The Fantastic Family Whipple (27 page)

At that moment, Arthur’s mother and her younger children emerged through the gates.

“Ah, here they are now!” Rita exclaimed. She walked over and wrapped her arms around a very surprised Mrs. Whipple, the mob following her every move. “Well done, Lizzie,” Rita smiled as she released her grip on Arthur’s mother. “Congratulations on your silver medal—you were nearly as good as we were. We’ll have to watch our backs next year. If you work really hard, you might just beat us!”

“Thank you, Mrs. Goldwin,” replied Mrs. Whipple, still slightly shaken by the sudden encounter. “But I think you are the one to be congratulated. That was truly some sensational knife throwing.”

“Ahhh, what an honor that is coming from you, Lizzie—the former Mother/Child Knife-Throwing Champion of the World! You know, most people who have just been trounced by a relatively unknown competitor would be angry and bitter—but you somehow manage to remain complimentary. Bravo, Lizzie. Bra-vo.”

Arthur’s mother must have been altogether too touched to say any more—because at Mrs. Goldwin’s last comment, she simply smiled and led her children away from the reporters.

Arthur had never seen his mother moved to speechlessness before. He turned to Ruby in astonishment. “Your mother really is incredible, isn’t she?”

“Ehh,” said the girl. “Rita’s all right.”

With only three events left in which both families were competing, the Whipples’ chances to show the world they had not been entirely superseded by the Goldwins were dwindling fast.

Next up was the rocket-kart race.

Simon had been perfecting his rocket kart for several years now, having collected a steady stream of speed records in the process.

As a rocket kart is essentially a wheeled soap box with a rocket engine strapped to its back, the key to improving the general design is to use as large an engine as possible without it blasting through the kart’s flimsy frame and instantly obliterating the driver. (This last consideration, of course, was to comply with the rather obnoxious rule that the driver of the rocket kart indeed be alive upon crossing the finish line.) Simon had gone through a great many dummy test drivers to arrive at his current design, which he felt was the perfect blend of power and unlethality.

And yet somehow, Rupert Goldwin’s rocket-kart design proved to be just a bit better.

Though Simon held a wide lead for most of the race, the Goldwin boy nosed ahead of him just before the finish
line—and promptly scored another world record for the Goldwin family.

Arthur noticed his brothers and sisters were no longer so vocal about their plans for revenge. His father remained silent.

Next, it was on to the Archery Area, where Cordelia would be competing in the foot archery event.

Despite Arthur’s familiarity with this celebrated sport—in which competitors use only their feet to loose arrows from a bow toward a specified target—he had only recently learned of its somewhat dubious origins. According to Chinese legend, foot archery got its start in the late Jin Dynasty as a rather unpleasant method of capital punishment. Reserved only for the most despised criminals, foot archery was employed by the emperor when death by conventional archery struck him as too humane. Unfortunately for the executionee, it took much longer for the royal archers to hit the proper targets when they were made to use their feet. Instead of three or four arrows to put the poor wretch out of his misery, it typically required between seventy-five and one hundred—which soon led to the Great Chinese Arrow Shortage of 1214, and hence, the Mongolian victory and subsequent invasion at the Battle of Beijing in 1215. Of course, with the popularization of foot archery as a sport over the following centuries, foot archers had gained enough accuracy that in modern contests, only about one in fifteen arrows completely missed the target and flew into the surrounding crowd.

Cordelia, who held the records for Longest Distance to
Shoot a Bull’s-Eye by Foot and Most International Tournament Wins, was truly a master foot archer. But so, it seemed, was Rosalind Goldwin.

Not surprisingly, as the end of competition drew near, it was down again to one member from each of their families.

For the tiebreaking round, both girls would shoot three arrows into the same target, and the competitor with the arrow nearest to center would win. For Cordelia, this would increase her record for Most International Tournament Wins to an even twenty; for Rosalind, it would make her the First Tenderfoot Ever to Win Gold in Target Foot Archery.

Favored by the coin toss, Rosalind chose to shoot first. After her first two arrows landed several inches from center, it was looking to be an easy victory for Cordelia—but Rosalind must have merely been gaining her bearings, because her final arrow landed dead center, with a heartbreaking
thunk
.

Unlike the crowd, the Whipples were less than ecstatic. For Cordelia to force a double tiebreaker and remain in the competition, there was only one shot she could make—and it was near impossible.

Cordelia started off strong, her first and second arrows landing well within the gold center circle—much better than Rosalind’s first two shots—but still an inch or so from perfect center.

The Whipples’ honor now hinged on Cordelia’s last arrow.

Lying back on her specialized foot-archery recliner, Cordelia drew back the bowstring with her leg, the feathered end of the arrow snugly gripped between her toes. She held it there for an extended moment, biting her bottom lip in serious concentration as the crowd held its breath. And then, she let go.

As Arthur watched the arrow leave his sister’s bowstring, he couldn’t help but reflect on one of his all-time favorite heroes. Ever since he was a small boy, he had been thrilled by stories of the benevolent outlaw Robin Hood, who had lived in Sherwood Forest and—in order to impress a girl—had won an archery competition by skillfully splitting his opponent’s arrow with an arrow of his own. Cordelia, however, had frequently assured her brother this was utter nonsense. “First of all,” she’d explained, “you don’t win an archery competition by making the exact same shot as your opponent—you force a
draw
. And second,” she’d added, “if Mr. Hood actually had split an arrow in two, I’m sure he was just as surprised by it as anybody else. The way the story gets told, you’d think he went around splitting six arrows every day before breakfast. But believe me, Arthur, that’s just not something you do much more than once or twice in your lifetime, no matter how skilled an archer you are, or however badly you want to impress a girl. The odds are entirely too low. If you want to go on listening to silly stories, be my guest—but you’ll hear no such nonsense from me.”

In the end, it seemed his sister was right about Robin
Hood. At least, it would be hard to argue with her after what happened next.

A moment later, Arthur watched Cordelia’s arrow sink into the target, just left of Rosalind’s—and another record for the Goldwins was secured.

The Whipples were all but silent as they trudged toward the Cycle Sector, where Arthur’s eldest brother, Henry, would be competing in their family’s final event against the Goldwins: the penny-farthing stunt park.

As Arthur had learned from Dr. Bracket, his Early Bicycle History tutor, a penny-farthing (or high-wheel bicycle, as it is sometimes called) is marked by its two disparately sized wheels—the front being as large as five feet in diameter, and the rear being as tiny as five inches. Its name, Arthur had learned, had been derived from two British coins in circulation at the time of its invention: the penny and the farthing—the penny, of course, being worth a hundredth of a pound, and the farthing, a quarter of a penny. Apparently, upon seeing the bicycle in profile, somebody had thought it looked like a penny and a farthing standing side-by-side, since a penny was so much larger than a farthing, and since all some people can ever think about is money.

Even though the invention of the chain drive had long since replaced the need for such a large front wheel, the penny-farthing was still the vehicle of choice for true bicycle purists—or “wheelmen,” as they preferred to be identified—and
Arthur’s eldest brother considered himself one of them.

Henry was an expert wheelman. Not only had he executed the First Rear Tornado Whip-Twist in Competition, he was also the undisputed record holder for Most Gold Medals in the Penny-Farthing Stunt Park Event. And yet, with the Goldwins around, it seemed all prior awards had been virtually rendered meaningless.

Luckily, Henry thrived on pressure. It was widely rumored he would be unveiling a brand new trick at this year’s Showdown, with experts speculating it could even be the elusive “Ten-Eighty”—the holy grail of spin moves, long thought to be humanly impossible by even the most seasoned wheelmen—in which the rider launches into the air and completes three full rotations before landing.

And so, despite his family’s recent losses, Henry approached the stunt park with an uncommon air of confidence.

The stunt park itself was quite a marvel of recreational engineering. Squarish in shape, it was over fifty yards across, with all manner of ramps, rails, bridges, ledges, pools, and loops packed within its perimeter.

One by one, each rider entered to face it alone.

Halfway through the lineup, Roland Goldwin took to the park. As good as the previous competitors had been, Roland’s superiority was instantly clear. Riding with more
energy, more skill, and more style than anyone before him, the Goldwin boy soared to first place.

It was hard to imagine Henry coming even close to matching such a flawless performance. But when the eldest Whipple boy finally dropped in at the end of round one, Arthur felt ashamed for his momentary lack of faith. As ever, Henry was phenomenal.

When he had finished his run, all eyes turned to the scoreboard. A moment of tension, and there it was: 9.55—edging Henry into first by two-tenths of a point.

The Whipples cheered with joy and relief—but with two rounds to go, the competition was far from over.

As the second round commenced, it quickly became clear that Roland and Henry were in a class to themselves. While the other riders generally performed slightly worse than their own initial runs, the two frontrunners only seemed to improve upon theirs.

Adding an Extended Front Wheelie to his routine, Roland executed nearly half of his run without allowing his rear wheel to touch the ground. A score of 9.61 deftly moved him to the top of the board.

But then Henry pulled off triple consecutive Nine-Hundreds—completing two and a half rotations each time he launched off the lip of the half-pipe—reclaiming his lead with a lofty score of 9.67, much to the Whipples’ delight.

And so, as the competing wheelmen headed into the third and final round, all the pressure landed squarely on the shoulders of Roland Goldwin. Since only the best run
from each rider would be counted, even if Henry failed to finish the round, it would still take a near-perfect run from Roland to dethrone him.

Unfortunately, it seemed the Goldwin boy shared Henry’s penchant for pressure. This time, in addition to the Extended Front Wheelie, he added an Extended
Rear
Wheelie as well, expertly transferring his balance from fore to aft, lifting the large wheel off the ground while stabilizing himself over the tiny one. He was on his way to his best run yet.