– Felix
The day was clear and warm, full of delicious smells and promises. Felix could barely pay attention in class. As soon it was over he flew to the Chip N’ Swill. It’d be easiest for Amelia to find him there and thank him and maybe, just maybe—although he was trying not to get his hopes up—fall at his feet. He found a faded piece of plastic, tossed it onto the rune pile, and took his place at the logtop. The Swill was almost empty: a kookaburra, a pair of grey butcherbirds, a noisy miner, and a gull. Nobird was talking. None of them were even eating. In fact, all of them were variously staring into space, down at the logtop, or across at the sand. Felix was about to wonder why the stony silence when Huma gave him a chip on credit. Unasked. And no lecture. He frowned and opened his beak to say something but a dirty pigeon landed, seemingly needing her attention. Huma disappeared to the back of the Swill with the feral.
He shrugged and bit into his chip.
“Do you really think you should be eating chips?” a voice enquired.
Felix looked its owner up and down. “You think I’m going to take dietary advice from a seagull?”
“I’m Sarah,” she said, as if that answered his question.
“Felix,” he managed, around a second beakful.
“So. Like I said, should you be eating that?”
“Mmmf,” Felix tossed the last of the chip into his beak. “Yes,” he swallowed the piece and nearly choked, coughing before answering. “I was hungry,” he said, swallowing it again.
Sarah stretched her wings.
“Errr, excuse me,” Felix asked. “But…what’s wrong with your legs?”
“Legs?” Sarah looked down at them. “Why? I can’t see anything! Is it a tick? Get it off me!” She screeched. “Get it off me!”
“No…err…they’re just so…orange.”
“Oh,” she relaxed. “That’s just my colouring. They’re very natural-looking. And they match my beak. Don’t you think?”
Huma returned, stuffing mysterious somethings into various containers. Her customers were definitely not looking at her now. Felix again opened his beak to ask—
“Hey, Sarah.” Huma beat him to it. “Why don’t you show Bumpy where you get those pretty shells? Kill two bees with one stone: gets him out of my feathers and he might find something to start paying me back.”
“Sure,” Sarah said. “I was about to go join my friends anyway. You know I don’t eat delectables. Come on, Bumpy. You can meet my cockfriend.”
They found him at the football stadium. He was standing at the halfway line with a syndicate of seagulls and a mute of common miners. As Felix circled to line himself up with the headwind, he was surprised to see Olly standing there too. Felix spread his wings, lowered his legs, and tried to gracefully join the birds on the grass.
“Steve.” Sarah greeted her cock with a peck, absent-mindedly introduced Felix, and nodded towards the miners. “I believe it’s my turn, isn’t it?”
Steve grinned while Felix brushed off dirt and grass stains. “They’re all yours,” he told Sarah.
“Ok!” Sarah raised her voice so everybird could hear. “Gulls versus miners. One to antilog one Sam gets it!”
“Gets what?” Felix asked Steve.
“There’s a bit of bread at the try line.” He pointed. “You want in? One to antilog one! You get it, right? Easy maths, but we can’t go wrong.”
Felix didn’t get it. And he was pretty sure he couldn’t figure it out without his beak moving and his claws scratching in the dirt. He tried figuring it anyway while he pretended to sum up his surroundings. He looked at the try line: he could see the bread without zooming. He looked to where some of the gulls were massaging the gull that was presumably Sam and realized he already knew him from the Chip N’ Swill: the sick-up gull.
Nope. He wasn’t going to be able to figure this maths out.
He tried another delay tactic. “What, just him? Against all those miners?”
“Yep.”
“Shouldn’t you make it easier for the miners to understand?” He bluffed.
“You’re right,” Sarah replied with a wink. “Miners! Our new friend here is worried you might not understand the odds, so let’s give them to you in a way you can’t fail to understand. The odds are one to √ φ x π π.”
Felix frowned. The odds sounded like chicken scratch; but everybird else seemed to understand so he kept his mouth shut.
“Oh you poet!” Olly laughed.
Felix sighed. “I’ll stand out of this one, if you don’t mind.”
“Your loss,” Sarah told him. “Now, miners, how about it?”
“Alright,” one of them agreed. “And you’re sure there’s no rules?”
“None whatsoever,” Sarah said. “Anybird can do whatever it takes to get the bread.”
Felix pasted a smile on his beak and started at the beginning. Checking to see if had a file on antilog tables, he was surprised to find one. Now…why was the gang offering odds for something they were guaranteed to lose? Was antilog one a negative answer? He scratched surreptitiously in the dirt.
“And we start here?” the miner was asking in disbelief, pointing to the halfway line painted on the football field.
Antilog one equals ten, Felix read from his file with only the faintest movement of his beak. He looked at the halfway line.
“Yep,” Sarah told the miner. “And when I say start, then you fly, run, whatever. Just get to the try line and get that piece of bread before Sam does.”
Felix ran the next formula through his lecture files. The scratching sounds apparently translated to the square root of phi multiplied by double pi. He did so.
“You’re on,” the miner said.
Twelve point something? They went from 10:1 to 12:1? Not only were they guaranteed to lose, they’d just upped the ante. With no rules, all the miners had to do was send one of them to the try line while the others held Sam down.
He watched as all the miners emptied their cockpurses of everything they had until a huge mound of shells, beetle wings, moths, nuts and lizards stood between the two groups.
“They’re going to win,” he whispered to Steve.
“Yep,” Steve replied as Sarah called out to the crowd. “Alright! Everybird ready? On the count of three! One, two—”
Two of the miners broke for the try line. The rest of them attacked Sam—stabbing at him, holding his wings down, standing on him. It was over almost before it started.
“Three!” Sarah yelled. The two miners reached the piece of bread. Sarah whooped and high-feathered Olly.
“Wait,” the miner who’d done all the talking said. “We won. You said there were no rules.”
Oh, Felix realized. It’s backwards! It’d normally be antilog one to one, Sarah had tricked the miners and said the odds backwards. He grinned.
“Yes, you did,” Sarah agreed with the miner. “And you remember what the odds were, don’t you?”
“Of course they were—oh.” The miner lowered his head.
“Yep. One to the square root of phi by double pi. Not the other way round. We’ll even drop it back to antilog 1 to show what good sports we are. So here’s your one tenth. Pleasure doing business with you.”
“You shoulda been in on that one, Felix,” Olly winged him on the back.
“Next time,” he said with a smile. “Definitely.”
“There won’t be a next time,” Olly said. “Not even miners are stupid enough to fall for that twice!”
“I dunno,” Steve said as the mute flew away. “They were dumb enough to get the odds backwards in the first place, then dumb enough to let us drop it back from 12.5% to 10%. Can you get much dumber than that?”
“We can only hope not,” Olly said. “Or life as we know it is nothing but a cockfight. Anyway,” he said, packing his share into his cockpurse. “I’m gonna love yas and leave yas. There’s a barbie over at King Edward Park and there’s at least one sausage there with my name on it.”
“Not us,” Steve said. “Me n Sarah are taking our new friend crabbing!”
Evolution: it's for the birds 