Aristotle's Nostril

by Morris Gleitzman

  Just in case.

  Suddenly Aristotle missed his brother so much it hurt even more than his legs. OK, his brother could be grumpy sometimes. OK, his brother counted things a bit too often. But Aristotle knew, as he struggled up the side of the mole hill, that no amount of grumpy counting could ever make him stop loving Blob.

  I hate you, Aristotle, thought Blob as he dragged his aching body up the other side of the mole hill.

  By hate, he didn’t mean he wished Aristotle any harm. Not like the harm he was suffering as the rubble scraped his tender bits and the senior intelligence agent prodded his other tender bits. Not like the stress he was feeling as the rest of the intelligence agents just over his shoulder muttered about him not knowing the way.

  By hate Blob just meant he wished he had another germ as his brother. Any one of the other sixty-three million four hundred and ninety-eight thousand seven hundred and forty-two germs in his nostril would do.

  Anyone except Aristotle.

  Please.

  ‘Leaping lymphocytes,’ gasped the commando officer.

  Aristotle watched nervously as the officer and the rest of the royal scouting commando unit had their first view of a nostril that wasn’t their own.

  ‘Blimey,’ one of the commandos said to the others as they stared, stunned-shaped, at Aristotle’s nostril. ‘It’s true. He’s not an idiot after all.’

  Aristotle peered at his nostril too, hoping to see Blob.

  No sign of him, sadly.

  ‘Atten-shun,’ shouted the commando officer.

  Aristotle stood to attention. The commandos immediately stopped being stunned and snapped back into regulation commando shapes. But they all still gazed at the nostril.

  Suddenly Aristotle realised that he and the commandos weren’t alone on the top of the mole hill. Slithering over the ridge on the other side were a large number of germs with human food draped over themselves.

  Aristotle stared at them, alarmed but also disgusted.

  They must be very messy eaters.

  Could they be tummy germs?

  They looked more like nose germs in fancy dress.

  Now they were staring too, stunned-shaped, at the new nostril. All of them except one, who was peering at Aristotle.

  Aristotle peered back.

  Was it?

  Could it be?

  The peering germ took off a scarf of bacon and a hat of spinach, and Aristotle saw that it was.

  ‘Blob,’ he yelled.

  He started to trot towards his brother. But his way was blocked. The commandos had all stopped staring at Aristotle’s nostril and were on full battle alert, facing the fancy-dress germs. The fancy-dress germs, who Aristotle realised must be from home, were doing the same to the commandos.

  ‘Don’t attack until I give the order,’ shouted the commando officer.

  ‘Ditto,’ shouted the senior intelligence agent.

  Aristotle trembled in the middle.

  This is tragic, he thought. These are all nose germs, all the same underneath their military equipment and bits of bacon, but they just don’t know it yet.

  He had to do something.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he shouted to the commandos and intelligence agents. ‘Can I have your attention please?’

  He waited until both sides had stopped glowering at each other.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’m Aristotle and this is my brother Blob. Um . . . as you can see, there are two nostrils. That makes us neighbours so we should probably do some introductions and get to know each other. Blob, why don’t you start.’

  Blob stared at Aristotle and went a weird shape Aristotle didn’t recognise.

  After a few moments, Aristotle remembered that Blob wasn’t very good in big social groups. Counting them, yes. Talking to them, no.

  Aristotle was about to do the introductions himself when, to his surprise, Blob started speaking.

  ‘Actually,’ said Blob to the assembled military personnel, ‘I’m not sure if Aristotle is my brother. I’ve been thinking about it and I reckon there might have been a mix-up at birth.’

  Aristotle stared at Blob, numb with shock.

  Then he realised what was happening.

  Of course, chuckled Aristotle to himself. It’s been an hour since I gave him the cake. It’s our birth anniversary. We’re eleven. He’s playing a birthday joke on me. This is wonderful. Blob’s actually playing a joke.

  ‘Happy birthday, Blob,’ said Aristotle happily, and gave his brother a big hug.

  Blob pulled away.

  Some of the commandos and intelligence agents gasped.

  ‘I mean it, Aristotle,’ said Blob, miserable-shaped. ‘How can me and you be brothers? We’re just too different.’

  Aristotle struggled to find something to say, something that would end this birthday nightmare and make things all right.

  But before he could, there was a terrible rumbling squelching sound.

  Aristotle looked around, startled.

  And saw a truly horrifying sight.

  Surging towards the hilltop from the south was a massive greasy white wave. Aristotle had never seen anything like it. For a few moments he didn’t know what it was. Then the commandos and intelligence agents all started yelling in panic.

  ‘Whipped cream.’

  Aristotle froze, mesmerised by fear.

  Whipped cream. He’d learned about it at school. The deadliest substance known to nose germs. Deadly because its fat content made it so easy for germs to absorb through their membranes, but once they had, the sugar content sent them into shock and spasms and . . .

  Aristotle didn’t want to think about it.

  ‘Blob,’ he yelled.

  Commandos and intelligence agents were scrambling in all directions. Aristotle saw Blob knocked spinning onto his back by a burly fleeing commando.

  ‘Blob,’ yelled Aristotle again, flinging himself at his brother and trying desperately to drag Blob by the legs across the hilltop away from the thundering white wave.

  Aristotle knew they weren’t going to make it.

  He stared sadly at his brother, and just for a second Blob stared back.

  Then the whipped cream hit, and everything went black.

  9

  What a nice surprise, thought Aristotle. Somebody’s made me a birthday cake. What a nice thing to wake up to when you’ve been unconscious.

  Candlelight danced over Aristotle’s dazed squiz molecules.

  Very bright candlelight.

  Was Blob here?

  Had Blob made a cake for him?

  Aristotle tried to stand up, but he was too weak.

  Ouch.

  That candlelight was much too bright.

  ‘So,’ said a voice Aristotle sort of recognised. ‘Are you going to be a good germ and tell us everything? Or are we going to have to smell you?’

  Aristotle didn’t know what the voice meant. The only thing he did know was that the voice wasn’t Blob’s.

  He squinted through the light. All he could see of the germ standing in front of him was a dark outline. It was an outline he’d seen before. A bulge at the top and a bulge at the bottom.

  ‘Where’s Blob?’ whispered Aristotle.

  ‘Blob?’ said the senior royal adviser.

  ‘My brother,’ said Aristotle.

  ‘We don’t know,’ said the senior royal adviser. ‘We wish we did, because we’d like to interrogate him too. But sadly we’ve only got you. So let’s start with the whipped cream. When did your government first have the idea of attacking us with it?’

  Aristotle went stunned-shaped.

  ‘Attacking you with it?’ he said. ‘Nobody attacked you with it. Whipped cream is a natural disaster.’

  The senior royal adviser stepped closer. He said something to the candles and they went even brighter. Except, Aristotle now realised, they weren’t candles. They were big clusters of very bright carbon molecules that had obviously been trained to dazzle a suspect’s squiz molecules during questioni
ng.

  ‘Think carefully, young germ,’ said the senior royal adviser. ‘Our commandos saved you from the whipped cream and brought you back here so you could tell us the truth.’

  ‘Could you turn the lights down a bit, please?’ said Aristotle. ‘They’re hurting me.’

  ‘If I do,’ said the senior royal adviser, ‘will you tell us everything you know about the whipped cream?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Aristotle.

  The senior adviser gave another order, and the carbon molecules dimmed.

  Aristotle’s squiz molecules gradually stopped hurting and he looked around. He was lying on the ground in an aroma processing plant. It looked a bit like one he had gone to once on a school excursion. Smell-centre germs were grabbing aroma molecules as they came floating into the nostril on the wind.

  Homesickness stabbed through Aristotle. He wished he was still on the school excursion with Blob.

  But he wasn’t.

  He was in a different nostril, in a different aroma processing plant. One that was full of grim-shaped royal advisers staring at him.

  ‘I should warn you,’ said the senior royal adviser, ‘that you are in very serious trouble. We know your brother is a high-ranking officer in the armed forces of your nostril. We know he led the vicious and unprovoked whipped cream attack on our commandos. We believe you are a spy who was sent here by your government to lure our defence force into that brutal ambush.’

  Aristotle went gobsmacked-shaped so violently he almost split his outer layer.

  ‘It’s not true,’ he said. ‘None of it.’

  The senior adviser’s two bulges twitched.

  Aristotle could see he wasn’t happy.

  ‘We thought that might be your answer,’ said the senior adviser. ‘So we’ve set up a little test for you.’

  Two military germs grabbed Aristotle and dragged him to his feet.

  ‘Let me introduce you to Len,’ said the senior adviser.

  Standing next to the senior royal adviser, towering over him, was a smell-centre germ quite a bit bigger than the others.

  ‘Hello,’ said Aristotle nervously.

  ‘Whipped cream,’ said Len, sniffing in Aristotle’s direction. ‘Bacon and spinach. Vegemite.’

  ‘As you can see,’ the senior adviser said to Aristotle, ‘Len is a very capable aroma worker. But he has extra skills. He can also smell if someone is lying.’

  Len went modest-shaped.

  ‘It’s just this talent I’ve got,’ he said. ‘If you tell a porky, tiny fear atoms sneak out through your outer membrane and I can smell ’em. The boffins reckon it might be on account of my unusually large nucleus and inflamed . . .’

  ‘Thank you, Len,’ interrupted the senior adviser. ‘Let’s get started.’

  Len came over and stood very close to Aristotle.

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ he said. ‘Just pretend I’m not here.’

  Aristotle looked up at Len and gave a nervous smile. A smile looked innocent and truthful, he knew that.

  And I am innocent, he thought. So all I’ve got to do is be truthful.

  ‘Why,’ said the senior royal adviser, ‘does your government want to attack us?’

  ‘They don’t,’ said Aristotle.

  Len frowned, then shrugged.

  ‘He’s telling the truth,’ he said.

  Aristotle saw that the senior royal adviser was frowning too.

  ‘Then why,’ said the senior adviser, ‘did your government send you to spy on us?’

  ‘They didn’t,’ said Aristotle.

  He was about to explain how he’d been banished, but then he stopped himself. Governments who did banishing might not sound completely friendly, and Aristotle didn’t want to make the royal adviser any twitchier than he already was.

  ‘He’s telling the truth,’ said Len.

  The senior adviser was scowling now.

  ‘Tell us everything you know about the whipped cream,’ he snapped at Aristotle.

  ‘Um . . .’ said Aristotle. He struggled to remember what he’d learned about it at school. ‘Whipped cream is a natural disaster that happens when a human takes a bite of a pastry, bun or other dessert that’s too big for its mouth and the human starts choking and creates a tragic tidal wave across its top lip and sometimes breathes some up its nose.’

  Aristotle shuddered.

  Talking about it was bringing back the horror.

  Please, he begged silently. Please let Blob have survived it too.

  ‘He’s telling the truth,’ said Len.

  The senior adviser twitched quite a lot.

  ‘I find this hard to believe,’ he said tersely. ‘Len, are you sure you’re not having an off day? What aftershave am I wearing?’

  Len looked hurt.

  ‘Three molecules of Old Spice,’ he said. ‘And one molecule of Imperial Leather and one molecule of Arctic Splash. You really shouldn’t mix them.’

  ‘I can’t get a regular supply,’ muttered the senior adviser.

  He turned to Aristotle.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ he said. ‘Not many get past Len.’

  Aristotle felt weak with relief.

  ‘Does that mean I can go now?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said the senior adviser. ‘We in this peace and freedom loving nostril have a problem. We find we have a neighbouring nostril that might not be very nice. That might threaten our way of life. We need to find out more about the germs who live there. And you’re the only one we’ve got.’

  Aristotle didn’t like the sound of this.

  ‘And,’ continued the senior adviser, ‘because on the outside you don’t look any different to us, I’m afraid we’re going to have to . . .’

  The senior adviser paused with what seemed to Aristotle to be genuine regret.

  Aristotle didn’t like the sound of that pause. And he also didn’t like the look of the germs approaching him now. The ones carrying what appeared to be pieces of scientific equipment.

  Some of them horribly sharp-looking.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ said the senior adviser, ‘we’re going to have to take a look inside you.’

  10

  Blob felt like he’d been picked out of a nostril by a giant finger, rolled into a ball and flicked into a crowd of angry tummy germs.

  Well, he was pretty sure he did.

  He couldn’t be certain because he’d never actually had the experience. But he was ninety-six percent sure that having the experience would leave you feeling as mangled and upset as the experiences he had been having.

  Being almost smothered by whipped cream.

  Being dragged back to your own nostril and scrubbed in a military hospital till your outer layer nearly peeled off.

  Being left alone in a ward minute after minute after minute with nothing to do except think about the germ who might or might not be your brother. How that germ had gone bravely into a strange nostril to try and find somewhere for you both to live. How he’d tried to save you from the whipped cream, even though it might have cost him his own life.

  Blob felt very sad having those thoughts about Aristotle. So sad that even counting dead skin cells on the hospital wall hadn’t made him feel better.

  And then, on top of all that, Blob had been rushed to a secret location, which he now recognised as one of the eleven hundred and ninety-four abandoned mucus mines in the nostril, where the prime minister and fifty-three percent of the government were waiting impatiently for him.

  ‘Young germ,’ said the prime minister as soon as Blob’s police escort had left. ‘I have a very important question for you, and you must tell the truth. Do you understand?’

  Blob struggled to concentrate. He couldn’t get Aristotle out of his thoughts.

  ‘Do you understand?’ repeated the prime minister.

  ‘No,’ said Blob. ‘Yes. I think so.’

  ‘Good,’ said the prime minister. ‘Here’s the question. Does your brother know any secrets about this nostril, any secrets at all,
that would put our freedom at risk if a hostile nostril, any hostile nostril, found out about those secrets?’

  Blob tried desperately to understand the question.

  It wasn’t easy. A lot of very important germs were looking at him. He felt himself starting to panic.

  He counted to ten silently to calm himself. He would have preferred ten thousand, but he could see the prime minister was getting impatient. The prime minister’s big lazily-floating molecules were starting to speed up. Blob resisted the temptation to count them.

  ‘We’re waiting,’ said the prime minister.

  ‘Um . . .’ said Blob. ‘That’s a pretty big question. Thirty-two words. Can I have a little bit more time to think about it?’

  The prime minister nodded.

  Blob thought hard.

  He thought about which answer would be best for Aristotle.

  He was ninety-nine percent sure Aristotle would never give away his recipe for fluffy skin-flake icing. But what if he did, and what if a hostile enemy made it with sugar and used it in an attack . . .?

  Blob forced the thought away. Mentioning that could get Aristotle into trouble.

  ‘The answer’s no,’ said Blob.

  ‘No secrets he’d give away,’ said the prime minister, ‘even if he was being tortured?’

  Blob stared blankly at the prime minister.

  ‘Tortured?’ he said.

  ‘Tortured,’ said the prime minister.

  Blob went confused-shaped.

  ‘Who would want to torture Aristotle?’ he said. ‘That’s crazy. He’s one of the nicest germs you could meet. Very silly, and I could kill him sometimes, but torture . . .’

  Blob was lost for words.

  ‘They are torturing him,’ said the prime minister. ‘Right now.’

  Blob felt like he’d been slapped with a cold cold-germ.

  ‘Why?’ he whispered.

  ‘We don’t know why,’ said the prime minister. ‘That’s why we’re asking you. But we do know that your brother is being held prisoner by those ingermane brutes in the other nostril, and we do know they’re torturing him.’

  Blob struggled to take this in.

  ‘How do you know?’ he asked.

  ‘One of our intelligence agents got in there,’ said the prime minister. ‘He’s just reported back. I’m sorry.’