“All we can do is to be prepared to use whatever powers we have to thwart every assault,” said Tracy, “And, young Jim, a proper acronym matching your description would be ‘TOWNI’, and that is a bit too cuddly and chav. Besides, you boys have both assumed that The Needful One is a ‘he’. It could be a ‘she’ or even transgender!” There would have been no prizes for guessing who injected that feminist note.
Lim made the peace, “Actually,’ he said in a measured way, ”actually TONI could be male or female with a slight tendency towards the feminine. Use it if you like, but it sort of drains all the menace out of the concept of an enemy of The Quintessence. And ‘The Needful One’ is no longer than ‘He Who Must Not Be Named’ and is androgynous.”
The reference to the legend of Harry Potter settled matters once and for all, though the use of the word ‘androgynous’ had to be explained to Jim.
“I think we should carefully consider the nature of the protections that have been revealed to us in the form of Superpowers. They have been relevant and very timely. We must talk to The Quintessence regularly and seek for help at all times.”
“I think you mean ‘pray’ a lot,” said Jim, whose experiences as a choirboy told him that praying gave you very flat knees.
“More like a respectful inward chat,” said Lim, “thanking Him for safety and praying for His intervention at all times.”
“There you go again, Lim, assuming that God is male with a capital ‘M’!” Tracy said this with her best lemon sucking expression. She was just making a point.
“You’re right,” said Lim, “So let’s just call him or her ‘Q’, like the boffin in James Bond films.”
“And you thought TONI was disrespectful to the Devil,” snorted Jim who was still smarting over the demolition of his suggestion of a diminutive for The Needful One, “condensing ‘The Quintessence’ into ‘Q” is a bit infra dig, ain’t it. And if you want me to explain ‘infra dig’ to you, I can!”
“I don’t think it bothers The Quintessence how we address him, as long as we are polite,” said Tracy falling into her own trap.
“You said ‘Him’,” chortled Jim and they all giggled and silently rocked and held their sides as in a silent film. They had reached the school where waiting outside the Headmaster’s office for a session with a genius and a mighty benefactor made you whisper and mime. Loud discourse might make you seem like yobs to visiting VIPs.
The Headmaster, Dr Griffin Sledge, did a double take as he came out of his office, looking them over carefully;
“Are you really Jim Bean?” he asked. This was evidence of his confusion for he was a man who insisted on addressing scholars with a polite ‘good morning’ or ‘good afternoon’.
Jim gave the twisted grin much favoured by his hero Rupert Grint. No reply was necessary. The grin spoke of wistful sorrow, acknowledged sarcasm and an ineptitude when it came to responding. It had to be delivered sideways with a knowing look.
“Well, you all look very smart,” said Dr Sledge, “We are still waiting for Sir Isaac and Mr Carnegie who have specifically and unaccountably asked to meet you three. They have been delayed by a strange and inexplicable accident en route from Cambridge. A perfectly good bridge collapsed onto the motorway in front of Mr Carnegie’s Rolls Royce, practically taking the nose off the vehicle.”
The Companions exchanged fearful looks.
“Oh nothing to worry you,” said Dr Sledge, “I should not have mentioned it. Shock I shouldn’t wonder and I will go and take a snifter of something for it.”
“Was anyone hurt?’ asked Tracy.
“No luckily they were unscathed, but I believe there were some very serious injuries to others,” responded Dr Sledge, “now do not mention any of this to your comrades. We don’t want any kind of hysteria among the girls.”
“Among the girls?” gritted Tracy pulling against the restraining hands of the boys.
“Yes, you know that not all the girls are as level-headed as you, young lady,” soothed Dr Sledge.
“Some are positive bimboes,” said Jim in wide eyed faked innocence. The presence of Dr Sledge only postponed Tracy’s retribution.
“I expect the inexplicable event will be on the news soon,” worried Dr Sledge. He hurried away, having seen an arriving Mayor and Member of Parliament.
“Inexplicable, my foot,” hissed Tracy, “a bridge collapsing and nearly wiping out the world’s number one benefactor and the universal genius to end all geniuses? On their way to an assignation with the three of us who manifestly have a role in the battle against The Needful One?
“You think The Needful One is behind this bridge collapse? How would he know about an assignation which is not even in the minds of those he is prepared to kill?” said Lim, playing Devil’s Advocate, a description which suddenly had real meaning.
Jim nodded slowly but firmly, “there is definitely a backdoor in the Harbourmaster’s coding,” he said.
When Carnegie and Newton arrived, they were dishevelled and dusty but brushed aside all offers of refreshment and ablution. They had had to climb over the debris of the bridge and there wait for a taxi until recognised by arriving police and whisked away in a squad car. They confirmed that there were many dead and injured, the bridge having fallen on a coachload of football supporters and several cars.
“The Needful One is really playing hardball,” muttered Lim.
Newton was tall and slim with long curly hair that was clearly disobedient. His height belied his mother, Hannah Ayscough’s, description of him as a baby. She had said “he could have fit into a quart mug”. Clearly the lees in the mug had been extra nourishing. But his height was increased by the sprung calf stilts he was wearing and he reached a full 7’ 6” and could lope like a gazelle. His trousers were tailored for the extra length of his legs. He wore a lot of corduroy and velvet, chiefly because velvet was enormously expensive and some foolish Savile Row tailor had offered him a suit in royal blue for free. He had also supplied an outer cloak of midnight blue bedecked with golden stars and moons. This was worn as an obvious affectation and used for functions such as these school visits.
Newton readily, foolishly and frequently expressed hatred of his mother for her wilful remarrying. He even included this bile in speeches to already truculent teenagers. The threats of arson against his mother and his reviled stepfather’s home, were not so frequently mentioned. In these acts, the genius that was Newton had something of the murderous streak of Caravaggio about him. He had piercing brown eyes and when he looked at you, your soul shrank into a small corner of your being because the scrutiny was beyond bearing. This was an effect he had learned from a stage hypnotist when investigating suggestibility as an anaesthetic. His majestic appearance, topped by luxurious long hair, was diminished somewhat by a tendency to totter on his stilts owing to an ear infection which he had unwisely treated with laudanum. Tottering behind a massive lectern on the raised dais in the school hall made him seem like an aerial spirit, or a butterfly akin to The Emperor Blue Morpho Peleides. If you haven’t seen one of those butterflies, you haven’t lived. You certainly wouldn’t have lived in Mexico where they are more abundant.
The bearded Andre Carnegie was altogether the more bluff and well built, though grown to no more than a low rise ‘edifice’. If you did not know him for the gifted entrepreneur and philanthropist that he was, you would mistake him for a bare knuckle prize fighter. My mother would certainly have described him as ‘big boned’. His career had taken him from penniless urchin in Scotland to bobbin boy and merchant in America. His fortune was made in steel and commerce and then in satellite launching and communications and was so vast that a special vault had been built into his house to contain some £100,000,000,000 in bonds which he was quickly dispersing to build libraries schools and colleges. And yet his wealth grew greater still. He was the all-time greatest ever philanthropist and facilitator and he was now behind every advance of Rowling world’s genius, Newton.
These two great man st
ared at the diminutive ginger mop of the teenager Jim Bean. He could feel the heat of their stares and, after introductions were complete and the men were made aware of Lim and Tracy and of their powers and experiences, they all retired to the Headmaster’s office delaying speeches and presentations to the school until later. The delay was all explained by referring to the collapsed bridge. The bridge became scapegoat.
“So,” said Newton gravely, “you are the boy who farts outrageously and cloaks Britain’s greatest benefactor with sheets of excreted filth like a skunk fleeing from capture.”
Though this was solemnly said, there was a twinkle in the brown eyes looking down on Jim.
“Sir,” said Lim, “he is also the youth who confronted a tiger with a scaffolding pole to try and save his friends. We none of us have the choice of the Superpowers bestowed upon us by The Quintessence.”
The brown eyes turned on Lim. “And you are the leader of the companions, a levitator who could rise above me and strike off my head with your invisible scythe. All facilitated by The Almighty whom you refer to as ‘The Quintessence’?”
“You have the better of me, Sir,” said Lim, simultaneously wondering why he was speaking in such a strange and pompous way. It was what a Newton stare could do to you. “though the scythe is unlikely to harm anyone not imbued with evil, or so I believe.” Lim had fingers crossed behind him as he now knew Newton as the would-be arsonist and Newton the slanderer of Hooke.
“We all carry something of the Dark side within,” said Newton, freeing a long lock of hair from his face in a movement that reminded all present of the slow deliberation and cold menace of Severus Snape, as played by Alan Rickman in the Potter film; “But perhaps you are too young to have yet experienced the darkness. But be warned, it is there and you must be prepared to confront and defeat it or you will become as fodder for The Needful One.”
“I trust I shall be equal to the task,” said Lim, still in that strangled adult speak which seemed to be his only intonation in present company. Privately he was thinking that he had already done more to advance the defeat of The Needful One than this polymath.
“Good,” said Newton, “Well, Carnegie, is paralymphatology the only pseudo-science of interest today?”
Carnegie shrugged, “Levitation, cloaking, invisible weapons! It seems that there are several fields of investigation, including spiritism and theology.”
“Yes, Carnegie, there is so much to excite the scientific mind and to engage the interest of the Fellows of the Royal Society. But chief among the jewelled paths of research is the theology. For it seems that The Needful One is about to assault humanity in this universe endowed with the knowledge of his failure in its mirror pair. All that stands between that evil and success is these three and you and I.” He looked at Tracy;
“What powers do you bring to this little party, apart from being, as I understand it, the King’s Lynn Slimmer of the Year?”
Lim again intervened, “Tracy has a unique way of uniting our efforts and making them more effective,” he said. It sounded lame and empty. Tracy certainly thought so.
“Oh no,” said Newton, “there is more to this young lady than that alone. Clearly The Quintessence is saving her endowment until the battle is firmly joined.”
“You seem to know more than we understood Sir,” said Lim.
“Again, not so. Science is based on thinking and on the making of sensible theories and in this, I may boast, I am somewhat forward. It annoyed Liebnitz and Hooke, poor creatures, and I have to confess that it often amazes and delights me. Why The Quintessence has chosen me, it alone knows, but I am grateful and bow nightly to give thankful prayer. And prayer is what I commend to you as a way of opening what Hindus call the Chakras and enervating the inner mind. What say you Carnegie.”
“I know of no more productive exercise than conducting a conversation with what Newton calls The Quintessence and I call God. Each night I follow the same routine beside my bed and on my knees in consort with my good wife. We thank God for his bounty and every blessing, then we bring to his attention those in need and then we ask for guidance, direction and for the chance to be his instrument, And finally, we ask that whatever our will, His will be done. We close that conversation in the name of Jesus Christ. Now even an atheist can benefit from that process for it engages the powers of the subconscious in a most revealing way.”
Tracy was emboldened, but found herself speaking Lim’s posh speak, “Sirs, you variously describe The Quintessence as ‘it’ and ‘Him’, but never ‘her’. Permit me some confusion.” She had never spoken like that before. Jim looked at her with an expression that said, ‘be you never so mighty...’
Newton answered, “Perhaps Carnegie may permit me to be our, er, spokesperson. The use of anthropomorphic pronouns for the divinity or for the force for all good is a fault of the limitations of our language, history and tradition. I am struggling myself with a new language which is capable of shading meaning in a parallel with the art of the calculus. It may be a fanciful exercise as unproductive as turning lead into gold. But that is how science is: dreamings, imaginings, theories and then proofs. We must look to you Chinese much more, for you have reconciled ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘it’ into a single pronoun. Yes, young Tracy, even the feminine, third-person, singular personal pronoun, subjective case, ‘she’ surrenders to the Chinese.”
This comment made Lim feel like the Chinese ambassador and personally responsible for the androgynous pronoun ‘Tā’. Newton struggling? Fanciful and a dreamer? Even Jim suddenly felt a bit more at home. Tracy was also in a state of heightened awe.
“I heartily concur,” said Carnegie, “And let me tell you, that if I had not departed Scotland with my possessions in a red spotted handkerchief on a stick but with dreams filling my head, I would not have succeeded in business. Nor would my sense of pity for the plight of others irrespective of gender or nationality, ever have blossomed into a life of giving. And much of my manufacturing is done by the remarkable Chinese people. I commend the word ‘Tā’ to you as an exemplar of the unity of humankind and the planet.”
“Carnegie outdoes me in empathy,” said Newton, “for my failing is that I cannot abide fools and the mediocre and by unhappy extension, that comes to include the poor. I chastise myself for it in every prayer. But enough! We will soon bore you into insolent distaste for our self-righteousness. What is to be done?”
Newton paused and leaned forward intently and Carnegie lowered his bluff bearded head beside the giant who wrote “Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica’ and the later “Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Plumbo Mutando ad Aurum”. They all waited.
Lim shifted uncomfortably, “We know that The Needful One...”
Newton interrupted, “Do not let us lend that entity any kind of dignity, let us use the word “Billy” for the Needful One is both a Liar as in Billy Liar and silly as in Silly Billy. Enraging such an entity throws it off balance.”
Lim marvelled at Newton’s knowledge of the mundane work of Keith Waterhouse and the sayings of an aged politician called Denis Healey. Newton briefly explained the role of television in resting an overheated cerebral cortex. By so doing, he had inadvertently given Jim an explanation for preferring TV to homework. He could now say to his mother,
“resting an overheated cerebral cortex, Mum. Isaac Newton does it all the time.”
His mother would sigh and say;
“Sir Isaac to you, my boy, but you watch so much TV, your brain must be chilled as ice by now.”
He planned to respond by telling her how his friend Isaac only used his knighthood with bankers, charlatans and the Prince of Wales, all of whom had the characteristic of being too big for their boots. But she was a fan of the Prince of Wales and the Prince’s Trust work, so that was not wisdom.
Lim hitched his pants uneasily; “ We know that The, that Billy is coming, though the evidence is circumstantial. He may have arrived in a silvery saucer-shaped pod we spotted at RAF Sculthorpe.” That
was an extemporary extension of what the Companions of the Order of the Spectacles had previously thought. But Tracy and Jim said nothing. Let the leader lead. And take the can for any error.
“Oh Billy is here and no mistake,” said Newton, “Billy has tried to kill both me and Carnegie here. What a coup that would have been.”
“But as to what to do about Billy, we were hoping you would have some idea,” he quickly changed ‘idea’ adding “er, theory,” said Lim.
“Well,” said Newton, “I am in the dreaming and imagining phase on this one and my single theory is that you should be helped to continue your investigations. The Quintessence has chosen you and protected you and that is quite enough for me. I hope Carnegie will join me in persuading the military to allow you full access to their saucers and drones in their new location at Cardington. What say you Carnegie?”
“Lord Beaverbrook is my friend,” said Carnegie, “and I am sure he can be persuaded.” Lord Beaverbrook was the Minister for Defence and a former Canadian citizen. A Time-Space fold accounts for any surprise you may feel about another person out of time. Out of your time, only.
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