by Paul Gamble
“G-Grey, something awful’s happened,” Jack panted.
Grey looked up from the book he had been reading. “What?”
For a moment Jack couldn’t speak. It was as if saying the words out loud would choke him. “It’s Trudy,” he croaked. “She’s dead.”
Grey looked stunned. “Then we must do something immediately.”
“What?” Jack asked.
“Well, for a start we must let Trudy know.”
“Huh?”
“We have to let Trudy know that she’s dead. She’s sitting over there having a lemonade and looking at some maps. And if she’s dead, she probably shouldn’t be drinking any kind of fluid.83 She won’t be able to digest it and it’ll just get messy.” Grey pointed to a chair across the room.
Jack turned to look and saw Trudy sitting in a chair, looking over a stack of maps. She looked remarkably lively for someone who had fallen from the tenth story of an office building. Jack coughed to try and attract her attention. Trudy looked up, annoyed that someone had interrupted her work. For a minute Trudy looked as confused as Jack felt. Then her eyes focused and she seemed to realize what she was looking at.
Trudy bounded out of her chair and launched herself at Jack. He was knocked backward with a hug of awesome power.
“Jack. It’s you!”
“Trudy,” Jack gasped, trying to catch his breath. “I’m fairly sure that hugs aren’t meant to be this painful.”
Trudy apologized for her enthusiasm and helped Jack to his feet. “I’m sorry, but we thought you’d been captured!”
“I was captured,” Jack confirmed. “But I managed to free myself with a pillow.”
“You must be one hell of a pillow fighter.”
Jack looked solemn and nodded. “I killed three scouts at cub camp once.” Jack went on to explain that he was only joking and briefly told them how he had escaped from his imprisonment at Scrabo Tower.
“But never mind me being captured. I thought you were dead. They threw you out of a tenth-floor window.”
Trudy nodded. “I thought I was a goner myself for a minute. But then I remembered the quartermaster.”
Jack thought back to their meeting with the diminutive quartermaster. “You mean you fell all that way two feet at a time.”
“Perhaps I wasn’t quite that good—you must need to practice to get to that level. I think I fell a floor at a time, but it stopped me from ending up as an omelet when I hit the pavement.” Trudy rubbed her ribs as if they still hurt.
“That’s amazing!”
“It isn’t. It was awful. I was badly hurt and knew I wouldn’t be any good to you so I ran to get help.” Trudy looked ashamed of herself. “I abandoned you, Jack.”
“You didn’t. You did the right thing. There was no point in both of us getting caught.”
There seemed to be a tear in the corner of her eye. “It was wrong of me. Abandoning people is never right. I don’t care what anyone says.”
Jack knew that that wasn’t all there was to it. But he also knew that now wasn’t the time to pressure Trudy into telling more.
“Okay, so what do we do now? Unless we stop Mr. Teach, he’ll sail Northern Ireland into the middle of the ocean. We’ll all be at his mercy.”
Trudy grabbed the paper that she’d been studying. “I’ve pulled together these maps of where kids have gone missing. Grey helped me to use the map to draw up a plan of where the tunnels are under the ground all around the island. I thought we might be able to use them to find a way of attacking.”
“Brilliant, Trudy. One slight problem: I was away overnight and we’ve missed two days of school. Therefore I might not be able to participate in thwarting Teach’s evil plans because my parents will almost certainly have grounded me.”
Grey stepped forward. “Don’t worry about that, Jack—it’s all been sorted. I called the school and said that you had to take a few days off because your dog had died.”
“I don’t have a dog,” objected Jack.
“Well, not anymore you don’t,” said Grey, irritated at being interrupted, “because he’s dead. I also phoned your parents and pretended to be Trudy’s father. I told them you were sleeping over. Incidentally, your father has a very impressive mustache.”
“You could hear my father’s mustache over the phone?”
“It is a very impressive mustache,” Grey reiterated. “Your parents were happy enough and I sent them a car over to pick up your school uniform.” Grey handed Jack his uniform. “Not that you’re going to need it today.”
“Of course I’m not going to need it today. Today’s the day we’re going to rescue David.”
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
FALLING FROM HEIGHTS
INVENTION OF THE MODERN PARACHUTE
Many people have claimed that the first modern parachute was invented by a Frenchman called Louis-Sébastien Lenormand. This is not true. He was the first person to invent an effective modern parachute.
* * *
The names of the people who invented the ineffective parachutes are not recorded by history. All we know about them is that generally they were buried in very flat coffins.
* * *
46
REINFORCEMENTS
“We need reinforcements,” said Jack. “We couldn’t take down eight pirates at the offices. There could be dozens more underground.”
“We don’t have time to round any up, Jack.” Trudy was shaking her head. “Every minute we waste brings David closer to having to learn how to write left-handed.”
It was a stark reminder of what was at stake.
“The first thing is to try and rescue all the kidnapped children. Then we’ve got to destroy the digging equipment. If Teach detaches Northern Ireland from the rest of the island, then there’ll be nothing more we can do.”
“What about the enforcer thing he mentioned? He seemed pretty confident about that.”
Trudy frowned. “That was the only part of the plan I didn’t get figured out. I mean, everything else seems to have fallen into place. But I have no idea what the enforcer might be.”
Jack thought hard. “Well, the only loose ends I can think of are the stolen dinosaur bones and the school boiler. Maybe it’s something to do with that?”
“Maybe,” Trudy agreed, “but we’ll just have to deal with whatever it is when we come to it. Hopefully we’ll manage.”
Jack smiled. “I think we can do a little bit better than just manage. I’ve got an idea. Maybe we can get us some cavalry after all. Pass me the maps, Trudy.”
As Jack spread the maps out across a tabletop, Grey and Trudy gathered around to listen to his idea. “Now this might be a little bit of a longshot,” he confessed, “but if we can pull it off, I think they’ll probably write poetry and sing songs about us.”84
* * *
Trudy and Jack took a Ministry car to the school. Grey had left them to work on the second part of Jack’s plan.
“Do you think that the plan’s going to work?”
“That’s a bit like asking if the one parachute you have is going to work, Jack,” said Trudy. “It’s the only plan we have. So we’re going to have to pull the ripcord and just accept the consequences.”
“That’s a cheery metaphor, Trudy. Thanks.”
When Jack and Trudy arrived at the school, all the pupils and teachers had already gone home and so they easily sneaked through the corridors, despite the fact that they were carrying a ridiculously long rope ladder. Trudy peeked around the corner of the boys’ changing room.
“Is it all clear?” asked Jack.
Trudy nodded for Jack to take a quick look for himself. He poked his head around the corner and saw four security guards standing at the end of the changing room. They wore blue uniforms that looked like something that the army would wear if they ran fast-food restaurants. They didn’t have guns on their belts, but they did have crackling walkie-talkies, handcuffs, and small cans of what Jack assumed was p
epper spray.
“Okay, Jack, you’re going to need to be faster than you ever have been. Think of the saddest thing you can.”
Jack closed his eyes and thought. He needed to summon up something really sad. At first he thought of the fact that his dog had just died. Then he remembered that it had only been an imaginary dog that had died and that didn’t seem so sad anymore.
Then Jack thought about the day of his grandfather’s funeral. He had been seven at the time and hadn’t been entirely sure what had been happening. He had known that his grandfather had died. But there was an enormous gulf between knowing the word dead and really understanding what it had meant. It certainly wasn’t something that the death of his goldfish had prepared him for. His mother had bought him a new goldfish. You couldn’t buy a new grandfather.85
The entire day of the funeral adults kept making jokes with him, hugging him, and calling him brave. His mother had promised him a trip to the toy store if he behaved himself.
Overall, the day of the funeral hadn’t seemed that sad. But there was a moment … when they lowered the coffin into the ground and he had looked up at his grandmother’s face. She had looked so sad, and weak and alone. Before the funeral Jack would never have seen his grandmother without his grandfather hovering around in the same room. But now it was different. He looked at his grandmother that day and saw her completely differently. It wasn’t the way she looked, it was more the way the grandfather-shaped hole beside her had looked.
As they lowered the coffin into the ground a single tear had rolled down his grandmother’s cheek.
Jack felt truly miserable as The Speed descended on him. He didn’t think anyone could have felt any sadder. However, when he opened his eyes and saw Trudy’s face he realized he was wrong. Jack was astonished to see that she looked even more wretched than he felt. The single tear he had remembered trickling down his grandmother’s face was running down Trudy’s face. It made Jack feel impossibly sad to see Trudy, who was normally so strong, look so wretched.
“What did you think of?” Jack asked.
Trudy tried to say something, but her voice broke. She took a few seconds to pull herself together before she mumbled, “Now isn’t the time. We have to save David.”
Trudy sprinted around the corner of the changing rooms and blurred toward the guards. The four security guards turned to look at her. One dropped a cup of coffee as Trudy leapt up and ran along the wall before jumping onto the ceiling. She dived from the ceiling above the guards, lashing out with feet and fists. The first guard fell after three quick jabs to his jaw. Trudy then spun in mid-dive, stretching out with her feet, and kicked two of the other guards, knocking them backward. One staggered back into the shower area and fell, smashing his head on the tiles. The other crunched into a wall and slid down into a slumped position.
Trudy landed on her hands and pushed back. Flipping over the final guard’s head, she sailed over him and caught his neck between her ankles. Using her speed, she continued diving forward and flipped the guard over, catapulting him into the ceiling. He seemed to stick there for a brief second before crashing to the ground. Trudy landed on her feet, nimble as a fox.
Jack had followed her down through the changing room. Although he had been moving faster than he ever had before, he still arrived a few seconds after Trudy had finished with the guards. He reached out and caught the coffee cup the guard had dropped before it hit the ground.
“I saved the coffee cup,” said Jack, trying to pretend that his contribution had been important.
Trudy punched him in the shoulder playfully. Jack dropped the coffee cup and it shattered on the ground.
“I’m not cleaning that up,” said Jack.
Trudy pressed the button on the globe and the tunnel to the cavern opened up. The passageway was empty.
“I was sort of expecting some kind of horrible boss monster that we’d have to battle.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s coming,” said Trudy. “It’s probably just farther along the tunnel.”
“Let’s not keep it waiting. I can handle a horribly murderous monster, but I’d hate it if we also made it impatient.”
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
GOLDFISH
TWO-SECOND MEMORIES
It has been claimed that goldfish only have two-second memories. Which explains why if you have a goldfish it’ll almost certainly not remember to get you a birthday present.
It also means that goldfish are generally considered the most pleasant tempered of all living creatures as they don’t have enough recall to bear a grudge. If you flush a goldfish down the toilet and then accidentally bump into it at a cocktail party ten years later, it won’t have a clue who you are and will be interested in your name, job, and what hobbies you have.
If you meet the baby alligator you flushed down the toilet at a cocktail party ten years later, it will have chewed off your left leg before you can tell it that you are called Stephen and you work as an accountant.
* * *
47
ESCAPE
Trudy and Jack had reached the cliff edge that overlooked the cavern. Beneath them, they could see the kidnapped children still working, using mechanical diggers to shift more and more soil. It looked as if they had nearly finished.
“They can’t have much more work to do.”
Jack unrolled the rope ladder and they both clambered down.
They were surprised to find David waiting for them at the bottom. Jack counted his friend’s arms and legs and was relieved to find them all in place, although the dotted lines remained.
“You’re okay!” exclaimed Jack.
Trudy explained the plan to David. “We’ve got to get everyone out of here before any giant moles show up. Do you think the kids with hooks for hands will be able to climb the ladder?”
David nodded. “I think so. The ones with peg legs might struggle a bit, but we can help them.”
“Okay, you start gathering them up. We’ll guard the bottom of the ladder. Get everyone out and then get out yourself.”
David nodded and then sprinted across the enormous mine toward groups of kids. He spoke to them briefly and then pointed toward where Jack and Trudy stood. Some of the kids ran toward the ladder, but others spread out and began telling other kids of the route to freedom.
“If one kid tells two kids, and they each tell two kids…” Jack thought to himself that the plan might actually work.
The first batch of prisoners had arrived with Jack and Trudy and started streaming up the ladder to freedom. Of course not all of the prisoners were children. As Trudy had figured out, the digging had been going on for decades and some of the prisoners had been held captive for thirty or more years.
Jack imagined what it would have been like to live your life underground, in the dark, with no hope of escape. He realized that if he had not joined the Ministry, a similar fate might have awaited David.
“Mr. Teach has to pay,” Jack said.
“Agreed,” said Trudy. “And we may get to make him pay sooner than we thought.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jack.
Trudy pointed into the distance. Mr. Teach was strolling toward them, flanked by eight of the largest pirates Jack had ever seen. Suddenly Jack realized he recognized one of the pirates, who was carrying a chalkboard! So his P.E. teacher Mr. Rackham hadn’t lost his hand in a vicious rugby scrum. Like Mr. Teach himself, Rackham must have been descended from a pirate.86
Trudy and Jack walked toward Mr. Teach. They didn’t want him to get near the rope ladder. It was vital that it was protected so the prisoners could continue escaping.
“Well, if it isn’t my little friends from the Ministry,” said Mr. Teach.
“We aren’t scared of you, Teach,” snapped Trudy.
“Please, call me Blackbeard,” said Mr. Teach as he stroked his chin.
“Blackbeard Junior, maybe,” laughed Jack.
“Enough!” shouted Mr. Teach/Black
beard Junior. “You have interfered with my plans. I will turn Northern Ireland into the world’s biggest pirate ship no matter what you try and do to stop me.”
“Why not the whole of Ireland?” asked Trudy, who was slightly curious about this.
Blackbeard Junior pulled a face. “With fuel costs as high as they are at the moment? Do you have any idea how much power you need to drive a landmass the size of this? Anyway, if I took the whole island there would be an international uproar. If I just take the north part of the island, it’ll probably be a few weeks before anyone even notices.”
“That’s harsh,” said Jack, thinking that it was harsh … but also fair. People generally didn’t know where Northern Ireland was on a map. Therefore, they wouldn’t notice if someone moved it to a different place altogether.
“Eight pirates won’t be enough to stop us,” Trudy sneered.
“I don’t intend for eight pirates to stop you, young lady. You see, I have more than a hook up my sleeve. Jack, you’ll remember I mentioned my enforcer?”
Blackbeard Junior lifted a finger and pointed behind Jack and Trudy.
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
USEFULNESS OF P.E. LESSONS
ROPE CLIMBING
It is generally accepted that P.E. lessons are of limited use in real life. However, probably the most useless part of any P.E. lesson is being made to climb up a rope.
In real life you will almost certainly never have to climb a rope. Unless, of course, you are kidnapped and kept at the bottom of an enormous cavern, where a rope ladder is your only means of escape.
* * *
However, it is essential to stress that this is very, very unlikely to happen.
* * *
48
STEAM POWER
It took Jack some time to figure out exactly what he was looking at. And then everything fell into place at once. The missing dinosaur bones that the old woman had stolen from the museum, the boiler that had been removed from the school …