The Big Over Easy

“It’s just plain Mr. Spratt,” said Jack, knowing full well how bureaucrats hate having rank pulled on them. “What seems to be the problem?”

Mr. Quick laid his briefcase on the table as several of Mrs. Spratt’s cats shot past his feet in a blur.

“As I was saying to your mother, there is a maximum size of structure that can be permitted to be built without recourse to a planning application. This… er… ‘thing’…”

“It’s a beanstalk, Mr. Quick,” said Mrs. Spratt helpfully.

“Precisely. This ‘beanstalk’ exceeds those guidelines quite considerably. I’m sorry to have to say that you are in contravention of planning regulations. We will be issuing a summons and require you to have it demolished at your own expense—there might be a fine, too.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“I don’t make the rules,” said Quick, “I just enforce them.”

They all stopped as a large bear of a man in a tweed suit and deerstalker hat entered the room. He was barefoot and sported a long, shaggy beard that appeared to have several rare strains of lichen growing in it. Under his arm he was carrying a giant beanstalk leaf.

“This is Professor Laburnum from the British Horticultural Society,” explained Mrs. Spratt. The Professor rolled his eyes but seemed uninterested in anything but the plant. Jack noticed that he had dirt not only under his fingernails but under his toenails, too.

“Just in time for tea, Professor!” exclaimed Mrs. Spratt. “What have you found out?”

“Well, it’s difficult to say,” he began in a deep baritone that made the teacups rattle in the corner cupboard, “but what you have here is a Vicia faba, or common broad bean.”

Mrs. Spratt nodded, and the Professor sat down, clutching the large leaf lest anyone try to take it away from him.

“For some reason that I have not yet fathomed, it is at least fifty times bigger than it should be. It has a complex root structure and from first indications would seem to be capable of reaching a height in excess of two to three hundred feet. It is quite unprecedented, unique even—extraordinary!”

“And the planning authority,” Jack added provocatively,

“wants to demolish it.”

Professor Laburnum went a deep shade of purple and glared dangerously at Mr. Quick, who seemed to inflate himself like a puffer fish, ready to ward off an attack.

“Not,” growled Professor Laburnum dangerously, “if we have anything to do with it!”

“The rules are very clear on this matter,” said Mr. Quick indignantly, “and I have a fourteen-volume set of planning regulations to back me up.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Laburnum as he got to his feet.

“Yeah.”

“Thanks for helping out,” said his mother as she showed him to the door. Behind them in the kitchen they could still hear Quick and Laburnum screaming obscenities at each other. A brief bout of fisticuffs had been succeeded by a series of prolonged and increasingly loud and vulgar name-callings.

“I didn’t really do much, Mother. Let me know if you need anything else.”

Pandora was talking to Madeleine when Jack walked in through the side door of his own house less than ten minutes later.

“A creationist, of course, but what an intellect!”

“If he’s a creationist,” said Madeleine, “what did he make of the fossil record?”

“Created to maintain our curious nature. He said it was useful to strive for knowledge even though there is no end to the knowledge that we could gain. It might take two hundred years more to figure out how the universe came about, or five hundred to devise a grand unifying theory. But when we finally crack those questions, they will still remain a sideshow, a mere exercise, he said, to offer us valuable groundwork to solve even greater problems of incalculable complexity.”

Madeleine frowned. “Such as?”

“Why the toast always falls butter side down. Why you can look for something for hours and then find it in the first place you looked. These are the real puzzles that will face humanity. There is, he claims, a single theory that will explain not only why the queue you choose at a supermarket is always the slowest but why trains always leave on time when you are late and leave late when you are on time.”

“There isn’t an answer to those,” murmured Madeleine doubtfully. “It just happens.”

“That’s what they used to say about lightning,” replied Pandora, “and rainbows.”