The Big Over Easy

The fire brigade, ambulance and medical teams arrived within an hour, and the whole process began in earnest. It was a miserable end to an otherwise good day. As Jack waited his turn to be scrubbed down in the portable showers, he suddenly had a disturbing thought about something Lola had said. By the time he was dry, issued a set of blue overalls and finally allowed to go, the disturbing thought had transformed into doubt. A doubt that said everything was still not quite as it seemed.

43. Loose Ends

PUMPKIN TRANSMUTATION DEVICE TESTED

Scientists at QuangTech were said to be “overjoyed” at the latest testing of their new pumpkin transmutation device, it was reported in the Berkshire Radio News this month. The Reading-based technology company had been experimenting on pumpkins for some years, but until now with little success. The highly technical article outlines for the first time the extraordinary advances made in the world of pumpkin transmogrification. “It is possible,” said a QuangTech spokesman yesterday, “to change pumpkins into almost anything one wishes by bombarding them with twin beams of particle-shifting gamma radiation, then moving the charged particles to within a magnetic-contained matrix of the new shape. The successful transmutation of a pumpkin into a coach was undertaken last week and was entirely successful—for a while. At present we have no way of permanently fixing the new shape, and the coach reverted to a pumpkin around about midnight.”

—Extract from The Mole, April 19, 1988

Aside from the absence of the Sacred Gonga and the fact that it wasn’t held in the visitors’ center, the Jellyman’s Sacred Gonga Visitors’ Center dedication went extremely well. Everyone present commented on how it was conducted with the utmost tact, solemnity and reverence. After the dedication ceremony, the Jellyman went on a procession route through the town, stopping off at various places of interest on the way.

The police estimate for the turnout was nearly three hundred thousand, despite the poor weather and the faint possibility of contracting verrucas. Of that it was estimated that 10 percent actually got a good look, 30 percent saw a man in a white suit waving, a further 30 percent saw only a distant white blob, 10 percent thought they saw something but actually didn’t, and the remainder saw nothing at all.

Madeleine, Stevie, Ben, Pandora, Megan and Jerome had been in the unlucky last category. They had left too late and got stuck in the throng, battling with the crowds and dodging street traders who were selling everything from Jellyman key rings to bedside lamps to DVDs of his speeches to dolls that made suitably sagacious pronouncements when you pulled a string at the back of their neck. Pandora and Ben gripped Jerome and Megan’s hands lest they get swept away in the crowd. They got to the Civic Center just as the Jellyman had gone in. When he came out two hours later, a police van pulled up and blocked their view, so all they saw was the back of his white Daimler limousine as he drove off to visit St. Septyck’s new ward for terminal sarcastics. Madeleine thought of waiting for his return in three hours’ time, but the children were tired and it had begun to drizzle. They made their way back home in a subdued mood. It was a bit like visiting the beach one day in the year to find it shut.

“Congratulations, Jack!”

Briggs shook him warmly by the hand, but Jack didn’t smile. The decontamination process has that effect on people.

“They got away, sir. It’s not much of a result.”