by Paul Gamble
On the ground, Jack, Trudy, and Grey followed as best they could, dodging in and out of rows of filing cabinets. Now that the laws of physics were back in the room it was considerably easier to move than it had been before. Apart from anything else there was something reassuring about being able to walk along a floor without worrying it might turn into a wall at a moment’s notice.
Cthulhu was hurling balls of green energy at the vacuum cleaners, which tossed them back and forth. The vacuum cleaners dodged and wove, frantically trying to avoid the explosions.
One robot cleaner had found a filing cabinet marked Merlin and pulled the bottom drawer open. “We have to stop it,” Jack shouted, and pointed.
Trudy turned Jack to face her. “You know, Jack, a lot of the time you shout things that we already know. It’s unnecessary and a little distracting.”
“Sorry.”
“Just think before you shout.”
Jack and Trudy dashed toward the filing cabinet. Grey was fending off a robot vacuum cleaner that lashed and prodded at him with its multiple hoses.
Trudy ducked as a vacuum cleaner was thrown over her head by one of Cthulhu’s exploding green bolts. Jack ran past her and grabbed hold of the robot cleaner that was attacking the filing cabinet. As he pulled at it, it plunged a hose into the drawer and sucked up the paper inside. One of its other hoses shot straight up in the air and showered them with shredded paper. Jack collapsed on the floor.
“We … were … too … late,” panted Jack.
“You see, Jack, this is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about when I said you said things that were unnecessary,” Trudy complained.
Grey was being driven back by the vacuum cleaner striking at him. “A little less talk—we’re still in a battle here!”
Trudy and Jack backed up against the filing cabinet. “I think we’re in some fairly serious trouble,” Jack said.
“Stop stating the obvious! We need a plan for how to get out of this.”
“I don’t think we can.” Jack gulped. “It’s the suits of armor all over again. Even if we smash them, Merlin could use his magnetic powers to pull them back together.”
“Think harder, Jack”—Trudy swatted a probing hose away from her head—“I don’t want my gravestone to read ‘Trudy Emerson—killed by vacuum cleaners.’”
Jack racked his brains, desperately trying to think of a plan. Cthulhu let out a mind-numbing screech and fell from the sky, landing on the ground in the middle of the battle. The business-suited Cthulhu then spun on one leg while tentacles appeared from his collar, cuffs, and trouser legs. They shot out and pushed and shoved at the vacuum cleaners, rocking and rattling them.
The robot cleaner that had been attacking Grey turned and sped toward Cthulhu. Similarly, Jack and Trudy found themselves free from attack, as Cthulhu was surrounded.
Jack and Trudy quickly ran to Grey. “Even Cthulhu can’t possibly defeat that many vacuum cleaners.”
Grey stared at Jack. “Really, Jack? Is that what you think? That an interdimensional monster of nearly unlimited power is going to be killed by some rogue vacuum cleaners?”
“Well, I was just…”
“We might have had difficulty—but we’re only human. I’m sure Cthulhu knows what he’s doing.”
All the vacuum cleaners had formed a circle around Cthulhu now. They zipped forward, lashed at him with a hose, and then rolled back out of reach. Cthulhu didn’t seem too worried. He fended off their attacks with his writhing tentacles and occasionally gestured with a clawed hand, creating a small vacuum-cleaner-deflecting force field.
After a short while the vacuum cleaners seemed to realize that their attacks were having limited effect. They all drove back a few feet and stopped. Jack squinted. He was sure he could see Cthulhu’s maw smiling under his facial tentacles. The vacuum cleaners all charged Cthulhu at once, flailing with their hoses.
In the blink of an eye Cthulhu split the back of his jacket with his enormous bat wings and sprang into the air. As he flew upward, he withdrew his tentacles back under his suit and shirt. The vacuum cleaners didn’t manage to stop themselves and crashed into one another. Their flailing hoses twisted around together in the carnage. When they tried to pull back, the vacuum cleaners found themselves hopelessly tangled. They pulled and strained, but it only made the tangle worse.
Cthulhu flapped his great bat wings twice and landed beside Trudy, Grey, and Jack. “Well done, Cthulhu,” Grey said.
Cthulhu barely nodded. He then gestured with a clawlike hand, and a dark-green bubble surrounded the mass of vacuum cleaners. The bubble expanded, shimmered for a second, and then burst. The vacuum cleaners disappeared with it.
“Are they destroyed?” Jack asked.
Grey shook his head. “Sent to another dimension. I’ve seen Cthulhu do this type of thing before.”
“Couldn’t he have done it a bit sooner?” asked Trudy.
“It’s kind of a last resort—I mean, he doesn’t want to always have to ruin a perfectly good jacket.” Grey nodded to where Cthulhu was looking forlornly at the suit jacket, which had been torn apart when he had unleashed his wings. Cthulhu groaned quietly.
Trudy walked over to a pile of shredded paper on the ground. “But Merlin’s achieved his purpose. He shredded his file—it’d take us forever to put this back into order.”
Jack picked up a piece of paper that had the word Merlin written on it. “This looks like the world’s most difficult jigsaw.”
“A million-piece jigsaw.” Grey kicked at a pile of the shredded paper. “We’ll never get this put back together before Merlin puts his plan into action.”
“If only this was like a little kid’s jigsaw,” Jack said. “You know, the ones that have large pieces that are easy to put together.”
“Maybe that’s what we need to do. Is there some way of making the individual pieces of paper bigger?” asked Trudy.
Then an idea hit Jack. “We don’t need to make the pieces of paper bigger—we just need to use smaller hands.”
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
CTHULHU
HOW TO MAKE SURE THAT YOU DON’T ANNOY HIM
Stop existing.93
* * *
37
THE HISTORY OF A SCIENTIST
Following Jack’s instructions, Grey had sent a message for Auntie to come to the filing room. The robe, filled with the teeming mass of ants, arrived quickly.
“Do you really think this will work?” Trudy asked.
“I’m sure of it,” Jack said. “After all—you know that puzzles with large pieces are easy to put together. To the ants, this paper will seem like the world’s largest puzzle pieces. And on top of that, they’ll be using hundreds of hands to put them together.”
“Hands?” Trudy queried.
“Well, legs and feelers and mandibles—you know what I mean.”
Grey had finished explaining to Auntie what they wanted her to do. As had happened in the café, her cloak collapsed and a wave of ants ran out the bottom and toward the shredded paper. Each ant picked up a single piece of the “puzzle” and scurried around comparing it with its friends. Slowly but surely the ants were putting the paper file back together again.
As the ants finished each page of the file, Grey followed after them and pressed a sheet of transparent sticky-backed plastic on top to hold it in place.
“Why didn’t you just get the ants to rearrange the paper on top of the sticky-backed plastic?” Jack asked.
Grey raised an eyebrow. “Really, Jack? Ants on sticky-backed plastic? Are you trying to cause a tragedy?”
“Oh, yeah, hadn’t thought about that.”
The ants had finished reconstructing the paper and quickly re-formed themselves under the robe that made Auntie. Grey gathered up the files, and after thanking both Cthulhu and Auntie, he took Jack and Trudy to a quiet room with a table and several chairs.
Trudy and Jack sat impatiently while Grey scanned the files. Eve
ntually he looked up. “I still don’t know what Merlin is planning, but some of this might be helpful.…”
Grey read to them from the reconstructed files. Much of the story was the same as the legends both Jack and Trudy were familiar with—but some sections were very different indeed.
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
MERLIN
HOW HE ALMOST BECAME KING
Merlin was born in Wales many centuries ago. Initially he made his living as a carpenter. He traveled from town to town doing all those things that carpenters do, making tools, designing furniture, and generally carrying out freelance activities related to wood.
One day, Merlin went to the forest to cut down a tree to make a new cupboard for a family of blacksmiths. He raised his ax above his head and swung it with all his might. However, he was surprised to find that instead of biting into the bark of the tree, the ax was suddenly ripped from his hands. It was propelled across the clearing, eventually driving itself deep into the soil. Merlin followed the path of the ax, and after digging in the dirt for several minutes was shocked to realize that his ax-head was fastened to a strange buried boulder.
Merlin realized the boulder could be a source of enormous power. After years of working for other people, he liked the idea of becoming powerful. But how could he use this magnetic stone? How could he even move it? After much thought, he could not come up with a single idea of how to use the stone, and so he sighed to himself and went back to the village to borrow another ax.
The family of blacksmiths for whom he was making the cupboard made him promise that he wasn’t going to lose the ax and he agreed, deciding that he would have to find another oak to cut down. Preferably far away from the strange buried stone.
As he was about to trudge back into the forest, Merlin couldn’t help noticing that the blacksmith’s youngest son was playing with a bow and arrow. The reason that Merlin couldn’t help noticing this was that the young boy had accidentally shot an arrow straight through Merlin’s shin.
Merlin fell to the ground, swearing loudly. The father of the family came running out of the forge and shouted at his son. “Arthur! What on earth are you doing playing with that bow again? I’ve told you, you’re far too clumsy to be doing such things.”
Merlin looked over at the boy. Although Arthur was only fourteen, he was an enormous, hulking brute. His father had been a blacksmith; his grandfather had been a blacksmith; his great grandfather had been a blacksmith. His great, great … But you get the idea. Each generation had grown up bigger and stronger than the last, with enormous biceps, good for hammering metal; enormous legs, good for lifting the anvil; and enormous hands, good for powering the bellows. However, it is entirely possible to have too much of a good thing, and after so many generations, Arthur had been born with a set of hands so large and powerful that he was incapable of any actions that required fine manual dexterity.
Merlin cursed his luck to have strayed across such a clumsy and incapable boy. And then he found himself wishing that the arrow had been fired near that strange stone he had found that morning. If only that had happened, then the arrow would have gone off course and struck the stone instead of him.… And then, just before the blood loss from his shin made him pass out, Merlin had a quite tremendous idea.
When he came around again, Merlin threatened to have young Arthur arrested for attempted murder. Arthur’s father was terrified and offered Merlin as many free swords and spears as he wanted if only Merlin would agree to forget Arthur’s clumsy mistake.
Merlin pretended to consider this offer for a moment. “Perhaps we can come to some arrangement. I won’t be able to walk for quite some time, so you must give me a horse.” The blacksmith agreed without a second’s hesitation. Merlin pretended to need a further moment to think before adding, “And I will need help getting on and off the horse. Therefore, your son must become my servant for a year.”
At first the blacksmith was taken aback. Arthur was his son—he didn’t want to send him away … but then, on further reflection, the blacksmith realized that this might be good for Arthur. Clearly the clumsy boy did not have a future as a blacksmith. Apart from anything else, his mistakes around the forge meant that almost all the swords they had made in the past three weeks were horribly bent. And they couldn’t keep trying to pass them off as “Arabian cutlasses,” because, frankly, people weren’t buying that.94 The blacksmith agreed that Arthur would serve as Merlin’s servant for a period of one year while his shin healed.
It took Merlin a week to build himself a cart for the horse to pull. It took Arthur three days to dig up the enormous boulder from the forest, and another three days between them to load it safely onto the cart. Yet in less than a fortnight Merlin was ready to put his plan into action.
Arthur had wondered if Merlin was planning to start a rock collection, but Merlin’s idea was much more sinister than mere geology.
At first Merlin’s plans were relatively modest. He would travel the country looking for battles.95 When he located one, he spoke to a general and offered to park his cart with the stone in it to the side of the general’s armies. Its magnetic powers meant that any arrows aimed at that army would be pulled harmlessly off course, creating a kind of medieval force field.
Later on, Merlin realized that he could achieve an even better result by offering to drive his stone to the far side of an opposing army. This meant that the other army’s metal arrowheads would be attracted to it like heat-seeking missiles zooming through the air—slicing through any soldiers standing in between. Occasionally someone in the army Merlin had parked behind would ask what he was doing, but Merlin always had an innocent and completely plausible explanation ready. “Me? No, nothing to do with the battle! Just taking my boulder for a walk.”
It wasn’t long before Merlin had amassed a fortune from his appearances at battles. But Merlin was a greedy and vain man, and mere riches were never going to be enough for him. At every battle there were always kings, lords, and dukes surrounded by their riches and fawning servants. Although they needed Merlin, they saw him only as a servant—a carpenter—and refused to give him a title or even call him “Mister.”
Merlin wanted revenge for this shabby treatment, so he schemed and plotted to become a king himself. He promised himself that one day he would not take a single step unless it was on a fluffy red carpet.
Merlin told his servant Arthur what he wished to do. Between the two of them they came up with a brilliant scheme. If they could coat men from head to toe in metal, and figure out some way of directing the magnetic waves the stone gave out, then they would have an invincible army that could defeat anyone. A soldier that could be controlled by magnetism could keep fighting even if he was unconscious … perhaps even if he was dead.
They were left with two problems to solve. First, how on earth could they coat a man in metal? Second, how could they ensure that the magnetic waves were directed accurately enough to be able to control entire armies of people? Arthur easily solved the first problem. His father was a blacksmith and his mother was a seamstress. He went back to his home village and persuaded his parents to work together to create a “suit of armor,” a tight-fitting covering of metal that a soldier could wear.96
This left Merlin to solve the other problem of directing “magnetic waves.” Sadly, this was the Middle Ages and there were very few civilizations with the technology to undertake such a feat. Luckily Merlin had built many boats during his time as a carpenter and was well aware of the existence of the scientifically advanced people of Atlantis. Merlin promised the queen of Atlantis that if she helped him, he would return any favor she (or her descendants) requested in the future. The queen agreed to have her scientists build Merlin an antenna and a control panel that would direct the magnetic waves, thereby turning metal-clad soldiers into puppets. During the building of the control panel Merlin studied everything the Atlanteans could teach him, thus becoming a scientist himself.
The antenna that
was created looked, for all intents and purposes, like a sword. Merlin took delivery of it when the queen of Atlantis walked out of the water one day and threw it at his feet, thus starting the myth of the “Lady of the Lake.”
Once the antenna was given to Merlin, he got Arthur, using his enormous brawny hands, to drive it deep into the center of the stone, and his supreme weapon was complete. Once thrust into the center of the stone, the sword stuck fast, as its tip pierced the very heart of the magnetic field.
Slowly Merlin began to build an army of metal-clad warriors. Using Excalibur, the antenna, and the control panel that the “Lady of the Lake” had built for him, he marched across the country defeating enemies in battle and forcing warlords to swear loyalty to him. Arthur had served the year as Merlin’s servant, but decided to remain with him. While Merlin wanted power and riches, Arthur realized that by uniting warring tribes they could bring peace to the land and improve the lives of their fellow countrymen.
Soon there were no more warlords to defeat. Merlin at last thought he was to be king. But he made the fatal mistake of overconfidence. He stood before his army thinking that they loved him and asked them to choose their king. With one voice they shouted their decision. “ARTHUR—ARTHUR—ARTHUR!”
Merlin cursed under his breath. It wasn’t that Arthur was more lovable or more intelligent than Merlin. It was simply that, being the son of generations of blacksmiths, he had absolutely enormous hands—and people really wanted their king to have big hands.97
What followed was a period of great calm. Arthur ruled the country kindly and thoughtfully. Under Arthur’s reign, rampaging dragons went down by 15 percent, evil goblins were forced to see the error of their ways, and although damsels were occasionally locked in towers, King Arthur introduced a new class of male damsel to ensure that there was at least equality for all.
In fact, it would have been a perfect period in history had it not been for Merlin, who was becoming more and more bitter. Although Arthur had appointed Merlin as his chief adviser, Merlin continually found himself relegated back to his old role of a carpenter. The final straw was when Arthur asked Merlin to make him a round table for the knights to sit at. Merlin was infuriated. He should have been king—not a mere craftsman.
