by Paul Gamble
“The Ministry fish prison,” said Grey. As if that explained anything.
Grey waved the deadly hair dryer at the crab, indicating for it to move to the aquarium doors.
* * *
Ten minutes later, the superfast Ministry car dropped the heroes outside the museum that was the entrance to the Ministry. Jack felt strangely happy. Less than a week ago he had had no idea that his local museum had been the home to the mysterious Ministry. Of course that visit had been completely different from this one. The last time he had come here he had arrived because he had been attacked by a bear. This time he was here because he had been attacked by a crab. Which was a very different thing indeed.
Grey, Trudy, and Jack ran through the entrance hall of the museum with the crab clacking over the tiled floor in front of them. Occasionally a visitor would look at the enormous crab quizzically. Grey would smile at them and explain, “Just a new exhibit—all done with animatronics.”
They went up the stairs and made their way straight to the Egyptology display. Once there, Trudy pressed on the fingernails of an enormous stone sculpture of a hand. This action caused the glass case over the sarcophagus of the mummy Takabuti to open. The front of the sarcophagus case swung open on its hinges, revealing the steps down to the hidden headquarters of the Ministry.
* * *
Once inside the Ministry, Grey guided them to a large, gunmetal-gray door that was secured in place with a large circular valve. It looked like the kind of door you would have expected in an old submarine. The words Party Room were written on the door in stenciled white lettering.
“So what’s in here?” asked Jack. “Because it sounds like it’s going to be fun. And you’ll understand that makes me very suspicious indeed.”
Grey handed the hair dryer to Trudy to hold on the crab as he grabbed hold of the valve and with a great heave turned it several notches. He then took a deep breath and turned it again.
Jack wondered what would be inside the room. He’d seen some very odd things indeed in the Ministry. He tried to guess what it might be. “Is this room host to a interdimensonal rift that spits death?” asked Jack.
Trudy considered Jack’s suggestion. “Yes, or maybe it’s home to a clockwork wind-up humanoid-mannequin that was wound overly tight one day, which caused it to develop self awareness and come to life.”
“Ohhh!” Jack enthused. “That’s a good one, Trudy. Yeah, he came to life and the Ministry had to stop him because he was trying to kill people because he went mad.”
Trudy laughed. “Yeah, he went mad from the pressure because it’s very stressful when you’re clockwork and you have to remember to wind yourself every two hours, otherwise…”
“… you’ll die!” Jack and Trudy finished the sentence together, laughing.
Grey made a tutting noise. He was looking sternly at them. “If you’ve quite finished? We have important business to complete.” Grey turned the valve another notch and the door made a thock noise.
“So what is in there, Grey?” Trudy asked.
“Well,” Grey said as he slowly pulled the door open, “it isn’t a death-spitting dimensional rift, because they’re too dangerous to be kept in the office. And for that matter it isn’t the clockwork wind-up mannequin that was overwound and came to life … because we keep him on the seventh floor.”
Grey took the hair dryer back from Trudy and signaled for the crab to walk through the door. “Instead, you’re about to meet the oldest man in the Ministry and the smartest marine biologist in the world.”
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
MARINE BIOLOGISTS
WHY PEOPLE THINK THEY ARE SO INTELLIGENT
Generally, people tend to think that marine biologists are incredibly intelligent.
It should be noted that not all marine biologists are as clever as people generally believe them to be. People always assume that they are very wise; however, this is mainly because they spend a lot of time in water and get wrinkly. Wrinkles make people look older than they really are, and it is always assumed that with age comes wisdom. If marine biologists were really clever, they would spend a little less time in the pool and a little more time applying moisturizer.
* * *
8
THE PARTY ROOM
Jack should have been shocked when they walked into the room, but he wasn’t. A normal person would have been shocked upon walking into a room that seemed to be hundreds of meters tall and wide. But Jack was used to the fact that the normal rules of time and space didn’t seem to apply to the Ministry.
The room was also full of dozens of enormous glass structures randomly located. They looked like tall drinking glasses. At the top of each of the containers, long glass tubes straddled the distances between them like a series of interlinking bridges. Each glass tank held the most amazing sea life that Jack had ever seen: small fish, large sharks, enormous seahorses, squid, octopuses, giant lobsters, swarms of oversized prawns.… They all darted around the tanks, dodging between tendrils of seaweed and other vegetation. Occasionally, a fish would swim to the top of a tank, swish its tail, and zip along one of the thin tube bridges to another tank.
Jack was feeling proud of himself that he was taking such a strange room entirely in his stride. In fact, he was almost at risk of becoming a little smug. Luckily, before that happened Jack noticed the incredibly intense smell of fish that permeated the air. The stench was so awful that it caused Jack to retch a little in his own mouth. At this point Jack stopped feeling pleased with himself. It is extremely hard to feel smug while swallowing chunks of your own vomit.
Grey was shaking hands with a man—a man whom Jack literally could not take his eyes off. He was six feet tall, with wavy black hair, piercing blue eyes, and perfect olive skin. He was wearing a pair of shorts and a T-shirt that showed off his muscular arms.
He was the most stunningly attractive man that Jack had ever seen. Jack turned to look at Trudy. She was staring even more intently than Jack, her jaw was slack, and she seemed to have stopped breathing.24
For a few seconds Jack felt strangely jealous. Okay, the man was very attractive, but he wasn’t anything that special.… Jack looked at the man again and was annoyed to realize that he was something very special. He was impossibly handsome.
Grey smirked. “Jack and Trudy, meet the Professor. Professor, meet Jack and Trudy.”
The Professor made a small theatrical bow and held his hand out to shake. Jack shook his hand and then nudged Trudy, who was still awestruck. “You might want to try and start breathing again before you asphyxiate,” Jack muttered.
Trudy shook herself and then shook the Professor’s hand. She was clearly more than a little enthralled by how stunningly beautiful the Professor was. “I thought Grey said that you were the oldest man in the Ministry—but you couldn’t be more than … twenty or thirty or something.…”
The Professor looked sternly at Grey, and then they both started laughing.
Jack was confused. “Is this a joke? Or what?”
The Professor shook his head. “Not at all, but it’s all very predictable. This is the same reaction that I have been getting for … well, for the last six hundred years, at least.”
Now it was Jack’s jaw’s turn to go slack. “You’re six hundred years old?”
The Professor thought for a moment. “More like seven hundred, I think. To be honest, after my two hundred and fiftieth birthday I stopped counting. Apart from anything else, the candles on my cake were not only a fire hazard, but I suspect they were also substantially contributing to global warming.”
“So if you’re seven hundred, how do you look so young?” asked Trudy.
The Professor turned and placed a hand flat against the surface of one of the enormous tanks. Jack noticed that even this small movement seemed to spook the fish inside and they rapidly swam away—it was as if they were scared of the Professor’s hand. “My secret is simple.” The Professor smiled. “Fish oils.”
“Why don’t you take them on a tour and explain?” Grey suggested. “I’ll put our prisoner here in one of the tanks.”
Grey motioned for the crab to move toward a large hydraulic platform fixed to the side of a large glass tank. The Professor, Jack, and Trudy walked across the room, looking at the fish swimming through the tanks and also along the narrow glass bridges above them.
“It all started when I was a fisherman in Portugal,” the Professor explained. “I was dreadfully poor and couldn’t afford to eat anything other than what I caught. I couldn’t afford bread, milk, or eggs. Just fish and nothing but fish. In fact, I ate so much fish that I actually started smelling of fish. In the end the people in my local village refused to let me into the marketplace. So I had absolutely no choice but to continue on my fish-only diet. Of course back then we scientists hadn’t discovered just how good fish are for you. No one had even heard of polyunsaturated fats, essential fatty acids, or omega-3 and omega-6.”
“And they stop you from aging?”
The Professor nodded. “Yes, they’re incredibly good for your heart, brain, joints, eyes … they prevent cancer, eye disease, and bone problems. You get all these benefits if you eat fish a few times a week. Of course the effects are much stronger if you eat fish every day, for every meal. And on top of that the kinds of fish I was eating were fish that ate fish that had eaten other fish—which multiplied the effects many times over.”
“And that diet of fish is what makes you stay looking so young and being so beautiful?” Trudy blushed as she realized what she had said.
The Professor smiled. “My fish-only diet has also given me bones that literally can’t be broken, a heart that never gets tired and gives me limitless energy, eyes that can see in the dark, and the IQ of a genius.”
Jack was still curious. “If a fish-only diet can do all that, then why isn’t everyone on one?”
The Professor’s face fell slightly. “I sort of explained that already.”
Jack thought hard. “Did you? I think I would have noticed.”
“A fish-only diet may be brilliant for health, but unfortunately it does make you smell rather badly of fish.”
“Oh.… Ohhhhhh.”
“Yes,” said the Professor, looking slightly ashamed. “That smell isn’t from the tanks. I’m afraid to say that’s from me. That’s why the door is shut with the valve. It isn’t meant to be waterproof or anything like that … just odorproof.”
Trudy leaned forward and gave the Professor a slight sniff. She grimaced.
Jack felt awkward and stammered, trying to change the subject, “So are you the only person in the world who is on a fish-only diet?”
“No, not at all. Can you think of any groups of people who are talented, good looking, and never seem to age?”
“Hollywood actors?” Trudy suggested.
“Precisely,” said the Professor. “It’s obvious, really. The idea that plastic surgery can keep you young is ridiculous. If that were the case, then plastic action figures and toy dolls would never get as grimy and tired-looking as they do.”
“So all film actors are on a fish-only diet?” Jack asked. “I mean … all of them?”
The Professor nodded. “Of course. Why do you think they built Hollywood so close to the sea? It was in order to ensure a ready supply of fish. It’s also the reason they all live in those ridiculously big mansions. They have to make sure they’re far enough away from ordinary people that they won’t notice the ghastly smell.”
“I think I’m glad that Hollywood actors smell bad,” said Jack. “It makes the world seem slightly more fair, for some reason.”
“Just visit Hollywood sometime and you’ll see. There’s a reason that every second restaurant in that town is a sushi bar.”
There was a splashing from above as Grey had made the crab jump into the top of one of the giant tanks. He was now descending on the hydraulic platform.
“So why do they call this place the party room?” Jack asked.
The Professor smiled, clearly relieved to be able to talk about something other than the way he smelled.
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
BEING SICK
LOCATION—YOUR OWN MOUTH
It is never fun to be sick in your own mouth. However, it is interesting to note that some animals are sick in their own mouths as a matter of course. Cows have developed the rather unpleasant habit of “chewing the cud.” This is basically the process of being sick in your own mouth and swallowing it again.
This is the reason why cows rarely get invited to dinner parties and never get asked to play Spin the Bottle.
* * *
9
PRISON BREAK
“Do the enormous tanks look like anything you might have seen elsewhere?”
Jack looked at the tanks. There was really only one thing. “Well, enormous glasses. And the bridges at the top are a bit like straws sticking out of one drink and into another.”
“Precisely.” The Professor smiled. “You see, we couldn’t afford to get an architect to design this place, so I just sketched it out from an idea I had after a Ministry Christmas party. That’s why we call it the party room.”
Jack laughed. “You’re joking.”
The Professor furrowed his brow and stroked his chin. “Don’t you like my design?”
“It’s not that,” said Jack. “But you really mean this whole place was designed on drinking glasses from a Christmas party?”
“That’s precisely what I mean. It was also at that party that I got the idea for fish food.”
Jack’s eyebrows raised. “Now you’re claiming that you invented fish food at a Christmas party? So what did you base that on? Sausage rolls? Streamers?”
The Professor sighed. “What does fish food look like?”
Jack thought back to his (now dead) pet goldfish. “Well, little multicolored flakes.”
“Would you say the flakes looked like confetti?”
Jack’s eyes widened. “Exactly like confetti.”
The Professor picked up a rifle with a barrel the size of a tin can, which had been leaning against one of the tanks. “You see, when I was designing the huge tanks I realized I didn’t want to have to climb up and down every day just to feed the fish. And seeing the confetti at the party gave me a design idea.” The Professor raised the rifle to his shoulder and pulled the trigger. There was a dull whump and a ball of confetti rose into the air, arched over one of the tanks, and exploded into thousands of little flakes. The flakes drifted and fluttered over the surface of the water. Fish teemed upward to nibble at them.
The Professor held up the rifle. “CO2-powered confetti cannon. I invented it to feed fish, but I believe that they also use them at rock concerts these days.”
The hydraulic platform had reached the ground and Grey jumped off to join the others. “Well, that’s one crab safely caught.”
Trudy stared at the tanks. “Are all these criminal fish, then?”
While Trudy was asking questions about the enormous fish prison, Jack wandered over to the tank and watched the crab with the metal claws. It looked around briefly and then scuttled over to a giant octopus. It was dark blue with ten-foot-long tentacles. The crab seemed to be trying to communicate something as it waved its pincers frantically. The steel claw ends flashed in the water.
“Don’t you ever worry that the fish will try and escape?” Trudy asked.
The Professor laughed and Grey slapped him on the back. “Not a problem, Trudy,” said Grey. “That’s one of the most amazing parts of the Professor’s design. You see, he got the tanks made from prescription glass.”
“Prescription glass?”
“Yes, the kind you get in eyeglasses.”
Trudy didn’t understand. “And is that especially strong?”
“Not strong,” the Professor explained. “But it magnifies everything. So the fish are looking through a magnifying glass at us. From their perspective we look li
ke giants. They’d never try and escape because they’re too worried that we’re giants and could easily defeat them.”
Trudy smiled. “That’s brilliant!”
Jack was still looking at the octopus and the crab, but he had overheard the conversation. “Hey, guys … I don’t want to worry you, but I think your plan might have a flaw in it.”
The Professor wrinkled his perfect nose indignantly. “A flaw? How could it have a flaw? I don’t make mistakes. Did I mention how much fish oil I eat in a week?”
Jack ignored this comment. “The crab knows we aren’t all giants—and you just put him into the tank with the other fish.”
The Professor stopped being indignant for a moment. “Oh dear … normally the fish are transported in closed boxes. But still … what can one crab do? The glass is several feet thick. Even a sledgehammer blow wouldn’t crack it.”
As if to prove the Professor’s point, a large hammerhead shark slammed into the side of the tank next to them. There wasn’t a mark on the glass.
“You see,” the Professor said, gloating, “we’re all entirely safe.”
Jack wasn’t listening. He was thinking. Although he’d been very pleased with himself when they had captured the crab, looking back now it felt as if it had been too easy. Maybe the crab had let itself be captured. And then there were the metal pincers it wore. They wouldn’t be able to cut through glass … so what was the point of them? He tried to think of something else that was made of metal and had two prongs.
The crab had stopped signaling to the octopus, which had swum away to some other octopuses that lurked in the corner of a decorative castle on the bottom of the tank. The crab scuttled over to the side of the tank where Jack was still gazing in. Jack took a cautious step back.
The crab held up one metal claw and struck it hard against the side of the tank. The tank was unmarked, but the metal claw was vibrating, giving out a piercing, high-pitched tone. Jack clasped his hands over his ears. What was happening?
