by Paul Gamble
Jack turned to the Minotaur. “Do you mind? I’ll get to you in a minute.” Jack turned his focus back to Static. “Yes, I appreciate that it’s a Minotaur; I understand—half man, half bull. But I think you could have been a bit more clear about just how dangerous this Minotaur is.”
“My name is Alan. Umm, your friend seems a little bit odd.”
Trudy raised an eyebrow. “He is, but you get used to it in time.”
Alan was indeed a Minotaur—half man and half bull. However, he had the body of a bull and the head of a man—a mix that was considerably less frightening than the traditional Minotaur combination.
Jack was considerably more surprised than Trudy. “You can speak!”
Upon later reflection, Jack realized that it was foolish to be surprised by the Minotaur speaking. After all, it had the head of a man with an ordinary mouth, nose, and eyes. The head looked to be relatively young, although it was largely bald with only a few tufts of hair over the ears.
“Of course I can speak. Now, perhaps you’d care to introduce yourselves?”
“Sorry, we didn’t mean to be rude,” said Trudy. “Alan, this is Static.…”
“The Spark Knight!” Static gave a flourish, standing up and putting his hands on his hips again.
“Calm down, Static. This is Jack and I’m Trudy.”
Alan held up a hoof and they each shook it in turn.
“Incidentally … Static, is it? Just to say I’m sorry for butting you in the chest. The problem with having the body of a bull is that you have an overwhelming urge to run around charging things and butting them with your head.”
Jack was wondering if it was rude to ask the Minotaur how he had become a Minotaur. While Jack was considering this, Trudy rushed in.
“So were you always…?”
“A Minotaur?” Alan sighed. “No, not at all. I used to be an ordinary human. But then I tried to make some extra money by signing up for scientific clinical trials—I needed the money for my gym fees. But I hadn’t read the flyer properly. I signed up for mad scientific clinical trials.”
“Which was a bad idea?” Jack guessed.
“Very bad idea.” Alan nodded as far as his bull-neck would let him. “Turned out that the mad scientist was doing a bit of work for some Queen Something-or-other. She’d asked for a Minotaur to guard her drilling platform. Unfortunately, the queen hadn’t specified that she’d wanted one of those Minotaurs with the head of a bull and the body of a man. And so … here I am.”38
“Who was the queen?” asked Trudy. Jack leaned forward too. Perhaps they were going to get somewhere now.
Alan tried to shrug his shoulders but couldn’t. “Sorry, no idea. At the time I was more concerned about the fact that I had woken up with a bull’s body and wasn’t paying that close attention.”
“That must be awful,” said Jack.
Alan wrinkled his nose. “Actually it’s not as bad as you’d imagine. You can get used to anything, given enough time.”
There didn’t seem to be an answer to that.
“Anyway, Alan, it’s been nice talking to you. But we want to go and have a look at the drilling platform so…” said Trudy.
“By all means, go on. Technically I’m meant to be guarding it. But to be honest I tend to leave that to the other fella.”
“Other fella?” asked Static.
“Yeah, well, apparently after they made me the queen complained to the mad scientist—so he used the other bits to make…”
A bellowing noise echoed across the maze.
Alan nodded to himself. “That’ll be him. He’s got my body and the bull’s head.”
“And this is when it starts to go wrong.” Jack sighed.
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
HYBRID CREATURES
WHEN HYBRID CREATURES GO WRONG
There are a range of hybrid creatures that combine the parts of two different creatures. However, it is vital to ensure that you get the right part of each to achieve the desired effect. Many sailors have been amazed by the beauty of mermaids with the tail of the fish and the upper half of a gorgeous young woman. What few realize is that there is another type of mermaid altogether, with the legs of a human and the upper half of a fish. Sadly there are very few of these creatures left. Legs are of limited use when swimming, so they tend to wander ashore, panic, and then die as their fish heads drown in the fresh air.
Despite the beneficial effects of fish oil, having a fish brain generally means you aren’t going to be desperately bright.
* * *
20
DRILL PRACTICE
The sounds of a bellowing Minotaur had reminded the heroes that it was time to continue on their way.
“Look, we’d love to hang around and meet your … other half,” said Jack, feeling fairly sure that this wasn’t the right phrase to use, “but we’ve got to find that drilling platform.”
“I’ll take you there; I haven’t got much else to do here.” Alan trotted ahead of them. Jack, Static, and Trudy looked at one another, shrugged, and followed.
“This is all getting very strange,” observed Static.
“We’ll explain it all to you later,” said Jack, despite being fairly certain that they wouldn’t. “Here—just in case it gets any stranger, you ought to have this back.” Jack handed Volty back to Static, who instantly shoved him into the Static Cave.
Alan quickly led them to the drilling platform. “Here you are,” said Alan before wandering off to scratch his left flank against some of the corrugated iron.
“What a nice Minotaur,” Trudy observed.
The drilling platform looked almost exactly as they had expected. An enormous drill shaft rose up from the ground, surrounded by platforms, scaffolding, and joists.
“It looks like a fracking drill to me,” Jack said.
“Do you really have any idea what a fracking drill would actually look like?” Trudy asked.
“Okay, it looks like what I imagine a fracking drill would look like,” Jack corrected himself. “But there is something odd about it. If they were drilling for gas, I’d have expected some kind of tanks—somewhere to store the gas. The only thing this drill looks like it could do is make a hole in the ground. But that … that doesn’t make any sense.”
Static had turned to Jack and Trudy. “Hey guys, I’m going to ask Volty what he thinks we should do.” Thankfully Static didn’t get a chance to remove Volty from his pocket/the Static Cave as he froze in fear.
Jack and Trudy were looking at Static. “Do you think we’re going to see the other Minotaur when we turn around?” asked Jack.
“Pretty much.”
Jack and Trudy spun on their heels and were confronted by an enormous hulking brute of a Minotaur. Including the twisted yellow horns on top of its angry bull face, it stood eight feet tall. A gold ring was threaded through its nostrils and long trails of saliva fell from the corner of its mouth. The human part of the body was also quite scary. It was huge and muscular—the kind of body you normally saw in movies about crazy barbarians. Like a crazy barbarian, it was bare-chested with a pair of leather trousers that had metal studs up the sides. “I think we might be in trouble,” said Jack.
Alan trotted over. “Yup, that’s my body all right.”
“I take it you used to work out?” Trudy asked.
“All the time,” confirmed Alan.
“I really wish you’d had some other hobby, like flower arranging.”
“That’s annoying,” said Alan.
“That the bull’s going to kill us?” suggested Jack.
“Not that, it’s just that the Minotaur is wearing my wig.” Alan gestured with a hoof.
Jack hadn’t noticed it at first, but Alan was right. Between its two enormous horns the Minotaur had a wig on that was the same color as the tufts of hair behind Alan’s ears.
“It’s even more annoying because he doesn’t even have it on straight,” complained Alan.
During this conversation,
Static had made the decision that perhaps he wasn’t quite set on being a hero after all. He had quietly crawled into a small space between the metal girders that supported the drilling platform.
“Um, Alan, I don’t suppose you could talk to the other part of yourself and persuade him to not attack us?” asked Jack.
“We’re really not that close anymore. He never calls or anything. Look, guys, I don’t want to have to pick a side here. So … y’know … good luck.” And with those final words Alan galloped off into the maze once more.
“Any ideas, Jack?”
Jack tried to think of everything he knew about bulls. Then he had an idea. “Static, throw me the fast-food wrapper.”
Static crumpled the fast-food wrapper and threw it to Jack. Jack remembered that last week he had scared a bear with a chair. Bears were scared of chairs because they thought that anyone who could make a chair could kill a tree and trees were the only thing in the forest larger than a bear.
Maybe a Minotaur would be scared of a fast-food wrapper because it would think that anyone who could turn a cow into hamburger would have to be pretty powerful.
Jack took a step toward the Minotaur and held up the wrapper in front of himself, yelling, “YAH!” Jack hoped there was enough smell of hamburger left on the wrapper to scare the Minotaur.
The Minotaur sniffed the air a few times, and then a crazy look came over its eyes. It snorted, tossed its head, and charged at Jack and Trudy, trying to gore them with its horns. Jack and Trudy dived aside in the nick of time as the Minotaur’s head clattered into the metal beams of the drilling platform. “Nice work, Jack; you basically just taunted him with the fact that people have been eating his family.”
“Mmmm,” agreed Jack, “I might not have thought that one through enough.”
“Time for The Speed?” suggested Trudy. Jack agreed that this was a brilliant idea. As usual, Trudy conjured up a sad thought much more rapidly than Jack. Jack racked his brains and then remembered the year that his parents had gotten him a Transformer for Christmas. He had spent three hours trying to turn it from a car into a robot before he realized that it wasn’t a Transformer. It had just been a toy car. And now it was a broken toy car. He remembered an incredibly sad Boxing Day watching his father failing to glue a remote-control Porsche 911 back together. As he remembered, he slowly felt The Speed seep through his bones.
Trudy had already run back toward the Minotaur. It charged at her again but she leapt and somersaulted in the air. With her one good hand she grabbed hold of the Minotaur’s right horn and pulled with all her might. Any other creature would have tumbled backward, but the Minotaur, with its enormous neck and powerful shoulders, barely noticed. It jerked back a step but then steadied itself. The wig fell off its head, which was at least a minor victory.
Trudy landed badly. With one arm still in a sling, she struggled to get her balance, tripped, and fell. The Minotaur turned, snorted in amusement, and lifted its head. It was going to drive itself headlong into the ground, skewering Trudy before she could get to her feet again.
Jack began running toward them, but even with The Speed he was too far away—he’d never get there in time. He could see the muscles in the Minotaur’s neck tensing, ready for the strike. Jack’s body sagged as he felt completely helpless … but at the last minute the Minotaur was distracted by something off to the side.
As the Minotaur glanced away, Trudy scrambled to her feet and, using The Speed, sprinted across the grass to where Jack was.
They both gazed in amazement. The Minotaur had stopped to pick up the wig and was carefully placing it back onto its head.
“What happened there? I thought I was dead for sure.”
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
MALE VANITY
WHY MEN WEAR WIGS
Many men feel the need to wear wigs to show how manly they are. Of course, this frequently makes them seem sillier than they would have been otherwise. Interestingly enough, some of the silliest wigs of all time are worn by the guardsmen who stand outside Buckingham Palace. Tourists often mistake their two-foot-tall wigs for hats. However, if you get close enough you will realize that they are in fact wigs and are covered in hair gel.
This is why the British public refer to the guardsmen’s enormous wigs as “bearskins”—because under the wig there is literally “bare skin.”
Some of you may wonder why so many of Buckingham Palace’s guardsmen are bald. The reason is simple: Guarding the queen is a very important job that makes the guards worry a lot. Almost all of the guardsmen have lost their hair due to the stress of their positions.
This is why if you ever visit Buckingham Palace you should not make the bald guards feel self-conscious but should try to raise their self-esteem. This is most easily done by shouting “Hey, dude, great hair!” at the guardsmen.
* * *
21
TYPICAL MINOTAUR
Jack’s mind was buzzing with a dozen different thoughts at once. “I think I’ve figured out how we can defeat the Minotaur. But I’m going to need you to buy me some time.”
“Great,” said Trudy, “because that’s worked so well up until now.”
Jack ignored Trudy’s sarcasm and started looking for what he needed to defeat the Minotaur. Unfortunately, he couldn’t see a box anywhere with “Minotaur-defeating equipment” written on it. He was going to have to improvise.
The Minotaur had finally gotten the wig fixed back onto the top of its head. It turned toward Jack, but Trudy started shouting at it. “Hey, Mr. Minotaur! Over here, you big idiot.” Trudy picked a rock up and threw it across the field. The rock was thrown with such accuracy that Jack rightly suspected that Trudy may well have done a lot of rock throwing in her life before she joined the Ministry. The rock smacked the Minotaur right on one of its big, floppy ears. It whinnied in pain and then turned to face Trudy with angry, bloodshot eyes. With one enormous foot the Minotaur pawed at the ground, getting ready to charge.
“You owe me for this, Jack; you owe me a lot.”
“Just give me five minutes.” Jack bolted up a ladder that led to the upper level of the drilling platform. He looked around the platform frantically. There were tools, pipes, sections of metal, and everything you would need if you were a construction worker. But there wasn’t the one thing that Jack really wanted. Jack clenched his fists and wished to himself that construction workers wore lipstick.39
“Hurry up, Jack; avoiding a Minotaur with one arm in a sling40 isn’t as easy as it looks.” The Minotaur charged at Trudy. Trudy stood up straight, looking as if she was about to try a somersault. The Minotaur continued to charge but raised its head, ready to try and catch Trudy with its horns if she flipped in the air. At the last possible moment, Trudy ducked down and dived through the Minotaur’s legs. She spun on her good hand and kicked the back of the Minotaur’s knee. The Minotaur howled and fell awkwardly, embedding one of its horns in the soil.
Amongst all the building materials Jack had found what he had been looking for. It was a square of shiny metal about three feet along each edge. He spat on it.
Trudy was watching him from the ground. “What on earth are you doing?”
“Just a few more minutes.” The metal was grimy from lying unattended. Jack used The Speed and the cuff of his school shirt to polish it at a frantic rate.
The Minotaur had worked its horn free from the ground. Its face was now covered in saliva, grass, and dirt. The wig was stuck to the left horn with a big clod of mud.
Jack dropped the square of metal off the side of the platform and clambered down the ladder after it. The Minotaur charged toward Trudy. She steeled herself to try one last dodge. Jack tapped her on the shoulder, having clambered down beside her.
“Jack! Get out of here. It’ll be a lot easier if I try and dodge it by myself.”
“We aren’t trying to dodge. Here, help me with this.”
Jack hoisted the shiny square of metal in front of them. Trudy loo
ked at the metal and realized that Jack’s plan was hopeless. The metal was far too thin to deflect the Minotaur’s deadly horns. Looking up, she could see that it was too late to dodge. The Minotaur was almost on top of them.
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
POLISHING
MILITARY USES
Many people have said that the training soldiers undergo in the army seems pointless. For example, we have all seen films and television programs where soldiers in training are told to polish shoes, belt buckles, and buttons until the Sergeant Major “can see my face in them.”
Admittedly this seems pointless, as battles are generally dirty and dusty things. However, Sergeant Majors are clever and cunning men. Their plan is simple—when shiny soldiers charge the enemy, the enemy soldiers are dazzled and see buttons, belts, and shoes all reflecting their faces back at them. The enemy then counts the faces and assumes that the opposing side has many more troops than first suspected and undertakes some tactical running away—or retreating, as the army like to call it.
The army is very clever in this way.
* * *
22
THE NARROWEST OF MARGINS
At the last moment the Minotaur caught sight of its reflection in the shiny square of metal and came skidding to a stop. Trudy and Jack were both holding their breath. For a few seconds the Minotaur breathed heavily and looked at its reflection. Then it started turning its head one way then another before starting to straighten the wig that still sat askew on its head.
“What’s happening?” whispered Trudy out of the side of her mouth.
“Put the mirror down very slowly,” Jack said in the same hushed tones. “Once we’ve moved to a safe distance, I’ll tell you.”
Very slowly and very gingerly Jack and Trudy lowered the metal square to the ground. As they did so the Minotaur slowly lowered its head, following the sight of its own reflection. When the metal square was on the ground, Trudy carefully leaned it against the side of the drilling platform so it still stood upright. By now the Minotaur was sitting cross-legged on the grass and picking pieces of mud out of its shaggy mane.
