Floods 10 (8 page)

The ninety-nine-point-seven explained that there was a perfectly good reason for that and it was the fact that out there was run by humans and, as all
witches and wizards knew, humans were not only a bit stupid, they also did a lot of unpleasant and oft en dangerous things.

‘Sure, they can be all right, but basically life is a lot easier if we just stay here,' said the ninety-nine-point-seven.

‘But what about progress?' said the remaining nought-point-three per cent.

‘There's no future in it,' said the ninety-nine-point-seven.

It was at this point that the eyes of the remaining nought-point-three per cent glazed over a lot more and they began banging their heads against tree trunks and whimpering. Some of them, whose eyes had double-glazed over so they couldn't see anything, just walked forwards until they collided with something. Then they started banging their heads against that, which was OK if the something was a horse or a girl,
²¹
but not so good if it was a high-voltage electric power
line or a huge pile of scrunched-up rusty barbed wire covered in anthrax.

A month later King Nerlin Flood and Mr Hulbert opened the doors of the Parliament building.

They got there quite early to be ready for the rush of people who were to be admitted at midday.

‘I wonder how many we'll get,' said Nerlin. ‘I hope sixty-seven chairs will be enough.'

‘Well, if there is a big queue outside,' said Mr Hulbert, ‘they're being very quiet.'

On the dot of twelve a footman opened the doors and a mad uncontrollable rush of five people wandered in. They were all from the remaining nought-point-three per cent and their arrival reduced the excitement in the room, which had been almost zero, to minus fifty. After a wait of thirty minutes, another no more people had joined them.

‘Where's the cake?' said one of the five people.

‘Yes, we were told there would be cake,' said another.

‘And lemonade,' said a third.

‘It would appear that virtually no one wants to be a Member of Parliament,' said Mr Hulbert. ‘We've sent out four proclamations, the last one offering free jelly demons,
²²
and all we've got are five pimply nerds with clipboards and bad breath.'

‘Yes, where are the jelly demons?' said the fourth.

‘Nmm ghh nnnnn,' said Nerlin, which meant,
There are no jelly demons, because I am eating them.

‘I wonder if we can get a refund on the chairs,' said Mordonna.

‘Do we have to make one of them Prime Minister?' said Nerlin.

‘No,' said Mordonna. ‘There is a Transylvania Waters law that says the King is automatically Prime Minister for ever. As you know, my father was an evil dictator and he made the law.'

‘Excellent,' said Nerlin. ‘I know we decided to get rid of all the terrible laws your father made, but in this case I think we can make an exception.'

‘We still need some Members of Parliament,' said Mr Hulbert, ‘and I dread to think what those five out there would pass laws about, but one thing's for sure: life would become much more boring.'

‘I have an idea,' whispered Mordonna.

One of the nerds stood up and began to speak,
but then he thought about it, looked at the other four and sat down.

‘You wanted to say something?' said Nerlin.

‘Yes, but I haven't been elected to speak by my four companions,' said the nerd. ‘So I'm not sure I should.'

‘Hands up if you are happy to be represented by this person,' said Mr Hulbert.

The other four put up their hands.

‘Though we do reserve the right to renegotiate the leadership, should our de-facto leader prove unsatisfactory,' said one of the nerds.

‘OK,' said Nerlin. ‘I'm not sure what you just said, but go ahead and say what it was you wanted to tell us all.'

The first nerd, or it might have been one of the other because in their beige anoraks they all looked the same, even down to the pimples and fluff on their chins, stood up and, consulting his clipboard, began to speak.

‘I represent the remaining nought-point-three per cent of the population who want to see progress
in this country and, as my four friends and I are the only people here, we, the Point-Three Party, are the biggest party in this government and therefore claim the right to rule and make the decisions about our future.'

‘So you five claim to represent the wishes of the people and the right to make all the laws, do you?' said Mr Hulbert, who realised he was actually enjoying all this.

‘Yes.'

‘Five of you?'

‘Yes.'

Nerlin and Mr Hulbert whispered to each other while Mordonna sat there with a smile on her face. It was the sort of smile that said,
Whatever anyone has to say is irrelevant because I have a better plan, but I'll let you prattle on for a bit before I reveal my plan, just to make you feel all the more annoyed when I do reveal it.

The nerds sat there muttering to each other and writing things on their clipboards.

‘We want high-speed internet, digital TV,
traffic lights at every crossroad and some traffic …' the nerd leader began.

Mordonna stood up and looked round the room with a big smile on her face.

‘You do, do you?' she said.

‘Err, umm, err, yes,' said the nerd. ‘And bacon.'

Everyone, even the remaining nought-point-three per cent, knew how powerful Mordonna was. Most people had a story about how somebody had crossed her and been turned into something very unpleasant like a septic tank or a history teacher with a wooden leg full of termites. So the nerd was very nervous.

‘Don't be nervous, young man,' Mordonna said in that sweet, friendly, terrifying voice she kept for special occasions. ‘The thing is that you are not the largest political party, so you are merely the opposition.'

‘I don't see anyone else here,' said the least nervous nerd.

‘They're on their way,' said Mordonna. ‘Most of them are in New York at summer school, so it'll
take a few minutes for them all to get here.'

‘You mean …?' Nerlin began.

‘Yes, the Royal Party,' said Mordonna. ‘Princes Valla, Winchflat, Morbid and Silent and the Princesses Satanella and Betty, and of course Merlinmary. So I think you are outnumbered by two. And of course our wonderful leader, His Majesty King Nerlin, is just about to confer knighthoods on our four new family members, the Hulberts.'

‘Well, we can go out and get more members,' said the least nervous nerd, ignoring the other four pulling at his clothes to shut him up.

‘You can indeed,' said Mordonna, ‘and while you are doing so you can also wonder how life will be as a Huge-legged Frog in a French restaurant aquarium.'

The doors were flung open and the Flood children entered together with Ffiona and Charlie Hulbert, who was so excited he wet himself.
²³
During their two-minute flight from New York on
the Quicklime College school bus, everyone had been briefed on the situation.

‘Right,' said Betty, who although the youngest Flood child, had been elected the leader of the Royal Party because a little blonde human-looking girl was guaranteed to make the nerds feel ill at ease. ‘Here are our first set of demands:

• As the new fifty chairs are not needed and as it would be really unfair to make the nice carpenters who made them take them back, the Point-Three Party will pay for them out of their party funds.
  
• Traffic lights will only be installed outside the homes of the Point-Three Party members.
  
• The aforementioned traffic lights will always be set on red.
  
• Texting, Twittering and blogging are banned, not because they are undermining real face-to-face social contact between people, but because they are really, really, really, really, really, really BORING.
  ²⁴
  
• Facebooking is banned for all members of the Point-Three Party because they are very ugly and would scare the internets.
  
• Every day of the week that ends in ‘day' is an official chocolate day.
  
• Parliament is suspended until further notice because politics is really, really, really, really, really, really BORING.
  
• Before leaving, members of the Point-Three Party will mop up Charlie Hulbert's puddle and change his nappy.
  

‘Right, that's sorted out,' said Betty. ‘Time to get back to New York.'

The nerds decided to go meet at Kevin's house to discuss things. This, itself, took three days to organise because they were all called Kevin, even the one who was a girl. A few minutes After they did all finally get together in the same place at the same time, the stuck-on-red traffic lights appeared in the street outside the house and they were trapped there for weeks.
²⁵

The next morning Maldegard and Edna set off early with Spudly as their guide. It would be too obvious to say this was ‘the blind leading the blind', but there is no other way to say it.

It was the blind leading the blind, except everyone could see.

However, Spudly was supremely confident in a fools-rush-in-where-angels-fear-to-tread sort of way. Maldegard and Edna realised this immediately, but pretended they had every faith in Spudly because it made them feel a lot easier about the boldly going they were about to do.

‘It is quite exciting, isn't it?' said Maldegard.

‘Umm, I'll get back to you on that,' said Edna, who was not so much going boldly as going timidly with a big bit of I wish I'd stayed at home.

‘I name this tunnel
in honour of your leader,' said Maldegard.

Spudly wrote the name on the wall of the tunnel in chalk.

‘Can I have something named After me?' he said.

‘Of course you can,' said Maldegard. ‘In fact, all of you can.'

‘I'd like a waterfall,' said Spudly. ‘I think
sounds way cool.'

And as if to emphasise the point, he tripped over a rock and fell flat on his face.

‘Yes, you do, don't you?' said Edna. ‘Though it might be more suitable to name a small hill after you.'

‘What do you mean?' said Spudly.

²⁶

Because they are usually underground, caves are cut off from the light of day, or night, or anything in between such as twilight. The only light they are not cut off from is torchlight or lamplight.

‘Or firelight,' said Spudly.

‘Indeed,' said Maldegard.

The three explorers did not have a torch or a lamp.

‘Or a fire,' said Spudly helpfully.

‘Quite,' said Edna.

Yet they were not in total darkness, due to being in Transylvania Waters, which, as everyone knows, is a wondrous and a magical place.

As the light faded to black, a plugg
²⁷
of glow-worms appeared, lighting their way. There were not your regular rubbish glow-worms like humans have. These were Transylvanian Firestorm Glow-worms that could glow so brightly that you often needed to wear dark glasses to avoid getting a headache. On top of that, in every plugg of these glow-worms there was at least one Glowrom. The Glowrom would tangle itself in a traveller's hair, fur or feathers and read their mind. It then transferred information to the rest of the plugg that told them where the traveller wanted to go. This way, the glow-worms could fly ahead and always be in the right place at the right time. If a traveller changed their mind, the Glowrom could read the change and re-route the plugg in less than seventeen milliseconds.

The glow-worms had it pretty easy that first
morning. There was only one tunnel. There were no side passages or narrow gaps in the wall that might have led somewhere else. The tunnel took them down deeper and deeper into the earth until at half-past lunchtime or thereabouts, they reached a large cave. They sat on a rock and ate their sandwiches, which in Transylvania Waters were called ‘lumps of bread with stuff in'.

‘I name this cave
said Maldegard, ‘because any one else coming down here from Yggdrasil would always arrive here at lunchtime.'

‘Not if they set off just after lunch,' said Edna.

‘Or they was on a diet and not eating no lunch,' said Spudly between mouthfuls of pickled turnip.

Spudly and the other goblins had a unique way of growing vegetables, though ‘growing' is not really the right word. After the first goblins to reach Transylvania Waters had made their home among the roots of the great Yggdrasil, they had excavated tunnels out in all directions. Partly so they would always have an escape route and partly because there isn't much else to do when you're stuck in a cave.

Some of these tunnels reached the local village and went right beneath the inhabitants' vegetable gardens. At the height of the veggie growing season, carrots and parsnips used to poke down through the tunnel ceilings. It was simple enough for a goblin to reach up and pull one down.

‘After all,' one old goblin had said, ‘we be doing the gardeners a favour really. If we didn't take them, they'd have to eat 'em theyselves.'

‘If I was ever beed King,' a very wise goblin had commented, ‘I would make parsnips illegal. Disgusting things they be, and don't even talk about radishes.'

That was actually the last very wise thing he did say. As he had been passing beneath one vegetable garden, an enormous parsnip had fallen on his head and killed him.

‘See, I told you vegetables was bad for you,' said his wife as they had rolled him up and carried him home for supper.
²⁸

‘All right,' said Maldegard. ‘We'll call it
because whenever you get here, you'll be ready for a snack.'

‘But this is a very lovely cave,' said Edna.
isn't a very lovely name, is it?'

‘OK, OK, we'll call it

‘But supposing there are caves that are much lovelier?' said Spudly. ‘I mean, we've barely started. We might find that by the time we've finished this was actually the ugliest cave we went to even though it is quite nice.'

Maldegard was beginning to wish she'd either decided to do the mapping job on her own or not taken it on at all. When she had taken on the naming job she had no idea how difficult it would be.
²⁹
It was all she could do not to turn around and go back. The glow-worms were thrown into confusion. Was she going back or not? They darted backwards
and forwards, not knowing which way to fly until Maldegard made up her mind to go on.

‘There is a special underground rule that I must have forgotten to tell you both about,' she said. ‘It's the Naming of Places Rule 837B subsection 14, and it says that when working below ground only the Official Namer of Places – me – is allowed to name places. All assistants and guides are banned from naming anything.'

‘Oh yes,' said Spudly, ‘and why's that then?'

‘It's to do with health and safety,' said Maldegard. ‘And we certainly don't want to take any safety risks, do we?'

‘But …' Spudly began.

‘Let me make a suggestion,' said Maldegard before the young goblin could say another word. ‘Let me remind you of the Naming of Places Rule 837B subsection 15 which says anyone breaking Rule 837B subsection 14 will get a great big smack around the head, which will be neither healthy for you nor safe.'