“The strange undulation of the Prizzucks is only one of the many mysteries of the Sacred Gonga.” The professor smiled. “Let me show you something.”
He positioned Jack on one side of the room and Mary on the other so the Sacred Gonga was directly between them and told them to close their eyes.
“Now think of a number,” whispered the Professor in Jack’s ear.
“Eight,” said Mary as soon as he thought of it. “Four. Six. Twelve.”
“Was she right?”
“Quite right. How does it do it?”
“We have no idea. The Sacred Gonga has many secrets, good and bad. Thousands of lives have been lost over the years in the effort to find out. Despite the demands of the Splotvian minister of antiquities, the Sacred Gonga is going to stay here in Reading.”
Jack pointed at the clear dome covering the Sacred Gonga. “What’s that made of?”
“Toughened glass. It will withstand a grenade, eighty kilos of Semtex, an .88 artillery round. A thief would have to somehow get through the glass, take the Sacred Gonga and be out again in under thirty seconds—always assuming he was not apprehended by the four armed guards or rendered unconscious by the quick-acting nerve gas we can introduce at will.”
“Looks like you’re not leaving anything to chance.”
“Absolutely not. The dedication ceremony will take place in here at midday. At 1400 hours we open to the public. We expect ten thousand visitors that afternoon and over one million in the first six months. It’s not surprising; since the attempted theft three years ago, the Sacred Gonga’s not been on public display.”
They put their shoes and socks back on and were escorted to the exit.
“The Jellyman Security Service will take command from 0900 hours to midday; the rest of the time, security will be down to you and me and the four armed guards on the museum floor.”
“Looks like we won’t have much to do,” observed Jack.
“Exactly what I said to Superintendent Briggs,” said Hardiman with unwelcome directness. “I told him I could make do with lobotomized monkeys if he had any.” He clapped his hands together, indicating that he had used up enough of his valuable time. “Well, thanks for coming around, and I’ll see you on Saturday at 1330, but if you’re late, don’t worry—I’m sure we can manage.”
They exited by way of the secure double doors and were soon back out on the street, which felt cold and damp after the precise humidity-controlled environment of the visitors’ center.
“Ever felt redundant?” asked Jack as they walked back towards the car. “I think it’s Briggs’s way of easing me into the pain of losing the NCD.”
Mary didn’t answer. It was probably exactly what Briggs had in mind.
“Let’s go and see what Dr. Quatt has to say for herself. Blast. Agatha’s given me a ticket.”
12. St. cerebellum's
SCANDAL ROCKS QUATT FOUNDATION
The Reading genetic industry suffered a severe blow last night when the Quatt Foundation for Genetic Research was closed following its owner’s admission that she conducted morally dubious experiments. “So I kept a monkey brain alive in a jar,” said the disgraced Dr. Quatt, “so what? It’s only a bit of fun.” Once the nation’s foremost expert in reptilian genome mapping and skilled at grafting frogs’ heads onto whippets, Dr. Quatt has been permanently banned from funded research. The disgraced pariah of the medical establishment has been shunned by every decent hospital in the nation, except for St. Cerebellum’s, which asked if she could start Monday.
—Extract from The Owl, August 2, 1994
The outdated St. Cerebellum’s mental hospital had been constructed in 1831 and was considered modern for its day. With separate wards for unmarried mothers, sufferers of milk allergies, unwanted relatives and the genuinely disturbed, St. Cerebellum’s once boasted a proud record of ill-conceived experimental treatment. With the high level of fee-paying curiosity seekers the litmus test of its success, St. Cerebellum’s even outstripped Bedlam as those requiring lunatic-based entertainment flocked to Reading in droves. But the days when you could pay sixpence to view someone who thought he was Napoleon were long gone, and despite continued and relentless modernization, it was still an anachronistic stain on Reading’s otherwise fine record of psychiatric treatment.
Jack and Mary entered the hospital at the main reception area and, after being issued with passes to avoid any more embarrassing accidental incarcerations, were escorted along the plain whitewashed corridors by a burly nurse with a two-way radio and a bunch of keys on his belt.
“You’ve heard about the plan to rebuild St. Cerebellum’s?” asked the male nurse.
“Sure,” replied Jack. “Fifty million should do it, yes?”
“And none too soon. We are both an outpatient center and a secure hospital for the criminally unhinged—even though the two halves never meet, it would be better for everyone to separate the two.”
“Doubtless,” replied Mary as some weird and maniacal laughter echoed up the corridors.
“Dr. Quatt is a brilliant woman,” said the nurse as they took a clanking lift to the third floor. “The popular view is that she’s as mad as a barrel of skunks, and many people see her as a perverter of all the decent virtues that bind society together, but they said the same about Galileo.”
“I must say I don’t remember the bit where Galileo grafted sheep’s hooves onto amputees,” mused Mary.
“Or subjected toads to Iron Maiden’s ‘Number of the Beast’ so loud they exploded,” added Jack.
“All her work was to alleviate suffering,” retorted the nurse defensively. “When they banned her, a dark veil fell over the medical-research community. We don’t expect outsiders to truly understand her brilliance.”
St. Cerebellum’s seemed like a little world unto itself.
A crackling message came over the nurse’s radio. He unclipped it and waved them to a stop. There was an almost unintelligible rasp of dialogue about a “patient in transit,” and he acknowledged the call before he turned to a nearby room, selected a key and unlocked the door.
“We are moving one of our secure patients,” explained the nurse as he ushered them into what had once been a small cell.
“It’s safer to lock ourselves in while he’s being transported.”
The lock clunked shut, and the nurse spoke briefly on the radio. Up and down the corridor, they could hear doors slamming and locks being thrown.