I took a picture from my shoulder bag and showed her.
‘The photographer was trembling with fear when he took it,’ I explained, ‘so it’s a bit blurred.’
‘Hmm,’ said Once Magnificent Boo as she took the picture to a desk, where she opened a book full of Quarkbeast illustrations. It wasn’t just a rescue centre – she was studying them. She pulled out a picture and showed it to me.
‘Was that yours?’
I stared carefully at the picture.
‘No.’
She turned to the large Florentine mirror above the mantelpiece and held up the picture so I could see the same picture but in mirror image, and I felt a tear spring to my eye with the sudden recognition.
‘That’s him.’
‘Not him, it,’ corrected Once Magnificent Boo, scribbling in a notepad. ‘Quarkbeasts are genderless. You had Q27. Is this the beast you saw in town?’
She showed me the photograph I had given her of my Quarkbeast, but reflected in the mirror.
‘Yes, that’s him.’
‘Then we’ve got the pair of your Quarkbeast sniffing around – Q28. It took him two months to get here from Australia, which was to be expected. Quarkbeasts aren’t strong swimmers.’
‘It swam twelve thousand miles?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. It only swam eight thousand miles – the rest would have been overland at a fast trot.’
‘That’s quite a migration.’
‘Quarks are remarkable beasts. Do you want to see some?’
‘Yes, please.’
We walked out of the back door, which I noted had been broken recently and hastily repaired, and into a paddock at the back, where four Quarkbeasts were happily sunning themselves.
‘Quark,’ said the one closest.
‘Quark,’ said another.
‘Quark,’ said the third.
‘Quark,’ came the muffled call of one that was inside the pen.
It was quite an emotional moment, and although their calls were subtly different and none of them looked like mine, they all looked as if they might be, which is a bit odd and unnerving.
‘That’s Q3,’ said Boo, pointing to a mangy-looking specimen who was missing most of its back-plates. ‘I rescued it from a Quarkbaiting ring. A very cruel sport. Over there is Q11, which got run over on the M50 and was dragged for six miles. You can still see the eight grooves its claws made in the road all the way to the Newent exit from the Premier Inn. Q35 is the one in the iron filings wallow. It was captured alive in the jam and biscuit section of the Holmer Road Co-op. The beast with the missing teeth is Q23. I got it from the zoo after they thought it was frightening the public too much. I had them all registered as dangerous pets. Legally, no one can touch them – not even the colonel.’
She looked at me for a moment, then opened a cardboard box that contained tins of dog food. She picked them up with her gloved hand and tossed them toward the Quarkbeasts, which crunched them up eagerly, tin and all.
‘What do the neighbours think about having them here?’ I asked, since the four of them looked so intimidating that only those well acquainted with the species would be relaxed in their company.
‘They’re okay about it – they think it keeps burglars at bay. It doesn’t.’
She indicated the broken back door.
‘Last Tuesday night. Did the beasts let out a single Quark? Not a bit of it.’
‘Take much, did they?’ I asked, stalling as I tried to figure out a way to raise the ‘can you help us?’ issue without getting punched in the eye.
‘Money, jewellery, that kind of stuff. I thought of leaving a Quarkbeast in the house at night, but, well, there are some things you baulk at doing, even to burglars.’
She was right. No one deserves a savaging by a Quarkbeast – or even being surprised by one when you’re off doing a spot of innocent villainy.
‘Do they like it here?’
‘They seem happy, but since they’re running on Mandrake Sentience Emulation Protocols to make us think they’re real, we can’t ever know for sure.’
‘So what is Q28 doing in town?’ I asked. ‘If its twin is dead, it can’t be looking for him, surely?’
The Once Magnificent Boo stared at me intently.
‘Are you ready to be confused?’
‘It’s how I spend most of my days at Zambini Towers.’
‘Then here it is: Quarkbeasts breed by creating an exact mirror copy of themselves – and since the Mighty Shandar created only one Quarkbeast, every Quarkbeast is a copy of every other Quarkbeast, only opposite.’
‘I was blown back to front yesterday,’ I said. ‘Is that the same thing?’
‘No, and if I were you, I should stay that way. It will save your life.’
‘Right. But wait a minute,’ I said, looking at the picture of Q26, the one that paired to give mine, ‘if Q27 is the mirror of Q26 and Q28 is the mirror of Q27, then why don’t Q26 and Q28 look the same? Alternate generations must be identical, yes?’
‘No. It’s more complicated than that. They create identical copies of themselves in six different flavours: Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top and Bottom. All are opposite and equal, but all uniquely different and alike at the same time.’
‘I don’t understand any of this,’ I said, feeling increasingly lost.
‘I still have problems with it after twenty years,’ confessed Boo. ‘The complexities of the Quarkbeast are fundamentally unknowable. But here’s the point: there can only ever be thirty-six completely unique yet identical Quarkbeasts, and as soon as the combinations are fulfilled, they will come together and merge into a single Quota of fully Quorumed Quarkbeasts.’
‘What will happen then?’
‘Something wonderful. All the great unanswered questions of the world will be answered. Who are we? What are we here for? Where will we end up? And most important of alclass="underline" can mankind actually get any stupider? The Quarkbeast is more then an animal, it’s an oracle to assist in mankind’s illusive search for meaning, truth and fulfilment.’
‘Really?’
‘Don’t take my word for it – it was foreseen by Sister Yolanda of Kilpeck.’
Yolanda was a good precog. If she said enlightenment would be attained when there was a full thirty-six Quarkbeast Quota, there was a good chance it would.
‘When will this quota happen?’
‘Good question. The last near-Quota was two months ago. For eight minutes there were thirty-four Quarkbeasts in existence. When yours died it dropped to thirty-three. By the end of the week there were twenty-nine. We’re down to fifteen at the moment. The colonel needs to be stopped. Quarkbeasts shouldn’t be messed around with, and never held against their will. Can I rely on you to do what you can to ensure it remains free?’
‘Of course.’
I suddenly had an idea.
‘They use magic to copy themselves, don’t they?’
‘You learn fast,’ she replied. ‘They do, but since they require a whopping 1.2 GigaShandars for a successful separation they can’t do it alone. They need a sorcerer of considerable power to channel the energy. They can store power, too, just like fireflies – only unlike fireflies, which transmit it out as light immediately, Quarks can store it for a day or two.’
‘Patrick surged yesterday. There was a Quarkbeast close by.’
‘Pat’s a sweet man, but he doesn’t have the skill to channel that amount of power. Since Zambini vanished, no one has. Quark division is unlikely, but if it happens, we have plans in hand. See that vehicle over there?’
She pointed to a riveted titanium box about the size of small garden shed that was mounted on the back of a rusty E-type Jaguar fitted with blue lights and sirens.