Floods 10 (14 page)

‘No,' said the chicken, ‘thank
you.
'

‘Why?' said Winchflat. ‘What did I do?'

‘You have brought me back to life,' said the chicken. ‘Re-created me, as 'twere, from my own fossilised bones.'

‘Wow,' said Winchflat.

‘I must say,' said the chicken, ‘everything appears to have gone exactly to plan. By the way, I am Ethel the Chicken – though you can just call me Ethel – and yes, I suppose “wow” is a pretty fair statement considering the last time I spoke was quite a lot of millennia ago.'

‘Wow,' Winchflat repeated because there isn't anything remotely suitable you can say to someone
who has been fossilised for much longer than an extremely long time.

‘Tell me,' said Ethel, ‘does everyone still live in constant fear of being trampled or eaten by dinosaurs with feet bigger than your entire family?'

‘No, dinosaurs are extinct,' said Winchflat. ‘Though I do have several jars of DNA that might be from them.'

‘Are you talking about DNA that you collected from the same place as mine?' said Ethel.

‘Yes.'

‘I think you might be a little bit disappointed there,' said the chicken, ‘but you might as well give it a go.'

So Winchflat set fourteen jam jars in a row on the bench, filled them with Idiotic Fluid and tipped the powder from the fourteen remaining jars of pure DNA. The only jar he left untouched was the sixteenth one which contained the unsortable left overs.

‘Probably a good idea to leave that one for now,' Ethel agreed and added mysteriously, ‘It could be an accountant.'

By the middle of the next afternoon all fourteen jars had produced a living creature.

This is a list of them:

• Jar 1 – a chicken.
  .
  
• Jar 2 – a chicken.
  
• Jar 3 – a chicken.
  
• Jar 4 – a chicken.
  
• Jar 5 – a chicken.
  
• Jar 6 – a chicken.
  
• Jar 7 – a chicken.
  
• Jar 8 – a chicken.
  
• Jar 9 – a chicken.
  
• Jar 10 – a chicken.
  
• Jar 11 – a chicken.
  
• Jar 12 – a chicken.
  
• Jar 13 – a chicken.
  
• Jar 14 – another chicken.
  

‘You seem a little disappointed,' said Ethel, ‘but you can't say I didn't warn you.'

‘It's all right,' said Winchflat, realising his
chances of a Nobel Prize for Serious Cleverness were probably fairly remote now.

‘Look on the bright side,' said Ethel. ‘You are the first person ever to have created life from ancient fossilised DNA. All fifteen of us are perfect in every detail and yet we are all subtly different in our own ways. I mean, look, Brenda over there is very dark brown whereas Brenda over here, like me, is a rich golden caramel colour.'

‘Are they both called Brenda?' said Winchflat.

‘We all are,' said another chicken. ‘Except our glorious leader, Ethel.'

‘Who is called Ethel,' said another Brenda.

‘Right,' said Winchflat.

‘Come on, cheer up,' said a Brenda. ‘You can have lovely fresh eggs for breakfast every day.'

‘Tell me something,' said Winchflat, ‘this talking thing. Can you all do it?'

‘What do you mean?' said Ethel.

‘Can every one of you speak?'

‘Well, of course we can,' said Ethel. ‘I don't understand.'

Winchflat explained that chickens as he knew them couldn't speak or communicate with any other species. Nor could dogs or cats or any other animals.

‘Well, that's your evolution for you, isn't it?' Ethel explained. ‘You see, when we were originally alive all animals could talk right, down to the smallest mouse.'

‘Insects could, too,' said a Brenda, ‘but they were so quiet no one could understand them.'

‘Except other insects,' said another Brenda.

‘I think it was the talking that made us all extinct,' said Ethel. ‘Every species argued with each other and the arguments led to fights and the bigger animals killed the smaller ones until there were only a few very huge dinosaurs left and unfortunately they were not vegetarians so they starved to death. Obviously Mother Nature realised what an enormous stuff-up she'd made so she started again, but made sure no one could speak any more.'

‘Except humans,' said Winchflat, ‘and wizards.'

‘Yes, so it would seem,' said Ethel. ‘I wonder why?'

‘Probably to compensate for their lack of wings or claws or beaks,' said a Brenda. ‘And the fact they can't run very fast.'

‘Or swim under water,' said another.

‘Or build nests,' said a third.

‘Or hear very well.'

‘Or see in the dark.'

‘Yes, thank you,' said Winchflat.

‘They're right, though,' said Ethel, ‘You have to wonder why Mother Nature created humans at all.'

Winchflat had to admit that when he thought about it, humans would be a lot better if they couldn't talk. There certainly would have been a lot fewer wars and killing if they couldn't, and far fewer stupid reality shows on TV.

‘Well, maybe humans will make themselves extinct,' said Ethel, ‘so there'll just be wizards and chickens left to run the world.'

Winchflat also had to admit that was sort of a kind of nice daydream, maybe, perhaps.

‘Tell me,' said Ethel. ‘Is this place still called Transylvania Waters?'

‘It is indeed,' said Winchflat. ‘That's amazing. I thought my forefathers, the first wizards who came here, gave it that name.'

‘No, it has had that name since the dawn of time, when we were rulers of this land,' said Ethel.

‘You were in charge of Transylvania Waters?' said Winchflat.

‘Not so much
were
, sonny, as
are
,' said Ethel.

All the Brendas clucked and muttered in agreement. Ethel hopped onto the floor, waddled across the room, flapped up onto the window sill and peered out.

‘Look, girls,' she said. ‘If I am not mistaken, we are actually in a building that has been built on the site of the Great Coop.'

The Brendas took it in turns to look out and agree.

‘Oh dear,' said Winchflat. ‘I think I may have unleashed a can of worms here.'

‘Where? Where?' said all the chickens, running around pecking at the floor.

‘That was a mean thing to say,' said Ethel when
Winchflat explained that it was just an expression and there were not actually any worms.

Ethel demanded that they be taken to Nerlin so he could be told he was not the King and be given twenty-four hours to leave the castle or else.

‘Or else what?' said Winchflat, backing away towards the door.

‘That,' said Ethel, ‘is secret chickens' business.'

Winchflat dashed out of the door and locked it behind him.

‘Chickens,' said Mordonna. ‘We are being told to leave by fifteen chickens?'

Winchflat nodded, though a little voice in the back of his head was wondering if there was any way Ethel and the Brendas could work out how to use his cloning machine and make lots more Brendas and if they did, how many more? He found himself wondering exactly how many chickens a room the size of his laboratory could hold. And supposing
they used the leftover DNA jar, what unspeakable creature might that produce?

Oh, for goodness sake,
he told himself.
They're chickens. They won't even be able to open the jar, never mind mix the contents with the Idiotic Fluid. They're useless birds who can't even fly.

And as if to prove his point a fat chicken fell past the window and landed with a splat in the courtyard fifteen floors below. It was followed by twenty-seven others, which added up to thirteen more chickens than he had left locked in the laboratory.

Oops,
he thought, wishing he hadn't told everyone that his cloning machine was so simple that even a chicken could work it. He hadn't really meant it, but now it appeared that it actually was.

More chickens rained down until there were so many flattened ones in the courtyard that the following ones had somewhere soft to land and were now waddling around trying to find their way out of the courtyard. Nerlin sent guards down to make sure all the doors were locked.

Meanwhile, up in Winchflat's laboratory, one
chicken had stayed behind and was pecking away at the lid of the sixteenth jar.

She had already pushed the plug into the laboratory bench and knocked the jar of Idiotic Fluid into it. Now she nudged to jar towards the rim.

One last peck and the lid fell off into the liquid, followed by the open jar and its contents.

Unlike Ethel's DNA, which had taken several hours to re-awaken, this DNA couldn't wait to rebuild its owner.

‘Take me to your so-called leader,' Ethel the Chicken shouted as loud as a talking chicken can shout, which wasn't very loud at all.

She was strutting about in a sea of feathers that were flying around like a snowstorm, thrown up from all the dead chicken clones. There seemed to be about twelve survivors plus another very nervous chicken still up on the windowsill of Winchflat's laboratory.

Nerlin put on a big, shiny gold crown and leaned out of a first-floor window.

‘Hello, little chicken,' he said. ‘I am Nerlin son of Merlin, grandson of Merlin and so on right back to my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandfather Merlin and all of us were and are the Kings of Transylvania Waters. What do you want, little chicken? How about a nice cup of corn?'

‘What sort of corn?' said Ethel. ‘No, no! I mean, I want you to leave my country by nightfall.'

‘When you say nightfall,' said Nerlin, ‘do you mean nightfall or Knight-fall? The reason I ask is, if you mean Knight-fall, you'll have to be more specific. Do you mean the brave Sir Lostalot or the nearly as brave Sir Listalot? And I have to tell you that both of them – we've actually only got two Knights, though I believe my son Prince Winchflat is growing some more in a special greenhouse – that they are both very steady on their feet. In fact, there are no recorded incidents of either Knight ever falling down.'

Ethel may have been a talking chicken, but she was still just a chicken with a very tiny brain and was now very confused.

‘Then, of course, there's midsummer's night,' Nerlin continued, ‘which is the shortest night of the year, at least fifteen centimetres shorter than Sir Lostalot, who used to be called Sir Hasalot until he lost both arms below the fingertips in a card game.'

‘Umm,' Ethel said, sinking into the sea of feathers. ‘The corn. Tell me about that.'

‘Interesting you should ask,' said Nerlin. ‘Because it is magic corn with a very long and fascinating history. It is the oldest known type of corn in the world and comes from a small town in Belgium called Miasto-Kukurudza which means “the City of Corn” in Polish, not Flemish, which is also very interesting. I mean, what is a town in Belgium doing with a Polish name?'