Floods 9 Page 5

  All the people who had lost the millions were forced to sell everything they had and it seemed the only one who had any money to buy their stuff was a very small company which, until then, no one had heard of. Le Inondazioni33 Olive Oil Import and Export Company was located in a very small shop in a poor part of New York. None of their neighbours knew anything about them, which was hardly surprising as they hadn’t been there the day before. At the same time Winchflat had created the very small shop by shuffling all the other buildings in the street up a little bit to create a space for it, he had also implanted false memories in everyone’s brains that told them the shop had been there as long as they could remember and the brothers who ran the business – Morboso e Silenzioso Inondazione – were two of the nicest young men you could ever meet. They helped old ladies across the street and fed sardines to abandoned kittens.

  ‘Or maybe,’ said a neighbour who hadn’t quite caught the full force of Winchflat’s Memory-Implanting-Machine, ‘they helped kittens across the street and fed sardines to abandoned old ladies.’

  By the end of the week, Le Inondazioni Olive Oil Import and Export Company owned more property in New York than anyone else. Just to show what lovely caring people the owners were, they began giving away free knickers to anyone who asked for them – which, in a city of nineteen million people, was a lot of underwear.

  ‘It is my belief,’ said a local councillor, ‘that one of the Inondazione brothers should run for Mayor of our great city.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said hundreds of other people, ‘and the other one should be Deputy Mayor.’

  By an amazing coincidence – which Winchflat created with his newest and probably greatest invention, The Amazing Coincidence Engine34 – the closing date for nominations to be Mayor was the very next day, with the elections to take place a week later.

  ‘I think if we handle this properly,’ said the Headmaster, ‘the success of our Summer School could exceed everyone’s wildest and most optimistic dreams.’

  ‘Indeed, Headmaster,’ said Aubergine Wealth. ‘There is an old story that says the original settlers bought the land New York stands on from the Native Americans for a bag of toffees and some corn or something like that.’

  ‘What flavour?’ said Merlinmary.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What flavour were the toffees?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Aubergine. ‘That’s not the point. The point I’m trying to make is that although everyone thinks it is really funny that they conned the land out of the Native Americans for almost nothing, I think they paid too much. If we handle this correctly, we could end up owning New York without paying a cent for it.’

  ‘So does that mean we get to keep the toffees?’ said Merlinmary.

  ‘Forget the toffees,’ said Aubergine Wealth.

  ‘That’s easy for you to say, but I happen to like toffees,’ said Merlinmary.

  ‘Well, listen,’ said Winchflat, ‘if our plan comes off, you will be able to have all the toffees you could ever want.’

  ‘Could I be the Minister for Toffees?’

  ‘You could indeed.’

  ‘With special powers over treacle toffee?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Merlinmary.

  ‘Yes, yes, you go off and do that while we take over the city,’ said Aubergine Wealth.

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s going to be a government department for rubber balls, is there?’ said Satanella.

  With the dream of owning the whole of New York making him feel giddy with desire and happiness, these minor distractions were beginning to make Aubergine Wealth a little short-tempered. Luckily his wizard powers were nowhere nearly as strong as any of the Floods’ powers. The most his limited powers could achieve was to turn all the coins in everyone’s pockets into chocolate money. Some people thought this was a brilliant talent, but most people got rather annoyed when he did it. He had been able to turn chocolate money into real money, but had that spell removed when several small children nearly choked to death.

  Just to be on the safe side, Winchflat had engaged the I’m-Slightly-Stressed-But-Not-Enough-To-Hurt-Anyone-Drive on his Memory-Implanting-Machine. This was a safety feature he had incorporated in case anyone got annoyed when they discovered that the big expensive property they had paid a fortune for a few years earlier now belonged to a strange crowd of junior wizards and witches who were telling them they either had to move out of the city or start paying rent.

  ‘Humans can be quite touchy sometimes,’ he explained.

  A week later the election drew the highest turnout in any election of any sort in America ever. The night before, thousands of people had gone to bed thinking, Vote? I don’t think I’ll bother. I mean, it won’t make any difference who gets in. Everyone knows all politicians are corrupt.

  However, during the night Winchflat put his Wonderful-Memory-Implanting-Machine into turbo mode and the next morning every single person in New York who was old enough to vote woke up thinking, Wow, I wonder what time the voting stations open. I can’t wait to go and vote for those wonderful Inondazione brothers. They really seem the type of guys to get the city moving again. I mean, how could you not love and trust people who help stray kittens across the street and feed old ladies sardines?

  People who thought in many different languages, people who had never had a single thought before, and even the other election candidates all had the same idea etched into their brains. Winchflat’s wonderful machine, which shall be forever known as Winchflat’s Wonderful Machine, had worked its magic on everyone. So that when Morbid and Silent got one hundred per cent of the vote with not one single vote going to any of the eighty-seven other candidates, no one was at all suspicious. Far from it, they were delighted.

  So Morbid Flood became the Mayor of New York and Silent the Deputy Mayor. The first thing they did was make every single Monday a public holiday. When, a week later, they made every Saturday a working day so the weekends were still only two days long, no one seemed to notice.

  ‘There is no doubt,’ said Morbid, ‘it’s exactly as the famous old wizard philosopher Aristhrottle said all those centuries ago: “Humans are stupid.”’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Silent. ‘In fact, they are so thick that not one of them batted an eyelid when Satanella set up the Department of Rubber Balls.’35 36

  ‘And no one complained about the Department of Toffees,’ said Merlinmary. ‘The Toffee Police have been collecting thousands of them.’

  Of course, it wasn’t just Winchflat’s amazing memory machine that made them win. It was also the fact that every pair of free knickers the twins had handed out were printed with Inondazioni For Mayor in bright yellow letters all over them.

  Not all of the money that went into the Floods’ Enormous Treasure Chests was just to make them the richest wizards in the whole history of history. Greed on that scale would have been despicable. No, the Mayor and his government officers made sure that everyone knew that part of their taxes was being given to those less fortunate than themselves.

  An emergency charity was set up to deliver red rubber balls to all the dogs in New York City. As the new Mayor said in a television interview, ‘No dog shall go to bed cold or hungry or without a red rubber ball to call its own.’ Because of Winchflat’s Wonderful Machine, the entire population of New York totally loved dogs and were only too happy to know their money had helped fix a serious Red-Rubber-Ball-Shortage situation.

  This meant that all the cats in New York were forced to move to another country. When the draw was held to decide which country all the cats should go to, Satanella picked the winning country and incredibly, it was Belgium.37 The next morning Belgians woke up to find thousands of New York cats inside their houses meowing in American, which of course none of them could understand.38

  * * *

  33 By the way, Inondazioni is Italian for Floods.

  34 See the back of the book for more information, including proof that Winchflat may hav
e had other lifetimes before this one, or not.

  35 The purpose of the Department of Rubber Balls was to charge everyone who had a rubber ball that wasn’t red a tax of two dollars a week because of the unnecessary suffering it caused to dogs. In six weeks the tax raised $114,000, but as everyone gradually changed over to exclusively red-coloured balls the income dwindled until the only people paying the tax were colour-blind.

  36 My editor has told me that dogs are red-green colourblind. Now, I know I am and so is my daughter Hannah, but I am going to pretend dogs are not. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because ALL dogs know that Red Rubber Balls give off a magical aura that no other coloured ball does.

  37 Actually it wasn’t incredible because every one of the three-hundred-and-fifteen pieces of paper in the lottery hat had ‘Belgium’ written on them, and of course, sending all of the city’s cats to Belgium was a win-win situation for everyone except the cats, cat lovers and Belgium, but that’s OK because they don’t count. Small defenceless birds everywhere were delighted.

  38 This was probably a good thing because apart from ‘Where’s my breakfast?’, the rest of the meowing involved a lot of very strong swearwords.

  Generally, good things are usually too good to last and so it was in New York. It went something like this . . .

  ‘OK,’ said Aubergine Wealth when the students were all gathered for the evening conference. ‘We pretty well own everything that’s worth owning in New York and it’s been ridiculously easy. In fact, it’s been not that great a challenge at all, really. So has anyone got any suggestions about what we could do next?’

  ‘Well, we’ve actually only got two weeks until the end of the summer holidays,’ said the Headmaster. ‘So we need to wrap things up here so we can all have a week’s rest before next term back at Quicklime’s.’

  ‘What do you mean, wrap things up?’ said Morbid.

  ‘Put everything back how it was before Summer School started,’ said the Headmaster. ‘This was only ever meant to be a project, something for you all to learn a bit about how the financial world worked.’

  ‘But Headmaster . . .’ Aubergine Wealth began, turning a terrible shade of white. ‘Please, Headmaster, tell me that what I’m thinking isn’t true?’

  ‘That depends on what you are thinking.’

  ‘Well, Headmaster,’ Aubergine Wealth said as he felt all the blood drain away from the pocket where he kept his wallet full of platinum credit cards, ‘it sounds like you want us to give everything back.’

  ‘Well, yes, of course,’ said the Headmaster. ‘I thought everyone realised that.’

  They didn’t.

  Some of the teachers and students were more upset than others.

  ‘But, but,’ said Morbid, ‘in case you’d forgotten, I’m actually the Mayor of New York. So what are we supposed to do about that?’

  ‘Oh come on,’ said the Headmaster. ‘You didn’t really think a twelve-year-old wizard could be in charge of all this, did you?’

  ‘But everyone voted for me,’ said Morbid. ‘Everyone.’

  ‘Well, no, what actually happened was that Winchflat used his Wonderful-Memory-Implanting-Machine to persuade everyone to vote for you,’ said the Headmaster.

  ‘Well, yes, but they did vote.’

  ‘And now they are all going to unvote,’ said the Headmaster. ‘Tomorrow morning when they wake up, everyone will have totally forgotten about that election and they’ll all be looking forward to voting next week, and you will not be one of the candidates because you will be back at Quicklime’s learning your eighty-five-and-a-quarter times table with everyone else.’

  ‘And what about all the money and the lovely penthouses and all the other stuff?’ said Merlinmary. ‘Can’t we keep any of it?’

  ‘No, it all has to go back to its rightful owners.’

  ‘That’s us, isn’t it?’ said Satanella. ‘We didn’t break any laws to get it all. So we should be allowed to keep it.’

  ‘I think using powerful spells and crafty wizardry might not strictly be against the law,’ said the Headmaster, ‘but it’s probably pretty close.’

  ‘Excuse me, Headmaster,’ Aubergine Wealth whimpered, ‘but isn’t that what being a wizard is all about? Isn’t magic our reward for being persecuted by human beings who are, after all, considerably more stupid than even the most stupid wizard who ever lived?’39

  ‘Well, yes, but the first law of wizardry is that we must not harm humans,’ said the Headmaster.

  ‘No it isn’t,’ said Aubergine Wealth. ‘That’s the first law of robotics.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Aubergine Wealth.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘So does that mean we can keep all the stuff?’

  ‘No it does not,’ said the Headmaster. ‘And be aware, all of you, that you are under the Painful Pimples Spell, which means that if you keep anything at all, you will get great big yellow spots that will be very painful and burst at extremely embarrassing times. One pimple for each thing you keep.’

  There was panic followed by a lot of clattering as everyone emptied their pockets. Rolls of dollar bills, exquisite jewellery, gold watches and a strange assortment of small electronic gadgets covered the floor. Dozens of pieces of paper, title deeds to fabulous apartments and stocks and shares fluttered everywhere.

  The Headmaster reached into his gown and pulled out the Quicklime College Supreme Wand. He threw it into the air and it flew around the room just above everyone’s heads before returning to his hand. There was a brilliant white flash of light and all the treasure vanished, transported back to its original owners. At the same time a lovely peaceful calm descended on everyone so they didn’t actually mind losing all their treasures. And, to top it off, everyone got a special Show Bag with lots of sugar-filled lollies, a chocolate broomstick and a free pair of Mordonna Flood sunglasses.

  The Headmaster had anticipated there might be a few objections to putting everything back and he had made sure he was prepared. Not only had he brought the wand – the first time in living memory it had ever been outside the remote valley in Patagonia where Quicklime College was situated – but Winchflat’s Wonderful-Memory-Implanting-Machine had actually been the Headmaster’s idea.

  It never occurred to any of the students that the machine could work on them. They were, after all, witches and wizards, which meant their brains were several thousand times more advanced than human brains. So everyone assumed that they would be immune to memory implanting. The only two people who knew this wasn’t the case were Winchflat and the Headmaster. It had been one of the main things they had talked about when they had discussed the possibility of building a Wonderful-Memory-Implanting-Machine in the first place.

  ‘You know what people, even witches and wizards, can be like when large amounts of money are involved,’ the Headmaster had said. ‘If you could create this machine, it would give us some insurance in the event of any arguments at the end of the holidays.’

  Winchflat agreed and that was how the machine came to be built.

  ‘Of course, no one must ever know that we discussed this,’ said the Headmaster. ‘And if it ever comes out, I will deny any involvement.’

  ‘If it ever comes out, Headmaster,’ said Winchflat, ‘I can soon fix it with a quick memory implant. See, it has its own insurance built in.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ said the Headmaster, wishing that every Quicklime’s student could be a genius like his star pupil.

  Though if they actually were, he thought, I would be out of a job.

  Winchflat sat quietly in the shadows at the back of the room, twiddling the knobs on the Wonderful-Memory-Implanting-Machine, and one by one everyone agreed that the Headmaster was right. Everything had to be put back exactly as it had been, not just the stuff that had just been sent back, but all the strange events that had happened since the Summer School had begun.

  Well, not so much put back absolutely, totally, exactly as it had been, but in many cases a bit better. The
toilet rolls were softer. The sun shone a bit more each day, but it didn’t get so unbearably hot and dusty. The birds all sang a bit sweeter and the cats that had been brought back from Belgium were now cross-eyed so they couldn’t catch the birds.

  It didn’t take much magic to make the mayoral elections that Morbid had won the week before never have happened. Now they were due next week. Although the candidate who would be the winner was actually quite a decent person, there’s always room for improvement. So Winchflat improved him and within one month of being elected, he had got rid of three thousand, eight hundred and seventy-five stupid, petty little laws that only made people’s lives more restricted and miserable, though it was still illegal to fart in front of a nun on Sundays.40

  BUT not everyone was happy. Standing in the shadows, almost hidden behind the blood-red velvet curtains, out of range of the Painful Pimples Spell and protected from the Wonderful-Memory-Implanting-Machine by a layer of lead implanted under his scalp, there was one person who was most definitely not at all happy.

  Aubergine Wealth.

  At the first talk of giving everything back, he had come over all faint and had to go outside for some fresh air. When his head had cleared he slipped back into the room and stood silently in the darkest corner, his head whirling with confusion and desperate plans. Parting with five cents gave him a headache. Giving up a dollar gave him a headache and a nose-bleed. And losing fifty dollars gave him a migraine and nose-and-ear-bleed and severe conniptions.41 The thought of having to give back the millions of dollars, portfolio of stock and shares and collection of wonderful penthouse apartments he had acquired over the previous weeks was more than he could stand. There was no way that was going to happen. If it meant leaving his beloved Quicklime College, then that was a price he was prepared to pay, although even the words ‘price he was prepared to pay’ were very upsetting.