The question was: what?
Mew What?
Hamish had dug up the little green shoot and put it in a small Tupperware box along with some soil. He didn’t know whether to water it, because what if it turned out to be something nasty? But he didn’t want to throw it away either, because that felt somehow cruel.
No, throwing it away would feel bad.
It was a living thing, even if it didn’t talk or have thoughts or play Boggle.
Hamish decided the best thing to do would be to take the shoot home and study it. If he could keep an eye on it, it might help him to work out what the Superiors were up to. It was a clue, and a clue that he’d found.
He felt sad as he remembered again that his dad had already got in his car and left. It had seemed like they were on an adventure together, but that now he’d gone off to work with the grown-ups and the real agents. Hamish understood, but still . . . it made him feel a bit small and rubbish and useless, just when he’d started to convince himself he was big and not rubbish and useful.
‘Hi, Mum,’ he said, walking through the front door.
‘Dad said you were in Elliot’s shed when the last one happened,’ she said, trying desperately to smooth down her hair, which seemed much more affected by these GravityBurps than anyone else’s. ‘I want you to stay in from now on. I got Jimmy to hammer some mattresses to the ceiling of your room so that if it happens when you’re in bed at least you’ll have a soft landing.’
Mum seemed stressed. She worked at Starkley Town Council, dealing with complaints, and there had been plenty today to keep her busy.
But it was the piece of paper in her hand that seemed to be causing her the most stress.
‘What is it, Mum?’ asked Hamish, and she showed him.
It was an email.
PUBLIC OFFICE OF PRIDE
From the desk of Goonhilda Swag
NOT VERY POLITE NOTICE
People of the ‘town’ currently known as Starkley,
As you know, I visited you today and was not at all impressed with what I saw.
Old men stuck in trees! Cars on their roofs! Litter everywhere! You were so determined that I should have a terrible time that you even organised some kind of eclipse and made seeds rain from the sky!
RUDE!
Of course you made up some vulgar story about ‘GravityBurps’, but I am too smart and other words meaning smart for that sort of bunkum, claptrap and ballyhoo!
This is a formal notice that not only will I be recommending you are NOT given royal status, but that soon we will also be hiding you from view ALTOGETHER.
You will be off the maps. We will take all your signs down. You will be NOTHING.
Think yourself lucky. I recently visited Tramley-on-Sea and renamed it SOPPING WET.
I forced the people of Brannigan to rename their town LITTLE PLOPPING.
What I find particularly suspicious is that I can find no evidence of your town even existing before 1982. WHAT ARE YOU UP TO?
Soon I will return for a SURPRISE INSPECTION. If things aren’t VERY DIFFERENT when I arrive to make my SURPRISE REPORT, then it’s curtains for Starkley!
Warm regards, etc. etc.
Goonhilda Swag
‘What does she mean she can’t find anything about Starkley before 1982?’ asked Hamish, who because he was only ten had never even heard of the year 1982 before.
‘I don’t know, but if we’re not a proper town imagine how many complaints the council will get then!’ Hamish’s mum said, shaking her head. ‘And, if we’re not a proper town, then why would we even have a council? I’ll be out of a job! Starkley will be off the maps! And everyone will move away!’
Hamish hadn’t thought about that. Poor Mum. And where would they go? As boring as Starkley was – and remember it was the fourth most boring town in Britain – it was home. And, though home might seem boring sometimes, it’s where you love the most. It’s where you’re loved the most.
Mum immediately felt the need for an emergency Mustn’tgrumble biscuit to soothe her stress levels and Hamish padded upstairs with his tiny green shoot in its box.
He put it by the window then sat down on his bed to stare at it.
What’s going on this time? he wondered. And when will Dad be back? What am I supposed to do now?
And then the little green shoot seemed to move ever so slightly.
It was probably just the wind.
Hamish walked to the window to make sure it was shut.
But as he got closer . . . was that a tiny noise the shoot just made?
No. Can’t be. Plants can’t do that.
And then . . .
mew
Just that. As tiny a noise as Hamish had ever heard. Tinier than the noise an ant makes when it stubs its toe.
But a noise nonetheless.
The Gravity of the Situation
The next morning, Hamish was woken rudely from his sleep by a familiar voice.
‘ALWAYS BE PREPARED!’
He opened his eyes, startled, to find Alice’s face just centimetres from his own.
She was frowning with her bottom lip out, like she just couldn’t believe Hamish had the temerity to be so lazily asleep, in his own bed, in his own room, in his own house, first thing in the morning and before his alarm had even gone off.
‘I’ve been up half the night filling people’s boots with rocks to try and stop them floating off!’ she said, hands on hips. ‘Elliot and I drew up an Anti-GravityBurp plan and we all got to work! I do hope you feel rested, though, Hamish?’
Hamish felt immediately guilty. He hadn’t even slept that well, to tell the truth. He’d gone to bed early, because he felt a bit overwhelmed. He was worried about GravityBurps. He was worried about that small shoot, which still sat there by his window. He was worried about his dad having to go away again. And he was worried about his mum and her job.
And now he had Alice to deal with.
‘Get dressed!’ she said. ‘Your mum’s making breakfast and we’ve got school. And at lunchtime there’s a special PDF meeting to discuss strategies and preparations! Unless you can’t make it because you’d rather have sleepytimes?’
Hamish blushed. He was proud of Alice and the PDF for getting started on some plans, and she knew it.
Here’s what they’d done:
• Put up some strongly worded notices reminding people about GravityBurps.
• Attached small hooks to the sides of buildings so people could grab on if they needed to.
• Put an old fishing net over the whole of the town square to stop people underneath it floating away.
Plus, lots of people had gone even further:
• Mr Slackjaw had filled all the car tyres in Slackjaw’s Motors with gravel to try and weigh them down. His cars now made a crunchy sound the whole time, but he said that wasn’t all that different from how they usually sounded. Plus, the gravelly noise made the driver feel like they were driving through a grand country garden.
• Margarine Crinkle, the milk lady, had popped a stone in every bottle of milk. ‘The stone is free!’ she told everyone, delighted, but secretly she charged them an extra 30p.
• Grenville Bile had been a very good boy, and eaten fourteen cheeseburgers and a piece of broccoli so that he’d be properly weighted down. And that’s true, apart from the bit about the broccoli, because yuck.
• Madame Cous Cous had taken a hammer and nailed down all the sweets in her International World of Treats. It hadn’t worked too well with the Creme Eggs, but with the Polos it turned out just fine.
Alice looked delighted by all this. You could always rely on the people of Starkley to rise to a challenge – even if the challenge was ‘rising’.
‘Can I ask you something?’ said Hamish, sitting up.
‘Unless it’s “what is completely and utterly the very quickest way for me to get ready and be useful?” then no,’ said Alice. ‘Get dressed.’
‘Do plants make noises?’ asked Hamish, igno
ring her.
‘Plants? Make noises?’ said Alice. ‘No. Why?’
Hamish glanced at the shoot on the windowsill and weighed up whether to tell her. Maybe he’d been mistaken. Or perhaps he was just hearing things. But what if it was important?
‘I think that little green shoot over there went “mew” last night,’ he said, shyly.
‘ “Mew”?’ said Alice, scrunching up her nose. ‘Why would it say “mew”?’
That was the good thing about Alice. She didn’t immediately say, ‘Impossible!’ or make Hamish feel silly. She questioned things. But, crucially, she believed him.
‘Hmm,’ she said, cupping her ear and getting up close to the shoot. ‘We need to be careful. These are space seeds, after all. I mean, they’re probably harmless, but who knows what they can do? You can’t underestimate vegetation. Sometimes my mum puts fennel on pizzas and that absolutely ruins them.’
She pulled a nut and pickle baguette out of her combat shorts and pointed it at him, like a sword.
‘Now GET DRESSED.’
At Winterbourne School, everyone was weirdly excited about the GravityBurps.
One kid – Puny Curdle – said her parents were going to turn a massive bouncy castle upside down and hang it over their garden, so the next time they all flew into the air they’d just bounce straight back down again.
Poor Robin had just got a new football and had gone outside to try it out. He’d only given it one kick when the GravityBurp started and it flew off at 200 miles an hour.
Astrid Carruthers said she’d been in the garden on her trampoline during the last one, and had ended up going so high she could see the Great Wall of China, but everyone agreed that what she’d probably seen was a big poster advertising fences outside the DIY shop.
Tommy Shunt had been in Juggling Class when all the balls suddenly blasted off into space, so they had to do stamp collecting instead. Lily Wax said all that happened in her house was that her dad’s belly lifted slightly. Manjit Singhdaliwal had been competing in an under-elevens high-jumping competition at the time and had inadvertently broken all national and world athletic records. He was going to be on the news later because a big sports shoe company in America wanted to sponsor him.
Lots of kids seemed to think all this was brilliant fun. Only Hamish and the PDF seemed to grasp the gravity of the situation.
‘I’ve been doing some thinking,’ said Elliot in the playground at lunchtime.
While all the other kids played, the PDF had found a quiet corner and set to work.
Elliot had brought with him a small blackboard on wheels. It had a blue velvet curtain on the front. ‘We know there are GravityBurps, and we suspect there are GravityBelches. But what else might there be?’
He pulled two short strings and the curtain parted to reveal his workings-out.
The kids all stared at the words. None of them seemed particularly terrifying. But then who’d have thought a burp could cause such chaos?
‘What’s a GravitySneeze?’ asked Buster.
‘Good question!’ said Elliot. ‘I assume it would be a great big WHOOSH.’
‘A whoosh?’ asked Alice, who’d convinced her parents to let her transfer to Winterbourne School from her old one nearby, just in case the world needed more quick thinking from the PDF.
(Well, to be honest, she hadn’t actually convinced her parents to let her transfer. She just started turning up at Winterbourne instead, and no one dared argue with her.)
‘Yes, a whoosh,’ said Elliot. ‘Like a powerful sneeze. Gravity would go side-on, and push you hundreds of metres along the Earth until, before you knew it, you’d end up in Siberia or halfway across the sea!’
‘That’s not good,’ said Hamish. ‘What about a GravityHiccup?’
‘I suppose it would be a series of unpredictable tiny jumps!’
‘A GravityCough?’ asked Venk.
‘Like a hiccup but quicker and more powerful!’ said Elliot. ‘The kind of thing that would launch you right over tall buildings!’
Everyone stared at the last one on the board. No one wanted to read it out loud.
‘And . . . um . . .’ said Buster. ‘The last one?’
‘A GravityFart?’ said Elliot, matter-of-fartly. ‘Well, I suppose it depends. It could be a little squeaker. You might not even notice it. It might be short. It might be long. It might go or or ’
‘Ding-ding?!’ said Clover, a little worried about Elliot’s bodily functions now.
‘Or it might . . .’ began Elliot, and the PDF braced themselves for whatever dark horrors Elliot was about to reveal, ‘. . . be silent but violent!’
The kids shuddered. That was the last thing they wanted. At least with a GravityBurp they could hear the
‘Just to be clear,’ said Elliot. ‘None of these things might happen.’
‘Good!’ yelled Buster. ‘They’re disgusting!’
‘But we should be aware that they are possibilities. Who knows what dreadful technology the Superiors are harnessing?’ said Elliot.
‘He’s right,’ said Alice. ‘Always be prepared.’
‘Anyway, there are lots more,’ said Elliot. ‘I could go through them if you’d like?’
‘No, don’t worry, Elliot,’ said Alice. ‘I think we’ve heard enough.’
‘GravityVomits!’ said Elliot, not listening. ‘GravitySweats!’
‘Okay,’ said Hamish, trying to move things along.
‘GravityPees!’ yelled Elliot, quite lost in his own thoughts. ‘Or a sort of gravity thing that spits snot everywhere when you laugh. I don’t know what the word for that would be.’
‘Honestly, don’t worry,’ said Venk, feeling queasy. ‘We get the idea. Hamish, what do we do next?’
But, once again, Hamish had been distracted by something else and moved away from the group. In a crack on the concrete, he’d spotted something.
‘Another green shoot,’ he said. Something about this just did not feel right. They were all concentrating on the Burps and how to solve them, but these seeds had arrived for a reason. They were growing for a reason. An invasion, his dad had said.
‘There’s another one on the school roof,’ said Venk, pointing upwards. You could just about make it out – like a small bright green finger finding its way through the tiles so it could wriggle towards the sunlight.
‘This could be a problem,’ said Hamish.
All the kids in the playground rose up into the air for a second then landed back on their feet.
The sound of delighted giggling filled the air.
Up they went again, maybe one or two metres, and down they came again.
‘This is BRILLIANT!’ yelled Grenville Bile, but only because he knew it meant he wasn’t heavy enough and could have more cheeseburgers.
These were short Burps – tiny ones.
‘They seem to be losing power, not gaining it!’ said Alice, delighted. ‘The Superiors must be giving up! Maybe your dad and Belasko have come up with a plan!’
The school bell rang and Mr Longblather flung open the doors. His moustache was nearly vertical and he had tomato soup all over his face. He’d obviously been halfway through a Cup-a-Soup when the world started burping.
‘Everybody inside NOW!’ he yelled.
Another tiny
Mr Longblather bopped his head on the doorway. Everyone rose slightly again as they began to run indoors.
Only Hamish stayed where he was.
Because he was watching the shoot.
And what he saw scared him.
Once You Pop
The rest of the afternoon passed without much incident.
Well, not exactly.
There were plenty more tiny GravityBups and, even though Mr Longblather looked very sweaty and nervous, he explained that this was nothing to worry about.
After an earthquake, he said, it was ‘quite normal’ for there to be lots of little tremors. It was just nature’s way of calming down, he said, so why shouldn’t it be the sam
e with whatever this was?
Mind you, he said all this while constantly slamming his head on the ceiling, or losing control of his whiteboard rubber, or watching Sharpies fly into the air and then land in his coffee. None of that seemed ‘quite normal’. But you knew when a GravityBurp was brewing because the first thing to rise was Mr Longblather’s tie. It was like a polyester Early Warning System.
The kids were having a ball. As a precaution, the school had installed seat belts at every desk, but every time there was a Burp they all flung paper balls in the air to see who could get one in the wastepaper basket at the end of the room. Only Hamish wasn’t joining in. He hadn’t had a chance to explain his theory to Alice before they’d all rushed away, but now Hamish had a pretty good idea of what linked the seeds and the Burps and they’d arranged to meet after school to come up with a plan.
The bell rang and the kids of Winterbourne School streamed out of the gates, leaping and jumping, hoping to catch another GravityBurp, the way surfers hope to catch a big wave.
Alice was waiting at the gates for Hamish, as the rest of the kids all disappeared off to the safety of their homes.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ she said, seeing Hamish’s serious face. ‘Look, your dad’ll be back soon. He’s just gone to meet with Belasko. It’s probably because of him that the Burps are losing their power.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ said Hamish, as they walked towards the town square. ‘It’s just that I think I may have worked something out.’
Hamish noticed the hooks that people had been hanging on the side of houses, and the great big net above the town square. The grown-ups weren’t enjoying the GravityBurps as much as the kids – the same way they get all huffy when it starts snowing, even though snow is pretty much the best thing ever, and if they had a brain in their body they’d all take the day off work and stop complaining. Kids had been ordered by the council to stay inside after school, as if after-school Burps might be worse somehow.