Hugh Cook: The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

So Shabble gaily betrayed Pokrov’s secrets, just as Shabble revealed nearly all of Chegory Guy’s most intimate confidences to the Originator.

What’s more, when Rinprofen Rum told Shabble of the trials and tribulations he had undergone, Shabble had no hesitation in retailing Rum’s stories to the Originator. But that Rum would not have minded. What mattered to Rum was the secret of his identity, and that Shabble ever kept secret. Since Rinprofen Rum was ever Shabble’s most special friend, the delinquent toy never told the Originator that the conjuror Odolo was in fact an immortal survivor from the days of the Golden Gulag.

By now you will be asking: precisely how and when did Shabbies acquire the ability to throw forth flame?

The answer is simple. Shabble’s brain is a sun which is located in a separate cosmos of its own. This solar mass is to Shabble what our own brains are to ourselves: a thinking apparatus devoid of any sensory connections. As we cannot feel our own brains, so Shabble cannot feel the solar mass on which Shabble’s existence depends. In Shabble’s private cosmos there is a Solar Organiser, an intricate device which connects Shabble’s thought processes to the transponder through which Shabble’s sensory inputs are processed, the transponder which is Shabble’s sole manifestation in whichever human universe dear Shabble happens to be located.

The Solar Organiser has the ability to feed energy from Shabble’s solar mind through to the transponder which is, in effect, Shabble’s body. These sun-transponder units were first developed for military applications, so they were originally designed to be able to throw flame, generate fireballs, and withstand a fair degree of combat shock. They can also absorb heat as easily as, they can project it and can camouflage themselves at will, disguising themselves as spherical mirrors or as balls of old iron, or turning red, green or blue as the situation demands.

When a toymaker produced the first Shabble from the original Sword, it was necessary to make the sun-transponder unit safe for the nursery. So each Shabble was sent out into the world with the energy flow turned down to minimum. However, the energy flow controllers built into Solar Organisers are prone to positive drift. They were designed this way when the military experts of the Musorian Empire found that manufacturers were incapable of the exquisite quality control necessary to ensure that an exact and unchanging amount of energy was always available to the transponder.

There would always be a drift, either positive or negative, and in a military context a negative drift was intolerable. So the energy flow controllers of the Swords were designed to have positive drift. They could not be redesigned (the expense would have been prohibitive) just because a toymaker wanted to make a few Shabbies out of a basic Sword design. But this was not seen as a problem, since with the energy flow turned down to minimum a Shabble would be perfectly safe in a child’s hands, and adjustments to ensure safety would only have to be made every twenty years or so.

Hence — many millennia later — the pyrotechnical abilities of the demon of Jod.

What else needs to be added to the Originator’s Text and the Commentary of the redactors of Odrum? Much could be added. But let us content ourselves with just a glimpse, the smallest glimpse, of the celebrations organised by the Empress Justina (she was a diplomat, and thought it wise to show approval of the Hermit Crab’s decisions) to celebrate the General Amnesty.

‘Let there be a General Prescription!’ she cried.

And a General Prescription there was, with alcohol freely available to one and all, leading to a consequent excitation of the mood of all concerned, an excitation much helped by banqueting, music and dancing.

‘Tintinnabulate the tindnnabula!’ commanded the Empress Justina.

Tintinnabulation proceeded. One tintinnabulum after another was struck, and tintinnabulary peals rang out across the city.

Chong! Jong! Jung! Yong! Chan-gantachong!

Pigeons exploded to the sky. Bats in the belfries wept red blood. And young Chegory Guy closed with Olivia, closed to her sweetness, to her heat, and yes she said yes she said yes.