Jasper Fforde - The Great Troll War

‘Your kind has a Hive Memory, so you can understand how it might pay to be cautious.’

‘The shared memory only runs through individual strands of Troll society,’ she explained. ‘My memory only feeds into the other veggie trolls. Before I got in the Mini I could feel them, y’know, in my head, doing stuff all round the country. Back in Trollvania we used to share memories to hone survival strategies – and swap recipes. But once I was in the Mini, I couldn’t feel them any longer. Do you think that’s weird?’

‘I can’t think of much that isn’t weird about all this.’

She paused for a moment.

‘If I tell you all about your Zambini friend, can you offer a safe haven for all the veggie trolls? We’re only 6.66 per cent of the Troll population.’

‘How many is that?’ I asked, thinking I could find out how many Trolls there were in total. But she cocked her head on one side and looked at me as though she didn’t really know what I was talking about.

‘Trolls prefer to work in percentages, fractions and ratios, as it allows a clearer overview of stuff, rather than getting bogged down in specifics.’

‘Can you give us an example?’ asked the Princess, who was aways interested in figures.

‘Well,’ said Molly, ‘if the Troll agree to spare ten per cent of humans from the pot, then we can say that without needing to count you all first, which would be time-consuming and tricky, since you spend a lot of time scurrying around and screaming idiotically. Here’s another one. I represent twenty-five per cent of the creatures in this room, right?’

We nodded. There were four of us: Me, Tiger, the Princess and the Troll.

‘Okay. Now, if the seventy-five per cent of creatures in this room that belong to the subset “non-Trolls” agree to share a cake of unit one, what would be the numerical value of each share?’

‘.333,’ said the Princess, before adding: ‘Actually, the 3s would go on for ever.’

‘And if you recombined the cake without eating any, would the sum return to unit one?’

‘No,’ conceded the Princess, ‘by my reckoning it would come to 9.9999 recurring.’

‘Then you see what I mean. Fractions are better for sharing cake, percentages for understanding sets within a large body without quantification. Numbers, well, they’re quite good for precisely defining ownership, but not much else.’

‘I disagree,’ said the Princess. ‘Numbers are not simply about raw quantity – they can be manipulated with others to calculate a future event with accuracy. If I know how far away something is, and have an idea how fast I will move, then knowing the time it will take to reach it is a useful asset. Similarly, if I have limited time and a destination to reach, I know how fast I will have to travel. And if I have both limited time and speed, I will know how short I will fall of my destination.’

Molly chortled.

‘Your complex mathematics don’t fool me, Human. Your calculations only have relevance if you place value on what time you get anywhere. We prefer a “we’ll get there when we do” approach.’

‘Some of our trains work on the same principle,’ I said.

‘So I heard,’ said Molly. ‘If you dispensed with timetables and defined arrival time as when they got there, all trains would achieve one hundred per cent punctuality.’

‘By the same token they would all depart exactly on time, too,’ said Tiger.

‘Now you’re getting it,’ said the Troll. ‘Numerical values are seriously overrated. Here’s another example: if I were to tell you the mass of the sun is roughly 2 x 1030 kilograms then it would just be a meaninglessly high number – two with thirty noughts 36 36 Exponential notation allows us to express a high number without running out of ink. For comparison the age of the universe in years is thought to be only a trifling 1.3 x 1010. after it.’

‘I agree with that,’ said the Princess.

‘Right,’ said the Troll, ‘but if I were to tell you the sun has 99.86 per cent of the combined mass of the entire solar system, what would that mean?’

‘It would mean … wow,’ said the Princess.

‘Exactly,’ said the Troll, grinning broadly. ‘Wow.’

‘So hang on,’ said Tiger, ‘all the rest of the planets and moons and comets and stuff make up only, what, less than .14 per cent of the total mass?’

‘To be honest,’ said the Troll, ‘most of what isn’t the sun is Jupiter. All the rest of it – us included – is the galactic equivalent of the dust you missed when cleaning.’

‘I’ve come over all negligible,’ said Tiger.

‘I try and keep all my counting to a minimum,’ said the Troll. ‘It saves a lot of time. So: will you give a safe haven to vegetarian Trolls, even if I don’t have a numerical value?’

‘I can’t make that promise,’ I said, ‘but I know someone who can.’

The Princess removed her handkerchief too. Sometimes a little trust goes a long way.

‘I am Princess Shazine Blossom Hadridd Snodd,’ she said, ‘uncrowned Queen of the greater United Kingdoms.’

‘You seem a little spotty for someone who’s going to be a great queen,’ said the Troll after staring at her for a moment.

‘And you seem a little lacking in grace for someone who will one day negotiate peace between our species.’

They stared at each other for a moment, then smiled. They would go on to form a great alliance, but that would be later, in a time and place I wouldn’t share.

‘Wow,’ said Tiger, who felt it too, ‘I think I’ve just witnessed history in the making.’

The Princess put out her hand.

‘I will offer the V-Trolls a safe haven irrespective of numbers,’ she said. ‘If a group of people are being persecuted for their beliefs, then assistance can only ever be a binary issue: yes or no.’

‘Now you’re speaking my language,’ said Molly with a grin. ‘So here we go: Zambini had four messages for me to pass on to Jennifer. The first was that the Mighty Shandar’s plans were ‘bigger and bolder than anything you can imagine’. Secondly, that you, Miss Strange, are the only one who can stop Shandar, and help will come from an unexpected quarter. You need to be brave, to be bold, and go where others fear to tread. The third message was less of a message, and more of a gift.’

She pulled a waxy object from her ear, where, she explained, ‘she had to keep it in case she was searched’. The key was greasy and, well, a little disgusting – there were even some hairs and a couple of beetles attached. I took the key, wiped it on my handkerchief and stared at it closely. I knew which lock it would fit.

‘And the fourth message?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said the Troll, ‘but you have to come a little closer.’

I moved closer to the Troll, who, while not as grimy, smelly or as dribbly as her carnivorous kin, was still far more unpleasant than anyone I knew. She put her arms around me in the most gentle and tender of embraces and held me for a moment, rocking gently. She had emulated Zambini’s trademark hug so closely that for a brief moment it actually felt I was there, transported back to my first few days at Kazam, when everything was strange and frightening and new. The Troll put her mouth to my ear and whispered, in a fine impersonation of Zambini’s voice: ‘This is goodbye, Jen. Had you been my own daughter, I could not be more proud.’

I now returned the hug, hoping that it would eventually make its way back up the line to him. I knew then I wouldn’t see Zambini again, and not because he had stopped randomly appearing. It was just that the next time he did, I would, as likely as not, no longer be here.

Eventually, Molly released me from the embrace, and I blinked away the tears.