‘It’s your dad, Porrig. It’s your dad.’
Wok Boy grinned down at Porrig. ‘Now what do you think about that?’
Exactly what Porrig did think about that can only be imagined. But that it was nothing altogether jolly would be a reasonable guess.
‘The old bloke wants you to expose your own dad,’ said Wok Boy. ‘Expose him and the ministry. Tell the world who’s really running everything. No publisher will touch the story, no newspaper or TV news service, the ministry controls them all. But a privately printed production, beautiful artwork, telling the whole story, could get the message across to the young. Plenty of people take comics more seriously than newspapers anyway. Well, that’s about it.’ Wok Boy rose from the bed. ‘That’s the brief outline, all the details are in the book, so you can read them when you wake up. I’d read it all to you myself, but I’ve got other things to do, if you know what I mean.’
Wok Boy leaned over and gave Porrig’s cheek a painful tweak, then he departed, leaving Porrig once more alone with his thoughts.
No rock stars, no sports personalities, no television presenters.
All alone, bewailing his lot.
And cursing the name of Augustus Naseby.
Inwardly, of course.
12
Augustus Naseby, inwardly cursed but outwardly thriving, lurked in the seat of power on the swirly-whirly-patterned carpet that covered the floor of his little office in the Ministry of Serendipity, beneath Mornington Crescent Underground station.
The station itself has apparently been closed for years. In fact the station never ever was open. Ask anyone you like. Say: ‘Have you ever been to Mornington Crescent on the Tube?’ Some blighter is bound to say yes, but they will be lying.
So why exactly has the station never been open? And why is the Ministry of Serendipity situated there?
Good questions. And ones that are relevant and so shall be answered.
Allow me to explain.
Now, as you may well know, the London Underground system is reckoned to be the very best of its type in the whole wide world.
Sure, you’ve got the Paris Métro, with its fab Art Nouveau fiddly bits, and Tokyo with its Sarin attacks and New York with its muggers and junkies, but the London Underground has its own special magic.
It’s a magic that most people don’t know anything of. They might travel on the Underground for all of their lives and still know nothing about the real magic. They may well know about the race of troglodytes who live down there, descendants of trapped Victorian navvies. They may know about how the government regularly tests out new strains of flu virus on the commuters there. And they may even know about the ghost of Jack the Ripper, who pushes so-called suicides to their deaths. But they don’t know about the magic.
And why don’t they know? Because it’s a secret, that’s why. Guarded by the Ministry of Serendipity.
Consider, if you will, the map of the London Underground. It’s a very stylish map and has won numerous design awards. But the map conceals far more than it reveals. Certainly it shows you the order of the stations, but it does not show you their actual locations.
Allow me to explain.
The map is all straight lines - apart from the Circle Line, and the Circle Line isn’t even drawn as a circle. If you take a large-scale map of London and mark on it all the tube stations, then join these dots up, a curious pattern is revealed. A series of strange, almost cabbalistic symbols.
The reason for this is that the location for each station was carefully chosen by a group of Victorian ritual magicians skilled in the arts of geomancy and working for the government of the day. The London Underground follows the course of the major ley-line system, the stations being at node points where certain earth energies are released into the capital city. The entire system has at its very hub Mornington Crescent, and it is towards this station that the channelled energies flow like water spiralling down a plughole.
You see, once we had an empire that ruled two-thirds of the world.
And how?
By magic, that’s how.
But then, later, what happened? Some daft git behind a Whitehall desk decided that magic offended the British sense of fair play. And so we lost the empire.
It is not difficult to imagine how thrilled a later government was when Augustus Naseby turned up on their doorstep with a plan to restore it.
But what exactly was his plan, you may well ask, and how did he intend to put it into action?
Well, as it is Thursday and the Ministry of Serendipity always has its special meetings on Thursday, why don’t we listen in and find out?
Augustus Naseby rose from the chair he was lurking in and donned the robes and fez of an Egyptian. The impersonating of Egyptians was an important part of Thursday meetings. But as its significance is a closely guarded secret, it wouldn’t do to go blabbing it about here.
All donned and dandy, Augustus set out along a corridor which led him at considerable length to the big boardroom where the meetings were held.
It was a very big boardroom, about the size of, well, ooh, something really big, Wembley Stadium perhaps. Or if that is a bit too big, something slightly smaller. It was all panelled out in oak the way that boardrooms are and had a table so long that it dwindled away into the distance.
Augustus sat down at the head of the table. Without the aid of a telescope (something he never carried), he had no way of knowing who, or what, might be sitting at the foot.
He struck a small brass gong, which emitted a sound like a cat being put through a mangle, and called the meeting to order.
‘Order,’ he called.
Many faces turned towards him. Many faces of many shapes and sizes. Some very big and some really really really little. Some in between and a few it was difficult to categorize.
‘Now,’ said Augustus. ‘Before we begin this meeting and for the benefit of anyone or thing that has not attended before, a word or two of what it’s all about.’
Heads nodded thoughtfully. Big, small and otherwise.
‘We at the Ministry of Serendipity take care of business. We plan next week’s news, what will be in fashion next year, who will become famous and for how long and for why.
‘Why do we do this? Because someone has to. If politicians or world leaders, who are just jumped-up politicians anyway, were allowed to do this, there is no telling where it might all end. ‘When I took over the helm here back in the 1960s, my brief was simple. “Sort out the mess that the world’s in, Augustus,” the Prime Minister said to me, and that’s just what I have been doing. Sorting out the mess the world’s in. Or should I say, the worlds are in?’
There was much applause at this.
Which meant that it had to mean something.
‘You all have problems,’ said Augustus. ‘You know this and I know this. Beings from one reality want something that beings in another reality have got and so on and so forth, and I act as broker and arbitrator to see that everyone and everything gets a fair share.’
There was even more applause at this. Much clapping of hands and things that passed for hands.
‘When, all those years ago, I performed the ritual that enabled me to pass from one reality to another, coming as I did in the spirit of peace, a stranger in strange lands, I did so in the hope that we would be able to co-exist in harmony. You, as chosen representatives of your separate realities, meet with me here every Thursday so that we can iron out little difficulties, trade freely and with trust.’
Even greater clapping and flapping and several cries of ‘Hear, hear.’
An enormous maggot in a red fez rose upon its belly parts.
‘Mr Chairman,’ it said, in a voice that resembled the sound of two ferrets fighting in an over-sized bucket of brine. ‘Mr Chairman, your fairness and generosity are well known to us all. The folk of my reality, Maggotonia, would like to take this opportunity to thank you for all the rotten apples you unfailingly supply us with, in exchange for nothing more th
an their weight in useless gold.’
Augustus Naseby cleared his throat. ‘Ah yes,’ he said, ‘useless gold.’
Hands and things went clap clap slop and soon the boardroom air all but glowed with the eulogies of praise that poured from up and down the table. Praise for Augustus, the man who so selflessly plundered the riches of his own world: beer-bottle tops, used cocoa tins, horse manure and condemned veal, in exchange for the rubbish of other realities: gold, silver, platinum, diamonds . . .
Do you see a pattern beginning to emerge?
Augustus Naseby held up his hands. ‘Please, please,’ he said, ‘enough praise.’
‘More than enough,’ came a voice. ‘If there’s any praising being done, it should be done for me.’
Augustus Naseby cast a doubtful eye towards the owner of the voice: a young and shabby-looking individual who had now risen to his feet. He was, by all accounts, human, well, humanish. His eyes were small, his mouth was large, his nose was in-between. He wore upon his unwashed head a dirty fez and a crown-of-thorns-style wreath of Christmas tree fairy lights which flashed on and off at irregular intervals. He sported an ill-fitting tweed suit, onto the shoulders of which had been glued a pair of cardboard wings. These, like his face, had been spray-painted gold.
‘Ah,’ said Augustus. ‘Espadrille, it’s you.’
‘Angel Espadrille,’ said the angel Espadrille.
He wasn’t much of an angel really. In fact he wasn’t really an angel at all. He hailed from a separate reality peopled by types such as himself, who had accidentally stumbled into this reality for a moment or two, been observed by some gullible sap and taken for the real McMessenger of God. And then got it into their own heads that they actually were. Sounds unlikely? Well, anything’s possible. And if it’s possible then it must exist in a separate reality.
The Ministry of Serendipity found the likes of Espadrille extremely useful. They were always on the lookout for bogus religions they could manipulate, the ‘real church’ being something that, in their opinion, held far too much power in the real world. And holding all the power in the world was what the Ministry was all about.
Augustus had The Twenty-third Congregation of Espadrille pencilled in as next year’s big thing.
‘Angel Espadrille,’ said Augustus. ‘How honoured we are that you should grace us once more with your presence.’
‘I’d grace you with my presence a whole lot more if I got the chance. But my name seems to get unaccountably left off the invite list every other week’
‘I cannot imagine how that happens,’ said Augustus, the lie falling from his lips with the ease of guano falling from a passing pigeon.
‘Yeah, well, I’ve filled out all the application forms and I want to know when I can start visiting my followers on a regular basis.’
‘You wish to manifest,’ said Augustus.
‘He wishes to give the womenfolk a bit of how’s-your-father.’ A small grey head bobbed up from beneath the table. It was a small grey domed head with oval black eyes, a tiny lipless mouth and no nose whatsoever to speak of.
It was, as it were, your archetypal grey.
‘Keep out of this you little weirdo,’ said the angel.
‘Weirdo?’ said the grey. ‘You’re calling me a weirdo!’
‘Yeah, well we all know what you get up to.’
‘Oh yes, and what’s that?’
The angel made a two-fingered gesture that is universally understood.
‘And what does that mean?’ asked the grey.
‘We all know what you do with the people you abduct.’
‘We have permission,’ said the grey. ‘In triplicate, with the Ministry’s seal on the bottom. For our interbreeding process.’
‘Your unlicensed bit of how’s-your-father process you mean.’
‘But it is licensed. Ten thousand top-class human breeding specimens a year. Kindly donated by our chairman Mr Naseby. All we have to do is go around at night and pick them up from the shop doorways where they’ve been left out for us.’
Augustus Naseby cleared his throat once more.
‘And I’ll tell you this.’ The grey shook a diminutive and bony fist. ‘We’ll be here when you’re nothing but a footnote in a book of duff twentieth-century cults.’
‘I’m not duff,’ huffed the angel, puffing out what little chest he had. ‘I’m holy.’
‘Gentlemen, please,’ said Augustus, raising his hands. ‘There is no call for such undignified behaviour.’
At that moment a pig fell through the ceiling.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ said the pig. ‘I was putting some lard on the wife’s boil and you know how time flies when you’re having a good time. Have I missed anything?’
‘Not much,’ said Augustus.
‘I saw your son last week,’ said the pig.
‘My son?’ asked Augustus.
‘That’s right. I recognized him from that photo you have pinned to your darts board. He was lurking around in ALPHA 17. Doesn’t lurk as well as you, but I’m sure he’ll get the hang of it eventually.’
‘My son in ALPHA 17?’ Augustus clutched at his heart. ‘What was he doing there?’
‘No idea at all.’ The pig did sniffings with his snout. ‘Any sandwiches?’ he asked.
‘I object to this pig,’ said the angel Espadrille. ‘Has he got security clearance? He’s not impersonating an Egyptian.’
‘What’s that thing on your head?’ asked the pig.
‘My holy crown,’ said the angel.
‘No, I didn’t mean the manky lights. I meant the other thing. It looks like a Kentucky Fried Chicken party bucket.’
‘It’s my official fez.’
‘No it isn’t,’ said the grey. ‘The pig’s right. It is a party bucket.’
‘All right, it is! Some swine nicked my fez.’
‘Language!’ said the pig.
‘This angel is an imposter,’ said the grey.
Augustus shook his head. ‘Of course he’s an imposter.’
‘No, I mean an imposter here. He’s an imposter of an imposter.’
‘I don’t think I quite follow that,’ said the pig.
‘I’m the genuine article,’ said the angel.
‘Shut up all of you!’ Augustus brought his fists down hard upon the table, flattening the maggot who was putting out a cigarette.
‘Is it all right if I eat that?’ asked the pig. ‘As you’ve no sandwiches?’
Augustus wiped his sticky fingers down his smart Egyptian front. ‘I am closing this meeting,’ he said. ‘I will see you all again next week. Same time, same place.’
‘That’s not fair,’ the angel complained. ‘I want my application passed.’
‘And you’ — Augustus pointed stickily at Espadrille — ‘will wear a proper fez next week or you won’t be allowed in.’
‘L. Ron Hubbard nicked my fez.’
‘Meeting adjourned!’
‘You’re all barking mad,’ said the pig.
‘And you stay here. I want a word with you.’ Augustus went off to lurk in a corner, beckoning the pig to follow him. The various representatives from the various other realities removed themselves variously. There were nearly two hundred of them, although only four had actually spoken this day and of these one had been unfortunately flattened. A small boy from a separate reality, where small boys don’t have to eat their greens and are allowed to stay up as long as they like watching television, had to be persuaded to leave by asking him very nicely and giving him a big bag of sweets.
A number of chickens, who had repeatedly had their applications for temporary world domination rejected, relieved themselves on the carpet and faded into wistful imagination.
‘Now,’ said Augustus to the pig, ‘what is all this about my beastly son being in ALPHA 17?’
A knock came at the door.
‘Someone’s knocking,’ said the pig. ‘I hope it’s not that maggot’s daddy.’
‘About my son—’
Knock knock knock.
‘Shall I answer it? I could say you were busy. Larding up your wife’s boil, or something.’
Knock knock knock, went the repeated knocking at the door (repeatedly).
‘I’ll speak to you later,’ said Augustus, ducking down behind his chair.
The door opened, the pig went out and three men walked in. They were ragged men. Ragged and woebegone, much travelled and much wearied.
Their armpits sorely needed a wash and their socks smelled none too savoury.
The tallest of the three, and very tall he was, dropped down into the nearest chair and buried his face in his hands.
The youngest stood with his hands in his trouser pockets. ‘He’s hiding, I’ll bet,’ he said.
The one of middle years, with the white frothy barnet, pointed. ‘There he is,’ he said. ‘He’s lurking behind his big chairman’s chair.’
Augustus rose with dignity. ‘Thank you, madam,’ he said, ‘please put your bill in the post.’
‘He’s got a woman down there,’ said the youngest.
‘No he hasn’t,’ said the frothy white-haired one. ‘He was just on the lurk, as per usual.’
‘Gentlemen,’ said Augustus. ‘What a surprise. Danbury, I won’t shake your hand. Dr Harney, I will shake yours.’ Augustus did. ‘And Sir John. Oh my God!’
Augustus stepped back. ‘Your . . . your . . .’
‘Don’t say the word,’ said Dr Harney.