‘Pathetic.’
‘Time to do your party trick, Jim,’ said Omally. ‘Professor?’
The old man indicated a dimly-lit panel on the bleak wall. ‘Just there,’ he said.
‘I don’t know if this is such a good idea,’ Jim complained. ‘I think the best idea would be to give the place a good leaving alone.’
‘Stick your mitt out, Jim.’
The cursed Croesus placed his priceless palm on to the panel. There was a brief swish and a section of the wall shot aside. A very bad smell issued from within.
‘Quickly now,’ said the Professor. ‘Keep your hand on the panel until we’re all in, Jim.’
A moment later the gap closed upon three men, one robot shopkeeper, and a bike called Marchant.
‘Blimey,’ said Omally. ‘I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.’
They stood now in what might have been the lobby and entrance hall of any one of a thousand big business consortiums. The traditional symbols of success and opulence, the marble walls, thick plush carpeting, chromium reception desk, even the rubber plant in its Boda plant-stand, were all there. It was so normal and so very ordinary as to be fearful. For behind this facade, each man knew, lurked a power more evil than anything words were able to express.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Professor Slocombe, ‘we are now in the belly of the beast.’
Omally suddenly clutched at his stomach. ‘I think I’m going to chuck up,’ he said. ‘I can feel something. Something wrong.’
‘Hold on.’ The Professor laid a calming hand upon Omally’s arm. ‘Speak the rosary; it will pass.’
Beneath his breath Omally whispered the magical words of the old prayer. Its power was almost instantaneous, and the sick and claustrophobic feeling lifted itself from his shoulders, to alight upon Jim Pooley.
‘Blech,’ went Jim. Being a man of fewer words and little religious conviction, he threw up over the rubber plant.
‘That will please the caretaker,’ chuckled Omally.
‘Sorry,’ said Jim, drawing his shirt-sleeve over the cold sweat on his brow. ‘Gippy tummy I think. I must be going cold turkey for the want of a pint.’
‘You and me both. Which way, Professor?’
The old man fingered his chin. ‘There is no-one on the desk, shall we take the lift?’
Norman the Second shook his head, ‘I would strongly advise the stairs. A stairway to oblivion is better than no stairway at all I always say. Would you like me to carry your bike, John, or would you prefer to chain it to the rubber plant?’
‘I’ll carry my own bike, thank you.’
Pooley squinted up at the ragged geometry, spiralling into nothingness above. ‘Looks like a long haul,’ said he. ‘Surely the cellar would be your man, down to the fuse boxes and out with the fuse. I feel that I have done more than my fair share of climbing today.’
‘Onward and upward.’
Now there just may be a knack to be had with stairs. Some speak with conviction that the balls of the feet are your man. Others favour shallow breathing or the occupation of the mind upon higher things. Walking up backwards, that one might deceive your legs into thinking they were coming down, has even been suggested. In the course of the next fifteen minutes it must fairly be stated that each of these possible methods and in fact a good many more, ranging from the subtly ingenious to the downright absurd, were employed. And each met with complete and utter failure.
‘I’m gone.’ Pooley sank to his knees and clutched at his heart.
‘Nurse, the oxygen.’ Omally dragged himself a stair or more further and collapsed beneath his bike. ‘We must give poor Jim a breather,’ he said. ‘The life of ease has gone to his legs.’
‘Are you all right yourself?’ Norman the Second enquired.
‘Oh yes.’ Omally wheezed horribly and wiped the sweat from his eyes. ‘It is Jim I fear for.’
Professor Slocombe peered down from a landing above. If his ancient limbs were suffering the agonies one would naturally assume them to be, he showed no outward sign. The light of determination burned in his eyes. ‘Come on now,’ he urged. ‘We are nearly there.’
‘Nearly there?’ groaned Jim. ‘Not only can I hear the grim reaper sharpening his scythe, I am beginning to see the sparks.’
‘You’ve enough breath, Jim; lend him your arm, John.’
‘Come on, Jim.’ Omally shouldered up his bike and aided his sagging companion. ‘If we get out of this I will let you buy me a drink.’
‘If we get out of this I will buy you a pub.’
‘Onward and upward then.’
Another two flights passed beneath them; to John and Jim it was evident that some fiendish builder was steadily increasing the depth of the treads.
‘Stop now.’
‘With the greatest pleasure.’
Professor Slocombe put his eye to the smoked glass of a partition door. ‘Yes,’ said he in a whisper. ‘We shall trace it from here, I think.’
Norman the Second ran his fingertips about the door’s perimeter and nodded. ‘Appears safe enough,’ he said.
‘Then let us see.’ Professor Slocombe gestured to Jim. ‘You push it, please.’
Pooley shook his head dismally but did as he was bid. The door gave to expose a long dimly-lit corridor.
Omally fanned at his nose. ‘It smells like the dead house.’
Professor Slocombe pressed a large gingham handkerchief to his face. ‘Will you lead the way, Norman?’
The robot entered the corridor. ‘I can feel the vibration of it,’ he said, ‘but it is some distance away. If I could get to a VDU.’
‘Stand alone, clustered, or wide-area network?’ Omally asked.
‘Super advanced WP and a spread-sheet planner, hopefully,’ said Jim.
‘Do I take the Mickey out of your relatives?’ Norman the Second asked. ‘Stick your palm against this panel will you please?’
‘Security round here stinks as bad as the air,’ Pooley pressed the panel. A gleaming black door slid noiselessly aside.
‘Ah,’ said Norman the Second, ‘magic.’
The room was nothing more than a cell, happily unoccupied. Black walls, floor and ceiling. A cunningly concealed light source illuminated a centralized computer terminal, bolted to the floor. ‘And people have the gall to ask me why I never take employment,’ said Omally, parking his bike. ‘Imagine this place nine to five.’
The robot faced the console and cracked his nylon knuckles. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘only one small problem. We do not possess the entry code.’
Professor Slocombe handed him a folded sheet of vellum. ‘Try this.’ The automaton perused the paper and stared up at the old man.
‘Don’t ask,’ said John Omally.
‘All right then.’ With a blur of digits the robot punched in the locking code. The words ‘ENTER ENQUIRY NOW’ sprang up upon the now illuminated screen. Norman’s hand hovered.
‘Ask it for permission to consult the main access body,’ said the Professor.
Norman punched away at the keyboard.
PERMISSION DENIED, INFORMATION CLASSIFIED
Professor Slocombe stroked at his chin. ‘Ask it for a data report.’
Norman did the business. Rows of lighted figures plonked up on to the monitor. Row upon coloured row, number upon number, little illuminated regiments marching up the screen. ‘Magic,’ crooned Norman the Second.
‘Looks like trig,’ said Jim disgustedly. ‘Never could abide trig. Woodwork and free periods, but trig definitely not.’
‘The music of the spheres,’ said Norman the Second.
Professor Slocombe’s eyes were glued to the flickering screen. His mouth worked and moved, his head quivered from side to side. As the projected figures darted and weaved, so the old man rose and fell upon his toes.
‘Does it mean something to you?’ Omally asked.
‘Numerology, John. It is as I have tried to explain to you both. Everything, no matter what, can be broken down into
its base elements and resolved to a final equation: the numerical equivalent; all of life, each moving cell, each microbe, each network of cascading molecules. That is the purpose of it all. Don’t you see?’ He pulled Omally nearer to the screen, but John jerked away.
‘I’ll not have it,’ said he. ‘It is wrong. Somehow it is indecent. Obscene.’
‘No, no, you must understand.’ The Professor crouched lower towards the screen, pushing Norman’s duplicate aside.
Pooley was jigging from one foot to the other. ‘Can’t we get a move on. I’m freezing to death here.’
The room had suddenly grown impossibly cold. The men’s breath steamed from their faces. Or at least from two of them it did.
Omally grasped Pooley by the wrist, for the first time he realized that the Professor was no longer wearing his helmet, and hadn’t been since they had joined him on the landing. ‘Oh, Jim,’ whispered John,’bad Boda.’
The ‘Professor’ stiffened; slowly his head revolved a hundred and eighty degrees upon his neck and stared up at them, sickeningly. ‘Learn, last men,’ he said, clearing his throat with the curiously mechanical coughing sound John and Jim had learned to fear. ‘It is your only salvation. Humble yourselves before your new master.’
‘Oh no.’ Omally stumbled back and drew out his crucifix. ‘Back,’ he shouted, holding it before him in a wildly shaking fist. ‘Spawn of the pit.’
The Professor’s body turned to follow the direction of his face. His eyes had lost their pupils but now glowed from within, two miniature terminal screens, tiny figures twinkling across them in hypnotic succession. ‘Behold the power,’ said he. ‘Know you the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.’
‘By the Cross.’
The thing which dwelt in the Professor’s image thrust a hand into its trouser pocket and drew out a small black box with two slim protruding shafts.
‘Head for the hills,’ yelled Pooley, as the clone touched the nemesis button and the black rods sparkled with electric fire.
Omally flattened himself to the wall as the thing lunged towards him. A great explosion tore the world apart. Shards of glass and splinters of burning circuitry spun in every direction, spattering the walls and the two cowering men; flame and smoke engulfed the room. The Professor’s duplicate stood immovable, his synthetic hair ablaze and his clothes in tatters. Norman’s double drew a smouldering fist from the shattered terminal screen. He leapt forward, grasping the Professor’s doppelganger about the throat, and dragged it backwards. ‘Out!’ he shouted. ‘Run for your lives, lads.’
Pooley and Omally bundled out of the door. John leapt astride Marchant and Pooley clambered on to the handlebars. At very much the hurry-up they took to the retreat
Omally’s feet flew about and Marchant, realizing the urgency of the situation, made no attempt to ditch its extra rider. With its bell ringing dramatically it cannoned forward up the corridor. Figures appeared before them, dressed in grey uniforms and carrying fire-fighting equipment. Pooley struck aside all he could as the bike ploughed forward. As he cleared a path between several rather sloppy versions of himself, a thought struck him. The great machine for all its dark magic certainly lacked something in the old imagination department. Obviously when idling and stuck for something to do, it just kept turning out the same old thing.
‘Do you know what this means?’ Omally shouted into his ear. Pooley shook his terrified head and lashed out at another robot duplicate of himself. ‘It means that there is nobody left, Jim. No one but us.’
‘Not good, said Jim.
‘Not good, but do you know what it means?’
‘Not that we will have to repopulate the world by ourselves?’ said Jim, kicking out wildly once more.
‘No, you buffoon, it means that I am the last Catholic on Earth.’
‘Well, some good came out of it all, then,’ said Jim, who had never had too much truck with organised religion.
As Omally’s hands were busily engaged at the handlebar grips, he could do no more than lean forward and bite Pooley’s ear. ‘Jim,’ he shouted, ‘Jim, as the last Catholic, I am Pope! Jim . . . I . . . am Pope. I am Pope!’
31
Some distance beneath the pedalling pontiff a great cry broke the silence. ‘Fe . . . fi . . . fo . . . fum.’
Neville the barbarian barman had finally reached a wall. And at long last he had found something he could thump. The thrill of the prospect sent a small shiver up his back which finally lost itself amid acres of straining muscle fibre. Neville ran his hand across the barrier blocking his way; hard and cold as glass. An outside wall surely? The barman pressed his eye to the jet crystal surface and did a bit of squinting. Something vague was moving about on the other side. People in the street? Neville drew back for a shoulder charge, and he would have gone through with it had not a sensible thought unexpectedly entered his head. He wasn’t exactly sure which floor, or wherever, he was on. With his track record the movements were likely to be those of roosting rooftop pigeons. It could be a long hard fall to earth. Neville pressed his ear to the wall of black glass. He couldn’t hear a damn thing.
Bash out a couple of bore holes to see out through, that would be your man. The barman drew back a fist of fury and hurled it forward at something approaching twice the speed of sound. With a sickening report it struck home. His knotted fist passed clean through the wall, cleaving out a hole the size of a dustbin-lid. ‘Gog a Magog!’ Neville took an involuntary step backwards. An icy hurricane of fetid wind tore out at him shredding away the last vestiges of his surgical smock and leaving him only his Y-fronts. Neville stood his ground, a great arm drawn over his face to shield his sensitive nostrils from the vile onslaught he had unwittingly unleashed. ‘Great mother.’ Tears flew from his eyes as he forced himself onward. With his free hand he tore out a great section of the wall, which cartwheeled away in the stinking gale. With heroic effort he charged forward into the not-so-great beyond.
The wind suddenly ceased and he found himself standing in absolute silence and near-darkness. It was very very cold indeed. ‘Brr,’ said Neville. ‘Brass monkey weather.’ To the lover of Greek mythology, what next occurred would have been of particular interest. But to a Brentford barman in his present state of undress, the sudden arrival of Cerberus, the multi-headed canine guardian of the underworld, was anything but a comfort.
‘Woof, woof, and growl,’ went Cerberus, in the plural.
‘Nice doggy,’ said Neville, covering his privy parts. ‘Good boy, there.’
The creature tore at the barman, a blur of slavering mouths and blazing red eyes.
Neville sprang aside and ducked away beneath it as it leapt towards his throat. ‘Heel,’ he said. ‘Sit.’ The thing turned and stood pawing the ground, glowing faintly, its scorpion tail flicking, low growls coming from a multiplicity of throats. By all accounts it made Holmes’ Baskerville growler seem pretty silly.
‘Grrrrrrrrrrs,’ went Cerberus, squaring up for the kill.
‘Grrrrrrrr,’ went Neville, who now considered that thumping a multi-headed dog was as good as thumping anything. ‘Come and get your Bob Martins.’ With a single great bound it was upon him, heads whipping and snapping. Neville caught it at chest height and pummelled it down with flailing fists. It leapt up again and he caught at a scaled throat, crushing his hands about it until the thumbs met. The hell-hound screamed with pain as Neville dragged it from its clawed feet and dashed it to the ground. Roll on chucking-out time, thought the part-time barman. With one head hanging limply but others still on the snap, the fiend was on him once more, ripping and tearing, its foul mouths snapping, brimstone vapour snorting from its nostrils.
The two bowled over again and again, mighty figures locked in titanic conflict. The nightmare creature and the all-but-naked barman. The screams and cries echoed about the void, the echoes doubling and redoubling, adding further horror to a scene which was already fearsome.
‘I’m not doing it, John, and that’s the end of the matt
er.’ Pooley clung precariously to his handlebar perch as Pope John the Umpteenth freewheeled down a deserted corridor. ‘I am not a Catholic and I utterly refuse to kiss your stupid ring. The thing came out of a Jamboree bag for God’s sake.’
‘Let me convert you, Jim, come to the Mother Church before it’s too late.’
‘Let me down from here, I want a drink.’
‘Drink?’ Omally tugged on the brakes and sent Jim sprawling. ‘Drink did I hear you say, my son?’
Pooley looked up bitterly from the deck. Popes don’t drink,’ he said. ‘Such is well-known.’
‘A new Papal bull,’ his Holiness replied.
‘All right then, but no ring-kissing, it’s positively indecent.’ Pooley unearthed the hip-flask and the two plodded on, sharing it turn and turn about.
‘It’s getting very cold,’ Pooley observed, patting at his shirt-sleeves. ‘And the pong’s getting a lot stronger.’
‘What do you expect?’ Omally passed him back the hip-flask. ‘Roses round the door?’
‘Are you sure we’re going the right way?’
‘The passage is going down, isn’t it? Would the Pope put you on a wrong ‘n?’
‘Listen, John, I’m not too sure about this Pope business. I thought you lads had to be elected. White smoke up the chimney or the like?’
‘As last Catholic, I have the casting vote. Please don’t argue about theological matters with me, Jim. If you let me convert you I’ll make you a cardinal.’
‘Thanks, but no thanks. God, it stinks down here. Couldn’t you issue another Papal bull or something?’
Omally halted the infidel in mid-step. ‘Would you look at that?’ he said, pointing forward.
Ahead of them loomed a great door. It seemed totally out of context with all they had yet seen. At odds with the bland modernistic corridors they had passed down on their abortive journey of escape. It rose like a dark hymn in praise of evil pleasure, and hung in a heavily-carved portico wrought with frescoed reliefs.
Omally parked his bike, and the two men tiptoed forward. The hugeness and richness of the thing filled all vision. It was a work of titanic splendour, the reliefs exquisite, carved into dark pure wood of extreme age.