‘All right. What is going on?’ The Druids made innocent shrugs.
‘Nothing,’ said one.
‘Where is my husband?’
‘Haven’t seen him.’
Christeen glared down at Fido. ‘Don’t look at me, man. Ask the one with the sword.’
‘Sword? Who’s got a sword?’ There was further pushing and shoving and Rambo was suddenly thrust forward.
‘Can I be of assistance, madam?’ he asked politely.
‘Rambo Bloodaxe. I should have known. Show it to me.’
Rambo produced the athame. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, smiling feebly. ‘Folk art, that’s all.’
‘Folk art?’ Christeen’s voice had an edge to it. ‘You have been beating your ploughshares into swords, haven’t you? Where is my husband?’
‘He sort of went.’
Christeen spied out the owner of this voice. ‘Ah,’ she said meaningfully. ‘The other member of the double-act. And where did he sort of went, Eric?’
‘He vanished. Into thin air.’ Eric made encompassing gestures which soon were all the rage.
‘And what were you doing to him when he vanished?’
‘Chatting, madam.’ Rambo bowed slightly from the waist. ‘Having a little chat.’
‘Ooooh!’ said Fido in a manner much favoured by the late and legendary Frankie Howerd. ‘He was going to stick him with the sword. Sanctify the stones, he said.’
Christeen passed a withering look over the robed ne’er-do-wells, who withered accordingly. ‘You were going to stick my Rex?’
‘Just a bit of fun.’ Eric gave a sickly smile. ‘We didn’t mean him any harm.’
Rambo patted his companion on the arm. ‘I fear that the game is most probably up, my old arcadian acolyte. Best we clear the air, I think.
Christeen folded her arms and tapped her foot upon the turf. Straw fluttered down from the roof. ‘Out with it!’ said she.
‘Madam,’ Rambo began. ‘You will surely agree that it is the individual’s right to worship in the church of his choice.’
‘Yes.’
‘And so in a perfect world, which this I recall purports to be, we were merely exercising our rights.’
‘By sticking my Rex with your sword?’
‘I agree that on the face of it this might seem somewhat radical. But isn’t it often the case that what is anathema to one culture is the accepted norm in another? Laws, religious and civil, vary according to the needs of those who make and obey them. If I might just enlarge upon this a little..’
‘Shut up!’ Christeen was not smiling.
‘Shut up? Aha! The witch-hunts begin. Already we are to be persecuted for our beliefs. Did I not warn you of this, oh my brothers?’
‘You certainly did,’ they all replied. ‘Oh woe and wail and things of that nature.’
Christeen threw up her hands. ‘Now just you hold on. Are you telling me that you are starting a new religion?’
‘Reviving madam. Revitalizing, reinvigorating . . . reinstating, re this and re that. Yes.’
‘Rambo, you were at my wedding. You saw who gave the bride away. You cannot be serious.’ All eyes turned toward Rambo. He was still smiling if no-one else was.
‘Madam,’ said he. ‘There you have it. The eternal paradox. Do not the monotheist and the pantheist ultimately pay homage to the single deity? God is all things to all men. The paths to enlightenment are many and various, but lead in a single direction when all is said and done. The almighty manifests himself in an infinite variety of forms, thus the manner of his worship does likewise.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Christeen. ‘You know who my dad is and he would not take kindly to you sticking his son-in-law.’
‘So you say.’
‘How would you like a big fat lip?’
‘Is that a fat lip or a fatwa?’ Eric asked.
‘Very good, Eric.’ Rambo shook his chum by the hand. ‘I wish I’d thought of that.’
‘I’m sure you would have, Rambo.’
‘Aren’t you the nice one, Eric?’
‘Thank you, Rambo.’
‘All right,’ cried Christeen. ‘All right. I don’t care. Do what you like. Worship the grass if you want. But be warned it will end in tears. It always does.’
‘I could snap at his ankle,’ Fido suggested. ‘Often does the trick.’
‘No.’ Christeen shook her head. ‘Let them learn the hard way. I wash my hands of the whole thing.’
‘But what about Rex?’
‘Yes.’ Christeen stalked away from the henge. Taking its cue from her departure the poorly constructed roof collapsed on to the New Age Druids. ‘What about Rex? Where can he have gone?’
The two men faced one another. The one was tall and thin, if a little paunchy. He had blue eyes and a slightly broken nose. His weakening chin was sketched over by a clipped greying beard. His thinning hair, a likewise hue, was tied back in a long ponytail. He wore a faded Hawaiian shirt, a wide-shouldered jacket of pale linen. Trousers of similar stuff and scuffed black brothel-creepers. The other was a dead ringer for a young Harrison Ford. He wore a scorched kaftan and foolish open-toed sandals.
Rex Mundi blinked and tried to take in his new surroundings. He was in a long low room. There were many books and many TV terminals. ‘Oh no,’ croaked Rex. ‘When am I?’
‘When?’ Jack was clawing his way up his desk. It was just possible that the vodka fairy had chosen to visit his drawer during the confusion.
Rex dragged him to his feet and began to shake him about. ‘When?’ he demanded. Jack blurted it out. Day, month and year.
‘Oh no no no.’ Rex let him drop. ‘This can’t be true. How did I get here?’ He reached down once more for Jack who was crawling toward the door. ‘Tell me how?’
‘I don’t know. Let go there.’
‘What is this place? The Nemesis Bunker?’
‘The what? This is the Miskatonic. Unhand me.’
‘Who owns these terminals?’ Rex had him up and was shaking again.
‘The university. Get off. Who are you anyway?’
‘Rex,’ growled Rex. ‘Rex Mundi.’
‘Doveston.’ Jack extended a hopeful hand. ‘Jack Doveston.’
Rex gave him a penetrating stare. ‘Doveston?’ he said slowly. ‘The Jack Doveston?’ Jack nodded in doubt. He supposed so.
‘Jack Doveston, the bestselling author of They Came and Ate Us?’ It was Jack’s turn to ask ‘What?’ Rex let him go. He smoothed down the crumpled lapels. ‘You are that Jack Doveston?’
‘I am.’ Jack found his outstretched hand being roundly shaken. ‘I don’t think I quite understand.’
‘Nor me.’ Rex regarded his whereabouts once more before turning back to Jack. ‘You are really him?’
‘Yes I’m me. But my book ... I haven’t even got a publisher for it yet.’
‘But you will. My Uncle Tony had all your stuff. He used to read it to me when I was a lad.’
‘When you were a lad?’
‘Certainly. Uncle Tony considered you the greatest novelist of the twentieth century. He reckoned that if it hadn’t been for your tragic . . .’ Rex’s voice tailed off.
‘My tragic what? Who are you? Where do you come from?’
‘I’m Rex Mundi,’ said Rex Mundi. ‘I come from the year 2060.’
Jack mulled the concept over. ‘Let me out of here!’ he screamed. ‘Lunatic at large. Help.’
The hall was silent. Wan evening light showed faintly beyond unwashed upper windows. One hundred and forty-five faces stared intently toward the speaker on the rostrum. Three minutes earlier he had raised his hands to still the turbulent applause which followed the conclusion of his speech. Now he just stood there, frozen in the single spotlight.
Had there been any reporters present, it is hard to say exactly what their reactions might have been. The speech contained in essence two simple concepts. The world is in a mess. I Wormwood can solve this mess.
But there had been a good dea
l more to it than that. It was not simply what was said. It was in the how. The power lay somewhere between the words themselves. A single sentence repeated three, possibly four, times. Yet each retelling adding greater depth, insight, perception. A precision of thought and exposition which made a nonsense of all argument.
One instinctively knew that things were as this man said. If he said they were so, then they were so.
A ripple of Wormwood’s fingers broke the spell. The crowd rose to its feet. Heads bowed, one hundred and forty-four souls shuffled out into the night. They would spread the word of his truth. Within a month they would all be dead. But by then the whole world would know the name of Wayne L. Wormwood. The spotlight dimmed. Wormwood left the rostrum.
The one hundred and forty-fifth member of the congregation sat alone to the rear of the hall.
‘Holy hokem,’ said he.
‘Ain’t it just,’ agreed Barry the Time Sprout.
‘Sorry,’ said Rex.
Jack lay sprawled across his desk nursing a big fat lip. ‘You hit me,’ he mumbled.
‘I’m sorry. But I’ve got to get out of here. I’m not supposed to be in 1993.’
‘I’m dreaming this. It’s the Betty Ford Clinic for me.’
‘Listen.’ Rex raised his fist again, but it pained him deeply to do so. ‘I will make this brief. I will say it once only. You are a great novelist, or will be. I am a desperate man. Somehow I have been hijacked into this century. I do not know how or why. But I feel it logical that you may. So, now tell me everything that you know, or surely you will enter a world of great hurt. Do I make myself clear?’
Jack’s head bobbed up and down. ‘It all began this morning,’ he began.
Wormwood left the building. He crossed the rubbish-strewn street and entered one of those long glistening black Cadillacs with the long glistening black windows, which might as well have VILLAIN flashing in neon above them, for all the subtlety they possess. The driver pressed a plastic card into the dash. The engine purred. The limousine slid away.
Within the rear-view mirror, although unnoticed by the driver, the headlights of a police car flashed on. At the wheel of this sat Elvis Presley. A designer cop in dapper uniform and exclusive mirrored sunglasses.
‘You got a plan, chief?’ Barry asked.
‘I’m working on it.’
‘Doesn’t make a bit of sense, chief. And if I say that you can consider it said.’
‘Sure enough, green buddy. We’ve been searching for this son of Satan for fifteen years and not a nothing. Seems like he never was born. No school records, never been to college, never had a job. Never even existed. Then we get this tip-off tonight. Who called us anyway?’
‘Let me jog your memory.’ Barry made certain adjustments to Presley’s mental synapses. A telephone rang once more in his ear. ‘The guy you’re looking for,’ a voice said, ‘I heard you got a reward out, I know where he is.’
Elvis: Where?
Caller: About the bucks . . .
Elvis: If it checks out.
Caller: He’s tall and thin, right? Shoulders kind of hunched. Nose like a hook. Little eyes, real piercing . . .
Elvis: You got him.
Caller: The bucks.
Elvis: I gotta know where he is.
Caller: Buddy, I gotta have the bucks.
Elvis: Grand Central Station. There’s $20,000 in a left-luggage locker.
Caller: And the number?
Elvis: Where is he?
Caller: The number?
Elvis: Six six six.
Caller: East Side Hall eight this evening.
Elvis: Listen you’ll need the key. The locker is ...
Telephone: Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Elvis: Booby trapped.
The police radio crackled into action. ‘All cars in the vicinity of Grand Central Station. We have a 1610. One fatality. No injured.’
‘Seems like he made the pick-up, chief.’
Elvis nodded ruefully. ‘Seems like. Where are we now exactly? I don’t know this part of town.’
‘Search me, chief. If you ain’t been there, I ain’t been there.’
‘And that’s all I know. Honest.’ Rex examined the printout. It was sufficiently charred to be no use whatever. The magic it might possibly have contained had now departed. He leaned across Jack’s desk, which had the scholar cringing, and swivelled the terminal. ‘And did you trace the pirate?’
Jack shook his head slowly. ‘What with all the excitement I never had time to.’
Rex shrugged it off. ‘Forget it.’ He stooped to delve amongst the wreckage. ‘Bio-tech,’ he said somewhat impressed. ‘I didn’t think this stuff was around this early.’
‘It’s brand-new. But Spike, she’s my assistant, she says it’s military hardware.’
‘Then how come you were issued it?’
‘I don’t know. But when the Dean sees this he’ll have my arse for an ashtray.’
Rex managed half a grin, but he really didn’t have anything to smile about. ‘And you have transposed all of these books on to disc?’
‘On to a K-squared carbon.’ Jack swivelled back his terminal and withdrew same. He passed it to Rex.
‘And so the elements which composed this spell, or whatever it was, are in here.’ He turned the rainbow disc upon his palm. ‘Somewhere.’
‘Somewhere.’ Jack peered up at the man from the future. Little cogs were beginning to turn. ‘About my books . . . my novels . . .’ he began.
The door of the library burst open. Two men in military uniform flung themselves into the library, weapons at the ready. Rex sensed the little red laser dot as it centred upon his forehead. He glanced sidewise at Jack the Writer who wore his like an Indian caste mark. ‘Oh dear,’ said Rex Mundi.
There is a nice lap-dissolve here for the aspiring B-movie maker. The two red laser dots blur to become the tail-lights of Wormwood’s limousine. The fact that the events of the afternoon and evening appear to be occurring simultaneously should not be allowed to get in the way. No-one will notice.
Elvis blinked, pulled off his sunglasses and plucked at his eyes. ‘Where’s he heading?’
‘Search me, chief. We’ve been driving northeast for hours, as far as I can figure it. I guess he’s heading toward Providence.’
‘You reckon he might have grown up there?’
‘Had to grow up somewhere.’
‘I wonder,’ Elvis wondered. ‘Hey, what’s he doing?’
‘He’s stopping. Now what are you going to do?’
Wormwood’s car pulled over to the side of the highway. The lights dimmed. The rear door swung open. Elvis drew in the police car fifty yards behind. ‘We’re rumbled.’
‘Not yet, chief. You’re a cop, perhaps he’s lost and wants directions.’ Wormwood had stepped from the car, now he was striding towards them. He was full in Elvis’s headlights.
‘Run him down, chief,’ whispered Barry. ‘You’ll never have a better chance.’ Elvis gripped the gearstick. Wormwood strode nearer. Now thirty yards and closing. The King’s foot forced down the accelerator pedal. ‘Do it now, chief.’ Twenty yards . . .
Wormwood’s eyes shone cat-like in the headlight’s glare.
‘Do it.’ Elvis slammed the car into gear. He was shaking violently. Ten yards . . . ‘Run him down.’ Elvis let out the clutch. Wormwood was there, on the bonnet, but the wheels spinning and screaming tore the car into reverse. Elvis span the steering wheel, threw the stick-shift into first. Raced back along the highway.
5
. . . Ah yes, the ‘wolf children’. There have been many examples of children being reared by wild animals, I agree. I have contributed much to the literature on this subject. The slides I wish to show you tonight, however, are of children who have been raised by insects and molluscs. 1 believe my findings to be entirely unique. The East Dulwich Aphid Girl, the Penge Fly Children and the most curious of all, the Brentford Snail Boy. The first slide please, Rizla. Thank you. No
w kindly note the watering can worn upon the head . . .
The Hugo Rune Lectures, Paris 1938
The chamber was vast and circular, girt about with numberless marble galleries. Spiral stair-cases connected these, but, so huge was the structure, that those upon the far side of the galleries appeared as nothing more than distant corkscrews. The walls seemed all over brass, peppered by a billion rivets. These blurred by aeons of ceaseless polishing. From each gallery, and peering up or down there seemed too many to count, high archways opened from corridors which led to further and further galleries. Throughout all of these could be heard the dull rhythmic throb as of a great heart beating. Or some titanic engine pounding endlessly away. Those who toiled in the galleries, and there were many, adjusting complicated mechanisms of antique design, all brazen tubes, dials and turncocks, had long ago ceased to be aware of the sound. They were attuned to it. Its harmony regulated their toil. There was no day here and no night. No seeming sense of time. Just a constant state of now.
The controller seemed little more than a skeleton. His weak rheumy eyes had sunk so far into their sockets as to be scarcely visible. His head was a mottled bird’s egg, a few wisps of transparent hair puffing out above the pointed ears, marbled by fine blue veins. The toothless mouth was pursed in a frozen scold. The nose nothing but a chitinous crest. He was swaddled in blankets wrought with curious patterns of birds and beasts long vanished.
Yet if he was strange and eerie to gaze upon, then his carriage was doubly so. It was an open brass curricle, standing somewhat under the height of a man, upon two coppered birdlike legs, jointed forward at the knees. The feet of these were trifold claws which terminated in black rubber pads. The conveyance offered a single, deeply cushioned leather seat on which the controller draped. His frail hands worked slim rods with gilded spherical tips. These engaged the clockwork mechanism which powered the bizarre contraption. It was not altogether the most commodious means of transport as it swayed perilously whilst strutting along. But the mummified driver handled it without apparent heed of caution.
The curricle picked its way from gallery to gallery, halting only for some brief moment when the controller issued some instruction as the mechanism was rewound. The dull click-clack of the padded feet, coming as they might and when they would, reinforced the sense of urgency in this world of the forever now.