The book rooms were clean and dry and adequately ventilated, although the exhalations of 666,666 ancient librams weighed heavily upon the air. All those pages. Millions of them and it was Jack’s job, as it had been now for five years since he had first come out here from England to take up the post, to transfer every one of them on to computer discs.
The project had begun on a grand scale, fifty terminals, manned day and night. But times were now hard and funding a thing of the past. Now there was Jack and Spike and no overtime. The largest collection of rare occult books anywhere in the world and just the two of them to transpose the lot before they mouldered away to dust.
Jack had evolved the system, the cross cataloging, -referencing, indexing and whatnot, and the project was now not far from completion. The cream of the crop was in: The Daemonolatreia of Remigius, Joseph Glanvil’s Saducismus Triumphatus and even the unmentionable Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred in Olaus Wormius’s forbidden Latin translation. No kidding. All on disc available for anyone authorized to take a peek at, the originals sealed into protectrite shells for eternity.
Jack seated himself at his desk and jacked up his terminal. The screen blued on, Jack tugged open the desk drawer, pulled up a half bottle of vodka and took a little slug of breakfast.
Almost instantly a horrid ‘state of the art’ telephone began to blow electric raspberries at him. Jack lifted the receiver without enthusiasm and said ‘library’. To his small pleasure the voice of the Dean wished him a good morning. Jack returned the redundant pleasantry. He hadn’t had a good morning in months.
‘Jack,’ said the Dean. ‘How is the work progressing?’
‘Excellently, thank you sir.’ Jack did his very best to give it his all.
‘Good, and you have everything that you need?’
‘Well. . .’ I have forty-nine empty desks, thought Jack.
‘I wonder if you would mind coming up to my office.’
‘Well . . .’
‘Good. Shall we say five minutes? Thank you.’
Jack replaced the receiver and returned to breakfast. Five minutes, up in the office? So it had finally come to this, had it? He could already hear the Dean’s words delivered as ever in cold deadpan. Situation beyond our control. Constant cutbacks. Our hands are tied. Regret that we shall be forced to let you go.
‘Something tells me,’ said Jack Doveston, ‘that this is not going to be my day.’
He was quite right of course. But what he didn’t know, although it is doubtful whether he would have received much consolation from the fact even if he had, was that this was not going to be anyone’s day at all.
Rex Mundi woke up on this particular day, although many years into the future, with a hangover. But as he dwelt in paradise he felt as fresh as the proverbial daisy. He belched, shamelessly broke wind and rolled over towards his wife Christeen.
‘No,’ she said in her sleep. Rex rose from the nuptial couch and gave his surroundings a bit of first-thing inspection.
It was not at all bad, considering. Somewhat rustic, but that was the name of the game. Everything grew as required. Bed, chairs, tables, furniture all round. The only prohibition was the growing of televisions.
Prior to the Apocalypse, the heirs to the 1999 Nuclear Holocaust Event eked out a bitter existence on a forced diet of compulsory TV. Constantly under the surveillance of electronic iris scanners, rations were allocated according to the viewer’s dedication before the screen. In paradise TVs were a definite no-go area. It was now ten full years since Rex had watched television and this fact gave him no sleepless nights at all.
He padded to the window, peered out and took it all in. It was another beautiful day and he was putting on weight. He prodded thoughtfully at his stomach. Distinctly on the plump side and no doubt about it. Portly. Now that wasn’t paradise. Beneath his fingers he felt his belly shrink away to be replaced by tight corded muscle. Now, that was paradise. And that really depressed him.
Before the big renewal he hadn’t been much to speak of. He had been scabby, downtrodden, dumped upon from impossible heights, shillied, shallied, used, abused and beaten. But somehow he’d been alive. He’d won through and ultimately triumphed. Hell, he’d even got to marry God’s only daughter, and that was no small thing in itself. But where was he now? Well, he wasn’t dead, although it seemed at times to amount to pretty much the same thing. Ten long years of doing exactly as he pleased and getting everything that he wanted. And what had it all turned out to be worth? Nothing, Rex con-cluded.
Perhaps Man just wasn’t built for paradise. Perhaps it simply never got coded into his genes. Mankind generally spent its collective days either searching for something it could never find, or if by chance it did, then discovering that it never actually wanted it in the first place. There had been a word for this in the twentieth century. Rex searched his memory. Oh yes, cliche, that was it.
What he needed was some kind of challenge, conflict, confrontation. Some great quest.
Something. Anything.
Rex gazed towards the naked Goddess on the continental quilt. She had to be the most beautiful woman that had ever lived. ‘Come to me my beloved,’ she murmured.
That made Rex feel even worse.
‘Sit,’ said the Dean. Jack sat. The Dean’s office was the size of a small stadium. There was probably a ceiling up there somewhere. Vertical acres of wall displayed countless bright rectangular patches. Much of the marble statuary had taken up their plinths and walked. The priceless carpets had obviously realized their price. Now probably wasn’t the time to broach the subject of a salary increase.
‘Am I about to be let go?’ Jack asked, by way of making conversation.
‘No no, Jack. Nothing of the sort. You have so much valuable work left to do.’ The Dean offered a wan smile, Jack accepted it for what it was worth. He studied his superior. A man about his own age, approaching forty, but with a fierce vitality. Something Jack did not possess. The Dean was one of those square people. Square jaw, square shoulders, even his fingernails were square. Everything about him said ‘I am powerful and you are not’. The Dean had more hair than Jack. He wore it in a flat-top.
‘It is this memorandum,’ said the square one, pushing a sheet of paper across the desk top. The desk was the size of a double bed and frequently served as one. Jack studied the sheet, and at length he said, ‘I don’t think I quite understand this. Who sent it?’
The Dean tapped a nostril, it wasn’t exactly square, but as near as makes no odds. ‘Upstairs,’ he confided, which Jack correctly assumed to mean the nebulous bodies that controlled the university.
‘A security matter, Jack. A copy of this memo has fallen on to executive desks the country over. The government is concerned with security. Computer piracy, the hacking and sabotage of systems is now a major political issue. In essence the request of this memo is that we tighten our systems.’
‘They are just about as tight as they are likely to get.’ During his five years below ground, Jack had instituted a wonderfully complex labyrinth of entry codes known only to himself. His little hedge against redundancy. The codes were going to cost the Dean a very large golden handshake.
‘Good,’ said the Dean who, unknown to Jack, had been overriding Jack’s codes for years. His little hedge against golden handshakes. ‘I am certain that we are secure. But tell me, if a pirate did try to infiltrate, would you know?’
Jack was far from certain that he would. ‘Of course I would,’ he said.
‘And do you think you could skip-trace and locate the source of infiltration?’
‘No. Not with the present set-up. We do not have that kind of hardware.’
‘But if you did?’
‘Given time I suppose it could be done. I would need a considerable amount of gear. Sequence modulators, on-line decoder, cable links, multiphase . . .’
‘All these in fact,’ The Dean pushed more paper in Jack’s direction. Jack studied it. He nodded. ‘All of these.’
br /> ‘They will all be with you today. Good morning to you, Jack.’
‘Good morning to you.’ Jack Doveston left the Dean’s office a very puzzled man.
Sam Maggott watched the paramedics zip the defunct Presley into a bodybag. He left them to it, shuffled down into the southern sunlight and sank into a pool-side chair. On a slatted table stood a half-gone glass of bourbon. Sam took it up and turned it between his fingers. The drink was warm. When Elvis had ordered it eight hours before it had been on ice. It had helped to wash down a fistful of barbiturates. Sam fumbled in his pockets for his cigarettes.
He tried to figure out how old Elvis must have been, then recalled that he and Sam were both born in the same year. He’d found that out when his call-up came, he’d gone in a month after Elvis. Well, if it was good enough for the King . . .
But to end up like this. What a waste. The whole world had watched as Elvis fell to pieces. Almost as if he had some kind of death wish. Just blew himself away.
Sam was not one to wax lyrical. He was a big fat sweaty two-dimensional cop, and he knew it. But this was some kind of event. Some kind of statement and he was here right in the middle of it. And something did not smell right.
A young woman plunged into the pool, as if from nowhere. She was probably trying to make some kind of statement. But if so, no-one was paying attention. After a few moments of very well orchestrated drowning she pulled herself ashore, cast Sam a venomous glare and vanished into the milling crowds.
Sam placed the now empty glass on the slatted table and followed the men with the bodybag.
His progress was observed on a small telescreen by two shadowy figures.
‘Put a hold on that guy, what’s his name?’
‘Maggott. Sam Maggott.’
‘I don’t want him within fifty miles of the morgue.’
‘That’s not gonna be easy.’
‘What am I paying you for?’
‘No sweat.’
Multiple orgasms satisfactorily achieved, Rex Mundi rolled himself a spliff of a magnitude only formally entertained by the likes of Fat Freddy and Freewheeling Frank. It didn’t help any. His beautiful spouse returned to her slumbers. Rex shambled about, brewing coffee, pecking at a bowl of cornflakes, patting the dog.
‘Ease up on the patting, man,’ said Fido. ‘You’re giving me a migraine.’
‘Sorry. Do you want a toke of this?’ He offered the dog his spliff, which after half an hour’s puffing, still showed no signs of getting any smaller.
‘Not this early. I’ve got a morning of heavy bum-sniffing planned.’
‘Each to his own.’
The dog peered up at his miserable master. ‘What’s on your mind, Rex? You’ve been on a real downer lately.’
Rex restrained a kindly pat. You could always rely on man’s best friend in times of sorrow. ‘I think I’m having my mid-life crisis.’
‘You need a hobby, man. Something to occupy your mind.’
‘A hobby, such as?’
‘You ever thought about building an ark?’
‘Funnily enough . . .’
‘Well, just you give it some thought. A word to the wise is all.’ Upon that enigmatic note Fido upped from his basket and made off through the hut door.
Sam squeezed into the squad car. ‘The morgue,’ he said. The driver glanced back over a dandruff-speckled shoulder.
‘Your wife has just been on the horn, sir. There’s been some kind of accident.’
‘Goddamn,’ said Sam. ‘Where did she call from?’
‘Up at your shack, I think. The line wasn’t that good.’
‘Goddamn,’ said Sam once more. ‘That’s fifty miles. Listen, get two guys down to the morgue, I wanna know every last thing that goes on there.’
‘Everyone’s pretty stretched. There’s only Evans and Mishcon.’
‘Those turkeys?’ Sam mopped at his brow with an oversized red gingham hanky. ‘Send them if they’re all we got.’
The driver radioed in the message. ‘The shack, sir?’
‘Yeah. I guess.’ The car swung into the unruly crowds, sirens screaming.
‘Excellent.’ A shadowy figure switched off the telescreen. The lights went up revealing the interior of a large van. It was crammed with telescreens, monitoring doodads, hi-tech how’s-your-fathers and state-of-the-art whatnots. One shadowy figure was now clearly displayed as a well-turned-out young man in a sharp grey suit. The other was anything but. He was bloated, sweat-stained and breathing heavily. And he was the very dopple-ganger of the man in the bodybag.
‘Nice work,’ said Elvis Aron Presley.
As the sharp young man looked on in considerable awe, Elvis began to tear at his own face. His fingers sank into the huge jowls and bore them away. He pulled off the pudgy nose and flung it to the floor. Ripping open his shirt he removed a bulbous carapace secured from behind. From beneath the hideous prosthetics a handsome young man began to emerge. It was also Elvis Aron Presley, although this model had not aged by a single day since 1958.
Elvis peeled off the gross synthetic fingers which sheathed his own slender digits, he plucked strands of latex from his killer cheekbones. ‘This time we’re gonna do it right, Barry,’ he said.
‘Barry?’ queried the sharp young man. ‘My name is Clive.’
Elvis handed him a bulging envelope. ‘You are now a very wealthy man, Clive. My parting advice to you is, hang loose, keep schtum and never pollute your body with strange drugs. Got me?’
‘Got you. It has been a pleasure to serve you, sir. We shall not meet again.’ The rich young man took his leave and Elvis was left alone. ‘Where to now, Barry?’ the King asked.
‘New York, New York,’ came a chirpy voice from the rear of Presley’s head.
‘It’s a wonderful town,’ said the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
‘It surely is, chief, and we have a potential president there to assassinate,’ said Barry the Time Sprout from the planet Phnaargos.
‘Hey, Rex man,’ called dog Fido. ‘Check this out.’ Rex Mundi poked his head around the door. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘Now, call me a mangy cur or a feckless footpath fouler, but it seems like someone’s just dumped a dirty big spaceship on your lawn.’
3
CRUEL TO BE KIND PRINCIPLE: It is a proven fact that most awkward individuals respond well to the application of a stout stick. Also known as the PERSUASIVE PERCUSSION PROPOSITION, this has proved its worth time and again when verbal reasoning fails. Although it involves a regrettable expenditure of energy upon the part of the hitter (unjustly treated person), the general good of the hittee (culprit) must be taken into consideration. One is being cruel to oneself in order to be kind to others.
Hugo Rune, The Book of Ultimate Truths
Rune’s habit of striking malcontents with his stout stick earned him a certain amount of undeserved criticism from opponents of his credos. Koeslar, one of his chief protagonists, in his infamous lecture Runistics: Cult of Unreason, accused Rune of being ‘an arch fiend and wifebeater, perpetuating the evil philosophy that might is right and violence an acceptable form of social behaviour’.
Rune sat serenely throughout the lecture occasionally making notes, but for the most part appearing to be asleep. Shortly before the conclusion he excused himself and left the hall. And, as the court later heard, ‘Lay in wait for Mr Koeslar in the alleyway behind the theatre’.
Rune’s defending counsel stated that at the time of the attack, which was described as ‘coldly premeditated and particularly violent’, the accused had been under great emotional strain having just been pipped at the post for a Nobel Prize by Albert Einstein. He was deeply sorry for what he had done and hoped that Mr Koeslar would soon recover from his injuries.
Sir John Rimmer, The Amazing Mr Rune
Jack returned from the Dean’s office to find his lone assistant Spike already unpacking the equipment. She winked up at him as he made his way uncertainly to his desk.
‘Yo, boss. Is
this Christmas or what?’
‘Or what.’ Jack sat down and watched her working. She was just eighteen. Slim as a wisp and sharp as knives. Her hair was an orange napalm burst above thoughtful grey eyes. Her wide mouth seemed ever set in a whimsical half-smile. She was elfin. It made Jack ache just to look at her. But his lust was tempered by the fact that he had a daughter that age.
Spike plucked electronic hokem from their packings. Each new find brought from her a small squeak of joy.
‘Megabliss, boss. Did you order this?’
‘The Dean.’
‘Do you know what we have here?’ Jack shook his head. ‘This is Bio-tech. These chips float in plasma. Like they’re organic, see?’
‘Really?’ Jack was impressed. Impressed and confused.
‘Funny thing, though. I’ve read up on this tackle and it’s restricted goodies. Military hardware.’
‘Perhaps the Dean has friends in high places.’
‘So how come we’ve got this?’
‘He had a memo. He thinks we’ve got pirates.’
‘Pirates in here?’ Spike laughed. ‘So what’s to cut? We don’t have any state secrets here, do we?’
‘None that I know of. But he wants us to set up a defence net. Monitor any infiltration and skip-trace back to locate the source.’
‘Cut the cutter eh?’
‘I think so.’ Jack generally understood about one word in three of the current argot. ‘Can you set up such a system?’
‘I could. Unless the cutter is other military. Go in there and you’re dead. But if it’s a street pirate then snip snap.’
‘Then will you set it up?’
‘No. I don’t approve. Most of my friends are pirates one way or another. Everyone’s getting a piece of something they shouldn’t have. That’s life.’
Jack understood well enough. Things were not exactly a bundle of laughs out there in the real world. The kids were schooled on computers. Education programs had ultimately proved cheaper than employing live teachers. The kids learned fast. Learning was a game. A sport. But when they left school they found there was nothing for them but menial jobs at low pay. So those that could turned to computer piracy. Crashing systems, tampering with accounts. Causing mayhem. It was slowly and surely bringing the economy to its knees. The government invested fortunes to develop new technologies to confound the pirates. Spin-offs from the new technologies were used to update the education programs and next year’s pirates were even better equipped than last year’s.