‘I didn’t sleep that day, I was sleeping rough anyway. I just walked around the town, this town that hated me so much. And I thought, Look at these people, they may have jobs, they may be rich, but they will all die, die soon. Not me. I’ll outlive the lot of them. I will cheat death. I’ll go on into the future. Dance on their graves.’
The priest let out a small sigh.
‘And so I went back the next night. The man in black, I didn’t even know his name, he took me again into that room and he showed me. He showed me the ‘new me. It was a perfect me, taller, better built, younger-looking, more handsome. It stood there and it was an empty shell. I hadn’t eaten, I felt sick and light-headed and he showed me the back, my back. And there, at the back, were these little doors, hinged doors, of polished wood. On the arms and the legs, like a suit of armour, but of polished wood, beautifully made, brass hinges and little catches, the skin closed over these, you see, once you were inside. But I don’t know how that worked, I didn’t understand. And they’d built it so fast. It was a work of art. Sort of like ship-building, polished wood, little bits of rigging—’
The old man broke down once more into a fit of coughing.
The priest wanted to call for a nurse, but the old man stopped him.
‘He said it was built to last. Built to out-last. To continue. Then he told me to take off my clothes and climb in. Step into the future.
‘I knew this was wrong, father. I knew it. You can’t cheat death. You have only your own time. But I made that wrong decision, I tore off my clothes and climbed into the back of this new self. I put my head up inside its head, like a mask, you see, put my arms inside the arms, my hands into the hands, like gloves, legs inside the legs. And then he shut the little doors at the back, snapped them shut and clicked the catches. And there was this terrible pulling, this shrinking as that new skin shrank around me, embracing me, clinging to me.
‘My neck tightened, this awful compression and he said, “I must take your spine now. The exchange must be made.” I struggled, but he took hold of me and he had this instrument, like a pump, polished brass, very old-looking and he put it against the small of my back and he—’
‘Nurse!’ called the priest.
‘No!’ cried the old man. ‘No, let me speak, let me finish. What he did to me. The pain. I woke up in a doss house and when I woke up I screamed. And I looked around and I laughed then, and I thought, oh no, it was a dream. A nightmare, drunk probably, oh how I laughed. But then, but then, as I sat up on that wretched bed, I knew it had all been true and I felt at my neck and I could feel the flap and the button and I knew that that other self was now inside me, I wasn’t inside it. The backs of my arms, hard under the skin, like wood and my legs, my back, rigid and I was numb. I couldn’t smell anything, even there in that stinking doss house, not a thing and I no longer had a sense of taste. I got up and I was like a robot, an automaton, I was not a person any more, like a doll, not a person.
‘I walked about and I looked at people, but they weren’t like people any more, they seemed like animals, or some remote species. But it wasn’t them, it was me. I wasn’t one of them. I was something different. And now they meant nothing to me. I was remote from them, aloof. I couldn’t feel them any more. Emotionally, I couldn’t feel them emotionally. I had no feelings. No love, no hate. Nothing, just a great emptiness inside.’
There was a moment of silence and then the priest said, ‘I am afraid, my son. You have made me afraid.’
‘I am afraid, father. Afraid of what I have done.’
‘Will you tell me more?’
‘I will tell you all. I knew that I was afraid then. But I could not feel it. I knew that I was angry, very angry, but I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t remember how those things felt. But I knew one thing and that was that I could not go through five hundred years of this. Of this emptiness and solitude. This apartness. I wanted my self back, wretched thing that it was, but it was me.
‘I returned to that chapel to seek out the man who had taken my spine. But he was gone, the chapel was all boarded over, the door chained shut. I did not know where he might have gone to, I couldn’t know where. But I knew I had to find him, to reclaim my self. And so I searched. I walked, father. I walked across England. And I didn’t need to eat — I felt no hunger — or sleep —I never felt tired. I walked and walked from town to town until the shoes wore off my feet and then I begged for more. I searched through the pages of every local newspaper.
‘I walked, father, for fifty years I walked.’
The priest caught his breath. ‘For fifty years?’ he whispered.
‘For fifty years. But I found him. I finally found him, right here, right here in Brighton. Another small advert in the local paper, another chapel just like the first. And there he was, up upon the dais. Same man, same suit, exactly the same. He hadn’t aged by a day. I kept to the rear of the hall, in the shadows and I watched and I listened. It was all the very same. And I watched his audience. The same audience, father, the same people, even after fifty years I recognized them all, sitting there, straight-backed.
‘He spoke, a newer speech now, of micro technology and silicone chips, but he was selling the same thing. The five hundred years. And as he spoke the other folk drifted out, leaving only me, hiding at the back and one lone downtrodden-looking man at the front, and after he had spoken he led this man away.
‘I crept after them. I had a gun and I could feel no fear. I stood at the door of another little back room, listening. I knew he would be removing his shirt. I had waited so long for this, but I was like a sleepwalker, so distant. I turned the handle and pushed open the door. He stood there, half naked. I shouted at him, raised my gun, the young man saw the gun and he ran away. He was safe, he would be spared my torment.
‘The man in black slipped on his shirt, he was cool, I knew that he could feel nothing. Or what did I know? He did this to other people, yet he knew what it was like. I had many questions. Fifty years of questions.
‘“So” said he. “This is most unexpected.”’
‘“Give me back my spine,” I told him. “Give me back my self.”’
‘And he laughed. Laughed in my face. “After fifty years?” he said. “It is gone. It is dust.”’
‘My hand that held the gun now shook. Of course it was dust. Of course after all this time. After all these years.
‘“But you go on,” he said. “You go on into the future. Look at you, still young, still fit.”
‘“No!” I cried. “No. I will not be like this. Not what you have made me. I will kill myself, but first I will kill you. You will do to no more folk what you have done to me.”
‘He shook his head. He smiled. “You fail to grasp any of this,” he said. “I am just one, there are many like me. Like us. Our number grows daily. Soon, soon now, all will be as we are. You will achieve nothing by killing me.”
‘“Why?” I asked him. “Why do you do this?”
‘“A new order of life,” he said. “A new stage in development. A world freed of emotion, without sickness or hatred.”
‘“Without love,” I said and he laughed again.
‘“Put aside your gun,” he said, “and I will show you why this must be and then you will understand.”
‘I put aside my gun. I would kill him, I knew this. And I would kill myself. But I had to know, to understand.
‘“Follow me,” he waved his hand and led me from the room. Along a dirty corridor we went and down a flight of steps towards the boiler house below. Here he switched on a light and I saw heaps of ancient baggage, old portmanteaus, Gladstone bags. “All mine,” he said, and opening a musty case he took out an ancient daguerreotype in a silver frame. He held it up to me and I looked at the portraiture. A gaunt young man in early Victorian garb.
‘“It is you,” I said.
‘He inclined his head. “I was the first. I opened up the way for Him and He gave this life to me.”
‘“For Him?” I asked.
br /> ‘“I am His guardian, until all are converted. It is conversion, you see, real conversion.”
‘“Who is this person?”
‘“Oh, He’s not a person.” The man in black stepped back from me. There was an old red velvet curtain strung across a corner of the room, he took hold of it and flung it aside. And I saw Him. I saw the thing. It sat there on a sort of throne, hideously grinning. It was like a monstrous insect. Bright red, a complicated face with a black V for a mouth and glossy slanting eyes. And this face, it seemed to be composed of other things, of people and moving images, moving, everything moving. Shifting from one form to another. I cannot explain exactly what I saw, but I knew that it was wrong. That it was wrong and it was evil. That it shouldn’t be here. That it was not allowed to be here. He had brought it here, this tall gaunt man, he was its guardian. All he was and all he did was for the service of this creature.
‘“Meet your maker,” said the man in black. “Meet your God.”
‘“No!” I fumbled for my gun, but I no longer had it, the man in black had somehow stolen it from me. I wanted to attack this thing. I felt no fear, you see. I couldn’t fear. But the sight of this thing was such that I knew, simply knew, that I must destroy it. I raised my hands to strike it down, but the gaunt man held me back.
‘“You must kneel,” he cried, “kneel before your God.”
‘I fought, but he forced me before it. It glared down at me and it spoke. The voice was like a thousand voices. Like a stadium chant. “You wanted more time,” it said. “But I have your time, your real time. The time you had to come. And now I will have all your time. You have seen me and so I must have all of your time.”
‘And it opened its horrible mouth. Wide, huge and it sucked in. And I knew it was sucking me in. Sucking in my time. All the time I’d already had, all my life. That’s what it did, you see, father. From the spines. It had my real future time and now it was sucking in my past. It was taking all the time I’d had before. The time of my childhood, my youth. It was taking all that. And it wasn’t fair, father. It wasn’t fair.’
‘It wasn’t fair, my son.’ The priest was weeping now. ‘It isn’t fair.’
‘It took my time, it took all my time.’
The pub had gone rather quiet. As Sean had been telling this tale to me more and more folk had been gathering around to listen. And they were listening intently, as if somehow they knew the truth of this tale. Or had heard something similar. Or knew of someone who had told such a tale to someone else.
‘Is that it?’ I asked Sean, when finally I found my voice.
‘Not quite,’ Sean took a pull upon the pint of beer that had grown quite warm, while the listeners’ hearts had chilled. ‘The priest was weeping, crying like a child and he ran out of the cubicle. He ran right past me, he looked terrified. And I sat there, I could hear the old man wheezing, he was dying. He had told his awful tale and now he was dying. He had lost all his time and now he was going to die alone. Utterly alone.
‘I sat there and I thought, I can’t let this old man die like that, it’s so wrong. Someone should be there with him, to hold his hand. I should be there with him. I heard his tale too.
‘So I got down from my bed and I limped around to his cubicle. My ankle didn’t hurt because of the injection, but even if it had hurt, I wouldn’t have cared. I pushed back the curtain and I went inside. He was lying there on the bed and he smelled really bad. The smell of death. I smelled that on my Gran when I was a child. The man was about to die.
‘He was all covered up, except for his head and his face looked old. Like really old. Like a hundred years old. It made me afraid just to look at him. I pulled down the cover so I could get at his hand, he was pretty much out of it by then, he probably didn’t even know I was there. But I pulled down the blanket and I took hold of his hand.
‘But it wasn’t a man’s hand. It was a child’s hand. A little child and when I pulled the blanket right back I could see his body. It was a baby’s body. This old man’s head on top of a baby’s body.
And as I took hold of the hand, this little hand, it was shrinking. Shrinking and shrinking. His time had been stolen, you see, his previous time, his past time. The thing had stolen it all from him and he was going back and back until he wouldn’t exist at all, would never exist at all. I tried to hold the hand, but I couldn’t. It just got smaller and smaller. All of him, smaller and smaller, his head was the size of a grape and I saw the eyes look up at me and the mouth move. And he spoke.’
‘And what did he say?’ I asked Sean.
‘He said, “help me, help me,” and then he just vanished.’
13
ACCIDENTAL MOVEMENTS OF THE GODS
Three months have passed since Russell parted with his life’s savings, thus depriving his poor mother of the stair-lift for her bungalow. Three months that have seen great activity in Hangar 18. Russell, who had never actually watched a movie being made, would have loved to have stood quietly by and done so. But he did not.
Russell’s days of standing quietly by were gone for ever. Russell had to find more money. Much more money.
And he’d done just that. Because, as has been said (to the point of teeth-grating tedium), Russell was a hard worker and when he was given a job to do, he did it. And he did it to the best of his abilities. And so if he was producer, then he would produce.
Armed with a carrier-bag full of videos (the ones he and Bobby Boy had made) he’d set off ‘up town’, which is to say ‘towards the West End’, which is to say, London. And there he’d made appointments, shown his videos and eaten many lunches. And being what is known as ‘an innocent abroad’, he had signed a number of rapidly drawn-up contracts and been ‘done up like a kipper’, which is to say, ‘taken to the cleaners’, which is to say, swindled.
It became clear to Russell at an early stage, that the backers (or ‘Angels’ as they preferred to be called), were far more interested in acquiring a share of the Cyberstar technology than Mr Fudgepacker’ s movie. And that wasn’t Russell’s to sell.
But he sold it anyway. Many times over. Reasoning, that if the movie was the great success he was sure it would be, he could just pay everybody back what they’d lent and a bit of a cash bonus on top and all would be happy.
Oh dear.
So he had raised a considerable sum. More than sufficient to finance all the great activity in Hangar 18 that he would have loved to have watched, but could not.
They kept him at it from morning till midnight. Mr Fudgepacker shot the movie during the day, while Russell was out doing the business, then he locked away all the test videos and technology and what-nots in his big safe before Russell got back to spend the evening trying to figure out the accounts. It just wasn’t fair.
And so now, at the end of a particularly tiring day, Russell sat all alone in Bobby Boy’s suitably grim office, that was now Russell’s suitably grim office, with his head in his hands, in a state of stress.
A state of stress and one of worry.
Russell worried about everything. He worried (not without good cause) about all the deals he’d made, but that was the least of his worries.
Russell worried a lot about the Flügelrad. For one thing, where was it now? Bobby Boy had shifted it out of Hangar 18 before anyone else got a look at it. But he wouldn’t tell Russell where he’d shifted it to. All he said was that it was in a very safe place and that Russell should remember he was sworn to secrecy about it.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Bobby Boy told him. ‘It is no longer important.’
But it did matter and it was important. That thing had brought Adolf Hitler into the present day. And where was Adolf now? Lurking somewhere close at hand? Plotting and planning? Committing unspeakable acts? It didn’t bear thinking about. But Russell thought about it all the time.
And what about the future? That Nazi future Bobby Boy claimed to have seen? And what about the beautiful Julie? She had somehow come back from that future to give Russell the
programmer, kiss him and tell him she loved him. How had that come about? She’d vanished with two evil clanking things in pursuit. Things that had followed her from the future. And neither she nor the clanking things were travelling in Flügelrads. What did that mean?
Was time travel commonplace in the future? Did folk from the future come back and tamper with the past?
Russell raised his head from his hands and gave it a dismal shake. And what about the movie? If it was made using technology stolen from the future and was a great success, then copies of it would exist in the future. Therefore someone in the future would be able to trace where and when the movie was originally made and dispatch a couple of evil clankers to reclaim the technology and therefore stop it being made. But of course if they did that and the movie didn’t get made, then copies of it could not exist in the future, so someone wouldn’t be able to trace where and when it was made and send back the clankers. But what if—
‘Aaaaaaaaagh!’ Russell reached into the desk drawer and brought out a bottle of Glen Boleskine. He was drinking now on a regular basis and it really wasn’t good for him. But all of this was all too much and what made it worse was that Russell was the only one doing any worrying about it.
Old Ernest wasn’t worried. He was back behind the camera reliving his golden days. And Bobby Boy wasn’t worried, he’d passed all the responsibility on to Russell and he was fulfilling his dream to become a movie star. And Frank wasn’t worried. And Julie wasn’t worried. And Morgan probably didn’t even know how to worry. Only Russell worried. And it wasn’t fair.
It just wasn’t fair.
Russell tasted Scotch and glared at the papers on his desk. Piles of them and many the fault of Frank. Frank just loved paperwork and now he was a prop man again he could give his love full head (so to speak). Frank was currently employed by Fudgepacker Films as well as Fudgepacker’sEmporium. Which put him in the marvellous position of being able to send paperwork to himself. Every time something hired from the Emporium got broken on the film set, the Emporium charged the film company. The film company then borrowed back its own money, bought a replacement item, leased it to the Emporium which then rehired it to the film company. Frank had never been happier.