‘No!’ Mr Fudgepacker raised a shrivelled fist. ‘I’m not done. He’s not done.’
‘I’m afraid you’re wrong again,’ said Russell. ‘He is done. He is being disposed of even as we speak.’
‘No! That cannot be.’
‘I set up a little bureau back in the Fifties,’ said Russell. ‘Department 23. To investigate paranormal occurrences. The data came in from police stations around the country. I called myself The Captain, investigated one or two very strange ones in the Brentford district. A crime wave caused by a man who turned out not to be a man at all, just a bundle of spare parts.
‘The workings of that thing in your basement. I’ve kept Him under close surveillance and I’ve learned all about Him and all about His weaknesses.’
‘He doesn’t have any weaknesses. Only—’
‘Only his problem with time,’ said Russell. ‘He lives time in reverse, doesn’t he? He was born in the future, and he’ll die in the past. He halts the process by absorbing other people’s time. He can do that to them. Steal their time. And I know about his voice. His one voice which is many. The voice that has the power to hypnotize and control, the voice you intended to dub onto the movie so that all who heard it would be controlled.’
‘He’ll take you,’ crowed Mr Fudgepacker. ‘He’ll take your time.
‘No,’ said Russell. ‘A special unit of my operatives is already at the Emporium. They are wearing protective reflecting suits. And earphones which broadcast white noise. Your creature cannot influence them. They have the time belt. I’ve set it for the year dot, as it were. I wonder how long ago that is? A million years? A billion? They will put the time belt on the creature and press the little button.
As Russell spoke the intercom purred. Russell whispered words into it and whispered words were returned to him.
‘It is done,’ said Russell. ‘It is all over.’
Julie slumped into one of the boardroom chairs and stared across the table at the old man who sat before her. ‘You really did a number on us, didn’t you, Russell? You really pulled out all the stops.’
‘It has cost me my life. I have a chronic heart condition. I only have months, maybe only weeks, to live. But I held on because I knew this day would come. I’m finished now, but I have stopped you.’
‘Oh no you haven’t,’ said Julie. ‘There’s something you’ve forgotten.’
‘What?’ Russell asked.
‘I still have my time belt, I can go back to yesterday and cancel this meeting.’
‘No,’ said Russell. ‘You wouldn’t do that?’
‘Oh yes I would.’ Julie opened her jacket. She was wearing the belt. She adjusted the little dial on the buckle.
‘No,’ implored Russell. ‘Don’t do it.’
‘I’ll see you yesterday,’ said Julie. ‘Except you won’t see today. I’ll gun you down as you cross the street. You’re dead, Russell. Goodbye, and it hasn’t been nice knowing you.’
And with that she pressed the button on her belt and promptly vanished.
‘Ha ha!’ Bobby Boy laughed up from the floor. ‘You’re dead, Russell. Ha, ha, ha.’
Russell smiled. ‘I don’t feel very dead,’ he said.
‘But she’ll shoot you, yesterday.’
‘I don’t remember being shot, yesterday.’
‘What?’
‘You didn’t really think I’d leave a loose end like that floating about, surely?’
‘What?’
‘I’m afraid I did something yesterday,’ said Russell. ‘I crept into Julie’s bedroom and did a bit of reprogramming to her time belt. I think you’ll find she’s a long way from here now. Back in the year dot.’
‘You bastard!’ croaked Fudgepacker. ‘That was my wife.’
‘The Führer’s girlfriend,’ said Russell. ‘She played you false. She played everybody false.’
‘Ah yes,’ Ernest Fudgepacker rose from his knees. ‘The Führer, the Führer.’
‘Ah yes. The Führer.’ Russell perused the golden Rolex on his wrist. ‘I think just about now, on the western horizon ... If you’ll just look into the sky.’
Ernest Fudgepacker turned and as he did so a bright flash, almost like a daytime firework, lit up the western sky and then faded into the blue.
Ernest Fudgepacker groaned.
‘Bomb on board the Flügelrad,’ said Russell. ‘If only he hadn’t kept popping back from the future to have a drink with you. Still, at least this time he went out with a bang, rather than a whimper.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I saw what you did to him in the future,’ said Russell. ‘What you are intending to do Sacrifice him to that time creature of yours, is that it?’
‘I would have, a couple of years from now, for what he did. Taking my beautiful wife.’
‘Well, he’s gone now,’ said Russell, ‘for ever. And that, gentlemen, I think, is it. I’m afraid the excitement has all been a little much for me, I will have to have a lie down. I can call for a paramedic if you want, Bobby Boy.’
‘No thanks,’ the thin man climbed unsteadily to his feet.
‘And you’d best get back to the Emporium, Mr Fudgepacker,’ said Russell. ‘There’s a lot of business coming your way.’
‘There is?’
‘I’m producing a movie,’ said Russell. ‘It will be my last. But I’ll want to hire props from the Emporium. Many props. All the props. You’ll make enough for a happy retirement, Mr Fudgepacker. I wouldn’t deprive you of that.’
Mr Fudgepacker sighed. ‘You’ve a good heart, Russell. You’ve always had a good heart.’
‘Sadly,’ said Russell, ‘I now have an ill one. But you’ll get your retirement fund. I’ll see that youdo.’
Mr Fudgepacker shuffled to the lift door accompanied by a sulking Bobby Boy, and then he turned. ‘Tell me, Russell,’ he said, ‘what’s your movie about?’
‘It’s autobiographical,’ said Russell. ‘It’s called Nostradamus Ate my Hamster.’
22
‘And?’ said Pooley.
‘And what?’ said Omally.
‘And what happened next? I suppose.’
‘Well, nothing happened next. That’s the end of the story.’
‘Oh,’ said Pooley, taking a sip from his pint. ‘So that was it. Just like that.’
‘Just like that.’ Omally joined Jim with a sip from his own. ‘But it wasn’t really just like that, was it? I mean Russell gave up all of his life for just that one moment. A pretty noble thing to do by any reckoning.’
Jim nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s not the way we would have done it,’ he said. ‘If we’d done it there would have been explosions going off and people running all over the place.’
‘But we didn’t do it, did we?’
Jim now shook his head with an equal degree of thoughtfulness. ‘No,’ said he, ‘you’re right there.’
‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man,’ said Omally, raising his glass to his companion.
Jim raised his in return and both took deep respectful draughts. ‘But what do you think did happen to Russell?’ Pooley asked.
Omally shrugged. ‘Who can say? Perhaps he’s dead now. Or perhaps all the things in the story have yet to happen. After all, I’ve never seen his movie, have you?’
‘No,’ said Jim. ‘And let’s face it, we’ve never actually met the fellow. We didn’t get atomized at Christmas time and we didn’t get sent into the future. The Swan’s still here and we’re still in it.
‘Makes you think,’ said John Omally.
‘It certainly does,’ Jim agreed. ‘And it makes you wonder also.’
‘Some say,’ said John, ‘that he is still alive. In fact ...’ And here Omally gestured towards old Pete, who stood at the bar counter tasting rum, his dog Chips sampling a drips tray that Neville had put out for him. ‘Some say that old Pete is actually Russell.’
‘Leave it out!’ Jim coughed into his pint. ‘Not that surly old sod.’
‘I heard that,?
?? said Pete.
Me too, thought Chips, but he said only ‘woof’.
‘Others,’ Omally drew Jim near with a beckoning hand, ‘others say that if you were to go to Fudgepacker’s Emporium and discover the secret door, go down the steps and enter the boiler room, you would find a tiny curtained-off corner. And if you had the nerve, you might draw that curtain aside. And there, there, seated on a kind of throne-like chair, you would see Russell. Still a young man and just sitting there staring forever into space. You see, some say that he was never a real person at all, that he was just a construct. A bit of you and a bit of me. A bit of everyone who cares about the borough, called into life by magical means when the need arose. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. And possibly ...’ John paused.
‘Possibly what?’ Jim asked.
‘Possibly if you were to go right up to him and put your ear to his lips, you might just hear this little voice.’
‘Little voice?’
‘Little voice. And it would say ...’ John paused again.
‘What would it say?’
‘It would say, Help me, help me.’
‘Urgh no!’ Jim shook his head fiercely. ‘That is a terrible story, John. That is quite horrible. That’s not the way it should end at all.’
‘No, you’re right.’ Omally finished his pint. ‘But, of course, other folk say other things. I heard tell, for instance, that because Russell stopped all the bad stuff from happening by giving up his whole life, that he, of course, changed the future. So if none of the bad stuff could happen in the future, he would never go there, get the time belt and have to do all he did. So, in a twinkling of an eye, everything un-happened and he was a young man again, working back at Fudgepacker’s.’
‘I like that one,’ said Jim. ‘That one I like. That’s what I’d call a happy ending. I hope it happened that way.’
‘Me too.’ Omally rattled his empty glass upon the table. ‘Me too.’
A young man now entered The Flying Swan. He was a fit and agile-looking young man, with a fine head of thick dark hair. He approached the bar and the new blonde barmaid Neville had taken on for lunchtimes turned to greet him.
She smiled the young man a mouth load of lovely white teeth. ‘What will it be, sir?’ she asked. The young man paused a moment, as if suddenly torn by some inner struggle, possibly regarding what blonde barmaids expect a real man to drink. But the moment he paused for was a brief one and straightening his shoulders he said, ‘a Perrier water, please.
‘Oh good,’ said the blonde barmaid, beaming hugely and beautifully, as if possibly recalling something her horoscope had said. ‘Oh, just perfect.’
Omally looked at Pooley.
And Pooley looked at Omally.
‘Now that,’ said Jim, ‘is what I call a happy ending.’
‘I’ll drink to it,’ said Omally. ‘Hey, Russell, two pints over here.’
THE END
Also by
ROBERT RANKIN
The Antipope
The Brentford Triangle
East of Ealing
The Sprouts of Wrath
Armageddon: The Musical
They Came and Ate Us
The Suburban Book of the Dead
The Book of Ultimate Truths
Raiders of the Lost Car Park
The Greatest Show Off Earth
The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived
The Garden of Unearthly Delights
A Dog Called Demolition
Nostradamus Ate My Hamster
Sprout Mask Replica
The Brentford Chainstore Massacre
The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag
Apocalypso
Snuff Fiction
Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls
Waiting for Godalming
Web Site Story
The Fandom of the Operator
The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse
The Witches of Chiswick
Knees Up Mother Earth
The Brightonomicon
The Toyminator
The Da-da-de-da-da Code
Necrophenia
Retromancer
The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions
The Mechanical Messiah and Other Marvels of the Modern Age
The Educated Ape and Other Wonders of the Worlds
Illustrated works:
The Bumper Book of Ficts written by Neil Gardner
EMPIRES
E-book edition cover illustration by Robert Rankin
Additional Editing and Art direction, joyful company, top drawer steel pan artistry and an unnatural passion for the kiwi bird: Rachel Hayward
Table of Contents
A WORD TO THE WISE
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Robert Rankin, Nostradamus Ate My Hamster
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