The Gang of Four

Sir Grievous Mielczarek’s revival of Cats at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane was, by common consent, a triumph, with Mr. Waterstone in particular gushing with fulsome praise. He even insisted on dragging the others backstage afterwards to meet the cast.

  Russell was happy to tag along. This was perhaps the third time he’d seen Cats over the years, but the first at the West End. The production values, he had to concede, were impeccable. Maybe if anything it was all a bit over-produced. But Mr. Waterstone was having none of it.

  The gang finally departed Drury Lane some time after midnight and headed straight for the karaoke bars. Mr. Waterstone performed numbers from Cats, much to the hilarity of the mainly Chinese clientele, while Ceres reduced grown men to tears with her immaculate and soulful renditions of various pop classics. Michael, with the help of Russell, and a deliberately malfunctioning perception filter, banged out a disturbing version of The Prodigy’s Diesel Power. Like Ceres, he had demonstrated the ability to touch his audience emotionally, but not in the same way.

  After the karaoke came the clubs, and then it all got a bit hazy...

  The loud banging at his bedroom door jolted Russell awake. Once again he found himself contributing to a Gordian knot of twenty intertwining limbs, unable to move or breath. He could not even cry out!

  The banging returned, more insistent: ‘Russell!?’

  The Gordian knot flew apart, with Russell forced down into his mattress before being sent skyward again by the rebound. He bounced back onto his bed.

  ‘Christ! Why do we have to sleep like this!?’ he demanded of the others.

  ‘Russell!?’

  ‘Oh shit, that’s Meg!’ he shouted.

  ‘I heard that! Russell, open the door!’

  Russell unlocked the door and Meg burst in. She looked over at Ceres and then Mr. Waterstone; she even glanced at Michael, who was stuck to the ceiling. But it was Russell she was interested in.

  ‘Russell! A word please – in private.’ Meg dragged Russell from his bedroom and towards the front door of his flat.

  ‘Russell, what the hell is going on!? I had to cancel two classes yesterday because of your no-show, and you’re already keeping your ten o clock waiting today! What the hell are you playing at and–’ Meg added in a loud and hoarse whisper: ‘–why are you still hanging around with this crowd!?’

  Ceres pushed by them, reaching for the front door. She beamed a large smile at Meg. ‘There’s a bakery down the high street, Mr. Waterstone has a hankering for croissants. Can I get either of you anything?’

  ‘Not for me, thanks,’ replied Russell.

  ‘You shouldn’t feed a cat croissants, it’s bad for their digestion,’ added Meg, eyeing Ceres with obvious disapproval.

  ‘Who, him!?’ snorted Ceres with laughter, as she departed Russell’s flat: ‘he’s a dustbin, he’ll eat anything!’

  ‘She’s a bit eccentric,’ said Russell with a chuckle.

  ‘That’s hardly the point! You’re missing classes because of them and you’re running the business into the ground!’ Meg’s eyes began to moisten and Russell reached to comfort and reassure her but she pushed him away. ‘Get your arse down there asap! And change your stinking clothes!’

  Meg stomped down the stairs that led to the studio, slamming Russell’s front door behind her.

  ‘Staff problems?’ enquired Michael who had appeared from nowhere.

  ‘Piss off!’ Russell pushed past the spider and it followed him into the kitchen.

  ‘Just a black coffee again for me, thanks.’

  Russell began to fill the kettle and glanced over at the cat who was sitting at the kitchen table expectantly: ‘Your croissants are on their way, Mr. Waterstone… you won’t need the knife and fork this time.’

  Russell conducted his ‘ten o clock’ in a distracted frame of mind. As well as the ‘issues’ facing humanity and the fact that Meg was on his case, there remained the disquieting prospect of dealing with an ET known as: “the Malevolence”. After the class he joined the others, who were watching television in his lounge.

  ‘What’s the itinerary for today, then?’ Russell asked, checking to see if the blackboard was anywhere in sight. He was relieved to see that it wasn’t. Every time that thing showed up his universe disintegrated.

  ‘We will be leaving London today, Mr. Tebb. I suggest you pack a suitcase,’ replied Ceres.

  ‘Now hang on! You heard Meg. I can’t just leave my business to hang like this. I have responsibilities, obligations, duties!’

  ‘Oh put a sock in it, Russell,’ said Michael, ‘you’ve got bigger fish to fry. Besides, you just need to cancel classes for today, tomorrow and probably Friday. If, after that, the world is still standing, you could resume classes by the weekend. Do you conduct classes at the weekend?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘There you go! Russell Tebb Aerobics will survive, people are always going to need fitness instructors! – Unless, of course, your business model is flawed. How’s your cash flow?’

  ‘Never mind my cash flow, what about Meg!?’

  ‘Would you like me to talk to her, Mr. Tebb?’ enquired Ceres.

  ‘Err, no. I don’t–’

  ‘Yes, you can talk to me!’ Meg had been eavesdropping from somewhere, but she now strode directly into the lounge for a showdown with Ceres. She stood before her, arms folded.

  ‘You’ll have to close the shop for the remainder of this week,’ said Ceres, leaning around Meg to maintain her view of the TV.

  ‘What!? Why!?’

  There was a groaning sound. Everyone turned to look at the cat.

  ‘Did you feed him those croissants? He’s probably in considerable pain right now!’ declared Meg.

  ‘Well, let’s hope he doesn’t blow, or we could lose California,’ remarked Michael. The cat farted. ‘Too late!’

  Everyone, including Meg, erupted with laughter.

  ‘Happy to report: California still intact, ma’am,’ added Michael, once the laughter had subsided.

  Meg shifted her position slightly to block Ceres’s view of the TV. ‘Why should we close the business on your say-so? Who the hell do you think you are!?’ demanded Meg.

  ‘It’s just for a few days, Meg,’ cajoled Russell, ‘We’ll be alright. You can take the remainder of the week off!’

  ‘No. I want to know why she’s calling the shots.’

  Ceres stopped trying to view the TV around Meg’s blocking form and calmly regarded her. ‘Mr. Tebb is assisting us with very important work.’

  ‘Legal work?’

  ‘Not illegal.’

  ‘Fine!’ shouted Meg. ‘And what is “Mr. Tebb” being paid for this “very important work”!?’

  Mr. Waterstone dropped down from his chair and deposited a small gold nugget at Meg’s feet. She instinctively picked it up: ‘Is this solid gold? Eeww! It’s slimy! And it stinks!’

  Meg continued to eye the nugget in her hand: ‘It looks and smells like a turd. Where did it come from?’

  ‘From deep inside the bowels of the Earth,’ replied Russell taking the nugget off Meg, who did not want to give it up. He then took it through to the kitchen and washed the warm steaming lump under a tap. Once clean he handed it back to Meg. ‘There must be about an ounce there; and it’s definitely real gold. You can take it to one of London’s gold merchants to exchange for cash.’

  Meg gauged the weight of the gold nugget and seemed happier now. She turned to the cat: ‘Have you got any more of these?’

  ‘Just wait till yesterday’s Full English works its way through the pipes,’ remarked Michael.

  The distraction of the gold nugget was enough to finally get Meg to calm down and get off everyone’s back. Russell packed his suitcase and instructed Meg to contact all the clients who had booked sessions for this week. He finally departed the Bermondsey studio close to noon, and joined the others at the Bentley.

  ‘Okay, West Country is it?’ asked Russell, starting up the car’s motor.

  ‘Yes,’ repl
ied Ceres, ‘but first, it’s time we dealt with the Malevolence. Are you happy to take the lead with this one, Mr. Tebb?’

  The Bentley soon found itself in gridlock at Southwark and Ceres began to read out loud from her secret file:

  ‘The Malevolence roughly extends from Belgravia in the west to Blackfriars in the east, although it does have extensions beyond this, mainly continuing along that east/west axis. It seems to favour proximity to the Thames, and has very little interest in south London.’

  She turned over several pages of the secret “Majestic” report and continued Russell’s briefing:

  ‘Its nearest Earth analogues are the Eukaryote–’

  ‘The what!?’ asked Russell, as he slowly edged the traffic-snagged Bentley forwards.

  ‘Fungus, Mr. Tebb. The majority of its physical form is made up of hypha, a branching filament network used to transport water and nutrients; it resides exclusively underground. The Victorians discovered this when they were building their underground network.’

  ‘Did they know it was ET?’ asked Russell.

  ‘They did when it started possessing people.’

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘It’s the fruiting bodies that exhibit this capability. The material underground is largely harmless, but the Victorians did not realize this, and they went to war against it. For nearly ten years it was the worst kept secret in London, everyone knew about it, or thought they did. Only when the state stepped up its attacks to an industrial scale did the Malevolence retreat. It vanished from the scene and the Victorians believed it to be destroyed. They then concentrated on spinning the whole tale into something more prosaic. Through an onslaught of misinformation and bullying of the international press it soon became but a rumour, then a myth, then after a generation or two – everyone forgot about it.’

  ‘They managed to quash the whole story!?’

  ‘Yes, in the era before the internet, when even the telegraph was in its infancy, the bureaucracy of the state could easily kill it – the story, that is. Then, thanks to Sir Hamish Smiles, the British secret service even managed to forget about it.’

  The Bentley negotiated its way into lighter traffic but subsequently ground to a halt again near Waterloo station. Russell listened with growing unease as Ceres explained how the fungus took control of its attackers.

  ‘It sounds as though the Victorians got the upper hand in the end. Are you convinced they didn’t wipe it out altogether?’ he suggested.

  ‘Yes. They destroyed biomass but the creature itself could re-spawn from even microscopic fragments. Destroying this thing outright would be like trying to kill giant knotweed: a virtual impossibility for Victorian technology. The Malevolence chose to retreat, not because of the humans, but because all this human activity risked alerting the Sponsors.’

  ‘Ah, you’d think the Sponsors would have noticed all this activity anyway!’

  ‘Indeed, Mr. Tebb, which leads us to conclude that this entity is some form of naturally evolved Sponsor parasite. Something very adept at concealing itself from them. The hoo hah generated by its discovery was probably the last thing it wanted, so when things all became a bit too hot, it sloped off into the shadows. Then when the fuss finally died down, it restored its physical form.’

  The Bentley crossed over Westminster Bridge, heading north.

  ‘Are you sure it is still around now?’

  ‘Oh yes, after first reading this report yesterday I instructed the local bacterial community to investigate and confirm its extent. They reported back this morning: Their mapping analysis closely matches the Victorians’ findings. Although it now keeps clear of the Underground system.’

  ‘Bacterial community!?’

  ‘Yes!’ affirmed Ceres, with some force.

  ‘Valued members of our team, Russell,’ added Michael, rather sternly.

  ‘I’m sure they’re all lovely fellas,’ replied Russell. ‘...So what’s the plan? Are we going to send in Mr. Waterstone to give this thing a taste of tube gun?’

  ‘No, that would be overkill. Besides, the Malevolence, unlike the Sponsors, does not mine the Earth for rare heavy elements, so Mr. Waterstone has no direct gripe this time. And it is not growing or displacing any pre-existing ecosystems, so I’m not that bothered either. But it is interested in the human system, very interested.’

  ‘So this is why you want me to “take the lead”?’

  That’s correct, Mr. Tebb. Find out what it’s doing here. Discover the full extent of its capabilities. Then decide what action you want us to take. You may decide that no action should be taken. But it is your call.’

  ‘No problem,’ replied Russell, sarcastically. ‘So I’m just going to saunter up to…’

  ‘One of its fruiting bodies.’

  ‘Yes, one of its fruity bodies–’

  ‘Fruiting bodies!’ interjected Michael.

  ‘Whatever. And then say, “hi, I represent Earth, do you mind filling out one of these immigration forms!?’

  ‘Something like that. We’ll play it by ear.’

  Russell shrugged as he drove the Bentley along Birdcage Walk. ‘That’s Saint James’s Park on the right,’ he remarked, bringing the car to a gradual halt.

  The gang jumped out and assembled around the boot. Once Michael had retrieved various bits of tech, they were ready.

  ‘Start looking for exotic flora,’ said Ceres, ‘when Mr. Tebb starts acting strange – we’ll know we are close.’

  ***