MrsRoeg ran a long pointy tongue back and forth beneath her painted upper lip. ‘Now what will I have?’ she asked.
The question was, of course, rhetorical. Mrs Roeg knew exactly what she was going to have. And Danny knew exactly what she was going to have. And Mrs Roeg knew that Danny knew exactly what she was going to have. And Danny knew that she knew. And so forth.
But in an off-licence you pretend that you don’t.
‘Was it wine?’ Danny asked.
‘No.’ Mrs Roeg’s pale blue eyes danced along the ‘heavy duty’ shelf. Well, her vision did anyway. Her eyes stayed inside her head (for now).
‘Well, la-de-da,’ said Mrs Roeg.
‘That old tart hates your guts, Danny boy.’
‘She does not,’ whispered Danny behind his hand.
‘Put the machine on her, you’ll find out.’
‘It will be a pleasure to prove you wrong.’
‘Did you say something?’ Mrs Roeg asked.
‘No, sorry, only clearing my throat.’ Danny cleared the throat that didn’t need clearing.
‘I think I’ll take a bottle of Jim Beam and twenty Consulate.’
‘Don’t forget the machine.’
Danny took down the bottle and the pack of cigarettes. He placed them on the counter just beyond the woman’s reach and picked up the bar-code-reading light-pen thingy that was attached by a cable to the cash register.
‘This brand?’ Danny asked, turning the pack of cigarettes onto its side. Mrs Roeg reached out her hand and, as she did so, Danny ran the light-pen over her wrist. She didn’t notice. Folk never did.
‘They’re fine,’ said Mrs Roeg.
Danny applied the light-pen to the bar codes on the bottle and the cigarettes. On Mrs Roeg’s side of the cash register the liquid crystal display showed the prices. On Danny’s side it read out something quite different. The words SMARMY YOUNG UPSTART glowed in capital letters. Danny looked up from them and smiled. ‘Will there be anything else?’ he asked, as he accepted the credit card.
‘No, that’s all.’
The business was done, a signature signed, a bottle wrapped, a carrier bag shaken, a wrapped bottle placed therein and a packet of cigarettes. Mrs Roeg smiled once more and went on her way.
Danny watched her depart. Danny wasn’t smiling.
‘The bogtrotter’s slipped a can of Carlsberg up his jumper,’ said the voice in Danny’s head.
‘I saw him, we share the same eyes, you know.’
‘But not the same instincts. A summary caution, do you think?’
‘I do.’
Danny came around the counter and approached the young man. ‘Might I be of assistance?’ he asked.
‘No. I don’t think I want anything, actually.’
‘I see.’
It was fast. It was very fast. Danny shot out his left hand, caught the young man by his left wrist, twisted it viciously up his back. The first two fingers of Danny’s right hand were suddenly up the young man’s nostrils.
A can of Carlsberg Special Brew bounced onto the linoleum and rolled slowly across to the counter.
Danny’s mouth was close to the right ear of the now squirming youth. ‘Come into my shop again,’ whispered Danny, ‘and I’ll break both your legs. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, yes,’ went the lad in a high-pitched nasally tone.
‘Bite his ear off as a lesson.’
‘I will not!’
‘You won’t what?’ The young man struggled.
Danny flung him towards the door. ‘Get out. Go on, and don’t come back.’
‘I won’t.’ And with a step so light and quick that the doormat hardly raised a growl, the young man left the off-licence never to return.
‘Bite off his ear?’ said Danny. ‘What kind of talk is that?’
‘Just my little joke. Ha ha.’
‘I shouldn’t have brought you out with me tonight. You stay in the shed tomorrow.’
‘Oh no, please, sir, don’t lock me in the shed.’
Danny laughed. ‘Then behave yourself. Bite his ear off indeed. Whatever goes on in your head?’
‘I don’t have a head, Danny, that’s why I’m inside yours.’
Danny grinned. ‘And for the most part I enjoy the experience.’ He turned towards the cash register. ‘And showing me how to rewire that thing so it reads out what people think. That was clever. How do you know such stuff?’
‘Danny boy, I know all kinds of stuff.’
‘Yep. I reckon that you do.’ Danny did a little skipping kind of a dance back to the counter. ‘And do you know what?’
‘Probably, but go on just the same.’
‘I’m chuffed,’ said Danny. ‘Dead chuffed.’
‘And why, as if I don’t know?’
‘Because I have you, my own holy guardian angel, to protect and advise me. Am I one lucky guy, or am I not?’
‘You certainly are, Danny. You certainly are.’
But he certainly wasn’t.
Most certainly he was not.
11
If all the Chinese in the world were to march four-abreast past a given point, they would never finish passing it, though they marched forever and ever.
BASED ON US MARCHING REGULATIONS
AS HARD TO SAY AS SNPHZJT
‘So, what have you to report?’ asked the gentleman, glancing up from his desk to the man in the whitest of suits.
The man who was not altogether a man, but mostly a cockroach.
‘Everything is going exactly according to plan,’ said Mr Parton Vrane.
‘This would be the Above-Top-Secret plan, rather than the Just-Plain-Secret plan?’
‘Correct. I proceeded to the house of the late Mr Sprout and waited. Sure enough, a likely subject appeared on the scene. A Mr Danny Orion. I temporarily disabled Mr Orion and then summoned the beast, which was hiding in the picture of the Queen Mother. It entered Mr Orion, who engaged me in combat. I allowed him to rip off my hand and thrust my body down a drainhole.’
‘And how is the hand?’ the gentleman asked.
‘Oh fine.’ Parton Vrane displayed his left hand. ‘I grew another. No problems there.’
‘Splendid. Go on with your report.’
‘Convinced that I was dead and no threat remained to it, the beast then went on his way within the subject. I have been keeping him under close surveillance. He is showing no signs of psychotic behaviour as yet. I suspect the beast has spun him the usual yarn.’
‘That he is a holy guardian angel, come to protect and advise?’
‘That’s the form. The subject keeps smiling and talking to himself. He’s taken a job at the local off-licence.’
‘Ah,’ said the gentleman. ‘That is significant.’
‘Agreed. Normally the subject withdraws totally into the world the beast creates for him. This is a new development. Do you want me to bring them in yet?’
‘Oh no, not yet.’
‘I don’t think we should wait too long.’
‘There you go, thinking again.’
‘People will die,’ said Parton Vrane.
‘I’m not altogether sure. Something different is occurring. Any – how shall I put this? – creative activity, on the part of the subject?’
‘Indeed,’ Mr Parton Vrane nodded. ‘He has rented an allotment patch. He spends most of his spare time there.’
‘Horticulture?’ The gentleman shrugged. ‘Surely not.’
‘There is an allotment shed. He spends much of his spare time in it.’
‘Have you seen inside?’
‘No, he’s painted over the windows and he keeps it well padlocked.’
‘They’re building another one. I knew it.’
‘Another shed?’
‘Not a shed.’
‘Another what, then?’ asked Parton Vrane.
‘Vehicle. Animated robot, ersatz zombie, Frankenstein’s monster, call it what you will.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Then allow me to explain. You know how the beasts first came to be discovered?’
‘Of course. But if you’re in the mood to re-tell the whole story, I’d really like to hear it again.’
‘You would?’
‘Absolutely.’
The gentleman raised an eyebrow, was Parton Vrane making the mock or what? The gentleman composed himself. ‘Right then,’ he said. ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’
‘No, I’m still standing up.’
‘Well, let’s assume you’re sitting comfortably.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Then I’ll begin. The story proper begins in the year 1905, when that great philosopher, scientist and mathematician, Sir Hugo Rune, first postulated his theory of relativity.’
‘But I thought it was Einstein’s theory of relativity.’
‘Different theory. Rune’s theory was in regard to the Earth’s exact position in the universe, that it is at the very centre, with everything else relatively far away.’
‘It sounds a rather foolish proposition.’
‘Nevertheless, he proved it conclusively.’
‘How?’
‘I’m coming to that. Will you stop butting in?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Right. Now, Rune’s theory works in this fashion. If you could draw a straight line of infinite length, a never-ending line which stretched on and on for ever and ever in either direction, then any point you chose upon that line must, by definition, be at its very centre. There could not be more infinity on one side of the point than the other, could there?
Parton Vrane shook his head. ‘Of course there could not.’
‘So,’ continued the gentleman, ‘if you stand at any point on the planet Earth and look straight up, what are you looking into?’
‘Infinity?’
‘Infinity. From wherever you choose to stand. In every direction. No more infinity if you stand at the South Pole and look straight up, than if you stand at the North. Equal amounts of infinity in every direction. Ergo, the planet Earth is right at the very centre of the universe.’
‘What about if I stood on another planet somewhere else? Wouldn’t that make the planet I was standing on the centre of the universe?’
‘An interesting theory,’ said the gentleman. ‘How would you go about demonstrating this then?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t, would I?’
‘No, you would not. Because you cannot stand upon another planet, only this one.’
‘Someone else might be standing on another planet.’
‘The point is, Mr Vrane, that they are not. No life exists upon other planets. Because all life exists here, right here at the very hub of the universe. On planet Earth.’
‘All life?’
‘All. Life, as we define it, is a localized phenomenon, occurring only at the central point. You are aware that infinity only works in one direction, aren’t you? That although you can go on doubling the size of something for ever, in all directions, you cannot divide something in half an infinite number of times?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because eventually you will have something so small that it weighs less than the light which falls upon it and at that point it simply ceases to exist in this universe.’
‘Well I never knew that.’
The gentleman raised another eyebrow. That was sarcasm. It was. ‘So,’ said he, ‘Earth at the very centre of the universe and all life on Earth. Where does that take us to?’
‘Does it take us to the experiments of Dr James Bacon in the 1920s?’
‘It does. Dr Bacon’s work was with spectroscopy, the science of analyzing the spectrum, which is the distribution of colours produced when white light is dispersed by a prism or some such means. Dr Bacon’s research took a radical departure. He wanted to know what would happen if you projected darkness through a prism. Would there be a negative spectrum?’
‘Again a rather foolish proposition, on the face of it.’
‘On the face of it. However, the redoubtable Dr Bacon persevered. In his opinion darkness was, in fact, black light. He constructed test apparatus to project a shadow through an opaque prism cut from obsidian. Few of his notes remain extant, but we know that he succeeded and that he perfected his dark-light goggles, or nightshades, as he called them. And that he was the first man ever to see into the negative spectrum and view the creatures that dwell within.’
‘The riders.’
‘The riders. Invisible to normal vision. Another order of being, sharing our planet. And sharing us.’
‘Makes your flesh crawl, don’t it?’ whispered Parton Vrane.
‘It does. Dr Bacon saw them. At first he thought it must be some trick of the light. The black light. And so he put on his nightshades and went out for a stroll in the park.’
‘Didn’t he keep bumping into things?’
The gentleman raised both eyebrows. Very high. And lost his monocle once more. ‘I don’t know. But he sat in the park and he watched people passing by. Except he couldn’t see people. Because he was looking into the negative spectrum. But he could see what was riding upon the people. The other beings. He described them as pale and flimsy, humanoid, with oversized hairless heads and large black slanting eyes.’
‘That’s what they look like,’ said Parton Vrane. ‘Apart from the really bad ones. The real beasties.’
‘Dr Bacon returned to his laboratory,’ the gentleman continued. ‘And there, with the kind of courage which made Clive of India, Gordon of Khartoum and Tom of Finland whatever they are today, he looked through his nightshades into a mirror.’
‘And got a somewhat unpleasant surprise. But tell me this. We know that these creatures are capable of controlling the thoughts of the individuals they ride upon. How come the creature on Dr Bacon did not control his thoughts? Stop him being able to see the creatures, in fact?’
‘Theories abound.’ The gentleman shrugged. ‘Some say that the creature slept, others that it was aloof to the thoughts of Dr Bacon and did not see that he could pose a threat. Whatever the case the creature did nothing. Dr Bacon stared into the mirror and the creature on his shoulders stared back at him. And Dr Bacon determined that at all costs he would remove this creature from his person.’
‘Which he did.’
‘Which he did, although we do not know how. After he had removed it he went once more for a walk in the park. This time without his nightshades. And now he could see them clearly. With the creature removed from him, his eyes were well and truly open. Dr Bacon had become the world’s first clear.’
‘And then his troubles began.’
‘They did. He could see the creatures, but the creatures could see that he was clear. That one of their number was no longer riding upon him. They pressed hard upon the thoughts of their unwitting human hosts. Dr Bacon was pelted with stones by small boys. Attacked in the street. An angry mob surrounded his laboratory.’
‘And they killed him.’
‘The Coroner’s report said “suicide”. But then it would say that, wouldn’t it? We don’t know how he died, he was working on a means to rid humanity of the creatures. His left foot was injured in some way. Heavily bandaged. Gangrene, blood-poisoning, murder, who can say?’
‘Which takes us almost up to the present day. Thankfully.’
‘Thankfully?’ As the gentleman had already raised both his eyebrows, he now raised his moustache.
‘Go on,’ whispered Parton Vrane. ‘Finish the story.’
‘The nineteen fifties. The Cold War. Suspicion, intrigue, espionage. Experiments with electronic camouflage. Radar invisibility. Genetic engineering.’
‘The creation of my kind,’ said Parton Vrane, ‘designed to withstand atomic radiation, regenerate lost limbs, see in the dark.’
The gentleman nodded. ‘Into the black light. Although we did not understand it then. It came as a shock when your kind described what they were able to see.’
‘My kind being naturally clear.’
> ‘Exactly. The scientists working on the genetic experiments were urged by the creatures that possessed them to close down the project and destroy all of your kind.’
‘But they did not.’
‘They tried. And they would have succeeded. But for your father. He had observed that when a man dies, the creature riding upon him dissolves. He contrived to kill each scientist in turn by drowning. Once the creature had dissolved, he resuscitated his victims. I was one of his successes. There were a few failures. But a core of clears was established. We exist within this building as virtual prisoners.’
‘Is that like virtual reality?’ Parton Vrane asked.
The gentleman ignored him. ‘We are clear and cannot be re-infected, but it is not safe for us to walk the streets.’
‘It’s not safe for me to walk the streets. I have to burrow underground most of the time.’
‘Quite so. Which brings us up to the present day. We know the creatures exist. We suspect that for the most part they are benign, although parasitic. But there are those amongst them who are destructive. A breed within a breed, capable of transferring from one person to another.’
‘The mad-dog element.’
‘Correct, which brings us around once more to the matter of vehicles, animated robots, ersatz zombies and Frankenstein’s monsters.’
‘Which was the matter I asked you about.’
‘The creative activities. It goes back to Edward Gein and beyond. The collection of body parts. I believe the creatures are aware that their days are numbered. They know we’re on to them and that it is only a matter of time. So they are trying to engineer vehicles for themselves other than man. Do you recall that case a few years back? A Colonel Bickerstaff tried to build himself an elephant? There have been many other such cases. Do you know, I’d really like you to take a look inside this Orion’s allotment shed. See what he and his “holy guardian angel” are cooking up.’
‘You think Orion is building another elephant?’
‘We have a file on Orion,’ said the gentleman, ‘as we have a file on everybody. This Orion doesn’t want an elephant. What he wants is a dog.’
‘A dog called Demolition?’
‘I think he’d prefer one called Princey, but it’s not what he’s going to get.’