The Book of Ultimate Truths

  ‘Not altogether.’ Cornelius fished out the slip of paper and passed it to Tuppe.

  Tuppe read it. ‘Oh Gawd,’ said he. ‘It’s…’

  ‘My address.’ Cornelius spoke in a low doomed voice. ‘My own house.’

  He thrust the key into the steering column, revved the engine and prepared to back through the crowd.

  But the crowd had vanished. And but for two epic travellers and an electric-blue eyesore, Sunnyside Road was deserted.

  19

  INSTRUCTION MANUAL FOR THE TRAIN OF TRISMEGISTUS MODEL 4

  You lucky being!

  You are now the proud owner of a Train of Trismegistus Model 4. The very latest in Deviant Extermination Systems.

  Featuring:

  1 Forbidden Zone to outer-world modes.

  2 Fully armoured attack, search-and-destroy capabilities.

  3 On-board tennis-ball-with-nail-stuck-in-the-top assisted memory.

  4 Holographic Day-Glo decals.

  5 Free stationmaster’s cap.

  6 And flag.

  The Trismegistus Train Company hope that the Model 4 will give you many happy hours of use. Our salesman (Wally) has no doubt informed you that this model is a Last Resort Option, and as such, the company can accept no responsibility for its bad language, unpredictable behaviour or radical course of action.

  The Model 4 replaces the Model 3 (squirt flower and smiley face on front), whilst retaining the ever-popular exploding handbag, whoopie cushion and bad-boy Princey fake doggy-doo accessories.

  To these have been added the Total destruction of anything that stands in its way facility and the Scorched earth policy policy. Please note. These come as standard and are not optional.

  THE TRAIN OF TRISMEGISTUS WILL GET THE JOB DONE!

  TO OPERATE

  To get the very best from your Model 4 please follow the following to the letter.

  Please note. The Model 4 comes fully assembled and does not take kindly to having unqualified persons tinkering about with it.

  Do not engage it in conversation.

  Do not attempt to open the little box on the side which has the words EXTREME HAZARD: DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT OPENING printed in huge red letters on it.

  Stoke up the boiler with the piece of coal and the match provided.

  Place photograph of deviant in slot ‘A’.

  If you do not have a photograph, then jot down a few details on a postcard instead. Approximate height. Colour of eyes, skin and hair. Age, sex, clothing favoured. Things of that nature. Anything you feel might help the Model 4 to get some idea of exactly who it’s supposed to be wiping out. It will then systematically snuff anyone even vaguely resembling the subject sought.

  Open door to outer world.

  Don stationmaster’s cap.

  Press start button and retire to safe distance waving flag.

  Close door to outer world upon train’s departure and keep it shut if you know what’s good for you.

  Please note. If scale of ensuing carnage exceeds acceptable norm (ie: total extinction of dominant planetary species) contact THE TRISMEGISTUS TRAIN COMPANY at once!

  We will be pleased to sympathize deeply, whilst stressing in no uncertain terms that it is NO RESPONSIBILITY OF OURS!

  Arthur Kobold shuddered. He closed the instruction manual, wiped cream from its cover and consigned it to the waste-paper basket.

  It was no responsibility of his either, he considered. All he had needed was a little more time and the whole operation could have been concluded in a civilized fashion. He didn’t hold with the total extinction of a dominant planetary species. Even if that species was not his own.

  Sucking ruefully upon a creamy thumb, Arthur Kobold began to pace up and down in his office.

  In the front room of twenty-three Moby Dick Terrace the Campbell was doing some pacing of his own. He had listened, for what now seemed to him an eternity, whilst the mother spun tales which would have had Havelock Ellis, Krafft-Ebing, or even the now-legendary Magnus Hirschfield himself, wilting under the assault.

  If there was any conceivable form of sexual deviation, gross depravity, or outlandish perversion abroad on this planet, then this woman had watched it, full frontal, red in tooth and claw, whilst stopping off somewhere for a small sweet sherry, during some charabanc outing, package tour, or trip around the bay.

  And if there was any end to it, none seemed in sight.

  ‘And then the headsman asked us if we’d ever watched an elephant being circumcised,’ the mother went on. ‘Have you ever watched that, by the way?’

  ‘No,’ said the Campbell, continuing to pace. ‘No no no.’

  In the back garden, penned within the circular confines of the magic wall, the daddy also paced. The ARP helmet was off. The shirtsleeves were in the ‘rolled’ position. The pacing that the daddy went in for was made precarious by nature of the many blunt and discarded garden tools which lay scattered about him. Many a chum had been ground down, during an afternoon of fruitless assault on the magic wall. And many also were the words of profanity that the no longer merry fellow had offered up, to be taken as they came, by the deity of his choice. The daddy fumed as he paced. And paced as he cursed. But he didn’t seem to be getting anywhere just at the moment.

  Cornelius Murphy didn’t seem to be getting anywhere either.

  The Cadillac Eldorado was all snarled up in the rush hour.

  There was a time when London had two rush hours. One in the morning and one in the evening. Then a very wise man, whom no-one can remember the name of, had a very wise idea. He invented flexitime, which meant that workers could stagger their working hours and avoid the rush hours if they wished to. And so they all did and now London has a rush hour all day long.

  ‘Get out of the way!’ Cornelius meeped the horn, rose from his seat and made fists at the car in front. It was a black cab. The driver ignored him.

  ‘Have patience,’ Tuppe advised.

  ‘Patience?’ Cornelius glared at his small companion. ‘Patience, did you say?’

  ‘Cornelius, sit down. You’ll draw…a crowd.’

  Cornelius sat down. ‘This is bad, Tuppe. This is really bad.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve seen worse. You should try passing through Paris with a packed pantechnicon of porcine prodigies. Or even saying it.’

  ‘I am not referring to the traffic, as you well know.’

  Tuppe made an encouraging face.

  ‘Jack London! The daddy himself! It was so obvious. I should have seen it earlier.’

  ‘Oh come on.’ Tuppe dispensed with the encouraging face. He’d stick with the anxious one. ‘It could have been anyone. London is a very large place.’

  ‘But the world we inhabit is not. Everything so far has been a coincidence of one kind or another. We’ve been led along by coincidence. Coincidence and design. Give me the map. Let me show you.’

  Tuppe fumbled in the glove compartment. ‘Here you go.’

  Cornelius took the map. ‘Now give me a Biro.’

  Tuppe fumbled in his pockets. ‘I know I have one. I picked one up in the auction room. No, I lost that. But I found another in the Holiday Inn. Where did I put that? No, I don’t seem to have one at the moment. Where ever do they all go to?’

  Cornelius raised an eyebrow and dug in his own top pocket. Here he found his pencil. He licked the point. ‘Now look at this.’ He spread the map across the ample dashboard. ‘Our epic journey takes us from my house, to King’s Cross, up and around here to Edinburgh. Across to Sheila na gigh. Back to Edinburgh, for a visit to the police station. Back to Sheila na gigh. Down to Milcom Moloch, which for some reason doesn’t appear to be on this map, but must be about here.’ Cornelius sketched in the route with his pencil. ‘From there we go to Cromcruach, where we acquire this car. Then to the Holiday Inn, North Ameshet. You are following this?’

  Tuppe nodded. ‘I am.’

  ‘Good.’ Cornelius sketched on. ‘Then, by a curious route we reach the monastery. Then we come all the wa
y down here to Penge. And we are currently travelling, I use the word in its loosest sense, right across here and back home.’ He held the map towards Tuppe. ‘Now what does that look like to you?’

  Tuppe studied the pencilwork. ‘It looks somewhat like a deformed rocket ship. Or possibly a hunchbacked cigar.’

  ‘Not quite.’ Cornelius snatched back the map. ‘We stopped at other places along the way. For food, petrol, visits to the toilet.’

  ‘I only have a tiny bladder. It’s not my fault.’

  ‘Never mind. We stopped here, here, here.’ Cornelius drew circles. ‘Here. Here, I think. Here, I’m sure.’

  ‘And there.’ Tuppe pointed. ‘You had to get out there, I remember.’

  ‘All right. There too.’ Cornelius circled it in. ‘Now what do you see?’

  Tuppe gave the map another looking over. ‘It’s a what’saname. One of those things you blow. Except it’s got too many holes.’

  ‘It’s a reinvented ocarina,’ said Cornelius Murphy. ‘That’s what it is. And its pointy end is sticking right into my house.’

  ‘V marks the spot, as it were?’

  ‘Precisely. And that’s why I should have seen it earlier. It’s what I do, Tuppe. See, observe. The patterns. The cross-correspondences. The things written into other things. It’s what I am, Tuppe.’

  ‘Anyone ever tell you you’re a weirdo?’ Tuppe asked.

  ‘Funnily enough…’ Cornelius grinned.

  ‘The traffic’s moving,’ said Tuppe.

  It was a little after seven of the nice summery unsuspecting evening clock, when the Cadillac Eldorado finally stuttered to a halt before an area of wasteland, which had once been number one Moby Dick Terrace.

  Cornelius shook the pockets of his jacket. ‘Out of petrol. And out of money. Not one penny left.’

  ‘It would seem, then, that the travelling part of our epic journey has come to an end.’

  Cornelius agreed that it probably did.

  ‘Which also means that the really exciting climax will not be far away.’

  Cornelius agreed on this also.

  ‘Which would be why I need the toilet rather badly.’

  Cornelius thought this more than likely.

  ‘You know he’s probably already in there, don’t you?’

  ‘The Campbell?’ Cornelius sniffed the air. Certain subtle odours drifted to him. Others steadfastly refused to do so. ‘He’s in there.’

  ‘Then I’ll have to find a bush to go behind, before we do anything else. That Campbell gives me the sh–’

  ‘He doesn’t exactly brighten up my day.’ Cornelius wondered where lay the nearest and stoutest of sticks. He was very concerned for the safety of his parents. Murphys, Londons, or whatever they turned out to be.

  ‘This Campbell. What is he, Cornelius?’

  ‘A would-be student of the reinvented ocarina, would be my guess.’

  ‘Do you have a plan, by any chance?’

  ‘Do I have a plan?’ Cornelius managed a nod and a wink. ‘Do I have a plan.’

  ‘Well, do you?’

  ‘Well…’

  The daddy had given up on the pacing. Now he sat, in the doorway of his shed, smoking his pipe and discussing the sad decline of popular music with his chums.

  ‘I can’t help feeling responsible,’ the old one told his tools. ‘If I hadn’t tampered with that karaoke machine, The Beatles would never have had to split up. I just took the front off to give it a clean and this small screw fell out…’

  ‘I never dug The Beatles myself,’ said the trowel. ‘Dug ‘em, geddit?’

  The daddy didn’t.

  ‘Whatever happened to Reg Presley?’ asked a couple of unemployed trugs.

  The daddy shrugged.

  ‘I’m more a Philip Glass man myself,’ announced the shed window.

  ‘Rap!’ went the hammer.

  ‘Listen, I appreciate the gesture, chaps,’ said the daddy, ‘but I’m afraid it isn’t helping matters.’

  ‘I’ll scrub around my fondness for Dean Martin then,’ chuckled the screwdriver.

  ‘Hang about,’ cried the hosepipe, a Tom Jones fan. ‘The day may yet be saved. Here comes the son.’

  ‘Do-dn-do-do,’ went a passing beetle. ‘What about a reference to Pink Floyd then?’

  Unaware of what lay in store for him, Cornelius Murphy shinned over…The Wall.

  ‘Ah,’ said he, viewing with interest the spectacle of his father, seated in a kind of smokey-glass dome, at the bottom of the garden. ‘Daddy?’

  ‘Cornelius, my own dear boy.’ Murphy Senior arose and smote the magical wall. The dull chime like a dreary bell rang out once more.

  ‘Mike Oldfield,’ said the dibber.

  ‘The secret is in knowing when to stop,’ said the daddy. ‘Cornelius, fruit of my passion for your sweet mother. Cornelius, release me from this devilish entrapment, if you have an ounce of common decency in your fine young body.’

  Cornelius approached the man in the magical prison. ‘I have a delivery outside for you, Mr London,’ he said.

  ‘Oh dear. Oh woe.’ Arthur Kobold let up on the pacing. He studied his pocket watch and glanced down at the telephone. Once the train was set in motion, there was no telling what might happen. But it was bound to be something terrible. If he, Arthur Kobold, was to do anything, then now was the time that he had better be doing it. Arthur gnawed upon his knuckle. He would dearly have preferred cake.

  ‘Oh dear. Oh woe.’ The mother ceased her latest fascinating monologue. ‘Would you look at the time already? You must be craving for your supper, Mr Kobold. I’ll just pop out to the kitchen and rustle you something up. Another cup of tea perhaps. I’ve a bag drying on the window sill. Still has a bit of life in it I’ll bet.’

  The Campbell dispensed with further pacing. ‘Pop out to the kitchen? No, I don’t think that would be a good idea. Tell me some more about how you learned head-shrinking from those natives in Papua.’

  ‘Well, they slit open the back of the head, you see, from the nape of the neck to the crown and prise out the skull. There’s a knack to it, but I soon got it right. You know you look a little off-colour, Mr Kobold. What with all those lumps beginning to sprout out of your head and everything. Are you sure you won’t reconsider the tea?’

  ‘Oh dear. Oh woe. Cornelius, release your daddy and find favour in his eyes for ever.’ Cornelius approached the trapped fellow and ran his fingers lightly across the invisible barrier.

  ‘How is this done?’ he asked.

  ‘The powers of darkness, my boy.’

  ‘Those demonic fellows, eh? Well, it looks like you’re done for then.’ Cornelius turned to take his leave.

  ‘No. Wait. Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘To save the mother of course.’

  ‘Then help me out. I’ll give you a hand.’

  Cornelius grinned at his father. ‘There is one thing you could do.’

  ‘Anything, thou chip off the old block.’

  ‘Tell me where you’ve hidden the ocarina.’

  ‘Oh no. Not that.’ The daddy covered his face.

  ‘That indeed. I want it and I want it now.’

  ‘Cornelius, no. You don’t have all the papers yet.’

  ‘I expect the ones I lack are hidden with the ocarina. Where did you say that was, by the way?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Then I’ll just have to leave you here. Sorry, Mr London.’

  ‘No wait. Cornelius, I can explain everything. About the ocarina and ‘Jack London’. Everything. Just apply yourself and get me out of here.’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘I do. I do. Cross my aching heart.’ The daddy did so.

  ‘Don’t trust the old bastard,’ muttered the wheelbarrow.

  ‘Shut up, you!’ The daddy flapped his heart-crosser at the two-handled traitor.

  ‘Who are you telling to shut up?’

  ‘Not you, my boy. Perish the thought. Come on now, apply your i
ngenuity.’

  Cornelius shook his head. ‘I think not.’

  ‘What? But the ocarina…’

  ‘You’d best stay here. After all, if your own wheelbarrow doesn’t trust you, I don’t see why I should.’

  ‘Cornelius, wait.’ The daddy biffed upon the invisible wall.

  ‘Bong bong bong,’ it went.

  And bing-bong went the front-door bell of twenty-three Moby Dick Terrace.

  ‘A caller,’ said the mother. ‘Now I wonder who that can be. It’s a bit early in the year for the dustmen.’

  ‘Allow me to answer it, dear lady. It might be Cornelius. I’d like to surprise him.’

  ‘Cornelius has his own key. Just sit down. I’ll go.’

  ‘Then I’ll go with you.’ The Campbell smiled sweetly.

  ‘No. It’s quite all right.’ The mother smiled also.

  ‘I really must insist.’ The Campbell stopped smiling.

  The mother didn’t. She said, ‘I expect it’s little Tuppe come to use the toilet. Cornelius probably went around the back. He’s not going to be very pleased when he sees what you’ve done to my husband.’

  ‘What of this?’ The Campbell stiffened. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know exactly what I mean, Mr Deviant-lumpy-head.’

  ‘Oh ho!’ The lumpy-headed one took off his spectacles and tucked them into the sharp top pocket of his sharp grey suit. ‘I thought I had the right address in more ways than one. This bodes ill for you I fear.’ He snapped his fingers and fire branched once more between them.

  The mother looked singularly unimpressed. ‘That’s nothing,’ she said. ‘I once took tea with a Ugandan obi-man called Katafelto who could do that with his willy. And one evening he came with me to a do at the British Embassy in Kampala. Lady Windermere was there and you’ll never guess what happened. She asked Katafelto if he had a light for her cigarette and…’

  ‘Shut up, woman!’ The Campbell grew ever so lump-some. ‘I’ll fix you.’ He spread his fingers and the flames rose like an Olympic torch.

  ‘Careful. You’ll scorch my antimacassars.’ The mother made a rather interesting mystical sort of a pass with her right hand. And uttered several magic syllables.