Retromancer

  ‘Well,’ I said, and I thought about this. I do consider myself to be a brave boy. But, as I have said, there are degrees of bravery. And as to whether I possessed bravery to the standard required to qualify for heroic status, that was open to question.

  ‘Your timidity is understandable,’ said the Perfect Master.

  ‘I am not timid,’ I said. ‘I am . . . well . . . yes, I will join you, Mr Rune. I will. Yes. I will.’

  ‘Good lad.’ And the great man patted my shoulder. ‘Let us get this done before the rising of the sun, so we can have the squadron leader back to his squadron in time for his breakfast.’

  I went, ‘Hm,’ and followed Mr Rune.

  I knew from what I had read of Bletchley Park that Colossus occupied what had once been the ballroom of the mansion and I had a pretty good idea of what it looked like, and so, with an inevitability that was little less than inevitable, it came as no surprise to me whatsoever to discover that the huge computer was located somewhere altogether different and looked absolutely nothing like any photograph I had ever seen of it.

  ‘Down to the cellar,’ cried Hugo Rune.

  And down to the cellar went we.

  The first thing that I became aware of was a humming vibration. It fair put my teeth upon edge. And there was that bumper-car electric sparks smell, mingled with something all-consumingly cheesy that I did not recognise.

  ‘The scent of amaranth,’ said Hugo Rune, testing the air with a sensitive nostril. ‘A fragrance brought back from Jerusalem during the Crusades. King Arthur’s favourite, I do believe.’

  ‘The Crusades?’ I whispered. ‘Since when was King Arthur around at the time of the Crusades?’

  ‘A rather poorly constructed question,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘So please hush now and do not speak unless I request you so to do.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Did I request that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Shut up!’

  And we continued in silence.

  The hum grew louder, the smells grew smellier and then suddenly—‘Halt!’ The voice came as if down a crackling telephone line, or from some even more crackling ancient 78 rpm record. ‘Halt and bend the knee.’

  Hugo Rune knelt and I did likewise. Hurriedly.

  ‘Who dares to trouble the Monarch unannounced?’ asked the voice.

  ‘A loyal knight, my liege, with his squire,’ replied Hugo Rune.

  ‘Advance then and be recognised.’

  And Mr Rune rose and I rose also. And we two approached Colossus.

  And I have to say that I was mightily impressed by what I saw and mightily afeared by it also.

  Colossus sat upon a kind of makeshift throne, constructed apparently from the detritus of the cellar. Discarded packing cases, old steamer trunks, several pairs of stag antlers cunningly laced together. And Colossus resembled a man. He was a good and proper nineteen-forties science-fiction-movie-style robot. Most of his parts were cylindrical, the head, body, arms and legs. And all the parts were heavily riveted and all of a metal buffed and polished. He had oblong, letterbox-shaped slits for eyes and mouth and within these slits there was the suggestion of movement. Of cogs slowly grinding together. Of little wheels turning. Of glowing valves and twinkling lights. The robot’s hands were jointed and dexterous; its feet had pointy toes.

  And upon its head sat a paper crown, of the Christmas cracker persuasion.

  I viewed this mechanical apparition with considerable misgivings. I could not see any external wiring. No power leads or plugs that might be wrenched suddenly from sockets. This creation exuded an aura of power and confidence. It had the look of something that would not be easily dealt with.

  ‘I am Arthur, King of all the Britons,’ it said. ‘And who are you to trouble my cogitations?’

  ‘I am Rune,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Though you, sire, will recall me as Merlin.’

  My mouth grew wide and ached to utter words. But I shut it up and kept silent.

  ‘Merlin?’ The robot leaned itself forwards, metal creaked on metal, cogwheels whirred and whizzed. ‘Merlin?’ it said once more. ‘So long ago. So much time has passed.’

  ‘I am here, sire,’ said Hugo Rune, ‘as ever loyal and ready to serve you.’

  ‘Merlin, Merlin.’ The robot nodded its head. ‘We can use your magic here in this benighted time.’

  I looked up at Hugo Rune; his face wore an unreadable expression.

  ‘Where are my knights?’ asked the robot. ‘My knights of the rounded table? What of Lancelot and Galahad and Berty?’

  ‘They race upon their mighty steeds to join you, sire.’

  ‘That is good. That is good. There is so much to be done. So many battles to be waged. No war such as this have ever I seen. Such evil. Such weapons. How has this come to pass?’

  ‘With the passage of time, sire. Much time has passed. Much progress has been made.’

  ‘Progress?’ The robot laughed. Its laugh, though, was hollow and somewhat resembled small stones being shaken about inside a tin can. ‘You mock me with your words, Merlin. Progress? Look at your King. I am locked within this suit of armour, unable to free myself. Such weirdery as this there never was. And you would call this progress?’

  ‘Much progress has been made, but little of value has been learned,’ said Hugo Rune. Which I considered somewhat profound.

  As so, it appeared, did the robot.

  ‘But you have not changed, Merlin,’ it said. ‘Still as bald and well knit. Forever in love with your trenchering.’

  I did flinch somewhat at this, as I knew that Mr Rune never took kindly to remarks regarding his portliness.

  ‘I’ll dine with a less heavy heart once our enemy is defeated,’ he said to the robot. ‘I observed your battle plans upon the map upstairs. Such a campaign, although costly, must surely find success.’

  ‘So it is to be hoped.’

  As I listened to the crackling telephone voice of the robot, I thought to discern emotion in its words. A certain sadness, a wistfulness, a loneliness also. And as it spoke, I sensed an overwhelming exhaustion.

  ‘Why sit you here, my Lord,’ asked Hugo Rune, ‘in this dark and dampness? There are fine rooms above that would surely serve you better.’

  ‘No,’ said the robot. ‘Here I must stay, until all I am called to do is done.’

  ‘Would you not see the light of day once more? Touch mighty oaks that were not yet acorns in our days?’

  ‘No!’ And the robot shook its head most fiercely. ‘Here must I stay until all is done. I will burn those who fail me with this.’ And electrical sparks grew brightly at its fingertips and arced up into the floorboards forming the ceiling above. ‘Those who will not obey will be subdued or destroyed. Already have I slain several who I discerned to be spies. But it is here I must remain, beneath the earth, until I have triumphed. And then I shall rise again and take my rightful place upon the throne of England.’

  ‘Then here I stay also,’ declared Hugo Rune, placing his hand on his heart. ‘Together we will sing the songs of old and recount the valorous tales. Squire, bring ale for the King and I.’

  And I almost said, ‘The King and I?’ But I thought better of it.

  ‘Ale,’ I said. And I bowed my head and backed from the sinister cellar.

  It took me a considerable time to find any ale. But at last I managed to locate two bottles of Fuller’s ESB. And these in the jacket pockets of the still-unconscious Squadron Leader Lancaster.

  I returned to the cellar with much trepidation.

  And two bottles of beer.

  But I had only reached the foot of the stairs when it hit me that something had changed. Something was altogether different. The humming sound had ceased to be, as too had the curious smells.

  Hugo Rune sat at the foot of the throne. His head was in his hands.

  The robot sat on the throne itself. But its head lolled to one side. In the manner of a man who had been hangèd.

  ‘What has happened?’ I asked Mr
Rune. ‘Did you kill it? Are you all right?’

  The Magus turned his face up to me and I saw tears in his eyes.

  ‘He is gone now,’ whispered Hugo Rune. ‘I have sent him on his way.’

  I looked towards the robot and noticed a dent of considerable size on the crown of its head. And I looked down towards the floor, where lay Mr Rune’s stout stick.

  And Mr Rune’s stout stick was broken, all but snapped in half.

  ‘You did kill it,’ I said to Mr Rune. ‘And you sent me away so that I would not see you do it.’

  ‘Now is not his time,’ said the Magus. ‘I have returned him to his slumbers.’

  I shook my head. And I said, ‘No, you are not telling me—’

  ‘That it was the spirit of King Arthur, lodged within the framework of a machine?’ Hugo Rune did wipings of a tear. ‘That is what I am telling you, Rizla. Because that is what it was. What he was.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But then, if it was King Arthur, why did you strike him with your stick? Surely, as you said, his battle plans will win the war. Surely that is what we want.’

  ‘The plans will remain in place,’ said Hugo Rune, hauling himself to his feet. ‘And Mr Turing will restore this machine and this machine will help us to win the war.’

  ‘Oh, hold on,’ I said. ‘I see this. The robot was not really possessed by the spirit of King Arthur at all. That was some kind of glitch. You have disabled the robot so that Mr Turing can sort out the glitch and use the machine to help win the war.’

  And I once more did those buffings of my fingernails upon my tweedy lapels.

  But Hugo Rune had no comment to make and we left the cellar in silence.

  24

  THE CHARIOT

  What happened at Bletchley Park deeply affected Hugo Rune. He was silent for days and when finally he spoke again his words were gruff and unfriendly.

  I really did not know what to say, but I felt that the Bletchley Park case had not really been brought to anything even vaguely resembling a satisfactory conclusion. I had never got to chat with Alan Turing and the entire case seemed to simply terminate in nothing more than a cop-out ending. And so, when a week had passed, and a most uncomfortable week at that, I felt up to tackling Mr Rune on the subject.

  ‘I really must know,’ I told him over breakfast. Mine was a big one and his merely toast. ‘I really must know what all that business was about back there at Station X. Was it really the spirit of King Arthur? And were you really Merlin?’

  Hugo Rune looked up from his toast, a faraway look in his eye. ‘I might tell you much, young Rizla,’ he said, ‘but whether you would believe any of it, that is quite another matter entirely.’

  ‘I have learned that although it can be uncomfortable, it is always better to believe you rather than to doubt your words,’ I said, ‘so please tell me what it was that affected you so deeply.’

  ‘The re-meeting of an old friend under quite the wrong circumstances. ’ Hugo Rune munched toast, but with little joy or gusto.

  ‘Then it was King Arthur, and you—’

  ‘Let me tell you a story,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘You can believe it, or believe it not, the choice is entirely yours.’

  I nodded with the head of me and tucked into my breakfast.

  ‘There is an Eastern Esoteric tradition,’ said Hugo Rune, ‘that at the beginning of time, the angels of God penned the pages of a great book. Within this book were listed the names of every person who would ever be born, live and die upon the Earth.

  ‘As each person dies, his or her name is crossed out in the great book. When every name is finally crossed out and there are no more men upon the Earth, so then will this great book be closed for the last time and placed in a great bookcase, beside many other such books that listed the names of many others of many another world.’

  I raise my eyebrows to this, but kept on eating my breakfast.

  ‘Now,’ said Hugo Rune, ‘knowledge of the existence of this great book, and knowledge of its whereabouts, reached the ears of a certain evil man. Exactly how this evil man bribed the angels that guard the great book I do not know, but bribe them he did, to this end: that his name be cut from the book. And once cut from the book his name could never be crossed out. And so he would live for ever.’

  ‘That is very ingenious,’ I said. ‘If somewhat far-fetched.’

  ‘Do you wish me to continue or not?’

  ‘I do,’ I said. And I did.

  ‘This evil man is Count Otto Black,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘I have killed him at least three times by my reckoning, but back he comes, as chipper as ever.’

  ‘So what is this?’ I asked. ‘Some personal quest of yours, to track down this particular man and seek to destroy him?’

  ‘It is for me to deal with Black because I am forever linked to him. Allow me to explain, Rizla. A page of a book has two sides and when a name on a page was cut from that great book it had another name upon its other side. When Count Otto Black had his name cut from the great book, my name was on the other side of this cutting.’

  And I then choked on my breakfast.

  And Mr Rune had to pat me on the back and fetch me a glass of water.

  ‘Are you telling me that you are some kind of immortal?’ I asked Hugo Rune.

  The Magus nodded his head. ‘My name was Merlin. Count Otto’s name was Mordred, an evil knight at the Court of King Arthur.’

  I did whistlings and shakings of the head. ‘That is pretty far out,’ I said. ‘To use the patois of the sixties, that really freaks me and I cannot get my head around it.’

  ‘Perhaps it would be better not to believe it - after all, I might just be winding you up.’ And Hugo Rune winked and I saw his face lighten.

  And then he stole my sausage.

  We had come to the month of May and I was not altogether sure that we were furthering the War Effort and helping to free Europe from the impress of the Nazi jackboot. There was an unremitting sameness about the days. The wail of the sirens, the horror of the bombings. Although, to my wonder, I almost seemed to be growing used to the bombings. Was I developing the Blitz Spirit? Surely not. I was perhaps merely growing numb.

  But that ever-present possibility of death certainly seemed to make life brighter. Jokes seemed funnier, food tasted better, drunkenness was somehow more drunken. I had not cared much for our silent week, but if now Mr Rune’s spirits were rising once again then it seemed appropriate that we should celebrate this with a drink.

  ‘The Purple Princess will be open,’ I said, consulting my wristlet watch. ‘We did take a rather late breakfast and it is nearing twelve of the midday clock.’

  ‘You are suggesting luncheon and libations?’

  ‘Well, libations at least, and you will have to pay as I am wageless, as ever.’

  ‘We’ll take a drink,’ said Hugo Rune, rising and stretching and smiling as he did so. ‘But as to actually paying, that would be a matter for discussion.’

  There were many cardboard boxes upon Fangio’s bar counter. These were stamped with numbers and symbols suggestive of a military origin.

  ‘Fell off the back of a tank?’ I enquired when Mr Rune and I had reached the counter.

  ‘Gremlins,’ said Fangio, bobbing up and down behind the boxes.

  ‘Two pints of that guest ale, Sans Serif,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘And then you might explain about the gremlins.’

  Fangio pulled pints, cleared boxes to the right and left of him, then pushed these pints across his counter towards our hands.

  ‘Gremlins,’ he said once more. ‘You must surely have heard the term used. It’s a military term - when the mechanical gubbins of something go all to pot, the military folk say “it’s got gremlins”.’

  ‘That is just a term, Fange,’ I said, ‘like saying “there is a spanner in the works”.’

  ‘And I’ve got those spanners too,’ said Fangio. And he hoisted one up from behind the bar and banged it down on the counter.

  ‘That is a big one,’
I said to Fange.

  ‘It’s size that matters,’ said the barlord. ‘Or at least that’s what Squadron Leader Lancaster is always saying in his sleep. Did you hear that he got a knighthood? Solved some murder at somewhere called Station X, apparently.’

  I looked at Hugo Rune.

  He looked at me.

  And our looks were far from pleasing.

  ‘So,’ said the Magus, tasting ale, ‘regarding these gremlins. What do they look like and what do they do and how much are they by the gross?’

  ‘I cannot answer those questions with any degree of precision as of yet,’ said Fangio, his face like a cloudy autumn sky. ‘I can’t seem to get the tops off the boxes.’

  Oh how we laughed.

  ’Til we stopped.

  ‘But I will,’ said the publican. ‘And when I do, you will be the first to have first dibs, as I live and breathe.’

  We took ourselves away from the counter to Mr Rune’s private corner.

  ‘Gremlins indeed,’ said I.

  ‘Are you expressing some doubts regarding our black-marketeering barlord’s latest acquisitions, young Rizla?’

  I shrugged and said, ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘You should know now never to favour the natural over the supernatural. An illogical explanation will forever trounce its logical counterpart.’

  ‘I am not altogether sure about that.’

  ‘Then what about this?’ And Hugo Rune fished the morning’s paper from his pocket and tossed it onto the table before me.

  ‘More toot and propaganda?’ I queried.

  ‘That and more. You will notice that certain military campaigns have proved most successful. Campaigns that you saw represented by flag-pins on a wall map at Bletchley Park.’

  I perused the front page of the paper and mouthed the word impressive. ‘So Colossus is back on line and all is hopefully well,’ I said.

  Himself nodded, then prodded at the paper. ‘It is this article that interests me,’ he said. ‘Read it and tell me what you think.’

  The article was ringed in pencil.

  I read it aloud.