‘Surely you’ve seen one of these before.’ Kim displayed the device. ‘Safe-sex blood analyser. Ten-second analysis and visual display. A girl can’t afford to be without one of these nowadays.’ Kim flipped up the lid and a hypo needle extended.
‘Just dig your thumb, it doesn’t hurt.’
‘And you do the same?’
‘Sure and if we both check out clean then we ball.’ Rex took up the device and turned the needle toward his thumb. It certainly made a great deal of sense, he winked up at Kim and offered her a man-of-the-world smile. But it froze instantly on his face. Kim wasn’t smiling. She was staring intently at the needle, her lips were drawn back into an evil sneer, her eyes glowed almost red. It was not a pretty sight.
‘Let’s have another drink first.’ Rex carefully laid the device aside. ‘I’m a bit squeamish about blood, hope you understand.’
‘Sure.’ Kim was now all smiles again. ‘Absinthe over blue ice. Then . . .’ She winked.
‘Then,’ said Rex, finding his feet, which now seemed a bit distant. ‘I won’t be a moment.’ He elbowed his way into the crowd. Where was Elvis?
The patrons of the Split Beaver were now engaged in some inane scatological chant. Rex forced his way amongst them. Where was Elvis? Rex found his way to the bar counter and hailed the muscleboy in the codpiece. ‘Mr Never, where is he?’
‘You just missed him. He went outside with two guys. Didn’t look too pleased about it I can tell you.’ Rex felt suddenly sick. He and Elvis had dropped their guard. In failing to hunt they had become the hunted. Rex struggled toward the door. A hand gripped his shoulder. Rex turned in time to see Kim swinging the hypo device at his face. He slashed her hand aside and struck her hard in the jaw. Then he ran.
Up the corridor, through the wonderful entrance hall and out into the night. Elvis was being bundled into a stretch Roller. The car was already in motion. Rex dashed for the Koshibo Tiger. He flung open the driver’s door.
‘Vehicle violation! Vehicle violation!’ shrieked the electronic bimbo. ‘Leave the car immediately. You have twenty seconds.’ Rex fumbled at the dash. He didn’t have the key card. ‘Fifteen seconds, the doors will be sealed and the police notified.’ The in-car phone lit up. ‘I am preparing to dial for assistance.’
‘This is an emergency,’ cried Rex. ‘Override. Override.’
‘Ten seconds, please leave the car at once.’ Rex glanced up. The Rolls-Royce was swinging out of the car park.
‘Hot wire.’ Rex thumped the dashboard hopelessly. ‘Spare key, anything.’
‘The spare key card is under the driver’s seat.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Excuse me. The spare key card is under the driver’s seat, sir.’
‘Under the driver’s seat?’ Rex grinned. The car had evidently not been programmed to recognize voice patterns. Some security. Rex found the spare key card, rammed it into the housing. The Tiger roared. ‘Good evening, sir,’ cooed the computer. ‘You have returned somewhat early. I will brew coffee.’ Rex squeezed the accelerator ring. The car lurched forward. And then his vision was obscured. Kirn’s face was flattened against the windscreen, her hands clawing madly at the glass.
‘Vehicle violation,’ shouted Rex. ‘Felon on board.’
‘Outer defence systems operative.’ Kim’s face contorted as the Tiger’s bodywork lit up to a crackle of static electricity. She rolled off the car and fell howling to the ground. Rex thrust the car into reverse, then swerved around her. The Koshibo made his Porsche seem rather tame, thought Rex as he clipped along a row of parked autos. The bill for the damage would have bankrupted any one of a dozen European nations. He brought down several statues which fell to great effect. Petrol tanks exploded, the Koshibo Tiger sped away from the conflagration and off in hot pursuit.
The Roller was fast but it was no match for Rex and the wondercar. He was soon close up behind. ‘Where is the horn?’ Rex asked.
‘Claxton, Alpine or novelty selection?’
‘All,’ said Rex.
‘As you please, sir.’ The Tiger set up a deafening cacophony. Car-cophony? Faces appeared at the Roller’s rear window. Two looked angry, the third offered a curly-lipped smile. They had reached a stretch of open road, which was probably the same stretch they always reach. Rex accelerated, brought the car alongside. ‘Tell them to pull over.’ The Tiger’s public address system did that very thing. The driver of the Rolls swerved toward Rex. The two cars struck raising showers of sparks. Rex fell back. Speed he had, but not weight. In the Roller’s rear seat Elvis hid his face. ‘My new car,’ he wept.
‘You don’t happen to have any hidden extras do you?’ Rex asked.
‘Many sir. What precisely did you have in mind?’
‘Any weapon systems?’
‘No sir, I’m afraid not. If it’s weapon systems you want, you should go for the Koshibo Commando. Fully armoured body. Bullet-proof glass, carries one of those amazing rotary machine-guns like . . .’
‘Yes, I know. Okay. If we can’t shoot or ram them off the road we’ll do it another way. Call the police, tell them a kidnapping is in progress. Give them the licence number and description of the getaway car and our present whereabouts. Can you do all that?’
‘I am doing all that, sir. Your coffee is now brewed.’
‘Excellent. Three sugars please. Oh no!’ A bullet sang through the rear window and left via the windscreen, clearing Rex’s head by inches. Rex ducked low in his seat, adjusted the driving mirror. A motorcycle was gaining upon him. On it sat the seemingly indestructible Kim.
‘Vehicle violation!’ screamed the dashboard. ‘Vision obscured. Emergency stop.’
‘No!’ Rex gripped tightly to the accelerator ring but the Koshibo Tiger had made up its mind. It applied its four-wheel anti-lock braking system. The one much praised in the handbook. Sixty to nought in three seconds. Rex covered his face. The motorcycle struck the rear of the Koshibo, catapulting Kim through the air and erupting with explosive force as its petrol tank made impact.
The Rolls Royce continued upon its way. Elvis gazed white-faced through the rear window at the mushroom cloud billowing into the night sky. ‘Rex,’ whispered Elvis. ‘Aw Rex . . .’
Jack Doveston, the new Dean of the Miskatonic, was working late. He was working on the new draft of They Came and Ate Us. He had just got to the exciting part where the hero is in pursuit of villains who have kidnapped his best friend but has now got himself blown up by a crashing motorbike. KABOOOOOOOM!!! Jack paused over the keyboard, perhaps another ‘O’. No, seven was enough, after the WHAM and the KERUNCH, a seven-Oed KABOOOOOOOM was sufficient.
Jack poured another large Scotch of the former Dean’s private stock. He knew how to live, that square fellow, and no mistake. Or had known. The telephone rang. Jack considered it with distaste. He let it ring a while longer.
‘The Dean,’ he said at last.
‘What have you to report?’ Jonathan asked. ‘Eh?’
‘Work is proceeding at a steady pace. We expect a result quite soon now.’
‘You reading that from a card or what?
‘Listen, I have the best computer pirates in the country working around the clock in that basement. Cut the seeker you said, find out who is behind it. And that’s what they’re doing. They’ve left your corporation alone. They’ll get results.’
‘Not fast enough, Jack. Apply a little pressure.’
Jack tossed his drink down his throat. ‘If I start ordering them around they will become suspicious. They think I am the big subversive. If I play the tyrant they’ll quit.’
‘All right then. But what progress are they making?’
‘Quite a bit. They have found a way of monitoring the seeker without being seen. But the thing has an extremely complicated structure. It is composed of twelve separate units which each appear to function independently. Returning after each sortie through the matrix to merge into some kind of mass mind. It’s freaky stuff.’
‘I a
m LEGION we are many,’ whispered Jonathan.
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing. So what are your team proposing to do? What are you proposing to do?’
‘Catch it off guard. Isolate one of the units. Lock it into one of our systems here. Then take it apart and see what makes it run.’
‘Yes. That should be possible. When do you expect a result?’
‘Possibly some time tonight. They are monitoring one of the units now.’
‘Good. Let me know immediately they have isolated it. I will take over from there.’
‘You will? No, wait . . .’ But Jack was speaking to a dead line.
‘Asshole,’ said Jack. ‘Now, where was I?’
‘Where am I and who the doody schnoody are you?’ Elvis was in the top-secret room, in the company of Mr Aldus, Mr Lorrimer, Mr Russell and Mr Asher. Mr Russell made the introductions.
‘I’m saying nothing,’ Elvis growled. ‘I want my mouth-piece.’
‘Please, please.’ Mr Russell waved Elvis towards a vacant chair. ‘Sit down, relax.’
‘Relax my butt! Your goons hijacked me. I’m an American citizen. I got rights.’
‘You also have a lot of different names,’ said Mr Lorrimer. ‘T.H.E. King. Noah Never. Ken Creole. Sid Galahad. Which one are you today?’
‘What day of the week is it?’ Elvis sneered. ‘Take a hike up your own . . .’
‘They’re not very good aliases, are they? Not very imaginative?’ Mr Russell asked. ‘All a bit of a giveaway, don’t you think? Sit down please.’
Elvis sat down. ‘I’m sayin’ nuffin.’
‘Nice sunglasses.’ Mr Lorrimer was holding same. ‘Very expensive. Very exclusive, I should think.’
‘That’s the kind of guy I am.’
‘And what kind of guy is that exactly?’
‘Right now a real angry one. Where is this place?’
‘What do you make of this?’ Mr Lorrimer pushed a newspaper under Presley’s nose. It was a copy of the National Enquirer. Its headline read: ELVIS CLONE SIGHTED IN NEW YORK.
‘I don’t read that kinda cow-plop,’ said Elvis.
‘Your resemblance to the young Presley is nevertheless a little more than just uncanny.’
‘That’s because he was my daddy!’ Elvis watched their expressions. They mirrored exactly that of Jonathan Crawford, when Elvis had spun him this particular yarn. ‘S’true,’ the Big E continued. ‘I’m the rightful heir to the entire Presley estate. Had my genetic codes done and everything, blood type, you name it. Been tied up in legal action for years.’
‘This is quite a revelation.’ Mr Russell shook his head. ‘Quite a revelation.’
‘We have been doing a little checking,’ said Mr Lorrimer. ‘It seems that the greater part of your “father’s” wealth was transferred only weeks before his death to a numbered Swiss bank account. Also that a year after his death an anonymous business man bought up all the rights to his music. What do you make of that?’
‘It’s news to my ears. Can I go now?’
‘No you cannot. There are certain matters we need to discuss.
‘Uh-hu.’ That look of enlightenment, which surely even the most jaded amongst us must by now have come to like just a tiny bit, was once more on the face of you-know-who. ‘Aha. I get it. You want me to cut you in for a piece of my daddy’s estate.’
‘No,’ said Mr Russell. ‘That is not what we want at all. We want what you want.’
‘Which is?’
‘To assassinate President Wormwood.’
18
BLACK MAGIC: Each colour holds magical properties By its application it can bring about cosmic change. This is because magic exists on a spectroscopic basis, from white (good and pure) to black (very nasty indeed) A skilled magician, using the correct colour sequences can bring about cosmic change and acquire great wealth. See also paint magic by Jocasta Innes.
Hugo Rune, The Book of Ultimate Truths
In his chapter ‘The Colour of Genius’ from The History of Mr Rune, H. G. Wells writes:
‘Rune had now become obsessed with the idea that colour presented a source of untapped power and had taken to painting himself as the mood took him to observe the effect upon passers-by. We dined out one evening at a “Chinese” run by a friend of mine Rune was well known to him and he always strained all the mystic’s food personally before serving it.
Hugo arrived somewhat late and it must be stated that he presented quite a startling appearance He had apparently sprayed himself from top to toe with mauve paint He apologized for his late arrival, saying that he had encountered difficulies hailing a cab, but that the exercise had given him quite an appetite.
He spoke very little during the evening and seemed at times vague and uncomfortable. We parted at midnight and I well remember the bizarre image of the bright mauve man limping away in pursuit of a cab.
I saw little of him over the next few days and when word reached me that he was taken ill, I hastened to his bedside He was swathed in bandages and looked near to death
The doctors informed me that his acolyte Rizla had called them to the house, fearful for his master’s life “That man had seventy layers of gloss on him,” said a surgeon “He still seemed quite perky though. It was only after we removed the paint with a blow lamp that he appeared to be in difficulty”.’
Sir John Rimmer, The Wacky World of Hugo Rune
The fat sweeper-upper leaned on his short-handled broom. ‘You’ll get no joy from the controller,’ he told Byron. ‘Not a bit.’
‘Look at it.’ Byron tapped gauges on his Inter-Rositer. Four-micron downgrade and going into the red. Do you know what that means?’
‘Do you?’
‘Not altogether,’ Byron confessed. ‘But it can’t be good, can it?’
The fat sweeper-upper shook his fat head. ‘No it can’t. But what are you going to do about it?’
‘What can I do? It’s just around in a circle. And the controller . . .’
‘I shouldn’t put too much trust in the controller. If we all did that, where would we be?’
‘But where are we anyway?’
‘We’re “as of the now”, as always.’
‘But what if we’re not? What if the big flywheel stops. Breaks down and just stops, imagine that.’
‘That cannot be imagined.’
‘What can I do?’ Byron wrung the fat man’s lapels.
‘You could trust that the fault rectifies itself.’
‘Might it?’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’
‘Then what?’
‘There are other alternatives. But who am I to say? I’m only a fat sweeper-upper.’
‘Please.’ Byron made a very pathetic face. ‘Please.’
‘All right. You’ve talked me into it. Come down to my little cubbyhole and we’ll see what can be done.’
Byron was by now perspiring freely about the brow area. ‘Lead on,’ said he.
The cubbyhole occupied no particular space or time but was somewhere impossible between two levels. The fat man turned a key in a floor plate, lifted it and the two vanished down a flight of stairs.
‘Very cosy,’ said Byron, when he had finally arrived at wherever he had arrived at. ‘Or spacious, depending how you look at it.’
‘It’s a flaw. A flaw between floors, if you like. A downgrade on an Establishment Moderator which was never corrected. You’ll find them all over the place if you care to look. There seems no specific limit to how far this one extends. But I have never troubled to go walkabout. There would just be more of the same, one suspects.’
Byron gazed about in wonder. The room had no walls. It simply extended away to nothingness on every side. An effulgence, contained within a crystal sphere, hung motionless in the air, illuminating what there was to illuminate. A small floor area, covered by a worn rug, jumbles of books, rolled charts. An oil stove, kettle and so on, two comfy chairs.
‘This is all a bit of a surprise. A flaw bet
ween floors, eh?’
‘Tea?’ asked the fat man.
‘Yes please.’
‘You see, Byron, things ain’t what they used to be. Not what they were.’
‘What they were? I don’t understand.’
‘It hasn’t always been “as of the now”. Once there was an “as of the then” and an “as of the will be”. I was here during the “as of the then” and when the “as of the will be” comes to pass, I shall no doubt still be here pushing my broom up and down. Sugar?’
‘Three please.’
‘Let me explain. Back in the “as of the then” there was only the controller. He was here all on his own, his job was to maintain the big flywheel which steers this planet mechanically through space and stops it going off course. But obviously you knew that.’
‘Obviously.’
‘He was to keep everything running on trim, preserve the human race above and control the situation. When things looked like getting out of hand it was his job alone to press the rewind button, reverse time, readjust and set the whole thing in motion again.’
‘I see.’ Byron accepted his cup. It was hot, although he hadn’t seen the kettle boil. ‘Thank you.’
‘But the controller wanted an assistant. He wanted to improve efficiency. Things were simple as of the then. Small disasters, wars, plagues, easily controlled. Nothing like, as of the now. But the controller had all the projections, he knew what to expect, and he knew he couldn’t handle it by himself.’
‘So he got his assistant?’
‘Certainly. He brought his son into the business. But his son didn’t like the way it was being run. He demanded more help. The controller indulged him. The son organized a department. Those in the department wanted sub-departments, the sub-departments wanted sub-divisions and on and on and on. Nobody wanted to be at the bottom, you see. Life’s like that.’
‘So who is at the bottom? Is anybody?’
‘You’re looking at him,’ said the fat sweeper-upper. ‘Unless you’d like the job as my assistant.’
‘No thanks. But please continue.’