They Came and Ate Us: Armageddon II: The B-Movie

‘Might be a little difficult to apply to society. You’ve wandered off the point, in case you thought I hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘Not at all. Now society, that is even more simple. Although it is impossible to predict accurately what an individual might do at any given time, it is simplicity itself to predict what a mass will do. Watch a particular TV show, read a particular newspaper, eat a particular brand of beans. The bigger a thing is, the more simple it becomes.’

  ‘It only sounds simple.’ Rex halted unexpectedly to let a bag lady cross the road. A nun on a bike struck the rear of the stolen ambulance, which may or may not have been of some cosmic significance. Jack went boldly forth.

  ‘It gets simpler. Forget man, forget society. Consider the planet itself. What does it ultimately do? Goes around the sun once a year. What could be simpler than that? And then we come to God.’

  ‘He’s not simple.’

  ‘Of course he is. He’s the simplest of the lot. He either exists and knows everything or he doesn’t exist at all. And since he doesn’t, that’s why I don’t believe in predestination. I rest my case.’

  ‘But God does exist,’

  ‘Oh no he doesn’t.’

  ‘Oh yes he does.’ Rex applied the brakes. ‘You are the sophist, Jack. Your arguments are pure rhetoric.’

  ‘That is your opinion. I make no judgement of it.’

  ‘There is a god. The God.’ Rex threw up his hands. ‘I’m telling you. I know.’

  ‘You’ve met him, I suppose.’

  ‘Actually yes.’ Car horns were starting to honk.

  ‘And he told you he was God.’

  ‘I married his daughter,’ bawled Rex.

  ‘I see.’ Jack’s arms were folded and he was making that smug sort of face that gets you punched in pubs. ‘You are clearly suffering delusions brought on by your blow to the head.’

  ‘And how did I get my blow to the head? And what came out of the dead woman’s mouth? No God, no Devil, Jack. You saw Asmodeus with your own eyes.’

  ‘The existence of evil does not argue for the existence of God. Quite the contrary in fact. The reality of evil disproves the infallibility of the all-good divinity. If evil exists then God must have created it. Ergo, if God created evil then God is not all good. Therefore if God is not all good then he is not God. Simple.’

  ‘So simple a child might have conceived it. As most do.’ Rex put the ambulance into gear and set off once more. The motorists who had been banging on its sides raced back to their vehicles.

  Presently Rex asked, ‘If you do not believe in pre-destination, then how do you account for the fact that I have read all your books? Books you have not even written yet?’

  Jack applied his mental processes to that one. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked. ‘And why are you taking me?’

  ‘We are going to assassinate the president. You are coming because I need your help.’

  ‘There,’ said Jack. ‘What could be simpler? Kindly stop the ambulance. I want to get out.’

  ‘No.’ With his gear-changing hand, Rex smote the poltroon a goodly blow. ‘You are going to re-deem yourself Jack. This is predestined for you. The library is destroyed. The remaining K carbon cannot be used. You are now the world’s leading expert on the occult.’

  ‘I am?’ Jack fixed Rex with a bitter eye.

  ‘You are. I have it on the best authority, the cover blurb of They Came and Ate Us. President Wormwood is the Devil made flesh. With your knowledge we will defeat him.’ Rex patted the flinching Jack on the shoulder. ‘Just you and me, Jack. The old team, eh? Pal.’

  Jack hunched low in his seat with a very sour face. Rex swerved to avoid a pile of trash cans and sent an overtaking motorist through the front window of a massage parlour. Two streets away, police chief Murphy and his flame-throwing ghostbusters were dealing with a 1407. A devil-possessed vehicle in a towaway zone.

  21

  MOTION OF THE PLANET: The important thing to remember about space is that it is empty. I do not wish to labour the point, but that is what space is all about. There is no air, no anything. So what does that say to you? I’ll tell you what it says, it says that where you have nothing, you have nothing going on. Nothing moving, nothing happening, nothing. So how come, you ask, do planets revolve around suns and suns as part of galaxies revolve about and whatnot?

  Recall if you will Rune’s third law of motion: Nothing goes anywhere unless it is pushed. Obviously in space, if things were left alone they would stay still. Rune’s fourth law states: Nothing moves unless it has to. So evidently an unseen hand is at work.

  It is my contention that a huge clockwork motor with a big flywheel, housed at the centre of this planet, not only rotates it, to create gravity, but powers it through space.

  Hugo Rune, The Book of Ultimate Truths

  Although there can be no doubt of Rune’s genius regarding many cosmic matters, his theory of the clockwork-driven Earth is possibly the most foolish concept that has ever wasted ink upon paper.

  Sir John Rimmer, Who Was This Hugo Rune Anyway?

  Mother Demdike, that fetid mockery of the human form, opened the greasy casket on her capacious lap. Within it lay six globes, as of glass; four shimmered with a fierce unholy light, one was black, another fast fading towards nigrescence.

  ‘My little cherubs,’ piped the old witch.

  Wormwood looked up from a desk now arrayed with pressing affairs of state. ‘What of you, beldame?

  ‘Two gone.’ Mother Demdike returned his stare. ‘Two little Kims. Your enemies swell in numbers. First Asmodeus and now they have murthered two of my children. If I was not the evil, verminous old gammer I pride myself to be, I should feel some remorse or even sadness at their loss. However . . .’ She plucked the two atramentous globes from her casket and tossed them into the fire.

  ‘They did not succeed in their tasks?’

  The hag shook her head, liberally distributing lice about the room. ‘I regret not. Your Nemesis has a guardian. My little Kims sniffed them out but something troubles the ether.’

  ‘In other words you let them get away. You useless trump. How did your creatures find my assassin and his consort?’

  ‘The Goetia, my little duck. The high magick which moulds the ether. Man inhabits a realm of time and space. But the Goetia does not. Within the ether there are no limitations, no time and no distance. No thought is too subtle that its resonance cannot be felt. Those who brood upon your destruction show their faces and their thoughts to me.’

  ‘Spare me your moonshine, your mendacious dugout. Bring me their skins.’

  Mother Demdike slammed shut her casket. ‘As you will. But have a special care for yourself. Death creeps toward you from many sides. Can’t you smell its breath?’ She raised a cheek of her gargantuan posterior, broke wind and fluttered her skirts toward the president. There was no way Meryl Streep was going to accept the role.

  She might go for playing Christeen, though.

  ‘Now that is one big black heavy-looking cloud.’ Fido sniffed at the sky. Above him a goodly amount of tumbling black stuff muttered ominously.

  ‘Is this your doing?’ Christeen levelled an imperious digit towards Artemis Solon Hermes-Aiwass-Crowley the fourth. Exalter Magus to the Sacred Order of the Golden Sprout. Otherwise known as Rambo Bloodaxe. ‘Come on. Speak up.’

  ‘None of my doing, madam, I assure you.’ Rambo shook his head. ‘Not guilty.’

  ‘Well, someone brought it here.’ Christeen began to tap her foot.

  ‘Perhaps you might just wish it away,’ Eric suggested.

  ‘Wish it away?’ Christeen’s tapping began to accelerate. ‘You think that I should do that do you?’

  Eric looked towards Rambo. ‘Rambo?’

  ‘Correct title please, Eric.’

  ‘Divinely Inspired One?’

  ‘Search me, Eric.’

  ‘But . . .

  ‘It’s a cloud, Eric. A big black cloud. No cause for alarm surely? You’ve seen big black clouds befo
re, haven’t you?’

  ‘Not for the last ten years, no.’

  ‘Humph,’ said Rambo. ‘It’s a cloud.’

  ‘Shall I piss on his leg now?’ Fido asked.

  ‘Wait till I trip him over,’ Christeen replied. ‘Then you can piss on his head also.’

  ‘Now just you see here.’ Rambo gathered his robes about him and prepared to flee. ‘I am not taking the blame for any big black clouds. Even one that looks like a . . .’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A 1958 Chevrolet Impala,’ said Eric.

  ‘A what?’ This ‘what’ belonged to Rambo, the first had been Christeen’s.

  ‘What is he talking about?’ Fido asked. ‘Chevrolet Impala indeed.’

  ‘It’s a car,’ Christeen told him. ‘A bit before your time. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘No, I don’t mean that, man. I know what a car is. I’m a dog, ain’t I? It’s programmed into my genetic code. In the old ancestral memory. What I mean is, how can someone be dumb enough to think the cloud looks like a Chewy Impala? That’s a Buick 6 or I ain’t man’s best friend. Which I surely am.’

  ‘It’s a Chevy,’ said Eric. ‘I know my history.’

  ‘Buick 6, man. Word to the wise is all.’

  ‘Not with fins like that,’ said Christeen. ‘That’s a Thunderbird.’

  ‘Buick,’ said Fido. ‘1959. Drophead coupe.’

  ‘Thunderbird,’ said Christeen.

  ‘THUNDERBIRD!’ said the cloud.

  Told you,’ said Christeen.

  ‘Rex,’ said Jonathan Crawford, for it was to him that Rex had driven Jack. ‘This is a most pleasant surprise. And who is this I see skulking in behind you? Surely it is the newly retired Dean of the Miskatonic.’ Jack groaned. ‘Or perhaps he has come here, chequebook in hand, eager to reimburse me for the ten million dollars’ worth of Bio-tech he destroyed last night.’

  ‘I can explain about that. It wasn’t my fault.’

  Rex raised calming hands. ‘Where is Elvis?’ he asked Jonathan.

  ‘Elvis?’ Jack looked up in surprise. ‘He lives in a bus on the moon with Lord Lucan, doesn’t he?’

  Jonathan ignored him. He leaned forward across his desk and waggled a boyish finger at Rex. ‘What do you know, eh Rex?’

  ‘I know my history. You asked me about the future and whether you were in it.’

  ‘And you said no.’

  ‘I was not being entirely honest with you. But I am prepared to be so now, for a price. Where is Elvis? What have you done with him?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him. Honestly.’

  ‘Then I shall take my leave.’ Rex, who had been sitting, rose to do so. ‘It’s a pity though.’

  ‘Let us not be hasty, Rex.’ Jonathan was all smiles. ‘But I am perplexed. Why do you think that I should know where Elvis is?’

  ‘Because he was driven away in one of your cars.’

  ‘What?’ Jonathan seemed genuinely startled, and not a little put out. ‘One of mine?’

  ‘JC3. You are fond of your initials, aren’t you?’

  ‘JC3.’ Jonathan clapped his hands together. ‘If this is the case we shall soon know.’ He plucked up a telephone and spoke rapid words into the receiver. Jack pricked up his ears, but the language was unknown to him. A lengthy conversation then ensued with Jonathan breaking off every so often to swear at the ceiling. Finally he slammed down the telephone.

  ‘It would appear that you are correct,’ he said bitterly. ‘A curious business and one I intend getting to the bottom of.’

  ‘Who were you speaking to?’

  ‘The car of course. JC3. A highly sophisticated piece of Bio-tech. I invented all its inner workings myself. I asked it where it had been last night and it told me a most fascinating tale.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Three men, apparently with security clearance, took the car from the garage here at seven thirty last night and drove it to the Split Beaver Club.’

  ‘I know it,’ said Jack brightly. ‘Know of it, I mean.’

  ‘Quite so. Two men left the car and returned shortly thereafter in the company of a third who answers the description of our Mr Presley . . .’

  ‘Elvis Presley?’

  ‘Be quiet Jack. Mr Presley did not go unprotesting. A Koshibo Tiger pursued JC3 and some unpleasantness occurred. JC3 is very upset about certain damage done to its bodywork and so am I. Mr Presley was then driven to a certain classified top-secret establishment and after several hours, delivered to his home at the Tower. The car was then returned to the garage. A most singular affair.’

  ‘Most singular. But who were these men? Your employees?’

  ‘The computer is running them through.’

  ‘And you knew nothing of this?’

  ‘I swear to you, Rex. My car, the nerve.’ Jonathan’s magical computer swung up from the narrow desktop. Jack, who had not seen the trick before, was mightily impressed. Jonathan hammered at the keyboard. ‘Oh no,’ he gasped. ‘Oh no, oh no.’ He hammered some more. ‘Oh no,’ he continued. ‘This is terrible. I never employed these people, but I appear to be paying them outrageous salaries. And I am funding some monstrous Bio-tech project I know nothing of. Project Wormwood. What do you make of that? I shall sack them at once and close down the project.’ He raised a hammering hand.

  ‘No.’ Rex rose to stop him. ‘Don’t do that. It would ruin everything.’

  ‘It would?’

  ‘It would.’ Rex did big nods. ‘It is essential that Project Wormwood go ahead. Essential to you in particular.’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘Indeed. I recognized you the first time we met. I saw a video documentary about you when I was a child.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Certainly. You were one of my biggest heroes.’

  ‘I was?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Rex had started, so he thought he’d finish. ‘Jonathan Crawford, child prodigy, boy genius. Youngest ever president of the USA.’

  ‘You what?’ Jonathan fell backwards from his chair. Neither Rex nor Jack hastened to his assistance. ‘President,’ came a strangled voice from beneath the desk. ‘President Crawford. Yes it does have a certain ring to it. Oh my word yes.’

  22

  Nothing is so powerful as a bad idea whose moment has come.

  Scott Rice

  ‘It is my considered opinion,’ Mr Smith had Byron’s toolbox out and a goodly amount of Byron’s Inter-Rositer on the gallery floor, ‘it is my considered opinion that matters can still be made straight. What do you suppose this part to be?’

  ‘That’s the logic jogger. Works the rack and pinion beneath the torque sprockets. Here, let me.’ Byron gave it a twist and a jerk with his spanner.

  ‘You’ve broken it off,’ said Mr Smith in a sorry tone.

  ‘Never mind.’ Byron began to whistle. Between flat notes he said, ‘You know, this is really quite exciting. There’s really no telling what will happen next. The possibilities are quite without end.’

  Mr Smith could see many possibilities; none, however, were particularly engaging. He offered his considered opinion once more.

  ‘If we can persuade the big flywheel to keep spinning a bit longer we might be able to sort all this out. We cannot possibly fix all the failing units but we might simply concentrate on one. Cannibalize other units for spare parts and restore this one to full operational capacity. Gear it towards our key figure.’

  ‘Rex Mundi,’ said Byron brightly.

  ‘The very same. The hero. Let him carry the action. That’s the way it should be done. We will give him an edge.’

  ‘But that’s cheating. Cheating never works.’

  ‘It’s not cheating. We just need to flesh out his character a bit. Put in a love interest. Liven things up a little. It’s all such a shambles at present.’

  ‘Well, if you say so.’

  ‘Trust me.’ Mr Smith pulled the broken log-jogger free and tossed it over the gallery rail. ‘We won’t be needing this.’ He dug
and delved with a three-pronged screw-driver, rooted and rattled with parbuckle, grip, lug, heft and handspike, and when he was done he said, ‘This is somewhat drastic and Rex won’t be expecting it. But it’s a calculated risk.’ He threw a nice big lever. ‘Now, watch this.’

  ‘Now watch this.’ Rex squeezed the inner ring of the steering wheel and the Koshibo Tiger roared. ‘Nought to sixty in no time at all.’ It was Jack’s turn to make the silly G-Force face. ‘Errg,’ he said. ‘Slow down.’

  ‘Sorry Jack. Bag please.’ The in-car computer flipped open a dashboard housing and the barf bag dropped into Jack’s lap.

  ‘Back there,’ Jack eventually found his breath, ‘Crawford, all that stuff you said about him becoming president. Was it.. .’ He paused to gaze sidelong at Rex. There was something different about him. It was difficult to say exactly what, but it was something. Presence, perhaps that was the word. He did bear an uncanny resemblance to a young Harrison Ford, although somewhat more ruggedly handsome. Physically, he was in pretty good shape. Jack was starting to feel a grudging respect for the man. This upset him no end.

  The truth?’ Rex asked.

  ‘Well, was it?’

  ‘One possible truth perhaps. Jonathan seemed happy enough with it. He promised to leave Project Wormwood alone and gave me this new car. So the day is not yet lost. What is that out there?’

  They were passing through a new development area. Thousands of men and women toiled away with pick and shovel. Earth movers moved earth. Diggers dug. A holographic hoarding projected a jolly green sign. TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY ECO-HOMES.

  ‘Part of our beloved president’s jobs for all policy.’ Jack’s voice had a dark edge to it. ‘“The only way is down,” says Wormwood. Homes below ground. Great cities and above them vast forests to be planted. To restore the ecological balance. Reform the ozone layer. Can’t say I relish living in a concrete bunker.’

  ‘It has little to recommend it.’ Rex halted the car and watched for a bit. ‘And they actually believe him?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t they? There is a crazy logic about all he does. A basic simplicity. Wormwood says that unemployment will be eradicated if there are plenty of highly paid low-skill jobs. So he creates them. Here we see the homeless digging homes for themselves and being paid for it into the bargain. They go about it with a will, do they not?’ Rex had to agree that they did.