The Mechanical Messiah and Other Marvels of the Modern Age

  There is sometimes comfort to be found in explanation.

  This was not one of those sometimes.

  ‘We are doomed!’ cried Corporal Larkspur. ‘Doomed!’

  Things were not going as well as they might have been in the armoured gun port that housed the prang cannon.

  ‘This one makes the seat go up, I think,’ went the major, harnessed into the firing seat and pushing a button to no response whatever.

  ‘“Thank you for choosing the

  MARK FIVE PATENT PRANG CANNON.”‘

  Cameron Bell was reading aloud from the instruction manual.

  ‘“The Mark Five supersedes the Mark Four, lessening the danger of severe radiation damage to the operator. Incidences of fatal static discharge to the operator are minimised by almost three per cent. Rubber boots and a hardy disposition are, however, recommended.

  “‘Sterility may be avoided through the simple expedient of shielding the operator’s private regions by wearing the

  MARK FIVE LEAD-LINED LONG JOHNS.

  ‘“Thank you for choosing the

  MARK FIVE LEAD-LINED LONG JOHNS.

  The Mark Fives supersede—

  ‘This might take a little time,’ said Cameron Bell.

  But time, however, was not upon his side.

  A horrible groaning sound accompanied by a sudden forward movement informed all aboard the Marie Lloyd that the ship was taking off. Not, though, by the power of its very own engines. The snaking silver rods had woven themselves into a kind of web about the hull and were dragging the helpless hulk into the sky.

  ‘Oooooh!’ went all who were not firmly strapped in. Cameron Bell amongst them.

  ‘Start, you *****!’ went Corporal Larkspur, frantically twisting the key.

  In a great swinging arc, which avoided any damage at all to the mighty Nabana trees, the Marie Lloyd was drawn from its hiding place into the naked heavens.

  Within there was madness and mayhem as, but for most of the passengers, absolutely nothing had been secured prior to this unscheduled take-off Food and furniture, beer bottles, brandy balloons, shoes and safari suits, servings of Treacle Sponge Bastard, each of these and so much more were all flung about within the spaceship.

  Cameron Bell found himself catapulted from the armoured gun port and bounced down the central aisle between the ranks of passenger seats.

  ‘Come back, Balls,’ bawled the colonel. ‘Must I do everything myself?’

  The Marie Lloyd was now some three thousand feet up in the bright blue sky. A beautiful cloudless sky today, had anyone sought to enjoy it. But within this captured spaceship most were consumed by terror. The engines clearly were not on the go and should the Venusians choose simply to release their captive from the silver cables that netted the ship, all aboard would surely die when it struck the valley floor.

  That the Venusians had no such intentions might have been speculated upon. To them an object of blasphemy had been removed from the sacred valley of Efland. It and all it contained would be destroyed in the great furnace at Rimmer, which had been specially constructed for such purposes.

  A letter of stern protest would be penned to the British ambassador. And the delivery of those little round chocolate sweets that he loved so much would be curtailed for a month, in punishment.

  Darwin held tightly to Alice’s hand and wondered what dying was like. Since he had learned to speak the Queen’s English and to read and write also, Darwin had read many books. Amongst these the Bible. He had been greatly taken with the Old Testament. Especially all the animals going into Noah’s ark, two by two by two. But there had been a question nagging away at him and that was regarding souls. Men had souls, the Bible made clear, but what about the monkeys?

  The swinging about of the spaceship made for upset stomachs, but there was a queer calm silence all around.

  ‘Alice,’ said Darwin, ‘might I ask you a question?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Alice, who was shaking very much.

  ‘When we die in a minute,’ said Darwin, ‘will you take me to Heaven with you?’

  Alice looked at the monkey and tears welled in her eyes.

  Cameron Bell had tears in his eyes. But these were not from emotion. These tears were from a cheesecake that had struck him in the face. He was back on his feet now and at the cockpit door. Forcing his way in, he frowned at Corporal Larkspur.

  ‘Why have you not switched on the engines?’ he demanded to be told.

  ‘The battery is flat. Because of the difference in time. It would have been good for weeks under normal circumstances.’

  ‘Don’t you carry a spare?’

  Corporal Larkspur glared at the private detective. ‘No, ‘said he. ‘I do not.’

  ‘Then improvise, man. Don’t you realise what peril we are in?’

  ‘Peril?’ said Corporal Larkspur, bitterly. ‘Oh, I thought we were all just going for a jolly joyride. You stupid *****!’

  The two men looked hard at each other. Cameron Bell knew instinctively that only one of them would return to Earth alive.

  The private detective drew out his ray gun.

  ‘Ah!’ cried Corporal Larkspur. ‘So now you show your hand.’

  ‘Out of the seat,’ shouted Cameron Bell, ‘and let me deal with this.’

  ‘You cannot pilot the ship,’ said Corporal Larkspur. ‘In fact no one can but I. If you wish to return in safety to Earth you would do well to offer me your protection.’

  ‘I only mean to get the engines started.’

  The city of Rimmer, capital of the magical world of Magonia, sparkled on the horizon like the Emerald City of Oz. Romantic, beautiful, unearthly. This city was ancient, built before Mankind had first set foot upon the Earth. Here the mighty ones of old, whose epic adventures were now the myths of other worlds, had done their deeds and lived their lives of magic.

  Sailing towards it in gossamer glory, the aether ship of the death patrol dragged the Marie Lloyd.

  The great furnaces were stoked, awaiting heretics to burn.

  ‘You don’t know what you are doing,’ complained Corporal Larkspur. ‘What are you doing, by the way?’

  ‘Connecting the charging cable from my ray gun to the ignition panel,’ explained Cameron Bell. ‘I pull it out from the stock, see? Then plug it into here, see?’

  ‘It is a charging cable,’ said Corporal Larkspur, ‘for charging the ray gun. Not the other way round.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘But here is the beauty of it. If I make a small adjustment here to my ray gun— ‘Yes?’ went the puzzled Corporal Larkspur.

  ‘And reverse the neutron flow—’ said Cameron Bell. But then he looked up at the corporal.

  ‘Is it getting hot in here?’ he asked him.

  Mighty furnace doors were opening below.

  Above the Marie Lloyd, Venusians slipped the silver cables.

  41

  alling like a stone towards the furnace, the Marie Lloyd went down and down and down.

  Darwin clung to Alice and Alice clung to Darwin. The Jovians said prayers their mothers had taught them. Cameron Bell discovered God and wondered whether the Almighty really did offer his eternal blessings to those who made eleventh-hour conversions to His faith.

  The flames roared up, the ship dropped down.

  Down into the furnace and was gone.

  Then up again in a roar of engines. Up into the sky.

  Corporal Larkspur clung to the joystick, red of face, with eyes all popping out. Cameron had a fine sweat on and offered his thanks to God.

  The Jovians cheered, Alice cried and Darwin the monkey fainted.

  ‘Out into space,’ cried Cameron Bell. ‘Back to the Earth at the double.’

  ‘I know what I’m doing,’ Corporal Larkspur said with bitterness. ‘You might thank me for saving your life.’

  ‘I think you will find that it was I who started the engines,’ said Cameron Bell.

  ‘But I who flew us from the jaws of death.’

 
‘But you who let the batteries run flat.’

  ‘But you who stole the ignition key.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said Colonel Katterfelto, ‘best cease congratulating each other. Aether ship on our tail, doncha know? Best get a move on, eh?’

  ‘Is the prang cannon operational?’ Cameron asked the colonel.

  ‘Depends how you define operational, old chap. Have the firing seat working now. Come to borrow the ignition key.’ The colonel reached towards it.

  ‘Best not,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘I will pick the lock on the cannon.

  It was certainly to be hoped that things would all work out right in the end. As Cameron and Colonel Katterfelto scuttled off towards the armoured gun port, the pursuing Venusian craft trained cannons of its own upon the speeding Marie Lloyd.

  Scholars of cosmology and those who write wordy treatises upon the life of the inhabited worlds have long found wordless gaps in their work when they write of the planet Venus. How exactly a race so polite, charming, godly, peaceful and cooperative had for so long managed to stymie all attempts at anthropological study by other races was, if nothing else, a triumph of interworld diplomacy.

  Attempts had been made, some of these most valiant. The Rough Guide to Venus, briefly published before the threat of war had it removed from the shelves of W. H. Smith, included maps, a history of Venus and a Good Food Guide to Rimmer. Authored, very possibly, by the enigmatic Herr Döktor and now more highly prized than an original copy of The Necronomicon, this small tome represented all that was known of the planet Venus and her people.

  In the section entitled MAGICAL WEAPONRY, these words were to be found:

  As with the Venusian ships of space, which are referred to as Holier-than-Air craft and move through the aether by the power of faith alone, the weapons of this magical world do not function by mechanical means. An ecclesiastic, trained in the aiming of the ‘Weapon of Wrath’, concentrates his thoughts through a meditative process into a ‘will to punish’, then mentally propels them through the nozzle of the gun. This nozzle is fashioned from the sacred metal Magoniam, a subtle form of gold capable of carrying the power of magic. It is said that no minerals on any other planets possess this property.

  White stripes of destructive force issued from the aether ship. The death patrol was now in hot pursuit.

  Corporal Larkspur glanced into a wing mirror then made what he considered to be an evasive manoeuvre. Cameron Bell found himself plastered to the ceiling of the armoured gun port.

  The colonel, once more harnessed to the firing seat, said, ‘Don’t be a silly arse, Balls. We’ve serious business here.’

  The Marie Lloyd did loopings of the loop then swept towards the blackness of space. The equivalent of Earth’s gravitational pull increased by a factor of three and had Cameron now pasted to the floor and the colonel’s mustachios meeting at the back of his neck. But at least these loopings of the loop brought artificial gravity to the Marie Lloyd.

  ‘Tally-ho!’ cried the old soldier, when he was able. ‘Damn good fun, eh, Balls?’

  Cameron scraped himself into the vertical plane.

  A white stripe of concentrated malice cleaved a tail fin from the Marie Lloyd, sending the craft into a corkscrew trajectory that was most unpleasing to the spaceship’s occupants.

  Jovians brought up their breakfast.

  Darwin fainted again.

  Cameron Bell tinkered at the prang cannon’s dashboard with his fork. The colonel spun stopcocks and gave valves professional flickings.

  ‘Fast as you can now, please,’ was his advice.

  Cameron tinkered, then threw up his arms, drew out his ray gun and pointed it at the dashboard.

  ‘Ah,’ said the colonel. ‘Good idea. Use the retractable charge cable in the ray gun’s stock. Reverse the neutron flow. Job done.’

  Cameron took aim and shot the dashboard.

  Bulbs sprang into vivid life along the cannon’s length. A whining, as of dangerous power, rose to an eardrum-splitting pitch. Cameron Bell pocketed his ray gun. ‘Aim it and fire it!’ he cried, clamping his hands over his ears. ‘Fire it before it overloads.’

  ‘Speak up!’ shouted the colonel. ‘A lot of noise in here.’

  ‘Fire it!’ shouted Cameron.

  ‘Fire it? Jolly good.’

  The Marie Lloyd lost another tail fin, which at least stopped all the spiralling. Jovians peered pale-faced through their portholes as the Venusian aether ship began to draw alongside.

  ‘Hold hard a moment,’ shouted Cameron Bell. The din of the prang cannon overcharging itself had risen to a pitch beyond that of human register. On Venus the dogs all started to howl. Which meant they have dogs upon Venus.

  ‘What are you saying?’ shouted the colonel, for everything else in the armoured port was still rattling noisily about. ‘Can’t hear what you’re saying.’

  ‘They don’t know we are armed,’ bawled Cameron Bell. ‘Don’t shoot until they are right alongside. Then give them everything that we have.’

  ‘Just like we did to Johnny Martian, eh?’ The colonel made the thumbs-up.

  Alice now peeped through her porthole. She saw the beautiful craft. So close it was that she could see that it more resembled a galleon than a flying castle. There were Venusians upon the decks, laughing and pointing. Some appeared to be drinking cocktails. One was aiming a very big gun indeed.

  Alice saw a Venusian in an extravagantly decorated uniform approach the being that manned the very big gun. He raised his hand then brought it down and there was a terrible bang.

  The explosion tore the ship apart, dissolved it into atoms, made it simply cease to be.

  A single craft now moved through the silence of space.

  ‘Alexander’s greatcoat!’ said the colonel. ‘That was a prang if ever there was one. Damn fine job there, Balls.’

  After a great deal of watch-checking and heated debate, it was finally agreed that the time was nearing one of the lunchtime clock. Earth time.

  ‘And the sun is bound to be over the yardarm,’ said the colonel. ‘Drinks all round, my treat.’

  Major Thadeus Tinker patted the old campaigner on his bowing back. ‘This fellow’s a hero,’ said he. ‘Best give him a round of applause.’

  ‘Balls did most of the work,’ puffed the colonel. ‘I just pressed the firing button. Let’s have three big cheers for Mr Balls.’

  ‘Let us not bother,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘And please stop calling me Balls.’

  There had been drinking before on the Marie Lloyd. Heroic drinking by men of the Queen’s Own Electric Fusiliers. On the way back from the Martian Campaign, with crates of Martian gin. And the colonel had enjoyed a particularly memorable booze-up with the survivors of a previous big-game hunt. Two of them had died from alcohol poisoning, the colonel recalled. But this was somehow a special party. A special party indeed.

  To Colonel Katterfelto’s enormous surprise, Corporal Larkspur paid him the balance of his wage, in cash, without any fuss.

  Darwin stuck out a hairy hand and the colonel gave him half.

  ‘We have triumphed,’ quoth the colonel, ordering all the champagne on board to be uncorked and offered around. ‘Those of us who have survived will be wealthy men when we reach Earth.’ He raised his glass to the Jovians. ‘You fellows, already wealthy,’ he said. ‘But with the diamonds, even wealthier now, eh?’

  The Jovians laughed and cheered the colonel, then all drank champagne.

  ‘Think we’ll be going home with our heads on our bodies,’ Colonel Katterfelto whispered to Darwin. ‘So all is well as ends well, I suppose.’

  Darwin was already enjoying a slight degree of simian insobriety.

  ‘You are my bestest friend,’ he told the colonel.

  ‘And you mine, my dear fellow, you mine.’

  The two clinked glasses. Darwin poured some champagne into his ear.

  Major Thadeus Tinker appeared with a smile on his face. It was a visible smile now as he h
ad shaved away his great white beard and given himself a haircut.

  ‘You missed a bit under your ear there, Tinker,’ said Colonel Katterfelto. ‘But damn me if you don’t look ten years younger.

  ‘I am very grateful to you, Katters.’ The major put his arm about his old friend’s shoulders. Darwin made a face and turned away. ‘I will be very glad to get back to Blighty. And we must take that night out at the Music Hall. What do you say?’

  ‘Well, about that—’ huffed the colonel. But Alice started to sing.

  It was that much-loved Music Hall standard, a poignant Irish ballad of a mother’s love for a boy with very big ears. Who leaves his mother all alone to bring up five children when he joins the British Army and marches off to fight the enemies of the Crown. So sad a song was this as to be capable of raising a tear from the eye of a tiger.

  The Jovians who knew it sang along; the others, who did not, simply wept.

  The verse that most remembered went as follows:

  The big-eared boy has gone away

  To fight a foreign war,

  No more to hear the children play

  But only cannons roar.

  His mother now has lost her joy.

  She walks a lonely road

  Where he marched away as a soldier boy —

  Ungrateful little toad!

  Amidst the cheering, Cameron Bell took out his hankie and noisily blew at his nose.

  As the champagne was danced around again and again others rose to perform their party pieces.

  The colonel performed a high-stepping dance that he’d learned in Afghanistan.