The Greatest Show Off Earth

  THE GREATEST SHOW OFF EARTH

  ROBERT RANKIN

  The Greatest Show Off Earth

  Originally published by Doubleday, a division of Transworld Publishers

  Doubleday Edition published 1994

  Corgi Edition published 1995

  Kindle Edition published 2012 by Far Fetched Books

  Diddled about with and proof-read by the author, who apologises for any typos or grammatical errors that somehow slipped past him.

  He did his best, honest.

  Copyright Robert Rankin 1994

  The right of Robert Rankin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  For a good friend of mine,

  Pádraig O’Méalóid

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  1

  How Raymond came to meet the flying starfish from Uranus. And how that same flying starfish taught him the meaning of the word ‘schmuck’.

  If you enter the village from the end where the common is, turn left at the mini-roundabout that everyone drives straight across, take the first right beside the big house that’s always being done up you’ll find yourself in King Neptune’s Road.

  Go down it for about half an old mile. Pass the overgrown playing field, the youth club where they play the loud music on Mondays, The Jolly Gardeners where music is never allowed, the road where Simon lives, and the big green corrugated workshop of Vinny the Builder. The-lane-that-dare-not-speak-its-name is tucked away on the left, at the very top of the hill.

  You will have to drive quite carefully down the lane, because it is full of potholes that no-one wants to take responsibility for. But if you do make it safely to the bottom you’ll notice several houses hiding there.

  There’s the horrid new one, with the satellite dish and the three bad dogs; the proud red tile-hung job on the corner, where the mad old major lives. And, up on the bank, the little Victorian cottage with the cast-iron gate.

  And that’s Raymond’s house.

  Of course, if you happen to come into the village from the other direction, it can all get really complicated. So the best thing would be to stop and ask at the post office. But if you do have to ask at the post office, then ask either the lady with the dyed blond hair or her assistant with the nice blue eyes. Don’t ask the bald postmaster who’s ‘a bit of a lad’, or the ancient granny who sits and knits. Because they both hate Raymond, so they’ll probably give you the wrong directions.

  Oh yes, and if you get there any time after six of a warm spring evening, you won’t find Raymond at home anyway. He’ll be at work on his allotment. And God only knows how you get there.

  Naturally Raymond knew the route to his allotment well enough. He even knew the short cut. But then he knew his way all around the village. He’d lived in the village for all of his life so far and he knew all of the things it was necessary to know.

  He knew where to go on Mondays if you wanted to hear loud music. And where to drink the rest of the week if you didn’t. He knew better than to attempt the retrieval of another tennis ball from the garden of the horrid new house with the satellite dish. And he knew that the potholes in the-lane-that-dare-not-speak-its-name were not his responsibility.

  Raymond was twenty-three years of age. His eyes were blue and his hair was brown. His height was a little under six feet. And his feet were a little over size nine. He worked for Vinny the Builder on the big house that was always being done up. And when he wasn’t working, or listening to loud music, or drinking quietly, or disavowing responsibility for potholes, and it was after six on a warm spring evening, as it was now, he could, like as not, be found digging on his allotment.

  It was mostly digging that Raymond did there. The actual planting and nurturing and harvesting aspects of allotment life were, as yet, terra incognita to him. He had sent off a postal order for a manual on the subject, but it had failed to arrive within the promised twenty-three days. Raymond had telephoned the publishers, who assured him that it had been sent. And later he remonstrated with the bald postmaster, who swore blind that it had been delivered. Voices had become raised and insults exchanged. And Raymond had found himself barred from the village post office.

  In fact, the manual had been delivered, but in error to the horrid new house with the satellite dish. And the man who lived in that house hated Raymond, because Raymond had once knocked a tennis ball through his greenhouse roof and then trampled down many prize blooms whilst making good his escape from the three bad dogs after trying to retrieve it.

  So the man in the horrid new house with the satellite dish had decided to keep Raymond’s manual and grow some vegetables on the bare patches of land where the flowers had got trampled down.

  So Raymond just dug for now. Often in his vest, and many times whistling loudly. Habits which got right up the noses of the other allotment holders. And on this particular warm spring evening, he was doing it all alone.

  His fellow allotmenteers had tired quite early with the sound of his whistling and the sight of his armpits, and repaired to The Jolly Gardeners, where whistling was prohibited and singlets proscribed. Raymond was fashioning a hole in which to plant an apple tree. A Granny Smith, or perhaps a Cox’s Orange Pippin. He had plenty of time to make up his mind, as apple trees are best planted in November.

  His spade struck upon a light brown stone and Raymond stooped to pick it up. He was examining the stone with some interest when his best friend Simon happened by. Simon was slightly older than Raymond, but no wiser. He found favour in the eyes of the local womenfolk and had worked, ever since he left school, for Mr Hilsavise the Gardener, whom many claimed to be in league with the devil. Simon had dark hair, dark eyes and very expensive dental work that he had saved up for.

  ‘Evening, Ray,’ said Simon, flashing his smile. ‘Digging a hole?’

  Raymond looked up from his digging. ‘Good evening, Simon.’ said he. ‘New hat?’

  Simon who never wore one, even in winter, shook his head. I’ve been thinking about growing a beard. But it’s only in the ideas stage yet. What is that you hold in your hand?’

  Raymond drew a spittley finger over his find. ‘It is either a stone that longs to become a potato, or a potato which has affected a most successful transformation into a stone.’

  ‘Perhaps it is a fossilized potato.’

  ‘Or a simulacrum.’

  ‘Possibly so.’ Simon m
ade a mental note to look that one up when he got home. ‘Did you read that thing in the paper the other day?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Raymond. ‘You must have me confused with somebody else.’

  ‘It would appear’, said Simon, ‘that the Russians have drilled this hole.’

  ‘No.’ Raymond gave his head a shake, ‘I dug this hole.’

  ‘No.’ Simon gave his head a shake also. ‘Not the hole I’m talking about. This hole is another hole entirely. In Siberia. Russian scientists drilled it to study the movement of tectonic plates.’ Simon paused in the hope that Ray would ask exactly what tectonic plates might be. But he didn’t, so Simon went on. ‘Twenty-three miles down they drilled. Through the solid bedrock. Then suddenly their drill broke through the roof of some kind of mighty cavern. So they pulled it up and lowered down this special microphone on a very long lead. And you’ll never guess what they heard.’

  Raymond leaned upon the handle of his spade which, since the arrival of Simon, had done no digging whatsoever ‘Was it the sound of millions of souls screaming in eternal agony?’ he enquired. ‘Because they had drilled into Hell?’

  ‘That’s what it said in the paper.’

  ‘I see.’ Raymond pocketed his stone/potato, climbed out of his hole and began to fill it in. ‘Would you care for a cup of coffee?’ he asked Simon.

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘Me too. But I only have tea.’

  Inside his allotment hut, Raymond uncorked his Thermos flask and poured out two piping-hot cups of tea. One with sugar and one without. ‘I wish it were coffee’ he said in a sorrowful tone. ‘I have never cared for tea’.

  ‘You should ask you mum to make up coffee for you, instead of tea then.’

  ‘If only it was that easy.’ Raymond sighed. ‘But I always make up the flask myself.’

  Simon sipped at the tea that was offered him. ‘I am baffled by the Thermos flask,’ he said between sippings.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, you put something hot into it and it stays hot; And you put something cold into it and it stays cold.’

  Raymond nodded thoughtfully

  ‘Well. How does it know?

  Raymond grinned the smile that he’d got on the National Health and did his best to explain the situation. ‘It doesn’t actually know as such. You see the Thermos flask consists of two glass bottles, one inside the other. And between these two bottles there is a quarter of an inch of vacuum. And heat cannot travel through a vacuum.’

  ‘Get away,’ said Simon. ‘So heat can’t travel through a vacuum?’

  ‘You have it.’

  Simon scratched at his fine dark head of hair. ‘Then tell me this: if heat cannot travel through a quarter of an inch of vacuum, how can the heat from the sun travel through ninety-six million miles of vacuum and reach the earth?’

  Raymond peered into the steaming glass throat of his Thermos flask. ‘Perhaps it does know after all,’ he whispered in an awestruck kind of a tone.

  ‘Makes you think,’ said Simon. ‘What is that terrible smell, by the way?’ Raymond sniffed. ‘You have trodden in dog pooh again, I suppose.’

  ‘No, not that smell.’

  Raymond sniffed again. ‘It smells like fish. Have you trodden in fish?’

  ‘Don’t be a schmuck,’ said Simon, who had come across the word in his dictionary while looking up ‘tectonic’, and had been hoping for an opportunity to use it.

  Raymond was about to ask the meaning of the word ‘schmuck’, when the sound of a terrific detonation, coming from very near by, caused him instead to drop his Thermos flask and take a dive for cover.

  ‘Whatever was that?’ asked Simon, joining him at floor altitude. ‘Are we at war?’

  ‘No, we’re still friends.’

  Raymond rolled on to his back and struck his head on half a bag of solid cement. ‘Go out and see what’s happened.’

  Simon felt at his teeth. ‘Would you do that if you were me?’

  There was a second detonation, somewhat louder and nearer than the first. ‘Run!’ cried Raymond, leaping to his feet.

  There was a good deal of undignified struggling and fighting as the two young men sought their escape through the narrow doorway. But when it was over and done with and they emerged, puffing and panting back into the warm spring evening, one thing was immediately apparent to them. And that one thing was, that nothing whatsoever appeared to have changed upon the allotments.

  ‘I see no shell holes,’ said Simon, straightening his hair and dusting down his manly denims. ‘Nor any holes at all for that matter.’

  ‘I have many down my lane,’ said Raymond. ‘But they are not my responsibility. I wonder what made those loud bangs.’

  ‘Have you ever heard of The Barisal Guns?’

  Raymond shook his head and showered his shoulders with cement dust. ‘I must hear of them now, I suppose?’

  ‘They might be pertinent to the situation.’

  ‘Pertinent?’

  ‘Pertinent.’ Simon hooked his thumbs into the belt-loops of his jeans and began to pace about. ‘I read of them in a book about unexplained phenomena that I received through the post.’

  ‘I sent up for one of those,’ said Raymond wistfully. ‘But mine never arrived.’

  ‘Shame. Well in this book there’s an article about The Barisal Guns. They are sounds resembling cannon fire that are regularly heard around this little village called, coincidentally enough, Barisal. Which is somewhere in the Ganges delta. They’re not cannons though and no-one knows what causes them. They’re believed to be of an atmospheric nature and they go. . . Ouch my nose!’

  ‘That would surely be a misprint in your book then.’

  ‘No, its ouch my nose.’ Simon staggered about, clutching at his face. ‘I don’t think I altogether follow that,’ said Raymond.

  ‘I just banged my bloody nose,’ whined Simon, somewhat nasally.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘I don’t know. On something. Something there.’ Simon gestured in the general direction of where the nose-banging incident had purportedly occurred. Raymond stepped over to see what might be seen.

  But nothing was to be seen.

  Although something was to be felt.

  ‘Shiva’s sheep!’ cried Raymond. ‘I have banged my nose also. And stubbed my toe into the bargain.’ He reached out a seeking hand and found it blocked before him by a cold, hard and quite invisible wall. ‘It is glass,’ said he.

  ‘Glass?’ Simon slouched over, rubbing his nose. ‘How is my profile?’ he enquired, and, ‘Show me this glass.’

  ‘It is here.’ Raymond went tap tap tap with his knuckle.

  Simon put out his hand and he too gave it a tap. ‘It is very clear glass,’ said he, ‘as it cannot be seen at all. And very cold glass also and . . .’ He put his tapping knuckle to his nose. ‘It smells strongly of fish.’

  Raymond sniffed at his own knuckle. ‘Perhaps it is recycled glass,’ said he. ‘But who put it here and, for that matter,’ he began to tap up and down and all around, ‘how big is it?’

  ‘Let’s find out. You go that way and I will go this.’

  The two set off, reaching and tapping and stooping and tapping and doing that thing with the palms of their hands that mime artistes never tire of boring their audiences with. Presently they found themselves together once more. On the other side of Raymond’s hut.

  ‘Ah,’ said the allotment holder.

  ‘Ah indeed,’ said his companion. ‘We would appear to be encircled. This isn’t good, is it?’

  Raymond scratched his head. And so did Simon.

  ‘Kindly stop scratching my head,’ said Raymond. ‘And help me to smash our way out.’

  ‘Good idea.’ Simon took up Raymond’s spade and Raymond sought out the pickaxe that he had once been persuaded into buying by the man with the earring who ran the ironmongers in the high street.

  They swung and they smote. They pummelled and they pounded. They beat and belaboured, bas
hed and blackjacked, battered and bludgeoned, biffed and banged. Great ungodly oaths were sworn and knuckles grazed aplenty. But it was all to no avail. The invisible wall didn’t give. Not a crack, nor a chip, nor a chaffing. It held.

  Presently the end came off Raymond’s pickaxe and nearly took his eye out. He flung aside the shaft and sank to his knees in the dirt. Simon dropped down beside him.

  ‘How are you on screaming for help?’ Raymond asked, when he’d got back some of his breath.

  ‘Help! screamed Simon.

  ‘Pretty good,’ said Raymond. ‘Heeeeeeelllp!’

  The sun was just beginning to dip behind the fine old meadow oaks that bordered the allotments, and hoarseness of the throat was taking its toll of the ‘help’ screamers, when Simon had an idea.

  ‘We could light a fire,’ said he in the voice of Louis Armstrong. ‘Stack stuff up against this invisible wall and set it ablaze. Melt our way out.’

  ‘Do you think that would work?’

  ‘Have you ever heard of Euclid’s fifth proposition?’

  ‘No,’ said Raymond. ‘Nor do I wish to hear of it now.’

  ‘We could burn that old pickaxe handle. What else do you have?’ Raymond cast a troubled eye towards his nice wooden hut.

  They got a really decent blaze going. They stood back and admired it. They warmed their hands by it and they poked at it with sticks. They threw things onto it and they generally behaved in that childish irresponsible manner that all men do when they have a bonfire.

  ‘Do you think it’s starting to melt yet?’ Raymond asked at length.

  ‘Bound to be.’ Simon fanned at his face and took to a fit of coughing. ‘There’s an awful lot of smoke,’ he observed.

  ‘An awful lot.’ Raymond joined in with the coughing. ‘I say. Look up there.’ ‘Up where?’

  ‘Up there.’ Raymond pointed towards the vertical.

  The smoke was gathering thickly and not too distantly above. ‘I think I am beginning to suffocate,’ said Simon.

  ‘Stamp out the fire!’ croaked Raymond.