The Fandom of the Operator

  ‘Stop, stop,’ said Adam. ‘This is driving me insane. How many generations of me are there here?’

  ‘Thousands and thousands and thousands,’ said the son, ‘and not just here, but on every other habitable planet in the universe. The universe is now all completely overcrowded by generations and generations of you.’

  Adam went back into his spaceship, and if he’d had a revolver to hand he would have shot his brains out. But he didn’t. Although he might well have done. But he was a very nice man and none of this was really his fault, so he left his spaceship and went down to the crowd and was carried shoulder-high by the crowd, for being such a pioneer and everything, and finally he had a meal out at a nice restaurant that had about three thousand tables in it, so that a few of his descendants could dine with him too.

  And it was over the meal that his son put a proposition to him.

  ‘Dad,’ said his son. ‘As the universe is all full up now, mankind is looking for new places to live in and your great (to the power of 23,000,000) grandson has come up with this new spaceship drive system that will take a pilot into an alternative universe in another dimension. And we’re looking for someone to pilot the ship.’

  And Adam, who was frankly pretty much off his rocker by now, said, ‘I’ll do it. Can I do it now, or at least as soon as I’ve finished my dinner?’

  And his son said, ‘Sure thing, Dad. First thing in the morning. The ship’s all fuelled up and waiting. We knew you’d want to volunteer.’

  So the very next morning there was this big procession and a broadcast on wrist televisions that went out to planets all over the universe and Adam got into the special new inter-dimensional spaceship and got frozen up in the very modern cryogenic capsule. And his son pressed the launch button and the spaceship vanished into an alternative universe.

  And you’ll never guess what happened when the spaceship landed on the first habitable planet it came to in the alternative universe in another dimension.

  THE END

  ‘What did happen?’ I asked Dave, after he had said, ‘THE END.’

  Dave rolled his eyes. ‘Same thing,’ he said. ‘Except that now it was far more complicated, with more millions of descendants involved. And one of them had invented another spaceship that could travel into an alternative alternative universe. I had to end the parable somewhere, so I ended it there. I did toy with the idea that on his final voyage in an infinitely alternative universe Adam took a woman with him for company. And, as it turned out, when he reached the next habitable planet in a universe so many times alternative from the first one that it didn’t have a number to cover it, he finally found himself on a planet that no descendant of his had got to before him. Because the spaceships they’d designed had finally reached the point where they could no longer be improved upon. So there was only him and his woman all alone on this new planet that was just like Earth but no one had ever been to before. The woman’s name was Eve, by the way.’

  ‘That’s a far better ending,’ I said.

  ‘Nah,’ said Dave. ‘That’s a stupid ending. Too far-fetched.’

  I removed my finger from my nose and scratched at my head with it. ‘I always thought that parables were supposed to have a moral to them,’ I said.

  ‘They are,’ said Dave.

  ‘So what’s the moral to yours?’

  ‘It’s obvious,’ said Dave. ‘Think about it.’

  I thought about it. ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘I get the moral. I understand it.’

  Dave nodded thoughtfully. ‘I knew you would,’ he said. ‘I only wish that I did.’

  7

  I lay behind the hedge with Dave and thought about his parable. It was a pretty good parable, as parables go, because it did have spaceships in it. But the more I thought about the substance of that parable, the more I realized that it really didn’t work at all.

  The space pioneer Adam could never have met his own son on that far-away world. He’d have died there thousands of years before. And how could there be all those generations of descendants all still alive? Had they discovered the secret of immortality? But all the same it was a good parable and I thought that if the time ever came to tell it I’d tidy it up somewhat and put my interesting ending at the end.

  But the time never came for me to tell it, so I didn’t.

  ‘I’m growing impatient with all this lying around in wait,’ I said to Dave. ‘We should do something to precipitate some action.’

  ‘Do speak English,’ said my bestest friend.

  ‘Go and knock on the door, or something.’

  ‘Just be patient,’ said Dave to me. ‘Pretend you’re an adult: wait.’

  And so we waited a little while more and finally our patience was rewarded.

  ‘A police car,’ said Dave. ‘I’ve been expecting that.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘I have. When I left the wake house before you, I telephoned the police.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, which seemed a reasonable question.

  ‘So we could have time alone with Mr Penrose.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, and I didn’t.

  ‘Just watch,’ said Dave. ‘Just watch and learn.’

  And so I watched and I learned.

  The police car, all glossy black, an Armstrong Smedley, one-point-five-litre, with running boards and the big bell on the top, slewed to a halt outside the wake house. Four coppers, as we knew them then, before they were known as ‘the Filth’, jumped out of the car and took to beating upon the front door. And shouting very loudly.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ I said to Dave. ‘But surely they’re beating upon the wrong front door? That’s the one next door to the wake house.’

  ‘Just watch,’ said Dave, ‘and be ready to run inside the wake house, as soon as I give the signal.’

  ‘What will the signal be?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll hoot like an owl.’

  ‘It’s the wrong time of day for that, surely? Why not moo like a cow?’

  ‘A cow? In Brentford?’

  ‘Bark like a dog, then.’

  ‘I don’t do dogs,’ said Dave. ‘Doing dogs is common.’

  ‘You could whinny, like a horse.’

  ‘That’s too posh,’ said Dave. ‘Only girls who go to posh private schools can do that properly.’

  ‘Is that true?’ I asked.

  Dave nodded knowingly. ‘When the day comes, and it will, that you find yourself in the company of a posh woman who once went to a posh private school, you just ask her whether she and her friends used to whinny like ponies.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I bet you she’ll say she did.’

  ‘All right, then,’ I said to Dave. ‘I’ll bear that in mind for the future. It is my intention to marry a very posh woman one day. I’ll ask her on our wedding night.’

  ‘Ask her earlier,’ said Dave. ‘Then you’ll know for sure whether she’s really posh or not. You ask her the first time you take her out. Before you’ve queued up for the pictures or waited in a line to buy her a portion of chips, or anything. No, on second thoughts, wait until after you’ve had a bunk-up with her. Until you’ve had that, it doesn’t really matter whether she’s posh or not.’

  ‘I’ll bear all that in mind,’ I said. ‘So what will the signal be, then?’

  ‘It will be an owl,’ said Dave. ‘Let’s speak no more about it.’

  I shrugged beneath the hedge and viewed the doings across the road. The front door of the house next to the wake was now open and a man in pyjamas was remonstrating with the policemen. He was shouting things at them. Things like: ‘I’m not a homo!’

  I glanced at Dave. Dave was grinning wickedly.

  ‘I know that man in the pyjamas,’ I whispered.

  ‘Of course you do,’ said Dave. ‘It’s Mr Purslow, the maths teacher. Didn’t you know he lived there?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I did,' said Dave. ‘He’s off sick with diphtheria.’

  ‘He
looks very angry.

  ‘He’s always angry. I hate Mr Purslow.’

  ‘Oh, look,’ I said. ‘He’s punched that copper.’

  ‘I knew he would,’ said Dave.

  And now other front doors were starting to open, as front doors always do at the arrival of a police car. Folk were issuing from them and into the Butts Estate. Posh folk, some of them, folk who looked as if they surely must have daughters who were good at impersonating ponies.

  And then the front door of the wake house opened and a number of drunken men, who looked for the most part as if whatever offspring they might have had would all be rubbish at whinnying, came a-blundering out with greatly raised voices of their own.

  Amongst these were the Daddy, who, to my surprise, and also my satisfaction, was accompanied by Mr Timms the undertaker, whose head he held firmly underneath his arm.

  ‘It seems that your daddy took your side,’ Dave observed. ‘They must have been fighting for quite some time. It looks like your daddy is winning.’

  A policeman turned upon my father and asked what he thought he was doing with the undertaker’s head.

  My daddy told him and I heard the word ‘homo’ once more being used.

  I shall get to the bottom of this homo-business, I told myself. Which might have been funny if it had meant anything to me.

  I heard one of the coppers saying something about the Butts Estate being ‘a den of vice’. But as the only vice I knew was in the woodwork room at school this didn’t mean anything to me either.

  ‘Wooo-eee,’ went Dave.

  ‘Yeah, it’s good this, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, wooo-eee, woo-ee.’

  ‘Eh?’ said I.

  ‘I’m hooting.’

  ‘In your pants?’

  ‘Like an owl. It’s the signal.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Right.’

  ‘Follow me,’ said Dave. And I followed him.

  Things were warming up nicely in the road, if you like that sort of thing. Fists were beginning to fly and truncheons to be drawn. Those were the days before riot sticks, CS gas, electric prods, stun-canes and phase-plasma rifles with a forty-watt range. These were the days when villains put their hands up when caught and said things like ‘It’s a fair cop, guvnor’. There was respect for the law in those days.

  A constable struck down Mr Purslow with his truncheon.

  My Uncle Jonny, who played darts with Mr Purslow, struck down the copper with his blind-man’s cane.

  We skirted around the growing chaos and slipped back into the wake house.

  Dave shut the front door quietly behind us and put on the security chain. ‘Mr Penrose awaits you,’ he said to me, as we stood by ourselves in the hall.

  I hesitated for just a moment. Well, it was a big deal. I was about to re-animate a dead man. I was in uncharted territory, so to speak.

  ‘Are you scared?’ asked Dave.

  ‘Of course I’m not.’

  ‘Then, get on and do it.’

  ‘All right, I will.’

  I strode down the hall to the wake-room door and pushed it right open. Before me the room lay in silence. Shafts of smoky sunlight still fell through the tall casement windows, onto the coffin of the great author, lighting up his nose.

  I hesitated once more.

  ‘Go on,’ said Dave. ‘Go on.’

  But I was now having second thoughts. I don’t know why this was. Well, perhaps I do. I think it must have been the silence and the sense of peace. The repose of death, if you like. Death is first of all about stillness. Of everything becoming still. The senses themselves. The organs of the body, the blood, the cells. All the things that were chugging away, the lungs going up and down and the heart going pump, pump, pump, and the bits and bobs in the brain going think, think, think , all have become still. All are silent. Still.

  Well, for a brief while at least. Until the putrefaction begins. Then there’s lots of activity.

  The nose of Mr Penrose looked terribly, terribly still.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ Dave asked. ‘Get on with the re-animating.’

  ‘I don’t know if it’s right,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ Dave stared at me. ‘Are you bottling out?’

  ‘Don’t say that. I’m not. It’s just––’

  ‘Give me the herbs,’ said Dave. ‘I’ll stick them into his gob.’

  ‘You can’t just stick them into his gob. You have to do the ritual. Say the words.’

  ‘Go on, then, if you really are as brave as you’re always saying.’

  I crept slowly forward, reached the coffin and peeped in at the face of Mr Penrose.

  And didn’t it look peaceful. So at rest. So in repose.

  ‘He looks happy as he is,’ I said to Dave.

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ Dave said to me. ‘After all the trouble I’ve gone to, telephoning the police and everything, and now you’re bottling out.’

  ‘I’m not. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘But he’s your favourite author. He wrote the Lazlo Woodbine books, the best books in the world. And if you bring him back to life he can write us some more.’

  ‘Yes, but––’

  ‘And don’t you think he’ll thank you? He’s bound to be happier being alive again rather than being dead, isn’t he? And everyone else will be happy too. And the Queen will give you a special badge. And P. P. Penrose might even make you a character in one of his new books. Maybe a baddie who will be shot dead by Laz with his trusty Smith & Wesson during the final rooftop confrontation.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘And there’s something else,’ said Dave.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘If you don’t do it, I’ll punch your head in.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  Dave made a fist. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but we’ve come too far to go back.’

  I considered Dave’s fist. It was a fierce fist. I’d seen it in action. ‘I’m sorry too,’ I said. ‘I’m just being silly. I came here to bring Mr Penrose back from the dead. And that’s just what I’ll do.’

  ‘Good man.’ Dave hugged my shoulder. ‘Then, please hurry up.’

  I took out the book I’d borrowed from the library and the special herbs that Mother Demdike had given me.

  ‘Take the herbs,’ I said to Dave. ‘And when I tell you, and not before, you put them into his mouth.’

  Dave looked down at Mr Penrose and I saw a look of doubt appear on his face. ‘I’m not doing that,’ he said. ‘That’s your job, putting the herbs in.’

  ‘But you just said—’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ said Dave. ‘You should take all the glory.’

  ‘You’re scared.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘You’re afraid to touch his face.’

  ‘You can catch the syph from touching a dead man’s face.’

  ‘What’s the syph?’

  ‘It’s a terrible disease.’

  ‘All right, let’s forget the whole thing.’

  Dave dithered, but only for a moment. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll prise his mouth open with my penknife.’

  I shook my head. I really did have my doubts.

  ‘All right,’ I said too. ‘Let’s do this.’ And I opened the book and began to read out the ritual.

  I knew that there was more that should be done than just reading out the ritual. I knew there was supposed to be beating drums and frenzied dancing about by half-naked brown ladies and even a cockerel getting its head chopped off. But it seemed to me that in theory the words and the herbs should be enough.

  In theory.

  Now, one thing that I didn’t know then was that when you perform a magic ritual you have to do it very loudly. You have to shout the words right out. Magic is a very noisy business, which is why its practitioners have always chosen out-of-the-way places like blasted heaths and distant forest glades to perform their rituals. The line that divides the world of man from th
e world of spirit is not a thin line, it’s a chunky solid affair that takes some breaking through. If you want to be heard on the other side of it, you’re going to have to shout very loudly indeed. I pass on this information to you in the interests of science. And because I know that passing on little titbits like this, as I will throughout this book, really gets up the noses of ritual magicians, who love to keep things like this secret.

  ‘Speak up,’ said Dave. ‘I can’t hear you.’

  I spoke up a bit, then a bit more. Dave rocked back and forwards on his heels and clicked his fingers and popped his thumbs. ‘Go on, my son,’ he said. ‘Give it ritual.’

  I gave it ritual and shouted the words.

  ‘Go on,’ I shouted at Dave. ‘Feed Mr Penrose the herbs.’

  Dave took out his penknife and I averted my eyes as he prised the author’s teeth apart and emptied in the herbs.

  I shouted away the rest of the ritual.

  And then I was done.

  Dave stepped back from the coffin. ‘What happens next?’ he whispered. ‘Will he come alive?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I suppose so.’

  And we waited.

  The sunlight fell in shorter shafts now; the room was becoming darker. Outside, in what seemed now a distant realm, the bell-sounds of other approaching police cars could be heard. Here in this old room, this peaceful room, we stood shoulder to shoulder, Dave and I, wondering what would happen next, each alone inside our heads with thoughts that were personal to us.

  I don’t know what Dave was thinking, but I knew what was going on in my brain.

  It hasn’t worked, my brain was saying. It was all rubbish and you will now be for ever a fool in Dave’s eyes.

  ‘Are you sure you did it right?’ Dave asked, and his voice seemed now very loud indeed in that room.

  ‘I’m sure,’ I whispered. ‘Although the herbs might not be right. Mother Demdike might have given me the wrong stuff.’ That seemed a very good excuse to me.

  ‘Gary,’ said Dave, and he took out his cigarettes.

  ‘Dave?’ said I, and I eyed them eagerly.

  ‘Gary, I just want to say this. We are bestest friends, aren’t we?’ Dave took out two cigarettes.