I glanced towards Mr Rune and viewed the big smile on his face.
‘Hand over the experimental subject,’ clicked and grunted the space crab. ‘If the area is compromised, my crew and I must make a speedy departure.’
‘Not so fast,’ said the doctor. ‘You promised to exchange the microchip technology. A deal is a deal.’
‘Another time,’ clicked Ahab.
‘No,’ said Doctor Proctor. ‘My superiors won’t take kindly to that. Don’t believe a word of what this fat fool has to say.’
‘Another time,’ clicked Ahab once more.
‘I think not,’ said the doctor. ‘If you won’t give it now and willingly, then we’ll take it.’
And he turned his gun on the space crab. And would you not just know it, but that space crab suddenly drew out a gun of its own from somewhere. A big silver gun. A big silver ray-gun, I supposed.
And suddenly a cry went up, a great cry, as of warriors, and up upon the hillside at all points of the crater’s rim I saw them, big and bold and piratically inclined. And well armed, too, and holding flaming torches. It was none other than the greatly feared Moulsecoomb Militia.
‘I warned you,’ said Mr Rune.
And I saw the look of horror on the face of Doctor Proctor. And then I saw him swing his gun towards Mr Rune and pull upon the trigger and I dropped down and swung around and kicked at this gun, which went off loudly and blew the end from one of the space crab’s legs.
And then there was gunfire all around and things became rather chaotic. The nutcase holding me at gunpoint was removed from existence by an arc of blue energy that issued from the muzzle of the space crab’s ray-gun. For which I remain eternally grateful.
There was running and shouting and screaming and shooting. And Ahab the space crab retreating up his gangway. And the Moulsecoomb Militia laying down fire and pouring into the crater. The fighting was fearsome and I took cover and Mr Rune did likewise.
And amidst the running and shouting and screaming and shooting, there came a terrible humming as Ahab the space crab’s scout-craft rose into the sky.
And then some blighter clubbed me down and things went very black.
And I awoke with a terrible headache in forty-nine Grand Parade.
‘I do very much hope,’ I said, when I had located my voice, ‘that I dreamed all that.’
‘Which part?’ Mr Rune asked. ‘The space crab, or the attack by the Moulsecoomb Militia?’
And I made plaintive groaning sounds.
‘You acquitted yourself most well and also saved my life, as I predicted.’ Mr Rune placed a glass of Scotch in my hands and I was grateful for this.
‘And all has worked out rather splendidly,’ said the Mumbo Gumshoe, ‘for I am now the owner of a three-masted galleon.’
I rubbed at my head, which did not help, and sipped at my Scotch, which did. ‘That will come in handy if we ever decide to take up a life of piracy,’ I said.
‘I’m leasing it out to Bartholomew Moulsecoomb,’ said Mr Rune. ‘He’s still rather keen and there might well be booty worth sharing.’
I did further rubbings of the head. ‘Please explain it all to me,’ I pleaded.
‘Certainly,’ and Mr Rune took Scotch himself. ‘Firstly, all the clues were there in the house of Bartholomew’s brother. You saw them, as did I. You saw, but I saw more.’
‘Continue.’ I savoured Scotch, and found it to my liking.
‘The photographs on the hall wall,’ said Mr Rune, ‘of Bartholomew’s brother in military uniform – the Queen’s Own Electric Fusiliers, a regiment that you will not find in any military history book. A unit that specialises in covert operations for the Ministry of Serendipity. There were medals in a case on the lounge wall – you noticed them also, but you did not understand their significance. They were for off-world campaigns, for battles fought in space.’
‘You cannot be serious,’ I said, in a manner that would one day find favour with the likes of John McEnroe.
‘I certainly can. If you recall, in Danbury Collins’s lecture, he spoke of the endless vacuum of space, and how there couldn’t have been a Big Bang because sound cannot travel through a vacuum.’
‘I recall that,’ I said. ‘It made a lot of sense.’
‘But it is incorrect. Space is not a vacuum. Space is filled with air. There is an atmosphere in space and not only that, all of the other planets in our solar system are inhabited.’
‘That cannot be true,’ I said. ‘Surely we would have discovered that by now.’
‘Rizla,’ said Mr Rune, ‘spacecraft have been flying from Earth since Victorian times and commuting between the planets. You won’t find this in any history books because it is a secret, a top-secret secret known only to a few. That few being the Secret Government that controls the controllers of our planet. I know this because I have travelled in space. I travelled with a circus, as it happens, that of Professor Merlin and his Greatest Show Off Earth. A treaty exists between the inhabited worlds – a peace treaty. But, needless to say, there are pirates – the flying starfish from Uranus, and those crab lads from the nebula that bears their name.’
I shook my head. Which hurt. ‘So Ahab the space crab is a pirate,’ I said. ‘A space pirate.’
‘You’ve no doubt read about alien abductions,’ said Mr Rune.
‘I have,’ I said, ‘in the Weekly World News.’
‘It dates back to the time of the pharaohs. An unsavoury business, but there you are. Bartholomew’s brother, it seems, was having his doubts about the whole thing. You saw also the books on his shelves, books on philosophy. And there were the letters on his desk. He was about to blow the whistle, as it were. The Men of the Ministry offered him up to Ahab, so he took his own life.’
‘That is horrible,’ I said.
‘Indeed,’ said Mr Rune. ‘But by using his genetic material and the advanced technology that Ahab had already provided for previous services rendered, to whit the supply of the surplus “homeless” for experimentation in the crab nebula, Doctor Proctor cloned another Bartholomew’s brother.’
‘This all seems rather unnecessary and complicated,’ I said.
‘If everything was simple,’ said Mr Rune, ‘there’d be no need for me.’
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Tell me how you knew that Ahab would be landing last night and where.’
‘The maps were there in the house – you saw them. And also the calendar with the rings about the dates.’
‘But that is all so simple,’ I said. ‘But then you knew a lot more about all this than I could possibly know. But what happened to me when I was in that house and what was that shimmering shell thing that I saw surrounding the place?’
‘An engineered fluctuation in the ether,’ said Mr Rune. ‘It is the ether that is the substance of space. It is by attuning to the ether that one can access everything – the past, the present and the future. It is how the Chronovision functions.’
‘I really do not understand,’ I said, ‘but I did see a real flying saucer and a real alien last night and that was pretty damn exciting. I cannot wait to tell Fangio.’
‘You will tell no one,’ said Mr Rune.
‘Aw,’ I said.
‘No one.’ And he put a big fat finger to his lips. ‘You and I,’ he continued, ‘have embarked upon a crusade. We are comrades in this and confidants, also. I have to have your word regarding secrecy – it is imperative.’
‘Oh, all right,’ I said. And grudgingly, too.
‘We’ve seen the last of Ahab for the time being,’ said Mr Rune, ‘which is something.’
‘It is something, I suppose. But there is another something. I recall you saying that the future of the House of Windsor and the British Government were at stake here. It seemed a big thing at the time. I remember thinking that I would probably end a chapter upon it, should I ever come to write the bestseller that you say I will write.’
‘And you will,’ said Mr Rune. The cloning process, which will now go n
o further as Doctor Proctor was shot in the head last night—’
‘Oh, good,’ I said. ‘I am sorry I missed that, though.’
‘You would not have enjoyed the experience. Very messy.’
‘But the cloning process.’
‘The Ministry of Serendipity’s intention was to clone the Royal Family and the Prime Minister, then remove the real McCoys and substitute their own versions – versions that would do as the Ministry wished them to do. The Ministry seeks to control all, but it does not absolutely do so. Yet.’
‘I am sure I have other questions,’ I said, ‘but as I cannot think of them now, I will not go racking my aching head.’
‘Sound fellow.’
‘No, hang about,’ I said. ‘I do have one question: why were Bartholomew’s twin brother and Bartholomew’s twin brother’s twin brother dressed as space crabs?’
‘Female space crabs,’ said Hugo Rune, and he tapped at his nose and winked in a somewhat lewd manner.
I shook my head. ‘I do not get it,’ I said.
‘It’s a long way back to the Crab Nebula,’ said Mr Rune, ‘and with an all-male crew with time on their hands and—’
‘Stop!’ I cried. ‘I do not wish to know any more.’
Mr Rune and I went to the circus the following week.
It was not Professor Merlin’s Greatest Show Off Earth. It was Count Otto Black’s Circus Fantastique.
The Count was not there in person, of course, but Mr Rune knew that he would not be. But there were clowns – fellows with whitely daubed faces who did things with cardboard boxes and mackerel for Art.
I did not take to the clowns.
Nor did Mr Rune.
And when they came grinning in our direction and capering and doing it all for Art …
We punched them.
And we were thrown out of the circus.
4
The Lansdowne Lioness
The Lansdowne Lioness
PART I
I really did enjoy my time with Hugo Rune. It was certainly a dangerous time, but it was also thrilling. It was exciting.
He annoyed me greatly, however, because although he always said much, he taught me so very little. He hinted at many amazing things – impossible things, so it seemed at the time. That he had lived for several thousand years, for instance. Ludicrous, I know, but he said it, and said it with sincerity. Also that he walked with Christ, as the thirteenth and unchronicled disciple. And that during the Victorian age, something had happened, something big, in which he had somehow been involved. That there was a great secret hidden away from Mankind, and that history had been somehow changed.
And all this had to do with Mr Rune’s quest to find the Chronovision, this television-set jobbie invented by a Benedictine monk that allowed its viewer to tune in to the past.
And of course there was the sinister Count Otto Black, who similarly sought this miraculous device for his own nefarious purposes.
Mr Rune had lent me a copy of what he described as his ‘Magnum Opus’ and ‘probably the most important book ever written’. It was called The Book of Ultimate Truths and Mr Rune suggested that I should read it from cover to cover and learn its contents by heart. It would explain everything and change my life, he told me. After all, it had been written by the Greatest Man Who Ever Lived.
Well, I did give it a quick skim through, but it was not an easy read and I did happen to have the new Lazlo Woodbine thriller, Blood On My Trenchcoat, on the go, so I put it aside.
Mr Rune’s book seemed to me to consist mostly of conspiracy theories, or cases proven, as he preferred to call them. Most centred on his conviction that A–Z road map books of towns and cities concealed more than they revealed. It was Mr Rune’s contention that there were Forbidden Zones, which were not on the maps, and that ‘A–Z’ really meant ‘Allocated Zones’, the zones that were allocated for the ‘rest of us’ to inhabit, whilst those who controlled us – the mysterious Ministry of Serendipity, or God knows who else – hid within the Forbidden Zones, running everything. I got almost halfway through the first chapter before I stuck the bookmark in. The bookmark, I noticed, was an unpaid printer’s bill for the private printing of three hundred leather-bound copies of The Book of Ultimate Truths.
‘What think you of miracles?’ asked Hugo Rune upon a fine June morning as sunlight gushed in through the windows of our study/ sitting/dining/drinking room at forty-nine Grand Parade.
I looked up from the breakfasting table. ‘Miracles?’ I said.
‘Miracles, young Rizla. What do you think of them?’
‘I have never thought much about them at all,’ I said, as I poured myself coffee. ‘I do not think I understand exactly what a miracle might be.’
‘Then look up the definition.’ And Hugo Rune hurled his Webster’s Dictionary* at my head.
I ducked the flying tome and availed myself of the last of the toast.
‘I shall quote from memory,’ said the Greatest Man Who Ever Lived. ‘A miracle is a marvellous event attributed to a supernatural cause.’
‘I think,’ I said, as I buttered the last piece of toast, ‘that it is somewhat marvellous that we are still in these rooms. I see another rent demand from your landlord in the morning post.’
‘Perhaps you should chip in towards the rent,’ Mr Rune suggested.
‘From the wages you have been promising to pay me?’
‘Take a look at this.’ And the Hokus Bloke flung me a copy of the morning’s Argus.
As I caught the paper, Mr Rune deftly snaffled away my piece of buttered toast. I sighed and read out the morning’s headline:
‘“PIRATES PILLAGE WORTHING”’
‘Not that.’ said Mr Rune, munching my toast.
‘“TINY SPANIEL PLAGUE TROUBLES TOWN COUNCILLORS”?’
‘Nor that,’ he said, now downing my coffee.
‘How about “CRAB-SUITED DOCTOR FOUND DEAD ON DOWNS”?’
Mr Rune chuckled. ‘Not even that,’ he said, as he dabbed at his gob with my napkin.
‘Then you must mean “SHE IS NOT AMUSED”.’
‘That’s it, carry on.’
And I read the column of newsprint aloud:
In what some are now calling the miracle of Lansdowne, the statue of Queen Victoria is weeping tears of Earl Grey.
‘Tears of Earl Grey?’ I shook my head.
‘Always Her Majesty’s favourite cuppa, Gawd bless Her.’
‘Someone is having a laugh,’ I said. ‘They are always having a go at that statue, sticking a traffic cone on its head or daubing it with graffiti.’
‘So you don’t believe it to be a miracle?’
‘I have read that statues of the Virgin Mary have been known to weep,’ I said, ‘and the Weekly World News mentioned a statue of Elvis that occasionally coughs up cheeseburgers.’
‘You should apply yourself to more substantial reading matter. I trust you are marvelling at The Book of Ultimate Truths.’
‘Absolutely,’ I said, tucking away the Lazlo Woodbine thriller that was spread across my lap. ‘But I do not believe that a statue can weep tears of Earl Grey. It is not only absurd, it is, well, it is absurd, and only that.’
‘And yet I feel that a visit to this phenomenological manifestation might prove instructional. Pop outside and hail us a cab, young Rizla.’
‘I will do no such thing,’ I said. ‘It is but a short stroll. We shall walk.’
And we did.
Mr Rune gave me another badge to wear, one with the head of Queen Victoria upon it this time. He referred to her as the Lansdowne Lioness, and suggested that she was the reincarnation of Richard the Lionheart. And he went on and on about the glories of the British Empire until he could take my yawnings no more. I pinned the badge to the tie-dyed T-shirt I was wearing, the one that flattered my shoulders.
For his part, Mr Rune looked particularly dapper on this particular day. He had recently taken possession of a six-piece white linen suit – jacket, waistcoat, trouser
s, spats and matching Panama hat. Swinging his stout stick, he strode along, flipping the bird at a passing cleric and cocking a snook at the seagulls.
Presently, we reached the area of the statue, and here discerned a great wonder: there was a crowd of people present, and local characters abounded. I spied the now-legendary masked walker, who, despite the clemency of the season, wore his usual anorak and gloves and scarf about his face. And there were holidaymakers, too, easily distinguishable by the knotted hankies they wore upon their heads and by their braces and vests. These individuals were being looked upon sniffily by the local residents, the sauve élite of the Lansdowne area. In their shell suits and trainers.
‘So many athletes,’ Mr Rune declared. ‘And see there,’ and he pointed to where stalls had been set up, selling flags and T-shirts and trinketry, all adorned with printed representations of Queen Victoria.
‘Time to remove the money-lenders from the temple,’ quoth Mr Rune, overturning the nearest stall, to the great alarm of the vendor.
‘It is a bit early for trouble, do you not think?’ I asked the Hokus Bloke. ‘Would it not be better simply to blend into the crowd and observe?’
‘Hugo Rune never blends,’ declared himself. ‘But we have come to observe. Follow me.’ And swinging his stout stick to the left and right, he cleared a path before us and we approached the statue.
It was not sporting its usual traffic-cone helmet, but it was heavily garlanded with flowers and there were many candles burning beneath it. And the eyes of the statue were definitely wet: liquid glistened in the sunlight and trickled down towards the plinth and from there dripped on to the ground. And here and there and all around lay many arms and legs and other body parts of broken dollies.
‘Votive offerings,’ Mr Rune explained, observing these. ‘I think it’s safe to assume that the first purported miraculous cures have already occurred.’
‘That they ’ave, mister,’ said a Cockney type. ‘A woman tasted Her Maj’s tears and her dose of baker’s bosom cleared right up.’