‘Plah!’ I said, for I had always wanted to say it.
‘I shall set the timer for, what shall we say, fifteen minutes?’
‘That will be cutting it somewhat fine,’ I replied. And, ‘Wake Up, Lord Tobes!’ I continued.
‘Fifteen minutes should be enough,’ said Mr Rune, pulling sticks of dynamite from the lining of his coat and linking fuses together. ‘Time enough to leave this vessel, confront Count Otto, destroy the Chronovision and kill the Count.’
‘Fifteen minutes will not be long enough for all that. And hold on here,’ for a terrible thought had just struck me terribly. ‘This is a nuclear reactor. If we detonate it, will there not be a nuclear explosion? We could destroy all of Brighton.’
‘Tempting, isn’t it?’ said Mr Rune.
‘No, it is not. I love this town.’
‘We will not destroy Brighton,’ said Mr Rune. ‘This sewerage system was built in the days when men knew how to build sewerage systems. It will absorb the blast. All will be well.’
‘But not at all well for us if we do not get out in time.’
‘Have faith,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Have I ever let you down?’
‘Well …’ I said. But nothing specific came to mind. ‘Wake Up, Tobes!’ I shouted once more.
Mr Rune had linked up the dynamite sticks and primed a rather high-tech-looking timer. ‘Digital,’ he said to me. ‘They’ll soon be all the rage.’
‘Tobes!’ I shouted. ‘Tobes, we have to be going!’
Tobes awoke with a sober start. ‘My but I’m thirsty,’ he said.
‘We have fifteen minutes,’ I told him, ‘before the big bomb goes off. We really have to be going.’
‘Big bomb?’ said Tobes. ‘What big bomb?’
‘We are blowing up the ark so that Count Otto cannot escape in it. Forward planning, you see,’ I said.
‘Oh, very good,’ said Tobes to me. ‘But what about the animals? You’re not telling me that you intend to blow up my pussy?’
I paused and waited, but there was no sound.
Not a single small ‘Oooh, Matron.’
‘The animals!’ I cried. ‘We cannot blow up the animals!’
‘Casualties of war?’ said Mr Rune.
‘No!’ I said. ‘We have to free the animals.’
And we did. And can you imagine how long that took, releasing all those animals?
We must have used up, well, at least three minutes of our precious time.
‘I’m having trouble getting these spaniels out of their cage,’ said Tobes. ‘There just seems to be more and more of them.’
‘Out! Out!’ cried Mr Rune, shaking his stick at scurrying ferrets and foxes and wolverines.
Getting those polar bears out was not easy, either, but I will not dwell on that.
‘They are all out,’ I said, ‘and I think we should be following them.’
‘You’re so right,’ said Tobes to me. ‘What are we waiting for?’
So we left the ark at the hurry-up and hurried-up down the gangplank. Animals were fleeing down the many tunnels. I waved them a little goodbye.
‘Now, which of the tunnels did Count Otto go down?’ I asked.
‘That one,’ said Tobes.
‘No, that one,’ said Mr Rune.
‘No, I think it was that one,’ I said.
‘Does it matter,’ asked Tobes, ‘if the big bomb is going to go off and everything? Does anyone want a sip of this whisky?’
‘Where did you get that?’ I asked.
‘From behind the bar when we came up. I got this bottle of vodka, too.’
‘I’ll take some vodka, please,’ said Mr Rune.
‘Which damn tunnel is it?’ I shouted.
‘That one there,’ said Tobes. ‘I was only joking with you.’
‘Are you sure?’ I said.
‘I’m sure.’
We made for the tunnel, entered and marched along it.
‘Do you know,’ said Mr Rune to me, ‘it’s a funny old business, isn’t it?’
‘I am sure it is,’ I said, as I marched. ‘What business would this be?’
‘Our business here,’ said Mr Rune to me. ‘Above,’ and he pointed upwards with his stick, ‘is the rest of the world, folk at home or out at their entertainments, and they know nothing at all of this, of what we are engaged in. To them, the world is a straightforward affair. They know not of our noble deeds.’
‘I think that our noble deeds, as you call them, might have recently had some effect upon their lives,’ I suggested, ‘such as the West Pier burning down, and I do take responsibility for the rioting and mayhem in Hove last month.’
‘Such things will soon be forgotten,’ said Mr Rune. ‘People will go about their daily business. When you publish the book of our deeds, well, then we shall see what we shall see. Will you use your own name on the cover, do you think, or assume a nom de plume?’
I halted my marching and turned upon Mr Rune. ‘Sometimes I really do not believe you,’ I said. ‘Which is to say, you are incredible. For the most part you are completely unmoved by the madness you invoke.’
Mr Rune shrugged and smiled. ‘I come from Highland stock,’ said he. ‘My earliest ancestors were the Rankins of Mainstray. If you do not choose to use your own name, then please use that of my noble ancestor Robert.’
‘Quite mad,’ said I. ‘We have less than ten minutes left, by my reckoning.’
‘And just remember,’ Mr Rune continued, ‘to spell my name correctly and lay great emphasis on my charisma. And if Hollywood does buy the film rights, I would like to be played by David Warner.’
‘Can I be played by Sean Connery?’ said Tobes. ‘Or Ingrid Pitt at a push?’
I shook my head and rolled my eyes. And then I said, ‘What is that?’
That lay ahead of us. And there was a lot of that.
We crept ourselves forward upon tippy-toes and gazed at the whole lot of that.
Before and beneath us lay a wondrous cavern, carved, it seemed, from the living rock, as such caverns so often are. And it was the lair of Count Otto Black and it looked just the way that it should.
There was a great round central plaza there,
With a mosaic floor patterned out as a pentagram,
Computer banks encircled this affair,
And pirates stood, drank rum and dined on Spam.
Floodlights flooded all and round and back,
And at the very centre of this all
Stood the evil one, Count Otto Black,
Lean and mean and long and dark and tall.
The Chronovision rested on a gothic altarpiece,
With lighted candles in a ring around it,
And one of the pirates looked like Charlie Peace,
And I had really stuffed the verse, confound it!
‘Well, it was hardly the time for poetry,’ said Mr Rune. ‘But you gave it your best, although I do have to say that it was probably the worst piece of verse I have ever heard. I recall saying to Byron once, “If you just gave the opium a miss every once in a while, then—”’
I cut Mr Rune off short. ‘It was probably just delaying tactics,’ I said. ‘I know that the end is really near now. I was just trying to put it off for a bit.’
‘With the seconds ticking away on the bomb?’ said Tobes, taking a big slug of something alcoholic.
‘Quite so,’ said I. ‘So what do we do now?’
‘Well.’ Mr Rune stroked at one of his chins. ‘There are certain traditions that must be observed upon occasions such as these. Certain traditions, or old charters, or somethings.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ said Mr Rune, once more, ‘upon such occasions as these, when we look down on the villain beneath, tradition generally dictates that the villain’s henchmen, who have crept up upon us unseen, stick guns into the smalls of our backs and make us put up our hands.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Perhaps. But I feel that upon this particular occasion, we might dispens
e with that. It is a bit of an old cliché, after all.’
‘I do so agree,’ said Hugo Rune.
‘Put up your hands!’ said Count Otto’s henchmen.
PART III
Count Otto Black did not look pleased to see us.
He ceased his ludicrous dance along with his manic laughter and stared at Mr Rune with a look that spoke of horror.
‘No!’ cried the Count, raising high his hands and composing fists from them. ‘Oh no, no, no, this cannot be.’
‘Wrong, as ever,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Having a little party, are we?’ And he glanced, and so did I and so did Tobes as well, towards the tables laden with cakes and sandwiches and lots and lots of booze.
‘Hm,’ went Tobes, gazing longingly at the latter.
‘No!’ shouted Count Otto. ‘No, I mean, yes, I mean, what are you doing alive?’
‘Just visiting,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘I am here in the cause of justice. Ultimate justice, that is.’
Count Otto Black made a very fierce face. ‘Kill them all,’ he told his pirate crew.
The pirate crew made menacing motions, but none pulled a trigger, nor got stuck in with a cutlass.
‘They don’t seem too keen,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Perhaps you would care to engage me in armed combat – one to one, as it were. Naturally, I will offer you the choice of weapons.’
‘Give me your gun,’ Count Otto told the nearest gun-totin’ pirate. ‘I will execute these dogs myself.’
‘That ain’t fair,’ said the gun-totin’ one. ‘Admiral Hugo is a decent enough cove. A proper gentleman, he is. You should fight him like a man.’
‘Bravo there,’ said Mr Rune. ‘And your name is?’
‘Dave,’ said the pirate. ‘You remember me, I used to be a pop star but I fell upon hard times and was reduced to running a hot-dog van on the seafront.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Mr Rune.
‘Ahem,’ said I and I made motions to where my wristwatch would have been had I been wearing one, which I was not. So to speak.
‘Ah, yes,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Quite so. I would urge, with some degree of urgency, that all present, with the exception of the Count, take at once to their heels and flee.’
‘What is this?’ cried Count Otto, struggling to wrest the pistol from the gun-totin’ pirate, but without success.
‘Mister Rune has placed a bomb on board your ark,’ I explained. ‘It will be going off with a very big bang indeed in a very short time from now.’
‘My ark?’ The Count ceased his fruitless wresting and gaped in further horror at Mr Rune. ‘A bomb aboard my ark?’
Mr Rune nodded. ‘A big bomb,’ he said.
‘But my animals. My spaniels.’
‘We set them all free,’ said Tobes. ‘We set the squirrels free first. And you know what squirrels are, open locks with no trouble at all. Could I have a sip of that champagne, by the way? It’s a Mulholland eighteen fifty-one, isn’t it?’
‘Bomb!’ went Count Otto, rocking on his heels. ‘Bomb!’
‘Bomb?’ went the pirates, looking towards each other before, as if at a silent command – which argued strongly for the existence of telepathy – taking to their collective boot-heels and fleeing away at speed.
‘Well,’ said Mr Rune, ‘your crew have deserted you, Otto. Choice of weapons, or just fisticuffs?’
‘I think we should be running also,’ I said.
‘Go ahead, then,’ said Mr Rune. ‘I will join you shortly.’
‘But the bomb …’
And then there was a great big bang and a very big cloud of smoke.
I ducked and Tobes ducked, though Tobes ducked with a bottle in his hand.
But Mr Rune did not duck at all. Mr Rune just stood there defiantly.
Because the bang had not been the bomb. The bang had been Count Otto. And as the smoke cleared, it became clear that Count Otto Black had cleared off. Clearly.
‘A neat trick,’ said Mr Rune. ‘I confess that I should have seen it coming.’
‘He vanished,’ I said, ‘and he took the Chronovision.’
Tobes took a large quaff of champagne. ‘We’d better vanish, too,’ he said. ‘By my calculations, which are based not, I hesitate to say, on chronological indicators, but what is in all probability divine intuition, I would say that we have less than thirty seconds in which to make our escape before the bomb goes off. No, make that twenty, no fifteen. I mean …’
I looked at Mr Rune.
And Mr Rune took out his reinvented ocarina.
‘This is no time to play us a tune,’ I said. ‘The bomb is about to go …’
‘… boom!’ I said. And I said this in the dark. Which might have meant that I was dead. But happily it did not.
‘Boom,’ I said once more. ‘Hello, where am I? Is anybody there?’
Flame suddenly welled from a cigar lighter and I viewed the smiling face of Hugo Rune. And also that of Tobes de Valois, but Tobes was not smiling at all.
‘We are alive,’ I observed. ‘But where are we?’
‘Upon the trail of Count Otto,’ said Mr Rune, ‘and once more within the Forbidden Zones.’
‘Then his vanishing act—’
‘Precisely.’
‘Precisely what?’ asked Tobes. ‘I all but wet myself. Though I managed to hang on to this champagne.’
By the lighter’s glow, Mr Rune took this bottle and emptied its contents down his throat. ‘Forward, gentlemen,’ said he, ‘and follow me.’
‘Precisely what?’ said Tobes once more. ‘Explain this to me, please.’
‘Do you know where he is heading?’ I asked Mr Rune.
‘I have my suspicions,’ said the All-Knowing One. ‘I feel that what you are about to see might well surprise you.’
And Mr Rune snuffed out his lighter and we stood in the dark.
‘And what precisely is that?’ asked Tobes.
‘I have seen many surprising things since I made my acquaintance with you,’ I said to Mr Rune, ‘but to be honest, I do not find darkness sufficiently surprising as to be worthy of any particular note.’
‘Plah!’ said Mr Rune. ‘Look ahead there, in the distance.’
And so I looked and slowly beheld the light at the end of the tunnel. It was quite a dim light, but there was the promise of brightness about it.
‘Move towards the light,’ said Mr Rune, and Tobes and I did so, in his company.
We reached the end of the corridor and then we looked and further beheld. And what we looked at and further beheld was truly wonderful.
‘It is a city,’ I whispered to Mr Rune. ‘A subterranean city.’
And such a city it was. A mighty city, a vast and awesome city. Seemingly, too, a Victorian city, but unlike any other on the face of the Earth. But then this city was not upon the face of the Earth; it was deep beneath it.
The buildings were of the style known as Victorian gothic, but they were vast, rising like countless cathedrals, all carved terracotta and gargoyles and fiddly bits. And between these incredible structures and rising above their lofty pinnacles rose slim metal towers topped by shining spheres, about which twinkled electrical sparks.
‘Tesla Towers,’ said Mr Rune. ‘The lost technology of the Victorian age. They transmit electricity upon a radio wave – the wireless transmission of energy. And see there,’ and he pointed upwards, ‘electrical airships, flying hansom cabs.’
‘People,’ I said. ‘There are people down here. An entire lost civilisation.’
‘The lost civilisation of Atlantis,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Mister Isambard Kingdom-Come was not incorrect regarding its location.’
‘Oh no!’ I said. ‘Look there,’ and I pointed.
‘That is a flying saucer,’ said Tobes. ‘I have surely died and gone to the bad place. Which is rather disappointing, really, considering who I am.’
‘You are not dead,’ said Mr Rune. ‘And those are flying saucers. I told you, Rizla, Mankind has been commuting between the planets and communicating with oth
er off-world civilisations for years.’
‘But how?’ I asked. ‘How can all this be here? And how come no one above knows about it?’
‘There are those who know,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Those at the Ministry of Serendipity. Those in the places of power.’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘I am stunned. I do not know what to say. But we will never find Count Otto here – he could be anywhere.’
Mr Rune tapped at his nose. ‘We’ll find him,’ he said and he took something from his pocket. Something small and furry. ‘We’ll find him with the aid of this.’
‘And what is that?’ I asked.
‘A spaniel,’ said Tobes. ‘It’s a tiny spaniel.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘So it is.’
‘I kept it back when we freed all the other animals from Count Otto’s ark,’ Mr Rune explained. ‘It’s a homing spaniel. It will lead us to Count Otto.’
‘Ludicrous,’ I said.
‘I’m so glad you approve.’ Mr Rune placed the tiny spaniel on the ground before us. ‘Go on, Nathaniel, go and find your master,’ he said, and gave the tiny spaniel a little encouragement with the toe of his black leather boot.
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Nathaniel the spaniel?’
‘Let’s be moving along, Rizla,’ said Mr Rune. ‘This is not the time for idle chitchat.’
And so we followed Nathaniel. We followed him on to a spiral staircase that measured our footsteps down and down to the city beneath. It was a long walk down and by the time we had reached the bottom I was very dizzy.
‘Pacey-pacey, Rizla,’ said Mr Rune, marching onwards. ‘The knotted condom of self-congratulation may well be—’
‘Please do not,’ I said. ‘I will pacey-pacey as best I can. Oh, look, Nathaniel seems to know the way.’
Now, if from our vantage point above the city had looked vast and tall, from below, where we now followed the spaniel across a broad marble plaza, it looked vaster and taller and very daunting indeed.
‘Mister Rune,’ I said, as I caught up with the Big Figure, marching along, ‘Mister Rune, I am somewhat concerned. The folk of this city might not extend us a hearty welcome. In fact, they might see fit to arrest us as undesirable aliens. Even to shoot us on sight.’