The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived (36 page)

Crash, bang, wallop, went
Old Claude, hitting something. Bit of a long time falling?

Well.
This may have happened a bit earlier. Hard to say, really.

‘Ouch,
my bloody bum!’ went Old Claude. ‘Fuck me!’ went Jack Bradshaw. ‘It’s Ben Gu—’

‘Don’t
bother with it, sonny. It doesn’t get a laugh. And who are you, for fig’s
sake?’

‘Bradshaw.
Jack Bradshaw.’

‘What
are you doing at the bottom of my lift shaft, Jack Bradshaw?’

‘Ah,’
said Jack.

‘Clerical
error, was it? Found out something you shouldn’t?’

‘Threw
in my lot with a bad crowd,’ was Jack’s explanation. ‘The bastard threw you
down here, did he?’

‘If you
mean the controller, yes.

‘So
what are you going to do about it, eh?’

‘Well,
actually,’ said Jack, ‘I was in the process of escaping.’

‘Oh
yes. And how?’

‘I’m
going to make gunpowder,’ said Jack. ‘Grind up these old pencils for charcoal,
use the potassium nitrate that’s crystallizing on the walls and get sulphur
from… er— ‘I’ll gather the sulphur for you, sonny, it’s over there in the
place you get the wire coat-hangers and the pocket lighter from.’

‘Eh?’
said Jack.

‘Grrr!’ went that beastie
again.

‘Open
fire!’ went men along the shoreline.

‘Get
away,’ went Cornelius clouting the beastie in the stomach with his mortar.

‘Whoosh!’
went a flare, lighting up the entire area.

‘Damn,’
went Cornelius, well lit.

‘Grrr!’
went the beastie. Clout! went the tall boy.

‘Ouch!’
went the beastie, falling off the boat.

‘Good
riddance!’ went the tall boy, shaking his mortar in defiance. Bang! went the
muzzle of a Sherman tank.

Wheeeee!
went its shell.

Clunk!
went the shell from the tall boy’s mortar, falling out onto the deck. Then
whoosh it went, igniting and firing vertically into the air.

Down
came the shell from the tank.

And
down, came the shell from the mortar.

‘Abandon
ship!’ cried Cornelius Murphy, leaping over the side.

37

Boris had been creeping
along in the darkness at the edge of town that Bruce Springsteen used to sing
about. He saw the flare as it lit up the bay. He saw the tank fire and he saw
something or other occur on
The Lovely Lynne.

And
then he saw the big explosion.

And
then he felt very sick inside and crept on.

Tuppe
saw it too and he prayed very hard and struggled towards the Tor.

Norman
didn’t see it. He was lost up a back street. But as he didn’t know where the
Hugo Runes were, he didn’t know that he was lost and going in the wrong
direction. So he just continued on.

Wrongly.

‘Gulp and gasp,’ went
Cornelius, narrowly avoiding going down for that old third time. ‘I’m still
alive, which is something.’

Splash!
went something quite near by.

But as
the flare had died away and the flaming wreckage of
The Lovely Lynne
had
vanished beneath the waves, it was very dark, so Cornelius couldn’t tell
exactly where the splash came from. He struck out for the shore.

Bad
choice.

Ding dong, Ding dong, went
the chimes of the town hail clock, ringing out the half-hour.

‘More port?’ asked Rune of
the mayoral cloak. ‘Let me top up your glass.’

‘Get a bloody move on,
Jack Bradshaw,’ shouted Old Claude. ‘Tamp it into something and blow the wall
down, come on now.

‘Ready for the final
countdown here, Chunky,’ said the large controller. ‘I have erased all of
Claude’s nonsense from the Karmascope. In thirty minutes’ time the old Earth
will come to an end and the dawn of a new millennium will begin.’

‘Any
chance of a deal on the scrap metal?’ Chunky enquired.

Storm clouds were
gathering above Skelington Bay. Boris could hear them at it. Well, he did come
from a superior race after all.

‘Whoa!’
said Boris, creeping from the darkness, back to the light that Brian May used
to sing about. ‘There’s my saucer.

And
there it was, perched upon its tripod legs in the road outside the vicarage.

It looked
in pretty good nick. The government boffins had evidently done repairs on it.

‘Nice
one,’ said Boris, creeping up.

Nobody
about. Up and in.

Boris
scrambled up, lifted the transparent dome and dropped down inside. He rammed
oversized headphones over his ears and flicked switches on the dashboard.
‘Ambassador to base,’ he whispered. ‘Ambassador to base.’

Long
silence.

Then.

‘Base
to Ambassador. Is that you, Mavis?’

‘Is
that
you,
Bryant?’

‘Yeah
it’s me, how are you doing?’

‘None
the better for listening to you. Mavis! Sheep outfit! Erich Von bloody Daniken!
You shit, Bryant!’

‘Only
having a laugh. No offence meant.’

‘Well,
much taken. Listen, we have a real emergency here.’

‘Are
you taking the piss now, or what?’

‘No,
I’m not. This is for real. King Hugo’s a fraud. He’s not the king of this
country at all. And at exactly midnight he is going to pump trillions of volts
into the sea.’

‘What’s
a volt?’ asked Bryant.

‘It’s a
unit of electricity.’

‘Like
an Ohm?’

‘Yes.’

‘Or a
Watt?’

‘Yes.’

‘Or an
Ampere?’

‘Yes, yes,
yes.

‘Never
heard of a Volt. What does it do?’

‘It
kills you. He’s going to wipe out Magonia. You have to do something.’

‘You
are
taking the piss. I don’t blame you. Fair dos.’

‘I’m
not
taking the piss. It was all a con to steal the saucer and escape. This Rune
is mad. Call up the Emperor, have him do something.’

‘He’ll
be in his bed. Get real, Mavis.’

‘Boris!
You shit.’

‘Boris
then.’

‘Tell
the Emperor. Get him to whip up something. Whack Skelington Bay with it. We
have the technology. We’re an advanced civilization.’

‘Tidal
wave,’ said Bryant. ‘Is that what you’d like?’

‘Yes,
that’s it. Get him to organize a tidal wave. Smash the town with it.’

‘Boris.’

‘Bryant?’

‘Piss
off, Boris.’ The line went dead.

‘No,
come back. Wait. Listen.’ Not a dicky sea bird. ‘I’m flying out of here,’ said
Boris.

‘Not
without these you’re not.’ The saucer’s ignition keys dingle-dangled between
the pudgy fingers of Hugo Rune. In his other hand was the deadly derringer. It
was pointing right at Boris’s head.

‘Oh
shit!’ said the man from Magonia.

‘Oh shit,’ spluttered
Cornelius, thrashing towards the shore. He wasn’t much of a swimmer.

And
something bobbed up, right in his path.

‘Grrrr!’
went this something, lunging forward.

‘Oh
no!’ went the tall boy, falling back.

But
‘Grrrrr!’ it continued to go. It meant business. It caught Cornelius by the
hair and it dragged him under the water.

Ding dong, ding dong, went
the town hail clock. A quarter to twelve already. Doesn’t time just fly, eh?

WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP!
WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP!

Cornelius
came up fighting. Bright lights whizzed and turned across the bay. Boat horns
did the whooping.

‘What
the—’ Down once more into the depths.

‘What the—’ Chunky’s chaps
along the shoreline cocked their weapons, squinted into the twisting, whirling
lights.

‘What the—’ Rune stood up
upon the saucer’s edge, gazed out across the bay. ‘Oh no,’ said he. ‘Oh no, no,
no.

For now
they could clearly be seen. The boats. Hundreds of boats. Rowing-boats, fishing
smacks, trawlers and pleasure boats. Round-the-bay tippers, dinghies and
coracles. And currachs and canoes and catamarans; and sailing yachts and
speedboats, wherries and ferries, tugboats and tow boats and launches.

And
Lilos.

And a
gondola.

An
irregular fleet, it was. A flotilla. A forest of masts.

An
argosy.

An
armada.

And a
thousand folk were waving, cheering, jeering. Hooting and hollering. Raising
sticks. Some bearing guns.

‘Twas
the folk of Skelington Bay no less. Hoorah!

Returned
to retake their town. Hip, hip, hooray!

It must
have required an awful lot of organization.

Probably
that’s why they took so long to get here.

The
armada’s searchlights zigzagged over the bay. The waves were growing choppy
now. There was thunder in the air. A big storm was abrewing.

Cheer!
Cheer! went the town folk, letting off flares and firing shots into the sky.

Dither,
dither, dither, went Chunky’s troops upon the beach.

Sweep,
sweep, went the searchlights.

And
‘There!’ cried the voice of a young woman from the leading craft, a white motor
launch. ‘Keep the light there. I saw him.’

‘Uuuugh!’
went Cornelius, breaking surface. A claw closed about his throat. And dragged
him down and down.

‘I’ll
get him.’ The young woman dived from the motor launch, seemed to hang, as if
suspended in the air, for just a moment, then arced into the blackness of the
churning waves.

‘More
light. More light,’ others cried, bringing their boats about. ‘Where is she?’

Lights
criss-crossed and those seconds ticked on towards twelve.

‘Wah!’
A great dark mass rose from the waves. Tendrils trailing.

‘Shoot
it!’ cried many.

‘No
don’t!’ Another young woman’s shout rose from the motor launch.

And the
diver’s head swept up through the mass, straining and hauling at it. And lo
that mass was the mane of Cornelius Murphy.

‘Help
them out.’ Hands reached, faces strained. Up and onto the deck.

The
diver clawed hair away from the tall boy’s face. Pinched at his nose, put her
lips to his.

Gasp
and gulp and not enough seconds for all this. ‘Whoa!’ went Cornelius, turning
his face to the side and vomiting seawater.

‘Is he
OK?’ asked Louise.

The
diver looked up and smiled. ‘He’ll live,’ said Thelma.

And now
shots rang out from the beach. The big butch lads of Chunky’s private army
weren’t really into acts of heroism. Acts of brutality, yes. But not the
‘making-a-final-stand’, Rorke’s Drift kind of jobbie. Oh no.

They
were shooting as they ran. Away.

‘Fools!’
roared Rune from the saucer top. ‘Buffoons.’ He pulled a golden watch from his
waistcoat pocket (a present from Haille Sellaise)
[25]
, studied its face by the lightning
that now streaked across the sky. A wind was rising from seaward, twisting the
pylon cables, skimming litter and debris. ‘Only minutes,’ cried Rune, ‘and all
shall be mine.’ He dropped down into the saucer beside Boris. ‘Fly,’ said he.

‘Stand back,’ said Jack.
‘I’m going to light the fuse, except I—’

‘Use my
lighter, sonny. And get a bloody move on.

‘Watch the minutes tick
away,’ said the large controller to Chunky.

‘Nothing
can stop us now.

‘Hey!’ whispered Norman,
who now found himself lost in the graveyard. ‘Who’s that I see over there?’

It was
Rune — well, a Rune — seated in a steamer chair, in the vicarage garden.
Looking as if he cared not a jot for the growing gale that decapitated
hollyhocks and cast them hither and thus.

Norman
pulled the pin from one of his grenades, but kept his thumb hard down on the
trigger-release thingy. ‘Oi, you!’ he shouted.

The
Rune said nothing. Glass of port in one hand, other in his lap, wind whipping
every which way about him.

‘What a
bummer,’ said Norman. ‘I’d have liked him to at least have been able to hear me
before I blew him up. Still, fair enough.’