Robert Rankin - Retromancer

Hugo Rune engaged the pirate captain in conversation. Whilst plying him with a mixture of drinks that could surely have brought down a rhino.

‘And,’ I heard him say, ‘this floating city could serve you as a luxurious headquarters, whilst in it you scour the seas for further wealth. All that would be needed would be for half a dozen of your men to dive down and free the propellers that drive the ship.’

And I gathered from the pirate chieftain’s reply to this that the notion of leaving the Sargasso Sea, where his forefathers had become trapped and where he and his father before him had lived since birth, preying upon the contents and crews of unhappy ships that fell victim to the Sargassum weed, found great favour with him.

‘And so,’ Mr Rune continued, ‘myself and my companions would be honoured to throw in our lots with you and offer the highly specialised skills, which take years of training, to manage the actual movement of this great ship. You will find us a valuable asset.’

The scummy ruffian nodded his mouldy tricorne to this and then asked Mr Rune what progress had been made in the world beyond during the last two hundred years and whether the iPod had been invented yet. Which certainly had me baffled. But I did think that we were all starting to get along quite well. And I was joining in with some of the shanty singing. And my father was telling a tale about how he had been aboard a cross-Channel ferry that had gone down with all hands but himself and how he had been washed up on the beach at Hartlepool. Where the locals would have hanged him as a French spy, had he not been able to convince them that he was in fact a monkey. And Fangio had even encouraged several of the pirates to enter the Weeping and Wailing Competition. And Clarence was dancing a jig and rattling a tin cup for money.

When things suddenly went the shape of a pear in an unexpected fashion.

The door to the posh saloon bar, which had been burst in by the arriving pirates, and which had been eased back into its frame by my father, whom it appeared to me for the first time had a thing about tidiness and was perhaps just a tad obsessive-compulsive, burst open again, this time to admit the entrance of something more foul and unwholesome than all of the pocky pirates put together.

‘Ahoy there to you, bonny lads!’ cried out Count Otto Black.

There was a moment of silence then. Followed by mighty cheerings. The squalid leader of the bog-rotten bunch did evil toothless grinnings towards Mr Rune. ‘I have enjoyed our conversation,’ said he, ‘whilst you tried to inveigle me with talk of your knowledge and the value of your fellows. But we need none of you, as we can move this mighty ship by other means. I only spared you my blade because I was ordered to do so by my master here, who predicted who would be found aboard this ship after she struck the Sargasso.’

Hugo Rune looked towards his arch-enemy. ‘Why, if it isn’t Count Rotto,’ said he. ‘We meet again. And how fitting that it should be amongst your own people. Those who share your fear of the bathroom.’

‘Shall I cut him down by a foot or two?’ asked the pongy pirate chief.

‘All in good time.’ Count Otto Black grinned. ‘For now I will have words with my fat friend. And then you may cast them all over the side.’

‘But we can jolly roger the little one?’ asked the pirate captain.

‘Be my guest,’ said Count Otto. And he produced from his pocket a Luger pistol and pointed this at Hugo Rune. The pirates resumed their carousing and the count had words to say.

‘This, I feel,’ said Count Otto, smiling with evil upon Hugo Rune, ‘will be our last time together. You are fighting out of your weight, my plump fellow, and that says much, does it not?’

I saw Mr Rune’s knuckles whiten on the hand with which he held his stout stick. But he retained his dignity and regarded his enemy with a look which combined nonchalance and contempt to a winning effect.

‘Poor old magician,’ crowed Count Otto Black. ‘Out of his time and out of his league. The world has changed, Hugo, changed for ever. The old Gods are reborn, but not within the frail bodies of men. Rather within mighty machines. Great engines of power. Do you understand anything of what I speak?’

‘I understand all,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘I understand that the enemies of Goodness and Peace are possessed of a great computer, which is itself possessed by the spirit of Wotan.’

‘Indeed, indeed.’ And the count clapped his hands together. ‘And Colossus was possessed by the spirit of Arthur, which you sent on its way.’ And the count laughed cruelly. ‘A bit of an error there on your part, I am thinking. An own goal.’

‘We shall see,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Matters will adjust themselves, of this I have no doubt.’

‘Indeed they will, but you will not be here to see this occur. You will be deep at the bottom of the sea where you can cause no further annoyance.’

‘And as this is to be the case,’ said the Magus, ‘then there would be no harm in you revealing to me your plans for world domination. Such is the way of the supervillain, is it not?’

‘Indeed, indeed, indeed,’ said Count Otto Black, thrice more. ‘As you might well be aware, two days from now, at precisely twelve noon, an atomic bomb will fall upon New York. The Americans have been carrying out many experiments with atomic weaponry and they have a number of bombs in various stages of completion currently being transported hither and thus across North America. These will be triggered in a chain reaction by my bomb. America will cease to be, the Allies will capitulate before the nuclear might of the Third Reich and Germany will win the war.’

‘And what will that make you?’

‘I rather favour a position of power,’ said the count, preening at himself with grubby fingers. ‘Ultimate power! High Priest in the World Temple of Wotan rather suits me. For with the fall of the Allies, an ancient God will once more be restored to his rightful place and the beaten peoples of the world converted to his faith.’

‘All well and good,’ said Hugo Rune, in a voice that lacked not for irony. ‘But how do you intend to deliver an atomic bomb to New York unnoticed?’

‘It is on its way even now,’ said the count. ‘ Germany is all but done for in terms of resources and cannot survive another year of war. A means of transporting the bomb, using what remains in the armament factories of the Reich, has been created. A Zeppelin, Hugo. The biggest ever built, powered by jets. And aboard this craft, along with the bomb itself, the computer possessed by Mankind’s new God. Such will direct the dropping of the bomb, unseen from on high.’

‘Such a mighty craft will surely be seen and shot down,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘This plan will never succeed.’

‘Oh, I think it will,’ said the count. ‘Because no one will see the Zeppelin approaching New York. Because it will be invisible. Caught within the ionic beam of the Tesla field generator that I removed from your conservatory and which is even now down in the cargo hold. What think you of that?’

‘I think we shall see what we shall see,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘I thank you for supplying me with this valuable information. I shall of course use it to confound your evil scheme.’

‘No no no,’ said Count Otto Black, taking then to the laughter so beloved of supervillains. ‘Now you die, Hugo Rune. Hey, Captain,’ he called to the pestiferous pirate. ‘Weight this big one heavily and cast him over the side.’

And with that several loathsome swabs laid hands on Hugo Rune. They tore his stout stick from his grip and marched him from our sight.

I would have pleaded with Count Otto Black if I had thought that there would have been any point in doing so. But I knew better, so I kicked him in the ankle bone instead.