Robert Rankin - Retromancer

Princess Roellen ordered a number of her noble warriors to dive down and free the liner’s propellers of Sargassum and others to stoke up the boilers and help get the ship back on course. And my father took himself back to the wheelhouse and stood proudly behind the wheel and vowed that the ship would wander nowhere whatsoever off course but only strike port in New York.

And so it came to be.

I removed myself to a drunken bed and did not awake until late the following afternoon. I think I would probably have slept even longer than that if I had not been awoken by the terrible noise and the very sudden shock.

I raced from my cabin up onto the deck and there met Hugo Rune. ‘Have we struck an iceberg?’ I begged to be told. ‘Are we doomed? Are we sinking? What has happened?’

‘We have arrived safely in New York, young Rizla,’ said the Magus, lighting a cigar.

‘But that noise and that shock, oh my God!’

And now we were joined by my father the captain, who had that look on his face.

‘I am sure it can be fixed,’ he said. ‘I only took my eyes off the water for a moment. I just popped to the toilet.’

‘You crashed the ship,’ I said to him.

‘Only a bit crashed, but yes.’

‘Into the Statue of Liberty.’

I had been rather looking forward to seeing the Statue of Liberty. And so I was just a little disappointed that all I ever got to see of her was her feet. As the rest of her now lay at the bottom of New York Harbour.

I said farewell then to my father, who seemed rather keen to make a speedy departure. What with, it seemed, much of the American Navy now heading in our direction.

And that was the last that I ever saw of him.

But he went out with a bang and not a whimper.

Which was something!

I looked up at Hugo Rune.

And he looked down at me.

And, ‘Welcome to America,’ he said.

THE TOWER

There was some unpleasantness. As the pirates had done so recently, American Marines came swarming onto the decks. My father was nowhere to be seen, and as there was no one else aboard the stricken liner but for Fangio, myself and Hugo Rune, we were taken into custody and not in the kindest of manners.

Because these fellows were less than pleased that the RMS Olympic had destroyed one of their national monuments. I might have enjoyed the motorboat journey over to the mainland, had I not been handcuffed. And being thrown into the cell did little to please me.

Also matters certainly were not helped by the fact that neither Mr Rune nor myself owned a passport. The word ‘spies’ came into play and there was talk about marching us outside and putting us up against a wall. If my hands had not been handcuffed they would surely have flapped.

Hugo Rune, however, took it all in good spirit and told me not to worry as he would soon have matters set to rights and we would be on our way.

As indeed we were.

I have never ceased to be not-surprised-at-all by the power of that ‘certain handshake’. Mr Rune employed it first upon our interrogator, an evil-breathed brute who laid out instruments of torment for us to inspect prior to the commencement of questioning. From the shaking of this hand, Mr Rune’s moved on to shake many more. Gradually rising up the chain of command until we were whisked away from the dismal cell and taken off to a comfy hotel.

Our steamer trunks and bits and bobs were brought to us, and I do take my hat off to Mr Rune, for he even arranged for Fangio to be released. There were some negotiations involved and these I understood involved the question of who was going to pay for the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. Mr Rune suggested, and this suggestion was gratefully accepted, that, as the RMS Olympic now stood completely empty of passengers and crew, the American Government should claim ‘salvage’ and sell it back to the White Star Line for more than a decent profit.

‘And so all things adjust themselves to our satisfaction,’ said the Magus to me, as we sat in the bar of Hotel Jericho.

‘Not all things, surely,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow at noon an atom bomb will fall upon New York. This does not satisfy me.’

‘Quietly, Rizla, quietly,’ said Himself. ‘Walls have ears even here and we would not wish to alarm the general population.’

Now I must say that I certainly took to the general population and I certainly took to New York. Many on arrival find its scale so daunting and the fear that they will be immediately robbed or murdered when they step out onto the street so great that they spend the first day in New York cowering in their hotel rooms. But not so I. I loved it. It was just so big and the people were just so amazing. The women were gorgeous and wonderfully dressed and the men all seemed tall and handsome and attired in the most fashionable couture.

‘They do know there is a war on, do they not?’ I whispered to Mr Rune. ‘Only apart from the fact that there are a lot of well-dressed GIs escorting pretty ladies about, there does not seem to be much evidence.’

‘There will be evidence enough tomorrow at noon if we don’t act, young Rizla.’

I raised a glass of something delicious to my lips. ‘And about that,’ I said. ‘Surely the best thing to do would be to inform the top bods of the American Army, Navy and Air Force and let them deal with the deadly Zeppelin.’

‘Gosh!’ said Hugo Rune. ‘I wish I’d thought of that.’

And I really was about to revive that nail-buffing thing when he added the word, ‘Buffoon!’

‘You have already done it, then?’ I said.

‘I made certain telephone calls,’ said Mr Rune, ‘whilst you were in the bathroom doing whatever you were doing for such a protracted period.’

‘Washing,’ I said. ‘To remove the taint of wolf gonads and pongy pirates.’

‘And you now smell delightful,’ said the Magus. ‘But inform the bigwigs of the military establishment I did.’

‘And so they will be literally throwing a cage of steel about New York.’

‘No, Rizla, they will not. They didn’t believe me. They actually pooh-poohed the concept of a jet-powered invisible Zeppelin driven by a computer possessed by the spirit of Wotan, intent on nuking the country out of existence.’

‘Well,’ I said. And I made a certain face. ‘When you speak it all out loud like that I can see why-’

‘Plah!’ said Hugo Rune. ‘That Americans should doubt me? Preposterous!’

‘Could you not employ your secret handshake? Perhaps with the president, or something?’

‘No, Rizla. And think about this, if you will. When you were a child you read about the Second World War, didn’t you?’

‘All the time,’ I said, ‘in books and comics. And I played with toy soldiers and toy tanks and cannons.’

‘And did you ever read about any invisible Zeppelins?’

‘Definitely not,’ I said.

‘Precisely,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Because this must never become part of history. We must foil the count’s plan, but none must know of it. Thus will we restore order to history. We must do it anonymously, if it is to be done at all.’

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘How exciting. But something of a responsibility. What if we fail?’

‘Fail?’ said the Magus. ‘Outrageous also. Tell me what cards you have left.’

‘You know what cards I have left,’ I said. ‘I am assuming that THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE is now used up. That leaves us with THE TOWER and DEATH.’

‘And if I ask you to choose?’

‘THE TOWER it is, then,’ I said to Hugo Rune.

And he took to smiling and said, ‘Yes, it is,’ as if he knew something I did not.