Robert Rankin - Retromancer

‘And no tip?’ The driver bawled after us. ‘******* **** and ******!’ But we let those pass and hurried onwards.

To be met by locked doors and a big CLOSED sign.

‘Closed!’ cried Hugo Rune. ‘Closed! The Empire State Building cannot be closed.’

A shabby type who was ‘pushing broom’ came mooching over to us. ‘You can’t go in there, fella,’ he said. ‘The bulls evacuated the building. There was a bomb warning, everybody had to leave.’

I looked at Hugo Rune.

And he in return looked at me.

‘Count Otto Black,’ we agreed.

‘Who has the key to this building?’ asked Hugo Rune.

‘You’d have to ask at City Hall, fella.’

‘Are there people inside this building? Bomb-disposal people?’

‘But there’s a bomb in there,’ said the shabby type. ‘If bomb-disposal people went in there, surely they’d get blown up if it went off.’

‘He has a point there,’ I said to Hugo Rune.

‘He has what!?’ And I turned away my face as the stout stick rose and fell. And then I had to do keeping-a-lookout whilst Hugo Rune applied this same stout stick to the beautiful etched glass doors of the Empire State Building, prior to us hurrying inside.

‘I do not know what the point was of me keeping a lookout,’ I said to Mr Rune, as we scurried across the concourse. ‘Loads of people saw you breaking the glass.’

‘Yes, but they are New Yorkers, they will pretend that nothing happened.’

‘Then what was the point of me-’ I threw up my hands as I scurried. ‘Well,’ I continued, ‘I think that is a rather cynical view of New Yorkers. They would not like you very much if they heard you say that.’

‘Perhaps they will take to me just a trifle if I save their city from nuclear destruction, then.’

‘Yes, well… Where are we going? Should we not be going to the lift?’

‘We have to pick up certain items of our baggage that I had dispatched here to be placed in a left-luggage locker.’

‘I do not recall you doing that!’ I said.

‘I do not recall getting too picky regarding the matter of the unlikely revolver that you held upon the cabby. Best not get too picky over this, wouldn’t you agree?’

And I agreed.

‘You are planning to stop the bomb dropping?’ I said. ‘No matter what it does to the future?’

‘I am perhaps risking my very existence in doing so,’ replied the Magus, and, as we had reached the left-luggage lockers, fishing out a key from his waistcoat and applying it to a lock. ‘But I must do what I know in my heart to be right. It is what I am, Rizla. What I might be is something else entirely.’

‘So what do you have stored in the locker?’ I asked.

‘Let me whisper,’ said Himself.

But his whispers were drowned by a terrible sound that came from the heavens above. A screaming sound as of millions of souls in horrible horrible torment. A great shadow darkened the concourse and a chill ran through my heart.

I cupped my hands over my ears and shouted, ‘What is that? What is that?’

And Hugo Rune tore items from the locker and shouted that we must hurry.

‘Time is running out for the world – the Zeppelin is upon us.’

It swung in the sky above New York, made visible to all. No larger craft was ever built by Man. It was surely nearly a mile in length and hundreds of feet in height. It shimmered, ghostly silver-grey, and uniformed figures were to be glimpsed at work upon its numerous decks. The great jet engines, mounted beneath the rear of this fantastic craft, throbbed and hummed. And upon the sides of this sky-borne warship, the swastikas, blood-red and fearsome, shone with a horrible clarity.

In the streets beneath there was panic. Fleeing, screaming people terrorised by what had materialised above. By this and by the ghastly sounds that issued from it. Rows of silver-horned loudspeakers poured down a sonic assault on the city below.

Mr Rune and I were in the lift now and that lift was moving up apace. ‘They have certainly honed their skills in the martial arts of sound,’ said Hugo Rune, ‘since our encounter with Count Otto’s daughter at Roberta Newman’s Musical Academy. It is the frequency of fear, Rizla. They seek to terrorise the city before they utterly destroy it.’

‘But why take the risk of making the Zeppelin visible? It clearly crept in stealthily under cover of the field generator’s beam.’ We were many storeys up, but with many yet to go.

‘Do you think to understand the ego of a God?’ asked Hugo Rune. ‘We are dealing with forces here which might even, to some small degree, be beyond my understanding.’

By the time we reached the roof it seemed that all of New York was in chaos. The mighty Zeppelin loomed above, blotting out a third of the sky. And down from it showered balls of flame that drifted to the thoroughfares below to explode in hideous gouts of liquid fire.

‘How can we stop this?’ I shouted, as I tried to make myself heard above the horror-screams that roared from the airship’s horned loudspeakers. ‘It is too big, what can we do?’

‘I must recalibrate the field generator, Rizla. You must cause a diversion.’

‘Me?’ And I clung to the guardrail where the tourists came to view the city beneath. A city now in a Hellish turmoil. The day itself was still and no wind blew to fling me from my perch. But it was oh so high that it was frightful. The world of Men so small below, and a Mad God hanging on high.

‘A diversion?’ I said. And then I said, ‘Oh no!’

For I had spied out the field generator, manned by Count Otto Black.

‘Rune!’ he crowed from his lofty abode. ‘Somewhat late for the party. But no matter. A big present will be heading your way, in precisely…’ and he fished out a pocket watch and examined its face ‘… five minutes. Where is your God now, Hugo Rune?’

And Count Otto did that maniac laugh and raised his fists to the sky. I do have to say that he did look every bit the supervillain at that moment. Long and gaunt and all over horrid. Clad in a spiked Prussian helmet, with a German eagle emblem on the front. Flying goggles, a magnificent plumed coat, leather trousers, leather boots, that great black beard flying every which way. His gloved hands, clenched into thin fists, thrown above.

‘It is all over for you now, Rune. And I must say farewell.’ And he threw a switch, as such villains will, and the mighty airship vanished.

‘Goodbye, you fools!’ cried Count Otto Black, mounting his flying motorcycle.

‘Rizla,’ shouted Hugo Rune. ‘I feel I need you to provide me with a little more than a diversion. I need the key to the field generator.’

‘Key?’ I shouted back. ‘This is new.’

‘The count has locked the controls. I need to recalibrate them if I am to save the day. And indeed win the war. He has the key, Rizla. You must take it from him.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you.’ And Hugo Rune thrust in my direction the Gravitite disc, which was amongst various other items we had brought up from the left-luggage lockers oh so far below us now.

‘And put these on,’ said Hugo Rune. And he now flung goggles at me.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I tried them on before. And all was wrong when I looked through them.’

‘All was right, Rizla. Put them on – they will enable you to see the Zeppelin.’

And now we heard the roar of the count’s motorcycle combination and he waved to us as he swept upwards upon it and into the ‘clear’ blue sky.

‘I am frightened,’ I cried to Mr Rune. ‘We are too high. I am frightened.’ And my hands began to flap and I began to turn around in small circles.

‘And enough of that!’ And Hugo Rune cuffed me across my chops and said, ‘Be brave now, Rizla. All depends upon you.’