Robert Rankin - The Brightonomicon

'I let you sleep in again,' said Mr Rune. 'You needed to regain your strength.' I shook my head and opened my mouth to protest. But just then Barry served up breakfast, so I used my mouth to set about that instead.

And we were more than three breakfasts in, and Barry had finished my hair cut, before Tobes appeared in the kitchen. 'Who drank my banana liqueur?' he asked. 'I was saving that for a special occasion. Like now, when there's no more booze left.'

'Rizla drank it,' said Mr Rune. 'On the first night we came here. Pray sit down and join us for breakfast.'

'There is a naked chef here,' said Tobes, observing Barry. 'Is that not illegal?' 'Best eat,' said Mr Rune. 'There's a busy day ahead.'

Tobes unearthed a bottle of home-made sloe gin from within the apparently hollowed-out kitchen toaster.

'That can't be right,' said Barry. 'I just cooked toast in that. How-'

'Do not even ask,' I told him. And we enjoyed sloe gin with our breakfast.

'We must sit before the Chronovision now,' said Mr Rune. 'There is much that you must see, Lord Tobes.'

Our breakfast finally concluded, Mr Rune dismissed Barry and handed him a bundle of large-denomination money notes.

I raised my eyebrows at this and the hairs stood up on my arms.

Mr Rune took Lord Tobes and me to the sitting room, explained to Lord Tobes the workings of the Chronovision – to whit, what it did rather than how it did it – then fiddled with the knobs and we sat down to watch.

And we saw it all in a sort of fast-forward, starting with the life and eventual natural death of Jesus, then continuing with the history of his subsequent bloodline. And as event after event unfolded, I saw it – what history actually was. What human life actually was. This series of seemingly random and disparate incidents, the losing of something trifling, which led to someone meeting someone. The decisions of small folk that affected the great. And how it all fitted together to move Mankind forward. Towards what?

Well, I could not say then and still cannot. The Chronovision showed only the past. The future was still to occur.

But I did see the point and Lord Tobes saw the point, too. And the point was so simple that it was almost obscene. There is purpose to it all. Our little lives are part of a greater something, and that something is what Mankind might become – should become – if all things work to the good.

But all things rarely work to the good. At least, they have not so far, because there has always been someone who will seek to use the world to his or her advantage. They crop up in every age, like a cancer. And Mr Rune and his kind, and the ancestors of Lord Tobes, do battle with them, unseen and unknown to the rest of us. It is the stuff of which movies are made. And it is sad, but true.

Which was a track by Metallica that I had quite liked at Rock Night. When Mr Rune finally switched off the Chronovision and pulled its plug from the wall, Lord Tobes and I did not have anything to say to each other. Each of us was alone with his thoughts. Which is how, I suppose, we always are.

'Well,' said Lord Tobes, breaking the silence, 'I suppose then that there is nothing for it other than for the three of us to engage in battle against Count Otto Black.'

'Thank you,' said Mr Rune, and he nodded. 4I only wish that we had some vintage champagne to toast the success of this remarkable alliance.' 'I'm sure I can find some somewhere,' said Tobes. And he did.

'About this battle,' I said to Mr Rune as I chugged down the champagne of Tobes in his preposterously huge sitting room, with us all sitting very close together. 'It will be one of those fight-to-the-death sort of jobbies, I assume.' Mr Rune raised his glass to me. 'No chance of a truce, I suppose?'

'Truce?' went Mr Rune, and he spluttered champagne. 'That blackguard shot me dead last month.'

'It is the killing bit that I am not too keen on,' I said. 'Could we not get him arrested and committed to jail for life?'

'Perhaps you would care to turn him in yourself,' said Mr Rune, 'what with your Identikit picture up on the "wanted" board.'

'Ah, that's where I knew you from,' said Tobes. 'Knew I recognised your face from somewhere. You're the Lewes Road-Rage Maniac and the Grand Parade Firestarter (twisted firestarter).'

'The road-rage thing was not my fault,' I protested. 'Well, it was, but it also was not. And I never burned down Grand Parade.'

'I understand,' said Tobes, raising his hand as if in benediction. 'I am not judging you.'

'You could absolve me of my sins,' I said. 'In fact, you could work a little miracle and remove my face from the wanted posters.'

'I absolve you of your sins,' said Tobes. 'Go and sin no more.' 'And the other bit?'

'I thought I told you to sin no more. Get thee behind me, Rizla.' 'Sorry,' I said and I chugged further champagne.

'It has to be life or death,' said Mr Rune. 'There is no choice. Recall if you will the vision of a possible future that we experienced in Chief Whitehawk's tepee.' 'With the swearing chef and all those B-list celebrities?'

'And myself in cahoots with Count Otto Black. That must not come to pass.' 'All that sounds very familiar,' said Tobes. 'It does?' asked Mr Rune.

'It does. You see, I have these dreams. Very vivid, they are, and I think that they might be premonitions. Like, I'll dream that someone's cat will get run over and the next week it does.' 'Have you warned people, then?' I asked.

'I've thought about that,' said Tobes, 'but it doesn't make any sense. You see, if I was to dream of someone dying in a car crash, and it was a premonition, and so warned them and they didn't go out in their car, then they wouldn't be killed in a crash. Well, how could I have had a premonition about a car crash if the car crash wasn't going "to happen? I wouldn't have had the dream in the first place, would I?' 'He does have a point there,' I said to Mr Rune. 'A rather dodgy one,' said Hugo Rune.

Tobes shrugged and finished the champagne. 'But what you were saying about a restaurant with B-list celebrities and a shouting chef – I had a dream about that a month or so back. In fact, you were in it, Mister Rune, chatting on a portable phone and selling film rights to Hollywood.' I looked at Mr Rune. And Mr Rune looked at me. 'And it was inside a tepee?' I asked. 'Oh, that's what it was. I thought it was a circus tent.'

'I am doomed,' said Mr Rune. 'Your dream came to us also, Lord Tobes. We witnessed it all.'

'Don't despair,' said Tobes, who rose from his chair and rooded about beneath its cushions. 'My dreams are not always correct. And some of them are frankly absurd. Why, only ten minutes ago I dreamed-' 'Stop,' I said. And Tobes stopped. 'Why am I stopping?' he asked.

'Because,' I said, 'we are forgetting one precious detail. Well, Mister Rune and myself are anyway. The Chronovision. In the vision of the future, the Chronovision was still extant, was it not?' 'It was,' said Mr Rune. "Then surely all we have to do is smash it up now, right now. Which was what we were originally intending to do with it, if I recall.'

'Good thinking, Rizla,' said Mr Rune. 'Without the Chronovision, that particular future cannot exist. Do you have a hammer in this house, Lord Tobes?'

'Ah,' said Tobes, and he fished about beneath his cushions. 'By happy coincidence, yes.'

I took the hammer from Tobes and took the long hike across the living-room floor to where the Chronovision stood. I knew that it had to be done, but it did seem such a shame to destroy something so miraculous. It made me feel as if I was the ultimate vandal.

'I hate to do this,' I said, 'especially as I could have found out who I really am if Mister Rune had only twiddled the dials for me. But I realise that it must be done. Wondrous as this instrument is, it could mean the ruination of Mankind if it fell into the hands of Count Otto Black. And so it must be destroyed.' And I raised the hammer. And then I paused.