Robert Rankin - The Sprouts of Wrath

Jim limped after them. A wagon overturned, spilling its ghastly load. The witch-women deserted it, ran screaming. The horsemen thundered nearer. The horsemen of King Bran. And Jim ran, as though the devil was at his heels. And now two called out to him, called through the crashing elements, the terror, the lightning and the pounding hooves of the approaching warriors. A man and a woman, braced against the driving winds, crying through the maelstrom, “Hurry, Jim, this way!” — Pooley shielded his eyes. “John,” he gasped, “Jennifer, I’m coming.”

Then hands grasped him, pulled him back, back from the drawbridge, the threshold of the sanctuary. “Stop, do not enter, you must not enter.”

“Take the bottle,” cried Paul Geronimo, “uncork the bottle!”

“Do it now!” his brother urged. “Only you can!”

Jim’s brain reeled, torn with doubt, indecision and fear.

Paul thrust the silver bottle into his hand. “For the Professor, do it now, open the bottle!”

Pooley stared towards Omally; he was stepping back into the iron tower. Only one wagon had entered, the others were abandoned, people screamed, fled, the winds tore. The horsemen of King Bran bore down upon him. The drawbridge began to rise. Pooley ripped the stopper from the bottle.

A beaming face beamed out across the nation. “This is the London Olympics.”

Old Pete switched off the television set. “It’s not the same without Anne Diamond,” he complained bitterly. The sound of his letter-flap creaking on its rusty spring drew his attention. “Hello,” said Old Pete, “it’s not Giroday.”

Upon the unwelcoming mat lay a silver-foil envelope. YOUR PERSONAL INVITATION TO THE BRENTFORD OLYMPICS. “Gold dust,” said Old Pete, pressing it to his lips. “Thirty-carat gold dust.”

“Gold dust,” said Inspectre Hovis. “At each of the sites where disturbances occurred, and last night it was in the air, on my clothes.”

Rune sat over a bowl of Tibetan muesli. The mess-room of the Brentford nick was crowded with bandaged officers hunched over their breakfasts. “The alchemist’s quest,” said Rune. “Pure gold. It is a powerful instrument in any hands.”

“Whoever is at the bottom of this is taking the piss,” said Hovis, applying himself to his cornflakes. “Having a pop at me personally.”

“I don’t like to say I told you so,” said Hugo Rune. “Well, actually I do, as it happens.”

“A bulldozer,” spluttered Hovis, spraying the magus with half-masticated flakes of golden corn. “A bulldozer wouldn’t go through the wire. I’ve got six police vehicles smashed to a pulp, a dozen officers banged up in the Cottage Hospital, my reputation, for what it was, is in tatters. My job will be on the line for this.”

“To offer you my sympathy would be as futile as it would be fallacious. You wasted your opportunity.” Rune brushed cornflakes from his shoulders. “Your man was distracted, I could sense it. It will be more difficult now.”

“Don’t even think about raising your fee,” said Hovis.

“You must do it my way, Inspectre. It will take a few days. Keep the gasometer under constant surveillance, arrest anyone who attempts to leave it. Other than for that, bide your time and wait for me to give you the word.”

Hovis pushed his breakfast bowl aside and took to the contents of his cane, pecking a hearty blend of Moroccan Black cut with cocaine in his left nostril. “If you cross me, Rune,” he said, “I will have your wedding tackle for cufflinks.”

“I am Hugo Rune,” said Hugo Rune. “Lord of the seven spheres. Master of the cosmic consciousness, Laird of Cockpen and hereditary heir to the Grand Mastership of the Golden Dawn. I think therefore I’m right.”

“You’d better be.” Hovis looked up towards the magus, but the chair was empty. Hugo Rune had gone.

Professor Slocombe nudged the sleeper on his chaise-longue with a slippered toe. “Wake up, Jim, I want you to look at something.”

Pooley rubbed at his eyes and creaked upright. “I don’t remember dropping off,” said he, stretching his arms and yawning hugely. Suddenly he jerked into realization. “Blimey,” he gasped. “Last night. All that.” He gaped at the study. It was as it ever had been, confusing, but in order. “Did I dream it, what happened?”

“You saved our lives, Jim.”

“Really? But I wasn’t here, something happened, I was somewhere else.”

“I know, and now I begin to understand.”

“Has he gone?” Jim stared about fearfully. “Is he — is it — dead?”

“Not yet, I regret.”

“Oh God,” said Pooley. “Then we can expect more of the same.”

“Or worse, I suspect. But come, I want to show you something.” The Professor led Jim to his desk where a beautiful Victorian brass microscope stood. “Have a look in here.” He indicated the eye-piece.

Jim took a peep. “Bloody hell!” he swore, leaping back. “It’s alive in there.”

“Indeed, very much so. What did you see?”

“Little things, buzzing about like crazy, they looked …”

“Yes?”

“Angry,” said Jim, “Very angry.”

“And so they are. They are the very stuff of our friend Kaleton.”

“Friend?”

“My apologies, the word is most inappropriate. They are, if you like, a portion of his very essence. The silver flask drew in a quantity of his substance. He left in some confusion before it could take more, but what we have is sufficient.”

“So what does it mean?”

“It means that the non-man Kaleton is a ‘Grex’. A large body of separate organisms which when grouped together form the semblance of something else, either for camouflage or defence. Certain bacteria have the ability to do this when faced with starvation. They pass a message through a chain of single cells, amalgamate into a larger form and refunction in a different manner. They lose their individuality in the cause of mass survival.”

“It’s a bit early for me,” said Jim.

“Then look upon it as a microcosm of human society. A single naked individual could not survive, but in harmony, in rapport with the whole, protected and fed by the whole, he or she is able to function, to exist. Kinship, harmony, team spirit, that is loosely how society maintains its equilibrium. As a single body.”

“Hm,” said Jim. “It’s not the same. We may be part of the whole en masse, but we are each individuals, not one big homogenous blob. It doesn’t compute.”

“Oh, it does. It may be impossible to predict what a single individual will do, but one can predict with absolute accuracy what, say, a million people will do at any given time. They will get up at a certain hour, go to work at a certain hour, take lunch at a certain hour.”

“Yes, I get the picture,” said Jim, “although I don’t like it. Every man is an island, I am not a number, I am a free man, that kind of stuff.”

“No-one could ever doubt that you are an individual, Jim.”

Pooley chewed upon the Professor’s words that might have been a compliment. If it was, he meant to savour it, he didn’t get them that often. “What about this Soul of the World stuff?” he said presently.

“It is an ancient belief,” said Professor Slocombe, “universal as the Flood legend. The Buddhists believe in Rigdenjypo, king of the world, who dwells at the very centre of the planet in Shamballa, capital city of earth. All religions, past and present, have recognized a single Divine Creator, a God of the gods. Kaleton does not claim to be the universal deity, he claims to be the very spirit of this planet. Soul of the World made flesh.”

“And do you believe his claims?”

“No,” said the Professor, “I cannot. I dare not. His case is well argued, mankind has much to answer for, but there are too many contradictions. To quote an old chess-playing chum, and putting it crudely, ‘If the earth seeks to lose man, it has merely to fart.’”