Robert Rankin - East of Ealing

Professor Slocombe turned up his palms. “Please be seated, I have no wish to detain you longer than necessary. I merely seek a few answers to certain pressing questions.”

The duplicate clutched at his chest. “To take away my life, more likely.”

“No, no, I swear. Please be seated.” Professor Slocombe turned to his other guests. “Please avail yourselves, gentlemen, Norman and I have much to speak of.”

Holmes held his gun pointing steadily towards the robot’s spinning heart. “You counselled care, Professor,” said he, “and now it is my turn.”

“A degree of trust must exist, Holmes, kindly put aside your gun.”

Holmes did so. Pooley and Omally fought awhile over the decanter and finally came to an agreement.

“It is of the greatest importance that we speak with each other,” Professor Slocombe told the robot. “Please believe that I wish you no harm. Will you play straight with me?”

“I will, sir, but have a care for him. The man is clearly mad. Calls himself Sherlock Holmes but knows not a thing of the thirty-nine steps. I would have come to you of my own accord.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes.” The robot cleared his throat with a curiously mechanical coughing sound which sent the wind up Pooley and Omally. “Things cannot be allowed to continue as they are.”

Professor Slocombe raised his eyebrows. “You are aware of that?”

“I can hear them talking. They gnaw at my brain but I will not allow them ingress. I am Norman’s man and sworn by the bond of birth to protect him.”

“Your loyalty is commendable.”

“I am sworn to serve mankind.”

“From behind a counter,” sneered Omally.

The robot nodded grimly. “It sounded a little more noble the way I put it, but no matter, there is little enough of mankind now left to serve. The shop doorbell is silent the better part of the day. Trade declines; I rarely punch an order into the terminal, and when I do, the new stocks which finally arrive are further foreshortened. The master computer now runs it all. Mankind is on the wane, the new order prevails, night falls upon Brentford and the world. It is the coming of Ragnorok. Götterdämmerung .”

“Stick the Laurence Olivier circuits into override, you clockwork clown,” said John Vincent Omally, Man of Earth.

“How would you like me to fill your mouth with boot?” the robot enquired.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” said Professor Slocombe, “let us have a little decorum please.”

“Well, he’s had my shed down,” Omally complained. “For one sworn to protect mankind he’s about as much use as a nipple on a-”

“Quite so, John. Please be calm, we will achieve nothing by fighting amongst ourselves. We must all pull together.”

“You can pull whatever you want,” said the robot, “but take it from me, you had better start with your fingers. Unless you can come up with something pretty special, pretty snappish, then you blokes are banjoed, get my meaning, F… U… C…”

“Language, please,” said Professor Slocombe. “I think we catch your drift. Something pretty special was what I had in mind.”

“AAAAOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOO… O… UH?”

Neville the part-time barman awoke after an absence of some eleven chapters. Scorning the tried and tested “Where am I?” he settled for “Why have I got a light bulb stuck up my left nostril?” which was at least original. His eyes rolled up towards the ceiling, several inches above his face, and a great hand rose to brush away the obstruction blocking one side of his nose. This bed is a bit high, thought Neville. But then the dreadful memories of his most despicable situation came flooding back in a tidal wave of adipose tissue.

“The fat!” groaned Neville, his voice rumbling up from the depths of his stomach to shiver the ceiling above. “The terrible fat!” He tried to move his great St Paul’s dome of a head, but it seemed to be wedged tightly into an upper corner of the tiny hospital room. Painfully he struggled and shifted until he was able to peer down over the great massed army of himself and gauge some idea of how the land lay. It lay someway distant in the downwards direction. “OOOOOAAAAAAOOOOOOAAA… UH,” moaned Neville. “Worse, much worse.”

A sudden sound distracted him from his misery, somewhere beneath his spreading bulk and slightly to one side, a door appeared to be opening. From his eyrie above the picture-rail Neville watched a minuscule nurse enter the already crowded room.

“And how are we today?” asked this fairy person.

“We?” Neville’s voice arose in desperation. “You mean that there is more than one of me now?”

“No, no.” The tiny nurse held up a pair of doll-like hands. “You are doing very well, making good progress, great signs of improvement, nothing to fear.”

Neville now noticed to his increasing horror that the midget was brandishing a hypodermic syringe. Which, although perched between her tiddly digits like a Christmas cracker fag-holder, looked none the less as threatening as any of the others he had recently experienced at hind quarters.

“Time for your daily jab, roll over please.”

“Roll over? Are you mad, woman?” Neville wobbled his jowls down at the nurse.

The woman smiled up at him. “Come on now, sir,” she wheedled. “We’re not going to throw one of our little tantrums now, are we?”

If Neville could have freed one of his feet, possibly the one which was now wedged above the curtain-rail surrounding his bed, he would have happily stamped the tiny nurse to an omelette.

“Come on now, sir, roly-poly.”

“Crunch crunch,” went Neville. “Fe… Fi… Fo… Fum…”

“Don’t start all that again, sir. I shall have to call for doctor.”

“Crunch… splat.” Neville struggled to free a foot, or anything.

“You leave me no choice, then.” The tiny nurse left the room, slamming the door behind her.

Neville rubbed his nose upon the ceiling. How long had he been here? Days? Months? Years? He really had no idea. What were they doing to him? Pumping him full of drugs to keep him sedated? What? He had known all along that it was a conspiracy, but what were they up to? They had blown him up like a blimp for their own foul ends. Probably for some vile new hormone research designed to increase the bacon yield from porker pigs. It was the Illuminati, or the masons, or the Moonies or some suchlike sinister outfit. Just because he was slightly paranoid, it didn’t mean they weren’t out to get him.

And far worse even, what was happening at the Swan? That defrocked Matelot Croughton would have his hand in the till up to the armpit. The beer would be flat and the ashtrays full. There was even the possibility of after-hours drinking, Omally would see to that. He was probably even downing pints on credit at this very moment. It was all too much. He must escape, if only to save his reputation. Neville twisted and turned in his confinement, a latterday Alice tormented in a sterilized doll’s house.

The door of the room flew open beneath him and the nurse re-entered, accompanied by a pale young doctor in headphones. As Neville watched in fearful anticipation, he withdrew from his belt a small black device bristling with a pair of slim metallic rods. “We are being naughty again,” he said, clearing his throat with a curiously mechanical coughing sound and arming the mechanism. “Will we never learn?”

Neville the part-time barman turned up his eyes and gritted his teeth, “Fe… Fi…Fo…”

The pale young man stepped forward and applied the electrodes to Neville’s groin. A mind-rending shock of raw pain, tore the captive barman’s nerve endings to a million ribbons and he sank once more from consciousness into a blinding red haze of dumb agony.