Robert Rankin - East of Ealing

“If we get out of this I will buy you a pub.”

“Onward and upward then.”

Another two flights passed beneath them; to John and Jim it was evident that some fiendish builder was steadily increasing the depth of the treads.

“Stop now.”

“With the greatest pleasure.”

Professor Slocombe put his eye to the smoked glass of a partition door. “Yes,” said he in a whisper. “We shall trace it from here, I think.”

Norman the Second ran his fingertips about the door’s perimeter and nodded. “Appears safe enough,” he said.

“Then let us see.” Professor Slocombe gestured to Jim. “You push it, please.”

Pooley shook his head dismally but did as he was bid. The door gave to expose a long dimly-lit corridor.

Omally fanned at his nose. “It smells like the dead house.”

Professor Slocombe pressed a large gingham handkerchief to his face. “Will you lead the way, Norman?”

The robot entered the corridor. “I can feel the vibration of it,” he said, “but it is some distance away. If I could get to a VDU.”

“Stand alone, clustered, or wide-area network?” Omally asked, sarcastically.

“Super advanced WP and a spread-sheet planner, hopefully,” said Jim.

“Do I take the piss out of your relatives?” Norman the Second asked. “Stick your palm against this panel will you please?”

“Security round here stinks as bad as the air,” Pooley pressed the panel. A gleaming black door slid noiselessly aside.

“Ah,” said Norman the Second, “magic.”

The room was nothing more than a cell, happily unoccupied. Black walls, floor and ceiling. A cunningly concealed light source illuminated a centralized computer terminal, bolted to the floor. “And people have the gall to ask me why I never take employment,” said Omally, parking his bike. “Imagine this place nine to five.”

The robot faced the console and cracked his nylon knuckles. “Now,” said he, “only one small problem. We do not possess the entry code.”

Professor Slocombe handed him a folded sheet of vellum. “Try this.” The automaton perused the paper and stared up at the old man.

“Don’t ask,” said John Omally.

“All right then.” With a blur of digits the robot punched in the locking code. The words “ENTER ENQUIRY NOW” sprang up upon the now illuminated screen. Norman’s hand hovered.

“Ask it for permission to consult the main access body,” said the Professor.

Norman punched away at the keyboard.

PERMISSION DENIED, INFORMATION CLASSIFIED Professor Slocombe stroked at his chin. “Ask it for a data report.”

Norman did the business. Rows of lighted figures plonked up on to the monitor. Row upon coloured row, number upon number, little illuminated regiments marching up the screen. “Magic,” crooned Norman the Second.

“Looks like trig,” said Jim disgustedly. “Never could abide trig. Woodwork and free periods, but trig definitely not.”

“The music of the spheres,” said Norman the Second.

Professor Slocombe’s eyes were glued to the flickering screen. His mouth worked and moved, his head quivered from side to side. As the projected figures darted and weaved, so the old man rose and fell upon his toes.

“Does it mean something to you?” Omally asked.

“Numerology, John. It is as I have tried to explain to you both. Everything, no matter what, can be broken down into its base elements and resolved to a final equation: the numerical equivalent; all of life, each moving cell, each microbe, each network of cascading molecules. That is the purpose of it all. Don’t you see?” He pulled Omally nearer to the screen, but John jerked away.

“I’ll not have it,” said he. “It is wrong. Somehow it is indecent. Obscene.”

“No, no, you must understand.” The Professor crouched lower towards the screen, pushing Norman’s duplicate aside.

Pooley was jigging from one foot to the other. “Can’t we get a move on. I’m freezing to death here.”

The room had suddenly grown impossibly cold. The men’s breath steamed from their faces. Or at least from two of them it did.

Omally grasped Pooley by the wrist, for the first time he realized that the Professor was no longer wearing his helmet, and hadn’t been since they had joined him on the landing. “Oh, Jim,” whispered John, “bad Boda.”

The “Professor” stiffened; slowly his head revolved a hundred and eighty degrees upon his neck and stared up at them, sickeningly. “Learn, last men,” he said, clearing his throat with the curiously mechanical coughing sound John and Jim had learned to fear. “It is your only salvation. Humble yourselves before your new master.”

“Oh no.” Omally stumbled back and drew out his crucifix. “Back,” he shouted, holding it before him in a wildly shaking fist. “Spawn of the pit.”

The Professor’s body turned to follow the direction of his face. His eyes had lost their pupils but now glowed from within, two miniature terminal screens, tiny figures twinkling across them in hypnotic succession. “Behold the power,” said he. “Know you the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.”

“By the Cross.”

The thing which dwelt in the Professor’s image thrust a hand into its trouser pocket and drew out a small black box with two slim protruding shafts.

“Head for the hills,” yelled Pooley, as the clone touched the nemesis button and the black rods sparkled with electric fire.

Omally flattened himself to the wall as the thing lunged towards him. A great explosion tore the world apart. Shards of glass and splinters of burning circuitry spun in every direction, spattering the walls and the two cowering men; flame and smoke engulfed the room. The Professor’s duplicate stood immovable, his synthetic hair ablaze and his clothes in tatters. Norman’s double drew a smouldering fist from the shattered terminal screen. He leapt forward, grasping the Professor’s doppelgänger about the throat, and dragged it backwards. “Out!” he shouted. “Run for your lives, lads.”

Pooley and Omally bundled out of the door. John leapt astride Marchant and Pooley clambered on to the handlebars. At very much the hurry-up they took to the retreat.

In absolutely the wrong direction.

Omally’s feet flew about and Marchant, realizing the urgency of the situation, made no attempt to ditch its extra rider. With its bell ringing dramatically it cannoned forward up the corridor. Figures appeared before them, dressed in grey uniforms and carrying fire-fighting equipment. Pooley struck aside all he could as the bike ploughed forward. As he cleared a path between several rather sloppy versions of himself, a thought struck him. The great machine for all its dark magic certainly lacked something in the old imagination department. Obviously when idling and stuck for something to do, it just kept turning out the same old thing.

“Do you know what this means?” Omally shouted into his ear. Pooley shook his terrified head and lashed out at another robot duplicate of himself. “It means that I am the last Catholic on Earth.”

“Well, some good came out of it all, then.” As Omally’s hands were busily engaged at the handlebar grips, he could do no more than lean forward and bite Pooley’s ear. “Jim,” he shouted, “Jim, as the last Catholic, I am Pope! Jim… I… am Pope. I am Pope!”

Some distance beneath the pedalling pontiff a great cry broke the silence. “Fe… fi… fo… fum.” Neville the barbarian barman had finally reached a wall. And at long last he had found something he could thump. The thrill of the prospect sent a small shiver up his back which finally lost itself amid acres of straining muscle fibre. Neville ran his hand across the barrier blocking his way; hard and cold as glass. An outside wall surely? The barman pressed his eye to the jet crystal surface and did a bit of squinting. Something vague was moving about on the other side. People in the street? Neville drew back for a shoulder charge, and he would have gone through with it had not a sensible thought unexpectedly entered his head. He wasn’t exactly sure which floor, or wherever, he was on. With his track record the movements were likely to be those of roosting rooftop pigeons. It could be a long hard fall to earth. Neville pressed his ear to the wall of black glass. He couldn’t hear a damn thing.