Robert Rankin - Web Site Story

Kelly nodded in the way that said she really did. 'What was it you said happened to your husband?' she asked.

Mrs Gormenghast scratched at her puce perm with a wooden spoon. 'I don't rightly recall,' she said. 'Did I say that he was run over by a juggernaut? Or was he carried away by the fairies? It's so hard to keep up with current events nowadays and a week is a long time in politics. Do you want grated cheese on your hot crossed buns?'

'Parmesan?'

'No, I'll use a fork.'

At a little after eight of the gone-without-any-breakfast clock, Kelly left the house of Mrs Gormenghast. She did not leave by the front door but by the old back entrance, that used to be reserved for hawkers, tradespersons, mandolin players by moonlight and Tom the butcher's boy. She walked hurriedly up the garden path, between the blooming puce rhododendrons, flowering puce gladioli, glorious puce sunflowers and spreading puce spruce trees and looking left and right and up and down as well, slipped behind the trellis work that hid the two puce dustbins and the garden shed, all painted puce. Kelly lifted the latch and entered the shed.

She stepped over the half a bag of solid cement and peered down through the semidarkness towards a mound of coal sacks. A low murmur came from beneath them.

Kelly stooped and carefully lifted a sack. And then she stepped back briskly, careful not to scrape her expensive footwear on the aforementioned half a bag of solid cement.

On the floor lay Big Bob Charker. He lay face down. His hands were tightly bound behind his back with strips torn from Kelly's polyvinylsynthacottonlatexsuedosilk mix dress. His ankles were similarly secured and drawn up to his wrists. Another strip of dress served as a gag and this was knotted at the nape of the big man's neck.

'It's me, Kelly,' said Kelly. 'I'm sorry that I had to knock you out and drag you here and I'm sorry I had to tie you up like this. But it was for your own sake. You would have killed yourself. Or something would have killed you. I didn't touch your skin. I'm sure I'm not infected by whatever it is you're suffering from. But you'll have to stay here until I can find out what to do to help you. I'll come back later and bring you food. I'm going to Mute Corp. I know the answer to all this lies there.'

Big Bob growled through his gag and struggled fear-somely. Blood flowed from his wrists. It was just a matter of time before he broke free. Kelly delved into her shoulder bag, brought out a pair of white kid gloves, slipped them on, knelt over the big man and applied a Dimac 'quietening' touch to his left temple. Big Bob lapsed from consciousness.

Kelly re-covered him with the coal sacks. Left the shed, the garden and the street and went in search of the cab she should have ordered earlier.

Orders had never been Derek's thing. He knew that he was a free spirit. And an innovator, a man of imagination, a natural leader. If he hadn't had such a rough night of it last night he would have been feeling a great deal happier about dealing with this present day to come.

In charge.

In complete charge of the Brentford Mercury.

The man at the helm. The captain of the ship. The man who made decisions. Dictated the editorial policy. Did the business.

You have to balance things, you really do. The ups with the downs. The goods with the bads. The obfus-cations with the polyunsaturates. The antonyms with the antelopes. The diddy-do's with the rum-tiddly-um-pum-pums…

And things of that nature generally.

And so by the time Derek had had his breakfast, been told off again by his mum for coming in so late, put on his very best suit and marched all the way to the offices of the Brentford Mercury, mentally composing a stupendous pun-filled alliterative phew-wot-a-scorcher of a headline, he was out of the deep down doldrums and up in the wispy white clouds and ready and willing and ready once more to tackle the task in hand.

'I am the man,' said Derek, as he upped the staircase, two stairs at a time, put the key that was now his responsibility into the lock of the outer door, turned it and entered the offices.

'You're late,' said Mr Speedy, the pink-suited little man from Mute Corp.

'We'll have the company dock him an hour's pay,' said Mr Shadow, the larger man from the same corporation, similarly suited but in a bright red ensemble.

'You!' exasperated Derek. 'What are you doing here? How did you get in?'

'We have our own keys,' said Mr Speedy. 'Issued by head office. Business never sleeps, you know. Time is money and time waits for no man and all that kind of rot.'

'Rot?' said Derek, making a face that some might have taken for fierce.

'Things to do,' said Mr Shadow. 'We will overlook the unpleasantness of our previous meeting. We're all healed. We bear you no malice.'

'I should think not,' said Derek. 'It wasn't me who threw you out of the -window. It was that Kelly woman and she doesn't work here any more.'

'So very pleased to hear it. Shall we proceed?'

'I have work to do,' said Derek. 'Perhaps you could come back later. Tomorrow possibly, or next week?'

'How amusing,' said Mr Shadow. 'Shall we proceed to the editor's office and discuss business?'

'I have a paper to put out.'

'Yes,' said Mr Speedy. 'And all on your own, by the look of it. Unless you noticed a crowd of employees queuing up to get in. On your late arrival.'

'Hm,' went Derek. 'Actually no.'

'No,' said Mr Speedy. 'There is only us. We three and we must put the paper together by ourselves.'

'Couldn't possibly be done,' said Derek. 'You need typographers, compositors, mixers of inks, straighteners of paper. Someone to make the tea and pop out for doughnuts. It's all terribly technical, you wouldn't understand any of it.'

Mr Speedy shook his head. Slowly he shook it. 'We only need this,' he said, pointing to that tiny briefcase jobbie that those in the know call a laptop.

Kelly's hands were in her lap. Demurely.

The office where she now demurely sat was a pretty swank and fab affair. Walls of brushed aluminium, clothed by the works of Rothko, Pollock, Humphrey (in his pre-video, postmodern, hyper-realistic period) and the inevitable Carson. The floor was of black basalt, a stone desk rested upon steel trestles like a fallen monolith. There were two chairs, one behind the desk, with Mr Pokey upon it. One before the desk, with Kelly, hands in lap. Demurely.

She sat upon a chair the shape of a scallop shell. It was silver grey in colour and it didn't have any legs. The chair hovered eighteen inches above the floor, but did it in centimetres, as they were far more modern.

There was something alarming about sitting in a chair that didn't have any legs, and Kelly found herself ill at ease and constantly pressing the heels of her fashionable footwear to the floor.

'It won't collapse,' said Mr Pokey. 'It works on a principle similar to magnetism, but not. If you catch my drift and I'm sure that you do.' He smiled upon her breasts. 'Do you?'

'Naturally,' said Kelly. 'But it is somewhat disconcerting.'

'Yes, they never caught on with the general public. People eh, there's no telling what they will respond favourably to. Well, actually there is, but we like to keep them thinking that we don't know what it is.'

'Yes,' said Kelly. 'I can understand that.'

'The company that cares,' said Mr Pokey. 'Founded by…' He waved a hand and the face of Remington Mute appeared ghostlike and all 3-D above the desk of fallen stone. 'A legend. A true innovator. The man behind the most successful computer games company in the history of mankind. hellcab.' Mr Pokey waved his hand and a game screen gleamed and twinkled in the air, replacing the face of Remington Mute. Cars whizzed, explosions flashed. Sound effects came from hidden speakers.