The Abominable Showman

by Robert Rankin

  ‘I really must stop you there,’ I said. ‘You did say Martian spaceships?’

  ‘You’ve already met a Venusian, chief. Nice folk, the Venusians, if a little aloof and overly religious. Jovians are jolly and up for a giggle, Martians were scum to a spaceman.’

  ‘Martians, eh?’ I said and I whistled.

  ‘Please don’t whistle, chief. Everything written in H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds happened in your granddad’s version of history. The Martians attacked England, Earthly viruses killed them off. Then British scientists, Mr Babbage and Mr Tesla, although he wasn’t strictly British, back-engineered the abandoned Martian spacecraft, and Mr Winston Churchill did a rather ignominious thing to kill off the Martians on Mars.’

  ‘Mr Winston Churchill?’ I said. ‘The Mr Winston Churchill?’

  ‘He was made head of the armed services by Mr Gladstone. He was only a teenager, but he was always a bit fighty. He reasoned that more Martians might attack, ones wearing gas-masks perhaps, so to pre-empt that he had a couple of back-engineered Martian spaceships filled with dying diseased patients from the isolation hospitals and shot back to Mars. The Martians were tricked, opened the spaceships then all dropped dead from diseases.’

  ‘Pretty sneaky trick,’ I said.

  ‘And a well-kept secret, chief. But it got the job done and with the Martians dead, Queen Victoria became Empress of both India and Mars. And it was then that the other inhabitants of our solar system chose to make themselves known to the British Empire. The Venusians and the Jovians. With the nasty Martians dead there was a chance for peace between the planets. Treaties were drawn up and Earth had a golden age.’

  ‘And now all of this is gone,’ I said. ‘And only a few remember.’

  ‘That’s the way of it, chief. Did you ever see that film, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis?’

  ‘The daddy took me to it at the Walpole Cinema,’ I said. ‘A wonderful film, I loved the lady robot.’

  ‘Well the scenes of the outside city-scape, with all those mighty sky towers and super-highways and thousand-storey buildings and flying cars, all that is exactly how London looked in your granddad’s boyhood. In his version of history, Fritz Lang shot Metropolis as a documentary live on location in London. No models involved. And the Maria robot was played by a real robot.’

  I whistled softly, but I really whistled.

  ‘Exciting stuff, chief,’ said the sprout. ‘And of course it didn’t stop there, technology improved and improved, space travel became commonplace and by nineteen twenty-seven things were pretty spectacular, I can tell you. Yes indeed by golly. Bippity-boppity-boo.’

  ‘So what do you want me for?’ I asked. ‘Why am I needed in this?’

  ‘It’s a super villain thing,’ said Barry. ‘In fact it’s always a super villain thing. There is always some aspiring super villain with designs on world domination. I believe it is a tradition, or an old charter, or something.’

  ‘Or another tired old trope,’ I said, though I said this very quietly.

  ‘And my hearing is acute,’ said Barry. ‘But that’s what it is anyway. Let me speak of the great cruise liners.’

  ‘Speak on.’

  ‘They are very big indeed.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I speak of the great cruise liners that move in orbit about planet Earth, in the year nineteen twenty-seven. Showboats of space, they call them, the ultimate in luxury, as swank as swank can be. They have casinos on board and music halls and magnificent ballrooms and the well-to-do swan about in glamorous attire, living the life and getting up to no good.’

  ‘Getting up to no good?’ I queried.

  ‘It is very hard to police space,’ said Barry. ‘Space is a bit big for that kind of thing and with interplanetary treaties about who would own what bit of space and how much, it all got rather complicated, so each inhabited planet sort of drew a big three dimensional line about the outer edges of its own atmosphere and said ‘That is ours and we are only responsible for what happens within this limited area.’

  ‘I see trouble brewing,’ I said.

  ‘It all got rather chaotic, chief. Earth law ended where Earth’s atmosphere ended, beyond that it was every man for himself.’

  ‘But you said that the British Empire also owned Mars and the Moon.’

  ‘Same deal applied. Both Mars and the Moon have breathable atmospheres.’

  ‘You do realise that this is all thoroughly insane,’ I said.

  ‘Completely, chief,’ said Barry. ‘But such a lot of fun.’

  ‘Go on then,’ I said and, ‘tell me more.’

  ‘Right,’ said the sprout, ‘so as I was saying, the rich and famous like to visit these showboats of space, and beyond the reach of Earthly law behave very badly indeed. Proper dens of vice these cruise ships are. All manner of debauchery that would be punishable by prison sentences down below goes on up there. And the taking of drugs,’ Barry whistled.

  ‘Ow,’ I cried. ‘I see what you mean with the whistling.’

  ‘Sorry chief, but when it comes to drunkenness, drug abuse and debauchery, the rich and famous leave the hoi-polloi with egg on its collective chin and also mud in its eye.’

  ‘So a lot of hanky panky goes on up in the sky?’

  ‘Nicely put, chief, a lot of hanky panky. And a lot of shenanigans too.’

  ‘Well,’ I said and with a wisdom well beyond my years. ‘The rich and famous have always considered themselves to be above the law.’

  ‘Quite so, chief. All of these fabulous space liners were built in England. Because on Earth the British Empire has complete control of spaceships. The liners are built and launched from Liverpool. The White Star Line’s flagship is The Leviathan.’

  I recalled that very name. ‘Your friend the Venusian said that he’d left his ray gun aboard that space liner,’ I said.

  ‘Well, we did have to make something of a speedy getaway, chief.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ I said and I raised my eyebrows.

  ‘I can’t see your eyebrows from here,’ said Barry. ‘But do let me finish. The Leviathan is the ship of space to be on. The most expensive and exclusive of all the wondrous showboats. And it is the property of a self-styled Russian count.’

  ‘A self-styled Russian count?’ I said.

  ‘Count Ilya Rostov,’ said Barry. ‘Most believe he’s an Englishman, but nobody knows for certain. It was he who financed the building of The Leviathan and it is he who lords it over it, like a monarch with a sky-borne kingdom.’

  ‘Lucky blighter,’ was my opinion of this.

  ‘Glad you think so, chief. For it is also he who will be employing you as his cabin boy.’

  ‘I do like the sound of that,’ I said, for I liked the sound of that.

  ‘Good,’ said Barry, ‘very good.’ Then he did some mumblings.

  ‘What are those mumblings about?’ I asked him.

  ‘This and that,’ said Barry. ‘I wouldn’t worry yourself.’

  ‘Amesha the Venusian said that you had to tell me everything,’ I said.

  ‘He’s not my dad,’ said Barry. ‘He can’t tell me what to do.’

  ‘I somehow suspect that he can,’ I said.

  ‘Hmph,’ went Barry the sprout. ‘Well, there is something you should probably know, chief. About Count Ilya Rostov. He is one of the very richest men in all of the inhabited worlds.’

  ‘You told me that,’ I said.

  ‘And probably the very most evil.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘A super criminal,’ said Barry.

  ‘Ah,’ said I once again.

  ‘A monster,’ said Barry. ‘A murdering, butchering horrible creature.’

  ‘Oh dear me,’ I said.

  ‘So, there you go,’ said Barry cheerfully. ‘And now you know and you will be his cabin boy.’

  ‘Right,’ I said and I nodded my head. ‘I want my mummy!’ I shouted.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Barry, ‘it’s too late for that.’

  And bl
ack turned to white with a whizz and a pop, and Barry said, ‘We’re here, chief.’

  8

  And I opened my eyes to Metropolis.

  And there it was all around me. A vast and daunting spectacle, Metropolis it was.

  We had arrived in Trafalgar Square and at least I recognised that. There was Nelson on his column and Landseer’s lions, the fountains and there was the National Gallery.

  But.

  To every side and rearing into the sky were colossal buildings. Impossibly tall, with raised roads and walkways strung between them. Though daunting by their ridiculous scale these buildings were lovely to look on. The style was classic Art Deco with much use of black glass and chrome. Soaring curves and elegant features, sweeping ornamentation.

  My mouth and eyes grew wide at the sights and so too the sounds of London. For here in this super city of a future past, if I might describe it so, there was a lack of that sound that all of us know so well.

  The internal combustion engine.

  Sleek silver vehicles purred as they passed. Purr they did, rather than rumble.

  I would later learn that this was down to the genius of Nikola Tesla. He had, in this past, realised his life-long dream, the wireless transmission of electricity.

  High steel columns were to be seen, dwindling into the sky. Atop these were what must have been vast steel balls that crackled with sparks which were surely electric blue.

  The internal combustion engine, I learned, had been dismissed as a noisy, inefficient and air-polluting contraption and had found no favour in this past world.

  The cars and aircraft too ran on small electrical motors which, drawing their energy from that broadcast by the Tesla towers, required no cumbersome batteries.

  And above, in the sky, I saw the electrical airships. Gorgeous silver aeroforms drifting between the high towers.

  ‘Pretty swank, eh, chief?’ came a voice in my head.

  When I found the voice of my own, it didn’t speak very much sense.

  ‘All a bit much, I suppose,’ said Barry. ‘Let’s go to the hotel and get you settled in.’

  ‘Hotel?’ I managed to say.

  Amesha the Venusian booked you a room. It’s arranged and there you’ll find suitable clothes and necessary identification papers and sandwiches and cocoa, money and room for the night and instructions for what you should do.’

  ‘Instructions?’ I said, in the tone that is known as thoughtful.

  ‘Instructions, chief. So you can say and do the right things in order to qualify for the post as Count Rostov’s cabin boy.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, with an equal degree of thought.

  Around and about us people strolled and took in the sights of London. Beautiful people all it seemed, tall and wonderfully dressed. The style was still that of the nineteen-twenties, but it was somewhat enhanced. A sort of science-fictionalised version of the nineteen-twenties dress style. Gentlemen wore stripy blazers, white flannel trousers, two-tone brogues and boaters jauntily perched upon their heads. But the blazers’ stripes had a metally sheen and Flash Gordon pointy shoulders. And the boaters were not straw at all, but rather they seemed to be Bakelite.

  My gaze dwelt on the ladies of the time. It was bobs and flapper dresses, but the bobs were green or blue or purple and the dresses twinkled as if lit somehow from within.

  And then I caught sight of the Jovians. Massive ponderous figures, out of scale with human kind, swaying through the crowds, laughing loudly, talking with gusto. I began to feel faint.

  ‘Close your eyes and take a deep breath,’ said Barry. ‘Can’t have you passing out here with no ID. Questions would be asked that we could not answer.’

  I closed my eyes and took a very deep breath. This really was a great deal to take in. An impossible amount. I wasn’t sure that I could cope at all. And regarding my ‘instructions’ and applying for a job with the world’s most evil super villain, well it wasn’t a matter of having second thoughts about that. I hadn’t even had first thoughts. I was not going to do it.

  ‘If you don’t do it,’ said Barry, breaking in upon my thoughts, ‘then I will have no choice but to abandon you here and find some other schmuck to do the job.’

  ‘Schmuck?’ I said. ‘What of this?’

  ‘Slip of the tongue, chief. Naturally I meant hero.’

  ‘Naturally you did,’ I said and then I said ‘Oh no!’

  ‘What is it now?’ asked Barry, making a little sigh.

  ‘You can read my thoughts,’ I said. ‘That is somehow disgusting.’

  ‘Not if you think pure thoughts it’s not.’

  ‘That isn’t what I mean.’

  ‘I know what you mean, chief. But trust me, you really do not want me to abandon you here. This might all look very glossy, but you are only seeing the nice part now. There’s plenty of poverty and oppression and a child, alone, without money or identification papers, would not fare well at all.’

  ‘You little green turd!’ I said. ‘You blackmailing, horrible –’ and then I said nothing more.

  Folk were stopping to stare at me, some were pointing and whispering behind their hands, I heard the term ‘beggar boy’ being used and someone said something about calling the child catcher.

  ‘Time we were off to the hotel,’ said Barry. ‘Get a move on, do.’

  The Empire Hotel was a shard of steel and glass. Three hundred floors of luxury, lifts of glass and fountains in the foyer. I glimpsed the fountains through the revolving doors as Barry hurried me on –

  – to the hotel next door.

  RENFIELD’S ROUGH AND READY

  read the sign above the door. Another sign read:

  SCHEDULED FOR DEVELOPMENT

  An unhealthy miasma oozed from the ROUGH AND READY.

  ‘I’m not going in there,’ I said to Barry. ‘That is what my mother would describe as a “loathsome den of iniquity”. A well-bred boy would only come to grief in such a place.’

  ‘It’s luxury compared to the child catcher’s cage,’ whispered Barry.

  I made a very fierce face indeed, but of course it was wasted, as Barry couldn’t see it at all.

  ‘Go up to the chap on the desk, chief, and say these words to him.’

  Reluctantly I did as Barry told me.

  ‘I am Lord Rutherford’s servant boy and have come to collect his goods and chattels,’ I said to the sturdy ruffian who lurked in the gloomy bower of the reception.

  Unwashed fingers passed a key to me.

  Up three flights of uncarpeted steps and into a room that smelled like old boiled cabbage and looked a whole lot worse.

  ‘I’m not at all impressed by this,’ I said to Barry the sprout.

  ‘Chief, this is an undercover operation. Expenses don’t run to five star hotels, you know.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said in my grumpiest voice. ‘In fact I really don’t know anything about what my involvement in this is supposed to be. Am I supposed to be a boy detective?’ and as I spoke these words, I have to say, I liked the sound of them.

  ‘A boy detective? Spare me.’

  I sat down on what passed for a bed and tightly folded my arms. ‘Whatever it is, I don’t want to play,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, not all this again,’ said Barry. ‘Have a sandwich, chief, there’s some over there.’

  ‘Probably nibbled by rats,’ I said.

  ‘There aren’t any rats on Count Rostov’s space yacht,’ the voice of Barry echoed in my head.

  I sighed very sadly. ‘I’m only a schoolboy,’ I said.

  ‘But an important one, chief. This undercover operation is being run by something called the Ministry of Serendipity. A secret government organisation based beneath Mornington Crescent Underground Station. You could look at yourself as being a secret agent, I suppose. Your job is to infiltrate Count Rostov’s organisation and report what you find to a certain undercover private detective, who will be posing as a passenger.’

  ‘Not Lazlo Woodbine?’ I said.
/>   ‘Not Lazlo Woodbine,’ said Barry.

  ’Awww,’ I added to that.

  ‘His name is Sir Jonathan Crawford,’ said Barry the sprout. ‘He is the son of Lord Brentford. He is also half Venusian, which makes him, how shall I put this, rather interesting.’

  ‘Go on,’ I said, ‘tell me more.’

  ‘Several operatives have sought to infiltrate Rostov’s organisation. Each of them vanished without a trace.’

  ‘And you’re sending me?’ I said.

  ‘You are a child,’ said Barry. ‘He’d never suspect a child.’

  ‘I would,’ I said. ‘Because I am a child and I know how sneaky children often are.’

  ‘He won’t suspect you,’ Barry said. ‘And if he puts you through the blooper then I’ll sort it out for you.’

  ‘And what is a blooper, pray tell?’

  ‘It’s a brannnn prouub,’ mumbled Barry.

  ‘One more time, if you please.’

  ‘Brain probe,’ blurted out the sprout. ‘A sort of lie detector test. And if he puts one in your head, I’ll do the thinking for you.’

  ‘As perhaps you could have done for the previous operatives?’ I suggested.

  ‘Humph,’ went Barry the sprout.

  The sandwiches were in a tin box and had not been nibbled by rats. There was a thermos flask of cocoa and I helped myself to a cup. I sat on the pallet that passed for a bed and gazed through the grubby window and into the street.

  The silver cars went purring by, the airships moved like magical fishes swimming in the sky. People came and people went and somewhere high above it all, The Leviathan swung in orbit round the Earth.

  ‘So I am to be a spy,’ I said, when I had finished my cocoa.

  ‘Yes chief, a spy. A boy-spy-detective. Special agent, a boy-scout-special-agent-crusading-hero, all that kind of caper.’

  ‘And I won’t get killed?’

  ‘I don’t see how you can, chief. As I told you, it was the you-in-the-future who put the you-here-now up for the job.’

  ‘All right,’ I said to Barry. ‘I won’t make any more fuss about taking the job. This is a very big adventure and I suppose I should be grateful to my future self for suggesting me. Because, after all, my future self must remember everything that the me now did in this time and if it was truly horrible he could have said that he didn’t want his younger self to get involved and so I wouldn’t be here, would I?’