The Abominable Showman

by Robert Rankin

  ‘Tar and feathers,’ said the count. ‘I had supposed that such a carry-on only went on in the Americas. In Grimsby I thought they’d throw bloaters or something. Taught me a lesson, Grimsby did, I won’t go there again.’

  ‘I like the look of her,’ said Atters, pointing.

  ‘Ah, yes, Alice,’ said the count.

  ALICE’S AVIAN ACROBATS

  STUNNING FEATS OF BALANCE

  HISTORICAL RE-ENACTMENTS

  SONG AND DANCE ROUTINES

  Admission 1 Shilling

  All Classes

  Electric Alhambra

  MUSIC HALL

  PICCADILLY

  ‘Kiwi birds,’ said Count Rostov. ‘Very versatile. Highly trained.’

  ‘This Alice on the poster,’ observed Atters. ‘Somewhat scantily-clad, one might almost say, near to naked.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Count Rostov. ‘Never really noticed. Great success though. Built upon that. Began Rostov’s Follies.’ He gestured to another poster.

  ‘No clothes at all on any of them,’ said Atters. ‘I see where you were going with this. A successful formula.’

  ‘Dusky maidens,’ said the count. ‘It’s their national costume, you know. Very hot, where they come from.’

  ‘And will they be on the bill tonight?’

  ‘Indeed they will,’ said the count.

  ‘Something for us all to look forward to there then.’

  Count Rostov sighed and took out his pocket watch. ‘Time for your morning thrashing,’ he said.

  ‘Make it hard,’ said Atters. ‘I have been a very naughty minion.’

  38

  Space pirate Captain F-Stop Bell-Franchise now enters the picture. He enters in a flurry of tweed, as his Piccadilly tailor misread his over-extravagant hand writing. Although to what degree and in what manner is really anyone’s guess.

  Captain F-Stop, and here we shorten his name to avoid tedium, commands the bad ship Umma Gumma, a swarthy vessel, somewhat halibut-shaped with a rather nice figurehead of a bare-bosomed Earthish lady on the front.

  The bad ship Umma Gumma, along with its foolishly-named captain and suitably scurvy crew hail from the Jovian moon of Trubshaw and have set a course for the great showboat liner The Leviathan.

  Our narrative has not included the more recent assaults upon The Leviathan by space pirates, as they were all very much of a muchness. An entertainment for The Leviathan’s passengers, who enjoyed the downing of cocktails and tipping of tea cups, whilst the pirates failed to penetrate The Leviathan’s electrical defences and were inevitably vaporised by the great space liner’s on-board prang cannons. But hardly worth much of a mention and not, one might have supposed, an integral part of the plot.

  But how wrong can one be? Because here comes space pirate Captain F-Stop Bell-Franchise (one of the new breed of surrealist space pilots, as this modern art movement has now spread from Earth out to the other inhabited planets). His tricorn is of tweed, so too his lacy-ruffed shirt and so too also his boots, which are a puzzler for sure. A brace of ray guns at his hip, an eye patch in the form of a bondage teapot. A parrot named Mr Slater and a bottle of rum from his Fortnum’s Pirate Hamper.

  ‘Avast behind!’ he cries, for this sometimes raises a laugh and then, ‘Death to the puny Earthlings!’ which generally doesn’t.

  Captain F-Stop is tall, broad-shouldered, waspy of waist and struggles with difficulty to disguise his Etonian accent. He shared a dorm with Rostov and with most of Sir Jonathan’s chums, but wished like Count Rostov to make his own way in the world.

  ‘Mr Mate,’ Captain F-Stop called out. ‘Are we on course?’

  ‘On course we be, Captain.’

  ‘That should be “We are on course, Captain”, should it not?’

  ‘Aaaaaaar,’ went Mr Mate.

  ‘So what time will we reach our destination?’

  ‘We be a-reaching The Leviathan ‘pon the stroke of midnight British Empire time.’

  ‘Absolutely splendid,’ said Captain F-Stop.

  ‘One question, Captain, please,’ Mr Mate had a hook for a hand and this he raised to his captain.

  ‘Ask then, Mr Mate,’ this man replied.

  ‘Captain, we be the very last space pirate vessel out of Trubshaw. All other vessels have sailed to their doom and the moon Trubshaw is now empty but for the man who owns the sweetshop and his daughter Doris.’

  ‘A fair and winsome damsel, Doris.’

  ‘So that be, Captain. But me point is this. We is surely a-sailing to oblivion’s shore, on a voyage of no return.’

  ‘Take your point, Mr Mate,’ Captain F-Stop smiled a handsome smile. For he was a handsome fellow all in all. ‘We however have a secret weapon that no space pirate has ever used before.’

  ‘Aaaaarrr?’ said Mr Mate, questioningly.

  ‘Against the evil Empire, we will be using The Force.’

  ‘The Force?’

  ‘The Force.’

  ‘The Force?’

  ‘Well, almost The Force. Naturally one cannot actually use The Force per se. One would definitely run up against litigation. So shall we say that, as pirates bold, we will be using The Fierce.’

  ‘The Fierce?’

  ‘The Fierce.’

  ‘The Fierce?’

  ‘Please stop now,’ said the captain. ‘I have studied The Fierce and attuned myself to it. Would you care for a demonstration?’

  Mr Mate nodded his battle-scarred head.

  The captain sought a suitable subject for his demonstration. The tea lady was pushing her trolley by. For even pirates have to stop for tea.

  Mr Mate reached out to a plate of tasties.

  ‘These are not the scones you are looking for,’ said the captain.

  Mr Mate made a puzzled face. ‘These are not the scones I am looking for,’ he said.

  Other pirates who had been looking on, took to cheering.

  ‘May The Fierce be with us,’ said the captain.

  Mr Mate scratched his head with his hook and nearly put his good eye out. ‘That all be well and good,’ he said. ‘But there is the matter of the impenetrable electrical force field that surrounds The Leviathan.

  ‘Good point, well made,’ said the captain.

  ‘Will The Fierceness negate The Force….field?’

  ‘No,’ the captain shook his tweed tricorn. ‘But my secret agent on board The Leviathan will see to it. At five minutes to midnight he will overpower the operatives who man The Leviathan’s electrical defence systems and then blow up the control room. The ship will be helpless and we will move in for the kill.

  ‘And the prang cannons, Captain?’

  ‘All plugs pulled from those,’ the captain said.

  The crew took once more to warm applause and some even suggested that ‘three cheers’ might be in order.

  Back aboard The Leviathan, Count Rostov spoke to Atters of applause.

  ‘That is why I do it, you see,’ he said. ‘To bring joy. A very wise woman once said that a person’s life has a meaning, if when at last they reach their final hours, they can look back upon their life and say, that during it, they made the world just a little bit better a place to be, rather than a little bit worse.’

  ‘Shades of the Hegelian dialectic,’ said Atters, who for his outspokenness received a blow that sent him reeling.

  ‘I am warmed by applause,’ the count continued. ‘It is all I ask in return for the joy that I bring.’

  Atters now sought to evoke Euclid’s Proposition regarding mathematical balance in regards to door-takings at the count’s numerous entertainment venues. But did not.

  ‘Tonight,’ said the count, ‘will be my triumph. Tonight the joy that I bring will receive universal applause.’

  ‘Might we tie that down to specifics?’ Atters asked. Adding, ‘master.’

  ‘We might not,’ said Count Rostov. ‘But know this. Tonight, in the lately renamed Jubilee Music Hall, here aboard The Leviathan, the greatest performers of our day will tread the
boards for a Royal Command Performance. This done, and done well, Her Majesty and guests will repair to the Grand Ballroom, there to dine at table upon the finest viands the four worlds can supply. This done, and done with such style and panache as might never be experienced again, the culmination of the proceedings. A performance from Sophia Poppette, sufficient in itself to inspire wonder. But tonight, upon the stroke of midnight something so much more.’

  ‘Which is?’ ventured Atters.

  ‘None of your damned business, my little chumrade.’

  I ate heartily of breakfast and drank heartily of a drink called Rosto-Cola.

  I had been keeping something of a low-profile. Something that the now legendary Lazlo Woodbine, whose name I had appropriated, but seemingly to no point whatsoever, regularly did, when he was either being sought by henchmen of the master criminal who would eventually meet his end in the final rooftop showdown. Or Laz’s landlord, Mr Fish, regarding overdue rent. My sleeping accommodation had been a linen cupboard, but this I considered preferable to a bunk in the dormitory of the silly boys. Or indeed the shrunken corridor that awaited me if I caught the eye of Count Rostov.

  I was enjoying my breakfast though, in one of the cafés that bordered the reproduction of Rotten Row before the great glass house.

  I ceased to heartily drink of Rosto-Cola. ‘This drink tastes like wee wee,’ I remarked.

  ‘Not one of the count’s greatest achievements,’ Barry agreed. ‘But they can’t all be winners, can they, chief?’

  ‘How am I going to get to see all the shows and attend the feast in the ballroom tonight?’ I asked. ‘I don’t have any tickets and I am a boy on the run.’

  ‘You are a boy on the run in the uniform of a cabin boy,’ said Barry.

  ‘I know that,’ I said. ‘There is still some small hope of continuity.’

  ‘My point is, chief, it’s a uniform and the thing about a boy in a uniform is that he’ll look a lot like every other boy in a uniform, especially if he has a cap on and he keeps his head down. You’ll need an usher’s cap on to get you into the music hall and serving boy’s cap to get you into the grand Jubilee ball and sit-down feast. Chief.’

  ‘Well now, Barry,’ I said, as one who gives credit where credit is due. ‘Naturally I had thought of that.’

  ‘Well naturally you had, chief. You lying little tick.’

  ‘What was that, Barry?’

  ‘Nothing, chief, just offering up a word or two to Terrance for doing me the honour of allowing me to reside in your nitty bonce.’

  ‘So that’s the plan, then, Barry,’ I said.

  ‘The plan then, chief?’ asked Barry.

  ‘I shall be on-hand,’ I said. ‘Be where I am supposed to be. In the midst of things and things of that nature, generally. And when my big moment comes, and I am now supremely confident that it will come, I shall do whatever it is that I am supposed to do. Save the day and humbly take the credit.’

  ‘Yessss,’ said Barry. It was a very long ‘yesssss’.

  ‘So for all your sly sarcasm, you are blessed of Terrance for taking up quarters in my head.’

  ‘Yes,’ Barry said once more.

  ‘Waiter,’ I called, ‘would you kindly remove this glass of cat’s piddle and bring me a proper Coca Cola?’

  ‘Who served you that breakfast?’ asked the waiter.

  ‘Rather strange response to my question,’ I replied. ‘But a rather charming waiter of foreign extraction, why?’

  ‘Because,’ said the waiter. ‘You ain’t a guest, you’re a bleeding cabin boy.’

  And with that he clipped me round the ear and sent me on my way.

  ‘Have you ever heard the expression, “A prophet is without honour in his own land”?’ Barry asked.

  I rubbed my stinging red ear and replied.

  ‘Stuff you, Barry,’ I said.

  39

  I crept down to the dismal sub-level of dormitory and staff canteen, stole the appropriate headwear and stayed away from the gruel. It occurred to me that I was going to have to occupy myself for the day, as the festivities-proper would not be beginning until eight of the evening clock.

  I considered a stealthy perambulation of the great vessel, reasoning that some unlikely coincidence or another might precipitate a minor adventure, or even offer some extra clue as to what precisely was going on, would be going on, or how it all would end.

  Barry, however, was doubtful.

  ‘Can’t really see the point, chief,’ he said. ‘Just be padding it out in my opinion.’

  ‘So what would you suggest?’ I asked, as if I really cared.

  ‘Well, chief, as you seem to have acquired some kind of cosmic how-do-you-do, why not just wish yourself forward a few hours and we’ll see what happens.’

  ‘Wish myself forward?’

  ‘Up, up and away,’ said Barry. ‘To infinity and beyond the pale and all around my hat.’

  ‘What do you live on, Barry?’ I asked. ‘You are alive, so I assume you must eat to survive.’

  ‘A sprout that dines out?’ said my holy guardian. ‘Interesting thought. But no chief, I don’t eat as such. Certainly I feast upon your vital juices like some parasitic vampire fungus, but that could hardly be called eating, could it?’

  ‘If this was a movie, who would you like to play you?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, I see, chief, we’re just padding it out right here, are we?’

  ‘I only wondered,’ I said. ‘We’ll part company soon.’

  ‘Not soon enough in my opinion.’

  ‘What was that, Barry?’

  ‘Nothing, chief.’

  ‘But would you say,’ I continued, ‘that we have ever really got to know each other?’

  ‘I think I can make a reasonably sound assessment of your personality, chief.’

  ‘I think I’ll just fast-forward then,’ I said.

  ‘I think that would be for the best, chief, yes.’

  And so it came to be.

  More racing and whirling and whirring all about and me in the middle, at the sides and in the end.

  I saw, in no particular order, a grim-looking spaceship with a naughty figurehead rushing at considerable speed towards the great Leviathan.

  I saw a being that I knew to be Sophia Poppette. She looked somewhat naughty too, as she lacked entirely for clothes. She walked in the wondrous glass house atop the space liner. Nourishing something plump and green from a baby’s feeding bottle. I looked long and hard at this magical scene and not because it was a lady with no clothes on, I was still a little too young to become overexcited by that. I was more entranced by just what it was I was seeing. There was an unworldly quality about the fay little fairy girl that was the Poppette. She seemed to float and glide rather than to walk. And the creature she nursed with the bottle, there could be no doubt in my mind as to what that was. It was a Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, the mythical mystical Borametz itself.

  And then there were folk in their cabins. Many many folk, thousands of folk in fact. All rather rich and mostly titled folk and from all of the inhabited worlds.

  Stately Venusians arranging elaborate costumes upon their beds and gazing at their ethereal faces in the looking glass.

  Bloated Jovians, most in the restaurants, bars and casinos. Laughing immoderately, slapping each other on the back, belching and farting and generally carrying on in the manner that oafish tourists have done and always will do too. But with a lusty and harmless good nature.

  The titled folk of Earth, and there were numerous, sat a-sipping of gin or champagne, in lounge rooms and eateries, suites and on horseback. Menials, liveried, laid out their fineries, whilst these swells lounged and did sippings.

  Royalty dwelt within royalty’s six star accommodation, doing those things that the royals do in private, but sometimes get caught at in public.

  Each and everywhere all over The Leviathan preparations were taking place. In the great kitchen, the master chef, an evil-looking Frenchman, who enjoyed serving oth
ers a taste of the whip, lorded it over kitchen staff, striking out at all and sundry, shouting orders, sniffing this and that.

  The food would surely be all that Count Rostov had hoped for. The monkey catchers and parrot wranglers, those men who ensnared emus and captured coypus, had been busy at their business overnight and the great glass house was almost silent. The cries of the animals and birds that had rejoiced within it now were nought but magical memories.

  Workers worked in a workmanlike way, a-wearing their workman’s work clothes. Some polished silver and some polished brass, some watered flowers, while others desalinated the swimming pool (which could get a tad salty due to overuse). Some swept carpets with up-to-date vacuuming cleaners. Others pushed mops and others pushed trolleys and one pushed his luck a bit far.

  The crew outnumbered the guests of course, for these were the days when they did. And Rostov’s boy servants, his Rostov Youth Movement, in their smart brass-buttoned uniforms, with faces bright and hair cut short and centre parted, attended to their master’s needs, with all due propriety and absolutely no funny business.

  These boys, my twelve silly shipmates among them, also inhabited the great ship’s armoury, where they did cleaning of weapons and sometimes naming of parts.

  For if one single thing might be noticed, noticed in fact with considerable difficulty, for this was a surreptitious thing, this one single thing would be the one single thing that each and every person aboard The Leviathan had in common. Be that person a royal being, a member of the crew or a member of the aristocracy, a music hall performer, for all the best were here, a boy worker of Count Rostov’s elite or a broom-pushing lackey on sub-level forty-two.

  Each and everyone aboard had a single thing in common.

  Each and every single one was armed.

  Exactly how so much deadly ordinance had been smuggled aboard the ship was anyone’s guess. The greasing of palms had been surely employed. Bribery and corruption given its head.

  But here in this spaceship above the law, only a foolish fellow went unarmed.

  ‘I want a gun, Barry,’ I managed to say, as I went whirling on.