‘When the Earth was young, it knew nothing,’ the taxi driver explained, ‘because there were only a few people/brain cells. But as the millennia passed, more and more people/brain cells appeared upon the planet. Quite soon now, when the world knows everything it needs to know, it will quit this solar system and take off on a voyage of discovery. Somewhere, out there—’ the cabbie gestured to ‘out there’ generally, taking his hands off the steering wheel and nearly having a passing cleric off his pushbike ‘—the wandering world will meet up with other wandering worlds that have similarly gained sentience due to all their people/brain cells. And it will amalgamate with them into a superorganism, which will be God, a new God who will then create a new universe. That’s what happened before, you see – that’s how this universe began. And it will happen again and again.’
Mr Rune had no comment to make during the cabbie’s metaphysical discourse; he sat passively with his eyelids drooping, playing the occasional wistful air upon his reinvented ocarina.
When we reached our destination, I made hurriedly to The Rampant Squire and so did not witness the rise and fall of Mr Rune’s stout stick.
I rather liked The Rampant Squire. It was a rough old dive filled with rowdy students from the university. I observed them as they laughed and chatted and wondered whether I was a university type myself. Probably not, I concluded, because I was too young. Too young for drinking in pubs also, of course, but then that only made the drinking more enjoyable.
The walls of The Rampant Squire were decorated with dreadful contemporary paintings, the work of a local artist by the name of Matthew Humphrey. They were all squiggles and daubings and splatterings-on, and looked much the way that restaurant tablecloths looked by the time Mr Rune had reached the cheese-and-biscuits course.
I elbowed my way to the bar and found Fangio standing behind it.
‘Hello, Fange,’ said I. ‘I did not know that you worked here.’
‘A man’s got to have a hobby,’ said Fange. ‘I saw you admiring the artwork.’
‘The paintings are horrible,’ I said.
‘I know,’ said Fangio. ‘I chose them.’
‘Why?’
‘The pub is called The Rampant Squire, so the brewery asked me to order in some erotic paintings.’
‘I see,’ I said. But I did not.
‘You don’t,’ said Fangio. ‘I blame these new teeth of mine. I telephoned this Matthew Humphrey and asked him to knock up some erotic paintings. He misheard me and—’
‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘He supplied you with a series of erratic paintings instead.’
‘Oh,’ said Fangio. ‘That would be it, then. I thought he was just a really terrible artist.’
‘A pint of Esso, please. And as I have a thirst upon me, we will scrub around all the toot about what you do or do not have on the pumps, if that is all right with you.’
‘A pint of Esso it is, then. And one for Mister Rune? I see his big baldy head looming through the crowd.’
‘Make his a half,’ I said.
‘Appalling pub,’ said Mr Rune, joining me at the bar. ‘Have you ordered?’
‘I have.’
Fangio served up the drinks and Mr Rune availed himself of my pint.
‘Only a half for you?’ he said. ‘Wise move – you’ll need a clear head for what lies ahead of us this night.’
‘The lecture?’ I said, ruefully sipping my half.
‘The lecture is merely the tip of the iceberg. Before this night is through, you will have stared death in the face, and spat into its cavernous eyeholes as well.’
‘I do not like the sound of that.’
‘It’s much of a muchness,’ Mr Rune said. ‘I’ve done it on many occasions. I remember once in the nineteen thirties when I went down to the crossroads at midnight with the blues musician Robert Johnson—’
‘Ladies and gentlemen, will you please take your seats upstairs for the lecture. It begins in five minutes,’ called a personable young woman with a nimbus of orange hair and a dress that barely covered her costs.
‘Best get a couple more beers in, then,’ said Mr Rune. ‘And trust not the ways of women, “For they are like unto a fire that quencheth not even though constantly watered.” The Gospel of Rune 3: 16.’
‘Two pints of Esso then, please, Fange.’
And Fangio once more did the business.
And ‘Oh,’ said Mr Rune, ‘you’ll want to wear this.’
‘What is it?’ I asked as I took the item from him.
A badge,’ said he. And it was – a badge with a centaur upon it. ‘Pin it next to that spaniel one,’ he said.
And I did.
The upstairs room of The Rampant Squire was furnished with rows of folding chairs. A makeshift stage had been constructed from beer crates and upon this stood a blackboard resting on a precarious stand and a three-legged table called Peter. Upon this table there lay something that looked very much to be Aladdin’s lamp.
We had gained our entrance to this dismal room with little difficulty, Mr Rune flashing his library ticket and announcing us to be ‘senior members of the Society of Psychical Research, here to observe the proceedings in the interests of health and safety’.
Mr Rune then cleared three seats for us in the front row through the employment of his stout stick – one for me and two for himself.
When all that were coming in were in and the door was closed upon the lot of us, Danbury Collins took to the makeshift stage, introduced himself and launched uncertainly into his talk.
Now, I did not take much to Danbury Collins. He was a callow youth with sunken eyes, an acned complexion and hairs upon the palm of the hand that was not in his trouser pocket.
‘Do wotcha like is the whole of the law,’ quoth Danbury.
‘Good grief,’ muttered Mr Rune.
‘I’m glad to see such a big turnout tonight,’ continued the psychic youth.
I glanced about: there were twelve of us, all told, in the audience. Which, with Danbury on the makeshift stage, at least made up the requisite number to get a Last Supper started.
‘So,’ said Danbury Collins, ‘my topic tonight is the Centaur of the Universe – how everything began, how it works, what it means and what our part in it is.’
‘This should be enlightening.’ Mr Rune yawned loudly.
‘Give him a chance,’ I whispered.
‘I am,’ the Hokus Bloke replied. ‘You will note that I haven’t as yet struck him.’
‘The universe,’ said Danbury, and he gestured towards his blackboard, ‘endless, black, and going on for ever and ever and ever—’
Rune opened his mouth, then closed it again.
‘Endless,’ said Danbury. ‘Endless space and endless time. But not – and I must emphasise this – not endlessly filled with matter. We are lately informed that the universe began with a Big Bang, that before this momentous moment there was no time and then suddenly the universe exploded into being. There are, I understand, equations that prove the proposition that everything began with a Big Bang. But I say rubbish to this, I say stuff and nonsense.’
‘Well done, you,’ said Mr Rune, applauding.
‘Thank you,’ said Danbury. ‘And good evening to you, Mister Rune.’
Mr Rune gave Danbury a knowing wink. ‘Pray continue,’ said he, ‘with your most fascinating monologue.’
‘Well, firstly,’ continued Danbury, ‘as I’ve said, the universe is endless space, it goes on for ever and ever, so no matter how big this Big Bang might appear to us to be, it is damn all in an endless universe. It is in fact a very small bang, infinitesimally small. Virtually no bang at all. And, as we all learned in science at school, sound doesn’t travel through a vacuum. So in the vacuum of infinite space, it wasn’t even a bang. It was more of a puff, a small puff.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Mr Rune, ‘but are you suggesting that a small puff began the universe?’
‘I am,’ said Danbury.
‘Oscar Wilde?’ asked Mr
Rune, which resulted in some merriment from the audience.
‘Exactly,’ said Danbury Collins.
‘Bravo,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Naturally, I have toyed with this concept myself.’
‘Eh?’ said I.
And Danbury continued, ‘Space is infinite, but matter is finite – there is only a limited amount of it. It’s a fair old amount, I grant you, but if you lumped it all together it would have a finite weight, and no matter how far you spread it all about, it’s the same amount. And we – you, me, Oscar Wilde, all of us – are composed of the matter of the universe. We are Stardust.* We are composed of universal stuff. Every cell of our bodies has been here, part of the finite amount of matter, for ever. You can’t create more matter – that would be creating something out of nothing. You can convert matter, burn it, change it into gas, whatever, but the weight of it all remains the same. We – everyone in this room – is composed of cells that are composed from the original matter of the universe.’
I had a bit of a think about this. I was only a teenager and had never, as far as I could recall, ever given much thought to esoteric matters of this ilk, but I had to say that this was, well, profound. That is what it was: profound.
‘So,’ continued Danbury, ‘if we are all composed of the original and finite material of the universe, we are all a part of its beginning; we all contain the stuff of its beginning – whatever that beginning might have been. And so we should be able to access universal knowledge, knowledge of the past and the future, for it is all one in universal terms. And it’s all there in the cells of our being.’
A student type a few seats along from me raised his grubby hand. ‘Are you saying,’ he asked, ‘that we are inherently capable of accessing the past – of travelling in time, as it were?’
‘Certainly,’ said Danbury. ‘It is all in our cellular memory. You don’t just inherit your father’s physical features, but also his cellular memory of his father and his father before him. I’ve heard that a scientist named Doveston has invented a drug called Retro that allows you to access these memories.’
‘I read that somewhere,’ said the student type. ‘And also about this Benedictine monk who invented a television set that could play back past events.’
‘Eh?’ said I and I turned to the student type. ‘Where did you read about that?’ I asked.
‘In the Weekly World News,’ the youth replied. ‘“MAD MONK INVENTS TIME TV: Watches Christ’s Crucifixion”, that was the headline.’
I looked at Mr Rune. The Perfect Master appeared to be sleeping.
‘The Weekly World News!’ I said. ‘I have seen that in the newsagent’s. It is nothing but made-up nonsense. Only last week the headline was “ELVIS PRESLEY CONFESSES: I Travelled Through Time With the Aid of Barry the Time Sprout”. The Weekly World News is always on about time travel and it is all rubbish.’
‘The CIA owns the Weekly World News,’ said another student type. ‘They publish real information but in such a way that no “right-thinking” person would believe it. It’s all a big conspiracy. The CIA had Kennedy shot because he was going to blow the whistle on the alien bodies in Area Fifty-One. Everybody knows that.’
‘Not me,’ I said.
‘Well, you say that,’ said the student type, ‘but of course you might well be lying. You might well be a spook.’
‘A spook?’ I said. ‘What is a spook?’
‘A CIA agent. Probably a member of MK Ultra, the mind-control programme.’
‘I can assure you that I am no such thing.’
‘Yeah, well, you would say that!’
‘Let’s have order now, please,’ called Danbury. ‘I haven’t got to the exciting part of my lecture yet. You see, it is indeed possible to reach through time – in either direction, in fact – and I have actual living proof of this here with me. Something brought forward through time from the past. From the distant past, the Age of Myth. A mythical beast and it’s here.’ And Danbury held aloft the Aladdin’s lamp that had been standing on the table named Peter.
‘A centaur!’ cried Danbury. ‘Now, please let’s have a little order while I give the lamp a rub.’
‘I am not having this bloke calling me a spook,’ I protested.
‘You look like a spook,’ said the personable young woman with the nimbus of orange hair and the dress that barely covered her costs at all now that she was sitting down. ‘That ID his big fat friend flashed me on the door looked like a CIA Above-Top-Secret security pass to me.’
‘It is a library ticket,’ I said.
‘There,’ said the personable young woman, becoming somewhat less personable. ‘He has access to the American Library of Congress. They’re both spooks.’
‘You are bl**dy mad,’ I said.
‘Bl**dy?’ said the increasingly more unpersonable young woman. ‘He speaks in Esperanto, which we all know is an alien tongue. He’s definitely a spook. The CIA are in cahoots with the aliens in Area Fifty-One. In exchange for alien technology, they allow the aliens to abduct one hundred human beings each year for their hybridisation programme.’
‘You should get yourself a boyfriend,’ I suggested.
‘There!’ screamed the now extremely unpersonable young woman. ‘He wants to hand me over to the aliens to be part of their hideous crossbreeding programme.’
‘Could we have a little order, please?’ called Danbury.
‘Oh,’ said another student type, one with the kind of goatee beard that I was hoping soon to grow. ‘Siding with the CIA-Proto-Zionist-Illuminati-Bilderberg-New-World-Orderists, are you, Collins? You’re part of the misinformation programme, too, aren’t you?’
‘I’m a paranormal investigator,’ cried Danbury. ‘It’s my job to get to the bottom of this kind of thing.’
‘Get to the bottom?’ The young woman rose to her feet, with her dress all most pleasingly rucked up at the back. ‘The bottom, did you hear that? He wants to hand me over to the aliens, too. For rectal probing.’
‘That sounds like fun,’ I said. ‘Do you think the aliens are taking on apprentices?’
Now, I probably should not have said that.
In fact, looking back, I definitely should not have said that.
It transpired that the student type who had asked the original question about travelling in time was the orange-nimbus-young-woman’s boyfriend, who apparently had a bit of a thing about anal sex because the nimbus woman was avidly refusing ever to give him any.
And one thing led to another.
And the other thing involved punches being thrown.
And as I recall mentioning in the opening chapter of this bestseller, I do know how to handle myself. But once again I found myself to be substantially outnumbered.
But then they were not all actually hitting me. Several of them were hitting Danbury Collins, who was doing his best to put up a spirited one-handed defence. And a small grey chap with a big bald head and shiny black eyes was hitting on the nimbus woman. But a lot of them were hitting me.
Chairs were overturned. And raised and used as projectiles and weapons. The blackboard was torn from its precarious stand and went the way of all flesh. The beer crates were raised and hurled, some through the windows.
If there was a haven of peace and quietude in the midst of this maelstrom, an eye in the hurricane, as it were, then this haven and eye was to be found in the person of Mr Hugo Rune.
The Guru’s Guru, the Logos of the Aeon, the Hokus Bloke, the Lad Himself slept on, untouched by the chaos that reigned all about him, surrounded, it seemed, by a protective cocoon. A cone of power? A psychic force field?
Or just the plain luck of the draw?
Luck was not on my side and I went down beneath a torrent of blows and buffets.
Which all seemed rather unfair, really. After all, I was definitely not a CIA spook.
‘You are all bl**dy nutters!’ I cried, as I did my best to fight back.
‘Once more he speaks the alien tongue.’ And nimbus woman put the boot in.
Now, I recall this as clearly as if it was yesterday, because it is often funny the way things work out. In fact, it is always funny, but mostly only from a detached point of view, but I do recall that it was Danbury Collins that set The Rampant Squire on fire.
I do not think he meant to do it. I do recall him shouting something about peace and love, although it was difficult to tell exactly what, with all the noise of breaking furniture and the boots going in and everything. And I do recall Danbury up on what was left of the stage, rubbing away at his magic lamp. And then flames coming out of the spout. Which had me thinking that the thing was probably a table lighter. But it really was not his fault. He was hit, fell against the curtains and the curtains took fire. And I suppose that all the noise must have attracted the attention of all the other folk in the bar downstairs, because suddenly, it seemed, there were many more folk in the room upstairs and all fighting and coughing, what with the smoke, and panicking also, and stampeding.
And I do recall something altogether strange.
Something monstrous.
In the midst of the conflagration and the screaming (of which there was much) and the violence and all of the rest, I saw something.
It rose above me, huge and menacing and terrible, a mighty primal force, so it seemed. An atavistic something from a mythical time long past.
Its upper parts were manlike and naked, too, its lower parts those of a horse. And it reared up and then it stamped down with its hideous hooves. And I swear to you, yes, I swear that at that very moment, amidst all the flames and chaos, that I surely stared death in its face.
And spat into its cavernous eyeholes.
Although whether or not I did the actual spitting, I am unsure.
I am at least sure that I saw Mr Hugo Rune, stout stick in hand and defiant.
And he struck out at the atavistic something and once again saved me from death.
PART II
I awoke to find myself blinking up towards a glossily painted ceiling. I was in hospital. I did not have to think too much about this, because it is only in hospitals that they paint the ceilings with gloss. In fact they paint everything with gloss in hospitals because it is so much easier to wash blood and guts off gloss paint. I believe that all military establishments are also painted with gloss, but this is only my belief, as I have never personally entered any of them.
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