The Brightonomicon

by Robert Rankin

  ‘But what is in these Forbidden Zones?’ I asked.

  ‘All that is missing. All that is lost. The ballpoint pens, the yellow-handled screwdrivers, that pair of glasses or whatever it was that you put down for a moment and can never find again. Although this can also have something to do with congregational instinct amongst inanimate objects, which explains why buses always come along three at a time. Or small-screw phenomena, which explains why there are always two small screws left over when you reassemble that broken toaster, which now appears to be mended. But we cannot go into those matters here. They are explained at length in The Book of Ultimate Truths. So, let me continue about all those things that unaccountably go missing. That postal order that should have arrived for your birthday. That job application that you sent off. Put this on a worldwide scale. What about the things that go missing from the corridors of power in Westminster? All these things go into the Forbidden Zones. Which is why, of course, I reinvented the ocarina.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘My ocarina,’ said Mr Rune, taking it from his pocket and tootling out a little trill.

  ‘Your ocarina has something to do with the Forbidden Zones?’

  ‘It is our means of entry to the secret labyrinth that lies within them. I have travelled into those regions before. In fact, I was trapped within them for a goodly spell before being released by a chap named Cornelius Murphy. But that is another story.’

  ‘And this is a cop-out,’ I said. ‘You cannot just spring all this on me out of the blue at the last minute to explain things. That is not the way it works.’

  ‘Rizla,’ said Mr Rune, ‘every case that we have been involved in during the course of the last year has led towards this moment. Put them all together in your mind. See the connections. I confess that I did not know that the Chronovision was hidden in one of the Forbidden Zones. Did not know, in fact, until we drove into this cul-de-sac that was not on the map, guided here by the hole burned into the map.’

  ‘So what has your ocarina to do with it?’

  ‘My reinvented ocarina. The notes between notes, Rizla, the cracks between the piano keys, a series of notes that cannot be played upon any normal instrument open the portals into the inner labyrinths of the Forbidden Zones. We are here. The ocarina is here. I will play and you will drive.’

  ‘Absurd,’ said I.

  ‘Everything is absurd, Rizla. Everything. Life is absurd; love is absurd; death, too, utterly absurd. Which is why we try not to think about the absurdity of everything. In fact, we don’t really think very much about anything. We just go on doing what we’re doing. And all things considered, and I have considered them all, it is probably better that way.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I am really sorry that I did not do more than flick through your book. Although I do remember reading about how hedgehogs inhabit the Aquasphere, where rain comes from, where they float about, held aloft by the natural helium inside them, but sometimes get punctured during overexuberant rutting and plunge to Earth. Which is why you see them splatted on to country roads.’ And then I yawned and fell asleep.

  ‘Wake up!’ cried Mr Rune.

  ‘What?’ I went. ‘What?’

  ‘Rear-view mirror.’

  I blinked up at the rear-view mirror. It seemed mostly filled by a black and evil-looking car.

  ‘Wah!’ I went. ‘Wah!’ And had I had sufficient space I would have flapped my hands and taken to the turning in small circles.

  Well, at least I had room to flap my hands.

  ‘Stop doing that,’ ordered Mr Rune. ‘Put your foot down hard and drive.’

  ‘But we will crash into the wall ahead.’

  ‘No, we will not. Trust me …’

  And I trusted Mr Rune.

  I put the cab in gear and put my foot down hard and drove.

  And Mr Rune wound down his window, stuck his big head out and played his ocarina.

  And the evil-looking black car roared after us.

  And the wall ahead grew nearer and nearer.

  And suddenly it filled all of the world.

  And there was a terrible …

  Nothing. No sound apart from a kind of gulp. As in swallowing. As if we were being swallowed into blackness. And then into light. And I slammed on the brakes and the cab skidded around and we came to rest amongst more than a million ballpoint pens.

  Which is where I might reasonably have ended this chapter.

  But as you see, I did not.

  ‘Where are we?’ I asked. ‘What is this place?’ And I peered all around and about in a skulking and fearful fashion, for it seemed that we were in some vast chamber, walled with brick, with countless pillars and columns. And there was a roof some great distance above, but it was lost in shadows as there was really not much light.

  ‘Magnificent,’ said Mr Rune, gazing through his open window. ‘This architecture predates all of the great cathedrals. It is the work of a hand older than Man’s.’

  ‘I do not find that encouraging,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you can always look on the bright side – our pursuers no longer pursue.’

  ‘And do you know where we are?’

  ‘Within the labyrinth.’

  ‘And the Chronovision is here? Somewhere?’

  ‘Undoubtedly. I kick myself for not having reasoned this out earlier. If it were hidden within the realm of Man, I would surely have found it already. It is all so obvious now.’

  ‘Hm,’ I said. ‘I think you will find that you are all alone in that opinion. Are we safe here, by the way?’

  ‘For now,’ said Mr Rune.

  ‘Then do you mind if I get my head down for a few hours? Eight will do, then I will be all perky again.’

  ‘No time for sleep,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Drive on.’

  ‘We are three-feet deep in Biros here. I do not think the cab will move.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to walk. Bring the torch.’

  ‘What torch?’

  ‘The one that cabbies always keep beneath the dashboard. Beside their pistols. Bring the pistol also.’

  ‘Pistol?’

  ‘Bring the pistol.’

  It was a rather odd pistol of a design that I had never seen before. But as all this was so unlikely anyway, I did not care. I just brought the pistol, and felt more comforted bringing it.

  Mr Rune and I struggled to open the cab doors, then we waded through Biros. We waded through Biros, and yellow-handled screwdrivers, and house keys and car keys and penknives and spanners and tickets. Tickets! There were thousands of tickets. Tens of thousands of tickets. Millions and billions and trillions of tickets. Cloakroom tickets, bus tickets, train tickets, concert tickets.

  ‘Now you know where they all go to,’ said Mr Rune.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But why?’

  ‘Control,’ said Mr Rune. ‘It is as simple as that. Or as complicated. A man’s life appears to travel in a straight line from birth to death. He does this and that along the way, of his own free will, he thinks. But in truth, he is constantly thwarted, constantly made to do that which he does not wish to do, guided – pushed, more like – into other things. Free will? Plah!’ went Hugo Rune. ‘You will find that what a man does is not a product of his own free will. It is the product of what he loses.’

  Mr Rune plucked up a single ticket from the countless numbers that lay in great swathes about us. ‘What do we have here? Ah, a ticket to see The Who, a popular rhythm combo, at the Hanwell Community Centre, last February. Let us suppose this. The buyer of this ticket was really looking forward to the concert. He queued up, but when his time to enter came, he could not find his ticket and so was sent upon his way. Miffed and angry, he wandered into the nearest alehouse and there, as seeming chance would have it, he met the woman who would later become his wife. And bear him a child who would later invent a space-drive system based upon the transperambulation of pseudo-cosmic anti-matter. None of this would have occurred had his ticket to see The Who not gone unaccountably missing.�
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  ‘But surely that is a good thing. I thought the Forbidden Zones were run by baddies. Who is in charge of the Forbidden Zones, by the way? Or is anyone – or anything – actually in charge? Or does this stuff just happen?’

  Mr Rune ignored my questions. ‘Shortly,’ he said, ‘when all this is at an end, you will recover your memory and know once more who you really are. And when you do, you will recall that the only reason that you came to Brighton was because something unaccountably went missing. This seemingly trivial event changed the course of your life.’

  ‘I doubt that very much,’ I said.

  But I was wrong to doubt.

  And I began to yawn once more, for I was really all in.

  ‘Pacey-pacey, Rizla,’ said Mr Rune. ‘The man of destiny knows better than to linger long beneath the lifted leg of serendipity’s spaniel.’

  And of course I would not have argued with that!

  *

  And so we pressed on for a goodly way and then we came to the tellies. I shone my torch up at them and its light did not reach very much of the way up the pile. And my, oh my, oh my. They were the Great Pyramid of Televisions. There were so many of them, I did not dare to consider their number.

  ‘You do not lose TVs,’ I said. ‘Not like Biros or car keys.’

  ‘Or dry cleaning?’ said Mr Rune. ‘Or suitcases on air flights? Or aeroplanes themselves – do you recall Amy Johnson? Or ships? Have you ever heard of the Bermuda Triangle? What now of Whitehawk’s evil reputation? This is where all the “stolen” items really go.’

  ‘I am scared now,’ I said. ‘And I want to go.’

  ‘And we will, when we have acquired that which we have come here to find.’

  ‘What does it look like?’ I asked.

  Mr Rune gazed up at the countless TVs. ‘Like one of those,’ he said.

  We shared a special moment. And also the contents of Mr Rune’s hip flask, for which I was grateful.

  ‘You must scale the peak,’ said Mr Rune, ‘and find the Chronovision.’

  ‘I must? But how will I know it, when I find it? So to speak.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Well, let us put ourselves in Father Ernetti’s place. He is a Benedictine monk and he constructs a television set, which is a window into past events. What would it look like?’

  ‘A bit gothic,’ I said. ‘About twenty feet high, all covered with carved cherubs and such like, with lots of gilded bits and bobs and a big crucifix on the top.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d better wait here while I search,’ said Mr Rune.

  ‘Good idea,’ I agreed. ‘Then I could have a little sleep.’

  ‘Settle yourself down, then, Rizla. I will search alone.’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘That is not fair. We have come this far together. Let us both search.’

  ‘You will know it, if you find it,’ said Mr Rune. And he and I began our search.

  *

  Now I could, of course, drag this out for a bit, and possibly make it exciting. But there would not be much point, and it was not exciting.

  Mr Rune had not climbed more than two levels up the pyramid of TVs before he cried, ‘Eureka!’

  ‘You have found it?’ I said.

  ‘I have,’ said he. ‘Pray give me a hand to get it down.’

  I did as I was bid and we struggled it down together. And when we had done so, I gazed upon it.

  ‘And that is it?’ I said.

  ‘It is,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Father Ernetti’s Chronovision.’

  ‘But it looks just like a nineteen-fifties Bakelite TV.’

  ‘There are subtle differences.’

  ‘Well, they are lost upon me. But bravo to you, Mister Rune. Our search is over. Now let us smash it to bits.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Mr Rune and he raised one of those hairless eyebrows of his.

  ‘Well, that is what we came here to do. That is what our quest has all been about – seek and destroy. Well, we did the seeking, now we have found it, so let us get on with the destroying.’

  Mr Rune held the Chronovision in his great hands and clasped it to his great chest. ‘Not as yet,’ said he.

  ‘Not as yet?’ I said to him. ‘But you told me that this is the most dangerous device on all of God’s Earth. That the man who has it within his control can view all of the past – the past of any living man. That the secrets of any living man can be shown upon the screen. And so the man who owns the Chronovision can become the most powerful man on Earth, because no man can have secrets, no matter how dark, from him. Am I correct?’

  ‘You are,’ said Mr Rune, ‘which is why Count Otto seeks it.’

  ‘And why it must be destroyed. Put it down and I will stamp upon it.’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Rune. ‘This cannot be.’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘Do not tell me this. You mean to keep the Chronovision for yourself. After all we have been through. You have tricked me throughout – you had no intention of destroying the thing. You just wanted to get your own hands upon it.’

  Mr Rune put down the Chronovision and it floated there upon that sea of tickets. ‘Do you trust me, Rizla?’ he asked.

  ‘I did,’ I said. ‘Absolutely. But now I am having my doubts.’

  ‘Such a pity.’

  And Mr Rune swung his stout stick.

  And struck me down with it.

  PART II

  ‘Ow!’ I went, when I regained consciousness. ‘That hurt!’

  ‘And it was meant to.’ Mr Rune glared almost-daggers at me. ‘Have a word with yourself, if you will. I am Hugo Artemis Solon Saturnicus Reginald Arthur Rune, the physical embodiment of the universal consciousness. I am not some self-seeking blackguard yearning for ultimate power.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said, ‘but you did not need to bop me on the head.’

  ‘You had a nice sleep though, didn’t you?’

  ‘Very nice, actually,’ I said, rubbing at the bruise on my head. ‘Where are we now? Is it safe?’

  ‘Still in Whitehawk, in the domicile of an old friend of mine.’

  ‘You have a friend in Whitehawk?’

  ‘I have friends everywhere.’

  I took in my surroundings. They were not altogether insalubrious. ‘This does not look too rough,’ I said. ‘Where are we? Exactly?’

  ‘Inside a tepee.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The tepee of Chief Whitehawk.’

  ‘Chief Whitehawk,’ I said. ‘Well, I will probably wake up in a minute.’

  ‘You are not dreaming, Rizla. Now rouse yourself, breakfast awaits.’

  And indeed breakfast awaited.

  And it was the breakfast of the Gods.

  I had never seen anything like it and I had dined upon some pretty nifty cuisine during my time with Hugo Rune.

  I took it all in, in breaths and in gasps.

  ‘I have died and gone to Heaven,’ I said. ‘You hit me too hard with your stick.’

  ‘The chief always puts on a decent spread,’ said Mr Rune, seating himself in an ornate chair and tucking a napkin into the collar of his shirt. ‘But then there is a branch of Lidl on the border of Whitehawk.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘That explains everything. You never get better value for money than at Lidl.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Tuck in.’

  I seated myself in a similar chair.

  There were two at the table and both rather nice.

  And I dined upon viands and wondrous fare.

  With wines that were mulled with a cinnamon spice.

  And I nibbled at nubbins of newt in the raw

  And fresh peccary that was done in a roast.

  And caviar cheese that you sucked through a straw.

  And something like butter to spread on your toast.

  Which was not actually butter but a vegetable-oil derivative, which although low in soluble jobbies was high in polyunsaturates. Which was just the way I liked it.

  I was ravenously hungry, ridiculously hungry. I
felt as if I had not eaten for a month. I got stuck in and I munched on and glanced around the tepee. It was a considerable tepee, with a central dining area, an open-plan kitchen with a peninsular unit and an eye-level hob. The worktops in this kitchen were of grey slate and the doors of bird’s eye maple. And there were many labour-saving devices of the kind that no doubt saved considerable labour on the part of those who knew what they were for.

  There was also a sports and gymnasium area, with dartboard, billiard table and one of those machines where you run along on top of a conveyor belt, for reasons that must make some sense to those who have the wish to use such things. I was also impressed by the indoor garage facility and the chief’s collection of automobiles. I spied an Aston Martin DB7, a Ferrari and the new R-Type Jaguar. Which led me to believe that not everything that got nicked in Brighton and entered Whitehawk ended up in the Forbidden Zone. Then there was the pool, the solarium, the sauna, the five-screen cinema complex and the private bar.

  Then there was the shopping mall, the airport and …

  ‘I think I have concussion,’ I said to Mr Rune. ‘I am sure I am hallucinating.’

  ‘That would be the peyote flakes you sprinkled on your Rice Krispies.’

  ‘That would be it, then. Where is Chief Whitehawk, by the way? I would like to thank him for breakfast.’

  ‘He’s out leading a hunting party of braves. The great herds of Sussex buffalo migrate towards Roedean at this time of year. They’ll take a few head on the golf course, I shouldn’t wonder, then be back later for the feastings and celebrations.’

  ‘Are we safe here?’ I asked. ‘From Count Otto and his minions, I mean.’ And I wolfed down another helping of wolf.

  ‘Safe enough.’

  ‘And the Chronovision?’ I swallowed another portion of swallow.

  ‘That is safe, too.’

  ‘Then you have not broken it up.’