by Rhys Hughes
“An odour amplifier! That’s what it was! Helped people with weak noses to smell better. Like a hearing aid for nostrils. A bit cumbersome right now, the size of a bloodhound. In some ways it was a bloodhound, highly modified. Ruined now!”
“And this?” growled Paddy with a punch.
Glass tinkled, springs sprouted. “A bubble car for a tree! It’s a little known fact that of all living things trees are the finest trackers, superior to bloodhounds or Apaches…”
“Bloodhounds again!” cried Harris.
“The man’s obsessed!” remarked Paddy.
Mondaugen regained his feet, rubbed his bruised buttocks. “A tree can follow a fugitive’s trail across an entire continent years or even centuries after he has fled, but until now they’ve never been able to utilise this skill. Because they can’t move.”
“And what are all these? Don’t you ever clean?”
Mondaugen was frantic. “Don’t break them! They have nothing to do with spiders. They are artificial webs designed to catch bottles of vintage wine. Have you never noticed how the best wine cellars are full of bottles covered with cobwebs?”
“Several times I’ve observed that,” conceded Paddy.
Mondaugen stumbled forward. “Clearly vintage wines fly around like flies and blunder into the webs when nobody’s looking. That’s the only logical explanation. I’ve made the process more efficient. My synthetic cellar webs will ensure that even the poorest people can enjoy the delights of rare wine. Imagine!”
While he spoke, Harris shredded every strand with uncut fingernails on the ends of wildly waving arms.
“What’s this?” demanded Paddy.
“A bicycle!” squealed Mondaugen. “With a hollow frame. The pedals are connected to a pump that fills the frame with compressed air when the cyclist travels on level ground. When he reaches an upward slope a valve opens and the air is released.”
“And helps power the bicycle uphill?” frowned Harris.
“No, activates a device that writes begging letters to a firm of mining engineers requesting that the hill be removed with gelignite. Don’t spin the wheel backwards! Too late!”
As if electrocuted by a hidden discharge, by bolts of indoor lightning, the two heroes continued to thrash and smash their way through the home of the eccentric inventor. Splinters. Shrill scream of metal against metal. Mad sparkle of scattered crystals. But the projector would not show itself, was probably hiding behind one of its own holograms, the same way the man who sells masks at a carnival wears a mask too, to make untraceable his responsibility for transformation.
Maybe not like that. Too demented to care.
The inventor fell to his knees, clutched their ankles, but in the frantic minds of Harris and Paddy he had fallen to his ankles and was clutching their knees. Debris littered the floor, litter also. Everything was a blur, except the blurs, which were in focus. Wires uncoiled like the snakes of a gorgon’s hair during a bagpipe concerto. Awful carnage. Enough to make the toughest robot weep.
They reached the back door, blustered through, smashing the things of the garden, karate chopping sunflowers, uprooting cabbages, continuing to a fence that was demolished with senile headbutts until they suddenly found themselves in a back alley that took them away from that house of awful innovation and down other alleys and streets to a shady park where a bench waited to receive them.
Torn and stained, they sat slowly, more than merely fatigued. They were beyond aches and beyond disillusionment. Was the curry really in khaki or was it in beige? None of that seemed to matter now. The betrayal was total. Then Paddy mumbled:
“What exactly did happen fifty years ago?”
They looked at each other. “I just… I mean that my memory… I can’t seem to… I don’t…” he added.
Around them the world pulsed, moving one second at a time from the oblivious past to the eternal present, taking that past along with it like a gigantic suitcase stuffed full of creased items, groping towards a future it could never reach, expecting to be stopped and searched at any moment for those things no longer permitted. Tradition, respect, gratitude, dancing girls. All confiscated by fate.
“Neither do I,” growled Harris.