Jim Baen's Universe Volume 1 Number 3 October 2006

by Baen Publishing

  At least a temporary cessation of hostilities was achieved with the barmaid calling for the intervention of the blue helmets—a concoction of Parfait d'Amour, Baileys Irish Cream and cognac. This is a drink which is not surprisingly vastly unpopular in every civilized country, and most uncivilized ones. It had a remarkable pacifying effect, though, as all the combatants united in demanding beer and agreeing that it was possibly the vilest drink of their experience.

  "It compares favorably with chili beer," said Steven, sticking his tongue out.

  "British beer is always too bloody warm," grumbled Kevin, doing the oral temperature test. "Back in South Africa they damn near freeze the stuff, because otherwise you might taste it. Chemical-flavor lager."

  "Not cold beer. Mexican stuff. It has a chili in it," explained Speairs.

  "That's an abomination," I said, speaking as the resident Vindaloo connoisseur. "Chili and beer should only be simultaneous coming up, not going down. And I bet it was lager."

  "Yeah." Steven nodded, his face set in a real-ale grimace. "Kind of fitting really."

  "I had a cousin in the merchant marine who brought me some Japanese saki once," admitted Sheila.

  "And what was it like?" asked Dexter.

  Sheila grimaced. "You understand why the beggars committed suicide, but become mystified as to how the hell they ever hit something the size of an aircraft carrier when they did it. It still wasn't as bad as that concoction." She pointed accusingly at the empty glasses scattered among the other debris on the table.

  This is the stage of the evening when mixing drinks is even more unwise than usual, because it made me say "Well, let us see the picture of Nessie then?"

  So MacParrot did his famous wallet hunt and the "it's been stolen!" performance again. We gave a standing ovation and then Sheila went and ruined it by pointing out that his wallet was still sitting on the table in its puddle of beer.

  MacParrot leafed through the entertaining pink pictures of Sally-the-camel and hauled out the second last picture in the pile out for us to all stare at.

  His pictures of Sally were taken with a less shaky hand, and in much better light. Even the moon was blurred. That could have been something with three humps sticking up out of the water. It could have been hay bales covered with tarpaulin, sunk in shallow water. It could also have been the pyramids at Giza.

  I said so.

  "No, Nessie wus definitely a lass," said our Scots instant cryptozoology expert. "No' a geezer."

  "He means one of those fountains of steam associated with geothermal activity," explained Dexter.

  "Whut?"

  I intervened. "I mean that picture is too shaky to be used as evidence of anything except delirium tremens."

  "Whut? Weel, there's this one." He produced another picture without the slightest hint of camera shake.

  It was also without the slightest hint of a Loch Ness Monster. It did show a series of neat splash rings on the moonlit water, and the back of a boat. For a picture taken using a cheap Polaroid at night, it was a great photograph. For proof of a monstrous dweller in the chilly waters of a Scots loch, it was rubbish.

  "She wus startled by the flash. No' me. The camera," he said, forestalling us.

  "You mean you flashed her as well?" Steven asked with a grin.

  He blushed. He really blushed. You wouldn't have thought it possible but plainly a streak of deep prudery lurked in the Calvinist soul of MacParrot. "In a manner o' speakin', I did," he admitted.

  "No wonder she left in such a hurry. The poor beast's probably having therapy." Sheila grinned and appropriated one of my smokes.

  Steven reached his large mitt across the beery table and the debris of dead soldiers. "I'm honored to shake the hand of the man who flashed the Loch Ness Monster. I mean plenty of people have seen her, but just how many do you think have flashed her?"

  MacParrot's first brush with fame, if not fortune, seemed to embarrass the Scot further. "Ah wus answering nature's call," he explained. "Ye see . . . Ach. we'd just gone for a wee romantic sail in moonlight."

  It appeared that MacParrot had, in a fit of drunken gallantry, "borrowed" a rowboat to take his light-of-love for a bit of passion on the ocean . . . well, loch.

  "Wuch, is where things went just a wee bit wrong," he explained, while proving that a man can set fire to the filter end of cigarette if he tries long and hard enough. "As ma experience on the water was a wee bit limited. And I might just have been a bit fu'."

  "How unlike you!" Sheila's sarcasm can crack rocks, whereas her biceps and forearms are merely limited to walnuts. "Quite out of national character."

  MacParrot took the coffin nail out of his face. Squinted at it. Broke the filter off and lit it again. Coughed spectacularly, and continued, oblivious. "Aye. Otherwise I might have taken oars."

  George blinked away from the difficult problem of getting his eyes to focus. "How did you get away from the shore?"

  MacParrot shrugged. "Ach., it wus tied tae a wee pier. We just pished her off. And then we got a little distracted like."

  "The famous Sally?" I asked. It would appear that she was an enterprising lass.

  "Aye," MacParrot nodded. "And a bottle of scotch. Ut might have helped if we'd discovered the lack of oars a wee bit earlier." He grimaced. "Ye might say we were adrifting up Loch Ness without a paddle. And out of drink." He looked tragically at his glass. "An' there wasn't any bathroom facilities on board. I had just liberated mesel' from my trouser-buttons at the stern, when I found that I was lookin' down at the monster."

  Steven sniggered. "MacParrot's so modest, isn't he?"

  So did Sheila. The rest of us of course kept dead straight faces. "So she came for a closer look? And didn't swim off into the night, shrieking?" asked the barmaid Vicki.

  MacParrot nodded. "Ah've nivver seen anything like it. It must ha' been forty foot long."

  Vicki took a long look at the squat young Scotsman. "That's what I call a grew-some monster."

  MacParrot nodded. "Aye. A great long snaky neck and a wide body—wi' those finnys things instead o' legs. I just stood there wi' my fly down. And she just floated there and stared at me. I just had tae get a picture—and when the flash went off she dived."

  "So all we have to do is go and expose ourselves on Loch Ness, in the middle of the night, and we're bound to get a glimpse of the holy grail of cryptozoology, the legendary Loch Ness Monster. A plesiosaur that has somehow taken a perverse interest in the undercarriage of small Scotsmen. It's another griffin I tell you, " I said.

  "Makes sense to me," said Dexter, grinning. "That's why they wear kilts."

  "It's too cold up there to flash, or they'd have a petting zoo for Nessies by now," said George. "We should go and try it out!"

  "To flash Nessie. Sounds like a project to me. Shall we go tonight?" said I, happy and secure in the knowledge that Scotland was probably not within reach, even by transdimensional minicab, at one in the morning. The blue helmet was having its legendary pacifying effect and I was thinking about that Zen state where you become one with the top of table.

  "It can be arranged," said Watters.

  When someone says that, in that tone—especially a pub owner—you should find your feet, stagger to the john and lock yourself in.

  Really. It's the wisest course. Do not say "and the fucking pudding. It's five hundred miles! You got a Lear jet out the back?"

  Whatever you do, do not say this.

  As it happens, I faithfully followed my own advice and said nothing.

  But bloody Steven, the UK's gift to determined foot in mouth disease, said "and the fucking pudding. It's five hundred miles! You got a Lear jet out the back?"

  Watters smiled. "No, something much faster. Something known only to the inner circle of the Brotherhood of the Angle. I see recruits among you. Believers in fish. Come with me."

  I should have followed Speairs into the john instead, where I believe he went to bark at the porcelain. I could have quietly fallen asleep there. Inste
ad I joined the rest of the drunken cavalcade into the nether parts of the pub.

  ****

  There should have been, at the very least, pentacles. Sigils scrawled in blood, guttering candles, that sort of thing. Alternatively, high voltage blue arcs of sparks dancing in jagged lines between the insulators, great monstrous switches to be pulled, the air heavy with the reek of ozone.

  It was totally out of the best tradition. There weren't even instrument panels full of flashing lights. How were we to know what we were in for?

  It was simply a cupboard under the stairs smelling of brass polish, with maybe a hint of ammonia-based floor cleaner. There was a bucket and a mop in it.

  James Watters waved us forward with a showmanlike air.

  "Wow . . . it's amazing," said Dexter.

  "I've never seen anything quite like it," I agreed.

  "No you haven't, and yes it is amazing," said Watters. "The churnel tunnel doesn't look like much. But if you just let me adjust the settings before you step through, I can have you in Scotland and on the banks of Loch Ness in the twinkling of an eye. The churnel penetrates the very fabric of reality. Reality doesn't want us there, so it spits us out. We've learned to control where it spits us to."

  He seemed to be offended that we found it funny. People are like that. When they own the pub, you stop laughing quickly. He moved and twisted the mop. Nodded. And said: "Well, who is first?"

  "First for what?" I asked.

  "A trip through the churnel," said James. "Don't all shout at once. Just step into the cupboard."

  Now we were all in a fine and plummy state. Even Sheila, and she has a head like cast iron. We'd have probably been good for a session of fishing on the Wandle with vibrating lures. Or climbing Nelson's Column to go and put a copy of the Daily Worker under the statue's right arm. Or harpooning swine in the fleet ditch . . .

  But being asked to step into a cupboard under the stairs was a bit of a let down. Had the man no sense of drama? Besides, even if only dimly, we got the feeling that we were going to be the butt of some complex and horrible joke, a feeling reinforced by Vicki saying "Not me. Not again."

  "How many of us do wish tae put into the broom cupboard?" asked MacParrot, doubtfully.

  "All of you, if you like," said Watters. "Or one at a time, if you prefer."

  "And how long before you let us out?"

  For an answer James took the key and held it out. "Here. Take it with you. Give it back on the other side."

  So in a fit of foolishness MacParrot did. He stepped into the cupboard. Watters swung the door closed.

  I expected a bolt.

  He opened it again.

  The cupboard was exactly as it had been. Only it was empty of a short-arsed swaying little Scot.

  "This has immense possibilities!" I said eagerly. "How do you get bank managers to step into it?"

  "Clever!" agreed Kevin. "There must be bloody panel at the back!" He marched into the cupboard to look for it, closely followed by the rest of us.

  It was very dark and somehow there was enough room for all.

  Now, according to Douglas Adams in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, going through hyperspace is unpleasantly like being drunk, and therefore Arthur Dent will never be cruel to a gin and tonic again. Going through the churnel tunnel was actually more like being eaten. Or rather, more like being digested. And the black tunnel treated us as if we were a bad curry. It didn't help that the process left me feeling like I'd had one too, complete with all the light and sound effects that would go with stomach cramps, if Andrew Lloyd Webber put them into a stage show.

  Then the churnel spat us out into darkness, and in a confused mass we pushed our way toward the only crack of light. The door opened and we fell out, en masse. We lay there groaning in a small, somewhat used pile, next to a rubber plant, in an almost generic 1970 lounge-bar.

  I say "almost" because there were signs that some confused designer in the process of making the typical chain Irish pub (a concept which is in itself an abomination and a sin against nature) had got hooked up on bad-taste tartan and thistles, instead of green and shamrocks. Possibly the only other evidence we had that we had traveled the severe digestive problems of time and space were the other occupants of the bar. Such sights can only be the result of the distortion of space time and causality.

  Staring amiably at us was a man in a blue turban and a kilt. From his appearance, a south Asian of some sort. It is possible that he may have been wearing other garments too, but those were the bits that will remain etched forever in my memory. He also had a long curled moustache that would have made your average walrus die of envy.

  "Greetings," he said, bowing. "What can I be getting you to drink, guests? Och of the noo'," he added as an afterthought. "I am sorry. It is being very late. I am forgetting the traditional accent."

  "Who the hell are you?" demanded Sheila, finding her way to her feet first.

  "And where are we?" I asked, taking in the scene. There were three people playing "fuzzy duck" and ignoring us at a table across from the bar.

  "Where is the bathroom?" quavered Kevin.

  "He is the Indian equivalent of Manuel," said the fellow standing behind the bar, with a glass cupped in his hands. "Except that he stays sober and is efficient. You're at the Loch Ness Highland Experience Inn. And the bathroom is over there, but I see it is too late."

  Kevin was being sick into the potted rubber plant. "That's a plant with an unenviable diet. Still, it seems to thrive on cigarette butts and used beer." He waved at Watters, whom I suddenly realized had come with us through the churnel. "Hello, James. To what do we owe this pleasure?"

  "They want go hunting for Nessie." He said that as if it were a perfectly normal statement, like "they're in need of a bathroom" and just as relevant.

  "I see," said the barman, unwinding himself from the slump over his glass. "Harpoons? Nets? High explosive?" He was one of those individuals with a lot of spare slump. Yards of it. He was tall and skinny, and, as befitted one of the custodians of the churnel, had a glittering and inscrutable eye. It could also have been his glasses.

  "Last I heard," said Sheila, "it was to use guided muscles."

  The barman nodded. "Novel," he said, with just a hint of a smile. "Different. Is entry to ancient Brotherhood of the Angle now requiring new recruits to drink a gallon of scrumpy, catch Nessie and make love to Eskimo Nell, and now that they've done the first bit, they've got a little confused?"

  He look at the sorry bunch of us, still stunned by our first experience of being rejected by the very fabric of reality. "Drinks, gentlemen and lady? And who is Nessie's first date? She'll be spoiled for choice."

  Looked at in this light, it all seemed a little dimwitted, rather like the two guys playing fuzzy duck in an attempt to charm the third, undeniably female part of the game. They were not assisted by the fact that they were both, by now, losing nearly every second round. The woman wasn't.

  Sheila shook her finger at the barman. "You're threatening the spectacle of a lifetime. I'm looking forward to watching this. I wouldn't be surprised if the Loch Ness Monster laughs herself out of the water."

  "I have it on good authority," said the woman at the table, "that the Loch Ness Monster is a male."

  MacParrot looked at her in pure affront. "How can ye say that!"

  "My lips move and the words come out." She looked him up and down. "And anyway, it's these two's theory. About bedroom hackle for tying flies with."

  "That was salmon," defended one of the male fuzzy duck players, the one with the goatee. "The record for salmon is held by a woman."

  "Is it?" asked Dexter.

  "Was, anyway," said the other male drinking game loser, with a faint slur and a vacuous smile that went very well with his ponytail. "You should never let facts stand in the way of a good story."

  His rival nodded. "It must be the pheromones."

  MacParrot looked puzzled. "Pharaoh moans? Ach, Like the mummy's curse?"

  "No,"
said Dexter, "not quite. Scent communication."

  "Exactly," said the fellow with the goatee. "That's why fish're attracted. Salmon only enter fresh water to breed. Horny fish that are thinking of nothing but sex, even to the exclusion of food. That's why women catch more."

  "It couldn't just be that women are better fishermen?" demanded Sheila, flexing her biceps.

  "I really prefer the theory that fish are zoophilists," said the woman, "even if the latter is true. It makes haddock justifiable. Deserving of being poached in milk."

  "Time for last orders, folks. Closing time passed a good two hours ago." The barman yawned. "We bend the rules, but Dryck here gets up at dawn. And his practiced accent's going. That means that he'll fall asleep when he's supposed to be working."

  The turbaned and mustachioed man nodded. "For religious reasons, you understand. Besides, everybody else has gone to bed. Business is slow. My name is Dryck Spivey, by the way."

  I squinted at him. "Meaning no offense, but you don't look like someone who'd be named that."

  Spivey smiled serenely. "I was not born with the name, of course. It was given to me by my swami, Aniruddha Tucker—who changed his own name in order to elude the attentions of . . . well, never mind. It's a long story, which perhaps some day I shall recount."

  "Quick. Order drinks," said Sheila. "And kick MacParrot if he tries to make any Indian jokes."

  "It's your round," I said, getting in before she had time to think. It was, actually, but it usually took a fair amount of solid persuasion to this effect to get her to agree. Armlocks were good, if you could manage it.

  In the important business of staving off incipient drought, the sex of Nessie and the rivalry between the groups was forgotten, especially as Dexter was set on making sure everyone was double parked. So too was travel across the secret routes of the Angling Brotherhood. After all, what did space-time have to compete with strong drink? Anyway, it was that stage of the evening when everything is a little surreal, and I have often found myself in places which I have no memory of getting to or plausible reason for being at, like the time we ended up in a campsite in Woking.