by Rhys Hughes
Lord Doublestuff frowned. “Are you really glad you hired me as your manager and that I’ve arranged for you to play at a French music festival? You’re not just being polite?”
Then he frowned and repeated the question.
“Oh no! Our zest is genuine!” cried Ruby. “It’s what being in a band is all about. Fun and success!”
“When you first came backstage to see us,” added Dancin’ Daze, “we never imagined you would secure us a recording contract, let alone get us a gig on the same stage as Jean-Michel Jarre and that girl from Stereolab. But you’ve done both.”
“Both is always the best thing to do. Twice!” Lord Doublestuff replied with an appreciative smile.
“It’s a dream come true,” declared Wilson the Clockwork Man. “The apotheosis of our original ambition!”
“What was that?” asked Dancin’ Daze.
“Something in Albanian, don’t know what,” said Ruby dubDub. “His head is still tuned to Radio Albania.”
Baddie TwoShoes began barking. “I want crisps!”
Lord Doublestuff reached down to pat him. “Very well. What flavour? Brandy and Brie, eh? I’m not sure they have that flavour here. You should wait until we’re in France.”
“You said that without repeating it!”
“No, I said it twice, but the author only wrote it down once. Maybe he is getting lazy, can’t be bothered with verisimilitude anymore! That’s the slippery slope, I tell you!”
“I have one small doubt,” confessed Ruby.
“Oh yes?” Lord Doublestuff arched his eyebrows and then raised them into arches. His expression thus became strong enough to drive a convoy across in storm-force winds.
“From everything you’ve told us, the festival is for French bands only, but none of us is French!”
Lord Doublestuff lowered his eyebrows. They had served the function intended for them by the eyebrow gene. It’s a lie that eyebrows exist for the catching of the sweat that drips from foreheads. Mainly they are there to be arched. He sniggered.
“Worry not! French-style bands are permitted!”
“But we play a sort of electronic bluegrass underpinned by interstellar tribal rhythms,” persisted Ruby.
“That can be changed easily enough!” smirked Lord Doublestuff and he leaned across the table and skilfully re-tuned the head of Wilson the Clockwork Man. Suddenly a French voice issued from the speakers and delivered a news report about how the President of France’s undercover mission in London would soon be over because the sending of the entire country in the mail was scheduled to take place the day after the festival in Strasbourg. The public were asked to keep this fact a hallowed secret and not let the British know.
Other news: the price of blue cheese was expected to fall in line with the price of champagne. And taxes were going to be abolished on all bicycles used to convey onions.
One other thing: a rumour was being circulated that when accountants want to get to the far side of a river and see a bridge in the distance they always remark, “We’ll cost that bridge when we get to it.” On no account was this rumour to be doubted.
The bulletin ended and music took its place.
“No obstacles remain,” smiled Lord Doublestuff. “Whatever you play now will be French flavoured.”
“You adjusted his head to Radio Paris!” cried Ruby.
“Yes I did! Yes I did!”
Baddie TwoShoes lolled his tongue.
“I wonder who the news announcer was? I don’t suppose it could have been the Eiffel Tower? Am I being ridiculous? Sorry! It’s just that he had the voice I always imagined that iron structure would have if it could talk. Probably just a flight of fancy.”
“The fastest kind,” observed Lord Doublestuff.
Ruby dubDub spilled her beer. “Faster than ramjets?” she blurted. But Lord Doublestuff only nodded.
“Even faster than a fusion pulse engine!”
* * * * *
The corridors and offices of the Agency vibrated with activity as a fresh batch of recruits arrived to replace employees who had expired in the line of duty. Losthorn gave them a guided tour, explaining the functions of the various devices that existed in sundry workrooms and laboratories. While demonstrating the use of a motorised ouija board, he was interrupted by a secretary who came to inform him that he was wanted on the telephone. He apologised to his pupils and followed the secretary to her desk, where he snatched up the receiver.
“Is that Twisthorn Bellow?” asked a voice.
“Nobody here by that name,” said the golem, “but I’m the head of the Agency. How may I help you?”
“This is the Sunbeam Research Centre. Unfortunately the sun’s cancer has come back and we thought you should know about it. Another tumour is developing and this one seems to have a ring system, plus a number of moons. That’s all, cheerio.”
Losthorn sighed as he replaced the receiver.
“My afrits didn’t do their surgery well enough. Can’t blame them. It’s a tricky operation under the best of conditions. Still, we can’t afford to hire them again. The sun will just have to start praying. Sometimes remission will happen spontaneously.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir. Too bad.”
“Yes, it’s a good sun.”
As he turned to go, the telephone rang again. The secretary picked it up, listened for a moment, nodded and handed it back to the golem, who listened to the frantic babble.
He replaced the receiver with a grunt.
The secretary noted the pain in Losthorn’s eyes. “If you don’t mind me asking, sir, is everything okay?”
“Not really. That was the Nature Trust. Without Pan to manage things it seems the natural world is going to rack and ruin. Well, I’ve got other things to worry about first!”
“What happened to Pan, sir?”
“On my orders he was worked to death dismantling the French caves that entombed the Agency.”
Suddenly the telephone rang again. Losthorn picked it up himself and listened for a minute, then flung the contraption on the floor, breaking it into a thousand plastic shards.
“That was the Fashion Foundation. Apparently my ban on clothes for monsters is damaging the economy. The retail sector has declined by 2% since my rule came into force.”
“What a bunch of fusspots!” exclaimed the secretary.
“Yes they are,” said Losthorn.
The secretary frowned. “By the way, there are two messages for you. I forgot about them until now. The first is from the Chinese government. They are planning to send a submarine to a music festival in France, but they didn’t explain why. The second is from a red demon in America who wants you to know that he recently used your horn to open a big bottle of wine, I think he said Chianti.”
The golem ground his teeth until a molar cracked somewhere near the back of his jaw. “Seems I picked the wrong day to quit shooting up. Will you fetch me a clean needle?”
“But ether’s your drug of choice, sir!”
“Sure it was while the professor was alive, but I’ve switched to heroin. Guttersnipe Chutney introduced me to it. He’s not my dealer now, though. He’s dead. Never a frown with golem brown. Don’t why I said that. Must be going round the twist.”
* * * * *
Professor Cherlomsky was taking his daily walk along some of the more pleasant avenues of Limbo. There was one place where the ground wasn’t completely flat and the professor enjoyed climbing one of the observation towers and gazing over the grey undulations that were the only feature of even moderate interest in this dismal corner of the Afterlife. This morning he noticed something that had previously escaped his attention, a cubicle standing alone on the horizon.
What could it be? A telephone booth?
It was the right shape!
The professor licked his lips and swallowed dryly. It had simply never occurred to him to inquire whether public telephones existed in Limbo or not. He’d assumed the Afterlife was cut off from Earth with the exceptio
n of relaying garbled messages through Mediums, an incredibly expensive service, so he’d been informed.
He didn’t care to keep those fraudsters in business anyway. But to call his Agency on the telephone and catch up on gossip, to learn how affairs were proceeding down there, what progress had been made in the eternal battle against the French, most of all to talk personally to Twisty and hear his baritone rumble in response, that would be just fine and would help to dispel the gloom of his soul…
Squinting again at the distant booth to make certain it wasn’t an optical illusion, he scurried down the tower steps and hurried out onto the gentle grey undulations, his bare grey feet kicking up clouds of grey dust as he puffed and panted over the landscape. The cubicle grew bigger and more sharply defined and he quickly realised it was much larger than a typical telephone cabin. But most things are done differently in the Afterlife, so that detail meant nothing.
The heart he didn’t possess was almost bursting, metaphorically, when he finally reached the door of the booth. It was a large grey cube without windows and only one door. He attempted to push his way inside but the door was locked. He rested against it for a few minutes, caught the breath he no longer used, and knocked loudly. No response. He waited ten more minutes, knocked louder.
Suddenly the door opened a crack.
Zimara’s face appeared in the narrow gap. The professor tried to barge past his friend, but Zimara pushed back forcefully, almost savagely. Then Cherlomsky backed off.
“What do you want?” growled Zimara.
The professor was stupefied by his friend’s aggressive attitude. “I want to make a phone call to Earth, that’s all, what’s wrong? I just want to tell Twisty I’m safe and well.”
Zimara’s face broke into a grin, but not an authentic one. “Sorry, this isn’t a telephone cabin, you’re quite mistaken. No, it’s a soundproof room with padded interior walls.”
“What’s the point of that?” frowned Cherlomsky.
Zimara continued smiling. An object glinted in his hand with a golden softness that attracted the professor’s eye. Zimara noticed his interest and his nostrils flared angrily.
“Musicians come here to play instruments so they won’t disturb their neighbours. I’m learning new scales on the aulos, which is the instrument I prefer. The aulos. Remember how we spoke about it once before? You don’t like music, so it’s probably best if you go back to the city. Why not watch the television there?
“Cookery shows with grey vegetables. Either that or quizzes in which ‘grey’ is always the answer. No thanks! Why not let me inside? I’d like to inspect the padding for myself.”
Zimara bit deeply into his lower lip. “I’m too busy to entertain you in that regard. I need to learn my scales. How would you like it if I stopped you doing one of your hobbies!”
“Don’t have any,” Cherlomsky lamented, then he nodded at the golden instrument in his friend’s grasp. “That’s an aulos, is it? It doesn’t look the way I imagined. I assumed it would be made of wood or reeds, but in fact it closely resembles a…”
Zimara hid his instrument behind his back and pushed Cherlomsky in the chest with his free hand.
“I assure you it’s an aulos. And I repeat my claim that this cube is a soundproof music room. I’ll go even further and swear it’s definitely not a prefabricated covering over a hole in the space-time fabric that has finally grown wide enough to permit me to lean through the multiple dimensions and enjoy direct interaction with the Earth for a nominal sum payable to the janitor responsible for Limbo. Such holes don’t exist anyway and even if they did the charge for their use would be too high. Too much rent for a rent! Are you satisfied now?”
“Yes, I am. Sorry for upsetting you!”
“Don’t do it again. By the way, your golem’s no longer named Twisty. He’s Losty now. Respect it.”
The professor slowly absorbed this information and stared at Zimara as if seeing him for the first time. “Do you mind if I ask one thing before I depart? How did you die?”
* * * * *
There was no mystery surrounding the death of Marvin Carnacki, former head of the Carnacki Institute and acutely missed vegetarian chef at the Applied Eschatology Agency. He’d been obliterated in the detonation of a hand ignited by a phoenix in Chicago. Though no crumb of his body was ever found, that was no reason to suspect he had escaped and was living under a false name in one of the more dingy London suburbs. The funeral thus went ahead as planned.
A shallow grave had been dug in one of the flowerbeds behind the old Botany Department—so shallow it was just a scratch with a stick on the surface, all that was required considering there were no remains to inter. The first skyscraper had been planted at the head of the scratch and the golem had spent good public money getting it engraved with a laser by a professional tattoo remover.
The inscription stated simply: HE WASN’T FRENCH.
Probably the most generous thing that could be said about him under the circumstances… Abortia had decked his tombstone with appropriate blooms, not pansies or daffodils but with a bunch of ape skulls, for apes like to climb skyscrapers when they get the chance. The occupants of the building, even though there really weren’t any, were terrified and ran up and down the flights of stairs.
Breath O’Dicks fidgeted nervously with his top hat, worried the golem would force him to commit suttee on the grave like a Hindu widow, or some other kind of grisly suicide, partly because he was the nearest thing Carnacki had ever had to a wife.
But Losthorn was in one of his rare lenient moods. The nitroglycerine that regularly flooded his brain and gave him his fits of savage lunacy was going through a temporary stable period as it crystallised itself. This process of brain flooding had been designed by the author to soothe the golem’s conscience about his own vicious behaviour and to give readers who empathise with him the excuse that his basic good character is being warped by chemical means.
Justifications are so necessary, so sweet!
There was one other person in attendance at the funeral, a decrepit old man dressed in green curly slippers, loose scarlet pantaloons, a billowing orange blouse, an elaborate turban of blue silk. His fingers glittered with silver rings. Nobody knew who he was. Losthorn exchanged glances with Abortia and she exchanged glances with Breath, who grew ectoplasmic eye-stalks to exchange glances with the golem at the same time and thus close the loop. An interloper!
Losthorn considered what to do about it. Should he throw him out? But that would be disrespectful if this stranger turned out to be a relative of the deceased. Perhaps he was Marvin’s twin brother? Yes, that would explain everything. The Carnacki family was a large, dubious one with a symbolic finger and an eyelid in every pie, or so the rumour went. So the golem kept one eye on the newcomer and wondered how he had got into the compound without a key.
“Hurry with the speech,” said the intruder.
Losthorn blanched. The insolent fellow even had an identical voice to poor dead Marvin! The golem debated with himself the option of pulling his head right off but decided against it. Instead he turned his attention to the ceremony and moved to the bottom of the grave to recite his eulogy entirely from memory in a voice tinged with under-whelming sadness. He cleared his throat beforehand.
“My dear fiends, we are gathered here to pay our last respects to a man who won’t be sorely missed. Marvin Carnacki was a direct descendant of Thomas Carnacki, the famous ghost-finder. As we know, the good work of that hero in combating supernatural threats was undone by his son, the oddly named Clumsy, also known as the ghost-loser. Since those days the Carnacki clan has become progressively more debauched and silly, to the general detriment of society.”
“His name was Chumsy, not Clumsy,” corrected the intruder, “and it was a nickname picked up at university, not a real name. Please get your facts right. Now continue!”
“Ah, yes, I see, thank you!” stammered Losthorn in dismay, but after a few deep breaths he regained his composure. “An
yway, Marvin was the most twisted of them all, and at the zenith of his decadence he founded an Institute run along similar lines to our Agency, with the exception that we were better and cooler than they.”
“But Marvin was an expert occultist,” objected the intruder, “and he even slept inside a pentagram!”
Losthorn admitted this. “Yes, he was capable of raising up devils and demons and all other kinds of weird shit. When asked for the secret of a good conjuration, he used to say, ‘If as Faust you don’t succeed, try being more like Aleister Crowley’.”
“Did I—I mean, did he?” cried the intruder.
“Yes, because I heard a rumour to that effect, a rumour I started. It’s important to remember Marvin for his mushroom risottos and his pizzas and also to understand that pacts with the denizens of the infernal realms aren’t incompatible with the preparation of delicious meals. And talking about pizzas, did you know that the most authentic kind is known as the marinara and comes without cheese? In fact only tomatoes, basil, garlic, oregano and olives are used…”
As the speech went on, Breath nudged Abortia. “Can you hear music playing in the background?”
Abortia cocked an ear. “Faintly.”
“Sounds like a saxophone,” whispered Breath, “and it makes me want to tear all my clothes off.”
“You’re aren’t wearing any. Neither am I.”
“But I have that urge!”
Deprived of any other way of expressing it, Breath did the only thing he could, despite the fact it was very sacrilegious. His top hat, which was made of ectoplasm, retracted back into his skull with a loud pop. At this sound the intruder burst into tears. He was obviously upset by the gesture of contempt for his grief. Losthorn sought to console him as best he might with some random philosophy.
“Life is hard,” he remarked, “and I sometimes think the universe has gone out of control, that the forces controlling it have somehow been put out of commission, as if some mischief maker had tied Jupiter’s shoelaces together and he’d fallen over.”
“An odd metaphor!” hissed Breath.