The Quanderhorn Xperimentations

by Andrew Marshall

  Jenkins grumbled out of the room behind him. ‘Another bloomin’ meteorite shower! Still, it’s good for the garden.’

  And we were left in peace. No end-of-the-world alerts, no klaxons, no ‘no time to explain right now’. Guuuurk noticeably relaxed. By which I mean, he deflated his head noisily. He was resplendent today in a cricket sweater, flannels held up by an Eton tie and a cap with an MCC badge. (I later found out that this stood for Motherwell Cribbage Club.) ‘That’s that, then,’ he grinned. ‘The pressure is off.’

  Troy perked up also. ‘Yeah. I think I might go up and work on my dung ball.’

  ‘On your what?’ I asked, not really looking forward to the reply.

  ‘Work out with . . . my . . . dum bells.’ He sidled out, sheepishly. I exchanged glances with Dr. Janussen.

  ‘Just don’t go into his room. Ever. And never let him talk you into a game of croquet.’

  Guuuurk hefted a sports bag onto the desk. ‘Right! Time for a spot of R&R.’ At which precise moment the Professor’s voice crackled over the intercom.

  ‘And Guuuurk, I’ll want a full report on that sinkhole business on my desk by noon.’

  ‘Absolutely!’ Guuuurk’s grin didn’t waver. He winked at me with three eyes and snapped off the intercom.

  The Professor appeared on a wall-mounted TV screen behind him. ‘And I don’t want you paying a schoolboy to do it for you this time.’

  Guuuurk wheeled round. ‘That’s a scurrilous lie! But understood.’

  The TV went dead again.

  Guuuurk waited for a few moments to see if the Professor had any more surprises, and then said brightly, ‘Right! As I was saying: time for a spot of R&R.’

  ‘What about the report?’ I asked.

  ‘Ye-e-e-ess. If you could have it finished by 11.30, so I have a chance to sign it?’

  ‘Why would I do that for you?’

  He fixed me with a guilt-inducing stare and tilted his head. ‘I don’t know, Brian. Why would I selflessly have saved your life at enormous personal risk?’

  He started rummaging through his bag. ‘OK. Seduction essentials . . .’ He pulled out a set of tortoiseshell moustache brushes, a large tub of Brylcreem, a tin of white spray paint, and what appeared to be a passport in the name of Edith Sitwell. A thought suddenly struck him, and he fished out his notebook again. ‘Oh, Brian, I was meaning to ask before – these “French letter” thingies – where exactly does one get them . . .?’

  I realised my face had gone very red. I stammered out some nonsense. ‘Well, I, uhm, well . . .’ but I was saved by Dr. Janussen.

  ‘Leave Brian alone , Guuuurk. You know he’s lost his memory, and I need to bring him back up to date.’ She thumped a stack of files on the desk.

  My heart soared. I’d been desperately wondering how I might persuade the good doctor to spend the morning with me, and here she was, volunteering. At last, some answers!

  She flipped through the folders one by one. ‘The Failed Martian Invasion; the Second Failed Martian Invasion; the Third Failed Martian Invasion . . .’

  Guuuurk looked up from his eyebrow pencil. ‘Oh, rub it in, why don’t you?’

  She ignored him. ‘Attack of the Mole People; Hepcats from Under the Sea; Project: Huge Dog . . .’ she frowned. ‘The Andromeda Thrush; The Man With the X-ray Arse . . .’ She turned and narrowed her eyes. ‘Guuuurk, have you been tampering with these labels?’

  ‘That’s a scurrilous lie! But I get so bored . . .’

  I was quite keen for Guuuurk to go, so I’d be alone with Dr. Janussen for the first time, but suddenly to my not-very-much-surprise, there was yet another alarm sound – a new one this time, like a particularly piercing telephone ring crossed with the war cry of a pack of baboons – and a light on the wall strobed red and white.

  Guuuurk and Dr. Janussen shot upright.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked, again not keen to know the answer.

  ‘That,’ Dr. Janussen said coldly, ‘is the Future Phone.’

  Chapter Seven

  From the journal of Brian Nylon, 2nd January, 1952 – Iteration 66

  We scampered out of the room and round the corner, where there was an armoured door with a strobing red and white beacon above it.

  Dr. Janussen unlocked the door with a key on a chain that was round her neck, and we hastened into the room containing this so-called Future Phone.

  There it was, spotlighted on a plinth. It looked like a distant relative of a regular telephone, with a bloated riveted base covered in flashing lights. A thick piece of glass in its belly shielded a bright orange flame which was burning up a blob of strange material. There was a faint aroma of scorched linen.

  There were two holes on the dial, one labelled ‘Yesterday’, the other ‘Tomorrow’.

  I was amazed. ‘This is a phone . . . from the future?’

  Dr. Janussen’s hand hovered over the heavy studded metal receiver. She looked suddenly pale. ‘It’s only for the direst of emergencies. On the end of that telephone line, one of us is calling from tomorrow.’

  ‘How is that possible? And don’t tell me there’s no time to explain right now.’

  ‘Well, there isn’t. I need to prepare myself. It must be something so terrible, so monumentally awful that—’

  But Guuuurk had snatched up the receiver himself. ‘Hellllooooo? Yesterday here!’

  ‘Guuuurk – give that to me.’ Dr. Janussen held out her hand.

  But the voice of another Guuuurk bled out of the speaker. ‘ Hello handsome! ’ it crooned. ‘ Guuuurk Tomorrow here! ’

  ‘Oh, how lovely to hear from you . . .’ Guuuurk eyed us leerily. ‘. . . Mother!’

  Dr. Janussen tilted her head and folded her arms.

  I heard the Future Guuuurk hiss: ‘ Is the coast clear? ’

  ‘No,’ Guuuurk offered me a counterfeit smile, ‘there are a couple of birds on the windowsill, actually.’

  ‘Guuuurk . . .’ Dr. Janussen sighed.

  ‘ I’ll be quick, then ,’ the Future Guuuurk said, ‘ Put seven and sixpence each way on Dandy’s Lad, 3.30 at Haydock Park .’

  Guuuurk’s smile remained completely fixed. ‘I’m sorry to hear your leg is still playing up, Mother.’

  But Dr. Janussen had had enough of the feeble charade. ‘Guuuurk, we can hear you on the speaker. And we know it’s not your mother, because, as you never tire of telling us, you ate her at birth.’

  ‘ What? ’ Guuuurk fizzed with indignation. ‘Who is this? How dare you impersonate my sainted mother, you unspeakable cad?’ He slammed down the receiver in mock fury. ‘Some people!’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re using the Future Phone to give yourself racing tips.’

  ‘How else am I supposed to make ends meet?’

  ‘You know every call burns more of our dwindling supply of temporium 90.’

  ‘What’s temporium 90?’ I asked her.

  ‘It’s an incredibly rare natural precipitate of crystallised time. There’s only three and a half ounces in the world.’

  ‘Two and a half ounces now,’ Guuuurk corrected.

  I struggled to understand what had just happened. ‘Hang on – Guuuurk, if that was you from the future, why didn’t he remember that Dr. Janussen and I could hear what he was saying?’

  ‘Brian, old chap, you’re not thinking this through,’ Guuuurk purred. ‘You see . . .’ A look of sudden confusion progressed through his six eyes like momentum through a Newton’s cradle. ‘Hang on, he’s right.’

  Dr. Janussen frowned again. ‘The best explanation is: you were calling from an alternative future. Something happens over the next twenty-four hours that throws us off track and into a different timeline. You realise the horrible implications?’

  ‘Indeed I do!’ the Martian was aghast. ‘It means Dandy’s Lad may well lose at Haydock!’

  ‘And you’ve wasted a whole ounce of temporium.’

  ‘ Nil desperandum .’ Guuuurk snatched up the phone again and dialled Yesterday. ‘I’l
l just call my past self and warn him, i.e. me, not to take today’s call tomorrow.’ He grinned winningly. ‘Hello, it’s Mother here—’

  Dr. Janussen snatched the phone away roughly and slammed it down. ‘That’s another half ounce squandered, you clot.’

  I wrestled with the conundrum. ‘But surely if Guuuurk had persuaded Yester-him not to take the call today, then Tomorrow-he wouldn’t have had to make the call warning Today-him, and we wouldn’t have used any of it.’

  There was a very long silence.

  Eventually, Dr. Janussen said: ‘It’s not as simple as that.’

  ‘That was simple ?’ Guuuurk wailed. ‘I’d hate to hear the complicated version.’

  ‘Every call creates a new time strand, a strand where the people who didn’t previously get the call, do get the call. The temporium is expended over all the strands simultaneously , therefore any strand using the temporium depletes the total store.’

  There was an even longer silence.

  Eventually, Guuuurk said, ‘I was right. I did hate hearing the complicated version.’

  We all jumped as the phone started ringing again.

  We stared at it. ‘So,’ I ventured, ‘do we answer that?’

  Reluctantly, Dr. Janussen nodded. ‘We daren’t ignore it. It could be one of us calling with a critical warning.’ She raised the receiver. ‘Hello?’

  And again we heard some version of Guuuurk on the end of the line. ‘ Hello! Different Future Guuuurk here. I’m just calling to remind you not to answer this call. Otherwise you’ll be down to your last half ounce. ’

  And in the background on the other end, another Dr. Janussen interrupted: ‘ Guuuurk? What are you doing? Please tell me you’re not calling yourself to warn yourself not to take the very call you’re making? ’

  ‘ Good point ,’ Different Future Guuuurk agreed. ‘ Ignore what I just said. ’

  The line went dead.

  I noticed, with some trepidation, that Dr. Janussen’s ear had rotated ever so slightly.

  ‘You idiot!’ she snarled at Guuuurk. ‘There’s only enough temporium left for one more call now!’

  The dreaded ratcheting noise was speeding up.

  Guuuurk shot me a look that said: Look out! She’s about to blow!

  ‘Dr. Janussen, you’re unwinding,’ I ventured carefully. Not carefully enough.

  ‘Get out!’ she screeched. ‘You useless pair of rubber testicles!’

  There really was no call for that sort of sailor talk. ‘B-but—’ I stammered.

  ‘GET OUT!’ she repeated. ‘I’ll do the report myself!’

  ‘I could just wind it up for you . . . Oh, ow! OK, we’ll be off then.’

  ‘And you, you six-eyed loon, stay away from this phone, or I’ll deck you!’

  ‘Understood, dear lady.’ Guuuurk snatched up his bag and hightailed for the door, and discretion being the better part of valour, I followed him. Very quickly.

  We headed down the corridor towards the reception area, not running, exactly, but walking very briskly, and glancing over our shoulders.

  ‘Will she be all right?’ I asked, trying to stem the blood from my nose.

  ‘Oh, she’ll be fine. She’ll burn herself out and fall asleep as usual, and Jenkins will rewind her, safely.’

  The aforementioned factotum was behind his desk, apparently counting biros. He eventually looked up. ‘Ah! Mr. Nylon. There’s a letter for you.’ He turned to the wall behind him. There was only one box, with a letter clearly protruding from it, but he made a great show of inspecting every inch of the wall before he ‘found’ it. ‘Ah! Here you go, sir.’

  I tried not to snatch it from him. Who on earth would be writing me a letter?

  Jenkins was looking at me oddly. But then, he tended to look at everyone oddly. He was odd. Mercifully, Guuuurk distracted him.

  ‘Jenkins, old fruit!’ the Martian cooed. ‘I’ve been meaning to have a word in your shell-like.’ He drew the janitor aside, and they began speaking in low voices I couldn’t make out. Clearly, some nefarious piece of commerce was being conducted. That suited me.

  Turning away, I examined the envelope.

  It was indeed addressed to me: ‘Mr. Brian Nylon, Professor Quanderhorn’s Secret Laboratory, Somewhere on the road to Carlisle’. I didn’t recognise the handwriting, but it was elegant, and executed in fountain pen.

  Opening it quickly, I tugged out the missive inside.

  It was a torn fragment from an Ordnance Survey map of the local area. The lab, of course, wasn’t marked (it never appeared on any map), but the quarry was there, and the old fever hospital within it. There was a hand-drawn ‘X’ in the middle of the nearby village, with the footpath from one to the other picked out in red, and a time. 10.30 a.m.

  I considered requisitioning a vehicle, but, frankly, I didn’t want to face any awkward questioning from the nosy janitor. I’d established I was confoundedly bad at lying, and I didn’t want any suspicions raised.

  I glanced at the clock behind the reception desk. It was already half past nine.

  The village was a good three mile walk away. I had to hurry.

  Chapter Eight

  Booday the argth of Phobos, Martian Year 5972 Pink

  Secret Report to Martian Command, by Guuuurk. Also known as ‘Guuuurk the Magnificent’, ‘Guuuurk the Bold’ and ‘Guuuurk the Bare-faced Liar’.

  Having bribed Jenkins to turn a blind eye with a bottle of stout and three saucy postcards, I dabbed on some of the old distemper, fully deflated the noggin and taped closed four of my eyes with stamp hinges.

  I admired the effect. Though I say so myself, I cut rather a handsome figure, not a million miles away from the young Dirk Bogarde.

  I scurried out to the hut round the back of the septic tank, which I use as my secret garage, and there was the love of my life: my beautiful Morgan Plus 4 drophead sports coupé, Maureen , which I had obtained on ‘appro’ from a rather gullible inbred car salesman in the village. Topping up the tank with the amontillado, I hopped aboard, and sure enough, she started the fifteenth time, meaning my luck was in.

  I roared off, my Biggin Hill NAAFI scarf flapping grandly behind me.

  I coaxed the beauty around the rough winding country lanes, the sunlight glinting through the naked branches of the trees overhead. I hit a straight, and pushed down on the pedal. Maureen replied with an appreciative purr as she smoothly accelerated to top speed. It was a quite glorious January day, crisp and fresh. In a peculiar way, a lesser, more dishonourable Martian than myself might find himself beginning to feel very much at home here. But not me.

  I double-declutched, slipped down into growling third, and powered on towards the village.

  Chapter Nine

  From the journal of Brian Nylon, 2nd January, 1952 – Iteration 66

  I approached the village of Wytchdrowninge over the brow of a cobbled hill. It was a small but nevertheless horrible place.

  It ought to have been a picture postcard sort of spot, but there was something off about it, something skew-whiffy I couldn’t quite put my finger on. There was a flock of large black sharp-billed birds I didn’t recognise perched along a telegraph wire. A small tanner’s workshop belched yellow sulphurous smoke which bit into every breath you drew. The front gardens of the cottages had dried, dead plants in them, and the pub was called The King’s Torso.

  As I strolled down the hill quite warily, I passed a blacksmith hammering nails into a disgruntled horse. A hag-like old woman in a black shawl was entering Slaughter the Family Butchers, which had unidentifiable organs hanging on hooks in the window. An ugly baby in a pram was bawling outside a miserable-looking temperance bar, which had signs on the door reading: ‘Closed Evenings, Weekends and Holidays’ and ‘No Dancing’.

  I relaxed somewhat to see a policeman on a corner, clipping the ear of a local urchin. He seemed to recognise me, and offered a nod.

  I found myself saying, ‘Good afternoon, P.C. Mosely.’

  I stopped. Now
, how on earth had I known that? Could he have been the person who’d sent me the map? I was about to cross over to him when I heard a voice whose familiar gravelly timbre gave me pause.

  ‘Chestnuts!’ it cried. ‘Chestnuts! Buy my lovely hot chestnuts!’

  I turned to see the corpulent street merchant at his smoking brazier. He was approached by an amiable fellow in a tweed cap who chirped, ‘I’ll have six penn’orth, please.’

  ‘Bugger off!’ Winston Churchill barked, brusquely dispatching the poor chap on his way.

  ‘Prime Minister!’ I hurried over. It was he who’d sent me the map.

  ‘Keep it down, Penetrator!’ the Great Man rumbled. ‘Don’t want to draw attention . . .’ A housewife passing by eyed us suspiciously, and he suddenly affected a pleasant, vendor-like tone to me. ‘Ah! So you’d like some of my chestnuts, sir? Would you prefer them on or off the bone?’ He suddenly seemed to lose faith in his rather dismal charade, and leant in again. ‘What the devil are chestnuts, anyway? Are they still alive?’

  ‘What are you doing here, sir?’ I felt terribly exposed. I really didn’t want word of this encounter getting back to anyone at the lab.

  ‘Communication lines are down all across the country, Penetrator. Something’s going on. And mark my words, that despicable scoundrel Quanderhorn is mixed up in it, somehow. What have you discovered?’

  ‘I haven’t found anything out at all yet, sir.’

  ‘Well, time is of the essence. Oceanic sinkholes, mountains decapitated – that insane scoundrel seems to think he can do whatever he pleases. He must be brought under control!’

  The urchin had wandered up, rubbing his swollen ear. He fished some filthy coins out of his pocket and squeaked, ‘I’ll have thruppence worth, please, mister.’

  ‘Bugger off!’ the Prime Minister bellowed, cuffing the urchin’s other ear to make his point. The lad’s face quivered, and he raced off lest we see him cry.

  ‘We have to find out,’ Churchill continued unabashed, ‘why it’s perpetually 1952, and we believe the answer’s in the blaggard’s cellar. There’s something fearful down there. Something so evil and unspeakable it would render the bravest of souls a gibbering, mindless wreck. What we need is a man, a reckless and selfless hero who’s prepared to risk his life and even his very sanity for the love of his glorious country. And you are that stupid man.’