The Quanderhorn Xperimentations

by Andrew Marshall

  ‘Do we?’ he stammers.

  I puts him out of his misery. ‘We’re both spies.’ Now he goes a completely different colour.

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘On behalf of the British Operatives for the General Biological Research Union of Sanitation Handlers,’ I announce proudly.

  I can see him trying to work out what they call the ‘acronym’. ‘We don’t refer to it by its initials, of course. For obvious reasons.’

  I think I hears him mutter: ‘Is there any organisation I’m not a spy for?’ but we’re talking so low, like as not I’ve misheard.

  ‘In the light of which developments, comrade brother,’ I winks at him, ‘as shop steward, I have to employ my endeavours to find some way of not showing that photograph to the management, viz . to wit and i.e., Professor Quanderhorn.’

  ‘Could you draw a moustache and beard on it?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s already got a moustache and beard,’ I points out.

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘that’s gravy browning.’

  I don’t ask. Dr. Janussen starts calling him from the tent. I pats my boy on the shoulder. ‘You’d best be off, comrade. Don’t worry, old Brother Jenkins’ll think of something. Be like Dad – keep mum.’

  ‘Brian!’ she calls again. And he scampers off obediently, like Lassie to a mineshaft.

  Think of something? All very well saying that, old Brother Jenkins. But what?

  Then there’s this tap on my shoulder, and the Martian pops back out of the tent, in his white boiler suit. He’s adding a cravat and a spotted silk hankie in the top pocket.

  ‘Jenkins, old bean,’ he hisses, ‘can I have a private?’

  ‘I have to tell you, Mr. Guuuurk, I’m in a bit of a rush at the moment.’

  ‘I think you’ll find time for this.’ He reaches into his inside pocket – I notice he’s got tape round three of his thumbs. ‘I have a fresh consignment of particularly . . . artistic photographic studies of the most tasteful nature taken backstage at the Windmill Theatre.’

  The Windmill! I feel a tiny drop of drool forming under my moustache, which I wipes away all surreptitious-like. You don’t want these Martians aware you’re keen in negotiations.

  ‘Knowing you as a well-travelled gentleman of the world and a long-standing connoisseur of pulchritudinal portraiture—’ he spiels.

  ‘I do like big ones, sir, and that’s for sure,’ I blurts, before I can stop myself.

  ‘I was wondering if you might be interested in obtaining them, as per our usual financial arrangement. Which, I recall, is a crisp, white fiver.’

  I narrows my eyes and stares him down.

  ‘Fourpence,’ I says. ‘Take it or leave it.’

  He looks like he’s about to have a heart attack while sucking a bowl of lemons. ‘ Fourpence? You cut me to the quick!’ he wails. ‘Here am I trying to make a meagre crust from the pathetic scrapings of a miserable existence and you insult, nay, mock me with your derisory offer! Three pounds!’

  ‘Fourpence’, I fires back.

  ‘You’re stealing the bread out of my children’s mouths! I know I don’t have any children at the moment, but I plan to have some, and feed them bread! Two pounds!’

  ‘Fourpence.’

  ‘Let’s split the difference.’

  ‘Agreed. Fourpence.’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ he groans, handing the snaps over. ‘Mind you, I shall want a written receipt for tax purposes. Shall we say for five hundred pounds?’

  ‘I’ll write one for three shillings and elevenpence ha’penny,’ I says. ‘And that’s my final offer.’

  ‘Done!’ He certainly has been. He’s solved my problem. But him, poor blighter, his problem’s just beginning. I’ve seen what that Obliteration Chamber can do.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Private Diary of Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill: Saturday the 5th of January, 1952.

  Tea break over, I packed away the Fortnum’s hamper and silver champagne tankard. Retying the knotted string around my trouser knees, slipping back the false red nose made from an old tomato, and reinserting the signed photograph of Joseph Locke into my wellington, I resumed my erstwhile persona as ‘Mr. O’Reilly’, the simple Irish navvy.

  Of course, no one had recognised me in this impenetrable disguise, and I had therefore been able to witness in person the sinister alien apparatus issue forth its terrible declamation.

  The Secret of the Eternals! Should such a prize fall into the hands of the accursed Quanderhorn, he would become unstoppable, and this great nation of ours could never be liberated from the pernicious snare of his infernal Time contraption.

  The years of tremulous waiting must end. The hour of action had been finally thrust upon me!

  But before I could put my ultimate plan into action, there was one question that demanded an answer.

  And at last I spotted Agent Penetrator himself, hovering around the mouth of the ziggurat, reconnoitring. As fortune would have it, he was blessedly alone, at least for a moment or two. I hurried over to him, keeping to the shadows cast by the malignant alien edifice.

  ‘Pssst. Begorrah and bejabers,’ I brogued expertly, ‘do you have a light for a simple bog Irishman’s shillelagh?’ I still have no idea what that is.

  ‘Mr. Churchill!’ he exclaimed, rather indiscreetly.

  I hushed him. ‘Indeed it is, Penetrator. You’re a hard man to track down.’

  ‘I didn’t know you’d been looking for me, sir.’ There was something different about the fellow. He seemed more assured, more dauntless. He even looked slightly taller . Clearly that holiday on the Moon had worked wonders on his constitution.

  ‘I have to tell you, sir,’ he went on, ‘this is all being recorded and transcribed.’

  ‘I’m aware of that, Penetrator. Don’t concern yourself – my people will tear off and destroy the printed version when we’ve finished.’

  ‘Your people?’

  ‘Yes, Penetrator. None of these men is actually a genuine navvy.’

  One nearby pipes up: ‘Oi am, sir.’

  ‘You’re sacked.’

  ‘Fair enough. I’m orf to da pub.’ He tossed his shovel aside and trundled off happily.

  ‘ Now none of these men is an actual genuine navvy, so we can speak freely.’

  ‘Roger that, sir.’

  ‘So, to the important business: I need to know precisely what you found in Quanderhorn’s cellar.’

  He looked completely mystified. ‘I didn’t find anything in the cellar.’

  I knew it! That scabrous fox Quanderhorn had been talking the whole thing up to thwart any manoeuvre against him. But I needed to be certain.

  ‘Nothing dangerous down there at all?’ I persisted.

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  I looked deep into his eyes, as I’d looked deep into Stalin’s. I can ascertain whether or not a man’s telling the truth. Stalin wasn’t. Penetrator indubitably was.

  ‘That’s excellent news!’ I slapped the fellow on the back. ‘There’ll be a medal in this for you, young rapscallion! Though regrettably it won’t be the Empire Medal for Conspicuous Honesty. We’ve had a lot of trouble with cheap forgeries, recently.’

  He looked momentarily perplexed. ‘I’m afraid I really don’t know what all this cellar stuff is about, sir—’

  ‘Of course you don’t.’ I winked. ‘And neither do I. Carry on, Penetrator. But don’t be too successful.’

  Leaving him behind, I hastened to the transcribing device to supervise the immediate destruction of any record of our conversation. I was finally free! Free of the confounded restraints that had prevented my moving against Quanderhorn.

  Free as the goddess Nemesis herself to deliver that final, delicious and richly merited thunderbolt.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Daybook of ‘Jenkins’ Jenkins, RQMS Royal Fusiliers (pleas taken into consideration), Saturday the 5th of January, 1952

  ‘Good God in Heaven!’ The prof’s veins all knot in his fo
rehead.

  ‘I told you to prepare yourself for a shock, sir.’

  ‘But this!’ He slaps the photo with the back of his hand. ‘What devilish agency would infiltrate my top secret cellar in G-strings and rotating nipple tassels? The Russians? The Martians? The Elastic-eating Mothmen from Trappist-1?’

  ‘Oh, I remember them Mothmen, sir. Nasty bits of work. The amount of bloomers that fell down after that attack!’ Mothmen? Don’t like ’em.

  Corner of my eye, I see some navvies tearing up bits of paper. Why can’t they just use bog roll, like civilised people?

  The Prof’s eyes is flittering from side to side, his mind churning nineteen to the dozen. He don’t usually get agitated like this. ‘Whoever it was, the blundering buffoons were threatening the very essence of existence.’

  Blimey. ‘If you’ll forgive me, sir, d’you mind me asking how?’

  He goes all quiet for a moment, then shoots me this look which really frightens me. ‘Yes, Jenkins, as a matter of fact, I mind very much.’

  Knowing what’s good for me, I hastily changes the subject. ‘The duplicates are ready to go in, sir. The originals are still arguing who gets to hold the flaming torch.’

  ‘I’ll deal with all that, Jenkins.’ His veins don’t look much less purple. ‘We can’t risk any more incursions into that cellar. You have to get back to the lab urgently and shore things up. Double the slow-motion gas, triple the ball bearings, quadruple the flame-throwers and raise the invisible shield.’

  ‘If you remember, sir,’ I reminds him, ‘you put the invisible shield down somewhere, and now we can’t find it.’

  ‘Dammit! Secure that cellar at all costs !’

  Well, I don’t know exactly what he’s got going on down in that cellar, but I ain’t never seen him scared like this. Never.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Dr Virginia Whyte’s diary, December 31st, [the very first] 1952

  I can’t honestly say I knew precisely what it was in London we were on our way to, but it was thrilling, nonetheless. I’d never seen Darius look quite so exhilarated, as he powered the Jaguar XK120 roadster down the A1, snow-covered fields flashing past on either side. Despite the temperature we had the roof down, and I was rather thankful for the woolly scarf and mittens Aunt Alice had knitted for me for Christmas. The wind ruddied our faces and occasional flecks of snow stung my cheeks before melting.

  As night fell we stopped off at a transport café to put the roof up. We sat, gratefully cupping our hands round hot mugs of cocoa, amid the gruff lorry drivers and intense-looking young men in leather jackets and tight blue workman’s trousers. What a hoot! It was, quite frankly, a tremendous adventure!

  I managed to hold back until we finally purred into central London, then I could supress it no longer. ‘So, are you finally going to tell me, you beast?’ I asked.

  ‘Tell you what?’ He grinned.

  ‘Whatever it is, you silly goose! I can see you’re bursting to come out with it.’

  ‘Virginia.’ He positively gleamed. ‘Remember when we first started out, with barely enough money to keep body and soul together?’

  ‘I’m not likely to forget that. We had to live a whole week on that awful soup I cooked up.’

  He laughed heartily. ‘Yes, I can still taste it! I’ve got a confession: I fed most of it to that funny little dog you had.’

  ‘My chihuahua? Gargantua? You didn’t! You could have killed him!’ I punched Darius playfully on the shoulder.

  ‘And remember,’ he grinned on, ‘how we’d sit up into the wee small hours, telling each other fine stories of how one day we would do some work – important work – that people would remember us for for ever?’

  I laughed. ‘Yes! Pipe dreams of the young and foolish!’

  ‘It may have seemed like a pipe dream at the time—’

  ‘Darius – what are you telling me? You’ve finally got the Vegetablising Ray operational?’

  ‘No, not that . . .’

  I almost missed a heartbeat. ‘Not the Möbius Project ? Have you found a way to make it work? But that’s enormous! And you kept it to yourself?’

  ‘I didn’t want to raise false hopes. But if I’m right, Virginia, this is it! Our masterpiece! Our magnum opus !’

  ‘Come on, Q-horn – don’t keep me hanging. How will we pull it off?’

  As usual, once unleashed, there was no stopping the Professor in him. ‘Well, what we needed, of course, was to identify the precise location where the conflux of temporal energies are most powerfully focused.’

  ‘Yes, clearly, but—’

  He held up his driving-gloved finger. ‘By fracturing the very continuum itself only at that precise spot, the ruptured time stream would be forced out under tremendous pressure along the path of least resistance to find egress at another precise location elsewhere.’

  ‘But we already knew all that. We simply don’t have the geomaths to calculate either of those points.’

  Grinning unbearably, he reached into his door bin and handed me a battered exercise book.

  I skimmed the formulae-strewn pages greedily. ‘This . . . If this is correct—’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Then the emergence point would be precisely beneath the old fever hospital we converted into our laboratory!’

  He nodded, rather smugly. ‘Directly into that cavern we made into our cellar . . .’

  ‘Our cellar . . .? I wondered why you chose that curious site.’

  ‘Where the excess years can be safely stored in a five-dimensional array of polytopic hyperspheres!’

  ‘So that’s what all that equipment was!’ I raced through the rest of the calculations as best I could. ‘And that would make the origin point . . .’

  He smiled to himself as we rounded New Palace Yard, slithered to a stop, and gazed up the yellow illuminated face of the clock popularly (and incorrectly) known as ‘Big Ben’.

  It was half an hour to midnight, and the revelries were in full swing. We pushed through the milling throngs below, into the Palace of Westminster. We ran giddily through the maze of stone corridors and slipped in at the base of the clock tower. Darius took my hand and led me quickly up the stairs.

  ‘So,’ I panted, ‘starved of fresh tomorrows, Time would loop over and over – a temporal Möbius strip – and it would be perpetually 1952!’

  ‘We’ll be virtually immortal – of course people will still die, but not of old age any more. We’ll stay just as we are for ever! It’s the single most important contribution anyone’s ever made to humanity.’

  I stopped to catch my breath. ‘But what about people who are miserable, people who are in pain? Aren’t we condemning them to perpetual suffering?’

  ‘But I’ll have time , Virginia. Time to find a cure for all diseases. To end all suffering. Time to pursue all my projects—’

  ‘You mean all our projects.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said too slowly. He didn’t mean it. ‘ Our projects. Of course.’ There was a distant look in his eyes. ‘But mostly mine,’ he added rather strangely. He began climbing again.

  ‘But, Darius – people may not want to stay the same for ever, have you thought of that?’

  He was several steps ahead of me by now, ‘People! What do we care for people ? People don’t think – they have no idea what’s best for them! We’re giving them stability. Constancy. No more fear of things changing – it’ll be a perpetual golden age no one need ever look back to!’

  We rounded the last twist of the stairway and he pushed open the door to the clock chamber. I stepped in after him, lungs and legs aching.

  The ticking of the colossal mechanism was deafening, but what startled me was the bewildering and complex series of relays, switches and devices which had been jury-rigged to the famous workings. They beeped, buzzed and burred, lying in wait like some monstrous insect that had made its atrocious nest in our national monument.

  ‘Y-you’ve already set the whole thing up?’

  ‘I told
them it was a minor weather experiment.’ He laughed rather unkindly. ‘They’re so easy to dupe, it’s almost cruel.’

  A horrible realisation flooded over me. ‘Now I see why you waited ’til New Year’s Eve to tell me.’ He didn’t even register my disappointment. I’d naïvely assumed he was being romantic. ‘You’re going to activate it tonight !’

  ‘It’s already activated, Virginia! I wanted you to be here to witness it firing up with me.’

  He looked over the terrible creation with something like pride. Or was it obsession?

  I had to deter him from this path. It was madness. ‘We can’t just go ahead with this – there are so many things we need to work through—’

  ‘Plenty of time to work them through after midnight has struck. All the time in the world, in fact!’

  ‘But the polytopic hyperspheres are finite. They won’t hold more than ten years safely. Twenty at the most.’

  ‘Agreed, but we’ll have found another way to safely dissipate it long before then.’

  I checked the reverse clock face; it was almost midnight. ‘Darius, we have to disengage this right now—’

  But as I spoke the giant minute hand tocked up to the twelve and the chimes began, shaking the chamber and forcing my hands over my ears.

  ‘You have to listen to me,’ I shouted. ‘The storage array will eventually become unstable. Please wait!’ But the machinery was already gathering speed, and each new chime was getting closer to the last.

  ‘Impossible!’ he yelled back. ‘Now it’s in motion, the Time-Splicer can’t be stopped. It’ll automatically fire up at the end of every year to keep the Möbius time stream turning back on itself. It’s synchronised to the final stroke of midnight.’

  ‘Darius! No! Once those tanks reach capacity, the slightest tremor in the cellar could cause a temporal fissure that would split the planet . . . maybe even reality itself!’

  The final chime rang out. The sound seemed to hang in the air, and then reversed itself, like a genie being sucked back into its bottle.