The Quanderhorn Xperimentations

by Andrew Marshall

  There’s a crackle from the speaker.

  ‘ Don’t kid yourself, Jenkins, you unctuous little powder-monkey .’

  Blimey! Who rattled her cage?

  ‘ Lab-Busting bomber squadron three minutes, forty-five seconds away ,’ she says, and sarkily throws in: ‘ But on the bright side, the weather for it’s looking marvellous! ’

  Then, blow my pipes, if there isn’t another alarum. This time it’s that Not Entirely Tested Matter Transfusification Booth thingumabob in the corner. Ain’t used that in a while, and with good reason. Last time it went off, I had to spend the whole day cleaning up an inside-out monkey.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Mission log. Flight number 001, Advanced Laboratory-Blasting Squadron (‘The Lab Busters’) Wing Commander William ‘Wee Willy Winkie’ Watkins, Officer Commanding. Dateline: Sunday the 6th of January, 1952 02.58 hours

  It’s a grim business. And I don’t just mean bombing your own. I mean the pipers, currently murdering the score of Show Boat . That infernal instrument can only play nine notes, and none of them appeared to be in ‘Only Make Believe’. Or, as they insisted on caterwauling, ‘Ownlah Mak’ Bellee’.

  Suddenly, the target approach light flicked on, and I was finally able to yell: ‘Shut up that filthy racket! We have visual on the Quanderhorn Lab.’ I twisted to look through the canopy glass either side and hoisted my thumb to signal to the rest of the Wing.

  One by one they peeled off into attack formation, opening the bomb bay doors as they slipped aside.

  I sighed a fathomless sigh. No escaping it now: orders are orders. With my guts knotted like an amnesiac’s handkerchief, I called out: ‘All right, pipers, this is it: let’s have the Wagner!’

  I waited. There was only silence from the back of the plane.

  I craned round.

  The pipe major, despite having lost a tooth and gained a black eye, was looking rather coy. ‘If it’s all the same to you, sir, we’d prefer to segue into “Life Upon the Wicked Stage”. Only, Angus here has been practising his fingerwork and—’

  ‘This isn’t a matinée at the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] Victoria Palace! You’ll do as you’re ordered, you check-skirted drunkards! And while I’m at it, can one of you, just one of you, for once in your life introduce yourself to a pair of [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] underpants ?’

  There was a brooding silence behind me. I thought for one dreadful moment that I’d gone too far, and I’d wind up with an angry Scotsman’s dirk in my back.

  Then, mercifully, the pipes started up, and the strains of the ‘Valkyries’ swelled through the cabin.

  I began the final descent . . .

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  From Troy’s Big Bumper Drawing Book

  [PICTURE OF A STICK MAN BEING SENT ALONG A PHONE WIRE, LABELLED ‘ME!’]

  Its grate! Im beeing sendid down a fone wirr. Its dangerus, Pops sez. Hee went larst. Gerk went firs. He smells. He shoutid O No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no. I don think he wontid to go firs. I wontid to go. Its grate. Wil I bee verry long an thin when I gett two the uther end? I hop so. I cud go up chimernees lik Farther Crismus. Only bakwoods

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Mooday the rth of Phobos, Martian Year 5972 Pink

  Secret Report to Martian Command, by Guuuurk ‘the Valiant’, also called: ‘Guuuurk the Dauntless’ and ‘Guuuurk the Dreadnaught’. Holder of the Imperial Star (23rd Class), the Imperial Leaf (honorary only), and the Grand Jewel-Encrusted Imperial Gold Wedge (temporarily in pawn shop) (all rescinded by Emperor pending embezzlement investigations).

  When the Professor explained exactly what was in the cellar, you can imagine how overjoyed and delighted I was to discover we were on our way to the Most Dangerous Place in the Universe.

  In the unlikely event we were to succeed in preventing the destruction of the entire fabric of reality, we would merely be blown to pieces by vast barrages of enormous bombs.

  A glorious death, in any eventuality.

  Eager to seize the honour of this hideous fate for the glory of Mars, I insisted, nay, insisted , on entering the Not Entirely tested Matter Transfuser ahead of all the Terraneans, despite their desperate pleading with me not to do so. Anyone who knows me well would confirm that I laugh at Danger, and guffaw at Death! I also chortle at Horror, chuckle at Torment and grin wryly at Hideous Dismemberment.

  I stepped jauntily into the booth, and saluted jovially. ‘Toodle pip!’ I chirped. ‘I’ll see you all in Bzingador.’

  Bzingador! The poor saps! Every Martian knows the sign on the Great Black Door reads: ‘No Blubber Beasts, Scum Slugs or Earthlings’.

  Still, I didn’t mention that.

  You have to keep the troops’ spirits up, don’t you?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  From the journal of Brian Nylon, 6th January, 1952 – [cont’d]

  To decide who went through the machine first, Guuuurk insisted upon the Martian game of ‘ABC – That’s Definitely Not Me’, but we had no time for his monkey business, and despite his ferocious remonstrations – or to be more accurate pathetic begging – we bundled him straight in.

  I elected to go next.

  This time, I found being disintegrated into my component atoms not quite so pleasant an experience. Rather like having every single bone in your body simultaneously smashed with a toffee hammer, then being shoved into a toothpaste tube which someone then stamps on with enormous hobnail boots.

  I arrived in the assembling booth feeling nauseous and giddy, but I did at least seem to be in one piece.

  I pushed the glass door to step out and nearly fell over Guuuurk, who, apparently unaware he’d already been transferred, was still protesting. ‘No! No! I absolutely refuse to travel in this thing! You can’t send a living person through a copper wire!’

  Jenkins turned from concealing what looked like an empty bottle amongst the straw lining an empty rat’s cage. He over-enunciated, in that way dipsomaniacs do: ‘Ah! Mr. Guuuurk! Are you all right?’

  ‘ All right? Look at this !’ He swept his hand in the direction of his legs.

  Jenkins blinked at them. ‘Never fear, sir, we can soon put your trousers back on the right way.’

  ‘It’s not my trousers!’ Guuuurk slapped his groin. ‘Those are my buttocks ! My entire lower half is on backwards!’

  There was a sort of fizzing, popping sound, and Gemma arrived in the booth behind me.

  ‘Are you all there?’ I asked.

  She patted herself down. ‘I think so. That was . . . disturbing.’

  ‘Get out of my way!’ Guuuurk waved his hands wildly. ‘I’m going back through that thing until my feet point the right way! How on earth can I tie my shoelaces when they’re round the back? I shall have to wear my boudoir slip-ons outside, like a louche Italian roué!’

  He marched off resolutely in completely the opposite direction, the back of his head hitting the wall with some force. ‘Hang it all!’ he wailed, rubbing his pate.

  Troy popped into view, holding the bucket.

  ‘Wow!’ he grinned, wide-eyed.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Gemma interjected. ‘That was great.’

  ‘Wasn’t it, though?’ Troy looked down at his body and frowned. ‘Aww! I’m still exactly the same!’

  ‘Oh, rub it in, why don’t you?’ Guuuurk staggered backwards and forwards, like a remote-controlled toy robot being operated by a small, tired child on Christmas morning after an accidental box of chocolate liqueurs. ‘Blast! I’ll never get the hang of this.’

  ‘Shall I hit you in the face with a shovel again?’ Troy offered with genuine concern.

  ‘No! How is that supposed to help, for Phobos’ sake ?’

  We were all silenced by the arrival of Quanderhorn himself, who was in no mood for levity.

  ‘Jenkins, put your boots on, you idle man, and hand out the black goggles and sound-deadening helmets.’

  ‘Sound-deadening helmets?’ Gemma glanced at me.

  ‘There m
ay be . . .’ Perhaps the others didn’t notice Quanderhorn’s almost imperceptible hesitation, but I did. ‘. . . temporal hallucinations down there, and we can’t risk them disorienting you. Not at this critical moment.’

  Temporal hallucinations indeed! He knew jolly well what was down there, and he knew jolly well they were real.

  He slickly moved on: ‘Troy, bring the Gallus Tempus . We have to get to the cellar and start bailing as soon as humanly possible. The rest of you will need to take over in turns. This way.’

  He raised a section of carpet in the corner, wrenched open the trapdoor concealed beneath, and disappeared down some rough wooden steps, followed by Troy tugging a wildly tottering Guuuurk. ‘How am I supposed to run down stairs when I can only see where I’ve been ?’ he wailed.

  I made to follow, but Gemma caught my arm and in a confidential tone asked: ‘You never said – what was it your duplicate told you back there?’

  Now it was my turn to hesitate.

  ‘He told me,’ I replied honestly, but not quite fully, ‘where I could find all the answers I sought. The answers to everything.’

  ‘ Lab-Busting bomber squadron ninety seconds away .’

  ‘Not that it will matter if we all get blown to smithereens first.’

  There was a scream and a clattering noise below us, and Guuuurk yelled: ‘Who left that beastly invisible shield there?’

  We descended breathlessly through the gloom towards the faint blue glow from the cavern at the base.

  By the time we arrived in the cellar, a begoggled Troy was already jamming the helmet and specs onto the protesting Martian. I gratefully accepted my own from Jenkins – I had no desire to repeat the mind-warping experience that close proximity to the time tanks had induced the last time I’d been in there.

  ‘ Bombers three minutes away. ’ The metallic voice paused, and in a new tone announced: ‘ You’re not getting out of this one, Professor. I’m handing in my resignation and leaving the building. ’

  ‘You can’t leave the building, Delores!’ Quanderhorn yelled as we all lurched into the frightful chamber itself. ‘You’re completely synthetic.’

  There was a horrible, crackling pause. ‘ Now you tell me! ’

  The goggles didn’t exactly black everything out – I could easily perceive the others and the outlines of the vast storage tanks. In the helmet there was mercifully no sound from those dread phantasms, but Quanderhorn’s voice came over loud and clear.

  ‘Troy, take the bucket over to that tank, and up the access ladder.’ I made out the blurred outline of the Professor as he grabbed a sturdy lever. ‘When I open it up, you’ll have to start bailing the time into the bucket for all you’re worth.’

  ‘Do you know?’ Guuuurk was staring down at his front. ‘I’d never realised my bottom was so extraordinarily dashed attractive! It’s usually round the back, you see.’

  ‘I’m on it, Pops!’ Troy shouted, shimmying lithely up the ladder.

  He reached the top with astonishing speed, and I began to believe there could really be a chance we might, just might survive this.

  Then the first bomb struck.

  Although we didn’t technically hear it, it felt like we did, and the ground shook mightily under our feet.

  ‘Well, I’m luckier than you chaps!’ Guuuurk announced rather bitterly. ‘If I bend forward, I can now literally kiss my arse goodbye.’

  A second, stronger tremor.

  Cracks networked across the ceiling, and chunks of limestone and chalk dust started showering down on us.

  Gemma slipped her hand into mine. Even though the circumstances were dire, I still felt that amazing electric frisson at the touch of it. I squeezed it back gently.

  Then another, more violent blast.

  Then another.

  They were coming every few seconds now. Each one closer than the last, each one bringing bigger chunks crashing all around.

  Troy yelled: ‘Pops! What are you waiting for? Pull the switch!’

  The Professor’s hand was frozen on the lever. His whole body was shaking, shucking off clouds of chalk dust. Was I going insane, or was he actually laughing?

  ‘ What the devil is so funny, Quanderhorn? ’ I screamed over the deafening avalanche.

  ‘To think, that I, of all people,’ he grinned bizarrely, ‘should finally run out of . . .

  7

  Time

  Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.

  Seneca, Natural Questions

  Chapter One

  Note from Dr. Virginia Whyte to Brian. December 31st, 1952 – Iteration 65

  Dearest B,

  I know this may sound the most appalling cliché, but these really will be the last words I shall ever write.

  Last night, I finally worked up the gumption to visit the cellar. As you know, Darius guards the access like Cerberus himself, but after some surreptitious nocturnal snooping, I found there is, indeed, a secret entrance.

  No. I shan’t tell you how to find it – you must never, ever go down there.

  You would never be the same again.

  Can Q’horn have any notion what he’s done? The casual, unspeakable horror of it?

  The lives unlived! The destinies unfulfilled!

  I cannot stand by and let this continue. What I must do to myself is abominable. But I fear it’s the only way I can make myself strong enough to literally beat the clock. To stop the man I was meant to love.

  This ends tonight.

  To slay a monster I must, myself, become a monster.

  Forgive me, Brian. If you could have seen them, you’d understand.

  The children.

  The poor, beautiful children I was meant to have with Darius. Who never got to be. In that life we should have had together.

  Your dear friend,

  V.

  Appendix One

  Transcription of transmission from Advanced Lunar Station Q, translated by Gargantua: the Linguaphonic Quanderlator (Estimated Earth date: Saturday 5th January, 1952 – iteration 66)

  TEE-POL: Hello? Hello? Is there any [PROFANITY EXPUNGED]there?

  POL-TEE: This place is a [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] hole. Can only have been built by those Tellurian bastards.

  TEE-POL: Shut your fetid crackhole! I’m trying to send a message, here!

  POL-TEE: 400 years we spent repairing that bastard ship! Finally get it working, go out for ten minutes to forage supplies, some [PARTICULARLY LARGE SEXUAL ORGAN]’s nicked it! *

  TEE-POL: I said I’m trying to send a distress message. To save our lives . If that’s all [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] right with you, your ‘majesty’.

  POL-TEE: [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] you and [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] your [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] message

  TEE-POL: Do you want to do it? Do you want to send the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] message?

  POL-TEE: What am I? Head of Interplanetary Diplomacy all of a sudden?

  TEE-POL: Well, not ‘all of a sudden’ exactly, sputum brain – it’s the third badge on your [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] sleeve. Look, it says right there: ‘Mercurian [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] Diplomatic Corps.’

  [SILENCE]

  POL-TEE: Well they’d never let you in, would they? You’ve got no [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] diplomacy at all.

  TEE-POL: I can be [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] diplomatic. Ask any [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] alien bastard.

  POL-TEE: What a load of [REPRODUCTIVE BODY PARTS]! Remember your interview? You shat in the face of the Venusian ambassador.

  TEE-POL: For the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] thousandth time - I thought that was the official greeting !

  POL-TEE: Oh, just forget this. The Tellurians aren’t going to rescue us. Let’s just grab supplies and find another ship to fix.

  TEE-POL: Yes, then after we’ve spent another 400 years repairing
it, you can forget to lock that one, too!

  POL-TEE: Oh, I’m in charge of locking the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] ship now, am I?

  TEE-POL: What d’you think that badge is for? A rocket ship with a lock next to it - Put a Chain Round My [ERECT MALE SEXUAL ORGAN]?

  POL-TEE: Well, you do have a . . .

  TEE-POL: That’s nothing to [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] do with it! Just snag what you can and let’s get out of here.

  POL-TEE: Hang on, there’s a bath here. I haven’t had a bath in centuries.

  TEE-POL: Really? That’s not a big secret to me. Or anyone within nasal range.

  [SOUND OF RUNNING WATER]

  TEE-POL: What the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] are you doing ?

  POL-TEE: Have they got any soap, the dirty mother-[PROFANITY EXPUNGED]? Here – this packet’s got a picture of a bath on it. Must be bubble bath?

  TEE-POL: Seriously? You’re seriously going to have a bath?

  [RIPPING OPEN PACKET]

  POL-TEE: Oh. They look like bath bombs. [SNIFF] Smell a bit [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] porky.

  TEE-POL: Just [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] get on with it. [SPLASH]

  [PAUSE]

  [MUCH GRUNTING, SNORTING AND SPLASHING]

  POL-TEE: Oh crap.

  TEE-POL: What the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] have you done now?

  POL-TEE: There’s hundreds of the bastards! They’re stampeding.

  TEE-POL: What are they? What are they?

  POL-TEE: It’s a [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] Tellurian trap, the evil scum! I told you we should have blasted the planet to smithereens.