Armageddon: The Musical (Armageddon Trilogy)

by Robert Rankin

  ‘Maybe it shouldn’t. How should I know? But it is and possibly it always has been. So what are you going to do? Change the world?’

  ‘I might just do that,’

  ‘No. Please, please.’ The barman clutched at his sides, laughing hideously. ‘Too much fine humour in one day. Change the world indeed! A crapulous comic, so you are.’ He topped Rex’s cup without charge, and sauntered away chuckling immoderately. Rex stubbed out his cigarette upon a leg of his radiation suit and thought grim thoughts.

  A sudden altercation now occurred which sent Rex ducking for cover. Between the plastic flaps voices were being raised, blows exchanged. The barman made haste along the counter and brought a knobkerrie into play. Rex peeped over a tabletop. Just don’t let it be Rambo Bloodaxe, he prayed without shame.

  ‘I’m only doing my job,’ wailed a small voice.

  ‘Look at my Goddamn suit,’ came a larger voice. A small head was soundly cuffed, and its owner, the pail-toting lounge boy, entered the inner flap with a kind of awkward cartwheel which terminated in concussion against the bar counter. The owner of the head-cuffing hand now followed the inadequate acrobat into the bar. He was a tall, handsome young man, wearing a magnificent, if now slightly sodden, gold lame suit. And Rex knew that face immediately. It was the face of the mystery man himself. The face of the photograph. Killer side-burns, thought Rex.

  ‘What’s your game then?’ The barman shinned over the bar counter and bore down upon the lounge boy’s attacker, knobkerrie raised.

  ‘Take a hike buddy.’ The mystery man threw an unusual punch, which came with as much surprise to the barman as it did to Rex. Only more painfully so. He then brought a blue suede shoe into action. Rex watched in fascination. Old Adam Earth favoured the ancient Tibetan fighting technique known as Dimac, when disposing of the Dalai’s would-be assassins, but this was something far more convincing.

  ‘Goes with the sickle,’ said the mystery man, in an enigmatic fashion. Rex pondered upon a course of action. However the large amount of Tomorrowman Brew now burning its way through his stomach lining made cogitation difficult.

  ‘That’s him, chief.’ Rex heard the curious voice, although he couldn’t see its owner.

  ‘You certain?’ The mystery man addressed this question to the air.

  ‘Sure thing chief. The old dame in the bunker showed us the picture, remember?’

  ‘He looks like plop.’

  ‘Plop?’ The voice chuckled. ‘Hardly surprising. Best tackle him now, eh?’

  ‘No sweat.’ Elvis approached Rex Mundi. Rex sought invisibility without success. ‘Hey fella, I’d like a word with you.’ Rex weighed up his chances. The barman was down and out, the punters, momentarily interrupted from their viewing, had now returned to it. This was what was once called a one-to-one situation. Rex raised an unconvincing fist.

  ‘Have a care,’ he said. ‘I know Dimac.’

  Elvis raised calming palms. ‘I ain’t looking to fight. I just want to move mouth with you, is all.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Talk. Sit down, no problem.’ Rex sat down. He almost made the chair. Elvis helped him up on to it. ‘There. You okay?’

  ‘I don’t feel all that chipper as it happens.’

  ‘You’ll be fine. The name’s Rex, right?’

  Rex nodded carefully. ‘I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced.’

  ‘The King, just call me the King.’

  Why? wondered Rex. ‘As you please,’ he said. ‘So what do you have on your mind, your majesty?’

  ‘Revolution,’ said Elvis Presley.

  20

  . . . the records? You mean the albums, right? Everybody always asks about the albums. A quarter, maybe half a million of them, I guess, and growing all the time. And he kept them moving around, never in the same place for long. They were stored at the foundation at the first off, he had them guarded day and night. Then he said that they should be moved out. They went into containers, we worked in shifts, took us nearly three weeks to load them up. Then they travelled. All over the country. All new, all mint condition, still in the cellophane wraps, never played. Imagine a collection like that and he never played them. This would be late in sixty-eight and he was getting real reclusive by then. We’d get phone calls and stuff, nothing in writing of course. Sometimes we wouldn’t hear from him for weeks. And there were a lot of hassles. A lot of people asking awkward questions, and none of us had any answers. Things got real bad about then. People stopped smiling, do you know what I mean ?

  The Suburban Book of the Dead

  ‘Kidnap the Dalai Lama?’ Rex clutched at his narcotized head. ‘That is what you are saying?’ He examined his fingers; between them were small knots of dead hair.

  ‘Sure thing, buddy.’

  ‘I would suggest that it was anything but. But why him, why not Pope Joan or L. Ron Hubbard the twenty-third?’

  ‘All in good time. I gotta personal score to settle.’

  Rex could feel the room circling. ‘Let me get this straight. You are telling me that the Dalai Lama is the what?’

  The enlightened look that some had come to know, if not perhaps to love, was once more upon the face of Elvis Presley. ‘Ant-eye-Christ. Ant-eye-Christ.’

  ‘Antichrist. Sorry, this is all somewhat unexpected.’

  ‘I have seen the future. It’s much like the past, only worse.’

  ‘I never expected much else. Who are you?’

  ‘I told you. Are you sure we got the right guy?’ The question wasn’t directed toward Rex.

  ‘Sure thing, chief. He’s your man.’

  ‘Who said that?

  ‘I have a sprout in my head,’ Mr Presley explained.

  ‘Ah,’ said Rex. It was a very meaningful ‘ah’. ‘I have to take a spray now and very probably throw up. If you will excuse me?’

  ‘I’ll bust your head if you try to leave.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Now let me just recap. Revolution, kidnap, the Antichrist, and a sprout in your head.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  ‘Friend,’ said Rex. ‘I don’t know what you are on. But it certainly is not what I’m on.’ With no further comments to make, Rex fell forward across the table and from there to the floor.

  ‘He’s out of it for now, chief,’ came a voice from the rear of Presley’s skull. ‘Best away to a place of safety with him until he sobers up.’

  ‘We could have a drink before we go.’

  The Time Sprout drew Presley’s attention to Rex, who was now puking silently in his narcotic slumbers. ‘Best not, eh?’

  ‘So then what?’

  ‘So then he helped Rex up and they went off screen, sir.’ Fergus smiled, a little too complacently for Mungo’s liking. ‘We can’t be everywhere. Most places, yes, but not everywhere.’

  Mungo sniffed pollen. ‘We refoliated that planet, every leaf, flower, mould and fungus all broadcasting back to us. There can’t be any blank spots, surely?’

  ‘Well, we’ve lost Rex before. There are dead areas all over, we never needed to pay them much attention before now.’

  ‘So we can’t see what they are up to?’

  ‘Not until they break cover again. But I might suggest the suspense angle. Both of them are geared up to take some sort of revenge, don’t you think?’

  ‘Kindly expound further.’

  ‘Rex Mundi must be pretty put out over his aunt, and Elvi. . .’

  ‘Yes Fergus, the mercurial and inspired Mr Presley?’

  ‘Bit of an unknown quantity, I agree. But I’m sure he can be chivvied along in the right direction.’

  ‘I can’t imagine upon what evidence you could possibly base that supposition.’

  ‘Oh, wheels are in motion,’ lied Fergus Shaman. ‘Any more memos from Jason Morgawr?’

  ‘Hourly,’ Mungo replied. ‘Although none telling me the all important news that he has stopped the spread of the virus. Most read like the outpourings of some crazed evangelist. If I were
an uncharitable chap I might be led to the conclusion that Mr Morgawr was pulling some kind of fast one. Your thoughts on this, Fergus.’

  ‘Mine, as ever, mirror your own, sir. A shady customer and no mistake. One of the late Mr Garstang’s confidants, or so I understand.’

  ‘Well, you just keep a close eye on him. Let me know exactly what he’s up to, there’s a good fellow.’

  ‘I certainly will, sir. Something of an upstart, our Mr Morgawr. Not of the old school, like us.’

  ‘Maybe so, just keep me informed.’

  Fergus smiled his friendly smile. Mungo Madoc was clearly in a full-time state of confusion. If he played his cards right all manner of possibilities might present themselves.

  I’m off the hook here, thought Fergus Shaman.

  Oh no, you’re not, thought Mungo Madoc.

  ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaagh, ow and ouch.’ A good many hours had passed away, but these did nothing to spare Rex Mundi from a hangover of epic proportions. Rex tore at his skull, uprooting further discouraging clumps of hair. ‘Where am I?’

  Elvis stirred life into the fire. Above it hung a blackening coffee pot. ‘How are you doing?’ asked Elvis.

  ‘Not well,’ Rex did some futile eye focusing. ‘Where am I, or did I ask that already?’

  ‘You did. You are down below.’ Elvis managed to get the sufficiently sombre tone into that. ‘Down in the depths. You’ve been here before, haven’t you?’

  Rex nodded, he’d been here before, although he couldn’t recall exactly how. ‘Is it safe?’

  ‘Free from the bio-scan.’

  ‘The bio-what? No, don’t tell me.’

  ‘Have some coffee. There’s a whole mess of things I gotta tell you.’

  Mess is probably right, thought Rex, which was probably right.

  Dan fed the slim beads into his ears and jacked into the holophon . . . Well since my baby left me ... It felt even worse than before. Closer somehow and more threatening. The words approached him at great speed, as if wishing to physically assault him. Where once they had been haunting and melancholy, now they were down-right offensive. They buffeted him in the face, probed through the pores of his skin. Invaded him. They lay in his stomach like leaden weights. Dan jerked and twitched. It hurt. And the face of SUN leered at him. Put the blue suede boot in and kicked him again and again and again.

  ‘And that,’ said Rex, when Elvis had finally run himself dry of exposition, ‘is a mindbender to end all mind-benders.’

  ‘How do you think I feel?’ Elvis sipped cold coffee. Rex turned his chipped cup between his unwashed fingers. Another nail was coming loose.

  ‘And so to cut a long story short,’ said he, ‘you were kidnapped in 1958 by a visitor from outer space, who travelled back through time by means of a sprout, which you now have in your head.’ Elvis nodded. ‘And this visitor from space and his chums have manipulated the entirety of human history so they can broadcast it as a television show on their planet.’ Elvis nodded yet again. Rex shook his head. ‘And the present situation on Earth is somehow all your fault because you joined the Army.’

  Elvis hung his head. ‘Joined up. Led an entire generation to disaster.’

  ‘So what are you doing here? Surely you should be back in nineteen-whatever, not joining the Army.’

  ‘Oh and I will. But I gotta sort things out here first, just to be on the safe side.’

  ‘And this sorting out of things includes the over-throw of the Dalai Lama, whom you claim to be the Antichrist?’

  Elvis grinned. ‘That’s it. I had me a revelation see. The Presleys belong to the First Assembly of God. My family have revelations all the time.’

  ‘Yes,’ Rex agreed, ‘although this is something of a revolutionary revelation.’

  ‘Revolutionary revelation.’ Elvis chewed it over. ‘I like the way you think, brother,’

  ‘Dan is a shit,’ said Rex, in all candour, ‘but the Antichrist, I think you are on a wrong’n there. He’s a Buddhist for one thing.’ Elvis didn’t appear to be listening. He was whistling ‘Dixie’. Rex put aside his cup and climbed carefully to his feet. Patting down the knees of his radiation suit. ‘Well it’s all most interesting and I really do wish you the best of luck. You must let me know how you get on.’

  The whistler ceased his whistling. ‘Going somewhere?’ he asked.

  ‘Thought I’d take a bit of a stroll. Thanks for the coffee.’

  ‘He’s going to make a run for it, chief,’ came a small green voice.

  ‘How do you do that?’

  ‘He thinks you are a stone-bonker, chief.’

  ‘Should I give him a little smack?’ Elvis asked.

  ‘I’d give him a large one, if I were you.’

  ‘Easy now,’ Rex put up his hands. ‘No need for any violence. We’re both on the same side really. As it happens,’

  ‘Show him your doodad, chief.’ Rex flinched. A homosexual rapist, that was all he needed.

  ‘The doodad, sure thing,’ Elvis delved into a golden pocket and brought out the small black contrivance which he had lifted whilst on Phnaargos.

  ‘Figured no-one would ever believe a Goddamn word I said,’ said the King, ‘so I took me a souvenir. Cop your whack for this, our kid,’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Sorry Buddy. It’s the time travel, I’ve picked up all sorts of weird stuff,’

  Rex drew back. ‘Diseases and such like?’

  ‘No. Figures of speech. And other figures. Equations and stuff,’

  Elvis passed the doodad to Rex, who took it gingerly. ‘What does it do?’

  ‘It’s a pocket transceiver. Muilti-band. Bio-plasmic, of course. Utilising a cross polarization of beta-particles with minimal doppler shift, due to its advanced pseudopodia,’ said the Time Sprout, informatively. ‘Phnaargian state-of-the-art stuff, chief,’

  Rex nodded thoughtfully. ‘Has it macro-equalisation through quasi-spectrum nexus bicordials?’

  ‘Er, um?’

  ‘Does the rheostat impede throughout the red-diactinic field variables?’

  ‘Er, um?’

  ‘You looking for a fat lip, buddy?’ Elvis asked.

  ‘Sorry,’ Rex replied. ‘But I draw the line at being talked down to by a vegetable,’

  ‘He’s a great little guy when you get to know him,’

  Rex let that one slide by. ‘So, what does this do then?’

  ‘Just press the red button and adjust the distance control,’ Elvis told him. Rex held the thing at arm’s length and did so. Light emanated from the slim black box and formed into a fuzzy but self-contained hologram of the outside world. Rex was entranced. Holographics were hardly new to him, but this was something more. Live holographics? That couldn’t be done, could it? He twiddled the distance knob and brought the image to clarity. It focused and then passed on. Through walls, across broken streets, into dank homesteads, through further walls. On and on. Rex turned it in a circle. The image remained before him, but the outside world span through it. The Nemesis Bunker appeared upon the horizon. A great concrete pyramid, its peak piercing the cloud cover. Rex angled up the doodad and zoomed in upon it. The roving eye, drawing its information from the mould and lichen, shrubs and mosses, penetrated the bunker’s outer defences. Pierced the heating ducts and inner partitions, crossed the studio floor. Entered the sanctum of the Dalai Lama.

  ‘There’s a sound button,’ Elvis indicated, Rex pressed.

  ‘It’s down at the end of lonely street at Heartbreak Hotel.’

  ‘Old Shep!!!,’ cried Mr Presley. ‘That’s one of mine. That son-of-a-bitch is playing my music. Hear that, fella. Am I the King or am I the King? Or what?’

  ‘But that’s classical music. I’ve heard that stuff on the Educational Channel when I was a child. Uncle Tony loved all that. But it must be . . .’

  ‘Must be?’

  ‘Must be a hundred years old.’

  ‘Very nearly. Ninety-four to be exact. Recorded in Nashville, Scotty Moore on guitar, Bill Black on
slapback bass. First number one single, first gold record.’ Elvis sang along with himself. Rex’s jaw fell. Only one man in history ever had a voice like that. And Rex was now staring at that very fellow. The goalposts had just been shifted. As the saying of the day went; this man was the real Lieutenant McCoy.

  ‘Then you really are . . .’ Rex’s voice did all the appropriate quivering and quavering. ‘Really are . . .’

  ‘Really am, buddy.’

  ‘Ian Paisley,’ gasped Rex, wringing the final bit of life out of what had been from the start, a very very lame joke.

  21

  ... sure, I heard about the records. Because it’s my business, a collection like that. Muso’s dream. The word was that he had the lot. And all the bootlegs. Out-takes. Gash over-dubs, backing tapes. Ten years worth, or so it was said. I’m talking 1970 now, you know, when the place went up. Well, a guy I know said that He was in there, The God. It was a major explosion. Blew in the bar windows. I got cut with the flying glass. See this scar. And this. They say it was the CIA or the FBI but who can say? Anyhow, there’s a lot of theories, you can believe what you like. The God got killed, the God didn’t get killed, the records went up in the blast or they didn’t. Strangest one I heard was that the entire collection was some kind of computer program, right? Sounds off the wall, I know, but consider this. If you take the complete musical output of an entire generation, the whole damn lot, then don’t you have something? A kind of a soul, perhaps. The soul of a generation. I mean it’s there in the music. We all know it’s in the music, somewhere, right. Anybody who’s ever really listened knows it’s there. Somewhere.

  The Suburban Book of the Dead

  Rex zoomed in upon the bed chamber of his sister. She was indulging in her second favourite pastime. Her first, Rex considered, to be the persecution of himself.

  ‘Focus that up, boy,’ choked Elvis. ‘Lord alive, look at that baby.’

  ‘You see, I actually did you in history,’ Rex explained. ‘My aunty,’ he paused a moment in sad reflection. ‘My aunty was a fundamentalist for a while, one of Hubbard’s. When L. Ron the third amalgamated with the Gospel Church of America, wherever America was, back in the nineties, they were very big on the musical message.’