The Sprouts of Wrath

by Robert Rankin

  ‘Then it is . . .’ the word did not come easily to Pooley’s lips, ‘. . . alive?’

  ‘Not quite, it is dormant, moribund, if you like, it sleeps.’

  ‘I do not like.’ Jim tottered along behind the Professor, who moved with certain, long strides. ‘What when it wakes?’

  ‘That, my dear Jim, is what we are here to prevent. We must not allow Kaleton to activate it, animate it, whatever you will.’

  ‘This big shot of his that will ring out across the universe?’

  ‘The very same. A shot of energy, some activating chemical agent, or pre-programmed codification. Whatever it might be we must prevent it.’

  ‘It’s ever so quiet,’ said Jim. There must be thousands of people up here, how come we haven’t seen anybody?’

  ‘I would suggest the use of a soporific gas, introduced into the air-conditioning at night to prevent any of the athletes wandering. We will not enter the dormitories to find out. Now wait.’

  Jim looked up, somehow they had now entered the great arena. As usual Jim had been doing too much talking and not enough paying attention. He was lost, and now he was speechless. A low gasp arose simultaneously from two throats. They had entered a world of dream. Above them spread the weather-dome but from below it did not look like a glass canopy, more like a transparent membrane, breathing gently. And the arena itself, its scale was daunting, impossible to take in at a single viewing. The seating rose in great rings, rank upon rank, tier upon tier about a circus maximus built for Titans. The scope and symmetry was fearsome, yet it was fascinating.

  ‘Oh indeed,’ said Professor Slocombe. ‘Oh yes, indeed.’

  ‘Why?’ Pooley asked. ‘Why do all this if it is only meant to destroy?’

  ‘It can destroy a million people here at a single go. But the whole point is that the entire world will be watching. More people watch the start of the games than any other single event, they would have to have something to look at.’

  ‘It is inhuman, all too big, no human architect was a part of this.’

  ‘No, Jim, it is as if all previous architecture was just a dry run for this. Baalbek, the pyramids, the temples of the Incas, the great cathedrals, all leading towards,’ he gestured to include all that he could, ‘a temple for the gods.’

  Jim’s head swam. ‘You are talking about religion again.’

  ‘Not religion. An ideology perhaps, a greater understanding, a greater knowledge, but not one born of men. Worship of his gods has driven man to his most abominable of crimes, but also to his greatest of achievements. But this is not the work of man, but that of a higher order of being.’

  ‘Esoterica was never my strong point, but this is the work of the devil.’

  ‘It is all here, Jim, a masterplan, a great formula, the culmination of a hundred thousand years of accumulated thought and knowledge.’

  ‘Then we are finished, Kaleton told the truth. Those that would walk with the gods require somewhat superior footwear. Let’s go out now, Professor, warn the army or something, take our chances on the ground.’

  ‘No, Jim.’ The Professor held up his hand. ‘All this can act for good as well as for evil. We can save the games, save mankind. This is the product of High Magick. Knowledge is neither good nor evil, it is in how it is applied.’

  ‘As ever you have grasped but a tiny morsel of reality,’ came a voice from everywhere and nowhere. ‘You think to construct a map of the universe, having nothing but the plan of your own backyard.’ Pooley turned about in circles. The Professor stared into space. ‘Proud little man,’ the voice continued, ‘puffed up with your own importance, creating God in your own image.’

  ‘I am unable to see you,’ said the Professor. ‘Will you show yourself or must I call out to you in the darkness?’ The air buzzed with an unnatural electricity.

  ‘Proud little man,’ said the voice.

  ‘Do you fear me so much that you dare not show yourself?’

  ‘Fear is a human concept, Professor.’

  ‘As is love. But you would know nothing of that.’

  ‘Love, fear, hatred, all masks and blinkers, walls of delusion hiding a higher reality.’

  Pooley strained his eyes to see something, anything, but the stadium swept away in all directions, fading into hazy perspectives. The owner or owners of the voice remained hidden to view. Jim shivered. There was a terrible B movie banality about Kaleton’s conversation. One which, to Jim’s extensive knowledge of the genre, generally terminated in such phrases as ‘so die, puny earthling,’ or something of a similarly unpleasant ilk.

  ‘What do you want here, Professor? Have you come to plead for your precious hurnanity? Or perhaps for yourself alone?’

  ‘On the contrary, I have come to issue you a challenge. There are old scores to be settled.’

  ‘Old scores? I am intrigued.’ The voice came close at Pooley’s elbow and the lad leapt back, keeping his failing bladder in check. Kaleton was sitting not two yards away in one of the rear stadium seats. Near enough to leap upon and kill, thought Jim, although he didn’t feel personally up to the challenge. ‘I thought perhaps you came in peace for all mankind.’ The mocking tone in Kaleton’s death-rattle voice grated on Jim’s nerves, but the Professor seemed oblivious to it.

  ‘Hardly that, Kaleton. I come to exact retribution. To punish you for your crimes and to finish a job which should have been finished a long time ago.’

  Laughter exploded from Kaleton’s hideous face and the stench of his breath reached Jim, curling his nostrils and crossing his eyes. ‘And how do you mean to go about it? You are in my world now, I can smash you whenever I choose.’

  ‘Perhaps and perhaps not, but hardly a victory upon a grand scale. I propose a far more noble scheme and one which I think might appeal to your sense of grandiosity as well as of justice.’

  ‘Speak on.’

  ‘I propose a battle of champions, to be held here and now.’

  ‘Champions, battle, what is all this?’

  ‘The protagonists are well known to each of us, light against darkness, good against evil, your man against mine.’

  ‘Men? What men?’

  ‘The sleeping Kings of Brentford!’ said Professor Slocombe.

  ‘What?’ Kaleton’s head shrank into his shoulders, his chest bulging out to receive it, then he sprang from his seat to land upon all-fours. ‘You know of this?’

  ‘Of the old battle, of the sanctuary, yes I know.’

  Kaleton bounced and shook. Low howls and guttural sounds broke from his twisted mouth. Jim wondered where the lavs were. With a shudder, Kaleton rose once more upon two feet. He stared at the Professor, trembling and shaking. There was a battle once,’ he whispered, ‘long, long ago, when your people and mine fought, but then . . .’

  ‘But then you were defeated.’

  ‘Defeated, never! Look where you stand, Professor, does this look like defeat to you?’

  ‘Then you have nothing to fear, you may enjoy your sweet revenge.’ With that the Professor turned upon his heel and strode off down the long walkway towards the arena. This is my challenge, Kaleton. Take it if you dare.’

  Jim watched Kaleton. He was perched upon his crooked heels, frozen as if lost in thought. In reminiscence, perhaps? The Professor strode on. Jim glanced down, the Gladstone bag was there at his feet. The old man had gone off without it. In his recklessness he had surely left himself undefended. Jim was moved to take action, but lacked the wherewithal. Should he open the bag? Chuck the whole lot at Kaleton? Or simply run like mad?

  Without warning Kaleton shot past him, bowling him from his feet. Jim felt that hideous strength, the raw elemental power. It fairly put the wind up him. Climbing into the nearest seat Jim flopped, powerless to do anything other than to look on.

  Moving with a fearsome energy Kaleton bounded down the walkway after the Professor. ‘Raise your warriors!’ he crowed. ‘Raise your dead king, your champion! This time, the reckoning will be swift and bloody.’

 
Pooley sank into his seat and sought his hip-flask. And now Professor Slocombe was standing upon the artificial turf of the sports ground, arms raised towards the sky. Kaleton bounded about him like a monstrous hound, calling insults and provocations. And light was growing in the arena. A curious glow illuminated the two tiny figures, foreshortened to Jim’s fearful gaze. Pooley popped the cork from the hip flask. ‘I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight,’ he wondered.

  Professor Slocombe mouthed the syllables of an ancient spell:

  ‘"And good King Bran had a battle axe

  King Balin a mighty sword

  And the warrior kings rode out to war

  And they met at the river’s ford."’

  And there came, as sounds and as movements, a great restlessness within the very bowels of the earth, a rumbling beneath the streets of Brentford. Old Pete’s dog Chips set up a plaintive howling which went unheard by his snoring master, the Hartnell Hear-it-all having been switched off for the night. At the pumping station, the mighty beam engine gasped in a lost Victorian voice. And beneath the water-tower something stirred. Beneath that tower of stone, forces long slumbering came into wake-fulness. A sound, a call, an awakening.

  Outside the tee-pee at the bottom of the garden, two braves ceased their dance and stood sweating beneath the stars. Their faces shone. ‘And now it begins,’ said Paul Geronimo, ‘the dance is over, the great old ones return, now it begins.’

  And so did it begin. From behind the yellow varnish of old portraits unviewed for a century in council cellars, faces gazed forth, eyes blinked open. Musty tomes and librams heaved, pages turned. Out of the coffers of the museum, dust-dry hands reached up to take rusted weapons, the rotting halberds, the lances and war-swords. Memories unstirred for a millennium, memories hidden in old walls and crumbling fallen waterfronts, in grassy mounds, in dolmens, long barrows, hill-forts, earthworks and holy groves. Memories. And the warriors beyond memory awakened, returned. The warriors arose from their unmarked graves.

  And through the walls and floors, the stairwells and window casements from out of the worn flagstones and cobbled courts, the warriors breathed life. And up through the tarmac which smothered the old thoroughfares and swallowed up the ground of Brentford, where once stretched dew-dappled hedgerows and corn-fields mellow with golden harvest reaching out to the gently flowing Thames, came Bran.

  Bran. Bran the brave and just, the slayer of men. Bran with that great head of his, which still spoke on long years after it had been parted from his body. Bran with those great arms of his, which had broken men and cradled babies. Bran with his wild blue eyes, and even wilder hair-do. Bran the blessed. Bran of old England. King Bran of Brentford.

  It was definitely him! King Bran’s great hand closed upon the shaft of his battle-axe, drawing it from its museum case. He raised it to the heavens. Stretched up his arms, those arms of his with their steely thews, their cords of muscle, their knotted, tightened sinew. Raised up that great head of his, with its wild blue eyes, sweeping whiskers and quite improbable coiffure. And he called with a cry of triumph, To arms! To arms!’

  Rune’s Raiders bumbled about in the shadow of the gasometer as a seismic tremor rumbled beneath their feet.

  ‘Something is occurring,’ said Inspectre Hovis. ‘Rune, open the door or I will not answer for my actions.’ He turned his pistol upon the mystic. ‘Make haste now or it will be the worst for you.’

  Rune threw up his arms and in desperation addressed the gasometer. ‘Open, Sesame!’ he cried. ‘Open . . . Sesame!’

  Inspectre Hovis raised his pistol. ‘You ruddy pillock!’ he cried.

  ‘And good King Bran had a snow-white steed.’ Now the warriors were mounting up their horses. Steeds reformed from the dust of ages, reanimated by the words of the Professor’s calling. And the horsemen moved out towards the stadium, towards the new lair of their ancient enemy. A dusty legion passing through a dreamworld, at once foreign, yet oddly familiar. And they were of heroic stock, sprung from that mould long broken, long crumbled into nothingness. These Knights of old England, of that world of forests and dragons, of honour and of noble deeds. Holy quests. And the dust fell away from their armour, from the dry, leather harnessings, from those regal velvets. And the golden crown of kingship, with its broken emblem, rested upon the brow of Bran. The once and future King.

  And the Kinsmen and the men-at-arms, the Knights Royal, breathed in the new air, the new unnatural air, laden with strange essences, flavours of this crude, uncertain century. And they rode on without fear. The boys were back in town!

  High in the stadium, Pooley gulped Scotch and wondered what was on the go. The Professor stood alone at the very centre of the stadium, but Kaleton was nowhere to be seen. The stadium was silent as the very grave and had just about as much to recommend it. For in the stillness there was something very bad indeed.

  ‘By the pricking of my thumbs something wicked this way comes,’ said Jim. And he wasn’t far wrong, for now came a chill wind and the sounds of distant thunder. Pooley gazed up towards the weather-dome, but it had completely dissolved away. The stadium was now open to the sky. Lightning troubled an ever-blackening firmament and the stars came and went as trailers of cloud drew across them like darting swords. ‘Looks like rain,’ said Jim ‘which would just about be my luck at present.’

  And then Jim saw it. The cruel dark shape cutting through the midnight sky. The great, crooked wings sweeping the air. The long narrow head, the trailing feet, eagle-taloned, lion-clawed. The thin, barbed tail streaming out behind. The Griffin!’ Pooley ducked down into his seat. Further praying seemed out of the question, God was no doubt sick of the sound of Jim’s voice. Pooley’s nose came into close proximity with the Gladstone bag. ‘Professor!’ Jim sprang up, scanned the arena, in search of the sage ... the old man had vanished. ‘Oh dear,’ said Jim, ‘oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’

  And now he could hear the sounds of the flapping wings and further shapes filled the sky. The legion of King Balin rode the sky above Brentford. The legion of the forever night, raised by the force-words of the arch-fiend Kaleton. And at the van upon that most terrible of beasts, rode Balin. ‘Balin of the black hood. Balin whose eye was night.’ Balin whose sword blade was the length of a man, although considerably narrower in width. King Balin of the iron tooth, the bronze cheek, the ferrous-metal jaw. Balin, the all-round bad lot. King Balin led his evil horde down towards the army of his enemy.

  ‘I am going to count to five and then I am going to shoot your head off,’ said Inspectre Hovis. ‘I should like to say that there is nothing personal in this, but I would not lie to a condemned man.’

  ‘Abracadabra Shillamalacca! Come out, come out, whoever you are!’ cried Hugo Rune.

  ‘One,’ said Hovis, ‘and I mean it.’

  ‘Shazam!’ cried Rune. ‘Higgledy-piggledy, my fat hen . . .’

  ‘Two, three . . .’ I

  ‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff . . .’

  ‘Four, fi. . .’

  ‘Look there, sir!’ shouted Constable Meek. ‘Up there, up in the sky!’

  ‘Birds?’ said Hovis, squinting up. ‘No, not birds, bats! No! Holy hell!’

  ‘And there, sir, who’s that?’

  Hovis peered about, following the constables wavering digit. On one of the high catwalks of the gasometer a solitary figure was edging along, carrying what looked to be a couple of heavy suitcases.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Hovis demanded. ‘I demand an explanation!’

  ‘What’s he doing, sir?’ The solitary figure was lowering one of the suitcases down the side of the gasometer on a length of rope.

  ‘Is this your doing, Rune? Rune, come back! Stop that man, Constable!’

  ‘Blimey,’ said Meek. ‘And will you look at that lot!’

  Along the Kew Road came the army of King Bran, riding now at the gallop. The war-horses heaved and snorted, their hooves raising sparks from the tarmac. The riders turned their noble faces towards the sky and r
aised their swords. King Bran ran a tail-comb through his gorgeous locks and urged on his charger. ‘Giddy up, Dobbin!’ he cried. ‘Good boy there, gee up!’

  Constable John Harney brought down Hugo Rune with a spectacular rugby tackle. ‘Gotcha!’ said he, quoting the notorious headline from the Sun.

  Hovis leapt up and down. ‘Arrest everybody!’ he cried. ‘Get on the walkie-talkie, Meek. I want the SPG, the SAS, the reserves, the bally Boys Brigade, get them all here!’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Meek whipped out his walkie-talkie. ‘Calling all cars,’ he said in his finest Broderick Crawford, ‘calling all cars.’

  ‘Please, sir, about this suitcase?’

  ‘What suitcase, what, Reekie?’

  ‘This suitcase, sir.’ Constable Reekie pointed to the thing which now dangled a few feet above his head.

  ‘Arrest it, boy! Arrest that holidaymaker. That case is probably full of drugs.’

  ‘It’s ticking rather loudly, sir.’

  ‘Ticking? Oh my God!’

  ‘Duck, you suckers!’ called a voice from above. ‘Hit the deck!’

  The army of King Bran reached the Arts Centre. From out the night sky their mortal enemies fell upon them. The dark creatures dropped down upon the horsemen, beaks snapping, claws crooked to kill. The legions of darkness led by their evil lord. Balin the bad. Balin with his brow of burnished copper. Balin with his nose of black lead, his navel of tungsten carbide and a rare alloy with a complicated chemical figure.

  ‘No prisoners,’ cried Balin. ‘Spare not a filling, not a spectacle-frame, kill them all, kill, kill, kill!’

  ‘Kill, kill, kill!’ echoed his men, spurring down their nightmare steeds.

  ‘God for Harry!’ cried King Bran.

  Tic-Toc-Tic-Toc went a certain suitcase.

  Professor Slocombe laid a hand upon Pooley’s shoulder. ‘I think I have him distracted,’ he told the flinching, cowering Jim. ‘We must get to work.’

  ‘All work and no play,’ said Jim painfully. ‘The hours in this job stink.’