The Mechanical Messiah and Other Marvels of the Modern Age

by Robert Rankin

  ‘We all did,’ he confessed. ‘There was no more food. We were hungry.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said the colonel. ‘Then any minute now. There was a kind of collective gasp. And the last folk alive on the Marie Lloyd were those born on Planet Earth.

  ‘Shame to see them go like that,’ said Colonel Katterfelto to Mr Cameron Bell, who was acting as co-pilot. The two sat in the cockpit. Cameron Bell looked glum.

  ‘Still,’ said the colonel, ‘accidents will happen, I suppose.’

  ‘I suppose,’ the detective agreed. ‘You all strapped in?’ the colonel asked. ‘All strapped in,’ said Mr Bell. ‘Then I will take us down.’

  ‘Just one thing,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘It has occurred to me that the Royal London Spaceport might not be now the best place to land. What with the captain of the ship missing and all those dead Jovians in the passenger compartment.

  Questions might be asked. Questions that might be difficult to answer.

  ‘Take your point,’ said the colonel. ‘Where do you fancy, then? Isle of Wight’s rather nice.’

  ‘Perhaps a little far south. How about Ealing Common?’

  ‘Splendid,’ said the colonel. ‘We’ll set down there and go our separate ways. Plenty of public transport thereabouts.’

  ‘That will be fine, then.’ Cameron Bell settled back in his seat. ‘What does the co-pilot do?’ he enquired.

  ‘Haven’t the foggiest,’ said the colonel. ‘Hold on tight now. I am taking us down.’

  Colonel Katterfelto pressed the joystick forwards. The Marie Lloyd dived into the atmosphere of Earth at a reckless speed.

  ‘Isn’t that a bit fast?’ asked Cameron Bell.

  ‘Sensitive controls,’ said the colonel. ‘Just need to straighten her up a little.’

  Flames suddenly appeared before the cockpit. There was a definite feeling of heat.

  ‘Slow down,’ cried Cameron Bell.

  ‘Trying to,’ cried the colonel in reply. ‘Controls not responding. Not doing anything at all.’

  Cameron Bell now recalled what Corporal Larkspur had said to him. About Corporal Larkspur being the only one who could pilot the ship successfully.

  ‘Oh my dear dead mother,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘Larkspur altered the controls. We are—’

  ‘Doomed?’ asked the colonel as the ship plunged down.

  ‘Doomed!’ the detective agreed.

  45

  arth became bigger and bigger. The colonel clung on to the joystick and Cameron Bell threw what levers he could, but nothing seemed to help. The heat in the cockpit was becoming intolerable. Cameron shielded his face.

  ‘No good,’ gruffed the colonel.

  ‘Ship’s out of control.’

  ‘It was a pleasure to know you.

  Cameron Bell clasped his hands in prayer and recommended himself to the Almighty. The ship was now shaking fearfully and the cockpit windscreen was surely starting to melt.

  Down and down went the Marie Lloyd, heading to her doom. ‘Bail out somewhere,’ shouted the colonel. ‘Too hot in here, by golly.’

  Ghastly groaning, crackling sounds announced the departure of riveted hull plates. The falling spaceship was also falling apart.

  ‘Best tell that Alice girl you love her,’ bawled the colonel above the growing din. ‘Go on, Bell, I’ll still do what I can.

  Cameron Bell made to leave the cockpit as Darwin was suddenly entering it.

  ‘Let me at the controls,’ cried the ape of space. ‘I can steer the ship.’

  Cameron Bell blundered past him. Darwin jumped up onto the colonel’s lap.

  The superheated windscreen glass bulged dangerously inwards.

  ‘Let me take the controls,’ cried Darwin. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘Nothing works,’ the colonel shouted. ‘This is the end, my only friend. The end.’

  ‘I know these controls,’ insisted Darwin. ‘It was me they were altered for.’

  ‘Damn me, what?’

  The monkey took hold of the joystick. His little hands pressed buttons unseen to the colonel. The engines were flung into reverse, ailerons extended. Darwin tugged on the handbrake.

  Shaking, groaning, grumbling and all but falling apart, the Marie Lloyd levelled out, slowed in speed and drifted over an ocean.

  ‘Good God!’ cried the colonel. ‘Well done, that man. Bravo and things of that nature.’

  That man? thought Darwin. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘But how?’ the colonel asked.

  ‘Because this used to be my spaceship,’ Darwin explained. ‘Very briefly, when I still had Lord Brentford’s inheritance money. I had the controls altered to make it easier for me to fly it. Sadly, though, I never got the chance. Lost all my money at the gaming tables of Monte Carlo shortly afterwards. Bet the spaceship too and that was that.’

  ‘Well, well, well,’ went the colonel. ‘What a fortunate coincidence that turned out to be.’

  ‘Some might call it that,’ said Darwin.

  Cameron Bell was back at the cockpit door.

  And Alice was with him.

  Colonel Katterfelto winked at Cameron Bell. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Did you tell her?’

  ‘Tell me what?’ asked Alice.

  ‘Nothing important.’ Cameron Bell sighed, mopping sweat from his brow. ‘But how—’ he indicated all around and about ‘—how did you save the day?’

  ‘Darwin did,’ said the colonel. ‘Long story. Somewhat unlikely one, too. But let’s not labour the point. Thing is we’re all still alive. That’s what matters, eh?’

  ‘That’s what matters,’ said Cameron Bell, gazing fondly at Alice.

  ‘From what I know of the topography,’ said Colonel Katterfelto, rum glass in hand, sitting in the co—pilot’s seat, ‘we are flying over the South China Sea. Take a good few hours to get back to Blighty.’

  Alice sat in the pilot’s seat. Darwin sat upon Alice.

  ‘Well, I’m staying right here,’ said Alice. ‘I don’t want to go back into the passenger compartment and sit with all those dead bodies.’

  ‘Understandable,’ said the colonel. ‘Where’s Tinker?’

  ‘Having a sleep,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘But we must discuss just where we are going to land.’

  ‘I must go back to the Crystal Palace,’ said Alice, ‘and collect my darling kiwi birds.’

  ‘If we land at the spaceport we will surely be arrested,’ said Mr Bell, helping himself to some of the colonel’s rum. ‘Where do you keep finding these bottles of drink?’ he asked the old campaigner. ‘I thought we were all out of alcohol.’

  The colonel mumbled. But offered no explanation.

  Alice said, ‘I’ve done nothing illegal.’

  ‘There would be so much explaining to do,’ said Cameron. ‘I suggest we put the ship down somewhere quiet, and I know just the place.’

  Horsell Common, near Woking in Surrey, was the landing place of the first craft of the Martian invasion fleet, more than a decade before in eighteen eighty-five. Being the very small world that it was proving to be, the Marie Lloyd had been the very first Martian spaceship to land upon Earth, in the middle of Horsell Common.

  ‘Horsell Common,’ said Colonel Katterfelto. ‘Has a certain humour to it, I suppose.

  ‘Lost on me,’ said Darwin. ‘But you show me where to land this spaceship and I will land it for you. Do you suppose—’ And here he paused.

  ‘Suppose what, my dear fellow?’

  ‘Well…’ The monkey gave thought to his words. ‘After I have safely landed the ship, we could leave it, then return to it later, as if discovering it there, and then claim salvage rights, as one would for a sailing ship that had been brought ashore in a storm with all hands lost.’

  The colonel glanced at Cameron Bell.

  ‘An ingenious plan,’ said the private detective. ‘But please let me be far away before you put it into action.’

  ‘You can come with me,’ said Alice. Which brought a smile to the face of Cameron B
ell.

  ‘And we will pick up my kiwi birds together.’

  Which did not.

  ‘So, all agreed upon Horsell Common?’ asked Colonel Katterfelto.

  And all agreed they were all agreed and the Marie Lloyd flew on.

  Making rather unhealthy sounds, but flying nonetheless.

  Hours passed and the colonel needed the toilet. He left the cockpit and took himself down the central aisle between the passenger seats. And here he encountered Major Tinker.

  ‘What are you doing there, Tinker?’ asked the colonel.

  ‘Looting,’ the major replied. ‘Dead men need no diamonds. I’m sure you agree.

  ‘Actually do.’ The colonel did. ‘And the fewer the traces left on this ship that she’s been to Venus the better.’

  ‘My thoughts entirely,’ said Major Tinker. ‘And the thought of what I might buy with the countless wealth from all these diamonds.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said the colonel. ‘Just popping off to the loo.’

  Seas and lands passed far beneath and some time later Europe came and went.

  The survivors of the voyage to Venus were all crammed into the cockpit. Which although not the safest way to travel was at least away from the corpses. Corpses that no one personally wanted the job of shifting.

  ‘Aha,’ said the colonel, pointing ahead. ‘Behold the white cliffs of Dover.’

  Alice hugged at Cameron’s arm, raising hope within the private detective that some chance might exist for him.

  In truth, Cameron Bell was a man of most troubled mind. What exactly was he returning to? He had no home. He had no employment. He was certain that Lord Andrew Ditch-field, manager of the Electric Alhambra, would have given up on paying his expenses many months ago. There would probably be several warrants out for his arrest and worst of all, in his personal opinion, he would eventually have to confess to Alice that in all likelihood her kiwi birds had been consumed in the great fire at the Crystal Palace. Those whose necks had not previously been wrung during the pecking to death of the dark and sinister being.

  If not for his love of Alice, Cameron could find absolutely no reason whatsoever for returning to London.

  The detective peered through the heat-scarred windscreen towards the white cliffs of Dover. These cliffs shone in fine bright sunshine. Cameron Bell’s watch told him that it might possibly be about three in the afternoon. But as to which month, or even which year, that was anyone’s guess.

  ‘You know, we should really wait until nightfall before we land,’ said Mr Bell. ‘Sneak in, unseen, as it were.

  Darwin the pilot shook his hairy head.

  ‘No?’ asked Cameron Bell. ‘Why not?’

  Darwin pointed towards the fuel gauge. The needle pointed to a red segment labelled EMPTY.

  ‘Oh my dear dead mother,’ said Cameron Bell.

  ‘We will have to land as soon as we’re there,’ said Darwin.

  ‘Colonel, point the way.

  ‘Quite so,’ said the colonel. ‘Head in that direction towards Brighton, then we’ll follow the A23.’

  Nasty coughing sounds were now to be heard. The strangled gasps of engines becoming starved of fuel.

  ‘Couldn’t we stop somewhere and take some fuel aboard?’ Alice asked. ‘What sort of fuel makes the engines run, by the way?’

  But no one was listening to Alice. So she folded her arms and grumped somewhat and tried to ignore the bad noises.

  ‘We will have to land,’ said Darwin. ‘Choose a field, Colonel. One without sheep in it would be nice.’

  ‘Quite right, my dear fellow, let me see.

  Even though all but gone with the fuel, the Marie Lloyd was still cracking along at a goodly pace. They had reached the outskirts of Croydon now. And all agreed, without the need for words, that they had no wish to set down there.

  Darwin made adjustments to the controls. ‘Well now,’ he said. ‘There is a thing.’

  ‘A good thing?’ asked Cameron Bell.

  ‘Not as such,’ said the monkey. ‘Do you recall when we left Venus? How we were chased by the aether ship?’

  Heads went nodding all around.

  ‘And how it shot at us?’

  Heads went nodding once again.

  ‘And how it shot off two of the tail fins?’

  Heads stopped nodding. But all remembered that.

  ‘The thing,’ said Darwin. ‘Is. That lacking those two tail fins, the landing of the ship might prove problematic.’

  ‘Problematic?’ asked Cameron Bell. ‘As in difficult? Or impossible?’

  Darwin made a so-so gesture.

  ‘Oh my dear dead mother,’ said Cameron Bell.

  The Marie Lloyd passed over the Crystal Palace.

  ‘How splendid,’ said Cameron. ‘It has been rebuilt. But look at the spaceport, odd.’

  The survivors peered towards the spaceport.

  ‘Where are all the spaceships?’ asked the colonel. ‘Damn place is deserted. Nose up, Darwin, if you will.’

  Darwin struggled to bring up the nose of the Marie Lloyd, but at least one of the engines had now given up the ghost.

  ‘We’re heading towards the centre of London now,’ the colonel huffed and puffed. ‘Might be an idea to veer off towards the outskirts.’

  ‘It might be,’ said Darwin. ‘But sorry to say…’ And he cupped a hairy hand to his ear.

  And all listened and all heard … nothing at all but silence.

  ‘We are out of fuel,’ said Darwin. ‘Please say prayers for me.

  The Marie Lloyd dropped towards London. Its undercarriage struck one of the tall Tesla towers, dislodging the great steel ball from the top in a bright cascade of sparks. Causing chaos and destruction far below.

  As all aboard stared white-faced and praying through the blurred windscreen, the spaceship smashed into the roof of Buckingham Palace, cleaving away a vast section of the front façade, struck the Mall with a hideous rending of metal, ploughed along its length then bounced over the archway and plunged with a devastating swerving crash into Trafalgar Square.

  Bringing down Nelson’s Column and burying its nose deep into the front of the National Gallery.

  46

  state of National Emergency was brought into being. A regiment of the Household Calvary rode out from their barracks at the rear of the stricken palace. Electric tanks growled onto the streets of the great metropolis. Black Marias, some bearing the distinctive crest of the Metropolitan Police Force, others not, clattered towards Trafalgar Square. Chaos had come to the Empire’s heart, and many were fleeing in terror. A platoon of the Queen’s Own Electric Fusiliers circled the sky above the ruination aboard a sleek silver airship. In the wheelhouse stood young Mr Winston Churchill, cigar in mouth, examining a map of London.

  An hour had passed since the Marie Lloyd crashed and already newsboys were hawking broadsheets which announced in letters bold and black that

  MARTIANS ATTACK LONDON

  AGAIN!

  1000s ALREADY DEAD

  In fact, miraculously, there had been no loss of life, although a lady in a straw hat had been elevated to a state of hysteria by a close encounter with a falling statue of Nelson.

  The Marie Lloyd lay crumpled and broken, smoke rising gently from battered bits and bobs.

  No Martian storm troopers had so far emerged from the wreck to lay further waste to London.

  At a little after five of the Greenwich Meridian clock, Mr Winston Churchill ordered an assault to be made upon the invaders and joined one hundred fusiliers as they abseiled down to the square.

  These noble warriors of the British Empire met with no resistance as they charged the crumpled craft. Onboard they found the bodies of the dead Jovians dressed in their safari suits.

  But no one else at all.

  Colonel Katterfelto, Major Tinker, Cameron Bell, Alice and Darwin the monkey had quietly slipped away from the wreck of the Marie Lloyd long before the cordoning off of central London and the arrival of assorted troops. They h
ad mingled with those fleeing the National Gallery and Trafalgar Square. They had, miraculously once more, remained uninjured by the crash.

  They now sat in the Ritz taking afternoon tea.

  There had been some unpleasantness, though.

  The gentlemen of the party had not been wearing ties and the Ritz enforces a strict dress code for afternoon tea.

  The maitre d’ had supplied them with ties. And a striped cravat for Darwin.

  ‘Well,’ huffed, puffed and gruffed the colonel, lifting his teacup and taking a sip. ‘I’ve said it once. I’ve said it twice. Very close thing, was that.’

  Cameron Bell had his face buried deep in his hands. ‘Buckingham Palace,’ he was heard to mumble. ‘The Mall. Nelson’s Column. The National Gallery. Dear oh dear oh dear.’

  ‘Could have been worse,’ said Major Tinker. ‘Could have hit the Electric Alhambra. Anyone fancy joining me in a box there tonight?’

  No one seemed particularly keen.

  Darwin the monkey said, ‘I don’t see bananas on the menu.

  ‘If we are to go our separate ways,’ said Cameron Bell, ‘which I would personally recommend as our departure from the Marie Lloyd might well have been observed and our descriptions circulated, might I ask where I can find you all should the need arise?’

  ‘Here,’ said Darwin. ‘I will be engaging a suite of rooms right here.’

  ‘And you, Colonel?’ asked Cameron Bell.

  ‘Have to go to Alperton. Pick up the key to the chapel I rented. The you-know-what should already have been delivered there, ready to be energised.’

  Alice did not know what the you-know-what was, but neither did she care.

  ‘Then I’ll probably take a room here, too,’ continued the colonel.

  ‘Me also,’ said Major Tinker. ‘Handy for the Halls and all that.’

  ‘It is not really going our separate ways, is it?’ said Cameron Bell. ‘Alice, what of you?’

  ‘I am going with you,’ said Alice.

  ‘Oh,’ said Cameron Bell.

  ‘To the pet shop in Sydenham to collect my kiwi birds. We can then take rooms at the Adequate.’