The Abominable Showman

by Robert Rankin

  So I made a break for it.

  ‘So, chief,’ said Barry. ‘What was it you were saying about being in charge of the situation and doing things your way?’

  I had nothing to say to the sprout.

  I was pouring beer.

  I had been hustled aboard The Pilgrim shortly after my failed attempt at escape. A boy slightly larger than myself, though clearly lacking in intellect, had been put in charge of me and told to beat me soundly if I did not pull my weight.

  My protests at this had left me nursing a black eye.

  And now, to my horror, The Pilgrim was in space.

  The order had been given to ‘set the controls for the heart of the sun’ and I had been told to serve the beers whilst keeping my mouth tightly shut.

  So I poured beers in stony sullen silence.

  The other boys came and went about their respective businesses. Either clearly oblivious to their impending doom, or labouring under a complete and ill-founded trust in Professor Mandlebrot’s theories.

  One told me what an honour it was to serve such a hero.

  Another asked what time this bus got into Fulham Broadway.

  Barry sang ‘Keep Your Sunny Side Up’, which I did not find amusing.

  Alone in the toilet I took him to task.

  ‘This is all your fault,’ I said to Barry.

  ‘All my fault, chief? We’ve been through this and you are clearly to blame.’

  ‘That evil villain Rostov is to blame,’ I said, for I had considerably modified my views of the count. ‘My secret mission has clearly been compromised. Someone has betrayed me to that child-murdering monster. We will have to abort the entire operation. Return me at once to nineteen sixty-one. Now.’

  I took a deep breath and prepared to travel through time.

  I closed my eyes and I waited.

  Then I re-opened my eyes.

  ‘We are still here,’ I said to Barry. ‘How would you account for this?’

  ‘You can’t abandon your mission now,’ said Barry.

  ‘My dear little green chumrade,’ I said to the sprout. ‘This spaceship is bound for a hideous molten end and my life is in dire jeopardy. Would you not agree?’

  ‘Are you suggesting,’ Barry asked. ‘That I take over and we do things my way from now on, chief?’

  I did grindings of the teeth, and mumbled agreement.

  ‘I didn’t quite catch that, chief,’ said Barry.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘You’re in charge.’

  ‘You promise that?’ the time sprout asked.

  I dibbed and dobbed as a boy scout should and grudgingly said that I promised.

  ‘Do it once again,’ said Barry.

  ‘Once again?’ I asked.

  ‘Once again without your fingers crossed.’

  ‘Spiteful little sod,’ I said, but I uncrossed my fingers. ‘And now,’ I went on, to the sprout in my head, ‘get us out of here.’

  Barry was silent for a moment, then said, ‘I’ll give it some thought.’

  ‘Give it some –’

  But a banging came upon the toilet door.

  ‘Out of there you lazy turd!’ cried the bigger boy.

  It was gruel for lunch and I was appalled. And as to the sleeping accommodation! A dormitory, a row of hammocks! But not before we got a little pep talk from the mad Professor Mandlebrot.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said to us, as he stood us all in a row. ‘I am sure that to a limited degree you are capable of understanding the enormity of what you have become involved in.’

  ‘Enormity is right,’ I said.

  The bigger boy gave me a ‘dead-leg’.

  ‘We are spiritual pioneers. We will penetrate Heaven itself yet in our physical bodies.’

  ‘Oh no we won’t,’ I said.

  The bigger boy stamped on my foot.

  ‘When we pass through the lens and experience the Urseele, we will become transcendent. As supermen, you might say.’

  ‘Or as burnt little crisps.’

  The bigger boy gave me a Chinese burn and I vowed to take my revenge.

  ‘We must return within ten days,’ said Professor Mandlebrot. ‘In time for the Jubilee celebrations aboard The Leviathan. It is my avowed intention to present the monarch with a token of our visit to Paradise. A little piece of Heaven brought to Earth, as might be said.’

  ‘Some chance,’ I said.

  And as the bigger boy leaned close to pull my hair I kneed him very hard right in the testes.

  He doubled up with much panting and groaning. Our captain, the professor, ‘naughty-naughty’d’ with his finger.

  ‘My apologies,’ I said to him. ‘But sir, I hate to disillusion you regarding your deeply held spiritual convictions, but I regret that I must. The sun is not a lens through which shines the radiance of the Almighty. It is a dirty great flaming star and that is that.’

  ‘Oh ye of little faith,’ said the professor. ‘Off to your hammocks now all of you. An early start in the morning.’

  The following morning Sir Jonathan Crawford was up for an early breakfast. He was not by nature an early riser and indeed today was no exception to this rule. He was not as such up for an early breakfast as simply having an early breakfast. For he had not taken a minute of sleep during the previous night.

  He had, in a most scandalous fashion, spent the entire night in the first class cabin of Lady Agnes Rutherford, where the two of them had playfully and joyfully engaged in what can only be described as sexual intercourse.

  Sir Jonathan was not untalented in this particular field of endeavour and was adept at not only ‘taking tea with the parson’ and ‘splitting the old bamboo’, but also ‘kick-starting kitty’ and ‘petting the perfumed puss’.

  Practising any one of these in London would have been rewarded by five years’ hard labour. But high above and beyond the law, the libertine ways of Sir Jonathan Crawford were hardly even a matter for discussion.

  Except amongst several members of the liner’s crew who had taken turns at peeping through the keyhole.

  As Lady Rutherford was having a bit of a lie in, Sir Jonathan took breakfast on his own.

  He sat at a table dressed with white linen in one of the many cafés on the glass-covered promenade deck. A waiter brought him croissants and coffee.

  A smile played upon the lips of his lordship as he thought of the previous night’s hanky panky. Her ladyship had proved to be a most accomplished lover, combining coquettishness and innocence with lustful abandonment into a particularly pleasing union. Sir Jonathan was quite a little puffed.

  He munched upon croissants and sipped his black coffee and gazed at the heavens above. He had attended the waving off of Professor Mandlebrot the previous day and watched The Pilgrim diminish into the blackness. That was surely a very foolish venture, but then these were very foolish times.

  Upon the table lay the latest issue of The Gentleman Adventurer. The foolish face of Professor Mandlebrot grinned from the front cover.

  ‘Twit,’ said Sir Jonathan Crawford. He sipped further coffee and flicked through the pages of what was after all his very favourite magazine. The Gentleman Adventurer had run a number of articles about him during the last season, featuring photographs of his extensive collection of monocles and walking canes, and an interview which Sir Jonathan considered hadn’t really shown him in his best light. He had sought to portray himself as an intellectual man of letters and gentleman about town. The editing (for surely that was to blame) had left readers with the impression that he was an empty-headed roué.

  But it was still his favourite magazine.

  TROUBLESOME WOMAN BELIEVED TO HAVE GONE OFF-WORLD

  read Sir Jonathan Crawford. And:

  The search for the masked female vigilante, who performs her violent deeds under the nom de guerre of Lady Raygun, is believed to have left planet Earth. An Empire-wide search for this troublesome woman, who is understood to be responsible for at least twenty-seven deaths –

  Sir
Jonathan whistled.

  of wanted criminals, has drawn a blank. Chief Inspector Digby Barton, who is leading the hunt for Lady Raygun, was unavailable for comment as he is presently attending a detective’s congress aboard the showboat Leviathan.

  Sir Jonathan Crawford made mirthful sniggers. ‘I suspect that this Lady Raygun has little to fear from that bumbler Digby Barton.’ His lordship gave his noble chin a bit of a noble stroke. ‘I would dearly like to meet this “lady”,’ he said.

  ‘Our Lady of Space,’ said Count Ilya Rostov taking an early stroll through secret corridors. For as surely as a villain must have minions and catspaws, so too must he have secret passages. Or in this case corridors.

  Gurt dragged his gammy leg along. ‘What of her, master?’ he asked.

  ‘Imagine her as a guest at the grand celebrations.’

  Gurt did screwings up of his hideous face. ‘I’m trying, master, I’m trying,’ said he. ‘But I’m not getting anywhere.’

  ‘Perhaps she is nothing but a myth,’ said Count Rostov. ‘Have we had any communications from The Pilgrim?’

  ‘On the hour every hour, master. Just as you ordered and nothing at all to report. Except the misbehaviour of an irksome cabin boy, that Lazlo Woodbine lad who we had to tie up before we could drag him aboard The Pilgrim, he’s been playing up it seems –’

  Count Rostov laughed with glee. ‘But the mission is proceeding as planned?’

  ‘To the letter, master. Yes.’

  ‘That is pleasing to my ears,’ said Rostov. ‘Is there anything else that I should need to know?’

  ‘The guest list for the Jubilee dinner and grand ball is now complete. Would you care to view it with scorn before mercilessly thrashing me for some minor error?’

  ‘Certainly I would, my little chumrade.’

  Gurt handed the list to his master and took to cringing.

  Count Rostov moved his gaze from name to name.

  ‘Two thousand guests,’ said he at length. ‘The great and the good of all the four worlds and all to be gathered here.’

  ‘One might say like lambs to the slaughter,’ said Gurt.

  ‘One might if one wanted one’s head chopped off.’

  Gurt wrung his fingers and made obsequious sounds.

  ‘And each and every one a personal friend.’

  ‘Master has so many many friends.’

  ‘Indeed I do,’ said Count Rostov and then he paused. ‘But what do we have here?’

  ‘Is it the error that might cost me my life?’

  ‘A name I do not recognise,’ said the man in the bearskin hat. And then he tapped at the list and asked Gurt, ‘Who is this?’

  Gurt looked fearfully at the name, ‘Lady Cadaver,’ he read.

  ‘A name unknown to myself,’ said Count Ilya Rostov. ‘And as it was myself who carefully selected the names that would appear on this list, I might enquire as to how it arrived here.’

  Gurt shook his misshapen head and said, ‘I really have no idea.’ Then hastily added, ‘Should I just cross her out?’

  Count Rostov gave a little thought to this.

  ‘I think not,’ said he. ‘Whoever this Lady Cadaver is, she would appear to be a most enterprising female and a bold one to boot, who would dare such an act of bravado and cause me inconvenience. No Gurt, do not cross her off, I think I should like to meet this troublesome woman.’

  18

  I did not wake up with a great big smile on my face.

  But I was first out of the hammock.

  I took myself off to the toilet and there with a whistle woke up the sleeping sprout.

  ‘Right!’ I said to the little green blighter. ‘I have had quite enough. Get us off this ship of doom and do it right away.’

  ‘Let us not be hasty,’ said my holy guardian. ‘It is always better to mull things over before reaching an important decision.’

  ‘Well mull this over, chief!’ I said. ‘You get me out of here as quick as you please, or I swear I will winkle you out of my head with a sharpened pencil and stamp you flat upon the floor. Now what do you think of that?’

  ‘You should really mull that over,’ said Barry. ‘That fails to get the job done on oh so many levels.’

  ‘Out of that toilet you dirty tick,’ called the voice of the bigger boy. The bigger boy with the bruised testicles, who had it in for me.

  Breakfast was gruel and once again I did not ask for more. After breakfast Professor Mandlebrot lined us all up and gave us another of his talkings of toot.

  ‘We are moving through space,’ said he, in his stupid squeaky voice, ‘at a quite improbable rate of knots. I will not dwell upon the technology which makes this singular feat possible, because I neither know of it, nor care. What I care about is our goal, to pass through the great lens and enter the realm of the blessed. There to be greeted by Our Lady of Space. Please incline your little heads and join your hands in prayer.’

  I looked along the line of boys, their heads bowed low, their hands pressed tightly together. A bunch of stupid gullible cabin boys! I made fists instead of praying hands. Stupid stupid cabin boys! And then, like that, a thought just hit me, such an obvious thought. Barry was being no help at all and I would be unlikely to persuade the professor as to the error of his ways. But a bunch of stupid cabin boys! They were cabin boys and this was a ship. And where you had a crew and a ship, you could have a mutiny.

  Sir Jonathan Crawford, having breakfasted, returned at length to his suite. Here he drew himself a bath and luxuriated within it. He fussed at his person with loofah and sponge and whistled a merry air.

  ‘Sometimes I despair,’ said Berty the beetroot. ‘I swear that if I had not transcended to a higher plane when you began “watering the pansies” with that trollop last night, I would have shrivelled into compost from the shame.’

  ‘You missed me “parading the pink parasol” and “measuring Betsy for a bonnet”,’ said Sir Jonathan, smiling somewhat.

  ‘Happily I do not even know what those are,’ said Berty.

  ‘Neither do I, as I just made them up. Now please be quiet, I have to wash this bit here,’ and Sir Jonathan pointed.

  ‘Om mani podme hum. Om mani podme hum,’ Berty the beetroot moved to a different level.

  Sir Jonathan finally dried and dressed.

  A sober grey serge morning suit with striped trousers, ankle spats and patent leather shoes. His shirt was white, his tie was black, his hair was centre-parted.

  ‘Off to make an utter clown of yourself,’ said Berty, returning from somewhere that was possibly Nirvana.

  ‘If you are referring to my role as guest speaker at this year’s Congress Of Detectives And Non-Detectives, Considering Huge Interplanetary Police Stations,’ Sir Jonathan straightened his spats in the cheval glass. ‘A role that carries considerable gravitas –’

  ‘And indeed free rocket fares and accommodation aboard this palace of sin.’

  ‘I did have to “upgrade” on the journey,’ said Sir Jonathan. ‘But the suite meets with my exacting standards.’

  ‘Which is the real reason you agreed to come.’

  ‘I have reasons of my own for being here.’

  Berty searched Sir Jonathan’s thoughts, but his lordship had become most adept at concealing his innermost feelings and plans from his guardian vegetable.

  ‘My name is on the guest list for the Jubilee banquet and ball,’ said Sir Jonathan. ‘So I would have been here anyway.’

  ‘I know precisely how much you have in your bank account,’ said Berty. ‘I can see out of your eyeballs, you know.’

  ‘I know only too well. But I must press on, my talk is at ten this morning.’

  ‘And will you be doing it in the idiotic toff patois in which you engage, whilst in the company of your foolish friends?’

  ‘No,’ said Sir Jonathan. ‘I will not.’

  ‘Well, thanks to Our Lady for that.’

  There were naturally many conference rooms aboard the great Leviathan. Conference
rooms and meeting rooms and all of that kind of caper. COD AND CHIPS had hired one of the smaller and more modest rooms. Little less than an oversized cupboard and with no windows at all.

  Sir Jonathan, elegant in his sober attire, small leather portfolio containing his speech notes tucked beneath his arm, checked the number on the room’s door against that on his invitation, tugged his gold-cased hunter from his watch pocket and perused its face.

  ‘Three thirty-two,’ said Sir Jonathan Crawford. ‘I really should try winding that once in a while.’

  A ship’s bell chimed the hour of ten and Sir Jonathan knocked on the door

  ‘I shall ‘ave to ask you to enter, please,’ came a voice his lordship knew. It was that of Chief Inspector Digby Barton of Scotland Yard. The man who might perhaps have been more fruitfully engaged in applying himself to the Lady Raygun case than swanning about on an all-expenses-paid beano aboard The Leviathan. An abuse of rank that thankfully would find no parallel in the days of the twenty-first century.

  Sir Jonathan Crawford was pleased to enter, and did. Then fell about in a fit of coughing.

  A fug of cigarette, pipe and cigar smoke poisoned the air of the tiny windowless room. Sir Jonathan flapped with his leather portfolio and was waved through the murk to his seat.

  The voice of Lady Agnes Rutherford now reached Sir Jonathan’s ears. ‘Might we have the door open a tad?’ she enquired in a tone that had more of the command to it than the humble request. ‘Before someone chokes to death and the entire event is ruined.’

  ‘A crack and no more, madam.’ The Chief Inspector left the door open a crack. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘as all are present and correct, I will pass you over to our chairman, Mr Henry Warrington, to open the congress.’

  Hands clapped with vigour which helped to clear some of the smoke. A small man in tweeds rose from his chair at the end of a long black ebony table and beamed about at all and sundry in a pleasant manner.

  Then he greeted everyone in turn.

  To his left, Digby Barton of Scotland Yard, Jack Hayward the retired Dandy Highwayman and next to him Dawkins the Simian Sleuth. At the table’s far end, Sir Jonathan Crawford.