The Abominable Showman

by Robert Rankin

  ‘Certainly not me,’ said Barry. ‘And as we have now strained the Improbability Drive gag to well beyond breaking point, I suggest we get on with the action.’

  ‘Yes, but –’ but I didn’t say any more. For the spaceship gave an alarming lurch and came to a sudden standstill.

  I scrambled up to the porthole and peered out.

  The Venusian aether ship was almost alongside. A weird and wondrous vessel. It did resemble a gigantic galleon, but composed it seemed of either cobwebs or frozen wisps of smoke. There were intricate traceries, as of spider-webs billowing as sails and folk came and went upon the decks seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were out in airless space. The gun ports were open and curious +weapons thrust their noses towards us.

  ‘They have caught us,’ I said. ‘So we are as good as dead. I am going to give you one last chance to redeem yourself, Barry, and get us out of here.’

  ‘But, chief –’

  ‘And if you do not,’ I went on, ‘and the Venusians kill me, I will report you to God for failing in your duties as a holy guardian sprout. And I hope he’ll boil you up for his Christmas dinner.’

  Barry sighed a small and plaintive sigh. ‘I wish I could help, chief,’ he said, but then his words were swallowed up by clamour.

  The Venusians had come aboard The Pilgrim.

  I chewed upon my knuckles and my knees knocked together. I then pressed my ear against the door. I heard a great deal of shouting and banging about and I heard a loud smack and a cry of pained response to it from the bigger boy. Which gave me a small degree of pleasure, though in truth not very much.

  Then my door was rattled about and I fell back from it.

  Then there came a great deal more shouting, then the sounds of marching feet, then it became very quiet on board The Pilgrim.

  ‘Bang bang bang bang bang,’ went bangs on the door.

  Happily on a door aboard The Leviathan.

  ‘Telegram for Jack Hayward,’ called a voice from the corridor.

  From within Jack Hayward said, ‘I won’t be a moment.’

  The man that many, in truth, were still too scared to mention, donned a scarlet kimono with matching smoking cap, silk platform-soled slippers and fingerless gloves of cassowary feathers. He examined his reflection in the glass and found it pleasing.

  Then he unlocked his cabin door and said, ‘Oh.’

  For the snout of a ray gun pressed against his forehead.

  ‘Kindly retrace your steps,’ said Sir Jonathan Crawford.

  When I felt it was absolutely safe, I quietly stepped from the cupboard.

  ‘I think we are all alone on The Pilgrim,’ I said.

  ‘Such would seem to be the case, chief, yes.’

  ‘So,’ and I rubbed my palms together. ‘Let’s get back to The Leviathan.’

  ‘All on your own?’ asked Barry.

  ‘You can come too if you want.’ And I did a little dance.

  ‘You don’t think perhaps you might have a try at rescuing the cabin boys and the professor, then?’

  I shook my head firmly and said, ‘No.’

  ‘So you’re happy to let them go to their deaths?’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ I said to Barry. ‘Although the nutty professor and that bigger boy do have it coming if you ask me.’

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘What can I do?’ I said to Barry. ‘I’m a schoolboy. Do you want me to wage war on the planet Venus or something?’

  ‘Hardly that,’ said Barry the sprout. ‘But there might be ways and means.’

  During this conversation I had been walking towards the cockpit of the spaceship. When I reached it I sat down in the pilot’s seat.

  I cast my eye over the somewhat daunting array of stopcocks, switches, levers, dials and doodahs that adorned the dashboard.

  ‘I wonder if there’s a users’ manual,’ I wondered.

  ‘Space pilots take a six-week intensive course,’ said Barry.

  ‘Then we will just have to trust to good fortune.’ I reached out towards a particularly large and useful-looking lever.

  ‘Don’t touch that!’ howled Barry.

  ‘Not a good choice?’ I asked him.

  ‘Not unless you wish to flush all of the air into space.’

  ‘Perhaps this instead then –’

  ‘No!’ cried Barry.

  ‘Well,’ I said and I folded my arms. ‘It is quite clear to me that you know how to fly this spaceship.’

  Barry said nothing, but I knew what that meant.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘I can either pull levers at random, or you can tell me what to do.’

  ‘Other alternatives do exist,’ said Barry.

  My hand snaked out towards a large brass stopcock.

  ‘I could advise you,’ said the sprout.

  ‘Then do.’

  ‘Or I could leave you here to work things out for yourself.’

  ‘And what of this?’ I made the face of puzzlement.

  ‘I feel you would be the first to agree,’ said Barry, ‘that this working relationship of ours lacks for a certain something. If it were a marriage then both of us would seek a speedy divorce.’

  I nodded in agreement to this.

  ‘So perhaps it has all been a big mistake,’ said Barry. ‘On my part and that of your older self. Perhaps I should seek another partner. Perhaps in truth, we should go our separate ways.’

  ‘Barry,’ I said, I have two black eyes and a bloody nose. Nothing would bring me greater joy. So please take me home.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not taking you home, chief. You haven’t fulfilled your side of the deal. I’ll just leave you here in space and you never know, you might just by sheer chance pull all the right levers and fly the spaceship safely.’

  ‘What?’ I said, ‘Barry, WHAT?’

  ‘Good luck, chief,’ said Barry, ‘and farewell.’

  ‘You can’t just abandon me,’ I said. ‘That’s inhuman. That’s monstrous. I’m just a little boy, you can’t leave a little boy in danger, you can’t –’

  ‘Well obviously you can,’ said Barry. ‘You are prepared to abandon the cabin boys. I am only taking a leaf out of your book as it were. Goodbye, chief.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Wait.’

  ‘Wait?’ said Barry. ‘Why?’

  ‘Perhaps we could come to some agreement,’ I said.

  ‘Go on, chief.’

  ‘Well, you could show me how the spaceship works and I could fly it back to The Leviathan and Count Rostov could get the Venusian ambassador on the phone and ask him to return the cabin boys, and –’

  ‘Goodbye, chief,’ said Barry.

  ‘Oh all right!’ I threw up my hands in defeat. ‘All right, we’ll do it your way. We’ll try and rescue the cabin boys, all right?’

  ‘And the professor too?’

  ‘Must we?’ I asked.

  ‘We must,’ said the sprout.

  ‘I really hate you Barry,’ I whispered.

  ‘What was that, chief?’

  ‘Nothing, Barry,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing to see here,’ said Chief Inspector Digby Barton. ‘A small altercation, please move right along.’

  The crowd that had gathered outside Jack Hayward’s cabin door, drawn by the sounds of fighting and gunfire within, dispersed a-mumbling and grumbling. At least the chap from Scotland Yard could have let them see the body.

  ‘That’s the stuff,’ said Digby Barton. ‘Job for the professionals, this.’ He waggled his fingers and waved folk away, then entered the cabin and slammed the door behind him.

  ‘I declare myself the winner,’ said Jack Hayward. He was now most magnificently dressed in his full dandy highwayman attire. The frock coat, the tricorn hat, the pistols, the boots, the little domino eye mask. ‘The scoundrel posed as a telegram boy and when I opened the door he went for me with a ray gun.’

  Chief Inspector Digby Barton viewed the body lying on the floor.

  The sober suit of Sir Jonathan Crawford did n
ot look quite so sober now, as the body lacked for a head.

  ‘Well, he’s certainly dead,’ said the chief inspector. ‘No doubt in my mind regarding that.’

  ‘He didn’t reckon with my skills in the deadly martial art of Fop-Mak.’

  ‘Fop-Mak?’ queried Chief Inspector Barton.

  ‘It is a version of Dimac but for fops. One practices it in front of a mirror. It mostly involves the waving about of a silk handkerchief.’

  ‘Well it surely got the job done here,’ said the chap from Scotland Yard.

  ‘Well, almost,’ said Jack. ‘That and Sir Jonathan getting momentarily distracted when a real telegram boy knocked at the door. I put his body in the bedroom, out of the way.’

  The chief inspector nodded thoughtfully. ‘I foresee certain difficulties here,’ he said. ‘You have broken at least two of the rules to my counting. You did not use one of the approved weapons and you have killed the victim in a room not designated for play. You did the right thing to call me, but I’m afraid that rules are rules. I’m sorry, Jack.’

  ‘You could help me move the body to the billiard room or something.’

  ‘That really wouldn’t be playing the game now, would it?’

  ‘If you were just to look the other way.’

  ‘Look the other way?’ said Chief Inspector Digby Barton. ‘What, just pretend I’ve seen nothing? Turn and look the other way? Like this?’

  And he turned the other way.

  And Jack Hayward brought him down with a length of lead pipe.

  ‘I’ll just have to drag Sir Jonathan’s body to the billiard room by myself then,’ he said.

  21

  ‘Sir Jonathan Crawford is dead?’ said Lady Agnes Rutherford.

  ‘In the billiard room with the length of lead pipe and rather violently,’ said the Dandy Highwayman and he bowed low and did foppish hand-twirlings. ‘Your servant, ma’am,’ he added.

  ‘Oh,’ the lady’s lips went all a-quiver. She dabbed a hanky to her eyes where tears were taking shape.

  ‘The man was a craven buffoon,’ said Jack. ‘And when a toff crosses swords with a dandy highwayman, then there will be one less foolish toff in the world, for certain.’

  Lady Agnes sobbed a little.

  ‘Come come now,’ said Jack. ‘You surely did not harbour any feelings for the over-educated clown.’

  ‘In truth –’ said Lady Agnes, then she shook her head.

  ‘Well, he’s gone to that place where all toffs eventually go,’ said Jack. ‘But if it’s of any comfort to you, I’d like to think that he’s looking up at us even now.’

  ‘What a very cruel thing to say,’ said her ladyship.

  ‘My apologies, dear lady,’ and Jack consulted his watch. It was a golden hunter of a watch and had until recently belonged to Sir Jonathan Crawford. ‘Nearly tea time already,’ said Jack. ‘Might I take the liberty of inviting you to take a cup with me? And perhaps some champagne too, that we might celebrate my success in our amusement and raise a glass to the memory of Sir Jonathan.’

  Lady Agnes made a thoughtful face, then looked the dandy fellow up and down. There just is a certain something about a chap in riding boots, with pistols and a frock coat and a tricorn.’

  Lady Agnes fluttered her eyelashes. ‘You certainly may take me, sir,’ she said.

  ‘And that’s all it takes to fly the ship?’ I said to Barry. ‘Turn the ignition key and then I just hold this single joystick and press it forward to go forward?’

  ‘And backwards to go back,’ said Barry the time sprout. ‘Don’t forget that, chief. That is very important if you wish to go backwards.’

  ‘And sideways if I want to go sideways?’

  Barry said yes.

  ‘And right in the middle to stop?’

  ‘Yes too.’

  ‘And that’s all there is to it?’

  ‘There’s a switch there that works the headlights,’ said Barry. ‘And a hooter button somewhere, but I doubt if we’ll need those.’

  ‘And what about all this complicated jiggery-pokery covering the dashboard?’

  Barry said nothing.

  ‘Well?’ I demanded.

  ‘Oh, sorry, chief, I was shrugging, but I suppose you wouldn’t have been aware of that.’

  ‘You’ve tricked me, you little green swine.’

  ‘Harsh words, chief,’ said Barry. ‘You might well have moved the joystick to the left when you wanted to go to the right. You should be thanking me for sharing my expertise and giving you a crash course in how to pilot a spaceship.’

  I made certain growling dog-like noises and scowled out through the windscreen.

  ‘Doesn’t Venus look nice at this time of year?’ said Barry.

  I gave Venus a jolly good scowling. It did look very nice indeed, but now I felt was not the time to appreciate its beauty.

  ‘I suppose you want me to land on this planet,’ I said.

  ‘That would be the plan, chief. Steer us down and I’ll tell you what to do.’

  I pushed forward the joystick and The Pilgrim plunged towards the planet Venus. And then I had another of those special moments. Because here I was, a schoolboy from the nineteen-sixties, here in these fantastic nineteen-twenties, piloting a spaceship down to the planet Venus. Pretty amazing stuff by any accounts. And hadn’t I read somewhere about ‘claiming salvage’ on abandoned ships? I wondered whether that applied to spaceships. Because if it did then it meant that The Pilgrim was now my spaceship.

  ‘I’ll leave you to take that one up with Count Rostov,’ said Barry, once more rudely breaking in on my thoughts. ‘For now just steer us down towards that green bit there.’

  ‘That green bit there?’

  ‘That green bit there.’

  So I just steered us down to the green bit there.

  The green bit was a mighty jungle and as we swept down towards it, I was truly awestruck by its beauty. It had, how should I put this, an untouched beauty. A sort of purity, as if no man, of whatever race, had ever walked beneath the spreading branches of its mighty trees.

  ‘And few men have,’ said Barry. ‘For to enter the jungle is punishable by death.’

  ‘I thought the Venusians were spiritual peace-loving folk,’ I said.

  ‘Yes they are, but rather territorial. There is a belief that this jungle might well be the biblical Garden of Eden.’

  ‘The what?’ I said.

  ‘Some believe,’ said Barry. ‘That at the time of creation, God created an Eden on each of the worlds. Mars, Earth, Jupiter and Venus. He created an Adam and Eve for each world and so too sent a serpent to tempt them. On Mars the brutal Martians took to worshiping the evil tempter. In return God turned their world the colour of blood. On Jupiter the Jovian Adam and Eve ignored the tempter, they were too busy eating and having a good time. God threw them out of their garden because of the mess they made. You know the Old Testament story of what happened on Earth. But you won’t know what happened on Venus. Here their Adam and Eve slew the serpent and gave their praise only to God. He rewarded them with magic and by spreading their Garden of Eden to cover all of the planet. You can understand why Venusians don’t want Earth people stamping all over their sacred soil.’

  ‘I can,’ I said and I nodded my head. ‘And do you believe the story is true?’

  ‘I have been to this planet several times,’ said Barry. ‘And its magic is never lost upon me, I assure you.’

  I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

  ‘We shouldn’t be here, should we?’ I said. ‘It’s wrong for us to be here.’

  ‘It is,’ said Barry. ‘So let’s just get the job done and take our leave as quickly as we can.’

  ‘Please pardon me, dear lady,’ said Jack Hayward. ‘I have a tiny unfinished piece of business to conduct, but I will return as quickly as I can.’

  He and Lady Agnes had taken a table in the Tudor Tea Room, a quaint little eatery on board The Leviathan, whose panoramic window afforded an excellent
view of planet Earth.

  ‘You are all right for champagne?’ asked Jack, refreshing her ladyship’s glass. ‘I will be but a moment.’

  And with that he rose, bowed flamboyantly and swept from the Tudor Tea Room and was gone.

  Lady Agnes sipped champagne and bit on a Barmouth biscuit.

  Presently Jack returned to her, patting his hands together.

  ‘All done?’ asked Lady Agnes.

  ‘All done indeed,’ said Jack.

  ‘All three?’ asked Lady Agnes.

  ‘All three indeed,’ said Jack.

  ‘All dead?’ asked Lady Agnes.

  ‘All dead indeed,’ said Jack.

  ‘Then you can take off that ludicrous mask, Sir Jonathan Crawford.’

  ‘Well mercy me,’ said Sir Jonathan Crawford. ‘You saw through my cunning disguise.’

  ‘But not so the other detectives,’ said the lady.

  Sir Jonathan removed the domino. ‘I thought it made me look very dashing indeed,’ he said. ‘A rather romantic figure, I felt.’

  ‘You certainly suit the boots,’ said Lady Agnes. ‘And killing Jack and switching clothes, I know it’s not within the rules, but it’s made the game more fun.’

  ‘I trust that we might consider this game over,’ said Sir Jonathan.

  ‘Or you might kill me too?’

  ‘I would not dream of such a thing. And you?’ his lordship cautiously enquired.

  Lady Agnes raised her glass, ‘I can think of better things to do,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe there’s a better way of doing this than actually landing on the planet,’ I said. ‘Maybe we should have a good long think. And some food too as I am now very hungry.’

  ‘Just steer the ship,’ said Barry. ‘Left hand down a bit, pull back on the joystick –’

  Down and down and down went Barry and I. The lush green world rushed up to meet us and we plunged into the jungle.

  ‘Right a bit, chief, left a bit, no up, no down.’

  ‘I can do it by myself,’ I said.

  And we crashed.

  It was not a disastrous, all dead and the spaceship torn to pieces kind of a crash. More a scraping the hull along the ground and running The Pilgrim into a great big tree sort of crash. There were ghastly grornching sounds and I’m sure the brooms and mops fell over in that cupboard.