He was ready. He knew the direction of the Institute. Hopefully, some time tonight, a message would get through and there would be contact.
“There is a full moon tomorrow,” Valantina said. “The selenation will be strong.”
Sheremy grinned. The joy of selenography was that it did not work in straight lines; the other station could be miles away, behind a cathedral, behind even a mountain. Using a brass connector on the box to cut and remake the lunar link, he took from the box the selenograph’s earpiece and voicer. With one bakelite petal at his ear and the other at his lips, he cleared his throat and said, “Testing, testing. Sheremy Pantomile calling the Royal Institute.”
“How will they know you are calling?” Valantina asked.
“They will notice a yellow glow in their upper chambers. They’ll know it’s the selenograph receiving, and then somebody will come. Thitherto, hopefully, though that isn’t guaranteed.”
And so they waited. Other messages appeared, since selenography was not limited by straight lines or one-to-one contact; he had sent out his query as a ripple in a selenate aura. He heard: “Decent of you to find me a whole jar of Balinese oysters,” and, “Will you tell that wretched chimney sweep to stop making eyes at my wife,” and, most curiously of all, “The spinnaker of the orange whatsit bulges far too much for my liking, you’ll have us falling out into the hair!”
But at length Sheremy heard a voice he recognised. “Thitherto Frenulum here. Is that you, Sheremy? One of our cleaners said she saw a yellow glow. Sheremy, are you there?”
“Here, dear fellow. I’m free of the clutches of Murchison Volume. I’m with Valantina Moondusst, very close to the Thames, in her house. Is there aught we can do to assist the Institute?”
“Indeed there is. I have news for you. We urgently need to trace and speak with a man known as the Trichologist, thought to be living somewhere south of the river – in some kind of palace. This is exactly the sort of mission a chap like you is good for! Take your selenograph and deliver it to him. Then everybody at the Institute who wants to speak with him will be able to.”
“Who is he?”
“Don’t know exactly, but all our men in the field have been hearing rumours about him. We think he may be connected with the hairiness.”
“Right-o! Keep your eyes on the Rajah’s selenograph. Over and out.”
Valantina nodded. “So… we have our mission.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “And you were the one who facilitated it. Well done!”
She batted her eyelashes at him and said, “You flatter me, Sheremy.”
He grinned. Gosh, he liked this woman.
“But I have another secret,” she said. “Now I am here I have access to certain items my family brought from our lunar home when they repaired to London, the most important of which is the selenowiz.”
“The what?”
“It will be easier to show you.”
Valantina led him downstairs to the rear of the house, where a conservatory stood. Standing at one side was a vehicle composed of a great glass sphere six feet in diameter, covered with a tracery of iron, that supported it. A hinged gullwing door had been cut into one side. This sphere lay upon a black metal framework, that itself stood on four rubber tyres.
Sheremy said, “This vehicle will never forge a path through the hair.”
She laughed. “Ah, but you don’t know how it operates!” There came a twinkle to her eyes. “You see, the tyres are to support it at rest. A selenowiz flies.”
Sheremy nodded. “Of course…”
Midnight had come and gone. With Valantina in her bedroom, Sheremy wrapped himself in a mohair blouson and slept on a couch downstairs. They spent the next day preparing provisions and equipment for their expedition, until, as evening fell, they partook of cheese nudges and a poltroon soufflé in the conservatory; a final supper before they departed.
Sheremy put a hamper in the selenowiz boot, ensuring there was plenty of wine in it. Then Valantina opened the conservatory door and pushed the selenowiz outside. She closed and locked the door, placed the key on a chain between her breasts, then sat beside Sheremy inside the glass globe, pulling down the gullwing door so that its shutting mechanism clicked.
“Now what?” Sheremy asked.
“We wait for the moon to rise. Because it is full, the power of the selenowiz will be maximised. We can fly perhaps fifteen or twenty miles before the moths in the engine tire.”
“How long to wait?”
“A few minutes.”
Sheremy felt a hint of discomfort at being in such intimate proximity to Valantina. She had perfumed herself with lavender, he noted, and brushed her hair so that it shone. She wore a blue trouser suit and a formal pettiquette. He glanced down at his own stained clothes and felt only embarrassment.
The sky was clear, and soon enough they saw the moon rising over the eastern horizon, round and orange through a hair-induced mist. Valantina took a metal nose from the pouch at her side and pressed buttons, whereupon the selenowiz rose into the air. By pointing the nose – linked by moonflower stem-strings to the control juncture – she was able to steer the vehicle, and in moments they were flying over the Thames, the front of the selenowiz slightly lower than the rear, so that they had to sit back in their leather seats else fall out.
“Where shall we go first?” Sheremy asked.
“This Trichologist must have a palace of note if his rumour already spreads north of the river,” Valantina replied. “We’ll fly for a while and observe the land below us. Watch out for a hirsute palace unfamiliar to you.”
He nodded, gazing through the glass globe at the tenebrous city below him. In some houses elekertrick lamps burned, but many streets were dark from end to end, and he feared for the lives of their residents. Some communities had made camps by shearing great quantities of hair, and many of these camps were marked by blazing bonfires, but he knew such communities could not last long. The hair regrew. It covered all. Truly, it was a plague.
And then disaster. Valantina turned the selenowiz east so that the moon returned to view. She cried, “Sheremy, look!”
The moon was not round. A segment had been taken from it.
“An eclipse,” he gasped. “And we’re far from the north bank of the Thames.”
“We will never make it back… though I will try!”
But it was far too late. As the eclipse became full and the moon turned red the selenowiz descended like a discarded feather to the ground, chuttering as Valantina fought with the controls, then gliding into a lush crop of black hair. Everything went dark. The selenowiz halted, silent; they lay submerged beneath hair. Sheremy massaged a bruised shin, while Valantina sat back in her seat and sobbed.
He grasped her shoulders and pulled her to him. “There there,” he said. “We’ll find a way back. I’m a member of the Suicide Club, remember.”
She turned to him and wept upon his chest. “I am so sorry, Sheremy,” she said. “I should have checked the lunar timetable. It has been so long since I had anybody to take with me in the selenowiz.”
He kissed her cheek. “My dear,” he said, “I’ll expend every effort to save you… to save us from any unpleasant fate that might lie ahead. With me at your side…” He paused, considered who he was talking to, then continued, “… and with you at my side, we’ll forge a path back to Swan Lane. I do so swear!”
There came a noise of thumping outside the selenowiz. Sheremy jumped, peering into the luxuriant gloom. Pale lamps like frosted lanterns inside the globe gave some illumination, but he could make nothing out beyond the edge of the vehicle. Then the thumps returned, louder, and the hair moved outside.
Faces. Dark faces, bald, sweaty, with round white eyes. Grinning people holding tribal weapons.
“I believe the natives have located us,” he said.
~
Velvene was horrified by the cruelty he had witnessed at the Pentonville Road building, cruelty the like of which he had not known existed. Thou
gh he knew nothing about children, an unexpected feeling inside him, that he thought must be sympathy, welled up. He could not control this feeling, and he found himself weeping; not for himself, as he had in Highgate Cemetery, but for the boy Tyko.
He wandered along the road towards King’s Cross Railway station, pulling the clay figure behind him; forlorn, tired and bruised.
The smell of chocolate emanating from the station perked him up, and he realised he was hungry. Outside the entrance he saw a number of people holding placards with curious legends upon them: Ban The Hair, and Equal Rights For Us And Them, and, most curiously of all, If You Can Read This You’re Educated.
One of the men grunted at him and tossed over a printed newspaper, which Velvene opened to scan the front page.
MARX IST-LENINIST TIMES
Emergency Editon!
LONDON ARISTOCRACY S PREAD HAIRY LIE
From our Russian corespondent. The parasitic upper classes of London Town yesterday night spread a great ha iry blanket across us all, destroying the mobility of the working classes in a fowl m ove that Engels hiself could have predicted in The Conditio n Of The Working Classes In England. Tody every street in London town, every alley and passage is choked with hair that the aristocracyy can avoid becuase they have Archimedean floating systems, which only they can aford. Fight the reactionaries! Brothers and sisters unite! Many people who must through the c onditions of their lives go to work every day canot today go to work today. The govern ment is to launch an enquiry, but who will write it, and to who will they report? The landed gentry who rule us from Downing Street of course. The London aristocracy habve spread a hairy lie.
Velvene glanced up at the slender, pale and unshaven man who had thrown him the rag. “Who are you, if I might ask?”
The man scowled at him. “More to the point guv, who are you?”
Velvene glanced down at himself, aware that his attire marked him out as a man not of the working classes – although his clothes were filthy and tattered. Moderating his accent as best he could he said, “I just heard a man whipping a little boy in the johnny cab down Pentonville Road.”
“Yes, they do that, the people who rule us. You only just noticed? What’s your name, guv?”
“Velvene… Orchard. I’m a sculptor, a destitute sculptor.” He glanced at the clay figure on the trolley behind him. “This is my latest work.”
“Yeah, right. Well guv, the nobs got us good and proper this time. The hair is designed to stop us moving about see, so they can control us even better.”
“Who are you people?” Velvene asked, his curiosity piqued.
“I’m Pertrand Urricane, leader of the Marxist-Leninist Workers’ Movement Of London. Glad to make your acquaintance, guv.”
Velvene nodded. He wanted to mention that he had met Karl Marx the previous day, but realised that Pertrand might consider that an opportunistic lie. So he said, “And what are your basic principles, eh?”
“We follow Marx and Lenin. You ever heard of Lenin, guv?”
“Vaguely.”
Pertrand smiled, then laughed and shook his head. “Ooh guv, you got some very tasty reading coming up. Lenin is the saviour, see, he’s got the theory that’s gonna bring down the Romanovs in Russia, and hopefully the aristocratic government over here. Marx, you see, he pointed out that the working classes is oppressed, but Lenin, he took it one stage further, saying that the final stage of capitalism is imperialism. So we gotta bring down the nobs.”
“Well,” Velvene said, “I think the, er, nobs might have a thing or two to say about that.”
“You know any nobs, guv?”
“Not me, no.”
“Hmmm. Only you sounded like you might.”
Velvene decided to change the subject. “Why are you protesting outside King’s Cross station?”
“’Cos some Romanovs is due here any minute, down from Balmoral or some such place of idle luxury. It’s our duty to protest. I’d knife ’em if I could.”
“Would you…”
Pertrand looked Velvene up and down for a while then said, “I’m gonna do you a favour, guv. Come with us back to our headquarters. You need some grub, some tea, and then some good solid reading. What you say?”
Velvene shrugged. “I suppose I could, I have nothing else to do.”
From the station entrance a toffee landau emerged in which two figures could be seen, glittering with jewels, as Velvene noted. The Marxist-Leninists threw stones and sacks of Curious paint at the vehicle, which, resting on an inflated bag, sped off down Euston Road with little hindrance from the hair.
“That showed ’em,” Pertrand observed. “All right, everyone! Fun over. Back to Gordon Square. This here is Velvene Orchard, a sculptor. He’s interested in Marx and Lenin, so be polite to him.”
With some embarrassment Velvene waved to the half dozen protestors.
Pertrand’s headquarters was a dingy upper floor flat situated opposite the tree-strewn greenery of Gordon Square, an apartment in which lay a Marxist library, a number of living rooms and bedrooms, and a shared kitchen. The bathroom was a shed erected on the roof. Plumbing was rudimentary.
“This’ll be your home for a while guv,” Pertrand said. “It’s basic, but it’s all a human being needs. No need for gold and opulence, is there? Plenty for all, if the confounded aristocracy would just share it out fairly.”
“I know what you mean,” Velvene said, nodding. He glanced at the others, settling down to tea and toast, then said, “I notice you have three women here.”
“Yeah. Women are part of the revolution. Men and women are equal, as Marx and Lenin pointed out.”
“But politics is a man’s job.”
“You need to disabuse yourself of that idea soon as maybe,” Pertrand said. “And don’t go repeating it inside these walls. I can chuck you out, you know.”
Velvene felt uncomfortable. A woman’s place was in the world of women. Everything else was the world of men. He decided to use Pertrand for a brief time, get himself back on his feet, then move on. Bedwards House lay less than a mile away.
“This afternoon I’m going out on a scouting mission,” Pertrand said, “to a hidden factory using cheap labour. You should come, guv.”
Velvene nodded. Just this once…
“It’s not situated too far away,” Pertrand continued, “so the hair won’t make the walk impossible. Grafton Place by Euston Station, it is.”
“A small trek,” Velvene replied, recalling treks of his own that had stretched for hundreds of miles across jungle and desert.
After a luncheon of mouldy cheese on toast and weak tea, Velvene and Pertrand departed the flat and headed north. Velvene said as little as possible, not wanting to give his Belgravia background away, but also hoping to entice hints from Pertrand as to what his intentions were for the group.
“Bring down the aristocracy,” Pertrand said. “Simple ’nuff. By any means, guv, know what I mean? We got all sorts of plans. Maybe one day I’ll let you into a few little Marxist-Leninist secrets, depending on how well you serve the cause.”
“Serve the cause, eh?”
“I can see it in your eyes. You hate ’em as much as me.”
Velvene said nothing. He hated his family, of course.
The Grafton Place factory stood in a yard hidden behind a mercantile row, small windows piercing high brick walls, one great chimney belching smoke, and one great door strengthened with steel; upon the main gate a plate: Black-á-Nor Developments, Private Property, NO ADMITTANCE.
“Private property,” Pertrand chuckled. “We know what Marx has to say about that, don’t we guv?”
“I certainly do,” Velvene replied. “What do we do now?”
“Climb round the back. I wanna see how the master works his crew. Gonna make it the front page report on the next Marxist-Leninist Times – tomorrow with a bit of luck. C’mon guv, quiet like, else the dogs’ll hear us.”
Tip-toeing through mud, discarded paper and mats of hair, the pa
ir rounded the factory to see a high wall behind a tall chainlink fence.
“That wall can be climbed,” Pertrand observed. “See, they’ve put stays out to hold up the sheds round this side. Reckon we could jump across to ’em, then crawl along and shin up that drainpipe.”
“You could be correct,” Velvene agreed, recalling a similar situation at the Brown Temple of Berber-Time. He sized up the leap. “It may be done, Urricane. But we must hurry, eh?”
Like skulking squirrels the pair clambered up the fence, jumped upon the nearest stay (a two yard leap not for the fainthearted) then crawled over to the wall and the drainpipe. Velvene, his confidence increasing, took the lead for the climb, explaining to Pertrand the safest way of ascending.
“Sheesh! I’m impressed, guv.”
At the top of the drainpipe Velvene leaned across and clambered upon a wide sill, shuffling along so that Pertrand could follow. A hundred foot drop below; the wind whistling around his ears.
He turned to look through the window, and was astonished at what he saw.
It was indeed a site of cheap labour. Hundreds of half naked darkies sat at steaming machines, all of which produced something familiar to Velvene. Soft leather undergarments.
“It’s a sweat factory,” Pertrand said. “Forced labour, cheap labour, immigrant labour.”
Velvene felt sick. He had no idea the standard undergarment of the Suicide Club – indeed, of so many gentleman’s clubs – was produced in this way.
But then he saw something so shocking he almost fell off the sill. It was the master of the factory. And that master was Lord Blackanore.
Hairy London Page 7
