Armageddon_The Musical (Armageddon Trilogy Book 1)

by Robert Rankin

  I also make sure that I carry the carbon, in case we have to split up for any reason. So anyway, we arrive back at my place unmolested and 1 jack up my deck. Which for those who wish to know such things is a GIBSON 440 with cross-pattern interface and lock-in multi-broads, full spectrum I don’t tell this guy that his is the first K-squared that I have ever laid hands upon and the chances of compacting the incompactible are less than zero He looks as if he was worried enough But looking back it was somewhat neither here nor there, because the next thing I know is the terminator which is stuck in my ear And the guy making mockery of my equipment and using jargon the like of which is perplexing to my ears I wind up handcuffed to my chair whilst he sets up my linkages and runs the whole program himself, before my very eyes And all the time he is going, ‘crude, crude, crude’, some thanks So once he’s run in the program he then looks about my place for something to store it in. And then he sees my collection and he starts to laugh ‘Just the trick,’ says he, ‘pure irony ‘ Well, 1 don’t know what irony is, but my collection is something else For one thing it is complete, was complete I had everything the Man ever did. And this son-of-a-bitch just dips in at random And does he take some remix or cover version ? Does he king shit. He takes the jewel of my fucking collection. Laughing like a drain as he does it.

  The Suburban Book of the Dead

  ‘He’s a friend to the foe

  The star of the show

  The man we all know

  By his king-sized karma

  He’s a real breath of Spring

  He’s the Living God King

  He’s the Dalai . . . Dalai . . . Dalai

  Dalai ... La ... ma’

  Dan’s suit was electronic jiggery-pokery. Although nothing new had been invented upon Earth during the preceding three decades, the scope of the Dalai’s wardrobe, allied with the brief lifespans of his audience, saw to it that he always remained Mr Wonderful.

  Commerical holographics, sired in the late 1980s and milked for all they were worth after the NHE, were still capable of impressing those conditioned to be impressed. Dan’s suit seethed with three-dimensional erotica. A heaving panorama of taut buttocks, pert nipples, milk-white thighs, armpit hair and exposed front bottoms.

  Dan took a major bow toward his viewing public. Willies of every colour and hue came and went across his shoulders.

  ‘My dear friends,’ said Dan, in a manner much favoured by American Evangelist fornicators of the late eighties, ‘my dear, dear friends. I am with you once again.’ Dan made a profound and sacred sign. The Pavlovian bunker-bound responded. Ringpulls popped from Buddhabeer cans and the narcotized contents bubbled into waiting throats. Today’s delivery had been double-strengthened, just to be on the safe side. Dan filled in the twenty seconds before the beer took hold by performing a little dance amongst The Lamarettes. In the control room Rex began to feel somewhat strange. He found his right hand tugging at a ringpull that wasn’t there. Things were becoming clearer and clearer to Rex Mundi. Mickey Malkuth entered a lift many floors beneath. Second anonymous torturer was with him.

  ‘Showtime.’ Dan twirled upon his heel. ‘And what a show have we got lined up for you tonight. It is going to be big and when I say big, what do I mean?’

  The bunker-bound knew exactly what he meant. ‘Big,’ they went, as one.

  ‘After all, who is it that cares for you? Who clothes you? Who loves you? Yeah, that’s right. It’s me. And that’s why you love me, isn’t it? And you do love me? Don’t you? Love me. Love me. Love me.’

  Rex peered down at the performance. He chewed upon his knuckles, he felt wrong inside. He perused the console deck before him. The show’s running time flashed, five minutes gone already, how could that be. He looked out at the Dalai. Dan made another profound gesture. Rex yanked at his trouserleg. ‘Gotta get a beer, gotta get a beer.’

  ‘Easy Rex.’ She seated herself beside him. ‘You’re not thirsty.’

  Rex couldn’t take his eyes from the Dalai. ‘Gotta get a beer.’ Christeen pulled his face away and gazed into it, she turned down the sound. ‘Conditioning. Don’t watch him. You’re not thirsty.’

  ‘Thirsty?’ Rex stared into her eyes. ‘Why should I be thirsty?’

  ‘Why indeed? Now if you will kindly place yourself behind the door. Do you have your gun?’ Rex proffered the piece, the way one does.

  ‘Now, hold it in your right hand and count to ten.’ Rex did so, the door burst in.

  ‘.. . ten.’ Rex swung the gun. Mickey Malkuth hit the floor.

  ‘And just to four this time.’

  ‘Two . . . three . . . four.’ The second anonymous torturer joined Malkuth in the ‘prone position’.

  ‘Thanks again,’ Rex pocketed the pistol. ‘I owe you.’

  ‘You owe yourself, Rex.’ The lad peeped over the console deck and down through the plexiglass toward the studio floor. ‘He’s on to me, then?’

  Christeen nodded, Rex didn’t need to see her. ‘You just retired without the pension.’

  Rex slumped back in the AC’s chair. ‘I hope I’m doing the right thing. I do appear to be a little short of options right now.’

  Christeen drew attention to the liberal distribution of KOed station folk. ‘I think that no matter how you might unwish it, you are committed.’

  ‘I hate him.’ Rex turned away from the glass.

  ‘So do I,’ said Christeen.

  ‘I hope you won’t accuse me of fatalism,’ whispered the dangling Deathblade. ‘But having given my all to the considered assessment of our present situation, I’m forced to conclude that there is no hope left to us.’

  ‘Very well put, old muckamuck, but never say die, eh? The fact that we are currently hanging upside down before the viewing public, with explosive capsules nestling in our privy passages, might on the face of it, I grant you, appear cause for just concern.’

  ‘On the face of it?’

  ‘But,’ Rambo rambled on, ‘I myself subscribe to the credo of positive thinking. Should the worst possible occur and our bums blow us to oblivion, we must look on the bright side. We will be making a political statement.’

  ‘Making a mess of the studio, more like.’

  ‘Eric, in some future time our names may well be writ big upon the wall of martyrdom.’

  ‘The blood is running to what remains of my head.’

  ‘Chin up, think of England.’

  ‘Of where?’

  ‘Never mind, it’s just a saying.’

  ‘It’s the questions I worry most about, Rambo.’

  ‘Questions, Eric? Do you mean like, what does all this mean? And is there really a divine purpose behind it, and things of that nature?’

  ‘No, Rambo. I was thinking about the questions the Dalai will ask, I hope they are on gardening. Do you think he will let us choose or will we just have to take what comes?’

  ‘We’ll just have to play it by ear, Eric. No offence meant.’

  ‘None taken, I assure you.’

  ‘Extremists and heretics,’ the Dalai was screaming, ‘like really bad people. Like well, you know, how bad can bad be, right? Really bad, yeah, you got it. They hate me, so they hate you, it’s the same thing when you think about it, know what I mean, innit? These people just hate, that’s all they do. Who needs them, do you need them? I don’t need them . . .’

  ‘He’s talking gibberish.’ Rex had fearfully tweaked up the sound in the control room, but wasn’t daring to look.

  ‘He’s talking the universal tongue.’

  ‘He is what?’

  ‘The language of the stoned, the blitzed, the smashed and well and truly out of it. The Enlightened.’

  ‘But it’s rubbish, it just goes on and on.’

  ‘Enlightenment is like that. Refined knowledge is no knowledge at all. Every question has a million answers and all of them probably wrong. The Dalai now has his followers narcotized, he speaks to them in their language. We’ve all been stoned at some time or another and felt certain that we k
new what was what. When we woke up the next day and couldn’t precisely remember, what did we do?’

  ‘We got stoned again.’

  ‘Precisely, the bunker-bound will recall some of it, the bits that are drummed into them and they’ll be back for another helping.’

  ‘Then surely I have listened to this, again and again?’

  ‘Rex, you slept through the most part of it with your eyes open.’

  ‘My uncle taught me.’

  ‘And you know now who killed him.’

  ‘Yes, and I know why.’

  ‘So, keep watching the show, carefully of course. There’s a very good bit coming up in just a moment.’

  ‘Dear friends, do you have your remote controls at the ready? Yes, I just know that you do. Well, I’m gonna ask you a question and you, the viewers at home, are gonna answer it. You got the two buttons, right, one marked yes and the other marked, you guessed it, no. So I ask you the question and you have the choice. All ready, right. The question is, should we let these vindictive murderers and would-be assassins of my good person live, or should we blast the heretic sons of Satan off to Hell, live in colour?’

  ‘One feels the question might have been better phrased,’ Rambo observed.

  ‘If the opinion of a man with half a brain is of any interest, I have the feeling that our goose-flavoured food cube is well and truly cooked.’

  ‘Now the choice is all yours.’ The Dalai continued. ‘It’s a yes if you want them blown to pieces, and a no if you don’t think they deserve to live. So what’s it going to be then, eh?’

  ‘What about the don’t knows?’ Rambo protested.

  ‘Ask him if he could kindly repeat the question,’ the bewildered Eric put in. ‘I don’t know which way I should vote.’

  ‘Ask him to stick up his hands and shut his mouth,’ said Elvis Presley.

  Dan turned in horror to view the materialization. ‘SUN,’ he gasped.

  ‘Messiah,’ went the inverted Rambo.

  ‘Golly,’ said Eric. ‘And in the nick of time, eh?

  ‘This station is now the property of the people.’

  ‘But the people are stoned. Cut the sound, fade out . . .’

  ‘I think not,’ said Rex Mundi.

  ‘Get me Fergus Shaman.’

  ‘I’m sorry Mr Madoc, but Mr Shaman is no longer in the building.’

  ‘Then get him at home.’

  ‘I regret that Mr Shaman isn’t at home.’

  ‘Then where is he?’

  ‘Mr Shaman has, and I quote, gone to Earth upon pressing business.’

  ‘Mr Shaman isn’t authorized to visit Earth.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Get me a spaceboat at once.’

  ‘Mr Shaman said that you might require one. It’s all prepared on the top landing.’

  ‘Thank you, Mavis.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Madoc,’

  ‘Cut down those sons of freedom, father-raper,’ snarled Elvis, from the trigger end of a four-barrelled Phnaargian peacekeeper. ‘And don’t get smart.’

  Dan made frantic motions towards the lovely Marion, who was making goo-goo eyes at the unscheduled star guest. ‘Marion!’

  The bra-busting beauty, whose hobbies included doing voluntary work for the terminally underprivileged, running on the spot and learning a first language, wiggled her unlikely hips and nose-dived a lurex finger towards a row of garish buttons. These were housed beneath the score board, which should have been mentioned earlier.

  ‘To hear you say, is to obey,’ she coupleted, most prettily. Rambo and Eric tumbled to the studio floor in khaki confusion. Dan glanced toward Elvis.

  ‘Don’t even think about it.’ Elvis cocked a second hammer on his piece.

  Rambo struggled to free himself from the harness about his ankles. Rising to his feet he straightened his lapels and put his hair in order, before delving into his trouser seat, to remove something singularly distressing. ‘I feel we might dispense with further formalities and stick this where it belongs.’

  ‘All in good sweet time.’ Elvis opened his jacket, exposing his considerable weaponry. He tossed a hand-gun to Rambo. ‘Stay loose.’

  ‘I have every intention of doing so, Lord King.’

  ‘Someone untie my hands,’ moaned the Deathblade.

  ‘It’s your feet that are tied, close friend of mine.’

  ‘Ah yes. I see my mistake now, thank you Rambo.’

  ‘Don’t mention it, Eric.’

  ‘Now just you listen,’ said Dan, whose telepathic cry for help now echoed about the building. ‘You are making a terrible mistake.’

  Elvis shook his head. It was a very definite shake. It said a very definite no.

  ‘End transmission,’ said the Dalai Lama. But he didn’t say it from the studio floor, where he stood trembling. He said it close by the ear of Rex Mundi.

  ‘Shock horror!’ Rex lurched back in his borrowed chair. Dan leaned forward, his wide eyes showing only the whites. ‘End transmission.’

  ‘Stay away from me,’ Rex lashed out at the holyman, his fist struck empty air. ‘A hologram.’

  ‘A holygram,’ said Christeen. ‘A tulpa, an astral body.’ The other Dan turned slowly away from Rex, the pupils returned to his eyes, one from above, the other from beneath. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

  ‘He can see you,’ croaked Rex.

  ‘Of course he can, in his present state we occupy the same plane.’ Christeen walked slowly toward the tulpa, smiling sweetly. Her fingers were cupped demurely before her. She drew back her beautiful face and brutally head-butted him. Back on the studio floor Dalai Dan collapsed in a heap of holy confusion, clutching a bleeding nose. Rambo and Eric went into a big twentieth-century American cop routine over him. Legs akimbo, both hands upon the gun.

  ‘Are we rolling?’ Elvis squinted into the lights. Rex gave an invisible thumbs up. Elvis tucked away his weapon. ‘People of the World,’ said he, addressing the automated camera with the red light on. ‘I wonder if you’re lonesome tonight.’

  Now it might have been a blinder of a speech. A heartfelt heart-string puller, a rowdy rabble rouser, or a wise and witty tickler of ribs. It might have been a Churchillian upper-lip stiffener or even a metaphysical mind-blower. Or of course it could well have been a load of old pussy-cat poo. But whatever the case, that’s as far as it got.

  Because just then the stage doors opened to reveal the Dalai’s special guard, the Orange Agents, as they are unaffectionately known.

  They were stunningly clad in this year’s look. Heavily-padded shoulders giving that fuller feel. Belts worn at a jaunty angle, rakish high-boots beneath hip-hugging combat trousers, pocketed for convenience at thigh height. The stun guns, grenade launchers, flame throwers and rapid-fire machine pistols were all standard issue, but the straps and fittings had been whimsically toned in bold primaries, which although adding that essential splash of colour, in no way detracted from the bold, macho image.

  ‘Nobody move.’

  Rambo and Eric, now both tooled up, turned their inadequate firepower upon the intruders. ‘Drop those weapons,’ called Eric, whose complete lack of comprehension, regarding the sudden shift in the balance of power, had a certain naive charm. ‘Give yourselves up.’

  Elvis sighed deeply. Up in the control room, Rex Mundi said, ‘Phase Two.’ He pulled from his radiation suit a pre-recorded transmission disc Elvis had given him for the occasion. It was entitled ELVIS PRESLEY’S GOLDEN GREATS. Something about going out on a song, the King had said. Rex slotted it into the desk housing and sat back awaiting further events.

  On the studio floor a little tableau was now arranged. At its centre knelt Dan, somewhat green about the gills and red around the hooter. About him were ranged Eric, Rambo and Elvis, their guns angled down towards the kneeler, aimed at areas of their respective choosings.

  ‘Back off fellas,’ called Elvis. The Orange Agents looked at one another, they looked at Elvis, they looked at the Dalai. ‘Now,’ encouraged Mr P
resley, before all the looking got out of hand. ‘And clear the decks, we’re leaving.’

  Dan looked up bitterly, ‘I’m wounded,’ he complained. The look on Elvis’s face told him all he needed to know. ‘Quite so. Kindly move back, gentlemen.’

  ‘Cue it in, Rex,’ Elvis called up to the control box.

  Rex tipped the switch. The passionate strains of the immortal classic filled the studio air. ‘It’s now or never,’ it went.

  Elvis said, ‘Let’s go.’

  Rex turned towards Christeen, she had gone, and once more all memories of her had gone too. The disc was running and now it was his turn.

  Four men dashed along the studio corridor. Three held guns, one held his nose. ‘Into the lift.’

  ‘They will cut the power,’ said Eric.

  ‘Very good, Eric.’

  ‘Thank you, Rambo.’

  ‘They won’t,’ Elvis bundled Dan into the lift. ‘In you.’ Dan had nothing to say.