The Book of Ultimate Truths (The Cornelius Murphy Trilogy 1)

by Robert Rankin

‘What is it?’

  Cornelius held up the object. It sparkled in the headlight’s beam.

  ‘Our windscreen wiper,’ said Cornelius Murphy.

  ‘It isn’t very good in the dark, dark wood.’ Tuppe’s teeth were chattering.

  ‘We definitely didn’t pass a turning, did we?’

  Tuppe shook his shaking head.

  ‘And I don’t see how we could have just driven around in a circle. I’ve hardly turned the wheel. So, where does that leave us?’

  ‘It leaves me in a state of considerable nervousness. Let’s walk back. If we’re no further on than we were half an hour ago, then we’ll have no further to walk back.’

  ‘There is wisdom in your words. But I don’t think we should leave the car. Although,’ he tapped at the dashboard, ‘it would appear that we are almost out of petrol.’

  ‘How about if we ran back?’ Tuppe suggested.

  ‘No. That is not what we will do. Put your safety-belt on, Tuppe.’

  Tuppe clipped himself up. ‘I’m not going to like this, am I?’

  Cornelius revved the engine. ‘Probably not. Perhaps you should close your eyes.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Because I am going to close mine.’ Cornelius gave the accelerator pedal full wellie and slammed the car into gear.

  He let out the clutch.

  The wheels spun. The engine screamed and the car shot forwards.

  Cornelius gripped the steering wheel with both hands and kept his head well down. Branches snapped and crackled. The windscreen shattered. The headlights did likewise. Cornelius kept his foot right down on the floor.

  ‘Ooooooooooooooooh!’ shrieked Tuppe.

  ‘Hold tight!’ Cornelius swung the steering wheel hard to the right. The Cadillac swerved. Tore into the hedge. Crashed through it.

  There was a great fireball of light. The car seemed to hang a moment in space. And then it plunged down and down and down.

  Cornelius held his breath.

  Tuppe held his breath.

  Crash, bang and wallop, went the Cadillac and finally…

  Tuppe’s eyes remained tightly shut. ‘Cornelius,’ he whispered. ‘Cornelius, are you there?’

  ‘I’m somewhere.’ The tall boy had his hands over his head.

  ‘What do you see?’

  ‘I don’t see anything. I’m not looking.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I think it was the roof closing. Do you smell something, Tuppe?’

  Tuppe sniffed. ‘I smell flowers. Oh Cornelius, I smell flowers.’

  ‘I smell flowers too.’

  ‘Cornelius. I think we’re dead.’

  ‘Then we’ve gone to the good place. Flowers have to be the good place.’

  ‘…Tulips from Amsterdam,’ sang Max Bygraves, all of a sudden.

  ‘Or possibly not,’

  ‘Oooh and ouch!’ Cornelius Murphy’s trousers began to burn. ‘We’ve gone to Hell.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Tuppe floundered about blindly and turned off the heater.

  Cornelius fanned at his trouser bottoms and slowly drew himself back into the vertical plane. ‘Gosh,’ said he. ‘Would you look at that?’

  Tuppe crept up beside him and took a peep. ‘Ooh,’ went Tuppe.

  The Cadillac was standing in the middle of a small grassy field. Not twenty yards from the open gateway it had apparently just driven through. On the road beyond cars went by.

  Birds twittered. Flowers bloomed. The sun shone.

  Cornelius stood up, drew back his hair and scanned the horizon. No hedgerows. No overhanging trees. He climbed from the car and examined it with interest. The windscreen was intact. Both wipers were there. The headlights were on. The paintwork was immaculate.

  Tuppe scrambled out to join him. ‘Not a scratch. Nothing. What happened? Were we dreaming?’

  ‘Not dreaming. Come on. Help me search the car.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I’ll know when we find it.’

  They searched the car. They were very thorough.

  Tuppe found a pair of knickers down behind the back seat.

  Cornelius rummaged through the contents of the boot and found them to be very oily indeed.

  Suddenly Tuppe said, ‘What’s this?’

  ‘What do you have there?’ Cornelius slammed shut the boot.

  ‘A little black package, sealed with wax. It was under the driving seat. It feels very cold.’

  Cornelius came around the car and took it from him. He weighed the thing on his palm and turned it with his thumb. ‘Would you care to hazard a guess at the contents?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a bar of chocolate. It’s not a bomb, is it?’ Tuppe ducked back into the car.

  ‘Not a bomb. I would suspect that it’s a model car. Probably a Cadillac Eldorado, with the windscreen painted black.’

  Cornelius tore open the little package. It was a model car. It was a Cadillac Eldorado. A piece of black gaffer tape had been secured across the windscreen.

  Tuppe looked at Cornelius.

  Cornelius looked at Tuppe.

  ‘Lucky guess?’ Tuppe asked.

  ‘Sympathetic magic,’ said Cornelius. ‘Someone put a curse on us.’

  ‘That someone would be the Campbell I am thinking.’

  Cornelius nodded. Thoughtfully.

  The Cadillac was now parked in a lay-by. Tuppe sat in the front passenger seat brrrming the toy car up and down the dashboard.

  Cornelius was in a telephone box. Tuppe couldn’t hear what he was saying. But he could understand his friend’s body language. Things weren’t going well.

  Cornelius slammed down the receiver and stalked back to the car. He flung himself into the driving seat. Tuppe thought it best not to ask.

  ‘I’m sacked.’ Cornelius threw up his hands and brought them down amidst a torrent of hair. ‘Sacked.’

  ‘Why?’ Tuppe asked.

  ‘For my own safety. Mr Kobold says I am in grave danger. He says I should forget about the monastery. Come back home at once.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I told him no.’ Cornelius fought to free his fingers from his hair.

  ‘Good for you. No, what am I saying? We’re out of our league here.’ Tuppe waggled the toy car beneath the tall boy’s nose. ‘This is witchcraft. We were hexed. We can’t mess around with stuff like this.’

  ‘I’m not quitting.’ Cornelius folded his arms. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘I understood that you’d been sacked.’

  ‘Tuppe, whatever we’ve got ourselves into is something really big. The epic something. We can’t quit now. Not at least until we know exactly what we have got ourselves into.’

  ‘Could we quit then?’ Tuppe made a hopeful face.

  ‘You can quit now if you want to. I’m going on to the monastery. And I’m going to find the papers. What do you say?’

  Tuppe stroked his pointed chin. ‘They would seem to be most valuable papers. And as you are now unemployed, I see no reason why you shouldn’t search for them in a freelance capacity. And then perhaps, sell them to the highest bidder.’

  ‘These thoughts have crossed my mind. So, will you join me, or should I drop you off at the nearest station?’

  Tuppe gave his chin another little stroke. ‘As you may have noticed, Cornelius, I am only a small person. And I greatly fear magic. Especially magic that actually works. I feel that I might prove a hindrance rather than a help.’

  Cornelius nodded carefully. ‘I understand. I’ll drop you off at the first station we come to.’

  ‘You must be joking. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.’

  ‘Then you’ll stay?’

  ‘Of course I’ll stay.’ Tuppe tinkered with the wireless.

  ‘Born to be wild,’ sang Steppenwolf.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ cried Tuppe. ‘Let’s Rock and Roll.’

  ‘Let’s do that very thing,’ Cornelius agreed. And the big grin was back with a vengeance.<
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  14

  THE SMALL SCREW PHENOMENON

  Have you ever dismantled a malfunctioning electric toaster in order to effect a repair?

  Have you then located the cause of the problem, generally something trivial, a disconnected wire or whatnot, made the repair, reassembled the toaster, tested it and found everything once again working properly?

  And then discovered you had two small screws left over.

  Then heed the words of Rune.

  Open the nearest window.

  Take the screws in your right hand.

  (Or your left, if this interferes with your Biro implant.)

  Defenestrate the screws.

  That is THROW THEM OUT OF THE WINDOW!

  Because if you do not, then all that lies before you is madness, misery and the ruination of your health.

  If you again dismantle the toaster and search for places to refit the screws, you will very shortly become aware of two things.

  Once reassembled, the toaster will no longer work.

  You are now the proud possessor of three small screws!

  That the mystery of the small screw phenomenon, S.S.P., has baffled the scientific greybeards of our age is hardly surprising. The greybeards lean naturally towards bafflement.

  However, I Rune, understanding, as I do, all things, reveal this truth unto you.

  SMALL SCREWS BREED INSIDE ELECTRICAL APPARATUS.

  The small screw, as may be observed through a very powerful lens, resembles the spiral of D.N.A. It is a living body.

  The fact that toasters, as with all electric appliances, possess self-healing screw holes, has long been recognized as fact. All screw holes have the tendency to shrink once the screw has been removed from them. This is natural. Nothing enjoys having a foreign object forcibly inserted into it. With the notable exception of certain members of The Chiswick Townswomen’s Guild. But this does not have any particular bearing upon the subject of S.S.P.

  The small screw is the demon spawn of modern technology. It has driven many good men to early graves, cost industry countless billions of pounds each day, crippled innovation and lost us The Empire.

  I have recently been made privy to certain ‘leaked’ Ministry of Defence documents.

  These refer in great detail to S.S.P. in regard to the construction and maintenance of so called ‘Nuclear Submarines’. (See Nuclear Power. The Myth Exploded, Hugo Rune.)

  These submersibles are literally bulging with electronic hokus pokus, which, having been constructed to the very highest standards of technological perfection, is in constant need of repair.

  During a recent overhaul, the multiplicity of small screws became so pronounced and the incidences of madness amongst the service teams so apparent, that the M.o.D. was forced to seek a socially acceptable excuse. They chose Radiation Leaks!

  The S.S.S. (Special Screw Service) were called in to descrew the submarines and removed nearly three tons of small screws, all of which had apparently come out of something or other, but nobody knew what.

  The small screws were packed into containers, labelled TOXIC WASTE to avoid suspicion, driven to the south coast of England and dumped into the sea.

  My own interest in the subject of S.S.P. began in the late 1940s. I was in India, acting as Gandhi’s spiritual adviser. At the time I write about, he and I were travelling on a steam packet out of Bombay. We had decided to get away from it all for a couple of weeks and ‘do the nightlife’ in Calcutta. As usual we went incognito, adopting our favourite guise of ‘man and wife’.

  Gandhi had a natural bent for female impersonation. Had he chosen to take it up professionally, it might well have made his fortune. His Widow Twanky was formidable. And how well I remember his rendition of ‘I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No’, performed in blond wig and ball gown, to the appreciation of the British Trade Delegation outside the Taj Mahal (by moonlight).

  Although we had begged the captain to see to it that we remained undisturbed, word soon got out that one of the world’s greatest spiritual leaders was on board the ship.

  In no time, passengers and crew alike were beating on our door and begging me to bless their children, cure their baldness, restore their youth, and double the length of their ‘old chaps’. All of which I did, simply in the hope of getting a bit of peace during the rest of the voyage.

  When all were satisfied I prepared to turn in for the night. But noticed that a single figure yet remained, cowering in the corner of the cabin.

  Having done my bit that day for the good of mankind, I told him to clear off at the double, or know my wrath. But he flung himself down before me and kissed the hem of my raiment.

  He was as ragged a wretch as ever I saw. And I’ve seen some. Stained a deep chestnut by the subcontinental sun, white of hair and mad of eye.

  It was only when he spoke that I realized he had once been an Englishman. And a gentleman to boot.

  He told me that he had a terrible confession to make and knew of no other man on earth to whom he could make it. His name was Lord N – (I withhold his name because his family are prominent members of the ruling class, and to reveal it would bring shame upon a noble house and in all probability bring down the present Government).

  The tale below is told in his own words.

  During the early 1930s, I spent a period passing the time as a news reader for the BBC. In those days the BBC was staffed exclusively by members of the English aristocracy. It had very much the atmosphere of an exclusive gentleman’s club.

  The news was supplied to the readers by a team of back-room Johnnies whose job it was to think up items of news suitably cheerful and patriotic to broadcast. This was generally done by recycling whatever news had proved the most popular the previous year, or taking passages from the pages of Old Moore’s Almanac. During the depression, the BBC Northern Service broadcast ‘live coverage’ of the King’s coronation every three or four weeks, to great spirit-raising effect. And you will no doubt recall how the summers were so much better before the war. This was due to the BBC’s policy of always adding a few degrees to the temperature on all weather forecasts. A little wrinkle picked up from the Russians, who used it to ensure good turnouts on May Day.

  Anyway. Each morning, when I arrived at Broadcasting House, I would leave my top hat and cane with the porter and collect my daily supply of news from my special pigeonhole. It was always there in a large, crisp, buff-coloured envelope.

  Once in a while, if I felt in the mood, I would flick through it in advance, to see what the Johnnies had dreamed up for the Empire to be doing. But mostly I did not, considering it unsporting for a news reader to know the news before the listener.

  However, one particular morning, I noticed that the buff-coloured envelope presented a somewhat shabby appearance. There was evidence of a finger-mark and what looked to be a ring made by the damp underside of a coffee cup. You can imagine my surprise, as the BBC was always scrupulous about providing saucers.

  I complained at once to the Director General, an Etonian uncle of mine, and he agreed that the culprit should be given a stern ticking off and that I should be the one to do it.

  Now, I did all my news readings from a comfortable drawing room on the third floor and had never ventured down into the labyrinth of sub basements beneath Broadcasting House. It took me nearly an hour to locate the back-room Johnnies’ room. The sign on the door said, BACK ROOM KEEP OUT.

  I knocked loudly. But receiving no response, turned the handle and went in. What I saw upset me not a little. I had expected a number of learned bookish types, being terribly earnest and responsible, seated at great desks, studying mighty leather-bound tomes. But no. The room contained but a single cove, clad in an overall and worrying at a complicated-looking electrical contrivance about the size of a portmanteau. This was all covered in dials and valves and little lights and mounted on a sturdy work bench.

  ‘You, sir,’ I hailed the cove and waved the grubby envelope in his direction. ‘I demand to know the mean
ing of this.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve read it, have you?’ he replied. ‘Well sorry, guvnor, you’ll just have to wait.’

  I did not like his tone, nor did I understand the meaning of his words. So I opened the envelope and acquainted myself with the contents. On a sheet of paper, torn from a cheap copybook, were scrawled the words NORMAL SERVICE WILL BE RESUMED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

  ‘I demand to know the meaning of this also,’ said I, striking a martial pose.

  ‘It means what it says,’ said the overalled cove, in what I now came to realize was a working-class accent. ‘Until I get this fixed there ain’t going to be no news. So you’d best go back upstairs and apologize to the listeners.’

  I shook my head. ‘That is not the way things are done at the BBC,’ I told him.

  ‘Well, it’s how they are now,’ came his insolent reply. ‘Until I have this here gadget all tickety-boo, there’ll be no news today.’

  ‘And what, pray tell me, exactly is this gadget of yours then?’ I enquired.

  ‘A radio receiver.’

  ‘You mean a wireless set,’ I corrected him.

  ‘I mean a radio receiver. It picks up news reports from all over the world.’

  ‘What? Foreign news?’ I was flabbergasted. ‘The listeners don’t want to hear news about a bunch of damned foreigners. They want English news. Made up by Englishmen for Englishmen.’

  ‘Progress,’ said he.

  ‘Progress?’ Well, I was rattled at this, I can tell you. Progress is not a word a gentleman uses. But then, this cove was evidently no gentleman.

  ‘I wish to speak to your master,’ I told him.

  ‘Bugger off,’ quoth the lout, and then, ‘Strike me pink, another of the little perishers.’ And with this he flung a tiny screw in my direction.

  By now I had heard quite enough and stepped forward to give the blighter a sound thrashing. But I lost my footing upon numerous similar little screws which covered the floor and fell heavily, striking my bowling arm on the table and my forehead on his infernal machine.

  ‘Have a care,’ he cried, with no concern for what damage my person had received. ‘I’ve nearly got it fixed.’

  ‘Sir,’ said I, rising with difficulty and dusting down my morning suits. ‘Sir. Where are the back-room Johnnies who make up the news?’