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

by Robert Rankin

  What light struggled through this travesty, lit upon a room of singular hideousness. In fact, so singularly hideous was it, that it will receive no mention here whatsoever.

  At its centre sat a man of middle years. He was bound and gagged. His body was finely muscled. He wore nothing but a gossamer posing pouch.

  The abbot, for it was he, glared daggers at the fellow seated upon his desk. The fellow who wore the abbot’s own robes of office and who was even now lighting up one of his best post-Lent cigars.

  The Campbell, for it was he, grinned evilly. A shaft of sunlight, entering by the formerly mentioned stained-glass posing pouch, haloed his baldy head.

  ‘I won’t keep you long,’ spake the Campbell, puffing on the panatella. ‘I only want the papers.’

  ‘Mmmmmph,’ the abbot replied, struggling heroically and bringing areas of muscle definition into dramatic prominence.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.’ The Campbell leaned forward and tore off the abbot’s gag.

  ‘I said you’re a fat-assed baldy-headed little toe-rag,’ quoth the abbot.

  Monks were being herded into the courtyard. There seemed to be a lot of confusion and Hamish was in the thick of it. He was demanding to know the whereabouts of a certain Brother Tuppe.

  The monks, for their part, were trying to be helpful. They were saying things mostly to the effect of: ‘Brother who?’

  ‘I have this contract,’ Brother Eight told Felix. ‘It brings in a bit of revenue for the monastery. I used to be an electrical engineer, you see. So I can fix things. Well, some things. Small things. Sometimes. But this,’ he pointed to the dismembered karaoke machine. ‘This has me completely baffled. It was sent up from London. The note said that it had a small screw loose.’

  Felix gazed about the floor. ‘You seem to have rather a lot of small screws loose now,’ he observed.

  ‘They keep coming out.’ Brother Eight twiddled at a dial. A small screw dropped from it. ‘There’s another,’ he sighed.

  McMurdo gave his head a thoughtful nod. ‘You have to defenestrate them,’ he said.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘Throw them all out of the window.’

  ‘What? All of them? That can’t be right, surely.’

  ‘Oh yes. It’s right all right. I read this book once. Trust me, I’ll soon get this blighter going again.’

  ‘Now now now.’ The Campbell blew cigar smoke into the abbot’s face. ‘Let’s have no rudeness from you. I need to talk to Brother Tuppe and I need to talk to him now.’

  ‘What is your name?’ the abbot enquired.

  ‘Campbell,’ said the Campbell.

  ‘A Campbell.’ The abbot flexed his pectorals. ‘I might have known it. Sheep shaggers and well poisoners to a man. A pox on all –’

  The Campbell kicked him from his chair. Leaped down from the desk and stood over him. He pulled out his pistol and glared down the long barrel. ‘You are unwontedly outspoken for a bound man in a Spandex codpiece. How would you like it if I took my gun and…’ He bent down and whispered specific details into the abbot’s ear.

  ‘Well,’ said the abbot wistfully. ‘I’m game if you are.’

  Cornelius flattened himself against the monastery door in the generally approved manner. ‘You cover me,’ he told Tuppe. ‘I’m going in.’

  ‘Cover you? With what?’

  ‘I think this valve is supposed to go somewhere.’ Brother Eight looked all forlorn. ‘But I’ve never seen a layout like this before. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s some kind of practical joke. The karaoke machine seems to be full of rubbish. Old tennis balls with nails sticking in them, drinking straws, and look at this.’ He pointed to a clockwork mouse in a tiny treadmill. ‘I don’t see how any of this could work at all.’

  ‘I do,’ smiled Felix. Who actually did.

  Hamish had his pistol out and he waved it in the air as he marched up and down before the line of captured monks in the courtyard.

  The monks watched him at it. Beneath their habits each was a potential Chippendale.

  Hamish ceased his marching and waggled his pistol at the nearest monk. ‘How many of you should there be?’ he demanded to know.

  Brother Five grinned at the gunman. ‘Twenty-three,’ said he.

  ‘And how many are here?’ Hamish wasn’t much of a numbers man when he ran out of fingers.

  Brother Five did countings up. ‘Twenty-one,’ he announced.

  ‘Then there’s,’ Hamish set about the subtraction, ‘two missing.’

  ‘I’m not missing.’ Brother Two raised a hand upon a finely muscled arm. ‘I’m here.’

  ‘What?’ Hamish hastened in his direction. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I’m Two,’ said Two.

  ‘Don’t get funny with me, laddie.’ Hamish made a menacing expression.

  ‘No, no.’ Brother Five rose to Brother Two’s defence. ‘Two is quite correct.’

  ‘Two, yes, two.’ Hamish glared.

  ‘Yes, Two. It’s Six that’s missing.’

  ‘Six? What do you mean six? You said two.’

  ‘And Eight,’ added a muscular monk. ‘Eight isn’t here either.’

  ‘Who said that?’ Hamish swung around.

  ‘Seven.’ Brother Seven put up his hand.

  ‘Seven? You just said eight.’

  ‘Six and Eight,’ said Brother Two and all the monks began to nod in agreement. Six and Eight it was. ‘Which makes two.’

  ‘Six and eight. That makes…that makes…’ Hamish worried at his fingers. ‘That makes fifteen.’

  ‘Fourteen,’ Brother Two corrected him. ‘Fourteen!’

  ‘Does somebody want me?’ asked Brother Fourteen. ‘You’ll have to speak up if you do. I’m a bit deaf.’

  ‘I don’t think,’ the Campbell straightened up from certain unmentionable acts, ‘that I am quite getting my point across to you.’

  ‘Oh you are, you are.’

  ‘I want Brother Tuppe.’

  ‘I don’t see what he’s got that I haven’t.’

  ‘Possibly a lifespan extending beyond the next five seconds.’ The Campbell cocked his weapon and pressed the muzzle to the abbot’s forehead. ‘Listen,’ he continued, ‘while you were locked up in your cupboard…’

  ‘Which I quite liked…’

  ‘Shut up! While you were locked up in your cupboard, you no doubt heard what Mr Murphy had to say. He was telling the truth when it came to the matter of pyrotechnics. I wouldn’t think twice.’

  The Campbell snapped his fingers and fire branched between them.

  ‘How do you do that?’ The abbot looked on in no small awe.

  ‘Never you mind. Deliver Brother Tuppe to me immediately, or I will shoot you in the head and burn the monastery to the ground.’

  ‘You wouldn’t prefer to torture it out of me a bit more?’

  ‘No I bloody well wouldn’t.’ The Campbell shook his baldy head. Strange nubbins and bumps now protruded from it and his face had become curiously elongated. ‘It’s Brother Tuppe or a quick end to you. That’s about the size of it.’

  The abbot mulled it over. ‘Oh all right,’ he said sulkily. ‘Brother Tuppe is probably in his workshop. Up the stairs in the courtyard and first door on the left. But listen, if you want to come back later, we could crack a bottle of Beaujolais and…’

  Up the stairs from the courtyard and beyond the first door on the left, Brother Eight watched Felix at work.

  ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course I do. I’ve realigned the transponders and the inductance coils. Cleaned the master cylinder and the circuit breakers in the forward manifold. The particle accelerator should be good for another thousand miles as long as no-one tries to push the electrostatic potential beyond the fifteen-million-volt ceiling. Oh, and I’ve given the clockwork mouse a bit of a wind. So all we need now is a new fuse in the plug.’

  ‘Gosh,’ said Brother Eight. ‘You certainly know your karaoke
machines, friend.’

  ‘I know this one well enough,’ said Felix. ‘My dad built it.’

  Cornelius crept along the nasty gallery towards the abbot’s study.

  Tuppe crept along behind Cornelius.

  ‘This is a very horrid gallery,’ Tuppe peered up at the paintings. ‘Why is it that so many martyrs get martyred in their underwear?’ he wondered.

  ‘I wish I had a stout stick about my person.’ Cornelius crept on.

  ‘Pssst.’

  ‘What do you mean, pssst?’

  ‘I don’t mean anything,’ Tuppe replied. ‘Because I never said it.’

  The Campbell struggled to open the hinged portion of the abbot’s stained-glass window.

  ‘You have to waggle its bottom about.’ The abbot waggled his. ‘It always jams.’

  The Campbell stepped back from the window. Raised his pistol and did the world of ecclesiastical art a big, big favour.

  Stained glass rained into the courtyard.

  A bitter argument of a numerological nature ceased and all eyes turned to the breaker of the sacred panes.

  ‘Hamish!’ screamed the Campbell. ‘Up the stairs. First door on the left.’

  ‘Who?’ Hamish asked.

  ‘First door on the left?’ Brother Two thought about it. ‘Ah,’ said he. ‘That’s where Eight will be.’

  ‘If there’s eight of them dug in there, I want back-up,’ snarled Hamish.

  ‘What do you mean, your dad built it?’ Brother Eight watched as Felix skilfully replaced the faceplate of the karaoke machine.

  ‘Thirty years ago, almost to the day.’ Felix scooped up a few small screws and secured the faceplate. He cast those left over, over his left shoulder. Which was easier to do than to say. ‘Long before I was born, of course. But I’ve still got all his plans. Here, have a look at this.’ He spat on to his finger and applied it to a grimey little plaque on the base of the machine. Bringing up a name.

  Brother Eight squinted. ‘The Singalonga McMurdo,’ he read. ‘Pat Pending. Who was Pat Pending then? Your dad’s partner?’

  Felix wondered whether that was supposed to be funny. ‘Were you any good as an electrical engineer?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really.’ Brother Eight hung his tiny head. ‘I’m colour-blind, you see. I was all right with the stripey wires. But the other two, well…’

  Felix grimaced. ‘Yes, I can imagine. Anyway, my dad built this machine. It was the prototype. I can’t imagine how it ended up here though. I always thought it must have been destroyed in the explosion.’

  ‘Please!’ Brother Eight covered his ears. ‘Not that word.’

  ‘Sorry. You had one or two of those yourself then?’

  ‘And then some. That’s why I became a monk. But I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.’

  Felix didn’t mind. ‘It was his shed,’ he said.

  ‘His shed?’

  ‘Where, you know, that word, happened. Mum had got him to build the shed as far away from the house as possible. Things occasionally went wrong with his inventions.’

  ‘How wrong?’ Brother Eight wondered whether he really wanted to know.

  ‘The newspaper men blew it up out of all proportion.’

  ‘The newspaper men blew up his shed?’

  ‘No. It was the reactor in the spaceship that blew up the shed.’

  ‘Spaceship? What spaceship?’

  ‘The One he was building so that Scotland would be the first country to put a man on the moon. The Scots are always me first to invent everything. Renowned the world over for it. The Scots invented television and the hovercraft and the steam engine. The first man to reach the South Pole was a Scot.’

  ‘Scott,’ said Brother Eight. ‘Scott.’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘No, you said…no never mind. Just let me get this straight. Your dad built a nuclear reactor in his shed to power a spaceship – ’

  ‘To put a Scotsman on the moon, yes. Surely you remember the ‘space race’?’

  ‘Yes, but that was between Russia and America.’

  Felix shook his head. ‘Not a bit of it. It was between my dad and Mr Patel who runs the corner shop.’

  ‘Mr Patel? Who runs the corner shop?’

  ‘Oh, do you know him then?’

  ‘No.’ Brother Eight was becoming more than a little confused. ‘I’ve never heard of him before.’

  ‘You’d like him.’ Felix gave the top of the karaoke machine a dust over with his sleeve. ‘Very nice chap. Although there was a bit of unpleasantness about his fag machine.’

  ‘And he was building a spaceship as well as your dad?’

  ‘Yes, I told you. So you can understand why my dad wanted to get his to the moon first.’

  ‘Well, I, er, yes…’

  ‘Dad was a Rangers supporter to his dying day.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Rangers. You know. Mr Patel is a Celtic fan.’

  ‘I said pssst.’

  ‘He said pssst.’ Tuppe clung to the tall boy’s knee. ‘Pssst, that’s what he said.’

  ‘Who is saying pssst?’ Cornelius asked.

  ‘Over here.’ A puff of cigarette smoke issued from behind an irregularly spaced column.

  ‘Number Six, it’s you.’

  ‘Number Six?’ Tuppe looked up at Cornelius.

  Cornelius looked down at Tuppe, ‘Don’t say it,’ he said.

  ‘Over here, papal nunciat Murphy. Something terrible is going on.’

  ‘Papal nunciat?’

  ‘Silence, Tuppe. He’s one of the good guys.’

  ‘Tuppe?’ Brother Six peeped around the column. ‘Is that Brother Tuppe?’

  ‘It’s his nephew.’ Cornelius made the introductions. ‘Brother Six, meet Cardinal Tuppe. Fellow of the Holy See. He’s come to supervise things.’

  Brother Six curtseyed. ‘Pleased to meet you, Your Eminence.’

  ‘Bless you, my son.’ Tuppe made a peace sign. ‘Now what’s this I hear about a spot of bother?’

  ‘Terrorists. I’ve seen their pictures in the paper. The Wild Warriors of West Lothian.’

  Cornelius and Tuppe shared first prize in the dismal-face competition.

  Brother Six went on. ‘One’s holding the abbot captive. I peeped in. It’s your uncle they’re after, Eminence. I heard them talking. Then a gun went off. I took cover.’

  ‘Very wise, my son.’ Tuppe inclined his head. ‘Where do you keep your stout sticks?’

  ‘Down in the armoury,’ the brother replied. ‘With all the serious weaponry.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Brother Eight scratched his tonsure (it was a St Michael’s, close crop with a chevron razored out at the back in the form of stylized Y-fronts). ‘I don’t seem to be able to follow any of this.’

  ‘Allow me to explain.’ Felix slotted a new fuse into the plug, screwed back its cover and pressed it into a wall socket. ‘My dad was a follower of a certain Hugo Rune. Scientific genius, Rune was. Reinvented the ocarina. Hated Bud Abbott. He taught Einstein everything he knew.’

  ‘Bud Abbott taught Einstein?’

  ‘Rune! Rune taught Einstein.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Except Einstein got everything wrong. He thought the universe was a really complicated place.’

  ‘And isn’t it?’

  ‘Nope.’ Felix shook his head. ‘Not according to Rune. Rune said that people just try to make out it’s complicated to prove how clever they are. Have you ever had the back off a transistor radio?’

  ‘Of course. I was an electrical engineer.’

  ‘But do you understand how it actually works?’

  ‘Not entirely.’

  ‘That’s because it doesn’t. Not in the way people think it does. Not really.’

  ‘I see.’ Brother Eight was beginning to regret that he’d never had a lock fitted.

  ‘Ever heard of the crystal set?’ Felix went on.

  ‘Is all this going to take very long? I heard footsteps in the corrido
r. I think there’s someone at the door.’

  ‘Rune invented the crystal set to win a bet with Marconi. Another Scot, you notice.’

  ‘Marconi? A Scot?’

  ‘McOni. That’s how it’s really spelt. McOni was obsessed with big valves and coils and stuff. Rune said it was all just dressing. He bet McOni that he could knock up a working wireless set with nothing more than contents of the nearest waste-paper basket.’

  ‘Which just happened to contain a cat’s whisker, a piece of crystal and…’

  ‘Oh, you’ve heard the story? Well you know the outcome then. Rune certainly left that famous Scotsman with egg on his old grey beard.’

  ‘Funny how you don’t see a lot of crystal sets around today.’

  ‘But you do. Except now they’re called transistor radios. Allow me to explain.’

  ‘Look. Just explain about the nuclear reactor. The one that…you know.’ Eight mimed a mushroom cloud.

  ‘I was coming to that. Cold fusion. Rune made it work. It can power anything, spaceship, you name it. All you need is a couple of tennis balls, a few nails, some drinking straws, a clockwork mouse and a little treadmill. Well, I’m all finished here. Let’s switch her on and see what happens.’

  Felix reached towards the switch.

  Tuppe, Cornelius and Brother Six stood before a large shining steel door. Brother Six tapped out the combination on one of those digital panel sort of arrangements that strong-rooms and vaults always seem to have. Each little number had its own separate note. The sequence Brother Six tapped out played ‘Now is the hour’.

  The door swished aside and Brother Six led the way in.

  Cornelius stopped short in the doorway.

  Tuppe stopped shorter.

  ‘Guns!’ Cornelius gasped.

  ‘Guns,’ Brother Six agreed. ‘All standard Vatican issue. Every monastery is kitted out. Always has been. We’re only lightweight tactical here. The Jesuits hold the nuclear stockpile. But you’d know all about that, of course.’