Armageddon: The Musical (Armageddon Trilogy)

by Robert Rankin

  Suddenly a telephone rang. Dan snatched it up. A recorded voice said, ‘We regret that the Doomsday button has been disconnected due to a maintenance dispute. It’s hoped that meaningful negotiations between management and shop floor will shortly return it to full operational capability. We hope that this temporary suspension of service has not inconvenienced you. Have another day.’

  ‘What?’ Dan began to foam at the mouth. ‘What???’

  Rex looked toward Christeen. She shrugged. ‘Not me, I didn’t . . . oh no . . .’

  The room was suddenly swallowed up by a blinding golden light which poured through the windows from all sides. Rex screwed up his eyes and squinted into the glare. A dazzling throne hovered beyond the west-facing window and even now a shining figure was stepping down from it. The light dulled slightly in intensity as Christeen knotted her fists and kicked furniture. ‘Him. I should have known. It had to be him.’

  ‘Him who?’ Dan turned to view the radiant figure who was now waving away the throne as one might a taxi. The figure smoothed out the creases in his immaculate white suit and waved gaily toward the gaping group within. ‘Hi, sis’,’ he called.

  ‘Oh bollocks,’ said Dan.

  Christeen buried her face in her hands. ‘Not fair,’ she protested, stamping her feet. ‘Not fair.’ The windows parted of their own accord and the shining figure entered the room.

  ‘God save all here,’ said Jesus Christ, for it was none other. He beamed around the room. All, with the exception of Dan and Christeen, were now kneeling. ‘Oh let’s not be formal.’ Such perfect diction. ‘We’re all friends here. Well, nearly all.’

  ‘My button,’ said the disgruntled Dan. ‘You broke my button.’

  ‘Yes, sorry about that. But we couldn’t really have you killing everyone off just out of bad grace, could we?’

  Dan sniffed. ‘You can’t pull a stroke like that. No-one is going to swallow a Deus ex machina ending in this day and age.’

  ‘A Deus what?’ Elvis asked. Such shoulder pads, he thought, who is this man’s tailor?

  ‘Deus ex machina,’ Jesus said. ‘I think, all things considered, that it’s truly justified. And if I think so, I can’t see who’s going to argue. So you’ll just have to lump it, won’t you?’

  ‘Well, really.’ Dan folded his arms and got a huff on.

  ‘He’s such a tiresome little tick, isn’t he?’ As the question appeared to have been directed toward Rex, this man nodded in ready response.

  ‘Yes sir,’ he said, as the warmth of Jesus’s smile dried out his acne.

  ‘Enough of that “sir” stuff, Rex. You’re almost one of the family.’

  ‘I am?’ Rex gazed up at the fantastic figure. Even with the close-clipped beard and the designer sunglasses his resemblance to Christeen was undeniable. God, what a handsome bloke, thought Gloria, I wonder if he’s married yet.

  ‘Christeen,’ said Jesus kindly. ‘Aren’t you going to say hello to your brother?’

  Christeen shook her beautiful head. ‘It’s not fair,’ said she. Jesus gazed about him, taking it all in. Ms Vrillium watched him at it. What a lovely mover, she thought.

  ‘Why, thank you.’ Jesus flashed her a smile which took twelve inches off her waistline. ‘Now I see that the gang is almost all here.’

  ‘Almost all?’ gasped Mungo Madoc. ‘There’s more?’

  ‘Almost all, Mungo.’ Jesus replied. ‘Does anybody know who’s missing?’ Faces were universally vacant. ‘Oh come on,’ Jesus urged. ‘Surely you’ve been following the sub-plot? No?’ Jesus took out a remote control from the waistcoat pocket of his Heavenly three-piece, aimed it at the ceiling, mid-point of the erotic columns (which had now, unaccountably, toned down their dirty doings and were all hearts and flowers), pressed a button and stood back.

  ‘And tonight’s star guest. Mr Mystery himself. Come on down.’

  An ethereal Hammond organ, of a generation now mercifully gone to dust, made with the show time fanfares. Lights flashed. The special star buzzer buzzed and a section of ceiling drifted down. Bearing upon it the famous Mastermind chair. Perched upon this and making with the Royal hand waves sat ...

  ‘Jspht,’ said Fergus Shaman. ‘Jovil Jspht.’

  ‘Fergus,’ said Jovil. ‘This is a surprise.’

  ‘Mr Shaman to you. But how? What? You can’t be here. You’re back in 1958. How can you? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear . . .’

  Jovil held up his waving hand. ‘All in good time,’ he checked his watch. ‘Now I think I’m right in supposing that. . .’

  A station menial of deathly aspect burst into the boardroom of Earthers Inc. ‘Mr Madoc,’ he wailed. ‘Mr Madoc, the virus, the virus. It has caught us up . . The virus is Jovil….’ He might have had more to say, but he didn’t get the chance. He was trampled to oblivion beneath the mad lemming dash for the window.

  ‘And so it’s good night to all our viewers on Phnaargos,’ said Jovil. ‘You won’t forget to turn off your sets now, will you?’

  ‘You haven’t,’ gasped Fergus.

  ‘Have too. The Earthers just went off the air,’

  ‘God’s nose,’ Fergus slumped into the nearest seat.

  ‘Get off,’ Gloria protested.

  ‘I’m sorry to show my ignorance,’ said Rex. ‘But should I know this person?’

  ‘That’s the alien who jumped me back in fifty-eight.’ Elvis gestured with his weapons. ‘I nearly cashed in my chips at the Bates Motel because of him. Luckily Barry threw in his lot with me and hauled me out in the nick of time.’

  ‘Then how can he?’

  ‘Honestly, Rex,’ Jesus smiled again. Rex felt new hair sprouting on his head. ‘You really should have reasoned it out by now,’

  ‘I should?’

  ‘It’s all right there in your pocket.’

  ‘It is?’ Rex patted at his multiple pocketry. One bulged. He unzipped it. ‘The Book,’ he said, recalling, that he had left it behind, hidden in his apartment. ‘The Suburban Book of the Dead.’

  ‘I’ve been here all along in the sub-plot, just like the Good Lord told you,’ Jovil said. ‘I got marooned back in fifty-eight. But I could hardly die there, could I? I hadn’t even been born yet, back then.’ Heads nodded thoughtfully. Thoughts nodded doubtfully. ‘So with my advanced knowledge I built an empire. And with more than a little Divine guidance pieced a certain thing together. And I was in on the genesis of this place. My money built it. I designed the MOTHER computer, the lot. I went completely underground when the big bang came in 1999. The Phnaargs never knew it but I was the virus in their system. By sending me back in time they had poisoned their own storage beds. I never killed that operative, the system did it. As I moved forward in time, changing the past, the cells mutated. Now I am here, and so their whole system has collapsed, bio-feedback.’

  ‘So where have you been for the last fifty years?’ Rex asked.

  ‘Up there, sitting in cryogenic suspension. We Phnaargs are of vegetable origin, you know. I’ve been in cold storage. Just waiting for the big day to thaw out.’

  ‘Big day?’ Rex gazed down at his battered book.

  ‘Sure, when the big secret would be disclosed. You’ve read the book, what do you think it is?’

  ‘I’ve tried to read it. But from what I can gather it all seems to be some kind of quest. A search for something which was never found.’

  ‘He found it.’ Jovil pointed towards Dan, who was seeking invisibility with no apparent success.

  ‘Oh, I’m in this again, am I?’ croaked the stinker. ‘And what did I find, pray tell me, do?’

  ‘It’s all in Rex’s book. The book you killed his uncle to get your hands on. The location of the K-squared carbon containing the Ultimate Secret of the Universe.’ (What else? Rex thought.) ‘It was the last item checked in by the Department Of Antiquities. After you had it you closed down the commission. So why didn’t you use it?’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but I closed the commission down because they were all on the f
iddle. Of Universal Secrets my cupboard is bare.’

  All faces now turned back to Jovil Jspht.

  ‘I think not.’ Jovil sprang from his chair like the legendary sleuth of old, plunged across the room and drew the SUN recording from the holophon.

  ‘Holy, shity shitty shit, sorry Momma,’ said Elvis, as the thing passed him by at close quarters, ‘that’s one of mine.’

  ‘And a load of old brain damage it is too. Remember my eyeballs, Gloria?’

  ‘I’m not speaking to you,’ that lady replied. ‘You’re not nice.’

  ‘Well, whacky stuff it may be. But Secret of the Universe it ain’t.’

  ‘Oh no? Well that’s where you’re wrong, schmucko.’ Jovil turned the plasticized disc between his fingers. ‘Because you have been playing the wrong side.’

  Great roars of applause went up from the bunker-bound. Playing the wrong side! What a hoot! What…a…what was going on?

  ‘Foiled again.’ Dan struck his fist into his palm and made with the melodrama. ‘Do leave me out. Secret of the Universe, if you please.’ The only person looking in his direction was Ms Vrillium. ‘I ask you,’ said Dan.

  ‘Shitbag,’ the woman with the perfect waistline replied.

  Jovil held the record’s flip-side towards Rex. ‘You know old English, Rex, what does it say?’

  Rex perused it. Faintly etched upon the ancient vinyl was a pentacle enclosed within two circles and between these a single word: TETRAGRAMMATON.

  Rex spelt it out. Those who were in the know went Blimey, Cor,and things of that nature. Those who weren’t, and this included Rex, asked, ‘What’s a Tetragrammaton, when he she or it is at home?’

  ‘Tetragrammaton,’ sighed Christeen, who could feel another 2000 years of obscurity coming on. ‘The four syllables which compose the unknowable name of God. A name so sacred that none may know it. To speak the name is to unlock the ultimate power in the universe.’

  ‘Some big number,’ said Elvis.

  ‘Got the edge on killer maggots, eh Fergus?’ Fergus nodded. It was all well beyond him. ‘But you couldn’t know this,’ Christeen stared at Jovil Jspht, who wilted visibly beneath her gaze. ‘No-one can know this. That is the point.’

  Dan was searching for an exit. None was readily available.

  ‘Ask your brother,’ said Jovil. ‘He put me up to it. He was the brains behind the whole operation.’

  Jesus shrugged modestly, he knew no other way. ‘What did I preach?’ he asked. ‘Love and peace. And I tried really hard in the 1960s to get it across. It was all there in the music, Jovil and I saw to that. You only had to listen. And perhaps turn on a little, but that is neither here nor there. Some did, of course, but not enough. So I had Jovil programme a tiny piece of the jigsaw into all of it. Into the music. And it got pieced back together by a chosen few. It’s all in there. All you have to do is play it.’

  ‘The name of God,’ said Rex. Impressed being hardly the word.

  ‘The Name. The Sound. The Universal Note. It was always there in all the world’s music. You only had to listen. All the universe is composed of a single note. All atoms and all molecules are but vibrations of a single note. The big note. The Buddha sussed it out. Which makes the present incarnation of this blighter’ - Dan flinched - ‘all the more perverse.’

  ‘And where, exactly, does this leave me?’ asked Christeen, sulkily. ‘Out of the picture again I suppose.’

  Jesus shook his head. And beautifully he did it too. ‘It’s here.’ A small black book appeared in his hand. He offered it to Christeen. ‘Even now a baby moves within you. Rex’s child. You are to be the mother of Mankind.’

  ‘Another TV series?’ Christeen took the book. It was entitled The Third Testament. She opened it. The pages were blank.

  ‘No more series,’ said Jesus. ‘Dad may have a sense of humour but he also has a sense of justice. You can write it yourself. Put the record on, Rex. Play us a tune.’

  Rex’s fingers trembled. He was going to become the father to a child whose grandfather was . . . ‘Yes,’ said Rex Mundi, who, having no knowledge of Latin, had yet to figure out just what his name actually meant. ‘Put the record on, indeed.’ He placed it reverently upon the turntable. ‘What are the settings?’ he asked.

  ‘Play Loud,’ Jesus replied. ‘That’s the way we did it back in the sixties.’ Nice fellow, the future brother-in-law, thought Rex.

  And I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth;

  for the old Heaven and the old Earth were passed away.

  Revelation 21:1

  And the word of the Tetragrammaton played upon the turntable. And God said, Let there be light and there was light. And was it a sound? Was it a note? Was it a something? It was Hendrix at Woodstock as the sun was rising. The Stones in Hyde Park. Pink Floyd at The Roundhouse. The Grateful Dead at Winterland. It was Beefheart at his best. It was the fourth movement of Beethoven’s glorious Ninth Symphony performed at the Albert Hall in the year 2012. And it was all those marvellous moments you ever had all rolled into a great big one.

  It was hard to describe really. You know that amazing bit at the end of Day in the Life? It was a bit like that, only much more so.

  The Universal Note. I mean, like, Wow man.

  At Earthers Inc. the cone of light faded and died. The circuits fused and the network closed down. The great spiral tower sagged and fell.

  ‘And that’s all the thanks I get,’ mumbled Mungo, as he of the Nose Divine, a not inconsiderable deity in his own right but hardly on a par with the Big Figure, squeezed his pimple and saturated the Phnaargian universe with you know what.

  On Earth a great wind tore across the sky. The clouds flew before it. They rolled back, drew themselves into a swirling vortex and spun into the heavens. The sun shown down upon the tortured landscape. And a cry went up. Bunker doors opened upon the new day. Pale faces gazed toward the sky. Blinking and wondering, the denizens of the sub-world crept forth to view the new world. For already the world was turning. The irradiated wastes were vanishing. Lush fields spread to every side, rivers flowed, trees rose and blossomed. That which had been done was undone. The gates of the city were open to the fingers of the sun.

  It was now or never for the ex-High Lama. Dan made a break for it. He grabbed Gloria about the throat and dragged her towards the lift door. Elvis spun around and let fly. Beams of fire ripped across the room, wreaking havoc. Dan thrust Gloria into Elvis. ‘You haven’t heard the last of me,’ he cried in the traditional manner. Fergus Shaman shot him in the backside. The lift doors opened and Dan staggered through them into the waiting knives and forks of Rambo and Eric.

  ‘The main course.’ Rambo raised his filleting knife and did something quite unprintable. The lift doors closed mercifully upon it.

  ‘That isn’t exactly in the script,’ said Jesus. ‘But it does have a certain charm. I think we’ll leave it in.’

  ‘Shall I be mother?’ came the muffled voice of Deathblade Eric.

  Jesus turned to Christeen. ‘It’s all up to you now. You and Rex. Make it right this time.’ And without even waiting for a thank you, he vanished. Which was just like him, what a fine fellow.

  ‘Well,’ said Rex, the way that formerly only the great Jack Benny had been able to say it, ‘what a day this has been.’

  ‘Started poorly but finished well,’ Fergus added. ‘Although I’m not exactly sure where it leaves me.’

  ‘Redundant,’ said Jovil Jspht. ‘I think you will find that we are no longer required.’

  ‘I haven’t a spaceship any more,’ Fergus complained. ‘And even if I had . . .’

  ‘I have,’ said Jovil. ‘The top of this pyramid. Designed it myself. Works on a principle which even I conclude is scarcely credible. But who cares, eh? Shall we away, new worlds to conquer and that kind of thing?’

  ‘Sounds good to me.’ Fergus waved his farewells, but as everyone seemed to be gazing out of the windows, oohing and aahing, he was largely ignored. ‘Do you think we will find a planet
where all the ladies have big . . .’ His words were lost as the Mastermind chair carried him and Jovil aloft.

  Rex took Christeen in his arms. Violins welled in the background. No doubt a wedding present from the brother. Christeen smiled up at Rex and kissed him. An old couple in a bunker who had only just switched on said, ‘Ah, bless ‘em.’ Christeen turned her face toward Elvis who was scuffing his advanced footware upon the carpet. ‘What of you?’ she asked. The King shrugged.

  ‘Back to 1958, I guess.’ His voice lacked any enthusiasm.

  ‘You going to take the draft, then?’ Rex posed the question.

  ‘Can’t see that I have a lot of choice. This was all preordained, wasn’t it?’ Christeen nodded.

  ‘’Fraid so chief,’ the Time Sprout agreed.

  ‘The thing that really peeves me,’ said Elvis, ‘is that I come across real two-dimensional in all this. No depth of character, d’you know what I mean?’

  ‘But you never had any real depth of character, chief. You’re one shallow son of a gun.’

  ‘Guess so,’ Elvis shrugged. ‘Rich and pretty, though.’

  ‘So it can’t all be bad, can it, chief? You won’t remember any of this, once you’re back in fifty-eight though.’

  ‘What a bummer. I gotta do all that bad stuff again and no-one ever gets to know what a hero I really was.’

  ‘We know,’ said Christeen.

  ‘Yeah, I guess you do. Uh, and just a couple of things before I go.’ The look of enlightenment was once more upon the King’s face.

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Rex, who had seen it before.

  ‘Right,’ said Elvis. ‘Now, if that cat Jovil has spent the last fifty years in cold storage, how could he also have been on Phnaargos when they sent him back in time to get me? And if the Dalai had been all those other people through history, how come he never knew who I was? All that SUN baloney. And I’ll have you know that Heartbreak Hotel was recorded on RCA. So that SUN disc is a phoney, which probably means that all this is a . . .’