East of Ealing

by Robert Rankin

  What attempts were made to stir up a bit of healthy rioting were stifled almost as soon as they were begun by the arrival of police snatch squads. Strange pale young men in protective uniforms, sporting minuscule headphones, and carrying small black boxes attached to their belts, moved swiftly into the crowds to bear away the outspoken to waiting meat-wagons. Those who had voiced complaint reappeared hours later passive and uncomplaining, clearing their throats before speech with curiously mechanical coughing sounds. Brentford’s ghost people drifted back to haunt their houses and closed their doors behind them.

  Days began to pass one upon another, each one the same as the last. Pooley and Omally sat in the Swan bitterly regarding the new barman as he soullessly directed the redecoration of the grand old watering hole. Through the Swan’s windows, now being double-glazed, the dark walls could be viewed, shimmering and strange. Beyond them the sun shone, but in Brentford a thin drizzle hissed upon the pavements and trickled down the gutters.

  The sun beyond the barrier was setting as Old Pete hobbled in, shaking rain from his cap and muttering under his breath. As he passed his coinage over the counter the young barman tut-tutted and warned him that such cash transactions would soon be impermissible. Old Pete muttered something in reply but it was only the word ‘pox’ that caught the ears of John and Jim. Pooley lit up a Passing Cloud and drew deeply upon it, he opened his mouth to speak but no word came. Omally read the expression and the open mouth and nodded hopelessly. There was no need for either question or answer, nobody knew what they were going to do next, or even why. When the barman called time six minutes early the two men parted with no words spoken and wandered away into the night.

  The disappointments and the hopelessness of it all were beginning to take their irrevocable toll. Pooley lay on his bed, hands cupped behind his head, awake to the sounds of the night. The room was now heaped with a pointless array of useless and expensive articles. The wardrobe over-spilled with tailor-made suits, shirts, and shoes. Quadrophonic record players, all lacking plugs, and most not even unpacked from their boxes, lay half-hidden beneath every Frankie Laine record Jim had always promised himself and the entire Robert Johnson collection. He had riffled every Brentford store in the vain attempt to spend his wealth. Finding an estate agent with property deeds still for sale he had purchased all available for wallpaper. The things he ordered arrived by the hour, to lie in soaking stacks on the pavement. Jim went about the business with a will but, as with everything now, the task was hopeless. He could never outspend his own wealth. Progress across the cluttered room was made the more precarious for fear of sinking to his doom in the marshland of expensive shag-pile carpets heaped one upon another. He should have been sleeping the sleep of the drunk, but no matter how many pints he struggled to down, nowadays he still remained fiercely sober. None of it made the slightest bit of sense to Jim, there seemed no purpose to any last bit of it.

  Pooley pressed the time-speak button on his brand new Lateinos and Romiith wristlet watch. ‘Eleven forty-five and all is well, Jim,’ said the polite little voice. Pooley made an unseemly sound and suggested that all was very far from being that. Professor Slocombe had called him and John to a midnight rendezvous this very night. No doubt the Professor felt the need to impart to them more prophecies of impending doom. Jim did not relish the thought. And to think that he had once considered the old man to be a stimulating conversationalist and source of enlightenment.

  Jim climbed down from the most expensive mattress printed palms could buy and sought out a pair of matching shoes from the undisciplined regiment which stood before him. Having kicked about for several minutes, to Jim’s immense chagrin he unearthed one lone matched set, his tired old work-boots. Muttering something about the curse of the Pooleys, Jim drew the wretched articles on to his naked feet. Having recently had a nasty experience in the bathroom with a computerized umbrella which opened automatically upon contact with water, he left the thing rolled up under the bed, and braved the drizzle in a new tweed shooting jacket with matching cap. Neither fitted. Jim shook his head - everything money could buy, but it was all rubbish. The new calfskin waistcoat had looked a bundle in the shop, but no sooner home than the buttons had begun to fall off and the leathery smell vanished away to be replaced by one of plastic. The same smell which permeated everything he had bought. Jim sniffed at the ‘tweed’ jacket. Yes, even that. Bewailing the millionaire’s lot, Pooley slouched on to the Professor’s.

  Omally was already there, comfortably ensconced ‘ in a fireside chair, wearing a natty three-piece whistle Jim had given him, his right hand wrapped about a whisky glass. Professor Slocombe was at his desk amongst his books and Sherlock Holmes was nowhere to be seen.

  Upon Jim’s noisy entrance, the sole of his right boot having chosen this inopportune moment to part company with its aged leather upper, John and the Professor looked up from their separate reveries and greeted the new arrival. ‘Help yourself, Jim,’ said the old man. ‘I think you will find the fruits of my cellar eminently more stimulating than those of the Swan.’

  ‘Praise be for that,’ said Jim Pooley, liberally acquainting himself with the decanter.

  ‘So now,’ said the Professor, once Jim had hopped into a comfortable chair and eased off his rogue brogue, ‘there are a good many things that I must tell you this evening. Few of which you will find comforting, I fear.’

  ‘We’re off to a good start, thought Jim, but he kept it to himself.

  ‘As you are both aware, Brentford is now completely surrounded by an impenetrable barrier.’ The two men nodded gloomily; they were a long way from Rio and that was a fact. ‘And no doubt you have been asking each other why?’

  ‘Never gave it a thought,’ said Jim. Omally leaned forward and smote him a painful blow to his naked sole.

  ‘Thank you, John. Now it is my wish to put you both in the picture as far as I am able. It is essential that you understand what we face. Those of us with the power and the will to fight grow fewer by the day. Soon, if the thing is not stopped, there will be none remaining.’ Pooley did not like the sound of that very much at all. ‘I will start at the very beginning.’

  ‘Do so, sir,’ said Jim.

  ‘In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and God was the word . . .’

  ‘Hold hard there,’ Pooley interrupted. ‘From Genesis to the Revelation is a long haul by any standard. Might we just skip right through to it now?’

  ‘All right, but let me briefly explain. The God of Adam brought something to the world which had not existed before. He brought light. To our perception there is but one God, the true God. But our forefathers believed in an entire pantheon of Elder Gods. These rose and fell with their temples, for how can a god exist when there are none to worship him? It is the balance of equipoise; the harmony of the spheres. Each new and rising god replaces his predecessor when his temple is cast down and his followers no longer believe. Allow me to suggest the possibility that dark and sinister gods existed prior to the word which brought light to our Mother Earth.’

  ‘Sounds pretty iffy so far,’ John observed.

  ‘Oh, it gets far worse later on,’ the Professor replied. ‘This is just the prawn cocktail; by cheese and biscuits you’ll be thoroughly sick.’

  ‘I have a strong stomach,’ said John, refilling his glass.

  ‘Now,’ the old man continued, ‘in the beginning of the world we know, our God brought light and created man. Before this time existed only utter cold and utter confusion where reigned the Elder Gods of darkness, unchallenged. With the coming of light and the creation of man they were cast down with their temples. But gods do not die, they sleep and they dream. The old serpent entered Eden to tempt man back to the darkness; he sowed the seed of doubt in him. Doubt in the power of his Creator. God drove back the serpent but the damage was already done. The serpent never left Eden you see, he slept, and he dreamed, awaiting the time when he would rise again. That time is now upon us. Through the exercise of wh
at man thought to be his own free will he has furthered the aims of the serpent. The prophecies are even now being fulfilled, as testified by your palm there, Jim.’ Pooley pocketed his tattooed mit. ‘Man has, through the influence of the serpent, given genesis to his own replacement: simply, the thinking machine.’

  ‘I, Robot?’ said Omally. ‘I’ve read all that. Machines do not think, they are programmed merely to respond, they answer questions but with the answers that were already fed into them. Computers do not have souls.’

  ‘There now,’ said Professor Slocombe, ‘you have saved me my old breath. They have no souls. It is man’s soul alone which prevents him slipping back into the darkness. The soul cries out to the light, the soul worships the light. Replace man and the temple of the lord of light is cast down. The darkness returns.’

  ‘The whole menu was a bowl of sprouts,’ said Omally bitterly. ‘I am going to be sick.’

  ‘It all sounds somewhat eclectic,’ remarked Jim, surprising even himself. ‘I do not pretend to understand much of it.’

  ‘Like the sprout, it takes a bit of swallowing,’ the Professor replied. ‘What I am trying to say is this: computer science is founded upon the silicon chip. It has long been suggested by scientists that life might exist elsewhere in the universe, life possibly with a silicon base. They do not seem to realize that they have created it here on Earth, at the behest of a hidden master. When man is made subservient to the machine he is no longer in control of his own destiny. Therefore he is no longer the dominant species. The people of Brentford are being replaced one after another by duplicates of themselves. Soulless robots programmed to worship their master. Unless we act quickly, then all we have ever known will be lost.’

  Pooley solemnly removed his wristlet watch and cast it into the fire. The plastic crackled amongst the flames, and, to add further horror to a conversation which had already been a far cry from a cosy fireside chat, a shrill voice shrieked out from the flames calling for mercy.

  Omally crossed himself. ‘I believe,’ he said simply.

  ‘Then you will fight with me?’

  ‘I think that we have little choice. Jim?’

  Pooley raised his unmarked palm. ‘Count me in, I suppose,’ said he.

  17

  The conversation wore long into the night. John and Jim were anxious to know exactly what plans the Professor had formulated, but the old man was obstinately vague in his replies. It was either that he was as yet uncertain as to what had to be done, or that he had already set certain wheels in motion and feared the two men might, out of their eagerness to pitch in for the cause, confound them. Whatever the case, Jim at length returned to his rooms and fell into a most uneasy sleep beset with ghastly dreams of mechanical monsters and bogey men who loomed up from every darkened corner. Omally, as ever, slept the sleep of the just, which was quite unjust of him, considering he had no right to do it.

  At around eleven the next morning, the two men met up outside the Flying Swan. Pooley emptied what pennies remained to him into the outspread palm of his fellow. ‘He won’t take my cash any more, simply runs his damn little wand over my hand. It gives me little pleasure.’

  ‘If there is a word of truth to anything the Professor told us, then at least we have a vague idea what’s going on.’

  ‘Vague would be your man, John, this is well out of my league.’

  ‘That is a nice suit you have on there,’ Omally observed as Jim strode on before him into the Swan. ‘If a little tight across the shoulders perhaps.’

  The pale young man in the headphones stood as ever behind the jump. Nothing had been heard of Neville since he had been whisked away in the ambulance. The Sisters of Mercy said that he had been moved to another hospital but seemed uncertain where. The fact that ownership of the brewery had changed hands suggested that Brentford had seen the last of the part-time barman.

  ‘Replacement,’ the Professor had said; it was a more than unsettling business. And the thought that duplicates were even now being created to replace each living individual in Brentford was no laughing matter.

  ‘Usual please,’ said Jim, extending his palm.

  The man in the headset ran his electronic pen across the outstretched appendage and cleared his throat with a curiously mechanical coughing sound. ‘Great day for the race,’ he said.

  ‘Yours or mine?’ muttered Jim beneath his breath.

  Omally bought his own. ‘It’s just not the same any more,’ he sighed, as he bore his pint over to the table Jim now occupied. ‘I miss the thrill of the chase.’

  ‘I don’t think anything is ever going to be the same again,’ said Pooley unhappily. ‘All is finished here. If only we had legged it away in time we would never be sitting here trapped like rats, waiting to be replaced by piles of diodes.’

  John shook his head. ‘It is a bad one to be sure. No doubt the walls will expand to finally engulf the whole world, but the Professor never did explain why it all started right here.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it had to start somewhere and Brentford, although worse than some, is, as the world knows, better than most. But it is the unfairness of it that gets my dander up. Me, with money to burn and two dozen High Street shops to burn it in. My God, I’m doing my best, but what about teas at the Ritz and the Concorde flight to the Bahamas? Such things are day to day affairs for lads with my kind of scratch. I can’t even buy people drinks. My entire wealth is without purpose.’

  ‘The Professor warned you, Jim, the money wasn’t meant for you.’

  ‘This beer is definitely not what it was.’ Pooley raised his pint and held it towards the light. Through the clear amber liquid a row of computer lines etched on to the glass twinkled like the slats of a Venetian blind.

  ‘I had been thinking the same,’ Omally replied. ‘It has a definitely metallic tang to it nowadays.’

  An odd figure now entered the Flying Swan. He appeared awkward and ill at ease amongst his surroundings. The stranger wore a wide-brimmed hat of dark material and a similarly-coloured cloak which reached to the floor, exposing only the very tips of his Wellington boots.

  ‘It’s Soap,’ Omally whispered. ‘Now what do you suppose he is doing here?’

  ‘Come to pay us our thirty quid, hopefully,’ said Jim, who even in wealth was never too aloof to forget a creditor.

  Soap ordered a Guinness, without the head, and paid for the same with a gold nugget which the barman weighed up and committed to the till. The man in black approached the two seated drinkers. ‘Good day,’ he said.

  ‘Not yet,’ said the Omally. ‘But you have my full permission to improve upon it should you so wish.’

  ‘Might I take a seat?’

  ‘If you must.’

  Soap removed his hat and placed it upon the table. His albino coiffure glowed stunningly even in the dim light of the saloon-bar; the pink eyes wandered between the two men. ‘How’s tricks?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, going great guns,’ Pooley made an airy gesture. ‘Just sitting here drinking duff beer, waiting for the end of the world. Ringside seats to boot.’

  ‘Hm.’ Soap toyed with the ample brim of his extraordinary hat. ‘I’ll tell you what though, but.

  You’re better off here than out there.’ He thumbed away towards the glistening wall of light which shimmered in the distance beyond the Swan’s upper panes. ‘It’s all hell for sure in that neck of the woods.’

  ‘You mean you’ve been outside?’ Omally raised his ample eyebrows.

  ‘Naturally.’ Soap tugged lewdly at his lower eye. ‘You know the expression you can’t keep a good man down? Well here it’s a case of a good man down is worth three in the Butts. Good’n that, eh? One of my own.’

  ‘Absolutely marvellous,’ said Pooley without conviction. ‘So what is going on out there?’

  ‘Bad things.’ Soap stared sombrely into his pint. The sharpened, ear-rooting nail of his little finger traced a runic symbol upon the knap of his hat-brim. ‘Bad things.’ Soap sipped at his pint and drew
a slim wrist across his mouth. ‘Blood and chaos,’ he said simply. ‘It makes me sick at heart to see what goes on out there, but the Professor says that I must keep the watch. Although he never says for what.’

  ‘So what have you seen, Soap?’

  ‘They are starving out there.’ Soap’s pink eyes darted up at his inquisitor.

  ‘You’re joking, surely?’

  ‘I am not. Since the institution of the new non-monetary system of exchange the entire country is literally in a state of civil war.’

  ‘Come now,’ said Jim. ‘What you mean is that a few die-hards are giving two fingers to the printed-palm brigade. Jolly good luck to them I say. I’ll arrange to have a couple of million drawn out. You take it with my blessings.’

  ‘Money won’t do it,’ said Soap. ‘Paper currency is illegal. All assets were instantly frozen on the day of the change. Each individual had to hand in his cash to the bank upon his turn for registration. Those who refused to submit to the change found every door closed to them. They could not travel upon buses or trains or buy petrol for their own cars; nor milk from the milkman, nor bread from the bakers. Their friends and neighbours rejected them. Even members of their own families, those who had the mark, refused them. They were ostracized totally from society. Many went straight to the banks but were told that they had missed their opportunity and that was that.’

  ‘And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name,’ said Jim Pooley in a leaden voice.