East of Ealing

by Robert Rankin

  ‘It was me,’ mouthed Jim.

  ‘Well, it isn’t now. You’re safe.’

  ‘It was me.’

  ‘Sunnyside up,’ piped Soap.

  ‘Two on a raft,’ Omally replied, ‘with all the trimmings.’

  Shortly a fine breakfast was in the offing. With the aid of much pushing, prompting, and cuffing, Jim was slowly brought back to the land of the living to enjoy his. For every ‘It was me’, he received a blow to the head. Somewhat after the fashion of the now legendary Pavlov’s pooches he learned the error of his ways. ‘Could I have another fried slice?’ he asked.

  Soap obliged. As he turned the bread in the pan he said. ‘The lead you see, the scan cannot penetrate it. They’ve got an eye in the sky up there watching everybody that’s left, but they can’t see through the lead. I myself lined the Professor’s loft with lead foil. Keeps the buggers out it does.’

  Omally wiped his chin. ‘Very good, Soap. It is pleasing to hear that some precautions can be taken.’

  ‘Oh yes, no system is infallible. Old Ratinous and Loathsome think they’ve got it all figured out, but there is always a dodge to be found by the thinking man.’

  ‘Such was once the credo of my karma but I am now experiencing some doubts.’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Soap. ‘We’ll beat the blighters yet.’

  ‘You seem very confident.’

  Soap dumped the fried slice on to Pooley’s plate, and popped a grilled tomato into his mouth.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said between munchings, ‘there is not a machine yet that will not fare the worse for a well-placed spanner jammed up its works.’

  ‘Good man,’ said Omally, leaning forward to pat his host upon the shoulder. ‘I hope you know where to place the spanner.’

  ‘Never fear.’ Soap pulled at his lower eye. ‘Never fear.’

  ‘See,’ said Omally, nudging Pooley in the rib area, ‘even with Armageddon staring you in the face there is always a flanker to be pulled.’

  ‘It was me,’ said Jim. ‘Could I have another grilled sausage do you think, Soap?’

  The pink-eyed man laughed heartily. ‘Have two,’ he cried, ‘have three if you wish.’

  ‘Three would be fine,’ said Jim. ‘I have no wish to appear greedy.’

  The three sub-Earthers enjoyed a hearty breakfast washed down with several bottles of Chateau Distant carrot claret. ‘I think you might do well to lie low here for a while,’ Soap advised his guests. ‘Your cards would seem to be well and truly marked at present.’

  ‘What about the spanner?’ Omally made turning motions with his hand.

  ‘All in good time, Professor Slocombe has the matter well in hand. He will tell us when the time is right.’

  Omally made a sour face. ‘Much as I love that old man, I am not altogether sure that his reasoning is quite as clear as it once was.’

  Soap flapped his hands wildly. ‘Do not say such things. The Professor is an Illuminati. You must trust in all he says.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Omally finished his glass. ‘But it is all theories, theories, and there is precious little of what he says that makes any sense to me.’

  ‘I would have thought that as a Catholic yourself, the idea would have held great appeal.’

  ‘What Armageddon? The Twilight of the Gods? Not a lot.’

  ‘No, not that side of it, I mean about the garden.’

  ‘What garden?’

  ‘About the garden being in Brentford. That is the whole point of it all, surely?’

  ‘Soap, in a single sentence you have lost me completely. What are you talking about?’

  ‘Eden, the Garden of Eden. Do you mean he didn’t tell you?’

  ‘Hold on, hold on.’ Omally held up his hands. ‘Go through this again slowly. What are you talking about?’

  ‘The Garden of Eden,’ said Soap. ‘You know the one, gets a big mention in Genesis.’

  ‘Of course I know. What are you saying?’

  Soap shook his head; he was clearly speaking with a half-wit. ‘Why do you think the walls have come down about Brentford?’

  ‘To stop me spending my millions,’ said Pooley bitterly.

  ‘Hardly that. To protect Eden against the fall of Babylon.’

  ‘I always had Babylon pegged as being a little further south.’

  ‘Not a bit of it,’ said Soap. ‘Chiswick.’

  ‘Chiswick?’

  ‘Yes. You see, the Professor solved the whole thing years ago, when he reorientated all the old maps. He was under the belief that the entire chronology and location of Biblical events was wildly inaccurate. He spent years piecing it all together before he finally solved the riddle.’

  ‘That Babylon was in Chiswick.’

  ‘Yes, but more importantly, that the Garden of Eden was planted right here. Upon the very spot now enclosed within the Brentford Triangle.’

  ‘Madness,’ said Omally, ‘nothing more, nothing less.’

  ‘Not a bit of it. He showed me all the re-orientated maps. All the events chronicled in the Bible took place right here in England.’

  ‘And Christ?’

  ‘And did those feet in ancient times? Liverpool born, crucified in Edinburgh.’

  ‘Blasphemy,’ said Omally, ‘heresy also.’

  ‘It is as true as I am sitting here.’ Soap crossed his heart with a wet finger. ‘All the stories in the Bible are based upon more ancient texts than scholars suppose. The events took place in a more northerly clime. They were transferred to their present incorrect locations upon far later translations of the Holy Word. The dates are thousands of years out. It all happened right here, and, for that matter, it is still happening. I would have thought that matters above make that patently obvious.’

  ‘Blessed Mary,’ said John Omally.

  ‘Born in Penge.’

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘Makes you think, though,’ said Pooley, freshening his glass. ‘After all, we all knew that Brentford was the hub of the universe. This simply confirms it.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Soap. ‘And we have always known that God is an Englishman.’

  ‘Steady on,’ said John Omally. ‘I will swallow a lot but never that. Born in the British Isles at a pinch. But English? Never.’

  ‘Ipso facto,’ said Soap, ‘or something like.’

  ‘I will need to give this matter a considerable amount of intense thought,’ said John Omally, ‘which I believe might necessitate the consumption of a litre or two more of your claret to aid cogitation.’ ‘Cogitate on me,’ said Soap Distant, drawing out a brace of flagons from beneath his chair.

  ‘You are a gentleman, sir.’

  25

  Norman had the door of his shop well-barred. Trade had fallen off to such an alarming degree that, but for serving Old Pete with his newspaper and tobacco, there seemed no point whatever in opening. Absolute panic, and the fear of his duplicate’s return, or possibly the arrival of something far worse, had prompted him this day, upon the ancient’s departure, to barricade the premises against the outside world. The counters now stood across the front door, with what few items still remained stacked upon them. Viewing the hole in his ceiling, Norman considered these moves to be little more than token opposition. But even token opposition was surely better than no opposition at all. ‘Many hands make light work,’ said the shopkeeper, irrelevantly recalling a faith-healing session he had once attended, where a defunct fuse box which had thrown the place into darkness, had been miraculously restored to life.

  Norman tottered over the newly-laid linoleum, wielding his screwdriver Excalibur-fashion. He entered the kitchenette. There wasn’t a lot of room in there at present. The object of his most recent, all-consuming attention occupied more than a little floor space.

  Norman’s time machine was a big filler!

  There was very much of the electric chair evident in the overall design of the thing. But also a good deal of NASA’s mission control and a fair degree of Captain Nemo’s Nautilus. A soupçon of the
pumping station at Kew and Doctor F’s laboratory completed the picture. The thing bristled with the banks of twinkling lights Norman always felt were so essential to lend the necessary atmosphere to such a project. Above the driving seat, commandeered from his Morris Minor, a slim brass wheel turned at precisely twenty-six revolutions per minute. From the axle-rods, wires trailed to every compass point like the ribbons of an eccentric electronic maypole, enshrouding the entire contraption, which rested upon a kind of Father Christmas sleigh.

  ‘Now then.’Norman consulted a ludicrous wiring diagram scrawled on to the back of a computer stock control print-out. It was all something to do with E equalling MC squared, the parallax theory, whatever that might be, and the triangulations of Pythagorus. Oh yes, and the space-time continuum, not that that even bore thinking about.

  Norman shook his head at the wonder of it all. Scientists always did tend to over-complicate the issues. Professional pride, he supposed. To him science was, and always had been, a pretty straightforward affair, which required only the minimum of writing down. Once you’d nicked the idea, this time from HG Wells, you simply went down to Kay’s Electrical in the High Street and purchased all the component parts. What you couldn’t buy you hobbled up out of defunct wirelesses and what was left of the Meccano set. Scientists always made such a big deal out of things and made everything so complicated. Norman was the happy exception to this rule.

  Brentford seemed to be in a bit of schtuck at the present, but the shopkeeper considered that once he had the machine on the go he would at least be able to set matters straight once and for all. He always liked to think that he was helping out, and seeing as how nobody had cared to put him in the picture he meant to go it alone. Not being at all silly he had tracked down the root cause of the Parish’s ills to the dreaded Lateinos and Romiith concern, and it seemed but a simple thing to him to slip back into the past and make a few subtle changes. Like murdering the ratbags where they slept in their cribs for a first off. Then bending the council records so he got that planning permission to do his loft conversion. And he had always wanted to shake the hand of that editor of the Brentford Mercury who had run off with his wife. There was quite a lot you could achieve once you’d got time travel licked.

  Norman had definitely decided to travel backwards first; the future looked anything but rosy. He dived forward with his screwdriver into an impenetrable-looking network of wires and fuse boxes and twiddled about here and there. The strains of the Rolling Stones’ legendary composition ‘Time Is On My Side’ sprang almost unconsciously to his lips. The whole concept of the enterprise pleased Norman with its every single detail. There was the sheer naked thrill of hurtling into the unknown, allied with the potential power a man might wield once able to traverse the fields of time. Also, and by no means the smallest part of it, was the infinite variety of puns and proverbs that could be drawn from the word ‘time’. Such things must never be overlooked. ‘Time, gentlemen, please,’ said Norman, tittering loudly to himself. He flicked a random selection of likely looking switches in the hope that he might get some clue as to why he had fitted them. One brought his old Bush Radiogram bucketing into life, ‘It’s time for old time,’ sang a disembodied voice. Norman creased up. He was having the time of his life.

  The shopkeeper straightened his back and scratched at his head with the end of his screwdriver. It did all look about finished really. He could always tighten up the odd bolt, or give the gleaming brass-work another polish, but apart from these niceties it looked very much complete. ‘And not before time,’ chuckled Norman, making nudging notions towards an imaginary companion.

  The sounds of sharp tapping suddenly drew his attention. Someone, or something, was knocking upon the barricaded shop-door. An icy hand clutched at the shopkeeper’s heart. Of course, it could be just a customer anxious to pay his newspaper bill? Well, it could be.

  The Lateinos and Romiith computer scan monitored Norman’s infra-red image as it dithered about in the crowded kitchenette. The sensors gauged the increase in his pulse rate and analysed the sweat particles which broke out on his forehead. It also relayed this information instantly to the shopkeeper’s mirror image, which was even now rapping left-handedly upon the door. A cruel smile appeared upon the duplicate’s face as it turned and strode purposefully away, bound for the backyard wall.

  Norman gnawed upon his knuckles. Now would certainly seem like an ideal time for a bit of a test run. He climbed rapidly into the driving seat and fastened his safety belt; as he had no way of telling exactly which way up time was when you travelled through it he did not wish to fall out. Carefully, he swung a pair of great calliper arms, heavily-burdened with switch-boxes and levers, about him, and, turning the ignition key, put the machine into reverse. Lights pulsed and flashed, and the great brazen wheel tumbled on above him, a ring of sparks encircled the machine in a twinkling halo. The sudden crash of brickwork informed the aspiring time traveller that an unwelcome visitor had just entered his backyard. The buzzing and hammering of the mechanism increased at a goodly rate; but to Norman’s dismay he did not appear to be going anywhere, either backwards, or forwards, or even upside down.

  ‘Get a move on,’ shouted the distraught shopkeeper, thumbing switches and squinting up at the kitchen clock in the hope of a fluctuation. The machine shook and shivered. The lights flashed and the engine roared. The sounds of splintering woodwork as the kitchen door parted company with its hinges were swallowed up in the cacophony.

  Norman’s fearsome replica stood in the doorway clearing its throat and rubbing its hands together.

  Norman flung levers in all directions and waggled the joystick. The creature stalked towards him wearing a most unpleasant expression. It reached down slowly and grasped one of the runners, meaning to up-end the whole caboodle. Norman cowered back in his seat, kicking at any levers which lay beyond his reach. The creature strained at the runner but the thing would not shift. Norman stared up at the great wheel spinning above, its gyroscopic effect was such that the machine could not possibly be overturned. The robot, being Norman to its finger ends, twigged this almost instantaneously, and abandoned this futile pursuit to deal with matters more directly. Its hands stretched towards Norman’s throat. The wee lad shrank away, burbling for mercy. The demon double clawed towards him, its eyes blazing hatred, and its lips drawn back from gnashing, grinding teeth; the talons were an inch from Norman’s throat. Norman unceremoniously wet himself. Not the wisest thing to do when surrounded by so much unearthed electrical apparatus.

  ‘Oooooooooooh!’ Norman’s voice rose to an operatic soprano as the charge caught him squarely in the nuts, arched up his backbone and shot out through the top of his head, setting his barnet ablaze. A great jolt rocked the machine, sparks cascaded roman candle style from every corner, and the humming and throbbing rose to a deafening crescendo. As if suddenly alert to the possibility of imminent explosion the robot drew back its hands. It dropped them once more to the runner then straightened up and backed towards the door. Norman batted at his cranial bonfire and squinted through the now rising smoke. To his amazement he saw the creature back away through the doorway and the shattered kitchen-door rise magically behind it, to slap back into its mountings, pristine and undamaged.

  Norman’s glance flew towards the kitchen clock. The second hand was belting round the face like a propeller. It was travelling anti-clockwise. ‘Ha ha ha ha ha ha.’ Norman clapped his hands together and bounced up and down in his seat, oblivious to his scrambled goolies and smouldering top-knot.

  He was travelling back in time!

  The second hand was gathering speed, increasing to a blur, followed now by the minute and the hour. The kitchenette began to grow vague and fuzzy and then in a flash it vanished.

  The kitchenette door tore from its hinges and crashed down on the linoleum. Norman’s duplicate stood horribly framed in the doorway, staring into the fog of smoke which now filled the otherwise empty room. A look of perplexity swept over the robot sh
opkeeper’s face. Data retrieval and logic modification channels whirred and cross-meshed, and finally spelt out absolutely sweet damn all.

  26

  Norman held fast to his seat and stared forward into the darkness. Strange lights welled up before him, swung past to either side, and vanished away behind. He experienced no sensation of motion; it was as if he was somehow travelling outside of space and time altogether. He was in limbo. Norman looked at his watch. It had stopped. He scrutinized the date counter he had optimistically screwed on to one of the enclosing calliper arms; a tangle of wires dangled from beneath it. He had forgotten to link the thing up. Where was he, and more importantly when was he? He might have been travelling for an hour or a year or a century. He had no way of telling. He had best put the machine out of gear and cruise to a halt before he slipped back too far. The idea of finding himself trampled on by a dinosaur was most unappealing.

  A terrible fear took a grip upon his heart. Exactly what would he find when he stopped? He could wind up in the middle of Rorke’s Drift with the Zulus on the attack. Or even in the sea or inside the heart of a mountain. There was no way of telling. Perhaps if he slowed down just a bit he could spy out a safe place to land. Norman’s hand hovered over the controls, a look of imbecility folding his face in half. He had pulled off The Big One this time and no mistake, but where was it going to get him? In big big trouble, that was where. Norman did his best to weigh up the pros and cons. Could he get killed in the past before he had even been born? Was such a thing possible? The situation he was now in lent sufficient weight to the conviction that nothing was impossible. The words of the great Jack Vance filled his head, ‘In a situation of infinity, every possibility no matter how remote must find physical expression.’ He had that sewn into a sampler over his bed.

  It was all too much for the shopkeeper and he slumped dejectedly over the controls and grizzled quietly, resigning himself to oblivion. What had he done? What in the name of dear Mother Earth had he done?