Retromancer

by Robert Rankin

  ‘I would really like it if you told me what is going on,’ I said. But Hugo Rune cried, ‘Faster!’ so I put the hammer down. Well, pressed my foot to the elegantly designed accelerator pedal anyway.

  We passed around Piccadilly Circus, through Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square and up the Royal Mall towards the palace.

  ‘Faster, Rizla, faster and run him off the road.’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘I cannot,’ I said.

  ‘Just do it!’ shouted Hugo Rune.

  And I put my foot down as far as it would go and my cab drew level with the other cab. And would not you know it, or would not you not, that other cab was being driven by Hugo Rune’s arch-enemy, the ever evil bad Count Otto Black.

  And in the back of that cab sat Mr McMurdo, wearing a fearsome expression.

  ‘Off the road with them, Rizla,’ shouted Mr Rune. ‘Grind them into a tree.’

  So I took a deep breath and swung the wheel and our cab struck their cab a devastating blow. There were showerings of sparks and grindings of metal and the cabs’ running boards and wheel arches got sort of locked together, which caused them to leave the road and hurtle towards a very large tree indeed.

  And yes, things really do seem to happen in slow motion in situations such as this. And what I saw surprised me all the more because it happened as if so slowly.

  The entire front part of the other taxicab detached itself from the rest of the vehicle and rose into the sky.

  It was the count upon his flying motorcycle. The rear section of his now driverless cab continued on at speed and ploughed into the tree. A terrible explosion occurred that freed the cab that Mr Rune and I were travelling in and allowed it to grind to a halt some hundred yards beyond. With both of us mostly unscathed.

  And when I felt myself able to speak again, I raised my head from between my legs and managed to blurt out a, ‘What was that all about?’

  ‘Infamy and trickery,’ said Hugo Rune.

  ‘And Mr McMurdo,’ I said. ‘Oh dear. Was Count Otto kidnapping him? He was still in the cab, he must surely be—’

  ‘Put completely out of service,’ said Hugo Rune.

  ‘I was going to say “killed”,’ I said.

  ‘You cannot kill what has never lived,’ said Mr Hugo Rune.

  ‘And that is a statement I would really like explained.’

  ‘And so it shall be, Rizla. You performed sterling work today and you will have the nation’s thanks for it.’

  ‘I could do with a beer,’ I said. ‘And a great deal of explanation.’

  ‘Then let us return to Brentford and I will buy you a beer. But not I think in The Purple Princess. Brentford, please, Rizla, and don’t spare the horsepower.’

  49

  THE MOON

  ‘You really will have to explain,’ I said, ‘for I am most confused.’

  ‘Energy fools the magician,’ said Hugo Rune.

  ‘As an explanation, that fails on so many levels,’ I told the magician, but raised my glass to him all the same as I did so.

  We were in the saloon bar of The Four Horsemen, which was under new new management. Jack Lane, former Brentford team captain and centre forward, and the man who hammered in three goals when Brentford won the FA Cup in nineteen twenty-seven, now stood behind the bar. Bald and bandy-legged, he had hardly changed at all since that famous day of glory.

  ‘My suspicions were originally aroused by the healthsome state of the ghastly Mr McMurdo,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Believe me, Rizla, it would take more than any Harley Street quack has to offer to set that fellow to rights. And then all that nonsense about putting me out to pasture. Me out to pasture? Me?’

  ‘Quite so,’ I said. ‘Go on,’ I also said.

  ‘The second exploding cab confirmed my suspicions that something untoward was occurring. One cab, fair enough, Spontaneous Cab Combustion does happen once in a while. But two, I think not. You will note that I repaired to the Gents. Did you not think that was strange?’

  ‘Well, I thought—Well, never mind,’ I said.

  ‘I felt that I needed to check the contents of the briefcase and so I slit the bottom and took a little peep inside.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ I said, intrigued.

  ‘A bomb, Rizla. Small and of advanced design and timed to go off precisely at three.’

  ‘To kill you and George Cole, oh no!’

  ‘Oh yes.’ And Hugo Rune drank ale. ‘It is not altogether unpleasing, this,’ he said. ‘What did you say it was called?’

  ‘Apple Chancery,’ I said. ‘But as a running gag, having all the beers named after typefaces never really gained its legs at all, did it?’

  ‘There may be a bit of life left in it. But, as I was saying, a bomb of advanced design. I disarmed it, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘So what about the speech for the prime minister to read out?’

  ‘I will get to that,’ said the Magus. ‘I had you drive me at speed to Mornington Crescent. There I found what I expected to find: dead and dying, precious files destroyed, computers wrecked, all lost. The Ministry had been infiltrated. My worst fears were founded.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘And then you had me chase after that cab because Count Otto was kidnapping Mr McMurdo.’

  ‘Count Otto was not kidnapping him. Because that was not McMurdo. I found McMurdo’s body at the Ministry - by the looks of him he had been dead for several days.’

  ‘You did an awful lot of looking around down there in a very few minutes,’ I said. ‘But tell me please, for I do not understand - the McMurdo who tried to blow you up with a bomb in a briefcase was not the real McMurdo? So was he an actor like the one who plays Winston Churchill?’

  ‘He was not a man, Rizla. Which was why he would not shake my hand. He was a robot, a construct, a mandroid, call it whatever you like.’

  ‘Oh come on,’ I said to Hugo Rune. ‘I saw the robot at Bletchley Park, a proper nineteen-forties robot, all rivets and eye slits and clockwork. Nothing like what we saw in that office - a robot that can look and sound so convincingly like a human being - is likely to exist for hundreds of years yet, surely.’

  ‘It is as I said,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘A great inhuman force is at work here, Rizla. A force far greater than Hitler or the horrible Count Otto Black. And now at last I know what it is. And it is a thing to fear.’

  ‘Oh come on now,’ I said. ‘ “You ain’t afraid of no man.” ’

  ‘ “There’s something out there,” ’ said Hugo Rune, ‘ “and it ain’t no man.” ’11

  ‘A robot?’ I said. ‘A great big robot, just like our Colossus?’

  ‘A computer,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘And one possessed by the spirit of a God.’

  I whistled and said, ‘You mean Wotan.’

  ‘That is entirely correct.’

  ‘Pardon me for saying this—’ and I took sup at my ale ‘—but this is a very big leap of logic. Do you have any definite proof? Is this not just a theory?’

  ‘Just a theory?’ Hugo Rune did risings in his seat. ‘When Rune has a theory, it is a theory proven. Am I not Rune, whose eye is in the triangle? Whose nose cleaves the etheric continuum? Whose ears take in the Music of the Spheres?’

  ‘You are indeed,’ I said and I raised my glass to him. ‘And it is a joy to see you once more on top form. For indeed you are THE MAGICIAN.’

  We did not take too many beers. In fact we were quite restrained. I drove the taxi back to the manse, picking up fish and chips on the way that we might enjoy for some dinner.

  And fish and chips in the paper, on your knee in a cosy chair, by the wireless set, is as English as English can be. And I switched on the wireless set to listen to the news. And perhaps catch some popular dance band music of the day. But probably not one led by Liam Proven.

  ‘This is the voice of Free Radio Brentford,’ came a crackling voice. And that voice seemed to me to be the voice of my friend Lad Nic
holson.

  ‘I did not know that Free Radio Brentford was about during the Second World War,’ I said to Hugo Rune. The Magus leaned over and filched away one of my chips.

  ‘And on the world stage today,’ continued the voice that seemed to be that of Lad Nicholson, ‘the long-awaited three-fifteen speech from the prime minister turned out to be something of a surprise. It stated, and I quote: “That for his services to the British Nation, Hugo Rune be awarded its highest honour and a state pension. And that from this day forth he must be addressed as either ‘sir’ or ‘your lordship’ by all and sundry and—” ’

  ‘And?’ I said. And I turned to Mr Rune.

  The Magus continued to munch on his dinner. ‘It was all I had time to write on that piece of toilet paper in the Gents at Broadcasting House,’ he explained. ‘After I had disabled the bomb that was meant to kill myself and the mighty George Cole. I expect it is what the real Mr McMurdo would have wanted, don’t you?’

  And I just nodded my head.

  Having dined, we then got down to work. We packed our clothes into steamer trunks and loaded them into the cab.

  Then Mr Rune put out the rubbish, switched off the lights and closed up the manse.

  ‘I really liked living there,’ I told him. ‘I think I will quite miss it. Along with the mysterious unnamed and unmentioned cook who always provided our breakfasts.’

  ‘We have more adventures lying ahead,’ said the Perfect Master. ‘Now drive us to the allotments - I have items to collect from my workshop.’

  At Mr Rune’s behest I loaded all manner of interesting things into more steamer trunks, swung each aboard the Gravitite disc and nudged them into the lift. Once topside, all went into the cab and then we upped and left.

  ‘I wonder how far we can get in this cab before it runs out of fuel,’ I said to Hugo Rune. ‘Because neither of us has a ration book, so I do not see how we will buy petrol.’

  ‘Fear not for that, young Rizla,’ called Hugo Rune, as he mixed himself a cocktail. ‘London cabs never have and never will run on petrol. They run on tap water, taking advantage of the MacGreggor Mather’s Water Car Patent, which is otherwise kept secret from the public and the motor industry.’

  ‘There are so many legitimate reasons for hating cabbies, are there not?’ I said. And I saw Mr Rune’s head nod in the driving mirror.

  I drove for many hours. Because we were driving to Liverpool and Liverpool is a goodly drive from Brentford, especially in a taxi with a top speed of sixty-five miles per hour.

  ‘Tell me about the liner we are travelling on,’ I said. ‘Will it be luxurious?’

  ‘Extremely,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘It is the RMS Olympic.’

  ‘Hold on there,’ I said in return. ‘The Olympic was a sister ship to the Titanic and it ceased to ply the waters back in the nineteen thirties.’

  ‘Well, you know best, young Rizla.’

  ‘So it is still in service?’ I said.

  ‘It is a luxury liner, top class in all departments. And it is neutral. Like Switzerland.’

  ‘You cannot have a neutral ship, can you?’ I asked.

  ‘You have to have at least one. Otherwise how are the rich supposed to take their cruises during wartime?’

  ‘That is surely outrageous.’

  ‘You won’t say that when you are aboard.’

  But I did say that when I was aboard. I was somewhat appalled. There were folk of every nation on board that magical liner. Rich folk all and all as friendly as can be. And there were military folk also. Those of the highest ranks. SS officers were clinking glasses with martial toffs from Eton. All around and about the world was in the grip of a terrible war that would leave millions homeless, wounded or dead, and here the swells were having it large and dancing the night away.

  A seaman chappy in an immaculate white uniform showed us to our staterooms. And yes, they were POSH - port out, starboard home, Posh with a capital P.

  I entered the suite of Hugo Rune, who was bouncing on his double bunk.

  ‘Now this, young Rizla,’ he said to me, ‘really is the life.’

  ‘This is shameful,’ I said. ‘Awful. With all the misery of this hideous war, the rich and privileged live like kings aboard this floating palace and have not a care in the world.’

  ‘Oh, they have their cares,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Which tie to wear for dinner. The jewelled coronet or the diamond pendant.’

  ‘It is disgusting,’ I said. ‘And you should be ashamed of yourself.’

  ‘Me?’ said Hugo Rune, with outrage in his voice.

  ‘You condone it. You revel in it—’

  ‘Rizla.’ And Hugo Rune ceased all his bouncing. ‘You and I are on a mission to alter the course of this war. To save millions from nuclear death. Do you not feel that we deserve three square meals a day and a decent nest to curl up in come nightfall, whilst journeying forth on this noble quest?’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘If you put it like that. But the rest of these people—’

  ‘Their lives are not ours. Their morals are not ours. Do you not think that I hold them in contempt? Do you think that I lack all morality and sensibility?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘In that case, Rizla, I suggest we don our dinner suits and make our way to the bar. The Olympic sails at sunrise and I would recommend that you view this event from the top deck, with a gin and tonic in your hand. What say you to this matter?’

  And I said Yes to it.

  50

  A regular pair of toffs we looked, as we sauntered down to the bar. This was the first time I had actually worn my dinner suit. Mr Rune had had it made to measure for me at a fashionable tailor shop in Piccadilly. Regarding the payment of the bill?

  I had no regard for that.

  The sheer scale of the RMS Olympic was daunting. The decks dwindled with perspective seemingly to infinity and the bar was nearly the size of a football pitch. It was all early neon, chrome and black, with elegant statuary of the art deco persuasion. All topless sylphlike females with slender bums and breasts.

  Behind the bar counter were more colourful drinks than I had ever imagined existed. They covered the spectrum and went beyond and I looked on in awe. Behind the counter, before these bottles, stood a noble barman. A modish figure in a rapscallion jacket and feta-cheese-style pantaloons, he wore a jaunty little sailor’s cap and a flower in his buttonhole. And he greeted our approach to his counter with a, ‘Welcome aboard.’

  ‘Pleased to be here,’ I said with a smile. And then I said, ‘Hold on.’ And I gazed hard at that barman and I said, ‘Fangio?’

  ‘None other,’ said he. ‘But we’ll keep that just between the three of us, if you don’t mind. Or four, if you want to count my pet monkey Clarence here in his natty waistcoat and fez.’

  I tipped a wink at Clarence and he raised his fez to me.

  ‘What a joy to see you both here,’ said Fangio. ‘I had to, how shall I put this, make myself scarce, as it were. The customs men and the rozzers were hard at my heels. And although I hated like Satan’s saucepan-full of collywobbles to have to run off before entering the Inter-Pub Lookalike Competition, I felt it best to sign on for a one-way passage to the home of the brave and the land of the free rather than stay behind and face the music. As it were.’

  ‘Well, that makes everything clear,’ I said. ‘Except for Satan’s saucepan.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Fangio. ‘I’m experimenting with new terms of expression. Lord Cardigan welt me with a kipper if I’m telling you a lie.’

  ‘I think it might need working on,’ I said. ‘But there is running-gag potential for sure, so work at it.’

  ‘And what are you and Mr Rune doing here?’ said Fangio. ‘Having a bit of a holiday, is it now?’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Hugo Rune, pointing to this bottle and that in the hope that Fangio might combine their contents into an interesting cocktail. ‘We are here strictly on business. Undercover, as it were.’

 
‘Well, it’s my good fortune to run into you again. I have your bill for your outstanding account at The Purple Princess in my cabin.’

  Mr Rune pointed with greater urgency and the matter of the outstanding account was never mentioned again.

  ‘Tell you what though,’ said Fangio in a confidential kind of a way, ‘they’re an odd old bunch, aren’t they, the rich?’

  He shook Hugo Rune’s concoction and then poured it into a glass. The Magus downed this in one and swiftly ordered another.

  And then he said, ‘Odd? In what way?’

  ‘They just look odd,’ said Fangio. ‘Especially the old ones - and there are some really old ones on board. Ancient dowagers and countesses. Eastern European nannas with unpronounceable names.’

  ‘I fail to see what is so odd about that,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘And while you’re at it, please pop in two of those olives and a squirt of mescaline.’

  ‘Well, perhaps it’s just me, then,’ said Fangio. ‘I can be all step-and-fetch-it-Barney-on-me-way-to-the-local-zoo at times, and don’t go flattering me by telling me otherwise.’

  ‘Forget what I said earlier,’ I said. ‘And how about serving me a drink?’

  We spent the time until dawn in cocktail experimentation and succeeded in creating a number of drinks of such extreme unlikeliness as to baffle even ourselves. But then the dawn came up like thunder, as it sometimes does from Rangoon across the bay, and Mr Rune and I tottered topside to enjoy the leaving of port.

  And it was a sight to remember, the lowering of the gangways, the belaying in and heaving to, some late and complicated pipings aboard, followed by lines being slipped and forecastles trimmed and things of that nature nautically.

  And off slid the liner out into the sea and we were off on our way.

  And I did yawnings and Hugo Rune did too and then we went off to our bunks.

  I arose at three the following afternoon, bathed, dressed and went for a stroll on the promenade deck. It was late September now12 and the sun was low in the sky, throwing long shadows and making the grandeur seem somehow even more grand. I tipped the brim of my panama to passing ladies and wished that I had a dandy cane to twirl between my fingers. This was the life, there was no mistake about it. And though it was all so terribly wrong, it still felt marvellous.