Retromancer

by Robert Rankin

  So speak clearly I did.

  ‘James Pooley,’ I said, ‘Brentford’s James Pooley is now captaining the ship. And this would be - how should I put this? - well, how about James Jonah Pooley, sole survivor of many a shipwreck, scourge of the seven seas. A man, if ever there was one, who was born to wear an albatross around his neck.’

  ‘I agree that he does have something of a reputation for that kind of thing,’ said Fangio. ‘But you shouldn’t go tarnishing someone with a sticky brush just because they ate the parson’s nose. Or is it the other way round?’

  ‘It does not work for me either way,’ I said. ‘But trust me on this: if James “Down-with-all-hands-but-me” Pooley is at the helm, I am wearing my lifebelt for the remainder of the voyage.’

  ‘I’ve been wearing mine since we left port,’ said Fangio, lifting the hem of his blouse to expose said item, ‘although not by choice. I was trying it on for size in my cabin and sort of got stuck in it. Funny thing that, really. Once I was vacuuming the house and it was a hot day and I was vacuuming naked and I fell forwards and you’ll never guess what happened—’

  ‘Correct,’ said Hugo Rune, ‘because we will certainly never attempt to. Let us take another cocktail, Rizla, then let us take to our beds.’

  I have to admit that I did not sleep well. My dreams were haunted by snapping wolves on sinking ships and all was not right with the world. But then all was not right with the world and I was seriously beginning to wonder whether Hugo Rune and I really would be able to put the world to right. To my reckoning there were three tarot cards left. THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE, THE TOWER and the one with the sticking plaster on it, the terrible card known as DEATH. Just the three. And how near were we to putting the world to right? To stopping America being blown into nuclear fragments? Not too near, in my opinion. In fact just about as distant as we could possibly be. And so I did not sleep well and I did not have pleasant dreams.

  Mr Rune woke me early and he looked bright enough. ‘I have been thinking, Rizla,’ he said, ‘and thinking all of the night. We have but three cards left to be dealt and time is running out. If von Bacon’s Hell Hound was aboard this ship, I am wondering what else might be down in the cargo hold. I feel that after we have fortified ourselves with a suitably heroic breakfast we might acquire the ship’s manifest and take a little look around downstairs.’

  ‘Splendid,’ I said, ‘because I was dreaming—’

  ‘Rizla, I know what you dreamed.’

  We breakfasted in the forward salon. It was all white Lloyd Loom chairs and tables, potted palms and posh folk. And I grew grumpy at the sight of these.

  ‘Look at them,’ I whispered to Hugo Rune, ‘pointing at me and muttering behind their manicured hands. They know I was marked for death. The horrid rotten bunch.’

  ‘I think it more likely,’ said Himself, ‘that they are commenting on the fact that you are wearing your lifebelt. It quite ruins the cut of your jacket.’

  ‘This stays on,’ I said. ‘Even when I am using the toilet. And that is a challenge, believe you me.’

  ‘I am prepared to believe you, Rizla. Now what shall we take for our brekkie?’

  I had made the suggestion to Mr Rune that we should employ the services of Fangio’s monkey as a food taster, just in case there were those aboard who might now seek to poison us. More werewolves perhaps, for they are known to exist in packs. Or SS officers mourning the loss of their Hell Hound. But Hugo Rune sniffed at each course as it came and pronounced that each passed muster.

  And he was clearly confident in his talents (if belatedly demonstrated) as food sniffer, because he wolfed down his breakfast and goose-stepped many cups of tea.

  ‘A stroll now, Rizla,’ he said, when we were done, ‘and let us see what we shall see.’

  We wandered topside and mooched about the decks. Ignoring the sporting opportunities of deck javelins, tossing the grimble, sidestepping and that evergreen favourite ‘pluck one out on a bended knee’. Although I never really saw the point of that game. Too many balls involved.

  We gazed at the sea, which was flat as turquoise glass with no visible join to the sky. Mr Rune smoked a post-breakfast cheroot and I had another go at a Wild Woodbine but still was not making a lot of progress on the smoking front.

  ‘I think,’ said Hugo Rune, ‘that we should now evade the eyes of our watchers and slip away to the cargo hold.’

  ‘Our watchers?’ I whispered. ‘Now this is new.’

  ‘Two gentlemen, wearing trenchcoats and snap-brimmed fedoras, have been following us since we left the forward salon. Clearly our cards are now marked, as they say, and we must be on our guard.’

  I glanced back over my shoulder and noticed two fellows in trenchcoats. As my eyes caught theirs they turned away, confirming Mr Rune’s thoughts.

  ‘Assassins, do you think?’ I whispered.

  ‘They have the look of Americans, Rizla. And there’s no telling with them.’

  Hugo Rune now performed a number of classic manoeuvres to avoid surveillance without giving the impression of doing so. He employed the ‘double-footed swan-dive’, the ‘partly-taken-aback’ and the ‘there-goes-ninepence-again’ stratagems to splendid effect and soon we were at the cargo hold unfollowed.

  The heavy padlocks now barring our entry were dealt with by Mr Rune and he and I slipped into the hold to see what we might see.

  ‘There are many steamer trunks,’ I said. ‘Did you manage to acquire the cargo manifest?’

  ‘Sadly, no, Rizla, it is locked in the captain’s safe. The new captain would happily have allowed me to peruse it, but apparently he has mislaid the combination.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said, but quietly. But thought many more ‘oh dears’.

  ‘So employ your intuition, Rizla, and let us see what we can find.’

  And so we searched. And there really did seem to be some most extraordinary things stored in that hold. A London taxicab, for instance, under a tarpaulin. And a number of coffins that I really did not want to open. But then, after much nosing about into other people’s private possessions, I discovered what must surely be the mother lode.

  ‘Mr Rune,’ I called out. ‘Mr Rune, you will never believe what I have just found here.’

  And Mr Rune was soon at my side and Mr Rune asked, ‘What?’

  ‘See for yourself,’ I said and I pointed. And Himself saw for himself. ‘Oh, Rizla,’ he said. ‘Oh, well done indeed.’

  And he read the label aloud.

  HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE

  MARK ONE TESLA

  IONIC FIELD GENERATOR

  ‘It is the field generator that was stolen from your conservatory,’ I said. ‘But what is it doing here?’

  ‘Heading for America,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Everything falls neatly into place.’

  ‘It does?’ I said. ‘Then please explain it to me.’

  And I am sure that he would have done just that.

  Had it not been for the interruption.

  Which came as if a bolt from the blue.

  As our ship struck something—

  HARD

  54

  We headed to the topmost deck, for that would be the last to go underwater. By the time we reached it chaos reigned, with rich folk screaming and beating each other and fighting over the lifeboats.

  ‘Would I be right in assuming,’ I shouted to Hugo Rune, ‘that this ship owns to a deficit in the lifeboat department, as did its sister ship the Titanic?’

  ‘I rather suspect this to be the case,’ yelled the Magus. And then he laid a hand upon a well-dressed seaman in a rather superior lifejacket, who was seeking to sneak on board the nearest lifeboat. Hugo Rune hauled this fellow from his feet and spoke to his dangling person.

  ‘Speak to me, please,’ said the guru’s guru. ‘And with precise phraseology, lest an ambiguity or inconsistency result in severe skull damage upon your part.’ And he waggled his stout stick meaningfully. ‘What exactly has happened?’

  The dangling fe
llow squirmed about, but spoke as best he could. ‘The ship has wandered slightly off course,’ he cried, ‘and has entered the Sargasso Sea.’

  ‘Slightly off course!’ roared Mr Rune. ‘One thousand miles or more. And what was the nature of the obstacle we struck?’

  ‘An ancient galleon, sir.’

  Mr Rune let the fellow fall into the crowd. ‘Come, Rizla,’ he called unto me. ‘It is to the bridge with us, to see how affairs might be righted.’

  And so I got to go onto the bridge of the RMS Olympic. Which was a very exciting place to be. There was the big ship’s steering wheel. And it was a really big one, nearly as high as a man. And there were those things with the levers on that the captain orders to be pulled for FULL STEAM AHEAD and suchlike. And big red buttons to press for foghorns and emergency sirens and so on. And a chart table and a framed picture of Queen Victoria.

  And there was also my father. Dressed as the captain.

  With a rather guilty look upon his face.

  ‘Captain Pooley?’ asked Hugo Rune, pushing onto the bridge.

  ‘It is private up here,’ said Captain Pooley. ‘Please go back the way you came.’ And then Captain Pooley caught sight of me and said, ‘This is a surprise.’

  ‘Do you know each other?’ asked Hugo Rune.

  And I looked hard at the Magus.

  Surely he knew that this was my father. All that business with the tarot card and the SUN being father to the Earth and everything. And so on. And so forth. And suchlike.

  ‘This is my—’ And I looked up at my father. ‘My casual acquaintance, ’ I continued. ‘I met him in Brentford a while back.’

  ‘I had no idea you were of wealthy stock,’ said my father. ‘Are you enjoying the voyage?’

  ‘Well,’ I said. And I did sort of noddings over my shoulder to where all that chaos reigned below and where rich folk were now leaping into the murky waters.

  And indeed those waters were truly murky. Because from the lofty prominence of the wheelhouse you could get a really decent overview of the Sargasso Sea.

  I had read about this sinister area when I was a child. The Ocean’s Graveyard, it was called, amongst many other uncomplimentary things. It was a portion of the North Atlantic Ocean bogged with a surface-growing seaweed called Sargassum. It dwelt within the notorious horse latitudes, in an area known as the doldrums. When sailing ships found themselves windless and caught in this mire, they rarely if ever made home port again.

  And legend had it that there were many ghost ships to be found there, barnacled up and choked with seaweed. With naught aboard but skeletons and the wraiths of long-dead sailors.

  And yes, looking out from that wheelhouse you could see the wrecks. And there were many of them too, from ancient Romanesque sailing barques to twentieth-century shipping.

  ‘Have you tried putting the engines into reverse?’ asked Hugo Rune of the captain.

  ‘You are Mr Hugo Rune,’ said Captain Pooley, all of a suddenly sudden. ‘I recognise you from your photograph in John Bull. Being congratulated by the King, after your famous four-way Channel swim.’

  ‘A bet with George Formby,’ Hugo Rune explained to me and he shook my father by the hand.

  And that really meant quite a lot to me, though I would not perhaps wish to put into words just why.

  ‘I would be grateful for any advice you might have to offer, Mr Rune,’ said Captain Pooley. ‘I did try reversing the engines, but it seemed to make matters worse. Both screws are now jammed and there appears to be imminent danger of the boilers blowing up.’

  Himself gazed over the mayhem below. ‘I think I see the stokers fighting their way into one of the lifeboats,’ he said, ‘so the boilers will probably be safe for now. Do you have any rum about yourself?’

  ‘The special captain’s bottle,’ said the special captain.

  ‘Then let’s crack it open and discuss matters,’ suggested Mr Rune, ‘until all the foolish people have left the ship and there is some peace and quiet.’

  And so that is what we did. We drank rum up there in the wheelhouse and watched the rich people bashing each other up, falling over the side, crowding the lifeboats and generally carrying on in a manner which, I have to confess, I found most amusing indeed.

  Schadenfreude I know it is called. Or epicaricacy, as the English will have it. From the original Greek.

  But they would have let me be eaten.

  It was nightfall before it began to grow quiet. There came a few distant cries for help as foolish people went down on the overcrowded lifeboats. A number of piercing screams which, I was given to understand, might have something to do with the shark-infested waters. But then mostly calm.

  And we had the great ship to ourselves.

  We had left the wheelhouse by this time and, as the special captain’s rum had all gone, adjourned to the bar to take advantage of the easy access to the counter.

  And behind this counter stood Fangio.

  And next to him sat his monkey.

  ‘Jolly good to see you, Fange,’ said I. ‘Decided against fighting your way aboard a lifeboat, then? Wise.’

  ‘Lifeboat?’ said Fangio. ‘I’ve been having a sleep and have only just come on shift. It’s very quiet in here this evening. What is all this about lifeboats?’

  ‘Nothing you should worry yourself about,’ I told him. ‘But this is the captain and the drinks are on him.’

  ‘Are they?’ asked my father. ‘Well, I suppose they are. Or on the house, at least. I’ll have a pint of Cooper Black, please, barman.’

  ‘I think the running gag about typeface beer names has run its course,’ I said.

  ‘Pint of Cooper Black coming up,’ said Fangio.

  ‘Then make that two,’ I said.

  And, ‘Three,’ said Hugo Rune.

  ‘So,’ I said to my father, ‘the ship is not actually in imminent danger of sinking?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ he replied. ‘It’s just a bit stuck, that’s all.’

  ‘I find this encouraging,’ I said.

  ‘I did miss something, didn’t I?’ said Fangio. Presenting us with our ales.

  ‘I never saw you pull those,’ I said.

  ‘Because I never pulled them, it was my monkey. Did you know that if you sat an infinite number of monkeys down before an infinite number of typewriters, one of them would accidentally type out a book called Retromancer? So what did I miss?’ implored Fangio. ‘And why do you smell of white-wolf gonads, Rizla? I did miss something, didn’t I?’

  ‘The captain sort of bumped this ship a bit,’ said Hugo Rune, taking his beer glass to his mouth. ‘But it did lead to a lot of upper-class rats fleeing a non-sinking ship. So I think we must chalk it up as a success.’

  ‘Except that we are in a hurry to reach New York,’ I said.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘So regrettably we cannot enjoy the peace and quiet and perhaps upgrade to better accommodation. We must make haste to extricate the ship from the Sargasso and head for the USA.’

  ‘The Sargasso Sea?’ wailed Fangio. ‘Then all is lost. We are doomed, we are doomed.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I had forgotten about the Weeping and Wailing Competition. What time does it start? I would like to enter it too.’

  ‘Eight o’ clock,’ said Fangio. ‘We are doomed, we are doomed, oh mercy, mercy me.’

  ‘Enough,’ cried Hugo Rune and he raised his stick. ‘Someone will have to don a diving suit and go down and cut free the screws. As originator of this idea that will save all of our lives, I nominate the captain to carry out the mission.’

  ‘And as captain,’ said the captain, ‘I nominate this barman here.’

  ‘And I nominate Clarence, my monkey,’ said Fangio.

  Fangio’s monkey shook its head and pointed a finger at me.

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘I am not doing that. I know all about the shark-infested waters and I would get claustrophobic in a diving suit. And I am not a very strong swimmer.’

  ‘Then I
shall do it,’ said Hugo Rune.

  ‘You?’ I said. ‘Surely not.’

  ‘It will have to be done, Rizla. And someone will have to do it.’

  ‘We could perhaps draw lots for it,’ I said. ‘Or spin a bottle, or something. It does not seem fair that you should do it, you are rather—’

  ‘Old?’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Portly?’ he said also.

  ‘Too dignified,’ I said. ‘But it is a job for a younger man. Either Fangio, or the captain, or myself.’

  ‘Or the monkey,’ said Fangio.

  And the monkey bit him.

  We had it all planned. Well, we almost did. We would have a few drinks then take ourselves off to the ship’s casino. And there we would play cards, or throw dice, or otherwise gamble, but let fate decide by one means or another which of us should dive.

  And I think we had at least come to the agreement that it would all rest upon a spin of the roulette wheel, upon THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE, as it were.

  But then we heard the sounds.

  That round of cannon shot.

  And the blowing of many whistles.

  And a kind of atavistic howling.

  Which heralded the boarding party . . . . . . of pirates.

  55

  Now I make no bones about it, in fact neither skull nor crossed bones, but I have always had this thing for pirates. How well I recall the dealings Mr Rune and I had with Captain Bartholomew Moulsecoomb, the Bog Troll Buccaneer14 and his crew of scurvy pirate types. I really took to those fellows, I did. I do not know exactly what it is about pirates that I like so much. It might be one of so many things. The tricornes or cutlasses, peg legs or hand-hooks, frock coats or eyepatches, parrots or treasure chests. One of them, or maybe all. But I do like pirates. Monkeys I also like. But I like pirates the bestest.

  And even as Fangio, my dad and myself were discussing THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE and I was telling them that I had chosen the tarot card of THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE, so we must be doing the right thing, grappling hooks were being thrown up onto the passenger decks and pirates, many lacking for bits and bobs of themselves, were swarming up ropes, with knives between their teeth, arr’ing and arr-harr’ing and belching rum-tainted breaths.