The Mechanical Messiah and Other Marvels of the Modern Age

by Robert Rankin

  Darwin recited the Twenty-Third Psalm, and this made Alice cry again.

  Major Tinker dropped his trousers and prepared to perform a trick he’d seen done in the officers’ mess at Sandhurst.

  Cameron Bell put his hands over Alice’s eyes.

  The private detective later impressed all lovers of river craft with his impersonation of a tugboat.

  The Marie Lloyd moved on towards Earth and all grew drunker and drunker.

  42

  enus now lay far astern; the Marie Lloyd flew on. Most of the champagne now was gone, and the Jovians had moved on to the creation of imaginative cocktails conjured from what remained behind the bar counter. Colonel Katterfelto had discovered some rum and this he shared with Mr Cameron Bell. Darwin was asleep with his head on the colonel’s lap.

  ‘You did a man’s job in the gun turret, Bell,’ said the colonel, patting Cameron hard upon the back. ‘Conducted yourself as a gentleman should, bravo.’

  ‘It is my hope that I can always rise to the occasion when required,’ said Mr Bell, wistfully looking towards Alice Lovell and wondering whether there might possibly be any way for him to continue his acquaintanceship with her once they had returned to Earth.

  ‘Thoughtful look in your eye there, Bell.’ The colonel refilled the detective’s glass. ‘Setting your cap at a Music Hall gal. Not too wise a proposition.’

  ‘She is pure enough,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘But speaking of the Music Hall, I observed you receiving your wages from the charming Mingus Larkspur. I imagine that you will not be continuing with your career upon the boards.’

  ‘You imagine correctly.’ The colonel, now far gone with drink, beckoned Cameron closer. ‘Can you keep a secret?’ he asked.

  ‘Keeping a secret is my middle name,’ said Mr Bell, equally far gone with drink.

  ‘Good man. Then between one prang-gunner and another, have a bit of a project on the go. Secret project. Word to the wise.’ The colonel tapped at his nose and almost missed.

  ‘The project you have sought to pursue for all of your adult life?’ said Cameron Bell.

  ‘How the Devil did you know that?’ The colonel sat back, appalled.

  ‘Colonel,’ said Cameron Bell, ‘ever since we first met, you have worn that uniform. Day in and day out.’ Cameron Bell made hiccups. ‘Pardon me.’ He continued, ‘I draw inferences from observation. Most of your life is written for me upon your uniform.’ Cameron Bell drained further rum. ‘Did any of that make any sense?’ he asked.

  ‘S’pose so,’ said the colonel. ‘And true as true. Single project. Obsessed me all me life, you might say. Have the means to bring it to fruition. Cheers to that, says I.’

  The two drained glasses, the colonel refilled them both.

  They both said, ‘Cheers,’ and both drank once again.

  ‘You said it was a secret,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘But you did not tell me what it was.’

  ‘Cos it’s a secret,’ said the colonel.

  ‘But you were going to tell me.

  ‘Ah yes. So I was. Read this book, you see—’

  ‘The one you carry in your left-hand inside jacket pocket, over your heart?’

  ‘Stop it now, Bell, or I’ll have you burned for a witch.’ The two men laughed, and the colonel carried on. ‘Chap called Herr Döktor,’ he said. ‘You mentioned him, with regard to how Darwin learned his skills. Read the book I carry with me when I was a child, all about—’ The colonel drew the private detective very very near. ‘All about the Mechanical Messiah.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mr Cameron Bell. ‘Well, I was not expecting that.’

  ‘Built one in America,’ the colonel continued. ‘Unfortunate business. Villagers with flaming torches. Had to make a break for it. You know the drill.’

  Cameron nodded. ‘Not really,’ he said.

  ‘But having it built in London. Right now. Well, with time differences, months ago. Should be ready and waiting when we get home.’ The colonel clinked his glass against Cameron Bell’s.

  Cameron Bell asked, ‘Just what will it do?’

  ‘Do?’ asked the colonel. ‘What will what do?’

  ‘The Mechanical Messiah. I assume the intention is to somehow bring it to some form of sentience. But when that is done, what will it actually do? Will it be—’ Cameron started to titter foolishly ‘—like a monkey butler?’

  ‘Monkey butler?’ cried the colonel.

  ‘What?’ went Darwin. ‘What?’

  ‘Not you, my dear fellow, go back to sleep.’

  Darwin went back to sleep.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Mr Cameron Bell. ‘But I assume this mechanical being is some form of automaton.’

  ‘Some form, yes,’ agreed the colonel. ‘But imbued with spiritual forces, literally possessed by the divine. It will bring peace on Earth to all men.’

  ‘I will drink to that,’ said Mr Bell. And he did. ‘But please bear with me for a little longer,’ he also said. ‘The one you built in America, did you bring that one to life?’

  ‘Couldn’t,’ puffed the colonel. ‘Missing part. Didn’t know about that until later.’

  ‘Hope you asked for your money back,’ said Cameron Bell, who was beginning to grin rather foolishly.

  ‘Couldn’t get the part on Earth.’ The colonel dug into a pocket and produced a lump of Magoniam. ‘Only exists on Venus. Magical rock. Special compartment in the chest where the heart should be. In it goes and job jobbed.’

  ‘Really?’ said Mr Bell, trying to focus. ‘So you are confident that you will bring your Mechanical Messiah to life by placing a piece of Venusian gold inside its—’

  There was a pause. The colonel puffed. Cameron Bell was asleep.

  ‘Wake up!’ shouted the colonel.

  Darwin woke up. ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Sorry,’ said the colonel.

  Cameron Bell awoke.

  ‘Conversation is getting too damned complicated.’ The colonel drank more rum.

  Cameron Bell could now see two Colonel Katterfeltos. ‘We need cigars,’ he announced. ‘Cigars will sober us up.’

  ‘Bet you can’t make it to the bar and back without falling on your arse,’ said the colonel.

  ‘Bet I can,’ said Cameron Bell.

  But he could not.

  Corporal Larkspur stood behind the bar. He was fiercely sober.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘All the cigars you have,’ said Cameron Bell.

  The corporal grinned at the drunken detective. It was an evil grin. ‘And the condemned man requested a final cigar,’ he said beneath his breath.

  ‘Pardon me?’ asked Cameron Bell.

  ‘The gentleman requests cigars,’ said the evil grinner. ‘And cigars he will have.’

  Corporal Mingus Larkspur opened the glass-fronted case and tipped its entire contents onto the bar counter.

  ‘Shall I put all these on your bill?’ he asked.

  ‘The colonel is paying,’ said Cameron, trying without success to stuff cigars into the top pocket of his now most thoroughly soiled suit jacket. He staggered somewhat and barely caught the bar in time to avoid a further tumble.

  ‘Sir seems in a bit of a state,’ said the grinning Mingus. ‘Would sir care for me to escort sir to his cabin?’

  ‘Sir would not!’ said Cameron Bell. ‘You are a scoundrel, sir. And I will have satisfaction. Would you care to step outside and settle it man to man?’

  ‘Outside the spaceship?’ asked the corporal.

  ‘Damned right,’ said the drunken detective. And he did that thing that gentlemen do with their gloves when they are challenging a rival to a duel: go smack-smack-smack in the other fellow’s face with them.

  As Cameron Bell possessed no gloves, he smack-smack-smacked the corporal’s face with several large cigars.

  ‘Ray guns at dawn?’ the corporal suggested. ‘Ray guns at dawn,’ said Cameron Bell.

  ‘Having a chat with that Larkspur cove, I see,’ said Colonel Katterfelto, when Came
ron Bell, by a weaving route, returned at length to the table. ‘Something of the rotter about that chap.’

  The detective slumped once more into his chair and offered the colonel a broken cigar. ‘I have challenged him to a duel,’ he said.

  ‘Duel?’ said the colonel. ‘Chaps don’t fight duels any more. Duke of Wellington one of the last chaps to fight a duel, doncha know. Lucky to stay out of prison.’

  ‘The laws of the Empire do not apply in space.’ Cameron Bell put the broken end of a cigar into his mouth and then spat it out again. ‘Ray guns at dawn. I can’t go back on it now.

  ‘Hmph!’ the colonel grunted. ‘Seems to me that you’re three sheets to the wind, my dear fellow. When you sober up in the morning you’d best apologise. Can’t have chaps shooting each other for no good reason. Only a few of us left, damn me.

  Cameron Bell was now asleep.

  A cigar was stuck up his nose.

  The drinking had gone on for a very long time and when by Earth time it was dawn folk did not feel too well.

  The colonel had made attempts to intercede on Mr Bell’s behalf with Mingus Larkspur, explaining that there was no reason at all for a duel and that Mr Bell was drunk and that he, the colonel, was prepared to apologise on his behalf, if it would help.

  Corporal Larkspur explained that it would not. His dignity had been affronted. He had been called a scoundrel and struck across the face by cigars. An offence punishable by death on Jupiter, he further explained. There was nothing for it but for him and Mr Bell to leave the confines of the ship and settle this matter man to man as proper gentlemen should.

  The colonel had shrugged at this and given up and gone to bed, carrying Darwin on his shoulder.

  The colonel was up at the cracking of the dawn, hoping to dissuade Mr Bell.

  It might well have been assumed by those who observed Mr Bell’s decline into alcoholic oblivion the previous evening that he would be in no fit state even to rise from his bed upon this Earthly dawn, let alone conduct himself with sufficient sensibility to engage in a deadly duel.

  But Cameron was whistling while he washed. He hummed a little whilst he shaved and sang whilst he went to the toilet. After he had dressed and laced up his shoes, he did a tiny tap dance, too.

  It was not the way of Cameron Bell to suffer ‘the morning after the night before’. He was quite immune to that kind of thing. His doctor had told him time and again that he drank too much, but Mr Bell dismissed these words, although he knew them to be true.

  He would not, of course, be letting on to Corporal Mingus Larkspur as to quite how chipper he felt. Although his acting skills stretched to little more than the impersonation of tugboats, the private detective felt confident that he could create the impression of a man with a blinding headache without the need to be coached by Sir Henry Irving.

  But, thought Mr Bell. Had it been a rash move upon his part, challenging the corporal to a duel? No, he considered, it had not. Certain details of the corporal’s person, observed by Cameron Bell, had informed the private detective that Mingus Larkspur was neither brave, nor a crack shot. Cunning, yes. But brave, or a crack shot, no. And Cameron’s intuition had told him that Corporal Larkspur surely planned his murder. As after all he had overheard Larkspur’s conversation on the transmitting device on Venus, that Cameron would be killed and Alice returned to London for a blood sacrifice. Better then a fairish fight than to keep looking over his shoulder.

  Alice Lovell knew nothing of this. She had tired of men-talk relatively early and gone off to bed in a huff. Now she slept on soundly and dreamed of tall dark men.

  A tall man with a greying head knocked upon Cameron’s door.

  Bolts were drawn, the door opened. ‘Good morning, Colonel,’ said Cameron Bell.

  ‘Impressive constitution,’ said the colonel, viewing the vigorous figure before him through somewhat bleary eyes. ‘You still intending to proceed with this dangerous farce?’

  ‘There is no other way for it.’ Cameron Bell viewed the rather tatty atmospheric suit the colonel was carrying. ‘Is that my size?’ he asked.

  ‘One size fits all,’ said the colonel. ‘Found this one in the ship’s stores. Best of a bad bunch. Seams are good enough. Tank’s three-quarters full of air. Gives you half an hour outside. Wish you’d reconsider, though.’

  ‘As a matter of interest,’ said Cameron Bell, taking the suit from the colonel, ‘what odds are the Jovians offering on who will win this duel?’

  ‘Well—’ puffed the colonel. ‘Well—’

  ‘Not good odds on me, then?’

  ‘Not as such, my dear fellow, no.

  Cameron Bell struggled with the atmospheric suit. He was having trouble just getting his legs in. ‘As a betting man yourself,’ he said to the colonel, ‘who, might I ask, have you laid a bet upon?’

  ‘Well… my dear fellow,’ the colonel puffed.

  ‘I see,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘And upon what grounds, precisely, have the odds become so stacked against me?’

  Colonel Katterfelto shrugged.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Cameron Bell.

  ‘Well. You know,’ the colonel blustered. ‘One thing and another. Chaps chat. Seems Larkspur has a bit of a reputation for this kind of thing.’

  ‘He does?’ said Cameron Bell.

  ‘Bit of a master of deception apparently. How should I put this? Gives off the wrong impressions, you might say.’

  ‘He does?’ said Cameron Bell once more. In a slightly higher-pitched voice.

  ‘Apparently so. Stumpy was telling me that Larkspur is noted for his bravery in such situations. Him being such a crack shot and all.’

  43

  retting somewhat, Cameron Bell was helped into the atmospheric suit. Colonel Katterfelto screwed on the helmet.

  ‘I’ll open up the little visor door so you can breathe the ship’s air for now,’ he said. ‘And I’ll link up the air bottle on your back. You can’t actually adjust the controls once it’s on, so I’ll wait until the last moment to switch the valve. Give you as long as possible with an air supply, eh? Not that you will be needing all of it.’

  ‘What was that last bit again?’ asked Cameron Bell.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing. Now, do you have your ray gun?’

  ‘Trouser pocket,’ said Cameron, peeping out through the opening in the front of his space helmet. ‘The trousers I wore last night are on the floor, I’m afraid. I did consume a tad too much rum.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be in this fix if you hadn’t.’ The colonel rooted about in the rumpled-up trousers and produced the ray gun. ‘Really wish you’d reconsider,’ he said. And he looked the duelist up and down. ‘Not much room in there, eh? Somewhat tight beneath the armpits.’

  ‘Somewhat tight all over,’ said Cameron Bell, uncomfortably.

  ‘Well, best get it over with. Take your gun. ‘Cameron took his gun.

  ‘And follow me,’ said Colonel Katterfelto.

  Corporal Larkspur looked rather splendid in his brand-new atmospheric suit. Rather dashing, quite a romantic figure. Cameron Bell had not been fully aware before as to just how tall and imposing Corporal Larkspur actually was. He had always slouched around with his head hung down in a subservient manner. He was certainly skilled in creating the wrong impression.

  The corporal squared up before the private detective, looked down upon him and toyed with a ray gun so much bigger than Mr Cameron Bell’s.

  ‘Cargo area,’ he said, his voice muffled within his sealed space helmet.

  Cameron Bell turned to Colonel Katterfelto.

  ‘Two of you wait in the cargo area,’ said the old soldier. ‘I’ll leave, close the airtight door to the rest of the ship. Once done you can open the outer door and step outside. I’ve roped you both up to this bulkhead so you won’t drift off into space. And this—’ he displayed a cable with a plug upon each end ‘—this goes here and here—’ He plugged one end into Cameron’s spacesuit and the other into that of Corporal Larkspur. ‘Now you can talk to one ano
ther outside. You won’t be able to hear me. Nor me you. So—’ he shook each man by the spacesuit-gloved hand ‘—may the best man win and all that how’s-your-father-up-in-Heaven kind of caper. Farewell.’

  The colonel saluted and left the cargo hold, closing and locking the inner door securely behind him. He went off to join the Jovians who were thronged along the portholes of the ship’s starboard side awaiting the opening of the cargo bay’s outer door and for all the fun to begin.

  In the cargo hold there stood two men who did not care for each other. Two men who would leave the ship in a moment or two, knowing that only one of them would return alive.

  Within his snugly fitting atmospheric suit, Cameron Bell was perspiring freely. His fingers felt numb and his heart was beating much too fast. Corporal Larkspur applied himself to the outer door, spun the turn-screw, let it fall open. The air from the cargo hold rushed into space. And Cameron stared after it into the star-strewn nothingness.

  ‘After you.’ The voice of Corporal Larkspur boomed in Cameron’s ear. ‘Let us have this over and done. I have other things to be getting on with.’

  Cameron Bell spoke softly. ‘Quietly now, I have a terrible hangover,’ he lied. ‘But at least no further pretence upon your part as to being a Jovian.’

  ‘Jovian?’ The corporal’s laugh banged about in Cameron’s helmet. ‘Buffoons to a man of them. Cannon fodder, they are, and nothing more.’

  ‘You are not wholly human,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘How shall I put this?’ He was trying most hard to stop his voice quavering. ‘Are you perhaps of mixed race? An English mother of— how shall I put this? — loose morals—’

  Cameron heard the rush of air as the corporal drew in breath. ‘Outside,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll deal with you—’

  ‘You first,’ said Mr Bell. ‘I would hate for there to be an accident. Your ray gun accidentally discharging into my back, for instance.’

  ‘No need for that.’ Corporal Larkspur lunged at Cameron Bell, sought to fling the private detective into space. Mr Bell, however, had seen that coming. He stepped nimbly aside, tripped the corporal and sent him blundering forwards, through the open outer door, out into the universe beyond.