East of Ealing (18 page)

“Come on, Jim.” Omally shouldered up his bike and aided his sagging companion. “If we get out of this I will let you buy me a drink.”

“If we get out of this I will buy you a pub.”

“Onward and upward then.”

Another two flights passed beneath them; to John and Jim it was evident that some fiendish builder was steadily increasing the depth of the treads.

“Stop now.”

“With the greatest pleasure.”

Professor Slocombe put his eye to the smoked glass of a partition door. “Yes,” said he in a whisper. “We shall trace it from here, I think.”

Norman the Second ran his fingertips about the door’s perimeter and nodded. “Appears safe enough,” he said.

“Then let us see.” Professor Slocombe gestured to Jim. “You push it, please.”

Pooley shook his head dismally but did as he was bid. The door gave to expose a long dimly-lit corridor.

Omally fanned at his nose. “It smells like the dead house.”

Professor Slocombe pressed a large gingham handkerchief to his face. “Will you lead the way, Norman?”

The robot entered the corridor. “I can feel the vibration of it,” he said, “but it is some distance away. If I could get to a VDU.”

“Stand alone, clustered, or wide-area network?” Omally asked, sarcastically.

“Super advanced WP and a spread-sheet planner, hopefully,” said Jim.

“Do I take the piss out of your relatives?” Norman the Second asked. “Stick your palm against this panel will you please?”

“Security round here stinks as bad as the air,” Pooley pressed the panel. A gleaming black door slid noiselessly aside.

“Ah,” said Norman the Second, “magic.”

The room was nothing more than a cell, happily unoccupied. Black walls, floor and ceiling. A cunningly concealed light source illuminated a centralized computer terminal, bolted to the floor. “And people have the gall to ask me why I never take employment,” said Omally, parking his bike. “Imagine this place nine to five.”

The robot faced the console and cracked his nylon knuckles. “Now,” said he, “only one small problem. We do not possess the entry code.”

Professor Slocombe handed him a folded sheet of vellum. “Try this.” The automaton perused the paper and stared up at the old man.

“Don’t ask,” said John Omally.

“All right then.” With a blur of digits the robot punched in the locking code. The words “ENTER ENQUIRY NOW” sprang up upon the now illuminated screen. Norman’s hand hovered.

“Ask it for permission to consult the main access body,” said the Professor.

Norman punched away at the keyboard.

PERMISSION DENIED, INFORMATION CLASSIFIED Professor Slocombe stroked at his chin. “Ask it for a data report.”

Norman did the business. Rows of lighted figures plonked up on to the monitor. Row upon coloured row, number upon number, little illuminated regiments marching up the screen. “Magic,” crooned Norman the Second.

“Looks like trig,” said Jim disgustedly. “Never could abide trig. Woodwork and free periods, but trig definitely not.”

“The music of the spheres,” said Norman the Second.

Professor Slocombe’s eyes were glued to the flickering screen. His mouth worked and moved, his head quivered from side to side. As the projected figures darted and weaved, so the old man rose and fell upon his toes.

“Does it mean something to you?” Omally asked.

“Numerology, John. It is as I have tried to explain to you both. Everything, no matter what, can be broken down into its base elements and resolved to a final equation: the numerical equivalent; all of life, each moving cell, each microbe, each network of cascading molecules. That is the purpose of it all. Don’t you see?” He pulled Omally nearer to the screen, but John jerked away.

“I’ll not have it,” said he. “It is wrong. Somehow it is indecent. Obscene.”

“No, no, you must understand.” The Professor crouched lower towards the screen, pushing Norman’s duplicate aside.

Pooley was jigging from one foot to the other. “Can’t we get a move on. I’m freezing to death here.”

The room had suddenly grown impossibly cold. The men’s breath steamed from their faces. Or at least from two of them it did.

Omally grasped Pooley by the wrist, for the first time he realized that the Professor was no longer wearing his helmet, and hadn’t been since they had joined him on the landing. “Oh, Jim,” whispered John, “bad Boda.”

The “Professor” stiffened; slowly his head revolved a hundred and eighty degrees upon his neck and stared up at them, sickeningly. “Learn, last men,” he said, clearing his throat with the curiously mechanical coughing sound John and Jim had learned to fear. “It is your only salvation. Humble yourselves before your new master.”

“Oh no.” Omally stumbled back and drew out his crucifix. “Back,” he shouted, holding it before him in a wildly shaking fist. “Spawn of the pit.”

The Professor’s body turned to follow the direction of his face. His eyes had lost their pupils but now glowed from within, two miniature terminal screens, tiny figures twinkling across them in hypnotic succession. “Behold the power,” said he. “Know you the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.”

“By the Cross.”

The thing which dwelt in the Professor’s image thrust a hand into its trouser pocket and drew out a small black box with two slim protruding shafts.

“Head for the hills,” yelled Pooley, as the clone touched the nemesis button and the black rods sparkled with electric fire.

Omally flattened himself to the wall as the thing lunged towards him. A great explosion tore the world apart. Shards of glass and splinters of burning circuitry spun in every direction, spattering the walls and the two cowering men; flame and smoke engulfed the room. The Professor’s duplicate stood immovable, his synthetic hair ablaze and his clothes in tatters. Norman’s double drew a smouldering fist from the shattered terminal screen. He leapt forward, grasping the Professor’s
doppelgänger
about the throat, and dragged it backwards. “Out!” he shouted. “Run for your lives, lads.”

Pooley and Omally bundled out of the door. John leapt astride Marchant and Pooley clambered on to the handlebars. At very much the hurry-up they took to the retreat.

In absolutely the wrong direction.

Omally’s feet flew about and Marchant, realizing the urgency of the situation, made no attempt to ditch its extra rider. With its bell ringing dramatically it cannoned forward up the corridor. Figures appeared before them, dressed in grey uniforms and carrying fire-fighting equipment. Pooley struck aside all he could as the bike ploughed forward. As he cleared a path between several rather sloppy versions of himself, a thought struck him. The great machine for all its dark magic certainly lacked something in the old imagination department. Obviously when idling and stuck for something to do, it just kept turning out the same old thing.

“Do you know what this means?” Omally shouted into his ear. Pooley shook his terrified head and lashed out at another robot duplicate of himself. “It means that I am the last Catholic on Earth.”

“Well, some good came out of it all, then.” As Omally’s hands were busily engaged at the handlebar grips, he could do no more than lean forward and bite Pooley’s ear. “Jim,” he shouted, “Jim, as the last Catholic, I am Pope! Jim… I… am Pope. I am Pope!”

Some distance beneath the pedalling pontiff a great cry broke the silence. “Fe… fi… fo… fum.” Neville the barbarian barman had finally reached a wall. And at long last he had found something he could thump. The thrill of the prospect sent a small shiver up his back which finally lost itself amid acres of straining muscle fibre. Neville ran his hand across the barrier blocking his way; hard and cold as glass. An outside wall surely? The barman pressed his eye to the jet crystal surface and did a bit of squinting. Something vague was moving about on the other side. People in the street? Neville drew back for a shoulder charge, and he would have gone through with it had not a sensible thought unexpectedly entered his head. He wasn’t exactly sure which floor, or wherever, he was on. With his track record the movements were likely to be those of roosting rooftop pigeons. It could be a long hard fall to earth. Neville pressed his ear to the wall of black glass. He couldn’t hear a damn thing.

Bash out a couple of bore holes to see out through, that would be your man. The barman drew back a fist of fury and hurled it forward at something approaching twice the speed of sound. With a sickening report it struck home. His knotted fist passed clean through the wall, cleaving out a hole the size of a dustbin-lid. “Gog a Magog!” Neville took an involuntary step backwards. An icy hurricane of fetid wind tore out at him shredding away the last vestiges of his surgical smock and leaving him only his Y-fronts. Neville stood his ground, a great arm drawn over his face to shield his sensitive nostrils from the vile onslaught he had unwittingly unleashed. “Great mother.” Tears flew from his eyes as he forced himself onward. With his free hand he tore out a great section of the wall, which cartwheeled away in the stinking gale. With heroic effort he charged forward into the not-so-great beyond.

The wind suddenly ceased and he found himself standing in absolute silence and near-darkness. It was very very cold indeed. “Brr,” said Neville. “Brass monkey weather.” To the lover of Greek mythology, what next occurred would have been of particular interest. But to a Brentford barman in his present state of undress, the sudden arrival of Cerberus, the multi-headed canine guardian of the underworld, was anything but a comfort.

“Woof, woof, and growl,” went Cerberus, in the plural.

“Nice doggy,” said Neville, covering his privy parts. “Good boy, there.”

The creature tore at the barman, a blur of slavering mouths and blazing red eyes.

Neville sprang aside and ducked away beneath it as it leapt towards his throat. “Heel,” he said. “Sit.”

The thing turned and stood pawing the ground, glowing faintly, its scorpion tail flicking, low growls coming from a multiplicity of throats. By all accounts it made Holmes’ Baskerville growler seem pretty silly.

“Grrrrrrrrrrs,” went Cerberus, squaring up for the kill.

“Grrrrrrrr,” went Neville, who now considered that thumping a multi-headed dog was as good as thumping anything. “Come and get your Bob Martins.” With a single great bound it was upon him, heads whipping and snapping. Neville caught it at chest height and pummelled it down with flailing fists. It leapt up again and he caught at a scaled throat, crushing his hands about it until the thumbs met. The hell-hound screamed with pain as Neville dragged it from its clawed feet and dashed it to the ground. Roll on chucking-out time, thought the part-time barman. With one head hanging limply but others still on the snap, the fiend was on him once more, ripping and tearing, its foul mouths snapping, brimstone vapour snorting from its nostrils.

The two bowled over again and again, mighty figures locked in titanic conflict. The nightmare creature and the all-but-naked barman. The screams and cries echoed about the void, the echoes doubling and redoubling, adding further horror to a scene which was already fearsome.

Roll over and die for your country Rover, was not in there.

“I’m not doing it, John, and that’s the end of the matter.” Pooley clung precariously to his handlebar perch as Pope John the Umpteenth freewheeled down a deserted corridor. “I am not a Catholic and I utterly refuse to kiss your bloody ring. The thing came out of a Jamboree bag for God’s sake.”

“Let me convert you, Jim, come to the Mother Church before it’s too late.”

“Let me down from here, I want a drink.”

“Drink?” Omally tugged on the brakes and sent Jim sprawling. “Drink did I hear you say, my son?”

Pooley looked up bitterly from the deck. “Popes don’t drink,” he said. “Such is well-known.”

“A new Papal bull,” his Holiness replied.

“All right then, but no ring-kissing, it’s positively indecent.” Pooley unearthed the hip-flask and the two plodded on, sharing it turn and turn about.

“It’s getting bloody cold,” Pooley observed, patting at his shirt-sleeves. “And the pong’s getting a lot stronger.”

“What do you expect?” Omally passed him back the hip-flask. “Roses round the door?”

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?”

“The passage is going down, isn’t it? Would the Pope put you on a wrong ’n?”

“Listen, John, I’m not too sure about this Pope business. I thought you lads had to be elected. White smoke up the chimney or the like?”

“As last Catholic, I have the casting vote. Please don’t argue about religious matters with me, Jim. If you let me convert you I’ll make you a cardinal.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. God, it stinks down here. Couldn’t you issue another Papal bull or something?”

Omally halted the infidel in mid-step. “Would you look at that?” he said, pointing forward.

Ahead of them loomed a great door. It seemed totally out of context with all they had yet seen. At odds with the bland modernistic corridors they had passed down on their abortive journey of escape. It rose like a dark hymn in praise of evil pleasure, and hung in a heavily-carved portico wrought with frescoed reliefs.

Omally parked his bike, and the two men tiptoed forward. The hugeness and richness of the thing filled all vision. It was a work of titanic splendour, the reliefs exquisite, carved into dark pure wood of extreme age.

“Fuck me,” said John Omally, which was quite unbecoming of a Pope. “Would you look at that holy show?”

“Unholy show, John. That is disgusting.”

“Yes, though, isn’t it? And that.” Jim followed Omally’s pointing finger. “You’d need to be double-jointed.”

“There’s something inscribed there, John. You know the Latin, what does it say?”

Omally leant forward and perused the inscription, “Oh,” said he at length, his voice having all the fun of herpes about it, “that is what it says.”

“Exit does it say?”

Omally turned towards the grinning idiot. “Give me that hip-flask, you are a fool.”

“And you a Pope. Drink your own.”

“Give me that flask.”

“Well, only a small sip, don’t want your judgement becoming impaired.” Pooley began to hiccup.

Omally guzzled more than his fair share. “It’s in there,” he said, wiping his chin and returning the flask to Pooley.

“What is?” Jim shook the flask against his ear and gave the self-made Pope a disparaging look.

“The big It, you damned fool.”

“Then next right turn and on your bike. We don’t want to do anything silly now, do we?”

Omally nodded gloomily. “We must; stick your tattooed mitt up against it.”

“I can think of a million reasons why not.”

“And me. For the Professor, eh Jim?”

“For the Professor, then.” Jim pressed his hand to the door and it moved away before his touch.

Omally took up his bike, and the two men stepped cautiously through the opening.

“Oh, bloody hell,” whispered Jim.

“Yes, all of that.”

They stood now in the vestibule of what was surely a great cathedral. But its size was not tailored to the needs of man. It was the hall of giants. The two stared about them in an attempt to take it in. It was simply too large. The scale of its construction sent the mind reeling. The temperature had dropped another five degrees at least, yet the smell was ripe as a rotten corpse.

“The belly of the beast,” gasped Pooley. “Let’s go back. The utter cold, the feeling, the stench, I can’t stand it.”

“No, Jim, look, there it is.”

Ahead, across an endless expanse of shining black marble floor, spread the congregation, row upon regimental row. Countless figures crouched before as many flickering terminal screens, paying obeisance to their dark master. For there, towering towards eternity, rising acre upon vertical acre, spreading away in every direction, was the mainframe of the great computer. Billions of housed microcircuits, jet-black boxes stacked one upon another in a jagged endless wall. Upon giddy stairways and catwalks, minuscule figures moved upon its face, attending to its needs. Feeding it, pampering it with knowledge, gorging its insatiable appetite.

I AM LATEINOS, I AM ROMIITH.

The Latin, the formula, words reduced to their base components, stripped of their flesh, reduced to the charred black dust of their skeletons; to the equations which were the music of the spheres, the grand high opera of all existence. Omally slumped forward on to his knees. “I see it,” he whispered hoarsely, his eyes starting from his head. “Now I understand.”

“Then bully for you, John. Come on let’s get out, someone will see us.” Pooley fanned at his nose and rubbed at his shirt-sleeves.

“No, no. Don’t you understand what it’s doing? Why it’s here?”

“No. Nor why I should be.”

“It is what the Professor told us.” Omally struck his fist to his temple. “Numerology; the power lies in the numbers themselves. Can’t you see it? This whole madhouse is the product of mathematics. Mankind did not invent mathematics nor discover it. No the science of mathematics was given to him that he might misuse it to his ruin. That he might eventually create all this.” Omally spread out his arms to encompass the world they now inhabited. “Don’t you understand?”

Jim shook his head. “Pissed again,” said he. “And this time as Pope.”

Omally continued, his voice rising in pitch as the revelation struck him like a thunderbolt. “The machine has now perfected the art. It has mastered the science, it can break anything down to its mathematical equivalent. Once it has the formula it can then rebuild, recreate everything. An entire brand new world built from the ashes of the old, encompassing everything.”

“But all it does is churn out the same old stuff over and over again.”

Omally clambered to his feet and turned upon him. “Yes, you damn fool, because there is one number it can never find. It found the number of a man, but there is one more number, one more equation which never can be found.”

“Go on then, have your spasm.”

“The soul. That’s what the old man was trying to tell us. Don’t you see it, Jim?”

“I see that,” said Pooley, pointing away over John’s shoulder. “But I don’t believe it.”

Omally turned to catch sight of a gaunt angular figure clad in the shredded remnants of a tweed suit, who was stealing purposefully towards them.

“The Saints be praised.”

“Holmes,” gasped Pooley. “But how…? It cannot be.”

“You can’t keep a good man down.”

Sherlock Holmes gestured towards them. “Come,” he mouthed.

Jim put his hand to Omally’s arm. “What if he starts clearing his throat?”

Omally shrugged helplessly. “Come on, Jim,” he said, trundling Marchant towards the skulking detective.

Holmes drew them into the shadows. There in the half-light his face seemed drawn and haggard, although a fierce vitality shone in his eyes. “Then only we three remain.” It was a statement rather than a question. Omally nodded slowly. “And do you know what must be done?”

“We do not.”

“Then I shall tell you, but quickly, for we have little or no time. We are going to poison it,” said Sherlock Holmes. “We are going to feed it with death.” The cold determination of his words and the authority with which he spoke to them seemed absolute.

“Poison it?” said Jim. “But how?”

Holmes drew out a sheaf of papers from his pocket, even in the semi-darkness the Professor’s distinctive Gothic penmanship was instantly recognizable. “Feed it with death. The Professor formulated the final equation. He knew that he might not survive so he entrusted a copy to me. What he began so must we finish.”

“Hear, hear.”

“Computers are the products of diseased minds, but they will react only to precise stimuli. Feed them gibberish and you will not confuse them. But feed them with correctly-coded instructions and they will react and function accordingly, in their own unholy madness. Professor Slocombe formulated the final programme. It will direct the machine to reverse its functions, leading ultimately to its own destruction. This programme will override any failsafe mechanism the machine has. I must, however, gain access to one of the terminals.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” Jim enquired as he slyly drained the last drop from his hip-flask. “They all seem a little busy at present.”

Sherlock Holmes drew out his gun. “This is a Forty-four Magnum, biggest…”

“Yes, we are well aware of that. It might, however, attract a little too much attention.”

“My own thoughts entirely. I was wondering, therefore, if you two gentlemen might be prevailed upon to create some kind of diversion.”

“Oh yes?” said Pope John. “What, such as drawing the demonic horde down about our ears whilst you punch figures into a computer terminal?”

Holmes nodded grimly. “Something like that. I will require at least six clear minutes. I know I am asking a lot.”

“You are asking everything.”

Holmes had no answer to make.

John stared hard into the face of Jim Pooley.

The other shrugged. “What the heck?” said he.

“What indeed?” Omally climbed on to his bike. “Room for one more up front.”

Jim smiled broadly and tore off his metallic balaclava. “Then we won’t be needing these any more.”

“No,” said John, removing his own. “I think not.” Raising his hand in a farewell salute he applied his foot to the pedal. “Up the Rebels.”

“God for Harry,” chorused Pooley, as the two launched forward across the floor, bound for destiny upon the worn wheels of Marchant the Wonder Bike.