The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived Read online

  THE MOST AMAZING MAN WHO EVER LIVED

  ROBERT RANKIN

  The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived

  Originally published by Doubleday, a division of Transworld Publishers

  Doubleday Edition published 1995

  Corgi Edition published 1995

  Corgi Edition reprinted 1996

  Corgi Edition reprinted 1998

  Kindle Edition published 2012 by Far Fetched Books

  Diddled about with and proof-read by the author, who apologises for any typos or grammatical errors that somehow slipped past him.

  He did his best, honest.

  Copyright Robert Rankin 1995

  The right of Robert Rankin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Dedicated to my son Robert

  “THE STUFF OF EPICS”

  For his love and kindness.

  You make your old Dad proud.

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  1

  THIS ICARUS SORT OF STUFF

  ‘And then I shall leap from the east pier and be borne aloft by these wings.’ Norman the elder made an expansive gesture which Norman the younger found most encouraging. ‘Up I shall go.’ The daddy’s right hand described the flight path. ‘Across and around.’ His left hand joined in with much gusto. ‘And away.’ The hands flew off in the direction of France then came home to roost in the elder Norman’s trouser pockets.

  ‘Gosh,’ said his son, ‘and with only the aid of these.’

  The daddy stroked the wings upon the garage workbench. ‘The aid of these alone.’

  Young Norman sighed a sigh. ‘Gosh,’ he said once more, ‘imagine that.’

  ‘Something to tell your school chums, eh?’ The daddy nudged his son confidentially in the rib area. ‘Not many of them got fathers who can fly, I’ll bet.’

  Young Norman shook his head. ‘Not many,’ he said, ‘but a few.’

  ‘A few?’

  ‘Well, Blenkinsop’s father claims to have mastered the Lamaist art of levitation. Charlie Huxley’s brother has a pair of zero-gravity trousers and Boris Timms says he has a priestly uncle who can inflate his stomach with helium and propel himself through the sky by fa—’

  His father cut him mercifully short. ‘Not many got feathered wings, by the sound of it.’

  Young Norman shook his head. ‘Not many,’ he agreed.

  The elder Norman ran a loving knuckle across the feathered wings.

  ‘Fine big wings these,’ he said, gazing wistfully through the cobwebbed garage window towards the lonely sea and the sky. ‘Fine big wings.’

  On his way to school the next morning the boy Norman thought a lot about the conversation he’d had with his father.

  Could it be, he asked himself, that the daddy has truly cracked it regarding this wing business, or is this just another of the sad flights of fancy to which the old chap has become subject of late?

  The annual Skelington Bay East Pier Man-Powered Flight Competition always drew the holiday-makers. And the annual £1000 prize for the first successful one-thousand-foot flight always drew the town’s eccentrics. But no-one was actually expected really to win the money. It was all just a bit of summertime jolly, wasn’t it? Men in cardboard planes and dicky-bird costumes jumping into the sea to raise money for charity.

  A bit of jolly. That was all it was.

  Although it didn’t have to be.

  Norman strode on, chewing gum and bouncing a tennis ball.

  It didn’t have to be.

  As it was Thursday it was Science for 3A.

  Norman sat at the back of the class, that he might observe whilst remaining unobserved.

  Mr Bailey bashed the blackboard with his baton. ‘Boyle’s law,’ said he, in the voice of one who really cared about such things. ‘What do we know of Boyle’s law?’ The eyes behind his pebbled specs searched in vain for that little island of enlightenment set in the sea of vacant faces. ‘Blenkinsop?’

  Blenkinsop the Buddhist pulled his finger from his nose. Examining the yield he said, ‘There is only one law and that is the law of dharma.’

  ‘The law of dharma.’ Mr Bailey beckoned with his baton. ‘Come hither, boy, and have your trousers dusted.’

  Sheltering behind Bilson’s gargantuan frame, Norman leaned upon an elbow and stared out of the window. His thoughts were far from the horrors of corporal punishment. They were sailing high above with Timms’ clerical uncle and a veritable flock of airborne relations. There couldn’t be too much to this flying lark if you really put your mind to it. A lad of his capabilities should surely be able to figure it out.

  On Friday there was Games. PE it was called.

  3A’s pimply personnel stood shivering in the drafty hall that springtime never reached. Those whom loving mothers had furnished with ‘notes’ sat grinning from the safety of the stage. Those with parents who believed in healthy exercise and team spirit shuffled in their vests and shorts and viewed the exalted ones with a healthless mixture of envy, loathing and contempt.

  Mr McLaren the games teacher sprinted knees-high into the echoing hall. Clad in the regulation-issue soiled track suit and evil-smelling plimsolls, his arrival brought dread to the non-athletic noteless.

  ‘Vaulting horse, Tompkins and Turner. At the double!’ The order was barked out in that staccato ex-national-service voice that you don’t hear much of nowadays. ‘Straight line, the rest of you. Number off. Wait for . . . it. Now!’

  ‘One, two, three, four,’ went the quavery wavery voices, to end with the big, deep ‘twenty-three’ of Teddy Bilson.

  ‘And go!’

  Number One was stubby Harry Hughes. His dash towards the towering horse was determined and courageous. His would be the only broken collar bone of the day.

  Norman was unlucky Thirteen in the quivering queue. ‘A man with feathered wings might soar above that vaulting horse with next to no effort at all,’ he confided to the trembling Twelve.

  ‘To paraphrase the late great Winston Churchill,’ the Dozen replied, ‘Give us t
he wings and we will finish the job.’

  ‘Twelve!’ screamed the martial Mr McLaren.

  ‘God bless me,’ whimpered Number Twelve, making the sign of the cross.

  ‘With wings all things are possible,’ Norman informed Number Fourteen, a big lad with a small moustache. ‘All things to do with flying, anyhow.’

  Number Fourteen nodded. ‘Wings have their uses,’ he said, ‘this cannot be denied. But I am approaching fifteen years of age and beginning to take a lively interest in girls.’

  Norman stroked his hairless upper-lip area. ‘Further conversation with you on the subject of wings would probably be wasted then, I suppose.’

  Number Fourteen nodded again. ‘Isn’t there a bird in South America called the Giant Condom?’ he asked.

  ‘Thirteen!’ bawled the games teacher.

  ‘God bless me!’ mumbled Norman. And this gave him a sudden idea.

  At 5.30 a.m. on the following Sunday, young Norman, damp with dew and ring-fingered by carrier bags, laboured to the top of Druid’s Tor and stood puffing and panting to await the arrival of the new sun.

  Below him Skelington Bay, holiday town of his birth, lurked in sea mist, its twin piers paddling in the tide.

  Above him the sky. The big, wide-open sky.

  Just waiting.

  It was the ‘God bless me’ of Games that had brought young Norman here. It had recalled to him a painting he’d once seen during a force-marched school outing to the town hall.

  It was one of those huge Pre-Raphaelite jobbies that municipal councils used to snap up for a song before the War, to cover the cracks in their walls. It was of angels evident at the birth of the Christ child. And the thing about these angels was that, although togged up in what appeared to be old curtains and bereft of footwear, they had, as Norman remembered quite clearly, dirty great wings of the feathered variety growing out of their backs.

  ‘Fine big wings,’ as his father would have said.

  And the recollection of these fine big wings had set young Norman thinking.

  Now, angels could fly. This was well known. But, according to the Bible, no matter how good you were while alive, your chances of becoming an angel when dead were somewhat less than zero. The old harps and wings were not doled out to the blessed the way cartoonists would have us believe. You joined the angels. You did not become one.

  And of course you did have to be dead first.

  And of course, if you were dead, then you couldn’t win the man-powered flight competition and fly off with the £1000 prize.

  But what say, if you could communicate with angels? Contact them, with a view to boning up on the various hints and wrinkles concerning the art of ‘winging it’? Surely that would give you the supernatural edge on the opposition.

  Of course it would.

  And so it was to this end that Norman had spent the greater part of Saturday in the reference section of Skelington Public Library. He’d drawn a bit of a blank with the Christian tracts though. These spoke a lot about prayer and guilt and living a blameless life, but nothing about how you could get any one-on-one chit-chat with any of the feather-clad choirs eternal. In fact, the would-be aviator was just on the point of chucking the whole thing in and making off to the Wimpy Bar, when the new librarian, the one on the Job Opportunities Scheme, skulked over with a large buff-coloured book and thrust it into his hands. ‘Check this out, kid,’ he said. ‘I think it’s just what you’re looking for.’

  Norman eyed the book with interest.

  Its title was The Necronomicon.

  Now it is a fact well known amongst satanic circles, or wherever two or three heavy-metal fans are gathered together, that every borough library secretly possesses a copy of The Necronomicon. Not the original, of course, bound in the skin of a sacrificial virgin and penned in the blood of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. The Vatican has that. But most often they possess one of the forbidden Latin translations of Olaus Wormius, revised into English and published as a part-work for private subscription by Marshall Cavendish, or some such.

  Of course the librarians, who have taken whatever binding oath they take during their secret initiation ceremonies, won’t let you see it. They’ll swear blind that it doesn’t even exist.

  But then they would, wouldn’t they?

  The new librarian on the Job Opportunities Scheme was wearing a Deicide T-shirt with the legend DEAD BY DAWN (The fourth track on side one of Deicide’s imaginatively titled first album, Deicide) printed across the front. His name was Chris and he had lots of hair. And he’d only been working there for a day. ‘Use the photocopier and go for it,’ was his advice.

  So Norman had done and was doing so even now.

  To the early-rising passer-by, the dog-walker or poet seeking inspiration upon the misty hilltop, the youth would have presented a most disconcerting spectacle. Now stripped down to his Y-fronts and crouched within the confines of the lop-sided pentagram he’d just chalked out, his Thermos flask and sandwich box before him and a selection of anything he could find that looked remotely ‘occult’ spread whither and so, he clutched his photocopies in one hand and began to make wild gestures with the other.

  And to intone.

  ‘Hail unto thee, thou Ancient Ones,’ he went, as best he could, with the unbroken voice and the touch of catarrh. ‘Hail unto thee, Absu Mummu Tiamet, Nar Maturu, Yog Sothoth, Nyarlathotep and the like. I conjure thee, thou fungous abnormalities too hideous for the grave’s holding. Rise from your haunts of forever night and summon unto me.’

  It had to be said that there was a distinct air of blasphemy about all this. And an older and wiser fellow might perhaps have thought twice before seeking to invoke the powers of darkness and taking the risk of eternal damnation, just to win the first prize in a man-powered flight competition.

  But then, when you’re fourteen, you do that sort of thing. We all do. Indeed who amongst us can truly put their hand upon their heart and swear that they never once offered up a sacrifice to Satan during their teenage years?

  Not many!

  ‘Harken unto me,’ the youth continued, ‘Ninnghizhidda, lak Sakkak, Laibach, Napalm Death and Celtic Frost. Ye ghids and bogiebeasts, come serve I that standith in the five-pointed star. Deliver unto me what I request. Come bring me wings!’

  Norman had decided upon the direct approach. Keep things sharp, crisp, to the point. Summon up the deep, dark denizens from out the pit-that-hath-no-bottom. Have them cough up the goods. Then back with them to from whence they came. And quick. It was all for the best.

  ‘I summons you and constrain you by the powers of Lord Cthulhu, who is not dead but only getting his head down for a bit of shut eye. Obey my commands. Manifest. Give me Wings, Wings, Wings! I want them and I want them now. All I want is Wings!’

  If there was a distinct (a very distinct) air of blasphemy about all this, then there was also the feeling that some callous spirit, with an eye for the obvious, might at any moment appear before Norman, bearing a copy of Paul McCartney’s latest album in its scaly paw.

  ‘Wings!’ impeached Norman. ‘I command you, bring me Wings!’

  It was no laughing matter really (especially the Paul McCartney gag). It was a very bad idea doing this. The birds that had been making free with the dawn chorus had gone very quiet indeed. And there was a definite chill in the air.

  But Norman had started and he meant to finish. Chris had underlined for him a certain Latin incantation, which was known as The Great Calling. And the young magician in the Y-fronts bawled it out at the top of his voice, with a bit of the old ‘What do we want? Wings! When do we want ‘em? Now!’ thrown in for good measure, wherever he felt it appropriate.

  And then suddenly Norman stopped.

  Something was stirring. Something large. Norman couldn’t see it, but somehow he could sense its approach.

  And then he heard it.

  From far away upon that misty morn, there came a distant-flapping sound, which sounded, for all the world, like nothing le
ss than the sound of a distant flapping.

  Norman got a cold sweat on to go with his damp behind. He strained his eyes into the rising mists. The sun, now half awake, glistened upon the hedgerows and dazzled him.

  He gave his ears a strain also. The flapping sound grew louder. Something was on the approach. Something monstrous.

  Great wings were beating on the morning air. Great wings like those of The Giant Condom itself.

  ‘Yes!’ screamed Norman, most pleased to get such a swift return upon such a small Satanic outlay. ‘I’m here. My Wings. My Wings. My Wings.’

  It was overhead. It was right overhead. It had come straight to him. This was it.

  ‘My Wings!’

  There was a sharp, snapping sound; a moment’s silence; a scream from on high. The cry of a great bird? Not as such.

  Another scream and then down though the mist, at the speed of one hundred and eighty feet per second, came a cascade of wire, wood, wax, pegs, feathers—

  And Norman the elder.

  ‘Look out below,’ went this unhappiest of men. ‘Test-flight systems failure. Aaaaaaaagh!’

  ‘Oh my God!’ Norman the younger struggled to make his escape. But his left toe had somehow become intimately entangled in the crotch of his Y-fronts.

  So he couldn’t.

  In the few seconds that remained to him on this plane of existence, young Norman had just enough time to ponder on the folly of the particular method he’d chosen to go about solving the man-powered flight problem. But not quite enough to apologize to God.

  Shame really.

  The sun, now fully risen, looked down upon the drying grass of Druid’s Tor and viewed the broken wreckage that had once been Norman and his dad.

  The old sun smiled, for, after all, it had seen this Icarus sort of stuff before and would probably come up to see it again. Sometime.

  A little later a party of librarians came up to hold an initiation ceremony and found the sorry remains of the two erstwhile airmen. They too mused upon man’s folly.