Armageddon: The Musical (Armageddon Trilogy) Page 15

  ‘Cheers. So, when Fergus learned that you were at Earthers Inc., he wanted to check you out, see how come you had survived the time travel and all. So while you were out cold he ran a brain scan on you and saw me in here hiding. He knew that all you needed to do was stick your hand in the top-up tank for me to fully revive. Clever stuff, eh?’

  ‘But that Garstang could have done for me.’

  ‘No chance chief, you’re a key figure. No-one wants to do for you. Well, almost no-one.’

  ‘You mean that Dalai?’

  ‘Sure do.’

  ‘Well, as it happens, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about him. I worked it all out in my head. If all this mess in the world is because I screwed up in fifty-eight, then I gotta do something about it, right?’

  ‘Right, so back to fifty-eight then, is it?’

  ‘No chance, not yet anyhow. I gotta sort stuff out here first. We gonna have us a revolution, little green buddy. Hell, what are you groaning for? And, hey, exactly where are we now anyhow?’

  They were suddenly inside a bunker. A funny-looking woman in a red gingham dress, her neck hung with medals, each of which displayed the grinning face of the Dalai, regarded Elvis with considerable awe.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Aunty Norma did a little curtsy.

  ‘No tea, thanks ma’am. But I could use a beer.’ Beside Aunty Norma stood a pair of charred boots and a neat pile of ash. These didn’t offer Elvis a drink.

  ‘You have come unto me,’ crowed the crone. ‘You the born again.’

  ‘People keep telling me that.’ Elvis spied out the TV terminal.

  ‘Say,’ said he, seating himself in Uncle Tony’s chair. ‘No chance of one of my movies being on, I guess?’

  In Odeon Towers Rex’s terminal lit up like the fourth of July he knew nothing about.

  IDENTIFICATION OF SUSPECT CONFIRMED. LOCATION FOLLOWS:

  LATITUDE 51° 29’, LONGITUDE 0° 18’. HAVE ANOTHER DAY, MR MUNDI.

  ‘I certainly will.’ Rex bounced up and down, cracking his head on the gilded cherub. ‘Gotcha,’ he chirruped. ‘Oh, ouch.’ Rubbing his skull he danced over to the terminal and bashed through a direct line to Dalai Dan. The Inmost One’s face filled the screen.

  ‘Nice work,’ he said, before Rex had even had time to speak. ‘Very ingenious, we will take it from here.’ The screen went blank. Rex’s jaw fell. ‘What the . . .’

  A sudden commotion upon the landing below drew Rex’s attention. And a sudden sense of approaching danger that he was unable to explain.

  Something told him that big trouble was coming his way.

  ‘There,’ said a company medic. ‘As good as new.’ Mungo Madoc examined his ears. You could hardly see the joins. ‘Very good, a quick clean job, expertly performed. We can all learn something from this, can’t we, Fergus?’

  ‘I pride myself on a job well done,’ he replied.

  ‘And Mr Presley. Back in the right place and the right time, I trust?’

  ‘Have no fear of that, sir. We’ve seen the last of him.’

  Jason Morgawr burst into the room. ‘It’s Presley,’ he gasped. ‘He’s back on Earth.’

  ‘Yes thank you, Morgawr. We all know that, he’s back in 1958, about to take the draft.’

  ‘Oh no he’s not, sir. He’s sitting down there right now, plotting to overthrow the Dalai Lama. Mr Madoc…….? Could someone help me pick Mr Madoc up? Are you all right, sir?’

  Rex peeped down through the roof hatch on to the landing below. He saw Deathblade Eric and Rambo Bloodaxe creep up the stairs and approach his doorway. Rex had left the door ajar. Rambo put his finger to his lips and nudged Eric, who was carrying an enormous handgun. Half of Eric’s head appeared to be missing. At a signal from Rambo, Eric burst into Rex’s apartment. Rambo followed him in. Rex gave them a moment before shinning down the metal ladder, slamming shut the door and engaging the anti-theft devices. ‘Like rats in a trap,’ he observed. Much shouting and beating issued from within, but once locked and bolted the door wouldn’t be bothering about that. Rex gave it a little pat.

  ‘Two in the can for later.’ He upped the ladder once more and climbed into the air car. Canopy down, straps on, identification confirmed.

  ‘Latitude fifty-one degrees, twenty-nine minutes. Longitude, zero degrees, eighteen minutes. And fast please.’ The car dragged itself clear of the roof and swung away into the gloom. Rex belled through to the Dalai. The Inmost One’s face appeared on the dash screen.

  ‘Rex, my dear boy. Something I can do for you?’

  ‘I have further good news to report.’

  ‘You never cease to amaze me.’

  ‘The bounty on Rambo Bloodaxe.’ Bounty was a poorly chosen word. ‘The bonus I mean.’ Rex wondered just how far Dan’s telepathic powers extended.

  ‘The bonus, yes,’ said Dan.

  ‘Does it still hold good?’

  ‘My word is my bond, Rex. But Bloodaxe and his flesh-eaters died during the Fundamentalist missile attack, surely.’

  ‘Happily not. Although I have no idea how they escaped. There’s another one with him. I have them held prisoner in my apartment. You have only to have them collected.’

  ‘Most enterprising, Rex. My congratulations.’

  ‘You’ll have my account credited then?’

  ‘Most certainly. Where exactly are you now, Rex?’

  Rex made crackling sounds with his mouth. ‘Sorry, getting a lot of static. I’ll have to call you back.’ He switched off the dash screen. The air car flew on, its engines coughing fitfully.

  Rex was left alone, or so he hoped, with his thoughts. Something strange had happened. Somehow he had known that Rambo and Eric were on their way up to kill him. But how? ESP? The Dalai’s gifts couldn’t be rubbing off on him, could they? He wasn’t altogether sure that the Dalai’s gifts were all that reliable anyway. The Living God King seemed somewhat fallible, to say the least. But something strange was going on and somehow the mystery man in the photograph was at the heart of it. A word or two with him, in private, might yield up all manner of interesting information. The air car informed him that it was about to land and ran through its programmed routine of solace . . .should any accident occur . . .

  ‘Om-mani-padme-hum,’ sang Rex Mundi. It was a catchy little number after all. The air car whacked down on to familiar territory. Rex screwed on his weather-dome and lifted the canopy. He climbed out.

  ‘Aunty Norma’s,’ he whistled. ‘Now there’s a thing.’

  A Nemesis security craft was parked near at hand and two heavily-armed thugs swung round to face his arrival. Rex recognized them as his former torturers. ‘Hello Rex,’ Mickey Malkuth addressed him on the open channel. ‘How’s your luck?’

  ‘It varies,’ Rex cautiously approached the stun-suited duo. ‘Have you made any arrests then?’

  ‘Arrests? Naughty, naughty. Wanted for questioning is all.’

  ‘Questioning? Yes, I see. And you have apprehended your suspect?’ Rex stepped warily across the rubble-strewn landscape surrounding his former home. It was grim and somehow it now seemed even grimmer than he remembered.

  ‘Flown the coop,’ said Malkuth. He indicated the open bunker door. ‘There was an old girl down there. But we couldn’t get any sense out of her.’ Rex’s stomach dropped. He stumbled towards the bunker.

  ‘I shouldn’t go in, if I were you, Rex. It’s a bit messy, if you know what I mean.’ Malkuth’s laughter rang in Rex’s ears. Rex fell through the bunker door and tore off his weather-dome. And he remembered that smell. That stale rancid smell. The smell of hopeless doomed poverty.

  The bunker was as it always had been. Candles burned in the tiny wall shrine, where an out-of-register photo of Dan grinned at nothing. Next to it was a sketch of Uncle Tony scrawled on a can label in Rex’s childhood hand. The two chairs faced the terminal screen.

  Aunty Norma lay before them. Her face discoloured and hardly recognizable. One hand was twisted unnaturally into the pile of ash
which had once been Uncle Tony. Into this her dying fingers had clawed a single name. Dan. Tears ran from Rex’s eyes. He gazed down at the broken body. Up at the terminal screen. It blazed colourfully, eternally. Dan’s face was there, grinning like a wolf.

  Rex ran his fingers lightly over his aunt’s hair, rose to his feet and put his boot through the terminal screen.

  19

  . . . I was with the foundation from sixty-three until sixty-eight, when it went completely underground. If it’s still in existence then I don’t know where. But he’s still around, 1 can tell you that. Once you’ve seen how he works, you don’t forget. I see stuff in the papers and I say, that’s him. That’s the God. As I say, 1joined in sixty-three, approached in the street, the usual thing. Their technique never altered. Never had to. Why improve on perfection? I was just one more disillusioned kid. Bummed out of high school. These guys just homed right in. All smiles, handshakes, first-name terms. Like they’d known me all of their lives. Invited me up to one of those weekend retreats and I never left. Not for five years. We were changing the world. Or thought we were. And we did it all for him. He was always ahead of everybody else. Knew exactly what was coming, when and where. So we were always one jump ahead. Fashion, music. Music. He was responsible for it all, you know. All that sixty-seven thing. Haight Ashbury, Woodstock, Owsley’s acid. You name it. Hendrix, The Doors, The Grateful Dead ... Shit, The Beatles, man, someone told me that he’d set all that up. Tipped off Brian Epstein, lent him the money, everything. Engineered it all. And he never wrote a single word down. Kept it all in his head. We were laying the stones, that’s what he said. Some times back then I can tell you. Yeah, the foundation, what don’t I remember about the foundation.

  The Suburban Book of the Dead

  That which can be thought is not true.

  Hindoo proverb

  I think therefore I am.

  French proverb.

  The acid rain began to fall. The Nemesis security craft had long since departed. Rex sat alone upon the rubble before his late aunt’s bunker. Hissing droplets smeared over his weather-dome. He sighed long and hard. Fifty years in a hole in the ground, and for what? Rex climbed to his feet. For nothing. Just another non-person. He needed a drink. He needed a big drink. With a very final look toward his former home he returned to the air car and called up the co-ordinates of the Tomorrowman Tavern. ‘And fast,’ he said.

  ‘Fergus, why do you think it is that I’m losing all confidence in you?’ Mungo was propped up in his boardroom chair. Tubes, dangling from an assortment of coloured bottles strung above him, vanished into various parts of his anatomy. He didn’t look the picture of health.

  Fergus could only shrug helplessly. He thought he probably knew the reasons.

  Jason Morgawr was grinning behind his hands. At length he rose to speak. ‘If I might just say a word or two,’ he ventured.

  ‘Oh yes, Jason.’ Fergus winced. ‘What would you like to say?’

  ‘Well, sir. The fact that Mr Presley is still here in the present, need not necessarily be such a terrible thing.’ Fergus brightened, Jason was back on his side, surely. What a decent fellow.

  ‘Although Mr Shaman has clearly made a grave error in judgement-’ and none more so than just then, thought Fergus ‘-the situation can still be turned to our ultimate advantage.’

  ‘I like what I’m hearing, Jason. Please continue.’

  ‘Certainly sir, thank you. I just wondered if I might sound you out upon the subject of Armageddon.’

  Mungo clutched at his heart. The dangling bottles gurgled. Mungo gurgled. ‘Armageddon?’

  ‘Well, not so much the real thing. None of us want the series to end, do we?’

  Mungo shook his head gravely. ‘We do not.’

  ‘Well, it occurs to me that it might not be altogether a bad thing if we just let this Presley get on with whatever he has in mind. It’s bound to go down well with the viewers. I understand from a recent poll that his antics on the Nemesis show were extremely well received. Now if we could jolly things along a bit. I have a certain scenario in mind which might just do the business.’

  ‘To do with Armageddon?’

  ‘Well, in a way. I’ll work out all the figures and get it costed. Then I’ll get back to you.’

  ‘And you are suggesting that in the meanwhile we do nothing at all?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing. Just trust me.’

  ‘Do absolutely nothing,’ Mungo sank into his chair and began to suck his thumb. ‘Absolutely nothing. I like the sound of that.’

  The lounge boy dowsed Rex down with decontaminant as he passed through the plastic flaps. Rex entered the uncrowded bar. The one-eyed barman met his approach with an unfaltering stare. ‘What do you want?’ he asked, without charm.

  Rex cradled his weather-dome. ‘Tomorrowman Brew, mega-large,’

  ‘Eyeball the screen.’ Rex hesitated. ‘Eyeball or butt out. It’s all the same to me,’

  Rex eyeballed. ‘My, my,’ the proprietor raised a matted eyebrow, ‘you’ve come into some scratch lately. The wages of sin, eh?’ He glanced at Rex and decanted a triple measure. ‘Still it’s of no consequence to me. But the pox on you, nonetheless, for it.’

  ‘Your very good health.’ Rex drained the fetid cup in three short gulps. ‘Another of similar.’

  ‘And have one yourself landlord?’

  Rex didn’t dignify the remark with a reply. Mine host splashed short measure. ‘To the line,’ said Rex.

  ‘Company man then, are you?’ The barman passed the cup across the unspeakable bar top. ‘Station boy?’

  ‘I just quit.’

  ‘Buddhavision car though. Saw you come down.’

  ‘I haven’t quit officially as yet.’ Rex stared dispiritedly into his spirits.

  ‘No-one quits, asshole. No-one.’ With this said the barman took himself off to business elsewhere. Rex ferried his drink to as distant a corner as he could find. Here he sank into a plastique scoop-chair of near antique construction.

  Delving into one of his numerous pockets he fought free a pack of Kharma Cools and flipped one inexpertly toward his mouth. He drew deeply on it, chemicals flared and Rex filled his lungs with toxic relaxant. He held the smoke a full five seconds before releasing it in a turquoise plume through his currently serviceable left nostril. Rex turned the packet between his fingers. The Dalai’s face grinned up at him above the motto ‘You’re never alone with a Kharma Cool’. Rex tipped out the two remaining cigarettes before crushing the packet to oblivion. He wasn’t a happy man.

  Something gnawed away at his insides and it wasn’t simply hunger or the senseless killing of his aunt. Nor the Dalai’s cold-bloodedness nor his sister’s contempt.

  It was something much more. He was up to his neck in something, but he had no idea just what. Perhaps that was it. The helplessness. Lack of control. Rex struggled to put it into words, but his limited vocabulary proscribed it. H. G. Wells once said that every word of which a man is ignorant represents an idea of which he is ignorant. That Rex was walking proof of the great man’s hypothesis would doubtless come as little consolation to either of them. Rex fumed. He sucked upon his cigarette, downed his second triple, rose gloomily and hunched back to the bar counter for a refill.

  The one-eyed barman was squeezing his spots. Rex rattled his cup meaningfully upon the bar top. ‘Shop,’ said he.

  The barkeep examined a pus-bespattered fingertip. ‘Another? You are a prodigious bibber, and there’s a fact for you.’

  ‘Eyeball the screen is it?’

  Barkeep angled a cracked bottle toward Rex’s cup. ‘Conscience pricking?’

  ‘Up yours,’ Rex replied.

  ‘Articulate fellow, aren’t you,’ the barman observed. ‘Man of action.’

  Rex eyed the barman. History records that when lost for words many prefer the use of violence to enforce a point. This well-attested truism was not unknown to the professional behind the bar, who now took a deliberate step back. ‘You’d lov
e to, wouldn’t you?’ he said.

  Rex shook his head. ‘It’s not you. You just happen to be here.’ He accepted his drink. ‘Have one yourself.’

  The barman grinned and decanted a large libation of the demon brew into an unnaturally clean glass of his own. ‘What’s on your mind?’

  Rex shook his head. ‘I only wish I knew.’

  ‘Not a lot of time nowadays for too much self-examination. Look at them . . .’ He gestured with his drink-clutching hand towards his patrons. These sat, a row of dummies lined up along the bar counter. Drinks in hands, eyes fixed upon the screens, earning credits. ‘No-one thinks any more. Free thought is tantamount to heresy. Thought implies doubt. Doubt equals subversion. Subversion leads to anarchy. Anarchy is heresy. Round in a circle. Like some unholy mandala. I’d not go troubling yourself with too much thought, if I were you.’

  ‘If you were me?’

  ‘Company car. Rooms above ground, I’ll wager. Big credits with MOTHER. You’re a whizz kid boy. You’re the business.’

  ‘So I should say thank you, I suppose?’

  ‘That’s the system; you’re a part of it. What else do you expect? What else do you want?’

  ‘Integrity?’ Rex suggested.

  The barman fell about in mirth. ‘Excuse me,’ he wiped tears from his cheek, ‘It’s a long time since I heard that word. Are you sure you know what it means?’

  ‘And what of you, then? Running this plague pit, you are above it all, I suppose?’

  ‘Oh no, pal.’ The barman shook his head violently, causing his false eye to turn it’s pupil into his skull. ‘I’m just like you. A victim. We’re all victims. There is them and there is us. We’re never going to be them, no matter what we do. We’re us. You’re us. A victim, a non-person, cog in the great wheel, number on the screen. The only difference between you and me is that you haven’t come to terms with it yet.’

  Rex glowered into his cup. ‘But it doesn’t have to be like that. It shouldn’t be like that.’