The Greatest Show Off Earth Page 6

  So, how to go about it?

  Well, Raymond stared thoughtfully down the hill. And the big holographic circus hoarding shone brightly back at him.

  And Raymond had an idea.

  It wasn’t really his idea. It was something he recalled Simon telling him about, only a few days ago, in fact, although it now seemed more than a lifetime.

  Simon had been reading this book about circuses and had been impressed by a Victorian performer named LaRoche. This LaRoche had originated an incredible act whereby he entered a metal sphere a mere two feet in diameter, then proceeded to manipulate it up a spiral ramp some twenty-four feet in height.

  So. If a French Victorian could pull off a stunt like that. . .

  Raymond wormed his finger into the little airhole now directly above his head and took a firm hold. And then he began to shift his weight about from side to side. It took a bit of starting off, and getting a steady rhythm going was anything but easy. But Raymond went about it as he went about everything.

  With a will.

  Raymond hammered himself from side to side. Bruising his shoulders and sorely numbing his bare behind. And the beastly bubble began to rock. Back and forwards. Back and forwards.

  Raymond increased his efforts. Sweat broke out wherever it could and with his finger jammed in the airhole, breath was soon in short supply. With that mighty and supreme effort that one sometimes reads about in books of derring-do, Raymond flung himself forwards.

  The bubble tumbled from the back of the truck and struck the road. And with a single bound . . .

  . . . Our hero, wasn’t free!

  The bubble didn’t break. It struck the road but it didn’t break.

  It spun around on the road’s surface and continued up the hill for a few yards. But it didn’t break.

  Confusion now reigned within the Dumptys’ truck. Daddy had seen Raymond’s departure in his driving mirror. He slammed on the brakes. The truck swerved to the side of the road, spilling the family from their seats. Raymond’s bubble missed the bumper by inches. And then it stopped.

  Raymond clutched at his spinning head. ‘I’m not free,’ he observed. And then, ‘Oh help!’

  The Dumptys were clambering from their truck anxious to reclaim their purchase. They bumbled around him.

  ‘Let me out of here,’ cried Raymond. ‘I don’t want to die, set me free.’

  ‘You naughty George.’ The face of darling daughter scowled in at him. Raymond could now see just how sharp and pointed her little teeth were.

  ‘We must roll George out of the road before something runs into him. Come on give me a hand. Oh—’

  And ‘Oh—’ went Mummy Dumpty and the two small Dumptys too.

  Because Raymond’s bubble was no longer still. Raymond’s bubble was yielding to a law of gravity, which obviously applied upon Venus as it did upon Earth. Raymond’s bubble was starting to roll back down the hill.

  ‘Stop,’ yelled Daddy. ‘Stop I say.’ He clawed at the shiny sphere, but he couldn’t get a grip. As Raymond began to turn head over heels once more he was overjoyed by the sight of the Humpty Dumptys going down like tenpins before a bowling ball.

  ‘Ha ha ha ha,’ went Raymond. ‘Gotcha, you bastards. Oh no—’

  Daddy Dumpty’s remark about getting Raymond off the road before something ran into him, had not been an idle remark. There was a fair bit of traffic about. Going down the hill. And coming up.

  Especially coming up. Raymond was now rolling straight down into its upward path. ‘Look out belowwwww—’

  Potato faces froze above driving wheels. Trucks swerved to either side of the onrushing bubble.

  ‘I must have George back!’ screamed a high piping voice, but Raymond didn’t hear it.

  A very large lorry hung a left beside the high brick wall beneath the holographic circus hoarding and rumbled up the hill. It was a very large lorry indeed. And at the wheel of this very large lorry sat none other than Mr Chameleon himself.

  His auction house always provided a special delivery service for all the posh Venusian restaurateurs who bought in bulk. And today Mr Chameleon’s very large lorry had no fewer than fifty bubbles stacked up neatly on the back. The occupants of these lazed in their hypnotically induced slumbers, blissfully unaware of what fate held in store for them.

  Mr Chameleon was whistling. He had had a most successful day. And one run with the clockwork precision which had distinguished the five generations of his family who had gone before, to make the auction house the most fashionable on Venus.

  The auctioneer changed gear, the very large lorry gathered speed and travelled up. And then the auctioneer suddenly ceased his merry whistling and a look of dire perplexity spread across his big broad face. Before him vehicles were swerving. And what was this? Something was coming down the hill towards him. Something that was accelerating at a goodly rate of Venusian knots.

  And that something was—

  ‘GEORGE!’ shrieked the auctioneer, dragging the steering wheel to the right and hammering the brake.

  Raymond didn’t see the very large lorry. He was moving much too fast. He didn’t see the look of horror on the face of Mr Chameleon. Which was a shame because he would really have enjoyed it. Nor did he see the dramatic manner in which the very large lorry jack-knifed and overturned, shedding its load. So he also missed the sight of all those fifty bubbles as they smashed and shattered. The screamings and roarings of the enraged beasties as they were rudely awakened were lost on him also.

  Raymond just kept rolling.

  As his head whirled about and his brain whirled within it, Raymond recalled something else that Simon had recently told him. It was about an experiment that had once been performed by a Frenchman (not M. LaRoche). This Frenchman had dropped a penny (or perhaps it was a franc) from the top of the Eiffel Tower and it had embedded itself a full two inches (or perhaps it was four centimetres) into the pavement (or perhaps it was the boulevard) below.

  But whatever the whats, whys and wherevers, the general gist was that the further a thing fell, the more mass it gained and the bigger the smash it made when it finally hit something solid.

  And Raymond now held in his dizzying mind a very strong visual image of the high, substantial-looking brick wall at the bottom of the hill. The one with the holographic sign above it. And Raymond wondered now, in a rushing tumbling sort of a way, whether he had really done the right thing in working the bubble off the back of the potato heads’ truck whilst it was travelling up such a very steep hill.

  He concluded that perhaps he hadn’t. ‘HeeeeeeeeeeeeLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPP’ went Raymond offering a practical, if unsolicited demonstration of the Doppler effect to any that might feel inclined to appreciate it.

  But none apparently did. They had other things on their minds. Such as avoiding the unwelcome attentions of the howling, screaming torrent of hungry auction lots that were already on the rampage.

  Jammed into the wreckage of his cab, Mr Chameleon gazed in terror towards the ferocious creature, all bristling spines and waggling wattles, that was climbing through the shattered windscreen. It looked very angry. And very hungry.

  And Raymond kept on rolling. ‘HeeeeeLLLLPPP, oh HeeeeLLLP,’ he went, as further cars and trucks and preposterous-looking Venusian motor scooters swerved to the left and right and crashed into one another. ‘HELP!’

  The great big solid brick wall rushed up (in an Einsteinian relativian sort of a way) towards Raymond. Inside his wildly whizzing bubble the poor naked schmuck tried his best to cross himself and make his recommendations to his maker, whilst bracing himself against the terrible terminal concussion to come.

  And come it did. Although not in quite the manner he had expected that it would. Although Raymond had taken a passing notice of the big brick wall, he had paid no attention whatsoever (and why would he have?) to the height of the pavement kerbstones. Now, as anyone who has made a lifetime’s study of kerbstones will tell you, these articles are inevitably constructed to a
greater height than usual at the bottom of steep hills. Because here they usually incorporate storm drains. Raymond’s speeding bubble was heading for one of these right now.

  And what a sickening crash it made as it struck home.

  ‘Ooooooooooooooh,’ went Raymond continuing to travel forwards, although now in a forwards and upwards sort of direction. With shards of splintered bubble spiralling around him he cleared the raised kerbstones by inches and the top of the big brick wall by centimetres. But he didn’t clear the holographic circus sign. This he struck with a vengeance. For the benefit of any potato heads who had missed Raymond’s demonstration of the Doppler effect and were not now busily engaged in either crawling from the wreckage of their crashed automobiles, or attempting to evade The Revenge of the Bubble Creatures, the spectacular explosion caused by the flying schmuck, as he passed through the intricate web of electronic hocus-pocus that powered the holographic circus hoarding, would provide animated conversation for many barbecue lunches yet to come.

  Raymond entered the hoarding as a whirling white thing. He emerged on the other side still whirling. But now of a somewhat darker hue. And trailing smoke.

  There are many exotic pleasures to be had in the sport of nudist skydiving, but Raymond did not experience any of them.

  He fell from the sky screaming all the way. And then he struck the roof of the circus tent.

  And then he passed through the roof of the circus tent and continued down towards the ring.

  And there, regrettably, we must leave Raymond. Held, as if at the touch of a celestial pause-button, halfway ‘twixt roof and ring. Hardly the way things are usually done it is to be agreed. But at this particular moment it is necessary to return to Earth to catch up on Simon’s progress. Why? Because Simon is about to make a discovery. And no small discovery. The discovery Simon is about to make is a discovery of considerable magnitude. Concerning, as it does, what happens to Raymond after he has fallen through the roof of the circus tent and how this event leads to other events, which culminate in Raymond performing a great service to mankind

  In saving it from destruction. And everything.

  Simon slammed shut his front door, threw the bolts and thrust on the security chain. Then he sank down onto his bottom and did great gaspings for breath.

  He was in trouble here and he knew it. And this was not your everyday ‘wronged husband out for revenge’ sort of trouble. This was a different kind of trouble altogether. And what made this trouble all the worse was that it wasn’t his fault.

  It was all Raymond’s fault.

  The way Simon saw it, if Raymond hadn’t agreed to go off with Abdullah, then Abdullah would probably have flapped away to some other village and snatched away some other schmuck. And then the grey men would never have come to Bramfield and now be chasing after him to ‘clean up’.

  It was definitely all Raymond’s fault. Not his.

  ‘Bloody Raymond,’ said Simon.

  On hands and knees he crept down his hall, into the front room and over to the window. Here he lifted a corner of the net curtain and peeped out at the street.

  No grey man. He’d outrun him.

  Simon did not trouble with a sigh of relief. There was no escape to be had here. Black Jack knew where he lived. It was doubtful that he would choose to withhold the information. ‘I think it’s time I took a holiday,’ said Simon. ‘New Zealand perhaps, or Tierra del Fuego.’ He backed away from the window and made off up the stairs.

  Now, there are always many decisions to be made when you make up your mind to take a holiday; and exactly what to pack is possibly the greatest of them all.

  There is an art to it, of course, as there is with anything else. What clothes to take, which ‘factor’ of suntan lotion, the big lilo or the small one, should you make do with last year’s flip-flops or splash out on a new pair?

  And, of course, what are the currently fashionable sexual practices in the area you are about to visit and so which appliances should you sterilize? There’s no point in turning up with a suitcase full of the usual ball weights, pressure tusks and Labret studs, only to discover that this season’s taste is for flesh tunnels, nipple clamps and stirupped barbells, and you’ve left all yours at home in the fridge. That sort of thing can really spoil what would otherwise be a decent weekend away at Lourdes.

  So, there’s an art to it. You have to be thorough and you have to be precise. There’s no point in going off half-cocked. It’s always worth spending that extra few hours to do the job properly.

  ‘Passport,’ said Simon. ‘Cheque book, credit cards, toothbrush. All packed.’

  All packed?

  ‘All packed! All packed if I can actually find my passport, of course. Now I remember putting it somewhere safe when I came back from that incredible weekend away at Lourdes. Ah yes, top left-hand drawer of the dresser, with the Rin tin tin vibrator and the Arab straps.’

  On top of the dresser was Raymond’s parcel.

  Simon had not got around to opening it yet and now he glared at the thing in a manner which no parcel, other than one containing either a bomb or the torso of a young woman, deserves to be glared at. He snatched it from the dresser-top and flung it to the carpet, where it burst open disgorging its contents.

  Simon took to rooting in the top left-hand drawer. No passport was forthcoming.

  ‘Damn and blast,’ said Simon, starting on the right.

  Still no passport. Simon cursed the dresser, tore out both drawers and flung these to the carpet. Then he began on the drawers below.

  No passport.

  ‘Damn damn damn.’ Simon now took to stalking around the bedroom, ripping open cupboards, tearing out their contents, kicking things in general, ‘damning’ all the while.

  Then he tripped heavily upon the contents of Raymond’s parcel and fell to the floor. ‘Ouch,’ he said, and then, ‘What’s this?’ It was a book. A glossy hardback of a book. A great big glossy hardback of a book. Simon stared at the front cover. The face of Raymond stared back at him. Simon read out the title.

  The Greatest Show off Earth

  The Unofficial Biography of RAYMOND

  Saviour of Mankind

  ‘Saviour of mankind?’ Simon turned the book between his fingers. There was no author credited. Just the publishers, B.E.A.S.T. That rang a bell somewhere. Ah yes, the pamphlet Simon had read in the dentist’s waiting-room. That had been published by B.E.A.S.T. also.

  ‘Saviour of mankind?’ Simon thumbed the book open. This had to be some form of elaborate hoax. This was Raymond having a pop at him, and Andy was probably in on it too. Mocked-up cover folded around a library book or something.

  Simon examined the inside title page. The Greatest Show off Earth, Same business. A very elaborate hoax. Simon perused the first chapter. It was a full account of what he and Raymond had been through on the allotment the previous night.

  ‘How on earth?’ Simon flicked forward a few chapters and read aloud from the book:

  The Transit had been wheel-clamped!

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Simon. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’

  ‘Oi, you! called out a voice. And Simon turned. A grey man was approaching at a trot.

  ‘Shiva’s sheep!’ Simon stared at the page in utter disbelief. ‘That happened only a few minutes ago. But I’ve had this parcel with me since last night. It’s impossible. Unless . . .’ An awesome thought entered his head. It couldn’t be, could it?

  He leafed back to the beginning of the book and stared at the publication date. It was a year from today. This book had been written in the future.

  The future!

  Simon thumbed through the pages. And yes, here he was. Right here and now, searching for his passport in order to escape to Tierra del Fuego.

  Simon glanced up and down the page. There was no mention of him finding this book though. Which meant . . . Simon’s thoughts became justifiably confused. Which meant what? That the author of the book never knew that Simon had found it and read it. Th
at must be what. Found it and read it before it had even been written. Before the things in it had actually happened. This was deep.

  Simon fingered his fine head of hair. This was also brilliant. Why with this book in his possession he could always be one step ahead of the grey men. He could be one step ahead of everybody. The possibilities were endless. The financial possibilities. The sexual possibilities.

  ‘Boom shanka!’ said the lad.

  Knock knock knock, went his front door.

  Simon looked up in horror. And then he looked down at the open page:

  A knock came at Simon’s door. Luckily for Simon it was only the postman.

  ‘Thank God for that.’ Simon placed the book carefully upon his bed and gave its cover a loving pat. ‘Pardon me for a moment,’ he told it. ‘I just have to pop down and see what the postman’s brought me.’

  With a considerable spring in his step and a multitude of thoughts buzzing around in his head, Simon pulled bolts, unclipped the safety chain and threw open the front door.

  On the doorstep stood a man in grey.

  He wasn’t a postman.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you, Simon,’ he said.

  6

  A mighty finger released the celestial pause button and Raymond continued on his way towards the circus ring.

  He had time for just one more brief ‘Aaagh’ before he struck the sawdust with a hideous bone-fracturing report.

  And then with a scream he awoke.

  Raymond jerked up and rubbed at his eyes. Where was he? Where?

  With shock, horror and a cold sweat on, Raymond gave his immediate surroundings a fearful scrutiny.

  And then he blinked, rubbed his eyes again and then went, ‘Oh.’ And then he began to smile.

  A real face-splitter it was. Almost to the ears.

  ‘I’m home,’ sighed Raymond. ‘I’m home in my bed.’

  He felt at himself for broken bones. There were none. Charring? No. Bruises? Not a one. And he was wearing his pyjamas.