Apocalypso (13 page)

‘They
don’t sell books in shops,’ said Rippington. ‘That really would be absurd.
Imagine what would happen if just anything could get its mitts on a book. Chaos
there’d be. Oh yes. No more harmony, everything out of key.’

‘I’ll
bet this is all really cosmic stuff,’ said Porrig.

‘But
personally I’ve never had too much of an interest in elves and goblins and all
that sword and sorcery cack.’

‘You’re
a bit of a rub-tugger, aren’t you?’

‘A
rub-tugger?’

‘One
who tugs at his rubbing part.’ Rippington waggled his willy about.

‘Oh
perfect,’ said Porrig. ‘Even the fairies have me down as a wanker.’

‘Do you
want me to look you up in the big book, or don’t you?’

‘I do,
yes please.’

‘Then
follow me. But pretend that you’re not, if you follow me.’

‘Yes, I
think that I do.’

And so
Porrig followed Rippington, whilst pretending that he wasn’t, down between the
aisles of books, along stone corridors, around balconies that looked down upon
further balconies and further corridors, through halls lined with more books
and rooms lined with even more. And on and on and on some more.

‘Are we
nearly there?’ Porrig asked.

‘Are
you following me?’

‘Yes,
but I’m pretending not to.’

‘Then
pretend not to speak to me either.’

‘But
are we nearly there?’

‘Let’s
pretend that we are.’

‘All
right. I’m pretending.’

‘Then
we’re here.’

‘Absurd.’

‘I do
so agree. Help me up onto the desk.’

Porrig
dithered a little. He did not like the feel of Rippington.

‘I don’t
like the feel of you either. Just lift me up.’

‘There
you go, then.’

It was
a great big old desk and it was covered by many big old papers, maps of
unlikely places and manuscripts scrawled in fanciful lettering.

‘Here’s
the big book,’ said Rippington.

Porrig
stared down at it. ‘That’s not a very big big book,’ he said.

‘Size
is relative, you know. Now let’s have a look.
Person,
you said, let’s
see.
Pergola,
I’ve got. It says,
see: Trumpet.
That’s not even
close, is it?’

‘Let me
have a look.’

Rippington
waved his magic wand about. Porrig felt an unpleasant itching sensation. He
rubbed at his hand. ‘Please don’t do that,’ he said.

‘Then
keep your mitts away from the big book. Ah yes, hold your fire, Mr Rub-Tugger.
Person.
It says,
see: human being.
Would that be the one?’

‘Yes it
would.’

Rippington
leafed through the little pages of the big book. He paused now and then and
looked sidelong at Porrig. Sidelong and up quite a bit. At greater length he
ceased to read and closed the book, and sat cross-legged upon it. ‘We have a
situation here,’ he said.

‘We do?’
said Porrig.

‘We
surely do. According to the big book, you are a mythical being.’

‘I am?’
said Porrig.

‘You
are and you come from a magical kingdom high above.’

‘I do?’
said Porrig.

‘You
do. And I am apparently now in a state of grace because I’ve met you.’

‘You
are?’

‘I am.
Well, no, actually I’m not. But I could pretend to be if it would make you feel
more at home.’

‘It
wouldn’t,’ said Porrig.

‘So
what are you going to do? Are you going to grant me a wish? I’d quite like a
larger rubbing part. Size being relative and all my relatives having bigger
ones than me.’

‘I just
want to go home.’

‘Back
to heaven, do you mean?’

‘I’m
not from heaven. I’m from Earth.’

‘Same
place.’

‘It’s
not the same place. Look, where’s the exit? Is there someone in authority? Who
runs this mad house?’

‘That
would be the curator.’

Porrig
sighed. ‘And would I be right in supposing that the curator is a bowed old
gentleman with a long white beard, a conical hat and a gown all covered in
stars?’

Rippington
pointed to his willy. ‘Tug tug tug,’ he said.

‘All
right,’ said Porrig. ‘Then let me have another try. Would I be right in
supposing that the curator
is
an old gentleman? That he doesn’t have a
long white beard, but that he does look a bit like a dog, with two white tufts
of hair on the top of his head?’

‘Well,’
said Rippington.

‘Well?’

‘That’s
a pretty good supposition.’

‘And
would you be impressed if I went for the double and told you his name?’

‘Very,’
said Rippington. ‘Apocalypso The Bloody Miraculous.’ Said Porrig.

‘Well,
tug my rubbing part.’ Said Rippington.

‘So I’m
right!’ Said Porrig.

‘No,’
said Rippington, ‘you’re wrong. But one out of two wasn’t bad. Now, about my
rubbing part…’

9

The largest rubbing part
in the whole wide world belonged to Dilbert Norris. It was approximately a yard
and a half in length and resembled a giant parsnip.

Now, whilst
it is certainly true that there are few things the British public find more
side-splittingly funny than a vegetable shaped like a willy, it is interesting
to note that the man who possesses a willy shaped like a vegetable, especially
one of such length, is rarely to be found waving the thing about in the high
street in the noble cause of a good clean laugh.

It must
also be said that the practical applications for such a monstrous member are
few, other than for sticking it into your ear and going to a fancy dress party
as a petrol pump, when the laughter would soon die away and horrid thoughts
enter the mind.

Naturally
opinions vary greatly regarding just what size the perfect penis should be.
Most men would go for an eight-incher, although this man for one has no
intention of lopping off a couple of inches to please anybody.
[2]

Dilbert
would have liked a bigger one. But then Dilbert was not as other men. Dilbert
was, in fact, not a man at all. Dilbert was a vegetable. And whether a
vegetable having a willy shaped like a vegetable, no matter what size it
happens to be, is actually funny, is anyone’s guess.

It
certainly was not considered even vaguely amusing on the planet where Dilbert
grew up: a planet called Eden in the constellation of Knob-end Major, which is
not to be found on any earthly star map because it is a very very great
distance away.

For
those who prefer clarity to inference, let it now be said that Dilbert Norris
was the creature in the seven-pointed spacecraft that had recently been hauled
from the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

And
also, that although much of what Dr Harney had to say about Dilbert was
correct, the appellation attached to Porrig’s previous employer at the Used
Car Emporium could not be applied to him. Dilbert was
not
mad, time had
not
addled his brain, he was neither stone-bonker nor space cadet. Dilbert
Norris was a sentient vegetable, and sentient vegetables see and do things
differently.

On
Dilbert’s home planet there had been no mammals, no herbivores to gorge
themselves on nature’s bounty and interfere with the true path of evolution:
that of vegetable rather than mammal. On Dilbert’s home planet the vegetable
kingdom had become
the
kingdom, vegetables the rightful heirs to the
earth in which they grew.

It was
all peace and harmony upon Eden, where no serpent, or perhaps more
appropriately, no cow, had ever entered the garden of paradise.

Now, it
is surely self-evident that a universal truth must apply, no matter in which
part of the universe you choose to apply it. And the universal truth that the
highest life form on a planet with an atmosphere and a gravity similar to that
of Earth will have man-like characteristics, is one of these very truths.

You can
fiddle about a bit with the basic design features, but a head at the top end
with eyes in the front, a pair of legs to get about on and those all-essential
opposing thumbs are prerequisites. And willy in the middle has yet to be
bested.

Dilbert
Norris was man-like, as were all of his ilk. But Dilbert’s ilk possessed
certain powers that humankind do not.

It has
long been accepted that plants are capable communicating with one another,
although the means by which this is done are not fully understood. Nor, it can
be said with some authority, are they ever likely to be, as man’s inability to
understand even his fellow man, let alone plants, and his basic attitude to
the vegetable (which he sees foremost as a source of food rather than wisdom),
puts the kibosh on this from the outset.

The
relationship between man and vegetable is a very one-sided affair.

Vegetables
communicate telepathically, as do some fish, most insects, yellow-handled
screwdrivers, car keys, biros and small screws from the insides of pop-up
toasters.

Only
one man in history has ever come to terms with this and he is Hugo Rune and his
is another story.

Dilbert’s
bunch, having evolved into their manlike forms, still retained their
telepathic abilities, and it was by means of these that Dilbert found himself
able to exert control over the beings he encountered here on Earth. Beings who,
by the very nature of their eating habits, were his natural enemies. Or, in his
case, unnatural, as none existed on his particular planet.

In
describing Dilbert’s physical appearance the word ‘tricky’ springs to mind. Not
that he looked tricky (although he did), but more because it is tricky to find
flattering prose when describing a creature some twenty feet high, weighing in
at approximately two tons, that resembles a man-shaped sprout and possesses the
aforementioned yard-and-a-half long parsnip donger.

No
doubt Dilbert would have been considered a good-looker on Eden, a regular beau,
a dandy, drop-dead gorgeous and hot to trot. But here on Earth, and casting ‘tricky’
to the four winds, there could be no hesitation in referring to him as one big
fat ugly-looking son of the sod.

And he
smelled bad too.

On Eden
Dilbert had not amounted to very much, a verdant version of Tom Cruise perhaps,
but a tad intellectually challenged. Or, as Porrig might have put it, thick as
shit. A second-rate clerk in a town-planning department, he spent most of his
days staring dreamily out of the window and planning plans of his own about
what he might do if he ever won the National Lottery. For it is another
universal truth that no matter where a civilization rises, there will always be
clerks looking dreamily out of windows and there will always be a National
Lottery.

For the
most part these clerks must dream on, but in Dilbert’s case fate had other
plans. Dilbert came up trumps on the National Lottery and bought himself a
spaceship.

And the
rest is history.

Although
not the history you will read about in many other books. Especially those of a
religious nature.

In all
fairness it has to be said that Dilbert never intended to set himself up as a
god. Not originally. When he set out from Eden in his spacecraft it was with
the intention of finding a new world for the folk of Eden and earning the big
kudos that went with such a discovery. Had it ever crossed his mind that things
would work out in the way they did, he would probably have stayed at home.
Although home was getting
very
crowded. And had things worked out a
little differently on his arrival here, he would probably never have acted in
the way he did.

But it
didn’t, and they did, and he didn’t and they didn’t and so he did. As it were.

Location
can often be everything and had not Dilbert’s craft chosen the island later to
be known as Gwa’tan Qua Cest’l Potobo as an ideal landing site things might
have gone a little more smoothly and much unpleasantness been avoided.

But it
didn’t, and it wasn’t.

The
spacecraft dropped down out of the clear blue sky halfway through the ceremony
to inaugurate the instatement of the new village head man. An omen if ever
there was one.

The
natives gathered about the seven-pointed craft, which bore to them an uncanny
resemblance to a giant wok, and looked on in awe as it opened to reveal to them
something that bore an uncanny resemblance to a giant version of a particularly
toothsome local vegetable: the sand sprout.

It was
as clear as clear was possible to be that the gods had sent down an offering. A
food parcel from on high. And all they had to do was cook it up and tuck in.