Clovenhoof (14 page)

He scooped up some more and snipped off their heads with a pair of pliers.

When the remainder continued to hide on the floor, he lost the final remnants of his patience. He gathered them all into a saucepan and set them onto a low light.

“Go on, tell me that it’s a bit warm for you! Tell me that you’d rather go and fight like men! Well it’s too late now, you stupid cowardly fools!”

He amused himself for a moment bashing mini-Michael with a hammer and then he watched as the saucepan of soldiers started to melt and then stirred them with a spoon to be sure that none escaped. He failed to notice how thick and black the smoke drifting upwards had become, until the smoke alarm went off.

He ran cold water into the saucepan, which made a crackling filthy mess, and left it on the side to go and open some windows.

Ben had just returned from the bookshop as he heard the alarm going off. He stood in the hallway trying to work out which direction it was coming from.

“It’s Clovenhoof,” said Nerys, coming down the stairs. “I wonder what the stupid bastard’s up to.”

As she went to knock on his door, the alarm stopped.

She shrugged her shoulders and turned back to Ben.

“I’m glad you’re here though, I need your help for a minute.”

“OK, what do you need?”

“I just need someone to take a photo, come on up.”

She led the way to her flat.

“Wait there while I get everything ready. I need a good shot for some Valentine cards I’m making.”

She handed Ben a camera and disappeared into the bedroom while he studied the controls.

He took a picture of Twinkle to be sure that he understood it and then looked up as Nerys returned.

She held two large fans in front of her, and he could see that she’d changed into a pair of unfeasibly high heels.

“How on earth do you walk in those?” he asked.

“Oh, these aren’t for walking in,” Nerys answered. “So, I need a pose that shows enough to titillate, but not enough to be considered pornographic.”

She adjusted the fans slightly.

“How’s this?” she asked.

Ben swallowed.

“Are you
naked
?” he asked.

Nerys rolled her eyes. “Well,
durrr
. It wouldn’t be very titillating if there wasn’t some flesh on show.”

Ben carefully put down the camera and ran downstairs, whimpering. He knocked Clovenhoof’s door, slightly fearful that Nerys might follow him.

As the door opened, swirls of evil-smelling smoke escaped. Clovenhoof stood in the doorway, a saucepan in his hand.

“Can I come in?” Ben asked, glancing nervously backwards.

Clovenhoof stood aside and said nothing.

“What on earth have you been cooking?” Ben asked and then stopped and stared in horror at the saucepan Clovenhoof held. He could see an arm poking out on the melted, blackened mess. An arm, a head and a tiny twisted leg. It looked as though his Seleucidian warriors had drowned in mud.

He looked at the table and saw the headless infantry, the crushed bodies.

“What did you do?” he hissed.

Clovenhoof looked at his hands.

“I think they might have been faulty. They didn’t work properly.”

“Didn’t
what
?”

“They wouldn’t do what I wanted.”

“Why would you think they’d
do
anything? They’re models. It’s up to you to make them do things.”

Ben gathered up his paints, which had been tipped across the table.

“Oh. Were they very expensive?” Clovenhoof asked.

Ben shook his head.

“It’s not about the money. I mean, these were mail order from Germany they don’t come cheap but, Jeremy, I trusted you with my things.”

Clovenhoof opened his mouth to speak, but suddenly sneezed instead.

He looked surprised at himself and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

“I’m disappointed, Jeremy,” said Ben.

“To be honest, I don’t see how this is my fault,” said Clovenhoof but Ben was already leaving.

Clovenhoof’s clothes had dried onto him from his early morning soaking and he was left feeling stiff and tired. He climbed into bed with his Lambrini.

“People aren’t tricky,” he said, flicking on the TV with the remote and wondering why he couldn’t get warm. “They’re impossible.”

On the news were images of famine victims in Africa, driven from their land by civil unrest.

“Free will is something you’d give to
rational
beings.”

He changed channels and bellowed insults at a TV game show that was offering contestants money if they’d eat a maggot.

He thumped his pillow and howled with anger and flicked on through a televised riot in some foreign city, comedy clip shows of people hurting themselves in imaginative ways and a bile-fuelled documentary about evil bankers.

“Idiots! Idiots! All idiots!”

The only times he saw genuinely happy faces was in the adverts, people oohing and aahing and cooing over their newest white goods, the coolest gadgets and the sleekest cars. The problem was, the advert breaks were constantly interrupted by the flood of human misery and stupidity evident in all the other TV programming.

People were infuriatingly contrary things, he silently fumed when he finally turned off the TV and put his head under the pillows. His flatmates were proof of that. He had done – what? – nothing and they acted as though he declared a second war on heaven.

“Idiots,” he mumbled groggily into his pillow.

He woke up the following morning feeling strangely light-headed and with only one clear thought in his mind: happiness was to be found in buying stuff, not in people.

He called a taxi and demanded to be taken to the largest shopping centre around.

“The Bull Ring?” said the taxi driver.

“Whatever,” sniffed Clovenhoof.

His nose kept running and he was fascinated to find that his snot had turned thick and colourful.

He scooped a blob of it onto his fingertip and offered it to the taxi driver for an opinion but the man seemed peculiarly uninterested.

Clovenhoof alighted outside a giant edifice of steel and glass and poster adverts of some seriously happy people. He quickly concluded that the Bull Ring was a much more impressive place of worship than any church he’d been in. It had a feeling of space, light and supreme power over mortals.

He nodded in approval.

“My church, my people.”

He saw the brass statue of a bull outside its main entrance.

“And it even comes with its own golden calf. Delicious.”

He prowled through the displays and realised that he could have anything that he wanted. He just needed to use the credit cards that had proven so useful.

He watched a demonstration of a pasta-making machine and decided that he had to have one. He found a useful gadget for electrically rotating his ties so that he could find the right one. He was pretty sure that he only had one tie, so he bought a couple more while he was there.

He went to the computer shop and bought a silver box of delights that looked like it might sprout limbs and take over the world at any moment. He kept stroking it, hoping that it would do just that. It was also (so said the salesman) ‘voice-controlled’, which reminded him of Ben’s crappy non-voice-controlled soldiers and this made Clovenhoof, feel immeasurably superior.

After the shopping splurge, he was so exhausted that he decided to find somewhere to eat. He asked a taxi driver to take him to the most expensive restaurant in town and found himself in a place where the staff were most helpful, and made suggestions on what he might like to eat and drink. When he complained that the portions were a bit small, they fetched more.

He found that there were even people whose job it was to tell you what drinks went with different kinds of food. He was so pleased to discover this that he sampled every course on the menu and demanded the drink for every single one. He scoffed and quaffed, belching his appreciation and sniffing his farts to see if his diet made any discernible difference.

He called over the wine waiter, struggling to focus on the approaching man after his sixth glass of claret.

“They call you
the nose
?” he said in drunken incredulousness.

“Yes sir, that’s right,” said the wine waiter.

“Would you say that this” - he let rip with a thunderous sound - “has a hint of that Mouton Rothschild ‘forty-five that you just served me? Or is it carrying notes of the Carménère from before?”

He used his hands to waft the scent upwards and sniffed appreciatively.

The wine waiter paused for a moment, considering the tip that this dreadful customer might pay for the hours of attention he’d had. He was on the verge of offering his professional opinion in no uncertain terms when the dilemma was removed. Clovenhoof fell forward onto the linen tablecloth and started to snore loudly.

As he helped the other staff members to carry the unconscious Clovenhoof to a taxi he murmured quietly, “I think sir, on balance, that the most assertive notes were of carrion and brimstone.”

“Thass right,” Clovenhoof whispered. “I think I’m coming down with something.”

The next morning he clutched his head and groaned as he woke. This wasn’t right. His head had never felt like such a giant, throbbing painful mess before.

As he moved, he realised that something was wrong with his entire body. Pain pulsed through every part that he tried to move. He sat upright and found that his head was now throbbing even more ferociously. He saw the computer he had bought on the floor nearby. The words ‘voice-controlled’ were printed on the side.

“Computer,” he called croakily. “Go get me a cup of tea.”

The box just sat there.

“Computer!” he shouted, already hoarse, but again it failed to respond.

He tested his weight on shaky legs and collapsed back onto the bed. He couldn’t understand it. He’d been told that death was not an option for him. But surely, he was close. Suffering like this could only mean death was imminent. He staggered to the toilet, and found that he could barely focus on the “Keep Boldmere Beautiful” leaflets as he picked one up to wipe his bottom. He needed advice, and fast. He couldn’t go to the neighbours, who both hated him now. He decided to try out the computer, and see if it was as smart as they’d said in the shop.

He staggered over the computer box and kicked it.

“Wake up, you great tin tit,” he snarled. Nothing.

Maybe it needed charging. He ripped open the box and began to pull things out. He recognised the keyboard and monitor, but other boxes, wires and disks followed and he realised that it might be trickier than he’d thought.

He turned over all the pieces in his hands, but with his head pounding and his grip wobbly, he was having trouble thinking it through. Surely, what he wanted was to join the keyboard and the monitor? The other bits could wait.

The wire from the keyboard wouldn’t fit into the monitor, however hard he tried. He cursed the shoddy workmanship that allowed this rubbish out of the factory. He picked up the pliers that he’d used on the soldiers and snipped the annoying adapter off the keyboard wire. He tried to poke the wires into the hole on the monitor, but they wouldn’t stay in. He snipped off some other adapters and tied those onto his wire, but nothing he typed on the keyboard showed on the screen.

He rang the number that they’d given him in the shop.

“I bought a computer from you yesterday and it won’t work.”

“Would you like to book an appointment with a Genius?”

“Oh. Well yes, of course. Who wouldn’t?”

“Come in at two thirty.”

Ben knocked on the door as Clovenhoof was trying to gather the pieces together.

“Look, I know you didn’t mean –”

“Can’t stop now, Kitchen. I’m off to see a genius. Put those cables on top of this, will you?”

“Erm, I know a bit about computers.”

“Didn’t you hear? I’m going to see a genius. A genius! I’ve got a lot of questions. Out of the way.”

Clovenhoof made it to the Bull Ring, without dropping too many of the bits.

He rode the escalator, sniffing. He gobbed a wad of yellow phlegm over the side and watched it tumble lazily to the ground floor. He was quite impressed and decided that if he felt equally ill on the way down the escalator he might try an experimental vomit, sure that the results would be quite beautiful. He felt wretched but confident that here, in this place of power and grandeur, were the answers that he needed.

He entered the shop, wondering where he would find the genius. He noticed the pine altar-like counter at the rear, and knew where he needed to go.

His name was displayed on a board behind the altar.

“That’s me!” he said, impressed.

“Hi, Mr Clovenhoof, I’m Ryan, and how can I help?”

The man was impossibly young. He looked a bit like Ben. Clovenhoof wondered if there was a shabby factory that turned out such creatures on a production line.

“You’re the genius?” he asked.

“Yes I am,” said Ryan. “What can I help you with today?”

“Oh, so many things. I’ve got this horrible mucous in my throat and my friends don’t like me anymore. And this suffering business, should it hurt as much?”

Ryan winced.

“I’m more of a computer-type Genius.”

“Right.”

Clovenhoof unloaded the computer onto the counter.

“Yeah, this thing won’t work.”

“Let’s take a look.”

“Yeah, but first, I have to know, how did you become a genius?”

“Company policy forbids me to speak of the training.”

“Oh. Yeah. I guess it would.”

“Some of these leads are badly damaged. When did you say that you bought it?”

“Yesterday, from here.”

“And did you make any modifications?”

“Nope.” Clovenhoof said, avoiding his gaze. “It just wouldn’t work.”

“Right. I’m going to try some new leads and see where that gets us. This will take a few minutes. You’re absolutely sure that you made no modifications?”

Clovenhoof shook his head.

“Our computers are made to be reliable and foolproof, but only if you treat them exactly as intended. Like it says in the manual.”