East of Ealing (10 page)

At a little after five of the clock, Pooley and Omally left Professor Slocombe’s house behind and trudged up the long crescent bound for the Swan. Although the old man had served a fine tea, neither could raise much of an appetite, finding to it more than a hint of the Messianic feast. With rumbling guts and grumbling tongues they mooched along, ignoring the gaily-coloured bunting which fluttered between the great Horse Chestnuts, raised in preparation for the forthcoming Festival of Brentford. Pooley was in full slouch, his chin upon his chest, and his hands thrust deeply into his tweedy trouser pockets. His last suit was in exquisite ruin and lacked a right sleeve, which an over-zealous hospital intern who watched too many Aldo Ray films had cut away from his grazed elbow with a pair of surgical scissors. The thought that he could buy a thousand suits and all of them of the hand-tailored, Saville Row variety, did little to raise his spirits. Jim’s right thumbnail worried at his hidden palm.

Omally worried at Marchant’s pitted handlebars, the old boy seemed to have developed an irritating pull to the left, which was either something to do with its political leanings or something even more sinister. “Give it a rest,” growled John as the thing had him in the gutter once more.

After what seemed an age they arrived at the Swan’s welcoming portal. And found to their increased horror that it was no longer welcoming. A large plastic sign fastened to the front window announced to the world that THE BUYING OF “ROUNDS” IS HENCEFORTH FORBIDDEN BY ORDER OF THE BREWERY. ANY CUSTOMER ATTEMPTING TO VIOLATE THIS PRINCIPLE WILL BE BARRED FOR AN INDEFINITE PERIOD.

“By the Saints,” said Omally, turning wobbly at the knees. “Would you look at that?”

Pooley curled his lip. “This is too much. I am even to be denied spending my money as I please.” He thrust Omally aside and entered the bar.

The Swan was empty of customers. The only folk present were a pale young man in headphones who stood behind the jump, and two brewery henchmen in drab-coloured overalls, who appeared to be screwing a gleaming contrivance of advanced design on to the bar counter.

“What is the meaning of that notice?” Pooley stormed up to the bar.

The strange young barman watched his furious approach with an untroubled expression. His head moved to and fro to a rhythm only he heard.

“I demand an explanation,” foamed the red-faced Jim.

The young man pushed back his headphones. “What will it be then, sir?” he asked.

Jim raised his fist. “That, that bloody notice in the window. What’s your game, eh?”

“Oh, that.” The young man was all bland composure. “Rules and regulations, what can we do?”

“We can tear the bloody thing down for a kick off.”

The young man waggled a finger. “Naughty, naughty,” said he.

Jim clenched and unclenched his fists. “Has the world gone mad?” he asked. “Has the brewery lost its bloody marbles?”

The young man shrugged. “Since the takeover everything seems to have changed.”

“Takeover, what takeover?”

“Hadn’t you heard? Lateinos and Romiith bought the brewery out. An offer too good to refuse I suppose.”

Jim began to flap his hands wildly and spin about in small circles. Omally, who had followed him in, knew this to be a bad sign. Pooley sought men to kill. Two of such were now tinkering at the counter’s end. “Who are they?” Jim ceased his foolish gyrations. “What are they up to?”

The pale young man smiled wanly. “Installing a terminal, of course. Under the new system every establishment must have its own terminal, you know.”

“John,” said Jim, “John, hold me back.” Omally did as he was bidden. “What, if one might make so bold, is a terminal?” he asked.

“My goodness me,” the pale young man tittered to himself, “we do live in the dark ages around here, don’t we?” He grinned towards the two henchmen, who exchanged knowing glances and sniggered. “This terminal,” he explained, “is modular in concept, with a networking capability that is virtually plug-in. It has a one hundred and twenty-eight bit multitasking operation, super-advanced WP forms and spread sheet planner; wide area network configuration, multi-key ISAM on shared data bases, L and R six-six-six Asynch emulations, soft font and bitmapped graphics.”

“Bit-mapped graphics, eh?”

The young man cleared his throat with a curiously mechanical coughing sound. “Bit-mapped,” he said slowly. Above his left eyebrow the short row of eighteen vertical lines gave his face a permanently quizzical expression. “Now, perhaps, sir, you would care to order?”

“Two pints of Large,” said Omally.

“As you wish, sir. Will your irate companion be thinking to order two for himself also, do you think? Once he recovers his senses?”

“We are only just outnumbered,” quoth Pooley. “Shall we make a fight of it?”

“All in good time, Jim. Now please calm yourself and lend me a couple of quid.” The pale barman raised a tattooed eyebrow. “Usury is strictly forbidden upon the premises, by order of the brewery.”

“A pox on the brewery,” said John. “Jim is minding some money for me. Can I have it back please, Jim?”

“Certainly.” Pooley thrust a couple of hundred smackers into Omally’s outstretched palm and outstretched his own towards the nearest pint.

The new barman deftly reached across the counter-top and caught up Jim’s wrist in a vice-like grip.

Turning Jim’s palm towards the ceiling he drew out a light-wand and ran it across. “Your credit rating is triple A,” he said. “Two pints for yourself is it?”

“Make it three,” said Jim bitterly. “I feel a bit of a thirst coming on.”

“As you please, sir.” The pale young barman replaced his headphones and, nodding to himself, drew off the business.

Bearing their pints away, John and Jim stalked off to a side-table where they dropped into a brace of chairs and sat staring into one another’s eyes.

After a somewhat pregnant pause, Jim said, “I’ve had enough of all this, John.”

Omally nodded thoughtfully. “It is not very much to my own liking,” said he, gulping away the nearest pint. “If you want my considered opinion I feel that we should both do very well to have it away from this district post haste.”

“Look at those bastards.” Jim gestured towards the brewery henchmen who were even now tearing up the Swan’s antique carpeting to run a power-line across the floor.

“Rio would be your man,” said John. “Dusky maidens rolling green cigars upon their bronzed thighs. A train-robber chum of mine has lodgings thereabouts. The climate so they say is ideal for the professional drinking man or the unemployed war criminal.”

Pooley considered his printed palm. “I can’t be having with all this stuff. Things are no longer healthy hereabouts.”

“So let us away.”

Jim chewed upon a thumbnail. “I think you’re right,” said he. “But what about all this Revelations business? Do you think that the Professor is correct in his theories? If it is the end of the world then it might catch up with us even in Rio.”

Omally downed another pint. “I have my doubts about the whole thing. Listen, with the old currant bun beaming down and a bottle or two of duty-free on the patio table we can give the matter serious thought. What do you say?”

“I say it’s time we had a holiday.”

“Good man. Now the travel agent’s in the Ealing Road closes at six, I can be up there in five minutes on the bike and back in another five, I’ll book us aboard an aeroplane for first thing tomorrow.”

“Do it then.” Jim dragged out another bundle of banknotes and thrust them at John. “Go at once. I’ll get some bottles to take out, this place is beginning to depress me.”

“Right then, I will be back directly.” Omally left the Swan and mounted up Marchant, who had set himself in for an evening kip. He bumped down the kerb and pedalled furiously up the Ealing Road. Cresting the railway bridge he swept down the other side, legs outspread, past the Mowlem’s building. Without warning he suddenly came into contact with a great body of halted traffic. The road was a shambles of stalled automobiles and shouting drivers. Cars were parked at crazy angles across the road, and those at the vanguard lay, their bonnets stove in and steam issuing from their shattered radiators. A blank wall of dark light rose from the street at the junction with the Great West Road. It soared into the sky, an impenetrable barrier blocking all further progress. Omally dragged on his brakes but his iron stallion appeared to have developed ideas of its own. It rocketed him headlong into the boot of a stalled Morris Minor. John sailed forward in a blizzard of whirling banknotes, to tumble down on to the bonnet of the defunct automobile and roll on to the roadway. Cursing and spitting he slowly dragged himself to his feet and stared up at the grim barrier ahead, struck dumb with amazement and disbelief. The curtains, which the Professor had observed for so many weeks through his rooftop viewer, had finally closed upon the borders of the Brentford triangle.

And the parish was now completely sealed off from the outside world.

As word spread from house to house that the veil was drawn down, the people of the parish flocked into the streets. They flowed hurriedly towards the borders to stand, their noses pressed against the walls of hard air, staring out into the beyond. The vista, normally so mundane as to be invisible, now assumed a quality of remoteness and unreality. That none might any longer pass into that world made it fairyland and the figures that moved there became exaggerated and larger than life. And though they shouted and coo-eed and smote the barrier with sticks and staves, the world beyond did not see them, nor hear their cries for help. The world beyond simply went on doing that which it had always done – which wasn’t very much, although it seemed so now. Although the trapped people watched desperately for some sign which might signal the recognition of their plight by the free folk, who now passed within inches, none came. Their faces never turned and they went about their business as ever they had. To the world outside it seemed that Brentford had simply ceased to exist.

What attempts were made to stir up a bit of healthy rioting were stifled almost as soon as they were begun by the arrival of police snatch squads. Strange pale young men in protective uniforms, sporting minuscule headphones, and carrying small black boxes attached to their belts, moved swiftly into the crowds to bear away the outspoken to waiting meat-wagons. Those who had voiced complaint reappeared hours later passive and uncomplaining, clearing their throats before speech with curiously mechanical coughing sounds. Brentford’s ghost people drifted back to haunt their houses and closed their doors behind them.

Days began to pass one upon another, each one the same as the last. Pooley and Omally sat in the Swan bitterly regarding the new barman as he soullessly directed the redecoration of the grand old watering hole. Through the Swan’s upper windows, now being double-glazed, the dark walls shimmered. Beyond them the sun shone, but here in Brentford a thin drizzle hissed upon the pavements and trickled down the gutters. Old Pete hobbled in, shaking rain from his cap and muttering under his breath. As he passed his coinage over the counter the young barman tut-tutted and warned him that such cash transactions would soon be impermissible. Old Pete muttered something in reply but it was only the word “pox” that caught the ears of John and Jim. Pooley lit up a Passing Cloud and drew deeply upon it, he opened his mouth to speak but no word came. Omally read the expression and the open mouth and nodded hopelessly. There was no need for either question or answer, nobody knew what they were going to do next, or even why. When the barman called time six minutes early the two men parted with no words spoken and wandered away into the night.

The disappointments and the hopelessness of it all were beginning to take their irrevocable toll.

Pooley lay on his bed, hands cupped behind his head, awake to the sounds of the night. The room was now heaped with a pointless array of useless and expensive articles. The wardrobe overspilled with tailor-made suits, shirts, and shoes. Quadrophonic record players, all lacking plugs, and most not even unpacked from their boxes, lay half-hidden beneath every Frankie Laine record Jim had always promised himself. He had riffled every Brentford store in the vain attempt to spend his wealth. Finding an estate agent with property deeds still for sale he had purchased all available for wallpaper. The things he ordered arrived by the hour, to lie in soaking stacks on the pavement. Jim went about the business with a will but, as with everything now, the task was hopeless. He could never outspend his own wealth. Progress across the cluttered room was made the more precarious for fear of sinking to his doom in the marshland of expensive shagpile carpets heaped one upon another. He should have been sleeping the sleep of the drunk, but no matter how many pints he struggled to down, nowadays he still remained fiercely sober. None of it made the slightest bit of sense to Jim, there seemed no purpose to any last bit of it.

Pooley pressed the time-speak button on his brand new Lateinos and Romiith wristlet watch. “Eleven forty-five and all is well, Jim,” said the polite little voice. Pooley made an unseemly sound and suggested that all was very far from being that. Professor Slocombe had called him and John to a midnight rendezvous this very night. No doubt the Professor felt the need to impart to them more prophecies of impending doom. Jim did not relish the thought. And to think that he had once considered the old man to be a stimulating conversationalist and source of enlightenment.

He climbed down from the most expensive mattress printed palms could buy and sought out a pair of matching shoes from the undisciplined regiment which stood before him. Having kicked about for several minutes, to Jim’s immense chagrin he unearthed one lone matched set, his tired old work-boots. Muttering something about the curse of the Pooleys, Jim drew the wretched articles on to his naked feet. Having recently had a nasty experience in the bathroom with a computerized umbrella which opened automatically upon contact with water, he left the thing rolled up under the bed, and braved the drizzle in a new tweed shooting jacket with matching cap. Neither fitted. Jim shook his head – everything money could buy, but it was all rubbish. The new calfskin waistcoat had looked a bundle in the shop, but no sooner home than the buttons had begun to fall off and the leathery smell vanished away to be replaced by one of plastic. The same smell which permeated everything he had bought. Jim sniffed at the “tweed” jacket. Yes, even that. Bewailing the millionaire’s lot, Pooley slouched on to the Professor’s.

Omally was already there, comfortably ensconced in a fireside chair, wearing a natty three-piece whistle Jim had given him, his right hand wrapped about a whisky glass. Professor Slocombe was at his desk amongst his books and Sherlock Holmes was nowhere to be seen.

Upon Jim’s noisy entrance, the sole of his right boot having chosen this inopportune moment to part company with its aged leather upper, John and the Professor looked up from their separate reveries and greeted the new arrival. “Help yourself, Jim,” said the old man. “I think you will find the fruits of my cellar eminently more stimulating than those of the Swan.”

“Praise be for that,” said Jim Pooley, liberally acquainting himself with the decanter.

“So now,” said the Professor, once Jim had hopped into a comfortable chair and eased off his rogue brogue, “there are a good many things that I must tell you this evening. Few of which you will find comforting, I fear.”

We’re off to a good start, thought Jim, but he kept it to himself.

“As you are both aware, Brentford is now completely surrounded by an impenetrable barrier.” The two men nodded gloomily; they were a long way from Rio and that was a fact. “And no doubt you have been asking each other why?”

“Never gave it a thought,” said Jim. Omally leaned forward and smote him a painful blow to his naked sole.

“Thank you, John. Now it is my wish to put you both in the picture as far as I am able. It is essential that you understand what we face. Those of us with the power and the will to fight grow fewer by the day. Soon, if the thing is not stopped, there will be none remaining.” Pooley did not like the sound of that very much at all. “I will start at the very beginning.”

“Do so, sir,” said Jim.

“In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and God was the word…”

“Hold hard there,” Pooley interrupted. “From Genesis to the Revelation is a long haul by any standard. Might we just skip right through to it now?”

“All right, but let me briefly explain. The God of Adam brought something to the world which had not existed before. He brought light. To our perception there is but one God, the true God. But our forefathers believed in an entire pantheon of Elder Gods. These rose and fell with their temples, for how can a god exist when there are none to worship him? It is the balance of equipoise; the harmony of the spheres. Each new and rising god replaces his predecessor when his temple is cast down and his followers no longer believe. Allow me to suggest the possibility that dark and sinister gods existed prior to the word which brought light to our Mother Earth.”

“Sounds pretty iffy so far,” John observed.

“Oh, it gets far worse later on,” the Professor replied. “This is just the prawn cocktail; by cheese and biscuits you’ll be thoroughly sick.”

“I have a strong stomach,” said John, refilling his glass.

“Now,” the old man continued, “in the beginning of the world we know, our God brought light and created man. Before this time existed only utter cold and utter confusion where reigned the Elder Gods of darkness, unchallenged. With the coming of light and the creation of man they were cast down with their temples. But gods do not die, they sleep and they dream. The old serpent entered Eden to tempt man back to the darkness; he sowed the seed of doubt in him. Doubt in the power of his Creator. God drove back the serpent but the damage was already done. The serpent never left Eden you see, he slept, and he dreamed, awaiting the time when he would rise again. That time is now upon us. Through the exercise of what man thought to be his own free will he has furthered the aims of the serpent. The prophecies are even now being fulfilled, as testified by your palm there, Jim.” Pooley pocketed his tattooed mit. “Man has, through the influence of the serpent, given genesis to his own replacement: simply, the thinking machine.”

“I, Robot?” said Omally. “I’ve read all that. Machines do not think, they are programmed merely to respond, they answer questions but with the answers that were already fed into them. Computers do not have souls.”

“There now,” said Professor Slocombe, “you have saved me my old breath. They have no souls. It is man’s soul alone which prevents him slipping back into the darkness. The soul cries out to the light, the soul worships the light. Replace man and the temple of the lord of light is cast down. The darkness returns.”

“The whole menu was a bowl of sprouts,” said Omally bitterly. “I am going to be sick.”

“It all sounds somewhat eclectic,” remarked Jim, surprising even himself. “I do not pretend to understand much of it.”

“Like the sprout, it takes a bit of swallowing,” the Professor replied. “What I am trying to say is this: computer science is founded upon the silicon chip. It has long been suggested by scientists that life might exist elsewhere in the universe, life possibly with a silicon base. They do not seem to realize that they have created it here on Earth, at the behest of a hidden master. When man is made subservient to the machine he is no longer in control of his own destiny. Therefore he is no longer the dominant species. The people of Brentford are being replaced one after another by duplicates of themselves. Soulless robots programmed to worship their master. Unless we act quickly, then all we have ever known will be lost.”

Pooley solemnly removed his wristlet watch and cast it into the fire. The plastic crackled amongst the flames, and, to add further horror to a conversation which had already been a far cry from a cosy fireside chat, a shrill voice shrieked out from the flames calling for mercy.

Omally crossed himself. “I believe,” he said simply.

“Then you will fight with me?”

“I think that we have little choice. Jim?”

Pooley raised his unmarked palm. “Count me in, I suppose,” said he.