East of Ealing (19 page)

A strange vibration swept up the mainframe of the great computer. The figures moving upon its face stiffened, frozen solid. Diamond-tipped lights began to flicker and flash, forming into sequences, columns, and star-shapes, and pyramids, veering and changing, pulsing faster and faster. A low purr of ominous humming rose in pitch, growing to a siren-screaming crescendo, as the machine’s defence system suddenly registered the double image coursing across the floor of its very sanctum sanctorum. A ripple of startled movement spread out from the base, as the terminal operators took in the horror. Their heads rose to face the mainframe, their mouths opened, and the curiously mechanical coughing sounds issued forth, swelling to an atavistic howl.

“Do you think they’ve tumbled us, John?” Pooley clapped his hands across his ears and Omally sank his head between his shoulders as the two zig-zagged on between the sea of terminals and their shrieking, howling operators. The robots were rising to their feet, stretching out their arms towards their master, their heads thrown back, their mouths opening and closing. They stormed from their seats to pursue the intruders.

At the back of the hall a stealthy figure in shredded tweed slipped into a vacant chair and flexed his long slim fingers.

“Get away there!” Pooley levelled his travelling hobnail towards a shrieking figure looming before them. He caught it a mighty blow to the chest and toppled it down across the face of a terminal, tearing it from its mounts amidst a tangle of sparking wires and scrambled mechanisms.

“Nice one, Jim.”

“Hard to port, John.”

Omally spun a hasty, wheel-screeching left turn, dodging a cluster of straining hands which clawed towards them. They dived off down another line of abandoned terminals, the robots now scrambling over them, faces contorted in hatred, anxious to be done with the last of their sworn enemy. Small black boxes were being drawn into the light, emitting sinister crackles of blue fire. The chase was on in earnest. And there were an awful lot of the blighters, with just two men to the bike.

The figures on the high gantries now ran to and fro in a fever of manic industry. They worked with inhuman energy, tending and caring to their dark master. The lights about them streamed up the dead black face, throbbing in “V” formations, travelling down again to burst into pentacles and cuneiform. They became a triple-six logo a hundred feet high which reformed into the head of a horned goat, the eyes ringed in blood-red laser fire. Blackpool illuminations it was not.

Holmes laboured away at his terminal, but here and there his trembling fingers faltered and he punched in an incorrect digit. Cursing bitterly, he was forced to erase an entire line and begin again.

“You bastard.” A clawed hand tore off Pooley’s right shirt-sleeve. “I’m down to the arm. Let’s get out of here, John!”

“Strike that man.” As a foaming psychotic rose up before them, Pooley levelled another flailing boot. The floor was now a hell-house of confusion. The robots were fighting with one another, each desperate to wring the life from Pooley and Omally. The cycling duo thundered on. Omally wore the orange jersey. The tour de Brentford was very much on the go.

“Get a move on, your Popeship, they’re closing for the kill.”

John swung away once more, but the road-blocks were up. He skidded about, nearly losing Pooley, who uttered many words of justifiable profanity, and made hurried tracks towards the door. The androids encircled them, black boxes spurting fire. The circle was closing fast and every avenue of escape was blocked as soon as it was entered. Omally drew Marchant to a shivering halt, depositing Pooley on the deck. “If you know how to fly,” he told his bike, “now would be the time to impress me.” Sadly, the old battered sit-up-and-beg showed no inclination whatsoever towards sudden levitation. “Well,” said John, “one must never ask too much of a bike.”

Pooley rose shakily to his feet. To every side loomed a sea of snarling faces, surrounding them in an unbreakable circle. It was many many faces deep, and none looked amenable to a bloodless surrender.

“Goodbye, John,” said Jim, “I never knew a better friend.”

“Goodbye, Jim.” Omally pressed his hand into that of his lifelong companion, a tear rose in a clear blue eye. “We’ll go down fighting at least.”

“At the very least.” Pooley raised his fists. “Beware,” he cried, “this man knows Dimac, the deadliest martial art known to… well, to the two of us any way.”

The crowd rose up as if drawing its collective sulphurous breath, and fell upon them; cruel hands snatched down, anxious to destroy, to draw out the life. Omally struck where he could but the blows rained down upon him, driving him to his knees. Pooley could manage but one last, two-fingered expression of defiance before he was dashed to the deck. The writhing mob poured forward, thrashing and screaming, and it seemed that nothing less than a very timely miracle could save the dynamic duo now.

A great tremor rushed across the floor of the unholy cathedral. The lynch mob drew back in sudden horror, the black marble surface upon which they stood was being jarred as if by some great force battering up at it. Pooley and Omally cowered as the floor moved beneath them. A great crack tore open, tumbling androids to either side of it. Shards of sparkling marble shot up like some black volcanic eruption. An enormous fist thrust up from the depths. Another followed and, as the crowd backed into a growing circle, crying and pointing, a head and shoulders emerged from the destruction, rising noble and titanic amongst the debris.

“Fe… Fi… Fo… Fum.” As a great section of flooring smashed aside, Neville scrambled up through the opening. He was bloody and scarred, with great wounds upon his arms and legs, but his face bore an old nobility. He was indeed a Titan, a god of olden Earth. Yes, there were giants in the Earth in those days, and also after that. Neville stood, a Hercules in soiled Y-fronts. “All right,” he cried. “Who wants a fight then?”

“Not us,” cried Jim Pooley.

“Hello, lads,” said the bulging barman, sighting the cringing twosome, and flexing a selection of chest muscles. “You appear to be somewhat unfairly outnumbered.”

“A bit of assistance would not go amiss.”

Neville flexed shoulders which had previously only been flexed by the Incredible Hulk, and even then to a minor degree.

“The rest has done him good,” said John. “He looks well on it.”

Amidst a roar of green flame, Cerberus, the hound of hell, sprang up from the netherworld beneath to confront the barman. Its three heads, one now shredded and dangling, worked and snapped, saliva drooled from fanged jaws, and the stench of brimstone filled the already overloaded air. The scorpion tail flicked and dived. “Come on, doggy,” called the barman. “Time for a trip down to the vet’s!” The creature launched itself towards him, passing over two terrified human professional cowerers. Neville caught it by a throat and the two crashed back into the crowd.

“On your toes, Jim,” called Omally. “I see a small ray of light.” Shrinking and flinching, he and Jim edged away.

Neville swung the beast about, bringing down a score of robots. Others snatched at him but he swept them aside. Above, the mainframe pulsed and flashed, the moving lights forming obscene images. Pooley and Omally backed towards it, the exit was thoroughly blocked and the only way seemed like up.

Neville drove his fist through a plasticized face, sending up a cascade of synthetic blood. The hound of hell fell upon him once more but he tore down a lower jaw with a rending of bone and gristle. He was quite coming into his own.

Pooley and Omally gained a first staircase. “Not more stairs,” gasped Jim.

“Pull the plugs out,” screamed Omally. “Pull it to pieces. Follow me.” He thundered up the steps on to the first gantry. A vista of housed microcircuits met his gaze. Omally thrust forth his hand and tore out a drawered section, punching the things free. Pooley followed suit. Faces turned from the
mêlée
below, a group of androids detached themselves from the throng. Pooley ran along, drawing out random circuit patterns. Omally followed on, punching them from their housings. They gained the second level. Ahead stood a robot barring their way. “You duck, I’ll hit it.” Omally pressed Jim forward. The robot swung its hand at him but Jim ducked out of reach, grabbing at the knees. Omally drove a fist over his diving back, and the thing lurched off the gantry to fall into the chaos which now reigned below.

Neville stood defiant, taking on all comers. Cerberus with but one head left snarling, snapped at his ankles. A ring of shattered pseudo-corpses surrounded the combatants. John and Jim gained the third level. They were making something of an art out of dispatching the face-workers to whatever fate their microchipped god had in store for them.

“Pull it to pieces, Jimmy boy.”

“I’m pulling, I’m pulling.” Jim ran forward, dragging out segments, Omally came behind, kicking and punching. Microcircuits fell like evil snow upon the ferocious crowd welling beneath. Up another stairway and beyond.

Below them the lights exhibited a jumbled confusion. Great battle waged upon the floor. Neville stood head and shoulders, and a good deal more, above the great ring of his attackers. Blue fire sparkled as they strove to apply their killing weapons to his naked flesh, but Neville snatched out the arms from their silicone sockets and flung them high over his head. Cerberus had barked his last, but from the great chasm yawning in the marble floor other horrors spilled, spinning and thrashing, whirling out of the pit. Barbs and spines, close balls of fur, animals and swollen insects with the heads of infants. A darkness was filling the air, as if it were a palpable thing, felt as much as seen. A fog of hard night.

“Bandits at six o’clock,” shouted Pooley. “Get a move on, John.”

Omally applied his boot to the face of a pursuer as it loomed up from a stairwell. “Onward and upward, Jimmy.”

The two men struggled in an unreal twilight world. Below, Neville’s great warcries and the dull thuds of falling, broken bodies mingled with the unholy screechings of the monstrous obscenities pouring up from the pit. The siren had ceased its banshee wail but voices issued from the computer’s mainframe, sighing and gasping from the circuitry, whispering in a thousand tongues, few ever those of man. A hand fastened about Pooley’s ankle, drawing him down. Omally turned, sensing rather than seeing his friend’s plight. He wrenched out a drawer-load of circuits and swung it like an axe, severing the clinging hand at the wrist. The thing remained in its deathlock about Jim’s ankle, but the hero clambered on.

They were by now high upon the computer’s great face. The air was thin but sulphurous. John clutched at his chest and strained to draw breath. Pooley leant upon his shoulder, coughing and gasping. “We’re running out of stairs,” he croaked. Above them now was nothing but darkness. They stood engulfed in it, breathing it. The sounds of battle echoed below but nought could now be seen of the conflict. “You don’t happen to see any daylight lurking above?” Jim asked. “Fast running out of wind this man.”

“I can see sod all. Get off there.” A hand had John by the trouser cuff. He squinted down in horror to see no other face than his own, leering up. Without thought or feeling he tore out another section of circuitry and thrust it down into the snapping mouth which sought his leg. Sparks blistered the visage, and the thing sank away into the darkness.

Pooley clung to a further staircase, his energy, such as it ever was, all but gone. “About making me a Cardinal?” he gasped.

The Pope followed him up. “Bless you, my son. Popes and Cardinals first. Press on.”

The two thrust blindly onward; there was nothing left to do but climb. The metal handrails were like ice and their hands were raw from the clinging cold which tore at the flesh. Their attackers poured at them in an unceasing horde. They called to them in voices which were their own, jibing and threatening, crying out explicit details of the fate which they intended for them.

“I’m gone,” said Jim. “I can climb no more, leave me to die.”

Omally fumbled about with numb and bleeding fingers. “I will join you,” said he. “There are no more stairs.” Pressed back against the icy metal of the mainframe the two men stood, alone and trapped. The mob surged up beneath them, swarming over the catwalks and gantries. There was finally nowhere left to run.

“I don’t want to die here,” said Pooley, his voice that of pitiful defeat. “I’m not supposed to be here, amongst all of this. This isn’t true, this isn’t right.”

Omally clung to the cold hard wall. They were neither of them supposed to be here. They were alone, two men, leaning now as in a time long past, upon the parapet of the canal bridge, above the oiled water of the old Grand Union. They looked down into their own reflections and those of the old stars. The stars always had much to say to drunken men, although none of their counsel and advice was ever heeded upon the cold, cruel, hangover-morning. But the truths lay there. For ordinary men, the truths always lay there upon that very moment before falling over. It was there at that instant a man was truly himself. The truth lay in that netherworld between drunkenness and oblivion, and dwelt where no sober man could ever grasp it. Only the drunken taste reality, and that for an all-too-fleeting moment. Removed from all sensible thought they made their own laws and moulded futures unthinkable at sunrise. Ah yes, John and Jim had tasted the truth upon many many an occasion.

“I see the light,” shouted Omally.

Jim craned his head. Above them a torch beam shone down.

“Get a move on lads,” called a voice. “You’re late as usual.”

“Norman,” called Jim, squinting up at the flashlight. “Is that you?”

“Sorry, were you expecting someone else?” Norman stretched down an arm towards them. “A stitch in time never won fair lady you know. Get a move on will you.”

“At the hurry-up.”

Omally shouldered Jim, who took Norman’s hand and struggled up through the rooftop opening. The screaming swarm beneath were hard upon the Irishman’s heel, he stretched up his hand towards Jim and Pooley leant down, fingers straining to reach. Their fingers met, but with a cry of horror Omally was gone. The screams of the mob welled up and the shouts of Omally as he battered down at the creatures engulfing him were nothing if not ungodly. Their fingers met again and Jim drew him up through the opening.