The Chickens of Atlantis and Other Foul and Filthy Fiends (30 page)

. . . and Jack turned into a monkey.

35

‘
arwin, wake up.’ Somebody poked at the ape.

‘Darwin, please.’ Darwin was rattled about. ‘Please.’

And Darwin opened his eyes and blinked.

‘Mr Bell?’ said Darwin. ‘Is that you, Mr Bell?’

‘More to the point, is that you?’

Darwin tried to rise, but something held him down. He focused his eyes and glanced about and then became confused. He was in some kind of bed, but it was unlike any bed he had previously inhabited. It was a disc and he appeared to be hovering slightly above it. And there were queer things all about. Shiny things of burnished metal. Things with tubes and dials and little screens. And above, the ceiling was not flat. The entire room looked like a great big dome.

‘Where am I?’ asked Darwin. ‘Was I asleep?’

‘You are in the year three thousand,’ said Mr Bell, who wore some kind of strange and silvery suit.

‘The year three thousand?’ Darwin said.

‘The year three thousand. Not a lot has changed. Although they do live underwater.’

Darwin breathed in sterilised air. ‘Then I did
not
die,’ said he.

‘Ah,’ said Mr Bell. ‘Regarding
that
.’

Darwin dragged himself into a seated position. He felt very odd indeed, as if his body was a suit of clothes that did not entirely fit him.

‘Regarding
that
?’ he asked Mr Bell.

‘You were dead,’ said Mr Cameron Bell. ‘Very dead indeed, I am sad to say.’

‘And you did
what
? Brought me back from the dead? What am I now – a zombie?’

‘No no no.’ Mr Bell did shakings of the head. ‘You are yourself, I think. You are a clone.’

Darwin gave himself a scratch. ‘What is a clone?’ he asked.

‘I will do my best to explain,’ said Mr Bell, and he sat himself down upon the disc above which Darwin appeared to float. ‘It was a dreadful business,’ he said. ‘A dreadful business indeed. I left you alone at the Flying Swan with a note expressing that you should
not
leave the premises and that a carriage would collect you at nine o'clock the following day.’

‘I do remember
that
,’ said Darwin.

‘But you
did
leave the premises, and when the carriage came you were not there.’

‘No, I suppose I was not,’ said Darwin.

‘Because, according to witnesses, you and a young chimney-sweep boy climbed up the spire of Saint Joan's Church in Brentford and then threw yourselves off.’

‘It was not quite like that,’ said Darwin, ‘but sadly it amounted very much to the same thing.’

‘I arrived back in Brentford that evening to search for you, and that was when I learned what had happened. I was told that your body had been taken to Syon House because
they thought you must be an escaped ape from the monkey sanctuary. It was all beyond awful, Darwin. When I got there, they were about to stick your body into the incinerator.’

‘Oh dear me,’ said Darwin.

‘I wrapped you up,’ said Mr Bell, and a tear came to his eye. ‘Wrapped you up and took you back to the
Marie Lloyd
and put you in the refridgetorium.’

Darwin shivered.

‘Quite so. But what else could I do? I thought I would give you a decent burial. But then something did not make any sense to me. If you were dead, then how could you, as a very old monkey, travel back to the eighteen nineties to be shot dead by Lord Brentford?’

‘I thought we had given up on asking those sorts of questions,’ said Darwin.

‘Ah,’ said Mr Bell. ‘It is definitely you.’

‘So what happened next?’

‘Well, I thought of the future and it set me to thinking that in the future there would be great steps forward made in medicine. Perhaps the folk of the future had even conquered death.’

‘And have they?’ Darwin asked.

‘No,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘On the contrary. They have simply come up with more efficient ways of
causing
death.’

‘And they live underwater?’

‘Something to do with something known as the greenhouse effect.’

‘Is that to do with growing bananas?’ asked the ape.

‘Sadly not. But to continue. I stopped off again and again but to no avail. Finally I got this far into the future and here they have mastered cloning. Which actually is a way of almost conquering death.’

‘Tell me all about it,’ said Darwin.

And Mr Bell went on to explain. ‘I think it had much to do with a moving picture called
Jurassic Park
,’ he explained. ‘You need the blood of the subject, and from this you extract the DNA, and then—’
^*

Some time later Darwin said, ‘That all sounds rather unlikely.’

Mr Bell raised his eyebrows.

‘Fair enough, then,’ said Darwin. And he scratched at himself once again.

‘You still have fleas?’ asked Mr Bell.

‘Why should I not?’ asked Darwin.

‘Well, I just explained to you all about the cloning process.’ Mr Bell now shrugged. ‘But if you still have them, then I suppose they must almost be a part of you now, somehow. And I am told that the cloning process improves the subject being cloned.’

‘I do feel a little different,’ said Darwin.

‘Then so, I suppose, must your fleas. In fact, they may now have become super-fleas, as it were.’

‘I am rather hungry,’ said Darwin. ‘And I would at least care for a pair of trousers to wear.’

‘Good old Darwin,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘How wonderful to have you back.’

‘It is wonderful to be back,’ said the ape. ‘It was not too bad being dead, but I would far rather be alive.’

And I thanked Mr Bell (for now I return to ‘First Monkey’), and I told him that I was very grateful that he had gone to so much trouble to bring me back to life.

‘What is a friend for?’ said Mr Bell. Which was a rhetorical question and I gave him a hug.

*

We lunched in a big refractory dome. And this one too was underwater and transparent, too, so we could see the big fish swimming above.

They put me in mind of the sky whale and I told my friend all about the adventures that I had become involved in after I had died.

Mr Bell listened with interest, but also tucked into his lunch. He had lost none of his appetite and I was glad for that. And of course
he
had survived his encounter with Arthur Knapton, the Pearly Emperor, at the Crystal Palace in eighteen fifty-one, and I was very glad for that, too.

‘So,’ I said, when I had done with eating, ‘it has all been a most extraordinary business and I for one am glad it is over and done with. Now we can return to eighteen twenty-four and finally enjoy Beethoven conducting the Ninth.’

Mr Bell drew breath and stared at me.

‘Ah,’ said he, and he made a thoughtful face.

‘You did defeat Arthur Knapton, did you not?’

Mr Bell made a slightly more thoughtful face.

‘You didn't, did you?’ I said.

Mr Bell made so-so movements with his hands and fingers.

‘He is still on the loose, isn't he?’

Mr Bell nodded sadly.

‘Tell me the worst,’ I said.

And Mr Bell did.

‘As you will know,’ said Mr Bell, ‘when I set out to solve a case, I do so with precision and an eye for the finest detail. I leave nothing to chance, I am scrupulous, I am exact, I—’

‘And I will have to stop you there,’ I said, ‘because, as
you
have said, you did
not
apprehend Mr Arthur Knapton.’

‘It was not for the want of trying,’ said Mr Bell, ‘and not for lack of skills upon my part.’

‘Did you blow up the Crystal Palace?’ I asked.

Mr Bell made that thoughtful face once more.

‘Did you save Queen Victoria from assassination, Mr Bell?’

‘Yes, I did that,’ said himself.

‘But at some cost to the capital of the British Empire?’

‘Certain landmarks that were there are no longer there,’ my friend confessed, and then he went on to tell me the whole story.

It certainly did not lack for excitement, nor for ingenuity upon the part of my friend. Indeed, he came up with several ploys and stratagems which I have no hesitation in saying had to be unique in the field of crime solution. The business regarding Her Majesty the Queen and the see-through aspidistra plant was little less than inspired. And his employment of radio waves during the period he spent in suspended animation, prior to erecting the full-size facsimile of the Forth Bridge, was a work of genius.

I must emphasise my admiration for the way he dealt with the conundrum of the Greek lady-boy and the travelling rhinoceros impersonator. And his bravery when confronted by quite so many fire-walkers whilst he foiled the evil intentions of the psychic triplets should have earned him the Order of the Garter at the very least.

I oooohed and aaaahed and applauded when he spoke of how he dug the underground tunnels and perfected the means to walk upside down on the ceiling. And his description of how he confounded the army of killer ants was so funny that I was hard-pressed to keep my luncheon down.

‘But you did not catch Arthur Knapton?’ I said, when he paused to take breath and drink water.

‘Not as such,’ replied my friend. ‘But let me tell you about the countess and the sentient trifle.’

And so it went on for some time. I would have liked, of course, to have related my friend's tale in full here. But as I lacked for pen and paper when he told it, I did not take it all down in detail, so I would hesitate to repeat it from memory lest I neglect some salient detail or miscount the number of dwarves.

And as, of course, I was
not
personally involved in these particular adventures, I would not wish to ‘inflict’ them upon the unsuspecting reader.
^*

‘But you did
not
catch Arthur Knapton,’ I said, when all was said and done.

‘Regretfully, no,’ said my friend, a-shaking his head. ‘But I am confident that I will next time.’ Mr Bell lowered his voice and added, ‘Because I will
have to
next time.’

‘What was that?’ I said.

‘Next time will be the last time,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘The very last time to stop him. If I fail next time, then that is that.’

‘And we can go and see Beethoven?’

Mr Bell shook his head once more. ‘If I get it wrong next time, it will be all up for us and we will never travel anywhere through time again.’

‘But we have agreed that I must,’ I said, ‘because I must die by both barrels of Lord Brentford's fowling piece.’

‘If I fail,’ said Mr Bell, ‘then
all
will be confounded.’

‘Please explain what you mean by that,’ I said.

‘Recall how I told you that Arthur Knapton escaped in the pedal-driven ornithopter that was hidden inside the artificial elephant?’

‘And you pursued him by means of an improvised rocket pack comprising two fire extinguishers?’

‘Quite so. Well, it was during our confrontation on London Bridge—’

‘Which you blew up.’

‘That was not entirely my fault. Regardless, it was during this confrontation that he cursed me for foiling his plans to assassinate Her Majesty and plant himself upon the throne of England, and he vowed to take a terrible revenge upon my person and upon all the people of England.’

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ I said to Mr Bell. ‘You certainly got him riled.’

Mr Bell chewed on his bottom lip. ‘Well, he vowed a terrible vengeance,’ he said. ‘For eighteen eighty-five.’

‘That year rings a bell,’ said I.

‘It should,’ said Mr Bell, ‘because it is the year that the Martians invaded Earth.’

‘And failed,’ I said, ‘because we all know what happens to Martians on Earth – they die from Earthly bacteria. That is called an Eternal Verity, by the way – something we simply know to be true, cos it is.’

‘Indeed,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘Except this time, in eighteen eighty-five, the Martians will
not
fall prey to Earthly bacteria. Because this time those Martians will all be inoculated with penicillin by Mr Arthur Knapton, Pearly Emperor and apparently also King of Mars.’

‘Oh your dear dead mother,’ I said.

‘Oh my dear dead mother indeed,’ said Mr Cameron Bell.

*
And we all know how it works. In theory. (R. R.)

*
Outrageous! (R. R.)

36

‘
n eighteen eighty-five,’ said Mr Bell, ‘I was a student at Oxford. Happily, the Martians never laid waste to the country that far north.’