The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag (27 page)

‘Bring
him to justice, right.’

‘Right,
but from what you’ve been telling me, Billy Barnes is a pretty smart cookie.’

The guy
shrugged. ‘Not that smart,’ he said.

The telephone began to ring.

But it
was not the one on Lazlo’s desk.

It was
one of the many on that of Blazer Dyke.

‘Mr
Dyke,’ said Mr Dyke.

‘It’s
me, sir,’ came the voice of a young man. ‘I’m outside Barnes’ penthouse.’

‘Good,’
said Blazer Dyke. ‘You will find a duplicate key beneath the potted palm to
the right of the door.’

There
was a pause, then —’Found it, sir.’

‘Good,
then enter the apartment cautiously. I have Barnes on the monitor, he is still
in the lounge doing unspeakable things to his chauffeur.’

‘He’s a
bastard, sir.’

‘He is.
Now just make sure he’s a dead bastard. You’d better shoot the chauffeur, too.
She’s seen and heard far too much.’

‘Do you
want me to download Barnes before I kill him, sir?’

‘Absolutely
not. I do
not
want Billy Barnes at loose in the Necronet.’

‘As you
say, sir. A bullet through each. Quick and clean.’

‘I’ll
stay on the line, keep me informed. I’ll watch you on the monitor.’

‘I’m
going in then, sir.’

‘Good.’

Pause.
Then —’I’m in the hall.’

‘Good.
He’s still busy at the chauffeur. Go into the lounge and take him by surprise.’

Pause.

Then
greater pause, then —’There’s nobody here, sir.’

‘Go
into the lounge, they’re in there.’

‘I
am
in the lounge, sir.’

‘You’re
not in the lounge, I can’t see you on the screen.’

‘Perhaps
he
is
in the lounge,’ said the voice of Billy Barnes. ‘But perhaps you
can’t see him.’

Blazer
Dyke looked up in horror. Billy Barnes stood before his desk. He was holding a
gun. ‘Hand me the phone,’ whispered Billy. ‘Don’t say another word.’

‘How—’

‘Not
one word.’ Billy took the receiver and covered the mouthpiece.

‘But
you’re—’ Blazer pointed to the monitor screen where the image of Billy Barnes
continued with his dirty work.

‘The
wonders of science,’ said Billy. ‘A little something I prepared earlier.
Remember, you did tell me to be careful, and I have been careful. Very careful.
I kept a wary eye open for any more of those little micro cameras that caught
me out the first time. And what did I find? You’d installed some in my
penthouse. So I hacked into your security system. My would-be assassin is
standing in an empty lounge while you watch a performance F recorded yesterday
and began playing through your system an hour ago. My would-be assassin is
there, and your would-be assassin is here.’

‘No,’
said Blazer. Wait—’

‘Sir,’
came the voice of the young man down the phone. ‘There’s no-one here, sir. I’ve
searched the entire place.’

Billy
kept the mouthpiece covered. He held the phone towards Blazer Dyke. ‘Tell him
to look in the big cupboard in the lounge. Tell him to bring all the files he
finds there.’

‘Files?
I don’t understand.’

‘Just
tell him, and I will be merciful with you.’

Blazer
Dyke took the telephone. ‘Go to the big cupboard in the lounge,’ he said. ‘Bring
me all the files you find there.’

‘OK,
sir,’ said the young man.

Billy
replaced the receiver, then he fished a rather gory-looking remote controller
from his pocket and pointed it at the monitor screen. Why don’t we see how he
gets on?’ Billy said.

Blazer
Dyke watched the young man cross the lounge. Saw him open the big cupboard.
Heard his voice as he spoke into his mobile phone, relayed to the monitor by
bugs in the apartment. ‘I’m at the cupboard, sir, opening it, looking inside.
It’s dark in here, sir, there’s no light.’

Blazer
looked on as the young man stepped into the cupboard and was lost to view on
the screen.

‘I can’t
see any files, sir. There’s an odd smell. Rotten, it is. Hang on, there’s
something here. Something white. It’s a… no… wait. What is this, it’s
moving. It’s—’

And
then, ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaagh!’

And
then silence.

‘Oh
dear,’ said Billy. ‘He seems to have met with a tragic accident.’

Blazer
Dyke’s hand moved slowly beneath his desk.

‘No,’
said Billy. ‘Hands up. No touching of alarm buttons.’

‘Can’t
we talk about this?’ Blazer Dyke had a sweat on now. ‘Promotion, a rise in
salary—’

‘No,’
said Billy. ‘I do believe that you cannot be trusted. I tried out your chair
six months ago. It suited me then, it will suit me now.’

‘Are
you going to’ — Blazer Dyke’s voice was a whisper — ‘download me?’

You
must have heard me say that.’

‘I did,’
said Blazer Dyke. ‘You said it to your chauffeur, before you—’ He glanced at
the remote control.

‘I’m a
control freak,’ said Billy. ‘And I just can’t be trusted, either. It’s the
Necronet for you, yes.’

‘Thanks
at least for that,’ said Blazer Dyke.

‘I
hardly think thanks are in order. You will be despatched directly to the
hospital facility.’

‘No!’
Blazer shook his head. ‘I altered the programme. It’s a gas chamber now.’

‘Bummer,’
said Billy, as he clubbed down Blazer Dyke. ‘But he that liveth by the sword of
technology, shall die by that very sword.’

Poets On Holiday

Where the beach meets the sea,

And the family tree,

Gets a little bit wet about the roots,

The poets skip round,

And lie on the ground,

Spoiling their sensible suits.

Where the pierhead flag,

Is beginning to drag,

And winter is coming to town,

The poets in flats,

Sit huddled with cats,

Their jaws going up and down.

Where the old Channel ferry,

In shades of white and cherry,

And its funnels in a dirty coloured green,

Comes sailing into port,

With the rations running short.

And the poets on the decks,

With the lifebelts round their necks,

Moaning about facilities,

There’s no paper in the utilities,

While the meat was under-cooked,

And the cabins over-booked,

And generally making a bloody nuisance of themselves.

Poets being just a bloody nuisance.

Then it’s time to set sail on your own,

Go forth,

Strike out,

And so on.

19

A
violent man will respond poorly to

a gift of flowers.

REG
MOMBASSA

Lazlo Woodbine replaced his
telephone receiver, made final notes upon a sheet of paper, then pushed it
across his desk to the young man in the bowler hat.

What’s
this?’ the young man asked.

‘I’ve
called in a lot of favours for you, kid,’ said the great detective. ‘These are
the directions to your ancient mariner. He lives in a seaport called Arkham.’

The
young man read the directions aloud.

‘Go
through office door. Turn left, down stairway into street. Turn right. Turn
right again into alleyway beside Fangio’s bar. At end of alleyway enter the
Desert of No Return, cross desert until you reach the Mountains of Madness, go
through the Cave of Ultimate Horrors to the Land of the Screaming Skulls. Then
ask directions from there.’

There
was a pause.

Brief,
but pregnant.

What is
this crap?’ the young man asked.

Lazlo
Woodbine smiled a certain smile. ‘It’s your genre, kid, not mine. Like I say, I’m
strictly “mean streets”. I wouldn’t go in for all that Mountains of Madness
fol-de-rol.’

‘Nor
me. Arkham, did you say? I’ll think my way there at once.’

Lazlo
put up a hand. ‘It won’t work.’

Why
not?’

‘Because
you’ve never been to Arkham. You have no memory to call up in order to create
the place. In order to get to Arkham you’ll just have to travel through all
those ludicrous places. There’s no way round it, kid.’

‘There
has to be some way round it.’

‘Kid,
consider what you’ve already learned. This Necronet of yours occupies the same
hypothetical space occupied by dreams, right? The dream space, the weird space,
the
mundus magicus.
This is the place where ideas come from, where they
originate. I’m a fictitious detective, I came from the dreaming mind of an
author. That’s the world I inhabit. And I enter the world of my reader’s
imagination. Each reader sees me a little differently, visualizes my surroundings
a little differently, creates a slightly different world for me to inhabit. But
all in here,’ Lazlo tapped his temple. ‘And it’s all one world, really.’

‘I don’t
understand what you’re trying to say.’

‘I’m
trying to say that you shouldn’t be here, kid. What Billy Barnes and Necrosoft
are doing is wrong. I’m not saying that technology is wrong. But to bridge the
two worlds, the outside world and the inner, the physical and the metaphysical,
that’s gonna blow all the circuits.’

‘I
still don’t get it.’

‘OK. I’ll
say it once more, and I’ll say it plain. You got downloaded, right? You’re no
longer inside your own head, right?’

‘Right.’

‘So
whose head do you think you’re in now?’

‘I’m
not in anybody’s head. I’m in cyberspace. Inside the Necronet.’

‘And where
is
that,
exactly?’

‘I don’t
know,
exactly.’

‘Then I’ll
tell you where it is.’

‘Go on.’

‘Buddy,
you’re now inside God’s head.’

I must
confess that I was rattled. Severely rattled. When I bade farewell to Lazlo,
left his office, turned left, went down the stairway, turned right into the
street and right again into the alleyway by Fangio’s bar, I was severely
rattled.

Sure, I
knew, as we all know, that without our dreams and our imaginings, mankind
wouldn’t be mankind. But to think that when we dream, we actually enter the
mind of God, that was a new one on me. And that was one
big
number.

So what
was I doing now? I looked down at my feet. Walking around inside God’s head?

And for
that matter, why was I wearing wellington boots?

I
plucked at my apparel.

And an
evening suit!

I felt
at my head.

And a
bowler hat!

I’d
never thought that lot up.

‘Oh
dear,’ I said, ‘perhaps I’m beginning to lose it. Perhaps I’m going mad. That
won’t do, a mad thought inside God’s head.’

And
then it hit me. As it would. About what Lazlo had meant when he talked about
blowing all the circuits. If Billy and his cohorts at Necrosoft were
downloading people into the Necronet, they were unwittingly downloading them
into the mind of God. It would be like God having multiple personality
disorder, or being possessed by demons. God would become a paranoid
schizophrenic.

God
would eventually go mad.

I
looked up the alleyway and down it. Behind me, the streets of Manhattan, before
me the Desert of No Return. There was no-one around, so I dropped to my knees.

‘Dear
God,’ I said, putting my hands together. ‘Now I know in the past it’s always
been me asking you for things. But I’ve been learning a lot of lessons
recently, about give and take, and stuff like that. So I don’t want to ask you
for anything now. The reason I’m praying like this is to tell you that Mr
Woodbine has put me in the picture, about me being in your mind, and
everything. And I just wanted to say that I’m going to get out. And when I do,
I’ll get everyone else out as well and leave your mind at peace. Peace of mind,
right? Well, that’s all I’m saying, I’m not asking for anything, I’m just
volunteering my services. I’ll do my best. OK?

Love
Robert.

Amen.’

I
crossed myself, stood up and dusted down the trousers of my evening suit. ‘Right,’
I said. ‘If it has to be the Desert of No Return, then it has to be. But watch
out, Billy Barnes, because I’m coming to get you.