The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag (30 page)

‘All,’
said Billy, without hesitation.

‘All
seems very fair to me.’

‘It
does?’

‘I need
someone to assume control. Someone ruthlessly ambitious. Someone who will let
nothing and no-one stand in their way. Someone such as you.’

‘But
why should you offer this to me? This company is yours.’

‘I don’t
want the company, Billy. I want you to have the company. Ownership of the
company means nothing to me. It’s what the company does that matters.’

‘The
Necronet.’

‘Exactly.
The PM wants to nationalize Necrosoft. He wants the government and Necrosoft to
become one. That is my wish too. Let both become one, but with you at the helm.’

‘That
was my intention,’ said Billy, ‘should I have failed to locate you.’

‘Well,
go for it, my boy. Spread the Necronet around the world. Encompass the globe
with it. Download millions and millions and millions—’

‘To
what ultimate end?’

‘Call
me an ecologist. Call me one who cares about the planet. All this overcrowding,
all this pollution. We have it in our power to save the world.’

‘Or
destroy it,’ said Billy.

‘I hope
I don’t detect a twinge of conscience there.’

‘Not a
bit of it. I have no concern for the herd, drive them all to the abattoir, I
don’t care.’

‘Not
all,’ said Henry. ‘The prime stock you keep for breeding purposes.’

‘I see,’
said Billy, who didn’t.

You don’t,’
said Henry, who did. ‘There are too many people, Billy. Too many little people.
Too many nonentities. And they jabber away, don’t they? In their banal little
voices. Jabbering and jabbering. It drives you mad, doesn’t it? All that
jabbering. Imagine if they were all inside your head, all of them, jabbering at
once. It would drive you insane.’

‘It
would,’ said Billy.

‘So let’s
clear them all away to somewhere, so we don’t have to hear their jabbering.’

‘Into
the Necronet.’

‘Exactly.
And then the world is a better place for us, isn’t it?’

‘Much
better,’ said Billy. ‘And so you’ll let me control Necrosoft, and ultimately—’

You’ll
control the world, Billy. You will become the World Leader.’

‘And
you will remain in the background?’

‘I
always remain in the background. That is what.
I
do best.’

Who are
you?’ asked Billy. ‘Who are you, really?’

‘Come
on,’ said Henry Doors, ‘you’ve worked it out by now, surely?’

Billy
shook his head.

Where’s
that flyer I sent you?’

‘Flyer?’

‘It
came with the pleaser. In the package that led you to Brentford. I know you
still carry it with you as a keepsake.’

‘This?’
Billy produced a sheet of crumpled paper from his pocket.

‘Read
it out again, Billy.’

And
Billy read it out.

‘
S
urfing the web?

A
nyone can do that! Why not

T
ry something
really
radical?

A
ccess the dear departed by body-boarding the

N
ecronet.

N
ever has it been more

E
asy. All you have to do is

E
nter the Soul

D
atabase, by taking a left-hand turn off the

Information
S
uperhighway and

Y
ou’re there. In the Land

Of the Virtual Dead.

U
know it makes sense’

‘It
says it all, Billy, doesn’t it? The soul database, all those millions of souls,
no more heaven, no more hell, but endless paradise in cyberspace. Wish fulfilment,
fantasy fulfilment. The virtual dead, happy in their virtual wonderland.’

‘It
says more than that,’ said Billy.

What,
the acrostic? I couldn’t resist it, Billy, it made me laugh.’

‘The
acrostic, yes. I spotted it right away. Read the first letters down and you
have SATAN NEEDS YOU. A bit of a giveaway, perhaps.’

‘Just
my little joke. Something for the heavy metal fans.’

‘Tell
me, I need to know.’

‘Who I
am? What I am? Am I a man? Am I a god? Are you dreaming me or am I dreaming
you?’

You’re
not a god,’ said Billy. ‘But—’

‘I might
be the Devil? Satan? The Anti-Christ? Well, I might be. But if science is the
new religion, Billy, then surely I am its god.’

‘God,’ I said. ‘It’s dark
in here. No chance of a light, I suppose?’ I felt my way along. It was black.
Black as night. Black as the grave. Black as death?

Death
was the ultimate horror, surely?

The
walls were smooth, featureless. I had no idea how far I’d come or how far I had
to go. How far can a man walk into a mountain? Perhaps the cave just went on
and on and on. Like that Möbius strip of a town surrounding the virtual
hospital. No matter how far you went, you never went anywhere. Was that an
ultimate horror? Worse than death?

Or was
it madness? Or isolation? Or just being lost?

Or was
it to be powerless? Utterly powerless.

Utterly
without control.

While
something dreadful happened.

And you
couldn’t do a thing to stop it.

The elevation of Billy
Barnes to the exalted position of World Leader was timed to coincide with the
millennial celebrations. The plain people of Brent-ford watched it on TV. They’d
had their celebrations a couple of years earlier to avoid the rush, and were
looking forward to a period of peace and love and a night in with the telly.

The
fireworks and the motor cavalcades, the speeches and the swearing in, the
fly-pasts, and the raising of the one-world flag with its Necrosoft logo, all
made for an exciting watch. But not
that
exciting.

The
camera panned over the hundreds that lined the route of the motor cavalcade.
And it was hundreds now, not thousands. The population of America had been
almost halved. As had that of the rest of the world.

Not so
that of Brentford, however. The Brent-ford populace had little truck with
computers and Necronets. They’d seen all this kind of stuff before, so they
were just keeping their heads down in the hope that it would all blow over and
not involve them personally. As it had so often in the past.

Uncle
Brian watched the celebrations on TV.

‘Billy
Barnes,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I wonder if that’s the same Billy Barnes the
ancient mariner in my dream told me to warn my young nephew about. And come to
think of it, what ever
did
happen to my nephew?’

I stumbled out of the Cave
of Ultimate Horrors into a world of bright whiteness. I stopped and I blinked
and I took off my bowler hat and scratched at my head. Had I missed something,
or what?

I had
gone into the
right
Cave of Ultimate Horrors, hadn’t I? I hadn’t perhaps
gone into the Cave of Very Little Horror at all, but Just a Bit of Dark and
Dank, by mistake?

I
shrugged. And then it struck me that while I’d been wandering about in there,
something really dreadful might have happened. Something I might have
prevented, but had been utterly powerless to do so.

‘Phew,’
I said. What an ultimate horror that would be. Let’s trust that it isn’t the
case.’ And then I rubbed my hands together. ‘So,’ I continued cheerfully, ‘where’s
this Land of Screaming Skulls, then? Oh, shit!’

And I beheld Golgotha. Which is

the place of the skull. And I beheld

the multitude there. They that had

lived and now were dead. And they

cried unto me, saying woe unto

thee that hath deserted us.

Before
me a plain of white beneath a sky of likewise hueless hue. And on that plain
were human skulls. They clothed the earth and filled the sky. An endless,
endless, endless multitude. And they were not still, these dust-dry bones,
these husks of men, they were not still. They murmured and they moaned. They
gnashed their teeth and ground their jaws. They howled towards the heavens,
screaming out for justice and for life. These bones, these skulls, these angry
dead. They screamed and screamed and—

‘Er,
excuse me,’ I said, ‘does anyone here know the way to Arkham?’

Two Canny Scotsmen Out with a Kite

Two canny Scotsmen out with a kite,

Out with a kite and a string,

Checking the wind and checking the light,

Saying, I’ll have a wee pull if I might.

‘Look at the fine wee thing in flight.’

(It makes the Scotsmen sing.)

Two canny Scotsmen out for a drink,

Out for a drink and a chat,

Out if the telly’s gone on the blink,

Saying ‘It’s your round I think.’

‘Look at them washing the pots in the sink.’

(That’s where the Scots are at.)’

Two canny Scotsmen down for the day,

Down for the day and the match,

‘Aye but it’s great to see them play.

‘We always win both home and away.

‘Hoots the noo, that’s what I say.

‘And what do you think you’re looking

at, you Southern bastard? Take that!’ etc.
[3]

21

Killing is the ultimate simplification of life.

HUGH MACDIARMID
(1892—1978)

There was some
unpleasantness.

A skull
called Yorick thought he knew the way to Arkham. Well, not actually he himself,
as he’d never been there. But a skull friend of his had a friend who had. I was
not able to trace this particular friend, but I did encounter several other
skulls who were sure they knew Arkham and had even been there at some time in
the past.

Now I
pride myself upon my patience, I’m an easy going chap, but I was anxious, very
anxious, to get to Arkham and I was not in the mood to be trifled with. And I
know that throwing human skulls around is not a politically correct activity,
and I know that effing and blinding inside the mind of God is to say the least distasteful.
But I was anxious.

And I
did, eventually, learn the route to Arkham. It was just as I might have
imagined it. A fishing village, snuggled down into a bay. An ancient harbour
with old-fashioned whaling boats. Steep cobbled streets with gabled cottages
leading down to a quayside with an inn called Philthy Phrank’s. As I
approached, the rain began to fall.

And it
was coming down in buckets by the time I pushed open the rough-hewn oak door
and entered the crowded bar. Oak beams and bottle-glass windows, whisky stench
and sawdust floor, burnished copper, pewter tankards. A swordfish saw hung over
a counter, constructed from whale’s ribs.

I hung
my bowler hat upon a peg, shook raindrops from my shoulders, and grateful for
my wellington boots, I squeezed through the crush of seafaring men and made my
way to the bar.

Philthy
Phrank was just as I might have imagined him to be. Short and surly,
evil-smelling, dressed in rags and tattered. He glared at the world through his
one good eye and called no man his brother.

‘A pint
of Death by Cider,’ I said in a macho kind of a way.

Philthy
fixed me with his evil peeper. ‘Show me coin or get ye hence,’ he remarked.

I
thought it might be handy to have a pocket full of gold dubloons, so I reached
in a hand and fished out a couple.

Philthy
Phrank drew me a tankard of gut rot.

‘Cheers,’
I said.

‘Pox,’
said Philthy Phrank.

I
squinted about the bar. A grey pall of tobacco smoke cloaked the clientèle.
They wore sou’westers and rainproofs, favoured eye patches and timber legs,
muttered and mumbled and fidgeted about. In a not too distant corner I spied an
ancient mariner.

He was
just as I might have imagined him to be.

I eased
my way between the mutterers and mumblers and bade him a big how d’ya do. The
ancient one raised a gnarled appendage that had once been a hand and gestured
to a vacant chair with it. I pulled up the chair and sat right down.