The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived (12 page)

‘No,’
said the large controller. ‘If you wish to go walkabout, then walkabout you
shall go. With
me.
I am on my way to inspect the relocation bays. You
will accompany me.

‘Good-oh,’
said Norman, without any trace of enthusiasm entering his voice.

‘You
will learn much.’ The large controller leaned forward, stretched up and pushed
the very top lift button. Way beyond Norman’s reach it was. ‘Much.’

‘Much,’
said Norman.

‘Much
indeed. Many are there here who have never made my acquaintance. Many who have
never known the thrill of listening to me speak. You will learn much. Very
much.’

The
large controller peered down upon the red-haired youth. He was rubbing at his
ear with one hand and picking his nose with a finger from the other.

‘Or
probably in your case not very much at all.’

After a
space of time which was neither very long nor very short, but somewhere in
between, the lift stopped suddenly with a clunk and a click and a ding of the
bell.

The
doors opened and Norman, who was still rubbing his ear, but no longer picking
his nose (he being at the rolling, preparatory-to-flicking stage), found
himself staring out at something very strange indeed.

‘What
is that out there?’ he managed in an awestruck kind of a tone. ‘The relocation
bays.’ The large controller strode from the lift to whatever lay beyond.
‘Follow me.

Norman
dithered. He had to get out of here. Pass on his terrible knowledge about the fatal
electrical dischargings to God. Or to somebody. He had to do
something.

‘Get a
move on,’ called the large controller.

‘Coming,’
said Norman.

What was out there was
large and noisy. Very large and very noisy. And very brass. It was a monstrous,
steam-driven, oily-smelling kind of a contrivance and there were acres of it.
All in the open beneath the big black sky.

It was
all burnished flywheels and ball governors and throbbing pistons and fan belts
and big round glass gauges with flickering needles and pipes going every which
way and bolts and rivets and bits and bobs and all sorts. It was Jules Verne
meets Isambard Kingdom Brunel round at Cecil B. De Mille’s house.

And
there really were acres of it. It spread away, a grinding and a chugging and an
emitting of small steam puffs to every direction. There were gantries and
catwalks in pierced cast iron and little men in boiler-suits, of the type you
normally associate with steam preservation societies, bumbled about with oil
cans, greasing nipples and ragging away at things.

‘What
does it all do?’ shouted Norman above the mechanical hubbub.

‘It
powers the big sky nozzles,’ the large controller explained in a large voice.
‘The furnaces pressure up the boilers which work the turbines that run the
generators that supply the energy to the big sky nozzles.’

‘What
do the big sky nozzles do?’ bawled Norman.

‘They
broadcast the frequencies that you program into your Karma-scope. You have read
the handbook, I trust.’

‘I’ve
been meaning to.’

‘Yes,
I’ll bet you have.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Never
mind. Each soul exists upon a slightly different electrical frequency. You
calculate this frequency by going through the procedures that Jack explained
to you. Punch it into your Karmascope, which relays it directly to one of the
big sky nozzles. The big sky nozzle broadcasts the frequency, the required soul
is detached from the hovering throng encircling the sun, sucked up the nozzle,
reprocessed and reallocated, then spat back down to Earth to its next
recipient. Are you paying attention, boy?’

Norman
actually was, but his thoughts were all elsewhere.

‘Something
on your mind?’ the large controller asked.

‘Does
God ever come down here himself to inspect the machinery?’ Norman asked. ‘Only
I was hoping to say hello to Him.’

The
withering gaze withered him once more. ‘Follow me.’

‘Yes,
sir.’

Norman
followed the large controller. As the big man strode on, Norman’s eyes darted
to the left and right in the pathetic hope that he might spy out a sign reading
STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN, or a door marked GOD’S OFFICE KNOCK AND ENTER.

But he
didn’t.

He did
come at last to a door, however. It was not the kind of door that looked as if
it led to the office of God. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was a big black
greasy iron door with lots of rivets and several mighty bolts.

The
large controller began to draw them. One, two, thee.

‘What’s
through there?’ Norman asked.

‘You’ll
see.’

‘I’m
not sure I really want to.’ Norman took a step back, but the large controller
turned with quite remarkable speed considering his bulk and caught the lad once
more by the ear.

‘I
ought to be getting off to work now,’ squirmed Norman. ‘Oh please let me go.

With
his free hand the large controller drew the final bolt and pulled upon the iron
door, releasing an exhalation of fetid air. Norman fought and struggled but to
no avail whatever.

‘I
fear’, said the large controller, ‘that you have done exactly what you should
not have done and discovered something that you should not have discovered.’

‘No,’
blubbered Norman. ‘Not me, sir.’

‘Yes, you
sir. And so regrettably I shall have to “let you go” as they say.

‘No,
please wait … I—’ But the terrible door was now open sufficiently wide to
admit the passage of one medium-sized struggler with a red Beatle cut and a
grey school uniform.

‘Aaaaaagh!’
went Norman plummeting into darkness and downwardness.

Slam
went the terrible door and clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk went its mighty bolts an
increasing distance above.

Echoes
and darkness and oblivion and a really rotten way to end your first day at work.

Or your
very existence.

Or
whatever.

12

‘He says he wants to speak
to someone in authority,’ said Tuppe to Cornelius as they sat a-puffing and
a-panting in a barn. The small grey off-worlder with the large nose and the fir
larger head sat a-puffing and a-panting between them. But he did it in a
different register and rhythm. As might well be expected.

‘Someone
trustworthy,’ Tuppe continued. ‘He says he wants to speak to Erich Von
Daniken.’

‘Oh
right. Good idea. Have you asked him yet whether he brings us greetings from a
distant star, and whether we should all lay down our nuclear weapons, live in
peace with one another and share the wisdom of our benign space brothers?’

‘No,’
said Tuppe. ‘I didn’t think to. Should I ask him now?’

‘No,
Tuppe. You see I noticed the jack-knifed low-loader that this joker’s flying
saucer fell off. It had the legend DR DOVESTON’S WONDER SHOW plastered all over
it. He’s part of a fairground turn, Tuppe. You should have known this, you grew
up with the circus.’

‘Is
this true?’ Tuppe asked the grey-faced big-nose.

the
grey-faced big-nose replied. In Romany.

‘He
says it’s not true,’ said Tuppe. ‘Well, some of it is. He
did
fill off
the back of the low-loader, but only because he crash-landed on it first.’

‘A
likely story.’

‘You
can be a terrible cynic at times,’ said Tuppe.

Woo,
Woo, Woo, Woo, came the sound of police car sirens once again. ‘We had best run
again,’ said Cornelius.

‘I
don’t know why I’m running, I’m not wanted for anything.’

‘You’re
quite right,’ said Cornelius. ‘You stay here with ET and I’ll run on alone.’

‘Stuff
that,’ said Tuppe.

said
ET.

‘He
says “Stuff that too”,’ Tuppe explained. ‘Let’s all run together.’ And so run
together they did.

It was
a nice day for it. Nice countryside also. Wobbly wheat and dappled hedgerows.
And those spinneys that might be copses but probably turn out to be thickets
when you get up close to them.

Very
nice.

Very
agrarian. And bucolic. Agrarian and bucolic. And praedial. And agrestic. That
sort of thing.

‘Which
way?’ Tuppe asked, when they had finally done with that sort of thing and
reached a road.

Cornelius
was all but gone with the exhaustion. He had been carrying Tuppe on his
shoulders and the little grey space man under one arm. ‘Any way,’ he gasped.

said
the little grey space man.

‘He
says he can hear a car coming,’ said Tuppe.

‘I
can’t hear anything.’ Cornelius strained his ears. ‘He can’t hear what colour
it is, I suppose.’

said
the space man.

‘Red,’
said Tuppe.

‘Gettaway,
Red!’ Cornelius caught his breath and hung onto it. The sound of an approaching
vehicle reached his ears, it appeared above the crest of a distant hill and
rushed towards him. The vehicle was a car. It was a
red
car.

‘Don’t
say lucky guess,’ said Tuppe.

‘I
wasn’t going to, I was going to say hide at the side of the road and when I
give the signal get into the back seat on the passenger side.’