The Sprouts of Wrath (23 page)

“I’m not Luke Skywalker,” said Jim, “but the force is with us, I suppose.”

“Oh yes, indubitably, Jim.”

“Right then.” Pooley eased back on the throttle and in fits and starts they approached the opening. “Please extinguish your cigarettes and fasten your seat-belts.”

“Now is hardly the moment for levity. As soon as we are into the entrance hall, switch off the engine.”

Jim was suddenly more doubtful than ever. “But we will float up again surely?”

“And lodge under the entrance arch.”

That, thought Jim, was as iffy a proposition as any he had yet known. “In for a penny then.” The car bumped down on to the walkway with a squeal of tyres, bounced up again uncontrollably, the engine faltered and made coughing sounds. Jim gripped the wheel. “We’re going to crash.”

“Hold on tight, Jim.
Now!
” Pooley slammed on the brakes, tore the key from the ignition and made his personal recommendations to his Maker. The car ground along a side wall raising a stream of sparks and mangling metal, swerved, stopped dead and almost at once began to rise. There was a sickening crunch as it struck the top of the entrance hall. And then, a blessed silence. “Bravo, Jim, you did it!”

“I did?” Pooley’s face appeared over the wheel, nose crooked, a facsimile of the now legendary Chad. “I did do it, I really did.”

“Right, now we have wasted more than enough time — to work.”

“Right,” said Inspectre Hovis, “we have wasted more than enough time.” Rune’s Raiders stood in a dubious huddle before the great gasometer, fingering an arsenal of weaponry they were certainly unqualified even to handle, let alone raise in anger. Hovis cocked his old service revolver. “Now, Rune,” he said. “Open it up, there’s a good fellow.”

“Open it up,” Rune slowly remouthed the Inspectre’s words, “open it up.”

“We have the element of surprise to our favour.” Hovis turned to address the nervous constables. “Now, gentlemen, I do not want a bloodbath on my hands. We do not know how many of them there are in there. No-one, and I mean no-one, shoots anyone until I give the order, do I make myself understood?” The boot-blackened faces bobbed up and down in the darkness. Constable Meek straightened his Rambo-style headband and wondered which end of his Kalashnikov was the killing end. “OK, Rune, take us in.”

“Yes indeed,” said the Perfect Master, “indeed yes. Take us in, now let me see …”

“Now let me see.” Professor Slocombe studied the blueprint. He and Pooley stood within the shadow of the entrance hall; above them the Hartnell Air Car roosted quietly. “We go this way, Jim. Now try to keep your bearings, we may have to return at some speed.”

Pooley tucked the car’s ignition key safely away in his top pocket. “Exactly where are we going to?” he asked.

“To the very heart, Jim, the very hub. The core which lies at the centre of the arena, this area.” He pointed to the blueprint.

“But there’s nothing there but a black spot.”

“Indeed.” The Professor nodded gravely. “This way now, follow me.”

The two men passed between the titanic structures. Their entire design and geometry was strange, unnatural, alien. Jim ran his hand along a handrail and speedily withdrew it. “It hums,” he said, “it vibrates.”

“It knows we are here.”

Jim shuddered. “And what’s it all made of, Professor? This isn’t metal or glass, what is it?”

“Horn, bone, chitin, it is organic,” said the sage. “I don’t think this stadium was built, in the true sense of the word. I think it was grown.”

“Then it is …” the word did not come easily to Pooley’s lips, “… alive?”

“Not quite, it is dormant, moribund, if you like, it sleeps.”

“I do not like.” Jim tottered along behind the Professor, who moved with certain, long strides. “What when it wakes?”

“That, my dear Jim, is what we are here to prevent. We must not allow Kaleton to activate it, animate it, whatever you will.”

“This big shot of his that will ring out across the universe?”

“The very same. A shot of energy, some activating chemical agent, or pre-programmed codification. Whatever it might be we must prevent it.”

“It’s ever so quiet,” said Jim. “There must be thousands of people up here, how come we haven’t seen anybody?”

“I would suggest the use of a soporific gas, introduced into the air-conditioning at night to prevent any of the athletes wandering. We will not enter the dormitories to find out. Now wait.”

Jim looked up, somehow they had now entered the great arena. As usual Jim had been doing too much talking and not enough paying attention. He was lost, and now he was speechless. A low gasp arose simultaneously from two throats. They had entered a world of dream. Above them spread the weather-dome but from below it did not look like a glass canopy, more like a transparent membrane, breathing gently. And the arena itself, its scale was daunting, impossible to take in at a single viewing. The seating rose in great rings, rank upon rank, tier upon tier about a
circus maximus
built for Titans. The scope and symmetry was fearsome, yet it was fascinating.

“Oh indeed,” said Professor Slocombe. “Oh yes, indeed.”

“Why?” Pooley asked. “Why do all this if it is only meant to destroy?”

“It can destroy a million people here at a single go. But the whole point is that the entire world will be watching. More people watch the start of the games than any other single event, they would have to have something to look at.”

“It is inhuman, all too big, no human architect was a part of this.”

“No, Jim, it is as if all previous architecture was just a dry run for this. Baalbek, the pyramids, the temples of the Incas, the great cathedrals, all leading towards,” he gestured to include all that he could, “a temple for the gods.”

Jim’s head swam. “You are talking about religion again.”

“Not religion. An ideology perhaps, a greater understanding, a greater knowledge, but not one born of men. Worship of his gods has driven man to his most abominable of crimes, but also to his greatest of achievements. But this is not the work of man, but that of a higher order of being.”

“Esoterica was never my strong point, but this is the work of the devil.”

“It is all here, Jim, a masterplan, a great formula, the culmination of a hundred thousand years of accumulated thought and knowledge.”

“Then we are finished, Kaleton told the truth. Those that would walk with the gods require somewhat superior footwear. Let’s go out now, Professor, warn the army or something, take our chances on the ground.”

“No, Jim.” The Professor held up his hand. “All this can act for good as well as for evil. We can save the games, save mankind. This is the product of High Magick. Knowledge is neither good nor evil, it is in how it is applied.”

“As ever you have grasped but a tiny morsel of reality,” came a voice from everywhere and nowhere. “You think to construct a map of the universe, having nothing but the plan of your own backyard.” Pooley turned about in circles. The Professor stared into space. “Proud little man,” the voice continued, “puffed up with your own importance, creating God in your own image.”

“I am unable to see you,” said the Professor. “Will you show yourself or must I call out to you in the darkness?” The air buzzed with an unnatural electricity.

“Proud little man,” said the voice.

“Do you fear me so much that you dare not show yourself?”

“Fear is a human concept, Professor.”

“As is love. But you would know nothing of that.”

“Love, fear, hatred, all masks and blinkers, walls of delusion hiding a higher reality.”

Pooley strained his eyes to see something, anything, but the stadium swept away in all directions, fading into hazy perspectives. The owner or owners of the voice remained hidden to view. Jim shivered. There was a terrible B-movie banality about Kaleton’s conversation. One which, to Jim’s extensive knowledge of the genre, generally terminated in such phrases as “so die, puny earthling,” or something of a similarly unpleasant ilk.

“What do you want here, Professor? Have you come to plead for your precious hurnanity? Or perhaps for yourself alone?”

“On the contrary, I have come to issue you a challenge. There are old scores to be settled.”

“Old scores? I am intrigued.” The voice came close at Pooley’s elbow and the lad leapt back, keeping his failing bladder in check. Kaleton was sitting not two yards away in one of the rear stadium seats. Near enough to leap upon and kill, thought Jim, although he didn’t feel personally up to the challenge. “I thought perhaps you came in peace for all mankind.” The mocking tone in Kaleton’s death-rattle voice grated on Jim’s nerves, but the Professor seemed oblivious to it.

“Hardly that, Kaleton. I come to exact retribution. To punish you for your crimes and to finish a job which should have been finished a long time ago.”

Laughter exploded from Kaleton’s hideous face and the stench of his breath reached Jim, curling his nostrils and crossing his eyes. “And how do you mean to go about it? You are in my world now, I can smash you whenever I choose.”

“Perhaps and perhaps not, but hardly a victory upon a grand scale. I propose a far more noble scheme and one which I think might appeal to your sense of grandiosity as well as of justice.”

“Speak on.”

“I propose a battle of champions, to be held here and now.”

“Champions, battle, what is all this?”

“The protagonists are well known to each of us, light against darkness, good against evil, your man against mine.”

“Men? What men?”

“The sleeping Kings of Brentford!” said Professor Slocombe.

“What?” Kaleton’s head shrank into his shoulders, his chest bulging out to receive it, then he sprang from his seat to land upon all-fours. “You know of this?”

“Of the old battle, of the sanctuary, yes I know.”

Kaleton bounced and shook. Low howls and guttural sounds broke from his twisted mouth. Jim wondered where the lavs were. With a shudder, Kaleton rose once more upon two feet. He stared at the Professor, trembling and shaking. “There was a battle once,” he whispered, “long, long ago, when your people and mine fought, but then …”

“But then you were defeated.”

“Defeated, never! Look where you stand, Professor, does this look like defeat to you?”

“Then you have nothing to fear, you may enjoy your sweet revenge.” With that the Professor turned upon his heel and strode off down the long walkway towards the arena. “This is my challenge, Kaleton. Take it if you dare.”

Jim watched Kaleton. He was perched upon his crooked heels, frozen as if lost in thought. In reminiscence, perhaps? The Professor strode on. Jim glanced down, the Gladstone bag was there at his feet. The old man had gone off without it. In his recklessness he had surely left himself undefended. Jim was moved to take action, but lacked the wherewithal. Should he open the bag? Chuck the whole lot at Kaleton? Or simply run like mad?

Without warning Kaleton shot past him, bowling him from his feet. Jim felt that hideous strength, the raw elemental power. It fairly put the wind up him. Climbing into the nearest seat Jim flopped, powerless to do bugger all except look on.

Moving with a fearsome energy Kaleton bounded down the walkway after the Professor. “Raise your warriors!” he crowed. “Raise your dead king, your champion! This time, the reckoning will be swift and bloody.”

Pooley sank into his seat and sought his hip-flask. And now Professor Slocombe was standing upon the artificial turf of the sports ground, arms raised towards the sky. Kaleton bounded about him like a monstrous hound, calling insults and provocations. And light was growing in the arena. A curious glow illuminated the two tiny figures, foreshortened to Jim’s fearful gaze. Pooley popped the cork from the hip flask. “I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight,” he wondered.

Professor Slocombe mouthed the syllables of an ancient spell:

“‘And good King Bran had a battle axe

King Balin a mighty sword

And the warrior Kings rode out to war

And they met at the river’s ford’.”

And there came, as sounds and as movements, a great restlessness within the very bowels of the earth, a rumbling beneath the streets of Brentford. Old Pete’s dog Chips set up a plaintive howling which went unheard by his snoring master, the Hartnell Hear-it-all having been switched off for the night. At the pumping station, the mighty beam engine gasped in a lost Victorian voice. And beneath the water-tower something stirred. Beneath that tower of stone, forces long slumbering came into wake-fulness. A sound, a call, an awakening.

Outside the teepee at the bottom of the garden, two braves ceased their dance and stood sweating beneath the stars. Their faces shone. “And now it begins,” said Paul Geronimo, “the dance is over, the great old ones return, now it begins.”

And so did it begin. From behind the yellow varnish of old portraits unviewed for a century in council cellars, faces gazed forth, eyes blinked open. Musty tomes and librams heaved, pages turned. From out the coffers of the museum, dust-dry hands reached up to take musty weapons, the rotting halberds, the lances and war-swords. Memories unstirred for a millennium, memories hidden in old walls and crumbling fallen waterfronts, in grassy mounds, in dolmens, long barrows, hill-forts, earthworks and holy groves. Memories. And the warriors beyond memory awakened, returned. The warriors arose from their unmarked graves.

And through the walls and floors, the stairwells and window casements from out of the worn flagstones and cobbled courts, the warriors breathed life. And up through the tarmac which smothered the old thoroughfares and swallowed up the ground of Brentford where once stretched dew-dappled hedgerows and corn-fields mellow with golden harvest reaching out to the gently flowing Thames, came Bran.

Bran. Bran the brave and just, the slayer of men. Bran with that great head of his, which still spoke on long years after it had been parted from his body. Bran with those great arms of his, which had broken men and cradled babies. Bran with his wild blue eyes, and even wilder hair-do. Bran the blessed. Bran of old England. King Bran of Brentford.