The Witches of Chiswick (39 page)

It was the day before the day before the day before yesterday, and it was raining.

The rain peppered the glass rooftops of the Great Exhibition. The Great Exhibition was in its original location, Hyde Park. The year was eighteen fifty-one.

A horse-drawn hansom moved sedately along the Kew Road towards Brentford. The cabbie turned up the collar of his ulster coat against the rain. His passenger closed an open window and lightly tapped his cane upon the floor. The cane was of ebony with a silver skull-shaped mount.

At length the hansom came to a halt before an elegant Georgian house upon Brentford’s historic Butts Estate. The cabbie climbed down from his mount, opened an umbrella and then a passenger door. The passenger emerged, a large and noble-looking gentleman, clad in a fashionable Westbury coat of green Boleskine tweed, with matching double-brimmed topper. He stepped down from the cab and sheltering beneath the umbrella, he addressed the cabbie.

“Put the cost of this journey on my account,” said he.

“But sir,” the cabbie protested. “Your account now stands at twenty guineas.”

“Due to the generosity of my tipping,” said the gentleman. “Shelter my person beneath your brolly to yonder doorway and then take your leave without further complaint. Lest I take my business elsewhere in the future.”

The cabbie did as he was bid and returned grumbling to his cab. The gentleman stood in the porch of the elegant Georgian house and perused the brass doorplate. Inscribed upon it were the words

CHARLES BABBAGE

Mathematician and Inventor

The gentleman rapped upon the door with his cane and presently the door was opened.

An attractive young woman looked out at the gentleman. She had a head of glowing auburn hair and a most remarkable pair of Charlies.

The gentleman’s eyes strayed towards these Charlies.

“Mr Rune,” said the attractive young woman. “My husband is away upon business and has not returned home yet. I understood that your appointment with him was at three. You are more than an hour early.”

“A wizard is never early,” quoth Hugo Rune. “Nor is he ever late. He is always where he should be, when he should be. Time, dear lady, is everything. Time is the name of the game.”

“Quite so, Mr Rune. Then will you come inside?”

“I will, dear lady, I will.”

The rain continued to fall and time continued to pass.

At two-thirty of that rainy afternoon clock, Mr Charles Babbage returned home. He did not knock upon his own front door. He entered by using his key, and he used this key with stealth. And it was also with stealth that he crept up the stairs towards his marital bedroom, and with stealth that he turned the knob on the door, before he flung the door open – to reveal an erotic scene that caused him considerable distress.

“Mary,” cried Mr Charles Babbage. “Mary, my love, how could you?”

The sexual position that Mr Babbage’s wife Mary was presently engaged in with Mr Hugo Rune was, and is still, known as
Taking Tea with the Parson
. You won’t find it catalogued in the
Kama Sutra
; it is somewhat too advanced for that.

“It’s not what you think,” cried the fragrant Mary, disentangling her limbs with considerable difficulty. “It’s—”

“A Tantric massage to relieve tension,” said Mr Hugo Rune, seeking his undergarments.

“It is what it is.” The face of Mr Babbage was now the colour of a smacked bottom. It matched the colour of his wife’s smacked bottom. “You, you swine!” Mr Babbage addressed Mr Rune, who was now struggling into his trousers. “You have betrayed me, sir. Betrayed my trust. You promised me an introduction to Her Majesty the Queen, God bless Her, to gain royal patronage for my Analytical Engine. You told me that my computer would change the world as we know it.”

“And it will, sir, it will.” Rune now sought his shirt.

“It was all a trick, so that you could defile my wife.”

“I assure you sir, it was not. Your inventions will change the world.”

“Not through any help of yours, you rogue. Out of my house. I never wish to see your face again.”

“No, I beseech you.” Rune was now in his coat and putting on his hat. “Your inventions will change the world. Do not let this unfortunate and trifling incident deprive the world of your genius.”

“No more!” Mr Babbage waved his hands about. “No more work upon calculating engines for me. This is all my fault, leaving my wife alone, whilst I worked upon my machines. My darling, please forgive me.”

“Oh,” said the fragrant Mary. “Then consider yourself forgiven. But don’t let it happen again.”

“No,” cried Rune. “This must not be.”

“Out of my house, sir. I am done with science. It all ends here.”

“No,” cried Rune once more.

But Mr Babbage ushered him from the house, with no small force and many angry words.

The rain continued to fall and Hugo Rune now stood in it.

“Damned bad luck,” said a voice.

Rune turned to view a lad who lounged in the porch, a tall thin lad, dressed all in black with a blondy head of hair.

“And who are you?” Rune asked.

“Starling,” replied the lad. “Will Starling.”

“Away about your business, boy.”

“But you are my business,” said the lad. “Or
were
. You have failed, Mr Rune. Failed in your attempt to introduce Babbage to the Queen, to gain royal patronage for his inventions that would alter the Victorian age and advance it into a technological super future.”

“What?” went Rune.

“Ah, ‘what’, is it? Just like my other self. I have come from the future. I arranged for Mr Babbage to return home early, to catch you doing what comes so naturally to you. You never could resist the ladies, could you, Rune? So simple a downfall. And now I say farewell to you. My work here is done.”

“Why have you done this?” Rune asked.

“You’ll know that in forty-nine years, on the eve of the twentieth century. Will it seem like forty-nine years, or simply a second or two?”

And with that said, the blondy haired lad vanished away.

“No,” cried Hugo Rune. “No and no and no.”

And “No!” once more cried Hugo Rune in the sawdust ring of Count Otto’s flying circus.

“But yes,” said Will’s other self, all present once again.

“What has happened?” Will asked Rune. “What did he do?”

“He returned to the past. He changed history. He stopped me from introducing Babbage to Her Majesty the Queen. He’s effectively wiped out every piece of Victorian supertechnology as if it never existed.”

And all over London the lights were going out, the electric lights. And one by one the Tesla towers and each and every bit of technology that had come into being through the work of Charles Babbage vanished away and was gone. And then the lights of London returned, the gaslights of London, that is.

“Do something, Barry,” whispered Will.

“Take you home, chief? It’s all I can offer you.”

“Take me back in time. Let me put this right.”

“No can do, chief, not in my remit. You know that.”

“Mr Rune,” Will whispered. “Now would be the time for you to finally demonstrate your magic”

“Yes,” said Rune. “Indeed,” and he twiddled his thumbs.

Will’s other self took the athame from Count Otto’s hand, knelt over the Colonel and cried aloud, “Great Satan, God of this world, accept the sacrifice and hearken to these words. The future is yours through me. I will be your power on Earth. The Loved One, adored by all. I will cast down every other church but yours. Hearken to these words, these perfected words. Accept the sacrifice and bring the love to me.”

And words spilled from the mouth of Count Otto Black. The words of the Great Spell, the Big Magic Spell, the spell that moulded time and space, the spell that had been brought to absolute perfection through computer technology. And the awful words jarred the air, sending terrible vibrations that rattled the teeth of the rich and famous and knocked the lady’s straw hat off.

“Do something!” Will shouted at Rune. “Employ your magic”

“It’s not quite as simple as that.” Rune’s raiment flapped about him now, as an evil wind whipped up from nowhere, blizzarding the sawdust and bringing Rune’s generously proportioned belly into startling relief.

“And die that I gain all!” The other Will drove down the athame.

Rune raised high his hands. The athame halted in midswing.

The other Will struggled to push it home but an unseen force held it back.

“Bravo,” said Will.

But a look of puzzlement was to be seen on the face of Hugo Rune. The other Will fought and struggled. Hideous words issued from the mouth of Count Otto Black. Pinch-faced women cowered and fretted. Tim all but vanished beneath his hair. Automata braced themselves against the growing force. The crowd, who’d had more than enough, took to mass panic and took to the exits, screaming and clawing and climbing one upon another.

And then a blinding golden light beamed down through the great glass dome. The blade of the athame, lit by the golden radiance, pressed closer to the chest of Colonel William Starling.

The words that poured from Count Otto Black’s mouth, poured forth faster and faster: ancient words of power, the formulae of sorcerers and maguses and warlocks, brought to hideous reality.

The minute hand of Big Ben clunked to the hour of twelve.

And the golden light, the golden light.

“They come,” crowed Joseph Merrick, rising from beneath his seat and making a fist in the air with his one good hand. “The strike force of the Martian invasion fleet. Right on schedule. Let’s get a Mexican wave going.”

“
What
?” went Will, as well he might.

The blade of the athame struck the chest of Colonel William Starling.

“No!” shouted Will, as a maelstrom tore about him.

“Sorry,” came the voice of H.G. Wells, but faintly in the tearing and rending of elements. “I tried to hold the knife back, but he was too strong.”

The blade pressed into the chest of Colonel Starling.

“No!” Will sprang forward, hurled himself at his other self.

“No!” cried Barry. “No, chief, don’t forget David Warner. You mustn’t touch him, you mustn’t.”

“No!” cried Will’s other self, who had also seen
Time Cop
.

But Will threw himself forward. He knew what it meant for him; it meant certain death. And Will was young and had no wish to die. That it should end like this, so suddenly, after all he had been through, all he had seen and done and experienced, seemed nothing less than absurd. There should have been more, much more: the Lazlo Woodbine final rooftop confrontation, with the villain taking the big fall to oblivion and Will surviving as the hero. And although
this
wasn’t original, it would have done for Will.

But it wasn’t to be. There would be no eleventh hour reprieve, no twist in the tail, not even a
deus ex machina
ending, with God stepping in and putting the whole thing right. There would be only this. It would end here and end now, with Will and his other self, the meeting of matter and anti-matter, of Will and Anti-Will.

It is a fact well known to those who know it well, although how they know it well remains unclear, that at the very moment of your death, your entire life flashes right before your eyes: like a movie, like a biopic, the director’s cut. And as Will plunged forward, he viewed it, as from a plush comfy seat in a private screening cinema.

He saw himself as a child and a youth: the thin lad amongst the fat, the freak, the outsider, like Master Scribbens and Mr Merrick and Mr H.G. Wells. Alone, no matter in whose company he was.

And he saw himself in his orange-walled housing unit in the Brentford sky tower of the twenty-third century, breakfasting with his parents. And at the Tate, discovering the wristwatch on
The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke
. And being attacked by the robots from the past. And travelling into this past, this hidden past with its countless marvels.

And he saw his meeting with Hugo Rune, and the year that he and Rune had spent together wandering over the Victorian world, the sights he had seen in foreign parts and the folk he had met: the Dalai Lama, the Tsar of Russia, the Mandarin and the Pope. And Will knew now why Hugo Rune had taken him upon these travels. Rune had known that Will’s time was short. That he was doomed to die, now, at this very moment. Rune had wished to show Will all he could, allowing him to experience all he could, to taste the finest foods and drink the finest wines and stay at the finest hotels there were, and yes, to have had the finest sex also, with many exotic women, in many exotic parts. Which indeed Will
had
done, although he hadn’t mentioned it to Tim, because he hadn’t wanted Tim to be jealous.

And Will relived his meeting with Sherlock Holmes and with Barry, the time-travelling Holy Guardian sprout, and Joseph Merrick and Will’s other self. And he remembered how he had returned to the future and told of his adventures to Tim and brought Tim back to this age; and the courtroom siege and the moonship disaster at Crystal Palace, and all that had led him to this moment, this moment when he would die.

All of this as seen by Will and re-experienced: the wonder, the excitement, the laughter and the pleasure. And there was a sense of satisfaction here, of closure.

He had lived a life, which though short, had been filled with adventure, fantastic adventure, with risk and adventure, with all that he had ever really truly wanted, and if it was to end here and end now, then so be it. Perhaps it wasn’t so bad. Perhaps, indeed, this was how it should be, how it was meant to be.

And as Big Ben chimed in the dawn of the twentieth century, Will fell upon his other self. Fell
into
his other self. Matter, anti-matter, Will and Anti-Will. The two merged into one, became one and the same. Which cannot be, because it buggers time and space and sets the cosmic cats amongst the pigeons.

And there was a mighty flash and a mighty crash bang wallop, and the flying circus of Count Otto Black, that evil magical, grown-in-the-future, organic interdimensional transperambulist of pseudo-cosmic tomfoolery which had mostly been Larry’s idea, because it really did seem to Larry to have been a good idea at the time, erupted with a force that was nothing less than nuclear.

This force blazed upwards into the midnight sky, engulfing the Martian invasion fleet, much to the surprise and disgust of the captains, crews and onboard troops, who’d been really looking forward to invading planet Earth and getting into all the mass-slaughtering, raping and pillaging that generally went along with interplanetary invasion.

And the force blazed upwards and outwards and onwards, bending space and bending time. And as bath water goes down the plughole, either clockwise or anti-clockwise, depending which hemisphere you’re in, the flying circus, the Will and Anti-Will, and the Martian invasion fleet were sucked into a hole in the sky, to vanish, with a pop.