Tomas (18 page)

Tomas and Tereza's favourite discovery, however, is the Omnipotent Musical Being, whose appearance on the world stage is as bizarre as it's unexpected. The Being never really bothered with the world until one day his giant finger accidentally pressed one of the palazzi lining Venice's Grand Canal. The palazzo was instantly submerged into the mud of the lagoon, making a ‘Parp!' noise like an organ note. Due to the Being's lightness of touch and his other omnipotent qualities, it bounced up again undamaged. Amused, the Being tried it on the palazzo's neighbour. It too submerged, made a different sounding ‘Parp!' and then resurfaced. The Being ordered all the palazzi cleared. Thousands of Venetians were temporarily dehoused.

Looking at the sky above the city, you are now likely to see the fingers of two huge hands interlocked and cracking together in a limbering-up exercise. After a few preparatory ‘Parps!' to establish pitch and tone, the Omnipotent Musical Being plays the palazzi in concert like the keys of a giant organ.

At first the Venetians were furious at this intrusion into their floating paradise and the damage caused by mud and silt. But the city often floods – and the music is
beautiful. The Being's concerts quickly became a gigantic tourist attraction. Gondolas groan under the weight of euphoric fans. The residents, far from angry, dress in bathing suits and snorkels, and ride their palazzi up and down like vertical aquatic rollercoasters.

Predictably, the world has become a Federation by the year 3000 and fought several successful interstellar wars. Buoyed by these victories, the Federation challenges another star system, only to be defeated in seconds by an opponent who covers the sun with a giant black dot.

On their way home Tomas and Tereza see a beautiful sphere floating in space. Like the pockets of a roulette wheel, bright diamond sections alternate with luminescent black elements around its circumference. Bemused, Tomas asks the invisible voice for his opinion.

‘Come on,' says the invisible voice, ‘take a guess. A sphere rotating in time and space with alternate light and dark sections. It can only be one thing.' Tomas and Tereza scratch their heads. ‘It's the wheel of fortune.'

How to dig a trench
…

‘The new Messiah has gone mad,' screams Shit TV's news bulletin. ‘He's attempting to amputate Italy's foot.'

While Tomas's sanity may be in question, the accuracy of Shit TV's report isn't. The boot-shaped peninsula runs over seven hundred miles from Milan down to Naples, with a clearly defined foot at the lower end. Tomas has drawn a line at the top of the foot, from Camerota on the west coast to Bari on the east, a distance of around one
hundred miles. He orders a mile-deep trench to be dug from coast to coast.

In this he is aided, as ever, by the Alien, who uses his telekinetic magic to transport a fleet of digging machines with rotating circular drills to the trench site. In flight, with parts in motion, they resemble a swarm of prehistoric creatures migrating south. These mechanical mammoths now go to work on the trench. The serrated edges of their drills resemble jagged teeth; viewed from space, it appears that a rogue army of mutant machines is chewing off Italy's foot.

The monster excavators are operated by the combined armies of the West. This gigantic mobilisation was suggested by the new President, who used the potent combination of her charms and her authority to persuade her aging male counterparts to fall in with the plan.

Meanwhile a unit of engineers has been positioned at Bari, its task to sink a massive pin into the earth at the top right-hand corner of the amputated foot. This object, many times larger than the rotating rod in Tomas's Russian-soup dream, is half a mile wide and two miles long. Massive piling machines drive it into the earth's core.

The new Messiah's plans don't just involve moving dirt, and it's not only the army that is busy. Next, Tomas orders a series of chains to be attached along the length of the south coast from Siderno to Tricase at its heel. These are driven into the coastal rock and then hoisted aboard the ships of the West's combined fleet. Once secured, the ships begin to sail south-east towards Greece.

Rat spies swarm the trench site and coastal areas.
Their reports defy belief. The military and naval strength of the West is massed around the foot of Italy. A trench is being dug, in an apparent attempt to remove it. Simultaneously, the biggest armada in world history is carrying hundreds of heavy chains, all secured to the shoreline, out to sea.

The Great Bear can't believe the scale of Tomas's miscalculation. The skill of the defending commander is to anticipate the time and place of the enemy attack. How could he possibly believe that the entire Cocksack army would invade south through Italy? Even a novice would spread his forces across the West in expectation of an advance on several fronts. And to make his main line of defence so obvious? Perhaps he really is insane; will he go from the sermon on the tower, to a soliloquy in a trench?

The West is wide open. The Great Bear orders the strike.

‘Cocks away!'

Despite the screeching sirens that warn of invasion, Pierre, as Tomas's reporter-in-chief, still receives telephone calls and information. He has just heard from the hypnotherapist whom he recommended to the smoking soldier. Apparently the therapy didn't work, the patient's head was ‘blocked'. His investigation of the new Messiah never ends. It's evening and he is sitting with Judge Reynard in a suite of a Cannes hotel attempting to question him above the noise. What else can he do? He has written more words than anyone attacking the Great Bear. Now that he has failed to discover the secret of the pipeline extension,
there's just one last piece left to write – the destruction of the West. Soon, however, he'll be dead, a condition unhelpful to storytelling. He might as well go down chasing his original quarry.

This one is difficult to catch, not least because he has gone mad. ‘Has Tomas ever exhibited signs of dementia to you?' Pierre asks the judge. ‘Has he behaved irrationally or as if on drugs?'

‘Not at all,' Reynard replies above the wail. ‘He was perhaps a little soporific after his execution; otherwise I have always found him to be clear minded, normal.'

‘I've always meant to ask you,' Pierre continues casually, ‘why someone as organised and thoughtful as yourself neglected Tomas's funeral arrangements?'

‘Did you say organised and thoughtful?' the judge replies, ‘or old and forgetful? As you know, I don't have much time and … '

He is cut off by a tremendous crash as an anti-aircraft battery in the nearby fort fires a salvo into the night. With the regular army away in south Italy, the local militia are defending the town with equipment left over from a forgotten war. But it's not just the judge who hasn't much time: the searchlight, normally used for celebrity parties and film premieres, now illuminates an approaching apocalypse.

Just as the sea is composed of water, God intended the sky to be made of clouds. On this night over Cannes, it consists of an undulating blanket of metal, which causes the first ever unscheduled eclipse of the moon. Thousands of aircraft are flying in formation overhead, the roar of their engines creating an airborne earthquake that cracks the pavements and knocks the elderly off their feet.

A worse terror awaits within their metal skins. Perched on rooftops and balconies, the Cannois hear a terrible groan of undercarriages opening; moments later they behold the instruments of the Great Bear's Armageddon: a thousand giant phalluses, with massive distended testicles dangling beneath them, are hurtling like meteors towards the city.

By daybreak every street corner in London, Paris, Berlin and Rome is occupied by a Cocksack. Ten million have fallen over Europe the previous night to take up their positions; a further army is massed in reserve on the Polish border. Now each Cocksack soldier peers with an expressionless face through the hole in his phallus's head, awaiting the order via his mobile headset, detonator ready.

A deathly pall falls over the West. Not a breeze stirs. Just as Tomas puts the finishing touch to his trench and the chains become taut, King Rat begins the countdown.

‘Attention, Cocksacks! On my marks! Three, two … '

A cream puff destroys the world
…

On the night of the Cocksack invasion, Mrs Olgarv sends her husband a death dream. Like him, she's not very good at transmitting telepathic messages to the dead. It requires mental dexterity to stop the dream veering off in the wrong direction. But it's the thought that counts. In this instance, Mrs Olgarv believes the Boss deserves a nice dream. The West is being invaded and will collapse come dawn, and the Cocksacks, designed to his order and in his image, will carry
the day. Although the Boss can't rejoice in the temporal world he can at least have some fun in the great hereafter.

Boss Olgarv dreams that he's having lunch at a seaside restaurant in Cannes on the day after the invasion. The restaurant has been cleared of all other diners, tables and chairs, and a simple reinforced slab is set in the middle, on to which the Boss climbs. He is wearing his detachable stomach and, in deference to the events of the previous day, a pair of gigantic testicles.

The Boss lies down on the slab. A pillow is placed beneath his head and he is made comfortable by the waiters. He opens his mouth, whereupon two large tubes are fed down his throat. The Boss signals his readiness and service begins.

Anticipating his arrival, the restaurant staff have raided all the nearby kitchens. The produce acquired – meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, pastries, pasta, bread, cheese, eggs – is piled into a giant liquidiser and pulped into a fetid grey mess. This is now pumped into Boss Olgarv via the first connecting tube, as a main course. The Boss is told that a gargantuan cream puff awaits him for dessert. It's the size of a swimming pool: he looks forward to diving in.

Filling the second gastric pipeline involved a separate assault on all the cellars in Cannes. A river of vodka is poured through a funnel down the second tube.

Boss Olgarv greatly enjoys his celebratory meal. The waiters gather round to perform small services. An escaping food particle is dabbed from his mouth; his brow is caressed with a chilled cloth; his stomach is massaged to ease its labours.

Eventually the Boss signals that he is satiated and the tubes are removed. A dozen waiters attempt to prop him up on the slab but he's so full and fat that it is impossible. Worse, their efforts disturb the finely balanced eco-system of the Boss's stomach and he is violently sick.

The waiters rush to fetch buckets and mops to clean up the mess, while the mâitre d' politely suggests that the Boss might want to rest awhile after his exertions. ‘What?' screams Boss Olgarv. ‘You think I can't handle the cream puff? This is an insult to Russia.' Although the French Riviera has been subjugated, the mâitre d' deserves worse, the Boss rants. Slavery is too good for him. He must be killed. In fact, why stop there? Destroy the restaurant. Why not Cannes? France deserves it as well. Hell, blow up the world! Boss Olgarv orders nuclear Armaggedon.

Russia has the power to destroy the world a hundred times over. Once or twice isn't enough. Not an ant shall remain. This is exactly what happens. To Boss Olgarv's satisfaction, the world is destroyed not once, but a hundred times over.

The giant cream puff, the cause of the catastrophe, is also obliterated, except for a blob of whipped cream which somehow manages to escape the nuclear hell fires. This is dragged by an ant to its lair beneath the restaurant. The cream blob sustains the ant during the winter of the nuclear holocaust, precipitating an entirely unexpected result.

A radiation particle permeates the ant's nest and bonds with the blob. When ingested it has an immediate and dramatic effect. The ant mutates.

Despite the devastation of the world, there's still more
damage to be done. The restaurant's mosaic floor is split asunder as a giant mutated ant emerges into the dawn of the post-nuclear day. It has grown not just in size, but in intelligence too.

It takes the ant only hours to find the materials – mostly from people's kitchens – necessary to construct a time machine, and a few more to complete the task. He mutates a million of his fellow soldiers, who in turn build a million machines. They return in time to Russia just before Boss Olgarv orders the strike and switch off all the computers. Russia is thus enslaved for eternity by an army of mutated time-travelling ants.

‘Idiot!' screams the Great Bear at Boss Olgarv.

‘Damn,' he replies. ‘Next time I'll eat the cream puff before ordering the strike. That'll get the ant.'

Judge Reynard and the dream devil
…

As the Cocksacks tumble to earth, Judge Reynard is philosophical about what the morning will bring. He's ill and will die soon anyway. A little less time, so what? Nevertheless, he is unable to spend a peaceful last night because in his dream he is presiding over the trial of the Devil.