East of Ealing (12 page)

Old Pete thrust his wrinkled hand beneath the shining plexiglass counter-shield of the sub-post office. The dark young man now serving behind the jump did not remove his minuscule headphones but merely nodded as he passed the electronic light-wand across the ancient’s palm. He punched a few details into the computer terminal and awaited the forthcoming readout. Upon its arrival he raised a quizzical eyebrow towards the pensioner and said, “There appears to be some discrepancy here, sir. I suggest that you come back next week.”

Old Pete glared daggers at the dark young fellow-me-lad behind the tinted screen. “What damned discrepancy?” he demanded.

The young man sighed tolerantly. “The computer registers a discrepancy,” he said. “It states that for the last ten years you have been receiving two pensions each week. Such a thing could not, of course, happen now under the new advanced system. But with the old Giro, well who knows? We shall just have to resubmit the data and await a decision.”

“And how long will that take?”

“Well, computer time is valuable, you are allotted six seconds weekly; we will see what happens when your turn comes around again.”

“And in the meantime?” foamed Old Pete. “Do you mean that until your filthy electronic box of tricks gives you the go-ahead I am penniless?”

“The word ‘penniless’ no longer applies. It is simply that, pending investigations, your credit is temporarily suspended. You must understand that this is for the public good. We are trying to institute the new system hereabouts in a manner that will cause minimum civil unrest.”

“You’ll get maximum civil unrest if I don’t get my damned pensions, I mean, pension!” Young Chips growled in agreement and bared his fangs.

“Next customer, please,” the dark young man said.

“Hold hard,” cried Old Pete raising his stick. “I want to speak to the manager.”

“This branch no longer has a manager, sir, but an operator, fully conversant, I hasten to add, with all current trends in new technology.”

“A pox upon your technology. Who do I see about my pension?”

“Well you might fill in a form which we will forward in due course to Head Office, requesting a manual systems over-ride, although the procedure is somewhat archaic and extremely lengthy.”

“Then I’ll go up to your Head Office and speak with them.”

The dark young man laughed malevolently. “One does not simply go up to Lateinos and Romiiths and speak to them. Whoever heard of such a thing?” He smirked towards his assistant, who tittered behind her hand and turned up her eyes.

“Oh don’t they, though?” snarled Old Pete, grinding upon his dentures and rapping his Penang-lawyer upon the plexiglass screen. “Well, we’ll see about that.” With Chips hard on his down-at-heels, the ancient departed the sub-post office, walking for once without the aid of his stick.

Ahead, where once had been only bombsite land, the Lateinos and Romiith building rose above Brentford, a dark and accusing finger pointing towards the enclosed triangle of grey-troubled sky. Sixty-six floors of black lustreless glass, swallowing up the light. Within its cruel and jagged shadow magnolias wilted in their window-boxes and synthetic gold-top became doorstep cheese. It was not a thing of beauty but there was a terrible quality of a joyless for ever about it. High upon the uppermost ramparts, amid the clouds, tiny figures came and went, moving at a furious pace, striving to increase its height. Never had there been a Babel tower more fit for the tumbling, nor a fogey more willing to take on the task.

Old Pete rounded the corner into Abaddon Street and glowered up at the sheer glass monolith. “Progress,” he spat, rattling his ill-fitting dentures. “A pox on it all.” His bold stride suddenly became a hobble once more as he passed into the bleak shadow of the imperious building and sought the entrance. A faceless wall met his limited vision. Another painful hundred yards, a further corner, and another blank wall of featureless glass. “Damned odd,” wheezed the ancient to his dog as he plodded onwards once more. The entrance to the building could only be in the High Street. To Old Pete’s utter disgust and still increasing fury, it was not.

He now stood leaning upon his cane beneath the night-black structure, puffing and blowing and cursing loudly whenever he could draw sufficient breath. There was simply no way in or out of the building, not a doorway, not an entrance, not a letter-box or a nameplate, nothing. Young Chips cocked his furry head upon one side and peered up at his ancient master. The old boy suddenly looked very fragile indeed. The snow-capped head shook and shivered, and beneath the frayed cuffs of his one suit, the gnarled and knobby hands with their blue street-maps of veins knotted and reknotted themselves into feeble fists. “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” snarled Old Pete, still undefeated. Once more raising his stick and this time striking at the dead-black wall towering towards infinity. The blow did not elicit a sound and this raised the ancient’s fury to cardiac arrest level. Pummelling for all he was worth he retraced his steps and staggered back towards Abaddon Street.

As the aged loon lurched along, raining blows upon the opaque glass, a hidden probe, shielded from his vision, moved with him, scanning his every movement. Digesting and cataloguing the minutiae that made up Old Pete. Through an advanced form of electro-carbon dating it penetrated the bone rings of his skull and accurately calculated his age to five decimal places. Its spectroscopic intensifiers analysed the soil samples beneath his fingernails and generated graphs which were no matters for jest. Fluoroscopes X-rayed his lower gut and ruminated upon the half-digested lunchtime pork pies, which contained no traces of pork whatever. The probe swept into the fabric of his wartime shirt, illuminating a thousand hidden laundry marks and cross-indexed them. It moved down to his underpants and hurriedly retraced its metaphorical footsteps to areas above belt-level. It checked out the tweed of his jacket, measured the angles of the lapels and, through numerous esoteric calculations, tracked down the suit’s manufacture to a Wednesday in a long hot summer prior to the Great War. The computer banks gulped it all down and gorged themselves upon the feast of data; gurgled with delight and dug in ever more deeply in search of further toothsome morsels. They entered secretly into his head and chewed upon his brain cells, ravenously seeking the possibility of electron particle variabilities in the codex of his cerebellum.

Within.666 of a second they had done with their main course and were seeking a mangey-looking half-terrier for afters. The read-out which followed, had it been broadcast in standard five-point lettering, would have formed an equation sufficient to engirdle the Earth several times around. Summing up, the computer pronounced Old Pete a harmless loony and no threat to security. It did, however, suggest that certain discrepancies existed regarding multiple payment of pensions in the past and that the data relating to this would require a prolonged period to assess accurately. It refused to comment on Young Chips, offering only a cryptic remark that the wearing of flea collars should be made compulsory.

Old Pete finally gave up his unequeal struggle and limped off down the street effing and blinding for all he was worth. Young Chips lifted his furry leg contemptuously on to the dull black-glass wall and skipped off after his master. The Lateinos and Romiith mainframe filed away Old Pete’s vitals and beamed a triplicate copy of the now completed programme to the bio-gene constructional workshop, twenty-six storeys below. The probe moved up once more to the building’s roof and turned itself to more pressing business. Included amongst a billion or so other tiny matters which required attention was the removal from this plane of existence of a certain local Professor and his unclassifiable house-guest.

The sensory scanner criss-crossed the triangle of streets and houses, prying and probing. The X-ray eye of the great machine penetrated each dwelling, highlighting the plumbing pipes and television tubes. The house-owners were tiny red blotches moving to and fro, going about their business unaware that all was revealed to the voyeurist machine which lurked above their heads. The data whirred into the computer banks, but at intervals the motors flicked and whined as a patch of impenetrable white light appeared on the screen. As the macroscope focused upon the area of disturbance and intensified its gaze, the area revealed itself to be a large house and garden set upon the historic Butts Estate. The data retrieval cross-locators coughed and spluttered, fruitlessly seeking a snippet of relevant information, but none was to be found. The white patch glared on the screen, the missing piece of a great jigsaw. The best the print-out could come up with was “Insufficient data, scan penetration negative, over-ride and re-submit.”

Professor Slocombe rewound the great ormulu mantel-clock and, withdrawing the fretted key from the gilded face, set the pendulum in motion. The sonorous tocking of the magnificent timepiece returned the heartbeat once more to the silent house.

Sherlock Holmes entered the study through the open French windows. “It has stopped again?” said he.

The Professor nodded sombrely. “The mechanism has become infected, I believe.”

Holmes slumped into a fireside chair. “You have had the electricity disconnected, I trust?”

“As we discussed, we will have to be very much upon our guard from now on. I have taken what protective measures I can, but my powers are not inexhaustible, I can feel the pressure upon me even now.”

Holmes slid a pale hand about the decanter’s neck and poured himself a small scotch. “I have just spent a most informative hour with Norman Hartnell. A man of exceptional capability.”

Professor Slocombe smiled ruefully. “He keeps us all guessing, that is for certain.”

“I discovered the hand of a duplicate replacement at work in his shop and sought to question it.”

Professor Slocombe raised his eyebrows in horror. “That was a somewhat reckless move upon your part.”

“Perhaps, but when confronted by the gun you gave me, the thing took flight, literally, through the ceiling of the shop. To my astonishment the real Mr Hartnell appears from his quarters. The mechanical double was, in fact, something of his own creation. To spare his time for more important matters, according to himself.”

Professor Slocombe chuckled loudly. “Bravo, Norman,” he said. “The shopkeeper does have something rather substantial on the go at the present time. It is of the utmost importance that nothing stand in his way.”

Sherlock Holmes shook his head. “Your corner-shopkeeper produces an all-but-perfect facsimile of himself with no more than a few discarded wireless-set parts and something he calls Meccano and you treat it as if it were an everyday affair.”

“This is Brentford. Norman’s ingenuity is not unknown to me.”

“And do you know how his mechanical man is powered?”

“Knowing Norman, it probably has a key in its back or runs upon steam.”

“On the contrary,” said Sherlock Holmes, taking the opportunity to spring from his chair and take up a striking pose against the mantelpiece, “it runs from a slim brass wheel set into its chest. Your shopkeeper has rediscovered the secret of perpetual motion.”

“Has he, be damned?” The Professor bit upon his lower lip. “Now that is another matter entirely.”

“Ha,” said Holmes, nodding his head, “and now would you like me to bring you the automaton, that you might inspect his workings at first hand?”

“Very much. Do you consider that such might be achieved in safety?”

“Certainly, I took the liberty of following the ample trail he left, after my interview with Norman. He is holed up on the allotment.”

“Holed up?”

“Certainly, in Mr Omally’s shed. If I can catch him unawares I shall bring him here at gunpoint. Although I must confess to a certain bafflement here. How might it be that an automaton who can leap without effort or apparent harm through ceilings and walls, fears the simple bullet?”

“Ha, yourself!” said Professor Slocombe. “You have your secrets and I have mine. Go then, with my blessing, but stay upon your guard. Take no unnecessary risks.”

“Natcho,” said Sherlock Holmes, turning as he left to make a gesture which all lovers of the New York television cop genre know to be the “soul fist”.

“Natcho?” Professor Slocombe shook his old head and returned once more to his work.

Having slipped away to Jack Lane’s for a pint or three of non-takeover-brewery beer, Pooley and Omally now loped down a bunting bedecked Sprite Street. To either side, front gardens bulged with sections of the home-made floats destined to join the grand carnival procession of this year’s Festival which, meaningless as it now appeared, showed every sign of going on regardless. Exactly what the theme of the parade was, neither man very much cared. As they ambled along they muttered away to one another in muted, if urgent, tones.

“As I see it,” mumbled John, “we have few options left open to us at present. If the end of civilization is approaching there is little, if anything, we can do about it.”

“But what about all my millions?” Jim complained. “I thought that the holders of the world’s wealth always had it up and away on their hand-mades and sailed their luxury yachts into the sunset at the merest mention of impending doom.”

“What, off down the canal you fancy?”

“Well, somewhere, surely? Let us at least go down with Soap and weather it out until the troubles are over.”

“I had considered that, but you will recall that it is very dark down there in his neck of the woods. And darkness would seem to be the keynote of this whole insane concerto.”

“So what do we do then?”

The two stopped on the corner of Abaddon Street and stood a moment, gazing up at the great black monolith towering above them.

“I have been giving this matter a great deal of thought and I think I have come up with an answer.”

“It better be a goody.”

“It is, but not here. Walls have ears as they say. Let us hasten away to a place of privacy and discuss this matter.”

It did not take a child of six to put the necessary two and two together and come up with Omally’s suggestion for a likely conspiratorial hideaway. “My hut,” said John.

The two men strode over the allotments, each alone with his particular thoughts. The first inkling that anything of a more untoward nature than was now the common norm was currently on the go thereabouts hit them like the proverbial bolt from the blue. The sound of gunfire suddenly rattled their eardrums, and the unexpected sight of Omally’s corrugated iron roof rising from its mountings and coming rapidly in their direction put new life into their feet.

“Run for your life,” yelled Omally.

“I am already, get out of my way.”

The roof smashed to earth, sparing them by inches. The cause of the shed’s destruction tumbled down to bowl over and over between them. Norman’s duplicate rose to his feet and glared back towards the ruined hut. Sherlock Holmes appeared at the doorway wielding his gun.

“Not again.” Pooley crawled away on all fours, seeking safety.

“Stop him,” cried Sherlock Holmes.

“With the corner up, pal.”

“Hold hard or I fire.”

Norman’s duplicate turned upon his attacker. He snatched up a ten-gallon oil-drum which was harmlessly serving its time as a water-butt and raised it above his head. Holmes stood his ground, feet planted firmly apart, both hands upon his weapon. “This is a Magnum Forty-four,” he said, “biggest handgun in the world, and can blow your head clean off your shoulders.”

“He has definitely been watching too many videos,” whispered Omally as he crawled over to Pooley’s place of safety.

“Now I know what you’re thinking,” Holmes continued, “you’re thinking, in all that commotion did he fire five shots or six, that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it, punk?”

“I much preferred the Victorian approach,” said Jim Pooley.

Norman’s robot stiffened; he was not adverse to watching the occasional Clint Eastwood movie himself on Norman’s home-made video.

“Do you know, in all the excitement I’m not really sure myself? So what do you say, punk?”

The mechanical punk, who had seen that particular film six times said, “It’s a fair cop, governor,” and raised its hands.

“Up against the wall and spread’m mother,” cried Sherlock Holmes, causing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to veritably spin in his grave.

Not too long later, Jim Pooley, John Omally, and Mr Sherlock Holmes, this time accompanied by a near-perfect facsimile of a highly-regarded local shopkeeper, entered the Professor’s study. The scholar looked up from his desk and turned about in his chair. “You made very short work of that,” he said. “Good afternoon, Norman.”

The mechanical shopkeeper regarded the Professor as if he was guano on a hat-brim. “You would do well to leave well enough alone,” said he.

Professor Slocombe turned up his palms. “Please be seated, I have no wish to detain you longer than necessary. I merely seek a few answers to certain pressing questions.”

The duplicate clutched at his chest. “To take away my life, more likely.”

“No, no, I swear. Please be seated.” Professor Slocombe turned to his other guests. “Please avail yourselves, gentlemen, Norman and I have much to speak of.”

Holmes held his gun pointing steadily towards the robot’s spinning heart. “You counselled care, Professor,” said he, “and now it is my turn.”

“A degree of trust must exist, Holmes, kindly put aside your gun.”

Holmes did so. Pooley and Omally fought awhile over the decanter and finally came to an agreement.

“It is of the greatest importance that we speak with each other,” Professor Slocombe told the robot. “Please believe that I wish you no harm. Will you play straight with me?”

“I will, sir, but have a care for him. The man is clearly mad. Calls himself Sherlock Holmes but knows not a thing of the thirty-nine steps. I would have come to you of my own accord.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes.” The robot cleared his throat with a curiously mechanical coughing sound which sent the wind up Pooley and Omally. “Things cannot be allowed to continue as they are.”

Professor Slocombe raised his eyebrows. “You are aware of that?”

“I can hear them talking. They gnaw at my brain but I will not allow them ingress. I am Norman’s man and sworn by the bond of birth to protect him.”

“Your loyalty is commendable.”

“I am sworn to serve mankind.”

“From behind a counter,” sneered Omally.

The robot nodded grimly. “It sounded a little more noble the way I put it, but no matter, there is little enough of mankind now left to serve. The shop doorbell is silent the better part of the day. Trade declines; I rarely punch an order into the terminal, and when I do, the new stocks which finally arrive are further foreshortened. The master computer now runs it all. Mankind is on the wane, the new order prevails, night falls upon Brentford and the world. It is the coming of Ragnorok.
Götterdämmerung
.”

“Stick the Laurence Olivier circuits into override, you clockwork clown,” said John Vincent Omally, Man of Earth.

“How would you like me to fill your mouth with boot?” the robot enquired.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” said Professor Slocombe, “let us have a little decorum please.”

“Well, he’s had my shed down,” Omally complained. “For one sworn to protect mankind he’s about as much use as a nipple on a-”

“Quite so, John. Please be calm, we will achieve nothing by fighting amongst ourselves. We must all pull together.”

“You can pull whatever you want,” said the robot, “but take it from me, you had better start with your fingers. Unless you can come up with something pretty special, pretty snappish, then you blokes are banjoed, get my meaning, F… U… C…”

“Language, please,” said Professor Slocombe. “I think we catch your drift. Something pretty special was what I had in mind.”