Sprout Mask Replica (26 page)

‘Cheers,’
said Len, waving. ‘And thanks a lot.’

THE
EPISODE OF THE GOLDEN TABLET AS ARCHROY’S WIFE OVER-THE-ROAD SAW IT

Now all who knew Archroy’s
wife, and many did in the biblical sense, knew her to be a woman of diverse
sexual appetites. And no small sense of humour. These ranged from the ‘Oh my
God I hear my husband coming in the back door’ routine, which had lovers
shinning half-naked down the drainpipe to confront Jehovah’s Witnesses on the
front doorstep, to the ‘Of course it won’t result in any lasting injury, would
I do that to
you?’,
which had more permutations that Vernon’s Pools.

On the
day that Len received his award, and at that very moment, in fact, Archroy’s
wife was indulging in one of her personal pleasures, that of leaning, head and
shoulders out of her bedroom window, waving to passers-by, whilst being ravished
from behind by a boy scout (or at least a man dressed up as one).

As the
golden tablet changed hands and Len closed his front door, Archroy’s wife waved
down to the Venusians.

One of
the Venusians waved back at her. The tall one. He waved in a friendly way,
almost, one might say, in an intimate way. In fact, it was in such an intimate
way that an observer who could recognize an intimate wave when he saw one might
have been forgiven for thinking that here was a case of illicit interplanetary
liaison.

Which
was
not
the case.

Archroy’s
wife
had
waved because she
did
know the larger of the two aliens.
And that was
know
in the biblical sense. But she knew this alien to be
no alien at all.

For
rather than step into some sort of telekinetic—anti-gravitational beam and
levitate up to a waiting scout craft, as one might have expected of an alien,
the alien removed his mirror-visored weather dome, stroked down locks of curly
black hair and climbed into a Morris Minor.

‘Come
up and see me sometime, Omally,’ called Archroy’s wife, as he drove away, ‘and
bring the costume.’

THE
EPISODE OF THE GOLDEN TABLET AS THE BRITISH MUSEUM SAW IT

The curator of
outré’
antiquities
and general weird shit looked up from a desk all jumbled high with jars of
pickled bats’ wings, plans of ancient flying craft, dust-dry bones and mottled
tomes, curious stones and garden gnomes, maps and caps and spats and hats and
many other things.

‘Ah,
Sir John,’ he said, adjusting his pince-nez upon the bridge of his bulbous
nose, ‘I had not expected you so soon.

‘I set
out the moment I put down the telephone.’ Sir John Rimmer, for it was he,
tapped his silver-topped cane lightly upon marble floor and removed his
wide-brimmed hat. To those who had never met the world-famous psychic
investigator before, his appearance had a sobering effect, to those who already
had, it still did the same. As it were. Standing nearly seven feet in height,
his vast red beard spread nearly to his waist. His gaunt frame, encased in lush
green velvet, seemed permanently a-quiver. Steel-grey eyes glittered behind
horn-rimmed specs atop his hawkish nose.

‘Yes,
yes,’ said the curator, staring up at the phenomena that loomed above him. ‘Well,
the item in question turned up this very morning. It was in a shoe-box, would
you believe, which had apparently fallen down the back of a radiator. Would you
care to examine it now?’

‘I
would.’

‘Then
follow me.’

The
curator led the long stick insect of a man down aisles of files and corridors
of drawers, past cases of braces and spaces where faces of concubines and
philistines stared from oils that were the spoils of war and the so much more
to gaze on them was sure to quite amaze.

‘If we
might simply cut the poetic descriptions and get straight to the matter in
hand,’ said Sir John who was not to be shilly shallied, dilly-dallied, taken
for a ride or subtly pushed aside,
‘the shoe-box!’

‘It’s
here,’ said the curator.

‘Ah, so
it is.’

Sir
John gave the box a good looking-over. On the lid, a label bore a British
Museum catalogue number and the words THE GOLDEN TABLET of Tosh m’Hoy, written
on with biro in a crude hand. Sir John blew dust from the lid and the curator,
who received it full in the face, took to a fit of coughing.

‘And
how long has this been down behind the radiator?’ asked Sir John.

The
curator added a polite cough or two to his indiscriminate stream. ‘About thirty
years,’ he said.

‘Thirty
years!’
Sir John rose to a quite impossible height.

‘Booked
in in 1966.’

‘1966,’
Sir John’s narrow head nodded. ‘But of course it would have been. That was when
it all happened.’

‘All
what?’ asked the curator, who being a curator was nosy by nature. A bit like
being a window cleaner really, or one of those people who views houses for sale
when they’ve no intention of buying them, or an investigative journalist, or—
‘Shut
up!’
shouted Sir John.

‘But I
only said, all what.’

‘Never
mind.’ Sir John opened the shoe-box lid and viewed the contents. ‘The Golden
Tablet of Tosh m’Hoy. And it was claimed to be of extraterrestrial origin.’

The
curator’s head bobbed. ‘And is it, do you think?’

‘No,’
said the psychic investigator. ‘It
isn’t.
But I’ll take it with me, if I
may.’

‘I’m
sorry, but you may not.’

‘Nevertheless
I will.’

‘I
really must protest.’

Sir
John raised his cane and smote the curator on the head. The curator collapsed
in an unconscious heap.

Of
mounted sheep

And
things that creep

And
parchment scrolls

And—
‘Shut
up!’
said Sir John.

THE
EPISODE OF THE GOLDEN TABLET AS SIR JOHN RIMMER EXPLAINED IT

In a dungeon beneath the
Hidden Tower, the manse of Sir John Rimmer, three men were gathered about a
cylindrical steel coffin. Pipes ran from this to various control units,
stop-cocks, temperature gauges, canisters of liquid nitrogen, electrical
apparatus. It was very cold down there in the dungeon, the breath of three men
steamed in air made bright by naphtha lamps.

Sir
John was there with his two associates, Dr Harney, of the white nimbus hair and
freckle face, and Danbury Collins, the psychic youth and masturbator.

‘Gentlemen,’
said Sir John, ‘I have called you here, upon this dark and stormy night’
(thunder crashed distantly and a flash of lightning showed beyond a
stained-glass window), ‘because our search is finally at an end.’

‘You
have found the tablet?’ said the good doctor.

‘At
last. It has lain lost in the vaults at the BM for almost thirty years, handed
in by a Mr Lemon who believed it to be a gift from Venusians.’

‘And it’s
not?’ asked Danbury, scratching his trousers.

‘Terrestrial
in origin. I have examined it at great length. It was carved in the early
nineteen sixties, then buried on the St Mary’s allotment, where a Mr Omally
found it and then passed it on to Mr Lemon as a prank. I believe it was
intended that we come across it at the same time we acquired our chap here,’
Sir John tapped lightly upon the cylindrical coffin, then examined his
fingertips for frostbite. ‘In 1966, however, it got knocked down behind a
radiator and thirty years have been allowed to pass.’

‘But it
will
do what you think it
will
do?’ asked the doctor.

‘The
spell of denecrolization is engraved upon it.’

‘What
exactly
is
that?’ asked Danbury.

‘A
spell for reanimating the dead.’

‘Ooh,
freaky.’

‘Shut
it, boy, and take your hand out of your trouser pocket.’

‘Thirty
years is a long time,’ said Dr Harney. ‘Do you think the corpse—’

‘The
corpse has been preserved at a temperature of two hundred and forty degrees
below zero, it will be in mint condition.’

‘Let us
hope so. But listen, perhaps now, before you speak the spell, you might care to
reacquaint us with the details of this extraordinary business.’

‘I
would be glad to.’ Sir John took to pacing, and spoke as he walked. ‘As you
will recall, we rescued this chap from the hospital morgue just hours before he
was due to be cremated. We brought him here and froze him up.’

‘Nasty,’
said Danbury.

‘Not
nasty, boy. He is dead, he can’t feel anything, can he?’

‘I
suppose not.’

‘I know
his real name, but we will refer to him as John Doe. The story begins back in
the 1950s. The Ministry of Serendipity, a secret government research department,
were searching for the Alpha Man. That is a man who is number one in the
process of idea-to-realization of idea. An original originator, if you like.
They were not successful in their search but they later discovered someone with
an extraordinary gift. John Doe here. He possessed the power of the mystical
butterfly of chaos theory. He could achieve great ends by performing small
feats, but he was unaware of his wild talent. The ministry nurtured him and by
enlisting relatives of his, an uncle and John Doe’s brother, they set up a
controlled experiment: a stage act where John played Carlos the Chaos
Cockroach. They worked out what actions he should perform with a specially
designed computer program. The experiment was a success, but John overheard his
brother and uncle in conversation and realized that he was being used. The M.o.S.
put plan B into operation, they set up a phoney attack on Fangio’s Bar,
allowing John Doe to escape in the company of a woman called Litany. Litany was
also in the pay of the M.o.S. She was one of their top agents.

‘The
plan was that she would be John’s lover, and guide him to use his gift for the
ends of the M.o.S. These ends were, naturally enough, world domination by the
United Kingdom.’

Dr Harney
whistled.

Danbury
tinkered in his trousers.

‘However,’
said Sir John, ‘things didn’t go the way they planned. At a seaside resort
called Skelington Bay, John used his talents to make all the local homeless
wealthy. Call it fate or call it irony, but the money came from the coffers of
the M.o.S. They were furious and tried to track down all these now wealthy
homeless. But the homeless were one step ahead, they donated all their money to
local charities in the town. The M.o.S. couldn’t touch them.

‘Now we
come to the bad bit. Our John Doe here has a fatal accident. He walks into the
path of a Blue Bird Cleaners truck.’

‘Is
that a truck for cleaning blue birds?’ Danbury asked. ‘As in birds in blue
films?’

Dr Harney
clouted Mr Collins.

‘Ouch,’
said Mr Collins.

‘Fatal
accident,’ continued Sir John. ‘Except it was
no
accident. The driver of
the van was an M.o.S. hitman. Mr Doe had been targeted for termination, as they
say. He had become a dangerous liability. They snuffed him out.’

‘That’s
very bad,’ said Dr Harney.

‘Very
bad,’ Sir John agreed. ‘But there is a little more to the story. My
investigations have uncovered that throughout the course of Mr Doe’s short life
there are a number of curious anomalies concerning time. For instance, this man’s
brother owned a disco van in 1966 in which he played the Byrds’ ‘Eight Miles
High’ on the radio. ‘Eight Miles High’ was not released until 1967.’

‘That
could just be a mistake,’ said Danbury. ‘Maybe it was a promo copy.’

‘Possibly,
but how would you explain him receiving a copy of Captain Beefheart’s legendary
1969 album
Trout Mask Replica
in 1957 when he was eight years old and
playing it on a 1980s stereo system?’

‘I
wouldn’t.’

‘And
most recently a 1966 Lincoln Continental was trawled from the mud flats in Skelington
Bay, where it had lain for thirty years. On its back seat was a 1996 laptop
computer.’

Danbury
now whistled.

Dr Harney
didn’t tinker with his trousers.

‘There
are many more such anomalies,’ said Sir John. ‘This lad’s life was riddled with
them.’

‘Are
you suggesting that
he
caused them?’ the doctor asked.

‘I am.
Unwittingly, unconsciously, he caused things to occur. Part of some great
pattern that only he knew about and yet that even he himself was not aware that
he knew about. It is my belief that
he
created this Golden Tablet with
the spell of denecrolization upon it so that it could be used upon him after
his death.’

‘That’s
quite incredible!’ said Dr Harney.

‘It’s
not bad, is it?’ said Sir John. ‘And it hasn’t half tied up a few loose ends.’