The Brightonomicon (Brentford Book 8) (10 page)

‘Do wotcha like is the whole of the law,’ quoth Danbury.

‘Good grief,’ muttered Mr Rune.

‘I’m glad to see such a big turnout tonight,’ continued the psychic youth.

I glanced about: there were twelve of us, all told, in the audience. Which, with Danbury on the makeshift stage, at least made up the requisite number to get a Last Supper started.

‘So,’ said Danbury Collins, ‘my topic tonight is the Centaur of the Universe – how everything began, how it works, what it means and what our part in it is.’

‘This should be enlightening.’ Mr Rune yawned loudly.

‘Give him a chance,’ I whispered.

‘I am,’ the Hokus Bloke replied. ‘You will note that I haven’t as yet struck him.’

‘The universe,’ said Danbury, and he gestured towards his blackboard, ‘endless, black, and going on for ever and ever and ever—’

Rune opened his mouth, then closed it again.

‘Endless,’ said Danbury. ‘Endless space and endless time. But
not –
and I must emphasise this –
not
endlessly filled with matter. We are lately informed that the universe began with a Big Bang, that before this momentous moment there was no time and then suddenly the universe exploded into being. There are, I understand, equations that prove the proposition that everything began with a Big Bang. But I say rubbish to this, I say stuff and nonsense.’

‘Well done, you,’ said Mr Rune, applauding.

‘Thank you,’ said Danbury. ‘And good evening to you, Mister Rune.’

Mr Rune gave Danbury a knowing wink. ‘Pray continue,’ said he, ‘with your most fascinating monologue.’

‘Well, firstly,’ continued Danbury, ‘as I’ve said, the universe is endless space, it goes on for ever and ever, so no matter how big this
Big Bang might appear to us to be, it is damn all in an endless universe. It is in fact a very small bang, infinitesimally small. Virtually no bang at all. And, as we all learned in science at school, sound doesn’t travel through a vacuum. So in the vacuum of infinite space, it wasn’t even a bang. It was more of a puff, a small puff.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Mr Rune, ‘but are you suggesting that a small puff began the universe?’

‘I am,’ said Danbury.

‘Oscar Wilde?’ asked Mr Rune, which resulted in some merriment from the audience.

‘Exactly,’ said Danbury Collins.

‘Bravo,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Naturally, I have toyed with this concept myself.’

‘Eh?’ said I.

And Danbury continued, ‘Space is infinite, but matter is finite – there is only a limited amount of it. It’s a fair old amount, I grant you, but if you lumped it all together it would have a finite weight, and no matter how far you spread it all about, it’s the same amount. And we – you, me, Oscar Wilde, all of us – are composed of the matter of the universe. We are Stardust.
^*
We are composed of universal stuff. Every cell of our bodies has been here, part of the finite amount of matter, for ever. You can’t create more matter – that would be creating something out of nothing. You can convert matter, burn it, change it into gas, whatever, but the weight of it all remains the same. We – everyone in this room – is composed of cells that are composed from the original matter of the universe.’

I had a bit of a think about this. I was only a teenager and had never, as far as I could recall, ever given much thought to esoteric matters of this ilk, but I had to say that this was, well, profound. That is what it was: profound.

‘So,’ continued Danbury, ‘if we are all composed of the original and finite material of the universe, we are all a part of its beginning; we all contain the stuff of its beginning – whatever that beginning might have been. And so we should be able to access universal
knowledge, knowledge of the past and the future, for it is all one in universal terms. And it’s all there in the cells of our being.’

A student type a few seats along from me raised his grubby hand. ‘Are you saying,’ he asked, ‘that we are inherently capable of accessing the past – of travelling in time, as it were?’

‘Certainly,’ said Danbury. ‘It is all in our cellular memory. You don’t just inherit your father’s physical features, but also his cellular memory of his father and his father before him. I’ve heard that a scientist named Doveston has invented a drug called Retro that allows you to access these memories.’

‘I read that somewhere,’ said the student type. ‘And also about this Benedictine monk who invented a television set that could play back past events.’

‘Eh?’ said I and I turned to the student type. ‘Where did you read about that?’ I asked.

‘In the
Weekly World News,’
the youth replied. ‘“MAD MONK INVENTS TIME TV: Watches Christ’s Crucifixion”, that was the headline.’

I looked at Mr Rune. The Perfect Master appeared to be sleeping.

‘The
Weekly World News!’
I said. ‘I have seen that in the newsagent’s. It is nothing but made-up nonsense. Only last week the headline was “ELVIS PRESLEY CONFESSES: I Travelled Through Time With the Aid of Barry the Time Sprout”. The
Weekly World News
is always on about time travel and it is all rubbish.’

‘The CIA owns the
Weekly World News,’
said another student type. ‘They publish real information but in such a way that no “right-thinking” person would believe it. It’s all a big conspiracy. The CIA had Kennedy shot because he was going to blow the whistle on the alien bodies in Area Fifty-One. Everybody knows that.’

‘Not me,’ I said.

‘Well, you
say
that,’ said the student type, ‘but of course you might well be lying. You might well be a spook.’

‘A spook?’ I said. ‘What is a spook?’

‘A CIA agent. Probably a member of MK Ultra, the mind-control programme.’

‘I can assure you that I am no such thing.’

‘Yeah, well, you
would say that!’

‘Let’s have order now, please,’ called Danbury. ‘I haven’t got to the exciting part of my lecture yet. You see, it is indeed possible to reach through time – in either direction, in fact – and I have actual living proof of this here with me. Something brought forward through time from the past. From the distant past, the Age of Myth. A mythical beast and it’s here.’ And Danbury held aloft the Aladdin’s lamp that had been standing on the table named Peter.

‘A centaur!’ cried Danbury. ‘Now, please let’s have a little order while I give the lamp a rub.’

‘I am not having this bloke calling me a spook,’ I protested.

‘You look like a spook,’ said the personable young woman with the nimbus of orange hair and the dress that barely covered her costs at all now that she was sitting down. ‘That ID his big fat friend flashed me on the door looked like a CIA Above-Top-Secret security pass to me.’

‘It is a library ticket,’ I said.

‘There,’ said the personable young woman, becoming somewhat less personable. ‘He has access to the American Library of Congress. They’re both spooks.’

‘You are bl**dy mad,’ I said.

‘Bl**dy?’ said the increasingly more unpersonable young woman. ‘He speaks in Esperanto, which we all know is an alien tongue. He’s definitely a spook. The CIA are in cahoots with the aliens in Area Fifty-One. In exchange for alien technology, they allow the aliens to abduct one hundred human beings each year for their hybridisation programme.’

‘You should get yourself a boyfriend,’ I suggested.

‘There!’ screamed the now extremely unpersonable young woman. ‘He wants to hand me over to the aliens to be part of their hideous crossbreeding programme.’

‘Could we have a little order, please?’ called Danbury.

‘Oh,’ said another student type, one with the kind of goatee beard that I was hoping soon to grow. ‘Siding with the CIA-Proto-Zionist-Illuminati-Bilderberg-New-World-Orderists, are you, Collins? You’re part of the misinformation programme, too, aren’t you?’

‘I’m a paranormal investigator,’ cried Danbury. ‘It’s my job to get to the bottom of this kind of thing.’

‘Get to the bottom?’
The young woman rose to her feet, with her dress all most pleasingly rucked up at the back. ‘The bottom, did you hear that? He wants to hand me over to the aliens, too. For rectal probing.’

‘That sounds like fun,’ I said. ‘Do you think the aliens are taking on apprentices?’

Now, I probably should not have said that.

In fact, looking back, I
definitely
should not have said that.

It transpired that the student type who had asked the original question about travelling in time was the orange-nimbus-young-woman’s boyfriend, who apparently had a bit of a thing about anal sex because the nimbus woman was avidly refusing ever to give him any.

And one thing led to another.

And the other thing involved punches being thrown.

And as I recall mentioning in the opening chapter of this bestseller, I do know how to handle myself. But once again I found myself to be substantially outnumbered.

But then they were not all actually hitting me. Several of them were hitting Danbury Collins, who was doing his best to put up a spirited one-handed defence. And a small grey chap with a big bald head and shiny black eyes was hitting on the nimbus woman. But a lot of them
were
hitting me.

Chairs were overturned. And raised and used as projectiles and weapons. The blackboard was torn from its precarious stand and went the way of all flesh. The beer crates were raised and hurled, some through the windows.

If there was a haven of peace and quietude in the midst of this maelstrom, an eye in the hurricane, as it were, then this haven and eye was to be found in the person of Mr Hugo Rune.

The Guru’s Guru, the Logos of the Aeon, the Hokus Bloke, the Lad Himself slept on, untouched by the chaos that reigned all about him, surrounded, it seemed, by a protective cocoon. A cone of power? A psychic force field?

Or just the plain luck of the draw?

Luck was not on my side and I went down beneath a torrent of blows and buffets.

Which all seemed rather unfair, really. After all, I was definitely
not
a CIA spook.

‘You are all bl**dy nutters!’ I cried, as I did my best to fight back.

‘Once more he speaks the alien tongue.’ And nimbus woman put the boot in.

Now, I recall this as clearly as if it was yesterday, because it is often funny the way things work out. In fact, it is
always
funny, but mostly only from a detached point of view, but I do recall that it was Danbury Collins that set The Rampant Squire on fire.

I do not think he
meant
to do it. I do recall him shouting something about peace and love, although it was difficult to tell exactly what, with all the noise of breaking furniture and the boots going in and everything. And I do recall Danbury up on what was left of the stage, rubbing away at his magic lamp. And then flames coming out of the spout. Which had me thinking that the thing was probably a table lighter. But it really was not his fault. He was hit, fell against the curtains and the curtains took fire. And I suppose that all the noise must have attracted the attention of all the other folk in the bar downstairs, because suddenly, it seemed, there were many more folk in the room upstairs and all fighting and coughing, what with the smoke, and panicking also, and stampeding.

And I do recall something altogether strange.

Something monstrous.

In the midst of the conflagration and the screaming (of which there was much) and the violence and all of the rest, I saw something.

It rose above me, huge and menacing and terrible, a mighty primal force, so it seemed. An atavistic
something
from a mythical time long past.

Its upper parts were manlike and naked, too, its lower parts those of a horse. And it reared up and then it stamped down with its hideous hooves. And I swear to you, yes, I swear that at that very moment, amidst all the flames and chaos, that I surely stared death in its face.

And spat into its cavernous eyeholes.

Although whether or not I did the actual spitting, I am unsure.

I am at least sure that I saw Mr Hugo Rune, stout stick in hand and defiant.

And he struck out at the atavistic
something
and once again saved me from death.

PART II

I awoke to find myself blinking up towards a glossily painted ceiling. I was in hospital. I did not have to think too much about this, because it is only in hospitals that they paint the ceilings with gloss. In fact they paint everything with gloss in hospitals because it is so much easier to wash blood and guts off gloss paint. I believe that all military establishments are also painted with gloss, but this is only my belief, as I have never personally entered any of them.

Especially not Area Fifty-One.

The fact that I now found myself in hospital was somewhat alarming, because I had not been aware that I was ill. So why had I woken up in hospital?

‘Doctor Proctor.’ I heard the voice of a nurse – Nurse Hearse, I would later discover. ‘Doctor Proctor, this is the patient.’

‘Patient X,’ said Doctor Proctor and suddenly he loomed over me and did pullings about with my eyelids. ‘Looks like a hopeless case.’