The Garden of Unearthly Delights (3 page)

Outside.

And it
had grown somewhat dark.

Maxwell
blinked and rubbed at his eyes. It couldn’t be much past
midday
. What had happened to the light? He
blinked and squinted. The lane was blurry. Indistinct.

Dreamlike.

Dreamlike.

Maxwell
made for home. He forced his way along. His boots, substantial as they were,
seemed sticky about the soles. They clung to the pavement, making every step an
effort.

Ahead
was confusion. Police cars. Flashing lights. Shouting.

Crowds
of people.

A
policeman stepped forward. Barred his way. ‘You can’t go any further,’ said the
officer of the law.

‘I live
down there,’ said Maxwell. ‘Let me by.’

‘No,
sir. There’s a fracture in the reality of that street, we can’t let anyone
past.’

‘But my
house is there.’ Maxwell almost said, ‘My wife is there.’ But he didn’t.

‘There’s
nothing we can do about your house, sir. You’d better get out of town quickly.
Go abroad. Go to
Patagonia
.’

‘Let me
through, please.’ Maxwell raised a fist towards the policeman.

‘I can
shoot you for that, sir. It’s allowed now, you know.’

‘What’s
going on? You have to tell me.’

‘It’s a
reality fracture, scientists are working on it.

Someone
moved the chair. You’d better go, sir, before you arouse suspicion.

‘Yeah,
go on. Bugger off.’

Maxwell
turned. A policewoman sneered at him. It was his wife. The not-so-dear one. But
then she was also the new barmaid! It was the same person. Maxwell couldn’t
understand how he’d never recognized her in the
Tengo Na Minchia Tanta
and
in The Shrunken Head.

‘Go on,
Maxwell, sling your hook. Bugger off. Don’t look back. Don’t come back. Don’t
ever
come back!’

Maxwell
turned, ran blindly. Tripped. And fell.

And
vanished.

2

And then awoke.

In his
favourite armchair.

And
groaned mightily.

‘Oh I
do hate that.’ Maxwell reached to scratch his head but thought better of it and
rubbed his eyes instead. ‘Drop off back to sleep in your armchair,  dream a lot
of gibberish and think you’re still awake. Horrible.’ He shuddered briefly.
‘Still, at least I didn’t dream I was walking around the streets in my pyjamas
this time.’

‘Oh
dear,’ said someone in a tired and languid tone.  ‘I had hoped so much that we
might simply skip over  this sequence. It is such a cliché.’

‘You
can’t skip over it just like that.’ This voice was sharp and foxy. ‘There has
to be a process of adjustment and explanation.’

‘And
acceptance.’ The third voice had a youthful quality to it. ‘For him to
function of his own free will.’

‘What
is this?’ went Maxwell, opening wide his eyes. Then, ‘Aaaaaagh!’ he continued.

‘Why is
it always “Aaaaaagh!”?’ asked he of the tired and languid tones.

‘Because
it is,’ said foxy. ‘Let him get it over with. Someone pour him some coffee.’

‘Aaaaaagh!’
went Maxwell, which wasn’t a new ‘Aaaaaagh!’ but a continuation of the
original. ‘Who? What? Where? How? Why? Aaaaaagh!’

‘Take
some coffee, Mr Carrion. It contains a mild soporific. It will calm you down.’

‘Calm
me down?
I don’t want—’ Maxwell jumped up from his
favourite armchair. ‘Who? Where? How?’ He gaped all around and about. This
wasn’t his front room. He wasn’t home. But where was he? And was he actually
awake?

‘You
are
awake,’ said languid-tones.

Maxwell
gaped now at the speaker. A long tall speaker, towering before him. Somewhere
near to seven feet in height, he was. A bony frame shrink-wrapped in a suit of
bottle-green velvet. The head was narrow, long, its facial features all pinched
in together. A great red beard, a fantastic embroidery of tortured plaits,
depended to the chest. Thick-lensed, horn-rimmed spectacles bridged a hatchet
nose. The mouth beneath pursed quizzically, then spoke again. ‘Try to remain
calm,’ it said.

‘Calm?
I?’ Maxwell’s eyes went flashing round this room that wasn’t his. And ‘wasn’t
his’, it was, to a most notable degree.

This
room was long and wide, yet low of ceiling, each wall bricked with books of
ancient leather. Dusty cabinets displayed a wealth of
outré objets d’art.
Glass
domes sheltered beasts and birds and insects, fruit and flowers. There were
reliquaries of burnished gold on chiffoniers of satinwood, and deeply buttoned
chesterfields and escritoires and astrolabes. What floor was seen was rich with
rugs, of Soumak, Shirvan, Susani, Senneh and Savonnerie.

‘Enough,’
croaked Maxwell, gazing this way and the next, yet seeking only the door. ‘If
I’m not dreaming, let me out.’

‘You’re
free to go,’ said the long tall figure in the bottle green. ‘But I would not
advise you so to do, quite yet.’

‘It
wouldn’t go well for you if you did.’

Maxwell
swung about to view the speaker with the foxy voice. A man of medium height (to
those who dwell amongst the very tall and the very short in approximately equal
proportion), broad of freckled, smiling face, with a nimbus of white hair
rising airily above a forehead of considerable span. This chap was all in green
tweed. Watch-chains swagged the waistcoat that curtained his luxurious paunch.
Tiny hands toyed nervously on the mount of a lacquered cane. ‘Drink some
coffee, compose your thoughts, relax yourself, it’s for the best.’

A third
fellow offered a tiny Copeland coffee cup upon a delicate saucer painted in the
Imari palette, with gilt line and dentil rims.

‘And
who are you?’ asked Maxwell, declining the proffered cup.

The
third fellow simply grinned. Young and elfish, he wore a black T-shirt printed
with the words ‘FAST AND BULBOUS’ across the chest area. A black leather
jacket, soiled
Levis
and Doc
Marten boots completed the ensemble. He had a rather unfortunate cold sore on
his upper lip. ‘Sugar?’ he enquired.

‘I’m
out of here,’ Maxwell pushed his chair aside, took half a step and fell flat on
his face.

‘I took
the liberty of tying your boot laces together,’ said red-beard of the bottle
green.

Maxwell
glared up bitterly from the Soumak, Shirvan, Susani, Senneh and Savonnerie
rug-bestrewn floor. ‘Thanks a lot,’ said he. ‘But hold on there.’ He glanced
from standing figure to standing figure and back again. ‘I know you, don’t I?’

‘He’s
getting there,’ said foxy voice.

‘I knew
he would,’ said FAST AND BULBOUS.

‘You
know us,’ said red-beard of the bottle green. ‘You do, go on.’

Maxwell
fumbled with his boot laces. As with his boots, they were substantial. They
would not be untied without effort.

‘Help
Mr Carrion back into his armchair,’ said red-beard, and the others hastened to
oblige.

‘It’s
Karrien,’
said Maxwell, sitting down once more. ‘It’s Maxwell Karrien. But … it
is
you.
Yes it is.

‘It
is,’ the tall man nodded curtly from the waist.

‘Then I
am
dreaming. You’re not real.’

The
tall man shook his head. ‘This isn’t helping. Who are we? Go on, say it. Tell
us.’

‘You’re
them,’
said Maxwell. ‘The characters in the books I read. You’re Sir
John Rimmer, fifth Earl of Boleskine.’ The tall man winked an eye behind a
pebbled lens. ‘You’re Dr Harney.’ Fox-voiced freckle-face fluttered tiny
fingers. ‘And you’re the psychic youth himself, Danbury Collins.’

‘I’m
that fellow,’ said the psychic youth himself.

‘The
paranormal investigators in the p. p. Penrose novels.’

‘We are
they,’ quoth those who were.

‘And
you
do
look very good.’ Maxwell made a most approving face. ‘Just as I
imagined you to, in the novels. Except,’ he peered at Danbury Collins, ‘you
never had a cold sore. In the novels.’

‘Would
you?’
the lad asked.

‘Quite
so. Well, brilliant. I’m very impressed.’

‘Good,’
said Sir John. ‘We hoped you would be.’

‘Impressed
by my own imagination,’ said Maxwell. ‘That last dream was crap, but this one
is a killer.’

‘This
one is for real,’ said Danbury Collins.

‘Oh
yeah, sure.’

‘What
happened yesterday was real,’ said Sir John. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

Maxwell
glanced up, about, from face to face, around the room. It did all look so very
real. And feel so very real. It even
smelled
so very real. Musty. Musky.
A hint of armpit issuing from
Danbury
’s direction. Sir John’s beard lotion and the beeswax on the
doctor’s shoes.

So very
real indeed.

‘It
is
real,’ said Maxwell. ‘But it can’t be.’

‘Things
have changed,’ said Sir John. ‘The times have changed. Perhaps I might explain.
To spare much later anguish. To elucidate.’

‘To
allow for the process of adjustment,’ said Dr Harney.

‘And
acceptance,’ said Danbury Collins, offering the coffee cup once more to
Maxwell.

Maxwell
took the dainty thing and put it to his lips. ‘Go on,’ he said, suspiciously.
‘Elucidate. Explain.’

‘Good.’
Sir John lowered his gauntness onto a chesterfield sofa and extended his long
legs before him. ‘Have you ever asked yourself why the Old Testament just sort
of petered out at the end?’ he enquired.

‘No,’
said Maxwell, sipping coffee. ‘Can’t say I ever have.’

‘Or why
the cycle of Greek myths simply finished?’

‘No.’

‘Or why
Columbus
never sailed over the
edge of the earth when he went off in search of the
New
World
.’

‘That’s
because the earth is a sphere, I think you’ll find.’

‘Is it
indeed?’

‘Well,
it was yesterday.’

‘Ah,’
said Sir John. ‘Yesterday.’

‘You
mean it’s not
today?’

‘Very
possibly not. I’ve yet to find out.’

‘Hold
on there,’ said Maxwell.

‘I’ll
keep this as brief as I can.’ Sir John twiddled here and there about his beard.
‘And as simple. The history of this planet, the history of man, is composed of
“ages”. From the age of chaos to the age of the dinosaurs, to the age of the
dawn of man. The Stone age. The Bronze age. The Iron age. The age of myth and
legend. The golden age. The dark ages. The middle ages. The age of reason. The
age of steam. The technological age. The age of Aquarius. The new age. Ages,
cycles, times, durations. Units of measurement, flowing from one into another,
but always in the same direction: forward. Why does the Old Testament simply
peter out? Because the biblical age came to an end. The age of the prophets and
of those who walked with God was over.’

‘Where
is all this leading?’ Maxwell asked.

‘Quite
simply, Max, the age you knew two days ago has
simply
ceased to be. The
planet earth has moved into another age.’

‘And so
what’s this age then? The age of fictional characters?’

His
hosts exchanged glances.

‘Leave
it out,’ said Maxwell.

‘No-one
has had a chance to give it a name yet,’ said Sir John. ‘But if I might make so
bold, I should call it “The Age of Almost Infinite Possibility”.’

‘Really?’
said Maxwell, most underwhelmed. ‘But surely every age is of
almost
unlimited
possibility.’

‘I’ll
take your word for it, Max. You’re the hero, after all.’

‘The
hero?’
Maxwell choked upon the grouts in his coffee. ‘I’m no hero. I’m just
Mr
Me.
And I’m Maxwell, not Max.’

‘You
were
Maxwell. It will all become clear quite soon. Does any of this make the
vaguest sense to you so far?’

‘You
might try to be a bit more specific about this new “age” you say the earth has
moved into. How did it move into it anyway? And why?’

‘There
were signs of its coming. A shadow cast before, as it were. Prophecies,
predictions.’

‘You’re
saying that it’s the Apocalypse then? Or Armageddon?’

‘I am
saying that the Age of Technology is no more. If you like, the earth has moved
into a period of non-causality. Reality would appear to have fractured. A new
age of myth and magic has dawned upon us.’