The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived (27 page)

‘What
is?’ Norman asked.

‘Not
you, him.’

‘Stop
it at once,’ ordered Cornelius.

‘The
newspaper page in your pocket. The one that made you feel strange. The one
about the boy’s funeral.’

‘Oh
that.’ Cornelius dragged bundles of money from his pockets, unearthed the
crumpled news-sheet, handed it to Tuppe.

‘It’s
you,’
whispered the small man.

‘Me?’
asked Cornelius.

‘Him,’
said Tuppe.

Norman
gave the news-sheet a perusal. ‘Shit, I made the front page. That
handbag-humping vicar, he—’

‘Then
you’re—’

‘Dead,’
said Norman. ‘Dead as a dead boy. Sorry.’

‘Then
you’re a—’

‘Ghost
I suppose. It’s a real bummer, I can tell you.

‘Stone
the Christians.’ Tuppe sat down hard on his backside. ‘Would you mind not
sitting there?’ Norman asked. ‘That’s the very place where I—’

‘Aaaaagh!’
went Tuppe.

‘We did
Aaaaagh!’ said Cornelius. ‘And enough is quite enough.’

‘It’s
him. It’s him.’ Tuppe jumped up and down. Norman frowned. Tuppe shifted himself
and jumped up and down once more.

‘Thanks,’
said Norman.

‘Don’t
mention it.’

‘Don’t
mention what?’

‘Shut
up, Cornelius, and listen. He’s here, the—’

‘Dead
boy,’ said Norman dismally.

‘The
dead boy. The one who died up here when his dad fell on top of him. The one
here in the newspaper. He’s here. I’m looking at him, talking to him. I swear.’

‘You
don’t?’

‘I do.’
Tuppe crossed his heart and hoped not to become a dead boy.

‘I
swear as your bestest friend. I am not lying. He’s a ghost and his name is— ’

‘Norman,’
said Norman. ‘And I’m here to help Cornelius.’

‘He
says his name is Norman and he’s here to help
you.’
Cornelius viewed his
bestest friend. And he viewed the paleness of pallor and the earnestness of
expression. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ he said.

‘I’m
not kidding.’

Cornelius
now bumped down on his bum. ‘Not there please,’ said Norman.

‘He
says, not there please,’ said Tuppe. ‘Eh?’

‘That’s
the exact place where he, you know, er—’

‘Aaaaagh!’
went Cornelius, leaping up.

‘Thanks,’
said Norman. ‘He says thanks.’

‘No
problem. Where is he, Tuppe?’

‘He’s
right there.’ Tuppe pointed, but Cornelius couldn’t see a thing.

‘I
can’t see a thing,’ said Cornelius.

‘Well
he’s here, I’m telling you.

‘So
what does he want? What is he here to help me with?’ Norman told Tuppe and
Tuppe said, ‘Stopping Hugo Rune.’

‘I
think Hugo Rune
has
been stopped. And for all of his badness, he
was
my
dad. Which doesn’t make me too happy, as it happens.’

Norman
spoke some more. Tuppe said, ‘Rune isn’t dead.’

‘Not
dead? He could never have survived that crash into the sea.’

‘Norman
says that there’s more than one Rune. That he cloned himself How many are there
of him, Norman?’

‘How
many?’
asked Cornelius. ‘What is this?’

‘He
says there are five, including the one who has taken control of The Universal Reincarnation
Company.’

‘What?’

‘I
think you’d better explain,’ Tuppe told Norman. ‘Slowly and precisely. And I
will pass it on to Cornelius.’

‘Fair
enough,’ Norman agreed. ‘But you’d better tell your friend to sit down. It’s a
bummer of a tale and he’s not going to like it.’

‘He
says you’d better sit down,’ said Tuppe.

‘But
not
there,’
said Norman.

‘But
not
there.’

And so
it came to pass that Norman did speak unto Tuppe and Tuppe did speak unto
Cornelius, saying all that Norman had told him. And Cornelius did drop his jaw
and raise his eyebrows to what he was told. Yea verily, thus and so.

Norman
told it all. Of the man-powered flight competition and his unfortunate demise.
His funeral and his journey to The Universal Reincarnation Company. Of the
static souls that encircled the sun and how God had put the bollocks on the
outside, closed down Hell and built Heaven far too small. Of Norman’s going
through the filing cabinets and of the terrible disclosure that most, if not
everyone, were destined to die next Friday at midnight from an electrical
discharge. Of his capture by the large controller. And his meeting the real
controller and all that the real controller had told him about Rune being
preincarnated as himself on his original birthdate again and again. And there
being five Runes, one of which was now controlling the URC.

And he
spoke of the airship
Pinocchio
and the big sky nozzles and how Claude
had shot him to Earth. And how something hadn’t gone altogether right and he’d
nearly burned up on re-entry. And how he was sorry for burning down the
Skelington Bay Grande.

And
everything.

‘And he
says, that’s everything,’ said Tuppe in a very small voice. Cornelius shook his
head in awe and vanished ‘neath his locks.

‘Big
hair,’ said Norman approvingly.

‘I’m
gobsmacked,’ said Cornelius, seeking out his face. ‘This is all very much
too
much. But then it makes some kind of sense. Remember when I told you that I
smelt my father in the hotel room, but at the same time I didn’t?’

‘Strangely
I don’t follow that,’ said Norman.

‘That’s
what I said,’ said Tuppe.

‘No,
it’s what
I
said.’ Cornelius rolled his eyes. ‘But that must be it.

The
Rune in the hotel room wasn’t the real Rune. Not my father, but one of his
clones. My father’s something of a nutter, I grant you, but he’s not the stuff
of genuine baddy-dom. Killing off the world’s population isn’t his game. I’m
sure that must be it.’

‘Could
be.’ Norman shrugged.

‘He said
it could be,’ said Tuppe. ‘And he shrugged when he said it.’

‘Incredible.
Hey, hello.’

‘Hey
hello?’

‘Hey,
hello, it’s Thelma and Louise.’

‘Well,
hey hello to that.’

The two
young women came smiling and waving. Steering their shoes between the sleepers and
the wakers.

‘Is
this Woodstock?’ Thelma asked. ‘What time does Hendrix come on?’

‘You
OK?’ Louise asked Tuppe.

‘We’re
fine. Are you both fine?’

‘We’re
fine.’

‘Well,
isn’t that fine.’

‘It’s
fine. Who’s your friend?’ Thelma reached to tousle Norman’s hairdo. Her hand
passed straight through his head.

‘Aaaaagh!’
went Thelma.

‘We did
Aaaaagh,’ said Cornelius.

‘But I,
he—’

‘He’s a
dead boy,’ said Tuppe. ‘And his name is Norman.’

‘He’s a
what?’

‘He has
returned from beyond the grave to help Cornelius prevent Hugo Rune from wiping
out the world next Friday.’

Thelma
shook her golden head and stared at her fingers. ‘Things are never dull around
you blokes, are they?’

They all sat down (being
careful where they sat) and spoke of this and that thing and the other.

Having
been introduced, Norman told Thelma and Louise everything he had just told
Tuppe. Looking on, Cornelius was appalled to observe that both Thelma and
Louise could see and hear the red-haired dead boy in the charred overalls.

Thelma
then told her all regarding the conversation she and Louise had overheard
between Rune and ‘Chunky’ Wilberforce, about pylons and cables and radio masts.

Cornelius
chipped in with an inventory of pre-fire hotel-room contents, the maps and the
printouts and the calculations and the books on electrostatics and
electroplating.

And
Tuppe told a story about how his father had once met Judy Garland in a London
hotel and helped to put her to bed.

Norman
said that this was a most interesting tale, but probably not very relevant. ‘Ask
Cornelius to tell us about those calculations he saw,’ he told Tuppe.

Tuppe
did so.

‘Oh the
figures,’ Cornelius thought about this. ‘They were to do with cubic miles and
units of $93,000,000.’

‘Then I
know what he’s up to,’ said Norman. ‘We did it in science with that moron Mr
Bailey. It’s to do with the sea. Every cubic mile of sea water contains
$93,000,000 worth of gold.’

‘It
never does,’ said Tuppe.

‘It
does too.’
[20]

Tuppe
passed this intelligence to Cornelius.

‘It
never does,’ said the tall boy.

‘Apparently
it does,’ said Tuppe. ‘With footnotes attesting to the fact.’

‘Gold
from the sea?’ Cornelius gave that some thought. ‘But surely it can’t be done.
If it could be done someone would have done it by now.’

‘There’s
nothing that can’t be done,’ said Norman. ‘Only things that have not been done
yet.’

‘Did
you get that out of a Christmas cracker?’ Thelma asked. ‘Yes,’ said Norman.
‘But think about it, it all fits together. The books Cornelius saw about
electrostatics and electroplating.’

Tuppe
passed this on to Cornelius.

‘Go
on,’ said he.

‘Electroplating,’
said Norman. ‘We did that in science. You put two electrodes into an
electrolyte, a saline solution of something, and pass a current through them.’

‘Yes,’
said Tuppe, ‘but if you wanted to draw the gold out of the sea that way you’d
need a pretty monstrous pair of electrodes.’

‘You
would,’ said Norman. ‘And Cornelius saw them coloured in on the maps like he
just told us. It’s the twin piers.’

‘The
piers?’

‘The
piers?’ Cornelius asked.

‘The
piers,’ said Norman, pleased as a dead boy could be pleased. ‘If you
electrified the piers, passed a massive current through these, it might just
work.’

‘It
wouldn’t,’ said Tuppe. ‘The sea’s too big, it would short out your power
supply.’

‘I’m
following this from what I can hear of it,’ said Cornelius. ‘And there was a
computer printout in Rune’s room about the National Grid, and it had something
like “NOT ENOUGH POWER” scrawled across the bottom.’

‘But it
has to be it,’ said Norman. ‘The deadly electrical discharge, this has to be
what Rune plans to do.’

‘Well,
I can’t see where he’d get all the energy from,’ said Tuppe. ‘There wouldn’t be
enough electrical power on Earth, he’d have to get it from somewhere else.’

‘Somewhere
else.’ Norman ran his fingers through his Beatle cut and chewed at his bottom
lip. And then he had the mother of all mental flashes. It was of billions of
souls encircling the sun. Each of which was in itself an immensely powerful
electrically charged particle. A particle that could be manipulated by Rune’s
controller
doppelgänger
with his big sky nozzles. A particle that could
be wiped out for ever and ever. Used up. Snuffed out in the cause of electrical
discharge.

‘Oh
shit!’ said Norman.

‘I
heard that,’ said Cornelius.

31

‘God’s teeth!’ spat Hugo
Rune. ‘What am I doing dead? What am I doing
here?’

The
large controller stared his unliving double eye to eye. ‘You’re all wet,’ he
observed.

‘You
get wet when you drown. Go somewhat bonkers also. I swear that at the moment of
my death I saw sheep go swimming by.’

‘Perhaps
it was a ship sailing by.’

‘It was
nothing of the sort. But I shouldn’t be here. I should be being born again as
myself on my original birthday. Why have you brought me up here?’

‘I
wished to warn you,’ said the large controller. ‘We have had something of a
“situation” up here. As you are well aware, the success of our operation here
depends on nothing ever getting done. As long as we only employ loafers, who
sit around all day squeezing their spots and testing the aerodynamics of paper
darts, then you and I and the other three of us are free to go on undetected,
growing ever in power, until we control all.’

‘This
is the purpose of the exercise, yes. Absolute control of absolutely
everything.’

‘Well,
we have come slightly unstuck,’ said the large controller. ‘An oaf Jack
Bradshaw took on found out a good deal more than he should and has absconded
with his knowledge.’