I sat in the front garden next to one of the unmanned gun emplacements whilst Mr Rune returned to the house. I heard sounds issuing from within, hangings and scrapings and other noises that suggested that heavy chains were being hauled to and fro over corrugated iron. And then the distinctive chiming of a Burmese temple bell, the plaintive howl of a spaniel and what appeared to be the roar of a train coming out of a tunnel, a factory chimney being demolished, an owl hooting and finally the sound of silence.
Mr Rune emerged from the house with several LPs under his arm. 'I don't think too much of the sound-effects records,' he said, 'but I'm keeping this Simon and Garfunkel one.'
'That is not even remotely funny,' I told him. 'I saw it coming a mile off.'
'Which is as it should be, young Rizla, but my money, if I carried any, which I do not because I always feel impelled to give it away to the poor, would be placed upon a bet with you that you have not observed the larger picture.'
'You are probably right there,' I said, rising to my feet and dusting grass-cuttings away from my person. 'Did you find any clues in the house, or were you even looking for any?' 'I have already made up my mind regarding this case. It is, in its way, all but solved.' Hugo Rune flicked through the LPs he was carrying. 'This Captain Beefheart, is he any good?'
'Exceedingly so. Do you have any Robert Johnson there?' 'The very question I was hoping you would ask.' 'And the answer?'
'We must proceed at once to the Sussex Downs. You will note that the sun is already beginning to set.' 'I trust you will not be taking any personal credit for that.'
Mr Rune raised a hairless eyebrow. 'We will need torches,' he said.
'Flaming ones?' I asked. 'As are generally carried by villagers when they storm Castle Frankenstein?'
Mr Rune sighed deeply. 'You are still not entirely yourself, young Rizla, so please do this for me.' And he pointed with a podgy digit back towards the house. 'Close your right eye and hold your nose and tell me what you see.' I gave him the blankest of stares. 'Just do it,' said the All-Knowing One. And so I shrugged and did it.
I did not see anything untoward at first, just a rather shabby, dull suburban dwelling, which, but for its rooftop rocket launcher, titanium-alloy window grills and sandbag heapings, looking much the same as any similar house might look in any similar street. Although quite unlike one of a different period in a different country somewhere else – Wales, say, or Greece, or possibly the Solomon Islands. But then, as I breathed in through my unblocked nostril, I saw it: there appeared to be something shrouding the house, like a mist, perhaps, or more like a shimmering film, oily, glistening, but difficult to pin down. It sort of came and went as you looked at it. And the more you did not look, it came, and the more you did, it went. 'Whatever is that? I asked, turning to Mr Rune. The Reinventor of the Ocarina was red in the face and he let out a terrible gasp. 'My apologies,' he said. 'To grant you the ability to see what I see, even for a moment, is an exhausting exercise. But you did see it, didn't you?'
'I did,' I said. But looking back I could no longer see it at all. 'But what is it?'
Mr Rune gave his nose a significant tap. 'All will be revealed, and upon this very night. And you will be offered an opportunity to redress the imbalance that exists between us.'
'The financial imbalance?' I asked. 'Does this mean that you will be sharing fifty-fifty whatever profits you hope to derive from solving this case? Can I have half-shares in the galleon?'
'You certainly can not,' said Mr Rune. 'I speak of a spiritual imbalance – that I have upon two occasions saved your life. Tonight it will be your turn to save mine. Please don't make a fist of it, Rizla. I am not as yet ready to move on to my next incarnation.' 'Bight,' I said. 'Well, you can trust me.'
'So,' said Mr Rune. 'Torches. And armaments, too, I feel. Bring one of the machine-guns from that emplacement there.' 'A machine-gun? I do not know about that.'
'I will teach you. There isn't much to it. I observe that the machine-gun there is none other than a General Electric M13 5 7.62mm minigun, of the variety that they are presently using on the gunships in Vietnam. A war, I hasten to add, that was precipitated by a bet between Aristotle Onassis and Howard Hughes. The General Electric is a sound enough weapon, dispensing, as it does, six thousand rounds per minute from its six rotating barrels. Now let us hasten back to the cab, and be off to the Sussex Downs.' Mr Rune suggested that for his own safety and wellbeing, the unconscious cabbie be placed in the boot of his own taxicab. And this I did unaided, for Mr Rune complained that his shoulder was playing up – 'the one that had been struck by a Jezail bullet during the Afghanistan Campaign, where I was serving as spiritual adviser to General Custer.' I dumped the cabbie in the boot and dropped the lid. And then I drove off towards the Sussex Downs.
Mr Rune had not as yet acquired for me the Bentley he had promised; although he had assured me that it was on order. But my driving skills were improving and I merely glanced against a few parked cars, and sent just a single cleric flying from his pushbike on this occasion.
Oh, and there was some unpleasantness when I nearly ran down a fellow who was filling his Morris Minor with petrol at the garage we stopped off at to purchase a couple of torches. Now, I do have to say that I had taken a shine to the glorious Sussex Downs, their natural glories, flora, fauna and things of that nature generally. I took the occasional stroll upon them when I felt the need for solitude, which was not often, I confess, as I am gregarious by nature. In fact, if the very truth be utterly told, I never took a stroll upon them at all, for I cared as little for nature as I did for Art.
'There are an awful lot of these Downs,' I said to Mr Rune as I drove amongst them on the road that leads towards Henfield. 'Is there any specific part you would like to visit? It all looks much of a muchness to me, although I cannot see much of the muchness at all now, as it is growing somewhat dark.'
'Keep driving,' called Mr Rune from the rear of the taxicab. 'I'll tell you when I wish to stop.'
And presently he did so and I pulled to the side of the road. 'Where exactly are we going?' I asked. 'To the very spot where Bartholomew's brother expired.' 'And you know exactly where this spot is?'
'So would you had you observed a little more closely whilst we were at his house. But that is not entirely your fault. Bring the machine-gun and follow me.' 'You said you would teach me how to use it.' 'And I will, when the need arises. Now pacey-pacey, Rizla,' called Mr Rune, marching on ahead. 'Mahatma Gandhi's loincloth won't go washing itself.' And who can argue with that? It was very dark upon the Sussex Downs by that point, and rather chilly, too. I felt very out of place there. And somehow rather vulnerable. Even though I carried a General Electric M135 7.62mm minigun – or struggled beneath its considerable weight, to be precise. But I did not fit in in places such as this – outdoor places, where there were no pavements. I was, and still am, strictly a town-dweller. You know where you are in a town, but out in the wilds, well, you could be anywhere.
The torch that Mr Rune carried was flashing its light all about as his chunky silhouette loped onwards at an easy pace. He had told me that he had once walked alone across the Kalahari Desert wearing a dinner suit and carrying only a rolled copy of The Times for protection, in order to win a bet with Lawrence of Arabia. Whether this was true or not, there were certainly times when he showed remarkable energy and stamina for a man of his not inconsiderable bulk. This, it seemed, was one of those times and I was sorely flagging.
'Keep up, Rizla.' Mr Rune turned and shone his torch in my face. 'This gun is bl**d*ng heavy,' I said. 'Ah, a touch of the Old Sussex dialect. How fitting.'
'That particular running gag, if such it is,' I said, 'will soon run its course when I run out of swear words.'
'Well, as it happens we're nearly there.' Mr Rune's voice dropped to a whisper. 'Now listen to me, Rizla, and listen to me closely. What you are about to witness you will not entirely understand, but do as I say, when I say it, and all will be well. Do you understand this?' 'I do,' I said. 'And I am cold.'
'Things will soon warm up, methinks. Now follow close at hand. I'm going to switch off the torch.' Mr Rune did this and the darkness closed about us.
'And now I am scared,' I confessed. 'There could be badgers about and those things can give you a terrible biting.'
'Badgers are the least of our concerns. Stay close behind me, in case of man traps.'
'Man traps?' My voice made the whisper known as hoarse.
'We are on secret government property now, and I do not mean property owned secretly by the government – I mean property owned by the Secret Government.'
It was an uphill struggle. In the literal sense of the words. Mr Rune was on his hands and knees now and so was I, struggling uphill, the minigun slung across my shoulders and Mr Rune's big bottom filling most of what little vision I had. 'Are we nearly there yet?' I whispered.
'Nearly, and indeed yes. Come up alongside me, Rizla, and position your weapon according to my specific instructions.'
Mr Rune's specific instructions were: 'Lay it there, pointing in that direction.' Which I gratefully did. And then I peered out into the darkness all around and a big breath of surprise caught in my throat.
We were crouched, it appeared, upon the rim of some natural indentation in the Downs. But it was a vast indentation, somewhat like to that of an extinct volcano. It was a great crater of a thing, with steep sides that led down and down. To brightness.
The only way to describe what I saw is as an encampment. There were vehicles parked there that looked to be of the military persuasion, but these were not of your everyday military ilk. They were camouflaged, but in psychedelic colours, positively Day-Glo, and lit by strips of lights that were powered by a chugging generator. And within the brightness of these lights were many folk all busily engaged in activities that were strange and enigmatic to me. And there was equipment, too, scientific equipment – big portable computer jobbies with rotating tape wheels and rows of valves that glimmered and glistened and looked very much all the present state of the art.
Which is not to say the Art, for this was no Art installation brought in for the Festival.
Whilst chaps in white work-coats fussed at the computers, other chaps in black suits, white shirts, black ties and sunglasses fussed at them and did occasional pointings towards the sky above.
The sky this night, although moonless, was altogether clear of cloud and I was able to make out the constellation of Orion (which put me in mind of spaniels) and vaguely the Crab Nebula (which put me in mind of Bartholomew's brother who had perished hereabouts in a platypus-skin crab suit). 'What is this place?' I whispered to my companion.
'A window area,' said Mr Rune, 'which is to say, a very special place where the line between what we believe we understand to be real and what we believe to be unreal is very thin indeed.' 'You must feel right at home here, then.'
'Just observe, whilst doing your best to remain unobserved. Do you think you can do that for me?'
'I will try,' I said and I patted the General Electric M135 7.62mm minigun. It really was a most remarkable-looking weapon, with its six rotating barrels and everything. And the big belt of bullets and…
Well, you know how it is for boys. Or at least you will if you are a boy. There is something strangely compelling about guns, especially great big machine-guns. It is like fire, really – how small boys play with matches and big boys have barbecues and bonfires. There is something about the excitement and danger of it all. Firing guns is wrong. Guns are all wrong. But there is still something terribly compelling about them.
'Am I right in thinking,' I whispered to Mr Rune, 'that the men down there are baddies?'
Hugo Rune nodded his naked dome. 'Baddies of the baddest persuasion.' 'Do you want me to shoot them?' I asked. The Guru's Guru turned his head towards me. 'Whatever has brought this on?' he asked. 'Well…' I patted the minigun.
'Ah,' said Hugo Rune, 'too close a proximity to a weapon. I once wrote a most erudite monograph upon the subject of the car crash in relation to metallurgy, to whit how certain metals are capable of absorbing the psychic essence to which we refer, most lightly, as good luck or bad luck. Allow me to elucidate.
'The alchemists believe that gold is the purest metal, that all other "base" metals aspire to be gold and can in fact be transformed into gold by the addition of a catalysing agent known as the Philosopher's Stone. This stone is, in essence, the very quintessence of purity.
'People love gold – worship gold, in fact; they are unconsciously drawn to its purity. Gold pleases them upon a psychic level, above that which they are able to comprehend. Gold, you might say, is good luck. Iron, however, and the steel it is converted into, are quite another matter. Here we have the basest of metals, a primitive atavistic brute of a metal. Weapons are not fashioned from gold; jewellery that beautifies is fashioned from gold. Which brings me back to the subject of my monograph. It is my contention that the motorcars that crash, as opposed to those that do not, do so because a portion of the iron of which they are constructed has been recycled from a piece of iron that in the past absorbed bad luck. It might have once been a sword, or a knife or some other weapon. The cycle continues. Evil inevitably befalls the user.
'Now please remove your hand from that weapon lest its evil contaminate you further.'
'I was only asking,' I said and I grudgingly removed my hand from the General Electric Mi35 7.62mm mini gun.
'When I do ask you to start shooting,' said Mr Rune, 'and be assured that I will, it will not be towards those particular baddies that I will request you to direct your firepower.' 'Whatever you say,' I said. 'This is all rather exciting. In a sort of I-wonder-what-will-happen-next kind of way. If you know what I mean.' Mr Rune sighed deeply. 'Just remain alert,' said he.
And I remained alert, although chilly, and I watched the fellows below us, the ones in the white and the ones in the black. And there were some in colourful camouflage, too. And they were all keeping busy. Then a van arrived from somewhere. And it was a Royal Mail van. 'Look at that,' I whispered to Mr Rune. 'A Royal Mail van. What do you think that is doing here?' 'What do you think it's doing here?' 'Delivering letters? Although-'
'Although?' Mr Rune took out a silver hip flask, removed its cap and drank from it.
'Although, as you know, I recently had a most alarming experience in a Royal Mail van. You do not think it could be that evil Doctor Proctor, do you?' 'Observe,' said Mr Rune. 'Give me a sip from your hip flask.'
'Observe,' said Mr Rune once again. And he did not give me a sip. The rear doors of the Royal Mail van opened. And it was that evil Doctor Proctor. 'That f*cker!' I whispered. Mr Rune had no comment to make.
And that f*cker climbed down from the Royal Mail van and Nurse Hearse climbed down from it also. And then they reached up and helped another f*cker down. And this f*cker was 'A crab!' I whispered, though harshly. 'Some f*cker dressed up as a crab.'
'Enough f*ckers now,' said Mr Rune. 'Such language does not become you. But what do you make of it?'
'No sense at all,' I replied. 'But I can see his head sticking out of the top of the crab suit – Bartholomew the bog troll.'
'It's his brother,' said Mr Rune. 'His twin brother, to be precise.' 'But I thought his brother had been murdered. You said his brother had been murdered.' 'He was.' 'Well, clearly he was not, because he is right there.'
'You misunderstood me.' Mr Rune had pulled a bar of chocolate out of his pocket now and was munching upon it. 'That is the twin brother of Bartholomew's twin brother. The identical twin. It is, in fact, a clone of Bartholomew's twin brother.' 'And what is a clone?' I asked.
'A genetically engineered duplicate wrought from the DNA of a subject.'
'That is science fiction,' I said. 'We cannot do things like that yet.' ' We can't. But they can.'
'Would you care to enlighten me, please?' I pleaded. 'Clearly you know what is going on here.'
'All the clues were back at the house of Bartholomew's brother – you saw them with your own eyes – but now is not the time for explanations. Look on and learn and be prepared to employ the weaponry if and when the need arises.'
I made exasperated sounds, but I looked on, because let us face it, whatever was going on was not the sort of thing that you see every day. Whatever it was that was going on. And then…
'Ah,' whispered Mr Rune, 'if I am not mistaken, the show is about to begin.'
And then I heard those big electrical clunking sounds that are only made by searchlights when you switch them on. And sure as sure can be, around and about the encampment below, searchlights that I had not previously noticed because they were all in darkness blinked on and shone up into the sky. They crisscrossed and arced in the sky and then appeared to focus upon something. Something large. 'What is that?' I enquired of Mr Rune. 'A scout-craft,' said himself.
I could hear a low, distant humming. And this grew louder to such a degree that I had to cover my ears. And down from the sky dropped this scout-craft. This scout-craft wasA flying saucer, no less.
'Mister Rune!' I shouted above the din. 'Mister Rune, it is a flying saucer!'
Mr Rune clamped a big, fat hand over my mouth. With his other hand, he raised a finger to his lips.
Down and down came the flying saucer. I saw some kind of glowing undercarriage fold out, and I do have to say that it was with a certain elegance, almost balletic, that it set down within the crater below. The terrible humming died away. A terrible stillness followed. 'The sound of silence,' whispered Mr Rune.
I recalled that I had once seen photographs, purported to be of flying saucers, taken by an American chappie by the name of George Adamski. I had considered them to be fakes at the time, but now I was of a different opinion. George's photos were dead on the nail, conning tower, portholes and all.
An entrance port in the saucer eased open and a metal gangway slid down towards Earth. And then an occupant of the craft appeared in the doorway. And that occupant looked like a crab.
But it was a simply spiffing crab, and I am not being flippant here.
It came down the gangway sideways, as is the manner of crabs. But it was decked out in a silver spacesuit. Which is what made it look so simply spiffing.
For those who pay attention to such matters, it would have been noticed that in the early days of the NASA programme, the astronauts all wore silver spacesuits, unlike the white ones that they wear today. Why? Because silver was the colour that spacesuits should be, wasn't it? Everyone in those days knew that a spacesuit had to be silver. Until of course it crossed the mind of some spacesuit designer at NASA that spacesuits did not really have to be silver just because everyone naturally assumed that all spacesuits had to be silver. Spacesuits could be white. In fact, they would actually look more chic if they were white.
Well, everybody is entitled to their opinion, I suppose, but for me, a simply spiffing spacesuit has to be silver. To Hell with modern trends. 'That is one simply spiffing space crab,' I whispered.
'I have to agree,' said Mr Rune, 'so I trust that you won't take it too badly when I call upon you to shoot it.' 'Of course not,' I replied. 'After all, it is a space crab.'
The space crab was now at the bottom of the gangway. It had sort of scuttled around, because scuttling is what crabs do – as opposed to shifty fellows. Who sidle. Although there seemed to me to be a degree of sidling in the space crab's scuttling, for it scuttled in a sinister fashion. I would not have trusted it at all.
And then I heard a kind of fanfare coming through loudspeakers that I had also failed to notice earlier. And I noticed a chap with a Stylophone(tm), of the type that was presently being advertised by Rolf Harris on the television. This chap had a microphone set up and was scraping away at the Stylophone(tm) with a will and a vigour. And then he spoke into the microphone, speaking words that sounded to me like absolute gibberish.
'That would be Cosmoranto,' Mr Rune explained, 'the universal tongue.' The gibberish went on and on and then it stopped. And the space crab must have said something in reply. Because it then went on and on again. And then stopped.
And then the chaps in the black suits with the white shirts, black ties and sunglasses took hold of the twin brother of Bartholomew the bog troll's twin brother and started *This really is true. Look it up if you don't believe me. I got it from Mike Simpson and he knows these things. dragging him towards the space crab and the flying saucer. And it quickly became clear that the twin brother of the bog troll's twin brother had come to the conclusion that he did not want to be dragged anywhere, especially there, and he began to put up a spirited struggle. Which was not easy as he was somewhat encumbered by his platypus-skin crab suit. 'Should I shoot someone now?' I asked Mr Rune. 'You'll shoot no one at all.'
'I am impressed by that,' I said, 'because even though I can only see you vaguely in this uncertain light, you really did appear to say that without moving your lips.'
'That's because I said that,' said someone who was not Mr Hugo Rune. And I glanced up to see who this was. And someone clubbed me all but unconscious.