The Brightonomicon (Brentford Book 8) (51 page)

‘No,’ said Tobes. ‘You’d only laugh.’

‘I’m sure we wouldn’t.’

‘You would,’ said Tobes. ‘Go on now,’ he yelled at me. ‘Take a swing at the Chronovision, get it over with.’

I raised my hammer.

‘Not yet,’ said Mr Rune. ‘I beg you, Lord Tobes, speak to us of your dream.’

‘Oh, all right.’ Tobes sat down in the armchair, but as he had not replaced the cushion after rooting for the hammer, he sort of sunk into it, pranging his bum on a spring. ‘Ouch,’ he said. ‘I should have recalled
that,
because
that
happened in the dream also.’

‘Will you
please
tell us?’ And Mr Rune wrung his big fat hands.

Tobes rose from the armchair and rubbed at his bum. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘like I was saying … Yes, that’s right, I’d just hurt my bottom, and then there was some chitchat – I was speaking, I think. And then you shouted for Rizla to smash the Chronovision. Then the absurd bit happened.’

‘And the absurd bit
was
… ?’ And Mr Rune leaned forward in his chair.

‘A house,’ said Tobes, ‘like the sort of house that a child would draw – this house appeared, came right up through the floorboards. Damn near demolished
this
house, I can tell you. Gave me such a start that it woke me up.’

Now, even though Lord Tobes had not shouted, I had heard every word. Which was probably a miracle, but I could not say for sure. But—

I looked at Mr Rune.

And Mr Rune, in the distance, looked back at me.

And then from beneath our feet there came a rumble.

‘Smash the Chronovision!’ shouted Mr Rune. ‘Smash the Chronovision now!’

‘Yes, that’s what you said,’ said Tobes. ‘And what
is
that God-awful rumbling?’

Great vibrations shuddered through the room and rolled across the mighty floor. China ducks fell from the walls, along with a painting of a crying child. Ornaments tumbled from the mantelpiece as the mighty floor began to rise.

‘Smash it, Rizla!’ roared Mr Rune.

I raised the hammer above my head, but I did not have time to swing it because suddenly I was borne aloft upon the room’s carpet and broken floorboards and the roof of the rising bathyscaphe. I glimpsed the distant Mr Rune falling back and taking grip on his stout stick. But I did not see Tobes, though he must have been there somewhere.

Floorboards shivered and shattered. The sounds of destruction pounded my ears and brick dust filled my nostrils and throat. I clung to the now rooftop carpet as it rose up and up. And above me, growing closer by the second, was the living-room ceiling.

I tried to jump from the rising rooftop, but would you not know it, but the sleeve of my tweed jacket was snagged upon a nail. I scrunched up my shoulders and ducked my head and prepared myself for oblivion.

And then with a kind of rocking, grinding, halting kind of motion, there was a rock and a grind and things became motionless.

And I was … well … phew … about a mere three inches from oblivion. But still all snagged like a fish on a hook and somewhat covered in dust.

And then I heard new sounds beneath me – the sounds of a door being opened and sounds of manic laughter, too.

‘Ho, ho, ho,’ went these sounds of manic laughter. ‘Excellent navigation, Mister Mate. It would have been your ’nads on a plate if you’d harmed the Chronovision. Now hurry along, man, fetch it in. A lively evening’s viewing awaits us. Get a move on, you oaf!’

The voice was that of Count Otto Black.

The mate’s name was Phil. And he said, ‘Aye aye, Captain.’

There was a fumbling and bumbling beneath me, and sounds as of broken floorboards and of mashed-up fixtures and fittings being shifted. And then the mate gave a cry of, ‘I have it, Captain. And unharmed it is.’

Followed by more sounds of manic laughter from the mouth of Count Otto Black.

‘Do you want me to fish their bodies from the wreckage, Captain,’ asked the mate, ‘so that you can defile them in an unspeakable fashion, as the fancy takes you?’

‘Tempting though that is, Mister Mate,’ crowed the Count, ‘I now have what I want. And what my God has in store for Rune’s soul far out-grosses anything that I could seek to do with his body.’ And then he laughed once more for good measure.

‘Blackguard!’ I thought. And I tried once more to release myself from the nail that I was snagged on, up on the roof of Count Otto’s subterranean ark.

‘Take us below, Mister Mate!’ called the Count. And the door slammed shut upon them.

‘Take us below – oh by Crimbo,’ I whispered. ‘I will be ground to oblivion.’ And I wrestled once more with my snagged-up sleeve and received no joy in return. And suddenly the rocking, grinding and halting motion jerked into reverse and
The Bevendean Bathyscaphe
submerged.

‘Oh by Crimbo, by Crimbo! By Crimbo!’ I scrabbled about at the now-sinking rooftop, trying to free myself. And over the apex of the roof, two faces grinned at me.

‘Mr Rune!’ I went. ‘Lord Tobes!’

‘We both snagged our sleeves upon rooftop nails of this here ark,’ said Tobes, ‘and so were saved from being crushed to our deaths. Was
that
a miracle or what?’

I would have said something in reply, but it suddenly became very dark and I became greatly afeared. And I would probably have voiced my fears, probably something to the effect of, ‘Get us out of here, Lord Tobes!’ had I been able to make myself heard. But the sudden sound of whirling blades cleaving through the earth would have drowned out what I might have said, and so I did not say it.

So to speak.

And it certainly moved at a fair old lick, that subterranean ark. And on its rooftop we did not get mashed, but we did have to cling on tight. I do not know how long we travelled for, nor how fast, nor how far, but it was very scary and it did not smell too nice.

But suddenly we came to a halt. And with the suddenness of halting came a suddenness of light. Bright light. Bright light and whiteness, too. I looked up fearfully into the bright-light whiteness and saw that it was all-over tiles. We were inside a great domed structure composed of what seemed to be millions of tiles. Many
tunnels ran away from this place and although it looked rather wonderful, it also smelled very bad.

Stretching my snagged arm to its limit, I dragged myself to the apex of the roof and there was joined by Mr Rune and Tobes, who were still similarly snagged. ‘Where are we?’ I asked Mr Rune.

‘The cathedral,’ said himself.

‘The
what?’

‘The main chamber of the Brighton sewerage system. I visited it on one of their popular sewer tours during the Brighton Festival.’

‘You did not take
me,’
I said.

‘It must have been the day you went to see The Lady-Boys of Bangkok.’

‘I never
did,’
I said. But I had done. ‘But why are we
here?’
I asked, as I fanned at my nose from the pong.

‘Don’t you ever go to the cinema?’ Mr Rune asked, dusting earth from his leather coat. ‘Supervillains always have mountain lairs or inhabit the innards of extinct volcanoes. And how fitting
this
is for a sewer rat like Count Otto Black.’ And Mr Rune chuckled. And then I shushed
him
into silence. From beneath us came sounds of the door being opened, and Count Otto’s voice once more.

‘Home again, home again, jiggedy jig,’ the Count cackled. ‘Bring that Chronovision, Mister Mate. And all the rest of you, me hearties – you’ve earned your rum tonight.’

I peeped down and beneath me saw the Count doing his foolish dance as he pranced along, followed by the pirates who had once sailed under Captain Moulsecoomb on
The Saucy Spaniel.
They presently vanished into one of the many tunnels of the great sewer system.
^*

‘It would be nice if we could climb down now,’ said Mr Rune.

And as if at a magic word, the nails came away and we all tumbled down from the rooftop.

‘Ouch,’ I said. And so did Mr Rune. Tobes did silent chucklings.

‘And so what now?’ I asked of Mr Rune when he and I were on our feet and rubbing at our bruised parts.

Mr Rune had a firm hold upon his stout stick. ‘Follow the villains,’ said he.

‘Well, yes,’ I said, in a hesitating fashion. ‘But actually I
do
go to the cinema as often as I can. And I
do
notice all the plot holes in the movies.
Now
would be the time to disable Count Otto’s ark, to be on the safe side.’

‘Exemplary thinking,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Lead on.’

I led on and did so with caution, for there might still have been some pirates on board.

Now, you have to picture this really, or it makes little sense. Picture, if you will, Noah’s Ark. Everyone knows what Noah’s Ark looks like. It is a big ship with a house on the top. Myself, Mr Rune and Tobes had been snagged on the roof of this house, and when we dropped down, we did so on to the deck of the ark. From this deck ran a lowered gangplank, by which Count Otto and his pirate crew had most recently taken their leave.

The only truly noticeable differences between Noah’s Ark and the Count’s was that the actual ship parts of the Count’s were constructed from riveted steel and there was a hefty great revolving blade arrangement on the front that enabled it to dig through the ground. And it was nuclear powered, of course. Though I do not actually know what powered Noah’s.

Oh, and there were these big caterpillar-tracks beneath Count Otto’s. Oh, and some rather dangerous-looking guns mounted on the forward part of the deck. Oh, and—

‘Pacey-pacey, Rizla,’ said Mr Rune, ‘for surely as the quixotic seagull of haste besmirches the tart’s handbag of time, so too does the spaniel of hesitance foul the footpath of destiny.’

Which I took in the way it was meant, I suppose, and pacey-paceyed along. With care.

We found ourselves first in the bar, of course, which brought great joy to Tobes. He took himself straight behind the counter and helped himself to a bottle of gin. We followed him and then I led the way below, although I do not really know why
I
was leading. I had no idea of where I was going. Although of course, it
had
been
my
idea, so I suppose that I should have done the leading.

Below was lit by bulkhead lights and looked like the inside of an
ocean liner. Animal noises came to us and we soon found ourselves moving stealthily between countless cages.

‘Damn me,’ said Tobes, stopping at one. ‘That’s my cat, Coldean – I wondered where he’d gone.’

‘
The Coldean Cat!’
I said. ‘What a cop-out. That has to be the most tenuous link to the Brightonomicon ever. And half of the others have been pretty duff.’

‘Which reminds me,’ said Mr Rune, ‘it seems like months since I’ve given you a badge.’

‘It matters not,’ I said. ‘I have lost all the others.’

‘Then you’d better have the full set.’ And Mr Rune dug into his leather-coat pocket and brought out a handful of badges. He counted them into my hand. ‘You didn’t have these,’ he said, counting in several, including one of a Morris Minor, the Saltdean Stallion. One of the Chronovision. Another with a gaudy representation of Jesus – ‘For Lord Tobes here, the Wiseman of Withdean,’ Mr Rune explained. And a final one with the portrait of Count Otto Black. ‘Something for you to remember him by.’

‘Well, thank you very much,’ I said and I stuffed the badges into my pocket. ‘But the point of these badges has always been lost upon me. And
now
is hardly the time for such trinkets, surely?’

‘Their time will come,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Now let us proceed.’

And so we proceeded, until …

‘I think we are in the engine room,’ I said. ‘Does that, or does that
not,
look like a nuclear reactor to you?’

‘It looks like
three
nuclear reactors to me,’ said Tobes, and he giggled foolishly.

‘You are drunk again,’ I said in horror. ‘You have drunk that whole bottle of gin.’

‘Drunk, but happy,’ said Tobes. ‘If a mite sleepy.’

‘Oh … my … God!’ I said.

‘What can I do for you?’ asked Tobes.

‘What do we do?’ I asked of Mr Rune. And my hands were starting to flap.

‘Keep him conscious,’ said Mr Rune, ‘while I position the bomb.’

‘What bomb?’

Mr Rune unbuttoned his coat and drew it widely open. Within
were many sticks of dynamite. ‘Forward planning,’ said the Lad Himself. ‘One must be prepared at all times.’

‘Plah!’ I said, for I had always wanted to say it.

‘I shall set the timer for, what shall we say, fifteen minutes?’

‘That will be cutting it somewhat fine,’ I replied. And,
‘Wake Up, Lord Tobes!’
I continued.

‘Fifteen minutes should be enough,’ said Mr Rune, pulling sticks of dynamite from the lining of his coat and linking fuses together. ‘Time enough to leave this vessel, confront Count Otto, destroy the Chronovision and kill the Count.’

‘Fifteen minutes will not be long enough for all
that.
And hold on here,’ for a terrible thought had just struck me terribly. ‘This is a nuclear reactor. If we detonate it, will there not be a nuclear explosion? We could destroy all of Brighton.’