The Educated Ape & other Wonders of the Worlds (57 page)

Whispers
to the effect that they should depart the Earth at once and leave its people to
the untender mercies of the Venusian battle fleet that swung in a steady orbit
several miles above.

‘The
evil must end
here!’
cried an ecclesiastic.

Concert-goers
shushed at the Venusian.

‘I
will settle this,’ said Leah, rising from her seat.

Concert-goers
shushed her, too, and someone called, ‘Sit
down.’

Toscanini
flourished his baton. He heard nothing at all but the Glorious Ninth.

Leah
the Venusian left the concert hall.

Fire
fell once more from high above.

Winston
Churchill stared in horror at the massacre below. He shouted into his brazen
mouthpiece, but no words were returned to him. He turned his gaze towards the
floating palace, saw pirates pouring over the battlements, swarming down lines
and rope ladders.

Many
alighted onto the high arched roof of the Grand Exposition.

Bringing
delight to the audience within.

Beethoven’s
Ninth
and
pirates? How could it possibly get any better than
that?

‘For better or
worse, but for nothing in between.’ General Albert Trubshaw rode his chestnut
charger up and down before his mounted troops. A dashing chap, was Albert, in
his thigh-boots and bearskin, his handlebar whiskers rising to either side of
his head as noble antlers and his burnished silver codpiece capable of holding
a litre of champagne. As it so often did in the officers’ mess where it could
not frighten the horses.

‘Gentlemen.’
General Albert stirred his mount with a riding crop that had reddened the
buttocks of many a music hall gal. ‘Gentlemen, I have just received orders from
Mr Winston Churchill that he wishes us to engage the enemy. Kindly draw your
sabres and put on your fiercest faces.’ He made a fierce face of his own to
demonstrate the look. ‘Quite so. Destroy the pirate menace for the honour of
the regiment. And
charge!’

And
proudly did the cavalry charge.

Only
to draw up rapidly short, upon finding their way barred by dug-in anti-airship
guns and a row of fresh latrines.

‘And
turn! And
charge!’

To
once more draw up short, their way now barred by the rear of the concert hall.

‘To
the right! Charge!’

To
arrive at the Jovian food hall.

‘Turn
about and charge! And I forbid any fellow to stop!’

It
was the way things should be done when it comes to bravery. The horsemen
plunged forward, standards flaring out and bugles blowing. The wall of glass
before them was that of the Venusian Hall. An empty hall it looked to the
valiant lads.

With
spurs dug in and battle cries upon their lips, they rode their spirited
thoroughbreds through the plate-glass windows and into the empty hall. Horses’
hooves raised sparks upon the mosaic floor which might have held the image of
the fingerprint of God. They thundered around the Sphere of Nothingness, which
was surrounded by a rope baffler as a safety measure to keep the public away.
And then through plate-glass windows beyond, a swift left turn and out into the
Mall.

The
majority survived these brave advances. General Albert Trubshaw plucked a shard
of glass from his left eyeball and considered just how extra-dashing and
romantic he would look when sporting a black silk eyepatch.

All in black
silk, though mauve of eye, the evil witch gazed down upon the destruction she
had wrought and found it very pleasing to behold. The last of the pirates
cheered her success before thrusting daggers between their teeth and
disappearing over the battlements. Princess Pamela came to Lavinia’s side.

‘Nice
work, lass,’ said she to the woman in black. ‘Ah, see, look at t’ horsemen
riding out.’

‘Should
I blast them?’ asked Lavinia, raising her hands once more.

‘Let
pirates battle ‘em. Always a guilty pleasure, watching pirates.’

Lavinia
Dharkstorrm magicked up champagne.

Princess
Pamela took a glass and toasted the witch with it. ‘Thou art full of it
tonight, lass,’ said she. ‘We’ll ‘ave a glass or two of this, then pop down and
sort me sister out.’

Princess
Pamela broadly grinned as glasses clinked together.

‘Darwin,’
whispered Lord Brentford. ‘I think I heard the sound of breaking glass.’

Darwin
shrugged. He really didn’t care.

‘Be a
good boy,’ said his lordship. ‘Pop down towards the Venusian Hall and see if
all’s hunky-dunky.’

‘Hunky-dunky?’
queried Darwin.

‘Ssssh!’
went a concert—goer.

Sssssh
and
whoosh
and
wsssh
and chop and slice went flashing sabres. The dashing
chargers swept against the pirates. The red snow had finally eased, which meant
at least that none of the riders’ looks got sullied by boils.

The
pirates put up a spirited fight, employing all those underhand tactics for
which they are universally despised. Heads and hands were sliced from bodies,
horses bommy-knockered to the ground. General Albert leapt from his mount and
hacked away with vigour. Gentlemen riders cried, ‘Huzzah!’ at the pirates.

Pirates
‘arrrhed’ and ‘arr-harrhed’ in reply.

The
hacking was horrid and the hewing hideous.

And
as the second movement of Beethoven’s Ninth came to a triumphal conclusion, the
final combatant sank to the ground. And no one moved upon the Mall, for
everyone lay dead.

55

arwin
marched from the concert hall, then loped along the gallery beyond. Darwin was
a rather angry ape. He did not want to be out here checking for broken
windowpanes. Was there not some caretaker to deal with that kind of business?
He wanted to be at the concert listening to the wonderful music.

The
Hall of British Industry and All Things Empire was dimly lit and Darwin felt
suddenly most vulnerable. He crept past Mr Rutherford’s time-ship, which set
the hairs a-rising on the back of his little neck, and slunk past the automated
elephant.

Behind
him the dramatic beginning to the third movement struck up. Ahead there was a
curious silence. Darwin cocked his head upon one side. Electric street lamps
cast light in from the Mall, but it had an unearthly red hue to it. A nasty
smell came to the simian’s sensitive nose. It was the smell of human blood.
Darwin’s eyes grew wide.

Beyond
was the entrance to the Hall of Venus. The air was growing colder as the monkey
butler moved upon his way.

Then
a voice called, ‘Darwin,’ and the monkey butler all but soiled his trousers.

‘Darwin
— here.’ The voice was that of an angel.

‘Leah?’
said Darwin. ‘Leah, is that you?’

The
Venusian lady stepped from the shadows. ‘Come to me, Darwin,’ she called, and
she held out her hand to the ape.

‘London, ‘ere we
come,’ said Princess Pamela. ‘Mister Mate, where art thou?’

‘I’m
here, ma’am. Ah—harr—harr—harr.’ Mister Mate flourished his cutlass. Princess
Pamela clipped him round the ear.

‘Take
us down!’ she said to him. ‘Land me palace
there.’

‘There,
ma’am?’
Mister Mate pointed with his cutlass. ‘But there’s something already there. We
could land in the park.’

‘There!’
the
princess said with such fierceness that it would even have put the wind up
General Albert Trubshaw, now deceased.
‘There!’
she shouted, very
loudly. ‘Land it right there on top of Buckingham Palace!’

Darwin and Leah
looked out from’ the palace of glass. Looked out towards the Mall and viewed
the carnage that lay beyond the glazed walls of the Grand Exposition. The
broken bodies of horses and horsemen, charred and twisted corpses, too, and
all, it very much appeared, afloat in a sea of blood. It was truly a vision of
Hell right there in the heart of London.

Darwin
turned his face away and Leah held him close. ‘You must aid me, Darwin,’ said
she. ‘Great evil is amongst us and if it is not destroyed, all will be lost. My
people will cleanse this planet of all upon it.’

Darwin
looked up at the beautiful creature. ‘I am only a monkey,’ he said. ‘What can a
monkey do?’

‘Do it!’
shouted
Princess Pamela. ‘Do it
now,
Mister Mate!’

Mister
Mate swung the steering wheel and then released the handbrake.

And the dragon was wrath with

the woman and went to make

war with the remnant of her seed.

Revelation
12:17

The
flying palace passed over the halls of the Grand Exposition, swung past Mr
Churchill’s airship and, as that man looked helplessly on, settled down amidst
sickening crunches right upon Buckingham Palace.

The
walls of Queen Victoria’s London abode buckled outwards and windows exploded as
priceless artworks and artefacts within were crushed into flattened ruination.
Servants sipping cocoa in the pantry fled as the stuccoed ceilings fell. The
throne-room buckled and the throne itself became splintered fragments of gold.
The turquoise and silver frescoes depicting supposedly mythical tales, which
few found even vaguely humorous, were mangled into oblivion. And like some
bloated mother hen settling onto its nest, Princess Pamela’s palace came to
rest upon the soil of Albion.

As
sole surviving minion, Mister Mate offered up three cheers for the Lady Beast.

Princess
Pamela smiled upon him. ‘Now, lass,’ she said to Lavinia Dharkstorrm, ‘what say
thou and I take a stroll t’ me throne.’

One might
naturally have assumed that the mangling of Buckingham Palace would certainly
have been heard within the concert hall. But if one had naturally assumed it,
one would have been
most
wrong.

Toscanini
conducted the lyrical third movement, with its subtle variations of rhythm and
melody, as if his baton touched the precious skin of the one he loved. Or,
perhaps more prosaically, stroked the inner thigh of a lady who played the
viola.

The
crowd, enraptured as ever, hung upon every note.

Princess Pamela
hung Mister Mate upon a hook in her pantry. ‘Changed me mind about thee bein’
Prime Minister,’ she said. ‘Lavinia,’ she called, ‘art thou ready, lass?’

Lavinia
Dharkstorrm was loading the four reliquaries into her oversized reticule. Their
importance upon this night had not been forgotten by
her,
for she alone
knew what had to be done with them. They must stand in an unhallowed place as
the planets drew into alignment, and she must perform the blasphemous ceremony
that would usher the Lady Beast to power as the new millennium dawned. You had
to attend to the
details
if you wanted the
all
to occur. And
Lavinia Dharkstorrm wanted the
all
to occur.

She
hefted the reticule over her shoulder. ‘I am ready,’ she called.

Cameron Bell did
not look very ready. He studied his pocket watch once, then twice, and then
again and again.

The grand main
entrance to the princess’s palace had been barred to Cameron Bell upon Mars,
where he had entered by the door reserved for tradesmen. A splendid drawbridge
now dropped before the grand main entrance. A slightly more splendid portcullis
arose. And splendid to the highest degrees were the doors that swung within to
reveal the Lady Beast and the witch named Lavinia Dharkstorrm.

Princess
Pamela sniffed at the air. ‘I love the smell of Man blood in the evening,’ she
said. ‘Smells like victory, wouldst thou not agree?’