The Fandom of the Operator (27 page)

Can you believe that?

I mean, can you?

He had me thrown into the furnace.

If frying in the electric chair had been bad, it was a doddle compared with that.

That
really
hurt.

But it did get the job done and, there was no doubt about it, I was definitely dead again. And for good and all this time, with no Earthly hope for resurrection. Gone, reduced to ashes. No more Gary Charlton Cheese in the flesh. Only in the spirit. I didn’t find myself back at Mr Doveston’s tomb this time: I found myself nowhere in particular. A bit lost, as it happens. Just sort of drifting.

But it felt really nice. I didn’t feel empty at all this time. There was a great deal of darkness around and about, but a light or two in the distance. I moved towards those lights.

As I moved on, the lights moved nearer. Big lights, two lights.

A car ran me over.

I picked myself up and dusted myself down and chewed upon my lip as I surveyed the tyre marks over my chest. “Not a great start,” said I.

But where was I?

It looked a bit like New York, but as I’d never been to New York I couldn’t be sure. However, as I’d seen New York on TV and in movies, I could be sure. It was New York. But why New York?

I shambled along in a bumbling kind of fashion, like you do when you’re lost, or drunk, or both. I didn’t recognize any New York landmarks.

But then suddenly I did.

There was a bar up ahead – a New York bar, a Manhattan bar. A neon light flashed above it, spelling out letters that made up the name: FANGIO’S.

Fangio’s bar, favourite hangout of Lazlo Woodbine. I bumbled towards Fangio’s bar. Of course I recognized the cracked glass door. It was exactly as I’d imagined it, exactly as it had been in the books. And inside, the bar was all there, all exactly right. A man stood behind the bar counter, and he was a big man, a big
fat
man. This was Fangio, the fat boy barman. And seated upon the customer side of the counter, upon a chromium bar stool, sat the other man. He wore a trenchcoat and a fedora. He sipped on a bottle of Bud and munched upon a hot pastrami on rye.

The other man was none other than Lazlo Woodbine.

Fangio looked over at me as I swung in the door.

“Lordy, lordy,” said he. “It’s the elephant man.” I chewed upon my bottom lip and realized that it was a quite substantial bottom lip. And I remembered my encounter with the late Mother Demdike – how she’d said that, when we died, we each got the form that was
really
us. “Ah, no offence meant, fella,” said Fangio. “Looks ain’t everything. Did the circus leave town without you? Why not have a drink? What’ll it be?”

“Anything at all,” I said. “Anything at all.”

“That’s a bit vague,” said Fangio. “We like to be specific here.”

“I don’t care,” I said. “Give me a beer. Give me a Bud.”

The guy in the trenchcoat (you note that I say “guy” here, rather than “man”) turned to me.

“Sit yourself down,” he said. “There’s no appearance-code here. We’re always grateful when someone breezes in to chew the fat. What’s your name, buddy?”

“It’s Cheese,” I said. “Gary Charlton Cheese. And you are …” I couldn’t get the words out.

“The name’s Woodbine,” said Woodbine. “Lazlo Woodbine, private eye.” And he added, “Some call me Laz.”

“I would be proud to call you Laz,” said I. “I’m your greatest fan. Well, the fan of your author. If you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do.”

“Don’t use my catch phrases,” said Mr Woodbine. “And don’t mention
him
. He and I do not see eye to eye any more.”

“I’m perplexed,” I said, as Fangio handed me my bottle of Bud. “I mean, you’re
real
. You’re here. I thought—”

“That I was a fictitious character?”

“Well, yes.”

“That’s because I was written up as a fictitious character. But I was once alive, like you were. So what are you doing in this neck of the Manhattan woods?”

“It’s a bit embarrassing for me to have to tell you,” I said, “but I’ve come to kill P.P. Penrose. That dead man is wreaking havoc on Earth.”

“It’s fine with me,” said Laz, for I could call him that. “I hate the guy. He wrote up my cases then claimed all the glory for himself. Like I say, I was never a fictitious character. I was a real detective. He just changed my name.”

“Outrageous!” I said.

“And he had me killed.”

“
What
!” I said.

“I was going to expose him. He had me killed. Weirdest thing. Never saw it coming and me being Woodbine – well, Passing Cloud, actually; I’m half Cherokee from my father’s side. This blind guy killed me. Blind guy from the circus. Count Otto Black’s Circus Fantastique.”

“Oh no,” I said. “My Uncle Jonny.”

“Small world, isn’t it?” said Mr Woodbine. “Everything fits together, eventually, doesn’t it?”

“Where is he?” I asked. “Mr Penrose. Do you know where he is?”

“In my office, doing his stuff: pulling strings, playing his sporting games.”

“Do you want to come with me?” I asked. “Do you want to help?”

“Can’t,” said Laz and he shook his fedora’d head. “I’m stuck here, in this bar. Me and Fangio, we chew fat and talk toot. We tried to kill him, because we hated him so much for what he did. But if you hate, you get stuck. We got stuck here, but we make the best of it. You go get him, kid. And here, take this; you’ll need it.” And Laz pulled out his trusty Smith & Wesson and handed it to me. “It’s taken down a few bad guys in its time,” he said. “One more won’t hurt. Get the job done, kid, then come back here. I’ll stand you a beer.”

“You can pay for the one he’s just had, Laz,” said Fangio.

“We can discuss that,” said Laz to the fat boy.

I took Laz’s trusty Smith & Wesson and stared at it.
The
trusty Smith & Wesson: what a collector’s item. I was still a fan – I had no control over it. Once you’re a fan of something or someone, you’re stuck to it. I thanked Laz and waved farewell to the fat boy.

And then I left the bar. I passed down the now legendary alleyway, where Laz used to get into sticky situations, and found my way to his office. It was where I expected it to be, so it was no mystery how I found it.

On the partition door the words LAZLO WOODBINE INVESTIGATIONS were etched into the glass. I don’t know what I felt. Nervous? Yes. Doubtful? Yes. Guilty? Yes, that too. It was all my fault, what had happened; what had caused Mr Penrose to behave as he had. But truth is truth is truth. He obviously hadn’t been a good person. Not if he’d had Mr Woodbine, Mr Passing Cloud, killed.

But there was more that troubled me. Could I actually trust Mr Woodbine/Passing Cloud? I knew that the dead were notable liars. Perhaps I hadn’t been told the truth. But I was really giving up on the truth. Perhaps there really isn’t any truth, any ultimate truth. Perhaps the universe consists for the most part of half-truths and just plain lies. Perhaps there really isn’t any real truth at all.

I knocked at the office door.

“Come,” called a voice.

And I entered.

It was the same office – the same office as that which Mr Boothy had occupied. Exactly the same. Behind the desk of this one sat an old gentleman clad in a suit of Boleskine tweed.

“Mr Penrose?” I said. “Mr Charles Penrose?”

The gentleman stared at me, though he did not seem at all bothered by my obviously grotesque appearance. “So,” said he. “Someone who knows my real name, my True Name. And you would be?”

“Gary Cheese,” I said. “Gary Charlton Cheese. You would know me as Valdec Firesword, Archduke of Alpha Centuri.”

“Oh yes,” said Mr Penrose. “The maniac. But this is a bit of a surprise. I didn’t expect ever to see you here.”

“It’s fate,” I said. “Everything fits together for a purpose. It’s just that most of us never get to know what that purpose might be.” And I looked hard at Mr Penrose. He obviously didn’t know that I was the one who’d woken him up from the dead and caused him to hate humanity so much. Well, if he didn’t know, I wasn’t going to tell him.

“And what is your purpose?” asked Mr Penrose.

I pulled out Laz’s gun. “I’ve come here to kill you,” I said. “I’m sorry, but there it is. You are my favourite author and I’m your greatest fan. And I can’t tell you just how incredible it is for me to meet you – if not in the flesh, then at least in the spirit. But I have to kill you, to stop you playing your games with humanity. All that has to stop now. But before I kill you, and I must, and I am sorry for it, would it be all right if I asked you a question? Something that I’ve always wanted to know.”

“Ask on,” said Mr Penrose.

“Thank you,” I said. “The question is this:
where do you get your ideas from
?”

Mr Penrose made a groaning sound, deep in the back of his throat.

“So?” I said.

“Forget it, lad. If I knew where I got my ideas from I wouldn’t tell you. And I do know, and it’s a secret.”

“Like magic,” I said.

“Ideas
are
magic,” said Mr Penrose. “So let’s discuss the business of you killing me. What’s that all about, then?”

“You know perfectly well what it’s all about,” I said, waggling the gun at the famous author. “All that beaming of science-fiction characters into people’s brains: that has to stop.”

“Why?” asked Mr Penrose.

“Because it’s not right.”

“People kill one another all the time, with or without my prompting. What’s a few less people in the world?”

“That’s a rather callous attitude. I don’t think you’re a very nice man. I thought you were a great sportsman.” I cocked the pistol.

“It’s not very sporting to shoot an unarmed man,” said Mr Penrose.

“Sportsmanship doesn’t enter into this,” I said.

“Well, it should. I’ve always given my characters a sporting chance.”

“You didn’t give me much of one.”

“Oh yes, I did. You lost the game because you fell into an obvious trap. Imagine going through a door marked WHITE COAT AND LIGHT BULB STORE. Ludicrous.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “I was under stress. It had been a difficult day. And it wasn’t me, was it? It was Valdec Firesword making me do what I did.”

“So if you had another chance, you’d do better, would you? Doing your own thinking, you’d win the game?”

“What game?” I said. “What is the game anyway?”

“It’s a role-playing game,” Mr Penrose explained, “based on the plot from one of my Adam Earth series. An alien race is wiped out in a cosmic catastrophe, but their spirits are able to manipulate human beings. They’re a competitive race, the aliens, and somewhat cold-blooded. They compete on Earth through their unknowing human hosts. It’s survival of the fittest and the most intelligent. Eventually there will be only one of them left. That one wins the game.”

“And what’s the prize?” I asked.

“Earth, of course,” said Mr Penrose. “The winner will be the one who ends up controlling the entire planet.”

“That’s daft,” I said. “Just beam one of your characters into the head of the President of the United States and he’s the winner.”

“Unsporting,” said Mr Penrose. “Too easy. It has to be little people who can work their way up to become rich and famous. You had a lot of chances, you know. You were given the opportunity to communicate with the dead. That should have given you an edge.”

“If I’d known,” I said. “But Valdec Firesword screwed it up, not me.”

“He never was too bright. Which is why he lost the game.”

“Who’s winning at the moment?” I asked. “Not that I’m interested.”

“I’m not going to tell you
that
,” said Mr Penrose. “That would be really unsporting.”

“Well, it’s neither here nor there. You’re a dead dead-man.” And I levelled the pistol at his head.

“You can’t do it, you know. You can’t just shoot me here.”

“And why not?”

“Do you like this office? Do you really like it?”

“It’s OK,” I said. “It’s nothing much to speak of.”

“So how would you feel about spending all eternity here?”

“I wouldn’t be too keen on that at all.”

“No,” said Mr Penrose. “And, frankly, I hate it. But that’s what I’m stuck with. Because I’m stuck here. Because of what I’ve done. You’ll be doing me a favour if you shoot me. I’ll move on to another level. But you won’t be doing yourself a favour. Your actions will cause you to become stuck here, right here, in this office, like mine have for me. Bad thoughts and actions weigh down the dead and stop them moving on.”

“Hm,” I said, scratching my head with the gun barrel and noticing for the first time just what a lot of head there was to scratch.

“A dead woman called Mother Demdike explained that to me. This is a tricky situation.”

“I can’t see any way out of it for either of us,” said Mr Penrose.

I stared at him and I scratched at my head once more. “I think I can,” I said.

“Oh yes? And what do you have in mind?”

“Well,” I said, “you consider yourself to be a great sporting man, yes?”

Mr Penrose nodded.

“Well, what if you and I had some sport? One on one and winner takes all?”

“I am intrigued,” said Mr Penrose. “Speak to me of this sport.”

And so I spoke to him.

And that is the end of my tale.

“What?” I hear you cry. “
What
? What kind of cop-out ending is this? You can’t end your tale here. You just can’t.”

But I can.

I really can.

I could drag it out a bit longer. Because, in all truth, it hasn’t truly ended yet. But then, it can’t end. Because it doesn’t have an ending. There is no end after you die. There is only for ever. A blissful for ever, with all the universe to explore. Not that I’ve started my exploring yet.

But I will.

I will, very soon.

Just as soon as I win the game.

I told Mr Penrose what I had in mind for us both.

It was simple and it was sporting. And he does seem to have a big thing about sportsmanship, that Mr Penrose. He’s firm, but he’s fair. I suggested that he give me a sporting chance, and considering all that I’d been put through, and being the sporting man that he was, I knew he’d take me up on it. He wouldn’t be able to resist. And I felt certain that I would win, because I’d be calling my own shots this time. I would be in control of the situation. And I felt absolutely sure that ultimately I would triumph.

In essence this was my suggestion. He and I would both play the game. Against each other, and winner takes all. We had to work out a lot of rules that we both could agree on and this did take a lot of time. But we had time a-plenty, and when we had worked out the rules, and agreed that they were sporting and that any cheating would disqualify the player caught at it, we were both ready to play.

The game would be played in this fashion. Each of us would beam our thoughts into a living person of our choice. But it had to be an ordinary person of no particular consequence. No one rich and powerful. We would choose whoever we fancied, beam in and take control of that person. And it would be our secret. Neither of us would know who the other one was possessing, if you follow me. Then we’d go looking for each other and each would try to kill the other.

We both agreed that, as in the Lazlo Woodbine thrillers, it should end in a final rooftop showdown, with the loser getting blasted by the winner and taking the big fall into oblivion.

And, as I say, it would be winner takes all.

If I won, then Mr Penrose would be obliged, on his word of honour, to quit the game, taking all his created dead-alien characters with him, and for ever leave the world and its people alone.

And if
he
won, I would be obliged to leave Mr Penrose alone to go on playing his games and I would be obliged to remain on Earth in a body of his choosing, which I suspected would not be a particularly appealing one.

So, having gone through all the rules to ensure that we both knew exactly how things were to be done and the game was to be played, and – here comes the clever bit – having persuaded him that he should remove all the other players (the dead aliens he had created that were mucking about with people’s brains) temporarily, until we had completed our game, we chose our hosts and beamed our thoughts down.

And it was game on.

Now, for the afterlife of me, I didn’t know how he caught me that first time. I’d beamed myself into the head of this young black guy in Tooting. He was into martial arts and weapons and in my opinion was a natural-born assassin. But he got run down by a woman shopper on the top of a multi-storey car park. Which I wasn’t expecting.

“A woman shopper!” I said to Mr Penrose. “What kind of body was that for you to choose?”

“It worked, didn’t it? You weren’t expecting it. And it was on a rooftop.”

“But how did you know it was me?”

“Aha!” said Mr Penrose, and he tapped his nose.

“That was unsporting,” I said. “You forfeit the game.”

“No, I don’t. I stuck to the rules. It’s just that I neglected to mention that you can tell who’s who.”

“How?”

Mr Penrose whispered – not that there was anyone around to hear – how.

“Oh,” I said. “Yes, I suppose that’s obvious. All right, let’s make it best of three.”

“But you lost.”

“You cheated.”

“I didn’t cheat. I just neglected to mention an important detail.”

“That’s the same as cheating. That should have been written into the rules.”

“All right,” said Mr Penrose, “we’ll write it in.”

“And there’s nothing else that you haven’t mentioned?”

“Nothing,” said Mr Penrose.

But there were one or two other things.

So we made it “best of three”.

And then “best of five”.

I’ve kind of lost count now. I think we’re going for best of thirty-three million, three hundred and thirty-three thousand, three hundred and thirty-three.

Between us, we’re keeping down the population to a reasonably stable level, which is sound ecology, so I can’t see anything particularly wrong with that.

I’ve had him a few times – a few thousand times, in fact. And I feel absolutely certain that ultimately I’m going to win.

I’m going to have another go at him tomorrow. But as it’s New Year’s Eve, we’ve both agreed to take time out from the game to party for the next couple of days. I’m looking forward to seeing in this New Year. I think 3012 will be a lucky year for me.

And this evening promises to be interesting too. I’m currently inside the head of a quite remarkable-looking young woman. She’s a window-dresser in a posh store here in New Brentford. It used to be called Rio de Janeiro, before the New British Empire changed it. The New British Empire runs all of the planet now and maintains world peace. Which is nice. Mr Boothy still runs the Ministry of Serendipity. I pop in to see him whenever I’m in England. He’s holding up pretty well, what with all those advances in medical science and everything. He’s the last zombie there is now. He had all the rest humanely despatched to foreverness. Including my Sandra, but it was right that he did. I like to surprise Mr Boothy when I see him. He always gets a kick out of seeing what body I’m currently in. I’m sure he’d like this one. She’s not rich or famous or anything – Mr Penrose and I still stick with the rules – but she really is a beauty and I know, just know, she’s going to get laid later by that handsome waiter who keeps giving her the eye.

I figure that it’s worth experiencing life from every perspective, and over the last thousand years or so I certainly have. I’d like to say that there’s nothing that a human being can experience that I haven’t experienced. But it wouldn’t be true. And thankfully so. There’s always something new and that something new is always wonderful.

And I really am optimistic about the year that lies ahead. And I’m really sure that, OK, perhaps I won’t win the game this year, because I still have a lot of catching up to do.

But if not this year, then next year, or the year after that.

Because I have no shortage of time.

Time is on my side.

I have all the time in the world.

In
this
world.

Because ultimately. And marvellously.

It’s never, ever,