The Japanese Devil Fish Girl (42 page)

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Authors: Robert Rankin

BOOK: The Japanese Devil Fish Girl
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Ada touched the certain something. ‘
The Book of Sayito
,’ said she.
 
‘I
had
to take it,’ said George. ‘The prophecy says that I will read from it. Perhaps there is something in this book that will save the day.’
 
Ada smiled at George and said, ‘I put my trust in you.’
 
But then a terrible sound was to be heard. A sound that had never before been heard in London. A vile screech of a sound, prolonged, fearsome, strident. It jangled the nerves of all and set their teeth to grinding.
 
Folk, who had returned to their tables, were rising once again, flapping their hands and making the faces of dread.
 
‘What is that appalling racket?’ Ada asked of George.
 
‘That, I fear,’ said George, ‘is the air-raid siren.’
 
42
 
‘O
h no,’criedAda. ‘It cannot be. It is all too soon.’
 
And indeed it was true that things were occurring with a most disturbing rapidity.
 
The declaration of war. The special-edition newspaper. The arrival of the Mark 5 Juggernauts. The banshee cry of the air-raid siren. All too fast indeed.
 
‘What do we do?’ asked Ada of George. ‘Run to an Underground station?’
 
‘No,’ said George. ‘I do believe not. Come with me, if you will.’
 
There was never going to be any doubt that Ada would accompany George. It was little more than a turn of phrase. George took Ada by the hand and when the patrons of the Lyons Corner House had squeezed themselves into the street and run screaming towards the nearest entrance of the London ‘Tube’, he and Ada took their leave with many a fearful skywards glance and much speed in their steps.
 
 
It would later be reported in the press that a veritable armada of Magonian cloud-ships had for several weeks been orbiting Planet Earth. That thoughts of a planned invasion had lurked within the snow-capped heads of the visiting Venusians. That the ecclesiastics who had been aboard the ill-fated
Empress of Mars
had been in search of Sayito all along. These things
would
be made known. But to Mr Churchill and those now in the cabinet war room, these things should have
previously
been known.
 
 
Within the war room, bunker as it was, deep beneath the streets of London, Mr Churchill lazed in a wicker chair. Cigar at full bore between his lips. A glass of port at his elbow. A monkey on his knee.
 
‘Get down, Darwin, if you will,’ said Mr Churchill. ‘And please don’t move the flags about on the war-board map table until I tell you to.’
 
The ex-monkey butler of the late Lord Brentford, close chum of Mr Churchill, had called by at Westminster in search of George. Using that special seventh sense for which simians are so noted, Darwin had found himself reunited instead with that old friend of his late lamented master, Mr Winston Churchill. And having nothing else planned for the afternoon, had accompanied Mr Churchill to the war room.
 
Darwin fished a monogrammed cigarette case from the waistcoat pocket of his best man’s suit and helped himself to a Spanish Shawl, a perfumed cigarette.
 
A curious whistling sound was now to be heard. Mr Churchill reached for a speaking tube. The subterranean war room should have been fitted out with Mr Tesla’s new telephonic communication system, but Mr Churchill had spent the allocated funds on weaponry. So speaking tubes remained, and there were many indeed to choose from, being connected as they were to all manner of important secret locations. The blower at the other end of this particular speaking tube, whose blowing was raising the whistling sound, was located at an observation post atop the Crystal Palace on Sydenham Hill. He was gifted with a particularly strong set of lungs and a very loud voice indeed.
 
‘Mr Churchill,’ came his voice to Mr Churchill’s ear.
 
‘Not so loud,’ said Mr Churchill. ‘There’s no need to shout.’
 
‘Sydenham Hill position here, sir,’ came the voice once more in a more moderated manner. ‘Magonian cloud-ships moving in from the south, sir. I can count nearly twenty, but there may be more.’
 
‘Ah,’ said Mr Churchill. ‘They intend to raze the spaceport. Darwin, if you please, put one of those big yellow flags on the war-board map at the location of the Royal London Spaceport.’
 
Darwin deposited something at that location.
 
‘Ah,’ said Mr Churchill once again. ‘Well, I suppose that will have to do for now.’ He spoke once more into the speaking tube. ‘Open fire from the Crystal Palace battery as soon as you have the cloud-ships within range.’
 
‘Yes, sir,’ said the voice. And that was that for now.
 
Ancient generals in exaggerated uniforms swirled brandy in large balloon glasses and looked towards Mr Churchill for orders. None were presently forthcoming, so they continued with their conversations.
 
Darwin sucked on his cigarette. The sky grew dark over Sydenham.
 
 
They appeared to be almost transparent. Fragile, delicate forms. Sails frail as the fins of tropical fish. Wispy superstructures. But the cloud-ships of Magonia moved across the still, blue sky of late afternoon in a close formation, their trajectories arrow-straight, their helmsmen in perfect control. Did they truly move by the power of will alone, the power of faith, these Holier-than-Air craft? Or through some subtle aetheric fluid? Some all-pervading universal force as yet beyond the human understanding of even such luminaries as Mr Tesla and Mr Charles Babbage? How?
 
At an order unspoken, two cloud-ships broke from the formation, swung down from on high, gained a vivid solidity and swept in low towards the Royal Spaceport.
 
Those aboard could not have been aware of the whirring of gears. Of steam-driven pistons engaging and iron doors drawing back. The twin fountains before the Crystal Palace ceased their aquatic displays. The water-bearing statues shuddered and moved aside. From out of the fountain’s pools rose armoured gun ports. Brass-muzzled heat-ray cannons swung into view.
 
Gunners donned their range-goggles. Adjusted their focus settings. Were given the order to ‘Fire’.
 
Simultaneous discharges of red-raw energy belched from the brazen muzzles, swept down the hillside, over the spaceport and onto the low-flying cloud-ships. Flame engulfed the fabulous craft. Shrivelling the gossamer sails. Wreaking horrid destruction. Billowing smoke, ravaged and broken, the cloud-ships fell from the sky. Down to the cobbles of the landing field to die in pools of fire.
 
First blood to the Empire of the Queen.
 
Ladies and gentlemen, taking afternoon strolls upon the lawns before the Crystal Palace, applauded enthusiastically. News of the start of Worlds War Two had yet to reach the suburbs.
 
‘Splendid stuff,’ called gentlemen in tweeds. Assuming this to be an unscheduled afternoon entertainment. ‘Jolly good show,’ and, ‘Most convincing,’ and, ‘I say, there is more.’
 
A vast and ghostly vessel, the flagship of the fleet perhaps, dipped its prow and then released a shower of crystal spheres. Like swollen hailstones, down from the sky they fell. And into the great hall of glass. Explosions ripped along the length of the Crystal Palace, erupting into the blueness above in a firestorm of destruction. Girders melted, sank, dissolved, wonders of the Empire turned to dust. Within brief seconds little remained.
 
The Crystal Palace was gone.
 
 
The Jovian warships lay somewhat further away from the Earth. They were harboured on the dark side of the moon, in garrison towns that had existed there for many hundreds of years. Jupiterians were noted for their jolly dispositions, which to a degree had been rightfully attributed to their gift for planning ahead. Jovian garrisons were stationed upon the dark sides of moons that swung in orbit around all the habitable planets of the solar system. Including Mars.
 
Word of the declared war reached the garrison stationed upon the Martian moon of Phobos through the medium of Jovian pigeon post. The space pigeon, a species not native to Earth, inhabited the depths of space and had been domesticated by the burghers of Jupiter as an ideal form of speedy message transportation. Space pigeons, their flight-bladders filled with solar wind, travelled at close to the speed of light.
 
Portly admirals of the Jupiterian battalion on Phobos perused the message lately arrived by speedy space bird, mounted up their chunky-looking ships of war and dropped down to the undefended planet to purge it with ease of Earth folk.
 
 
The air-raid sirens ceased their awful cry. London was a city now of empty streets. A ghost town drained of life. Now and then the sound of breaking glass was to be heard as some looter took the opportunity of a lifetime.
 
Shots soon followed on as armed police patrols sought out their prey. Dark wraiths moving but fleetingly in the dreadful stillness. The horses of abandoned hansoms munched away in their nosebags. Earthly pigeons circled overhead. A flyer advertising the Japanese Devil Fish Girl drifted on the breeze along the Mall.
 
 
George and Ada skulked within the shadow of a butcher’s awning. Peering at the all but silent streets.
 
‘We must be very careful,’ said George. ‘I have no wish that we be shot as looters by mistake.’
 
‘So where are we going?’ Ada asked. ‘You have not told me yet.’
 
‘To St Paul’s Cathedral. To the statue.’
 
‘And then what?’
 
‘I intend to give it up,’ said George. ‘It may not truly belong to the Venusians. I do not believe that it truly belongs to anyone. It belongs to itself. But if it remains in London, I fear that things will become far worse than when the Martians invaded.’
 
‘Do you remember that?’ asked Ada. ‘Where were you when it happened?’
 
‘In the East End of London,’ said George. ‘I never saw any of the Martian tripods. Only the refugees. Thousands of them streaming into the capital seeking safety. I remember the sadness.’
 
‘It must never happen again,’ said Ada.
 
‘No,’ agreed George. ‘And we are in the midst of all of this. I am very much to blame. That statue could have remained undiscovered by the “civilised world” for another thousand years.’
 
‘It was fate,’ said Ada. ‘All of this is fate. Do not feel too badly, George. If there is anything that is within your power to do in order that the day be saved, you, I trust, will do it.’
 
‘By bedtime?’ George asked. Hopefully.
 
‘That might be asking quite a lot.’
 
‘There,’ said George, pointing. ‘Two policemen with rifles. Let us slip into the back alleyways and make haste to St Paul’s.’
 
‘And then?’
 
‘Somehow end this war,’ said George. ‘Upon my shoulders, so I have been told, rests the future of the planets. I must do what I can to end this war.’
 
Ada nodded. ‘Yes indeed.’
 
‘And,’ George added thoughtfully, ‘war. What is it good for?’
 
‘Absolutely nothing,’ said Ada Fox.
 
 
Evening was coming, borne, it so appeared, on summer winds. The great dome of St Paul’s darkened with the setting of the sun. George and Ada edged their ways down alleys whose grim impoverishments had guided the pen of Gustave Doré. Here was a London never viewed by tourists. A dark forbidding place of crime, poverty and hopelessness.
 
A more cynical George might have reasoned that areas such as this would do well to be destroyed by fire-breathing spaceships. That they might be destroyed and forgotten. New housing built to home the poor in a manner more humane.
 
But such thoughts never entered this George’s head. All was precious to him now. London, rich or poor, life and, above all, Ada.
 
‘Look,’ whispered Ada. ‘Above St Paul’s – the stolen Lemurian airship still remains.’
 
‘Then perhaps we will succeed.’
 
But sounds of distant cannons reached their ears. Cannon fire and then explosions slowly drawing nearer.
 
‘Whatever we can do,’ said George, ‘it would be best that we do it now.’
 
 
Magonian cloud-ships hung in the sky above Penge. Sunset tinting diaphanous sails. Glinting in the golden eyes of sky-sailors. Languid fingers, frail as twigs, toyed at weird controls. Sparkling spheres descended to the village far below.

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