The Mechanical Messiah (2 page)

The gentleman’s name was Colonel Katteffelto. The monkey’s name was Darwin.

Now Colonel Katterfelto had a tragic tale to tell and would tell it at the dropping of a sixpence. Late of the Queen’s Own Electric Fusiliers, he had distinguished himself in the Martian campaign and been awarded several medals for valorous deeds above and beyond the call of duty. Sadly the colonel no longer sported these medals, for he had been forced to pawn them. He did, however, cling to his dignity, though this was oft-times perilous.

Although age had brought a bow to his back, Colonel Katterfelto still retained his military bearing. The greying whiskers of his mustachios were tinted a steely blue and twisted into martial spikes. His pale grey eyes were clear and alert, though in them sadness showed.

For the colonel had fallen upon hard times and been reduced to the status of Music Hall bill-bottomer. A precarious position at best and one to be dreaded at worst. The worst being the volatile crowd’s aptness to greet those first up on the evening’s bill via the medium of hurled rotten fruit and vegetables.

It was a tradition, or an old charter, or something.

But the colonel would give of his best this evening, for he knew of no other way. Had he not laid down fire upon Martian tripods? Rescued wounded comrades-in-arms? Marched across the dusty landscape of the red planet, letting loose at anything that moved with his back-engineered service ray-gun revolver (which now sadly lay in the pawnshop next to his medals of honour)? Yes he had, he most certainly had.

A rough crowd held no fear for Colonel Katterfelto, though he fretted for the staining of his uniform. It had been for him a sad and sudden decline into penury and it had not been of his own making. The colonel knew just where the blame for it lay.

The blame lay with Darwin the monkey.

Darwin the monkey’s tale was equal in sadness to that of the colonel’s. Perhaps more than equal, in fact, because it involved the loss of not one but
two
fortunes. And Darwin the monkey had no one to blame but himself.

He had once been employed as monkey butler to Lord Brentford. When his lordship came to a sorry end aboard the ill-fated airship the
Empress of Mars,
Darwin inherited the Brentford fortune. The Great House at Sion Park, along with extensive grounds, which Darwin soon converted into England’s biggest banana plantation, and a good many golden guineas besides. Some of these guineas Darwin had invested most wisely; others most surely he had
not.

Upon a May morning in the year of eighteen ninety-six, a gentleman caller at Sion Park had presented his card. Known only as Herr Döktor, he had a unique proposition to put to England’s most moneyed monkey.

It was Herr Döktor’s conviction that it was possible to teach monkeys to read, write and speak the Queen’s English. This, he considered, would advance their evolutionary progress, enabling them eventually to catch up with our own. This was
not,
he was careful to stress, in any way a heretical idea. On the contrary. Herr Döktor was doing God’s work. His goal was to bring enlightenment and understanding to Man’s hairy cousins, that they might save their souls through knowledge and worship of the Almighty.

Naturally it was difficult to put a price upon the benefits of such an offer. The benefits that would present themselves to the world’s first talking ape. But Herr Döktor was nonetheless willing to name a sum, which although on the face of it sounded over-excessive to the point of whimsy, he considered suitable. A labourer being worthy of his hire, as the scriptures so aptly put it.

Darwin, who had a basic understanding of English — for how otherwise might he have served as a monkey butler? —warmed immediately to the prospect of articulating human speech. He forked out the most considerable sum, in cash (for render unto Caesar those things which are Caesar’s) and engaged in a six-month programme of intense tutorage.

It was not, however, without incident and Darwin, who had yet to eschew the basic ways of monkeydom, had not been above the occasional flinging of dung to enforce a point when he felt it necessary.

But he met with success and half a year later had mastered the basic rudiments of the Queen’s English. He then shook hands with Herr Döktor and in all but perfect ‘Man’ thanked him for his lessons and bade him farewell.

Herr Döktor bowed and turned away, struggling down the drive, bow-legged beneath the weight of golden guineas.

Three days later, cleanly shaven of face and presenting himself as an English country gentleman, Darwin settled down before a gaming table at Monte Carlo and within several hours had gambled away his entire remaining inheritance. Big house, banana plantation, a spaceship and all.

Very sad.

There was probably a moral to be learned there, but whatever it was, it was lost upon Darwin. Who now found himself gifted with speech, though quite without funds.

He could of course have chosen to exhibit himself before a paying public, but this he had no wish to do. Knowing something of the showman’s life, he harboured no longings to be presented as a freak of nature. Rather he wished for comfort and stability and so chose once more to accept the position of monkey butler. But not, it must be said, without a slight degree of bitterness towards humankind.

Colonel Katterfelto had, like most gentlemen of his time, always yearned for a monkey butler. A servant who would work for bananas, be ever obedient and not answer back. He had lately come into am inheritance of his own and this coupled with his army pension, which he chose to take as a cash sum, would, he felt, enable him to achieve his life’s ambition. To build a certain something, with the aid of a monkey butler.

The certain something that the colonel had in mind was a something of almost infinite magnitude. Its genesis had come about with a book the colonel had read when still a child. A book of considerable age entitled
Treatise upon the Establishment of a New World Order, through the Construction of the New Messiah.
As curiosity might have it, and here it might be said that curiosity was piled upon curiosity to form an all-encompassing coincidence, the author of this ancient tome was one Herr Döktor.

The gist of this treatise was that the New Messiah would not come down in glory from the skies, as was popularly touted about in scripture. The New Messiah would be a modern messiah, behaving in the ways of modernity. The New Messiah would require a little help from his friends to manifest himself. He would in fact need to be constructed from modern materials. The author argued convincingly that human anatomy was far too complicated, and that a good engineer could create a man of greater simplicity and greater efficiency. A man that would last far longer than three score years and ten. A man who might be as a God. Included in the treatise were the plans for such a man. A mechanical man that would be designed as ‘a magical magnet used to attract divine energies’. A Mechanical Messiah to be imbued with the presence of God. Heaven’s last and best gift to Mankind.

And all it required was finance.

In the communal dressing room, Colonel Katterfelto tapped distractedly upon his ray-gun holster, wherein lay the ancient tome. Somewhat scuffed and charred about its edges. Where had it all gone wrong? he wondered, and then he recalled well enough.

He had engaged the services of his monkey butler. He had drawn out his fortune from the bank. He had purchased tickets to America, where a family property had been bequeathed to him, and had sailed upon
The Great Eastern
[2]
in the company of Darwin, striking port in New York and heading off to Wormcast, Arizona.

Here, in a simple shack on the edge of town, the colonel had set up his Spiritual Laboratory and begun his Great Work. Things had gone well. Up to a point. The actual construction of the Mechanical Messiah had been reasonably straightforward. A local blacksmith shop, a light engineering company and an airship construction works had shared in the manufacture of parts. Each working upon separate, seemingly unrelated items and no one but the colonel knowing of the intended whole. Secrecy, the colonel considered, would be for the best, until the Great Day dawneth. The parts had been expensive, but how could one place a monetary value upon the salvation of Mankind? It was beyond price.

It took six months to construct the Mechanical Messiah. It took the townsfolk of Wormcast, Arizona, less than an hour to destroy it.

It had all been such a sad misunderstanding. It had all been the fault of Darwin the monkey butler. The colonel had not one inkling as to his servant’s skills in the field of human speech. And then, upon having made his tenth attempt to bring life to the Mechanical Messiah by drawing into it the electrical ether, in a manner which had hitherto only been attempted (with some success, it is recorded) by a certain Victor Frankenstein, the misunderstanding had occurred.

The colonel considered that if the lightning rod had been correctly aligned by Darwin, the experiment might well have proved a success. But instead of the lightning darting down the rod to engage with the terminals upon the shoulders of the Mechanical Messiah, it jumped these terminals and bounced about the Spiritual Laboratory, striking Darwin and setting fire to his tail.

Which caused the monkey to cry out
the Name of God’s Son.

Colonel Katterfelto had fallen back in amazement. And then rushed forwards to extinguish his burning butler.

‘It is a miracle,’ cried the colonel. ‘You have become a Vessel of God. The voice of the angels speaks through you.’

Darwin, still smouldering slightly, turned a bitter, although thoughtful, eye upon the colonel.

‘The angels require that you should furnish this vessel with a bunch of bananas and a large gin and tonic,’ he had said. Most eloquently.

And from thereafter all had gone terribly wrong.

The angels made many demands of the colonel. Many demands that did not seem even remotely connected with bringing life to the Mechanical Messiah. Most seemed more directly concerned with the vessel’s welfare in the form of culinary requirements and bottles of vintage port. At times the colonel questioned these demands.

‘To what end,’ he enquired, ‘did the New Messiah need to have the front garden converted into a banana plantation?’

But who was he to argue with the angels? Who would do such a thing?

The end came swiftly and in the form of fire. Darwin, somewhat bloated of belly from an over-surfeit of bananas and far gone in drink through the imbibition of too much vintage port, had taken it into his hairy head to borrow the horse and trap (a surrey with a fringe on the top) and drive into town to purchase some chocolates from the general store.

It had been an ill-considered move. For where Colonel Katterfelto discerned the voice of angels speaking through Darwin, the plain folk of Wormcast, Arizona, saw something altogether different. They saw a demon employed by the Antichrist. For rumours in Wormcast were rife that Colonel Katterfelto was up to something altogether unhealthy at his shack. And this, if proof were needed, was all the proof there needed to be.

That night the God-fearing folk of Wormcast, Arizona, marched upon the Spiritual Laboratory in the company of blazing torches.

And that was that was that.

The man and his monkey fled Arizona. They returned to London, where Colonel Katterfelto hocked his medals and his ray gun and invested the last of his money in a set of battered clockwork minstrels.

He was down, was the colonel, but not entirely out. He would rise again. But for now he certainly wasn’t speaking to Darwin, who had remained with the colonel for reasons of his own. And Darwin was
not
speaking to
him.

So the two sat wordlessly and glowered at one another, as kiwi birds flopped foolishly, and the five-minute bell rang a kind of a death knell in the crowded communal dressing room.

n evening at the Music Hall quite suited Cameron Bell. He needed something to exercise his mind. The challenge of another complex criminal case would have been the first choice of the man known by those in the know to be the world’s greatest detective. But if such was not forthcoming then an evening of frivolous entertainment. Especially if it came in the comely form of the enchanting Alice Lovell, whose acrobatic kiwi birds were presently causing some annoyance to Colonel Katterfelto.