East of Ealing

31

Some distance beneath the pedalling pontiff a great cry broke the silence. “Fe… fi… fo… fum.” Neville the barbarian barman had finally reached a wall. And at long last he had found something he could thump. The thrill of the prospect sent a small shiver up his back which finally lost itself amid acres of straining muscle fibre. Neville ran his hand across the barrier blocking his way; hard and cold as glass. An outside wall surely? The barman pressed his eye to the jet crystal surface and did a bit of squinting. Something vague was moving about on the other side. People in the street? Neville drew back for a shoulder charge, and he would have gone through with it had not a sensible thought unexpectedly entered his head. He wasn’t exactly sure which floor, or wherever, he was on. With his track record the movements were likely to be those of roosting rooftop pigeons. It could be a long hard fall to earth. Neville pressed his ear to the wall of black glass. He couldn’t hear a damn thing.

Bash out a couple of bore holes to see out through, that would be your man. The barman drew back a fist of fury and hurled it forward at something approaching twice the speed of sound. With a sickening report it struck home. His knotted fist passed clean through the wall, cleaving out a hole the size of a dustbin-lid. “Gog a Magog!” Neville took an involuntary step backwards. An icy hurricane of fetid wind tore out at him shredding away the last vestiges of his surgical smock and leaving him only his Y-fronts. Neville stood his ground, a great arm drawn over his face to shield his sensitive nostrils from the vile onslaught he had unwittingly unleashed. “Great mother.” Tears flew from his eyes as he forced himself onward. With his free hand he tore out a great section of the wall, which cartwheeled away in the stinking gale. With heroic effort he charged forward into the not-so-great beyond.

The wind suddenly ceased and he found himself standing in absolute silence and near-darkness. It was very very cold indeed. “Brr,” said Neville. “Brass monkey weather.” To the lover of Greek mythology, what next occurred would have been of particular interest. But to a Brentford barman in his present state of undress, the sudden arrival of Cerberus, the multi-headed canine guardian of the underworld, was anything but a comfort.

“Woof, woof, and growl,” went Cerberus, in the plural.

“Nice doggy,” said Neville, covering his privy parts. “Good boy, there.”

The creature tore at the barman, a blur of slavering mouths and blazing red eyes.

Neville sprang aside and ducked away beneath it as it leapt towards his throat. “Heel,” he said. “Sit.”

The thing turned and stood pawing the ground, glowing faintly, its scorpion tail flicking, low growls coming from a multiplicity of throats. By all accounts it made Holmes’ Baskerville growler seem pretty silly.

“Grrrrrrrrrrs,” went Cerberus, squaring up for the kill.

“Grrrrrrrr,” went Neville, who now considered that thumping a multi-headed dog was as good as thumping anything. “Come and get your Bob Martins.” With a single great bound it was upon him, heads whipping and snapping. Neville caught it at chest height and pummelled it down with flailing fists. It leapt up again and he caught at a scaled throat, crushing his hands about it until the thumbs met. The hell-hound screamed with pain as Neville dragged it from its clawed feet and dashed it to the ground. Roll on chucking-out time, thought the part-time barman. With one head hanging limply but others still on the snap, the fiend was on him once more, ripping and tearing, its foul mouths snapping, brimstone vapour snorting from its nostrils.

The two bowled over again and again, mighty figures locked in titanic conflict. The nightmare creature and the all-but-naked barman. The screams and cries echoed about the void, the echoes doubling and redoubling, adding further horror to a scene which was already fearsome.

Roll over and die for your country Rover, was not in there.

“I’m not doing it, John, and that’s the end of the matter.” Pooley clung precariously to his handlebar perch as Pope John the Umpteenth freewheeled down a deserted corridor. “I am not a Catholic and I utterly refuse to kiss your bloody ring. The thing came out of a Jamboree bag for God’s sake.”

“Let me convert you, Jim, come to the Mother Church before it’s too late.”

“Let me down from here, I want a drink.”

“Drink?” Omally tugged on the brakes and sent Jim sprawling. “Drink did I hear you say, my son?”

Pooley looked up bitterly from the deck. “Popes don’t drink,” he said. “Such is well-known.”

“A new Papal bull,” his Holiness replied.

“All right then, but no ring-kissing, it’s positively indecent.” Pooley unearthed the hip-flask and the two plodded on, sharing it turn and turn about.

“It’s getting bloody cold,” Pooley observed, patting at his shirt-sleeves. “And the pong’s getting a lot stronger.”

“What do you expect?” Omally passed him back the hip-flask. “Roses round the door?”

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?”

“The passage is going down, isn’t it? Would the Pope put you on a wrong ’n?”

“Listen, John, I’m not too sure about this Pope business. I thought you lads had to be elected. White smoke up the chimney or the like?”

“As last Catholic, I have the casting vote. Please don’t argue about religious matters with me, Jim. If you let me convert you I’ll make you a cardinal.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. God, it stinks down here. Couldn’t you issue another Papal bull or something?”

Omally halted the infidel in mid-step. “Would you look at that?” he said, pointing forward.

Ahead of them loomed a great door. It seemed totally out of context with all they had yet seen. At odds with the bland modernistic corridors they had passed down on their abortive journey of escape. It rose like a dark hymn in praise of evil pleasure, and hung in a heavily-carved portico wrought with frescoed reliefs.

Omally parked his bike, and the two men tiptoed forward. The hugeness and richness of the thing filled all vision. It was a work of titanic splendour, the reliefs exquisite, carved into dark pure wood of extreme age.

“Fuck me,” said John Omally, which was quite unbecoming of a Pope. “Would you look at that holy show?”

“Unholy show, John. That is disgusting.”

“Yes, though, isn’t it? And that.” Jim followed Omally’s pointing finger. “You’d need to be double-jointed.”

“There’s something inscribed there, John. You know the Latin, what does it say?”

Omally leant forward and perused the inscription, “Oh,” said he at length, his voice having all the fun of herpes about it, “that is what it says.”

“Exit does it say?”

Omally turned towards the grinning idiot. “Give me that hip-flask, you are a fool.”

“And you a Pope. Drink your own.”

“Give me that flask.”

“Well, only a small sip, don’t want your judgement becoming impaired.” Pooley began to hiccup.

Omally guzzled more than his fair share. “It’s in there,” he said, wiping his chin and returning the flask to Pooley.

“What is?” Jim shook the flask against his ear and gave the self-made Pope a disparaging look.

“The big It, you damned fool.”

“Then next right turn and on your bike. We don’t want to do anything silly now, do we?”

Omally nodded gloomily. “We must; stick your tattooed mitt up against it.”

“I can think of a million reasons why not.”

“And me. For the Professor, eh Jim?”

“For the Professor, then.” Jim pressed his hand to the door and it moved away before his touch.

Omally took up his bike, and the two men stepped cautiously through the opening.

“Oh, bloody hell,” whispered Jim.

“Yes, all of that.”

They stood now in the vestibule of what was surely a great cathedral. But its size was not tailored to the needs of man. It was the hall of giants. The two stared about them in an attempt to take it in. It was simply too large. The scale of its construction sent the mind reeling. The temperature had dropped another five degrees at least, yet the smell was ripe as a rotten corpse.

“The belly of the beast,” gasped Pooley. “Let’s go back. The utter cold, the feeling, the stench, I can’t stand it.”

“No, Jim, look, there it is.”

Ahead, across an endless expanse of shining black marble floor, spread the congregation, row upon regimental row. Countless figures crouched before as many flickering terminal screens, paying obeisance to their dark master. For there, towering towards eternity, rising acre upon vertical acre, spreading away in every direction, was the mainframe of the great computer. Billions of housed microcircuits, jet-black boxes stacked one upon another in a jagged endless wall. Upon giddy stairways and catwalks, minuscule figures moved upon its face, attending to its needs. Feeding it, pampering it with knowledge, gorging its insatiable appetite.

I AM LATEINOS, I AM ROMIITH.

The Latin, the formula, words reduced to their base components, stripped of their flesh, reduced to the charred black dust of their skeletons; to the equations which were the music of the spheres, the grand high opera of all existence. Omally slumped forward on to his knees. “I see it,” he whispered hoarsely, his eyes starting from his head. “Now I understand.”

“Then bully for you, John. Come on let’s get out, someone will see us.” Pooley fanned at his nose and rubbed at his shirt-sleeves.

“No, no. Don’t you understand what it’s doing? Why it’s here?”

“No. Nor why I should be.”

“It is what the Professor told us.” Omally struck his fist to his temple. “Numerology; the power lies in the numbers themselves. Can’t you see it? This whole madhouse is the product of mathematics. Mankind did not invent mathematics nor discover it. No the science of mathematics was given to him that he might misuse it to his ruin. That he might eventually create all this.” Omally spread out his arms to encompass the world they now inhabited. “Don’t you understand?”

Jim shook his head. “Pissed again,” said he. “And this time as Pope.”

Omally continued, his voice rising in pitch as the revelation struck him like a thunderbolt. “The machine has now perfected the art. It has mastered the science, it can break anything down to its mathematical equivalent. Once it has the formula it can then rebuild, recreate everything. An entire brand new world built from the ashes of the old, encompassing everything.”

“But all it does is churn out the same old stuff over and over again.”

Omally clambered to his feet and turned upon him. “Yes, you damn fool, because there is one number it can never find. It found the number of a man, but there is one more number, one more equation which never can be found.”

“Go on then, have your spasm.”

“The soul. That’s what the old man was trying to tell us. Don’t you see it, Jim?”

“I see that,” said Pooley, pointing away over John’s shoulder. “But I don’t believe it.”

Omally turned to catch sight of a gaunt angular figure clad in the shredded remnants of a tweed suit, who was stealing purposefully towards them.

“The Saints be praised.”

“Holmes,” gasped Pooley. “But how…? It cannot be.”

“You can’t keep a good man down.”

Sherlock Holmes gestured towards them. “Come,” he mouthed.

Jim put his hand to Omally’s arm. “What if he starts clearing his throat?”

Omally shrugged helplessly. “Come on, Jim,” he said, trundling Marchant towards the skulking detective.

Holmes drew them into the shadows. There in the half-light his face seemed drawn and haggard, although a fierce vitality shone in his eyes. “Then only we three remain.” It was a statement rather than a question. Omally nodded slowly. “And do you know what must be done?”

“We do not.”

“Then I shall tell you, but quickly, for we have little or no time. We are going to poison it,” said Sherlock Holmes. “We are going to feed it with death.” The cold determination of his words and the authority with which he spoke to them seemed absolute.

“Poison it?” said Jim. “But how?”

Holmes drew out a sheaf of papers from his pocket, even in the semi-darkness the Professor’s distinctive Gothic penmanship was instantly recognizable. “Feed it with death. The Professor formulated the final equation. He knew that he might not survive so he entrusted a copy to me. What he began so must we finish.”

“Hear, hear.”

“Computers are the products of diseased minds, but they will react only to precise stimuli. Feed them gibberish and you will not confuse them. But feed them with correctly-coded instructions and they will react and function accordingly, in their own unholy madness. Professor Slocombe formulated the final programme. It will direct the machine to reverse its functions, leading ultimately to its own destruction. This programme will override any failsafe mechanism the machine has. I must, however, gain access to one of the terminals.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” Jim enquired as he slyly drained the last drop from his hip-flask. “They all seem a little busy at present.”

Sherlock Holmes drew out his gun. “This is a Forty-four Magnum, biggest…”

“Yes, we are well aware of that. It might, however, attract a little too much attention.”

“My own thoughts entirely. I was wondering, therefore, if you two gentlemen might be prevailed upon to create some kind of diversion.”

“Oh yes?” said Pope John. “What, such as drawing the demonic horde down about our ears whilst you punch figures into a computer terminal?”

Holmes nodded grimly. “Something like that. I will require at least six clear minutes. I know I am asking a lot.”

“You are asking everything.”

Holmes had no answer to make.

John stared hard into the face of Jim Pooley.

The other shrugged. “What the heck?” said he.

“What indeed?” Omally climbed on to his bike. “Room for one more up front.”

Jim smiled broadly and tore off his metallic balaclava. “Then we won’t be needing these any more.”

“No,” said John, removing his own. “I think not.” Raising his hand in a farewell salute he applied his foot to the pedal. “Up the Rebels.”

“God for Harry,” chorused Pooley, as the two launched forward across the floor, bound for destiny upon the worn wheels of Marchant the Wonder Bike.

A strange vibration swept up the mainframe of the great computer. The figures moving upon its face stiffened, frozen solid. Diamond-tipped lights began to flicker and flash, forming into sequences, columns, and star-shapes, and pyramids, veering and changing, pulsing faster and faster. A low purr of ominous humming rose in pitch, growing to a siren-screaming crescendo, as the machine’s defence system suddenly registered the double image coursing across the floor of its very sanctum sanctorum. A ripple of startled movement spread out from the base, as the terminal operators took in the horror. Their heads rose to face the mainframe, their mouths opened, and the curiously mechanical coughing sounds issued forth, swelling to an atavistic howl.

“Do you think they’ve tumbled us, John?” Pooley clapped his hands across his ears and Omally sank his head between his shoulders as the two zig-zagged on between the sea of terminals and their shrieking, howling operators. The robots were rising to their feet, stretching out their arms towards their master, their heads thrown back, their mouths opening and closing. They stormed from their seats to pursue the intruders.

At the back of the hall a stealthy figure in shredded tweed slipped into a vacant chair and flexed his long slim fingers.

“Get away there!” Pooley levelled his travelling hobnail towards a shrieking figure looming before them. He caught it a mighty blow to the chest and toppled it down across the face of a terminal, tearing it from its mounts amidst a tangle of sparking wires and scrambled mechanisms.

“Nice one, Jim.”

“Hard to port, John.”

Omally spun a hasty, wheel-screeching left turn, dodging a cluster of straining hands which clawed towards them. They dived off down another line of abandoned terminals, the robots now scrambling over them, faces contorted in hatred, anxious to be done with the last of their sworn enemy. Small black boxes were being drawn into the light, emitting sinister crackles of blue fire. The chase was on in earnest. And there were an awful lot of the blighters, with just two men to the bike.

The figures on the high gantries now ran to and fro in a fever of manic industry. They worked with inhuman energy, tending and caring to their dark master. The lights about them streamed up the dead black face, throbbing in “V” formations, travelling down again to burst into pentacles and cuneiform. They became a triple-six logo a hundred feet high which reformed into the head of a horned goat, the eyes ringed in blood-red laser fire. Blackpool illuminations it was not.

Holmes laboured away at his terminal, but here and there his trembling fingers faltered and he punched in an incorrect digit. Cursing bitterly, he was forced to erase an entire line and begin again.

“You bastard.” A clawed hand tore off Pooley’s right shirt-sleeve. “I’m down to the arm. Let’s get out of here, John!”

“Strike that man.” As a foaming psychotic rose up before them, Pooley levelled another flailing boot. The floor was now a hell-house of confusion. The robots were fighting with one another, each desperate to wring the life from Pooley and Omally. The cycling duo thundered on. Omally wore the orange jersey. The tour de Brentford was very much on the go.

“Get a move on, your Popeship, they’re closing for the kill.”

John swung away once more, but the road-blocks were up. He skidded about, nearly losing Pooley, who uttered many words of justifiable profanity, and made hurried tracks towards the door. The androids encircled them, black boxes spurting fire. The circle was closing fast and every avenue of escape was blocked as soon as it was entered. Omally drew Marchant to a shivering halt, depositing Pooley on the deck. “If you know how to fly,” he told his bike, “now would be the time to impress me.” Sadly, the old battered sit-up-and-beg showed no inclination whatsoever towards sudden levitation. “Well,” said John, “one must never ask too much of a bike.”

Pooley rose shakily to his feet. To every side loomed a sea of snarling faces, surrounding them in an unbreakable circle. It was many many faces deep, and none looked amenable to a bloodless surrender.

“Goodbye, John,” said Jim, “I never knew a better friend.”

“Goodbye, Jim.” Omally pressed his hand into that of his lifelong companion, a tear rose in a clear blue eye. “We’ll go down fighting at least.”

“At the very least.” Pooley raised his fists. “Beware,” he cried, “this man knows Dimac, the deadliest martial art known to… well, to the two of us any way.”

The crowd rose up as if drawing its collective sulphurous breath, and fell upon them; cruel hands snatched down, anxious to destroy, to draw out the life. Omally struck where he could but the blows rained down upon him, driving him to his knees. Pooley could manage but one last, two-fingered expression of defiance before he was dashed to the deck. The writhing mob poured forward, thrashing and screaming, and it seemed that nothing less than a very timely miracle could save the dynamic duo now.

A great tremor rushed across the floor of the unholy cathedral. The lynch mob drew back in sudden horror, the black marble surface upon which they stood was being jarred as if by some great force battering up at it. Pooley and Omally cowered as the floor moved beneath them. A great crack tore open, tumbling androids to either side of it. Shards of sparkling marble shot up like some black volcanic eruption. An enormous fist thrust up from the depths. Another followed and, as the crowd backed into a growing circle, crying and pointing, a head and shoulders emerged from the destruction, rising noble and titanic amongst the debris.

“Fe… Fi… Fo… Fum.” As a great section of flooring smashed aside, Neville scrambled up through the opening. He was bloody and scarred, with great wounds upon his arms and legs, but his face bore an old nobility. He was indeed a Titan, a god of olden Earth. Yes, there were giants in the Earth in those days, and also after that. Neville stood, a Hercules in soiled Y-fronts. “All right,” he cried. “Who wants a fight then?”

“Not us,” cried Jim Pooley.

“Hello, lads,” said the bulging barman, sighting the cringing twosome, and flexing a selection of chest muscles. “You appear to be somewhat unfairly outnumbered.”

“A bit of assistance would not go amiss.”

Neville flexed shoulders which had previously only been flexed by the Incredible Hulk, and even then to a minor degree.

“The rest has done him good,” said John. “He looks well on it.”

Amidst a roar of green flame, Cerberus, the hound of hell, sprang up from the netherworld beneath to confront the barman. Its three heads, one now shredded and dangling, worked and snapped, saliva drooled from fanged jaws, and the stench of brimstone filled the already overloaded air. The scorpion tail flicked and dived. “Come on, doggy,” called the barman. “Time for a trip down to the vet’s!” The creature launched itself towards him, passing over two terrified human professional cowerers. Neville caught it by a throat and the two crashed back into the crowd.

“On your toes, Jim,” called Omally. “I see a small ray of light.” Shrinking and flinching, he and Jim edged away.

Neville swung the beast about, bringing down a score of robots. Others snatched at him but he swept them aside. Above, the mainframe pulsed and flashed, the moving lights forming obscene images. Pooley and Omally backed towards it, the exit was thoroughly blocked and the only way seemed like up.

Neville drove his fist through a plasticized face, sending up a cascade of synthetic blood. The hound of hell fell upon him once more but he tore down a lower jaw with a rending of bone and gristle. He was quite coming into his own.

Pooley and Omally gained a first staircase. “Not more stairs,” gasped Jim.

“Pull the plugs out,” screamed Omally. “Pull it to pieces. Follow me.” He thundered up the steps on to the first gantry. A vista of housed microcircuits met his gaze. Omally thrust forth his hand and tore out a drawered section, punching the things free. Pooley followed suit. Faces turned from the mêlée below, a group of androids detached themselves from the throng. Pooley ran along, drawing out random circuit patterns. Omally followed on, punching them from their housings. They gained the second level. Ahead stood a robot barring their way. “You duck, I’ll hit it.” Omally pressed Jim forward. The robot swung its hand at him but Jim ducked out of reach, grabbing at the knees. Omally drove a fist over his diving back, and the thing lurched off the gantry to fall into the chaos which now reigned below.

Neville stood defiant, taking on all comers. Cerberus with but one head left snarling, snapped at his ankles. A ring of shattered pseudo-corpses surrounded the combatants. John and Jim gained the third level. They were making something of an art out of dispatching the face-workers to whatever fate their microchipped god had in store for them.

“Pull it to pieces, Jimmy boy.”

“I’m pulling, I’m pulling.” Jim ran forward, dragging out segments, Omally came behind, kicking and punching. Microcircuits fell like evil snow upon the ferocious crowd welling beneath. Up another stairway and beyond.

Below them the lights exhibited a jumbled confusion. Great battle waged upon the floor. Neville stood head and shoulders, and a good deal more, above the great ring of his attackers. Blue fire sparkled as they strove to apply their killing weapons to his naked flesh, but Neville snatched out the arms from their silicone sockets and flung them high over his head. Cerberus had barked his last, but from the great chasm yawning in the marble floor other horrors spilled, spinning and thrashing, whirling out of the pit. Barbs and spines, close balls of fur, animals and swollen insects with the heads of infants. A darkness was filling the air, as if it were a palpable thing, felt as much as seen. A fog of hard night.

“Bandits at six o’clock,” shouted Pooley. “Get a move on, John.”

Omally applied his boot to the face of a pursuer as it loomed up from a stairwell. “Onward and upward, Jimmy.”

The two men struggled in an unreal twilight world. Below, Neville’s great warcries and the dull thuds of falling, broken bodies mingled with the unholy screechings of the monstrous obscenities pouring up from the pit. The siren had ceased its banshee wail but voices issued from the computer’s mainframe, sighing and gasping from the circuitry, whispering in a thousand tongues, few ever those of man. A hand fastened about Pooley’s ankle, drawing him down. Omally turned, sensing rather than seeing his friend’s plight. He wrenched out a drawer-load of circuits and swung it like an axe, severing the clinging hand at the wrist. The thing remained in its deathlock about Jim’s ankle, but the hero clambered on.

They were by now high upon the computer’s great face. The air was thin but sulphurous. John clutched at his chest and strained to draw breath. Pooley leant upon his shoulder, coughing and gasping. “We’re running out of stairs,” he croaked. Above them now was nothing but darkness. They stood engulfed in it, breathing it. The sounds of battle echoed below but nought could now be seen of the conflict. “You don’t happen to see any daylight lurking above?” Jim asked. “Fast running out of wind this man.”

“I can see sod all. Get off there.” A hand had John by the trouser cuff. He squinted down in horror to see no other face than his own, leering up. Without thought or feeling he tore out another section of circuitry and thrust it down into the snapping mouth which sought his leg. Sparks blistered the visage, and the thing sank away into the darkness.

Pooley clung to a further staircase, his energy, such as it ever was, all but gone. “About making me a Cardinal?” he gasped.

The Pope followed him up. “Bless you, my son. Popes and Cardinals first. Press on.”

The two thrust blindly onward; there was nothing left to do but climb. The metal handrails were like ice and their hands were raw from the clinging cold which tore at the flesh. Their attackers poured at them in an unceasing horde. They called to them in voices which were their own, jibing and threatening, crying out explicit details of the fate which they intended for them.

“I’m gone,” said Jim. “I can climb no more, leave me to die.”

Omally fumbled about with numb and bleeding fingers. “I will join you,” said he. “There are no more stairs.” Pressed back against the icy metal of the mainframe the two men stood, alone and trapped. The mob surged up beneath them, swarming over the catwalks and gantries. There was finally nowhere left to run.

“I don’t want to die here,” said Pooley, his voice that of pitiful defeat. “I’m not supposed to be here, amongst all of this. This isn’t true, this isn’t right.”

Omally clung to the cold hard wall. They were neither of them supposed to be here. They were alone, two men, leaning now as in a time long past, upon the parapet of the canal bridge, above the oiled water of the old Grand Union. They looked down into their own reflections and those of the old stars. The stars always had much to say to drunken men, although none of their counsel and advice was ever heeded upon the cold, cruel, hangover-morning. But the truths lay there. For ordinary men, the truths always lay there upon that very moment before falling over. It was there at that instant a man was truly himself. The truth lay in that netherworld between drunkenness and oblivion, and dwelt where no sober man could ever grasp it. Only the drunken taste reality, and that for an all-too-fleeting moment. Removed from all sensible thought they made their own laws and moulded futures unthinkable at sunrise. Ah yes, John and Jim had tasted the truth upon many many an occasion.

“I see the light,” shouted Omally.

Jim craned his head. Above them a torch beam shone down.

“Get a move on lads,” called a voice. “You’re late as usual.”

“Norman,” called Jim, squinting up at the flashlight. “Is that you?”

“Sorry, were you expecting someone else?” Norman stretched down an arm towards them. “A stitch in time never won fair lady you know. Get a move on will you.”

“At the hurry-up.”

Omally shouldered Jim, who took Norman’s hand and struggled up through the rooftop opening. The screaming swarm beneath were hard upon the Irishman’s heel, he stretched up his hand towards Jim and Pooley leant down, fingers straining to reach. Their fingers met, but with a cry of horror Omally was gone. The screams of the mob welled up and the shouts of Omally as he battered down at the creatures engulfing him were nothing if not ungodly. Their fingers met again and Jim drew him up through the opening.

“That was quite close,” said John, dusting down his trousers. “But where now?”

Norman’s impossible machine was parked near at hand. An icy wind screamed over the rooftop, howling and moaning. “This way,” cried Norman. With tears flying from their eyes, they followed the shopkeeper. Pooley shielded his face and moved with difficulty, the gale near tearing him from his feet.

The sky above was black and starless. The blank vista of the rooftop seemed to stretch towards impossible extremes in every direction. Beyond, in the vertical seas which girded the borough, strange images burst and sparkled projecting themselves as if on three vast screens. But the panorama was shrinking, the streets still dimly visible below were diminishing. The building was shuddering beneath them, rising like a lift in a shaft. Its distant edges were becoming ever more distant. The building was duplicating itself. Time had run out, Holmes had not been successful, the Professor’s programme had failed.

“The Millennium!” cried Norman, as he forced himself into the driving seat. “Hurry!”

Pooley clung to the handrail of the time machine. The duplicates were pouring through the roof opening, a screaming mass tumbling towards them through the smashing firmament.

“This helicopter will never fly,” Jim told the shopkeeper.

“You have lost the last of your marbles.”

“All aboard now.” Omally did just that, as the satanic horde engulfed them.

Norman turned the ignition key and engaged reverse.