“Didn’t you forget something?”
“No, I don’t think we did.”
“Their heads!” shouted Fred. “What about their frigging heads?”
“Ah now, we thought about that,” said Derek. “And we considered it a bit previous. Better to let the louts lead us to the scrolls, we thought. Then cut off their frigging heads.”
“So what exactly are you doing back here?”
“Dunno,” said Clive. “What are we doing back here?”
“Money,” said Derek. “We want lots of money.”
“For what? You haven’t done anything yet.”
“For bribery and corruption. Set friend against friend. Break the community spirit. They’re thick as pus from a weeping wound, these Brentonians, they all club together. A bung here and a bribe there will set them at each other’s throats.”
Professor Slocombe stoked up the fire. “What I should have done,” said he, “was to cast a spell of return over the scrolls. Then, wherever they were, all I’d have had to do was summon them.”
“Things always seem so simple when you look back at them, don’t they?” said John.
“Urgh!” went Jim. “Urgh! Uuh! Argh!”
“I do so agree,” said John. “An advanced form of Esperanto is this, or what?”
“No, I’ve got it, I’ve got it.”
“Well, don’t get any on me.”
“The old ones aren’t always the best,” said the Professor.
“No, I really have got it,” said Jim. “Things always seem simple when you look back at them. John’s right.”
“Go on.”
“Look back at them,” said Jim. “Don’t you get it?”
“No,” said the Professor. “I don’t.”
Jim sighed. “It’s so simple. I should have thought of it at once. Go back. In time. I can do that. I go back in time and see who pinched the casket.”
“Give that man a big cigar,” said John Omally.
Dr Steven puffed upon a big cigar, the way proud fathers do.
On the dining table lay the casket, in this lay the golden child. Upon the floor lay the lid and in this lay the other one.
Dr Steven stooped and peered. There was something not quite right about the other one. Only two had survived the terrible zinc tanks and they had both been cloned from dried blood from the Turin Shroud. But they were by no means identical.
The golden child exuded warmth and joy.
But this one.
Dr Steven blew cigar smoke into its face.
The features twitched. Dark they were. Swarthy. The hair was black, the eyebrows and the lashes. But there was an all-over blackness about this child. A little shell of darkness seemed to surround it. A palpable thing. Whenever Dr Steven fed it with the bottle he felt his fingers growing cold. There was something far from right about this baby.
The fact that everything about all of this was far from right eluded Dr Steven.
“What exactly are you?” asked the genetic engineer.
The baby’s dark eyes opened and they focused.
“Dada,” it said, in a deep dark tone.
“Does it need to be dark?” asked Professor Slocombe. “Should I switch off the lights?”
“No problem.” Jim settled himself on the chaise longue. “Where did Celia Penn go?” he asked.
“She went home,” said Professor Slocombe. “We had a chat. I won’t bore you with the details.”
“Secrets again.”
“Indeed. Yes.”
“And whoever knocked upon your door? Did they give you any trouble?”
Professor Slocombe winked.
“You did that. To get us off on our way.”
“I’d like to get you off on your way now, if you don’t mind.”
“No problem, Professor.” Jim closed his eyes. “Do the road drill, John.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes, you do.”
“Brrrrm,” went John.
“In A minor.”
“That was A minor.”
“That was B flat,” said Professor Slocombe. “Like the blues. The blues are always in B flat.”
“Just do it like you do it, John.” And Jim drifted off. “Om,” he went, drifting backwards.
“What is Om?” Omally asked.
“The Universal note,” said Professor Slocombe. “In Hinduism, the sacred syllable that typifies the three gods, Brahma, Vishna and Shiva, who concern themselves with the threefold operation of integration, maintenance, and disintegration. Birth, life and death. Om as a symbol is more powerful than the pentagram or cross. It represents love and love of life, without fear of death. To give and to receive this symbol is an act of love.”
“Why is Jim Omming?” Omally asked.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Professor Slocombe.
“Om off to Alabama with a banjo on my knee,” sang Jim Pooley.
A long black car with blacked-out windows drew up outside the Professor’s house. At the wheel sat a chauffeur, whistling.
“Shut up the bloody whistling,” said Clive.
“I can whistle if I want to.”
“And I can rip your fucking heart out,” said Derek (him being the God-damn crazy ape-shit one-man killing machine of the partnership).
The chauffeur stopped whistling.
“So what happens next?” said Clive.
“We wait ’til they come out. Follow them and nab the scrolls.”
“Fair enough,” said Clive.
“Now I’ll tell you what I want,” said Derek.
“What you really, really want?”
“What I really, really want is a Zigger cigar.”
“And what is that, exactly?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. But I really, really want one.”
“Actually I had one once,” said Clive. “But it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Hey, hang about. Are they coming out?”
“No,” said Derek. “They’re not.”
“You’re not doing it properly, are you, Jim?”
“I’m sorry, John, I can’t seem to get in the mood.”
“Should I Brrrrm some more?”
“I don’t think it will help.”
“I could put you under hypnotically,” said Professor Slocombe.
“No thank you,” said Jim. “I can manage on my own.”
“I don’t think that’s altogether true.”
