“Why in Camelot, of course. Wherever did you think?”
“I thought, perhaps, well I don’t know, still in Brentford maybe.”
Merlin cocked his head on one side. “Brentford,” he said. “I like the name, I will see what can be done about that for some future time. But for now we have much to speak of. Will you come with me to yonder castle and take a cup of mead?”
“I think that would be just fine,” said Norman, the once and future shopkeeper of England.
27
Professor Slocombe looked up towards the great ormolu mantel-clock and nodded his old head gently in time to the pendulum’s swing. “Good luck, Norman,” he said. Drawing his gaze from the antique timepiece, he turned to stare out through the open French windows. There, in the all-too-near distance, the great black shaft of the Lateinos and Romiith building obscenely scarred the two-hundred-year-old skyline. Its upper reaches were lost high amongst gathering stormclouds. The aura of undiluted evil pressed out from it, seeking to penetrate the very room. The old man shuddered briefly and drew the windows shut. Norman’s homemade double laid aside a bound volume of da Vinci, penned in the crooked mirror-Latin of the great man himself, and peered quizzically towards the Professor.
“I know what you are thinking,” the scholar said. “He is safe thus far, so much is already known to me. But as to the return trip, all depends upon the calculations. It is all in the numbers. We can only offer our prayers.”
“Prayers?”
“They offer some comfort.”
“I wouldn’t know,” said the robot, somewhat brusquely. “Norman did not see fit to log such concepts into my data banks.”
Professor Slocombe watched the mechanical man with unguarded interest. “I should really like to know exactly what you do feel.”
“I feel texture. I think, therefore I am. Or so I have been informed. Every cloud has a silver lining I was also told, and a trouble shared is a bird in the…”
“Yes, indeed. But what causes you to react? How do you arrive at decisions? What motivates you?”
“Impetus. I react as I have been programmed to do. Upon information received, as the boys in blue will have it.”
“Do you believe then that this is how the other duplicates function?”
“Certainly not.” Something approaching pride entered the robot’s voice. “They are merely receivers, created solely to receive and to collect information and perform their tasks. The mainframe of the great computer does all their thinking for them. Clockwork dummies, that’s all they are.”
“Interesting,” said Professor Slocombe.
“You spend a great deal of time in idle speculation,” the robot observed, “considering the gravity of the situation. You seek to detect human emotion in me. I might do the same to you.”
Professor Slocombe chuckled delightedly. “There are more wheels currently in motion than the one which spins in your chest,” said he. “Even now, great forces are beginning to stir elsewhere in the parish.”
28
“Fe… fi… fo… fum.” The bloated barman awoke giddily from another bout of barbiturate- induced slumber and rattled the window-panes of his hospital prison. The door beneath him opened and his Promethean tormentor entered the barman-crowded room, hypodermic at the ready. Neville eyed her with absolute loathing. “I smell the blood of an Englishman.”
“We are not going to be naughty again, are we?”
“Be he alive or be he dead.”
“Roly-poly, please, sir.”
“I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.”
“I shall have to fetch doctor, then.”
“No!” Neville drew in his breath, filled his cheeks, and blew a great blast at the clinical harpy. The midget fought at the gale, but lost her footing and fluttered away through the doorway and out into the corridor. “At last,” said Neville to the ceiling against which his face had been compressed so uncomfortably for so very long. “At long long last.” He raised a fist the size of a cement sack and clenched and unclenched the fingers. The sap was beginning to rise and a great inner strength was rising with it. The power was surging, driving through his veins; unstoppable and titanic.
At last he realized the truth: his consuming disability had been nothing more than the painful and grotesque prelude to what was to come. The time for the settling of scores was fast approaching. The power of the great Old Ones. The gods of his pagan ancestry born in the dawn of the light when the world was full of wonder. The power had returned and it had returned to him. The last of the line.
A broad tight-lipped smile arced up upon the barman’s face. His fingers flexed, and beneath the surgical gown huge muscles rolled about his body, porpoises swimming in a sack. The Herculean barman pressed his hands to the ceiling of his most private ward. With a splinter of plastic-cladding, his hands rose, tightening to fists and forcing upwards, unstoppably. Neville rose with them, pouring forth from his prison, rising upon a floodtide of superhuman energy. The barman’s head and shoulders passed through the ceiling and a low choked cry rose from his throat.
He was ill-prepared for the sight which met his gaze. He had supposed himself to be in the private wing of the Cottage Hospital. The view from the window tending to support this well enough. But not a bit of it. The hospital room and its window view were nothing but a sham, hiding a grim reality. The tiny room was little more than a box, set in some great empty warehouse of a place. It spread away, dimly-lit, acre upon acre of concrete flooring and absolutely nothing. The window view, now seen from above, was a mish-mash of laser lines projected on to a screen. It was a hologram.
“Fe… fi… fo,” said Neville, as he perused his stark surroundings. Where was he? He felt like a jack-in-the-box in an empty toy factory. “Curiouser and curiouser!” Standing erect and kicking aside the make- believe walls of the movie-set hospital room, he stood upon a soundstage vaster by far than any ever envisaged by the now legendary Cecil B himself.
Neville drew in his breath and watched in pride as his great chest rose beneath the gown. This was the dream come true, surely? The impossible dream realized. His gods had at long last decided to smile upon him. He must have performed for them some great service without even realizing it. A million glorious thoughts poured into the barman’s head. He would seek out that Trevor Alvy who had bullied him at school; and parade up and down the beach come summer with his shirt actually off. No more heavy sweaters to disguise his bony physique, no more cutting jibes about his round shoulders. He would get a tan. And kick sand in people’s faces. Yes, he would definitely do that. He would eject drunks from the bar without having to resort to the sneaky knobkerry from behind. Neville threw himself into a pose, displaying muscles in places where Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t even have places. Conan who? He was quids in here and no mistake. “Oh joy, oh bliss.” Things were happening about Neville’s groin regions which, out of common decency, he did not even dare to dwell upon. The bulging barman paused for a moment or two’s reflection. For one thing, it was impossible for him to gauge exactly how high he might be. If the hospital room was life-size, he must surely top the twenty-foot mark. That was no laughing matter. Giants, no matter how well hung they might be, were never exactly the most popular fellows in town. In fact, the more well hung they were, the worse their lot. There was always some would be “David” about, with a catapult and poor eyesight.
Neville erased such thoughts from his brain with difficulty. If this thing had been done to him,
