PERMISSION DENIED, INFORMATION CLASSIFIED Professor Slocombe stroked at his chin. “Ask it for a data report.”
Norman did the business. Rows of lighted figures plonked up on to the monitor. Row upon coloured row, number upon number, little illuminated regiments marching up the screen. “Magic,” crooned Norman the Second.
“Looks like trig,” said Jim disgustedly. “Never could abide trig. Woodwork and free periods, but trig definitely not.”
“The music of the spheres,” said Norman the Second.
Professor Slocombe’s eyes were glued to the flickering screen. His mouth worked and moved, his head quivered from side to side. As the projected figures darted and weaved, so the old man rose and fell upon his toes.
“Does it mean something to you?” Omally asked.
“Numerology, John. It is as I have tried to explain to you both. Everything, no matter what, can be broken down into its base elements and resolved to a final equation: the numerical equivalent; all of life, each moving cell, each microbe, each network of cascading molecules. That is the purpose of it all. Don’t you see?” He pulled Omally nearer to the screen, but John jerked away.
“I’ll not have it,” said he. “It is wrong. Somehow it is indecent. Obscene.”
“No, no, you must understand.” The Professor crouched lower towards the screen, pushing Norman’s duplicate aside.
Pooley was jigging from one foot to the other. “Can’t we get a move on. I’m freezing to death here.”
The room had suddenly grown impossibly cold. The men’s breath steamed from their faces. Or at least from two of them it did.
Omally grasped Pooley by the wrist, for the first time he realized that the Professor was no longer wearing his helmet, and hadn’t been since they had joined him on the landing. “Oh, Jim,” whispered John, “bad Boda.”
The “Professor” stiffened; slowly his head revolved a hundred and eighty degrees upon his neck and stared up at them, sickeningly. “Learn, last men,” he said, clearing his throat with the curiously mechanical coughing sound John and Jim had learned to fear. “It is your only salvation. Humble yourselves before your new master.”
“Oh no.” Omally stumbled back and drew out his crucifix. “Back,” he shouted, holding it before him in a wildly shaking fist. “Spawn of the pit.”
The Professor’s body turned to follow the direction of his face. His eyes had lost their pupils but now glowed from within, two miniature terminal screens, tiny figures twinkling across them in hypnotic succession. “Behold the power,” said he. “Know you the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.”
“By the Cross.”
The thing which dwelt in the Professor’s image thrust a hand into its trouser pocket and drew out a small black box with two slim protruding shafts.
“Head for the hills,” yelled Pooley, as the clone touched the nemesis button and the black rods sparkled with electric fire.
Omally flattened himself to the wall as the thing lunged towards him. A great explosion tore the world apart. Shards of glass and splinters of burning circuitry spun in every direction, spattering the walls and the two cowering men; flame and smoke engulfed the room. The Professor’s duplicate stood immovable, his synthetic hair ablaze and his clothes in tatters. Norman’s double drew a smouldering fist from the shattered terminal screen. He leapt forward, grasping the Professor’s
Pooley and Omally bundled out of the door. John leapt astride Marchant and Pooley clambered on to the handlebars. At very much the hurry-up they took to the retreat.
In absolutely the wrong direction.
Omally’s feet flew about and Marchant, realizing the urgency of the situation, made no attempt to ditch its extra rider. With its bell ringing dramatically it cannoned forward up the corridor. Figures appeared before them, dressed in grey uniforms and carrying fire-fighting equipment. Pooley struck aside all he could as the bike ploughed forward. As he cleared a path between several rather sloppy versions of himself, a thought struck him. The great machine for all its dark magic certainly lacked something in the old imagination department. Obviously when idling and stuck for something to do, it just kept turning out the same old thing.
“Do you know what this means?” Omally shouted into his ear. Pooley shook his terrified head and lashed out at another robot duplicate of himself. “It means that I am the last Catholic on Earth.”
“Well, some good came out of it all, then.” As Omally’s hands were busily engaged at the handlebar grips, he could do no more than lean forward and bite Pooley’s ear. “Jim,” he shouted, “Jim, as the last Catholic, I am Pope! Jim… I… am Pope. I am Pope!”
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
