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
