Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series Page 35

  ‘I don’t understand the words,’ I said.

  Mr Disvan cheerfully broke off singing.

  ‘You wouldn’t, Mr Oakley. You don’t know the language.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The language—you don’t know it yet, just hum along.’

  ‘What language is it?’

  ‘Our own. A sort of dialect of Old West-Saxon with South-Saxon loan words. Don’t concern yourself. When you’re retired and have got the time, I’ll teach it to you.’

  ‘But what are they singing?’

  ‘Think of it as our national anthem, Mr Oakley.’

  ‘What, “Binscombe, Binscombe uber alles”?’

  Disvan tutted impatiently. ‘Don’t be snide about our culture, Mr Oakley. And now look what you’ve done. You’ve made me miss the end of the song—that’s the best bit.’

  The singing had indeed come to an abrupt end. The ululation of the Binscomite womenfolk that greeted its finish filtered eerily out into the night air.

  ‘Well done, Mr Oakley,’ said Disvan. ‘You can come back now.’

  I grasped the suggestion with both hands and in seconds was ‘safely’ back with the mob.

  Professor Moorcock was dumfounded.

  ‘Amazing...’ he kept repeating. ‘Really amazing.’

  Doctor Bani-Sadr smiled at me. ‘Well, Mr O, what did you make of it all?’

  ‘Nightmares probably,’ I replied, thereby getting a laugh out of the doctor.

  ‘And you, professor?’ he added.

  Moorcock looked blankly at us. ‘It’s...’

  ‘Amazing?’ I prompted.

  ‘Yeah,’ he agreed predictably, ‘it’s amazing.’

  ‘Oh-oh,’ said Mr Disvan. ‘Trouble.’

  We all looked in the direction he indicated and saw what he meant. In the light provided by a set of car headlamps, a little morality play was being enacted down by the roadside.

  Two obvious strangers—young, brash, caricature yuppies—had been attracted by the noise and lights on the side of the Ridge and had stopped their car to investigate. Mr Limbu and Vladimir Bretwalda were trying to discourage their curiosity, but to no avail. I assumed the young men were drunk because they appeared to be actually arguing with these two very dangerous Binscomites.

  Then I saw the mountainous Vladimir Bretwalda terminate their enquiring frame of mind by hitting each—one, two—very hard indeed. They suddenly felt the need to rest limply on the ground beside their car. Bridget Maccabi shimmied in from the shadows and, leaning into the car, turned off the lights, thus bringing the show to an end.

  ‘Has he..?’ I hissed.

  ‘I shouldn’t worry, Mr Oakley,’ said Mr Disvan placidly. ‘Neither they or their car will be there when we go back home.’

  You could, of course, take this either way, or, as I did, choose not to think about it.

  ‘Really amazing,’ said Professor Moorcock.

  ‘Oh, shut up!’ I snapped.

  Something else also snapped at that point: the sky. Like the gaps between pictures at a slide show, for one brief second there was no sky—only a white void that I caught out of the corner of my eye as I was being rude to Moorcock. Then, just as I turned to look, the sky slid back into place. The problem was, it was not the same sky as before. Nor, indeed, the same view.

  Previously, the prospect down the slope in front of us was, successively: a field, a road, more fields and then the street lamps of Binscombe. That first field was still there but, beyond it, there was a new landscape of light. Where there had been darkness, now there was a carpet of untold points of light, stretching away to the horizon. All manner of huge shapes, darker than the surrounding night and dotted with these warm, yellow illuminations, were suggestive of buildings. I was looking down on more than a mere city. Where Binscombe had once been there was now a mighty metropolis.

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Disvan, ‘what do you think?’

  I gestured, gaped and thought of an answer (‘amazing’, I regret to say) but nothing came out.

  ‘Rollover Night,’ said Disvan grandly, waving his hand towards the illuminated swathe. ‘Nature’s rare and unpredictable gift to our little community.’

  There was a pause whilst he fetched out, filled and lit his wretched hashish pipe.

  ‘You see, Mr Oakley,’ he continued, ‘we’re being allowed to stand back from time, far back enough to see glimpses of both past and future. The Wheel of History is rolling over tonight in a review of what has been—and what is to be in the latter days.’

  He puffed a credible, greenish, smoke screen round his head before going on.

  ‘You were privileged to see the distant past, Mr Oakley and, as though that were not gift enough, now—this.’

  As he spoke, a giant craft, ablaze with yet more pinpoints of hard light, flew slowly over the city in our direction. It was truly vast, an ocean liner of the sky, not an airship or an airplane but something more than both combined. Manoeuvring gracefully, it hovered broadside on in front of us, sufficiently close for me to fancy that I saw faces in the portholes and observation windows.

  Once again, the Binscomite crowd did not share my sense of alarm. They stood and applauded the space ship (for such, I concluded, it must be) and parents held their children aloft so they might see it more clearly.

  Mr Disvan waved and some of the ship’s inhabitants responded in kind. That part of my mind which still answered to the helm, registered the fact that persons intent on destruction rarely wave at their victims first. Overtime instructions to my adrenal gland were thus rescinded.

  ‘They were expecting us,’ explained Mr Disvan. ‘I suppose it’s Rollover Night for them as well. We’re their past just as they’re our future.’

  As if to confirm this, the side of the great ship suddenly flared into fresh life. A monstrous neon, digital display screen came into being and characters and symbols began to scroll across it.

  I didn’t understand them and complained about this to Mr Disvan. He counselled patience.

  ‘Give people a chance, Mr Oakley. I don’t suppose there’s many left that can do the translation work.’

  Evidently there were still a few, for my attention was then diverted by the neon display starting to churn out recognisable English. The massed Binscomites stood silent and transfixed.

  ‘WELCOME PAST PEOPLE ....

  GREETINGS FROM BINSKOM SUBURB

  - SOLENT CITY .... S.S.S.R.

  .... PKB 1644 = AD 5023

  .... ALL IS WELL .... PEACE

  ON EARTH .... GOODWILL TO ALL

  MEN AND NON-HUMAN LIFEFORMS

  .... ALL IS WELL ..........

  WELCOME PAST PEOPLE .......’

  All this was wonderful enough, but something else, equally interesting, caught my attention. I had the sense to sneak the resulting question up on Mr Disvan under cover of a more innocuous query.

  ‘PKB 1644?’ I asked.

  ‘Hmmm,’ mused Disvan in return, studying the embers in his pipe, ‘it seems to correspond to our 5023 AD. Looks like the Rollover has slowed down a touch since you first saw it. I expected us to be further in the future than that by now.’

  ‘But what’s PKB?’

  ‘No idea. The reference point for a new civilisation, I presume.’

  ‘Are you quite sure you don’t know?’ I persevered.

  Mr Disvan gave me a suspicious look.

  ‘Quite sure. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Only because, in one of the portholes, I saw an elderly gentleman, like yourself, wearing a Panama hat, not dissimilar to yours. He was smoking a pipe too. Curious, isn’t it?’

  Disvan was absolutely unmoved.

  ‘Mr Oakley,’ he said smilingly, ‘on a night of miracles such as this, what are one or two minor coincidences?’

  ‘What indeed? But if I may put the question to you directly...’

  The space ship drowned out my intended coup de grace. Some mechanism within it let out a complicated melody of farewell as the craft spun on i
ts axis. It then flew off, with inconceivable speed, away from us, into that faraway night.

  I was too stunned to continue Disvan’s interrogation. The city-to-be sprawled endlessly before me and it recaptured all of my attention. At its nearest edge, I thought I could discern a mirror image of our own gathering. A crowd of silhouettes were gazing at us as we were at them.

  Knowing that I was but scattered dust in that age, I wondered timidly if my blood ran in any of those future ‘Binskomites’.

  Mr Disvan either read my expression exceedingly well or else had access to my innermost thoughts—a worrying theory I hurriedly put aside.

  ‘If you want a part of you in that age, Mr Oakley,’ he said, ‘you’ll need to settle down and reproduce. Marry a nice local girl and pack in all that random gallivanting in the woods.’

  ‘Why else do you think I was in the woods today?’ I replied, knowing full well that Disvan didn’t like ‘that sort of talk’.

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ he said primly and turned away.

  Doctor Bani-Sadr stepped into the ensuing socially tricky moment.

  ‘Well, there you are, Professor Moorcock,’ he said jovially, ‘It doesn’t look as if anyone blew up the world, does it? Nigh on three thousand years from now, there’re mega-cities, space ships and, best of all, peace on Earth.’

  ‘Goodwill to all men,’ repeated Moorcock.

  ‘Exactly. So, you needn’t have got so het up, need you? Do you see how unfounded your fears were?’

  Professor Moorcock evidently did, to an alarming degree. His face was gripped in an expression of overwhelming joy. The chains of depression were loosing and he was floating up and away onto cloud nine (at least).

  ‘Peace on Earth!’ he shouted, scrambling to his feet.

  ‘Well, yes...’ cautioned Doctor Bani-Sadr, ‘but I expect they have their own problems too.’

  ‘The sum of human happiness and misery is more or less a historical constant,’ said Mr Disvan in (I presume) support. I half expected him to add, ‘Discuss.’

  ‘GOODWILL-TO-ALL-MEN!’ howled Professor Moorcock, waving his arms and taking a step or two down the hill.

  ‘Get him,’ said Bani-Sadr tersely.

  Sadly we were too late. Moorcock broke into a run. I and a few other of the younger Binscomites tried to catch him but his lead was too great.

  One minute he was loping down the field, his rats-taily hair streaming behind him. The next, he froze in mid-air and then collapsed in on himself, turning to dust before our eyes. His last cry of ‘peaceeeee’ lingered briefly in the ether.

  I pointed speechlessly.

  ‘Well, Mr Oakley,’ said Mr Disvan, ‘that’s what happens to people who suddenly become three thousand years old. He entered into the “Rollover field”, you see.’

  ‘That’s right,’ confirmed Doctor Bani-Sadr. ‘Didn’t you read Rider Haggard’s She when you a boy?’

  I shook my head feebly. I’d been more into things like Mechano News.

  My horror was compounded by hearing a ripple of laughter pass along the hillside. Looking closely, I saw that, apart from the children, the villagers had found the incident amusing. The poker-faced Mr Disvan and Doctor Bani-Sadr were studying my reaction just as intently.

  ‘Try to avoid being judgmental, if you can,’ said the former, reasonably. ‘He was an outsider and we did try to save him.’

  ‘And he wasn’t destined for a happy life,’ added Doctor Bani-Sadr. ‘At least this way he had his moment of contentment, didn’t he?’

  ‘In fact,’ said Disvan, ‘it’s as well he went when he did. Look!’

  While we’d spoken, Rollover Night had silently moved on and the scene before us had changed.

  The mega-city was still there, more or less, although parts of it were now dark or only thinly dotted with light. No spaceship or crowd were there to meet us. Perhaps the people of that time simply couldn’t be bothered to do so, for they’d also allowed some of the city’s towers and pinnacles to crumble and decay. The glory of the age was clearly past.

  Visible against the light of the city and stars, from horizon to horizon, a bank of cloud was sweeping in. It was blacker than any I ever recalled; denser and more continuous. A fanciful person (which I am not) might have imagined it had the shape of a wolf’s head with jaws agape. The thunder that accompanied it was like snarls of anger.

  ‘It looks stormy there, doesn’t it?’ I said.

  ‘You’re the master of understatement, Mr Oakley,’ said Disvan. ‘Fimbulwinter is more than a storm. Come on, we’d best be off quick.’

  Looking round, I saw that others had the same idea. Everywhere, people were packing up their picnics and gathering their possessions together. A few had already started on the way, once again sticking cautiously to the side of the field.

  ‘I apologise,’ said Mr Disvan politely, ‘I should have explained before. Rollover Night is an interrupted feast. We never stay for the end.’

  ‘Is there one?’ I asked, being genuinely curious. ‘A great sign in the sky saying “The End”?’

  Both Mr Disvan and Doctor Bani-Sadr turned to look at me, patently surprised at some lack of understanding on my part.

  ‘In effect, Mr Oakley,’ said Disvan, ‘in effect. You’re seeing it now.’

  The cloud was a third of the way over the city now. The myriad lights cast a sickly yellow glow on its underside.

  ‘That’s the Fimbulwinter,’ explained Bani-Sadr. ‘According to the old time legends, it precedes Ragnarok—that is to say, “the end” that you were so flippant about. As a non-believer in the afterlife, I, for one, am so not so keen to see it.’

  I pretended to be made of sterner stuff.

  ‘Well, what if we are seeing the end of the world? We’re safe this side of the Rollover field, aren’t we?’

  Mr Disvan studied me with renewed esteem.

  ‘No one’s ever stayed to find out, Mr Oakley, but it’s a very interesting point you make. If you’re able to, let me know how you got on—this side of the grave or the other, I don’t mind which.’

  Then, without so much as a goodbye, he and Doctor Bani-Sadr hurried off.

  The hillside emptied rapidly but I stubbornly refused to move. What was this Ragnarok to me anyway? An old, superseded Anglo-Norse myth, that’s all.

  Despite the ever present sense of unease that, just like rates, was the price of Binscombe residence, I was still minded to stay. What form would ‘the end’ take, I wondered? Missiles? Unsafe sex? A meteorite? Alternatively, was everyone getting worked up about a common or garden bank of cloud?

  Then, as the said cloud finally shrouded the megacity-to-be, I recalled that the legends of my own civilisation called Ragnarok, ‘Judgement Day.’

  After a brief examination of conscience, I grabbed my coat and sprinted after Mr Disvan.

  YANKEE GO HOME!

  ‘So how long have you lived in Binscombe, Mr Hood?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s mighty hard to rightly say, Mr Oakley. But many years, that’s for sure.’

  ‘I see, and when did you or your family come over from America?’

  Hood looked outraged.

  ‘America?’ he said. ‘Who the hell said anything about America?’

  I was obliged to do a bit of swift backtracking. Some people were just sensitive about names, some about class, some about race, and so on. ‘Different dogs itch in different places,’ I thought—no sense in getting bitten for no reason.

  ‘Oh, I beg your pardon, perhaps I misheard when Mr Disvan introduced you. I didn’t mean to accuse you of being American.’

  I was having no luck at all. My response lit another short fuse in Mr Hood.

  ‘Whaddya mean “accuse”?’ he roared. ‘America’s a fine nation!’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ I said, in an attempt to placate. ‘I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with America.’

  I wasn’t helped by an outbreak of stifled coughs and guffaws from the Argyll regulars, some of whom were
of a different opinion.

  ‘Anyhow,’ continued Hood, composing himself, ‘there’s no way I’m American, no way. Why, I’m as English as you are, Mr Oakley. So look, why don’t I just purchase you a pint of ale and...’

  ‘No, no, no,’ said Mr Disvan, a pained expression on his face. ‘Enough’s enough. That was pitiful. We told you it wouldn’t work.’

  ‘What wouldn’t?’ I asked—and was ignored as usual.

  ‘Do you think he knows?’ said Hood with a look of childlike innocence.

  ‘Just possibly,’ grinned Doctor Bani-Sadr, ‘just possibly. Mr Oakley, could you hazard a rough estimation of Mr Hood’s country of origin?’

  ‘Well... America, I think. Texas to be more specific.’

  Hood was wide mouthed with surprise.

  ‘A security breach!’ he gasped.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Mr Disvan. ‘If you persist in sounding just like J R Ewing, we’ll never pass you off as one of us. Mr Oakley spotted you straight away, didn’t you?’

  I didn’t want to upset the bulky Mr Hood again, but neither could I deny the blindingly obvious.

  ‘Well, yes, I’m afraid so. That southern drawl isn’t particularly Binscombe, you see.’

  Hood’s eyes slitted.

  ‘Maybe someone tipped him off,’ he said to Disvan. ‘Maybe you got a spy in your apparatus.’

  The roar of laughter from the regulars at the bar was an eloquent answer to this exciting theory.

  ‘But seriously,’ said Disvan, not joining in the merriment, ‘back in the real world for a moment, Mr Hood, this isn’t an “apparatus”, you know. It’s just an old village with a large council estate all over and round it. There’re no agents, no spies, just people. Bear that in mind if you hope to live here. Meanwhile, a lot more Anglicisation practice is clearly required.’

  Mr Hood pulled a face.

  ‘Hell, more warm beer, more talking like a goddamn constipated faggot. And the cricket—ugh!’

  Mr Bretwalda seemed to take this assessment of his culture personally. Accordingly, I and a few others considered running for the safety of the Gents. Fortunately however, violence was not on his central processing response menu on this occasion. He leaned on our table and made it groan ominously. Mr Hood was more than covered by the Bretwalda shadow and was plainly willing to give a lot of attention to anything the man might care to say.