Pooley solemnly removed his wristlet watch and cast it into the fire. The plastic crackled amongst the flames, and, to add further horror to a conversation which had already been a far cry from a cosy fireside chat, a shrill voice shrieked out from the flames calling for mercy.
Omally crossed himself. “I believe,” he said simply.
“Then you will fight with me?”
“I think that we have little choice. Jim?”
Pooley raised his unmarked palm. “Count me in, I suppose,” said he.
17
The conversation wore long into the night. John and Jim were anxious to know exactly what plans the Professor had formulated, but the old man was obstinately vague in his replies. It was either that he was as yet uncertain as to what had to be done, or that he had already set certain wheels in motion and feared the two men might, out of their eagerness to pitch in for the cause, confound them. Whatever the case, Jim at length returned to his rooms and fell into a most uneasy sleep beset with ghastly dreams of mechanical monsters and bogey men who loomed up from every darkened corner. Omally, as ever, slept the sleep of the just, which was quite unjust of him, considering he had no right to do it.
At around eleven the next morning, the two men met up outside the Flying Swan. Pooley emptied what pennies remained to him into the outspread palm of his fellow. “He won’t take my cash any more, simply runs his damn little wand over my hand. It gives me little pleasure.”
“If there is a word of truth to anything the Professor told us, then at least we have a vague idea what’s going on.”
“Vague would be your man, John, this is well out of my league.”
“That is a nice suit you have on there,” Omally observed as Jim strode on before him into the Swan. “If a little tight across the shoulders perhaps.”
The pale young man in the headphones stood as ever behind the jump. Nothing had been heard of Neville since he had been whisked away in the ambulance. The Sisters of Mercy said that he had been moved to another hospital but seemed uncertain where. The fact that ownership of the brewery had changed hands suggested that Brentford had seen the last of the part-time barman. “Replacement,” the Professor had said; it was a more than unsettling business. And the thought that duplicates were even now being created to replace each living individual in Brentford was no laughing matter.
“Usual please,” said Jim, extending his palm.
The man in the headset ran his electronic pen across the outstretched appendage and cleared his throat with a curiously mechanical coughing sound. “Great day for the race,” he said.
“Yours or mine?” muttered Jim beneath his breath.
Omally bought his own. “It’s just not the same any more,” he sighed, as he bore his pint over to the table Jim now occupied. “I miss the thrill of the chase.”
“I don’t think anything is ever going to be the same again,” said Pooley unhappily. “All is finished here. If only we had legged it away in time we would never be sitting here trapped like rats, waiting to be replaced by piles of diodes.”
John shook his head. “It is a bad one to be sure. No doubt the walls will expand to finally engulf the whole world, but the Professor never did explain why it all started right here.”
“Well, I suppose it had to start somewhere and Brentford, although worse than some, is, as the world knows, better than most. But it is the unfairness of it that gets my dander up. Me, with money to burn and two dozen High Street shops to burn it in. My God, I’m doing my best, but what about teas at the Ritz and the Concorde flight to the Bahamas? Such things are day to day affairs for lads with my kind of scratch. I can’t even buy people drinks. My entire wealth is without purpose.”
“The Professor warned you, Jim, the money wasn’t meant for you.”
“This beer is definitely not what it was.” Pooley raised his pint and held it towards the light. Through the clear amber liquid a row of computer lines etched on to the glass twinkled like the slats of a Venetian blind.
“I had been thinking the same,” Omally replied. “It has a definitely metallic tang to it nowadays.”
An odd figure now entered the Flying Swan. He appeared awkward and ill at ease amongst his surroundings. The stranger wore a wide-brimmed hat of dark material and a similarly-coloured cloak which reached to the floor, exposing only the very tips of his Wellington boots.
“It’s Soap,” Omally whispered. “Now what do you suppose he is doing here?”
“Come to pay us our thirty quid, hopefully,” said Jim, who even in wealth was never too aloof to forget a creditor.
Soap ordered a Guinness, without the head, and paid for the same with a gold nugget which the barman weighed up and committed to the till. The man in black approached the two seated drinkers. “Good day,” he said.
“Not yet,” said the Omally. “But you have my full permission to improve upon it should you so wish.”
“Might I take a seat?”
“If you must.”
Soap removed his hat and placed it upon the table. His albino coiffure glowed stunningly even in the dim light of the saloon-bar; the pink eyes wandered between the two men. “How’s tricks?” he asked.
“Oh, going great guns,” Pooley made an airy gesture. “Just sitting here drinking duff beer, waiting for the end of the world. Ringside seats to boot.”
“Hm.” Soap toyed with the ample brim of his extraordinary hat. “I’ll tell you what though, but. You’re better off here than out there.” He thumbed away towards the glistening wall of light which shimmered in the distance beyond the Swan’s upper panes. “It’s all hell for sure in that neck of the woods.”
“You mean you’ve been outside?” Omally raised his ample eyebrows.
“Naturally.” Soap tugged lewdly at his lower eye. “You know the expression you can’t keep a good man down? Well here it’s a case of a good man down is worth three in the Butts. Good’n that, eh? One of my own.”
“Bloody marvellous,” said Pooley without conviction. “So what is going on out there?”
“Bad things.” Soap stared sombrely into his pint. The sharpened, ear-rooting nail of his little finger traced a runic symbol upon the knap of his hatbrim. “Bad things.” Soap sipped at his pint and drew a slim wrist across his mouth. “Bloody chaos,” he said simply. “It makes me sick at heart to see what goes on out there, but the Professor says that I must keep the watch. Although he never says for what.”
“So what have you seen, Soap?”
“They are starving out there.” Soap’s pink eyes darted up at his inquisitor.
“You’re joking, surely?”
“I am not. Since the institution of the new non-monetary system of exchange the entire country is literally in a state of civil war.”
“Come now,” said Jim. “What you mean is that a few die-hards are giving two fingers to the printed-palm brigade. Bloody good luck to them I say. I’ll arrange to have a couple of million drawn out. You take it with my blessings.”
“Money won’t do it,” said Soap. “Paper currency is illegal. All assets were instantly frozen on the day of the change. Each individual had to hand in his cash to the bank upon his turn for registration. Those who refused to submit to the change found every door closed to them. They could not travel upon buses or trains or buy petrol for their own cars; nor milk from the milkman, nor bread from the bakers. Their friends and neighbours rejected them. Even members of their own families, those who had the mark, refused them. They were ostracized totally from society. Many went straight to the banks but were told that they had missed their opportunity and that was that.”
“And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name,” said Jim Pooley in a leaden voice.