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The Quanderhorn Xperimentations
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The Quanderhorn
Xperimentations
ROB GRANT &
ANDREW MARSHALL
GOLLANCZ
LONDON
For Sioned
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Preface
1: Chlorophyll
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
2: Temporium 90
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
3: 50% Acrilan, 20% Cotton and 70% Anaconda
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
4: Oxygen
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
5: Chiffon
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
6: Trinitrotoluene
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
7: Time
Chapter One
Appendix One
Appendix Two
Also by Rob Grant from Gollancz
Copyright
PREFACE
During the current restoration of the Palace of Westminster certain documents and artefacts were discovered, hidden in a bricked-up alcove behind the mechanisms in the clock tower popularly known as ‘Big Ben’.
They were quickly dismissed as a hoax, and a rather pointless and unconvincing one at that. For reasons far too circuitous to elaborate, the material eventually found its way to us. There were dozens of volumes of badly scrawled personal journals and various sketch pads and notebooks crammed with strange inventions and astonishing designs, together with some extraordinarily curious devices, the purpose of which has yet to be established.
Intrigued, we ploughed through everything, and the results of that research are here in these pages.
If it is a hoax, it’s a very elaborate and clever one, in that it’s impossible to disprove.
Where there are multiple accounts of the same incident, we have chosen what appears to be the most credible. Since the journals are personal, they tend to present their author in a most favourable light. When this understandable foible is in danger of distorting the truth, we have used aggregates of the accounts and our best guesses to arrive at a more likely accurate version. Where facts are disputed, we have pointed out the alternatives in our footnotes.
For reasons that will quickly become apparent, it was painfully difficult to establish a sequential chronology to these events. Hence, we present this account in the way it was revealed to us, and leave readers to make up their own minds.
RG & AM, London 2018. Probably.
1
Chlorophyll
We all have our time machines, don’t we. Those that take us back are memories . . . And those that carry us forward, are dreams
H.G. Wells, New Worlds For Old
Chapter One
From the journal of Brian Nylon, 31st December, 1952
I clawed my way out of a swirling vortex of strangling black velvet. I was either unconscious, or trapped under one of the Beverley Sisters’ show dresses. Mercifully for Joy, Teddie or Babs, it was the former.
Slowly, painfully, a distant pinprick of light coalesced, dazzled and finally settled into a nauseating corona around the head of the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She was looking down at me and gently slapping my face very hard.
I had no idea who she was. And worse than that: I had no idea who I was, either.
I noticed I was uncomfortable. I was lying on some rather scratchy hessian sacking on a cold, hard metal floor. We were juddering, in motion. A manual gearbox protested loudly. I raised my head. We were in the back of a van of some kind. A series of makeshift shelves held stacks of bizarre machinery and tools. A sign pasted over the back window read WARNING: THIS DOOR LEADS TO OUTSIDE.
The exquisite goddess leaning over me said: ‘Brian’. It seemed a strange name for a woman.
‘Hello, Brian,’ I said. But this only made Aphrodite slap me harder.
‘ You’re Brian, you mutton-head.’
‘Am I? Who are you?’
‘Oh no. You’ve lost your memory, haven’t you? It’s me , Dr. Janussen.’
‘Dr. Janussen?’
‘Gemini? Gemma? Good grief, it’s really wiped this time.’
I was suddenly gripped by a very exciting thought: ‘Are you my wife?’
This produced a fleeting snort of cruel laughter in the divine creature, yet she neglected to answer.
‘Where are we?’ I tried.
‘There’s no time to explain right
now.’
Just then a masculine voice called from the front cabin: ‘Is it left here?’
I raised my head further and espied a handsome young brute in the driving seat: artfully tousled blue-black hair, a steely jaw and a fierce intelligence in his eyes.
‘Is it left here?’ he repeated louder.
The lovely woman, who may or may not have been my wife, blinked with the merest hint of exasperation. ‘No, Troy.’
‘Is it right then?’
‘No, Troy. There are no turnings. We’re on Lambeth Bridge.’
‘So – straight on, is it?’
‘Yes, I think that’s best.’ She sighed and turned back to me. ‘You see? We’ve had to put Troy in the driving seat. Can you please concentrate? We need you right now.’
‘Yes, yes, I’m . . . I’m trying.’
Outside, I began to make out sounds – crowds of people in the distance, shouting, panicking, screaming.
The lovely woman gripped my face and hauled it towards her.
‘Listen, your name is Brian Nylon . You’re twenty-four years old, and you work with me in Professor Quanderhorn’s research team. The very fabric of Reality depends entirely on our actions in the next ten minutes. Don’t be alarmed. No, actually be very alarmed. Am I getting through to you?’
Her fragrant breath enveloped me like a cloud of jasmine and honeysuckle. ‘You figgy nails are diggy indo by cheeeeks,’ I mumbled through involuntarily gritted teeth.
‘We’ve run out of “straight on”,’ Troy called from the front.
‘Head right, and aim for the big clock.’
‘Okey-doos. Got you. Big clock. No problem.’ Troy chewed on his lower lip for a second. ‘What’s a clock?’
‘That thing with the white face and two hands.’
‘I thought that was Brian.’
‘There! There! That huge round thing! There!’ My possible wife Dr. Janussen pointed urgently, mercifully releasing her grip on my cheeks. ‘And quickly!’
The sounds of the panicking crowd grew louder. Through the rear window, I glimpsed them as we zipped past: hordes of misted faces haloed by street lamps, contorted in fear and horror. What on earth were we getting into? And what had Dr. Janussen meant by ‘the fabric of Reality’?
The van stopped suddenly, but I didn’t. My head crashed through a cardboard box and when I retracted it, I found a small glass valve had jammed itself up my nose. Whilst I was gingerly teasing it out, Dr. Janussen had already leapt out of the rear door. Troy seemed to be struggling to open his.
‘We have to go, now !’ Dr. Janussen yelled, rummaging through a haversack.
Troy yelled back, ‘I can’t get out!’
‘We’ve been through this before, Troy: it’s the handle , remember?’
‘Of course I remember about handles! I’m not an . . . an— Brian, what are those really stupid people called?’
‘Idiots?’ I offered.
‘Yes, I’m not an idiots.’
I was beginning to revise my initial impression of the ferocity of Troy’s intelligence. He grabbed the handle and to my astonishment, ripped the door entirely from its housing, tumbling with it out onto the pavement with a metallic clatter and a faint yelp of surprise. Who were these people?
Before I’d managed to entirely remove the CV6094 Induction Diode from my nasal canal, Dr. Janussen grabbed my arm and yanked me out of the van.
We were standing in Parliament Square. Silhouetted in the moonlight, Big Ben frowned down upon the panicking multitudes, its face displaying seven minutes to midnight. A struggling line of mounted police barely held back the sea of jabbering humanity, who were torn between fascination and fear. Many of them, rather curiously, were wearing small, cone-shaped cardboard hats and carrying paper trumpets.
I had no idea what was happening. ‘What’s happening?’ I asked the beautiful doctor.
‘There’s no time to explain right now.’ She passed me a large, heavy tube. ‘Here’s your bazooka.’
Chapter Two
From the journal of Brian Nylon, 1st January, 1952 – Iteration 66
I thanked her. I looked at it. It was indeed a bazooka. ‘Just a minute!’ I called.
But she was already fighting her way through the human tide. ‘Don’t fire unless it comes towards you,’ she yelled helpfully over her shoulder.
‘Unless what comes towards me?’ I shouted after her, but the crowd had folded in behind her.
So I was standing in Parliament Square at five minutes to midnight, wearing what I now realised were my winter long johns and a novelty Christmas sweater, holding a bazooka, with a valve still protruding from my nostril and a head full of unanswered questions.
Before I could even move, there was a sudden burst from a very loud loudhailer.
‘Keep back!’ rapped an echoing stentorian voice. ‘Keep back from the Giant Broccoli Woman!’
It struck me that the crowd would hardly need this instruction, but a woman near me seemed reassured. ‘Thank Gaawd! That’s that Professor Quanderhorn,’ she grinned, proudly showing off her single tooth. ‘He’ll save us from the vegetable monster, and no mistake.’ Her wizened hand scooped a fistful from a bag of whelks and she sucked on them excitedly.
‘Do you reckon,’ her mousey friend trilled, ‘this is one of them alien invasions, or just another of the Professor’s ’perimentations what has gone horribly wrong?’
‘Now then, you ugly old termagants,’ a cheerful bobby herded them away, ‘move back for your own good. It’s already eaten three people’s faces.’
‘Oooooh! We’ve never had a face-eater before,’ the whelk woman cooed. ‘I wish I’d known – I’d ’ave brought Bert’s pigeon-racing binoculars.’
The loudhailer burst into life again. ‘This is Quanderhorn himself speaking! Behind the railings, everyone! My team need room to operate!’
The sound of his voice again seemed to calm the crowd momentarily. Who the dickens was this Quanderhorn fellow?
I was about to ask the policeman, when a new chorus of piercing screams erupted all around, and the multitude parted before me.
And I saw it.
I can’t swear it was the most spine-chilling, horrifying thing I’d ever laid eyes on, since I had no memory, but I did at that moment recall exactly what I’d had for breakfast, by virtue of its unexpectedly reappearing on the pavement beneath me. (For the record: spam and toast.)
I was most certainly looking at a monster. At least twelve feet tall, vaguely female in shape, it was green and knobbly, like . . . well, like a giant human broccoli. It was entirely covered over by a thick viscous mucus, as if a circus giant had been painted with glue and then sheep-dipped in an enormous St Patrick’s Day spittoon.
It threw back its cabbage-like head and let out the most unearthly wail. The crowd drew back further, leaving me standing alone to face it.
It caught me in its monstrous gaze. Was it my imagination, or was there, for a fraction of a second, a spark of recognition in those hideous simulacra of human eyes? Frozen for one moment, I was almost tempted to step towards the wretched beast, when Dr. Janussen grabbed my arm again.
‘Stop dawdling, Brian – the Professor needs us.’
She pulled me quickly away from the clock tower into New Palace Yard, where Troy was waiting. For some reason he had neglected to put on a suitable winter coat. Or, for that matter, a shirt. And I swear he’d slipped and fallen in some engine oil somewhere, because his rather muscular chest glistened unnervingly in the street lamplight. For reasons that eluded me, a gaggle of teenaged girls who had pushed themselves to the front of the crowd shrieked inanely at his every move.
Dr. Janussen narrowed her eyes at the vehicle door under his arm.
‘Troy, why have you still got that?’
‘In case we need to lock up the van when we’re not there.’
With remarkable patience, Dr. Janussen smiled. ‘Get rid of it.’
‘Righty-ho!’ He promptly folded the van door several times, like
he was making an origami swan, and leant it against the fence. Clearly, the lad was possessed of an exceptional strength.
She continued briskly: ‘The Professor needs us to wheel out Gargantua, the Toposonic Cannon.’
Troy struck a casual pose reminiscent of bodybuilding contests, to the sound of more pubescent squeals. ‘Consider it done.’ He bounded off into the shadows, muscles a-rippling.
There was a strange whinnying sound, and he re-emerged clutching the forelegs of a rather disgruntled police horse over his shoulders, dragging the struggling beast behind him.
The loudhailer barked: ‘No, Troy, the one with the wheels.’
‘Right you are, Pops!’ Troy grinned amiably. Whirling the angry horse somewhat carelessly into a hedge, he spat on his hands and missed, then raced back into the shadows.
I looked over to the source of the rebuke. Some way in the distance, atop a hydraulic platform looming high above the crowd, was a tall, imposing figure, shrouded in a British Warm overcoat, his features shadowed beneath the brim of a brown slouch hat. He raised his loudhailer once more and pointed it directly towards us.
‘Not to panic unnecessarily, Troy,’ he barked, ‘but the very fabric of existence is at stake.’
This sent a rustle of worried murmuring through the crowd.
Across the yard, Troy emerged again with a thick rope around his waist, towing an entire London bus.
‘Not the red one,’ Dr. Janussen smiled patiently. ‘The one that looks like a cannon.’
‘Are you sure a bus won’t do?’ Troy offered a winning grin. ‘It’s the 43 to Highgate Woods.’
‘Get the cannon, Troy.’ Dr. Janussen glanced towards the clock face. Three minutes before midnight. ‘Now!’
Just then, an agitated murmuring swept across the crowd. I heard a man in pinstriped trousers and bowler hat shout: ‘By ginger! The beastly article is starting to scale Big Ben!’
At first, I couldn’t spot the creature, but suddenly, with a loud electric rasp, a powerful beam, brighter than a magnesium flare, blasted from Quanderhorn’s platform, stabbing through the gloom, starkly illuminating the foul travesty of a humanoid as it clung to the masonry. Temporarily blinded, it slipped slightly, to a communal gasp from the throng, then recovered and began once more hauling itself up the tower. It moved with astonishing agility, considering its clumsy, cumbersome frame.
In a voice that chilled me to my combinations, Dr. Janussen hissed: ‘Brian, it’s imperative she doesn’t reach the clock.’