The Quanderhorn Xperimentations Read online

  Clearly, I was an Englishman.

  In fact, I was beginning to feel a deep-seated need to stand behind someone and wait for something.

  More than that, however, I really couldn’t tell. Was I a good man? I certainly felt like one. But then, why was I spying on these people who seemed to be my friends? And hadn’t I just acted as a decoy so a dear colleague could be blasted to smithereens?

  Despite these tortured thoughts, and the occasional glance to reassure myself that the piano was flying the plane properly, I found the regular chop-chop-chop of the props had begun to make my eyes feel heavy, and I surrendered, finally, to Morpheus’ embrace.

  It was a troubled sleep, in which I ran backwards and forwards with no trousers, pursued by huge psychopathic vegetables spouting Latin grammar and hurling sloppy custard-covered intestines at my head. What could it possibly mean?

  And there were other dreams: I was lounging on a riverbank with a woman, listening to an enormous radio – was that my mother? My sister? My wife? . . . Me, in a dark cave tied in a chair with giant mole-like creatures giving me Chinese burns while chanting some infernal dirge . . . Tearing open my shirt to find a player piano roll embedded in my chest . . . Walking into Lyons’ Corner House at 213 Piccadilly and being served afternoon tea by Winston Churchill in a waitress outfit. I had no idea which were memories and which simply disturbing dreams. I was praying the naked trigonometry exam with my fountain pen full of bull semen was the latter.

  The Professor’s laboratory was far away from . . . well, from everywhere. We made our way from a makeshift airfield in a very old jeep with a large Q stencilled on its side. It appeared to have had its roof sawn off and its suspension deliberately removed. Troy spent a great deal of time looking for the door, until Dr. Janussen pointed out it wasn’t there, and he was finally persuaded to jump in.

  For some reason, it became clear that I was expected to drive, and I was relieved to find I remembered how. More interestingly, whilst Dr. Janussen was supposed to give me directions, I seemed to know the way instinctively. Though any mental picture of our destination still eluded me.

  On the Carlisle road, the trip was merely horribly uncomfortable, as the tiniest stone in our path rocked the entire vehicle, but once our route took us off it, things rather deteriorated. We lurched down a long, overgrown path, cratered with pot-holes, over jutting boulders and through thick bracken. Overhanging branches snapped alarmingly on the windscreen and raked the top of my head. I found it exhausting trying to wrestle the wheel just to keep us pointing vaguely in the right direction.

  I’d planned to ask Dr. Janussen a great many questions, but conversation was impossible. Troy, however, had once again fallen into deep and sonorous slumber. This time, he seemed to have glued himself to the seat by means that escaped me, and was untroubled by the bone-rattling vibrations. And was it my imagination, or had his skin turned ever so slightly the colour of the upholstery?

  As we got closer, I began to spot a sequence of warning signs nailed to the trees, featuring mind-boggling graphics I couldn’t begin to guess the meaning of: a silhouette of a man being rained on by penguins; a Red Indian being electrocuted whilst sitting on a fat woman; a rabbit and an ‘=’ sign followed by a skull and crossbones with a Robin Hood hat on. And those were the less bewildering ones.

  Finally, the rude forest gave way to a clearing, leading to the crest of a hill. As we trundled over its brow, the dawning sun cast a red/orange glow over the long-abandoned exhausted quarry below, inside which the vast laboratory complex nestled.

  Chapter Six

  From the journal of Brian Nylon, 1st January, 1952 – Iteration 66

  It was far more extensive than I’d imagined. It sprawled below us, a hotchpotch of dozens of buildings and outhouses, scattered randomly. At its heart were rows of ex-military warehousing, Nissen huts and the like, but there were many and varied later additions, some conventional, others inexplicably eccentric. One or two of them towered dizzyingly upwards, to be cut off by the early morning fog.

  We lurched down towards a set of imposing gates, which were cast from some peculiar shiny chocolate brown alloy I couldn’t identify. I stopped the jeep.

  There was an unnerving pause, then a chorus of servos screeched into life, and a whole bank of articulated box cameras swivelled as one in our direction.

  I was unaccountably nervous. For some reason, I pulled the genial face I usually put on for photographs. The one Mumsie always told me off about, because it made me look like Simple Simon. (What? Was that an actual memory?)

  Eventually, the cameras lost interest and turned away, dropping their heads. The great gates began to swing open majestically.

  From a high-mounted speaker a curiously metallic woman’s voice said: ‘ You are positively identified. Welcome back, everyone .’

  ‘Thank you.’ I smiled, and turned to Dr. Janussen. ‘Who’s that charming lady? Is she the Professor’s wife?’

  ‘Not every woman in the world has to be someone’s wife ! You clot!’ she chided, rather more brusquely than was called for in my opinion. Looking closer, I noticed there was something ‘off’ about her appearance, but I couldn’t fathom what.

  I drove very slowly through several layers of indescribably strange defensive measures, including, rather worryingly at one point, a dog kennel the size of a sentry box. From its dark interior, a pair of red glowing eyes followed us hungrily. Clearly, the Professor did not welcome the uninvited visitor.

  Finally, we rattled up to what I assumed was the main laboratory building, which appeared to be an old abandoned fever hospital. I pulled up in the cobbled quadrangle outside it, where some very peculiar vehicles were parked, all stamped with that same Q stencil.

  Troy opened his eyes and pulled himself off the seat with a strange sort of suction noise, and panicked momentarily trying to find a door again, until Dr. Janussen brought him a loose one stacked nearby. ‘Thanks, Gem.’ He grabbed it and jumped to the ground. ‘Thought I’d be trapped in there all day.’

  The good doctor’s brow was furrowed as she peered intensely into the wing mirror, clearly perturbed by something. ‘Are you all right, Dr. Janussen?’ I asked.

  ‘Look at my face, Brian,’ she ordered earnestly, turning to me. ‘Tell me honestly: what do you see?’

  I gazed at that lovely countenance. Again I sensed there was something askew. But I couldn’t for the life of me work it out.

  ‘It’s a spot, isn’t it?’ she smiled, with a faintly unnerving kind of calm.

  I leant in closer and squinted. There may have been some kind of minor discolouration about the size of a single pore, just beside her nose. ‘There might just be a tiny—’

  ‘Trust you to point it out! How d’you think that makes me feel?’ She punched me quite hard on the shoulder, spun on her heels and attempted to march with dignity towards the lab, her hand cupped over her nose. Sadly, this obscured her view, causing her to stumble ungraciously over protruding cobblestones until she tottered through the entrance and raced up a stairway.

  Troy and I exchanged glances, then tramped across the courtyard after her.

  A small plumpish man appeared at the doors to greet us. His upper lip was obscured by a full tash, which had at one time been well kempt, and probably at that one time had considerably fewer biscuit crumbs decorating it. He wore a faded dark green uniform and peaked cap to which the letters of the word ‘JANITOR’ had at one time been glued, though the ‘J’, the ‘A’, the ‘O’ and the ‘R’ had long since fallen off, leaving only the word ‘NIT’. I didn’t say anything.

  He called to Troy: ‘You can leave that door, young sir – we’ve plenty of our own.’

  ‘Oh, right-ho, Jenkins,’ the lad chirruped. He hurled the door away a quite superhuman distance and disappeared inside with a cheery wave.

  ‘Good morning, Mr. Nylon, sir.’ Jenkins offered a very smart salute. Turns out the palms face outwards .

  ‘And you’re . . . Jenkins . . . the janitor?�
�

  ‘Yes, sir. The Professor told me you’d gorn and lost your memory again.’

  ‘ Again? ’

  ‘We’ll just do the usual thing: I’ll show you around the place, as per. This way, sir . . .’

  For some reason, I instinctively mistrusted this Jenkins fellow: there was something going on behind his eyes that belied his servile manner. He led me down corridors with dark green linoleum floors and chocolate brown painted walls, seemingly without end.

  We walked in silence for a while. There were yet more inexplicable warning signs on most of the doors: a coalman whose teeth were on fire; a pair of goggles with legs fleeing a giant lightning bolt with a bow tie. Some doors had been nailed up extremely securely with planks across them, others hung off their hinges loosely. More than one colour of smoke issued from underneath many of them. The occasional alcove held what looked like heavily modified fire extinguishers crossed with flame-throwers, others fire axes, and now and then, disturbingly, the odd samurai sword.

  Out of the blue, Jenkins piped up: ‘Rum business, innit, sir?’

  ‘What particular business would that be?’

  ‘What they done to Miss Virginia, turning her into a vegetable like that. Ain’t decent. ’Course they says it was an accident, but they always says that.’

  I felt a horrible tightening in my bowels. ‘Are you suggesting it wasn’t an accident?’

  ‘Least said, soonest mended.’ Jenkins tapped the side of his nose and half-winked. It wasn’t a particularly fetching gesture. However, I took the hint, and we mounted a staircase without further conversation. At the landing, we passed through a green baize door to a corridor where the décor was somewhat softer and less institutionalised.

  ‘Here’s the living quarters, sir.’ Somehow, Jenkins managed to imbue the ‘sir’ with a kind of dumb insolence.

  I heard a strange buzzing thudding sound, like a giant wasp hitting a window. I looked at Jenkins querulously.

  ‘That’s young Master Troy Quanderhorn’s room.’

  ‘ Quanderhorn? Is he the Professor’s son?’

  ‘They put it about he’s the Professor’s son,’ Jenkins nodded, ‘but some do say he grew him in a petri dish.’

  ‘ What? ’

  ‘Used his own genetical material and made him extra strong with a pinch of insect.’

  ‘He’s part insect ?’ Well, that did explain rather a lot.

  ‘Word to the wise, sir: do watch out when he’s swarming.’

  ‘ Swarming? ’

  ‘The Professor’s terrible proud of him, though. Claims he’s a “major breakthrough in Artificial Stupidity”. Least said, soonest mended, sir.’

  We passed the next door. Jenkins nodded at it. ‘Dr. Janussen you already know.’ He raised a cheeky eyebrow. What was this upstart implying?

  ‘Was she all right just now? I mean, she seemed a bit—’

  ‘Nothing wrong with her. Nothing at all, sir. Excepting half her brain is clockwork.’

  What did one say to such an outlandish assertion? I tried: ‘Surely not!’

  ‘She was in a car crash, and the Professor had to rebuild her slightly. ’Course they says it was a car crash, but they always says that.’

  ‘Goodness! A car crash!’ The poor darling. ‘And you say her brain is clockwork ?’

  ‘Just the right-hand side, sir, the logical half.’ He stopped and drew me in closer, lowering his voice and treating me to a wave of Mackeson breath. ‘Sometimes her emotions run the mechanism down, and then . . .’ He mimed a silent explosion. ‘All I’m saying: if her ear starts to rotate, just get yourself out of there, sharpish.’

  Of course! That was what I’d found peculiar about her appearance in the jeep: her ear was at an angle of forty-five degrees! I needed to ask him more before he said “Least said, soonest mended”.

  ‘Jenkins – this rotating ear—’

  ‘You’re going to have to meet the Professor, of course.’ He cut me off rather impertinently. ‘I’ll need to go and clear it with him. I’m sure you’d like to freshen up in your own room, Mr. Nylon . . .’

  ‘Oh yes. Very much.’

  ‘Unfortunately, we can’t have you wandering by yourself around willy-nilly with your memory all shot, so if it’s OK with you, sir, I’m just going to put you in here, temporarily, with the Martian.’

  Chapter Seven

  From the journal of Brian Nylon, 1st January, 1952 – Iteration 66

  ‘I need to— Wh— Did you just say “Martian”?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. He’s a hostage, from the last Invasion. ’Tween you and me, I don’t think they wanted him back’.

  He slid open the door.

  I half expected the room to be dark and reek of sulphur, but it seemed bright and smelled of the kind of cheap aftershave a cad might wear.

  ‘Word to the wise.’ Jenkins leant in conspiratorially again. ‘He learned Earth language watching How Do You View , starring Terry-Thomas – they says it’s the only telly-vision signal they can receive up there, but—’

  ‘Least said?’

  ‘In one, sir. His name’s “Guuuurk”, by the way. Four u ’s.’

  I tried it. ‘Guuu-uuurk?’

  ‘Close enough, sir.’ And with a rather impudently firm hand to my back, he shoved me into the Martian’s abode.

  I had no recollection of meeting a Martian before, but I did know they were our deadly enemies. I was expecting a furious great beast, chained to the walls and raging. But the figure in front of me was standing quite free and unencumbered. I bunched my fists by my sides involuntarily as he slowly turned towards me.

  He had a bulbous purple head, about twice the size of a human’s, with six eyes arranged symmetrically in pairs, three on either side of his face, a prominent beaky nose, and beneath it a rather fetching pencil moustache. He was surprisingly dapper, sporting a gold velvet smoking jacket with ebony facings and slightly shiny elbows, black dress trousers, sharply pressed, and a pair of inappropriately coloured moccasins, such as might be worn by a particularly shifty Italian gigolo. And at the moment, me.

  He was in the act of decanting what smelled like cheap cooking sherry into an expensive bottle. He looked up and smiled. There was a rather endearing gap between his two front teeth. ‘Hel lo there, Brian,’ he trilled in a louche English accent.

  ‘Hello, er, Guuuuu-uurk.’

  ‘Ha! Three u ’s too many, old thing. You are a card! Amontillado?’

  ‘Uh, no thanks.’

  ‘Very wise. I get it for thruppence ha’penny a gallon from the ironmonger’s. I’d never touch the filthy stuff myself, but you did say a couple of schooners really helps grease the wheels with the fairer sex.’ His eyes performed a rapid sequence of winks as he nodded towards his noticeboard, which was festooned with cut-outs of ladies from corset advertisements.

  ‘I said that?’

  ‘Well, not in so many words, you’re too much of a gentleman. Listen.’ He took a more serious tone. ‘Terribly sorry to hear about Virginia. Beastly way to go. Commiserations, et cetera, et cetera.’

  ‘I . . .’ I decided not to confide in him about my memory loss. He seemed like a stand-up chap, but I just couldn’t bring myself to trust a Martian. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Honestly, it’s a complete fiasco here. They’re a useless shower. Wouldn’t last a second on Mars.’

  I suddenly felt very sorry for this poor desolate creature, imprisoned millions of miles from home, separated hopelessly from his friends, his countrymen and his familial comforts. Though I have to say, he’d made his ‘cell’ rather comfortable.

  There was a real zebra skin rug, for instance, and the chair behind his somewhat grandiose reproduction French kidney writing desk was throne-like, but upholstered in a garish orange velveteen. Amongst the underwear adverts, right in the centre of the noticeboard, there was a London map with a vibrant red ring around Soho, and a big exclamation mark. What could it mean?

  He slipped a pastel-coloured cigarette into an extr
avagantly long ivory holder and fired up a desk lighter cast in the shape of an erotic mermaid. He exhaled happily, and rooted in his drawer for a dog-eared notepad with an elastic band around it. ‘Anyhoo, whilst you’re here, old boot, perhaps you can fill me in on some more Earth Things.’

  I bunched my fists again. I wasn’t about to give any information to an enemy agent. ‘What kind of “Earth Things”?’ I demanded, coldly.

  ‘Well, gals, mostly.’ He thumbed through the notepad. I noticed with a start that all of his fingers appeared to be thumbs, and there were six of them on each hand.

  ‘We prefer to call them “ladies”.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, of course.’ He looked at me oddly, then crossed out several different words and amended them. All six of his eyes flitted outwards then back again, then he lowered his voice. ‘Now then: supposing a chap were to have himself a “Date”—’

  ‘You’ve got a date ?’ My voice suddenly went all mezzo-soprano, rather rudely, in disbelief.

  ‘Pipe down! You know I’m not really allowed out of here.’

  ‘With an Earth woman?’

  ‘Of course with an Earth woman. There’s not a lot else here.’

  ‘But hasn’t she noticed you’re . . .’ I waved my arms around ineffectively, not quite knowing how to put it. Ugly? Martian? Purple?

  ‘No. I simply deflate my head . . .’ He demonstrated. There was a hiss of escaping air, and his head did indeed halve in size. ‘. . . close four of my eyes . . .’ He did so. ‘. . . and slap on a coat of white distemper. Voila! Instant human!’

  I tilted my head and squinted at him. He looked for all the world like Edith Sitwell recovering from a recent strangulation attempt. ‘Hmm, yes,’ I murmured as encouragingly as possible. I was beginning to worry about how terribly bad I seemed to be at lying.

  Guuuurk looked back at his notes. ‘Now, as I understand it, first I have to present the . . . the lady with some elegant plant life, and some diabetes-inducing sweetmeats. Is that right?’

  I processed that. ‘Flowers and chocolates? Yes, that’s normal.’