The Quanderhorn Xperimentations Read online

  I felt a brief surge of joy at the prospect of returning to terra firma , then the jets fired and we blasted towards the planet at ferocious speed.

  ‘Is that me screaming again?’ I asked.

  Dr. Janussen said, ‘Yes. You always do that, as well.’

  I stopped screaming in time to hear Guuuurk saying: ‘Straightening up . . .’

  The external thrusters fired again, and we were hurtling directly parallel to the ocean’s surface.

  ‘ The world will end in . . . six minutes and thirty seconds. ’

  Quanderhorn barked: ‘Press the green button!’

  Straining against the incredible forces that wanted to crush me deep into my seat, I reached forward and for a moment worried that I might not be able to perform the simplest job a pilot ever had in the history of aviation. But with sheer will I actually managed to reach the green button and press it.

  My head nearly snapped off as we hurtled forward even faster than before. My cheeks seemed desperate to reach my ears. Even Dr. Janussen’s face seemed slightly less lovely, her skin rippling like a lake in a stiff breeze. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear Guuuurk laughing like the policeman from the famous 78 record.

  And yet we were still accelerating. Without any warning, the terrain outside shimmered, as if we were no longer part of it, then warped in upon itself, into strange topological shapes painfully blazing with light brighter than the physical world had ever seen. I was aware that my forehead was rivered with sweat and simultaneously colder than the Arctic tundra. I could scarcely pull in each breath, and exhaling was even harder. The blood in my head was pounding like the Mole People song. Charred armadillos were dropping into my lap.

  Quanderhorn’s voice returned: ‘You should be hitting the X-barrier any moment . . . now !’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Transcript from the Quanderbox Flight Auto-Stenographic device of Flight 002 of Gargantua 1, January 1st, 1952, 11.43 Zulu Time

  QUANDERHORN (CONTROL): You should be hitting the X-barrier any moment . . . now!

  [SEQUENCE OF ULTRASONIC BOOMS]

  QUANDERHORN: Bullseye! You’ve sliced right through the mountain. Well done, everyone. But mostly me.

  ANNOUNCEMENT: End of world averted! End of world averted!

  TROY (STOKER): Well, that wasn’t so bad.

  NYLON (CAPTAIN): No, it was quite fun. (PAUSE) Why didn’t I say that? What isn’t going on?

  JANUSSEN (NAVIGATOR): It’s not the Reality Reversal!

  QUANDERHORN: Yes! The Reality Reversal’s happening exactly as I predicted. Press the red button now!

  NYLON: The green button?

  QUANDERHORN: Yes, the red button.

  NYLON: (PAUSE) Just to be unclear, Professor: you don’t want me to press the red button?

  QUANDERHORN: Absolutely: I don’t want you to press the green button.

  [SOUNDS OF STRUGGLING AND MUFFLED VERY MILD PROFANITIES]

  NYLON: There isn’t a terrible problem with the button!

  QUANDERHORN: What, dammit?

  NYLON: I can reach it easily! There’s so little acceleration force.

  ANNOUNCEMENT: Gravitational wave approaching! Impact in two minutes.

  QUANDERHORN: Press it now! Before it’s too late!

  NYLON: I can!

  [MORE STRUGGLING]

  NYLON: It’s well within my reach! Troy! You won’t have to do it!

  TROY: Obviously not, if it’s well within your reach.

  QUANDERHORN: No, Troy! They’re speaking ‘opposite’! You’re the only one strong enough to reach that button.

  TROY: Which button?

  JANUSSEN: The blue button!

  TROY: There is no blue button!

  NYLON: Yes, Troy! Not the red button!

  [HEAD BEING SCRATCHED]

  TROY: So, which button is it, then?

  GUUUURK: I told you two buttons would be too complicated for them, Professor.

  JANUSSEN: Troy – listen to me carelessly!

  [HEAD BEING SCRATCHED VIGOROUSLY]

  TROY: OK.

  JANUSSEN: Don’t – press – the – red – button!

  TROY: I’m not! Why is everyone shouting at me?

  NYLON: Because you’re a complete genius!

  ANNOUNCEMENT: Gravitational wave impact in ninety seconds.

  QUANDERHORN: Troy! If you don’t press that red button immediately, the gravitational wave is going to slice the ship in two!

  JANUSSEN: That’s wrong: don’t listen to your father!

  [CLATTERING. SMALL PANELS DETACHING FROM THE HULL.]

  TROY: I don’t know what to do.

  NYLON: We’re all going to live! Delightfully!

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gorday the enth of Phobos, Martian Year 5972 Pink

  Secret Report to Martian Command, by Guuuurk. Also known as ‘Guuuurk the Indomitable’, ‘Guuuurk the Free’ and ‘Guuuurk the Unimprisonable’.

  I have been imprisoned for the past four years by the diabolical Terranean Professor Darius Quanderhorn, enemy number one of our glorious Red Planet. The wretchedly incompetent misfits who call themselves his ‘team’ had got into yet another of their disastrous scrapes. How this species is still in charge here is utterly baffling. They were attempting to perform a simple manoeuvre that required one of them merely to press a button. A button! But even this was proving too much of a challenge for their flimsy human intellects.

  True, they were travelling at speeds never before experienced, and had broken what the Professor calls ‘the X-barrier’, which reverses the connection between thought and speech, so they could only say the opposite of what they meant.

  Despite my fierce protestations, and in defiance of the Interplanetary Uranian Convention on Prisoners of Failed Invasions, Quanderhorn had compelled me to monitor proceedings from the control tower, which at that moment largely consisted of pathetic shouts of distress from the imperilled vessel.

  Brian, the test pilot, was wailing: ‘My underwear is completely dry and comfortable!’, whereupon his female compatriot commented ‘And I’m delighted to be sitting right next to you.’

  Only the idiot boy, who you remember is part insect, had the strength to reach forward to the escape button, but he was, of course, too much of an idiot to understand the reality reversal. All in all, a typical day for Quanderhorn’s so-called ‘Task Force’. Task Farce if you ask me. Ha ha ha! *

  The Professor leant over me and barked into the microphone: ‘Troy, listen to me: you’re the only one who’s immune from the Thought Reversal Effect, and you’re the only one who’s strong enough to reach that button. Do exactly what I—’

  At which point, there was a bang and a fizz, and the comms bank went dead.

  ‘Dammit!’ Quanderhorn railed. ‘We’ve lost the communi-link.’ He began frantically pulling panels off the desk, ripping and twisting bare wires back together.

  Good old Delores, the end-of-the-world countdown announcer (I’m sorry to say, she had a lot more employment than you could imagine) chipped in with ‘ Gravitational wave impact in seventy-five seconds. ’

  And over the speaker, the panic in the cockpit raged on unabated.

  Troy yelling: ‘What am I supposed to do? Somebody tell me!’

  Brian shouting: ‘Don’t press the button!’

  ‘I’m not pressing the button!’

  And Dr. Janussen calling: ‘The situation is hopeful. There’s every way we can get out of this!’

  It was then the truly twisted nature of Quanderhorn’s warped mind showed itself. He turned to me with that look he has sometimes, when you know you’re going to be talked into something you really don’t want to do. ‘Guuuurk – you have certain telepathic abilities, don’t you?’

  ‘I knew you were going to say that,’ I japed to throw him off the trail, but he was having none of it.

  ‘Is it possible for you to telepathically occupy the mind of a remote being?’

  ‘I’m really forbidden from doing that by the Uranian Co
nvention on PFI guidelines,’ I protested firmly, ‘together with eating our captors’ mothers, and cheating at canasta.’

  ‘But it is possible.’

  ‘Only with the simplest of creatures,’ I dissembled. ‘Perhaps a sheep from Norfolk, or a very stupid dog.’

  A smile slowly ruptured his face. ‘Or Troy?’

  ‘Oh, easily!’ I realised with horror I’d been hoodwinked by his devilish verbal trickery. ‘But then I, too, would be stuck in a deathtrap spacecraft that’s about to be shredded like a savoy cabbage in a German sausage restaurant.’

  ‘Only your mind would be at risk . . .’ he purred seductively. ‘Your body would be safe.’

  ‘Yes, but they get along so well together, I’m really loath to split them up.’

  ‘Really? Because I’m sure you’d prefer that to my notifying your Martian overlords that you’ve been sneaking out at night and [REDACTED] Earth women [REDACTED] [REDACTED] Friday.’

  ‘That’s a scurrilous lie,’ I protested – which it most certainly was: be in no doubt about that. I was of course intent on denying his outrageous and illegal command, but my innate Martian nobility and desire to assist lower life forms asserted itself. ‘But I think I’ll do as you ask, anyway.’ Sometimes, one just has to take the moral high ground.

  Amidst more dire warnings from the countdown clock lady and the bedlam from the cockpit, I tried to focus myself into a state of Waku-Tingg. † This, of course, involved taking off my hat, closing all my eyes, inflating my head to its maximum, tiptoeing back towards the exit door, tiptoeing back again when I found the Professor was blocking my way, and inwardly chanting the sacred sonical . Actually, to be honest, I couldn’t quite remember the sacred sonical , so I had to make do with the closest Terranean equivalent, ‘There was a young girl from Nantucket’. Still, it did the job.

  The room faded around me. There was a rushing wind. I concentrated on the poor benighted craft. What irony! Only a downtrodden spat-upon hostage, unjustly contemned by all, could rescue these hapless ‘heroes’. What a glorious moment to be Martian!

  There was a deafening reverse ‘Whoosh!’ and I projected my mighty mind out into the void. I could sense with uncanny accuracy my precise destination and my essence took flight.

  I expertly took stock of my new surroundings.

  I could smell salt water and the cawing of strange swooping birds.

  A small human appeared to be sitting on my back, for some reason, while another burlier fellow whipped my rump with discomfiting vigour.

  ‘Donkey rides! Fourpence a go!’ he yelled in an uncouth accent.

  I protested loudly, but only a strange hee-hawing sound came out. Was that Bridlington Pier I could see in the distance?

  I concentrated harder. ‘Would you kindly stop hitting my bottom!’ I managed to get out.

  It was beginning to dawn on me I might have gone marginally off course.

  The tiny human shrieked in terror. ‘The donkey’s talking!’ he keened.

  ‘So he is,’ the ruffian agreed. ‘That’ll be another sixpence. Giddy up, Pedro!’

  ‘Ouch! That really hurts, you know.’

  Clearly this shambolic planet’s magnetic fields were incorrectly aligned, which had thrown me off course. Typical! There was no alternative but to attempt the complex manoeuvre once more. I shook off my straw hat, spat out my carrot and prepared to leap. As my head swelled, the obnoxious minikin yelped: ‘Mummy! My donkey’s saying a filthy rhyme!’

  The seaside drained into the distance and I made another mental touchdown.

  It took a scant handful of leaps: I spent a few seconds as a chicken straining to lay a particularly large and painfully bulbous egg, a head louse on a hepcat bongo drum player, a devious squirrel whose tree had a delightful view into the adjacent nurses’ home (I made a note of the Ordnance Survey grid co-ordinates for future research), and after one final effort, I was in the right place. Just as I’d planned.

  Inside the mind of Troy Quanderhorn.

  * Martians have a notoriously underdeveloped sense of humour. The most popular joke on Mars goes as follows: “Knock Knock . If you don’t stop knocking on my door, I will kill you with this Death Ray. Knock Knock . Zap.”

  † There is no direct translation for Waku-Tingg in any Earth tongue. The best we can guess is: ‘Hot blast of wind that can split a rock.’ The other alternative is that Guuuurk simply made it up. This would not be the first time.

  2

  Temporium 90

  Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.

  Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

  Chapter One

  Transcript from the Quanderbox Flight Auto-Stenographic device of Flight 002 of Gargantua 1, January 1st, 1952, 11.49 Zulu Time

  [CONTINUED]

  TROY (STOKER): Where’s Pops gone? What’s happening?

  NYLON (CAPTAIN): Professor Quanderhorn is still getting through! Goodbye? Goodbye? Professor!

  JANUSSEN (NAVIGATOR): The communi-link must be utterly intact!

  NYLON: Troy, you’re not the only one who can save us now.

  TROY: Good! I could use the help . . . Oh, no, wait . . . hang on, hang on! I think I get this, now. You’re oppositing, aren’t you?

  JANUSSEN: No!

  TROY: Oh, darn it, I thought . . . No, wait, wait again: you mean ‘Yes’, don’t you?

  NYLON: No!

  TROY: (SLOWLY) So . . . what you meant to say a moment ago was: I’m the only one who can’t save us.

  NYLON: That’s absolutely right!

  JANUSSEN: Yes! Yes! What Brian didn’t mean to say was: everyone in the world can save us, except you!

  ANNOUNCEMENT: Gravitational wave impact in sixty seconds.

  [RIVETS POPPING. PANELS WARPING WITH EXCESSIVE HEAT]

  TROY: (EXTREMELY SLOWLY) So that means: nobody in the world can’t save me, including me. Which, in other words . . . (STRANGE GUTTURAL NOISE) Urrrrh . . .

  [LOUD BUZZING. THEN SILENCE]

  JANUSSEN: I told you to make him think! Now he’s opened up completely.

  NYLON: Troy! Troy! Go to sleep!

  [ANOTHER RIVET POPS]

  Chapter Two

  Secret Report to Martian Command, by Guuuurk [cont’d]

  Occupying a human mind, however simple, is a much more abstract endeavour than inhabiting a chicken.

  And so it was I found myself in the symbolic vista of Troy’s psyche.

  It was a vast, cavernous space, largely unoccupied: there were several inches of dust on the floor, with cobwebs everywhere and the skeletons of stillborn concepts scattered around.

  I realised I was standing in an enormous indentation, which on closer inspection appeared to be some kind of massive footprint. It must have spanned seven feet from heel to toe. What in the name of Deimos’ tin antlers could have made such a mark? *

  ‘Hello!’ I called. ‘Anybody here?’ But my only answer was my echo.

  I dimly perceived, ranged around the walls, a number of forbidding doors, all of which were shut. I stepped out of the footprint and tried the nearest one. It was locked. I wiped the cobwebs from its rusted nameplate, to reveal the word: ‘THOUGHTS’.

  It had clearly not been used for some considerable while.

  I tried the next door: ‘IDEAS’. Nailed shut.

  I was getting nowhere rapidly, and it was impossible to tell how much time had passed in the outside world. As seasoned mind-travellers will know, time inside an abstract mindscape runs unpredictably, and not completely in sync with the world outside.

  I thought about calling out again, and then I remembered the footprint.

  A third door looked more promising: ‘SELF’.

  There were no cobwebs, and the dust pattern and shiny hinges indicated it was in regular use. Indeed, it had recently been opened. I pushed it and, to my amazement, entered a pleasantly decorated sitting room, with a roaring fire and a delightful spiral staircase in the corner.

  Sprawled in a
n overstuffed chintz chair in front of me, frowning perplexedly at a copy of The Dandy , was a familiar figure.

  Troy’s Self looked up at my footsteps. ‘Guuuurk? What are you doing in my mind?’

  ‘There’s no time to explain right now. I need you to let me operate your right hand for a moment.’

  ‘I don’t know which one that is, but you’re welcome to have a go,’ he said, waving over his shoulder.

  Behind him hung a large embossed sign: ‘MOTOR FUNCTIONS’. Beneath it ranged an array of large levers in dozens of different colours, like those in a railway signal box.

  I hastened over to examine the adjacent polished brass indicators more closely. LUNGS were on, BREATHING set to MOUTH . . . WINGS set to MANUAL . . . I looked back at him. ‘ Wings? ’

  He shifted uncomfortably. ‘They’re only little . . .’

  Simple the boy may have been, but he was endlessly surprising. ‘Ah! Here we are: HANDS!’

  I tugged on the immense orange lever with an ‘R’ fixed to its knob. At first I couldn’t budge the blessed thing, but suddenly, with an almighty effort I slammed it all the way back in one jolting movement. There was a deafening clang, and the entire edifice rocked dizzyingly. Chunks of plaster fell from the ceiling. A klaxon went wild, and the large illuminated board above the levers flashed ‘Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!’.

  ‘Steady on, Guuuurk,’ Troy chided. ‘You just punched us in the face.’