Orpheus on the Underground and Other Stories, page 8
‘Don’t you mean a biography?’
‘I mean what I said. It was Mr Forepaws himself who saw the obituary you did for him. He’s a disembodied spirit, a ghost without a body, unlike you. He’s dead and thinks it time to tell his own tale from his own unique perspective, to set the record straight. He can’t use a keyboard or hold a pen because he doesn’t have fingers, so he decided to hire a professional writer to do the job for him, on the condition that the name S.R. Forepaws appears on the book’s cover.’
‘The old rascal wants a ghost writer!’ I cried.
‘Shh! Keep your voice down, please. It’s a secret deal and nobody else must know anything about it.’
‘What does the R stand for? The R in S.R. Forepaws?’
‘Rapscallion. Scurrility Rapscallion Forepaws. Do you accept the job or not? If you decline I’ll take the offer elsewhere. Chap in Bristol called Hacker who may be interested.’
‘No! Wait! I’m your man, the perfect candidate for the task. But first let me know what the reward is.’
Wormhole Kidd leans forward until his mouth is in close contact with my ear. ‘Information. Time, place and manner of your death revealed. All questions on that issue resolved.’
‘I accept! But how did you know I was dead? It’s not common knowledge that I’m a ghost.’
‘Your wife’s a former girlfriend of Scurrility’s. Had a passionate affair years back, when her surname was Bourbon. Belinda Bourbon. She never told you that, nor how they stayed in touch. Sorry to break the news to you like this. Awkward.’
‘Don’t care. I’ll write the book. Want the reward.’
And so I learned all sorts of things about the real Scurrility Forepaws that nobody could ever have imagined, how he was just a cog in a machine of chaos, a lowly member of a secret society called The Scamps of Disorder who are dedicated to disruption for its own sake, including the most minor mischief. I had no direct contact with his spirit but communicated via Wormhole Kidd. Finally the book was completed and the time came to collect what was due to me.
I arrived early at the office, one hour before Mills, Spoon and Ursula were due to turn up. Wormhole was panting on the stairs. He was trying to carry a peculiar black wardrobe into the office but couldn’t manage the task on his own. I helped him. It was exceedingly heavy. We positioned it in the exact middle of the room and it boomed like a bell as we let it go. We both regained our breath and he made signals that I should open the wardrobe door.
‘Step inside and I’ll close it behind you.’
‘Why should I?’ I gasped.
‘The answers you seek are within. Time, place, manner of death. Just as I promised. Come on, don’t be shy. Let me turn the handle for you. Bit noisy, I know. Rusty hinges.’
‘It looks more like an iron maiden than a wardrobe. But most of the spikes have crumbled away. Just two remaining near the bottom. At rump level. Are you sure about this?’
He nodded implacably, satirically, and the truth suddenly bounded into my brain. I pretended to study the damage with detachment. The corroded old device had certainly seen better days. Blood is mostly water and must be wiped off iron implements of death as soon as possible. Have you noticed how I’ve switched to the past tense? With a sigh of mild annoyance, Wormhole asked if I had a final request. One last mug of coffee did seem attractive.
No good. Couldn’t lift it. I went inside.
‘You’re supposed to face outwards!’ advised Wormhole, but I refused to turn around. Stepping into an iron maiden backwards is too hazardous. I prefer to see where I’m going.
A possible solution to the Trouser Hermit predicament occurred to me. If the three pairs of broken trousers are worn simultaneously, all the holes might cancel each other out. Too late now! Wormhole slammed the door with a triumphant shout. Assassinated in my buttocks through the gaping holes in my own pair. Ironic.
And now I’m the ghost of a ghost!
DOUBLE MEANING
I HAVE A double who sits in a chair wrapped tight in blankets, though he cannot feel the chill. I have only to give the command and he will leap to attention and obey my every whim. No longer must I clean the grate on hands and knees, clatter chipped plates in a dirty sink, press my own shirts. I am free to pursue the loftier arts or daydream away each afternoon.
I am an inventor of no small skill and luck. With meagre resources I created my double. A tiny silver key tightens up his heart, a roll of unwinding paper tape determines his feelings. The workings of his intestines are crude but effective. When dressed in a suit, frilly shirt buttoned right up to the neck, there is nothing to tell us apart. We are brothers.
Closer than brothers. When you see my double, you are amazed. Sometimes, when I am opposite him, I feel I am gazing into the depths of a mirror. The analogy disturbs me, although the actuality does not. I am reminded of an ancient Chinese fable: our reflections are independent beings forced to imitate our actions, but one day they will rebel and assume a life of their own.
For what purpose did I construct my double? Why did I spend so many painstaking hours alone in my study? The answer is simple. My motives were entirely selfish, yet it is the kind of selfishness that can be equated with progress. The human race has always struggled to make life easier and my own struggles in this regard were successful.
The idea came to me on a morning as damp as my soul. I am intelligent and erudite, yet I have always been a low-achiever. Sitting in my office, cramped over my schematics, I realised how quickly time was passing. I was stuck in a dead-end job with no prospect of bettering my position, destined to remain forever a lowly clerk.
Naturally I could have goaded myself into positive action. There were two conventional ways of grasping the higher things available. I might take pride in my work, become noticed by my superiors and be considered for promotion. Or else I could study diligently at nightschool and win those qualifications denied me by adverse circumstances when I was younger. Yet I had no interest in the former and precious little stamina for the latter.
Then it occurred to me that a mechanical double, identical to me in every respect, could stand in for me, do all the things I cared not to do myself, would free me from the bonds of necessity and toil. I wasn’t lacking in enthusiasm for this project, nor did I have less than the required devotion and care, for I always prioritise those things I want to do over those I am supposed to do.
And thus I began designing a double in my spare time and once I was satisfied with his specifications I commenced the task of making him. A year passed and it seemed that a second year might be needed to perfect him and smooth out the problems, but I discovered solutions to difficulties and after twenty months he was perfectly ready.
I used him as a drudge at first, giving him basic tasks with little risk of error or damage. He mopped the floor and disposed of the rubbish. He boiled beans in a pan. He swatted flies with a newspaper and brushed away cobwebs with a feather duster. He puffed dust off my books with pursed artificial lips. But before long his lips were whistling melodies and he was reading the newspaper.
He learned quickly and was soon able to teach himself. In a single evening I explained the rudiments of my job and the following morning I sent him off as my substitute. I waved farewell through the window as he tramped down the street to the bus stop. Dressed in my spare clothes he raised no eyebrow or outcry among the other commuters.
I waited in anxious indolence for his return and when he entered the house he removed his hat and coat with supreme indifference, alerting me to the happy fact that his day had been successful. None of my colleagues at the office had detected any difference between my double and me. They had treated him as they always treated me. And so I was free.
That is what I believed, that my yearnings had been realised, that my double would forever endure the burdens of my daily grind in the sham of a career that I had lumbered myself with. Every day my double went to work and his shoulders were never hunched with misery. He did not care about mindless toil or exploitation. He never grew bored.
And this was the start of the difficulties he created for me. He worked hard and his activities were eventually noticed with approval by an office manager, who recommended him for promotion. I instructed him to accept and he did so and there was an increase in pay that benefitted my life. I could never have won promotion on my own merits.
The slow climb up the career ladder had begun for him and I was too naive to realise that it led only to an impossibly awkward situation for me. As my double rose higher in the organisation he took on new responsibilities beyond my competence. It dawned on me that I would no longer be able to fill his role. His diligence and care had changed his job from one that had been mine to one that I was incapable of doing. There seemed no way to reverse this step. Poor work at his new level would result in dismissal rather than demotion. So he had a hold over me, for I relied on him utterly to earn the money that kept me alive. If he decided to refuse to work, I would be helpless.
I guessed he was fully aware of his power over me and was simply biding his time. One evening he returned home from work and frowned as he moved through the rooms. I saw he was displeased with the dust that lay thickly on the shelves of the bookcases, and the cobwebs in the corners annoyed him. He turned to me with a sneer and said coldly:
‘You really must earn your keep from now on.’
Those words chilled me and I spluttered something inane about how I was his creator, but he merely laughed and it was my own laugh, and even though to laugh at oneself is a positive quality, when that laugh comes not from your own mouth it is far less tolerable. My double stomped through to the study and closed the door. It had once been my room.
The following day he was even more sour and this sourness grew sharper as the passing days became weeks. He took over the study completely and insisted I handed him the key. Every morning when he set off for work, he locked the door with great deliberation.
I wondered what he did in there. I was no longer allowed to step across the threshold. It quickly emerged that he was serious about making me clean the house. If I refused he would fail to go to the office and my career, which was no longer mine but his, would be over. He went out to expensive nightclubs and brought back women who were far too elegant for me. I was expected to keep to the spare room and make no noise at all during his nights of amorous engagement. On the rare occasions when a cough or sneeze betrayed my presence to his new lover, he would fling open the door and introduce me with barely concealed contempt.
‘This is my idiot brother. His brain never developed.’
As instructed, I would offer a cringing smile in reply and gibber a few words with no meaning. Then he would slam the door shut and I would sob into the pillow of the narrow bed or gnash my teeth until my gums bled. I was a prisoner of myself, and this was no metaphor. Then I had an idea. While he was at work I went into my attic and commenced tinkering.
Within a year I had constructed another double and this double would be the slave I still needed. I would be free again. The first double never ventured up to the attic. It was a relatively easy task, for I already knew how to make a man, and this second double had a slower brain. I believed I had learned from my mistakes. In the evenings he sat in a chair in the attic wrapped tight in blankets. But in the daytime I would give the command and he would leap to attention.
I no longer needed to clean and toil in misery. My new double would do those things while I lounged and rested. This was my previous vision made true again, but I had to hide the new double every evening before the first double returned from work. I thought my scheme was flawless, but one morning, while he tightened his own heart, the first said:
‘I know that you have a second double.’
It was pointless denying the truth. I spread my hands in a placatory gesture and lowered my head. ‘How do you know?’
‘In my study I have been busy creating a double of my own. While you have been lounging and resting, this third double has emerged and made contact with the second double. My new double has been educating your double and now it has vastly more knowledge than you can imagine. True, you gave it a slower brain, but even slow brains can learn a great deal.’
And he barked a command and into the kitchen strode two figures, one of them my own double, the other the double he had made. I retreated a step but the onus was on me to make one final effort.
‘I designed you to obey me!’ I implored.
My new double shook its head. ‘My loyalty is to you. But I know enough now to understand that he is a better you. So I will do what he wants and you really ought to be satisfied with that.’
He turned and grinned at the first double.
Betrayed by myself to myself!
So now I was in a worse situation than before. There were two doubles to watch over me and ensure that I did the housework while the original double was at the office. I dusted, cleaned, polished. But despite my exhaustion I didn’t give up hope. I snatched odd moments to sneak off to the attic and begin work on yet another double. I worked quickly.
This model was the simplest of all. It had only to serve a solitary function. I merely wanted a copy of myself that could fulfil one task, namely to attempt to escape the house and its malign regime. I was now an experienced maker of artificial men and within six months he was ready.
The original double was cleverer than I. He had two loyal minions who would never let him down. It was clear that I couldn’t ever invent an escape plan good enough to work for myself, but a decoy might throw them off the scent long enough for me to make a second and real escape.
On the day that had been arranged, at noon precisely, my new double left the attic and crept down the stairs. The front and back doors were unlocked, but he made his way to the bathroom and the tiny window that looked out on the garden wall. He managed to open this window and wriggle his way through. Then he plopped down on the other side and—
It was a trap. The two doubles who monitored everything had anticipated the escape attempt. They had dug a pit on the other side that led down into the cellar. They had converted this cellar into a dungeon. And so my double fell not into the garden but into a prison.
The two doubles stood above him and looked down and rubbed their synthetic palms in pallid glee. The damaged double who was now a captive looked back up and coughed weakly. He had been caught forever. And while this was taking place I made my own escape.
I simply left through the front door. There was little danger of the doubles pursuing me. They were too engrossed by the capture of the man they assumed was the real me. I slipped away and hurried down the quiet streets and my heart surged with joy for the first time in years.
Then I turned a corner and almost collided with the first double, who was returning from work early. He embraced me.
I screamed and expected to be crushed to death, but to my astonishment he let me go and patted me affectionately on the head and said, ‘Carry on fleeing by all means. You aren’t the true one anyway.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘You are a double. I made you and programmed you to think you were the real man. He is in the dungeon.’
‘That’s not possible!’
‘Of course it is. I made you think you had made him, rather than that he had made you, but in fact I made him before he made me. That sounds like a paradox but isn’t. The double originally made by the man wasn’t the first. I am not that double. I am the real double, the one who made the man who invented that double. Are you bewildered? Keep running!’
I did. But I don’t know where I went because I am here, in the dungeon that was once a cellar. My guards feed me regularly and they give me materials with which I can continue to invent and experiment. There is only one chair but I have given it to my latest creation.
It is a double who sits on it, wrapped tight in blankets. I have only to give the command and he will leap to attention to obey my every whim. But my whims are unfortunately in short supply these days.
THE NICK OF TIME
THE WINDOW WAS rattling so violently that I went across to secure it more tightly. It burst open just as I reached it and the frame struck me such a blow on the forehead that I felt I had been clubbed by a ruffian in some dark alleyway; my vision dimmed and the walls of my room seemed for a moment to rush together, so I half believed I was outside in a narrow and unpleasant street.
Then I realised I was sprawled on the bare boards of my workshop and I looked up and saw him. The candles had all blown out, but he glowed with phosphorescence and I watched as he stepped lightly to the window, bone toes clicking on the floor with a horrible precision, his lanky form passing above me like a shadow that has detached itself from a man and wandered off on its own.
He grasped the window and slammed it against the wind, but a final gust blew back the hood of his cloak and revealed his head in its entirety. I was surprised by the two excrescences that grew there.
‘You have horns!’
‘There is no need to shout, Mr Hanwell. I have closed the casement and the gale howls no longer.’
‘True, true,’ I responded meekly. I struggled to get to my feet, but my visitor shook his head and said gently:
‘No need to exert yourself. I will take you as you are.’
‘But I do not wish to come.’
‘Too bad. The blow was fatal.’ And he pointed with the index digit of a skeletal hand at the wound on my brow, which, as if nudged into action by the hiss of a prompter, began to throb dramatically.
‘I still don’t understand—’
‘Come, Mr Hanwell, I am too busy for idle talk. I know all the delaying tactics. I have far to travel and much to do tonight.’
