The Unhappy Medium 3: Wretched Things: A Supernatural Comedy, page 48
‘Nah,’ replied Newton. ‘It’s still insane, of course, but I’m getting used to that.’
‘Oh, it’s bloody ridiculous,’ confirmed Hitchens. ‘But it is what it is. Hopefully, you now have the motivation you need to crack on. We need you focused, Dr Barlow. An unhappy medium is no good to us, no good to you, no good to anyone.’
‘It is a bit more motivating,’ admitted Newton. ‘I’ll give you that. I don’t feel I’ve entirely wasted my life now. Well, not so much at any rate.’
‘It is as we hoped then,’ smiled Sagan. ‘We can do no more. It is time for us to go.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Newton. ‘I guess this is where I get left to enjoy my air disaster.’
‘I’m afraid so.’ Carl Sagan prepared to leave. ‘Can I kindly ask that you return to your seat? You have to be positioned exactly as you were before we paused time’s arrow. Oh, and all this is all in the strictest confidence, buy the way. Your colleagues cannot be aware of this hiatus, nor of any of the issues discussed; there are proto–’
‘Protocols?’ suggested Newton. ‘Thought there might be. Ok, … mum’s the word, Secret Squirrel and all that. And thanks, Carl. I’m glad it was you. And thank Hitch, James and the others, please. They say you shouldn’t meet your heroes, but trust me, I would never have believed any of that if I hadn’t.’ Newton took his place in the co-pilot’s seat, looking over at Valenti, frozen at his controls, then buckled up.
‘Enjoy your flight, Dr Barlow,’ called the spirit of Carl Sagan fading from the cabin.
The plane fell silent.
Newton looked over at Valenti’s cigar. Slowly, it was moving faster. Incrementally, it began to speed up, moving first in millimetres, then centimetres, as time surged back to the now.
A cacophony of screeching, tearing metal, waves of boiling flames and the cries of Bennet, the Bonetaker and the ever-cussing pilot.
‘Godddaaaaaaammmmmmmmmit!’
The Dakota was, of course, doomed.
Plummeting back towards the fog, Valenti slammed down the nose, desperate to build up airflow beneath what remained of the wings. Howling, Thunderbird 2 piled on the speed. Then she was back up, the pilot fighting for every last yard to get them over land.
A burning wreck, the plane hurtled across the beach, jumping over Viktor’s villa, then swinging left, staggering on its tattered wings across the reedbeds, watched by Andronicus and the Myrmidons.
The Dakota, engines dead, finally ran out of lift. Dropping like a sick goose, she bellied in, bouncing through the swamp before grinding to a nerve-shattering halt against a sea wall.
The crash landing had torn what remained of the transport to pieces.
The cockpit, in particular, was a mess.
Newton, struggling out of his harness, looked back to see a huge hole where the main cabin had been. The left wing, still packed with black market fuel, was roaring like a blast furnace.
Waking up, Newton grabbed the pilot, shaking him desperately, willing him into consciousness. But there was no response.
Valenti … was out cold.
Newton fell out of the wrecked cockpit into knee-deep mud. Picking himself up, he staggered around the crash site, frantically looking for life.
‘Bennet! BENNET!’
When he found him, Bennet was half in and half out of the fetid water. Had Newton not discovered him in good time, it was obvious he’d have drowned. Newton dragged the spluttering vicar up to the base of the sea wall, then collapsed beside him, retching up the Russian mud he’d just had the pleasure of swallowing.
Of the Bonetaker, there was no sign.
Too shocked and stunned to move, Newton and Bennet could do nothing as the torches surged towards them.
Chapter 37
Ground
Andronicus the Terrible was having a thoroughly exciting evening. As sophisticated as Byzantium had been, it did not have aeroplanes. Nor had it possessed the ground-to-air missiles with which they could be destroyed, so the spectacle of the Purgatorian shoot-down had been really something. As Thunderbird 2 had fallen burning to the earth, he had jumped up and down like a toddler on Christmas morning, before running towards the crash with the soldiers of Viktor’s army. Yelping triumphantly, he’d found Newton and Bennet, with the crumpled Valenti, lying shocked beside the sea wall as flames billowed up from the wreck around them.
‘Got you!’ laughed Andronicus, rubbing it in. ‘Losers.’
‘How many of you?’ growled Dima, his gun cocked and pointed. ‘Answer me, how many?’
‘Fo¬–’ began Bennet.
‘– Fortunately,’ interrupted Newton, being economical with the truth, ‘all three of us … have survived. Us two are ok but our pilot’s out cold. He needs help.’
‘How’d you find us?’ demanded Dima. ‘Some kind of tracker? Is that it?’
‘Hunch,’ lied Newton.
‘Theo, take ’em to the dacha,’ ordered Dima, far from convinced. ‘I’ll get better answers out of them later.’
Newton and Bennet were kicked to their feet. Guns in their backs, they were marched away.
‘You again!’ warbled Homer, as they were bustled into the living room of Viktor’s quarters. ‘Do you people never give up?’
‘It’s our job,’ shrugged Newton. ‘What do you expect?’
‘We should just kill them,’ suggested Dima. ‘We let them live, and they give us grief. End it now!’
‘They will be disposed of,’ promised Andronicus. ‘I just haven’t decided how yet. Trust me, I know a thing or two about executions; it will be … “special”. For now, though, we keep them; we may have need of hostages.’
‘As you wish,’ said Dima, reluctantly. ‘But if you should change your mind ….’
‘I’ve told you my decision,’ snapped Andronicus. ‘If you’re going to contradict me, you can just get the hell out.’
‘I was just saying …,’ began Dima.
‘Just get out,’ ordered Andronicus, flicking him off with his fingers. ‘You’re not needed.’
Bewildered and hurt, Dima sidled out of the room like a scolded dog, closing the door behind him.
‘Was that really necessary?’ groaned the shellshocked Newton. ‘You’ve hurt his feelings.’
‘Oh, boo-hoo,’ replied Andronicus. ‘No one questions my authority. Not unless they wish … to die!’
‘Oooh, look at you,’ laughed Newton. ‘Aren’t you the hard man?’
‘I am, actually,’ snorted Andronicus. ‘And the sooner you and your Purgatorian overlords realise that, the better.’
‘Trust me,’ replied Newton, painfully sitting up, ‘we know your kind, all right. Purgatory is crammed with puffed-up narcissists like you.’
‘I am not a narcissist,’ declared the former emperor indignantly. ‘I’m “special”. I … am Andronicus I Comnenus … Emperor of Byzantium. You will know me better as Andronicus … the Terrible.’
‘Sorry, Mister Terrible,’ Newton shook his head dismissively. ‘Never heard of you.’
‘He only ruled for a couple of years,’ sneered Achilles.
‘It’s not the length!’ snorted Andronicus. ‘It’s what you do with it. You,’ – he pointed at the battered and very nearly broken Bennet – ‘you’ve heard of me, haven’t you?’
‘Can’t say I have,’ groaned the dazed vicar. ‘Emperor of Byzantium, you say? Er … no. Were you on any coins?’
‘How dare you!’ shrieked the skilfully insulted Andronicus. ‘Of course, I was on some bloody coins! I was a big man … a BIG man, I tell you!’
‘Yeah, but only for two years,’ grinned Achilles.
‘Two glorious years!’ insisted Andronicus. ‘GLORIOUS!’
‘So, what’s all this about anyway?’ asked Newton. ‘What do you think all this posturing is going to achieve?’
‘It’s about a better world,’ replied Homer. ‘We are going to bring back a time of heroes.’
‘Homer, right?’ asked Newton. ‘Rings a faint bell.’
‘You have heard of me!’ insisted Homer. ‘Everyone’s heard of me! I’m the greatest poet in history. I wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey. How could you not have heard of me?’
‘You were great in the Simpsons,’ replied Newton drily. ‘Sorry, cheap joke. Of course, I’ve heard of you. Famous but unreadable; I prefer the films.’
‘The movies were a travesty!’ exclaimed Homer. ‘They cut out about eighty percent of the book completely. What’s left is meaningless. I couldn’t bring myself to watch it!’
‘Brad Pitt wasn’t anywhere near as attractive as me,’ said Achilles. ‘In real life … I was HOT!’
‘The TV series was even worse,’ moaned Homer. ‘And that awful stop-motion animation version. What a flop!’
‘Nothing wrong with a bit of Ray Harryhausen,’ protested Bennet, wiping the blood of his hands with a handkerchief.
‘Who played you in the movie?’ asked Newton, rolling his eyes towards Andronicus.
‘There was a Greek miniseries!’ exclaimed the former emperor. ‘It deserves a remake!’
Newton turned his attention towards Homer. ‘And you’re not even a real person, anyway. You were an amalgamation of loads of people, a poetic tradition. You’re no more a real person than Ronald McDonald.’
‘I was real enough to be dragged into the Labyrinth by you Purgs!’ replied the indignant poet. ‘Imprisoned beneath this accursed island, for eternity. But I wasn’t going to be held. No! I escaped, travelling from kingdom to kingdom using my advanced storytelling abilities to pay my way, always one step ahead of you ever-meddling swine.’
‘Praise be to Homer!’ exclaimed Achilles. ‘For he kept our Heroic Age alive!’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever met three vainer people in my life!’ laughed Newton. ‘Get over yourselves, will ya?’
‘Vanity?’ snorted Achilles. ‘I don’t think so. We are heroes, the ultimate form of man, Gods … in human form. We have no need for vanity. We are too perfect for that.’
‘Are you now?’ replied Newton. ‘And how do you work that out?’
‘If you had actually read the Iliad,’ said Homer, ‘you’d know that the Gods themselves intervened in the lives of my heroes. That’s how important they are.’
‘But you wrote the Iliad,’ Newton pointed out. ‘You could put any old crap you liked in there. Stop bigging yerselves up. If your gods actually existed, then why would they be interested in a bunch of Bronze Age bullyboys with nothing up top but a death fixation and an endless need for validation.’
‘Ok, that does it,’ exclaimed Achilles, rushing forward with his sword held high. ‘I kill them now.’
‘No!’ cried Homer. ‘I’ve waited a long time for this. Let me say my piece to this scumbag. I have things to get off my chest. After that, we will decide a suitable fate for these snowflakes. You Purgatorians …,’ he continued, pointing his withered finger nearly in Newton’s direction, ‘with your weak-willed desire for a humanity marinated in the milk of human kindness. You make me sick. Why should that vision of civilisation be the one that wins? Eh? WHY? In the Bronze Age, it was blood, war, good old-fashioned hubris and ritual violence that made the world go around, not some trumped up debating society with a weakness for kittens.’
‘Oh, that’s it, is it?’ asked Newton. ‘Survival of the fittest? Only the strong deserve to live? Oh really.’
‘Yes! Of course, it is! The world needs a race of supermen, not thinkers.’
‘Thinkers are supermen,’ replied Newton. ‘Look at the modern world. All the technology, freedom, medicine, communications, … thinkers gave that to the world, not some musclebound wrestler with the emotional intelligence of a lamprey.’
‘WRONG!’ barked Homer. ‘War makes technology better than peace ever could. Look at your Second World War; it started with cavalry and ended with rockets. What does peace give you now, eh? Fidget spinners!’
‘That’s a very bleak view of life,’ remarked Bennet, who owned three. ‘I’m not sure everyone would agree with your way of thinking.’
‘Shut your face, priest!’ raged Andronicus. ‘Your “love thy neighbour” garbage won’t wash with us.’
‘Charming,’ said Bennet.
‘Yeah, well, your dinosaur strongman won’t wash with anyone,’ declared Newton. ‘Oh, sure, it’s all very entertaining on TV, or in a video game, but no one in their right mind genuinely wants to live like that. The modern world wants cheap wine, takeouts and two holidays a year; they don’t want hand-to-hand combat and tribal nihilism. People have evolved; your world died three millennia ago, and for a good reason. … It was horrible.’
‘It wasn’t horrible. It was heroic!’
‘My era was heroic too,’ added Andronicus.
‘No, it wasn’t!’ snapped Homer. ‘Nothing will ever be as heroic as the Trojan War.’
‘It will be heroic again, though,’ declared Achilles. ‘We will make it thus.’
‘No, you won’t,’ replied Newton firmly. ‘The Purgatorians are coming for you. Do yourself a favour and give up. Be honest; you’ve failed at just about everything you’ve tried so far, beaten by these “thinkers” you have so much contempt for. Oh, sure, we’re bumbling, and we lack the same ruthlessness as you bunch of bastards, but unlike you, we have brains. What do you have? Brawn. Corned beef for brains. You’re no more heroic than a flock of vultures. A new Heroic Age? Give me strength. … You people couldn’t create a bad smell in a lift. Sure, like all of history’s bully boys, you can push the little people around, but that only gets you so far. Once the small kids in the playground get their act together, that’s when the real heroism kicks in.’
‘Well said!’ exclaimed Bennet.
‘When have tyrants ever not been defeated?’ continued an impassioned Newton. ‘Imperial Japan, the Nazis, the Romans … if their victims didn’t take them down, then their hubris would. You lot aren’t even that good. I mean, look at you … a blind narcissist enabler, a WWF wrestler and a womanising fantasist who can’t keep it in his trousers long enough to conquer anything. Why would anyone want to follow you anywhere?’
‘How dare you?’ gasped Homer. ‘How DARE you!’
‘I told you I should kill him,’ added Achilles.
‘Let me slaughter these slanderous worms!’ urged the enraged Andronicus. ‘To talk to heroes in that way.’
‘Oh, we won’t kill them yet,’ replied Homer. ‘I want them to see how wrong they are first. Let us keep them till we make our move. They will witness our triumph, our glory, and the start of our new Heroic Age. Then we WILL kill them.’
‘Never gonna happen,’ said Newton. ‘The Purgs will have you for breakfast long before that happens. Even now, they’ll be tracking us down, homing in on your deranged little pantomime with every weapon at their disposal. Face it, my Bronze Age chums, you’re doomed. You haven’t even got a plan, have you?’
‘No?’ snapped Andronicus. ‘Well, why don’t you have a look out the back … there’s an army out there. An army big enough to take over … the world.’
‘That’s the Russian army,’ stated Newton. ‘Not yours.’
‘Not yet,’ admitted Andronicus. ‘But we’re working on it.’
‘It’s the Russian army,’ continued Newton. ‘You can’t just borrow a whole army from Comrade Putin. You’re mad.’
‘Borrow? We will buy it!’ insisted Andronicus. ‘We have control of the oligarch’s money, and trust me, it’s a lot of money.’
‘Don’t care how much cash you have under the mattress,’ laughed Newton, ‘there is no way the Kremlin will sell you an army. Besides, even if Vlad did lend you a battle group, the first shot you fired would have NATO all over you. You haven’t thought this out at all, have you? Far too busy being heroic to formulate a plan rationally. You know what?’ continued Newton. ‘It’s almost sweet, the way you wanna give it your best like this. Plucky … it really is. Awwwww bless.’
‘Look, the details haven’t been worked out yet,’ protested Andronicus, banging a table. ‘But when they are … LOOK OUT!’
‘By the Gods … I’m tired of this,’ exclaimed Homer. ‘Ignore him. He’s just baiting us. He and his Purgatorians have no hope of stopping us now. We have our heroic work to do. Get Dima back in; have him chain the dogs up … with their bitches.’
‘DIMAAAAA!’ yelled Andronicus. ‘Get your arse in here … now!’
‘Viv and Gabby!’ exclaimed Newton. ‘So, you do have them.’
‘Your Purgatorian whores?’ asked Andronicus. ‘Sadly, yes. Two of the most irritating women I have ever met. And, trust me, I’ve met a lot of women.’
‘I bet you have,’ replied Newton. ‘Well, you’d better not have done anything inappropriate with ours,’ he warned, ‘Or we’ll be having words.’
‘I wouldn’t waste my masculine essence on such women,’ snorted Andronicus. ‘Rude, cocky, dressed like witches; why … the younger one kicked me in my plums!’
‘Ha … really?’ laughed Newton proudly, as Dima entered and yanked them roughly to their feet. ‘That’s my girl.’
*****
‘Whassa wrong?’ asked Enrico Pescatore, as a concerned Vasilakis appeared ashen-faced from the bow.
‘Dr Barlow and the others … on the plane,’ replied the Cretan. ‘They no answer my messages. It’s been thirty minutes now. They were checking in regularly, then nothing. Maybe … they crash!’
‘Lasta known position?’
‘Somewhere around there,’ answered Vasilakis, throwing the chart down, then tapping it hard with his index finger. ‘Entering the Sea of Azov through the Kerch Strait. Barlow said they head for Russia, … this bit here. Is dangerous place. Russian and Ukraine, they say soon there may be the war.’
‘War or no war,’ said Pescatore, ‘den dat’sa where we hava ta go.’
*****
‘He’s awake!’ exclaimed Homer from outside Colonel General Viktor Nahrapov’s bedroom. ‘Finally!’
‘About bloody time,’ snorted Andronicus who, despite Astrid’s comforting attentions, still smarted, inflamed by Newton’s skilful insults. ‘Look, I like a tipple myself, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve never seen a man drink like he did last night. Sweet Jesus and all the saints, what must his insides look like.’
