"02 - They Came and Ate Us - Armageddon II- The B-Movie 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rankin Robert)

16

acupuncture: A spiteful habit much favoured by the shifty

Chinese. Hugo Rune, The Book of Ultimate Truths

Rune's distrust of the 'damned Chinee' appears to have had its genesis during a meal he once took with George Orwell at a Pimlico Chinese restaurant during the early 1930s. Orwell records the incident in his first draft of Down and out with Huge Rune.

'Rune had invited me out to dinner to discuss this idea he had for a book set in the 1980s about his "Big Sister". I recall that in those days his appetite was quite prodigious. We were halfway through the thirteenth course when he suddenly clutched at his neck and fell to the floor. With the aid of a wok spoon and a couple of chopsticks I managed to extricate from his throat a three-inch bone which later proved to be the femur of a Ring Tailed Marmot.

'The restaurant owner was profuse in his apologies and promptly tore up the bill. Rune however was enraged and later settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.'

Evelyn Waugh also records this incident, although in his account it took place six months earlier and at a different restaurant. Curiously his description of the bone is ident­ical.

Sir John Rimmer, The Amazing Mr Rune

17

The road to Graceland, Elvis Presley Bou­levard, is, so to speak, about as broad as it is long, and not paved with particularly good intentions. Dogs do not foul its footpaths. Loiterers, either with intent or merely shoelaces to tie, are moved along at the hurry up. Winos with paper sacks do not take sup in this neck of the woods. To paraphrase Bobby the Z, 'There are no bums outside the gates of Graceland.' Young female worshippers, come to lay their offerings before the King receive a scant welcome from the killer canines and armed militiamen of the so-called 'Memphis Mafia'.

But now, with a suddenness that made it all the more terrible, the unthinkable had occurred. The King was dead. And now chaos reigned supreme. The gilded gates yawned, feet trampled the sacred lawns. Police heli­copters swung in faulty circles, bullhorns demanded order. Cordons stretched across the road, cops displayed their weapons and ambulance sirens mourned dread­fully. The word was already on the network, an era was over. Elvis the man was dead, but Elvis the legend had only just begun.

Sam Maggott has penetrated to the epicentre of the chaos. It is the eye of the hurricane. Here is only an unearthly silence, an awful loneliness. There is little enough dignity in birth but there is none whatever in death. A fat man lies on a chill tile floor. He is wearing pyjamas, a yellow top, blue bottoms. His knees are drawn up almost to his chin. Already he smells bad. Sam pushes back his police cap, runs a knuckle over his moist forehead. Behind him people are running about shouting, crying, arguing. The dead man is at last all on his own. Sam stoops to examine the corpse. He feels the thick blue neck. Almost lovingly he strokes the cold bloated cheek. A grey sideburn curls away beneath his touch and flutters gently to the tiles. Sam is fascinated. He stares at it dumbly, then plucks it up and pokes it back on to the dead cheek. Upside down. He notices to his amazement that the deceased is wearing a wig.

18

i Sam won't be telling the press. Later he will be very surprised that no-one else has.

I

To the sounds of the immortal Jimi Hendrix, Jack Doveston swung his banjoed Oldsmobile into the car park of the Miskatonic University. It was full. The students' cars were newer and flashier. The students were punctual. A ready curse sprang to Jack's lips. He slammed the greedy Olds on to the grass verge, slammed \ the 'broken down' sticker on its windshield, slammed the rust-ridden door and slammed away up the drive.

The university never failed to impress him. It hardly could. All those Gothic spires and cupolas. All that tortured stonework, the fluted columns, the gargoyles and galleries. The mullioned windows with their stained-glass grotesqueries. Awesome. But for all of it Jack's heart dwelt in the dimly lit sub-basement, and he wouldn't have had it any other way.

Jack skirted the grandeur and made off down a set of side stairs. He let himself in with his pass key and threaded his way through musty corridors bound for the very womb of the great university. It was definitely the womb rather than the heart. The heart was three floors above, the great hall. Or at least that was what Jack's wife considered. 'Your own little womb, which you enter daily by the back passage.'

The book rooms were clean and dry and adequately ventilated, although the exhalations of 666,666 ancient librams weighed heavily upon the air. All those pages. Millions of them and it was Jack's job, as it had been now for five years since he had first come out here from England to take up the post, to transfer every one of them on to computer discs.

The project had begun on a grand scale, fifty terminals, manned day and night. But times were now hard and funding a thing of the past. Now there was Jack and Spike and no overtime. The largest collection of rare occult books anywhere in the world and just the two of

19

them to transpose the lot before they mouldered away to dust.

Jack had evolved the system, the cross cataloging, -referencing, indexing and whatnot, and the project was now not far from completion. The cream of the crop was in: The Daemonolatreia of Remigius, Joseph Glanvil's Saducismus Triumphatus and even the unmentionable Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred in Olaus Wormius's forbidden Latin translation. No kidding. All on disc available for anyone authorized to take a peek at, the originals sealed into protectrite shells for eternity.

Jack seated himself at his desk and jacked up his terminal. The screen blued on, Jack tugged open the desk drawer, took up a half bottle of vodka and took a little slug of breakfast.

Almost instantly a horrid 'state of the art' telephone began to blow electric raspberries at him. Jack took it up without enthusiasm and said 'library'. To his small pleasure the voice of the dean wished him a good morning. Jack returned the redundant pleasantry. He hadn't had a good morning in months.