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The switchboard (for why belabour the reader with a lot of sci-fi-hi-tech-hokum, regarding its
multi-cellular, bio-embrionic jiggery-pokery) at Earthers Inc. jammed. Minor employees
scurried up and down the membrane tubes. Board members paced the lush and tufted
carpetings. One or two of the more highly-strung took the opportunity to fling themselves
from upper windows. Mungo Madoc sought divine guidance from He of the Nose Enormous.
But as is so often the case with deities, old Holy Hooter was being just a little backward in
coming forward. He was keeping out of this one. At length, Mungo knelt, pinched his nostrils
and took himself off to the lift. For a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
Jason Morgawr met him on the boardroom landing. The intense young Phnaarg had never
looked more so. 'No warning,' he shrieked, 'well, not enough at any rate. My team isn't ready.
This is really too much. Really too much.'
Mungo brushed him aside. 'Are the other board mem-bers within?'
'Those that still remain amongst the living.'
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Mungo sighed as only he could sigh and ordered the door aside.
'Gentlemen, he declared, although the appellation seemed inappropriate to describe the
bunch of jibbering ninnies now huddled at the far end of the Goldenwood table. 'Please be
seated. There is no, and I repeat, no need to panic.'
The unmagical mushroom cloud rose above Aunty Norma's bunker. At 500 feet it flattened
against the artificial cloud cover, which had been expressly designed to cope with such
eventualities. The poisonous residues reflected downwards and cutaways. The long-range
cameras atop Nemesis which had been recording the great event, retracted into their
blast-proof housings.
'We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when,' sang the Lamarettes, clad soberly in
black arm-bands, although very little else.
'And remember,' Gloria mopped at a tear and smiled bravely, 'if you are in the latter stages
of pregnancy or even giving birth at this very moment, give your EYESPI a little wave.
Because you could be carrying the next incarnation of the Living God King himself. Here
today and here tomorrow, that is the watchword of Buddha-vision. Tomorrow belongs to
you.'
'For I know we'll meet again, some sunny day . . .' Fade out.
L. Ron Hubbard's glory girls freighted their precious cargo at great speed towards the
Chosen One's thinking quarters. Scores of vacuum-eyed young men, with swish black suits,
clutching antique filofaxes to their bosoms, followed at the double. 'Arm 'em up!' trilled the
portly Thetan. 'Run every son-of-a-bitch through the E meter
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and send 'em out.' The pale young men shouted into their radio-phones and did what they
could to add to the general confusion.
'And get my chef down here, L. Ron continued, 'I want to discuss lunch.'
Pope Joan stayed put. Popes don't rush about in panic, it simply isn't done. She merely
addressed the assembled clergy.
'Consider the guns blessed. Aim them directly at Fundamentalist Foods and discharge
them. That is all.'
The lads at the Nemesis motorpool grudgingly paid off the chief mechanic. One bright spark
suggested a whip-round to get up a wreath for Rex. But no-one was particularly keen, so
they got on with the business in hand. 'Who will give me evens on the Jesuits?' asked the
chief mechanic, who was feeling lucky.
'News teams are covering both the rival stations, said Ms Vrillium. 'We are monitoring all
their broadcasts, internal as well as external. We will relay all relevant information to the
viewers the moment anything truly significant occurs.'
'You consider that a state of war now exists?'
'Oh yes, dear. No doubt about it.'
Gloria was all smiles. 'Good. And technical are going to run all the appropriate archive
footage? Threats, recriminations, cover-ups, scandals, corruption in high places. All the
horny stuff?'
'The stuff we have been manufacturing for years, dear? All taken care of. Overkill, is, I
believe, the expression.'
'There is, I trust, no chance whatever that Dan might have survived the blast?'
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'None. Intelligence informed us that a bomb had been fitted to Rex's air car. We took the
liberty of exploding that first. They had nowhere to run to.'
'Shame,' said twenty billion Phnaargs. But they re-mained glued to their sets, all the same.
'Good.' Gloria stretched languidly and ran her fingers through her hair. 'I am, of course, very
sorry about Rex. But, as they say, you can't make a really good lubricant without breaking
eggs.'
'You certainly can't,' Ms Vrillium willingly agreed. I wonder what an egg is, and where you can
get one at this time of day? she mused.
'Oh, boo and hoo and boo hoo hoo,' sobbed the Sneaky Reekie. 'I'm a dud. A great big dud.
The shame, the shame.'
Rex patted the blubbering bomb upon the dented nosecone. 'Never mind,' he said
encouragingly. 'It's all for the best, you know.'
The last of my line,' wailed the missile, 'and how does my world end?'
'Not with a bang but a whimper?'
'Oh cruel, cruel.'
'But let's look on the bright side,' Rex was all for that, 'you could have injured us badly.'
'Injured you badly? I would have atomised you. My destructive capabilities are ... were ...
should have been ... oh, the shame . . .'
'Hey, hold on there,' Elvis put in. 'If it wasn't this SOB, something made one hell of a bang out
there.'
'I think I might be able to explain,' said Fergus Shaman. 'There was a bomb in Rex's air car.
It was detonated by remote control from the Nemesis building. I fear it must have set off the
Dilithium Crystals in my spaceship
271 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]