Sprout Mask Replica (Completely Barking Mad Trilogy Book 1) by Robert Rankin

Author:Robert Rankin [Rankin, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Far Fetched Books
Published: 2012-07-24T04:00:00+00:00

I awoke all alone in the limo

Parked upon grey mud flats

In the distance I saw

Several men, three or four,

They were searching for drowned sailors’ hats.

And the sea was a ribbon of mercury

That underlined the sky

And the sky was blue

As a blue suede shoe

And sweet as apple

Smack! went a fist into the side of my face.

‘Pie,’ I said. ‘Ouch,’ I continued. ‘What did you hit me for this time?’

Litany smiled in through the open car window. ‘The poetry,’ she replied. ‘It’s appalling.’

‘It’s a necessary evil. I nursed my grazed cheek, felt at my fat lip and gingerly tested my testes. ‘I have to keep poetry in my head. To concentrate on. Otherwise I have to compensate. Endlessly. For everything.’

‘Yes, I know all about that.’

‘You do?’ She opened the car door and I scrambled out onto the mud. ‘What do you know?’

‘While you slept, I hacked into your uncle’s computer. I know all about how you have to compensate, maintain the balance of equipoise. It’s all in there, your entire case history. The Ministry of Serendipity have been monitoring you for years.’

‘They never have?’

‘They have too.’

‘Swine!’

‘The gigs you played last night. The jokes you told from the print-outs. That was all part of a secret government experiment, to see whether you could actually cause great changes by performing small actions. Be the mystical butterfly of chaos.’

‘Secret government experiment?’ I shook my head, which hurt my cheek and my fat lip, but mercifully left my testicles in peace. ‘So are you saying that my brother and my uncle both work for the M.o.S.?’

‘It’s all there in the computer files.’

‘Does it say what damage I caused? They said something about typhoons, disasters.’

Litany smiled. It was a beautiful smile. I could almost forgive her for all the hitting. Almost, but not quite. ‘You didn’t cause any disasters,’ she smiled. ‘It was a controlled experiment aimed specifically at creating fluctuations in the world’s money markets.’

‘But they said—’

‘Forget what they said. They got it wrong.’

I shook my head once more. But carefully this time. ‘They’re all a pack of swine,’ I declared. ‘And I’m not working for any of them.’

‘So what do you intend to do?’

‘Well, I’m not going home. I’ll stay here. Where is here, by the way?’

‘We’re just outside Skelington Bay on the south coast.’

‘Well, I’ll stay here. I’ll merge anonymously into the holiday crowd.’

‘It’s not a bad idea,’ she said, with yet another smile, ‘except for one thing.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘If you want to merge anonymously, I think you’d better change out of your gold lamé catsuit. Come on, I’ll drive you into town and buy you some new clothes.’

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ I said. ‘Except for one thing.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Well, if you’d care to look behind you, you’ll notice that the limo has now sunk up to its roof in the mud.’

She looked and she saw and she didn’t smile this time.

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