The insight I had received was a terrifying one, but it provided some sort of explanation for what was going on – and it also showed me a possible way out of the situation. The key factor was Trev’s own faith in his powers, and if I had built that faith up I should also be able to tear it down and restore him to his former state of ineffectual goofiness.
“I have a confession to make,” I said to Trev, relieved to find he had left me the power of speech. “Ralph and I have been making money out of this thing with the horses. We’ve been duping people all along. It was what we set out to do, right from the beginning.”
Trev eyed me with sorrow. “You’re a broken reed, Des.”
I nodded. “The point is, Trev, that we even duped you. Nearly all the predictions you made about the races were wrong. I fooled you into thinking you were getting them right.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” he said, giving me a calm and pitying smile. “You showed me the letters yourself. And why are the people I helped still sending you their money?”
“But those are only a fraction of the number we started out with.”
“That’s right,” Wynter chimed in, apparently sensing what I was trying to do. “You see, my whole plan was based on starting off with a huge…”
“Silence!” There was a look of Mosaic anger on Trev’s round face as he turned on Wynter. “You are the one who corrupted my cousin, you are the serpent – and you shall be punished accordingly.”
He raised his UFO detector, waved it once – and Wynter disappeared. For a second I thought he had simply been dematerialized, then I saw there was a tiny speckled snake wriggling on the floor right where he had been standing. I stared down at it in dismay. Trev, revealing a ruthless streak I didn’t even know he possessed, completed Wynter’s punishment by raising one of his boots and stamping hard on the snake, converting it into a revolting mess.
“My God,” I quavered. This is terrible.”
“You have nothing to fear from me,” Trev said. “You are a weak man, Des, prey to all the desires of the flesh, but you have a hidden core of goodness. I have forgiven you for your sins and will give you a place by my side as soon as… Well, as soon as…” His words tailed away uncertainly.
I had been staring at him for several nervous seconds before it dawned on me that he had no idea what to do next, that he was all dressed up with supernatural powers and epaulettes on his T-shirt, and had nowhere to go. My gaze followed his to the clock on the office wall. The time was ten after ten, which meant that the Supreme Nizam was late for his appointment. Trev gnawed his lower lip and I could see he was having difficulty in reconciling himself with the notion that a Lord of Orion could have human faults such as tardiness.
“How about that?” I said, seizing the chance. “It’s way after ten and there hasn’t been any cosmic visitation. Can’t you see what this means, Trev? It proves…”
“Clam up,” Trev said irritably and, having seen what he could do to people who displeased him, I clammed up. He brooded for a moment, his face looking more and more like that of the Trev I knew, and I began to hope against hope that the bubble of his beliefs had been punctured. I studied his halo, trying to decide if it had shrunk or grown dimmer. It may have been my imagination at work, but it seemed to me that his aura really was on the wane.
I was beginning to feel quite optimistic about my chances of escaping from him when he got one of his inspirations. He raised the UFO detector to his eye and aimed it at the ceiling. There was a moment of silence and then, to my consternation, a look of inhuman elation spread over his chubby features. He snapped the telescope shut, almost dislodging the radio tube from the end of it, and turned to me.
“I’ve been a fool,” he said, beaming. I don’t know what came over me, Des. All that stuff about the Supreme Nizam coming here – it was pure nonsense.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I soothed, hardly able to credit my luck. “Anybody can make a little mistake.”
Trev shook his head. “It wasn’t a little mistake, Des – I got the message completely wrong. You see, the Supreme Nizam wants me to go to him!”
“Hold on a minute,” I said, my voice rising into a bleat of alarm as new vistas of peril opened up in my mind.
“I don’t have a minute.” Trev raised his arms and now he really was huge and awesome. “My work on Earth has ended. The time has come for me to lead the faithful to the Kingdom of Orion.”
I made an attempt to pull his arms down again, but I was too late.
The floor gave a sickening lurch, the office walls dissolved and blew away like mist, and all at once I was standing with Trev at the centre of a circular landscape about the size of a football field. It was a surrealistic landscape, dotted with ornate fountains and artificial-looking trees covered with small tufts of white. Beyond the perimeter was a hard blackness, and when I turned to my left I could see the blue-white disk of the Earth floating on a background of stars. I moaned aloud as it came to me that I was out in space and travelling through the interplanetary void in a kind of environmental bubble conjured up by Trev. I fell on my knees before him and tugged at the hem of his T-shirt.
“Have mercy on me,” I pleaded. “I don’t want to go to Betelgeuse – please send me back to Earth.”
“Can’t do that,” he said in a voice full of compassion. “Earth is no more.”
He made a casual gesture with his UFO detector as he spoke, and the Earth winked out of existence.
I cringed away from him. “Wha… what have you done, Trev? All those people…”
“Not all of them.” He gave me one of his terrifying indulgent smiles. “The harvest of the faithful is safely gathered.”
At that moment I became aware that there were about fifty people wandering around the circumscribed Dali landscape, their faces blanked out with shock. I recognized several as members of Trev’s Orion Society, and could only surmise that the rest were ‘all-winner’ clients of inside information inc. The whole affair must have been even more traumatic for them than it had been for me, but I didn’t get time to sympathize with their plight.
Trev waved his telescope and suddenly all of us were dressed in unisex garments which took the form of ankle-length robes. I looked down at the unfamiliar object which had materialized in my hands and saw that it was a small harp.
“Come, my children,” Trev called in a voice of thunder. “Come and sing the praises of the Supreme Nizam of Betelgeuse, who has called us to our rightful places in the Kingdom of Orion. The journey will take many years, but do not worry – there is an abundance of food and drink. Now, sing!”
Raising our voices in unison – because there is no way to disobey Trev’s commands – and with me plinking dispiritedly on the harp, we began to sing.
That was three years ago and we’ve been travelling through space ever since. I’ve become as fat as a hippo through lack of exercise and having to get all my nourishment from the Coco-blob trees and the Blissfizz fountains. With Trev in complete control of things here inside his space bubble life is, as you might imagine, hellishly boring – no booze, no decent food, no sex, and we spend sixteen hours a day singing the bloody awful hymns he composes. I don’t mind telling you, the only thing that keeps me from going mad is trying to figure out what is going to happen when we finally get to Betelgeuse.