“Fe… Fi… Fo… Fum.” As a great section of flooring smashed aside, Neville scrambled up through the opening. He was bloody and scarred, with great wounds upon his arms and legs, but his face bore an old nobility. He was indeed a Titan, a god of olden Earth. Yes, there were giants in the Earth in those days, and also after that. Neville stood, a Hercules in soiled Y-fronts. “All right,” he cried. “Who wants a fight then?”
“Not us,” cried Jim Pooley.
“Hello, lads,” said the bulging barman, sighting the cringing twosome, and flexing a selection of chest muscles. “You appear to be somewhat unfairly outnumbered.”
“A bit of assistance would not go amiss.”
Neville flexed shoulders which had previously only been flexed by the Incredible Hulk, and even then to a minor degree.
“The rest has done him good,” said John. “He looks well on it.”
Amidst a roar of green flame, Cerberus, the hound of hell, sprang up from the netherworld beneath to confront the barman. Its three heads, one now shredded and dangling, worked and snapped, saliva drooled from fanged jaws, and the stench of brimstone filled the already overloaded air. The scorpion tail flicked and dived. “Come on, doggy,” called the barman. “Time for a trip down to the vet’s!” The creature launched itself towards him, passing over two terrified human professional cowerers. Neville caught it by a throat and the two crashed back into the crowd.
“On your toes, Jim,” called Omally. “I see a small ray of light.” Shrinking and flinching, he and Jim edged away.
Neville swung the beast about, bringing down a score of robots. Others snatched at him but he swept them aside. Above, the mainframe pulsed and flashed, the moving lights forming obscene images. Pooley and Omally backed towards it, the exit was thoroughly blocked and the only way seemed like up.
Neville drove his fist through a plasticized face, sending up a cascade of synthetic blood. The hound of hell fell upon him once more but he tore down a lower jaw with a rending of bone and gristle. He was quite coming into his own.
Pooley and Omally gained a first staircase. “Not more stairs,” gasped Jim.
“Pull the plugs out,” screamed Omally. “Pull it to pieces. Follow me.” He thundered up the steps on to the first gantry. A vista of housed microcircuits met his gaze. Omally thrust forth his hand and tore out a drawered section, punching the things free. Pooley followed suit. Faces turned from the mêlée below, a group of androids detached themselves from the throng. Pooley ran along, drawing out random circuit patterns. Omally followed on, punching them from their housings. They gained the second level. Ahead stood a robot barring their way. “You duck, I’ll hit it.” Omally pressed Jim forward. The robot swung its hand at him but Jim ducked out of reach, grabbing at the knees. Omally drove a fist over his diving back, and the thing lurched off the gantry to fall into the chaos which now reigned below.
Neville stood defiant, taking on all comers. Cerberus with but one head left snarling, snapped at his ankles. A ring of shattered pseudo-corpses surrounded the combatants. John and Jim gained the third level. They were making something of an art out of dispatching the face-workers to whatever fate their microchipped god had in store for them.
“Pull it to pieces, Jimmy boy.”
“I’m pulling, I’m pulling.” Jim ran forward, dragging out segments, Omally came behind, kicking and punching. Microcircuits fell like evil snow upon the ferocious crowd welling beneath. Up another stairway and beyond.
Below them the lights exhibited a jumbled confusion. Great battle waged upon the floor. Neville stood head and shoulders, and a good deal more, above the great ring of his attackers. Blue fire sparkled as they strove to apply their killing weapons to his naked flesh, but Neville snatched out the arms from their silicone sockets and flung them high over his head. Cerberus had barked his last, but from the great chasm yawning in the marble floor other horrors spilled, spinning and thrashing, whirling out of the pit. Barbs and spines, close balls of fur, animals and swollen insects with the heads of infants. A darkness was filling the air, as if it were a palpable thing, felt as much as seen. A fog of hard night.
“Bandits at six o’clock,” shouted Pooley. “Get a move on, John.”
Omally applied his boot to the face of a pursuer as it loomed up from a stairwell. “Onward and upward, Jimmy.”
The two men struggled in an unreal twilight world. Below, Neville’s great warcries and the dull thuds of falling, broken bodies mingled with the unholy screechings of the monstrous obscenities pouring up from the pit. The siren had ceased its banshee wail but voices issued from the computer’s mainframe, sighing and gasping from the circuitry, whispering in a thousand tongues, few ever those of man. A hand fastened about Pooley’s ankle, drawing him down. Omally turned, sensing rather than seeing his friend’s plight. He wrenched out a drawer-load of circuits and swung it like an axe, severing the clinging hand at the wrist. The thing remained in its deathlock about Jim’s ankle, but the hero clambered on.
They were by now high upon the computer’s great face. The air was thin but sulphurous. John clutched at his chest and strained to draw breath. Pooley leant upon his shoulder, coughing and gasping. “We’re running out of stairs,” he croaked. Above them now was nothing but darkness. They stood engulfed in it, breathing it. The sounds of battle echoed below but nought could now be seen of the conflict. “You don’t happen to see any daylight lurking above?” Jim asked. “Fast running out of wind this man.”
“I can see sod all. Get off there.” A hand had John by the trouser cuff. He squinted down in horror to see no other face than his own, leering up. Without thought or feeling he tore out another section of circuitry and thrust it down into the snapping mouth which sought his leg. Sparks blistered the visage, and the thing sank away into the darkness.
Pooley clung to a further staircase, his energy, such as it ever was, all but gone. “About making me a Cardinal?” he gasped.
The Pope followed him up. “Bless you, my son. Popes and Cardinals first. Press on.”
The two thrust blindly onward; there was nothing left to do but climb. The metal handrails were like ice and their hands were raw from the clinging cold which tore at the flesh. Their attackers poured at them in an unceasing horde. They called to them in voices which were their own, jibing and threatening, crying out explicit details of the fate which they intended for them.
“I’m gone,” said Jim. “I can climb no more, leave me to die.”
Omally fumbled about with numb and bleeding fingers. “I will join you,” said he. “There are no more stairs.” Pressed back against the icy metal of the mainframe the two men stood, alone and trapped. The mob surged up beneath them, swarming over the catwalks and gantries. There was finally nowhere left to run.
“I don’t want to die here,” said Pooley, his voice that of pitiful defeat. “I’m not supposed to be here, amongst all of this. This isn’t true, this isn’t right.”
Omally clung to the cold hard wall. They were neither of them supposed to be here. They were alone, two men, leaning now as in a time long past, upon the parapet of the canal bridge, above the oiled water of the old Grand Union. They looked down into their own reflections and those of the old stars. The stars always had much to say to drunken men, although none of their counsel and advice was ever heeded upon the cold, cruel, hangover-morning. But the truths lay there. For ordinary men, the truths always lay there upon that very moment before falling over. It was there at that instant a man was truly himself. The truth lay in that netherworld between drunkenness and oblivion, and dwelt where no sober man could ever grasp it. Only the drunken taste reality, and that for an all-too-fleeting moment. Removed from all sensible thought they made their own laws and moulded futures unthinkable at sunrise. Ah yes, John and Jim had tasted the truth upon many many an occasion.