“To be the biggest and most influential independent film producer and distributor in the world. The one you would have to bring the movie to. And you did. And now it’s all over. The film is destroyed, the Cyberstar equipment is destroyed. It is all over. All of it.”
“No,” Mr Fudgepacker groaned. “It can’t end like this, it just can’t.”
“But it can and it has. I agree it could have been a whole lot more exciting. Explosions going off, roof-top chases, chases through time, even. Guns, violence, all the stuff you love in your movies. But that’s not life, is it? I know life is duller than art, but there’s more power in the boardroom than on the battlefield. It’s all over now. It’s done.”
“No!” Mr Fudgepacker raised a shrivelled fist. “I’m not done. He’s not done.”
“I’m afraid you’re wrong again,” said Russell. “He is done. He is being disposed of even as we speak.”
“No! That cannot be.”
“I set up a little bureau back in the Fifties,” said Russell. “Department 23. To investigate paranormal occurrences. The data came in from police stations around the country. I called myself The Captain, investigated one or two very strange ones in the Brentford district. A crime wave caused by a man who turned out not to be a man at all, just a bundle of spare parts.
“The workings of that thing in your basement. I’ve kept Him under close surveillance and I’ve learned all about Him and all about His weaknesses.”
“He doesn’t have any weaknesses. Only –”
“Only his problem with time,” said Russell. “He lives time in reverse, doesn’t he? He was born in the future, and he’ll die in the past. He halts the process by absorbing other people’s time. He can do that to them. Steal their time. And I know about his voice. His one voice which is many. The voice that has the power to hypnotize and control, the voice you intended to dub onto the movie so that all who heard it would be controlled.”
“He’ll take you,” crowed Mr Fudgepacker. “He’ll take your time.”
“No,” said Russell. “A special unit of my operatives is already at the Emporium. They are wearing protective reflecting suits. And earphones which broadcast white noise. Your creature cannot influence them. They have the time belt. I’ve set it for the year dot, as it were. I wonder how long ago that is? A million years? A billion? They will put the time belt on the creature and press the little button.”
As Russell spoke the intercom purred. Russell whispered words into it and whispered words were returned to him.
“It is done,” said Russell. “It is all over.”
Julie slumped into one of the boardroom chairs and stared across the table at the old man who sat before her. “You really did a number on us, didn’t you, Russell? You really pulled out all the stops.”
“It has cost me my life. I have a chronic heart condition. I only have months, maybe only weeks, to live. But I held on because I knew this day would come. I’m finished now, but I have stopped you.”
“Oh no you haven’t,” said Julie. “There’s something you’ve forgotten.”
“What?” Russell asked.
“I still have my time belt, I can go back to yesterday and cancel this meeting.”
“No,” said Russell. “You wouldn’t do that?”
“Oh yes I would.” Julie opened her jacket. She was wearing the belt. She adjusted the little dial on the buckle.
“No,” implored Russell. “Don’t do it.”
“I’ll see you yesterday,” said Julie. “Except you won’t see today. I’ll gun you down as you cross the street. You’re dead, Russell. Goodbye, and it hasn’t been nice knowing you.”
And with that she pressed the button on her belt and promptly vanished.
“Ha ha!” Bobby Boy laughed up from the floor. “You’re dead, Russell. Ha, ha, ha.”
Russell smiled. “I don’t feel very dead,” he said.
“But she’ll shoot you, yesterday.”
“I don’t remember being shot, yesterday.”
“What?”
“You didn’t really think I’d leave a loose end like that floating about, surely?”
“What?”
“I’m afraid I did something yesterday,” said Russell. “I crept into Julie’s bedroom and did a bit of reprogramming to her time belt. I think you’ll find she’s a long way from here now. Back in the year dot.”
“You bastard!” croaked Fudgepacker. “That was my wife.”
“The Führer’s girlfriend,” said Russell. “She played you false. She played everybody false.”
“Ah yes,” Ernest Fudgepacker rose from his knees. “The Führer, the Führer.”
“Ah yes. The Führer.” Russell perused the golden Rolex on his wrist. “I think just about now, on the western horizon … If you’ll just look into the sky.”
Ernest Fudgepacker turned and as he did so a bright flash, almost like a daytime firework, lit up the western sky and then faded into the blue.
Ernest Fudgepacker groaned.
“Bomb on board the Flügelrad,” said Russell. “If only he hadn’t kept popping back from the future to have a drink with you. Still, at least this time he went out with a bang, rather than a whimper.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw what you did to him in the future,” said Russell. “What did you do, sacrifice him to that time creature of yours?”
“I would have, a couple of years from now, for what he did. Taking my beautiful wife.”
“Well, he’s gone now,” said Russell, “for ever. And that, gentlemen, I think, is it. I’m afraid the excitement has all been a little much for me, I will have to have a lie down. I can call for a paramedic if you want, Bobby Boy.”
“No thanks,” the thin man climbed unsteadily to his feet.
“And you’d best get back to the Emporium, Mr Fudgepacker,” said Russell. “There’s a lot of business coming your way.”
“There is?”
“I’m producing a movie,” said Russell. “It will be my last. But I’ll want to hire props from the Emporium. Many props. All the props. You’ll make enough for a happy retirement, Mr Fudgepacker. I wouldn’t deprive you of that.”
Mr Fudgepacker sighed. “You’ve a good heart, Russell. You’ve always had a good heart.”
“Sadly,” said Russell, “I now have a bad one. But you’ll get your retirement fund. I’ll see that you do.”
Mr Fudgepacker shuffled to the lift door accompanied by a sulking Bobby Boy, and then he turned.
“Tell me, Russell,” he said, “what’s your movie about?”
“It’s autobiographical,” said Russell. “It’s called Nostradamus Ate my Hamster.”
22
“And?” said Pooley.
“And what?” said Omally.
“And what happened next? I suppose.”
“Well, nothing happened next. That’s the end of the story.”
“Oh,” said Pooley, taking a sip from his pint. “So that was it. Just like that.”
“Just like that.” Omally joined Jim with a sip from his own. “But it wasn’t really just like that, was it? I mean Russell gave up all of his life for just that one moment. A pretty noble thing to do by any reckoning.”
Jim nodded thoughtfully. “It’s not the way we would have done it,” he said. “If we’d done it there would have been explosions going off and people running all over the place.”
“But we didn’t do it, did we?”
Jim now shook his head with an equal degree of thoughtfulness. “No,” said he, “you’re right there.”