“No, you really should see this, come over to the window, do.”
“I’m not interested.”
“Sure you are, sure you are. Come over. Bobby Boy, you come over too and Julie, come on, all of you.”
“Oh all right!” Mr Fudgepacker struggled from his chair and limped over to the window. Bobby Boy joined him in the limping. Julie didn’t limp, she sort of “swept”.
“Look at those guys,” said Mr Nelluss. “What do you think they’re up to?”
Many storeys below tiny figures moved in the car park. They were tossing things into a skip.
“Just builders,” said Mr Fudgepacker. “Now let’s not waste any more time.”
“I don’t think they’re builders,” said Mr Nelluss. “Surely those are cans of film they have there.”
Mr Fudgepacker’s eyes bulged behind the pebbled lenses of his spectacles. “Cans of film?” he croaked. “That’s my film, they’re opening up the cans. They’re exposing the negatives.”
“By God,” said Mr Nelluss. “That does look like what they’re doing, doesn’t it?”
“They’re chucking it onto the skip.” Mr Fudgepacker swayed to and fro. “They’re destroying it.”
“Hey, and look at that guy.” Mr Nellus pointed. “Surely that’s the Cyberstar equipment he’s got there. He’s not going to … oh my lord, he’s thrown that on too.”
“No!” Mr Fudgepacker croaked.
“And who are those?” Mr Nellus pointed once more. “Those guys in the protective suits. Are those flamethrowers they’re carrying?”
Mr Fudgepacker chewed upon his fingers. “Bobby Boy, do something. Do something.”
“What can I do?” Bobby Boy had fingers of his own to chew. “Look what they’re doing now.”
“Isn’t that gasoline?” Mr Nelluss asked. “Surely it is. They’re pouring it into the skip.”
Mr Fudgepacker gasped and tottered.
“They’re lighting it up.”
From below came a muffled report, a flash of flame and a mushroom cloud of oily black smoke.
“Dear, oh dear, oh dear,” said Mr Nellus, returning to his chair. “Now is that a blow to business, or what?” He perused the piles of contracts on the table before him and then, with a single sweeping gesture of his arm, he drove the lot into a wastepaper bin, positioned as if for the purpose.
Ernest Fudgepacker sank to his knees. Bobby Boy stood and made fists. Julie’s face wore a bitter expression, tears were welling in her eyes.
“Why?” croaked Mr Fudgepacker. “Why? Who did this? Who?”
“I did it,” said Eric Nelluss, suddenly losing his accent. “It was me.”
“It was you? But why? All the money. Everything. Everything lost. The future lost, oh the future, the future.”
“I did it,” said Eric Nelluss, “because my name is not Eric Nelluss. Can’t you guess who I really am?”
“You’re a mad old man,” shouted Bobby Boy. “And I’ll take your head off.”
Bobby Boy lunged across the table, but the Eric Nelluss who was apparently not Eric Nelluss skilfully caught him by the left wrist, snapped it and cast him down to the thick pile carpet.
“I could always take you,” said not-Eric Nelluss. “I did ju-jitsu at night school, remember?”
Bobby Boy clutched at his maimed wrist. “Russell?” he gasped. “Is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me.” Russell settled back into his big red chairman’s chair.
“But how? You’re old, or is that make-up? You bastard.”
“It’s not make-up.” Russell took a sip of champagne. “I am old. I’m more than sixty-five years old. I gave up my life for this day. For this moment. My time. I gave up my time.”
“But how?”
“I know how,” said Julie. “He came back from the future with one of the time belts and he went into the past.”
“Correct,” said Russell. “It was a one-way journey. You were always one step ahead of me. That’s what gave me the idea. I would be one step ahead of you. I went back to 1955 and I took a job in the film industry. Just a humble gopher, but I worked hard. You know me, Mr Fudgepacker, I work hard and if I’m given a job to do, I do it. I worked my way up. Well, I knew which films to invest in, didn’t I? But it was hard work. But as the years went by I grew more and more powerful. I only had one ambition, you see, to be top of the heap.
“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.”