“Hear, hear,” mumbled a muddy brown Major, drifting into a pharmaceutical haze. A further chorus of hear hears filled the unhealthy atmosphere of the council chamber. Philip Cameron clutched at his testicles and maintained a bitter, clench-toothed silence.
Ms Naylor smiled and nodded her head gently as if in time to some secret melody. “So be it then,” she said dramatically. “Consider it done.” She clapped her hands and at the signal the doors of the council chamber opened to reveal a pair of Covent Garden design-studio-executive-types sporting designer sunglasses, clipped beards and Paul Smith suits. They flanked what appeared to be a hospital trolley, its upper regions shrouded beneath folds of white linen.
“Oooh!” said Clyde Ffog, straightening his tie. “Nice.”
“May we enter?” enquired the taller of the two.
Clyde Ffog nodded enthusiastically. “Please do,” said he.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the smaller of the pair, “I am Julian Membrane and this is my associate, Lucas Mucus.” Lucas bowed slightly from the waist, anticipating the looks of disbelief which generally greeted his name. “Of the Membrane, Mucus, Willoby, Turncoat and Gladbetook Partnership, specialists in the conceptualizing of new marketing trends through increased consumer product awareness. Design Consultants. Our card.”
Paul Geronimo eyed the thing suspiciously, “White brother speak with forked tongue,” he observed. “Talk load of old buffalo chips,” his brother agreed.
“We should very much like to make for you our presentation,” Membrane continued. “We are acting upon the part of our client, a great philanthropist who wishes to finance the games here. He is a scientist and something of a recluse and he wishes for us to make this presentation upon his behalf. He chooses anonymity; we honour his wishes.”
“Words spill from white brother’s mouth like wheat from chafing dish of careless squaw,” said Paul Geronimo. Barry eyed his brother proudly. He could never think of things like that to say. He went along with Paul’s conviction that they were a dual reincarnation of the great Apache chief mostly because he liked dressing up.
“Thus,” said Julian Membrane, “we offer our conceptual representation for the proposed Brentford Olympiad.” With a flourish, he drew aside the linen cover from the trolley to expose a scale model of Brentford. With a chorus of “oohs” and “ahs”, those councillors that were able rose from their seats to view the wonder. For wonder it indeed was.
The model’s realism was uncanny — the entire borough reduced, as if by magic, to doll’s house proportions. The councillors gathered about it, cooing and pointing, anxious to examine their own houses, as well as those of their fellows. Mavis Peake let out a little excited cry. “Even my bedroom curtains are the right colour!”
“What are those things in your back garden then?” Philip Cameron asked Clyde Ffog. “They look like instruments of torture.”
“Rubbish,” spluttered the reddening Ffog. “They’re … er … bean-frames.”
Philip Cameron was unconvinced. Paul Geronimo whispered loudly to the effect that “brown-hatted brother heap big bondage fan”.
“This is an invasion of privacy!” cried Ffog. “So where is the bloody stadium then, under the ground?”
Lucas Mucus shook his cropped head. “On the contrary, very much over the ground, as it happens.”
“Oh, yes!” crowed Ffog. “And where do you propose to put it?”
Mucus took up a pointer. “Here, here, here, here and here,” he dipped variously about the borough.
Clyde Ffog looked baffled. Ms Naylor said, “I think you’d better demonstrate, Lucas.”
“Certainly, madam. If you would be so kind, Julian.”
Julian smiled, nodded and, stooping, withdrew from a compartment in the trolley a glittering object approximately a third of the size of the model village. It had much the look of a flat star which contained at its centre a dancehall mirror-globe. Julian held it out proudly before the assembly. “The Star Stadium,” he said. If he had been hoping for a round of applause then he was to be sorely disappointed.
“And where would you like to stick that?” asked Ffog pointedly.
“Lucas, if you would be so kind.”
Lucas nodded with politeness and pressed a small button at the side of the model. There was a hiss of hydraulics, and from each of the five locations previously appointed arose a telescopic column. When these had risen to their full extent, Julian stepped forward and placed the “star” gently upon them, tip upon tip. “Wallah,” he said.
Lucas made free with his pointer. “The columns will be five hundred feet high,” he said proudly. “Traffic will flow into the North and East legs directly from the Great West Road, to rise upon a continuous belt lift to parking bays beneath the stadium. Each area between star tip and sphere houses an Olympic village, the central sphere a stadium seating five hundred thousand, swimming pools, full games complexes, etc., etc., etc.”
“Hold on, hold on,” blustered Clyde Ffog. “You are seriously proposing to hang this thing above Brentford? Apart from the obvious dangers, it will plunge half the town into permanent darkness.”
“Do you think so?” Julian asked. “Look closely at the model.”
Clyde Ffog gave the thing a good squinting. To his amazement he realized that the stadium cast no shadow. “There is no shadow!” he exclaimed.
“That heap big medicine by any reckoning,” declared Barry.
“A scientific breakthrough,” said Lucas. “The top of the stadium is covered in solar cells, these absorb light and project it through similar cells on the underside. In fact, when the real stadium is completed it will appear literally invisible from below, there will simply be the appearance of a clear sky.”
“If not talking out back of loincloth then that technological miracle of first magnitude,” Barry said, nodding respectfully. “Nobel prize in that for inventor.”
“That is only one small miracle,” said Lucas. “You mentioned obvious danger did you not?”
Clyde nodded fiercely, “What if the whole shebang falls down on Brentford? Don’t tell me you can put up a thing like that without something getting dropped, or falling off!”
“Julian,” said Lucas. Julian reached into his trouser pocket and withdrew a flat black disc about the size of an old penny. “This, ladies and gentlemen, is ‘Gravitite’. A self-buoyant polysilicate which has rather special qualities.” He held the disc between thumb and forefinger and then released it. To general amazement and gasps of disbelief it did not fall to the floor, as one might reasonably expect. Instead it remained where it was, suspended in the air in defiance of all the laws of nature, or some of them at least.
“That not heap big medicine,” said Barry Geronimo. “That fucking impossible!”
“Not really,” said Julian Membrane. “You see, it is not actually defying gravity. The disc is falling, but it is falling so slowly that its movement is scarcely perceptible. So you see the stadium is really only moored to the five columns. During the two months or so it is in use it will fall possibly two inches or so.”
Even though he felt sure it would get him nowhere, Clyde Ffog persisted, “What if someone drops something during the actual assembling? Hammer? Rivets? Someone in Brentford is sure to get killed!”
“No chance of that whatsoever.” Julian’s smugness was becoming roundly intolerable. “Gravitite possesses other qualities. Its molecular structure is such that two pieces need only be touched together for them to weld unbreakably as one. Therefore no rivets, no visible joins, no hammers. The stadium will be constructed elsewhere in sections, towed into place by dirigibles and manoeuvred together at night.”