Icarus gathered up the papers and the boxes of tablets and the spectremeter. “No,” said he. “I think we’ll just walk from here.”
Down the exit ramp from the first floor came the long dark automobile.
“On second thoughts,” said Icarus, “I think we’ll run.”
Johnny Boy couldn’t run very fast, because he had very short legs. Icarus managed to flag down a cab.
“Brentford,” said he. “And fast, please.”
“Ah, you again,” said the cabbie. “And with your mate out of the box, this time. Hop in then and I’ll tell you some more about the knowledge.”
On the journey back to Brentford, which was not achieved in quite the speedy manner Icarus would have hoped for, the cabbie told Icarus some more about the knowledge. And Johnny Boy, who had a passionate interest in the geography of Greater and Inner London, and also the songs of Bruce Springsteen, asked the cabbie how you got to Thunder Road.
“What an interesting man,” said Johnny Boy, when he and Icarus had finally stepped from the taxi.
“Fascinating,” said Icarus Smith.
“But I think he was wrong about turning left in Arnold Layne,” said Johnny Boy, who also had a love for early Pink Floyd. “So what, exactly, are we doing here?”
“This is a pub,” said Icarus.
“Yes, well, I can see it’s a pub.”
“It’s called the Three Gables and I’m supposed to be meeting my best friend, Friend Bob, here tonight. I’m going to tell him everything.”
“Do you think that’s wise?”
“Absolutely,” said Icarus. “In movies, people always keep things to themselves until the last minute. It heightens the tension. Personally I don’t need any more heightened tension today.”
“You’re gonna get it,” said Johnny Boy, “when you’ve taken the drug.”
“That’s why I want to be with Friend Bob when I take it.”
Johnny Boy made a doubtful face. “It’s a very wise man who knows who his real friends are,” said he. “Friend Bob might not be what you think he is. You’d better let me take a look at him first.”
“To see if he’s a wrong’un?” Icarus pushed open the door to the saloon bar. Johnny Boy followed him in.
The Three Gables was a proper drinking man’s pub. No theme nights or foppish fancies here. It was your honest to goodness, down to Earth, spit and gob, drinking man’s pub. And you don’t see many of those around any more. It served proper flat ale in proper dirty glasses. Had proper full ashtrays and a proper foul-mouthed barmaid with an enormous bosom and a taste for group sex with Jehovah’s witnesses (well, they do keep knocking at your door when you’re taking a bath). There was proper unswept lino on the floor and proper unmopped vomit in the gents. There was a proper one man band called Johnny G, who performed there on a Tuesday night. And proper drunken louts who threw proper light ale bottles at him when he did.
The atmosphere was fugged throughout with proper cigarette smoke.
It was all right and proper and the way a pub should be.
“I hate it here,” said Johnny Boy. “It smells.”
“What can I buy you?” asked Icarus Smith, making his way through the proper crowd of early evening drinkers to the bar.
“Hold on, don’t lose me.”
Icarus returned to assist the small man to a quiet corner table.
“Look after all this stuff,” said Icarus, placing the boxes of tablets and the papers and the spectremeter down on the bench seat next to Johnny Boy. “I’ll get us in the drinks.”
“A short for me,” said Johnny Boy. “But make it a large short, a triple. Vodka, no ice, off you go.”
And so off Icarus went. Presently he returned in the company of a vodka bottle and two glasses.
“Blimey, I’ll bet that cost you a few bob,” said Johnny Boy.
“An understanding exists between myself and the big-bosomed barmaid,” said Icarus.
Presently still, the bottle was uncorked, glasses filled and glasses drained away. Icarus opened one of the boxes of tablets.
He placed a tablet on his palm and rolled it all about. It didn’t look all that much. Just a little white pill. There was nothing about it that said BEWARE.
“What will I see, when I take it?” he asked Johnny Boy.
“The truth,” said the small man. “And you won’t like it one little bit.”
“And are you seeing the truth? Now, at this moment?”
Johnny Boy glanced all around and about. “Yeah,” he said. “And it’s all pretty safe in here. There’s nothing that should rattle you too much. But out there,” Johnny Boy gestured to out there in general, “out there is a whole different matter. What you’ll see out there will shake you up. You’ll never be the same man again once you’ve taken the drug. The effects don’t wear off.”
Icarus lifted the tablet to his mouth.
But then he paused. Did he really truly want to know this truth, whatever it was? Did he really want to take some strange drug, whose unknown effects would be with him for ever? Did he, Icarus Smith, really really truly truly want to change the world? Yes, he’d had the dream. Yes, he was the relocator. Yes, he felt that he was on some mission that seemed almost divine.
But he was a lad of eighteen. His whole life stretched before him. He had already got himself into something rather dangerous. Would it not perhaps be better just to cut and run while he still had the chance?
“It’s a lot to think about, isn’t it?” said Johnny Boy.
“Far too much,” said Icarus Smith. “And that is not the way that I do business. So let’s leave it to fate. It either goes in, or it doesn’t.”
“Eh?”
Icarus tilted back his head, closed his eyes and opened his mouth. And then he flipped the tablet high into the air.
The tablet spun into the fug of cigarette smoke, caught a fleeting beam of sunlight when it reached its apogee, became a tiny star hung in a foul-smelling Heaven and then fell back to Earth.
To vanish down the throat of Icarus Smith.
“Fate has it then,” said Johnny Boy.
Icarus gagged and reached for his glass and swallowed down some vodka.
“There’s no going back now, lad,” said Johnny Boy. “Let’s just hope that you’re up to it. I think you are. In fact, I’m sure you are.”
Icarus wiped at his mouth. Sweat was already coming to his brow. The thought “Oh God, what have I done?” was crying very loudly in his head.
“Don’t panic,” said Johnny Boy, patting the arm of Icarus. “You won’t actually feel anything. You’ll experience a bit of double vision at first, but when that clears … well, when that clears, we’ll talk about things.”
Icarus clutched at his head. There was something going on in there. Something decidedly odd. There was a rushing noise in his ears now. And a queer sensation, as if parts of his brain were being tightened, or bolted up, or realigned in some way.
“Tuned in,” said Johnny Boy. “Your brain’s just being tuned in. It’s all to do with frequencies, you see. Like the ghosts. We’re all attuned to only a limited range of frequencies, which is why we can only hear and see and smell a limited number of things. We can’t see everything that’s really going on around us. And that’s the way the wrong’uns would like to keep it. That’s why they’ll stop at nothing to make sure the professor’s drug doesn’t fall into the right hands. Except it already has. It’s fallen into yours.”
The double vision was really kicking in now. Icarus pinched at his eyes. “I can’t see.” He shook his head from side to side. “I’m going blind.”
“It will clear, lad. It will clear.”
Icarus suddenly jerked bolt upright, his eyes widened and he stared at Johnny Boy. And then his jaw dropped open and then it slowly closed again.
“My God,” said Icarus Smith. “Johnny Boy, you’re beautiful.”
“Well, thank you very much.”
“But you are. You’re beautiful. You glow. You’ve got a golden aura all around you.”