| Hargrove
the Marxist Detective and the Adventure of the HMS Hoobe-Entwhistle |
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Hargrove
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“There is no such thing as a stupid question,
but there are a whole lot of inquisitive idiots.” – Anon. The alien slide was pleasant, thought Hargrove, all
things considered. It was not
on fire (like that time in Prague), covered in sharp bits (Vienna), or
freezing cold (Edmonton). Edmonton…
Hargrove squirmed at the memory of his tongue sticking instantly to the
icy metal, while his body plunged down the pitched slope.
It had taken a skin graft and three months of physiotherapy before
he could recognizably pronounce ‘propeller’ or ‘dislocate.' Hargrove relaxed.
Nestled against his beloved Frieda, he enjoyed the ride.
In fact, he could almost imagine that he and Frieda were on a date
– the kind that normal couples experienced.
Yes, just like an amusement park ride.
He was happy. As he let his mind wander, his subconscious seized the rare
opportunity to remind Hargrove of something. It was one word: guns. With a scream, he shoved himself away from Frieda,
and frantically clawed at the chute.
“My guns! They’re
still on the ship! I must get
my guns!” The slide, only a
moment previously a pleasant ride, was far too slick and yielding for
Hargrove to climb even a fraction of an inch if he had been standing
still. With his present rate of speed, he hadn’t a chance. Sliding further down was Pat O’Lan.
He too had been enjoying the ride, up to the precise moment he saw
Hargrove struggling. “Sit
down, you idiot! The
dimensional-fabric slide is a one-way trip and can’t handle the stress
you are putting on it!” The word ‘it’ stretched out to cover about
fifteen syllables, and ranged up and down several octaves before hopping
over to the visible light spectrum and dopplering away from Hargrove.
The slide wavered, slithered and then disappeared entirely, leaving
Hargrove to fall far, far down into… What? The famed Marxist Detective’s powers of observation
told him…nothing, absolutely nothing.
Everything around him was grey and soft. There was no horizon and whatever light he was seeing by came
from no obvious source and cast no shadow. For a while he wandered, although he had no way of
knowing how long. He saw a man, although he would have sworn nobody was
standing there a second ago. There
was something incredibly familiar about him – the hair, the beard… Hargrove stammered, and his knees went weak.
“You… You’re Karl Marx!” The old man nodded.
“Mostly right. I am
the ghost of the late Karl Marx.” “I don’t understand.
For you to be a ghost would imply an afterlife, which would
indicate some sort of divine being. That
would mean religion, and a belief of religion which would repudiate when
you wrote ‘to abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people
is to demand their real happiness. The demand to give up illusions about
the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs
which needs illusions.’” “Yes, yes,” said the ghost, tiredly.
“I’ve heard it all many times before.
One of you thickies dies and manages to run into me.
Then it’s nothing but ‘blah, blah, blah, opiate of the
peoples’ and ‘blah, blah, blah, religion is the sigh of the oppressed
creature,’ until I manage to ditch you somewhere.” Hargrove stared in disbelief. “But, but…” “Do you think it’s been easy? I’ve been dead, what, about a century now?
Let me tell you what I’ve been doing: nothing, nada, zilch.
With no deity to take care of me, I’ve been floating around and
around in Limbo like it was some cosmic airport luggage claim.
I’ve had a lot of time to think about things, and if you want my
opinion, convert. “I mean, really.
‘Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real
distress and also the protest against real distress.’
What the hell kind of crap is that?
It sounds like a high school essay.” “LA LA LA LA LA LA LALALALALALAAAAA!” screamed
Hargrove, running as fast as he could from the terrifying phantom.
It was not easy running with his fingers firmly thrust in his ears
but he managed somehow. The scream was cut off as if a switch had been flicked,
replaced by a wheeze and a groan, accompanied by the sound of snapping
ribs. Hargrove had run full
force into the formidable, Gibraltar-like chest of Trotskov. “Well, well, well,” she said, peeling him off her
rock-solid bosom. “Just
when you thought you had seen the last of me.” Her laughter was like a subway train navigating a
particularly sharp corner. “Surprised
to find me here? My alien
masters were sending Serapion and I to Yerevan, when your bumbling fouled
our matter transmitter – I’m sure you managed to suck any number of
things into this. In a way, I
should thank you for helping me. There
was no way I wanted to let Frieda leave before I could finish her
disrobing… uh… debriefing... uh.” “I should thank you too, for letting me finish what
we started in Reykjavik.” Hargrove’s
hand closed around the smooth grips of his Webley, but O’Lan stopped him
from drawing. “Please, no
shooting,” he pleaded. “One
stray shot in this place could doom us for all eternity.” Reluctantly, he released his grip. “What is this
place?” asked Hargrove, looking around. “This is an inter-dimensional pocket universe,
caused by your attempt to climb up the slide.
You’ve caused a wrinkle in the fabric of time and space.
We, and anything that was close enough to the incident, are stuck
here until it sorts itself out,” said O’Lan. “How long will that take?” “Asking questions about time in this place is a
dicey proposition, and I doubt Einstein could give you a good answer.
In fact, I would recommend not talking about it at all, since
certain paradoxical thoughts tend to pop up and the after effects
linger.” Meanwhile, in Hargrove’s
brain, his subconscious was experiencing what corporeal beings would refer
to as a vacation. As Hargrove
was presently outside of time and space, distinctions between
consciousness and unconsciousness blurred.
It had already managed to plant several astounding leaps of logic,
as well as three insightful guesses, and cleared out all the memories of
Hargrove’s piano lessons to make room.
Now it could relax and enjoy its hobbies – advanced metaphysics,
non-Euclidean geometry, and phrenology. Hargrove was unaware of the activities going on
behind his eyes. Looking
around the area, he saw that the group had formed a crude table and some
chairs out of the grey matter they stood on.
Serapion lay in a heap, still unconscious from the enraged
Glaswegian’s assault. Brashnikov
waved Hargrove over with his remaining arm. He took a spot next to Frieda, acting as a barrier
between her and Trotsov. Grabbing
the grey surface beneath his feet, Hargrove pulled until he had raised a
suitable amount, then smoothed the top and perched. “So what do we do to pass the ti… I mean, how do
we occupy ourselves?” asked the Marxist Detective. “We drink and we gamble, gormless poufter.”
MacGuinness passed him a much-battered hip flask.
“Doon drink it all, that brand is nae easy to find.” Hargrove took the most minute of sips.
It worked down his throat like an unhappy, spastic wood rasp, and
settled in his stomach, there to sit parasitically until a point three
years later when 30 per cent of his internal organs would be sucked out by
the explosive decompression of a 767 airliner over the Pacific. “Good, nae? Glen
Fujiyama, the finest Japanese whiskey.”
MacGuinness beamed with pride. With a trembling, barely functioning hand, Hargrove
handed the flask back. From
his jacket he retrieved his own flask and offered it to the group. “Gin,” he said. “The
absolute pinnacle of English cuisine.” He placed it on the table beside O’Lan’s Irish
whiskey, Trotsov’s vodka, and the sacramental wine filched from the
now-snoring ecclesiastical beached whale. It was Frieda’s turn to deal the cards, and
distributed them swiftly around the table.
“Five card draw. Deuces
wild.” Brashnikov glanced at his cards. “Draw two.” At the word ‘draw’, Hargrove, Frieda, Trotsov and
the suddenly conscious Serapion drew and pointed their guns.
Slowly, sheepishly they holstered their weapons. “Deal me in, heathens,” said the Bishop,
literally pulling up a chair “Wait ‘til the next deal, ye frilly puke.” “Raise you five, misguided tools of your
otherworldly masters.” “You’re not fooling anyone, Hargrove,” said
O’Lan. “And pass the
gin.” “All right, which one of you interfering bastards has all the threes?” “See your five,” said Brashnikov, tossing his
eyeball onto the growing pile of rubles, yen, zlotys, pound notes, and
Canadian Tire money. There was a brief series of shrieks and shudders
before they convinced him to remove the partially-thawed orb from the
table. The game resumed. Suddenly, Serapion’s eyes blazed with holy fury.
“Cheat!” he howled, sweeping the cards and liquor aside with
his croizier. The grey walls
shuddered, while the table and chairs slid back into the floor.
“You!” he roared, pointing at Frieda.
“You are hiding an extra set of cards!” Everyone at the table cast an appraising look at
Frieda, trying to imagine just how she could hide a deck of cards, and
still have access to them. “That beating you took from MacGuinness has robbed
you of whatever tenuous grip you had on reality,” said Hargrove. “Ha! I’ve
got papal infallibility! Consider
this to have the weight of a pronouncement from God.” “Och, where weight is concerned, yer the expert,”
said MacGuinness. “But in
matters theological, yer noothing but a slap-headed, many-chinned
spittoon. Papal infallibility
belongs tae the body of bishops as a whole, when, in moral unity, they
solemnly teach a doctrine as true and therefore must then be adhered tae
with the submission of faith. It
dinnae apply when yer playing poker.” They regarded the grimy Scotsman curiously. “Dinnae look at me like that. I’m a God-fearing Lutheran, but I’ll be damned if I let
some poncy papist scouse git have the better of me in any argument.” “Serapion is right about Frieda, though,” said
Trotsov. “I taught her
every card trick I could for that mission in Atlantic City.
A pity she didn’t stick around to learn all my other tricks.”
She licked her lips, making a sandpapery sound. Instantly, guns were drawn again.
Frieda looked stricken. “Where’s
my derringer?” Hargrove spun to find Trotsov, but froze when he
found himself looking down the barrel of the neutrino accelerator.
“Just for you, I’ve changed the setting from ‘magenta’ to
‘teal.’ Farewell
Hargrove.” Frieda leapt in front of her former lover, ready to
sacrifice herself to save him. Hargrove
found himself leaping in front of her, as surprised as she was.
His subconscious rolled its eyes.
I slave and slave, and still get no credit.
It returned to its phrenological studies. A blaze of teal energy blurted out of the alien
weapon and punched a hole straight through Hargrove’s abdomen. The Marxist Detective looked down at his stomach.
The hole was about three inches in diameter, perfectly straight and
smooth. It had also been
instantly cauterized. The
pain hadn’t set in yet, but when it did...
Still looking through the aperture, he saw Frieda fall to the grey
ground. “Frieda!” Her
leg had been vaporized, but she didn’t seem to be in pain.
If anything, she was angry. “Hey! Do
you know how much bionic legs cost? Back
in the 70’s it cost me $6 million for the whole set – arm, leg and
ear. I have no idea what
it’ll set me back to replace a part.” “Told you she was half-machine.” Trotsov tried to shoot again, but her weapon hadn’t
finished recharging. “Serapion,”
she yelled, with a voice like a blender loaded with ball bearings.
“Finish them!” The Feudal Detective took careful aim.
This is it, thought Hargrove.
Marx was right - I should have converted. But before he could shoot, a depleted-uranium tipped
bullet from Frieda’s missing derringer caved in the side of his head.
MacGuinness revealed the small gun, looking tiny and toy-like in
his massive grip. “The
Scots have been stealing things fer centuries, and I figured since you had
me wrench, I’d knick yer wee firearm.” Serapion’s massive corpse tottered, spun and fell.
The neutrino accelerator dropped from his hand, bounced and fired,
bounced again and fired a second time. The first bolt took Trotsov in the torso, leaving a
wound that couldn’t be anything but fatal. The second stray magenta bolt punched into the grey
wall, leaving a fist-sized hole. Streaming
through the aperture was sunlight. The
most beautiful blue sky could be seen, along with some of the sweetest,
fluffy clouds imaginable. For
a moment, everybody froze – first in horror, waiting for some cataclysm,
but then in delight at the sight of the real world. Their joy was short-lived as their pocket universe
turned itself inside out and emptied its contents with a roar and a
whoosh. Surprisingly, being
vomited from of a wrinkle in the space-time continuum wasn’t as bad as
one would have supposed. One
moment they were surrounded by grey, the next they felt the sunshine and a
light breeze. Their joy
reappeared. Just as quickly,
it turned on its metaphorical heel and ran away as it realized they had
materialized approximately 20 feet above the streets of Yerevan and were
falling. “Oh crap,” said Brashnikov, succinctly. The former ship’s captain shattered on impact with
a sound akin to that of a pair of wind chimes in the hands of a
two-year-old. Providing alto
to his soprano was the sound of the rest of the group thudding to the
asphalt. The bass counterpoint of Trotsov and Serapion’s corpses
whumping into the street rounded things out nicely. They lay on the street, drawing stares from the
city’s residents. Groaning,
Hargrove rolled onto his back and looked up.
“Now that’s odd,” he said. Everyone looked up.
Above them was the blackest storm cloud any had ever seen, and
strangely shaped too – oblong… with a keel down the middle… and
propellers at one end. It was the HMS Hoobe-Entwhistle, suspended several
hundred feet in the air above them. Well,
not actually suspended. It
was falling - 46,000 tons of steel plunging downwards, directly at them.
They could hear it whistling through the air now, mingled with the
screams of the few passengers still on board. Hargrove clutched Frieda, not able to decide whether
to look at her or the ship that was going to crush them flat, but knowing
that he had one last desperate question for her in what would be their
final moments. “Frieda my love,” he said gently. “There’s something I have to ask you while we still have
time.” She had a tear in her eye.
“Yes? Yes, my
love?” He held her closer.
“Do you still have that bottle of Codeine on you?” Will Hargrove be crushed
flatter than a tick? Will
Frieda forgive Hargrove for spoiling the moment? Could all the King’s
horses put Brashnikov back together?
And what about Mary Lou?
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