OK no apologies, this is a blatant plug for this book...
THE HOUSE ON HYDROGEN HILL - BY PETER TRUCKEL
Surrealist Science Fiction Thriller Humour
Pitched somewhere between the deadpan, anything is possible, wackiness of Kurt Vonnegut and the bizarre but ultimately optimistic fatalism of D.B.C. Pierre this is an audacious and highly accomplished first novel from a clearly very gifted writer.
Truckel plays fast and loose with concepts of scientific theory carrying out mental experiments into the reality bending implications of such things as matter transportation, quantum uncertainty and time travel. The ideas keep coming, from a town laid out in accordance with the periodic table to some rather unfortunate side effects of genetic engineering.
At times salaciously outrageous, and often laugh out loud funny, the story entertains from beginning to end. With a richly convoluted plot and strongly defined, well-drawn characters this is a thoroughly enjoyable page-turner of a book and I urge anyone who might be wavering, don't waver, buy it, read it, tell your friends.
Review by Simon Tayler: Director of ARTEM Physical Special Effects
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THE HOUSE ON HYDROGEN HILL
A simple delivery job for brothers Louis and Nathan Apostle, leads them into a bizarre adventure. After collecting an unusual piece of stolen scientific equipment from a derelict warehouse in Detroit, the brothers are told to deliver it to the town of Planck's Island. The town which isn't on any maps, can only be found by following a set of strange handwritten instructions which predict their every move, and seem to reveal a comprehensive knowledge of future events. After surviving an arson attack by a pair of over zealous Mossad agents, the brothers team up with a giantess called Little Inge and her friend - the ghost of Robert Oppenheimer. Pursued by various intelligence agencies and Inge's brother Erwin - a psychopathic dwarf, they travel to Planck's Island, and the house on Hydrogen Hill. . .
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...high on technology... His characters are all larger than life, and one is a LOT larger. The interconnectedness of all things are the rails on which this roller coaster of a book runs. Each twist brings a delightful depravity or unexpected bombshell, and like a roller coaster, you may have felt a little sick at times, but you finish with a huge smile on your face. I loved it.
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This is a fabulously written,funny and endlessly entertaining first novel from Peter Truckel. The characters are so well crafted and whilst the science sometimes left me realising why my physics "O" level was such a challenge for me, the book is a joy from start to finish. Think Ian Banks meets Mark Helprin,(Winter's Tale) meets John Kennedy O'Toole (Confederacy of Dunces) and you will get some idea of the writing style.
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"Of all the books I've read this is one of them" as someone else probably will say once he's read this book. I thought it was extremely enjoyable. I'd like to show my erudition by comparing it to other novels I've read but I only read magazines. Its much funnier than "London Cyclist", for example, and lasts longer; it took me ages to read it so very good value. The paper its printed on is quite thick so it feels like a good quality school geography text book; built to last. No glossy pictures of conurbations alas although Mr Truckel manages to paint some very vivid pictures in your head with words. How does he do that? He is clearly very talented.
This is a very entertaining and enjoyable book that will appeal to those who like humorous science fiction and don't mind seeing the word penis in print. Buy it.
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word count: 134,917 page count: 433
Available in paperback from etsy: £9.90 / $15.48
Available from Amazon: £11.99 / $18.75
Available as a Kindle Edition from Amazon: £1.95 / $3.05
includes vat + free international wireless delivery.
Available from createspace (an Amazon company): £8.69 / $13.59
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Read the first chapter...
1
(Bad decision Marilyn)
It was early morning in central Detroit and it wasn’t
pretty.
Daybreak
had revealed a
battle-scarred landscape, littered with the ruins of countless homes, stores and
factories - casualties of the social and economic meltdown that decimated the
city in the wake of the 1967 riots. The view was more like post ‘Little Boy’ Hiroshima
than 21st century Michigan and wasn’t improved by the
fat, rain-swollen cumulonimbus, reducing the November sky to a dull,
monochromatic smudge.
A
cold wind, whipped up by the approaching storm swept across the inner-city
wasteland, chasing the tattered pages of a week-old newspaper as they fled like
the ghosts of frightened sheep. Nature’s half-hearted attempt at reclaiming the
land had left petrified forests of spiky, waist-high weeds, which stood out
amongst the debris of razed buildings and clawed at the windblown newsprint
with their desiccated bracts. Bulldozers, wrecking balls and decades of
indiscriminate dumping had turned the district into a desolate wilderness - but
it wasn’t totally devoid of life. Sheltered from the wind in a shallow crater
of broken bricks and twisted metal, a large brown rat was breakfasting on the
rotting carcass of a dead dog.
The remains had yet to be discovered by other scavengers
and until that happened the rat could gorge itself on the decomposing flesh.
With the full onslaught of winter just a few weeks away this was good news for
the rat but had obviously ceased to be of any interest to
the unfortunate pooch - a three-year-old Great Dane/Dandie Dinmont cross called
Marilyn.
Picked
out as a nine-week-old puppy from the ‘Pets by Post’ website, Marilyn had been
the overindulged family pet of Eugene and Grace Garabedian. Although she bore
no resemblance to the cute ball of fur in her Internet photographs the
eccentric looking animal soon became a surrogate daughter for the childless
couple and the glue that held their increasingly fragile marriage together. But
when the Garabedians moved house (so Grace could be nearer her widowed and
rather wayward mother), Marilyn suddenly decided she’d had enough of her
hedonistic and pampered lifestyle. An ancient feral memory, buried deep within
the peculiar cocktail of her DNA, triggered a survival instinct that had lain
dormant in scores of her ancestors. It urged her to take off, get back to her
old scent-marked territory, enjoy her freedom and live a little.
Six
days after running away from her new home and still many miles from the
familiar smells of her old neighbourhood, Marilyn was lost, disorientated and
weak with hunger when she was hit by a speeding car. Badly injured, she managed
to drag herself several hundred yards from the roadside, through a hostile
terrain of bricks, rusting cans, broken bottles and discarded crack vials, before
she finally died. Two weeks later her major organs had become a valuable source
of protein for the rat.
Bad
decision Marilyn.
* *
* * *
The
sound of a powerful engine shattered the silence.
Curiosity
instantly overcame the hungry rodent’s urge to feed. Pulling its blood-soaked
snout from the remains of Marilyn’s kidneys, the rat stood on its hind legs and
peered through the dog’s exposed rib cage as the noise grew steadily louder.
Ignoring the frenzy of blow flies swarming around the eviscerated pet, it
watched without blinking as a large semi-trailer eased slowly out of the
timber-framed warehouse seventy-five yards from its hiding place. The huge
tin-roofed structure was the only building in the immediate vicinity still
standing and completely dominated the rubble-strewn vista.
Eleven
seconds later, in a cloud of blue exhaust smoke, the truck’s long trailer
finally pulled clear of the warehouse doors.
Squeezing
its head between two of the ribs, the rat followed the 18-wheeler’s progress as
it rocked and bounced over the network of rusting railway tracks criss-crossing
the depot’s seldom used service road. Beyond the acres of stark post-industrial
decay the clouds briefly parted and a shaft of sunlight burst through the haze
of dirty yellow pollution staining the sky above the Motor City like a fading
toxic bruise. The thin autumnal sunshine squeezed between the silhouetted
corporate headquarters and towering financial citadels that dominated the
re-branded Downtown skyline, before glinting off the truck’s pristine
windshield and temporarily blinding the inquisitive rat.
The
heavy vehicle rumbled on, passing within inches of Marilyn’s last resting
place. Highway-grade Bridgestones crunched over a crude amalgam of building
debris and consumer trash until the truck reached an unmanned gatehouse at the
fenced-off perimeter of the badlands surrounding the warehouse. Slowing to a
crawl, its throbbing engine sent ripples dancing across the puddles littering
the acne-scarred asphalt. Fragmented reflections ricocheted across the broken
windows of the graffiti tagged security building - zigzagging over the
shattered glass, they tracked the semi-trailer’s progress as it passed
cautiously between a pair of useless metal gates hanging crookedly on their
twisted hinges and entered the lawless back streets of Detroit’s second worst
ghetto.
In
the truck’s bright red cab Louis Apostle rolled his unlit but well-chewed cigar
into the corner of his mouth and spat out of the open window. Either by luck or
skill the quasi-solid ball of tobacco tinted mucus hit the top strand of the
rusting chain-link fence adjoining the gatehouse and hung there, swinging in
the wind like a solitary amber earring. Ignoring a stop sign, Louis changed
gear and pumped the gas. Then letting out a long, melancholic sigh he turned to
face the man next to him and said, ‘I tell ya Nathan, there are times when I
hate this fucking planet.’
‘Oh shit…’
thought Nathan, ‘here we go again.’
He
closed his eyes and tried to think of something else, anything else, in an
attempt to block out what was bound to follow. He’d heard this rant countless
times before and knew by heart the well-trodden path it would follow. Louis
would soon forget the original reason for his irritation and using his collection
of science fiction comics from the 1950s and 60s as a frame of reference, he’d
start complaining that the gravity on Earth was too strong, before going on to
criticise the ratio of land to water and the distance to the nearest
inhabitable star system.
Nathan
stayed silent, refusing to be drawn into the conversation and hoping that Louis
would let the matter drop. Instinctively though, he knew that would never
happen and the diatribe would continue with or without his assistance.
* *
* * *
Louis and Nathan Apostle were
half-brothers, and despite having a great deal of genetic material in common
the two men weren’t at all alike. At thirty-seven, Louis was almost three years
older than Nathan; he was also six inches shorter and never less than forty-seven
pounds heavier. Five minutes after shaving Louis looked as if he hadn’t shaved
for three or four days, unlike Nathan who could go for nearly a week without
using a razor and still appear freshly barbered. Louis’ hair was thinning and
the remaining strands, which were permanently lank and greasy, were combed straight back over his head. In contrast, Nathan had short, tight, curly hair.
The most obvious difference though was
that Louis was white and Nathan was black. This peculiar twist of fate came about
when Louis was eighteen months old and his father Dmitri, a small-time career
criminal, was given a two-year prison sentence for fencing stolen goods. During
Dmitri’s incarceration his twenty-three-year-old wife Venus had a passionate
on-off relationship with a temperamental Jamaican jazz guitarist called Henry
Henry.
Three months before Dmitri was released
from jail his wife gave birth to Nathan.
Three days after his release
Dmitri was back in court, charged with the murder of Henry Henry. The case was
a gift for the prosecution and the easiest the future District Attorney would
ever handle. Eight hundred and sixty-two people had been in the audience when
Dmitri walked onto the well-lit stage of a popular Brooklyn night-club holding
a stolen Smith and Wesson. He fired seven 9 millimetre bullets into the
musician and one into the body of his cherished, mint condition 1959 Gibson Les
Paul. It took the jury just two minutes to return a guilty verdict, after which
the judge handed Dmitri a sentence of 25 years to life.
Thanks
to his physical strength, fighting ability and sheer determination, Dmitri
survived the hotbed of racial violence in Sing Sing prison for nearly a year
before being fatally stabbed with a sharpened spoon handle during a fight in
the prison yard. The black gang member who killed him was never identified and
the overstretched prison authorities, in an attempt to avoid another potential
riot, were more than happy to let the matter slide.
After
Dmitri’s death Venus was ostracised by the other members of her husband’s
family. She never remarried and soon went back to using her maiden name, as did
the two boys, who grew up in their mother’s seventh floor walk-up apartment on
Avenue B in New York’s Alphabet City.
Venus
was fiercely protective of her sons and worked hard to provide for them. As the
boys got older they both developed an uncanny physical resemblance to their
respective fathers, which was a source of great comfort to their mother. Nathan
inherited his father’s guitar as well as his looks, but unfortunately not his
ear for music. After his only piano lesson the teacher promptly returned the
three dollar fee to Venus on the understanding Nathan never came again. She
claimed his playing sounded as if he imagined the keys were someone’s face –
someone he didn’t like. Louis on the other hand was pitch perfect and on the
rare occasions when he bathed or used a shower he could be heard singing a
range of songs, from classic opera to contemporary pop in a rich and beautiful
baritone.
The
brothers were also poles apart when it came to interacting with members of the
opposite sex. Louis had been out with a few girls over the years but he always
found it difficult to start relationships. When he did they were usually
short-lived and generally unsatisfying. Unlike Nathan, who after losing his
virginity at the age of fourteen had never looked back. He knew he’d probably
settle down one day, but until then Nathan was more than happy to play the
field. Something he managed to do with a reasonably good grace and without ever
really upsetting any of his numerous girlfriends.
On
an intellectual level Louis and Nathan were also very different. Although Louis
could just about manage to read and write, there were no more than a handful of
machines on the entire planet he couldn’t strip, fix and reassemble without
ever looking at a manual. While Nathan was never happier than when he was
reading - this could be anything from newspapers and magazines to the classics
of world literature and he’d regularly get through two or three books a day. He
also had a photographic memory and showed flashes of such brilliant and
intuitive genius that his IQ was, by conventional methods, unquantifiable.
Growing
up in a part of the city where gang violence was a way of life meant the
brothers had frequently found themselves in situations where they had to rely
on their fists and as a result they’d grown up to be the sort of guys you’d
want on your side in a fight. Nathan’s style was a classic combination of
well-disciplined Taekwondo and kickboxing, while Louis relied on good
old-fashioned, totally undisciplined street-fighting techniques with just a
little bit of bar-room brawl thrown in for good measure.
After
finishing (or in Louis’ case, failing to finish) their schooling, the brothers
had gone into business together. Their tax returns claimed they worked in the
transportation and haulage industry. Roughly translated, that meant they were
paid to move stolen or smuggled goods around the country. Their long client
list was impressive and included three Mafia families, a Yakuza gang, the
Hell’s Angels, the CIA and Microsoft.
Louis
and Nathan still lived with their mother but they’d moved from Alphabet City to
a generous four-storey brownstone in Greenwich Village. The rented building had
a large, useful yard to the rear and the ground floor at the front of the
property had been turned into what soon became the most popular coffee bar in
the area. Besides keeping house and looking after her two sons, Venus Apostle
also ran the tiny coffee shop, which was simply called ‘Venus’, and frequently
had long queues of people waiting for what was probably the best espresso in
New York.
The
brothers’ business success had recently culminated in the purchase of the top
of the range Volvo semi-trailer Louis was steering carefully through the
litter-strewn back streets of Detroit. On both cab doors a sign-writer had
lovingly crafted in navy blue paint with a gold outline and a black drop
shadow, the words: ‘The Apostle Brothers’. There was no telephone number or
contact address. The people who gave the brothers most of their work inhabited
a shady world of mistrust, where deals were done by word of mouth, reputation
was everything and letting a client down could be fatal.
Strapped
to the long flatbed trailer behind the cab was a large, very unusual piece of
high-tech equipment. It was covered by several tarpaulins and held securely in
place with enough ropes and chains to keep a team of sadomasochists in a state
of arousal for many months. The strange apparatus had been loaded onto the
truck by a gang of maladjusted sociopaths working in the semi-derelict warehouse when Louis
and Nathan had arrived there an hour earlier.
* *
* * *
While
Louis had supervised the five warehousemen as they struggled to hoist the heavy
and unwieldy cargo onto the trailer using a pair of ancient diesel winches,
Nathan went in search of Vincent Esposito - the owner of the building. He found
him in a small, square office tucked into the far corner of the sprawling
warehouse. The claustrophobic, windowless room was wallpapered with 20 years’
worth of fading centrefolds taken from a selection of gratuitously explicit
men’s magazines, the most recent of which was older than Nathan.
‘Hi,’
said Nathan, pushing open the door to the rank, smoke-filled office. ‘I guess
you know who we are and why we’re here.’ His eyes flicked quickly across the
repetitive, almost abstract display of close-up vaginas before finding Esposito
once again. ‘Do I need to sign anything?’
‘You’re
joking, right?’ replied Esposito, without a trace of humour in his voice.
A
sixty-two year old hulking bully of a man - Esposito had fat, bruised knuckles,
rheumy eyes and the bulbous veined nose of a hardened drinker. His thick, wavy
black hair was liberally peppered with silver and a lightning bolt of badly
healed scar tissue, picked up in a gang fight forty-five years earlier, ran
from just above his left eye to his cheekbone. He was wearing a pair of
grease-stained jeans and a well-worn leather jacket over a grey sweatshirt and
was sitting at a battered desk nursing a mug of coffee so liberally laced with
alcohol Nathan could smell it from more than eight feet away.
Esposito’s
shoulders may have rounded with the passing years but he was still powerfully
built with a brutal and intimidating manner. However beneath that veneer of
toughness was the haunted look of a frightened man. Something he attempted to
disguise by giving Nathan a cursory sneer as he dropped his half-smoked
cigarette to the floor, then ground it out with a heavy work-boot before taking
a long drink from his mug.
‘Do
you know where we’re supposed to take that thing?’ asked Nathan, unfazed by the
man’s surly attitude. He tilted his head in the direction of the open door,
through which he could see the machine being winched onto the back of the
Volvo. ‘All we were told, was to turn up at 7 o’clock and pick up something
called a ‘biomagnetic rectilinear-amplifier’. Our contact said someone here
would give us the delivery address.’
‘That
would be me I guess.’ Esposito grudgingly put down his mug, pulled open a
drawer and took out a bottle of bourbon followed by a slim white envelope. ‘I
was told to give you this,’ he said, holding up the envelope with his left
hand. Using the fingers of his right hand he spun the cap from the bottle with
practised ease and topped up his ‘coffee’. He took a generous swig before
adding another half inch of bourbon to the mug, then recapped the bottle and
slipped it back into the drawer.
The
alcohol seemed to give him confidence.
‘A
real nasty little dwarf turned up here late last night, about ten minutes after
your load arrived,’ he paused then added, ‘in a fucking helicopter of all
things. He said to tell you the machine had to be delivered to The Doppelgänger
Institute in a place called Planck’s Island - these are the directions to get
there. He also said you had to follow them exactly if you wanted to find the
place and get paid.’
‘Planck’s
Island…’ said Nathan, reaching across the desk and taking the envelope from
Esposito. He turned it over. Hand-written on the front it simply said, ‘How to find Planck’s Island’, ‘Never
heard of it. Did he say anything else?’
‘Only
that it’s not an island, apparently it’s nowhere near water.’ Esposito waited a
moment, looking Nathan in the eye before continuing. ‘And that if I or any of
my men even thought about mentioning this transaction to anyone we’d die slowly
and very badly. And before you ask yes I believed him, I’ve been around enough
hard men to know when someone means shit like that.’
Nathan
gave him a quizzical look, but before he could reply Esposito stood up and
said, ‘I think our business is about done.’
He
was looking over Nathan’s shoulder at his men, who were finishing their
adjustments to the ropes and chains securing the machine to the trailer. ‘If
you haven’t figured it out yet I’ll let you in on a little secret,’ continued
Esposito arrogantly. ‘You’re playing with some very serious fuckers. That piece
of kit on the back of your truck belongs to The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and
they’re gonna be really pissed when they find it missing. You’d better watch
your backs, if it’s traced to you and your brother you’ll have all sorts of
Federal shit crawling over you.’
Nathan
had spent a sizeable chunk of his adult life evading various law enforcement
agencies, even so the prospect of driving across the country with a massive
piece of high-tech machinery stolen from NASA on the back of the truck didn’t
exactly thrill him. ‘Thanks for the advice,’ he said, slipping the envelope
into his shirt pocket and turning to leave.
‘I
can’t afford to be fingered for something like this,’ shouted Esposito,
following Nathan to the door. ‘As soon as you’re outa here this place is gonna
be history. There’ll be nothing left to tie me or my boys to it, so don’t get
any cute ideas about trying to cut a deal with the police or the feds.’
Nathan
ignored him and walked calmly back towards the truck, watched by the handful of
sullen men who’d just loaded the stolen biomagnetic rectilinear-amplifier onto
the trailer. They were now unloading a stack of five-gallon gasoline canisters
from the back of a pickup, parked a few feet from the Volvo.
Climbing
into the cab and shutting the door, Nathan looked at his brother. ‘We’re good
to go, let’s get out of here,’ he said simply.
* *
* * *
Apart
from a pack of stray dogs and a handful of homeless men and women who wandered
the squalid streets muttering to themselves, the area surrounding the warehouse
was deserted. It only really came alive after dark, when its anonymous alleys
and unlicensed basement bars offered the pleasure, pain or oblivion so many of
the city’s lonely inhabitants sought. But at the first sign of dawn the
night-time predators, dealers, pimps, whores and victims disappeared - like
vampires hiding from the light of the new day.
While
Louis manoeuvred the large truck through a maze of nameless roads and boarded
up buildings, Nathan played with the Sat Nav. After a few moments he switched
it off and gazed out of the window at the passing streets and the piles of
trash, which were constantly being rearranged by the gusting wind. The future
had been derailed and by the mid 1970s a vibrant and thriving neighbourhood
with a real community spirit had mutated into an unforgiving hellhole where
gentrification was a distant dream and life was cheap. He had to admit that in
the face of such damning evidence his brother’s pessimistic view of the world
had some validity.
But
he also knew the best way to prevent Louis listing the numerous things he found
wrong with his home planet was to quickly change the subject. ‘So Louis…’ he
said nonchalantly, ‘what do you suppose a biomagnetic rectilinear-amplifier is
used for?’
Louis
stared in amazement at Nathan and snorted, ‘Hello! Do I look like a freakin’
scientist? How the fuck would I know what it’s used for?’ Shaking his head, he
turned back to face the road before continuing. ‘All I know is we’re being paid
a hundred thousand of the finest American dollars, to pick one up from a lousy,
rat-infested warehouse here in beautiful Detroit City and transport it
somewhere. I take it you’ve got an address.’
‘Yeah,
I’ve got an address,’ replied Nathan with a wry smile. ‘We’re going to a place
called Planck’s Island and when we get there we’re supposed to drop off our
load at The Doppelgänger Institute. I can’t help wondering though, what sort of
people are involved in this Doppelgänger Institute. I mean they can hardly be
legal or honest if they’re dealing with guys like us can they?’
‘No,
I think it’s safe to say they’re probably of the criminal persuasion,’ sighed
Louis, humouring his brother.
‘I
agree,’ continued Nathan, ‘and if that’s the case, how’d they manage to get
hold of something like a biomagnetic-rectilinear-amplifier? Which according to
Jimmy Hoffa’s stunt double back at the warehouse, was once the property of The
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or in other words our esteemed Government.’
There
was a crunch from the gearbox as Louis’ foot slipped off the clutch. He turned
to stare angrily at his brother.
‘What
the fuck have you got us into?’ he screamed furiously.
‘Me
get us into!’ shouted Nathan defensively. ‘It was you who took the original
call. You who said it would be a ‘sweet
little trip across country - something to run in the Volvo’.’
Louis
looked at his brother with disbelief. He was about to tell him that when they’d
discussed it, Nathan was also all for doing the job; saying the hundred
thousand bucks would pay off much of what they still owed on the new truck. But
he decided to let the matter drop. Partly because Nathan’s revelation made what
should have been an ordinary delivery job a bit more interesting and partly
because he knew it would just end in the usual stalemate, with countless
accusations and denials - and two or three days of ‘did - didn’t - did - didn’t
- yes you fucking did’, which would be too much to bear.
It
was Louis’ turn to change the subject.
‘Okay,
okay... forget it,’ he said shaking his head. ‘So have you had a look on the
map to find out exactly where this Planck’s Island place is? I guess it’s on
the coast, but are we looking at the Atlantic or the Pacific?’
Nathan
frowned. ‘Neither,’ he said pensively, ‘it’s very weird... Planck’s Island
isn’t actually an island it’s totally landlocked…’
‘Whatever,’
said Louis impatiently, ‘just look it up on the map or put it in the Sat Nav
and tell me what Interstate we need to be on.’
‘The
other weird thing if you’ll let me finish is that it isn’t on the map.
According to both The American Automobile Association and the Sat Nav, the town
of Planck’s Island doesn’t exist.’
‘How
the hell are we meant to find the fuckin’ place then?’ demanded Louis, screwing
his face up even more than usual and sliding his cigar back to the other side
of his mouth.
‘I
was given this…’ Nathan held up the envelope, ‘and apparently we have to follow
the instructions it contains, which will tell us and I quote, ‘How to find
Planck’s Island’.’
He
slit open the envelope with his finger and pulled out a folded sheet of legal
paper. Both sides were covered with very small, very neat handwriting, done in
ink with an old-fashioned fountain pen.
‘Okay
mister co-pilot,’ said Louis looking at Nathan expectantly, ‘what does it say?’
‘Well,’
said Nathan, unfolding the paper and running his eyes up the long list of
instructions. ‘The first thing it says here is… look out for the dog!’
Whipping
his head around, Louis was just in time to turn the steering wheel and avoid
hitting a brown and white Jack Russell, rolling on its back in the middle of
the road. From the sidewalk his driving skills were loudly applauded by the
dog’s owners - a couple of down and outs, sitting on a broken refrigerator
outside a boarded-up video rental store, sharing a cigarette and an early
morning bottle of Colt 45.
‘Nice
timing, thanks bro’!’ said Louis as the heavy truck thundered past the startled
terrier and cheering hobos. ‘Now what the fuck does it say on those
instructions?’
Nathan
was confused. ‘I just told you!’ he said. ‘Right here at the top of the page,
the first thing it says is look out for the dog. Then it says turn left by the
blind man.’
Louis’
eyebrows knitted together in an angry frown that seemed to say, ‘If you’re trying to be funny, you’re gonna
be spending a little face-time with Mister Fist and the Knuckle Brothers.’
But
a sixth sense made Louis shift his eyes to the front, just in time to see an
old black man standing nervously by the side of the road as if waiting to
cross. He was wearing a threadbare coat, a battered trilby and a pair of
shades. With his right hand he was dragging a three-wheeled shopping cart,
piled high with everything he owned. In his left hand he was holding a white
cane. Louis didn’t hesitate. Braking hard, he dropped down two gears and spun
the steering wheel sharply to the left. The truck lurched violently, before it
shuddered round the corner - missing the man by inches and blowing the hat from
his head as he turned to follow the speeding vehicle with sightless eyes.
After
making the turn Louis continued on for a further hundred yards, before slowing
down some more and pulling onto the weed infested empty forecourt of an
abandoned used car dealership. The business had closed about eighteen months
earlier, after failing to entice customers with the slogan - ‘Python Pete’s
Used Cars: A free snake with every car purchased’.
* *
* * *
Python
Pete - a reptile fanatic, had sunk his life’s savings plus a hundred and
fifty-thousand dollars he’d borrowed from his brother, into what he considered
to be a sure-fire business venture backed up with a great sales gimmick. The
car-buying public hadn’t agreed and in his first four weeks of trading he made
only one sale. Things didn’t improve even after he upped the offer to two and
then finally three free snakes. Inevitably, nine short weeks later his dream
came to an end. Unable to meet his monthly payments Python Pete defaulted on
the lease and was forced to close. The bank repossessed his cars, leaving him
with no means of income or of ever being able to pay off his debts. His wife,
who’d lost her love of reptiles and her husband many years before, decided
she’d had enough and kicked him out. After putting a few clothes into a
suitcase and using a false name, he moved to a low-rent trailer park on the
outskirts of Charlotte, North Carolina with his remaining fifty-three snakes.
Unfortunately,
the day after moving in he foolishly ate a can of out-of-date economy tuna that
had been sitting in the trailer’s solitary kitchen cupboard since the previous
tenant’s hasty departure six years earlier. Even by Python Pete’s pitifully low
standards the contents smelled bad. But he was hungry, and hey - what’s the
worst thing that can happen to a guy who eats a can of tuna?
It
didn’t take long to find out.
After
spending two days vomiting, passing blood and being crippled with agonising
stomach cramps he died on the floor of the trailer with only his disinterested
snakes for company. His body was discovered four months later, when a group of
neighbours broke open the door after becoming concerned about the smell. By
that time the number of snakes inhabiting the mobile home had increased to
nearly two hundred and many of them were using Python Pete’s well-rotted
remains as both a bedroom and a larder.
Two
of his ex-neighbours were still in therapy.
* *
* * *
Louis
switched off the ignition. He snatched the sheet of paper from Nathan’s hand
and read the first three lines of instructions aloud, ‘Look out for the dog…
turn left at the blind man… when you pull out of Python Pete’s forecourt
continue south until you get to the house fire… twenty yards after the fire
turn right.’
It
was Louis’ turn to be confused - very confused.
‘What
the fuck is going on Nathan?’ he screeched, turning the sheet of paper over and
scanning both sides. ‘There must be more than three hundred separate
instructions here! And they seem to know what we’re gonna do before we do it.
Who did you say gave it to you?’
Nathan
smiled at his brother. ‘There are four hundred and thirty-seven to be exact,’
he said evenly, ‘and I was given it by the guy in charge of those faceless
humps back at the warehouse. He’d been told to give it to us by a weird,
psychopathic dwarf who turned up in a helicopter late last night, just after
the truck delivering the biomagnetic rectilinear-amplifier arrived.’
Nathan
took back the sheet of paper from Louis. ‘He also said the dwarf made it very
clear we had to follow these instructions exactly or we’d never be able to find
Planck’s Island, let alone The Doppelgänger Institute. And if we can’t find the
place we won’t be able to deliver this biomagnetic shit to it, which means we
won’t get the hundred thousand bucks we’ve been promised.’
Louis
was perplexed, or he would have been if he’d known what it meant, in his
vocabulary he was, ‘getting a bit fuckin’
freaked out’. His substantial eyebrows had moved even closer together. If
they travelled any further towards each other they’d be unified in one glorious
ridge of thick black hair. He liked things to be relatively uncomplicated and
this job was shaping up to be anything but that.
‘Okay
then little brother,’ he said after giving the matter some thought and getting
nowhere, ‘talk to me - what do you think we should do?’
‘Well,’
said Nathan seriously, ‘if we want to get paid, and I’m pretty sure we do, I
think we’ve gotta follow these instructions and make the delivery. Besides, I’m
intrigued to see what a town that isn’t on the map, that’s called an island but
is nowhere near water and is named after the man who’s hailed as one of the
founding fathers of Quantum Mechanics actually looks like.’
He
paused for a moment before adding casually, ‘Apart from that, our delivery is
obviously of interest to someone because we’ve been followed by an unmarked,
black Chevy Suburban since we left the warehouse.’
‘Oh
well… if you put it like that,’ said Louis, thumbing the toggle switch to
adjust his door mirror so he could see what Nathan was talking about.
Sure
enough, fifty yards behind them on the opposite side of the road, parked in
front of a fire-damaged pawnbroker’s shop, was a powerful looking black SUV
complete with tinted windows and three antennae.
Louis
started the engine and put the Volvo in gear. He rolled the cigar across his
lips and spat out of the window. Then letting the clutch out he eased the truck
off the forecourt, whilst carefully watching the Suburban in his mirror.
‘Pretty punchy model, looks like it might be the special option twin-turbo
version that GM deny making,’ he said appreciatively. ‘By the number of
antennae I guess its either the Feds or the Secret Service. I can’t see why the
Secret Service would be following us, so that means it must be the FBI, which
certainly ain’t the best news I’ve had all day. What the fuck have we got
ourselves into?’
‘Yeah,
it’s getting interesting. I think we can assume the large piece of scientific
equipment on the back of the truck didn’t walk out of The Jet Propulsion
Laboratory on its own,’ said Nathan, leaning forward in his seat to watch in
his door mirror as Louis brought the trailer carrying their precious cargo onto
the road, before continuing. ‘I’d go as far as to say it wasn’t the biomagnetic
rectilinear-amplifier that telephoned us with detailed instructions about the
pick up address or arranged to pay us the hundred thousand bucks to deliver it
to these Doppelgänger freaks. No Louis, I think what we’ve got here is a
fishing expedition. Someone in the intelligence community wants to find
Planck’s Island and it looks as if they’re using a piece of equipment stolen
from NASA as bait.’
‘Right…
that’s more or less what I was thinking,’ replied Louis nodding his head
slowly. ‘But what are our options and what’s the legal position on our load?’
‘Well
it’s a safe bet the Feds already know what’s on the back of the truck. Plus
they’re tailing us in a big old armour-plated SUV, which is so obvious they
might as well be driving a carnival float, maybe there are other tails we can’t
see.’
Nathan
paused and looked around, checking for other signs of surveillance. He couldn’t
see any and continued, ‘So if we’re gonna stand any chance of getting our money
from these Doppelgänger guys we’ve gotta try to get there without the Feds
following us. If we don’t, and they decide to pull us in with this baby in our
possession, we’ll be well and truly fucked. The charges would be theft, industrial
espionage, grand larceny and after the way you took that corner back there,
dangerous driving. Oh yeah, I nearly forgot - and spitting in a built up area.
Which ever way you look at it we’re not gonna get out of this one unless we’re
very, very lucky.’
Behind
them, the Suburban pulled away from the curb and quickly picked up speed as it
resumed its pursuit. Suddenly and without any warning all four of its tyres
exploded. Louis watched in his door mirror, wide-eyed with fascination, as the
eighteen foot, 5 ton vehicle cart-wheeled dramatically across both lanes of the
otherwise empty road. It eventually landed with a loud, echoing crash on its
badly dented roof, straddling the sidewalk in front of ‘Python Pete’s’ like an
upturned tortoise.
‘Well
I’d call that pretty fucking lucky, wouldn’t you?’ said Louis, in a
particularly patronising tone of voice.
‘No
I wouldn’t...’ replied Nathan calmly. ‘I think that’s what happens when someone
goes fishing for sardines and hooks a barracuda.’ He turned to look out of the
windshield, ‘Look,’ he said, pointing to the road ahead, ‘there’s a house on
fire. We’ve got to turn right just after it.’
Two
men in understated but very well-cut dark grey suits pushed open the doors and
crawled out of the disabled SUV. Standing on the sidewalk next to their
overturned vehicle, they watched as the large semi-trailer drove away from
them, then turned right twenty yards after a burning house.
