The Quanderhorn
Xperimentations

ROB GRANT &
ANDREW MARSHALL

GOLLANCZ

LONDON

For Sioned

PREFACE

During the current restoration of the Palace of Westminster certain documents and artefacts were discovered, hidden in a bricked-up alcove behind the mechanisms in the clock tower popularly known as ‘Big Ben’.

They were quickly dismissed as a hoax, and a rather pointless and unconvincing one at that. For reasons far too circuitous to elaborate, the material eventually found its way to us. There were dozens of volumes of badly scrawled personal journals and various sketch pads and notebooks crammed with strange inventions and astonishing designs, together with some extraordinarily curious devices, the purpose of which has yet to be established.

Intrigued, we ploughed through everything, and the results of that research are here in these pages.

If it is a hoax, it’s a very elaborate and clever one, in that it’s impossible to disprove.

Where there are multiple accounts of the same incident, we have chosen what appears to be the most credible. Since the journals are personal, they tend to present their author in a most favourable light. When this understandable foible is in danger of distorting the truth, we have used aggregates of the accounts and our best guesses to arrive at a more likely accurate version. Where facts are disputed, we have pointed out the alternatives in our footnotes.

For reasons that will quickly become apparent, it was painfully difficult to establish a sequential chronology to these events. Hence, we present this account in the way it was revealed to us, and leave readers to make up their own minds.

RG & AM, London 2018. Probably.

1

Chlorophyll

We all have our time machines, don’t we. Those that take us back are memories . . . And those that carry us forward, are dreams

H.G. Wells, New Worlds For Old

Chapter One

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 31st December, 1952

I clawed my way out of a swirling vortex of strangling black velvet. I was either unconscious, or trapped under one of the Beverley Sisters’ show dresses. Mercifully for Joy, Teddie or Babs, it was the former.

Slowly, painfully, a distant pinprick of light coalesced, dazzled and finally settled into a nauseating corona around the head of the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She was looking down at me and gently slapping my face very hard.

I had no idea who she was. And worse than that: I had no idea who I was, either.

I noticed I was uncomfortable. I was lying on some rather scratchy hessian sacking on a cold, hard metal floor. We were juddering, in motion. A manual gearbox protested loudly. I raised my head. We were in the back of a van of some kind. A series of makeshift shelves held stacks of bizarre machinery and tools. A sign pasted over the back window read WARNING: THIS DOOR LEADS TO OUTSIDE.

The exquisite goddess leaning over me said: ‘Brian’. It seemed a strange name for a woman.

‘Hello, Brian,’ I said. But this only made Aphrodite slap me harder.

‘You’re Brian, you mutton-head.’

‘Am I? Who are you?’

‘Oh no. You’ve lost your memory, haven’t you? It’s me, Dr. Janussen.’

‘Dr. Janussen?’

‘Gemini? Gemma? Good grief, it’s really wiped this time.’

I was suddenly gripped by a very exciting thought: ‘Are you my wife?’

This produced a fleeting snort of cruel laughter in the divine creature, yet she neglected to answer.

‘Where are we?’ I tried.

‘There’s no time to explain right now.’

Just then a masculine voice called from the front cabin: ‘Is it left here?’

I raised my head further and espied a handsome young brute in the driving seat: artfully tousled blue-black hair, a steely jaw and a fierce intelligence in his eyes.

‘Is it left here?’ he repeated louder.

The lovely woman, who may or may not have been my wife, blinked with the merest hint of exasperation. ‘No, Troy.’

‘Is it right then?’

‘No, Troy. There are no turnings. We’re on Lambeth Bridge.’

‘So – straight on, is it?’

‘Yes, I think that’s best.’ She sighed and turned back to me. ‘You see? We’ve had to put Troy in the driving seat. Can you please concentrate? We need you right now.’

‘Yes, yes, I’m . . . I’m trying.’

Outside, I began to make out sounds – crowds of people in the distance, shouting, panicking, screaming.

The lovely woman gripped my face and hauled it towards her.

‘Listen, your name is Brian Nylon. You’re twenty-four years old, and you work with me in Professor Quanderhorn’s research team. The very fabric of Reality depends entirely on our actions in the next ten minutes. Don’t be alarmed. No, actually be very alarmed. Am I getting through to you?’

Her fragrant breath enveloped me like a cloud of jasmine and honeysuckle. ‘You figgy nails are diggy indo by cheeeeks,’ I mumbled through involuntarily gritted teeth.

‘We’ve run out of “straight on”,’ Troy called from the front.

‘Head right, and aim for the big clock.’

‘Okey-doos. Got you. Big clock. No problem.’ Troy chewed on his lower lip for a second. ‘What’s a clock?’

‘That thing with the white face and two hands.’

‘I thought that was Brian.’

‘There! There! That huge round thing! There!’ My possible wife Dr. Janussen pointed urgently, mercifully releasing her grip on my cheeks. ‘And quickly!’

The sounds of the panicking crowd grew louder. Through the rear window, I glimpsed them as we zipped past: hordes of misted faces haloed by street lamps, contorted in fear and horror. What on earth were we getting into? And what had Dr. Janussen meant by ‘the fabric of Reality’?

The van stopped suddenly, but I didn’t. My head crashed through a cardboard box and when I retracted it, I found a small glass valve had jammed itself up my nose. Whilst I was gingerly teasing it out, Dr. Janussen had already leapt out of the rear door. Troy seemed to be struggling to open his.

‘We have to go, now!’ Dr. Janussen yelled, rummaging through a haversack.

Troy yelled back, ‘I can’t get out!’

‘We’ve been through this before, Troy: it’s the handle, remember?’

‘Of course I remember about handles! I’m not an . . . an— Brian, what are those really stupid people called?’

‘Idiots?’ I offered.

‘Yes, I’m not an idiots.’

I was beginning to revise my initial impression of the ferocity of Troy’s intelligence. He grabbed the handle and to my astonishment, ripped the door entirely from its housing, tumbling with it out onto the pavement with a metallic clatter and a faint yelp of surprise. Who were these people?

Before I’d managed to entirely remove the CV6094 Induction Diode from my nasal canal, Dr. Janussen grabbed my arm and yanked me out of the van.

We were standing in Parliament Square. Silhouetted in the moonlight, Big Ben frowned down upon the panicking multitudes, its face displaying seven minutes to midnight. A struggling line of mounted police barely held back the sea of jabbering humanity, who were torn between fascination and fear. Many of them, rather curiously, were wearing small, cone-shaped cardboard hats and carrying paper trumpets.

I had no idea what was happening. ‘What’s happening?’ I asked the beautiful doctor.

‘There’s no time to explain right now.’ She passed me a large, heavy tube. ‘Here’s your bazooka.’

Chapter Two

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 1st January, 1952 – Iteration 66

I thanked her. I looked at it. It was indeed a bazooka. ‘Just a minute!’ I called.

But she was already fighting her way through the human tide. ‘Don’t fire unless it comes towards you,’ she yelled helpfully over her shoulder.

‘Unless what comes towards me?’ I shouted after her, but the crowd had folded in behind her.

So I was standing in Parliament Square at five minutes to midnight, wearing what I now realised were my winter long johns and a novelty Christmas sweater, holding a bazooka, with a valve still protruding from my nostril and a head full of unanswered questions.

Before I could even move, there was a sudden burst from a very loud loudhailer.

‘Keep back!’ rapped an echoing stentorian voice. ‘Keep back from the Giant Broccoli Woman!’

It struck me that the crowd would hardly need this instruction, but a woman near me seemed reassured. ‘Thank Gaawd! That’s that Professor Quanderhorn,’ she grinned, proudly showing off her single tooth. ‘He’ll save us from the vegetable monster, and no mistake.’ Her wizened hand scooped a fistful from a bag of whelks and she sucked on them excitedly.

‘Do you reckon,’ her mousey friend trilled, ‘this is one of them alien invasions, or just another of the Professor’s ’perimentations what has gone horribly wrong?’

‘Now then, you ugly old termagants,’ a cheerful bobby herded them away, ‘move back for your own good. It’s already eaten three people’s faces.’

‘Oooooh! We’ve never had a face-eater before,’ the whelk woman cooed. ‘I wish I’d known – I’d ’ave brought Bert’s pigeon-racing binoculars.’

The loudhailer burst into life again. ‘This is Quanderhorn himself speaking! Behind the railings, everyone! My team need room to operate!’

The sound of his voice again seemed to calm the crowd momentarily. Who the dickens was this Quanderhorn fellow?

I was about to ask the policeman, when a new chorus of piercing screams erupted all around, and the multitude parted before me.

And I saw it.

I can’t swear it was the most spine-chilling, horrifying thing I’d ever laid eyes on, since I had no memory, but I did at that moment recall exactly what I’d had for breakfast, by virtue of its unexpectedly reappearing on the pavement beneath me. (For the record: spam and toast.)

I was most certainly looking at a monster. At least twelve feet tall, vaguely female in shape, it was green and knobbly, like . . . well, like a giant human broccoli. It was entirely covered over by a thick viscous mucus, as if a circus giant had been painted with glue and then sheep-dipped in an enormous St Patrick’s Day spittoon.

It threw back its cabbage-like head and let out the most unearthly wail. The crowd drew back further, leaving me standing alone to face it.

It caught me in its monstrous gaze. Was it my imagination, or was there, for a fraction of a second, a spark of recognition in those hideous simulacra of human eyes? Frozen for one moment, I was almost tempted to step towards the wretched beast, when Dr. Janussen grabbed my arm again.

‘Stop dawdling, Brian – the Professor needs us.’

She pulled me quickly away from the clock tower into New Palace Yard, where Troy was waiting. For some reason he had neglected to put on a suitable winter coat. Or, for that matter, a shirt. And I swear he’d slipped and fallen in some engine oil somewhere, because his rather muscular chest glistened unnervingly in the street lamplight. For reasons that eluded me, a gaggle of teenaged girls who had pushed themselves to the front of the crowd shrieked inanely at his every move.

Dr. Janussen narrowed her eyes at the vehicle door under his arm.

‘Troy, why have you still got that?’

‘In case we need to lock up the van when we’re not there.’

With remarkable patience, Dr. Janussen smiled. ‘Get rid of it.’

‘Righty-ho!’ He promptly folded the van door several times, like he was making an origami swan, and leant it against the fence. Clearly, the lad was possessed of an exceptional strength.

She continued briskly: ‘The Professor needs us to wheel out Gargantua, the Toposonic Cannon.’

Troy struck a casual pose reminiscent of bodybuilding contests, to the sound of more pubescent squeals. ‘Consider it done.’ He bounded off into the shadows, muscles a-rippling.

There was a strange whinnying sound, and he re-emerged clutching the forelegs of a rather disgruntled police horse over his shoulders, dragging the struggling beast behind him.

The loudhailer barked: ‘No, Troy, the one with the wheels.’

‘Right you are, Pops!’ Troy grinned amiably. Whirling the angry horse somewhat carelessly into a hedge, he spat on his hands and missed, then raced back into the shadows.

I looked over to the source of the rebuke. Some way in the distance, atop a hydraulic platform looming high above the crowd, was a tall, imposing figure, shrouded in a British Warm overcoat, his features shadowed beneath the brim of a brown slouch hat. He raised his loudhailer once more and pointed it directly towards us.

‘Not to panic unnecessarily, Troy,’ he barked, ‘but the very fabric of existence is at stake.’

This sent a rustle of worried murmuring through the crowd.

Across the yard, Troy emerged again with a thick rope around his waist, towing an entire London bus.

‘Not the red one,’ Dr. Janussen smiled patiently. ‘The one that looks like a cannon.’

‘Are you sure a bus won’t do?’ Troy offered a winning grin. ‘It’s the 43 to Highgate Woods.’

‘Get the cannon, Troy.’ Dr. Janussen glanced towards the clock face. Three minutes before midnight. ‘Now!’

Just then, an agitated murmuring swept across the crowd. I heard a man in pinstriped trousers and bowler hat shout: ‘By ginger! The beastly article is starting to scale Big Ben!’

At first, I couldn’t spot the creature, but suddenly, with a loud electric rasp, a powerful beam, brighter than a magnesium flare, blasted from Quanderhorn’s platform, stabbing through the gloom, starkly illuminating the foul travesty of a humanoid as it clung to the masonry. Temporarily blinded, it slipped slightly, to a communal gasp from the throng, then recovered and began once more hauling itself up the tower. It moved with astonishing agility, considering its clumsy, cumbersome frame.

In a voice that chilled me to my combinations, Dr. Janussen hissed: ‘Brian, it’s imperative she doesn’t reach the clock.’

‘Why?’

‘She may prevent it striking twelve—’

‘Why must it strike twelve?’

‘There’s no time to explain right now. We need to warm up the cannon. Get out there and delay her.’

‘What? Wi-with my bazooka?’ I looked down at the infernal tube. I had no idea which way round it went or how to fire it without being catapulted backwards into the Thames.

‘No! Of course not with the bazooka. Distract her.’

‘What do you mean “distract her”?’

‘Flirt with her!’

‘Flirt?’

I looked over at the unspeakable monstrosity, oozing a trail of vile green slime up Sir Charles Barry’s exquisite Gothic revival stonework.

‘In front of all these people?’

‘You are such a Boy Scout.’

‘Why me?’

‘That thing – it’s Virginia.’

‘Virginia?’ I shook my head. The name meant nothing to me.

‘She used to be part of the team.’

I looked around again at the suppurating behemoth. I was suddenly gripped by a very disturbing thought.

‘Was she my wife?’

‘Not everybody’s your wife. What’s wrong with you, for heaven’s sake?’

I glanced again at the grotesque mutation. ‘And I’m supposed to flirt with her?’

‘We all thought she was rather soft on you.’

‘But how did she—’

‘There’s no time to explain right now – get out there and shout sweet nothings!’

‘And why is there never any time to explain anything?’ But Dr. Janussen had hastened over to the extraordinary contraption Troy was finally trundling over the cobblestones. It was on caterpillar tracks, like a tank, but the cannon barrel looked more like a giant elongated version of the valve that my nose had recently accommodated. Troy shimmied up a lamppost, pulled out the bulb and plugged a long flex in its place. The giant valve began to glow blue and buzz like an angry beehive.

I gingerly leant the bazooka against a wall, adjusted my reindeer pullover to cover the flap of my long johns, and strode purposefully towards the beast. At the base of the tower, I cleared my throat and cupped my hands.

‘Uhm . . . Virginia! Hullo there! It’s . . . it’s me!’

The abomination stopped in its tracks, slowly turned its hideous visage towards me, and bellowed in a subhuman growl. The word was distorted and garbled, but undeniably recognizable.

‘Brrriiiiiiii-annn?’

I very slightly wet myself.

Chapter Three

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 1st January, 1952 – Iteration 66

‘Ha ha. Yes . . . Honey bunch – it’s me, Brian.’

A large tendril fell off her and hit the ground with a splat beside me.

‘Brrriiiiiiii-annn?’ she/it repeated.

I glanced round at the horrified faces of the rapt crowd. ‘Yes, uhm . . . Lambikins.’

A wave of distaste swept through the throng. A small urchin threw a half-sucked gobstopper which struck the back of my head painfully and stuck there. I ignored it with dignity.

‘I was wondering if you might – if you feel like it – stop snacking on people’s faces for just one moment and come down from there?’

The beast let out a pained and angry howl, then turned back to the climb.

‘Wait! Virginia! I’ve been thinking – how would you feel about our going steady?’ This stopped the creature briefly, but there were more groans and some rather distasteful insults from the mob. I pressed on desperately: ‘Obviously we wouldn’t want to rush towards a wedding straight away. I mean, at the reception we wouldn’t know what greens to serve with the chicken—’

‘Grunghhnnnuhn!’ Virginia howled. Somehow, I seemed to have enraged her.

‘All right, all right: we’ll get married straight away! We’ll have children together. A boy who takes after me, and a girl who looks like a huge Brussels sprout.’

‘Gnghhnnarhhhgnuhn!’

A nun from a silent order suddenly yelled: ‘You’re a bloody awful flirt!’ Then clapped her hand over her mouth and crossed herself.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Troy furiously cranking a handle to elevate the cannon’s glowing barrel. The broccoli creature was almost at the clock face. It was one minute to midnight. I needed to buy just a little more time. Perhaps if I appealed to the person inside the beast.

‘Listen – Virginia – I don’t know what’s happened to make you this way, but try to remember you started out as a human being. And you still have that elusive spark of humanity inside you . . . I’m sure there’s a future for you of dignity and mutual respect and peaceful co-habitation . . .’

She stopped. She turned to me. She exploded.

Quanderhorn’s strange device had blasted her into thousands of fragments of sloppy green flesh and ribbons of foul-smelling viscera. The crowd shrieked as the ghastly carrion rained down on them.

There was a small moment of silence. A lurid flatfish-shaped organ splatted onto my shoulder and flapped alarmingly in its death throes. I slapped it to the ground and stamped on it, realising too late I was in my stockinged feet.

Big Ben began to chime the hour. I looked up from my saturated sock to see Troy’s beaming face.

‘Bullseye, eh?’ He winked. ‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m covered in the green slimy entrails of a respected colleague. How do you think I am?’

A strange expression clouded Troy’s handsome features. His mouth opened and closed like a fish undergoing a rectal examination. By a crab.

‘Never ask Troy to think. You might damage him,’ Dr. Janussen chided. ‘Troy, stop thinking at once.’ This seemed to do the trick.

The loudhailer barked: ‘Simple common folk – you can all go back to your celebrations. Well done everyone. But mostly me.’

The midnight chime rang, but it had a curious tone to it – a sort of whooshing reverse echo – and I felt momentarily light-headed. Had I sustained some kind of minor head injury in the mêlée, I wondered?

There was a small, shuffling pause, then various appalling renditions of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ began to break out among the cheering multitude. Of course! New Year! Scanning the revellers, I spotted some ‘Happy 1952’ banners. Some small part of my brain thought that odd, but I couldn’t put my finger on why.

Troy and Dr. Janussen had started packing the equipment away. I was turning to help them when I felt on my elbow a rather brusque tug, which had enough force to spin me round.

I was facing an imposingly tall and wide man in improbable sunglasses. ‘Do you know what this is?’ He nodded down to where a large object was tenting the front of his raincoat.

I licked my dry lips. ‘I’m sincerely hoping it’s a gun.’

The object jerked to the left threateningly. Gun or not, it seemed prudent to heed its instruction.

The mysterious figure ushered me down a dark alley. Was this to be the end for Brian Whatever My Second Name was? Shot in a dingy alleyway, for murky reasons I couldn’t even remember? The echo of our footsteps changed in timbre slightly. I looked up to see we were approaching a dead end. This was it, whatever ‘it’ was. In an attempt to appear slightly less cowardly than I actually was, I turned to face my tormentor and casually asked him ‘What now?’ with my eyebrow. Sadly, having raised the eyebrow, I couldn’t get it down again.

He leant over, I assumed to strangle me, but instead he pressed a protruding brick by my shoulder. The wall behind me slid aside smoothly and, with a reassuringly metallic prod from the overcoat object, I turned again and stepped into the darkness.