Cowboys and Dinosaurs - Chapter 6

6. Your Powers Are Weak, Young Jedi

"Pressure equalized", said Chrissie Hynde. There was a whoosh of air, and the lock opened. Banks of lilac lights flickered comfortingly. A plasma screen worth more than Steve's car showed clear empty space.

"Jesus", said Gonoroid. "What happened to you?"

"Thick as grass and black as hell...Zulus...nearly a dozen of 'em", said Steve, and collapsed into the navigator's seat.

"Oh no. You poor thing. You've been Isandhlwana'ed." Gonoroid fished for his Universal Remote Control.

Steve looked up in consternation. "This has happened before?"

"Oh yes. With predictable frequency." Gonoroid found the control, zapped an overhead cabinet and extracted a jar of coffee. "Were you heavily outnumbered?"

"No...that would have been Rorke's Drift. Instead, we were cunningly encircled using a formation known as the Horns of the Buffalo. Me and a guy called Pete from Tooting. We never stood a chance. Pete went down in a shower of knobkerries and cruel feminist slogans, then they started on me." He looked up at Gonoroid in dread. "Syndii wants me to do the same next week, to Get It Absolutely Right."

"I really should have warned you", said Gonoroid. "This happens to most heterosexual men who live on the east side of the building. Most of them move out some time after. They can't take the shame of being constantly bitch-slapped by a bunch of girls, and they don't dare face Syndii to say they don't want to turn up to rehearsals any more."

"Once it came down to bayonet range", reminisced Steve traumatically, "they were all over us. It was horrible. And at the same time sort of lovely."

"What you need", said Gonoroid, "is a session with the Masters. You need to improve your bayonet-work." The kettle began to hiss like a bad special effect.

"How do you -" Steve winced as one of his throat muscles impinged on his bruises - "know anything about bayonets that aren't made of beef? Space Cruiser Invincible didn't have, I don't know, light sabre bayonets on phaser rifles or anything."

"You are referring", said Gonoroid severely, "to Other Sci-Fi Franchises Which We Do Not Mention."

"Sorry", said Steve. "I'm aware of the lack of story arc and the fact that Ewoks strain the viewer's suspension of the vomit reflex. Also that Jar Jar Binks is the world's first amphibian negro stereotype."

"Thank you", said Gonoroid, spooning a white powder into Steve's coffee.

"I don't take sugar", said Steve.

"I know", said Gonoroid. "This is cocaine. It'll ease the pain and make you foolishly imagine I'm your friend. The Masters of Cold Steel are unrivalled in their knowledge of jabbing folk with sharp stuff, and as luck would have it, they live right here in this very street. Luckily, they are sworn enemies of the isangoma and will happily assist you in kicking her butt." He handed the coffee mug to Steve.

"How do you know them?" said Steve, sucking at his coffee. He was as yet physically unable to sip.

"They're both as gay as flower fairies of the spring. But steel, especially pink steel, is deadly in their hands."

"What's an isangoma?"

"A zulu witch. Stick with me, young crewman. Trust your Sixties sci-fi. Women are evil creatures who serve only to distract a regular character from the pure love that can only exist between him and his fellow officers."

A warm glow of analgesic contentment was spreading throughout Steve's entire body. "Thank you, Brevet Sub-Commander."

"Don't mention it. And if you wake up on the couch over there, you have my word as an officer that I didn't bugger you while you were asleep."

"You're so good to me. I can't feel my teef."

Gonoroid patted Steve gently on the head, and Steve floated gently away on fluffy clouds of antigravity.

***

"Behold", said Gonoroid, "the lair of the Masters of Cold Steel."

Steve beheld the lair.

"It looks remarkably like a Victorian terrace", he said.

"Appearances can be deceptive", said Gonoroid, ringing the doorbell.

"It says 'DANDAIR' on the nameplate", said Steve.

"That's because one of the Masters of Cold Steel is called Daniel and the other Alasdair", explained Gonoroid.

"Coming!" said a plummy voice from beyond the door. There was a sound of frustrated key-finding, and many, many bolts withdrew from the door jambs. The door opened to reveal an elderly man in carpet slippers and a maroon dressing gown, holding a Persian cat.

"Good morning", said the man.

"Steve here requires bayonet training", said Gonoroid.

"Sword or cruciform?" said the man, releasing the cat and stooping to retrieve a bottle of Gold Top and a copy of the Daily Mail.

"British infantry, Natal", said Gonoroid, and then added, as a trump card, "1889."

The old gent inhaled his false teeth in shock, having to return them to the front of his mouth to speak.

"I see", he said. "You'd better come in."

Inside the house, great stacks of books filled every unfurnished corner, like an Augeian Stables of literature. The subject of the literature was single-minded - biographies of generals, first-hand accounts of combat, histories of armoured warfare. One book was entitled STICK IT IN AND TWIST - A HISTORY OF THE BAYONET FROM 1697 TO THE PRESENT DAY. Where there were not books, there were weapons - swords leaning up against fireplaces, shell cases positioned as ashtrays, and locked cabinets crammed with ancient rifles.

"Isn't it dangerous, keeping guns in the house?" said Steve. "Someone might break in."

"Whatever they took would most likely blow up in their faces", said the gent. "They don't make ammunition for many of these pieces any more." He picked up a small, compact carbine. "Recognize this? You should, it's the same gun that was used to kill Kennedy." Noting Steve's expression of bewilderment, he snapped: "Not the same gun, nitwit. Do I look like I work for the American Secret Service? Carcano M91/38, original calibre, mint condition. Picked it up from a blackfella in a pub, suspiciously dirt cheap, he'd probably just killed somebody with it, it's what these chaps do. Killers, your mans. Born killers. Splendid fellows."

"Where's Daniel?" said Gonoroid.

"Oh, he's sulking in the greenhouse. A ridiculous spat over where we park Barbie. The concrete underneath the old garages is the only spot thick enough to take it. Last time I parked Barbie anywhere else in the garden, I ruptured a sewer. The Council charged us thousands. But will he listen?" Alasdair picked up a maroon beret larger than his own head and slapped it on his skull, then rounded on Steve. "So, you've got a problem with Johnny Lady Zulu, have you?"

Steve fidgeted nervously. "They come at me from all sorts of angles."

Alasdair prodded Steve with a swagger stick he had somehow secreted inside his Daily Mail. "Roll up their flank, my lad, that's what you need to do. Get on the left hand side of their left hand gel, then take 'em on one by one." He held the swagger stick in both hands and jabbed it at Steve's midriff. "You see, Johnny Ripen-at-Noon will come at you like this, holding her assegai with both hands like the floor mop to which she is accustomed. This is not how one handles a spear, and a bayonet is just a spear with a rifle on it. Instead, one rests the spear in an open hand, stirring it round with the other until one finds an open spot through which one then strikes -" he struck unexpectedly with the stick, winding Steve agonizingly under the ribcage. Steve toppled into a pile of Purnell's Illustrated History of the Second World War.

Alasdair tutted in annoyance. "Neither reflexes nor stamina. Terrible material. It will take time to train this one."

"They're re-enacting the Battle of Isandhlwana", goaded Gonoroid. "The British have a chance to win this time."

Alasdair scoffed. "They're always re-enacting the Battle of Isandhlwana. Never Ulundi. Why not Ulundi? Answer me that? Why not Ulundi?"

Steve staggered upright, using a handy gun carriage for support. A long-barrelled rifle with a cruciform bayonet attached was leaning up against the curtains.

"You want that, don't you?" said Alasdair, his eyes shining. "Want to pick that up, and stick it in your Uncle Alasdair, don't you. Go ahead, do it - I'm an old man, I won't resist. I have little to live for save affordably priced coach excursions."

Teeth grinding in his skull, Steve bent down to pick up the rifle.

"Mauser Gewehr 98", said Alasdair. "A fine weapon. Good choice." He lifted up his diamond-patterned pullover and pointed at his belly button. "See if you can make this go all the way through. Go on."

Steve lifted the barrel, screamed hideously, and ran at full pelt at Alasdair, who produced a pistol-shaped device from his dressing gown pocket and zapped Steve with it at point blank range. Tiny wires sprang out of the instrument; Steve's legs inexplicably failed to carry him forward, and he ploughed into the carpet, which appeared not to have been cleared for some time. He lay with his head in the shag, convulsing weakly.

Alasdair extracted the rifle from a copy of TILL YOU SEE THE WHITES OF THEIR EYES - THE MEMOIRS OF A COLONIAL MAN OF ACTION, through which it had penetrated to chapter six.

"Better", he said. "Though I'd have expected a good man to get as far as the index."

He pushed a button on his weapon to retract the wires; darts pulled out of Steve's skin painfully. Alasdair holstered the weapon, which was labelled ADVANCED TASER.

"Come on, we'll take you out into the garden. Let's see whether you're a straw man or a bayonet."

Steve looked out into the back garden through French windows blocked with books.

"There's a tank out there", he said. The turret of the tank, visible above a protective tarpaulin, aimed its gun sightlessly into the sky.

"Tank, Infantry, Mk 2 Matilda. Pounded Rommel halfway across North Africa, bless her", said Alasdair. "The only thing the Hun had that could touch her was an Eighty-Eight. Despite appearing female, she's actually a male. By convention, only male tanks have cannon; the females just have machine guns. They're man-killers, you see. That's why there are no tanks nowadays with female names. They all carry cannon. The Matilda is hence the only gender-confused tank in existence apart from the original Tank, Mark 1 Mother."

Steve suddenly recited: "Women are evil creatures who serve only to distract a chap from the pure love that can only exist between him and his fellow officers." He re-examined the statement. Why had he said that? Where had he heard it? Across the room, Gonoroid became intensely interested in the backs of his own fingers.

"Ah, you know the creed!" Alasdair clapped Steve on the back. "Wouldn't want a chap spreading his love round the other ranks, obviously. Some things have to be kept from the privates. To the practice ground! We'll make a gay man of you yet."

***

"NO, NO! Not like THAT! Not overarm, you can't get your weight behind it!"

Steve, so exhausted he now felt little but nausea, lowered the wooden practice bayonet and stormed into Alasdair again, feeling a satisfying CRACK as the point connected with the heavy kendo armour.

"Better! MUCH better! Though I let you have that one, of course, I am of course much more skilled at this than you."

Alasdair, dressed from crown to groin in fibreglass and holding a genuine Zulu assegai and shield, danced backwards across the lawn. Steve, totally unarmoured and equipped only with a wooden mokujo rifle, manoeuvred cautiously round the garden gnomes.

"Is it really necessary for the gnomes to be there?" said Gonoroid from his position perched fearfully on the garden swing.

"Johnny isangoma", said Alasdair, "may come at you at any time, in any place. There may be gnomes in that place, and there may not be gnomes. Whatever the gnomic configuration, you must be ready. Boola Boola!"

Weakly, Steve parried the spear-blow, only to stagger forward onto another as the blade deftly retracted and dabbed forward again.

"You're weakening! You cannot afford weakness! You must be steel, young trooper! You must be steel!"

Utterly spent, Steve sagged forward and grabbed the spear.

"You've grabbed my spear, young man. Let go."

Steve refused to let go of the spear.

"Young man, holding on to my spear is just not on. Unhand it."

"No", said Steve. "You'll hit me with it."

"You achieve nothing by holding the spear, young man. You have stopped me from being able to attack you; but by dropping your own bayonet, you have also stopped yourself from being able to attack me."

"It works for me", said Steve.

"And if there are ten of me?"

"There aren't."

"There will be next weekend", said Gonoroid. "Then you'll be sorry."

Steve sobbed on the end of the spear, stooped to pick up the bayonet and attempted weakly to defend himself as Alasdair leapt to the attack.

***

"Excellent, young shaver! Excellent! You are still flabby, still weak, but you are improving!" Alasdair slapped Steve heartily on his bruises. "This pain is but a passing thing. It will only be a memory in a week or so. In two days' time, it will be far worse, I grant you -" Steve groaned - "but eventually you will be reborn as a warrior in the mould of Ajax, bright of eye, sound of round of muscle, firm of buttock -"

"Loin of pork?" suggested Steve, too spent to care who he offended.

"Ingrate! I've provided you with the means to defeat our common enemy."

Steve slumped over the lawn swing. "Have you - have you ever defeated them?"

"Ha! I defeated them so roundly they will no longer play with me. I was arrested for assault, sexual assault, and racially motivated hate crime. They eventually generously agreed not to press charges after I threatened to show video footage of their previous two public displays, in which three men clearly received broken bones and a dislocated shoulder. I have since posted it on my blog, Boadicea - Queen of the Battlefield. No battle-reenactment enthusiast will deal with the vutwamini any longer. They are getting increasingly desperate. I read exchanges in web fora where the isangoma has been attempting to get members of the Sealed Knot to engage in alternative history battles between the Zulus and Cromwell's New Model Army, presumably somewhere on the Surrey-Zululand border."

Alasdair was interrupted by a monstrous roar from the garages at the bottom of the garden, loud enough to shake the raindrops off the garden gnomes and vibrate the french windows in their frames.

"I see he's out of his sulk", said Alasdair. A window next door slid down, and a red-faced neighbour poked his head out to yell abuse. In response, a considerably more massive heap of tarpaulin at the foot of the garden began to move. It turned ponderously, swinging a gun thicker than a drainpipe out across next door's lawn.

"I see he's got the turret working again", said Alasdair. "He's been engaging himself in productive labour."

"If you don't switch off that bloody machine, I'm calling the Council!" yelled the neighbour. "Don't point that thing at me! I'm not scared of you!"

"He has loud garden parties till three a.m.", said Alasdair. "The Council have bye-laws allowing them to confiscate loud stereo equipment. I'm not sure those laws extend to the confiscation of seventy-tonne armoured fighting vehicles."

A coalscuttle helmet popped up from inside the turret, on top of a second elderly gentleman in a string vest.

"What sort of tank is that?" said Steve.

"Tiger 2", said Alasdair with grudging admiration. "In a tank like that, SS-Haupsturmführer Michael Wittmann trapped and killed twelve Allied tanks in a sunken road in Normandy in 1944. A weapon to be respected. Not to be reported to the Council like an uncollected dustbin." He yelled up to the man in the helmet. "SPRECHEN WIR JETZT MITEINANDER, KLEINES?"

The helmeted man grinned. "SCHAU DOCH MAL MEIN KRÄFTIGES BIEST AN! MEINE MÄCHTIGE WAFFE LÄUFT DIREKT DEINE LÄCHERLICHE SCHWACHE RÜSTUNG DURCH!"

"DU BIST SCHWACH IM ARSCH GEPANZERT, QUERFOTZE!"

The helmeted man gave a gleeful Hitler salute.

"TURN THAT BLOODY THING OFF! I'M WARNING YOU - I'VE GOT THE POLICE ON SPEED DIAL -"

"DO YOU WANT ANYTHING FROM THE SHOP?" yelled the tank commander.

"FIFTY GAULOISES", yelled Alasdair back. "AND A DAILY EXPRESS. THEIR WEBSITE CLAIMS THEY'VE TRACKED DOWN THE MI6 MAN WHO MURDERED PRINCESS MICHAEL OF KENT, WHICH IS SURE TO BE GOOD AS SHE'S NOT DEAD YET."

The tarpaulin fell off the massive, cottage-sized structure as it rumbled slowly out of the garden on paving slabs of treads. The earth shook. Individual stones rattled in their mortar in adjoining garden walls. There was a honking of horns as the Tiger, its whip aerial trailing a Nazi pennon, intersected with the street beyond.

"Isn't it a little risqué driving through London covered in swastikas?" said Steve.

"It's all right", said Alasdair. "He's being ironic. Daniel's grandparents all died in Auschwitz. Besides", he said, returning his assegai to what appeared to be a hand-knitted assegai cosy, "if I dress up as a Roman soldier, does that mean I worship Jupiter and believe escaped slaves should be crucified? You owe me fifty pounds for the bayonet practice, by the way."

Steve's flesh crawled. He stared hard at Gonoroid. Gonoroid attempted to achieve invisibility by fervent concentration on the floor.

Meekly, Steve reached for his wallet.