Cowboys and Dinosaurs - Chapter 7

7. Mmmm, That's Good Java

"It's you, isn't it! Admit it!"

Gonoroid defended himself weakly as a New Age book was waved in his face. "What's me? What are you talking about? I have a Grade Six student in here, and she's only got a week till her exams."

Steve stood on Gonoroid's threshold, brandishing the book. "Ten more of these things! In the same place on the floor! As if they'd never left the building, and I donated all ten of them to the Oxfam shop in Kentish Town yesterday."

Gonoroid thought it over. "Yes. Yes, that'd work. Kentish Town is probably far enough away not to have too many of them already. Closer to home the charity shop ladies tend to see you coming and tell you to fuck off back to Buddha with your books."

"I know it bloody well worked. I just need to stop them coming back here once they're bored with being in Oxfam."

Gonoroid raised an eyebrow. "They're the same ones?"

"Same cock and balls on page 183, same tear in the cover."

Gonoroid took the book from Steve, leafed through it cursorily. "Steve, if your cock and balls look like this, you really need to see a doctor."

"I failed GCSE Art, OK? Look, if it's you it really isn't funny any more."

Gonoroid shrugged. "How can it be? You had your lock replaced over a week ago."

Steve's suspicion was aroused. "How do you know that?"

"You have a small crater of woodshavings around your door which you have still not cleared away. I did warn you, Steve - the books cannot be gotten rid of."

"I've even considered reading them", admitted Steve guiltily. "Incidentally, I have also noticed that food has started vanishing from my fridge."

"We have here", said Gonoroid, "the makings of a classic locked room mystery." He ushered Steve into his flat. "Please come in. We are about to do Rhapsody in Blue, and Petronella is convinced I only tell her she's playing well."

Petronella was blonde, six feet tall, and proportioned like a Greek goddess squeezed with difficulty into an expensive public school uniform - in short, a perfect repository for Steve's beastly man paste. Steve dreamed of such moments, and Gonoroid, it seemed, experienced them for a living.

Petronella smiled at Steve, thereby starting a rapid tectonic process of mountain building in his trousers. "Hi. Are you Gonoroid's partner?"

As quickly as it had started, the mountain building subsided.

"I'm too pretty for Gonoroid", said Steve wearily.

Gonoroid turned a page on the music stand in the centre of his Battle Bridge.

"Begin."

Petronella's lips descended expertly to a mouthpiece that Steve envied.

***

He was through the front door and fumbling with his latest set of heavy-duty burglarproof keys when Gonoroid's face appeared between the bannisters on the first floor landing.

"Pssst!"

"Gonoroid, you're six feet tall and dressed in primary coloured lycra. You have signed away any and all rights to stealth. 'Pssst' is, for you, a redundant phrase. What do you want?"

Gonoroid looked up at Steve's front door warily. "I've got some books for you."

"I've got plenty of books, thanks."

"You don't understand." Gonoroid tiptoed up the stairs with excruciating care. "I've been to Kentish Town." Steve did not look particularly impressed with this news; Gonoroid qualified it. "To Oxfam in Kentish Town." He held out a cardboard box as if it held the Holy Grail of the Last Supper.

"It's a box."

"Think inside the box, Steve."

Steve looked inside.

"No go into your room, and look in there."

Turning his nose up at Gonoroid's box, Steve turned the key in the lock and opened the door. He looked into the room; he looked back at the box.

"The same set", he said. "It's the same set."

Gonoroid fished inside the box for a book with a slight tear in the front cover. "Now look on page 183."

Steve flicked through the book rapidly, and swore as he arrived at the page.

"We've been had", said Gonoroid.

Steve strode into the room, picked up the equivalent book from his own collection of THE SUPREME CELESTIAL PLANET, flicked through it in turn, and held the two books side by side. "The cunning bastard."

"Cunning indeed", whispered Gonoroid redundantly.

"Now that I see them side by side, I can clearly see that his cock and balls is by far the less skilfully executed, but at a casual glance -"

"Identical to the work of the master", said Gonoroid, finally giving up whispering. "We are dealing with a substantial intelligence, and an exceptional attention to deal. He had to flick through every page of all ten books and inspect each one minutely."

"An ultraviolet pen. I could mark it with ultraviolet pen. He wouldn't spot that." Steve sucked in his cheeks in frustration. "But how is he getting into my flat?" He held up the bizarre polygonal keys. "These bastards cost three hundred pounds apiece."

Gonoroid set down the box and folded his arms. "Now, Steve, you know, there may be another solution."

"Such as what? Food is still going from my fridge, you know. A whole cabbage went yesterday. And I can't keep beetroot in there more than forty-eight hours."

"Perhaps the culprit is not so far away", said Gonoroid, looking directly at Steve, "as you think."

Steve turned round in fear. "He can't be in the kitchen, I've checked in there, unless he's some sort of amoeboid eel who comes in via the waste disposal -" He stopped short, realizing Gonoroid's intended meaning. "Whoah. Now just a cotton picking second -"

"Imagine another Steve", said Gonoroid. "Let us call him Good Steve."

"Hold there just one rectally bleeding minute, if I have a multiple personality, he's bloody well going to be Evil Steve."

"I have observed your behaviour, Steve, and believe you to be evil. These books are about vegetarianism, nuclear disarmament, and love. Good Steve is attempting to spread a benign message to his counterpart."

Steve sank back against the wall. "I can't be me. I have a deep-seated distrust of vegetarianism."

"Have you experienced blackouts, peculiar smells, or an unaccountable ability to speak foreign languages? Perhaps, inside, you just feel you need to be a better person. Perhaps", said Gonoroid, holding up a crystal healing pendant Steve recognized from TOSS 8, Put Not Thy Trust In Trinkets, "if I hypnotized you, we might meet Good Steve."

"I am having nothing to do", said Steve crossly, "with hypnosis."

"Hypnosis is a tried and tested alternative therapy."

"You will put post-hypnotic suggestions into my mind to bugger you."

"That's very unfair, Steve."

"He keeps moving my chair, too", said Steve. "Good Steve, that is. I keep finding it halfway across the room." He looked across the hall at the window. "Maybe he isn't getting in through the door."

"There are bars on all the windows. And the paint hasn't been disturbed."

"Maybe he repaints the windows each night, with quick-drying paint."

"Hmm, yes. Or maybe he comes in through the wall, by taking all the bricks away and putting them back and making good with quick drying plaster and replacement thirty-year-old nicotine-stained wallpaper. Face it, Steve. You are moving the books yourself."

Steve fixed Gonoroid with an earnestly deranged stare. "Or maybe he's coming in through the floor."

"Through my flat. Hey, now you mention it, that explains the hordes of short bald Buddhists I have traipsing through my living room every morning. Bring in all manner of muck, they do, I can't move for butter sculptures."

Steve clicked his fingers. "How did I move the books before? If I didn't even live here, how did I move the books before? When the other tenants couldn't get rid of them?"

Gonoroid pursed his lips. "I don't know. Maybe you came to live here because you'd already been here. What was it that made you come to this house in particular?"

Steve thought back. "I saw a cowboy", he said. "Outside, in the street. I was intrigued. I followed him. I ended up here."

"A cowboy. Mr. Botham from downstairs, I suppose."

Steve nodded.

"We don't talk much", said Gonoroid. "Between you and me, I think he's a bit odd. But maybe you didn't follow Mr. Botham at all. Maybe you already knew where this house was. Maybe Good Steve had been coming here for years."

"Putting books here", said Steve, "In somebody else's house. For no reason."

Gonoroid threw his hands in the air. "Hey, I'm just describing your behaviour, not explaining it. Do you fancy a coffee? I've just bought a kilo of Kopi Luwak. It's the most expensive coffee in the world. Civet cats eat the beans and shit them out, and then people collect them and sell them to people like me for far more money than the coffee would have cost originally."

Steve frowned. "Do you have any instant?"

***

"Now, I'm going to count down from ten", said Mrs. Griffin. "For each number I count, you will feel twice as relaxed. When the count gets to zero, you will be the most relaxed you have ever been. Ten - nine - eight -"

There was a fly buzzing round the room, drawing on the calm pastoral watercolour of his relaxation like a big black permanent marker. Was it a house fly, or a bluebottle?

" - seven - six - five -"

- a bluebottle. Flies contained less germs than an entire teatowel, he had read. Which wasn't really a fair comparison, as a teatowel presumably had a far larger surface area than a fly, and a far better drying capacity -

" - four - three - two -"

- what would be needed for a fair comparison was a fly with the surface area of a teatowel, a quite frightening concept. Perhaps they, the men in white coats, really had located such an animal, or mutated it, in order to carry out the comparison. He knew from school that fruit flies, drosophila, had giant chromosomes much bigger than an ordinary chromosome. He had no idea how big the fruit flies that had those chromosomes were. Maybe -

" - one."

The bluebottle obligingly settled on his nose to allow him to see it more distinctly. It buzzed its wings at him angrily. His eyes crossed on it.

"Ignore the fly", said Mrs. Griffin. "You are more relaxed than you have ever been."

"Sorry", said Steve.

"Now, we are going back in time. You are no longer a young man any more. You are now a school leaver...it is two thousand and two..."

"Restaurants", said Steve indistinctly. "Restaurants with false ceilings and violet uplighters."

"Now you are a teenager, an adolescent...it is nineteen ninety eight..."

"Decking", mumbled Steve. "Decking in every garden."

"Now you are a boy", said Mrs. Griffin. "Quite a young boy. It is nineteen eighty nine."

Steve's eyes screwed up in terror. "The T shirts! The horrible, mass produced Acid House bandwagon T shirts!"

"Now, I want you to be calm, Steve. There is no need to fear the T shirts, they can't harm you now. Is Good Steve there with you? Does Good Steve like the T shirts?"

"Who's Good Steve?" said Steve. "Let's play Robocop. I want to be E.D. 209. You have twenty seconds to drop all your weapons, BADABADABADABADABADA -"

"Steve, I really need you to be calm."

"But I'm five."

"If you're a good boy, a very good boy, Mummy and Daddy will play your most favourite game with you all afternoon."

Steve looked confused. "'Let's Look Up Ladies' Skirts'? Daddy told us that Daddies couldn't play that game, or they got arrested."

"Can Good Steve play that game?"

"I don't know. Who's Good Steve?"

Mrs. Griffin remained resolutely calm. "All right. All right. Let's move forward in time a little now. You are now seven years old. It is nineteen ninety one."

"Factory custom motorcycles", said Steve. "Pimply adolescents riding around on 125cc fake Harleys with 'L' plates."

"Is Good Steve with you now?"

"My name is Steve. Does that count?"

"Maybe. Are you Good? Can I talk to Good Steve?"

"My dad says, if I'm good, I'll get a Dino Rider T Rex for Christmas. That means no more letting down people's tyres, no more pretending to drown in the river, and no more see-who-can-piss-up-the-wall highest contests, because I get piss on my shirt collar, because I'm the best."

Mrs. Griffin sighed and clicked her fingers. Steve opened his eyes. The fly buzzed away from his nose. The wind chimes in the corner of Mrs. Griffin's hypnotherapy suite tinkled gently as a heavy goods vehicle thundered past the window. The electric water feature on the fireplace gurgled reassuringly.

"I'm afraid, Mr. Simpson, that you seem to be a very average young man. Quite depressingly so, in fact. Try as I might, I can't find any evidence of childhood trauma, repressed sexual memories, or anything that might lead to the sort of multiple personality disorders you're describing."

"Rats", said Steve.

"Why do you mention rats?" said Mrs. Griffin with sudden interest. "Are you afraid they might be secured to your anus inside a plant pot and tunnel out through the soft flesh of your bowels at all?"

"No", said Steve. "Just rats. So I don't have a multiple personality disorder, then."

"Not as far as I can see", said Mrs. Griffin. "That will be fifty pounds, please."

"Oho", said Steve, struck by sudden inspiration. "Bad Steve's here now, and he doesn't want to pay."

"That will be fifty pounds, please."

***

Knocking thundered on the outer airlock door, like machine gun fire on a tin hat. Gonoroid walked to the master remote and opened both doors with a hiss of servos.

Steve stood on the threshold, framed in clouds of CO2 vapour, clearly fuming.

"I", said Steve, "am normal."

"You get any more normal, love, and you'll be driving one point five cars. Don't hammer so hard on the metal. It's only billet aluminium, it's softer than supermarket butter."

"I have been to see a hypnotherapist", said Steve, "and she has pronounced me normal." He handed Gonoroid a sheet of A4 letter-headed stationery. "I made her write me this."

Gonoroid read down the letter. "Steven Simpson Is Normal. To whom it may concern: I, Emily Griffin, GQHP, Dip. Hyp., hereby certify my belief that Steven Simpson suffers from no multiple personality disorder and is perfectly mentally normal." Steve, the fact that you forced some poor woman to certify you normal clearly indicates the opposite."

Steve took Gonoroid by the cuff of one sleeve. "Come. We are going upstairs to check out my new crop of books. I took the old ones out to the council allotment and planted them yesterday. I dug a hole three feet deep in some poor bastard's turnip patch and buried them alive." He mounted the stairs to the first floor, fishing for his keys, Gonoroid in tow. "Jumped up and down on the earth afterwards to pack 'em in. They've had a good sixteen hours now. They should have begun to sprout. I should have a fresh set in the corner of my room, around about -" he threw the door to his flat open - "there." He exploded at the continued sight of ten identical copies of THE SUPREME CELESTIAL PLANET. "Gah! How is he doing that?"

He heard a sman from behind him, turned, and wagged a finger at Gonoroid. "I'm warning you, this isn't a laughing matter."

"I didn't laugh", protested Gonoroid.

"What?"

"I didn't laugh." Gonoroid searched the walls around him minutely. "I heard it too. Like someone trying to stop themself laughing, really."

"It was out here", said Steve, pushing past him. "In the hall."

He searched the walls with his eyes, then the floors, and finally -

"You tricksy bastard."

He had passed the loft door a thousand times. Too high to reach easily with an outstretched hand, it could probably be gotten to from the stair balustrade, on the top of which, just underneath the door, he could tell-tale scuff marks. The door itself was securely locked from the outside with a steel strap and padlock.

"I put that on", said Steve. "Same time I changed the lock on my door. And", he said, testing it with a hand, "it's still solid. So that means", he said, addressing the ceiling, "you had to get out another way." He clambered up onto the balustrade and, perching there unsteadily, selected the key for the padlock. It sprung open, and he reached up to push up the loft door.

It was hinged. His first touch set a mechanism in motion, and a gleaming aluminium ladder nose-dived out of the loft space above, diligently oiled, sliding soundlessly down until its rubber treads kissed the floorboards with the gentlest of bumps.

"Jesus", said Steve. He looked at Gonoroid, mutely asking him to confirm he saw the same thing. Gonoroid shrugged weakly.

Wary of unprovoked attack from above, Steve climbed the ladder. There was light above, a gentle purple radiance.

The space under the gable was tall enough to stand upright in. The light was very dim, shining out of deliberately-placed irregular, blocky walls arranged in a cube; a room within a room. The room had one entrance, facing away from the loft door; inside was a simple bed, consisting of a single air mattress and sleeping bag, a UV bulb, a tiny porcelain Buddha, and a small scattering of cheese crumbs. Steve looked around the walls, and only then realized that the walls were made of hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of copies of THE SUPREME CELESTIAL PLANET. He was surprised the ceiling joists could take the weight.

As his eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom, he could see huge shrinkwrapped boxes around him in the loft. He squinted at the label on one of them. It read SUPREME CELESTIAL P/BACK 50 OFF.

"Is it safe to come up?" said Gonoroid.

Steve stared into the dark around him.

"Think so", he said. "Our ghost has never been violent, at any rate."

Moving further across the joists, he found another loft door, and pushed it gently with a finger. As perfectly balanced as the ladder had been, it dropped out and down on a silent hinge, flooding the loft with white light, revealing a floor seven feet below just as the first ladder had done.

He recognized the floor. Specifically, he recognized the balding grey carpet. It was his.

Wide-eyed, he lowered himself out of the second loft hole and turned his head around, spyhopping upside down. The door in his own ceiling was elaborately cut, carefully attached to a fake matrix of ceiling tiles, millimetrically balanced. Directly beneath him was the chair he always found moved halfway across the room.

He dropped out of the ceiling, folding himself over till his feet hit the floor. In a crouch on his vile carpet, he looked back and forth across the room.

The fridge door was open.

"Come out, come out", he called softly, "wherever you are."

Something moved in the kitchen, possibly without having intended to. Steve edged closer. Cautiously, he peered inside the kitchen door. Nobody was visible in the kitchen, but a huge pile of pots, pans, washing up liquid, and washing powder was visible on the worktop.

He opened the cupboard the pots, pans, and washing powder normally occupied.

"I think you'd better come out", he said.

***

"Devasekhara said I had to do it", said the short, shaven gentleman sitting at Gonoroid's helm console, miserably nursing a cup of Kopi Luwak. "He said I had to get inside the mind of Anne Frank." He took a sip from his mug. "Hey, this is excellent coffee. Where does it come from?"

Gonoroid hung his head guiltily. It had been Steve who had insisted on feeding their guest the very best coffee in the house.

"A coffee bush", said Steve, "by way of other places."

The interloper cupped the mug thankfully. "You know, when you said you were going to make me a coffee, I thought you were going to shit in it or something."

"No need for that", said Steve pleasantly. "So, how long have you been living in my ceiling?"

"About six months", said the shaven man. "It was all going well until you changed the locks. I thought I was going to starve." He looked at Steve accusingly. "Your fridge really has a very poor nutritional selection. I doubt whether you're getting all your vitamins and minerals -"

"That's because YOU'RE EATING THEM, you bugger. You are a human tapeworm." Steve raised a finger with which, he felt confident, he could, at this precise moment, do deadly damage. "You cannot stay here. You are going to go back to Mr. Big Lama and tell him it is no longer feasible for you to live in my attic. Otherwise you and he are going to have a long, long opportunity to explain the hidden meaning of existence to a number of police officers, judges and prison warders who are, truth be told, only interested in whether Kerry Katona's tits are real."

The shaven man smiled with infinite wisdom. "If Devasekhara tells me I must discuss the reality of Kerry Katona's tits to obtain enlightenment, then Kerry Katona's tits, her true-life life-and-death struggle with alcohol, drugs, nicotine and cake, and her beautiful house and/or wedding will all be discussed."

Steve narrowed his eyes. "If I explained that I was considering poking you in the scrotum with a darning needle, would that change your mind?"

A crack appeared in the infinite wisdom. "Erm - no. Of course not. Erm - you aren't, are you?"

"I have a darning needle. Quite a large one. And I am almost certain that you have a scrotum. Where's your Buddha now."

"Um. Actually, we don't actually worship the Buddha. Whilst appearing to pray to a variety of bodhisattvas, we are in fact only using them as aids to meditation - er, what are you doing?"

Steve was aiming the remote control at portions of Gonoroid's room at random. "I was sure you had a sewing kit around here somewhere..." Secret compartments unfolded and unfurled themselves bizarrely from the walls. The holy man looked around himself in confusion.

"I have a reasonably adequate sewing kit with a variety of needles from one to eighteen. But I'm not sure I approve of you sticking them in Buddhists. He could have any number of horrible Buddhist diseases."

"I'll sterilize it afterwards, don't worry, you won't catch Zen or anything - AHA!"

Triumphantly, Steve retrieved a full set of needles from a compartment marked EMERGENCY HULL REPAIR. But when he turned round again, the helmsman's chair was empty, the inner airlock door had dogged shut, and Chrissie Hynde's voice could clearly be heard explaining the pressure differential on the other side of it.

Shortly afterwards, the outer door hissed open, and a clatter of sandalled footsteps spilled out onto the stairs, followed by a frantic scrabbling at the catches on the front door.

"You so owe me a drink", said Gonoroid.

"I do indeed", said Steve. He held up a wooden egg-shaped object he had found in the storage locker. "Erm - is this some sort of gay homosexual love toy?"

"It's a darning egg, Steve. Please put it down."

Steve held up a second object, in the shape of a mushroom. "And this is?"

"A darning mushroom, Steve. Used for darning."

Steve held up a third item. "A darning penis?" he said hopefully.

"A gay homosexual love toy", said Gonoroid. "I put it in there to keep it cool."

Steve put the darning penis away. "At least", he said confidently, "I won't be hearing any more about the teachings of the divine Devasekhara."