The Antipope by Robert Rankin Page A

thunder it rolled forward. From far along the street, lights began to blink on in upstairs windows. Cats began to whine and dogs to bark.
    Pooley said, “It’s an earthquake!”
    Omally crossed himself.
    Somewhere deep within the earth a monstrous force was stirring; great ripples ran up the paving stones of Sprite Street. A shock wave spread across the grass of the Memorial Park, stiffening the coarse blades into regimented rows. A great gasp which issued from no human throat shuddered up from the very bowels of the earth, building to an enormous crescendo.
    Omally felt inclined to run but his knees had turned to jelly. Pooley had assumed the foetal position. By now Sprite Street was a blaze of light, windows had been thrown up, front doors flung open, people issued into the street clad in ludicrous pyjamas and absurd carpet slippers. Then as rapidly as it had begun, the ominous rumbling ceased, seemed to pass away beneath them and fade away. The denizens of Sprite Street suddenly found themselves standing foolishly about the road in the middle of the night. Shuffling their carpet slippers and feigning indifference to conceal their acute embarrassment they backed into their respective abodes and quietly closed their front doors.
    The night was still again, the lights of Sprite Street dimmed away and Pooley rose to his feet patting dirt from his tweeds. “John,” said he, “if you will excuse me I am now going home to my bed where I intend to remain for an indefinite period. I fear that the doings of this evening have forever destroyed my vitality and that I am a broken man.”
    “Certainly this has been an evening I should prefer to forget,” said Omally. With that he put his arm about his companion’s shoulder and the two friends wandered away into the night.

9
    It was indeed a mystery. The pressmen thrust their way through the crowds of baffled onlookers and peered disbelievingly down from the bridge to the muddied track of twisted bicycle frames, old tin cans and discarded pram wheels which spread away into the distance. How an entire one-mile stretch of canal from the river lock to that of the windscreen-wiper factory could simply have vanished overnight seemed beyond anybody’s conjecture.
    “It couldn’t have gone out through the river lock,” an old bargee explained, “it is high water on the Thames and the river is six foot up the lock gates on that side.”
    “And at the other end?”
    The bargee gave his inquisitor a look of contempt. “What, travel uphill into the next lock do you mean?” The interviewer coloured up and sought business elsewhere.
    Archroy, who was a great follower of Charles Fort, explained what had happened. “Teleportation,” said the lad. “The water has been teleported away by those in sore need of it, possibly inhabitants of a nearby sphere, most likely the moon.”
    The pressmen, although ever-anxious to accept any solution as long as it was logical, newsworthy or simply sensational, seemed strangely diffident towards his claims for the existence of telekinetic lunar beams.
    It was certainly a most extraordinary event however, one which would no doubt catapult Brentford once more into the national headlines, and at least bring good trade to the Flying Swan. Neville was going great guns behind the bar. The cash register rang musically and the no-sale sign bobbed up and down like a demented jack-in-the-box.
    “And don’t forget,” said the part-time barman above the din, “Thursday night is Cowboy Night.”
    Jammed into an obscure corner and huddled over his pint, Jim Pooley watched with loathing the fat backside of an alien pressman which filled his favourite bar stool. Omally edged through the crush with two pints of Large. “It was only after I got home that I remembered where I’d seen those crests before,” he explained as he wedged himself in beside Pooley. “They were the coat of arms of the Grand Junction Water Works, those doors must have been part of the