The Chickens of Atlantis and Other Foul and Filthy Fiends

by Robert Rankin

Genres: Fantasy

Synopsis

Robert Rankin, the master of far-fetched fiction, presents, for the first time, a book written in 'the first monkey'. Sure to be taken up as the newest of literary fads, Darwin, the Educated Ape here tells his life story to his legions of fans. Featuring: Chickens! Martians! Doodlebugs! The Far Future! The Distant Past! Sherlock Holmes! Winston Churchill! Dynamite! More Monkeys than you can shake a stick at! Barmen! Pubs! The End of the World and more! The fourth in Robert Rankin's series of steampunk-tinged Victoriana novels featuring the master detective Cameron Bell (who has an unfortunate fondness for blowing up major landmarks) and his companion, Darwin, the Educated Ape, this is another masterpiece of comic fiction and SF.

Release date: September 19, 2013

Publisher: Gollancz

Print pages: 307

Sample

1

y name is Darwin and I am a monkey butler.

I have travelled through space, I have travelled through time, and I have had many adventures.

My earliest memories are not pleasant to recall, full of stench and of ghastliness, of many bells chiming, of coarse cries and clamour and I all alone and in fear.

I awoke to sensibility in a cage on a Tilbury dock. The year was eighteen ninety; the month, I believe, was May. I have no knowledge of my parents, my tribe or even the country in which I was born. Upon my passport and papers of travel I am now identified as ‘a citizen of London’, and I take pride in this, for within that great and ancient city I have enjoyed more happiness than sorrow, made more friends than enemies and acquainted myself with artists and musicians, knights and noblemen and members of the Royal Household.

I recall too clearly the kicking at my cage and a great face, all red and wildly whiskered, calling upon me to dance. The breath of this face was tainted with liquor, and the eyes of this face were fierce.

At that time I spoke not a word of the Queen's English and as such was limited in my means of communication. My response to the assault upon my tender senses lacked then the sophistication I now enjoy and I make no pretence to the contrary. And so it was there, upon that clamorous, foul-smelling dock, that I committed my first social gaffe. For I produced dung and hurled it!

This act, construed no doubt as one of defiance, was met with a brutal rejoinder: a shaking of my cage, which increased in vigour until it reached an intolerable degree and I passed from consciousness once again.

Cold water awakened me to a room with air made dense by tobacco smoke. A roguish type in a colourful suit wrought a brisk tattoo upon the bars of my little prison with the business end of a swagger-stick and called out to an audience before him. I was announced as, ‘Lot thirty-two. A monkey of cheerful disposition. Eager to learn and as fine a fellow as might grace an organ-grinder's in-stri-ha-ment and lure many pennies into an old tin cup.’

Hungry then was I and bitter at the shaking I had received. And so, I confess, I did not exhibit that cheerful disposition attributed to me by the chap in the colourful suit. I made loud my protests in my ancestral tongue and had I been capable of producing further faeces I would gladly have done so. And gladly hurled them, too.

I was sold for the princely sum of twelve shillings to a gentleman named George Wombwell, the proprietor of a travelling menagerie, and it was he who named me Darwin.

Mr Wombwell was a kindly man, whom I feel harboured a genuine love for the animals in his charge. At the time when I accompanied him on his meanderings along the highways and by-roads of southern England, he owned a pair of charming elephants, a lion of evil intent, numerous trained kiwi birds and performing chickens, a ‘pig of knowledge’ and a mermaid.

The mermaid was a fascinating creature. It appeared for all the world to be part-monkey and part-fish, although the monkey portion never spoke to me. Around and around that creature swam in a vast spherical bowl and many were the heads that shook in wonder. It was many, many years before I saw its like again, and then in somewhat outré circumstances.

Although initially belligerent and uneager to cooperate, I found myself gently won over to Mr Wombwell's wishes. I learned that to please him garnered rewards which, like as not, came in the shape of bananas. To displease him, however, occasioned a falling from grace characterised by an absence of these yellow delicacies.

I learned quickly and became most obliging.

I could write much regarding my travels with Mr Wombwell, for indeed my days with that singular gentlemen were rarely ever dull. We moved from town to village and like-abouts, mostly bringing happiness to those who patronised our performances. I became adept at juggling, tomfoolery, pratfalls and ‘tricks above ground’. I well remember the happy cries of children and the merry jingle of Mr Wombwell's brass cash register. I learned tricks enough to please him and gained an understanding of the English tongue, although at that time I was unable to vocalise and express myself through words. There was the occasional unpleasantness.

I will not belabour my reader with tales of the travelling life. Mr Wombwell has published his autobiography, and although his recollections differ somewhat from my own regarding the extent of his successes, the gist is very much the same as any account I could give.

Now, a man must adapt to what he cannot control, and so too must a monkey. I have lived upon other worlds and encountered beings who, although sharing a common sun with men of Earth, inhabit such strange forms and hold to such quaint manners as to baffle my small senses. These beings do not cogitate like men, but they do exhibit certain attitudes which display, to my thinking, what might be described as an all-but-universal constant.

That of tribalism.

My first experience of this was with Mr Wombwell's Travelling Menagerie. Showmen and circus folk consider themselves a race apart. The ‘hicks’ or ‘rubes’ or ‘billy-docks’ or ‘nadgers’ who attend their performances and fill their coffers are ‘not as they’. Showmen and circus folk are of a tribe that keeps itself apart. They look after their own and hold most others in the lowest form of contempt. Such, sadly, I have found to be the case throughout all levels of society, on this world and elsewhere.

History records that in the year eighteen eighty-five, King Phnarrg of Mars declared war upon the British Empire. He sent a mighty fleet of space-going warships to attack and destroy the subjects of Queen Victoria. Few there are, however, who understand that this was a religious crusade. The Martian tribe considered itself composed of God's chosen people and Mankind to be an impure race of idolaters, fit only for extermination.

Tribalism is the tragedy of the sentient being, and I, who have visited the past and the future, can see no end to it.

I gathered what learning I could from Mr Wombwell and also from others in his employ, for although I was at that time unable to utter words of English, I was perfectly able to converse with others of my ‘tribe’: to wit, the animal kingdom.

A rooster named Junior talked long into the nights with me. He was a prodigious conversationalist and a cock of a religious bent. Junior held to the belief that Mankind had descended from chickens, that the first fowl had been placed upon the Earth by Lop Lop, God of the Birds, and the Great Mother Hen who dwelt on her cosmic nest. I later came to understand that a gentleman whose name I shared held to not dissimilar beliefs – his, however, involved ape-like antecedents.

I will not at this juncture inform the reader as to which of these theories is correct. Although the title of this tome might have released the pussy of metaphor from the sack of obfuscation, thereby saving it from a drowning in the village pond of Penge.

In the year of eighteen ninety-four, I resigned from Mr Wombwell's employ. I am of a mercurial disposition and have what my good friend Sigmund Freud would term ‘a limited span of attention’. I had by this year gained sufficient understanding to realise that the itinerant life held little charm for myself. I had become an ape of ambition and now held to the conviction that I should seek my fortune in the great, good-hearted City of London.

My opportunity to take my leave came one night after a performance at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly. An inebriate cage-boy had inadequately secured the fastenings upon my quarters and I stole quietly away into the night.

The closing years of the nineteenth century were, regrettably, characterised by debauchery and decadence. Whether this is the case in every century, I know not. My experiences in several, however, lead me to believe that this is the rule rather than the exception.

During these years, well-to-do ne'er-do-wells behaved with shameless abandon – ingesting morphine by means of gold-plated syringes, guzzling Vin Coca Mariani, a wine laced with cocaine, and concluding their extravagant dinings with a desert of strawberries soaked in ether.

As for myself, I have always preferred Treacle Sponge Bastard for afters.

The literature of this period reflected its social mores and I well recall a popular erotic novel of the day called Fifty Shades of Earl Grey.*

I was free, but all alone once more. From lofty rooftops I viewed others of my tribe, sporting slave-wear of the waistcoat and fez variety and chained to the barrel organ. Not for me, thought I. I am cut from richer cloth. Perhaps I felt I was more of a man than a monkey.

Reality impinged upon such ill-founded graces when I was taken by Lambeth's Monkey-Catcher-in-Residence and found myself once more put up for auction. On this occasion, perhaps on account of the rather smart velvet suit Mr Wombwell had clothed me in and my knowledge that flinging dung brought few rewards, the hammer came down at the sum of one guinea and I became a member of a most exalted household.

That of Lord Brentford, whose stately abode, Syon House, occupied lands between London's most beautiful borough (Brentford) and the fields of Isleworth.

I was greatly taken with his lordship, a gentleman in every sense of the word. He delegated one of his minions to school me in the noble arts of monkey butlerdom, and these I took to willingly and without complaint. The duties were not arduous, the tasks simple but specific. My accommodation was almost luxurious and bananas were in plentiful supply.

Looking back now, I know that Lord Brentford cared deeply for me. He was and is a good man and my times in his employment lacked not for adventure and excitement.

He, too, named me Darwin, which seemed a rare coincidence. Only later did I come across the velvet suit that I had worn during my years with Mr Wombwell, laundered and folded in a drawer of my dresser. By that time, my knowledge had increased and I read the label on the collar, which said ‘Darwin, property of George Wombwell's Travelling Menagerie’. Lord Brentford might well have chosen to return me to my ‘owner’, but he did not. Because he cared for me.

I am grateful that he did and glad to have known that noble lord, for it is because of him that I became what I am today.

The world's first and only talking ape.

The Ape of Space.

The Ape of Time.

The ape who would, through a twist of fate, become the father of all apes and the father, too, of all Mankind.

And many many tribes.

* This may strike the reader as a rather tired and worn-out gag, but do remember that Darwin encountered this book in 1897. (R. R.)

2

have chosen to set down my musings and memoirs in ‘the first monkey’.

This is, I do not hesitate to add, in direct opposition to the wishes of my publishers, who advised strongly against such a course of action, stating that my prose was dense and idiosyncratic and suggesting that I – and here I employ the parlance of the nineteen sixties – ‘dumb it down in the cause of increased sales’.

My response to this did not involve the employment of dung, for I am now above such acts of grossness. Rather I explained to them, with patience and good grace, that I valued quality above the worship of Mammon, adding that as the world's only speaking ape ever to publish his memoirs, I felt that the reading public might be persuaded to meet me halfway and look up any difficult words in the Oxford English Dictionary.

You may consider my decision rash, or indeed vain, and suggest that one of England's great writers should have been engaged to better tell my tale. Perhaps even Robert Rankin himself might have been presumed upon to take up this endeavour.

And indeed I have, in the spirit of altruism, made the concession of allowing Mr Rankin to lend the considerable weight of his literary celebrity to this venture by adding illustrated letters and annotations to the text at appropriate intervals.

I will confess that after my initial meeting with my publishers, I repaired to my suite at The Dorchester, where I regathered my wits in the company of Château Doveston champagne and vowed, using another term I encountered during my sojourn in the swinging sixties, to ‘stick it to the man’.

I briefly touched upon the matters above because it is now my wish to touch upon other matters connected therewith. To wit, how I arrived at that estate of Man characterised by speech and literacy.

It all came about in this fashion.

I had become Lord Brentford's ‘man’ in that I was now his monkey butler, engaged as a gentleman's gentle-monkey to aid his lordship with his daily endeavours, to ensure that the niceties which should be accorded to a person of noble birth were occasioned with correctness.

A monkey butler's duties are those of the valet. To attend to his master's dressing room and maintain order and tidiness therein, replenishing the jars of pomade, moustache wax and gentlemen's special creams when necessary. To assist his lordship in dressing or otherwise. To accompany him upon outings and be aware at all times of the correct social etiquette. To be on hand, when so required, for anything as may be required.

Naturally, the duties of a human butler go beyond this and extend to the hiring and firing of staff, the admittance of and making of polite conversation with guests, the ordering of supplies and the keeping of household accounts. And, of course, the occasional thrashing of wayward bootboys.

My size and communicative abilities precluded me from several of these duties. Much to my regret, as I would dearly have loved to thrash those wayward bootboys.

It was during the summer of eighteen ninety-five that I accompanied Lord Brentford on what was intended to be the first circumnavigation of the globe by airship.

The Empress of Mars was a magnificent vessel, a gigantic pleasure craft almost a third of a mile in length. The very cream of London society was booked on board for this historic flight and history was to be made. The Empress would rise from the Royal London Spaceport, which spread beneath the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, and I would be amongst the history-makers.

I confess that I was wary, but the prospect of such a journey held great charm for me as Lord Brentford explained that the airship would pass over Africa.

‘Where you were born, young Darwin.’

Sadly, his lordship did not return in triumph from the maiden flight of the Empress of Mars. That beautiful silver ship of the skies went down in a terrible storm and plunged into a distant ocean. Lord Brentford was lost and I returned to London in the company of Mr George Fox, later dubbed a knight for his services to Queen and country.

It was at this time that I first attained great wealth.

Lord Brentford, it transpired, was not a man who looked favourably upon his family; in fact, he held them in utter contempt. He had taken the sensible precaution of updating his will before taking passage aboard the Empress of Mars and had removed the names of his ‘nearest and dearest’ and substituted my own.

I had suddenly become an ape of wealth. The lands, the investments, the great house of Syon – all indeed were mine.

I was deeply touched by this act of Man's humanity to Monkey and vowed that I would raise a monument to Lord Brentford. Possibly a bronze statue of himself to adorn the vacant plinth in Trafalgar Square.

Just as soon as I had attended to one or two more pressing matters, to wit, the laying down of banana plantations in the grounds and the construction of a Bananary to adorn the rear of Syon House. And in order to achieve these admirable ends, it was essential that I gain the ability to speak the Queen's English, to read and also to write.

I had overheard conversations regarding a mysterious gentleman known only as Herr Döktor, who held to certain radical theories, most notable amongst them his conviction that the evolutionary progress of the simian species could be advanced through human tuition, and that apes might eventually catch up with Humankind. Herr Döktor's goal was to bring spiritual enlightenment to Man's hairy cousins, that their souls might be saved through knowledge and worship of the Almighty.

Sir George Fox, with whom I had formed a bond of friendship, had a beautiful wife named Ada. I had achieved some success at communicating with her through the medium of mime, and when I made my wishes known, she arranged for Herr Döktor to attend me at the great house and put me through an intense course of instruction.

Dear reader, I could write at great length of the travails endured upon both sides during the months of my training. And I confess that in times of great frustration I did resort to the flinging of dung. But Herr Döktor endured and so did I, and six months later I shook the hand of this remarkable visionary, thanked him and said farewell in all-but-perfect ‘Man’.

And here I must express a certain measure of regret, for I did not use my new-learned talents as wisely as I might. I craved excitement and I craved to be as men are. I shaved my facial whiskers and the hairs from my hands; dressed as a sporting toff, my tail tucked out of sight; represented myself as an English country gentleman; and took myself off to the gaming tables of Monte Carlo.

Within several short hours I had lost all that Lord Brentford had left me. I stood once more at poverty's door, a sadder yet wiser monkey.

I learned that evening a bitter lesson. But my life has been a series of lessons learned and it has also been an adventurous and often carefree one, filled with the joys of genuine friendship and love. Thus I no longer offer excuses for my early foolishness.

Happily I had retained my papers of employment, drawn up for me by Lord Brentford himself and bearing his heraldic seal. With these I presented myself at the offices of Blackfrond's, London's premier employment agency.

Blackfrond's specialised in placing registered non-human workers into suitable employ. Here, upon any given day, the sapient pig, the equine wonder, even the spider of destiny might be found in the plushly furnished confines of Blackfrond's Waiting Hutch, patiently preparing for placement.

I was fully aware that as the world's first speaking ape, a simian prodigy if ever there was one, I could reasonably expect to turn a pretty penny by exhibiting myself before a paying public. But my travels with Mr Wombwell had convinced me that discomfort outweighed monetary benefit in that line of work. I had grown to love the finer things of life. I determined to take once more to what I now considered my vocation and return to being a monkey butler.

It was a wise decision.

I took employment with a venerable ancient by the name of Colonel Katterfelto.

My adventures with this worthy fellow have been chronicled within Mr Robert Rankin's admirable book The Mechanical Messiah and Other Marvels of the Modern Age, and I can do no better than to recommend the reader purchase and peruse this finely crafted tome.

After a life of heroic service to his fellow man, Colonel Katterfelto died in my arms. He was one of the finest and most noble individuals it has ever been my honour to call friend. Indeed, he called me his little brother, and tears fill my eyes at his memory.

After that I fell in with Cameron Bell.

Mr Cameron Bell is a most singular individual, even in an age that appears overpopulated with singular individuals. He is, by calling, a consulting detective and owns to a number of literary friends and acquaintances, two in particular being worthy of note here – Messrs Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Mr Dickens based the looks of Mr Pickwick upon those of Cameron Bell, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle modelled the deductive reasoning of his most notable creation, Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, upon that of Mr Bell.

A most singular individual indeed.

Mr Bell's observational skills, his capabilities as a consulting detective, his discretion and his boundless enthusiasm for his vocation have made him the greatest detective of the Victorian age and something of a darling with the well-to-do.

He has solved cases for most of the royal houses of Europe, and in eighteen ninety-nine, with my invaluable assistance (as he and I had formed a partnership under the name of Banana and Bell), he saved Her Majesty Queen Victoria from assassination.

Mr Bell was awarded the Royal Victorian Order for his services to the sovereign and became a Knight of the Grand Cross.

I received neither medal nor commendation. But, like the Fuller's 1900 Millennial Double Chocolate Stout, I harbour no acerbity.

The case that led to Mr Bell saving the life of Victoria, Empress of both India and Mars, involved two dreadful harpies: Lavinia Dharkstorrm, a witchy woman, and Princess Pamela, twin sister of Queen Victoria and, as it turned out, the female Antichrist.

It was a hair-raising adventure and I have many hairs that might be raised. Especially whilst in the company of Mr Bell, who is known to me as the World's Most Dangerous Detective due to his immoderate use of dynamite.

I would mention here, because it is of importance, that Mr Bell and I had been taken into the confidence of the pre-eminent chemist Ernest Rutherford, the gentleman who created the world's first Large Hadron Collider, which was cunningly disguised as part of London's Underground Railway System – the Circle Line.

This piece of advanced technology powered yet another.

Mr Ernest Rutherford's time-ship.

Through a series of what the mean-spirited amongst us might describe as unlikely events, I became the pilot of Mr Rutherford's time-eliminating conveyance and returned from the future to save my past self. In doing so, my future self was shot dead by Lord Brentford, who had not in fact died when the Empress of Mars went down, but had survived and taken shelter on a cannibal island. It is all rather difficult to explain, and rather than waste the reader's time doing it here I would recommend perusing a copy of The Educated Ape and Other Wonders of the Worlds by Mr Robert Rankin, where all is set out in the most meticulous detail.

I write these words in the elegant city of Brighton, in the year two thousand and twelve. I know that I must return to the year eighteen ninety-eight to save my younger self, and I know that in doing so I will be shot, in error, by Lord Brentford.

This is my fate. So it must be.

But between the time when I set off in Mr Rutherford's time-ship in the company of Mr Cameron Bell and the time of my inevitable extinction, there have been many years of travel and many adventures, and it is these that I intend to write of here.

Mr Bell assured me that once he had cleared up the single case that he had so far failed to solve, we would travel back in time to watch Beethoven conduct the Ninth Symphony and thereafter begin our adventures.

Things did not go quite as he had planned.

But . . .