Limbo 56 - Mike Morris (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud TXT) 📗

slow recruit. “I mean the person in charge of this… - town, or village, or whatever it is.”

“It’s Limbo,” the thin man said. “And, as I told you, “I’m Governor here.”

Jimmy was convinced that he had landed right next door to an Asylum. He was probably inside the big square edifice, and the big, square edifice was probably where the most dangerous lunatics were locked up. He remembered the lack of an outcry when his Spitfire crash-landed. Outside this giant blockhouse were the Asylum grounds, where the merely insane, rather than criminally insane lived. He wondered wildly where the doctors were. Had the patients taken advantage of some air raid to liberate themselves? He remembered now, the thin man himself had flung open the Asylum gates. Jimmy regarded the filthy apparition who was looking fixedly at his sutured face. “How did you get here?” he asked cunningly, “and how did you become Governor?”

“I got into a bar-fight,” the man said laconically, “and a big Londoner killed me. Here’s the knife,” he said, lifting a flap on his overall, showing a rusty, rather amateurish-looking fake knife.

Jimmy smiled accommodatingly at him. “Ah, I see. So they made you Governor after the big air-raid.”

The thin man looked puzzled. “No,” he said irritably. “I got recruited.” He paused. “As a matter of fact, the recruiter looked remarkably like you. He had the same name as you, ‘Jimmy Wheeler’.”

“My name is James Albert Wheeler, I’m a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force, serial number 4243468,” Jimmy said automatically.

“It couldn’t have been you,” the lunatic thin man said, “that was more than thirty years ago, and he’d been at it for years before that. “Must have been your father, no, more likely your grandfather. What was your grandfather’s name?”

Jimmy’s head was beginning to swim. Obviously, the man in front of him was completely mad. He did not at this time appear to be violent, although Jimmy remembered uneasily the strong arms pushing him back on the bed. He began to see a glimmer of hope. “Yes, my grandfather had the same name as I do. God rest his soul,” he said piously and falsely. “You…”

The lunatic interrupted him. “He wasn’t resting much when I saw him last month; when I saw him he was pulling in dead soldiers, scooping them in as fast as he could get them to sign.”

“Ah,” Jimmy said desperately, “You must be that good friend he was talking about last week, when I visited him.”

“But you weren’t dead last week,” the lunatic said. “You weren’t even in a coma.” He felt Jimmy’s forehead. “Are you alright?”

Jimmy remembered a long time ago, reading a book under the supervision of a not-too awful teacher. He had read ‘Alice in Wonderland’ from cover to cover. He looked up, expecting to see the mad hatter, but it was still the thin man, regarding him intensely.

“Er, yes, I was a bit confused. I think my dad mentioned you, though. You were my grandfather’s best friend. Which is why he made you Governor,” he ventured.

The maniac snapped to attention. “That man, your grandfather, made a complete idiot of me. I almost went to Hell, just so he could fulfill his quota. I fooled him, though. I’m still here after thirty years. And I got to punch the bastard in the face a few times.” He paused. “Sorry, just the mention of his name makes me angry.”

“I may not be his grandson,” Jimmy said hastily. “I’m probably just confused.” Things were getting out of hand. He looked at the thin man, who, under the soot, could have been anywhere between twenty-five and forty years old. “So, you knew this Jimmy Wheeler,” he said, “years ago.”

“Back in 1911,” the madman told him, “Of course, I died in 1878,” he said. “But the Angels are so slow.”

Jimmy nodded wisely, taking a deep breath. ‘Calm,’ he said to himself. ‘This is a wretched, uneducated lunatic, and I’m an officer in the Royal Air force’. He thought for a moment. “Where do you lock the people up who give you trouble,” he asked cunningly. “Like the man you thought was my grandfather,” he added.

“Jimmy’s not in gaol,” the madman said irritated, “don’t you listen?” He stood up, a scrawny scarecrow who looked as if he could tie even a young uninjured flying ace in knots. “The only prisoners we have are Governors, - ex Governors.”

“I see,” Jimmy said. “They tried to stop you taking over – Limbo, did they? You had to lock them up for their own good.”

The lunatic looked irritated again. “You must be in worse shape than I thought,” he said. “Actually, a couple of the Governors are my best helpers. Look,” he said impatiently, “I’ll be off shift in an hour, then I shall be able to explain everything properly.” He started to leave, “Just stay here and heal a little; I’ll see you soon.”

“I demand to see the military authorities,” Jimmy shouted. “I don’t care what little charade you’re playing, but you can’t keep me here.”

“Why are you military people so difficult to convince,” the lunatic said irritably. “With all the killing you see, I would think that you would be prepared for this. Follow me then,” he said striding out..

Jimmy had never seen a foundry, but this was obviously the real thing. Sweating men shoveled frantically at wet black sand, Bins banged, steel screeched and iron clanged. The furnace doors opened and a blast of burning air boiled through the huge building. Sweating faces lit up with the flames, and the men looked like Devils from hell. This was no confused madhouse. Everyone worked with a purpose, straining muscles feeding the furnace, which in turn disgorged strange-looking spears.

“We’re doing a short run on tridents,” the lunatic said. “Just to fool the people upstairs – and downstairs. We complete our quota now in about half a shift, and the other 2 ½ shifts we produce parts for the Allies. Mostly small stuff, guns, armour plate. We’ve started making parts for that American jeep car. Some of our eggheads have managed to put a few jeeps together and we use them around town.” He was waxing enthusiastic. “Of cause, we have to pretend to be penitent, our houses look old and dilapidated outside, but most of them are pretty comfortable now, and we can only drive the jeeps at night, which can be any time depending on what shift you’re on.”

It occurred to Jimmy that this man was not insane, indeed, none of them were. He looked away at the purposeful workers then back at the thin man. Like all the other pilots, he had been briefed about German methods of interrogation, and obtaining intelligence. Was all this a fiendishly clever way of getting him to drop his guard? “Governor,” he asked, “Can you fix my ‘plane?”

The thin man shook his head. “I doubt it. Even if we could get it to fly, I’m not sure what would happen if you just took off and flew into the wide blue yonder. We do all our trade via the gateways. That’s the only way it seems to work.” He thought for a while. “You don’t look too bad, and you can’t cause much trouble on your own. Go on outside and relax a while. There’s a pub close by, and I’ll meet you there in about an hour.” With that, he strode off into the incredible racket of the foundry.

After a while, Jimmy located the massive doors, and walked out into the street. To his surprise, it was nighttime and raining. The town stretched out around him, and he had no idea which direction his base lay. All traces of his Spitfire had disappeared. It was obvious that the town was well versed in the art of scavenging. He stood in the shadow of the doors, shivering slightly. Occasionally, a door opened, throwing light onto the old-fashioned cobblestones, revealing what appeared to be a comfortable warm interior, and a pasty-faced ironworker would scuttle off into the darkness. Since they all seemed to scuttle down the same alley, Jimmy decided that the pub must lie that way. Hunched against the rain, he followed.

‘The Pig’, the sign read. A couple of old oil lamps flickered over the sign, and the pub looked as though it had stood in this miserable place unchanging in the rain, for a century or more. Jimmy, not normally a drinking man, was still trying to come to terms with his surroundings and the people around him. He already felt giddy, and he decided that a moderate amount of alcohol could make things no worse. The barmaid was a tall raw-boned hulk who looked rather like a run-down, seriously battered prizefighter. “Double whisky,” Jimmy said in his best gentleman’s accent. He had found that the gentrified tones, combined with his flying officer’s uniform, now slightly worn, sometimes won him the odd drink or two.

“Posh ‘un,” the prizefighter muttered, picking her nose. She poured a generous stream of golden liquid into a dusty glass and shoved it towards him.

Jimmy fished out a wad of banknotes, folded double to look more impressive, and guaranteed to impress even the most attractive barmaid. “What’s this then,” she said sharply, looking at good British money with a suspicion that sent warning bells through his head.

“Cash, Sterling, banknotes,” he said sharply.

“Bloody hell, I haven’t seen any of that since the last soldiers were here,” she said. “Did the Governor say it was OK to use this stuff?”

“Yes,” Jimmy said, tossing a note on the bar. He thought that, if this really was one of those Kraut psychological establishments, a bad slip had just been made. “Don’t you take English money here?” he queried. “It’s all I have, and I’m supposed to meet the Governor here.” Quickly, he grabbed the drink, and swallowed it in a gulp. “AAch,” he grimaced, “this stuff is vinegar.” The concoction burnt his mouth where he had loosened a tooth in the crash, but he caught only the tiniest hint of fire and peat and the body of a good, blended scotch.

She grinned at him. “You’re new to Limbo,” she smirked. “You must be one of them black marketers,” she said. “What ya got ter trade? I can be real friendly,” and she ogled him fiercely.

Involuntarily, he stepped back, crashing into the thin, solid frame of the Governor. “Come, sit down,” the thin man said. They walked towards a dim table in the corner of the old pub, and with each step, confusion peeled uncertainly from his mind, leaving him, when they sat down, with the firm conviction that he was in Limbo, and he was, in fact, dead.

“My regular pub is better than this one,” the thin man remarked, “but not much.” He beckoned to the barmaid. “It’s part of being in Limbo; I’ve cleaned up the pubs, and I make the barmaids wash every so often, but the booze still tastes like vinegar and the food tastes like cardboard.”

“Finally, I believe you,” Jimmy said. “I really am in Limbo.”

“But you’re not dead,” the thin man interrupted, “and that presents a problem.” The barmaid ambled over with two whiskies. “Wait,” he continued, waving a large bundle of scrip at her. “Where’s the black market stuff, the real booze?”

She managed to look wary and confused at the same time. “We don’t have none,” she said.

“You had better,” he told her. “You’re on the bottom rung of a very low-flying Limbo.