Free The Witches of Chiswick by Robert Rankin Page B

scared.”
    “I don’t know what to say,” Tim said.
    “I wish I’d never hidden that painting.”
    “You did it because you cared, because you didn’t want to see a thing of beauty being destroyed.”
    “But if I take the drug and I do find out the truth, or some of it, where does that get me? If I’m still on some death list, what am I going to do?”
    “Don’t know. But perhaps an idea will come to you. Perhaps something will come to you.”
    Will let out his breath.
    “Pooh,” said Tim. “Garlic”
    “I’m sorry. Give me the drug.”
    “You’re not going to take it here.”
    “Where then?”
    “I don’t know, but anywhere other than here.”
    “Why?”
    “Well, I don’t want you ODing in my cupboard.”
    “What?”
    “Well, it
might
happen. I’m not saying it will. Go home and take it.”
    “And what if another robot turns up at my door?”
    “Take it on the tram, or something.”
    “No,” said Will. “I know just the place to take it, but you’re coming with me. I don’t want to be on my own when I do it.”
     
    The Shrunken Head was still Brentford’s premier rock pub. For more than two hundred and fifty years it had played host to countless up-and-coming rock bands that had later gone on to find fame. In their early days the Beatles had played there, and so had the Stones, and so too had Gandhi’s Hairdryer, Soliloquy, The Lost T-Shirts of Atlantis, and Sonic Energy Authority.
    Tonight it was the Apes of Wrath, Foetus Eater and the others, with the Slaughterhouse Five topping the bill.
    The Slaughterhouse Five were a “suit band”, which is to say they were a three-piece. There was Dantalion’s Chariot, lead vocals, political awareness and whistling; the Soldier of Misfortune, who impersonated weather, and Musgrave Ritual, whose strummings on the old banjo brought pleasure to literally dozens. The Slaughterhouse Five were in line to be the “Next Big Thing”, but the line was very long and with only fifteen minutes of fame allotted for any Next Big Thing, there was always the chance of being out or asleep when the moment came.
    The interior of the Shrunken Head was rough: it was dire, it was ill-kempt and wretched. The management was surly, the bouncers were brutal. The beer, a pallid lager called Little, was overpriced and underpowered. It was everything that a great live-music pub should be.
    The clientele was big, fat, young and colourful, and whilst they drank, they dined upon rice muffins and an extensive variety of soft and easily chewable crisps called Soggies.
    Will found a vacant table and seated himself. Tim went off to the bar and returned with two cups of Little and a large pack of rice muffins that he tucked into with gusto.
    Will turned the phial of capsules on his palm. “Tell me everything you know about this drug,” he said to Tim. “What exactly are its effects?”
    “Mind-expanding.” Tim mimed expandings of the mind. A mimester from the Apes of Wrath caught sight of this miming and mimed admiring applause.
    “But you’ve never actually taken it, have you?” Will fixed Tim with a very hard stare.
    “Not as such.” Tim shook his head sadly, showering Will with rice muffins.
    “So you don’t really know
what
will happen.”
    “I know this,” said Tim. “The drug was designed as a memory restorative for patients who’d suffered amnesia due to some accident or trauma situation or whatever, and it enjoyed a very high success rate. But then the doctors began to notice that the patients they were treating with it seemed to be remembering things they shouldn’t be able to remember: very early childhood experiences, their own births, and more. They could remember things their parents had done before they themselves were born. That had the doctors scratching at their skullcaps, I can tell you. But they worked it out, what was happening. The drug was allowing patients not only to access their own lost memories, but other memories, imprinted into the very