Free The Brightonomicon (Brentford Book 8) by Robert Rankin Page A

making red rings upon my fingers. We lunched well, though, and suppered, too, and then at six of the evening clock took to the street and waved a taxi down.
    The taxi driver’s name was Dave, a truculent fellow who supported the Brighton Seagulls ‘come rain or shine, through thick and thin and all the way to Hell and back’. And he enlivened our journey with talk of his theories that the planet Earth was in fact a great big head, swinging through space and gaining increased sentience due to human beings, which were in fact its brain cells, exchanging information.
    ‘When the Earth was young, it knew nothing,’ the taxi driver explained, ‘because there were only a few people/brain cells. But as the millennia passed, more and more people/brain cells appeared upon the planet. Quite soon now, when the world knows everything it needs to know, it will quit this solar system and take off on a voyage of discovery. Somewhere, out there—’ the cabbie gestured to ‘out there’ generally, taking his hands off the steering wheel and nearly having a passing cleric off his pushbike ‘—the wandering world will meet up with other wandering worlds that have similarly gained sentience due to all their people/brain cells. And it will amalgamate with them into a superorganism, which will be God, a new God who will then create a new universe. That’s what happened before, you see – that’s how this universe began. And it will happen again and again.’
    Mr Rune had no comment to make during the cabbie’s metaphysical discourse; he sat passively with his eyelids drooping, playing the occasional wistful air upon his reinvented ocarina.
    When we reached our destination, I made hurriedly to The Rampant Squire and so did not witness the rise and fall of Mr Rune’s stout stick.
    I rather liked The Rampant Squire. It was a rough old dive filled with rowdy students from the university. I observed them as they laughed and chatted and wondered whether I was a university type myself. Probably not, I concluded, because I was too young. Too young fordrinking in pubs also, of course, but then
that
only made the drinking more enjoyable.
    The walls of The Rampant Squire were decorated with dreadful contemporary paintings, the work of a local artist by the name of Matthew Humphrey. They were all squiggles and daubings and splatterings-on, and looked much the way that restaurant tablecloths looked by the time Mr Rune had reached the cheese-and-biscuits course.
    I elbowed my way to the bar and found Fangio standing behind it.
    ‘Hello, Fange,’ said I. ‘I did not know that you worked here.’
    ‘A man’s got to have a hobby,’ said Fange. ‘I saw you admiring the artwork.’
    ‘The paintings are horrible,’ I said.
    ‘I know,’ said Fangio. ‘I chose them.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘The pub is called The Rampant Squire, so the brewery asked me to order in some erotic paintings.’
    ‘I see,’ I said. But I did not.
    ‘You don’t,’ said Fangio. ‘I blame these new teeth of mine. I telephoned this Matthew Humphrey and asked him to knock up some erotic paintings. He misheard me and—’
    ‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘He supplied you with a series of erratic paintings instead.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Fangio. ‘That would be it, then. I thought he was just a really terrible artist.’
    ‘A pint of Esso, please. And as I have a thirst upon me, we will scrub around all the toot about what you do or do not have on the pumps, if that is all right with you.’
    ‘A pint of Esso it is, then. And one for Mister Rune? I see his big baldy head looming through the crowd.’
    ‘Make his a half,’ I said.
    ‘Appalling pub,’ said Mr Rune, joining me at the bar. ‘Have you ordered?’
    ‘I have.’
    Fangio served up the drinks and Mr Rune availed himself of my pint.
    ‘Only a half for you?’ he said. ‘Wise move – you’ll need a clear head for what lies ahead of us this night.’
    ‘The lecture?’ I said, ruefully sipping my