The Periwinkle Perspective - Those Among Us: The Periwinkle Perspective, #2

By Paul Eccentric

THE PERIWINKLE PERSPECTIVE, Volume Two: 'THOSE AMONG US'

January 1898… Step forward Space Captain Gordon Periwinkle: Adventurer; raconteur and amateur taxidermist, and the man who; six months ago, became the first to walk upon the Moon.

...Or did he?

There are those who claim that Queen Victoria's greatest achievement was nothing more than an elaborate hoax, perpetrated by the overseer of a previously ailing Empire in order to gain dominance over those who sought to usurp her.

Either way, Gordon's going 'back', though this time with none of the pomp and ceremony that surrounded his original mission. For this is a secret mission; a mission to discover whether or not there is in fact an alien base, hidden on the satellite's dark side, and also to find out quite what became of his brother, who was sent skyward in a fit of pique by the Inventor Royal, Professor Hamble Blaise, after she discovered that she had been sleeping with Jack-the bleedin'-Ripper!

Add to this the news that scientists from all over Europe have been going missing; that the Queen is in need of a new pair of legs, and the possibility that not everyone on Earth is entirely who they claim to be, and you have all the ingredients for the second volume of The Periwinkle Perspective...

Reviews of 'The Periwinkle Perspective' Volume One 'The Giant Step'

'Jam-packed full of stylishly written japes and characters. Is there a Steampunk trope that has been missed out? I would very much doubt it. I would very much love to read more of these. Please write a sequel! '- Donna L. Scott- Editor of Best of British Science Fiction 2016 - 2020

'Both engaging and intriguing in equal measure. I found the book a positive hoot and total delight from start to end! The brilliantly realised narrative has an eccentrically measured pace that keeps one wanting to find out more!', I look forward to Vol 2! - Terry Molloy, Doctor Who's 'Davros', 1984 to present day.

The Periwinkle Perspective takes the reader into a gloriously cinematic steampunk world. Like a wonderful mix of Jules Verne, Conan Doyle and the League of Gentlemen, the characters and their adventures come charging off the page. I would love to see them make it to the big (or small screen) - Pete Rowe Director of photography - Friday Night Dinners, Not Going Out, Zapped and The Mighty Boosh

• Language: English
• Publisher: Caffeine Nights Publishing
• Release date: Apr 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215292020

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Gordon

Gordon had first heard the idea mooted, a couple of weeks ago, over a few jars in the newly renovated ‘Sherpa Suite’: the basement taproom of The Adventurers’ Club, just off Piccadilly.

Tiny had asked him for his take on the theory of Multiple Concurrent Universes (or ‘MCU’s, as the popular press had apparently been dubbing them).

W’s it sumfin’ ’e’d ever cunsid’d, like? had been his aide-de-camp’s exact words, and Gordon had indeed had to confess that, No, as of that moment, he had not, as; up to and including the point when his trusty Sherpa had slurred this unexpected poser in his general direction, Gordon had not even considered the concept of there being more than one version of his story panning out, somewhere, in a parallel dimension, while they sat there merrily supping away their downtime. And why would he have done; the idea was, after all, totally preposterous! Although they had known each other for less than a year, Tiny had been in the older man’s employ for far longer than any of his previous factotums; few of whom he had ever had the chance to while away an inebriated evening with. The average mortality rate of someone on his payroll tended to be somewhat lower than the sum of the standard adventure. Gordon, therefore, felt that he knew his current abettor well enough to be as stunned by the fact that he had asked the question at all as he had by the implications of the query itself; Tiny, not generally being given to conundrums of a metaphysical nature, either during, before or especially after a skinful of ‘Caddy’s Triumph’. Intrigued, Gordon had thus gone on to interrogate his drinking partner as to exactly how he may have come by such a tantalising notion in the first place, considering the philosophical Shortcomings of the types with whom he knew him to associate.

Well, the man with the weirdest head to body mass ratio discrepancy in the known world had replied, I w’s jus’ finkin’, was’n I, said; Gordon could not help but remember, to the overture of a somewhat melancholy release of colonic gas, that had risen from bar stool to eye line in less than the time that it had taken for Gordon to relight his pipe, I w’s finkin’ ’bout wha’ you said t’tha’ ol’ journalis’ fella, abou’ this ’ere life not followin’ i’s original course; wha’ wiv all the changes wha’ ’ave occurred since you (di’n’t really) go t’th’Moon.

Tiny had, of course, been referring to the incidents of six months previous: the very reason that Gordon was stood where he currently was; that being, behind an ornately carved, gilded mahogany lectern, centre stage at The Royal Albert Hall.

The sudden recollection of that previously forgotten exchange had startled him; throwing him from his script, elicited, as it had been, by a grilling from a member of his riveted, capacity audience. The man who had proffered that selfsame query seemed equally as well informed as Tiny had been about conjectural hypotheses of a quixotic nature, therefore, Gordon had concluded, the idea must have gained momentum since the press had last misquoted him and he had elected to stop indulging them.

It was true that he had voiced his paranoid concerns regarding his belief that the world had been forced along a path that he felt it had not been intended to take, during an interview with the Mail, the previous Thursday; an inquisition ostensibly intended to focus on his expectations for the following season’s millinery stylings.

It had been an unshakable fear of his ever since he had arrived on the surface of the ‘Moon’ and a subject that he had raised more than once with his doctor, only to have been told that he was most likely suffering from a case of ‘Victor’s Guilt’, a not uncommon malady, apparently, affecting people who fear that they do not deserve the successes that they have achieved in life. As a man of a certain celebrity status, it could be argued that he would have been better off having kept his personal anxieties betwixt himself and his over priced Harley Street physician, rather than sharing such potential vulnerabilities with the good gentlemen of the press, as it seemed likely that the whole ‘MCU’ debate had arisen from his own offhand comments; words that had been printed as a headline and a matter of fact and then repeated all over the world. It had got him thinking, though...

However, he had chosen to respond to his anonymous inquisitor in much the same manner as he had his sherpa, though with his words unslurred this time and his ability to focus unfettered.

Poppycock! was all that he had to say on the matter.

* * * * *

Gordon was tired; nay, he was exhausted! Who knew how utterly brain-boggling public speaking could be? Charles Dickens, he supposed: the orator’s orator, the people’s storyteller, but then Ol’ Dickie had built up to his star billing, rather than finding himself catapulted into the spotlight, like a... well... like a copper plated rocket, ratcheted back on a trebuchet and sent hurtling heavenward: destination Moon.

Which was not to say that he did not love his new job with every aching fibre of his middle-aged being; oh no! It was what he had always wanted to do. Storytelling, he was always insisting, was in his blood. He could feel it!

He had spoken before, of course, many, many times; it had, indeed, been a fundamental given of his adventuring career and the part that he had always enjoyed the most. Obviously, one had actually to do the adventuring first if one were to have anecdotes with which to impart; which was where the real work always came in, but the chance to tour the dinner party circuit for the following six months had always made traipsing around the lesser visited and more mosquito infested parts of the world a worthwhile endeavour. But society luncheons and corporate functions were a world away from the five thousand plus seats of Victoria’s great gothic monument to her late husband, and five sell-out nights on the bounce at such a prestigious barn of a venue, was utterly unprecedented, even for Dickens himself!

Gordon had always prided himself on his ability to adlib; never to tell the same tale in exactly the same way twice: to go with the flow of an evening’s raconteuring; to acknowledge what was working and what was falling flat and to temper his recitals accordingly. He had revelled in his talent for being able to spin a good yarn around the dullest of accounts; pushing poetic licence to the very limit of public credulity. And this had been his expectation of the tour that he was currently engaged upon; a little light banter; a modicum of saucy spiel and the odd nearest-the-knuckle gag, just to keep them listening. Humour: the binding agent in the jam sponge of a well delivered story; the cream by which the cut and the thrust were held together. He would have enjoyed that. Doubtless, he would not even have noticed that his throat currently felt as dry as if he had been eating mirage sandwiches in the Sahara again.

Gordon slumped into the chair at his dressing table and glared back at himself through his spot-lit reflection in the mirror. This was all he had ever wanted to do. He was the most famous man on the planet; he was richer than he had ever imagined it possible to be. People would never tire of listening to tales of his heroic deeds, but they were tales that he was beginning to abhor the telling of; mainly because they were lies. He had stood up there these past five nights, along with the twenty nights that had preceded them, in theatres ranging from Edinburgh, all the way down to Brighton, immaculately groomed and bedecked with ribbons and enough brass medals to put a shire horse to shame, and he had related the story of how he had conquered the Moon to a rapt and often swooning reception: a story recited nightly with word for word accuracy. It was a tale that he had scripted and that the Admiral had edited; a tale that had been conjured in order to secure Victoria’s hold over the world. It was a fabrication, from beginning to end. As was he...

‘MISSING SCIENTISTS NOW TOTAL THIRTEEN!’ Read the strapline of The Times. Idly, he opened his paper to read the latest instalment of the story of the moment, but his reverie was broken as his attempt to change the focus of his musings was interrupted by a rhythmic rapping at his dressing room door.

Why can’t they just buy the bally book? he asked his reflection, wiping the eye liner from his lids with a dry sponge. Available in all good bookshops, the Empire wide; more often than not signed by the author himself!

Lady t’see yer, Capt’in, announced Tiny, quickly trousering the bribe with which a member of the audience had just bought a few private moments in the company of her hero.

Tiny, I’m not in the moo... oh... hello, he said, catching sight of his prospective visitor, framed in the open doorway; ebony locks spilling onto her exposed shoulders as she removed her cape to reveal a décolletage deeper than many a ravine that he had crossed in the course of his adventuring career, do step inside, m’dear. Can I offer you a glass of champagne?

The vision smiled, vampishly, he thought; the momentary reaction morphing into an impish pout as she slunk through the door, thrust her discarded satin cloak toward him and gently kicked the door closed in the sherpa’s face with the heel of her boot.

All thoughts of fraudulence and duplicity duly evaporated as the star’s blood began to head south. He loosened his red satin kimono and pulled a fresh bottle of plonk from the ice bucket beside him.

Slipping off her velvet gloves, the girl availed herself of a flute and held it out toward him as he wrestled with the muselet and the cork accordingly. It popped; slightly easier than he had anticipated, and he filled her glass before replenishing his own.

Agent S, she said, winking as she took her first sip, The Admiral requests your presence at your earliest convenience.

Gordon sighed heavily.

Of course he does, he replied, knocking back his glass in a single hit, of course he bally well does.

* * * * *

Hamble

International fame for Professor Hamble Blaise, along with its ever obliging bedfellows: ‘Royal Endorsement’ and ‘Unlimited Research Funding’, had been an entirely different animal to wrangle for the genius who had single-handedly designed and built the rocket that had taken the good Captain Gordon Periwinkle all the way to the Moon and back. Certainly the ‘Inventor Royal’ could have taken the route that her decorated co-conspirator had followed: the offers, for once, had been both plentiful and as potentially lucrative as his, but Hamble had always seen herself more as someone who did rather than someone who talked about what she did. Whereas Gordon obviously saw himself as an ‘ex’ adventurer; regaling the world with tales of (just this side of credible) derring-do, her career was only just beginning!

Despite, as far as the man in the street was concerned, her having achieved far more than any man in her shoes had managed in the whole history of ‘men-in-her-shoes’, Hamble was still a woman in a predominantly male world and, as enlightened as the age was rapidly becoming, largely due to her own unprecedented level of achievements, there were still those men who would have liked to have seen her stripped of her greasy dungarees, bent over their knees and slapped sharply across both bare buttocks, before presenting herself for immediate impregnation, then nipping out into the yard to bring in the washing.

But Hamble had not simply built a rocket ship capable of transporting a man to the stars; a feat that would have kept the British flag flying over colonial compounds the world over into the next century and beyond, no. Hamble had built a rocket ship capable of transporting people to the stars; a feat that would still keep the British flag flying over colonial compounds the world over, well into the next century and beyond, but would also help stake her place in the history books as the woman who finally equalised the sexes, as she fully intended to become the first woman into space once her new rocket was unveiled!

And she had not just done this for herself, of course. Hamble had done it for every downtrodden, horse-whipped housewife, every university-stalking daughter who had been forced to marry a clergyman or a serial misogynist (same thing, really, she thought), every streetwalker and every martyred suffragette, like her mother: finally freed from Bedlam by her celebrity daughter and currently snoring in the corner while her offspring worked. And she had not just done it for British women, either. She had done it for women the world over! One day, in the not too distant future, Hamble hoped to be able to say that she had done it for everyone: male and female alike, on a planet that accepted all human beings as equals, but that statement may be a little premature, as yet. One battle at a time, she decided, one battle at a time...

It was nearly ready. She had been working day and night on the project; money no object, since the day after the royal barge malarkey. She had taken a single day off: the first Sunday, in order to reclaim her mother from the nuthouse; swapping her for a man whom she had found locked in the boot of the Range Roller: a mad man, if ever she had had cause to name one, for he had claimed, once he had stopped screaming, that was, to have been the American inventor ‘Thomas Edison’, held captive with access to neither food nor water for four days, by a madwoman who had beaten him and stolen his camera. A sad case, the warden had concluded; quite, quite delusional.

Before leaving Bedlam, Hamble had donated a machine of her own divining: a ‘therapy box’, she had explained, that she thought may prove useful if the American seemed resistant to conventional treatments.

She chuckled at the memory, dropping her spanner in the process, which clanged against the hollow hull as it fell to the floor of her workshop. One day, she thought, when her work was finally done; in her dotage, she supposed, when it no longer mattered and no court in the land would take the case against her, she would dictate to her grandchildren the real story of the 1897 Moon landing. Of course, nobody would believe her. It would be seen merely as the ravings of a fruitcake: a mad old lady who had once had the finest mind of her generation, now reduced to aged insanity. They might decide to visit Mr Edison in his cell at the asylum, just for curiosity’s sake, to see if any of it were by chance true, but by that point, with any luck, she thought, he would be nought but the jibbering wretch that he so deserved to be.

Tea! said Abdul sulkily, slamming down the second of two steaming mugs, before stropping back off towards the kitchen to continue working his way through the list of chores that she had set for him earlier. The first mug he had set beside Mrs Blaise, next to the two previous mugs that she had slept through.

Spanner, Abdul, Hamble called down from the top of her ladder, under there, she instructed, pointing with her wrench, I think it bounced into the gully behind the bins.

You want me to fetch it? her servant asked, sarcastically, lifting his fez to scratch at the bald patch where his crown had once been, just like you would throw stick for dog?

If I have to come down there, Abdul, she said, dragging her oily forearm across her sweaty brow, "you’ll be fetching it out of your own shitty gully, do I make myself clear?"

The diminutive Egyptian, whom she had employed out of pity when he had lost his right hand whilst trying to burgle her, replaced the culturally stereotypical hat that he always wore and bent to retrieve his mistress’s lost tool. Handing it back to her, he made sure to avert his eyes; not out of respect or as a nod to his subservient position, she knew, but because her work attire offended him. Hamble was dressed, as she so often was while ‘alone’ in her workshop, in a pair of stained, heavy cotton dungarees of the kind one might expect a fireman on a steam train to sport. Tailored for the figure of a man of ample girth, her overalls were gathered at the waist with a leather belt. Beneath the bib and the shoulder straps, Hamble wore a device of her own design: a double hammock affair, made from twisting a single length of chamois leather in the middle, then stretching it across and around her breasts before tying the loose ends in a knot behind her back. She called it the ‘tit sling’ and she was hoping to refine it for everyday use when she finally got around to patenting it..

And this came for you, Abdul said, having climbed three rungs up the ladder to pass her both the spanner and a sealed envelope that he had intercepted earlier. Tucking the spanner behind her topknot, she received the note and tore open its waxed seal.

Blah, blah, requests your presence, blah blah, earliest convenience, blah blah, she read. Abdul, when did this arrive?

His gaze still averted, Abdul sighed loudly and replied, Yesterday.

* * * * *

The Admiral

For a man of Sir Archibald’s elevated status, the retirement that he had been enjoying these past six months was a rare privilege indeed, for despite their maturity or their individual states of decrepitude, it was unusual to hear of an Admiral of the Fleet bowing out under his own steam. Retirement, to a man of such celebrated status, usually meant a strategic withdrawal to the drawing room of his favoured London club, from whence he would become an immovable fixture thereafter, commanding his men by proxy, rather than relinquishing the power and the respect that it had taken him so long to acquire. More often than not they would simply expire where they sat, midway through The Times’ cryptic; post-breakfast tipple in hand and a large cigar on the go: ‘natural causes’ being the most commonly cited grounds for their ultimate passing.

It was considered a dignified end to an honourable career, among those too entrenched to go home, second only to a ‘Missing In Action’ stamp and far preferable to being considered ‘all at sea’: the technical term for those poor souls often found roaming the streets clad in nought but a crusty bed sheet and a brown paper crown, claiming to be the king (or in some cases even the queen), often seen accosting perfect strangers and demanding tribute, whilst brazenly pissing on their subjects’ shoes.

As Fleet Admiral: the man in overall charge of every naval ranking in that fleet, Archibald Spatchcock had had the dubious honour of having had to order the ‘natural retirement’ of twelve former war heroes in such a fashion and had been expecting no less a golden handshake himself when his own time finally came. However, in his case, events had not followed their anticipated course. Having been promoted sideways a year ago, in order that he might take command of the newly instigated ‘Imperial Space Agency’, the Admiral had been spared the ignominious end that his forebears had all shared and been given a new lease of life as the first man to bear such a distinctive rank. As a direct consequence of this extraordinary posting, he had found himself one of a select few to have been privy to the ‘finer details’ of the British Moon Mission; hence his somewhat unnatural form of retirement after the programme had been cancelled. There were certain ‘letters’, he had informed The Secretary, discretely, though he had to admit, somewhat smugly, at the party held to welcome Captain Periwinkle back to Earth. They were to be his insurance, he had explained, held by certain people on his behalf and to be published should anything untoward be seen to happen, either to himself or to a member of his family. He was to be left in peace; he had insisted: allowed to live out his days as he saw fit. He had not expected to hear from The Secretary again.

The Admiral may not have agreed with his superior’s reasoning regarding the faking of the ‘Giant Step’; as the mission would become known in government circles, but he had at least been able to use the situation to some advantage...

Placing her key in the lock, Moneypenny twisted and pushed open the door that had been painted to look as if it were a part of the concrete plinth that surrounded it. Atop the plinth stood a twice life-size bronze effigy of Sir Gordon Periwinkle; the first man to have walked on the Moon.

Ladies first, the Admiral said, with a well-mannered flourish. Acknowledging the new statue with a pinched pout, he ushered his minder through before him, following her inside the hollowed block and closing the door behind them. Inside, a cramped stone stairway wound downward some twelve feet into the bowels of the capital, eventually fanning out into ‘Space Command’: a large, buttressed bunker that had originally been built as a dry ordnance store, directly beneath Trafalgar Square. Following Moneypenny’s lead, Archibald gripped the hand rail firmly; his right hand, as ever, never leaving the silver heal of his cane as they descended into the atrium below. He had not expected to find himself here again and especially not so soon, but The Permanent Secretary’s telegraph had intrigued him. There had been a number of loose ends left dangling at the close of play: missing persons, international conspiracies, even the small issue of a missing rocket. In his brief, but tantalising missive, his nemesis had offered him the possibility of answers to some of these outstanding questions and so, warily, he had taken the bait...

The complex was exactly as he had left it late the previous year, tail between his legs, the fate of the entire Empire in the balance. He had anticipated a mothballing exercise to have taken place in his absence, with the disbanding of the department and the cancellation of the space programme; objective achieved, but it would seem, no such order had been given.

The centre of the room was still dominated by the polished walnut conference table, around which were parked five exquisitely carved, high-backed chairs. Rumour had it that both the table and its chairs had once adorned the staff quarters of Buckingham Palace, but that they had been removed when Prince Albert had decreed them too good for mere footmen and butlers to dine from.

At one end of the table, the end closest to his office door, offset to the right and still marked ‘Admiral Spatchcock’, sat his leather bound command chair and on the table in front of this: two Bakelite telephones, one black and one red. Beside these sat an intercom grill, behind an array of tall switches and a Morse tapper, the aerial of which, he knew to rise all the way to the very top of Nelson’s Column, one hundred and eighty feet above them. The Admiral consulted his pocket watch, checking it against the wall-mounted pendulum clock, before taking his seat at the head of the table. Moneypenny, whom he had not noticed leaving his orbit, suddenly reappeared bearing a crystal decanter and his old balloon snifter: the engraved cognac glass that the admiralty had presented him with when he had first become a full-time landlubber. She had also brought with her a jug of iced water and four tall glasses.

Anything else that I can do for you, sir? she enquired; as if nothing had passed between them since last they had shared time in this dank, subterranean crypt; as if his private secretary had not turned out to have been an undercover agent under The Secretary’s direct remit and as if she had not been the very agent sent to ‘retire’ him shortly before the Captain’s miraculous ‘return’. They locked eyes momentarily for the first time since she had escorted him here from Whitehall. Back in uniform once more, she looked no different to the way that he had viewed her every day during the three years that she had supposedly been working for him: young, vulnerable and easily bullied, but he now knew better.

That’ll be all, m’dear, he eventually replied, breaking eye contact and pouring himself a large measure. Let me know when they arrive, would you? There’s a tot.

Very good, sir, she responded, passing him a sealed, buff-coloured file marked ‘EYES ONLY’, then disappearing into the shadows of the crypt...

"I know perfectly well where I’m going, thank you, he heard: a voice he knew only too well, which echoed around the all but empty room, growing in volume as its bearer came closer. It was accompanied by the sound of several pairs of heavy shoes clacking against the flagstone floor. I take it you do know who I am? Ah...! the new arrival suddenly exclaimed, spying his summoner and dismissing the agent who had shown him in with a wave of his hand, Spatchie, old fruit; how the very devil are you?"

The Admiral rose as the first of his anticipated guests thrust his limp, manicured fingers toward him. Captain Periwinkle, he said, with a feigned smile, gripping the pampered fop’s hand tightly in his own with the intention of reaffirming the chain of command. They were not friends, it was also intended to remind him, and were never likely to become so. They were merely people who had cause to know each other due to circumstance, rather than measure.

I’m perfectly well, thank you; please take a seat."

Adm’ral, greeted the damned fool’s hideously disfigured sherpa, hoving in his master’s wake with a beaming, tooth-troubled smile, to which the Admiral merely nodded his greeting in the most perfunctory way possible.

What’s it all about, then, Archie? enquired the Captain, settling himself into the