Phil and the Death Machine: Marshal College, #1

By Dominic Green

Decidedly adult retro Urban Fantasy from a Hugo nominated author.

Kingshampton University was founded in the Middle Ages.  It was intended to be a recruiting ground for 'special advisors' for the British monarchy.  Nowadays, though, in more enlightened times, the masters of its various colleges do so hate to use the word 'magic'...

Phil Wolseley-Jones is starting his first year of Applied Parapsychology at Kingshampton.  His interests lie in drink, sex and the avoidance of any sort of work.  It's becoming depressingly possible, though, that his college years might have gainful employment at the end of them. This is because Phil has talents that are in demand.  The only students recruited for Applied Parapsych are those who can see things ordinary mortals can't.  But the catch is, the things they can see can see them back...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dominic Green
• Release date: Apr 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224306916

Dominic Green

DOMINIC GREEN was born some time ago.  He is so old that he remembers when telephones were attached to the wall with cables.  In 2006, he was nominated for a Hugo award for his story, The Clockwork Atom Bomb.  He has a tetrapod body plan, breathes oxygen, and has a Newfoundland dog who is the world's first life form to consist entirely of drool.

Book preview

Phil and the Death Machine

published by

Dominic Green

Copyright 2017 Dominic Green

––––––––

Author’s note – Yes, I do use a z rather than an s on the end of realize, just like an American.  The OED tells me I’m allowed to, and if George Bernard Shaw can get away with it, I can.

Table of Contents

1. Foightin Inna Quad

2. Getting To Know You!  Getting To Know All About You!

3. Here's a Spectral Entity I Manifested Earlier

4. Bum Bum David

5. You're Just The Kind of Man We're Looking For

6. What Ho, Dead Chap

7. How Bad a Boy Were You Exactly?

8. Welcome to the Machine

9. The Time of Year for Dead Wasps

10. There Shouldn't Have Been Any Sort of Bikini

11. Quality Time With Bacon

12. Phil Does Something Else Incredibly Stupid

13. A Horrid Orange Blur With Teeth

14. A Bit Of Cosmetic Damage

1. Foightin Inna Quad

It's okay if you screw this one up, old chap.  This isn't just an O or A level.  This is the big time.  Best university in the world for your subject, so we're told.  So there's no shame in failure.  The only shame would be in not having tried at all.  And there are four more choices on your UCCA form.

Dad was now standing, pacing, smoking, quietly worried sick down in the stone quadrangle three staircases below.  Probably with three other sets of dads, all trying to psych each other out, if their three horrible offspring sitting looking daggers at each other in the waiting room with Phil right now were anything to go by.  Dad would, of course, try to psych out the opposition.  It was a Dad thing to do, to win at any cost.

Phil felt like a sea anemone stranded at high tide.

The boy who'd just left hadn't stopped smiling the whole time he'd been in the room.  He'd actually turned up to the interview in his school uniform - a horrid thing, all garish stripes, with not just a cap but a waistcoat too.  Maybe he'd heard the Tutor had gone to the same school (was the guy called a Tutor?  It had been a simple thing to remember, but it was as gone from Phil's mind as the name of the animator of Spider-Man).

Far away over dreaming spires and ivory towers he could see the guy on the massive plinth in the middle of the college court (was it called a court, or a quad?) - a knight on horseback, raising a sword towards the sky.  He was all rain-weathered bronze, but his sword looked made of a different metal.  Phil had no idea who Sword Guy was.  As he didn't know this, he was certain he'd be asked it in the interview ("How can you say you want to come to our college, if you haven't bothered to find out the first thing about it?  Do you know when it was founded?  Do you even know when the university was founded?).

He knew that, at least.  This is the third oldest university in England, founded in 1261.  It flourished under Henry III, following its scholars' loyalty to the monarch in opening the gates to the city when he besieged it in 1264.  It is the world's ninth oldest continuously endowed university, and was founded by King Richard the Lionheart - ah yes, that'd be him, then.  Sword Guy.

Emboldened by that deduction, he sneaked a peak around him at the competition - two male, one vaguely female.  The first male, a sour-faced Hindu-looking kid in a suit and turban (was it Hindus who wore turbans?), was sitting apparently genuinely reading a book entitled An Introduction To Tensor Calculus.  Phil had absolutely no idea what Tensor Calculus was or why the kid was reading about it in a waiting room for an appointment to see the History Tutor.  He hoped History did not involve calculus, or indeed any other form of mathematics whatsoever; all indications so far had been that it didn't.  The second male, who looked bored at being forced to share oxygen with lesser life forms, was wearing a cricket jumper and a Paisley scarf and reading the Racing Times.  The girl, meanwhile, had a case of acne so advanced it was bordering on actual leprosy, and her nose was buried in something called Ganzfeld by someone called Charles Honorton.  Phil had never heard of Charles Honorton, but guessed he was a romantic novelist.  The girl looked like the type who needed to read about other people having boyfriends.  The book was probably a nineteenth-century thing about a tragic hero called Ganzfeld who loved someone above or below his station and died of consumption.  Romantic novels all were in Phil's admittedly limited experience.

Phil was no good at psyching people out, and the frigid silence in the room was like listening to a violin being played with a fretsaw.  Phil was uncomfortable with silence.  Phil had also not brought anything of his own to read.

Hi, he said to Turban Boy, who, being Indian, seemed like his best bet at a polite reply.  My name's Phil.  Phil Wolseley-Jones.

Turban Boy completely threw Phil by having a Black Country accent that was the love child of a three-way gangbang between Ozzy Osbourne, Noddy Holder and Pig from Pipkins.  Mohinderpratap Chhugani, he said.

I see, said Phil.  Have you come far?

Birmingham, said Mohinderhoojamaflip, predictably.  You?

Tring, said Phil.  Don't worry.  No-one else knows where Tring is either.  It's more like a sound than a place.

Mohinderwhatsisface's brows creased.  Why? he said.

Erm.  It's kind of a joke, said Phil.

He means it sounds like onomatopoeia, said the girl.

And what the hell is THAT, it sounds painful?  Haha, isn't that a small country in Eastern Europe?  said Phil.

What? said the girl.

It's kind of a joke, said Phil.

The girl looked at him as if he were clinically insane.

It's a literary device, she said.

Haha, like Jane Austen's vibrator, said Phil.

There was an uncomfortably long silence in the waiting room.  It was broken by the door to the Interrogation Chamber opening and an ashen-faced public schoolboy walking out, cap in hands.  A tall round-faced man in his thirties poked his head round the door.  Philip Wolseley-Jones?

I think you're up, said Cricket Sweater Boy, without bothering to look up from his copy of the Racing Times.  A promising career in comedy bites the dust.

***

There were three men sitting in the interview room.  The round-faced man sat in the centre, and a rather shorter, paunchier man in his fifties was on the left of him, fussily scratching incomprehensible hieroglyphics in an A4 pad.  On his right, meanwhile, on a chair in the corner of the room, sat an incredibly pale-skinned, angular man wearing a jet-black suit, pure white shirt and black tie.  Not an ounce of colour existed in either him or what he was wearing; Phil suspected both heavy use of foundation and the world's oldest infatuation with the music of Robert Smith.

He judged his interrogators by their spectacles.  In the middle, huge round spectacles, as if the man seriously thought he might be Elton John - there was a hideously flamboyant bow tie, too, that confirmed that suspicion.  On the left, tiny fastidious bifocals.  On the right, ancient-looking black horn-rimmed things made of metal plates and bakelite.

So, said Elton John, smiling to put Phil at his ease, Philip, is it?  Phil nodded.  I'm Peter Pringle, Senior Admissions Tutor.  He extended a hand for Phil to shake; Phil took it.  This is Harry Kirk, who would be supervising you should you be successful in your application to study History here.

Kirk scowled and kept his head down in his notes.  No hand was extended from his direction.  No introduction was made, either, of the man on the right hand side of the room.

Okay.  So you made up your minds before I even walked in here.

Maybe, though, this was in itself a test.  Phil had been brought up only to give up when the whistle blew.  He considered it a character weakness.  He had prepared answers for any number of fiendish questions across thirty centuries of historical knowledge. 

Were you to be successful, continued Pringle, you would be one of our 1986 student intake next October.  What makes you want to study History here, Philip?

Egad, the cunning devils.

Erm, he said.  I heard it was, erm.  The best place to go.

This woke Harry Kirk up.  Oh, really? he said.  From whom?

Phil grasped desperately.  The Times Educational Supplement, he lied.

Really? said Kirk, with an I-know-you're-bullshitting-you-know-you're-bullshitting grimace.  "Was that a recent edition?  Do you base all your educational decisions on what you read in the Times Educational Supplement?"

All of them, said Phil, nodding vigorously.

Behave, Harry, said Pringle.  Philip, I've been discussing your case with Harry, and based on your performance in the Colleges Examination, we do not feel there is a place for you at this college studying straight history.

He had no idea what to say.  Fifty miles in a car here, hopes built up, expectations falsely created that he might end up somewhere nice, somewhere top-flight, somewhere elite, just for this?

Eventually, he settled for:

"Aren't you supposed to tell me that after the interview?  I mean, isn't that the done thing?"

"But there may be an opening, said Pringle, holding up a finger, on one of our combined honours courses.  History combined with another subject.  We always have difficulty filling our, uh, quota for this one -"

Kirk scoffed from the left hand side of the room, but said nothing.

We'd like you to consider course AP1, he said, pushing a leaflet across the desk.

Phil looked at it.

Applied Parapsychology? he said.  He found himself looking at the black-and-white man in the corner.  Pringle noticed him doing so, and cast a questioning glance in the man's direction.  The man looked Phil in the eye, then turned to Pringle and nodded.  A decision, it seemed, had been made.  Based on what, Phil hadn't the slightest clue.

Yes, said Pringle.  We believe the course would suit you, and it has available places.

So there are no places studying, said Phil, "straight History."  As opposed to some sort of gay bendy history, I imagine.

Kirk looked up from his notes, like a dragon whose hoard had been stepped on.

Mr. Wolseley, said Kirk, "I am looking at your KCE examination paper here.  In response to the question Describe one direct result of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, you reply:  'The wise and beautiful Aztec people were totally exterminated'."

What's wrong with that? said Phil.

The Aztec culture was founded on human sacrifice, continual war and arguably ceremonial cannibalism, said Kirk.  Furthermore, they were not exterminated.  Many of them are alive today.

They are? said Phil in confusion.

"The Aztecs referred to themselves as Mexica", said Kirk.  "Hence they referred to the country they inhabited as Mexico.  A country that, the last time I looked, had a population of sixty-five million people."

Yes, said Phil stubbornly, but they're probably all Spanish now.

"They are not all Spanish now."

They might be, said Phil.  My opinion's as valid as yours.

Kirk threw up his hands in frustration.  Is it?  Maybe I should ask the woman who cleans my rooms.  Maybe her opinion's as valid as yours.  Maybe we should ask the bronze fellow on the horse outside Peter's window.

Ah, said Phil comfortably, feeling he was on solid ground now.  You mean Richard Coeur-de-Lion.

No, said Kirk, I mean William Marshal, first Earl of Pembroke, founder of this college.  Exemplary mediaeval knight, continual and loyal supporter of the crown, and one of the few men in history to ever be given absolute power and not abuse it.  He met Richard Coeur-de-Lion in battle once, you know.  Richard the supposedly lion-hearted pissed his armoured trousers and begged Marshal not to kill him.  Marshal replied that the Devil should kill Richard, because he, Marshal, wasn't prepared to, and killed his horse instead.  If the statue had been Coeur-de-Lion, we'd be the college of the same name next door.  I'm sorry, Mr. Wolseley.  You display a facile and hearsay-based understanding of history.  Combined honours will, frankly, be a position I have to be negotiated into.  He looked at Pringle.  Peter, will you stop staring at that corner of the room and listen to me.  I want Candidate 120 to be given the Reginald Scot scholarship.

Out of the question, said Pringle, who was still looking at the goth in the corner with a questioning expression.  The goth looked at Phil again, and nodded again.  The Scot scholarship is reserved for individuals with particular talents.  The Piers Gaveston scholarship is as high as I'm prepared to go.

Kirk compressed his face into a mass of wrinkles.  "The Reginald Scot is in your gift, Peter.  The Gaveston you just have a vote on."

Well, you have my vote for Candidate 120 and that's my final offer.  But I need your agreement to match my offer for combined honours in course AP1 with an offer from you for H1 History as far as this candidate is concerned.  Pringle looked Phil up and down, and also from side to side.  It says here you played rugby for your school.  Phil nodded.  What position?

Lock.

Pringle nodded to himself, as if to say yes, you're big and you're ugly.  I believe the college side is weak in that position right now.  That'll give us some leverage with Dr. Bewley; he coaches the team.

So I'm being considered for a college position because I'm six foot tall and look scary now?

Excuse me, said Phil.  Do I get a say in this?

Pringle did a double take as if only just noticing Phil was there.

Of course, he said.  That was very insensitive of me.  Let me outline the situation.  You are, to all intents and purposes, a bright but somewhat mediocre student who would normally find difficulty getting into a college of this calibre.  It's true that you do have a letter of recommendation here from a Mr., he bent his head down to the paper to read the scrawled signature, Panczak, one of our old boys, apparently, who says he's your housemaster -

Well, God bless you, Eddie Panczak.  You never told me you were going to do that.  I never even knew you'd been to this college.

- but in this day and age, living in the great democracy we do, I'm absolutely certain you know as well as I do that letters of recommendation can't be allowed to mean spit.  But despite all that, for my own very good reasons, I am offering you, here and now, a position at this college, in one of the three foremost universities of this country, a university that has produced one tenth of all this country's Members of Parliament in the last century and one quarter of all its Prime Ministers - we like to think, the quarter from the neck up.  I am offering you a chance to study under Harry here, who for all his curmudgeonly exterior is one of this country's foremost mediaevalists.  I am offering you an Oxbridgehampton education with all punts, July Balls, and Pimms parties in the watermeadows attached - an education that will, if you play your cards right and go to the right careers fairs, get you a job in the merchant bank, international tax law firm, or government department of your choosing.  Now if you don't want that, that's fine - I'm sure there are decent redbricks further down your UCCA form -

Phil sat stunned, blown from defeat to Pyrrhic victory in under a minute.

Well, if you put it like that, he said.

***

How did it go? said the boy in the school uniform, who was standing outside ostentatiously smoking when Phil came down the stairs.  He'd already slipped his school cap into his pocket.

I've just been talked down to, mused Phil, by a man who, by his own admission, is unable to clean his own room.

Those two, said the boy, tag-teamed me.  Talk about good cop / bad cop; they never had the slightest intention of letting me into this fucking place.  I mean, he said, "my tutor went to this place and wrote them a personal letter of fucking recommendation.  But Jonathan King behind the desk just took one look at me and dug in his heels.  Kept looking over at the corner of the room as if he had some sort of nervous tic."

Jonathan King, said Phil.  Interesting.  I was leaning more towards Elton John.

The other one, the good cop, asked me some questions about whether Elizabeth the First was the greatest queen of England, and seemed pretty happy with my answers, but Jonathan wasn't having any of it.

I see, said Phil.  "And was Elizabeth the First the greatest queen of England?"

You don't have to agree or disagree, said the boy irritably.  You're supposed to put the cases for and against, supporting with historical facts and sources.

Gosh, said Phil.  What about the third guy, the Mystery Man.  Did you get to talk to him at all?

The boy looked at Phil curiously.  There wasn't a third guy, he said.  Not when I was in there.

But there had to be, said Phil, breaking out in a grin.  There were no other doors leading out of that room.  You came out, I went in.  What, you're expecting me to believe he hid in the cupboard or something?

There was no third guy, said the boy.  Stop trying to fuck with my head, I've already come here all the way in and out of London.  I don't need this fucking place anyway.  My family could buy and sell this fucking place.  I'm going to find a fucking pub and get myself a fucking beer.  He had the sound of a boy who did not often get himself a beer.  Phil, who had been big, broad and hairy enough to pass for a grown man since the age of twelve, looked him up and down critically.

Make sure you take off your blazer first.

What, you think I'm fucking stupid?  The boy sloughed off his blazer and folded it over his arm.  Is that your subtext here, that I'm fucking stupid, just because you think you did so well in there?

I didn't do that well in there, said Phil.  Look, just cool it, will you?  It's only a bloody college place.  There are four more choices on your UCCA form.

Not on mine, said the boy bitterly.  "I put down Kingshampton, Oxford, Cambridge, Durham and Hull.  Because I was so sure I was going to get a place here with my personal recommendation from my tutor at the alma mater, and I figured, well, if I don't get in here, I'm bound to get in at Durham or one of the other Oxbridgehampton colleges.  Except what I didn't know was -"

- Oxford, Cambridge and Durham don't like being put second on an UCCA form, finished Phil.

I'm going to Hull, said the boy, his eyes haunted by grim northern wastelands only he could see.  There's a place in Hull for me.  The gates of Hull are open night and day.

Phil felt that this had been a deliberate attempt at a joke, and that it was his duty to laugh at this point.  This proved to be an incorrect assumption.

"What, you think that's funny?  You find me fucking AMUSING?"

Less and less by the second, said Phil - and then the boy tried to hit Phil in the face.

Phil was tall enough to manage the old sixth-formers' trick of slapping the heel of his palm into his opponent's forehead and thereby preventing any of his punches from landing.  They were sort of landing, but only the last millimetre or so of them, without any force at all.

Look, just cool it, he said.  You're just embarrassing yourself -

HEY!  The voice was certainly not middle-class enough to belong to a Marshal College student.  It had a Midlands twang to it, as if its owner had actually been born and bred within the swampy confines of the city.

He turned.  The man who had spoken was certainly ugly enough to come from Kingshampton.  But he was also dressed in paramilitary uniform, with shiny silver buttons on a coat that was a blend of  undertaker, security guard and member of the Waffen SS.  The uniform came with a black hat.  It had epaulettes.  It had, Phil could see reflected in the glass of the entrance to the block next door, tails.

WHADDYA THINK YOU'RE DOIN', FOIGHTIN INNA QUADRANGLE?

I'm not fighting, said Phil.

The man was a head shorter than Phil, but Phil had a sneaking suspicion that dealing with him would not have been as easy as simply putting a hand in the middle of his forehead and waiting for him to punch himself out.  He had the ruddy complexion of a man with extremely poor circulation, it was true, and he was carrying a lot of weight around his middle, but Phil had absolutely no doubt about the fact that he was both extremely, permanently, professionally angry, and perfectly capable of laying hand to the back of Phil's collar.

Then why's e croyin? said the man.

Phil had not realized the boy was crying.  He felt disgust mixed with sympathy.  Up there in the interview room - in the room where he should have failed the interview that this boy should have passed with flying colours - he'd felt the anguish of failure build up in his gut just like this kid had.  The difference was, however, that he wasn't crying in public in front of the whole world like a fucking girl.

He's crying because he knows he failed an interview, said Phil.

Oh, said the man.  Did you parss the innerview?

I'm not sure, said Phil.  Maybe.

Well, if you did, said the man, congratulations an' report to the Dean first Toozday you're in college for foightin' inna quadrangle.  You look loike the sorta young man I get to know very well, very quick.  The name's Edifice.  I'm the Ead Porter in this college, an' foightin' inna quadrangle contravenes college rules an' regulations.

Pleased to meet you, Mr. Edifice, said Phil.  He extended a hand.  Philip Wolseley-Jones.  I'll be reading History and Parapsychology, if I end up here at all.

Surprisingly, Edifice shook the hand.  Parapsychology, eh?  You'll be wunna Doc Pringle's stoodents, then.

If I end up here at all.

I see.  So what can you do?

What do you mean, what can I do?

What can you do?  You godda be able to do summat, if yer wunna Doc Pringle's stoodents.  You'll learn.  You got summat you can do, even if maybe you dun't know it yet.

Then he actually crossed himself, clasped his hands behind his back, and strolled away at businesslike speed, like a policeman on his beat looking for further people foightin inna quadrangle.  From far above, wafting out of an open window, Phil heard a sound of crackly singing coming from someone's off-centre record player:

"And I don't want to live my life like everybody else,

"And I won't say that I feel fine like everybody else,

"'Cause I'm not like everybody else,

I'm not like everybody else...

How'd you do, old chap?

Phil turned to see his dad walk out from behind a pillar, with a pipe on the go.

I've been foightin inna quadrangle, apparently, said Phil.

"Well, he seemed to be, observed Phil's dad.  You not so much.  How did the interview go?"

I'm not sure, said Phil.  My course has changed, for certain.

Humph, said Phil's dad.  History's bunk, so I hear.  So what's parapsychology?  Do I need to be afraid you'll develop an Oedipus Complex, drag me out of my chariot and kill me?

I don't think an Oedipus Complex is a thing you develop just because you've been told you should, dad.

Nonsense.  Just take all this new-fangled  homosexuality.  We had no homosexuality in my day, and that was because no-one ever bothered to tell us there were men who delivered their coal via the rear entrance.  You tell people people can have sex with vacuum cleaners, and the next morning they're all in Casualty stuck in Electroluxes.  So don't tell them in the first place, that's the ticket.

In any case, dad, I don't think parapsychology's anything to do with Oedipus Complexes.  I think it's about investigation of the paranormal.

What's the paranormal, then?  Stuff that's Normal For Paratroopers?  Spit-roasting rough-looking women in the barracks at two a.m., that sort of thing?

I think it's more ghosts and goblins, dad.

Oh.  Wolseley-Jones senior was having difficulty processing this information.  Dissecting them?

No, ghosts and goblins don't actually exist, dad.  But parapsychologists kind of pretend they do so they can look for evidence of them and get paid for it.

Oh, said Wolsely-Jones senior.  Like experimental physicists.

If you say so, dad.  Phil shoved his hands in his pockets.  It was getting cold in what he now found himself thinking of as the Quadrangle.  Where are we going now, then?

A bite to eat, I think, and then home.  A consoling hand fell on Phil's shoulder.  In any case - if you've failed, there's no shame in it, none at all.

"I might actually not fail, you know, dad.  Had you considered that possibility?"

Well, I suppose that could happen.

Phil clicked his fingers.  Iwao Takamoto.

What?

"The guy who animated Spider-Man."

Did they ask you that in the interview?

No.  But they might have done.  A man has to be prepared for every eventuality.

I see.  Well I'm famished, so - Indian or Chinese?

2. Getting To Know You!  Getting To Know All About You!

So without further ado - a big HELLO to all our new First Year friends.  There's a fun questionnaire on every table - please pick one up, fill it in, and stick it to your name badge, it helps everyone get to know everyone else -

The girl on the stage was standing on a chair (otherwise she'd never have been seen over the crowd of good decent normal-sized people) and talking with the aid of a microphone (otherwise she'd never have been heard).  She had that shiny-eyed enthusiasm that Phil had always identified as a mark of those who had not yet divined the true horror of the universe.

He was sitting in what he now knew was called the Junior Combination Room, a modern brick-and-steel building squashed in between two grand Georgian blocks like a plastic prosthetic limb on the Mona Lisa.  Unlike Phil's tiny little attic room in one of those blocks, though, it was warm in here and there was no water dripping from the roof.  That was one of the reasons why Phil was here.  The other was the large friendly POUND A PINT!!! sign someone had stuck to the bar door with sellotape.

There was a juke box in the corner.  Someone had filled it with pound coins, and it was playing the same mournful ska lyric on a loop.

"This - TOOOOWN - is goan be like a Ghost Town -

"All the clubs have been cloooosed dooowwn -

"This place - is goan be like a Ghost Town -

Bands won't play no more (too much fightin' on de dance floor) -

Phli picked up one of the Fun Questionnaires.  It was written in Moronic English and asked him his Course, Hobbies, Fave Band, Fave Food, Fave Film, and Fave Holiday Destination.  Phil thought about this and wrote down ANTIBIOTICS under Course, and ELASTIC