Evil Machines Read online

  ‘Here!’ said Orville Barton, proffering the cheque again.

  ‘And I want you to find the time to get to know your grandson,’ said his daughter.

  Orville Barton didn’t say anything. He was experiencing yet another feeling that he hadn’t felt for many, many years. He wasn’t quite certain what it was, and he certainly didn’t want to know. But, between you and me, I think it was probably a little tiny touch of humility.

  Orville Barton placed the cheque silently on the table. It suddenly looked meaningless and unnecessary, despite the large number of zeroes. Annie, however, left it where it was. She now had Little Orville in one arm and a sandwich box in the other hand.

  ‘I must go,’ she said. ‘I have to take Tom his lunch. He’s working at the hospital while he’s looking for another job in engineering. Can you give me a lift?’

  ‘Um . . .’ said Orville Barton. ‘I came by train.’

  ‘I thought there was a train strike on,’ said his daughter.

  ‘Well, I caught one,’ said Orville Barton, nodding through the window and the abating storm towards the Euston to Manchester Express.

  ‘What’s it doing here? There’s no railway station!’ exclaimed Annie.

  ‘I think it’s waiting for me,’ replied her father.

  ‘You mean . . . it’s your own personal train? Like the Queen has?’ gasped Annie. She knew her father was rich, but she had no idea he was that rich.

  ‘Erm . . . sort of . . .’ said Orville Barton, uncertainly.

  ‘Then it can drop me off at the hospital,’ said Annie.

  Orville Barton wasn’t sure he could get the Euston to Manchester Express to do anything at all that he wanted, but he kept his mouth shut as Annie climbed onto the train with Little Orville and the sandwich box.

  Orville Barton made sure they sat in the First Class compartment, in the least farmyardy bit, and then made his way to the driver’s cab.

  ‘Now look here!’ he hissed at the train. ‘I don’t want any more nonsense, you wretched machine! I want you to drop my daughter off at the hospital and then I want to go to Manchester.’

  ‘Phooey!’ cried the train. ‘I hate hospitals, and Manchester’s no fun!’ And before Orville Barton could say another word, the train was speeding over a very high

  bridge. In fact it was so high it seemed as if they were flying.

  Orville tried to remonstrate with the train, but it was no good. It simply said ‘Phooey! Phooey! Phooey! Phooey! Phooey! Phooey! And Phooey!’ and so he returned to his seat.

  ‘Are we flying?’ asked Annie, as he sat down. Orville Barton looked out of the window.

  ‘Er . . . yes,’ he said, for there was now no sign of a bridge beneath them, and the earth was a very long way below.

  ‘What sort of a train is this?’ asked Annie.

  ‘Oh! It’s an experimental model, my dear,’ replied her father. ‘I’m only just finding out what it can do myself!’ As much as he hated not being in control, he hated even more the thought that someone else might realize that he wasn’t . . . especially his daughter.

  ‘Well, just so long as it drops me off at the hospital,’ said Annie. ‘Tom only has half an hour for his lunch.’

  At that moment the train started to plunge back towards the earth. As it plummeted, Annie held Little Orville tight, while her father closed his eyes and pretended that he was an RAF pilot performing an aerobatic stunt at an air show. The pretence helped him to feel in control again.

  When he opened his eyes, however, the train was skimming over an ocean of tree-tops that stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see.

  ‘Dad! I asked you to drop me off at the hospital!’ exclaimed his daughter. ‘This looks more like the Amazon jungle!’

  And it did indeed. It looked so like the Amazon jungle that they could plainly see the wide loops of the great river

  itself, coiling through the jungle below.

  ‘I’ll go and have a word with the driver,’ said Orville Barton, and stamped his way towards the front of the train.

  ‘What are you playing at?’ he shouted at the train. ‘Where are you taking us?’

  ‘Whooo! Whooo!’ hooted the train. ‘Relax! Have fun! Watch this!’

  The train banked sharply and dipped down below the tree-tops so that they were now skimming along the river Amazon, with the wheels of the train just cutting the surface of the water, as it swung at a tremendous speed round the curves and twists and turns of that vast waterway.

  ‘Whooo! Whooo!’ hooted the train again, and flocks of parrots flew up from the trees, squawking with indignation.

  ‘Where’s the driver?’ cried a voice, and Orville Barton turned to see his daughter standing in the doorway of the driver’s cabin with a face like a thunderstorm. ‘Er . . .’ said Orville Barton. The truth was he didn’t know quite what to say, so he said, ‘What have you done with Little Orville?’

  ‘He’s asleep,’ said Annie. ‘Are you driving this train yourself?’

  ‘No, of course he isn’t,’ said the train.

  ‘Who’s that?’ exclaimed Annie, jumping and looking all around her.

  ‘It’s the train,’ said Orville Barton, miserably.

  ‘I go where I like!’ hooted the train. ‘Whoo! Whoo!’

  ‘It’s got a mind of its own. It simply won’t do what it’s told. I mean take this morning: I was supposed to be going to Manchester for an important business meeting, but it took me to your place instead! It just . . .’

  Orville Barton stopped himself . . . But it was too late.

  ‘I knew you hadn’t really wanted to see me and Little Orville,’ said his daughter. ‘You never have before, why should you start now?’

  ‘But I’m glad I did . . .’ began her father.

  ‘All you care about is money and work!’ cried his daughter. ‘Your money! Your work! And now you’ve let me get on this ridiculous train, when I should be at the hospital with Tom’s sandwiches! Can’t you see how selfish you are? Mum was right! You never think of anyone else!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Orville Barton. It was the first time for many, many years that the word had passed his lips, and he noticed how unfamiliar it felt as he said it.

  ‘I’m not ridiculous!’ interjected the train.

  ‘Yes, you are!’ said Annie severely. ‘Trains are meant to get people to where they want to get to, not whizz off just anywhere!’

  ‘I’m a Class 4MT BR Standard No. 75027!’ hooted the train. ‘Nobody can call me ridiculous!’

  ‘Then take me to Ryefield Hospital this instant!’ shouted Annie. Orville Barton had never heard his daughter speak in that way before, and he was glad she was speaking to the train and not to him.

  ‘Phooey!’ cried the train. ‘You can’t tell me what to do!’

  ‘Huh!’ said Annie. ‘We’ll see about that!’ And she grabbed one of the levers on the control panel.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Orville Barton.

  ‘The regulator,’ said his daughter, who had once written a musical about railways for her school, and had therefore learnt a thing or two about trains.

  ‘No!’ exclaimed the train.

  ‘I’ll soon slow you down!’ shouted Annie, turning the lever anticlockwise.

  ‘No! No! No! No! No! No! And No!’ exclaimed the train, and it abruptly lurched to the left, despite the fact that the river at this point turned to the right. Orville and Annie were both thrown on to the floor.

  ‘Hang on to your gobstoppers!’ cried the train, and it plunged straight into the thickest part of the jungle.

  ‘Argh!’ screamed Orville.

  ‘Argh!’ cried Annie.

  ‘Whooo! Whooo! Whooo! Whooo! Whooo! Whooo! And Whooo!’ hooted the train.

  ‘Stop it!’ cried Orville, but the train didn’t take the blindest bit of notice.

  The jungle canopy was so thick, it was as if they were travelling along the bottom of the sea, where the only rays of sun that ever reach are green and p
allid. Leaves and branches slashed and scraped against the windows, as the train swerved round tree-trunks and skidded under lianas and through trailing creepers.

  ‘We’ll hit something!’ yelled Annie. But they didn’t. They were speeding through a tunnel of vegetation in the heart of the Amazonian rainforest . . .

  ‘Whooo! Whooo!’ hooted the train again. ‘Whooo! Whooo!’

  ‘Orville!’ cried Annie, racing back to the First Class carriage, where Little Orville had now woken up and was screaming at the top of his lungs.

  ‘Slow down! You wicked train!’ she shouted, but the

  train just went on faster than ever.

  Then, quite suddenly, the train burst into a clearing and screeched to a halt a few inches behind a man who was crouching beside a campfire, cooking. The man span round, and his mouth fell open, giving an unappetizing preview of the meal he was consuming. He screamed, leapt clean over the campfire and the stew, and disappeared into the rainforest on the far side of the clearing. At the same time a dozen or so other rough-looking characters, who had been lounging around in camouflage fatigues, also disappeared into the undergrowth.

  ‘Listen up, train!’ shouted Orville Barton. ‘If you’re not going to take us where we’re supposed to be going, I don’t want to have anything to do with you. Is that understood? We’ll take a cab.’

  ‘You’ll be lucky round here!’ observed the train.

  ‘I said I didn’t want to discuss it!’ said Orville Barton.

  ‘No you didn’t,’ retorted the train.

  At this point the cook peered out from the undergrowth. A bearded face appeared next to his, and pushed the cook towards the intruding train.

  One by one the others began to emerge from the bushes. Each was carrying a rifle, and each had a finger on the trigger. They did not look particularly friendly, and in a few moments they had the train surrounded.

  Orville ran back to his daughter in the First Class compartment.

  Annie was pulling up the seats and cushions to form a barricade.

  ‘How could you let me get onto this infernal train with

  Little Orville here!’ she yelled at her father.

  ‘I didn’t know it would bring us here!’ pleaded Orville.

  ‘You knew it was a diabolical machine!’ yelled his daughter. ‘You shouldn’t have let us get on!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Orville for only the second time in recent memory.

  ‘Da! Da!’ shouted Little Orville, who had now stopped screaming and seemed to be enjoying himself among the mound of cushions.

  ‘Come out with your hands up!’ shouted one of the armed men outside. Only he shouted it in Spanish.

  ‘I’ll take care of this, my dear,’ said Orville, though he had no idea what the man had said or what he, himself, was going to do. Nevertheless, he grabbed his briefcase and went to the door of the carriage.

  ‘Step down from the train!’ shouted the leader of the armed men, only once again he said it in Spanish, so Orville Barton had no idea what he meant, until the man fired a shot into the air, and then Orville hurriedly climbed down from the train.

  Annie watched from behind her barricade of seats, as the armed men gathered around her father. All through her childhood she had hoped her father would come and see her in the school play, or watch while she showed him her first ballet steps or listen to her count up to a million, but he never had time. He did come to the school musical she wrote about railways, but that had been exceptional, and, since he and her mother had separated, contact between them had dwindled to almost nothing. She, herself, had always found excuses for him: he was too busy, there was a

  crisis on the stock market that day, oil prices had suddenly gone through the roof and so on and so on. And gradually she didn’t need to make excuses for him any more, she just stopped expecting him to pay her any attention whatsoever – even when he failed to come to Little Orville’s christening.

  And yet now – seeing her father surrounded by these men with rifles and machine guns – she felt an unaccountable desire to take care of him. More than that: she wanted to do something heroic for him. She wanted to leap from the roof of the train on to the leading gunman, snatch the man’s weapon from him and shoot the rest of them dead in their tracks. She would then throw her father across her shoulder and heave him back on to the train so they could make their escape, and all to an exciting musical soundtrack!

  At this moment Little Orville started crying again. Perhaps he understood the stress in his mother’s face. Perhaps he was hungry. Perhaps he needed a nappy change. But whatever the reason, it reminded Annie that she couldn’t leave her little son alone in the train while she became a heroine in a movie that wasn’t even being made. So she held Little Orville in her arms and shushed him, as she watched the drama unfold outside the carriage window.

  ‘Give me that!’ said the leader, once again in Spanish, and tried to take the briefcase out of Orville’s hand.

  But Orville was very attached to his briefcase, and he wasn’t going to give it up to just anyone in any old jungle, simply because they were carrying a machine gun.

  ‘Give it to me!’ shouted the man, as he pulled at the briefcase. Orville Barton pulled it back, whereupon the man pulled it back again, and pretty soon they were doing

  ‘push-me–pull-you’ faster than the connecting rods on the wheels of a train.

  ‘How dare you!’ exclaimed Orville Barton. ‘This is my briefcase!’ And he redoubled his efforts to hold on to it, but so too did the other man, and if they had actually been the connecting rods on the wheels of the train they would have been doing a hundred miles an hour as they pulled and pushed and pushed and pulled.

  Now Orville Barton was a man who was used to quality. He always bought the most expensive things on offer. If he had to choose between a pair of shoes for £80 and a pair of shoes for £380 he would always choose the latter even if he knew they were identical shoes. That way, he felt, he could always rest assured that he had the best.

  But occasionally a tradesman pulled a fast one on him and sold him inferior goods at an inflated price. The briefcase, for example, had cost £1,149.99, and he had been assured that it was hand-made in Scotland from organic antelope hide. In fact it had been made in China from some cow skins. The leatherwork was actually of a very high standard, but the catch was not. And out here in the Amazon jungle, under the pressure of an armed guerrilla (for that is what they were) trying to wrest the briefcase from Orville Barton’s grasp, it was the catch that gave up and broke.

  The briefcase flew open and the contents spilled out all over the guerrillas’ encampment. The effect of this on the guerrillas was remarkable: they suddenly dropped their weapons and started chasing here, there and everywhere over the encampment retrieving Orville Barton’s belongings. ‘Very nice of them!’ you might think, but don’t,

  because the contents of Orville Barton’s briefcase consisted of the one thing that everyone in the world would chase after: money.

  The fact of the matter is that Orville Barton had been on his way to Manchester to finish a crucial business deal. It was the kind of deal that did not sit comfortably with cheques and credit cards and promissory banker’s notes. It was better done in hard cash. And that is what was in his briefcase: thousands and thousands of pounds in used £50 notes.

  From her hiding place, Annie watched as the men ran around snatching at the notes that blew about the clearing like autumn leaves. She had never seen so much cash all at once, and she felt strangely uncomfortable to know that her father had been carrying so much in his briefcase.

  Eventually the men collected every last bank note, and – here’s a curious thing – instead of rushing off to the nearest bar (which was admittedly 200 miles away) to spend their ill-gotten gains, they carefully placed them back in the briefcase, and snapped it shut again. In the meantime, two of the men had pinioned her father’s arms behind him, while another tied a blindfold over his eyes. And before you could say ‘Dj
ango!’ they had marched him out of the clearing and disappeared into the jungle.

  Meanwhile the rest of the guerrillas had started to examine the train: they were peering into the windows and trying to open the doors.

  ‘Oh no, you don’t!’ exclaimed the train, and it locked them all, reared up like a stallion, shook those guerrillas off as if they were fleas on a dog’s back, and charged, across the campfire, across the clearing and straight into the jungle again.

  The guerrillas lay where they had fallen and gaped as they watched the train disappear into the tangles of the forest.

  Orville Barton, meanwhile, found himself being marched through the jungle, blindfolded. His captors steered him through the dense vegetation, but even so he stumbled and tripped more times than he didn’t. It was the most uncomfortable journey he had ever made in his life, and what made it doubly unpleasant for him was the fact that he was powerless to do anything about it.

  After some time, they stopped. His captors removed the blindfold and Orville found himself standing outside a small hut, in front of which a pleasant-looking man in spectacles was sitting reading a book entitled: Post-Capitalist Re-organization of the Global Economy. He stood up as they approached, and put his book down on the table. There was a short exchange in Spanish, and the man in spectacles turned to Orville.

  ‘Mr Barton,’ he said in almost flawless English, ‘I am surprised that you decided to come in person . . . I did not think you would be bothered by such a trivial matter.’

  His words somehow seemed mocking, although Orville had no idea what he was talking about. At that moment one of the guerrillas placed Orville’s briefcase carefully on the table.

  ‘Ah . . . let us check everything is in order first,’ said the man in spectacles, and he sat down again at the table and proceeded to open the briefcase.

  ‘That’s my briefcase!’ cried Orville, but the man was already counting the money it contained. ‘Who are you?’ asked Orville.

  ‘Sh!’ said the man in spectacles. ‘You’ll make me lose count.’ And he went on counting out the notes into neat piles.

  ‘I demand an explana . . .’ Orville began, but he was at that moment reminded that he was not in a position to demand anything by a blow on the head. He sank to his knees, and the scene before him seemed to turn to liquid for a moment, and swirled around a bit before eventually solidifying again.