Retromancer by Robert Rankin

consequences might well come to pass from my wanderings.
    ‘You must understand, Rizla,’ said he to me. Over breakfast it was, I recall. ‘We are strangers in this particular portion of time. We should not really be here. A wrong move on our part could easily result in some future calamity. We are here in the past to alter the future, after all. But to alter it correctly, as it were. We tread a fine line; care must be our watchword.’
    ‘I will not break anything,’ I said. ‘I just want to have a look around Brentford. You can understand this, surely.’
    ‘I understand all,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Trust me, I am an avatar.’
    ‘Then you must know that I will not cause any harm.’
    And perhaps he did, or knew to the contrary, but he forbade me to leave the house, so I just sat and sulked.
    ‘You’ll turn the powdered milk sour,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Perk up and read from the paper. You are au fait with my method of doing things. Seek us out a case.’
    The daily paper in question was the borough’s organ, the Brentford Mercury. This venerable news-sheet, founded by the legendary Victorian newspaper magnate Sir Cecil Doveston in eighteen seventy-five, had hardly changed its basic format since that time. Indeed, but for the date, and the general contents, the copy I held in my hand seemed all but identical to any one that I might have held, or did hold, or would hold, in nineteen sixty-seven. Some things were just built to last and a classic never dates.
    I read aloud the banner headline.
     
    BRENTFORD ALLOTMENTEERS DIG FOR VICTORY
     
    The Brentford Mercury always led with local news, no matter the nature or importance of ongoing world events. I recall that on the day after Kennedy’s assassination it ran a front-page article about the local electrical shop stocking a new make of battery.
    ‘Thrilling stuff,’ I said, and I made a certain face.
    ‘It’s an improvement on the sulky one,’ said the breakfasting avatar, ‘but not much. Dig into the inside pages, worm us out a little nugget on which to hang our first case. Let us do some digging for victory.’
    I shrugged and said, ‘I will never understand the logic in your method of doing things.’
    ‘And I trust that you never will. Now dig.’
    And so I turned pages and dug.
    ‘A woman in Chiswick has given birth to a child the shape of a vacuum cleaner,’ I said.
    ‘Dig further.’
    ‘Brentford Football Club have beaten Manchester United four-nil,’ I said. And I whistled as I said it, and after I had said it too.
    ‘And that is something they will do again. But a long way into the future and in quite another story altogether.’ [2]
    ‘Aha,’ I said. ‘Perhaps this is it. “SCIENTIST VANISHES”. Is that the kind of thing you are looking for?’
    ‘What do you think?’ Mr Rune asked, as his hand snaked out towards my bacon.
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think that it is. I recall that the first Brightonomicon case we took on involved a lost dog. I think the case of a missing scientist might be a suitable one with which to begin our new quest. Would you care for me to go and take a stroll around the borough and see if I can find him by myself?’
    Mr Rune did shakings of his head and swallowings too of my bacon. ‘From where did this scientist go missing?’ he enquired, once he had swallowed.
    I skimmed through the article and read aloud from it.
    Professor James Stigmata Campbell, a particle physicist working for the Ministry of Home Affairs, vanished from his laboratory in mysterious circumstances. His cellar laboratory was locked from the inside and his clothes were found strewn upon the floor. Professor Campbell had most recently announced a significant breakthrough in his field of endeavour, which he had been expected to deliver in a paper to a meeting of the Fellows of the Royal Society tonight. Police are baffled.
    ‘Perfect,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘And now go and answer the telephone. ’
    ‘But the telephone is not ringing.’
    Mr Rune