“I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” he said sadly. “I grew up long ago.” “Then why, then what – oh, I don’t understand. Where am I?”cried Jane, gazing about her in terror. “Far from home, my child, far from home,” croaked the Great-Grandfather. “You are back in the Past – back where Christina and the boys were young sixty years ago!” Through her tears Jane saw his old eyes burning fiercely. “Then – how can I get home?” she whispered. “You cannot. You will stay here.
There is no other place for you.
You are back in the Past, remember!
The Twins and Michael, even your Father and Mother, are not yet born; Number Seventeen is not even built.
You cannot go home!”
“No, no!” cried Jane. “It’s not true! It can’t be.” Her heart was thumping inside her. Never to see Michael again, nor the Twins, nor her Father and Mother and Mary Poppins! And suddenly she began to shout, lifting her voice so that it echoed wildly through the stone corridors. “Mary Poppins! I’m sorry I was cross! Oh, Mary Poppins, help me, help me!” “Quick! Hold her close! Surround her!” She heard the Great-Grandfather’s sharp command. She felt the four children pressing close about her. She shut her eyes tight. “Mary Poppins!” she cried again, “Mary Poppins!” A hand caught hers and pulled her away from the circling arms of Christina, Valentine, William and Everard.
“Heh! Heh! Heh!” The Great-Grandfather’s cackling laugh echoed through the room. The grasp on her hand tightened and she felt herself being drawn away. She dared not look for fear of those frightening eyes, but she pulled fiercely against the tugging hand.
“Heh! Heh! Heh!” The laugh sounded again and the hand drew her on, down stone stairs and echoing corridors. She had no hope now. Behind her the voices of Christina and the Triplets faded away.
No help would come from them. She stumbled desperately after the flying footsteps and felt, though her eyes were closed, dark shadows above her head and damp earth under her foot. What was happening to her? Where, oh, where was she going? If only she hadn’t been so cross – if only! The strong hand pulled her onwards and presently she felt the warmth of sunlight on her cheeks and sharp grass scratched her legs as she was dragged along. Then, suddenly, a pair of arms, like bands of iron, closed about her, lifted her up and swung her through the air. “Oh, help, help!” she cried, frantically twisting and turning against those arms. She would not give in without a struggle, she would kick and kick and kick and. . . “I’ll thank you to remember,” said a familiar voice in her ear, “that this is my best skirt and it has to last me the Summer!” Jane opened her eyes. A pair of fierce blue eyes looked steadily into hers. The arms that folded her so closely were Mary Poppins’ arms and the legs she was kicking so furiously were the legs of Mary Poppins. “Oh!” she faltered. “It was you! I thought you hadn’t heard me, Mary Poppins! I thought I should be kept there for ever. I thought—” “Some people,” remarked Mary Poppins, putting her gently down, “think a great deal too much. Of that I’m sure. Wipe your face, please!” She thrust her blue handkerchief into Jane’s and began to get the Nursery ready for the evening. Jane watched her, drying her tear-stained face on the large blue handkerchief. She glanced round the well-known room. There were the ragged carpet and the toy cupboard and Mary Poppins’ armchair. At the sight of them she felt safe and warm and comforted. She listened to the familiar sounds as Mary Poppins went about her work, and her terror died away. A tide of happiness swept over her. “It couldn’t have been I who was cross,” she said to herself. “It must have been somebody else.” And she sat there wondering who the Somebody was. . . “But it can’t really have happened!” scoffed Michael a little later when he heard of Jane’s adventure. “You’re much too big for the Bowl.” She thought for a moment. Somehow, as she told the story, it did seem rather impossible. “I suppose it can’t,” she admitted. “But it seemed quite real at the time.” “I expect you just thought it. You’re always thinking things.” He felt rather superior because he never thought at all. “You two and your thoughts!” said Mary Poppins crossly, pushing them aside as she dumped the Twins into their cots. “And now,” she snapped, when John and Barbara were safely tucked in, “perhaps I shall have a moment to myself.” She took the pins out of her hat and thrust it back into its brown-paper bag. She unclipped the locket and put it carefully away in a drawer. Then she slipped off her coat, shook it out, and hung it on the peg behind the door. “Why, where’s your new scarf?” said Jane. “Have you lost it?” “She couldn’t have!” said Michael. “She had it on when she came home. I saw it.” Mary Poppins turned on them. “Be good enough to mind your own affairs,” she said snappily, “and let me mind mine!” “I only wanted to help—” Jane began. “I can help myself, thank you!” said Mary Poppins, sniffing. Jane turned to exchange looks with Michael. But this time it was he who took notice. He was staring at the mantelpiece as if he could not believe his eyes. “What is it, Michael?” “You didn’t just think it, after all!” he whispered, pointing. Jane looked up at the mantelpiece. There lay the Royal Doulton Bowl with the crack running right across it. There were the meadow grasses and the wood of alders. And there were the three little boys playing horses, two in front and one running behind with the whip. But – around the leg of the driver was knotted a small, white handkerchief and, sprawling across the grass, as though someone had dropped it as they ran, was a red-and-white checked scarf. At one end of it was stitched a large white label bearing the initials: M.P. “So that’s where she lost it!” said Michael, nodding his head wisely. “Shall we tell her we’ve found it?” Jane glanced round. Mary Poppins was buttoning on her apron and looking as if the whole world had insulted her. “Better not,” she said softly. “I expect she knows.” For a moment Jane stood there, gazing at the cracked Bowl, the knotted handkerchief and the scarf.
Then with a wild rush she ran across the room and flung herself upon the starched white figure. “Oh,” she cried. “Oh, Mary Poppins! I’ll never be naughty again!”
A faint, disbelieving smile twinkled at the corners of Mary Poppins’ mouth as she smoothed out the creases from her apron.
“Humph!” was all she said.
“But you, Watson"—he stopped his work and took his old friend by the shoulders —"I've hardly seen you in the light yet. How have the years used you? You look the same blithe boy as ever."
"I feel twenty years younger, Holmes. I have seldom felt so happy as when I got your wire asking me to meet you at Harwich with the car. But you, Holmes—you have changed very little—save for that horrible goatee."
"These are the sacrifices one makes for one's country, Watson," said Holmes, pulling at his little tuft. "To-morrow it will be but a dreadful memory. With my hair cut and a few other superficial changes I shall no doubt reappear at Claridge's tomorrow as I was before this American stunt—I beg your pardon, Watson, my well of English seems to be permanently defiled —before this American job came my way."
"But you have retired, Holmes. We heard of you as living the life of a hermit among your bees and your books in a small farm upon the South Downs."
"Exactly, Watson. Here is the fruit of my leisured ease, the magnum opus of my latter years!" He picked up the volume from the table and read out the whole title, Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen.
"Alone I did it. Behold the fruit of pensive nights and laborious days when I watched the little working gangs as once I watched the criminal world of London."
"But how did you get to work again?"
"Ah, I have often marvelled at it myself. The Foreign Minister alone I could have withstood, but when the Premier also deigned to visit my humble roof—! The fact is, Watson, that this gentleman upon the sofa was a bit too good for our people. He was in a class by himself. Things were going wrong, and no one could understand why they were going wrong. Agents were suspected or even caught, but there was evidence of some strong and secret central force. It was absolutely necessary to expose it. Strong pressure was brought upon me to look into the matter. It has cost me two years, Watson, but they have not been devoid of excitement. When I say that I started my pilgrimage at Chicago, graduated in an Irish secret society at Buffalo, gave serious trouble to the constabulary at Skibbareen, and so eventually caught the eye of a subordinate agent of Von Bork, who recommended me as a likely man, you will realise that the matter was complex. Since then I have been honoured by his confidence, which has not prevented most of his plans going subtly wrong and five of his best agents being in prison. I watched them, Watson, and I picked them as they ripened. Well, sir, I hope that you are none the worse!"
The last remark was addressed to Von Bork himself, who after much gasping and blinking had lain quietly listening to Holmes's statement. He broke out now into a furious stream of German invective, his face convulsed with passion. Holmes continued his swift investigation of documents while his prisoner cursed and swore.
"Though unmusical, German is the most expressive of all languages," he observed when Von Bork had stopped from pure exhaustion. "Hullo! Hullo!" he added as he looked hard at the corner of a tracing before putting it in the box. "This should put another bird in the cage. I had no idea that the paymaster was such a rascal, though I have long had an eye upon him. Mister Von Bork, you have a great deal to answer for."
The prisoner had raised himself with some difficulty upon the sofa and was staring with a strange mixture of amazement and hatred at his captor.
"I shall get level with you, Altamont," he said, speaking with slow deliberation. "If it takes me all my life I shall get level with you!"
"The old sweet song," said Holmes. "How often have I heard it in days gone by. It was a favourite ditty of the late lamented Professor Moriarty. Colonel Sebastian Moran has also been known to warble it. And yet I live and keep bees upon the South Downs."
" As I mentioned in my introduction to Frank's Dark Knight, one of
the things that prevents superhero stories from ever attaining the status of
true modern myths or legends is that they are open ended.
An essential quality
of a Legend is that the events in it are clearly defined in time; Robin Hood is
driven to become an outlaw by the injustices of King John and his minions. That
is his Origin.
He meets Little John, Friar Tuck and all the rest and forms the
merry men. He wins the tournament in disguise, he falls in love with Maid Marian
and thwarts the Sheriff of Nottingham. That is his Career, including love
interest, Major Villains and the formation of a superhero group that he is part
of.
He lives to see the return of Good King Richard and is finally killed by a
woman, firing a last arrow to mark the place where he shall be buried. That is
his Resolution --
you can apply the same paradigm to King Arthur, Davy Crockett or
Sherlock Holmes with equal success.
You cannot apply it to most comic book
characters because, in order to meet the commercial demands of a continuing
series, they can never have a resolution. Indeed, they find it difficult to
embrace any of the changes in life that the passage of time brings about for
these very same reasons, making them finally less than fully human as well as
falling far short of True Myth.
The reasons this all came up in the Dark Knight intro was that I
felt that Frank had managed to fulfill that requirement in terms of Superman and
Batman, giving us an image which, while perhaps not of their actual deaths,
showed up how they were at their endings, in their final years. Whether this
story will actually ever happen in terms of "real" continuity is irrelevant: by
providing a fitting and affective capstone to the Batman legend it makes it just
that... a legend rather than an endlessly meandering continuity.
It does no
damage to the current stories of Batman in the present, and indeed it does the
opposite by lending them a certain weight and power by implication and
association--every minor shift of attitude in the current Bruce Wayne's approach
to life that might be seen in Batman or Detective over
the next few years, whether intentionally or not, will provide twinges of
excitement for the fans who can perceive their contemporary Batman inching ever
closer to the intense and immortal giant portrayed in the Dark Knight
chronicles.
It also provides a special poignance... while I was doing some of
the episodes of "Under the Hood" for the Watchmen text backup and
especially upon seeing Dave's mock-up photographs of the Minutemen in their
early, innocent days, I felt as if I'd touched upon that sense of "look at them
all being happy. They didn't know how it would turn out" that one sometimes gets
when looking at old photographs.
Dark Knight does this for the
Batman to some degree, and I'd like to try to do the same for the whole DC
Cosmos in Twilight. I feel that by providing a capstone of the type
mentioned above, but one which embraces the whole DC Universe rather than just a
couple of its heroes, I can lend a coherence and emotional weight to the notion
of a cohesive DC Universe, thus fulfilling the criteria set out in my ramblings
about the effect of all this on the idea of DC continuity as mentioned above.
Being set in a possible future, it does nothing that cannot be undone, and yet
at the same time has a real and tangible effect upon the lives and activities of
the various characters in their own books and their own current continuities.
At
the same time, by providing that capstone and setting the whole continuity into
a framework of complete and whole legend, as Frank did in Dark Knight,
we make the whole thing seem much more of a whole with a weight of circumstance
and history that might help to cement over any shakiness left in the wake of
Crisis and its ramifications.
Even if we pull the threads of these
various characters' circumstances together at some hypothetical point in the
future, this does imply that there is a logical pattern or framework for the
whole DC Universe, even if the resolution of the pattern is at a point thirty
years in the hypothetical future.
Of course the bears came out, and stood in the middle of the road and waved
their arms: Archie and Teddy and Bruno.
ARCHIE TEDDY BRUNO
So Mr. Bliss had to stop, because he could not get by without running over them.
"I like bananas," said Teddy.
"And I like cabbages," said Archie.
"And I want a donkey!" said Bruno. "And we all want a motor-car," they all said together.
"But you can't have this motor-car; it's mine," said Mr. Bliss.
"And you can't have these cabbages - they're mine," said Mr. Day.
"And you can't have these bananas, or this donkey - they're mine," said Mrs. Knight.
"Then we shall eat you all up - one each!" said the bears.
Of course they were only teasing; but they rolled their yellow eyes,
and growled, and looked so fierce that Mr. Bliss was frightened (and so
was Mr. Day and Mrs. Knight). So they gave the bears the cabbages and
the bananas.
Archie and Teddy piled them on the donkey and took them away to their
house in the wood. Bruno sat and talked to Mr. Bliss. Really he was
watching to see Mr. Bliss did not drive away before Archie and Teddy
came back.
Now our
whole lives will be coloured by the knowledge that we're going to end
up becoming people we despise.
Rimmer:
Threat warning -- vessel off the stern!
They've got a
missile lock on us!
Lister:
Our Future Selves are attacking us!
Cat:
They're nuts!
Crew experience a jolt (exactly the same type of jolt as
when they enter or leave an unreality pocket).]
Cat:
Direct hit!
The gyroscope's out!
Kryten:
They're trying to disable us!
Rimmer:
Another lock!
Lister:
Incoming message!
Future Rimmer's face appears on the view-screen.
Future Rimmer:
Gentlemen, we have no intention of being deprived
of the opulence and luxury the time drive provides.
Either you
give us access to the data we require,
or be prepared to be
blasted out of the sky.
Kryten:
But if you kill us, you'll cease to exist.
Future Rimmer:
Better that than to be forced to live like you,
like rats trapped together, marooned in deep space.
Your answer -- thirty seconds.
View-screen message ends.
Cat:
So what do we do?
Rimmer:
Have we got any chance of winning?
Kryten:
Their craft is greatly upgraded.
We have no chance
whatsoever.
Rimmer:
Then I say fight!
(dramatic chord of music)
Kryten:
Mr. Rimmer?
Rimmer:
Better Dead Than Smeg!
Lister:
Cheers!
Cat?
Cat:
Better Dead Than Sofa-Sized Butt
Lister:
Kryten?
Kryten:
Better Anything Than That Toupee!
Lister:
Shields up!
Arming lasers!
Cat:
Bringing her around.
Kryten:
Target acquired!
Lister:
Locking on -- firing!
(pushes button)
Rimmer:
Direct hit!
Kryten:
Starbug thrusters!
Nice shooting, sir!
Cat:
Bringing her around to reserve.
Rimmer:
Threat warning!
They've got a lock on us!
Lister:
I'm going for the main fuel tank!
Kryten:
They're in your sight!
Lister:
Locked on -- fire!
Lister's console blows up, and Lister is showered in sparks. He
is sent flying to the floor near Kryten.
(Note: this time when
they are hit, they do not experience the same jolting effect)
Kryten:
Mr. Lister!
Cat:
Is he okay?
Kryten:
(in shock)
He's dead, sir!
Rimmer:
The hull's gonna go.
We'll all be dead in a minute.
Another explosion. Cat is sent flying on top of Kryten's
console. (Again, the jolting effect is absent)
Rimmer:
CAT!?
Kryten:
... Dead.
... But there may be --
Another explosion sends Kryten flying. (Still no jolting!)
A
very concerned Rimmer hurries to Kryten's body.
Rimmer:
Kryten?! There may be a what? A way out of this?
Is
that what you were gonna say?
... Speak, Kryten!
How can we
change what's happening?!
A look of realization comes over his face. While Starbug is
being rocked with explosions, he hurries to the Mid-section
where he grabs the bazookoid. He kicks open a smashed door and
runs through the ship.
Avoiding the falling pieces of ceiling,
he arrives at the engine room. He takes aim at the time drive
and pulls the trigger on the bazookoid. The time drive is
destroyed.
29. Shot of Starbug moving through space.
A laser blast hits it
and it is completely destroyed.
