A Blink of the Screen: Collected Short Fiction

by Terry Pratchett

  Linsay struggled up, leant against the table, raised the rifle in a shaky movement, took instant aim and fired. The distant man jerked and fell.

  Linsay half fell back into the chair, his face grey with pain.

  ‘I would have said it was you,’ he said. ‘He seemed too … simple. I’d really made up my mind it was you. If the damn fool had got the belt round him he could have moved out instead of running. I wonder why he didn’t?’

  ‘You scare people,’ she said. ‘That’s why. Living out here drains something from people. You’re too far away from everyone else, I guess. Still, you made the right choice of who to trust. Give me the gun.’

  He didn’t slacken his grip. She moved closer.

  ‘I’ve got to go and see,’ she said, a new note in her voice. ‘I don’t give a damn if he’s dead, but if you only winged him he might be back. Give me the gun.’

  A realization seemed to cross her mind as she looked at his hand still tight on the gun, the aim unwavering.

  ‘Oh shit,’ she said, and kicked his ankle.

  He made one movement, even as the gun went flying from his hand. He hit the belt.

  He rose into consciousness again maybe a few minutes later, lying in the grass. Straining down he could see the display on the belt buckle – plus 3 – three worlds further up.

  He’d taken the batteries out of the other belts, and done some minimal stripping down. It might take her a few more minutes to work out what he’d done and put it all together and come after him.

  Come after him she would. She would have to track him down, because she’d be bright enough to suspect that he’d cache a weapon in some handy nearby world.

  He should have cached a weapon in some handy nearby world. Would she expect him to have gone downhill, put a tiny inroad into the vast distance between himself and the first Earth?

  Possibly – which gave him a minute or two more, if she was husbanding her batteries. No. She’d all the batteries in the camp to use.

  If she was clever at putting things together she could be here now.

  He rolled away as she flashed into view, taking aim even as she appeared. The smack of the bullet into the ground near his head was still echoing in his ears as he moved up two worlds, wincing with pain because that meant another jolt to his ankle. Here the ground was even more chewed up, and the trees were gone. Here the Fist had begun to really hit, not just graze. Here the air was thin, depleted.

  He rolled, almost cherishing the pain because it somehow kept the darkness at bay. But she had expected that, only she gave him more credit than he deserved and emerged firing at a spot several yards away.

  Flip. And drop a bone-shaking metre on to ground that was nearly freezing. Flip. Flip. The soil here was rock now, the freezing remains of the molten guts spewed out when the Fist had really meant business. The air was thinner and the rising sun prickled oddly. It would fire him, if he stayed. Flip. She was ready for the drop, emerged with legs bent to cushion her fall. Linsay glanced at his belt with watering eyes. Plus 23. Plus 24.

  Flip. She was holding the gun one-handed, knowing he wouldn’t roll far, knowing that the thin air would tell on him first. She hit the belt switch.

  Linsay was ready. He had his mouth open, and was already turning the belt controls when she arrived again. In the one red-eyed second before his hand found the switch he saw her tumble, breath escaping in a plume of ice crystals. The gun fired and sent its bullet barrelling off towards the freezing shining stars. Then she was spinning, her face a mask, her legs still tensed from the fall that this time would be endless. About a mile off was a jagged asteroid, one of a great many out here between Mars and Venus. The Fist had pummelled harder, and here the Fist had won.

  Before he blacked out Linsay made it back a few steps, to the freezing lava flow, and managed a final roll downslope into the shade of a rock. Almost naked sunlight sleeted past, and the boundary between shade and light was knife sharp. There was air, but it was weak wheezy stuff.

  The pain seemed distant, a hot sensation rather than an agony. He wondered whether she would survive. But she’d lost valuable seconds before she touched the belt, and even then it would still be set to jump the wrong way.

  Linsay, half expecting it even the first time round, had travelled forward with the belt rigged so that the next flip would take him back to his starting point. He nearly hadn’t survived, even then. So she would have jumped onwards – and there was no telling yet how many times the destruction of the Earth had taken place. Perhaps only once or twice, perhaps a thousand, a million times. But not more, because even with an infinity of Earths to play with, the striking of the Fist must be a rarity.

  So beyond there must stretch even more. Beyond the high meggas would be the gigas, the teras, the googols. But by then Earth would have hit the big changes, it would be moonless, or an airless desert, or a cinder around a red sun, all the things that Earth might have been if it hadn’t been the one place in a multiplexed universe that could give rise to sapience. Perhaps. Because they said the soul was indivisible.

  He could feel them, the vast empty spaces stretched around him, as distant as the back of a reflection. Far behind him, impossible to reach, was the tiny circle of firelight. Ahead, the untold possibilities.

  That would be the way to go. To hit the switch and hold it down until the battery burned out, drift a few hundred dimensions out, like a burial at sea …

  He remembered dreaming: it is vital to know how many Earths the Fist knocked out. If we have a measure of that, we can hazard a guess at the chances of a Fist strike, and the two figures might give us an idea of the numbers of the Earth. Of course, Mellanier says it will simply be the circumference of a great circle. But he was wrong to think we simply come back to our starting point. If we go far enough, we should meet ourselves halfway. He remembered waking: he was white with frost, but his ankle glowed white hot. Overhead a few early stars were out, and they wheeled around him as he pulled himself upright against the boulder and then, with a last effort, stood up.

  ‘Were you trying to walk home?’

  The words filtered through the warm white fuzz in his head as he woke. The pain was gone – he could feel the shape that it had left.

  Valienté was sitting by the open flap of the tent, and the maps had been pushed aside to make room for batteries.

  Linsay felt a weight on his chest. There was a pistol there.

  Valienté caught the movement.

  ‘It’s loaded,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want you to feel in any way beholden. What’s all this stuff? I found it in the shed.’

  Linsay’s lips were swollen, but he managed.

  ‘Biltong,’ he said.

  ‘You mean like jerked meat?’

  ‘Yah.’

  ‘Right. It’s light, nutritious – we’ll take it. We leave the guns.’

  ‘Wah?’

  ‘Too heavy.’ Valienté’s fingers flew over the paper-thin calculator. ‘We’ll get to Forward in maybe seven days, if we waste charge. There’s all kinds of medical stuff there. Perhaps I’ll have to learn surgery. Don’t worry – I probably won’t, I think. If we don’t waste time. And time’s speed, and speed is lightness, so we’ll take jerky and sugar for a few days and pick up water as we go and then just forage. Then later I reckon if we pick up every battery there, and demount the little solar charger, plus get a kick from their generator, we should be back in the low numbers in three months.’ He paused, shielded the display from the rising light. ‘Thirteen weeks, in fact, but we can take it easy. We’ll have to anyway, ’cos there’ll be a lot of hanging around waiting for the cells to recharge. Did you aim to miss or just miss anyway? I’ve got to know.’

  There was silence.

  ‘I couldn’t be … sure,’ said Linsay. ‘If I’d aimed to hit, I would have hit. I had to see what would happen next.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  Linsay sat up, ignoring the slight wave of nausea.

  ‘She’s dead. Abou
t two dozen jumps up ahead there isn’t any Earth. She didn’t expect it. The kind of belts you’ve got will always flip you through provided there’s nothing in the way. There was nothing in the way.’

  ‘You were there?’

  ‘Briefly. The human skin is quite a good spacesuit.’

  ‘But she wouldn’t have expected it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She deserved it.’

  There was the barest click. Linsay looked up. Valienté looked around.

  She was standing just inside the stockade gateway, with the rifle raised. There was blood on her face.

  Linsay tried to calculate how many shots would be left. Maybe only one.

  ‘Touch the pistol and I’ll blow your head off,’ she said, and the words croaked through a tortured throat. ‘I came the long way round. Did you know the gap is only one world wide? I had to cross it twice.’

  Beyond the gate the long yellow grass swayed gently. Big Yin’s muzzle rose like the dawn of man.

  Linsay’s face must have shown it, because Shea’s gaze flickered uncertainly, but the moment of hesitation was too long because the baboon was already out and leaping. She turned then, but he was inside the rifle’s radius, paws open to tear and rip. Linsay swept the pistol up and sighted carefully, ignoring the dual screaming. The red jumpsuit and the dusty grey shape danced in front of his sight, but he didn’t squeeze the trigger until he was certain.

  As the echo died away he thought: If I have any influence back there, like he says, if the people think they owe me anything, then I’ll have this world declared off limits. Let the baboons try.

  It was moonlight. The camp was long deserted, but the fire was still burning and threw a circle of light around the open stockade. Grey bodies huddled as far from it as they could, afraid to go any closer despite the growls of their leader.

  He sat near it, watching, and the light in his eyes was a tiny circle of firelight.

  TWENTY PENCE, WITH ENVELOPE AND SEASONAL GREETING

  TIME OUT, 16 DECEMBER 1987

  I remember reading long ago that the vision of a ‘typical’ English Christmas owed a lot to the fact that, in his boyhood, Charles Dickens lived through seven of the worst Christmases of the nineteenth century – and so they became, under his influential pen, what Christmas ‘ought’ to be. As a former journalist, I think that’s far too good a story to check.

  This was written for the magazine Time Out for Christmas 1987. I wanted to write a kind of Victorian horror story in which the covers of a row of Christmas cards come to life. And what better starting point than the jolly mail coach which is so, so traditional on the really cheap cards … and what would the passengers think of Christmas cards to come? We don’t see Snoopy cards much now. But there are plenty that are worse.

  From the Bath and Wiltshire Herald, 24 December 1843:

  CALNE – Singular Mystery surrounds the disappearance of the London Mail Coach on Tues. last in a snowstorm of considerable magnitude, the like of which has not been seen in the memory of the oldest now living. It is thought that the coachman, missing his way in the driving blizzard at Silbury, took the horses off the road, perhaps to seek the shelter of a Hedge or Rick, and became overwhelmed in the drifting. Search parties have been sent out and the coachman, who was found wandering in a state of severe anxiety in the snow, has been brought back to Bath …

  From the journal of Thos Lunn, Doctor, of Chippenham, Wilts:

  The world is but a tissue spread over the depths of Chaos. That which we call sanity is but a circle of firelight, and when I spoke to that poor mazed man downstairs he was several logs off a full blaze.

  Even now, with my own more Natural fire drawn up and the study curtains shut against the Christmas chill, I shudder at the visions he imparted. Were it not for the solid evidence, which I have before me as I write, and which catches the firelight and sparkles so prettily, I could dismiss it as the mere ravings of a deranged mind. We have made him as comfortable as the ropes allow in my front room, but his cries punctuate this Christmas Eve like skulls in a flowerbed.

  ‘Is Father Christmas Coming/Or Is He Just Breathing Heavily? Lots of Stuffing This Christmas!!! Snugglebottom Ex Ex Ex!’

  There is a sound outside. Carol singers! Do they not realize the terrible, terrible risk? Yet if I were to throw open the window and warn them to quit the streets, how could I answer their most obvious question? For if I attempted to, I too would be thought mad also … But I must set down what he told me, in his moments of clear thought, before insanity claimed him for its own.

  Let my readers make of them what they may.

  His eyes were the eyes of a man who had looked into Hell and had left behind something of himself. At times he was perfectly lucid, and complained about the ropes the searcher had put him in for fear that in his ravings he would hurt himself. At other times he tried to beat his head on the wall and ranted the slogans that had sent him mad.

  ‘Twenty Pence, Plus Envelope and Seasonal Greeting!’

  In between he told me …

  It had been a wild day, with the snow blowing off the Plain and turning the hills west of Silbury into one great white waste. At such times it is possible to miss the road, and he had got down off the box to lead the horses. Yet, despite what one may read in the papers, the snow was not impossibly deep on the hills, and had abated so that the sunset could be seen. Spirits were generally high, for the lights of Calne were visible, and one and all looked forward to being off the freezing roads by darkness.

  And then, as he tells it, there was a creaking noise and a flicker of shadow and the world changed or, he believes, they stepped from this world into another. And, ahead of them, there was a great square hole in the landscape.

  He avers now that it was the gateway to Hell, and while it was not the Hell that Dante visited there is to my mind some internal evidence to suggest that his ignorant guess might be the truth. There was something a-glitter at the edge of the world and, when he examined the drifted snow, he found the same curious substance strewn haphazardly on the crest of each hummock. It appeared to be thin plates of silver, scattered so as to reflect the light in what would have been, in better circumstances, a pleasing manner.

  The coachman and several of the male passengers considered the situation. The sun was sinking fast into a western sky that was now a mess of livid red and purple tones, and to the east more snow threatened. Besides, it appeared to those who ventured a little way back along the coach tracks, which were already being erased by the blowing snow, that the road had been well lost and a white wildness stretched all around.

  At length, there appearing to be no alternative, several of the party resolved to venture closer to the rectangle that obliterated the sky a score of yards away.

  It was then that they saw for the first time the monster that appeared to be the guardian of the gateway, perched on a snow-covered log.

  It was a giant Robin, several times larger than a Turkey. It watched them with malevolence in its beady eyes, and they feared greatly that it would attack; but it remained unmoving as they reached the rim, and peered out on a blur of colour. Warm air, tinged with tobacco smoke, was blowing into the world, and according to the coachman they could hear strange sounds, distorted and distant …

  One of the party was a scholar from Oxford who, having in the coachman’s opinion refreshed himself mightily during the journey, suggested that some of the party climb through the opening, beyond which lay, at a depth of perhaps three feet, a wide expanse of brown plain, because, uncertain though this course might be, it offered a more certain chance of survival than a night in hills which seemed increasingly alien.

  ‘Season’s Greetings! From all at the office!’

  Several bold spirits in the party, with whom the scholar had been sharing his brandy, resolved to do this. The coachman was not among them, he told me, yet eventually decided to accompany them out of a sense of duty. They were still his passengers, he said, and he felt it incumbent upon him to
bring them safely to Bath.

  It was the view of the scholar that Bath might be found across the plain, for, he held, if this was a window out of the world then it followed that there might be a window back into it …

  Strange though it may seem, this appeared to be the case. They had not gone above a hundred yards before they saw, looming out of the mists in front of them, another rectangle very similar in appearance to the one they had vacated.

  Imagine their joy to see that it opened on to a friendly street lined with yellow-lit windows. One of the party declared that it was in fact a street very close to his own home in London, and while many of the travellers had left London some time before, the prospect of a return now caused them the greatest joy; the traveller promised to open up his house for them, and one of the men volunteered to go back alone to the coach to fetch the rest of the party. For it seemed to all, in those last few moments of hope, that Almighty Providence had foreseen their fate upon the bitter road and had opened a gateway into the warm heart of the greatest city in the world …

  It was then that they noticed a party of anxious people clustered near the rectangle, and the coachman saw with a falling heart that it too was rim’d with the glittering plates. This party was composed both of men and women, bearing lanterns, and, after some hesitation, one member approached the coachman.

  The man who had a house nearby gave a cry of recognition and embraced the stranger, claiming to know him as a neighbour, and then recoiled at the dreadful expression on his face. It was clear that here was another victim of a similar fate.

  After some refreshment from the Oxford scholar the newcomer explained that he had, with a party of friends, gone out carol singing. All had been well until, an hour before, there had been an eerie creaking and shifting of shadows, and now they were somehow in a world that was not of the world.

  ‘But – there is a street, and lighted windows,’ said the London man. ‘Is that not the Old Curiosity Shop, so ably run by Mrs Nugent?’