Earth, Air, Fire & Custard Tom Holt

by Earth, Air, Fire

  'It's not that,' Paul said, turning round to face the speaker, 'it's just that I lost track of the time and I'm going to be late, so-'

  His mouth might have carried on moving for a split second or so, like the proverbial headless chicken running round the yard, but no words came out. The man who'd spoken to him was half-hidden behind the counter, but Paul could plainly see his round, perfectly circular bald head, balanced on top of a similarly spherical body, like a snowman. At the same moment he remembered a name he'd been groping for at some point in the recent past. Mr Palaeologus, the toothbrush-and-antique-prints man.

  'You take,' the round man repeated, his tone of voice making it clear that this was an order rather than a suggestion. 'No money. Present.' He tipped coffee from a mug into a styrofoam cup, and pressed on a lid. 'Also more cake,' he added. 'Custard slice, is very popular. Many women in love with bad men come here to eat, makes them fat but happy.' He fished a slice off the tray with a big pair of steel tongs, dumped it in an open-ended cardboard box, and slid the box into a paper bag. 'Enjoy. You are in love too, maybe. Take mind off.'

  Well, Paul thought, why not? He didn't wait for a reply, probably because, if it was at all accurate, it'd take way too long. 'Thanks,' he said. 'Thank you very much.'

  'Welcome.

  'Um.' There was no point asking, and he had more chance of getting a straight answer out of a Cabinet minister, but even so. 'Do I know you?'

  'You do now. Before-' The man shrugged. 'Is possible. I been here many years, many years.'

  'You don't sort of run a map-and-toothbrush shop, in your spare time?'

  The man looked at Paul as if he was drooling down his lapels. That was presumably a No.

  'You don't have a twin brother or anything?'

  The man shook his head. 'I come here from the old country twenty-seven years ago. No brother, no sister, not even aunt or second cousin.

  'Ah, right.' One last try, and then he'd done his duty to Curiosity, and could leave. 'The old country,' Paul said. 'Where would that be, exactly?'

  'Manitoba,' the man replied. 'In the old days, before the war, we are dukes and counts and princes; much land, much money, we live in great palace. Then the war come and pfft! Is very sad, but-' The man shrugged. 'Is very bad, but we come here, we make new life. Is not like old country. Is shit compared to old country, but what you do? Now you take coffee, you take cake, have nice day. Goodbye.'

  Manitoba, Paul thought as the door swung shut behind him. It's all Miss Hook's fault; because if she hadn't been so horrible and so boring, maybe I'd have learned some geography and history and stuff back when I was eleven, and then I'd know where the hell Manitoba is. Counts and dukes and princes; that sounded sort of eastern European, and of course they were always having wars Out that way.

  As he started to walk down the street, the book slipped out of its carrier bag and fell on the pavement. He stooped to pick it up; there was a dusty mark on the jacket and one corner was bruised; also, he'd contrived to drop a splodge of custard on the flyleaf. Wonderful.

  It was getting late, and Mr Laertides would be wondering where the hell he'd got to. In spite of that, Paul got a taxi to Aldgate. As he'd rather expected, Mr Palaeologus's shop wasn't there any more. Then he headed back to the office.

  Mr Laertides didn't notice the damage to his book; he took it from Paul's hands, wrote out a pink slip so that he could get the money back, then went on with the paperwork he'd been doing when Paul arrived. No, there wasn't anything else for now. Come back after lunch.

  Paul stood in the corridor for a couple of minutes, still holding his cake and his coffee (now stone-cold and dribbling slightly from the air-hole in the lid) trying to decide what he ought to do. It was difficult, mostly because he couldn't quite put his finger on where the problem lay. Last time it had been pretty straightforward: there had been an enemy, Countess Judy, and a clear and present danger. It had taken him quite some time to get involved (though not nearly as long as he'd have liked) but at least he'd known what the problem was. Now, though, he could tell something wasn't right, but this was JWW, where everything was different, weird, not right at all; trying to track down a problem here was like trying to find last year's rain in the ocean - and besides, it wasn't his problem, his fault, his responsibility. More to the point, it wasn't anybody's fault. No, that wasn't strictly true. There was one person who'd failed in their duty, and who had to be made to put that failure right. If he could do that, he'd at least have a vague idea of where to look for the problem. Progress, as the deer said to the caveman who invented the bow and arrow.

  On the first floor landing, Paul nearly collided with Ricky Wurmtoter; Paul had stopped to fish a bit of dust out of his eye in front of the mirror that hung there, and Ricky came charging up the passageway like a prop forward. A last-moment sidestep avoided serious impact damage, but most of Paul's coffee went down the front of his jacket.

  'Sorry,' Ricky said. 'Wasn't looking where I was going.'

  'Doesn't matter,' Paul replied, 'it was cold anyhow.'

  'That's all right, then,' Ricky said. 'You're Philip, aren't you? Frank Laertides's assistant. Don't think we've met before, I've been a bit tied up recently, out of the office a lot. Fifty-headed hydra'd somehow managed to wriggle its way into the vaults of the Credit Lyonnais in Basle, real bitch getting at it down there without blowing up half the city, and you know how pernickety the Swiss can be. Eventually managed to flush it out with ultrasonic waves and nailed it the old-fashioned way - the old cold steel, as Lance Corporal Jones would say. How about you? Settling in?'

  'Fine, thanks,' Paul replied. 'I like it here, it's fun.'

  'Great.' Ricky smiled at him, then caught sight of the paper bag in his hand. The paper had gone translucent in a couple of places, and the tell-tale yellow of confectioner's custard was peeking through. 'What've you got there, then? Custard slice?'

  Paul nodded.

  'Mmm, I love them,' Ricky said, shifting his attention away from the bag with a slight but still perceptible effort. 'They've got really great patisseries in Basle, of course, as you'd expect, but even so, I always reckon you can't beat a traditional English custard slice. Probably my favourite, though it's a close call between that and a proper old-fashioned sticky bun.'

  Slight pause, as though Ricky was waiting for something. 'Actually,' Paul said, 'you can have this one if you like.'

  'No, no, I couldn't.'

  'No, really. I've had one already, so it'd just be greedy. Please, be my guest.'

  If Picky fought dragons with the same ferocious energy he brought to battling with his conscience, no wonder the Credit Lyonnais had sent for him straight away. 'Oh, go on, then,' Picky said, practically snatching the bag from Paul's hand. 'Thanks, that's very kind of you. My shout next time, I know this really great little Monagasque place that does a mean crème tartuffe aux cerises.' He hurried away down the stairs, as though he was afraid that Paul would change his mind.

  Shaking his head, Paul went to his office. After a brief, futile attempt to sponge coffee off his jacket with a screwed-up sheet of paper before it stained, he picked up the phone.

  'Directory enquiries?'

  Rather to his surprise, they were able to give him the number he wanted. He dialled it; it rang through. Holding his breath, he waited.

  'Hello?' The voice was thinner, reedier, a little cracked, but Paul's mouth still went dry with fear. He screwed his eyes shut. 'Miss Hook?'

  'That's right. Who's this?'

  Deep breath. Here we go. 'You won't remember me, Miss Hook,' he said, 'but my name's Paul Carpenter, I was in your class back in ninety-one. You-'

  'Oh, I remember you,' snarled Miss Hook. 'I remember you very well. You were always fidgeting, playing with bits of paper. You and that Demelza Horrocks.'

  'Ah, right,' Paul said. 'Fancy you remembering me after all this time. Anyway, there's something-'

  'Never paid attention,' Miss Hook went on, as if he hadn't spoken. 'Weren't interested. I might a
s well have tried teaching a brick wall. Trying to get homework out of you was a waste of time. And if I told you once, tuck your shirt tails in, straighten your tie, sit up straight-'

  'Miss Hook,' Paul interrupted, 'I know I wasn't a very good student...

  'That's putting it mildly.'

  'And I know I sort of missed out on a lot of stuff we did in class ...'

  'In one ear, out the other. I don't know why I even bothered to try.'

  'Well,' Paul said firmly, 'I realise now how stupid that was of me, and I'm sorry. Really I am.'

  Pause. 'You called me up after all these years just to apologise?'

  'Yes,' Paul said. 'Partly. Also, there were some things I know I missed, and I was just wondering if we could go over them now. Make up for lost time, as it were.'

  Paul felt he could hear the expression on her face. 'Isn't it a bit late for that?'

  'It's never too late, Miss Hook,' Paul said. 'So, would it be all right? There's just a few specific questions, it won't take long.'

  'All right. Though I really don't see what can be so important, thirteen years later.'

  'Oh, it's important all right. First-'

  Some time later, Paul put the phone down. He was shaking slightly, and his breathing was forced and quick, but he had half a page of notes jotted down on the piece of paper in front of him. They'd cost him more than blood, more than breaking and entering his own worst childhood memories, but they were worth it. Now at least he actually knew something.

  He now knew that Manitoba was in Canada, and so was Saskatchewan; that Canada was first colonised by Westerners in the sixteenth century, although there'd been an abortive attempt nearly six hundred years earlier, when a bunch of Vikings led by someone called Leif Eriksson had briefly established a settlement in Labrador. But they'd given up and gone home almost immediately, and for the next six centuries the only inhabitants of Canada had been the indigenous Native American tribes. Aside from a few skirmishes around 1814, the last war fought on Canadian soil had taken place back in the eighteenth century. There were a lot of French-speaking people in Canada, and they were proud of their cultural heritage, but Miss Hook hadn't been able to tell him if they had a distinctly French Canadian school of cuisine; and even if they had, she'd pointed out, it wouldn't have been on the syllabus for eleven-year-olds, though they might just possibly have touched on it in a project or something. She'd also told him a few things about himself at eleven years old that she thought might have slipped his mind, but he hadn't bothered taking notes about them.

  Paul read the paper through four or five times, his eyes skating over the scribbled words like a file on hardened steel. Now at least he knew what was wrong, and he had a faint shadow of an idea why it was wrong; also why Sophie had vanished and been replaced by Colin the goblin, who Mr Palaeologus was, and why the office had appeared to be deserted when he'd got there that morning. All well and good; but he was no nearer the truth than, say, a twenty-ninth century archaeologist trying to extrapolate the whole of twenty-first-century society from a Coke bottle and a Barbie doll. What he couldn't figure out for the life of him was where Vicky the ex-mermaid or the sword he'd cut the cake with fitted in, or why Mr Laertides moved like second-rate computer animation, or why the TV anchorman's blood on the sword had saved him in the Land of the Dead. Without answers to those questions, he was no better off than he'd been before.

  He glanced at his watch. If he was quick and didn't bump into some chatty bastard on the way out, he could be through the front door before they bolted it for the lunch hour. He was hungry, and he had an experiment he wanted to try. If only he was still on flirting terms with Mr Tanner's mum . . . But that would involve long, complex explanations, and probably a slap round the face with her leather-palmed, scale-backed hand. Besides, there was no guarantee that the experiment would work, and if it failed he'd be in no danger at all.

  There's never a bakery around when you want one. It felt like he'd been walking for hours before Paul finally stumbled across what he was looking for: a small, crowded sandwich bar under some railway arches, with a queue of office workers backed up into the street. When eventually he got to the head of the line, he saw what he'd been expecting to see. He smiled politely. 'Hello,' he said. 'Your name wouldn't happen to be Palaeologus, would it?'

  The short, bald, round-headed man raised both eyebrows at him. 'You what?'

  'All right, then. You wouldn't happen to be one of a set of identical triplets?'

  'Uh?'

  Paul shrugged. 'Never mind,' he said. 'Thought I knew you from somewhere. Could I have two custard tarts, a custard slice, a custard doughnut and a Danish pastry, please?'

  'What flavour Danish?'

  'Custard.'

  The man handed them over in a paper bag. 'You like custard, don't you?'

  'No,' Paul said. 'Well, I can take it or leave it. Thanks.'

  Next he needed somewhere quiet and peaceful. Fortunately, he wandered into a small public garden in the middle of a square: some sad-looking flower beds surrounding a patch of threadbare grass, with a few benches and a statue of some old general on a horse. It was still a bit public, and of course there was no prospect at all of any help if something went wrong, but that was only to be expected. And anyway, nothing was going to go wrong, because the experiment wasn't going to work, was it?

  Paul began with the Danish, and nothing happened. Next he ate one of the custard tarts. It fell to bits as soon as he'd coaxed it out of its little foil cup, and a cascade of pastry shrapnel tumbled down his shirt-front and into his lap. The custard slice was messier still, and the custard doughnut squidged alarmingly under the pressure of his teeth, shooting sweet-smelling yellow goo up his nose. So far, so futile; and he was just starting to think what a prat he must look, sitting on a park bench on his own gorging himself on cakes, when he looked up and noticed something.

  It was the green and brown bronze general, on his anatomically impossible, guano-streaked horse. Two minutes ago, he'd been facing east. Now he was pointing due north.

  That was it; nothing else. If Paul hadn't made a point of taking note of every little detail that might possibly be relevant, he'd never have noticed anything, because who the hell pays any attention to mouldy old Victorian statues, or gives a damn which way they're pointing? Nevertheless, he stood up, walked over to the statue and read the inscription on the plinth:

  Erected by public subscription in honour of His Royal Highness Louis-Philippe XXII, Prince of Saskatchewan, Grand Duke of New Brunswick, Elector Palatine, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo.

  Fine, Paul thought, so I proved my point. Now, how the fuck am I supposed to get back out of here?

  Should've thought of that earlier, shouldn't you? chided his inner voice, which was pretty much the sort of remark he'd come to expect from it. He sat down heavily on the bench and tried to rally his thoughts, but he knew he was wasting his time. If this place was where he thought it was, he was beyond help. It wasn't like falling asleep on the bus and having to walk home from the terminus. This was a place he could never walk home from if he marched all day for a thousand years.

  Paul was, he knew perfectly well, approaching the problem from the wrong direction. That was another thing he knew; he'd really taken to this knowledge business, making up for lost time. Unfortunately, it was rather like the feeling you have in those dreams where you're both the main player and a spectator, where you watch yourself doing something really stupid but you can't tell yourself not to -

  - And maybe that was the whole point, except of course he couldn't see it, not from here. Over there . . . Over there but invisible, sitting on precisely the same few square inches of this very bench, but looking at a mouldy old Victorian statue that faced east instead of north, was his old friend and worst enemy Paul Carpenter; he could feel the smug bastard's eyes watching him, knew for a certainty that bloody Carpenter knew what ought to be done, could most likely do it himself, easy as sneezing, but either co
uldn't be bothered or was maliciously refusing to help -No; paranoia. Paul Carpenter was in the same dream, the one where you watch yourself walking out into the unmarked minefield and you yell warnings till your throat's rasped raw but you can't seem to make yourself heard. It was infuriating, because Carpenter was only ninety or two hundred and seventy degrees away, but without the right gadgetry or guaranteed stone-cold reliable method of cheating (damn Mr Tanner's mum to goblin hell for taking the bloody thing from him, just when he really, really needed it) he had no hope whatsoever of establishing contact between himselves. Semaphore wasn't going to get the job done, nor smoke signals, beacon fires, messages in bottles, sky-writing, e-mail or standing on the bench shouting very loud. Possibly, just possibly, if he set off walking in the opposite direction and kept on going right the way round the planet until eventually he came back to this exact spot and faced himself, as in a mirror ... But there wasn't time for all that. No, it was a mess, and stupid Carpenter had got him into it. All Carpenter's fault. No wonder nobody had liked him in school.

  He still had what he knew. He'd won the knowledge the hard way, by living it, not the easy way, reading it in a book or being told by someone who'd been in on the secret all along. He'd dug down deep to get it, as though he'd been retrieving someone else's buried treasure, with only a badly drawn, faded sketch where X marked the spot. And, of course, he'd wormed his way in here without giving any thought to how he was supposed to get out again, because deep down he'd refused to believe that the experiment might work. After all, he'd been basing everything on a hypothesis figured out by a known idiot, someone only a fool would ever believe. But he still had what he knew, for what that was worth- 'Hello, Paul.'

  He recognised the voice; no need to turn his head and look at her. 'You,' he said ungraciously. 'Should've expected you'd be here.'

  'Really?' The voice was the same, but not the tone. Paul still thought of her primarily as Vicky the mermaid, assuming that that was what she really was. 'Well, clever old you. What led you to that conclusion?'