Earth, Air, Fire & Custard Tom Holt

by Earth, Air, Fire

  'Paul?' The door flew open, and Mr Tanner's mum came bounding out like a stack of cans collapsing. 'You bastard,' she screeched, 'I thought you were dead.'

  'Well, I'm not, all right?' Churlish, yes, but he really wasn't in the mood to explain anything right now. 'And yes, I'm sorry if you got upset thinking I'd died, but-'

  'Upset? She fired the word at him like a harpoon shot at a whale. 'You arsehole, I went to your funeral. I cried.'

  'I know, I saw you. But I assumed you were upset' - he emphasised the word deliberately - 'because I thought you were afraid of getting sued. I mean,' he went on, ignoring the look of fury on her face, 'if you didn't like me being dead, maybe you shouldn't have bloody well had me killed in the first place.'

  'I explained all that,' she roared. 'And you weren't killed. You escaped just fine. I saw you that evening, remember, when you got back. So don't go blaming me for what happened to you.' Mr Tanner's mum paused, righteous fury disputing for possession of her mind with unbearable curiosity. 'So what happened to you, then?'

  Paul sighed and thought, Well, why not? 'It's a long story, but the gist is, Mr Laertides taught me how to change how I look.'

  She frowned. 'What? He gave you fashion tips?'

  'Taught me how to remould my bone structure, shorten my nose, deflate my ears, all that stuff. So I did. You've been seeing me round the place every day for weeks.'

  'But-' She stopped dead. 'Philip Marlow. You turned yourself into Philip Marlow.'

  Paul nodded. 'Got there in the end, then.'

  A slight sway of the torso, rolling of the right shoulder, forewarned Paul of the coming punch, just in time for him to take one step to the side, one step back. Her balled fist swung through the patch of air he'd just vacated. 'You rotten, callous, thoughtless, self-centred shit,' she snarled. 'And hold still while I'm hitting you. You can do your shoulder in, hitting hard into empty air.

  'No way,' Paul replied. 'Holding still, I mean. I didn't ask you to be unhappy or anything. I kept telling you, no offence but I'm just not interested that way.' He could feel himself starting to go beetroot colour round the ears - an unfortunate effect, he couldn't help thinking, given the outstanding size of the bloody things. Probably he looked like a portable sunset. 'Anyhow,' he said sharply, 'I'm not dead, so that's all right, isn't it? Look, you can shout at me all you like, but would you mind dreadfully if we did it later? Because I'm actually really rather busy right now, and-'

  Mr Tanner's mum made an ominous creaky growling sort of noise, like a huge iceberg calving. 'You know what?' she said. 'I think I liked you better when you were dead. Yes, all right, subject closed. For now, anyway.'

  'Good,' he said briskly. 'Right then. What the hell are you doing here, anyhow?'

  'Me?' She frowned. 'Our Dennis asked me to. I'm part of the posse, hunting down Phil Marlow for killing Ricky Wurmtoter. Actually,' she added, 'I'm the whole posse, on account of the rest of them thinking they could skip over here using a pentangle, an athame and a packet of Bird's custard powder. Told them it wouldn't work, and I was right.'

  Paul clicked his tongue. 'So how did you get here, then?'

  'Guess. Oh, all right, then. I used the Door.'

  'Door?' Then something clicked in his mind. 'The Portable Door, you mean.'

  'Of course. Borrowed it off little Paul Azog, I knew he wouldn't begrudge his dear old mum. Needn't have bothered, need I, if that Phil Marlow doesn't even-' She hesitated, frowned. 'Hang on,' she said. 'If you were Phil Marlow all along, did you murder our Ricky?'

  'Oh, for crying out loud,' Paul snapped. 'No, I bloody well didn't. Nobody did, he's over here, alive and kicking and-' Pause. 'At least,' he added, 'he was last time I saw him. But that was a while ago now, and things may have changed a bit since then. Anyway,' he added decisively, 'screw him. If you've got the Door with you, we can both of us go back through it, right? That's wonderful, it'll solve everything.'

  'Like hell,' Mr Tanner's mum replied. 'Haven't you been listening? Our Dennis has got every goblin in the building out looking for you. Wanted, dead or alive. And saying that to goblins is a bit like asking you, "Do you want your tea hot or cold and full of worms?" Now if Ricky really is here, we can grab him and take him back with us, and just maybe that'll convince our Dennis that maybe it's not such a watertight case against you as he thought. But you know him - I wouldn't bank on it. Otherwise, you'll just have to stay here.'

  'No, I won't.' Then he thought, Yes, I will; because Colin the goblin had told him that Mr Laertides had let Mr Tanner in on the secret, and Tanner knew who Phil Marlow really was. 'Fine,' he said wearily. 'Let's go and find Ricky Wurmtoter, then, shall we? As a matter of fact, I was just going to look for him myself. Actually,' he remembered, 'I was sort of planning on challenging him to a duel. But if we've got the Door, I won't have to, which is nice.'

  'You were going to-' She stared at him. 'What the hell would you want to go and do a stupid thing like that for?'

  'It's complicated,' Paul sighed wearily. 'Really, really complicated. It's a load of crap about living swords and stuff, and I think custard and early Canadian history come into it somewhere, and Vicky the mermaid and a small, bald bloke with a round head like a melon. But with the Door, I don't have to do any of that stuff, I can cheat. Well?'

  Mr Tanner's mum shrugged. 'Whatever. I take it you're imploring me for my help, because you know you haven't got a politician's chance in hell on your own.'

  'What? Oh yes, right. If you're not busy or anything.'

  Suddenly she grinned. 'Anything for you, sugar muffin, you know that. All right, where was Ricky when you saw him last?'

  Where was Ricky? Well, he was being hunted down by a carbon copy of me armed with a living sword and hell-bent on slicing him into little thin strips, but I got sidetracked gunning down a dead Fey in cold blood, so they could be anywhere by now.

  'Um,' Paul said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Actually, the trail wasn't that hard to pick up and follow, consisting as it did of trashed furniture, doors hacked down and drooping sadly from their hinges, banister rails chopped into firewood, shredded curtains, disembowelled filing cabinets and other subtle clues. It led from the closed-file store along the corridor, through the laser-printer room (which no longer contained a functional laser printer), up the stairs, over the landing, down the stairs to the strongroom (apparently not as strong as all that), back up the stairs to the third floor, in and out of half a dozen offices, back down the other staircase into the front office, sideways into the post room, and along the corridor straight back to the closed-file store from the other direction.

  'Which suggests-' Paul started to say.

  The closed-file store no longer had a door in any meaningful sense, but there were just enough splinters still hanging on to the hinges to provide a screen of sorts. They paused and listened; sure enough, from the other side of the doorway came bangs, crashes, thuds, the clash of steel and what Paul took to be some very rude words indeed in Old Norse.

  'I think they're in there,' he whispered.

  Mr Tanner's mum nodded. 'Fine,' she said; then she asked, 'And one of them's our Ricky. So who's the other one, then?'

  'No idea. Sorry.'

  She looked at him and grinned. 'You want me to go first, don't you?'

  'If it's no bother.'

  Her grin spread a couple of inches, like an oil slick. 'This would be a good time for me to name my price,' she said. 'How about dinner at my place, followed by - shit, I was only kidding. Come back here.' She grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. 'If they kill me,' she said, 'the Door's stuffed down the front of my knickers.' She leered at him. 'You just help yourself, all right?'

  'Come back safe,' Paul replied, with feeling.

  'Spoilsport.' Mr Tanner's mum took a deep shouldered aside the tattered fragments of the door, and bundled through. Paul heard a crash, a chunky sort of sound, another noise which could conceivably have been two skulls colliding with great force, and Mr Tanner's
mum yelling 'What the hell-?' Then silence.

  'Mr Carpenter.'

  Paul swung round so fast that he almost lost his footing. Behind him stood Professor Van Spee. He looked pretty much the same as always - long, thin, little wispy white beard, old but best-quality dark grey wool worsted suit, watery pale blue eyes -apart from the custard pie on a paper plate that he held in his right hand. That was a new one on Paul, and he wasn't quite sure he liked it.

  'Please take one step to your right,' the professor said. 'Thank you.'

  Well, Paul thought, why not? It's not as though I'm particularly attached to this square foot of carpet. Naturally he wasn't in the least bit scared of an old man with a custard pie, of all things. Absolutely not. Ridiculous. No, he just fancied a very small spot of exercise, change of perspective, fresh carpet squares and pastures new. He moved.

  'Thank you,' the professor repeated, and with his left hand he pointed at the door frame and the mangled remains of the door. There was no flash of brilliant blue light, shower of sparks, ripple effect; but the doorway sort of healed up, rather quickly, until there was nothing to show that it had ever been there.

  'Just a minute,' Paul said. 'There's people in there.'

  The professor nodded. 'Correct,' he said. 'Dietrich Wurmtoter, Mr Tanner's mother and-' He sighed, apparently with genuine regret. 'You,' he added. 'It's very disappointing. I had hoped that this time, matters could have been arranged rather more efficiently, and with a minimum of suffering. Unfortunately not. Naturally, I accept all the blame myself. I should have done better. I-' He hesitated, like someone bracing himself to pull a plaster off his arm. 'I am sorry,' he said.

  That didn't sound good at all. 'What did you just do?' Paul demanded. 'Can they get out?'

  The professor shook his head. 'Sadly, no,' he replied. 'Not even by using my Portable Door, which for some reason Mr Tanner's mother has seen fit to insert inside her underwear. It can bring you back from the Land of the Dead, as you know, but it will not work where they have gone. Indeed, where the whole room has gone. Demolish that wall, and you will find yourself out in the street. Most unfortunate.'

  Paul stared at him for a moment. 'They're dead, then,' he said. 'You killed them.'

  'In a sense.' The professor frowned slightly. 'Mr Carpenter, you have seen yourself what I can do: how I can shift the course of comets, calculate the effects of such alterations hundreds of years in the future. I can do most things, in fact. I can build worlds,' he added, in a mild, almost apologetic voice, 'such as the one we are presently occupying. It is certainly not beyond my capabilities to end two lives, either practically or in terms of having the determination to do such a serious thing. They no longer exist, and I have brought that about. I suppose you could interpret that as an act of killing.'

  'Right,' Paul said. 'Glad we got the semantics sorted out. Why?'

  'Ah.' The professor sighed. 'That, Mr Carpenter, would be a very long story. You wish to hear it, but you are also very angry, and also rather afraid. You are speculating as to whether you can escape from me, or whether you would be able to overpower me, possibly do me bodily harm. Part of you believes that you ought to want to harm me - a duty to exact revenge, to punish me for what I have just done. Another part of you abhors the thought of violence, and has not yet come to terms with the killing of Antonia du Guesclin, even though that was done in self-defence and would be considered entirely justifiable in virtually all legal jurisdictions. You are also tired, confused, hungry and painfully thirsty, and you have pulled a muscle in your neck.'

  'Fuck you,' Paul said.

  'Anger.' The professor nodded slowly, like a wine buff acknowledging an adequate burgundy. 'An admirable piece of engineering, in its way. Anger is both a lubricant and an anaesthetic. Evolution requires that we retain it in our genetic matrix because it makes it possible for us in moments of great stress and danger to override various restraint mechanisms - fear, for example, and ethics - in order to do something necessary but unpleasant.' Slowly and carefully, he put the custard pie down on the floor. 'Anger at an injury, to ourselves or to one of our own, makes it possible to retaliate, to avenge, thereby preventing or making less likely a repetition of the original injury. It is as useful as any other tool, but it is in essence a very simplistic reaction. It is possible to control it, even in the most extreme circumstances, and I would urge you to do so in this case. It will not help, and it is likely to make things worse for you. However,' the professor added, 'if you feel you absolutely must, you may proceed.'

  Paul thought about it. Absolutely must he? Well, he thought, yes. He took a big step towards the professor, until he was about two feet from his nose, then swung back his right fist and punched as hard as he could.

  He missed. At first he assumed that the professor had ducked, but now he came to think of it, he'd maintained eye contact all the time and the old bastard hadn't moved at all. He'd just missed, that was all.

  'You may try again if you wish,' the professor said, 'but the outcome will be the same. In case you feel belittled or humiliated by your failure to harm me, I should point out that thousands have tried it and no one has ever succeeded. It can't be done.'

  'Like hell,' Paul snapped, and lashed out with his leg. He felt something go in his knee and hobbled over to the wall for support. 'Ow,' he complained.

  'A very slight sprain,' the professor said. 'There should be no lasting impairment. Can we consider the experiment duly carried out?'

  Paul nodded. 'Bastard,' he said. 'So, are you going to kill me too?'

  This time the professor frowned, as though what Paul had just said didn't make sense. 'But I already have,' he said, inclining his head in the direction of the patch of wall where the door had once been. 'Further action would therefore be superfluous, and a pointless waste of resources. However,' he added sternly, 'I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to leave this place. Your presence is frankly disruptive, and as you must by now appreciate, matters are coming to a head. You do not know where to go, of course, and I must confess that I cannot help you to reach a decision. However, it is of little importance, all things considered, either to you or to me.' He paused and looked at Paul with a curious blend of annoyance and compassion. 'You do not understand,' he said. 'Perhaps it would be a kindness to explain, after all. I have not done so before on the grounds that the parts of the story that concern you would cause you undue alarm, and the parts that do not are none of your concern. However, in spite of everything I am and always have been primarily a scientist; intellectual curiosity is my besetting sin, and I find it hard to deny it in others. If you wish to hear the whole story, Mr Carpenter, I will tell it to you. Then you must leave. Is that acceptable to you?'

  Paul shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'But tell me, anyway.'

  The professor smiled. 'You only wish to learn in the hope that the knowledge will better equip you to fight,' he said. 'If you were not involved, you would prefer not to know. But nevertheless, I will tell you. Perhaps it will make me feel better if I tell you. On balance, I believe that is the true reason. No matter.' He blinked, and a deep, snug-looking armchair appeared out of nowhere. Rather to his surprise, Paul discovered that he was sitting in it.

  'You are sitting comfortably,' the professor said. 'I shall begin.'

  In the beginning (said Professor Van Spee) there was darkness and emptiness and confusion. The creator of all things brought light and order and understanding, and the universe began. He divided everything into four elements: earth, air, fire and water. He held them in place by the force of his will, arranged them in time so that one thing followed another, confined them in space so that each of them had form and structure and was separate from the rest. That is how it was meant to be, and it was a satisfactory arrangement. Unfortunately, I saw fit to interfere. With hindsight I regret having done so. However, I had very little choice, as you will see.

  As I mentioned a moment ago, I am a scientist. All I ever wanted to do was to understand how things worked, what made the univ
erse behave as it does, the properties of materials, the effect of processes, the nature of time. Accordingly I studied long and hard, and eventually I learned everything, the answers to all the questions that I have just referred to. I knew and I understood, and there was nothing left to find out.

  I was, therefore, at something of a loss. When, as a young man, I had set myself to my task, I had assumed, perhaps foolishly, that it was impossible, that I must inevitably die before I could complete it. But, in the course of my researches, I discovered simple techniques for the unlimited extension of life, the arrest of entropy and decay; death no longer applied to me, neither did sickness or disability. I had also assumed that my frail human intellect would not be able to grasp the vastness of the concepts that I had set myself to address. In that, too, I was wrong. In due course, therefore, I reached the point where I had accomplished the purpose of my existence, but in doing so I had made it impossible for that existence to come to a natural end. I could only cease to exist if I took steps - difficult, complicated steps involving lengthy and tedious procedures - to destroy myself. Quite apart from an instinctive reluctance, I felt that to destroy such a complete and unique work of scholarship as I had become would be the most unpardonable act of vandalism. I could not do it. But I had no purpose. I had nothing to do.

  I was bored.

  It then occurred to me that, since I had complete and perfect knowledge of the universe as it existed, I might find a worthwhile occupation for my time in creating another universe, an artificial one if you wish to call it that. Compared to my original task, this would be a trivial matter, an amusement, a diversion; I couldn't hope to learn anything from it, since by its very nature it would contain nothing that I didn't already know and understand. But you must appreciate that hitherto, I had been passive, a mere consumer of pre-existing information. It would make a pleasant change, I felt, to be active, to create rather than merely to observe. And, as I have said, I had nothing better to do with my time.