Earth, Air, Fire & Custard Tom Holt

by Earth, Air, Fire

  'Not so fast.' Paul folded his arms; he meant it as a gesture of steely resolution, but he had a nasty feeling that it just made him look as though he had an upset stomach. 'First you sort out Sophie.'

  'Already done,' Mr Laertides replied. 'Magic,' he explained. 'And no, you can't go back and see for yourself because I haven't got the time or the energy to run a bus service across the inter-dimensional void. You'll just have to trust me.'

  'I thought you'd say that,' Paul replied glumly. 'Sooner or later everybody says that to me, and I always do. Probably explains a lot about how I keep ending up getting comprehensively screwed.'

  'Ah yes,' Mr Laertides said, 'but this time it's different. This time, it's me saying it.'

  'That makes a difference, does it?'

  'Yes. It's the only difference between a lie and the truth, actually. And you can trust me on that, too.'

  'Oh well, in that case,' Paul said. But apparently Mr Laertides didn't do irony, either. 'This way. Just follow me, it's not far.'

  'Oh, I know where it is,' Mr Laertides said. 'After you, though. Might as well do it properly, I guess.'

  Out into the corridor, turn left. Paul walked a few yards, then stopped. 'It's around here somewhere,' he said. 'Only I can't be more specific than that, because-'

  'No problem,' Mr Laertides said. He reached out with his left hand, and where the tips of his fingers touched the wall they seemed to soak into it, like ink into blotting paper. They flowed, sideways and down, defining a thin black rectangle about the size and width of your average door frame. 'This is just a guess and God forbid I should presume to lead the witness, but would it be sort of near here, perhaps? Warm?'

  'Burnt to cinders,' Paul replied. 'Now what?'

  Mr Laertides took a step back. The rectangle stayed where it was. 'After you,' he said.

  Paul looked at him. 'You want me to go in first?'

  'Essential,' Mr Laertides said. 'The door won't open for me. Just give it a push and toddle in, there's a good lad.'

  'I'm not sure, I-' Paul didn't get any further, because Mr Laertides booted him hard on the backside. He hit the wall bang in the middle of the rectangle, and fell forward.

  He was home.

  Which was ridiculous, because the house he was standing in no longer existed. When his parents moved to Florida, they'd sold the house that Paul had grown up in to a developer, who'd razed it to the ground and built a block of flats. But here, apparently, he was again, kneeling on the living-room rug trying to figure out who'd just kicked him so hard.

  Paul stood up. Home, he thought. Not that I was ever desperately fond of the place. This must be symbolism or some such skit; in which case, it probably doesn't matter too much that I'm wearing my shoes in the house.

  Unnaturally quiet. Back home, either the TV or the radio was on all the time, a permanent background drone, like the voices of the Furies in his head. Other things were missing, too: no smells - furniture polish, air freshener, recently cooked cabbage, stale cigar smoke, elderly and evil-scented dog. Without them it couldn't really be home; in which case it was a construct, a set, contrived deliberately for his benefit by someone. No, he could be more precise than that. By Professor Van Spee. A password, maybe: as soon as you came in here, it morphed into your own personal space. Or, more likely, a defence mechanism - whenever someone broke in, it turned itself into the environment in which the intruder felt most uncomfortable. That made rather more sense. It'd explain the school set Paul had just come from, too. What a particularly nasty mind the professor had, to be sure. But it was a great comfort, practically overwhelming, to know that it wasn't actually real, and he wasn't about to be thirteen again. He'd managed to put up with a lot recently, including death, but he wasn't sure he could have coped with another dose of adolescence.

  So, if it wasn't real . . . 'Hello?' Paul called out. 'I'm here. Now what?'

  Mr Laertides materialised beside him, a shimmering column of black dots like a newspaper photograph, rapidly coagulating into apparent solidity. 'About time,' he said. 'I was afraid you'd got lost or something.' He looked round, practically quivering with excitement, like a dog about to be walked. 'So this is it,' he said, 'I'm finally here. You have no idea what it's been like, waiting on the doorstep for thirteen hundred years but not being able to get in.'

  'I'm sure,' Paul muttered. 'All right, where's Picky Wurmtoter and Mr Tanner's mum? We're going to rescue them, remember?'

  Mr Laertides nodded. 'It's all right, I hadn't forgotten. And don't worry - as soon as I've nailed Theo Van Spee they'll be sent straight back to Realspace, no messing. How many times have I got to tell you? Just trust me.'

  'I wish you wouldn't say that,' Paul replied. 'It doesn't help.'

  'Oh, you.' Mr Laertides grinned. 'Anyhow, I can take it from here. You don't have to hang around if you don't want to. If you like, I can send you back right now.'

  That got Paul's attention. 'You can?'

  'Of course. There's practically no limit to what I can do -hadn't you figured that out by now? And to think,' he added, 'all this time you were keeping milk and old mouldy bits of cheese in me, and you never knew I was one of the five most powerful entities in the universe. You want to go back? I can send you straight to the photocopier room if you want, it's no trouble.'

  'Why would I want to go there?'

  Another of those horrible grins. 'Because that's where your Sophie is, right now. Cured,' he added. 'Back to normal, or as close as she ever gets to it.' His eyes (composite, like a spider's, now Paul came to think of it) twinkled. 'I don't want to spoil any surprises for you, but this would actually be rather a good time. And you've helped me out here, rather a lot, so why shouldn't you get something out of it?'

  Paul didn't say anything; but if he'd had movable ears, like a cat, they'd have been flat to the sides of his head. He stayed exactly where he was.

  'Fine,' Mr Laertides said. 'You can stay here if you like, makes no odds to me. It'd be good if you could stay back out of the way, just in case there's any crossfire. I can guarantee your safety about ninety-six per cent, but beyond that you're on your own. Make your mind up, one way or another. I don't think I can wait any longer.'

  'You don't want me here, do you?' Paul said.

  Mr Laertides looked away. 'Nothing personal,' he said.

  'Fine. I'll stay.'

  'Whatever. At your own risk, though.' Mr Laertides closed his eyes and took a deep breath. 'Wish me luck,' he said. 'Even I need it, you know; for the missing four per cent, if you follow me. Ninety-six per cent is pretty good odds, but I like dealing with gilt-edged stone-cold certainties. Like, for example, the last time I was this close to nailing Theo Van Spee, the odds were ninety-nine point six per cent in my favour, and that was thirteen hundred years ago.' He took a step forward, then stopped as though he'd bumped into an invisible wall. 'Word of advice for you,' he said. 'Never believe in any god who reckons he's omnipotent. If the small print on the stem of the burning azalea says Guaranteed 99. 78% omnipotent, you're probably OK. But not a hundred. There's no such thing.'

  'Thank you,' Paul said. 'I'll bear that in mind. Look, can we get this over with, please? Only all this standing about-'

  'Fine,' snapped Mr Laertides irritably. 'Here goes nothing, then.'

  He moved very suddenly - like the place where the film's been badly edited, and five or six frames have been cut out. Before Paul knew what was happening, Mr Laertides had grabbed him; left hand covering his mouth, right hand digging a knife into his neck, almost but not quite hard enough to break the skin.

  'Sorry about this,' Mr Laertides whispered. 'But it's, you know, the old omelette/egg causality nexus. Real bitch, but there you are. Theo!' he shouted. 'I know you're here somewhere. If you make me do it, I'll snuff the kid. You know you can trust me on that, Theo.'

  A sigh. Quite a clear, audible noise: disappointment, regret, contempt, annoyance. 'There is absolutely no need for violence,' said Theo Van Spee, walking out of thin air as if he'd just been st
anding behind a curtain. 'Just as you know that if you kill him, we will all be lost beyond any hope of recovery.'

  Paul could feel Mr Laertides's shoulder shrug; an instinctive translation of the slight increase of pressure behind the knife-point. 'Broad as it's long to me, Theo, you know that. Which is it to be? If you really do want a thousand years of utter chaos either side of now-'

  Van Spee laughed coldly. 'You have never even begun to understand me,' he said. 'No wonder you have failed so wretchedly up to this point. To hunt something, you have to understand it perfectly. But you are the sort of hunter who closes his eyes and shoots arrows into the forest at random. Eventually you will hit something, but it will take you a very long time.'

  'Whatever, Theo. Right now, I've got your nuts in a mole wrench. Whichever way you choose, I'll have you this time. All that's left is how much damage you want to do to the scenery, and that makes no odds, as far as I'm concerned. Either way, your choice.'

  'You clown.' Van Spee's voice was quiet and utterly contemptuous. 'You claim to be the guardian of all that is good in the universe, but you have the heart and soul of a policeman. Very well; we will let them fight it out. Will that satisfy you?'

  A deep sigh from directly behind him; Paul could believe it was thirteen hundred years' worth of frustration drifting away into the air. 'Perfect, Theo, that'll do just fine. I've got mine right here; you got your two handy?'

  'As you know perfectly well.' Van Spee lifted a finger, and that same curtain of invisibility lifted off Picky Wurmtoter and Mr Tanner's mum. They stood quite still, but looming slightly, like heavily sedated elephants. 'And of course,' he added, 'the weapons themselves.'

  Two bright flashes in the air: a sword and an axe landed on the floor with a clatter, like the loose, rolling hubcaps so dear to the hearts of film directors. Paul didn't need to look closely in order to know that the sword was a shiny brown colour, with cute spirally silver patterns. Only it wasn't; more a sort of dark steely blue.

  'Sorted,' said Mr Laertides. 'No, fuck it, where's she got to? Daft bloody tart. Heel!" He snapped his fingers, and Vicky materialised a couple of feet away from where Paul was standing. 'There you are,' he said. 'What kept you?'

  'All right,' Vicky snapped back. 'I was drying my hair, actually. Came as quick as I could.'

  'You were drying your hair. Anyhow,' Mr Laertides said, 'you're here now. Let's get this over and done with, Theo, before you figure out some other way of making trouble. You're a clever bloke, but you change your mind more often than a tart changes her knickers. Ready?'

  Van Spee shrugged. 'Of course.'

  'And no cheating. Promise?'

  A mild click of the tongue from the professor. 'Even now you wilfully refuse to understand anything. All I wanted to do was prevent the fight. If that objective is lost to me, the outcome is a matter of complete indifference. In fact, I would prefer not to watch. I would rather read a book, if that is acceptable to you.'

  Mr Laertides laughed. 'Sure,' he said. 'If you want to improve your mind, go ahead. It's the last chance you'll ever get.'

  'Then I most assuredly shall not neglect it,' Van Spee replied mildly. From his pocket he produced a battered black paperback; he picked out a bookmark and began to read.

  "'Heart and soul of a policeman",' Mr Laertides muttered under his breath. 'You're going to have a long, long time to regret saying that. All right,' he barked, letting go of Paul so that he stumbled forward. "let's finish up and then we can all go home. Your majesties.'

  Picky came to life with a shudder, walked forward, stooped, and picked up the axe. He was staring at Paul as though there was nothing else visible in the room.

  'You what?' Paul asked.

  'You and him,' Mr Laertides said. 'Fuck me, I was just trying to be polite. Oh, for pity's sake,' he added. 'You still haven't got it, have you?'

  'Is this necessary?' the professor said mildly, without looking up from his book. 'All that is required is that they fight, not that they understand.'

  'Wrong, smartarse,' Mr Laertides snapped back. 'Got to know what they're fighting for, or it's not a fair re-enactment. Motivation, see? All right,' he went on. 'Time for some introductions. In the blue corner, King Hring of Rogaland, armed with the two halves of the axe Battle-Troll.' Picky Wurmtoter smiled weakly; Mr Tanner's mum, face expressionless, dropped a tiny curtsey. Old battleaxe, Paul thought; Viking humour was clearly no better than goblin humour, in fact marginally worse. 'And in the brown corner - that's you, Paul, sorry - King Hroar of Vestfold with Tyrving.'

  There was an interval, maybe three-sixteenths of a second, during which Paul just stood there thinking, What's the stupid git talking about? Then it hit him like a falling tree.

  'Me?' he said.

  'You,' Mr Laertides confirmed. 'After one thousand, four hundred years, so I guess you could call it a grudge match. Well, don't just stand there like a prune. Get your sword.'

  'Like hell,' Paul replied with intense feeling. 'I'm not fighting any stupid duels.'

  Mr Laertides nodded over his head to Vicky; she swept past Paul, snatched the sword up off the ground and thrust the hilt end into his hand. He managed to grab hold of it just before it could slip through his fingers and skewer his foot. 'You're pathetic, you,' Vicky hissed at him. 'And don't even think of trying to throw the fight, because if you do-' The sword bucked suddenly in his hand, wriggling like a live fish and sweeping round, nearly carving off his chin. 'Do I make myself clear?'

  'Crystal,' Paul muttered anxiously. 'Only, I'm not terribly good-'

  'Oh, for God's sake,' Vicky sighed. 'That's the whole point, you don't need to be. Just don't drop me - leave the whole thing to us, it's what we're for.'

  'She's right,' Mr Laertides confirmed. 'In fact, it's best if you don't try and participate at all, just let Vicky here take control. Vicky, by the way, isn't short for Victoria.'

  'Huh?'

  'Victory,' Vicky explained irritably. 'Now, can we please get started?'

  Paul tried to step backwards, but something felt wrong. To be precise, wet. Stepping backwards, he was walking into water.

  'Which is why they had their duels on small islands,' came Mr Laertides's voice, now apparently far away in the distance. Mr Laertides himself was nowhere to be seen; nor were Vicky, Mr Tanner's mum nor the professor. Just Picky, standing in front of Paul, very still. 'On a small island,' the voice continued, 'there's not a lot of scope for creative running away. Means you either stand and fight, or you drown. Unless you're a really good swimmer, of course.'

  Paul tried to move his feet, but they seemed singularly lacking in bones. He wobbled and had to use the sword to prop himself up. Picky was apparently doing deep-breathing exercises; at any rate, he seemed uncommonly reluctant to start the fight, which struck Paul as rather odd until he remembered the spectacle of his alter ego, Psycho Boy, only just failing to slice Picky into pastrami. Except-Except nothing. There was, of course, no way in Hell that

  Paul could even begin to make sense of all this. But it was beginning to dawn on him that the vicious and extremely competent swordsman he'd watched earlier had, on some level at least, been himself, Mrs Carpenter's little boy, the one who'd always been picked last when they chose teams at school. It was therefore quite possible that Picky knew quite a lot more about what was going on here than Paul did himself. If Picky was - dear God -scared of Paul, he was bound to have his reasons. Scared of him, scared of the sword. . . That at least struck him as reasonable. If he'd understood the living-blade business correctly, he was there as little more than a sop to the laws of gravity, a hand for the sword to sit in while it did its stuff; basically a base of operations for the loathsome thing, a main à terre. And hadn't someone told him at some stage that Vicky was Picky's ex-wife?

  No wonder the poor bastard was sweating.

  Even so; there has to be a limit. There comes a point where the reasonable man, even if he's a born coward, has to draw the line against the in sweeping tide of weirdness and say, That's it
, that's my lot, I will humour you no further. Paul had been killed by goblins, sent halfway across the country to look at trees, been patronised by fridges, framed for murder, stranded in an alternate universe apparently made out of custard and forced to believe in the existence of the Great Cow of Heaven. Participating further would simply be encouraging them, and he wasn't going to do it.

  He glanced over his shoulder at the calm blue sea behind him. Theo Van Spee had made it, and presumably controlled it, and Theo Van Spee didn't want the fight to happen. It was worth the risk, even if he wasn't what you'd call a human fish. Van Spee's synthetic ocean wouldn't let him drown, it was more than its job was worth. 'Bye, then,' he called out to Picky, who stepped back and winced. Then Paul dumped the sword - getting rid of it was like ditching chewing gum, it really didn't want to leave his fingers - and ran down the beach into the water.

  Just for once, he reckoned as the sea welled up under him and took his weight, he'd guessed right. The water cushioned him like a lilo, and somehow each successive wave got out of the way of his face so that he didn't get a mouthful of brine. He began to doggy-paddle, and soon had enough weigh on him to tow a water-skiing Barbie doll. Screw Mr Laertides and the rest of them, he thought; somewhere, all this wet stuff had to have a dry edge. All he had to do was keep on sploshing about until he reached it. Elegant in its simplicity, though he said it himself.

  An arm shot out of the water eighteen inches from his head. The shock made him flounder; he should have panicked and gone under, but the sea pushed him firmly back, like a mother trying to convince her toddler that the noisy, scary party was actually fun. The arm sliced through the water at him, shark's fin-style. He tried to avoid it, but no dice. Its hand - he knew it from somewhere - grabbed itself a generous handful of his hair, and yanked him back.

  'Ow,' Paul wailed, and then the sea fed him a mouthful of salt water, like an impatient mummy cuckoo feeding its young. The hand in his hair dragged harder, pulling him under with a level of force that was beyond the power of doggy-paddle to resist. As the waves closed round him, he shut his eyes tight and breathed out through his nose, to keep it from filling up with sea.