Earth, Air, Fire & Custard Tom Holt

by Earth, Air, Fire

  'Say you're sorry,' Vicky hissed.

  Never mess with a mermaid in a maritime context. Paul opened his mouth to comply, but it flooded before he could get further than 'So-' Luckily, Vicky seemed happy with that, and let go of his hair. He bobbed up, spitting out brine, and she punched him in the eye.

  That sort of broke Paul's concentration, and the world went rather vague for a while. When he came round he was lying on the beach on his back, with Vicky leaning over him, looking worried. He looked up at her and groaned.

  'Context,' he said. 'I hate context.'

  'What?'

  'Think about it.' Paul felt his jaw; like a Bedford van, it wasn't perfect, but it worked. 'I'm not allowed to leave, right?'

  Vicky nodded. 'Now get up and fight,' she said.

  'Or what? Or you'll hit me again?'

  'Yes.'

  He grinned. 'And if I do as I'm told, Picky's going to kill me. Gosh, tricky one. I may have to think it over for a whole millisecond.'

  'Don't be so feeble.' She grabbed his wrist and yanked hard; Paul yelped and scrambled to his feet. As he did so, he noticed that there was something sticking to his right heel; automatically he reached down and pulled it off. It was a dark green leather bookmark. Without thinking, he stuffed it in his trouser pocket.

  'Nice game plan,' he grumbled. 'Dislocate my sword arm, inspirational stuff. You should get one of those hooded fleeces with "coach" on the back.'

  'For crying out loud, stop whining,' Vicky replied. 'And how many times have I got to tell you, leave everything to us, don't interfere and we'll be fine. We've been waiting thirteen hundred years for this, remember.'

  'When you say we-'

  She stuck the sword in Paul's hand, closed his fingers round the hilt and shoved him in the small of the back. He stumbled forward, and by the time he'd got his balance back, he was standing no more than three feet away from the cutting edge of Picky's axe.

  'Hello,' Picky said unhappily. 'So here we are again.'

  'Again?' Paul shook his head. 'You may be, I'm not. Look, there's obviously been the most colossal balls-up, but if you and I just chill for a moment, talk it over, sort it out like rational human beings-'

  Picky swung at him with the horrible axe. Paul felt the edge, sharp as a needle, trace a line across his forehead. 'Fuck!' he shouted. 'That hurt.' But then his own arm jerked out straight, as if the sword was a huge, boisterous dog wanting to be walked, and he watched in horror as the cutting edge grazed Picky's cheek, shaving a small patch of his designer stubble.

  'Jesus, sorry,' he gasped, 'I really didn't mean-'

  Picky lunged. Paul felt himself sway out of the way - actually, it was like being batted in the stomach with a large invisible pillow - and his annoyingly wilful arm swished a fearful horizontal blow at Picky's neck. Just as he thought he'd killed the poor bastard, Picky's axe-head got in the way, and there was a noisy clang of steel on steel. Paul tried to jump back out of the way; his body tried to obey, but his feet stayed planted. Fortuitously, his failed attempt coincided with a furious sweep from Ricky, which turned it into a perfectly judged evasive manoeuvre.

  'Picky,' he yelled. 'Stop it. This is stupid.'

  'I can't,' Picky grunted back, avoiding a murderous downward slash by the thickness of a cigarette paper. 'It's not up to us, don't you see?'

  Paul saw all right, but there wasn't a lot he could do. Each time he tried to lower his sword, step back or turn around, Picky's axe would dart past him, converting his move into an appropriate response. That, he couldn't help thinking, was insult to injury with insult sauce. Meanwhile, his poor abused arm was putting up one hell of a fight; even Paul could tell it was hot stuff, and considerably better than the show Picky was putting on. When Picky was a fraction of a second late with a high parry, and the edge of Paul's sword nicked his shoulder with a revolting chunky snicking sound, it was almost more than Paul could bear. Sure, he told himself, dying won't be fun; it'll be back to that horrible dark place with no walls or floor, and Mr Dao's bridge club and gradually fading away, like the end of a song. But one of these days, sooner or later, he was going to die anyway; it was inevitable, and there was nothing he could do about that. Killing Picky, on the other hand, was something he didn't have to do, not now or ever, and if there was any way he could avoid it, he would.

  Paul did his best. He tried letting go of the sword hilt, but it stuck to his hand like chewing gum on a shoe. He tried holding still when the sword wanted him to move, but the sword kept winning. He tried yelling Out what he thought the sword was about to do, so Picky could dodge or parry or counter-attack, but he didn't know nearly enough about swordfighting and just made things worse. He tried jamming his foot down on a large stone, hoping he'd turn his ankle over and go crashing to the ground, but all he succeeded in doing was kicking the stone into Picky's face, nearly knocking him off his feet. It was hopeless; any moment now a cut or a thrust was going to get past Picky's fragile-looking guard, and there was nothing Paul could do to stop it, because every deliberate mistake he made got forcibly converted into brilliant defence or remorseless aggression. It's not fair, he howled at himself. The only time in my life I'm really good at something, and I don't want to be.

  And then, in the tiny interval between Picky's feeble counter-cut and his own ruthless feint, leading inevitably to an opening in Picky's guard on the left-hand side of his chest, Paul figured it out. The sword, it seemed, could predict his attempts to throw the fight and could transform them into winning moves. It didn't trust him, obviously, and was wise to the few half-baked ploys that made up his entire repertoire, itself a vague collage of images remembered from watching Mel Gibson in Braveheart, before he fell asleep halfway through. But what if he deliberately tried to win? Would the sword stop him and make him do the fight its way, or wasn't it devious enough for that?

  If he did nothing, Picky would be dead meat in about thirty seconds.

  Screw it, Paul muttered to himself, and launched an all-out attack on Picky's head. He swung the sword and hacked as hard as he could. Just as he'd hoped, Picky dodged the cut easily, then drew back his arm for the counter-attack. About time, too, Paul told himself, and waited for the sharp steel to slice into him. At least it'd be quick, and then he'd have nothing to worry about apart from some dead guy trumping his best cards on a bid of two clubs redoubled.

  Ricky didn't attack. Instead he stood there, his left hand clamped to his right wrist, his teeth gritted with strain, Dr Strangelove with a huge meat-cleaver. He was trying desperately to say something, but he couldn't get his mouth open wide enough to make himself understood. Paul was pretty sure it ended in -un, but that was the best he could do.

  'Fun'? At any other time, maybe, but Picky didn't look like he was enjoying himself much. Not 'gun', because they were both using more basic instrumentation; or was Picky trying to tell him to pull his gun out from his shoulder holster and blast him while he was still able to keep the sword from doing its stuff? Or 'bun', perhaps, referring to the poisoned custard slice. Sun, pun, nun- 'Forfuckssake' exploded from Picky's mouth. 'Un!'

  Tun, spun, shun, my kingdom for a rhyming dictionary, run.

  'I can't,' he whimpered, 'this fucking stupid sword won't let me. I wish I could, but-'

  'Uck,' Picky said with feeling, as his right hand forced itself down half an inch. 'Ill. Ill now.'

  Me too, Paul was about to say, but he figured out the context just in time. Here we go again, playing Scrabble in the jaws of death. Bill, fill, spill, mill, nil- Kill.

  'I can't,' he whispered. 'Sorry.'

  'Ill!' Picky shrieked, as his left fingernails gouged out bloody furrows of skin from his right wrist. His eyes were screwed shut. Paul could feel the unbearable pressure of Picky's will-power concentrated on him, ordering him to stick the sword into his opponent's chest. 'Please.'

  Well, it'd solve a lot of problems.

  No. Couldn't be done. Paul couldn't send someone else down there, where he'd been. He could feel his own arm
dragging at its socket, the tendons ripping away from the bone, the muscles tearing, but it was still his arm, and he could make it do as it was told; because even magic couldn't achieve the impossible, and killing Picky was, quite simply, something he was incapable of doing. A pity, really, because one of the two of them wasn't going home, and Miss Hook had managed to hammer enough basic arithmetic into Paul's skull to make the implications of that appallingly clear. If he couldn't kill Picky, he himself was going to die. In about three seconds.

  'Tell Sophie I love her,' Paul said. 'All right, she knows that, but tell her anyway. Oh yes, and could you see to it that someone picks up my grey suit from the dry-cleaners and takes my library books back? That's about it, I think.'

  'Alls,' Picky sobbed, and his right hand tore free. Paul watched the blade come straight at him, most of the way.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  They'd put up a banner. It was big and white, slung between two poles, and it read -WELCOME BACK, PAUL CARPENTER.

  There was also a brass band, and an honour guard of spectral warriors in full dress uniform, and a thin, shadowy crowd, and the grey outline of a little girl who presented him with a bouquet of insubstantial flowers, while the onlookers applauded, soft as an echo, and the band played a Souza march. And, of course, there was Mr Dao, who came out from the crowd and stood there and looked at him and said, 'You again.'

  'Yup.' Paul nodded.

  'And are you planning on staying this time? Because I don't like to complain, but some people treat this place like a hotel.'

  'I'm staying,' Paul said firmly. 'You can count on that.'

  'Right,' said Mr Dao, and the crowd, brass band and banner vanished into dark grey swirls. 'No offence, Mr Carpenter, but I must express my relief. Your various comings and goings have caused us, let's say, a degree of administrative difficulty. Made all the worse, of course, by the fact that I was not at liberty to tell you the whole truth, in case it prejudiced the outcome.'

  Paul frowned. 'The whole- Oh, you mean that stupid duel thing. It was really that important?'

  Mr Dao looked at him solemnly, then nodded. 'Very important indeed,' he said. 'Without exaggerating, it was a matter of life and death. Come here and I'll prove it to you.'

  Nothing better to do; so Paul followed him, a hundred paces or so over, under and through nothing, until they reached a doorway. There was no door to go in it and no wall for it to fit into; just a doorway, and screwed onto it a brass nameplate, such as you see outside posh offices.

  THE BANK OF THE DEAD

  (A wholly owned subsidiary of the Allied Toronto & Winnipeg Banking Corporation)

  'Oh,' Paul said. 'Is that a good thing?'

  Mr Dao almost smiled. 'That word and its antonym have no meaning here. It is just a thing, neither good nor bad. But until it was sorted out, we found it hard to know what to do. Who do we report to? Do we pay out the profits to the shareholders, or to ATVQ'BC Head Office in St Lawrence? Now, at last and at least, all that has been resolved and we know who we are. And of course,' he added, with a slight smirk, 'the world above has been changed for ever out of all recognition. Fortunately, that is none of my business, or yours. You're free from all that now. You see, there are benefits.'

  'You told me,' Paul said. 'The bridge club.'

  'And the evening classes, and the experimental theatre group, and the quilting circle. There used,' Mr Dao added sadly, 'to be nine quilting circles, but we've had to cut back. But we now have a chess tournament and a flower show. No flowers,' he added, 'except a few lilies. But we have plenty of time, and a certain degree of ingenuity. We will adapt.'

  Paul shrugged. 'What you told me last time,' he said. 'I'll just sort of seep away fairly soon, won't I? Until there's nothing left.'

  Mr Dao nodded. 'It's for the best,' he said. 'Living people make the mistake of believing that death is somehow a malfunction, something that's wrong with you, an illness. It's not. It's perfectly natural. People have been dying for well over a million years now, it's an intrinsic part of the way of things. Quite a few of our guests here will tell you it's the best days of their lives.'

  'Whatever,' Paul replied. 'Look, it's really very kind of you to take the time to make me feel at home and see that I'm nicely settled in and everything, but really, I just want to get on with the fading painlessly away. Looking back over my life, I find the words no great loss seem to fit pretty nicely, and I think I'd like to be rid of it as soon as I can.'

  Mr Dao made a deprecating gesture. 'As usual, you're being too hard on yourself,' he said. 'Consider your case objectively. You were the victim of the most appalling circumstances, yet you acted with honour, decency and compassion. At the end, you willingly gave your life rather than kill another. Unfortunately,' he added with a mild sigh, 'that doesn't actually count for anything; you don't get a better room or preferential treatment or even a badge. But since this is the last time you'll ever be aware of yourself, it's only reasonable that you should part from yourself on good terms, free from any misconceptions.'

  'So,' Paul said with a hint of impatience. 'I did all right, then.'

  Mr Dao thought for maybe a moment longer than was tactful. 'In some respects, anyway,' he said. 'And the other aspects of your existence no longer matter; in a hundred years, nobody will care or even remember. And a hundred years, here-' He shrugged. 'There is no harm in my telling you that you did all right, and if it'll make you feel better, by all means believe it. You did well. We're all very proud of you. Now-'

  Paul shivered, though he wasn't feeling cold, or anything at all. 'I don't want to go,' he said.

  'You will. Would it help if I pointed out that there's a twenty-foot-high statue of you on the edge of the main car park of Vancouver airport? Or that your portrait is on the current ten-dollar bill? It's not a wonderful portrait - in fact it makes you look rather like a chipmunk - but you can rest assured that your name will be remembered for as long as there's a People's Democratic Republic of Canada.' Mr Dao frowned. 'You don't seem very pleased.'

  'I'm not, actually. I've never even been to Canada, and if I had I'm sure I wouldn't have liked it.'

  'Well.' Mr Dao clicked his tongue. 'It doesn't actually matter. Nothing does, here. I imagine you'll find that a great relief. Just think. Nothing will be your fault ever again.'

  But Paul shook his head. 'But it never was,' he said. 'I just thought it was, but I was wrong. I thought I was solely responsible for my life being a great big heap of poo, but lots of it -most of it, really - was other people playing silly buggers with me.' He scowled, but there was nothing left of his face except unreliable memories. 'You know what?' he said. 'That's not fair. That's not fair at all.'

  'Correct. And now, if you'll excuse me, Mr Shumway will be here soon with the day's receipts, and I really should be getting ready for him. Of course, there is no time here, so I don't actually need to do anything, but it's nice to pretend.'

  He didn't grab Paul by the elbow - Paul no longer had an elbow to grab - or beckon to him, or anything like that. He stood, slightly to one side, making it clear that Paul should lead the way. A polite gesture, like opening a door or giving up a seat on the Tube. Polite, and very, very final.

  'I don't want to go,' Paul repeated.

  'Nobody ever does,' replied Mr Dao. 'It's like those awful children's parties when you were young. Your mother promised you that you'd enjoy it once you got there, and of course she was right-'

  'No, actually. I used to hang around by the door, waiting to be collected.'

  'Well, then,' Mr Dao said, with a hint of impatience. 'A life like that. You'll be happier here. Many of our guests are happier once they've got rid of themselves.'

  Paul had no head to shake, no feet to take a step back with. 'I don't want-'

  'Like it matters.' Mr Dao frowned. 'I'm sorry, I don't mean to be insensitive. But this was always where you were going to end up, the rest was just a matter of time. Your name went on the list as soon as you were born, like rich people putting their
children down for Eton. Come with me now, please. There's nothing left to say.'

  'No, wait.' Where the defiance came from, Paul had no idea. At first, he wondered if it was the thought of Sophie, of true love, of the normal or sort-of-normal-ish life that had always been just out of reach, like a hand stretching down from the air to pull him up off the cliff ledge but never quite reaching. But it wasn't that, because a normal life is just a life, and Mr Dao had convinced him that it really didn't count for much in the long run. That realisation made him falter; he could feel the emptiness pulling a him, like a big, boisterous dog tugging on its lead. He felt it, but somewhere deep inside him, a little voice said, No. No, why should I?

  'Mr Carpenter.'

  Why should I? It wasn't my fault.

  'Carpenter.' Mr Dao flickered for a moment and became Miss Hook, stern and inevitable as divine justice, standing over Paul with that look on her face. 'It was you. Now, unless you own up before I count to ten, I'm going to have to keep the whole class in after school.'

  - And that's what's happening to me, Paul thought; maybe I'm being kept in after life, as a punishment. Maybe it's because there's something I've still got to do, only I'm buggered if I know what it is- 'Now.'

  But Paul shook his head (and, he realised with a faint jolt of hope, that he once again had a faint vestige of a head to shake). 'I can't,' he said. 'Sorry. No, really, I've got something I need to do, up there. I'll be back just as soon as it's done, I promise.

  'No.' Mr Dao was back, and his usually grave face was contorted with some strong emotion that Paul couldn't quite identify, maybe because it seemed so out of place there. 'I really am terribly sorry,' he said. 'But there it is. No choice. No second chance. No alternatives. No deal. You have to come with me, that's all there is to it. I really don't want to call security, but I will if I must. You must see that. The rules apply. There's nothing anyone can do.'