Earth, Air, Fire & Custard Tom Holt

by Earth, Air, Fire

  He thought about that. 'Good,' he said.

  He stayed there, on the floor on his knees, for quite some time; how long he wasn't sure, because he wasn't quite used to time having any meaning; a bit like jet lag, only much, much more so. He wasn't entirely sure where he was, of course, which universe he was in, whether things outside were what he'd think of as normal or whether he was living in a world where Canada had a monopoly of the international banking sector and more medieval cathedrals than the whole of Europe put together. Like, he decided, it mattered. He had nothing against Canada. Live and let live, that was his motto. Especially the live part.

  I'm alive, Paul told himself. I was dead, and now I'm alive again. Thank God. Or thank Cow. Whatever.

  'What I'd like now,' he said, still aloud, because it was so wonderful to be able to make a noise that existed outside his own head, 'is a nice cup of tea. And a sandwich.'

  He paused and thought about that. Not a drop of drinkable milk in the place, of course; ditto edible bread, butter, and ham. All such things would have to come from outside this room, and maybe he was just being silly and overcautious, but he wasn't quite sure if he was ready to go opening any more doors quite yet, for fear of what he might find on the other side. Every door opened was a risk, after all.

  'But I'll settle,' he decided, 'for baked beans and tinned peaches.' He knew that he had some of them, because he'd seen them in the lower kitchen cupboard a few days ago. He pulled out the cutlery drawer, found the tin-opener, then opened the cupboard door.

  It was dark inside, and there were no peaches. No baked beans either. No anything, just nothing.

  Very quickly indeed, Paul slammed the door shut and leaned his full weight against it. Not good, not good. Very bad, in fact. Obviously, it was better being here in his kitchen than back there with Mr Dao and absolutely nothing else; but he couldn't very well stay here for ever and ever. There was also the singularly disturbing question of where here was.

  Paul had a nasty feeling that custard might enter into it, somewhere.

  Then he realised how very, very tired he was. Of course, sleep and food and stuff were only significant factors if you were alive, and arguably he hadn't been, not for quite some time. He'd been dead; and before that he'd been in Custardspace, and before that - he couldn't actually remember that far back with any degree of precision. He had vague recollections of sword fights and Van Spee's crystals and goblins that appeared out of thin air and a lot of other stuff like that, but none of it seemed to want to stick, as though the inside walls of his mind were coated with Teflon. Instead, he remembered what it felt like to be drifting away into nothing, and the great big round eyes of the Great Cow. This wasn't, he couldn't help thinking, the way he'd have liked his life to turn out, if it had been up to him.

  No good, Paul told himself sternly. Might as well still be there, in fact it'd probably be better: bridge club and flower-arranging classes and first steps in conversational Spanish. But it was all very well being brave and grimly determined and never saying die; the plain fact was that he had every reason to believe that he was marooned here, a desert island with walls and doors instead of sea. Hopeless.

  Whereupon the phone rang.

  It took him a moment, one full beep-beep and then a single beep, to realise what the sound actually meant; then he dived at the phone like a hungry seal and knocked it off the table onto the floor.

  'Hello?'

  'Hello,' said the voice at the other end. 'Is Janet there, please?'

  Janet. Janet. Janet? 'Sorry?'

  'I said, is Janet there, please?'

  Paul closed his eyes. One theory of Creation has it that God only made the human race so that He could have a straight man. 'Sorry,' he said, 'I think you've got a wrong number.'

  The voice apologised and rang off. Paul tried to move but he couldn't, so he stayed where he was, on his knees with a phone pressed to his ear. Bugger, he thought. Bloody stupid. At the very least, I could've pretended to be Janet - it'd have been better than nothing.

  Of course he tried putting the phone back and picking it up again, tapping the little plastic spur thing (presumably it had got a name, an arcane technical term used every day of the week by telephone engineers), hoping for a dialling tone. Zip. Nothing. That old thing again.

  Eventually he gave up, dropped the phone back onto its cradle, and sank into a heap of arms and knees, like a pile of discarded laundry from which he'd carelessly forgotten to remove himself. His eyes closed, because there wasn't really any reason why they should bother staying open. Days and nights of frantic activity, fear, disorientation and other fun stuff caught up with him like the ground catching up with someone who's fallen a long way. And, since Paul had nothing much to gain from staying awake, he fell asleep.

  He was dead. Apparently Mr Dao had just been kidding, or he'd changed his mind, because he was quite definitely dead, and they were carrying him in his coffin, and in the distance he could hear the mournful tolling of bells; ring, ring-ring, beep-beep -Beep-beep?

  Paul sat up and snapped his eyes open. The phone again. He threw himself at it like a prop forward and stuck the receiver in his ear.

  'Paul?'

  'Yes. Yes!' He paused. 'Sorry, who is this?'

  'Paul? Are you all right?'

  Memories flooded his mind like the flushing of great celestial toilets. 'Sophie,' he said.

  'Yes. Look, are you OK? You sound really weird.'

  Ah, yes, but that's because I am really weird. 'I'm fine,' he said. 'Except that I think I'm sort of trapped here, in the flat. Like, all the doors, when you open them they don't go anywhere. Except the Land of the Dead, of course. How are you?'

  'Oh, I'm all right. What do you mean, the doors don't go anywhere? That doesn't make sense.'

  'No, it doesn't. Where are you ringing from?'

  'Me? The office. Mr Tanner asked me to give you a call. He wants to know why you haven't come in today.'

  He wants to know why- Because I died. Because I only just managed to escape from a bunch of goblins who were going to execute me for a crime I didn't do. Because last time I was in the office I wasn't even Paul Carpenter, because Paul Carpenter died -

  'Excuse me,' he said, as calmly as he could manage, 'but what day is it today?'

  'Thursday, you idiot. Same as it was this morning. Look, what's wrong with you?'

  Paul knew the answer to that one. 'I'm immature and self-centred and I have real problems relating to people, mostly because of my appallingly bad self-image, the result of a near-abusive family environment. What I meant was, what's the date?'

  'The date?'

  'Which day of which month of which year.'

  'Paul.' He knew that tone of voice only too well. 'This really isn't a good time, we've got to finish photocopying all those leases for Mr Suslowicz, not to mention Countess Judy's filing and that bloody great big stack of Mortensen printouts. Trying to skive off work by pretending you've gone barking mad since five o'clock yesterday is like so childish, and I'm buggered if I'm going to do all this lot on my own.'

  'Sophe-'

  'Don't call me that.'

  'No, but for fuck's sake listen, will you? What did you say about filing?'

  Short, bemused silence. 'I didn't - Oh, you mean all those letters and reports and stuff we've got to file for Countess Judy. She's getting really pissy about it, I promised her we'd have it done by Wednesday and she's not the world's most patient-'

  Countess Judy. If Countess Judy was still a partner, still in a position to order junior clerks about, then she wasn't permanently banished to the Isle of Avalon, where Paul had sent her just a few months ago- 'Sophie,' he said. 'I want you to do something for me. No, just shut up for a second and listen. Have you got your chequebook handy?'

  'Paul-'

  'No, please, it matters. I want you to look at it, and tell me what's printed on the cover. Please.'

  Long, ominous silence. 'I'm not happy about this, Paul. I don't think you should be screwin
g around with my head like this, at this stage in our relationship. I mean, presumably you think it's a big joke-'

  'Just read the fucking chequebook!' Paul yelled; partly to emphasise the message he was trying to get across, partly to drown out the echoes of that word relationship. 'Really, I need you to do this for me. I'll explain, I promise. Please?'

  'Oh, for- All right. It says, Imperial Bank of Canada, a wholly owned subsidiary of the-'

  'Thank you,' Paul said. 'That's all I needed to know. I'm feeling much better now. Oh, by the way. Has Picky Wurmtoter dropped by the office today?'

  'Who?'

  'Doesn't matter. I'll be there as soon as I can. I'll get a taxi or something.'

  'Paul-'

  He put back the receiver, and breathed out until his lungs were completely empty.

  Not Custardspace, because if it was Custardspace he'd be alone. But Sophie's chequebook said the Imperial Bank of Canada, and she was in love with him, and Countess Judy was still there, and there was no Picky Wurmtoter. Which meant- Paul took a moment to marshal the evidence, examine the implications. Because, in this version, King Hring had beaten King Hroar (or was it the other way around? Like he cared), the Vikings had settled permanently in Canada and founded banks, and the world was slightly different. Picky Wurmtoter had died thirteen hundred years ago. Countess Judy obviously hadn't made her bid for world domination yet. He was still a junior clerk, so no Mr Laertides - no need for Mr Laertides, whose sole purpose in existence had been to put right Theo Van Spee's offence against time and space. And Sophie - he and Sophie hadn't split up yet.

  Let's have that one more time, please. He and Sophie- Hadn't split up, because Countess Judy hadn't hijacked Sophie's mind and wiped out her love for him; and now, because he knew the other version, he could make sure that it never happened. All right, so the world had changed, and presumably the gnomes lived in Montreal instead of Zurich, and lots of big stuff wasn't the way it should be - or the way it used to be, more like, because who was to say this version wasn't every bit as good as the other one, or maybe even better? Actually, it was much, much, much better as far as he was concerned, and fuck the big stuff. This version was right - it had to be, surely, because what Countess Judy had done to Sophie was wrong, about as wrong as it was possible to get, so if changing the world had changed that, surely it had to be better, an improvement. And true, Paul hadn't met a lot of Canadians, but the few he'd come across, or to be precise the one Canadian he'd met briefly at a party two years ago, had been perfectly pleasant and nice, a bit boring maybe, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but very polite and well mannered, definitely the sort of person you'd want running the world, particularly if it meant he could have Sophie back -Just like the love philtre?

  No. Not even a teeny-tiny bit like that.

  Paul slumped on the floor, his forehead pressed to the kitchen tiles. There was, after all, the fact of Mr Laertides. He'd said, hadn't he, that he was some kind of supernatural umpire or referee, who'd been sent here to fix the terrible fuck-up caused by Theo Van Spee's synthetic dimension, and the postponing of that stupid fucking duel on the island all those hundreds of years ago. And he, Paul, had made the duel happen, at last, eventually; he'd made it so that there was a definite outcome, by allowing Picky Wurmtoter to kill him. As a result, the world had changed. Fine. Mr Laertides's mission had been a success, which implied that everything that had gone wrong was now put right, as a result of which Sophie was now in love with Paul. What the bloody hell could possibly be wrong about that?

  Well?

  On his hands and knees, Paul shuffled over to the nearest kitchen cupboard, and opened it with all the energy and vigour of a man pulling the pin from a grenade inside a small, sealed room.

  Furniture polish. Cif. Scotchbrite pads. Two tins of peaches. Loads of stuff. No trace of eternal nothingness or the Land of the Dead. Excellent.

  Next he went to the front door and opened it just a tiny crack, through which he could see the top of the stairs. Every indication seemed to suggest that some kind person had put the world back. It was OK. All he had to do was jump in a taxi and go to work, and forget about the other version of the world, and everything would be absolutely fine. Happy ending, here he came. It was perfect. It was his just reward for putting things straight and giving his life for others and all that crap. He'd have to be barking not to be happy with a deal like that.

  Except -It was a very small voice, so small that he could easily have ignored it, if only it had come from outside his head. He did try. Quite hard -Except -Paul tried humming. He didn't know many tunes, but he hummed them all, one after another. He tried counting up to a hundred. He recited a poem he'd been made to learn at school, something about daffodils.

  Except you can't, really, can you? It wouldn't be right.

  And when he'd run out of tunes and numbers and scraps of half-remembered poetry, he tried reasoning with it. He explained, carefully and patiently, that it wasn't his fault, it hadn't been his idea, he'd been press-ganged into it, it had all turned out to be for the best, it had all been arranged by people who were much cleverer than he was, people who knew about these things, and if they reckoned it was all right, then who the hell was he to argue? He pointed out that, quite apart from the wider implications, this neat and elegant solution would secure not just his happiness but that of the girl he loved - and what on Earth could be more important than that? And sure, Picky Wurmtoter wouldn't be around any more, but that was all perfectly proper because he should have died thirteen hundred years ago, and all Paul had done was put straight a ghastly mess brought about by the greed and arrogance of the loathsome Theo Van Spee. Even if he had the faintest glimmer of the vaguest penumbra of a clue about how to undo what'd just happened, it'd be a crime against humanity past, present and future to put things back how they were, with Van Spee triumphantly profiting from his evil interference with time and space. Call yourself a conscience? Paul shouted into the foggy depths of his mind. You don 't know jack about right and wrong, you haven't got a clue- It's not on, you know. Really, you've got to do something about it. You know I'm right. Don't you?

  'Yes,' he mumbled, very quietly. 'I suppose so.'

  Well, there you go, then. Glad we got that sorted out.

  'Yes, but-' Yes, but what the hell was he supposed to do? How could he even start putting it right, whatever it was, when he didn't even know how it worked? And why him, when everybody else in the whole world knew everything about everything, except him-?

  The little voice cleared itself and said nothing. He gave in.

  'All right,' Paul said aloud. 'All right. Just leave it with me, and I'll-' He tailed off. He'd what? He didn't know. He didn't know yet. In which case, he was going to have to find out. Which meant figuring it all out for himself, from first principles. He could do it on the bus, on the way to work. Ha.

  So he thought about it: at the bus stop, on the bus, walking from the bus stop at the other end to the office, and by the time he reached the front door and the reception desk, he still didn't have the faintest idea where to start looking for a clue, let alone what it might look like once he'd stumbled across it. Break back into Custardspace - but since Theo Van Spee's crime had never happened, there wouldn't be any Custardspace, because Van Spee had never invented it. Without Custardspace, how was Paul supposed to get from this dimension or alternative reality or whatever the hell it was he was in, back into the real one? Magic sword, maybe? Fine, except he had no way of knowing where to find one; if the duel had taken place, they could be anywhere, buried in a grave mound or tucked away in some museum or long since crumbled into flakes of red rust. He couldn't ask Mr Laertides, because if the duel had taken place, there hadn't been any breach in spatio-temporal continuity, and Mr Laertides wouldn't have been called into being to deal with it. Theo Van Spee? He might conceivably know, but he'd be the last person in the universe who'd want to tell him, because in this reality Van Spee was innocent of any crime, whereas in the real version he'd
be the most wanted man in history. It was just imposs- 'You're late,' said the reception girl. He looked down. He recognised her. The hair.

  'Vicky?'

  She gave him a look. 'Don't stare,' she said, 'it's rude. You look like you've seen a ghost.' She frowned. 'No, actually,' she went on, 'you look like you've just seen your best friend eaten alive by elephant-sized pink ferrets. What's the matter? Hangover?'

  Paul shook his head. 'Can I ask you something?' he said.

  She scowled. 'If it's anything to do with my plans for my spare time at any point in the next sixty years, forget it.'

  'It's not like that,' he said. 'Look, this probably sounds a bit odd, but have you got an other half?'

  If the American government could have bottled the look on her face and dropped it out of helicopters, they might well have won the Vietnam War. 'Yeah, right,' Vicky said. 'Weren't you listening just now? I wouldn't go out with you if-'

  'No, not like that. What I mean is, are you the other half of anything?'

  From revulsion to bewilderment in one flicker of the eyelids. 'What, you mean like a pantomime horse or something?'

  Well, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. 'Obviously not,' Paul said. 'Sorry, please forget I said any of that stuff. It's, um, a project I'm working on for Professor Van Spee, much too complicated to explain. I'd better be getting along, I'm late enough as it-'

  'Yes,' she said.

  'Fine. Well, if anybody asks if you've seen me-'

  'I mean,' she said, 'yes, I have.'

  Paul pulled a long face. 'Sorry,' he said, 'I'm getting confused. Yes, you've seen me, or yes. .

  'Oh, for crying out loud. Yes, I've got an other half.'

  'Ah, right.' Getting somewhere at last.

  'And if he catches you trying to chat me up again, he'll break your neck. Understood?'

  Sigh. 'Sorry,' Paul said. 'It's not like that, really. Look-'

  Then Vicky scowled at him and stared hard at the desk, as someone walked past. Paul caught a glimpse of red lipstick and shoulder-length blonde hair, and a rather nice voice called out, 'There you are. Hurry up.' Before Paul could turn his head, she'd gone.