Earth, Air, Fire and Custard

by Tom Holt

  Paul frowned. ‘That’s not right,’ he said. ‘You get in here by gorging yourself on custard. I proved it, by experiment. Or wallowing about in the stuff, apparently. But custard’s definitely the key.’

  Colin sighed again, longer, louder and sadder. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. Custard’s not the key, it’s the door. Van Spee’s crystals are the key.’ He frowned; allergic to metaphors, probably, unless the mental image of a custard door was doing strange things to the inside of his head. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘this is neither the time nor the place for a magic-theory tutorial. Bottom line is, guzzling custard on its own doesn’t fetch you here, otherwise the place’d be crowded out, standing room only. You need to have swallowed the crystals first; they do something to you on the atomic level, they sort of make it so you can slide in through the mesh. Once you’re in, though, you need another dose to get out again. Otherwise—’

  ‘Hang on,’ Paul interrupted. ‘That time in St James’s Park. Did you know all this back then?’

  Colin shook his head. ‘It was that set me trying to find out about the stuff,’ he replied. ‘All I knew about it at that time was how much it was worth. But I thought, if you’d gone to all the trouble and risk of stealing so much of the stuff right out of the professor’s desk - well, I assumed you must know what it does, or why nick it in the first place?’

  Paul winced. Easy mistake to make; so was treading on a landmine. ‘This is the first I’ve heard of it,’ he said heavily, ‘what you’ve just told me. I mean, I sort of figured a bit of it out from first principles; like, how this place exists, kind of at right angles to the real world, and how it had something to do with stupid bloody custard. But I thought—’

  ‘Whatever.’ Colin shrugged. ‘You write it up for the scientific journals and send me a copy. Meanwhile, we’re stuck in here for ever and ever, so really it’s not amazingly helpful agonising over how we got here in the first place.’ He scowled; then a look of great bewilderment crossed his face. ‘What did you say just now?’

  ‘Several things,’ Paul pointed out. ‘Which particular—?’

  ‘You said,’ Colin continued, ‘you said this is the second time today you’ve been in here.’

  ‘Perfectly true, actually.’

  ‘Great,’ Colin said. ‘So you know how to get out again.’

  Paul couldn’t help grinning. ‘Absolutely right, I know precisely how you go about it, and not a crystal in sight. All you actually need is the other half of a living sword.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Well might you ask. Me, I haven’t got a clue. But it worked fine earlier on, that’s all I’m saying.’ With a long, dreary sigh Paul sat down on the floor, next to Colin. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘It seems like we’re in the shit so deep we need a pair of extra-long snorkels. How’d it be if we pigeon-holed stressing out and scoring points off each other for now, and tried to figure out a way of escaping? I mean,’ he added, as Colin frowned at the bewildering novelty of the idea, ‘you obviously know a lot of stuff about these things, clearly much more than I do—’

  ‘A small cottage loaf knows more about magic than you do.’

  ‘Very true,’ Paul admitted, ‘and the bit I know is a bit more than I’d like, believe me. On the other hand, your choice of people to cooperate with is rather limited right now, and you never know, I might come in useful. Also,’ he added quickly, ‘I’ve got that jar of crystals back home. If we get out of this in one piece, they’re yours. No charge.’

  A slight quiver of nose and ear told Paul that he finally had Colin’s undivided attention. ‘Well,’ the goblin said eventually, ‘I suppose it can’t hurt; fool’s luck and all that. And if getting out of here turns out to involve getting things down off high shelves, I guess you’d be better at that than me. All right, you’re on.’ He paused. ‘Got any ideas?’

  Paul shook his head. ‘But I might have,’ he added, ‘if only I had just the faintest glimmer of a notion of what the hell’s going on here. For instance: what’s with this whole custard thing?’

  ‘You mean you—?’ Bewilderment, contempt, even a faint trace of amusement. ‘Well, for pity’s sake,’ Colin said, ‘everybody knows that. Even humans.’

  Paul shook his head. ‘Everybody except me.’

  Colin stretched out his legs; cramp, probably. ‘It’s totally basic, really. The world is made up out of four elements, right? Earth, air, fire, water. Scientific types’ll try and kid you into believing there’s a whole load of other elements, with funny-sounding Latin names all ending in -um. You don’t want to take any notice of that. There are only four elements, and everything else is just a mixture of them. Your lot have known that ever since the Dark Ages, but clearly you weren’t paying attention in school or something.’

  ‘Oddly enough—’ Paul shrugged. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, that’s it, more or less. Or it was up till about thirty years ago - for reasons that’ll become clear, it’s rather hard to pinpoint the precise date. The important thing is, there are now five elements: earth, air, fire, water and a sort of slimy sweet-tasting yellow gooey stuff.’

  ‘Custard.’

  Colin pulled a well-sort-of face. ‘Actually, not custard,’ he said. ‘At least, not custard as we known it, Jim. Looks like it, smells like it, feels like it, tastes like it - but that’s where the resemblance ends.’

  ‘I see,’ Paul lied. ‘So, not custard.’

  ‘But we call it custard,’ Colin added, ‘for convenience. Really, of course, it’s the fifth element.’

  ‘Fine. Glad we cleared that up.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Colin yawned. ‘And, like I just said, it came out of nowhere not that long ago. Theo Van Spee invented it. It’s what he’s famous for.’

  ‘You mean, he discovered it.’

  Colin shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘invented. It’s whatsitsname, synthetic. Artificial. Van Spee made it, cooked it up on a stove or something. Now, of course, it’s everywhere, like Russian vine.’

  ‘Then it can’t be an element, surely.’

  A pained look crossed Colin’s face. ‘Yes, it can,’ he snapped. ‘Because it is. You want to know how he managed it, you go ask him. Anyhow, there you go. The point is, things made out of the fifth element exist sideways to everything else; it copies anything it comes into contact with, you see, exact replicas. Only thing it can’t copy is life. But inanimate objects - no trouble at all. And, if you swallow some Van Spee’s crystals, you can sort of wiggle through, in and out of it. That’s how the folding parking space works, and all the other stuff Van Spee’s come up with over the years - such as the buildings that sit on top of each other, like Russian dolls except they’re all the same size. You can see what a gold mine it is.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Paul replied, his mind elsewhere. He was thinking of the circumstances of Ricky Wurmtoter’s death; also about the living sword that could transcend the elements. Some of it was starting to make sense, but it was the sort of sense you can see clearly at three a.m. when you’ve been drinking steadily since six o’clock the previous evening. He wasn’t sure it’d carry on making sense in any other context but this. ‘So,’ he said, ‘Van Spee invented this stuff simply to make money.’

  Colin looked at him. ‘Well, I imagine so. Why else would you bother?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Paul replied truthfully. ‘Anyhow, thanks for filling me in. Of course, I still can’t think of any way of getting out of here, but at least I’m doomed but informed rather than doomed and ignorant. That’s progress, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not what it’s cracked up to be, progress,’ Colin replied. ‘So, what’ll we do next? Noughts and crosses?’

  Paul shook his head. ‘I have a cunning plan,’ he said. ‘It won’t work, of course, because I’m missing something really blindingly obvious, though I don’t actually know what it is yet. Still, giving it a try’ll help pass the time, I guess. You up for it, or would you rather stay here?’

  Colin shrugged. ‘Tell me what you’ve got in
mind,’ he said.

  ‘Nah. You’ll say it’s too stupid to be worth trying.’ Paul stood up. ‘You coming?’

  ‘Why not?’ Colin rose, winced a bit as he put his weight on his feet (pins and needles, probably) and hobbled after Paul as he headed for the door.

  70 St Mary Axe was pretty much the same in Custardspace as it was in real life, with the important and rather pleasant difference that they had the place to themselves. No armed goblin guards, no partners, not even a single solitary spider in the nets of cobweb up in the corners of the hallway ceilings. Annoyingly, none of the lights worked (nothing electric worked, apparently) but someone had thoughtfully left a couple of lit oil lamps on the front desk.

  ‘Up the stairs,’ Paul said. ‘Top floor.’

  Custardspace stairs were just as steep, and there were just as many of them. Eventually, they reached the door of Professor Van Spee’s office. Paul halted in front of it and caught his breath.

  ‘This is one of the points at which this could go horribly wrong,’ he announced cheerfully. ‘Feel free to leave if you don’t fancy the risk.’

  ‘You don’t get shot of me that easily.’

  ‘Didn’t want to. All right, here goes. Only don’t blame me if we find Van Spee sitting behind the desk.’

  The thought of that made Colin turn faintly green, but he kept his apprehensions to himself. ‘Get on with it,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait outside, in case anybody comes.’

  Paul glowered at him scornfully. ‘You’re scared.’

  ‘’Course I’m bloody scared. That’s Professor Van Spee’s office you’re about to break into. And you thought death was bad.’

  Paul knocked, loudly, three times. Then he turned the door knob and walked in.

  The office was uninhabited, to his great relief. Also, the desk was where it ought to be, exactly the same in all respects as its counterpart in realspace. That was what Paul had been hoping for. He slid open the second drawer from the top, and a surge of joy mixed half and half with amazement flooded through him. It was there, where he’d hoped it would be: a glass jar about the size of a soda syphon, three-quarters full of something that looked like coffee sugar.

  Couldn’t be that simple, could it?

  But this was Professor Van Spee’s desk in Professor Van Spee’s office, and this was the very same jar Paul had burgled not so long ago, so was it so difficult to believe that these could be Professor Van Spee’s famous patent crystals, as recommended by larcenous goblin pharmacists everywhere?

  Yes, it was; because nothing was ever that convenient. Gobble a mouthful of these, and God only knew where he’d end up. What if they led him through to a dimension at right angles to this dimension? And if only he’d paid attention in school like every other bugger, he’d know if right angles to a right angle ended you up out in hyperspace or back where you started. But there: maths, the twelve-year-old Paul Carpenter had declared with the unassailable arrogance of youth, when am I ever going to need to know any of this stuff?

  Paul picked the jar up, even got as far as fiddling with the lid, but he couldn’t bring himself to take the risk. What if these crystals dumped him in yet another iffy dimension? Would there be a drawer in a desk containing a jar full of crystals, and what would happen to him if he munched a handful of them? It’d be like that old gag about being trapped in a room with mirrors on all four walls; he could finish up bouncing endlessly through time and space, like the misdirected luggage of an airline passenger. Shaking his head, he stooped to put the jar back where he’d got it from, and in doing so caught sight of a sheet of yellow paper, the sort JWW used for internal memos—

  To: PAC

  From: TVS

  Your caution is both uncharacteristic and commendable; however, there is nothing to worry about. The crystals in this jar will return you to normal four-elemental space. Nonetheless, for your own safety you are advised not to steal from this jar again.

  You have failed the fifth test. All is not lost; even so, one more failure will lead to regrettable consequences.

  Bastard, Paul thought, though he wasn’t quite sure why. He opened the jar, shuffled a handful of crystals into his palm, put the jar back and went out before he saw anything else that might upset him.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Now what?’

  Colin the goblin looked at the crystals in his hand, then slowly up at him. ‘You jammy git,’ he said softly. ‘Are those—?’

  Paul nodded. ‘Like falling off a log. Do we eat them, or dissolve them in water, or what?’

  ‘Where’d you get them from? Are there any more?’

  Goblins, Paul thought. ‘Answer the question,’ he said. ‘What’re we supposed to do with them now we’ve got them? Do we swallow them, or do they just—?’

  He got no further, because Colin grabbed his wrist and buried his face in the pile of crystals in Paul’s hand, licking at them like a dog. Then he vanished.

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ Paul said aloud to the space where Colin had been; not such an unreasonable thing to do since, if he’d made sense of any of this stuff, Colin was still there, precisely where he’d been a moment ago, except in a different axis. Still, Paul felt a certain reluctance to put in his mouth anything that a goblin had just licked; so he carefully picked out a couple of crystals on the edge of the pile with his other hand and raised them to his lips, like someone taking a very small pill. Here goes, he thought—

  Then someone screamed, right in front of him. He jumped, scattering the crystals everywhere.

  ‘Paul?’

  The shock had made him shut his eyes. When he opened them again, he saw Sophie standing where Colin the goblin had been, staring at him as though she’d seen a ghost. Which, of course, from her viewpoint she just had.

  ‘Sophe?’

  ‘Don’t call me—’

  ‘Sophie,’ he snapped impatiently. ‘It’s all right, I can—’

  She took a couple of steps back, and the wall got in her way. ‘What are you doing here, Paul? I thought you were dead.’

  He could feel his face adjusting itself into some stupid expression, an inane half-grin or something of the sort. It was the sort of expression that wouldn’t have fitted on the strong, confident face of Phil Marlow; also, Sophie had recognised him. Clearly, Paul Carpenter was back in town. ‘Depends on how you define—’

  ‘Bastard!’ She lunged forward like an Olympic fencer and smacked him round the face with her fist. Paul did the only honourable thing in the circumstances; he wobbled for a moment, folded at the knees and sat down on the floor, very hard. He also tried to apologise, but there was something not quite right about his jaw.

  ‘I cried,’ Sophie was yelling. ‘I cried and cried, because I thought you were bloody dead, and here you are, still bloody alive, and what the hell am doing here anyway? Last thing I knew I was in the ladies’ toilet, just about to—’ She stopped and scowled at him. ‘You are Paul, aren’t you? I mean, you’re not some stupid goblin in disguise, or anything like that?’

  Paul nodded, then realised the gesture was ambiguous. ‘It’s ee,’ he mumbled, and his mouth felt like it was full of razor-sharp flints. ‘Eally.’

  ‘Then why the hell does everybody think you’re dead? And where’ve you been? And—’

  ‘Oo eally kied?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You really cried?’ Paul said, painfully. ‘Just because you thought—’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ For a moment he thought Sophie was going to kick him. ‘And why are you talking in that stupid voice?’

  ‘I think you broke my jaw.’

  ‘Good. And has this got anything to do with that other time? In St James’s Park, with that other—’ She stopped, and stared at him. Something uncomfortable was slowly taking shape in her mind, like a square egg inside a small chicken. Of course, Paul thought, I could have explained all this really quickly and succinctly, if some dozy cow hadn’t smashed my face in.

  ‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Yes, I died, but I,
um, escaped. Like I did the other times, sort of. And yes, it’s sort of like the St James’s Park thing, though I don’t actually know why it’s doing it. Look, would it be all right if we did this explaining stuff later, because—’

  He tailed off. A horrible thought had just occurred to him. Before, in St James’s Park, Sophie’d gone away and Colin had taken her place. This time, Colin had gone away and here she was. Paul had a nasty feeling that it was something like those funny mechanical clocks you get sometimes in old churches and town halls and places like that: a little man comes out when it’s sunny, and a little woman pops out when it’s going to rain. As soon as one comes out, the other one’s whisked back in, because that’s how the mechanism works. If that was how it was and Sophie was somehow linked to Colin concerning exits and entrances in Custardspace, it had been Colin’s escape that had drawn her here. Which was fine up to a point, provided there wasn’t going to be a problem getting her back home again—

  Or either of them, come to that. Paul had spilled all the crystals when Sophie had screamed, and the professor’s memo had left him in little doubt about the risks incumbent on going back and stealing another dose. He winced a little. Quite apart from the nameless horror of being stranded in Custardspace for ever, it was yet another damn thing to explain, and no jaw to do it with.

  ‘Because what?’

  ‘Because my face hurts where you hit it, you—’ He shut his eyes for a couple of seconds. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I really can’t talk any more. Really.’

  Sophie muttered something about men in general that Paul didn’t quite catch, then went on: ‘Right, first things first. We’d better get you to a doctor, see if you’ve really hurt your jaw. Then you can explain—Why are you gawping at me like that?’