by Tom Holt
The professor smiled; at least, a thin crack opened up between his nose and his chin. ‘Would you care to put that hypothesis to empirical proof, Mr Carpenter? If so—’
‘Sure,’ Paul said; and suddenly he could move his arms and legs quite freely. He held out his hand, palm upwards. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘But it won’t do you any good, because I don’t believe in fairies any more. Well? I’m waiting.’
Such a look of sheer cold hatred he’d never seen before; it glowed through the professor’s eyes like candlelight through a Hallowe’en pumpkin. ‘How annoying,’ the professor said. ‘How vexing that you should choose this moment to discover your latent intelligence. A few weeks earlier, and you could have been of such great use to me, as my assistant in my work. That you should pick this time to evolve is most—’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Most unfair,’ he said. ‘In case you’re interested, this is the first major setback I’ve encountered in over three hundred and twenty-five years.’
‘Whooppee,’ Paul said grimly. ‘Do I get a prize, or a badge or something?’
‘Hardly.’ The professor took a step back. ‘Nothing so agreeable. I shall leave you now, and take a trip through the Portable Door to 16 November 1980, disguised,’ he added with a very mild smirk, ‘as a Jehovah’s Witness of unparalleled eloquence and persistence. I regret having to do it, of course; such a blunt, brutal approach is practically an admission of defeat. However, I have to say, you have nobody to blame but yourself. Goodbye, Mr Carpenter. It was hardly a pleasure having known you, but most certainly an education.’
He was backing away through the wall, as if he was a ghost or the wall wasn’t really there. As Paul watched him go, he was counting frantically on his mental fingers, just to check he’d guessed right. November, December, January, February . . .
‘Quite right,’ the professor told him, as his ears vanished into the plaster. ‘Eight months and twenty-six days before you were born. On the night in question, your mother wasn’t really in the mood, your father had been drinking a little. The arrival of a Jehovah’s Witness who refuses to be shooed away—’ Suddenly the professor broke off. He was staring at Paul, his mouth slightly open. ‘Good heavens,’ he said. ‘Remarkable, quite remarkable. In that case—’ He pulled himself together with a visible effort. ‘In that case, I shall no doubt see you again soon enough, at which point we can resolve all the issues between us. I hope so. I—’ Just the tip of his nose was sticking out of the wall now, and a few wisps of eyebrow. ‘I just don’t know any more.’
As soon as he’d definitely gone, Paul sagged like share prices in an oil crisis. To have fought off Professor Van Spee, on his own turf - Brave. Definitely brave. Brave, he couldn’t help thinking, as two short planks. He didn’t know the professor all that well, but you don’t have to be on best-buddy lawnmower-borrowing terms with someone to get the impression that they don’t give up quite so easily. Apparently the threat to see to it that Paul would never be conceived (a Jehovah’s Witness, he thought, that’s just so diabolical ) wasn’t going to be carried out; it was almost as though Van Spee had fast-rewound to that moment in his mind, and found there something he really hadn’t been expecting . . . That set up a whole gallery of images in Paul’s mind, none of which he wanted any part of. He shook himself like a wet dog. Time, he really felt, he wasn’t here.
Talking of which: before Van Spee had bubbled up out of nowhere and started prattling about living blades and Great Cows of Heaven, he’d been about to try and do something. What was it? Ah, yes. Ricky Wurmtoter. He tried to remember: was he going to kill him, or just place him under citizen’s arrest?
Well, looked like killing him was a non-starter anyway, here where death didn’t work unless you wanted it to or the whole audience clapped or something. So that just left—
Paul remembered. He pictured Mr Tanner’s mum charging into the room, and then the room ceasing to exist, with her and Ricky and whoever that was with the face and the sword, all trapped inside. He remembered the stunned, blank feeling when he’d been sure that they were all suddenly dead, or at the very least never coming back. He remembered feeling angry enough to want to smash in the teeth of a partner in JWW and former professor emeritus in the University of Leiden.
Odd that he should have forgotten that. It had seemed so very important before he got chatting and let the professor distract him with Great Cows and opt-in death threats.
Think, Paul urged himself, like a horse led to water. No harm can come to anybody here; but it looks like he’s sent them somewhere else. But where else was there? Realspace: dodgy old place, but not necessarily fatal. Custardspace, which was here. There wasn’t anywhere else. Was there?
Anyway. To answer the question: that just left rescue. Because, Paul reasoned with a strong why-the-fuck-me? feeling going right down into the marrow of his bones, if Van Spee wanted rid of them, he pretty much had to get them back, or else he’d be screwed. Why this was inevitably so he wasn’t quite sure. He just knew, that was all.
Deep breath. Then he tried very hard to picture in his mind the doorway that Van Spee had caused to disappear. Somehow he was convinced that it was still there somehow, if only he could get a grip on it, a fingernail under the very edge so he could prise off the lid . . . How nice it would be, he thought, if right now I had the gift of being able to do magic. I could perform a really neat revealing spell, or a dead cool opening charm, or maybe crackly green fire would leap from my fingertips and blast a bloody great big hole in the wall. Or maybe a kindly old voice would whisper in my mind’s ear, Use the Force, Luke, and I’d just be able to do it, like wiggling my ears.
But I can’t.
Staring at the wall wasn’t doing any good, so Paul sat down with his back to it instead; because in all those movies, that was how the hero accidentally found the hidden lever that opened the secret passage. But that was just another kind of magic that didn’t work.
Maybe they really were gone for ever.
Quite possibly they were; but he wasn’t giving up, mostly because he was stuck here with nothing else he particularly wanted to do, so he might as well persevere as get out a pen and start playing noughts and crosses with himself on the plaster-work. But there was nothing he could do, right?
Wrong. Paul felt in his top pocket, just to make sure it was still there, and it was. There was something he could do, something magical and JWW-ish, which was very good except that it was the wrong thing. He could still do it, of course. It wouldn’t help, it’d quite probably make everything a whole lot worse, but yes, he could do it.
He considered that for a moment. Bloody stupid idea, but on the other hand it’s the way this country’s been governed for the last fifty years. He took out the little paper packet containing Van Spee’s crystals, pulled it open and spilled its contents onto the palm of his hand. He could eat these, he thought, they were supposed to make him able to travel back into Realspace from here. But what if he scoffed them while leaning on the bit of wall where a door used to be, one that used to open into the closed-file store but which now apparently led to somewhere quite other?
Indigestion, probably. Or he’d end up back in the genuine 70 St Mary Axe, where he’d be arrested by Mr Tanner’s goblins for killing Ricky Wurmtoter, who wasn’t going to be able to stand up and admit he wasn’t dead really, because now he possibly was—
Aargh, Paul thought, too bloody complicated for me. He closed his eyes, opened his mouth and gulped. For a moment, absolutely nothing; then the wall began squidging out between his fingers, as though he was leaning on, say, custard.
The Great Cow of Heaven, he thought, for crying out loud. Then he fell over.
Paul woke up, and lifted his head off his hands.
‘I said,’ growled a horribly familiar voice behind him, ‘wake up.’
Every muscle in Paul’s body stiffened, and he swung round in his seat, in doing so barking his knee against the leg of the desk. Behind him stood Miss Hook, just the same as when he’d last seen her.
Suddenly it seemed terribly important that he should remember exactly how long ago that was. Good question, actually. It was either eleven years or three minutes, but he wasn’t quite sure—
‘You were asleep,’ said Miss Hook, with that ominously soft tone of voice that always meant extreme danger. ‘You were asleep and making funny noises.’ Giggles all around him. Paul didn’t dare break eye contact with Miss Hook, but he could dimly see rows of desks, faces behind them. ‘You were dreaming, ’ she went on. ‘Rather an interesting dream, by the sound of it. Perhaps you’d like to share it with the rest of the class?’
CHAPTER TWELVE
Shit, Paul thought. Out of the corner of his eye he could just see his sleeve. He remembered that loathsome shade of navy blue, the shine of daily-worn gaberdine. Away to his right, he could just make out one of the grinning faces: Demelza Horrocks, age about eleven.
It couldn’t be, he told himself. Surely not. Not even in his worst nightmare—
And then the full impact of what Miss Hook had said hit him like a falling building. He’d been asleep. He’d been dreaming, but he was awake now.
He’d been dreaming—
‘No!’ he yelled; he tried to get up, but banged his knee on the underside of the desk and froze with the pain. ‘That’s not—’ The words died on his lips, as the unspeakable truth ground itself into his mind. ‘Um,’ he said.
‘Sleeping in class,’ said Miss Hook, her voice full of savage delight. ‘How do you expect to learn anything if you can’t even stay awake?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t come in here every morning for the good of my health, you know. I come here to try - heaven help me, to try to ram knowledge into your thick head, teach you the things you’re going to need to know in later life. One of these days, you’re really going to wish you’d paid attention, and then it’ll be too late. All right, on your feet. Headmaster’s office. Come on, don’t just sit there. Move!’
Paul’s legs were wobbly and defective. It took him three goes to get out from behind the desk, and all the other kids were laughing at him. ‘Please, Miss Hook,’ he pleaded, as he turned for the door. ‘What was today’s lesson about?’
Roar of laughter from the other kids; a cocktail of anger and contempt in Miss Hook’s eyes. ‘The rest of the class,’ she said, ‘has been learning how to escape from a synthetic universe without accidentally finding yourself trapped in something even worse. But, of course, you won’t ever need to know that, will you? Headmaster’s office, Carpenter. And no running in the corridor.’
He’d taken this walk so many times he’d have known the way blindfold: down the passage, past the library, past the assembly hall, up the stairs, past the closed-file store (but they’d shut it at the end of last term, bricked up the doorway), down the stairs, past the science labs, up two flights, turn left, you couldn’t miss it. In a way, it reminded him of somewhere else, but that was just an illusion. At some stage last term, the rest of the class had learned that all buildings are in fact the same building, made over and seen from slightly different angles, like a reused film set; but Paul had been gazing out of the window, and so had missed it. Subconsciously, he therefore misrationalised, he must’ve modelled the floor plan of the fantasy office building in his dream on the school. Just the sort of thing you do in dreams.
And here he was—
Theodorus Van Spee
Head Teacher
Do NOT enter until told to do so
Yeah, yeah; he knew the drill by now. He knocked, stood back, waited. No answer, so he’d just have to stand there and wait until the old git was ready for him. He hated that.
Such a vivid dream, he could have sworn it was all real. But now he was awake he could see just how ridiculous it had been. Magic, for crying out loud. A whole bunch of grown-ups making their living doing magic, right here in the late-twentieth century; and for a while back there, he’d actually believed in it. How stupid could you get?
What was he going to tell the Head?
No mileage whatsoever in trying to lie to Van Spee; he had this horrible knack of knowing exactly what you were thinking, what you’d just done, what you’d been just about to do, it simply wasn’t fair. Sometimes Paul imagined he was living in a world that was made and run by Van Spee, the way nerdy kids built huge dioramas for their model-railway layouts.
So, he’d have to tell him the truth; he’d fallen asleep in Miss Hook’s class, he’d been having this really weird dream - no, he didn’t want to tell anybody about that, it was too freaky, they’d drag him away and lock him up in a loony bin. But if he went in there and had to face Van Spee, trying to keep it secret’d be a complete waste of time. Van Spee would hook it out of his mind like a bogey. They’d come and take him away in a big white van, just like they’d come for Ricky in Year Twelve last month.
I can’t go in there, Paul thought desperately. I daren’t. If I go in there, I’ll never get free again. Not ever.
In his dream . . . He had to stop thinking about it - nothing but a bad dream, a nightmare. Dad said bad dreams were just because you’d eaten sweets and stuff just before you went to bed. But in his dream, this room would’ve been Professor Van Spee’s office, and you weren’t allowed in there unless you were told you could go in—
‘Next,’ said a voice from the other side of the study door.
His hand was on the door handle. He paused, used his right hand to pry open the fingers of his left. Obviously there was no way of knowing just by sight, or by feel, or anything like that. A door is just a door; the fundamental things apply.
When is a door not a door?
‘Next,’ the voice repeated. It wasn’t happy.
Answer. It came at him like King Harold’s arrow, so fast and straight and sudden that it could’ve taken his mind’s eye out. Answer: a door isn’t a door when it’s one of those doors, the sort that seal up behind you and won’t let you out again. And it hadn’t been a dream. It’d been real.
Fine; but what was he supposed to do next? Even if it had been real, and he was a twenty-two-year-old clerk in a magicians’ office in the City rather than an eleven-year-old schoolboy, and this was indeed one of those doors, leading to the place you couldn’t go to unless you were allowed to go there, and where you couldn’t get back from ever - Knowing all that was one thing, but what was he supposed to do about it? Miss Hook’s words were still ringing in his ears. How to escape from a synthetic universe without accidentally finding yourself trapped in something even worse. One of these days, you’re really going to wish you’d paid attention, and then it’ll be too late.
Well, since he’d been asleep and missed all that useful stuff, he was just going to have to figure it all out for himself, from first principles. As bloody usual.
(Rule Forty-Six: no mental swearing in the corridors. Stay behind after school. Permanently.)
The best place to start, Paul resolved, would be not going through this particular door. Try another one instead. He looked round, and saw a door that he couldn’t remember having seen before. It was only a few yards down the corridor from the Head’s study, and it was pink. Even so.
He stood in front of it. Getting there had been awful, like squelching through thick mud, the sort that sucks your boots off and swallows them, but he was there now. He reached for the door handle.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ He cringed; Mr Tanner, the maths teacher, horribly strict and bitterly unfair, was standing next to him, looking just like a goblin out of a story book.
I was just about to go in here, sir.
‘You can’t go in there, Carpenter.’
Sorry, sir. Why not, sir?
‘Because it’s the girls’ changing room.’
Balls, sir, and by the way, you don’t exist. Mr Tanner obligingly vanished, and Paul opened the door.
It was, indeed, the girls’ changing-room; but it was empty, apart from a few battered old lockers and an ancient but familiar-looking fridge-freezer. With a sigh of relief, Paul stepped over and pulled o
pen the door. The light came on.
‘What kept you?’ asked the fridge.
‘Don’t start,’ Paul replied. ‘All right: first, is it true? Is there really a Great Cow of Heaven?’
The light blinked, which Paul assumed was a yes. ‘Her name,’ said the fridge, ‘is Audumla, just like I told you but you wouldn’t listen. Do you know who I am?’
Paul shook his head. ‘At least,’ he added, ‘I have a vague sort of idea, but I bet it’s a long story,’ he said, ‘so you’d better tell me later. Right now, I need to know some things.’
‘Please yourself. There may not be a later.’
‘There will be,’ Paul said firmly. ‘Question one. The next door down on the left. That’s Van Spee’s secret place, isn’t it? The place only he can get into or out of.’
Agonising pause. ‘Very good,’ said the fridge. ‘Correct. When I came looking for him, to punish him for his crime, he built it as a last hiding place, somewhere I could never find. I’d figured out how to break into his synthetic dimension, that was easy, but however hard I try - and believe me, these last fourteen hundred years, I’ve tried - I can’t find that one small room. Oh, I know where it is, it’s just a few yards down the corridor on the left, but I can’t find it—’ Silence for a moment, as the fridge fought back its rage. ‘Do you know why?’
Paul nodded. ‘It needs a key,’ he said. ‘And the key’s not a bit of metal with a frilly end, it’s a person.’ He took a deep breath, because if he was wrong, this was going to sound so stupid. ‘It’s me, isn’t it?’
