Earth, Air, Fire and Custard

by Tom Holt

  ‘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.’

  ‘I’m not going.’

  ‘Mr Carpenter.’ Still that unplaceable something in his eyes. ‘I shall count to three. Please don’t make this any more distressing than it has to be. I don’t enjoy this, you know.’

  ‘Fine,’ Paul said. ‘One, two, three.’ He paused. ‘Your go.’

  Nothing happened. It was almost as though Mr Dao was having to work hard just to stay there, as though something was tugging at him now. Paul, on the other hand, felt strangely exhilarated: breathless (well, obviously) but strong, in a way he’d never been before. Any second now, he predicted, Mr Dao was going to start pleading.

  ‘Please?’

  ‘No,’ Paul said. ‘When did you say Benny Shumway was due? I’d quite like to see him, I think.’

  ‘Time has no meaning here.’

  ‘You know,’ Paul said - he almost drawled, though his mum had told him not to when he was nine. ‘I don’t think that’s true, somehow. Otherwise, why are you in such a hurry to get me to come with
you? Surely you’ve got all the time in the world. We could stay here for ever and ever chatting like this, and it wouldn’t matter a damn.’

  ‘Mr Carpenter—’

  ‘And besides,’ Paul went on, ‘if you’re telling me the truth, you don’t need me to come with you, because I’ll just evaporate and blow away, whether I like it or not. That should have happened by now, but it hasn’t. Something’s wrong, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course not. Nothing is ever wrong here. That’s the point. There’s nothing that can go wrong, because there’s nothing. I thought I’d explained all that.’

  ‘You did. But it’s not true. You can’t touch me. I’m different.’

  ‘Fuck.’ Mr Dao closed his eyes, screwed up his face into a snarl and jumped up and down. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Yes,’ he went on, immediately resuming his usual calm, ‘you are, of course, quite correct. The rules do not apply in your case, which is why you are the only person ever to leave this place. The fact that you have done it on more than one occasion is, I must confess, something of an embarrassment. One does not care to have one’s shortcomings highlighted, even here, where failure is as irrelevant as everything else. But you are right, Mr Carpenter. Death has no jurisdiction over you. Which means,’ he added, with the very faintest of sighs, ‘that you are free to leave.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yes. It was - interesting. We shall not meet again.’ Mr Dao paused, and shrugged. ‘Never thought I’d hear myself say that, but there you are. Three impossible things before breakfast, and all that. Goodbye.’

  Mr Dao started to walk away into the shadows, but Paul yelled, ‘Stop!’ Mr Dao paused, then walked backwards, as though he was being rewound, until he was exactly where he’d been a moment ago. ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘For crying out loud,’ Paul shouted. ‘You can’t just tell me I’m different and death’s got no jurisdiction and all that stuff and then walk away.’

  Mr Dao smiled, and Paul saw just a trace of salvaged satisfaction. ‘Actually,’ he said, and vanished.

  Paul looked around. There was still nothing; in fact, if at all possible, there was even more nothing than there had been a moment ago. Just by being there, Mr Dao had defined a tiny area; where he’d stood there had been at least a suggestion of something for him to stand on, and just enough light to see him by. Now he was gone, and there was nothing at all.

  Nothing, that was, except Paul Carpenter.

  Maybe, he thought, this is the sting in the tail. Maybe I really did die and go to hell, and this is how hell is for incurably self-centred people; a universe where nothing exists except me. In which case, it probably serves me right. But.

  But. But nothing.

  Exactly. The whole point.

  Paul thought about that for just over four seconds. Then he dropped to his knees and started yelling, ‘Help!’

  He yelled for quite some time, except (he could picture Mr Dao in his mind, grinning insufferably) time had no meaning here; there was no time, no space, there was just Paul, a whole universe full of him. A bad place. Very bad. I don’t like it here, Paul thought. I want to go home.

  ‘Yes, but if you do that, you’ll have to go and deal with people. You were never any good at that. Stay here, this is where you belong. Besides, we never really liked you anyway.’

  ‘I want to go home,’ Paul tried to say. (But there can’t be any words where there’s nobody to hear them except yourself.) ‘I didn’t mean to do any harm. What did I do, anyway?’

  ‘It’s never what you do, it’s what you are.’

  Bullshit, Paul thought, that’s just not true. And then he thought: I don’t believe that, in which case I can’t just be talking to myself. Therefore—

  Who are you?

  He waited. Nothing.

  And then there was a sound. Coming through the total absence of anything, it was rather like the creation of the universe, except that in the beginning there wasn’t the Word. There was, in fact, the Moo.

  ‘Sorry?’ Paul yelped, startled.

  ‘Moo.’

  Moo, he thought; and then, Oh, for crying out loud. ‘Moo?’

  ‘Moo.’

  And there she was, ambling towards him with that utterly relaxed, laid-back look about her that only cows can manage. She was smallish for a cow, a sort of light sandy beige, with big eyes, little pointy horns and a bell on a collar round her neck. She looked like something out of a butter advertisement.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Many, many times before, Paul had felt an utter fool, but never more so than now. ‘Excuse me,’ he repeated, ‘but are you Audumla, the Great Cow of Heaven?’

  She nodded, and her bell tinkled softly. ‘Moo,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, right. I’ve, um, heard of you.’

  ‘Moo,’ she replied, with the faint air of good-natured boredom of any celebrity stopped in the street and told who they are. Her vast brown eyes surveyed him as thoroughly as a billion-dollar research project, and blinked once. She swished her tail. She looked unspeakably cute and friendly and cheerful and, what was the concept he was groping for, ah yes, Swiss. Now there was a thought: could a Swiss cow possibly have created the universe? That would account for the precision mechanism of the seasons, the perfect timing of comets, the fact that two blades of grass picked at random are exactly identical. But the Swiss, even the bovine Swiss, could never have created people. Too messy.

  ‘God, I’m glad to see you,’ Paul said; and then he stopped and wondered, Yes, but why? It’s a cow. Why on earth should I be so pathetically relieved to see a cow?

  ‘Moo,’ said Audumla; and Paul thought, Here we go again, because if only he could understand Cowspeak, he was sure that she’d just answered his question. The answer, and he’d missed it - just like being back at school.

  ‘I see,’ Paul said. ‘Thanks. Look, can I get out of here? Can you help me get out?’

  ‘Moo.’

  Paul closed his eyes and opened them again. ‘Is that a yes moo or a no moo?’

  ‘Moo.’

  There was a proverb about that, he reflected. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘just to clarify. Nod for yes and, um, swish tail for no. Can you help me—?’

  ‘Moo.’ Audumla nodded her head, and the bell tinkled like all the church bells that ever were. Then she started licking her left front hoof.

  ‘That’s fantastic,’ Paul said. ‘Um—’

  She looked at him. He waited. She looked at him some more.

  ‘Sorry,’ Paul said. ‘But, um, can we be a bit more, you know, precise. Like, how can you help me get out of here?’

  ‘Moo.’

  ‘Oh Christ,’ Paul said wretchedly. ‘Just my luck, just my bloody rotten luck. Here I am dead, and I bump into a cow who knows how to get me out of here, and the sodding thing can’t speak English.’

  ‘Of course I can speak English, silly,’ said the cow. ‘I was just being annoying.’

  Ninety per cent of Paul wanted to dance around in circles rejoicing. The other ten per cent wanted to force-feed the Great Cow of Heaven her cowbell. Fortunately, Paul was a democracy.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please can you tell me—?’

  ‘How to get out of here, yes.’ Audumla shook her head, as though dislodging a notional fly. ‘Piece of cake. Actually, you know what to do already. At least, you ought to, if you’ve been paying attention.’

  Aaargh, Paul thought. ‘Let’s assume,’ he said, ‘for argument’s sake, that I haven’t.’

  ‘All right.’ The cow licked her lips with an insole-sized pink tongue. ‘Professor Van Spee told you about the other Portable Door, the one he made for himself. Yes?’

  Paul nodded. ‘Now you mention it,’ he said.

  ‘He told you it’s here, in the bank, in a safe-deposit box.’ Audumla turned her head to nibble a tuft of hair on her knee. ‘That’s your way out. Told you it was simple,’ she added.

  Fuck, Paul thought. ‘That’s not actually a lot of help,’ he said. ‘You see, I’ve sort of pissed off Mr Dao rather a lot.
I don’t suppose he’s going to be in the mood to leave his keys lying about accidentally on purpose where I can find them.’

  Cows can look at you the way no other living creature can. They have a special, cows-only bemused gaze that says, ‘Why are you doing that, you very strange person?’ in a way that mere words never can.

  ‘Well, if I can’t get the keys,’ Paul said, ‘how’m I going to open the safe-deposit box? Unless you just happen to have a stick of dynamite stashed away somewhere.’

  But they don’t do irony. ‘No,’ Audumla said. ‘And anyway, if you blew up the box with dynamite, it’d damage the Door. But you don’t need a key.’

  ‘I don’t?’

  ‘Of course not, silly. The boxes aren’t locked. Why would you bother, down here?’

  Paul thought about that, and realised that he’d been missing the point with all the futile diligence of a blind machine-gunner. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘fair enough. But I can’t just wander into the Bank and rob it. And anyway, how’d I know which box it’s in?’

  ‘Number 18873446229D,’ Audumla replied promptly, ‘third shelf up on the right as you go in the door, they’re in number order, very neat and tidy. And Mr Dao won’t catch you, he’s busy with your friend Mr Shumway, doing the paying-in and the petty cash.’ She lowered her voice just a little. ‘Entirely between you and me, but Mr Dao’s been fiddling the books, embezzling. From your firm.’

  ‘Get away,’ Paul replied. ‘Really?’

  The cow nodded. ‘For the last six years.’

  ‘Um, has he embezzled a lot?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Audumla flicked her ears and chewed for a moment; Paul realised that, for lack of fingers, she was counting on her teeth. ‘Six pounds and forty-seven pence. I believe he plans to use the money to buy up newspapers, radio stations and TV companies, like that nice Mr Murdoch. Eventually,’ she added. ‘But don’t tell on him, will you?’