Earth, Air, Fire and Custard

by Tom Holt

  What, me? He thought hard. ‘Actually,’ he said, and dried up.

  The silence that followed was pretty excruciating, almost to the point where Paul wished the ground would open and swallow him up, but not quite. Accordingly, it was almost a welcome interruption when a door appeared in the middle of the opposite wall and started to swing open.

  Sophie had her back to the wall in question and couldn’t see it. Paul could see it perfectly well, but the shock paralysed him until it was too late to do anything useful. By the time it had worn off, the door was wide open and Theo Van Spee had climbed through.

  The professor wasn’t armed, or pointing a magic wand; crackly blue flames weren’t flickering out from under his fingernails. He didn’t even stride purposefully. In fact, the way he shuffled across the room suggested that more than anything else, he was very tired. It was only when he cleared his throat, a soft, muffled noise like an apple falling off a tree onto deep leaf-mould, that Sophie turned round, saw him and screamed.

  A cue, if ever there was one: a damsel in distress, and here was Paul, until recently a professional deputy hero with a leading City firm. He jumped to his feet. But then Professor Van Spee looked at him, and he sat down again, not quite knowing why but painfully aware that he had no choice.

  ‘Mr Carpenter,’ the professor said. ‘And Ms Pettingell. You will forgive the intrusion.’

  It wasn’t a request; Paul could practically feel forgiveness being yanked out of him. He started to lift a hand, to gesture the professor to a seat, but such an invitation was redundant. A particularly fine leather armchair that Paul had never seen before had appeared in front of him, and the professor was sitting in it.

  ‘You will excuse my rather melodramatic entrance,’ the professor went on. ‘But I have very little time, and a great deal to do. The clock on the kitchen wall is six minutes fast, and the light bulb in your bedside lamp needs replacing. You are both considering the use of physical violence, but it would be both futile and counter-productive.’ He paused, took off his glasses, polished them on a little bit of soft yellow cloth, and replaced them. ‘Mr Carpenter, Ms Pettingell,’ he went on, ‘you are under the impression that you have won. This is not the case. I regret to have to inform you that you both have less than two minutes left to live. In just over one minute, I shall evacuate all the air from this room, and then you will both suffocate and die.’ He sighed, more in sorrow than in anger; in fact there was hardly any anger at all, like vermouth in a really dry martini. God probably sighed like that when he looked at the tree and saw that someone had been scrumping apples. ‘Before you die, however,’ he went on, ‘there is something I would like to ask you, if it’s convenient.’

  Well, Paul thought; two minutes, it’s not like there’s time to start anything else, so why not? ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Fire away.’

  The professor nodded. ‘You will recall,’ he said, ‘our last meeting.’

  Paul had to think. ‘The duel,’ he said. ‘The first one. Ricky killed me.’

  ‘Correct. Can you remember what I was doing?’

  ‘You were reading a book,’ Paul replied. ‘While Ricky and I were fighting it out, you just leaned up against a rock or something. You were looking the other way the whole time.’

  ‘Quite right,’ the professor said. ‘And you may remember, I marked my place in the book with a bookmark.’

  ‘Did you?’ Paul asked. ‘Sorry, but I wasn’t—’

  He remembered now: a dark green leather bookmark, with gilded writing on it, letters he couldn’t read. But so what? Pointless thing to remember.

  ‘Would you happen to remember,’ the professor went on, ‘what became of that bookmark? I fancy I may have dropped it at some stage. It has sentimental value, nothing more, but—’

  ‘Why aren’t you dead?’ Sophie demanded.

  The professor looked up at her, as though he’d forgotten she was there. ‘Ms Pettingell,’ he said. ‘Since you will shortly be dead yourself, I see little point in telling you. The bookmark, however, is of some trifling significance to me, and I shall still be alive. You wouldn’t happen to have seen it, by any chance?’

  ‘I have,’ Paul said.

  The professor looked up at him sharply. ‘Excellent,’ he said.

  ‘And I’ll tell you where it is,’ Paul added, ‘if you’ll answer her question.’

  The professor sighed. ‘You are playing for time,’ he said. ‘A pointless exercise. Still, it’ll be quicker to tell you what you want to know than to try and reason with you. The bookmark, and then I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Other way round,’ Paul said firmly. The professor shrugged.

  ‘As you like,’ he said. ‘The truth is that when you and that tiresome little man’ - Mr Laertides, Paul assumed - ‘forced your way into what you both thought was my last secure hiding place, you were both mistaken. It was simply another simulation; not my last refuge, only its counterpart in my synthetic universe. I had already taken steps to remove the real thing, and make it secure. So long as I control it, with the real me safely concealed inside, your enthusiastic but rather dull-witted father can kill me to his heart’s content, as often as he likes. All he’s killing are replicas, duplicates. In fact,’ the professor went on, with a weary smile, ‘he has done me a substantial favour. He, and the rest of the powers that be, now believe that I am dead and my private dimension is destroyed or lost for ever; accordingly, I shall be able to continue with my work without any fear of further annoyance. There,’ he concluded, ‘that’s my side of the bargain. Now yours.’

  Paul nodded. ‘Your bookmark,’ he said. ‘I picked it up.’

  ‘Really.’ The professor raised an eyebrow, neatly as any Vulcan. ‘May I trouble you to give it to me, please? I can wait a few seconds and take it from your dead body, but—’

  ‘I picked it up,’ Paul said, ‘and when I got back here afterwards, I found this bookmark in my pocket. It should still be there.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘In my other jacket,’ Paul said. ‘In the wardrobe, just behind you.’ He smiled pleasantly. ‘Go on,’ he added, ‘it won’t bite you.’

  The professor looked at him for two and a half seconds. ‘I am trying to calculate,’ he said eventually, ‘whether that is a bluff, a double bluff, a triple bluff or a pathetic attempt to prolong your existence by a few seconds in the vain hope that someone - your father, presumably - will come and rescue you. Based on my evaluation of your intelligence and resourcefulness, I believe that you may have some unpleasant surprise in store for me in there - a pocket demon or a Detlinger’s Chasm, or some other low-level magical booby trap that you may have acquired by mail order or found in a Christmas cracker. Accordingly, I shall be obliged if you would open the wardrobe and retrieve the bookmark yourself.’

  Paul frowned. ‘I’d rather not,’ he said.

  ‘In that case, I must insist.’

  Paul took a step back. ‘No,’ he said.

  The professor clicked his tongue. ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I shall make Ms Pettingell do it. Would you like me to—?’

  ‘Shit,’ Paul said, and walked across the room to the wardrobe.

  He closed his eyes as he reached for the doorknob.

  ‘Both of you,’ the professor said, his voice unusually harsh, and a moment later Sophie had joined him. With his left hand, Paul grabbed her wrist; with his right, he pulled open the door, located his other suit, fumbled with a pocket flap and pulled out a thick, flat rectangle that should have been too big ever to fit in a jacket pocket. It contained, of course, Mr Laertides’s flying-carpet samples.

  ‘Hold on,’ Paul yelled to Sophie as he flicked the book open with his forefinger and snatched at the first sample he came to. Then there was a nauseating rush and a blur, a moment of sharp pain as they burst through the glass in the kitchen window, and a tendon-jarring bump as the carpet spilled them off onto the pavement of the street outside.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  What the hell,’ Sophie de
manded as she pulled her head out from under Paul’s leg, ‘was that?’

  ‘Me being really clever and resourceful,’ Paul answered truthfully. ‘You all right?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Great,’ Paul replied. ‘Run.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Will you stop arguing with every bloody thing I say and just run? Please?’

  ‘All right, I’ll run, if that’s what you—’

  They ran. Even as he turned the corner and felt the first stitch bite into his ribs, Paul knew that running away from Professor Van Spee was a bit like trying to stab an elephant to death with a darning needle. The master of Custardspace, proprietor of the Acme Portable Door, hardly needed to come sprinting after them, because there was nowhere for them to go. Wherever they ran to, wherever they hid, he could find them and get at them. He was just, as the professor had pointed out, playing for time.

  Which only left Paul with the other option, and that was something he really didn’t want to have to do. Unfortunately—

  ‘Sophie,’ he said, stopping dead, hands on knees, panting rather shamefully for breath, ‘have you got any money on you?’

  ‘Money?’ she repeated, as if he’d just asked her for dinosaur eggs. ‘What the hell use—?’

  ‘Only I’ll need at least fifty pee, and I don’t think I’ve got that much.’

  Sophie, who was also more than a little bit out of breath, gave him a long, nasty look. ‘Go on,’ she said, ‘here’s a whole pound. You can owe me.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He took the coin from her and marched into the newsagent’s shop outside which he’d halted. There he bought a cigarette lighter.

  ‘Here’s your change,’ he said.

  ‘Keep it,’ Sophie said munificently. ‘Paul, what the bloody hell is going on? And what’s that?’

  Having looked carefully up and down the street, Paul had taken from his inside pocket the bookmark he’d picked up on Bersa Island, the first time. He was relieved beyond words to find that it was still there. ‘Van Spee’s bookmark,’ he said.

  ‘Fine,’ Sophie replied, as Paul flicked at the lighter to get it going. ‘And what are you planning to do with it?’

  Paul looked at her. ‘Commit murder, actually,’ he said, as he held the lighter flame under the little tassels at the bottom of the bookmark. For three seconds nothing happened. Then it caught light and slowly began to burn.

  ‘All right,’ Sophie growled at him, ‘don’t explain. Be cryptic. I really don’t care any more. Because—’

  The bookmark screamed.

  It took Paul all his strength to hang on; not because the flames were scorching his fingertips, though they were doing that all right, but because he knew perfectly well what he was doing. As usual, the right thing. He hated it.

  ‘You see,’ he said, raising his voice a little to cover the screams, which were pretty faint, ‘it’s bloody obvious why Van Spee wanted this thing, isn’t it? He practically told us himself.’

  ‘What - Oh,’ Sophie said.

  ‘“Oh” is right,’ Paul said. ‘Doors and portals that just roll up and tuck away in a pocket; they’re what he does best, right? This—’ He nodded toward the scrap of burning leather pinched between his fingers. ‘This is Theo van Spee’s last hiding place. With Theo Van Spee still in it.’

  Sophie’s eyes widened. ‘Paul—’

  He nodded. ‘Like I said,’ he told her, ‘murder. Also,’ he added, ‘the end of Custardspace, probably also the Portable Doors, any hope of rescuing Ricky Wurmtoter from the Land of the Dead, and I’ve got a nasty feeling it’ll probably do something horrible to Colin the goblin, since you’re standing here next to me.’ He shook his head. ‘Tough,’ he said. ‘But there you go. According to my dad, I was born to make omelettes.’

  ‘Omelettes—?’

  ‘By breaking eggs,’ Paul said; and he dropped the last fragment of charred leather on the pavement and ground it under his heel until it was nothing but black dust. A little spurt of wind caught it and whisked it away. ‘Job done,’ he said, in a voice with no trace of feeling whatsoever. ‘So, shall we go and have some lunch somewhere? Or is it dinner time? I’ve completely lost track. Time has no meaning for me. Private joke,’ he added.

  ‘Paul,’ Sophie said. ‘Did you just kill Professor Van Spee?’

  Paul nodded. ‘Mphm.’

  ‘Good.’

  He looked at her. ‘Good?’

  ‘Yes. He was a bastard. Not just,’ she added firmly, ‘an employer-boss bastard, but a real arsehole. If you really did kill him just now, I’m glad.’

  Paul frowned. ‘That’s a bit—’

  ‘And now,’ Sophie said, grabbing his hand (he winced, because his fingers were burned), ‘we’ll go and have lunch, and you can start explaining. You can take,’ she added grimly, ‘as long as you like.’

  Since they were now both out of a job, lunch was coffee and a cheese roll each at a sandwich place, but it took longer than many Guildhall banquets. Sophie wanted to know everything; she wanted Paul to begin at the beginning, but got very impatient when he started telling her about Audumla the Great Cow of Heaven. Also, she kept interrupting, making him go back and then forward until he’d completely lost his place. There were bits she couldn’t grasp, even when he’d been over them four or five times, and he had to pretend her misunderstandings were what had actually happened, just so as to be able to get on to the next bit. There was quite a lot she refused to believe (‘For crying out loud,’ Paul said, ‘why on Earth would I want to make something like this up?’) and times when she’d break in on a complicated bit of explaining, where Paul himself was only just managing to hang on to the thread by one fingernail, to say that something rather like that had happened to a friend of hers, or a cousin, or an aunt. Eventually, though, he ground to a halt, and sat looking at her, waiting for a reaction.

  ‘And that’s it?’

  He nodded, and waited, and sipped some coffee to keep himself occupied while he was waiting. It was foul coffee and tasted of chemicals; probably the stuff they used to clean out the steel pipes of the cappuccino-frothing machine.

  ‘That’s it?’ Sophie repeated.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, with just a hint of annoyance. ‘Enough to be going on with, I’d have thought.’

  She sighed. ‘It just seems - well, bloody odd, to me.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ Paul replied. ‘If you’d said it sounded normal, I’d be really worried about you.’

  That remark apparently qualified for one of her beneath-contempt scowls, after which she went on: ‘The thing is, I can’t see where the whole horrible mess started. Did Van Spee invent Custardspace before or after the second Bersa Island duel? And what happened to the first other-you, the one who was really good at swordfighting? And why did Laertides make you go all round the country doing all those silly things, looking at trees and counting pigeons and so forth?’

  Paul thought for a moment. ‘I think he explained that,’ he said. ‘As I understand it, which isn’t much, it’s a bit like a computer mouse; only on the screen, all the icons are hidden, so you just have to move the mouse around and click at random, in the hope that you’ll land on the one you want.’

  ‘And you were the mouse, and the stupid things you had to do were the clicking?’

  ‘Suppose so.’ Paul yawned. It wasn’t surprising that he was feeling worn out. He couldn’t remember when he’d last slept; it was either just before his most recent death, or just after his death before last, and besides, time hadn’t had any meaning for him lately. Probably he wasn’t just suffering from exhaustion but time-lag as well. ‘The other stuff you asked about—’ He yawned again. ‘Sorry, I’ve forgotten. What was it?’

  ‘Something about Custardspace.’ Sophie was yawning too. ‘I can’t remember either, so I don’t suppose it was very important.’ She frowned, as though trying to round up a flock of stray thoughts with a very slow, lazy sheepdog. ‘What is important,’ she went on, rubbing her eyelids, ‘is us. Wha
t happens next? Where do we go from here?’

  ‘Um,’ Paul replied, and he knew that yes, this was really important, really really, but in spite of that he couldn’t seem to keep his eyelids apart. Also, his head was very heavy and his neck disappointingly weak. ‘Think I’ll just,’ he mumbled, and rested his head on his forearms. As he closed his eyes, he heard Sophie yawning hugely.

  A couple of minutes later, the little bald, round-headed man who ran the sandwich bar came out from behind the counter, checked to make sure all the other tables and chairs were empty, and turned the sign in the window from OPEN to CLOSED, EVEN FOR THE SALE OF PRANCING PORKER CRISPS. Just to be on the safe side, he shot the bolts on the door and drew the blinds. Then, tiptoeing, he left the room and nipped out into the back, locking the door behind him.

  On the other side of the door, he grinned, though there was a smidgeon of sadness in his empty black eyes. In a few minutes he’d cease to exist, at least until the next time (and when that happened and he was jerked back into existence he was pretty sure that he’d wake up as someone else, a slightly but crucially different personality, because that was what always happened. He’d never be Frank Laertides again, at any rate; in which case, even if his son was still alive when the next call to duty came, he wouldn’t be Paul’s father any more. Pity, that. He’d created worlds and bred countless billions of different forms of life to inhabit them, but he’d never actually been a father before. It had been a strain, all that worry and stress, not to mention frustration and disappointment, but on balance he felt it had enriched him. And been fun.)