by Tom Holt
How many other poor bastards had been sucked into competing in the game, he wondered, and what had become of them? He’d never know, so it was pointless to speculate. They’d never have stood a chance, of course. It had been luck, and a twenty-first-century mindset, that had made it possible for him to succeed where they, presumably, had failed. And he’d only tumbled to the game’s secret because he’d spent way too much time playing other, less lethal but equally silly games when he should have been out having a life.
Once you figured it out, though, it was simple. You don’t win by giving the right answer. You win by winning. Since the question is unanswerable, there is no right answer. Therefore, the only way you can win is by cheating.
In the distance, the very far distance, he saw a tractor. He altered course a degree or so and headed for it.
He knew he couldn’t be the only player of the game, because someone had played it before and had figured out the secret, just as he had. At some stage in the past someone had tried to cheat. He didn’t know how his anonymous predecessor had gone about it, but for some reason he’d developed a successful cheat, and then something must have happened and he never got the chance to confront the great voice, give his answer and collect the prize. Pity, in a way. But his sympathy was muted somewhat by the appalling side effects of the cheat, into which he and his sister and the Briggses and most likely a load of other people had been unwillingly drawn. It was the cheat that had created the weirdness, the transdimensional anomalies and simultaneous lives and all that crap; it was something to do with the cheat, and once he’d recognised it for what it was, he knew that the cheat existed; at which point, since he didn’t know the details of how it worked, he’d been left with a straight fifty-fifty guess. Luckily, he’d guessed right. Simple as that.
The tractor was driving up and down, shooting something out onto the ground from a trailer. If only he could get there before it finished and went away again. He could hitch a ride back as far as the nearest road, then walk until he reached a village or a town, and then he could go home. The thought made him catch his breath. Home, a mythical place where all your dreams come true. Untold millions of naive adventurers had come to grief searching for it, and many people reckon it doesn’t actually exist. Still, it was worth making an effort. Knowing his luck, though, he’d probably end up discovering America.
After a very long time he got close enough to smell what was coming out of the back of the trailer. It wasn’t terribly nice but it was definitely real. Appropriate too, for inside a toilet, except he wasn’t any more. That made him walk a bit faster, even though his feet and the calves of his legs were giving him all manner of aggravation.
When he was close enough to be able to read the tractor’s number plate, it turned, zoomed through a gateway and disappeared behind a hedge. Don stopped, realising that he was out of breath and pretty much crippled, and for the past five minutes he’d been walking through the stuff that had come off the trailer. It was enough to make him wish he was back in the game.
No, it bloody wasn’t. He trudged through the gateway and found himself on a rough, muddy track between two tall hedges. He could hear the tractor rumbling away somewhere in the distance, too far away for him to catch it now. He looked down at his shoes, which, like him, would never quite be the same again. All because he’d been stupid enough to do his sister a favour.
Well, he knew that wasn’t true. Quite where the tipping point had been, where he’d lost his footing and slithered into the six-hundred-year-old mess, he couldn’t possibly say. Most likely it had been a gradual process, the final slip being something he wouldn’t have noticed at the time. Nobody’s fault, though, or nobody living. Just one of those things, like floods or lightning.
The lane curved, and in front of him he saw something wonderful: a house (genuine twentieth-century brick-and-breeze-block job, so he wasn’t in the game any more), to be precise, a farm, with a regulation farmyard cluttered with block and corrugate-iron buildings, lots of concrete, some large bits of abandoned machinery, a dilapidated horsebox parked in a corner and chickens. Under other circumstances, far too rural for his taste. He felt like someone who doesn’t really like dogs being hauled out of a collapsed avalanche by a St Bernard.
“Hello,” he called out, as he took his first step on concrete. “Anybody here?”
No answer, but the chickens came running. Naturally, he wasn’t scared of a bunch of chickens; far more scared of him than he could ever be of them, that was the whole point of Homo sapiens having dominion over the animal kingdom. The reason they were crowding round his feet was just that they were dead tame and expected him to feed him. That was probably why they were pecking at his shoes, mistaking them for pellets of concentrated sorghum, wheat, bran and essential vitamins, the way you do. “Shoo, chickens,” he said in a brisk but friendly voice, whereupon one of them flapped its wings, rose up in the air to kneecap level and pecked him so hard he yelped. “Get out of it, you—” he started to say, but got no further than that, because another chicken had flown up and sunk its claws into his shirt, and was trying to get its head into his inside pocket. Stupid bloody creature, he thought, batting frantically at it and missing; there’s nothing to eat in there, just my wallet and my phone.
The chicken had his phone clamped in its beak, for crying out loud. It backed away, hummingbird style, for three wing flaps before the weight of the phone overcame its already marginal airworthiness and it sank, still flapping, still holding the phone, to the ground. It landed running and was halfway across the yard before it occurred to Don to do anything about it.
Fucking chicken just stole my phone! But the rest of the flock were right under his feet, almost as though they were deliberately obstructing him from chasing the phone thief. Crazy, or maybe someone had trained them. Could you train chickens? No idea. Didn’t care. He just wanted his phone back, but that seemed to be an unrealistic aspiration. He kicked out, caught a chicken on its folded wing and sent it sailing up in the air like a beach ball, which paralysed him with guilt until the bird landed, immediately found its feet and rushed back into the scrum, eyes glittering with warlike zeal.
“Don’t kick the chickens,” a voice said sharply behind him. “They’re human.”
He knew that voice. Slowly and carefully – What the hell did he mean, the chickens are human? – he turned to see who it was. Then he tried to speak, but his mouth opened and shut goldfish style and no sounds came out.
“Mr Mayer?”
He breathed out, then addressed himself to the tall, shaven-headed man, not the long, thin bugger in the suit. “Mr Gogerty?” he said.
There had been a time when Polly had been seriously, deeply, passionately into ponies. It had lasted about six months, ending just after her fifteenth birthday (the transitional period, the lady at the riding stables had called it, between toys and boys), and now, when she looked back on it, she wondered what on earth had possessed her. Big fierce things with teeth at one end and hooves at the other; falling off; shovelling poo.
But at least she could recognise the interior of a horsebox when she found herself in one. True, it wasn’t like the specimens she’d encountered at Mrs Jeffries’. It was dark and dirty and smelt overwhelmingly, not of horse but of something even worse – something, she noted as she moved her feet, with extremely poor personal hygiene and bowel control. Yuck.
Another thing she remembered about horseboxes: when you’re inside and the door’s shut, you can’t get out.
Ridiculous, she thought. A fraction of a second ago she’d been in Don’s flat, peering into the little rosewood box she’d found in his fridge. She couldn’t be scared because something like this couldn’t have happened. Fear needs belief. This was just silly, and silliness only made her irritable.
She pushed against the door, just in case it was loose. Nope.
As well as the main door, which folds down to double as a ramp, there’s usually a little side door. She investigated it, found it, saw that the
re was no handle on the inside. She tried kicking it and hurt her toe.
“Hello?” she shouted. “Anybody there?”
She waited. Polly wasn’t very good at just waiting. Restaurants, airports, building societies, government offices, dentists’ waiting rooms: not happy places for her. Add another category to the list. “Hey!” she yelled. “Let me out!”
Nothing. Then she heard a rustling noise, as of wings, somewhere outside. Wings, she thought. Angels? Not that she was in any position to be choosy, but angels struck her as excessive. Whatever it was, it was getting louder, and there was also an element of scrabbling. That implied claws, so she could probably dismiss the angels theory. Her views on the shut door softened. She could see that a steel door, tightly closed, might have its advantages.
Then light burst in around her as the door swung down, and suddenly the horsebox was full of chickens. Some of them scuttled around her feet; others flapped up at her face or tried to perch on her arms and shoulders, prodding at her with their beaks, almost as though they were frisking her for something. Naturally she waved her arms, batted at them and made loud shooing noises, but they didn’t seem inclined to take her seriously. One of them had got its beak round her mobile phone. She grabbed at it, but the chicken ducked under her hand and flapped away, weighted down with its trophy. Maybe, she thought, they’re going to beat me up, and they want the phone to film it with.
But the chickens withdrew, as suddenly as they’d come, and she was left alone in the horsebox with a view of a farmyard through the open door. It wasn’t a situation that called for deep introspection. She was out of there like a bullet from a gun.
No sign of the chickens, thankfully. She stopped and looked round. Rickety buildings, rusty old machinery, concrete, the rural idyll bang up to date. At any rate the weirdness quotient appeared to have dropped to an acceptable level. She couldn’t have asked for anything more prosaic.
Some people, though, would be nice, provided they weren’t dangerous lunatics. “Hello?” she called out. “Excuse me, is anybody about?”
No answer. Sort of creepy. Perhaps all the humans had been killed and eaten by the feral chickens. She could have called for help if she still had her phone. Was that why they’d stolen it? All things considered, and she didn’t think she was being too hasty in her judgements here, she rather wished she was somewhere else.
In which case (her rational self asserted itself ) why not just leave? Well, quite. There was a gate on the other side of the yard which could reasonably be assumed to lead somewhere. She headed for it, but before she got there someone behind her called out her name. Both parts of it: Polly Mayer.
She spun round, and saw the unmistakable bulk of Mr Gogerty, the weirdness expert, striding towards her. Behind him, struggling to keep up, was Don. Behind him, looking thoroughly confused, was—
She blinked. Fancy meeting you here.
“Mr Huos?” she said.
And behind him, she noticed, the chicken pack, closing on him fast. “Look out,” she yelled, but Mr Gogerty shook his head. “It’s all right,” he assured her. “They’re not chickens, they’re people.”
An odd sentiment, she couldn’t help thinking, the sort of thing you’d expect from Jamie Oliver – maybe a little bit extreme even for him. No sign of her phone. Presumably they’d already sold it to buy drugs.
“Mr Huos, be careful,” she shouted. “Those chickens are dangerous. They stole my—”
But Mr Gogerty had arrived, taking up a protective stance between her and the flock. “They aren’t chickens,” he repeated. “As a matter of fact, I believe they’re mostly lawyers, like yourself. There’s nothing to be afraid of, trust me.”
She stared at him. “Lawyers?”
“I think so,” he said. “I haven’t had a chance to ask them all.”
That was a bit too much, even in context. “Don,” she complained, “he’s not making any sense.” (At which point it occurred to her that she was overwhelmed with joy and relief at seeing her brother again after she’d more or less given up hope, but he was her brother, after all, so the cluster of strong emotions surging about inside her could wait.) “Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?”
Don looked sheepish, which was nothing to go by, but he nodded once, briefly, and said, “Maybe, I’m not sure. Look, wouldn’t it be a good idea if we all sat down and talked about this?”
“Yes,” said Mr Huos, in a very loud clear voice which made the other three turn and look at him. “And since I’m paying Stan’s wages, and I have an idea you work for me—”
“Polly Mayer,” Polly said, quickly and in a rather small voice. “Assistant solicitor in the—”
“You’re fired, by the way,” Mr Huos said kindly. “Nothing personal. I’ve closed down the company. I imagine there’ll be a redundancy cheque waiting for you when you get home. Anyhow,” Mr Huos went on, “I think sitting down and talking about it would be a very good idea indeed. What do you lot reckon?”
“I think we should wait for Mr and Mrs Williams,” Mr Gogerty said firmly. “I don’t suppose they’ll be very long, and we owe it to them.”
“Are you Polly’s boss, then?” Don asked.
“Was,” Mr Huos replied. “Like I just said, I’ve shut down the business, and—”
“So my sister’s out of a job, just because you take it into your head to—”
“Don,” Polly snapped, her face red as beetroot. “Stop it.”
“Yes, but—”
“Really,” Mr Huos said, “I had no choice. All the houses I sold never really existed.”
“And that makes it all all right, does it?”
Mr Gogerty frowned, unsure what to do. He was no stranger to conflict. He bought silver bullets by the case and wooden stakes by the pallet load. A market gardener just outside Cambridge kept back four acres every year to grow a special variety of garlic just for him. Over the years he’d cut his way out of the bellies of sea monsters that had swallowed him whole, reduced the Lithuanian manticore to a Level 6 endangered species and collected enough yards of mummy bandage to lag the dome of St Paul’s. There were some fights, however, that he made a practice of steering clear of, and this had all the signs of being one of them. On the other hand, he was impatient to get on, and he needed these people to help him wrap the job up. He cleared his throat politely, but they took no notice. A complex three-cornered snarling match had sprung up between them, and he doubted whether anything short of a power hose would get their attention. Probably best, he decided, to back off and let them resolve their issues, and then talk to the survivors.
From his deepest, most inside pocket, with its unrippable lining and charm-reinforced Velcro closing strip, he took the ring that had once been a pencil sharpener and gave it the full force of his attention. It was rounded rather than flattened in section, so it wasn’t a human finger ring. There was a point where the two ends had been butted together, but not brazed or soldered shut. The wear on one side was quite pronounced. He smiled. He knew exactly what it was. That and his knowledge of dead languages gave him at least a third of the answer, but he still wished he had the box.
He sat down on a rusty muck spreader, took another look at the ring, then glanced at his surroundings. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for; it wasn’t small or hidden. He stood up, walked over to it and sat down on a low wall. Low, that is, to a tall human. He leaned forward, lowering his line of sight.
The cockerel who’d indentified himself as Kevin Briggs waddled across the yard to join him. Stan didn’t have his phone any more, but he had something just as good – his pocket organiser, by Hauptmann of Wiesbaden, one of only seven the great man made before he disappeared in 1906. He took it out, switched it on and laid it carefully on the ground, so that the keyboard faced Mr Briggs. The head dipped, the beak pecked.
“well?”
Mr Gogerty picked up the organiser and thought for a moment. Then, stabbing at the tiny keys with the edge of his li
ttle finger, he wrote, “nearly there. just need a few more details.”
Mr Briggs pecked for a long time in reply. “my sister just turned up and her boyfriend. hes a cockerel too of course a bantam. wanted to rip his head off but didn’t. cant you hurry it up a bit? mary byron’s got another phone shes trying to call nasa oh and theres a whole lot of cars coming over the hill be here soon thought you ought to know big black ones limos.”
Mr Gogerty’s right eyebrow twitched. “that’s interesting,” he typed. “it looks like they’ve finished arguing over there. stay here i’ll be back.”
He picked up the organiser and put it away, then walked quickly back to join Mr Huos and the Mayers. “Better now?” he asked.
Mr Huos nodded. “I explained it was all my fault,” he said. “It is my fault, isn’t it?”
“No,” Mr Gogerty said. “It’s somebody’s fault, but he’s not here. I think I may have an idea who it is, but—”
“Don here’s got something to tell you,” Mr Huos interrupted. “I think you ought to listen.”
In the sixth limousine from the back of the convoy the CEO of United Petroleum twisted his hands together in his lap. Next to him, the president of Turkmenistan had chewed his pencil almost down to the stub. Opposite, the professor of pure mathematics at Harvard was staring blankly through the window, while the Chinese foreign minister kept looking at his watch. None of them had spoken for a long time. Understandably enough; there was only so much anybody could say about the weather, the food on the plane and George Bush, and there were no other safe topics of conversation.
“That’s just stupid,” Polly said.
Don sighed. “Fine,” he said. “If you can think of a better explanation…”
