The Better Mousetrap

by Tom Holt

  Ready to fight?

  Always.

  Fine. Now then, the name of the game is cribbage—

  ‘Just to clarify,’ Dennis Tanner said, after a long silence. ‘You won the new Wayatunga bauxite strike off Amelia Carrington’s super-dragon in a game of cards?’

  Emily was too tired to speak, so she nodded.

  ‘Oh well,’ Dennis said. ‘It’s an approach, I guess. Very ecofriendly and non-violent of you, and you’ll probably be getting Christmas cards from Bob Geldof and David Cameron. So,’ he added wistfully, ‘what’re you planning on doing with it, now?’

  ‘Already done.’ Emily yawned. ‘Gave it to your mum. Small token of appreciation.’

  ‘Oh.’ Dennis’s face registered no visible emotion whatsoever. ‘How about the dragon?’ he went on (and, tired as she was, Emily recognised a changed subject when she heard one). ‘Only it’s not really such a good idea to leave something like that just wandering about. You know better than anybody what they’re capable of—’

  Emily’s next yawn registered on seismic instruments all over the world. ‘Gone to Vegas,’ she mumbled. ‘It reckons gambling’s the most fun it’s had in years and what’s the point of having money if you don’t spend it? Said something about putting together a dream syndicate of all dragons everywhere. Poor buggers,’ she added, ‘they’ll end up losing the scales off their backs. Still, better than—’ Her eyelids drooped, and she fell asleep.

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ Dennis said, as Frank half-rose from his chair. ‘Just tired out, that’s all. I mean, what with all the dying she’s been doing lately, it’s hardly surprising.’ He fell silent and sat quietly for a while, staring down at his hands.

  Frank waited for a bit, then said, ‘The Carrington woman.’

  ‘Locked up in the cellars. Won’t be going anywhere in a hurry.’

  ‘Yes, but we can’t just leave her there.’

  Dennis looked up. ‘Yes, we bloody well can. Your girlfriend there may suddenly have turned into a dragon-hugger, but I prefer my pest control traditional, thanks all the same.’

  Frank frowned. ‘Isn’t Amelia Carrington your god-daughter or something?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘I just thought—’ Frank shrugged. ‘Forget it, then. But you can’t leave her down there. I’ve been there, remember. So have you.’

  ‘Fine.’ Dennis grinned. ‘We’ll kill her, then.’

  ‘You can’t do—’

  ‘Why not? We don’t need her for anything any more. If you don’t want anything to do with it, I expect Colin Gomez’ll help us out. Jump at the chance, probably.’

  Frank shook his head; then a smile crept over his face. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a better idea.’

  Amelia Carrington woke up.

  Her first reaction was to grab for a handful of fire, just in case the goblin woman was— No, belay that. She wasn’t in her office any more. In fact, she wasn’t in a building of any sort. She was lying on grass-wet grass, yetch - under a cloudless blue sky.

  Does not compute. She sat up, and in doing so she caught sight of her feet. They were bare, and stuck out from under the hem of a flowing, tie-dyed cheesecloth skirt.

  A horrible thought struck her. They couldn’t have, she thought. The bastards!

  It was at that point that she became aware that she was not alone. Lying grouped around her on the grass were a number of young men and women. The girls wore kaftans, headbands and big clunky beads, the boys had long hair, beards, and, in the most extreme cases, round rimless spectacles. One of them was strumming a guitar.

  The funny smell, Amelia realised later, was patchouli oil. They couldn’t have, she thought. But they could, and they had. Bastards!

  Rage flooded into her, and she clenched both hands in the air. True, her real enemies were presumably decades away by now, leaving her Crusoe-stranded in the most unforgivingly alien environment known to mankind, so she couldn’t very well firebomb them. But the rage was so strong that it had to be vented somehow. She needed to firebomb somebody, or she’d burst.

  She looked round and selected two of the hippies at random. After all, she told herself as she squeezed the inert elements out between her fingers, who the hell would miss them?

  A male exhibit lifted his head and stared blearily at her. He’d do for one target. Him and that bloody guitarist. She gave the fireballs in her hands a final squeeze for luck, took careful aim and let fly—

  (Later, Amelia figured out that someone-Uncle Dennis, most likely, or possibly Colin Gomez-must’ve put a strong dampening field on her, almost entirely neutralising her magical abilities.)

  —releasing two glowing blobs of plasma that drifted slowly up in the air, hung a yard or so off the ground and then popped softly, briefly filling the air with brightly coloured sparks. They swirled for a second or two in the vestigial breeze, glittered, faded and went out.

  The bleary-eyed man shook his head, closed his eyes and lay down again, while a girl next to him giggled and said, ‘Hey, far out. Can you do that again?’

  (In time, of course, the field began to wear off, so that by 1979 Amelia was able to bend spoons, materialise white rabbits out of hats and do physically impossible things with playing cards, coins and bits of string. By then, however, she was quite broken in mind and spirit, and had long since given up any thought of taking revenge or trying to regain her lost power. She was last heard of in 2003, standing unsuccessfully as a Liberal Democrat in a council by-election somewhere in Essex.)

  ‘Oh, go away,’ she said, and burst into tears.

  What else? Oh yes—

  ‘And therefore,’ said Colin Gomez, ‘in consideration of your dedication and hard work on behalf of the firm over the last three years—’

  ‘Four, actually.’ Emily, who’d been tapping her foot impatiently, smiled. ‘And while I think of it, troll’s blood.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I absorbed some, a while back. So I know what you’re really thinking.’

  Mr Gomez went quite pale. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Well. Look, do you want to be a partner or not?’

  Emily’s smile broadened, until it bore a distinct resemblance to the Tanner family grin. ‘Yes, please,’ she said.

  ‘Fine. In that case, welcome to the—’

  ‘And the same to you too, with knobs on.’ Emily closed her eyes, just briefly, then opened them again. ‘So that’s it, is it? I’m a partner.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ah.’ She frowned. ‘You know, I always thought it’d feel different, somehow. I don’t know, something like the troll’s blood thing. I expected the world would change.’

  ‘I see,’ Mr Gomez said carefully. ‘Has it?’

  ‘No. But I suppose I had to get here to find that out, didn’t I?’ Emily shook her head. ‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘Another ambition realised ahead of schedule. True love and a partnership. That just leaves the rest of my life to fill with something. Maybe I can take up gardening.’

  Mr Gomez was looking at her anxiously, as if waiting for her to pounce. ‘Really?’ he said at last. ‘Troll’s blood?’

  ‘Mphm. That troll you sent me to kill. Long story.’

  ‘So you can hear—’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mr Gomez nodded slowly four times. Then he reached for a piece of paper and took a pen from his top pocket. ‘It’s all right,’ Emily said, with a sort of exasperated sigh. ‘I’m not stopping. I resign.’

  The pen made a faint clunking noise as it fell to the desktop. ‘You’re what?’

  ‘I quit.’ Big smile, not even faint traces of a grin in it. ‘I wanted to be made a partner, just because-well, because it was there, I guess. But actually being one—’ She pursed her lips to hold in a giggle. ‘No offence,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think so.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mr Gomez gazed at her as though she’d suddenly started speaking in tongues. ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Because,’ Emily replied sweetly, ‘worst-
case scenario, I’d turn into Amelia Carrington. Best-case scenario, I’d turn into you.’

  ‘Thank—’

  ‘And in either case,’ she went on, ‘I think I’d rather be eaten alive by rats. But that’s just me, I’m afraid. Not a team player, after all. No, I’m thinking of turning freelance, and anyhow, I’ve gone off killing dragons. Not that there’ll be much call for that soon, if they’ve really discovered gambling. I have an idea that a few weeks of Internet blackjack will do what generations of hairy men with swords could never quite manage, and there’s progress for you. Anyway, I’m out of here.’ She sighed, and gave Mr Gomez a friendly smile. ‘Before I go, I’d like to say how much I’ve enjoyed working with you.’

  ‘Ah, well, and the same—’

  ‘But I promised my mother I’d tell the truth, so I can’t. Never mind.’ Emily stood up. ‘I’d better go,’ she said, ‘Frank’s waiting for me in reception-we’re going to find his Mr Sprague and then have lunch. You know, I’m quite sure you’ll make a really good senior partner, Mr Gomez. You’ve got all Amelia Carrington’s stupidity and none of her intelligence. I won’t bother clearing my desk,’ she added. ‘There’s nothing there I actually want any more. Goodbye.’

  She was halfway to the door when Colin said, ‘I’m sorry you’re leaving. We shall miss you.’

  The odd thing was that he said it twice, simultaneously; or at least, that was how Emily heard it. She stopped and looked back. ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Colin said. He went on, ‘You were always a pleasure to work with and highly conscientious, and I think you’d have had a great future in the profession.’ Or rather, he went on, ‘You earned us a shitload of money, did all the rotten jobs and never seemed to notice that we were paying you peanuts. Still, you’re only a woman, you’d have left sooner or later to have babies, and I can replace you like that, so what the hell.’

  Emily nodded gravely. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and left the room.

  It took Erskine less than ten minutes to find Mr Sprague. He was in a matchbox in a file in a locked filing cabinet in the junk-furniture collection in the third floor back office, where all the old manual typewriters went to die. Fortunately, Emily knew how to unpack him, and soon she had him back to his normal size without even waking him up.

  ‘Can you make him a couple of inches taller?’ Frank asked. ‘Only he’s been put through a nasty ordeal on my account and I think he deserves some sort of thank-you present.’

  ‘Could do,’ Emily replied. ‘But then his trousers’ll all be too short.’

  Frank shrugged. ‘I guess,’ he said.

  They took him back to his office through the Door and left him in his chair, still peacefully sleeping, while Erskine skipped round their heels, wagging his tail. Then they went back through the wall—

  ‘Where are we?’ Emily asked.

  The Door had opened out of the side of a rusty corrugated-iron shack under a clear blue sky. An empty road stretched out as far as the eye could see in both directions, and in the distance a purple haze masked the peaks of improbably beautiful mountains.

  ‘My favourite place to eat,’ Frank said. ‘I can particularly recommend the egg and bacon rolls. Actually, that’s all there is. Come on.’

  They walked round to the front of the shack, where a middle-aged man in a filthy white apron was prodding slices of bacon on a greasy range. ‘G’day, Frank,’ he said. ‘You’ve been a stranger. Usual?’

  Frank nodded. ‘And two teas.’

  ‘Coming up.’ The man noticed Emily and frowned slightly. ‘Who’s the—?’

  ‘Her name’s Emily. She’s English.’

  ‘Ah.’

  They took their rolls and their styrofoam cups over to the roadside, where there was a handy anthill to sit on. Far away in the distance, a huge, long lorry shimmered into view through the heat haze. ‘Actually,’ Frank said, ‘you’ve been here before.’

  Emily looked blank. ‘Have I?’

  Frank nodded and pointed at the ground. ‘Down there somewhere. We’re directly above the new Wayatumba bauxite strike you know, the one you gave to Mr Tanner’s mum.’ He sighed. ‘Won’t be long now before all this is spoil heaps and loading yards,’ he said. ‘I thought you might like to see it before it gets trashed. I used to come here a lot at one time.’

  Emily stared at him. ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘Because, if I set out really early in the morning, I could walk here from home by noon. It was something to do, and it got me out of the house. I didn’t like it at home much, you see.’ Suddenly he grinned. ‘On balance, I think it’ll be a good thing,’ he said, ‘talking to you. It won’t matter that I can’t find the right words to explain what I mean. You’ll know anyway.’

  Emily nodded slowly and cleared her mouth of a rather chewy bit of fried egg. ‘You think so?’ she said. ‘Someone else might reckon it’d make any sort of relationship impossible.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Frank said. ‘But what the hell. If ever I feel the need to lie to you, I can always put it in writing.’

  ‘But then I’d know—’

  He shrugged. ‘Quite,’ he said. ‘Saves time, that’s all.’ He broke off a corner of his roll and threw it to Erskine, who sniffed at it and backed away. ‘Really,’ he said, ‘I only brought you here because it’s lunchtime, and I like Herman’s egg and bacon rolls. Or I used to, anyway,’ he added, as Erskine scuffed up a small hole with his paws and buried the roll-fragment in it. ‘Also, there’s this general sense I’ve got of being at the beginning of the rest of our lives. Seemed as good a place to start as any. Did you mean what you said earlier, by the way? About going freelance, I mean.’

  Emily nodded absently. ‘Probably. I don’t want to think about work just now. Let’s go somewhere with a beach, and have an ice cream.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Frank said. ‘I’ll just get the—’

  Door, he was about to say, but as he opened his mouth he caught sight of two figures walking along the road. There was nothing particularly unusual about them, if you ignored context. One of them was a boy, about fifteen: tall, fair, thin, unfinished-looking, with a small nose and big ears. The other was a girl, about the same age but short and thin, with dark hair. Both of them were in some kind of school uniform, with their shirt-tails hanging out and their ties wrenched sideways, and the girl was reaming dirt from under her fingernails with the cap of a biro. She looked up, caught his eye and said, ‘Hello, Frank.’

  He stared back at her for three seconds, vaguely aware of Emily’s voice saying, ‘Somebody you know?’ The boy looked at him too, and smiled vaguely.

  ‘It’s you,’ Frank said.

  ‘Hello, Frank,’ the boy replied. ‘And this must be Emily. Hello.’

  For some reason, that made Emily feel nervous. ‘Frank,’ she said, ‘who are—?’

  ‘What?’ Frank seemed to wake up. ‘Oh, right, yes. This is Emily Spitzer, we’re—’ He paused, and went slightly pink. ‘Emily,’ he went on, ‘meet Paul and Sophie Carpenter. My mum and dad.’

  At that moment, for some reason, it occurred to Emily to look round. She saw the egg-and-bacon-roll man, Herman or whatever his name was, apparently frozen in the act of breaking an egg into his frying pan. A few feet away from him, a butterfly hung motionless in the still air.

  ‘So,’ Frank said, and he felt as though he was trying to hammer the words into a crack in solid rock with his bare hands. ‘What are you two doing here?’

  The girl scowled; not at anything in particular, just a generalised expression of dissatisfaction. ‘We came to see you,’ the boy said. ‘How’s everything, by the way?’

  ‘Oh, fine.’

  ‘You’ve found true love, then.’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘That’s good. Your mother was saying only the other day, it’s about time young Frank found true—’

  ‘You’ve got to give it back,’ the girl interrupted. Before he said ‘Give what back?’ Frank already knew the answer. ‘The Portable Door, of
course,’ the girl said. ‘You shouldn’t have taken it. It’s dangerous.’

  ‘It’s our fault, really,’ the boy said. ‘We shouldn’t have left it behind, only we didn’t have a choice. When we went away, you see, it closed, and we were on the other side … Anyhow, we’re not blaming you. But your mother’s right, I’m afraid. You can’t keep it.’

  ‘Oh,’ Frank said, as Emily hissed loudly, ‘That’s your mother?’

  ‘Yes,’ the girl said, and if there was a hint of he’s-mine-youcan’t-have-him in her voice, Emily could only deduce it in the normal way, rather than hear the actual words. Whoever or whatever these two were, troll’s blood didn’t seem to have any effect. Be that as it might, she thought. Although it was utterly true that she didn’t just want Frank because of the Door and its endless possibilities, there was no way she was going to let him give it up without a fight. She took a deep breath, looked the girl squarely in the eye and said—

  (Later, of course, she kept on asking herself, over and over again, why? Just kidding herself, of course. She knew perfectly well why.)

  ‘Go on, Frank,’ she said. ‘You’d better do as they say.’

  Frank shrugged. ‘Oh, all right, then,’ he said, and he held out the little cardboard tube. The girl snatched it out of his hand, and it went somewhere. ‘Thanks, son,’ the boy said, with maybe a trace of guilt in his voice. ‘Sorry. But you know it makes—’

  ‘And the other one,’ the girl interrupted.

  Frank nodded, dug in his jacket pocket and produced another cardboard tube. The girl took that one as well. This time Emily watched closely, but she still failed to see where it went.

  ‘You’ll be better off without it, I promise you,’ the boy went on sadly. ‘I know I am. After all-how long’s it been now? Oh, yes, silly question, but you know what I mean. It’s been ages, and I haven’t missed it at all. Never given it a second thought, in fact,’ he added; and although the troll’s blood wasn’t working, Emily didn’t need it to hear what he really wanted to say. ‘And anyway, you’re young, you’ve got your whole life in front—’

  ‘And the other one.’

  This time, Frank couldn’t help pulling a face. ‘Oh for pity’s sake, Mum—’