Falling Sideways

by Tom Holt

  No matter the cost, David had to know. ‘That police­man,’ he said. ‘What did you do to him?’

  The driver didn’t answer. Somebody or something in the back said, ‘Rivet, rivet, rurrk!’ David hoped very much that it wasn’t intended as an answer to his ques­tion.

  ‘Keep your eyes open for a garden with a goldfish pond,’ the driver was saying. ‘And don’t let it hop about back there. Driving this thing’s tricky enough as it is.

  David took a deep breath. ‘You turned that policeman into a— ‘Don’t be bloody stupid.’ The driver shook his head.

  ‘That’s impossible, just think of the technology involved.

  You’d need to be able to do teleportation, matter transmutation, God knows what else. Even if you had the tech, the energy required would be more than the total output of a small star.’

  ‘Ah,’ David replied, relieved.

  ‘No, all we’ve done is make him think he’s a frog.’ The driver leaned across and unlocked the handcuffs. ‘It’s the basis of all our, or should I say their technology: manipulating appearances. The thing stays the same, but everybody sees what we — they want them to see. He thinks he’s a frog, you think he’s a frog, and you can run the whole show off two triple-A batteries.’

  ‘I see. So really, he’s perfectly all right.’

  ‘Oh yes. At least, so long as he doesn’t try breathing underwater or crossing a road. But that’s what free will and freedom of choice is all about. Not our problem, in other words.’ The driver laughed, and turned the igni­tion key. ‘Don’t look so miserable,’ he said. ‘You should be pleased. Two minutes later and he’d have hauled you off to jail for the rest of your life.’

  There was that, of course. ‘Thank you,’ David said, but he wasn’t sure he meant it.

  ‘My pleasure. Anyway, about that flat. Nobody there. And it was the wrong one. Nothing in it at all, not even any furniture. Just,’ the driver added, ‘and this is the really weird thing, a bag of sugar.’

  ‘Oh,’ David said.

  (And he was thinking: the thing stays the same but everybody sees what they’re supposed to see. Still, if they hadn’t figured it out for themselves, he wasn’t going to make it easy for them.)

  ‘Like you said,’ the driver replied, ‘oh. Now, do you know this Alex character’s real address, or do you want to spend the rest of your life chasing flies around a lily pad?’

  Awkward. Served him right, presumably, for telling the truth in the first place. ‘All right,’ he said, and just for once inspiration was there waiting for him when he reached out for it. ‘They’re over at my place. Do you know the address?’

  ‘Mphm. You’re sure about that, are you?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure.’

  ‘Well, that’s all right, then. What’s the quickest way to get there from here?’

  Pretty well everything comes in handy sooner or later, provided that you’re prepared to wait; even, as David was able to prove, a profoundly rotten sense of direction. He did his best to navigate. If he’d been trying to get them all lost in the back streets of Chiswick Park, he couldn’t have done a better job.

  ‘Here we are,’ he announced, nearly two hours later. As he’d expected (and hoped) there were several omi­nous-looking Big Flash Cars lurking round the kerbside like hungry crocodiles. Fortunately, the clones didn’t seem to be able to recognise a stake-out when they saw one. ‘I suggest you park here,’ David said, ‘and walk the rest of the way. Just in case.’

  ‘Just in case of what?’

  ‘Oh, you know.’

  The clone glowered quizzically at him but followed the suggestion, dumping the van a hundred yards back from David’s front door. He’d have preferred a bit more margin, but it was better than nothing. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but I think I lost my house keys back in the clone work­shop, so you’ll have to kick down the door. Shouldn’t be difficult,’ he added, ‘it’s been practically falling to bits for years, a really good sneeze’d probably blow it into matchwood.’

  ‘What about the neighbours?’

  ‘Oh, they’re used to me by now,’ David said as blandly as he could manage. ‘If I had a flyer for every time I’ve come home rat-arsed and kicked the door in because I can’t find my keys—’

  ‘Really? You don’t look the type.’

  ‘It’s always the quiet ones,’ David replied hopefully. ‘Anyhow, you won’t get any trouble from them.’

  ‘If you say so,’ the clone replied, snapping the hand­cuffs back round David’s wrist. ‘But if you’re lying, then so help me—’

  As they piled out of the van, David racked his brains for the words of the truly appropriate quotation. He was all right as far as It is afar, far better thing than I have ever done before, but what came after that he wasn’t quite sure.

  (And what came after that? Unfortunately, having seen a few prison documentaries, he had a reasonable idea of what came after as far as he was concerned; but they had no reason to hold the girl, sooner or later they’d have to let her go, and she’d be out of it, and safe. Relatively safe, anyway. Safer than she was in this van, surrounded by her father’s enemies.)

  He watched them down the street and in — noisily —through the front door. He saw the watching bluebottles getting out of their cars; gave them thirty seconds to radio for back-up, and then— He wound down the window with his free hand.

  ‘HELP!’ he yelled, feeling appallingly self-conscious about making so much noise. ‘Excuse me! Over here. Help!’

  The bluebottles didn’t seem to be taking any notice (understandable, of course; it takes a very special sort of policeman to be capable of walking and listening at the same time) so he stabbed the horn with his elbow and put his weight on it.

  They heard that, all right. One of them broke away from the pack and sprinted over to the van.

  ‘Shut it, you,’ he hissed. ‘We’re trying to do a stake-out here.’

  ‘Yes,’ David replied, ‘I know. It’s me you’re—’

  ‘I said shut it,’ the policeman interrupted, grabbing David’s arm and wrenching it away from the steering column. ‘Or I’ll do you for obstruction.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m the—’

  The policeman slapped the van door with the palm of his hand. ‘QUIET!’

  ‘Sorry,’ David whispered. ‘Look, it’s me you want. Really.’

  ‘Yeah, sure. Now piss off and play nicely, I’m busy.’

  ‘Really,’ David pleaded. ‘And look, I’m handcuffed to the steering wheel. And there’s a girl tied up in the back.’

  The policeman shook his head. ‘Wrong department,’ he said, ‘we’re on a murder case here.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘All right,’ the policeman sighed, ‘tell you what I’ll do. Soon as we’re finished here, I’ll call the perve squad. Shouldn’t be more than an hour. You’ll just have to hold out till them.’ And he started to walk away.

  ‘Bugger,’ David muttered under his breath, and jabbed the horn again.

  The policeman turned round and came back. ‘You said you’d do me for obstruction,’ David said, smiling pleasantly.

  ‘Oh for . . . Look, you’re under arrest, right? Now wait there. Don’t move and don’t touch that bloody horn.’

  This time, David let him get thirty yards up the street before applying the elbow.

  ‘Right,’ the policeman snarled at him, ‘that’s it. Out of the van.’

  ‘I can’t,’ David pointed out. ‘I’m handcuffed to the steering wheel.’

  The policeman pulled a face. ‘There’s always got to be one, hasn’t there? Bloody well unlock yourself, and then get out of the—’

  ‘I haven’t got the key.’

  David could see the policeman counting up to ten. Under other circumstances, he’d have assumed this was just showing off (‘Look, no fingers!’). ‘Then you won't be going anywhere, will you? Look, I promise I’ll come back for you in a minute, soon as I’ve finished arresting this highly dangerous murderer. Just le
ave the horn alone. Or,’ he added, ‘I won’t arrest you at all, and you can just sit here all night and catch pneumonia. Got that? Fine.’

  This time, David let him get fifty yards .

  But this time, the policeman didn’t say anything when he returned to the van. Instead, he reached inside the cab, flipped the bonnet catch, opened the bonnet and ripped out some wires. Then he ran back to the house.

  ‘Have you quite finished?’

  David spun round, nearly dislocating a vertebra. ‘How did you—?’

  ‘It was only rope,’ the Philippa clone said scornfully. ‘Now, if you’re through with teasing that man, I think we should leave. There’s some sort of disturbance going on over there, and we don’t want to be conspicuous.’

  ‘I’m handcuffed to the—’

  She made a rude noise, reached over his shoulder, grabbed the wheel and pulled. A six-inch section broke away in her hand. ‘Not now, you aren’t,’ she said. ‘Coming?’

  ‘Just a minute,’ David said. (His brain was still trying to process what he’d just seen.) ‘Why are you rescuing me? You hate me.’

  ‘True,’ she replied. ‘But you were trying to give your­self up just so as to rescue me, and that was rather sweet. Stupid and utterly futile, of course, and only you could fail to be caught when there’s so many of’ them out to catch you, but sweet. Come on, last chance.’

  Well, he thought, why not? He hopped out of the van, just in time to see her walking away, very quickly. He had to run just to catch up.

  ‘Don’t run, idiot,’ she said. ‘It’s a sure way of drawing attention, running away. Just walk fast.’

  At another time, in other company, David might have pointed out that his attempts at drawing attention hadn’t got him very far. But just for once he got it right and kept his face shut.

  ‘You know the area,’ she said. ‘Where do we go now?’

  He shrugged. ‘Depends on where you want to get to,’ he replied.

  She tutted impatiently. ‘The cloning plant, of course. Or, to be precise, the ultraspatial interface matr— The lift,’ she amended. ‘I’ve got to get back home as quickly as possible.’

  David was surprised, but pleased. He’d been sure she hadn’t been listening. ‘Great,’ he said. ‘I’m so pleased you came around to—’

  ‘I’ve got to notify the authorities,’ she went on, ‘before they turn every single soldier on your planet into a frog.’

  ‘They weren’t soldiers, they were policemen— Oh,’ David said. ‘I see what you mean. But they couldn’t do that, could they?’

  ‘Bet?’ She laughed. ‘You’re forgetting,’ she went on, ‘when Daddy and I came here, we were able to pass ourselves off as gods for over two thousand years. And even after that, when they’d seen through us, we made everyone believe we were great and powerful sorcerers. And the frog thing’s easy.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Piece of cake. And efficient, and totally non-violent, which is good. Also one hundred per cent fatal, of course, but in a non-violent way.’

  David looked worried. ‘Fatal? I thought you said they weren’t actually turned into anything, they just believe—’

  ‘That’s right. And guess what happens to a fully grown adult human after a week of trying to live on flies he catches with his tongue. That’s assuming he hasn’t tried to cross any roads or railway lines in the meantime.’ She laughed, though without humour. ‘We have this sacred commandment,’ she went on. ‘You shall not kill—’

  ‘Mmm,’ David interrupted. ‘We’ve got that one, too. But—’

  ‘And we’re really good about obeying it,’ she went on, ignoring him. ‘But there’s absolutely nothing in our holy books that says, You shall force-feed people on totally unsuit­able diets, so that’s all right. Where we come from, you see, we don’t distinguish between — you’ve got a neat little phrase for it, let’s see — the letter and the spirit of the law. If it’s not allowed, you don’t do it; if it’s allowed, that’s fine. So we find allowed ways of doing the things we aren’t allowed to do, like killing people, and everybody’s happy. We have no crime on our world, none whatsoever. And no love, of course, but I think I mentioned that already.’

  At least nobody seemed to be following them; no sirens, running feet or, come to that, little spongy paws floppetting down the pavement. David racked his brains, trying to figure how to get to Ravenscourt Park on foot —he didn’t have any money for the bus or the Tube, let alone a taxi, and the Philippa clone was still wearing nothing but Honest John’s old shirt. If his luck was run­ning anything like true to form, any minute now they’d run into another policeman who’d arrest them for loi­tering or indecent exposure. He wondered if he ought to share his concerns with her, since they now seemed to be on the same side. He felt sure it was the sensible thing to do.

  ‘By the way—’ he began.

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ she interrupted, ‘but I think we’ll get there much faster in one of those horseless carts. And besides, I haven’t got any shoes, and these stone slabs are hurting my feet. Can you work the horse-less cart things?’

  ‘Sort of— I don’t have one of my own. But—’

  ‘Fine.’

  They were standing next to a green Nissan. She slid her fingertips into the slight gap between the door and the door frame. There was a sound like a giant steel whelk being scooped out of a cast-iron shell, and the door popped open. The lock mechanism was hopelessly mangled.

  ‘Now,’ she said, sliding across into the driver’s seat, ‘how do you make these things go?’

  ‘You can’t. Not unless you’ve got the key.’

  ‘Don’t need a key, the door’s open.’

  ‘No.’ And to think, before this started he’d never been in any trouble of any kind. ‘The key doesn’t just open the door, it starts the engine.’

  ‘Oh.’ She frowned. ‘Are you sure about that? Only I was studying the one we were in earlier, and it seemed to me that if you take this wire here and connect it to this one here—’ The engine roared into life.

  ‘You worked that all out from first principles?’

  She shrugged. ‘Not exactly difficult,’ she replied. ‘Once you’ve figured that the power source is a series of controlled explosions, and that logically the igni­tion system must involve some form of electrical discharge’

  ‘Move over,’ he said quietly. ‘I need to sit here if I’m going to drive.’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘I think I’ve figured that out, too. This wheel steers, these pedals are the stop and the go, and this one — I’m guessing, but does it operate some kind of power-transmission ratio-interchange device, when used in connection with this stick with a knob on the top?’

  ‘Fine,’ David said. ‘You can drive.’

  ‘If you like,’ she replied, throwing the car into reverse and backing hard into a parked Sierra. ‘Not very robust, these things, are they?’

  It was an interesting journey, but nobody died, and they got there eventually. ‘This is it,’ she said, stamping on the brake and stalling in the middle of the road. ‘I can see the sign, look.’

  David, who’d spent the whole trip struggling to hold the mangled door shut, opened his eyes. ‘You’ve got a very good sense of direction,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Well, don’t just sit there. We’ve got work to do.’

  As he was climbing out of the car, something small and green moved abruptly, right on the edge of his field of vision. He shuddered, and made a conscious effort to ignore it. ‘Maybe we should stay here for a minute or two and watch,’ he suggested, ‘just in case there’s some­one in there.’

  ‘Don’t be so feeble,’ she replied. ‘We haven’t got time for playing silly games. Are you coming or not?’

  Another green shape jumped over his left foot, fol­lowed by another one, and another. In fact, there were little green shapes everywhere. For some reason, the phrase ‘police frogmen’ drifted into his mi
nd, and he grinned crazily. ‘Coming,’ he said.

  The doors were, conveniently, open; after the bad clones’ forced entry, it was improbable that they’d ever close again. Inside, the floor was covered with frogs— ‘It’s probably not as bad as it looks,’ she said. ‘Think about it.’

  ‘I don’t want to think about it, thanks very much. Quite the opposite, in fact.’

  ‘All right, then, just keep quiet and watch. Look, there on the bench.’

  She pointed at the row of goo-tanks (her birthplace; if she got famous in years to come, would they hang a little blue plaque over it?) as a small green frog who’d been sitting on the edge of the workbench suddenly flexed its hind legs and jumped neatly into the tank. There was a glopping noise— ‘There’s the commercial aspect to consider,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Tell me, has traditional French cuisine changed a lot over the last four hundred years?’

  ‘No! I mean,’ David amended, ‘yes. Radically. They’re all vegetarians now.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Vegetarian?’

  ‘Somebody who only eats vegetables.’

  ‘Ah.’ She nodded. ‘We used to call them “poor people” in my day, but—’

  David wished he hadn’t started this particular thread. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘it’s mostly people who don’t want to eat meat. You know, on ethical grounds.’

  ‘Really? Oh well. So if a vegetarian’s someone who only eats vegetables, a humanitarian—’

  ‘Let’s go and make sure your machine’s working all right, shall we?’

  He picked his way carefully through the frogs, trying very hard to bear in mind that each and any of them could be a six-foot, fifteen-stone policeman who thought he was a frog, to the door he remembered going through before. It was open, too, which was just as well — the girl could probably open it easily enough, but he wasn’t sure his nerves could stand very much more of that sort of thing. Carefully shooing away a cluster of frogs (or policemen) he pulled back the door and poked his head round.

  The room was empty.

  No, not quite empty. All the machines, consoles and other impressive-looking clutter had gone, but in the very centre of the room there was a bag of sugar.