Falling Sideways

by Tom Holt

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘Would it be all right,’ David asked, ‘if I burst into tears at this point?’

  She was only a few steps behind him. ‘Now what’s the matter?’ she was saying. ‘God, you don’t half make a fuss.’

  He moved aside to let her past.

  ‘Right,’ she said, ‘I suppose I’d better be getting along.’ She hesitated, and frowned, as if making up her mind about something. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘For your help, I mean. At least, you didn’t help, exactly, but I suppose if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be here. Anyway, you turned out to be quite useful in the long run, even if it was by accident. So — well, thanks.’

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  She licked her right forefinger and dipped it into the sugar. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I guess you should leave now. I know I said a lot of stuff about you going to our planet, but I wasn’t thinking straight at the time. I wouldn’t go there if I were you. They aren’t very keen on — well, strangers. At least, not your kind of—’ She tailed off, sounding rather unhappy. ‘Please go away,’ she said.

  ‘Oh.’ He hadn’t expected that. ‘But your spaceship.’

  ‘How many times have I got to tell you, it isn’t a spaceship, it’s a—’

  ‘Whatever the bloody hell it is.’ The vehemence of his own words surprised him; he wasn’t used to shouting at people, and he was rather pleased to discover that he was actually rather good at it. ‘It isn’t there any more. It’s gone.’

  She looked at him. ‘No, it hasn’t,’ she said.

  ‘But...’ He looked back at her, with fifteen per cent extra, absolutely free. ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘Where’s all the stuff gone? The computers and machines and stuff? It was absolutely jam-packed with them—’

  ‘What? Oh.’ And she giggled. He didn’t know she could do that. ‘Oh, none of that was real,’ she said. ‘It was, you know, like the frogs.’

  He frowned, puzzled. ‘Recycled policemen?’

  ‘Optical illusions. Things you thought you could see, but they weren’t actually there. I forgot all about it till you mentioned it; standard operating procedure when we let primitives—’ She stopped and pretended she hadn’t just said the p-word. ‘When we let evolutionarily challenged life forms on board our transport platforms. We make them see what they expect to see. It keeps them happy, and it reduces the risk of them figuring out how our technology works.’

  ‘Ah. Fine.’ David looked round. ‘So that’s your tech­nology, is it? A pound of Silver Spoon granulated?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, silly, that’s a bag of sugar.

  We always like to suck something sweet during take-off. It helps with the spacesickness.’

  ‘But there’s nothing else here!’

  ‘Ah.’ She smiled. ‘That’s what all you pr— emerging species say. And that’s why we have to lay on all the imaginary clutter, to stop you panicking.’

  He frowned. If this was drivel, at least it was internally consistent drivel, which put it a couple of notches above ninety per cent of what you heard on the television news. ‘So what makes it go?’ he asked. ‘Or are you trying to tell me there’s a bloody great big hook screwed into the other side of the ceiling, with a steel cable and a winch?’

  ‘Same principle, actually.’ She sounded impressed. ‘Slightly more advanced hardware, but the same basic idea. To be honest, I wouldn’t have expected you to be able to grasp that.’

  ‘Thank you so much.’ He was starting to get very annoyed, to the point where annoyance turned to anger, but it wasn’t simply because she was being insufferably patronising about his species. Something else, some­thing major was bothering him, but one part of his mind wouldn’t tell the rest what it was. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’d better start it up, then.’

  ‘I will. As soon as you get off.’

  ‘No.’

  Awkward silence. ‘All right,’ she said eventually, ‘why not?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ It wasn’t the answer he’d intended to give, but for what it was worth, it was true. ‘I don’t want to stay here,’ he ventured. ‘Not after what you, well, the other you and your father did to me. And while we’re on the subject,’ he added, ‘why exactly was it necessary to frame me for murder?’

  She shrugged. ‘Search me,’ she said. ‘Must’ve been a reason, I suppose, but I can’t remember what it was. But you know that parts of my memory got jumbled. Because you didn’t do the resequencing,’ she added.

  ‘Must’ve been a reason,’ he repeated. ‘Fine. Do you think it might have been to give me an incentive to go along with being shipped off out of the way? Sound plausible?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Sounds the sort of thing Daddy would’ve come up with. Attention to detail, and all that.’

  ‘Quite.’ He nodded. ‘But you’re forgetting. The orig­inal plan was to ship me back to your rotten planet. That’s how I got here in the first place — you know, when there were all those imaginary computers and things in here, and you lot tried to make me think I’d been abducted by frogs.’

  She shrugged. ‘I can’t really help you there,’ she said. ‘Like I told you, some of it’s missing.’

  ‘The point is—’ he was almost shouting ‘—the point is, your precious father was sending me to your precious planet. So why don’t you want me going there?’

  ‘You wouldn’t like it. And they wouldn’t like you. Two good reasons.’

  ‘But not the real reason.’

  ‘All right, it’s not the real reason. Now get off my transporter platform, before I throw you off.’

  He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. And the next thing he saw was the concrete floor, just visible in the gaps between frogs, rushing up to meet him.

  David had a dream. In the dream he was Gulliver, lying on his back pegged to the ground by Lilliputians, and there were scores of one-tenth scale policemen in green uniforms bouncing up and down on his chest, snaring passing gnats with their long prehensile tongues.

  Fortunately for his peace of mind, the entire dream melted away like a snowman as soon as he opened his eyes again, and saw that he was sprawled on the floor of Honest John’s workshop, hemmed in on all sides by a whole lot of frogs. Loads of frogs. An entire green ocean of them.

  At another time, under different circumstances, he’d have been seriously freaked out by that. As it was, he found he could take them in his stride, or more accu­rately in his hop. In fact, he managed to cross the floor as far as the doorway leading to the transporter pad without treading on a single frog, but it was more luck than judgement. Typical, of course; if he’d been worry­ing himself sick about hurting helpless amphibians and taking special care, he’d probably have flattened half a dozen out of sheer nervous fecklessness.

  He pulled open the door. The room was empty, apart from that damned bag of sugar.

  She’d gone.

  He leaned against the door frame, trying to think. Things were bad, very bad; on top of all his other prob­lems (which he was coping with by ignoring them, the way he dealt with most utility bills and the ruder letters from his bank) it looked like he’d just lost the only girl he’d ever really loved, or at least the only girl he’d ever really loved, version 1.1. For some reason, this seemed to matter more to him than the complete and utter dem­olition of his life — probably because he hadn’t managed to make himself believe in it yet, but never mind. Actually, it felt rather good to be able to say that the greatest sorrow afflicting him was a broken heart, as opposed to, say, a broken thermostat or a crashed hard drive, as would have been the case under normal cir­cumstances...

  Besides: you don’t discover something utterly earth-shattering, like proof of life on other worlds, and then calmly put it out of your mind and go back to fretting about your everyday mundane inconveniences, such as being wanted for murder. You stick with it, press on till you’ve uncovered the Truth That’s Out There — and once you’ve done that, presumably, the screen flashes ‘Game Over’ and th
e reset button solves all the problems you’ve caused for yourself along the way.

  Nothing for it; he’d have to go after her. To Homeworld, or whatever the wretched place was called. That in turn meant figuring out how to work the trans­port device (and him not even able to replace a broken fuse). Well, he’d faced greater challenges before. He’d installed Windows 2000 without consulting the manual; more impressive still, he’d installed Windows 2000 with the assistance of the manual, an achievement compara­ble to rebuilding a Spitfire engine by following the procedures set out in the Haynes Guide for an Me 109.

  David walked into the room and shut the door.

  It had to have a start button, even if it was nothing more than a glorified lift. The question was, where?

  First, start by eliminating the humiliatingly obvious. He picked up the bag of sugar and looked under it. No button.

  Next, he inspected every square inch he could reach for signs of hidden panels, concealed monitors or con­soles made out of totally transparent plastic. Nothing.

  If all else fails, click on ‘Help’. ‘Help!’ he said.

  Zzzxt’prt. Sfhds gdsgfqcshxzc. Either the strange noises inside his head were words, or at some stage he’d swal­lowed a diehard bee. Please wait while Wormholes prepares HelpMage to guide you through your enquiry.

  David bit his lip. Getting somewhere, maybe, but he had a bad feeling about this. Meanwhile, the bag of sugar had raised itself eighteen inches off the floor and was pouring sugar into a neat cone, ten inches high. When the bag was empty, it miraculously refilled itself and started all over again.

  Definitely a bad feeling.

  HelpMage complete. Showing index. Indicate the entry you want, or state search topic.

  Now the spilled sugar was rising into the air like sand caught in a whirlwind; swirling a couple of times, then forming itself into shapes that were quite definitely let­ters, though of course he couldn’t read them, not being fluent in Homeworldese. That only left State topic, and he knew all about that— ‘Um,’ he said, ‘how about a translation?’

  Go to Settings and select language required. ‘Fine. How do I go to Settings?’

  Go to Start Menu.

  ‘Wonderful. How do I go to Start menu?’ Initiate Start menu sequence.

  ‘Bugger.’

  Do you want to initiate Start Menu?

  ‘Yes, please.’

  The floating sugar-shapes vanished suddenly, and were replaced by others, equally incomprehensible.

  ‘How do I translate the Start Menu?’

  Go to Settings and select language required.

  In a way, it was almost reassuring, like coming home after a long journey; the only real difference between this system and the ones he was used to dealing with was that there wasn’t anything he could hit, apart from the bag of sugar. Nevertheless; if the people who’d built this thing had managed to leave their planet and head out into the stars, surely it stood to reason that their tech­nology was just a bit more advanced . . . Well, it was worth a try.

  ‘How do I make this thing go to Homeworld?’ Select Operations Menu and indicate Go. David thought for a moment. ‘How do I indicate

  select the Operations Menu without,’ he added quickly, ‘using the Start Menu?’

  Say ‘Select Operations Menu’.

  ‘This is too easy. All right, select Operations Menu.’ Operations Menu selected.

  ‘OK.’ He closed his eyes. ‘How do I indicate Go?’ Say Go.

  ‘Go.’

  That function is not available. You have performed an illegal action— The bag of sugar hit the floor and exploded, shower­ing him with tiny white crystals. Instinctively he dived towards the doorway and pulled the door open. Only then did he pause.

  ‘Why isn’t that function available?’

  Device is currently in use. Device will be available for use in 42.774 standard Earth rotational cycles. You have perf— He jumped through the door and slammed it behind him. A frog hopped on to his foot and tried to jump up his trouser leg. As he bent down to shoo it away, there was a deafening crash just beyond the door, and painfully bright light flooded out through the keyhole.

  Just for fun, he tried the door handle (quite gently; he didn’t actually want to open the damn thing). It was stuck, and neglected-saucepan-handle hot. He let go quickly. That, apparently, was that. She’d gone, and taken interstellar travel with her, and left him behind to face a bewildering array of versions of the one-eyed man and the majestic wrath of the law.

  Bitch, David thought, but the word wouldn’t take in his mind. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew she’d left him behind for his own good, or what she perceived as his own good. Probably, deep down, she’d quite liked him. A bit.

  Yeah, right.

  Not, he decided, that any of that mattered any more, since she’d gone and wasn’t coming back until he was either dead or the oldest lag in B wing. 42.774 years, and that was when the lift was working normally. These aliens, he decided, might just be the only sentient beings in the galaxy who could ride on the Bakerloo Line with anything resembling equanimity.

  So, now what?

  He slumped against the wall and stood for a while, counting frogs in an aimless fashion. Really, if he was going to be sensible about this, the only thing that he could do would be to find that nice man with the miss­ing eye, apologise properly and ask if he could still take him up on his kind offer of a fresh start in beautiful rural Canada. The moral indignation that had put him off that idea originally had evaporated somewhat, ever since he’d caught himself doing exactly the sort of thing they’d been doing to him (only much quicker and far, far less efficiently); and, as befitted a soppy young man who’d just lost The Only Girl in the World (or rather Worlds, plural), he was at that I-don’t-really-mind-what-happens-now-so-long-as-I-can-droop-about-sighing phase, and going to British Columbia would probably involve far less effort than living off his wits while evad­ing the combined resources of the State.

  So, that’s what I’ll do. The next question, of course, was how to find the nice one-eyed man. Awkward — but the girl, Philippa Levens #1, would probably know, and he’d be sure to find her at Alex’s flat— Bloody hellfire, he thought.

  —Because, of course, the Bad Clones had been to Alex’s flat and come out again looking all baffled, since they’d found nothing there but bare walls and a bag of sugar.

  ‘Excuse me,’ David said instinctively as he hurried towards the door. Disturbingly, at least some of the frogs got out of the way; but he didn’t stop to think about that.

  The car she’d stolen was still there. He started it up and drove as quietly and sedately as he could — bloody silly to get done for speeding at a time like this — until he recognised the familiar symptoms of getting lost in west London late at night (primarily, crossing Hammersmith Bridge for the second time, but on this occasion from the other direction). He emptied his mind, trying to think of woodland flowers and village cricket matches and cows being herded down a narrow country lane, and duly found himself outside Alex’s flat without really knowing how he’d got there. Amazing, the way it always seemed to work.

  As he put the handbrake on, he tried to remember what if any indictable mayhem the Bad Clones had com­mitted last time he’d been there. Tricky: so much had happened that he was running out of RAM to store it in.

  He seemed to remember a policeman, and a frog, but nothing that made the area inherently dangerous. Nevertheless, he exercised extreme caution when getting out of the car and approaching Alex’s door. Fortunately, nobody could’ve been watching, since David being deliberately cautious was probably the most sinister and furtive-looking spectacle anybody could ever hope to see.

  Now what? Do I ring the bell and wait, or do I break the door down, or what? And how exactly do you break down a door? They stopped using their shoulders in films around the time Technicolor first came in, so pre­sumably it’s best if you kick. But where? You could hurt yourself, kicking a big, solid door.

 
Then he noticed that the door was slightly open, which solved that one. Closer inspection revealed sub­stantial damage to the wood around the lock, presumably caused by thirteen vengeful clones in a hurry. He pushed it with his fingertips until he could squeeze through, and started up the darkened stairs. Luckily, he’d only gone a few steps when the light clicked on, because the shock made him jump and nearly fall over.

  ‘Ah,’ said a familiar voice, proceeding from a familiar face, ‘there you are. We were wondering where on earth you’d got to.’

  David studied him like a cat inspecting another cat across a narrow lawn. ‘Do I know you?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ the man replied. ‘We were talking to each other just this afternoon. I was telling you about —well, everything, really, and how we’ve fixed up a nice new life for you in—’

  ‘British Columbia, yes. So you’re him.’

  He nodded. ‘And then, when we came to give you a lift to the helicopter pad, you’d wandered off somewhere and we couldn’t find you. But not to worry, you’re here now. And we can sort out some new arrangements for getting you safely away.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ David said— Well, it was. That was why he’d come here, to claim his free prize and his Blankety-Blank chequebook and pen for being a good sport. So why did he feel like his ears should be pressed back against the sides of his skull?

  ‘In fact,’ the man went on, ‘this is pretty damn con­venient, all things considered, because we can actually send you on your way from here, without having to go trekking about the countryside. Just follow me — well, of course, you know the way, don’t you?’

  David stayed precisely where he was. ‘From here?’ he repeated, thinking of the bag of sugar.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Bit of a long story to go into, stand­ing on the stairs like this. Let’s go up to the flat and talk about it there.’

  ‘No, thanks. I like discussing things on stairs, it reminds me of when I was at college. Are you sure I’ll be going to British Columbia?’