Falling Sideways

by Tom Holt

  ‘They aren’t computers,’ David replied. ‘At least, not what we think of as computers, little grey tellies that go wrong all the time. Homeworld computers are groups of frogs—’

  ‘Precisely. Ten or twelve frogs; for a really big, power­ful mainframe, maybe as many as fifteen; and that’d be powerful enough to run a planet, send ships through interstellar space and maybe even handle Tomb Raider 2 without freezing solid.’ She grinned suddenly. ‘So if you had a computer made up of, say, six thousand frogs—’

  David blinked about five times in a row. ‘There’s a thought,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Quite. And, being one of mine, it’s pretty damn’ bril­liant. Of course, we’d only want to run it part of the time — say, when this lot are asleep, so as not to cut into their free time. Even so, I think it ought to be more than enough to sort out this funny little planet, don’t you?’

  David thought about that for a moment. ‘You want to rule the world?’

  ‘Good heavens, no. If we did that, everything would be our fault. I was thinking more of selling computer time to everyone who needs it. I think the expression I’m groping for is “global monopoly”.’ She smiled. ‘I just thought it’d be a good way to make lots and lots and lots of money, that’s all. To keep us and all your relatives here in a modest degree of comfort.’ She frowned. ‘Just in case the penny’s still teetering in the balance rather than actually dropping, you may care to consider the concept of a happy ending. You know, where we can all live happily ever after, doing whatever we want and not having to go to work or do our own laundry. Well?’ She challenged him abruptly. ‘Isn’t it what you’ve always wanted?’

  He opened his mouth; and then he thought: a nice house in the country (and whatever else it may be, Canada’s indisputably a country), my own computer business; and when I was a kid I always thought it might be fun to have a brother or a sister... And Philippa, of course. She’s what I always wanted. It’s just that— (And at the back of his mind, a very familiar voice said, ‘Finished. Forty-seven seconds ahead of schedule, what’s more. Now, how’s that for planning?’)

  For a split second — about the time it takes to put a pound’s worth of petrol into your car, no more — all David wanted to do was grab John firmly by the ears and bounce him off the sides of buildings. Since that wasn’t really practical, he did the next best thing and broadcast feelings of hatred and contempt so intense that television viewers in Stevenage called the BBC to complain about signal interference. Pointless, of course; he couldn’t feel John’s presence anywhere, inside or outside his mind. And if John didn’t want to be found, finding him was a bit like trying to swat a flying wasp with a sledgeham­mer.

  Of course, David rationalised, once he’d cooled down enough to be able to think, he only means it for the best. Probably thinks he’s helping. Well, obviously he was helping, even after I thought he’d buzzed off for good. That was fine, as long as I didn’t know; but no, he had to go and spoil it, because he simply can’t help showing off how clever he’s been—

  And he has been clever, too. Absolutely no doubt whatsoever about that. And here I am, on the verge of becoming Emperor David I of No-Longer-British Columbia and Bill Gates, having apparently won the love of the girl of my dreams, not to mention having the useful knack of being able to turn policemen and similar pests into pondlife. It’s— ‘It’s impossible.’ Philippa interrupted. ‘On the one hand, everything anybody could want. On the other hand, the feeling that you were born with a silver spoon rammed violently up your bum. Oh, and whether having a life partner who can read your mind is a good thing or a bad thing, a blessing or a curse — that’s something you’d better not have to think too hard about, if you know what’s good for you.’

  David shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I mean, I suppose it’s roughly the same for Crown Princes and tsarevitches and all that crowd; yes, they get all the nice things and the big houses and stuff, but from the moment they’re born, their lives aren’t their own, every last detail’s mapped out for them, they’re the result of hundreds of generations of careful dynastic planning.’ He smiled bleakly. ‘Most of them seemed to cope, I guess. But of course they knew, and I’ve only just found out—’

  Philippa clicked her tongue. ‘You’re going to have to sort that one out for yourself,’ she said. ‘After all, com­pared to me you’re laughing; I’m not even the lead, I’m just the accessory chick. For God’s sake, I’ve been viciously killed at least once.’ She yawned, and stretched. ‘You know what I’d do, if I was in your shoes?’

  David thought for a moment. ‘Limp?’ he suggested.

  ‘In your shoes metaphorically, cretin. If I was in your figurative shoes, I’d shut my face and make the most of it. Do what everybody else does. Stop trying to make your life into an ideal home and just camp out in it. I mean, think. Exactly what alternatives have you got, short of hanging yourself?’

  It occurred to David that in Philippa’s vocabulary, upbeat was Newspeak for getting your teeth kicked in. True, if he was only a week or so old and had been born in a tank of green slime— ‘—You’d be bloody miserable too. Exactly. And here’s me trying to cheer you up. I think it ought to be the other way around, don’t you?’

  David sighed. ‘Probably,’ he said. ‘I just wish—’ Without warning, Philippa smiled. He wasn’t sure he’d seen her — this Philippa, at any rate — do a really full-out, fifteen-hundred-amp smile before. It changed a lot of things, somehow. ‘Screw what you wish,’ she said. ‘Face it, this is as good as it’s likely to get. And this time the day before yesterday you were a penniless, desperate fugitive cowering in a lock-up industrial unit in Watford. Really, there’s no pleasing some people.’

  David stood up. ‘Oh well,’ he said. ‘Suppose I’d better go and kiss a few frogs, then.’

  ‘Better had,’ Philippa agreed. ‘That’s the thing about work, it’s something you can throw yourself into and not worry any more.’

  ‘Ah. A bit like a combine harvester, then.’

  She appeared not to have heard him. ‘And in case you were wondering,’ she said, ‘though if you were, surely you’d have mentioned it just once in all this time—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This.’ She leaned forward and kissed him, with a certain degree of enthusiasm. For a moment, a voice in his head tried to make the point that it didn’t mean a damn thing, any more than a tape recorder talking to you when you hit the play button means that it likes you. And for a moment, David wondered if the voice in his head was his own or someone else’s. And for yet another moment, he thought, That reminds me, I’ve got to kiss six thousand frogs as soon as we reach Canada. And for yet another moment, he reflected on the fact that, to all intents and purposes, he lived in a cosmos where God’s name was Honest John. Then, as each of these moments crumpled and burned up like a sheet of paper in a good fire, he realised that he didn’t care: it didn’t even matter if the kiss lasted exactly to the nanosecond that John had calculated it would back in the early seventeenth century. All that mattered was the fact that he was participating in the kiss, and that some­how, utterly improbable as it might have seemed only a day or so earlier, he had finally managed to reach the end of the story.