Basic authorship theory, as further amended by the characters' agents, adds the proviso that characters can only believably do things which are in character, and any attempt to get out of their allotted book would be a breach of credibility, resulting in immediate implosion.
Basic authorship theory, as amended by inserting a crowbar into a weak seam and leaning on it, states that there are loopholes. These range -from the well-known minor technicalities, which make it possible for tired and overworked authors to carry out the occasional discreet cattle-raid into an adjoining author's stock of ideas, to the celebrated and entirely mythical airlock in the cellars underneath the west wing of the Library of Congress.
There is no known loophole that allows a character from one book to hop into another book whenever he likes. By the same token, there is no way of getting into the vaults of the First State Bank of Idaho without first going past the security; but only because to date nobody has stacked a wagonload of dynamite up against the wall and lit the fuse.
Coincidentally, in a dimension long ago and far away, the senior partner of Messrs Shark, Shark and Shark, a firm of lawyers with a very specialised but extremely lucrative practice, was advising a client.
'Now then,' said Mr Shark. 'I don't suppose you've given any real thought to constructive inheritance tax planning. Well, have you?'
King Lear bit his lip. 'Now you mention it,' he replied, 'I can't say I have.'
Mr Shark shook his head sadly. 'It's about time you did, don't you think? What I would advise you to do is to gift over your kingdom to your two eldest daughters. Then, provided you survive the gift by seven years, there'll be no tax to pay whatsoever.'
'Really?'
'Really.'
King Lear rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'Sounds like a good idea, then. Only - well, it's a bit drastic, isn't it? Just sort of giving it to them like that with no strings attached. What if...
Mr Shark frowned. 'Can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, now can we? I mean, do you want to be stuck with a massive great tax bill?'
'No, no, of course not. But couldn't I keep a little something back? A hundred knights, say, something like that?'
Mr Shark sighed. 'Sorry,' he said, 'but that would constitute a gift with reservation, which is caught by the anti-avoidance provisions and that would render the whole scheme void. And if a thing's worth doing-'
'Yes, you're right, I suppose. But why only my two eldest daughters? Isn't that a bit rough on the youngest? She's a good kid, and-'
'True,' interrupted Mr Shark wearily, 'but she's married to the King of France, isn't she? Which makes her non-UK resident, and the statutory provisions about taxation of offshore interests would just make a mockery of the whole scheme. You do see that, don't you?'
'Yes. Yes. If you say so, I suppose .
'Right, I'll get on with drawing up the papers and I'll let you know when they're ready. Thanks for dropping in. Bye.'
No sooner had the door closed than the phone rang.
'Yes?'
'Two callers holding for you, Mr Shark,' said his assistant. 'I've got Macbeth asking for advice about this proposed takeover bid. He says he can see your point about why it's a good idea, but he can't help thinking it's a bloody, foul and unnatural merger and he reckons he'd have problems sleeping nights. And then there's Hamlet on the other line, won't say what it's about.'
'I see. Tell Macbeth to be bloody, bold and resolute, and we're sending him an interim bill. I'll take the Hamlet call.'
Buzz. Click.
'Hello. Mr Shark?'
'Shark here. How's things? Look, about your inheritance claim-'
'Actually,' said Hamlet, 'I wasn't calling about that. What I-'
'I think,' said Mr Shark firmly, 'that you have ample grounds for contesting your father's will, and if I were you I'd crack on and have a damn good go. Now I know you're fond of your uncle and you don't want to upset your mother, but really, it's the principle of the thing. I feel sure that if your father knew what was going on, he'd turn in his grave.'
'Okay,' said Hamlet, 'whatever you think's best. What I actually wanted to talk to you about-'
'I mean,' Mr Shark continued, 'yes, your scruples do you credit, obviously you're a very conscientious young man, and I know you'd really prefer to carry on with your academic career rather than go into the family business anyway. Nevertheless I put it to you-'
'Mr Shark.'
'Yes?'
'Shut up,' said Hamlet, 'and listen. Through no fault of my own, I've somehow managed to get myself trapped in the real world. How do I go about getting back?'
There was a long pause - at Mr Shark's charging rates, about six hundred pounds' worth. 'Mr Shark?'
'It's an interesting problem you've got there,' said Mr Shark. 'Yes, certainly very interesting. All sorts of possibilities for creative tax planning, for a start.'
'Fine. What can I actually do? I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, I'm falling to bits down here. My nose is currently glued on with Araldite and every time I move my right arm there are little tearing noises.
'I sympathise,' replied Mr Shark, 'believe me, I do. Unfortunately, we're into a rather grey area of the law here. I think this may take some time.'
'Time? How much time?'
'Immigration law is tricky stuff,' Mr Shark replied. 'The last thing we want to do is rush into anything. We could come badly unstuck if we do.'
'Mr Shark,' said Hamlet, controlling himself with difficulty, 'I'm going to come badly unstuck any bloody minute now. Have you got any suggestions, or would you rather I took my business elsewhere?'
'Now then,' said Mr Shark, 'calm down, let's not say anything we might later regret. You have my word we'll start looking into this thing right away, and as soon as there's any progress I'll let you know. Happy now?'
'I suppose so.'
'And,' Mr Shark went on, 'in the meantime we will of course need a small payment on account, say twenty thousand to be going on with, so if you'd just send a cheque-'
'Ah. That might be a problem. You see, I haven't actually got any money over here. Not as such.'
'I see.' Mr Shark leaned back in his chair and scowled at the ceiling. 'You know, you're putting me in a very difficult position here.'
'Really? Your toes have just fallen off too, have they?'
'I'm sorry,' said Mr Shark. 'I'd love to help, really I would, but our policy as a firm is very strict. Unless we have money up front, there's very little we can-'
The line went dead. Mr Shark shrugged and replaced the receiver.
'I don't know,' he sighed. 'Bloody clients.' The literary equivalent of stacking dynamite against a wall:
'Hello?'
'Hello, this is Jane Armitage, I'm afraid I'm not in to take your call right now but if you'd care to leave a message...'
'Hey!' Regalian shouted into the receiver. 'Cut that out! I know you're there, because the line's been engaged for the last half hour. Hello?'
'...as soon as I return. Thank you. Beeeep.'
Regalian swore under his breath. He hated talking into the bloody machines.
'Right,' he said, 'now listen carefully. This is what you've got to do...'
Mr Prosser, of Prosser and White Funeral Services Ltd, drew his dressing gown tight around his waist and peered round the door.
'Yes?' he said.
'Excuse me,' said Jane, 'but it did say twenty-four-hour service in the phone book, and it's rather an emergency.'
Mr Prosser suppressed an inner sigh. Twenty years in corpse disposal had taught him that people who are dead today are almost invariably still dead tomorrow, and frequently still dead the day after. The term 'emergency' should not, therefore, have any meaning within the parameters of his profession. Still, bereavement does funny things to people, and the golden rule of bespoke grave making is, be sympathetic, even to the nerks and the time-wasters. 'Of course,' he said. 'Do please come in. He removed the chain from the door, and refrained from mentioning the fact th
at 'twenty-four-hour service' was in fact a reference to his answering machine.
'Thank you ever so much,' Jane said, having refused a cup of tea. 'To get straight to the point, I need someone embalmed.'
'I see,' said Mr Prosser. 'And the identity of the sadly departed?'
Jane pointed. 'Him.'
There is another golden rule of bespoke grave making, if anything, even more fundamental than the first. Never be shocked, never allow yourself to be sickened or revolted, never let the punter see that you want to throw up. 'Quite,' said Mr Prosser. 'Might I just point out that the sadly departed would still appear to be alive?'
'Yes, I know,' Jane replied wearily. 'And we did try the hospital first but they threw us out.' She shuddered from head to foot. 'I was all right, but he landed sort of awkwardly. We've got all the bits in this plastic bag here. Actually, while you're at it, you might just see if you can't sort of sew them back on, if that's all right with you.
Golden rule, Mr Prosser muttered to himself under his breath, golden rule. 'Perhaps I'm not explaining myself clearly enough, miss,' he said. 'We really do prefer to specialise here in, um, dead people. That's basically what we're all about, you see, and your, er, friend here isn't really all that dead, now is he? Not as such, I mean.'
'All right,' said a voice from under the paper bag, 'let me talk to him. Listen, creep.'
'Um-'
'Don't interrupt. Now, unless you make with the suture and the embalming fluid pretty damn quick, I shall be back here tomorrow. And I shall take this bag off, and I shall strut up and down in front of your shop window stopping passers-by and saying, You don't want to go in there, the service is absolutely terrible, I mean, just look at me. Now, are you going to co-operate?'
Mr Prosser sat down, closed his eyes and swallowed a couple of times. Then he stood up again. He was twitching slightly, but, apart from that, he was his usual professional self once more.
'That won't be necessary, sir,' he said politely. 'Now, if you would care to follow me into the, er, if you would care to follow me.'
'I shall be watching what you do,' Hamlet went on. 'And don't you dare cut any corners, or you'll regret it. The first suggestion of a bolt through the neck, and I phone Esther Rantzen.'
'Quite,' said Mr Prosser. 'This way, please.'
'Yes? Wassawant?'
'It's Jane here. I got your message. Are-?'
Regalian growled, and switched on his bedside light. 'For crying Out loud, it's half past two in the morning.'
'I've only just got in. Look, if you're ready, I can start immediately.'
'Alternatively, you could go to bed and we could make a start in the morning. Have you considered that line of approach in any significant detail?'
'I...'
'Yes, I know, it's a tricky decision to have to make, and I don't want to rush you. Tell you what, you sleep on it and call me back tomorrow. Goodnight.'
'I think,' Jane said, 'we should start right away, if it's all the same to you. It's really a question of how long things are going to hold together at this end.'
'Hold together?'
Jane glanced at the figure stretched out on her sofa, reeking of preservatives and muttering softly about the pain in his seams. 'Yes,' she said. 'I don't think we've got much time. So I'm going to make a start at my end. I'll be about twenty-five minutes, okay?'
'Okay,' Regalian sighed. 'Don't use too many technical terms.'
Jane replaced the receiver and tottered wearily through into her workroom, where she plugged in the machine and slipped in the disk.
'Inspiration, please,' she said.
And,, either by coincidence or some unaccountable cross-dimensional telepathy, inspiration came. It wasn't particularly high-class inspiration; it bore the same degree of resemblance to the good stuff that works canteen coffee bears to the finest Arabica. But it did the job, in the circumstances, as far as the situation required.
Jane began to type.
Regalian slept, she typed. And, as he lay on his crude couch of z'myri hides, his bronzed limbs stretched out in slumber, he dreamed...
... Of a strange landscape, of a kind he had never seen before.. It seemed to him as if he was walking down a dusty and deserted street, between rows of tall wooden-framed buildings with weird shiny squares set into their sides, like sheets of crystal. And he noticed that he was wearing some outlandish costume: a buckskin shirt fringed with strips of hide, a large, broad-brimmed hat, strange wide-legged trousers and long boots, and around his waist a thick, wide belt, from which hung a scabbard. But there was no sword in the scabbard; only a small, heavy iron object that looked something like a hammer.
He stopped walking. There were three men barring his way. They too wore the same outlandish garb, and the same strange instruments hung by their sides. Their swarthy faces were grim.
'Howdy, stranger,' cried the tallest of them ...
CHAPTER FIVE
'Howdy, stranger,' said the tall man. Regalian blinked.
'Sorry?' he said.
'I said,' said the tall man, 'howdy. You deaf or somethin'?'
Regalian smiled ingratiatingly. 'I do beg your pardon,' he replied, 'I was miles away. My, what an attractive and pleasantly situated township you have here.'
Confused, the tall man turned to his colleagues and conferred briefly in whispers. 'Yeah,' he said eventually. 'We reckon it's kinda cute ourselves. Trouble is, we don't take too kindly to strangers in these parts.'
'Quite right, too,' Regalian replied, nodding. 'It's always better to be cautious at first when meeting new people. A certain initial diffidence frequently proves to be the bedrock on which a lasting relationship of mutual support and trust is constructed, don't you find?'
The tall man looked at him; rather as you'd expect a sentry to look when he's issued his time-honoured challenge and been told, 'Foe'. He didn't seem entirely sure what he should do next, but he was a tryer. He cleared his throat nervously.
'Reckon so, stranger,' he said. 'So why don't you jes' turn yourself round and head straight back out of town the way you jes' done come?'
He hesitated, as if aware that he was laying it on just a bit too thick. Too late now, however, to do anything about it.
'I quite agree,' Regalian said. 'What an eminently sensible suggestion, if I may say so. If one of you gentlemen would be kind enough to point me in the way of the next settlement down the line, I should be eternally obliged to you.
This time, the tall man refused to be drawn, and there was an embarrassed silence; during which Regalian offered the three of them a peppermint. Eventually the man in the red shirt, who gave the impression of having learned his lines and being extremely loath to waste them, expressed the view that the town wasn't big enough for the both of them.
'Excuse me?'
'You heard.'
'Yes,' Regalian answered, 'but might I just briefly trouble you for a few words of explanation? You referred to "the both of us", but, in point of fact, between us we number four. Which particular two did you have in mind?'
That, as far as the three men were concerned, put the tin lid on it. Without taking their eyes off Regalian, they started to back slowly away, and in due course backed right into the town watering-trough, fell over their feet and landed in a small, confused heap on the ground.
'Hey,' whined the tall man, from underneath his two associates, 'that ain't fair. That's cheatin'.'
Regalian shrugged, drew his revolver and thumbed back the hammer. 'You could say that,' he replied. 'Now, get up slowly, or I'll blow your fucking heads off.'
The three men relaxed. Admittedly, they were being held at gunpoint at the mercy of their enemy, but at least they knew where they stood, or rather sprawled. Any minute now, one of them would try and go for his gun, there'd be some nice, familiar shooting and
Quite so. For the record, the man in the red shirt went for his gun first, but he was so flustered that he dropped it on his foot. The tall man followed his lead, however, and was all poised
for the nauseating sensation of hot lead punching holes in his body when he noticed that Regalian hadn't moved. In fact, he wasn't even looking in the right direction.
'Hey!' he shouted.
'With you in a minute,' Regalian replied over his shoulder. 'Gosh,' he added, 'that really is a stroke of luck.'
The tall man froze, his revolver in his hand and levelled at Regalian's heart. 'Luck?' he repeated helplessly.
Regalian nodded. 'Absolutely amazing,' he replied. 'Look, you see that big white building with the horse and cart standing outside?'
'The livery stable, yeah. What-?'
'Well,' Regalian went on. 'Follow the line of the roof about seventy yards to the left and you'll come to a low tree. Look over the top of that and you'll see another tree, sort of roundish with a bald patch halfway up. Got that?'
'Sure thing. What-?'
'Now then,' Regalian said. 'Look closely at the lowest branch on the right-hand side, and if I'm right, and I'm pretty sure I am, the small green bird perched there is in fact a Jackson's warbler. Now, according to Audubon...'
The tall man narrowed his eyes and stared; and just when he thought he could make out a small green blob, someone standing behind him fetched him a terrific crack with a pickaxe handle, and he fell unconscious on to his nose beside his two similarly concussed associates.
Regalian sighed, holstered his gun, and wiped a little oil ostentatiously off his hands. Then he nodded to the man with the pickaxe handle.
'Not bad,' the pickaxe-handle user said. 'Against the rules, but who cares a damn, anyway?'
Regalian nodded, and then extended his hand.
'Mr Skinner, I presume?' he said.
Everybody knows that characters in books can do things that ordinary people can't.
They can jump off tall buildings and survive. They can remember, word for word, conversations they had sixteen years ago. They can fire ten shots from a six-shot revolver without reloading. They can encounter historical figures who haven't actually been born at the time the book is set. They can get from Paris to Marseilles faster than it would take a mortal just to get to the front of the checking-in queue, and still arrive cool, refreshed and without a splitting headache. They can even fade out at the end of Chapter Five hanging by their fingernails from a precipice and stroll on at the beginning of Chapter Seven in immaculate evening dress without a word of explanation.
My Hero Tom Holt. Page 6
