My Hero Tom Holt.

by My Hero (lit)

  The Doctor gazed at him, mild as lamb stew with lentils. 'My agenda, you mean? I would have thought that would be obvious by now.'

  'I'm thick, you'll have to explain. I think my brain came free with twelve litres of lawnmower oil.'

  'It's very simple,' said the Doctor. 'I'm going to rule the world, and you and your, um, subsequent models are going to make it possible.'

  'Really?'

  'Absolutely. I shall build an army of invincible artificial humanoids, seize absolute power and reform human society on strictly scientific principles. It's my life's work, you know. Or at least,' he added, 'my life's work for the last twenty-three years. Before that, of course, I worked for the soap powder people.'

  Hamlet stood up, and as he did so he began to realise the extent of the changes that had been made to him since he was last on his feet. It was a strange and somewhat awkward feeling, but exhilarating, like taking a Challenger tank for a joyride. 'Sorry, mate,' he said, 'but no thanks. Don't bother to show me to the door, I can probably walk out through the wall.'

  The Doctor gave him a look, woolly but stern, like a cross between Judge Jeffreys and a sheep. 'I really wouldn't advocate that,' he said. 'Really, I wouldn't.'

  'No?'

  'Quite. You see, I've planted a bomb in your chest.'

  'Oh.'

  The Doctor nodded. 'Only a small bomb,' he went on. 'Powerful, but small. There's no danger unless I operate the remote control.' He fished in his pocket and produced a small handset.

  'We'll see about that,' Hamlet replied; then he made a grab for the little plastic box, secured it and ate it. 'All right?' he said.

  'Actually,' the Doctor answered, unfazed, 'it doesn't matter in the least about that one. The device is harmonically regulated.'

  'Huh?'

  'The bomb will go off,' the Doctor translated, 'in response to certain sounds. To be precise, a specific piece of music.'

  'Get away!'

  The Doctor nodded. 'A pleasing refinement,' he said. 'Anticipating a potentially hostile reaction, I thought it best to take sensible precautions.'

  'Which specific piece of music?'

  The corners of the Doctor's mouth twitched ever so slightly. 'Buffalo Girl,' he replied.

  Hamlet frowned. 'You what?'

  'Oh, you'd recognise it as soon as you heard it,' the Doctor said. 'It's what's always being played on the pianola in the saloon in Westerns. I'd hum it for you now, only... Anyway, it was a particular favourite of my late wife. I have the melody in question loaded into the intercom system here. If you make any further untoward movements, I can set it playing by using the remote control device built into the ring on my left hand.'

  Hamlet sat down on the table he'd been strapped to when he came round. 'I see,' he said. 'Clever sod, aren't you?'

  'You are too kind, The Doctor shrugged. 'In any event,' he said, 'for your own good I really can't advocate your leaving this particular environment. At least, not until the side effects I mentioned a moment ago have had a chance to stabilise.'

  'Side effects? What-?'

  'Ah,' said the Doctor. 'I was coming to that.'

  'Excuse me,' Jane said. 'I'd like to report a missing person.' The desk sergeant was a tall man, but he slouched, which meant he was six foot two (gross), five foot nine (net); and the only reason his knuckles didn't trail on the ground was that he had his hands on the counter. He would have reassured Charles Darwin, but he didn't inspire Jane with overwhelming confidence.

  'Uh?' he said.

  'A missing person,' Jane said. 'I've lost a person and I'd like him found, please.'

  'Jussa minnit.'

  'Sorry?'

  'Jussa minnit. Finda pen.'

  Jane opened her handbag and produced a biro. 'His name,' she said, 'is Hamlet, he's a Danish citizen, I think, but he speaks very good English, some of the best there is, in fact, and he's about five foot eight, slim build, I don't know what his face looks like because he wears a paper bag over his head all the time, but you'll know him when you see him because he smells of embalming fluid. He was wearing an old raincoat. I think he's been stolen.'

  'Name.'

  'I just said, Hamlet, that's H-A-'

  'Your name.'

  'Oh. Armitage. Jane Armitage.'

  'Address.'

  Jane gave her address, and the policeman wrote it down in slightly less time than it would have taken to do a page of the Lindisfarne Gospels. 'Right,' said the policeman. 'What can I do for you?'

  'I'd like to report a missing person, please. Preferably,' she added, 'before he dies of old age and the whole thing becomes academic anyway.'

  'Name.'

  'Whose?'

  'His.'

  'Right, it's Hamlet, that's H-'

  'How do you spell that?'

  'H-A-M-L-E-T.'

  'Just the one T?'

  'Yes, please. And two sugars.'

  'You what?'

  'Nothing. Look, can you get a move on, please? I'm worried.'

  The policeman turned his paper over. 'And when did you see him last?' he asked.

  'Last night. Well, about half past two this morning, actually. Like I said, I think someone's stolen him.'

  'You want to report a theft?'

  'I suppose so ... Look, can I just-?'

  'Name?'

  Jane drew a deep breath, thanked the policeman nicely, and left. Probably just as well, she reflected as she drove home again. She was no expert on immigration law, but she had the notion that it might have something to say about buckshee imaginary Danes occupying home-made bodies. She parked the car, let herself in and switched on her screen.

  There was, she realised, rather a lot more there than she remembered.

  Her first reaction was annoyance. Many a time she'd gone to bed in the early hours of the morning secretly wishing the writing fairy would come while she was asleep and knock off ten or so pages for her; and now, apparently, it had, and it wasn't a publishable book.

  Then she read what was on the screen.

  Regalian stared.

  He was not, all in all, a happy character. He'd just crawled three hundred yards, noiselessly, through thick brambles, right under the noses of a number of very fierce-looking fairy guards, and he was currently lying flat on his stomach in a bed of the most virulent stinging nettles it had ever been his misfortune to encounter. He was observing Skinner, the man he had been sent to save. He was wondering why the hell he bothered.

  In fairness, the mortal wasn't doing anything he wouldn't be - doing himself if he were in Skinner's position; but that, he felt very strongly, was beside the point. It was aesthetically right that Skinner had to be saved, PDQ. And it was artistically inevitable that he, Regalian, was going to have to do the saving; which was a pity. Left to himself, the most he'd be inclined to save would be green shield stamps, and then only if there was something in the catalogue he actually wanted.

  Skinner, of course, was a mortal, and so he had no instinctive knowledge of what was and wasn't right. More than that, he was an author; and any character will tell you that those dozy buggers wouldn't know an aesthetic necessity if they found one in their breakfast cereal.

  Ah well, Regalian muttered to himself, publish and be damned. He looked around, and started to put together his plan of campaign.

  What I need right now, he told himself, is a good diversion.

  Such as might be caused by an angry, still partially concussed bounty hunter crashing through the undergrowth on the edge of the glade, clutching a Winchester rifle and not looking where he's going. And, talk of the devil...

  The bounty hunter, too, was not happy. As he entered the glade, tripping over a root as he did so and very nearly shooting himself in the foot, he looked like Jack Palance waking up to find the freezer had defrosted itself in the night and flooded the kitchen floor. The fairy who tried to impede his progress got the butt of the Winchester in his solar plexus, together with a very unfriendly look.

  'You,' he- snapped at Skinner, w
ho was on his knees scrabbling frantically - for his trousers. 'On your feet, or the broad gets it.'

  There was a screech at his right elbow, and he found himself confronted by a beautiful, scantily clad, silver-skinned female holding a very sharp-looking knife. He reassessed his priorities.

  'You,' he snapped at the female. 'Back off or the donkey gets it.'

  The female backed off, snarling. 'Peaseblossom, Moth, Mustardseed,' she growled, 'stomp the bastard!'

  This complicated matters. He was covering Skinner with the rifle and the female with his revolver, and he only had one pair of hands, for Chrissakes. He resolved the problem by booting Moth savagely in whatever fairies have due south of their navels, and stepping back towards the presumed safety of the trees.

  A mistake. As the immortal Kurt Lundqvist says in Chapter Nineteen of Bounty Hunting For Pleasure And Profit, never presume. Just as he was within arm's length of the edge of the glade, he felt a depressingly familiar cold, metallic something pressing in his ear, and heard the sound of a hammer being cocked.

  'All of you,' said a voice behind him, 'freeze or the bounty hunter gets it.'

  There was a moment of puzzled silence.

  'So?' demanded a fairy. 'What of it?'

  'You're quite right,' Regalian said apologetically. 'What I meant to say was, freeze and nobody's going to get hurt.'

  'Oh. Right. Why didn't you say so before?'

  'Now then, the knives. Drop them slowly, where I can see them.'

  There was a clatter of falling cutlery. 'It's confusing enough as it is,' the fairy continued, 'without you fluffing your lines.'

  'Look, I said I'm sorry. And you, the one with the big log. Thank you.'

  'Yes,' complained the fairy, 'but who's he meant to be threatening? The other one's in the way, I can't see what's going-'

  'Hoy!' It was Skinner, waving his arms. 'Just what in hell is going on?'

  'Don't you start,' Regalian snapped. 'Now, get yourself over here and we can be on our way.'

  'Not damn well likely,' Skinner replied. 'I like it here.'

  'Get over here or I'll blow your stupid head off!'

  'Hey, he's threatening him,' wailed a fairy. 'I thought he was on their side.'

  'No, he's on our side, that's why he's threatening the other one, and-'

  'No, you're wrong there, because otherwise they'd both be threatening us.'

  'Surely not.'

  'HEY!' Regalian shouted, and there was silence. 'Get this straight, will you? I'm threatening all of you, so if you'll just.

  He tailed off in mid sentence. Titania had stepped in front of Skinner, who was now trying to step in front of her. She was holding him back with one slim but obviously very strong arm. Meanwhile Mustardseed was trying to step in front of both of them, and Peaseblossom was trying to barge him out of the way. It was, Regalian said to himself, all so utterly depressing

  'Please yourselves,' he said, and, for want of anything better to do, he belted the bounty hunter across the back of the head with the barrel of the Scholfield, dropping him to the ground. That, at least, simplified matters to some extent. 'NOW!' yelled-a voice from the bushes, and suddenly the glade was full of fairies in black pullovers and balaclava helmets. Regalian recognised the leader as the chap who'd ambushed them in the forest and fitted out Skinner with the big ears. That, presumably, was Oberon, whose practical joke all this had been.

  The arrival of Oberon's people didn't do much to simplify the position. There were now so many fairies trying to stand in front of each other that the far end of the glade looked like the queue for night-of-performance tickets for The Phantom of the Opera. The bounty hunter, having recovered from his nasty knock in excellent time, had lunged forward towards Skinner, tripped over his own feet, and was being fought over by two separate contingents of Oberon's lot. Titania, meanwhile, had grabbed hold of Oberon himself and was giving him a fearful shellacking with an empty champagne bottle. Regalian stepped back into the vegetation at the edge of the glade, picked up a stray apple from the picnic, and holstered his gun. Let someone else do the running around for a change, he thought.

  When he'd finished his apple he put the core tidily in the hollow of a dead tree and strolled forwards through the heaving tumult of fighting elves, muttering the occasional, 'Excuse me, please,' and, 'Mind your backs, please, coming through.' Pleasingly enough, the fight seemed to eddy round him, and he got the distinct impression that the participants had other issues to resolve besides the detention/rescue of Skinner. They had even stopped kicking the bounty hunter, except occasionally in passing.

  When he reached him, Skinner was kneeling over a rather battered-looking Oberon, brandishing a small fork in his face and yelling something about ears. With a sigh, Regalian grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, hauled him to his feet and said, 'That'll do. Time we were leaving.'

  'Not,' panted Skinner, 'without my ears, I want my goddamn ears back, and I'm not.

  Enough, Regalian said to himself, is enough. Pausing only to knock Skinner silly with a large veal and ham pie, also left over from the picnic, and fireman's-lift him on to his shoulders, he turned and started to walk away; only to find the dratted woman blocking his path.

  'Can I come too, please?' she said.

  'No. Bugger off.'

  'I can fix your friend's ears for him- if you'll let me come too.'

  Regalian scowled. 'Miss,' he said, 'my job is to deliver this idiot to the real world, preferably alive. Nothing was said about ears. Now get out of my way before I thump you with this pie.'

  Titania didn't move. 'You want to get out of here?' she said. 'Back to real life?'

  'Yes. Now I warned you..

  The pie twitched in his hand, and turned into a white rabbit. With a shudder of distaste, Regalian opened his fingers and let it go. 'Was that you?' he asked.

  Titania nodded. 'I'm good at that sort of thing,' she said. 'I could be a lot of help getting you out of here.'

  Regalian was about to try pushing past when an unpleasant thought occurred to him. Letting Skinner slide gently off his shoulder on to the ground, he turned to Titania and folded his arms. 'Why exactly are you so damn keen to tag along?' he asked.

  Titania prodded the recumbent Skinner with her toe. 'Him,' she replied. 'I think he's cute.'

  'You're the love interest, aren't you?'

  The Fairy Queen nodded. 'That's right,' she said. 'It's a lousy job, but someone's got to do it.'

  They stood-for a moment; two professionals, each with a job to do. They understood each other.

  'All right, then,' Regalian sighed, 'if you must. But I'm warning you, the moment you sprain your ankle or get kidnapped by the bad guys, you're on your own, got it?'

  'You don't mean that.'

  No, Regalian sighed to himself, I probably don't. Who'd be a hero, anyway?

  'All right,' he said grumpily. 'But you get to carry him until he comes round.'

  'But he weighs a ton!'

  'True. But I'm a strictly equal opportunities hero, and I refuse to conform to outmoded stereotypes. Come on, we haven't got all day.'

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Hamlet sat and stared into the darkness.

  Had he been feeling his usual self - the self who saw ghosts, went mad, stabbed government officials through curtains and eventually got killed - he would undoubtedly have thought of something pretty pungent, not to say quotable, to say about all this; although since it would have had to be a soliloquy, nobody would have been any the wiser for it. As it was, he merely sat with his elbows on his knees, occasionally muttering, 'Bugger!'

  It was, he decided, a sorry state of affairs, slice it how you like. On the positive side, admittedly, instead of having a body like a clapped-out Skoda, he had the corporeal equivalent of an armoured car. On the negative side, according to Dr Rossfleisch, he had a number of fairly major side effects to look forward to, at some unspecified but probably not too distant point in the future.

  Among the more palatable of thes
e were sudden uncontrollable fits of violent rage, a dual personality oscillating between diabolical malevolence and whimpering remorse, murderous headaches, adrenalin rushes, catatonic trances and extra-special heartburn. There was also the prospect of a stray snatch of music from a car radio, a supermarket muzak tannoy or a whistling postman blasting his intestines out through his ears at half a second's notice. To make matters even worse, it seemed that he no longer had the choice of to be or not to be. He was, and that was that.

  To help pass the time, he got to his feet, groped his way to the door and tried battering it down with his head; but it didn't get him very far. The good Doctor had evidently had that in mind when he'd designed the room, and all he did was make his headache slightly worse.

  It would be nice, he said to himself, to get my hands on whoever's responsible for this, and pull his head off. No, dammit, he corrected himself, that's what the bastard wants you to think, he's planning to use you as a sort of para-human Dobermann, don't give him the satisfaction. Think nice thoughts. Peace. Love. Spring flowers. Wee lambkins.

  It didn't work. After about four seconds, all he could see in his mind's eye was himself, chasing wee lambkins across flowery dells with a bloody great cleaver.

  All right, then, he urged himself, harness that aggression and hostility, make it work for you. Try giving the door another damn good hiding.

  It was a palliative, nothing more; and as soon as he stopped, the bad thoughts started again. World leaders, he found himself thinking, heads of state, I bet a lot of this is their fault. If I could just get my boot behind some of those suckers ... Dear God, he said to himself, this is bad, I'm definitely going round the bend here. Put a hawk and a handsaw in front of me right now, and I'd be lucky to get it right four times out of ten.

  Well now, he ventured, what would Hamlet do in this situation? Well, he'd agonise. He'd speak lots of blank verse, prance around a bit scoring verbal points off anyone who didn't get out of his way fast enough, and end up dragging everybody around him down into a cock-up of monolithic proportions. Not exactly ideal, admittedly, but better than running around the place scragging people.