'Oh? Why?'
Regalian closed his eyes. 'He wants me to deliver a package,' he replied.
'A package? What sort of package?'
'Oh for God's sake, woman, use your bloody imagination. It's a squarish sort of parcel about a foot long, it's wrapped in brown paper and weighs about five kilos. You don't think you get to write books about disappearing white rabbits and jabberwocks and mirrors you can walk through just by closing your eyes and using your imagination, do you?'
'Ah. I see.'
Regalian nodded and twitched his whiskers. 'Apparently,' he went on, 'it's quite a regular traffic. The weasels and the stoats bring it downriver from Toad Hall in big crates marked Tractor Spares, and Ratty and Mole handle the distribution from this end. I think they launder the proceeds through a holding company at Pooh Corner. Anyway, something nasty happened to the regular courier and they need a replacement. That's us.'
'Dear God.' Skinner looked up, dazed. 'I always thought there was something weird about your goddamn limey children's books, but I didn't think it was as bad as that. What a country!'
'You can wipe that grin off your face,' Regalian snapped. 'Next time you see Brer Rabbit, ask him how he paid for his bright pink Mercedes convertible. Now, are you two coming or do you want to stay here and argue the toss with Mister Badger?'
Jane looked up, and blinked twice. That wasn't what she'd had in mind at all.
On the other hand; if it worked...
* * *
Slowly, inch by inch, the bounty hunter edged his way along the river-bank.
His calling had taken him to some odd places, and brought him into contact with some strange people; this, however, looked set fair to establish new parameters of meaning for the word 'kooky'.
Jesus, the place was full of goddamn animals.
He found what he was looking for; and sat behind a bramble bush for five minutes or so, waiting to see if anyone came in or out of the little' round painted door in the side of the bank.
Just when he'd concluded it was safe to proceed, he was tripped up neatly from behind and thrown on to his face in the mud. As he tried to rise, someone put a clawed foot in the small of his back and prodded his ear with the barrel of a gold-plated Uzi.
'I say, Moley,' said Mr Rat. 'It seems we have another visitor.'
CHAPTER EIGHT
The lift stopped.
The doors opened.
Hamlet shut his eyes, left a prayer on God's answering machine, and stepped out. Into the street.
The doors shut behind him. In facts if he had been inclined to be thin-skinned and oversensitive, he could have imagined they ostentatiously dusted off their hands, like a night-club bouncer who's just thrown out a couple of drunks. Not that Hamlet minded one little bit. Of all the places in the world he was most keen to get thrown out of, Dr Rossfleisch's cosy little establishment headed the list by quite some way.
On further inspection, the street turned out to be nothing but a back alley, designed as a repository for dust-bins and a playground for tattered-eared cats. Hamlet picked up his enormous feet and ran, filling the narrow way with the echoes of his clopping.
At the end, the alley opened on to a broad, crowded street, into which Hamlet turned right. He was clearly in a big town or a city somewhere, although he had no idea which one. He had an idea that it wasn't anywhere in
Denmark, because he remembered something about Denmark being an unweeded garden, and there were no weeds to be seen anywhere.
Trying to mingle unobtrusively with the crowd - difficult, since he was a foot taller than anybody else within sight, and his head stuck up above the throng like a giraffe feeding on treetops - he strolled as nonchalantly as his big clumping boots would allow him towards the southerly end of the street. It would all, he knew, be wonderfully simple. In a moment or so he would find a telephone box. He would call Jane Armitage. She would come and pick him up, or at the very least tell him what to do. Then they would work out how he could get back into his play, where he belonged. If things went well, he might even get back home in time to be murdered.
At the end of the street, sure enough, stood a phone box. He smiled and pulled open the door...
'Hey, do you mind?'
'Sorry.' Hamlet stepped back. 'I didn't mean-'
'There's another one just round the corner,' said the occupant of the box quickly. Hamlet couldn't help noticing that he was half in and half out of a red and blue leotard, and that a plain charcoal-grey suit was lying discarded on the phone box floor. 'And next time, look before you go barging in.'
'Sorry,' Hamlet repeated, and closed the door. He had got about ten yards down the street when there was a sharp crack and a whooshing noise above his head. He looked up to see a tiny figure in blue and red disappearing into the sky. All around him, people were staring after it.
'My God,' someone said, 'I didn't know he was real. I thought he was just in comics.'
Hamlet turned back, entered the now empty phone box, fumbled in his pocket for a coin and dialled Jane's number.
Hello, this is Jane Armitage. I'm sorry there's no one here to take your call but if you'd care to leave a message...
Hamlet replaced the receiver, briskly, with an oath. The bloody woman, he said to himself, how dare she go swanning off when I'm missing? Typical bloody author. About as reliable as a petrol station watch.
Never mind, he reassured himself, I'll use my initiative. No problem at all finding out where I am and how to get out of it. His head held high (or as high, at least, as it would go without unseating the main neck bearings), he strolled down the road in search of somebody to ask.
There is a stubbornly entrenched streak of bigotry in all of us. We may have made some progress towards flushing out prejudice on grounds of race, gender, creed and sexual orientation; but troll down the street with staring red eyes, big shoes and a bolt through your neck, and don't be surprised if no one wants to know you. All Hamlet got for his efforts at communication were twelve funny looks, a muffled scream and an offer to share with him the glad tidings of Our Lord Jesus Christ; all of which, he found, wasn't getting him anywhere. He caught sight of a big sign saying POST OFFICE and headed towards it.
Before he reached his objective, however, he found his path blocked by a girl, fourteen years old or thereabouts, in school uniform and carrying a satchel. She was staring at him. He stopped and frowned.
"Scuse me,' said the girl, 'but you're him, aren't you? The bloke in the film.'
Am I? Gosh, yes, of course I am. Laurence Olivier, Mel Gibson and a tall Russian bloke with a name that seemed to go on for ever, to name but three. Hamlet smiled, and nodded.
'Can I have your autograph?' The girl rummaged in her satchel and produced a grubby exercise book and a pen. Hamlet accepted both as graciously as he could manage, signed with a flourish and handed them back.
'Here,' said the girl. 'I thought you said you were Frankenstein.'
'I...'
'That's bloody marvellous, that is. Now you've gone and written all over my geography book.' She scowled at him, stuffed the book back in the satchel and flounced off; which was probably just as well for all concerned. Hamlet had never struck a woman, but only really because the ones he most wanted to thump were able to get out of the way in time.
He sighed, pushed open the post office door, and joined the queue.
'On air in fifteen seconds,' said the continuity girl.
'Fourteen, thirteen ...
Jane gave the camera a worried frown. It was bad enough that she had to do things like this, she reflected, but of all the inopportune moments in history, this one was in a class of its own. She caught sight of herself in the monitor, realised that the horrible, scowling woman was her, and hitched up the corners of her mouth. She had just realised that that made her look like an opium addict when the interviewer took a deep breath and started to speak, leaving her stuck like it, just as her mother had warned her all those years ago.
'Hi,' said the intervi
ewer, 'this is Cable South West's Afternoon Show, I'm Danny Bennet, and we're lucky to have with us this afternoon none other than Jane, um, Armstrong, author of the bestselling Zarmanico trilogy. Tell me, Jane, where exactly do you get the ideas for your characters from?'
As she mouthed the usual pleasantries, Jane let her mind wander. Wherever they were now, whatever they were doing, there was nothing she could do to help until she got back home; at which point, she added remorsefully, I've also got to do something to find out where Hamlet's got to. Another stray bloody cat to worry about, another whale to save, another rain-forest to preserve; but there was something more to it than that, something rather more immediate forcing her to get involved, although she couldn't really say what. Why, she demanded of herself, am I doing all this anyway? I must be out of my.
'I expect,' the interviewer was saying, with the air of a man drowning in tapioca, 'that sometimes you find your characters almost seem as if they have a life of their own, don't you find? Almost as if they know what they want to do, and you're just there to help them do it.'
Jane laughed; and there was a tiny sliver of hysteria in there somewhere, like the metal strip in a banknote. 'Oh, I wouldn't say that,' she said. 'No, I generally find they do what they're told. If they know what's good for them, that is. Anyway, my lot are usually so damned idle they wouldn't get out of bed from Easter to Michaelmas if I didn't put my boot behind them.'
Was that it? she wondered. Was it because they were her characters, wholly dependent on her, like a mother and her children? No, probably not. She'd never worried about them before. She could kill any of them without a second thought if the plot required it. Often, she recalled, with great pleasure.
'Now then.' The interviewer was finding it difficult to keep afloat. 'Perhaps you can tell us about what you're working on at the moment.'
'Yes indeed.' Oh Christ. 'It's a bit of a new departure for me, really. It sort of starts off as a western, goes on as a pastiche of a couple of classics of English literature, and I don't know what happens after that. But,' she added firmly, 'it does have a happy ending. I mean, they do all get home safely in the end.'
'Quite,' said the interviewer, sourly. 'Well, we have to take a short break now for the news headlines, but we'll be back with Jane in a moment, when I'll be asking her more about her fabulous new book. And now it's coming up to five o'clock, and here's the latest from the Cable South West newsroom. The main story this afternoon is the armed siege in the Birmingham post office, and I think we now have some pictures for you .
Images of a deserted street flashed on to the monitor, and Jane turned her head and cast a jaundiced eye over them. She was just about to look away when the camera zoomed in...
... On Hamlet, his face pressed against a window, waving frantically. Behind him stood a tall, dreamy looking man with a portable cassette player in one hand and a revolver in the other. Cut back to the street outside ...
Jane sat on the edge of her chair, doing goldfish impressions. She was sure, she knew that it was Hamlet in there, even though he looked completely different. In fact, she realised, she hadn't got the faintest idea what his face looked like, because she'd never seen him without his paper bag. But even so, she knew; just as a mother always knows her child, perhaps. Unimportant why. What mattered was that her Hamlet, a character of hers by adoption, was in trouble and she had to go to him. Only she couldn't, because she was on telly.
She wrenched her mind away and tried to listen to what the interviewer was saying.
'The man holding the hostages,' he said, 'has been identified as a Doctor Rossfleisch, a world-famous scientist working in the field of genetic engineering. The siege is apparently the result of a botched kidnapping attempt. Dr Rossfleisch has so far demanded a helicopter to fly him to Tripoli, a plate of jam sandwiches and a tape of SO All-Time Pianola Greats. A spokesman for the Performing Rights Society has declined to comment.'
She was wrong, Jane realised. It was because they were hers that she cared. All right, so occasionally, when it was necessary, she killed them or had them paralysed in devastating accidents; but that was for her to do, not anybody else. Because if she did it, it was because it was right and she would know that that was what the character was there to do. If it simply happened, there could be no reason or justification for it; it would be just like Life. And that wasn't something she'd wish on her worst enemy, let alone a character she had deliberately called into existence.
Come on, you silly man, let's get this over with so I can go and protect my baby.
'And there'll be more from the newsroom at six o'clock. Now then, this is The Afternoon Show, I'm Danny Bennet and I have with me this afternoon the novelist Jane, um, Armitage. Tell me, Jane, do you write in longhand or do you use a word processor?'
Got to get out of here. Find a pretext. Got it. Right.
'Honestly!' she snapped, rising to her feet. 'How dare you! I've never been so insulted in all my life.'
'But,' flummoxed the interviewer, 'I only asked if you-'
'That does it.' Livid with synthetic rage, Jane tore off the microphone, threw it on the chair and stalked out of the studio. As soon as the door closed behind her, she picked up her feet and started to run for the car park.
Down this mean river-bank a man must walk.
After half an hour's stroll beside the pleasantly lapping waters, with Skinner peering anxiously into every bush in case it contained narcotics agents or the Mob, and the Scholfield observing from time to time that if he was going to ambush anyone in these parts, here was as good a place as you could hope to find, they reached a small boat-shed.
'Right,' said Regalian, his hand resting as if by coincidence on the butt of the revolver, 'this looks like the place.' He sighed. It was a hot day, he was uncomfortably warm inside the beaver's skin and he had a headache. The thought of having to do anything heroic seemed positively distasteful. 'I suppose,' he went on mournfully, 'I'd better lead the way.'
Nobody contradicted him. He took a deep breath, pushed the door open and waited. After what seemed to him a decent interval, he dropped on to all fours and scuttled through the doorway.
'It's all right,' he called out after a moment. 'Looks like we've got the place to ourselves.'
Titania and Skinner walked through the door, each doing their best to follow the other. It was dark inside, and there was a strong smell of mould, stagnant water and decomposing boat. So far, in fact, so reassuringly normal.
'Well?' Titania demanded.
'It's somewhere,' said a voice from under a low table, 'over here, if only I can find ...
There was a muffled clinking noise, followed by a bump; and a moment later the beaver reappeared, looking dusty but triumphant, with a small green bottle clutched between its front paws.
'Now then,' Regalian said. 'Let the dog see the... Ah yes, right. Here goes.'
He uncorked the bottle, which was inscribed DRINK ME, took a mouthful and wiped his muzzle on the back of his front left paw. Then he passed the bottle to Titania, who accepted it with the same degree 'of enthusiasm she would have exhibited had she been given a large, hairy spider.
"Sorlright,' Regalian mumbled. 'A bit nutty, perhaps, with maybe a slightly over-long aftertaste, but-'
He vanished. Titania and Skinner exchanged glances.
'And I thought things were a bit over the top where I come from,' Titania commented. 'Well, if he thinks I'm going to drink this stuff after what-'
She stopped and looked down, to see a very small man jumping up and down on her foot and pointing excitedly to what she had assumed on a previous cursory inspection to be a mouse-hole.
'I think,' said Skinner, 'he wants us to go through there. It's a proper doorway, with a doorbell and a handle and everything.'
'Just because it's a door doesn't mean we've got to go through it,' Titania replied, backing away a step or two. 'There's millions of doors I've never been through, and they were all the right size, too.'
Skinner shrugged.
'He's the hero,' he said. 'You gotta trust the hero, or where are you?'
'Where aren't you, more to the point,' Titania replied. 'And high up on the list, I've put crawling about down mouse-holes.'
'I'm game if you are.'
Titania winced. 'An odd expression, that,' she commented. 'As far as I'm concerned, game is dead furry things hanging up in butchers' windows. Mind you, in this particular instance, I can see where the expression might acquire a certain relevance...'
'Time I was going,' Skinner said, taking a long swig. 'You don't have to come if you don't want to.'
'Oh yeah, I can stay here and wait till we come out in paperback. No thanks.' She took the bottle, finished it off and then held it up to read the label.
'Hey,' she said, 'this stuff's got riboflavin and permitted food colouring in it. I heard that stuff makes you go-'
Skinner vanished; and a moment later, so did Titania. Another moment later they were all three standing at the entrance of the mouse-hole, which had turned out not to be a mouse-hole after all.
'It looks bigger like this,' Titania conceded.
'I thought this sort of thing was all in a day's work for your lot,' Skinner said, impatiently. 'Or else how come you're called things like the Little People and the Wee Folk?'
'All right,' Titania admitted, giving the door a tentative prod, 'on our own turf we have a certain flexibility in these matters. Doesn't mean I have to like it, though. I always feel distinctly jumpy whenever I'm in a situation where I have to look up to a cat.'
They looked at each other.
'Oh well,' said Titania, remembering that she was, after all, the Erl-King's daughter and, par excellence, a thing that goes bump in the night, and therefore presumably afraid of nothing, 'here goes. Last one through the door's a cissy.'
My Hero Tom Holt. Page 13
