My Hero Tom Holt.

by My Hero (lit)

  Such as heroism.

  Being a hero isn't something anybody can do. True enough, once in a lifetime a quiet, mild-mannered newspaper reporter can save a child from being run over by a negligent steamroller. If on the strength of that the reporter buys himself a cape and a pair of tights and tries jumping off tall buildings, however, he is likely to find out two things in pretty short order; the second of which is the folly of pushing one's luck.

  It's different, of course, for heroes.

  Heroes have nine lives, rubber kneecaps, diplomatic passports, an uncle on the board of magistrates, an exercise book permanently in place down the back of their trousers and a sick note signed by God. In a cosmology where everybody knows his place, it is immutably ordained that the guards the hero has to stalk and silently kill before scaling the castle wall are the only two in the whole brigade who happen to be stone deaf and crippled with arthritis. Even the most lacklustre hero has available to him resources on a scale which would put Spielberg into immediate bankruptcy, while the household names have more doubles and stunt men than Napoleon had

  Old Guards at Waterloo. The only sure-fire way to kill a hero is to lock him up for six months in a room with no mirror.

  For the first time, he noticed in the corner of the room a big cabinet radio, the kind that hums for thirty seconds and then plays Glen Miller, regardless of where the dial is pointing. Perfectly normal thing to find in a house of the period.

  In the bicycle shed of Regalian's subconscious mind, an idea stirred. At that particular moment, it bore as much resemblance to a workable plan of action as the first ever single-cell organism to a Nobel prize-winner, but everything has to start somewhere.

  Basic authorship theory; the hero rises to the occasion. The grottier the occasion, the more outstandingly brilliant and innovative the hero's response; and the laws of physics, generally speaking, are happy to come along for the ride. Set a hero a sufficiently nasty problem, and there's virtually no limit to what he can achieve. Provided, of course, that the odds are sufficiently stacked against him.

  The difficulty is, therefore, not that the task confronted is impossible; but whether it's impossible enough. Luck, like a Russian car, generally only works if you push it.

  It's basically the same inverse feasibility matrix that you find when you want to borrow money. Try and borrow fifty quid from your bank to pay the rent, and you're a no-good loser. Ask to borrow fifty million to take over a moribund company, and you're a respected financier. Raise a forced loan of five hundred billion to pay the interest on the fifty zillion you borrowed last week, and you're a Chancellor of the Exchequer.

  Having made himself a strong cup of coffee, Regalian sat back and thought hard ...

  * * *

  Jane paused, knocked a substantial quantity of compacted snow off her left boot, and stared at the signpost. It depressed her.

  She wasn't obsessive about her art, God knows; you can't afford to be, if you're a professional. But there were some things that did offend her sense of basic craftsmanship, and this was one of them.

  The sign read:

  MIDDLE BIT BYPASS

  Characters for Chapters 23-47 are advised to leave at Junction 12

  CHAPTER TEN

  'Igor?'

  No reply.

  'Igor?'

  The howl of the wind in the fir trees. The rippling crash of the thunder. The pecking hammer of the rain on the shed roof, like a spectral Fred and Ginger doing the Tap Danse Macabre.

  'Igor, tha daft booger, what's tha playin' at?'

  The bounty hunter flickered.

  Imagine a double-sided mirror. He was on both sides simultaneously.

  Half of him, during this strange moment of transition, was in Fiction, half in Reality. He'd never been in Reality before, in whole, part or instalments. A less completely focused individual might have paused to look around, admire the scenery, take an interest. He didn't. Understandable; when the SAS are parachuted in miles behind enemy lines to blow up a bridge or rescue a hostage, they don't make detours to take a look at interesting old churches or unusual rock formations. Likewise with the bounty hunter, only more so.

  Go in, do the job, get out again. Yes. Absolutely.

  He was looking for a doorway

  'IGOR!!'

  In the distance, an unfastened gate banged eerily. The woodwork of the shed creaked under the insistent malice of the storm. Somewhere far away, maybe as far out as Halifax, a forked tongue of lightning flicked at the wet, chill earth.

  'Hold tha water, Norman lad. Ah'm coomin' as fast as ah can.'

  And about time too. Having an assistant was a mixed blessing, Frankenbotham reflected. True, it had meant that Stanley Earnshaw #2 had been assembled in only a fraction of the time it had taken to piece together the prototype; before his retirement, Igor Braithwaite had been one of the five most respected TV repair men in all Yorkshire, and he could do things with a soldering iron that no mortal man should be capable of. The flipside was that Igor was eighty-three years old, and ever since his operation the intervals between his trips to the little boys' room were shortening like daylight in December.

  'Hurry oop, tha daft old sod, there's bits leaking all over t'shop.' Which was true; and with black market AB negative standing him at close on a flyer a pint (and when I were a lad, you could get ten pints, a bucket of jellied brains and still have change out of half a crown ...) that was no laughing matter. More to the point, the lightning was headed this way, and who could say where their next major electric storm was coming from?

  Stanley Earnshaw #2 lay motionless on the workbench before him. If you overlooked the damp patches and the messy bit where Igor hadn't quite finished connecting up the main relay circuits just over the right ear, he was a fine figure of a man; six foot eight, massive of bone and sinew, and (a marked improvement over the first model) proper organic outer dermatic membranes instead of insulating tape, brown paper and treacle. It had been Igor who had pointed out the amazing properties of the skin that forms on stagnant cold tea; Frankenbotham had taken the idea one step further in using the exterior surface of works canteen rice pudding for the hard-wearing areas such as the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet. A direct hit from a Rapier missile might cause problems; otherwise, his creators felt sure, Stanley Earnshaw #2 was proof against anything Fate had to chuck at him.

  Igor hobbled in, still fumbling with his fly buttons. With an impatient gesture, Frankenbotham shooed his assistant back to work, and for the next half hour there was no sound but the fizz-crackle of the Mig welder, the buzz of the sewing machine, the low drone of Igor muttering to himself, and the ping of the occasional small component dropped on the floor.

  And then...

  'Reckon that'll do, Norman lad.'

  Just in time, too. A fraction of a second after Igor's gnarled fingers tightened the last retaining screw on the inspection panel, a livid fang of searing blue light arced down through the wire coat hanger that connected Frankenbotham's jury-rigged lightning conductor to the primary pulse electrodes in Stanley's ears. There was a flash, a sizzle, a repulsive stench of burning .

  'Igor! More power! Ig- Oh for cryin' out loud, tha prawn, can't tha wait five minutes?'

  The distant clank of a chain and surge of a cistern were faintly audible in the distance. Frankenbotham took a deep breath, spluttered as his lungs filled with smoke, and threw the main switch...

  The smoke cleared.

  'IGOR!'

  On the workbench, something stirred.

  As he dragged himself up from the floor and wiped matted sawdust and shavings out of his eyes, Frankenbotham hardly dared look. If, after all this, he had failed ... But something told him he hadn't. He turned to face the bench. Suddenly, it was very quiet.

  'Stanley?' he breathed.

  'Howdy, partner.'

  Igor, framed in the doorway, gave a strangled gasp. His eyes met those of his colleague, reflecting the same horror.

  'Norman, lad,' whispered the
older man, 'tha's only gone and built a bloody Yank!'

  'No,' said Skinner firmly. 'Absolutely not. No way.'

  Titania clicked her tongue impatiently. 'It might work,' she said. 'Not a new idea, genre splicing. Entirely possible, in theory.'

  Skinner stopped pacing, turned and glared at her. 'All sorts of things are possible,' he growled, 'including artificially generated plague viruses and nuclear holocausts. Just because something's possible doesn't mean we actually have to do it. The same applies to-'

  'Chicken.'

  Before he could reply, Skinner caught the Piglet's bewildered, terrified stare and his heart sank. 'For the last time,' he said, 'we are not going to kill the pig. Over my dead body.'

  Titania considered for a moment. 'No,' she said. 'Good of you to offer, but just one corpse ought to be enough. Look, it's only a dratted pig. Or are you trying to tell me you've never eaten roast pork?'

  'Hey...'

  'Or bacon? Ham and eggs? Frankfurters? Listen, buster, that's the way it is with pigs. They don't herd them into the abattoir and wait for them to pass away peacefully in their sleep, you know.'

  'Watch my lips, you bloodthirsty bitch. We are not-'

  The gun went off.

  With a terrified squeal, Piglet wriggled on to his chest, scrabbled with his tiny paws (ropes notwithstanding) and burrowed under the rug like an agoraphobic mole. Before Skinner could swear at it, the gun fell off the table, landed on its hammer, cocked itself and fired again. A small fur-fabric donkey wobbled on the mantelpiece and fell with a soft thud into the fireplace.

  'Jesus!' Skinner screamed.

  Titania jumped up, retrieved the toy and poked her finger through the bullet-hole. 'That'll do,' she said happily. 'Now then...'

  'That maniac's just shot Eeyore!'

  The Queen of the Fairies shook her head. 'This isn't Eeyore,' she replied patiently. 'This is just a kid's soft toy. The real Eeyore's down there with the rest of them. I saw him. He's got a Remington sniper's rifle with infra-red sights, he's tied his tail round his head like a headband and smeared camouflage paint all over his nose and ears. Guess he's finally found a role in life he can be happy with.'

  Skinner stared at the perforated object in Titania's hand. 'What do you mean, just a toy?' he demanded. 'They're all frigging toys, that's the whole point.'

  'No, you're wrong there,' Titania said. 'This is a toy's toy. Like, you know, subtext. Here, even the cuddly furry animals have cuddly furry animals. Now then, we've got work to do.'

  Shaking his head, Skinner took the limp object and laid it on the ground. Titania picked up the Scholfield (guns can't smirk, but, by the same token, they can't of their own volition shoot stuffed donkeys, can they?) and laid it artistically beside the body, one stuffed paw on the grips. 'That'll do,' she said. 'Now we wait and see.'

  Genre splicing theory. Set up a classic stock situation from one genre in another genre and see what, or who, happens. So; a body on the hearthrug, apparently suicide, except that that would be too simple. Two obvious suspects, nobody else could have entered or left the room. But if it wasn't suicide, what possible motive could there have been? And what about the third witness, the seemingly innocuous Piglet, who, at the time the fatal shot was fired, was supposedly cowering under the rug?

  'This isn't going to work,' Skinner said, with gloomy satisfaction.

  'Give it a chance, misery guts.'

  'Waste of everybody's-'

  The scene changed.

  Genre splicing theory. Set up a situation that obviously, painfully obviously, belongs in one sort of book and one sort only, and you might just build up enough dramatic tension (what reviewers call a critical mass) to bust out of one genre into another, regardless of the laws of artistic physics. Nice idea, but you wouldn't want to try it. Even if it worked, you'd have absolutely no control over where you ended up.

  The scene had changed. Same basic layout; hearthrug, corpse, gun, chairs, table. But the walls were now oak-panelled and lined with books, the rug had once been the outside of a tiger and the corpse had somehow changed from a stuffed donkey into a tweed-clad, white-haired man with a bristling moustache, probably a retired Indian army colonel. Closer inspection revealed a clock that had stopped the first bullet, its hands now frozen at 12.15; a scrap of paper in the fireplace that looked suspiciously like the remains of a compromising letter; a small glass bottle lying under the writing desk, very probably containing the last dregs of a dose of an undetectable poison known only to the Bushmen of northern Natal; a footprint from a size nine walking shoe with a built-up heel ... One could go on for ever. It was like one of those newspaper puzzles where you have to find thirty-six tropical birds hidden in unlikely places all over the picture. Skinner made a peculiar noise.

  'There,' said Titania. 'Piece of cake.'

  Oh yes, and a half-eaten slice of seed cake on the window-ledge. No prizes for guessing that, once analysed, the cake will turn out to be marinaded in enough arsenic (the white variety, as opposed to the brown variety commonly used in rat poison and weed-killer) to kill half of Bradford .

  And the door opens, and a fussy little man with an egg-shaped head and enormous moustaches trots in, beams and introduces himself.

  'I think,' said Skinner, 'I'd like to be sick now, please.'

  The bounty hunter sat up.

  So, he said to himself, this is Reality. Could have fooled me.

  True, he wasn't seeing it at its most convincing. The electric storm still raging outside was every bit as melodramatic as one of its fictional counterparts. He'd heard one of the funny little old men who were gawping at him call the other one Igor. And there was something disturbingly familiar about the look of his feet.

  Big shoes they wear in Reality. Almost like old-fashioned diving boots.

  Very big...

  'Hey,' he said. 'What's the big idea?'

  One of the funny men took a step backwards. 'How were I to know?' he stammered in a peculiar voice. 'It were all genuine Yorkshire parts. Maybe he just sounds like a bloody Yank.'

  'Ask him, then. Go on, ask him.'

  'Tha ask him.'

  'He's thy bloody fast bowler.'

  The bounty hunter was reassured. Maybe there was a passing similarity, but nobody ever talked like that in Fiction. He smiled.

  'Howdy,' he said. 'Say ...

  ('That's never Yorkshire, young Norman.'

  'I dunno. Could be Harrogate. They talk bloody funny in Harrogate.')

  'Say,' continued the bounty hunter, reaching out a hand towards a large piece of ironmongery with a view to pulling himself upright, 'can you folks put me on the right road for Chicopee Falls? Reckon I'm kinda out of my way here-'

  'Don't touch that!'

  The bounty hunter raised an eyebrow. As he did so, something tore

  ('It's them Co-op tea bags. Told thee they were weak as buggery.')

  but he ignored it. Instead, he inspected the curious gadget he was holding on to. He had no idea what it was.

  'Don't touch that! It's t'random particle accelerator. If t'lightning shorts through that and tha's holding on to it-'

  'Hey up, Norman lad, tha never said tha'd got a random particle accelerator.'

  'Didn't ah? Well, tha knows Chalky Wainwright, as used to live across t'way from t'canning factory? Well, his dad-'

  There was a blinding flash, as enough power to run Scotland for twenty minutes crackled across an inch of empty air and leapt joyfully towards the bare terminals of the random particle accelerator. The windows blew out in a shower of razor-edged confetti. Quite a lot of things caught fire.

  Chalky Wainwright's dad, whose superior Yorkshire intelligence had graduated from cat's whisker radios in the 'twenties into a staggering new vista of One Hundred and One Things A Young Man Can Make, had rigged up the particle accelerator out of cannibalised transistors, used HT leads, electric fire elements, a broken telly and twelve square yards of tinfoil, round about the time Harold Wilson had been enthusing about the white heat of
technology. It had always been Chalky's dad's ambition to travel backwards in time; and there was a small but enthusiastic body of opinion which held that he hadn't simply walked out one day on the pretext of buying an evening paper and never returned, but had in fact achieved his aim and somehow made it back to Huddersfield, circa 1109, where he was currently running a thriving jellied eel concession in what would one day be Palmerston Street. All pure speculation, of course.

  'Igor.'

  'What?'

  'Where's he gone?'

  'Who?'

  'T'Yank, tha dozy pillock.'

  Igor looked round. 'What Yank, Norman lad?'

  'T'one we were building..

  'Talk sense, Norman,' replied the older man sharply. 'Who with any sense'd be building a bloody American?'

  For a moment, Frankenbotham surmised that all the lightning they'd been having recently must have fried his assistant's brain. Then it occurred to him that, in order to reach an advanced age in the TV repair business north of Wakefield, you probably had to have survival instincts which would make the average gazelle look like a kamikaze pilot.

  'Tha's right, Igor,' he said slowly. 'Nobody in their right mind'd be building an artificial Yank. Not,' he added, 'in Dewsbury.'

  Igor nodded conclusively. 'Flamin' daft idea, if you ask me.'

  'Fancy a brew?'

  'Now tha's talking, Norman lad. Now tha's talking.'

  Damn, thought Jane.

  It was all very well to say, I know, I'll use the interface fault under the Library of Congress to slip into Fiction; but Fiction, she was beginning to realise, is big. Ever so much bigger than, say, Carlisle. This one book she'd wandered into, a single book out of countless hundreds of thousands (how many books were there? A million? Ten million? Apart from the guess that ISBN stands for Incredibly Seriously Big Number, she hadn't a clue) was easily as big as the human imagination, if not bigger. Every book can be that big, with the possible exception of Teach Yourself Thumb-Twiddling and the works of Jeffrey Archer. Accordingly, wandering into Fiction by the back door and expecting to fall over Regalian was rather like standing on the platform on Fulham Broadway station and expecting to come face to face with your second cousin from Toronto. Only somewhat less likely.