The Finality Problem

by G. S. Denning

  The three Garridebs proved themselves alike not only in name, but also in thought, as they each chose exactly the same way to express their feelings regarding recent events. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaigh!” they all opined, running back and forth across the cellar, waving their arms in the air.

  And there I stood, behind it all, feeling utterly shocked. And stupefied. And not a little bit guilty. At last I gave a polite cough and muttered, “Ah. Well, you see… now I wish I’d clarified. I’m shot… a bit.”

  “Eh?” said Holmes, spinning back to look at me.

  “Just here. In the leg.”

  “Oh?” said Holmes, his eyes alight with happiness and hope and… you know… hellfire. But after a moment, his expression dimmed. His gaze shifted back to the wrecked form of James Winter and he added, “Oh.”

  We both stood there, watching the burning face meat drip down onto the floor.

  Warlock cleared his throat a few times. “So… you’re going to live, Watson?”

  “Oh, most definitely. It was just a derringer, after all.”

  “Ah. Good news… good news… erm… and we think you’ll keep the leg?”

  “Holmes, I think I’ll keep these trousers.”

  Holmes nodded, hooked both thumbs over his belt, stared up at the ceiling a few minutes while he rocked back and forth on his heels, then idly wondered, “I don’t suppose there’s anything you can… um… do for him?”

  “What? No! That man has been very killed!”

  “Well, it’s your fault, Watson.”

  “Oh?”

  “When you stop and think about it.”

  “I suppose that would be my soul-blade jammed through the victim’s mouth, then?”

  “Don’t be silly, Watson.”

  “I don’t think I am the one who is being silly, Holmes.”

  And we might have gone on like that for a while, if the border between worlds had not cracked. If the light of the twin suns of Tord’Th’Orath had not suddenly spilled in upon the room. If a quick wave of burning, sulfurous wind had not intruded from a realm we should never have seen. And, of course, if a nine-foot-tall battle demon had not come to visit.

  Nine feet, not even counting the horns. Even the extraordinary height of the room was hardly sufficient to accommodate him. With one hand, he dragged a bag made of interlocked chains, padded with the still-bleeding skin of some unknown unfortunate. Within the bag were several huge blocks of gold, which clinked as he pulled them through the portal—they must have weighed several hundred pounds. His hide was red, and thickened in places, with callouses so dense they seemed like armored plates. His eyes were deep black pools, flecked with amber. His limbs, preposterous knots of muscle. His hands bore claws that looked as if scything through torsos would be a much easier exercise for him than… let us say… picking up a toothpick. His jaw was strong and broad, but more notable for its length—jutting forward an extra foot or more, just so it had room to accommodate all of his teeth. The function of which, by the way, could not be mistaken by any reasonable observer.

  As he entered, he proclaimed, “Weep, denizens of my new realm, for your master has arrived. Those that live will serve me. Those that feel will fear me. I am Garrideb the Devourer. My reign will—Oh! Woah! Ohmigosh! What happened here?”

  He had caught sight of Holmes’s latest handiwork and recoiled in disgust. The three human Garridebs peeped out from behind cabinets and cases all around the room to stare at the demon. Strange—though fear was present upon their faces, more notable was a brand of stupefied worship. Holmes gave the invader a grim look. I… well, I just stood there, I suppose.

  As nobody was answering his question, the demon lifted his bag of gold up and displayed it. “I’m… um… supposed to be meeting a guy named Jimmy,” he spluttered. “He’s bringing me dinner and I’m bringing him this bag of gold. Not sure why he wants it; it’s really heavy. But… um… is Jimmy here?”

  Um… is Jimmy here?

  Holmes’s eyes flicked towards the mutilated corpse, pinned to the wall. Garrideb the Devourer followed his gaze.

  “Wait! No! That’s Jimmy? That’s Jimmy? Ohhhhhhhhhh, what happened?”

  In a tone hardly louder than a whisper, Holmes replied, “He displeased me.”

  Garrideb’s eyes went wide and he stared at Holmes in gobstruck horror. It rather looked as if he was about to cry. “Um… do you know what? I think I’ve come at a bad time. Are you busy? You look busy. Maybe I’ll just… go.”

  But Holmes thrust his hand forward and called, “Hie, Melfrizoth!” The black blade yanked free from the wall and sped to Holmes’s hand, dumping the earthly remains of James Winter to the floor and drawing a squeal from Garrideb the Devourer.

  “Demon!” Holmes roared. “Invader to this world! Now you will face me!”

  “No thank you! No. I think I’ll just—”

  Holmes sprang forward to the attack, shouting, “Defend yourself!”

  Which Garrideb did. A bit. He tried to slap Holmes away with one hand. There was a certain panicked-five-year-old-swatting-at-a-bee flavor to it, I must confess. Still, as the hand in question was huge, mighty, and currently clutching a chain-y skin bag with several hundred pounds of gold in it, even such a rudimentary effort was not without an element of threat. The bag spun towards us in a huge arc, smashing several of Garrideb Grub’s discount artifacts and spraying us all with debris. It would have bashed Holmes to paste, if he had stood his ground. Instead, there was a loud crack and when the bag passed through the space where Holmes had been, there was nothing but a swirl of black smoke. The same instant, Holmes appeared behind Garrideb the Devourer. He was facing the same way he had been when he left—which is to say, away from the demon—but he must have known exactly how matters stood, for he lashed out with a graceful back swing. The flaming blade sang through the air behind him and Garrideb cried, “Aaaagh! M’ leg’s off!”

  Holmes slashed back the other way.

  “Owww! There goes the other one!”

  And finally, Holmes spun to face his foe, lashing out a third time.

  “Urk—” was the only noise Garrideb the Devourer made, for Holmes’s final blow struck his head from his shoulders and sent it bouncing onto the be-sigiled floor. One interesting aspect of the demon’s physiognomy was this: he had no blood, or indeed any fluid within his body that seemed to have an even remotely blood-like function. Which was fortunate, really, for I’m sure it would have gone just everywhere.

  Holmes looked rather pleased with himself for just one moment, but then the portal behind him gave a tortured groan.

  “Ah!” he cried. “It’s closing! Quick, Watson, we’ve got to get everything from that other world back through that portal!”

  “Are you sure, Holmes? That’s rather a lot of gold.”

  “Get it out! Get it out!”

  “Oh, very well.”

  Holmes jammed Melfrizoth into the floor, tore open the chain bag and began hurling bars of gold through the doorway. I busied myself with demon chunks, marveling just a moment at Garrideb’s monstrous head before I pushed it through. Though, it soon became apparent we had a problem.

  “Good lord, Holmes! This leg weighs as much as I do! I don’t suppose you might have cut him up into smaller pieces.”

  “Well, I didn’t see you helping!”

  “Yes, and speaking of helping: human Garridebs, what say you come over and lend a hand, eh?”

  None of them moved an inch. They all stood about in the back of the room in stunned silence. And do you know what? Disappointment. Which, in an odd way, I could understand. One of the strange burdens of humanity is lack of purpose. If most of us have one, it is difficult to know what it may be. Oh, all the world’s religions will say they have the answer, but only if one is willing to suspend his disbelief and try to place his faith there. These three men did not have to. They—alone among humans—had possessed a purpose.

  All right, not an enviable one. Getting chewed up by a demon is not a fate most pe
ople aspire to, but it is a purpose nonetheless and it must have come as quite the shock to see Holmes carve up their destiny before their very eyes.

  Grunting and straining, I dragged one of Garrideb’s legs to the portal and shoved it through. Holmes kept tossing brick after brick of gold, as fast as he could. Leaning down and straightening back up to throw with rhythmic regularity, like some sort of overly charitable member of a bucket brigade. Though a few hundred thousand pounds worth of gold had spilled out, he’d gotten the bag empty. I helped him drag it over and push it through, horrified by the otherworldly blood that coated my hands.

  “His body! Did you get the body?” Holmes asked.

  “Are you joking? The thing must weigh two tons!”

  Holmes gave a little nod to concede the point, then gestured towards the demon’s corpse and made a little grunting noise. The body rose and flew through the portal like a disgusting meat-missile. The instant it went through, the portal changed. The light of the twin suns grew dim and the air beyond seemed to coalesce into jelly. This was aptly demonstrated by the next brick of gold, which flew though the portal, wedged itself in to the air beyond, and began to slowly sink.

  “How very outré,” I noted.

  “Hurry!” Holmes urged.

  The next few bricks splatted into thickening air. The one after that barely went in at all. Holmes had to lean on it and kick it to get it to sink in. The final brick clinked off solid stone and fell heavily to the floor. I looked down at it distrustfully.

  “Erm… so am I to gather that’s… not great?”

  “Not especially,” said Holmes, staring down at it with a pained expression. “I mean, it does seem to be ordinary gold—which at least occurs on this plane of existence. So that’s good. I’m just trying to decide which would be more damaging: to allow it to stay here, or to tear a hole through reality to put it back.”

  “Ooh. I know I don’t have your level of expertise in such matters,” I told him, “but I have always included myself in the please-don’t-tear-holes-in-reality camp, as it were.”

  Holmes sighed. “And it’s not as if we don’t have a use for it.”

  He grasped Melfrizoth by the handle, pulled it out of the floor, walked to the fallen brick, and used the tip of his soul-blade to cut the gold into three sections—as easily as if he were dividing up a soft cheese. This accomplished, he muttered, “Ves, Melfrizoth,” and the blade vanished. The fire in his eyes cooled. His horns retracted. His legs shifted back to normal human form. And finally, his right hand gave up and admitted that really, when one paused to reflect on things, that’s exactly what it was—a right hand.

  Holmes stooped, gathered up the pieces of gold, and walked over towards the human Garridebs. “All right, you three,” he said. “I know it’s been a bit of an odd day. I know you feel strongly drawn to this place and… er… what was supposed to have happened here. But that’s all done, now. It’s not going to happen. So just take this, all right, and go do whatever you want to do with your lives.”

  He gave each of them a gleaming bar of demon gold. At first, none of them seemed to understand what Holmes was doing. Of them, Mr. Chow was first to recover his senses. He stared dumbly at his bar of gold a few moments, then at the other Garridebs. Finally, he gave a little sidewise glance at Mr. Grub and muttered, “His is bigger.”

  “Well maybe by a tiny bit,” Holmes huffed. “Look, I had a demon-killing blade, all right? Not a wealth-reapportionment device! Besides, this is Mr. Grub’s house, isn’t it? This is the wreckage of his precious collection we’re all stomping around in, so let’s try to have a little charity, shall we?”

  This, at last, shook Garrideb Grub from his stupor. The antique antiquarian jerked back suddenly, as if he’d just recognized what he was looking at, gave a terrible cry of dismay, threw down his block of gold and flung himself to his knees to assess the damage to his beloved collection.

  Let’s just say: it was vast.

  Poor fellow. I went and laid a hand on his shoulder, saying, “There, there, Mr. Grub. It could have been worse, you know. True, some of your artifacts have been injured, but now you have the funds you need to fill some of those gaps that had frustrated you so. And with the demonic threat lifted, I’d say the whole thing’s gone rather well.”

  This seemed to infuriate Holmes. “Rather well? Oooooh, you bloody bastard!”

  “What? Me?” I protested.

  “Yes, you! Look at you, Watson! You’ve been shot! Again!”

  “Well… slightly…”

  “Unacceptable! Do you know the trouble I’ve gone through to keep you safe? And yet you continue to insinuate yourself into every adventure you can find! Sometimes it feels like you aren’t listening to me at all!”

  “Erm… no. I do confess it: I’ve been doing my utmost to ignore you, Holmes. But for good reason! These men needed my help.”

  “Actually, my help, I think you’ll find,” Holmes countered. “Unless it was you who just chopped up that demon. You are not a monster-slayer, John. You’re barely a monster-appetizer! By the Twelve Gods, you almost just got knocked down by a man with a pistol! Do you realize how preposterous that is? You cannot keep placing yourself in danger! This will stop! Right now!”

  I threw my hands to my hips and huffed, “No, it will not! I will not ever turn away from a person who needs my help.”

  “Oh, yes you will!” Holmes declared, then bent his hands into grasping claws, shot them towards the sky and howled, “Rhett Khan! Rhett Khan, mighty one, hear my call!”

  I gave a cry of horror! Well did I remember the last time Holmes invoked that name. Rhett Khan was a powerful demon with the ability to rewrite reality, but not one a fellow should resort to lightly.

  “Wait! Holmes, Wait! What are you doing? You asked me to remind you! Remember? Rhett Khaning a thing always causes more problems than it solves!”

  He ignored me.

  “A person has occurred which displeases me!” Holmes intoned. “Undo him, Rhett Khan, and replace him with a better one!”

  There was a terrible rushing sensation—as if reality itself were sweeping me away. I tried to push back against it, but what could I do? How does one resist the flow of… everything? How does one defend oneself against absolute fact? Especially when the fact is: one simply does not exist.

  THE ADVENTURE OF THAT STOCKBROKER JERK

  FROM THE JOURNALS OF HALL PYCROFT 12 JULY, 1884

  HIP! PIP! TOP! DERPY-DERPY! MY NAME IS HALL PYCROFT, and I have the most extraordinary adventures! Oh yes I do! Why, it is a joyful thing to be me! I sometimes think the only dark spot in this bright, wonderful world is that I’m the only fellow who gets to try it.

  On the other hand: what a lucky fellow I am! Hip! Pip! Top!

  Now, I know I have not written in you for some time, my dear journal. Please forgive me. The last entry, if I recall, involved that extraordinary occurrence when I showed up to my old job at Coxon & Woodhouse’s and everybody said they had no idea who I was. So strange! I repeatedly asked everyone to stop their nonsense and show me to my desk but everybody kept saying I had none and matters escalated until I was ejected from the premises and asked never to return.

  A rather extreme method of sacking someone, I thought. And more than a little cruel. Especially since, so far as I could recall, I hadn’t done anything wrong. Ah, I remember how low I felt—hanging my head in shame as I walked all the way home to tell my wife, Mary, that I had lost my job and was no longer a stockbroker.

  And she asked if I meant “doctor”.

  And I said, “no” and “what an extraordinary thing to say” and “I have always been a stockbroker, Mary, you know that!”

  What I should have said was, “Hip! Pip! Top! Derpy-derpy!” How I regret, dear journal, that in the depths of my disappointment, I forgot the advice—my mother’s sage advice—that has carried me so far in this tempestuous world. She took me aside one day, when I was only a little lad, and she told me, “Hall, my son, the world is strange.
Wonderful! But strange. There will be days you encounter a thing that you simply cannot understand. For example: why anybody would name their son after a long room whose only purpose is to contain doors to other, more interesting rooms. Now the temptation, my precious boy, when you discover something that doesn’t seem possible, is to stop and examine it. But why? You’ll only throw yourself deeper into confusion. Try this instead: just cry out something wonderful. Something loud and happy and confident! It needn’t make any sense. After all, the thing that made you say it didn’t make sense either. So just say, ‘Hip! Pip! Top! Derpy-derpy!’ and you’ll feel better in no time!”

  Ah, what a wise woman Mother was! How often I can be stunned into complacency and inaction by the simple (and let me say, extraneous) fact that I don’t know what I’m doing. On such occasions, a good, loud “Hip! Pip! Top! Derpy-derpy!” is all that is needed to remind myself that it doesn’t matter if something seems wrong. I am Hall Pycroft, by God! You can’t stop me! I’ll just carry on regardless, even if nothing makes sense.