by Tom Holt
“Funny man. Listen, how would you like to get rid of some of those cancelled orders you were always telling me about?”
A long silence—ten cents’ worth, which in context was practically unbearable. “You’re kidding me.”
“I don’t joke about money. Listen to me. I have a potential buyer.”
“You do? What for?”
She smiled. “I have a customer who might just possibly want to buy all those combination bean slicers and mango de-stoners you got stuck with five years ago; you know, the ones you sob hysterically about in your sleep?”
The voice was barely a whisper. “How many of them?”
“How many have you got? No, wait, listen, there’s more. Have you still got that consignment of O-So-E-Z clockwork sock stretchers, the ones the Finns decided at the last minute they didn’t want?”
“Oh yes.”
“Great, I can place them, I’m sure of it. How about the two hundred thousand pink powder compacts with the picture of George W. Bush on the back?”
Pause. “This is a wind-up, right? Nobody in the whole wide world could possibly—”
“I have a customer for them, ready and waiting.” She hesitated. This bit might be awkward. “Oh, and he’ll be paying in gold.”
“Say again? This is an awful line. It sounded like you just said—”
“Gold,” she repeated. “Chemical symbol AU, atomic number 79, density nineteen point three grams per cubic centimetre. Sort of a yellowy colour. Your wife has a rather nice brooch made of it,” she added pleasantly, “which I chose for her, for your twentieth anniversary. This stuff my customer’s talking about is around 99.999 fine, give or take a smidge.”
“He wants to pay in gold?”
“Yes. Is that a problem?”
“Um, no. No, definitely not. Look, are you sure about this?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Who is this lunatic?”
“Ah,” she said, “that would be telling. Of course, if you’re not interested, that’s fine. You can go on paying warehouse charges for a load of stuff you’ll never get rid of, and in due course no doubt your heirs will eventually find a big enough hole in the ground to dump it all in, and that’ll be that problem solved. Entirely up to you. I just thought I’d mention it.”
“How much?”
She stated a figure, in pounds avoirdupois. He whistled. “Are you sure?”
“Look, I haven’t got much money left on this phone. Which reminds me; put a hundred bucks’ worth of credit on for me, there’s a sweetheart. No,” she added quickly, “don’t argue, just do it, within the next ten minutes, or the whole thing’s off. This is a deal-breaker. I mean it.”
“Sure,” he said mildly. “So what now?”
Relief flooded through her like the first sweet rains of spring. “Soon as you’ve put the money on my phone, I’ll call you back with the details, all right? Oh, and in the meantime, you might give some thought to whether you’ve got any more hopelessly unsaleable junk littering the place up that you might consider parting with at twenty-five per cent above cost. Ciao, honeybunch.”
She cut the call. You have $0.46 credit remaining. Well, she’d always been a gambler. It remained to be seen whether this one would pay off.
Six anxious minutes later, her phone went ting! and congratulated her on a successful top-up in the sum of one hundred dollars. For a moment or so her heart was like a singing bird; then she put the phone away in the safe, locked it and went to find King Drain.
“Where the hell have you been?” he said, and she noticed a bowl of porridge on the table in front of him, a golden spoon standing in it, upright. “I want a bacon sandwich and I want it now.”
She beamed at him. “You think you want a bacon sandwich,” she said, “but you’re wrong. What you really want is a vast consignment of incredibly valuable imported artefacts at a ridiculously low price. Which is the most amazing coincidence, because I just happen to have one.”
He really did have genuinely nice eyes, even when they were practically popping out on stalks. “You what?”
“Genuine authentic artefacts,” she said, “from China. You remember China? We were talking about it only the other—”
“Like the Opener of Tins?”
“Better than the Opener of Tins,” she said seductively. “Much, much better. I can honestly and sincerely swear that these are items you can’t buy in any store. Even back home, where I come from, they’re incredibly rare and hard to come by.”
The mills of King Drain’s mind ground slow but exceeding small. “How much?”
“My, aren’t you the sharp one? Does it matter? These things are unique. There’s never been anything like them anywhere in the Realms. Once you’ve got them, your main worry will be how to keep the dragons from swooping in and stealing such a bewildering accumulation of treasure.”
“How much?”
She stated a figure in dwarvish pounds, which are just a tad heavier than human ones. The figure was exactly double what she’d just told her friend. King Drain frowned. “A vast consignment, you said.”
“Yup.”
“How vast, exactly?”
She told him. He did mental arithmetic, a discipline at which dwarves traditionally excel. “Deal,” he said. And then, a moment later, “What did I just buy?”
She patted the back of his hand. To do him credit, he barely winced. “Wealth beyond the dreams of avarice and a bright new future for the dwarvish race,” she told him. “And at a price you can afford.”
“Really?”
“Really and truly. Just trust your aunt Snow White. Who,” she added, “will now go and fix you a bacon sandwich.”
Drain gazed at her, his eyes filled with longing. “Mustard?”
“Loads of mustard.” She smiled at him. “Now be honest,” she said. “Does it get any better than this?”
“Just listen to this,” Terry Barrington roared. “We acknowledge receipt of your application for a permit to burn charcoal in a designated conservation area, blah blah blah. However, we cannot process your application since it was not accompanied by four duplicate copies duly countersigned and witnessed by a registered notary. We have therefore cancelled your application, should you wish to proceed further you should file Form 38837/C, notice of intention to reapply where a previous application has failed, together with all requisite copies and supplementary documentation, also duly notarised, for crying out loud, what does it all mean?” He threw the roll of parchment onto the table and folded his arms. “Well,” he said, “I’ve about had it with those clowns. If you really want a barbecue, you damn well sort it out.”
Molly Barrington looked up from the flowers she was arranging. “All right, dear,” she said. “Leave it to me. I’ll deal with it when I’ve got five minutes.”
Terry laughed. “You reckon? They’re impossible. How anything ever gets done around here I can’t begin to imagine. And to think, we came here to get away from all that kind of thing.”
“I’ll just pop down to the council offices and have a quiet word with them,” Molly said. “I’m sure it can all be straightened out, calmly and reasonably.”
Terry scowled at her. “You’re saying I’m not calm and reasonable.”
“I didn’t say that, dear.”
“I am beautifully calm,” Terry shouted. “I am perfectly fucking reasonable.”
“Yes, dear. Now, would you make me a cup of tea? My hands are a bit full.”
Another thing. It took for ever to boil a kettle in this dump. Theoretically, the whole tower was one great big solar panel and they ought to have enough power to keep the lights on right across Europe and barely notice. But, as with everything else in this ghastly place, the gap between theory and practice—
Almost out of tea, he noticed. She’d ordered a fresh supply from home, stuff was supposed to get here within forty-eight hours but that was a laugh, and he really didn’t want to be cooped up with Molly in a confined space if they ran out of tea
. Or, saints and ministers of grace preserve us, gin.
He made himself a coffee and stumped up the many, many flights of stairs to his study. At times like this, he told himself, waiting for the bloody laptop to wake up, it’s only updating the blog that keeps me going; the thought of all of them back in the foggy, rain-sodden UK gawping at the gorgeous sunny pictures of the spectacular view from the ramparts and all that guff, wishing they were here, dying slowly and painfully of envy—
Day 17.
Another spectacular sunrise over the distant mountains. Sometimes I wonder what I’ve done to deserve the uniquely special privilege of being here, in this amazing place.
No, that could do with rephrasing. Start again.
Day 17.
Woke up to another amazingly spectacular sunrise, seen from the top of our ancient historic watch-tower overlooking unspoilt virgin forest and a stunning panoramic view of the nearby snow-capped mountains. Downstairs, Molly is busy arranging some choice blooms from our garden, which promises to be especially spectacular over the coming months
No, sod, already said spectacular once. He changed the first one to breathtaking, which was just as good. He scrolled through the photos he’d taken that morning, but they were all a bit blurry and indistinct—bloody perpetual mist—and wouldn’t do at all. OK, then, Plan B. He called up another gallery of pictures, diligently culled from the Net, and chose three—one of New Zealand, the other two a remote corner of Albania—and posted those instead.
This afternoon we plan to stroll down to the nearby village, where the produce stalls in the marketplace are piled high with mouth-watering local fruit & veg
That made him laugh out loud. Packet soup and tinned peaches, more like. In theory, the local yokels were supposed to come round door to door with a wheelbarrow. If so. they were mighty discreet about it, and quite unnaturally timid about knocking on the door. But you had to have masses of stuff about food and drink in these blogs, giving the impression that every day was one long five-star cordon bleu blowout, and all for less than a kebab and a Coke back home. Now somewhere he had some old photos of him and Molly sitting outside a café in St. Paul de Vence, blurry enough that they could be practically anywhere. A bit of Photoshopping to get rid of any actual lettering on the signs, they’d do perfectly for the blog. He smiled. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad life, after all.
The nerve of it, though, bloody town hall bureaucrats telling him he needed a licence for a barbecue in his own backyard. He might just possibly understand if it was a question of aggravating the neighbours; but there weren’t any, not as far as the eye could see, which from the top of the tower was a very long way indeed. So, who the hell gave a damn, apart from a bunch of pointy-eared, pointy-nosed paper shufflers with nothing better to do than tear up perfectly good application forms—
I wouldn’t stand for it if I were you.
Absolutely. If there’s one thing that really ticks me off, it’s being pushed around by—
Who said that?
He looked round, but there was nobody else in the room.
He considered those of his electronic devices that were capable of simulated speech, then inspected them, one by one, eliminating them from his enquiries. That just left voices inside his head. Unless you’re Joan of Arc or an American evangelist, not a good sign. He made a promise to himself to throttle back a little on the drinkies, and not get so worked up about things.
The mist was starting to clear, and the view through the to-all-intents-and-purposes-non-existent wall was, he had to admit, pretty damn spectacular; the Snentwood, the sinuous curve of the Mouthwash sparkling in the sunlight, the rags of mist softening the peaks of the distant Taupe Mountains. You could learn to put up with a lot for the sake of a view like that. He wondered how you went about learning to paint; and soon he’d slipped into a reverie in which he was celebrating the success of his first one-man show in Bond Street, interspliced with shots of himself with palette and easel; pan out over the landscape, then close in on the same image miraculously transfigured on the canvas. Definitely, he told himself, as his eyelids began to droop, definitely look into that, painting. Can’t be difficult, after all, because look at some of the deadheads who make a living at it.
He slept; and as his eyes closed, inside his head another Eye opened, and looked around. It peered through the walls of Terry’s skull as easily as he looked through the ad-lib-transparent walls of the tower. It was bemused by much of what it saw; not worried, because it didn’t do stress, or fear, or doubt, but curious and not entirely sure it approved, though it was nothing if not, no pun intended, open-minded. This human, for example; judged by appearances, or even by the layer of accumulated garbage littering the surfaces of its mind, it was worthless, no use to itself or anyone else, a fat, old, redundant consumer of resources better applied elsewhere. Kill it, on grounds of tidiness and good taste if for no other reason, and move on.
But the Great Red Eye knew better than that. It had been open and looking about for a very long time; it was wise, patient and long-suffering (three Ages of the World spent enduring chronic conjunctivitis teaches many things, particularly if throughout most of that time One has no knuckles with which to rub), it knew better than to judge anything by superficialities or to discard anything that might be made useful. It knew that even the most unlikely, vain, effete, contemptible little creature might have hidden depths or special talents, all of them grist to the mill, all of them potentially nutritious, like the tiny edible core of an artichoke. It would be simply untrue to say that there could be more to Terry Barrington than met the Eye; but what there was of him was there for it to see, and merited a close inspection.
Filtering out the rubbish, therefore, the Eye looked for qualities, and found persistence, a sort of dogged determination that others, Mrs. Barrington very much included, might be misled into filing under obstinacy; intelligence, too, limited—not the right word; constrained and confined, like a light shone down a tube, and capable of being concentrated to great effect, like the same light through a lens. Imagination, always worth having, though neither necessarily nor exclusively useful to its owner; a latent but strong sense of self-worth, robust enough to override the evidence, flexible enough to find the gaps and the crevices in the facts; an offshoot of that, an invincible sense of entitlement; pure gold, in context.
Give the choice, the Eye would have preferred someone else; an Elvenking, a dwarf-lord, a wizard or one of the Kings of Men; well. It had had plenty of those over the years, and look at it now: a disembodied faculty, marginally extant, bed-and-breakfasting in the minds of lower animals. Perhaps it was time for a different approach. After millions of years trying to bash down the front door, it’s only sensible to consider digging up from the sewers.
The Eye fell on the curious object lying on the table in front of the sleeping human. It was unfamiliar. At first the Eye had assumed it was a book, or a slate for writing on, because there were letters, and a picture of some place. Something about the picture caught the Eye; it took it a moment to realise that it didn’t recognise the place depicted—but that was impossible; the Eye had seen every corner of the Realms, from the moment when they were first formed out of the fiery catarrh of Iluvendor, through all Three Ages, every tectonic fashion, every whim of geology and afforestation; the Eye had seen and knew it all, every square inch, but this image it did not recognise—in which case either it was fiction, a work of the imagination, or it was a view of somewhere else…
The Eye studied the image closely, distinguishing every pixel, every photon of every pixel, and pronounced it unfamiliar. No pencil or brush had made the picture. It had been produced by taking light and capturing it somehow, like a fly in amber; incredibly powerful magic, the Eye noted in passing, though it would have to come back to the implications of that later. No; the picture was true, not a figment of imagination. It was an accurate representation of a real place, somewhere. Somewhere else.
The Eye blinked.
There had
been long passages of time when the Eye had been closed, not daring to show itself. During those dark ages, since it could not sleep it had turned inwards, giving all its infinite energy and power over to contemplation of the intangible, the infinite, the very fundamentals of existence and reality. Much it had calculated and proved; much more was extrapolation and mere speculation, more likely than not but still not susceptible of proof, and among this material was what the Eye had decided to call Multiverse Theory; the hypothesis that this is only one of an infinite number of alternate realities—parallel universes might be a better way of putting it—all occupying one indivisible point on the x, y, z and t axes, but stretching away as far as even the Eye could see in another, equally valid direction, whose existence it could apprehend but never reach. The rational part of its persona held that, since none of this could be proved, it could not be considered to be true or real in any meaningful sense. The more speculative part held that there were more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in any discipline of philosophy, and it would be foolish to leave any possibility out of account when planning long-term strategies. The two halves had argued long and hard over this during the long night, and had come to the conclusion that, since they were never going to see Eye to Eye on the point, it was best not to dwell on it.
But the picture was evidence; genuine hard data. Once, in a place and at a time unknown, light had licked and slithered round these mountains and these forests, before splatting against a screen or getting caught up in a cobweb and ending up here, in the despicable little human’s remarkable book. Light can do many things, but it can’t lie; no dog ever ate Light’s homework. So, if the picture was real, the mountains and the trees were real, and if so, where were they?
Not round here, that was for sure. Nowhere in the Realms. In which case, it followed ineluctably that outside or above or below or beyond the Realms lay Somewhere Else. And the only possible way of accounting for that was, yes, you guessed it…