by Tom Holt
Bjorn didn’t actually click his tongue impatiently, because you don’t do that sort of thing around visions of sublime loveliness. There was, however, a slight spasm in the muscles of his jaw. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘Which means,’ Jane continued, ‘we’re inside somebody’s head.’
There was a pause while Bjorn, for the want of a better word, thought about it.
‘Nah,’ he replied. ‘We wouldn’t fit, for one thing. You’d have legs sticking out through ears and all sorts.’
Jane sat down on a lump of masonry and inspected the damage to her footwear. ‘It’s all a matter of dimensions, ’ she replied warily. ‘I could be wrong, but I’ve got an idea that you lot are rather more flexible when it comes to that sort of thing than we are. I mean,’ she added with a slight shudder, ‘all that business with Time . . .’
Bjorn frowned. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Jane confessed. ‘During physics lessons at school, I was always the one at the back of the class drawing sea-serpents in the margins. I just feel that anyone capable of coning off two lanes of the later Roman Empire isn’t going to have too much difficulty in tucking us two away between their ears.’
Bjorn digested this for a moment. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘so we’re inside some guy’s head. No problem.’
He stood up, grabbed hold of a large lump of rock and started banging it against a wall. Plaster fell from the ceiling in little clouds.
‘What exactly are you doing?’ Jane enquired.
‘Well,’ Bjorn replied, between gasps for breath, ‘if you’re right, pretty soon a big hole’s going to appear and a couple of aspirin are going to come flying in here. That’s when we make our . . .’
Jane sighed. ‘Maybe I was over-simplifying,’ she said. ‘I mean, yes, we’re inside this person’s head, but we’re also in a different dimension. These things are very complicated, you know.’
‘Oh.’ Bjorn sagged, and let the rock fall. ‘So what’ve you got in mind, then?’
‘Nothing, really,’ Jane replied sadly. ‘I think we’re trapped, if you really want to know. I think we’re stuck in here for ever and ever. Brilliant, isn’t it?’
Bjorn shook his head. ‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘Look, everything that exists is a thing, right? And everything that’s a thing can be broken, or smashed up, or knackered, right? All we’ve got to do is find where to kick it, and we’re away.’ He stood up straight, put his shoulders back and started to walk purposefully round the room, stopping occasionally to bang the walls hard with his head.
For her part, Jane put her arms round her knees and curled up. It was bad enough being stuck, she thought; she could really have done without the company. Her ideal companion for the rest of Eternity was . . . well, it wasn’t a subject she’d given a great deal of thought to, what with one thing and another - A-levels first, and then briefly the rain forests and the threat of nuclear weapons, and latterly mostly the quantum mass of accrued back ironing - but it certainly wasn’t a six-foot blond Nordic idiot whose reading probably stopped short at Alcohol 4.5% by Volume. Please Dispose Of Can Tidily. If someone was out to get her, so far they were doing a pretty neat job.
‘Hey,’ Bjorn called out. ‘Sounds pretty hollow over here.’
‘What does?’
‘The wall.’
‘Oh.’ Probably an inter-dimensional partition of some kind. Gosh, thought Jane, I’m hungry.
‘Definitely hollow,’ Bjorn continued. ‘Perhaps if I gave it a really good thumping with something hard and solid . . .’
‘I thought you’d just tried that.’
‘Well, it’s better than just sitting there,’ Bjorn replied coldly. He looked around, and then set about trying to lift a larger than average lump of masonry. He failed.
‘Or there’s the chimney,’ he added. ‘That looks like it goes somewhere.’
Jane sniffed. ‘Quite probably,’ she replied. ‘Given that the Universe is curved, it probably goes backwards. Up itself. Eventually, I mean.’
‘Yeah,’ said Bjorn uncertainly, ‘right. You know, what I could really use right now is a bloody big hammer.’
‘Look,’ Jane snapped, ‘you’re just wasting your time. We aren’t inside a room, we aren’t inside anything. We’re just inside.’ She waved her arms irritably. ‘So will you please stop banging around, because you’re starting to get on my nerves.’
Reluctantly Bjorn put down the promising-looking slab of breeze block he’d been trying for weight and balance, and paced up and down a few steps, humming. Then he got down on his hands and knees and tried staring up the chimney.
‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘if we’re inside this guy’s head like you said, this chimney is actually a nostril or something. Yeah,’ he added brightly, ‘and that pump thing, you know, the one we had on just now, maybe that’s something to do with the breathing gear.’
‘Please,’ Jane mumbled, as she lay on her back with her eyes closed, ‘would you mind terribly much just shutting up for a while, because I’d like to try and get some sleep.’
Bjorn glowered at her. ‘All right,’ he growled. ‘Just let me have one more go, okay?’
‘Please yourself,’ Jane replied irritably, and turned over on her side.
Bjorn nodded purposefully. He was in love, he was trapped inside somebody’s head, something he couldn’t understand had tried to spread him all over the walls like butter, and what he wanted most of all in the whole wide world was fifty centilitres of ice-cold Budweiser. He spat on his hands, hefted the chunk of breeze block, and gave the corner of the mantelpiece a bone-jarring wallop.
Various things happened.
Several pieces of shrapnel broke off the mantelpiece; the lights flickered, Ganger materialised in mid-air, fell heavily and rolled on the ground, clutching his ankle and groaning; a hole appeared in one of the walls and the floor suddenly flooded with a sea of soluble aspirin.
The final event was Bjorn splashing across the floor, grabbing Ganger by the lapels and shaking him as if he contained a mixture of gin and vermouth.
‘Dop, you bastard,’ he snapped. ‘What the hell kept you?’
Staff tightened his half-nelson on Finance and General Purposes’ right arm and grinned like a maniac.
The trick was, apparently, to keep the bastard’s mind occupied until Ganger could get out of it. This was getting increasingly harder.
‘Another thing I bet you don’t know about fifteenth-century Florentine religious painting . . .’ he said.
‘Dop?’ said Jane. It wouldn’t have taken much imagination to see wisps of smoke drifting out of her ears. ‘Dop?’
Ganger grinned sheepishly. ‘D. Ganger,’ he replied. ‘What did you think the D stood for, anyway? Norman?’
There are times when you can feel the situation drifting away from you. ‘But why?’ she heard herself ask. ‘Does that mean there’s two of you, or what?’
Ganger shook his head. ‘Coincidence,’ he said. ‘It just so happens that where I come from, Doppel is a very traditional Chri . . . very traditional name.’ He paused. ‘It’s part,’ he added, ‘of our rich and ancient cultural heritage.’
‘Where you come from,’ Jane repeated. ‘I thought you were a . . .’
‘Yes,’ Ganger interrupted, ‘well, anyway. This isn’t getting us anywhere, is it? Talking of which, I’ll bet you don’t know where you are. I mean, I could give you three guesses and you’d never . . .’
‘Inside the head of the chairman of the Finance and General Purposes Committee,’ Jane replied flatly. ‘To be precise, locked inside his conscience.’ She sniffed histrionically. ‘Give me credit for a little common sense, please.’
Ganger sagged. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now . . .’
‘And I think I’ve seen everything I want to,’ Jane went on brutally, ‘so if you’ll just see your way to getting me out of here, then I’ll be very much obliged to you.’
‘Right. Um.’
‘An
d,’ Jane added, ‘you can accept my resignation. I’ve had enough of all this. I want to go back to being a terminally bored and frustrated human being stuck in the same old mindless rut, if that’s all the same to you. In fact,’ she added savagely, ‘if ever I get out of this . . . this head in one piece, I’m going straight to the nearest poly to enrol for accountancy classes. Got that?’
Ganger nodded. And then vanished.
He re-materialised in complete darkness, but that was all right. Something soft broke his fall. Something soft and strangely comfortable. He reached in his top pocket for his slimline flashlight. Then he grinned.
He was completely surrounded by ironing.
Further inspection revealed that it was ironing strewn untidily across an unwashed kitchen floor, while on the edge of the penumbra cast by his small torch he could make out the silhouette of a sink piled high with saucepans and baking trays. He nodded. He’d come to the right place.
Look, said the walls and the floor, this is ridiculous.
‘Maybe,’ Ganger replied, lying back on a heap of creased and wrinkly cotton blouses and putting his hands behind his head. ‘Quite possibly. But you can’t blame me for trying.’
It’s absurd, replied the walls and the floor. I’m inside his head, you’re inside mine. It’s going to end up like that trick where you have two mirrors facing each other, and the reflections go on and on for ever. For all I know, we could end up disappearing or something.
‘Nah,’ Ganger yawned. ‘Trust me, I know about these things. I’ve been inside more heads than you’ve had hot dinners.’ He paused and peered across at the sink. ‘And that’s saying something, apparently. Hey, Le Creuset. I’ve got a set of them.’
Leave my kitchenware out of this, replied the floor. And while you’re in there, you can see for yourself. If you can find one scrap of remorse for me handing in my notice . . .
Ganger grinned. Then, slowly, he took a large, flat packet from under his coat and started to unwrap it.
Hey, shrieked the ceiling, that’s not fair. You can’t do that.
‘Who’s going to stop me?’ Ganger said simply. Then he bit through a strand of sellotape.
But it’s against the rules, howled the far wall. You can’t bring things of your own into my head, it’s brain-washing.
Ganger studied the floor pointedly. ‘Looks like it could do with it,’ he said. ‘If your mother were to see this floor, she’d have a . . .’
You leave my mother out of this.
‘I can do,’ Ganger replied. He walked across to the sink, picked up a cheese-encrusted kitchen knife, and set to work with it on the wrappings of the parcel. ‘Depends on how reasonable you can be.’
What’ve you got in there, anyway?
‘Guilt,’ Ganger chuckled. ‘Highly refined, industrial-strength concentrated remorse. So don’t sneeze or make any sudden movements, for both our sakes, or you’ll spend the rest of your life with people hiding sharp objects whenever you come into a room.’
You bastard.
Ganger said nothing. He wasn’t looking sheepish any more.
I think you’re bluffing. You wouldn’t dare.
‘Bet?’
If you let go one drop of that stuff, as soon as you come out I’ll kill you.
‘Oh no you won’t,’ Ganger replied grimly. ‘You’ll be so sorry for everything else you’ve done, you’ll positively beg me to let you carry on working for us. It’s amazing stuff, this,’ he added nonchalantly. ‘In the plant where they process it, they have to stop every five minutes and confess.’
The walls seemed to shrink a little. The floor quivered.
‘In fact,’ Ganger went on, ‘you wouldn’t believe some of the things they confess to. We had an assistant production manager phone up the newspapers and claim responsibility for the San Andreas Fault the other day. Said San Andreas was framed. We had our work cut out hushing that one up, I can tell you . . .’
All right. You win. Put it away.
‘I have a five-year contract in my left inside pocket,’ Ganger said slowly. ‘Also a pen. And something to rest on.’
All right. Just put it away before you drop it or something.
‘Thank you,’ Ganger said. ‘You won’t be sorry. Or at least, not half as sorry as you would have been if I’d . . .’
All right.
There was a blur.
It hardly lasted any time at all, which was just as well. Imagine a Cinemascope projection of the Rockies pulled through a two-inch hole, backwards.
‘Here we are, then,’ Ganger said cheerfully. ‘All safe and . . .’
Staff looked up and let go of his prisoner. ‘What the hell do you think you’ve been doing?’ he demanded. The prisoner made a little moaning noise, sagged forwards and collapsed. Ganger looked at him.
‘There wasn’t any call to get heavy,’ he said reproachfully. ‘Besides, we need him.’
Staff growled. ‘I didn’t get heavy,’ he said. ‘Not unless you could call explaining the plot of Tristan and Isolde three times consecutively, and trying to make it sound interesting, getting heavy,’ he added bitterly.
‘Sounds pretty heavy to me,’ Ganger replied. ‘Never mind, though, here we all are.’ He looked down and prodded the slumped body with his toe. ‘Somebody throw a bucket of water over him or something.’
‘Excuse me.’
Ganger and Staff looked round.
‘Excuse me,’ said Jane, ‘but the deal’s off. It was under duress, and absolutely unfair, and I’m not signing anything.’
She folded her arms, and Bjorn simultaneously took a step forward. There was an awful lot of him, and although it was undeniably true that mere physical violence wouldn’t have any effect whatsoever on the likes of Ganger and Staff, they both shrank back a few inches. After all, there was no way of telling that he knew that.
‘Who’s this?’ Staff asked.
‘Ah yes,’ Ganger replied, trying to smear a thin coat of self-confidence over his voice. ‘Friend of mine I’d like you both to meet.’
Staff considered this for a moment. ‘If he’s a friend of yours,’ he observed, ‘then why’s he holding you two feet off the ground by your lapels? Does that mean he’s really glad to see you or something?’
‘You bastard,’ said Bjorn. ‘You slimy, toffee-nosed little git. You went off and left me in that . . .’ Bjorn paused and made a thorough search of his vocabulary for the right word; given the size of Bjorn’s vocabulary, it was a bit like looking for a combine harvester in a haystack. ‘In that dump,’ he said decisively. Which only goes to show that you don’t need to lug a dictionary round between your ears to be able to come up with the mot juste.
‘Oh, come on,’ Ganger replied. ‘It wasn’t that bad, surely.’
It was the wrong thing to say. Ganger suddenly found himself an inch away from the angriest pair of eyes he’d ever come across.
‘Right, sunshine,’ said Bjorn quietly. ‘You can read minds, right?’
‘Up to a point.’
‘Maybe you’d fancy having a quick look round what I’ve got in mind for you.’
Ganger swallowed hard. ‘I’d rather not,’ he replied. ‘You do realise, of course, that physical discomfort has no effect on me whatsoever.’
‘Sure?’
Jane made a tutting noise. ‘Put him down,’ she said briskly. ‘If you frighten him he’ll probably go and hide in my subconscious, and I’ve had enough trouble with it over the years as it is. Who are you, anyway?’
Bjorn swung his head round, and blushed. ‘Um,’ he stammered. ‘Like, well, my name’s sort of Bjorn. That is . . .’
‘Hello, Bjorn. Aren’t you forgetting something, by the way?’
Bjorn’s eyes filled with panic, as he struggled to identify the social error he’d just committed. Should he have shaken her hand, he wondered, or offered to give up his seat or carry her bag for her? Were you actually supposed to say your name on a first date? He looked around wildly for a door to open.
&nbs
p; ‘I think she means about putting me down,’ Ganger whispered.
Without moving his head, Bjorn relaxed his fingers slightly. There was a thump, and something down by his feet said ‘Thank you so much.’
‘How do you come into this anyway?’ Jane was asking. ‘You don’t look like a . . .’
‘He’s not,’ Ganger broke in. ‘Or at least, he used to be. But he’s not any more. Now he’s a supergrass.’
Jane was just about to say ‘A what?’ and Staff was on the point of asking, ‘Look, just what is going on here?’ and Bjorn was poised to hit somebody, when the heap on the floor groaned and moved slightly.
And looked up. And saw Bjorn. And screamed.
Or at least one of him did.
One of the risks inherent in high managerial office, with all the accompanying stress and nervous tension of departmental politics, is that of developing a dual personality. Usually it’s regarded as something to be avoided, but it can have its advantages.
To take a good example: it meant that whereas half of Finance and General Purposes’ personality was making small squeaking noises and trying to hide itself in the pile of the carpet, the other half was striding angrily down the corridors of the Security barracks, yelling furiously and banging on doors with a riding crop. Where Finance and General Purposes had an advantage over the run-of-the-mill psychotic was being able to provide separate corporeal incarnations for each of his separate personas; or, to put it another way, two bodies to go with his two faces.
The one that went with his half-crazed-Dictator face was very big, dressed in the sort of black leather greatcoat the SS would have gone in for if they’d had access to top-quality dragon hide, and draped liberally with interesting-looking weapons. You’d need an active, not to say warped, imagination to work out what they were designed to do to you, but any fool could see they were weapons. Fiendish ones, probably.