Earth, Air, Fire & Custard Tom Holt

by Earth, Air, Fire

  'But I thought-'

  'Compared to that,' Paul said quickly, 'yes, my life's an absolute bed of bloody roses. But perfectly happy and satisfied would nevertheless be overstating it.'

  'I see.' Mr Laertides's voice raised a virtual eyebrow. 'And what would you say is wrong with your life, right now?'

  'That bloody woman,' Paul answered without a hint of hesitation. 'Just when I finally get what I truly deserve, what I've slogged my bum off for, the partnership, what do you and that git Tanner and the rest of you go and do? You make her a partner too. I mean, where's the sense in that? It's stupid.'

  'That's it?' Mr Laertides said. 'That's all, really? The only thing wrong with your life is Sophie Pettingell?'

  Paul thought about that for a full third of a second. 'Yes,' he said decisively.

  'Fine. And what would you say is your problem with her?'

  That took a little bit more thought, a whole half-second. 'I hate her,' Paul said.

  'Ah.' Mr Laertides sounded satisfied, as though he'd just reached a conclusion. 'In that case,' he said, 'you can wake up now.'

  So Paul woke up.

  But he wasn't snuggled in a nice warm bed under expensive Laura Ashley sheets next to a leggy flame-haired banker's moll. It wasn't even morning. He was at home, in his flat, but it was late afternoon and outside the kitchen window rain was drizzling like a selfish child's tears.

  'Oh,' he said.

  'I just thought,' Mr Laertides said, 'that before you committed yourself to your new life, I'd better check and make sure you actually liked it. I mean, in a sense it's supposed to be your reward, for repairing the space-time continuum and so forth.'

  'Reward,' Paul repeated.

  'Yes, up to a point,' Mr Laertides replied. 'Or it's an attempt, in my usual flat-footed, cack-handed style, to set things right. Like, maybe that's how you would have turned out if I hadn't interfered and you'd been left to your own devices.'

  'I see.'

  'Well, quite. So I said to myself,' Mr Laertides went on, 'it'd probably be wise if I did just check, to make absolutely sure. To make absolutely sure,' he repeated slowly, 'that that's how you'd like to be, irrevocably, for the rest of your life.'

  Paul didn't say anything. He owed it to himself to make a considered decision for once in his life, rather than just going with instinct and gut reaction. From his mind he plucked the image, only slightly wilted, of himself waking up in bed: himself but not himself, this other person, this stranger- 'Yes, please,' he said.

  Possibly it wasn't the reaction Mr Laertides had been expecting. 'Are you sure?'

  'Am I sure?' Paul exploded. 'For crying out loud. Weren't you bloody well watching? He's like rich and cool and successful and he gets on with people and he was in bed with this girl with no clothes on.. .'Paul paused a moment to catch his breath. 'Yes,' he said. 'If that could be me, I'm all for it. Absolutely no question whatsoever.'

  Mr Laertides frowned. 'But Sophie,' he said. 'What about Sophie?'

  'Well-' Paul hesitated. 'If I've got this the right way round, the deal is that if I choose, reality will be like it was in that dream, OK? I'll be normal and successful and I'll have a career and girlfriends and everything; and so will she. I mean, she'll have all the stuff she had in the dream; she'll be a partner too, and-'

  'But you'll hate her. And she'll hate you too, probably.'

  Paul grinned weakly. 'Omelettes and eggs?' he said.

  For a moment Mr Laertides flickered, as if someone was playing about with his vertical hold. 'That's what you really want, is it?'

  'Yes. Oh yes.'

  'Oh. Right,' Mr Laertides said, sounding somewhat bewildered. 'Fine. You do realise that unless you say otherwise really soon, like in the next five seconds, you'll be stuck like it for ever, for the rest of your life.'

  'Smashing,' Paul said. 'All right, have I got to do anything, or does it just happen?'

  *

  'I had this really weird dream,' Paul said.

  His friend wasn't listening. Four pints of Flammenwerfer tends to have that effect. Nevertheless, Paul felt he wanted to tell someone about his dream, and his friend hadn't actually begged him to shut up.

  'I had this really weird dream,' he repeated, 'where I was this obnoxious snivelling little git, and God or somebody came to me in a vision and asked me if I wanted to be me, or if I wanted to turn back into the git and get off with Sophie Pettingell.'

  At the words get off with, his friend's hearing came back on line. 'With who?'

  'Sophie Pettingell. You know, that awful bitch at our place, the one who just got made a partner.'

  His friend frowned, as though peering through a cloud of amber-coloured fumes. 'I wouldn't if I were you,' he said.

  'Wouldn't what?'

  'Whatsername, that bird you just said. Anyway, I thought you were after that redhead from the Credit Lyonnais.'

  'Snores,' Paul replied succinctly. 'And anyhow, I didn't say I wanted to, I said that in this dream I had, God said I could be this wimp loser and get off with her, if I wanted to.'

  His friend seemed to have a problem with that concept. 'God, you say?'

  'I think it was God,' Paul replied. 'One of those blokes, anyhow.'

  His friend shrugged. 'If I were you,' he said, 'I'd think seriously about my whole religious position. Also, if next time you see Him, He starts on about how there's all these English people buying up farmhouses in the Dordogne and wouldn't it be a good idea to raise an army and drive them into the sea, I think you'd probably be wise to change the subject.'

  Paul nodded absently. 'The thing was,' he said, 'it was such a vivid dream. If I close my eyes, I can still see bits of it. And he said, if I chose it'd be for ever, for the rest of my life. Which is really weird, don't you think?'

  His friend didn't seem unduly impressed. 'I had this dream once,' he said. 'I dreamt I was a twelve-foot-high bass saxophone, and I was being chased through the corridors of Broadcasting House by a pack of aubergines. And you know what? Since then, I've never touched the stuff again, and it seems to have done the trick.'

  'Maybe you're right,' Paul said vaguely. 'In any case, I think I'll go home now.'

  'Oh,' said his friend. 'You're not stopping for the other half.'

  'I had the other half two hours ago.' Paul swilled the last drop round in the bottom of his glass and swallowed it. 'Got to be up early,' he said. 'Pre-breakfast meeting with Dennis Tanner. Catch you later, Duncan.'

  'Neville.'

  'Whatever.' Paul pushed his way through the crowd to the door and walked out into the street. It had turned cold, and the beginnings of rain were feathering down. He'd left his umbrella at the office, but it was too late and too far to go back for it.

  'Really weird,' he muttered to himself, as he stepped off the pavement.

  Later, at the inquest, the taxi driver said the bloke must've been drunk or something, because he hadn't looked, he'd just charged out into the road.

  'Celia Johnson,' said the elderly Chinese gentleman. 'Leslie Howard.'

  Paul closed his eyes and opened them again, but the Chinese bloke was still there. 'You what?' he said.

  'Brief Encounter,' the Chinese bloke said. 'I can't remember if either of them actually says, "We can't go on meeting like this" in the film, but you get the idea.' He shrugged his blue silk-clad shoulders. 'Anyway,' he went on, 'you're down for the Scrabble tournament at six-thirty, followed by first steps in basket-weaving at seven-fifteen, followed by gardening club at nine. After that,' he added, 'I haven't bothered, since by then time will have no meaning for you.'

  'Excuse me,' Paul said, and he couldn't help but notice that, apart from the elderly Chinese gentleman and his rather garish silk dressing-gown thing, there was nothing at all in any direction, 'but I haven't got the faintest bloody idea where I am or who you are or what the hell is going on or what just happened to me.'

  The Chinese gentleman's smile was a salad of pity, cruelty, sadness and triumph. 'Like it matters,' he said.


  'So it's just as well,' Mr Laertides said, as Paul's eyes snapped open, 'that there's two of you. Otherwise-'

  For the first few seconds of consciousness, Paul was sure that he was dead. He could remember it so clearly: Mr Dao's horrible grin, the terrible sensation of gradually drifting away, the sudden realisation that this time there was no escape, the white curtain being drawn slowly across his mind's eye. 'Where?' he mumbled. 'Am I-?'

  'Now,' Mr Laertides was saying, 'there's only one of you, and so that's been put right too. I do like to have everything neat and tidy and sorted when I'm wrapping up a job.'

  Paul filled his lungs with air, just to see if he still could. 'Did I just die?'

  Mr Laertides's face stretched into a long, annoying grin. 'Don't ask me,' he said, 'I've never tried it myself. You, on the other hand, seem to spend more time down there than up here. Not so much a grave, more a pied-à-terre.' He drew his fingertips down the sides of his nose, and yawned. 'That said,' he went on, 'I'd sort of throttle back on the snuffing-it side of things from now on, if I were you. Might not be so easy to get away, the next time.'

  'I died,' Paul repeated. 'Really died. I was fading away, evaporating-' He stopped; he felt sick, and he was shaking. 'Are you listening to what I'm telling you? I didn't manage to get away at the last minute this time. It happened. I-'

  'You woke up,' said Mr Laertides. 'You were having a bad dream. People have them every day.'

  'Not like this,' Paul objected hysterically. 'It was so real. It was real-' He could feel muscles contracting in his stomach. 'All those other times, somehow I knew it wasn't actually the end, because, well, it wouldn't have been right. But this time-'

  'I wouldn't worry about it if I were you.'

  'The hell with that,' Paul said. 'It was horrible. It was so absolutely horrible.'

  Mr Laertides smiled awkwardly. 'I'm not saying it wasn't,' he said. 'I'm just saying that you shouldn't worry about it, because it doesn't do any good. I mean, it's like spending the whole summer holidays feeling miserable because school starts again in September. You can waste your whole life thinking like that.'

  'But I thought-' Paul tried to pull himself together; it was a bit like trying to catch whitebait with a cod-fishing net. 'Mr Dao told me himself. He said that over me death has no jurisdiction.'

  'Had,' said Mr Laertides gently, almost kindly. 'There was an anomaly. It's been ironed out. That's what I do. Congratulations,' he added, with a slightly forced grin. 'You're now a hundred per cent normal again, at least where mortality's concerned.'

  'Oh.' Paul curled up in a ball on the floor, hugging his knees to his chest. 'So some day-'

  'Some day,' Mr Laertides repeated. 'But not yet. Anyway,' he added briskly, 'that about wraps things up as far as my side of it goes. I can shove off, go back to sleep until some other dangerous bastard starts mucking about with the foundations of the universe. Thanks for all your help.' His voice was different somehow, Paul noticed. 'You know what?' he went on. 'I'll miss you. Sort of got used to being around people these last thirty years, and watching you grow up and everything. It'd be pushing it a bit to say I'm proud of how you turned out, but you could've been a lot worse.'

  Paul opened his eyes and looked up at him. 'Uncle Ken,' he said.

  'That's right,' said Mr Laertides; then he flickered one last time into a cloud of pixels, which reshaped themselves into his errant godfather. 'Now you see what I meant when I said I've always been here for you. Looking after your moral and spiritual welfare, that was the job description. I did OK, though I say so myself. So long, son.'

  'You're going,' Paul said.

  'Well, yes.' He smiled, this time with a hint of genuine warmth, though perhaps that was just an illusion resulting from the change of face. 'Couldn't hang around here even if I wanted to. I'm not so much an actual person, see, more what you'd call a phenomenon; and when my gig's over, I move on to the next one. Bit like Dr Sam Beckett, but without the crinkly blue lights.'

  'But you're my godfather,' Paul said. 'I mean, you're real.'

  'For a while,' Uncle Ken replied. 'Same as everybody else, same as you, even. But all good things come to an end.' He walked to the kitchen door and opened it, and Paul suddenly realised he'd never see him again. 'Thanks for the biscuits and stuff, by the way.'

  'Biscuits?'

  'The ones I helped myself to, last time I was here. I also nicked the magic sword from under the sofa, while you were in the other room, but that wasn't actually stealing, because I knew I'd be giving it back, at Rosie Tanner's do, when you'd be needing it. Just a minor detail I wanted to set straight,' he added. 'Force of habit. Talking of which: when I was your godfather -well, it wasn't one word so much as two separated by a comma. Or even an ampersand. Be seeing you, our Paul.'

  He closed the door after him; tricksy things, doors, as Paul had learned to his cost over the last nine months or so. Paul sat still for a while, musing on his godfather's parting words, which appeared on first hearing to be mere gibberish.

  Two words separated by a comma. Or even an ampersand -

  Oh.

  Oh well, Paul thought. That'd explain various things, too: like why Mum had always liked Uncle Ken a lot, but Dad had never seemed to care for him much; indeed, why Dad hadn't liked Paul much, either, or bothered to show up at his funeral. And other stuff, to do with the first of the two words; intriguing but on balance rather less important.

  Paul stood up and went to the fridge, but when he opened the door the light didn't come on, and there was nothing in it, not even furry cheese or deliquescent tomatoes. Paul sighed; it wasn't every day that you lost not only your immunity from death and your god and your newly discovered long-lost father but your fridge as well.

  'Now what do I do?' he said aloud; whereupon the doorbell rang.

  It was a goblin. No, it wasn't, but not far off the mark - it was Dennis Tanner. He came in without being asked, looked around at the furnishings and decor with a vague, mute blend of disgust and contempt, and sat down on the edge of the better chair.

  'You didn't come into the office today,' he said.

  'Didn't I?' Paul tried to think what day it actually was. 'Sorry,' he said, 'I've sort of lost track of time lately.'

  'Well, that's not good enough,' Mr Tanner said. 'You're fired.' A very brief spurt of instinctive anger, followed by a slow, glorious sunrise of joy. 'Really?'

  'Yes,' Mr Tanner said, and he had the grace to sound a bit uncomfortable about it. 'You'll get a week's pay in lieu of notice, and we'll clear your desk for you in the morning. Don't bother coming in, I'll send it on.'

  'That's-' Paul tried to find some words, but they were all out to lunch. 'Thanks,' he said.

  Mr Tanner sighed. 'Don't thank me,' he said. 'It wasn't exactly an ordinary management decision. More,' he added, muttering, 'an act of God. Anyhow, that's it as far as you and the firm are concerned. If you were hoping for a gold watch or a card signed by all of us, forget it.'

  'I-' Paul shrugged. 'That's all right,' he said.

  Mr Tanner got up. 'You may also be interested to know,' he said, 'that I've had to sack Ms Pettingell as well. Pity, we had high hopes of her at one stage, but-'

  'Another act of God?'

  'More acts than bloody Chipperfield's,' Mr Tanner said bitterly. 'But there you go. She's out of it, and so are you. In fact, it's going to play merry hell with my agoraphobia, what with Theo Van Spee and Ricky Wurmtoter suddenly vanishing off the face of the Earth. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?'

  'Me?' Paul said. 'Sorry, no.'

  'Ah.' Mr Tanner shrugged. 'So it'll just be me, Cas Suslowicz and Jack Wells holding the fort. Still, we'll manage. Probably take on a few zombie trainees from MIT come the autumn. They're smart and hard-working, have excellent qualifications and they don't want paying. I'll see myself out.'

  The door closed behind him, too. It was being a hungry door today, gobbling people up and not even spitting out the bones or the boots. On the other hand- On th
e other hand, Paul was free, and that was going to take quite some time to sink in. He dreaded to think what kind of threats Mr Laertides - even now he couldn't manage to think of him as Uncle Ken; let alone Dad - must've used to force JWW to let him go, after they'd paid a six-figure sum for him and seen hardly any return on their investment. Under other circumstances (fairly bizarre ones, admittedly) he could have felt sorry for them; but the screeching brakes of the sweet chariot swinging low drowned out any such thoughts. He was free; it was the same sort of relief he'd felt on parting company with Mr Dao- No, he was under strict orders not to worry about that, so he shoved the thought of Mr Dao out of his mind and slid a chair-back under his mind's door knob. Instead, he thought: So they've let Sophie go, as well. I wonder- Freshly canned worms; please dispose of can tidily. Sophie, and yet another ghastly dilemma. Mr Tanner could let her go, release her from her contract and let her get on with her life; all very well for him, all he had to do was tear up a piece of paper. But it didn't end there. If Paul had got the right end of the stick, Sophie was in love with him; she had to be, because she had no choice in the matter, she'd been bred that way, like a variety of geranium. If she was ever to be genuinely free and have some sort of a life without nasty bits of magic embedded in it like impossible-to-operate-on shrapnel, he'd have to find some way of letting her go too. Assuming, of course, that he could bring himself to do that- He'd tried once already; or at least one of him had, and died in the attempt. Not a good precedent. How do you make people stop loving you, Paul wondered; is there a magic spell or a philtre you can buy that'll do the trick? The impression he'd got back in the office was that there wasn't; in which case, what'd be so bad about leaving well alone, letting the happy ending slouch towards Bethlehem to be born? If Sophie loved him and he loved her; wasn't that what life's supposed to be all about, according to Hollywood and the music industry and received opinion generally?

  But it wouldn't be right. It hadn't been right when she'd offered to drink the philtre for him, and it wasn't right now. Paul flopped onto the sofa and put a cushion over his face, but he knew perfectly well that the world was still out there, even though he couldn't see it. He wondered where she was, what she was doing, what she was thinking; had Mr Tanner told her the good news yet, and if so- The phone rang. He dragged himself across the room to answer it.