When It's a Jar

by Tom Holt

  Well, he told himself, you say that, but have you actually tried? No, he hadn’t – mostly because he was fairly sure that prolonged contact with the field would reduce him to a pile of ash. That, however, was only an assumption, based on pure theory. Maybe the whole point of this being-stuck-inside thing was to teach him that theory’s all very well, but sometimes you’ve got to do the experiment. He stood up, lowered his head and ran at the invisible wall.

  Time passed. He woke up. His head hurt. He was lying curled up in a ball, and there was a funny smell which he quickly identified as oxidisation residue. Well, it was nice to know he’d been right about not being able to get through the field, at any rate.

  He yawned. Now he came to think of it, he’d been working pretty much flat out ever since he could remember, what with figuring stuff out from first principles, and now the unsuccessful experiment in field density parameters. His investigation of his body had led him to the conclusion that from time to time it needed to shut down for a while in order to recuperate and carry out routine maintenance functions, during which time he’d probably lose consciousness and move his eyes around a lot. Now, he decided, would probably be a good time to do all that. So he did.

  He slept; and he dreamed. In his dream, he was sitting at a table outside a café in Rio de Janeiro. Sitting next to him was a rather attractive girl, and on the table were six empty beer bottles. He was vaguely aware that he’d just reached a decision, and it was terribly important. Under his right hand was a scrap of paper, on which he’d just written Terms and conditions apply.

  Is this just a dream, he asked himself, or is it a memory? No way of telling. If it was a dream, the girl of his dreams was exactly that. If it was a memory, and she’d really smiled at him like that at some point, the sooner he got out of this damn bottle and back to his life, the better.

  “This one,” he heard himself say, as he picked up the one green bottle (the others were brown) and slipped it into his jacket pocket, “is for me. No terms and conditions. Complete freedom. I reckon I’ve earned it, don’t you?”

  She was gazing at the five brown bottles. “What about—?”

  “One for you.” He pushed a bottle across the table at her. She stared at it but didn’t touch. “And one for Pieter, one for Max, one for your uncle Bill, since he did put all that money into Pieter’s damnfool project. And one,” he concluded cheerfully, “for fun.”

  “Fun?”

  “Yes, fun.” He touched a fingertip to the neck of the bottle, which glowed blue and vanished. “Hey,” he said, shaking his hand and putting the fingertip in his mouth, “did you see that? That was cool.”

  Her eyes were still fixed on her bottle. “And the one you’ve kept for yourself—”

  “Well.” He made a vague and-why-not gesture. “One empty San Miguel bottle to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. If necessary,” he added. “But it won’t be, I’m sure. After all, I’ve given the others to people of unimpeachable integrity, so what could possibly go wrong?”

  “What about the sixth bottle?”

  “Oh, that.” He smiled. “A pound to a penny it’ll end up at the bottom of the sea. In which case, it’ll get eaten by a fish, which in turn will get caught by the seventh son of a seventh son. That’s what usually happens, and we’re all still here, aren’t we?”

  She’d shrunk back when the bottle started glowing blue. Now she leaned forward again. “And what about you?”

  “Ah. I’ve been thinking about that.”

  “And?”

  And – damn it – he woke up. Not fair, he howled silently at the universe, I was watching that. But it had gone – dream, memory, whatever – and all that remained behind was a scramble of unintelligible images and meaningless proper nouns: Rio, San Miguel, Pieter, Max. He had no idea what or who any of them were; but he had known, once, he was sure of it. And the girl, female entity, basically similar but still significantly different; what was all that about? It had to be a memory, because he couldn’t have invented anything so perfect, even back before his mind had been wiped clean and he knew what girls, female entities, were supposed to look like—

  “Hello? Can you hear it?”

  He snapped his head left. It, no, she was back, the female entity, the one he’d met earlier. Wonderful. “Yes, I can hear you,” he shouted. “Listen, you’ve got to let me out of here. I’ve just found out, I’ve got a life.”

  But she didn’t seem pleased. “You found out.”

  “Yes. I fell asleep, and I remembered. I was sitting on a thing beside a thing in a place, and there were six empty things on the thing, and there was this utterly amazingly wonderful female entity. Which is why I’ve got to get out of here. Now.”

  The female entity shook her head slowly. “It’s very sorry,” she said. “But that’s not possible.”

  “Why?”

  “Not possible,” she replied firmly. “Besides, what you thought you saw wasn’t real. It was a—”

  “Dream, yes.” He nodded enthusiastically. “A jumble of images generated during rapid-eye-movement sleep as a result of ascending cholinergic waves stimulating the forebrain. But it wasn’t just a dream. It was real. It was something that actually happened.”

  The female entity pulled a face. “Really?”

  “Yes, I’m sure of it. I remembered. It was terribly important, because of the six things. They’re things, you see. They make a sort of thing in a thing, which means you can get through into other things. And places. And the female entity—” He stopped. The last traces of the image were starting to break up, so that he could no longer remember the dream, only the memory of it. It was so desperately sad, he wanted to burst into tears.

  “Oh dear,” said the female entity. “Oh deary deary it.”

  “What?”

  “That’s not good,” she said, giving him a serious look. “It was afraid something like this might happen.”

  “Something like what?”

  “You’re not well.” She was frowning, which worried him. “Everything is not as it should be.” She tapped her forehead. “In here.”

  “What?”

  Now she was giving him a sympathetic look, which was downright scary. “Essentially, it’s an infection of the lower hippocampus. It can treat it,” she went on, as his mouth opened in a perfect circle, “but it’ll have to purge your brain again, which means you’ll be back to square one, it’s afraid.”

  “Square—?”

  “You’ll go to sleep,” she said, “and when you wake up, you’ll have no thoughts or memories at all. Again.”

  “Oh.”

  “Not to worry,” she said encouragingly. “You’ll soon figure it all out again, just like you’ve already done. But this time, with any luck, the infection won’t come back.”

  Two words registered. “This time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does that mean it’s happened before?”

  Pause. Then she nodded.

  “More than once?”

  Nod.

  “How many—?”

  “Two hundred and forty-seven.” She gave him a sad little smile. “This’ll be the two hundred and forty-eighth time it’s had to scrub your brain. But it’s all right. It’ll get there in the end, it promises. Just a matter of finding exactly the right treatment.”

  “Two hundred and—”

  “Yes.”

  He thought about that for two and a third seconds. “And each time, I’ve figured out everything from basic principles, and then you’ve come along and—”

  “Afraid so, yes. But it’s for your own good. It has to do it so you’ll be well again. You do want that, don’t you?”

  He hesitated. “Yes. Of course. But—”

  He was engulfed in fire. It ran down his arms and back like honey, and he screamed. His head was full of it; he could feel his brain burning—

  He slumped to the floor and went to sleep. The female entity stood looking at him for some time, and slowly the expression on h
er face changed, from sympathetic regret to cold hatred. Then she shrugged and walked away.

  He slept. Time passed.

  The temperature inside the bottle rose to something in the order of 60 degrees Celsius, then dropped away to – 30, then stabilised round about human blood temperature. Then (at exactly the same moment as Maurice got off the train, in exactly the same place, but at ninety-one degrees to that time and place in the D axis), he rolled onto his back, grunted and opened his eyes. He lay quite still for a moment, looking up. Then he frowned.

  “Hello?” he said.

  Here we go again, Maurice thought, because this wasn’t the first time. Oh no.

  The first time had been thirteen years ago, and it had started in the corridor outside the headmaster’s office, a very bad place indeed. There was a bench there. It was quite a famous bench; Death Row, they called it, and sooner or later, everybody found their way there, in the dreadful time just before the start of morning lessons, when Mr Fisher-King dispensed justice.

  Sitting next to him on the bench, looking mildly bored, was Stephanie Wilson, his co-accused. Normally he wouldn’t have minded sitting next to Stephanie Wilson; in fact, there had been times when he’d gone out of his way to arrange it. One such arrangement had landed them here, charged with two counts of illicit snogging on school premises. Ah well. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

  Stephanie – red-haired, plain-faced, undisputed arm-wrestling champion – took a biro from her pocket, removed the lid and used the plastic clip to clean out dirt from under her fingernails. It was something she did quite often, and it usually needed doing. No other girl he knew did that.

  The door opened, and a kid in the school only by sight wandered out with a look on his face that suggested his brain had just been sucked out through his ears. You saw stuff like that, sitting on Death Row.

  The kid nodded slightly, which meant it was their turn next. Maurice really didn’t want to go, but Stephanie stood up briskly, put the cap back on the biro, and marched into Mr Fisher-King’s office without looking back. You had to admire someone who didn’t know the meaning of fear, though it had to be said that fear was just one of many words Stephanie didn’t know the meaning of, let alone how to spell them. Reluctantly he got up and followed her. It was his first time in Mr Fisher-King’s office. People said it didn’t actually hurt, though of course you were never the same afterwards.

  Mr Fisher-King was sitting behind an enormous desk, his back to an enormous window, leaning back in an enormous chair. It was as though he’d chosen his surroundings to highlight just how small he was; five foot nothing in thick socks, with the body of a malnourished child and a bigger-than-average head. His hair was thick, curly, a blend of auburn and grey that together made up a sort of ghastly pink; he had the face of an unwrapped mummy, and the lenses of his glasses were as thick as a man’s thumb. As they walked in, he looked up from whatever it was he’d been reading and smiled at them. The smile mostly bounced off Stephanie, who instinctively turned her head at just the right moment, but Maurice caught the full force of it.

  “Well,” said Mr Fisher-King.

  There was no way of knowing how old Mr Fisher-King was – somewhere between fifty and a hundred and ninety – but sooner or later, Maurice thought, he’ll have to retire, and when he does, they’ll want to give him a leaving present. No problem whatsoever about what to get him. The biggest, fluffiest white Persian cat that money can buy; so that, when he quits the teaching profession and is immediately headhunted by SPECTRE as their new CEO, to drag them kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, he’ll have everything he could possibly need in order to do his job properly.

  A tiny nod of the massive head meant sit down, so they did. Mr Fisher-King looked at them for about twenty seconds, precisely the time it took for his eyes to reduce Maurice’s soul to mush without actually killing him. Then he frowned, glanced down at a sheet of paper on his desk, and looked up again.

  “Actually,” he said, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you two.”

  His voice had changed. The shift took Maurice’s breath away. It was as though he’d just been strapped into the electric chair, and the executioner, instead of throwing the switch, had pulled out his wallet and started showing him snapshots of his grandchildren. Even Stephanie looked mildly confused, like an Easter Island statue trying to do long division in its head.

  Mr Fisher-King’s head turned slowly, like a tank turret, and he looked at Stephanie for a long time. “Your great-great-great-grandmother,” he said, “was transported to Australia for stealing a sock. Your father won seventeen million pounds on the Lottery the year before last, but he lost the ticket two days before the draw and never bothered to check the number. There’s a Viking ship burial twelve feet under your gran’s living room. Your brother Kieran’s eldest son will one day invent a revolutionary new non-stick coating for frying pans, but someone else will patent it and get all the money. His youngest son will defuse a nuclear bomb using only a pair of pliers and a hairpin. You secretly like carrots, but you’ve never told anyone because it isn’t cool to eat fresh vegetables. Last Christmas you bet Tracy Armitage five pounds that you’d get Jason Turner into bed before New Year; you lost on a technicality, because there is no bed in the back of his van, only a mattress.” He paused, and looked at her again. “Are you wondering why I’m telling you all this?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr Fisher-King shrugged, and turned to Maurice. “Your destiny and hers are inextricably linked. So far in your short life you’ve achieved precisely nothing, unless you count Fiona Cartwright, but what you’ve got in store for you is quite simply—” He paused, then shook his head. “Which only goes to show,” he went on, “because as far as I can see you lack the intelligence, the courage, the resourcefulness and the strength of character to cope with any of the stuff you’re going to have to face, and yet—” He shrugged. “Amazing,” he said. “Because, well, just look at you. You’re a mess. You’re not just feckless, you’re a black hole into which feck falls and is utterly consumed.”

  “Sir?”

  Mr Fisher-King sighed. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, “it doesn’t matter. You know what? This is supposed to be the crowning moment of my career. My God,” he added, and shook his head. “I’ve thought about it often, but I never thought it’d be like this.”

  In addition to the anticipated fear and loathing, Maurice was starting to feel the acute embarrassment felt by the young when they have to witness their elders and betters losing it in style. “Sir,” he heard himself say, “is everything—?”

  “Yes.” Mr Fisher-King nodded sharply. “Yes, everything’s just fine. In fact, everything’s perfect. Guess what, kids, it’s nunc dimittis time.” He closed his eyes, as though something was hurting. “You know how long I’ve been in this job? Well?”

  Stephanie, who’d been staring straight at him, like an idiot gazing directly into the sun, shook her head. “Sir?”

  Mr Fisher-King smiled. “Well,” he said. “This school was built in 1926. Before that, there was an old Victorian Board school, which replaced the old village school, which started up shortly after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Before that—” He winced. “Believe it or not, there’s been a school of sorts here for twelve hundred years. I want you to think about that,” he added bitterly. “Twelve hundred years of bloody kids, and you know the worst thing about it?”

  “No, sir?”

  Mr Fisher-King laughed abruptly. “They’re all the same,” he said. “They’re all pretty much like you lot. I thought, when the Normans came in, That’s more like it, we’ll be getting a better class of students from now on, but no, not a bit of it. Same with the invention of moveable type. It’ll all be different from now on, I thought. Any time now we’ll have universal literacy – that’s got to bring about a quantum leap in intellectual evolution. Boy, was I wrong about that. Oh no. Year after year after year it’s still just bloody kids.” His hands were c
lenched into tiny balls, the knuckles standing out bone-white. “Until now,” he said, and suddenly he relaxed. “That’s it. At last, it’s over, and I’m free.”

  There was a long silence. Maurice couldn’t have moved if he’d wanted to. Stephanie was chewing slowly. Eventually, Mr Fisher-King started to come back to life. He sat up in his chair, looked down at the papers on his desk, shuffled some of them into a neat pile. “Anyway,” he went on, “this is the moment I’ve been waiting for. All I’ve got to do is give you two the message – Wilson, spit it out right now—” He nudged a steel wastebin out from under the desk with his foot; there was a faint metallic ting – “and I can finally call it a day. Which will be absolutely marvellous, believe you me. Right.” He straightened up and blinked twice. “Where was I?”

  “Sir?”

  “Oh yes. You two. Right, let me see.” He turned over a sheet of paper, frowned, screwed it into a ball and threw it over his shoulder. “An extraordinary destiny awaits you,” he said, in a curious sing-song voice. “Your task will be to kill the dragon, find the entrance to the glass mountain, release the prisoner of the Dolorous Tower and—” He paused, squinted at another scrap of paper, turned it over, folded it in half and stuck it in his top pocket. “Shopping list,” he said. “Ah, here we are.” He glanced at something written on the back of an envelope. “Actually, we won’t bother with all that right now. Let’s just say you’re going to be kept busy for quite some time. One of you will grow up to be the foremost warrior of your generation. The other one—” He blinked, and lifted his glasses to stare at the envelope. “Well, anyway. Lots and lots for you to be getting on with; success is absolutely not guaranteed, and if you fail, we’re all going to be in the brown and smelly up to our armpits. The destiny of the universe, in fact, rests on your shoulders.” He pursed his lips and turned his head for a moment. “I can only assume that at some point somewhere, somebody knew what he was doing, but there you go. Oh, and you’ll need this.”