by Tom Holt
Without thinking, he started tidying the place up – dirty cups and plates to the kitchen, discarded socks off the living-room floor, empty pizza trays in the bin, the usual protocols. And then he stopped and thought: Yes, and there’s a dead dragon in the bedroom. True, but that was no reason to leave the rest of the place looking like a pigsty, not when you’ve got a girl coming round. He gritted his teeth and tentatively felt between the sofa cushions for neglected items of food and clothing. Distressingly productive: a sock, his phone before last (with a crunched screen), a half-eaten doughnut—
Maurice left the motorway at Junction 23, drove round and round the spiral interchange known locally as the Coffee Grinder and turned into a service station.
It was a terrifying experience. First, his stomach swelled and flattened and became the car park. His chest bubbled out, like the bit you remember in Alien, shifted and contracted into a sort of a cube, and stabilised as the shops and dining area. His left arm became the petrol pumps, his right melted and resolidified as the slip road. He had no idea what happened to his feet, or various other bits to which he’d hitherto attached considerable importance. His right nipple was now a Burger King.
Now just a minute, he thought.
The big round clock in the main hall that had once been a hair on his chest froze; then the second hand began to move, the other two staying exactly where they were. It swept round, and round, and round again. Every time it passed 12, the people scurrying about in the shops and food places were teleported back to precisely where they’d been sixty seconds ago.
Now, he thought. Just a minute. Oh, I see.
Desperately, he jammed a gag in his mental modem; no thoughts to be turned into words until further notice. Absolutely no figures of speech under any circumstances. This means you.
He forced his mind to relax. This is fine, he told himself. It would only be scary and distressing if it bothered me, and it doesn’t. It’s perfectly all right that six cars are currently queuing to refuel out of my little finger, because, because, it’s perfectly all right. I’m fine with that. I’m cool.
He shivered, or at least his mind did; his body was too heavily encrusted with buildings for casual movement. Easy, he told himself, easy does it. Accept and adapt, and once we’ve done that, we can face whatever interesting challenge the universe has decided to honour us with today.
A family of six were buying hamburgers in his—But that was all right too. Relax. Don’t fight it. Go with it. Steer into the skid—
The car he was driving was going sideways. Instinctively, he slammed on the brakes, whereupon the car swerved monstrously, reared up on its front and back left-hand wheels, wobbled for a split second and fell over. The impact went straight through him, reducing his bones to jelly and his brains to milkshake, or at least that was how it felt.
The engine died and there was a moment of almost perfect silence, the only audible sound being the drip-drip of a ruptured fuel line. Not good; he’d seen enough action movies to know that drip-drip-drip is generally the overture to BOOM. Unfortunately, he was comprehensively wedged in the wreckage of the car and couldn’t get out. Trapped. Hopeless. Up shi—
Um.
He was in a canoe. On either side, a turgid brown stream was barely moving. It didn’t smell terribly nice. He glanced around him. Just as he thought: no paddle.
Oh God, he thought.
On the right bank of the river, a large rhododendron suddenly burst into flame. Yes?
Maurice blinked. The bush had just spoken to him. The burning bush had just—
“Hello?” he said.
Hello yourself.
Then the penny dropped. Ting! went the penny as it bounced off the polished beechwood rail of the canoe, then plop! into the evil-smelling brown stream. “Hey,” Maurice said. “Are you—?”
Yes.
“You exist.”
Here and now? It would seem so.
Maurice took a deep breath, an action he almost immediately regretted. “Excuse me,” he said, “but where is this and what’s going on?”
The bush crackled, and a spark drifted lazily into the cold air. Below him, the river steamed. You are here.
“Right,” Maurice said doubtfully. “Where, exactly?”
The orange heart of the fire flared. You are in the place you chose to be, talking to the person you summoned.
“Are you sure?”
Yes. Trust me on this.
A gust of chilly wind brushed his face, and it helped him concentrate. It was the sort of concentration and clarity you only seem to get when things are very bad – when you’re flying through the air, or you’ve just realised that the car pulling out in front of you hasn’t seen you – but he resolved to embrace it and make it work for him. “I’m in a world,” Maurice said slowly, “where the figurative turns into the literal, and figures of speech become real. Yes?”
Yes.
“I understand. How did I get here?”
Through the eye of the doughnut.
“Excuse me?”
You got here through the operation of the YouSpace device.
Maurice closed his eyes. It was a terrible strain thinking clearly and precisely, and he’d never been terribly good at it at the best of times, of which this was not one. “Tell me,” he said, “about the YouSpace device.”
The YouSpace device was invented by Professor Pieter van Goyen, of the University of Leiden, as a recreational aid or toy. Given the nature of the device, which distorts the space-time continuum, it would be pointless to assign a specific date to the moment of invention; relative to your own existence, however, the device first went on line roughly three years ago. Van Goyen’s original prototype was developed and improved by—
“What does it do?” Maurice asked.
The multiverse is made up of an infinite number of alternate universes, all of them different. The YouSpace device enables the user to relocate himself in the alternative universe of his choice. It operates on the principle of para-Heisenbergian qualified uncertainty, whereby—
“Stop there, please,” Maurice said. “Of my choice?”
Yes.
“I didn’t choose this.”
Yes you did.
“No I didn’t.”
Yes you did.
“No I—”
YES YOU DID. Although, the bush added, possibly inadvertently. Like most advanced technologies, the YouSpace device must be operated with extreme caution and a certain degree of precision if unintended consequences are to be avoided. It’s possible that you may have encountered an active, unattended YouSpace portal and operated it without realising what you were doing. Stuff happens. Anyway, the bush went on, you are here.
“Ah.”
The saddest-looking fish Maurice had ever seen flipped dejectedly out of the river and fell back again with a glopping noise. The bush glowed cherry-red as a slight breeze fanned it. Which is fortuitous, the bush said.
“Excuse me?”
Very well. Your sins are forgiven. Go in peace.
“I meant to say,” Maurice said firmly, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Fortuitous?”
Indeed. I wanted to talk to you, and here you are.
“You wanted to talk to me.”
Yes.
“You wanted to talk to—”
Indeed. Hence fortuitous. In this universe, I exist, and I am free.
Maurice blinked. “Meaning, in other universes—”
Quite. The multiverse is, after all, infinite. In many universes, I have no being. In others, I exist but my status is uncertain. And in the universe to which you are native, I am in chains.
“Excuse—” Maurice stopped himself just in time. “You what?”
Well, not literally in chains, but I might just as well be. I have been taken prisoner and am being held against my will.
“Um,” Maurice said. “Is that possible?”
Apparently, the bush said bitterly. Which is why, it went on, you must free me.
&nb
sp; “Me?”
You. Only you.
Maurice nodded slowly. “It’s like this,” he said. “I don’t know if you ever saw Star Trek 5 – it’s the one where they’re kidnapped by Spock’s brother, and they fly to a planet, and a sort of superbeing wants to use the Enterprise to leave the planet and escape. And Kirk says—”
That was a truly awful film.
“Yes. But Kirk says, what does God need a starship for? You see what I mean.”
The bush ebbed a little. The very tips of its branches were white ash. In an infinite multiverse, all things are possible. And in your universe, I am being held against my will by a complete arse, and I need to get out of there before I go crazy and the complete arse does something very, very bad. And, me help me, only you can rescue me. Got that? Or would you like me to draw you a picture?
Maurice shook his head. “I don’t believe you,” he said.
Overhead, the sky darkened. You might care to rephrase that.
“Not really.”
Darkness fell suddenly, like a curtain. A jagged prong of white lightning tore through the blackness and hit the surface of the river, drenching Maurice in fine, gritty spray. How dare—
Maurice frowned. “This YouSpace thing.”
The clouds dissolved. What about it?
“Is it working? Right now?”
You are within its operational field. However, in order to leave this universe and return to your own, you need an appropriate interface or portal.
“Right. What would that be, then?”
The bush was merely flickering. My time grows short, it said. If I undertake to return you to your own reality, will you promise to rescue me from my captivity?
Maurice thought for a moment. “No,” he said.
What?
“No. No way. It sounds horribly difficult and dangerous. Look, anyone capable of capturing God and locking him up somewhere is clearly an incredibly powerful and nasty person, and I really don’t want to get involved. Or alternatively, you aren’t God at all, which is how come you’ve been captured and locked up, and in that case you could just as easily be the bad guy, like in that really bad film we were talking about just now, and I could be doing something really awful letting you loose. Also I’ve got enough problems of my own at the moment, which I’m probably quite unable to do anything about, because I’m absolutely nobody special at all, so if it’s all the same to you, thanks but no thanks. Sorry, but there it is.”
A faint red gleam among the ashes said to him, Oh.
“Sorry.”
It’s your choice, the gleam said grumpily. Also, you say that now, but I feel confident that you’ll change your mind. You are, after all, the chosen one, and you cannot escape your destiny. Why you should be the chosen one escapes me completely, I must confess, but there you go.
“Thank you so much,” Maurice said sourly. “Look, can I go now, please?”
Suit yourself. A gust of air, soft and querulous as a sigh, stirred the ashes of the fire into one last spark. All right, confession time. I brought you here, this being the only reality in the entirety of the multiverse where we could have this conversation, me being in chains and all, and in two shakes I’ll send you back, to your native universe, where you are the subject, or if you prefer, the victim of an unstoppable manifest destiny, and you can get on with it. You will, of course, remember almost nothing of this, because otherwise you would cease to be a free agent, and for some reason I can’t quite remember offhand, that would seem to be important. I’d hoped for your active cooperation, but apparently that’s too much to ask for, so I guess I’ll have to make do with you blundering around and fulfilling your destiny by accident, the way you always have done in the past. Sorry, it added bitterly, to have inconvenienced you.
“Almost nothing?”
Theo Bernstein. Find Theo Bernstein. Remember, when you get back to the tedious little continuum you call home, to find Theo Bernstein. Got that?
But Maurice wasn’t paying attention. In front of him, hanging glistening in the air, was a doughnut the size of a large lifebelt. The specks of sugar on its rim shone like all the stars in the galaxy. He looked at it. It looked at him.
“Theo Bernstein,” he murmured. “Name rings a—”
All around him, the air was filled with the deafening clash of bells. The shockwave of the sound hit him like a hammer, knocking him out of the canoe and into the rich, dark river. He tried to struggle, but it was too dense and thick to swim in; his mouth and nose went under, he choked, and—
Opened his eyes. He was sitting on his sofa, and the doorbell was ringing. He raced to the door, stopped, realised he wasn’t wearing any clothes, grabbed a coat from the hall cupboard, threw it on and opened the door.
She appeared to have grown an extra inch or so, and either all the freckles had crowded together and fused into a single mass or she’d got a suntan. Apart from that, she was just Stephanie, which was exactly (he realised) what he’d hoped for. “Maurice,” she said, “what’s the matter with you?”
“Get in.”
She looked at him and came inside. He slammed the door. “Bedroom.”
“What?”
“Go into the bedroom. Now.”
“Maurice.” She was giving him a look carefully blended from only the finest horror, amusement and acute embarrassment. He scowled at her. “Now,” he said. “Please.”
She shrugged, walked past him and opened the door. He stayed where he was and held his breath. This ought to be good.
“Maurice.” Her voice, higher than usual but still just hanging on to control. “What the hell have you been doing?”
Well, he’d only ever have this one chance. “Killing dragons,” he replied. “What does it look like?”
“Maurice—”
He pushed past her into the bedroom. “I woke up and there it was,” he heard himself gabble. “It was snoring.”
“So you killed it.”
“Yes. No, not because of that.”
“Mphm. Why, then?”
“Because.” He stared at her. She was giving him her world-famous disapproving look. “It’s a dragon, for God’s sake. In my bedroom.”
“You do realise you need a Section 47 permit from Natural England, plus a certificate of actual damage, plus written consent from the secretary of state. And then you’ve got to be registered.”
There were all sorts of things she could’ve said, but that wasn’t one he’d been expecting. “Stephanie?”
“Steve. No, really. There’s a whole book of regulations about this stuff.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I don’t joke about regulations,” she said fiercely. “We did all this at Sandhurst. It’s an obligatory core subject. You’re not supposed to tell anyone, of course.”
“Sandhurst?”
“Yes.” Suddenly she smiled. “Didn’t you know, I’m an officer now. Second lieutenant. I got fast-tracked. They don’t do that for just anybody.”
He tried to keep his voice calm, but he failed. “You mean to tell me,” he said, “that they teach you about killing dragons at Sandhurst?”
She nodded. “The first duty of Her Majesty’s armed forces is to protect the kingdom against monsters of all kinds,” she said. “It’s a really old part of the charter, goes right back to King Arthur. And the bottom line is, civilians aren’t allowed to.” She paused, and frowned. “How did it get in here, anyhow? They’re really rare, you know.”
She sounded like a birdwatcher. “I don’t know. I woke up and there it was.”
“Don’t be silly. Look at the size of the thing.”
“Actually, I have, oddly enough.”
“Now look at the doorframe. And the window.”
Valid point, which hadn’t occurred to him. No way something that size came in through a door, or, indeed, a window. How did the dragon get in his bedroom without smashing a gaping hole in the wall?
But it didn’t matter. Stephanie was here now, and by some bizarre
quirk she knew all about this stuff: she’d been trained to deal with it, she was a public servant and he paid his taxes. Therefore—
“Anyway,” he said. “Over to you.”
“Excuse me?”
“You said it yourself: you’re a qualified monster-botherer. Well, help yourself. Do whatever it is you do.”
She scowled at him and shook her head. “I’m a transport manager,” she said. “I plan routes for lorries. I only just scraped through the monsters module. Fifty-seven per cent in the written exam.”
He frowned. “Really? That’s not like you.”
She shrugged. “It didn’t exactly help that I didn’t believe a word of it. I mean to say, dragons. Everybody knows they don’t exist.”
“Oh yes they do.”
“They don’t.” He looked at her, and just for a moment he thought he saw in her eyes a faint reflection of his own bewildered fury. “They can’t. It’s not right.”
“I know,” he said gently.
“And anyway,” she went on, moving away abruptly, “that’s not a dragon.”
“Um—”
“It’s a hydra. Genus draco,” she recited quickly, “species serpens impossibile, subspecies serpens impossibile nonacaput. A native of the southern Mediterranean, western Anatolia and eastern North Africa, its diet consists of birds, small mammals and, increasingly these days, roadkill. Easily distinguished from the more common serpens impossibile octocaput by virtue of its having nine rather than eight heads. Completely harmless,” she added grimly, “unless cornered and provoked.”
Maurice scowled at her. “A bit like me, then.”
“One quite significant difference, Maurice. You’re still alive. What on earth were you thinking of, anyway?”
“Survival, mostly,” Maurice said, and it would’ve been a good answer, he reflected, if it’d been true. “And besides, how was I supposed to know all that? It’s huge. It’s got nine heads.”