by Tom Holt
That you, anyhow – the version of you that you were just now. The rich, successful and powerful you, somehow got wind of what Pieter van Goyen had been doing just before his death, and you decided to pick it up and throw money at it; and the result was, my poor dumb brother got sucked in off his mountaintop and trapped, in there, in that jar you’ve got in your laboratory. And now it’s up to you (here Max pulled a very serious face indeed) to get him out again.
“Me?” Maurice said.
“You.”
“But that’s not me,” Maurice said bitterly. “I mean, it should be. I’m absolutely, definitely sure that should be me – I mean, it felt so right. It was so much more me than I am.” He paused. “Does that make any sense?”
“Amazingly, yes,” Max said. “I think you’re trying to say that you’ve spent most of your life in the wrong version of you. Think back. When did it all start to go horribly wrong?”
“That’s easy,” Maurice replied immediately. “Mr Fisher-King’s study, me and Stephanie. When we were kids, at school.”
Max nodded slowly. “Tell me something. I don’t know a whole lot about what passes for an education system in this country. You do exams, right?”
“Sure. GCSEs and A-levels. I did—”
Max was looking at him. “Go on.”
“I was going to do physics, maths and chemistry,” Maurice said. “I was quite good at all that stuff, though I didn’t do a hell of a lot of work. But that’s what I’d made my mind up I was going to do. Until—”
“Yes?”
Maurice took a deep breath and told him about Mr Fisher-King. “And after that,” he went on, “there didn’t seem to be any point. I mean, what use was there studying a rational Newtonian universe governed by immutable laws of physics when I’d just seen a doughnut levitate off the palm of a man’s hand? Obviously, all the physics and chemistry and maths stuff wasn’t true. So I changed my mind and did IT and media studies instead.”
Max raised an eyebrow. “Media studies?”
“That’s right. It’s like doing nothing at all, but you get a certificate. And I guess—” The full force of it closed in around him, like earth filling a grave, and he closed his eyes for a moment. “I guess that’s where our paths forked; him in the box there and me. He went on to be a billionaire before he was old enough to vote. And here I am. A total—”
“A hero,” Max said.
“A weirdness-haunted victim of circumstance who spends his days looking for things.”
Max grinned. “That’s what I just said.”
“And that man in there—”
“My brother,” Max reminded him. “Your mission in life. Your quest.”
Maurice frowned. “You mean to tell me he’s been stuck in there like that for eleven years?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Max said, with as much patience as he could muster. “You know, you’ve really got to do something about this cockamamie linear approach to cause and effect. It’s most definitely not your best friend.”
He’d chosen his words badly. “My best friend,” Maurice shouted at him, “is in that box. In there, I’m married to her; she’s my wife. Out here, she’s—”
“What?”
“Missing. Or, just possibly, shagging the obnoxious turd who’s got my life in this—” He stopped. There was no way mere words could keep up with what he needed to say. “It’s so unfair,” he mumbled. “Why me? What did I ever do to deserve all this?”
Max shook his head. “There you go again,” he said reprovingly, “linear approach to cause and effect. Monodimensional thinking, leading to a chip on your shoulder you could terraform and build colonies on. You clown,” he added, not unkindly. “You did get what you deserved. You did your maths and your physics exams, you founded your corporation, you made your billion bucks, you married your childhood sweetheart. You know you did. You just saw yourself having done it.”
“But that was—” Something broke deep in Maurice’s heart. “That was him,” he said feebly. “That’s no bloody use to me, is it? That’s like saying, it doesn’t matter me having a truly shitty life, because my brother’s now the chairman of Unilever.”
“Quite,” Max said quietly. “Or a Nobel laureate. Or even, just possibly, God. You have no idea how little comfort that can be when you’re looking back on a distinguished career in the abject failure sector. And it’s even worse, believe me, when, just when you think you can relax, come to terms and have a good time, your stupid, quasi-divine, sun-shines-outof-his-anal-aperture brother gets himself stuck in a jar, and you’ve got to drop everything and get him out again. And so you do that, and you find you’ve got stuck yourself because some dumb jerk of a hero can’t be bothered to check his email. You know something? That can go beyond trying and into the realms of tiresome.”
Maurice looked at him. “You got stuck?”
Max nodded. “Theo gave me this bottle,” he said. “A YouSpace bottle. Kind of like a portal. So, when he got lost, I used the bottle to try and go find him. Only—” He shrugged and smiled. “I think I may have done something wrong, because suddenly there I was in this cave, with no heating and not enough to eat, and an invisible sound system playing ‘I Need a Hero’ on a continuous fucking loop. Oh, and a cell phone, with one number in its address book. That’s where I’ve been for—” He paused and frowned. “Nearly as long as I can remember. Or longer; I’m not sure which anymore.”
If you could have connected up a basic hydro-electric system to the surge of pity rushing through Maurice’s heart at that moment, you could’ve lit Scotland. Even so. “I still don’t see why it’s anything to do with me,” he said. “I didn’t—”
Max’s face was as cold and hard as stone. “Yes you fucking did. You just saw it. You sucked my brother into that jar. You’re keeping him there. So you’re the one who’s got to make it right. Which,” he added crisply, “is why you’re here. Destiny, I guess. That’s the basic OS of heroes, isn’t it? Clearly what’s happened is that destiny shifted you from your home reality into this one, when you were a teenager. In this reality, destiny shapes the lives of heroes. So, here, you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do. Do you understand, or do you want me to run something up using PowerPoint?”
Maurice blinked. “Destiny?”
“Sure. In your reality, destiny’s just a crock; there’s no such thing. Here, though, it’s the mainspring of the cosmos. And, when in Rome…” He grinned. “And there you go.”
A tiny light flickered in Maurice’s head. “But that’s all wrong,” he said. “Here, it’s not me holding your brother prisoner in a jar, it’s George.”
“George?” Max scowled at him. “Who the hell is George?”
“Guy I was at school with. Total jerk. Always has been. In there—” Maurice pointed at the box, “as far as I can gather, he’s me; at any rate, he’s an unemployable, no-hoper wimp—”
Maurice nodded. “He’s you.”
“But in this reality,” Maurice went on, “he’s the billionaire industrialist and technological wizard I should’ve been, and he’s the one who’s got your brother banged up in a Kilner jar. So in this reality it’s not my fault, so it can’t be up to me. Right?”
Max sighed. “Sorry,” he said. “You’ve just proved my point. In this reality, he fits into the pre-ordained traditional narrative conventions like a brick in a wall. He’s the villain. The bad guy. The wicked sorcerer in his tower. If it was any more perfect, it’d fold up on itself and disappear up its own axis of symmetry. Gee, I’m glad you mentioned that. You’ve convinced me that my hypothesis is one hundred per cent correct. Thank you. Also,” he added with a sly grin, “I’m prepared to bet good money he’s got your girl locked up in his tower as well. Am I right or am I right?”
“I—” Maurice shook his head, as if it was suddenly full of water. “I think so,” he said. “That’s why I came here. I saw her, you see, in that box. And before that she disappeared. And then George said the two of them are—But I
couldn’t believe that. So I came here.”
“Bingo.” Max clapped his hands together. “There’s your narrative dynamic. You’re basically Jack and the Beanstalk, adapted for the twenty-first century. Can’t you see it? It’s so obvious it should be visible from orbit.”
“But—” Maurice stared at him, and felt his throat clog up. “I don’t want to be Jack and the Beanstalk.”
“Jack never does,” Max replied gently. “If he did, he wouldn’t be Jack, he’d be… I don’t know, Theseus or Beowulf or Captain frigging America. But where there’s a beanstalk, there’s got to be a Jack. And it’s your destiny, so you’re it. Sorry,” he repeated, “but them’s the rules. And anyway,” he went on seductively, “I don’t know where you’re coming from with all the hostility. We’re on the same side, basically. What we both want is through there, right? My redemption is your redemption.”
“You what?”
“Think,” Max said smoothly. “You go back through, OK? You take a stroll over to wherever it is they’re holding my brother, you say, Sorry, guys, change of plan, we let the prisoner go, or words to that effect. What happens?”
Maurice thought for a moment. “Your brother gets out of the jar.”
“Out of the jar,” Max said, “out of that whole reality, back to where he wants to be. And what’ve you done?”
“Um.” Trick question? “Let him go.”
“Exactly. Or, in heroic terms, fulfilled your destiny. Achieved your quest. And what happens to heroes when they do that?”
“Um.”
“They live happily ever after.” Max’s eyes were burning. “They marry the princess and settle down to rule the kingdom. OK, afterwards, presumably, they’ve got to deal with inner-city unemployment and negative macroeconomic trends, but the story’s not interested in that sort of thing. The story just wants them out of its hair. They get to live normal lives. And what life could be more normal,” Max added with a grin, “than your own? The one you should’ve had all along.”
Maurice blinked three times. “You mean—”
“Yes. You go in there, you let my brother go, you’ve done it. What you were abducted for. The obvious and inevitable result will be, you’ll stay there. You’ll be married to your girl, you’ll have your business empire, it’ll all be the way it was supposed to be. As far as this reality’s concerned, you’ll just vanish, and since nobody gives a damn, who’ll care? And over there…”
Maurice was having difficulty breathing. “You really think—”
“Of course. It’s obvious. Use your brain, for crying out loud. There was a screw-up, which caused a… I don’t know, a disturbance in the flow, ripples in the Force, whatever – and you got dragged out of your reality and dumped in this one, which shows all the signs of being tailor-made to enable you to fix the screw-up you caused—”
“Inadvertently caused.”
“Whatever. Soon as the screw-up’s fixed, obviously everything will then go back to how it should be. And then… what are you pulling that face for?”
Maurice shook his head. “It won’t work,” he said.
“Won’t work? Are you nuts? I just explained—”
“I won’t remember,” Maurice said sadly. “When I get back there. Like, when I was there just now, I had no memory whatsoever of being me here. I’d always been him, you know, the rich-happy-successful me. So, if I go back, how the hell will I know to set your brother free?”
Max looked as a man might look if he’d finally got to the front of the queue only to be told the last ticket had just been sold. “You didn’t remember anything?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s weird. Whenever I’ve jumped realities, I’ve always stayed me.”
“How wretched for you.”
Max gave him a not-now-I’m-busy look. “I guess,” he said, “it could be because the version of you over there, in the box there, is the real you, and over there’s where you really belong. Or maybe it’s just the difference between doughnuts and bagels; I really don’t know. Shit,” he added succinctly. “That’s—”
“The constant object.”
“Huh?”
“That thing.” Maurice pointed at the source of the blue glow. “It stays the same no matter which reality you’re in, right?”
“Its function remains the same, yes.” Max frowned. “Yes, but it’s a weapon, not a personal organiser.”
“Couldn’t we, I don’t know, write something on it or pin a note to it? I mean, I think it sort of knows how to make itself useful. Hence the light.”
Max raised his eyebrows. “It’s worth a try, I guess. When you say pin a note to it…”
“I don’t know, do I?” Maurice made a vague impatient gesture. “All right, let’s think about this. If you’re right and I’m in a narrative, what would happen?”
Max considered the point. “I think the weapon would know what to do of its own accord. Like, the sword would know to come out of the stone. Of course, if I’m wrong we’d be wasting our time, but I don’t see where we’ve got any options. We’ll just have to trust it.”
They both peered at the constant object, which carried on belting out eerie blue light.
“Trust that,” Maurice said.
“Well, yes. Actually, that’s quite plausible. Like when the two lost hobbits are forced to trust the little creepy guy to get them through the marshes. It’s a standard; it’s classic. I think I’m supposed to say something like, Yes, but can we trust him? And you say, I think we can. Heroic choice, see. You follow your heroic intuition. That’s core.”
Maurice shrugged. “Fine,” he said. “So, all we need now is a doughnut.”
They looked at each other.
“We could try ordering in,” Max said.
A suggestion best ignored. “How about you?” he said. “You got the bagel. Can’t you—?”
“Sure, if you feel like waiting around here for anywhere between twenty-four and forty-eight hours. And then it could be pastrami on rye or ravioli or semolina pudding. I have absolutely no control over the catering arrangements. Or,” he went on, “you could go out and get a doughnut.”
“And get back in again.” Maurice shook his head. “That could be difficult. In fact, I haven’t got a clue how to get out of here, let alone get back in again. No, there’s got to be a simpler way.” He looked round and found the discarded, bitten-into bagel. “Maybe we could fix it,” he said. “After all, it’s only missing a little bit.”
Max shook his head. “I don’t think that’d be a good idea,” he said. “I have no idea how these things work, but I have a gut feeling that this isn’t one of those areas where a bold and imaginative approach is called for.”
But Maurice had picked up the bagel and was gently squeezing it in his hands. “I think all we have to do is just gently squidge it like putty,” he said, “until the two ends meet, like this, and then it’s just a simple matter of—See if you can get some of that parcel tape off the box lid.”
“You’re going to fix a damaged transdimensional interface terminal with parcel tape?”
“Only because I haven’t got any glue.”
Max threw his hands up in the air. “What the hell,” he muttered. “I guess this is where I say, It’ll never work and you say, Trust me. Only don’t,” he pleaded, “please.”
Maurice grinned at him. “Won’t that screw up the narrative?”
Max was stripping tape off the box flaps. “Let’s risk it,” he said.
Maurice had massaged the two severed ends of the bagel together so that they were just about touching. “Tape,” he said.
“I still think we should call out,” Max said. “There was this pizza place in Newark I used to know – they were quite incredibly persistent. If you’d called them from Alcatraz, all they’d have wanted to know was if you wanted extra cheese.”
“Tape.”
“Tape,” Max sighed. Maurice held out the bagel, and Max wrapped the tape firmly round the join, applying gentle b
ut steady pressure. “That ought to do it,” Maurice said. “Now, am I right in thinking that all I have to do is—?”
On the desk in front of him was a small plastic rectangle.
It had seen better days. It was smashed, shattered, twisted and squashed, but most of all it was cut. Some sharp-bladed instrument had left a deep diagonal gash right across it.
Maurice sighed. “Gruz,” he said.
“Boss?”
Maurice closed his eyes. By and large, he enjoyed his job. He’d always wanted to be a journalist, and the five years he’d spent working for the Horrible Yellow Face had been the best time in his life. He was proud of having clawed, scratched and backstabbed his way up from the print room to the editor’s office. Even so, there were times when he despaired of his chosen profession.
“Gruz,” he said gently, “when I said it might be a good idea to hack into her mobile phone, this wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”
“Boss?”
That was one of the things he found hardest about working with goblins: that way they have of looking up at you with those great big round red eyes, and you know they haven’t understood a single thing about what you wanted them to do, but they went and did it anyway. The sublime alchemy that results when you bring together extreme stupidity and unquestioning obedience. “Forget it, Gruz,” he said. “And, um, take that thing away and bury it somewhere, OK?”
The senior arts and media correspondent shuffled away, and Maurice sat down in the big chair and tried to decide what they were going to lead with today. He was, he admitted to himself, still having trouble coming to terms with the takeover. When King Mordak had staged his leveraged buyout of the Beautiful Golden Face, the reaction of the paper’s High Elven owners had been sheer blank horror. They’d taken the money, of course. The two things High Elves do best is elegant distaste and cashing cheques. But they’d prophesied. In six months, they said, the Face will be unrecognisable. It’ll be a dumbed-down, knuckle-dragging tabloid gutter rag catering to the lowest common denominator, utterly devoid of redeeming social importance, pandering to the basest instincts of the Goblin 2 and Orc 3B demographics. It might even end up as the sort of thing a lot of poor people might pay money to read. The sound of them washing their hands of it was like the roar of a mighty river emptying into the sea. They’d been right, of course. One year on, gone were the ecological crusades and the opera reviews, the corruption exposés and the elegantly phrased editorials bitching about every aspect of government policy. Instead—