by Tom Holt
Well, that was the problem. King Mordak frowned on in-depth political coverage, particularly with the Coalition in such a fragile state. Since goblins’ reproduction involved a large vat of beige goo heated to precisely 78 degrees Celsius and a small army of technicians in hazmat suits, celebrity sex scandals were more or less out. Usually, a goblin newspaper was 95 per cent war reports, suitably improved to give an impression of constant victory, but thanks to Mordak and the Coalition, that was out too; likewise sport (see above, under war). That just left—
What?
And that, essentially, was why Maurice, as the paper’s token human, had got the big chair. Celebrity gossip, Mordak had rasped at him, during that fateful video-conferencing interview twelve months earlier, I want celebrity gossip. You people know all about that kind of stuff. Well, don’t you?
The memory made Maurice wince. What he should have said was, Yes, but goblins have no real concept of celebrities, apart from wanted posters, and you don’t give a stuff about the other species, except when you’re killing them, so really I honestly believe you’re scrabbling up the wrong tree here. Instead he’d tried very hard not to stare at the splintered ends of the three yellow tusks sticking up out of King Mordak’s lower jaw and said, Yes, great, no problem, I’ll get on it straight away. Give me six months and I’ll drag this paper kicking and screaming into the Third Age.
Fool. He sighed, reached instinctively for his coffee mug, then remembered that before it was a coffee mug it had been the skull of his predecessor, and pulled his hand away sharply. Some goblin customs he’d been able to get used to – bowing instead of shaking hands, not walking on the cracks between paving stones and giving dried fruit rather than flowers on Mother’s Day; easy-peasy. But whenever his subordinates made coffee-cup jokes (two heads are better than one; hey, latte-for-brains; won’t be long before we see his ugly mug down the print room) he just felt sick.
Tomorrow’s lead story, for crying out loud. He picked up the sheaf of papers on his desk and shuffled through them, in the hope that something wonderful had crept in there since he last looked, a quarter of an hour ago. Productivity down 0.7 per cent at the Central Weapons Factory. Ereth Morzul Arts & Literature Festival: three dead, one critical but stable. Financial crisis: heads will roll, promises bank chief. He took a second look at that one; but no, Mordak wouldn’t like it. The party line was, what financial crisis? and he’d run it as a headline the day before yesterday. Besides, heads rolling at the bank was hardly an unusual occurrence (see above, under sport). Global warming: catastrophe inevitable if immediate action not taken. Yawn. Who the hell would possibly want to read about that?
No, he needed a celeb story, and he needed it now. Taped to his wall was the goblin A-list. There were just five names, all decorated war heroes, all (by goblin standards) of unimpeachable integrity. Nothing inherently bad about that; the further up the moral high ground they are, the harder they tumble when skilfully pushed. Trouble was, goblins loved their few heroes. Say something nasty about Azog or Gnazhk or One-Eared Zug, and there’d be no trouble finding next morning’s front page: Face Editor Disembowelled By Furious Mob. Not a bad story, but some great leads come at too high a price. There were always positive celeb stories – Gogor saves comrades from burning house had been a sellout; they’d had to print a special edition – but goblin heroes weren’t really like that. They simply didn’t do warm-fuzzy-feeling stuff. Heroism was simply shorthand for kills elves or massacres dwarves; and thanks to Mordak and the wretched Coalition—
He stopped, and turned his head. There was a sixth name on the A-list that hadn’t been there yesterday. He peered at it.
Not a goblin name. Theo Bernstein. Not elf or dwarf either; unmistakably human, but he was quite sure he’d never heard it before. Not that it’d have mattered a damn if he had. Goblins weren’t interested in humans, not even as prospective enemies. As far as goblins were concerned, humans were irrelevant, inhabitants of a faraway country of which they knew little, contemptibly unwarlike, philosophically and ethically incomprehensible, and (according to leading TV chef G’rd’n R’mzarg) unpalatably stringy and with a distinctive bitter aftertaste that no spices could effectively disguise. No, it was pointless even considering—
He looked at the name again. Theo Bernstein. Who the hell was Theo Bernstein? He leaned back in his chair and took a doughnut from the paper bag beside the phone.
And then it happened. Suddenly, spontaneously and with dazzling clarity, he saw the front page. In the same moment, he also saw a computer screen showing record sales figures, a block-long queue besieging a news-stand, Mordak grinning happily, a printing press spewing out copies of a third special edition; it was as though he was standing outside time and space, watching an entire sequence of events, beginning to end, all happening simultaneously. He dropped the doughnut, scrabbled for a pencil and drew the front page.
It was to be completely blank, apart from the Face logo and four words:
WHERE IS THEO BERNSTEIN?
The receptionist looked up and grinned at him. Grinning is something goblins naturally do well, the same way that fish are accomplished swimmers. “You can go in now,” she said.
He tried to stand up, but his legs had unaccountably turned to pasta. He jammed a fixed smile on his face and used his arms and the arms of the chair to raise himself to his feet. Ah well, he thought. It’s been a short life, but a miserable one.
He’d never actually met Mordak in person, only via video conferencing (though the Great King’s voice in his ear was a regular feature of his working day), and although there were pictures of him everywhere – posters, the official portrait on the money and the stamps, the omnipresent authorised action figures – he guessed they were stylised and probably designed to flatter, or at least terrify (in goblin terms, much the same thing), so he wasn’t really sure what to expect when he nudged open the door to the inner office and teetered through. Certainly not an elf.
“Mr Katz?”
“Um.”
The elf smiled. “My name is Glorfangel,” he said. “I’m Mr Mordak’s executive assistant. Mr Mordak’s been held up.”
Inside Maurice’s head, a fanfare of trumpets, son et lumière, massed choirs. “Ah.”
“He sends his apologies,” the elf said. “Do please take a seat.”
The chair was, of course, pure goblin. Typical in that it was crafted from the leg-bones and tanned hide of some long-dead adversary who’d won the silver medal in a power struggle with the king. Goblins made most of their office furniture out of other goblins; when you joined a major goblin corporation, it wasn’t just for life, it was for ever. The chair was also typical in that when he sat down in it, it creaked horribly and sagged under his weight, so that he was practically sitting on the floor.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said the elf.
I bet you do, Maurice thought. “Um.”
“You’re thinking,” the elf went on, “an elf, personal adviser and administrative assistant to the Great Goblin. What is the world coming to?”
You were wrong, then. What I was thinking was, I’m so terrified I really need the bathroom. “I, um—”
“But times are changing, Mr Katz,” the elf went on. “That’s what the Coalition’s all about. Peace in our time, Mr Katz, an end to centuries of bitter, bloody, pointless war between elf and goblin. That’s Mr Mordak’s dream, and I’m proud to share it.”
“Um.”
“It’s basically a confidence trick, of course,” the elf went on. “Mordak spun it to the goblins by saying, Well, do you want the dwarves back in? And we said exactly the same thing to our people. Lesser of two evils – the most compelling argument in politics. We hate A but we hate B more.” He stopped, and smiled the unique elf smile: ethereal beauty and utter contempt. “But you’re an outsider,” he said. “Which is what gives you your unique perspective. You’re human. You hate all of us equally. That’s why Mr Mordak gave you the job.”
Maurice wanted
to say, No, you’re wrong, actually I don’t hate anyone, not even the dwarves. Yes, the violence of the goblins appals me, but I admire their straightforwardness and loyalty. Yes, the dwarves are powered by greed the way a boat’s driven by an outboard motor, but they make the most amazing works of art. And elves – well. Um. But not hate. But an elf wouldn’t understand that.
“Right,” Maurice said carefully. “Got that. Yes. Um, what did you want to see me about?”
“This.” With a movement of pure poetic grace, the elf reached down and picked up that morning’s Face. He turned it round and laid it on the desk, so that the headline was aimed at him, like a weapon. “What the hell is it all about?”
Good question. I will not say Um, Maurice promised himself, I will not—
“Well?”
“Er.”
The elf smiled. “Mr Mordak,” he said pleasantly, “was rather taken aback when he saw that over his pixie eggs and pan-fried liver this morning. He’s curious to know what you think you’re playing at. I confess, so am I.” The elf looked at him for two eternal seconds. “Hm? Who exactly is Theo Bernstein?”
Oh well. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.”
“No.”
“Ah.” The elf’s eyes sparkled. “You do realise,” he went on, “seven million goblins read that today—”
“Seven point six two five. Three special editions. Our best sales ever.”
The elf frowned. “Yes, very good, well done. Seven point six two five million goblins, seven point six two five million and one including Mr Mordak, are asking themselves, who is Theo Bernstein and why are we being asked to concern ourselves about him? Is he a threat? Is he the saviour of goblinkind? What does he look like, and where might we expect to find him?” The elf leaned back a little in his chair and ran an elegant fingertip over the point of his left ear. “They all assume,” he went on, “that there are answers to those questions. Can you imagine what their reaction’s going to be when they find out that you don’t know?”
Quite suddenly, Maurice felt completely calm. “You don’t know a lot about the newspaper business, do you?”
“What makes you say that?”
Maurice smiled. “The public memory,” he said. “Absolutely wonderful thing. I call it collective amnesia. It’s like when you lead with a health scare or a disaster story. The headline says, we’re all going to die the day after tomorrow. Well, the day after tomorrow comes along, and we’re all still here, and nobody minds, because nobody believes. Oh, they see the headline and they buy the paper, but they don’t think anything bad will ever actually happen. You can’t live that way; life would be impossible. People love to be scared, but only if they know it’s not really real. So, they read, and then they forget. Which is exactly what’ll happen here. Trust me,” he added, “I’m a journalist. Journalism is just one of many stages in the life-cycle of a tree: seed, sapling, tree, lumber, pulp, earth-shattering revelations, fishwrap. Its function – ” he was enjoying himself – “is to insulate people from the truth by making them think they know what’s going on. Really, it’s anti-news, like matter and anti-matter. I mean, if you read about it in the paper, you can be pretty well certain it’s not really important, because the really important stuff—”
He dried up. The elf was looking at him, and his face was alight with barely concealed joy; such joy as an oil executive might feel on discovering a vast, untapped new oil field. “What?” Maurice said.
“You believe that?” the elf said.
“Yes.”
“Bless you. That’s so sweet.”
Maurice withered and died a little. He was face to face with the Look, the subtle but unique facial expression that only elves can do. “What?”
“You’re a newspaper editor,” the elf said, “and you don’t know.”
“Know what, for crying out—”
The elf smiled. He was happy. “You don’t know,” he said, “what newspapers are for. Really, I’d never have believed it possible. It’s like being a fish and having no concept of water.”
Maurice waited patiently, while the elf savoured the moment. When he reckoned the elf had had as much fun as was good for him, he said, “Well?”
“Well.” The elf relaxed into his chair, making it look beautiful. “Has it ever occurred to you to wonder why my people, the Elder Race, got into the newspaper business in the first place? We invented them, after all. We founded all the great pillars of the Fourth Estate – the Tides, the Bystander, the Warder, even the dear old Face – long before your King Mordak was even thought of. Haven’t you ever thought it was odd, the Elders sullying their hands with something so unspeakably commercial?”
“That’s easy,” Maurice replied. “You did it so you could talk down to millions of people at a time and let them see how incredibly superior you are.”
“That was just an incidental benefit,” the elf replied. “No, the real function of newspapers is to mark the passage of time.” He smiled, and went on, “You know what the real heart of a newspaper is? The only bit that matters, though it’s the bit that nobody ever actually reads?”
“Um. The wine column?”
“Close, but no. It’s the date.” The elf’s face changed. “On the front page, top left or top right, in small print, usually the only statement of unassailable fact in the whole production.”
“The—?”
The elf nodded. “Newspapers exist to mark the transition from one day to the next. Before that, people had to rely on things like the sunrise, but that’s not much good, if it’s cloudy or foggy. There has to be publication, you see – it has to be written down somewhere: yesterday was the fifteenth of June, today is the sixteenth, it is now, officially, today. The world has moved one small step. The machinery of time is working. Oh, it seems like such a small, silly little thing; and it is, of course. It’s mundane, simple, unexciting – an everyday sort of thing, if you’ll pardon the expression. You could, of course, say exactly the same about the beating of the heart. It’s so commonplace it’s boring – until it stops.” The elf shook his head. “But it’s important, vitally important. So, of course, we saw to it. We kept the clock wound. Well, who else? Humans would forget to wind the clock, goblins would smash it, dwarves would carve it a stunningly ornate case and then sell it. But we’re patient, responsible people who understand about things.” He frowned slightly. “And then Mordak came along. But that was fine. We saw that Mordak, with his dreams of peace and reconciliation, was just slightly more evolved than your average goblin. We decided he could be trusted, so long as we kept him firmly under control.”
Maurice said, “That’s your job.”
The elf dipped his head in mock salutation. “Of course.
I’m here to control him, which is best done from a position of absolute power. A busy man like King Mordak relies absolutely on his trusted, efficient second-in-command, the man who actually does things, gets things done. It’s a subtle distinction, but a vital one. He makes decisions; I decide what decisions he makes. It’s a little bit like the difference between a bronze-caster and the man who owns the foundry. Any fool can be trained to make things. Especially decisions.”
Maurice looked at him. “He doesn’t realise—”
“And wouldn’t believe it, if told.” The elf studied him for a moment. “Anyway,” he said, “now you know. I can’t quite believe I told you all that.” A quick flash of anger in his deep green eyes. “You provoked me,” he said, “into showing off. Ah well, never mind. I think we’re drifting away from the purpose of this meeting. I’m supposed to tear you off a strip for your somewhat ill-judged front page. You can see my heart isn’t in it.”
“Ah.”
“But your heart will be in something,” the elf went on, “if you irritate Mr Mordak. I have no idea what, but I can guarantee it won’t be your chest. Think on, human.”
Maurice thought. Then he said, “Is that really true? Just the date?”
“Just the dat
e. Everything else is merely salad, pine kernels and a bed of wild rice. But then,” he went on, “as a great elven philosopher once said…”
“Yes?”
“It’s a funny old world. I’m so glad we’ve had this little chat, Mr Katz. Please don’t let me detain you any longer.”
All hell had broken loose when he got back to the office. Phones were ringing, goblins were running about shouting, and the art director had eaten the sports editor. He ignored them, wedged a chair under the handle of his door and sat down to get his head together.
When he felt a little better, he checked his in-tray. As well as the usual junk, there was a thick sheaf of Theo Bernstein sightings, which made him smile. He winnowed them down to six and put them carefully to one side. Screw the elf. Rest the story for three days, then a couple of sightings on page 2; two more days, then lead with Theo Bernstein Seen At—. Properly handled, he could make it last for months.
Now then; today’s lead. But for once, he didn’t have to worry. It was there waiting for him. Catastrophic fire at the GorgorSoft HQ, right here in the capital; dozens feared dead (the report on his desk said confirmed no fatalities, but you can’t stop people being scared, can you?), chaos as networks frozen, heroism of goblin fire crews, the works. He smiled happily, picked up the phone and yelled for his ace reporter.
“What?” she said, dropping into the chair and scowling at him. “Make it quick, can’t you? I’m just on my way out to this fire.”
“Ah.” Of course. He should’ve known she’d be on it straight away. “Why aren’t you there already?”
“Because some fool said he wanted to see me in his office right away.”