by Tom Holt
“Of course,” Maurice said. “Suddenly it all makes sense. Now can we go home, please?”
“I told you, didn’t I? I said it’d turn out to be something simple and obvious.”
Two more seconds and the lawyers would’ve had their test case. Before Maurice could make legal history, however, the door flew open and a dozen goblins burst into the room. They were armed with a wide variety of Weapon-Of-The-Month Club selections, and their faces bore the look of quiet joy goblins only wear when they’re about to get paid for doing something they love.
“That’ll do,” snapped a voice behind them. The happy faces immediately went sad and droopy, and the goblins fell in at attention on either side of the doorway. A man walked in. A—
She was staring at him. “Human?”
The man smiled pleasantly. “Yes,” he said. “By birth,” he added. “But I’ve been a naturalised goblin for the last ten years. My name’s Gorgor. I own this place. I don’t know who you are.”
“A naturalised—”
“Goblin, yes, and I’m sorry, but you’re starting to annoy me. Would you mind explaining what you’re doing here?” His smile levelled out a bit. “A good answer buys you lunch. A bad one gets you a trip to the roof and a flying lesson. No pressure.”
She blinked, then smiled. “Lunch sounds good.”
Maurice, who’d opened his mouth, closed it again. She never smiled at me like that, he thought; and then, hang on, you’re being threatened with death by armed goblins and you’re doing qualitative analyses of smiles? Yes, because it matters. Maybe. But not now—
“I’m having strips of pan-fried duck on a bed of roast artichoke hearts with parmesan and dark chocolate sauce,” Gorgor said. “Not very goblin, I know, but the raw liver of my mortal enemy gives me heartburn. What are you doing here?”
“We’re journalists,” she said.
“Good heavens.”
“That’s right,” Maurice broke in. “We were doing a follow-up story about the fire, and I guess we must’ve got lost wandering around the building, and—” He stopped. Nobody seemed to be listening to him.
“I always thought that must be a fascinating job,” Gorgor was saying. “I mean, you must get to meet the most remarkable people.”
Hang on, Maurice thought; hang on just a moment, this isn’t right, they can’t be—And then he caught sight of the notched blade of the sword one of the goblins was holding, and he thought, Priorities. And then he thought, Well, of course. She’s only schmoozing him to save both our skins; it’s a purely tactical schmooze, after all, she’d never—Tactical, he repeated firmly, and realised that nobody, not even a seasoned newspaper man, can ever lie convincingly to himself.
“Maurice.” She was smiling brightly to herself. “I think I can handle things here OK, if you want to get back to the office. You want to get back to the office, don’t you?”
“Um.”
“You want to get back to the office,” she said grimly, “because it’s nearly one o’clock and you’ve still got pages four and five to see to, and weren’t you expecting that very important call?”
“What call?”
“That call.” Furious eyes and a fixed beaming smile. “The important one, remember? The one you said you had to be back in time for.”
It is better to have loved and lost, the ancients said, than never to have loved at all. Indeed. This from the same people who brought you the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it, and the urine of a red-headed virgin will cure malaria.
Gorgor was also smiling at him. “Thanks ever so much for dropping by,” he was saying. “Sorry you’ve got to rush away. The lads will see you out.”
The goblins snapped to attention. They blamed him, he could tell. The hell with it. Time to go.
“Don’t be too long,” he wasted his breath telling her as the goblins escorted him to the door. “Remember, I need a thousand words by four o’clock.” A goblin accidentally trod on his foot and he moved briskly. As he did so, he glanced back at the jar, where the man was now sitting cross-legged on the floor, his eyes closed, his face completely blank, as though his mind had somehow been wiped clean. But before that, he’d been moved to breathe heavily on the jar wall, and, in the resulting condensation, had fingertip-traced—
MY NAME IS THEO B
—only back to front.
“Oh.” he said. “It’s you.”
Quarter to six. He’d spent the afternoon shouting at people and not getting much useful work done. Tomorrow’s lead story was going to have to be WEATHER CONTINUES MILD, but he wasn’t sure he cared anymore. And now she was back, standing in the doorway of his office with a ridiculous and totally non-elven grin on her face.
“Yes,” she said.
“Well?”
“Oh, I had a marvellous afternoon,” she said. “First we had lunch; did you know the whole of the top floor is like this amazingly cool staff canteen? Well, the goblin bit is pretty gross – you really don’t want to hear about the mixed grill – but there’s a balcony overlooking the river, and—”
“Yes, thank you. What a great story that’ll make.”
“Anyway,” she went on, “he had the duck and I had a really nice goats’ cheese and dandelion-leaf salad, and then we went for a walk on the roof; he’s got this beautiful sort of formal garden laid out, with—”
“You interviewed him.”
She giggled. Elves just don’t, but she did. “In a sense, yes.”
“Get anything?”
“Oh yes.”
“Did you find anything out?” he corrected grimly. “About the man in the jar?”
“What? Oh him. Yes, Gorgie explained all about that. Apparently this poor man was in a dreadful accident, fell off a building or something, horrendous brain damage – it means he can’t remember anything for more than an hour and then it’s gone again. So Gorgie’s medical team are trying to help the poor lamb, but there isn’t much hope, I’m afraid. I think it’s really sweet, the way Gorgie’s using his own money and all those resources to try and help a perfect stranger, because you know what the goblins are like – they couldn’t give a damn, though Gorgie says he’s right behind Mordak’s new medicare proposals; even though they don’t agree about a lot of things, still, he’s fair-minded enough to see that—”
“Right,” Maurice snapped. “Got that. So there’s no story there, then.”
“Oh, I think it’d make a marvellous story. Philanthropist backs Mordak on health reforms. Mordak’ll love it. I said, we’ll put it on tomorrow’s front page, because it’s a bit late for today’s edition. What’re you leading with, by the way?”
“Weather continues mild.”
“Mphm. Anyway, we can lead with that, and we can have a follow-up human-interest story on page four – you know, the man behind GorgorSoft—”
“I think our readers will find human and interest something of a contradiction in terms.”
“Ah, but he’s a goblin now.” She smiled. “We can make a big thing out of that. I used to be human but I’m better now, says GorgorSoft founder. The goblins’ll love that.”
She was right; that was the horrible irony of it all. And Mordak’d be happy too. True, he’d have preferred an excuse to employ Gorgor in an advisory capacity (advisory as in pick your brains), but support for his floundering and deeply unpopular flagship welfare program from a totally unexpected ally would probably do almost as well. And it’d sell papers – absolutely no question about that. All in all, she’d done brilliantly well. Only—
“Oh, by the way,” he said. “He’s Theo Bernstein.”
“What?”
“The man in the jar. He’s Theo Bernstein.”
She gave him an indulgent smile. “Don’t be silly.”
“But he is. He breathed on the side of the tank and wrote it.”
She shook her head. “He may think he’s Theo Bernstein,” she said kindly. “But he can’t be, because you made Theo Bernstein up, just to sell a few papers.” Sh
e clicked her tongue. “Probably the poor, confused man heard people talking about it and decided that’s who he is. It’s all very sad, but at least he’s getting the best possible care. Don’t you think that’s rather wonderful?”
Oddly enough. Maurice didn’t. Nor was he entirely convinced by her account of Gorgor’s explanation, though he was prepared to admit that he might be somewhat prejudiced. What surprised him most, though, was that she seemed to believe what Gorgor had told her. After all, she was the one who’d talked to the man in the tank, to Theo B—
I made him up, she’d said. But I didn’t. I saw his name, on the A-list.
Entirely true; but now he came to think of it, he couldn’t remember having added Bernstein’s name to that list, which he’d written out himself. He got out of his chair and went and looked at it. His handwriting, for sure, and five names, all goblins. Theo Bernstein wasn’t on there.
Oink?
He sat down again. I saw the name on the list. I thought I saw the name on the list. I wrote the frigging list, and I don’t remember adding him to it. Think carefully; when was the first time I can remember coming across the name Theo Bernstein?
He thought. Hard.
When I saw it on the list. But that’s—
Oh boy. Things, he couldn’t help feeling, were rapidly slipping out of control. It was now fairly clear that he was in love with Stephanoriel, just as it was pretty blindingly obvious that she was besotted with Gorgor the human goblin. Fur ther more, he appeared to have invented a fictional character he himself had firmly believed in, who’d then turned up in a mysterious glass jar (which was also, in some sense, a door; oooh, let’s not go there) in the high-security research facility, seventh-floor research facility that was apparently keeping the rest of the fire-ravaged building from collapsing in a heap of ash and rubble. Add to all that multiverse theory, and a very remote but still material possibility that in the beginning was some sort of Word, and you had what? A mess, is what you had; see also under shambles, pig’s ear, goblin’s all-day breakfast and pain in the bum. Still, he reminded himself, he also had tomorrow’s headline. That made up for a lot.
But not, he realised, enough. He chased the problem through his mind for a bit, and kept coming to the same conclusion. The man in the jar: he was key, possibly even core. Because if the man in the jar really was Theo Bernstein, that meant—
—he hadn’t invented him;
—Gorgor was lying; therefore—
—Gorgor was sinister and up to no good, in which case—
—She wouldn’t love him anymore, the Face could do a really vicious exposé and get loads of good headlines and extra sales, which would please Mordak almost as much as destroying his hated rival, the CEO of GorgorSoft, and—
—he could round off the Theo Bernstein story with Bernstein being rescued from unspeakable torture (actually, there was precious little that goblins found unspeakable; unspellable, yes, practically everything more than one syllable long, but not unspeakable), with loads of kudos for Mordak and the forces of law and order, and a huge headline announcing the discovery and rescue along the lines of IT WAS THE FACE WOT TRACED HIM.
Yes, he thought. I like that.
Fine. That just left the question of how. Well, he’d have to go back, on his own this time – no, not on his own, but definitely without her; and sneaking in pretending to be someone else was out, because he’d be recognised, so good old-fashioned aggravated burglary seemed to be called for. In which case, he’d need muscle. Not goblins, though. The goblin idea of going equipped for burglary was siege towers and a battering ram. What he needed, he decided, was two highly skilled and experienced private investigators, the sort of men every tabloid editor turns to when the going gets tough—
“Um,” he said.
“And this is my nephew, Art,” the old man went on. “Don’t judge him by how he looks; he’s a good lad, and I promised his mother I’d look after him. He’s got a real gift for the covert surveillance and information-gathering business, haven’t you, Art?”
The young man shrugged and ate a lamb samosa.
Maurice frowned. “Do I know you two from somewhere?”
“It’s possible,” the old man said, “very possible. I mean, we been in the business three years now, and before that I was forty years in clawmarks with goblin CID, followed by fifteen years as a hired assassin and soldier – oops, excuse me, one of my giddy spells – of fortune. So yes, our paths may well have crossed, sir, given the nature of our respective callings. Quite possible.”
“Or maybe not,” Maurice said firmly. “Not to worry. Listen,” he went on, lowering his voice. “Have you ever heard of—?”
“Say what?”
“Have you ever heard,” Maurice shouted quietly, “of a human called Theo Bernstein?”
“Oh yes.”
“You have?”
“Course. Read about him in the Face, didn’t we. Art? Always read the Face, we do.”
Maurice sighed. “Yes,” he said. “But before that.”
“No, can’t say I—” The old man paused. The young man had tugged his sleeve and was whispering in his ear. “Yes, that’s right,” he said. “Now you come to mention it, I think I do. The lad says, Mr Katz, wasn’t Theo Bernstein that chap who blew up the Very Very Large Hadron Collider a year or two back?”
“The what?”
“And then went on to complete the late Pieter van Goyen’s work on the YouSpace multiverse portal before disappearing in mysterious circumstances. Would that be who you were thinking of?”
“Um.”
“Is that who we’re going after, then, sir? Theo Bernstein? Only young Art here was saying just the other day, bet you anything you like that bloke they got in the glass jar up GorgorSoft is that Theo Bernstein. Didn’t you, Art?”
The young man nodded with his mouth open and full. Maurice closed his eyes for a moment, then said, “Something like that. Of course, we’re going to have to break into the building.”
“Leave all that to the boy and me, sir. There isn’t an electronic surveillance device on the planet young Art can’t outwit. Infra-red beams, underfloor pressure pads, air-displacement monitors, one-thirty-six-bit encryption – might as well not bother when the lad’s on the case, sir.”
Maurice blinked. “Him?”
“They call him the Wizard,” the old man said simply.
“Do they really? And what about the rest of it? Scaling sheer walls and abseiling off rooftops and stuff?”
“Oh, I handle that side of it. We’re a team, see. He’s the brains, I’m the brawn, you might say.”
There was a soft crackle, as the young man stripped the cellophane off a meat and potato pie. “Fine,” Maurice said. “I love it when a plan comes together.”
In the event, it went pretty well. There were a couple of anxious moments: when the old man was hanging by his foot from a piton hammered into the eighth-floor balcony and his hearing aid fell out; when the young man paused in the middle of winching himself down from the ceiling on a titanium-framed collapsible crane to check his text messages; when he unscrewed the cap of his Thermos of hot soup without first neutralising the heat-detection circuit. Other than that, the proverbial walk in the park.
Surprised, therefore, but enormously relieved, Maurice found himself standing in front of the glass jar in the secret laboratory, looking at the man inside. He was asleep, his head resting against the wall of the jar, eyes closed, mouth open. He rapped on the jar wall with his knuckles. “Hello,” he said. “Can you hear me?”
The man opened his eyes, blinked, frowned, and Maurice realised he was looking at a completely empty mind. He banged on the jar with his balled fist. “Can you hear me?” he yelled, but the man carried on gawping.
“Can we hurry it up a little, please?” the old man was saying behind him, but he couldn’t be bothered to answer. The man, he somehow knew, was Theo Bernstein. All he had to do was get him out of the jar, and—
“Only I think I
can hear someone coming,” the old man went on. “About ten of them, at a guess, and probably goblins, so if you could start thinking about leaving.”
Maurice swung round. “Can you get this thing open?” The old man looked sad. “Doubt it, sir, doubt it very much. That’s a multiversal static inversion chamber, see, and they don’t strictly speaking actually exist in this reality, so getting it open would be rather difficult. Also, it might set off a chain reaction and bring about the end of all universes everywhere. Don’t know how you stand insurance-wise, but you might want to check and make sure you’re covered before you—”
“I don’t care. Get it open.”
“Right you are,” the old man said. “Art. Get that chamber open, son, and don’t take too long about it. Definitely goblins, sir, headed this way.”
The young man stuffed the rest of his sausage roll in his mouth and loped over to the jar. He scratched his head, peered up and down, picked his nose, ate an individual pork pie and frowned. Then he prodded the jar with his finger. There was a faint ting! like the jingle of a slightly bent bell, and a door slid open.
The man in the jar jumped to his feet, staggered, stood up straight and drew in a vast lungful of air. That made him stagger again; he slumped against the jar wall, bounced, and hurled himself through the open panel. The moment his foot hit the floor outside the jar, the whole building started to shake.
The old man grabbed Maurice’s sleeve. “Got to go now, sir,” he said. “Fissures in the interdimensional walls, leading to a potential multiphasic implosion. Oh crikey.”
Maurice pushed him away. The man from the jar stumbled towards him, his face red with sudden, unlimited rage. An alarm went off somewhere. The floor under Maurice’s feet bubbled and rocked. “What the hell,” the man was shouting, “is going on?”