Earth, Air, Fire and Custard
Page 39
Paul smiled. ‘Because.’
‘What?’
‘Because of Countess Judy,’ he said. ‘It really was just because of her, doing horrible things to your mind. And also this sword stuff too, that was something to do with it. But whatever it was, it was just all magic crap, all JWW and work and nothing to do with us. That’s why—’
Sophie raised a hand. Miss Hook used to do something just like that, Paul remembered, when she wanted to shut the class up. ‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk about it later. A lot. For now, though, what’re you actually going to do with that - thing?’
‘Like I said,’ Paul replied. ‘I’ve got to fight Ricky Wurmtoter.’
‘But you can’t do that. He’ll murder you. You don’t know spit about swordfighting and stuff.’
Paul shook his head. ‘Not important,’ he said. ‘The sword sees to all that sort of thing, I’ve just got to, like, be there. And you too, of course. And . . . shit,’ he added. ‘There’s something I’ve forgotten.’
Sophie rolled her eyes. ‘Paul,’ she said.
‘No, it’s all right, really.’ He turned to his other self. ‘Vicky,’ he said.
‘What about her?’
‘We’ll need her too, or it won’t work. Look, can you go and find her and bring her here?’
‘What did your last slave die of?’ the other Paul grumbled, and left the room.
That made a difference. The presence of a third party, even though it had been the second party in duplicate, had made things a bit tense, but also easier, in a way, because they could-n’t really discuss - well, personal stuff - in front of someone else. Now they could talk, and they had nothing to do for five minutes or so. No reason not to. Bloody hell, Paul thought, and cleared his throat.
‘Sophie,’ he said.
‘Well?’
Christ. ‘I don’t know how to put this,’ Paul said with transparent sincerity, ‘but I think - well, I think we ought to give it another go. If you’d like to, I mean.’
She looked at him. ‘Not really,’ she said.
‘Oh.’
Bugger, he thought. It was one of those horrible relationship moments where it was your fault for not being a telepath and knowing exactly what she was thinking so you could say the right thing. He could see Sophie waiting, with imperfectly disguised impatience; she wasn’t actually tapping her foot or looking pointedly at her watch, but absolutely the next best thing. And he couldn’t think of anything to say to Not really. Which was odd, because twice now, or was it three times - he’d lost count - he’d faced down death and made it go away just by refusing to accept the unacceptable. The difference was, of course, that he couldn’t give a shit about death’s feelings.
‘Not really,’ she repeated, ‘because if we did we’d be right back where we started and it wouldn’t be right for either of us because I can’t ever be me so long as you’re afraid to be you, and it’d all just get fraught and horrible again and I wouldn’t be able to breathe, and anyway you’re just about to trot off and get yourself killed by Ricky bloody Wurmtoter, so where the hell would be the bloody point?’ Whereupon (and this was rather worse than facing Mr Dao against a backdrop of nothing whatsoever) Sophie started to sniffle, and a tear leaked out of the corner of her eye, like oil from a knackered gasket, and of course that was all his fault too -
‘No, I’m not,’ he said.
‘Yes, you are.’
Great, Paul thought, panto time. ‘No, I’m not,’ he said briskly. ‘That’s what he’s for.’
Sophie cut off the snuffles abruptly in mid-sniff. ‘What?’
‘Him,’ Paul said. ‘The other me. I’m not going to fight Ricky. He is.’
‘But that’s—’
‘Yes,’ Paul said savagely. ‘I know. But someone’s got to do it, and I’m sick to the teeth of dying. I figure it’s some other bugger’s turn. Besides, he’s dead already, so it’s not like it’ll put him out or anything.’
‘Paul.’ Her I’m-warning-you voice. He ignored it.
‘I was in Benny Shumway’s office,’ he said. ‘It was a strange morning. I’d died, you see. None of this has happened yet, by the way,’ he added helpfully, ‘and it’s not going to, either, if I have anything to do with it, but I’m drifting off-topic. Where was I? Sorry, yes. What should happen, you see, is this: tonight, I go along to Mr Tanner’s mum’s christening party—’
‘Is that tonight? Hell, I’d forgotten all about it.’
‘Tonight,’ Paul repeated. ‘And I’ve said I’ll be the godfather, right? What I don’t know is, the role of godfather in a goblin christening is, um, sacrificial. They killed me. Bloody goblins jumped out of a cake and stabbed me to death.’
Sophie was staring at him. Probably she was just shell-shocked by his reckless disregard for tenses, but at least he had her attention. ‘Anyway,’ Paul went on, ‘I died, and you remember me telling you about Mr Dao, from the Bank? Well, he was there. And I won’t bore you with the details, but I sort of escaped, and I ran like hell, and I reached the connecting door in Benny’s office just as he was shutting it behind him. I stood there banging on it and yelling, but of course nobody answered. And then I figured out another way of escaping, so that was all right; but a couple of days later, when I’d come back to life - sorry, am I going too fast for you or something?’
‘No, no,’ Sophie said, in a quiet, stunned voice. ‘Go on.’
‘Like I said,’ Paul continued, ‘it was being a really weird morning, but what the hell. Anyway, I had to go into Benny’s office to get something, Benny wasn’t in; and then I heard this terrible banging and shrieking coming through the connecting door. Well, naturally, I got out of there as fast as I could; but afterwards I got to thinking, and I realised. It wasn’t some hideous undead fiend trying to get through from the other side that was making all that racket. It had to have been me.’
She was looking at him again. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s say for argument’s sake—’
‘And then the next time,’ Paul went on, ‘the next time I died and there was Mr Dao waiting for me, he tried to take me away but I didn’t want to go, and guess what, it turned out that he couldn’t. He couldn’t, because he didn’t have any jurisdiction over me, that’s what he said. But that didn’t make any sense, because I’m not immortal or anything; unless, of course, what he meant was, I can’t die because I’m dead already. He couldn’t take me away again, because he’d already got me. And that,’ Paul concluded, ‘was what made me think of whatever it was on the other side of the door in Benny’s room: it had to be another me, the one who’s already dead. And of course, all the fuck-ups can’t be sorted out till Ricky and I have our duel, and obviously I’m not going to survive it; but it won’t matter a toss, because it won’t be me he slashes to bits, it’ll be the other me, the dead one—’ He paused. ‘You see what I’m getting at, don’t you?’
‘No.’
But it didn’t matter, because the door opened and the other Paul came back, and Vicky was with him. She took a couple of steps into the room, saw Sophie and the sword, which was lying on the floor, and screamed. Then, very quickly indeed, Vicky punched the other Paul in the mouth and tried to get to the door. Much to the real Paul’s surprise, the other Paul was too quick for her; he grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her back, as though she was an overexcited dog on a lead. For a moment Vicky looked as though she was going to make a serious fight of it; but then she just drooped, and flopped back against the wall.
‘That’s not fair,’ she said. ‘You’re pathetic, all - all three of you.’
Paul stepped forward, trying to be reassuring. ‘It’s all right,’ he told her, ‘it’s not like that. Really. What we’re going to do is, we’re going to find Ricky now—’
‘Just a minute,’ Sophie interrupted, and there was something in her voice that suggested breaking strain. ‘What did she mean, all three—?’
‘You,’ Paul said, ‘and the sword, and me. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ Paul protested. ‘Why doesn’t anybody ever listen?’ Sophie and Vicky turned and both of them scowled at him instead of at each other. ‘Sophie,’ he said, ‘it’s like this. In this duel I’ve got to have with Ricky, both of us, him and me, we’ve got to have these stupid magic swords, right? I’ve got one of them, and you’re the other half of it. Ricky’s got the other, and—’
‘And the other half of Tyrving is me,’ Vicky interrupted. ‘And Ricky thought he could break the spell by marrying me - No, let’s not beat about the bush. First, he got that bitch Countess Judy to wipe out my memory so I wouldn’t know who and what I am. Then he married me. Thank God Frank Laertides found out about it and made Countess Judy put it right.’
‘Anyway,’ Paul said firmly. ‘Vicky thinks we’ve tricked her here without her other half, the other magic sword, so we can cheat by killing her. That’s what she thinks,’ he added, ‘because she may be a supernatural being of exceptional power and able to transcend the elements at will, but she’s got the common sense of a small beetle.’
‘Hey,’ Vicky protested, but it didn’t do her any good; and Sophie, in spite of herself, giggled.
‘What we’re actually going to do,’ Paul went on, ‘is cross over into Custardspace, which is where Ricky’s hiding right now—’
‘Into where?’ Sophie demanded.
‘And we’re going to have the duel, and that’ll be that.’ Paul turned to Vicky. ‘All right?’ he said. ‘Will that do, as far as you’re concerned?’
Vicky looked a bit doubtful, but nodded. ‘Fine by me,’ she said. ‘Of course, if you could spare an extra ten minutes or so, first we could grab hold of him and hold him down and smash his face in with a baseball bat and then have the duel, but I can see you’re not keen on that idea. Pity.’
‘Yes,’ Paul said, ‘it is, but I don’t want to risk screwing things up. I mean, what if we broke his arm or sprained his thumb or something, and he couldn’t fight in the duel? Then everything’d be all to cock again, and all the chequebooks’d have English on one side and French on the other. No, you’ll just have to be magnanimous and forgive him. Right?’
‘I’ll forgive him,’ Vicky said pleasantly, ‘provided you promise faithfully to chop his arms and legs off in the duel and make him eat them with a salsa dip. Well,’ she added, ‘his legs and his left arm. He’ll be needing the other one to kill you with.’
‘Or,’ Paul replied after a brief, fraught pause, ‘you can carry on hating him to bits, I don’t care. I mean, I’d like it if everybody was friends and we all laid aside our differences and tried to get along, but it’s no big deal. And I suppose if we’re all going to be fighting to the death—’
Vicky grinned. ‘How charmingly naive,’ she said. ‘Your trouble is, you don’t think things through. I mean, I’m assuming you’ve figured out that Ricky is actually King Hring, which means he’s over thirteen hundred years old. Yes?’
Paul nodded glumly. ‘Been trying not to think about that,’ he admitted. ‘Too weird for me. But yes, I suppose if you’re going to take it to its logical conclusion, that’s who he’s got to be. I suppose he’s been hanging around ever since, trying to keep out of everybody’s way—’
Vicky shook her head. ‘Not everybody’s,’ she replied. ‘Just that’s.’ She nodded curtly towards the sword lying on the floor. ‘The thing about a living sword is,’ she said, ‘once it’s drawn in anger, it’s got to finish the fight, otherwise it can’t rest easy. Now everything was fine until Theo bloody Van Spee interfered: we’d had the duel, Ricky and I lost but that’s the rub of the green, and at least the fight was over. But then Theo stuck his oar in. The duel was interrupted, he whisked Ricky away from the island by magic, brought him here, even got him a job as a junior clerk; and Ricky worked hard, eventually got made a partner. All completely wrong, of course. It left both of us - my sword, and hers - stranded, marooned in mid-obligation. We had to finish the fight; but Ricky didn’t want to - for obvious reasons: he was the one who was supposed to lose - and his opponent . . .’ Suddenly she grinned without the slightest trace of levity. ‘What do you suppose came of his opponent?’
Paul sighed. ‘That’d be me, right?’
‘That’d be you, yes.’
‘What?’ Sophie yelled. ‘You mean to say he’s thirteen hundred years old too?’
‘In a sense.’ Paul had a nasty feeling that Vicky was enjoying this. ‘What actually happened was, as soon as the duel was interrupted there was a breach in normality, for want of a better word. Stuff had gone wrong, and that called into existence an avenger. It’s automatic, it just happens that way. It’s like the screw-up comes to life and turns into a person.’
Paul took a deep breath. ‘Mr Laertides.’
‘Excellent.’ Vicky clapped her hands together, like a little girl. ‘Frank Laertides. Of course, the timescale is completely screwy.
The duel happened thirteen centuries ago; but Van Spee chose to fuck everything up thirty years ago. So, he went back thirteen hundred and seventy years from his own time, did the screwing-up, substituted Tyving - that’s me - for that stupid clunky old axe - Rosie Tanner - and came back home. Meanwhile, thirteen hundred years ago, the screw-up makes Frank Laertides suddenly come to life. But he can’t just fast-forward through thirteen centuries to catch up with Theo and kick his arse. No, Frank had to go the long way round. More than that; in order to fix Theo’s fuck-up, he had to restage the duel, and of course that would be difficult if Ricky’s opponent, King Hroar, had conked out from extreme old age back in the early ninth century AD. Which means, not only did Frank have to wait around kicking his heels for thirteen hundred years, he had to bring King Hroar with him.’ She smiled, almost affectionately. ‘Just as well, really, that Frank’s a very resourceful guy. Or you wouldn’t be alive now, for one thing.’
Long, long silence. ‘You mean,’ Paul said slowly, ‘he brought me with him?’
‘That’s right.’ Vicky nodded gravely. ‘Now you’re getting it. And yes, that does mean that technically, you’re thirteen hundred and something-odd years old. There’s a word for it—’
‘Well-preserved?’ Paul suggested.
‘Undead,’ Vicky corrected him. ‘Which accounts for a lot of things that must’ve seemed a bit odd to you, come to think of it. Like, how you’ve been able to pop in and out of the Land of the Dead like a commuter catching the bus; why you found the Portable Door when you first arrived here; why Ricky shot you with a crossbow a few months back—’
‘No, that was an accident,’ Paul protested. ‘Well, a misunderstanding—’
‘Balls,’ Vicky replied. ‘Deliberate; he wanted to kill you so you’d never be able to fight the duel, and he could make it look like it was a misunderstanding, all part of the Countess Judy fiasco. But you didn’t die, because you’re undead. Was Ricky pissed off, or what? It also explains,’ Vicky went on, ‘how come your mother and—’ She frowned. ‘How your mother and father were able to sell you to the firm to pay for their retirement. I’m surprised you didn’t wonder about that, because strictly speaking, selling people isn’t all that legal these days.’
Paul shrugged. ‘I assumed it was, well, magic and stuff, so the rules didn’t apply.’
Vicky shook her head. ‘Not at all. The rules didn’t apply because they only cover living human beings; a category,’ she added sweetly, ‘into which you do not fall. Now then,’ she went on, ‘I hope that makes everything lambently clear?’
Paul tried not to snigger, but with indifferent success. ‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘The good thing is,’ he went on, ‘I’m getting to where I can just ignore a lot of this stuff, at least in the short term. So, I’m undead, and presumably Wurmtoter is, too.’
‘Yes.’
‘And let�
��s get this absolutely straight. If we go back to that island and fight a duel to the death, your stupid magic sword against mine, things will go back to how they’re supposed to be, and it’ll all be all right again?’
‘Yes. Well,’ Vicky said, with a slight frown, ‘not entirely. Strictly speaking, if two of the Undead fight, it’s a duel to the Undeath. But in real terms—’
‘Fine.’ It was as though someone had just switched Paul on at the mains. He jumped up, and the other him moved simultaneously, like a semi-detached shadow. ‘Let’s do it, then. No time like the present, right?’
‘Well, again, it’s not actually the—’ Paul pulled a horrible face, and Vicky stopped herself. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I get the message. The finer points are completely wasted on you, aren’t they?’
‘Yes.’ Paul waited for a moment, then said: ‘All right, how do we get there? I mean, I’m assuming that it’s something to do with living swords transcending the dimensions, and no, I really don’t want a lecture on the theoretical basis of how it works. Do I have to press a button, or pull a lever, or what?’
‘No need.’ Vicky smiled at him; and behind her, a flock of startled ducks clattered noisily off the misty surface of the water and flew away, their resentful quacking echoing back from the rocky cliffs of the distant fjord. ‘We’re here.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
‘Hello, Paul.’ Paul swung round. Ricky Wurmtoter was leaning against the pointy end of a small boat, drawn up on the beach. In his right hand, he held a long, slim sword that glittered blue in the uncertain light. With his left he was raising a cigar to his lips.
‘Not terribly good for you, apparently,’ he went on, having blown a stream of blue smoke out through his nose. ‘But I thought, in the circumstances, what the hell.’
‘You used to smoke them in bed,’ Vicky put in, over Paul’s shoulder. ‘That’s so revolting.’
Ricky frowned. ‘Clint Eastwood does it,’ he said. ‘And he’s a hero.’