Expecting Someone Taller Tom Holt

by Expecting Someone Taller (lit)

  "Obviously you know who I am," he said. "So you know I can read thoughts. I can read exactly what you're really thinking."

  The girl said nothing.

  "Which is probably just as well," said Malcolm irritably, "since you never say anything. But I can see what you're thinking, so it's no use pretending. For crying out loud, you love me more than I love you."

  "That's for you to say."

  "Then be quiet and listen. You don't have to give him the Ring."

  "You don't have to keep it."

  Malcolm wanted to grab hold of her and shake her, but he was being overtaken by a lorry and needed both hands for the wheel. "Don't you understand anything?" he shouted. The girl stared at the floor and said nothing.

  "If I was feeling as bloody miserable as you are, I'd burst into tears," he said savagely. "But you won't let yourself do that, will you?"

  He pulled over onto the hard shoulder and stopped the car. Two ravens were circling overhead. Malcolm said a lot of things, some of them very loudly, some of them very quietly, and after a while he started to cry. But the girl said nothing, and there was no point saying any more.

  "All right, then," he whispered, "you can have it. But not yet. Not yet."

  "I dunno," said Thought, as he watched the car draw up at Combe Hall. "Humans."

  The doors opened, and Malcolm and the Valkyrie Ortlinde climbed out.

  "Now what?" whispered Memory.

  Malcolm put his arm around the Valkyrie, and she rested her head against his face. The sharp eyes of the ravens could easily pick out the Ring, glittering on his finger. Neither the mortal nor the Valkyrie said a word as they went into the house, but the air was full of thoughts, and the ravens felt very frustrated that they could only read Ortlinde's half of them.

  The door of the house closed and the two ravens sat thoughtfully for a while, listening to the wind sighing in the pine trees that surrounded the Hall. They had seen many things in their time. They had seen Alberich screaming with rage and pain when Loge tore the Ring from his chained hands. They had seen Hagen drive his spear between Siegfried's shoulders, and Hagen himself struggling for the last time in the floodwaters of the Rhine. Nothing surprised them any more.

  "Thick as two short planks, both of them," said Memory at last.

  12.

  THE GIRL—MALCOLM could not bring himself to think of her as Ortlinde—was up at the crack of dawn cataloguing away like a small tornado. She at least had her work to occupy her mind; not that it was her proper work, of course.

  Malcolm's own work was not going so well. According to the BBC, a rail disaster in Essex had been narrowly averted, and a nuclear reactor in Kent had been shut down in the nick of time, just before it had a chance to make the English Channel a little bit wider. Needless to say, these unhappy incidents had all taken place at the same time as he had been struggling to keep control of the Ring. It was an added complication, but no more. It wasn't that he couldn't care less; he cared desperately, but what could he do? He was the master of the world, but not of himself.

  Alberich had been waiting for him when he returned from London. In fact, he had been pacing up and down in front of the garage all day, which had scarcely helped his digestion, with the result that he lost his temper when he caught sight of Ortlinde and called her some rather crude and unpleasant things. Malcolm had been on the point of hitting him again, but the dwarf had realised the danger he was in and apologised to the Valkyrie, blaming his bad manners on a cucumber sandwich he had been rash enough to eat while he was waiting. Now he had come back and was sitting in the drawing-room, drinking milk.

  "I know what you're going to say," Malcolm said.

  "Yes," replied Alberich, "you probably do. Whether you understand it or not is another matter. Giant's blood may have made you perceptive, but it hasn't stopped you being plain stupid."

  "Thank you," replied Malcolm sullenly, "but I can do without personal abuse."

  "Listen," said the Nibelung. "I told you before that you were too nice to be a proper Ring-Bearer. Ring-Bearers can't be like that. Sure, it worked well enough to start off with, but then it went all wrong. Well, didn't it? A nice but enamoured Ring-Bearer is capable of doing more damage in forty-eight hours than Ingolf managed in a thousand years. You're human; you can't help it. But you aren't qualified to hold the Ring if you're human. Don't you see?"

  "No."

  Alberich frowned. It was as if someone had said that they could not understand why rain makes you wet. It would take some explaining.

  "Take my case," he said. "I'm not human, I'm delighted to say, but even so, the first thing I had to do before I was able to make the Ring in the first place was to forswear Love and all its tedious works. Whoever thought up that particular requirement knew what he was about, believe you me. Not that I was ever romantically inclined myself; my heart has often been burnt but never broken. Anyway, this made me immune from the one single greatest cause of idiocy in the world. Since I took the pledge, I have been smiled at by Rhinedaughters, yearned at by Valkyries, and generally assaulted by beautiful people of every species, all to no effect. And I don't even have the miserable thing any more. I'm just a peripheral character, especially now that you appear to have dismantled the curse I so cleverly put on the Ring. Or perhaps you haven't." Alberich was thoughtful for a while. "Perhaps this Ortlinde nonsense is the curse catching up with you as well. If it is, I'm sorry. Oddly enough I don't feel any real animosity towards you, even if you are as stupid as they come. Curse or no curse, though, you've fallen head over heels into the oldest trap in the book. You really aren't fit to be allowed out on your own, let alone be the master of the universe."

  "I never asked for the job," said Malcolm wretchedly.

  "That's true, you didn't. But who cares? Shall I tell you about Love?"

  "Must you?"

  "Yes. The human race—we'll confine our attention to your mob to start with, although what I say is applicable to virtually all mammals—the human race has achieved so much more than any other species in the time it's been on this earth—a couple of million years, which is no time at all; about as long as it takes a sulphur-dwarf to learn to walk—that the imagination is unable to cope with all the things that the human being has done. The human race created Things. They built wonderful buildings, invented wonderful machines, brought into being poetry, music and art. To beguile their eighty-odd years they have every conceivable diversion, from the symphonies of Beethoven to the Rubik's Cube. They can rush around in sports cars, they can shoot elephants, they can travel around the world in days, or even hours. In virtually every respect, they have made themselves the equals of the Gods. Most of all, they have all the Things in the world at their disposal to use and entertain themselves with. And what do they like doing best of all? They like taking off all their clothes—clothes over which they have expended so much effort and ingenuity—and doing biologically necessary but profoundly undignified things to other human beings. Any pig or spider can do that, it's the easiest thing in the world. But you bloody humans, who can do so much that no other species could ever do, you can't do that efficiently. You agonise over it. You make an incredible fuss over it. You get it all wrong, you make each others' lives miserable, you write dreary letters and take overdoses. You even invent a medicine that deliberately makes the whole process futile. My God, what a species!"

  The dwarf fell silent and drank some milk. Malcolm could think of no answer to the case as Alberich had presented it, although he felt sure that there was a flaw in it somewhere. Alberich wiped his moustache and continued.

  "And so you give this irregularity in your minds a name of its own. You call it Love, which is meant to make everything all right. Rather than try and sort it out or find a vaccine, you go out of your way to glorify it. I mentioned your art and your poetry just now. What are your favourite themes? Love and War. The two things that any species can do, and which most species do so much more sensibly than you lot—screwing and killing—are the things
you humans single out to make a song and dance about. Literally," said Alberich, who above all else detested musicals. "Now be fair," he continued, "can you honestly say that a member of a species with this ancestral fallibility should be allowed to rule the universe?"

  "But isn't everybody the same? Don't the Gods and Goddesses ever fall in love? And didn't you once try and chat up the Rhinedaughters?"

  Alberich winced. "It is true that the High Gods do occasionally fall in love. You have, as a matter of fact, singled out the one race nuttier than your own. We Elementals have a far better record. The spirits of wood and stone have been known to make idiots of themselves, and I myself did go through a bad patch, I will confess. The spirits of wind and water—the Rhinedaughters, to take an excellent example—have so far proved entirely bulletproof. But even when we do go haywire, we get over it very quickly and very easily. We see how stupid it is, and we pull ourselves together. Look at me. And your lesser Gods, your phenomena and abstractions and so on, have no trouble at all. Seriously, I should consider giving it best and handing the Ring on to a more suitable keeper."

  "Such as?"

  "Modesty forbids."

  Malcolm shook his head sadly. "It's not that 1 don't accept what you've told me," he said. "You've got a point, I'm sure. But I can't give you the Ring, much as I'd like to. I've promised to give it to her."

  "But surely..." Alberich rose to his feet, and then sat down again, a hand pressed to his abdomen. "Don't say I'm getting an ulcer," he moaned, "not on top of everything else."

  "You see," Malcolm went on, "the Ring isn't about all that any more. It's the only way I can prove to her that 1 really do love her. Don't you see how important that makes it?"

  At times, Alberich said to himself, there are worse things even than dyspepsia. "You haven't been listening," he said.

  "Yes, I have. But she's the most important thing in the world."

  "If you weren't bigger than me," said Alberich, "I'd break your silly neck. Make yourself shorter and say that again."

  Malcolm wanted to explain, but that would clearly be pointless. The Nibelung, he could see, had no soul. He offered his guest another glass of milk, but the offer was curtly refused, and Alberich left in a huff.

  Having filled himself with the conviction that what he was doing was right. Malcolm went down to the library to seek confirmation.

  "Hello," said the girl.

  "Hello, Ortlinde," he replied. "Funny, isn't it the way all the people I talk to nowadays have German names?"

  "You've got a German name."

  "No," he said. "My name's Malcolm."

  "They didn't tell me that," said the girl. "I think it's a nice name."

  "So is Ortlinde."

  "Thank you. It means Place of the Lime Tree."

  "I know."

  Malcolm remained standing where he was, feeling rather. uncomfortable. The girl hadn't moved either, and Malcolm was put in mind of a boxing match he had once seen where both fighters had refused to leave their corners at the start of the first round.

  "Are you really cataloguing the library?" he asked.

  "Yes," replied the girl, who sounded rather offended.

  "Sorry. Did you really train as a librarian, then?"

  "No," said the girl, "I never had an opportunity to have a career. But we've got millions of books at home, and my father never puts them back where he got them from. He's very untidy."

  "How old are you?" Malcolm asked suddenly.

  "One thousand, two hundred and thirty-six."

  "I'm twenty-five," said Malcolm, and he made some sort of a joke about having always preferred older women. Ortlinde smiled wanly.

  "There's no point, is there?" she said.

  "No point in what?"

  "In going on like this," she said. "It's not your fault, really. It's my fault."

  She was looking down at her sensible shoes again;

  Malcolm wished that she might learn some sense from them. "I lied to you." she continued, "I was sent to do something and I haven't even managed to do that. It's just that nobody's ever loved me before, and I haven't loved anyone before. But you'll be all right, I know you will. You'll meet someone else and..."

  "I don't want to meet anyone else," Malcolm shouted. "Ever again. I'm going to give you the Ring as soon as... as I've sorted everything out," he finished lamely.

  "But you can't. If you did, you would know I've let you down, and I would know that too, and you wouldn't be able to communicate with me and I wouldn't be able to communicate with you and this terrible resentment would build up and neither of us would be able to talk to each other..."

  She talked, Malcolm thought, in the same way as a rabbit runs; terribly fast for a short burst, then a long, long pause, then another breathless sprint; and every few words, a little nervous smile that made him feel as if someone were crushing his heart like a cider-apple. Unless he found some way of cheering her up, life with her would be intolerable. On the other hand, life without her would be equally intolerable or even worse, so what could he do?

  "Of course we'll be able to talk to each other," he said firmly. "All I have to do is give you the Ring, and I'll give it to you because I want to, because it'll show you that I love you more than anyone else or anything else in the whole world."

  "No, you don't. You can't. You mustn't."

  Malcolm felt as if someone had asked him his name and then contradicted him when he answered. "Why not?" he asked.

  "Because I'm not a nice person at all," replied the girl, gazing tragically at her shoelaces. "I'm nasty, really."

  "No, you're not."

  "Yes, I am."

  "No, you're not."

  She's probably never been to a pantomime, Malcolm reflected, so she wouldn't know. "Really, you're a wonderful person, and I love you, and you love me, and it's all so bloody simple that any bloody fool could get it right. Don't you understand?"

  Malcolm was shouting now, and the girl had gone all brittle, like a rose dipped in liquid oxygen. "Come on," he said, lowering his voice with an effort, "we had it all sorted out a few hours ago. Don't you want to be happy?"

  There was a long silence; not a pause for thought, but an unwillingness to communicate. It was like trying to argue with a small child.

  "Well, don't you? Look at me when I'm shouting at you."

  "I don't know," said the girl, looking even further away. "Then..." Malcolm did not know what to say. Words were bouncing off her like bullets off a tank. "Then you'll just have to trust me," he said. He had no idea what that remark was supposed to mean, but it sounded marvellous. He put his arm nervously round her shoulder; there was no resistance, but it felt like touching a corpse, which was strange. Up to now, she had been the warmest person he had ever known.

  He left the library and wandered out into the drive. A small white Citroen was drawing up; it was the English Rose, back from her holiday. Malcolm groaned, and felt a totally unreasonable surge of resentment towards her. He knew that it had not really been his secretary who had invited the girl down to catalogue the library and so messed up his life. But on another level it had been, and that level suited Malcolm perfectly. He had found someone to blame for all his troubles.

  "That bloody librarian you hired," he started.

  "Pardon me?" said the Rose. "I engaged no librarian."

  "Yes, you bloody did. Linda Walker, Lime Place, Bristol."

  The Rose looked mystified. "To catalogue the library? But Herr Finger, you refused categorically to permit me to arrange for any such operation to be performed. I obeyed your instructions on that point to the letter. The person you referred to is unknown to me."

  "Oh," said Malcolm. "Then I'm sorry."

  The Rose looked at him curiously through her spectacles. "Is there a person of that name—Linda Walker of Lime Place—currently engaged in the work you described?" she asked.

  "Yes." Malcolm suddenly realised that he couldn't explain. "Well, now she's here she'd better get on with it, I suppose."
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  But the Rose seemed intrigued. "Would she by any chance be a young person?"

  "Yes, I think so." One thousand, two hundred and thirty-six. Well, you're as young as you feel.

  "Excuse me one moment."

  Before he could stop her, the Rose scuttled into the house. Malcolm followed, but his secretary proved surprisingly fleet of foot. She had reached the library door before Malcolm caught up with her, and she threw it open.

  "For Chrissakes, Lindsy," she wailed, "what are you doing here?"

  "Hello, Mother," said the girl.

  * * *

  "Believe me," said the Rose, "it was none of my doing. I came here specifically to prevent any such occurrence."

  The three of them were assembled in the drawing-room: Malcolm slumped in an armchair, which threatened to swallow him whole, the Rose perched on the arm of the sofa, and the Valkyrie Ortlinde, the Chooser of the Slain, sitting on a straight-backed chair staring rigidly at a spot on the carpet. The English Rose had sent for tea; it had arrived, and was going cold.

  "Who exactly are you, then?" Malcolm forced himself to ask.

  "I am Erda," said the Rose, "also known as Mother Earth."

  "But you're American."

  "That is so; but only by adoption, so to speak. I went to the United States—long before there were any States, united or otherwise—to be as far away as possible from my ex-husband, the God Wotan. Since he refused to allow me access to my daughters, I could see no point in remaining in Europe."

  "You're Mother Earth," Malcolm said dumbly. He wanted to argue this point. For a start, she was much too thin to be Mother Earth, but that line of argument would probably cause offence. He could see no reason to disbelieve the claim. Its very improbability made it plausible enough.

  "And this," continued the Goddess with a sigh, "is my daughter Ortlinde. I need not ask what she is doing here."

  The girl said nothing, which was entirely as Malcolm had expected. "Will someone please explain all this to me?" he asked pitifully. "I'm only human, after all."

  "Certainly," said Mother Earth. "When I perceived that you had obtained the so-called Nibelung's Ring, I took it upon myself..."