by Tom Holt
She laughed. “I guess it slipped his mind. It usually did. He was a nice man, though, I liked him.” She said it as if it was an achievement, like walking across Africa. “You were his favourite student,” she went on. “He talked about you a lot.”
“Did he?”
“Oh yes.” She frowned a little. “I wish I’d listened,” she added. “But then, if I’d paid any attention to what Pieter said, I’d have died of boredom inside of a year. Are you married?”
“Extremely,” Theo said. “But not right now.”
“It’d probably be OK now that you’re not a scientist any more,” she said kindly. “Seeing anyone?”
“No.”
“Probably wise. Give it a year or so, if I were you. I heard of an ex-biochemist in Florida somewhere who was normal again eighteen months after quitting science for good, but it doesn’t do to rush these things. So,” she went on, looking at him a bit sideways, as if looking for a seam between his neck and his head, “what’s one of Pieter’s old students doing behind the desk at a fleapit like this?”
“Only job I could get.”
“Ah. That figures. Actually, it’s not too bad here. Bill’s a nice guy, and little Mattie’s just such a doll, don’t you think? You could do worse,” she added with a gentle smile. “In due course. When you’re better. My key.”
Matasuntha; just such a doll. No, he couldn’t really concur with that; not even one of those Russian dolls which turn out to be half a dozen separate dolls, nested inside each other. “Sorry?”
“The key,” she said gently, “to my room. So I can let myself in. Rather than standing outside in the corridor all night.”
“Ah,” Theo said, and pulled open the desk drawer. There was just the one rusty iron key in there this time. “There you go. Is there anything…?”
“I don’t think so. No, belay that. Get me a bottle of champagne. The Veuve Clicquot ’77.”
“Um,” Theo said. “I’m not supposed to leave the desk unattended.”
“No problem.” She leaned over, grabbed the collar of his coat with a grip like a scrapyard crusher, and pulled him up out of his chair. Then she edged past him and sat down in his seat. “I’ll mind the store while you’re gone. See? No problem is insuperable so long as people are prepared to help each other.”
Theo stood frozen for a moment. Then he nodded three times in quick succession. “Veuve Clicquot ’77, coming right up. Um—”
Mrs Duchene-Wilamowicz sighed. “Row 9, stack 47, shelf 17B. On your left as you go in the door.”
“Ah. Fine. Won’t be long.”
After all, he thought as he ran down the stairs, why not the cellar? It was huge down there, and now he knew about the catalogue system, he could make sure his hiding place was truly random. Then, once his shift was over, he could nip down again and retrieve the bottle, and –
Yes. Well. Think about that later. Right now, just concentrate on hiding it. Pieter’s wife, for crying out loud. Probably just a coincidence; yeah, sure. Customers who believed that might also like to sample our extensive selection of guaranteed genuine three-dollar bills.
The cellar door creaked when he opened it, but it was just showing off; inside, no coffin draped in red satin, no bats, just a lot of wine, in racks. He found an empty slot, memorised the coordinates and took the bottle and the envelope out of his pockets. And hesitated.
After all, he told himself, his first visit had taken no time at all, literally. And that nice Mrs Duchene-Wilamowicz was minding the desk for him. And he needed to know – He turned over the envelope and looked at the equations, wondering what to do next; last time, he’d achieved access by solving the equation, and he’d already done that, so –
The flying knife missed him by an inch, sailed past and buried itself in the tavern door.
Fun, Theo thought furiously, and dived under a table. Pieter’s idea of fun, he refined, as a heavy body crashed down about a foot from his nose and lay quite still. He couldn’t see properly because the table was in the way, but was that an axe buried in the poor bastard’s head?
He wriggled sideways, away from the body, until someone trod on the back of his left leg. That made him sit up, and sitting up made him bang his head on the underside of the table, and after that things were vague for an unspecified time. When the vagueness gave way to a searing headache, he lifted his head and peered out between the legs of a chair. It was much quieter now; very quiet indeed.
Cautiously he crawled out from under the table and stood up. He was in a bar. Not the sort of bar he was used to, because, instead of glass-topped tables and chrome-legged neo-Bauhaus chairs, there were long wooden tables and the shattered remains of benches. The floor was covered in straw and bodies. A small dog was sniffing a pool of fresh blood with evident delight. Apart from the dog, he seemed to be the only living creature on the premises.
Fun, he thought. No, not really.
One of the bodies, a huge man in a leather jerkin, groaned and twitched slightly. Probably not a good idea to be the first thing he saw when he woke up.
At the far end of the room was a long wooden counter, with smashed jars and bottles on top. Sitting on the floor with his back to the counter was another enormous man in a leather jerkin. He was fast asleep, which was probably just as well, since someone had seen fit to pin him to the bar with two knives, driven through the fleshy parts of his ears.
Time to leave; but in order to do that, he needed –
One of the dead men had a moneybag on his belt. Theo hesitated for a moment, then knelt down and, feeling morally inferior to an investment banker cashing his bonus cheque, pried open the drawstring and helped himself to a handful of small silver coins. When he stood up again, he saw a small, round woman walking past him holding a broom. She didn’t seem to have noticed the dead people. She was humming.
He watched her walk to the counter, hitching up her skirt as she stepped over a couple of bodies along the way, and start sweeping broken crockery off the bar top. He thought for a moment, then made his way to the counter and cleared his throat.
The woman looked up and smiled. “Yes, dear?”
“Excuse me,” Theo said, “but have you got any doughnuts?”
She nodded, stooped and produced a tray of doughnuts from under the bar. “Farthing each,” she said. “You’re not from around here.”
“No.”
“On your holidays?”
Somewhere below him and to his right, someone groaned horribly. “Yes.”
She nodded. “You’ll be here for the flower-arranging festival, then.”
“That’s right.” He spread the plundered coins out on the bar top. “Is that enough?”
“What for?”
“A doughnut.”
She smiled at him and took one coin. “Where are you from, then?”
“South.”
“Ah.” That appeared to be all the explanation she needed. “While you’re here, be sure to see the pig fighting. Tuesdays and Thursdays, in the market square.”
“I’ll make a point of it.” His hand, his visible right hand, stretched out towards the nearest doughnut.
“We don’t get many southerners,” the woman was saying. Then she frowned and looked at him. “You remind me of someone, you know.”
“Really.” His fingertip made contact with the doughnut, in roughly the manner shown on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It was slightly sticky, and he could feel individual grains of sugar.
“That’s right. There was a young chap used to come in here a while back, looked just like you. Only he wasn’t from the south. Easterner, he was.”
“Well, then,” Theo said. “Our family’s lived down south for ninety-six generations.”
“Max, his name was.”
Theo snatched his hand away as though the doughnut was red-hot iron. “Max?”
She nodded. “Funny name. I guess that’s why it stuck in my mind. Max as in maximum, you see, and him being so skinny.”
There a
re hundreds of thousands of people called Max in the real universe, Theo thought, and no reason to suppose it’s not exactly the same here. But his brother had been so thin, he was practically two-dimensional. “When did you see him last?”
“Now you’re asking.” She frowned and squidged her eyelids together; you could practically see the white mice running round inside the little wheel. “Can’t say for sure. We get lots of people in here, you know.”
Quite, Theo thought, and by the looks of it, most of them leave in wheelbarrows. A horrible thought struck him. “Was he – I mean, did he die here?”
The frown deepened, until you could’ve hidden a small elephant in it. “Don’t think so,” she said; but her tone of voice suggested a verdict on the balance of probabilities, rather than beyond reasonable doubt. “It can get a bit boisterous in here sometimes. You know, lads larking about.”
The man pinned by his ears to the bar groaned, as if in confirmation. “But this Max character. He—”
“No, I’m pretty sure he made it,” she said. “Because I remember Big Con – that’s him there, bless him,” she went on, nodding in the direction of a crumpled bag of bones near the fireplace. “I remember Con saying, you could chuck knives at that Max all day long and never hit him, cos he’s so thin. No, I think he just stopped coming by after a while, for some reason.” She looked at him. “You know him, then.”
“What? I mean, I don’t know. He could be someone I used to know, but then again, it could be someone else. Did he, um, come in here with anyone in particular?”
She smiled. “Oh yes,” she said. “He was great pals with that wizard bloke.”
“Wizard.” He had to ask, but he already knew, with the resigned foreboding of an infant at the font who knows that his three elder brothers are called John, Paul and George, what the answer would be. “He wouldn’t be a short, fat guy. Bald head.”
“That’s him,” the woman said cheerfully. “Talks funny.” She paused. “Like you do.”
“He used to come in here with this Max.”
“Oh yes. From time to time, you know. On and off.”
“When was the last time you saw the wizard?”
“Not quite sure,” she replied. “I think maybe he was in here last—” She stopped. She was looking over his shoulder. When she spoke again, she lowered her voice. “Don’t want to seem unfriendly, but you might think about getting along. That’s Mad Frad waking up over there, look. I don’t think he likes you.”
“What makes you say—”
“Well, he did throw an axe at you. Mind, you can’t always tell with Frad. Sometimes when he wakes up, all he does is sit in a corner and sob for a day or so. Other times—”
“I’ll be going, then,” Theo said. “Thanks for the chat.”
“Don’t you want your doughnut?”
He’d forgotten all about it. His hand lashed out and connected, and the last thing he saw in that reality was the woman’s face through the hole in the doughnut. And then –
“Sorry I was so long,” he panted, slamming the bottle of Veuve Clicquot down on the reception desk. “I, um…”
“You’ve been seven minutes,” Mrs Duchene-Wilamowicz replied, with a smile. “Not bad, considering.”
“What? Oh, I see what you—” Memo from his brain; stop talking, before you embarrass yourself. “One bottle of champagne,” he said. “Will there be anything else?”
She stood up. “No, that’s fine. Thank you very much. I expect it’ll be lovely and fizzy, after all that being shaken about.” Looking past her, he saw that a couple of the desk drawers, the ones that stuck a bit, weren’t properly closed, as they’d been when he left them. “Well,” she said, “I’ll leave you to it.”
“Thanks for looking after the desk,” he remembered to say. “Were there any messages?”
“Two,” she replied. “I’ve left notes,” she added, nodding towards two yellow stickies on the desktop. “Enjoy the rest of your shift. Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?”
He gave her back a thoughtful scowl as she walked away. Time flies, yes. Fun, no. That and the rummaged-in desk drawers, and the fact that she’d been Pieter’s wife – obviously she knew something; equally obviously, it wasn’t something to be admitted to or talked about openly, or else why all the sneaking about and room searching?
He sat back in the chair and thought about it all. Clearly she knew about YouSpace; so, in all probability, did Call-me-Bill and Matasuntha. It wasn’t an unreasonable exercise in conclusion gymnastics to assume that they wanted the bottle. Fine, Theo thought. It’s terrifying and potentially lethal, so why not let them have it?
If he’d been having this conversation with himself eight minutes ago, there’d have been no argument. Give them the stupid bottle. But things had changed since then. Sudden, unexpected and potentially troublesome as a Klingon battle cruiser at a garden party, echoes of Max were back in his life. Yippee.
Because of which, he really couldn’t let go of the bottle just yet, not if there was any possibility, however remote, of finding out what had become of Max, not to mention what connection, if any, he’d had with Pieter van Goyen. Of course, the likeliest explanation was that it was all a con; a captivating little Easter egg snuggled into the program by Pieter to snag his attention and nestle there, the sweet-corn husk of doubt wedged between the teeth of curiosity. Ninety-nine per cent sure that that must be the true explanation; because he had no reason whatsoever to believe that Pieter and Max had known each other, or that Max could do any form of mathematics not immediately relevant to losing money in a poker game. Take ninety-nine from a hundred, however, and you’re still left with one; just enough to persuade him to hang on to the bottle a little longer, and go back.
He glanced down at the yellow stickies, just in case. Flowers4U were terribly sorry, not a single chrysanthemum to be had this side of Nijmegen before Friday, so they were sending fifteen dozen white lilies instead, hope that’s OK. Oh, and Janine had called, didn’t leave a number, will call back.
Janine, he thought. That’s funny. I had a sister called Janine.
Janine. He shuddered so violently he nearly fell off his chair. Needless to say it could perfectly well be a totally different Janine, just as the skinny Max in the horrible YouSpace bar could be a totally different Max. He grabbed the yellow sticky, glared at it, turned it over and scrutinised the back. No, he hadn’t missed anything. Janine; neither a common nor an uncommon name; possibly, just possibly, his sister.
He thought about her. Blood is thicker than water; it’s also sticky, messy and frequently a sign that things aren’t going too well. Half reluctantly, he allowed his memory to present a medley of Janine’s most characteristic moments. Janine aged nine, using his computer and her father’s credit card to try and hire a professional assassin to kill her gym teacher; Janine aged fourteen, sad and angry because her boyfriend hadn’t found a gift of one of her teeth, drilled and hung on a silver chain, a specially romantic Valentine gesture; Janine going through her political phase at age seventeen, again using Dad’s card to buy ex-Soviet surface-to-air missiles to arm the Cockroaches Protection League; Janine, politely refused entry to her senior prom because of the axe imperfectly concealed in her corsage; Janine in her freak-religions era, in her full regalia as a priestess of Kali Ma; Janine, any age between nineteen and twenty-eight, in a plain white smock without pockets, swearing blind that this time she’d stay in the clinic and really get herself straightened out. Well, he thought. I do love my sister, really and truly; just not enough to want to be on the same planet as her, if it could be conveniently avoided.
And, if he wasn’t mistaken, she felt the same way about him; hence the injunction, the terms of which were such that if she’d left a number and he’d returned her call, he’d have been liable to spend the next ten years in jail. What, he couldn’t help wondering, might have induced her to change her mind? Not running out of money, because she knew he hadn’t got any. Besides, even when her brain wa
s so monstrously infused with chemicals as to render her technically no longer human, she’d always been ferociously shrewd with her investments, so the chances of Janine having gone bust were Paris-Fashion-Week slender. But, if it wasn’t money, what the hell could it possibly be? And how could she possibly have found him?
Answer: it’s not Janine, just someone with the same name. Even so; just his rotten luck to be away from the desk when the call came through.
Max and Janine too; all the little vampire bats coming home to roost. Or (ninety-nine per cent probability) not. He made a conscious decision not to think about it, and accordingly spent the rest of his shift thinking about nothing else.
Janine didn’t ring the next day, or the day after that. He’d have known if she had, because he was on the desk from 7 a.m. to midnight both days –
“I’m really sorry,” Call-me-Bill had said, “but we’re short-handed right now, so we’re all having to pull double shifts until it’s all sorted out. You do understand, I’m sure.” By the end of the second day, he was pretty sure he did understand, and it was nothing to do with staffing levels, which were exactly the same as before – Call-me-Bill, Matasuntha and himself looking after two guests who put in an appearance roughly once every twelve hours; apart from that, he might as well have been on the Moon. The explanation, he was more or less certain, had to do with Call-me-Bill and Matasuntha wanting him pinned down at the desk while they searched for Pieter’s bottle.
Actually, he didn’t mind terribly much. He was right next to the phone, so he’d be there when Janine rang, and while he was on Reception he couldn’t sneak away into YouSpace, and when he got off shift all he wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep. It was good, he tried in vain not to admit to himself, to have an excuse for not going there and following up the clue about Max. For one thing, it was fairly obvious it had to be a trap of one sort; it couldn’t be more obvious if there were signs all over the stairs down to the wine cellar reading This Way To The Trap and Trap 50 metres. That wasn’t enough to stop him following up the clue, but it did make him feel a bit of a fool. True, it was very boring sitting behind the desk all day with nothing to do, and he’d never really learned how to cope with boredom, which made him feel like he was being nibbled to death by tiny invisible ants eating his brain, a millionth of a gramme at a time. Given the choice between boredom and the only trap on Earth obvious enough to be visible from orbit, however, boredom wasn’t so bad. And it gave him time to think the same agonising thoughts about his siblings, over and over and over again, which he wouldn’t have had an opportunity to do if he’d been busy.