The Outsorcerer's Apprentice

by Tom Holt

  It was a long time before he could bring himself to stand up and walk the dozen yards or so to the end of the gallery, and look back at the tunnel he’d come running out of. About fifteen yards down, he could see a great pile of rocks, completely blocking the passageway. He closed his eyes, trying at all costs to avoid the enormous fact that he could so easily be under all that weight, if he’d been just a tad slower, or if he’d tripped over and fallen. One little slip and he’d have been the flattest man in the world; John, the human crêpe. Oh boy.

  Then he thought: Moderately Safe? I’m going to sue those bastards for every penny they’ve got.

  And then he thought; the records. All that data. All that evidence. And it was there, I saw it, and now it’s gone and I can’t prove anything. That is just so—

  Fortuitous?

  He looked up. All he could see was roof, but he knew that above and beyond it was earth, blue sky, a world he’d always believed was comfortingly random, chaotic and meaningless. Stuff just happens, he’d always taken that absolutely on trust, and manifest destinies and grand designs are just things people make up in order to manipulate the gullible. There’s no rhyme or reason, there’s no need for anything like that. Goblin-built tunnels collapse; of course they do, the real wonder is that they stay up at all. And giants wander down from the mountains from time to time, and idiotic princes get caught with their fingers in the batter, and that’s just the crumblings of the primordial cookie, it doesn’t mean anything. Which is fine; because if for one moment you thought it was somehow planned, prearranged, that someone somewhere was doing all this shit to you on purpose, you’d get so mad you couldn’t stand it a moment longer—

  A deep rumble suggested that this wasn’t really the time or the place for an internal debate on the nature of the universe. He retreated to the stairwell, then paused to take one last long look. We’ll call it an accident for now, he silently announced. But if I find out that it was deliberate, I’m warning you—

  A pebble the size of a grape dropped from the roof and bounced off his head. With a squeal like a startled pig, he scampered up the stairs and didn’t stop until he was outside in the light.

  The receptionist at the Slam Corporation offices gave Uncle Gordon a production-line smile, issued him with a plastic pass with his name and a photograph that looked worryingly like Lee Harvey Oswald in a sandstorm and asked him to walk through the arch. Needless to say, it bleeped like crazy. They always did. He sighed, froze and waited for Security.

  “They don’t like me,” he explained. “Scanners. They always give me a hard time.”

  Security was prodding him with a sort of squawky wand. This took some time. Eventually, Security assured him that he was clean, and apologised for any inconvenience. “That’s quite all right,” Gordon replied, smiling sadly. “I’m used to it.”

  A flying glass box, designed to scare you to death by making you believe you’re standing on thin air, lifted him a hundred feet off the ground and stopped. A man was waiting for him. “Hi,” the man said, and leaned forward to read the badge. “You’re Gordon Penn.”

  Which was true. “Hi,” Gordon replied. “And you’re Leo Greenlander.”

  The man smiled brightly. “Follow me.”

  Mr Greenlander was obviously a man of great importance, because he had an office with non-transparent walls. There was a framed photo of a generic wife, child and dog; the human touch. The offer of coffee was probably quite sincere, though Gordon declined it. “Right, then,” Mr Greenlander said. “What’s the deal?”

  Gordon settled himself happily in his chair. It was time for The Speech.

  The Speech tended to go on a bit, because once he’d settled in to it and forgotten he was trying to persuade a perfect stranger to part with serious money, Gordon rather enjoyed giving it. He liked the way the other guy’s expression went from doubt to bewilderment to sudden understanding and belief, followed by wild longing and deep, deep greed. The Speech was, in fact, the thing he liked most about the thing he did for a living, so he could be forgiven for making the most of it.

  Boiled down a bit, The Speech was—

  What’s the biggest overhead [Uncle Gordon was wont to say], the most frequent source of aggravation, the least reliable and most expensive aspect of doing business in the modern world? Got it in one, it’s people. Trouble is, unless you’re prepared to do everything yourself (which, in the case of a trillion-dollar multinational, probably isn’t possible) you need people, to do all the things that need doing. Bummer. Now, the problem can’t be solved, but it can be made a whole lot less costly and stressful if you have the right people. Defined as—

  Reliable. Motivated. Responsible. Efficient. Undemanding. Dedicated. Passionate about what they do. And, most important of all, very, very cheap.

  Unfortunately, thanks to vote-grubbing populist politicians and wishy-washy liberal views of the dignity of labour, people like that are nearly impossible to find in the affluent industrialised nations. There’s only so far you can go with mechanisation, so unless you’re prepared to cave in to the incessant demands of your workforce, if you want your business to survive and flourish you really have no choice these days but to outsource. Trouble with that is, even remote, primitive tribes in faraway places get spoilt rotten after a while. They start demanding more money, shorter working hours, time off to be sick, give birth or die; so, before you know it, it’s time to uproot the whole operation and go off in search of even remoter, more primitive tribes who haven’t yet caught the Western disease of thinking they’re almost as good as you. And, sooner or later, the Earth being small and largely covered in water, sooner or later the supply is going to run out entirely, and then where will we go to get our widgets made and our phones answered?

  Fortunately [here Gordon pauses, smiles, relaxes visibly; he knows he has the attention of his audience], there’s an alternative. There is a place where amenable, cheap people can still be found. It’s inconceivably far away, but you can get there in a couple of seconds. They speak English; better still, they understand English − also French, Spanish, Chinese, classical Sanskrit, any language you care to mention, they’re perfectly at home in it. They work cheerfully and diligently for extremely long hours and next to no money. And, best of all, they’ll go on doing so indefinitely, for the foreseeable future, because they’re spoilproof. Yes, really. No danger at all that five or ten years down the line they’re going to come at you whining for health plans and maternity leave and flexible working arrangements and lots and lots and lots more money. And, even better than best of all, the supply of them is practically unlimited.

  At this point in The Speech, Gordon likes to pause, maybe stretch his legs out, stifle a yawn, drink coffee or tea if available, anything to break the flow and tweak up the suspense. He knows he’s at the point at which the audience was starting to be torn between the comfort of there’s bound to be a catch and the tantalising hope of but maybe there isn’t a catch. It’s a good point to hold them at, just for ten seconds or so, before proceeding to mess with their heads and prise open their wallets.

  The difficulty is—Actually, there is no difficulty.

  You’d be forgiven for thinking there might be a difficulty, because these people, these hard-working, wealth-indifferent people, don’t exist in precisely the same way you and I do. Oh, they’re real all right. I can pick up that phone there right now and dial a number, and you can talk to one, and he’ll tell you how to get a great deal on your car insurance or fix your computer. It’s not that they don’t exist. It’s just that they exist differently.

  Mister [your-client’s-name-here], you were young once. You were a kid. You read story books and watched Disney films, maybe you had an imaginary friend. Back then, before you grew up and got wise and had to start paying for things, you had no trouble at all believing in the story-book people living in fairy-tale-land, where there’s dragons and talking animals and magic that really works. Well; you’re older now and wiser and you’ve got ki
ds of your own to tell fairy stories to, but you’re essentially the same person. Well, aren’t you? Your DNA is unchanged, your fingerprints, your blood group. All that’s happened to you is that a bunch of the cells you were born with have been replaced by other cells that do exactly the same thing, and maybe not all the trousers in your wardrobe fit quite as well as they used to. No big deal. You haven’t changed that much. You can still believe, if you want to. And if I can make it worth your while, I promise you, you’ll believe.

  Let me cut to the chase, Mr [your-client’s-name-here]. The company I have the honour to represent can arrange for you to outsource your manufacturing, shipping, customer support, admin, the whole goddamn shooting match − apart from your job, of course, which is completely safe because you’re absolutely irreplaceable − to the other side of the crystal portal; to a land where magic is real, where the seventh sons of seventh sons find genies in bottles, where wild animals talk (and can answer telephones, for a trivial sum), where the rules are just different enough to allow a man with your qualities of perception, mental clarity and vision to make an absolute fortune and get away with it. I’m not asking you to believe right now or take my word for it. All I’m asking you to do is come with me and see for yourself.

  Well?

  The speech had gone down well. Mr Greenlander was looking at Gordon as though he had just bludgeoned him over the head with a million dollars. Gordon knew that look; not there yet, but well on the way. Here was a man who might very well come to believe.

  “Well?” he repeated.

  Mr Greenlander was breathing heavily through his nose. “What exactly do you mean,” he said, “come and see for myself?”

  “Just that.” Gordon snapped open the catches of his briefcase. “Won’t take very long, and we won’t have to leave this office.”

  “But you said—”

  “Ah.” From the briefcase, Gordon removed a square gold box with elaborate catches. He snapped them open, carefully lifted the lid and took out a doughnut. “Ready?”

  Mr Greenlander was looking at him with raw fear in his eyes. “What’ve I got to do?”

  “Just keep perfectly still, and when I say breathe in, breathe in and hold it. No air in the interface, OK? Right then, here goes nothing.”

  The clock on Mr Greenlander’s office wall read 2:47 and thirteen seconds. He checked to make sure Mr Greenlander was motionless and holding his breath, then he reached out and held the doughnut perfectly equidistant between them. Through the hole, their eyes met. And then—

  “What the hell?” Mr Greenlander said

  He was sitting on a tree stump − at least, he was in the same sitting position he’d been in a moment ago, but his trousers weren’t actually in contact with the wood. He was, in fact, floating just above it. His left trouser leg was embarrassingly wet, and a huge three-headed dog was standing over him, sniffing his crotch.

  Gordon stood up and the dog bolted. “Don’t mind him,” Gordon said. “He’s quite harmless. Actually, I’ve got seven hundred and forty more like him answering phones for a leading airline. Come on,” he added with a smile, reaching out a hand and hauling Mr Greenlander to his feet. “Time’s a-wasting.”

  Gordon didn’t look quite the same. Instead of his charcoal-grey lounge suit, so nondescript you had to make a conscious effort to notice it, he was wearing a long powder-blue robe with the signs of the zodiac embroidered on it in gold thread, and a blue hat like an upturned ice-cream cone. “Right,” he said, looking around and nodding. “We’ve landed on the edge of the Idyllic Pastures, so Peaceful Village ought to be about three minutes’ walk that way. I thought we might check out the monastery, and then the stirrer plant.”

  The grass was green, short and weed-free, like a lawn. Birds sang, impossibly loud and clear; and they weren’t just making tweet-whistle sounds, they were singing. The sun was a white ball in a cloudless blue sky, and at regular intervals (every five yards or so) there was either a rose bush in full bloom or a cute, floppy-eared rabbit. In spite of himself, Mr Greenlander felt the anxiety and bewilderment fade from his mind like breath on glass. He inhaled the sweet, pure air and caught himself thinking, I know this place, I’ve been here before. Which was nonsense, since he’d been born in Pittsburgh and hadn’t seen an acre of grass that didn’t have baseball players on it until he was fifteen years old. In spite of that, a voice inside him was telling him that he was finally back home, in the place he belonged, which he ought never to have left—

  “Our preliminary survey suggests that directly under where we are now there’s a vast deposit of premium-grade bauxite,” Gordon said. “Just perfect for open-cast strip mining. Soon as I find a buyer, someone’s going to get seriously rich.”

  Mr Greenlander shuddered, but didn’t say anything. A squirrel with a fat, fluffy tail scampered in front of him, stopped, turned back, smiled at him and flolloped away. “What did you say we’re going to see?” he asked.

  “The monastery,” Gordon replied. “See that glade over there? That’s where we’re headed.”

  They walked in silence for a while − it was hard to gauge exactly how long; time seemed different here, measured in moments rather than seconds, minutes and hours, and the length of a moment (Mr Greenlander suspected) would depend on how long you wanted it to last. A perfect moment could be practically forever. Mr Greenlander thought about that. This moment (the sunshine, the sweet air, the green grass, the wildlife, the absence of people yelling at him down telephones) maybe wasn’t quite perfect, but it was very nearly close enough for jazz. It occurred to him that if it was any more perfect, perhaps it really would last forever, in which case he’d be stuck here, unable to get home, for all eternity. The thought made him whimper, at which Gordon turned and smiled at him. “Yes,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Sorry, I was reading your mind. Bad habit of mine. Over here, you see,” he explained, “I’m a wizard, I can do that kind of stuff. Don’t ask,” he added, as Mr Greenlander opened his mouth, “it’s complicated, and you don’t need to know. But you’re quite right about the time thing. It’s vitally important while you’re over here not to let the moment get too perfect. There’s always got to be something spoiling it. So you’ll be just fine,” he added cheerfully, “so long as you’re with me.”

  Mr Greenlander decided he didn’t want any of that stuff in his mind, so he shooed it out and said, “The monastery?”

  “You’ll see,” Gordon said brightly. “Ah, we’re here. Now, before we go any further, you’ll need to put this on.” He opened his briefcase and produced something that looked like a silver net curtain. “Invisibility cloak,” he explained.

  “You what?”

  “Makes you invisible,” Gordon translated helpfully. “The thing of it is, the locals are used to me, but seeing you might freak them out a bit. There you are, it goes on over your head like this, and—”

  Mr Greenlander had leaned his head forward so the cloak could go over it; he’d been looking at his feet. But they weren’t there any more.

  “Yes they are,” Uncle Gordon said cheerfully. “And they still work and everything. You just can’t see them, is all.”

  “You bastard,” Mr Greenlander wailed. “What have you done—?”

  “Shh,” Gordon said. “Quiet as a little mouse from now on, OK?”

  A glade of weeping willows, which quite definitely hadn’t been there a moment ago, reared up at them out of the short grass. Mr Greenlander could just make out the faint echo of plainsong. “One of my best ideas,” Gordon was saying, “though I do say so myself. There, look.”

  So well hidden among the trees that Mr Greenlander had to look twice to see it was a high stone wall, surrounding a large rectangular building with a domed green copper roof. The music, a low hum like bees, was definitely coming from there. “Come on,” Gordon said, “there’s nothing to be scared of. If we’re lucky, we’ll be just in time for Evensong.”

  Before long they’d joined a well-trodden path
that snaked between the trees to a low, small door in the wall. Above it hung a tarnished brass bell, with a bit of string dangling down. Gordon yanked the string a couple of times, and after a while a panel in the door shot back, and a beady blue eye peered at him for a moment. Then the door opened.

  “Bless you, my son,” said Gordon. “Just a social call.”

  The monk (shaven head, brown habit, rope belt, sandals, no socks) who’d opened the door stepped aside to let him pass. He was mumbling under his breath, with the fierce concentration of the reluctant multi-tasker. Mr Greenlander couldn’t quite make out what he was saying; it sounded curiously like one zero zero zero one zero, or words to that effect.

  They followed the monk along an ancient cloister, the pale yellow stone of the pavement worn smooth by the passage of countless sandalled feet. The walls were plain and bare, but the roof timbers were beautifully carved with a repeating dot-dash motif that was both strikingly simple and enticingly sophisticated. At the end of the cloister, a great grey oak door, unimaginably old, stood in a high wall. The monk, still mumbling, opened it for them, and they went through.

  “Oh—” Mr Greenlander started to say, but Gordon trod on his foot and he cut the expression of wonder off short and contented himself with gazing, upwards, side to side. Mr Greenlander loved to travel, and at one time or another he’d visited all the great cathedrals of the world, but he’d never seen anything like this. It made St Mark’s in Venice look like a gas station.

  It was also packed. From where they were standing, they could see thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of brown-habited monks kneeling in prayer. The soft purr of their chanting rolled and echoed off the gloriously frescoed walls and around the vaulted hammer-beam roof, creating swirls and eddies of sound that made Mr Greenlander’s head swim. It was only when he followed Gordon down the main central aisle towards the high altar (a disappointing plain black rectangular box, though mounted on a stunning cruciform pedestal carved from a single block of rose alabaster) that he realised there was something very strange about the chanting. The monks weren’t all reciting the same words. In fact–he had to concentrate and strain his hearing to differentiate–he could have sworn that each monk was saying something different. Some of them seemed to be reciting scientific or historical tracts, some of them were mumbling about special two-for-one internet-only deals, most of them were just repeating sequences of ones and zeros. From a distance, the sound had blended into a tranquil blur. Close up, it was the stuff of nightmares.