The Good, the Bad and the Smug

by Tom Holt

  “Oh, that’s all right,” the little man said. “You will have, in time. I’m patient. All the time in the world, me.”

  “Ah. And I don’t have to, provided—”

  “Provided you can guess my name, yes, that’s quite right.” The little man whisked away the paper, then leaned forward and tugged the gold thread from the prince’s hand. “Of course, if you don’t like the deal, we’ll forget all about it. I mean, if you’re having second thoughts or anything.”

  “No.” The prince swallowed hard. “No, nothing like that.”

  “You wouldn’t like to go away and, oh, I don’t know, maybe talk it over with your wife or anything?”

  “No, that’s fine.”

  The little man gave him a look you could’ve cut diamonds with. “Jolly good,” he said. “Right, let’s have your John Ha—your signature on that contract, and I can get started.”

  “Um.”

  The little man looked puzzled for a moment, then he grinned. “X will do just fine,” he said. He held out a quill to the prince, who scrawled a wobbly cross at the foot of the page, squashing the nib. “And I’ll just sign too,” the little man added. “No peeking.” He smiled. “Not that I’m worried, in your case. That’s the joy of doing business with the aristocracy. Unimpeachable sense of fair play, and they can’t read what they’re not supposed to, even if they wanted to.”

  “Who’s John Ha?”

  The little man ignored him. “All done,” he said, folding the paper and thrusting it down the front of his jerkin. “How is your good lady, by the way? In the pink? Drinking plenty of milk?”

  The prince shuddered. “Right,” he said. “When can I expect delivery?”

  “You bring me the straw, I’ll spin it. Get your men to stack it up there, under those trees. And tell ’em to sling a tarpaulin over it, I hate spinning soggy straw. Everything you thought you knew about blisters is suddenly obsolete.” He dragged a handful of straw out of the bale. “Well, this is nice but I’m sure you’ve got ever such a lot of things you should be doing. Give my best to the missus.”

  The prince stood for a moment as if unable to move. Then he said quietly, “What do you do with them?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The children.”

  The little man clicked his tongue. “We don’t ask that question.”

  “Why not?”

  “If I tell you the truth you won’t believe me. If I lie to you, you will believe me.” He sighed, drew the paper out from his shirt-front and held it over the fire. “I don’t have to make this offer,” he said, “because you signed, and that makes it legally binding. But if you like—” He opened his fingers, so that the paper was retained by forefinger and thumb alone. “Say the word. Up to you. You’ve got five seconds. This does not affect your statutory rights.”

  “No.” The prince was sweating, though he wasn’t very close to the fire. “No, that’s fine. You’re sure that if I guess your name—”

  The little man smiled. “Then you keep the gold and the kid. Three, two, one. There, now.” He put the paper back inside his jerkin. “That was your last chance. But I’m sure you know what you’re doing. Been married long, have you?”

  “About six months. Why?”

  “As long as that.” The little man shook his head. “Goodbye.”

  The prince turned, walked away, stopped, hesitated, then pushed his way through the bushes and disappeared into the darkness. The little man watched him go, shrugged and went back to his spinning. He was counting under his breath; twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven. He’d got down to three when the bushes parted and the prince reappeared. His eyes were wild and there was a ferocious scowl on his face. The little man didn’t look up.

  “John Ha,” he said. “Your name is John Ha.”

  “Two guesses left.”

  “Oh God.”

  The little man twirled a length of gold thread round his finger and reached for his knife. The prince opened and closed his hands helplessly.

  “My wife’s going to kill me when I get home.”

  “Mphm,” said the little man.

  “You never told me I only had three guesses.”

  “Should’ve read the small print, then, shouldn’t you?”

  “I can’t—” The prince took a deep breath. “You haven’t heard the last of this.”

  “So sue me.”

  “I might just do that.”

  “Fine. Oh, sorry, you can’t, you’d need to know my name first.”

  I shouldn’t tease, the little man said to himself, as the crash of splintering branches tracked the prince’s retreat through the woods. They can’t help it. By their own lights, they’re behaving perfectly reasonably. It’s just that—He shrugged. People who live in glass houses, he thought.

  Human nature, he said to himself. Stupid, complicated human nature. Why are people so easy to cheat, and why’s it so damned hard to give them money?

  “So,” said the assistant director, “what do you think of New Zealand?”

  It was one of those long, inexplicable delays. This time it was something to do with the lighting. The stars had withdrawn to their trailers, the director was huddled over his laptop with his phone tucked under his chin and a handkerchief pressed to his nose because of his hay fever, the noonday sun was beating down on six men playing cards in full goblin prosthetics and steel plate armour, while a frowning young man in jeans wandered to and fro across the set, backwards and forwards, carrying an aluminium ladder. In the background, the snow-capped mountains soared up unnoticed into a pale blue sky.

  “It’s all right, I suppose.”

  “Reminds you of home, I guess.”

  “Not really.”

  The assistant director had never met a real goblin before. He’d known for some time that there were a few of them working in the biz, but although he’d been on four out of the seven films in the franchise so far, circumstances had conspired to prevent him from crossing paths with one, until now. He wasn’t sure if he was excited or disappointed.

  “So,” he said, glancing down at the screen of his LoganBerry, “you’re Archie.”

  “Mphm.”

  “But that’s not your real name. Your goblin name, I mean.”

  “Mphm.”

  “Fine,” the assistant director said, determined to stay relaxed and friendly if it killed him. “You don’t want to tell me your goblin name because of deeply and sincerely held cultural imperatives, that’s cool, sorry if I said the wrong thing. So, what’s it like being a goblin?”

  The entity called Archie looked up at him sourly. “Fantastic,” he said. “In fact, it’s so fantastic I ran away from Goblinland and came here. A decision,” he added, “that I’m beginning to regret, but there you go.”

  Usually extras didn’t talk to assistant directors like that, but presumably that too was a cultural thing. He decided to move on to safer topics for a while. “So,” he said, “what’s it like working with Kurt?”

  “Who?”

  The assistant director blinked. “Kurt,” he repeated. “The star.” A blank look. “The guy playing the lead.”

  Archie shrugged. “I don’t know, I’ve only seen him once, in the distance. He was throwing a hissy fit about something, but I wasn’t close enough to hear. If he’s playing the lead, my guess would be the lead is winning. I gather,” Archie went on, frowning slightly, “that he gets paid a lot of money for doing that stuff.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “That’s just silly. Never mind. I’d like to have a go at it.”

  “What, you mean acting?”

  “If that’s what it’s called. Actually, it strikes me it’s pretty much the same sort of thing as I’m doing now, except you’ve got to say things. I can say things.” He paused, apparently aware that his offer hadn’t immediately been accepted. “I don’t need as much money as he does. Tell you what, whatever you’re paying him, I’ll take ten per cent less. Well?”

  The assistant director
breathed in and out slowly before answering. “Don’t you have films in Goblinland?”

  “Oh yes.” Archie suddenly grinned. “But not like this. You wouldn’t like what we’ve got.”

  “Wouldn’t I?” The leer on Archie’s face made the assistant director inclined to believe him, but he had to ask. “What’ve you got, then?”

  Archie muttered something that sounded like—

  “YouTube?” the assistant director repeated. “Oh yes, we’ve got that here. It’s very popular.”

  “It is?”

  “You bet.”

  “Oh.” Archie looked impressed. “Well, hats off to you in that case, maybe you people aren’t such a lot of wimps after all. Have you got Facebooks as well?”

  The assistant director grinned. “That’s very popular too. Nearly everybody’s doing it these days.”

  Clearly he’d said the right thing. “Looks like I’ve underestimated your lot, then. I’d have thought it’d have been illegal.”

  “It is in China. But we’re a bit more enlightened here in the West.”

  “Enlightened,” Archie repeated. “Cool. And this is the West, right?”

  “Well, yes, I guess so. Actually, we’re sort of south-east of Asia, so China is actually west of here even though it’s the East. But New Zealand counts as West, yes.”

  “Ah well,” Archie said. “I might like it here after all.”

  Then the assistant director’s phone warbled at him and he had to go; just, Archie reflected, when he was starting to get marginally less annoying. If what he’d said was true. But you could never be sure about these people, they had a tendency to say what they thought you wanted to hear, which was ridiculous. But then, nearly everything around here was like that. The only good thing about it, as far as he could see, was the money. It was almost impossible to translate human dollars into goblin s’verk, because the frames of reference barely overlapped at all, but at a really conservative estimate, doing this idiotic and supposedly low-paid job, he was earning more in an hour than a skilled goblin artisan–a smith, say, or a skull-polisher made in a week. Now if only there were some way he could send the money back home—

  Someone was shouting at him, which meant he had to go and stand around somewhere else for a while. He sighed. He’d heard someone saying they were making an action movie, but most of the time nobody seemed to be doing anything. Still, he told himself, that’s humans for you. Serves you right for coming to live with food.

  He stood about in a different place for an hour, then ran from one entirely undistinguished spot to another six times along with a dozen other men supposedly dressed as goblins, and that was apparently that for the morning. He trudged away to the van to queue for lunch, and managed to find a deserted spot to eat it. Not deserted for long, though. The assistant director came bounding up to him like a happy dog, wanting to play.

  “Actually, I might be able to get you in on my next job. No promises, of course, but it’s looking good. They’ve green-lighted preproduction, so it’s practically in the can.”

  “Another film, you mean.”

  “Well, yes, of course another film. Anyhow, it’s something really special. It’s going to break the mould.”

  Archie nodded sympathetically. “I used to work in a foundry,” he said. “It’s a bitch when that happens.”

  The assistant director seemed to have worked out how not to hear him when he said things he didn’t understand. “It’s an action historical comedy musical,” he said. “It’s based on a Damon Runyon story, but they’ve shifted it to nineteenth-century Africa, because there’s more resonances. Matt’s already attached to direct, and Steve and Angie are really, really interested, so it should be really big.”

  “Really.”

  “Oh yes. Those French guys who did Les Mis are doing the songs and stuff, and it’s so great we’ve got Matt, because he’s so hot on battle scenes.”

  Archie frowned. “I thought you said it was a comedy.”

  “It is, yes. Action costume comedy musical. The idea is, there’s this group of Zulu warriors in the 1830s who’ve just come back from kicking Boer ass all over the Transvaal, and then they hear about this orphanage that can’t afford presents for the kids at Christmas, so they put on this big show and raise the money. It’s a sure thing. They’re thinking of calling it Assegais and Dolls. Anyhow,” the assistant director went on, “plenty of openings for a guy who knows one end of a spear from another, so watch this space.”

  Archie thought for a moment. “It’s hard to make an opening if you use the wrong end, granted,” he said. “You have to push like crazy. But I’m thinking of quitting this business. It’s boring.”

  The assistant director was staring at him as though he’d gone mad. “Boring?”

  “All you do is stand about waiting, and then you do the same boring thing over and over again. And it’s not like anyone ever does anything useful, even when they’re not standing around. It’s all pretend.”

  The assistant director had gone white as a sheet. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

  “Well, it is. And it’s silly. I mean, take this film you’re making at the moment. You’ve got this idiot who’s supposed to be a sorcerer, and he raises an army of goblins. Ridiculous. First, goblins don’t work for humans, it’d be like you getting a job fetching and carrying for a plate of sandwiches. Second, any sorcerer worth a gob and a spit doesn’t need an army, he just goes like that and suddenly you’re knee deep in confused frogs. Third—” He paused, calmed down a bit. “You’ve got us all wrong,” he said. “Goblins, I mean. We don’t act like you think we do, you’ve got our society and culture completely cocked, and we definitely don’t look like this.” He shook himself, like a wet dog. “Any goblin that went around looking like this would be quarantined and put down, in case it was catching.”

  The assistant director looked genuinely distressed. “I know,” he said. “It’s the whole authenticity thing. They want everything a hundred per cent genuine authentic, provided it’s what the audience expects to see and the colours don’t clash. When I was on that big Viking flick they got all these professors in to advise, built a whole Viking city here on North Island, then found they couldn’t use it because the greens came out as a sort of greeny-blue. Didn’t look right, see. Not on the screen. The suits reckoned it came across like bad CGI. So they shot the whole thing on a blue screen and did it all on the computer. Won an Oscar, if you remember.” Then he stopped, smiled and added, “It won’t be like that on Assegais, though. They’ve got forty-six tribal chiefs signed on as special advisers, it’s all going to be a hundred per cent real, the whole thing.”

  “With goblins to play the Zulus.”

  The assistant director nodded. “In motion capture suits. You ever worked in one of them? Amazing technology. They’re working on the next generation right now. How it’ll work is, you put on the suit and do the take, and then they feed some big star’s last movie into a computer, it converts him into digital, then they input the take you just did, in the suit, and it kind of dubs the big star over you and what the audience sees is him, doing your scene. Totally amazing. It’ll mean easier stunts, no expensive retakes, no scheduling conflicts, if the star drops dead one week into principal photography, so what? It’ll revolutionise the business, you’ll see.”

  Archie considered that for a moment. “We do something similar back home,” he said. “When we kill a hated foe, just before we go into battle we flay his face off and plaster it over our own with fish-glue and honey.”

  The assistant director’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head. “That’s nothing like it at all,” he said.

  “Well, it’s a bit different,” Archie conceded. “We only do it to our enemies.”

  “Anyhow.” The assistant director was hiding behind his smile. Humans did that. “I’ll keep you updated regarding Assegais. You’re going to love working with Angie and Steve, they’re great. They’re so genuine, you know?”

  “I’m gradu
ally getting the idea.”

  When the assistant director had finally drifted away, Archie ate a couple of mouthfuls of his sandwich, threw the rest away and tried to make sense of it all. Magic didn’t work here, the system had said, but even so they could cast illusions that the people believed, to the point of stealing faces and wearing them with absolutely no need for fish-glue and honey. In some respects, apparently, they were almost goblinlike, whereas in others they were bewilderingly alien. Occasionally he reckoned he could see where they were coming from, but never quite fast enough to get out of the way. As for this stupid job—Still, he had to do something, and if it wasn’t this…

  Someone was standing over him. He looked up and saw a big, fat man in a leather waistcoat and sunglasses. “You Archie?”

  “Yes.”

  The fat man nodded. “Kurt wants to see you.”

  Kurt? Oh yes, the actor who got paid all that money. “Why?”

  “Follow me.”

  As good an explanation as any, Archie decided. The fat man led him to one of the shed-on-wheels things that the film people seemed to esteem so highly, knocked on the door and stood aside. A woman opened the door and looked at them both. “This him?” she said.

  She had pointed ears.

  Slowly and (for a goblin) carefully, the royal tattoo artist unwound what looked at first sight like a roll of tape. He put a bleached shin-bone on one end to keep it from curling up, and rolled out about a yard of the stuff; it was a very pale yellow, the colour of pancake batter, and for the record it was the dried and cured great intestine of Mordak’s immediate predecessor on the goblin throne; goblins were a hundred per cent behind the idea of recycling long before it became fashionable. The artist, whose name was Girk, settled his spectacles on the bridge of his snout, opened the ivory (well, sort of) box in which he kept the tools of his trade, and said, “Ready when you are.”

  Goblins have quickly grown to love social media. When they aren’t updating their Facebooks (having first carefully removed all traces of the fish-glue and honey), they’re turning out useful and entertaining recordings, everything from destruct-testing the new Oriflamm ZZ97 E-Z-Slay to the best way to use up leftover Elf liver, via the equally popular medium of—