by Tom Holt
“Well, that’s Art, and I’m—”
“I think—” Mordak leaned forward, to the point where he should’ve overbalanced and fallen flat on his nose. But he didn’t. The invisible wall bore all his weight. “I think you’re not what you look like. I think you could be spectral warriors, or daemonic forces conjured into human form, or multi dimensional dark matter entities, or golems, or reanimated corpses, or just possibly slivers of quintessential space/time that have somehow achieved consciousness, or—”
“Young Art’s a Sagittarius, if that’s what you mean, sir. Me, I’m West Ham, have been since I was a nipper.”
“Just tell me,” Mordak said. “I’m a skilled, experienced, lucky and tolerably brave fighter. Why the hell am I so scared of you two?”
The young man ate a blueberry Danish. The old man’s beam widened. “Because you’re sensible, sir,” he said. “Very intelligent and perceptive.” He turned, paused, turned back, as if undergoing a moral struggle of epic proportions. Then he poked around in the frayed cuff of his brown coat and produced a slip of bent cardboard. “Our card, sir,” he said quietly. “Just in case you ever need us. Not that that’s likely, but just in case. Good luck,” he added, and the next moment there was no trace that either of them had been there, except for a few wisps of cellophane floating on the evening breeze.
“They’re weird,” Efluviel said.
Mordak was looking at the card. It was, of course, completely blank. Which was comforting, in a way, because it implied he didn’t need them yet. “Yes,” he said. “Way past thirty-ferrets-in-a-cider-press weird and groping their way towards profoundly strange.”
“And scary.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mordak said, putting the card away before Efluviel could see it. “Depends whose side they’re on.”
“No, they’re scary,” Efluviel said. “Still, we’ve rescued your stupid goblin. We can go home now.”
“Guess so.” She’d never seen Mordak look so exhausted. His shoulders had slumped, and his chins were on his chest. “You know what? I’ve had about enough of this. It’s just not me.”
“You’re a goblin king. Surely—”
“I’m an administrator.” Mordak looked up at her sharply, and there was a trace of the old fire in his small red eyes. “I run things. Over budget, behind schedule, under target, but I get things done, just about, more or less, close enough for jazz. Mostly I just sort of bash my way through, but sometimes I try and be clever, in the hope that rather fewer goblins will get hurt that way. The thing is—”
“Um.”
“No, let me finish. The thing is, goblin society and civilisation just don’t work, not if you just leave them to get on with it. We’re a nation of ignorant, bloody-minded fighters with no aptitude whatsoever for agriculture and a cuisine largely based on eating each other. In the normal course of events, when we’re left to our own devices, sixty-two per cent of our food supply and thirty-seven per cent of all our manufactured goods are made out of goblin. The only reason we’ve survived this long is because the Dark Lord needs us for arrow-fodder, so he won’t let us wipe ourselves out, like it would seem we want to. Well, I don’t know about you, but I think that’s silly. So I do my best. It’s nothing special, but I do it twenty-four-seven-three-sixty-five. Only, I can’t do very much, because if my goblins thought for one minute that I was interfering with their ancestral cultural traditions of bloodletting and mayhem, they’d have my head up on a pike so fast it’d just be a blur. They think I’m a dangerous idealist with a neo-Elvish liberal agenda, your lot write snarky bits about me in the papers saying I’m playing a crafty long game with a view to eventual world domination, the humans are buying weapons by the cartload to use against my goblins, and now I’ve got multiverse theory, magic portals, terrifyingly weird polite old men, Laws of Conservation and the equilibrium of an alternate universe that’s going to go kerboom, and which has somehow managed to transform itself, through some form of mysterious ethical alchemy, into my fault. And you know what? I think I may have reached the point where I no longer—”
“Mordak.”
“Where I no longer give a damn,” Mordak concluded with a rush. “There, hissy fit over. Wanted to get it off my chest before I exploded. Sorry, what were you saying?”
“Your goblin.” Efluviel pointed at an empty space. “It looks like he’s gone off again.”
Mr Winckler unstoppered a big jar of turpentine, splashed it liberally all over his spinning-wheel, took a long step backwards and smiled. Then he looked round for his tinder-box, which wasn’t where he thought he’d left it. A pity, he thought, that they hadn’t got around to inventing insurance in this reality yet, because he could really have cleaned up; it had been on his list of things to do, but you know how it is. He found the tinderbox by treading on it, picked it up and cranked the little handle. A thin plume of smoke rose straight upwards from the bone-dry moss. He lowered his face over it and blew gently. A tiny orange rose glowed into life. He counted to five, then blew it again.
Job done, he said to himself, mission accomplished. He’d run the projections, done the math, and as far as he could tell, nothing that could happen at this stage in the proceedings could possibly derail the sequence of events he’d set in motion. Whether they liked it or not, the people of this reality were ineluctably on course for a fully functional and guaranteed bulletproof economy whose workings would bring about social justice, fairness and a living wage for all, together with peace in their time and mutual respect and understanding between the fascinatingly diverse communities who inhabited this shitheap. And, most of all, there would be no over-mighty banks, no greedy, effete bankers, no credit derivative swaps, therefore no financial train wreck. A pre-emptive Never Again.
In the back of his mind, he could hear the Dark Lord’s thoughts, buzzing away like a bee in a bottle. They made his head hurt, a bit, though it wasn’t so bad when you got used to it–tiny, peevish, stupid thoughts, as you’d expect from a tiny little mind (but that had been no bad thing; the smaller the mind, the easier it is to control) and he’d be heartily glad to be rid of them, quite soon now, when the coup d’état came. He’d been especially proud of that part of the overall plan. It had been alarming at first to find himself in a universe where all the evil was concentrated in one place, instead of being a universal trace element, like radon; once he’d got his head around it, though, he’d seen the wonderful opportunity that circumstance offered. If Evil is basically just one guy, and you can get to him, worm in through his ears while he’s asleep, subvert and compromise him to the point where his subordinates can’t stick him a moment longer and then leave it to them to get rid of him–well, then, a world without evil, or at least a world where evil’s so divided and weak that it won’t be bothering anyone for a long, long time. He smiled to himself. The things I do for other people, he thought.
The moss in the tinderbox was glowing nicely now. He gave it one last puff, then emptied it on to the spinning-wheel seat and jumped smartly back out of the way. A brisk whoosh, and suddenly the whole machine was on fire, flames bursting and blooming out of the component parts like leaves and flowers. Goodbye, straw-into-gold. He felt a brief stabbing pain in his chest and left arm, which he rationalised as the magic leaving him, and then he was fine again and the wheel was a charcoal fossil. He hefted the big bucket of water he’d filled earlier and let fly. There was an angry hiss and a puffball of steam, followed by the rich smell of evaporation. He made sure the fire was properly out, just in case. The last thing he wanted was for his precious barnful of straw (twice its weight in gold at close of trading) to pick up a stray spark and burst into flames. One thing he didn’t have right now was money to burn.
I’m rich, he realised. Not just rich, but stupidly, toxically, violently rich, the way nobody would ever be rich again back where he’d come from. He did some more mental arithmetic and came to the conclusion that, if only there were some way he could move all that wealth across the interdimensio
nal portal, he could actually pay back every cent he’d cost the combined economies of his homeworld and still have enough left over for a caramel latte and a small slice of baklava. But he couldn’t do that–what a shame, there it is, never mind–so he’d just have to move on and live with it, opulently ever after; which would be that much easier to do once Back Home exploded in a blaze of violated Laws of Conservation and ceased to exist, to the extent that it would be a moot point, philosophically and mathematically speaking, whether it had ever been there in the first place. And nobody, no matter how liberal, can really be expected to feel guilty about something that almost certainly never happened, now could they?
A slight movement registered at the farthest extent of his peripheral vision, and he swung round to see what it was. Then he frowned. “For crying out loud,” he said. “I thought I told those two clowns to get rid of you.”
The goblin grinned at him. He was holding a pitchfork he’d acquired from somewhere, most likely left lying around by one of the carters who’d delivered the straw. In one of those sudden lightning flashes of insight that almost always come just a tad too late, Mr Winckler realised what a superbly efficient weapon the humble pitchfork can be in the right hands, or the wrong ones.
Damn, he thought, I’m going to die now. And me with all this money. Hardly seems fair.
The goblin, who once in a universe long ago and far away had been called Archie and had worn a suit to impress a girl, advanced on him snarling, with the feline grace of the truly efficient predator. “Oh come on,” Mr Winckler heard himself say, “this is ridiculous. What the hell did I ever do to you?”
The goblin’s eyes flashed. He took one hand off the pitchfork and traced a pair of concentric circles in the air. Kind of like a doughnut.
“Oh,” Mr Winckler said. “You’re one of those goblins.”
The goblin nodded, resumed his grip on the fork handle, and closed the distance to just over a fully extended lunge.
“Sorry about that,” said Mr Winckler. “Actually, I’m surprised. How did you get back?”
But the goblin was either too stupid or too smart for diversionary conversation. Mr Winckler noticed that he’d positioned himself just right so as to cut off any attempt at sneaking past him and making a run for the door. Bloody creature’s smarter than me, he realised, and the realisation irritated him profoundly–outthought and outclassed by a semi-human, what the hell kind of epitaph is that for the brightest spark on Wall Street? “Here’s the deal,” he said. “This straw is actually worth approximately seven and a half trillion dollars. It’s all yours. Just put the fork down.”
Either the goblin hadn’t heard him, or didn’t understand, or didn’t give a damn; or maybe he’d figured out (in his simple-minded, subhuman way) that killing Mr Winckler and having all the straw for himself weren’t nearly as mutually exclusive as the offer was intended to make him think. He took another long, tactically perfect stride forward; not rushing, because he didn’t need to, but not hanging about either. One more such stride and he’d be in optimum striking range, and there was nothing at all Mr Winckler (for all his wealth and his cleverness and his philanthropy unparallelled in the whole wide multiverse) could do about it
“Mr Winckler,” Mordak called out, as he tore open the barn door and dashed inside. “Mr Winckler, are you—? Oh nuts.”
The little man had his back to the barn wall, with nowhere left to go. Mordak could only see the goblin’s back, but the set of the shoulders told him all he needed to know. “Nuts,” he repeated loudly, and jumped. A double back somersault over the straw-bales brought him up just short, and not quite in time. The goblin was lifting the fork for a short, lethal thrust. “Hey, you!” he yelled. “Pack it in!”
The goblin hesitated and glanced over his shoulder, and his eyes were full of regret; sorry, Boss. Then, before Mr Winckler could move, he turned back again. The points of the fork were level with the little man’s heart. Mordak reached for his sword, then remembered that he’d left it at the inn. Meaning he was unarmed, and unarmed combat is a skill goblins don’t practise, for the same reason they don’t go in much for jumping off very tall buildings. There was only one thing to do; and I’m damned, Mordak thought, in mid-air, if I’m going to do that—
But he did it anyway. He jumped, and landed directly between the goblin and Mr Winckler. The prongs were about four inches from his chest. “If you don’t put that fork down right now, I’m going to be seriously annoyed.”
An agonised look passed over the goblin’s face. “Chief,” he said, “just bugger off, can’t you? I got to do this. I promised a bloke.”
“I’m giving you a direct—”
The goblin shrugged, and stabbed. He felt the fork-tines penetrate and go in deep. And then they stopped.
“Just a—” he said, but got no further. There was a deep, chunky thud. The goblin rolled his eyes, folded at the knees and fell over. Behind him stood Efluviel, holding a drastically bent length of lead pipe.
A bit late, that was the only thing. Mordak reached up and slowly pulled the fork out of himself; got it free, threw it aside, and frowned. Then a thought struck him. He reached inside his coat and, from an inside pocket, drew out a rolled-up newspaper. Closer examination showed two deep puncture-marks, going almost but not quite all the way through.
“Well,” Efluviel said, “there’s Monday’s headline. It Was The Face Wot Displaced It.”
Mr Winckler was staring at him. “You let him stab you.”
“What? Well, yes.”
“You were prepared to give your life—”
“Particularly stupid thing to do,” Efluviel pointed out, “since one of the salient features of pitchforks is that they’re reusable. Still,” she added, “it was kind of sweet. In a singularly thick-headed sort of a way. Oh don’t look at me like that,” she added irritably. “Also, while we’re at it, you might like to ask yourself who single-handedly subdued the crazed lone forkman, thereby saving both your idiotic lives.”
But Mordak was gazing at Mr Winckler. Then he shook his head. “I must’ve been out of my tiny mind,” he said.
Mr Winckler pulled a wry face. “Behold the eternal paradox of self-sacrifice,” he said. “The life lost, being that of a sublimely good hero, must always be of lesser value than the life saved. In strictly economic terms, it’s a dead loss.”
“Shut your face, you.”
“Shutting it right now.”
Mordak looked round for something to sit on, but the straw-bales were too high. He sat on the goblin instead. “So,” he sighed. “What the hell are we going to do with you?”
Efluviel came up and sat down beside him, having first covered a length of goblin flank with her handkerchief. “Well,” she said. “The old man and the boy who eats are on our side now.”
Mr Winckler looked up sharply. “Hey.”
“So,” Efluviel went on, “we aren’t scared of this toad any more, are we?”
“That’s a point,” Mordak said.
“So,” Efluviel said, “I assume from the fact you took a fork for him that you aren’t minded to kill the little creep, but I can’t see there’s anything stopping you from sending him back where he came from.”
Mr Winckler jumped back, as though he’d trodden in something. “No way,” he said. “That’s powerful, complicated magic. You have no idea of the damage you could do.”
“He’s right,” Mordak sighed. “We don’t know how this portal thing works. And if all that stuff about Laws of Conservation was true, if we just frogmarched him to the portal and stuck him in it, we could end up blowing up whole universes.”
“He’s quite right, you know,” Mr Winckler said. “Pretty smart, for a goblin.”
Efluviel was studying him, in a way he didn’t quite like. “He knows,” she said.
“What?”
“Presumably,” she said, “he used that thing to get here, so I’m guessing he knows how it works. I say we hit him with bits of wood until he sets up the
portal to send himself safely back where he came from. Well?”
Mordak stared at her. “You know,” he said, “you’ve been hanging around with me far too long. Whatever happened to the Elf who wrote that passionate diatribe about abusive treatment of asylum seekers?”
“I met one.”
“Mphm. Well, he’s not exactly typical.” Mordak wiped a bit of straw dust out of his eye. “I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t.”
Efluviel nodded. “It’s one of those ethical dilemma moments, isn’t it? Where there’s no guaranteed way of figuring out what’s the right thing to do.”
“Indeed. Or, in my case, the wrong one. I mean, beating him to death with a pick-handle would be evil, but not if he’s done all the bad stuff he says he’s done, in which case letting him go would be even eviller. Except that ever since he got here, he says, he’s been doing good stuff, which really confuses the issue. Sending him back to face the music where he came from would be good, and if sending him back means their universe doesn’t explode, that’s very good, so really I shouldn’t do it, but arguably he’s redeemed himself by all the good stuff he says he’s done over here, and if I sent him back they’d probably tear him limb from limb, which would be pretty bad, so really I ought to do it. Assuming,” he added, with a sudden frown, “I really am Evil, and not just a goblin. I’m not sure I even know that any more. God, I hate moral philosophy. It’s like doing a crossword puzzle in hieroglyphics.”
Efluviel laughed. “You should do what everybody else does,” she said, “and read the newspapers. Then you wouldn’t have to think about anything. That’s the point. We do it for you.”
“Yes, and look what happens. You get Elves.” He shrugged. “All right, what about this? We assume he’s innocent until proven guilty, lock him up on remand in a disused mineshaft and put the whole question of right and wrong to a committee.” He grinned. “And if that’s not evil,” he said, “I don’t know what is.”