Expecting Someone Taller

by Tom Holt

  Malcolm had heard this story from Flosshilde, who did an excellent impression of Loge when drunk, and it was at the back of his mind when he began his world tour. He hoped very much that things had changed since the Dark Ages. Certainly, some things were very different now; Freia, for example, had long since fallen in love with a wood-elf, with whom she later discovered that she had nothing in common. Centuries of quiet desperation and comfort eating had taken their toll, and Freia was no longer the most beautiful person in the world. In addition, attitudes have altered significantly since the Dark Ages, with the discovery of such concepts as enlightenment, feminism and electricity; Malcolm hoped he would quickly find that he was in a minority in regarding Love as being the Sweetest Thing. A quick survey of the thoughts of the human race would, he felt, help put his troubles in perspective.

  With magical speed he crossed the continents, and the further he went the more profoundly depressed he became. Admittedly, the concept of love took on some strange forms (especially in California), but by and large the human race was horribly consistent in its belief in its value.

  No matter how confused, oppressed, famished or embattled they were, the inhabitants of the planet tended to regard it as being the most important thing they could think of, and even the most cynical of mortals preferred it to a visit to the dentist. Not that they were all equally prepared to admit it; but Malcolm was able to read thoughts, and could see what was often hidden from the bearers of those thoughts themselves. Furthermore, with very few exceptions, the human race seemed to find its favourite obsession infuriatingly and inexplicably difficult, and considered it to be the greatest single source of misery in existence.

  Not that that was an unreasonable view these days. Human beings, as is well known, cannot be really happy unless they are thoroughly miserable, and as a result of Malcolm’s work as Ring-Bearer, there was little else for them to be miserable about. Wherever he went, Malcolm saw ordered prosperity, fertility and abundance. Just the right amount of rain was falling at just the right time in exactly the right places, and at precisely the best moment armies of combine harvesters, supplied free to the less developed nations by their guiltily prosperous industrial brothers, rolled through wheat-fields and paddy-fields to scoop up the bounty of the black earth. Even the major armament manufacturers had given up their lawsuits against the United Nations (they had been suing that worthy institution in the American courts for restraint of trade, arguing that World Peace was a conspiracy to send them all out of business) and turned over their entire capacity to the production of agricultural machinery. The whole planet was happily, stupidly content and, in order to rectify this situation, mankind had fallen back on the one source of unhappiness that even the Ring could do very little about.

  Despite this lemming-like rush into love, there was a curious sense of elation and optimism which Malcolm could not at first identify. He was sure that he had come across it somewhere before, many years ago, but he could not isolate it until he happened to pass a school breaking up for the holidays. He remembered the feeling of release and freedom, the knowledge that for the foreseeable future - three whole weeks, at least - all one’s time would be one’s own, with no homework to do and no teachers to hate and fear. It was as if the whole world had broken up for an indefinite summer, and everyone was going to Jersey this year, where there are donkeys you can ride along the beach. All this, Malcolm realised, was his doing, the fruit of his own innocuous nature. He remembered that when he was a child, a princess had chosen to get married on a Wednesday, and all the schools in the country had been emancipated for the day. It had been on Wednesdays that his scanty knowledge of mathematics came under severe scrutiny from a bald man with a filthy temper, and he would gladly have given his life for the marvellous lady who had spared him that ordeal for a whole week, allowing him to spend his least favourite day making a model of a jet bomber instead. Malcolm understood that he was now the author of the world’s joy, just as the princess had been in his youth.

  Actually seeing the results of his work made Malcolm feel unsteady, and at first he did not know what to make of it all. The world was happy, safe and in love, all except a certain M. Fisher who controlled the whole thing, and a small number of supernatural entities, who were out to stop him. There seemed to be an indefinable connection between everyone else’s happiness and his own misery, and he began to feel distinctly resentful. This resentment was foolish and wrong, but he could not help it. He had never wanted to take away the sins of the world. Once again, the old pattern was being fulfilled. Everyone else but him was having a thoroughly good time, and he wasn’t allowed to join in. His subjects didn’t deserve to be happy; what had they done, compared to him, to earn this golden age? Before he realised it, he was muttering something to himself about wiping the silly grins off their faces, and the clouds around the globe began to gather.

  The first drop of rain hit the back of his hand as he sat in Central Park, watching the ludicrously happy New Yorkers gambolling by moonlight in what had recently been declared the Safest Place in the USA. A group of street musicians, dressed in frock-coats with their faces painted in black and white squares, were playing the Brandenburg concertos to an appreciative audience of young couples and unarmed policemen, and Malcolm began to feel that enough was enough. He wanted to see these idiots getting rained on, and his wish was granted. As the musicians dived for cover among the trees and rocky outcrops, a tiny Japanese gentleman saw that Malcolm was getting wet and ran across to him with an umbrella. Smiling, he pressed it into Malcolm’s hand, said ‘Present’, and hurried away. Malcolm threw the umbrella from him in disgust.

  He sat where he was for many hours, the rain running down his face, and tried to think, but he appeared to have lost the knack. For most of the time he was alone, and the only interruptions to his reverie came from the scores of ex-pushers who had moved out of cocaine into bagels when the bottom fell out of drugs. Just before dawn, however, a pigeon floated down out of a tree and sat beside him.

  ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ Malcolm asked the pigeon.

  ‘Unlikely,’ replied his companion. ‘You were never in these parts before, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Malcolm said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That’s okay. Have a nice day, now.’

  The pigeon busied itself with bagel-crumbs, and Malcolm rubbed his eyes with his fingertips.

  ‘The way I see it,’ said the pigeon, ‘you care about people, right? That’s good. That’s a very positive thing.’

  ‘But where’s the point?’ Malcolm said, and reflected as he said it that he was starting to sound like the bloody girl now. ‘I mean, look at me. I’ve never been so wretched in my whole life.’

  ‘That’s bad,’ said the pigeon, sympathetically. ‘By the way, are you British, by any chance?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Malcolm.

  ‘They had a British week over at Bloomingdales. Scottish shortbread. You get some excellent crumbs off those things.’

  Already the first joggers were pounding their way across the park, like ghosts caught up in some eternal recurrence of flight and pursuit. Two policemen, who had been discussing the relative merits of their personal diet programmes, paused and watched Malcolm as he chatted with the pigeon.

  ‘There’s a guy over there talking to the birds,’ said one.

  ‘So he’s talking to the birds,’ said the other. ‘That’s cool. I do it all the time.’

  Malcolm looked round slowly. Only he knew how fragile all this was. The pigeon looked up from its crumbs.

  ‘You seem depressed about something,’ it said.

  ‘I’ve got every right to be bloody depressed,’ replied Malcolm petulantly. ‘Everyone’s happy except me.’

  ‘My, we are flaky this morning,’ said the pigeon. ‘You should see someone about that, before it turns into a complex. ’

  ‘Oh, go away.’

  ‘You’re being very hostile,’ said the pigeon. ‘Hostility is a terrible thing. You should
try and control it.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I should. Do you know who I am?’

  The pigeon looked at him and then returned to his crumbs. ‘Everybody is somebody,’ it said. ‘Don’t feel bad about it.’

  ‘I thought you birds knew everything,’ Malcolm said.

  ‘You can get out of touch very quickly,’ said the pigeon. ‘Have you been on TV or something?’

  ‘How come,’ asked Malcolm patiently, ‘I can understand what you’re saying?’

  The pigeon acknowledged this. ‘This makes you something special, I agree. But I’m terribly bad at names.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, really.’

  ‘I know who you are,’ said the pigeon, suddenly. ‘You’re that Malcolm Fisher, aren’t you? Pleased to meet you. Can you do something about this rain?’

  Malcolm did something about the rain. It worked.

  ‘And could you maybe make the evenings a tad longer?’ continued the pigeon. ‘This time of year, the people like to come out and sit by the lake and eat in the evenings, and this is good for crumbs. So if you put say an extra hour, hour and a half on the evenings, there wouldn’t be that scramble about half-seven, with all the pigeons coming over from the east. It’s getting so that you have to be very assertive to get any crumbs at all, and I don’t think being assertive suits me.’

  Malcolm promised to look into it. ‘Anything else I can do?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said the pigeon, ‘that’s fine. Well, be seeing you.’

  It fluttered away, and Malcolm shut his eyes. He felt very tired and very lonely, and even the birds were no help any more.

  At Combe Hall a small group had gathered in the drawing-room. It was many centuries since they had met like this, and they were very uncomfortable in each other’s company, like estranged relatives who have met at a funeral.

  Alberich broke the silence first. ‘He has no right to go off like this,’ he said. ‘It’s downright irresponsible.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t he go off if he chooses to?’ replied Flosshilde angrily. ‘He’s been under a lot of pressure lately, poor man. And we all know whose fault that is.’ She looked pointedly at the mother and daughter who were sitting on the sofa.

  ‘Let’s not get emotional here,’ said Mother Earth. ‘Unfortunately, we are all in his hands, and we can do nothing but wait until he sees fit to return.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ said Flosshilde. ‘I was talking to her.’

  Ortlinde said nothing, but simply sat and stared at the floor. Flosshilde seemed to find this profoundly irritating, and finally jumped up and put a cube of sugar down the Valkyrie’s neck. Ortlinde hardly seemed to notice.

  ‘That will do,’ said Mother Earth firmly. ‘Lindsy, perhaps it would be best if you went into the library.’

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ said Flosshilde. ‘I want her here where I can see what she’s doing.’

  ‘This is what comes of involving a civilian,’ said Alberich impatiently. ‘Whose idea was it, anyway?’

  ‘It certainly wasn’t mine,’ said Mother Earth. ‘The first I knew about it was when I heard the reports.’

  ‘That’s what I can’t understand,’ said Alberich. ‘Who is this Malcolm Fisher, anyway? Anyone less suited to being a Ring-Bearer . . .’

  ‘But he’s doing wonderfully,’ said Flosshilde. ‘Everything is absolutely marvellous, or at least it was until she showed up.’

  ‘I’m not denying that,’ said Alberich. ‘But the fact remains that he’s just not like any other Ring-Bearer there’s ever been. Perhaps that’s a good thing, I don’t know. But if you girls had your way, he could easily turn out to be the worst Ring-Bearer in history.’

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ said Flosshilde. ‘I’m on his side.’

  ‘Who chose him in the first place, that’s what I want to know,’ Alberich continued. ‘That sort of thing doesn’t just happen. I mean, look at the facts. He accidentally runs over a badger, who happens to be Ingolf. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘I confess to sharing your perplexity,’ said Mother Earth. ‘This is by no means what I had intended . . .’ She stopped, conscious of having disclosed too much.

  ‘Go on, then,’ said Alberich. ‘What was meant to happen?’

  ‘I am not at liberty . . .’

  ‘Since it didn’t happen,’ said Alberich, ‘it can’t be important.’

  Mother Earth shrugged her bony shoulders. ‘Very well, then,’ she said. ‘The Ring was supposed to pass to the last of the Volsungs.’

  ‘There aren’t any more Volsungs,’ said Flosshilde.

  ‘Incorrect. Siegfried and Gutrune did in fact produce a child, a daughter called Sieghilde.’

  ‘I never knew that,’ said Alberich.

  ‘Nobody knew. I saw to that. Sieghilde was brought up at the court of King Etzel of Hungary, where she married a man called Unferth. A most unsuitable match, I may say, of which I did not approve. Unfortunately, I was too late to be able to prevent it.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘I have no idea. Unferth was an itinerant bard by profession, and I lost track of him in his wanderings. By birth he was a Jute, but he never returned to his native Jutland. I can only presume . . .’

  Flosshilde ran out of the room

  ‘What’s she up to now?’ muttered Alberich. ‘Why can’t people sit still?’

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Mother Earth, ‘given the quite remarkable fecundity of the Volsung race, I have little doubt that the family is still extant, and I have spent a great deal of time and effort in trying to trace the survivors of the line. Who could possibly make a better Ring-Bearer than the descendant of Siegfried the Dragon-Slayer? But to date my inquiries have been fruitless.’

  ‘So you think there’s a Volsung or two wandering about out there just waiting for a chance to snap up the Ring?’ said Alberich. ‘That’s all we need.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Mother Earth, ‘I still regard the Volsung option as being the best possible solution. The Fisher episode is surely nothing but a strange and unplanned complication which will undoubtedly resolve itself in time. As soon as the missing Volsung is traced and apprised of his destiny, we can all get back to normal.’

  ‘That’s not exactly fair on our young friend Malcolm Fisher,’ said Alberich. ‘He deserves more consideration than that. I presume that your Volsung would get hold of the Ring in the same way that his ancestor Siegfried obtained it from Fafner.’

  ‘That ought not to be necessary,’ said Mother Earth hurriedly. ‘No, he has had his part to play as caretaker of the Ring, and to date I must grant you he has played it very creditably. Only this present difficulty has marred an unexpectedly satisfactory period in the Ring’s history. Recent events, however, have highlighted the underlying weakness in his emotional composition which makes it obvious that he is not to be trusted with the Ring on a long-term basis. Unfortunately, as we have recently been made to realise, there is very little that any of us can actually do, when the chips are, so to speak, down, to influence matters. Thanks to Wotan, and of course to my daughter here, all may yet be lost.’

  At this moment, Flosshilde came back into the room, carrying a volume of an Encyclopedia.

  ‘Say what you like about old Misery-guts there,’ she said, ‘she’s made a good job of that library. Here we are.’

  She laid the book down on the table. ‘The Jutes,’ she said, ‘were part of the Anglo-Saxon alliance that colonised Britain after the Romans went home.’

  ‘I seem to remember hearing something about it at the time,’ said Alberich, ‘now that you mention it. Go on.’

  ‘If your Unferth was a Jute, perhaps he came over to Britain with the rest of them. Have you tried looking here?’

  Mother Earth raised an eyebrow. ‘I must confess that this is a line of inquiry that has not previously occurred to me. These islands have always been so unremarkable, heroically and theologically speaking, that I never for one moment imagined that the Volsung line might
be found here. It is of course possible.’

  Flosshilde seemed excited about something. ‘Where would the records be?’ she asked. ‘This is worth following up.’

  ‘The main archive is at Mimir’s Well,’ replied Mother Earth. ‘I think it would be in order to check this new lead.’

  ‘So what are we waiting for?’

  ‘My dear young woman,’ said Mother Earth, ‘you don’t expect me to abandon this highly delicate situation at this crucial juncture simply to go chasing through the files. It can certainly wait until Mr Fisher returns from his holiday and this present difficulty has been satisfactorily resolved.’

  ‘Why are you so interested in tracking down this Volsung, anyway?’ said Alberich suspiciously. ‘I thought you were on Fisher’s side.’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ said Flosshilde. ‘If we find the person who ought to have the Ring, Malcolm won’t be able to give it to her, because it won’t be his to give away to anyone. He’s got wonderful principles, he’ll see at once that he has to give it to this Volsung person, and then everything will be all right.’

  Alberich shook his head. ‘You overestimate him,’ he said. ‘Besides, what guarantee do we have that this Volsung will be any more suitable than Malcolm Fisher?’

  ‘I can reassure you on that point,’ said Mother Earth. ‘I am, after all, the ancestress of the Volsung race. Admittedly, Wotan is their male ancestor, but that cannot be helped now.’

  ‘You mean this Volsung would be her cousin?’ Flosshilde asked, pointing rather rudely at Ortlinde.

  ‘In strict form, yes.’

  ‘Even so,’ said Flosshilde, ‘it’s worth a try.’

  ‘The Volsung race,’ continued Mother Earth, ‘was specifically designed from the outset to be Ring-Bearers. They have built into their software all the heroic qualities required to carry out that office in a satisfactory manner. Even after centuries of dilution, the fundamental ingredients ought still to be present. I have no doubts at all in my mind that if a Volsung or Volsungs can be found, our problems will be at an end. But first, it is essential that Mr Fisher’s ridiculous idea of giving the Ring to my daughter . . .’