by Tom Holt
‘You have it, then.’
Ali Baba winced. ‘Thanks ever so much, but no. Remember Akram? I got rid of all my magical kit years ago. Giving it to me now would be like saying, “Gosh, here come the police up the fire escape, please accept this five kilo bag of heroin, free and with my compliments.” You keep it, it can’t do you any harm unless you encourage it. Forget all about it.’
Michelle’s brows wrinkled. ‘That’s easy for you to say,’ she replied. ‘Just give a clue, how precisely do I go about forgetting something like that?’
‘Something like what?’
Three wishes you can’t refuse.
A curious idea; who in his right mind would want to refuse three genuine, fully functional, guaranteed wishes? The only dilemma would be, do we go straight for the Maserati, or would it be better to wish for the cash and maybe shop around a bit?
There are, indeed, people who think like that, just as there are people who quite happily use unexploded German bombs as door-stops. They don’t know any better. And for forty years it doesn’t matter; and then one day it does, and the Ordnance Survey has to recall the latest edition of the relevant map for urgent updating.
If you make a wish, you need someone to grant it. Wishes are granted by Class Four supernaturals: genies, dragons, witches, fairy godparents and other species, officially classified by the United Nations standing committee on reality preservation as dangerous pests. None of them are indigenous to this side of the Line; in fact, the Line mainly exists to keep the bastards out. Making a wish is therefore equivalent to driving back across the Channel Tunnel with two rabid dogs on the back seat and the boot full of Colorado beetles. And, once they get this side, Class Fours thrive. They make the alligators in the New York sewers look like a mild infestation of greenfly.
Wishes, magical objects, talismans, all the instruments and paraphernalia of organised fantasy; it’s taken science and reason two thousand years of savage, often bloody struggle to root them out, and every time the job seems to be done, somehow they creep back and carry on where they left off; infiltrating, taking over, setting up the storybook cosa nostra. Stories grow; the price of reality is constant vigilance.
So; three wishes you can’t refuse, three passports to this side of the Line for the Fairy Godfather’s enforcers.
And six wishes outstanding: three for Akram, three for Ali Baba. The conscientious arsonist doesn’t just set the building on fire; first he fills the fire extinguishers with petrol.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Morning.
Akram’s eyes snapped open. The sun behind the
curtains made the windows glow. There were no birds singing, but the whine of a distant milk float provided an acceptable substitute. He jumped out of bed, jammed two slices in the toaster and brushed his teeth so vigorously that his gums began to bleed. His tongue, exploring the inside of his mouth, touched the raw jelly left by the extracted tooth, and reminded him of his resolution.
Akram the Terrible was dead. Watch out, world, here comes Sir Akram, knight errant.
He swept back the curtains, threw up the sash and looked out. In the faceless city, there were wrongs to right, downtrodden victims to protect, villains to smite, and if they’d just bear with him until the kettle boiled and he’d had his toast, he’d be right with them.
Twenty minutes later, he was already in business. True, it was only a lost cat, but everybody has to start somewhere. It only needed one glance to see that the poor creature was bewildered and frightened, standing on the pavement, motionlessly yowling. Fortunately, there was a collar round its neck with a little engraved disc, and the disc had an address on it. He grabbed the cat, hailed a taxi and sallied forth.
‘Yes?’ said the woman through the crack between chained door and frame.
‘Your cat,’ Akram replied, producing the exhibit.
‘Stay there.’ The door slammed, then opened again. The woman stepped aside, and a remarkably tall, broad man stepped out onto the pavement, snatched the cat with his left hand, punched Akram with tremendous force on the nose with his right and went back inside.
‘Vera,’ he said. ‘Call the police.’
Akram wasn’t quite sure what to do next. He had an idea that turning the other cheek came into it somewhere, but he hadn’t been hit on the cheek, and he only had the one nose. Indeed, by the way it felt he wasn’t sure if he even had that any more. Discovering that he had at some stage sat down, he shook his head and started to get up.
‘Terry,’ the woman yelled, ‘he’s getting away.’
‘Don’t just stand there,’ the man replied from inside the house.
Among the souvenirs Akram had retained from his past life were a whole bundle of instinctive reactions to the words He’s getting away: don’t just stand there. There are times when it’s wholesome and positive to allow oneself to be carried away by one’s instincts. Therapists recommend it as a way of re-establishing contact with one’s repressed inner identity. This, Akram decided, was one of those moments.
‘Stop him!’ the woman was screaming to the world at large. ‘It’s the bastard who kidnapped our Tinkles!’ Clearly a hysterical type, Akram felt; and it looked very much like she’d married a compatible partner, because here came the man, brushing past her in the doorway holding a tyre iron. The optimum course of action under these circumstances for any self-respecting knight errant would be to get erring, as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, Akram’s motor functions were a bit below par, owing to the biff on the nose, and the three or four yards’ start essential for any meaningful chase didn’t seem to be available.
‘Right, you bugger, you’ll wish you’d never been, ouch, oh fuck, oh my head!’ exclaimed the man; and Akram, trying to account for the sudden non-sequitur in his conversation, realised that he’d instinctively kicked him in the nuts and kneed him in the face. Pure reflex, of course; those old recidivist instincts, at it again. He wondered, as he beat a hasty retreat, whether a course of hypnotism might be able to do something about them.
Reflecting that beginner’s luck isn’t always necessarily good luck, he returned to his quest; and as it turned out, he didn’t have long to wait.
A little old lady, complete with headscarf and wheeled shopping trolley (where do they get them from, incidentally? Try and buy one and you’ll find they’ve long since vanished from the shops; presumably you have to order them direct from World of Crones, quoting your membership number) was being set upon by three burly youths. Yes, Akram shouted to himself, second time out and we’re right on the money. His first instinct was to charge in, fists and boots flailing, but understandably he wasn’t on speaking terms with his instincts right then, and he resolved to try subterfuge. Accordingly, he ran forward yelling, ‘Look out, it’s the Law!’ and waving his hands frantically. The youths at once dropped the old lady’s bag, unopened, and scarpered, leaving Akram face to face with the old lady.
‘You’re nicked,’ said a voice behind him. At that moment, the old lady stood up straight, dragged off her scarf and hurled it to the ground, and said, ‘Fuck!’
Looking more closely, Akram saw that she wasn’t an old woman at all, but a young girl; tall, blonde and quite attractive, if you like them a bit hard in the face. Akram was familiar with the common variant where the old crone turns out to be the main popsy under a spell or enchantment, but somehow this didn’t look like one of those cases.
‘Jesus!’ she growled. ‘We were that close!’
Akram noticed that four uniformed constables had attached themselves to various parts of his body. A certain amount of radical preconceptions editing seemed called for.
‘Anyway, sarge,’ said one of the coppers to the girl, ‘we got this clown.’
‘Oh good,’ replied the girl unpleasantly. ‘We’ll just have to persuade him to tell us who his mates are.’
Akram’s instincts didn’t actually smirk or say Told you so, but there was a definite aura of smugness in part of his subconscious as he dealt with the fou
r policemen and (very much against his will, but she was trying to bite his leg) the damsel. Obviously, he rationalised as he ran like a hare down a side-street, there was some aspect of this heroism caper he hadn’t quite cracked yet.
Third time lucky.
Time, Akram reflected, to think this thing through. Ten minutes or so of logical analysis later, he hit upon the following hypothesis.
I’ve been a villain all my life, or rather lives. Trying to change from villain to hero overnight is probably asking a bit much of Continuity, hence the fuck-ups. A more gradual approach, on the other hand, might prove efficacious. What he needed, therefore, was a sort of intermediate stage between villainy and heroism, in which he could do basically villainous things - robbing and maiming - but in a good cause.
In other words, Operation Robin Hood.
This was a good idea, he reflected, since although he was a complete novice at errantry and oppressed-championing, what he didn’t know about thieving you could write on the back of a nicked Visa card. Robbing the rich - well, that would come as easily as leaves to the tree. Giving to the poor he reckoned was something you could probably pick up as you went along; and in the meantime, he’d just have to busk it as best he could.
Step One: locate the Rich.
Back home, that wouldn’t have been a problem. Saunter through the streets of Old Baghdad peering through the windows till you find a house where the goats live outside, then prop your ladder against it and you’re away. An hour of pavement-slogging in London, however, showed that the same rules didn’t seem to apply here.
The root of the problem, had he realised it, lay in the fact that he was operating in a district that was in the middle of extensive gentrification. Turning a corner and finding himself in what looked like a genuine, solid-milk-chocolate Mean Street of dingy old terraced houses, still black in places with authentic Dickensian soot, he was disconcerted to notice rather too many Scandinavian pine concept kitchens and smoked-glass occasional tables opaquely visible through the net curtains. Turn another corner and there were the big, opulent houses with steps up to the front door, flanked by pillars; but when you got there, you found a row of bell-pushes with name-tags beside each one, the kerb littered with clapped-out old motors, and a general shortage of desirable consumer goods visible through the windows. He was baffled.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, stopping a passer-by, ‘but where do the Rich live?’
‘You what?’
‘I’m looking for some rich people,’ he explained. ‘Am I in the right area?’
‘Bugger off.’
Akram shrugged; probably the bloke didn’t know either, but didn’t want to show his ignorance. He turned, and trudged on a bit further.
And turned a corner. And saw a bank.
Now that, he muttered to himself, is rather more like it. It should be pointed out that a lot of Akram’s knowledge of the real world came from watching old movies and soap reruns intercepted via a magic mirror and a bent coathanger from the satellite channels. He knew, therefore, that when banks aren’t foreclosing on the old farmstead, they’re foreclosing on the widow’s cottage or foreclosing on the family cotton mill in spite of the valiant efforts of the hero and heroine to pull the business round. That, as far as Akram was concerned, was what banks do, nine to five, Mondays to Saturdays. Indeed, as often as not they sneakily foreclose before the payments are actually due because of some shady deal the manager’s got with the local property tycoon; and Akram had seen evidence of this with his own eyes, when he’d taken a walk down a whole High Street of closed and shuttered shops one Wednesday afternoon, and been told it was because it was early foreclosing day. Banks, therefore, were eminently fair game. Go for it.
The actual robbery side of it was so laughably simple that he wondered how they managed to stay in business. All he had to do was rip out the close-circuit TV camera, clobber the security guard, kick down the reinforced glass partition and help himself, resisting with ease the attempts of the counter staff to interest him in life insurance, unit-linked pension policies and flexible personal loans as he did so. It was when he ran out into the street, a bulging sack of currency notes in each hand, that the aggro started. If he’d been analysing as he went along he’d have seen the trend taking shape and been prepared for it, but that’s the way it goes when you’re all fired up with enthusiasm.
As he emerged from the bank, he almost collided with a ragged, threadbare man, sitting on the pavement with a hat on the ground beside him and a cardboard sign imploring alms. Great, he muttered to himself, a genuine Poor. This is turning out easier than I expected.
‘Here you are,’ he said, offering the Poor one of the bags.
The Poor shot him a look of pure hatred. ‘Piss off,’ he snarled.
‘But it’s money. And you’re poor.’
‘I said piss off. Do I look like I want to spend the next five years inside?’
Akram was asking ‘Inside where?’ when the Poor noticed a poster in the bank’s window headed REWARD, grabbed his ankle and started yelling ‘Help! Police!’ As if in answer, four cars and a van screamed to a halt at the kerb and suddenly the street was full of men in blue uniforms waving guns. Akram was obliged to hit two of them quite hard before he could get away, and a number of vehicles, a street lamp, a dog, a parking meter, several twelfth-storey windows and a passing helicopter were severely damaged by stray gunfire.
By the time he was clear and certain that his most energetic pursuers had lost the trail or had a nasty encounter with his unregenerate instincts, it was half past two and his enthusiasm for heroism was decidedly on the wane. He was still getting something wrong, he told himself; something obvious and simple, if only he knew what it was.
Bugger this, he muttered to himself as he let himself in to his bedsit, for a game of soldiers. And when you don’t know, ask someone who does.
Princess Scheherazade sighed, scratched her ear and ate another pickled onion. She was bored.
When she’d met the handsome prince, she’d hoped it would be different this time; not just one more meaningless storybook love affair, another thousand-and-one night stand. Now, however, with only three nights left to go before the inevitable Happy Ending, she could sense the story coming to an end all round her, and it made her feel like a written-off Cortina just before the big crusher reduces it to the size of a suitcase. It was only a vague, unformed suspicion clouding her subconscious mind, but deep down she knew that Happily Ever After sucks. Time, in other words, to move on, except of course that that wasn’t possible.
She was, needless to say, in an unusual position. As well as being in a story, she made up stories. This only made her feel worse; having sent nine hundred and ninety-eight heroes and nine hundred and ninety-eight heroines to their Happy Ends, she no longer had any illusions whatsoever about what the process entailed, just as the man who operates the electric chair can’t really kid himself that Old Sparky is an innovative new alternative to conventional central heating.
The pickle jar was empty. She scowled and snapped her fingers.
‘Wasim,’ she snapped without looking round. ‘More of these round, vinegary things, quick as you can.’ She heard the slave’s obedient murmur and the slap of his bare feet on the marble floor. She yawned again. Dammit, she was bored out of her skull and the story hadn’t even ended yet.
Supposing there was a story that went on for ever…
God only knows where the thought came from. It’s extremely unlikely that it originated in the Princess’s brain, which simply wasn’t geared up with the necessary plant and equipment to turn out notions like that. Storybook characters don’t speculate on the nature of stories, in the same way that calves don’t write books called A Hundred and One New Ways With Veal. On the other hand, it’s equally improbable to think that somebody planted it there. Who?
A story that doesn’t end. A story that goes on, even outliving the storyteller.
But that’s impossible, Scheherazade told herself; get
a grip on yourself, girl, it’s the pickles talking. Because every story is made up of three parts, beginning, middle and end, and something lacking one of these parts can’t by definition be a story.
But just suppose…
On the evening before the First Day, God muttered But just suppose to himself in exactly the same way. He too ate rather too many pickled onions before going to bed, and the consequences are plain for everyone to see. But Scheherazade didn’t know that, being female and accordingly, in the Islamic tradition, excused religion. She stopped lounging, sat upright, and began to think.
Soap opera
Because she was excused religion, Scheherazade wasn’t to know that human life is what God watches in the evenings when He gets home from work, and that He has a choice of two channels, and He was watching her on one of them at that precise moment. She only knew that she had three stories to go before everlasting happiness, and a liberal interpretation of the rules might just be her best, and only, chance.
Okay, she thought. For tonight, she’d decided on the traditional tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves; a simplistic, two-twist narrative with two, maybe three featured characters and a couple of walk-ons for friends of the director’s brotherin-law. But maybe, with a little breadth of vision and an HGV-equivalent poetic licence, the tawdry little thing might stretch…
The further supply of pickled onions arrived. She helped herself, crunched for a moment, and began to rehearse. Once upon a time there was a man called Akram …
… Who sat down on a packing case, unwrapped a bulky parcel of old dusters and produced a brass oil lamp of the traditional Middle Eastern oiling-can-with-a-wick variety. He extended his sleeve as if to rub it, thought better of it, hesitated, closed his eyes and rubbed.