Snow White & the Seven Samurai Tom Holt

by Snow White

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘But there,’ the queen sighed, turning her head away in an ostentatious manner, ‘it’s very bad manners to mock the afflicted, so I won’t say another word.’ She stretched her arms and legs like a cat, then sat up on the bed and put her shoes back on. ‘That’s enough here,’ she said. ‘We’d better go down and start smashing furniture.’

  It helped Sis to be able to take her feelings out on a dear little chair, and by the time she’d finished with it there wasn’t enough of it left to provide a packed lunch for an infant wood­worm. The cold porridge didn’t interest her nearly as much, even though it was a long time since she’d had anything to eat. She forced down a couple of spoonfuls just to stop the queen nagging at her, spilt milk all over the tablecloth, and trod on a little wickerwork donkey she found on the mantel­piece. The last, the queen pointed out, wasn’t exactly canoni­cally correct, but Sis maintained that it was essential to her reading of the part. Then they sat down on the two surviving chairs to wait.

  They were deep in a discussion of the state of Mummy and Daddy Bear’s marriage — separate beds, the queen felt, was a sure sign that the whole thing was on the rocks — when the door opened. Which of them was more surprised, Sis and the wicked queen or the three little pigs, it’d be hard to say.

  For what little evidential weight it carries however, it was Julian who spoke first.

  ‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ he complained. ‘It was bad enough when he was a handsome bloody prince. The bimbo outfit’s going beyond a joke.’

  The wicked queen opened her mouth to say something but decided against it. Sloppy thinking, she chided herself. A failure to think things through to their logical conclusion before taking action. Of course, what with the system being down and everything being in a state of narrative flux, the last people you’d expect to see in the Three Bears’ cottage would be the Three Bears. And, come to that, the deceased system’s fatally Boolean logic, unable to locate the Three Bears, would automatically revert to the nearest available match, namely the Three Little Pigs. Spiffing.

  ‘Told you,’ Desmond muttered, shifting the pad of his crutch under his arm. ‘Told you it was pointless running away to this godforsaken backwater and trying to hide from the bugger. I say we do Plan B and that’ll be an end to it.’

  Julian stared at him. ‘Plan B? That’s a bit drastic, isn’t it?’

  ‘No. Let’s do it now, get it over and done with.’

  The wicked queen cleared her throat. ‘Excuse me,’ she said.

  ‘Shut it, you,’ Desmond snarled. ‘Oh, you think you’re so damned smart, don’t you, with your shape-shifting and your disguises and everything. Well, we’re going to show you this time all right. This time, it’s our turn. Eugene, where’s that remote?’

  Julian tried to protest, but Desmond and Eugene scowled him down. ‘Des’s right,’ Eugene said, handing his brother a slim black plastic box with red buttons on the top. ‘Let’s end it right now. Okay, so the house goes up in smoke, us too, but at least we’ll take this bastard with us. At least he won’t be able to terrorise other pigs the way he’s terrorised us.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ the wicked queen repeated urgently. She could feel sweat in the palms of her hands; a sure sign that (as her old mentor the sorcerer would have put it) a bloody great big opportunity was descending on her from a great height. ‘I think there’s been some sort of mistake.’

  Desmond only laughed. ‘Too right, wolf,’ he said grimly. ‘And you just made it. Eugene, stand in front of the door, just in case he tries to make a run for it.’

  The wicked queen recognised the key word; a short, un­ostentatious little grouping of letters, easily overlooked in the rough and tumble of dialogue: he. ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she said sweetly, ‘but I’m not a he, I’m a she. So’s she. Two shes.’

  ‘Nuts,’ replied Eugene contemptuously. ‘You’re a wolf. In she’s clothing,’ he added ineluctably. ‘Prepare to die, sucker.’

  ‘Now wait a minute.’ Sis stood up, missed her footing, wobbled and grabbed the table for support. ‘I don’t know who you are or what you’re planning to do, but it’s nothing to do with me, okay? I’m just an innocent civilian. I don’t even belong here. You want to do something horrible to her, be my guest, but...’

  Julian was listening; the other two weren’t. Desmond in particular was devoting his entire attention to the buttons on the remote control in his left trotter. ‘Armed and ready,’ he said harshly. ‘Plan B laid in and ready to roll. It’s a far, far better thing...

  The rest of his apt if predictable quotation was drowned out by the noise of the explosion.

  ‘Again.’

  The face in the mirror flickered, resetting itself to the position it had been in a few seconds earlier. ‘You, O Snow White, are the fairest of them all.’

  ‘I thought that’s what you said,’ Snow White replied. ‘Still,’ she went on, ‘it does no harm to check these things. Who the hell are you, anyway?’

  ‘Bad command or file name,’ replied her reflection austerely. ‘Please retry.’

  Although her reflection stayed poker-faced, Snow White herself grinned like a thirsty dog. ‘Dear God,’ she said joy­fully, ‘don’t say I’ve managed to hack into that bitch’s system. That’d be cool. You there, identify yourself.’

  A minuscule flicker of disapproval moved a muscle in the reflection’s jaw. ‘Currently running Mirrors 3.1, incor­porating Magic for Mirrors and SpellPerfect 7. Warning: this program is protected by international copyright. Any unauthorised reproduction or transmission of this program may render you liable—’

  ‘Enough.’ Snow White took a deep breath and let it go gradually. Never in her wildest dreams had she ever imagined herself in a position like this; the Wicked Queen’s legendary Mirrors system literally at her fingertips, enabling her to con­trol the whole virtual-make-believe construct that made up the world she lived in. Wow, she said gleefully to herself, cyberpunk comes to Avenging Dragon Cottage. With a grin on one of her faces and a po-faced stare on the other, she leaned back in her chair and wondered what she was going to do next.

  Where to start? Ask a silly question.

  ‘Right, you,’ she said briskly. ‘First, I want you to open me a numbered account at the Credit Suisse and pay in — let me see, deutschmarks or US dollars? Let’s make it dollars for now. Fifty million dollars, please. Next—’

  ‘Bad command or file name. Please retry.’

  Anger creased Snow White’s lovely (fairest of them all) face. ‘You what?’ she snapped. ‘Don’t mess with me, dream-boat. One: fifty million dollars. Two—’

  ‘Bad command—’

  ‘Shut your face.’ Or should that be, shut my mouth? Irrele­vant. All that mattered was that she was in command here and the mirror had to do what she told it to. ‘Why can’t I have the money?’

  ‘Requested operation out of character. Path not found. Retry or Cancel?’

  ‘Bugger.’ Hadn’t thought of that. In order to be able to use the wicked queen’s system, she had to become the wicked queen... Interesting dilemma for someone who really only wanted the money, rather than the power, the glory, and her head on the stamps. And if you’re going to be a wicked queen, having your head on the stamps isn’t necessarily a good idea. The citizens end up not knowing which side to spit on.

  Not that that, in itself, was enough to deter her; but there was something to think about here, clearly. ‘Pause,’ she said; the image of herself in the mirror faded and was replaced by the usual eye-bending mobile geometric shapes. She stood up and walked to the window.

  Below, in the garden, Mr Miroku, Mr Hiroshige and Mr Nikko were standing watching young Mr Akira weeding the turnip patch. Snow White frowned; there was something about the set-up here that she couldn’t fathom, and it bothered her. If only she could remember how she’d come to be here in the first place.

  ‘That’s right.’ Mr Miroku’s voice, carried up to her by the breeze. ‘Now you’ve got it. Be the h
oe.’

  If I’m going to be a wicked queen, Snow White mused, stands to reason I’ll need some trusty henchmen. Fat lot of good it’d be being a queen and having to do my own hench­ing. Would these guys be up to the job? They prance around in armour with whacking great swords, so presumably they’re qualified in that respect. It’s just that they’re so.

  She shook her head, sat down at the dressing table and gave the mirror a tap with her fingertip. The reflection reappeared.

  ‘Mirror,’ she commanded, ‘who am I?’

  ‘You, Snow White, are the fairest of them all.’

  Snow White nodded. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Now we’ve sorted that out. Am I right in thinking that I’m now the wicked queen?’

  ‘Identity confirmed. Access available to all systems.’

  Yes!

  ‘In that case,’ Snow White continued, ‘what’s become of the bi— I mean, who’s Snow White?’

  ‘Bad command or file—’

  ‘All right, yes.’ Snow White looked up and rested the point of her chin on the knuckle of her forefinger. She didn’t need to ask the question. She knew. ‘Never mind all that,’ she said. ‘How do we get this show on the road?’

  The reflection didn’t lighten up exactly; it still glowered at her like the proprietor of an expensive restaurant from whom she’d just ordered egg and chips. But there was a slight thaw, as if the mirror was acknowledging that there was now a possibility that they’d be able to work together.

  ‘Running DOS.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  — Because if Mirrors was now back on line, by rights it ought to reconfigure all the buggered-up settings. Snow White would once again have seven dwarves, instead of seven Japanese master swordsmen. Since she was no longer Snow White but the wicked queen, that didn’t affect her. Whoever was now Snow White would be the one with the dwarves. Find the dwarves and you’ll find Snow White. Provided, of course, that she felt the need; after all, why bother? True, it would be in character for her in her new persona to send her seven henchmen to bring her Snow White’s head on a sharpened pole, but that wasn’t her personal style. So long as the kid didn’t mess with her, she had no quarrel with a fellow professional. This forest’s big enough for the both of us.

  ‘Mirror,’ she commanded, ‘locate Snow White.’

  ‘Ba—’

  ‘Mirror,’ she warned.

  ‘Locating.’

  Ah. That was good. She’d got the mirror frightened of her. Essential first step in the control of technology is the establishing of a state of permanent mutual distrust.

  ‘Snow White currently located at Three Bears Cottage, The Forest.’

  ‘Thank you. Show me the location of Three Bears Cottage.’

  The usual clicks and crinkles; then the reflection more or less leered at her.

  ‘Three Bears Cottage no longer exists.’

  ‘Who’s been sitting in my chair?’ asked Baby Bear, holding up a fragment of chair leg.

  ‘You know,’ replied her father, poking around in the rubble, ‘right now, I figure that’s the least of our problems.’

  Baby Bear nodded, her snout wet with tears. Of the quaint, cosy little cottage in the woods, all that was left was a heap of scattered masonry and a few charred timbers. It did rather put a squashed chair and molested porridge into perspective.

  ‘Who the hell do you think it was?’ Mummy Bear asked, retrieving a miraculously unbroken sauceboat from under a fallen roof timber. Daddy Bear shrugged.

  ‘All sorts of people it could have been,’ he said. ‘Pixie Liberation Organisation. Gnome Rule activists. Does it matter which particular bunch of nutters? Come on, let’s see if we can salvage enough linen to rig up a tent.’

  Mummy Bear sighed. ‘You read about it,’ she said, ‘but somehow you never think it’ll happen to you. Oh God, my mum’s teapot.’ She held up a chipped handle, sniffed and dropped it. ‘Never mind,’ she said bravely. ‘It’s all just things. Nobody got hurt, that’s all that matters.’

  The three bears poked about a little more. ‘Good Lord,’ cried Daddy Bear, brandishing a blue cup with a rather wobbly picture painted on it. ‘My coronation mug. That’s some­thing, I suppose. My Uncle Paddy gave me that when I was just a cub.’

  Mummy Bear clicked her tongue. ‘Might have guessed that’d come through unscathed,’ she replied. ‘Fifteen years I’ve been trying to get that thing to meet with an accident. It must be made of cast iron.’

  ‘Oh.’ Daddy Bear looked hurt. ‘You mean you don’t like it?’

  ‘Never could stand the horrid thing, since you ask. But you never did, so I never said anything.’

  Daddy Bear shrugged. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘at least we’ve got one cup left. There’s poor starving bears in Antarctica who’ve got absolutely nothing at all.’

  ‘Tell ‘em they can have your coronation mug, then. They’re welcome to it.’

  Behind a clump of bushes at the extreme edge of the clearing, the three pigs watched the forlorn search and tried not to feel as guilty as hell.

  ‘Could have sworn it was our house,’ Eugene whispered.

  ‘Shut up and keep still,’ Julian replied, adjusting a knot on the makeshift sling he was attaching to Eugene’s arm. ‘I’ll admit I was fooled too, though,’ he conceded. ‘That’s the trouble with these rotten little design-and-build jobs, they all look the same. Anyway, we know what it’s like to have a house blown down around our ears, and it’s not the end of the world. Just for once, it wasn’t us after all. Be grateful for that.’

  ‘And we’ve got rid of the wolf,’ Desmond added brightly. ‘Copped the full force of it, he did. No way he could have survived that.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true,’ Julian said. ‘Looks like Old Mr Silver Lining’s finally been flushed out into the open. Hey, lads, if that’s not our house, has anybody got any ideas where our house has got to?’

  Eugene shrugged. ‘It’s a quaint little cottage in a clearing in the heart of the forest,’ he replied. ‘That narrows it down to about fifty thousand possibles.’

  ‘Bit of a turn-up, though,’ Desmond continued. ‘I mean, it being us who wrecks the cottage. Role reversal, I think the technical term is.’

  ‘Maybe it’s something to do with all the weird stuff that’s been happening lately,’ Julian suggested. ‘You know, like that business in the hospital with Humpty Dumpty and Jack and Jill. Like lots of things are getting stood on their heads all of a sudden.’

  His brothers looked at him.

  ‘Does that mean we’re going to have to go around blowing down people’s houses?’ Desmond asked plaintively. ‘Because I don’t think I’ve got the puff for that.’

  Julian thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Might be. I’m not all that sure how these things actually work. Adds a new terror to self-defence if it does.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘If someone attacks you and if you kill them, you’ve got to take their place,’ Julian explained. ‘If that’s the way it’s going to work from now on, I think I’d rather hold still and be eaten. Which,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘is the same thing in reverse, surely, since you are what you eat, though you don’t necessarily eat what you are. Am I burbling?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sorry, I’ll stop. There,’ he said, tightening the last knot on the sling, ‘how does that feel?’

  ‘Bloody awful.’

  ‘Oh well, never mind. It’ll have to do for now. I suggest we wait here till nightfall and then try to find our house.’

  The other pigs shrugged. ‘Might as well,’ Eugene muttered. ‘Nothing to hurry home for, after all.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Julian enquired.

  Eugene frowned thoughtfully. ‘It’s just occurred to me,’ he said. ‘If we really have managed to snuff the wolf, what are we going to find to do with ourselves from now on? For as long as I can remember, we’ve been building houses for that creep to blow down. If he’s gone—’

  Julia
n stared at him. ‘You’re not saying you miss the bugger, surely.’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? I’m just asking a simple question, that’s all. Personally, I reckon I’m too old and set in my ways for a radical career change.’

  ‘He’s got a point,’ Desmond agreed.

  ‘So has an almost bald hedgehog,’ Julian replied. ‘What of it? Nothing to say we can’t carry on building houses just because there’s no one to blow them down any more. Think of it. Building houses that are still there in the morning. I’d have thought you’d all have liked the idea.’

  ‘It has a certain novel charm,’ Eugene conceded. ‘Though whether it’ll catch on remains to be seen. There’s such a thing as gimmickry for gimmickry’s sake, you know.’

  Julian made a vulgar noise. ‘Don’t you see,’ he said angrily, ‘we’ve done it. What we’ve been trying to do since I can’t remember when. What we’re for. We’ve killed the big bad wolf, and now we’re free to go. Happy ever after. That’s how it works, isn’t it, in stories? Well, isn’t it?’

  The other two looked at him as if he’d just fallen out of the sky at their feet. ‘What’s he talking about?’ Desmond whispered. ‘I don’t like it when he starts talking all funny.’

  Eugene shrugged. ‘Comes of being the youngest, I sup­pose,’ he replied. ‘You know how it is with litters, the run— I mean, the youngest isn’t really even supposed to survive. Makes ‘em a bit weird in the head sometimes.

  ‘Hey!’ Julian glowered at his brothers, who smiled sweetly back at him in a manner that suggested that the only reason they weren’t trussing him up in a straitjacket was that they didn’t have a straitjacket. ‘Do you mind,’ he went on. ‘I’m still here, you know.’

  ‘Of course you are,’ Eugene replied. ‘Anything you say. Or maybe,’ he added in an audible aside, ‘it’s just a bang on the head or something. That can turn people funny, and sometimes they get better.’

  Julian thought for a moment. His mind was full of strange things, none of which had been there a while ago, though it felt as if they’d always been there. It was like going up in the loft for the first time when you’ve been in the house five years, and finding a whole lot of cardboard boxes left behind by the previous owners. In this case, Julian got the impression that the cardboard boxes had things like GELIGNITE —HANDLE WITH CARE stencilled on the side, which didn’t exactly help.