by Tom Holt
“Sorry?” And then he got it: pointless, in a world of beaks, claws and spurs, hadn’t been the best choice of words. “I mean, unnecessary violence.”
“Oh.”
It was one of those points of balance you get in chat-ups, a moment when, following an advance, things could go either way. “I mean,” he went on quickly, “sometimes you’ve got to get in there with the beak and do the business, sure. But I tend to think there’s rather more to being a cock than that.”
“Really? What?”
Time, his years of experience told him, to change the subject. Unfortunately, 99 per cent of his extensive repertoire of gear shifts couldn’t possibly apply here. “That’s a really great set of feathers you’re…” he began, then stopped. The hen was sitting down, snuggling herself into the dust, arranging her wings tidily. She was about to lay an egg.
“Sorry,” he said, looking away quickly. “I’ll, um, leave you to it.”
“Oh.”
Disappointment, which was good, but it also had the subtext Don’t bother coming back woven into it, like gold filigree in a luxury fabric. “Or I might hang around here for a moment,” he mumbled. “If that’s OK with you.”
“Do what you like.”
The hen was wriggling about. He prided himself that he wasn’t excessively squeamish, but he shared the male’s natural diffidence at witnessing the process of parturition. Laying eggs, he thought. Eew.
(And then a tiny echo of a former existence, already so far away that light from it would take a year to reach him, asked him what the bloody hell he thought he was playing at, and did he realise he’d just been chatting up a chicken, and there was a word for people like him and it wasn’t very nice. He considered that, and part of him could see what the echo was getting at, the point it was trying to make, but he wasn’t convinced. Nah, he thought. When in Rome. Go for it.)
“So,” he said. “Been here long?”
“All my life,” the hen replied. “Where are you from?”
He tried to say Walton-on-Thames, but he couldn’t get his beak around it. No palate, no lips to form the component sounds. “Far away,” he substituted.
“Don’t know your breed.”
Clearly, political correctness hadn’t filtered this far down the evolutionary chain. “I’m a pedigree,” he said, trying to sound offhand about it. “Rare breed, actually.”
“Oh.” Grudgingly impressed. Good. Then she made an extraordinary noise, and he flinched. It was a noise that only a true chicken or Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall could find remotely attractive. It was definitely too gynaecological for his taste, and he started to edge away.
“Where are you going?” said the hen.
He thought quickly. On the ground at his feet was a grain of corn. He dipped his head, snatched it up and swallowed. Actually, not bad. Tasted a bit like chicken.
“So,” he said. “Is this your, um, first time?”
“First today, you mean?”
Oh God, he thought. Also, strange how one aspect of the same basic process can be so enthralling, while another is so very yuck. “Good heavens, is that the time? I really ought to be…”
The hen made a noise he knew he’d never forget, then she shook herself, stood up and walked away. In the dust, hull down like a Tiger tank in the desert, he could see a light brown egg.
“Um,” he said, “will it be all right like that?”
The question had slipped out before he had a chance to vet it for embarrassment potential. “What?”
“The egg,” he said (the word stuck in his throat and came out as a sort of clucked hiccough). “It’s OK, is it, just like sort of leaving it there?”
The look she gave him made him wish he was coated in breadcrumbs. “Course it’s all right,” she said. “They’ll be along any minute.”
He really shouldn’t have, but he did. “They?”
“You know.” Twitch, peck, look of utter bemusement and scorn. “Them.”
Well, he’d blown it with her already, and besides, after the whole egg thing he wasn’t really in the mood. “I’m not sure we’ve got Them where I come from,” he said.
“Course you have,” she said. “Everybody’s got Them. If there wasn’t any Them, there’d be no us.”
He wondered why he wasn’t sweating. Maybe chickens don’t. “Maybe we’re talking at cross purposes here. When you say Them—”
“Them,” she insisted, and he could tell he was starting to get right up her beak. “You know. Them as feeds us and fills the water and puts down straw and made the Wire to keep the foxes away. Them up There.”
She arched her neck, as though looking up at something very tall; in proportion, adjusting for altered perspectives, about human-head height.
“Oh,” he said. “Them.”
Her relief was obvious. “That’s it,” she said. “They’ll be along very soon now, to top up the water and pick up the eggs. So that’s all right.”
All right, he admitted it. She’d shocked him. He wanted to say, But that’s your egg, your offspring, flesh of your flesh, and some tall bastard’s going to come along any second now and steal it and beat it into an omelette or scramble it. Your crazy, mixed-up kid. He didn’t say any of that, but he did manage, “And that’s – I mean, you’re OK with that.”
Hens can shrug. In fact, they do it rather well. “Course I am,” she said. “I mean, it’s what’s best for them, isn’t it? And it’s so kind and good of Them, after all.”
“Is it?” he croaked.
“Course. I mean,” she went on, “what’s going to become of them if they stay here? Dead end, basically. Just pecking around in the dirt. Instead, thanks to Them, they get a really good start in life. Boarding school, then university, then a really good job – doctors, lawyers, dentists, accountants. They’re not going to get anything like that if they stay here and I hatch ’em, are they?”
He cringed, from wattles to claws. “So that’s what They do, is it? Send them away to—”
“Well, course.” Her eye could be really beady when she wanted it to. “What else would They be doing it for?”
“And you know that, for a fact? I mean…”
Twitch. “Stands to reason, doesn’t it? I mean, why else’d They take the eggs? The way you’re going on,” she added corrosively, “anybody’d think you thought They were up to no good.”
“Well…”
“Which’d be daft,” the hen went on firmly. “Like, if They mean us any harm, why do They go to all that trouble feeding and looking after us? No, everybody knows They’re good and kind and nice, and They take the eggs and hatch them out for us and give them a really good education so they can make something of themselves. Course,” she added, more to herself than him, “it’d be nice if just once they’d ring or text or send us a letter, even, just to say hello, let us know how they’re getting on. Still, if it was me, I guess I’d want to forget about this place as quick as I could. If I’d had the chance to go to uni, I’d’ve been off like a shot, no messing. And I don’t suppose I’d have been in any rush to keep in touch with home, either. Can’t really blame them, can you?”
Silently he cursed his exceptionally keen memory, thanks to which he could just about remember the boiled egg he’d had for breakfast that morning. It could’ve been somebody, he thought. It could’ve been a contender, only some vicious bastard smashed its head in and stuck toast in it. “That’s right,” he whimpered. “It’s a world of opportunity out there. Well worth crossing the road for.”
“What road?”
He screwed up his face, trying to concentrate. It was so far away, a very faint signal, almost out of range. “It’s a sort of saying,” he said. “Well, a joke. Why did the chicken cross the road? It’s…” He shook his head. “Forget it,” he said.
The hen was looking at him. “What’s a joke?”
Good question. He couldn’t quite remember. And could he really have eaten an egg that morning? Were his protein and calcium levels really that def
icient? “I don’t know,” he confessed. “I think it’s a—” He shook his head, then twitched it from side to side. No foxes. “I don’t know. Can’t be important.”
“You want to stay away from roads,” the hen said. “There’s great big fast things on roads that can squash you flat. Best to stay in the coop, where it’s safe. That’s what They built it for.”
Well, of course. And They (he stooped, pecked up a grain of corn) knew best; you had to believe that, or nothing made sense. All that stuff, the echoes in his mind; maybe he’d pecked a bad nettle or something.
The hen had wandered off. He stood on one leg for a moment, preening his wing feathers. He was beginning to see things straight now. For some bizarre reason for a moment there he’d got it into his head that once he’d been one of Them. Crazy. But it was all right now, he was better again. He knew exactly who and what he was. He was—
“Excuse me.”
Another hen was standing next to him. Quick check (no foxes), and he looked at her. Wattles rather pale, no sheen to her feathers, hardly worth mating with but nevertheless…
“No,” the hen said, “not now. Listen. I need to talk to you.”
There was something different about this hen. Odd. Didn’t move right. He glared at her suspiciously. “Why?”
“Just now.” Ten seconds, and she hadn’t once checked for foxes. “You said something. About a road.”
“What road?”
She was looking at him. “You said, ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’”
He scuffed at the ground with his claws. “Wasn’t feeling right. Don’t know why I said that. Forget it.”
“‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’” the hen repeated. “That’s what you said. I heard you.”
“All right,” he snapped. “Don’t go on about it. I wasn’t feeling well, but I’m better now. All just a figment of my—”
“To get,” the hen said, “to the other side.”
Click. “What did you just…”
“It’s a joke,” the hen said. “A very old joke. A human joke.”
“What’s a…”
The hen came a little closer and lowered her voice. “You know what a joke is,” she said. “You know, because you’re…”
Instinctively, he knew he didn’t want to hear. He threw his head back and crowed until he thought his lungs would burst. But the hen just stood there.
“All right,” she said, “try this. Which came first, the chicken or the…”
He turned to run, as though all the foxes in the world were crowding in on him. Then he stopped. “Egg,” he said. “The chicken or the egg.”
Slowly the hen nodded. “And the answer is?”
The word came from deep inside him somewhere, a place he didn’t know existed. “Neither,” he said.
“What did come first?”
“Transdimensional phase shift relocation,” he replied, and the words squeezed out of him like (say) a square egg. “Setting up a differential feedback loop which in turn triggers a fundamental temporal paradox sequence, giving rise to what we subjectively term reality.”
“Thank you,” the hen said gravely. “Now, how do you feel?”
He considered his answer. “Bloody strange,” he said. “You know what, for a moment there, I could have sworn I was a ch—”
“Don’t,” the hen hissed, “look down. Or sideways. Just keep looking at me, all right?”
He nodded.
“Good. Now then, what can you see?”
He looked, and saw a smartly dressed middle-aged woman in heavy square-rimmed glasses. And feathers, but somehow he knew they weren’t really real, as though she was wearing a transparent disguise. “Who are you?” he said.
“My name’s Mary,” she replied. “Mary Byron.”
“Kevin Briggs,” he replied automatically. “Pleased to meet you.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Eileen,” he called out, “where’re my slippers?”
No reply. She was still in the toilet. He scowled and put on his brown shoes instead, even though they hurt his feet if he wore them for more than an hour. Then he went through to see to the customer.
A blouse, dry clean only, gravy stains down the front. A wool coat. Ready by half five, he told her. She looked pleased.
That was the sad irony. They offered a really quick, reliable service, as good as you’d find anywhere; by rights, they should’ve built up an impressive reputation by now, except they were never anywhere long enough. All that hard work for nothing. Sometimes he wondered why they bothered, except that if they didn’t turn the stuff around inside twenty-four hours, there was all the fuss of getting it back to the customer.
George glanced at his watch. Business had been steady but not brisk. He hung the blouse on a hanger on the rail and made a note in the book.
“Eileen?” he called again.
No reply. Ten past ten. How long had she been in there, anyway? She knew better than to be in the downstairs loo at ten fifteen. She’d be out of there in plenty of time – except, he couldn’t help thinking, she was still in there with only five minutes to go. What if she’d fallen asleep or something?
Hardly likely. The bell rang: a man with a grey Marks suit, looked like it had been slept in, a few other mishaps that didn’t want thinking about too closely. Not for him to pass judgement on the customers, of course. In his view a dry cleaner is like a priest. He knows everything there is to know about human frailty. His job is to get rid of the stains.
Hang up the suit, write it in the book. Suddenly he remembered the time.
“Eileen?”
He looked at his watch, and a cold panic spread upwards from his solar plexus, following his veins until it flooded every part of him. He yelled her name again, then roared it. She must’ve heard him, so why hadn’t she replied? Oh God, he thought, she’s in there.
Neither of them had the faintest idea what took place in their downstairs toilet between ten fifteen and a quarter to twelve every day. They had more sense than to look. The strange noises, though nearly always the same, were so bizarre and so diverse that they offered no intelligible clue. They’d never discussed it. Best not to think about it. After all, whatever it was had always stayed in there – it wasn’t really any trouble. By 11:46 everything was back to normal, more or less. A little water spilt on the floor, a new toilet roll in the holder and a faint smell of almonds, not at all unpleasant. They could live with it, not that they had any real choice.
But today, as far as he could tell, it was 10:14 and Eileen was still in there, which meant he had to do something. He broke away from the counter, dashed into the back, arrived at the door and stopped dead.
I’m not going in there, he thought.
Yes, but he had to. His wife was in there. She’d fallen asleep, or had a heart attack or a stroke, and it was due to begin in a matter of seconds. He had to…
His hand on the handle. He twisted it. The door was locked.
It was as though he and It had a deal: you respect my space and I’ll respect yours. It was a bit like sharing a house with a polite, well-behaved werewolf. Just as long as you’re out of the way at certain times, there’s absolutely no reason why it can’t be made to work indefinitely. But once you cross the line…
Very gently, he tapped at the door. “Eileen?” he whispered.
Then he heard a clanking noise, which meant it had begun. He closed his eyes.
For a long time, maybe five seconds, he stood there completely still. It was as though the universe had asked him a question, and there were two answers, each one completely contradicting the other, both – he knew it intuitively – entirely true. The answers were—
You’ve got to do something.
I’m not going in there. Not for anything.
George had never thought of himself as a coward. He’d always assumed, on the incredibly rare occasions when it occurred to him to consider the matter, that if it came right down to it (house on fire, kiddie drowning in
a pond, stuff like that) he’d probably do the right thing, because he’d have no choice. And, most likely, if the test had been one of fire or water, he’d have found the necessary courage. But it wasn’t fire or water in there, or if either fire or water were involved, he knew they’d be the least of his worries. Instead, what was in there was It. If that was cowardice, he was as yellow as a canary. End of story.
Yes, he thought, but it’s Eileen in there. And if something happens to her, and she never comes out again… Well, he thought, it’s going to be very lonely, stuck in this place for ever, without anyone to talk to. Besides, there was the business to think of.
He clenched his fist and banged it against the door. Ouch. “Eileen?”
No reply, just the sound of steel being drawn across stone and a snatch of plainsong. Suddenly he felt a spurt of anger – irrational, unexpected, in the circumstances exactly what he needed. Who the hell did they think they were, anyhow, taking over someone else’s downstairs bog for an hour and a half every day without so much as a thank you, playing with chains and knives and singing, and no consideration for other people? Well, he thought, it was about time he put a stop to it.
He wrenched the handle again. Stuck solid.
When he’d been a kid and had gone regularly to the cinema, they used to make the sort of film where strong, admirable men regularly broke down doors. Generally they shoulder-charged them; there was something a bit low or not-quite-nice about kicking them in. He considered the door. It was pretty solid, none of your two sheets of hardboard nailed to a deal frame when they built this house. Maybe if he got a bit of wire, he could fiddle about and try and work the latch.
No time for that. In the films they took a bit of a run-up, then straight at it, and the next thing you saw was the hero bursting into the previously inaccessible room (his good side always facing the camera). It was one of those things where you’ve seen it done a thousand times but never really picked up the details of technique you actually need in order to be able to do it yourself.
Oh well, he thought, it’s hardly rocket science. He paced off five yards, broke into a gentle trot, walloped into the door and bounced off, howling with pain.