by Tom Holt
Trevor, who’d just been glancing through the local free newspaper to take his mind off the recent strange goings-on, nodded. “That’s all right,” he said. He put the paper down, went to the front door and opened it.
Two knights in armour, just as Pam had said: one shiny as a newly polished chrome bumper, the other one black. If he hadn’t known what was going on, he might have been concerned. As it was, he regarded their appearance as a positive sign. “Hello, there,” he called out, and went into the garden to greet them.
The white knight turned slowly to face him and lifted his visor. He seemed confused, as well he might.
“You’re in the wrong place,” Trevor explained.
The knight’s eyes blinked under the steel rim of his helmet. “Wrong place,” he repeated.
“Yes.” Trevor nodded briskly. “You want Norton St Giles. This is Norton St Edgar.”
The black knight advanced, gently barging his colleague out of the way. “Did you say Norton St Giles?”
“That’s right,” Trevor said. “Where they’re having the Medieval Fayre and tournament re-enactment. It’s this weekend, isn’t it?”
The white knight was staring at him as though he’d never seen a retired transport manager before, as though he’d heard about such creatures in wild fireside tales but never believed they could possibly be true. “Where is this?” he said.
“I just told you: Norton St Edgar,” Trevor replied. “You want to go back to the crossroads, turn left, then after half a mile take the second right, right again at the Three Pigeons and there you are.” He paused, then asked with open interest, “The road’s open again now, is it?”
The black knight took a step back. “Is it?”
Trevor felt his patience starting to leak away. “Well, it must be,” he said, “or how else did you get here? Came down the B4197, I expect, and turned off too early. Now, what you could’ve done was stay on the 4197 as far as Adderbridge, then taken the first right past the Esso station, which would’ve brought you out the other side of Norton St Giles, and then you could’ve taken the right-hand turn that brings you out just past the Spar shop. Now you’re here, though, your best bet’s to carry straight on through the village till you…”
He tailed off. They didn’t seem to be listening. It annoyed him when he gave people directions and they couldn’t be bothered to listen. The white knight was staring at his cardigan, while the black knight was looking over Trevor’s shoulder at the bungalow with an expression of horrified awe on his face. Well, Trevor thought, hardly surprising. He’d heard stories. The sort of people who go in for these re-enactment things, they’re little better than hippies, the lot of them. Probably stoned to the eyeballs. In which case he didn’t want them in his front garden. On the other hand, he did want to know if the problems with the roads (it sounded so much better put like that) had been sorted out yet. It was hard to know what to do for the best; how to get the vital intelligence he needed without ending up with a posse of rusty Dormobiles camped on his front lawn.
Light burst inside his head, and he felt in his pocket. “Tell you what,” he said, producing his car keys. “I’ll show you the way. You just follow on.”
The two knights looked at each other. “Show us the way,” the black knight repeated. “Yes, that would be…” He shrugged with a loud creaking of rivets and articulated steel. “That would be helpful.”
The white knight didn’t look too keen on the idea, or else he was too far gone to understand what was being said to him. Trevor hoped very much that someone else would be driving. At least this way, though, he could get rid of them and find out about the roads at the same time. The knights were talking in low voices, having an argument about something; he saw the white knight nudge the black knight in his lobster-shell-plated ribs and hiss, “Go on, ask him.”
“Something I can help you with?” he said.
The white knight gave his colleague a shove with his elbow, and the black knight looked at Trevor and said, “Do you know which came first?”
Oink. “Which what came…?”
“The chicken,” said the white knight, “or the egg.”
God almighty, Trevor thought, they’re really far gone. “No idea, sorry,” he said sharply. “Now, if you go on back to your vehicle, you can follow me out of the village.” He walked away without looking round, got into the car and turned the key in the ignition. The engine fired, and instinctively he looked in the rear-view mirror.
The knights, he observed, were running away down the street. They weren’t finding it easy because of all the ironmongery, but they were putting a significant degree of effort into it, as though they’d just seen something so terrifying they couldn’t bear to be within a mile of it.
Well, fine, he thought, disconcerted but glad to be rid of them. The fact remained that they’d been here, and since they didn’t come from Norton St Edgar, inevitably it followed that they’d come in from outside, which must mean that the roads were open again. Open, such a good word. It reduced the weirdness to a minor inconvenience, on a par with resurfacing or a lorry shedding its load. Already his busy mind was building coral reefs of normality over the absurd anomaly he’d experienced – he thought he’d experienced, but he could have been wrong, must have been wrong, had definitely got hold of the wrong end of the stick, and really there’d been a perfectly rational explanation.
He drove sedately up the hill to the crossroads, turned left, past the farm, past a tall man with a shiny head and a smart suit (another stranger, therefore another hopeful sign), on a bit further, past an even taller man in an even smarter suit who was striding along apparently following a chicken, on a bit further, past a nice-looking middle-aged couple (all strangers, he noted with satisfaction), on a bit further, at which point he happened to look up at the sky and saw something that made him swerve and drive clean through a dense hazel hedge into a field of maize.
“I’ve got a theory about that,” Don said.
He waited, but the great reverberating voice said nothing. The chicken on the altar tucked its head under its wing and pecked at its feathers. The light streaming in through the stained-glass window dimmed a little, as though someone with a remote was adjusting the contrast.
“I think,” he went on, “that it must’ve been the chicken, only it wasn’t a chicken, if you get what I’m trying to say. I think that the first egg that ever hatched out a chicken was laid by something that wasn’t a chicken – very nearly a chicken, naturally, but not quite. Evolution is what I’m getting at. I mean, evolution is how amoebas eventually turned into ammonites, which eventually turned into archaeopteryxes, which eventually evolved into a bird that was bloody nearly a chicken, which mated with another bird, slightly different but also bloody nearly a chicken, and when their genes got together and mixed it up, the egg with which their union was blessed turned out to be the first chicken as we know it. I mean,” he went on, “it all depends on how you define what a chicken actually is, but I expect there’s a specification in a biology textbook somewhere, a genome or something like that, something you can look up and use to decide whether a particular bird is a genuine certified chicken or just an uppity pheasant.” He paused. “Just basic science, really. I mean, you can’t argue with science.” He paused again, and observed that the chicken on the altar seemed to be frozen in a pinion-feather-straightening pose, quite motionless. “All right,” he said. “Give me a clue. Am I sort of warmish or completely off the beacon?”
The building shook as the great voice said, “Yes.”
“Ah.”
“And no.”
Don nodded. “Yes and no,” he repeated. “Thank you so much. Can I go home now?”
“Only,” boomed the great voice, like a bell the size of Wembley, “when you have answered the question.”
He wasn’t having that. The voice was very loud and when it spoke the ground shook under his feet, but he’d stood up to bigger bullies before. He’d used Windows Vista. He’d installed broadb
and. Incomprehensible and immensely powerful forces entirely beyond his control were all in a day’s work as far as he was concerned. “I just did,” he said. “I chose the egg.”
There was a pause: dead silence, complete stillness. Then the voice said, “That answer is unacceptable.”
“Fine. So it’s got to be the chicken.”
“That answer is unacceptable.”
Don frowned. “You mean it’s wrong.”
“Yes. And no.”
The chicken clucked, got up, walked across the altar and pecked at the corner of the cloth. “So it’s not about evolution, then.”
About fifteen seconds of quiet stillness then, “An answer based on evolution is not acceptable.”
Don sighed. Rather frustrating, but at least he had an inkling of what sort of process he was involved with. Appearances, after all, are deceptive. Get past them to the true essence of the thing, and you’re in business. Accordingly, if it talks like technology and it thinks like technology, there’s a fair chance that that’s what it is. And where you have technology, you have to have rules. Only figure those rules out, and you’re in with a chance.
“All right,” he said, wearily but not without hope. “I think it’s the chicken, and here’s why. I think that you can take a bit of chicken genetic material and stick it in a Petri dish and clone a chicken, but only a chicken can lay an egg. Quite probably, though I’m not entirely sure of my facts here, you could take DNA samples from partridges and peacocks and guinea fowl and God only knows what, and you could do stuff to them and modify them and bung them in a tank full of green goo, and eventually you’d have yourself the poultry equivalent of Dolly the sheep, but growing an egg, no, I don’t think that’s possible. So, if you’re starting from scratch, the chicken’s got to come first, because only a chicken can make an egg. Now, strictly speaking that’d be which comes first, not which came first, but—” He stopped, sensing some slight change in ambience. “Sorry,” he said. “Am I boring you?”
The walls shook. “Continue.”
“I’m barking up the wrong tree, aren’t I?”
“Your answer would appear to be based on an unacceptable approach.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Don said. “It’s the egg, isn’t it?”
“That answer is not acceptable.”
Don smiled. He didn’t care about the answer any more. He’d found out something far more important, he was sure of it. The voice, the ruined abbey, the exceptionally roomy toilet, presumably the fridge as well; he was dealing with a machine. Not a human or a superhuman, but a gadget, a piece of kit. That was the point, surely. Gadgets don’t just happen. Gadgets are designed and built for a purpose, to achieve an objective. This one, he felt moderately sure, was intended to find an answer to this idiotic question, and by sheer bad luck he’d managed to get himself caught up in it, like the tie of a man bending too low over a shredder. But that was, or could be, all right. Gadgets have rules.
“Define acceptable,” he said.
The voice didn’t hesitate this time. “Acceptable is defined as that which is liable to be accepted by the panel of judges.”
Ah. “State the criteria by which the panel of judges assesses acceptibility.”
“The panel of judges will accept an answer that is in accordance with the terms and conditions of the competition, as set out in the statement of terms and conditions.”
“Tell me the terms and conditions.”
“One, the judges’ decision is final. Two, the competition is not open to fellows, staff and employees of the Paul Carpenter Foundation, their employees, contractors or families. Three, all entries must be received no later than 1 March 1362. Four, time travel is permitted under the conditions set out in Appendix A. Five…”
There were a hundred and four terms and conditions, and by the time the great voice finally fell silent Don’s head felt like the inside of a kettledrum. But that was a small price to pay. Finally, against all expectations, quite probably for the first time in his life, he understood what was going on. “Thank you,” he said. “In which case, the answer is, the chicken.”
A silence lasting two seconds. You could have held the world stalagmite-growing championships in those two seconds – qualifiers, opening rounds, quarter-finals, semi-finals and a best-of-three knockout tournament to decide the title.
“Correct,” said the voice.
“Stan,” Mr Huos said.
Mr Gogerty turned and faced his employer. “You’re here.”
“Apparently.” Mr Huos frowned. “I’d more or less given up on you.”
By Mr Huos’ feet a chicken clucked. Mr Gogerty gave it a not-now look. “I’ve found it,” he said.
For a moment Mr Huos couldn’t think what to say, and when he did manage to come up with a selection of words, they weren’t desperately original. “You found it?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“Here,” Mr Gogerty said, and from his pocket he took a plain brass ring, which he displayed on the palm of his hand, perfectly visible but significantly out of Mr Huos’ reach. “This it, isn’t it?”
It could have been any old brass ring. “Yes,” Mr Huos said immediately. “That’s it.”
“I haven’t got the box,” Mr Gogerty said. “Just the ring. It was a pencil sharpener, of all things.”
Shrug. “I think it was a pencil sharpener once before,” Mr Huos said. “I forget, it’s been so many things. Well, that’s fantastic. I don’t know what to say.”
Mr Gogerty paused as if trying to decide something. Then he fished a bit of paper out of his top pocket with his other hand, closed his fist tight around the ring and gave Mr Huos the paper.
“My bill,” he said.
Mr Huos looked at it and smiled. It came to $100,000.02.
“I’ll have to owe you the penny,” he said.
“That’s fine,” Mr Gogerty said. “I’ll take a cheque.”
“Got a pen?”
Mr Gogerty had a pen. He had several, including one by Schimmel & Bracht of Salzburg, circa 1927, which could write lies that anybody reading them would automatically believe, and another one by Braun of Geneva which only wrote the truth, and a rather nice chased-silver propelling pencil by Tomacek of Prague which could solve any crossword ever set. He also had a plain blue biro, which he handed to Mr Huos, who dropped it, picked it up and used it to write a cheque.
“Thanks,” Mr Gogerty said.
“Pleasure,” Mr Huos replied. “Now can I have my ring back, please?”
Many years ago, playing in the dusty backstreets of Port of Spain, the young Gogerty had been haunted by a recurring daydream. In it he was standing on a rostrum (an orange box draped with a pillowcase) in front of the assembled United Nations, as the President of Earth shook his hand and presented him with a gold medal the size of a dinner plate, while overhead floated a banner inscribed STANLEY GOGERTY SAVES THE WORLD. Nothing distressingly unusual in that, except that in the dream he was always thoroughly miserable, guilty, ashamed of himself, because somehow he knew that saving the world was an indulgence, an ego trip, showing off when he should be knuckling down and earning a living.
So, dilemma time. He could give Mr Huos the brass ring and keep the cheque, or he could refuse to hand over the ring, in which case Mr Huos would be entirely within his rights to ask for his money back. The quandary was further complicated by the fact that he had no proof, only a hunch, that withholding the ring would save the world (From what?), but the feeling in the pit of his stomach was so strong that he couldn’t just ignore it. Besides, what if his childhood vision had been a premonition rather than a daydream, and the misery of the young Stanley Gogerty was a foreshadowing of precisely the angst he was feeling right now? He thought, I can’t keep it; it’s not mine. Then he remembered that someone had burned down the Carpenter Library.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t do that.”
Mr Huos wasn’t angry, just confused. “Do what?”
; “I can’t give this thing back to you,” Mr Gogerty said, and it was like talking while wearing a ten-ton moustache. “I have reason to believe it’s extremely dangerous.”
“You don’t say.” Mr Huos was smiling like a sunset. “That’s what I just paid you a hundred thousand dollars for – it’s dangerous. Thanks, but I’d sort of reached that conclusion myself. So,” he went on, calming himself down as much as he could, “you’re going to hang on to it for safekeeping, I suppose. Make sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”
Put like that, it didn’t sound so good. Maybe it was a bit late. Maybe it was in the wrong hands already. Maybe there weren’t any right hands anywhere. “You’ve got another suggestion?” Mr Gogerty said cautiously.
“God, no.” Mr Huos was grinning again. “The way I see it, there’s only two possibilities. Try and use it to put everything back how it was, which I’m fairly sure can’t be done, or get rid of it. Kill it, saw it in half, throw it in the sea. I don’t know. Don’t suppose that’s possible either. Tell you what: have your lot got a museum or something like that? Safe place where you can put really dangerous stuff where it’s sealed in and can’t get out? Or maybe they can disarm it or something. Anyway, it’s yours. You keep it and do what the hell you like. I have absolute trust in your judgement and discretion, and I know you’ll do the right thing. And will you stop your chicken biting my ankles?”
“That’s not my chicken,” Mr Gogerty said, then, very quickly, as Mr Huos swung his leg back, “It’s not a chicken at all, it just looks like one.”
“Can I kick it anyway?”
“No.”
Mr Huos sighed and put his foot back on the ground. “How can it not be a chicken?” he said. “It looks like one; it sounds like one; if I put my boot up its arse I bet you anything you like it’ll fly like one.”
Mr Gogerty looked straight at him. It was like facing his reflection in a mirror when he’d done something he was particularly ashamed of. “It’s not a chicken,” he said, “the same way you’re not human.”