Little People

by Tom Holt

  ‘Yes, I suppose I’m still in love with you,’ she replied. ‘For what that’s worth,’ she added quickly. ‘I mean, I don’t think we’ve got any kind of a future together, because even if you are planning on staying unvanished for long enough to hear the weather forecast, there’s a fairly good chance you’ll be going to prison for a while, particularly if you will insist on ruining my concentration when I’m trying to prepare your defence, and even putting that on one side—’

  ‘You mean it?’ I said.

  ‘No, I only said it to see if your ears turned pink. Of course I mean it. Would I have said it otherwise?’ She shut her eyes, then immediately opened them again. ‘You still here?’ she said. ‘Good, that’s an improvement. Now, if we can finally get down to these witness statements—’

  I stood up, leaned across the table and kissed her. I didn’t make a wonderful job of it – lack of practical experience, plus the excitement of the moment and all that government furniture getting in the way; there was a nasty moment when our teeth clashed and she called me a clumsy moron but it passed.

  ‘Right,’ I said, having disentangled myself, ‘what were you saying about witness statements?’

  She gave me a look you could have kept polar bears in. ‘This isn’t going to work, you know,’ she said. ‘Not you and me, actually together. I mean, being in love with you when you weren’t there, God knows how many million miles or light years or whatever in a different dimension, I could cope with that. Well, so I should hope; after all, I got enough practice at it over the years. But being in love with you when you’re actually here—’

  ‘We’ll manage,’ I said.

  She hadn’t moved since the kiss. ‘And then there’s this half-an-elf business,’ she went on. ‘Without getting crudely biological, surely that’s going to present all sorts of difficulties. Take citizenship, for example. Immigration law isn’t really my area, but there’s all sorts of complicated rules. Are you even allowed to be in the country, properly speaking? And if we were to have children – Look, I’m just talking hypothetically, anticipating all possible contingencies. It’s a lawyer thing, we’re trained to think like that.’

  ‘One of each,’ I said. ‘A boy and a girl.’

  She shook her head. ‘It’d have to be four,’ she said. ‘Boy/girl, human/elf. Or is it more than that? I can’t remember if it’s two squared or two cubed—’

  ‘Four would be OK with me,’ I said.

  ‘Look.’ She was scowling at me as if I was something she’d found on her shoe – exactly the way she always had, ever since I’d met her. For the first time since I could remember, I felt happy. ‘Look,’ she repeated, ‘you’re racing on way too far ahead, we’ve got to get you out of this dump first before we can even start thinking about where we go from here.’

  I grinned. Didn’t want to particularly; couldn’t help it. ‘I’m not worried about that any more,’ I said. ‘So what if I go to prison? I’m sure it wouldn’t be for long – and after living all my life in our house with Daddy George, when I wasn’t at an English boarding school, I’m not sure prison wouldn’t be a pleasant change. Besides, if I’m in there he can’t get at me. Then, when I come out, you’ll be there waiting for me—’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I’m good at that.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ I said, ‘at least you’ll know where I am and when you can expect to see me again. It’s not perfect, but it’s got to be better than the last fifteen years. And that way, we’ll all know where we are and what we’re supposed to be doing, and we can make plans—’

  ‘Great. I can come and see you on visiting days and we can discuss pension schemes. I’m going weak at the knees just thinking about it.’

  She was doing her best, but her heart wasn’t in it. There comes a time when even the feistiest pessimist has to face up to the ineluctability of the happy ending.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘at least I’m going to try. If we go for a guilty plea, bearing in mind it’s a first offence—’

  ‘Just tell the judge we’re getting married,’ I said. ‘Bound to do the trick. He’d have to be really miserable to send me to jail then.’

  She gave me another one of those looks. ‘I think I’ll keep that in reserve as a very last resort,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to get the reputation of being one of those lawyers who’ll do anything to win a case. Now, will you stop gushing pink hearts and shut up for a minute while I go through these witness statements?’

  I let her get on with her legal stuff, nodding at intervals to give the impression that I was listening; but I wasn’t in the mood for anything like that. Well, would you have been? You can’t just turn off joy like shutting off the water when you go away from home for a week. Since I couldn’t dance around the room skipping and shouting, for fear of attracting unwelcome attention from the bogies, all I could do was to sit still and marinade in the pleasure of the moment, the first thing that’d ever actually gone right since the doctor snipped my umbilical cord. At last – I know, it was a complete non sequitur, but you’ve got to allow me my moment of intuitive clarity – at last I was free of the one thing I’d become that day when I’d seen my first elf. I’d finally managed to join the human race, even if I’d had to sneak round the back and climb in through the toilet window in order to do it. You can have no idea how much that meant to me.

  And Cru – if we were together, what else could possibly matter?

  I was so preoccupied with wallowing about in this self-inflicted quagmire of soppiness that I missed most of what happened next: a damned shame, but typical. One moment I was gazing idiotically at Cru’s left ear, listening to her voice reciting some statement or other in a Dalek monotone and remembering the first time I’d noticed how small and neat her ear lobes were (yes, I know; but these things matter to you when you’ve got a mental age of fifteen and you’re in love for the first time); the next, the door was just a few splinters hanging off bent hinges, the room was full of horrible white smoke, and someone was pulling me out of my chair by the scruff of my neck and propelling me towards the doorway. I didn’t have time to be frightened until I was pushed out into the corridor, just as a thunderflash went off at the other end.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I started to say.

  I didn’t get any further than that. A man wearing a black balaclava was kneeling down in front of me, fiddling about with a rectangular grey metal box about the size and shape of an arc welder. The man who’d grabbed me out of the interview room took hold of my hand just below the wrist and shoved it forward, whereupon the kneeling man snapped a couple of crocodile clips onto my index and third fingers. Another thunderflash went off somewhere beyond where the corridor took a sharp turn to our left, and a fine sprinkling of plaster dust drifted down, like icing sugar. Then the kneeling man flipped a switch.

  It was the classic Frankenstein moment; or, if you prefer, the Cistine chapel bit where Adam reaches up and touches God’s outstretched finger, having foolishly neglected to put his rubber boots on first. The nearest I can get to describing it - you’re in the dentist’s chair and he’s drilling away and his hand slips a bit, so that his evil little drill digs right into the exposed nerve. It was something like that, if your whole body was the bit of raw gum, except that it didn’t hurt exactly; I’d take mere pain over that sensation any day. It was very weird, and no fun at all; and after it had been going on for at least a sixty-fourth of a second, possibly even longer than that, there was also this other sensation – equally impossible to describe, but just suppose you were a cardigan sleeve, and someone pulled you inside out and then stuffed you into a jam jar. Exactly like that, apart from the differences.

  But that wasn’t the really freaky bit. Oh no; that came later, when I opened my eyes and looked down, and realised that I was something in the region of six inches tall, standing in the palm of someone’s hand.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A very different sensation; not one I’d necessarily recommend, except to a long-term enemy. The most disc
oncerting thing about it, apart from the vertigo and stuff like that, is that there’s no way to get your mind to accept on anything but the most superficial level that you’ve shrunk. No, what your brain wants to believe is that you’re the right size and everything else has suddenly got very, very big. This may seem like a minor academic quibble to you, but believe me, it isn’t. It affects the whole way you see things, because to us poor idiot humans, who bring our children up on stories of giants who live at the tops of beanstalks and eat people, anything and everything that monstrously outsize must be actively hostile. As a result, the mind locks up immediately with fear, and all you can do is stand there and quiver helplessly.

  Didn’t I speculate a while ago about why Nature should program us hapless life forms to do the whole panic thing at the first sign of danger? Well, I think I’ve got it figured out. It’s a good idea from the point of view of running a successful ecosphere; not a lot of use as far as helping small, defenceless creatures to survive is concerned, but pretty well essential for the well-being of the predators. At the bottom of the food chain there are only two categories, the quick and the dead. Hence the phrase, fast-food chain.

  So: instead of thinking on my feet, assessing the risks and taking quick and decisive action, like jumping off the hand and scuttling for cover under a low table, I just stood there like a prune as the fingers rose up around me, London Bridge fashion, and pinned me down so I couldn’t move. That was a really rather unpleasant moment, like the bit in the first Star Wars film where they’re trapped in the garbage crusher; worse for me, since I didn’t have a contract promising me work in two sequels. My innate fear of heights didn’t exactly help, either, as the hand lifted alarmingly quickly into the air, flipped over and let go of me.

  I didn’t fall far, and I landed uncomfortably on a chunky metal object that turned out to be a car ignition key. Next to it I could just make out a disposable Bic biro without a cap, and beyond that a big green cylinder that I identified, after a couple of wild and incorrect guesses, as a roll of Polo mints. I was in a pocket.

  It was dark in there, and the ride was horribly bumpy; and to make matters worse, I could distinctly hear noises off through the lining: thunderflashes and muffled shouts and what were probably gunshots. Being caught up in a battle is one thing; being caught up in a battle when you’re six inches tall and trapped in the coat pocket of one of the combatants has to be the absolute pits. It gives you a whole new perspective on armed conflict, because you realise that nobody, not even a police marksman, could possibly fail to hit something that big.

  One thing I wasn’t bewildered about – quite atypically, for me – was what was going on. All my life, I’d known that Daddy George’s idea of subtlety was the bank robber who doesn’t take his gun out of his jacket pocket when pointing it at the cashier; also, I suspected, the sheer nerve of snatching me out of a police cell was entirely in line with his view of himself as a swashbuckling pirate king. (It was embarrassing going to the pantomime with Daddy George: he cheered for Captain Hook and laughed hysterically when Tinkerbell asked if anybody believed in fairies.) Also, the small matter of the making-elves-smaller machine was pretty well conclusive, if the memories Melissa had uploaded into my head were at all trustworthy.

  I don’t know exactly what happened there in the police station, but whatever it was, it didn’t last very long. While I think of it, a word of advice: if you suddenly find yourself, please excuse the expression, suddenly taken short, try to avoid getting put in the pocket of someone who subsequently does quite a lot of running up and down stairs. That particular experience gave me a lot of valuable insights into how much unnecessary suffering there is in the world, and one of these days I’m going to found the Milk Shake Liberation front and the League Against Popcorn.

  One of the things you’re supposed to do when you’re kidnapped is to try and be observant, take careful note of your surroundings, anything you see or hear that will help the authorities to figure out exactly what’s been done to you and where you’ve been taken. I did my best; but since my surroundings consisted of coat lining, a grubby handkerchief and a dangerously heavy roll of mints, I eventually got bored with it and gave up. I think I was in a car for a long time; and then there was some brisk walking (not as bad as the running, but still no fun), and then the pocket filled up with huge pink things and I was fished out and dumped on a vast expanse of mirror-polished brown wood. The last bit jangled my brains quite a lot, and it was only when I recognised the scratch I’d made when I was nine – to me, of course, it looked like the San Andreas Fault on a bad day – that I realised I was standing on Daddy George’s favourite desk.

  That made me look up, but I couldn’t get my head back far enough to see anything helpful. There was a huge white thing with what looked like a frozen waterfall of garishly coloured cloth cascading down it – I stared at it for quite a long time before I figured out it was a shirtfront and tie – but I couldn’t see anything above the collar line.

  I could appreciate why the captive elves I’d talked to used ‘tall’ as their worst insult.

  ‘Good Lord,’ said a voice above me, apparently speaking through a PA system borrowed from God and hooked up to a speaker the size of Jupiter. ‘Look who it is.’

  I didn’t recognise the voice, because it was too loud to be anything but an enormous noise; but the tone of voice, that was unmistakable. ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘Hello yourself.’ Laughter, loud as an artillery barrage and about as friendly. ‘Usually, the next line would be, “My, how you’ve grown.” Trust you to be different.’

  That struck me as the kind of remark that doesn’t need a reply. Daddy George was working himself into his Evil Overlord persona. (The only time he ever regarded me with anything remotely approaching affection was one Christmas when I bought him a Darth Vader coffee mug. He really liked the thing and made a point of using it for years.) He appeared to be at the Being-Funny-At-The-Prisoner’s-Expense stage - you know, the bit before he has his minions lock up the hero in a storeroom with a flimsy grille leading to a ventilation shaft twice the height and width of the New York subway. I only hoped he’d follow the script faithfully.

  ‘You’re also looking remarkably well for someone who’s been dead for fifteen years,’ he went on. ‘Obviously death agrees with you. Well, it must do; I mean – two Nobel prizes, a vast fortune, a major share-holding in the fastest-growing major corporation in the world; look at everything you’ve accomplished since you died, and then compare it with the miserable hash you called a life before that. Being dead’s been the making of you, son.’

  Still no answer required; and I was damned if I was going to be the straight man in this comedy routine. If he wanted to do stand-up, he’d have to do all the work himself.

  ‘But,’ he went on, with a sigh like a Kansas twister, ‘much as I’d like to encourage you in your career in not living, I’m afraid this is one time when I can’t afford to indulge your every whim. It’s a distressing fault of mine, but having people killed just isn’t my style – even,’ he added thunderously, ‘people I could squash flat with one well-aimed swat and a rolled-up Independent on Sunday. There’d be this little voice in the back of my mind telling me I’m a rotten bully and why don’t I pick on someone my own size? Besides,’ he went on lugubriously, ‘you may be annoying and pathetic, not to mention a potential source of considerable embarrassment, but you’re still the nearest thing I’ve got to a son of my own, and I suppose I’m just a great big softie.’

  Well, two out of three, anyhow. I wasn’t reassured by this declaration; if Daddy George had decided to keep me alive, it could only be for the purpose of finding out by controlled scientific experiment whether there really was a fate worse than death.

  ‘So instead,’ he went on, ‘I’m going to be merciful and kind and even generous above and beyond the call. I’m going to start you off in the family business. At the bottom,’ he added, ‘on the shop floor. But that’s all right, isn’t it?’ he sai
d. ‘It’s so traditional it’s practically compulsory. You’ll enjoy it there. Plenty of your own kind, for one thing.’

  I’d thought as much when he said the words ‘family business’ – he was going to lock me up in the shoe factory with the rest of the slaves. As a future, it had a slight edge on being killed, but I’d sort of guessed that wasn’t an immediate threat from the fact that I was still alive, albeit considerably condensed, like a Readers Digest potted novel. Why bother to bring me all the way here, instead of simply having his employees kill me back at the police station? No, he was too deeply into his James Bond villain trip; at the very least he’d keep me alive so I could watch him launch his secret master plan. (Utterly safe bet to assume he had one; a supervillain without a plan is as unthinkable as a headmaster without trousers.)

  ‘Thank you,’ I replied. It was the first thing I’d said since my nasty slide down the Y axis, and although it sounded just normally loud to me, I don’t think he heard me or even knew I’d spoken. No big deal; it wasn’t exactly the cleverest thing I’d ever said. I think it was just a very deep-seated reflex prompting me to be polite to my elders and betters.

  ‘I’m assuming,’ he thundered on, ‘that either you’ve figured out what happens here for yourself, or one of your prickle-eared relatives has told you the whole sad story. Just in case you’re in any doubt, just think of it as the old folk tale of the shoemaker and the elves, updated and put on a sound commercial footing. Now I know you’re far too feeble and chickenshit to cause me anything interesting enough to merit the term trouble, but just in case you’re minded to make a pest of yourself here’s a couple of things you might care to consider. First, the height thing isn’t the only useful effect of my electric elf-zapper. I won’t bore you with the technical stuff and you’re too ignorant to understand it anyway, but what it boils down to is that the zapper freezes you in a state of interdimensional flux, whereby about ninety-five per cent of you is on this side of the line, and the other five per cent is over there among the Kate Greenaway types. Not only does this limit you to a much smaller slice of our airspace – there’s a diminishing-returns effect that you’d find utterly fascinating if you were really enough of a mathematician to spell Nobel prize, let alone win one, but you’re not, so screw it; it also means that the only people who can see you are either humans with amazingly complicated light-band filters built into their contact lenses – of whom there’s presently one and you’re looking up at him – and other elves. So,’ he continued with an edge to his voice that you could’ve performed surgery with, ‘if you think you can give me the slip, make a run for it and go find your mother, who’ll save you from me and make everything all right again, forget it. For what little it’s worth, she hasn’t got the faintest idea how I earn my living; she thinks I’m just exceptionally good at running a business, which is true but not nearly enough in these hard times. She thinks you were kidnapped by aliens, which is why she gives millions of dollars a year to the flying-saucer freaks in hopes they’ll find the bug-eyed critters who took you and persuade them to bring you back.’ He sighed, nearly blowing me off the desk. ‘Your mother may be as thick as a lorryload of bricks, but she has an extraordinarily compassionate nature. In fact, she’s a truly wonderful person, and it’s a very great shame that she’s had to go through so much sorrow and pain on account of a worthless little gob of snot like you. Oh, and in case you were wondering, because we never ever got around to having one of those quality-time stepfather-to-stepson chats that can make all the difference in an awkward family structure, I don’t like you very much. Never have, never will; and if you think I enjoy having to pretend that what measure of success I’ve had in the last fifteen years or so is down to your incredibly prodigious talents rather than my own hard work, scientific genius and sheer dogged determination, then you take after your mother when it comes to thickness quotients. Any questions?’