Little People

by Tom Holt

  I came out from behind the chair-leg; not too far, in case I had to dart back under cover in a hurry. Those enormous junkyard-car-crusher feet of his could flatten me in half a second by pure and genuine accident. ‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘it’s not my fault and I haven’t done anything. I never did anything, and you’ve completely screwed up my life.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ He burst out laughing, like a jolly volcano. ‘What harm have I ever done you? I brought you up as my own son, I sent you to the best school money could buy, and what did you do? You buggered off. I didn’t send you away or sell you to a slave-trader or abandon you on a hillside for the wolves to rear - you fucked off and left us, worried your mother to death. She cried herself to sleep for the first six months, did you know that?’

  I didn’t; but all I thought was, Only six months? Besides, I never really liked her all that much, not after she let him send me away to school.

  ‘And then,’ he said, ‘then you came back; and before I could reach you, you’d gone again. And what did you do for the brief few moments you were back? Did you call your mother and let her know you were all right? Did you hell; you were too busy slurping round that sour-faced lawyer bitch, setting her on me, as if I didn’t have enough to put up with. And then you pop up again, and this time I manage to get you under control, put you away where you won’t be able to hurt anybody or fuck up anything important—’

  ‘It’s a labour camp,’ I shouted, at the top of my little voice. ‘You make it sound like a bloody sanatorium.’

  He grinned at me. ‘You don’t know you’re born,’ he replied. ‘I give you a chance – all your life you’ve been useless, couldn’t trust you to post a letter, but I give you a chance in the family business, start you off at the bottom, on the shop floor, the traditional way of going about it. For God’s sake, look at yourself. When you were at that school you were a weedy, skinny, shambling little runt with the self-confidence of a water vole. A few months in here, and you’re fit, strong, healthy, confident, assertive – dammit, you miserable little snot, I’ve done my part, like a good father should. I’ve made a man of you. A very small man, true, but a man. And how do you thank me? You bloody well survive. Again. It’s enough to make a person spit.’

  ‘You didn’t mean to help me,’ I said. ‘You wanted me dead.’

  ‘So what? It’s the results that matter. You owe me everything, and all you’ve ever been is an unmitigated pain in the bum.’

  Normally, of course, I’d have taken his word for it; after all, this side of the line, that’s who I had to be, a quiet little twit who believes and does what he’s told. Not this time; all those months in the stockroom and Packing had changed me, and probably for the better. Thanks, I thought. But—

  ‘You arsehole,’ I said. ‘You shrunk me. You made me six inches tall.’

  Big sneer on his big face. ‘I did, didn’t I, Mister multimillionaire-mathematical-genius-without-even-trying? The way I look at it, someone had to cut you down to size. I’m glad it was me.’

  Hadn’t considered it in that light; didn’t have time to consider it at that particular moment, other things I had to do. In fact, this whole conversation was unscheduled, unscripted and off-topic. On the other hand, it was the first time we’d ever, you know, talked. I guess you could say we were sharing a little quality time.

  ‘You’re jealous,’ I said.

  ‘Of course I’m sodding well jealous, you stupid little shit,’ Daddy George shouted down at me. ‘Why the hell wouldn’t I be, when I’ve had to work all my life and you’ve had everything handed to you on a skewer dripping with barbecue sauce? I wasn’t born in the lap of luxury, nobody ever gave me anything; and your mother always cared more about you than about me, and I could never have figured out those fucking equations, but some elf just gave them to you on a scrap of paper. And just look at me, I’m just a plain old regular human mortal, all I’ve got to look forward to is getting old and senile, and dying. I’m not half-immortal, I can’t stroll backwards and forwards across the line as the fancy takes me. Fuck it, I should’ve wrung your stupid neck when you were three, and then none of all this would’ve happened and I could’ve had a life, instead of scrambling along out of breath just to keep up with you—’ He stopped, cold and deliberate. ‘But that’s all right,’ he said, ‘you’re here and you aren’t leaving, not ever. So they’re all dead, so what? The more dead elves, the better I like it. I don’t need them any more; thanks to you, I don’t have to do any of this secret creeping-around stuff any more. I can run a legitimate business and the hell with this poxy little factory. All I’ve got to do is walk out of here and lock the door behind me, and all my troubles will be over. Yours too,’ he added, ‘if you take the objective view. Me all over, that is, altruistic as a barrelful of eels.’

  I took a deep breath. This was getting easier every second. ‘So you’re just going to walk out of here and leave me to starve to death.’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Or you can go and immolate yourself on the containment field, if you feel like going out with a bang. Entirely up to you – your choice.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, you’re not,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘Watch me,’ he said.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ I repeated. ‘You can try, but you won’t make it. Want to know why?’

  He frowned; for the first time since I could remember, he didn’t seem a hundred per cent sure about everything. ‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘Astound me. What’s the deal?’

  ‘In the walls,’ I said. ‘Explosive charges, so you can blow the place up if anybody finds out about it.’

  He shrugged. ‘I like to cover all possible eventualities,’ he said. ‘And I’ve got this place very well insured. All the celluloid dust and crap like that we’ve got floating about in here, anything could happen.’

  I nodded. ‘That’s you all over,’ I said, ‘shaving every margin till it bleeds; you couldn’t use high-density neoprene like you say you do on the labels, you had to save a few pennies by making the stiffeners out of dangerous, flammable celluloid – which,’ I added, ‘when chopped up fine and wired up to a battery with a few strands of wire wool, makes a passable bomb.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ he said, still sounding mystified. ‘I’m not sure I can see the relevance, though.’

  ‘A passable bomb,’ I continued (back into the scripted material; a great relief), ‘stuffed down an airbrick and connected up to this handset, the one I’m holding. Can you see it all right from up there? You can? Splendid – I thought perhaps it might be a bit on the small side for a tall bastard like you. So, if I were to press this button, all that high explosive you crammed into the walls would go bang, and that’d be the end of you. Wouldn’t it?’

  He relaxed, smiled. ‘But you aren’t going to do that, idiot,’ he said. ‘Because if you did, you’d get blown up too, and where would be the point?’

  ‘That would be the point,’ I told him. ‘In fact, that’d be perfect.’

  His face went as white as a sheet. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘You’re bluffing. You’d never do a thing like that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t make a habit of it,’ I replied. ‘Just once, though. Once would do me.’

  He was sweating. I could’ve filled a bath with what was dripping off his forehead. ‘But you’ll die,’ he said.

  ‘You make it sound like that’d be a bad thing.’ Oh, I was wonderfully calm just then. ‘And of course, for you it would be. Complete downer. But not for me. If I did, I don’t have to go on being six inches tall.’

  ‘But—’

  And that was that: I’d got him. He knew I meant it, and that he was left with no options whatsoever. I knew him too well.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘So, what do you want this time?’

  My turn to smile. Couldn’t remember having smiled at him before. No call to. ‘Oh, not much,’ I said. ‘Simple stuff. Little things and little minds. Like, switch off the dampening field and unshrink me. Then we can call it quit
s.’

  He shook his head. ‘If I turn off the field—’

  ‘If you turn off the field,’ I said, ‘I can clear off out of here and go back across the line, never to bother you again. Isn’t that what you always wanted?’

  He frowned. ‘There’s more to it than that,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I interrupted, ‘there isn’t. Oh sure, if there were any real elves left, I can see you wouldn’t dare turn the field off, you’d be better off getting blown to bits than letting a whole lot of very angry elves get their powers back, start doing all that stuff we both know they can do on this side of the line when they’re upset about something. But that’s all right,’ I went on, ‘they’re all dead, there’s only me. I can’t do that stuff, remember, I’m not a real elf. I’m just me.’

  He thought about that for a moment. ‘And that’d be it?’ he said. ‘You’d fuck off and leave me in peace?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I would. You’d have nothing to fear from me.’

  ‘I dunno.’ He rubbed his chin, something I’d never seen him do before. Either it was a recently acquired mannerism or something he only did when he was on the wrong end of the spike. ‘You’d really let me go?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll even let you get well clear before I blow this dump to kingdom come.’

  ‘That’s big of you,’ he said.

  ‘I’m that sort of person,’ I replied. ‘Enormous moral stature. You could say I’m the world’s shortest giant.’

  He didn’t comment on that. ‘And then we’d be quits? No getting your own back, anything like that?’

  I shook my head. ‘Can’t be bothered,’ I replied. ‘I’ll be out of here, and I’ll have taught you a lesson; in future, pick on someone your own size. If you can find someone that small.’

  He didn’t say anything. I think he reckoned the crisis was over and he’d got away with it. A minor inconvenience, tax loss, insurance settlement. And no more me, of course. Adjust a few definitions of victory, and he’d have won.

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  (And that, in case you were wondering, was the point, about me knowing him too well. He’d rather have been blown up than lose, but I’d given him a way of winning; once I’d gone and he was still here, there’d be nothing but a memory to be deleted – time is flexible, history is negotiable – and an overpoweringly sickly smell of roses. I knew him well enough to be sure he’d believe I was loser enough to die just so I could take him with me; his contempt would make him believe that. I knew him well enough to know that he’d never believe I had the nerve to bluff on the strength of a few strands of wire connected to a black plastic floppy-disk box at one end and absolutely nothing whatsoever at the other – me, blow myself up just to kill Daddy George? Catch me doing that. Loser I may be, but I only lose when I have to. Oh, he knew me all right, too well but not well enough. He knew that the taller they are, the further they fall, while the little people are only a few inches off the deck at the best of times, so they don’t care . . .)

  ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Still, can’t be helped. Always been too soft-hearted for my own good.’

  He reached in his pocket, and for a split second I wondered if I’d got it wrong again; but when his hand reappeared he was holding a slim dark grey box, like a TV remote, and he thumbed a couple of buttons. (Didn’t have to look for them, knew where they were by touch.)

  It was as if I’d been trudging painfully up a long, steep hill and someone had pointed out that I might find it easier if I took off the lead-weighted diving boots. It was like stopping breathing custard. It was like losing five stones instantly, in the same fraction of a second you shake off a month-long cold and a really traumatic hangover. It was like bursting out of a cocoon and discovering you’re a butterfly, when all your friends and relatives have always told you that when you grow up you’ll be a clothes-moth. It was like trampolining in zero gravity with a nose stuffed with cocaine. It was way cool. It was me.

  It was also extremely painful, because I’d gone from being six inches tall and crouched behind a chair-leg to being six feet tall directly underneath a chair in the twinkling of an eye. Actually, it wasn’t my head hitting the chair that really hurt, it was the chair falling off my head and landing on my right big toe. Absolutely no fun at all.

  Just as well, though; because when I suddenly got tall again, I left my purported bomb trigger on the floor, and as soon as Daddy George saw that, he made a grab for my throat with his outstretched left hand. If the chair hadn’t toppled off my foot and got in his way, he could easily have strangled me while I was still off balance. As it was, I was able to jump backwards out of his reach and put my foot over the pretend trigger thing. When he saw that, he slumped a little and stayed put.

  ‘My,’ he said, ‘how you’ve grown.’

  He had a point. Sure, I was disorientated by suddenly putting on sixty-six inches, but surely I’d never been this tall; or maybe he’d shrunk. Don’t know; in any event, I looked at him and realised I could handle him. Any trouble and all I had to do was smash his face in. Easy as that.

  ‘That remote-control thing,’ I said. ‘Give it here.’

  ‘As if.’

  I shrugged, stooped down, pulled off my left shoe and threw it at him. Good shot; not just the height, also the hand/eye coordination. The shoe hit him right on the point of the nose, and he was far too busy reeling about and swearing like a bad ventriloquist to stop me picking up the remote, which had fallen out of his hand. I put it in my pocket, for later.

  ‘Id all ight,’ he buzzed through his cupped hands, ‘I got anudder.’

  ‘Won’t do you any good,’ I said.

  ‘Uck oo.’ He took one hand away from his face and dipped it into his side pocket. ‘I also god dis,’ he went on, pulling out a small, shiny gun and pointing it at me. ‘Wadn’t goping to shood oo, bud oo shudded hab done dat.’

  I looked at the gun, and it looked at me. We could see eye to eye on a large range of issues, unfortunately, one of them being my immediate future prospects. Oh well, I thought, I did try. Oddly enough, that was about as bad as it got: a calm acceptance of imminent death. I can only suppose it was because I knew I’d won really, and killing me was an acceptance of defeat on his part. Either that, or I’d run out of emotions.

  ‘Please yourself,’ I said. ‘You’ll be sorry.’

  ‘Really?’ He’d taken away the other hand from in front of his face, so at least he’d stopped sounding like Donald Duck. The incongruity of being murdered by a Disney character had been bothering me. ‘Don’t think so. When this building blows up, who’s going to know you died?’

  I took a step back. ‘I wasn’t thinking about that,’ I replied, and damn it, my voice was quite steady. Mister Cool, I was being, so the damp stuff trickling down the inside of my leg must’ve been sweat, because of the air conditioning being full of elves or something. ‘What I meant was, if you hurt me, the elves are going to tear you apart.’

  He laughed. ‘Unlikely,’ he said. ‘I’m not planning on crossing the line any time soon, and all the ones on this side are dead. By your own admission.’

  ‘Ah.’ I smiled, or at least one side of my face twitched. Sort of smiled, anyway. ‘I have a confession to make. I was lying.’

  He frowned. ‘Don’t believe you,’ he said.

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Now, the agreed signal was supposed to be a shrill whistle, but have you ever tried whistling when your face is paralysed by fear? Can’t be done. ‘All right,’ I shouted – and it came out all reedy and croaky, like a chain-smoking frog. ‘You can come out now.’

  And they did. Loads of them, from all directions; great, big, tall, irritable-looking elves. A few of them were holding hammers and makeshift clubs, but I got the impression that by the time they got to the head of the queue, there wouldn’t be enough left of Daddy George to hit.

  ‘You bastard,’ said Daddy George, quietly and with great feeling. ‘You bloody well tricked me.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘But you a
sked for it.’

  ‘Treacherous little snot,’ he growled. ‘I always knew you were a sneaky, underhanded bugger, but I never thought you’d do this to me. For God’s sake,’ he added, with a catch in his voice I’d never heard before, ‘tell them to back off. Please.’

  Another first.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, ‘they won’t hurt you, so long as you put that gun down and do as you’re told. Oh, come on,’ I added, ‘just for once stop faffing around and be reasonable.’

  He crouched down and laid the gun on the floor. ‘Wait till your mother hears about this,’ he said. ‘She’ll bloody skin you alive.’

  ‘That’s better,’ I said. ‘Much more like it. Well,’ I added in the general direction of the nearest elf, ‘if it’s all the same to you, I’ll wait for you outside. Don’t take all day about it.’

  A lot of elves took a step forward. Daddy George whirled round, to see even more of them coming up from behind. There was Spike, holding something (Ah, I thought, maybe that explains how she got her nickname), and there was Sweetie-Pie, looking distinctly unsweet. ‘Hey,’ shrieked Daddy George, ‘where the hell do you think you’re going?’

  ‘Outside,’ I told him. ‘Squeamish,’ I explained. ‘Don’t want to spoil their big moment by fainting or throwing up.’

  ‘But you promised—’

  ‘You know your trouble?’ I said. ‘You’re far too trusting.’

  He was terrified. Odd how fear always makes a person look smaller. I didn’t feel sorry for him, though. Probably I should’ve, but I didn’t. I suppose he brought out the worst in me.

  ‘Stop,’ he shouted. ‘Help me. You can’t let them—’

  ‘Get real,’ I interrupted, rather rudely. ‘Do you honestly think I could stop them?’

  (And I wondered, at that moment, about all the opposite numbers of all these elves, the humans they were paired with, on this side of the line. Who were they, I asked myself, and what were they like? Bloody strange thing to think of, quite suddenly at a time like that. Funny old critter, the mind.)