The Better Mousetrap

by Tom Holt

  Erskine’s nose twitched. ‘Whose dog?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Whose dog would I be?’

  One of those questions that jumps out at you when you aren’t expecting it. ‘I don’t know,’ Frank answered. ‘Your own dog, I guess.’

  But Erskine shook his head. ‘You can’t be your own dog, it doesn’t work like that. I’d have to be somebody’s, or— No, I think I’d rather be dead than a stray, thanks all the same. But it was very kind of you, and Mr Tanner, too.’ And, although he had no tail to wag, he sort of vibrated on the spot while smiling warmly.

  Oh for pity’s sake, Frank thought. ‘You could be my dog,’ he made himself say. ‘If you wanted, I mean. Rather than being dead.’

  ‘Your—?’

  ‘After all,’ Frank ground on, ‘you were sort of my dog for a while, when you were trailing round after me, and you weren’t that much of a nuisance, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s right. You called me Bobby.’

  ‘Quite. And you did rescue Emily and me from the Sixties, so I guess I owe you one.’

  ‘Yes, please.’ A huge beam lit up Erskine’s face; you could have read small print by it in the dark. ‘At least, until Ms Carrington gets back from her long journey. I’d have to go back to being her dog then, of course, it’d only be right. But until then, that’d be super.’

  ‘Fine,’ Frank said, muffling a heavy-duty sigh. ‘Right then. Dennis, if you wouldn’t mind.’ Mr Tanner cleared his throat and lifted his left hand, but before he could go any further, Frank suddenly stopped him.

  ‘Just one other point,’ he said, trying to sound casual. ‘When you were, urn, spying on me.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re good at that sort of thing, are you? Finding people, sniffing things out. Good nose, I mean. A knack for following a trail.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Erskine said, not without pride. ‘I can find most things. I did lots of finding for Ms Carrington, even tricky finding, like across interdimensional barriers and stuff. So long as it’s alive, I’m fairly sure I can track it down.’

  ‘I see,’ Frank said slowly. ‘So if I asked you to find my friend George—’

  ‘I’m sure I could. What does he smell like?’

  ‘Only,’ Frank said, ‘Ms Carrington sent him somewhere, and I really ought to bring him back again. I don’t think he’s dead or anything like that, just-well, put somewhere. Is that the sort of thing—?’

  ‘Piece of cake,’ Erskine said cheerfully. ‘Just give me a sock to sniff, or a shoe, or his favourite chair, and I’ll have him for you in no time.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Frank said, with a certain degree of genuine authentic sincerity. ‘In that case, Dennis, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  Dennis nodded. A moment later, there was a flash and a sort of sizzling noise— ‘It’s the same dog,’ Dennis observed. ‘The one that was following you about, the first time you came round my place.’

  ‘That’s him, yes.’

  ‘And he’s—’ Dennis frowned. ‘He’s yours now, then.’

  ‘Apparently.’

  Dennis clicked his tongue. ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘you should make him get off that chair. Once you start letting them sit on the furniture, they think they own the place.’

  ‘Hello,’ Emily said.

  It only took Amelia a third of a second to recover. She closed her right hand hard on a fistful of air, squeezing out all the trace elements that wouldn’t burn until she was left with a sort of fiery snowball. With a fast, easy movement she hurled it at Emily’s face. For a split second, the girl’s head was shrouded in roaring flames. But then they went out, leaving no mark or trace of any kind.

  ‘That’s not very friendly,’ Emily said, taking a step forward. ‘Anybody’d think you weren’t pleased to see me.’

  Amelia threw another fireball. Might as well not have bothered.

  ‘For crying out loud,’ Amelia screeched. ‘Can’t you stay dead for five minutes?’ Emily smiled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Bet you can, though. Like to find out?’

  Amelia was groping under her desk for the panic button. ‘Don’t you dare threaten me,’ she shouted. ‘You’re just an assistant, you ought to be terrif—’ She stopped and froze, as a sensation she hadn’t felt for years soaked into her. Fear, she remembered. She’d never liked it much. ‘Why aren’t you scared of me? Everybody’s scared of me.’

  ‘With good reason,’ Emily replied placidly. ‘Which is why you need to be put down, like a biting dog.’ She came a step closer, and Amelia (much to her own surprise) retreated.

  ‘You can’t have come back,’ Amelia said. ‘I’ve got both Doors.’

  ‘Indeed. Two out of three. Nearly the complete set, but not quite.’

  ‘There’s a third—’

  ‘Yes.’ Emily smiled. ‘Thanks to the intelligence and foresight of Dennis Tanner’s mother, a splendidly resourceful woman who you completely underestimated. Most people do,’ she added. ‘Anyway, that was your big mistake. Oh, and I wouldn’t rely too much on anybody coming to rescue you. The alarm doesn’t work. Well, it does, but Colin Gomez rerouted it to his office. So it’s just you and me. Well, go on, then. Fireballs don’t seem to do any good, but I’m sure you’ve got lots of other weapons up your sleeve. Let’s see, how about Litvinov’s Polecat? Or a nice consequence mine? Or dragons’ teeth, even.’

  Amelia stared at her warily. ‘They won’t work, will they? You wouldn’t be suggesting them otherwise.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re bluffing.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Rather clumsily, Amelia tugged a few hairs from the top of her head, blew on them and threw them in the air. They changed into giant bats, which flew at Emily’s face. She swatted them easily with the back of her hand. They hit the walls and folded up.

  ‘You can’t possibly do that,’ Amelia protested.

  ‘Can’t I?’ Emily smiled. ‘I kill monsters for a living, remember. And I’m good at it. Maybe you should consider paying me more.’

  The next twist of hair turned into three adult male lions. They took one look at Emily and scampered behind the desk, making whimpering noises.

  ‘Try spiders,’ Emily suggested. ‘I never did like spiders.’

  Amelia did just that. The spiders, Atkinsonii, each as big as a Great Dane, joined the lions behind the desk. There wasn’t really enough room for all of them, but they managed to squeeze in together somehow.

  ‘You can keep that up till you’re as bald as a cue ball and it won’t do you any good,’ Emily said smugly. ‘Look, why don’t you give Litvinov’s Polecat a try? It won’t work, of course, but I do so enjoy all the pretty coloured lights. Or, tell you what, how about an inversion grenade? The worst that could happen is that it’d get you too, and you’d hardly feel a thing.’

  Amelia had retreated so far that her back was to the wall. The feel of it seemed to calm her down, somehow. ‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘Your turn. If you’re going to attack me, go ahead.’

  ‘Splendid,’ Emily said, and clapped her hands together. ‘A little bit of backbone, that’s what I like to see. Preferably sticking out through the side of your neck.’ Faster than Amelia’s eye could follow, Emily lunged forward, raised her right hand and slapped her across the face. Amelia howled, tried to retreat, tripped up over her own feet and fell on her bum. ‘That hurt,’ she squealed furiously.

  ‘Yes. Serves you right. Come on, get up. We’ve got a lot to get through, and I haven’t got all day.’

  Amelia didn’t move. ‘There’s something wrong about this,’ she said quietly. ‘This can’t be happening. It’s all an illusion, it must be.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Emily replied, and kicked Amelia hard on the shin. ‘Real enough for you?’

  Amelia replied with yet another fireball. It missed, bounced off a wall and hit one of the spiders. There was, interestingly, a distinct smell of burning hair.

  ‘The joke is,’ Emily said, ‘you did it yourself.’

  ‘What?�
��

  ‘The way you killed me, the last time.’ Emily clicked her tongue. ‘It was a really neat idea, but it backfired, and now-well, I’m not afraid of you any more. And that’s all it takes, you see.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Amelia had gone from terrified to angry without even noticing. ‘There’s nothing unusual about the lunar atmosphere that could possibly— Or the reduced gravity,’ she added, dismissing the thought as quickly as it came. ‘I had Simon Aristides in Metaphysics run a thorough computer simulation, and there couldn’t possibly be any side effects. You’re bluffing again.’

  Emily’s face was as featureless as East Anglia. ‘The Moon,’ she said. ‘Generally speaking, of course, you’re right. But maybe there were other factors you didn’t take into account. Oh, I don’t know; something to do with the time of day, or perhaps there were significant beryllium deposits just under the surface of that particular crater. Easily overlooked, of course, but—’

  ‘Balls.’ Amelia was almost beside herself with fury. ‘I checked Simon’s results myself, otherwise I wouldn’t have gone ahead. You can read his report for yourself if you like-it’s just there, on the desk.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes. Help yourself,’ Amelia added sardonically. ‘You won’t find—’

  ‘Thank you.’ Emily swung round and pounced on the desk like a cat, sweeping papers aside until she found what she was looking for. ‘That’s marvellous,’ she added, glancing at the front page before tucking it firmly down the front of her blouse. ‘Exactly what we needed to know, and congratulations on being so wonderfully thorough. Oh yes, before I forget.’

  Two long strides took her back to where Amelia was kneeling; then she shook herself, like a wet cat, and turned back into a goblin.

  ‘Surprise,’ she said. Amelia stared at her for a moment, then shut her eyes tightly. ‘Shit,’ she said.

  ‘Quite,’ the goblin replied. ‘It’s like I keep telling our Dennis, never judge by appearances. You’d have thought he’d have got the message, what with being part goblin himself, though of course he can’t do the shape-shifting, because of his human side. Ah well,’ she added, and booted Amelia in the side of the head, sending her to sleep.

  Once she’d made sure that Amelia was out cold, Mr Tanner’s mother tied her up securely with a length of computer flex. Then she picked her up and swung her over her shoulder like a sack of coal, checked to make sure the report was still safely wedged down her front, and headed back to the Portable Door in the far wall. On its threshold she paused and turned towards the desk.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You can come out now.’

  But the lions and the surviving spider didn’t budge; in fact, one of the lions twitched an inch of exposed tail back out of sight behind the leg of the desk. Mr Tanner’s mother grinned.

  ‘Talk about a hair of the dog,’ she said to herself, and closed the Door behind her.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  As one Door closes, another opens. Thanks to Mr Aristides’s superbly detailed report, the timing was flawless, as was the dead-reckoning navigation. Accordingly, Emily was still staring at Honshu under the misapprehension that it was New Zealand’s North Island when she felt a tap on her shoulder. ‘Hello,’ Frank said.

  ‘There you are,’ she replied, when her heart had stopped trying to hammer its way out of her chest. ‘I was wondering when you were going to show up.’

  Frank’s eyebrows disappeared into his fringe, like explorers setting off into the rainforest. ‘Sorry if I kept you waiting,’ he replied.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right. I knew you’d come.’

  ‘Did you? I mean, that’s very—’

  Emily smiled at him. Behind her head, a million stars twinkled inquisitively. ‘Pretty safe sort of belief, as such things go. I mean, if I’d been wrong, I wouldn’t have had to suffer agonies of disappointment for very long.’ She looked past him, at the mountain range that made up the far wall of the crater she stood in. The first girl on the Moon: well, fine. Strange new worlds are where you find them. ‘Let’s go home, please.’

  Frank stood aside so that she could see the Door, set into a giant boulder. It was slightly ajar, and yellow light leaked through the opening. Emily took a step towards it, then stopped.

  ‘There’s just one thing,’ she said.

  Frank stopped dead in his tracks. ‘What?’

  ‘That long sort of lacy bit there,’ she said, pointing at the Earth. ‘That’s New Zealand, right? Where you come from.’

  He followed her pointing finger and shook his head. ‘That’s Sumatra, I think. Look, does it really matter? If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to get back to a breathable atmosphere.’

  Emily shrugged. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I was just taking an interest.’

  ‘Just to update you,’ Frank said, as they passed through the Door together and came out in Emily’s office in the Carringtons building. ‘Rosie Tanner’s got Amelia Carrington locked up in that doorless cellar place. Dennis Tanner’s nipped out to find a chemist’s; Rosie got a couple of nasty burns while she was sorting out Amelia, but apparently, since she’s a goblin, a dab of Germoline and she’ll be right as rain. Colin Gomez,’ he went on, closing the Door and rolling it up, ‘is staging a rather genteel palace coup, with the aim of getting himself crowned senior partner. Oh, and Erskine’s all right. I made up a bed for him in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet, with a couple of Amelia’s cashmere sweaters to lie on. He’s going to sniff out George Sprague for me once he’s recovered from turning back into a dog again, so that’s all right. I think that covers everything.’

  ‘Rosie Tanner,’ Emily said, frowning as she sat down in her old, familiar chair. ‘Oh, right, the goblin woman.’ Slight double take. ‘She managed to get the better of Amelia Carrington? How the hell did she manage that?’

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ Frank said. ‘But it worked. Amelia’s safely locked up, and we got the coordinates so I could come and fetch you. Oh, and you owe her a favour.’

  Her old familiar chair. When you live in an office (she had a flat, a tiny little thing huddled in the shadow of an enormous mortgage, like a cottage at the foot of Vesuvius, but it was just somewhere she went to sleep), your chair gradually becomes the centre of the universe. It’s your triangulation point, where you measure all your distances from. It’s where you’re to be found, unless you have legitimate business that calls you away. Needless to say, it reflects your status as accurately as the shoulders of a soldier’s uniform. Emily’s chair swivelled and sort of reclined, though you dared not push your luck unless you really wanted to visit the floor, but it was old and tired, having been handed (so to speak) down in a career of inverse promotions: full equity partner to associate partner to senior assistant to junior assistant, and when Emily, if Emily ever got promoted, it’d descend another rung of the ladder and support the weight of a junior junior assistant, until it finally wore out completely and went in the skip. The thing about office chairs is, though, that the more beat-up and rickety they become, the more comfortable they grow and the harder they are to leave. The seat moulds itself to the bum, but the brain and the heart mould themselves to the chair, until it’s not quite clear where one ends and the others begin—

  ‘Yes,’ Emily said gravely, ‘I guess I do. What did she have in mind?’

  ‘Well,’ said Frank.

  The dragon stirred.

  Fluctuations in the dream carried it, like a leaf in a storm. Gusts of memory swept it back into the shared past of all dragonkind, eddies sent it spiralling sideways into the minds of other dragons as they brooded, sulked, hoped, loved and regretted eating cheese. A swirl of vicarious pleasure lifted it up, but then it stalled and felt itself hang in empty air as it registered an unfamiliar presence.

  You again, it said.

  Me again, replied the human female.

  The dragon registered her properly. Emily Spitzer, dragon-slayer; exponent of a necessary function, since dragons hardly ever die of old age
or disease, but unless dragons die the dream would be a straight line rather than a circle. Hello, Emily Spitzer. Have you come to kill me now?

  Sort of, she replied.

  The dream filled with strange shapes and rare colours. Sort of, the dragon repeated.

  Look, said Emily Spitzer, about this prophecy.

  Oh yes.

  You know more about it than I do, obviously, and Amelia Carrington clearly believed in it, or she wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble to get rid of me—

  Have you been got rid of, then?

  Yes, but I came back. Just listen for a moment, will you? The prophecy says that when we fight, I’ll win, okay?

  Yes. I can show you the place in the dream, if it’d help.

  No, really, that’s fine. Only, I was thinking. I don’t really want to kill you, you see.

  Oh. That would be-inconvenient.

  The dream flared orange with Emily’s irritation. Well, tough. Look, this dream of yours. It’s not, well, carved in stone, is it?

  Of course not. It exists within the neural pathways of all dragons, comprised of regulated electrical discharges travelling along synaptic—

  Oh, be quiet. What I mean is, if we wanted to, we could change it. Right?

  Deep, rather revolting green. Well, in theory—

  Excellent. So, let’s fight.

  Now you’re talking. Just give me a second to wake up, and I’ll be ready for you.

  No (said Emily Spitzer, the dragon-slayer), don’t do that. Just tell me if I’m on the right lines, okay? The prophecy says when we fight-fight meaning ‘engage in conflict’, yes?

  I suppose so, dreamt the dragon grudgingly. Engage in conflict, right. And in this context, presumably, the ownership of great wealth has to be at stake, yes? It’s what we’re all about, yes. Otherwise, how do you keep score?

  Exactly (thought Emily Spitzer). Keeping score. Now, I’d like you to concentrate, please.

  The dragon concentrated; and into the dream came a pair of wooden blocks with holes drilled in them, two matchsticks and a pile of cardboard rectangles with pictures printed on them.