by Tom Holt
He gripped the torch he’d liberated from the assistant, flattened himself as best he could against the wall and waited. A few seconds later two men in white coats came flying round the corner, also clutching portable cassette players. They never knew what hit them.
Cripes, thought Hamlet, this is so easy. If ever I get back to Elsinore, certain people are going to have to watch out, because there’s a whole different way of going about things I never even dreamed of.
Catching his breath, he ran on down the corridor, pausing only to smash any PA speakers he passed on the way. There didn’t seem to be anybody about, and the way his luck was going, this tunnel would pretty soon end in a door leading straight out on to the street. And to think, he mused as he ran, how most characters make such a song and dance about breaking out of nick. A doddle. Kids’ stuff. Any fool can—
He stopped dead in his tracks. He had reached the end of the tunnel and it was a wall. A dead end.
There were footsteps down the corridor behind him; not so fast this time. It was probably safe to say that whoever his pursuers were, they had passed by the two men in white coats and were determined to learn by their mistakes.
Think. Why go to all the trouble of building a corridor, just to end it with a blank wall? Architectural error? Job creation scheme? Fifty thousand bricks left over from the main job, waste not, want not? Improbable. There had to be something here he hadn’t seen.
Like, for instance, a secret passage.
One of the drawbacks to secret passages, however, is that they’re secret. If they weren’t, they’d be painfully obvious passages and the builders couldn’t charge nearly as much for them. An educated guess told him he had about forty-five seconds to work out what the secret was before the heavies arrived.
Not for the first time, Hamlet found himself wishing he was back where he belonged. Where he came from, in fiction, the hero always finds the knob and lever that operates the hidden door, usually by stumbling against it or trying to hang his hat on it. Success is guaranteed, or else why the hell did the author put it there in the first place? In real life, there are no such guarantees. For all reality cared, he could spend the rest of his life down here biffing the walls and prodding the floor, and be none the wiser.
Something inside him, probably one of those goddamn side effects, told him that this was the wrong attitude; that what he should do in the circumstances was turn, face his attackers and beat the pulp out of as many of them as he could before one of them managed to switch on his tape recorder and operate the bomb. Who knows, continued the insidious little voice, you might get an opportunity to put your hands round Dr Rossfleisch’s scrawny little neck. Now, wouldn’t that be worth getting your liver blown out for?
Briefly urging his inner voice to put a sock in it, Hamlet turned to the wall and tried running against it with his shoulder. To his pleasant surprise, it didn’t actually hurt despite the terrific wallop when he made contact. That aside, however, there wasn’t much to be said for it.
He tried again, and again. Waste of bloody time.
The footsteps were very close now. It was time, Hamlet conceded, to give it best, hold his hands up, go back to his cell and try again tomorrow. Obviously the rules of dramatic necessity didn’t work here, and the sooner he accepted that fact the better. Accordingly, he stood back, put his hands behind his head in a gesture of submission and waited.
Not for long. A split second later, a gaggle of five men in white coats came haring round the corner—
—Saw him, tried to stop sharply on the smooth concrete floor, failed and piled up in a confused, high-velocity heap against the wall—
—Which swung open, revealing a spiral staircase descending steeply into the darkness, down which they all fell, with much bumping and use of profane language; after which, the door slowly swung to behind them, and shut with a loud clunk.
‘Oh come on,’ Hamlet said disgustedly to the heavens. ‘There’s no need to take the mickey.’
Then, without any real urgency, he started on the long trudge back up the corridor.
‘No,’ insisted Titania, ‘it went this way.’
Regalian stayed where he was. Quite apart from the fact that he was never at his best when down long, dark tunnels, scrabbling about on his hands and knees among rabbit droppings the size of pigeons’ eggs and towing behind him a heavy, insensible body, he was beginning to feel ever so slightly sick of Titania’s company. Four centuries of being the queen of the fairies had left its mark on her character, and he never had liked bossy women.
Thank God, he murmured to himself, she’s not my love interest; at least, not yet. There was plenty of time for the plot to demand an eternal-triangle situation. The very thought made him shudder.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
Titania clicked her tongue. ‘Of course I’m sure. Besides which,’ she added, ‘if you hadn’t been dawdling we wouldn’t have lost the damn rabbit in the first place.’
Regalian toyed with the idea of pointing out that he had been dawdling only because he was lugging along with him two hundred and forty pounds of sleeping novelist, which by rights was her responsibility anyway; but decided against it, on the grounds that life is too short, even if you’re technically immortal. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.
‘Well, come on then, if you’re coming.’
‘I’m right behind you.’
A certain time later, he observed that this seemed to be a very long tunnel.
Some time after that, he pointed out that this appeared to be a very long tunnel indeed.
A bit later, just as he was about to bring to Titania’s attention the fact that this tunnel was, horizontally speaking, extensive, they came to a dead end.
‘Oh,’ Titania said.
‘Quite.’
‘There’s probably a door of some kind somewhere,’ she continued, ‘if only we knew where to look.’
‘You reckon.’
‘It’s artistically right that there’s a secret door.’
Matter of opinion, muttered Regalian to himself. As far as he was concerned, poetic justice demanded that half a mile up the wrong tunnel, which she had insisted on following in the teeth of his advice, should end in a blank wall. On the other hand, he didn’t exactly fancy retracing his steps, particularly as there wasn’t enough room to turn round, which meant that instead of pulling Mr Skinner he’d have to push. On occasions like this, he was prepared to concede, there’s no particular shame in admitting you were wrong.
‘In that case,’ he said, ‘we’d better find it, hadn’t we?’
They were still searching when Skinner finally woke up. It took them some time to calm him down and convince him that he was not, in actual fact, in his grave. They asked him if, by any chance, he could see anything that looked like a door.
‘No, sorry,’ he replied; and then he remembered something, and his hands shot to the sides of his head.
‘It’s all right,’ Regalian assured him. ‘I made her take them off.’
‘Thank God for that.’ Skinner lowered his voice. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘just what exactly is she doing here?’
‘She’s the lo—I think she just wanted to come along for the ride,’ Regalian answered. ‘You know, a change is as good as a rest.’
In the flickering light from a match clutched between his thumb and forefinger, Skinner glanced round. ‘Funny sort of place to come for a holiday,’ he observed.
There was a cry of triumph from the wall face, and the two men craned their necks to look at the spot Titania was pointing at.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘it’s a letter box.’
‘Get away, so it is. Any doors in the vicinity, did you notice? Only, all due respect, both of us are a bit chubby to be getting through letter boxes.’
‘Yes, but don’t you see?’ Titania demanded. ‘Where there’s a letter box . . .’
‘I don’t like the way this conversation is headed,’ Skinner said loudly.
‘And,’ Titania went
on, ‘here’s a sort of brass plate thing, you know, like you get on the outsides of offices and old-fashioned houses . . .’
‘I really am getting a bad feeling about this.’
‘And - yippee! Hey, guys, there’s a bell-pull. Where there’s a bell-pull, there must be a bell. All we have to do is—’
‘Whatever you do, don’t touch that bell . . .’
‘—Ring it and see who answers.’
There was a moment’s silence, which Skinner broke by saying, ‘She didn’t pull it, did she? Tell me she didn’t pull it.’
From behind the wall came the sound of bolts being shot back and chains removed; and then the tunnel flooded with light.
‘Oh crap,’ mumbled Skinner. ‘I thought it was.’
Silhouetted in the doorway was an outlandish, disturbing figure. Generally humanoid in overall appearance, it was dressed in a sort of dowdy Edwardian style. Instead of a human head, a black rodent’s snout poked out of the creased wing-collar and sniffed at them. In the backlight from the open door, they could see the glow reflected on two sharp, pointed front teeth.
‘Hang spring cleaning,’ it said.
‘It could have been worse,’ Skinner said a little later. ‘It could have been Winnie the Pooh.’
Regalian didn’t bother replying. He was saving all his strength and concentration for his next attempt to chew through the ropes round his wrists.
‘It’s a fair point,’ agreed Titania loyally. ‘I mean, yes, maybe we are stuck in The Wind in the Willows and maybe Mr Mole does have a pathological hatred of human beings and a gun, but at least we’re in the right area, classic children’s fiction. There may well be a connecting door or a—’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Regalian sighed. ‘A looking glass. As in Through The. No, thank you very much. I’ve had enough to put up with as it is.’
‘Look . . .’
‘And the same goes,’ he added savagely, ‘for wardrobes. Got that?’
Titania wriggled angrily against the ropes. ‘Well, that attitude’s really going to help, isn’t it?’
‘Helps me,’ Regalian replied. ‘Surly truculence. Can’t beat it, in my experience.’
‘Nuts,’ Titania replied. ‘Instead of just sitting there making comments, you ought to be doing something. I mean,’ she added scornfully, ‘I had assumed you were meant to be the hero.’
‘You’re expecting me to gnaw through ropes, aren’t you?’
Titania considered. ‘It’s a thought,’ she said. ‘It’d be better than lounging about practising your repartee.’
‘You people have no idea,’ Regalian snapped. ‘Did you know that there’s more cholesterol in six inches of rope than four cream doughnuts?’
‘Spit it out, then. Honestly, if all you’re going to do is complain—’
‘And,’ Regalian went on, ‘there’s my teeth to consider. A fine hero I’d be, mumbling my way through the rest of the trilogy in a dental plate.’
‘Shut up and chew.’
‘Yuk,’ said Regalian, with his mouth full. ‘Liquorice again. I can’t be doing with bloody liquorice.’
Hamlet had been walking for hours, and his feet hurt.
The enormous boots didn’t help. Why Rossfleisch had seen fit to equip him with them, given that his actual feet were more or less normal size (he’d checked), was quite beyond him, unless it was just tradition or something. He felt like a circus clown in them, although he was prepared to concede that most circus clowns don’t have bolts through their necks.
Quite some place the Doctor has here, he mused, must have set him back a bob or two. Most of it, admittedly, seemed to consist of mile after mile of identical-looking tiled corridors, none of which appeared to lead anywhere, but maybe that was all the architect was good at.
Nobody had tried chasing him for some time now. That could have been because there were too few people to patrol all these miles of tunnel, or because he’d thumped all the staff who could be spared from duty for patrol purposes (he’d rather lost count, but he must have clobbered upwards of twenty of the poor devils by now); or maybe the good Doctor had other things on his mind and knew there was no way out of here anyhow. On reflection, the third alternative seemed the most likely. Sooner or later he’d collapse from exhaustion, whereupon they’d send out a crew with a small truck and bring him in.
How tiresome, he reflected, as he pulled down and crushed yet another PA loudspeaker (seventy-three; he had been counting them), and, in the final analysis, how pointless. For all he knew, this was all part of some complex research programme, to see how he would react under certain circumstances; white mouse job. Depressing, he concluded, turning a corner into yet another half-mile-long straight of tiled corridor. I could easily spend the rest of my life trolling about down here.
He stopped. Far away in the distance he could hear a gentle buzzing sound, like a hive of bees. As he stood, the noise came nearer and grew louder, and he concluded it was probably some sort of machine. A robot, perhaps. Rossfleisch was just the sort of man who would have robots; probably big silver ones with square heads and lots of flashing lights that went beep. He waited, and eventually just such an artefact wheezed round the corner at the far end of the straight. It was about five feet tall, chrome plated, vaguely human-shaped, and carrying a mop and a bucket.
It wasn’t in any particular hurry; and about five minutes crept by before it clanked past him, apparently oblivious to his presence. As soon as it was level with him, he reached out, grabbed it round what passed for its throat with both hands and lifted it off the ground. He was rewarded with a massive electric shock, and let go as quickly as he could. There was a loud thump and a frantic outburst of beeping; and then the machine shut up and lay still.
Great, Hamlet reflected bitterly, I’ve killed it, that really does help a lot. There was an outside chance it might have been going towards an exit of some kind. I could have followed it.
He was just about to vent his rage on the gadget when a couple of green lights, mounted on the side of its head where its ears should have been, switched themselves on and started to hum. Bemused, Hamlet stood back and waited to see what would happen.
Don’t just stand there, said the robot in an electric monotone, help me up before my batteries go flat.
‘Why?’ Hamlet demanded. ‘You’re just a machine. And besides, you aren’t safe to touch. You nearly fried my kidneys back then.’
Automatic defence system, replied the robot, which I have now deactivated. It is perfectly safe, repeat, perfectly safe. Come on, help me up. Or are you training to become a stalagmite or something?
‘I’ll help you up,’ Hamlet said, ‘if you show me the way out of here.’
In your dreams, buster.
‘Alternatively,’ Hamlet suggested, ‘I could jump up and down on you till you’re nothing but a heap of scrap. The choice is yours. Personally, I’d prefer option two. I’m just in the right frame of mind for smashing up something fragile and expensive.’
How do you know, asked the robot cagily, that I won’t lead you straight back to the labs you’ve just escaped from?
‘You try that,’ Hamlet replied, ‘and I’ll make sure you give Humpty Dumpty a bloody good run for his money in the jigsaw puzzle stakes. The more of Doctor Rossfleisch’s property I damage, the better I shall be pleased, so don’t tempt me.’
Big bully, the robot grumbled. All right, you win. Help me up and—
‘Not so fast. Switch yourself off again while I pick you up. And make sure you keep your nasty volts to yourself.’
The robot obediently bleeped into immobility, and Hamlet manhandled it back on to its feet. ‘Ready,’ he said. ‘Lead on, Macduff.’
Here, I thought you were the other one, you know, the one with the skull and the poncy black tights.
‘And shut up.’
The robot was aggravatingly slow, like the milk tanker you always find yourself behind in a winding country lane; but eventually it puffed and bleeped its way to a closed
brushed-steel-finished doorway with a panel with buttons on it. Hooray, thought Hamlet, a lift shaft. Now we’re getting somewhere.
This is as far as I go, muttered the robot. I have an idea it leads to Up, but I’ve never actually been there. My life is extremely boring.
‘Just as well you’re not a sentient life form, then, isn’t it?’
But the robot had switched itself off, and was standing to attention on a humming metal disc set into the floor. Recharging itself, Hamlet assumed, the cybernetic equivalent of a sit down with a cup of tea and a smoke. Now then, let’s see where this lift goes to.
He examined the panel and pressed the button marked G. A moment or so later, the door slid back and Hamlet stepped in.
It is, of course, entirely true that G stands for Ground. It also stands for a lot of other things as well.
The door slid open.
Maybe it was only in Hamlet’s over-productive imagination that, as it swished back to let him through, the door sniggered. It certainly shut again pretty damn quick as soon as he was through; and before he could do anything about it, he heard the lift scurrying back down the shaft as fast as its cable could carry it. He fumbled for buttons to press to bring it back, but there weren’t any.
G. G stands for ground, garage, gourmet, guano, gelignite, goldfinch, general, Guatemala, guild and gimcrack. And graveyard. This, Hamlet realised, was where Doctor Rossfleisch kept his spare parts.
It was a huge open space, like a gigantic ballroom, and it looked like a body-snatcher’s car boot sale. There were bits of people everywhere; laid out on tables, stacked in piles, spilling out of tea-chests or just lying about. Most of them had little labels attached - stock numbers, presumably, or use-by dates - and some had been bolted together in an apparently haphazard manner, giving the impression that these were the bits of old junk the Youth Opportunities lads were allowed to practise on.
There was an unpleasant smell.
It must have taken him years, considered the part of Hamlet’s brain that wasn’t yet completely traumatised by horror, to put this little lot together; years, a lot of money, and thousands and thousands of pairs of rubber gloves. Gosh, it added, bits of me probably came from here. Then it, too, switched off.