by Tom Holt
Stairs. There must be stairs here somewhere, or a window or a fire escape. There’s got to be some way out, unless everybody who comes here ends up joining the stock. Trying not to look where he was going, Hamlet stumbled about, bumping into things, knocking things over. He put his foot on something round, and fell over.
He opened his eyes. Hell fire, he said to himself, I know that face.
‘Yorick?’ he said. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
A bloody silly question, if ever there was one. He scrambled to his feet, removed a hand from his trouser pocket and tried going back the way he had come, with a vague idea of battering down the lift door and jumping down the shaft.
‘Ah,’ said a voice he knew, ‘there you are. I was wondering where you’d got to.’
Rossfleisch, portable cassette player in hand, stepped out from behind a palletful of knees and smiled indulgently. Hamlet froze.
‘This . . .’ he said, and ran out of words. The Doctor nodded graciously.
‘A life’s work,’ he cooed. ‘Tread carefully, for you tread on my dreams.’
Hamlet wasn’t so sure about that, because he had the idea that dreams didn’t go squish when you trod on them in heavy boots. He wasn’t, however, inclined to argue the point. He made a sort of general purpose gesture with his hand.
‘Actually,’ the Doctor continued, advancing a pace or two, ‘it’s extremely fortuitous, you finding your way here like this, because I did want to see if we haven’t got something a bit more suitable for you in the way of brains. I’m beginning to suspect that the one I put in is just a bit too high-powered for the job. So if you wouldn’t mind stepping over to the freezer cabinet there on your left . . .’
But Hamlet, tragically indecisive though he might occasionally be, had decided that that wouldn’t be a terribly good idea. With a movement so swift that it did enormous credit to Dr Rossfleisch’s skill with nerve-endings and a soldering iron, he stooped, grabbed the first object that came to hand, and threw. Then he ducked, rolled and came to rest behind a large wooden crate of left feet.
He peered round the edge of the crate. Rossfleisch was lying on his back, out cold, half buried under a pile of assorted bits that presumably he’d backed into and knocked down on top of himself. The cassette player lay on the ground beside him. Hamlet managed to jump on it fairly comprehensively on his way past to the lift; which, as he’d hoped, was standing open. He found the controls, pressed a button at random, and stepped back out of the way of the door.
As the door closed, he had a feeling he was not alone.
It was a rather irrational feeling, given that the lift measured four feet square. If there was someone else in there with him, he felt sure, it ought to be fairly obvious. For a start, given the size of his boots, he’d be standing on the poor bugger’s feet.
Unless, of course, the other person happened to be a ghost.
Hamlet, said the shimmering pillar of ectoplasm that now materialised in front of him, I am thy father’s spirit, doomed for a certain term to walk this lift, and for the day confin’d—
‘Er, yes, hi there, Dad,’ Hamlet replied, frowning slightly. ‘Actually I’m a bit tied up right now, could I possibly get back to you a bit later on?’
As he spoke, he sensed that the lift had slowed down. The ghost flickered irritably.
I could a tale unfold, it said crossly, whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young—
‘Sure, only not now, okay? Look, when this is all over it’d be really good to have lunch, have a really good talk about all the things we never seemed to find the time to talk about when you were, um, alive, uncurl a few locks together, stuff like that. Right now, though . . .’ He stopped, his inner ear ringing with the sound of a big penny dropping. ‘Just a minute,’ he said, ‘what the hell are you doing here anyway? This is the real world, there’s no such thing as ghosts in the real world.’
My hour is almost come, snarled the ghost in that reproachful, I-told-you-not-to-play-with-that-ball-near-the-French-windows tone of voice that Hamlet knew so well, when I to sulphurous and tormenting flames must render up myself. It paused, clicked its tongue and then went on. Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold. But soft! methinks I scent the morning air—
‘Dad, it’s half past four in the afternoon.’
The ghost flickered wildly, mouthed, Remember!, buzzed and snapped out of sight, leaving behind only a few spangles of blue light. Hamlet stared for a moment, shrugged and banged on the wall with his fist. The lift started to move.
It was going back up.
Regalian nibbled through the last remaining strand of the rope, shook his hands free and spat out a mouthful of liquorice-flavoured fibre. He felt sick.
‘Right,’ said Titania. ‘If you’ve quite finished stuffing your face, can we please get a move on?’
‘I was not stuffing my—’
‘Please?’
‘All right, just hold your water a minute, will you? I’ve only got one pair of hands.’
(And just as well, he added mentally, since scarcely five minutes seems to go by around here without some bugger tying rope round them. One set is plenty enough for me, thank you very much. You can get seriously ill eating too much liquorice.)
‘Excuse me,’ Skinner interrupted, ‘but when you two have quite finished bickering . . .’
Regalian frowned. Quite right. Unprofessional. A hero acts, he does not bicker. As he traced his way through the Labyrinth, spinning out the golden thread, Theseus didn’t bicker with Ariadne about who forgot to bring the torch.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I think we’re ready now. This way, I think.’
‘Hey,’ yelled Titania. ‘What about us?’
Regalian bit his lip. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll leave you both tied up just for now, and come back for you both later after I’ve sorted out what we do next. I mean, you’ll be perfectly all right there, and I’ll know where you are. No chance of anybody spraining an ankle or being used as a hostage. Cheerio. Won’t be long.’
He took advantage of the brief stunned silence and departed. At least, he mused, this is business sort of as usual; crawling through pitch-dark underground tunnels on a desperate mission to seck out and fight with a giant rat. The fact that the rat wears a straw boater and a pink blazer and is known to generations of small children as Ratty is neither here nor there.
His hand went instinctively to his side. He would have preferred a sword; a sword is long and sharp and has only one moving part, which does not require lubrication or frequent cleaning in order to make it work. Likewise, generally speaking, a sword doesn’t answer you back. Nevertheless, he told himself, it’s better than nothing. ‘Aren’t you?’ he asked aloud.
‘I’m not talking to you.’
‘Oh? And why not?’
‘Because,’ replied the Scholfield, ‘you let them put a spell on me. Honestly, I’ve never been so embarrassed in all my—’
‘But you’re cured now, aren’t you?’
‘That’s beside the point,’ the revolver snarled. ‘Back in 1875, I’ll have you know, I was the state of the art. Competing manufacturers packed it in and went into the bicycle business once they’d seen my improved patent frame latch. And now, at my age, to have a flag come out of my barrel with BANG! written on it . . .’
‘It must have been terrible,’ Regalian said soothingly.
‘It was.’
‘If I were you, I’d want to get my own back on those bastards.’
‘I do.’
‘Or if not them, then some other lot of bastards.’
‘I’d settle for that, certainly.’
Regalian nodded. ‘Tell you what I’ll do,’ he said. ‘First lot of bastards we come across, they’re yours.’
‘Really?’
‘Promise. Provided of course,’ he added quickly, ‘that they start it, not us, and that armed response can within the context be classi
fied as reasonable and a minimum-force position within the scenario as a whole, holistically speaking.’
‘Come again?’
‘In other words,’ Regalian explained, ‘don’t shoot till I pull the trigger, or it’s in the furnace for you. Got that?’
‘Rotten spoilsport.’
Regalian shrugged, squared his shoulders in the orthodox manner and set off down the corridor. It was dark, and damp, and there was a faint smell of toasting crumpet that spoke eloquently to his trained character’s senses of classic Edwardian escapist literature. He felt depressingly out of place. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the fact that he knew as an absolute certainty that he was the hero, he could have sworn he was the villain.
He turned a corner; and froze, rooted to the spot in sudden terror. In front of him, filling the tunnel, was an enormous rodent.
Yes, it was indeed wearing a straw boater; and too true, it had on a pink blazer and a little silk cravat round its thick, coarse-haired throat. But its small, red eyes and villainously sharp teeth sent clear, unequivocal messages down every nerve in Regalian’s body. Okay, so perhaps this little fellow liked messing about in boats; but so did his ancestors, the big grey buggers who brought the Black Death from Constantinople to Europe. Regalian backed away and reached for his gun; and, at the same time, the right words found their way spontaneously to his lips.
‘You dirty rat,’ he growled. ‘I’m gonna fill you full of lead.’
At which point, Jane reached for the keyboard and started to type furiously.
God knows, she thought, I’m not all that fussed about what posterity says about me. Let them say I was derivative, and my plots lacked sparkle. Let them, even, not remember me at all. But don’t let me go down in the annals of literature as the woman who killed Ratty. They’d probably dig me up and hang my bones in chains from Tower Bridge.
Think seamless, she commanded herself. All you have to do is steer the dialogue away from filling people full of lead and point it in the direction of the pointlessness of spring cleaning and the general desirability of rowing up and down the river in little boats. Doesn’t matter how you do it so long as it gets done.
Which was why, suddenly and without warning, Regalian found he had been turned into a beaver.
It was nearly two hours before Regalian was able to get back to his friends in the cellars of Mole End. He had been having such a jolly time with his new friends Mr Rat and Mr Toad, cruising lazily down the river in Ratty’s little boat and eating cucumber sandwiches, that he had quite lost track of the time.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Titania snapped, as he put his soft, hairy nose round the doorway and smiled. ‘I’ve got cramp in both knees, and I’ve had to put up with his incessant whingeing as well. Get me out of here before I start screaming the place down. And why are you dressed as a beaver?’
‘I’m not dressed as a beaver,’ Regalian answered quietly. ‘I am a bloody beaver, and it looks like I’m stuck that way till we get out of this madhouse. Hold still while I nibble through these blasted ropes.’
‘Oh, so that’s why you’re a beaver.’
‘No,’ said Regalian with his mouth full, ‘actually I think it’s just a coincidence. Christ, this stuff tastes awful.’
‘And what,’ Titania said a little while after, swinging her arms round to restore a little circulation, ‘have you been doing all this time? Lounging about feeding the ducks?’
‘Actually, I’ve been fixing up our way out of here.’
‘About time too.’
‘The rat,’ Regalian continued, with dignity, ‘claims he knows where there’s a sort of fault-line we might be able to use to get straight into Alice. Mind you, I wouldn’t normally trust him as far as I could sneeze him when the pollen-count was low, but this time I think he’s telling the truth.’
‘Oh? Why?’
Regalian closed his eyes. ‘He wants me to deliver a package,’ he replied.
‘A package? What sort of package?’
‘Oh for God’s sake, woman, use your bloody imagination. It’s a squarish sort of parcel about a foot long, it’s wrapped in brown paper and weighs about five kilos. You don’t think you get to write books about disappearing white rabbits and jabberwocks and mirrors you can walk through just by closing your eyes and using your imagination, do you?’
‘Ah. I see.’
Regalian nodded and twitched his whiskers. ‘Apparently,’ he went on, ‘it’s quite a regular traffic. The weasels and the stoats bring it downriver from Toad Hall in big crates marked Tractor Spares, and Ratty and Mole handle the distribution from this end. I think they launder the proceeds through a holding company at Pooh Corner. Anyway, something nasty happened to the regular courier and they need a replacement. That’s us.’
‘Dear God.’ Skinner looked up, dazed. ‘I always thought there was something weird about your goddamn limey children’s books, but I didn’t think it was as bad as that. What a country!’
‘You can wipe that grin off your face,’ Regalian snapped. ‘Next time you see Brer Rabbit, ask him how he paid for his bright pink Mercedes convertible. Now, are you two coming or do you want to stay here and argue the toss with Mister Badger?’
Jane looked up, and blinked twice. That wasn’t what she’d had in mind at all.
On the other hand; if it worked . . .
Slowly, inch by inch, the bounty hunter edged his way along the river-bank.
His calling had taken him to some odd places, and brought him into contact with some strange people; this, however, looked set fair to establish new parameters of meaning for the word ‘kooky’.
Jesus, the place was full of goddamn animals.
He found what he was looking for; and sat behind a bramble bush for five minutes or so, waiting to see if anyone came in or out of the little round painted door in the side of the bank.
Just when he’d concluded it was safe to proceed, he was tripped up neatly from behind and thrown on to his face in the mud. As he tried to rise, someone put a clawed foot in the small of his back and prodded his ear with the barrel of a gold-plated Uzi.
‘I say, Moley,’ said Mr Rat. ‘It seems we have another visitor.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
The lift stopped. The doors opened.
Hamlet shut his eyes, left a prayer on God’s answering machine, and stepped out. Into the street.
The doors shut behind him. In fact, if he had been inclined to be thin-skinned and oversensitive, he could have imagined they ostentatiously dusted off their hands, like a night-club bouncer who’s just thrown out a couple of drunks. Not that Hamlet minded one little bit. Of all the places in the world he was most keen to get thrown out of, Dr Rossfleisch’s cosy little establishment headed the list by quite some way.
On further inspection, the street turned out to be nothing but a back alley, designed as a repository for dustbins and a playground for tattered-eared cats. Hamlet picked up his enormous feet and ran, filling the narrow way with the echoes of his clopping.
At the end, the alley opened on to a broad, crowded street, into which Hamlet turned right. He was clearly in a big town or a city somewhere, although he had no idea which one. He had an idea that it wasn’t anywhere in Denmark, because he remembered something about Denmark being an unweeded garden, and there were no weeds to be seen anywhere.
Trying to mingle unobtrusively with the crowd - difficult, since he was a foot taller than anybody else within sight, and his head stuck up above the throng like a giraffe feeding on treetops - he strolled as nonchalantly as his big clumping boots would allow him towards the southerly end of the street. It would all, he knew, be wonderfully simple. In a moment or so he would find a telephone box. He would call Jane Armitage. She would come and pick him up, or at the very least tell him what to do. Then they would work out how he could get back into his play, where he belonged. If things went well, he might even get back home in time to be murdered.
At the end of the street, sure enough, stood a phon
e box. He smiled and pulled open the door . . .
‘Hey, do you mind?’
‘Sorry.’ Hamlet stepped back. ‘I didn’t mean—’
‘There’s another one just round the corner,’ said the occupant of the box quickly. Hamlet couldn’t help noticing that he was half in and half out of a red and blue leotard, and that a plain charcoal-grey suit was lying discarded on the phone box floor. ‘And next time, look before you go barging in.’
‘Sorry,’ Hamlet repeated, and closed the door. He had got about ten yards down the street when there was a sharp crack and a whooshing noise above his head. He looked up to see a tiny figure in blue and red disappearing into the sky. All around him, people were staring after it.
‘My God,’ someone said, ‘I didn’t know he was real. I thought he was just in comics.’
Hamlet turned back, entered the now empty phone box, fumbled in his pocket for a coin and dialled Jane’s number.
Hello, this is Jane Armitage. I’m sorry there’s no one here to take your call but if you’d care to leave a message . . .
Hamlet replaced the receiver, briskly, with an oath. The bloody woman, he said to himself, how dare she go swanning off when I’m missing? Typical bloody author. About as reliable as a petrol station watch.
Never mind, he reassured himself, I’ll use my initiative. No problem at all finding out where I am and how to get out of it. His head held high (or as high, at least, as it would go without unseating the main neck bearings), he strolled down the road in search of somebody to ask.
There is a stubbornly entrenched streak of bigotry in all of us. We may have made some progress towards flushing out prejudice on grounds of race, gender, creed and sexual orientation; but troll down the street with staring red eyes, big shoes and a bolt through your neck, and don’t be surprised if no one wants to know you. All Hamlet got for his efforts at communication were twelve funny looks, a muffled scream and an offer to share with him the glad tidings of Our Lord Jesus Christ; all of which, he found, wasn’t getting him anywhere. He caught sight of a big sign saying POST OFFICE and headed towards it.