My Hero

by Tom Holt

  At which point, Alice came hurrying in, ran full-tilt into the table (which was, of course, ten feet out of position) and landed face-down in the black forest gateau. There was a long silence.

  ‘Stuff it,’ said the Hare, resignedly. ‘I turned down a part in Our Mutual Friend for this. I’m going home now, and if anybody tries to stop me I’ll break their bloody neck. So—’

  He stopped. Someone was prodding a gun in the small of his back.

  ‘Okay,’ growled the bounty hunter, emerging from behind a bush. ‘Nobody moves, or the rabbit gets it.’

  ‘I would strongly advocate,’ said Rossfleisch, rather self-consciously, ‘that everybody remains exactly where they are. Otherwise . . .’

  (This, of course, is the entirely legitimate literary device of drawing parallels. One character unconsciously echoes another, setting up a resonance that crosses over the divisions of situation and form.

  In all fiction, there is a tendency to symmetry and balance. Particularly balance. For every cue, a reply. For every entrance, an exit.

  And for every exit, an entrance.)

  The siege had lasted three hours.

  Outside the building, the usual muster of police cars, vans, men with flak jackets, men with megaphones, men with television cameras. Another day, another melodrama.

  Inside the building, two men - well, two humanoids - facing each other.

  Not quite in and not quite out of the building (to be precise, wandering around in the sewers underneath the building with a torch, a portable word processor and a very wry expression, because of the smell), a novelist.

  Gee, mused Hamlet, but life can be a right bugger sometimes. Now if I was really Hamlet, the Hamlet, I could launch into a bit of impassioned oratory and talk this idiot into letting me go, or at least send him to sleep, which would amount to the same thing. A bit of blank verse, a few slices of heavy-duty industrial-grade imagery, and Bob’s your uncle. But no. All I can think of to say is, Gosh, this is silly, isn’t it? and that doesn’t quite have the necessary voltage to do the job.

  Nevertheless, one can but try.

  ‘Gosh,’ he said, ‘this is silly, isn’t it?’

  The mad scientist nodded. ‘I quite agree, my dear fellow,’ he said. ‘Ludicrous. It only goes to show how low scientific research is in some people’s scale of priorities. Still,’ he added, drumming his fingers on the casing of the cassette player, ‘the remedy is in your own hands. You’re completely bulletproof. All you have to do is lead the way, and we could be out of here in no time at all.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘In fact,’ said Rossfleisch, glancing at his watch, ‘if this goes on much longer I may have to insist. I really can’t afford to waste much more time in here. I have experiments that need constant monitoring.’

  Hamlet edged closer to the window.With luck, he might just be able to jump through it before the doctor had time to switch on the tape.

  ‘All the same,’ he said, ‘it’s a bit thick, don’t you think? I mean to say, all this fuss and bother and sirens going and men with rifles and things. Have you seen—?’

  ‘Please come away from the window.’

  Hell! ‘But like you said, I’m bulletproof, there’s no danger—’

  ‘In case you should get the urge to jump. That wouldn’t do at all, you know.’

  ‘Ah. Right.’

  He was just about to try another line of argument, something involving the bearing of fardels, although if anyone asked him what a fardel was he’d have to admit he hadn’t a clue, when his high-performance ears picked up a strange noise. A scrabbling sound, coming from under the building.

  ‘Hey . . .’ he said, and checked himself quickly. Best not to let the loony know about it, he reasoned. After all, it might be help.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Hey,’ Hamlet improvised, ‘did you realise you can see right across the city from here?’

  Jane pushed.

  Whatever it was she was pushing against, it lifted; and she found she was looking up into a room. A boiler room, by the looks of it, or something similar.

  She was, of course, hopelessly and irretrievably lost. When she’d been standing at the edge of the police cordon, staring at the building in which she knew Hamlet to be trapped, and wondering what her hero would do if he were here, it had seemed the most logical thing in the world to head for the nearest manhole cover and drop in.

  That had been some time ago.

  Since then, she had reassessed her priorities. Yes, she still wanted to find Hamlet and rescue him. But more than that, more than anything else in the world, what she really wanted to do was get out of the drains and have a long, scented bath lasting maybe three months.

  She hauled herself up out of the sewer, closed the cover behind her and sat down on a wooden crate to rest and think about what to do next. While she was thinking, she switched on the WP and waited for it to warm up.

  It started to beep.

  It wasn’t the ouch-you’re-hurting-me beep she got when she did something wrong, or the hurry-up-I-want-more-paper beep. It was somehow more friendly; no, that wasn’t the word. More positive. It was a come-on-don’t-dawdle-it’s-this-way sort of beep, and it gave her the impression that the machine wanted to tell her something. If it had been a dog, she realised, the WP would be rushing round her feet with its lead in its mouth.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘which way?’

  Beep. Beepeepeepeepeep. BEEEP!

  ‘Sorry?’

  Beepeepeepeeepeepeepeeepeeeeep!

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, I don’t under—’

  BEEEEEEEEEEEEP!

  ‘Oh, right, up the stairs. Got you. And then what?’

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  ‘You mean a fire door.’

  Beeeeeeep. Beepeep. Beep.

  ‘What, because of the snipers? Yes, good point.’

  Beep.

  ‘Yes, all right, I’m coming as quick as I can.’

  She scrambled to her feet, hefted the word processor and started to jog up the iron spiral staircase that led out of the boiler room. Halfway up she stopped and frowned.

  ‘Just a minute,’ she demanded. ‘Who the hell are you and how come you can—?’

  Beep.

  ‘Oh I see. Sorry.You did say left at the top, didn’t you?’

  Beeeeeeeeeeep.

  ‘No, I haven’t the faintest idea what a fardel is, but I promise I’ll look it up as soon as we get home. Now, is it left or isn’t it?’

  Beep.

  Hamlet held his breath. Any moment now. Then straight through the window, hit the deck, remember to roll, and . . .

  ‘Who were you talking to just now?’ the Doctor asked quietly.

  ‘Me?’ Hamlet swallowed hard. ‘Oh, nothing, just soliloquising. You know, thinking what a rogue and peasant slave I’ve been all these years.’

  The Doctor glowered at him. ‘There’s someone coming, isn’t there?’ he said accusingly. ‘Someone you can talk to without actually speaking.’

  ‘Gosh,’ said Hamlet, ‘you are clever, aren’t you? I wish I was as brainy as you, it must be wonderful to be so—’

  ‘Behind the curtain, quickly,’ the Doctor snapped. ‘Come on, jump to it. I’m afraid I’m in no mood for silly games.’

  Behind the curtain. Oh joy! ‘Must I? What about the snipers? You said just now—’

  ‘Do as you’re told!’ the Doctor growled, and he brandished the cassette recorder significantly. Masking a grin the size of Yorkshire, Hamlet nodded and stepped behind the curtain . . .

  A hint for aspiring character-nappers. Stop and think what a curtain is. Reflect for a moment what happens when a character steps out in front of a curtain, and what also happens when he goes behind one.

  Some curtains are better than others. The best sort are fireproof and required by law to be raised and lowered in the presence of five hundred empty seats and the ice-cream queues. Next best are the thick, dusty red velvet jobs with gold t
assels. At a pinch, though, any curtain will do. Or even, if the worst comes to the worst, an arras.

  Suddenly, Hamlet knew exactly who he was and what he was supposed to do next. With a brave flourish he drew the sword that was now hanging by his side, identified the bulge in the curtain and lunged with all his might. The correct line was, ‘A rat! A rat!’, but he was in a hurry.

  The sword-blade bent like a bow and snapped, just as Hamlet winked out of existence and dematerialised in a shower of golden sparks.

  On the other side of the curtain, Dr Rossfleisch stared in complete bewilderment at the filing cabinet, which had six inches of rapier blade protruding through the side of the drawer marked ‘N - P’, and so entirely failed to notice the door opening, Jane coming through, or the torch landing hard and square on the back of his head.

  Hamlet opened his eyes.

  He expected to see the ramparts of Elsinore. He expected to hear the sound of frantic voices and running feet, the flicker of torches in the courtyard below, the confused echo of shouted orders.

  No such luck.

  What he did see was a dark, rather cluttered room, furnished in the late Victorian style, with dark, solid furniture, gaslamps and VR picked out in bulletholes on the far wall. In the corner, some obscure scientific apparatus hiccupped quietly to itself.The walls were lined with leather-bound books.There was a healthy fire crackling in the grate, and on the mantelpiece a slipper stuffed with tobacco.

  ‘Remarkable,’ said a voice from the armchair.

  He looked up, and saw a long, thin man with a sharp nose and a high forehead, wearing a silk dressing gown and smoking a big, curved pipe. He had a horrible feeling he knew who it was.

  ‘From your appearance,’ said the man, ‘I deduce that you are somehow connected with the theatrical profession. The traces of makeup just below the hairline and the rather eccentric boots are conclusive on that point. From your general demeanour, I gather that you left the place you have just come from in something of a hurry, probably,’ he added, after a moment’s consideration and a puff of blue smoke, ‘in fear of your life. The colour of your hair and the set of your cheekbones imply Scandinavian descent, and I would venture to suggest that you are a Dane. The manner in which you arrived here is also,’ the man said, and smiled crookedly, ‘most suggestive. However, the hilt of a broken sword in your right hand puts the matter beyond any semblance of doubt. Your Highness,’ he added, with mock deference. ‘And how stand matters at Elsinore?’

  Despite his other preoccupations, Hamlet was impressed.

  ‘Cor,’ he said. ‘You worked all that out just by looking at me?’

  The man nodded. ‘Elementary, my dear Hamlet,’ he said.

  In the hallway of the house there was a looking-glass.

  Regalian, out of breath from running fast, stood in front of it and stared. Yes, he said to himself, a great big mirror with an ornate frame hanging over a mantelpiece. I remember now. This is exactly what it looks like.

  ‘Your hair needs combing,’ observed the Scholfield. ‘Apart from that, what’s the big deal? I thought we were meant to be—’

  ‘Shut up,’ Regalian ordered. ‘We’re here.’

  ‘Yes, I know we’re here,’ the gun replied. ‘But I thought we wanted to be somewhere else.’

  Regalian smiled thinly and pointed. ‘Somewhere else is that way,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be silly, that’s just a wall,’ the gun said. ‘Maybe you’re thinking of ghosts. In case you weren’t aware, you’re not a ghost. Trust me, I know about these things.’

  Regalian thought for a moment, and then started to unbuckle the gunbelt.

  ‘Here,’ whined the gun, ‘what the hell do you think you’re—?’

  ‘I’ve got to go back and get the others,’ Regalian replied, laying the belt on the mantelpiece. ‘You can stay here. Won’t be long.’

  The gun squirmed in its holster. ‘Here, you can’t do that. What are you doing that for?’

  ‘Because,’ Regalian snapped, ‘I’ve had enough of you to last me a trilogy, that’s why. Now shut up or we’ll leave you behind.’

  ‘Eek!’ The gun wriggled and, with a frantic effort, managed to slide out of the holster, edging its way in millimetre stages towards the mirror. ‘You can’t leave me here on my own,’ it wailed, ‘they’re all nutcases in this book, I’ll end up as a paperweight.’

  Regalian reached out to replace the Scholfield in its holster but somehow it eluded him and made a phenomenal spasmodic leap, two inches at least, towards the surface of the glass. It miscalculated, hit the frame and cocked itself. Regalian grabbed again - it was like trying to catch a goldfish in a bowl - missed and connected with the trigger. There was a loud bang.

  ‘Strewth!’ Regalian exclaimed.

  The recoil must have edged the gun right up against the glass, because the gun wasn’t there any more. But its reflection in the mirror was.

  ‘Hey,’ Regalian shouted, ‘how did you do that?’

  Just this once, the gun made no reply. Cursing under his breath, Regalian reached into the looking-glass, scrabbled for the revolver and flicked it back through the glass . . .

  And found himself looking at his reflection in a mirror. But his reflection was holding a Scholfield revolver and he wasn’t. And then there was just the Scholfield, lying on the mantelpiece on the other side of the glass.

  ‘Oh hell,’ Regalian whispered.

  He reached out and put his hand on the surface of the mirror. It felt smooth, cold and depressingly solid. Which is, of course, exactly how mirrors do feel, in the real world.

  ‘Marvellous!’ he growled. ‘Oh that really is completely fucking marvellous. What the hell am I supposed to do now?’

  He turned and looked around, examining the room. It was large, well-furnished and cosy. A glass-fronted book-case by the fireplace housed a complete set of the works of Carson Montague, also known as Albert Skinner. Oh Christ!

  For every entrance an exit. For every exit an entrance.

  He turned back, but the mirror was gone. In its place was a window, with a bullet-hole in it, and in his hand he noticed the Scholfield, with a little wisp of smoke drifting out of the gap between the cylinder and the barrel; and, beyond the window, a man in dungarees shaking his fist and pointing at a shattered cucumber frame.

  ‘Freeze!’

  Skinner did as he was told. In the big looking-glass directly in front of him, he could see the bounty hunter’s face; not to mention the long, black Colt revolver in his right hand.

  Christ, he said to himself, I know you. Goddammit, yes!

  ‘Okay,’ the bounty hunter continued. ‘Turn around, real slow, and keep your hands where I can see them. And if you was having any fancy ideas about making a grab for that gun on the mantelpiece . . .’

  ‘The thought,’ said Skinner truthfully, ‘never crossed my mind.’

  ‘Hoy,’ Titania hissed under her breath. ‘Who is this idiot?’

  Skinner sighed. The only thing that puzzled him was why he hadn’t thought of it before.

  ‘Titania,’ he said wearily, ‘I’d like you to meet my hero. Slim, this is Titania, Queen of the Fairies.’

  ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am.’

  ‘I last saw Slim,’ Skinner went on, ‘in a mirror. Well, a window, to be precise, but it was being a mirror at the time. I shot him. I think that’s why I’m here. Isn’t that right, Slim? I have the horrible feeling,’ he went on, ‘that he’s my alter ego. You know, the part of me I don’t like. In fact,’ he continued, ‘he’s probably the reason why I used to find it difficult to look myself in the eye in the shaving mirror every morning.’

  ‘Gosh,’Titania said. ‘It’s a funny thing, but when people give me these simple, logical explanations I always end up more confused than I was to start with. What does he want, exactly?’

  Skinner shook his head. ‘Whatever it is,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to know about it. Hey, Slim.’

  ‘Yeah, partner?’


  ‘What the hell do you want anyhow? I mean, there’s got to be a reason, hasn’t there?’

  Slim laughed, briefly and without humour. ‘Reckon so,’ he said. ‘Now why don’t you-all just use your brains while you still got them?’

  ‘Hell, Slim, you know me,’ Skinner answered. ‘Never was any good at plots.’

  ‘Sure enough,’ the bounty hunter replied. ‘It’s ’cos I ain’t through with you yet, bud. Not by a long way.’

  He raised his hand, pointed the Colt and fired.

  It would be an exaggeration to say that the whole of Skinner’s life flashed before his eyes, because he’d had a long and interesting life and there simply wasn’t time. He’d got as far as his sixth birthday party, when Jenny Mason ate too much jelly roll and was sick on Mom’s new carpet, when he realised he was still alive.

  He turned round. The bullet had hit the looking-glass dead centre, and all that remained of it was a few splinters of glass tucked into the edge of the frame.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Jane let herself in through the front door, dumped her portable WP and sagged into an armchair. It had been a long, long day.

  In retrospect, the police had been quite reasonable considering the fact that she had offered no explanation at all for her presence in the building apart from saying that she’d been researching for a book down in the sewers and had got lost. They had left her with the distinct impression that she’d been suffered gladly, but they’d let her go. Eventually.

  As for what had happened to Hamlet, she had a theory about that, and she was horribly afraid it was correct.

  Still, she reassured herself as she put the kettle on, if I’m right it does mean he’s back more or less where he belongs; or at least, back with his own kind. Kind of his own kind. In any event, beyond her help, which was all that mattered as far as she was concerned.

  When the coffee was made, she broke into a new packet of chocolate digestives, curled up on the floor in front of the fire and reached into her bag for the book she’d been reading on the train. Not exactly her usual thing, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; but it had been the only book on the bookstall that didn’t have a naked female on the cover, and she had to admit, she’d forgotten how readable the old things were, once you’d got into them.