by Tom Holt
The book fell open at the place she’d left off. She read:
‘One moment,’ said I. ‘You have, no doubt, described the sequence of events correctly, my dear Holmes, but there is one point you have left unexplained. What became of the hound when its master was in London?’
Before Holmes could reply, the young stranger leaned forward, his face a mask of the most intense emotions. ‘Hey, Jane,’ he cried, ‘is that you? For fuck’s sake, woman, where the hell have you been all this time, I’ve been trying to reach you for bloody hours. Look, you’ve got to get me out of here, they’re all a bunch of raving nutcases and there’s this bloody great dog, you would not believe the size of this sodding dog, and it jumps up and puts its horrible paws on your chest and licks your damn face off, so get your bum in gear and find some way I can—By all that’s marvellous, Mr Holmes,’ he exclaimed, ‘I can scarcely believe . . .’
Jane closed the book with a shudder. Her first reaction was, No, the hell with it, it’s out of my hands now. Let the little creep find his own way home; or he can stay there, get a job and a mortgage, just like the rest of us. She threw the book into a corner, folded her arms and tried to think of something else.
Tried, and failed. But somehow, in some weird system of logic that she couldn’t hope to understand, he was her responsibility. Because, if she didn’t help, nobody else would. Because . . . Because.
Hell!
Later, though. First, she was going to have a bath, a toasted ham sandwich and a good night’s sleep, and that wasn’t negotiable.
And, in due course, she slept.
There you are. Where have you been, for Chrissakes? You think it’s easy getting through on this frigging thing?
Still fast asleep, she sat bolt upright in bed and swore. ‘Not you as well,’ she shouted. ‘Go away!’
The dream of Skinner clenched its fists in rage. You goddamn lazy bitch, it ranted, I’m stuck in this lunatic asylum and you want to go back to sleep? Jesus, lady, if you don’t get me outa here, I will personally make sure you never sleep again.You hear me?
‘Hold on, now,’ Jane mumbled. ‘I thought all that was under control. Haven’t you been through the looking-glass, then?’
Oh sure. I’m just haunting your dreams for something to do. Of course I didn’t. That lousy stinking wimp of a hero of yours . . .
‘Don’t you talk about Regalian like that.’
Why not? The spineless little geek just pissed off and left us here. Just . . .
‘Us?’
Yeah, us. Titania and me. And now we’re . . .
‘What, the Titania? As in ill-met by moonlight, proud? The one with the donkey?’
Yeah.Why don’t you listen when people tell you things?
‘What’s she doing there, for God’s sake?’
I don’t know, do I? Skinner exploded. It’s your goddamn book!
Jane lay down again, turned her face to the pillow and growled like a tiger. The dream stretched out an incorporeal hand towards her shoulder, but he was, after all, only a dream.
‘Look,’ Jane snarled into the pillow, ‘get this straight, you third-rate hack. This - is - not - my - book. Understand?’
The hell with you too, sister. Just get me out of here, okay? Look, I gotta go, there’s a queue of goddamn chessmen outside this booth and they’re getting impatient. You know where I am. Now get on with it.
The dream faded; but before Jane could wake up, another face floated in front of her mind’s eye. It was vague and hard to make out, and somehow it wasn’t the face it should have been, because it looked uncannily like Skinner, only it wasn’t. To be precise, it looked like Skinner’s reflection in running water.
Hello? Can you hear me?
‘Regalian! God in heaven, you gave me a start. What are you—?’
Listen, I’m in trouble. You’ve got to find some way to get me out of here.
This time, Jane laughed so loud she woke herself up.
The theory about the US Library of Congress in Washington DC, which nobody seriously believes, states that, because the library holds a copy of pretty well every book there is, it’s theoretically possible to break out of the real world and into fiction through a fault-line somewhere in the boiler room; the argument being that:
(a) truth is stranger than fiction
(b) there’s a lot of fiction about nowadays which is so weird that even Aleister Crowley would have to stop halfway through, go back and read the first chapter again before he could work out what’s supposed to be happening; which is a pretty tough act to follow
(c) the idea of there being a hole in the reality-fiction interface in the basement of an American public building is so profoundly kooky that it must, a fortiori, be true.
It should be added that no university, even in California, has ever been persuaded to fund further research into the theory, and there is therefore no published data; and the theory’s proponents have to rely on anecdotal evidence of maintenance engineers meeting strange, unreal people wandering about when they go down to fix the heating system. These tales can, of course, be easily explained by the fact that it’s quite normal to meet strange, unreal people in the basements of government buildings. Who do you think works in these places, after all?
Above all, you wouldn’t catch a sane, rational person like Jane Armitage believing a cock-eyed theory like that in a million years. Absolutely not. No way.
‘Excuse me,’ said Jane. ‘Can you tell me the way to the boiler room, please?’
‘Sure, no problem. You go down this corridor until you come to a turning on your left. Follow that down about, oh, two hundred yards, and you’ll see a door on your right. Go through that, down a flight of stairs and you’re there. Okay?’
‘Thanks,’ said Jane. ‘Um . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Can I have your autograph, please?’
‘Huh?’
‘It’s not for me, you understand, it’s for my cousin’s nephew.’
The helpful man frowned for a moment; then he took the pen and paper Jane had thrust at him, scribbled ‘James T. Kirk’ and handed it back. Then he sauntered away down the corridor, turned right and was gone.
And sure enough, there it eventually was; or at least there was a door marked:
BOILER ROOM
and underneath in smaller letters:
Authorised personnel only
No smoking
For every entrance, there must be an exit; and vice versa.
Jane hesitated, her hand half an inch from the door-handle. She had, she knew, done many bloody silly things in her life, but never before an impossible bloody silly thing, and she was a great believer in sticking to what she knew best.
On the other hand; for every entrance there must be an exit, and vice versa, and she’d just seen a character walking away down the corridor. Was he, she wondered idly, an exit or an entrance? Depends which side of the door you’re on, presumably.
She turned the handle and pushed open the door.
There are agents - people who find you a job, take their ten per cent, and then move on to something else - and there are agents.
Into the latter category fall the superagents, who feed your cat while you’re away, insist on being present at the birth of your child and talk you down off the windowledge when the Boston Globe points out the fact that you appear to fall asleep halfway through the second act.
Beyond the superagent is the hyperagent, and there is only one of these. Her name is Claudia, she is extremely selective in who she represents, and above all she gets results. If it wasn’t for Claudia, the showbiz legend runs, Jesus Christ would have lived to a ripe old age doing stand-up, weddings and the occasional Bar Mitzvah.
In the course of an extremely long career - other agents never seem to find the time to take a holiday; Claudia keeps promising Death they’ll do lunch just as soon as her schedule allows - she has represented a few select characters, most of whom have gone on to become the focal points of major
religions.
One of these is Polonius.
Polonius? Yes, Polonius. And she’s working on it right now. When Bill Shakespeare originally wrote the play, her client was one of the bit players who come on at the end and say nice things about Fortinbras. By the year 2140, if everything goes to plan, they’re going to be forced to change the name of the show to Polonius, Home Secretary of Denmark. Watch this space.
En route, however, there are bound to be hiccups. For example . . .
‘Then find him!’ Polonius yelled into the receiver. ‘Now!’
‘Hey, Pol, cool it, will you?’ Claudia cooed. ‘We’re doing everything we can. It’s only a matter of time . . .’
‘Yeah,’ snarled the courtier, ‘sure. Meanwhile, I’m the one who’s being made to look a complete idiot. You’ve no idea how embarrassing it is, standing behind that bloody curtain and nothing happening.’
‘Okay, right. Now . . .’
‘I have to pretend to have a heart attack just to get off the stage. You’ve got to do something about it. The rest of them are starting to get depressed as well. The night before last, in fact, there was only me and the ghost who bothered to turn up at all. And I do my best, but you try keeping a packed house at Stratford entertained with four hours of I Spy With My Little Eye Something Beginning With G, and see how you get on.’
‘Point taken, Pol. And as soon as we’ve got anything, I promise you, I’ll let you—’
‘Yeah. Well, mind you do. Goodbye.’
The line went dead. Claudia replaced the receiver, chewed the end of her pencil thoughtfully for a moment and reached for her address book.
One of the good things about having a first-class quality clientele is that, when necessary, you can get one client to do a favour for another. She found the number, picked up the phone and dialled.
‘Hi, Sherlock, it’s me. Look, I need a . . . You’ve got him with you now? That’s absolutely wonderful, Sher, but how did you know . . . ? Yes, of course, you would, wouldn’t you.Yes, elementary, quite. Okay, Sher, keep him there, I’ll be right over. Ciao.’
Jane blinked.
Oddly enough, what disconcerted her most of all was the smell. Not that it was unpleasant; in fact she rather liked it. It reminded her of second-hand bookshops, the sort of establishment where the proprietor drifts around the place in an old cardigan and carpet slippers mumbling to himself and can never quite bring himself to believe you want to buy a book. It was, she realised, the smell of old paper.
Which was odd, because she wasn’t in a library, or a paper mill, or even a second-hand bookshop. In fact, she appeared to be standing in the middle of a . . .
Yes. Let’s not pussyfoot. The whole essence of being a writer is the ability to select the exactly appropriate word. A battle.
A battle, what was more, in the freezing cold snow. About three feet from her ear, a whacking great cannon went off, making the earth shake. The noise hit Jane like a hammer, and she felt her knees sag. Before she could recover, another cannon exploded on the other side of her, and the shock pushed her back on to her feet again.
Nobody seemed the least bit interested in her, and this came as something of a relief, since she had no right to be there whatsoever and explanations are always so embarrassing.
The battlefield was occupied by two opposing forces, as is often the way with battlefields. The part she was in was swarming with men in blue coats, tall black hats shaped like chimney-pots, and fancy white leggings that looked excruciatingly uncomfortable. They seemed to be talking in French. In fact, they were swearing a lot. The main topic of conversation appeared to be how, once they got to Moscow, they were going to drink a great deal of alcohol and try and make friends with the local women-folk. There was also a lot of technical stuff about the loading of cannons, which was beyond the limits of Jane’s schoolgirl French and was probably only of interest to artillerymen anyway.
Right, Jane thought. The Napoleonic wars. Snow. Eighteen twelve. Moscow. Oh bugger.
War and Peace. A fine short cut this had turned out to be.
This is the police. We have the wood surrounded. Throw out your gun and let the Piglet go, and nobody’s going to get hurt.
The electronically amplified voice died away on the gentle breeze, and all that could be heard in the Hundred Acre Wood was the twittering of songbirds and the gentle humming of the bees. Skinner cringed.
‘It’s all my fault,’ he muttered. ‘How could I have been so goddamned stupid?’
‘There, there,’ Titania replied soothingly through a mouthful of acorns and honey, ‘don’t blame yourself, we all make mistakes.’
‘Sure.’ Skinner nodded miserably. ‘And the biggest mistake I ever made in my whole life was listening to you.’
‘But . . .’
‘“Tell you what,” you said. “Let’s retrace our steps,” you said. “Let’s go back into the river-bank, and see if we can’t get into Winnie the Pooh from there, I bet there’ll be a way out there somewhere,” you said. And now look . . .’
Titania frowned dangerously. ‘I admit,’ she said, ‘that was my idea. I don’t seem to remember anything about breaking into Piglet’s house and taking him hostage.’
In the corner of the dark, circular room, the Piglet favoured them both with a stare of pure, blind hatred. Since he was three feet tall, however, and bound hand and foot with sticking plaster, he could safety be described as the least of their problems.
‘I never meant for this to happen,’ Skinner protested. ‘All I had in mind was, let’s break into an empty house somewhere, find something to eat. How was I to know the little bastard would be waiting for us with the goddamn poker?’ He rubbed his upper arm gingerly.
‘You shouldn’t have shot the bear, though.’
‘Shot at the bear,’ Skinner corrected her. ‘I missed, remember? And I didn’t mean to fire in the first place. The poxy gun just sort of went off . . .’ Skinner checked himself, and scowled. ‘Hey,’ he added. ‘You did that on purpose, didn’t you?’
There was a short pause.
‘You talking to me?’ asked the Scholfield innocently.
‘Of course I’m talking to you, you frigging psychopath. He’s only four foot six and stuffed with kapok. Are you trying to say you didn’t overreact just a little?’
‘Hey,’ replied the Scholfield, its voice heavy with reproach. ‘You said, Oh look, there’s a bear. Where I come from, bears are big and hairy and they eat you. How was I supposed to know—?’
‘All right, you two,’ Titania interrupted. ‘This isn’t getting us very far, is it? What we need to do now,’ she added hopefully, ‘is think of a plan of campaign.’
Skinner sighed. ‘Such as what?’ he asked. ‘Demand a helicopter to take us to the North Pole? Float down the river disguised as a poohstick?’
‘We could shoot our way out,’ suggested the Scholfield cheerfully. ‘There’s only about ten of them, I could do it standing on my hammer.’
Skinner closed his eyes. ‘One more suggestion like that,’ he muttered, ‘and you go down a rabbit-hole. You think we’re in trouble now, you try to imagine what they’d do to us if we waste Eeyore!’
‘We could negotiate,’ Titania said. ‘Explain what’s happened, tell them we didn’t mean any harm. After all, it’s a children’s book. I’ll bet you anything you like they aren’t really armed.’
Skinner raised an eyebrow; then he found a small biscuit tin, balanced it on a broomhandle and pushed it out through the window. When he brought it back in again a moment later, it had twenty-three bullet holes in it, all of them within a three-inch circle of the middle of the tin.
You in the tree-house.This is your last chance. Let the Piglet walk or you’ll leave us no alternative.
‘Those idiots,’ said Titania firmly, ‘are starting to get on my nerves.’
‘Mine too,’ Skinner agreed. ‘All right then, suggest something.’
Titania thought for a moment; then an evil smile crossed her face, lik
e on oil-slick on an ornamental pond.
‘How about . . . ?’ she said.
Basic authorship theory.
Take an author (you’ll need to wake him up and pour three pints of black coffee into him first), park him in front of a microphone and ask him how he designs his characters, and chances are he’ll pretend he made them up from scratch. Lies.
Characters are built, like Frankenbotham’s Hamlet, out of bits and pieces of real people more or less cobbled together. A friend’s mannerisms, an aunt’s squint, an employer’s unsightly facial blemishes are fed into the subconscious, reconstituted and come out the other end as a character.
Therefore, there are bits of all of us in all of them. Do you know an author to speak to? Then there’s a substantial risk that there’s a character up there wandering around wearing your nose.
The real problem arises when an author, consciously or not, bases a character on himself. The old maxim you can’t take it with you suddenly acquires a whole new set of macabre resonances.
Think about that for a moment.
On the one hand, Jane has gone into fiction. At almost exactly the same moment, her hero has popped into real life. There are likely to be serious consequences for the fabric of reality. Imagine a man standing in the dead centre of the aisle between the seats on an airliner fifty thousand feet up when two windows on opposite sides of the plane smash simultaneously, and you might begin to get the general idea.
While we’re on the subject, consider this.
For every exit there must be an entrance.