by Tom Holt
‘You realise,’ the Scholfield said, ‘that as soon as the goblins show up, they’ll have that door down in no time.’
‘Oh shut up.’
‘Don’t you take that tone with me. I’ll bet you King Arthur didn’t talk like that to Excalibur.’
‘Excalibur got chucked in a lake,’ Regalian replied. ‘Think on.’
‘Just for that,’ the Scholfield said icily, ‘you can get yourself out of this one.’
‘Thanks.’
Regalian scrambled to his feet and looked round. This didn’t help him much, because it was as dark as a bag and he couldn’t see a thing. Nevertheless. To boldly go, and all that crap. He went.
You lose track of time, walking in complete darkness; so it may have been twenty minutes or two hours before he turned a corner and found himself in the light once again. Once his eyes had recovered from the glare, he found himself facing a huge steel door, like a safe or an airlock. There was a tumbler, and one of those things like a miniature ship’s wheel. Also a notice, which said:
NO ENTRY EXCEPT ON OFFICIAL BUSINESS
Please leave fiction as you would expect to find it
A little gust of air tickled his ear. He stood still, listening. There was something or someone scuttling up the tunnel behind him. Three guesses? Only need one, thanks all the same. He reached out and twiddled the ship’s wheel until it locked. No joy. Obviously you had to know the combination, and he didn’t.
‘Gun.’
‘Not talking to you.’
‘Gun,’ he repeated, ‘believe me when I tell you that under normal circumstances I’d rather be tied hand and foot and dropped off Niagara into a cauldron of piranha-infested boiling shit than ask you for help. Understood?’
‘Still not talking to you.’
‘On the other hand,’ Regalian went on, ‘you’re a machine. You have component parts that go round and click and lock in place, and all that jazz. So does this door. If there’s a sort of mechanical-twiddly-clicky-things’ union to which you and this door belong, do you think you could have a word with your mate here and get this lot open? I’d be ever so grateful.’
Pause. ‘You would?’
‘Yes.’
‘Make a change, that would.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Oh well, since it’s you. Draw me and rest my muzzle against the door.’
Regalian did so. The gun moved in his hand, and knocked on the door three times; whereupon a little hatch slid across and a voice said, ‘Yes?’
‘Special delivery,’ said the gun. ‘Gotta be signed for.’
‘With you in a jiffy,’ replied the voice. The hatch closed, there was a rattling of keys, chains and bolts, and the door swung open.
‘Easy when you know how,’ muttered the gun under its breath, as Regalian brought it sharply up into line with the doorman’s eye. Not long after that, he was inside and the door clanged shut behind him.
‘Sorry about that,’ Regalian said. ‘Only there’s these goblins, you see, and—’
‘’Ere,’ said the man. He was a short, round, bald individual in a brown workshop coat with pencils and a Vernier calliper sticking out of the top pocket. ‘What you doing in ’ere? You’re not allowed.’
‘Sorry, but it’s an emergency. You see, these goblins . . .’
The man stared at him. ‘You’re from Fiction, aintcher? Your lot’s not allowed in ’ere. Clear off.’
Regalian waggled the gun meaningfully. ‘Or?’
‘Or,’ the man replied, ‘put that bloody thing away, come on through and ’ave a cuppa tea. Kettle’s just boiled.’
‘Ah,’ Regalian said. ‘Thanks.’
‘Got to say all that stuff, you see,’ the man explained, leading the way. ‘Then if anyone asks, I can say I told you to push off but you frettened me wiv a gun. ’Salright if you fretten me wiv a gun. I could of lent you one if you wanted.’
‘I see.’ Regalian looked around. ‘Where is this exactly?’ he asked.
‘Non-Fiction,’ the man replied. ‘Don’t spose you’ve ever been ’ere before. Different department.’
It was a workshop. It reminded Regalian strongly of various wizard’s caves he’d visited in the course of the trilogy; the same half-empty teacups on every flat surface, oily rags and cigarette butts on the floor, Pirelli calendar, small elderly transistor radio warbling mindlessly to itself in the shadows. The hardware was different, but not very. For the record, there were CNC lathes, vertical mills, slot mills, universal mills, pillar-drills, planers, bench grinders, cutter grinders, overhead countershafts and lots of other mythical, magical apparatus that only exists in the furthest reaches of the imagination. You could probably create the world in this place, if you had the materials. It would probably only take you five days; four if you took the phone off the hook and left the paperwork to look after itself.
‘Sugar?’ the man asked.
‘Please,’ Regalian answered. The man heaped in two tablespoons from a big tin, fished out the teabag and splashed in milk from an oily bottle.
‘There you go,’ the man said. ‘’Ave a seat, I’ll be wiv you in a tick.’
He pottered over to one of the giant machines, flicked a switch and turned a little wheel. There was a hum and a buzz like steel bees, and a few glittering specks of metal dust flew up into the air. ‘Bugger,’ the man snarled. ‘Taken off two fou too many, gotta do it again.’
‘Sorry,’ Regalian said. ‘I’m distracting you.’
The man shook his head. ‘Glad of the company, mate,’ he replied without looking up. He twirled a big T-shaped key in the chuck, pulled out whatever it was he’d been working on and chucked it in a bin under the bench. ‘Don’t get visitors down ’ere as a rule,’ he went on. ‘You don’t, not in Non-Fiction. Shouldn’t be ’ere meself, by rights. Should be fully automated, like.’ He laughed. ‘That’ll be the day, right?’
Regalian nodded, on general principles. ‘Excuse me asking,’ he said, ‘but how did I get here?’
‘You should know, mate,’ the man replied. ‘Don’t ask me.’
‘But I didn’t think it was possible,’ Regalian went on. ‘I mean, the balance of nature, basic authorship theory—’
The man shrugged. ‘Books is books, I guess,’ he replied. ‘’Snot as if you’d gone into whatsitcalled, Reality. It’s just, up this end, fings in books are sposed to be true.’
‘Only supposed to be?’
The man shrugged again. ‘Depends,’ he replied. ‘Like, whatchercall true? All depends on what it says in the specs.’
‘Specs?’
‘Tolerances,’ the man said, winding a new piece of metal into the chuck. ‘Like, ’as it got to be true to within one fousandf of an inch? Ten fousandfs? Fickess of a fag paper? Makes a difference, I can tell you. Me, I’m a perfecksionist, gotta be wivin half a fou or it doesn’t go out that door. In fact, most of yer Non-Fiction don’t need to be anyfing like that precise. Like, yer ’istory, yer politics, that sort of fing, you can get away with murder. Yer sciences, now, that’s different. Gotta be careful with the sciences, or the whole planet could get blown up.’ He switched on the machine; buzz buzz, crinkle crinkle. ‘An’ that’s why they’ll never do wivout the likes of me,’ he added. ‘Gotta ’ave somebody to make sure it don’t go wrong. Right?’
‘I can see that,’ Regalian replied. ‘Vitally important.’ He took a swig of his tea and, being a hero, managed to swallow it. ‘Um, is there another door?’
‘’Fraid not,’ the man replied. He was measuring something with a micrometer. It was so small that Regalian could barely see it. ‘On account of all this is a spatio-temporal anomaly. Dun’t exist,’ he translated. ‘No back door in a spatio-temporal anomaly. No front door either, come to that,’ he added, blowing away a grain of dust, ‘but it’s a bloody pain not ’avin’ a front door, so I knocked froo one afternoon when nobody was lookin’. Dozy buggers haven’t even noticed yet. That’s one of the good fings about not existin’; they leave you alone mo
st of the time.’
‘Right. So, if I wanted to leave—’
‘Can’t leave. On account of, you can’t go out of a place you never went in to start wiv.’
‘I see,’ Regalian said. ‘So I’m sort of marooned here, am I?’
‘You would be,’ the man replied, ‘if you existed. But you don’t.’
‘Don’t I?’
‘Not since you come in ’ere you don’t. On account of nuffin’ can exist in ’ere.’
‘Because this place doesn’t exist?’
‘You’re catching on, my son. There should be a quarter-be-twenty-Whit tap in that box by yer left foot, if you wouldn’t mind.’
Regalian picked up the box and carried it over to where the man was working. ‘Excuse me if this is a silly question, ’ he said, ‘but if this place doesn’t exist, how come you’re here?’
‘Some poor bugger’s got to be here,’ he replied. ‘Make sure the machines don’t play up. Do all the fiddly jobs. Like this,’ he said, pointing. ‘That’s an equation, that is. For a maffs book. Got to be exactly right, or the whole shooting match’ll be up the pictures. You show me a machine’ll do that an’ I’ll show you half a ton of rocking’orse shit.’
‘What he’s trying to say—’ said the Scholfield.
‘’Ere, who said that?’
‘My gun,’ replied Regalian, embarrassed. ‘It can talk. I wish it couldn’t, but it can.’
‘Give it ’ere a minute.’
‘Hey, hang on, what d’you think you’re—?’
‘Stroof,’ said the man, ‘it can talk. Nice bit of work, too. Nice machining. People knew how to make fings in them days.’
As he took the gun back, Regalian could hardly bring himself to look at it. Revolvers can’t smirk, of course, or look revoltingly smug. They can’t talk, either.
‘As I was saying,’ the Scholfield continued, ‘none of this exists, because there aren’t any imaginary characters in Non-Fiction; but because somebody’s got to do it, they bend the rules.’
‘Oh,’ said Regalian. ‘So he does exist.’
‘No, of course not. He doesn’t exist, this workshop doesn’t exist, none of it exists. They just happen to be here, that’s all. The universe turns a blind eye.’
‘On account,’ the man agreed, nodding, ‘of if they closed me down, they’d be in shit up to their ears. Which is good,’ he added. ‘Means I can do what the bloody ’ell I like, and if they try an’ stop me I tell ’em to get stuffed. Nuffin’ they can do about it.’
‘I see.’ Regalian leaned back, letting it sink in. ‘So it’s impossible for me to get out of here.’
‘That’s right.’
‘But since nobody gives a toss—’
‘Knew you’d get the ’ang of it eventually,’ the man said, grinning. ‘Least, they do give a toss, but they can’t do nuffin’ about it.’
‘So,’ Regalian went on, ‘although it’d be impossible for me to open that door there and find myself ever-so-conveniently exactly where I wanted to be—’
‘Do us a favour an’ put the kettle on first,’ replied the man. ‘Any time you’re passing, feel free to drop in.’
Regalian had walked to the door and his hand was on the handle when he stopped, thought for a moment and turned back. ‘One last thing,’ he said.
‘Hm?’
‘Science. You know all about it, presumably?’
Without looking up, the man pointed to a large tea-chest in a corner. It was full to the top with strange, tiny artefacts, and there was a label on it, which read:
‘’Sall in there,’ the man said. ‘Help yourself.’
Regalian shook his head. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘it wouldn’t mean anything to me. I was wondering if you could sort of translate for me.’
‘Do me best.’
‘Thanks.’ Regalian perched on the edge of a huge machine and folded his arms. ‘About the end of the world,’ he said.
‘What about it?’
‘How does it work? And how would you go about stopping it?’
The man stopped what he was doing, switched off the power and wiped his hands on his trouser legs. There was something - difficult to describe, when you’ve only got shoddy, post-modernist adjectives to work with - cheerfully reverential in his manner, as if he had just seen the Messiah and remembered that the Messiah owed him twenty quid.
‘Ah,’ said the man, ‘you’re one of them, then.’
Basic apocalypse theory.
It is now, for the sake of argument, the End of the World. Earthquakes are shaking the surface of the planet, making life difficult for all the nations of the earth who are trying to exterminate each other in the War To End All Wars - a difficult enough undertaking without the ground suddenly opening up and swallowing the enemy battalion you’ve spent all day carefully pinning down and enfilading in preparation for the Big Push - while overhead the upper atmosphere is nose-to-tail with executive shuttlecraft trying to make it to Alpha Centauri before the currency in the hold becomes totally worthless. The Four Horsemen™ roam the surface of the planet, trying to find an open blacksmith’s forge. The Antichrist paces through the devastated streets, dodging falling bombs and selling lottery tickets.
Seen it. Old hat. Yawn. What’s on the other channel?
This is not how the world ends.
This is how the world ends . . .
At the top of the hill overlooking Jerusalem, the Antichrist reined in his horse and waited for the Four Horsemen to catch him up.
‘It’s all right for you,’ muttered the First Horseman, who was in fact a Horsewoman. ‘All that time you spent schlepping around in Westerns, you obviously learned how to ride one of these wretched animals. I’m still trying to work it out from first principles.’
‘Oh for crying out loud,’ muttered the Antichrist under his breath, ‘it’s not difficult. All you’ve got to do is sit on the goddamn thing and hold on tight with your knees.’
‘That’s your idea of not difficult, is it?’
‘Well,’ replied the Antichrist, ‘the other three seem to be managing okay.’
‘Sure,’ snapped the Horsewoman. ‘I can believe it. Hamlet’s a prince, so presumably he’s been riding to hounds and playing polo since he was in nappies. Regalian’s a hero, practically born in the saddle. And Titania, well, from what I gather she’s got this thing about equine quadrupeds, so—’
‘I heard that.’
‘People!’ The Antichrist growled, asserting his authority. ‘Look, I hate to break up the discussion group, but we do have a schedule to keep to. Right then, where’s that bit of paper?’
‘What bit of paper?’
‘She wrote it all down for me,’ the Antichrist replied, scrabbling in the pockets of his jet-black robe. ‘Ah, here we go. First, we manifest ourselves.’
‘I think we’ve done that.’
‘You reckon? Okay then, one down and nine to go. Next, it says here, we’ve got to ride through all the nations of the earth spreading death and—’
‘All the nations of the earth?’
‘That’s what it says here.’
‘Bugger that,’ said the Fourth Horseman. ‘According to my pocket atlas, there’s seventy-eight of them, seventy-nine if you count the Vatican. Actually, that was before the break-up of the Soviet Union, so—’
‘All the nations of the earth,’ the Antichrist repeated. ‘Otherwise it won’t work. Shit, if Michael Palin can do it, so can we. And the sooner we get started—’
‘Hang on,’ interrupted the First Horsewoman. ‘I don’t suppose anybody’s thought to make any arrangements; you know, hotel reservations, ferry bookings, that sort of thing.You can’t just go blithely swanning about the place.’
‘Listen to her, will you?’ said the Second Horsewoman. ‘Where’s your spontaneity, your sense of adventure? I vote we just take it all as it comes, and if it turns out that we have to doss down on the beach or under a hedge a few times, then so what, it’s not the end of the—’
>
‘Ride through all the nations of the earth,’ repeated the Third Horseman. ‘All right, what comes after that?’
The Antichrist looked down at the envelope in his skeletal hand. ‘Bringing death and desolation, is what it says here. Any idea how we go about that, anybody?’
The Third Horseman sighed. ‘She didn’t tell you?’
‘Well, no.’
‘And you didn’t think to ask?’
‘Well, you were there too. Why didn’t you ask?’
‘Hey,’ broke in the Second Horsewoman, ‘you two, break it up. I expect we’ll find out what we’ve got to do when we get there. It’ll just come naturally, I expect. I mean, we’re the heralds of global destruction, they’re probably expecting us.’
‘What, you mean brass bands, banners stretched across the street, that sort of thing? I wouldn’t set your heart on it, because—’
‘I reckon,’ said the Third Horseman,‘we don’t actually have to do anything. Just being there’ll be enough. The violation of physics.The breach in the integrity of the fiction/reality continuum. Wherever we go’ll stop being real and start becoming a story. And,’ he went on, his voice becoming just a shade brittle, ‘when everything’s in a story and nothing’s real, that’ll be it. Nobody left to read the story, so the story can’t exist any more.’
‘Like in the Slushpile,’ agreed the Second Horsewoman thoughtfully. ‘Not a pleasant concept, really.’
The Antichrist shrugged. ‘Oh well,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ said Regalian.
The man nodded. ‘Won’t affect me, of course,’ he said, ‘on account of me not existing anyway. There’ll just be me an’ all this Non-Fiction, all the science and maffs an’ stuff, like in Plato.’
Regalian frowned. ‘That’s out the other side of Neptune, isn’t it? They always told me it was uninhabited. ’