Snow White and the Seven Samurai

by Tom Holt

  Good, Julian thought; then, For pity’s sake, that’s my brother Desmond, last thing I want to do is drop a heavy ladder on him. There was no time to consider the paradox, however; the flames were visible now, surging up at him like a burning oil-slick on a surfer’s dream of a wave. ‘Help!’ he squealed, backing away from the fiery curtain, while at the back of his mind he thought, Nothing like this ever happened when it was us and the wolf; sure he kept blowing down the house, but it never felt dangerous, just extremely annoying. He backed away but the fire was quicker than he was, had more time and space to manoeuvre. Then, as he drew near to the edge, he put down a trotter and realised that he was standing in thin air, like the unhappy cat in a Tom & Jerry cartoon.

  ‘Aaaagh!’ he screamed, as the past life slideshow started up in front of his eyes. Scrolled through quickly, his life seemed to have been about as interesting as a race down a window-pane by two docile flies. Then the ground reared up and hit him.

  ‘There he is!’ Desmond was shouting. ‘Quick, grab the bugger before he gets…’

  Julian squirmed. He’d landed on his back, cushioned somewhat against the fall by a broken-down straw bale, and he thrashed his legs in the air like an overturned woodlouse until, after what seemed like a very long time, he contrived to flip himself over right way up, find his feet and make a run for the door. It was a close-run thing, at that; he had to swerve violently to avoid Eugene’s outstretched trotters, and a pitchfork hurled by Desmond nearly kebabed him before he bounded out into the sunlight, leaving the smoke and the heat and the shouting behind him.

  Odd thing was, while he was making his escape under such difficult circumstances his attention was elsewhere. He steered his narrow course between fire and assault on a combination of instinct and extremely good luck, while his brain was entirely preoccupied with a topic far more engrossing and fascinating than mere survival.

  He cleared the farmyard and trotted up to the top of a low hill, from which there was a fine panoramic view of the valley, the farm, the huge column of black smoke reaching up into the clouds. He lay down in the shade of a young oak tree and tried to figure it all out.

  It had been in that brief moment, no more than the slightest paring from Father Time’s toenail, when he’d been falling and (as advertised, and nicely on time) his past life had flashed in front of his eyes in a subliminal blur.

  He hadn’t remembered any of it.

  Oh, the memories were all exceptionally clear and strong: falling off his first ever tricycle, lying awake on Christmas Eve waiting for Santa, fishing off the end of the pier with his Uncle Joe, the first time he’d ever set eyes on Tracy — splendid memories all of them, utterly convincing, a selection you’d be ever so pleased with if you’d bought them by mail order; but not his. Somebody else’s perhaps, but not his.

  In particular, the flashback had been markedly reticent on such subjects as wolves, houses and sudden, destructive gusts of doggy-breath. As far as his memory was concerned, none of that had ever happened. Except that it had.

  Had it?

  Below in the valley, the fire had spread from the barn to the cowsheds and, with a cluck-cluck here and a quack-quack-aaagh! there, Old Macdonald’s life work was going up in flames. Viewed from a distance it was rather a grand spectacle, though of course most of the piquant detail was lost. No sign of Eugene and Desmond, which implied that either they’d been consumed in the inferno or else they were showing signs of hitherto unexpected good sense and keeping well out of the way. Under other circumstances his heart would have bled for Old Macdonald; except that he knew for a fact that the old swindler was up to his ears in entirely justified aggravation from the Revenue, and the whole place was heavily over insured. Julian salved his sense of universal guilt by picturing Old Mac wandering round the burnt-out shell of his property with a big silly grin and a claim form, scribbling down here a cluck, there a cluck, everywhere a cluck-cluck, while the figures in the right-hand column soared exponentially.

  My name is Julian. I am a little pig. All my life I’ve been terrorised by a big bad wolf, who used to huff and puff and blow our houses down; first the house of straw, then the house of sticks — Put like that, of course, the whole thing sounded absurd.

  First: who’d be thick enough to try building houses out of straw or sticks? Second: there are many ways of demolishing buildings, especially buildings made out of one hundred per cent organic and biodegradable materials sourced from sustainable natural materials, but simply blowing on them isn’t one of them. Surely, therefore, those memories couldn’t possibly be true. Could they?

  Well, of course not; so it was just as well that he had a second layer to the onion of his memory, a recollection of buildings massively fortified and defended, blockhouses that ought to have been able to withstand direct hits from nuclear warheads; except that that was absurd as well, since pigs, even pigs as clever and resourceful as he was, can’t do that sort of work. It’d take an army of skilled craftsmen with an open cheque from the UN two years to put together some of the structures he seemed to remember throwing together in an afternoon — only to see them going down like card houses at one mild puff from the Wolf. Impossible. And what’s impossible can’t be true. Therefore.

  But I remember. I was there. It happened.

  All of it.

  Both versions.

  I am not a number. I am a free pig.

  Julian frowned and rubbed his shoulder against the trunk of the oak tree. That last bit wasn’t him either; it had seeped through from those damned synthetic memories that had somehow got into his head while he was falling — hardly surprising, seeing how vivid and evocative they were, like a hologram show inside his mind, but completely alien. He took a deep breath and allowed himself to examine them, as objectively as he could. They were fine memories, to be sure; and through them ran a convincingly logical thread; a bad case of sibling rivalry between himself, the puny but brainy younger piglet, and his two big thick brothers. He distinctly recalled, as if it was yesterday, that first tree-house their Dad built for them in the low branches of the old, droopy crab-apple tree; how Des and Gene hadn’t let him go with them to play in it, how he’d gone off on his own and built another, better tree-house in the tall sycamore, how Des and Gene had almost died of jealousy and had pulled it down and smashed it; how he’d built another one after that, which they’d also wrecked. The pattern was perfect, the way his patient perseverance had only served to infuriate them further, until one day — No, it hadn’t been like that. The hell with what’s logical and what’s possible. We’re three little pigs who built houses out of stupid stuff and had them all trashed by a wolf. The wolf blew on them and they fell down. The wolf was not my brothers. I know. I was there. — Picture of himself standing blubbering in front of his father, telling him what they’d done; and Des and Gene, red in the face and looking away. He could hear Gene’s voice in his head as clear as anything; wasn’t us, it was the big bad wolf.

  And a little voice said in the back of his mind that the past doesn’t matter anyway, who can say for certain what happened in the past, because the past doesn’t exist any more, it’s only there to explain the present, and if this version explains the present better than any other version, then why the hell shouldn’t it be the past? So much easier. So much more convenient for all concerned.

  Away in the distance, there was a queue of backed-up fire engines waiting at the farm gate, which was chained and padlocked; and there was Old Macdonald himself, furtively creeping round the back of the cider house with a can of petrol. In his past, no doubt, facts were quietly stabbing each other in the back, pushing each other out of twelfth-storey windows, sorting out an expedient explanation of the present that would result in the highest possible insurance payout. Here a barn full of valuable antique furniture, there a barn full of valuable antique furniture. So much more convenient.

  Julian grunted. Then he stood up and went into the wood to gather sticks.

  ‘Completely,’ the Brother G
rimm confirmed into his mobile phone, ‘and utterly. In fact, I reckon it’s getting near the point where it’s beyond salvaging… Yes, possibly, but would it be worth it? Surely it’d be simpler to start over again from. Okay, sure, you’re the boss. We’ll see what we can do. Yes, goodbye.’

  He closed the phone with a snap and slid it back in his inside pocket. ‘They want us to go ahead,’ he said. ‘Bloody stupid idea if you ask me, but… why are you looking at me like that?’

  His brother shook his head. ‘I’m not,’ he replied. ‘What makes you think…?’

  ‘Oh, come off it, you’re my brother, I know when there’s something you’re not telling me. Spit it out.’

  ‘Well…’ Grimm #2 spread his hands in a gesture of contrition. ‘I just thought you’d have worked it out for yourself by now, that’s all. Think about it, will you? We’ve got orders to take advantage of the present systems breakdown to seize control of the kingdom, right?’

  ‘His brother nodded sadly. ‘Completely unrealistic,’ he said. ‘Who do they think we are, the A-Team?’

  ‘Actually,’ said Grimm #2, ‘it’s not. It’ll be relatively straightforward, once we’ve re-established the Mirrors network and altered all the access codes so we’re the only ones who can operate the system.’

  Grimm #1 stared at him. ‘You knew all along,’ he said accusingly.

  ‘Of course. And I didn’t tell you for the same reason that I haven’t recently reminded you of the fact that you have a nose. I thought you’d realised. For pity’s sake, you don’t think those three Realside kids hacked into the system all by themselves, did you?’

  Grimm #1’s jaw slumped. ‘You mean to say we helped them?’

  ‘Naturally,’ Grimm #2 replied. ‘Obvious thing to do, use an innocent third party to bust our way in. If it works, we’re home and dry. If it doesn’t, we can claim we knew nothing about it and it was just an irresponsible act by a bunch of antisocial delinquent nerds, nothing to do with us at all. Standard operating procedure for subverting a friendly government. Don’t you ever read the tactical planning memos?’

  ‘No,’ Grimm #1 said, ‘you do. Look, is this all one of your jokes? I can’t believe we really do things like that. I thought it was all media paranoia and stuff.’

  ‘Ah.’ Grimm #2 grinned. ‘That’s what they want you to believe. But it isn’t true. It’s just—’ He hesitated for a moment and grinned as widely as the Grand Canyon. ‘Just a fairy-tale,’ he said.

  ‘Fairytale?’

  ‘Yeah, why not?’ Grimm #2 sat down on a tree-stump and lit a cigarette. ‘That’s what fairy stories are for, after all. Scare stories. Bogeymen. Give people something imaginary to be afraid of and they won’t worry about the real story, the thing we’re actually trying to cover up.’ He grimaced. ‘Works, doesn’t it? You’re so accustomed to hearing alarmist rumours about dirty tricks and cover-ups, you assume it’s just paranoia and bad craziness. And so it is, ninety-five per cent of the time. That ninety-five per cent’s a smokescreen so that nobody’ll believe we actually do the other five per cent.’

  ‘So those kids—’ Grimm #1 shuddered. ‘We sent them here?’

  His brother laughed. ‘Good Lord no, that’d be really irresponsible. No, they came of their own choice. We didn’t suggest the idea to them, either. Absolutely no way the parents’ll be able to sue if anything goes wrong.’

  Grimm #1 shook his head doubtfully. ‘That’s not right,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t do things like that. It’s—’

  ‘Expedient. And efficient. And all’s fair in love and narrative. What’d you rather we did, send in the marines? And a lot of people’d have got hurt, our boys included. No, the hell with that.’

  Grimm #1 scowled. ‘So why not just leave them the hell alone? What harm were they doing us?’

  ‘None of our business,’ Grimm #2 replied sternly. ‘Look, if you want a nice, easy answer, they’re different, see? When you’ve said that, you’ve explained everything. It’s the basis of all our fundamental policy. Different’s a threat, and so it’s got to go. Jeez, next off you’ll be asking why there’s a United Nations.’

  Grimm #1 thought about it and came to the conclusion that he didn’t want to think about it. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I take it you know how to get the system back on line again.’

  ‘More or less,’ his brother replied. ‘Even brought our own mirror,’ he added, opening his briefcase and reaching inside. ‘Look,’ he said, holding up a small looking-glass with a grey plastic frame and a serial number stencilled on the back. ‘Latest model, state of the art. Million times better than anything they’ve…’

  It was, considered with hindsight, a freak accident, the sort of thing that could have happened to anybody. The handle slipped through his fingers, did a salmon-up-a-waterfall impression and hit a stone. Crash, tinkle.

  ‘Neat trick,’ growled Grimm #1. ‘That’s supposed to be seven years’ bad luck, isn’t it?’

  Grimm #2 stared blankly at the shiny white shards. ‘Supposed to be doesn’t enter into it,’ he whimpered. ‘And that’s seven years minimum. How the hell do you think the superstition came about in the first place?’

  ‘Ah well,’ said Grimm #1, ‘no use crying over bust mirrors. We’ll just have to find another one, that’s all. Come on, we’ve got work to do, and the sooner we make a start, the sooner we’ll be finished and we can go home.’

  ‘You think that’s all there is to it? We get here and the first thing we do is crash their mirror?’ Grimm #2 laughed wildly. ‘You think that was just an accident?’

  ‘It’s really got to you, hasn’t it? Look, I’m supposed to be the one with the grave misgivings about this. Are you just going to stand there watching the stalagmites grow, or are you coming?’

  Grimm #2 shook his head. ‘What the hell,’ he said. ‘Yeah, let’s go and find a mirror. Doesn’t even have to be glass. A pool of water’ll do.’

  ‘True, but the response time’s lousy,’ Grimm #1 looked around; and, by sheer coincidence, caught sight of a quaint little cottage nestling among the trees. ‘Let’s try that house over there,’ he suggested. ‘Bound to find one there, I reckon.’

  ‘What if they don’t want to part with it?’

  ‘They will, you’ll see. Chances are it’s only some old biddy we can put the frighteners on. It’ll be easy as shelling peas.’

  Grimm #2 nodded uneasily. He wasn’t sure he’d liked the rather cheerful note that had entered his brother’s voice when he’d started talking about frightening old biddies. There had been this slightly unpleasant side to his brother’s nature ever since they’d been kids. It wasn’t a nice thing to have to admit about his own flesh and blood, but there it was. For all his earlier pontificating about dirty tricks and doing the right thing, Grimm #1 rather enjoyed watching things break. His idea of shelling peas probably involved a three-hour barrage from a battery of twelve-inch naval guns.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but let’s not get carried away.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Grimm #1 replied with a grin. ‘If everything goes to plan, it won’t be us getting carried away, you have my word on that.’

  ‘Do I? Oh good. That makes me feel so much better.’

  Grimm #1 shook his head, muttered something under his breath about half-hearted prima donnas and set off for the quaint little cottage.

  ‘At least try asking nicely first,’ Grimm #2 puffed as he struggled to keep up. ‘Can’t do any harm, and…’

  ‘All right,’ his brother grunted, ‘if it’ll keep you happy. Right, door’s locked. I expect you want me to knock first.’

  ‘I’d have thought it’d be the polite thing to do.’

  Grimm #1 reached out and tapped the door gently with the knuckle of his index finger. ‘Satisfied?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘I knocked first, like you said, and no reply. So—’

  He raised his left foot and kicked the door hard. It snapped open, swung back and slammed into the wall behind. Something yowled and s
cuttled away. ‘Cat,’ Grimm #1 explained. ‘And where there’s a cat, there’s always an old biddy. Damn,’ he added, ‘I knew I should have brought my brass knuckles.’

  ‘You know,’ muttered Grimm #2 as they walked in and looked around, ‘there’s something odd about this place. Reminds me of something, but I just can’t seem to — And what’s that funny smell?’

  Grimm #2 sniffed. ‘Search me,’ he replied. ‘Boiled cabbage, probably. Come on, let’s see what we can find. You look down here, I’ll try upstairs.’

  He clumped up the rickety wooden staircase and found himself in a dark, musty room with a low ceiling, most of which was taken up with an enormous four-poster bed. He was heading for the window to open the curtains and let some light in when a movement at the periphery of his vision stopped him in his tracks.

  There was someone in the bed.

  Burglars take these things in their stride; but Grimm #2 wasn’t a burglar. He swivelled round, lost his balance, slipped and fell backwards into a coalscuttle.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  Old biddy voice, coming from somewhere in the heavy duty darkness behind the drapes of the four-poster. Damn, thought Grimm #2, now what? The obvious thing to do was beat as hasty and unobtrusive a retreat as possible; but with his bum wedged in a coalscuttle he was in no position to demonstrate his precision-honed Special Forces running-away techniques. A pity. All that training wasted.