Snow White and the Seven Samurai

by Tom Holt

  ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ he said.

  The spider lifted its front legs and waggled them.

  ‘Yes, very nice,’ Fang said impatiently. ‘Great symbolism. Now, would you mind turning back into whatever you really are? You’re giving my friend here the horrors.’

  The spider began to spin. It quickly spun a huge ball of gossamer, so large that it could easily have concealed a human being. Just as Fang was about to lose patience (gossamer being spun, paint drying; you pay your money and take your choice) the cocoon split open and out fell a short bald man in rimless spectacles and a threadbare towelling robe bearing a monogram on the pocket that suggested that it had been stolen from the Grand Hotel, Cardiff. ‘Watch it,’ muttered Fang. ‘You nearly trod on my foot.’

  ‘Sorry,’ the short man apologised. He was sitting on a tomb whose lid was carved into what looked uncomfortably like an effigy of himself. ‘Problem with the encryption software. I’d try to fix it, but I can’t understand the code.’

  ‘Code,’ Fang repeated.

  ‘Code. Computer language. You know,’ the man added, ‘the stuff the programs are written in. What you get when you open one of the system files, and the screen looks like someone’s eaten too much alphabet soup and been sick. Code.’

  ‘I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about.’

  ‘What? Oh, of course, I forgot. Sorry.’

  Fang took a deep breath. ‘Forgot? Forgot what?’

  The man grinned a forty-watt grin. ‘I keep forgetting that I’m the only one of you, or rather us, who knows about the operating system.’

  ‘Operating system.’

  ‘That’s right. What makes this whole domain work.’

  ‘And you know all about it, do you?’

  The man nodded. ‘I ought to. After all, I built it.’

  Counting up to ten usually worked, but not this time. ‘You’d better start explaining,’ Fang growled. ‘And it’d better make sense, too. If it hadn’t been for those tricks you just did I’d assume you’re as crazy as a barrelful of ferrets; but you aren’t, are you?’

  The man shook his head. ‘Not to the best of my knowledge,’ he replied, ‘though after two hundred years down here all on my own in the dark, maybe my own assessment of my mental health isn’t all that reliable. I could be stark staring mad by now and not have noticed. Anyway,’ he went on, as Fang made an involuntary flexing movement with his fingers, ‘what it all comes down to is, I created this domain. Does the phrase computer-generated imaging mean anything to you? No? Well, never mind. How about Mirrors?’

  ‘The things you look at yourself in?’

  The man shook his head. ‘I’d better start at the beginning,’ he said. ‘Now then, once upon a time…’

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘You want me to cut the traditional preamble? Very well. I used to be what we call where I come from a software engineer, and I was playing about one day when I found a way to break into alternate universes using computer simulations as a gateway… This is all gibberish to you, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wrote all this,’ the man said. ‘On my old Macintosh. At least, I wrote an operating system that would make all the hundreds of different fairy stories and folktales and nursery rhymes and what have you actually exist in real time, rather than just floating about in the human imagination. It was just a question of protocol compatibility, really. Once I’d got that sorted out, it more or less wrote itself. Anyway, I called it Mirrors, and it all works through the magic mirror belonging to the wicked queen; you remember, Snow White’s stepmother.’

  Fang nodded. ‘At last,’ he said, ‘something I can understand. You’re the magician who cast the spell that gives the mirror its power.’

  The man blinked. ‘Isn’t that what I just said?’ he replied. ‘Sorry. You’ll find that’s a common failing among computer people, saying perfectly simple things in an utterly incomprehensible way. And before you ask, a computer’s just another word for a magical thing that does spells. All right?’

  Fang nodded. ‘I follow,’ he said. ‘So then what?’

  ‘Actually,’ the man went on, ‘the wicked queen was my pupil. Nice kid, hard working, quite good at it whenever she managed to apply her mind to it for more than a minute at a time.’

  ‘And she locked you up down here, did she? To make you tell her the secret of the magic?’

  ‘Oh no. Tracy wouldn’t do a thing like that.’

  ‘Tracy?’

  ‘That’s right. She used to be my secretary when I was still running Softcore Industries. That’s in the real — I mean, in the domain I originally came from. Tracy Docherty, her name was. She’d been with Softcore for years.’

  Fang closed his eyes and concentrated. ‘And Softcore was the name of your — what did you call it? Your domain?’

  ‘Oh no.’ The man laughed, and there was just the slightest fleeting hint of cold, hard authority in his voice; a faint smear on the glass, no more. ‘No, when I was running Softcore the whole world was my domain. Or at least I was the richest, most powerful, most widely respected—’ The little old man stopped, and smiled. ‘I was. Never really liked it much, either. It all happened so fast, or at least that’s how it seemed to me. One minute I was sitting in my squashy little apartment in Aspen playing about on my computer, and the next there were all these deputations from world governments offering me honorary doctorates. Anyhow, where was I? Oh yes, Tracy. Nice kid. Did I mention she was a nice kid?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ah. Sorry. Actually, it all started because every time I looked round, it seemed as if she had her handbag open and one of those powder compact things in her hand, and she was looking at her face in the little mirror. And every time I saw that I used to say to myself, “Who’s the fairest of them all?” And that sort of set me thinking.’

  Fang decided that concentrating on what the little man was saying was probably counterproductive and might even eventually fry his brain.

  ‘Anyhow, when I wrote Mirrors she became the wicked queen, and I was teaching her to run the system by herself. Then,’ he added with a sigh, ‘came the accident with the bucket.’

  ‘Accident. Bucket.’

  ‘Well, more with the mop than the bucket. She tried my cleaning-up program, but it sort of went wrong and created one of those Groundhog Day loops, the kind that run the same program endlessly over and over again until your hard drive falls to bits. In this case, the whole castle got filled up with self-propelled mops and flooded out with soapsuds. I got trapped by the flood and ran for it, and then I got lost, ended up down here and found I couldn’t get out again. Because of the loop, I think. I’ve had plenty of time to think it over, and I suspect what happened is that two mirrors somehow managed to end up facing each other, with me trapped in the middle…’

  Fang had no trouble visualising that. He shuddered.

  ‘So basically,’ he said, ‘you’re a wizard, right?’

  The man nodded. ‘That’s what they used to call us, computer wizards. I think it was meant as a compliment, but I’m not sure. Ambiguous term, really.’

  ‘So.’ He took a deep breath. ‘You can, um, turn people into things, right?’

  ‘Oh yes, piece of cake,’ the little man replied. ‘I can turn you back into a wolf, no trouble at all.’

  Fang stared. ‘You know—’

  ‘Like I said, I wrote the code. Shall I do it now?’

  ‘Yes. Yes please. I can’t—’

  Pfzzz.

  ‘—Woof.’

  ‘Better now?’

  Fang, a large grey timber-wolf with a lolling tongue and staring red eyes, wagged his tail furiously. ‘Woof!’ he said; and then paused and listened to what he’d just said. ‘Woof?’ he queried.

  ‘Oh, play fair, please,’ the little bald man protested. ‘You said you wanted to be turned back into a wolf, so that’s what I did. And when you’re a wolf, you’re not supposed to be able to talk. It was only the mess-up in the code wh
en the system crashed that gave you the ability. Can’t you remember what it used to be like? Before the crash, I mean?’

  ‘Woof. Woof.’

  ‘But that’s silly,’ replied the little man. ‘You were Fang the non-talking big bad wolf for ages and ages. You must be able to remember something.’

  ‘Woof. Woof woof. Woof.”

  ‘Honestly? Well, you surprise me, you really do. Obviously the problem’s more serious than I’d guessed. If only I could get out of this place,’ he added with a deep sigh, ‘I could get it fixed.’

  ‘Woof?’

  ‘He’s right, you know,’ Julian added, coming out from behind the granite coffin where he’d been hiding just in case the little bald man really was a Thing (or, worse still, Desmond or Eugene in a latex mask). ‘You should be able to get out, if we could get in. Maybe whatever’s been keeping you down here was wiped out along with the rest of the system.’

  ‘That’s—’ The little man peered at Julian over his spectacles. ‘You’re one of the Three Little Pigs, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Julian?’

  Julian nodded.

  ‘And you seem to understand something about how the system works,’ the little man went on, ‘which is why, though they don’t know it themselves, your brothers are trying to kill you. They think you’ve gone so dreadfully mad that you’ve got to be stopped at all costs.’

  Julian shivered. ‘And that’s all because of the mix-up, is it? What you called the crash?’

  The little man shook his head sadly. ‘Not that simple, I’m afraid. You see, on top of the original crash — which I strongly suspect was no accident, by the way; did you happen to meet a couple of strangers in grey suits earlier on? Hm, thought so. It’s depressing when you think that actually they’re my employees. Still, that’s corporate politics for you. Sorry, where was I? Quite apart from the original crash, there’s several other rather tiresome people fiddling about with the system, and that’s been causing all sorts of further problems. Quite simple to put right,’ he added, ‘if only I could get out of here.’

  Julian shrugged. ‘Maybe you can. Have you tried?’

  ‘Have I tried?’ the little man repeated. ‘Have I tried? Well no, now you come to mention it. At least, not since the crash. You know, it might be a rather interesting experiment, don’t you think?’

  Julian tried to imagine what it must have been like; two hundred years trapped in a dark crypt, when you knew that it was all just a fairytale anyway. ‘You could say that,’ he replied. ‘How will you know if it’s stopped working?’

  The little man smiled. ‘When I walk up the stairs and actually manage to get to the top,’ he replied. ‘As simple as that. In this business,’ he added, ‘things are rarely difficult. They’re possible or they’re impossible; no grey areas where things like difficulty can breed. Shall we go?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Woof.’

  ‘Fine,’ said the little man, standing up with an enormous effort and nearly collapsing again. ‘Let’s go, then. After you.’

  Although it’s open to the public (in roughly the same way as a spider’s web is open to visiting flies) there is no readily available guide-book to this castle. Which is not to say there isn’t a guide-book; it’s just that it’s twice as big as the castle itself.

  If you were to get a crane as high as Kilimanjaro and a winch capable of pulling the moon down out of orbit, you could turn to page 254,488,057,294,618 of the guide-book, where you’d find a plan showing the corridor that leads from the back of the chapel to the minstrels’ gallery above the door of the great hall. Twenty-seven thousand-plus pages further on, you’d find another plan showing the secret passage from the great hall that comes up through a trapdoor in the woods a mere five yards or so away from the spot where Snow White clobbered the ex-blind-mouse, Souris. From there, turn back 908,415,012 pages and you’ll see a diagram of the Baron’s laboratory, clearly showing the passageway that connects it to the great hall. They are all, of course, the same passageway. There’s only one passageway in the whole castle.

  First came Snow White, dragging the unconscious body of Souris. She dumped her burden on the steps of the dais on which the high table stood, straightened her back and used some coarse and unimaginative language. Then she heard a shuffling noise, looked over her shoulder and saw…

  A wolf, a pig and a doddery old man with a bald head and round glasses. They didn’t notice her at first; the old man was making a beeline straight for a place on the wall where a rectangular outline marked in discoloured whitewash and grime showed where a large mirror had once been. He took in the absence of mirror, sat down on a bench and used coarse and unimaginative language, until the sound of running feet, angry shouting and distant gunfire made him turn his head and see.

  A blonde girl and a scruffy-looking boy running out of the archway where the corridor came into the hall, closely followed by quaintly costumed halberdiers with assault rifles, who were just about to catch up with them when they ran lickety-split into the small knot of samurai who were chasing a beautiful but dangerous-looking young woman in the opposite direction…

  But before any serious mayhem could get under way, a side door burst open under the weight of a battering-ram swung with great enthusiasm by two pigs, who were followed by a motley collection of dwarves and Brothers Grimm, their hands securely tied behind their backs with a length of rope lashed to the carriage of the ram.

  While at opposite ends of the gallery two doors opened, to admit a flustered-looking elf and another, extremely bewildered-looking dwarf with cobweb in his beard…

  At which point, everything froze.

  Chapter 13

  The accountant sat up.

  He’d been dreaming again; a most bizarre dream, in which a substantial number of his clients had gathered together in the great hall of the wicked queen’s castle and then vanished in a cloud of glittering pixels. He shook his head, as if trying to make the dream fall out of his ear. Usually, his dreams dealt with profit and loss accounts, quarterly statements, double grossing-up of advance corporation tax and other relevant issues. He enjoyed his dreams. Quite often they were so specific, he was able to charge his clients for having them. This sort of thing was as unwelcome as it was unfamiliar.

  In the top left-hand corner of his office, he noticed, there was a cobweb. It wasn’t a particularly fine example of the genre, more of a wispy mess that looked like the sort of candy floss you might expect to eat in the house of Lucrezia Borgia. It wasn’t the sort of thing any self-respecting fly would be seen dead, let alone frantically struggling, in, obviously produced by a spider who didn’t take much pride in its handiwork (spiders don’t weave gossamer with their hands, but delicacy of expression forbids a more apt choice of words). It was quivering, vibrating even, as if in tune with a million wave-patterns that rushed into it from every side (and a fat lot of good that’d be to a hungry spider; can’t eat radio signals, can they?) and were caught and held in the threads until they solidified into tiny droplets of water that slid down the micron-thick wires and fell, like small, fat shooting stars, to join the rapidly growing pool that was collecting in the accountant’s empty coffee-cup.

  There’s a thought, the accountant mused. A web that catches messages from all over the world. A world-wide web. What possible use could it ever be, though?

  Hello. Hello? HELLO!

  The accountant reached for the nearest file and opened it.

  For pity’s sake, Grimm, switch your bloody modem on! Though why I’m telling you to switch it on when you can’t hear me, because if you could hear me it’d mean you’d already have switched your modem on… Oh God, just listen to me, I’m starting to babble. Has anybody in the building got a stamp I could borrow?

  The web shuddered a little, though there wasn’t a draught. A young bluebottle, who’d just passed his flying test and was really stretching his wings for the first time, hadn’t quite slowed down quickly enough. Bugger, it thought, as the foul sticky stuff refuse
d to let it have its legs back; then, since flies are fatalistic creatures, it stopped struggling and hung upside down, waiting for the main event. Nothing happened. Just my luck, the bluebottle reflected, first time out on my own and I run smack into the bogies.

  Curious; it was almost as if it could hear voices — some people called Softcore in a place so far away it couldn’t possibly ever matter were apparently trying to talk to two friends of theirs called Grimm, to ask them why they hadn’t reported back yet, and also what the explanation was for the unusual activity they were monitoring on [some technical stuff that the bluebottle couldn’t and didn’t really want to understand] and did that mean the Crazy Old Bastard was up to something?

  All very peculiar, the bluebottle thought; and it’ll never replace the blindfold and last cigarette. You can’t beat the old ways at a time like this.

  Below, the accountant’s head began to droop again. It slid forward and hung from his neck like an over-ripe pear on a thin branch. His eyes closed; then opened again. He could see a tiny reflection of himself in the pool of condensation that had gathered in the bottom of his cup.

  ‘Running DOS,’ he said. ‘Please wait.’

  We’ve been waiting long enough as it is, you idle bloody— Hang on. You’re not Neville Grimm. Who the devil are you?

  ‘Bad command or fi—’

  Don’t give me any of that crap, please. I write this garbage, remember? Save it for the customers. And listen; I need to talk to Neville Grimm, urgently. Can you pass on the message?

  The accountant’s eyes glazed over, then blinked seven times. ‘Channel now open,’ he said. ‘Please transmit now.’

  Neville. Neville, you dozy… Hey, you. I thought you said you’d put me in touch with Nev Grimm. All I’m getting is static.