by Tom Holt
He hadn’t planned on being trapped inside when it went off.
But that wasn’t a serious problem. All he had to do to get out of trouble was what he in fact did — Which was to reach out four inches to his left, feel for the power socket and pull out the plug.
‘That’s it, is it?’ Carl said, clearly disappointed.
Mr Dawes sighed. His definition of suffering fools gladly was giving them a little wave of commiseration as the man in the black hood kicked away the stool from under their feet.
‘What were you expecting, exactly?’ he said. ‘Lethal feedback? All of us trapped the wrong side of the screen and looking for something big and heavy to break the glass with? Grow up, son; and while you’re at it, get a life. It’s only a game.’
‘But…’ Carl held his peace, albeit unwillingly. Not all that long ago, he was sure, he’d been a little wooden puppet, and then a huge humanoid monstrosity with a bolt through his neck; he could remember it all as clearly as if it were yesterday; except that he’d been up all the night before last and had spent yesterday fast asleep. Now he thought about it hard, he couldn’t remember a thing.
They had rematerialised in an office. It was a nice office. It was the sort of office God would have liked to have if only He’d had as much money as Mr Dawes. The Seven Years War was fought to decide who owned an area rather smaller than the square of carpet under Mr Dawes’s desk.
‘In fact,’ Mr Dawes went on, as he lit a cigar the size of a giant redwood, ‘it’s all quite simple.’ Back here, he was quite definitely twenty-nine; a youngish, shortish twenty-nine, the baby-faced sort that gets exceptionally good value out of each razor-blade. Such a small man behind such a big desk; the bizarre incongruity of it made some of the special effects Sis’d seen on the other side of the looking-glass seem positively mundane. ‘There were these guys. They used to be on the board of Softcore till quite recently.’
‘How recently?’ Sis interrupted. Mr Dawes grinned and glanced at his watch.
‘About three minutes ago,’ he replied. ‘Anyhow, they had the same dumb idea about how the domain works as your kid brother here. They thought I could be stranded there permanently.’
‘Gosh,’ Sis said. ‘How silly.’
The door opened, and a secretary brought in the coffee. A jug and three cups.
‘Quite,’ Mr Dawes said. ‘So I stranded them there instead.’
Sis spilt hot coffee down her front. ‘But I thought you said it was all just a game,’ she stuttered. ‘Not for real at all, you said.’
Mr Dawes shrugged. ‘There’s real,’ he replied airily, ‘and then again, there’s real. You want to know how real it is, you go down to the ninety-eighth floor and look for Eileen Suslowicz, George McDougall and Neville Chang. If you can find them,’ he added, stirring his coffee, ‘I’ll give you the company.’
Sis thought for a moment. ‘Snow White,’ she said.
Mr Dawes nodded. ‘That was Eileen. George and Neville were the Grimm boys. You run across them?’
Sis nodded. ‘The wick— sorry, Tracy said they weren’t from inside the, um, domain.’
‘Tracy’s a good kid,’ Mr Dawes said, with a faint hint of fondness in his voice; the sort of slightly mellow tone you might expect from the head of Strategic Air Command talking about his favourite warhead. ‘On reflection — sorry, no pun intended — maybe I should have told her more about what was going on inside the corporation. But then she’d have been worried, afraid she couldn’t handle it herself. Much better she thought they were only pretend people.’
‘I see.’ Sis made a quick inventory on her fingers. ‘So there’s the three bad guys—’
‘Not bad,’ said Mr Dawes. ‘Misguided.’
‘The three misguided guys,’ Sis corrected, ‘and Tracy, all still stuck down there. That’s four real people—’
‘Five, actually. There’s also our chief accountant. But he prefers it down there. Reckons he gets far more work done. He’s a very sad man. You met him, yes?’
Sis nodded. ‘Five people,’ she said. ‘And they might as well be dead.’
Mr Dawes made a vague gesture. ‘Let’s call it living in a world of their own. Remember, with the best will in the world, they started it. What else would you have me do?’
Sis frowned. ‘You could go back and rescue them. And don’t say it’s not possible,’ she added sternly, ‘because I don’t believe you.’
Mr Dawes stood up and walked to the window, from which you could clearly see the curvature of the Earth. ‘Maybe I haven’t explained it clearly enough,’ he said. ‘It’s a fault I have, I know. Especially when I’m talking to people who aren’t in the business. I can’t go back there,’ he said, leaning on the windowsill, ‘because there’s no there to go back to. It’s a computer simulation, that’s all. And all I had to do to leave it was pull out the plug and switch off the machine.’
‘But that can’t be right,’ Sis protested vehemently. ‘You said yourself, this Eileen woman who was Snow White, and the other two—’
‘Snow White,’ said Mr Dawes quietly. ‘The Brothers Grimm. One’s a girl from a fairy story, the other two have been dead for a hundred years. That’s why they don’t exist, kid. Don’t you see that?’
‘But we were there. And we exist.’
‘Ah.’ Mr Dawes’s smile was reflected in the glass of the window. ‘But we’re real people.’ He drew on his cigar, and the smoke obscured the reflection. ‘Neat, huh? So much better than having them buried in concrete or dumped in the Bay. And so simple, you could say it was child’s play. Hey, kid,’ he added, turning to Carl, who’d gone an unwholesome shade of green. ‘You don’t like coffee? I’ll tell Evette to go fetch you some milk.’
‘You arranged it all,’ Sis said, very quietly. ‘You set it all up just so they’d try and get you, and you could get them. That’s…’
‘Business,’ Mr Dawes replied. ‘And pleasure too, of course. I like squashing bugs.’
More than anything else in the entire world, Sis wanted to go home. Mum’d be going frantic for one thing; for another, there was something about Mr Dawes and his office and his soft, quite pleasant way of talking that made her want to hide under the bed, probably for the rest of her life. But there was still one question she badly needed the answer to.
‘I still don’t understand,’ she said. ‘They were real people, just like you and me. When you pulled the plug, we all just found ourselves back here, in this building…’
‘My building,’ said Mr Dawes. ‘Which you and your brothers broke into. But I’m not going to call the police or anything, even though you did make things a little hard for me back there.’
‘All right,’ Sis said. ‘We’re sorry. We didn’t mean to make such a mess. But if we’re all real and it was all just a computer thing, how can they still be there, like you said? It’s just not…’
Mr Dawes sighed. ‘You want to know the answer, don’t you? Okay, you want it, you can have it. Follow me, and on your own head be it.’
He led the way down a long corridor to a service lift that went either up or down (there was no way of knowing) for a very long time; and then the door opened and they were in a large, bare room with a concrete floor and no windows. In the middle of the room was a trio of free-standing computer workstations surrounded by three chairs. In the chairs sat three people, a woman and two men: Snow White and the Brothers Grimm.
‘George and Neville you already know,’ said Mr Dawes. ‘And you saw Eileen briefly back in the great hall. You know, the resemblance is really kinda striking.’
All three were dressed in white surgical gowns; they had black plastic helmets and goggles on their heads, wires connected up to various parts of their bodies and plastic tubes going in and out of them like an Underground map. ‘They’re alive all right,’ said Mr Dawes, matter of factly. ‘And perfectly real. Well, as real as they ever were. Trust me, I’m a computer bore. I know about these things.’
Sis didn’t want to look, but she
found that she had to. ‘They look awful,’ she said at last.
Mr Dawes nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But it’s cheaper than litigation and more legal than murder, and the joy of it is, they did all this themselves. I’m not sure I even have the legal right to unplug them. I shall carry on paying their salaries,’ he added. ‘It’ll just about cover the cost of keeping them like this.’
A spasm of something like pain flitted across Snow White’s lovely face. Fairest of them all, no question.
‘She’s alive,’ Sis protested. ‘And she’s here, in real life.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Mr Dawes, ‘but she doesn’t know that. Maybe it’s all a matter of opinion, anyway. I mean, it all really comes down to what you’re prepared to believe.’
‘Can we go now, please?’ Sis said. ‘I’m truly sorry I asked now.’
She turned her back on the three of them (three little chairs, three little computers, who’s been climbing about in my head?) and walked quickly to the door.
‘Really,’ she said, as Mr Dawes keyed in the security code, ‘really and truly, they’re dead, aren’t they?’
Mr Dawes looked at her with no discernible expression. ‘Let’s just say they’re away with the fairies,’ he replied gravely. ‘Time you were getting home.’
Chapter 14
Once upon a time there was a little house in a big wood. It was a dear little house. It was adorable. The glass in its small, leaded windows was so old and distorted by age and authenticity that light stood about as much chance of getting in through them as an unemployed Libyan has of getting into the United States, and the sheer weight of the climbing roses on the front elevation was threatening to pull the house’s face off and dump it around the front door in dusty heaps. It had been photographed so often you could almost see it hold its thatch back with both hands and show the cameraman a bit of basement.
And in the cottage there lived a cute little girl called Snow White, along with seven dwarf samurai. And three bears. And three little pigs. And three blind mice. And a cross-dressing werewolf. And that was just the downstairs parlour.
Ask the residents of Own Goal Cottage (such a pretty name, even if nobody has a clue why it’s called that) about the reasons for the overcrowding, and if they’ll admit that the place is a wee bit cramped (which is by no means certain) they’ll be sure to tell you about the great flood; the flood in which all the other cottages in the domain were washed away, leaving only this place and Suckerbet Castle still standing. Just don’t bother asking when this flood was, because they won’t remember.
On the wall of the parlour there hung a big mirror in an ornate gilded plaster frame; and it had a crack in it that ran diagonally across the face. Even before it was broken it hadn’t been much good, of course, for it was a distorting mirror, bought by Dumpy the dwarf from a travelling circus for the sole reason that it was cheap.
In front of the mirror one fine sunny morning stood Snow White, in her prettiest gingham dress, with her brightest and most cheerful pink ribbons in her hair. She smiled at it, wedged her face into a demure smile, and asked:
‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?’
In the cracked mirror there appeared a rough impression of what her face might look like if it was inadvertently put in a blender. One eye was six inches higher than the other, the two halves of her nose made her look as if she’d been drawn by Picasso and then got in a fight with a barful of marines, and her mouth was a fat red slug trying to climb a ladder.
‘You, O Snow White,’ said the mirror, ‘are the fairest of them all.’
Snow White preened herself like a contented cat, even though she knew the mirror said exactly the same thing to everybody who asked the question. It had worried her for a bit, until nice Mr Hiroshige had explained to her that since all things are, cosmically speaking, One, all reflections are the same reflection and so everybody is by definition the fairest. Although she was somewhat disappointed, in the end she came to the conclusion that that was probably the best way to deal with the matter. After all, where there is no competition there’s no conflict, and where there’s no conflict there’s peace. Except in this case, when the flying pigs swoop too low and the sonic boom breaks all the glass in the greenhouse. Fortunately, that only tended to happen once in a blue moon; say, on average, every sixty-two days.
‘Doesn’t necessarily mean beautiful, either,’ Eugene whispered to Julian behind his trotter. ‘It could mean all sorts of things besides that. Gould just mean the one with the most mouse-coloured hair.’
Julian made a noise that eloquently if somewhat vulgarly communicated his scepticism by blowing air through his snout. ‘Just because she’s the fairest,’ he muttered, ‘I still don’t see why that gives her the right to boss us around. That’s twice this week she’s stopped my choccy bicky allowance for treading mud on the carpet, and it wasn’t even me that did it.’
Eugene drew his trotter along the point of his chin thoughtfully. ‘You know what,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking, wouldn’t it be nice if we had a place of our own? You know, a nice little house just for the three of us.’
Julian considered the proposition, then dismissed it. ‘Face facts,’ he said. ‘With none of us working we’d never get a mortgage.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of buying,’ Eugene replied. ‘How’d it be if we built it ourselves?’
‘What, us? Just the three of us?’ Julian’s nostrils twitched. ‘What the hell do we know about building houses?’
‘We could learn,’ Eugene said. ‘Can’t be all that difficult, can it? We could build it out of— oh, I don’t know, how about straw?’
‘Straw,’ Julian repeated, a thoughtful expression on his face. ‘Actually that’s not a bad idea. I mean, it’s cheap, it’s good insulation, it’s no bother to move about. And if hayricks and stuff stay up, why not a house? The only problem I can see is spontaneous combustion in the hot weather, when the residual moisture content starts to ferment. I gather that’s the cause of seventy-nine-point-three per cent of all hayrick fires.’
Eugene chewed his lip. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘How about sticks? Sticks are really cheap.’
‘True,’ Julian said, as he unearthed a truffle. ‘And you avoid the spontaneous combustion problem quite neatly. But then you run into your strength-of-materials hassles. You’d have to get the equations just right, or you’d end up with the whole lot around your ears.’
‘Okay,’ Eugene said, with just a hint of exasperation. ‘Forget straw and sticks. What about brick? Plain, honest-to-God bricks and mortar? You can’t go wrong.’
Julian shook his head. ‘Don’t you believe it,’ he replied. ‘The ground’s way too soft around here, you’d never be able to get proper foundations. You’d come home one evening and find the whole thing on its side, like a stag beetle that can’t get up again. Sorry, but bricks are a definite no-no in these parts.’
Eugene closed his eyes. ‘Just a minute,’ he said. ‘Dammit, the answer’s as plain as the snout on your face. How about straw and sticks and bricks? Thatched roof to reduce weight, wooden rafters, lintels and floorboards, the rest of the fabric in brickwork? Though I say so myself as shouldn’t, it’s bloody brilliant. Well?’
Grudgingly, Julian nodded. ‘Can’t see much wrong with it myself,’ he replied. ‘Taken at face value, of course. We’d have to draw up proper plans, do the maths—’
‘You could do that. You’re ever so good at that sort of thing.’
Julian nodded to acknowledge the self-evident truth. ‘And I reckon I know where I could lay my trotters on a supply of brick, definitely at trade, maybe cheaper.’ Already he’d started tracing sketches in the dust with his nose. ‘Of course, we’d have to get someone in to lay the damp-proof course…’
While he was talking, something moved away in the distance, nearly out of sight of the cottage, over by the patch of marshy ground where the old cesspit had been. At first it was just a quiver on the surface of the slime; then t
here was a deeply resonant glopping noise, and a long, thin canine muzzle forced its way to the surface into the air. It sneezed; then the rest of a wolf’s head followed it, and finally the rest of the wolf. It was, of course, filthy dirty, its fur plastered to its skull with creamy black yuck, and the smell was somewhat distressing.
‘Woof,’ muttered the big bad wolf; then he sneezed again. How long he’d been down there, he had no idea. Fortuitously, he had fallen into a large air-pocket, just enough to keep him going while he gathered his strength for the monumental effort of forcing a way out. Now he was hungry and thirsty, he felt horrendously squalid and he had a doozy of a cold. His priorities were revenge and a nice hot bath, in no particular order.
As soon as he’d shaken the loose stuff out of his coat he looked round and saw the cottage. It looked good. There’d be all sorts of useful commodities in there; things (or people) to eat, hot water, clean towels, maybe even a basket lined with an old blanket where he could get a good night’s sleep. And what was more, someone had been up on the roof putting back a fallen roof tile and had left a ladder leaning up against a wall. It’d be a piece of cake, climbing (a-a-a-CHOO!) up on the roof, sliding down the chimney, in like Flynn before you could say pork teriyaki. Having wiped further crud out of his eyes with the back of his paw, he set off across the clearing at a loping run.
Inside the cottage, an argument was raging. Mr Nikko was trying to get Baby Bear to understand that no, he hadn’t been sitting in her chair, it was too small for him and he simply wouldn’t fit; Mummy Bear was complaining loudly that the damned mice had been nibbling the cheese again and since there were seven grown men with blasted great swords around the place, couldn’t something be done about it, because if not she was going to commandeer one of said blasted great swords and cut the little perishers’ tails off. Dumpy the dwarf, meanwhile, was protesting that his back was killing him and there was no way he was going off to work today, not for all the cocaine in Nicaragua. The only sound that could be heard above all these discordant voices was Snow White, announcing that she wanted a nice warm bath and it was Mr Miroku’s turn to light the fire under the copper. This did at least have the effect of ending the civil disturbances like a volley of rubber bullets; and Mr Miroku, grumbling softly under his breath, got up out of his comfy armchair and did as he was told.