My Hero (35 page)

 

‘Thought you were going to shoot off the lock.'

‘Well?'

‘What you have just shot off,' Regalian said slowly, ‘was in fact the door handle.'

‘Oh.'

Regalian fetched a sigh up from sock-level and sat down, his back to the tunnel wall. Pretty soon, he would be knee-deep in goblins; not a pleasant prospect, if he knew goblins, which he did, rather better than he'd have wished if he'd had any say in the matter, which he hadn't. Say in the matter, now he came to think of it, had been conspicuously absent from his life for as long as he could remember, right up to the moment when Jane had turned him loose to embark on this damnfool adventure. Was it coincidence, he wondered, that ever since he'd been the master of his fate and the captain of his soul, one cock-up had, so to speak, pressed another's heel in a headlong stampede to happen to him? Probably not. The thought
that he was worse at arranging his own life than Jane, who was a nice kid but about as bright as the stairwell light in a cheap hotel, didn't cheer him up particularly. The opposite, in fact.

I wish, he caught himself thinking, I was back home in the Hubworld. For one thing, you got a better class of goblin in the Hubworld. More to the point, however many of the little buggers you found charging towards you, it was certain sure that you'd be more than a match for them. True, you did actually have to smite them, and they were perfectly capable of giving you a wicked nip in the ankle if you weren't careful; but at least you knew it was all going to be all right, because you were the hero. Right now, you're still the hero, but there are no guarantees whatsoever.

Thinks . . .

But this is still Fiction, and I'm still me. If I wasn't still the hero, this wouldn't be happening to me; it'd be some other poor bugger hunched in this lousy tunnel waiting for the goblins to show. And if I'm still the hero, then . . .

‘Howdy.'

Regalian looked up, puzzled. ‘You?'

‘Reckon so.'

‘I was expecting goblins.'

Max allowed himself a lazy smile. Actually, he was trying to cut down, but the situation seemed to justify the indulgence. ‘They'll be along directly. Reckon I got longer legs, is all.' He raised the rifle to hip level. ‘Won't be needing them, anyhow,' he added. ‘On your feet, partner. Little lady wants a word with you.'

Regalian looked at the muzzle of the rifle, remembered the position of the lock on the door behind him, and made a few swift calculations of trajectory. ‘Get stuffed,' he said.

‘Pardon me?'

‘Go play with yourself,' Regalian elucidated. ‘Shove off. Go away.'

‘Reckon you can't have heard me right, mister. On your feet - that's if you reckon on doin' much more livin' around these parts.'

Thanks to his basic training at character school, Regalian was able to sneer. He did so. ‘Nuts to you. Go on, shoot me.'

‘You said it, buster.' Max shrugged and pulled the trigger. At the moment when the sear slipped out of the hammer notch, Regalian threw himself forward and rolled. The bullet from Max's rifle cleared the top of his head by eight thousandths of an inch, hit the doorframe and smashed the lock. The door creaked and swung inwards.

‘Sheeit,' Max exclaimed, disgusted; but before he could jack another round into the Winchester's chamber, Regalian headbutted him in the stomach and threw him across the tunnel, then dived like an American footballer through the open door, hit the ground, swore, kicked the door shut with his foot and looked round for something to wedge it shut with. Quite by chance there was a section of railway sleeper of precisely the right length leaning against the wall, just handy. He grabbed it, jammed it in place and listened. He hoped very much that Max would try shoulder-charging it. A clatter of footsteps, a bang on the door and a cry of pain followed, and Regalian smiled contentedly.

‘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 most 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?'