My Hero (40 page)

‘She's crazy,' said the boy to nobody in particular. ‘My teacher says people who talk to people who aren't there are crazy and ought to be locked up, otherwise they turn into serial killers and go around stabbing people.'

‘Mummy, Kieron's being horrible again, tell him to stop.'

‘Kieron . . .'

‘Central Casting? Hello? Is anybody there? Look, what the bloody hell . . . ?'

‘Mummy, Kieron's upset Hamlet and made him cry. Make Kieron go to his room, Mummy.'

‘What the devil is this?' Hamlet growled. ‘And how do I get out?'

‘I think Sarah ought to go to her room,' said Kieron,
pouring gravy into the ravine between the mashed potato mountain and the cabbage swamp. ‘She's the one who's gone crazy and started talking to people who aren't there.'

‘What exactly do you mean by that?'

‘Perfectly good job? You call being some brat's imaginary friend a perfectly good job? In your dreams, chum.'

‘Kieron, leave Sarah
alone
. Oh God, now look what you've done. Go and fetch a cloth.'

‘Mummy, Kieron's spilt gravy all over Hamlet's sleeve. That's not
fair
, Mummy.'

‘Did you say a Mister Blobby cartoon?'

‘On reflection,' said Hamlet slowly, ‘and looking at it, you know, holistically, I can see where the character has potential. Okay, a limited audience, but certainly potential. I'll take it.'

‘Kieron?
Kieron!
'

‘Mummy, Hamlet's gone ever such a funny colour. Do you think he's going to be sick?'

 

Titania woke up.

What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?
It was, she realised, her voice. And the man standing over her, smelling of vinegar, sweat and something extremely pungent which might well have been jute, had a long, hairy snout and enormous ears. Hey ho, back to work again.

Now what, she asked herself, the hell was all that about?

 

The Scholfield woke up.

The ceiling had turned, it noticed, to glass; and the floor was green baize. And someone had tied a ticket to its trigger guard reading
$10 garanteid one carful oner
.

‘Where am I?' it murmured.

‘Hogan's Ironmongery and Provisions,' replied a battered-looking Remington. ‘Main Street. Dodge City. Second hand, sorry, I beg your pardon, pre-owned section, main display case. Where'd you come from, then? Last time I looked, you were a ratty ole Webley with a knackered cylinder axis pin.'

‘I heard that.'

‘Oh, he's still here, then. Don't mind him, he's British, they're all a bit snotty.'

‘I just got here,' murmured the Scholfield thoughtfully. ‘Are we for sale, then, or what?'

The Remington snickered quietly. ‘Could say that,' it replied. ‘More like Special Offer, actually. Ole man
Hogan, he'll be giving us away free with them colourfast cotton-rich shirts next.'

‘No demand,' added a nickel-plated Colt Navy in the corner of the case. ‘Quiet town, this.'

‘
Dodge City!
'

‘Armpit of the goddamn galaxy,' sighed the Remington. ‘When they're not in church they're sitting at home embroidering samplers. No injuns. A body could rust right through and nobody'd care a blind cuss.'

With a terrific effort, the Scholfield moved its barrel thirty thousandths of an inch to the left, until it was able to see the date on the copy of the
Dodge City Tribune
which someone had left lying on top of the case. June 15th, 1883.

Marvellous, muttered the Scholfield to itself, absolutely marvellous. Thanks to my quick thinking, ingenuity and imaginatively flexible approach to the rules of heroic fiction, there's a happy ending. All the rest of the gang are probably on some amazingly wonderful new assignment somewhere as a reward, and what do I get? I end up in a dusty case in a junk shop in a, open quote, quiet town, close quote. Comes of being a gun, I suppose. They never stop and think a gun's maybe got feelings too. Drop us; do we not break? Take us apart; do our springs not fly across the room and disappear forever behind the sofa? Has not a gun screws, pins, cylinder latch bolts . . . ?

Just then the bell over the shop door rang, and a tall, dark man with long black hair and a bushy moustache strode across the threshold. The storekeeper looked up from his ledgers and switched on a retailer's special smile.

‘Good day,' he simpered. ‘Mr Hickock, ain't it? How're you settling in down at the Old Parsonage?'

‘Swell,' replied the stranger. ‘Say, I'm interested in buying a pistol. You got any?'

The Scholfield held its breath . . .

Skinner woke up.

The first thing that he noticed was that his coffee had gone stone cold. The second was the broken window.

‘Goddamn kids,' he muttered.

Among the things he didn't notice was the lack of a Scholfield revolver in his desk drawer, largely because (as things now stood) he didn't expect there to be one. He'd never owned a Scholfield. Firearms in general made him nervous, which was one of the reasons why he'd given up writing cowboy stories years ago and now confined himself to wholesome tales for kiddies with a high fluffy-bunny-to-page ratio and no sex and violence whatsoever.

More money in it, too.

Under his elbows was the keyboard of his trusty Remington typewriter, and he observed with a scowl that, by falling asleep on it, he had caused it to type
oghurqwoieh
, which wasn't the sort of word his readership could relate to. Most of his readers had difficulty with
horse
and
cow
, let alone
oghurqwoieh
. He reached for the typewriter rubber.

And then he remembered his dream. Weird, he told himself as the mental review ended, wasn't the word for it. One hell of a dream; and a tiny part of him that hadn't quite got used to the idea that any book by A. Skinner had to have at least five furry animals in the first two paragraphs made the tentative suggestion that he might care to write it down while it was still fresh and use it for something. Lord only knew what, but something.

Well, quite. A dream in which he'd travelled to a strange and terrifying place where the characters in books had all come to life; in which he had a short but extremely instructive liaison with the Queen of Elfland before being chased about by mad gunmen, and . . . Hell, there was more, but it was leaking out like ink from a broken fountain pen. It was gone. Pity.

He was hungry. He could murder a big plate of stinging nettles . . .

Stinging nettles?

Hay?

Carrots?

He shook his head, finished rubbing out
oghurqwoieh
and phoned the glazier.

 

Jane woke up.

Third time this week she'd fallen asleep in front of the screen; and this time, her forehead had hit the keyboard, producing a three-inch row of asterisks. She deleted them, and glanced up to see where she'd got to.

Ah yes. The bit where Regalian gets killed.

She hesitated, and frowned. Hang on a minute, she thought, he's the damn hero. What do you think you're . . . ?

Her fingers started to move across the keys. This was an unusual occurrence in itself, since Jane was a lifelong member of the two-fingers-and-keep-looking-down school of typing, and whenever she tried to touch-type her words ended up more full of buckshee consonants than a watermelon is full of pips. Without slowing down production in any way, she glanced up at the screen to have a look at whatever the devil it was she was churning out.

‘Oh for crying out loud,' Jane said, and pressed the delete key. Nothing happened. Her left hand was still typing. She couldn't make it stop.

Just a cotton-picking minute. He didn't shoot Max, it was the other way round. I think. And who the hell is this Max guy anyhow?

‘No, please,' Jane said. ‘You can't make me say tortured frame, whoever you are, it's just not fair.'

‘Hey,' Jane objected aloud, ‘knock it off, sister. I want to know what's been going on.'

Jane leaned back in her chair and sat on her hands. For
a fraction of a second there, she'd almost believed . . .

No, the hell with that. Too many late nights, too much strong coffee. She pressed BLOCK, then DELETE. Nothing happened.

The bloody thing was just out of warranty, too.

With a sigh, she reached forward, pulled the disk out of the machine and switched off. The screen went blank . . .

For a moment, and then letters began to appear. They were persistent buggers, because she could still see them with her eyes closed.

DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT, YOU'LL HAVE FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT IT IN TEN MINUTES OR SO. LOOK, SORRY ABOUT ALL THIS, YOU'LL NEED TO FIND YOURSELF A NEW HERO. PROBABLY JUST AS WELL. I WAS STARTING TO GET A BIT BLOODY PREDICTABLE.

SKINNER GOT BACK SAFELY, IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING. UNDER THE NEW REGIME HE WRITES SOPPY STUFF ABOUT BETSY BUNNY AND SARAH SQUIRREL. HE'S BETTER AT THAT THAN COWBOYS, BUT EVEN SO I DON'T THINK HE NEEDS TO START MAKING ROOM ON HIS MANTELPIECE FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE JUST YET.

WHAT ELSE? OH YES, HAMLET'S COME TO A BAD END.THAT IS, HE'S SORT OF PERMANENTLY STUCK IN REALITY, EXCEPT THAT HE'S BECOME SOME KIND OF DISEMBODIED THINGY. ACTUALLY IT'S GOOD STEADY WORK, THERE'S ALWAYS A CALL FOR SPOOKS AND STUFF WITH A SPECIES AS DEPRESSINGLY SUPERSTITIOUS AS YOURS. MICKEY MOUSE IS HAMLET NOW. IN FACT THEY'RE RECASTING THE WHOLE BLOODY THING. I HEAR TOM AND JERRY HAVE GOT ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN AND
THE GHOST IS NOW MR MAGOO. PROBABLY BE AN IMPROVEMENT.

HEY JANE, IT WAS GREAT FUN BUT LET'S NOT DO IT AGAIN, OKAY?

CHEERIO FOR NOW.

The screen went blank.

Jane began to snore.

 

Regalian woke up.

It was cold, and dark. The only light was the afterglow of the green sky. He was alone.

‘I see,' he said aloud. ‘Right, fair enough. I didn't expect gratitude anyway, so I'm not disappointed. A souvenir would have been nice, a printed T-shirt or something, but what the hell.'

His voice sounded strangely hollow, almost artificial, or at least a long way off. There was sand under his feet. He checked to make sure he was wearing suitable shoes. He was. Good.

He tried to remember, but the last thing that he could bring to mind was Claudia's face, a Ralph Steadman caricature of rage and hatred, yelling, ‘You bastard, you'll never work in this business again!' Well, fine. Nobody loves a smartarse, and you're only as good as your last job.Who needs a hero who forgets to reload his gun before the final shoot-out?