My Hero (5 page)

‘No,' said Jane, thoughtfully, ‘not a wimp. Not,' she added, ‘as such. I mean, he's a deep and really quite complex character.'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘I . . .'

Beside Jane's bed, the alarm clock went off.

 

Livid sheets of blue fire rolled through the shed, flickering hideously. Oblivious, Albert knelt beside the workbench and howled at his creation.

The body on the workbench twitched; then, as another bolt of lightning seared through the already crackling air, it jerked convulsively, snapping the D-clamps as if they were made of porcelain, and sat upright.

It was alive. Heart beating. Lungs drawing. Tendons flexing.

All it needed now was a soul.

 

‘Yeah. Whoosat? Look, have you any idea what time it—?'

‘Be with you in a jiffy.'

S
lowly, it turned its head and stared at its Creator; who, for the very first time, began to wish he'd paid just a little bit more attention to the aesthetic side of things. True, when you're putting together a fast bowler out of whatever you can lay your hands on, you take what you can get and are thankful. Nevertheless . . .

‘Now then, Stanley lad,' muttered Norman, backing away and finding that the shed was rather smaller than he remembered. ‘Stay ont' workbench until I tell thee otherwise. Stanley! Be told!'

With an eerie grinding noise (
Oh bugger
, thought Norman,
forgot to oil t'eyelid bearings
) its eyes opened. And - graunch graunch, grind grind - blinked twice. Its lips mouthed noiselessly, as if it had suddenly discovered in mid sentence that it had forgotten how to speak.

‘What about,' squeaked Norman, ‘a nice cup of tea?'

A shudder ran through the Thing, and it made a little gurgling noise at the back of its throat. Norman tried walking backwards through the shed wall, ineffectually.

‘. . . And, by a sleep, to say we end, The heartache and the thousand natural shocks. That flesh is heir to, 'tis a
consummation Jesus bloody Christ where the fucking hell am I?' it said.

‘Dewsbury,' Norman replied.

‘Dewsbury?'

‘In Yorkshire.'

‘Yorkshire.' Slowly, the Thing raised a hand, rubbed its eyes and yelped. Specially roughened palms, for obtaining better purchase on a wet cricket ball, had been one of Norman's more satisfying design modifications. ‘That's in England, isn't it?'

Ordinarily, Norman would have had something to say about a remark like that. In this context, however, he simply nodded.

‘Ye gods,' snarled the Thing, swinging its legs off the workbench and getting unsteadily to its feet, ‘they did it! The slimy little sods actually did it! Just wait till I get my hands—'

‘Tha what?' Norman queried.

‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,' the Thing replied. ‘This time they actually did get me to England, all that crap with the pirates notwithstanding. I'll . . .' Something seemed to dawn on it, and it looked down. ‘Hoy!' it said. ‘That's not my body. What bloody practical joker's been mucking about with my body?'

That, as far as Norman was concerned, was it. With a terrified squeal he jumped back and hid himself behind the draught-excluder curtain that hung over the shed door. The Thing sighed.

‘Oh for crying out loud,' it said wearily. ‘Not another one. Not another ruddy ponce who thinks that sneaking round the back of the soft furnishings makes him invisible. Come out of there, you clown, I can see your blasted shoes poking out under the hem.'

The curtain twitched slightly, but that was all. The Thing shook its head sadly (
And the neck swivels
, muttered
Norman's subconscious.
Ah well, too late now
), selected a rubber hammer from the toolrack and applied it with modest but palpable force to where it calculated the kneecaps ought to be. Norman fell forwards through the curtain, barked his shin on the corner of the workbench and sat down clumsily in a big cardboard box full of offcuts.

‘Strewth,' continued the Thing, looking round the shed. ‘This is a bloody odd book we're in, if you ask me.'

‘Book?'

The Thing nodded. ‘Yeah,' it said. ‘You know, the book we're characters in. What's it about, by the way? Nobody saw fit to tell me before I left. Sorry if I startled you earlier, by the way, but it all took me a bit by surprise. Didn't know where I was for a moment back there. Still don't,' it added.

‘What's tha mean, book?' Norman mumbled. ‘This in't a book, tha daft ha'porth. This is like I said. Dewsbury.'

The Thing frowned, making a sort of crinkling noise in the process and causing Norman to make a mental note never again to use cheap glue on a job like this. ‘Is that some sort of play or something?' it said. ‘Because if it's not a book, then . . .'

‘Tin't a book,' yelled Norman frantically. ‘Don't tha understand? This is real bloody life!'

The Thing's jaw dropped (although, thanks to Norman's years of practice with the soldering iron, not off completely). ‘Real life?'

‘Of course it's flamin' real life.'

‘Oh.' The Thing's brows contracted again. ‘That can't be right, surely. Are you pulling my leg?'

Norman, who had a pretty good idea of what would happen if anyone tried pulling the Thing's leg (at least before the epoxy resin had a chance to dry), repressed an involuntary shudder. ‘Straight oop,' he replied.

‘But that's crazy. I'm a character. I can't come into real life.'

In the middle of all this, something occurred to Norman that made him turn white as a sheet and loosened the joints on his knees. Something he should have noticed before - immediately, in fact - if only he hadn't been sidetracked . . .

‘Here,' he said. ‘Tha doesn't sound Yorkshire.'

The Thing frowned. ‘What the hell are you blathering on about now?' it demanded.

‘Tha doesn't sound
like tha comes from Yorkshire
,' Norman screeched. ‘Tha sounds,' he ground on, articulating a fear that was beginning to gnaw his brain like worms in a rotten carcass, ‘like one of t'buggers on t'telly.'

The Thing shook its head. ‘Of course I don't sound Yorkshire, I'm a Dane,' it said. ‘Of all the damnfool . . .'

Norman's grip on sanity, which had been at the fingernails-slipping-off-tiny-ledge stage for months now, finally gave way; as was only reasonable, in the circumstances. To have devoted his life to the project, sacrificed everything, finally pulled it off - only to discover he had in fact created an
overseas player
. . . With a yowl like a banshee suddenly realising that its parking meter has just run out, he wrenched open the shed door and fled screaming into the night.

Hamlet scratched his head, trying to ignore the fact that doing so made large bits of it come away in his hand. ‘Be like that, then,' he said. ‘See if I care.'

He stood down and looked about him. In the corner of the shed, he noticed a biscuit tin lid, the shiny inside of which, he realised, would probably do service as a mirror . . .

‘Oh my
God
!' he said.

Nor (let's be honest about this) was he over-reacting. When a blunt, straightforward Dewsbury man builds a
human being, he doesn't muck about with frills and decorations. Function, rather than form, is his primary consideration. Where Leonardo or Benvenuto Cellini would have put in a few hours with the polyfilla, the palette knife and the 000-grade wire wool, Norman had made do with a lick of paint and a dab with the coarse sandpaper. The result was something that would have had the model-making team from
Alien
hiding under the bed calling for their mummies.

Hamlet sat down heavily and buried his face in his hands. Then, feeling slightly sick, he unstuck his hands and wiped them carefully on a bit of rag. He wasn't vain, not exactly; but when you're used to looking like Olivier, Gielgud, Richardson and Mel Gibson you do acquire a certain self-image. Looking in a mirror and seeing something that bears a close resemblance to the contents of a vulture's Christmas hamper will therefore come as something of a blow.

‘Great,' he muttered. ‘Marvellous. Now what the hell do I do?'

Hamlet looked up angrily. ‘You bloody well bet you do. What the hell am I doing here anyway? It may have escaped your notice, but this is real life.'

‘In addition to which,' Hamlet raged on, ‘I seem to have ended up in something that could pass for Burke and Hare's bargain discount warehouse. Please get me back to where I belong immediately.'

‘What?'

‘All right.'

Hamlet's jaw set in a grim line. Not straight, exactly, but grim. ‘I would like to speak to your supervisor, please,' he said. ‘At once.'

‘Oh no you don't. Just tell me how I can get out of here and we'll say no more about it.'

‘Stuck?'

‘Look . . .'

You really have just the two basic alternatives
, Cheryl went on, with just a hint of something in her voice.
Either you can suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or you can take arms against the sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them. Okay? Ciao
.

‘Look . . .' Hamlet waited for a moment, and then breathed a long sigh. Cheryl had broken the link and gone. He was stuck.

A few moments later, he found a paper bag, in which he punched two eyeholes. With that, Norman's frayed old Gannex mac, a packet of sandwiches he found on the bench, twenty pounds in change liberated from the electricity meter and a bare bodkin, he set out to explore Reality.

He had the feeling he wasn't going to like it much.

 

It wasn't as if Jane didn't like doing book-signing sessions. Perish the thought. Any opportunity to get out there and mingle with her public was, by definition, a rare treat. It's
the interface with the guys and gals who actually read the stuff that makes it all worthwhile.

It was just, she considered, as she gazed out of the bookshop window at the falling rain, that in her case it didn't seem to work like that. She was painfully aware that her ability to clear a bookshop of all sentient life forms except the people who worked there had earned her the nickname Bomb Scare Armitage; and having to get up at six in the morning and sit through a four-hour train journey in order to do it struck her as a wee bit much.

Just as she was considering making herself a little nest out of copies of her book and going to sleep, a shadow fell across the signing table and she looked up.

A customer.

True, he was wearing an old coat that would have scared the most lionhearted of crows and he seemed to have a paper bag over his head; but since this was a specialist bookshop catering to the fantasy and science fiction trade, that wasn't in itself surprising. What did disconcert her rather was the powerful smell of formaldehyde. Nevertheless . . .

‘Hi,' she said. ‘Who shall I sign it to?'

The paper bag twitched a fraction. ‘Just put
To Hamlet
, please.'

She had written
To Ham
when the celebrated cartoonist's light bulb switched on in her mind. ‘Hamlet?' she said.

‘Yeah.' The eyes, visible through the holes in the bag, glowed dangerously. ‘We spoke only the other day. Or at least, you spoke. I sort of printed. On your screen, remember? '