My Hero (24 page)

 

Regalian threw back the curtains and stared uncharitably at the sunrise.

It was, he admitted, the real sun. All the same, to someone brought up on the sunrises of heroic fiction, it was damned unconvincing.

Where I come from, he muttered to himself, sunrises are retina-scorching coruscations of vivid red fire boiling tumidly out of cloudy crucibles, not something like a motorway service station version of a poached egg. We, of course, only have sunrises when the dramatic situation requires them. The rest of the time we just switch on the lights.

He picked up his coffee cup and his plate of toast and sat down on the window seat, looking out over Main Street. Another day, he reflected, and nothing is going to happen unless I make it happen. What a depressing prospect.

He had, after thirty-six hours of patient argument, threats and blatant disregard of the rules of chronological physics, managed to patch through a telephone call to Jane's number in 1996, only to get the answering machine; which suggested, in the circumstances (she had a deadline for her new book which she could now only possibly hope to meet by writing it while orbiting the planet at light speed), that Jane had gone charging off
on her own to mount some sort of amateur rescue bid; which was silly. She had no qualifications for that sort of work whatsoever. True, by virtue of being a writer of fantasy fiction she wasn't exactly a stranger to weird and dangerous experiences - he recalled vividly her description of the time her publishers had sent her to a science fiction convention in Congleton, where she'd spent a harrowing weekend surrounded by four hundred and sixty-two self-proclaimed representatives of the Klingon Empire - but there's a material difference between boldly going and making a complete bloody fool of yourself. And there are some things which really do have to be left to the professionals.

Such as heroism.

Being a hero isn't something anybody can do. True enough, once in a lifetime a quiet, mild-mannered newspaper reporter can save a child from being run over by a negligent steamroller. If on the strength of that the reporter buys himself a cape and a pair of tights and tries jumping off tall buildings, however, he is likely to find out two things in pretty short order; the second of which is the folly of pushing one's luck.

It's different, of course, for heroes.

Heroes have nine lives, rubber kneecaps, diplomatic passports, an uncle on the board of magistrates, an exercise book permanently in place down the back of their trousers and a sick note signed by God. In a cosmology where everybody knows his place, it is immutably ordained that the guards the hero has to stalk and silently kill before scaling the castle wall are the only two in the whole brigade who happen to be stone deaf and crippled with arthritis. Even the most lacklustre hero has available to him resources on a scale which would put Spielberg into immediate bankruptcy, while the household names have more doubles and stunt men than Napoleon had
Old Guards at Waterloo. The only sure-fire way to kill a hero is to lock him up for six months in a room with no mirror.

For the first time, he noticed in the corner of the room a big cabinet radio, the kind that hums for thirty seconds and then plays Glen Miller, regardless of where the dial is pointing. Perfectly normal thing to find in a house of the period.

In the bicycle shed of Regalian's subconscious mind, an idea stirred. At that particular moment, it bore as much resemblance to a workable plan of action as the first ever single-cell organism to a Nobel prizewinner, but everything has to start somewhere.

Basic authorship theory; the hero rises to the occasion. The grottier the occasion, the more outstandingly brilliant and innovative the hero's response; and the laws of physics, generally speaking, are happy to come along for the ride. Set a hero a sufficiently nasty problem, and there's virtually no limit to what he can achieve. Provided, of course, that the odds are sufficiently stacked against him.

The difficulty is, therefore, not that the task confronted is impossible; but whether it's impossible
enough
. Luck, like a Russian car, generally only works if you push it.

It's basically the same inverse feasibility matrix that you find when you want to borrow money. Try and borrow fifty quid from your bank to pay the rent, and you're a no-good loser. Ask to borrow fifty million to take over a moribund company, and you're a respected financier. Raise a forced loan of five hundred billion to pay the interest on the fifty zillion you borrowed last week, and you're a Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Having made himself a strong cup of coffee, Regalian sat back and thought hard . . .

Jane paused, knocked a substantial quantity of compacted snow off her left boot, and stared at the signpost. It depressed her.

She wasn't obsessive about her art, God knows; you can't afford to be, if you're a professional. But there were some things that did offend her sense of basic craftsmanship, and this was one of them.

The sign read:

 

MIDDLE BIT BYPASS

Characters for Chapters 23-47 are advised to leave at
Junction 12

‘
I
gor?'

No reply.

‘Igor?'

The howl of the wind in the fir trees. The rippling crash of the thunder. The pecking hammer of the rain on the shed roof, like a spectral Fred and Ginger doing the Tap Danse Macabre.

‘Igor, tha daft booger, what's tha playin' at?'

 

The bounty hunter flickered.

Imagine a double-sided mirror. He was on both sides simultaneously.

Half of him, during this strange moment of transition, was in Fiction, half in Reality. He'd never been in Reality before, in whole, part or instalments. A less completely focused individual might have paused to look around, admire the scenery, take an interest. He didn't. Understandable; when the SAS are parachuted in miles behind enemy lines to blow up a bridge or rescue a hostage, they don't make detours to take a look at interesting old churches or unusual rock formations. Likewise with the bounty hunter, only more so.

Go in, do the job, get out again. Yes. Absolutely.

He was looking for a doorway . . .

 

‘IGOR!!'

In the distance, an unfastened gate banged eerily. The woodwork of the shed creaked under the insistent malice of the storm. Somewhere far away, maybe as far out as Halifax, a forked tongue of lightning flicked at the wet, chill earth.

‘Hold tha water, Norman lad. Ah'm coomin' as fast as ah can.'

And about time too. Having an assistant was a mixed blessing, Frankenbotham reflected. True, it had meant that Stanley Earnshaw #2 had been assembled in only a fraction of the time it had taken to piece together the prototype; before his retirement, Igor Braithwaite had been one of the five most respected TV repair men in all Yorkshire, and he could do things with a soldering iron that no mortal man should be capable of. The flipside was that Igor was eighty-three years old, and ever since his operation the intervals between his trips to the little boys' room were shortening like daylight in December.

‘Hurry
oop
, tha daft old sod, there's bits leaking all over t'shop.' Which was true; and with black market AB negative standing him at close on a fiver a pint (and when I were a lad, you could get ten pints, a bucket of jellied brains and still have change out of half a crown . . .) that was no laughing matter. More to the point, the lightning was headed this way, and who could say where their next major electric storm was coming from?

Stanley Earnshaw #2 lay motionless on the workbench before him. If you overlooked the damp patches and the messy bit where Igor hadn't quite finished connecting up the main relay circuits just over the right ear, he was a fine figure of a man; six foot eight, massive of bone and
sinew, and (a marked improvement over the first model) proper organic outer dermatic membranes instead of insulating tape, brown paper and treacle. It had been Igor who had pointed out the amazing properties of the skin that forms on stagnant cold tea; Frankenbotham had taken the idea one step further in using the exterior surface of works canteen rice pudding for the hard-wearing areas such as the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet. A direct hit from a Rapier missile might cause problems; otherwise, his creators felt sure, Stanley Earnshaw #2 was proof against anything Fate had to chuck at him.

Igor hobbled in, still fumbling with his fly buttons. With an impatient gesture, Frankenbotham shooed his assistant back to work, and for the next half hour there was no sound but the fizz-crackle of the Mig welder, the buzz of the sewing machine, the low drone of Igor muttering to himself, and the ping of the occasional small component dropped on the floor.

And then . . .

‘Reckon that'll do, Norman lad.'

Just in time, too. A fraction of a second after Igor's gnarled fingers tightened the last retaining screw on the inspection panel, a livid fang of searing blue light arced down through the wire coathanger that connected Frankenbotham's jury-rigged lightning conductor to the primary pulse electrodes in Stanley's ears. There was a flash, a sizzle, a repulsive stench of burning . . .

‘Igor! More power! Ig—Oh for cryin' out loud, tha prawn, can't tha wait five minutes?'

The distant clank of a chain and surge of a cistern were faintly audible in the distance. Frankenbotham took a deep breath, spluttered as his lungs filled with smoke, and threw the main switch . . .

The smoke cleared.

‘IGOR!'

On the workbench, something stirred.

As he dragged himself up from the floor and wiped matted sawdust and shavings out of his eyes, Frankenbotham hardly dared look. If, after all this, he had failed . . . But something told him he hadn't. He turned to face the bench. Suddenly, it was very quiet.

‘Stanley?' he breathed.

‘Howdy, partner.'

Igor, framed in the doorway, gave a strangled gasp. His eyes met those of his colleague, reflecting the same horror.

‘Norman, lad,' whispered the older man, ‘tha's only gone and built a bloody Yank!'

 

‘No,' said Skinner firmly. ‘Absolutely not. No way.'

Titania clicked her tongue impatiently. ‘It might work,' she said. ‘Not a new idea, genre splicing. Entirely possible, in theory.'

Skinner stopped pacing, turned and glared at her. ‘All sorts of things are possible,' he growled, ‘including artificially generated plague viruses and nuclear holocausts. Just because something's possible doesn't mean we actually have to do it. The same applies to—'

‘Chicken.'

Before he could reply, Skinner caught the Piglet's bewildered, terrified stare and his heart sank. ‘For the last time,' he said, ‘we are not going to kill the pig. Over my dead body.'

Titania considered for a moment. ‘No,' she said. ‘Good of you to offer, but just one corpse ought to be enough. Look, it's only a dratted pig. Or are you trying to tell me you've never eaten roast pork?'

‘Hey . . .'

‘Or bacon? Ham and eggs? Frankfurters? Listen, buster, that's the way it is with pigs. They don't herd them
into the abattoir and wait for them to pass away peacefully in their sleep, you know.'

‘Watch my lips, you bloodthirsty bitch. We are
not
—'

The gun went off.

With a terrified squeal, Piglet wriggled on to his chest, scrabbled with his tiny paws (ropes notwithstanding) and burrowed under the rug like an agoraphobic mole. Before Skinner could swear at it, the gun fell off the table, landed on its hammer, cocked itself and fired again. A small fur-fabric donkey wobbled on the mantelpiece and fell with a soft thud into the fireplace.

‘Jesus!' Skinner screamed.

Titania jumped up, retrieved the toy and poked her finger through the bullet-hole. ‘That'll do,' she said happily. ‘Now then . . .'

‘That maniac's just shot Eeyore!'

The Queen of the Fairies shook her head. ‘This isn't Eeyore,' she replied patiently. ‘This is just a kid's soft toy. The real Eeyore's down there with the rest of them. I saw him. He's got a Remington sniper's rifle with infra-red sights, he's tied his tail round his head like a headband and smeared camouflage paint all over his nose and ears. Guess he's finally found a role in life he can be happy with.'

Skinner stared at the perforated object in Titania's hand. ‘What do you mean, just a toy?' he demanded. ‘They're all frigging toys, that's the whole
point
.'

‘No, you're wrong there,' Titania said. ‘This is a toy's toy. Like, you know, subtext. Here, even the cuddly furry animals have cuddly furry animals. Now then, we've got work to do.'