Barking (47 page)

‘Which is why you need me.'

Nod. ‘Yes, it's why I need you. Sad, isn't it? Until they find out the true significance of the anti-clockwise gravitic semiquark - and they haven't even discovered it yet - all that expensive science is useless, and I've got to rely on
you
. Which is exactly why,' she added brightly, ‘your prospects with me are so dazzlingly bright. For twenty years, you know you're completely indispensable to me. If that's not an invitation to fleece me blind, I don't know what is.'

But Duncan wasn't interested. ‘And it's not because I can't be killed—'

‘Actually, you can.' The businesslike voice again. ‘But only by someone or something that's out of alignment by exactly the same degree that you are: point one of a degree. You'll be pleased to hear that there're only two other people on Earth who meet that criterion, and they're both Buddhist monks living in a monastery in Nepal; so stay clear of the Himalayas and you're laughing. Apart from them, there's a washing machine in Tierra del Fuego and a pot-bellied pig somewhere in the Solomon Islands, and that's it, as far as we know. Nobody and nothing else can kill you.'

‘Not even you?'

‘Not even me. Yet. In twenty years, mind you—'

‘Thanks for the warning.'

‘Token of good faith,' she said airily. ‘My pleasure, glad to have been of service. Of course,' she added, ‘death's not everything. For instance, you could be buried twenty feet down in solid rock. You'd still be alive, but after the first ten years you'd probably get a dreadful dose of the fidgets.'

Duncan grinned. ‘Ah,' he said, ‘but if I was buried alive, I'd be no good to you, would I? I wouldn't be able to do that special thing that only I can do.'

Click of the tongue, loud and sharp as a ringmaster's whip. ‘Don't fanny around, Duncan,' she said. ‘You know perfectly well what it is, so don't try pretending you don't. I was hoping we were on the same wavelength, you and I.'

‘All right.' Duncan closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Tell me if I've got this right. You exist because you're not legally dead—'

‘Oh, I'm
legally
dead,' she corrected him. ‘But I'm also illegally alive, if you follow me. I was a lawyer once, you know. Well, my father was a lawyer, and I married a lawyer; women weren't allowed to be lawyers in the sixteenth century, so I did all the work and we had to pretend it was them. I was brilliant, though. Utterly brilliant. Oh, you're looking at me and giving me that come-off-it look, but it's true. Never lost a case. All my clients got off. I even,' she added calmly, ‘got myself off death, on a technicality.'

Duncan played that back in his mind. Still didn't make sense. ‘Death?' he queried weakly. ‘But that's nothing to do with - I mean, you can't talk your way out of death. It doesn't listen.'

Smuggest grin ever. ‘Listened to me. Everybody listens to me. No, it was a logical progression, from bending man-made law to the laws of nature. That's what lawyers do, after all. We bend the truth. Just a little heat and pressure at the right place, applied just so, and we change the world. We take a reality in which our client was in the house helping himself to the loose cash and the DVD player into a slightly different reality in which he was down the pub with twenty-seven witnesses. We do it every day; and it's not lying. It can't be lying if twelve honest citizens believe it, because what a jury believes is by definition the truth. We change reality. One moment things are one way, the next they're completely different; and everybody accepts it, so it must be true. Truth is what everybody accepts, it's the only definition that makes sense. Oh sure, there're a few dissidents who refuse to fall in with the majority; eyewitnesses who saw the defendant steal the car or beat up the old lady. They won't accept it when he gets off, but that's their problem. They're at variance. Out of phase, just like you.' She sighed, and smiled. ‘It's not magic or anything like that, it's perfectly normal, happens a million times a day all over the world. It's just that people don't realise that's what's happening. Like people didn't know about gravity until I nutted Sir Isaac with the apple. Like they don't yet know about the anticlockwise gravitic semiquark. Yet.'

Duncan opened his mouth to object, because of course it couldn't be true. Then he remembered that he was a werewolf. At some point he'd accepted that, and now he believed it. What people accept is the truth.

‘Anyhow,' she went on, ‘the law's a bit fuzzy on what death really is. You die and your body stops moving, but until all your affairs have been put in order and your bills have been paid and your money's been shared out and your relatives have all fallen out with each other over who gets the ormolu clock in the dining room, you're still sort of there, what the law calls a legal person. It's a bit like being a ghost, except of course,' she added with a broad grin, ‘there's no such thing as ghosts. As far as the law's concerned I died years ago, but I don't actually stop being a person, in the eyes of the law, until my estate's finally wound up. Till then, I'm kind of betwixt and between: Bowden Allshapes, deceased. And thanks to you—'

Duncan nodded; he felt strangely grateful to her for saying it aloud. ‘Thanks to me,' he said, ‘your estate can't be wound up, because in order for that to happen, the estate accounts need to be drawn up and signed. And that can't happen, because no matter how many times I add up the figures, they always come out slightly wrong.'

She beamed at him. ‘In Base Ten, yes. Really,' she added, ‘I'm stunned you hadn't realised earlier. All you had to do was calculate the mean error over, say, fifty attempts, and then draw a simple Venn diagram—'

‘Bugger Venn diagrams,' Duncan said forcefully. ‘I keep you alive by not being able to get the accounts to balance. And that's
all
—'

She drew out a thin smile. ‘That's all,' she said. ‘Just a small thing, but so's a six-millimetre Billinghurst reed valve, and you try running a faster-than-light engine without one. Oops,' she added, ‘not invented yet, on account of Jason Billinghurst is still at school, just about to do his maths GCSE, actually. I'm paying for him to get special coaching. But in eight years' time—' She moved a hand in a vague gesture, like a queen trying to wave to cheering crowds with her eyes shut. ‘Like I said,' she continued, ‘perfectly simple. And you were quite right, by the way. Luke Ferris happened to tell Wesley Loop about that maths homework you did; about how you swore blind you'd checked it all thoroughly but it still came out completely wrong. Don't ask me how the subject happened to come up. Just making conversation, most probably. And because of it, your life, and Luke's, and all the other boys in your gang—'

Duncan was sure he hadn't meant to drag on the belt, because that'd have been spiteful and he wasn't a bully; or at least, he hadn't meant to drag that hard. Just a twitch was all he'd intended, probably, to remind her who had the upper hand at that particular moment. Possibly he'd forgotten his own strength; just conceivably possibly, he was upset about something.

Anyhow - she yelped and made a strange gagging noise, and then the belt broke. Actually, it was the stupid little pop rivet that held the buckle on; it tore through the fake leather, and suddenly she was free. A nice example of reality changing because of one little thing, if you cared to look at it that way. Or—

She vanished, and her chair kicked sideways to make room for a white unicorn. Before Duncan had drawn the lungful of air he needed to swear with, she'd barged past him and shot out of the door. He fought it long and hard this time, the desperate, compelling urge to chase her. He dragged out every last scrap of human rationality. He told himself, you know what it's all about now; you know what she really is and what you really are. You don't need to chase her, and you sure as hell don't want to. This is her way of hunting you, and if you play by her rules you'll lose. Whatever you do, stay here and don't run after her.

He put the case well, and he wasn't the same weak-willed easily led no-self-confidence loser he'd always been ever since he joined the Ferris Gang. He'd grown a hell of a lot over the last few weeks. He was stronger, wiser, more able to fight back. As a result, Duncan held out for a full two seconds before jumping off the chair and racing out of the room.

 

Maybe she'd done something with her pheromones, or maybe the cleaners actually got as far as this part of the building before giving up in terrified despair. The scent was much stronger than it had been, far too strong to ignore. Cursing himself for his stupidity, Duncan ran. The carpet provided excellent traction underpaw. Query: can a unicorn run down stairs?

Apparently, yes. He clattered down two flights to a landing, stopped to sniff and tore down the first turning on the left. At school they'd told him, no running in the corridors. Another of life's crucial lessons he'd completely failed to learn.

I could run into a wall, he thought, or straight through a window. Wouldn't do me any harm, even though I'm six floors up, I'd just land, smash a few paving slabs, no sweat at all. But I'm just kidding myself. I couldn't do it, because I can't ignore the scent. Enslaved. No free will whatsoever. Situation normal, in fact. It's a dog's life.

Round another corner, like a greyhound after an electric hare. And then he stopped. It wasn't at sudden as that, of course. There was a degree of skidding as his shoe heels failed to grip on the wool pile, and rather a lot of static electricity, and an encounter with a wall that would've spoiled an ordinary human's day. He just bounced off it, though, and sat down heavily on the floor.

It wasn't that the scent wasn't there any more. It was so strong he could feel it tugging at him. But there was another scent now, and it was stronger. For a moment he felt like he was being pulled apart. Then something broke, just like his stupid belt had done, and he turned his head like a horse on a leading rein. Another scent. Not that he knew much about that sort of thing, but he fancied it was mainly violets.

‘Hello,' said Veronica. ‘Why are you sitting on the floor?'

‘Hunggh,' he replied, because he'd been neglecting his breathing lately. ‘Unicorn,' he added. ‘Chasing. Bowden Allshapes.'

‘Oh.' She looked at him. ‘I thought—'

‘Your smell,' Duncan said. ‘Scent,' he amended quickly. ‘It—'

‘Do you like it?' She smiled. ‘I can't remember what it's called, it's just some stuff I bought at Gatwick last time I went on holiday. Usually I don't bother much about that kind of thing but . . . ‘ She paused and her brow furrowed. ‘Are you all right?' she said. ‘You look funny.'

‘I'm fine.' Not, perhaps, one of those lies that change the nature of reality he'd been hearing so much about. Just a lie gradually turning into the truth as he got his breath back. ‘Thanks,' he added.

‘For what?'

‘Saving my life.'

Veronica raised both eyebrows. ‘Did I?'

‘Not sure.' Duncan pressed his back to the wall and stood up. Feet just about working. ‘At least, you saved me from a fate worse than death, which is kind of the same thing, only more so, I suppose. Look, have you got any more of that stuff? The scent, I mean.'

‘Yes, in my desk drawer. Did it really—?'

He nodded. ‘Stopped me chasing her, yes. One moment I was a complete goner, the next I was just crashing into walls. Which,' he added, noticing the cracked plaster for the first time, ‘is absolutely fine by me. Sorry about the wall, by the way, but—'

‘Don't worry about it, we've got loads of them.' For a split second Veronica froze, with that characteristic did-I-really-just-say-that look on her face. ‘I mean, it's all right, nobody's going to notice. If they do, I expect they'll just hang a picture over it or something.'

She's gabbling, Duncan thought. Reminds me of something. Actually, reminds me of me, when I used to try and talk to girls, before I met Sally. He turned down the corner of that reflection so he wouldn't lose the place. ‘Anyhow,' he said, ‘definitely it seems to have done the trick. By rights I should be chasing after that horrible bloody unicorn. But, well, here I am. That's marvellous, really.'

She nodded. He had the feeling that, at that moment, she'd have agreed with him if he'd told her he was a trouser press. Very curious indeed; but for once, here was something weird and inexplicable he was quite comfortable with.

‘Absolutely,' she said. ‘What was she doing in here anyway?'

Duncan smiled. ‘Came to offer me a job.'

‘Oh. Did you—?'

‘Not likely. Actually, at one stage I was trying to strangle her with my belt. But it broke.'

‘Ah.'

Just to tempt providence, he sniffed. The unicorn scent was still there, but for some unaccountable reason he felt no urge whatsoever to chase after it. So instead: ‘Could you possibly show me where the kitchen is again? I know you showed me earlier, but I'm afraid I've forgotten. No sense of direction.'

‘Of course.' Beautiful smile. ‘I was just headed that way myself, as it happens.'

At four o'clock in the morning, wearing scent? Anything's possible. ‘That's lucky,' he said. ‘Only I could really go for a strong cup of coffee right now.'

There's always that stage, when speech dries up, the brain blanks out, and suddenly your feet become so unspeakably fascinating that you spend the next twenty minutes staring at them, rather than, say, at the person of the opposite sex sitting in dead silence next to you. Presumably there's a good reason for it, or else evolution's time-and-motion experts would've done away with it back in the early Neolithic era. You've just got to be patient, sit it out. Counting the lace-holes on your shoe uppers helps pass the time. Eventually, she asked, ‘Is the coffee all right?'