The Outsorcerer's Apprentice (29 page)

“
T
hat’s nineteen,” Buttercup said, “plus five for going no trumps on a triple star, plus fifteen for the eight of cups rebated, doubled for going out blind, and ten for the rubicon makes eighty-eight, which makes—” She paused to do the sums in her head. “Forty-six thousand nine hundred and fifteen to me and twenty-six to you. Play again?”

Turquine shrugged. “Why not?”

The spider, which had spent the last five hours trying to climb the opposite wall, gave up and went to sleep. Buttercup shuffled the pack. She’d found it in the last wolf’s cottage but six and tucked it away in a deep pocket in her pinafore, where the Elf who searched her had neglected to find it. “Right,” she said, having dealt nine cards each. “I call trumps, so we’ll have swords, fives and eights are wild, threes reverse the order, sevens and twos mean miss a go, fours and nines reversed, tens count as fives. My lead.”

Turquine examined his cards. “What did you say this game was called?”

“Easy-Peasy,” Buttercup replied. “I used to play it a lot with my gran when I was a kid.”

There were, she had to admit, worse places than the wizard’s dungeons. They were dry, clean and sweeter
smelling than any of the inns and taverns in the area, and the food was remarkably good if you liked dragon (Buttercup had decided she did, especially the dragon and onion pie with chives and coriander). On the other hand it was still a dungeon.

Turquine played the six of coins. “Hatstand!” Buttercup said, laying out her cards. “Sixes and fours over nines. So let’s see, I make that twenty-seven, doubled because we’re in Sagittarius—”

“I know,” Turquine said. “Let’s jump the guard.”

“’Scuse me?”

“Let’s lure the guard in here under false pretences, bash him silly and escape.”

She smiled at him. It had taken long enough, heaven only knew, but no man worthy of the name can put up with being taken apart at cards by a girl indefinitely. “That’s a good idea,” she said. “How do you go about that, exactly?”

Actually, the guard was quite nice, for an Elf. He seemed genuinely concerned when Buttercup yelled out that Turquine was having some kind of seizure.

“I’m a medical student, as it happens,” he said, peering in through the bars without getting quite close enough. “I’m just doing this to pay my tuition. What are the symptoms?”

“He’s twitching a lot and making funny noises, and he’s not breathing.”

“You don’t say.” The guard squinted. “Hold on, I’ve got my textbooks in my bag upstairs. Twitching
and
not breathing, you say?”

“And he’s gone very pale.”

“Really? He looks quite normal to me.”

“Pale compared with how he usually is.”

“Ah, right. Won’t be two shakes. Watch him carefully, if you wouldn’t mind. This could be one for the journals.”

“This isn’t going to work,” Turquine muttered from the floor. “He’s an Elf. They don’t give a damn.”

“Ssh, he’s coming back. Well?” she asked. “Any ideas?”

“Could be Flimbromel’s Syndrome,” the Elf said, turning a page. “Only then he’d be starting to go blue around the lips. Any sign of that?”

“I don’t think so. But he’s stopped twitching.”

“Heavy sweat? Traces of foam dripping from the nostrils?”

“Not as such.”

“Well, it can’t be Ydrail’s palsy then. Temperature?”

Buttercup laid a hand on Turquine’s forehead. “Ooh, he’s burning up.”

“What? Oh
sod
, that rules out Elroon’s Disease.” He frowned. “You sure there’s no foam? Just one or two flecks would be enough.”

“Sorry, no foam. Oh look, he’s started twitching again.” She nudged Turquine savagely in the ribs, and he twitched a couple of times. “Is that good?”

“Not sure.” The Elf was running his finger down a column of index entries. “Twitching
might
mean it’s acraural dyslepsia, except humans don’t get that. Otherwise, we’re left with goblin fever, and if it was that he’d be dead by now. Unless he’s been eating garlic recently.”

“No, no garlic.” She looked up at the Elf. “Maybe it’s something that’s not in your book.”

“Unlikely, it’s the ninth edition. Unless—” Suddenly his eyes lit up. “He’s a knight, right?”

“Yes.”

“Been in contact with dragons lately?”

“Yes.”

“My God, it could be dragonpox. Twitching, high temperature, pale, not breathing. Hold on, pages 3,667 to 3,671. Ah, here we are. Dragonpox.”

“That sounds bad.”

“Couldn’t be better, actually. Everyone says it’s bound to come up in the exam this year. Here, would you mind moving away from the door a bit, I can’t quite—”

Turquine’s boot got him on the point of the chin, and he fell just right, with the keys on his belt in easy reach. “Bastard,” Turquine said, lugging him into the cell and locking the door. “I could’ve been dying in there.”

“Yes, but at least we got him before he could bill you. Come on, I think it’s this way.”

The greatest test of love, as everyone knows, is navigation. If you still love someone after you’ve debated itineraries with them–left here, no, right, I told you we should’ve gone left, oh look, we’re going round in circles, no,
you’ve
got the map − it’s a pretty good chance it’s the real thing and for ever. On that score, Turquine was amazing, the best she’d ever got lost with. He just nodded and said “OK”, and when they arrived at the same junction for the third time, he appeared not to have noticed. Can’t help lovin’ that man of mine, she thought. “Left,” she said.

“OK.” They went left. About forty yards down the tunnel, he asked, “Where is it we’re heading for, exactly?”

“The wizard’s secret lair, obviously.”

“Ah, right. And you know where that is.”

“In the heart of the mountain. Stands to reason.”

“Ah.”

In fact, the further they went, the less sure she became. The corridors and tunnels went on for ever, straight as arrows and beautifully tiled in white ceramic; clearly someone had been to a great deal of trouble and expense, so it stood to reason the tunnels went
somewhere
, but they didn’t seem to be in any sort of a hurry to get there. The nice thing about them was that they were deserted–deserted
so far
; that could, of course, change at any time, and when it did, there were no nooks or corners to hide in, though ample scope for
running, if you were any good at that sort of thing, which Turquine probably was but she wasn’t.

“I said,” Turquine repeated, “what about that door?”

“What door?”

“That one.”

Oh,
that
one. She’d walked right past it and not seen it, which only went to show how preoccupied she was. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t like it.”

“Really? Wrong shape? Not keen on the colour?”

She gave him a look which conveyed far more information about her attitude to sarcasm than mere words ever could. “I think it’s a trap.”

“Oh, I see. A trapdoor.”

“Funny man.” She looked at the door. It was rectangular, about right for her height-wise but Turquine would have to duck; just a door. “See if it’s locked.”

It wasn’t. “Well?” he asked.

“Oh, why not? I’m bored with all these tunnels.”

Turquine pushed the door open and stepped back to let her go through; chivalry, caution or both. She really wished she had her basket, with the hatchet in it. Ah well, she thought, and went through.

“Well?”

“Come on,” she called back, “don’t be such a baby. It’s just a store.”

She was fairly confident about that. The room she’d entered was square, about the size of the village green back home, and filled with wooden crates. Mountains of them formed canyons and ravines, overhanging narrow defiles you could walk along. All the crates she could see had the same letters stencilled on them, underneath a simple but eye-catching little line drawing of a swan;

Dynamite
.

Handle With Care
.

They looked at each other. “What’s a dynamite?” Turquine asked.

“No idea. Let’s open a crate and find out.”

Dynamite turned out to be nothing but a fancy name for candles, about a foot long, with rather too much wick. For some reason, they were all individually wrapped in brown paper.

“He must’ve got a discount for bulk,” Buttercup said.

Turquine frowned. “What does he want all these candles for? Everywhere we’ve been so far’s been lit with the glowing yellow rocks.”

“Maybe for special occasions,” Buttercup hazarded a guess. “Dinner parties, that sort of thing. Or maybe he bought them in to sell, I don’t know. Anyway, they’re no use to us.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Turquine grabbed a dozen and struck them down the front of his shirt. “Always sensible to have a candle or two, in case we go somewhere dark.”

“Have you got a tinderbox?”

“No, the guards took it off me.”

She sighed. “Well,” she said, “maybe we’ll find another store full of tinderboxes. Come on.”

He followed her back out into the tunnel. “Why should you need to handle candles with care?” he asked. “They’re pretty robust things, as a rule.”

She stopped. “Turquine.”

“Yes?”

“It’s sweet that you think I know everything, but if you don’t stop asking me questions all the time, I’m going to hit you. Is that clear?”

Y
et another door. Benny yawned, pushed it open and walked through. Then he stopped.

“Hello, Uncle Gordon,” he said.

Gordon looked up from his desk. “Oh,” he said, “it’s you.”

“What are you doing here, Uncle?”

He doesn’t know, Gordon realised. Even though I’m sitting here in a sky-blue robe covered in arcane sigils, he hasn’t figured it out. “Looking for you,” he said, “what do you think? Bloody hell, Benny, what do you think you’re playing at? I’ve been so worried.”

“Were you looking for me in that box file?”

Ah, Gordon thought. “I’m trying to figure out what’s going on around here, aren’t I? To see if you’d been kidnapped or something. But you’re here now, so let’s get the hell out of this place and go home.”

He felt in his sleeve and produced a doughnut. Benny looked at it. “What’s the matter,” Gordon said. “Haven’t you ever seen a doughnut before?”

“You’re the wizard,” Benny said.

Sod it, Gordon thought. I could deny it, of course, but he’s not that stupid, and I’ll just make myself look devious
and weak. “That’s me,” he said. “And you’re Prince Florizel. You idiot.”

“You’re the wizard,” Benny repeated. “And you’ve been doing all those horrible things to these poor people.”

“Benny, don’t be such a
girl
.” He hadn’t meant to shout. The book he’d bought the day after his sister died had specifically said, on page five,
do not shout
, and its authors had been leading experts on child management, who’d been on TV and everything. There are times, however, when only a full-throated roar will get the job done. “Look, I’m not going to sit here discussing value ethics with you when I’ve got a business to run and you’ve got exams to revise for. Get over here and we’ll doughnut back home together.”

Benny’s eyes were fixed on the doughnut. “I can’t do that,” he said.

Here we go, Gordon thought. “Balls,” he said. “You’re coming home
right now
. Got that?”

Gordon had never owned a dog. If he had, 99 per cent probability it would’ve been the best-behaved dog in town. Gordon had the voice, when he cared to use it. Good boy, bad dog,
sit
! It had always worked on Benny, the way petrol always works on fires. But Benny didn’t move. “Benny. Did you hear me?”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“Look.” As soon as he opened his mouth, Gordon knew he was making a mistake. Don’t plead; it had always been a cardinal rule. It wasn’t, he realised objectively, one of his best days for idiot-whispering. “Look,” he repeated, “you’ve obviously got entirely the wrong end of the stick. We’ll go home, I’ll explain it all properly and then you’ll understand. All right?”

“No, Uncle.”

You don’t plead, because when you then gear-shift from pleading to blustering, you’re left with all the credibility of a
government in mid-term. “That wasn’t a suggestion,” Gordon said, “it was an order. Get yourself over here and look through the doughnut. Now.”

With an effort you couldn’t begin to quantify in terms of joules and newtons, Benny tore his attention away from the doughnut and turned it on Gordon. “Uncle,” he said. “How could you?”

“How could I what?”

“How could you do it? All those people. It’s so
wrong
.”

“Benny.” Gordon pictured himself putting on the elements of his superiority, as though they were pieces of armour; the breastplate of wealth, the helmet of success, the shield of elder-and-betterness, the little lobster-tail arm and leg bits of emotional and intellectual maturity. “You haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about. You don’t know all the facts, you haven’t thought any of it through, there are
Disney princesses
with a better grasp of the harsh realities of macroeconomics than you’ve got, and I’m not going to sit here listening to your half-baked self-righteous drivel. Now, are you going to look through the doughnut or do I have to call Security and have them make you do it?”

“I don’t think you can make me do anything,” Benny said.

Gordon laughed. “You reckon?”

Benny nodded, and with a movement surprisingly fluent for one so habitually clumsy, he drew the sword that hung from his belt. He didn’t point it or anything; it was just there. Gordon found himself unable to look at anything else.

“Now steady on,” he heard himself say.

Benny didn’t seem to have heard him. “Just now,” he said. “There were some armed Elves. They were going to attack me, but I drew this sword and they were
petrified
. At the time I thought, just as well they don’t know I don’t know how to use it. But what if I do? I’ve never tried. Maybe it’s a sort of magic thing, and the sword knows what to do.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Gordon said.

Suddenly, Benny grinned. “Rather more likely,” he said, “is that I haven’t got a clue how to swordfight, so if you call your Security people there’ll be a brief struggle and they’ll win. But any sort of a struggle with a big sharp thing like this involved is going to be very dangerous, and someone could easily get hurt. Almost certainly,” he added, “me. Is that what you want?”

Gordon breathed out slowly through his nose. “No, of course not, don’t be such a bloody fool. Put that thing away right now.”

Benny shook his head. “You have no idea how much I wanted to go home,” he said. “Once I realised I was stuck here, I mean. I’d have done anything. I tried so hard.” A thought struck him and he frowned. “I guess you don’t know anything about a unicorn.”

“A what?”

“There was this unicorn,” Benny said. “It told me I could find a doughnut in the Cradle of All Goblins, which is why I came here. But it said a funny thing. If I came here, I could never go home. I think I understand now.”

Gordon sighed. “Benny,” he said, “you do realise, you’ve got your final exams in
three days
. How long have you been here?”

Benny shrugged. “I don’t know. Days, weeks. It doesn’t matter, surely.”

“Of course it matters, you idiot. You may have known all your exam stuff when you got here, but I’ll bet you anything you like you’ve forgotten it all by now. You’d better get home and get some serious revision done, or you’re going to fail. Is that what you want?”

“You haven’t been listening, have you? I’m not going back.”

“Benny? You’re not making any sense. You can’t stay
here
.
It’s not
real
. This is not
real life
. This is just some place where you suspend disbelief and make money. You aren’t even
you
here. You’re some idiot with a palace full of falcons. That’s not you. You know it isn’t.”

Benny breathed in slowly, then out again. The weight of the sword was hurting his wrist. “I think that may be where you’ve been going wrong,” Benny said calmly. “This is real. It says so in the instructions for the YouSpace thing. It’s not our real, but it’s real. Real people and everything.”

“Don’t be bloody stupid.”

“They’re real people,” Benny repeated, “and you’re
hurting
them. That’s the point.”

“You know what?” Gordon said wearily, “you’re really starting to annoy me. For the last time, these are not real people, and this isn’t a real place. It’s got dragons in it, for crying out loud, and goblins, and magic that works, it’s
make-believe
. You can’t hurt these people, and nothing that happens to them actually matters. This is just—” He clawed about in his mind for a word. “It’s a
loophole
,” he said, “it’s a mistake made by reality which a clever man like me can exploit so as to make a fortune. None of it actually exists, any more than Amazon actually lives in Luxembourg. It’s just something we pretend, to make money. For crying out loud, Benny, even a bleeding-heart big girl’s blouse like you can’t get all worked up about the rights of people who don’t exist. What next? John Doe was framed?”

“You’re wrong, Uncle. They’re real. I’ve met them.”

Gordon realised his fists were clenched; a warning sign which he’d learned to respect. “Fine,” he said. “All right, let’s suppose for the sake of argument that you’re right. These people are really real, and so are the dragons and the Elves and the talking trees—”

Benny’s eyes widened a little. “Talking trees.”

“Yes, in the Old Forest beyond the Grey Mountains. I’ve
got forty thousand of them answering phones for MiniSoft. And you know what? They
enjoy
it. They
like doing
it. Before I came along, they just stood there, bored stiff. If a bird came and shat on their leaves, it was the highlight of their decade. Now, thanks to me, their lives are incredibly much better. They’ve finally got something to talk about, other than squirrels and the weather. They get a tremendous sense of fulfilment out of helping people whose screens have just frozen. They love what I’ve done. I’m their saviour.”

“Do you pay them?”

“They don’t
want
paying. Even if I did, what the hell can a tree spend money on? Same with all the rest of them. Before I came here it was all subsistence agriculture, scratching a precarious living from the dirt. Now they’ve all got shoes and woolly scarves and tea services. That’s
progress
. That’s what’s so good about the whole outsorcery thing, everybody wins.”

“You don’t pay them.”

“Actually, I pay most of them, the ones who want paying.”

“You pay them pennies.”

“Sure. And to them, it’s unimaginable wealth.”

“You’re making them cut down all the trees. That’s ecological suicide.”

Gordon grinned. “We’re talking primeval forest here, and men with axes. It’d take them ten thousand years to make a serious dent in it. And what they do clear is available to turn into farmland, to grow food, to feed people. You see? Everybody wins.”

Benny shook his head. “But they’re not growing food, they’re working for you. You’ve got Santa’s elves making guided missile components. That’s
bad
. Even you can see that.”

“They make them very well,” Gordon said calmly. “Which means the missiles hit what they’re aimed at, rather than the
village school a mile further on. That’s actually a good thing. And I make them very cheap, which means reduced defence spending, which means more money for schools and hospitals. Sorry, you’re going to have to do better than that.” Gordon found a smile from somewhere. It was a bit thin, creased and battered, but it would have to do. “Come on, Benny, you know me, I’m your uncle. Do you honestly think I’d do anything really bad? Well?”

Because everything here, this whole world, is about suspension of disbelief. “They seem happy enough,” Benny said slowly. “Some of them, some of the time.”

“Exactly. Like at home. Actually, if you look closely and think about it dispassionately, more of them, more of the time. I keep telling you. Everybody wins.”

“Especially you.”

“Yes.” Gordon nodded vigorously. “Especially me, and what the hell’s wrong with that? Who had the idea in the first place? Me. Who actually carried it through and made it happen? Me. Who’s spent
three thousand years
arranging it all, so these people can have a better life? Me, that’s who. So I make a lot of money. So I damn well should. And if you think there’s something wrong with that, you may care to reflect what that money’s all
for
.”

“Enlighten me.”

“For you, you clown. You want to know why I did all this? So you’ll never have to do a day’s hard work in your life.” Gordon smiled. It was a terrible smile; pour it over sheets of lead, you’ve got a battery. “Because let’s face it, you’re a bright kid, you’ve got a very good mind, but in practical, ordinary, getting-safely-through-each-day terms, you’re
useless
. You couldn’t hold down a job for ten minutes. Which is why you need to be provided for. Which is what I’m doing, because you’re my nephew, and I promised my sister I’d look after you, and because I love you, you halfwit. Right?”

Benny winced, as if he’d just been shot-blasted with chocolates. “So it’s all my fault.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.”

“Well, that’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? You did it all for me. Therefore, it’s my fault.”

“For the last time,” Gordon thundered, “there is no
fault
. No people, real or imaginary, were harmed during the making of this large amount of money. Listen to me. Thirty minutes’ walk from here, there’s a village with a shoemaker’s shop. There you’ll find a nice old man who makes shoes, all of which he sells to me. That makes him rich, in village terms; he can afford to eat well, he’s got a clock on his wall and he’s giving his nephew money to start up a carpentry business. He loves his work. The shoes he makes, him and fifty thousand like him, are either bright blue or pink, and they end up on the feet of a well-known brand of little girls’ dollies. Now, before I got the contract, those dolly shoes were made in a sweatshop in south-east Asia, by kids half your age working sixteen hours a day for a handful of rice–that’s if they still had hands to hold rice in, because the machines didn’t have guards on them, to save a buck. You want cruel, you want barbaric, you go and look at the firms I put out of business. I tell you what, they made the goblins look like
sweethearts
.”