Expecting Someone Taller (10 page)

A
gainst the dark blue night sky above the Mendip Hills, someone with bright eyes might have been able to make out two tiny black dots, which could conceivably have been ravens, except of course that they were far too high up.

‘It was around here somewhere,' said Thought.

‘That's what you said last time,' said Memory. His pinions were aching, and he hadn't eaten for sixteen hours. During that time, he and his colleague had been round the world twenty-four times. Anything the sun could do, it seemed, they could do better.

‘All right, then,' said Thought, ‘don't believe me, see if I care. But he's down there somewhere, I know he is. I definitely heard the Ring calling.'

‘That was probably Radio Bristol,' said Memory. Exhaustion had made him short-tempered.

They flew on in silence, completing a circuit of the counties of Somerset, Avon and Devon. Finally, they could go no further, and swooped down onto the roof of a thatched barn just outside Dulverton.

‘How come you can hear the Ring, anyway?' said Memory. ‘I can't.'

‘Nor me, usually. It just sort of happens, once in a while. But it never lasts long enough for me to get an exact fix on it.'

A foolhardy bat fluttered towards them, curious to know who these strangers might be. The two ravens turned and stared at it, frightening it out of its wits.

‘If it's about the radio licence,' said the bat, ‘there's a cheque in the post.'

‘Get lost,' said Memory, and the bat did its best to obey. Being gifted with natural radar, however, it did not find it easy.

‘Wotan's in a terrible state these days,' said Thought. ‘Not happy at all.'

‘So what's new?'

‘He's been all over the shop looking for clues. Went down a tin-mine in Bolivia the other day, came out all covered in dust.'

‘I could have told him he'd do no good in Bolivia,' said Memory. ‘Perhaps it would be better if we split up. That way we could cover more ground. You take one hemisphere, I take the other, sort of thing.'

Thought considered this for a moment. ‘No, wouldn't work. You couldn't think where to go, and I couldn't remember where I'd been. Waste of everybody's time.'

‘Please yourself.'

‘You want to go off on your own then, or what?'

‘Forget it.'

Thought was about to say something, but stopped. ‘Listen,' he whispered. ‘Did you hear that?'

‘What?'

‘It's the Ring again. Somewhere over there.' He pointed with his wing to the east. ‘Not too far away, either.'

‘How far?'

‘Dunno, it's stopped again.'

Memory shook his head. ‘I'm thinking of packing all this in,' he said.

‘How do you mean?' said Thought.

‘All this flying about, and that. I mean, where's it getting me?'

‘It's a living, though.'

‘Is it?' Memory leaned forward and snapped up a moth. It tasted sour. ‘You take my brother-in-law. Talentless little git if you ask me. Used to run errands for the Moon-Goddess. Then they got one of those telexes, and he was out on his ear. So he set up this courier service - five years ago, give or take a bit - and look at him now. Nest in the tallest forest in Saxony, another in the Ardennes for the winter, and I bet he isn't eating moths.'

‘Nests aren't everything,' said Thought. ‘There's job satisfaction. There's travel. There's service to the community.'

‘I know,' said Memory. ‘Instead of all this fooling about, why don't we keep an eye on the girls, or Alberich? Maybe they know something we don't.'

Thought considered this. ‘Could do,' he said, ‘it's worth a try . . .' He stopped, and both birds were silent for a moment. ‘There it goes again. Definitely over there somewhere. '

‘Stuff it,' said Memory. ‘Let's find the Rhinedaughters.'

 

Malcolm found it difficult to sleep that night. He had managed to get the thought of the two airliners out of his mind, but the meeting with Alberich was not so lightly dismissed. He had been afraid, more so than ever before, and the terrible thing was that he could not understand why. He was taller and stronger than the Nibelung, and he had the ability to make himself taller and stronger yet if the need arose. That was the whole point of the Tarnhelm. But the
Nibelung had something else that made his own magic powers seem irrelevant; he had authority, and that was not something Malcolm could afford to ignore.

He looked at his watch; it was half-past two in the morning. He toyed with the idea of transporting himself to Los Angeles or Adelaide, where it would be light and he could get a cup of coffee without waking up the housekeeper. He was on the point of doing this when he heard a noise in the corridor outside.

Combe Hall was full of unexplained noises, which everyone he asked attributed to the plumbing. But something told Malcolm that plumbing made gurgling noises, not stealthy creeping noises. Without understanding why, he knew that he was in danger, and something told him that it was probably the right time for him to become invisible.

His bedroom door was locked, and he stood beside it. Outside, he could hear footsteps, which stopped. There was a scrabbling sound, a click and the door opened gently. He recognised the face of Alberich, peering into the room, and for a moment was rooted to the spot. Then it occurred to him that he was considerably bigger than Alberich, and also invisible. The Nibelung crept into the room and tiptoed over to the bed. As he bent over it, Malcolm kicked him hard.

It would be unfair to Malcolm to say that he did not know his own strength. He knew his own strength very well (or rather his lack of it) but as yet he had not come to terms with the strength of Siegfried the Dragon-Slayer. As a result, he hit Alberich very hard indeed. The intruder uttered a loud yelp and fell over.

Malcolm was horrified. His first reaction was that he must have killed Alberich, but a loud and uncomplicated complaint from his victim convinced him that that was not so. His next reaction was to apologise.

‘Sorry,' he said. ‘What the hell do you think you're doing?'

‘You clumsy idiot,' said the Prince of the Nibelungs, ‘you've broken my leg.'

It occurred to Malcolm that this served Alberich right, and he said so. In fact, he suggested, Alberich was extremely lucky to get off so lightly, since presumably he had broken in with the intention of committing murder.

‘Don't be stupid,' said Alberich. ‘I only wanted the Ring.'

He made it sound as if he had just dropped by to borrow a bowl of sugar. ‘Now, about my broken leg . . .'

‘Never mind your broken leg.'

‘I mind it a lot. Get a doctor.'

‘You're taking a lot for granted, aren't you?' said Malcolm sternly. ‘You're my deadliest enemy. Why shouldn't I . . . well, dispose of you, right now?'

Alberich laughed. ‘You?' he said incredulously. ‘Who do you think you are, Jack the Ripper?'

‘I could be if I wanted to,' said Malcolm. The Nibelung ignored him.

‘You wouldn't hurt a fly,' he sneered. ‘That's your trouble. You'll never get anywhere in this world unless you improve your attitude. And did no-one ever tell you it's bad manners to be invisible when someone's talking to you?'

‘You sound just like my mother,' said Malcolm.

He reappeared, and Alberich glowered at him. ‘Still pretending to be who you aren't, I see,' he said.

‘I'll be who I want to be. I'm not afraid of you any more.'

‘Delighted to hear it. Perhaps you'll fetch a doctor now.'

‘And the police,' said Malcolm, to frighten him. ‘You're a burglar.'

‘You wouldn't dare,' replied Alberich, but Malcolm could see he was worried. This was remarkable. A few minutes ago, he had been paralysed with fear. Now he found the
whole thing vaguely comic. Still, it would be as well to call a doctor. He went to the telephone beside his bed.

‘Not that sort of doctor,' said Alberich, irritably. ‘What do you think I am, human?'

‘So what sort of doctor do you want?' Malcolm asked.

‘A proper doctor. A Nibelung.'

‘Fine. And how do you suggest I set about finding one, look in the Yellow Pages?'

‘Don't be facetious. Use the Ring.'

‘Can I do that?' Malcolm was surprised by this.

‘Of course you can. Just rub the Ring against your nose and call for a doctor.'

Feeling rather foolish, Malcolm did what he was told. At once, a short, stocky man with very pale skin materialised beside him, wearing what appeared to be a sack.

‘You called?' said the Nibelung.

‘Where did you come from?' Malcolm asked.

‘Nibelheim, where do you think? So where's the patient?'

The doctor did something to Alberich's leg with a spanner and a jar of ointment, and disappeared as suddenly as he had come.

‘That's handy,' Malcolm said. ‘Can I just summon Nibelungs when I want to?'

‘Of course,' said Alberich. ‘Although why you should want to is another matter. By and large, they're incredibly boring people.'

Malcolm shrugged his shoulders. ‘Anyway, how's your leg?' he asked.

‘Very painful. But it's healed.'

‘
Healed?
But I thought you said it was broken.'

‘So it was,' replied Alberich, calmly. ‘And now it's unbroken again. That's what the doctor was for. It'll be stiff
for a day or so, of course, but that can't be helped. If you will go around kicking people, you must expect to cause anguish and suffering.'

Malcolm yawned. ‘In that case, you can go away and leave me in peace,' he said. ‘And don't let me catch you around here again, or there'll be trouble.'

This bravado didn't convince anyone. Alberich made no attempt to move, but sat on the floor rubbing his knee, until Malcolm, unable to think of anything else to do, offered him a drink.

‘I thought you'd never ask,' said Alberich. ‘I'll have a large schnapps, neat.'

‘I don't think I've got any of that,' said Malcolm.

‘You're supposed to be a German. Oh well, whatever comes to hand, so long as it isn't sherry. I don't like sherry.'

So it was that Malcolm found himself sharing a bottle of gin with the Prince of Nibelheim at three o'clock in the morning. It was not something he would have chosen to do, especially after a tiring day, but the mere fact that he was able to do it was remarkable enough. Alberich made no further attempt to relieve him of the Ring; he didn't even mention the subject until Malcolm himself raised it. Instead, he talked mostly about his health, or to be precise, his digestion.

‘Lobster,' he remarked more than once, ‘gives me the most appalling heartburn. And gooseberries . . .'

In short, there was nothing to fear from Alberich, and Malcolm found himself feeling rather sorry for the Nibelung, who, by his own account at least, had had rather a hard time.

‘It wasn't the gold I wanted,' he said. ‘I wanted to get my own back on those damned women.'

‘Which women?'

‘The Rhinedaughters. I won't bore you with all the
details. Not a nice story.' Alberich helped himself to some more gin. ‘There I was, taking a stroll beside the Rhine on a pleasant summer evening, and these three girls, with no more clothes on than would keep a fly warm . . .'

‘I know all that,' said Malcolm.

‘Do you?' said Alberich, rather disappointed. ‘Oh well, never mind. But it wasn't the power or the money I wanted - well, they would have been nice, I grant you, I'm not saying they wouldn't - but it's the principle of the thing. You know how it is when someone takes something away from you without any right to it at all. You feel angry. You feel hard done by. And if that thing is the control of the world, you feel very hard done by indeed. Not that I
want
to control the world particularly - I imagine I'd do it very badly. But it's like not being invited to a party, you feel hard done by even if you wouldn't have gone if they'd asked you. I know I'm not explaining this very well . . . You can get obsessive about it, you know? Especially if you've thought about nothing else for the last thousand years.'

‘Couldn't you have done something else, to take your mind off it? Got a job, or something?'

‘This may seem strange, but having been master of the world for forty-eight hours - that's how long they let me keep the Ring, you know - doesn't really qualify you for much. And they threw me out of Nibelheim.'

‘Did they?'

‘They did. You can't really blame them. I had enslaved them and made them mine gold for me. They weren't best pleased.'

‘So what have you been doing ever since?'

‘Moping about, mostly, feeling sorry for myself. And looking for the Ring, of course. And a bit of freelance metallurgy, just to keep the wolf from the door. My card.'

He took a card from his wallet. ‘Hans Albrecht and partners, ' it read, ‘Mining Engineers and Contractors, Est. AD 900.'

‘Most people think the date's a misprint,' said Alberich, ‘but it's not. Anyway, that's what I've been doing, and a thoroughly wretched time I've had, too.'

‘Have another drink,' Malcolm suggested.

‘You're too kind,' said Alberich. ‘Mind you, if I have too much to drink these days, it plays hell with my digestion. Did I tell you about that?'

‘Yes.'

Alberich shook his head sadly. ‘I'm boring you, I can tell. But let me tell you something useful. Even if you won't give me the Ring, don't let Wotan get his hands on it.'