Expecting Someone Taller (6 page)

‘Where I come from,' said the pigeon, ‘that's not a compliment. Anyway, I didn't say it, you did, only you couldn't hear yourself think. But if by nice you mean decent, inoffensive, wouldn't hurt a fly, yes, I think you probably are. And all the other Ring-Bearers have been right bastards in one way or another.'

‘Even Siegfried?'

‘Siegfried had a wicked temper. If his porridge wasn't just right, he'd throw it all round the hall.'

Malcolm rubbed his eyes. ‘And my niceness is going to save the world, is it?'

‘Could do, who knows? Just try saying to yourself over and over again, I don't want anything bad to happen to anyone anywhere today. See if that makes any difference.' The pigeon turned its head and looked at the sun, which
was starting to shine with the evening light. ‘Time I was on my way,' it said. ‘There's a field of oilseed rape out there I want to look in on as I go home. They've got one of those machines that go bang every ten minutes, but who cares? I like it round here. Always wanted to retire to the seaside.'

‘So that's it, is it? Think nice thoughts?'

‘Try it. If it doesn't work, try something else. Well, take care, won't you? It's been a privilege meeting you, I suppose. But watch out for the Gods and the Volsungs for a while. They'll be after you by now.'

‘Can they read thoughts too?'

‘No, but Wotan has a couple of clever ravens. I don't think they can find you easily, though. The Tarnhelm masks your thoughts, except at very short range, and the world's a very big place. You've got the advantage, having the Tarnhelm. But if I were you, I'd be a bit more discreet in future. It's not clever to go around looking like people who have been dead for a thousand years.'

‘You mean Theseus?'

‘Who's that? No, I mean Siegfried. And Brunnhilde, come to that.' The pigeon flapped its wings, said, ‘Thanks for the crumbs,' and was gone.

For a moment, Malcolm did not understand what the pigeon had said about Siegfried and . . . He had only turned himself into one female character today. He stood in front of the mirror.

‘Quick,' he ordered, ‘Siegfried, then Brunnhilde.'

Once again, the images of the Most Handsome Man and the Most Beautiful Woman flashed across the glass. He sat down on the bed and, for some reason or other, began to cry.

A
potheosis can be rather unnerving. Even the most hardened and cynical Royal visitor to remote islands is taken aback to find the islanders worshipping his framed photograph, and he at least has the consolation of knowing that he isn't really a God. Malcolm had no such consolation as he faced up to the fact that his mind controlled the world.

‘If only,' he kept on saying to himself, ‘Mr Scanlon knew.' Mr Scanlon had tried to teach him Physics at school, and if his assessment of Malcolm's mental capacities had been correct, the world was in deep trouble. For his part, Malcolm had always been inclined to share his teacher's opinion; certainly, the weight of the evidence had always seemed to be on Mr Scanlon's side. Nevertheless, it was necessary to make the best of a bad job. Malcolm now had literally no-one to blame but himself, and the Daily Service on the radio seemed to be directly addressed to him. Especially one line, which Malcolm took it upon himself to paraphrase slightly:

‘For there is none other that fighteth for us, but only thou. Oh,
God
!'

But the news from the outside world gave him grounds for cautious optimism. The disasters that had marked his accession cleared themselves up with embarrassing speed. The United Nations, for example, held a special session in New York and unanimously voted to levy an unprecedented contribution from all its members to relieve the suffering of the victims of the catastrophe. The various coups and revolutions resolved themselves into benign democracies as if that had been their intention all along. Peace negotiations in the Middle East were resumed, America and China started playing each other at ping-pong again, and the swarm of locusts was devoured by a huge flock of migrating birds. Admittedly, England lost the Second Test as well, but Malcolm knew that he could not be expected to work miracles. The only disaster that had been reported was the destruction by volcanic forces of a small, uninhabited atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean; and even that had its good side, as the residents of the neighbouring atoll had always complained that it was an eyesore and spoilt their view of the sunset.

It needed no ghost come from the grave, and no visitation of prophetic birds to tell Malcolm that this was all the result of being nice. He had rigorously excluded from his mind all unpleasant, spiteful or angry thoughts for the best part of a fortnight (the strain was beginning to show), and the result had been a quite unparalleled upturn in the fortunes of the human race. ‘And all that,' Malcolm reflected smugly, ‘was me.'

But it was extremely frustrating to have to keep all this to oneself. Malcolm had never achieved anything before, except third prize in a village flower show when he was nine (three people had entered that particular category), and the wish to be congratulated was very strong. His sister, for
example, had achieved many things, but she had never stopped a war or disposed of a swarm of locusts. But the Ring seemed to cut him off from the rest of the human race. Although he was the master of the Tarnhelm, he scarcely went out at all. This was partly laziness, partly caution; for if he was to remain nice and keep his mind free of malice or resentment, it would not be advisable for him to see any of his friends or relatives. He was also beginning to feel extremely hungry. All the food lying about the flat (some of which had been there for a considerable time) was long since finished, he had no money left, and he could see little prospect of getting any more. Even if his job still existed (and after two weeks' unexplained absence, that seemed unlikely) he knew that for the sake of mankind he could not go back to it. One cannot work as a clerk in a provincial auction room without entertaining some fairly dark thoughts, any one of which, given his present position, could blot out a major city. The obvious alternative - theft, using the power of the Tarnhelm - was open to the same objection. If he were to start stealing things, who could tell what the consequences might be?

He contemplated the problem, turning himself into Aristotle in the hope that the transformation might assist his powers of reasoning. During the past two weeks, metamorphosis had been virtually his only occupation, and had kept him moderately amused. He had always rather wanted to know what various characters from history and fiction really looked like, especially the girls described by the poets. He also took the trouble to assume the shapes of all his likely assailants - Wotan and Alberich and Loge so as to be able to recognise them instantly, and had frightened himself half to death in the process.

The outward shape of Aristotle seemed to inspire him
and he went through the various ways in which he could sell gold for money without actually getting involved himself. Having dismissed the notion of putting an advertisement in the Classified section of the
Quantock Gazette
, he hit upon what seemed to be an acceptable notion. Armed with a large suitcase, he commanded the Tarnhelm to take him to some uninhabited vault in the Bank of England where he might find plenty of used banknotes. On arrival, he filled the suitcase (more of a small trunk) with ten- and twenty-pound notes, then started to materialise gold to a roughly equivalent value. By the time he had finished, his forehead was quite sore with rubbing and the floor of the vault was covered in exquisite treasures. He removed himself and the suitcase and tried the equivalent banks in France, America, Australia and other leading countries (for it would be unfair if only one or two countries suddenly found themselves linked to the gold standard). With the immense wealth he gathered in this way, he opened a large number of bank accounts in various names - a terrifying business, full of unforeseen complications - and bought himself the house he had always wanted, a huge and extremely attractive manor house near Taunton, which happened to be for sale.

As he had anticipated, no mention was made by any of the financial institutions with which he had done business of the sudden disappearance of large sums of money or the equally unexpected appearance of a fortune in gold. The price of the metal fluctuated wildly for a day or so, then went considerably higher than it had been for some time. Intrigued, Malcolm revisited his favourite banks, invisible and carrying two suitcases. All the gold had gone, and there were plenty more banknotes, neatly packaged up for ease of transportation. In the National Bank of Australia
there was even a piece of card with ‘Thanks; Please Call Again' written on it, propped up on a shelf.

Now that he was a multi-millionaire on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Malcolm turned his attention to furnishing his new house. It seemed likely that he would have to spend a great deal of time in it, on his own, and since money was no object, he decided to have the very best of everything. It was obvious that he could not risk appearing there in his own shape - what would Malcolm Fisher be doing buying Combe Hall? - and so he designed for himself a new persona to go with his new life. In doing so, he made a terrible mistake; but by the time he realised what he had done, it was too late.

It was simple carelessness on his part that caused the trouble. He had been so excited at the prospect of owning Combe Hall that he had gone to the estate agents who were handling the sale in his own shape. He was shown into an office and asked to wait while the senior partner came down to see him, and as the door opened to admit this gentleman, Malcolm caught sight of his own, original face in the mirror and realised his mistake. He commanded the Tarnhelm to change him into someone else, but did not have time to specify who. To his horror, he saw that the face in the mirror was that of the Most Handsome Man; but the estate agent had seen him now, so he could not change into anything less conspicuous. He had stuck like it, just as his mother had warned him he would.

Thus it was that Malcolm found himself condemned to embark on his new life with the face and body of Siegfried the Dragon-Slayer, also known as the Most Handsome Man. He could not help remembering the pigeon's warning about this, but it was too late now. Not that Malcolm objected in principle to being the most handsome man
who had ever lived; but the sight of ravens (or crows, or blackbirds; he was no ornithologist) filled him with horror.

Meanwhile, he fleshed out his new character and by deviousness and contrivance of which he had not thought himself capable acquired the necessary documents and paperwork. In order to give his new self a history (multimillionaires do not simply appear from nowhere) he had to Tarnhelm himself at dead of night into the computer rooms of half the public records offices in the country, and since he knew next to nothing about twentieth-century machines, he accidentally erased the life histories of several hundred people before getting the result he wanted. Finally, however, he ended up with everything he needed to be Herr Manfred Finger of Dusseldorf, the name and identity he had chosen. Again, the German aspect was ill-advised and unintentional; he had wanted to be a foreigner of some sort (since in Somerset it is understood that all foreigners are mad, and allowances for eccentric or unusual behaviour are made accordingly) and had chosen a country at random. That he should have chosen Germany was either yet more carelessness or else the Ring trying to get its own back on him for making it do good in the world. He was not sure which, but was inclined to the first explanation, as being more in keeping with his own nature.

Herr Finger was soon familiar to all the inhabitants of Combe, who were naturally curious to know more about their new neighbour. As local custom demanded, they soon found a nickname for the new Lord of the Manor. The various members of the Booth family who had owned the Hall from the early Tudor period onwards had all been known by a variety of affectionate epithets - Mad Jack, or Drunken George - and the periphrasis bestowed on Malcolm was ‘that rich foreign bastard'.
Such familiarity did not, however, imply acceptance. Although it was generally admitted that Herr Finger was not too bad on the surface and no worse than the last of the Booths (Sir William, or Daft Billy), it went without saying that there was something wrong about him. He was, it was agreed, a criminal of some sort; but whether he was an illegal arms dealer or a drug smuggler, the sages of Combe could not be certain. The only thing on which everyone was unanimous was that he had murdered his wife. After all, none of them had ever seen her in the village . . .

 

‘And what time,' said Wotan, ‘do you call this?'

Loge, his hands covered in oil, climbed wearily off his motorcycle and removed his helmet. ‘It broke down again,' he said. ‘Just outside Wuppertal. Plugs.'

Wotan shook his head sadly. Admittedly, it had been on his orders that the immortal Gods had traded in their eight-legged horses and chariots drawn by winged cats for forms of transport more suited to the twentieth century, but he expected his subordinates to be both punctual and properly turned out. Cleanliness, he was fond of asserting, is next to godliness.

‘Well, you're here now,' he said. ‘So what do you make of
that
?'

Loge looked about him. There was nothing to see except corn-fields. He said so.

‘Well done,' growled Wotan. ‘We are unusually observant this morning, are we not? And what do you find unusual about the corn in these corn-fields?'

Log scratched his head, getting oil on his hair. ‘Dunno,' he said. ‘It looks perfectly normal to me.'

‘Normal for August?'

‘Perfectly.'

‘It's June.'

Loge, who had spent an hour wrestling with a motorcycle engine beside a busy autobahn, did not at first appreciate the significance of this remark. Then the pfennig dropped. ‘It's two months in advance, you mean?'