Little People (41 page)

‘Go on,' she said, ‘impress me.'

‘I'll try,' I promised. ‘It's because every second you've been over here, you've been in the company of your alter ego. Now, when I brought Daddy George across, he wasn't – he'd killed his opposite number, my dad, years ago, over on our side. Likewise, I guess, when all the elves who ended up in the factory – nobody's said anything about their opposite numbers being there to meet them when they came through, though of course that's what should have happened. I'm guessing that Daddy George's gateway contraption somehow screwed up the equivalencies, and the equal-opposite effect didn't happen, because they were sort of pulled out of context when they came through. Really wish I knew more about that, but right now I can't face all the aggravation of asking Daddy George about it; it'd be like interrogating Minnie Mouse, and I haven't got the energy. So we'll just have to assume, for now.'

‘You assume away,' Cru growled. ‘Drivel's drivel, after all. Is there a point to all this?'

‘I think so,' I said. ‘I think that when things are all normal and everyone's got their opposite number on the other side of the line – well, they're all taking up the amount of space they're supposed to be taking up, and everything's fine. It's like a see-saw, and it balances. But when you take someone off one end of the plank and simultaneously plonk them down on the opposite end, it throws everything out. All right so far?'

She wrinkled her nose. ‘I suppose so.'

‘All right,' I said. ‘But if that's the case, the big explosion should've happened the moment you crossed over – when the see-saw got unbalanced – and it didn't. In fact, nothing happened.'

‘I wouldn't say that exactly,' Cru muttered. ‘But yes, I think I can see what you're getting at, a long way off in the distance through a very muddy windscreen. Go on.'

‘So,' I said, ‘it sort of stands to reason that the universe has got some way of adjusting. It must have, when you think about it, because there's been a whole bunch of elves over our side for years, and nothing got particularly blown to hell when they came over. I think all that happens is that the universe sort of slides its bum down the plank a bit until everything balances again, and that's it.' I turned to Melissa. ‘Is that anything like what your people have been figuring?' I asked.

She nodded. ‘More or less,' she said. ‘Except we're a bit worried about the two opposite-but-equals being together in effectively the same place. We think that when that happens, the adjustment you were talking about—'

‘The bottom-shuffling along the plank, you mean?'

She flushed slightly. ‘We'd never actually considered that analogy,' she said, ‘but yes, that's right. We think that the adjustment under those circumstances takes the form of – well, a merger.'

Cru frowned. ‘What, you mean like House of Fraser taking over Harrods or something?' she asked.

Melissa nodded slowly. ‘You could say that, yes. I think that you and I – well, we're now effectively occupying the same space that I was before you came. Instead of one of me, there's now two of us – two of me, rather, but the same size as I was before you arrived.' She hesitated. ‘I can show you what I mean, if you like.'

Cru made a very strange noise; I think she was actually grinding her teeth, something which I'd always thought only happened in books. ‘Go ahead,' she said. ‘this could be interesting.'

‘Come with me,' Melissa said, and she took us across the green to a funny-looking contraption with wooden beams and a scale and a big metal weight dangling off the fulcrum like a fossilised plum. ‘It's a weighing machine,' Melissa explained. ‘I sit on this seat here, and you move that weight down the beam till it balances – that's it. Now read off the number on the scale.'

I had to look closely; the typeface was so quaint and oldy-worldy, I had real trouble making it out. ‘Four and a bit,' I said. ‘Four and a bit what?'

‘Stone,' Melissa replied. ‘Just as I thought. You see, I weight eight and a half stone, usually. Now you get on.'

Sure enough, Cru weighed exactly the same, which came as rather a shock to her, though under other circumstances she'd probably have been thrilled to nuts. She'd always been a little on the substantial side.

‘You see,' Melissa explained, ‘the two of us put together make up me. I expect that if we took tissue samples and calculated the sectional density—'

‘Try it and I'll smash our face in,' Cru warned, taking a step back.

‘The point is,' Melissa went on, ‘we're now one person, as far as the universe is concerned. If we don't stay close to each other, there'd suddenly be a gap, and that's when we think the problems would start.' She took a deep breath. ‘To use your analogy,' she said, a trifle hesitantly, ‘we think the universe has reached the point where if it wiggles any further down the see-saw, it'll fall off and hurt itself.'

None of us said anything for a long time.

‘All right,' I said. ‘So, what do you suggest?'

‘Well,' Melissa was looking down at the ground. I used to do that a lot when I was a kid, usually when I'd broken something, and it's not a good sign. ‘We could just carry on like we are and hope we don't stray too far apart.'

‘I don't like that idea,' Cru said.

‘Or,' Melissa went on. ‘Well, we've developed a procedure – we haven't tested it, of course . . .'

‘What's she talking about, procedure?' Cru hissed.

‘Science stuff,' I replied. ‘Stop interrupting.'

‘We think,' Melissa said, ‘that we can actually do a physical merger; put me and her into an integration chamber, and make us into one person. You and me,' she said, looking at Cru straight in the eye, ‘sharing the same body.'

I expected Cru to make a fuss. I knew her too well. I was right.

When she'd calmed down a bit, I asked Melissa, ‘Which body?' It sounded a bit like your-place-or-mine.

‘I think it'd be far safer to use my physical template,' she answered, ‘because it's my body the universe is used to, if you see what I mean. Which is why,' she went on, ‘when we both weighed ourselves just now, we each weighed exactly half of my usual weight. If we used your template, it might cause problems.'

She looked at Cru expectantly. For her part, Cru had gone as white as a sheet.

‘Let's see,' she said. ‘You and me, locked up in your body, for the rest of our lives.'

Melissa nodded. ‘That's right,' she said. ‘I'm willing to do it if you are.'

Cru was shaking slightly. ‘Trapped for ever,' she said. ‘With her. In
that
.'

‘Oh, I don't know,' I said. ‘I think it's a very nice—'

The look Cru shot at me would've frozen a volcano.

‘Idea,' I said quickly. ‘A very nice idea. At the very least you ought to think about it.'

‘
Bastard
!'

There's being forceful and assertive, and there's being an idiot. The two should not be confused. ‘Sorry,' I said, as quickly as I could without dislocating my tongue. ‘If you won't even consider it, fine. Your choice. Absolutely no pressure. And I'm sure Melissa's perfectly happy to leave the decision up to you; aren't you, Melissa?'

I think the very tips of her ears might have quivered slightly, but she swallowed and said, ‘Yes, of course. In fact, I'm sure that after a year or so we'll be the very best of friends.'

Cru screamed. It wasn't one of your B-movie
Bride of the Gorilla
screams, more an attempt to express the sort of rage they just don't make words big enough for. ‘That does it,' she said. ‘All right, so the world's got to get blown up. That's a real shame and I'm very, very sorry, really I am. But.'

She turned on her heel and started to walk. I think she'd gone all of five yards when the first fissure opened up in the ground in front of her, and the sky began to crackle and spark in a manner that suggested that God had been doing DIY wiring.

‘Shit,' she said, and stopped dead.

Clouds had appeared out of nowhere, and were rapidly blotting out the sun; it was so dark it could've been a June noon in Manchester. A small laurel bush about three paces to my left burst into spontaneous flame. Actually, that struck me as a good sign at first, but when it didn't say anything I dismissed it as a coincidence (thought I was tempted to try leaving a message after the tone, just in case). Ahead of us on the green, elves were standing glued to the spot, staring upwards. It took me a while to realise that dwellers in Elfland, where skies are always blue, probably hadn't seen a cloud before.

‘Oh hell,' Cru wailed, ‘I don't know what to do. Somebody else decide, for God's sake.'

Of all the reactions I'd been expecting, this wasn't one of them. I reckoned I knew Cruella by then, and whatever else she might do, she'd never ask for advice. Ever.

‘Well?' she said.

Melissa had gone as white as tapioca pudding when the electrics started playing up; she was quite obviously frozen with terror, and I can't say I blamed her. Terror doesn't freeze me, though; in fact, it has the opposite effect, making me go all wobbly and fluid-boned. I had an overwhelming urge, in fact, to scratch a circle in the dirt and get the hell out of there, in an illogical hope that even if Elfland blew, the human side wouldn't go up with it. Silly, I know, and I'd like to say in my defence that I only considered it as a possible course of action because there wasn't a convenient pile of sand to hide my head in.

Cru was expecting a reply. Nobody to give it but me.

‘Decide what?' I asked.

‘Mike, just for once don't be so bloody stupid. Decide what I ought to do, is what.'

Not the hardest question I've ever been faced with. ‘I wouldn't go any further if I were you,' I suggested.

She muttered something under her breath. I couldn't make out most of it, though I fancy I caught the words
denser than depleted uranium
. ‘Thank you so much, professor bloody Einstein,' she said aloud. ‘Apart from that, what should I do?'

‘What, do you mean should you do the merging thing or carry on following Melissa about?'

‘Yes.'

‘Ah.'

Trickier, by several orders of magnitude.

I thought about it; and I had to confess, the first thought that crossed my mind was that I loved Cruella very much indeed. But Melissa was rather more restful, not to mention looking like something thrown off a catwalk for being so cute she was distracting people's attention from the clothes. Combine the two, I thought, what the hell is there to think about?

I considered that; and then I considered myself considering it. Not a pleasant sight.

On the other hand, we still had the world to save, not to mention Cru's sanity and quite possibly Melissa's life—

(Logic. If Melissa were to die, like my real dad, wouldn't that free up the necessary space on the seesaw? Hell, if she merged with Cru, they'd
both
effectively be dead – they wouldn't be themselves any more, so was there really any difference? I decided that the logical me was an even bigger arsehole than the selfish me . . .)

Come on
, I told myself,
you're a bloody double Nobel laureate, think of something
. There's got to be an answer, and the answer's got to be something to do with me, just like it was when I had to figure out a way of dealing with Daddy George. When you turn your face towards Heaven and cry out, ‘Why me?', the answer
Because everyone else is still at lunch
doesn't really cut it.

Something to do with me—

If they merged, Cru and Melissa might as well be dead, because neither of them would be
them
any more; because it's who we are that makes us unique. So: what makes us what we are? Various things; where we come from, the way our experiences shape us. The way other people shape us – like the way Daddy George effectively made me who I was; or the way I'd made Cru who she was, because she'd loved me all along and I'd kept vanishing, for years at a time, and she'd waited. Because she loved me.

The penny hadn't dropped yet, but it was quivering on the edge. Loving me was a fundamental part of who she was, it defined her. If she stopped loving me, she wouldn't be Cru any more, she'd turn into someone else living in the same body and wearing the same clothes. The old Cru might as well be dead.

(If she stopped loving me, I might as well be dead too. But that was a side issue. Can't make omelettes without breaking hearts.)

If I made her stop loving me, I'd kill her. There'd still be a Cruella, but it's be just an animated torso and appendages, haunted by the ghost of how she used to be, while a new occupier moved in and gutted the interior.

If I killed her, there'd be room on the bench; she'd drop out, having no opposite number, just like me. She'd be out of the loop. She could go home.

She'd be better off.

That just left the
modus operandi
; and that was easy.

‘All right,' I said, ‘I think you should go ahead with the merger.'

Cru looked at me, and it was as if some clown had poked a ladder through the roof, and I was looking up into darkness through two holes in her face.

‘It'd solve the mess,' I went on, ‘and that's the main thing. After all, this is very serious, we can't go letting our feelings put the whole world in jeopardy. Besides,' I added, ‘you shouldn't think of it as anything bad happening. Stroke of luck for you, really. Just think of it as if you were moving out of a poky little flat into a luxury mansion. It'd suit me better too, of course. I mean,
that
goes without saying.'

And I knew her too well. I was giving a fairly unconvincing performance, but I could've been reading it off the teleprompt and she'd still have believed it, because she'd always believe the worst of me, because she loved me and knew me too well. I could feel my hand tightening around the throat of her love, and the life slowly draining away with each heartbeat. It'd have been so much easier, so much more pleasant to slide a razor across my own throat, if only that'd have done any good – but it wouldn't, because the universe didn't need my space, think you very much, I could come and go as I liked and it wouldn't make any difference to the balance of the see-saw. And if I died, all I'd be doing would be going away
again
, this time with no chance whatsoever of coming back, and Cru would still carry on loving me, stubborn as a dog refusing to let go of a stick, and she'd still be Cru.