My Hero (39 page)

Except for a vague, almost translucent figure, like a huge mayfly, hovering in the cigar smoke. From a fold of his shimmering robe he took a small purple flower, which he proceeded to squeeze, like lemon over scampi, directly above the eyelids of the sleeping female. A moment later, he repeated the procedure with the male sleeper.

He snickered;
hna-hna-hna!
You can't hope to do that convincingly unless you've spent at least three terms at Baddie School. It's all a matter of breath control and, of course, hours and hours and hours of practice.

You could just about call this fleeting, ephemeral figure a fairy, just as you could theoretically describe Hitler as a statesman; after all, he was a man, and at various stages of his career he had quite a lot of states. This fairy, however, is different. He's the sort of fairy who, when assigned to tooth duty, would have with him at all times a pair of big, rusty pliers.

His name is probably Max.

 

The clock ticked on. One minute to twelve.

Twelve noon, or twelve midnight.

 

Jane woke up.

She couldn't remember having fallen asleep; but so what, she felt better for it. She remembered. And hey! the world was still here. She opened her eyes.

She closed them quickly and started to rub. Soap!

When it was safe to open them again, she discovered that she was looking directly into the eyes of . . .

‘Hello,' she said.

‘Hello,' Hamlet replied.

 

There was still one small, hidden part of Jane's mind that wasn't knee-deep in violet-scented pink goo, courtesy of the love-philtre. It was the part she used for being a writer.

This is how it goes with writers, even piss-awful ones like Jane. There's this tiny hidden cell bunker-deep inside their heads which operates on totally different rules and sees things from entirely different perspectives. It's a bit like an embassy; regardless of its location, it's a wee sliver of somewhere else - sovereign territory, operating under its own jurisdiction. And, like an embassy, it's the last safe place to run to when things on the outside start to get hairy.

Having barricaded herself in and jammed the mental equivalent of a chair under the door handle, the real Jane took a deep breath and called a staff meeting.

Oh dear. In love again. Shit.

Brain, she commanded, access memory for previous outbreaks of love and analyse.

Well?

Yes.

Chronological will do just fine.

Jane shuddered. Let's skip Kevin, shall we?

Next, please.

Next, please.

Next, please.

Further detail, please.

She hadn't; and so the catalogue continued . . .

(And outside that small, safe place the rest of her gazed
into Hamlet's soft, slugbelly-coloured eyes and sighed; and in the orchestra pit, the phantom violinists pulled on their asbestos gloves to protect their fingers from the glowing heat of tortured catgut . . .)

That's the lot?

Not just now, thanks. Session ends.

As she'd suspected; and the record confirmed it. Hopeless and feckless she may have been in her choice of kindred souls, but always consistent. There was a definite pattern to it (for a very general idea, imagine the brain of a Dalek linked up to a computer dating program) and Hamlet quite simply didn't correlate.

Put-up job. Somebody's doing this to me.

Guess who.

And, the real Jane realised, as she gazed into Hamlet's eyes, sod all I can do about it.

Help! Rescue!

My hero . . .

 

Not just sheer vindictiveness. Not just an evil mind having fun moving the counters around.

Fictional boy meets real girl; real boy meets fictional girl. They fall in love.

Fiction mixed with Reality, Reality with Fiction.

This is the way the world ends.

 

Stands the town clock at one to noon? And will the shootout happen soon?

But the clock also reads one minute to twelve at the end of
Midsummer Night's Dream
, just before Theseus's iron-hand-of-midnight speech; that poetic and, in context,
highly sinister version of
Last orders at the bar, please
. Then the play finishes, the happy-ever-after begins.

Happy ending; highly subjective term. Happy for who? Ending of what?

Even now, in the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour, there was a tiny nodule in the most obscure box-room of Skinner's mind that said
No, this isn't. And Titania doesn't, she goes back to Oberon and lives happily . . . And above all, I'm not. Not what? Can't remember. Just not, is all.

The sky is a stained-glass window, all different shades of light and dark blue. The air is that heavy, sweet, fresh smell unique to midsummer midnight. The little white light in Skinner's brain flickers for the last time and goes out. A big stupid grin splurges across his face, like a custard pie from the hand of God.

Cue Theseus, whose name is probably Max. He opens his mouth . . .

 

‘You bitch!' Regalian shouted, and ran.

Where to, he wasn't sure, Fiction or Reality, all one big happy . . . He stopped running, his breath coming hard. No point running. Main Street.

What had the man said?

He looked up; and he was facing Max.The clock started to strike twelve.

Max, in black, two guns on his belt, looking more like Jack Palance than Mr Palance could ever hope to do even if he took lessons.

The tumbleweed wobbled and fell over. Far away, the swinging door of the saloon banged in the wind. A bell rang. In the background, the wedding party stopped to watch; otherwise, the street was deserted, the way Main Street always is.

Yes! Restore Reality, have the hero die at the hands of the villain. Fat chance.

‘Okay, stranger,' Max drawled. ‘This town ain't big enough for the both of us.'

 

Basic authorship theory.

The hero always wins. He has no choice.

There are times when this can be a confounded nuisance.

 

‘Oh, I don't know,' Regalian replied. ‘Tell you what, you can have the whole of the top bit, from the bank down as far as the general store and the watering trough, and I'll even throw in the big open space behind the smithy. You could build a whole factory estate on that if you wanted to.'

Max didn't reply. On his right hand he wore a skintight black leather glove. It was hovering about an inch and a half above the pearl grips of his Peacemaker. He grinned.

And the realisation hit Regalian like an express train hitting a cow on the line; he'll draw and I'll be faster, and I'll kill him. And that'll mean Fiction has won, and there'll be no more Reality, ever. Even if he manages to shoot me, I'm still a sodding vampire, I can't die. Not that it'll come to that, of course, because I'm the hero. And the hero's always faster on the draw. Always.

From the direction of the upper saloon balcony, he heard the grinding click of a Winchester rifle being cocked. Of course, he realised, the sniper; the one who always gets shot and falls through the balsawood railings. Only he's not here to kill me, he's here to make sure, in case I miss . . .

But I can't.

I
can't
, dammit. If I turn through a hundred and eighty
degrees and shoot straight up in the air, the bullet will fall on his head and kill him. If I somehow manage not to shoot at all, he'll miss, his bullet will ricochet off a wagon wheel and come back and hit him straight between the eyes.

This is the way the world ends; not with a whimper, but a bloody loud bang.

And . . .

Max went for his gun. And before he'd cocked the hammer, before the Peacemaker was even clear of the holster, the Scholfield was out and cocked and levelled at his heart and—

There was absolutely nothing Regalian could do. He felt his finger tighten on the trigger, and the sear broke and (Max's gun was out now, and his thumb was on the hammer; too late, too late, too late) the hammer fell.

 

The Scholfield cleared its throat.

It had only one line, but it was a honey. When the film was over, it would be the line everybody would remember.

‘Click,' it said.

 

The bullet from Max's gun - sterling silver, ninety-nine-point-nine per cent fine - hit Regalian smack in the heart. He jerked, hit the ground like a sack of potatoes and lay still.

Max screamed, turned, raised the gun to put it to his head and fire it into his own ear. He pulled the trigger, missed; and the bullet went past him and hit Skinner on the saloon balcony.
Crash!
went those balsawood railings.
Thump!
went that heavy body.

Horrified, Max tried to back away but there was nowhere for him to go. He threw the gun from him. It hit the ground, the impact jarred the hammer, a shot rang
out; the bullet ricocheted off a wagon wheel, missed Hamlet's head by a fraction of an inch, sang off the tin-plate sign over Barker's Store, smashed through the window of the saloon and hit the pianola, which immediately began to play
Buffalo Girl
.

With a sickening
crunch!
, the bomb in Hamlet's chest exploded.

Max whimpered and stared at his right hand. The black glove had gone. He glanced up. The rim of his hat was now white.

‘No!' he screeched. ‘No, please!'

He sank to his knees; and Jane, making her way sedately towards the train that sat puffing quietly like a contented pipe-smoker at the end of the street, stepped over him without looking down.

 

Hamlet woke up.

He was sitting at a table. On either side of him was a child; to his right, a boy of about twelve, and to his left a six-year-old girl, with pigtails and freckles like a foxed mirror. In front of him was an empty plate. Everyone else's plate was heaped with slices of grey, sad-looking meat and vegetables boiled into semi-deliquescence.

‘Why isn't Hamlet having any?' demanded the girl.

On the other side of the table, a harassed-looking woman who was obviously Mummy made a little Give-me-strength sighing noise.

‘Hamlet isn't hungry, dear,' she said.

‘I think Hamlet's very hungry,' replied the girl. ‘I think Hamlet should have some too.'

‘Actually,' Hamlet said, and then stopped. It suddenly occurred to him that he was invisible.

Except possibly to the girl, who turned and gave him a long, serious stare. ‘Don't you?' she said.

‘Actually,' Hamlet replied, ‘I'm not all that hungry,
thanks all the same. Look, can you actually see me?'

‘Of course I can,' replied the girl.

‘Sarah,' said Mummy, ‘I think we've had enough of Hamlet for today, so just eat up your nice tea and then you can watch television.'

‘Can they see me?'

‘Of course not,' said the girl. ‘They're
silly
.'

The sour-looking bald man who was palpably Daddy clicked his tongue and scowled at Mummy. ‘I told you,' he said. ‘I said to you, Don't encourage the child, it'll get out of hand.'

‘I think Hamlet's gone to bed now,' said Mummy loudly. ‘You can say goodnight to him later if you like.'

The girl shook her head. ‘Hamlet hasn't gone to bed, have you, Hamlet? He says he'd like some food now, and ice cream for afters.'

‘No, really, it's very kind of—'

‘Another peep out of you, my girl,' growled Daddy, ‘and it's straight up to your room for you. Understood?'