The Outsorcerer's Apprentice (33 page)

Gordon opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“Elves, of course, are tougher than humans,” John went on, “as they never tire of reminding us. So when you hired Elves to dig up the shiny yellow rocks for you, they didn’t die straight away, like men would’ve done. But it did do nasty things to them; so nasty that the other Elves didn’t want anything more to do with them, so the miners took to living down here, in the caves. And, three thousand years later, here they still are, though properly speaking, they aren’t really Elves any more. The mountain Elves got shorter and started growing beards, and the woodland Elves–well, I personally think Mordak and his people have a distinguished, commanding appearance, and you might care to argue that the extra eyes and the claws and so forth are actually useful developments and an improvement rather than a genetic mutilation. I’d venture to suggest, however, that a court might not agree. The grossly reduced lifespan issue is also somewhat moot, since because of the dwarf-goblin wars, very few goblins and dwarves ever live long enough to die of radiation poisoning. Since you deliberately started those wars, however, you may feel it wouldn’t help your case too much to take that point in front of the judge. I don’t know. Up to you.” He smiled. “Well? Is that more or less how it happened?”

A loud sobbing noise made Benny look round, and he saw a short, bearded man with a gold crown on top of his helmet
being led away in tears. Then he glanced at King Mordak and instinctively backed away three paces.

“Is that right?” Mordak asked, in a surprisingly quiet, calm voice. “Well? Yes, you, in the blue nightie, I’m talking to you.”

Gordon shrugged. “I’m not admitting anything,” he said. “But in any case it’s all academic. All this stuff happened thousands of years ago. If your lawyer friend there was any good at his job, he’d know that there’s such a thing as a statute of limitations, even in this godforsaken armpit of a reality. Sorry, boys, but you can’t sue me, you’re out of time.”

For perhaps two seconds, Mordak was perfectly still and quiet. Then he roared and surged forward like a tidal wave, and nobody seemed interested in stopping him. Gordon sprang back, fumbling in the pocket of his robe. “Look out!” someone shouted–later, Benny was seriously upset to realise it’d been him–and a goblin soldier grabbed the thing that Gordon had pulled out; a small, round item of patisserie, with a hole in the middle. Gordon swerved sharply, kicked a goblin in the solar plexus and jumped over him, heading for the north wall of the cavern, where the fifty-foot giant doughnut—

—Had been. But it wasn’t there any more. Instead, there were just crumbs and a wall, against which the tall young man was leaning, chewing rhythmically and looking slightly guilty.

“Good
boy
, Art!” the old man yelled. “There, see,” he told the world in a loud, happy voice. “Told you he’d make himself useful eventually.”

Gordon stared in horror at the wall for a moment, then spun round to face the advancing phalanx of goblins. There was nowhere left to run, and Benny couldn’t bear to watch. He was about to turn away when a movement caught his
eye; Uncle was standing on one foot, rolling up his left sock, scrabbling for—

The goblins must’ve seen it too; they charged, and the first goblin to reach him was quick enough to knock the emergency backup Cheerio out of Gordon’s fingers. It flew through the air, only inches from Gordon’s nose. He had just enough time to stare at it,
through
it, and yell, “So long, idiots”; and then he vanished.

S
ome time later, when the cavern was almost empty, John the Lawyer said, “Damn.”

Buttercup gave him a friendly smile. “It’s all right,” she said. “We all make mistakes.”

John shook his head. “A
proper
lawyer wouldn’t have forgotten about the statute of limitations,” he said sadly. “A proper
Elf
lawyer. Ah well.” He yawned, and stretched his arms. “You know, I don’t think I’m really cut out for a career in the legal profession. I reckon I might go into local government instead. You can be just as nasty, but you don’t have to keep getting things
right
all the time.”

Benny cleared his throat. “Actually,” he said, “if you want, I can give you a job.”

Turquine, who’d been lying on the floor with his feet up on a dragons’ tooth ribcage, looked up sharply. “Him? Oh come on.”

“Why not?” Benny said. “He’s smart, and his heart’s sort of in the right place, and he did save us all from Uncle’s soldiers.”

John made a vague, bashful gesture. “Motivated by pure greed, I assure you.”

“Yes,” Benny said, “but to be honest, I don’t think any of
us have exactly covered ourselves in glory over all this. I know I haven’t, that’s for sure. If it hadn’t been for me barging in here without allowing for base theory distortion—”

The old man coughed gently. “As formulated by Sonderberg and Chen, sir? Bless ’em,” he added indulgently. “Course, young Art helped them a lot with that, back in the day. Put ’em on the right lines, so to speak. Sorry, sir, you were saying.”

Benny stared at him for a moment, then went on, “Anyway, the way I see it, this mess is just as much my fault as my uncle’s, and someone’s going to have to sort it out, and it’s not the sort of thing you can fix with a few magic spells and a happy-ever-after, it’s going to need solid hard work for a very long time. Really, I don’t think there’s any moral high ground, just a few low lying ethical foothills. If you want the job, you can have it.”

“Thank you,” John said. “Doing what?”

Benny shrugged. “Running things,” he said. “Making sure everything works. One thing Uncle was right about, you people can’t just go back to how things were. So instead, I guess you’ll just have to carry on doing all the outsorcery stuff, or else a lot of people are going to starve. The difference will be, though, you’ll get to keep the money, instead of Uncle grabbing it all for himself.”

Turquine shook his head. “The portal thing,” he said. “It’s gone.
He
ate it.” The young man blushed, and unwrapped a Snickers bar. “So we’re cut off—”

“Not really, sir,” the old man interrupted, “meaning no disrespect, but that shouldn’t be a problem. Me and Art, sir, we can rig something up, if you’d like us to. I mean to say, patisserie’s not really our line, strictly speaking, but it can’t be all that different from metadimensional field inversion, and we’re dab hands at that.”

“Just so long as I don’t have to watch,” Buttercup said crisply.

“And just to make sure you don’t make any careless mistakes in the accounts,” Benny went on, “I’d like Buttercup and Turquine to keep an eye on them for me. If that’s all right.”

“Sure,” Turquine said. “She’s got a marvellous head for figures.”

“Sweetheart.”

“So she can do the sums,” Turquine said, “and I can do the bashing-people’s-heads-in if the sums don’t add up. Though I’m sure they will,” he added graciously. “Won’t they?”

A wistful look flitted over John’s face, and then he nodded. “Yes, why not?” he said. “After all, money isn’t everything. It’s helping people that matters most in the long run. What?” he added. “Why are you all looking at me like that?”

“Nothing,” Benny said quickly. “Anyway, I’m glad that’s settled. I’d like to think, after all the mess my uncle and I made, there’ll be someone here to clear it up and make things run properly.”

Buttercup frowned a little. “You’re going back, then.”

Benny nodded sadly. “I have to,” he said. “I’d better talk to my uncle. Otherwise, he’ll come storming back here casting spells and sowing dragons’ teeth, and everything’ll be ten times worse.”

“You think you can stop him?” Buttercup asked.

“I think so, yes. He’d give it up, for me, if I make him see that’s what I really want. He’s not really a bad person, just—”

“An inhuman monster?”

“Thoughtless,” Benny said. “Not much consideration for other people. I think it’s because he uses up all his consideration on me, so there’s none left for anyone else. I’ll deal with him, leave it to me.”

The old man coughed gently. “Excuse me, sir, but you can’t.”

“Oh, I don’t know. If I can only make him see—”

“No, sir, if you’ll let me finish. You can’t go back to the other side, sir. You’ll die.”

Benny stared at him, but the old man nodded sadly. “Die? As in—”

“Yes, sir.” The old man took his cap off and twisted it in his hands. “No disrespect, sir, but you weren’t listening to what this gentleman here was saying. About the plutonium-302, sir. Particularly nasty isotope, the 302. Very bad for you, I’m sorry to say, and you were wandering about down there in the tunnels ever so long. Young Art’s been down there with his Geiger counter, bless him, and he says the ambient level is ninety times the safe max.”

With a sudden jolt of horror, Benny remembered the chunks of glowing yellow rock that lit the corridors. “Oh God,” he whispered. “I’m going to die.”

“Yes, sir,” the old man said. “Eventually. Everyone dies
eventually
; well, nearly everyone.” For some reason, the corner of his lip twitched; private joke, maybe. “But you should be good for another seventy-odd years, sir, provided you stay here. Not if you go back, though. That’d be a very bad idea.”

“What?” Benny felt as though the inside of his head was full of water. “I don’t—”

“It’s the YouSpace field, sir,” the old man explained. “Very clever, that Professor Van Goyen, he really knew his stuff. Got a built-in bioelectrical stasis compensator, see, keeps you safe from harmful radiation while you’re within the effective area of the YouSpace effect. Once you leave it, though…” He made a very sad face. “But so long as you stay here, you’ll be fit as a fiddle, sir. So that’s all right.”

Benny’s eyes opened wide. “Uncle—”

The old man nodded. “He’ll be just fine,” he said. “He used magic, see. Magicked up a personal bioshield, very impressive bit of conjuring, young Art says, more his line
than mine, if you see what I mean. He can come and go as he likes and no harm done. Not you, though, sir. Sorry, but there it is.”

There was a very long silence. Then John said, “Does that mean the job’s off, then? If you’re staying?”

“I’m stuck here,” Benny said. “For ever and ever.”

The sharp hissing noise proved to be Buttercup, sucking in air through her teeth. “Oh come on,” she said. “Pull yourself together, for crying out loud. It’s not so bad here, is it?”

“But it’s…” Benny hesitated. A certain degree of tact, he decided. After all, this was their home. His too, now. “It’s a bit of a shock,” he said. “I’ve been trying so hard to go home, and now I’ve sort of
won
, but it turns out I can’t go after all. It’s just a bit unfair, that’s all.”

“Unfair.” Turquine yawned. “Let’s see. You’re the absolute ruler of a relatively prosperous kingdom, with enormous personal wealth. Those two attributes alone are enough to pretty well ensure you’ll find true love.” He turned his head and smiled at Buttercup, who beamed back at him “And with John here and Buttercup and me running things, you won’t have to do any work, so you’ll have both the time and the money to do whatever the hell you like, always provided it doesn’t involve food with holes in. Thanks to you, all the people in your kingdom will shortly be getting ludicrously rich, so you’ll be incredibly popular and everyone’ll love you, including the goblins and the dwarves, which I would find seriously weird, but maybe you’re a bit more cosmopolitan in your outlook, I don’t know. And there’ll be universal peace, now the goblins and the dwarves have stopped fighting, and they’ll be too busy sniggering at the Elves from now on to want to fight
them
. So, how’s it looking? Yeah, it’s a real bitch. If I were you, I’d write to someone about it.”

Benny nodded slowly. “There’s that, I suppose,” he said. “I’ll just miss my uncle, that’s all. He’s all I’ve got.”

“All you had,” Buttercup said briskly. “And that’s what you want to go back to, leaving all this behind. Give me strength.”

Suddenly, Benny laughed, and carried on laughing until everyone was looking at him. “Sorry,” he said. “Yes, I think you’re probably right. Stuff the unicorn. And stuff home.” He grinned, so wide he nearly unzipped his head. “I think I’m going to like it here.”

“Thank goodness for that,” Buttercup said. “If I’d thought you were going to be stuck here rich, all-powerful and miserable, I wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night.” She looked round, then stood up. “What are we all doing sitting here surrounded by smelly dead dragons when we could be somewhere
nice
?” she said. “Come on. It’s haggis night at the King’s Head. You can buy us all dinner.”

Something she’d said made the tall young man look up and grin. “Sure,” Benny said, “provided you order the most expensive thing on the menu. I insist on that.”

“There’s only haggis on haggis night,” Buttercup said. “And it’s twopence. But there’ll be other times.”

“It’s a deal,” Benny said, and then he paused, and turned to John. “Looks like you’re wrong,” he said. “Money is everything, after all.”

But John shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I used to, but I’ve changed my mind. I realised, there’s something so much more beautiful and wonderful in this world than money, and it’s going to be mine, and nobody will ever be able to take it away from me.”

“Really?” Turquine said. “What?”

John picked a scrap of dragon fat off the sleeve of his robe. “The look on the Elves’ faces when they find out they’re intimately related to King Mordak and his goblins,” he said. “In fact,” he added, “I think I’ll go and tell them right now. So long, everyone. And thank you. Ever so much.”

And he walked away singing into the sunlight.