“I suppose you’ll be wanting lunch,” said the hermit.
Efluviel stared at him. From far below in the pit came the echo of a voice saying, “Yes, please.”
“Fine,” the hermit said sadly. “Here.” He uncoiled the rope from his shoulder and dropped it on the ground. “You do it. Don’t see why I should have to.”
There were several things Efluviel wanted to say at that moment, but instead she went with, “All right, yes, thank you.” Then she looked round for something to tie the rope to. By the time she’d done that, and Mordak had hauled himself up it out of the pit, the hermit wasn’t there any more.
“You’re fired,” Mordak said.
“You what?”
“You’re fired,” Mordak repeated, carefully winding up the rope around his forearm. “Come on, we don’t want to lose him. You didn’t happen to notice which way he went, did you?”
“You can’t do that.”
“Yes I can.”
“But why?” Efluviel wailed. “What did I do? I rescued you.”
“No,” Mordak said gently, “he did. You tied a bit of rope to a rock. For which,” he added, “I’m very grateful. Thank you.”
“This way, I think,” Mordak said, sniffing the air. “On account of, it’s the only one. Come on.”
For a moment Efluviel was too shocked to move. Then she scampered after him. “Why? Why are you firing me?”
“Simple.” Mordak stopped for another sniff. “Baked beans,” he said. “I quite like baked beans.”
“What did I do?”
“Nothing,” Mordak said. “I’m firing you because all you’ve ever wanted your entire life is to be the editor of the Face, right? And so, until you achieve that ambition, you’ll probably keep on helping me. So, you’re fired. Soon as the mission’s successfully accomplished, I’ll reinstate you. All right?”
“That’s so mean,” Efluviel said. “That’s just plain nasty. That’s—”
“Personnel management,” Mordak said. “Oops, tautology. Hurry up or he’ll get away. And don’t pull faces, you’ll stick like it.”
The scent of baked beans was getting stronger; Efluviel could smell it now, and it shows how hungry she was that she quickened her pace until she was practically treading on Mordak’s heels. “That must be him,” she said.
“What?”
“You know, him. The hermit.”
Mordak held back and fell in step. “You know,” he said, “just then you sounded almost like–no, it’s not possible.”
“Huh?”
“Respectful,” he said. “Which is so not you.”
“Of course I respect the hermit,” Efluviel said. “He’s the wisest man in the world. Why else do you think we’ve come here? To the Elves, he’s practically a god.”
“Right. A god who sets traps for visitors.”
“So?”
“And who really likes baked beans. Ah, this looks promising.”
In front of them they saw a rusty steel door, half ajar; by the state of the hinges, Mordak noted as they passed through, it hadn’t been capable of opening and closing for many years. Beyond the door, the corridor was dimly lit with tallow candles bearded with drips, whose light revealed a large number of empty brown earthenware jars lying on the ground, their labels peeling in the damp.
“Baked beans,” Efluviel said.
“So? He likes baked beans. Shows what a wise man he is.”
They turned a corner and found themselves in a high-roofed vaulted cavern. A hole in the roof let in daylight, revealing small hills of empty bean jars piled against the walls. A clothes-line spanned the cavern from torch-sconce to torch-sconce; from it dangled three pairs of frayed socks. In the far corner was a pile of cushions facing a small three-legged table, on which rested a perfect sphere of milk-white crystal, about the size of a man’s head. On the cushions lay the hermit, a thin man with straggly grey hair in a ponytail, wearing a brown robe. He had a bean jar in one hand and a fork in the other. He was staring at the crystal, and didn’t look round as they approached.
“There’s beans,” he said. “In the corner, by the stove. I suppose you’d better help yourselves.”
The stove was a small, spindly-legged charcoal brazier; on it was a battered copper pan, and next to it a pyramid of unopened bean jars. “Thank you,” Efluviel said. She lifted the pan and peered into it. “Maybe later,” she said. “But first, we have travelled far to ask you—”
“Quiet,” said the hermit.
Efluviel led Mordak off to one side. “That ball thing,” she said, in an awed voice, “I know what that is, they’re famous, everybody knows about them back home. It’s a Stone of Seeing. They’re magic, and there’s only six of them in the whole world. If you look into them, you can see what’s going on in distant places and—”
“Yes, I know.”
“Talk to the owners of the other five Stones without–what did you say?”
“I know. The Fathers of the Wise brought them from Omeranilenarion when they came over the Sundering Seas in the Pink Ships.”
“You know? That’s impossible. They’re a secret.”
Mordak smiled. “That’s what I like about you,” he said. “Every so often you can be quite disarmingly naïve. Of course we know about them. We’ve got one.”
“You’ve got—” Efluviel’s eyes opened wide. “Oh my God. The Fifth Stone. The Fifth Stone is in the hands of goblins.”
“Mphm.” Mordak hesitated, but she did look terribly upset. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said.
“Oh really. The Fifth Stone is controlled by the enemy and he says not to worry.”
“We can’t get it to work,” Mordak said. “It used to, about four hundred years ago. But then the picture got a bit blurry, and some fool thought he could fix that by cleaning it with nitric acid. We clean everything with nitric acid,” he explained, as Efluviel stared at him, “it’s the only way to get rid of those stubborn ground-in stains without the boil-wash. Anyway, since then it hasn’t worked worth a damn.”
“Oh.” Efluviel breathed a sigh of relief. Then she frowned. “Hang on, though,” she said. “If you’ve got the Fifth Stone, and the other five are all accounted for, what on earth is that?”
Mordak shrugged. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“Oh no, I can’t.” Efluviel was actually blushing. “He’s the hermit. No, no, I can’t. Really.”
Mordak rolled his eyes. “We’ve come all this way to ask him questions and now you’re shy. I don’t believe it.”
“You ask him. I just can’t. Sorry.”
“Elves,” Mordak said. Then he advanced towards the hermit and cleared his throat. “Excuse me—”
“Quiet!”
Behind him, Mordak could hear a little whimper, which he ignored. “I said, excuse—”
“Shut up,” the hermit roared. His eyes were still fixed on the crystal.
Mordak could feel his hackles rising. He took a deep breath, then another. “Listen, friend,” he said. “The lady and I have come a long—”
“Shut up! Go away! Oh for God’s sake. Why do you people always have to show up at exactly the wrong moment? Go away.”
Mordak thought for a moment. Then he slipped off his tattered travelling cloak and threw it over the crystal sphere. The hermit stared for a moment, then screamed. It was possibly the shrillest noise Mordak had ever heard, and goblins have rather sensitive ears, attuned to picking out very faint noises in the dark. So he did what he had to do, whereupon Efluviel hit him with a chair. By then, however, it was too late.
“You lunatic,” she screamed in his ear. “You’ve killed him.”
Mordak sighed. “Don’t be silly,” he said. “He’s just mildly stunned, that’s all. He’ll be fine in a minute.” He picked a splinter of wood out of his collar and looked at it. “Did you just attack me?”
“Yes.”
He shrugged. “Well, you’re not very good at it. You can explain to him why his one and only chair is now firelighters.” He leaned forward, twitched the cloak off the globe, and crouched down to listen. Very faint and far away, he heard a voice that seemed to be saying, “Dogger, Fisher, German Bight, moderate easterly, good”. He shrugged. “Oh look,” he said. “Your friend’s waking up.”
The hermit groaned, opened his eyes, saw Mordak and cringed away. “Get him off me,” he shouted. “Help! Goblins!”
“Now then,” Mordak said, “there’s no call for that. I just—”
“Goblins!” The hermit scrambled to his feet, caught his bare toes in the hem of his robe, slipped, skated across the smooth floor of the cavern, banged head first into the wall and went back to sleep. “Oh come on,” Mordak said. “This is silly.”
Efluviel grabbed him by the sleeve and marched him over to the opposite corner of the chamber. “Stay,” she snapped. “I’ll talk to him. You’ve done enough for one day.”
“The silly sod tripped over his feet,” Mordak protested. “How is that my fault?”
“You’re a goblin.”
Mordak made a faint whimpering noise. “Fine,” he said. “You talk to him. A moment ago you were too shy.”
“That was before you started beating him to a pulp.”
“I did not—”
“Goblins,” Efluviel said savagely. “Bloody goblins.” The hermit was stirring again. “You,” she said, giving Mordak a look that would’ve stripped paint. “Stay there. Don’t do anything. Don’t say anything. Leave everything to me. Understand?”
She said the last word slowly, accentuating each syllable. It was probably the single most dangerous thing she ever did in her life, though at the time she was too preoccupied to realise. For a moment, Mordak’s eyes glowed like tiny furnaces; then he suddenly smiled.
“Yes, dear.”
“Clown.” Efluviel turned her back on him and stalked across the chamber. By the time she reached the hermit he was sitting up, massaging his forehead with the palms of both hands. “Excuse me,” she said.
“No!” yelled the hermit. “Go away! Keep back. Don’t hit me.”
Efluviel had a smile on her face, hard and inflexible as an axe-head. “It’s all right,” she said, “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m an Elf. I’m good.”
“Piss off.”
Efluviel dropped on one knee and leaned forward to examine the hermit’s forehead. He shrank back. “Get off me.”
“I just want to see if—”
“Get away from me or I’ll rip your ears off.”
“Mphm.” Efluviel edged back a little. “You don’t seem to be too badly hurt. No blurred or double vision, nausea, dizziness?”
“I’ve got a knife,” the hermit said. “Somewhere,” he added, looking round. He scrabbled on the floor beside him and his fingers closed on something. It turned out to be a fork. “Want some of this, do you, needle-ears? Come on then, if you think you’re hard enough.”
Efluviel’s jaw dropped. “Needle-ears?”
“You heard me.”
For a moment, her eyes gleamed just like Mordak’s. Then she said, “It’s all right, I forgive you, you’ve just had a very traumatic experience. Just don’t ever call me that again. Capisce?”
There was a clatter as the fork hit the floor. “Sorry,” the hermit said. “Just keep your goblin off me, all right? And don’t scowl at me like that.”
“I’m not scowling. This is just my face.”
“Then for God’s sake take it outside. It’s making my teeth hurt.”
Efluviel blinked twice. Then she turned round. “Mordak,” she said. “Come and talk to the nice gentleman.”
“Love to.” Mordak got to his feet and wandered across. “Hello,” he said, “let’s start again. I’m Mordak, king of the goblins, though I’m sure you knew that already. Sorry if my assistant here’s been bothering you. I wonder if you’d care to answer a few questions. If you do,” he added quickly, before the hermit could speak, “we’ll go away and never come back.”
“Shoot.”
Mordak smiled. “Thank you,” he said, and sat down cross-legged on the floor. “First, you said something about lunch.”
“Over there.” The hermit waved at the bean jars.
“Thank you. My assistant will see to that. Would you like to join us?”
“I’m not eating anything she’s been fiddling with.”
Mordak smiled. “As you wish. Can’t say I blame you. Now then, that thing over there. What is it?”
The hermit glared at him. “None of your damn business.”
A crash behind him told Mordak that Efluviel was knocking the heads off baked-bean jars. “It’s one of those seeing-stones, isn’t it?”
“Might be. Never said it wasn’t.”
“But she doesn’t know about it.”
A broad, crafty grin spread across the hermit’s face. “Loads of stuff she doesn’t know about,” he said. “Thinks she’s so smart. Patronising cow.”
“I like you,” Mordak said. “In fact, I like you so much I might just decide to come and settle here permanently, and bring all my friends. Unless,” he added pleasantly, “you tell me where you got that thing from and why her lot don’t know about it.”
The hermit’s face didn’t change, but his eyes grew very round. “They all came through It,” he said quickly, “all the seeing-stones. All that about the Pink Ships is just bull. But that one came later than the others. Bloke who sold it to me said so. Bloke in a bar.”
“Ah.” Mordak gave him a reassuring grin. “And does it work?”
Mordak nodded slowly. Goblins love bargains, so the properties of objects bought from men in bars were familiar to him. “It doesn’t work.”
“Well, no. Not for talking to the other stones, but then, who gives a damn? All the other stones belong to Elves.”
“Quite.”
“But it does work. Sort of.”
“What does it do?”
“Ah.” The hermit seemed to have forgotten that he was talking to a goblin; his voice was higher and far less whiny, and he’d stopped quivering. “That’s a good question. It talks to me. I talk to it, but either it can’t hear me or it isn’t interested. A bit like my ex-wife.”
“I see,” Mordak said. “What does it say?”
“All sorts of really weird stuff,” the hermit replied excitedly. “I think it must be gods or something. You get different voices at different times of day. Like, the one I was listening to a moment ago tells you what the weather’s going to be, except that it’s always wrong and I’ve never heard of any of the places. And a lot of the time it’s a horrible noise like music, except it’s not music. And then there’s other gods telling me about stuff happening in a load of other places nobody’s ever heard of, and I can understand most of the words, but none of it makes any sense.”
Mordak thought for a moment. “You’re sure it’s real,” he said, “and you haven’t gone mad or anything?”
“I wondered about that,” the hermit said earnestly. “I mean, at one point I was pretty sure I must be imagining the whole thing. But I asked some visitors if they could hear it too, and they could. You heard it, didn’t you? Just now.”
“Yes, now you mention it, I did hear something.” Mordak said. “It was a little voice coming from a long way away. Dogger and Fisher and—”
“German Bight.” The hermit nodded vigorously. “So if you can hear it, it must be real. But I’ve researched it thoroughly, I’ve looked in all the records of the wisdom of the ages.” He nodded in the direction of the floor a few yards away; lying in the dust among the empty bean jars Mordak could see two small, rather dog-eared books, Wisdom and More Wisdom. “And there’s nothing in any of them about Dogger or Fisher or German Bight, or Washington or London or Brussels or Kabul, I don’t even know if they’re people or places or what the hell they are. And the stuff. The stuff’s just plain bizarre.”
“The stuff.”
“The stuff the gods tell me about. Crazy. Half of it’s all wars and earthquakes and some really odd kind of politics, and the other half is a load of trivial nonsense about actors and musicians and people who play kids’ games for money. And the god makes it sound like they’re all equally important, which makes no sense at all.” He sighed, and slumped against the wall. “For two pins I’d chuck the bloody thing down a volcano and be done with it, except—” He shrugged. “If it really is gods talking to me, I’ve got to listen, haven’t I? It’s my duty.”
Mordak rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “You said that the ball thing came here through It.”
“That’s right. At least, I think so. That’s what the bloke told me. Where else could it have come from?”
“What’s It?”
The hermit’s face suddenly went blank. “You don’t know.”
It occurred to Mordak that he might have made a serious tactical error. “Of course I know,” he said. “I just wanted to be sure we were talking about the same It, that’s all.”
He’d just made things worse. “There’s only one It,” the hermit said. “And you don’t know about it. And if you don’t know, I can’t tell you.”
“No I can’t. That’s sacred wisdom, that is. Need to know only. Not to be shared with the likes of you.”
Mordak pursed his lips. “What if I were to make a Freedom of Information request?”
“You do what you damn well like.”
“All right. How about if I bite your arms off?”
The hermit’s nostrils twitched. “That’s different.”
“Splendid,” Mordak said, grinning so as to exhibit his full range of teeth. “Now then. Tell me everything.”
“I’m not supposed to. I’ll get into all sorts of trouble.”
Mordak clicked his tongue. “No you won’t,” he said. “You’re under the direct personal protection of the king of the goblins, who’s unconditionally guaranteeing your safety. Also, if you don’t, I’ll hit you.”
Goblin diplomacy at its finest. The hermit shuddered, then sighed. “It,” he said.
“It.”
“It’s a thing.”
“You don’t say.”
The hermit gave him a much-enduring look. “I don’t know how you’d describe it,” he said. “Basically, a few hours’ march from here, there’s a cliff. In the face of the cliff, about three feet off the ground, there’s a hole, about six feet across. All round the hole there’s this—” The strain of searching for the right word distorted his face for a moment. “Thing. It’s like a big circle, it’s sort of a light brown, they do say it’s soft when you push against it, like a cushion, and oily and glistening, and there’s sparkly things like diamonds all over it. That’s it. A thing.”
Mordak frowned. “A thing with a hole.” He scratched his head. “Sounds like a perfectly ordinary cave to me.”
The grin that covered the hermit’s face had nothing o do with amusement; it was beyond pleasure or fear. “Ordinary it ain’t,” he said. “Anything that goes through the hole doesn’t come back.”
“Ah.”
“Quite.”
“That sort of hole.”
“That sort of hole,” the hermit repeated solemnly. “And if you stand next to it and keep very, very still, sometimes you can hear voices on the other side.”
“I bet.”
“Straight up. Distant voices, whispering. And nothing that goes in from our side ever comes back, but—” He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a murmur. “They do say, sometimes things come from the other side into our side. Things and people.”
Mordak’s head was starting to hurt. “Seems to me,” he said, “that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get a bloody great big rock and fill it in. Just to be on the safe side.”
That grin again. “Oh, they’ve tried that. The Wise. They’ve blocked it with boulders, they’ve built walls, they’ve sapped into the cliff face and brought down avalanches. Next day, the bloody thing’s back again. There’s absolutely nothing anyone can do to get rid of it. Believe me, they’ve tried. Six hundred years ago, the Jade Emperor of the East garrisoned an entire army there, six thousand men, to make sure nothing came through. When the supply wagons rolled up there two days later, they were all gone. Nothing left behind but a belt buckle and a small heap of plum stones. People try not to go near it much these days.”
“For some reason.”
“Indeed. Anyway,” the hermit said, taking a deep breath, “that’s It. And that’s where the man in the bar said this stone thing came from. Through the hole. From the other side.”
Cautiously, Mordak edged forward and nudged the crystal very gently with his foot. It didn’t move; it was like pressing against a wall. But it was spherical. Touching it made Mordak feel sick. “Well,” he said, “that’s really very interesting, but it’s not what I came to see you about.” He picked up the cloak he’d thrown over it earlier and replaced it, taking care that his fingertips came nowhere near the crystal’s surface. “All I want is to ask you a few questions.”
The hermit was looking at the covered sphere. “You know what,” he said, “when you do that, it’s different, somehow. Like suddenly it can’t see me any more.” He pulled himself together with a visible effort. “Let’s have some lunch,” he said. “I could murder a baked-bean sandwich.”
“A baked-bean sandwich wouldn’t be murder,” Mordak said. “It’d be self-defence.”
Archie wiped blood out of his eyes and propped himself up on one elbow. His head felt like he’d been using it to drive in fence-posts, and his fingers and toes were tingling ominously. “Define bad,” he said.
“Well.” The bald man reached out a hand. Archie shrank away, then realised that the bald man was offering to help him up. “A bad host, for one thing. Can I get you some milk? Pineapple juice? Maybe a couple of croissants.”
Archie was on his feet again. He swayed; balance sold separately. “Have I just been abducted?”
That made the bald man laugh. “If you like,” he said. “Me, I’d call it relocated or maybe added to inventory, but these things are subjective. If you don’t fancy croissants, I can get the lads to run you up a cheese and rocket salad.” Then he frowned. “You’re not going to attack me again, are you? Please don’t. Human bodies can’t take it like goblin bodies can.”
Archie nodded. “Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s pretend I have attacked you, and I’ve smashed you to the floor and jumped on your face a few times, and now I’ve terrified you into telling me exactly what’s going on.”
“Sure,” the bald man said. “What do you want to know?”
“Who are you, where am I, what am I doing here—” The bald man held up his hand. “That sort of thing,” he said. “Yes, why not?” He sat down cross-legged on the floor, took an apple from his pocket, bit off a large chunk, pulled a face, spat it out. “Are you sitting comfortably?” he said. “Then I’ll begin.”
Presumably you’re aware (the bald man said) of the Law of Conservation of Matter.
You aren’t? Gosh. Not to worry, because I was just about to say, forget everything you’ve ever learned about the Law of Conservation of Matter, ignore it, expunge it from your mind entirely. But you won’t have to do that, so that’s all right. Actually, you’re far better off than most people, because they know about the Law of Conservation of Matter, and it confuses the hell out of them when I tell them what they actually ought to know, which is the Law of Conservation of All Sorts of Things.
With me so far? Oh good.
The Law of Conservation of All Sorts of Things states that there’s only a finite quantity of any amount of stuff, and that finite amount can’t increase or decrease. Matter’s one of them, for sure, but there are others. There’s Energy, and Time, which are pretty much self-evident, and then there’s other, rather more nebulous forces and agents and so on, such as Optimism—
Yes, of course, Optimism is a classic. There’s only so much of it in the Multiverse, and it never dies, it just gets moved around. Give you a for-instance: for a week or so you’re really optimistic that you’ll get the vacant deputy assistant manager’s job, but then it becomes painfully obvious that your boss wants to give it to the smarmy cow in the Harrogate office; you therefore lose optimism, and the smarmy cow acquires it. The net quantity stays constant, but it’s redistributed. It’s just like Happiness. In fact, unless you’ve got a good working knowledge of the operation of the Law of Conservation of Happiness, I really can’t see how you could possibly begin to understand the first thing about sentient life. I mean, it’d make no sense at all.
But where the Laws of Conservation really matter is when you get on to Good and Evil. Yes, them too. Especially them.
All right, don’t believe it if you don’t want to, but it’s true. There’s a precisely quantified and absolutely limited quantity of both Good and Evil in every single reality in the Multiverse. It’s not optional, and it’s no good bringing in a note from your mother. There’s x Good and y Evil, and that’s that. Now in some realities, such as this one, you get what we call the Water Effect. Yes, I was just about to tell you. You’ve got hydrogen, and you’ve got oxygen; two very dissimilar substances, as I’m sure you’ll agree—
Gases. They’re gases. Sort of flavoured air.
All right, fine. All you need to know is that in nine realities out of ten, hydrogen and oxygen, though tending to disagree about a lot of things at a pretty fundamental level, nevertheless tend to combine to form the substance we call water; sort of like a coalition, but without all the point-scoring. Likewise, in this reality and quite a few others, low levels of Good and Evil combine to form the entity we know as human nature. In some people it’s two atoms of Good to one of Evil, in others it’s the other way about, but generally speaking it’s a pretty even and consistent mix. Consequently, the overall reserves of Good and Evil in this reality are widely distributed at a pretty low concentration, and it means the overwhelming majority of people aren’t particularly nice or conspicuously nasty. They’re just ordinary folks like you and me. Well, like me.
In other realities, though, such as the one you come from, the Water Effect doesn’t apply. Instead of being spread all over the place in tiny quantities, Evil and Good gather separately in massive concentrations; result, you get whole communities who are purely Good, like the Wise and the princes of the West, and entire species of rotters, such as your lot.
No offence, by the way.
Anyhow, on the whole it all sorts itself out, and so long as the balance isn’t interfered with, everything chugs quietly along and nothing suddenly breaks down or goes horribly wrong. Mostly this is because each reality is a sealed, self-contained unit, in which the Law of Conservation of All Sorts of Things can cheerfully apply without fear of anything getting in or getting out. Situation normal, everything fine. Quite.
Naturally, though, you can’t take all that for granted. Well, you can, but only because there are people like me. Which brings us back to your original question, who am I? Right. I am this reality’s Deputy Chief Curator of the Equilibrium. My team and I fight ceaselessly to ensure that the Laws of Conservation are rigidly obeyed and enforced. My highly trained and intensely motivated Rangers are the first and last line of defence against imbalance, chaos and the abyss, and together, we hold the line against the unthinkable.
Actually, it’s not a bit like that, in fact normally it’s a total skive, the sort of job you get because your uncle plays golf with the chairman. Because, you see, in a closed, sealed reality–which all of them are–nothing gets in, nothing gets out. No exits or entrances, no possible risk whatever to the equilibrium. The Laws take care of everything, and we just draw our salaries and our eye-wateringly generous bonuses. Exactly how it should be in a well-ordered cosmology.
Until—
“You’ve gone ever such a funny colour,” Archie said. “Are you feeling all right?”
The Curator nodded weakly. “Just thinking about it makes me so mad,” he said. “Everything was for the most ordinary in the most ordinary of all possible worlds, and then he had to come along. And then everything was suddenly—”
“Yes?”
“Difficult. Complicated.” The Curator practically spat the word. “We actually had to start doing things. It was a terrible shock to the system, believe me. Office hours. Sandwiches at my desk for lunch. For the first time in my life, I actually had to go out and buy an alarm clock.” He shook his head sadly. “Where’s it all going to end, that’s what I want to know.”
Archie waited for as long as he could bear. Then he said, “What happened?”
“He did,” the Curator said, and if it were possible to kill someone with the letter H, there’d have been blood on the floor. “Theo Bernstein, late Principal Technical Officer with the Very Very Large Hadron Collider project, and inventor of the YouSpace device. Bastard,” he paraphrased. “He ruined everything, and it’s all his fault.”
“Who?”
The Curator sighed. “It’s a long story,” he said. “All you need to know is that when you’re inside the parameters of a functional coherent YouSpace field, you can move from one reality to another via a simple visual interface. And to make it even easier, you don’t need special equipment or anything like that. All you need is a simple, ordinary, everyday doughnut.”
Archie looked at him for a moment. “Can I go now, please?”
“Or a bagel. Basically, any kind of food that’s got a hole in it. Bernstein figured that complicated electronic circuitry isn’t always available in some of the more primitive realities, but nearly everywhere’s got food, and practically every food-using culture has some form of deliberately perforated cereal-derivative. Therefore, wherever you go, you’re never more than a few minutes away from a YouSpace interface portal that’ll take you back home, or wherever you want to go next, in the blink of an eye. God, I hate that man.”
In his mind’s eye Archie could see a brown, glistening circle set in a cliff face, red early morning light flashing in the facets of the crystals set into the smooth curved fabric. “Really? A doughnut”
“Would I make something like that up? Oh, you can see the logic behind it. Quite well thought out, really. I mean, you can imagine some scenarios. Like, have you got a last request before we cut your heart out and offer it to the Snake-God? Yes please, I’d like a doughnut. It takes a special sort of mind to think of something like that.”
“And that’s how I got here,” Archie said. “But I still don’t get it. What does this Bernstein want me for?”
The Curator laughed. “Oh, bloody Bernstein faded out of the picture a long time ago. Waltzed off to be a god somewhere, left his nasty little invention behind. There were supposed to be safeguards, naturally. Enough said. Whether there’s someone out there retro-engineering the bloody things, or whether Bernstein was just criminally careless and left a warehouse full of YouSpace generators with the key under the mat we just don’t know. What we do know is, there’s at least five, possibly six, fully functional YouSpace portals in operation right now, and unless we can find them and shut them down—” He stopped, fumbled in his top pocket and produced a small brown bottle of pills, one of which he swallowed with a loud gasp. “Marvellous things, those,” he said. “Cure-anything tablets. Not actually from this reality, but a rotten job like mine, there’s got to be a few perks. Where was I?”
“Unless you can find—”
“Oh God, yes, don’t remind me.” The Curator massaged his temples with his fingertips. “I haven’t slept for weeks–well, not properly. Gone right off my food, can’t remember the last time I was able to snatch five minutes for a round of golf. All this work,” he added bitterly. “It really eats into your spare time.”
He looked so sad that Archie could feel a lump in his throat. “Getting back to me,” he said gently, “how do I fit in to all this? I’m nobody special, God knows.”
“True,” the Curator said, “very true. As an individual, you’re utterly insignificant and of no account—”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. No, it’s not who you are, it’s what you are.” He paused, and there was a worried look on his face, as if he was trying to make a decision. “I shouldn’t really tell you this. In fact, I shouldn’t have told you anything. It’s not like you knowing would help at all. But I guess it’s all right. After all, who would ever believe you?”
“Very true. You were about to—”
“Oh yes.” The Curator sat up a bit straighter. “A while back, you don’t need to know when exactly, there was a massive unauthorised transfer of,” he lowered his voice, “a certain commodity out of this reality into another one. Actually, the one you came from. Because this transfer was a flagrant and potentially disastrous breach of the Law of Conservation of All Sorts of Things, my colleagues and I were forced to initiate a programme of clandestine counter-transfers, of a certain commodity, from your reality into ours. And it was at the weekend, too.”
Archie’s head felt like it was being eaten from the inside by leeches. “A certain commodity,” he said.
“Yes. A huge, enormous quantity of this commodity was smuggled out through a doughnut. The result–well, it simply doesn’t bear thinking about. Fortunately, there’s a time-lag before the worst of the effects take hold. That means we had a brief window for saving the universe. We had to act quickly and decisively—”
“At a weekend.”
“At a weekend,” agreed the Curator. “My wife had asked people over, she had to ring and cancel, God only knows what she told them. Anyway, once we’d reviewed the situation, it was obvious what we had to do. We had no choice. We had to transfer an equal quantum of this commodity from your reality over to ours. To maintain the balance, you understand. But the problem was, the sheer scale of the thing. There was absolutely no way we could make up the shortfall all in one go, so we’d have to do it a bit at a time. Ones and twos here and there, sort of thing. And that’s what you are. You’re a one.”
“Ah.”
“Which is what I meant by you not being important as you,” the Curator went on. “All that matters is, you’re a goblin. Any old goblin would’ve done just as well.”
“That’s nice to know.”
“Don’t mention it. Also, you’re just a drop in the ocean. We actually need about four thousand of you, and so far we’ve only managed to scrape together about nine hundred. So,” the Curator added bitterly, “I might as well sell the Miami beach house, and probably the lodge at Interlaken as well, because it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting any spare time at all any time soon. I wouldn’t mind so much,” he added bitterly, “if it was just me that was affected. But it’s been sheer hell for my wife. She’s hardly seen anything of me at all for months.”
“Heartbreaking for her,” Archie said. “Um, so what’s going to happen to me? You said, a certain quantity of some commodity—”
The Curator laughed. “Oh, it’s all right,” he said, “there’s nothing to worry about. You’re not going to get boiled down or dissolved in acid or anything. We just need you over here, being a goblin.”
“But I’m not a goblin,” Archie pointed out. “Not a proper one, anyway.”
“The monkey-suit, you mean? Oh, that doesn’t matter. It’s your inner essence, that’s what’s important. At heart, you’re still goblin, no real indications of going native. We’ve proved that.”
“Have we?”
The Curator nodded. “Thanks to Flubenoriel. That’s the she-Elf, the one you’ve been conducting your ludicrous pseudo-romance with. Only, the human body she got issued with when she came over is seriously, seriously—But you simply didn’t notice, did you? Just another self-propelled ready meal as far as you’re concerned. No signs of incipient human behaviour there whatsoever.”
“Ah.”
“Absolutely clean bill of health,” the Curator said. “Which means you’re cleared for processing and onward transmission to Long-Term Storage.”
“Gosh,” Archie said. “That’s a weight off my mind. What’s Long-Term Storage?”
“Uh-huh.” The Curator shook his head. “You don’t need to know that.”
“Don’t I?”
“Security,” the Curator said owlishly. “Crucially important in a sensitive operation like this.”
“I suppose it would be, yes,” Archie said. “But nothing horrible’s going to happen to me, is it? You can tell me that, surely.”
“I don’t see why not,” the Curator said. “Nothing horrible, you have my word.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. As far as you’re concerned, it’ll be just like a nice, long rest. Nothing to do all day but lie peacefully and doze.”
Archie frowned. “Not in the sun, is it? I don’t like bright sunlight.”
“Of course you don’t, you’re a goblin. If you liked the sunshine, we’d know you’d gone wrong.”
“Ah. Only, a lot of the humans, they like lying in the sun. It’s what they do for pleasure.”
“Have no fears on that score, my friend,” the Curator said. “You’ll be indoors. No sunlight whatsoever.”
“That’s a relief,” Archie said.
“Below ground, in fact. In a tunnel.”
“I’d like that. It’d be like home.”
“Quite a lot like home,” the Curator said, “only better. No work. Nobody yelling at you telling you what to do. Just perfect peace and quiet, underground, in a tunnel. Well, more of a vault, actually, but it’s the same principle.”
“Vaults are okay,” Archie agreed. “Like treasure-vaults.”
“Very similar,” the Curator said reassuringly.
“And not too hot? Or too cold?”
“The temperature will be just right. We’re incredibly careful about that.”
Archie thought for a moment. “Well,” he said, “it sounds better than New Zealand, anyway.”
“Much, much better than New Zealand.”
“Good. I was getting a bit fed up with all the sitting around in silly costumes.”
“You won’t have to wear a silly costume. Or sit.”
“And the food was pretty boring, too. Same thing every day.”
“You won’t have to eat boring, monotonous food. Guaranteed.”
Archie remembered the assistant director. “And no idiot humans asking silly questions?”
“You won’t have to talk to a single human the entire time you’re there.”
“Cool,” Archie said. “So, what do I actually have to do?”
“You don’t do anything.”
“Won’t I get bored?”
“No chance of that. None whatsoever.”
“Really?” Archie frowned. “I must say, it all sounds too good to be true.”
The Curator smiled. “I promise you, you’re going to love it. Are you familiar at all with the term ‘cryogenic suspension’?”
“No.”
“Not to worry,” the Curator replied. “You’ll be so happy, the time will simply fly by. And you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you’re making a tiny but significant contribution to maintaining the equilibrium.”
“That’s nice. Do I get paid?”
“No.”
Archie shrugged. “Ah well,” he said. “Can’t have everything, I suppose.”
“You won’t be needing money. Everything’s provided.”
“Everything?”
“Everything you could possibly want or need, yes. The rest of your life will be one long, happy dream.”
“That’s all right, then.” Archie smiled. “When do I start?”