Expecting Someone Taller (27 page)

‘That was very clever,' Alberich said to Malcolm, forgetting to let go of the Norn's hand even though the danger was past. ‘How did you manage it?'

‘What, that?' said Malcolm diffidently. ‘Oh, it was nothing, really.'

Alberich and his new friend walked to the window. In the sky there was a deep red glow, which could have been the sunset were it not for the fact that it was due North. Alberich looked at it for a long time.

‘I never did like them,' he said at last.

‘Who?' Malcolm asked.

‘The Gods,' said Alberich. Then he turned to the Norn. ‘You look like you could do with some fresh air,' he said. ‘Do you fancy a stroll in the garden?'

It seemed very probable that she did, and they walked away arm in arm. Malcolm shook his head sadly.

‘Who was that, by the way?' he asked Mother Earth, who was busily brushing the fluff off her jacket.

‘The Middle Norn,' said Mother Earth.

‘Doesn't she have a name?'

‘I don't know. Probably.'

‘What's that light in the sky? I thought I'd put everything right.'

‘That is the castle of Valhalla in flames,' replied Mother Earth quietly. ‘The High Gods have all gone down. They no longer exist.'

Malcolm stared at her for a moment. ‘All of them?'

‘All of them. Wotan, Donner, Tyr, Froh . . .'

‘
All
of them?'

‘They went against the power of the Ring,' said Mother Earth with a shrug, ‘and were proved to be weaker.'

‘And what about the Valkyries?' Malcolm's throat was suddenly dry.

‘They were only manifestations of Wotan's mind,' said Mother Earth. ‘Figments of his imagination, I suppose you could say.'

‘But they were your daughters.'

‘In a sense.' Mother Earth polished her spectacles and put them precisely on her nose. ‘But what the hell, I never really got on with them. Not as
people
. They were too like their father, I guess, and boy, am I glad to see the back of him.'

‘And they're all dead?'

‘Not dead,' said Mother Earth firmly. ‘They just don't exist any more. I wouldn't upset yourself over it. In fact, you should be pretty pleased with yourself. By the way, did Flosshilde tell you about . . .?'

‘Yes,' said Malcolm, ‘yes, she did.' He was trying to remember what Ortlinde had looked like, but strangely enough he couldn't. He felt as if he had been woken up in the middle of a strange and wonderful dream, and that all the immensely real images that had filled his mind only a moment ago were slipping away from him, like water that you try and hold in your hand.

‘Let me assure you,' said Mother Earth, ‘that you have in no sense
killed
anybody.'

‘I don't believe I have,' said Malcolm slowly, ‘I think I'm beginning to understand all this business after all. By the way, what happens now?'

Mother Earth came as close as she had ever done to a smile. ‘You tell me,' she said. ‘You're in charge now.'

Malcolm looked at the Ring on his finger. ‘Right,' he said, ‘let's get this show on the road.'

Mother Earth yawned. ‘I'm feeling awful sleepy,' she said. ‘I guess I'll go to bed now, if you don't mind. If I don't get my thousand years every age I'm no use to anybody. '

‘Go ahead,' said Malcolm. ‘And thanks for all your help.'

‘You're welcome,' said Mother Earth. She was beginning to glow with a pale blue light. ‘I didn't do anything, really. It was all your work.'

Malcolm smiled, and nodded.

‘Remember,' she said, ‘whatever you feel like doing is probably right.' She was indistinct now, and Malcolm could see a coffee-table through her.

‘Sorry?' he asked, but she had melted away, leaving only a few sparkles behind her in the air. Malcolm shrugged his shoulders.

‘Never mind,' he said aloud. ‘She's probably on the phone.'

Two very bedraggled ravens floated down out of the evening sky and pecked at the window-pane. Their feathers were slightly singed. Malcolm opened the window and they hopped painfully into the room.

‘Hello,' said Malcolm. ‘What can I do for you?'

The first raven nudged his companion, who nudged him back.

‘We were thinking,' said the first raven. ‘You might be wanting a messenger service.'

‘Now you've taken over,' said the second raven.

‘You see,' said the first raven, ‘we used to work for the old management, and now they've been wound up . . .'

‘What do you do, exactly?' Malcolm asked.

‘We fly around the world and see what's going on,' said the raven, ‘and then we come and tell you.'

‘That sounds fine,' said Malcolm. ‘You're on.'

The second raven dipped its beak gratefully. ‘I was thinking of packing it in,' he said. ‘But now the old boss has gone . . .'

‘What are you called?' Malcolm asked.

‘I'm Thought,' said the first raven, ‘and this is Memory.'

‘When can you start?'

Thought seemed to hesitate, but Memory said, ‘Straight away.' When Malcolm wasn't looking, Thought pecked his colleague hard on the shoulder.

‘Fine,' said Malcolm. ‘First, go and make sure that all the damage has been put right. Then check to see if any of the old Gods are still left over.'

The two ravens nodded and fluttered away. When they were (as they thought) out of earshot, Thought turned to Memory and said, ‘What did you tell him that for?'

‘What?' said Memory.

‘About us starting straight away. I wanted a holiday.'

‘Don't you ever think?' replied Memory. ‘This is the twentieth century. They've got telephones, they've got computers, they've got Fax machines. They don't need birds any more. Nobody's indispensable, chum. You've got to show you're willing to work.'

‘Oh, well,' said Thought. ‘Here we go again, then.'

After a while, it occurred to Malcolm that he hadn't seen Flosshilde since the storm had died away. At the back of his mind something told him that now that Ortlinde no longer existed, it was time to move on to the next available option, but he recognised that instinct and deliberately cut it out of his mind. It was the old Malcolm Fisher instinct, the one that made him fall in love and be unhappy. He was finished with all that now. He knew of course that there was such a thing as love, and that if you happen to come across it, as most people seem to do, it is not a thing that you can avoid, or that you should want to avoid. But you cannot go out and find it, because it is not that sort of creature. The phrase ‘to fall in love', he realised, is a singularly apt one; it is something you blunder into, like a pothole. Very like a pothole. In his case, however, he had had the fortune, good or bad, to blunder into a badger, not love, and since he was not accident-prone, that was probably all the accidental good fortune he was likely to get. As for Flosshilde - well, since the passing of the Valkyries, she was officially one of the three prettiest girls in the universe, but only superficial people judge by appearances. Malcolm himself could be a prettier girl than Flosshilde just by giving an order to the Tarnhelm, although it was unlikely that he should ever want to do that. The fact that she was a water-spirit was neither here nor there; he himself was a hero, descended from Mother Earth and a now non-existent God, but he doubted whether that had any influence on his character or behaviour. He suddenly realised that Wotan and Erda and all the rest of them had been his relatives. That at least explained why he had been frightened of them and why he had found them so difficult to cope with.

He smiled at this thought. Family is family, after all,
and he had just blotted most of his out. But now he was on his own, which, bearing in mind the case of his unhappy predecessor, was probably no bad thing. It would be foolish to go looking for a consort now that the world depended on him and him alone. A trouble shared, after all, is a trouble doubled.

Nevertheless, he wondered where Flosshilde had got to. Everyone seemed to have drifted away, and for a moment he felt a slight panic. He sat down on the stairs and tried to think calmly. To his relief, he found this perfectly possible to do.

Wotan, he reflected, had gone to one extreme, but Ingolf had gone to the other. One had been caught up in a noisy and infuriating household which had driven him quietly mad. The other had curled up in a hole and allowed his dark subconscious to permit the world to drift into the twentieth century, with all its unpleasant consequences. He sought a happy medium between these two extremes and in particular considered carefully all that Mother Earth had told him. Then he got up and whistled loudly. To his surprise, nothing happened. Then he realised his mistake and went through to the drawing-room. There were the two ravens, huddled upon the window-sill.

‘Everything's fine,' said Thought, as soon as Malcolm had let them in. ‘All the Gods have cleared off.'

‘Except Loge,' said Memory. ‘He offered us all the dead sheep we could eat if we didn't tell you he was still around, but we thought . . .'

‘I've got nothing against Loge,' said Malcolm. ‘But how come he didn't go down with all the others?'

‘He was a bit puzzled by that,' said Memory. ‘Apparently, there he was, surrounded by Gods one minute, all on his own feeling a right prat the next. He
thinks it's down to him being a fire-spirit and not a real God.'

‘Tell him he can have his old job back if he wants it,' said Malcolm.

‘I'll tell him,' said Thought, ‘but I think he's got other plans. He was talking about going into the wet fish business. Muttered something about he might as well do it himself before somebody did it to him. Gloomy bloke, I always thought.'

‘Anyway,' said Malcolm, ‘did either of you see Flosshilde?'

‘Flosshilde,' said Memory thoughtfully. ‘Can't say I did. In fact, I haven't seen any of the girls since before the Big Bang.'

Malcolm suddenly felt very ill. ‘But they weren't High Gods, were they?' he said. ‘I mean, they couldn't have . . .'

‘Wouldn't have thought so,' said Memory, ‘but you never know with those three. Very deep they were, though you wouldn't think it to look at them. But they were always mixed up with some pretty heavy things, like the Rhinegold and the Ring. Could be that they had to go along with the rest.'

Malcolm sat down heavily, appalled at the thought. He couldn't understand why he was so horrified, but the idea of never seeing Flosshilde again suddenly seemed very terrible. Not that he was in love with her; but he knew now that he needed her very urgently.

‘Find her,' he snapped. ‘Go on, move. If you're not back by dawn, I'll turn you both into clay pigeons.'

The ravens flapped hurriedly away into the night, and Malcolm closed his eyes and groaned. He had just bumped into something, and it felt horribly disconcerting.

‘Oh, God,' he said aloud. ‘Now look what I've done.'

Alberich and the Middle Norn looked in to say goodbye, and found Malcolm in a strange mood. He seemed upset about something but would not say what it was, and his manner seemed cold and hostile. The Norn felt sorry for him, but Alberich seemed in a hurry to get away.

‘I don't like it,' he said. ‘Something's gone wrong.'

‘What could possibly go wrong now?' said the Norn coyly.

‘I don't know,' said Alberich, ‘but when it does, I want to be safely underground, where it won't matter so much.'

They walked in silence for a while, as the Norn nerved herself to ask the question that had been worrying her.

‘Alberich,' she said.

‘Yes?'

‘Don't take this the wrong way, but weren't you supposed to have foresworn Love?'

‘Yes,' said Alberich, ‘but I'm allowed to change my mind, aren't I?'

‘But I didn't think you could. Not once you'd sworn.'

‘That was conditional on my still wanting the Ring. And now that I couldn't care less about it . . .'

‘Couldn't you?'

‘No.' He felt rather foolish, but for some reason that was all that seemed to be wrong with him. An unwonted harmony seemed to have overtaken his digestive system.

‘To celebrate,' he said daringly, ‘let's go and treat ourselves to the best lunch money can buy in this godforsaken country. I've heard about this place where you can get very palatable lobster.'

The Norn stared at him. ‘Are you sure?' she said.

Alberich smiled at her fondly. ‘Don't you start,' he said.

 

It was nearly dawn by the time the ravens came back. They perched on the window-sill exhausted, for they had been
flying hard all night. Through the open window, they could see the new Lord of Tempests sitting where he had been when they had left him several hours before. He was staring at the ground, and he looked distinctly irritable.

‘He's not going to like it,' whispered Memory.

‘You tell him,' replied Thought. ‘You're the one with the words.'

‘Why's it always got to be me?' said Memory angrily. ‘You're the eldest, you tell him.'

‘How do you make that out?'

‘Stands to reason, dunnit? You can't have memory before thought, or you wouldn't have anything to remember. Well, would you?'

Memory clearly had right on his side, and so it was Thought who tapped gingerly on the pane and hopped into the room first. Malcolm looked up, and there was something in his eyes that both ravens recognised.