Falling Sideways (45 page)

‘Are you kidding? We've been out in real sunlight. We've been able to hop more than five hops at a time without crashing into each other. We've been for rides in the elevator – one to get here from Homeworld, another from Father's old shed to this shed here, that's two journeys. In less than a year. Amazing. And as soon as you turn us into humans—'

David winced, though he tried to pass it off as cramp. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘right. As soon as Philippa gets back—'

‘Isn't that her now?'

David looked round, and saw Philippa walking through the door. For a brief instant his newly acquired survival instincts had him go through a mental checklist, to make sure she was wearing the same clothes and shoes, had her hair the same length, and so forth – once upon a time, he could just remember, life had been so simple that there'd been only one of everybody, so that when you saw someone, you could guarantee that it was the real, genuine and original person and not some sixth-generation copy synthesised from genetically modified frogspawn – but he knew almost immediately that it was her,
his
her. He just knew, that was all.

‘Right,' she said, wearily brisk. ‘All sorted. There should be a big van round in about half an hour with the clothes and shoes and stuff – you lot'd better all be the same size, or there's going to be big trouble. The food's not going to be here for another two hours or so, but you'll just have to be patient. The lorries to take you all to Brize Norton airbase were promised for six-thirty sharp—'

‘Philippa,' David interrupted. ‘What the bloody hell are you talking about?'

‘Arrangements,' she replied irritably. ‘The difficult, complicated, exhausting arrangements I've just spent hours and hours and hours making on behalf of you and your family. Not that I'd expect any thanks, God forbid, but you might at least—'

‘Philippa. Thank you. Now, what arrangements?'

She sighed. ‘Well,' she said, ‘there's six thousand aubergine sweatshirts and six thousand pairs of burgundy jogging pants on their way from Redditch –
not
what I'd have chosen personally, but getting anything in that quantity for immediate delivery was a minor miracle, let me tell you. Food: I wasn't at all sure what to get that'd do for frogs
and
people, so I settled on bread and fish . . .'

‘Don't tell me,' David interrupted. ‘Three loaves, five fish—?'

Philippa looked at him. ‘Don't be ridiculous,' she said. ‘I ordered seven thousand white medium sliced and six thousand cans of John West tinned salmon. Obviously I'd rather have gone for fresh, but you've got to be realistic, haven't you? I mean, supposing for some reason we don't get this lot transformed in time, six thousand semi-deliquescent smoked-mackerel fillets . . .'

‘Quite. But,' David asked, ‘where the hell's it all coming from?'

‘Marks and Sparks. Which reminds me: underwear—'

‘Marks and Sparks,' David repeated. ‘I see. Paid for with what?'

‘Your Visa card, silly. You don't think I had that sort of money on me in cash, did you?'

David went a rather unique shade of white; almost the same white as the underside of certain kinds of poisonous woodland fungus, but slightly more pastel. ‘My— Hold on,' he said, as a small thought patiently battled its way through the rising surf of terror. ‘How did you get hold of my Visa card?'

‘I didn't. I just gave them the number.'

‘Right. And who told you the number?'

‘Nobody. It wasn't the real number, anyhow. I just persuaded them it was, and they believed me.'

‘They believed—'

Then David understood. Of course.

They hadn't burned the original Philippa Levens at the stake because she wore jet-black proto-Laura Ashley flowing cotton or kept cats. They'd decided she was a witch because, well, she could do magic. To be precise, she could do simple acts of persuasion – making people believe what she told them, or turning them (in their own estimation and that of their peers) into frogs: the basic repertoire of party tricks he'd taught her while he'd been in full showing-off-to-impress mode. Now she was back, and in no immediate danger of getting barbecued, and she still had the knack. Evidently.

‘They believed you,' he repeated. ‘Um, well done. That was—'

‘Extremely clever, verging on quite brilliant. Yes, I know. But positively mediocre compared with the real coup I managed to pull off. But I don't suppose you're interested, so I'll just wrap a tarpaulin round my shoulders and sit in the corner pretending to be a small stack of pallets.'

David counted to five under his mental breath, and asked, ‘What coup?'

‘Oh, nothing much. I just found us all somewhere to live, that's all. Rent-free, of course, and everything else entirely taken care of. But it's no big deal, really.'

‘Philippa. Stop wittering and explain.'

So Philippa explained. With the attitude pared away, the gist of it was that she'd phoned the Prime Minister of Canada—

‘Of course, to start with I got put through to some secretary or other,' she said. ‘But I explained that I really needed to talk to the Prime Minister himself, and the secretary understood perfectly; but the best she could do was pass me on to some bureaucrat or other, and I had to explain all over again. In the end, it took me nearly twenty minutes before I got through to the man in person.'

David nodded. ‘And you explained to him, of course.'

‘Well, of course. And he was a bit brighter than the rest of them, I guess, because he came round to my way of thinking in two minutes flat. Couldn't have been more helpful, in fact.'

‘Philippa,' David said cautiously, ‘what exactly was he helpful about?'

‘About giving us somewhere to live,' she answered. ‘You should try listening when people tell you things. I know it spoils the surprise, but—'

‘Where?'

She yawned. ‘British Columbia, of course,' she said. ‘Well, not all of it. There's no point being greedy, and of course we'll have to keep the grass cut and generally make the place halfway habitable, so I said we'd be perfectly happy with a town and a couple of hundred square miles. Besides, when you take out the mountains and the bits where it's freezing cold most of the year, there's not a lot left. We've got some lakes, which'll be fun, and a couple of oilfields we can rent to petrol companies, and for proper serious shopping, there's a place called Seattle, apparently, just the other side of the American border. Why are you looking at me like that? You weren't seriously expecting this lot to settle down in west London and get jobs in building societies?'

‘I—' David shook his head. ‘Why British Columbia?' he asked.

‘I thought that's where you'd always wanted to go.'

There was no answer to that: not without the risk of seeming ungrateful. ‘Um, yes,' he said.

‘So you're pleased, then?'

‘What? Oh yes. Thrilled to bits.'

‘You don't
sound
very pleased.'

‘It's just taking me a moment to get used to the idea, that's all.' He frowned. ‘What about the people who live there already?'

She shook her head. ‘No problem. I asked them if they wouldn't mind packing up and clearing out—'

‘You
asked
them?'

She nodded. ‘The Prime Minister had his technical people patch me through into the radio and TV stations,' she explained. ‘Really, they can be very clever and resourceful when they want to be, not to mention efficient. I don't know how they did it; he just said, “Hold the line just a moment, will you?” And I waited for a bit, and then he said, “You're on,” and I explained.'

‘You explained.'

‘That's right. And then I had to wait a bit longer, and finally he came back on and said all the people in the bit I'd chosen were loading their stuff into their cars and moving out. Of course, there'll be a few who didn't catch the broadcasts first time round, so he's having Navy helicopters cruise up and down with loudspeakers playing a recording every ten minutes. Means we won't be able to move in for a week or so, but that's fine, because it'll take you that long to kiss your way through all these sisters of yours. They're building a special aquarium thing at Port Moody where we can stay till everything's ready; you can do the kissing there. Oh, and they're sending their air force to pick us up and take us over there. The Prime Minister felt it was the least he could do.'

‘Oh,' David said. It seemed to be the only word in any language that came anywhere near expressing what he felt.

Philippa, however, clicked her tongue. ‘You haven't got it, have you?'

‘Got what?'

‘The reason for doing all this.'

David shrugged. ‘I can't say I—'

‘Typical. All right, think. Remember what John told us, about Homeworld computers?'

‘They aren't computers,' David replied. ‘At least, not what we think of as computers, little grey tellies that go wrong all the time. Homeworld computers are groups of frogs—'

‘Precisely. Ten or twelve frogs; for a really big, powerful mainframe, maybe as many as fifteen; and that'd be powerful enough to run a planet, send ships through interstellar space and maybe even handle
Tomb Raider 2
without freezing solid.' She grinned suddenly. ‘So if you had a computer made up of, say, six
thousand
frogs—'

David blinked about five times in a row. ‘There's a thought,' he said quietly.

‘Quite. And, being one of mine, it's pretty damn' brilliant. Of course, we'd only want to run it part of the time – say, when this lot are asleep, so as not to cut into their free time. Even so, I think it ought to be more than enough to sort out this funny little planet, don't you?'

David thought about that for a moment. ‘You want to rule the world?'

‘Good heavens, no. If we did that, everything would be our fault. I was thinking more of selling computer time to everyone who needs it. I think the expression I'm groping for is “global monopoly”.' She smiled. ‘I just thought it'd be a good way to make lots and lots and lots of money, that's all. To keep us and all your relatives here in a modest degree of comfort.' She frowned. ‘Just in case the penny's still teetering in the balance rather than actually dropping, you may care to consider the concept of a happy ending. You know, where we can all live happily ever after, doing whatever we want and not having to go to work or do our own laundry. Well?' She challenged him abruptly. ‘Isn't it what you've always wanted?'

He opened his mouth; and then he thought: a nice house in the country (and whatever else it may be, Canada's indisputably a country), my own computer business; and when I was a kid I always thought it might be fun to have a brother or a sister . . . And Philippa, of course. She's what I always wanted. It's just that—

(And at the back of his mind, a very familiar voice said, ‘Finished. Forty-seven seconds ahead of schedule, what's more. Now, how's that for planning?')

For a split second – about the time it takes to put a pound's worth of petrol into your car, no more – all David wanted to do was grab John firmly by the ears and bounce him off the sides of buildings. Since that wasn't really practical, he did the next best thing and broadcast feelings of hatred and contempt so intense that television viewers in Stevenage called the BBC to complain about signal interference. Pointless, of course; he couldn't feel John's presence anywhere, inside or outside his mind. And if John didn't want to be found, finding him was a bit like trying to swat a flying wasp with a sledgehammer.

Of course, David rationalised, once he'd cooled down enough to be able to think, he only means it for the best. Probably thinks he's helping. Well, obviously he was helping, even after I thought he'd buzzed off for good. That was fine, as long as I didn't know; but no, he had to go and spoil it, because he simply can't help showing off how clever he's been—

And he has been clever, too. Absolutely no doubt whatsoever about that. And here I am, on the verge of becoming Emperor David I of No-Longer-British Columbia
and
Bill Gates, having apparently won the love of the girl of my dreams, not to mention having the useful knack of being able to turn policemen and similar pests into pondlife. It's—

‘It's impossible.' Philippa interrupted. ‘On the one hand, everything anybody could want. On the other hand, the feeling that you were born with a silver spoon rammed violently up your bum. Oh, and whether having a life partner who can read your mind is a good thing or a bad thing, a blessing or a curse – that's something you'd better not have to think too hard about, if you know what's good for you.'

David shrugged. ‘I don't know,' he said. ‘I mean, I suppose it's roughly the same for Crown Princes and tsarevitches and all that crowd; yes, they get all the nice things and the big houses and stuff, but from the moment they're born, their lives aren't their own, every last detail's mapped out for them, they're the result of hundreds of generations of careful dynastic planning.' He smiled bleakly. ‘Most of them seemed to cope, I guess. But of course they
knew
, and I've only just found out—'

Philippa clicked her tongue. ‘You're going to have to sort that one out for yourself,' she said. ‘After all, compared to me you're laughing; I'm not even the lead, I'm just the accessory chick. For God's sake, I've been viciously killed at least once.' She yawned, and stretched. ‘You know what I'd do, if I was in your shoes?'

David thought for a moment. ‘Limp?' he suggested.

‘In your shoes metaphorically, cretin. If I was in your figurative shoes, I'd shut my face and make the most of it. Do what everybody else does. Stop trying to make your life into an ideal home and just camp out in it. I mean, think. Exactly what alternatives have you got, short of hanging yourself?'