Wish You Were Here (36 page)

‘Excuse me,' said the man in the dressing-gown, ‘but are you by any chance a journeyman?'

‘Journalist, Your Majesty.'

‘Sorry, a journalist? Only I gather there's one running around loose in these parts, and . . .'

Linda looked at him. ‘Yes,' she said, ‘I'm Linda Lachuk, current affairs correspondent of the
New York Globe
. Tell me, does that thing over there look like a submarine to you?'

The Prince nodded. ‘I should say,' he replied, with a hint of pride. ‘As a matter of fact, I know darned well it's a submarine.'

‘You do?'

The Prince inclined his head. ‘I should do,' he said, ‘it's one of mine. Murdoch, the Aldis lamp.'

Linda's jaw fell like a drawbridge. ‘One of
yours
?' she gasped. ‘But that's crazy. I mean, you're not the President of the United States.'

‘Very true. Actually, that's probably the nicest thing anybody's ever said about me. Thank you.'

‘And you're not the Pope, either.'

The Prince's brow clouded slightly. ‘True,' he replied. ‘And, no disrespect for my Brother in Christ intended, but I can't really see what His Holiness'd be wanting with a submarine, what with his dominions being some way inland and all. He's got the Tiber, I suppose, but that's so polluted these days, the average nuclear submarine'd probably dissolve in it like an aspirin.'

‘Right,' Linda replied, taking another good look at the Prince out of the corner of her eye. ‘In that case, who the hell are you?'

‘Me?' the Prince grinned pleasantly. ‘I'm Prince Charming, of course. Why, didn't you recognise me?'

‘Prince . . .'

The Prince nodded. ‘Actually,' he said, ‘don't be misled by the Prince bit, I'm actually the head of state. And yes, that's one of my submarines. The
Bloodspite
, actually, ex-Soviet navy, picked it up for a song at the liquidators' auction. One of the reactors is a bit dicky, but it's fine for just pottering about in. By the way, would you mind awfully if I were to ask you your shoe size?'

While he was saying this, the footman called Murdoch was flashing merrily away with the signalling lamp, and a succession of rapid blips of light appeared on the surface of the distant waters, presumably by way of reply. The Prince, meanwhile, had strolled over to where Calvin Dieb was sitting on a rock.

‘Hello,' he said.

For a moment the new Calvin Dieb, friend to all humankind, flickered like a flame in a breeze. Basic survival instincts whispered things in his mind's ear about strange men in peculiar fur-trimmed outfits who sidle up to you and say, ‘Hello.' The moment of apprehension passed, however, as soon as the Prince spoke again.

‘'Scuse my asking,' he said, in a pleasant sort of chummy drawl, ‘but you wouldn't by any chance be interested in abducting women, would you?'

Calvin looked at him. An entirely different set of survival instincts took their places on the bridge of his mind, kicked their shoes off and switched on their workstations. ‘Pardon me?' he said.

‘You
are
an American, aren't you?' the Prince went on, as if checking on an important detail he'd forgotten to clarify at the start.

‘Why, yes,' Calvin replied. ‘Though I should point out that abducting women isn't really part of the American heritage. Perhaps you were thinking of the Romans, or Vikings, maybe. We generally find we have more than enough of our own without stealing other people's.'

The Prince nodded. ‘Fair enough,' he said. ‘Only, you see, I need a whatchamacallit,
casus belli
. That's what diplomats say when they mean something to declare war about.'

Calvin looked at the Prince long and hard; and the old Calvin Dieb peered longingly through the bars of his cage and thought what a wonderful client this guy would have made - obviously rich, obviously deranged, obviously not too bright into the bargain. Legal dynasties have been built on such clients.

‘You see,' the Prince went on, ‘I've got this girl, you see, and she's so utterly, utterly gorgeous I feel I've got to fight the biggest and best war ever for her sake, just to tell the world how absolutely smashing she is, you know, but I can't do that unless someone abducts her, now can I? And so I thought, you being an American and America being such a big, powerful country . . .'

Calvin swallowed something that had suddenly appeared in his throat. ‘You want to declare war on the USA?' he said.

‘Well, it's a start,' said the Prince. ‘It's always been my dream, you see, ever since I was just a kid; you know, to meet this wonderful, wonderful girl and fight for her sake, like the knights of old. And now, suddenly, here she is, and nobody to fight with. So darned frustrating, don't you know?'

‘Excuse me,' Calvin asked quietly. ‘Did you happen to, um, fall in a lake recently?'

The Prince frowned. ‘Why, yes, as it happens I did. How did you know that?'

‘Oh, blind guess.' Calvin thought for a moment; and the refrain was, in spite of his very best endeavours,
Well, why not?
After all, what possible harm could there be in turning his special skill, hitherto only practised to the detriment of his fellow creatures, to the service of the human race? To save them, in fact, from the prospect of universal extinction? And maybe make a buck along the way, no harm in that, the labourer is worthy of his hire. ‘Excuse me,' he said, ‘but let me put a suggestion to you and see if this makes any kinda sense. When you say war—'

‘Yes?'

‘Well,' Calvin went on, taking a deep breath, ‘I know you say you've got your heart set on an actual shooting war, but has it perhaps occurred to you that a really prolonged and destructive lawsuit might not have the same effect, in the long run? You know, in terms of grand-scale expenditure of resources, pain, suffering and trauma inflicted, lives torn apart, national economies bankrupted, all the things you tend to associate with wars, but in a rather more controlled and civilised framework? Think about it,' he urged, observing the Prince's brow furrow. ‘Maybe you remember a few years back there was all that hype about a new bomb that wipes out human life but leaves the real estate unscathed? Well, it's here and it's now and we call it litigation; and as Head of State, don't you owe it to your realm to have the very best? Huh? Am I right or am I right?'

The Prince's lips moved silently for a moment. ‘You're saying,' he said slowly, ‘instead of having a war over the girl, why not go to law about her instead?' His face clouded. ‘All due respect, old thing, I'm not so sure about that. I mean, going to court, it's all a bit middle-class, isn't it?'

‘Middle-class?' Calvin's face reflected the magnitude of the blasphemy. ‘Going to law
middle-class
? Excuse me, Your Majesty, but have you any idea how much going to law costs these days? I mean, forget your yachts and your palaces and your private jets and all. If you want to talk about the ultimate status symbol, the kinda thing only the huge corporations and the divinely wealthy individuals can even dream of affording, look no further, 'cos what
you
need is a lawsuit. Damnit,' he went on, warming to the theme, ‘any miserable little country can have a
war.
Bosnia can have a
war
. Only the serious players can afford serious lawfare. In fact,' he added, seeing in his mind's eye the twitch on the float that suggests that the fish is nibbling, ‘before I'd agree to act for you I'd need to see some serious credentials from your banks.'

The Prince looked at him. ‘You would?'

Calvin nodded. ‘Definitely. And the audited gross national product figures for the last ten years. Sorry, but these days you gotta be businesslike.'

‘Oh, quite.' The Prince nodded. ‘I take your point entirely. Murdoch, the bank statements.'

Which is how, alone and unaided, Calvin Dieb very nearly saved the world. Unfortunately, while he'd been chatting up the Prince, Linda had been asking Janice whether she'd happened to notice any men in funny hats; and she'd replied that although she hadn't seen any men in funny hats, this was probably because she'd been captured and tied up and blindfolded at the time when the men in funny hats may well have been in evidence; whereupon Linda had asked whether, when she said tied up and held captive, she'd meant held captive like, say, a hostage; and she'd said, Well, yes, she supposed so; and Linda had suddenly realised that single-handedly rescuing the hostages and getting them home for Christmas would not only prevent the War but make the best possible finale to her story; and so she'd said, ‘Skellidge, the sharp knife,' and Skellidge had handed her a sharp knife, and she'd cut the ropes and grabbed Janice by the wrist and said ‘This way!'; and the Prince, observing all this, had asked Calvin which country Linda came from; and Calvin had replied that he was fairly sure she was American; and the Prince had smiled and said, ‘Splendid, splendid. Murdoch, the button—'

And Murdoch had said ‘Yes, Your Maj—' and then fallen silent and gone red.

‘Murdoch?'

‘I regret to say,' Murdoch replied painfully, ‘that someone would appear to have stolen the button.'

‘What?'

‘The fire control button, Your Majesty. Colloquially referred to as the Doomsday—'

‘Yes, I know all that,' replied the Prince impatiently. ‘How do you mean,
stolen
—?'

 

‘What is it, Hat?' Talks to Squirrels demanded, as the small and secret entrepreneur scratched his head and stared at his latest prize. ‘Looks like some sort of briefcase. '

Hat shrugged his shoulders. ‘Haven't the faintest idea,' he replied. ‘Don't know why I bothered pinching it, to be honest with you.'

Talks considered for a moment. ‘Because it wasn't spot-welded to the ground, Hat?' he hazarded.

‘Ah yes, that was the reason.' Hat prodded the catches tentatively, recalling the time he'd swiped a similar case from someone who daydreamed of being Agent 006. Occasionally, in the cold weather, he felt it still. ‘One of these damned combination locks,' he observed mournfully. ‘Last one of these I got took us twenty years of trying different combinations before we got it open. And you know what was inside? Sandwiches. Or rather,' he added, ‘a place where sandwiches had once been, a long time previously. Still, we might get lucky this time.'

Talks shrugged. ‘Why not just bust it open?' he suggested. ‘All it'd take would be a tomahawk spike behind the hinges there, and . . .'

Hat scowled. ‘True,' he said, ‘but that might just shave a few cents off the resale value, don't you think? No,' he went on, ‘I guess I'll just have to be patient and keep plugging and plugging away . . .'

He pressed both catches at once, and the lid flew open. ‘Hell,' he said disgustedly, ‘it's empty.'

‘No it's not,' Talks pointed out. ‘There's things built into it. What're they, Hat? That red thing, and all the flashing lights?'

‘I'm not sure,' Hat replied, fiddling. ‘Could be a portable fax, or a laptop PC, or a photocopier. I guess this red button's the on/off switch.'

‘Only one way to find out, Hat.'

‘True.' Hat peered more closely. ‘Only it does say DANGER in big stencilled letters. Do you think—?'

‘Nah, that's just public liability stuff, their lawyers make them put that in just in case it gets hit by lightning while you're using it. You don't want to worry about things that say DANGER.'

‘You don't?'

‘Well, I don't. Mind you, I'm dead already, so I worry about very little.'

Hat nodded. ‘All right, then,' he said. ‘You press it.'

With a sad smile Talks With Squirrels put his ghostly hand right through the keyboard. ‘Love to,' he said wistfully. ‘But I can't. Sorry.'

‘Fair enough. You're sure it'll be all right?'

‘Of course. Trust me.'

‘Trust me, I'm a dead Indian?'

Talks wrinkled his nose. ‘Be like that,' he said. ‘Would you trust me any better if I was alive?'

‘Well, no. Less, actually.'

‘There you are, then. Press the button.'

‘I'm not sure . . .'

‘Could be a CD player,' Talks said, his nose an inch or so from the button. ‘Worth a buck or two, they are.'

Hat inclined his head. It looked safe enough; no wires, no leads, it must just run on batteries. Even if he did get an electric shock, the chances were it'd be so slight he'd hardly even notice it. ‘The hell with it,' he said. ‘Why not?'

‘Go on, then.'

‘You're
sure
it's safe?'

‘How the hell could just pressing a button be dangerous? Gee, but you have one hell of a vivid imagination.'

Captain Hat bowed his head. ‘Sorry,' he said. ‘I was being silly. All right, then, here goes.'

He pressed the button.

And—

 

Beside His bed, the Proprietor's alarm clock started to scream.

And Wesley, who'd been running as fast as he could down the slope in the vague hope of getting to Hat before he pressed the button, put his foot behind a tangle of bramble, landed on his nose, said ‘Ung!', scrambled to his feet, launched himself again, slipped athletically in a patch of mud and did the rest of the distance, quickly but with a minimum of dignity, tobogganing on his backside. He arrived just in time to slither straight through Talks to Squirrels (who nearly jumped out of his skin, but still recovered his composure in time to put three consecutive arrows in the back of his head in the space of four seconds; not bad for offhand shooting at a moving target) and land on top of Captain Hat, sending the briefcase flying.