Wish You Were Here (7 page)

In this instance, Jemima. So highly was she thought of by the rest of the Lake Chicopee Defence Force that they hadn't actually told her she was in it. It took an atypically bright young lieutenant in the Household Frogs to notice that whenever anything moved within ten yards of Jemima's eggs, be it a moose, a squadron of armoured cars or a falling leaf, Jemima started making a horrible noise which lasted until the thing went away again. All that remained was to move Jemima's nest thirty yards or so to the right, until it was within spitting distance of the border gate, and that was one more loophole effectively plugged, relieving a proper soldier of a boring job and leaving him free to perform the vital function of bashing the butt of his rifle on the ground every time his sergeant yelled, ‘Hut!'

There were five of these vulnerable points - known as ‘gates' for convenience, though they were more complex than that; think of them as ill-fitting lavatory windows round the back of the cinema of Time and Space, through which the recklessly brave can sometimes climb in to watch the film for free - and each one had a sentry. Because of the peculiar physics of Lake Chicopee, there was no knowing what lay on the other side of each gate at any given moment, or (more to the point) who or what might be trying to get through it. Hence the need for sentries, who had to be fearless, vigilant, not easily bored and, above all, expendable.

Jemima had just completed twelve hours sitting on her eggs facing north-south, and was performing the delicate manoeuvre of turning east-west, when a tiny movement caught her eye. No human, no featherless biped of any description, would have noticed it; nor would the latest state-of-the-art monitoring device, for there was no displacement of air, no microsubtle temperature change, no physical transfer of mass to get in the way of an infrared beam. In fact, it wasn't so much a movement as a minutely small editing of reality, whereby a few motes of dust stopped being in one place and found themselves in another.

‘Ark!' said Jemima. ‘Ark ark ark ark ARK ARK ARK!'

‘Oh for crying out loud, it's that bloody duck again,' said Cap'n Hat, bravest and boldest of the transdimensional smugglers of Lake Chicopee. ‘I thought I told someone to deal with it the last time.'

His henchmen exchanged guilty looks. ‘Sorry, Chief,' muttered Squab, Hat's stubble-chinned, eyepatched bo'sun. ‘Slipped me mind. Here, I'll shoot the bugger if you—'

‘Please don't,' Hat said wearily. ‘Quacking ducks are bad enough without gunshots as well. Besides, you'd only miss.'

‘No I wouldn't, Chief. I been practising.'

‘Squab, my dear old mate, you couldn't hit a large building if you were inside it. Now shut up and let me think.'

Given the amount of noise the duck was making it was inevitable that somebody would come soon, if only to wring its neck. Caught as he was, in the open, in broad daylight, with two handcarts laden down with Flipside plunder that he'd really rather not jettison if he could help it, he was left with a meagre choice of three options; hang concealment and make a run for it, stand and fight it out, or try and find something to hide under. Dismissing the first two options, for he was essentially a realist, he ducked under an ivy leaf and gestured to his men to follow suit.

‘Wassat damn racket?' yelled the distant voice of an owl.

‘Just that duck again,' replied an equally distant frog. ‘Prob'ly seen its own shadow or somethin'.'

‘Take a squad an' have a look anyhow,' ordered the owl. ‘Just in case.'

Swearing fluently under his breath, Hat peered round the edge of the leaf until he located the frog-squad. Typically, they were directly between him and the gate, which put paid to making a run for it. As for fighting; instinctively he reached for his pistol and thumbed back the hammer, but he knew as he did so that he was hopelessly outnumbered. Indeed, bearing in mind the calibre of the forces at his disposal, he was theoretically outnumbered even when there was nobody there at all.

‘Nobody move,' he hissed.

‘But, Chief—'

‘Shuttup, Twist.'

‘Chief, I need a pee. Would it be all right if I just crept very quietly over to those bushes and—?'

Hat was tempted; after all, when Twist crept unobtrusively he was about as hard to spot as an earthquake in central San Francisco. That meant he'd be pounced on and instantly nabbed by the patrol, thereby causing a diversion under cover of which—

‘I said be quiet. Should've gone before you came out. Cross your legs and try not to think about it.'

The smugglers of Lake Chicopee, who make their living by scarfing up props and scenery from the infinite variety of Flipside, sneaking them Topside and selling them, are probably the most extraordinary parasites in the Universe. They're also, of course, a dangerous pest, since many of the commodities they bring across aren't supposed to exist on the obverse side of the lake; dragons and thunderbirds, magic rings, cloaks of invisibility, bottomless purses, seven-league boots and radio alarm-clocks that actually go off when they're supposed to. The damage they do in Reality is mirrored (of course) Down Under. Many's the time a long-lost prince has turned up to draw a sword from a stone only to find that someone's beaten him to it; and by the time he discovers it's missing, the sword has already been sold off a barrow in some street market, making a bemused Japanese tourist the rightful king of all Albion. In other words, the equilibrium is upset. Ripples get into the reflections.

The smugglers are not, therefore, terribly popular; hence the Defence Force, the sentries and the armed duck.

‘Chief.'

‘Shut
up
, Twist.'

‘Yes, but, Chief—'

‘Tie a bloody knot in it and be
quiet
!'

‘I was only going to ask,' said Twist, ‘why we don't just slip away through that tunnel.'

‘Because, you stupid oaf - what tunnel?'

‘That tunnel, Chief.'

And Twist pointed. Sure enough, there was a tunnel. It looked like the entrance to a mine (except that there was no way it could be, because it led directly under the lake; start digging into the floor there, and you'd break through and fall down out of the sky).

Hat stared at it. ‘Where the hell did that come from?' he demanded.

‘Dunno, Chief. Funny I never noticed it before.'

‘You and me both.' Hat rubbed his chin. He had no idea how long he'd been around this lake; vaguely he recollected a time when a little trickle of water had come down the side of the mountain with a sheaf of estate agents' particulars in its current, taken one look at the bone-dry valley below and said, ‘Yes!' In all that time, he'd never seen any tunnels or mineshafts or underground railways of rustic construction. What the—?

On the other hand, the frogs were closing in fast.

‘This way,' said Hat.

 

 

C
ALVIN DIEB: INTERNAL MEMORANDUM

From:
subconscious mind & memory archives

To:
awareness control centre

Message:
Please remember that you can't swim

 

Thank you, Dieb muttered under what little remained of his breath, I hadn't forgotten. Instead of wasting my time telling me things I already know, tell me some way I can get out of . . .

The rest of Calvin Dieb's breath, by far the majority, was floating on the top of the lake in bubble form. Another stream of bubbles headed towards it on an intercept course.

He was just drafting a scathing reply when something nudged his ear.Without actually ceasing to drown, he put drowning on hold for a moment or so. It was, he saw, an otter.

‘Hello,' said the otter. ‘Bears.'

‘What?'

‘And wolves, if they can catch us. But bears, mostly.'

‘Bears? What about goddamn bears? And how come you can—?'

The otter flipped over and floated on its back. ‘You were speculating earlier,' it said, ‘about what sort of animals eat otters.'

‘I - How did you
know
—?'

‘Mind you,' the otter went on, paddling languidly with its back paws, like a small furry paddlesteamer, ‘that wouldn't be much use to you, would it? Bears'd be even harder to get rid of than otters. Can't think offhand of anything on this continent that eats bears.'

‘Look, I'm really sorry, I didn't mean . . .'

‘Except,' added the otter, looking him in the eye, ‘humans. I believe barbecued bear steak with onions is considered a delicacy in these parts.'

‘No. I mean yes. I mean, do you want it to be?'

The otter shrugged. ‘Don't make no never-mind to me,' it said. ‘I'm not a bear. Not at the moment, anyhow. Welcome to Lake Chicopee, by the way.'

INTERNAL MEMORANDUM.
Hey, we're floating. Didn't know we could do that. How
are
we doing that? Hell, I thought you knew
.

‘Thank you,' Dieb replied.

‘You're welcome,' said the otter. ‘Have a nice day now, d'you hear?'

Whereupon it rolled over, ducked its head under the water and vanished. Immediately, Dieb started drowning again.

‘Hey!' he yelled. ‘You in the fur! Come back!'

No reply -

- Except, just as he'd assumed he'd gone under for the last time, there he was floating again. Or at least, he was lying on his back on top of the water, staring up at a blue sky -

- A blue sky with trees and mountains in it. Having given the situation some thought, Dieb came to the conclusion that lying very still was probably the most sensible course of action. Lying on water wasn't something he'd ever tried before, and he wasn't sure he knew the rules. Maybe it was the same basic technique as walking on water.Which can't be all that difficult, at that. If God and crane-flies can do it, so could he.

‘Hello again.'

This time, the otter was on the other side of him. It too was lying on its back, nibbling at a fish clutched between its front paws. The fish, Dieb noticed, was still vaguely alive.

‘I meant to ask earlier,' the otter said. ‘When you were drowning just now, did your entire life flash past you, the way it's supposed to? Sorry if that's a rather personal question, but I'm interested. I meet a lot of drowning people, you see, and about half of them say, “Yes, it does,” and the other half say, “No, it doesn't,” and I'd really love to do some serious research here. I mean, do you only get a memory flashback if you've lived a really happy life, or the other way round, or doesn't that come into it at all? What about you, for instance?'

Status report:
you're lying on your back in the water, talking to an otter.Why are you doing this?

‘I don't know,' Dieb replied. ‘I mean, no, my life didn't flash before my eyes. And it's been a very happy life, I guess.' His face clouded for a moment as he said the words; and his brain's credit control department raised a query along the lines of
Why are you lying when you're not getting paid for it?
‘I guess,' he repeated. ‘Yes, I'm sure. I mean, look at me. I'm the senior partner of one of the best goddamn law firms in the state. Annually, after tax, I take home—'

Suddenly, the fish between the otter's paws lashed out frantically with its tail, shot up into the air and crashed into the lake with a
plop!
and a shower of fine spray. The otter lifted its head and watched the ripples with the air of a park keeper watching people walking on the grass.

‘Damn,' it said. ‘I was just getting to the tasty bit.'

‘It was still alive, for Christ's sake!' As he spoke, Dieb wondered at his own passion. Hell, it was just a fish. Now it was a partially eaten fish, still gamely swimming. Under normal circumstances, his instincts would have been to try and interest it in substantial personal injury litigation, but for some reason all he could think was:
Why bother? Why make a run for it when effectively it's dead already?

‘I might ask you the same question,' the otter replied.

‘
What?
'

‘Look at you.' The otter obeyed its own suggestion. ‘Forty-nine years old, grossly overweight. Severe - I mean
severe
- stress-related disorders, badly aggravated by chronic alcohol and tobacco habits, virtually a suicide diet, no exercise ever; you're about five years overdue for the Great Meathook as it is, and you're exhibiting all the self-preservation instincts of a dishonoured samurai. But when you feel yourself drowning, you thrash about. Why bother?'