Wish You Were Here (9 page)

‘Well,' muttered the otter in his ear, ‘what're you waiting for?'

Dieb reviewed the options available to him, the way he'd been taught in law school. Something they don't teach you in law school, although maybe they should, is that climbing aboard mysterious Viking longships that suddenly materialise in the middle of mirror-calm mountain lakes is, at best, something of a gamble.

Quite where they'd fit it into the syllabus is anybody's guess. Probably they'd have to shoehorn it in between second-year conveyancing and industrial tribunals procedure. It ought to be in there somewhere, all the same.

‘Can one of you guys throw me a rope?' Dieb yelled.

‘Certainly we can. Here a rerp is to you coming.'

‘Ouch. I mean, thanks.'

‘Now then, Thorvald, Oddleif, if to pull upon the rerp so kind you would be.'

Not long afterwards, Dieb was lying on the deck, panting like one of the fish he'd seen there when the ship first emerged, and wondering what he'd gotten himself into. Round him stood a ring of the most ferocious-looking warriors you'd ever hope to see outside of the more flamboyant parts of Los Angeles. Some of them were lacking an eye, others a selection of teeth or fingers. All of them had patches of smooth, shiny pink skin on their arms, legs and faces that bore witness to a time when they'd nearly come second out of two in a hand-to-hand combat with sharp weapons. If someone had told Dieb at that moment that the ship's hold was stuffed full of customised Harley-Davidsons, he wouldn't have been in the least surprised.

‘How are you feeling?' asked a particularly serrated giant with a horned helmet and only one eye. ‘Perhaps of warm milk a cup good would do you.'

‘The water at this year time,' added an even larger Viking, ‘cold is being. A chill you might be getting.'

‘Scerns there are,' pointed out a third. ‘Freshly today baked by Little Olaf.'

‘Scerns?'

‘Scerns, with yam and clooted cream,' the first Viking explained. ‘Little Olaf, it is his mother's recipe.'

For the first time, Dieb realised that the second Viking, the one with arms like legs and only three teeth, was wearing a blue-and-white-striped pinafore. ‘Little Olaf,' said the first Viking, ‘is the cerk.'

‘Ah.'

‘Also there are dernuts.'

‘Right.'

‘And pastries Danske.'

‘Great.' Dieb swallowed hard. ‘I'd just love some, er, dernuts and a pastry Danske with my, ah, warm milk.'

Little Olaf departed, grinning, while the other Vikings produced a barrel for him to sit on, a blanket for his knees and a huge plump cushion with a rabbit embroidered on it.

‘Hey, guys,' he said, trying to manufacture a smile that didn't look like a Jack Nicholson crazed grin. ‘This is really, um, really decent of you. Thanks.'

‘You're welcome. Ah. Here Little Olaf with the milk is.'

Dieb took the cup, doing his best not to notice that it was formed from a human skull, the eyesockets and ear funnels of which were filled with gold and massive uncut gemstones that traced a runic inscription which undoubtedly translated as
World's Best Cook
.

‘While it warm is, be drinking.'

‘Yeah, right.' He took a deep breath and drank. Yuk! Warm milk!

‘And here, behold the dernuts.'

Still recovering from the milk, he glanced down and beheld the dernuts, still faintly glistening with oil. It made him nostalgic for the lake.

Which reminded him. What had become of that goddamn chatty otter? If he'd managed to show it a clean pair of handstitched heels, he was at least that much ahead of the game.

‘It's not that easy,' said a seagull perched on the rigging just above his head. ‘Oh, and before you think to ask, they can't hear me.'

Dieb groaned, prompting a worried enquiry from Little Olaf about the quality of the dernuts. He made a conscious effort not to look up.

‘Now then,' said the first Viking, who appeared to be some sort of leader. ‘You are to where going?'

‘Um,' Dieb replied. ‘Actually, if it's no trouble for you guys, maybe you could drop me off at the shore. Anywhere round here'll do.'

For some reason, this seemed to disturb the Viking; he looked away and fidgeted with his bears' teeth necklace for a moment before answering. ‘Clerse to the shore go we cannot,' he said. ‘For fear the ship aground to be running. This very sad is, that help you we cannot.'

‘Oh. Well, never . . .'

‘As hosts in our duty failed you we have,' the Viking went on. ‘Never in Valhall honour shall we have, if before as hosts our duty we our lives put. Scorn us will Thor. Upon us spit will the Valkyries. But our ship aground to run . . .'

‘Hey guys,' said Dieb, nervously, ‘please. Doesn't have to be here. Anywhere that's convenient for you will me do just fine.'

The Viking narrowed his eyes ferociously, until he put Dieb firmly in mind of Clint Eastwood trying to stare down a tax inspector. ‘Saying that you sure you aren't our feelings just not to be hurting?' he said.

‘Huh? I mean, quite. Yes. I mean no.'

Suddenly the Viking smiled, flashing two rows of teeth like badly weathered tombstones. ‘Then fine that shall be,' he said, standing up. ‘Maybe now below you to go would like, sleep to be getting. Arriving at Duluth, calling you we shall.'

‘
Duluth?
'

Immediately the Viking's face subsided into a look of utter self-reproach, so rearranging the scars that you could have played noughts and crosses in them. ‘Right I was, and out of your way too far Duluth,' he exclaimed, jumping to his feet. ‘Ashore at once to be putting you, and the ship aground to be running matter not at all will. Thorvald!'

‘No,' Dieb said imploringly, ‘please! Duluth'll be just great, I can charter a plane or something - I mean, Duluth's actually where I was headed anyhow. So that's great. Really.'

‘Sure?'

‘Positive. Word of honour. My, these really are mighty good, um, dernuts. Haven't had dernuts this good since I was a kid.'

The Viking sat down again, beaming like a lighthouse. ‘Then to take with you in a bag of paper more shall you have. Olaf I shall instruct freshly them to bake.'

‘Great.' The bridge of Dieb's mind sent a frenzied message down to Engineering:
Quick, for Christ's sake, fabricate some enthusiasm. How?We ain't got the recipe.Then improvise, dammit.
‘Looking forward to it.Yum!'

‘And now to be excusing me,' the Viking said, standing up again. ‘The ship to be running I must.' He wandered away, turning occasionally to smile and wave. Eventually, Dieb was left alone with his blanket, his cushions, several remaining pastries and the seagull.

‘Duluth,' muttered the seagull. ‘Wonder what's at Duluth?'

‘I'm gonna find out, aren't I?' Dieb replied irritably. ‘You know, this is costing me
thousands
—'

‘No you won't,' the seagull said, preening its wing feathers. ‘Ship's gonna hit a rock any minute. If I were you, I'd go up the rounded end.'

‘Hit a rock?'

The seagull nodded. ‘And sink. With all hands. That's a nautical expression meaning all these folks are gonna die. Not you, though.'

Dieb's jaw dropped, and for a moment - the first since he embraced the art of advocacy - he was fresh out of words. ‘Die?' he repeated.

‘Drown. Glug glug. Davy Jones' locker. But like I said, you make it, so where's the problem?'The seagull opened its beak wide, as if yawning. ‘Means you can't sue them for anything, true, but what the hell, they haven't got that sort of money anyhow.'

Dieb opened and closed his mouth several times, like a fish drowning in air. ‘But can't we warn them, for God's sake? Tell 'em to steer the boat to one side?'

‘Compassion, Mr Dieb?' The seagull regarded him for a while, standing on one leg. ‘That's a word for feeling sorry for people, in case you've never come across it before. No, can't warn them. Against the rules.'

‘But . . .' Dieb looked around; at the blanket, the cushions, the home-made doughnuts, the gold-and-gemstone-encrusted skull . . . ‘But they
rescued
me,' he said feebly. ‘I
owe
them.'

‘Nah.' The seagull shook its head. ‘Moral obligation only. Nothing on paper. And besides, if they're all dead, who's to know?'

‘But . . .'

The seagull spread its wings. ‘Anyhow,' it said, ‘this isn't getting your car-keys found, is it? Now remember; get up as near to the stern as you can without attracting attention, or else one of 'em might follow you - to ask how you're doing, offer you another doughnut, that sort of thing - and that'd be no good. The sucker might survive along with you.'

‘But that'd be great. I thought you said—'

‘Maybe I didn't explain properly. If any of these guys makes it, you don't get to find your keys.You'll have to stay here and drown too.Think about it. Pity there's always got to be a loser, but hey, that's litigation.' The seagull spread its wings and flew away before Dieb could answer.

He stood up. He looked once again at the blanket, the cushion, the home-made doughnuts, the skull. If any of these guys made it, he wouldn't. Then he looked over the side at the still, wet water, and remembered what it had been like being in that stuff, that fluid, alien element that makes no allowances. And on the bridge of his mind, the captain turned in his swivel chair and muttered,
Hell, we didn't ask to get involved in this. And the suckers'd have drowned anyway. Not as if them drowning's our fault.

Which was true.

Picking up the blanket, and stuffing doughnuts in his pockets for later, he set off for the rounded end.

 

Janice DeWeese climbed over the brow of the ridge, her feet hurting like something the Spanish Inquisition saved for people it really didn't like, and looked down at a big, mirror-still lake.

‘Hey!' she muttered. Her map, once she'd wrestled it out of her pocket and turned it the right way up, told her that this Lake Chicopee -

- Which was supposed to be over
there
. This was supposed to be a valley, not a lake. There should be a stream running through it, and a disused powder mill, and a small wooden hut put there by the Forestry Department for muggers and rapists to rest up in between jobs.

She'd come the wrong way.

Wearily she dropped herself on a fallen tree, cleaned her glasses on her sleeve and smoothed the map out again. Right; over there, the Squash river, so that was north. Over there, the tall pointy mountain with trees up to its neck, so that was west. Accordingly . . .

Accordingly, she was going to have to turn round and go back the way she'd come, seven miles of overgrown paths and savage inclines, if she wanted to get to Broken Heart by nightfall. Or, if she had the sense she was born with, she could go down to the lake and up the other side to join the road, which would take her to Claremont, the Greyhound bus and civilisation; and the hell with Broken Heart, pop. 361. She was faced with a long, long walk whichever way she went, and this lousy backpack wasn't getting any lighter. Some vacation, huh?

But, she reflected, as she scrabbled in her pockets for life-giving chocolate, this is the sort of vacation you get to go on when you're, to take an example entirely at random, twenty-eight, short and dumpy with a face like a prune. Vacations involving swimming-pools, long cool drinks, hot sun and slinky black evening dresses tend to happen to other sorts of people.

At least it had been something to talk about at the office, for a day or two. Something she could have talked about, if somebody had actually asked her. If somebody had asked her where she was going for her vacation, she'd have answered in a light, devil-may-care tone of voice that oh, she was backpacking across Iowa again this year.
Backpacking
across
Iowa?
Sure; don't you just love the freedom, the big open spaces? You can really be
yourself
. Oh yes, on my own, naturally; wouldn't be any point otherwise. If anybody had asked her, she could have been great. And if she ever got home again (could a person die of sore feet?) then she'd have some really spellbinding stories to tell, if anybody ever asked her.

The hell with it. She could go crawling round the moon on her hands and knees and nobody'd ever know. Last year, for instance; last year, she'd spent her entire savings on an overland expedition down the Nile, by boat, Jeep and camel. She'd slept under desert stars, huddled in her government-surplus sleeping bag while sandstorms howled, basted in red-hot winds and walked silent-footed through the dead cities of Ancient Egypt; she might as well have stayed in Pittsburgh, because (owing to a freak succession of cancellations) the expedition consisted of her and two seventy-year-old Egyptian guides who spoke no English, and when she got back to the office, sun-bleached and crispy-thin, Mr Marcowitz had said it was just as well she was back, the R304Es were all down again, they were knee-deep in pink PZ23s and could she take a look at the Xerox machine? Come five o'clock that first day back, she was into the chocolate again and hard put to it to remember anything about Egypt at all.

She dragged herself back onto her feet, speculating as she did so what the world would have looked like if she, not Chris Columbus, had discovered America. Easy; flat, with a big drop at the edges. Back the way she'd come, or on past the lake up to the road? The lake; why not? At least it'd be a different set of ankle-breaking trails and tendon-sapping gradients.

As she trudged, the phrase ‘holiday romance' bounced about in her mind like a small child in a collection of Oriental porcelain. That, as far as she could tell, is what vacations meant to the rest of the girls in the office; see bedroom ceilings the length and breadth of the USA. Quite probably some of them could write a learned textbook on the different types of light-fittings used across America. Not Janice DeWeese, though; all she got to see was mountains and lakes and rivers and deserts and sun-rises and sunsets and fallen-down old buildings. Oh, she had often sighed as she gazed out across some breath-taking panorama someplace, to be an egg; because at least an egg gets laid
once
. . .