The Portable Door (1987) (12 page)

Cool
, he thought. The dream seemed reluctant to let him in on how he came to be there, but he knew that it was his office now, and had been for some time. The only drawback he could see was that the soles of his shoes had at some point been stapled to the floor, which meant he couldn’t move his feet.

Across the desk from him was another, much plainer chair, and in it sat a goblin; he knew it was a goblin, because there’d been a picture of one in Sophie’s fairy-tale book, and this one was identical in every respect, apart from the fact that it was wearing a grey silk Italian suit and an inappropriate tie. The goblin was holding a spiralbound notebook and a pencil and looking at him expectantly. He was, he realised, in the middle of dictating a letter.

“Right,” Paul said. “Could you just read that back to me?”

The goblin nodded and recited, in a soft, purring female voice that would’ve played hell with his libido if it hadn’t been filtered through a mouthful of long, yellow teeth: “Dear sir, we thank you for your letter of the seventeenth inst and note what you say. However, in the circumstances now prevailing we feel that we cannot agree with your analysis of the situation, and must therefore regretfully decline your esteemed offer. We beg to remain, et cetera.”

Buggery
, Paul thought;
what’s all that about?
‘Fine’, he heard himself say. “Get that in tonight’s post, would you? First class.” The goblin stood up, Paul handed it the teacup, and it left the room, silently closing the door behind it.

Now there was a computer on the desk. He snapped his fingers (Paul couldn’t snap his fingers) and the screen filled with figures. He stared at them for a while, then reached out with his forefinger and traced down the columns one by one, until a familiar tingling stopped him. He wrote down some numbers on the notepad that hadn’t been there a few seconds earlier, then pressed a buzzer on the side of the desk. The goblin came back.

“Ask Scuffy to pop up and see me,” Paul said. “Oh, and would you mind nipping down and seeing if those bauxite scans are ready yet. I’ll need them for Thursday afternoon’s meeting, and Rick’ll need a few days to check them out.”

“Right away,” the goblin purred. This time Paul didn’t see it go, because he was preoccupied with more figures on the computer screen; he was listening as well as reading, as if they were some kind of musical notation, and the computer was somehow sending the music they represented straight to his brain, without having to bother with passing it in through his ears. Then the door opened and someone came and sat down in the chair. “You wanted to see me, Jack,” someone said, but he couldn’t place the voice, or even tell if it was male or female.

“Have a look at this,” Paul replied, swivelling the VDU round so it faced the other chair. “Third column, fifth line. What do you make of it?”

Whoever it was didn’t reply. Paul had known in advance that he or she wouldn’t. He felt extremely tense, as though knowing the coming interview was going to be awkward and painful.

“You know what I think?” he heard himself say. “Well, of course you do, you aren’t stupid, and we both know what I’m talking about. Mostly, I’m just curious to see if you’ve got anything to say for yourself.”

“Would it make any difference?” the voice asked.

“No,” said Paul, “except I’d really like to know
why
. It seems such a strange thing to do.”

“To you, maybe. Not to me.”

He sighed, because here came the really nasty bit, the part he’d been dreading. Before he could say anything, however, a door materialised in the opposite wall, between the Vermeer and the modern abstract. He watched it form; first the door frame and lintel appeared as thin grey pencil outlines on the pale silk wallpaper, and then their contours and decorative mouldings were fleshed out with lines of shadow, making them three-dimensional, and then the panels, hinges and round brass handle of the door grew up out of the wall like speeded-up mushrooms. He realised that he was staring and looked away, while keeping the new door under observation through the corner of his eye. It opened, and two very old men in black pinstripes crept in, trying not to make any noise; one of them put his forefinger to his lips and silently mouthed
Hush!
He deliberately didn’t look at them as they tiptoed past him and stood behind his chair.

“They’re here, aren’t they?” said the voice from the other chair.

“What makes you think that?”

“I can feel them hating me. But that’s all right. In fact, I’m glad they’re here. Say hello to them for me, if you like.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Nothing ridiculous about it at all. You know as well as I do, they can’t come back home without him, and we’re the only ones who know where he is. You,” the voice added meaningfully, “and me.”

He had no idea why; but Paul didn’t like that at all. “Are you threatening me?” he said.

The voice laughed. “Hardly,” it said. “A threat is a promise of unpleasant action that stands some chance of happening; if I threaten you with something that we both know will never happen, it can’t be a proper threat. You aren’t stupid either,” the voice went on, enjoying itself. “You don’t want him back any more than I do; and so long as he’s away, they can’t come through. But that’s by the by; it’s not a threat, because I’m not going to turn him loose, because you aren’t going to do anything that’d make me take such an unfortunate step. Do we understand each other?”

Paul felt angry and slightly sick, but all he said was, “Yes.”

“Fine,” the voice replied. “In which case, I’ll cut along and leave you to your bauxite scans. Nice little venture, that. I’m glad you took my advice. What this firm needs is diversification, if it’s going to make it through the twenty—first century.”

The voice faded away, until the chair was empty. At once, Paul swung round in his chair, but the two old men and the door they’d come in through weren’t there any more. He stood up, then remembered he couldn’t move his feet, and sat down again. Then he saw something, and clicked his tongue in annoyance: a long, ragged claw-mark, right in the middle of his beautiful polished desktop. He jabbed petulantly at the buzzer, and the goblin appeared.

“Get rid of this, will you?” he snapped.

The goblin sighed. “Sorry,” she said, “but the houses are all gone under the sea, the dancers are all gone under the hill, and the earliest they can manage is Friday. I can cover it up with something in the meanwhile, if you like.”

Paul shook his head. “No, that’s all right,” he muttered irritably. “Make sure nobody leaves the building, I’m going out for lunch. That rather nice little Uzbek place round the corner—”

“Sorry,” said the goblin sadly, “but I’m afraid you can’t. Would you like me to get you a sandwich or something?”

Paul tried to drag his left foot off the floor, but he couldn’t shift it. “No, thanks,” he snapped. “I’ve got a tin of pilchards here somewhere, if only—”

He sat up. His alarm was warbling spitefully. It was a quarter past seven, Tuesday, and he had to get up and go to work. No more than six feet away, the sword in its idiotic stone loomed over him like a drill sergeant. Even the recollection that he’d be seeing Sophie again in an hour and three-quarters didn’t do much to cheer him up. And as for the day ahead—Yesterday afternoon, they’d reported to Mr Tanner’s office, as ordered. He’d grinned at them (that, presumably, explained why Paul’s dream had been haunted by goblins) and told them he had a little job he wanted them to do. “Well,” he’d added with a snicker, “two jobs.” First, there was this stack of spreadsheets; they needed photocopying, and then stapling together ready for Friday afternoon’s partners’ meeting. After they’d done that, they were to go down to the strongroom in the basement. It was in an awful mess, he’d told them; deeds and securities and documents all out of their files and drawers and boxes jumbled about, and half the stuff listed in the register didn’t seem to be there. “Do a stock-take, make an inventory, get it all sorted out and filed away neatly; and you’d better bring along an old, tatty pullover or something, because it’s a bit dusty and dirty down there, not to mention perishing cold, this time of year.”

Paul had an old, tatty pullover, which also happened to be his best, smartest pullover. He hoped Mr Tanner had been exaggerating, but he doubted it. Dust made him sneeze, and the cold gave him headaches. What fun.

Yes
, he thought,
but today I’m going to see the girl I love;
and as he dressed and shaved, he wondered what it could possibly be like to see the girl he loved every day of the week, not just Monday to Friday; to see her lying beside him in bed when he woke up, and crunching her breakfast toast, and hanging out underwear to dry on the radiators, and cursing because she was going to be late, and she couldn’t find her keys. What
on earth would that be like
, he wondered; and for the life of him he couldn’t imagine it. It was more distant and surreal than his dream, or any number of goblin eyes and swords in stones; it belonged to another dimension, a world where things were different, somewhere most people managed to end up, but which he’d never be able to reach. He fished out his pullover from the drawer under the bed, and stuffed it in a plastic carrier.

§

One explanation for the greatest mystery of all is as follows.

Twenty thousand years ago, before the first walls were built at Jericho and the ancestors of mankind still lived in hut circles, patiently chipping at flints with stubs of reindeer horn, the photocopier manufacturers and the suppliers of office stationery lived at peace with one another, each considering the other’s needs and adapting their wares accordingly. But then a great wrong was done by one against the other, so that for ever after, from age to age, each strove to thwart the other’s designs; and since then, even though the cause of the feud has long since been forgotten, the hatred between them has grown ingrained, past all reconciliation. This deadly quarrel, more bitter even than the wars of the software lords of the South–West against the Dark Lord of Seattle, accounts for the fact that no standard-format spreadsheet will fit the bed of a standard-format office photocopier, and generations of hapless office juniors, secretaries and trainees have had to do the best they can with scissors, Pritt Sticks and Scotch tape.

“Are these the same ones we sorted into piles,” Paul speculated, as he nibbled Sellotape with his teeth, “or is this a different batch of meaningless drivel?”

Sophie shrugged her thin shoulders wearily. “No idea,” she said. “Does it matter?”

“No, not really.” They’d spent all morning in the photocopier room, and there was still a heartbreakingly thick wodge left in the folder still to do. “Bugger,” he added, “that red light’s come on again. Can you remember what we did the last time?”

“That’s the paper feed, isn’t it?”

“I thought it was the toner.”

He sighed. “You’re probably right. My brain switched off about an hour ago.” Paul pulled open the little plastic panel in the side of the machine and poked about with the stub end of a pencil; it had done the job, either the time before last or the time before that, though he had no idea why. “All right,” he said, “try that.”

The machine wheezed into action. The brightly green-shining slider thing got halfway through its stroke, and froze.

“It’s eating the paper again,” Sophie growled.

That wasn’t good. Once the machine had got its rollers on a sheet of paper, it tended to cling on, like a dog refusing to let go of the stick it’s just retrieved, and its grip was far greater than the tensile strength of ninety-gram copy paper. Extracting the tiny pulped slips that stayed behind after a jammed sheet had been yanked out by brute force would have taxed the skill and patience of a brain surgeon.

“There’s got to be something you can pull off or unscrew,” Paul said, “so you can get at the paper feed from the side.”

Sophie looked at him. “Don’t you dare unscrew any thing,” she said grimly. “If you start fiddling with it, that’ll be it.”

Harsh words; but fair. Paul knew perfectly well that the elves hadn’t blessed him with the knack of taking things to bits and putting them back together again. Even changing the fuse in a plug was a dark and terrible adventure, as far as he was concerned. “How about bashing it?” he said.

“I don’t think that would help.”

“I suppose not,” he sighed. “Still—”

“There,” she interrupted, holding up a crumpled, blackened but unshredded sheet of paper. “Got it.”

“Bloody hell. How did you manage that?”

“By going at it nice and steady,” Sophie replied, with more than a hint of smugness, “instead of trying to fight it to the death.” She shook her head. “Men,” she said. “If they can’t bash it over the head with a club, they’re completely helpless. All right, try it now.”

Paul riffled the paper and put it back in the feed tray, then hit the button. The slider slid back, graunched its gears a couple of times, and froze. Three red lights that hadn’t flashed before started flashing.

“Fuck,” Sophie shouted, and she belted the machine’s steel flank with her balled fist. The three red lights went out, and the slider purred smoothly into its ordained course. The copied page fed smoothly out the other side, still faintly warm.

“Don’t say anything,” Sophie warned him. It sounded like good advice. He took it.

They managed to get a dozen sheets copied before the machine broke down again. This time, however, it was apparent that they were way past the point where nice-and-steady or a shrewdly placed right cross could do any good. Not only were all the red lights flashing at once, two green lights and an amber one they hadn’t even known was there were strobing frantically, and the thing was beeping like a small, agonised rodent in a trap. Paul felt that the only humane thing would be to shoot it.

“Having trouble?”

How long Mr Suslowicz had been standing there in the doorway, they didn’t know. Sophie jumped as though she’d just been stung by a bee.

“Temperamental beast,” Mr Suslowicz said. “I keep telling the others we ought to upgrade, get a new one, but they won’t hear of it. Mind if I take a look?”