Wish You Were Here (8 page)

Calvin Dieb scowled. ‘Ah, cut it out,' he growled. ‘I get that all the time from the quacks, and I'm still here, aren't I?' A horrible thought struck him, precisely at the same moment as an unexpected wave splashed water into his face. ‘I
am
still here, aren't I? Shit, did I die? Is this some sort of goddamn afterlife or something?'

The otter twitched its nose at him. ‘Welcome to Lake Chicopee,' it replied, as if answering the question.

‘Huh?'

‘It's a moot point,' the otter went on. ‘I won't bore you with the equations, so let's just say it's - what's that phrase you lawyers use when somebody asks you a question and you don't know the answer? Let's just say it's a grey area. On the one paw, you're definitely taking time out from your usual continuum. Your watch, for instance, won't work. Time doesn't work, come to that; it just doesn't seem to pass here, is all. Hey, that must be hell for you; I could ask you for all sorts of complicated legal advice and you couldn't charge me a cent.'

‘Hey . . .'

‘On the other paw,' the otter continued, ‘don't try collecting on your life policies, because you can't, 'cos you're still alive.' It made a tiny hacking noise, presumably analogous to laughter. ‘You're stuffed, Dieb, you know that? You can't earn money, and you can't collect for being dead. Since your only purpose in existing is to accumulate dollars, what the hell is the point in you?'

‘Shuttup!'

At once, the otter flipped and dived. A surge of panic swept through Dieb like on a bad day on Wall Street, and he began to feel desperately heavy, as if he'd just stepped out of a twentieth-storey window. The water was just starting to get into his mouth when the otter popped up again, just by his left ear.

‘But we digress,' it said, and at once Dieb was floating again. ‘This is Lake Chicopee.You know the old legend?'

‘Get me
out
of here!'

‘The old legend,' the otter said, ignoring him, ‘has it that if you make a wish and jump in this here lake, you get your heart's desire. Good, huh?'

‘Fine. My heart's desire is to get out of—'

‘Wrong.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Wrong,' the otter repeated. ‘Your heart's desire, as at 11:04 and sixteen-point-two seconds, which is the precise moment you hit the water, was to find your car keys.' That tiny hacking noise again. ‘Your wish is my command, buster. You ready?'

‘
Hey!
'

‘Then here,' said the otter, ‘we go.'

 

‘That's it?'

‘Sure is, miss.' The cab driver pressed a button, and the window on Linda's side wound down with an electric purr. ‘Kinda pretty, ain't it?'

‘Hm?' Linda shrugged, as if he'd asked her to perform some abstruse mathematical calculation. ‘Yeah, sure. What do I owe you?'

‘Call it thirty bucks, miss.'

‘I'll need a receipt.'

‘Huh?'

Linda frowned. ‘It's what we call a piece of paper with the cost of the ride written on it.' She sniffed. ‘They do use writing around here, don't they? Or do you muddle through with body language and smoke signals?'

‘Just a second,' the cab driver said. ‘I'll write it on the back of one of my cards. There, that do you?'

She nodded, took the card and put it away. ‘Say, mister,' she said, ‘you wouldn't happen to have seen any submarines in these parts at all?'

‘Submarines.'The driver looked thoughtful. ‘Can't say as I have. What with the lake being so far from the sea, and all. Course, I could be mistaken,' he added fairmindedly. ‘Don't reckon I'd necessarily know one if I saw one.'

‘Quite.' Linda sighed. ‘All right, then, how about Australians?'

‘Australians?'

‘That's right. People from Australia. Seen any?'

‘Can't say as I . . . '

‘Forget it.' Linda opened the door, threw out her bag and slammed the door shut behind her. ‘Don't wait,' she added. ‘When I'm ready to leave I'll ring through on my mobile.' She hesitated, as a disturbing thought occurred to her. ‘Mobiles do work in these mountains, don't they? I mean, you can get a signal?'

‘Can't say as . . .'

‘It's all right,' Linda growled. ‘If necessary, I'll walk.

Don't let me keep you.'

The driver looked at her, smiled a thin little smile and drove away, much to Linda's relief. He reminded her a bit too much of her father, who had driven the station cab at Parsimony, Utah until they closed the station (not, mercifully, before she'd had a chance to use it to get the hell out of Parsimony, Utah and that whole goddamn way of life) and the resonances unsettled her. One of her dad's favourite apothegms was that you can take a girl out of Utah but you can't take Utah out of the girl; and it was remarks of that sort that tended to undermine her belief in language as a viable means of communication.

God, she muttered to herself, I
hate
the countryside. It's so . . .

Well. Quite.

Still, if there's a story in it somewhere, then it had to be tolerated; humoured, even. Even if it meant having to walk on grass and cross rivers and shelter under trees and all that crap. Feeling more than a little resentful, she hefted her bag onto her shoulder and set off towards the lake.

Whereupon the tiresome old man, who had been watching her through the eyes of an eagle circling a long way up above her head, pottered out of a sudden and unexpected timber shack and said, ‘Howdy.'

Linda turned and looked at him, assessing him in his capacities as (a) threat, (b) informant and (c) eyesore. No to (a), yes to (c); she resolved to investigate (b) further.

‘Hello,' she said, switching on her smile at the mains. ‘You live around here?'

The old man nodded. ‘Sure do,' he said. ‘Been livin' here all my life. You come to look at the lake?'

Linda nodded. ‘It's very . . .' She remembered the technical term the cab driver had used. ‘Kinda pretty,' she parrotted.

It seemed that she'd said the right thing, because the old man smiled, revealing a set of teeth that reminded her of baked beans swimming in mustard. ‘You said it, miss,' he replied, and wheezed; a general purpose combination laugh/cough. ‘Kinda pretty all right. Though,' he added, after a tiny pause, ‘they do say this here lake is haunted.'

Linda stepped up the smile by an amp or so. ‘Really,' she cooed. ‘How fascinating. You don't say.'

‘That's right,' the old man said, doing something disgusting with his tongue. ‘By the ghost of an ole Injun sperrit, name of Okeewana or some such. By Jiminy, miss, the tales I could tell you 'bout that ole—'

‘Submarines.'

The old man hesitated, like a jammed machine. ‘Beg pardon, miss?'

‘Have you seen any submarines, by any chance? You know, ships that suddenly appear from out of the water and then—'

‘You mean like that one?' He pointed.

Linda swivelled round like a small boy on an office chair and saw a
thing
; something that looked for all the world like a wood-carving of a dragon's head, just breaking the surface of the water, surrounded by ripples swarming like disturbed bees.

‘A periscope!' Linda breathed.

‘Keep lookin'.'

The thing rose steadily up out of the water, followed a moment later by what was unmistakably a mast, and then by a whole ship; broad-beamed, clinker-built, bristling with oars like a squashed-flat centipede. Brightly painted round shields encircled its bows, and a few disgusted-looking fish flapped wearily on the planks of the deck.

‘Right,' said Linda contentedly. ‘Thought so.'

 

Cursing fluently, Talks To Squirrels loosed his last arrow, following it with his eye all the way from his bowstring to the newcomer's heart. Bang on the money, as always; enough to make a man weep. He'd just put six consecutive arrows into a space the size of a playing-card at a range of a hundred and seventy-five yards, and the bugger hadn't even noticed. The irony, the cruel, savage, merciless irony of it was that when he'd been alive he'd been hard put to it to hit a sleeping bison at five paces.

Where the hell were they all coming from? Three of the sons of bitches, all in one morning; and he'd come out with just two dozen arrows and a small flint knife. The question was, if he sprinted back Flipside for more arrows and his business tomahawk, would the scumbags still be here when he returned, or would he come running back, armed to the teeth, only to find they'd moved on? Whereas if he stayed here, at least he could pelt them with insubstantial rocks and batter them around the head with non-existent tree-branches. It was a difficult choice to make. Or rather, it wasn't, since he wouldn't be able to stir so much as a hair on their heads even if he had a battery of cannon and a Gatling gun at his disposal. Quit kidding yourself, Talks.

Gloomily he shoved his bow back into its buckskin case, sat down on top of a disused anthill, wrapped his hands round his chin and sulked. When he'd made his wish, all those years ago, to be able to carry on fighting the paleface until the sun went out and the moon fell from the sky and the mountains slid down into the lake and were swallowed up, he hadn't pictured it working out quite like this. Admittedly, if you worked on the basis of mortal wounds delivered and direct hits inflicted, at the last count he had eighty-six thousand, four hundred and ninety-seven notches on his bowhandle; not bad going for a brave who used to be known as Trips Over Own Feet While Running Away. The figures were, however, deceptive, not least because of the duplication factor. At least twenty-seven thousand of those notches were multiple hits on the driver of the mail truck. He'd also killed old Mr Tomacek, who drove the garbage truck along the valley road once a week, sixteen thousand and eight times, and Mrs Bernstein from Owl Farm nine thousand, six hundred and twenty-four times. The first time he'd shot Mrs Bernstein, she'd been six; she was now a sprightly eighty-seven, and showing no inclination whatsoever to fall over and die, leaving Talks With Squirrels to draw the demoralising conclusion that shooting the buggers was actually good for them.

‘Still,' said a small bird above his head, ‘it keeps you out of mischief.'

‘Get lost, you,'Talks replied without looking up. ‘Since it's all your fault, I'd be obliged if you'd keep your witty remarks to yourself.'

‘My fault?' The bird flapped its tiny wings, caught a gnat in mid-air and returned to its perch. ‘Here we go again. I'm sorry, but I can't see the point in going through all that again. I only came by to say that if you want to nip home for more arrows, they'll still be here when you get back.'

‘Can't be bothered.'

The bird twittered cheerfully. ‘Oh no you don't, Talks. Till the sun goes out and the moon falls out of the sky, remember? I don't recall anything about only when you feel in the mood.'

‘But it's so pointless,' Talks growled wretchedly. ‘I mean, what exactly does it
achieve
? Ninety-four times I've crushed young Duane Flint's head with a rock, and he's never had so much as a bad cold in his life.'

‘At least you've learned something,' the bird replied. ‘Pointless. Doesn't achieve anything. Out of the mouths of babes and dead Indians, huh?'

Talks shook his insubstantial head. ‘Don't give me that,' he snarled. ‘It's only pointless and doesn't achieve anything when they don't fall over when you kill them. Let me have one real shot - just one - and then we'll see . . .'

‘Oh, you,' said the bird indulgently. ‘At least you're consistent, I'll give you that. Consistent as five hundred generations of lemmings, but consistent nonetheless. Good shooting.'

‘Ah, piss off.'

Wearily the ghost dragged itself to its feet and trudged away, mingling with the dappled shadows on the forest floor until it wasn't there any more. The bird watched him go, then shook itself, swung her legs over the tree-branch and dropped lightly to the ground. Shading her eyes with the palm of her hand, she gazed across the valley to where she was talking to Linda Lachuk; another customer, three in one day. She wasn't sure she liked these sudden flurries of new business; she was spreading herself pretty thin as it was. How people who
couldn't
be in two places at once ever managed to cope, she had no idea.

Time she wasn't here. Time she was -

- An otter, floating on its back in the middle of Lake Chicopee alongside a resolutely not-drowning lawyer.

‘Here we go,' she said.

‘How?' the lawyer replied. ‘I can't swim, remember.'

‘Then,' said the otter, ‘maybe we should hitch a ride. Tell you what, the next ship that passes this way, we'll flag it down.'

‘Oh, very—' Calvin Dieb didn't finish his sentence, because just then a Viking warship rose up out of the water next to him. It was probably at this point that the skeleton crew who'd been doggedly manning the key positions in his sanity got up from their seats, switched off the lights, locked up and went home. At any rate, he found himself lifting his right arm out of the water and waggling his thumb furiously.

‘Hello,' said a voice from the ship. ‘How can I of assistance be?'

‘You, um, going anywhere near dry land?' Dieb heard himself say. ‘Only I could really use a lift right now if you are.'

‘Dry land,' the voice repeated, as if confronted with a disturbing new concept. ‘Near dry land we may be passing. To be aboard welcome.'