Страница 19 из 70
‘Igor?’
‘Baron? Are you all right?’
Cautiously, both men stood up and stared at the bench and the source of the unearthly blue light. ‘Did you see what happened, Igor?’ the Baron whispered. ‘That fire… Is there anything left?’
Igor shrugged. ‘Search me,’ he said. ‘I was hiding.’
Together they approached the bench. The blue fire danced on the scarred surface of the oak like the brandy flare on a Christmas pudding, and in the heart of the glow, where the Thing had been, there was a shape; humanoid, certainly, with the correct number of limbs and in more or less the right proportions, but…
‘My God,’ whispered the Baron. ‘Igor, what have we done?’
‘What d’you mean, we?’ Igor whispered back. ‘I just work here, remember?’
Where there had been a seven-foot frame of carefully selected muscle and bone, painstakingly put together from raw materials taken from the finest mortuaries in Europe, there was now a short, stocky child-shaped object with a small, squat body, sticklike arms and legs and a head that was too large for the rest of the assembly. It was wearing brightly coloured dungarees, an Alpine hat with a feather in it and shiny black shoes. It was made of wood and had a perky expression and a cute pointy nose.
‘It’s a puppet,’ the Baron growled.
‘So it is,’ Igor replied, trying to keep the grin off his face and out of his voice. Despite all the melodrama of the last half hour, he couldn’t help liking the little chap.
‘A puppet,’ the Baron repeated. ‘A goddamned wooden puppet. What in hell’s name am I supposed to do with that?’
He broke off. The puppet had winked at him. ‘Did you see that?’ he gasped.
‘See what, boss?’
‘It winked at me.’
Igor craned his neck to see. ‘You sure, boss?’ he said. ‘Can’t say I saw anything myself.’
‘It moved, I’m sure of it.’ The Baron sat down heavily on the shell of a burnt-out instrument console. ‘Or maybe the radiation’s addled my brains. I could have sworn…’
‘Hello,’ said the puppet, sitting up at an angle of precisely ninety degrees. ‘Are you my daddy?’
The Baron made a curious noise: wonder, triumph and deep disgust, all rolled up in one throaty grunt. ‘It’s alive,’ he croaked. ‘Igor, do you see? It’s alive.’
‘Oh sure,’ Igor replied. ‘We got ourselves a walking, talking, moving, breathing, living doll.’ He closed his eyes and opened them again. ‘When you go back and tell the investors about this, I want to be there. Can I have your lungs as a souvenir?’
‘You’re my daddy,’ said the puppet. ‘I love you. My name’s Pinocchio and I’m going to live with you for ever and ever.’
The Baron groaned and buried his face in his hands; which surprised the puppet, because he’d imagined his daddy would be pleased to see him. A safe assumption to make, surely? Maybe not. There was so much about this wonderful new world he didn’t know, and wouldn’t it be fun finding out?
Deep inside his wooden brain, a tiny voice was squeaking Hang on, this isn’t right, it isn't fair, let me out! My name is Carl and I’m a human, and where’s my sister and brother? But the grain of the wood soaked up the last flickers of neural energy, and the dim spark drenched away into the cold sap. ‘My name is Pinocchio,’ the puppet repeated; and if its nose grew longer by an eighth of an inch or so, nobody noticed.
‘You sure this is the right place?’ Rumpelstiltskin asked.
‘I reckon…’
A chair crashed through the front window of one of the saloons on Main Street, making a hole through which something small and human-shaped followed it shortly afterwards. The chair didn’t travel much further than the saloon’s front porch, but the small humanoid object, being lighter, travelled further and made it as far as a muddy puddle in the middle of the street.
‘…so,’ Dumpy concluded.
The swing doors of the saloon opened and a large, burly, bald-headed man in a barkeep’s apron flung a tiny hat out on to the porch. It was sort of conical, like the narrow end of an egg. It was made out of an acorn-cup.
‘And stay out,’ the barman explained.
The two dwarves waited till he’d gone back inside, then strolled over to the puddle, across which the tiny creature was doing the breaststroke.
‘Howdy,’ Dumpy said.
‘Get knotted.’
Dumpy shrugged. ‘Only being sociable, friend. You Thumb?’
‘Who wants to know?’
Dumpy rested his hands on his knees and leaned over. ‘If you’re the Tom Thumb who’s got a $50,000 reward on his head in Carabas for cattle rustling and grand fraud, then I got a job for you. If not, then screw you.’
‘A job? What kind of job?’
Rumpelstiltskin nudged his colleague in the ribs. ‘Sorry if I’m missing the point,’ he hissed, ‘but isn’t this one a bit too small to be of any use to us?’
Dumpy gri
Rumpelstiltskin shrugged. ‘Up to you, I suppose. D’you want me to grab him?’
‘Don’t even think about it, partner,’ Dumpy warned.
‘Okay, he’s small, but so is five ounces of plutonium. Also, what with him bein’ a bit on the small side, he’ll be able to do things we can’t. Y’know, like crawling down ventilation shafts and overhearing secret plans. Talking of which, ain’t it ever struck you as odd the way the bad guys always choose to have their tactical meetings plumb underneath a vent grille? I ain’t complaining, mind; just strikes me as curious, is all.’
‘Hey, you.’
Dumpy looked down. ‘You talking to me?’
‘Yes, you. The tall bastard.’
‘Hey.’ Dumpy scowled. ‘Ain’t nobody ever called me that before. Not as is still alive, anyhow.’
‘What, you mean “bastard”?’
‘Hell no. Tall.’
‘Quit making wisecracks and go get my hat.’
Dumpy raised both eyebrows. ‘You givin’ me an order, Tiny?’ he muttered softly.
Tom Thumb sighed. ‘It’s for your own good. Go on, get a move on. Or are you standing around waiting till you evolve into a sentient life form?’
Before Dumpy could make an issue of it, Rumpelstiltskin fetched the hat and handed it over. The tiny man grabbed it and jammed it hard down on to his head.
‘That’s better,’ he sighed. ‘There’s an integral sound amplifier/universal translator built in to the hat. Means you can talk to me without shouting, and you can hear what I’m telling you. All right?’
‘Reckon’s—’
The tiny man winced, as if Dumpy had just stubbed out a cigarette in his eye. ‘Not so loud, for God’s sake. This is sensitive equipment here.’
Rumpelstiltskin nudged his colleague in the ribs. ‘Brilliant combination we’ve got here,’ he whispered. ‘Aggressive, foul-tempered and a wimp. What’s he supposed to be for, then? Lulling the enemy into a true sense of security?’
‘Shuttup,’ Dumpy growled back, ‘you ain’t helping.’ He leaned forward and grabbed; the little man tried to get away, but Dumpy’s forefinger and thumb closed on his leg. He yelped as Dumpy picked him up, in the ma
‘Like I always say,’ he sighed. ‘If you ain’t got their respect, you gotta earn it.’
It was disconcerting, to say the least, to hear a loud, raucous voice coming from inside a matchbox; enough to make at least one passer-by freeze in the act of lighting a cigarette, stare at the match he was about to grind against the side of the box, think hard and put it carefully away with a mumbled apology. Dumpy, meanwhile, was counting to ten.
‘All right,’ he said to the box. ‘You quit making that awful noise and I’ll let you out.’
The matchbox replied in language that was certainly forthright. A little match girl, who had been huddling in a shop doorway looking pathetic and doing a brisk trade as a result, stood up in a marked ma