The Mammoth Book of New Comic Fantasy Read online

  Similarly, the throne is connected to the rear wall by a device which can lift it to the ceiling along a disguised groove. There are changes of clothing inside the hollow seat. The idea was originally to impress ambassadors and visiting dignitaries from the west. A diplomat would be carried into the presence of the Emperor by two eunuchs and then set down. He would be expected to prostrate himself thrice, throwing himself at full length on the floor. Each time he looked up after one of these prostrations, the Emperor would be in a different position on the wall and in a new set of robes. It would be mystifying.

  But now the workings are worn and inefficient. The throne squeaks as it jerks toward the ceiling, threatening to throw its occupant off.

  A real bird flaps into the Palace and lands on the bronze tree.

  It is a pigeon. The Emperor reaches forward and removes the message from its leg. He unrolls the paper and arches an eyebrow.

  “A letter from the Sheriff of Nottingham,” he says.

  His Vizier bows deeply. “You asked him to keep you informed of developments.”

  “Did I? So I did! Now let’s see, what does it say? Ah! Apparently some fellow called Robin Hood was killed by an arrow and was laid inside a new coffin and the lid was about to be secured and nailed down when Nina, Queen of the Amazons, threw herself on his body. He was her son, she wailed, and therefore she had no choice but to love him, even though she had killed him. She kissed him on the lips. To everyone’s horror, the corpse returned to life. It seems that Nina had kept a god in a jar and had promised to let it go if it granted her a wish. It did so, but she cheated on her side of the bargain. She released it from the jar, yes, but by swallowing it! She chewed it up and digested it! Anyway, the magic powers inside the god must have transferred themselves into her metabolism, allowing her kiss to be suffused with implausible restorative qualities! So she kissed him back to life! But the story doesn’t have a happy ending. Do you know why?”

  The Vizier shakes his head. “Sorry, no. I don’t speak Latin. This is Byzantium and my language is Greek. I didn’t understand a word of that!”

  “Nor I! It’s just a mass of squiggles. It doesn’t matter anyway, because it will be out of date now. The events it describes are in the past.”

  The Vizier licks his lips. “Can we have the pigeon for lunch?”

  Maid Marian, Little John, Guy of Gisborne, the Sheriff of Nottingham and the Queen of the Amazons are patiently explaining to Robin Hood why he must be buried alive. He is lying in his coffin and only Nina’s foot on his chest prevents him from getting out. She holds the lid in her hands. She smiles sweetly.

  “If there was another way, you know I’d take it.”

  “Call yourself a mother?” squeals Robin. “I’m alive now!”

  “Yes, that was an enjoyable magic kiss. But the rules are clear. A final request must be obeyed, and you asked to be buried under the spot where your arrow ended up. It stuck in your own heart. So now we have to bury you here. The fact that you are a living person is completely irrelevant.”

  “But I’ll suffocate down there and be dead again!”

  “So what are you complaining about? That sorts everything out.”

  “I thought you loved me!”

  “I do. As a mother loves a son. But there comes a time when two people, whatever their relationship, have to let each other go.”

  “I don’t want to be buried alive! I don’t want to be buried alive!”

  “Oh, stop whingeing, you little pansy!”

  Pressing him down firmly, she positions the lid on the coffin. Maid Marian and Little John hurry forward with hammer and nails. There is much banging. The screams of Robin Hood are muffled now. The coffin is sealed.

  “Lower it into the grave!” cries the Sheriff of Nottingham.

  The pit is six feet deep. The coffin fits perfectly at the bottom. The knights kick the loose soil back until the hole is filled. Guy of Gisborne leads his horse over it a few times, to stamp it flat. The screams are now very faint. Perhaps they are not really there. It could just be a thousand worms writhing.

  “I hate these ceremonies,” says the Sheriff of Nottingham.

  “Well it’s all over now,” replies Nina.

  “What will you do? All of you, I mean.”

  Little John and Maid Marian exchange glances.

  “I’m going to retire to a convent.”

  “So am I! After a shave, that is. And an operation.”

  Guy of Gisborne barks: “My place is still by your side!”

  “Phasswass! Shoowshss!”

  “And you, my Queen? What are your plans?” the Sheriff adds.

  Nina sighs and looks around. Then she shrugs. “I’ve done what I came to do. I think it’s time to return to Scythia. But what about you?”

  “Oh, I owe the Emperor of Byzantium a long letter.”

  The Sheriff of Nottingham and his knights decide to accompany Nina, Queen of the Amazons, out of Sherwood Forest. But before they reach its edge, she reins in her horse and sighs. Then she turns around.

  “It’s no good. There’s a big problem.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I can’t leave Robin down there. He’s my son now and I carry him in my heart. And the way things have ended up, he has to be buried below himself. I mean, that’s what we’ve just done. So to keep to the spirit of the request, and the way we have interpreted it, he ought to be buried below wherever I am.”

  “But you’ll be constantly on the move now!”

  “Yes. Pity there’s no such thing as a portable grave!”

  He frowns. “Perhaps there is! Follow me!”

  The Sheriff of Nottingham spurs his horse back to the Damsel & Pointy Hat. The grave lies off to one side. He dismounts and enters the tavern. After a few minutes, he comes out and signals to Nina.

  “The landlord’s a carpenter, remember? I asked him if he could make some sort of device like a snow-plough to attach to the front of the coffin. He said yes.”

  “You mean I’ll be able to drag the coffin under me wherever I go?”

  “Yes, the plough will automatically shift the earth aside. The grave will remain a constant six feet under all the way back to Scythia.”

  “Taking it across the Channel might be difficult.”

  “You can hire out a ship with a hold packed with soil.”

  The knights have already disinterred the coffin. The knocking from inside is very feeble. The landlord emerges from the tavern with the prepared device. While he fits it, Nina decides to open the lid for a last look. Robin Hood’s face is contorted. There is much sweat on his brow.

  “Thank God! I was on my last breath!”

  “I haven’t come to rescue you, silly, just to tell you that we’re about to start on a long journey. We’re going home, my dear son.”

  “What? What? What?”

  She answers the question by replacing the lid.

  A rope is secured from the coffin to her hand before the soil is replaced. Now she can pull the grave along behind her. When the rope is taut, it carries the vibrations of Robin’s frenzied knocking. When she holds it close to her ear, she can hear his screams and pleadings. It will provide entertainment on the voyage.

  They leave Sherwood Forest by a different route. She crosses a dry riverbed. The Sheriff of Nottingham is behind her. Behind him are the fifty knights. While they are still crossing, a giant scorpion bears down on them. Shocking what the Crusaders brought back with them! A terrific fight begins. Many of the knights really are empty suits of armour after all.

  It is none of her business. She keeps going. In her trail Robin Hood undergoes his last, harrowing death.

  BAD TIMING

  Molly Brown

  Time travel is an inexact science. And its study is fraught with paradoxes.

  – Samuel Colson, b. 2301 d. 2197

  Alan rushed through the archway without even glancing at the inscription across the top. It was Monday morning and he was late again. He often thou
ght about the idea that time was a point in space, and he didn’t like it. That meant that at this particular point in space it was always Monday morning and he was always late for a job he hated. And it always had been. And it always would be. Unless somebody tampered with it, which was strictly forbidden.

  “Oh, my Holy Matrix,” Joe Twofingers exclaimed as Alan raced past him to register his palmprint before losing an extra thirty minutes pay. “You wouldn’t believe what I found in the fiction section!”

  Alan slapped down his hand. The recorder’s metallic voice responded with, “Employee number 057, Archives Department, Alan Strong. Thirty minutes and seven point two seconds late. One hour’s credit deducted.”

  Alan shrugged and turned back towards Joe. “Since I’m not getting paid, I guess I’ll put my feet up and have a cup of liquid caffeine. So tell me what you found.”

  “Well, I was tidying up the files – fiction section is a mess as you know – and I came across this magazine. And I thought, ‘what’s this doing here?’ It’s something from the 20th century called Woman’s Secrets, and it’s all knitting patterns, recipes, and gooey little romance stories: ‘He grabbed her roughly, bruising her soft pale skin, and pulled her to his rock hard chest’ and so on. I figured it was in there by mistake and nearly threw it out. But then I saw this story called ‘The Love That Conquered Time’ and I realised that must be what they’re keeping it for. So I had a look at it, and it was . . .” He made a face and stuck a finger down his throat. “But I really think you ought to read it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re in it.”

  “You’re a funny guy, Joe. You almost had me going for a minute.”

  “I’m serious! Have a look at the drebbing thing. It’s by some woman called Cecily Walker, it’s in that funny old vernacular they used to use, and it’s positively dire. But the guy in the story is definitely you.”

  Alan didn’t believe him for a minute. Joe was a joker, and always had been. Alan would never forget the time Joe laced his drink with a combination aphrodisiac-hallucinogen at a party and he’d made a total fool of himself with the section leader’s overcoat. He closed his eyes and shuddered as Joe handed him the magazine.

  Like all the early relics made of paper, the magazine had been dipped in preservative and the individual pages coated with a clear protective covering which gave them a horrible chemical smell and a tendency to stick together. After a little difficulty, Alan found the page he wanted. He rolled his eyes at the painted illustration of a couple locked in a passionate but chaste embrace, and dutifully began to read.

  It was all about a beautiful but lonely and unfulfilled woman who still lives in the house where she was born. One day there is a knock at the door, and she opens it to a mysterious stranger: tall, handsome, and extremely charismatic.

  Alan chuckled to himself.

  A few paragraphs later, over a candle-lit dinner, the man tells the woman that he comes from the future, where time travel has become a reality, and he works at the Colson Time Studies Institute in the Department of Archives.

  Alan stopped laughing.

  The man tells her that only certain people are allowed to time travel, and they are not allowed to interfere in any way, only observe. He confesses that he is not a qualified traveller – he broke into the lab one night and stole a machine. The woman asks him why and he tells her, “You’re the only reason, Claudia. I did it for you. I read a story that you wrote and I knew it was about me and that it was about you. I searched in the Archives and I found your picture and then I knew that I loved you and that I had always loved you and that I always would.”

  “But I never wrote a story, Alan.”

  “You will, Claudia. You will.”

  The Alan in the story goes on to describe the Project, and the Archives, in detail. The woman asks him how people live in the 24th century, and he tells her about the gadgets in his apartment.

  The hairs at the back of Alan’s neck rose at the mention of his Neuro-Pleasatron. He’d never told anybody that he’d bought one, not even Joe.

  After that, there’s a lot of grabbing and pulling to his rock hard chest, melting sighs and kisses, and finally a wedding and a “happily ever after” existing at one point in space where it always has and always will.

  Alan turned the magazine over and looked at the date on the cover. March 14, 1973.

  He wiped the sweat off his forehead and shook himself. He looked up and saw that Joe was standing over him.

  “You wouldn’t really do that, would you?” Joe said. “Because you know I’d have to stop you.”

  Cecily Walker stood in front of her bedroom mirror and turned from right to left. She rolled the waistband over one more time, making sure both sides were even. Great; the skirt looked like a real mini. Now all she had to do was get out of the house without her mother seeing her.

  She was in the record shop wondering if she really should spend her whole allowance on the new Monkees album, but she really liked Peter Tork, he was so cute, when Tommy Johnson walked in with Roger Hanley. “Hey, Cess-pit! Whaddya do, lose the bottom half of your dress?”

  The boys at her school were just so creepy. She left the shop and turned down the main road, heading toward her friend Candy’s house. She never noticed the tall blonde man that stood across the street, or heard him call her name.

  When Joe went on his lunch break, Alan turned to the wall above his desk and said, “File required: Authors, fiction, twentieth century, initial ‘W’.”

  “Checking,” the wall said. “File located.”

  “Biography required: Walker, Cecily.”

  “Checking. Biography located. Display? Yes or no.”

  “Yes.”

  A section of wall the size of a small television screen lit up at eye-level, directly in front of Alan. He leaned forward and read: Walker, Cecily, b. Danville, Illinois, U.S.A. 1948 d. 2037. Published works: “The Love That Conquered Time”, March, 1973. Accuracy rating: fair.

  “Any other published works?”

  “Checking. None found.”

  Alan looked down at the magazine in his lap.

  “I don’t understand,” Claudia said, looking pleadingly into his deep blue eyes. Eyes the colour of the sea on a cloudless morning, and eyes that contained an ocean’s depth of feeling for her, and her alone. “How is it possible to travel through time?”

  “I’ll try to make this simple,” he told her, pulling her close. She took a deep breath, inhaling his manly aroma, and rested her head on his shoulder with a sigh. “Imagine that the universe is like a string. And every point on that string is a moment in space and time. But instead of stretching out in a straight line, it’s all coiled and tangled and it overlaps in layers. Then all you have to do is move from point to point.”

  Alan wrinkled his forehead in consternation. “File?”

  “Yes. Waiting.”

  “Information required: further data on Walker, Cecily. Education, family background.”

  “Checking. Found. Display? Yes or . . .”

  “Yes!”

  Walker, Cecily. Education: Graduate Lincoln High, Danville, 1967. Family background: Father Walker, Matthew. Mechanic, automobile, d. 1969. Mother no data.

  Alan shook his head. Minimal education, no scientific background. How could she know so much? “Information required: photographic likeness of subject. If available, display.”

  He blinked and there she was, smiling at him across his desk. She was oddly dressed, in a multi-coloured T-shirt that ended above her waist and dark blue trousers that were cut so low they exposed her navel and seemed to balloon out below her knees into giant flaps of loose-hanging material. But she had long dark hair that fell across her shoulders and down to her waist, crimson lips and the most incredible eyes he had ever seen – huge and green. She was beautiful. He looked at the caption: Walker, Cecily. Author: Fiction related to time travel theory. Photographic likeness circa 1970.

  “File,” he said, “Further d
ata required: personal details, ie. marriage. Display.”

  Walker, Cecily m. Strong, Alan.

  “Date?”

  No data.

  “Biographical details of husband, Strong, Alan?”

  None found.

  “Redisplay photographic likeness. Enlarge.” He stared at the wall for several minutes. “Print,” he said.

  Only half a block to go, the woman thought, struggling with two bags of groceries. The sun was high in the sky and the smell of Mrs Henderson’s roses, three doors down, filled the air with a lovely perfume. But she wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it. All the sun made her feel was hot, and all the smell of flowers made her feel was ill. It had been a difficult pregnancy, but thank goodness it was nearly over now.

  She wondered who the man was, standing on her front porch. He might be the new mechanic at her husband’s garage, judging by his orange cover-alls. Nice-looking, she thought, wishing that she didn’t look like there was a bowling ball underneath her dress.

  “Excuse me,” the man said, reaching out to help her with her bags. “I’m looking for Cecily Walker.”

  “My name’s Walker,” the woman told him. “But I don’t know any Cecily.”

  “Cecily,” she repeated when the man had gone. What a pretty name.

  Alan decided to work late that night. Joe left at the usual time and told him he’d see him tomorrow.

  “Yeah, tomorrow,” Alan said.

  He waited until Joe was gone, and then he took the printed photo of Cecily Walker out of his desk drawer and sat for a long time, staring at it. What did he know about this woman? Only that she’d written one published story, badly, and that she was the most gorgeous creature he had ever seen. Of course, what he was feeling was ridiculous. She’d been dead more than three hundred years.

  But there were ways of getting around that.

  Alan couldn’t believe what he was actually considering. It was lunacy. He’d be caught, and he’d lose his job. But then he realised that he could never have read about it if he hadn’t already done it and got away with it. He decided to have another look at the story.