The Mammoth Book of New Comic Fantasy Read online

  Cynthia Ward

  Supercomputers average the size of a dining room table, yet this computer took up a hundred square feet of floor space and dwarfed the anxious-looking programmers and engineers who stood before it. These researchers, members of the SAM Project, shivered in their labcoats and sweatshirts, for the computer room was 50°F.

  Though she wore only a summerweight dress suit, Dr Maria Denhurst did not notice the cold. The Chief Scientist of the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory studied her baby, the vast machine panelled in eggshell white where it wasn’t sheathed in blinking red and green lights. The generic mainframe shell hid ten years of hard labour.

  Supercomputers, powerful almost beyond human comprehension, could count, in seconds, all the stars in the sky, and even deduce whether a light in the sky was a star, but they were incapable of wondering what a star might be; the mightiest computer in the world hadn’t the intellectual potential of a newborn babe. Mere increases in number-crunching power could not change this. Dr Denhurst contended that the path to a genuine thinking machine, a true artificial intelligence, lay in radical heuristic programming.

  Today her work would be tested, her creation brought online for the first time. She felt pride, and a hot current of fear flowing from her gut. This was the climax of the Self Aware Machine Project – the culmination of all her hopes and dreams. There was no guarantee her theory was right.

  She took a calming breath and stepped up to the supercomputer. Her co-workers burst into applause. Their enthusiastic cheers surprised and embarrassed her.

  What would it be like, she had often wondered, communicating with another intelligence? An artificial intelligence; the first verified non-human intelligence. It would, she thought, be alien. Though it would be a life created by human beings.

  The computer, like a living thing, even had a name: “Sam-I-Am.”

  When the applause had died, Dr Denhurst turned on the microphone and spoke the words her assistant had dubbed The Spell of Awakening: “Sam-I-Am. Awaken.”

  The banks of red lights went green. The voice-circuit indicator turned green.

  “– WAAAH!”

  STAKES AND ADDERS

  Marilyn Todd

  “You’ve got to help me.”

  I put down my pen. The voice was so soft, so sibillant, at first I thought it was the wind in the leaves, but no. There it was again.

  “Please. You’re the only persson who can.”

  Pushing my glasses to the end of my nose, I had to admit that, even by snake standards, he looked pretty miserable.

  “Go away.” I tugged at the hem of my mini-skirt, because who knows how far those slitty eyes reach? “I’m marking examination papers and you’re in flagrant breach of the rules.”

  And dear me, will that Jenkins girl never learn? It’s eye of newt, not wing of bat. C-minus.

  Undeterred, he slithered onto the page.

  “Fine for you to say ‘go away’. No-one turned you into a reptile, did they? And in any case it’s not fair. In the books it’s always handsome princes, and then they get turned into frogs.” His little scaly mouth turned down in a pout. “Hell, I wasn’t even a courtier.”

  “Hell, you weren’t even handsome.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I thought so.”

  How many times do I have to tell these stupid children you use brimstone, not soapstone? Was it any wonder the dragon didn’t retreat back in its lair? D, I scribbled, and consider yourself lucky to get that.

  “No, really. You are the only one who can help me,” and you had to hand it to him. He was a persistent little adder. “After all, it was your great-grandmother who did this to me.”

  “For a very good reason, I’m sure.”

  “Good? Good?” He writhed round the desk like a scaly green dervish. “I’d worked in that woman’s tavern from the age of sixteen, humping beer kegs, pulling pints, tossing out drunks from midday until midnight, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks of the year, until one day I have the temerity to ask for a rise. You call that a good reason to turn me into a ssnake?”

  “I’ve heard better,” I admitted, “but right now I’m busy.”

  These were merely the Spell Tests I was marking. I still had Stage 3 Wizardry and Advanced Werewolfing to wade through, and midnight oil was in short supply in those days.

  “Anyway,” I told him. “It’s got to be a cushy life, being a snake.”

  “Oh? Then what do you call being unable to bask on the river bank for fear of being eaten by herons?

  “Once bittern, twice shy?” (And who’d have thought something so thin and so slimy could snort.)

  “Mock all you want,” he hissed, “but it’s no joke minding your own business on a drystone wall, when suddenly you’re scooped up by some greasy garage mechanic, marched into the repair shop over the way and forced to dangle there utterly helpless while he yells, ‘Whose was the BMW that needed new vindshield vipers?’ To them, it’s a hoot. To me, it’s simply more humiliation.”

  “Pity, because if it was for real, you’d get a drive in the country out of the deal.”

  “Don’t talk to me about driving. Not after that scoundrel St Patrick drove all my cousins out of Ireland.”

  “Only because he couldn’t afford the air fare,” I quipped, reaching for the next paper.

  “Sun in Venus, moon in P –”

  Ugh. How vulgar. It might rhyme, I scrawled, but that is NOT how you spell Pisces. F minus minus, and you’ll hang upside down for an hour after school for that, and no cheating with Blu-tack like last time.

  “I’m not going away,” my visitor said, entwining himself round my coffee mug. “However long it takes, I shall –”

  “OK.” I slammed the book. “OK, I’ll help you, but only because it was my great-grandmother, right?”

  “You’re an angel.”

  Oh, come on. Even my shapeshifting powers aren’t that good. “What do you want?”

  “It’s Crowberry Heath.” He slithered down the handle and I really didn’t like the way he eyed up my computer mouse. “Do you know it?”

  Know it? Who could fail to be enchanted by its riots of yellow gorse and purple bell-heather that sparkled with butterflies and hummed with bees, where warblers sang and kestrels hovered, and nightjars nested in summer.

  “Yes, I know it.”

  “Well, that’s where I live, only now a group of developers want to cover the heathland with houses –”

  “And you want me to look into the future and see whether Scumby Homes get their way?”

  “That wasn’t exactly what I was after, but . . . hey, it’s a start.”

  I was beginning to understand what prompted my great-grandmother all those years ago. Not so much snake in the grass as a pain in it.

  “Fine. You want the future, I’ll give you the future.”

  I pulled the crystal ball out of the drawer, gave it a rub with my hankie (last time I forecast snow when in reality it was nothing more than a layer of dust on the glass and I won’t make that mistake again in a hurry. Until you’ve had snowmen prodding you in the breadbasket with an angry carrot, you haven’t lived).

  “Here we go.” I peered into the ball and waited. “I see . . . oh, I see a young woman.”

  “Yeah?” His scales perked up at that. “What’s she like?”

  “Blonde. Very pretty –”

  “Prettier than you?”

  “Oh, she’s gorgeous.” I shook my head in wonder. “I have to hand it to you, you tempter of Eve, this is one girl who won’t stop until she’s found out everything there is to know about you.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything?”

  “Wow.” He covered the desk in one slither. “Don’t suppose that crystal tells you when I’m going to meet up with this lovely lady?”

  “What about the crisis at Crowberry Heath?”

  “First things first.” He ran his forked tongue round his lips. “Can you, er .
. . can you look in there and see if she’s kissing me? It’s what pretty girls do to frogs, and you know reptiles and amphibians aren’t that far apart on the evolutionary scale.”

  “Sorry, chum, this crystal is rated strictly PG, but if it helps, the answer is soon. You will meet the girl who wants to know you inside and out very soon.” I gave the ball another rub. “Within minutes, in fact.”

  He preened himself in the glass. “Is it too much to assk where?”

  “Hm, let me see. Ah yes.” I lifted my head and looked him square in the eyes. “The school biology lab.”

  Trust me, you’ve never seen a snake move that fast. With a grin, I picked up the Werewolfing papers and worked right through until the midnight oil finally ran out.

  St Sylvester’s is precisely the sort of building that Charles Dickens loved to spend seventeen pages describing. I could have saved him a whole lot of ink, because you can sum up the school in one word. Ugly.

  Actually, that’s not true. St Sylvester’s really needs two words to do it justice. Very ugly.

  Of course by now you’re thinking Gothic. Cracked stone-work, grimacing gargoyles, a world of windowless turrets and creaking staircases, where the wind howls down long, lonely corridors and phantoms moan in the night. You’d be wrong. St Sylvester’s is a monstrosity of sixties design, all square blocks and concrete, built in a style that would give even the most hardened Eastern Bloc architect the shivers. Trust me, no self-respecting ghost would set plasma inside these walls. Until political correctness invaded our society, it used to be an upmarket ghouls’ school. Nowadays, though, they let in every Tom, Dick and Harry Potter. No wonder educational standards are falling.

  “Pay attention, class.”

  I folded my wings and rapped on the blackboard.

  “If you’re going to take up a career in politics, you will need top grades in shapeshifting, so repeat after me. Abracadabra, abracazoo, I want to turn, into a bat just like you. No, no, no. Isabelle, dear, that’s bat with a b, not cat with a c. Now drink your cream and try again. That’s better. Right, class. Who knows how we turn ourselves back again?”

  I can’t quite remember who answered, that squeaky little pipistrelle or one of the mouse-eared variety, because at that moment, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something long and green slinking out from behind the waste paper basket. I muttered the incantation for human reversal very quietly under my breath, so the class couldn’t cheat. They’ll get enough practice with that as politicians.

  “That was a mean trick you pulled yesterday.”

  “Hiss off. Can’t you see I’m taking a class?”

  “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “Take your sticky scales off me.”

  “I don’t know how you can sleep at night, I really don’t.”

  “Very well, I apologize from the bottom of my heart. I – Am – Sorry. Now will you kindly twist off? There are twenty impressionable young students flitting around under this ceiling, all of whom seem to have forgotten the incantation for reverting to human shape. One wrong phrase, my serpentine friend, and these kids are vampires, and how on earth does one explain to their parents that sorry, your Kylie’s turned into a bloodsucking monster.”

  “So they become lawyers instead of politicians.” He shrugged his lithe little shoulders. “Who cares? At least you’ll be able to turn them back again, which is more than I’ll get. This spell’s irreversible. Well.” He rolled his eyes. “Apart from one week where I’m able to adopt human form again, on account of your great-grandma missing a word out of the curse.”

  “Be grateful. On my father’s side they’re dyslexic.”

  I’ve lost track of the numbers of messes I’ve had to clear up there. Cows going “oom”. Grammy’s neighbour who was turned into toast instead of a stoat. Not to mention Grammy herself yelling “Are you a man or a moose?” at poor Gramps. (Oh, and don’t even ask about whether that woman believed in Dog or the Devil.)

  The viper wound his way up the desk leg and tilted his head on one side. “You’re the only one left who has the power to turn me back into a man,” he said. “It’s all I’m asking. My one chance to save Crowberry Heath from total destruction and my fellow adders from ending up as footwear –”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That was the other thing,” he said miserably. “Scumby Homes intend to round us up and open a snake farm on the side, to breed a steady supply of handbags and boots.”

  “Very well.” We witches don’t really like undoing someone else’s spell, but as he said. This one was irreversible. Might as well grant the poor chap his wish. “Seeing as it’s Crowberry Heath.”

  “Whoopee!” If he had them, he’d be kicking his little green heels in the air. “When can we start? Now?”

  “Now? Um, well, I – er, don’t see why not.”

  No time like the present, I supposed, to reverse the past and re-write the future. I scooped him up and ran my hands lightly over the length of his body.

  “Ooh, that’s nice.” He rippled with pleasure under my fingertips. “Better than nice, actually. Part of the reversal process, is it? Analysis of the subject?”

  “Absolutely,” I assured him.

  Not strictly true, but since one never knows how things might turn out in the future, it didn’t hurt to check this guy out. I could really use a smart pair of shoes.

  Everyone knows Scumby Homes, of course, if only for that TV advert four or five years ago. You remember? The one in which Prince Charming kisses the Sleeping Beauty awake with those immortal words “Your dream is our reality,” and hey presto! she’s no longer inside some draughty, thorn-encrusted castle, but a luxuriously decorated modern home, come and visit our showhouse today.

  Naturally, the media had a field day, especially since Prince Charming was played by Scumby’s rather portly Chairman – who’d clearly taken drama lessons from the Forestry School of Acting, he was that damned wooden. But mostly the press attached themselves to it, because the advert could have been invented for cartoonists and impressionists to poke fun at. Your realty is our dream was my personal favourite, but its sheer naffness lent itself to all manner of take-offs, which is exactly what Scumby Homes wanted. With one ghastly advert, they became a household name, synonymous with – irony of ironies – quality, would you believe? Now they could dub themselves “Britain’s No. 1 Builder” without fear of contradiction and, portly or otherwise, the Chairman was this close to a knighthood in the next New Year’s Honours List.

  As you’d expect, then, their headquarters was as prestigious as any of their exclusive developments. Smack bang on the River Thames, its glitzy design of marble and glass knocked the MI5 building into a cocked hat and, standing next door, it made sure it also dwarfed it. The message was clear. Scumby Homes made Big Business look small.

  “I really appreciate your help on thisss, Sssusssannah.”

  Hm. I suppose I ought to tell you about that, but it was the dust, you see. All my great-grandmother’s stuff was in boxes right at the bottom of the cupboard in the back of the classroom. Recipes, spell books, broomstick (just kidding), they were all there, and it took a fair bit of searching through, even allowing for Sebastian – that’s his name, by the way – slithering in through the smallest of gaps to search for the right tome that would change him back to human form. OK, OK, it didn’t take that long, since she wasn’t much of a hoarder, my great-grandmother. But she’s been a Guardian Angel for over fifty years now, and fifty years does leave a fair old layer of dust.

  So it was inevitable, I suppose, that I would sneeze at some point during the recitation but, as I pointed out to Sebastian, you can’t have everything and it could have been a lot worse. Far better he was left with a hiss than a forked tongue, I suggested, though he was far from convinced by the argument and, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure he believes it was an accident, even now.

  “It’s just a little lisp,” I pointed out. “Hardly noticeable unless you –”


  “Unlesss I what? Ssstop usssing pluralsss or wordsss with an ‘sss’ sssound.” I didn’t like the way his eyes narrowed when he leaned down to glare at me, which was a pity, because they were a really attractive shade of green. “Like Sssebassstian, for inssstanccce?”

  “No, more like dusky jade or wood sorrel, or even the colour of new ferns in the spring.”

  “Huh?”

  “With teensy weensy little red flecks in them, if you peer closely.”

  “Did you by any chance take a pinch from that box marked ‘Do Not Take a Pinch From Thisss Box’?”

  “What? Oh, sorry, I’d kind of lost track.”

  Easy to do when you’re strolling along the River Thames with a man whose hair has the colour and sheen of ripe horse chestnuts and whose smile is as wide as the ocean.

  “We were talking about the hisss you’ve left me with. Sssomething, I might add, that I didn’t have before.”

  “And won’t have once you’re a snake again,” I assured him, giving his arm a comforting squeeze and finding it pleasantly muscular. “After all, it’s only for a week –”

  How could I have been so tactless? Sebastian was overjoyed to be back as a man, and funnily enough so was I. OK, you wouldn’t put him up there with George Clooney or Brad Pitt, but he was far from ugly, years of sliding round drystone walls had left him lean and supple, and the basking had given him an good all-over tan – and I do mean all over. Talk about embarrassing! I blame the fact that he was in such a hurry, and what with rummaging round the cupboard to find my great-grandmother’s Book of Irreversible Spells (right under The Foresight Saga as it happens, and underneath a file marked Trivial Pursuits), we just hadn’t stopped to think about clothes. Like I said, one can’t have everything, so I stopped blushing and turned my thoughts to the issue in hand. Saving Crowberry Heath.

  “It’sss ssstill good of you to help me, Sssusssannah.”

  “Not at all.”

  After all, it wasn’t as though I had anything better to do. Oh, didn’t I say? Yes, that was another thing. I’d been sacked, and there’s an odd thing. In all my ten years of teaching at St Sylvester’s, I’ve never once seen the headmaster cross.