56K Modem looked at me and pursed its lips. “All the same,” it said, “perhaps he would bear watching.”
The elves had something roughly analogous to MI5. They called it the Library, and among other things it was charged with dealing with the Resistance. They hunted down ham radio operators and ham TV operators, they hunted down people who put together kit-cars in their garages or played guitars and sang to each other late at night. I thought this must be a pretty thankless task, but Modem seemed to find it fulfilling.
“Rex isn’t with the Resistance,” I said again.
“Harry Burns is.”
More ice around my heart. “Harry’s not with the Resistance either.”
“He’s at a meeting right now,” Modem told me. “Over on the outskirts of Sheffield. There are five of them in a house in Dore. They’re planning an assassination. We disapprove of assassinations.”
I shook my head. “Not Harry.”
“Harry’s ex-SAS. Good with munitions.” Modem blew gently on the burning coal at the end of the spliff. “An absolute star. No end to the things Harry can do with a few ounces of plastic explosive.”
“What do you want?” I shouted.
Modem looked taken aback. “It’s just this situation with Rex and Liam…”
“Yes!” I yelled. “Intervene! Do whatever you fucking well want!” We sat looking at each other from either end of the bed. “Are you happy now?”
Modem stood up. “I’m never what you’d call happy,” it told me.
Every village has a character. Sometimes, if the village is big enough or unfortunate enough, it might have more than one. Ernie Hazlewright was ours, a big, permanently-annoyed old man who lived just down the road from me. He was a legendary drinker and a brawler of some note, and he’d been barred from all three of the pubs in the area more times than anyone could remember.
By rights, he should have gone down fighting in a punch-up in the street, but he’d actually fallen into the river while walking home pissed out of his mind one night and drowned. I supposed it was a rather sad way for a Falklands veteran to go, but I wasn’t going to miss him.
Still, it was rather a good turnout in the little cemetery down by the river. About thirty people turned up, mostly Ernie’s old drinking buddies. I managed to get a few words from each of them.
The mourners had all gone off to the pub and I was chatting to the vicar when I saw Rex coming down the gravel path from the church. He stopped by Ernie’s grave and stood looking down at the coffin. I went over to him.
“He wasn’t a bad old lad really,” he said. “Just drank too much.”
“He was an absolute nightmare,” I said. “Coming home legless at all hours of the day and night, beating up his wife. You didn’t have to live near him.”
Rex nodded. “That’s true.”
“He smashed all my front windows once.”
“You haven’t been in to the office yet, have you,” he said.
I shook my head. “I came straight here.”
“So you won’t have seen what we found in the yard when we came to work this morning.”
“No, of course not.”
“So the animals didn’t have anything to do with you, then.”
I frowned and felt my stomach start to contract. “What animals?”
Rex shrugged. “Well, I left Harry counting them, but it looked like fifteen or so chickens, half a dozen goats and four pigs. Three sows and a boar.”
I stared at him.
“Anything to do with your source, do you think?”
I had never kept anything from Rex. I had told him everything about myself, at least everything I could remember. He was the only person I had told about 56K Modem and its visits, and I thought it was probably the bravest thing I had ever done. Rex, of course, was an old-fashioned sort of newspaperman. A contact with the elves was literally beyond price, even if it might be morally suspect, and a good journalist always protects his sources.
“Modem came to see me last night,” I said. “It asked me if I wanted them to do something about this thing with you and Liam.”
Rex frowned. “Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s a game with them, Rex. They think we’re funny. They watch us like we’re some kind of soap opera or something.”
He scratched his head. “Well.” He turned and started to walk up the gravel path towards the entrance to the churchyard. I followed. “I’m not sure whether to be flattered or not.”
“Best not.”
“Aye, maybe you’re right.”
“Someone had better mention to Harry that the elves are on to him as well,” I said.
He glanced at me. “Did your source tell you that as well?” I nodded and he shook his head. “Why don’t they just pick him up then?”
“I told you, they love to play games. Modem said Harry was in Sheffield last night meeting with a Resistance cell.”
Rex put back his head and laughed. “Either your source was playing games, or it’s not as well-informed as we thought. Harry was nowhere near Sheffield last night.”
“Oh?” I was rather hurt. “Where was he then?”
“He was with me, burning down the Chronicle’s office.”
I stood still. Nobody I had spoken to this morning had mentioned anything about a fire, but I supposed they’d all had other things on their minds, like mourning Ernie and getting to the pub for opening time.
Rex walked a few more steps, then he turned and looked at me. “Don’t just stand there with your mouth hanging open,” he said. “He’d have done it to us.”
That was fair comment, I supposed. “You’ll never get away with it. He’ll know who it was.”
He smiled cheerily. “There’s knowing,” he said, “and there’s proving.”
I caught up with him. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Rex looked thoughtful. “No,” he said finally. “No, neither did I.” He looked about him, then started walking again. “We didn’t put him out of action permanently, anyway. Just sort of charred the office a bit. He’ll be up and running again in a couple of weeks. It’s actually rather funny.”
“How on Earth is trying to burn down your competitor’s office funny, Rex?”
He chuckled. “It’s just that Harry and I spend most of the night skulking around the Chronicle’s office, trying to put Liam out of action for a while so some of the advertisers will sign up with us, and this morning we find the back yard full of livestock, courtesy of your friends.” He shook his head. “I just found it funny, that’s all.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. I knew there would be some kind of price to pay, but there was no way of telling what it would be. Or what would happen when the elves didn’t find us amusing any longer.
“One of us ought to go over to the Chronicle’s office and do some kind of story,” Rex said.
I grinned. “You cheeky old sod.”
“It’d look suspicious if we didn’t. And it’s good copy anyway. ‘Local Newspaper Burns Down.’” He nodded to himself. “Good local copy. The cornerstone of a good local paper.” He looked at me. “Would you like to do that?”
“It would make my day,” I told him.
He nodded again. “Good lad. And if you see Alice, give her my regards.” And he walked away, head up, back straight, whistling a little tune, the happiest editor in Derbyshire.
v
This was written for the Lou Anders anthology Live Without A Net, the premise of which was that all the stories took place in worlds where the internet either did not exist or had been lost. There was a lot of good stuff in that book, and it’s worth tracking down, not least for the stories by Adam Roberts, John Meaney, and John Grant.
Lou gave me a space of about 6,000 words to fit my story into. I’ve never been quite happy with the pacing of this one; I’ve always thought it needs to be two or three thousand words longer. I occasionally take the MS out and read it and fiddle with the idea of doing a sort of Director’s Cut, but I always wind up putting it away again untouched. Maybe one day.