Snow White and the Seven Samurai

Chapter 10

‘Squeak.’

The other two mice ignored her. It had been a mistake bringing her in the first place, of course, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

‘Squeak.’

(Roughly translated: I think this is probably the larder. There’s a strong smell of cheese. Follow me.)

The largest of the three blind mice twitched its nose. ‘Squeak,’ it said.

‘Squeak,’ replied the third mouse irritably. ‘Squeak.’

(Simultaneous translation: (a) That doesn’t smell like Camembert to me. That’s that industrial grade cheddar they put on cheeseburgers. (b) Oh put a sock in it, will you? Cheese is cheese. And besides, what d’you expect them to do, put the brand name on the labels in braille?)

In the big four-poster bed at the opposite end of the room, Snow White slept fitfully, her dreams strangely troubled by an image of a little wooden puppet with a perky expression, an Alpine hat and a very long nose, which grinned out at her every time she looked in the mirror. She grunted and turned over; there it was again, dammit, smirking at her out of the polished brass doorknob, wanting to be her friend…

‘Squeak,’ whispered the first mouse, and he wasn’t exaggerating. The other two mice froze in their tracks until the sleeper in the bed stopped thrashing about and started to snore again, making a sound like a bandsaw grating on a concealed nail. No great risk of her hearing them over that racket.

‘Squeak?’

‘Squeak,’ replied the first mouse, suiting the action to the word. Immediately the other two followed, and with exquisite caution they tiptoed along the mantelpiece, down the tie-back on to the curtain, and dropped the last inch to the floor.

‘Snff.’

‘Squeak!’

‘Snif snif. Squeak.’

The third mouse had a point, although she could have expressed her concerns in a rather less vulgar manner. They didn’t know what they were looking for; it was all very well to home in on a strong cheese smell and follow it to its logical conclusion, but in this case there were other elements that had to be factored into the equation. For example: a sleeping human, and a powerful scent that the mice weren’t to know was something as innocuous as Mr Hiroshige’s armour polish. The whole enterprise was, to quote the large mouse, completely squeak from the word Go.

Nevertheless, mouse’s reach must exceed mouse’s grasp, or what’s a whisker for? The first mouse took a deep breath, fed the spatio-temporal coordinates of the cheese smell into his superb natural navigation computer, and scuttled across the floor…

‘Squeak!’ he cursed, sitting up and rubbing his nose. Without further data it wasn’t possible to say what exactly he had just scuttled full-tilt into; but it was big and made of wood, and it was standing in the middle of the floor.

‘Tick,’ it said.

The first mouse ran a quick analysis. Large, made of wood and given to saying ‘Tick’ ruled out the vast majority of known predators, which was a good sign. On the other paw, there wasn’t anything about it that implied the presence of cheese. Yet it was directly in line with the source of the cheese smell. Decision time. Round, over, up or under?

‘Squeak?’

‘Squeak. Squeak squeak.’

The first mouse’s whiskers bristled. Squeak, it muttered to itself, and that was fair enough; this was a cheese heist, after all, not a parish council meeting, and the concept of one mouse, one vote was as out of place in this context as a battleship in a milking parlour. That aside, up was indeed as good a choice as any, given that none of them had a clue where they were.

The mice ran up the clock.

At 1:01 precisely (the clock was a minute slow) the whole structure began to vibrate alarmingly and a terrible noise shattered the silence. ‘Squeeeeeak? wailed the mouse who ought to have been left behind; then she turned tail (what was left of it after the last time) and ran back down again, hotly pursued by her two colleagues.

It wasn’t, unfortunately, a straight-sided clock. Instead, it had a sort of concave knee arrangement which could have been purpose-made to trip up a speeding mouse and catapult it through the air at an angle of forty-five degrees. There would, of course, be no saying where such a mouse would land; a lot would depend on how fast the mouse was going, whether he made an effort to stop in the final heart-crimping fraction of a second before his paws lost traction on the polished walnut, the effect of wind resistance and drag on the ultimate escape velocity, and so forth. One thing, though, is tolerably certain: the chances of said mouse landing in a nearby bucket of water would be effectively squeak—

Splosh.

Followed in quick succession by splosh, splosh.

Maybe it served them right; certainly, successive generations of moralising mice thought so, which is where the expression away from the farmer’s wife into the bucket is reputed to come from. All in all, a pretty sorry state of affairs. But it wasn’t until the bucket burped, rippled and said ‘Running DOS’ that the mice realised the full extent of the problem. Of course, the mice weren’t to know that this was the most valuable and significant bucket of water in the whole domain, sold to its present owner by an opportunistic leprechaun accountant for rather more money than the domain’s economy actually contained at any given time.

‘Squeak?’ spluttered the big mouse, frantically pawing water.

The first mouse replied to the effect that he didn’t know, but whatever the hell DOS was he didn’t plan on hanging around long enough to find out. One desperate push with the hind paws, and the first mouse was scrabbling against the sheer side of the bucket, failing to find a pawhold of any kind. No prizes for guessing what he said.

‘Bad command or file—’

‘Squeak!’

‘Running Help,’ said the bucket calmly. ‘Please wait.’

It couldn’t have said anything more aggravating if it had tried. ‘Squeak!’ said the big mouse with admirable restraint. ‘Squeak squeak glug—’

‘Running SQUEAK. Please wait.’

The mouse who should have stayed at home tried to say ‘?’, but since her head was an inch underwater, all that came up was a small cluster of bubbles. Fortunately, Bubbles 3.1.1. For Mirrors was included in the accessories menu. ‘Glublublububub,’ the bucket enunciated; then a small hole appeared in its side and the water started to stream out on to the floor.

When the bucket was completely empty, the three blind mice huddled in the bottom and tried to ride out the aftermath of the shock and panic. They shivered, and their teeth clicked together. That in itself would have constituted a valid command, if it wasn’t for the fact that, with its wet drive completely splashed, the bucket was useless. Inert. Just a bundle of beechwood palings wrapped round with a couple of iron hoops.

‘Squeak?’

‘You can say that again,’ muttered the mouse who shouldn’t have come, spitting out a bit more of the water she’d inadvertently inhaled. ‘I really thought we’d had it that time; I mean, my past life flashed in front of my ears, there was this absolutely heavenly smell of Limburger cheese, and I—’

She stopped, listening to the echo of her words. There was a moment of utter silence.

‘Squeak?’

‘Apparently,’ she replied, in a voice on the edge of hysteria. ‘At least, I think I am. But I can’t actually hear myself talking, and as far as I know I’m still thinking in Newsqueak, even if you’re right and what’s coming out is in Big. Do you think it’s something to do with the water in that crazy bucket? Only, you see, I did swallow some, and…’

‘Squeak?’

‘What’re you asking me for? Just because I can suddenly talk this godawful crackjaw language doesn’t mean I can— Oooo.’

‘Squeak?’

‘No, it’s just that I thought of something. In fact,’ the mouse added, horrified, ‘I just thought of a whole lot of things. A whole lot.’ She shuddered. ‘For example,’ she said, ‘did you know that the whole of this domain is run by a highly complex and intricate operating system that apparently was stored in the water in that bucket, which also happened to be the only surviving copy?’

‘Squeak!’

‘I don’t know how I know,’ the mouse wailed, ‘I just do. No, hang on, it’s coming through. I know because I drank some of the water, which means that I’m now a zipped database, whatever in Cheese that’s — Oh hell.’

‘Squ—’

‘I’m it,’ the mouse whimpered. ‘The operating system, I mean. It’s all inside me. Just a minute, though,’ she added, wrinkling her nose and twitching her whiskers. ‘Just a cotton-picking minute, let’s try this. All right.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Let there be cheese.’

There was a dull thud.

‘Squeak!’

‘Because I didn’t specify which kind,’ the mouse explained crossly. ‘Obviously Gouda is the default cheese. Next time I’ll make sure I specify cheddar. Satisfied?’

‘Squeak.’

‘So I should think,’ the mouse retorted with her mouth full. ‘Hey, this stuff isn’t half bad, for a default setting. Try some.’

The other two mice didn’t need a second invitation. While they were busy gorging themselves, however, the mouse who shouldn’t have come sat perfectly still and quiet. Then she opened her eyes.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘I can see.’

‘Squeak.’

‘Squeak squeak.’

She shrugged her sleekly furred shoulders. ‘I agree,’ she said. ‘Not what it’s cracked up to be at all, this vision stuff. Still, it’ll come in useful, I’m sure. Now shut up for a minute while I access the settings.’

More silence. If talking to yourself is the first sign of madness, then listening to yourself must be ten times worse; the first sign, quite probably, of a burgeoning desire to go into politics. ‘Coo,’ she muttered after a while. ‘You wouldn’t believe the things I can do if I want to. For example, if I want to stop being a mouse and change myself into, let’s say for the sake of argument a beautiful princess, all I have to do is—’

‘SQUEEEEEAK”

The warning came too late. By the time the mouse who shouldn’t have come realised the possible risks she’d already issued the command, or at least formulated the wish. Before she could think CANCEL she was already five feet two inches high and standing on her back paws, half in and half out of an old bucket. She looked down — And there are certain things about being a fairytale princess that just come with the territory, whether you like them or not. They aren’t pleasant, or helpful, let alone politically correct. They’re all to do with that dreadfully outmoded and patronising view of female psychology that was prevalent back along when fairytales first crystallised, an inherent part of which is that fatuous old scuttlebutt about women being terrified of mice —‘Eeeek!’

Even as she leapt out of the bucket and scrambled up on to the nearest available chair, a section of her brain was shouting, No, this is silly; dammit, I’m a mouse too. But the quiet, calm voice of reason was shouted down by the clamour of a million preconceptions, all of them insisting that mice were horrid dirty creatures that ran up your skirts and bit you where you really didn’t want to be bitten.

It was at that moment that Snow White woke up.

Possibly it was wave-echoes in the operating matrix, or a freak flash of telepathy, or the effects of the last-thing-at-night cheese sandwich whose pervasive smell had brought the three blind mice here in the first place. Whatever the cause, its effect was that Snow White awoke out of an entirely appropriate dream and demanded, ‘Who’s been standing in my bucket?’ Then she noticed the ex-mouse.

‘What the—?’ she began.

‘M-m-mouse,’ the ex-mouse gibbered, pointing at the bucket.

‘Eeeek!’

Fortunately there was another chair just beside the bed. With a single chamois-like leap, Snow White hopped on to it, gathered her nightdress tightly around her and whispered, ‘Are you sure?’

‘C-c-course I’m sure. I am one.’

‘Eeeek?’

‘Long story. Look, can you call someone? A big strong man, for instance?’

‘I—’ Snow White began; then she swore. ‘Useless bunch of pillocks,’ she went on, ‘I sent them out to do something for me and they aren’t back yet. Look, who are you?’

Then the significance of the empty bucket hit her. Thanks to her newly augmented mental powers, the ex-mouse-who-shouldn’t-have-come didn’t need to be told. She knew. ‘I’m most dreadfully sorry,’ she said. ‘It was an accident, honest.’

‘You stupid cow!’ Snow White screeched. ‘Have you any idea what you’ve done?’

The ex-mouse nodded. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘But you see, it’s all right, because I drank some of the water, which makes me a sort of honorary mirror. I can make it all work, you see, and—’

‘You can what?’

‘I can make it work,’ the ex-mouse repeated. ‘That’s how come I can see. And why I’m a girl instead of a mouse. In fact,’ she added, with a strange edge to her voice, ‘I think I can do anything I like.’

‘Oh.’ A substantial degree of her former belligerence faded out of Snow White’s voice. ‘Then why don’t you get rid of the mice?’ she added, reasonably enough.

‘They’re my brothers.’

Snow White considered this. ‘So?’ she said.

The ex-mouse hadn’t thought of it in those terms before. It was a seductive argument for the only girl in a family of a hundred and six. A whole string of memory-related convincing arguments, some of them dating back to her very earliest recollections, added their weight to the proposition. ‘Well…’ she said hesitantly.

‘Not permanently, necessarily,’ Snow White continued. ‘You could always bring them back later.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Much later, if you decided you wanted to.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘And it’d teach them a lesson, wouldn’t it?’

‘It’d do them good to be taught a lesson,’ the ex-mouse agreed. ‘Sorry, we haven’t been introduced. My name’s Souris, but you can call me Sris for short.’

‘Snow White,’ Snow White replied. ‘Go on, then. I dare you.’

Souris grinned. ‘All right, then. Boo!’

At once, the two mice in the bottom of the bucket vanished. Where they went to, only a highly trained folklore engineer could say. Possibly they found themselves pulling thorns out of the paws of lions, or drawing a pumpkin coach, or hiding under the bed until Mr Aesop had stopped prowling around and gone off with Uncle Remus for a swift half. The practical effect was that, with the threat they posed safely removed, Snow White was able to jump off her chair, snatch up the three-foot long daïsho that Mr Nikko had left lying about in the potting shed and take a savage swipe at Souris, whose instincts as a persecuted domestic pest only just saved her from spectacular decapitation.

‘Come back!’ Snow White screeched, as the ex-mouse bolted through the door and pattered down the stairs. It was, in context, a foolishly optimistic thing to say. The front door of Avenging Dragon Cottage slammed shut behind her, and the darkness covered her tracks.

‘Come back!’ Snow White repeated, livid with frustrated rage. ‘Are you a girl or a mouse?’

Apparently the concept of dual nationality wasn’t one she was familiar with.

‘This time,’ said the Baron, ‘try to get it right.’

Igor nodded, and turned the crank that jump-started the big transverse flywheel. It hiccupped a couple of times, then started to spin.

‘Quite apart from everything else,’ the Baron went on, ‘we haven’t got enough components in stock to go around wasting them. You got any idea how hard it is to get quality ankles these days?’

There was a crackle and a hiss, and the first fat blue spark flolloped across the points of the auxiliary generator. In the relay fuse bank, something blew. Igor hurried across, found the soot-blackened slide, hauled it out and slammed home a new one.

‘Not to mention skin,’ the Baron went on gloomily. ‘Fifty kroner a square metre I had to pay for that last batch, and I’ve seen better stuff on a sausage. Some of these body-snatchers, they’re no better than common thieves. All right, take it up to quarter power and for God’s sake keep an eye on the amps.’

‘Sure thing, boss.’

‘And put a cloth or something over that, will you?’ the Baron added, jerking a thumb in the direction of the cute little wooden puppet propped up on the workbench. ‘Heaven alone knows what possessed you to bring it in here.’

‘I like the little fellow, boss,’ Igor replied. ‘He’s like a sort of mascot.’

Before the Baron could tell Igor what he thought of that, another bank of fuses blew, and he jumped down from the quarterdeck to replace them. Igor frowned; he could have sworn he’d seen the puppet move, out of the corner of his eye. But that was impossible; after all, the little fellow had given his word he’d stay perfectly still and quiet.

‘All right,’ the Baron said, wiping sweat out of his eyes with his sleeve, ‘now we’re getting somewhere. Up the feed by fifteen per cent; and gently, for crying out loud. This is a scientific experiment, not a barbecue.’

Igor didn’t say anything; not his place. Instead, he eased back the lever, carefully watching the needle climb. Smooth as silk, if he said so himself.

‘Now then,’ said the Baron, ‘I think this may be where we went wrong the last time. Instead of routing the main feed through the collimator matrix, I’m going to backfeed via the auxiliaries and then bring it up to three-quarter capacity almost immediately. You got that?’

‘Sure thing, boss,’ Igor replied dutifully. Half the time, he felt sure, the Baron was making it up as he went along. Chances were, if you really pressed him, he’d have to admit he wouldn’t know a collimator matrix from half a kilo of bratwurst. Ah well, Igor smiled to himself, just as well one of us knows about these things.

The low hum of the generator became a growl, and there was a faint shrill edge to it, the first querulous complaint of stressed metal. Igor’s steady hand feathered the damper toggles, compensating for the surge effects while maintaining a constant supply to the main feed. There was a very slight smell of singed flesh, but that was only to be expected.

‘On my mark,’ the Baron said, his voice raised above the growing roar of the generator. ‘Up to eighty per cent and hold it steady. And… mark!’

Igor shook his head. Melodrama, he thought. Ah well. After all, it’s his train set. He slid the lever forward, wondering as he did so how Katchen’s sister’s husband had got on at the chiropodist’s. There was a loud hiss as a whiff of evaporated coolant escaped from the manifold; he shut down the conduit and transferred smoothly to the backup. No worries.

‘More power! Igor, more power! Ninety per cent!’

‘Sure thing, boss.’ Once, just once, it’d be nice if he said please. He nudged the throttle up another two per cent; okay, so he was the boss, but there’s unquestioning obedience and there’s blowing the gaskets. On the table, a finger quivered.

‘More power!’

Igor allowed him another one per cent, noted that two fingers were at it now, and let his mind drift back to what he was going to get little Helga for her birthday. Silly kid had set her heart on a porcelain doll, but there was no way he could afford that on a lab technician’s wages. A thought struck him, and he glanced over his shoulder at his little wooden pal, sitting propped up against the Bunsen burners. A lick of paint, some crepe hair, the missus could make a little dress out of off cuts from the curtains she was making for the dowager duchess… True, he’d half decided on giving it to his nephew Piotr, but Piotr was nearly nine and he’d far rather have something useful, like a carpentry set or a Kalashnikov rifle, something that’d be handy for when he came to decide which of the two trades traditionally practised by young men in this part of the mountains he was eventually going to follow.

‘More POWER!’

‘You got it, boss.’ He slid the lever forward to ninety-seven per cent, and then jumped sideways as the static feedback bit him. Nasty, dangerous contraption it was; still, it was this or go back to working in the slate quarries, and what kind of a life was that?

‘It’s working!’ The Baron was pointing at the Thing on the table, while sheets and snakes of blue fire shimmered and ebbed and surged; just, Igor thought, like when you light the brandy on the Christmas pud. ‘I’ve done it, Igor! I’ve created a life!’ He raised his head in triumph, caught sight of the little wooden puppet, frowned, and added, ‘A proper one.’

Create a life? You’d be better off getting one. ‘Well done, boss!’ Igor replied. ‘Will you be wanting the rest of the power now?’

‘What? Oh Christ, yes. Everything you’ve got, quickly.’

Gingerly, Igor prodded the lever home and jumped back quickly; and at once the shape on the table sat up with a click, pulling the electrodes out of its skin. Well, well, Igor thought, so he’s actually done it after all, he’s created a life. Big deal. Me and Mrs Igor have created seven, and our way was more fun and didn’t cost us a fortune in electricity bills. That reminded him: better shut down the power. Even at off-peak rates (you’ve never wondered why the Baron always insisted on conducting his experiments at dead of night? Now you know) all this was costing the boss a fortune; enough to reduce the chances of a staff Christmas bonus to virtually nil.

The Thing on the table groaned, as well it might. Its eyes closed, then opened again. It yawned, and took a deep breath. Hope the glue holds, Igor muttered to himself, absently swatting at a passing fly. I told him epoxy resin‘d be better, but he wouldn’t listen. But there was no tearing sound or hiss of escaping air, so that was all right.

‘My creation!’ the Baron crooned, holding out his arms towards the Thing. ‘My Adam! My life’s work.’

The fly, having circled the Thing’s head, landed on its nose. ‘Ha-a-a-,’ it said, and then ‘SHOOO!’ There was a noise like a sheet being torn in half, and the Thing flopped back down on to the table with a bump and lay perfectly still. The Baron stared at it.

‘Bugger,’ he said.

Once again, Igor got a curiously itchy feeling in the back of his neck that prompted him to turn round and look at the little wooden puppet. It winked at him.

Igor smothered a grin. Wonder how he does it, he muttered to himself, as the Baron fussed round with glue, brown paper and string. Bloody glad he’s on my side, he added. At least I hope he’s on my side.

‘All right,’ the Baron said wearily. ‘Let’s try again.’

Somehow, the second go lacked the feeling of awe and wonder there had been the first time around. Understandable, in a way; thousands watched in awe as Louis Bleriot flew the Channel for the first time, whereas now thousands sit around in airport terminals snarling about delays in air traffic control. Oh sure enough, there were crackles and hisses and lots of flashy blue fire; but it was playing to a sleepy Wednesday afternoon matinee rather than a first night. So, when the repaired Thing sat up this time, the Baron just grunted and started checking its seams for stress damage.

‘Hello,’ it said.

That got the Baron’s attention sure enough. ‘Hell’s teeth, it can talk,’ he said. ‘It’s not supposed to be able to do that. I formatted its brain. Damn thing should be clean as a whistle.’

‘Hello.’

The Baron shook his head sadly and reached for a screwdriver. Before he could make contact, however, the Thing’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the wrist, making him squeal with pain.

‘Hello,’ it said.

Igor jumped up to go to the Baron’s assistance, but somehow the lab stool he was sitting on managed to topple, dumping him painfully on his backside. Once again, he felt the urge to look round at his little wooden pal.

Its eyes were shut. Lights out. Nobody at home.

And the Thing turned its head and winked at him.

‘Hi,’ it said, ‘my name is Carl. Mind if I use your mirror?’