The Truth

Mr Tulip listened to the sound of the fire above them. Red and yellow light danced on the floor under the cellar hatchway.

'I don't --ing like it,' he said.

'We've seen worse.'

261

'I don't --ing like it!'

'Just keep cool. We're going to get out of this. I wasn't born to fry!'

The flames roared around the press. A few late paint tins pin-wheeled through the heat, spraying burning droplets.

The fire was yellow-white at the heart, and now it crackled around the metal formes that held the type.

Silver beads appeared around the leaden, inky slugs. Letters shifted, settled, ran together. For a moment the words themselves floated on the melting metal, innocent words like 'the' and 'truth' and 'shall make ye fere', and then they were lost. From the red-hot press, and the wooden boxes, and amongst the racks and racks of type, and even out of the piles of carefully stockpiled metal, thin streams began to flow. They met and merged and spread. Soon the floor Was a moving, rippling mirror in which the orange and yellow flames danced upside down.

On Otto's workbench the salamanders detected the heat. They liked heat. Their ancestors had evolved in volcanoes. They woke up and began to purr.

Mr Tulip, walking up and down the cellar like a trapped animal, picked up one of the cages and glared at the creatures.

'What're these --ing things?' he said, and dropped it back on the bench. Then he noticed the dark jar next to it. 'And why's it --ing got "Handle viz Care!!!" on this one?'

The eels were already edgy. They could detect heat too, and they were creatures of deep caves and buried, icy streams.

There was a flash of dark as they protested.

Most of it went straight through the brain of Mr Tulip. But such as was left of that ragged organ had survived his every attempt at scrambling and in any case Mr Tulip didn't use it much, because it hurt such a lot.

But there was a brief remembrance of snow, and fir woods, and burning buildings, and the church. They'd sheltered there. He'd been small. He remembered big shining paintings, more colours than he'd ever seen before...

262

He blinked and dropped the jar.

It shattered on the floor. There was another burst of dark from the eels. They wriggled desperately out of the wreckage and slithered along the edge of the wall, squeezing into the cracks between the stones.

Mr Tulip turned at a sound behind him. His colleague had collapsed to his knees and was clutching at his head.

'You all right?'

They're right behind me!' Pin whispered.

'Nah, just you and me down here, old friend.'

Mr Tulip patted Pin on the shoulder. The veins on his forehead stood out with the effort of thinking of something to do next. The memory had gone. Young Tulip had learned how to edit memories. What Mr Pin needed, he decided, was to remember the good times.

'Hey, remember when Gerhardt the Boot and his lads had us cornered in that --ing cellar in Quirm?' he said. 'Remember what we did to him afterwards?'

'Yes,' said Mr Pin, staring at the blank wall. I remember.'

'And that time with that old man who was in that house in Genua and we didn't --ing know? So we nailed up the door and--'

'Shut up! Shut up!'

'Just trying to look on the --ing bright side.'

'We shouldn't have killed all those people...' Mr Pin whispered, almost to himself.

'Why not?' said Mr Tulip, but Pin's nervousness had got through to him again. He pulled at the leather cord around his neck and felt the reassuring lump on the end. A potato can be a great help in times of trial.

A pattering behind him made him turn round, and he brightened up.

'Anyway, we're okay now,' he said. 'Looks like it's --ing raining.'

Silver droplets were pouring through the cellar hatch.

'That's not water!' screamed Pin, standing up.

The drops ran together, became a steady stream. It splashed oddly and mounded up under the hatch, but more liquid poured on top of it and spread out across the floor.

263

Pin and Tulip backed against the far wall.

'That's hot lead,' said Pin. They print their paper with it!'

'How --ing much is there going to be?'

'Down here? Can't end up more than a couple of inches, can it?'

At the other side of the cellar Otto's bench started to smoulder as the pool touched it.

'We need something to stand on,' said Pin. 'Just while it cools! It won't take long in this chill!'

'Yeah, but there's nothing here but us! We're --ing trapped*.'

Mr Pin put his hand over his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath of air that was already getting very warm in the soft silver rain.

He opened his eyes again. Mr Tulip was watching him obediently. Mr Pin was the thinker.

'I've... got a plan,' he said.

'Yeah, good. Right.'

'My plans are pretty good, right?'

'Yeah, you come up with some --ing wonders, I've always said. Like when you said we should twist the--'

'And I'm always thinking about the good of the Firm, right?'

'Yeah, sure, right.'

'So... this plan... it's not, like, a perfect plan, but... oh, the hell with it. Give me your potato.'

'What?'