‘Operating system.’

‘That’s right. What makes this whole domain work.’

‘And you know all about it, do you?’

The man nodded. ‘I ought to. After all, I built it.’

Counting up to ten usually worked, but not this time. ‘You’d better start explaining,’ Fang growled. ‘And it’d better make sense, too. If it hadn’t been for those tricks you just did I’d assume you’re as crazy as a barrelful of ferrets; but you aren’t, are you?’

The man shook his head. ‘Not to the best of my knowledge,’ he replied, ‘though after two hundred years down here all on my own in the dark, maybe my own assessment of my mental health isn’t all that reliable. I could be stark staring mad by now and not have noticed. Anyway,’ he went on, as Fang made an involuntary flexing movement with his fingers, ‘what it all comes down to is, I created this domain. Does the phrase computer-generated imaging mean anything to you? No? Well, never mind. How about Mirrors?’

‘The things you look at yourself in?’

The man shook his head. ‘I’d better start at the beginning,’ he said. ‘Now then, once upon a time…’

‘Hey!’

‘You want me to cut the traditional preamble? Very well. I used to be what we call where I come from a software engineer, and I was playing about one day when I found a way to break into alternate universes using computer simulations as a gateway… This is all gibberish to you, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wrote all this,’ the man said. ‘On my old Macintosh. At least, I wrote an operating system that would make all the hundreds of different fairy stories and folktales and nursery rhymes and what have you actually exist in real time, rather than just floating about in the human imagination. It was just a question of protocol compatibility, really. Once I’d got that sorted out, it more or less wrote itself. Anyway, I called it Mirrors, and it all works through the magic mirror belonging to the wicked queen; you remember, Snow White’s stepmother.’

Fang nodded. ‘At last,’ he said, ‘something I can understand. You’re the magician who cast the spell that gives the mirror its power.’

The man blinked. ‘Isn’t that what I just said?’ he replied. ‘Sorry. You’ll find that’s a common failing among computer people, saying perfectly simple things in an utterly incomprehensible way. And before you ask, a computer’s just another word for a magical thing that does spells. All right?’

Fang nodded. ‘I follow,’ he said. ‘So then what?’

‘Actually,’ the man went on, ‘the wicked queen was my pupil. Nice kid, hard working, quite good at it whenever she managed to apply her mind to it for more than a minute at a time.’

‘And she locked you up down here, did she? To make you tell her the secret of the magic?’

‘Oh no. Tracy wouldn’t do a thing like that.’

‘Tracy?’

‘That’s right. She used to be my secretary when I was still running Softcore Industries. That’s in the real — I mean, in the domain I originally came from. Tracy Docherty, her name was. She’d been with Softcore for years.’

Fang closed his eyes and concentrated. ‘And Softcore was the name of your — what did you call it? Your domain?’

‘Oh no.’ The man laughed, and there was just the slightest fleeting hint of cold, hard authority in his voice; a faint smear on the glass, no more. ‘No, when I was running Softcore the whole world was my domain. Or at least I was the richest, most powerful, most widely respected—’ The little old man stopped, and smiled. ‘I was. Never really liked it much, either. It all happened so fast, or at least that’s how it seemed to me. One minute I was sitting in my squashy little apartment in Aspen playing about on my computer, and the next there were all these deputations from world governments offering me honorary doctorates. Anyhow, where was I? Oh yes, Tracy. Nice kid. Did I mention she was a nice kid?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah. Sorry. Actually, it all started because every time I looked round, it seemed as if she had her handbag open and one of those powder compact things in her hand, and she was looking at her face in the little mirror. And every time I saw that I used to say to myself, “Who’s the fairest of them all?” And that sort of set me thinking.’

Fang decided that concentrating on what the little man was saying was probably counterproductive and might even eventually fry his brain.

‘Anyhow, when I wrote Mirrors she became the wicked queen, and I was teaching her to run the system by herself. Then,’ he added with a sigh, ‘came the accident with the bucket.’

‘Accident. Bucket.’

‘Well, more with the mop than the bucket. She tried my cleaning-up program, but it sort of went wrong and created one of those Groundhog Day loops, the kind that run the same program endlessly over and over again until your hard drive falls to bits. In this case, the whole castle got filled up with self-propelled mops and flooded out with soapsuds. I got trapped by the flood and ran for it, and then I got lost, ended up down here and found I couldn’t get out again. Because of the loop, I think. I’ve had plenty of time to think it over, and I suspect what happened is that two mirrors somehow managed to end up facing each other, with me trapped in the middle…’

Fang had no trouble visualising that. He shuddered.

‘So basically,’ he said, ‘you’re a wizard, right?’

The man nodded. ‘That’s what they used to call us, computer wizards. I think it was meant as a compliment, but I’m not sure. Ambiguous term, really.’

‘So.’ He took a deep breath. ‘You can, um, turn people into things, right?’

‘Oh yes, piece of cake,’ the little man replied. ‘I can turn you back into a wolf, no trouble at all.’

Fang stared. ‘You know—’

‘Like I said, I wrote the code. Shall I do it now?’

‘Yes. Yes please. I can’t—’

Pfzzz.

‘—Woof.’

‘Better now?’

Fang, a large grey timber-wolf with a lolling tongue and staring red eyes, wagged his tail furiously. ‘Woof!’ he said; and then paused and listened to what he’d just said. ‘Woof?’ he queried.

‘Oh, play fair, please,’ the little bald man protested. ‘You said you wanted to be turned back into a wolf, so that’s what I did. And when you’re a wolf, you’re not supposed to be able to talk. It was only the mess-up in the code when the system crashed that gave you the ability. Can’t you remember what it used to be like? Before the crash, I mean?’

‘Woof. Woof.’

‘But that’s silly,’ replied the little man. ‘You were Fang the non-talking big bad wolf for ages and ages. You must be able to remember something.’

‘Woof. Woof woof. Woof.”

‘Honestly? Well, you surprise me, you really do. Obviously the problem’s more serious than I’d guessed. If only I could get out of this place,’ he added with a deep sigh, ‘I could get it fixed.’

‘Woof?’

‘He’s right, you know,’ Julian added, coming out from behind the granite coffin where he’d been hiding just in case the little bald man really was a Thing (or, worse still, Desmond or Eugene in a latex mask). ‘You should be able to get out, if we could get in. Maybe whatever’s been keeping you down here was wiped out along with the rest of the system.’

‘That’s—’ The little man peered at Julian over his spectacles. ‘You’re one of the Three Little Pigs, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Julian?’

Julian nodded.

‘And you seem to understand something about how the system works,’ the little man went on, ‘which is why, though they don’t know it themselves, your brothers are trying to kill you. They think you’ve gone so dreadfully mad that you’ve got to be stopped at all costs.’

Julian shivered. ‘And that’s all because of the mix-up, is it? What you called the crash?’

The little man shook his head sadly. ‘Not that simple, I’m afraid. You see, on top of the original crash — which I strongly suspect was no accident, by the way; did you happen to meet a couple of strangers in grey suits earlier on? Hm, thought so. It’s depressing when you think that actually they’re my employees. Still, that’s corporate politics for you. Sorry, where was I? Quite apart from the original crash, there’s several other rather tiresome people fiddling about with the system, and that’s been causing all sorts of further problems. Quite simple to put right,’ he added, ‘if only I could get out of here.’