Julian shrugged. ‘Maybe you can. Have you tried?’

‘Have I tried?’ the little man repeated. ‘Have I tried? Well no, now you come to mention it. At least, not since the crash. You know, it might be a rather interesting experiment, don’t you think?’

Julian tried to imagine what it must have been like; two hundred years trapped in a dark crypt, when you knew that it was all just a fairytale anyway. ‘You could say that,’ he replied. ‘How will you know if it’s stopped working?’

The little man smiled. ‘When I walk up the stairs and actually manage to get to the top,’ he replied. ‘As simple as that. In this business,’ he added, ‘things are rarely difficult. They’re possible or they’re impossible; no grey areas where things like difficulty can breed. Shall we go?’

‘All right.’

‘Woof.’

‘Fine,’ said the little man, standing up with an enormous effort and nearly collapsing again. ‘Let’s go, then. After you.’

Although it’s open to the public (in roughly the same way as a spider’s web is open to visiting flies) there is no readily available guide-book to this castle. Which is not to say there isn’t a guide-book; it’s just that it’s twice as big as the castle itself.

If you were to get a crane as high as Kilimanjaro and a winch capable of pulling the moon down out of orbit, you could turn to page 254,488,057,294,618 of the guide-book, where you’d find a plan showing the corridor that leads from the back of the chapel to the minstrels’ gallery above the door of the great hall. Twenty-seven thousand-plus pages further on, you’d find another plan showing the secret passage from the great hall that comes up through a trapdoor in the woods a mere five yards or so away from the spot where Snow White clobbered the ex-blind-mouse, Souris. From there, turn back 908,415,012 pages and you’ll see a diagram of the Baron’s laboratory, clearly showing the passageway that connects it to the great hall. They are all, of course, the same passageway. There’s only one passageway in the whole castle.

First came Snow White, dragging the unconscious body of Souris. She dumped her burden on the steps of the dais on which the high table stood, straightened her back and used some coarse and unimaginative language. Then she heard a shuffling noise, looked over her shoulder and saw…

A wolf, a pig and a doddery old man with a bald head and round glasses. They didn’t notice her at first; the old man was making a beeline straight for a place on the wall where a rectangular outline marked in discoloured whitewash and grime showed where a large mirror had once been. He took in the absence of mirror, sat down on a bench and used coarse and unimaginative language, until the sound of running feet, angry shouting and distant gunfire made him turn his head and see.

A blonde girl and a scruffy-looking boy running out of the archway where the corridor came into the hall, closely followed by quaintly costumed halberdiers with assault rifles, who were just about to catch up with them when they ran lickety-split into the small knot of samurai who were chasing a beautiful but dangerous-looking young woman in the opposite direction…

But before any serious mayhem could get under way, a side door burst open under the weight of a battering-ram swung with great enthusiasm by two pigs, who were followed by a motley collection of dwarves and Brothers Grimm, their hands securely tied behind their backs with a length of rope lashed to the carriage of the ram.

While at opposite ends of the gallery two doors opened, to admit a flustered-looking elf and another, extremely bewildered-looking dwarf with cobweb in his beard…

At which point, everything froze.

Chapter 13

The accountant sat up.

He’d been dreaming again; a most bizarre dream, in which a substantial number of his clients had gathered together in the great hall of the wicked queen’s castle and then vanished in a cloud of glittering pixels. He shook his head, as if trying to make the dream fall out of his ear. Usually, his dreams dealt with profit and loss accounts, quarterly statements, double grossing-up of advance corporation tax and other relevant issues. He enjoyed his dreams. Quite often they were so specific, he was able to charge his clients for having them. This sort of thing was as unwelcome as it was unfamiliar.

In the top left-hand corner of his office, he noticed, there was a cobweb. It wasn’t a particularly fine example of the genre, more of a wispy mess that looked like the sort of candy floss you might expect to eat in the house of Lucrezia Borgia. It wasn’t the sort of thing any self-respecting fly would be seen dead, let alone frantically struggling, in, obviously produced by a spider who didn’t take much pride in its handiwork (spiders don’t weave gossamer with their hands, but delicacy of expression forbids a more apt choice of words). It was quivering, vibrating even, as if in tune with a million wave-patterns that rushed into it from every side (and a fat lot of good that’d be to a hungry spider; can’t eat radio signals, can they?) and were caught and held in the threads until they solidified into tiny droplets of water that slid down the micron-thick wires and fell, like small, fat shooting stars, to join the rapidly growing pool that was collecting in the accountant’s empty coffee-cup.

There’s a thought, the accountant mused. A web that catches messages from all over the world. A world-wide web. What possible use could it ever be, though?

Hello. Hello? HELLO!

The accountant reached for the nearest file and opened it.

For pity’s sake, Grimm, switch your bloody modem on! Though why I’m telling you to switch it on when you can’t hear me, because if you could hear me it’d mean you’d already have switched your modem on… Oh God, just listen to me, I’m starting to babble. Has anybody in the building got a stamp I could borrow?

The web shuddered a little, though there wasn’t a draught. A young bluebottle, who’d just passed his flying test and was really stretching his wings for the first time, hadn’t quite slowed down quickly enough. Bugger, it thought, as the foul sticky stuff refused to let it have its legs back; then, since flies are fatalistic creatures, it stopped struggling and hung upside down, waiting for the main event. Nothing happened. Just my luck, the bluebottle reflected, first time out on my own and I run smack into the bogies.

Curious; it was almost as if it could hear voices — some people called Softcore in a place so far away it couldn’t possibly ever matter were apparently trying to talk to two friends of theirs called Grimm, to ask them why they hadn’t reported back yet, and also what the explanation was for the unusual activity they were monitoring on [some technical stuff that the bluebottle couldn’t and didn’t really want to understand] and did that mean the Crazy Old Bastard was up to something?

All very peculiar, the bluebottle thought; and it’ll never replace the blindfold and last cigarette. You can’t beat the old ways at a time like this.

Below, the accountant’s head began to droop again. It slid forward and hung from his neck like an over-ripe pear on a thin branch. His eyes closed; then opened again. He could see a tiny reflection of himself in the pool of condensation that had gathered in the bottom of his cup.

‘Running DOS,’ he said. ‘Please wait.’

We’ve been waiting long enough as it is, you idle bloody— Hang on. You’re not Neville Grimm. Who the devil are you?

‘Bad command or fi—’

Don’t give me any of that crap, please. I write this garbage, remember? Save it for the customers. And listen; I need to talk to Neville Grimm, urgently. Can you pass on the message?

The accountant’s eyes glazed over, then blinked seven times. ‘Channel now open,’ he said. ‘Please transmit now.’