Doughnut - By Tom Holt Page 0,27
like a shuttlecock crumpled in its left claw.
“Hey!” Theo yelled. “Come back, I haven’t—” Too late. The eagle was already no more than a T-shaped silhouette against the blue sky. A drifting feather brushed his nose, and he sneezed.
For a moment he stood quite still, frozen and stunned. Then he realised that his legs weren’t capable of supporting him any more, and he folded at the knees and dropped to the ground.
Say what you like about Microsoft (and he did; oh, he did) but even their worst enemies couldn’t claim that their key functions were prone to being snatched in mid-operation by questing hawks. He groaned, and brushed the feather away from his face. It stuck to his finger, and, as he struggled to remove it, he noticed that the red speckles of blood spattered on the feather’s gossamer veins spelled out tiny words, which somehow came into focus and became legible as he stared at them –
Access to Help is restricted to registered users only. To register, input user code, password and your unique 77-digit PIN and product licence number and follow the instructions in the sky.
On the other hand, he thought, why not hawks? If they could do malignant paperclips, they could conjure up hawks if they wanted to. But no. For one thing, the animation was too good.
“Help!” he yelled, lifted his head and watched the skies anxiously. Nothing.
So this was Pieter van Goyen’s idea of fun, he thought bitterly. In fairness, his attitude was coloured somewhat by circumstances; he’d probably feel differently if he hadn’t been stranded here, with only a sketchy idea of what was going on or how it was supposed to work. In spite of everything he couldn’t help being impressed by the achievement, and the implications – for dimensional theory, M-space, the whole of quantum physics – were stunning. On the other hand, he couldn’t help thinking that maybe Pieter could’ve found something slightly more useful to do with his discovery. It was a bit like inventing the wheel with the sole intention of building a superior golf buggy.
Never mind, he told himself sternly, about all that; what I need to do is find the way out of here. Which, apparently, I can’t do; not without my user name, password, PIN and product licence number. He thought about that, and the few scraps of evidence he’d gathered so far about how this thing worked. Then he took a deep breath and shouted:
“HELLO! I’VE FORGOTTEN MY USER NAME, PASSWORD, PIN AND PRODUCT LICENCE NUMBER! HELP!”
He looked round. Just as he was about to give up hope, he felt a tiny pressure on the back of his right hand. He looked down, and saw a butterfly crawling from his wrist towards his knuckles. And, across the insect’s outstretched wings, in tiny letters that grew as he looked at them –
Thank you for accessing VGI YouSpace HelpSwift. Your user name, password, PIN number and product licence number have been emailed to you at your registered address in your default reality.
The butterfly spread its wings and fluttered away before he could squash it, which was probably just as well. Never mind. He wasn’t beaten quite yet. He took another deep breath, and called out:
“HELLO! I WANT TO ACCESS MY EMAIL! CAN I DO THAT FROM HERE?”
This time he wasn’t in the least surprised when a dragonfly materialised a few inches from his nose and hovered for a moment, wings beating invisibly fast, before landing on the lowest branch of the tree. It crawled across a leaf, then flew away. And on the leaf it had chewed:
Accessing your email from a YouSpace pocket universe is quick and easy. Simply input your name, password, PIN number and product licence number, and you’ll be forwarded to your mailbox instantly.
This time, when he shouted, there were no words, just a great deal of feeling. It relieved a certain amount of immediate stress, but that was all. He sat down under the tree and forced himself to get a grip. He’d got here, he told himself, by using straightforward, no-bullshit mathematics. The same agency, it stood to reason, should be able to get him home.
The idiotic costume he was wearing had no pockets; but there was a leather pouch attached to the belt, and, when he managed to get it off and prise open the drawstring, in it he found his handkerchief, a rubber band he remembered picking up off the reception desk, the magnifying glass, the pencil and the brown