Chapter Six

 

Feet in the Door

 

Arthur Stone sat glumly in front of a monitor, chewing the nails off chocolate fingers. Not only had he lost Evie Gardner just as things were getting interesting, he’d also lost his assistant. Not that Nigel was interesting, but he really did know how to get these machines to do things they weren’t designed to do. The best Arthur had been able to manage, apart from Gaelic football on Channel Five, was Mrs P in Edgware. As a result of her recent brush with celebrity, however frustrating, she was now advertising herself as a fully-fledged trance medium in a well-known monthly (‘Dora: advice from beyond the veil. Sexual problems a speciality, nothing too small for me to handle.’) and was rapidly gathering about herself a motley group of similar old dears anxious to have their faculties developed. For the most part, the circle was dedicated to the utterly trivial, such as the telekinetic tinkling of cowbells and the dematerialisation of as many fancy cakes as George had been able to snaffle from the bakery where he worked.

“Oooh, them’s nice,” Kath was saying, poking each cake with a podgy finger as if reserving them all for herself.

“Never mind them,” said Fran, “look what I brung.” She flourished a brown paper cone decorated with luminous green stars like a witch’s hat.

“Worrisit? Ice-cream?”

“`S a trumpet. Honestly. It’s for our little spirit friends to use when it floats up on the hectoplasm.”

“Worrif none of `em can play the trumpet?”

“`S for speaking through, you daft `ape’orth. Anyway, all the dear departed are perfect musicians, stands to reason.”

“My Alf were tone deaf.”

“Well your Alf ent likely to be coming through, where `e is, eh?” “Now look `ere, you old bat -”

“Children, it’s time to start,” interrupted Dora with a sweet fixed smile as she sliced viciously through a wad of chicken sandwiches for later. They trooped into the blacked-out back room, sat down with hands joined and launched into the customary three verses of She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain to raise the vibrations. Arthur watched and shook his head sadly. If this was the state of spiritual awareness on Earth then no wonder dialectical materialism was on the march again. Of course, he didn’t mind that but nobody likes to win by default.

The silence was deafening for a good ten minutes, broken only by bursts of deep, sonorous breathing from George’s direction. (Dora had suggested he should join in out of marital loyalty and on the grounds that there’d be no cod and chips later if he didn’t.)

“Strange,” said Dora, checking under the table, “we’ve usually got at least one leg up by now.” Then the cuckoo clock squawked and the sleeping cat stretched, knocking over the cowbells.

“Goody,” said Kath, clapping her hands as if at a West End show. “It’s started.” It was Dora’s signal, anyway.

“Omptypomtydomp,” she growled through clenched teeth, eyes shut tight in concentration. “Ergleweeb.”

“Ooh, wake up, George,” said Fran, shaking him. “I think it’s your

Aztec chief coming through.” She addressed mid-air reverentially: “Are you with us, friend?”

“Omptyweeble,” affirmed the friend.

“And does you `ave wise words for us this evening, friend?” “Da doo ron ron. Weeb.”

Arthur could bear it no longer. Rules may be rules but there’s a limit. He flicked two switches, entered Dora’s password, manoeuvred the cardboard trumpet over Kath’s head and gave them five bars of Colonel Bogey at a hundred and twenty decibels. When Nigel then suddenly reappeared through the back way (which Arthur still didn’t know he had), apparently followed by three heavies in uniform, Stone threw himself to the floor to save them the trouble.

“Get up, Art,” sighed Nigel, reaching across to turn Dora off.

“And we’re in enough trouble without any of that.” His boss gestured to the others.

“SGB?”

“Much worse.”

“Vot in heffen is vorse than ze SGB?” He studied them more closely. Realising that two of the uniformed figures were women, a sudden terrible thought struck him. “My got, it’s not ze Salvation Army is it?”

“Arthur, they know.”

“Zey know ze Salvation Army?”

“We know all about your work, Stone.”

“Ah, you are ze Meteorological Office, yes. Velcome, velc -”

“Your other work. Like the Finchley selection panel. The Champions League semi-final. And Evie Gardner.” Arthur sank back onto a chair and turned white as a ghost. Life used to be so peaceful, one was left alone to get on with one’s little subversions amid the quiet inane chatter of machines and Nigel, and now it was all getting complicated.

“You know zis EG?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Harry nodded. “Forties, small and weasely, hairnet.”

“Zat’s her. Vy is she so important?”

“She turned up on the CPU computer when they were investigating a disturbance,” Nigel explained to the others. “So the SGB came looking for her at PRU but they didn’t -”

“Hang on, I’m Pru.”

“No, we’re PRU. Psychic Res -”

“No, it’s my name. Prudence, see?” Nigel looked at her quizzically for a moment as the little cog wheels of his brain clicked into each other. Then without a word he sat down at a keyboard and began tapping, fingers blurred.

“A while ago,” he said, without breaking the blur, “I was just hacking about for something to do, and found myself in the CPU mainframe. It just came to me. Obvious really, an inverted polyglotic inferal animism lock.”

“Obvious,” agreed the colonel.

“Well, like I said, their chap Fuzru was working on some sort of disturbance and came up with… here it is, this is what he’s got so far. EG. Then HA and PRU, that’s… no, wait, there’s a bit more now...” There was a brilliant flash of aquamarine on the screen and a small duck waddled across carrying a banner bearing the letters AL.

“Oops, that would be me,” said Alison. “And I’d be HA,” added Harry.

“And all off you,” chipped in Arthur, barely able to disguise the triumph in his voice, “are in efen more trouble zan me. Vell done, Niggle, zat’s vorth a rise.” Nigel shrugged.

“What’s ten per cent of nothing?” he muttered.

Harry’s shoulders slumped momentarily as he realised that his squad was under attack and his grand strategy in imminent danger of collapse. The others looked equally dejected. Yet in every campaign there’s a moment when a man loses his bottle, when he goes over the top and the first bullet hits. You can still pull it off. The colonel had seen it all before. Yes, the circumstances were a bit different now. Mafeking, Dunkirk and Goose Green were one thing, but could he be sure that God was on their side now? Well, it didn’t matter, Harry decided. Right is right, whichever side God is on. And when faced with massive odds, the great and intelligent commanders know what to do. Retreat. (Of course, the more intelligent thing to do is not get involved in the first place, but it was too late for that.)

Nigel’s next remark boosted the troops’ morale.

“I shouldn’t worry about it, though. CPU won’t understand the readout. Fuzru’s a twit. We were at college together, only he got ambitious. He’s been on all the right courses, yes, but he’s got no feel for the machines. No flair, see? As I speak, he’ll be telling his boss about AL and they’ll be sending an SGB taskforce off to the GCSE.”

 

“…yes, sir, absolutely… couldn’t agree more… uhu, yup…” The 3rd Spiritual Secretary leaned back comfortably with his feet on the desk and a foolish smile on his face, basking in the warm, bubbly, lavender scented knowledge that his superiors believed everything to be under control. He was so relaxed that his extremities positively tingled in tune with the gold Thought Transfer Module by his side. “…quite sure, sir, yes… ahead of the game, as always, sir. As you know, we picked up the Corsicans immediately…yes, a sackful of money… well, they would deny it, wouldn’t they? Claimed it was some sort of protection… mmm, on their way to the laundry or something… Yup, well you know these foreigners, you can’t make any sense of… what? Were you indeed? I didn’t know… uhu, yes sir, I’ll remember that… The other thing? No, that’s being sorted as we speak… yep, a taskforce… you know what A Level students are like, some foolish prank…No, I don’t think so… I’m pretty sure they don’t have voles in Sicily… no, nor weasels…”

 

If you type ‘Skim’ into any reputable search engine you’re likely to get about seven million, five hundred and seventy thousand links. And for ‘Judas’ it’s more than thirteen million. Ranjit realised that Benedict might need a bit of a nudge in the right direction. Back in the little observation room he now called home – he’d worked out by now how to think up a bed for the corner and a poster of Sachin Tendulkar for the wall – he’d been making fine progress with the technology, especially as he was entirely unsupervised and could play to his heart’s content. Buoyed up by his success at getting information through to his dude, RJ’s spirits were high. The techniques were being refined all the time, and at last he knew that he’d found his life’s work. All right, he was actually dead. But better late than never.

For his part, Benedict was just about coming to terms with the idea that the total destruction of his life had somehow been necessary, since he himself had not been destroyed. Destiny was not something he’d ever given much thought to (except when he’d created the award-winning campaign for a hair spray of that name, the one with the dowdy size eighteen model finding herself pursued by a Russian oligarch). But there was definitely something in the air now, and it wasn’t just next door’s overflowing drain. In the few moments spent with a kindly if rather strange caretaker, life had started to make some sort of sense again. And now it had an all-consuming purpose: to find Alison, wherever she may be.

But the computer seemed to be acting up again. His first search had unaccountably yielded a site dedicated to famous Indian cricketers; then he had inadvertently clicked on a link that linked to something else and had learned that Maharaja Ranjit Singh had been the ruler of Punjab, had died in 1839 after a reign of nearly forty years, and had left seven sons by several different wives. Oh well, you never know when these things will come in useful.

RJ hadn’t yet quite grasped the principle that communication needs actually to mean something to the recipient. Nonetheless he managed to link Benedict through to some very interesting pages while his charge himself sat back with virtually no idea what the machine was doing. First, of course, was Skim’s official website (no self-respecting prophet is without one these days), set up by Winnie’s husband. It wasn’t that he cared one hoot about his wife’s interests, but the freehold of their property was in her name so it was a kind of insurance policy. The site was full of ajnas and harmonics and vague references to future unspecified great world events, and was terminally boring. But Benedict also found himself reading some older, very much more obscure references to Judas in the archives of provincial newspapers and the records of magistrates’ courts. The man had a history, and not all of it was as pure white as his suits. He’d been born of privileged stock in the West Country, had been expelled from two quite good public schools, had been charged at various times with possession of both suspicious substances and imported literature of, shall we say, the explicit kind, and had spent a while in prison having married three times without apparently bothering to get divorced in between. It was inside that he had got religion, with unlimited access to libraries and nothing else to do, and reinvented himself. And he was beginning to attract some serious attention, not to mention sponsorship.

Now, a career as a New Age guru does not in itself require too many formal qualifications, merely the unfailing gullibility of sufficient people who wish the world to be different and a proportion of whom have spare money. On the other hand, Benedict mused, this particular career would very quickly meet the slings and arrows of outraged fortune, were

Skim’s earlier life experiences to become more widely known. What the man needed, clearly, was a professional publicist.

Benedict set to work. Sandwiches passed. Coffee was replenished. By morning he had his own website: ‘The Apache Agency ~ your image is our business’. It had apparently already received over nine million hits. After a few hours sleep and more coffee, he looked out his best dark suit and a sober tie to match the only clean shirt he could find, and tapped Skim’s address into the satnav.

He was driven purely by instinct now, and by love.

 

Having abandoned her spiritual career with Judas Skim, Winnie Khan had hardly put the key in the Golf’s ignition when she was assailed by those perennial doubts that come to every born-again agnostic in the darker moments of life. Suppose – just suppose – it was all true? Suppose you were just doing the washing up one day and the last trump sounded, and all the graves opened up and billions of the dusty faithful were trekking down The Broadway to their eternal reward, and there you were up to your elbows in suds and you just couldn’t remember the third line of The Lord’s Prayer or the Archbishop of Canterbury’s name? It’s a chilling prospect. And Winnie, whose husband was after all in insurance, went suddenly cold. They didn’t have a policy for this.

“Er, Mrs Gardner? Evie dear? One moment… don’t dash off.”

Evie wasn’t dashing anywhere. She’d got a sleeve of her plastic raincoat caught up in a curler, and was standing on the pavement under the late evening drizzle like a futuristic Quasimodo. Moreover, she had absolutely no idea where she was or how to get back to Watling Avenue. She regarded Winnie with suspicion. The toffee-nosed madam had been the first to complain. But she did have a car.

“Perhaps I can give you a lift, dear?” Winnie flashed an ingratiating smile. “I mean, let’s not let a little disagreement spoil our new friendship. What do you say?” A few paces further on, Sylvia now stopped with ears twitching. She realised in a moment what was going on (as a part- time masseuse one learns to grasp things quickly). “I was probably a bit hasty back there,” Winnie purred on. “The higher vibrations, you know, makes one edgy. I’m sure you know how it is. After all, we’re both women of the world and -”

“But that’s just it,” interrupted Sylvia, retracing her steps to join them. “She isn’t, is she? Do forgive me, Evie – may I call you Evie? – but it was all just so… unexpected. Your wonderful news, I mean.”

“Exactly what I was about to say,” added Winnie, glaring territorially. “Yes, wonderful. And when Judas introduced you, well, you looked so… so…”

“Radiant,” Sylvia seized her chance. “Yes, and such a glowing aura about you, all pale blue and crimson and…” Struggling, she gazed in awe at

Evie’s curlers. “…and yellowish.”

“Mystical,” offered Winnie. “No other word for it.”

Evie had been watching this exchange like a tennis umpire, and sensed that she had to do something. Apart from anything else, each woman had by now taken a firm grip on one of her arms as if staking their claim, and she was in danger of being split down the middle.

“Shall we go back in then?” she ventured. They looked at the small terraced house behind them. The parlour was in darkness and just a thin light trickled through a gap in the bedroom curtains upstairs. One could sense the power being generated.

“Perhaps not just now,” suggested Sylvia. “Judas will be, er, meditating. Anyway,” she added brightly, “you don’t really need him now. You’ve got me.”

“And me.” Their grips tightened.

Evie summed up the situation. She was not stupid. This big city gave her the creeps, she was living out of a suitcase, her spiritual search had got completely out of hand, and most importantly she was almost broke. A hurried search of the colonel’s study had only yielded a couple of hundred pounds and a case of Peruvian sherry she hadn’t even been able to give away. So she could definitely recognise a couple of gift horses when they grabbed her arms.

“Right,” she said. “Are there any pubs round here? I feel like a stout.”

This was when Nigel picked up the trace again. It was something to do with the juxtaposition of Evie and alcohol.

“Zat’s her!” said Arthur excitedly, pointing to a dark corner of the screen. “By ze potted plant. Next to ze Toby Jug.”

“Phew, she’s ugly,” exclaimed Alison, peering intently at the screen. “Rolls of fat, big red nose and -”

“No, zat is ze Toby Jug.”

“Oh, I see. Yes, straggly hair, red face and -” “Zat is ze potted plant.”

“Right. Well, she seems very normal after all.”

“Agreed,” said Stone, raising a cautionary finger. “But zis Skim, now zere’s a real weirdo. Scares ze villies out off me.”

“Some sort of prophet she’s got mixed up with,” explained Nigel to the others, tapping away at a different keyboard. “Earthquakes, elections, the Cheltenham Gold Cup – he’s always right. `Course, most of them are dead certs but people are beginning to believe in him. His latest thing is some sort of cosmic upheaval… something world-shaking, but I haven’t found out what yet. Still, Mrs G seems to be in it up to her neck.”

“What?” spluttered Harry. “But she’s so… ordinary!”

“Zat’s just it!” shouted Arthur, banging a shoe on the table and rattling the walls. “You plant somevun completely ordinary and ten years later ven zey get to vork no-vun suspects a zing. Belief me, I know about zis.”

“Who are the other two with her?” asked Prudence. “They don’t look too happy.”

“Glad you asked that,” said Nigel, leaning back with a smirk. “Tombstone and Stroker there aren’t actually important, but I’ve been digging around their PFs with an empifluid eleven.dot search tool and turned up some juice.”

“I vish peoples vould speak English round here.” “Ah, but you’ll like this, Art.”

“Nasty?”

“As nasty as it comes. The one on the right, pouring her drink into the pot plant, now, her hubbie Jim is in the City. ‘Broker and Company Director’, the file says. Born Middle East. And the one cracking her knuckles under the table, her Ron’s down as ‘Banker and Company Director’.”

“So vot? Ze usual vestern capitalist toads.”

“But I checked Company House. See for yourselves.” He spun the monitor round and split the screen so that the two lists of directorships could be compared. They were identical. There was a token light engineering company, an offshore finance business and a couple of charities, and so on. But at the bottom of the pile was the WICH Corporation.

“Oh, they’re good. I saved a fortune on a new cooker after their report came out,” said Pru brightly. “Mind you, it did blow up later.”

“Ze cookers are just a smokescreen. All zat stuff is a cover for moving big wooden crates in and out of varehouses.”

“See, WICH stands for World Inter-Continental Hardware,” added Nigel, “short for rockets, tanks, missiles and generally anything explosive. Including cookers. It’s a multi-trillion pound business, and not exactly always legal.”

“So,” breathed Harry. “My Evie’s got herself mixed up in Armageddon.”

 

As she knocked back her third stout of the evening, Evie was quite unconscious of all this interest in her (and in another half an hour would be unconscious of everything else), as were her new friends.

At this moment, their husbands also happened to be together, laying siege to the pink gin at The Rising Sun in Mill Hill. Jim Khan, whose real Christian name was neither pronounceable nor Christian, was small and dark and deceptively meek in appearance, yet with the calm smile of one who never has to worry where his next Range Rover is coming from. His father had started out in oil, before ending up in concrete as a result of putting too much pressure on an American congressman. By contrast, Ronald Golightly’s career progress had been tough. A grammar school boy, he had started out as a branch manager of the bank in Walham Green. However, his shrewd investment sense and double thumbscrew method of bookkeeping had rapidly taken him further, aided not a little by the fact that a senior member of the judiciary had taken to visiting his wife’s place of work. He dwarfed the other man, hugely rounded and at forty-five already into his fourth chin.

They had met at a corporate dinner and soon discovered many mutual interests such as alcohol, warfare and a Japanese escort agency in Dean Street. Their interest in WICH was a logical progression for any normal capitalist toad who has reached a certain position. People with money naturally wish to both increase and protect it, thus requiring the services of banker and broker. And if international tensions and rumours of imminent conflagration increase, then all the more need to get as much money as possible and to guard it carefully, and not to ask too many questions. This logic has all the convenience of a teabag and just as many holes, since in the event of actual hostilities investments get frozen and claims refused. Therefore the only people who can ever become truly rich in the long run are bankers and brokers with directorships of armament companies.

“This monsignor chap worries me,” Ron was saying. “You can usually safely ignore priests, especially the sort who go to folk clubs and ride mopeds. British eccentricity, you know, people laugh at them. But this peace campaign waller is getting himself taken seriously. Did you see the Telegraph today?”

“I know what you mean, old boy.” Jim’s cultured Oxford tone matched his dark grey pinstripe. “Of course, back home we don’t have that problem. None of this guitars and mopeds – well, half the population have only got one hand anyway. But no, you people here never know what to believe in. All it takes is some jumped-up cleric talking about love and trust, and GDP’s down five points.”

“And did you see,” added Ron, “at that march on Sunday they got almost as many people out as last week’s telecom share issue? Damn hypocrites! If they’re all so holy, why weren’t they in church? I don’t like it, Jim, I don’t like it.”

If there’s one thing the Rons and Jims of the world don’t like it’s the threat of peace breaking out. They swallowed their drinks and stood to leave.

“And another thing,” said Ron as they crossed the car park towards his Mercedes, “this chap Sylvia and Winnie have got themselves mixed up with. What’s his name… Silvertop? Cream?”

“Skim.”

“That’s the one. Well, I’m not so sure he’s as harmless as they make out. Ok, registered charity and all that, not a bad wheeze. But he’s into this spiritual brotherhood stuff too, isn’t he? We need to keep an eye on the girls, don’t you think?”

At seven thirty the next morning, Jim Khan would have cause to agree wholeheartedly with his colleague’s suspicion.

When Evie had eventually passed out in the pub, a bitter argument had ensued between her two new disciples as to who should have the privilege of removing the body for safekeeping. They drank Martinis for it until they both felt sick and the lot fell upon Winnie. Evie was dragged out to the Golf and spread as decorously as possible across the back seat. When Jim came down for breakfast on Thursday morning, he recoiled in horror at the awful apparition of a green Evie in curlers and borrowed dressing-gown trying to focus on her eggs through eyelids that appeared welded together with putty.

“Good morning, dear,” said Winnie, who looked little better. She pecked him below the left ear. “This is Mrs Gardner – Evie. We met last night at my meeting. Would you like toast? Evie’s going to be the mother of the Messiah. Isn’t that nice?” Jim dribbled coffee down his fresh white shirt.

“Good God!”

“Yes, that’s the one, dear. And just think, it will happen right here in our own humble little home. Well, she hasn’t actually had the angelic visitation yet but it probably won’t be -”

Jim had already gone. The car was barely into second gear when he was on the `phone to friends in very low places.

 

“Right, chaps,” said the colonel, “the Strategy Revision meeting is called to order.” They were back in Guildford with the spare room converted to a War Cabinet Office, with several fine Winchester carvers around a polished oak oval table. There were bookcases along the walls, a drinks cabinet and, at Harry’s insistence, a wall-mounted Holiday Planner. At Alison’s insistence, there was also an elegant bonsai tree on a corner shelf, in honour of their friend. Nigel’s bedroom had in turn been converted into an Operations Centre with a wall full of gibbering machines, including direct hotlines to both Arthur Stone and Ranjit. Nigel wasn’t going to need to sleep.

The unholy alliance that had been forged back in PRU(NE) had a lot going for it, not least that any one party could at a moment’s notice shop any other party whereupon they would instantly be shopped themselves. As any married couple knows, the strongest and most durable unions are all founded on exactly this sort of thing. In any case, they all shared a common interest in subversion. Admittedly, for Arthur Stone it was less a matter of principle and more sheer force of habit, so he didn’t mind what he subverted. And Nigel, not having any principles, would go along with anything on the promise of Bishop’s Brew.

“It seems clear,” Harry went on, “there’s some big hoo-hah going down and top brass are in a funk because of some cock-up in the tubes, so the rozzers are yomping all over the shop in one hell of a stink and we’re bang across the wires, what?”

“What?” “What?”

Nigel stood quietly and went to retrieve a small paperback from a bookcase. Blowing the dust off it, he sat down again and pored over the pages with an intense frown. Prudence leaned over his shoulder to look.

“Biggles?”

“Yeah,” murmured Nigel, distracted. “Not quite the same sociocultural ethos but a similar dialect, related through the Hesiodan School on the Orphistic wing. Ah, here we are, I think I’ve got it…yes, what Harry is trying to say is that the Elementals have embarked upon some sort of big plan but it’s gone wrong and the SGB think that we’ve got something to do with it. Am I right so far, Colonel?” Harry waved his arms in frustration, which they all took for agreement.

“But we are involved,” said Pru, still shivering from the shock of her name coming up on the computer. “All our names have turned up on their system. It must be only a matter of time…”

Of course, it couldn’t at all be a matter of time as such.

Nevertheless it was just at this very moment that the letters BENE bleeped onto Fuzru’s screen. He sat back heavily in his chair with relief, now that the system had assured him all was well.

“You see,” Prudence continued with undeniable logic, “it’s actually worse than that. We’re not just involved – we’re part of the problem. It looks like someone -” she glanced around nervously, as if expecting the culprit to throw themselves on the floor in a heap of remorse and confession, “is using us. We’re lumbered.”

“Up the creek.”

“In a kettle of fish.” “Over ze vellies.” “And up to the neck.”

Harry sat down, bemused. Only a while ago he’d been in command, orchestrating the troops and on the point of delivering a counter-offensive strategy, if he could think of one in time. But now it was Prudence who held their attention.

“What do you suggest, my dear?” he said weakly, but gallantly.

“Well, I for one am not going to be a pawn in some underhand government operation,” she said with conviction, having had quite enough of that sort of thing when she was alive. Gathering her courage about her like a fur coat against the sudden chill of the astral planes, she banged the table emphatically. “I say we all go to ground. Get new identities. Nigel – you can change all our files, can’t you? New names, facts, jobs, everything.” Arthur’s face on the hotline screen beamed with pleasure. He was warming to this one, even if she was a woman.

“Yes, I can do it,” objected Nigel, “but the CPU master server will be onto it in a flash. That’s what it’s for after all, to pick up disturbances.” “Maybe so, but according to you the machines are a lot brighter than their programmers. If they’re that incompetent we stand a good chance of twigging what’s going on before they’re onto us. Right, Harold?” Harry started from his moody silence and sat up straight.

“Quite so, my dear, quite so. More or less what I was going to say myself.”

“I thought so.” She smiled sweetly at him, with affection. They were turning into a team. Then she stood up and tossed her hair, something she hadn’t done for at least thirty years. It felt good, so she did it again.

“But I must warn you,” said Nigel, “it can be quite a shock, reading your own Personal File. Unless you’re Swedish.”

They gathered round his most powerful machine as Nigel got to work. It didn’t take long.

“Here you are. Prudence Clearwater, deceased. This is your life.” She gasped as her own image, full face and profile, appeared on the screen. Above her head it read ‘Security Access Only. DoSS PF Clearwater, Prudence Emily. 190261UK70132/B/IR’.

“Is there no part of the system you can’t get into?” asked Harry with respect, but beginning to have the odd doubt about his own file.

“It’s pretty straightforward,” shrugged Nigel. “The design hasn’t changed much since ENIAC really. Shall we go on, Pru?” She gulped. Yes, it had been her idea but then a lot of ideas lose their appeal once they become reality. More than anyone, it had been she who had cemented the group together, kept Harry and Adrian from each other’s throats, found them a place to live and now galvanised them into action. But friendship is one thing. Opening the wardrobe door and rattling the skeleton is another. Then she felt Harry’s protective hand fall gently on her shoulder, and she nodded. Anyway, after the green gates of Rickmansworth, baring your soul could hardly be worse.

In the event she needn’t have worried, for what appeared on the screen entirely confirmed their suspicions of Heaven’s inefficiency.

 

 

She sat back, both relieved and somewhat affronted. “It’s not much, is it?” she said

“I shouldn’t worry,” offered Nigel. “A lot of men don’t like big .boobs.”

“I don’t think that’s what the lady meant, young feller,” Harry bristled. “It doesn’t seem much of a record for a human life full of hopes and fears and joy and suffering.”

“You’re right,” she said, “and it’s not complete anyway, or accurate. My Dad was a gardener and I got a B in Maths.”

“That is pretty poor,” Nigel pointed out.

“Well,” she said defiantly, “make it an A* then. And while you’re at it, you can put 20 on my IQ and three inches on my bust.” By the time he’d finished she hardly recognised herself on the screen, which was the whole point. It was a glowing testimony and a nice suburban middle-class background. All that remained was to insert the data into NRC records and she was legitimate. Prudence Clearwater, revived, gave Nigel a kiss and passed round pink and green cocktails with banana cubes for everyone.

It didn’t take long to transform the others either. Harry turned out to have no entry at all under ‘Purpose’, so in a fit of pique he demanded that Nigel wipe the entire record and reinvent him as a headmaster with an M.Phil. and a sexy young mistress. Alison was remodelled along the lines of an East European gymnast and assigned to the same fictitious Witness Agency as the others. It was a perfect cover for her. No-one would expect her to say anything and the discrepancies of physique could be put down to steroids.

 

Boris settled back in his new, padded swivel chair with his hands behind his head, and looked about the office with satisfaction. It was all his now – the mahogany veneer desk with red anglepoise lamp and Welsh slate paper weight, the zinc effect filing cabinet, the latest Thought Transfer Module with twin memory and automatic dial function, and the twelve square metres of blue Axminster. His reward. He strolled around, winked at the photograph of his mother on the wall, and paused before the two-way mirror to check the floodlit path towards the tunnel. All was quiet, just a trickle of arrivals, a chance to relax before the 3 a.m. rush.

The new NRC4 exercised his authority and flicked a switch.

“Ziggie? Have the applicants all arrived yet?”

“Yes, guv, three of them. And a right bunch of miserab -”

“Thank you, Ziggie. I’ll be ready shortly.” He sat down to make a few notes for the NRC3 interviews and a cup of tea appeared at his elbow. This was the life.

To be perfectly honest, there hadn’t been a lot of interest when his old job had been advertised. The NRC was vital point-of-entry work, but not glamorous, and word had got round about the circumstances of Jones’ departure144. In the good old days, souls would have been so delighted to find themselves still upright that they’d volunteer for almost any job as a gesture of gratitude. But nowadays everyone had done workshops and cranial sacral therapy and watched BBC2 so they had higher expectations. Having made it a few rungs up the spiritual ladder they weren’t content to hang about, as it were, on the scaffolding. Boris was determined that his regime would be psychologically enlightened, and the welcome offered to each deceased would be sympathetic and respectful. He might even hand out some information brochures, with maps and moral guidelines. He flicked the switch again.

“Ziggie? Send in the first one, please.” There was a pause, then a quiet feminine knock at the door and Alison entered. Boris checked the PF readout and beckoned her forward.

“Ah yes, Miss Krappskaya isn’t it? Alla, do come in, think up a chair. I can see that your record is impressive… Moscow Institute… Diploma in Physical Education… oh, and the European Championships… fourth place, what bad luck… then Reception experience in the chemical industry, good, very relevant, and volunteered to test the new… if only more people were so altruistic. And finally… oh dear, a javelin, eh? You’d think they’d be more careful, wouldn’t you?”

Alison was finding it hard not to laugh out loud. Not only had

Nigel done an excellent job on the Personal File, but she was actually beginning to assume the new persona. Being someone else was an extraordinary experience, much to be recommended, and in any case she’d always secretly wanted to be an actress. She felt her confidence growing, smiling quietly and nodding politely as Boris droned on about security and sensibility and something called the New Efficient Empathy approach.

“You see,” he continued, “it can be quite uncomfortable here at times, what with the low vibrations near Earth. We do get affected by material form, you know.” He glanced down at her physical profile on the PF and gulped. The finely muscled body had gone through some changes. What sacrifices she had made for her sport, for her country. Still, she was attractive enough and he liked a bit of paradox in a woman. He’d done an ARCE course on paradox.

The interview was going extremely well, not least because Alison hadn’t been required to say a word yet. But then Ziggie buzzed. “Guv? There’s an OBE coming.”

“What?” Panic welled up in Boris for a moment. He’d never been much good with the famous ones. “Get Jones on the red -”

“Nah, guv, not that sort. Out of Body Experience, cardiac arrest job gone wrong. Not due for another month. Mind you, `ardly seems worth botherin’ just for a month if you asks me. See, there’s too much fatty -”

“That will be all, thanks,” said Boris, turning him off and calming down. “See,” he explained to Alison, “the chap’s clinically dead on the operating table but he’s not supposed to be here yet. So we just gently explain it to him, turn him round, and off he drifts back down to his body. Easy. Of course, the surgeon will get all the credit and be treated like a hero but then we don’t look for rewards here in Heaven, do we? He’ll soon be back anyway. Let me see -” he consulted the notes, “– yes, a pot of hyacinths in twenty-six days.

“Look, Miss Krappskaya, why don’t you deal with him? Sort of on-the-job trial run, eh? Just put this white shroud on…” Alison was suddenly nervous as they went out and strolled a little way down the path. Eery memories began to stir within her, and there seemed to be a nip in the air. A distant solitary figure could be seen approaching slowly, glancing bemusedly from side to side, the undignified hospital gown still flapping about his knees.

“Off you go, then,” encouraged Boris. “Friendly smile. Efficient empathy.” Alison moved forward. The man looked up and stopped, and saw the white figure with arms outstretched.

“Aaaaaarrrrrrgggggh!” He turned and ran back the way he’d come.155

“Hmm, it wasn’t quite what I had in mind,” said Boris, back in the office, “but certainly efficient. We probably need to work on the empathy. Now, now, don’t worry about a thing.” He had noticed a tear in her eye, but not that she was heaving with suppressed giggles. “Tell you what, I’ll give you a demonstration. Let’s see…” He consulted the Planner. “Ah, yes, that’s interesting. There’s a last-minute entry coming through, a government agent no less, to be assigned straight on to the FEW. Confidentially,” he dropped his voice to a whisper, “there’s a bit of a flap on up there, so they’re obviously calling in some top staff.” Right on cue, there was a knock on the door and Pru entered.

“NRC4?” she said briskly. “Clearwater. I believe I’m expected. In rather a hurry if you don’t mind.” Boris bowed.

“Certainly, madam. Of course. Please just step this way, my secretary will escort you. I’ll deal with the paperwork personally, it’s just a formality. Do have a good journey.” And that was it. Boris waved politely from his office door as Pru disappeared, then looked around for the other applicants. They seemed to have disappeared too. “Well, Miss Krappskaya,” he said, “when can you start?”

Out of sight but not out of mind, Harry breathed a sigh of relief. The troops were in position. Now he could turn his attention to Phase Two. A Special Assistance Squad was going to be formed.

 

41 He could hardly expect to keep his job. Not only had an official barrier been damaged, but several souls had gone through unregistered. Most had been found but two seemed to have been lost forever. Statistically this was not significant, but it appeared that someone in a high place had decreed that a single lost soul was one too many. Jones had suffered the fate of any senior administrator faced with disgrace, and had been promoted to the newly-created post of NRC5 i/c VIP Reception & Guidance, which gave him the considerable kudos of holding perhaps the most complicated title in Heaven.

51 As a matter of interest, he re-entered his body with such force that he fell off the operating table and fractured his skull. His wife was subsequently able to claim huge damages, with which she bought a controlling share in a chain of manicure boutiques.