A dark and stormy night, a deserted country road, a solitary female motorist driving an elderly, unreliable Toyota. What could possibly go wrong?
Total failure of the car’s electrical systems, for one thing. The engine died, all the lights went out, the radio lapsed into silence, the car coasted to a halt and just sat there. Bother, thought Alice, or words to that effect. She reached in her pocket for her phone. Nothing, dead as a stone. She could only tell that it was there because she could feel it in her hand.
The scenario, she couldn’t help thinking, was not entirely unfamiliar; except, of course, that stuff like that didn’t actually happen, and there’s absolutely no such thing as—
She cried out and closed her eyes, a fraction of a second too late. The brilliant white light all around her was painful, unendurable. “Oh come on,” she screeched at it. She could feel its warmth on her skin.
The car was floating, as if on water. She risked opening one eye, just a bit, but all she could see was dazzle. A scooped-out feeling in her tummy suggested that the car was rising, none too steadily, as though a magnet had clamped to the roof and a winch was reeling her in. Terror flooded her, as if she’d left the window open in a car wash, together with the soft, scornful whisper of a tiny voice in the back of her head; this can’t be happening; this is silly.
A gentle shudder coming up through the floor via the shock absorbers. Not moving any more. A firm but not deafening metallic clunk. I’m dreaming all this, she told herself. Gentle forward motion, causing the seat belt to press lightly on her collarbone, contradicted her. Not a dream.
A tapping noise; close, insistent. Something banging against the driver’s side window. She ignored it. It grew louder. It was similar to the sound of a knuckle, but that bit clearer and sharper. It wasn’t going to go away. She opened her right eye, looked and screamed.
The reason, she later realised, why the knocking didn’t sound quite right was that human knuckles are covered in skin, whereas the tapper at her window had scales: small ones, about thumbnail size, a sort of iridescent greeny-gold. It wasn’t the scales she had a problem with, or the head being a third bigger than the body. It was the eyes: clusters and clusters and clusters of them, on long stalks.
She had no cogent reason to believe that if she shrieked loud enough, the monster would back off, she’d be put back where she’d been taken from and none of this would ever have happened. It was, she’d have cheerfully conceded, a long shot, at best. But she couldn’t think of anything else to do, so she gave it a go.
It didn’t work. The monster kept on tapping.
Somewhere inside her head, a voice said: anyone or anything capable of this level of technology isn’t going to be defeated by a car door. She stopped screaming and pressed the window wind-down button. It didn’t work, of course. Then it did.
The monster lowered its head, though it took care not to let any part of its anatomy actually enter the car. It was, she realised, respecting her personal space. Earth?
The voice was inside her head, but she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it hadn’t come from her. Telepathy, it said. This is Earth, right?
She discovered that you can’t lie to a telepathic species. Yes, said her mind, a moment before her lips could shape the word No. Oh well.
Parcel for you.
Excuse me?
Parcel for you. Delivery.
Understanding gradually seeped through her, like melting ice dripping off a roof. Oh, she thought, right. Do you need me to sign for it?
A sea-blue laser beam hit her between the eyes. No need, we scan. Have a nice 9.16030534351145-times-the-half-life-of-Silicon-31.
You what?
Something scrabbled in her mind for the right word. Day. Have a nice day.
The monster’s hand − nine-fingered and absolutely not something she wanted to think about, though she had a nasty feeling she would, every day for the rest of her life – came through the window, holding something about the size of a small cushion, wrapped in a shiny grey polymer. Somehow she forced herself to take it. The hand let go and withdrew. Her window wound up, all by itself. The monster took a step back, and she couldn’t see it any more, because of the dazzle.
The car was moving again, sinking this time. She heard the same soft clang she’d heard before, and felt a faint jar as the car stopped. Two seconds later, the terrible light went out. Five seconds after that, her car engine purred smoothly into life and the headlights and radio came on. You are my sunshine, it sang at her. She switched it off.
In her lap was the parcel. She turned on the interior light and stared at it. Just a parcel; and on it was a label. The label had signs on it, squiggles. She’d never seen anything remotely like them in her life, not even late at night after eating Limburger cheese. She discovered she could read them, quite easily. Telepathic reading, for crying out loud.
Q’xxw^etrqegr-3885/8a8!83/Z’ggwerq!tgr, Esq.
Unit 17, Sfhyoynxxxxx!xxyx Plaza,
ZZZxZ,
Alpha Centauri
− and underneath, a series of boxes, one of which was ticked:
Not at home; left with neighbour.
“I see,” said Mr Sunshine, pursing his lips. “Did you bring it with you?”
Alice nodded. “I haven’t opened it.”
“Of course not,” said Mr Sunshine. “It wasn’t addressed to you.”
“I hadn’t thought about it in quite those terms,” Alice said. “But, no, you’re right, it wasn’t. Look—”
Something nudged her kneecap. She was about to open her mouth and let fly when she realised it was one of the drawers of Mr Sunshine’s desk. It was trying to open. Mr Sunshine saw the look on her face and smiled. “That’s just Harmondsworth,” he said. “Stop it, Harmondsworth.” The drawer stopped nudging. “It means he likes you,” Mr Sunshine said. “You were saying.”
She looked at him. She saw a big man, somewhere around seventy, with a bald head rising up through a fringe of snow-white hair like a volcano surrounded by jungle. The sleeves of his shirt – white with a pale red and green check, the sort of thing you still see occasionally being worn by old-fashioned chartered surveyors in market towns – were rolled up, revealing powerful forearms with a few faint scars and liver splodges. His thick spectacles magnified pale blue eyes, topped by dense hedges of white eyebrow. “Sorry,” she said, without really knowing why.
“That’s perfectly all right. You were going to ask me something.”
Far below, traffic swirled, but she couldn’t hear it. “What am I supposed to do with it?” she asked.
“The parcel.”
“Yes.”
Mr Sunshine leaned back in his chair and rubbed his upper lip with the ball of his thumb. “You know,” he said, “I’m not sure I’m quite the right person to help you with this. It sounds more like a science thing.”
“It’s weird shit,” Alice said. “My friend told me, weird shit is what you do.”
“Not that kind of weird shit,” Mr Sunshine said gently. He picked a business card off his desktop and handed it to her. “Read that,” he said.
DAWSON, AHRIMAN & DAWSON
Commercial and Industrial Sorcerors,
Thaumaturgical & Metaphysical Engineers
Edwin Sunshine – Consultant
“Some of our practice does overlap with science,” he went on, “a bit, the trailing edges of the Venn diagrams barely touching. But flying saucers and space aliens—” He shrugged, very slightly. “You might be better off talking to NASA,” he said. “Or the Air Force.”
She felt as though the roof had just caved in on her. “You don’t believe me,” she said. “You think I’m—”
“Entirely truthful and as sane as I am,” Mr Sunshine said. “In fact, I don’t just think that, I know.”
Something about the way he said it made her shudder. “Thank you,” she said, in a tiny voice.
“But that doesn’t alter the fact that this isn’t really my field of expertise. Basically, anything where E equals mc2 isn’t our bag. We’re more sort of—”
A tiny starburst of golden flowers appeared from nowhere in front of her eyes. They hung in the air twinkling, then vanished, leaving behind a faint scent of lavender mixed with burnt gunpowder.
“Ah,” she said. “Right. But I don’t know any scientists, and if I did they’d laugh like a drain or have me locked up, and my friend Carol said—”
The name seemed to carry weight with Mr Sunshine. “I suppose I could have a word with one of my partn—” He stopped short and flushed. “One of the partners,” he said. “She’s had a certain amount of experience in spatio-temporal dynamics. If she can’t help, she probably knows someone who can.” He frowned, as though listening to someone raising an objection. “It can’t hurt,” he said. “Of course, there’s the question of money. I’m afraid we’re rather expensive.”
“Money?”
“Well, yes.”
“I’ve got money,” Alice remembered. “What sort of figure are we talking about?”
Mr Sunshine took back the card, turned it over and wrote something on the back with a pencil. He showed it to her. It was as though there was a part for a zero in a Harry Potter movie, and all the noughts in the world were queuing up to audition. “Oh,” she said.
Mr Sunshine looked at her. “Quite,” he said. “Of course, if you’d gone to JWW or Zauberwerke or one of the big City firms, you’d be looking at twice that, and they don’t do free initial interviews like we do. Even so—” He opened a drawer, reached in and took something out. “Not exactly cheap. Still, anything worth having very rarely is.”
The thing he’d taken from the drawer was a tatty old purse. Alice looked at it. Her grandmother had had one just like it, many years ago. “How long did you say you’d known Carol?”
“We were in the same class at junior school.”
“Ah.” Mr Sunshine nodded. Then he made a show of looking for something – shuffling papers on the desk, moving his chair a few inches, glancing round at the floor. “Stupid of me,” he said. “I seem to have lost a bottomless purse. I had it a moment ago.”
“A—?”
Mr Sunshine rolled his eyes. She picked up the purse and opened it. Out of it tumbled a heap of cut diamonds, more or less enough to fill a soup bowl. She put down the purse and scooped the diamonds into her lap, then picked up the purse again. “Is this it?”
“Yes, that’s the one.” Mr Sunshine smiled, took it from her and put it back in his desk. “Silly me, I’m always losing things,” he said. “About the money.”
She piled the diamonds back onto the desk. “Would these do?”
He was right, she had. She retrieved it and added it to the pile. “That’ll do nicely,” Mr Sunshine said. “It’s always nice when people give you the exact money. It saves having to fiddle about with small change.”
She tried to remember exactly what Carol had said about Mr Sunshine. He’s nice, she’d said. A bit weird, but nice. She shivered. “So you’ll—”
He nodded. “No promises,” he said, “but I’ll do my best. And like I said, Gina will probably know someone who knows about this sort of thing. Let’s see it, then.”
“Oh, the parcel.” She picked up the carrier bag from the floor. “It’s in here.”
Mr Sunshine had suddenly gone very still and very quiet. “In there. No, don’t take it out,” he said. “Just leave it in the bag, would you?” He dipped his fingers into his shirt pocket and produced a magnifying glass. It was jet-black. He peered at the bag through it, then put it away. The look on his face was the most disconcerting thing she’d seen all morning. “Now that’s not something you come across every day,” he said, and his voice was ever so slightly shaky. “You know, I think we might be able to help you after all. You wouldn’t mind leaving that with us for a day or so? I’ll give you a receipt.”
“Sure,” said Alice. She tried to hand it to him, but he gestured to her to put it on the desk. “Keep it. Please.”
“No,” Mr Sunshine said, “I don’t think I will, thanks all the same. Just a temporary loan, while we run some tests, that sort of thing.” He wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist. “Just routine stuff.”
After she’d gone, Mr Sunshine went to a cupboard in the corner of the room and took out a pair of iron tongs, with which he lifted the carrier bag and put it in the dustbin. Then he looked round for something to put the tongs in.
“Mistake,” said a voice from his desk.
“Don’t you start.”
“Really bad mistake. All end in tears.”
Mr Sunshine sighed. “You didn’t happen to notice where I put the hazmat bucket?”
“Top left-hand drawer.”
Mr Sunshine found it and deposited the tongs. There was a faint sizzle. “She’s Carol’s friend,” he said. “I couldn’t very well send her away.”
“Factual error.”
“No, I couldn’t,” Mr Sunshine said firmly. “Not to worry, I’ll pass it on to Gina. She’ll know what to do.”
“Factual—”
“Oh shut up,” said Mr Sunshine.
In his office on the second floor, the big one that used to belong to Mr Sunshine before the office civil war, Mr Dawson was conducting an interview. Mr Dawson (207 last birthday and didn’t look a day over thirty-six, and there was a reason for that) handled the firm’s substantial executive recruitment portfolio. He smiled reassuringly and steepled his fingers. Usually at this point he’d look the candidate full in the eye, to gauge his self-confidence and sincerity, but in this instance, for obvious reasons, he couldn’t do that.
“Tell me,” he said, “about yourself.”
The interviewee billowed slightly, as his bush crackled but was not consumed. “Let’s see, now,” he said. “Eight hundred and seventy-five million years as Supreme Being on Delta Orionis Four. Of course when I started there it was all without form and void, the contractors had made a real pig’s ear of it, but I had it all up together and shipshape in eight days flat. Then seven hundred and forty million years as the All-Highest on Baynard’s Planet, to be honest with you I felt like I was really just marking time there, I mean, I ran a tight ship, don’t get me wrong, but when I look back and ask myself, did I really achieve anything, did I make a difference, the answer would have to be yes but I could possibly have done even more. Omnipotencewise,” he added, by way of clarification. “Then three billion years on New Kampala, but I can’t talk about that because strictly speaking that’s in the future in this continuum, and you know the rules as well as I do. Suffice to say it was a challenge, but that’s what it’s all about in this game, isn’t it?”
Mr Dawson was smiling, an ominous sign to all who knew him. “Quite,” he said. “What would you say are your greatest strengths?”
The interviewee flared up for a moment, filling the office with unearthly red light. “Everything,” he said.
“Right,” said Mr Dawson. “So, for example, you’d be hard put to it to create a rock, say, that you couldn’t lift.”
The interviewee was silent for a moment. “Why would I want to do a thing like that?” he asked.
Downhill all the way from there, in both senses of the expression. Mr Dawson asked the rest of the questions on his checklist, for form’s sake and just in case the interviewee might say something to strike a tiny spark of interest; he didn’t, and that was that. He thanked the interviewee for his time, mentioned in passing that he had a few more people to see, and said he’d let him know. Then there was a roar, like the rushing of a mighty wind, and Mr Dawson was alone. He sighed, tore his notes into seven thin strips and put them in the wastepaper basket. Then he leaned forward and prodded a toggle on his desk. “Next,” he said.
He leaned back in his chair and looked at the mantelpiece, which hadn’t been there a moment ago. Nor, Mr Dawson couldn’t help noticing, had the fireplace directly beneath it. He frowned. Impressing the interviewer with a startlingly original approach was all very well, but he drew the line at structural alterations.
A loud bump and a cloud of soot. Out of the fireplace stepped a fat man in a red dressing gown. He had a white beard and a sack. “Not late, am I?” he asked.
“Exactly on time,” Mr Dawson said. “Please, take a seat.”
The fat man looked at the chair, still smouldering gently. “I’ll use my own, if that’s all right with you,” he said, and from the sack he produced a three-legged stool carved with entwined tendrils of holly and ivy. “Right, then,” he said. “Fire away.”
Mr Dawson peered at him over the top of his spectacles. “Excuse me saying this,” he said, “but you do know what this interview is for?”
The fat man nodded. “Planet in an alternative universe is looking for a supreme being,” he said. “That’s what it said in the ad, anyhow.”
Mr Dawson nodded slowly. “No offence,” he said. “But are you sure you’re—?”
“Qualified?” The fat man laughed. “I should think so. I was laying the foundations of the Earth when old Smiler there was still in nappies.” He nodded towards the smouldering chair. “He’s after the job as well, is he? Might have guessed. He’s got a nerve, I’ll give him that.”
Mr Dawson was interested in spite of himself. “Has he?”
The fat man laughed again. It didn’t sound one little bit like ho-ho-ho. “After what happened at his last place? I take it you heard about that.”
“Actually, no. I gather it hasn’t happened yet.”
“Not in this continuum, I guess not.” The fat man nodded sagely. “Well, all I can say is, don’t book any holidays on New Kampala any time in the next three billion years. Not unless you’re into really extreme sports. Right, let’s get on with it. You got my CV?”
Mr Dawson discovered that he had, neatly wrapped in green paper, like a cracker. “That’s impressive,” he said, after a quick glance. “I didn’t know you used to be a thunder god.”
The fat man nodded. “Mostly thunder,” he said. “Bit of rain and general fertility thrown in, some smiting here and there, not that I ever really took to smiting. I always say, you can do more with a snarky word and a sarcastic comment than you can do with a thunderbolt any day of the week. Still, if what people want is smiting, I can smite.” He grinned. “You bet.”
A slight shiver ran down Mr Dawson’s spine. “Moving on,” he said. “I don’t think it’s exactly a secret that you’ve already got a job. So why do you want this one?”
The fat man stifled a yawn. “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Fair enough. Bit of a cock-up, if you must know.”
“Ah.”
“Really, I was only trying to help,” the fat man said, with a hint of anger. “That’s all I ever do, try and help.”
“I see.”
“I said to myself, I said, they’d better watch out, because if they don’t they’re going to find themselves in the candy floss right up to here, the way they’re going on. I tried to drop a few hints, you know, casually, but—” He spread his hands. “If they’re too thick to get it, what can you do?”
“Um.”
“So I laid it on the line for them,” the fat man said. “I told them, if you’re good and sensible and you listen to what your scientists tell you and don’t insist on screwing it all up for yourselves, I’ll give you a clean, cheap source of renewable energy to meet all your industrial and domestic needs. But if you’re bad, you’ll get coal. And what happened?”
“Quite,” Mr Dawson said.
“Anyhow,” the fat man said, “that’s enough about me. Tell me about this gig. What are they after, exactly?”
Mr Dawson’s eyes opened a little bit wider. “They want a god,” he said.
“Fair enough,” the fat man said. “What happened to their old one?”
Mr Dawson looked down at the papers on his desk. “He died.”
“Ah,” the fat man said. “So I’m probably looking at a culture of self-destructive post-enlightenment nihilism. Bummer. What’s the dominant species like on this planet of yours, then?”
“Um,” said Mr Dawson, looking at the brief. “Mortal bipedal humanoid, omnivore, average lifespan eighty years, early post-industrial society. That sort of thing.”
The fat man frowned. “Nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere?”
“Afraid so.”
The fat man rolled his eyes. “Gravity?”
“Earth standard, give or take a smidge.”
“Magic?”
Mr Dawson nodded. “Within certain closely defined parameters, yes.”
The fat man relaxed slightly. “If there’s one thing I can’t be doing with, it’s orthodox Newtonian physics. Like wearing shoes a size too small, if you know what I mean. All right, you’d better fill me in on the details. I’m not saying I’ll do it, mind. But I guess it won’t hurt to listen.”
Mr Dawson realised that somehow he’d become the interviewee. His respect for the fat man went up a notch or two. Now he came to think of it, his clients could do worse. He told the fat man about the planet, its history, geography, cultural mores and underlying values. When he’d finished, the fat man was quiet for a while, thinking. Eventually he said, “Fair enough. Now for the big question. What’s in it for me?”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t play games, it doesn’t suit you. What’s the deal? How much do I get?”
“Um.” Mr Dawson looked at the brief, which was silent on that point. “I’m not sure my client was thinking of approaching it from that angle,” he said. “Remuneration per se—”
“In other words, what I can get out of the punters.” The fat man pursed his lips. “You know what,” he said, “that’s not really how I like to do business. What I like is so much in the bank at the end of the month, no deductions, no productivity bonuses or performance-related stock options, no mucking about. The other way may give you an incentive and a keener edge and all that malarkey, but it buggers up how you look at things when you’re doing the job. You’ve always got that percentage ticking away at the back of your mind when you’re making the big decisions. Whereas if you know that come hell, high water or Richard bloody Dawkins you’re still going to get your wedge come payday, you can afford to have whatsisname, begins in an in, integrity. I think that’s important when you’re a god, don’t you?”
“Um.”
“Not that I’m telling your clients how to run their planet. Not yet, at any rate. In fact, before I start doing that I want a properly detailed package, pension, health plan, the whole nine yards. That’s part and parcel of being a professional, don’t you think?”
“Um,” Mr Dawson repeated. “No offence, but what does God want with a health plan?”
The fat man gave him a look that should have frozen his blood but didn’t, then grinned. “Nice one,” he said. “All right, it’s a fair cop. So maybe I’m not exactly a god god.”
“I never really thought of it as a grey area.”
“More a sort of demiurge or genius loci. Still, a jerkwater alternative reality up the armpit of Nowhere can’t afford to be choosy, now can it?”
“Unfortunately,” said Mr Dawson, “yes, it can. It’s a great shame, but there we go. If you haven’t got that all-important bit of paper—”
The fat man clicked his tongue. “Never had the chance to go to college, me. By the time I was forty-five seconds old I was out on the street, earning a wage to support my widowed mother and seventy-four younger sisters.” He paused. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“No.”
“Shucks. Ah well, never mind.” He stood up. The carved stool flew up in the air and vanished into the neck of the sack. “If you do hear of anything that might suit, let me know, there’s a pal. Be honest with you, I’m not sure I can stick this job much longer.”
Mr Dawson felt a pang of sympathy, much to his surprise. “Really?”
The fat man nodded. “It’s all the faster-than-light travel,” he said, “it’s taking years off me. If I carry on at this rate, this time next year I’ll be twelve years old. Ah well, thanks for your time.”
“Just a moment.” The words were out of Mr Dawson’s mouth before he realised it.
The fat man was standing next to the fireplace. “What?”
“I was just wondering,” Mr Dawson said. “What would you say to the occasional bit of freelancing?”
A moment later, Mr Dawson was wondering what he’d just gone and done. All the traffic in the street below had stopped. Not a single airliner passed overhead. Even the specks of dust invisible in the air stopped drifting floorward and hovered like buzzards, waiting for something. “I might,” the fat man said. “Depends. What sort of freelancing?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mr Dawson, who honestly didn’t. “It just occurred to me, that’s all. Someone with your rather unusual skillset. You know, getting in and out of places. Making a lot of deliveries in a short space of time. Keeping scrupulously accurate records.” His mouth had gone dry, for some reason. “If you’re not interested I quite understand.”
“Oh, I’m interested,” the fat man said, and for some reason Mr Dawson was intensely aware of the follicles on the back of his neck. The hairs weren’t rising or anything like that. He just knew exactly where all of them were. He was reminded of the first time he ever met his future business partner, Mr Ahriman. Not a particularly happy memory. “Always up for good honest paying work, me,” the fat man said. “No job too big or too small. Provided I can fit it in, of course.”
“Of course.” Mr Dawson had the oddest feeling that the last sentence was letting him off a very big, sharp hook and relief started to well up inside him, like sweat on a forehead. “You’re a busy man, I appreciate that.”
“Yeah. When I’m busy, I’m busy. The other three hundred and sixty four days, I’m generally available.”
“Ah.” Mr Dawson swallowed. “Splendid. I’ll, um, bear that in mind.”
“You do that,” the fat man said, and handed him a business card. It had jolly robins on it, and Mr Dawson put it away in his desk. The fireplace was glowing red, as though a real fire was burning there. “Glad we had this chat. Shame about the job but what the hell. One door closes, right? Be seeing you.” He stepped into the fireplace. It vanished, and Mr Dawson’s office wall reasserted itself. He stared at it for about twenty seconds, then shook himself like a wet dog and hit the toggle on his desk. “Next,” he said.
The next interviewee manifested Himself as an earthquake, a mighty roaring wind, a firestorm and a small squeaky whisper, but Mr Dawson found it hard to concentrate. His mind was on other things.
Across the landing in a slightly smaller office overlooking the fire escape, Mr Teasdale, the youngest of the partners, sipped his coffee with a thoughtful expression on his face. “Not there,” he said.
“I just said so, didn’t I?” The young woman he was talking to glared at him. “Honestly, I don’t think there’s much point me being here and paying you all that money if all you’re going to do is repeat every bloody thing I say.”
Quite. “Sorry,” said Mr Teasdale mildly. “Just wanted to make sure I’d got my facts straight.” He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Let me see those pictures again.”
“You’ve already looked at them three times.”
“Yes, well, I need to be thorough.”
“I don’t think you should charge me for the third time.”
He held out his hand and she passed him the tablet. Scrolling through, he was struck by two things. First, she really was a very good wedding photographer, if you liked your matrimonial reportage in the style of Time magazine covering the Vietnam War. Second, there was nothing to see – apart, of course, from a bunch of people in clothes they’d never wear again, holding wine glasses in a large tent. “This one here,” he said.
“Yes.”
“She’s in every picture.”
“Yes. That’s the point. You have been listening, haven’t you? You haven’t just sat there thinking about something else, at God only knows how much per second?”
It was Mr Teasdale’s policy in life to like everybody as much as he could for as long as possible, and then stop. He still had a bit of a way to go, but the light was definitely there at the end of the tunnel. “Let me just clarify,” he said, “to make sure I’ve got it straight in my mind.”
That got him a sigh. He forgave it.
“Every picture you’ve taken,” he said, “at every wedding you’ve covered over the last six months—”
“Seven.”
“The last seven months, thank you. Every picture you’ve taken at every wedding, she’s in it.”
“Correct.”
“No,” she said, with exaggerated patience. “Sometimes it’s a different hat.”
“I stand corrected. Identical except for the hat. Same dress, handbag, shoes, same cheerful smile facing directly into the camera.”
“Yes.”
“And nobody’s ever seen her before or knows who she is?”
“Correct. Yes.”
“And you don’t remember ever having—”
“Of course bloody not. Otherwise I’d have had her thrown out on her stupid ear. She wasn’t there.”
Mr Teasdale nodded slowly. “Got you,” he said. “Appears in all the photographs but not actually there. I’ll just make a note of that,” he added, and did so.
“Look, are you sure you’re a properly qualified whatever-you-call-it? I mean, you’ve passed all your exams and everything? Only you don’t seem to know—”
Mr Teasdale cleared his throat gently. “It looks to me,” he said, as mildly as possible, “like a textbook example of a transdimensional affinity, or Reichenstafel’s syndrome.”
She looked at him. “Right. You what?”
“Reichenstafel’s syndrome,” he repeated. “Not common, in fact something of a collector’s item, but pretty well documented nonetheless. I suppose I’ve handled about a dozen cases in the last three years.”
He had her attention. “Is it bad?”
“Can be, yes.”
“Dangerous?”
“Sometimes.”
“How fucking dangerous?”
He took off his glasses, wiped the lenses with the special cloth and put them back on. “That depends,” he said. “Reichenstafel’s is hard to quantify, in the early stages. Death, though by no means inevitable—”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
“It’s just as well,” he said, with tastefully subdued relish, “that you came to see me. Seven months, you said?”
She’d gone a funny colour. “About that. Look, I can take it. How long have I got?”
He smiled at her. “It’s not an illness,” he said. “Reichenstafel’s is an affinity. It means that you and someone else have formed a special sort of connection, one that transcends time and space.”
She gave him a does-not-compute look. “You mean, like true love?”
He indulged himself in a small professional laugh. “That’s one sort of connection that can form a Reichenstafel event, certainly. But not the only one, by any means. It’s quite rare, actually. More usually, the connection is—” He paused, choosing the right word. “Rather more parasitic than romantic.”
She shuddered. “You mean, this stupid fat old woman is trying to lay her eggs in me or something?”
“Not necessarily eggs,” said Mr Teasdale. “But I would say, at a guess, she wants something from you, yes.”
“That’s gross.”
“The interesting thing, from a technical viewpoint,” said Mr Teasdale, “is the hat. Not the same hat every time. Usually the image is constant.”
“Fuck the fucking hat, get that horrible woman off me. Now.”
Mr Teasdale took another sip of his coffee. It was still exactly the right temperature, even though it had been sitting on his desk for the last fifteen minutes. Mr Teasdale had his morning coffee sent in from a little caterer’s in Plato’s ideal reality, where everything is always just so. It was expensive, but he could afford it. “First,” he said, “we have to find out exactly what she wants from you. Then, if at all possible, we give it to her.”
“How the hell can you do that?”
“We could always try asking.”
She rolled her eyes. “But she’s not there.”
“Almost right,” said Mr Teasdale. “What you should have said is, she’s not here. But she’s got to be somewhere, or she couldn’t be stalking you like this. All we’ve got to do is find out where she is, then ask her what she wants.”
Hope peered out at him from her eyes, like some timid forest animal. “You can do that?”
“I think so.”
“You think—”
“I have a 99.99998 per cent success rate in making contact in Reichenstafel cases,” Mr Teasdale said mildly. “The thing people fail to grasp is, the affinitor isn’t necessarily malevolent, just someone who wants something. And doesn’t give a stuff about what he does to get it, but never mind about that. It’s not evil you’re up against, just extremely highly motivated self-interest.”
“Lucky fucking me.”
“Yes, actually,” Mr Teasdale said. “Sometimes, evil can be a bitch. Self-interest, on the other hand, is at least something you can understand. Once you understand something, you can set about fixing it.”
He paused. She looked at him. “Well?” she said.
“Expensive,” said Mr Teasdale.
Expensive was, in Mr Teasdale’s opinion, one of those magical words. It was essentially a touchstone for the human soul, stripping away the layers of pretence and self-delusion and leaving the true self exposed to view, naked and defenceless as Adam and Eve in the Garden. “How much?”
“Of course,” he went on, “you could decide to do nothing, ignore it, pretend it isn’t happening, carry on with your life as though nothing’s wrong. Presumably you can Photoshop her out of the pictures—”
“How much?”
He said a number. For that much, you could buy a decent second-hand aircraft carrier. She made a noise like a chipmunk.
“Payable,” he added, “in advance.” Pause. “If it’d help, we can arrange credit.”
Tears were running down her cheeks. “What?”
“With a realistically sustainable repayment schedule,” Mr Teasdale went on, “spread over, say, fifteen generations. We’d need a certain level of security, of course. A mortgage on your firstborn child, that sort of thing.”
“I haven’t got a—”
“Not yet,” Mr Teasdale said. “We tend to favour the long-term view in this business.”
She scowled at him through her tears. “That’s horrible,” she said. “That’s—”
“Yes,” Mr Teasdale said, “it is. But you’ve got a problem, and we can probably make it go away. Or you can decide to keep the problem and deal with it yourself. And like I said, Reichenstafel’s isn’t invariably fatal. It’s possible that this woman may be content just to carry on haunting your photographic work, as opposed to your dreams or your every waking moment. It’s too early to tell for sure. Of course, if you wait till you start getting the dreams it makes it that bit less likely that we’d be able to do anything about it, but that’s your choice.”
She glared at him, as though through the bars of an invisible cage. “What if,” she said, “I signed your nasty little mortgage and then didn’t have any kids?”
That got her a sad smile. “Doesn’t work like that,” he said. “In any case, we don’t arrange the finance ourselves, we refer you to an associated concern that handles all that side of things for us. That’s if you decide to proceed. Like I said, it’s up to you entirely.”
“But if I don’t, I start seeing this woman in my dreams.”
“Quite possibly yes. Of course, you may find you like her. She looks quite nice, in the pictures. Maybe you’ll get on like a house on fire.”
“Fifteen generations.”
“Something like that,” said Mr Teasdale. “Of course, if you’d taken out supernatural insurance, the whole cost would be covered and you wouldn’t have to pay a penny, but it’s too late for that now. People can be so short-sighted.” He stood up. “Anyway, I expect you’ll want to think about it, so we’ll call it a day for now, shall we? Lovely to have met you.”
“No, please.” Ah, thought Mr Teasdale, the magic word. “I’ll do it. I’ll sign anything you want. Just don’t let that woman get me.”
Mr Teasdale sat down again. “Just kidding,” he said.
“What?”
“Not about the Reichenstafel thing,” he said. “But you don’t have to sign anything or give us your firstborn. I was just teasing you, because you were so rude and horrible.”
“You ars—” She stopped herself. It was like seeing someone walking into a plate-glass window. “Got you,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to pay?”
“Oh, lots,” said Mr Teasdale. “But we’ve been in the private client business for a long time and the truth of the matter is, there just aren’t enough rich people in the world with problems to make it worth our while. So we’ve learned to be inventive. Sign that.”
He gave her a bit of paper and a pen. “What is it?”
“Trust me.”
She hesitated, then signed. “What—?”
“You’ve just assigned me all the rights in a revolutionary new technology that’ll cut carbon emissions by ninety per cent and save the planet. And, incidentally, make an absolute fortune.”
“But—”
“You haven’t invented it yet,” Mr Teasdale explained. “But you will.”
“Will I?”
“It’s not the policy of this firm to reveal the future.” He took the paper from her, folded it neatly, walked to the wall, took down a framed watercolour of the Manchester Ship Canal painted by his grandmother, opened the door of the safe behind it, put the paper into the safe, closed it, spun the dial four times, replaced the picture. “That would be unethical.” He sat down again. “Right, then,” he said, “let the dog see the rabbit. The first thing we need to do is—”
“How much did I just—?”
He gave her a look. “You do want to save the planet, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course. I guess so. When you say an absolute fortune—”
“Well,” said Mr Teasdale, “you won’t be up to inventing or discovering anything if you’ve got that annoying woman whispering in your ear twenty-four-seven, you’ll be too busy climbing the walls. Shall we get on?”
“Yes, but—”
“Think,” Mr Teasdale said, “of all the baby seals in Alaska. You wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to them, would you?”
She gave him a look. It wasn’t the friendliest look in the history of the world, but it was sufficient cause for him to believe that they understood each other. “Fine,” she said. “What do we do now?”
Mr Teasdale was scrolling through the pictures again. “She reminds me,” he said, “of my Aunt Veronica. Nice woman, you’d like her. I think the simplest approach would be to conjure her.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Technical term,” explained Mr Teasdale. “It’s no big deal. All it involves is, we force her to come here, confine her so she can’t jump out and bite us, and ask her questions.”
“Bite us?”
“Metaphorically speaking.” He reached for his diary and turned a few pages. “Takes a day or so to set up. How’s Tuesday?”
“How can you do that if you don’t know where—?”
“Oh, we don’t do the actual summoning and coercing,” Mr Teasdale said with a smile, “that’s what the demons are for. If you can’t do Tuesday, how about Wednesday afternoon? I’ve got the dentist at two, so any time after three-thirty—”
After she’d gone, Mr Teasdale wrote a note for the file, looked up a few things on Wikipedia and sent an email to Robertsons to book twelve demons for 3.45 on Wednesday. Then (almost forgot) he reopened the safe, took out his pirate copy of Destiny and fiddled with it a bit so the annoying girl would be the one to invent carbon resequencing. The other partners, he knew, didn’t really think much of tuppenny-ha’penny private client work, preferring to concentrate on the big corporate accounts, but Mr Teasdale begged to differ. Quite apart from the money side of things, there was a lot of satisfaction to be gained from helping ordinary people with everyday problems, not to mention the good publicity for the firm and the Brownie points it earned with the regulators. One of many things Mr Sunshine had taught him, when he first started at Dawsons; money isn’t everything. Ninety-nine per cent of everything, true, but the remaining 1 per cent matters.
He called up the wedding pictures, which he’d saved to his computer, for one last look. Those hats. Apparently, the woman had three of them. Something snagged in his mind like a hangnail, but he couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
Unless –
Surely not.
Only one way to be sure. He finished his coffee, recycled the mug into a fountain of gold and silver sparks and set off across the landing and up the spiral staircase to the closed file store.
When Mr Teasdale was a young junior trainee at JWW, one of the first jobs he’d been given was tidying up the firm’s main archive and storage area, generally referred to by the partners as the Abyss and the junior staff as the Caves of Khazad-Dum. Not only had he survived the assignment (many hadn’t), he’d enjoyed it. Mostly, he said afterwards, it was because it was his first real chance to do a job on his own, his way, without some well-meaning clown peering over his shoulder criticising his every move. A young man starting off in the business, he maintained, needs a bit of space to make his first few mistakes in. The Abyss certainly provided him with that, but he survived, his left arm grew back eventually and he learned several valuable lessons about self-reliance, ingenuity and never turning your back on a thermal binder. It was, in fact, an experience he looked back on with a certain degree of nostalgia. It would be an exaggeration to say that he’d left his heart in the basement of 70 St Mary Axe – some toes and a certain amount of liver, no more than that – but it had been a formative experience and made him the courageous and resourceful, if slightly deckle-edged, man he was today.
When he moved to Dawsons as a young assistant sorcerer, therefore, one of the first things he did was give the firm’s closed file store a thorough makeover. It needed it. The last time it had seen a dustpan or a tin of paint, the firm was still Sunshine, Noctis & Gregg, the American colonists were chasing the French out of Quebec and a fashionable painter by the name of Tom Gainsborough had come to see the firm about an awkward problem he was having at work.
You wouldn’t recognise the old place now. Although he’d probably be reluctant to admit it, Mr Teasdale had a certain flair for interior design. Thanks to his efforts, the closed file store was now a light, clean, airy place where people tended to linger rather than escape from by the skin of their teeth. Mr Dawson, for example, often used it to unwind after a difficult morning, and he was there now, sitting in a big leather armchair beside the pool watching the flamingos.
“Morning, Brian,” he said without looking round. “How’s it going?”
“Oh, the usual,” said Mr Teasdale. “Saw a client with a suspected Reichenstafel, no big deal. How about you?”
Mr Dawson yawned. “I’ve been tied up all morning with that piss-arse job we got passed on from Cannings,” he said. “I can see why they didn’t want it.”
“Ah, yes,” said Mr Teasdale. “So, have you found God yet?”
Mr Dawson was used to Mr Teasdale’s jokes. “Bunch of deadheads,” he said. “Wouldn’t trust any of them to part a bowl of soup, personally. Never mind, it pays the bills. Talking of which.”
Mr Teasdale sighed. “Yes, it’s covered,” he said.
“Glad to hear it,” Mr Dawson replied. “Look, if you want to fritter away your time on private client stuff that’s your business, just so long as you remember, we’re not a bloody charity.”
“I told you, it’s covered.” Mr Teasdale made an effort to stay nice. “In twenty years, we’ll be so rich we won’t know what to do with it all. Guaranteed.”
“Oh,” said Mr Dawson, frowning. “One of those.”
“Wealth beyond the dreams of—”
“Yes, fine, that’s wonderful,” Mr Dawson interrupted, “but I’m the one who’s got to bother his pretty head with cash flow. It’s not much use the money being there in twenty years—”
“Yes it is.”
“Up to a point,” Mr Dawson said irritably. “But every time I have to go into the future to get a few quid for the electric and the business rates, it’s costing us nineteen pence in the pound in commission and charges. That’s just chucking money away, Brian, it’s stupid. Look, I haven’t got a problem with you doing your own thing so long as you drop a few pennies in the cocoa tin occasionally, you know that. And a bit of pro bono, within reason—”
“Thanks,” said Mr Teasdale. “I’ll remember that, if ever I decide to do any.”
“Look.” Mr Dawson stopped himself with an effort. “There’s no point you and me falling out about this. Well, is there? It’s not me you want to be worried about. It’s—”
“Of course,” Mr Teasdale said quickly. “I’m sorry.”
“You know what he’s like,” Mr Dawson said. “Where money’s concerned.”
Mr Teasdale bit his lip. “Message received and understood.” He hesitated. “Heard from him lately?”
“No.”
Mr Teasdale felt a surge of relief. “He’s definitely away, or you just haven’t heard from him?”
A wild look flashed across Mr Dawson’s eyes. “It’s not like that,” he hissed, “and you know it. He’s everywhere.”
Something in the way he said it made Mr Teasdale’s skin crawl. “Theoretically,” he said mildly. “Anyway, let’s not talk about him, you know it always depresses you. I’m looking for something.”
Mr Dawson sighed and leaned back in his chair, as though he was some form of liquid soaking into the fabric. “What?”
“Those paintings we used to have tucked away behind those crates of old computer stuff. You haven’t seen them lately, have you?”
Mr Dawson thought for a moment. “I know the ones you mean,” he said. “Gina had them in her office at one point, I’m sure of it.”
“I’ll ask her.” Far away in the distance, a column of weary elephants came down to the lake to drink, scattering the flocks of brightly coloured birds. Somewhere, a lion roared. “You don’t know where they came from, do you?”
“I think Ted Sunshine took them to settle a bill. He was always doing stuff like that.”
A sore point with Mr Dawson, so Mr Teasdale skated over it. “Been here a while, then.”
“They were here when I joined. What’s so special about them, anyhow?”
“Hats,” Mr Teasdale said. “Long story.”
“Story with a happy ending involving us getting paid? Sorry,” Mr Dawson added quickly, “didn’t mean to start all that again. Look, I’m off to talk to Gina in a minute, I’ll ask her about them, all right?”
“Thanks.”
“No problem. Out of interest, what sort of hats?”
“Different ones.”
“Ah. That clears that up, then.”
After Mr Dawson had gone, Mr Teasdale had a good look round and came across a number of quite interesting things, but no paintings. That in itself was curious, and quite possibly relevant. He fished a small scientific instrument out of his pocket and took a few readings.
As he’d thought. At some point, someone or something had distorted the fabric of time inside the closed file store. Not a deliberate temporal incursion, and not a space/time incident or anything like that, nothing that needed to be reported to the insurers; the trace residues were cumulative rather than explosive, and there was no telltale yellow-green glow or slight smell of frying bacon. Instead, it was as though somebody had stored a rather large quantity of time here, and where it had rested against the walls and the floor it had bent them slightly. Well, he thought, it’s a store room, nothing unusual or sinister about that. Occasionally they stored things for old and valued clients, as a favour, at a price, and several of Ted’s and Gina’s pet punters had been known to dabble in the bulk time business. He glanced up at the ceiling and figured out that directly above his head was the boardroom, where they held the partnership meetings. That might also account for it. Nothing to see here, or to worry unduly about. And almost certainly nothing with a direct bearing on the question of hats, or a hat, or just possibly three different hats that might, in some almost mystical sense that he was only just starting to grope towards, conceivably all be the same hat—
He glanced at his watch, a Flexichron ZX3. Seven a.m. in Tokyo, he noted, and on Delta Coriolis Six it was a Wednesday. More to the point, he had ten minutes to comb his hair, grab a bunch of flowers from somewhere and get his sorry carcass to Covent Garden to meet Consuela for lunch. That’s me, he thought, always running out of time. Now there’s irony.
“Oh, I know the ones you mean,” said Gina Noctis, looking up from her paperwork. “Women in frocks. Gainsboroughs or something like that.”
Mr Dawson nodded. “Seen them lately?”
“Not for ages. Didn’t we sell them to pay for the new roof?”
“You’re thinking of the Raphael cartoon. I have an idea I saw one of them a few weeks ago, but I’m buggered if I can remember where. Anyway, if anything comes to mind, tell young Brian. He’s got some bee in his bonnet about them because of some charity case he’s working on.”
Gina didn’t say anything, but her inner tongue clicked. Whenever Tom Dawson started moaning about Brian doing private client work, it meant he was under pressure from – Well. She understood, therefore she forgave. With something like that hanging over him, no wonder he got tetchy about money. “What does he want a bunch of old paintings for?”
“Something about hats.”
“Ah.”
Mr Dawson was perching on the corner of her desk, a curiously informal, almost boyish thing for a man of his age and dignity to do. And he hadn’t come here to talk about missing paintings. “What?” she said.
Mr Dawson looked at her. “He’s got one,” he said. “I know he has.”
“Oh not that again.” Gina made a show of rolling her eyes. “We’ve been into all that a million billion times. He hasn’t got one.”
“Yes he has.”
“No he hasn’t.” She made an effort and got a grip. “He hasn’t got one because they’re impossible. Therefore they don’t exist. Therefore he hasn’t bloody well got one.”
“Yes he has.”
Gina sighed, tapped a few keys on her keyboard and turned her laptop round so Mr Dawson could see the screen. “Read,” she said.
“Read it. Makes no odds. He’s got one.”
She dismissed the document, a scientific paper by Professor van Spee of the Chicago Institute for Supernatural Studies irrefutably proving for all time that bottomless purses can’t and don’t exist. “Even if he’s got one,” she said, “which he hasn’t—”
“Yes he bloody well has. Why else do all his trailer-trash clients always pay in diamonds?”
“Oh for crying out loud. Does it matter, so long as they pay?”
Mr Dawson was getting angry. “Yes, when they’re paying me with my money. That purse is partnership property. He should’ve handed it in when—”
“When you forced him out.”
A long sigh. In spite of everything, Gina realised, she was still sorry for him. “You know how I’m fixed,” he said.
“Yes, I know.”
“If I only had that stupid purse, all my troubles would be over. I could snap my fingers in his face and tell him to go to—” He stopped, closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again. “Go home,” he said. “As it is—”
“Did it occur to you,” Gina said quietly, “that if the purse is partnership property, it’s not yours. Or mine or Brian’s or Jerry’s or anybody’s. It’s his. Dawson, Ahriman and Dawson, remember?”
“He doesn’t know about it.”
Gina gave him a grim smile. “You reckon? I don’t think there’s much that goes on around here that he doesn’t know about.”
“You’re not helping, you know that?” Mr Dawson stood up, balled his fists and stuffed them in his jacket pockets. “Look, if we had that stupid purse, none of it would matter. There’d be so much money—”
“I’m not sure he sees it like that,” Gina said softly.
“He must do. Otherwise it makes no sense. For God’s sake, Gina, what more could anybody want? It’s a bottomless frigging purse. A fifth share of infinity is infinity. And then I’d be off the hook.”
Gina said nothing. If he wanted to believe that, let him. When someone’s addicted to hope, it’s sheer cruelty to cure him.
“That’s why it’s so stupid,” he went on. “Infinity means plenty for everyone. Which means Ted could carry on funding his stupid charity cases, exactly the same as he’s doing now, and we – Fuck it, we could all retire. The nightmare would be over. But, no, bloody Ted Sunshine’s got to keep it for himself, just so he can play fairy godmother to half the losers on Benefits Street.”
Gina looked at him. He wasn’t a bad person really, just very, very stressed. “You could try asking him,” she said.
That got her the wolf-in-a-trap look. “Oh sure,” Mr Dawson said. “Ted Sunshine’s going to help me out because I ask him nicely. Danger, low-flying pigs.” The wolf in his eyes looked at her hungrily. “It’d be different coming from you,” he said. “He’d listen to you.”
Yes, she thought, because I didn’t force him out of the partnership and steal his life’s work. “No,” she said.
“For pity’s sake, Gina.” He stopped, and all the energy seemed to drain out of him, like oil from the crankcase of a Land Rover. “Fine,” he said. “You aren’t going to help me. Great. Who needs you?”
“Tom—”
“I’m sorry.” He was, too. She remembered him as he’d been when she first met him: young, ambitious, not a care in the world, revelling in the glorious power and sheer fun of his newly discovered profession like a leaping dolphin enjoying the sea. A lot had changed since then, of course; Tom included. The new partnership, the deal with Mr Ahriman, the office civil war, the terrible realisation of what they’d all got themselves into. But there were times when she looked at him and caught a flash of sunlight reflected on the dolphin’s shining flipper, and so she could still forgive him, no matter what.
“I’ll talk to him.” She hadn’t intended to say that.
“Will you? Oh thank God. It’d be such a weight off my mind.”
Now look what she’d gone and done. “It won’t do any good,” she said. “Because he hasn’t got one. Because they don’t exist.”
“Just talk to him. He’ll listen to you.” Mr Dawson sat down again, this time in a chair. “How long have you known him? Of course he’ll listen to you.”
“There’s listening and there’s agreeing, Tom. You treated him very badly.”
“I had no—” Mr Dawson bit off the last word, like someone in a restaurant eating octopus. “Yes,” he said, “I did, didn’t I? You can tell him that from me, if you think it’ll do any good.”
“You know what he’ll say to that.”
“Yeah. Fine words and parsnips. Why parsnips, for crying out loud?”
When she walked into Mr Sunshine’s room, the air was full of smoke. “What’s going on?” she said, reaching for her handkerchief.
Mr Sunshine nodded at the steel wastepaper bin, which had melted all over the floor. Liquid metal lay on the carpet tiles in a shimmering pool. “The metal’s not hot,” Mr Sunshine said. “That’s what’s so odd.”
“Interesting,” Gina said. “Would you mind opening a window? I can’t actually breathe.”
“Oh, right.” Mr Sunshine sometimes forgot that other people needed oxygen. “Harmondsworth. Extractor fan.”
A drawer of his desk slid open, and all the smoke was drawn into it. Then the drawer snapped shut. “Sorry about that,” Mr Sunshine said. “You’d better be careful not to tread in it, by the way. I have no idea what it does.”
She glanced at the pool, which was slowly spreading. “Bet you anything you like it invalidates our insurance. Tom’d have a fit.”
“He’s health-and-safety obsessed, if you ask me,” said Mr Sunshine. “Talking of Tom, the answer’s no.”
“Ah.”
“No I haven’t got one, and no he can’t have it.”
Oh well. It didn’t occur to Gina to ask how he knew what she’d come to ask. He just knew things like that. “You don’t think you could stretch a point, just this once.”
“Could. Don’t want to.”
“Fine,” she said. “And there was me, thinking you were better than that.”
“Who, me? Not likely.”
Subject closed, for now. “What is that, anyhow?”
“Ah.” Mr Sunshine’s eyes twinkled behind his glasses. “That’s what I was about to ask you. Take a look. Don’t get too close.”
She went across the room and peered at the ruins of the wastepaper basket. “A parcel wrapped in grey plastic.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Which melted your bin. Without heat.”
“Apparently the client was carrying it round for days in a shopping bag, and she didn’t look any the worse for wear. It’s from space.”
“We’re all from space, Ted. Space is just a word for—”
“It’s an extra-terrestrial parcel,” Mr Sunshine amended. “Left with a neighbour.”
“Oh, one of those.” She frowned. “No big deal. If nobody claims it within thirty days, she can keep it.”
“I don’t think she wants it.”
“Very sensible, if it melts things.”
“I was wondering,” Mr Sunshine said. “Would you mind having a look at it?”
“Have I got to?”
“I sort of promised we would.”
Gina sighed. “Fine,” she said. “You can make it up to me by helping me out with my rotten time sheets.” She closed her eyes, breathed in deeply and tried to remember—
Remember what it was like once, long ago, before she was Gina; when she was Regina Noctis, Queen of the Night; oldest, first and foremost. It wasn’t a comfortable memory. It made her mind itch, like wearing canvas next to the skin. She remembered darkness and the bite of cold air, long before the first time two flints collided. No warmth, no light, just her. Gradually she began to shed her corporeal form, molecule by molecule, atom by atom. She felt like a snail out of its shell, for a little while. Then she started to feel something else: a roaring, gushing joy, out of the box, free… Like gunpowder ignited, turning from solid into gas, unstoppable expansion, unrestrainable energy, absolute force—
“I hate this,” she said. “Can’t Harmondsworth do it?”
“He’s sensitive.”
“So am I fucking sensitive.”
“Gina. Go fetch.”
She snarled and let go, and suddenly she knew who she was. Amazing: why did she put up with it, why had she ever consented to be contained, restrained, belittled like that, cooped up in a skin bag with a lot of old rubbish like civilised behaviour and consideration for others and respect for human life? The hell with all that. She was out, she was back, she was herself again—
She had a job to do. For Edwin. Sod it, never mind. Pull yourself together, girl, and attend to the matter in hand.
She was blind, of course, and had no fingers to feel with, but she had so much more. She let herself seep through the gaps in the lattice of molecules that comprised the flexible grey polymer. It wasn’t a variety she was familiar with, not from around here, different; better. She allowed herself to linger for a moment, revelling in the first unfamiliar texture she’d come across in a very long time, then slid through. Would you mind having a look at it, he’d said, as though it was nothing. He had no idea. But then, how could he possibly understand? How could anyone?
Hello, she thought. You’re odd.
The thing inside the grey polymer wrapping was – Let’s stop and think about this one, shall we? Alive? Deceptive concept. You think you know what it means, but you don’t really. A more useful word would probably be active, as opposed to passive; something capable of initiating action on its own initiative. Intelligent? A common human misconception, that things have to be alive to be intelligent; just ask the screwdriver you can’t find or the slice of toast that intuitively seeks the floor jam side down. Purposeful: that was more like it. She still wasn’t absolutely sure what the thing was, but it was as full of purpose as an orange is full of juice. Definitely not something you’d want to leave lying about. In fact, if you had more brains than a clam, you wouldn’t want to be in the same galaxy.
“How are you getting on?” said a voice, long ago, far away, familiar.
“Nearly done,” she called back, then realised she had nothing to make a sound with. Better get a move on, or Edwin would start to get concerned about her. He worried, bless him. She reached out and smeared herself onto the surface of the thing, searching for an opening.
There wasn’t one. It was sealed, solid, all one piece. Not made of atoms. It was one great big atom. She crawled across it, barely able to find anything she could adhere to. Hello, she said. Are you friendly?
Not a pore, fissure or crack anywhere. No. Go away.
It was frightened. She knew that particular brand of fear. The last time she’d felt it this intensely she’d been clinging to the casing of a bomb, just before it exploded. Poor thing, it had had plenty to be afraid about, and all its worst fears had suddenly come true.
Will it hurt?
Ah, she thought, we’re getting somewhere. I don’t know, she said. What are you going to do?
What I must.
Right, got you. You don’t have to do it yet, do you? she thought soothingly, and waited for a reply.
I suppose not.
Better. Then I wouldn’t, if I were you. No rush. Take your time. You might want to think about it.
What’s there to think about?
Oh dear. Relax, she commanded. Deep breaths. Go to sleep.
Much to her surprise, it worked. She felt the consciousness ebb and fade and go dark, no doubt instinctively recognising something about its new companion. She waited for a little while, then carefully she reached out with her metaphorical nails and teeth and began to gnaw a little hole in the impenetrable casing—