Tony Bateman counted 999,999, then stopped. “Have you thought of anything yet?” he said.
“Yes, actually.”
Tony realised he’d heard that last remark, rather than feeling it in his bones. “How did you do that?” he asked.
“You clown,” said Mr Sunshine. “Open your eyes.”
“They’re open.” Tony checked, just to make sure. “I tell a lie,” he said, as the faintest possible gleam of grey light scorched his retina. “It’s because I was counting. I always close my eyes when I concentrate.” He stopped. “Who’s that?”
“Forgive him,” said the flat grey outline of Mr Sunshine, “he’s an idiot. Charlie, this is Tony Bateman. Tony, this is Charlie.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said an impossibly thin line, which then turned sideways and became a sort of approximation at a human being – Rather as if one of those weird blind fish at the very bottom of the sea had heard a vague description of a man and had tried to draw one.
“Charlie’s pleased to meet everybody,” Mr Sunshine said. “That’s not necessarily an endearing trait, in context.”
Charlie laughed. It wasn’t a cheerful sound. But at least it was a sound, and the grey light he diffused was still light. “Charlie exists,” Mr Sunshine explained. “Well, sort of. At least, he exists when the Bank has customers.”
“What does he do the rest of the—?”
“Paperwork, mostly,” Charlie said. “Routine admin, monthly returns, compliance, staff assessment reports, that sort of thing. I find it’s the opposite of existing, in a way that merely not being there could never be.”
Tony decided that you probably couldn’t offend Charlie, in the same way you’d be hard put to it to set light to the sun. Even so, best not to push his luck. “Well, we’re here,” he said. “Gives you a chance to—”
“Shine,” Charlie said. “Believe me, it’s appreciated.” He turned to face Mr Sunshine, turning back into the shortest distance between two points as far as Tony was concerned. “You sent for me,” he said.
“That’s right,” said Mr Sunshine. “I want financial advice.” He paused, letting the implications sink in. “As a private banking customer I’m entitled to one-to-one investment counselling twenty-four-seven. Which is why,” he added, “you were obliged to turn up.”
“Perfectly true,” Charlie said. “And no skin off my nose, obviously. Quite the reverse, in fact. Well then,” he went on, “I have to say that in your current circumstances the most helpful advice I can give you is, you can’t take it with you. Other than that, I’m not sure what I can offer. If you were interested in minimising your estate’s exposure to inheritance tax, I’m sorry to say you’ve left it a bit late.”
“Not strictly true,” Mr Sunshine said.
“Excuse me?”
“About taking it with me,” Mr Sunshine said. “Well, actually it’s sort of true and not true. You can’t take it with you, but you can put it there beforehand so it’ll already be where you need it when you arrive.”
Charlie smiled. “Ah, I see,” he said. “Your safe deposit box.”
“Precisely.”
“No problem,” Charlie said. “If you’ll just let me have a copy of the grant of probate and a letter of authorisation from your executors, I’ll get on it straight away.”
Tony decided that Mr Sunshine hadn’t been expecting that. But he took it well. “Really?” he said, with an admirably casual smile. “How’d it be if I signed for it myself?”
Charlie shook his head, rather an alarming sight from where Tony was standing. “Sorry,” he said. “Rules is rules. The property of a deceased client can only be released to his duly accredited legal representatives.”
Mr Sunshine looked at him. “Are you saying I’m dead?”
“Not to put too fine a point on it,” Charlie said, “yes.”
“Meaning that at some point in time I died.”
“Yup.”
“Time,” he said pleasantly, “has no meaning here. I may have died back up there somewhere, but not down here, otherwise we couldn’t be having this conversation. Jurisdictional issue,” he added, “you may want to ask your legal department about it. But obviously I’m not dead here, or at any rate I’m not as dead as all that, because when I sent out my request for financial counselling, you felt obliged to turn up.” He grinned. “Sorry, Charlie, but you can’t have it both ways.”
The thin straight line chuckled. “Well spotted,” he said. “It was worth a try, but you always were a sharp one. No hard feelings, right?”
“No hard feelings, Charlie. Now then, let’s have that key.”
“Sure,” Charlie said. “Hang on there a moment while I fetch it.”
He vanished, and the light went with him. His own silly fault, Tony heard inside his head. He was so anxious to grab a few minutes of existence he conveniently forgot about the rules, and now of course he can’t contradict himself.
“Oh I see,” Tony said. “That’s why the first thing you asked him for was financial advice.”
Too right, said Mr Sunshine. I wouldn’t want his advice under any other circumstances whatsoever, he’d just try and sell me one of their in-house ISAs. Look out, he’s coming back. Do me a favour and don’t speak unless I tell you to, all right?
Sure, Tony remembered just in time not to say.
The thin vertical line was back, only now it had a key dangling from one side and a tin box held just above knee height on the other. “If you’ll just sign the register,” Charlie said. “Splendid, thank you. Yes, and there, thank you, all done.” A table materialised out of nowhere and Charlie put the box down on it. “Here we are,” he said, fitting his key in the lock and turning it. “You have got your key, haven’t you?”
“I never go anywhere without it,” Mr Sunshine said firmly.
“Only,” Charlie went on, and the edge in his voice was like a razor blade nestling in a bouquet of roses, “I was a bit concerned it might come under the heading of, you know, stuff you can’t take with you. I’d hate for you to have to go all the way back Topside and fetch it – Oh, wait, you can’t do that, can you? That’s a pity.”
“Not a problem,” Mr Sunshine said. He extended his forefinger and turned it sideways. It grew wards, just like a key. He thrust it into the lock and twisted it through ninety degrees, and Tony heard a soft click.
“I’d just like to point out,” Charlie said, after a moment of intense silence, “that that’s not an officially approved key. Only officially approved keys—”
Mr Sunshine looked at him. “Not now, Charlie, all right? Fun’s fun, but there are limits. Anyhow, the box is open now, so what are you going to do about it?”
“I was just saying, that’s all.” Charlie took a long step back, and Mr Sunshine lifted the lid of the box. For a few moments, almost infinitely prolonged as far as Tony was concerned, he scuffled about inside the box, the way you do, pushing things aside and looking under things. Then he made a sort of soft snorting noise, indicative of supreme joy. “Here we go,” he said. “Just look what I’ve found. Two Get Out Of Death Free cards.”
“Fancy that,” said Charlie.
“Well, quite.”
Mr Sunshine held up two small pieces of card. They were edged in black and carried a pressed black seal. “One for me,” he said, “one for the waste of space over there. Just confirm they’re in order for me, Charlie, there’s a pal, and then I think we’ll be going.”
When he took out the cards he’d dislodged something else, which fell out of the box, landed on the table, bounced and dropped to the floor. Charlie stooped and picked it up. “Thanks,” Mr Sunshine said. It was an old fabric purse, very tatty, with a tarnished clasp. “Wouldn’t want to lose that, I have a feeling it might come in handy one of these days.”
The clasp sprang open. Something dropped out of the purse onto the table. It was one of those days. “Hey,” Charlie said. He reached out to pick it up, then drew his hand away sharply. “Hey, Ted,” he said. “You know better than that.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know the rules,” Charlie said reproachfully. “No objects of offworld origin to be kept in safe deposit boxes if they exceed 10^9,000,000 terajoules in shearing force.”
“No kidding.”
“That’s the rule,” Charlie said. “Anything over that invalidates our insurance. Sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to take it away with you when you leave.”
“Ah.” Mr Sunshine smiled. “So I’m leaving, am I? Jolly good.”
There was a moment of dead silence. “It’s looking that way,” Charlie said, in a voice as cold as the Tuesday after the heat death of the universe. Nice one, Ted,” he added. “You sure played me for a sucker that time.”
“Actually,” Mr Sunshine said, “I didn’t. I’d forgotten all about this little tinker.” He picked it up gingerly. It didn’t burn his hands, presumably because he wasn’t really alive yet, only existing. “Sorry,” he said. “I only brought it down here because I didn’t fancy leaving it lying around upstairs. I don’t even know what it is, to be honest with you.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Charlie said. “It’s the key to an asteroid.”
A soft thump, as the object slipped through Mr Sunshine’s fingers and hit the table. He retrieved it quickly. “You sure about that?”
“Sure I’m sure,” Charlie said. “It’s a Zg[ip{u-p’ggggg’n Technologies NPX9000 Super Plus Extra, best locking device money can buy. We looked into fitting them here at the Bank, but the thaumaton radiation they give off has a nasty habit of burning holes in space/time unless you’ve got the right insulation, so we went with Yales instead. Yup, I’d know one of those babies anywhere. And I’m sorry, but you can’t keep it here. Rules is—”
“Yes,” Mr Sunshine said. “Quite. Well now, fancy that. Of course I’ll take it with me. Sorry to have bothered you with it in the first place.”
“No harm done,” Charlie said. “Well, nice seeing you, Ted. Drop by any time, you’re always welcome.”
Mr Sunshine wrapped the object in his handkerchief – a special handkerchief, don’t ask – and dropped it in his pocket. “Thanks, Charlie. All my best to the grandkids. How’s young Irving doing, by the way?”
“Not bad, according to his probation officer. His mother thinks this time he may have turned the corner.”
“That’s good to hear,” Mr Sunshine said. “Right then we’d better be going. Come on, Tony.”
“No,” Charlie said. “I’m afraid not.”
Mr Sunshine froze. “Excuse me?”
“Sorry,” Charlie said, “but he’s staying here.” He held up the two cards. “The thing of it is,” he said, “this one here’s in date, but this one’s expired. Ran out yesterday, as a matter of fact. Just think, one day earlier and you’d have been absolutely fine.”
“Yes, but time has no meaning—”
Charlie shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “Rules is rules. You can go, but not your friend. He stays.”
Tony opened his mouth to scream, but Mr Sunshine held up his hand. “Let’s get this straight,” he said. “Only one card is valid, right?”
“Afraid so.”
“So one of us can go home, but the other one’s got to stay here.”
“Yes.”
Mr Sunshine took a deep breath, though what of it’s hard to imagine. “Fine,” he said. He put his hand in his pocket and took something out. “Here,” he said. “Catch.”
Tony dropped it, needless to say. He stooped and picked it up. The handkerchief it was wrapped in was brown with singe marks.
“Take that,” he said, “to Gina Noctis, tell her it’s the key to Dolly’s asteroid. She’ll know what to do. Well, maybe. You’d better hope she does, because otherwise you’ll be back here pretty damn quick, and then I’ll have wasted my card for nothing. Go on, scoot.”
Tony stared at him. Once again he opened his mouth, but Mr Sunshine gave him a ferocious glare. Instead, he pointed to himself. What, me? Seriously?
Mr Sunshine nodded. “Hop it,” he said, “before I change my mind. And no more turning yourself into women’s underwear, got it? That’s definitely a condition of your parole.”
Tony nodded so hard he nearly strained a tendon.
“Good lad,” Mr Sunshine said. “Well, lad, anyway. Now get out of my sight.”
Tony was about to ask how he was supposed to do that exactly, but then he remembered he wasn’t allowed to talk – And then he was falling, and falling further, and then he hit something very hard.
He opened his eyes. The something was the desk in Jenny Swordfish’s office. He was sitting, he realised, in her out tray.
A brass Zippo lighter, a cinema ticket, a packet of Oreos, a rubber band and a tuning fork.
Consuela stared at them for about thirty seconds. Come on, she ordered herself, you can do this. But should I have to? Why me? Why only me? And why does everything have to be difficult?
The key to achievement (and from achievement comes success, and from success comes happiness) is, of course, engineering for oneself a position in life where you have people to do all the work for you, while keeping the rewards for yourself. Consuela reckoned she’d cracked that one when she acquired Erica, an entirely competent little person with absolutely no personality, but the ungrateful bitch had thrown a hissy fit and stomped off, which was so unfair. Erica, she felt sure, would’ve taken one look at this chaotic assembly of junk and said, in that flat, quiet little voice of hers, Oh, that’s the whatsisname for a whatchamacallit, you fit A into B and recalibrate it to resonate transmorphically with C and there you go, and would you like me to do it for you?
I need Erica, she decided, right now. She reached for her phone and had almost finished composing her come-back-all-is-forgiven text when she noticed she had no signal. Figures, she thought; this is, after all, a Zauberwerke magically shielded vault, so inevitably there’s going to be one of those field suppression thingies. Erica would know the technical term; also the detailed specifications and how to get round it. But bloody Erica wasn’t bloody there, was she? People can be so selfish.
Think again, she thought. But all she could think of was—
“Hanuman?”
A slight pressure on the back of her neck told her that the little gold monkey was bouncing up and down on his chain. She grabbed it. She felt it pulse once or twice in her palm, then stop moving.
“Hanuman,” she said. “Front and centre, stat.”
The little gold pendant disappeared from her hand and a heavy weight descended on her shoulder. Something flicked horribly across her face. A tail.
“Hanuman—”
The monkey hopped down off her shoulder and squatted in front of her, his head cocked quizzically to one side, a surly look in his round, red eyes. “Well?”
It was the first time Hanuman had ever deigned to talk to her. Hitherto, he’d addressed his remarks exclusively to Brian. But Brian wasn’t here, was he? Another selfish bastard. “Hanuman,” she said. “What are those things in that box on the shelf?”
The monkey didn’t move. “A Zippo lighter, a cinema ticket, a packet of Oreos, a rubber band and a tuning fork,” he said. “What of it?”
“What,” Consuela said patiently, “are they for?”
“The lighter,” Hanuman said, “is for setting fire to things. The cinema ticket gains admission to a cinema, though these days people tend to use QR codes on their phones. The Oreo biscuits are nominally a nutritional supplement, though leading medical opinion—”
“Taken together,” Consuela said, “what are they for?”
The monkey scratched itself, lashed its tail, got up, hopped up onto the shelf and peered into the box. “Good question,” it said.
When this is all over, Consuela promised the universe, Brian can have him back, whether he likes it or not. “In case you hadn’t figured it out for yourself,” Consuela said, “we’re in the most heavily guarded vault in the JWW building, and the only stuff being stored here is the junk in that box. That suggests—”
“A purpose,” Hanuman said, “well, obviously. These items taken together comprise something either unspeakably valuable or extraordinarily dangerous, or both. It’s probably fair to assume,” he went on, “that these are not an ordinary Zippo lighter, cinema ticket, rubber band, packet of Oreos and tuning fork, since if they were it ought to be possible to purchase identical components in any everyday retail environment and duplicate the effect, in which case the valuable item would be not these articles here but the formula or recipe. I would take the view, therefore, that these articles are not what they seem to be.”
“I can see why Brian likes you.”
“Thank you,” said the monkey. “I shall now proceed to scan each item with an imp-reflecting mirror, to ascertain its true nature. Hold on a tick, I’ll be right back.”
The monkey vanished, then reappeared almost instantaneously holding a pink powder compact. He opened it, and held each of the bits of junk up to it in turn. “In passing,” he said.
“What?”
“In passing,” Hanuman repeated, “I’d just like to point out that I’m doing all the work and you’re just kibitzing, but that’s perfectly all right because I’m staff and you’re management. There’s a principle here, about corporate responsibility and the greater including the lesser, which is probably lost on you but nevertheless has a certain degree of validity, which is why I’m doing all this for you.”
“You never used to give Brian all this grief.”
“Indeed. You might ask yourself why. But I don’t suppose you will. What I was about to say before you interrupted is, this state of affairs is normal and usual and entirely consistent with the trope of the Hero, or Heroine, throughout human cultural history. Personally I think it sucks, but since I’m staff I would think that, wouldn’t I? After all, the Hero or Heroine is always young and sexy and well-connected, so nobody gives a stuff about the gnome, good fairy or talking animal who actually knows the knowledge and does the hard graft. I just wanted to say that.”
“Finished?”
“Yes,” said the monkey. “Now, then. The lighter is fuelled with 0.28764 millilitres of the Spirit—”
“What spirit? Gin?”
“The Spirit,” said the monkey, “don’t show your ignorance. If lit using the primitive convection system and archaic flint ignition built into the lighter, it will generate the True Flame, which burns without consuming and can do pretty much anything you care to name. There’s enough gas in the lighter to run it for three-eighths of a second, so effectively you only get one shot. With me so far?”
“Go on,” Consuela said.
The monkey curled its tail round its haunches. “The cinema ticket,” he said, “is for the only seat in the Multiverse Multiplex, which has only shown one film since the moment of All-Creation.”
“Got you,” Consuela said. “What film?”
“It’s a real-time live-action interactive documentary,” said the monkey. “It’s everything that happens in every single variant and bifurcation of reality in every single alternate universe, screened simultaneously. The film is called What’s Really Going On.”
“Cool,” Consuela muttered. “All right, what about the rubber—?”
“Band,” said the monkey. “The rubber band is made out of the essential fabric of space/time. That means it’s absolutely strong and infinitely flexible. It binds the universe together.”
“I thought that was gaffer tape.”
“Gaffer tape will do,” said the monkey, “but this stuff is better. With this rubber band, you could keep a shattered planet from falling apart, or power an Infinity Generator, or tie up God. You could also extend a moment indefinitely, always assuming you had a moment that was that good. In your case, I would tend to doubt it.”
“Yes, thank you,” Consuela said. “What about the biscuits?”
“The tuning fork,” said the monkey, “when struck against a solid object, emits the Primal Note, on which is based the ruling harmony of the music of the Spheres. In effect—”
“I like the Spheres,” Consuela said. “Though their last couple of albums have been a bit, well, you know—”
“The Primal Note,” said the monkey, “produces order out of chaos. It imposes a fundamental harmonic where otherwise there would only be random fractal collisions. You could really do with one of these,” he added pleasantly, “for your underwear drawer. Not to mention your personal life, though it’s not really my place—”
“Right,” Consuela said grimly, “noted. The biscuits.”
“Ah,” said Hanuman, “the biscuits. As far as I can tell—”
“Yes?”
“They’re biscuits. According to the packaging, they contain flour, sugar, palm oil, corn syrup, baking soda, salt, riboflavin, soya and chocolate. The last named,” he added, “would seem to me to be highly significant, if not conclusive.”
“You what?”
“Sugar,” said the monkey. “Various kinds of spice. And chocolate, which is—? Come on, do I really have to spoon-feed you with every little thing?”
“Chocolate?”
“Yes, chocolate. What is chocolate?”
“Well,” Consuela said, after a moment’s thought, “there’s theobromine, and xanthoids, a certain amount of caffeine, seratonin, a spot of phenylethylamine, naturally—”
“Not what’s in chocolate,” said the monkey. “What is chocolate?”
“Um,” said Consuela. “Well, it’s nice.”
The monkey clicked his fingers and pointed at her. “Correct,” he said, then waited, then sighed. “Fine,” he said, “I’ll spell it out for you. Sugar. Spice. Something nice. Actually, it should be all things nice, but let’s not split hairs. Is the penny starting to fall, or it is still languishing in mid-air?”
“What little girls are made of – Hang on,” Consuela said. “That’s just silly.”
The monkey shrugged. “That’s magic for you,” he said. “Nobody ever said it was one of the sensible, grown-up sciences. My guess is, if you replaced the Oreos with slugs, snails and the tail of some unfortunate dog, you’d get something pretty much the same but fundamentally different.” He paused, waited for a reaction that didn’t come, and went on: “I don’t know if there’s a particular significance to Oreos or whether a Snickers bar would do just as well, but, then again, this isn’t really my area of expertise. Of course a Snickers bar would contain nuts, to which some people are violently—”
“Shut up,” Consuela said, “and let me think.” She thought. “Well?”
“Can I stop shutting up now?”
“Yes. Well? What does it all mean?”
Hanuman sighed. “Right then,” he said. “You’ve got your True Flame, you’ve got your insight into what’s really going on, you’ve got your fabric of space/time, and the Primal Note. Suggest anything?”
“A lot of useful kit.”
“Precisely. Add to that the matrix for a girl. What do you get?”
“I don’t know, do I? Wonderwoman?”
“Close enough,” Hanuman said. “Right, I don’t think you need me any more, so I’ll just turn back into bling and let you get on with it. I really don’t know what Brian ever saw in you, to be honest.”
The monkey vanished, and Consuela felt a sharp tug on the back of her neck. She took a deep breath. So that was what it all meant. But what did it all mean?
Wonderwoman? Close enough. A nasty thought crossed Consuela’s mind, particuarly distasteful since she had a horrible feeling it was the truth. “Oh come on,” she said aloud. “You’re kidding, surely.”
A voice in her head, unpleasantly simian, whispered, Say the magic word. “What magic word, for crying out—? I’m sorry. What’s the magic word? Please?”
The packet of Oreos split violently up its seam. The tuning fork lifted up into the air and fell back, sounding a piercing note that made Consuela’s teeth hurt. The rubber band twanged, causing a breeze that fluttered the cinema ticket. The lighter’s little wheel spun a full revolution. There was a blinding flash of pink light, which made Consuela instinctively shut her eyes.
She opened them again. Through the pink burn across her retina, she saw someone standing where the shelf and the box used to be. Oh God, she thought, I was right.
“Erica?” she said.
“Oh for God’s sake,” said Jenny Swordfish. “Look, you’ve already been warned about that.”
Tony tried to stand up, but his foot was wedged between the wires of a horribly distorted in-tray. “Sorry,” he said. “But it’s not like that, really. Look, I’ve got to see somebody, right now.”
“It’s high time you saw someone, if you ask me. Trouble is, nobody here’s qualified.”
“One of the partners,” Tony said. “Gina Noctis, or Brian Teasdale. It’s important. It’s about Mr Sunshine.”
Jenny gave him a look. “What’ve you done?”
“It’s not me, honest. Well,” he amended, “I guess it’s a teeny bit my fault, because of stowing away on the chariot, though I didn’t mean to do that. And if I hadn’t been there, Mr Sunshine would be alive instead of me. I mean as well as me. It’s complicated.”
Jenny had gone white. “Mr Sunshine would be alive?”
“Yes, and he isn’t. At least he’s existing, but he’s not alive. Look, I really need to talk to Gina Noctis.”
Jenny already had the phone in her hand. “She doesn’t seem to be in her office. Look, if you’ve done anything to Ted Sunshine, so help me I’ll rip out your liver and feed it to my goldfish.”
“It wasn’t me. The second card was out of date, that’s all it was.”
Before Jenny could hit him with the stapler, the door opened and Gina came in. “What’s going on?” she said. “I could hear you two yelling right down the corridor.”
Tony explained. When he’d finished, Gina looked at him. “You moron,” she said.
“It wasn’t me, really,” Tony said. “I didn’t do anything.”
For a split second, she fixed him with the full power of the Queen of the Night. “Not on my carpet,” Jenny wailed, and Gina let him go. “Bugger,” she said, with feeling. “On top of everything else, that’s just what we need.”
“What everything else?”
“Quiet, you.” Gina took a deep breath and let it go slowly. “Well,” she said, “at least now we’ve got the key to that stupid asteroid. Oh there you are,” she added, as the door opened.
“What’s going on?” Brian asked. “I could hear you lot right down in Reception.”
Gina rolled her eyes and gave him a quick résumé. Brian sat down on the desk. “Oh boy,” he said.
“At least,” Gina repeated, “we’ve got the key. Come on, you, let’s be having it.” Tony took it from his pocket and laid it on the desk. The handkerchief was now charred black. Brian zapped it with a containment field before it burnt a hole in the chipboard. “Actually,” Gina went on, “that’s not bad. We can let Dolly out and save the planet.”
Brian gave her a stern look. “How do we get there?” he asked. “Taxi? Bus?”
“That’s not an insurmountable problem,” Gina said. “Ted Sunshine being dead, on the other hand, is.”
Brian massaged his forehead, where a headache was rapidly forming. “I’d got the impression he’s some kind of—”
“Yes,” Gina said, “he is. But he got kicked into the eye of a black hole. That, I’m afraid, will do it every time.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
“Well, now you do,” Gina said irritably. “And thanks to this object here, he’s got no way of getting out again. That’s really—” She made a noise that might just have been mistaken for a kind of sob. “Anyway,” she went on briskly, “I can’t see there’s anything we can do about that right now. Saving the planet, on the other hand—”
She stopped. A horrible rattling noise was coming from under Jenny’s desk. Gina closed her eyes. “Not now,” she said. “I’m really not in the mood.”
The rattling was coming from a steel box. It was getting louder and more frantic. “Is that Jerry in there?” Gina asked.
Jenny nodded. “He used to be in the stationery cupboard but he turned all the paper clips rusty, so Mr Dawson said—”
“We ought to see what he wants,” Mr Teasdale said doubtfully.
“Screw him,” Gina said. “He’s nuts.”
“He’s nominally a partner in this firm,” Mr Teasdale pointed out. “Name on the letterhead, all that.”
Gina sighed and hauled the box up onto the desk. “It’d be different if he ever did a stroke of work,” she said. “Well? What do you want? Only we’re a bit busy right now.”
The rattling made the desk shake. “Do you think we ought to let him out so we can ask what—?”
“No,” Gina said, very firmly indeed. “Absolutely not. Jerry? Can you hear me, Jerry?”
The rattling stopped, and was followed by four clear bell-like notes, the sound of something solid being bashed against a steel plate. “I think he can hear you,” Mr Teasdale said. “Ask him what he—”
“You bloody well ask him,” Gina snapped. “He gives me the creeps, and you know what? These days that takes some doing.”
“Fine,” Brian sighed. “All right, here goes. Jerry? Are you there?”
A boom rather than a chime. “He’s there all right,” Gina said. “Go on, then, get on with it.”
Pause; then a furious high-speed tapping. “Now what’s he playing at?” Gina said. “I knew we shouldn’t have taken any notice, it only encourages him.”
“I think that’s Morse code,” said Jenny Swordfish.
“Don’t be silly, Jerry doesn’t know Morse – No, I beg your pardon, you’re right. Sorry, Jerry, can you give us that again from the top? We didn’t realise—”
Tapping of passionate intensity, like a million monkeys with a million typewriters trying to see which of them could write the entire works of Shakespeare first. “Is anyone getting this?” Mr Teasdale asked.
Jenny nodded. She was writing very fast, in shorthand, on the backs of a stack of yellow petty cash reconciliations. “He’s probably just moaning about the air conditioning again,” Gina said. “Why is it that everybody in this office complains about the air conditioning, but nobody ever does anything about it?”
The tapping stopped. Jenny looked up. “Shall I read it to you or just tell you the gist of it?”
Mr Teasdale had some experience of Jerry’s particular brand of oratory, which reminded him of some of the livelier bits of the Old Testament. “The gist, please.”
Jenny nodded. “Mr Dawson – the other Mr Dawson – is stuck on top of a mountain and wants you to rescue him.”
Gina blinked. “Come again?”
“Mr Ahriman stranded him there,” Jenny said. “He reckons he can hang on for about three more minutes and then he’ll slip and fall to his death, and, if that happens, Mr Ahriman will take over his share in the partnership, which you probably wouldn’t like, Mr Dawson says. So if you wouldn’t mind pulling your fingers out—”
Gina and Mr Teasdale looked at each other. “Telepathic connection,” Gina said. “Something else we didn’t know about. I’ll have to have words with Tom when I see him. Honestly, that man. All right,” she added, “that’s for later. I take it we really don’t want Ahriman as senior partner?”
Mr Teasdale was too moved to speak, so he nodded.
“Me, too,” Gina said. “All right, how on earth are we supposed to snatch Tom Dawson off a mountaintop in the Himalayas in just under three minutes? Options?”
One of the drawers of Jenny’s desk shot out like the cork from a champagne bottle. It flew across the room and hit the wall. A window shattered.
“Harmondsworth,” Gina said. “I was wondering where he’d got to.”
Mr Teasdale gazed at the shattered window for a moment, then shrugged and muttered something under his breath. The glass shards flew back into place, all except one which was trapped under Jenny’s shoe. It wriggled a couple of times, then gave up. Mr Teasdale had seen that in the movies, but never in real life. “Well,” he said, “another problem solved on time and under budget. Shame it’s not the problem we were trying to fix.”
“We could have just left him there,” Gina said mournfully. “Ah well, never mind. He ought to be grateful but I bet you anything you like he won’t be. Sorry, where were we?”
Jenny was stowing the steel box away under the desk. “Excuse me,” she said, “but would it be all right if you all went away and discussed things somewhere else? No offence, but it’s not exactly the Albert Hall in here, and I do have work to do.”
“Sorry,” Gina said. “Come on, Brian. And you,” she added, giving Tony a frosty look. “I’m not sure I’ve finished with you quite yet. Of all the—”
All the lights went out. The blinds skittered down over the windows. A week’s work disappeared from Jenny’s computer screen and was replaced by a single lidless red eye against a black background. The temperature dropped to zero, freezing the dregs of Jenny’s caramel latte. A shadow in the corner of the office took a step forward and turned into Mr Ahriman, and the pale green glow from his eyes was the only light in the room.
“Hi, everyone,” Mr Ahriman said. “Don’t mind me, I’m not stopping.”
“Good,” Gina said loudly.
Mr Ahriman favoured her with a mild scowl. “I just dropped by to collect my share of the partnership. I’m leaving.”
Under Jenny’s desk, inside the steel box, there was a frantic scrabbling. “Best news I’ve heard all week,” Gina said. “But I don’t know what you mean about your share of the partnership. You can’t just breeze in here and—”
“Actually,” Mr Ahriman said, producing a sheet of paper, “I can. It’s all here in the partnership agreement. I’m entitled to be paid in full on giving three seconds notice in writing. Now I appreciate that you don’t have that much cash money lying about, so I’m happy to take my slice in diamonds.” He turned to Gina. “To be precise, the Queen of the Night tiara. There’s not much on this godawful planet that’s worth anything offworld, but I reckon I might get something for it in the flea market on Sigma Orionis Four.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Come on, Gina, hand it over. I haven’t got all day.”
“Get stuffed,” Gina said. “Besides, it’s not partnership property, it’s mine.”
Mr Ahriman shrugged. “I’m sure your colleagues will settle up with you in due course. Otherwise I’m going to have to take a third of everything, which would, of course, include this building. In which case, I think I’ll have the first two floors. That wouldn’t leave anything holding the rest of it up, but that wouldn’t be my problem. Well?”
Gina hesitated. The stones set in the tiara weren’t technically diamonds; rather, they were nine neutron stars, compressed in the event horizon of a black hole and set in platinum by Fabergé. She had a shrewd idea of the uses Mr Ahriman might find for that much neutronium, out there far beyond the stars. On the other hand, she thought, it’s a big galaxy, and if he goes away, we won’t have to be bothered with him any more. Assuming we aren’t all smashed to bits by an asteroid, of course, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. “Bastard,” she said succinctly. “All right, but I’ll want a receipt. Plus your formal resignation from the partnership, settled in full.”
Mr Ahriman shrugged. “Of course,” he said. “Everything strictly by the book, you know me. In fact, it just so happens I have precisely the right documents with me, drawn up by my in-house lawyers.” He smiled. “All lawyers end up in my house eventually,” he added, “which is handy, isn’t it?”
“Just a moment,” said Mr Teasdale. “Why the rush?”
Mr Ahriman ignored him and held out a shadowy hand. Reluctantly, Gina put a hand to her head and pulled out a hairpin. It turned into a simple but breathtakingly lovely tiara, studded with nine jet-black diamonds. Mr Ahriman took it. It slipped through his fingers and fell on his toe. “Fuck!” he yelled and hopped round the room, bumping into the furniture.
“Heavier than it looks,” Gina said. “Sorry, I should’ve mentioned that.”
Mr Ahriman limped across to where the tiara lay and picked it up. He gave Gina a baleful stare. “Not a problem,” he said. “Just give me two seconds while I adjust the gravity.” He dropped the tiara in his pocket, then turned to Mr Teasdale. “You wanted to know why the rush,” he said, “I’ll tell you. That asteroid’s going to be here any minute now, and you’re all going to be smashed into atoms. I won’t be here, of course. I’m a god, so I’m leaving.”
“Like hell you’re a god,” Gina said, rather more accurately than she’d intended. “Since when did you have any worshippers?”
“Since about ten minutes ago, since you ask,” Mr Ahriman said pleasantly. “Just the one,” he added, “in a remote area of the Himalayas. But one’s all it takes, I’m delighted to say. Sayonara, creatures of a day. If any of your component atoms ever happen to drift over into the Doghead Nebula, be sure to drop in and say hello.”
“Hang on a second,” Mr Teasdale said. “You’re a god? Seriously?”
“Yes. I’m also a god in a hurry, so if you’ll excuse me—”
Gina started to say something, but Mr Teasdale spoke over her. “If you’re a god,” he said, “you can save the planet. You’ve got the power.”
Mr Ahriman shrugged. “Presumably,” he said. “Yes, now you mention it, I probably have. There’s not much I can’t do, now I come to think of it, though making a rock too heavy for me to lift might be a bit of a challenge, I just don’t know. Nor,” he added, “do I care particularly. This planet’s always been so damned provincial. I’m looking forward to spreading my wings.”
“All right, then,” Mr Teasdale said. “Save the planet. Please. We’ll make it worth your while.”
Mr Ahriman looked at him and laughed. “Really?” he said. “I don’t think so. No offence, but my while takes a lot of making. I don’t think you can afford it.”
“Try me,” Mr Teasdale said. Then he looked at Gina. She pulled a horrible face, then nodded. “Try us,” Mr Teasdale amended. “Name your price.”
Mr Ahriman beamed at him. “That’s so sweet,” he said. “I love melodrama. You know the one thing I’m going to miss about this useless ball of rock when it’s gone? Daytime soaps. They get me,” he added, knuckling his chest, “right here.” Then he frowned. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
Mr Teasdale made a gulping noise, like a frog swallowing a screwdriver. “Yes,” he said. “How about you? Are you serious? Or are you just some two-bit bogeyman who cuts and runs the moment things start to get heavy?”
“Are you questioning my commitment?” Suddenly Mr Ahriman was different. “Are you saying I’m not—?”
“Evil?” Mr Teasdale grinned at him. “No, I don’t think you are. I think you’re a nasty piece of work and more full of shit than an effluent digester, but evil? Nah. You don’t have the moral fibre.”
Mr Ahriman had started to glow red. “How dare you?” he said.
Mr Teasdale shook his head. “You,” he said, “evil? Don’t make me laugh. If you truly gave a stuff about the greatest harm to the greatest number, you wouldn’t be taking the money and running. You’d stick it out like a man. An evil man, naturally. You’d want to be here when everything turns to steam and gravel. Nothing could be more important to you, not if you were what you say you are. No, you’re just enlightened self-interest with a thin veneer of unpleasantness.”
“You take that back. Right now.”
“In fact,” Mr Teasdale went on, “if you were really evil, you’d be out there saving the planet this minute. Think about it. No planet, no people. No people, no sinners. Right now there’s nearly eight billion people in the world, and you know what? Very few of them are Boy Scouts. They’re all out there doing all sorts of really bad things, churning out greed and malice and hate and all sorts of murky stuff. But if the asteroid hits, then boop! No more people, no more wickedness, just a cloud of space dust peacefully minding its own business. All that lost productivity. The thought of that ought to be burning you up. But, no, all you’re concerned about is saving your own tail. And horns,” he added. “You, evil? It surprises me you haven’t got a halo.”
For a moment, Gina thought Mr Ahriman was going to hit Brian; also, she couldn’t help wondering, why boop? But instead he took a deep breath, took the tiara out of his pocket, dropped it on the desk (which collapsed) and smiled. “I’m going to make you regret saying that,” he said, “for a very long time. Which implies,” he went on, “you being around for a long time to do the regretting. So fine, you’ve got a deal. All of you,” he added. “No exceptions.”
Jenny went as white as a sheet. “That’s not what I had in mind,” Mr Teasdale said. “That’s not fair. And what harm did Jenny ever do you?”
“None whatsoever,” Mr Ahriman said. “That’s the point, surely. Enlightened self-interest, huh? Wash your mouth out with brimstone and water.”
“It’s all right,” Jenny said in a small, quiet voice, as she tore the receipt Mr Ahriman had given her into small pieces. “I don’t want to be smashed to bits, if it’s all the same to you lot.”
“Clever girl,” Mr Ahriman said. “Well, it’s pretty straightforward. I save your planet for you, and in return I get your souls. Yours,” he added, nodding at Gina, “and yours, and the fat girl’s. Not yours,” he said, glancing at Tony, “I don’t know where it’s been. Same deal as I had with Tom Dawson. All you have to do is fall down and worship me. Now that’s not a lot to ask, is it?”
“Gina?” said Mr Teasdale. “Are you OK?”
“Sure,” Gina said. “Not a problem. If this tosser wants to be the Supreme Being, why ever not? I don’t suppose he’ll make a particularly worse job of it than the previous administration. You know what they say, doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always gets elected. Oh, he may set out with his head full of starry-eyed idealism about Make Evil Great Again, but once he’s been in charge for a month or so – Yes, why not? All hail, glory be and three hearty cheers. You arsehole,” she added.
“I’ll take that,” said Mr Ahriman, “as a hallelujah. That’s settled, then. So glad I could be of service.”
There was a short, awful silence. Then Gina said, “Well, get on with it, then.”
“Saving the world, dickhead. You promised. Now do something.”
“Ah, yes.” Mr Ahriman wagged a reproving finger. “But please bear in mind, thou shalt not call the Lord thy God a dickhead. I’ll overlook it just this once, because you’re only a woman and can’t be expected to know any better, but if you do it again, I warn you, there will be consequences. Right then, give me that key.”
Mr Teasdale looked blank. “Key?”
“The key to the asteroid. I know you’ve got it, I can smell it from here. Thank you. Now, then. I take it all I have to do is use this key to unlock the asteroid, and then we can get down to the serious business of rationalising this planet. I think I’m going to enjoy doing that.”
Another drawer of Jenny’s desk flew open, and out of it crawled Mr Dawson. He was covered in dust, and there was a yellow Post-it Note stuck in his hair. The drawer slammed shut. “Oh look,” Mr Ahriman said. “Come, all ye faithful. Guess what we’ve been up to while you were away.”
Mr Dawson stared at him. “Oh God,” he said.
“Precisely. Many a true word, and all that. You thought you could be rid of me by sneakily dying.” He grinned. “You wish.”
“He’s going to save the planet,” Mr Teasdale said sheepishly. “In return—”
Mr Dawson looked at them in turn, then made a sort of keening noise. “You idiots,” he said.
“Quiet,” Mr Ahriman snapped. “When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it. Right then, that’s you and you and you. Where’s that old fool Ted Sunshine? We only need him to make up the complete set.”
“He’s dead,” Gina said.
“I don’t think so,” Mr Ahriman said. “He’s a god. Well,” he added, “was a god, anyhow. No worshippers, of course, unlike some of us I could mention, so he got struck off the roll. Even so, he can’t be dead, that’s not possible. Where is he?”
“Dead,” Gina repeated. “He got sucked into a black hole.”
“Ah.” Mr Ahriman nodded. “In that case, he probably is. A black hole, for crying out loud. You’ve got to hand it to him, he always did have a touch of class. Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it, or words to that effect. Don’t pull faces, Tom, you’ll stick like it. Besides, you never liked him much, did you?”
“Fuck you,” Mr Dawson said. “He was… Fuck you sideways with a barbed-wire banana.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Mr Ahriman said. “Good heavens, Tom, what’s that I see? A teardrop? Who’d have thought it? I always assumed you hated and despised him. Considering the way you treated him, I’d have said that was a logical assumption.” He smiled. “Maybe I could learn a thing or two from you about being evil, at that. Anyway, this won’t do. Time’s a-wasting. We need to be getting along if we’re going to stop that asteroid. Let’s see, we’ve got the key. Now all we need is transport.” He shifted round slightly to face the wall, and pointed. “Appear!” he said. Then he grinned. “I enjoyed that,” he said. “It’s nice being God.”
The wall glowed blue, and a fireplace appeared. Some soot fell down it, and then a chubby man in a red dressing gown. The chubby man looked at Mr Ahriman. “Oh for crying out loud,” he said.
“Meet the new boss,” Mr Ahriman said. “Not quite the same as the old boss, but close enough for jazz. Bring the sleigh round the back, there’s a good chap. I need it to do a spot of interstellar travel, and it’s the only faster-than-light vehicle on the—”
He stopped. Something else was coming down the chimney.