by Holt, Tom
‘Cash,’ the child repeated; and then she caught sight of the JWW chequebook, lying inside Paul’s open wallet. BANK OF THE DEAD, unmissable on the cover. She looked like she had the knack of reading upside down. ‘Or a cheque’ll do fine,’ she said pleasantly.
‘Um,’ Paul replied. It had just occurred to him that, according to Mr Shumway, the term ‘misuse’ specifically included giving JWW cheques to anybody outside The Business. Given who JWW banked with, he could see Mr Shumway’s point. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘maybe that wouldn’t be such a good idea. If someone could give me a lift to the nearest cashpoint—’
‘A cheque,’ the girl repeated firmly, ‘will do just fine. We’ve got a stamp,’ she added, making it sound like a threat.
So Paul wrote her a cheque. The girl waved away the card, then took the cheque in her left hand, produced a cigarette lighter and—
‘And then,’ Paul said, ‘you’ll never guess what she did.’
Sophie yawned. ‘Set light to it,’ she said, pouring water from the kettle into her hot water bottle.
Paul looked at her. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘How did you—?’
Sophie had joined JWW on the same day as Paul; they’d found out the great secret together, at roughly the same time that they’d discovered that they were, somewhat improbably, in love. But whereas there were still mornings when Paul woke up and assumed his recent memories were the shrapnel from a particularly bizarre dream, Sophie seemed to have adapted remarkably well to the ambient weirdness. She tightened the hottie-bottle stopper and yawned again. ‘Bank of The Dead,’ she said. ‘You don’t know, right?’
Paul nodded.
‘It’s a Chinese thing originally,’ she said. ‘They believe it’s your duty to provide for your ancestors in the next world by sending them money; you buy Bank of The Dead banknotes with real money, and then you burn them, which credits their account.’
Paul frowned. ‘Yes, but surely that’s just a—’
‘Tax fiddle, yes,’ Sophie said, her hand in front of her mouth. ‘Other companies bank offshore, but JWW has to go one better.’ She opened the kitchen door. ‘You think that’s strange, you wait till you see what happens when you use a Bank of The Dead cashpoint card in an ordinary machine. Well, I’m going to bed. G’night.’
‘’Night, then,’ Paul said. He felt faintly disappointed; not that it was the most grippingly fascinating story ever or anything like that, but . . . Still; on balance, he approved of the way that Sophie could shrug off the bizarre and the disturbing, the way he still couldn’t. A sense of perspective, he supposed you’d call it, a vitally important part of being grown-up and all that stuff he’d never quite been able to master. But so long as she had one, he didn’t have to. That’s partnership for you, the Jack Sprat equilibrium. She had her own special strengths, and he—
Paul still couldn’t see what the hell Sophie saw in him.
He caught sight of his reflection in the kitchen window, and found no answers there; tall, thin, unfinished-looking young Englishmen aren’t hard to find, the supply tends to exceed demand, whereas beautiful, intelligent, courageous, resourceful, small thin girls with enormous eyes are a scarce commodity, always highly sought after, even if they do have an unfortunate manner which you can get used to very quickly . . .
Yes, he thought, ordering the kettle to boil,but. In the time they’d been together, she’d started to change. It was as though Life was an exam the term after next, and she’d already started revising, and he hadn’t. Where he still drifted from day to day, trying to keep out of the way of the more alarming variants of weirdness and counting himself lucky every time he got home in the same shape he’d left in, she— She was gettingseriousabout things, in an admirable but not entirely comfortable way. At work, she tried hard; at home, she cared about stuff like spin-dryers and radiators and putting money aside for the electricity bill; and yes, someone had to do all that kind of thing and for sure he wasn’t capable of it, but even so. It couldn’t be too long, could it, before she got sick to death of the sight of him, and—
Frowning, Paul ordered the boiling water into his teacup, then remembered that he’d forgotten the tea bag. He had, of course, assumed that once he’d won the girl of his dreams, that would be that; the story would be over, and somehow complete. Exam thinking again; once he’d passed, he’d get his little bit of paper with the curly writing and his name and grade, and then he’d have his Maths GCSE for ever and ever. Nobody could take it away from him, and he wouldn’t ever have to do it again. But there was rather more to being in love. You had to stick at it, or you could lose everything, just like that. Not fair, growled Paul’s inner child. Not fair at all.
Somehow, tea seemed to have lost its relevance; he tipped the hot water down the sink, dried the cup and put it away. (He now lived in an environment where cups didn’t live on the draining board any more; when had that happened, and how?) The kitchen clock told him it was time to go to bed, since he had to be up bright and early in the morning for the Important Meeting. Oh well.
Perched on the edge of his side of the bed (asleep, Sophie displayed territorial ambitions unparalleled since the collapse of the Mongol empire) Paul fell into troubled sleep, the sort in which the dreams are all the more alarming because you’re pretty sure you’re still awake. He dreamed that he was in something like a hospital ward, except that there were no nurses or drips or legs in plaster; a dormitory of some kind, except that all the people lying asleep in the beds – hundreds of them, maybe even thousands – were grown-ups. Sophie was there, lying on her side, dead to the world. He knew that something was wrong, but there was nobody to ask; and then countess Judy di Castel’Bianco, the Entertainment Sector partner at JWW, was standing next to him, with a clipboard in one hand, smiling.
‘It’s all right,’ she told him kindly. (In real life, he hadn’t spoken to her since his interview.) ‘They can’t feel anything, it doesn’t hurt. And it’s necessary,’ she added, with possibly a hint of remorse. ‘And be realistic; it wouldn’t have lasted anyway, you’re far too immature. This way, you’re spared the pain. It’s for the best, you’ll see that in the end.’
That made sense, apparently; so did the fact that the ward (it was definitely a hospital now) was suddenly full of children, like the ones at the garage, and, wearing white coats, they were walking up and down between the beds. Some of them wheeled trolleys laden with food and drink: cheese omelettes, strong-smelling coffee. Others were inspecting the sleepers – thumbing back eyelids, forcing lips apart with little wooden spatulas, checking pulses and drawing samples of blood. From time to time they found one who wasn’t working any more; they took them away on trolleys and brought replacements.
When they came for Sophie (‘Over here,’ Judy di Castel’Bianco called out. ‘Hurry, she’s been dead for hours’), he woke up.
The notice hanging from Ricky Wurmtoter’s doorhandle was, as usual, both alarming and profoundly unhelpful. It read BEWARE OF THE PREDATORS.
Paul had regarded Ricky Wurmtoter, the partner specialising in pest control, with suspicious caution ever since he’d taken Paul out to lunch on the day he’d joined the firm. Probably Mr Wurmtoter was just being nice; he was the youngest and most affable of the partners, looked and dressed like a movie star trying to be inconspicuous, spoke with a faint German accent and owned (among other things) a flying white horse that could get from London to north of Manchester in the time it took to boil an egg. His work mostly consisted of slaying dragons (who, being attracted to stored accumulations of wealth, tended to be a serious nuisance to museums, art galleries and banks), vampires, werewolves, manticores and other monstrous creatures that Paul had, until recently, fondly believed didn’t exist; accordingly he was out of the office a lot of the time, and Paul hadn’t had much to do with him since that initial lunch.
Paul hadn’t been inside Mr Wurmtoter’s office before, and he was pleasantly surprised at how normal it was, at least by JWW standards. Apart from a couple of stuffed and
mounted heads on the wall that would lead to a mass pulping and rewriting of textbooks if they ever fell into the hands of the scientific community, and a huge walk-in safe in one corner, there were just a plain desk, three chairs and an almost empty bookshelf.
‘Paul,’ Mr Wurmtoter said, turning round and smiling pleasantly. ‘Thanks for joining us. You know Benny Shumway, I’m sure.’
Paul knew Benny Shumway, no doubt about it. Instead of snarling at him, however, the cashier raised his left hand and waggled his fingers. Paul sat down next to him and tried to look keen and eager.
‘As I’m sure you know,’ Mr Wurmtoter said, ‘it’s JWW policy for trainees like yourself to spend a month or so in each department, so we can see where your strengths lie and you can make up your mind which area you’d like to specialise in. Now, as I understand it, you’ve done your time with Dennis Tanner scrying for mineral deposits – he’s really pleased with your work for him, by the way, though I expect you’re sick to the teeth of staring at photos of bits of desert all day – and you made a start on sorcery and magic with Humph Wells, before—’ Mr Wurmtoter hesitated. It was Paul and Sophie who’d uncovered Humphrey Wells’s treachery towards his uncle, the firm’s senior partner; Humphrey Wells now served the firm in the capacity of Xerox machine, on the grounds that the copier is the most hated item of equipment in every office in the world. ‘And since then,’ he went on, ‘you’ve been doing odd jobs for all of us while we’ve been restructuring in the light of – well, you know.’ He paused, fiddled with the large claw he wore on a chain round his neck, and went on: ‘So really, it’s time you both got back on track with your vocational training, and I’d like it if you’d consider coming and working in my department for a while.’
He paused again, clearly waiting for a response. Paul, who had a feeling that he didn’t really have a choice in the matter, mumbled, ‘Yes, lovely, thanks,’ or words to that effect.
‘Great,’ said Mr Wurmtoter. ‘The thing of it is, though, I’m going to be away on a job with Jack – Mr Wells Senior
– and it’s likely to take quite some time. While I’m away, Benny here’ll be looking after things for me, and so you’ll be working with him. Is that going to be OK?’
Like he could say no, with Mr Shumway sitting next to him. ‘Sure,’ he muttered.
Mr Wurmtoter smiled. ‘That’s fantastic,’ he said. ‘The fact is, Benny knows the pest business inside out, don’t you, Ben?’
Mr Shumway nodded; exceptional economy of movement.
‘Actually,’ Mr Wurmtoter continued, ‘if there was any justice, he’d be the PC partner here instead of me. But—’
‘But I retired,’ Mr Shumway interrupted. ‘While I still had something to retire with.’ He shifted slightly in his chair until he was staring into Paul’s eyes through his extremely thick-lensed glasses. ‘What Rick hasn’t told you is that pest control is dangerous, as in death or horrible injuries. Also, you’ve got to kill things. Strikes me you might not want to do that.’
‘Well,’ Paul said, once he’d got his voice back, ‘no, not really. I don’t think I’ve ever killed anything on purpose,’ he added, ‘not even spiders or things like that. Usually I try and catch them and—’ He tailed off. Although, obviously, he didn’t want to be seconded to the dragon-slaying department for six months, he didn’t want to give the impression that he was totally pathetic and feeble, even if it was true. ‘I don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘What do you think?’
Mr Wurmtoter was smiling again. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘here’s where Benny and I agree to differ. Benny reckons that pest controllers are born, not trained, and you need to have the old killer instinct if you’re going to make the grade. I can see his point, but I’ve always felt that anybody who wants to do this job is probably too crazy to be allowed to do it, if you see what I mean. After all, it’s not like treating wood-worm or putting down mousetraps. The sort of pests you’ll be up against are highly intelligent sentient life forms; if dragons and harpies and frost-giants were allowed to go to university, you wouldn’t be able to stick your head out the door in Oxford or Cambridge without getting it bitten off. Which is why,’ he went on, ‘a gung-ho attitude – no offence, Ben – isn’t a survival trait in this area. A healthy instinct for staying alive and an ability to sense and assess danger is what you need, together with the ability to get on and do the job when the claws are out and the flames are licking round your toes, even though you’re so scared you can hardly breathe – because, take it from me, doesn’t matter how brave you are, when you’re on the warm end of twelve tons of angry dragon, that’s how scared you’ll be. Better to have someone who knows he’ll be scared right from the start, rather than a guy to whom absolute terror comes as a nasty shock. Do you see what I mean?’
Paul’s mouth had suddenly gone dry. ‘Um,’ he said.
‘And I think,’ Mr Wurmtoter said, glancing at Mr Shumway and then looking back, ‘I think that after the way you handled Humph Wells and a really bad situation, I think you’ve probably got what it takes. Of course,’ he added casually, ‘if you really feel you aren’t cut out for the job, that’s perfectly fine. I’ll have a word with Judy di Castel’Bianco, and you can go and do your stint with her, and Sophie can come in with Benny and me.’
Shit, Paul thought; and it occurred to him at that moment that Ricky Wurmtoter probably was very good at his job. At least he had the knack of laying a good trap. ‘No, that’s fine,’ he heard himself croak. ‘When do I start?’
Benny Shumway walked with Paul back to the office that Paul shared with Sophie. Benny didn’t say anything for a while; then he stopped dead, just outside the closed file store. ‘You probably got the impression I don’t want you working for me,’ he said abruptly. ‘Right?’
‘Well ...’
‘Right.’ Benny Shumway grinned. ‘But no hard feelings,’ he said. ‘Ricky was an arsehole, springing that or-else bit on you. He knows that you two can’t just tell JWW where to stick their rotten jobs, for fear of what Dennis Tanner’ll do to the both of you for breach of contract; he needs someone to help mind the store while he’s off gallivanting for three months, he doesn’t want your girlfriend because he’s got a really unreconstructed view of what women should and shouldn’t do in the workplace, so you’re it, by default. All that I-think-you-got-what-it-takes stuff was just flannel.’ He sighed. ‘That’s Ricky for you. Of all selfish bastards, a selfish bastard who likes to be liked is probably the worst. Never mind, though,’ he added, reaching up and slapping Paul on the back with spine-jarring force. ‘You’ll be all right, I guess. At least,’ he added, with a slight edge to his voice, ‘you will by the time I’m through with you.’
‘Um, thanks,’ Paul said nervously. ‘How do you mean?’
‘You’ll see,’ replied Benny Shumway, grinning. ‘Right, about you, let’s see. Do you work out at all?’
It took Paul a moment to figure out what he was talking about. ‘Well, no,’ he admitted.
‘I see. Done any martial arts? Judo, karate, tae kwon do?’
‘No.’
‘Basic weapons skills? Fencing, ken-jutsu, marksmanship training? How are you with high explosives?’
‘Um.’
Benny’s grin was threatening to unzip his face. ‘Poisons?’ he asked. ‘Wilderness survival techniques?’
‘Not really,’ Paul said.
‘That’s all right, then.’ Benny Shumway beamed up at him. ‘One thing I can’t stand is a bloody know-it-all. How about doing exactly what you’re told? You any great shakes at that?’
‘Oh yes,’ Paul said confidently. ‘I’ve been doing that all my life.’
‘Perfect,’ Benny said. ‘In that case, there’s a fair chance that you might get through this without me having to send you home to your family in a matchbox. Finish up what you’re doing, we’ll make a start on training you first thing tomorrow.’ Suddenly, without warning, he stuck out his hand for Paul to shake. ‘Welcome to heroism.’
Paul looked
at him. ‘Excuse me?’
‘That’s the other name for pest control, fighting monsters, what we do. We’re your actual heroes.’
Paul studied him for a moment, then thought of the reflection that he’d seen in the window the previous evening. ‘Are we?’ he said. ‘Oh, jolly good.’
‘He’s a dwarf,’ Sophie explained, as they worked through the last of the Mortensen printouts (apparently meaningless computer spreadsheets that had to be sorted by date order).
‘Well, yes,’ Paul said. ‘At least, he’s a bit on the short side, but I wouldn’t go as far as—’
‘No,’ she interrupted, ‘adwarf. You know; the ones who live in caves under mountains. Fearless warriors, skilled craftspeople, really into gold and wealth and stuff. Don’t you ever read books?’
‘But—’ Paul started to say; and then he thought,Fearless warrior, well, yes; don’t know about skilled craftsperson, but he’s the cashier, so I guess that figures.‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh, right. How did you—?’
Sophie scowled impatiently at him. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s obvious, surely. I mean, youhaveread the office procedures manual, haven’t you?’
Oh, Paul thought,that. ‘Yes,’ he lied. He’d been meaning to, of course, ever since they’d come to work one morning and found two copies of it on their shared desk: two enormous calf-bound, breeze-block-thick volumes, four thousand pages crammed with tiny, intimidating print. Two days afterwards, Paul had surreptitiously weighed his copy on the post-room scales: four and a half kilos, whatever that was in real money. He was planning to get around to reading it any day now.
‘Well, then,’ Sophie said. ‘Anyway.’ She looked past him, at the far wall. ‘Is that what you want to do?’ she asked. ‘Hunt monsters, kill dragons, that sort of thing?’
Paul thought for a whole fifty-thousandth of a second before answering, ‘No, of course not. It sounds horrible and dangerous. But I don’t think I’ve got a choice.’
