by Tom Holt
He put the tape in the tray for Clerical to collect and sighed. Everyone was going to blame him, and it really wasn’t his fault. Never mind, it couldn’t be helped. Nothing can be helped, ever. He shuffled about in his in-tray, looking vainly for something he felt he could manage to cope with.
‘Hi.’
He looked up, and saw Ganger, in his usual stance, half-in and half-out of the doorway.
‘Happy birthday,’ Ganger said. ‘I got you something.
Quite fun.’
He threw a small parcel through the air. Staff caught it and, feeling rather self-conscious, unwrapped it.
‘Thank you,’ he said, after a long pause for inspection. ‘It’s really, er.’
Ganger smiled. ‘There’s a leaflet inside the box,’ he said, ‘which explains what it is.’
‘Ah.’
He found the little piece of paper and unfolded it.
BLANK PAPAL BULL, it read. FOR YOU TO EXCOMMUNICATE THE PERSON OF YOUR CHOICE.There followed two columns of instructions in small print.
‘The receipt’s in there too,’ Ganger said. ‘If you don’t like it, you can change it. What’s the plan?’
‘Ah yes,’ said Staff, putting the box carefully away in his top desk drawer. ‘I’ve been thinking about that.’
‘Me too,’ Ganger said.
‘What I’d decided,’ Staff went on, raising his voice slightly, ‘is something a little bit less risky this time, something more straightforwardly administrative. I mean, we don’t want to put her off by just giving her crises to sort out, do we?’
‘All right,’ Ganger said, sitting on the corner of the desk and picking up the Executive Present. ‘What had you in mind? Hey, a mate of mine’s got one of these. They’re very good if you can get them properly tuned in.’
‘Yes,’ Staff replied firmly. ‘I was thinking of Records.’
Ganger gave him a look. ‘Oh come on,’ was all he said. The rest could easily be implied from context.
‘Yes, I know,’ said Staff. ‘But we don’t want to give her the wrong impression, do we? I mean, seventy per cent of what we do is just plain, unexciting clerical work; sorting papers, answering queries, filing, ordering, that sort of thing . . .’
He stopped. There was something extremely inscrutable about Ganger’s usually mobile face. ‘Maybe you’re right, though,’ said Staff quickly. ‘We can put her on that later. How about a tour of duty on Earthquakes?’
Ganger shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you’re right. Absolutely. No, don’t bother to get up, I’ll deal with it. I’ll let her know straight away.’
He stood up, pressed a switch on the side of the present that Staff had completely overlooked, and left the office. As he closed the door, a few wafer-thin rose-petals formed spontaneously in mid-air and drifted floorwards. When they touched the carpet, they melted like snowflakes.
‘Records,’ said Staff aloud. ‘Records.’
A small red light suddenly appeared on the side of the present, then it went out again. Staff spent the next quarter of an hour staring at it and then covered it up with an office circular.
‘Records,’ he said a third time. ‘Records. Beats me.’
‘It’s very simple when you get used to it,’ said Norman, the supervisor. ‘Once you’ve been here a few months, you’ll find the work is pretty straightforward.’
Jane nodded. First impressions, she knew, can be deceptive, but it looked to her as if straightforward was putting it mildly. As far as she could judge, it consisted of picking the envelopes out of the trolley, reading the number stamped on the side, taking the envelope to the appropriate shelf and leaving it there. She could, she decided, do it in her sleep; in fact, that would probably be the best way to approach it.
‘If you need any help,’ Norman was saying, ‘just ask.’
Thanks, said Jane to herself under her breath; the sort of help I’m going to need here is not the sort you’re likely to be able to supply. She smiled, and headed for the trolley.
On her seventeenth visit to the shelves, she collided gently with a bespectacled male person, who fell against a shelf, dislodging its contents.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said the person. ‘These things tend to happen in an infinite universe. By the way, you’re standing on my foot.’
‘Oh. Sorry.’
‘Not at all. Thank you, that’s much better. Do please continue with what you were doing while I laboriously put all this lot back.’ He scowled at her, and stooped wearily down.
‘Please,’ said Jane through stiff lips. ‘Let me help you.’
The person gave her a prickly smile. ‘How excessively kind of you,’ he said. ‘Gosh, how original of you! For years now, I’ve been putting them in numerical order, but you’re quite right. Think what an exciting challenge it’ll be for the researchers if they’re all jumbled up together like that.’
Jane drew in a half-lungful of breath and started again, while the person looked at her.
‘You’re mortal, aren’t you?’ he observed.
‘Yes,’ Jane replied. She stood on tiptoe to replace 26576768/766543765/2308J/3C.
‘Do pardon my saying this,’ the person said, ‘but wouldn’t you perhaps find it rather more - conducive, let’s say - back on Earth with all the other, er, people? I understand,’ he added, ‘that there’s plenty of room for everyone down there. Up here, on the other hand, it’s a touch on the cramped side, if you’re not used to looking where you’re going.’
For a moment Jane stood with her mouth open; then it occurred to her that she should have prepared herself for this sort of thing. Since she hadn’t, she determined to ignore it.
‘Not really,’ she replied, therefore. ‘In fact, it’s pretty much the same up here as down there I find. Would you be very sweet and put this one back up on the top shelf for me? I can’t quite reach.’
The person glowered at her, and then complied. ‘It’s been a funny old day so far,’ he observed, groaning as he stretched. ‘I overslept, arrived here late, found that someone had moved my trolley, forgot my sandwiches, slipped on the polished floor and bruised my knee, and now I’ve been knocked to the ground and trampled underfoot by a mortal, and it’s still only ten-thirty.’
Jane allowed herself a smile. ‘That’s unusual here, is it? Sounds like an ordinary day where I come from.’
The person raised a corner of his mouth. If hyaenas are dogs, it was a smile. ‘So I’d gathered,’ he replied. ‘In fact, I understand you people have a special word for it. Life, or something like that.’
‘Fancy you knowing,’ Jane replied. ‘Thank you so much for your help.’
At a quarter past eleven there was a coffee break. To her disgust, Jane found that Departmental coffee tasted very much like the coffee she was used to at home, except that it had even more chicory in it. Her back hurt and her mind had got pins and needles in it for want of activity. For the first time ever she began to wonder whether data inputting at Burridge’s had been quite as horrible as she’d thought.
‘My word,’ said the person, suddenly appearing behind her shoulder as she drained her coffee down to the silt. ‘What a lot you’ve managed to get done.’
In spite of herself, Jane felt pleased. She wanted to say, ‘Of course I have; I’m a mortal, after all,’ or something equally inflammatory, but she very sensibly didn’t. Instead she made vague and quiet thanking noises.
‘Beats me how you can do it so fast,’ the person went on, ‘ordering them, stacking them, and writing the numbers up in the Register.’
Inside Jane’s heart, something small but not entirely trivial broke. ‘What Register?’ she asked.
The person smiled, properly this time. ‘The Master File Register,’ he replied. ‘Didn’t they tell you about it? You write down the number of the file, and what shelf it’s on, and under which section of the shelf, and other things like that. Otherwise, you see, the researchers won’t have the faintest idea . . .’<
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‘Thank you,’ said Jane. ‘I see. Nobody did mention it, actually, but I suppose I should have worked it out for myself.’ She put her cup down on its saucer. ‘I suppose I’d better go back and do that, hadn’t I?’
‘That would be a splendid idea,’ the person agreed. ‘Oh, by the way. Aren’t we forgetting something?’
Jane stopped still and turned her head slowly. ‘Are we?’ she said. ‘Sorry, we didn’t mean to.’
‘Thirty zlotys for the coffee,’ said the person sweetly. ‘We always put the money in that tin on the shelf there.
It helps,’ he added, ‘to avoid bad feeling and disruptive outbursts of temper.’
Jane sighed. ‘That’s a nuisance,’ she said. ‘You see, I’ve only got terrestrial money. I don’t suppose they accept that here, do they?’
The person shook his head. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I mean, yes, it’s the thought that counts, but it doesn’t actually buy a new catering-size tin when the present one runs out. Let me,’ he added unpleasantly, ‘lend you thirty zlotys until you get paid.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
The person, having watched carefully while she put the money in the tin, walked away, leaving her to scream silently in peace and quiet. Then she found Norman and asked him to explain properly about the Register.
There was a crash. The four intruders stopped dead in their tracks, or at least they tried to. Alcohol, however, tends to enhance momentum. They fell over each other. In the far distance a dog barked, then fell silent.
‘Mind where you’re putting your bloody feet next time,’ Darren hissed. ‘There’s guard dogs about. I heard one.’
‘Bollocks,’ Jason hissed back. ‘Haven’t had dogs here for years. Cutbacks. Didn’t you know?’
Darren shrugged and fumbled in his pocket for the key to the hangar which he’d lifted off the hook four hours earlier. He was still worrying about the possibility of dogs, but he wasn’t going to let his mates see he was worried. He had his cloud credibility to think about.
The lock clicked and he pushed hard on the door. As it rolled back a single piercing ray of light speared out into the blackness. Jason hurriedly threw himself against the crack.
‘You prat,’ he snarled. ‘All that bullshit about dogs and then you nearly let the light show. What a wally!’
The four adventurers squeezed through the crack and then drew the door to behind them.
Inside the hangar it was, of course, as bright as day; in fact, very considerably brighter. For a moment they all stood dumbfounded by the sight; even Darren, who worked in the shed during the day, had never been this close to the thing before. It was enough to fry your brains.
Dave was the first to break the silence, and he did it with a nervous giggle.
‘Oh come off it,’ he said. ‘We’re never going to be able to fly this thing.’
It was intended merely as an observation, but somehow it got badly mutated on its way out past the gate of Dave’s teeth, and by the time it reached Jason’s ears it was a challenge with a strong superficial likeness to a taunt.
‘You reckon,’ Jason said. ‘Watch this, then.’
‘I didn’t mean . . .’ Dave started to say, but his friend was already halfway up the ladder towards the cockpit. There was nothing for it but to follow.
‘I’m beginning not to like this,’ observed a voice from the foot of the ladder. ‘Why don’t we just forget about it and do something else? We could go and smash up a few phone boxes or something instead.’
‘You’ve lost your bottle,’ Jason sneered. ‘You haven’t got the nuts, have you?’
‘No,’ replied Adrian, with a remarkable note of sobriety in his voice. ‘Not for this I haven’t, anyway.’
Dave and Darren paused on the ladder because this was somewhat disturbing. It was commonplace in their social circle that Adrian played the complete head-case, afraid of nothing. His favourite way of letting off steam, it was widely rumoured, was spray-painting graffiti on the sides of moving asteroids. If Adrian didn’t fancy it, the chances were that there was an element of risk.
‘Stuff you, then.’ Jason’s voice drifted down from the top of the ladder, but it sounded far away and hollow. He had clearly found out how to get into the cockpit. ‘Hey, those morons left it unlocked. What a load of pillocks, huh?’
‘Nobody gives a toss,’ Dave agreed, but his thoughts were elsewhere. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all. It really was very big, very big indeed.
‘Gotcha!’ There was triumph in Jason’s voice, and the other three exchanged glances. ‘You coming, Ade, or not?’
Adrian paused for a moment; then he shrugged and shinned quickly up the ladder. He wasn’t afraid any more - it had gone past that stage - and he was very curious to find out what was going to happen. ‘Coming,’ he said.
‘Only if you’re not going to bottle out,’ Jason shouted back. ‘’Cos if you suddenly get scared, I’m not stopping, right?’
‘Get stuffed,’ Adrian replied, and from his tone of voice the others could tell that he was himself again: the same Adrian who thought nothing of playing Chicken on the edge of Time. ‘We’ll see who shits himself first, my son.’
Jason grinned. He was sitting in the pilot’s seat, trying to guess which controls did which. He hadn’t, he realised, the faintest idea.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘How do you make this thing go?’
Adrian shrugged. ‘I dunno,’ he said, and leaned forward. ‘Let’s try this.’ He sprawled his hand out into a pink fan and pressed as many buttons as he could.
‘Don’t do that, you luna . . .’ Dave started to scream, then his mouth went dry and his tongue became inextricably welded to his palate. The hangar had suddenly become filled with the most agonising light, and all around them they could feel the pulsing of a planet-sized engine.
‘Switch it off, for fuck’s sake!’ Dave yelled, but nobody moved. They were all paralysed with terror, and besides, it was painfully apparent that it was too late now. The thing was beginning to move.
Slowly at first; then, as it built up momentum slipping down the ramp, very fast, then faster and faster still. As if in a dream, Dave noticed that the hangar doors were firmly shut. But the chances were, he felt, that that wasn’t going to make much difference. In fact, it was extremely doubtful whether anything was ever going to make any difference ever again.
The four joy-riders had just enough self-possession left to hurl themselves to the floor of the cockpit as the giant machine ploughed through the diamond-and-titanium doors of the hangar like a bullet through a bubble, left the ramp, hung for an everlasting fraction of a second in mid-air, and then began to drop like a very large stone. Then the engines fired.
It is at such moments that essential character, distilled and compressed, is most easily observed. Dave and Darren both howled ‘Shiiiiiiiiiiiiit!’ and tried to squash themselves into the same small space under the computer console. Jason sat flattened against the back of the pilot’s chair, his face apparently splattered across the front of his head in an expression of sheer horror that would be worth millions to an ambitious film producer. Adrian grabbed wildly for the joystick, and pulled.
The sun checked itself, seemed to hesitate, and then lifted.
The sun rose.
‘Where is it now?’ Staff demanded.
There was silence at the other end of the wire.
‘Well?’
‘Well,’ said the voice, and Staff could feel the effort of self-control running up through the wire. ‘You know that sort of lacy constellation just under the armpit of Sagittarius? Like an ammonite with woodworm, I always think. It’s out there.’ A pause. ‘Somewhere.’
Staff let the hand with the phone in it wilt. Disasters he could cope with - anyone whose days are spent in any form of high-level administration gets withdrawal symptoms without at least one disaster before breakfast - but there are limits. His lips went through the motions of repeatin
g the word Somewhere, but his larynx wanted no part of it.
‘You still there, Chief?’ said the voice.
He put the phone back by his ear. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Look, I know this is a damn silly question, but I owe it to myself to ask. Is there any chance whatsoever of getting it back?’
‘None, Chief. Sorry.’
Staff winced like a salted slug. ‘Right. Fine. Thanks for letting me know.’
The line crackled a bit. ‘So what do we do now, Chief ?’ said the voice nervously.
Staff sighed. ‘Heaven only knows,’ he said, and put the phone down.
He was, of course, lying.
Jason was worried.
He had good reason to be. He was a long way from home, his companions had blacked out - for good, by the looks of it - the fuel gauge was deep into the red bit on the far left-hand side of the dial, and there was a funny rattling noise coming from under the bonnet. The only good thing about running out of fuel, as far as he could see, was that when it happened, then the bloody thing would slow down and perhaps even stop. He had been trying to make it do that for some time.
The monotony of the view from the cockpit window didn’t improve matters. It had been as black as two feet up a chimney for the last forty million light years, and that sort of thing can get to you once the effects of the beer start to wear off. To put the tin lid on it, he found that he’d run out of cigarettes.
And then he saw the light; just a tiny little pinprick, far away in the distance, but definitely light. For a few seconds he was elated, until he remembered that (a) light didn’t necessarily connote safety or help, and (b) even if it did, he couldn’t steer the damned thing towards it anyway.
He needn’t have been concerned. The engine chose that moment to drain the last drop of fuel in the backup reserve emergency tank, and the sun decelerated and started to drift. A few minutes later, the gravitational field of whatever that bright thing over there was started to have effect, and the whole contraption slowly turned and started to travel towards the light. Jammy.
The light was a star. The star had a planet; you could see it from light years away. It was big and bright, and blue with the most incredible oceans Jason had ever seen. It was, he realised with a leap of the heart, inhabited. And he was headed straight for it, at a nice slow drift. He’d have called it Destiny if it wasn’t for the fact that he’d worked there for six months and knew how it really worked; so he called it bloody good luck instead.
