Here Comes the Sun

by Tom Holt

  ‘Just one or two things,’ Jane replied. She dipped into her bag and brought out two copies of a neatly typed list. Ganger’s smile became a windscreen.

  ‘First,’ she said, ‘I thought that perhaps we ought to get straight exactly what it is I’m doing here.’

  ‘You’re doing fine,’ Ganger said quickly. ‘Next question.’

  Jane glazed her expression of respectful contempt to the consistency of ceramic armour plate. ‘Thank you so much,’ she said, ‘but I asked what, not how. What’s my job description, precisely?’

  Ganger sucked his cheeks in slightly. ‘We-ell,’ he said, ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m all for flexibility in these things. You know, the broad outlook, the adaptable definition, the overall view . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ Jane said, ‘I’m sure you are. It wouldn’t do if we were all alike, would it?’

  For a moment, Ganger’s perennial smile had a lot of big sharp teeth in it which hadn’t been there a moment ago; then he recovered himself. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘Well, I suppose we could say . . .’

  ‘I thought Management Trainee,’ Jane interrupted. ‘Oh, by the way, you don’t mind if I take a few notes, do you? It does so help when you’re trying to remember what you said later on.’

  Ganger’s throat moved slightly, as if he were swallowing a small plum-stone. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you go ahead, that’s fine. Well, yes, I suppose Management Trainee covers it more or less, you know, in general terms, bearing in mind that . . .’

  ‘Next,’ Jane continued, ‘I think it’s time we had a little chat about salary, don’t you?’

  The upturned corners of Ganger’s lips flickered briefly. ‘Salary,’ he repeated.

  ‘That’s right,’ Jane said. ‘I’ve been asking around, and . . .’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I’ve been asking around,’ Jane said, with very slightly exaggerated clarity, ‘and the general opinion seems to be . . .’

  ‘You’ve been asking people what they earn?’

  ‘That’s right, and . . .’

  ‘Just walking up to them and asking?’

  ‘Exactly. Now . . .’

  ‘And they’ve actually told you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jane. ‘And the impression I get, and of course you’ll correct me if I’m wrong, is that the going rate for junior management in this setup is twenty-five thousand kreuzers per annum. That seems reasonable enough, doesn’t it?’

  Ganger sat monolithically on the desk-top with his mouth open.

  ‘Subject,’ Jane went on quickly, ‘to upwards review every six months, naturally. Now, the next thing I wanted to talk about . . .’

  There was a noise from the back of Ganger’s throat. ‘Twen—’ he croaked.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Twenty-five thousand kreuzers,’ Ganger said. ‘My dear girl . . .’

  It was unequivocally the wrong thing to say. To do him credit, Ganger realised this before the fatal words were more than a few inches out of his mouth, but by then it was too late. Before he could speak again, Jane’s eyes filmed over with permafrost, and her lips set in an invisible line.

  ‘Right,’ Ganger said, in a very small voice. ‘Yes, that’s fine. I’ll see to that straight away. Yes, absolutely. Now then, was there something else?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jane said. ‘Please don’t think I’m complaining, but it does seem a bit of a waste of my time to have to commute here from Wimbledon every morning. I have to change trains twice just to get to the stellaport, and then there’s all that hanging about getting through Customs . . .’

  ‘I’m sure we can do something about that,’ Ganger said quickly. ‘I could have a word with the guards, you know . . .’

  ‘I was thinking,’ Jane said, ignoring him completely, ‘about a relocation allowance. Plus superterrestrial weighting, of course, because . . .’

  She stopped speaking. Ganger had gone a very funny colour.

  ‘Um,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m going to have to talk to some of my colleagues about that, because . . .’

  ‘Alternatively,’ Jane said, ‘I gather there’s going to be a staff flat falling vacant soon in the basement of the Weather building. I could have that, couldn’t I?’

  Ganger had agreed, enthusiastically, before he suddenly realised that he’d been outgambited. He opened his mouth to speak, and then subsided.

  ‘Just a few more things,’ Jane went on. ‘Holidays, normal working hours, pension scheme, that sort of thing. We might as well clear them up now, while we’re on the subject, don’t you think?’

  There was a long silence, and Jane could feel Ganger trying to prise a way into her mind, for all the world like a psychological double-glazing salesman. She put the chain firmly on the door of her subconscious and gave him a look.

  ‘Yes,’ he said quickly. ‘Why not? I suppose,’ he added, ‘you had something in mind?’

  ‘As it happens,’ Jane replied pleasantly, ‘yes. Now, then . . .’

  ‘The work we do here,’ said the director, ‘is specialised. Very specialised.’

  He pressed a button on the console, and the far wall of the enormous room flickered and became one huge screen. At first sight, while Jane’s eyes were getting used to the brightness, it looked blank; then she realised that it was cross-hatched with millions of tiny fine lines, connecting hundreds of thousands of minute points of pink and blue light.

  ‘Each little light,’ the director went on, ‘represents one of our clients - we like to call them clients, you know, because we feel that above all we strive to offer a personalised service.’

  Jane thought of the name of the department - Office of the Director of Star-Crossed Lovers - and felt the urge to protest, but she didn’t.

  ‘Ah,’ she said.

  ‘The pink dots,’ the director went on, ‘are our lady clients, and the blue ones are of course the gentlemen. The lines connecting them are what we call the fate-lines. You’ll see,’ he went on, pointing at the screen witha lectuer’s stick, ‘that one tends to get a few patterns emerging on a fairly regular basis. Here,’ he said, pointing, ‘we’ve got a classic eternal triangle - lovely example, this; you’ll notice that all three sides are precisely the same length. Quite rare, nowadays.’

  ‘Really,’ Jane said. ‘Gosh.’

  ‘Yes.’ The director stood speechless for a moment, transported by the geometrical perfection of the thing. ‘Remarkable specimen, all things considered. When they’re that precise, you know, the links are quite extraordinarily strong. I’m writing a paper on them, as it happens,’ he added diffidently. ‘Just a little monograph, of course; but, I flatter myself, not without a certain intrinsic interest.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Jane said.

  The pointer moved to another sector of the screen. ‘And this,’ the director said, with a glow of pride, ‘is a quite lovely example of an H/A Syndrome Major. Bless my soul, yes,’ he added, leaning forward and squinting. ‘Exquisite. Just look at those reciprocities!’

  Jane coughed slightly. ‘H/A?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s short for Heloise/Abelard,’ the director explained, ‘although there’s a tendency in some circles nowadays to call them R/J’s.’

  ‘Romeo/Juliets?’ Jane hazarded.

  ‘That’s right,’ said the director, with slight distaste. ‘But really, that’s a misnomer, because properly speaking the R/J Minor Syndrome is an entirely separate and self-contained sub-group, with its own characteristic matrix of tension. They’re quite rare, unlike H/A’s, which are quite common, in their natural state. Ah, now here’s something I want you to see. Look.’

  He directed Jane’s attention to what looked to her like a small, perfectly symmetrical spider’s web, with four or five separate points of pink and blue light flickering desolately in the meshes. Jane swallowed hard.

  ‘Classic trifoliate misunderstanding,’ the director said, ‘with an impacted rebound just here, look. They’re completely self-explanatory once you get the hang of them,
of course.’

  For a moment, Jane couldn’t quite grasp what he meant; then, as she concentrated on the spider’s web, it all became lucidly clear. The two brightest points of light were palpably the original lovers (sorry, clients), but the thread that had originally joined them was hanging loose, broken in two equilateral parts. Around each original client there was a separate web, into which another client had been drawn (the rebound, presumably), thereby creating another little separate vortex of misery for the jilted partner who should have been linked up to the reboundee. From a distance, the overall pattern was immediately apparent and infinitely depressing.

  ‘The wonderful thing about this particular formation,’ the director was saying, ‘is that, where conditions are right, potentially the pattern is infinitely self-repeating. It just goes on and on and on, duplicating itself over and over again.’ He uttered a small, weak academic laugh. ‘We sometimes say it has a life of its own, but of course, that’s not strictly true. Eventually, something happens to break the sequence and then the whole thing grinds to a halt.’

  ‘Um.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a pity, in a way,’ the director sighed. ‘It’s such an intellectually satisfying configuration, in my opinion. Not like this,’ he added, pointing at another section of the screen. Jane looked across, and saw something which immediately put her in mind of what usually happened to expensive pairs of tights.

  ‘This,’ said the director, with a perceptible curl of the lip, ‘is what we call an HBH Convergence.’

  ‘Right,’ Jane said. ‘HBH standing for?’

  ‘Heartbreak Hotel,’ the director replied. ‘It’s not a very common phenomenon, although they’re on the increase, I believe.’

  Jane peered; and again, the thing became obvious. There was one big blue dot, she observed, and lots of little pink dots, which had torn away from their ordained pairings and followed the blue dot, like iron filings with a magnet. She frowned involuntarily; she knew the feeling. In fact, she had a shrewd notion she knew the blue dot concerned. Nigel something, used to work in Accounts . . .

  ‘And over here,’ the director said, ‘we’ve got the mainframe computer, which we use to plot out the various conjunctions and configurations before we put them up on the screen. In the old days, of course, we used to have to do it all by hand. It made life terribly simple.’

  ‘You mean,’ Jane said, ‘complicated, surely.’

  ‘For the clients, I mean,’ the director replied austerely. ‘We just didn’t have the capacity, you see; with the result that far and away the most common basic configuration, right up to about fifty years ago, was the absolutely basic BMG/BMG/HEA Simplex.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Boy Meets Girl/Boy Marries Girl/Happy Ever After,’ the director translated. ‘Millions of them, all dull and boring like that, simply because we didn’t have the facilities. Now, of course, it’s completely different, thanks to this little box of tricks here.’ He patted the computer affectionately. ‘This is only the third generation, of course. By the time we’ve got the sixth generation installed and operational, we’re hoping to be able to extend our service to the entire mortal population.’

  ‘Um.’

  ‘And of course,’ the director said, ‘the marvellous thing is that the computer never sleeps. Which means that even now, when the Department has closed down for the night and everyone’s gone home, the little black box is still awake, twitching a wire here, nudging a client into adultery there, on a twenty-four-hour, round-the-clock basis. Anyway,’ he said, switching off the screen and putting the lid back on the console, ‘that should give you an idea of the sort of work we do here. We’re only a small department, but I think I can say we’re a happy one.’ He gazed self-containedly over Jane’s head at a spot on the darkened wall. ‘I always say,’ he continued, ‘that it’s one of the few departments in the whole of the Service where you can point to an end result and lay your hand on your heart and say to yourself with pride, “I did that.” Yes,’ he added, ‘I confidently expect that you’re going to enjoy working here.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jane grimly, ‘I rather think I am.’

  ELEVEN

  The village cockerel woke up, glanced instinctively at the sky and did a double-take. Funny, said its genetic memory to its motor centres.

  Little Helga (who was rapidly becoming Big Helga, but the inhabitants of the village affected not to notice) yawned, rubbed her eyes and set off to the dairy to do the early milking. She was just crossing the yard, pail on arm, when she stopped and stared. Then she dropped the pail and ran back to the house.

  ‘Listen, everyone!’ she called out. ‘Neighbour Bjorn is leaving the village!’

  There was, for the first time in the history of the family, complete silence in the kitchen.Well, not complete silence: Minoushka stepped back on the cat’s tail, with highly vocal consequences, and there was a noisy clatter when Grandmama dropped the porridge spoon; but at least nobody spoke.

  Little Helga, being young, misinterpreted the reaction as signifying disbelief.

  ‘Honest,’ she said. ‘I saw him going up the path to the top of the hill, and he had his axe over his shoulder with a big red spotted handkerchief tied to the handle, and he was carrying a huge sack over the other shoulder, and he was wearing his Hell’s Angels vest, which he only wears when he goes down to the town to buy intoxicating liquor. And the little brown dog was trying to follow him, but he kept stopping and throwing apples at it.’

  More silence. Then Great-grandfather shook his head.

  ‘It’s impossible,’ he said. ‘Nobody ever leaves the village. People come here from the outside, yes, but they never leave.’

  ‘Because of it being idyllic here,’ Great-grandmother explained, with a microscopic quantity of residual wistfulness in her voice. She had fallen in love with the village the moment she set eyes on it sixty-two years ago, but before that she had lived in Chicago, and she couldn’t help remembering, sometimes, that in Chicago they were admittedly short on idylls but hot as mustard on sanitation and running water. ‘The whole point of idyllic is, you stay.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Grandmother. ‘If he’s leaving, it can only mean he’s been unhappy here. Oh, the poor man!’

  ‘We must counsel him,’ said Grandfather firmly, rising from the table and removing his bib. ‘We would never forgive ourselves if he left and we didn’t try to stop him.’

  ‘We would have failed him,’ Grandmother added, ‘in his hour of need. It would mean we are bad neighbours.’

  Helga lowered her head and peered out of the window. It wasn’t easy to see through, because the unutterably picturesque leaded panes were so distorted with genuine age that light only squeezed through them after a severe struggle.

  ‘Do hurry,’ she said, anxiously. ‘He’s stopped to try and find more apples to throw at the little brown dog. If you hurry, you might just catch him.’

  So Grandmother and Grandfather and Great-grandmother and Minoushka and Little Helga and Lazy Olaf and Little Torsten dashed out of the house and up the hill, to where Bjorn was taking careful aim with a suitably aerodynamic Granny Smith.

  ‘Surely,’ panted Grandfather, catching his breath. ‘Surely, neighbour Bjorn, you don’t propose to leave us without even saying goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ Bjorn replied. ‘Satisfied?’ He let fly, and the little brown dog finally took the hint and retired, hobbling, to the woodshed. Bjorn picked up his luggage.

  ‘But why?’ Little Torsten demanded. ‘Have you not been happy here, dear neighbour Bjorn?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where will you go?’ wailed Grandmother. ‘What will you do?’

  Bjorn considered for a while. ‘First,’ he said, ‘I’m going to find the nearest town that’s got a halfway decent bar and a cinema that shows dirty movies, and I’m going to . . .’

  ‘Why does he want to see dirty movies, Grandmama?’

  ‘Hush, Torsten.’

  ‘Yes, but Grandmama, if the fi
lm’s got all dirty, doesn’t that mean the pictures will come out all blurry and . . .’

  ‘Hush!’

  ‘And after that,’ Bjorn went on, ‘I’m going to find out what’s happened to the sun. All right?’

  The villagers stared at him as if he was mad.

  ‘What do you mean, neighbour Bjorn?’ asked Lazy Olaf slowly. ‘It’s the sun, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with it. Look.’

  He turned and pointed at the sky. The sun, as it happened, was obscured by a blanket of cloud.

  ‘See?’ Bjorn said. ‘It’s what we call a cover-up where I come from. Somebody’s made one hell of a cock-up, and they’re keeping it under wraps.’

  ‘Maybe,’ replied Grandfather. ‘Or maybe it just means it’s going to rain soon. Rain is good, neighbour Bjorn. It makes the crops grow and nourishes the little seedlings and . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ Bjorn interrupted impatiently. ‘I used to make the stuff, okay? And I could tell you things about how we used to do it that’d make your hair stand on end,’ he added. ‘Look, just take it from me, all right? That is not the real sun. Something has happened to the real sun, and whatever it is they’ve got up there is a substitute, okay? Okay.’

  He turned definitively and started to walk away. Little Torsten wiped away a tear.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he whimpered.

  Bjorn hesitated slightly, and then quickened his stride. Little Torsten started to cry.

  ‘Please don’t go,’ he wailed through his tears. ‘Even though you’re grumpy and bad-tempered sometimes, and you never have a kind word for anyone and never help anyone out and never say thank you when Aunt Gretchen gives you griddle-cakes and you get drunk on Wednesday nights and go around being sick in people’s hanging baskets and you’re cruel to animals and you tread on the flowers round the village pump and you never go church and you haven’t paid your contribution to the poor relief fund for three years and you park your cart in Uncle Gustav’s parking space and you steal the food we leave out for the poor blind boy and you cheat at dominoes and you cut down Grandmama’s cherry tree for no reason at all and when she complained you called her a rude word and you leave empty crisp-packets all over everyone’s front gardens and you trod on my toy horse once and when I cried you laughed at me and Hilda says you’ve got the manners of a warthog and the weeds from your garden blow out all over Uncle Carl’s potato patch and you put vodka in Big Peter’s orange juice at his wedding and Uncle Christian swears blind you’ve moved your back fence three feet over into his garden and you drew a moustache on the picture of the Blessed Virgin in the little white chapel, we still love you.’