Earth, Air, Fire and Custard

by Tom Holt

  ‘Not ants,’ the professor replied, and Paul realised that they had little lacy wings, like mayflies. The professor gave up the waltz and started humming ‘Blue Suede Shoes’; whereupon the mayflies stopped dead in their tracks for a split second, and then began whirling around even faster.

  ‘Jitterbugs?’ Paul asked.

  ‘No,’ the professor told him. ‘Look carefully.’

  Not insects of any kind; they had minuscule legs and arms, they were even wearing clothes - long white smocks like old-fashioned nightshirts. Beyond question they were dancing, though—

  ‘Eight hundred and thirty-six,’ the professor repeated. ‘Is that what you make it?’

  Paul wasn’t aware of making a decision to count them; there was a moment when he quite simply knew that there were eight hundred and seventeen of them. Presumably in his excitement he said the total out loud. The professor sighed. ‘Nineteen,’ he said. ‘Too large a margin of error.’ He moved a thumbwheel on a couple of clicks and said, ‘Try again.’

  He’d been right. Not ants or mayflies, and even though the professor had stopped humming, they kept on dipping and whirling, waving their tiny arms about in time with the gap in nature where the tune had been.

  ‘Angels,’ Paul said.

  ‘Correct.’ The professor was peering down at the little brass gadget. ‘Eight hundred and twenty-one,’ he said. ‘Do you agree?’

  ‘Eight hundred and nineteen,’ Paul heard himself say. ‘Only two out this time.’

  ‘That’ll do,’ the professor said, and he put the gadget he’d been playing with back in its box and took out its twin. ‘Now I make it eight hundred and twenty-three.’

  ‘Twenty-one,’ Paul insisted.

  ‘Excellent,’ replied the professor. ‘Down to a standard deviation of two - that’s very helpful.’ He shook the pin, like a nurse with a thermometer, and went through the same procedure, holding it between the jaws of the gadget and fiddling with the little wheels. ‘Eight hundred and fifty-two.’

  ‘Yes,’ Paul said, ‘I make it that, too. Professor, how come I can see them when they’re that small?’

  Either Professor Van Spee hadn’t heard him, or he was deliberately taking no notice. He shook the pin again, and Paul realised he was clearing the angels off, then waiting for a new batch to settle on it so he could count them with the little brass doodad. This time round, Paul’s total (he had no idea how he was doing the counting) was three less than the professor’s, but that didn’t seem to worry Van Spee as he put the brass callipers back in the box and closed the lid.

  ‘Most satisfactory.’ The professor finished making notes in a small red book and glanced at the grandfather clock leaning against the opposite wall. ‘Now you must excuse me for a moment, while I use the dimensional abacus. Once I have finished the job, I shall know whether it needs retuning.’

  The dimensional abacus looked like a doll’s-house harp, only round and with very small dots or blobs strung out on the wires. There were eight of them, all different combinations of colours, like marbles; there was a silvery one, and a red one, and a blue-green one, and further back a big brown one with a single dot, and one that appeared to have a thin, sharp-edged disc round it—

  ‘Professor—’ Paul started to say, but Van Spee was engrossed in what he was doing, teasing the balls along the wires with the tip of a biro. A tiny spark jumped across the frame, grazed the edge of the big yellow blob in the centre, and vanished in a bright blue flare.

  ‘Lefkowitz’s Comet,’ the professor explained. ‘Due to collide with Mars in five hundred and seventy-six years’ time. The result would have been substantial damage to the planet, resulting in a cloud of asteroids which would have bombarded Earth. A similar collision many millions of years ago led to the ice age which wiped out the dinosaurs.’

  Paul nodded slowly; he was feeling numb from the shoulders up. ‘But it’s not going to happen now,’ he mumbled. ‘Is it?’

  The professor dipped his head. ‘A tiny alteration in the solar orbit of Neptune will cause the gravitational field of Jupiter to draw the comet half a million miles or so off its original course. This divergence will increase as the comet continues its journey; it will miss Mars by a comfortable margin, fall into the sun and burn up harmlessly. There will be some perceptible effects here on Earth - increased rainfall in the southern hemisphere for a year or two, and there will be bumper harvests of cocoa and soya beans in 2579 - but beyond that, nothing of any consequence.’

  Paul breathed out slowly through his nose. ‘And you did that,’ he said, ‘nudging the blob things round with a pen.’

  ‘In a sense,’ the professor replied mildly. ‘This instrument,’ he went on, ‘is somewhat akin to a computer mouse; by moving it, one can initiate parallel movements in the world outside. One can, for example, make minor adjustments to a planet’s orbit. It’s a modern adaptation of a very old system of procedures commonly known as sympathetic magic - the same system that makes it possible to harm someone by sticking needles into a wax doll. Simple as it seems, it is in fact a tremendously complex and involved process, requiring many millions of complicated mathematical calculations.’

  ‘Right,’ Paul said, fascinated in spite of himself. ‘Which is what you need the abacus for.’

  ‘Excellent.’ The professor’s shadowy top lip moved a touch, just possibly a smile. ‘No doubt you’ve heard one or other of the popularised versions of chaos theory - the most commonly cited example is the butterfly that flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, thereby giving rise to storms and tempests over Northern Europe. That is, of course, a gross oversimplification. However, the abacus may be considered as the equivalent of the butterfly in that scenario. The difference is that the movement of the ball-bearing along the wire is deliberate and calculated with the utmost care and attention to all possible operating factors.’

  ‘I see,’ Paul said, bending the truth like a bowstring. His head was hurting, a real Force Eight little-men-with-pickaxes job, but he ignored it. ‘So I was right, and it was you that made Neptune get out of the way.’

  ‘Of course not. I merely moved a ball-bearing along a wire.’ The professor sighed audibly. ‘Think it over, Mr Carpenter, and it will come to you, I’m sure. Meanwhile, we must retune the abacus. I suspect it may be as much as 0.0000000000000000000001 picohertz out of true, which for fine work would render it not merely useless but dangerous as well.’

  Paul knew that he should know better; but he couldn’t let it pass so lightly. ‘Professor,’ he said, ‘you just saved the world. And the human race and things. Isn’t that—?’

  ‘Business.’ A mild click of the tongue, a patient man tolerating the fact that his good nature is being taken advantage of. ‘You wish me to explain my motivations, Mr Carpenter, when we should be recalibrating this instrument. However.’ He tutted, more in sorrow than in irritation, and shifted just a tad in his chair. ‘I suppose we should clear up this issue now, before it causes problems. Mr Carpenter, the procedure you have just witnessed, one small movement of a metal bead along a short length of ordinary fuse wire, was the culmination of over three hundred hours of intensive calculation and research, and my time is neither infinite nor entirely without value. Why would I want to do a thing like that?’

  ‘To save the planet, of course,’ Paul said, relieved that for once someone at JWW had asked him a question he could answer. ‘Otherwise there’d have been an ice age, and we’d all—’

  ‘No.’ The professor was trying to be kind, but he wasn’t finding it easy. ‘For money, Mr Carpenter. To make money for the firm’s clients, and for my partners and myself. There is no other reason. One must earn a living, after all.’

  ‘Sure,’ Paul said, ‘the same way doctors get paid for curing sick people. But really—’

  ‘Not at all.’ There were tiny flecks of annoyance in the professor’s bland voice. ‘We are retained by a major food-processing and retailing multinational. They are aware that sunspot activity results in climate
change, which in turn affects the growth of crops. A glut of any given commodity allows them to reduce the price they pay to their suppliers, which means increased margins and greater profits. Since even VogMart cannot afford the cost of launching nuclear missiles at the sun, they hired us to cause sunspots. This I have done; the adjustment in Neptune’s orbit will have an immediate effect, and next year there will be the required glut of coffee and bananas. The English summer will also be the wettest in thirty years, resulting in a rash of late foreign-holiday bookings, which will justify the trust placed in us by our clients in the travel and aviation sectors. And that,’ he added, absently scratching his chin with his forefinger, ‘is all there is to it.’

  ‘But—’ Paul struggled to find the words he needed. ‘You really mean to say that saving the world was, like, a coincidence?’

  The professor’s laugh was not entirely kind. ‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘Economy of effort is the key to productivity and profitability. By choosing very carefully the timing and nature of my intervention, I was able - what is the proverb, now? - to kill multiple birds with one projectile. I told you just now that there would be bumper harvests of cocoa and soya beans in 2579. I shall still be very much alive when that happens, and my stockbrokers will still be in business. An investment of twenty-five pence now, suitably managed over the intervening period, will provide the funds necessary to buy a controlling interest in the commodities markets in good time for me to take maximum advantage of those exceptional harvests. In 2580, I shall be the third richest man on the planet.’

  Whatever it was Paul had intended to say to that, it came out as a muted whimper. The professor clicked his tongue again, and went on: ‘Finally, there is the regulatory aspect to be considered. Our industry is governed by a voluntary ethical-standards agreement. Basically, if we fulfil our quota of good works, we are left alone by government. The agreement has to be self-regulating, since only we can understand it; we work on the honesty principle, like people who leave trays of tomato plants outside their houses and trust you to put money in a coffee tin when you take some. We fill our quota, because we must, but it’s entirely up to us to choose which good works we do. And today, I have saved the human race from extinction five centuries hence. I will send a detailed report to the relevant department of the Home Office, and they will pass on my data to their scientists, who will eventually confirm, once they have progressed far enough in their understanding of astronomy, that Neptune did indeed shift in its orbit for no readily apparent reason, and that Lefkowitz’s Comet is currently on a collision course with Mars, and that the adjustment in Neptune’s orbit has obviated that threat. There, you see: three birds for my stone, all of which taken together exactly justify the expense of time and resources I have devoted to this project. In taking the time to explain these simple facts to you, I have regrettably reduced the profit element of the project by 0.413 per cent, so I trust you will agree that we should now get on with the recalibrations without further delay.’

  That was Paul told; and for the rest of the day he helped the professor recalibrate the dimensional abacus, the mode reintegrator, the ⅜" serendipity wrench, the Wogelsang Keys and the self-centring entropy clamps. He didn’t ask what any of the things did, and the professor didn’t tell him. At twenty-five past five precisely, he tightened up the locking screws on the last clamp.

  ‘Thank you,’ the professor said (it was the first thing he’d said for over an hour). ‘You will be here at nine-seventeen tomorrow morning, and we will field-strip the Emmotson projector. Your front-door key has slipped through a hole in the pocket of your overcoat, but you will find it trapped in the lining just above the bottom hem.’

  As soon as Paul got back to his office, where his coat hung on the back of the door, he checked to see if the professor had been right. As he fished the key out through the hole in the pocket, he wondered if any of the things that Van Spee had told him earlier offered a hint of an explanation of how the hell he did that stuff. Someone who could shift the orbit of a planet - And then he frowned, because it had been rather hot in the professor’s room and there had been a useful-looking electric fan on his desk; but when Paul had asked if he could turn it on, the professor had shrugged and said it didn’t work . . . A man who could heave planets about, but who couldn’t replace a blown fuse. And if Van Spee was really all-seeing and all-knowing, wouldn’t he have realised that the fuse was about to blow? Or maybe he simply didn’t feel the heat.

  He glanced at his watch, and swore. Five twenty-nine; he really didn’t want to find himself locked in, even though he wasn’t afraid of the goblins any more. Grabbing his coat, he jogged down the corridors and made it to the front office just as Mr Tanner was reaching for the top bolt.

  ‘Cutting it fine,’ Mr Tanner growled. ‘Try and keep an eye on the time, will you?’

  Paul apologised, and scuttled through the door as quickly as he could. Outside it was bright and sunny, or maybe it just seemed that way after a day cooped up in the Professor’s office, with the blinds drawn. On such a fine evening as this, Paul didn’t feel like going home straight away to his sparse and miserable flat. There was already quite a crowd of people sitting outside the pub just down the road, and his throat was dry enough to justify a quick drink. A virtual coin spun in his mind and came up heads; it was a double-sided coin, but that’s often the way.

  It took him a while to fight his way to the bar, and almost as long to thread his way back through the dense forest of drinkers without spilling his lemonade shandy. Worn out by his adventure, he propped himself up against the wall, just clear of the doorway, and took a couple of deep breaths. The warmth of the sun and the fiery strength of the shandy made him feel almost absurdly relaxed. No hurry to go home, or go anywhere in particular. Being out of the office, in blissfully normal, magic-free surroundings, was solace enough. He might even stay a while, have the other half—

  Someone dug him in the ribs, and he convulsed, slopping shandy all over his cuff.

  ‘Careful,’ said a voice he’d never heard before but recognised immediately. ‘You’re a bit jumpy this evening. Nervous about tomorrow?’

  Mr Tanner’s bloody mother. Of course it was her, even though she’d disguised herself as a slim, flame-haired enchantress in a red sundress. ‘No,’ Paul replied. ‘I’ve just got this thing about getting stabbed with sharp fingernails. Did you have to do that?’

  ‘You looked so sweet standing there,’ Mr Tanner’s mum replied cheerfully, ‘I couldn’t resist. Haven’t you got a home to go to, then?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s horrible,’ Paul said. ‘It smells of cabbage and the plumbing makes disgusting noises. What’s wrong with having a quick drink before I go home?’

  She tutted. ‘Touchy,’ she said. ‘Girl trouble.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ The reply a tad too vehement, perhaps? Like he cared. ‘Nothing of the kind,’ he said stiffly. ‘And anyhow, won’t be long now before I’m through with all that stuff for ever. Can’t wait,’ he added, trying to look nonchalant as he sipped the foam on the top of his shandy.

  ‘You’re joining a monastery.’

  ‘Better than that,’ Paul said, ‘because I don’t like getting up early in the morning and I’m allergic to bee-stings. No, it’s much better than that, thanks for asking.’

  The gorgeous redhead frowned. ‘Why bee-stings?’

  ‘Monks,’ Paul said. ‘They all keep bees, don’t they? Anyhow, screw bee-stings, that’s not the point. Pretty soon, my falling-in-love-again, heart-of-glass days will soon be over. Just you wait and see.’

  Mr Tanner’s mum shrugged. ‘Oh, you mean that recipe you found in Theo’s book,’ she said. ‘That old thing. Pure snake oil. Doesn’t work.’

  Paul’s stomach lurched slightly. ‘What do you mean, it doesn’t work? How do you know about it, anyway?’

  ‘Ah, well.’ Mr Tanner’s mum grinned. ‘I know a lot of stuff, I do. And I happen to know, for a fact, you can’t brew that muck without the special secret ingredie
nt, Van Spee’s crystals. And of course, you can’t buy them anywhere, because only Theo knows how to make them, and he controls the supply.’

  ‘That’s what you think,’ Paul said, smirking insufferably. ‘Because I’ve got some Van Spee’s crystals. Loads of them.’

  ‘Really.’ Her tone of voice cut through the smug fug in his brain like a razor. ‘Where did you get them from, then?’

  There was hardly any delay before Paul replied, ‘Oh, I asked the professor for some and he gave them to me. From a big jar in his desk. Very pleasant he was about it, but he did say not to tell anybody about it, or they’d all want some. So if you wouldn’t mind keeping it to yourself—’

  ‘Sure.’ She nodded thoughtfully. ‘Well, that’s lucky,’ she said. ‘Only, he must like you an awful lot. You know how much that stuff is worth?’

  ‘You just said you can’t buy it.’

  Scorn, intense enough to strip varnish. ‘You can buy anything, ’ Mr Tanner’s mum said, ‘so long as you’ve got enough money. How much did he give you, then?’

  ‘Oh, about an ounce, I suppose. An aspirin-bottleful.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Not often Paul saw Mr Tanner’s mum lose her cool. ‘You may be interested to know, your mate Theo gave you enough stuff to buy a four-bedroom detached house in Surrey. Pretty remarkable, don’t you think? He must fancy you, or something.’

  Paul ignored that; he had other things to worry about. True, the professor hadn’t said anything about missing crystals, so he’d assumed that the old fool hadn’t noticed. Other explanations now came to mind, most of them involving diabolical forms of retribution that took a week or so to set up. ‘Oh well,’ he mumbled. ‘Like you said, very generous of him.’

  ‘Very. And everybody says what a mean, miserly old git he is. Well, see you tomorrow, then. Take care,’ she added, as she swayed off down the street, all heels and hips, and two dozen young stockbrokers forgot what they’d been about to say and stared until she was out of sight.

  Take care, she’d said; was that just a conventional form of words meaning goodbye, or was it a warning? Maybe if he managed to get the crystals back into the professor’s desk before he noticed - and how much was a four-bedroom detached house in Surrey worth these days? Half a million? Three-quarters—?