The Home Secretary shrugged and lit a cigarette. ‘Of course he’s acting oddly,’ he replied. ‘He’s the Prime Minister. If he wasn’t acting oddly,’ he added, shaking out the match and dropping it into an ashtray, ‘that would be odd.’
‘You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps? You may be right.’ The Foreign Secretary swilled the remains of his Scotch round in the bottom of his glass. ‘In a sense,’ he added, instinctively.
‘Of course I’m right,’ his colleague said. ‘You don’t get to be Prime Minister unless you’re odder than a barrelful of ferrets to begin with. You don’t know the half of it. Take Lloyd George, for instance.’
‘Huh?’
‘Kept seventeen goats in the cellars of Number Ten, and when he died they found enough ladies’ underwear in his safety deposit box at Coutts to clothe half the women in China. Why do you think they passed the Official Secrets Act? And he was as rational as the Speaking Clock compared with Ramsay MacDonald.’ He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘They say there’s a couple of offices in Downing Street they just bricked up after he resigned, ‘cos nobody could face going in there. Didn’t stop him doing his job, though. Damn fine statesman. Father of his country.'
The Foreign Secretary pursed his lips. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Point taken. I just wish he wouldn’t do it, that’s all. I mean, all it takes is one of the cameras to catch him, sitting there staring into space, twitching his nose and rubbing it between his hands, we’ll be a laughing stock. And that tatty old camel overcoat with the tea-stains on it could cost us a couple of marginals in the Home Counties if we’re not careful. Remember Michael Foot’s donkey jacket?’
‘True.’
‘More to the point,’ he added, frowning. ‘Nobody’s actually heard him say anything since he got out of hospital. I hope he’s going to snap out of it soon, because keeping the lid on that isn’t going to be easy.’
The Home Secretary smiled. ‘Don’t knock it,’ he replied. ‘What this party’s needed these twenty-seven years is a leader who keeps his gob shut. Stands to reason. Man doesn’t talk, doesn’t say anything bloody stupid. If he carries on like that, he could be another Churchill.’
‘Churchill said lots of things.’
His colleague nodded. ‘True,’ he replied. ‘Nobody’s perfect.’
‘And there’s another thing,’ the Foreign Secretary persisted, ostentatiously fanning aside the Home Secretary’s smoke. ‘All this jumping off things. You aren’t going to tell me that’s normal behaviour, even for the PM.’
‘Man’s got to have a hobby.’
‘Don’t be flippant,’ replied the Foreign Secretary sternly. ‘Yesterday he jumped off a filing cabinet and nearly broke the Cabinet Secretary’s arm. If he tries a stunt like that during the EC Summit, we’ll probably end up at war with somebody.’
‘If it was France, that could be a real vote winner. Better still if they broke his arm. We’d have an excuse to take out the centre of Paris in one hit.’
‘Well...’ The Foreign Secretary spread his hands in a gesture of self-absolution. ‘Last thing I want to do is rock the boat, as you well know. But if he’s going to make a habit of biting policemen’s legs—’
The Home Secretary looked up sharply. A grin was trying to shoulder its way on to his face. ‘Do what? I hadn’t heard about that.’
‘Last night, apparently. He opened the front door of Number Ten — you know he sits by the door for hours at a time, don’t you? — saw the copper standing outside and bit him in the ankle. Then he slammed the door in his face and went and hid under the chair until his PPS came with some letters for him to sign. It’s not on, Vince, really it’s not. Someone’s going to have to talk to him about it.’
On his way back from the bar, the Home Secretary put his head round the door of his chief researcher’s office, and demanded a copy of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Natural History.
‘Something I just heard rang a bell,’ he explained. ‘Hurry it up, there’s a good girl.’
When the book came he waited till the researcher had gone away and leafed through till he came to L.
LEMMING: a member of the vole family, the lemming is native to mountainous regions of Scandinavia. Lemmings average five inches in length and can be easily identified by their distinctive yellow-brown coats with dark-brown spots. During the day they tend to sit motionless at the entrance to their burrows unless disturbed. If a human being appears, however, they become excited and indeed violent, sitting up on their hindquarters to attack; there are many well-documented instances of passers-by being savagely bitten on the ankle. Lemmings are, of course, best known for their sporadic mass migrations when, following a period of frenzied activity, they set off in huge numbers across the country to the sea, whereupon they hurl themselves over cliffs and perish.
He closed the book, steepled his hands and sat still for several minutes, deep in thought. It was, he reflected, a familiar pattern of behaviour — habitual mindless lethargy, sudden fits of uncontrollable violence, the urge to form parties and self-destruct every five years or so — and it befits a great leader to share the mindset of the electorate; it means he can empathise with them, understand how their minds work. Properly handled...
He picked up the phone and put a call through to the head of the PM’s personal security squad, recommending that bars be put on all the upper windows of Number Ten.
‘And issue the copper on doorstep duty with a pair of shin-guards,’ he added. ‘I’ve got a feeling he’s going to need them.'
‘Kevin.’
‘Yes?’
‘What have you been doing to this machine?’
>DON’T ASK.
‘I wasn’t talking to you.’ Martha glared at the screen for a moment, until Kevin was sure she was about to tell it to go and stand in the corner. ‘This is a right mess and no mistake, young Kevin,’ she said. ‘You know what you’ve gone and done, don’t you?’
‘No. That’s what’s so horrible; it wouldn’t tell me. Said I didn’t have the right clearance.
Martha tutted. ‘I’ll have a few things to say to this box of tricks before I’ve finished,’ she muttered darkly. ‘What you’ve done is, you’ve been messing about with psychomorphic waveband stabilisers, that’s what.’
‘Oh.’ Kevin looked blank, like a man who’s come to collect his car from the garage and is having explained to him exactly why a new fan belt is going to cost him two hundred and fifty pounds. ‘Is that bad?’
Martha clicked her tongue. ‘It’s not good,’ she replied. ‘What it means is that some people have been whisked out of their bodies and put into things.’
‘Gosh.’
‘And versy-visa,’ Martha added. ‘The things have been put into the people, if you see what I’m getting at. There’s people’s bodies walking about with things’ minds in ‘em, and things sitting there thinking they’re people. Well, not so much of the thinking, either. It’s a bit of a banj ax, I’m afraid.’
Kevin considered this information. ‘When you say things,’ he asked, ‘are we talking about, you know, things, like in the horror movies? Aliens from another galaxy, that sort of..
‘Things,’ Martha repeated. ‘Like in vacuum cleaners, lawnmowers, tumble driers. And animals too, probably. And maybe even statues and the like.’
‘Ah.’
‘Not to mention,’ Martha said with distaste, ‘spirits and stuff. You know,’ she added nervously. ‘Angels and ... wassnames. Doesn’t bear thinking about, really.’
‘No,’ Kevin agreed, his throat uncomfortably dry, ‘I can see that. Awkward.’
Martha nodded. ‘Awkward’s right. I mean, what if one of ‘em were to take it into his head to die? Right palaver there’d be. You’d have answering machines eligible for eternal salvation, and people going in the big squashers down the scrapyard. Your Father...
‘Don’t,’ Kevin interrupted. ‘I don’t want to think about that.’
‘He’ll have to know sooner or la
ter,’ Martha admonished. ‘Your best bet is to get the phones fixed soon as you can and let Him know so’s He can come and sort it all out. Otherwise; well, I shudder to think.’
Kevin nodded slowly. ‘You don’t think,’ he said slowly, ‘that if we found some way of putting it all right, then at least we could say it wasn’t a problem any more. I mean, There was a bit of a flap but we fixed it sounds a bit less feeble than Help help, Dad, I bust the cosmos.’
‘Kevin! Haven’t you done enough damage already?’
Kevin hung his head, embarrassed, while Martha prodded a few more keys and tutted, sounding like a busy turnstile. ‘Mind you,’ she said after a long while, ‘there must be an easy way to turn it all round. You know, send ‘em back where they came from. Now if only I could ... Computer.
>SORRY
‘So I should think. Now then, which of these keys...?’
>SORRY, MEANING NO I WON’T TELL YOU. MORE
THAN MY FUSE IS WORTH.
For a moment, everything seemed to stop. In the blue corner, so to speak, was Martha, the only person in the history of Existence to tell the Boss that his desk needed tidying. In the red corner, Mainframe, the only sentient entity in all twelve dimensions that could truly say it’s forgotten more than His Omniscience would ever know. There was enough static electricity in the air to allow Dr Frankenstein to set up a production line.
‘All right,’ Martha grumbled eventually. ‘You’re being very childish and silly, mind, and I’ll tell Himself so when He gets home, but if that’s the way you want it, that’s up to you. Kevin, pass me that manual.’
Kevin grimaced. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but actually it’s not much...’
‘Don’t be silly.’ Martha produced a pair of reading glasses from the pocket of her pinny and perched them on her nose. ‘Now then, let me see. Stabilisers, psychomorphic waveband, adjustment of: page three. And here we are... Oh.’
Kevin chewed his lip for a moment. ‘What’s it say?’ he asked.
‘See for yourself.’ Martha handed him the book, and he read:
Psychomorphic waveband stabilisers, to adjust; oh come off it, okay? You, an all-powerful, all-knowing supreme being, want us, a puny little mortal software company, to tell you how to do a simple little thing like that? What is this, an initiative test?
‘Told you it wasn’t much help,’ Kevin said. ‘Mind you, they’ve got a point. Under normal circumstances, I mean, because...’
‘Kevin. Stop babbling and give me the manual back.’ Martha took the book and flicked through the opening pages until she found what she was looking for. ‘Here we are!’ she cried. “‘If you have any enquiries that are not covered by this handbook, consult our twenty-four-hour Freefone helpline service on 0666 66666.” As simple as that.’
‘Except that the phones are out.’
Martha frowned. ‘So they are, what a nuisance. Just a moment, though. What about the payphone down in the staff canteen? That’s on a different circuit.’
Kevin caught his breath. ‘Is it? Gosh. I didn’t know that. Come to think of it, I didn’t know there was a payphone in the staff canteen. Didn’t know there was a staff canteen, either. Is there a staff canteen?’
Martha looked at him. ‘Of course there is,’ she replied. ‘It’s on level 5A. Actually, I don’t go there very often myself, because the food’s rather dull, but...’
‘Dull?’
Martha nodded. ‘Bread and fish,’ she explained. ‘It’s a subsidised canteen. But they have got a phone. And I’m sure I heard someone say it was a separate line. Let’s try that, shall we?’
‘Huh? Oh, right,’ Kevin replied, his mind still trying to decode the bit about bread and fish. ‘And if we can’t get anything from the helpline, we can ring Dad, and...’
Martha sighed. ‘It’s a payphone, Kevin. He’s in a different galaxy, remember. Even if we broke into the
Social Club swear-box, I don’t think we’ve got enough small change for that.’
‘Then we could ring the operator. Try reversing the charges or something, I don’t know. There must be something... ‘His eyebrows lifted. ‘Oh, I see,’ he exclaimed, ‘About the subsidised food.’
Martha nodded. ‘Two loaves and five fishes,’ she said. ‘Good plain food and we get luncheon vouchers, but I’d just as soon have a Cornish pasty. Come on.’
In the darkness, something scuttled.
‘You’re right,’ said a voice. ‘They have.’
‘Told you so.’
Then there was silence for a while, an absence of sound as absolute as the absence of light. It wouldn’t do to try and give an impression of how long the silence lasted, because that might create an illusion that Time worked down here. The passage of time and the movement of light are, of course, linked by Einstein’s chain. They’re a double act, effectively inseparable; Time/Light Inc. Completely remove one, and the other ceases to have any real meaning.
‘Money?’ enquired the first voice.
Welcome to Hell; which is like anywhere else, in that it has its nice bits and other bits which aren’t quite as nice. This is one of the least attractive districts, notorious for the complete absence of light or sound, smell, gravity or friction; in this part of Hell, the five senses are about as much use as an early-model Spectrum with a busted tube. The theory runs that physical agony is bad enough, but complete sensory deprivation makes being roasted alive on a bed of red-hot coals seem like wicked self-indulgence. In practice, however it’s not so much the absolute nullity of the place that makes people avoid it if they have the choice; it’s the people you tend to find here. Either they’re Customers (in which case they’ve been fairly monumentally naughty during their terrestrial existence, and are therefore probably worth avoiding); or else they’re Staff, which implies Dukes of Hell or above, since nobody with a lower-grade security code can get past the doors. In actual fact, if it’s Staff they need to be Dukes of Hell or above and either mechanically gifted or very, very thin, because the locks haven’t worked properly since Noah was a kid.
‘Of course money,’ replied the second, who, like his companions, was a Duke, Grade IV(c). ‘F equals MA squared. It’s one of the three Actually True Laws of Nature. Wherever there’s a misfortune, there’s a sum of money of commensurate size waiting to be made out of it.’
A pause. ‘F equals MA squared?’
‘That’s right. F’s the fuck-up, M’s the money, A’s the dreams of avarice. In this case, we can only assume that avarice has been eating ripe Stilton last thing at night.’
‘Well of course, if there’s money.
The last word, money, drained away into the darkness like Lake Erie into the Sahara desert; a big word, but a bigger darkness. There was a distant slithering noise, then silence once again.
‘Wonder how it happened?’
‘Who knows?’ replied the second voice, sounding bored. ‘Likewise, who cares? Look, either we can hang around here speculating about chaos theory and the enzyme of entropy in the yeast-vat of eternity, or we can pull our fingers out and go make some money. Which would you rather?’
‘Sorry? Oh, the money, definitely. What are the other two?’
More silence; only this time vaguely bewilderment flavoured.
‘What other two?’
‘You said there were three Actually True Laws of Nature. What are the other two?’
‘Tell you later. Look, are you coming or what?’
‘Right behind you.’
‘Fine. Switch on the torch, and let’s get out of here.’
‘Torch? I thought you had the...’
Brief reprise of the awful silence, abruptly shattered by the sound of a head being smacked.
And on the third day he beheld the work that he had made, and saw that it was good.
He leaned forward, blew a little fine swarf out of a freshly cut keyway and dabbed a tiny drop of oil into it with the tip of a cotton-bud. At a touch, the power feed rolled smoothly forward, running the table effortless
ly from left to right, flick switch, right to left; and as it went, the dial of the clock showed no error, not so much as a hundred-thousandth of an inch, too small a space for even one angel to dance on without tripping over its feet and falling splat on its face. Then, with an easy sweep of a lever, he pivoted the head through ninety degrees, clamped the lock and ran the table past both ways, clocking the tolerances and seeing that they were, indeed, very good. With one oily hand he reached out for the stale crust of yesterday’s bacon sandwich; with the other he set the jibs on the saddle, correcting an error of a tenth of the thickness of a mayfly’s wing, before cramping it firm with an Allen key. Power feed on; no backlash, creep or drag. It seemed to move as silently and as regularly as the passage of the very finest bespoke, Swiss-made Time; except that it could go backwards too, and sideways, and up and down and through three hundred and sixty degrees.
Oh well, he thought. That’ll have to do, for now.
He noticed something. Yuk. This bacon sandwich tastes of oil.
Which in turn reminded him that, as a human being, he was very tired and extremely hungry, and if he wanted to avoid falling over he ought to have something proper to eat and then go to bed. Indeed. Finish the job off tomorrow. Except— Except, he realised, there was nothing left to do. In a
remarkably short time he’d converted a basic Shipcock & Adley universal-miller-and-turner into a machine so comprehensively and completely useful that there was nothing — nothing — that couldn’t be made on it. Everything he’d ever dreamt of, every half-realised schematic he’d glimpsed in his steel mind’s eye, had been made real and now stood before him, perfect and ready to go.
And now there was nothing left. He could make anything, yes; but there wasn’t anything he particularly wanted to make. All dressed up and nowhere to go.
Only Human Tom Holt Page 7
