by Tom Holt
The phone rang.
‘This is Sylvia from Mainframe Base, as if you didn’t know,’ it said. ‘We’re still waiting. However much longer is it going to take you?’
‘My name’s Jane. I’ve only been in this . . .’
‘And another thing,’ the voice continued. ‘You promised faithfully you’d let me have the Directory back when you’d finished with it, and that was three weeks ago. Now I suppose you’ve gone and lost it. Again.’
‘. . . In this office a week and I haven’t the faintest . . .’
‘Don’t give me that, dear. Unless it’s here, on my desk, with the reports filed to date, in the next forty-five minutes, I’m going to have to file a Blue. I’m sorry if that seems aggressive of me, but you don’t really leave me any choice.’
Line dead. Shrug. Now then, what on earth is this big green thing meant to be? Which way up, for a start?
‘Excuse me.’
Jane looked round, startled. Apart from the lost, violent souls on the other end of the telephone line, nobody except the tea lady had spoken to her since she’d started there. Most of the time the other people in the long, echoing hall yelled into their telephones and slammed them down again. For all she knew, they were the people who kept phoning her up.
‘Sorry to bother you, but do you think you could possibly explain something? You see, I’m new here.’
The person, once located, turned out to be a small, wispy female who looked as if she’d last eaten back when mammoth steak meant just that. Odds on there was a face somewhere behind those spectacles, but probably not a face of particular relevance to anything. Jane felt a brief pang of sympathy.
‘I’ll try,’ she said, ‘but I doubt it, really. You see, I’m new here myself, and nobody’s told me . . .’
‘Oh, but you must know more than me,’ replied the girl. ‘You see, I’ve only been here two years, so . . .’
She tailed off. Obviously she didn’t like the look of the way Jane was goggling at her, like an amateur swordswallower faced with a chainsaw.
‘Two years?’ Jane said. ‘And you still . . . ?’
‘Haven’t got the foggiest idea about anything, I’m afraid,’ the girl replied, clearly deeply ashamed of herself. You could tell that from the fact that her fingernails were the least pink bit of her. ‘Not a clue, honestly,’ she added.
‘But . . .’ Jane pulled herself together. ‘But what do you do all day, for pity’s sake? I mean, you must do something. ’
The girl nodded. ‘Mostly,’ she said, ‘I answer the phone. I’m not terribly good at it, though, because I never know the answer to anything anybody ever asks me. I’m a bit worried about that. There’s someone called Darren in something called Forward Budgeting who’s been calling me every day for the last eighteen months, and . . .’
‘I know him,’ Jane interrupted. ‘Wants it on his desk by two-fifteen or there’ll be trouble.’
The girl smiled apprehensively. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that’s him.’
‘And then he rings off without telling you what.’
‘Yes, um.’
‘Fine.’ Jane breathed in slowly and deeply. ‘And nobody else you’ve asked can help you?’
The girl frowned. ‘Oh, I haven’t asked anyone else,’ she replied. ‘I mean, they all look so busy, I was afraid to bother them. I only asked you because you look, well . . .’ The girl trailed off; her fingernails now looked positively anaemic.
Jane looked around the room. It was true that, apart from herself and the girl, everyone else did look extremely busy. Mostly they were shouting into telephones and then banging them down; and when they weren’t doing that, they were frantically rummaging through the coloured bits of paper on their desks, looking for something.
‘Just out of curiosity,’ Jane asked, ‘what did they take you on as?’
‘Computer operator,’ replied the girl. ‘Only the computer doesn’t seem to work, does it?’
She nodded her head at the VDU on the top of Jane’s desk. After the third day, when she still hadn’t been able to get the bloody-minded thing to do anything more constructive than flash its lights at her and display the words Hi! All rights protected!, she’d followed what appeared to be the general practice of the office and converted the thing into a plastic cup stand. Some VDU’s, she had observed, had several months’ deposit of cups on top of them, which made the office look like a stalagmite farm.
‘What is this office, anyway?’ Jane asked. ‘Someone told me when I first came here, but I’ve forgotten what they called it. It didn’t seem to mean anything much.’
‘Oh, we’re Processing,’ the girl replied, with a hint of crazy pride in her voice. ‘I think we’re terribly important, or else why do people from other offices keep ringing us up all the time? Oh, do excuse me.’ She looked away and answered the telephone on her desk. Jane didn’t need a vast amount of imagination to reconstruct the conversation from the side of it she could hear.
‘Let me guess,’ she said, as the girl lowered the receiver. ‘That was Dave from Throughput, and unless it’s in his tray by three o’clock, the world’s going to end.’
The girl stared at her. ‘So you do know what’s going on,’ she gasped.
Jane shook her head. ‘I’m just a good guesser,’ she replied. ‘Look, instead of just sitting here like a couple of decoy pigeons, why don’t we go and find someone and ask them? Someone who does know, I mean.’
The girl looked at her as if she’d just suggested tarring and feathering the Pope. ‘What, leave our desks?’ she said. ‘I don’t think we’re allowed.’
‘Oh, I think we are,’ said Jane firmly.
‘But . . .’ The girl shot her a look of pure terror; the sort of look one unborn twin might give to the other if it suggested going up the passageway instead of down. ‘What if the phone were to ring while we’re away?’ she quavered. ‘I mean, there’d be nobody to answer it.’
Jane shook her head. ‘Highly unlikely,’ she said. ‘And even if it did ring, how would anyone ever know? You see, there’d be nobody to hear it.’
‘The person at the other end would know,’ replied the girl, her lower lip quivering. ‘Wouldn’t they?’
‘Their word against ours,’ Jane said fiercely - indeed, Henry V couldn’t have said it better. In this mood, not only would Jane have had them into the breach once more, she’d have made them wipe their feet first. ‘Come on.’
Without looking at her colleague, she grabbed her handbag, stood up, and began to walk in the direction she believed was most likely to be north.
‘Wait for me!’ the girl gasped behind her. ‘If you leave me behind I might get lost.’
‘Keep up, then,’ Jane said. ‘And follow me.’
Although she was only dimly aware of it herself, one of Jane’s greatest strengths was her ear for the right choice of words to suit any given situation. Thus, when at last they came upon a man sitting at a desk who wasn’t talking on the phone, some internal word selection system put the magic phrase into her mouth without her having to think at all.
‘All right,’ she said, ‘where is he? I want to talk to him now.’
The man looked up at her, terrified. ‘You can’t,’ he replied. ‘He’s in with Them.’
Jane tightened the focus of her ferocious expression. ‘How long’s he been in there?’
‘Twenty minutes,’ the man replied. ‘Half an hour. Forty minutes. At least.’
Jane breathed out; and if her breath didn’t consist of bluehot flame, it was only because of the No Smoking sign. ‘Which room’s he in? Come on, I haven’t got all night.’
‘Number Five.’ The man pointed. As Jane turned her head to follow the line he was indicating, his phone rang, and he dived for it like a drowning man after a lifebelt. Two-thirds of a second later, he was shouting at someone.
‘Right,’ Jane said, and she beckoned to her acolyte. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere. Come on.’
The girl stood rooted to the spot. ‘Bu
t we can’t,’ she said. ‘He’s in with Them, the man just said.’
Jane turned her head and smiled. ‘Do you have any idea who he is?’
The girl shook her head.
‘Me neither,’ said Jane smugly. ‘And what about Them? You know who They are?’
‘No.’
‘Well then,’ Jane replied briskly. ‘What you don’t know about can’t hurt you. Well-known fact. Coming?’
She marched up to the door, which had a big, slightly grubby ‘5’ on it, knocked twice, and pushed open the door.
Then she stopped.
She was standing in a restaurant.
Furthermore, she was wearing a black skirt, shiny with age and the condensation of greasy food and sweat, topped by a white blouse and a pinny whose origins at least were decorative. She was holding a tray with three heaped plates of pasta on it. The door behind her closed.
‘C’mon, for Chrissakes,’ shouted a fat man, one of six fat men sitting round a table with a red and white checked tablecloth on it. ‘There’s people starving to death.’
‘I know,’ said a voice which Jane recognised as her own. ‘Half the population of the Sudan, for a start. This lot’d keep most of them fed for a week, though it wouldn’t do their arteries any good.’
Twelve round piggy eyes stared at her. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Who’s having what?’
For six weeks, a long time ago now, Jane had been a waitress, in a Little Chef on a ring-road south of Nottingham. Six weeks was all she’d been able to take, because she’d come to the conclusion that feeding fattening food to fat people is basically immoral; but while she’d been there, she’d learned. How to balance seven plates at once while clearing up after a small child who’s been sick after three consecutive knicker-bocker glories; how to serve a fried breakfast to three lorry-drivers who were trying to look down the front of her blouse, without hitting them with the ketchup bottle; how to watch thirty-seven eggs being fried simultaneously in dirty fat without becoming a vegan. She knew the ropes.
‘Um,’ said the fattest fat man, and pointed vaguely. Jane deposited the plates, turned on her heel and walked away as quickly as she could. Before she could make it to the door she’d come through, however, she nearly collided with a four-foot-high black-haired woman with her hands on her hips, who stood blocking her way.
‘Listen,’ the woman hissed, ‘’cos I’m only saying this once. Don’t sass the customers, right? Now, there’s two lasagnes over by the window.’
As if in a dream, Jane allowed herself to be diverted into what had to be the kitchen, where she found two plates of lasagne waiting for her. She picked them up and carried them to their recipients, who thanked her.
‘Next,’ the fattest man was saying, ‘policy. Anybody got anything to say about policy, guys?’
‘It’s a great policy we got there, Rocky.’
‘Yeah, don’t let’s fool around with it, it’s working just fine.’
Jane’s feet, meanwhile, had walked her back into the kitchen, where she took delivery of three portions of veal. There was a lot of cream on the veal, she noticed; in fact, if the proprietor of this restaurant took to buying his dairy products from Europe in future, there was a fair chance that the Common Agricultural Policy might make it after all. Jane frowned.
‘Table for six,’ hissed the short woman in her ear, ‘and don’t get fresh.’
‘I thought you were only going to tell me once,’ Jane replied, and darted through the door before a reply could be mustered.
‘Stocktake,’ the fattest man was saying. ‘Anybody know if we got any stock, fellas?’
‘Sure, Rocky, we got all the stock we can handle.’
‘Don’t you worry about a thing, Rocky. It’ll be just fine.’
As Jane approached, the six men fell silent and she could feel their eyes on her again, like overfed leeches. She put the plates down and turned to withdraw.
‘Did I hear you right, lady?’ said a fat voice.
Slowly, Jane turned round. She was smiling.
‘I beg your pardon?’ she said.
‘I said,’ repeated the fat voice, ‘did I hear you right just now?’
Jane identified the man speaking and looked him in the eye. It was rather like falling into something sticky, but she persevered. ‘That depends,’ she said, ‘on what you thought you heard me say.’
The man jutted some chins at her. ‘I thought you said,’ he replied, ‘something about my food.’
Jane looked down, to confirm that he’d had the pasta. ‘I did indeed,’ she said. Gosh, observed a part of her consciousness cheerfully, this is just like old times, isn’t it? The rest of her consciousness pretended it hadn’t heard.
‘You criticising my food?’ the man said.
‘No,’ Jane answered, as sweetly as she could. ‘I’m sure it’s lovely food. It’s the company it keeps that I have my doubts about.’
There was a silence round the table, as the twelve eyes grew round with amazement. Finally, one of the fat men turned to another.
‘Hey, Rocky,’ it said, ‘I thought you said this broad was okay.’
Rocky shrugged. ‘So did I,’ he replied. ‘Hey, you,’ he said, addressing Jane. She raised an enquiring eyebrow.
‘Me?’
‘You.’
‘Well?’
The man seemed to be having difficulty with his powers of belief. ‘Who do you think you are, lady?’ he said quietly. Something struck Jane as odd about the way he said it, until she realised that, whether the man knew it or not, he actually did intend it as a question.
‘My name is Jane,’ Jane replied. ‘I’ve only been in this office a week and I haven’t the faintest idea what I’m supposed to be doing or what’s going on. If you would care to explain exactly what it is that you want me to do, I’ll get on to it as soon as I possibly can. Thank you.’
Ten little piggy eyes stared at her in complete bewilderment. The other two narrowed slightly.
‘You’re new to this work, aren’t you?’ said their owner quietly.
‘No,’ Jane said, ‘I’ve done something similar before.’
‘Is that so?’ The man maintained his expression, giving Jane the feeling of being under a powerful X-ray that could see what she’d eaten for the last six days. Then one of the ends of his mouth flicked up a little. ‘You like this sort of work?’
‘No,’ Jane replied.
‘Not good enough for you, huh?’ Again, Jane felt she was in the presence of a genuine enquiry.
‘Let’s say it doesn’t tax me to the limits of my capacity,’ she said. ‘In fact,’ she added carefully, ‘it wasn’t my idea in the first place.’
‘No,’ the man said. ‘I guess not.’ He widened the smile a micron or so. ‘I’ll say this for you, kid, you’ve got guts.’
‘So have you,’ Jane replied involuntarily. ‘Lots and lots of them.’
The man didn’t seem to mind; and Jane slowly became aware of a feeling she didn’t like. Either the man was getting bigger, or she was getting smaller, or both. She broke off eye contact, and looked at the one piece of bread remaining in the basket.
‘So what kind of work are you looking for?’ the man said. ‘Not office work, I guess.’
‘I’ve done that,’ Jane said quietly. ‘Not really me, somehow.’
‘I guess not.’ Suddenly he chuckled. It was rather an attractive sound. ‘Maybe you should try your hand at a few things, you know, look around a bit till you find something that suits you.’
‘Thanks,’ Jane said. ‘I’ll remember that.’
‘Like I said,’ the man repeated, ‘you’ve got guts. Just don’t make a pain of yourself in anybody else’s if you can help it, okay?’
Jane mumbled something. Just now, she was thinking how nice it would be to get back to her desk and talk to somebody on the telephone. More her sort of level, somehow.
‘Now,’ the man said, ‘let me tell you something.’
He half stood up, and began whisperi
ng in Jane’s ear. It was rather like having your ears syringed by a blind octopus, but the words that she was hearing took her mind off that aspect of it.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You’ve been most helpful.’
The man smiled, widely this time. ‘You’re welcome,’ he said. ‘Oh, and kid—’
‘Yes?’
‘Before you go, tell Rosa this veal needs warming through,’ the man said. ‘Now get outa here.’
Jane pushed the door of Number Six. This time, she didn’t bother to knock first.
The occupant of Number Six was not a human being, nor even vaguely anthropomorphous. What Jane found sitting in the expensive-looking leather swivel chair was a chipmunk.
‘Excuse me,’ Jane said.
The chipmunk looked up from the pile of papers in front of it and wiggled its nose. ‘Well?’ it said.
For a split second, something shorted in Jane’s mind, and she couldn’t think of anything to say. Anything, that is, apart from ‘You’re a chipmunk’, which probably didn’t need saying right now.
‘Correct,’ said the chipmunk. ‘Did you come in here to tell me that?’
The short cleared. ‘Not you as well,’ Jane replied testily. ‘Can everybody in this place read minds?’
The chipmunk’s whiskers quivered slightly. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘It’s just a ninety-nine per cent certainty I know what you’re thinking. And before you waste your effort wondering, I can take any shape I like. I use this one for people who come barging in here without an appointment, ’ he added, ‘because it disconcerts them.’
‘Fine,’ Jane replied. ‘I want to talk to you about how this department is run.’
‘I know you do,’ replied the chipmunk. ‘Now get out.’
By way of a reply, Jane sat down and folded her arms. The chipmunk sighed and nibbled a small area of veneer off the edge of its desk.
‘I can give you five minutes,’ it said.
‘Thank you.’ Jane smiled, opened her handbag and produced a notebook. ‘I’ll come straight to the point, then, shall I? This entire department is superfluous.’