by Tom Holt
The chipmunk stood up in its chair and waggled its forepaws briskly; then it sat down again, turned round three times, and crouched with its ears back. ‘Rubbish,’ it said.
‘Fact,’ Jane replied. ‘The alleged purpose of this department is general administration for the whole operation. It’s superfluous because it doesn’t administer anything. And the reason for that is that the system broke down 107 years ago.’
The chipmunk disappeared. In its place, there appeared a long, green snake with diamond markings. ‘Really,’ it observed.
‘Really,’ Jane replied. ‘Take it from me. Ever since then, the input’s been continuing to flow in, but the output’s ground to a complete halt. Such administration as actually takes place is entirely spontaneous and ad hoc. I think that’s the expression I want,’ Jane added.
‘It’ll do,’ the snake said. ‘Where does your information come from, by the way?’
‘A man in a restaurant told me,’ Jane replied. ‘For instance, this department is supposed to channel funds from the Treasurer’s office to the Destiny department, via a system of requisitions and pink chits. In practice, Destiny keeps its money in a cocoa tin behind the clock in the machine shed. When there’s nothing left in the tin, the duty supervisor sneaks into the social club while the barman’s having his lunch, using the duplicate key belonging to the captain of the bowling team, and takes the change from the till. The barman in turn writes it off against breakages. Correct?’
The snake darted a fine tongue at her and hissed. Jane nodded and went on.
‘This department,’ she said, ‘is also nominally responsible for the allocation of staff to, among others, the Perjury department, the main job of which is to strike perjurers with lightning. Perjury has a staff of seventy operatives and six supervisors, all on full pay, but nobody gets hit by lightning because the post of departmental head has been vacant for over 300 years. The net result is that, although perjury among mortals is regularly detected and noted in the Records, perjurers aren’t being zapped at because thunderbolts can’t be drawn from the stores without a green chit signed by the departmental head. All that the operatives can do, therefore, is stick their tongues out at the perjurers and shout rude words at them; and since all Perjury staff are required by the rules to be invisible and imperceptible to mankind . . .’
There was a soft rustling noise as the snake wound itself round the arm of its chair. ‘Go on,’ it said.
‘Need I?’ Jane replied. ‘If you want me to, I will. I can tell you about how the staff pension fund never reaches the pensioners, not because the money isn’t there, but because Gary in Pensions is waiting for the 1897 returns and can’t issue a mauve chit without them; so everybody puts five kreuzers a week into the Solstice Club at the newsagents’ round the corner from the Earthquakes building, which does the job perfectly well. Or there’s stationery; shall I tell you about how the unissued stock of paperclips recently broke away under the force of its own mass and is now the centre of a whole new planetary system out the other side of Orion’s Belt?’ Jane paused for breath, and because she had run out of examples. The snake looked at her.
‘So,’ it said at last. ‘There are hiccups here and there. Big deal.’
Jane bit her lip; was it her imagination, or could she hear the faint clunk of a called bluff? ‘Hiccups,’ she repeated. ‘The sort of hiccup they had in San Francisco in 1906.’
The snake lifted its head, wondered what to do with it, and threaded it through the handle of its briefcase. ‘We’ll give what you say very serious thought,’ it replied. ‘In the meantime, perhaps you feel you ought to be seconded to some other department.’
Anger is a curious thing, with a behaviour pattern rather like that of a Honda CX550 motorcycle. Sometimes you can give the throttle just the slightest of tweaks, and the next thing you’re aware of is the ambulancemen picking bits of hedge out of your lower abdomen. Sometimes you stamp the gear lever down into fourth and twist the throttle right round, and the beast just looks up at you out of its cow-like instrument panel and slows down to a gentle stroll. The only thing you can rely on is its habit of running out of petrol exactly halfway between filling stations.
Jane’s anger, to continue the simile, had just boiled dry; and, as she looked the snake in the eyes and tried to think what to say next, something told her that it was going to be a long, hard push home.
‘Perhaps that’d be best,’ she said softly. ‘Thank you for your time.’ She got up, collected her handbag, and left the office.
As she was clearing her desk, the phone rang.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said Ganger’s voice. It sounded cheerful. ‘Not at all wise.’
‘I expect you’re right,’ Jane replied. ‘Who was that man in the restaurant?’
The line seemed to go numb. ‘That was Rocky,’ said Ganger, and his voice sounded as if he was speaking through two pillow-cases and a sock. ‘You weren’t supposed to meet him, either.’
‘He seemed to be expecting to meet me,’ Jane said.
‘I know. Anyway, there we are. Come and see me at half nine tomorrow, and we’ll talk. Oh, and by the way.’
‘Yes?’
‘You’re doing just fine. Trust me.’ Ganger smiled into Jane’s ear, and hung up.
THIRTEEN
The sky is very high here.
In most places, the sky is just, well, high; a sort of blue tent that keeps the stars out and the air in. Here, it’s different. Here, it’s so high above sea-level that the existence of the ground is little more than an unsubstantiated rumour. There is also a castle.
A big, frilly, no-expense-spared, Ludwig of Bavaria special. And it’s bobbing and floating about, like a balloon that’s been at the sherry on an empty stomach, with nothing holding it up apart from the thought of the quite appalling effect it would have on the ground if it ever stopped floating.
When it comes to a bare-knuckle fight between gravity and social conscience, gravity loses.
As you approach, picking your way cautiously through the thermals and taking care not to tread on the heads of any high-flying birds, you can hear snatches of a strange and bewildering noise, wafted at you by the semi-feral winds that hide out in the major altitudes. From this distance, and bearing in mind the uncanny distortions of wind and the Doppler effect, you could almost believe that you were listening to several thousand people whistling - flat, off-key - the disjointed scraps of a half-familiar tune.
Welcome to the Castle in the Air, headquarters of the Department of Omens and Auspices. The men standing in inch-perfect rows in the courtyard are trainee Messengers. Once they graduate, they will spend their working lives delivering dreams, uncanny flashbacks, moments of déjà vu, and other similar communications. At the moment, they are being taught the extremely tricky art of making the unique noise known as the postman’s whistle.
Now, supposing you look very carefully, you’ll notice one small figure in the Departmental blue-and-gold uniform, whose hair is rather longer than the rest. If you can somehow force your ears to blot out the general cacophony, you’ll notice that this one individual is defiantly whistling, in tune and without sudden disconcerting pauses, a tune which is unmistakably ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’.
Guess who.
‘You mustn’t think of it in those terms,’ Ganger had said, as they trudged up the Castle’s drive. ‘That’s negative.’
‘Really,’ Jane replied. She would have expressed herself more fully, but the gradient was steep, and her knees were beginning to feel as if some joker had whipped the sinews out of them while she wasn’t looking.
‘Believe me,’ Ganger said. ‘Even if we were trying to keep you out of the way for a while, which we aren’t, we wouldn’t do it by putting you in the Messenger service. It’s far too high profile for that.’
‘High,’ said Jane, breathlessly sardonic (try it for yourself), ‘profile. Running errands. Delivering messages.’
‘Yeah.’ Gange
r stopped for a moment, ran his finger round the inside of the button-down collar of his Abercrombie and Fitch pink shirt, and breathed in. ‘Hardly hidden away in some out-of-the-way back office, is it?’
Jane wiped sweat out of her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. ‘Not exactly challenging, though. Not precisely demanding the highest levels of executive performance. I thought you said I was a high-flyer.’
Ganger started to look down, then checked himself quickly. ‘You want to go any higher than this, you can find your own way.’
Jane kept her face straight, just. ‘You’re not afraid of heights, are you?’ she said.
‘I’m bloody terrified of heights,’ Ganger replied. ‘Think about it, will you? My natural environment isn’t high up on top of things; in fact, it’s the exact opposite. I get vertigo standing on thick pile carpet sometimes. And,’ he added, ‘if you think that’s so terribly amusing, we’ll pay a visit to my departmental HQ one of these days, and we’ll see how you like that.’
Jane made a contrite sort of breathless gasping noise, and they continued their climb in silence, or at least without words, for a while. Eventually, Jane bit her lip.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘And I do appreciate you coming along to introduce me. Thanks.’
Ganger smiled. ‘Think nothing of it,’ he said. ‘That’s fine.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I said that’s fine.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jane shouted back, ‘I can’t hear you for the blood pumping in my ears.’
‘It’s not important.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I said it’s . . . Nothing.’
‘Are we there yet?’
Ganger opened his mouth, thought better of it, and nodded. In front of them, its drawbridge lowered over nothing at all and resting on even less, was the gatehouse of the Castle in the Air.
Over the keystone of the arch there was a board of wood.Wind at barometric pressure had long since scoured it of varnish, but still faintly visible were the words:The Laurels
painted in faded white. Jane raised an eyebrow.
‘We tried calling it that for a while,’ Ganger explained, ‘but it never seemed to catch on somehow. You wait there while I knock.’
He advanced up to the massive gate and lifted the knocker, using both hands and putting his back into it. He managed to raise it a full inch before he had to let go.
‘It’s not a real knocker, you see,’ he said, rubbing his arms gingerly. ‘Or at least it’s real, but it’s an ideal knocker. You know, the way knockers should be in an ideal universe. And in an ideal universe, people take a lot more exercise than we do.’
‘Um.’
‘So,’ Ganger went on, ‘I guess we’ll have to do the next best thing.’
He stooped slightly and walked down under the gate. Jane followed, her belief not so much suspended as dangling by a thread.
‘Mind how you go from now on,’ Ganger called out to her as they emerged into the outer yard. ‘The whole of this place is an Excluded Liability Zone.’
Jane blinked. ‘Excuse me?’ she said.
‘Excluded Liability Zone,’ Ganger repeated. ‘Absolutely necessary, in view of the sort of work they do here. You see, if we could be held accountable for any of the information that we pass on from here - in perfectly good faith, you understand - we’d be in court so fast our feet wouldn’t touch. Talking of which, look out for tripwires.’
‘Tripwires.’
Ganger nodded. ‘And dogs, of course. It’s part of the training programme, you see.’
‘Dogs I can understand,’ Jane said, thinking of postmen again. ‘But why tripwires?’
‘We deliver supernatural promptings to some of the best-defended people in the cosmos,’ Ganger replied with a hint of pride. ‘You know the sort of thing. Merchant princes who won’t clinch a deal unless they get an okay from their astrologer. Lunatic third-world dictators who take their policy guidelines from the spirits of their ancestors. Identical twin brothers of Latin American drug barons. When you’re on a job like that, tripwires come as light relief. And the worst part of it is,’ Ganger continued, grinning, ‘you have to keep whistling. It’s the Code, you see.’
‘Um.’
‘Whistling, scattering rubber bands everywhere and never turning up with a Recorded Delivery unless you’re sure the recipient is out. It’s a point of honour. They’re very strict about it.’
Directly under their feet the sun chugged past, twenty minutes ahead of schedule. Was it Jane’s imagination, or did the pilot wave? Ganger stopped and straightened his tie.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘we’re here. Now then, I have a strange feeling you’re going to do all right here.’
‘Funny you should mention that,’ Jane replied. ‘So have I.’
‘Naturally,’ Ganger said. ‘Think about it.’
Bjorn hesitated.
Some hard things have been said about him recently, so the record should be set straight. He had his failings, true, but when it came to balls, he had more of them than Dunlop and Slazenger put together. Equipped with an axe, a home-made grappling hook and Great-grandmama’s washing-line, he was getting ready to burgle the Portals of the Sunset.
He reminded himself to stay cool, but it wasn’t really necessary. Slowly and methodically, he checked his equipment, pulled his mask (one of Old Gretchen’s black legwarmers with two eye-holes cut in it) over his face and crept forwards.
About here, somewhere, there should be an invisible electric fence.
He knew all about the fence. A long time ago, when he was working on Security, he and Thick Mick and Kevin the Pisser had had the job of installing it, one wet Friday afternoon. As he had anticipated, it did not detain him long.
The searchlights mounted on Number Three and Number Four observation towers would have been a serious hazard, if it wasn’t for the fact that keeping the bearings oiled and in good repair had been the responsibility of Old Nobby from Maintenance ever since the Fall of Man. Nobby had long since worked out what axle grease was for. He ate it.
So far, so good. There were three machine-gun nests in Number Five observation tower; but what with the cutbacks and everything, the gunners were never issued with more than five rounds of ammunition each per year, and they were under strict orders to save those for the twenty-one-gun salute for the Commandant’s birthday. Given this limitation, the gunners (probably still Daft Terry and Gormless Dave, even after all these years) tended to spend their watch in the guardhouse playing endless games of dominoes, which somehow or other neither of them ever seemed to win.
Having penetrated as far as the outer perimeter fence, Bjorn stopped and assessed the task now facing him. This was where the fun started.
For reasons which need not concern us here, nobody in the village had ever seen the need to spend good money on a pair of wirecutters. Bjorn, who had spent his meagre savings playing the Speak Your Weight machines at the Wolfhound bus depot on his way out, was therefore going to have to improvise. Over it, or through it.
He decided against over it. If memory served him correctly, the posts holding it up were put in by some friends of his from the Department of Works, and so the chances of it bearing his weight were not high. Through it, however, meant cutting a hole through the wire mesh without waking the entire guard. He frowned, and checked through his rucksack for inspiration.
Having rejected the spare pair of underpants, the roll of extra strong mints, the broken watch and the July 1985 edition of StreetBike, he was left with a tin opener, a leaky felt-tip pen and a Zambian Army Knife. The latter item had one overwhelming advantage over its Swiss rival which outweighed its various drawbacks in Bjorn’s estimation. It was given away free with litre cans of lawnmower gearbox oil. He took it out of the rucksack and fumbled for the sawblade attachment.
It says something about the quality of Departmental fencing wire that Bjorn was through and out the other side in three minutes flat. (For the record, when the Zambian Army wants a f
ence cut, they don’t hang around breaking their fingernails trying to get the sawblade out; they get on the radio for a squadron of MiGs.)
According to the periphery defences’ design specification, there are seventeen acres of minefield between the inner and outer perimeter fences. According to the latest Security Department stock audit, the Department possesses five mines, at least three of which were in working order when last inspected. Bjorn gritted his teeth and ran for it. There are times in a man’s life when he just has to ride his luck.
Which brought him, breathless but unscathed, to the foot of the inner perimeter fence. This was rather more of a challenge, since it hadn’t been installed by the Department but taken over without substantial modification from the chicken farm which had been on the site before the Department requisitioned it. Here Bjorn suffered his first major setback. He tore the right leg of his trousers, about an inch below the knee.
‘The thing to remember in this job,’ said the Dream-Master General, ‘is never to turn your back on small dogs.’
Jane nodded. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘I think I can remember that. And all the rest of it,’ she added, ‘such as finding the recipient, climbing in through locked and barred windows, all that sort of stuff; I suppose that just comes by light of nature.’
The Dream-Master gave her a disapproving look. ‘All right, Miss Clever,’ he said, ‘we’ll come on to the various procedures in due course. We can’t run before we can walk, you know. I was just telling you, for your own good, you look out for small dogs.’
‘I always have,’ Jane replied, with feeling. ‘Especially when sitting down in a strange house. Look, I didn’t mean to sound cocky, it’s just that I want to get on with it. The practical side, I mean.’
The Dream-Master nodded. ‘All in good time,’ he said. ‘Now, first you’ll do your basic training. That’s effecting entry, recipient identification drill, and elementary brain infiltration. That’s the easy part.’