by Tom Holt
She shrugged helplessly. “Usually I cope by praying,” she confessed. “I say Hail Marys under my breath all the way. Well, it worked, didn’t it?” she added before he could say anything.
“Fine. Carry on, don’t mind me.”
She scowled at him. “I can’t, not now.”
He gave her a puzzled look. “Why not? I don’t think they’ve made it illegal, have they?”
“No, but it won’t do any good. Not now I know for a fact there’s nobody there to listen.”
“Yes, there is. Are. Two of them, in expensive suits. Beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
“Yes, but not the sort you pray to. All they do is take your money. They’re not going to intervene if this useless contraption decides to fall out of the sky.”
“Um,” Jersey said, “to be honest with you, I’m not convinced the previous administration was any better.”
“Maybe not, but we didn’t know that. You could hope. You could have faith. It worked for me,” she added in a tone of voice that suggested reasoned arguments wouldn’t be welcome. “And now it doesn’t work any more, and I’m a million miles up in the sky riding in a machine that keeps itself from nosediving into the sea by farting fire, and we’re almost certainly going to die, and all you can do is—”
“Excuse me.”
The passenger in the seat in front had got up and turned round and was perching his elbows uncomfortably on the headrest. He looked about seventeen, but he had kind eyes.
“What?”
“Sorry,” said the kid, “but I couldn’t help overhearing. Are you nervous about flying?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t be.” He smiled. “It’ll be fine.” He had curly white-blond hair and baby-blue eyes, peach fuzz on his top lip.
“What did you just say?”
“It’ll be fine,” the kid repeated. “We’ll have a quiet, peaceful, very boring flight, and then we’ll make a safe landing, and everything’ll be all right. Trust me.”
And for some reason she did. It made no sense. He was just a kid. She couldn’t even be sure where he was from. He looked American, but his voice had no discernible accent of any kind, which was weird if you thought about it, which she didn’t because she trusted him implicitly. “Sorry,” she said. “I hope I wasn’t disturbing you.”
“Not a bit,” the kid said, and he smiled again. It wasn’t a movie-star smile, acting on the glands and knee joints, it was your big brother, who’s just looked under the bed and declared it guaranteed free of monsters. Lucy didn’t have a brother, and she’d always wanted to find a monster under her bed so she could bash it senseless with her slipper and take it in to school to show her friends. The only thing in the whole world she was scared of was flying. Only, apparently, not any more. “Sit back and enjoy the ride. It’s good fun once you get used to it. And perfectly safe.”
The kid turned and sat down, the back of his head invisible behind the headrest. Lucy took a long, deep breath, folded her hands in her lap and sat perfectly still for a while.
“You’re grinning.”
“You what?”
“Correction. Not grinning, beaming.”
She made no effort to change her expression. “So what if I am?”
“A moment ago—”
“I’m better now. Let’s not talk about it. I made a scene, big deal. I think I might just close my eyes for five minutes.”
No sooner said than zonked. She snored, but only quietly. It was a sound you could get used to, like rain falling on the roof. Jersey folded his arms behind his head and tried to relax, but he realised he was wound up like a clock spring.
No surprise there, when you thought about it. A man spends his entire life fixating on the tantalising possibility that there may be a way to talk to God. After five years of non-stop action adventure, in the course of which he’d suffered a broken arm, four cracked ribs, multiple concussions, lacerations, burns, gunshot wounds, all manner of fun stuff, not to mention breaking countless laws, stealing aircraft, burgling top-secret government buildings, fighting mano-a-mano with violent men, giving no thought whatsoever to his CV or his pension arrangements and having absolutely no social life—all that, and finally he’d got what he wanted.
A wise man once said that he who attains his ideal by that very act transcends it. Put another way, if the sole purpose of your existence is getting a date with the prettiest girl in the class and she turns out to have bad breath and a laugh like a lemming in a blender, you run the risk of finding yourself in a place where you ask, “What now?” and no answer springs to mind. He’d done it—dreamed the impossible dream, fought the unbeatable foe, made the call and been put through—only to find the very next day that God had sold out to the Venturi boys and everything was suddenly completely different, rendering his colossal achievement meaningless. Oh, and he’d met someone who might well prove to be the girl of his dreams, except he’d been too preoccupied to give the matter proper attention. Which said it all, really. When true love comes bursting in on you like the radiant dawn, and you more or less tell it, Please hold, your call is important to us, it’s a fair bet that something is wrong with this picture.
Well, yes. For example, what did the spotty American kid have that he didn’t? One word from him and she stopped climbing the curtains, curled up in a little ball and went to sleep. Symptomatic, you might say, of a world gone mad. He realised that his hands had clenched into fists, which was silly. For the first time in years, the chances of his having to punch somebody out in the next ten minutes were practically zero, and clenching your fists is practically begging for carpal tunnel issues at some point down the line. Even so. He peered over and ascertained that there was an empty seat next to the irritating kid. He got up and went and sat in it.
The kid smiled at him. “She’s nice, isn’t she?”
“Yes, and just you—”
“She likes you.”
Jersey blinked. “You think so?”
The kid nodded. “A lot. But right now she’s confused and she’s got a lot of other things on her mind. Well, you all do. We all do, I mean. With the change in management and everything. I guess coping with that and dealing with romantic feelings at the same time is a bit too much to ask, even though women are proverbially good at multi-tasking. I expect you’re a bit mixed up too.”
“Just a bit.”
The kid nodded. “It’s going to take some getting used to.”
“You bet it is.”
“The Venturi brothers—” the kid paused and frowned “—they aren’t bad people, fundamentally. Just very focused.”
“On making a lot of money.”
The kid inclined his head. “Yes,” he said, “to the exclusion of every other factor, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, it’s a business, and they’re ultimately answerable to the stockholders.”
“Is that right?”
“Oh yes. Of course, they own most of the stock. But you know what they say: if a thing’s worth doing …” The kid sighed. “And who’s to say the new system won’t be better than the old one? I mean, it’s worked all right on a billion other worlds across three galaxies. The old firm who used to run this place only had the one world. There’s advantages to being part of a big organisation. I guess.” The kid shook his head like a wet dog, then stuck out his hand. “I’m Kevin, by the way.”
His grip was surprisingly strong. “Hi. And I’m—”
“Jersey. Pleased to meet you.”
Must’ve seen his name on a luggage tag or something. It didn’t matter. “Where are you headed?”
Kevin shrugged. “Just sort of drifting aimlessly about,” he said. “How about you? Got any plans for the future?”
An odd way of putting it, if you didn’t know someone’s backstory. “No,” Jersey said. “I’ve, um, I’ve just finished something I was working on for a long time, and now I’m, well, not quite sure, really.”
“Drifting aimlessly?”
“Pretty much.
”
Kevin nodded. “It’s not something I’d recommend long term, but now and again it does no harm to go with the flow. Also—” he paused, frowned then went on “—I had a bit of a falling-out with my old man. No big deal. I don’t suppose you want to hear about it.”
“No, please, if it’d help to talk …”
“Yes.” Kevin flashed him a smile you could have toasted muffins over. “Yes, I’d like that a lot. You see, my father and my brother used to run the family business. Old-established firm, proud traditions, all that.”
“Got you, yes.”
“Now, all I ever wanted to do was work in it with them, but … well, the fact is, I couldn’t make the grade.”
“Surely not.”
Kevin shook his head sadly. “No, they were quite right. They gave me a lot of chances, but I kept screwing up. You can’t blame them. I mean, it’s not like it was just the three of us to consider. There were a lot of people depending on us. Couldn’t afford the sort of boo-boo I was forever making. They were very nice about it, but they had to draw the line.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” Another warm smile. “Anyhow, a short while ago Dad got this really great offer for the business. And he thought about it very carefully and talked it over with my brother, and they decided to sell out and move away. And I …”
“Yes?”
Kevin closed his eyes, just for a moment. “I could’ve gone with them. Of course they wanted me to. But somehow … I guess, basically, I’ve done nothing all my life, just hung out and chilled, and the prospect of hanging out and chilling for ever and ever and never doing anything … We’re not like that in my family, you see. We’re doers. Always busy. Improving the shining hour sort of thing. We live for the job.”
Jersey grinned. “That old Protestant work ethic, you mean.”
For some reason Kevin had difficulty with that. He frowned and took a moment to choose his words. “Something like that. So anyway, that’s not how I was brought up. I feel I ought to get out there and do something too.”
“Fair enough. So, why don’t you?”
Kevin smiled. “It’s easy for you to say that. You’re a genuine man of action, anyone can see that just looking at you. I’ll bet that for as long as you can remember, you’ve had a definite goal ahead of you—difficult, maybe, perhaps practically impossible, but that never stopped you. In your vocabulary, can’t is the name of a German philosopher as spelt by a greengrocer. No, you gritted your teeth, clenched your fists, got down and did it. And once you’d climbed one mountain, there was the next one facing you. Am I right?”
“Yes. That’s amazing. How did you—?”
“Whereas,” Kevin went on, “I’ve never had a goal in my whole life, except working with Dad and Jay, and that was out of the question. And so here I am. I can have anything I want, and I don’t want anything. Except something to want, if that makes any sense.” He laughed. “Sounds pretty pathetic, doesn’t it? I mean, there’s so many people out there in desperate need, so what have I got to complain about? Nothing.”
Jersey frowned. “No, I know just how you feel,” he said. “Only in my case … Well, I’ll spare you the sob story, but I just got what I’d always wanted and then—”
“It was taken away from you?”
Jersey shook his head. “It all just changed, that’s all. It’s really hard to explain, actually, but—”
“That’s OK. I get the general idea. But at least in your case you can look back and say, I did what I set out to do, I prevailed, even though the Universe cheated by changing the rules at the last minute. That doesn’t stop you feeling good about yourself. You can look in the mirror and see a winner. Meanwhile, you’re a hero who’s between adventures. Something else’ll come along, and you’ll snap back into action, no trouble. Right now you’re feeling a bit low because you’ve found your Lost Ark. What you don’t realise is that you’ve got your Temple of Doom and your Last Crusade still to come.”
Suddenly Jersey felt like grinning. “And my Crystal Skull.”
Kevin frowned. “On the other hand, there’s lot to be said for knowing when to stop. But you get the idea.”
Jersey laughed. “Well, there you go, then,” he said. “The same goes for you, surely. You’ll find your trilogy, same as I’ll find mine.”
“You think so?”
“I’m sure of it,” Jersey said. “I mean, you’re smart, you’re understanding. You really know people, you know?”
“I haven’t actually met very many,” Kevin said. “But those I’ve met I’ve liked.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes. When you get to know them, everybody’s worth knowing. I mean, look at you and me. You came over here to smash my face in for talking to your girl, and now we’re the best of friends. Honestly, there’s no such thing as an entirely bad person. The way I see it, the good in people is like the meat in a supermarket lasagne. You’ve just got to keep on and on, searching and searching, until eventually you find it.”
18
There are three dawns every day on Sinderaan. The first dawn comes up like thunder, drenching the canyons and the towering basalt pillars with red so deep you can practically feel it running down your face. The second dawn, two hours later, is a mellow flood of butter yellow. The third, around primary noon, is a searing, bleaching white heat, spooling threads of white mist off the lakes and rivers. You don’t need to light a campfire on Sinderaan to boil water for your midday coffee.
Because the dry land is too hot to sustain life for so much of the day, it’s no wonder that most of the serious evolutionary action took place in the ocean. Only the topmost six fathoms or so actually boils, except in midsummer; below that it ranges from tepid to luxuriously warm. Daylight for twenty hours out of the twenty-nine means deep-level photosynthesis is a given. Abundant underwater vegetation comfortably supports an incalculable quantity of fish, all of whom are smart, some very smart indeed. It’s an open secret that when Snib Venturi’s nephew Gred chose Fernwater College for young Ade, a substantial donation changed hands, although some of the hands were fins, which helped with the rather fussy entrance requirements, and everyone was a winner. In short, you have to get up pretty early in the morning to catch a Sinderaan fish.
Today, as on every other day since they’d arrived, the keepnet was full to bursting and third dawn was still several hours away. Jay was frying up a mess of snargfish (including four Snobel laureates and a professor of advanced particle physics—a waste, you might say, but on Sinderaan there are plenty more fish in the sea) while Dad sat behind a motionless float, reading the trade papers.
“It says here,” he announced, “that Earth’s been nominated for a Divvy.”
Jay was concentrating on the pan and didn’t look round. “Is that right?”
“That’s what it says in the comic,” Dad said. “In the Most Improved World category.”
Jay frowned. There hadn’t been any award nominations when they were running the place, and he knew that Dad had always felt a bit hard done-by on that score. “Well, you know what that’s all about,” he said. “If the Venturi boys ever have kids, they ought to name them Graft and Shmooze.”
“The guy in the paper says there’s been dramatic improvements in the first six weeks. He says—”
“Look out, Dad, you’ve got a bite.”
Dad peered over the top of his paper, saw the bobbing float, put the paper down and effortlessly reeled in a forty-six-ton szxnarpp with brick-red horns and fluorescent pink wattles on each of its four necks. He scowled at it and threw it back. “Here’s what it says,” he said. “‘Apart from the occasional crime passionel, all crimes are committed by the rich. To do murder on Earth these days, you need to be pretty high up in the Forbes List. This is great for the poor, who are no longer slaughtered by the untouchable privileged elite, as well as being rewarded with a wonderful sense of moral superiority, and the actual crime rate is negligible. This is great for government, who n
o longer need to pay out for police, prisons, justice systems etcetera and can therefore afford proper healthcare for the mentally ill, who therefore no longer commit the proportion of crimes traditionally committed by maniacs and loons. Also, the cost of sinning is a wonderful spur to wealthy entrepreneurs, movers and shakers, who need to generate vast incomes—honestly and ethically; they can’t steal, cheat or grind the faces of the poor, which would cost them more money than they make—in order to indulge even slightly antisocial whims and hobbies. Thus the free-market economy booms and everybody benefits. Once again the Venturi system proves beyond doubt that a happy, caring, prosperous society and a healthy bottom line aren’t just not mutually exclusive, but inseparable cause and effect.’” He put the paper down and scowled. “Well, son, that’s you and me told.”
Jay shrugged. “It’s nice to know the old place is doing so well. After all, we were never in it for the glory.”
Dad sighed. “Sure,” he said. “If they’re better off without us, that’s just fine. At least we did one thing right. We sold up and got out of there.”
The trade papers, Jay had recognised from the outset, were a mistake. Whenever the old man read them, he got broody. “We did our best, Dad,” he said, “and that’s all anyone can do. And we didn’t do so bad. After all, if the place was such a disaster, how come the Venturis wanted to buy it?”
Dad baited his hook with a glistening multi-faceted algorithm—bits of feather and coloured string just don’t cut it on Sinderaan—and cast far out into the shimmering blue. There was a soft plop. He sat down and tilted his hat over his eyes. “How long till chow’s ready? I’m starting to feel a bit peckish.”
“Give it another two minutes.”
“I wonder how Kevin’s getting on. You heard from him at all?”
“No, Dad.”
“I worry about that boy.”
“He’ll be fine,” Jay said, as he did every day about this time. For some reason the smell of cooking always got Dad worrying about his younger son. Association of ideas, presumably; they’d only tended to meet at mealtimes. “He’s not a bad kid really. He’s immortal and invulnerable and immune from any form of illness, and he’s got Raffa and Gabe looking after him. What harm can he possibly come to?”