by Tom Holt
He opened his eyes, which had somehow closed, and saw Jenny standing in the doorway.
Could you pray to the Venturi brothers? There had been a certain amount of discussion about that over the past few weeks. Spokesmen for the Corporation tended to go a bit coy and mumble about the scientifically proven benefits of the placebo effect, so the answer was probably, yes, you could, but don’t expect miracles. Unspoken prayers? Well, if that was what he’d just been unspeaking to himself, it looked rather like his prayer had been answered. Why do I stay here and knock my pipes out trying to keep this place going? Because of Mr. Lucifer, who likes me, and Jenny, who might just possibly …
“Stapler,” he repeated. “In the desk drawer. I think.”
She smiled. She was equipped with an ordnance-grade smile. Theoretically, since being withdrawn from front-line duty her offensive capabilities should have been decommissioned (offensive wasn’t really the right word), but you know how it is: not everything that strictly speaking should be done actually gets done, not every minefield gets swept, not every smile gets toned down to within acceptably safe parameters. You shouldn’t leave something like that lying around where it could hurt someone, but here, with just a handful of human staff who could possibly be affected, it was an easy corner to cut, and Duke Sitri had never liked him much anyway.
She was standing there, still smiling. After a long time (in context) she said, “If you moved a bit, I could get to the desk drawer.”
He bounded out of the chair as though it had teeth, apologising like an idiot. Calm down, for pity’s sake, he told himself; you’re not usually like this, usually you can handle it. Maybe, but not today, apparently. Could be the yield on the smile was just that decimal point or two higher that makes all the difference, or his defences were unusually low for some reason, or maybe the effect is cumulative and he’d just passed the threshold. Didn’t really matter what the reason was. He clamped his jaws together in the certain knowledge that if he opened them and spoke, the most appalling drivel was bound to come bubbling out.
“Got it,” she said. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“Actually.” She looked at him. All the skill and expertise of the Sentimental Warfare division had gone into designing that look, against which even blindness was an uncertain defence. “Have you got a minute?”
“Um.”
“Only …” Pause to chew lip. He tried to look away but couldn’t. “I was wondering if you could explain something for me.”
Millions of light years away, on Sinderaan, a gwlpp fish with a doctorate in applied xenopsychology and another in advanced particle physics gazed at a steel U dangling incongruously a centimetre from its nose, shrugged its scintillating carapace and said to itself, Go on, what harm could it do? Which just goes to show: doesn’t matter how smart you are; if it’s got your number on it, there’s no hiding place. Bernie swallowed hard and said, “Sure.”
She looked over her shoulder at the closed door, then back at him. “I just got this on my screen and I don’t know what it means.”
From her sleeve she drew a torn-off scrap of printout, folded many times like a Chinese fan. “I don’t want to get in trouble,” she said. “But I thought, I can’t just ignore it, in case it’s important.”
He stared at the piece of paper for quite some time before he realised he had it the wrong way up. He frowned. “Sorry,” he said. “What’s the problem?”
She gave him a blank look. “It’s terrible. Ever since I got it, I’ve been so scared.”
“Really?”
“I was sitting at my screen and then it suddenly went all red and this message appeared. And then it printed out, all by itself, and then everything went back to normal. It’s horrible. What does it mean?”
“Um.” Bernie read it again, just to make sure he wasn’t mistaken. “It’s just a poem. Well, a song, really. Human stuff.”
“A song?”
Bernie nodded reassuringly. “People sing it at Chris—at a certain time of the year. It’s traditional. Well, no, it isn’t; it only goes back as far as the thirties. And people don’t actually sing it; mostly they play it in stores. But it’s harmless.”
“It doesn’t look harmless.”
“But—”
She shot him an accusing stare. “It says there’s someone spying on me all the time, watching me, even—” she shuddered slightly “—when I’m in bed.”
“It’s just a bit of fun.”
“It’s creepy. And it says he knows if I’m good or evil, and if I’m not good …” She pulled herself together with an effort. “That’s what I wanted to ask you, really. Am I evil?”
“Sorry. You what?”
“Am I evil?” She shot him an imploring glance. “Because this—this whoever-he-is is watching me all the time, he knows, and he says, if you’re not good you’d better watch out, and I’m scared.”
Her eyes were red and ominously watery. Bernie felt a wave of panic rising somewhere around his socks. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a song, that’s all.”
“Why won’t you answer the question? Am I evil?”
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out, so he paused and actually thought about the question. Well? On the one hand, she was the most wonderful person he’d ever met. On the other hand—make that claw—she was an artefact of a Duke of Hell, cunningly and skilfully designed to entrap men’s souls and bring them to the everlasting (when there wasn’t a problem in Engineering) bonfire. Put in those terms, it was actually a valid query. Just as well, really, that it didn’t actually matter at all, because all she’d had was just some spam email.
Or maybe not. “This message,” he said. “That’s all it was?”
“Well, yes. Oh, and there was this terrible mocking laughter. It sent a shiver right down my spine.”
“What, sort of, ho, ho, ho?”
“Exactly.”
Oh boy, he thought. “Jenny, it’s just a song. I’ve heard it all my life. Usually it means somebody wants me to buy something. It really is no big deal.”
She wasn’t convinced, he could see that. “I don’t know how you can say that. I mean, it’s awful. And he says that if I tell anyone about it, he’ll do something terrible to me.”
“What it actually says is, you’d better not shout, cry or pull faces. It’s not quite the same thing. Look, it’s really quite a nice song. It’s got ever such a jolly tune. Here. I’ll whistle it for you.”
If he’d been in a more rational frame of mind, he probably wouldn’t have done that, bearing in mind how many of his family and close friends had asked him not to whistle over the years. But her anguished reaction couldn’t be explained simply in aesthetic terms, not the way she screamed, clapped her hands over her ears and sank sobbing to her knees. Even his Bruce Springsteen impersonation had never affected anyone that badly.
“I’m sorry,” he said desperately. “I won’t do it again, I promise. Please stop crying. It’s only a stupid song.”
“It was awful.”
“Yes, well—”
“It went through my head like a steel bolt. I could feel my brain starting to melt.”
Yes. Well. His mother had said something to the same effect the last time he sang “Happy Birthday.” Even so. “I know, I’m a hopeless whistler.”
“No, you’re not. I’ve heard you when you think no one’s listening. No, it was that tune. It was so …” She gulped like an ostrich swallowing a brick. “I didn’t like it.”
“I gathered.”
“You still haven’t answered my question.”
Oh that. Well, he could try and explain. He could say that although yes, probably she was technically evil, on account of having been produced—manufactured?—by the Dark Powers for an unholy purpose, that didn’t mean she was necessarily a bad person, that being evil in that sense was none of her doing, just as being French isn’t anybody’s fault, it’s just an accident of geography; that in any event it really didn�
�t signify anything now that the Venturi boys had effectively abolished Good and Evil, just as they’d abolished nationality and various other quite arbitrary and artificial divisions between people; he could say all that, provided he could get it all out without tying himself in knots, which wasn’t very likely given how he was feeling and the way his heart was trying to kick the walls of his chest in. But, in her state of mind, she probably wouldn’t believe him, and he could well make things a whole lot worse; whereas, if he went with Plan B and good old-fashioned non-verbal communication—
He leaned across the desk and kissed the tip of her nose. “There,” he said. “That’s how evil I think you are. Now, are you doing anything tomorrow evening after work?”
“Yes.” Oh. “I’m going home, boiling an egg and defrosting the freezer.”
He smiled at her. It took him more effort than lifting a hundredweight sack of potatoes, but somehow he managed to make it look like the easiest thing in the world. “Would you rather,” he said, “go to the movies and then have dinner afterwards?”
She thought for a moment. “Yes,” she said.
“Good, because by a strange coincidence that’s what I’ll be doing. Hey, here’s a thought. Why don’t we go together?”
“I’d like that.”
“So would I.”
“Would you?”
He nodded. “And that stupid song. You’re not going to worry about it any more?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Oh well, never mind.” The phone rang—the green one, which always meant trouble. For some reason, though, he didn’t really give a damn. “Sorry,” he said. “Yes, hello. Lachuk here. What? Not again. Yes, Mr. Malephar, I’ll see to it personally, though you might just consider leaving the pilot light on when the furnace is down, because otherwise you get this big build-up of gas when you—Yes. Sure, Mr. Malephar, first thing in the morning, you have my word on that. Yes. Sure.”
When he looked up she’d gone. Ah well. He turned his attention back to the accounts, but his eyes seemed to glance off the numbers like a file off hardened steel. At the back of his mind a tiny little query was jumping up and down clamouring for attention, but it simply couldn’t compete with the firework displays and the loud, happy music booming out from the tannoys, so after a while it gave up and went back to sleep.
21
“i really hate my boss,” the caller said. “I hate him so much I want to kill him.”
Lucy stifled a yawn. When you come down to it, all call-centre jobs are the same. But some are more the same than others. “Fine,” she said. “Now, if I can start off with a few personal details—name, date of birth, any capital savings or assets, your annual income net of tax for the last five years.”
The customer profile came up on her screen. “I see you’re a new customer,” Lucy said. “How can I help you?”
“I just told you. I want to kill my boss.”
“Of course you do. Any debts, county court judgements against you or unpaid credit card bills?”
“No.”
“Well, for murdering your employer there’s a fixed-rate tariff, fifty million dollars. Looking at what you’ve just told me about your finances, I don’t think that’s going to be possible. I’m very sorry.”
Pause. “How about if I just smashed his face in?”
Lucy flicked to a different screen. “All right,” she said. “That would be the sin of wrath, which is a variable rate depending on severity of provocation.”
“It’s the way he just looks at me and sneers when I bring him his coffee.”
“Let’s call that a Level Five,” Lucy said. “Which means you’re looking at forty thousand for the wrath, together with an actual bodily harm supplement which depends on how badly you damage him. Would a slapped face do?”
“I want to crush his skull like an eggshell.”
Lucy did the sums in her head, faster than the calculator. “That’s a seven-figure wish, I’m afraid. Would you settle for heavy bruising and some minor lacerations?”
“How much would that be?”
“You’re still looking at ninety thousand plus. Of course,” she went on, filling the sad silence that always seemed to follow the numbers, “there are other ways to pay. For instance, we offer a new endowment-backed earn-to-sin scheme. Basically, you pay into a unit-backed life policy, and when it matures you’re free to transgress up to the assured amount, less management costs and administration fees and an early termination penalty if appropriate. In your case, how old did you say you were? Well, you should just about make it before you retire.”
No sale. She thanked the caller anyway and moved on to the next in the queue.
“It’s like this,” the next caller said. “I’ve just inherited a nice little legacy from my aunt, and we were wondering what we could get for it.”
“OK,” Lucy said. “What did you have in mind?”
“Well,” the caller said, “my wife and I, we’ve always quite fancied coveting our neighbour’s ox—we live next door to a farm, you see. We’ve got a nice little bungalow on the south coast; we retired here from Birmingham about three years ago. You can see the sea from the bathroom window.”
“That’s nice.”
“We like it. Well, it’s either that or we could get the patio relaid and deck over the far end of the garden, and maybe have a rustic pergola with a nice teak bench and a couple of lavender bushes. We just can’t make up our minds. What do you think?”
Lucy was doing complex mental arithmetic. “This bungalow,” she said. “You own it outright? No mortgage?”
“No. What’s that got to do—?”
“Only,” Lucy said, “with the Venturi Personal Finance equity release scheme, you could have all that done and still afford the coveting. All it’d involve would be a simple charge-back on the property together with a fixed-rate premium with-profits life policy. Of course, you would have to bear in mind that the value of investments can go down as well as up. But, all being well, for a monthly premium of no more than …”
Five minutes later the caller thanked her, but he thought they’d probably go with the pergola and maybe a cruise. Lucy smiled as she replaced the receiver. The more you tried to sell, the less they wanted to buy. There had been calls where she could hear them actually whetting the knife in the background, but once she started to explain the Venturi Cash Sin-Now-Pay-Later variable interest loan account, it was amazing how quickly they calmed down. No bad thing, really. Good for the statistics, and one less pool of blood on the floor for some poor swine to clean up.
She wondered about that. The vast majority of the callers she advised decided not to sin after all, so she sold relatively few Venturicorp products, something the accountants at head office must have noticed by now. But the callers she spoke to were mostly ordinary folk from less favoured demographics. Wealthy individuals and big corporations tended to have their own Personal Transgression Adviser, and get invited to special seminars on such topics as spreading the cost of fraud and tax-efficient corporate manslaughter. It was just a theory of hers, but maybe the brothers were only interested in the high rollers, with their carefully tailored portfolios of blue-chip offences and triple-A-rated guilts, and her job was to deter the man in the street from sinning beyond his means. What if the wealth of nations was like a vat of milk, and the best way to get the cream was to skim it off the top, rather than sieving through the dregs? Just the sort of metaphor the Venturis would use, and it worried her slightly that she might be beginning to think like them. Or would that really be such a bad thing?
Wash your brain out with soap and water. The longer she did this job—no, she couldn’t put her finger on it, and probably it was quite illogical and irrational; but she knew she wasn’t the only one, not by a long chalk. True, crime had fallen to negligible levels in a stunningly short space of time, the economy was booming and everybody could now afford at least one fifty-five-inch UHD flat-screen TV on which to watch the latest remake of The Magic Roundabout, w
hich was one of the few things on the box you could afford to watch without being inspired to incur severe financial penalties. Fine. But were people happy? She wasn’t sure about that. Definitely yes as far as the ones who would’ve been killed, beaten or robbed were concerned. Everyone else? A walk down the street and a look at all the long faces told its own story. Something about Venturi ethics wasn’t working, but she was blowed if she could figure out what it was.
The next caller wanted to know how much it would cost to cheat on her husband. Only, she’d met this gorgeous man, there was definitely real chemistry between them, she knew it couldn’t last, but a brief, wonderful fling—how much? Oh. Right. Sorry to have bothered you. Not at all, and thank you for calling.
Well, quite. Who really wants a fortnight of reckless passion if you’ve got to scrimp and save for thirty years to afford it? Not that the Venturis were total killjoys. You could still fool around for free, provided that you weren’t in a long-term relationship with anyone and you didn’t make any promises you didn’t intend to keep. But it did rather polarise the field of interpersonal relationships into one-night stands and the death-do-us-part stuff, and it spoilt the mood rather if you were constantly on your guard not to say or do anything that might cost you the price of a four-door family saloon car. The Venturis had an answer to that: if in doubt, you can always call the helpline, and we’ll be happy to let you know where you stand. No more anxiety, no more uncertainty—that’s the Venturi way. Even so.
Maybe that was why she hadn’t seen Jersey for a week. She thought about it; no, not really, though she did like him, a lot. It was just … It was just those bloody Venturis—
She paused and waited, but no window opened in thin air, and she breathed a sigh of relief. At least you could still curse in your head without denting your bank balance.
—those confounded Venturis, and the whole attitude to life that came with the deal. There’s that old chestnut, if there was no darkness, we couldn’t see the light. If there’s no evil, there can be no good. If there’s no misery, there can be no joy. If nobody’s unhappy, nobody’s happy. Well, I’m not, that’s for sure. Not unhappy either, just … well, just quietly plodding along from day to day, and the thought of doing anything more exciting than work, basic cooking and laundry is just too much effort. Why bother? What’s the point?