The Management Style of the Supreme Beings

by Tom Holt

  He finished his shift, folded his whites neatly and put them in the laundry basket, and drifted down the corridor to the coffee room. He had it to himself, which was unusual at this time of day. He put a coin in the machine, which ate it and declared itself out of order. Hooray for Life.

  He sat down. His back was aching and his hamstrings weren’t anything special either. He stared at the opposite wall, which he’d come to know quite well. There was something different about it today. For some reason, and very quickly and efficiently, causing no mess and leaving no trace, the management had seen fit to install a fireplace.

  Oh no, you don’t, he thought and jumped to his feet. Too late. Out of the grate jumped half a dozen goblins, five with spears, one with a very big sack. They had ears like coat hooks and they moved very, very fast.

  Over the years Jersey had coped with all manner of enemies: guards, heavies, goons, henchmen and any number of fanatical devotees of diabolical secret sects, and none of them had caused him any real difficulty. Later, thinking back on the encounter, he decided that what made this one different was that all his opponents were four feet tall or less. Their skulls must’ve been an inch thick, and it’s really hard to fight effectively when you’re stooped double. He didn’t reproach himself for losing—there was no point—he respected competent opposition. Let’s hear it for the little people.

  He didn’t go quietly. But he went.

  32

  Not many packaging and wrapping products manufacturers can afford, or have a use for, a nuclear-powered submarine. But the Acme Novelty Paper Company of Pascagoula, Miss. has one. It picked her up for a very sensible price shortly after the break-up of the old Soviet Union, renamed her the Season’s Greetings, reflagged her in Panama and had her refitted in a specialist shipyard in South Korea. There they decommissioned the active weapons systems but retained the torpedo tubes (with some modifications) since they’d be useful for storing and handling long cylindrical objects. Since then she’s been in use more or less constantly, shuttling backwards and forwards between the company’s manufacturing plant and its one and only customer.

  Captain Simonov, who trained on Grusha-class subs as a young midshipman before the Wall came tumbling down, was a lucky find for the Acme people. Twenty-five years later, he knew the course like the back of his hand: Pascagoula to Anchorage, then Nome, across the Chukchi Sea to Wrangel Island, then deep under the ice cap until he reached a spot directly below the North Pole. Then came the tricky bit, manoeuvering the submarine so that her torpedo tubes were pointing straight up into the artificially heated well shaft of warm water leading to the surface that forces beyond his comprehension had cut and kept clear for this one purpose. After he’d done that, it was just a matter of pressing the button, realigning the ship, collecting the empties and heading home for the next consignment.

  Once fired, the cylindrical self-propelled amphibious freight containers (best not to call them torpedoes, to avoid unnecessary legal complications) speed up through the well shaft until they hit a stop net, whereupon they’re fished out, hauled up onto the ice, broken open and emptied of their contents before being weighted down with bricks and sent back to be collected for re-use. The contents meanwhile are loaded onto a sleek antigrav-powered monorail and sent hurtling across to a massive shed cut into the side of a giant glacier.

  The contents come in three standard patterns: jolly robins, holly wreaths and snowmen, and a cartoonish and wildly inaccurate representation of the boss, driving an artist’s misimagining of a reindeer-drawn sleigh. Each roll is enough to wrap seventy-five thousand standard presents (large) or one hundred and six thousand standard presents (medium) or half a million pairs of socks. Before they had the sub, the Acme people used to have to cart the stuff across the ice from Ellesmere Island on snowmobiles. It was a real drag, and there were sovereignty issues with the Norwegians.

  Until the Boeing people built their factory in Everett, Washington, the wrapping shed was the biggest enclosed space on the planet. Fully automated yet 100 per cent carbon neutral (the main power source is a treadmill, worn glassy smooth by the scaly soles of elven feet), it can handle up to three quarters of a million presents per six-hour shift at peak productivity levels, and the automatic bow-knotter was designed by Leonardo da Vinci. The Sellotape dispenser is only slightly smaller than the London Eye, and turns on synthetic diamond bearings a foot thick.

  None of this hardware is strictly necessary. If he wanted to, the boss could do it all himself in about three minutes. But it keeps the elves occupied. A significant problem throughout history has been the demoralisation that sets in when a standing army becomes a standing-about-with-nothing-to-do army. Making and wrapping presents gives the Green Horde a sense of purpose and achievement.

  The other notable structure on the site is the Sports and Social Club, where the elves are free to occupy their off-shift hours with a wide range of leisure pursuits, including armed and unarmed combat, simulated airborne assaults on major cities, the Explosives Bee and the twice-weekly Elves for the Ethical Treatment of People spit-roast, darts match and real polo tournament. A thousand-odd years ago the Red Lord made some sort of treaty with the old management, as part of which he promised faithfully to disband his armed forces, but naturally he has no control over what his people choose to do in their free time.

  The late shift had been amusing themselves and improving their minds with a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-human when the horn went off. Dutifully they filed out and made their way across the ice (clawed feet are essential at the Pole, or at least that’s what the Red Lord told the decommissioning inspectors) to the well head to collect an unscheduled delivery. Usually the Season’s Greetings called once a fortnight, regular as clockwork, and its last visit had been five days ago. Today, however, it was back again, having detoured on its way home to collect a special consignment from Denmark or Belgium or England or one of those places. No bother; if the late shift weren’t doing this, they’d be doing something else, and it was all automated anyway. All they had to do was haul the stop net into position and wait for the torpedoes to hit it, then run the winch and position the crane. Yawnsville.

  Today there was just the one torpedo, hardly worth going to all that trouble for, not that it was any trouble really. It hit the net rather harder than usual, but the restraining bolts held. The reason for the excess velocity was that it was considerably lighter than normal, leading those elves who could be bothered to speculate to wonder whether there was anything inside it, or whether some clown had inadvertently sent them a blank. But they hauled it out anyway, loaded it onto the monorail carriage and sent it on its way to Unloading, where it would be someone else’s fault.

  The unloading crew hefted their wrenches and crowbars and popped the side panel off the tube. There was no roll of wrapping paper inside, just a human-sized cocoon of cotton wool and inside that a very unhappy human. Fortunately they’d been warned what to expect (and besides, they’d already eaten) so they helped him out, stood him on his tottery feet and tenderly frogmarched him to the disused coal cellar that served as guest quarters on the rare occasions they had a visitor. Nobody had seen fit to tell them whether the ropes, handcuffs and gag were supposed to come off or stay on. The human didn’t seem to like them very much. They left them on, just to be on the safe side.

  Some time later the iron door creaked open. Three goblins bustled in and loosened the gag. “Shut it,” they warned before Jersey had a chance to say anything. Then they backed away respectfully and a long shadow fell across Jersey’s face. He blinked, and a voice that made the solid rock walls shake said, “Hello.”

  Large parts of Jersey’s face were numb after forty-eight hours inside a torpedo, but he managed a shaky grin. “You again.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You won’t remember,” Jersey said, “because it was a long time ago and you must meet millions of kids in your line of work.”

  “Ah,” said the Red Lord. “A peeper.”

&nb
sp; Jersey nodded. “On Christmas Eve I sneaked into the kitchen and ate half a jar of coffee granules so I’d be sure to stay awake. I had to know, you see.”

  The Red Lord nodded gravely. “Blessed are those who have seen and yet have believed.”

  “You could say that. Actually, by the time I was nine I’d more or less convinced myself that you were a hallucination brought on by a near-fatal dose of caffeine. But no, you look just the same as you did then. A bit fatter, maybe. But we’re none of us as young as we were.”

  “I am,” the Red Lord said. “Though young isn’t a word I’d ever associate with me.” He sat down on the pile of builder’s rubble that served, somewhat inefficiently, as a bed. “You wanted to see me.”

  “Yup. But I changed my mind.”

  “That’s a pity,” the Red Lord said. “I had to go to a lot of trouble to get you here.”

  “I gathered.”

  The Red Lord dipped his head in acknowledgement. “It’s all about jurisdictions, you see. Hell’s all right—it’s a self-governing autonomous nation state—and strictly speaking the submarine counts as Polar sovereign territory when it’s on business for me, though of course the Venturis don’t recognise me.”

  “Must be the beard.”

  “Recognise me diplomatically. Mind you, there’s sod all they can do about it. No, the only awkward bit was getting you from the hellmouth to the sub. Nice bit of piloting by the reindeer crew. Turns out Prancer can outrun a Venturi snatch-squad skimmer quite nicely, which is good to know. I’d been wondering about that, and I really didn’t want to find out for the first time on Christmas Night.”

  “Glad it wasn’t an entirely wasted exercise.”

  “Be quiet,” the Red Lord said, and Jersey’s eyes opened wide and his jaw dropped. He felt as though all the air had been squeezed out of him, as sometimes happens when you’re caught up in a big crowd or a packed rush-hour bus or, in Jersey’s case, when the bad guys have caught you and try to execute you by crushing you to death under a lorryload of watermelons. He managed to find just enough air to whisper, “Sorry,” whereupon he found he could breathe just fine.

  “That’s perfectly all right,” the Red Lord said. “I expect you’re feeling a bit snarky with me for snatching you away just when you thought you’d made sense of your life and accepted the fact that you’re really only a very ordinary, insignificant little man and not a superhero after all.”

  “Something like that,” Jersey said, after the slightest of pauses.

  “Understandable. However, now you’re here I imagine you’ll want to claim ethical asylum.”

  “Will I?”

  The Red Lord shrugged. “I’d have thought so. After all, where else can you go? Anywhere the Venturis can get at you is out of the question. That leaves Hell, or here. Did you enjoy Hell?”

  Jersey thought for a moment. “Enjoy isn’t quite the word. But I survived. Was surviving, until some pointy-eared git—”

  “Funny. I got the impression you were pretty miserable there.”

  “Yes, but no more so than I’d have been if I’d … Just a moment,” Jersey said. “You were watching?”

  The Red Lord smiled faintly. “Of course. I watch everybody, all the time. I find out who’s naughty and nice, remember?”

  “I thought that was just kids.”

  The Red Lord nodded sadly. “It used to be,” he said, “but what do they call it? Mission creep. Everybody expects to get presents at Christmas, or the economy of the industrialised world would come crashing down in ruins. Used to expect,” he amended, “and would have come crashing down. The Venturis have fixed all that, presumably, and probably no bad thing. It used to turn my stomach, seeing the first tinsel hit the stores in August. Anyway, yes, these days I watch every potential present recipient on the planet.” He shrugged. “It’s a bit of a bind. It’s lengthened my average working day by at least seventeen minutes, but there you go. I live only to serve. You can do stuff like that when you’re me.”

  Jersey nodded slowly. “Like God.”

  “Like a god,” the Red Lord said deliberately. “I’ve always firmly believed in freedom of conscience and non-exclusivity. All that no-other-gods-but-me stuff, I don’t hold with it. I took the previous lot to the Tribunal over it—restraint of trade—but guess who could afford the best lawyers. So I battle on anyhow, and screw ’em.”

  “But you were watching me,” Jersey said, “specifically.”

  The Red Lord smiled. “There came a point where you started to become mildly interesting,” he said. “It was round about when you figured out who I really am—sorry, was. I thought, an extra little something in that kid’s stocking, for being smart. Consider this that extra little something.”

  “Consider what?”

  The Red Lord sighed. “Being rescued,” he said patiently. “Snatched from the jaws of Hell. It’s not something I’d do for just anyone.”

  “What tribunal?”

  The smile broadened. “Oh, you wouldn’t be interested. Once upon a time you’d have been interested, but not now. You’re through with all that stuff, remember? The truth, and the truth behind the truth, and the foam-backed rubber underlay beneath the truth behind the truth. Once you’d have given anything to know, but now you’d rather flip burgers. A bit like the human race, really. A wise man once said that people tend to get the government they deserve, and I guess it’s the same with religions. Your generation got absolute certainty, and serve them bloody well right.”

  “What tribunal?”

  The Red Lord sighed and snapped his fingers. The pile of rubble metamorphosed into a huge red velvet cushion, and he snuggled his rear into it luxuriously. “There’s a tribunal,” he said, “where people like the Venturis, and me, go to have their disputes settled when they fall out among themselves. It’s not a court of law exactly—it can’t force anyone to do anything—it’s more like …” He closed his eyes for a moment, hunting for the word. “Self-regulation, I think they call it. Like with banks and newspapers and other institutions which think they can do precisely what they want and sod everybody else. Self-regulation is where they do precisely what they want with the approval of their peers. It’s a very slight difference, but in the circles I move in any difference is colossal.”

  “There’s a tribunal?”

  The Red Lord nodded gravely. “If you’re a bona fide divine entity in good standing, and if you can afford the court fees and the lawyers’ fees, and if you can find forty thousand other divine entities to countersign your application, you can take your case there and have it decided by a grand jury of independent gods from other jurisdictions, all of whom would rather eat their own thunderbolts with chilli sauce than offend the Venturis. After all, it stands to reason that the buck has to stop somewhere. Usually in a brown envelope in someone’s back pocket, but at least there’s an established procedure, which is a great comfort, don’t you think?”

  “That changes everything,” Jersey said. “We can take the Venturis to court. We can appeal. We can get rid of them.”

  When the Red Lord sighs, it’s like the bitter east wind howling across the icy wastes of Siberia, only wistful. “You poor sweet innocent child,” he said. “First, I’m not exactly bona fide or in good standing. Second, I haven’t got that sort of money. Third—”

  “Have you got a bit of paper I could borrow?”

  “What?”

  “And you couldn’t just free my hands for a moment. And could I borrow a pen?”

  The piece of paper was a corner torn off page 6,778,023 of the List for 1964, but that was all right. On it, Jersey wrote

  Dear Santa,

  What I want for Christmas is for you to sue the Venturis for me.

  Love, Jersey (34)

  “I don’t know if it actually has to be mailed in a postbox to count,” he said. “If so, could I please have an envelope and a stamp?”

  The Red Lord gave him a look so sour you could’ve mixed it with tandoori paste and made chicken tik
ka masala. “You can’t make me do this.”

  “Listen,” Jersey said, and the strength of feeling in his voice surprised him greatly. “Every year when I was growing up, when the other kids all got computers and bikes and games consoles, I got socks. And vests and pants and books that were on the school reading list. You owe me.”

  The Red Lord had gone pale, either from shock or anger. “Not that much.”

  “When I was twelve I got three complete changes of underwear, a pair of sensible black shoes, a fountain pen and the works of Tolstoy. When I was thirteen—”

  “All right.” The Red Lord’s face was white apart from tiny red dimples on his cheekbones. “Actually, I lied, a bit. I have got that sort of money and I’m on the Register, just about, and it wouldn’t exactly be hard to find forty thousand others who love the Venturis almost as much as I do. And I suppose it’d be fun, just to see the look on their faces.”

  “Well, then. Let’s go.”

  “Mphm.” The Red Lord frowned. “Just one little thing. What exactly are we going to accuse the Venturis of? What did they do wrong?”