The Management Style of the Supreme Beings

by Tom Holt

  “Well, they—” Jersey stopped dead. “They’re just not …”

  “Quite. Trouble is, that probably isn’t going to be enough. Give you a for instance. Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent of the Incas—nice enough in his way—made the maize grow on time, but he would insist on the still-beating hearts of prisoners captured in battle, and we sort of felt he was giving the industry as a whole a bad name. But would the Tribunal do anything about it?” He shook his head. “Not prepared to intervene in the internal affairs of a recognised jurisdiction. Pissing off mortals is no crime. It’s only if they’ve done something to their fellow gods that the Tribunal slithers into action. And face it: I bet you anything you like the Venturis have done all sorts of bad stuff, but can you find out about it and offer conclusive proof? Uh-huh. I don’t think so.”

  Jersey gave him a sort of crooked grin. “That’s what they said when I wanted to find the lost Death Mask of Amenhotep, which turned out to be an alien artefact of indescribable power, only the batteries had gone flat. If it was easy, it wouldn’t be worth doing.”

  The Red Lord shook his head sadly. “No, you’re wrong there,” he said. “If it was easy, it wouldn’t be quite so damn difficult. But what the heck. Apart from Christmas shopping for four billion people, it’s not like I’ve got anything to do.” He smiled and stood up. “Relax, chill, have a rest, think things over. Excuse me, I have elves to overawe. I’ll have you moved to the guest quarters. Correction, these are the guest quarters. Tell you what, I’ll leave the door open. Just don’t wander too far, or you might get eaten. Ciao.”

  Halfway up the corridor the Red Lord stopped and allowed the grin which had been building up for ever so long to break out and spread across his face like floodwater.

  33

  Summertime on Sinteraan, and the living was easy. Fish were jumping—hardly surprising, ever since a D’zigrethph’s mullet discovered how to create a stable anti-verteron field, and would have gone on to break the faster-than-light barrier if some clown hadn’t broken his concentration by hauling him out of the water on a bit of string—and the xzx’vxxxi grass was high. Under the spreading branches of an ancient tree Jay snoozed contentedly until a nearby beeping noise woke him up.

  “Dad?”

  “Just a minute, son.”

  His father was sitting on the riverbank, but he wasn’t paying any attention to the rods and lines or the brightly coloured floats bobbing in the lazy current. He was bent over his LoganBerry, and he looked worried.

  Jay yawned, stretched and got to his feet. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Dad.”

  His father sighed and handed him the tablet. “See for yourself.”

  Jay glanced down and pursed his lips. “Dad,” he said. “You didn’t.”

  Dad rested his chin on his hands. “It seemed like such a good idea at the time.”

  The news report concerned the sudden and unexpected collapse of the Andromedan Bank of Ultimate Truth, which had just gone down the tubes taking the capital reserves of three galaxies with it. “All our money?”

  “Not all. Just some.”

  “But how could you have been so—?” Jay cut himself off short. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “You couldn’t have known.”

  Somehow what he’d said had made it worse. “No,” Dad said bitterly, “I couldn’t, could I? Because I’m not omniscient any more. And why? Because I traded it away to the Venturi boys for a ridiculously large sum of money. Most of which is now—”

  Jay looked startled. “Most?”

  “All right, some. It’s OK, we still have enough. But how could I have been so stupid?”

  “Define enough.”

  Dad thought for a moment. “More than lots but a bit less than loads.”

  “Mphm.” Jay moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. “So I won’t have to, you know, go out and get a job or anything?”

  Dad patted him gently on the shoulder. “Relax, son,” he said. “Truth is, it’s my pride that’s taken the real damage. Any fool could see the bank was hopelessly extended in contingent futures.”

  Jay took the tablet from him and read a bit more. “Only because someone went and discovered time travel.”

  “Should’ve anticipated that. I would have.”

  “It says here,” Jay went on, “that the biggest single investor in Ultimate Truth was the Venturi Corporation.”

  “Does it? I missed that bit. Gimme.”

  Jay handed Dad the tablet and carried on reading over his shoulder. “Oh dear,” he said. “Oh, what a dreadful shame.”

  “And they should’ve known. They had no excuse.”

  Jay grinned. “Goes to show, really. Omniscient is one thing, thick as a brick is another. Not that I take any pleasure in the downfall of a fellow entity.”

  “Nor me. Still.”

  “Quite.”

  There was a long silence, broken only by the soft plashing of liquid argon against the roots of the old tree and the faint distant warbling of hyperdimensional gryphons. Then Jay said, “If the Venturis have just lost a shedload of money—”

  “In their core business area, don’t forget.”

  “Indeed. So maybe, right now, cash flow could well be a bit of a problem.”

  “Right. So they might be considering selling off some of their more peripheral assets—”

  “Especially ones they haven’t owned very long.”

  “—for whatever they can get for them, in what will definitely be a buyer’s market, given the dreadful state the universal economy’s going to be in—”

  “Oh, dreadful, dreadful.”

  “—because of Ultimate Truth going pear-shaped. In which case, they might just be open to—”

  “Offers.”

  Father and son beamed at each other. Then Dad said, “Of course, we might have to borrow some money.”

  Jay’s face fell. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be, Dad. You said it. Your own words.”

  Dad frowned. “You sure?”

  “Course I’m sure.”

  “I thought that was Shakespeare. Could’ve been me, I suppose. I’ve said loads of things in my time.”

  “It’s a big step, Dad. I mean, what if something went wrong? We’d have to mortgage the planet as security.”

  “We wouldn’t be borrowing that much. It’ll be fine, trust me.”

  That, from someone who’d just lost a fortune on a dodgy investment. “I don’t know, Dad. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all. We’re happy enough as we are. Why risk it all now?”

  “You’re happy,” Dad said. “I’m not.”

  There. It had been said and couldn’t be unsaid. A question for all you theologians. Can God put a foot in his mouth so big he can’t take it out again? “Fine,” Jay said. “In that case, it’s settled. We’ll borrow the money and we’ll get the planet back, and everything will be just like it was. Maybe—” He stopped, but too late. And he thought, so that’s the reason.

  Dad finished the sentence for him, though there was really no need. “If we get the planet back, Kevin will come home.”

  34

  One man’s meat, and so forth. Over the centuries thousands of men and women have yearned to come into the presence of the Almighty. They huddled in caves, perched on the tops of pillars, knelt on the cold stone floors of monastic cells, prayed, chanted, starved, grew haggard, unkempt and unwashed, all in the hope of a single fleeting glimpse of the Ineffable. Almost invariably without success. Jay once remarked, in a rare moment of flippancy, that they might have stood a better chance if they’d been cleaner, less smelly and a bit less wild-eyed and noisy; fanatical devotion is all very well, but you really wouldn’t want to invite that sort of person into your home.

  Lucy considered this paradox as they escorted her down endless plush corridors. Maybe the only ones who get the chance are those who really don’t want it. But then, the Venturi weren’t the sort of gods Earth was used to. Maybe on all
the other planets in their empire this sort of thing was regarded as perfectly normal, and their idea of Heaven was a vast office building with fire doors and potted palms and millions and millions of miles of beige-coloured industrial-grade deep-pile carpet.

  “Wait here,” said the Thing, pointing to a chair. There didn’t seem anything particularly special about this chair or its location. It was in one of those nondescript empty bits of space you tend to get in really huge office buildings, probably where the architect put his coffee mug down on the plans and the contractors took the brown lines literally. There were a couple of doors nearby. They looked just like all the others she’d seen on her long march. Her feet hurt from all the walking. She sat down.

  The Thing went away, and she was alone. For a brief moment she considered making a run for it, but then she caught sight of the CCTV camera peering down at her from the corner of the ceiling, and figured she probably wouldn’t get very far. And even if she did, a girl could easily starve to death before she stumbled across the way out, and she still clung to the belief that if only she could find someone sensible and explain …

  One of the doors opened, and a short fat man peered out, caught sight of her and beckoned. She stood up; he nodded. Simple as that.

  “Hi,” the fat man said. “Come in. Please take a seat. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  It was a small office, very plain: desk, two chairs, three phones, computer screen, filing cabinet. Just one picture on the walls, a photograph of a ghastly-looking red desert under a pale grey sky. She vaguely remembered something about the Venturis originally being from Mars. The fat man wore a plain but expensive-looking grey suit and a shirt with no tie. He looked like his shoes were a tiny bit too tight.

  “I’m Ab Venturi,” he said. “My brother Snib was going to have joined us, but he got held up on a call. Can I get you a cup of—” he glanced down at a yellow pad on his desk “—tea?”

  “No, thank you.”

  There was a lot of paperwork on Mr. Venturi’s desk, memos and reports and printouts of emails, and Lucy could read upside down. Under other circumstances there would’ve been much to interest her. As it was …

  “All right then, to business. You know a man called Jersey Thorpe.”

  “Mphm.”

  “Are you fond of him?”

  She gave him her best ice-dagger look, which seemed to have no effect at all. Actually, he had rather a jolly face. “You’re omniscient,” she said. “You tell me.”

  He nodded, which wasn’t at all what she’d expected, and turned a page on his yellow pad. “Your pal beat up a platoon of security guys.”

  “They were going to arrest us. And it was all paid for. In advance.”

  “Oh, quite, quite. No beef with you on that score; just making sure I’ve got the facts straight. You and Mr. Thorpe are trying to get in touch with—”

  “Father Christmas, yes. Well, he is. Or I assume he still is. I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in yonks.”

  “But you aren’t?”

  She sighed. “Mr. Venturi,” she said, “do you have sidekicks on your planet?”

  “Which one?”

  “Any of them.”

  “Oh yes. It’s an established trope in escapist adventure literature.”

  “Well,” she said, “for a few fleeting moments I thought I was going to be Jersey Thorpe’s sidekick. And yes, at the time it seemed like a good idea, because in our culture that’s what girls do, and I thought I quite liked him, and I guess the stereotype just sort of opened up in front of me like a fissure in the earth and I stepped into it without looking. And then I thought—”

  Mr. Venturi smiled at her. He had a nice smile. “Quite.”

  “—this just isn’t me, I thought. Because, let’s face it, what does it achieve? The hero gets all the fame and the glory and the satisfaction of having been right and winning, and what does the girl get?”

  Mr. Venturi nodded. “The hero.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Hardly fair.”

  “That’s what I think. And presumably, once the credits roll, they move in together and she gets to iron his shirts and darn his socks and clean the toilet while he’s off doing lecture tours on How I Found the Lost Thingummy of Whatever. It all seems a lot of trouble to go to when you can achieve pretty much the same result by going to the movies and having dinner a few times. Assuming it’s a result you genuinely wish to achieve, which I’m really not sure about.”

  “Mphm. Moving on,” Mr. Venturi said, pushing his spectacles back up his nose, “your pal wants to overthrow the government and install a known criminal in its place.”

  “I guess you could say that, yes.”

  “That’s not very nice.”

  She thought about that for a moment. “No, I guess not.”

  “Point one, we paid good money for this planet and it’s now our property. Point two, in the short time we’ve been here, we’ve improved the lives of practically every sentient being who lives here. Point three, you’ve got to be really stupid or worried about getting re-elected to get rid of one regime without having something a whole lot better to put in its place.”

  She scratched the tip of her nose. “Not so sure about point one,” she said, “but the other two are hard to argue with. Sorry, what are you getting at?”

  “Do you want to overthrow us and hand the planet over to a Bronze Age thunder god with a chip on his shoulder?”

  She didn’t have to think too long about that one either. “Not really, no.”

  “So that’s where you and Mr. Thorpe part company?”

  “Actually it was in a coffee shop off Leicester Square. Yes, sorry. You’re quite right. Mr. Thorpe and I don’t see eye to eye on that issue.”

  Mr. Venturi smiled at her, and she felt ever such a lot better. You see, said her inner voice, I was right. All you had to do was meet the person in charge and explain, and everything’s sorted out. “That’s fine,” he said. “Seems to me that you haven’t done anything wrong. You were just tagging along with Mr. Thorpe because you thought you liked him, and as soon as he started getting all those weird, antisocial ideas you quickly came to your senses and left him. Is that about it?”

  She nodded happily. “Exactly.”

  “That’s all right then.” He pressed the intercom on his phone. “Could someone come and take the prisoner back to her cell, please?”

  It was one of those walking-into-a-plate-glass-door moments. “But you said—”

  Mr. Venturi looked up, as though surprised to find she was still there. “Yes?”

  “—I hadn’t done anything wrong.”

  “You haven’t. We’ve established that.”

  “So why aren’t you letting me go?”

  “You’re a hostage,” Mr. Venturi said, as though explaining to a very old person or a foreigner. “A bargaining counter. Give yourself up or the girl gets it. From what we’ve gathered about Mr. Thorpe, he’ll be round here like a shot to rescue you, and then …” He grinned. “Gotta love those tropes,” he said. “So much easier than thinking.”

  “But that’s not right.”

  Mr. Venturi sighed, and you could tell that deep down he was fundamentally not a bad person, just a good person who happened to do a lot of bad things. “No,” he said, “it isn’t. According to the outmoded and obsolete morality of Right and Wrong, it’s a bummer, because you’re completely innocent, and if your pal chickens out and won’t play ball, we’ll kill you. Probably we’ll have to pay quite a hefty fine. To ourselves, naturally. But so what? There’s over six billion people on this planet, and only one of you, and the other six billion have decent jobs and free healthcare. You really do need to keep things in proportion, you know.”

  The door opened, and three Things stood in the doorway. She stood up because being dragged down corridors by the hair is so undignified.

  “Nice to have met you,” Mr. Venturi said. He was reading a report. “Soon as your pal’s safe in the Marshalsea, you’ll be
free to go. Have a nice day.”

  35

  Mr. Dao, chairman and CEO of the Bank of the Dead, looked up from his abacus and scanned the room. The Hole in the Wall was a bit quieter than usual, just a solitary, forlorn figure slumped over a caramel latte in the far corner. He got up and took his tea bowl over.

  “Hi, Bernie,” he said.

  Bernie Lachuk acknowledged him with a slight nod, which wasn’t like him at all. “Hi, Mr. Dao.”

  “On your own today.”

  “Yup.”

  “Usually you come in here with that charming young lady.”

  “Yeah, well. She dumped me.”

  Mr. Dao, who’d seen that coming for a long time, expressed suitable pained surprise. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “She said all I care about is work, and I’m no fun.”

  Mr. Dao frowned. “She’s right, of course.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And you’ve got to respect someone who tells the truth.”

  “Sure, but—”

  “The truth is a beautiful thing, Bernie.”

  “Of course it, is, but—”

  “Quite probably the most beautiful thing in the Universe.”

  “I’m not disputing that, Mr. Dao, but—”

  “And without truth, can there really be true happiness?”

  “Maybe not, but—”

  “Would you really want to date a pathological liar?”

  Bernie looked up at him. “Thanks, Mr. Dao. You’ve made me feel a whole lot better. And now I think I’ll just sit here on my own for a bit and drink my coffee.”

  “Glad to have been of service.”

  Mr. Dao was right, Bernie reflected as the sprinkles ate into the foam of his untasted latte. There has to be absolute honesty in a relationship, and absolute trust. Without truth and honesty, what would I have? Well, a girlfriend for one thing. Still, there’s more to life. Yes. Of course there is.

  For a start, there’s quarterly returns. He’d brought the file with him. (Not that he was boring or work-obsessed; it was just that it had been in his hand when he left the office and he must have forgotten to let go of it. A mistake anyone could have made.) He opened it and started to review the figures, and at some point a yellow highlighter pen must have found its way in between his fingers, and a calculator appeared on the table, probably by magic. Weird stuff like that seemed to happen to him all the time, and he had no idea why.