by Tom Holt
“And you told him all about me.”
“I may have mentioned you, yes.”
“Thank you ever so much.” The Red Lord narrowed his eyes. “Do you think he’s on the level?”
Jersey shrugged. “He struck me as a nice enough person. Went out of his way to be helpful because he was sorry for me.”
“I didn’t ask if he was an idiot. Do you believe him?”
“On the other hand, he’s very, what’s the word, corporate. A no-I-in-team sort of guy. A true believer.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It all depends what you truly believe in.”
“I think he believes in Hell. As a vibrant business concern and a nice place to work.”
“Ah.” The Red Lord flared his nostrils. “He’s in the right place then.”
“He thinks so.”
“Information that would help get rid of the Venturi.” The Red Lord picked a stray thread from the sleeve of his gown. “I don’t know. It stands to reason Snib Venturi must’ve done some pretty unwholesome things over the years. On the other hand, who could possibly give him a hard time about it?”
“The Tribunal. You said.”
“Them.” The Red Lord scowled. “Mind you, it’s not like we’re looking to get him arrested and thrown in jail. All we need to do is embarrass him enough to pull out of a tiny corner of his empire.”
Jersey grinned. “Now you’re talking.”
“You’re only saying that because you saw my lips move. I don’t know. It could work. If we caused a bit of a stir, knocked a cent or so off the share price … That still doesn’t explain how some clerk in Hell could’ve found out something Snib Venturi wouldn’t want anyone to know. How would he have the opportunity? It’s not like their paths would ever cross.”
“We won’t know if we don’t try and find out.”
The Red Lord sighed. “There’s another way of looking at this letter. We could regard it as a twenty-foot sign spelling out T-R-A-P in bright blue neon letters. But I don’t suppose that would bother you.”
Jersey thought for a moment. “Not really, no. Over the years I’ve been in more traps than an elderly pony. There was one time in the Vatican Library—”
“Yes, fine. I’ve watched your career with interest over the years, and it’s perfectly true you’ve been caught in obvious snares and you’ve escaped with remarkable ease. But there’s a reason for that.”
“Really?”
The Red Lord nodded. “All your enemies have been idiots. Snake-filled pits, garbage crushers and cellars slowly filling with water when a single bullet to the back of the head would’ve got the job done in seconds. The Venturis aren’t like that. I guess it’s because they’re in this business to make money, not show how diabolically evil they are. Almost certainly at some point they had a team of time-and-motion people in to research the most cost-efficient method of execution. Or, overwhelmingly more likely, they’ll throw you in the Marshalsea and leave you there for ever and ever.” He yawned. “Which would get you out of my hair, granted, and there’s ever such a lot to be said for a quiet life, but I feel it’s my duty to point out the risks.”
Jersey sighed like a slow puncture. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m being stupid. OK then, we’ll forget about charging in and thinking of something when the time comes. What do you suggest instead?”
“Me?” The Red Lord pulled a face. “Oh for crying out loud. What on Earth makes you think I’m interested enough to make suggestions? This is all your idea, remember.”
“You brought me here.”
“I did, didn’t I?” The Red Lord sighed himself. “All right, here’s what you do. Yes, Cinders, you shall go to the ball. But not alone and not empty-handed.” He made a fist and tapped himself on the forehead. “This is what comes of getting involved in the petty concerns of mortals,” he said. “Which I promised myself I wasn’t going to do. You should see my fridge door. It’s covered in yellow stickies, DON’T CONCERN YOURSELF IN THE PETTY CONCERNS OF MORTALS. But do I listen? Of course not. It’s all this joviality and ho-ho-hoing. After a while it rots your brain.”
38
What do you do when you’re probably the smartest businessperson who ever lived, anywhere in the Universe, regardless of gender, species or dimensional orientation, and you’ve got a kid brother who’s an idiot? Answer: you do your best for him, because you love him and you and he are so close you couldn’t squeeze a Higgs boson between you, and it doesn’t matter that he’s dumb because you’re smart enough for the both of you. Even so.
“It’s OK,” Snib Venturi said for the fifteenth time. “There’s nothing to worry about. Relax. It’s all under control.”
But Ab was still brandishing the front page of Intergalactic Deity under his nose. “It says here we’ve been wiped out. All the money’s gone. We’re broke.”
“No, it hasn’t,” Snib said, “and no, we aren’t. Trust me.”
“But all our money was in the bank. And the bank’s gone bust. It says so in the paper.”
Me, give me strength, Snib said to himself. “I know it does,” he said. “I told them to say that. We own the usdamn paper. But that doesn’t mean it’s true.”
Ab blinked twice. “Huh?”
“It’s a lie,” Snib said.
In the beginning the Universe was without form and void, completely and utterly blank, but not as blank as Ab’s face. “Why would we lie about a thing like that?”
Snib sighed. “Listen,” he said. “It’s really very simple. A while back I transferred the bulk of our uncommitted capital to the Bank of Ultimate Truth. Remember? You should do. You had to countersign the cheque.”
Ab nodded. “I remember that, sure.”
“OK, so far so good. Now then. Last week I suddenly withdrew all our money from the bank. Which, incidentally, we own.”
“Do we?”
“Yup. Only nobody knows that because I’ve been buying up the stock gradually through shell companies and dummy corporations.”
“OK,” Ab said, as though that was the most natural thing in the world. “So, why take all our money out?”
“To start a run on the bank.”
“Why?”
“To make sure the bank failed. Which it just did.”
“Oh.”
“Crashed and burned. No survivors. Ninety trillion dollars Andromedan we’ll never see again.”
“That’s awful.”
Snib sighed. “No, it isn’t,” he said. “You see, I had to own the bank so I could make sure they wouldn’t tell anyone we got all our money out safely just before it went down.”
“Um.”
“So,” Snib ground on, “it looks to everybody else in the Universe that Venturicorp just took a real heavy beating.”
“Well, we did.”
“No, we didn’t. We just lost ninety trillion. That’s nothing.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Comparatively nothing. So, what do you think happened then?”
“We lost ninety trillion dollars.”
“Apart from that.”
“Um.”
“What happened,” Snib said patiently, “is that Venturicorp stock plummeted on all the major exchanges right across the Firmament. Stock that was trading at thirty-six dollars is now worth two.”
“That’s terrible.”
“No it isn’t. Because I’ve secretly bought it all back, at cents on the dollar. Which means we—that’s you and me, bro—we now own seventy zillion bucks’ worth of Venturicorp stock for which we paid peanuts. Plus all our capital, which used to be in the Ultimate Truth, is safely squirrelled away elsewhere, and all it’s cost us is a measly ninety trillion. Net profit is six plus a string of zeroes from here to Alpha Centauri bucks, all for a few minutes’ work. Now I call that smart, don’t you?”
Ab scratched his head. “I guess,” he said. “But what about the economies of three galaxies? It’s going to be awfully hard on all the little people.”
“Sure. And where were they when we laid the foundations of the Earth? Screw them.”
“Suppose someone finds out? We’d be ever so unpopular.”
Snib smiled indulgently. “Nobody’s going to find out. But you know all this. You think I’d do something like this without telling you? I told you.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I sent you a memo.”
“Um.”
Snib closed his eyes for a moment. Undoubtedly Ab had read the memo and entirely failed to understand it, and he should have known that. But it was hard, terribly hard, to admit to himself that his own brother, who he loved so much, was quite such a thicket. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You know now. And you aren’t going to worry any more. Are you?”
Ab didn’t say anything. He looked miserable.
Snib hated it when he looked like that. “For pity’s sake,” he said, “what’s the matter now?”
“It just seems a bit …”
“Business,” Snib said. “Strictly business.”
“I know. Only, there’s one thing I don’t get.”
Just one thing? “What?”
“What do we need all this money for?”
The sort of question a child might ask—utterly dumb, but you can’t quite figure out how to explain it. A theologian’s question: suppose God accumulated a bankroll so big that even he couldn’t spend it. “In case,” Snib said.
“In case what, bro?”
“In case,” Snib replied, more sharply than he’d intended. “In case something goes wrong.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know, do I? If I knew, I’d make darned sure it never happened. But one thing’s for sure. You and me, we ain’t never going to be poor again, not like we were in the old days, when we didn’t have two cents, and you were walking around with no soles to your shoes. We’re through with all that. I won’t let that happen to you again, I promise.”
And then something wonderful happened. Ab smiled at him. “Thanks, bro,” he said.
“That’s OK.”
“I know you’ll look after me. You always have.”
“I said it’s OK. Don’t go on about it.”
“I know, because you promised Pa—”
“Don’t go on about it,” Snib repeated, and if he wiped the corner of his eye, it was almost certainly just a bit of stray grit. “And Pa was a good man, Ab, a really good man. He cared about us. It’s just he was no businessman, that’s all. A really great guy but no good with money.” Like you, he didn’t add. “Guess I take after Ma.”
Ab grinned. “She was real smart, wasn’t she?”
“The smartest.”
“She’d have been proud of you.”
“Of both of us, Ab. Don’t you ever doubt that for a minute.”
Worth it, he told himself when Ab had gone back to his office, to do whatever it was he did in there. Worth all the stress and the worry, just to see his brother smile like he used to in the old days, when Snib came back in the evening with one or two coins he’d managed to scrounge or steal somewhere, and they knew they’d be eating that night. He really was the most wonderful person in the Universe, though it was a shame he was so dumb.
Never mind. Snib took a deep breath and scrolled down the screen of his LoganBerry. Nothing that needed his personal attention, he was relieved to see, except possibly this ridiculous stuff about that crazy hold-out leftover god somewhere up near the planet’s magnetic pole. Those clowns in Security, they couldn’t catch a cold. Presumably at some point he was going to have to take charge of the matter personally. He opened the file. Pressure had been brought (he liked that phrase) on the CEO of the planet’s redundant Afterlife, who was suspected of harbouring the malcontent Thorpe. Arrangements were in hand to apprehend Thorpe using his contacts among the Afterlife’s staff. Fine, Snib thought. Once we’ve got him, I’ll deal with him personally, and that’ll be one less thing to fret about. Also, Thorpe’s girl was in the Marshalsea. He grinned. Catnip. He knew these hero types. It was all so unnecessary, such a waste of his time, but if there was one thing he’d learned long ago, it was the crucial importance of taking care of details personally.
A phone rang. “It’s him again, on line two.”
“By him you mean?”
“That guy. The one who used to own this place.”
Snib sighed. “Not again. What is it this time?”
“Says he’s got to talk to you, urgently.”
“For crying out loud. OK. I’ll take the call. Yes, hello.”
A crackle. Cosmically speaking, Sinteraan was just down the road, but the line was awful. “Mr. Venturi?”
“Speaking.”
“I was wondering if you’d had a chance to consider my offer.”
Snib put his palm over the mouthpiece and riffled through his in-tray. Got it. “You want to buy back the Earth.”
“That’s right.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s not for sale. Great little place you had here, by the way. You did a really grand job on the lesser crustaceans.”
“Sorry, it’s a bad connection. What did you—?”
“Really ace krill. But no, I’m not interested in selling right now, thank you for your interest.”
“Even though you just lost all your money?”
Careful. “Ah. You know about that, do you?”
“Well, it’s all over the papers.”
Snib smiled. “You should be careful about believing everything you read, Mr …” He hesitated. He was ashamed to admit it, but he’d never quite managed to figure out how to pronounce the guy’s name. Who has a name with no vowels in it, anyway? “Reports of our demise have been somewhat exaggerated.”
“So you’re not selling.”
“Not for a price you could afford.”
He hadn’t meant to be rude, but the unpronouncable guy was annoying him. There was a pause.
“Hello? You still there?”
“Yup.”
“You’d be surprised what I can afford, Mr. Venturi. Name your price.”
Over the millennia some of the best minds in the Universe have put a lot of time and energy into trying to find a form of words guaranteed to get them the attention of the supreme being. Remarkable that none of them had ever hit on those three little syllables. True, he hadn’t considered selling, but a blank cheque … To gain time he said, “While you’re on the line, I got a bone to pick with you.”
“Say what?”
“I said—” Snib took a deep breath “—when we were doing the deal I don’t think you were entirely straight with me.”
A surge of righteous indignation crackled across hyperspace and down the wire into Snib’s ear. “Are you calling me a liar?”
“Let’s say you didn’t give me all the relevant facts.”
“About what?”
“You told me,” Snib said calmly—the more the other guy shouts, the calmer you reply—“I’d be getting vacant possession. No other gods but you. Except for one very minor anomaly, I think was how you put it.”
Another silence. He let it hang. Eventually, Mr. No-Vowels said, “Well, that’s perfectly true.”
“I think we may have to beg to differ there,” Snib said smoothly. “The way I see it, this minor anomaly of yours has the makings of a real bad headache.”
“Only if you provoke him.”
“Ah. That’s not what you said.”
“I’d have thought you’d have had more sense than to … What’s been happening, then?”
So Snib gave him a concise and mostly accurate account of the Christmas man problem, while his fingertips danced on the calculator on his desk. Name your price, huh? Them’s fighting words. “No offence,” he concluded, “but in my scriptures that’s more than a minor anomaly. Seems to me that at any one time up to ten per cent of the population of the planet believe in this guy. Roughly the same proportion,” he added spitefully, “as believed in you. On a good day.”
“Kids,” the voice
on the line spluttered. “Who cares what kids think?”
“I made a deal in good faith. That’s my way of doing things. I’m a regular straight shooter. And that’s all I’m saying, OK?”
The longest pause yet. Then, “I’m not saying that what you allege is true. But if it is, hypothetically speaking—”
“Of course.”
“—then there’s a simple way of dealing with the problem. In fact, I’m surprised you haven’t thought of it yourself.”
Snib raised an eyebrow. “Is that right?”
“Sure. Raise an army and flatten the son-of-a-reindeer.”
“OK,” Snib said cautiously. “And the reason you didn’t do that when you were in charge is …”
“It’d be massively unpopular, and I wanted to be liked. No disrespect, but I don’t see that as a problem in your case. After all, nobody likes you much anyway.”
This guy, Snib said to himself, is starting to get on my nerves. “I’m a businessman,” he said, “not an exterminator. Also, armies cost money. And I shouldn’t have to lay out on stuff like that because there shouldn’t be a problem, because the contract was for vacant possession, not sharing the planet ninety–ten with a fat man in a red bathrobe.”
A long sigh that made Snib’s ear hurt. “Fine,” he said. “You raise your army and send me the bill. Let no one say I ever welched on a covenant. And then we can talk about your price.”
“Maybe,” Snib said. “Meanwhile, just to clarify, I send in the troops to wipe out this jingle-bells guy, and you pay the tab. Is that agreed?”
“I just said so, didn’t I?”
“I like to get these things right,” Snib said.
“Fine. I’ll want receipts, of course.”
“You’ll get them.”
“And you’ll need to find the little creep first. He’s darned elusive.”
“It so happens I have a lead on that,” Snib said happily. “Two leads, or two parts of the same lead. Sorry, just thinking aloud.”
“And watch out for those pesky elves. They can give you a nasty nip if you’re not careful.”
But then, Snib thought as he put down the phone, logic never was one of their greatest strengths. Anyone with an ounce of respect for logic wouldn’t agree to pay a large sum of money to enhance the value, and therefore the selling price, of an asset he was negotiating to acquire. A logical being—Snib Venturi, for example—would have conceded that the reindeer man was a significant unsolved problem and would have reduced his offer accordingly. But then, what could you expect of a deity who installed his dominant species prototypes in an apple orchard and told them not to eat the apples?