The Management Style of the Supreme Beings

by Tom Holt

  The more obvious explanation was that Jay had been a hit with walking on water because Jay was Jay, the elder son of God, the Chosen One, not the one who was always having to be shown how to do things three times and still got them wrong. Why was that? Theologically speaking, they were all part of the same essential being, consubstantial and co-eternal, so anything Jay could do, Kevin ought to be able to do just as well. He’d given that question a lot of thought over the millennia and never come up with a convincing explanation. True, Jay was an inch taller, and he could wiggle his ears and was double-jointed. Somehow, that wasn’t really enough to account for the discrepancy. Oh yes, and Jay was smarter. At least, that was the conclusion that everyone seemed to draw; nobody had ever said so in so many words, of course, let alone offered any real proof. But Jay could work the computer and understood the filing system and knew how to do the climate and the space–time continuum and the causality web and all that stuff. Now, here was a thought. Did Jay know how to do all that because Dad had taken the time and trouble to show him, slowly and patiently, until he’d got it right? Not three times, not seven times, not seventy-times-seven times, but as long as it took, and without sighs and sharp intakes of breath and clicks of the tongue, until eventually Jay had got the hang of it?

  I can do this, Kevin said to himself. And what’s more, I can do it on my own. Which I’m going to have to do, because nobody’s going to help me or show me how. And the first step is going to have to be, stop doing what Jay did, because I’m not him. If I’m really serious about this, I’m going to have to find my own miracles, and they’ve got to be right for me.

  Um. Such as?

  So he thought about the Venturi. He lay on his back and contemplated the sky. The little bit of it he could see from here was just a tiny part of what the Venturi boys owned, and they’d started with nothing. Correction, they’d started with a business plan, which they’d converted into an ethical system. They believed that people could do anything they liked, provided they had the money to pay for it. All that really meant was cutting your coat according to your cloth, not transgressing beyond your means, reducing your expectations to meet your ability to pay. The concomitant benefits, peace and prosperity, had risen out of that basic premise quite organically; if people know what they can and can’t do, they tend not to overstep the mark, and of course the whole thing was posited on universal belief, which was possible because the Venturi took pains to prove that they existed. Dad and Jay had never done that. They’d wanted to be believed in, to be loved, for their own sake. Maybe that had been asking a little too much from puny creatures of a day.

  Right. Lesson one: I won’t let anyone be in any doubt about it. I exist.

  He stood up and shouted at the top of his voice, “I exist! I’m real!”

  His words echoed back from the forest-covered slopes. They sounded really silly. He sat down again.

  “Sure,” said a voice to his left. He looked round. “So you’re real. So what?”

  The voice was coming from a seagull. Kevin looked hard at it. Not Uncle Gabe or Uncle Raffa or Uncle Mike, not one of the cherubim or seraphim, probably not a power or a dominion or a throne, though he couldn’t put his hand on his heart and say he knew them all by sight. “Are you a seagull?”

  “Yup.”

  “But you can talk.”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s … unusual.”

  “Nope,” said the seagull. “What’s unusual is, you can hear me.”

  “Ah.”

  The seagull ate a crisp packet. Then it said, “You’re him, aren’t you?”

  “Am I?”

  “You’re that guy. You know, whatsisname’s kid.”

  “Oh, him. Yes, that’s me. But probably not the one you’re thinking of. There’s two of us, you see, me and my elder brother.”

  “You’re the younger one.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Like I said,” said the seagull. “You’re him.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “You can hear me. Only he can do that.”

  Kevin blinked. Out in the sun without a hat—Uncle Gabe had warned him about that. But it was still early, and the sun wasn’t particularly fierce yet. “Tell me about him,” he said.

  “You’re the younger chick of the Big Guy,” the seagull said, “the one who’s gonna redeem the Earth and build the Nest of God. Everybody knows that. We learn about you in the egg.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Sure. Passed down from generation to generation.”

  “Of seagulls.”

  “Yup. Makes you something of a celebrity. When you come into your own, the world will be one vast beach flowing with sandwich crusts and cold French fries, and there will be no more death. That’s what they tell us, anyhow.”

  Kevin rubbed his eyes, then stuck his finger in his ear and wiggled it about. Not earwax, then. “Do they say anything about how I bring all this about?”

  “Sure.”

  Kevin waited, then he said, “For instance?”

  “You just be yourself,” the seagull said.

  “That’s it?”

  “Yup.”

  “Just be myself, and everything suddenly turns wonderful?”

  “Yup.”

  Kevin sighed. “There’s got to be more to it than that.”

  “Maybe,” the seagull replied. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? I mean, no offence, but I gotta say, at first glance you’re not that great.”

  “I just walked on the water.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “All the way from Alicante.”

  “Cool. I just flew here from Malaga. Do you fly?”

  “No.”

  “Mphm. How long did it take you?”

  “Fifty-two hours.”

  “Took me ten, and Malaga’s over twice as far. One of those aeroplanes could do it even quicker. I guess transit times aren’t what’s so special about you.”

  “I guess so.”

  The seagull looked at him thoughtfully. “So, what else do you do?”

  “Let’s see. I fed five thousand people.”

  “McDonald’s feeds four million people a day.”

  “I turned water into beer.”

  “By adding malt, yeast and hops?”

  “No.”

  “Then that was different,” the seagull said. “Different ain’t necessarily better. What else?”

  “I cured a couple of sick people.”

  “OK.”

  “And got fined for practising medicine without a licence. I know, don’t say it. Different but not necessarily better.”

  “I figure,” the seagull said, “if you’re out to to impress people, you should consider doing stuff they can’t do for themselves.”

  Kevin thought for a while. “Jay raised the dead.”

  “Who?”

  “Jay. My brother.”

  The seagull pecked at a ketchup sachet. “You might want to be careful there,” he said. “Seems to me there’s an awful lot of Homo sapienses on this planet, maybe more than’s good for it. Could be, death is nature’s way of keeping the numbers down.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Sure, I know. But you can’t raise ’em all; it’d be standing room only. And if you raise some but not others, all you’ll do is piss people off. Pardon my fowl language. They’ll say, he raised so and so but not my Aunt Jemima; it’s not fair. You’ll annoy more people than you please, that’s for sure.”

  “Good point,” Kevin said sadly. “All right then, what should I do?”

  “Don’t ask me; I’m a bird.”

  “There must be something you can think of, surely.”

  The seagull put its head on one side. “What we’re taught in the egg is, you’ll be yourself. Try it. What harm can it do?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Using the very tip of its beak and one claw, the seagull managed to get the ketchup sachet open. “You ain’t listening. I didn’t
say, try and be what your dad and your big brother want you to be, or expect you to be. Don’t try and be—What did you say his name was?”

  “Jay.”

  “Sure. Don’t be him. Be you. That’s all I’m saying. Hey, this red stuff is really good.”

  “It’s mostly sugar, salt and monosodium glutamate. You want to go easy on it.”

  “Thanks for the tip. You see? You care about people, even seagulls. That shows you’re basically a nice guy.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Not like the bunch of crooks who made the ketchup, right? They put all kinds of stuff in it to make it taste nice, but it don’t do you no good. Quite the opposite. You see what I’m saying?”

  “Yes,” Kevin said. “I should try to be wholesome and beneficial rather than just tasting nice. It’s not actually very helpful.”

  “Honest too. Honesty is good.”

  “I think they also put eggs in ketchup.”

  The seagull spat hard. “Hey,” it said. “You might have warned me.”

  “Chicken eggs.”

  “We’re all part of the universal brotherhood of fowls.” It wiped its beak on the sand. “But I don’t hold it against you. It’s not like you personally murder eggs. That said, when you found the Great Society, you might just bear it in mind.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Not that that’s at all likely. The Great Society, I mean.”

  “Sure it is. It’s been foretold.”

  “By seagulls.”

  “Yup,” said the seagull. “And we’re smart, trust me. I mean, could one of your peabrain Homo saps find his way across five thousand miles of trackless sea without any sort of landmark whatsoever, and pick out just one tiny little rocky island to lay his eggs on, year after year, for generations? Thought not.”

  “Homo sapiens wouldn’t want to. Homo sapiens has more sense.”

  The seagull made a clucking noise. “See that building over there? It’s a hotel full of tourists. Germans mostly, and Brits. You go in there and have a look around, and then you tell me which species making an annual migration to a tiny overcrowded seafront locale you think is superior.” It preened a stray feather. “Listen, it’s been great, but any minute now they’ll be chucking out the used cooking fat. There’s bound to be little crunchy black bits in it, and I’d hate to miss them. Think about what I told you. Ciao.”

  The seagull spread its wings and soared into the air. Kevin watched it until it turned into a tiny black dot and merged with the sky. Then he forced his feet back into his shoes and hobbled up the beach to the hotel, where they’d just started serving breakfast. A miracle, he thought. A Kevin miracle. He thought about that. Dad and Jay, and probably Uncle Mike as well, would define a Kevin miracle as Kevin actually doing something right for once. Well, that was as good a place to start as any.

  He walked up onto the terrace. The first breakfast sitting were just taking their seats—Brits, as the seagull had said, and Germans, with a couple of Danes and a single morose-looking Swedish man. “Is this where you go for breakfast?” he asked.

  Several voices assured him that it was. Is the food any good? No, they told him, it’s horrible. Then why do you eat it? Because it’s already paid for. Why don’t you complain? Because it wouldn’t do any good. Besides, added a sad-looking British woman, we’re on holiday; it’s what we expect.

  “What,” Kevin asked, “in your view, would constitute a really great breakfast?”

  No shortage of suggestions on that score. The Brits were unanimously behind sausages, bacon, eggs (Kevin thought of the seagull but said nothing), fried bread and plenty of toast and jam. The Germans were equally categorical about ham, salami, hard cheese and sauerkraut. The Danes pointed out the merits of rye bread and wienerbrod, while the Swede closed his eyes and said, anything, anything at all, except Shredded Wheat. Fine, Kevin said, and I could do with a short stack of pancakes with maple syrup. Let’s all have that, shall we?

  They looked at him. A few of them sniggered. Then the kitchen door opened, and out came the waiters with little trolleys. And behold, it was exactly what everyone had asked for, and it was very good.

  One of the Germans looked at him and said, “Did you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you do that?”

  Kevin shrugged. “Call it a miracle.”

  “Yes, but seriously.”

  “Why do miracles have to be serious? Why not a fun miracle? Mind you, any kind of fun is pretty miraculous with the Venturis in charge.” He stood up. “Anyway, if you enjoyed this miracle, why not tell your family and friends? Just let them know,” he added, “Kevin was here.” Then, pausing only to banish a looming raincloud and lower all the prices on the bar tariff by 30 per cent, he strolled down to the bay and walked out to sea, trying his very best not to limp.

  42

  “i’m going to commit a crime,” Jersey said. “Several of them, in fact.”

  Mr. Dao looked at him. “Is that right?”

  “Yes, and they’re going to be very expensive crimes, so I need a great deal of money.”

  Mr. Dao leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I thought you were barred from this establishment.”

  Jersey glanced over his shoulder. “I am,” he said. “So let’s make this snappy, before the manager comes back. Will you lend me a great deal of money?”

  “And last I heard, you were up at the North Pole with the crazy man.”

  “I was. This is a flying visit.” He wiped a speck of reindeer spittle off his sleeve. “In more senses than one. What about it?”

  “Naturally you can offer security.”

  “No.”

  “A great deal, did you say?”

  “A very great deal.”

  Mr. Dao pursed his lips. “The Venturis are after you. If they catch you, they’ll put you in the Marshalsea and weld up the lock.”

  “Very likely.”

  Mr. Dao drew his abacus across the table and flicked a few beads. “Very well,” he said, and from the flowing sleeves of his gown he produced a chequebook. “Do you know why the Bank of the Dead is the most successful financial institution in six galaxies?”

  “No.”

  “Or how come we survived the big crash of ’08, when all around us our competitors were crashing in flames?”

  “No.”

  Mr. Dao lowered his voice to a whisper. “We’ve never ever made a bad investment. Do you know why?”

  “No.”

  “I can see into the future. Or rather, I exist outside linear sequential time, so today is yesterday and yesterday is tomorrow, and as far as I’m concerned, you’ve already paid back the loan with ten per cent interest.” He held out the chequebook but didn’t actually let go of it. “Even so. I’ll need a mortgage on your future earnings, a pound of your flesh closest to your heart, your first-born child and every asset owned by your ancestors back to the Stone Age. Purely a matter of form, you understand.”

  “Of course. Where do I sign?”

  Mr. Dao produced a legal document. “Here,” he said. “And here, and here, and here, and here, twice on this page, here, here, here, here, there on the dotted line and here. Oh, and here. I think that’s everything. A pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Thorpe. Please accept this free pen as a token of our esteem.”

  “Thank you.” He looked at it. It was jet black and in the shape of a human femur. “You can really see into the future?”

  “Yes, and unless you leave now, the manager will throw you out in a very undignified manner. Goodbye, Mr. Thorpe. And please be careful.”

  “I will.”

  “You won’t, you know. But never mind.”

  Jersey grinned, tripped over the leg of the table, staggered and regained his balance just in time. “Told you,” Mr. Dao said with a trace of a smile. “Go get ’em, tiger.”

  43

  “That’s the four of reindeer on your three, the nine of sleighbells on your seven, add forty-six above the line and an extra ten for h
is hooves, making eight hundred and forty-two to me and three to you. I win.” Bernie smiled and gathered up the cards. “Which means you owe me four million three hundred thousand dollars and fourteen cents. Hypothetically.”

  The elf looked at him. “You’re good at this game.”

  Bernie shrugged. “Beginner’s luck. And it helps that the fall of cards appears to be controlled by an inverse numerical sequence based on intervals governed by multiples of pi.”

  “It does?”

  “It helps me,” Bernie said. “Double or quits?”

  The elf counted on her fingers. “Eight million, six hundred thousand dollars if I lose?”

  “And twenty-eight cents. Hypothetically. But if you win, you don’t owe me anything.”

  An hour ago the elf had been teaching the human how to play the game. What a difference sixty minutes can make. “How would it be,” she said, “if you told us how to access Venturicorp headquarters using the semi-derelict access tunnel leading from hellmouth 34A first, and then we played another game?”

  Bernie frowned. “I’d rather not stop now, if it’s all the same to you. I fancy I’m on a roll.”

  “OK. One more game, and then you’ll tell us?”

  Bernie smiled. “I know,” he said. “Let’s make it interesting. Double or quits, and I tell you how to find the access tunnel. How about it?”

  “I dunno. Eight million hypothetical dollars. I could get into a lot of trouble.”

  “You do want to find the tunnel, don’t you?”

  So they played another game. It didn’t take very long. When they’d finished, Bernie said, “You know, this isn’t really how I imagined being interrogated was like.”

  “Is that so?”

  “No. I thought it would mean lots of shouting and getting beaten up.”

  “There is that approach, certainly. Do you think it would work?”

  Bernie shook his head. “I don’t think so. You see, I don’t actually know how you get from the hellmouth to the access tunnel.”