by Tom Holt
“Cheered them up,” Dad repeated.
Gabe nodded. “That seems to be his thing. He does stuff to cheer people up. The way he figures it, if people are happy, they don’t need no laws or on-the-spot fines to keep them from doing bad things.”
Dad was silent for a long time. Then Jay said, “Doughnuts?”
“Other times it’s flowers or fireworks. Cheerful things.” Gabe took a deep breath. “Boss, I know you told him, stay out of the family business, but maybe you should cut the kid some slack, let him work this out for himself. And you know what, it’s not such a bad idea at that. Redemption through joy. Not just the pursuit of happiness but actually catching the bugger. Far as I know, it’s never been tried before. Why not let him give it a go?”
Dad leaned across the table. “Because when Snib Venturi gets hold of him, he’ll lock my son up in one of his debtors’ prisons,” he hissed furiously, “and take it from me, that’s too high a price to pay for the salvation of a bunch of semi-evolved monkeys. Also—” he leaned back in his chair “—what good is being happy going to do them? People don’t learn anything from being happy. They learn from making mistakes and being punished for them. No, this is your fault, yours and Raffa’s. I want you to find him and bring him here. Got that?”
Gabe sat perfectly still.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes, boss.”
“You’re still here.”
“Yes, boss.”
Dad breathed out heavily through his nose. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll deal with you later. Come on, son.”
Jay stayed where he was. “Where are we going, Dad?”
“Tromso. Where do you think?”
“Maybe we should talk about this some more.”
For a moment Jay was afraid his father would explode or maybe have a stroke. But he sat down. “Sure, son,” he said. “What do you want to talk about?”
Jay turned to Gabe. “Thanks for coming so quickly,” he said. “We’ll make sure you get the money back. I think you’d better go now.”
“OK, Jay. Nice seeing you again.”
“You too, Gabe. Give my best to Raffa.”
Gabe hurried off and Dad said, “I asked you a question. What do you want to talk about?”
“About Kevin,” Jay replied, “I guess.”
“Good idea, let’s do that. Son, do you really think Kevin ought to be allowed to make a fool of himself and then get himself locked up?”
It was a while before Jay answered. But eventually he said, “Dad, is that what you’re worried about, that he might fail? Or is it more that he might succeed?”
Dad barked out a laugh. “Not much chance of that.”
“Do you really think so?”
Dad drank some cold coffee and pulled a face. “Never could for the life of me see why humans like this stuff,” he said. “Come on. Time’s a-wasting.”
“Dad,” said Jay. “I thought we came here to do the deal with the Venturis.”
“That’ll have to wait. First order of business is to save your brother.”
“Dad—”
Dad gave Jay a stern look. “When it was you down here,” he said, “I made darned sure I was there to pull you out before it got nasty. I didn’t leave you with those barbarians while I went and got on with something else. Are you saying I shouldn’t do the same for your brother?”
Jay hesitated, then nodded. “OK, Dad,” he said. “Whatever you think is right.”
“I should hope so.”
Jay put the coin in the middle of the table where the waiter would see it and followed his father. His feet were still hurting, and it occurred to him to wonder when the people of Earth, made in Dad’s own image and for whom he’d endured severe though temporary discomfort on top of a green hill far away, had become a bunch of semi-evolved monkeys and those barbarians. But he dismissed the thought. Dad was just being Dad, and sometimes, for his own ineffable reasons, he chose to move in mysterious ways and pass all understanding. Jay just hoped this was one of those times, that was all.
48
Veltor is a small orange and grey planet in the Merionis cluster. Its dominant species originally evolved from small fast-moving rodents; the closest terrestrial parallel would be rats. From their ancestors the Veltrons have inherited cunning, ferocity, resourcefulness, courage when cornered, whiskers, ironclad digestive systems and small sharp teeth. They’re bigger now—between two and a half and three metres, on average—and their burrows run deep under the barren surface of their planet, which their early experiments with nuclear fusion have rendered uninhabitable. Since they have long since eaten every last worm, grub and snail in the Veltron subsoil, they’re entirely dependent on imports, and since they make nothing worth having, the only commodity they have to trade is their labour. Their special field of expertise is warfare. They’re very good at it, although prospective employers are reluctant to hire them because of the collateral damage. Once they’ve been somewhere for any length of time (measured in hours rather than days) the place is fit for nothing, and won’t be for some considerable time.
Security had hired 100,000 Veltrons. Sorry, they explained, but they were all we could get. Snib Venturi sighed and said, all right then, but keep them safely in orbit till the last moment and then teleport them directly to the North Pole. It was a good idea, but the Veltrons gnawed the insulation off all the power cables in the teleport chamber, so they had to be ferried down to the surface in shuttles. By the time they landed, the vinyl seat-covers were in shreds and all the plastic trim had been nibbled off the navigation consoles. Security immediately ordered an emergency airdrop of 12,000 tons of cheese. By the time it arrived, the Veltrons had eaten their body armour and the synthetic stocks of their blasters and were noisily freezing to death.
Monitoring all this on his CCTV screens, the Red Lord was observed to frown. “What’s the matter, boss?” asked a particularly brave and loyal elf, who’d been with him since the good old thunder-and-lightning days. “They’re just a bunch of overgrown mice. The lads’ll have ’em for breakfast.”
“Better not,” the Red Lord replied. “You don’t know where they’ve been. You know the one thing I was slightly concerned about?”
“I dunno, boss. Neutron bombs?”
“Sappers,” the Red Lord replied. “Nasty, determined little men digging tunnels under the walls.” He stood aside from the screen so the elf could see. “Like that,” he added.
Pyramids of granulated ice were forming on the frozen plateau. “What’re they up to?”
“Burrowing. Funny, really. I was expecting earth-moving equipment, heavy plant and machinery. I never expected them to use their teeth. I think we may have to fall back on Plan C.”
“You mean Plan B.”
“No. Plan B was to take out the big yellow diggers with low-level strafing runs from the sleigh. Plan C …”
The elf gazed eagerly at him. “Yes, boss?”
“Is to make it up as we go along. Think you can do that?”
The elf was, above all, a realist. “No, boss.”
“Me neither. Right then. Plan D.”
The elf looked at him in wonder. “There’s a Plan D?”
“There is now.” The Red Lord stood up and hefted a thunderbolt in his right hand. It had been a long time since he’d had occasion to use one, and it was a moment before he remembered where to look for the point of balance, which is always further back than you think. He armed it, and it started to glow an alarming shade of light blue. “Fall in A and B Companies,” he said. “C Company to the ramparts, D and E in reserve. Oh, and I’ll be needing the sleigh.”
The elf was mesmerised by the sight of the glowing thunderbolt, and the Red Lord could see his point. Mankind had developed a theory to account for the effects of the last time he’d used one, called tectonic shift. It was ingenious and completely wrong. “Just like the old days, eh, boss?”
“I bloody well hope not,” the Red Lord said. “I’ve only just got used
to Australia being an island.”
“But you’re going to blast them, aren’t you?” the elf said hopefully. “Real good?”
“Depends on whether Plan D works.”
The elf dashed off to his duty station while the Red Lord took a last look at the TV monitors. A shadow fell across the screen. He turned and saw Jersey, who was staring at the thunderbolt.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“Yup.”
“As a legendary warrior of my own people once said, do you think that’s wise, sir?”
“Certainly not. Trouble is, when I did my godhead training, you had to specialise at the end of First Year. You could do wisdom or you could do thunder and lightning. I couldn’t stand the wisdom tutor, and there was this water nymph I was quite keen on doing Theory of Thunder. Was there something?”
“What? Oh yes. I forgot all about it until I found it in my trouser pocket.”
The Red Lord raised an eyebrow. “It being?”
“This.” Jersey held out a crumpled sheet of paper. “Lucy gave it to me. She said you might find it useful.”
The Red Lord took it with his free hand, glanced at it and whistled. “That young woman,” he said, “is so much too good for you. When this is all over, I’m definitely going to offer her a job.”
“What sort of a job?”
“Mine, probably. She’d be ever so much better at it than me.” He folded the paper and stuffed it his pocket. “Now go away and make yourself useful. You know what? Things are looking up.”
He got out the piece of paper again and reread it, just to make sure. When he looked up, Jersey was still there. He pointed this out.
“Make myself useful in what way?”
“Don’t ask me. You could sharpen something or patrol a corridor. Or there’s always mountains of washing-up in the canteen.”
Jersey scowled at him. “When I was in Hell,” he said, “I met the boss of the Bank of the Dead. He said one day there’d be statues of me. There’d be a place called Thorpe City.”
The Red Lord pursed his lips. “Irresponsible,” he said. “There’s rules about that sort of thing. Nobody takes any notice of them, but there are rules.”
“The point being,” Jersey said, “clearly at some stage I do something that makes all the difference and saves the day.”
“Arguably. Of course, it’s possible that History gets it all completely wrong. It does that sometimes. I mean, look at King Arthur. And Oliver Winchester didn’t invent the Winchester rifle, he just bought up the patent when the inventor went bust. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.”
“Clearly,” Jersey said grimly, “I do something really heroic, and I haven’t done it yet. Logically, it seems to me, the most likely time for me to do something heroic is in the big battle. Destiny is ringing my doorbell. But I probably won’t hear it if I’m stuck in the kitchen washing glasses.”
“And Jackie Dao said all that, did he? A statue?”
“Statues, plural. And a whole city.”
“Silly bugger. Oh well. In that case you’d better take command of the army.”
Jersey’s mouth dropped open. “Me?”
“I suppose so. Manifest destiny and all that, and Jackie Dao’s usually right about these things. Never ever play Ludo with that man. Well, don’t just stand there. Go and get yourself some nice shiny armour and a helmet with a plume on it.”
“All right,” Jersey said. “I’ll do that. Right away.”
When he’d gone, the Red Lord read the bit of paper a third time, then folded it neatly and tucked it into the top of his boot. “Thorpe City, for crying out loud,” he muttered. Then he wrapped a hanky around the thunderbolt and set off for the war.
The Veltrons had hit solid rock. It was slowing them down a bit, but not so you’d notice. The only real difference was that the spoil heaps were a dirty grey instead of white. Snib Venturi watched the heaps grow from the window of his trailer and turned up the heating. The cold didn’t agree with him, and neither did the white glare of the ice. White, for pity’s sake! What kind of a colour was that? Hurts your eyes and shows the dirt. Once all this nonsense was over, there’d be some changes made to this planet, and damn the expense.
The door flew open. Knocking first was one of Ab’s blind spots, like when to put in apostrophes and which knife and fork to use for which course. “He’s here.”
“Who’s here, bro?”
“Him. The jolly fat man. The reindeer guy.”
“Shoot him.”
“Tried that. Didn’t work. And he’s got a thunderbolt, and he says if we fire any more rockets at him he’ll be seriously annoyed. You’d better come.”
A thunderbolt didn’t sound good. Certain levels of collateral damage were only to be expected, but there are limits. Snib thought about the insurance policy and stood up. “Who let that lunatic past the checkpoint with a thunderbolt?” he said. “And tell the rat people to knock it off for now. It’s time we settled this.”
As soon as Snib got outside he realised that he’d done Security an injustice. In the middle of the dreary ice plain stood a chimney stack at least a thousand feet tall. “It just appeared out of nowhere,” Ab whispered in his ear. “We hit it with laser pulse cannon, but they just bounced off. So we tried interphasic torpedoes—”
Snib shook his head. Any form of conventional munitions would be a waste of time and money because of course the chimney wasn’t really there, except in the eye of the beholder, where it mattered most. Which is why discerning gods throughout the ages have always opted for belief-based ordnance systems. If you believe your armour will stop the bullet, and so does the firer, the actual capabilities of the weapon are irrelevant. Faith, as Fidelicorp Weapons Systems put it in all their advertising material, it’s not just for moving mountains any more.
Ab was clinging to his arm. “Shall I call the rat people?”
Snib shook him off gently and shook his head. “He’s just a jerk,” he said. “I ain’t afraid of him.”
“Wait for me. I’m coming too.”
“No, Ab, you stay here. This won’t take long.”
“I’m coming too.”
Snib felt his temper rise to breaking point, then ebb away. “Sure, bro,” he said. “We’ll do this together. Like old times.”
“Just like old times.”
Thus it was that the Venturi boys advanced alone across the frozen waste, Snib striding purposefully, Ab squarely behind him but keeping pace. When they were a dozen yards from the foot of the chimney a red shape reared up out of the grate and said, “That’s far enough.”
Snib looked at the thunderbolt in the Red Lord’s hand. “You can put that thing down for a start. Or else no parley.”
The Red Lord shrugged and laid the thunderbolt down. A cloud of steam hissed up around him. He blew it away. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know it would bother you so much.”
Snib glared at him. “You just proved my point,” he said. “Anybody who’d even consider using one of those things inside an atmosphere isn’t fit to own a planet.”
“Valid point,” the Red Lord said. The thunderbolt stopped glowing. “I really only wanted to get your attention.”
“You got it.”
“Splendid. Now I suggest we talk about this like rational creatures.”
Snib shrugged. “I’m listening.”
The Red Lord took a deep breath. “Splendid. Here goes then. You obviously don’t like me. I can’t say I’m crazy about you. I was quite happy to carry on the same as I’ve been doing ever since the last lot took over, but I gather you don’t like that idea.”
“You’re a nuisance,” Snib said.
“Thank you.”
“And an anomaly. People believe in you, even though they know I’m real and I’m in control. It confuses the issue. That’s why you’ve got to go.”
The Red Lord smiled. “I can see where you’re coming from. On the other hand, I don’t much like the idea of being wiped off the face of
the Earth. That’s immortality for you. Habit-forming.”
“Funny man. But I’m a reasonable guy, Mr. Claus. You pack up your elves and your sleigh and your tinsel and get the Hell off my planet, and everything will be just dandy. You have one hour.”
“I don’t think so,” the Red Lord said. “Suppose I do just that. Suppose I find another planet somewhere just entering its early Jurassic phase. I know exactly what’ll happen. I’ll just be settled in nicely when you’ll turn up on the doorstep and throw me out, and the same thing, over and over again. Sorry, no. I like it here. I think I’ll stay. You can stay too if you like, but leave me alone.”
“I can’t do that,” Snib said.
The Red Lord sighed. “No,” he said, “I don’t suppose you can; it’s not in your nature. All right, here’s the schedule for today. For the next hour or so we have one doozy of a battle. You wipe out all my elves, whereupon I nuke your rat people with my thunderbolt and start a new Ice Age in the process. Or we settle this sensibly like grown-ups. What do you say?”
Snib stared at him for five seconds. Then he shrugged. “The rat people are mercenaries,” he said. “You nuke them, I don’t have to pay them. And Ice Ages aren’t so bad.”
“You really want to fight?”
“Of course not. But the alternative is you continuing to exist.”
The Red Lord smiled. “Well, I don’t want to fight,” he said. “Fighting is silly. So I think I’ll give in quietly and withdraw.”
Ab made a funny squeaking noise. Snib ignored him. “You do that.”
“And then I can spend the rest of eternity telling people how it was me who brought down Venturicorp and sent Ab and Snib Venturi back to snuffling for scraps in dustbins, where they belong.”
Snib went bright red, and jets of steam shot up from under the soles of his feet. “Don’t you ever—”
“Even as we speak,” the Red Lord said pleasantly, “my sleigh is heading out of this solar system towards the offices of United Galactic Press on Delta Leonis Two. When it gets there, in about five minutes, unless he hears from me first, one of my elves will hand the editor a memo, in your handwriting, setting out the whole story behind the collapse of the Bank of Ultimate Truth. I don’t think the editor likes you very much, so we can pretty much predict what tomorrow’s lead headline is going to be. And after that, goodbye, Venturicorp. Of course, it’ll mean economic disaster for five galaxies, but I can’t help that. I didn’t start this, after all.”