by Tom Holt
For a long time Snib couldn’t seem to make his tongue work. Then he said, “You’re bullshitting. There’s no such memo.”
“Yes, there is. You sent it to your brother—hi there, Ab—and instead of eating it or setting fire to it the moment he’d read it, like any sensible being would’ve done, he left it lying on his desk for the first prisoner he interrogated to pick up and stuff down her blouse.” He smiled. “She’s smart, that girl. Probably now you’ll have her killed, which is a waste. But I can’t help that either.”
“You’d do that?” Snib said. “You’d trash the economy of known space just to be able to say you beat me?”
“Let me see. Yes, I would, if you make me.” The Red Lord cut out the grin. “But on balance I’d prefer not to.”
Snib breathed out long and hard through his nose. “All right,” he said, “let’s hear it.”
“Why don’t we settle this in the spirit it deserves? Leave it to pure chance. Toss a coin.”
“That’s crazy,” Snib exploded. “That’s stupid.”
“Not stupid,” the Red Lord said. “Frivolous. There’s a difference. It’s a crucial one, and you’ll never understand it as long as you live. Go on, Snib, what’ve you got to lose? Either way I’ll call off my elf, Venturicorp won’t crash and burn, and you’ll have a straight fifty-fifty chance of winning. Or we can both lose, a lot of people will die, this planet will be wrecked and five galaxies will be sent back to the Dark Ages. Come on, Snib, be a sport. Where’s your sense of fun?”
There was a silence that lasted for ever and ever, world without end. Then Snib said, “Fine. Let’s do that.”
“Excellent.” The Red Lord stuck his hand in his pocket. “Now, it just so happens I have a coin with—”
Snib laughed. “I wasn’t born yesterday. We use our coin.”
The Red Lord glared at him. “All right, be like that. And if you don’t trust me, I don’t trust you. Ab can toss the coin. You can manage that, can’t you, little brother?”
Ab shot his brother an agonised glance. “Sure he can,” Snib growled. “He’s worth a million of you any day.”
“It’s a deal, then. Ab tosses, I call.”
Ab fumbled in his pocket, spilled his keys and handkerchief out onto the ice, stooped and picked up a one-dollar coin. “Let him see it,” Snib growled. “Satisfied?”
The Red Lord nodded. “One perfectly ordinary, genuine dollar bit,” he said. “When you’re ready, Mr. Venturi.”
Ab balanced the coin on his trembling thumbnail and flicked it into the air. It soared and tumbled; Ab tried to catch it and knocked it flying across the ice; he jumped forward and put his foot over it. “Call,” he said.
“Heads.”
Ab lifted his foot. The Red Lord strolled over and looked down. “Heads it is. Isn’t that right, Ab?”
Ab nodded. “He’s right, bro. Sorry.”
The Red Lord stooped, picked up the coin and dropped it in his pocket. “You won’t begrudge me a souvenir,” he said. “Right, I want you and your junk and your goons off this planet in three minutes. Which will leave me thirty seconds to call off my elf. Savvy?”
Snib gazed at him. “Savvy,” he said quietly.
“That was Plan D?”
The Red Lord slumped into his throne and gave Jersey a weary scowl. “It worked, didn’t it?”
On a TV screen a yard or so away Snib Venturi was telling the people of Earth about the change of management. He seemed very calm, almost relieved. “You know what?” the Red Lord said. “I almost envy him. He’s just got out of trying to keep order in this madhouse, and now that job’s landed on me. Lucky bastard.”
“You risked the fate of this planet on the toss of a coin. That’s—”
“Shh. I want to listen to this bit.”
Generosity in defeat, at least in public, is an old Martian tradition, and Snib Venturi was a very old Martian. “From now on,” he was saying, “your planet will be under the watchful eye of someone who needs no introduction from me. You all know him as a fat man with a cotton-wool beard who comes down chimneys, but from now on he’ll hold your destinies in the palm of his chubby hand. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and with immediate effect he’s your lawfully constituted government. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen of Earth, your new owner is Father Christmas. I kid you not. Goodnight, bless you all, and we now return you to your scheduled programme, Miracle on 34th Street.”
The screen went black. There were little red spots in the middle of the Red Lord’s otherwise milk-white cheeks, but he was smiling. “I call that quite gracious in the circumstances,” he said. “Ah, sod it. I suppose I’d better go out there and talk to them before they start setting light to parked cars. You, stay here, mind the store. If anybody prays, take a message.”
Jersey gazed levelly at him for a moment. “I still say it was a stupid, irresponsible risk.”
The Red Lord sighed. “No, not really,” he said. “It was a Venturi coin. Heads on both sides. Be good while I’m gone. If you ask the elves nicely, they’ll probably find you someone to eat.”
Outside on the ice there was already a media scrum twenty yards thick, through which, with great effort and violence, an angry old man and his red-faced son were forcing their way as the Red Lord walked out into a cordon of straining elves.
“You bastard!” the old man yelled.
“Language, Dad.”
“You no-good, conniving, treacherous son of a bitch!”
“Dad,” Jay hissed earnestly, “not in front of the humans, OK? There are people filming us.”
The Red Lord stopped, grinned at the old man and threw back his hood. “Hello there,” he said. “Long time no see. What are you doing here?”
“We were going to buy it back,” the old man shouted. “We were in negotiations with the Venturi. Everything was going to be fine. And then you had to—”
“Save the day at extreme inconvenience and personal risk.” The Red Lord frowned. “Which would never have been necessary if you hadn’t sold out in the first place. And another thing. If you think Snib Venturi would’ve sold this lot back to you, you’re delusional.”
Jay grabbed the Red Lord’s sleeve. “Don’t you dare talk to my father like that.”
An elf prised Jay’s fingers open. The Red Lord gave him an it’s-all-right nod, and the elf let Jay go. “Snib just wanted you to pay to have me killed,” the Red Lord went on. “He would never have done a deal with you. And by the way, if you’re happy humiliating yourself in front of the massed lenses of your former subjects, that’s fine by me. An you hurt none, do what ye will, that’s always been my motto.”
The old man raised his hand as if to throw something, then apparently realised it was empty. “You ain’t heard the last of this, reindeer boy,” he said. “We’ll be back.”
The Red Lord shook his head. “In about five minutes,” he said, “you’re going to feel such a fool. Leave them be, fellas. They’re harmless enough.”
Elves gently but firmly pressed the old man and his son back into the crowd. The Red Lord moved on towards the small stack of packing crates the elves had put together for him to stand on. He climbed up, wobbled a bit, got his balance and held his hand up. Immediately the crowd fell silent. The Red Lord cleared his throat and began to speak.
“Hello there, boys and girls,” he said in a voice that echoed off the firmament yet barely rose above a whisper. “Now I know all of you, and you all know me. Hi there, Luke, Karen, Steve, Jayden, Mark; say, haven’t you grown? I think nearly all of you have seen me before, though you thought I thought you were asleep. You may all have forgotten about me, but I’ve been keeping my eye on you, every single one of you. I know who’s naughty and who’s nice.” He stopped and turned his head slowly, and everyone in the crowd met his eye and looked down, flushing. “There’s a nice line in the old scriptures, to whom all desires are known and from whom no secrets are hid. Well, I guess that’s me. And believe me, the desires are not a problem
as far as I’m concerned, and the secrets are no big deal. By and large, you’re an OK bunch of bipeds. You’re decent enough people, given half the chance. I think we’ll get along nicely.
“Now you tried the old way, laws and rules and the rule of law, and I think we can all agree it was a mistake. No law or rule ever stopped anyone from doing bad stuff until it was too late, and I reckon the concept of punishment sucks, so we won’t be doing that any more. You tried the Venturi way—unfettered capitalism and the free flow of market forces—and it was an improvement, but there was no fun any more, no joy, and I think there’s a bit more to life than economic necessity. I never was much of a one for political theory, and in my view ethics is just an eastern county in England pronounced with a lisp. I like to keep things simple. That way we all know where we stand.
“From now on it’s presents at Christmas for everybody, not just kids. Now I think you all know I make a list, and in that list there are two categories, the good N and the bad N. And I know when you’re sleeping, and I know when you’re awake, so if you want your heart’s desire in your stocking on Christmas Eve, you know what you’ve got to do, and if you want coal, you know how to go about that too. Simple as that. You can have everything you really and truly want, or not; the choice is yours. Just don’t for one second believe that anything you do or say or think will go undetected, because it won’t. I’ll know, and you can be sure about that.”
The Red Lord paused and looked around again, and once again nobody could meet his eye for more than a moment. Then he grinned and continued: “Unfortunately it’s not quite that simple, because there’s times when, with the best will in the world, we don’t know what the right thing is, and that’s why I want to introduce you to a young man who I think will be able to help you.” He raised his hands, and two elves came forward with a large sack. They opened it, and Kevin fell out.
“This,” the Red Lord said, “is Kevin. Now Kevin is a good egg, but all I ever gave him was a cowboy hat, so he’s due a whole lot of back presents. So, to put things right, I’m going to give him the Earth and all that therein is.” He smiled. “Say thank you, Kevin.”
Kevin struggled to his feet and blinked twice. “Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome. Now I’m giving this planet and the whole lot of you to Kevin here because I know he’ll take care of it, and you. I strongly suggest you get to know him. He’ll be visiting your neighbourhood some time very soon. Kevin isn’t going to tell you what to do, and he’s not going to smite you with a thunderbolt if you don’t do it; that’s not his way. He doesn’t want your money, and he’s not going to look down his nose at you if you want to be different from the people next door. But once you’ve got to know him, if ever you’re in two minds about what the right course of action might be, or whether you’re being naughty or nice, you just ask yourself what would Kevin do? That’s it,” the Red Lord said. “That’s all there is to it, the law and the prophets. And if you can’t figure it out for yourself, then just ask him, and he’ll be happy to tell you. Short of assembling flat-pack furniture or reinstalling Windows, he’s the go-to guy for the difficult questions. Him, remember, not me. I’ve got far too much on my plate as it is.”
There was dead silence. Kevin smiled feebly, lifted his hand and waved, and three rows back Dad turned to Jay and whispered, “That’s my boy.”
Since nobody seemed to want him for anything, Jersey liberated one of the Veltron skimmers and flew to the nearest hellmouth, then walked down to the Hole in the Wall. He found Mr. Dao flicking beads along the strings of his abacus. “You lied to me.”
Mr. Dao looked up. “No,” he said.
“Yes, you did. You said there’d be statues of me, and Thorpe City. But I didn’t do anything.”
Mr. Dao smiled. “Sit down and have a cup of tea. That’s an order.”
Jersey felt as though his legs had been kicked out from under him by an invisible boot. “I was just a bit player,” he said. “A sidekick.”
“Hardly even that,” Mr. Dao said gently. “But I told you the truth. There will be statues, lots of them. They’ll represent the crucial turning point in human history, the moment when the Blessed Lucy gave Jersey Thorpe the Venturi memo. People will come from miles around to gaze at them and remember how one act of intelligence and courage—”
“Yes, all right,” Jersey snapped. “But what about Thorpe City? They don’t call towns after sidekicks.”
Mr. Dao patted the back of his hand. “In most Western cultures they have a strange tradition, which I have to say I’ve never understood, but who am I to pass judgement? In your society it’s the custom that when a woman gets married, she takes her husband’s name. Hence,” he added, “Thorpe City.” He poured some more tea and sipped it. “Actually, there is a Jersey City,” he said. “You may have heard of it. It’s not called after you, of course, but you can pretend it is, if it makes you feel better.”
Jersey was staring at him as if he had diamonds dribbling from his nose. “Husband?”
“She likes you,” Mr. Dao said, “but not when you’re being an arsehole. Come to think of it, she’s sitting at that table in the corner over there, eating caramel shortcake. You might do worse than go and talk to her.”
“I—”
“Only do try not to be a jerk,” Mr. Dao said. “I know it’s hard, but sometimes we have to do the difficult things if we want to get our heart’s desire. Even if we don’t deserve it.”
Jersey peeped over Mr. Dao’s shoulder and saw her. She saw him too and waved.
“I think I might just go and say hello,” Jersey said.
“And sorry,” Mr. Dao said. “Mustn’t forget that. I promise not to be a pain in the bum ever again probably wouldn’t hurt either. But far be it from me to interfere.”
“Look,” Jersey said. “About the money you lent me. I thought I’d be able to get it back from Santa, but when I asked he pretended he couldn’t hear me. So …”
Mr. Dao sighed and flicked a bead across a wire. “Forget about the money,” he said. “I just shorted Venturicorp at two dollars seventy-seven. Didn’t Santa mention it? Money will never be a problem for anyone on this planet, ever again.”
“Ah. Well, in that case …”
Mr. Dao pressed his palms together in formal salutation. “Go in peace, little brother. Remember what I said about not being a—”
“Yes. Thank you.”
As he walked across the cafe, Jersey tried to think of the right words, but they didn’t seem to be at home. As he took the last step, and she looked up from the book she was reading, a voice in his head said, What would Kevin say? And so he sat down beside her and said, “Hello.”
“Hi.”
“I’m really sorry for being a pig.”
“Good.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
She smiled at him. “What on Earth has deserving got to do with anything?”
He thought about that. “I don’t know.”
“You’ve been talking to Mr. Dao.”
“Yes.”
“He told you. About Thorpe City.”
“He told you?”
She nodded. “Do you mind?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Go on. You do mind. Just a bit.”
“Well, yes, just a bit. But only because I’d assumed—”
She smiled at him. “We don’t do assuming any more. We think with our brains instead.”
He nodded. “That would be better, yes.”
And then she kissed him.
49
Snib Venturi woke up with a start, out of a dream of shimmering nebulas. He’d always been a light sleeper. On the streets where he’d grown up you had to be if you wanted your shoes to still be there in the morning.
There was, or had been, someone else in the room. He reached under his pillow and his fingers closed on the butt of his blaster. Then he found the light switch with his other hand.
Nobody there. But, at the end of th
e bed, a big red stocking. There were giants on the fifth planet of the ninth sun of the Leonis cluster whose feet would have filled it, but they mostly wore sandals. Snib thumbed the intercom and called his new chief of Security.
“Bernie?”
“Here, Mr. V.”
“Get a team with scanners in here right now. I think someone may have left me a bomb.”
So the security team came and scanned the stocking, and there were lots of bleeps and clicks and high-pitched whistles. But no bomb. “It’s safe,” the team leader said, “whatever the Hell it is.”
“There’s something inside it.”
So the security people got a remote-controlled robot, which opened the stocking with its hydraulic arm and pulled out a square box. It was wrapped in paper decorated with holly wreaths and jolly robins, and there was a big red bow and a tag which read, HAPPY MARTIAN WINTER SOLSTICE.
“Thanks, boys,” Snib said. “Now get lost.”
Snib opened the box, and inside it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen: a gold and silver model galactic Core, exquisitely reproduced in folded metallic tissue, like a rose. Well, more like a cauliflower, but stunningly lovely nevertheless, and in the very heart of the swirling folds was a single teardrop-shaped diamond—which is, after all, just a form of coal that’s been under enormous pressure for some time and then finally gets its chance to shine. A bit like Snib Venturi.
He stared at it for a long time. Then he grinned. “Ab!” he yelled at the top of his voice. “Get in here. You gotta see this!”
extras