by Tom Holt
He added the outstanding rent to the sum by which he’d exceeded his overdraft limit, and stuck on a hundred pounds for luck. George gave him a mildly scornful look – the sort you’d expect to get from a genie if your three wishes had been a can of Coke, a corned beef sandwich and a Snickers bar – and handed him the cheque. “You sure that’s enough?”
“Yes, really.”
“Really?”
That was George for you; the sort of man who refuses to take Yes for an answer. “Really. And, um, thank you.”
“Oh, that’s all right. Now, I’ll just buzz Legal, and they’ll run us up some paperwork.”
For a split second he assumed that was a joke, but then he remembered whom he was talking to. A few minutes later, a tall, dark man in a blue suit walked through the wall holding a blue folder. He gave Maurice a nice smile, which lasted for precisely one and a quarter seconds.
“That’s just a simple loan agreement,” he said, passing Maurice a five-page document, with a sheaf of yellow stickies to mark the places where he had to sign. “This is a basic garnishee order, in case at some point we need to freeze your bank account. This one here’s a floating charge on any property you may buy at any time in the next forty-five years; just sign here, that’s fine, thank you, and here, and here, and I’ll just witness that for you. And finally, this one’s just a one-page bog-standard will, so if you die before the loan’s repaid, everything you own at date of death goes to George; now, we’ll need two witnesses for this one. Sonia, send Peter up here, will you? Thanks.” A twenty-year-old in a grey suit that cost more than Maurice had earned in a year at Overthwarts materialised through the wall, drew his squiggle on the paper and fled. “Needless to say, all these documents cease to be valid as and when” – he gave Maurice an evil smile – “the loan is repaid in full. You-have-the-right-to-take-independent-legal-advice. All done? Smashing. Cheers, George. See you later about the Uzbekistan position? Marvellous. Nice to have met you, Mr, um.”
“Well,” George said, as the lawyer retreated and they brought the swan-liver pâté in on a massive silver salver, “that’s you sorted. So, how’s tricks? Everything good with you?”
“Apart from losing my job, you mean.”
George smiled. “You can come and work for me if you like,” he said, as if offering Maurice the use of a pen. “I could do with someone to head up our operation in Mogadishu. Nothing to it; you could do it standing on your head.”
Almost certainly the best way. “That’s really kind of you, George, but I’m not sure I’m really up to—”
“Bull,” George said cheerfully. “I’ll get HR to call you first thing. You’ll love it out there, Maurice. Really genuine people, and they’re making huge strides with the security position. Huge strides.”
“Really, George. No.”
George stuffed a baby’s-fist-sized knob of swan-liver terrine into his mouth, chomped it a few times. “Fine, be like that. All right, I know, I’ll lend you the money to start up your own business – how would that be? Fantastic idea. How about long-distance air freight? Or better still, railways. Now there’s a sector that’s wide open these days, for a guy like you, with a bit of vision.”
Maurice ate a scrap of the terrine. It tasted disgusting. “No, George, thank you. As it happens, I went for a job only the other day, and I’ve got high hopes—”
“Fine.” George raised both hands. The world stopped dead for a moment, then continued smoothly as before. “So, you seen much of the old gang lately?”
Thanks to his marathon of evening phone calls, Maurice had plenty of old-gang news, which kept the conversation away from what George could do for him all through the swan-liver terrine and well into the salmi of wind-dried Thomson’s gazelle with blue cheese and chocolate sauce. George, of course, knew far more about everyone than Maurice did – presumably he had all their phones hacked, as a matter of course – but he enjoyed correcting and contradicting everything Maurice said, so that was all right. “Oh, and there’s Stephanie, of course,” George said, with his mouth full of wind-dried gazelle. “Sorry, Steve, as we’ve got to call her now. Wasn’t that marvellous?” George stopped and gave Maurice a mighty slap on the back. “You all right, mate? Here, drink some water.”
The water (snow airlifted from the high Pyrenees that morning, melted at the table in a little silver chafing dish) helped a bit, and eventually Maurice was able to breathe again. “Stephanie?”
“Mm, yes. What, hadn’t you heard? No, I’m sorry, this just isn’t good enough. Claudio! Get in here now.”
“What?” Maurice gasped. “What about Stephanie?”
A bearlike man in a white chef’s outfit came through the wall. George took his fork and prodded something small, black and shrivelled on the edge of his plate. “Claudio, what do you call this?”
The bearlike man mumbled something. George shook his head. “No way,” he said. “I don’t pay five thousand euros a kilo for oak-found Perigord truffles so you can steam them. There’s a plane leaving Heathrow for Ulan Bator in ninety minutes. Be on it.”
“Señor.” The bearlike man bowed his head, turned round and marched briskly through the wall. George shook his head and put down his fork. “Nice enough guy, but you’ve got to make them walk the line, or where the hell are you? Now then, what was I saying?”
“Stephanie.”
“Steve,” George corrected. “Got to say, though, she doesn’t really convince me as a Steve. I think you’ve got to be extra feminine to get away with calling yourself by a man’s name. Sorry, is something the matter? You’ve gone a funny colour.”
“What about Steve?”
“Oh, right. Well, I always said she was wasting her life playing soldiers; someone like that ought to be in the private sector, making money. And I was right, obviously.”
“She’s left the—?”
George nodded. “Headhunted,” he said. “By a really top-notch private security outfit: Brighthawk, or something like that. Anyway, it’s a subsidiary of VGE, and they’re all right. Anyhow, they’ve got her up in Greenland, which is where it’s all going to be happening pretty soon, and the last I heard she was as happy as a fox in a chicken-coop. I mean, the army had her stuck behind a desk controlling traffic, I ask you. And now there she is, driving jeeps and shooting guns and blowing stuff up, probably eating tree bark and weevils, having the time of her life. I always maintain, if you insist on being a soldier of fortune, make it the Fortune 500. Anyway, she’s looking good on it, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed—”
Maurice stared at him. “You’ve seen her? When?”
“Last Tuesday, was it, or Wednesday? No, I was in Jakarta, Wednesday, so it must’ve been Tuesday. No, I tell a lie. Evangelique, where was I last Tuesday?”
“Reykjavik,” said a disembodied voice, “all morning, and then you flew back to Paris via Nuuk, and then on to—”
“Thanks, Evangelique. Tuesday,” George said. “We had lunch.”
“And she was all right?”
“Blooming. She’d just laid three hundred kilometres of razor wire.”
“Did she mention me at all?”
George frowned. “No, I don’t think so. Mind you, we were talking about oil, mostly.”
“Ah.”
A sly look crossed George’s face, in the same way Lewis and Clark crossed Louisiana. “Why, did you expect she’d talk about you?”
“No. God, no. I mean,” he added truthfully, “I haven’t seen her for months.”
“Got you. Well, to be absolutely honest with you, it’s just as well you don’t think about her – well, you know. Because, let’s face it, you’re a really great guy, I’ve always liked you ever so much, but if it came to a choice… Well, she’d have to be out of her tiny mind, right?”
It took a moment for that to sink in. “Choice?”
George smirked. “But it won’t ever come to that, so that’s absolutely fine. Yes, Steve and me. Well, I guess it’s been on the cards ever since school, now I come
to think of it. Early days yet, of course, but let’s say I anticipate a better-than-positive outcome, going forwards.”
“Stephanie and you—”
He hadn’t meant it to come out like that, and just for a moment, a flash of anger lit up George’s face. But it passed, and the smile came seeping back. “Written in the stars, if you ask me. The distance thing’s a bit of a drag right now, but I’m building a new corporate HQ out there – we’ve just acquired forty hectares of prime land slap bang in the middle of Qaqortoq, well, all of Qaqortoq, really, and the joy of this business is, you can run it from pretty much anywhere. And of course, when the oil starts flowing we’ll be there on the spot waiting, so to speak. Bit of a cow for everyone who’ll have to relocate out there, but it’s a beautiful country, and they’ll all be much happier once they’ve got used to the cold and stuff. Perfect fusion of business and pleasure, really.” Abruptly, George rose to his feet; lunch, apparently, was over. “Come on,” he said, “I’ll give you the guided tour. You haven’t seen the new stuff, have you?”
Maurice hadn’t even seen the old stuff, not that he’d ever had the slightest desire to. “Mind the step,” George said cheerfully, as he walked into what was presumably a wall; he vanished, and Maurice had to force himself to follow. A moment later, he was in a perfectly normal corridor, with a floor he could actually see. Wonderful. “We had Bill and Melinda over here last month, and she nearly had a fit walking through the interface there. And Warren, bless him, he had to go round the back and out through the kitchen. He’s a funny old stick, but quite charming when you get to know him.”
Down the corridor to the end, turn left, then right, then left, then left, then right, and they arrived at a vast courtyard paved with black basalt flagstones. Another glass dome, this time clear; brilliant white light flooded down onto a white tower, perfectly smooth and windowless, with no obvious door. “My office,” George said. “Kareena calls it my Saruman room, bless her. But you don’t want to see that – it’s just a chair and a phone and a bit of basic kit. Tell you what, we’ll take the lift down to R and D. There’s some pretty funky things going on down there, though I do say so myself.”
Funky, Maurice thought. Jesus wept. “Actually, George, I really ought to be going. The people from this job I told you about could ring any time.”
“Oh that’s all right; I’ve had your calls redirected. Here we go.” George touched his left palm to the wall of the white tower, and a doorway slid open. Another lift – what fun. This one was completely black. “Of course, when we get to Greenland we’ll have the space to do things in style,” George said, as the door slid shut and darkness enveloped them. “I’m awfully fond of this old place, but it’s so cramped, if you know what I mean. Practically Coronation Street, all these poky little alleys and corners. In Qaqortoq I’m planning an office that’s just a straight room, a kilometre long. I like to walk up and down when I’m thinking.”
The door opened. Maurice had no idea where they were; ten storeys up or half a mile underground. The room in front of him was huge, absurd, something out of a Bond film (the Roger Moore era, when everything was a bit over the top). It was also empty.
“Warehouse space,” George explained. “It’s where we store the—”
Something collided painfully with Maurice’s knee.
“Stealth-glass furniture. This way.”
George always had walked quickly on those great long legs, and Maurice had always had to jog to keep up with him. They went through a door into another enormous room, but this one was full: people sitting at desks and consoles, busy people who didn’t look up. George greeted a few of them by name as they passed through. A smile and “Hi, George” appeared to be the orthodox reply.
“Number-crunchers,” George explained. “Marvellous people, the core of our R and D. But what you’ll really want to see is through here.”
Another door. This one opened onto—
“Ah,” George said. “Thirty-six.”
It looked like more warehouse space, except it wasn’t entirely empty. In the very centre of the room, a naked man was sitting on the ground, his back braced against nothing at all, his eyes closed. “Shh,” George whispered. “We don’t want him to know we’re here.”
The man was in his mid-thirties, dark-haired, a face that Maurice reckoned he might possibly have seen before somewhere, on the TV or in a photograph. “Is he all right?”
“Absolutely fine. Interesting guy, actually, very bright, and essential to the work we’re doing here.”
“Is he asleep?”
George shook his head. “Thinking.”
“Ah.”
At that precise moment, in exactly the same place, but at ninety-one degrees to that time and place in the D axis, the dark-haired man in his mid-thirties was thinking, Yes, but all that condensation’s got to go somewhere; I bet it gathers in big woolly-looking bunches up in the sky and just sort of hangs there. All right, fine, but what happens when one of these bunches hits a patch of cold air? Precipitation, that’s what’s got to happen – stands to reason – and then all the condensation’s going to fall out of the sky, hitting the ground in droplet form, probably. And then I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it soaked away into the ground until the big-burning-ball-of-Big-Bang-leftover-stuff comes out again and heats the ground up, which would surely evaporate the dropletty stuff, making it rise up into the sky to form more big woolly bunches, and the whole process starts all over again. Yes, that must be what happens. Logically, it couldn’t be any other way.
Yes, but suppose a lot of the droplets fall at one time, masses and masses and masses of them. They can’t all evaporate or drain away – the ground’d get saturated, so presumably you must get a whole lot of droplets sort of gathering in a big sort of mass. No, hold on just a second; this stuff’s going to be a liquid, right, so it won’t just sit there, it’ll kind of roll about, maybe even flow, and of course when it does that it’ll find its own level, and bet you anything you like it’ll follow the line of least resistance, so what’s almost certain to happen is that you’ll get, like, kind of streams of this droplet stuff flowing in a line. Wow. And then, of course, when it’s been doing that for a very long time, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it sort of gnawed away at the ground, I mean you could get great big chunks carved out if it went on flowing long enough; and presumably at some point it’ll get somewhere where it can’t go any further without backing up on itself, and then what? Well, you’d have huge great pools of the stuff, wouldn’t you? Huge pools. In fact, if I’m right about how everything started and all that stuff, you’d be looking at, gosh, let me see, well, something like 71 per cent of this ball-shaped-chunk-of-not-burning-left-over-from-the-Big-Bang stuff I’m on right now, all completely covered with flowedand-pooled dropletty stuff.
“That man in there,” George said, passing Maurice the sugar, “is key, well, fairly key, to the whole project.”
Maurice sipped the froth on his frankincense latte. “Ah,” he said.
“It’s going to be big.” George wasn’t looking at him now; he was staring just left of him, and Maurice had a feeling he was talking to himself. “Quite possibly the biggest thing I’ve ever done. If it all goes well, by this time next year I could be well on my way to being the richest man ever. Not just the richest man now. The richest ever.”
“That’s nice,” Maurice said.
“Of course,” George went on, “it’s so difficult to gauge these things, because of the comparatives and the lack of reliable data. I mean, how can you say for sure who was richer, Tutankhamun or Louis XIV?”
“Quite.”
“I mean,” George continued passionately, “what’s your principal criterion: capital or income? Do you draw a completely arbitrary line according to who was the richest when you translate everything into, say, 2014 values? Or do you try and calculate the total gross value of the world at the time such and such a person lived, and then express richness as the percentage of that total valu
e that the person in question owned? Because if you did that, it’d probably be Tutankhamun – 17.463 per cent, by the way – and poor old Louis would be practically nowhere, 2.019 per cent, peanuts. But if you just go on a strict cash-equivalent basis, how much all his stuff would sell for if you put it up for auction on 1 April 2015, chances are it’d be Montezuma or one of those guys. But if you’re going by sustained net income over a whole-of-career period, it’s got to be Louis, or maybe just possibly one of the Roman emperors, Hadrian maybe. It’s tricky,” George said. “I mean, it really helps if you know the rules before you start playing the game, or how are you ever going to be sure you’ve won?”
Maurice thought, If I agree with him a whole lot, maybe he’ll let me go and I can get out of here before I die of noxious-bastard poisoning. “You’re so right,” he said. “Um—”
“And that’s not even allowing for the Chinese,” George said bitterly. “Because the Chinese didn’t just have wealth in this life, they accumulated vast credit surpluses in the Afterlife, by investing heavily in the Bank of the Dead. So, if you can take it with you, what does that do to your accounting frame of reference? I mean, let’s take Qin Shihuangdi, the first emperor, suppose he invested two billion yuan in the Bank of the Dead in 210 BC. Let’s say for the sake of argument the Bank pays 3 per cent compound interest, that’s 2,225 years, two billion yuan, that gives you a 2015 value of—”
Without breaking eye-contact, Maurice used his peripheral vision to locate the nearest door. Just run for it, he told himself, screw good manners. There’s only so much of this sort of thing a man can take.
“So you see,” George went on, “if I want to be absolutely sure I’m the richest man ever, I’ll need to have a pretty substantial margin of error, say 7 per cent, to cover stuff like historiographical distortion and inaccurate reporting, because the last thing I want to happen is for me to get to the point where I think I’m the richest and stop trying, and then a couple of hundred years later some smartarse digs up a mouldy old papyrus in Egypt somewhere that proves that Tutankhamun’s scribes habitually rounded the fractions down instead of up, and so in fact he beat me by a lousy billion dollars. That’d be a disaster, a whole lifetime of effort wasted, and I’m damned if I’m going to let it happen.”