by Tom Holt
“That’s it?”
“Mphm.” George nodded.
“You came all this way just to—?”
“Got to go,” George said, “we’re holding up the traffic, and you know how bad that is for emissions. Did you realise that 32 per cent of vehicular carbon is released from stationary vehicles? Always remember, you’ve got to think green to be green. Take care of yourself, Maurice. Bye.”
George got back on his bike and waved his arm, like a cavalry officer signalling the advance. With a roll of thunder like a tropical storm breaking, the motorcade roared into life and surged magnificently away, leaving Maurice standing alone on the kerb, coughing his lungs out in a cloud of diesel fumes.
The hell with it, he thought. Weirdness, then George. I need a drink.
There was an off-licence on the corner. He bought a bottle of lager and walked slowly back to the flat. So much for the great escape.
So; why would Stephanie feel the need to reassure him about her safety and wellbeing after all this time; and why would she route the message through George? He’d noted the point about him not being in during the day, and for all he knew the godforsaken place where Stephanie was playing around with explosives and razor wire might be ten hours ahead or something, so that his evening was the middle of her night. Fine. He couldn’t have found that line of reasoning less convincing if he’d read it in a political manifesto. The only possible explanation was—
The hell with it. He couldn’t think of one offhand, and he really didn’t want to dwell on it. He went home, ate the pizza, drank the beer and slept through the movie.
On Sunday, he cleared up a bit of the mess in the flat, ironed his shirts for the week, polished his shoes and made himself cheese on toast. He filled two black plastic sacks with Styrofoam pizza trays and hamburger boxes, separated his cardboard (think green; George would’ve approved) and put yesterday’s beer bottle on the kitchen windowsill, ready for an expedition to the bottle bank. All this domesticity made him feel uncharacteristically grown up, but it wasn’t exactly his idea of having a wild time while he was young enough to enjoy it. Not fun; more like duty. That thought gave him a nasty jolt, and he resolved to spend the rest of the day having fun, if it killed him.
Some kinds of fun you can have on your own, but most of the recognised forms call for the company of others. That gave him pause. Lately, he’d rather got out of the habit of being sociable. The quest for Stephanie had involved talking to people but only at a distance, on the phone or by email. Before that, he’d been staying late at Overthwart & Headlong, to try and save his job. And before that – well. Turning into a bit of a hermit, he told himself; that won’t do at all. He called up his address book.
Maybe he’d been out of things a bit too long, or perhaps the changes in his character wrought by his brief time at Carbonec went deeper than he’d realised; he looked at the names of his friends and thought, I’m not sure I want to see any of these people particularly. Nice enough people in their way: Kevin, Darren, Mike, Tony and Liza, Shaz, Baz, Gaz and Maz, the usual suspects, the regular crowd. If he saw them, he’d hear about their lives, talk about telly and football and electronic gadgets; work, of course, they’d all want to tell him how ghastly their jobs were and how well they were doing in spite of it. He carried on down the list until he got to S.
She’s perfectly all right and she’ll call you sometime.
OK, try this. She’s talked to one of the old crowd and heard that he’d been asking around after her. She wants to reassure him, but whenever she’s phoned during the day, there’s been no reply, and for some reason, maybe to do with combat training and blowing things up, she can’t phone in the evenings. So she asks George to pass on the message. George has got the wrong number for him; being a determined, do-itnow, attention-to-detail kind of guy, he leaps on his bike, falls in the 4th Panzer Division, and pops round to deliver the message in person. Well. It could happen like that. Stranger things have been known.
Then why was his intuition – his heroic intuition; yes, well, we won’t let ourselves get side-tracked with all that right now – why was his gut feeling screaming at him that something was appallingly wrong, and he ought to be out there doing something about it, instead of wasting time ironing? Maybe because he couldn’t get his head around the idea of George-and-Stephanie; and maybe that was because, deep in the coal-seam of his subconscious, he’d been rather hoping that one day it’d be Maurice-and-Stephanie (though that was, if not denied, then most strenuously not admitted). Or maybe it felt all wrong because it was all wrong. Well? Decide.
Multiverse theory; how about this? In a version of reality so bizarrely at variance with normality that Maurice could not only get a job but fit in reasonably well and not mind terribly much going to work every morning, it’d be perfectly reasonable for Stephanie and George to be in love; and, by the same token, for personifications of Fun and Duty to accost him in the street and demand that he make high-level policy decisions affecting the future of the human race. Meanwhile, back in the boring old default reality where two plus two insists on making four, and a coffee cup dropped on a stone floor smashes instead of sprouting wings and flying away, Maurice is still working late every night at Overthwarts, Stephanie would rather be eaten alive by lemmings than go out with George, dragons don’t just appear in people’s bedrooms, and doughnuts—
Doughnuts don’t just float up off the palm of someone’s hand.
Screw multiverse theory. He went to switch off his computer, and saw he had mail in his inbox. 5,976 items.
He called them up.
From: Max Bernstein. Subject: HELP!!!. 5,976 copies.
He sighed and deleted the lot, promising himself a new spam filter when the technology budget could run to it. Then he checked to make sure they’d gone. They were still there.
Bloody Microsoft. If he was going to have to go through deleting each one manually, there’d be an extra few pins in his Bill Gates doll later on. He called one up at random and opened it.
Maurice, you clown, I’m still here. Why do you never answer your phone? Why don’t you check your voicemail? Why don’t you do something instead of just sitting around like a small shelf of sedimentary rock?
You’ve got to get me out of here, now, and then we’ve got to find Theo and rescue him. Have you got it yet? If not, why not??? Is this really what passes for heroic conduct in that rathole reality of yours?
Do you have any idea of the lengths I have to go to in order to get a message out to you?
Pull yourself together, man, for crying out loud. I expect to hear from you within the next twenty minutes.
He read it again carefully. Maybe, he told himself, it’s a new angle; plausible, since he couldn’t help but think that the traditional there’s-twenty-billion-dollars-frozen-in-the-First-National-Bank-of-Fasimba-and-I-need-your-help approach was probably not quite as effective as it had once been. On the other hand, explicit references to money seemed to be lacking. Also, he realised, there was no return address. From: Max Bernstein, but no email.
He chose another one and opened it.
Maurice, you’re a total disaster. I have to confess, I’ve never had a particularly high opinion of the human race, but you’ve got to be the laziest, most stupid, least gormful entity that a misguided Providence ever wasted sentience on. Why don’t you get off your bony Anglo backside and get me out of here? It’s not even as though it’d inconvenience you terribly much. I mean, I’m not asking you to do anything challenging or liable to stretch your reserves of ingenuity, like blowing your nose.
You must have got it by now. Come on. Please. I’m not sure I can stand much more of this.
He looked at the dates. All the emails had apparently arrived on the same day. He clicked on the one at the top of the list:
All right, Maurice. I give up.
Obviously, for some reason I can’t begin to understand, you hate me, or Theo, or both of us so much, you’re prepared to leave us stranded for ever, rather
than lift a finger to help. So be it. You’ve made your decision, obviously. I won’t be bothering you again.
I don’t know how you can live with yourself, though. Two perfect strangers; yes, I can see how someone as selfish and cold-hearted as you are could simply turn a blind eye. But when it comes to someone you grew up with, one of your closest friends – ah well. No point saying any more.
Anyway, it’s too late now. They tell me they can only keep this line open another hour or so, and then that’s it. I just hope you’re
A cold shiver ran down his spine. No address, but what the hell. He clicked on Reply, and a box appeared. He typed:
Hello?
—and hit Send. The little just-wait-there-till-we-can-be-bothered-with-you hourglass flickered for a second or so, and a Reply-sent box came up. He waited.
Someone you grew up with. One of your closest friends. She’s perfectly all right and she’ll call you sometime.
1 new message. He scrabbled with the mouse and clicked Inbox. There was a bang like a firework and a bright flash of light, the screen went dead and a plume of grey smoke streamed out of the USB ports.
When he reached the sub-basement door on Monday morning, Ms Blanchemains was there waiting for him. She was sitting on the bottom step of the staircase, reading the Financial Times and eating a—
“Hello,” she said with her mouth full. “Good weekend?”
—Doughnut. “Not particularly,” he said. “You?”
She shrugged. “So-so. On the one hand, I split up with my boyfriend – actually I threw him out – and the washing machine exploded. On the other hand, I fixed my car without any help from anyone and I won a hundred pounds in a raffle. What was so bad about yours?”
She’d changed her lipstick colour. “Well, it was dull and my computer’s broken down. What can I do for you?”
“Ah, right you are. Can they mend it, do you think?”
“No idea.”
“I hope they can. It’s always such a pain if you lose all your stuff. I’ve got everything on mine. If it went wrong, I’d probably cease to exist.”
“What was it you wanted, exactly?”
“Of course I back up regularly, like they tell you to, but—”
“Please?”
“What? Oh, yes, right.” Her face changed, and suddenly she looked like someone getting ready to put a suffering animal out of its misery. “Here’s a list of some stuff they want.” She handed him a piece of paper. “Top priority. Urgent.”
“Thanks.”
“Well.” She’d just pushed the plunger of the syringe all the way down, and was watching him for the first tell-tale droop of the eyelids. “Nice talking to you. We haven’t really had time to get to know each other, have we?”
“Um.”
“So long.” She moved past him, then, as quick and neat as an Olympic fencer, she dipped her head sideways and kissed him on the nose. “Bye now,” she said, and darted away up the stairs.
Maurice stood perfectly still for five seconds. Then he shrugged and opened the Omskium door.
Inside, the place was total chaos. Boxes had been dragged off the shelves and scattered all over the floor. One section of shelving in MORE STUFF had been ripped away, and the framework was bowed and twisted, like a collapsed suspension bridge. The derelict computer in the corner was a sad heap of broken glass, smashed plastic and exposed circuit boards.
He stared at the mess for a moment or so, then turned and ran up the stairs into Reception. It was deserted, as usual. He realised that he had no idea where anyone worked. He’d been in Mr Nacien’s office, once; likewise, Mr Pecheur’s. He hadn’t paid any attention to where they were; he couldn’t even remember which floor they were on (but Carbonec was an inverse pyramid hierarchy, right? So Mr Pecheur would be on the first or second floor. But it was a huge building, and he couldn’t very well trek the whole length of every corridor on the first and second floor, knocking on each door he came to. Could he?) He scanned the Reception desk for a bell or a buzzer he could press, but there wasn’t anything like that. Effectively, he was as conclusively alone as if he was on a desert island.
Fine, he told himself. Not my fault. Why not just wait till half past eleven, when everybody will be congregated in the back office? Meanwhile, he could go back downstairs and make a start on tidying up the appalling mess—
No, bad idea. What if the police had to be called? Fingerprints, disturbing the evidence. Oh God.
Think, he ordered himself. He thought. Then he looked around on the front desk until he found a sheet of Carbonec letterhead, located the company phone number, tapped it into his mobile and waited.
“Hello, Carbonec Group, Elaine speaking, how may I help you?”
“I’d like to speak to Mr Pecheur, please.”
“Certainly. Who shall I say is calling, please?”
“Maurice Katz.”
He waited. An orchestra played Vivaldi at him, which was nice of them. Then Mr Pecheur’s voice, deep as the Mariana Trench. “Maurice?”
“Oh, hello. Um. I’m in Reception.”
“That’s all right, I’m broad-minded. Be where you like, so long as the work gets done.”
“I think you’d better come down here.”
Pause. “Why?”
“I really think you ought to come down here right now.”
Another pause. “Can’t it wait till coffee time?”
“No.”
Sigh. “Fine. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
End of call. He put his phone away and sat down. Did it really take five minutes to get from Mr Pecheur’s office to the front desk? Maybe. It was, after all, a pretty huge building—
Quite. And forty-three people worked there, not counting Maurice Katz. Only forty-three, in a place this size. You could fit at least eighty-six good-sized offices in on the ground floor alone.
A reckless urge gripped him, and he went through all eight drawers of the front desk. All empty, apart from four paper-clips, a hole punch and a very, very old Cadbury’s Creme Egg.
He heard movement behind him and looked round. Mr Pecheur was limping towards him across the front office, trailing one leg, his face screwed up with pain. That would explain the reluctance to come down, of course.
“Well?”
“I’m really sorry to drag you down here,” Maurice said. “But I think there’s been a break-in. Down in the basement.”
Mr Pecheur frowned. “When?”
“I don’t know, I only just got here. Well, about ten minutes. The basement door was unlocked.”
“Well, it would be. I unlocked it this morning when I got here.” He shrugged. “Let’s go and take a look,” he said.
Mr Pecheur had terrible trouble getting down the stairs; he had to turn sideways and lift his bad leg from one step to the next with his hands. Eventually, they got there and Maurice opened the door. Everything was how he’d left it.
Mr Pecheur looked round. “What makes you think there’s been a break-in?”
Maurice looked at him, then pointed out the split boxes, trashed shelving, wrecked computer.
“Oh, that,” said Mr Pecheur.
“It wasn’t like this when I left on Friday,” Maurice said firmly.
Mr Pecheur frowned again. “Mice?” His eye rested on the shelves in MORE STUFF. In one place, the steel struts had been twisted into a corkscrew. “No, maybe not. Is anything missing?”
“I—”
“Well.” Mr Pecheur hadn’t waited for an answer. “This morning, 8.51 a.m., the door was locked. There’s just the one key.” He reached in his pocket and produced a tiny gold key, like something off a charm bracelet. “Get this mess cleared up and we’ll say no more about it.”
“But Mr Pecheur—”
“Leroy. Call me Leroy.”
“Shouldn’t we do something?”
Mr Pecheur shrugged. “Like check all the boxes off against the inventory, you mean?” He smiled. “The door was locked; there’s only one key. You
know about the door. Tell me how it’d be possible for anything to have been taken out of here.”
“Well, I—” Maurice made a hopeless gesture. “I don’t know. But—”
“If it’s impossible, it’s impossible. So, nothing to worry about.”
“But the mess,” Maurice said. “The damage—”
“Seismic activity,” Mr Pecheur said. “A minor earth tremor. Something like that.”
“But wouldn’t that have damaged the rest of the—?”
“Doesn’t seem like it,” Mr Pecheur said briskly. “So I guess we can count ourselves lucky, right? I mean, it could’ve been so much worse. Was there anything else?”
“Well, um, no, that was about it, really. I just—”
“Fine. Carry on. Oh, and did you get that special requisition I sent down? Make sure you get on to that right away. Top priority.” He paused, then smiled again. “You did right to fetch me down here,” he said. “I mean, we need to know if there’s something you think is wrong. However slight it may seem.”
“Um.”
“Well done, Maurice,” Mr Pecheur said, as he picked his way up the stairs, like Sir Edmund Hillary in a blizzard. “You’re doing a grand job.”
Maurice went back through the Omskium door and took another look. Boxes everywhere. He picked one up off the floor. As usual, it was painfully heavy; he’d wondered about that, because the boxes were only cardboard, and you’d have thought they’d have split or torn when you lifted them. He heaved it up onto a shelf, getting his knee under it to achieve the last few inches of lift. The label read i. Ah well.
There was, of course, absolutely no way of telling if there were any boxes missing, but at least he felt confident that none of them had been opened. He thought about it some more as he set about restoring some form of order. If someone had broken in here with intent to steal – well, now. If they were just ordinary thieves, surely they’d have tried opening a box or two, just to see if the contents were of any value. But if they’d come to steal something specific… he laughed out loud. Bloody good luck to them, finding anything in this lot. Besides, Mr Pecheur’s point was hard to ignore. The door hadn’t been forced. It was still locked at ten to nine, and there was only one key. True, that left ten minutes unaccounted for, between Mr Pecheur unlocking and his own arrival – ten minutes, in which to find one specific thing in among all those boxes and lug it up the stairs. No, less than ten minutes, because Ms Blanchemains had been waiting for him when he got there, and presumably she hadn’t seen anything or anyone, or she’d have mentioned it.