by Tom Holt
‘Mr C.’
‘I know.’ Chardonay, who had flung himself face down on the ground, picked himself up and stared at the huge, fast-moving shape hurtling through the sky. ‘It’s him. That bastard...’
‘Do you want me to get him, Mr C?’
The expression on her face - eager, thrilled to bits at the chance of doing something to impress and please - was almost heartbreaking. She would, too, he realised, if only I said the word. And maybe she’d succeed. If she failed, it wouldn’t be for want of extreme savagery. But he couldn’t do it. The spirit was sufficiently psychotic, but the flesh was weak. She wouldn’t stand a chance.
‘Don’t be stupid. And get down before he sees you.’
‘Righty-ho, Mr C.’
‘Not on top of me, please. I can’t breathe.’
‘Is this better?’
‘I can breathe, certainly. But would you mind just...?’
The slipstream from the dragon’s passage hit them like a hammer, and for the first time Chardonay appreciated the extraordinary power and strength of the bloody thing. It was going to take a whole lot more than just the five of them to cope with it. In fact, it wouldn’t be a foregone conclusion if the whole damn Department turned out against it. There was, quite simply, no way of telling how powerful the monster was, apart from picking a fight with it, of course. That’s like saying there’s one simple way of discovering what height you can drop a porcelain vase from before it breaks.
‘The Shopfloor with this,’ Chardonay said. ‘Let’s get out of...’
The dragon swooped.
Three of them, at least. The other two were bound to be around here somewhere. Besides, he reflected, I have this notion that if I go around letting off fireworks too close to this uranium stuff, pinpoint accuracy is going to be somewhat academic.
Hmm. Pity about that. Maybe it’s not the prettiest country in the world, but I could see where you could easily get fond of it.
Omelettes and eggs, boy. Omelettes and eggs. He focused and put his wings back. The soldiers dropped their guns and ran for it; the demons stayed where they were. For some reason.
‘Trust me,’ Prodsnap yelled. ‘He knows that if he flames off here, he’ll risk blowing up the power station, and then it’d be goodbye Europe. He won’t do that.’
‘You reckon?’
‘Of course.’ Prodsnap closed his eyes. ‘He’s the good guy.’
‘How’d you figure that out?’
‘Easy. George tried to kill him and couldn’t. Speaks for itself. So all we have to do is keep perfectly still and the bugger’ll peel off and fly away.’
‘Is that a promise?’
Prodsnap nodded. ‘Trust me.’
Job done.
The dragon banked again. Where the three demons had been, there was now just a big scorch-mark, a little molten rock. And a nuclear reactor going badly wrong.
Pity about that.
Never mind.
Omelettes and eggs.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘Oh said Chardonay.
‘At least it didn’t see us,’ Snorkfrod replied, emerging from behind a pile of used tyres. ‘Just as well, really, because if it had, we’d be—’
‘Yes. Quite.’ Odd, he reflected. Given that he was now a naturalised citizen of Hell, he hadn’t expected to be terrified by the sight of fire ever again. Quite nostalgic, really.
‘Mr C.’
‘Huh.’
‘I don’t want to worry you at all, but I think this whole complex is about to blow up.’
Why is it, Chardonay caught himself thinking, that whenever there’s a truly awful crisis, humans set off a ghastly, shrieking alarm? Mood music? Muzak? Even now, with the sky boiling and waves of heat you could bake cakes in, there were still humans busying about with clipboards and brown cardboard folders, convincing themselves it was all just a drill. Why do we wear our fingers to the bone trying to torment these people? They do a far better job of it left to their own devices.
‘We’d better be going, Mr C,’ Snorkfrod urged. ‘Come on.’
She tried to pull his sleeve, but he shook his arm free. ‘No,’ he said; and then looked round, trying to spot the smart-arse ventriloquist who’d hijacked his body to make such a damnfood remark. ‘No, we can’t just run. We’ve got to stop it happening. It’s our duty.’
Snorkfrod’s eyes were as large and round as manhole covers. ‘Mr C,’ she hissed, ‘this whole place, this whole country, is about to blow up. There’s nothing we can do. We’ll be—’
‘Yes there is. There must be.’
Snorkfrod’s talons closed round his shoulder, nearly ripping it off. ‘Don’t be bloody stupid,’ she shrieked. ‘We’re demons, we’re from bloody Hell, it’s not our responsibility.’
‘Yes it is.’ Chardonay carefully prised her talons apart and lifted them off him. ‘We’re officers of the central administration. And we’re here, now, where it’s happening.’ He heard himself saying it; otherwise he’d never have believed he could say anything like it. Stark staring...
‘All right, Mr C. What can we do?’
He stared at her. Leadership? Love? Both of them daft as brushes? She was smiling at him. God, it was like being followed round by a great big stupid dog. If she had a lead in her mouth it wouldn’t look out of place.
‘You sure?’ he asked.
‘Of course I’m sure, Mr C. Where you go, I go.’
In which case, Chardonay reflected, it serves the silly bitch right.
‘Um,’ he said. ‘Okay. Yes. Er, follow me.’
From safe to critical in four and a half minutes; too fast. Even a direct hit from an ICBM shouldn’t have made it all happen so quickly. There was absolutely nothing anybody could do. Even running away would be a waste of energy.
Two minutes.
Chardonay’s instinct told him to go by the heat; where it was hottest, that’s where the heart of the problem would be. Heat in itself didn’t worry him at all—
- Except this was not hot. Back on Shopfloor, the accountants’d have forty fits if they found anywhere as hot as this. Turn it down, they’d shriek, have you any idea what last quarter’s fuel bill came to?
‘Are we going the right way, Mr C?’
‘Getting warmer, definitely. Dear God, how can they get it as hot as this?’
Ninety-eight seconds later, Snorkfrod shoulder-charged a massive lead-lined chrome steel door. When she collided with it, she found it was red hot and soft...
‘Bingo!’ Chardonay blinked, found he had to look away.. ‘Oh shit, now what?’
Seventeen seconds to go. Chardonay’s brain raced, performing feats of pure maths he’d never have believed himself capable of. Pointless in any event. There was only one thing that might conceivably work, and they were to all intents and purposes dead already, so why waste time doing the sums?
Chardonay turned to Snorkfrod. She was glowing bright orange and on her face was an expression of part horror, part rapture.
‘Oh, Mr C,’ she said, in that gushing, cloying, Black-Forest-gateau-with-extra-cream voice of hers. ‘It’s all rather grand, isn’t it? Being together at the end, I mean.’
Gawd help us. For a moment he wondered if Snorkfrod’s unconquerable soppiness might be the only thing in Creation wet enough to put out the fire. On balance, probably not.
‘I love you, Mr C.’
‘Er, yes. Super. Now, when I give the word...’
And, even as the two of them hurled themselves down onto the core and were reduced instantaneously into atoms, Chardonay did catch himself thinking, Well, yes, if things had worked out different...
There’s nothing like bizarre and absolute annihilation to bring out the romantic streak in people.
Chardonay’s last, pathetically futile idea was that the physical bodies of demons are the most heat-resistant material in the known cosmos. Throw two demons onto the fire, like an asbestos blanket onto a burning chip-pan, and there’s a very slight chance you might put it out.
He was, of course, wrong. A whole brigade of spectral warriors might have done the trick if they’d parachuted in about eighty seconds earlier, before the meltdown entered its final phase. Two little devils leaping in at the last moment were always going to be as effective as an eggcupful of water thrown into a blast furnace.
A lovely gesture, then; but completely pointless. Heroism is one thing, physics is something else. At the moment when the two demons threw themselves into the fire, only a miracle could have prevented the final cataclysm.
Define the term miracle.
It’s got to be something Good - who ever heard of an Evil miracle? And it must be impossible or it doesn’t count.
That leaves us with something nice that simply can’t happen but does. Examples? Well, if we forget about tax rebates for the time being, how about a nuclear pile suddenly cooling down at the very last moment? Or two fiends from Hell giving their lives to save millions of innocent people?
Miracles do happen, but only very, very rarely; like the hundred-to-one outsider suddenly accelerating out of nowhere to beat the odds-on favourite. You could make an awful lot of money betting on miracles, provided you knew for certain they were going to happen. But that, too, would be impossible. Nice, but impossible.
Wouldn’t it?
Unpalatable theological truth number 736: behind every miracle, there’s usually an awful lot of syndicated money.
‘Just like that?’ Chubby enquired.
Just like that.
Chubby sat still and quiet for a while, letting his mind skate round the implications. Just then, he’d have given anything for a simple pie-chart diagram showing how much of his soul was still his own. Not, he imagined, all that much.
‘So that’s what we needed the dragon for,’ he said. ‘God, I must be getting thick in my old age.’
Not really. It took a genius to think it up in the first place. It would take a genius of almost equal standing to work it out from first principles. Don’t be too hard on yourself just because you’re not a genius.
It helped, Chubby found, to walk up and down, burning off a little of the surplus energy that his pineal gland was pumping into his system. ‘A dragon,’ he said, ‘because nothing else on Earth would actually be crazy, wicked, stupid enough to torch a nuclear reactor and blow up a country.’
And even then I needed a pretext, so he wouldn’t suspect what I was really up to. Hence putting a contract out on the demons. Rather neat, I thought.
‘Whereupon,’ Chubby went on, ‘you laid a whopping great bet on the outcome. What odds did you get? Thousand to one?’
You think I’d go to all that trouble for a handful of piddling loose change? No, the odds were very satisfactory, thank you.
‘Splendid. I do so like a happy ending.’ Chubby sat down behind his desk, broke a pencil and ground the bits into the carpet with his heel.
Another thing. You’re being too hard on my old friend Fred.
‘Fred? Oh sorry, I forgot.’
You said crazy, wicked, stupid. Fred’s none of those things. That’s the mistake everybody always makes around dragons. I should know, I am one. Or had you forgotten?
‘I did manage to remember, thank you.’
Dragons— Impossible, of course, for glowing green words on a screen to have any expression. Any subtext has to come from the mind of the reader. In Chubby’s eyes, at least, the words on the screen grinned.
Dragons, you see, simply don’t give a damn. Good and Evil’s just biped stuff. Sure, you believe in it, the same way you used to believe in Father Christmas when you were little. We don’t, is all. We don’t mean anything by it.
‘I see.’
I doubt that. And you know something else? I couldn’t give a shit.
Chubby gave the screen a long, level stare. For some reason, he found he could, without wanting to look away. His mind searched for a word and a word came: alien.
I thought they were little green men with radio aerials sticking out of their ears.
Chubby shook his head. ‘Nah,’ he replied. ‘You could get fond of little green men.’
‘Hello,’ said Prodsnap, without looking up. ‘What kept you?’
Chardonay sat down in the seat next to him. ‘Had to save the planet,’ he replied. ‘Any idea what sort of a mood He’s in?’
Prodsnap shook his head. ‘I haven’t heard any shouting,’ he replied. ‘On the other hand, that’s not necessarily a good sign.’
The five demons, wearing makeshift bodies issued to them from the huge wicker hamper colloquially known as the Dressing-Up Box, were sitting in a draughty corridor outside an office marked Personnel Manager. It isn’t mentioned in Dante’s Inferno, mainly because Dante had always hoped one day to sell the film rights and so he wanted to keep the whole thing basically upbeat and free from utterly negative vibes. The famous inscription about abandoning hope was nailed above the lintel.
Snorkfrod nudged Chardonay in the ribs.
‘We’d like you lot to be the first to know,’ Chardonay said, saying it with all the passion and enthusiasm of the little voice in posh cars that tells you to fasten your seat belt. ‘Snorkfrod and I are engaged.’
‘Strewth.’ Slitgrind pulled a face. ‘So you’ve been in already, have you?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Slitgrind nodded towards the office door. ‘That’s your punishment, is it, Char? I always knew he was a vindictive bugger, but ... Hey, Prozza, mind what you’re doing, that was my shin.’
Prodsnap switched on a silly grin. ‘Congratulations,’ he croaked. ‘I hope you’ll both be very...’
The door opened. A secretary fiend, lump-headed and shark-jawed, beckoned them.
‘He’ll see you now,’ she said.
‘Sugar Fred Dragon?’ Mr Kortright suggested.
Nah. Tacky.
‘Matter of opinion. All right then, Rocky Draciano. I like that. It’s got class.’
Tacky.
‘Honey George Sanctus?’ There was a slight edge of desperation in the agent’s voice. Self-doubt wasn’t usually a problem for Lin Kortright, in the same way that Eskimos don’t lie awake at night fretting about heatstroke. This client, though, had him rattled.
Lin. It smells. Come on, you’re supposed to be good at this sort of thing.
‘I am.’ He’d nearly said I was. The sweat from his armpits would have irrigated Somalia.
Sure you are, Lin, sure you are. Now then, the venue. Any progress?
Kortright nodded, realised that the screen couldn’t see gestures (or could it? He was getting distinctly offbeat vibes off this thing. As they say in the Business, never work with computers or children). ‘It’s in the bag, Nosher,’ he replied confidently. ‘All set.’
‘Set? Or set-set?’
‘Set-set. I got a signed agreement with the Mongolian Ministry of Tourism and War—’
Tourism and War?
‘Historical reasons, Nosher. Genghis Khan. The ultimate in encounter holidays, remember? Anyway, we’ve got a million-acre site between Mandalgovi and Dalandzadgad, they’re gonna build us an airstrip—’
Fine. I’ll leave all that sort of thing to you. As far as I’m concerned, all we really need is a very big flat space with a rope round it, and two corners.
Kortright’s brow creased. ‘Corners?’
Yes. You know; in the white corner, we have Saint George, representing Good, and in the black corner...
‘Ah. Right. Got you. I’ll fix that, no problem. Now then, the cola concession, I’ve got the Pepsi guys up to six million, but I’m expecting a fax any minute—’
Yes, yes. Deal with it, Lin, there’s a good fellow. ’Bye for now.
The screen in Mr Kortright’s office went dark. Another screen in Chubby’s bunker (reinforced chronite, guaranteed to withstand anything less than a direct hit from a neutron star) flicked on.
Chubby.
‘Now what?’
Just a few things. Transport ...
‘All do
ne.’ Chubby frowned. ‘You got any idea how much a ship that size costs per day?’
Yes.
‘Then you’d better - oh.’ Chubby hesitated. ‘Any chance of a few quid on account?’ he asked. ‘Only, what with one thing and another, all this is causing me slight cashflow problems, plus I’m neglecting my business. I’ve got orders to meet, you know.’
Correct. Mine. And you will obey them without question. Lemons.
‘I’m sorry, I thought you just said lemons’
That’s right. For the contestants to suck between rounds. Make sure there are plenty, will you? Or do I have to do everything myself?
‘All right, Chubby replied, offended, ‘keep your keyboard on. I’ve got a containerload of lemons on their way from Australia, together with sixty gallons of aviation fuel for the dragon. Apple brandy for George. Not too much, don’t want him falling over. Okay?’
Well done. Finally, then; how are you actually going to get them onto the ship?
Chubby smiled. ‘I’m way ahead of you there,’ he replied. ‘How’d it be if we tried the old Ark routine? You know, a couple of days’ synthetic rain beforehand, then I go around telling everybody I’ve had this message from God—?’
Chubby.
‘Yes?’
Don’t try my patience, chum. I think I used to have some, but I haven’t seen it around since 1946, and it’s probably gone off by now. Get it sorted, there’s a good lad.
The screen went blank. Chubby stuck his tongue out at it. Obviously it knew, but Chubby no longer cared terribly much.
This, he said to himself, is getting out of hand.
It was something, he knew, with the big gambling syndicate. You didn’t need to be Einstein or A.J.P Taylor to work out that Nosher had been behind the original syndicate, the one that persuaded the dragon to throw the fight first time round, back in the Dark Ages. And it was as clear as a lighthouse on a moonless night that this rematch was going to be a fix as well. The question was, which one was he going to fix this time?