by Tom Holt
Foolish, foolish; because the tree had always been there, as long as he could remember. Therefore it followed that it wasn’t an emergency, which meant he shouldn’t be wasting his time and his exceedingly small reserve of mental energy worrying about it right now. Instead, he should be tearing himself to bits over the reality of Hell, the existence of witches and the fact that his Dad was trying to sell his soul to the Devil in return for a cunning way round the statutory minimum wage regulations.
This is no good, Colin decided. I can’t just lie here, I’ve got to do something.
Like what? Get up a petition? Write to my MP?
He sagged, like a becalmed sail. All his hopes rested on the girl; the strange young woman, the witch, who gave him pins and needles in his feet and ferocious mental flashbacks to non-existent memories. Only she could stop Dad doing this dreadful thing; and if anybody could cast some light on the whole deja-vu nightmare, it had to be her. Right; talk to her. But he’d tried that. She was going to see what she could do; fine. But
His door opened.
‘Dad?’ Colin sat up. A thin taper of light gleamed through from the landing.
‘Oh,’ said a voice. ‘Sorry, wrong door.’
Colin froze. It was one of those moments when time slows down; more than that, it crumples, the way the front end of a Volvo’s supposed to if you drive it into a tree. It wasn’t just that he didn’t recognise the voice. It was the pitch, the timbre, the piercing tone. Hardly more than a whisper, but so clear as to be practically deafening.
The door closed. For seven seconds - he could hear the ticking (of his alarm clock, as loud as panel beating in the silence that followed that voice - he remained paralysed. Then his bones seemed to melt, and he flopped like a discarded shirt back down onto the bed. How long he lay there, he had no idea. He lost count of the ticks. He couldn’t think; it was as though someone had scooped out his brains to fill an ice-cream cone.
Oscar (it wasn’t its real name, but it pleased its somewhat whimsical nature to use it on field assignments) crossed the landing, found the stairs and climbed to the second-floor landing. There it stopped, and sniffed. Just follow the tree, they’d told it. Should’ve known better than to trust them to get anything right.
The smell was strongest in front of a white-painted door with a round brass knob. Oscar turned it and went in. A human was sitting in a chair in front of a desk, smoking a cigar.
Insofar as it had any time for humans, Oscar admired courage. It was very much the admiration of the angler for the cunning and determined fish, but it was sincere. Accordingly, the human’s reaction to its appearance earned its respect.
Even so: ‘Fuck me,’ the human said.
Oscar frowned. ‘I didn’t know that was in the contract,’ it said. ‘However’
‘No, it’s just an expression.’ Remarkable. It had taken the human a mere two-point-three-seven seconds to regain a substantial proportion of his composure. A sturdy fellow, this. ‘You’re late.’
‘Apology.’ Oscar checked the time against the schedule and acknowledged a failure, then reviewed the protocols. ‘You are entitled to punish me with disembowelling should you choose to do so,’ it said. ‘If you lack the necessary cutting tools, I can provide them.’
‘You what?’ Clearly, the human was unfamiliar with the protocols. A sorry creature, for all his courage. ‘No, screw that. I mean, forget it. You’re here now.’
Also given to stating the obvious. ‘We should proceed,’ Oscar said.
‘Yes, right. You’ve got the paperwork?’
Oscar nodded. Something about the gesture disturbed the human very much. Oscar didn’t understand, but understanding wasn’t necessary. ‘Rosters,’ it said. ‘Timetables, shift-rotation modules, requisition forms.’ A buff A4 envelope, mildly sulphur-scented, appeared on the human’s desk. ‘You’ll find everything in order.’
The human reached out a pink paw - humans have hair on one side of the hand only - and touched the envelope, then let it go again. Distaste. There had been a briefing on distaste a thousand years ago, but Oscar had been on assignment and had missed it. ‘I’ll check these over in the morning,’ the human said.
‘As you wish.’ Oscar frowned. ‘You haven’t signed the contract yet.’
‘No.’ The human looked away. Humans often did that. ‘Still going through the small print with JWW. My Dad always said, don’t sign something till you know what it means.’
‘I can explain it for you if you like. It’s quite straightforward.’
‘Yes.’ Oscar smelt an emotion it didn’t immediately recognise. Guilt, partly. Also distrust; loathing and terror, naturally (it would have hurt Oscar’s professional pride if they’d been missing). Something else, too. Not that it mattered. Either the human signed, or he didn’t. ‘He sends you his regards, by the way,’ it added.
The human blinked. ‘Who?’
‘Your father.’
A curious reaction followed. According to the manual, humans appreciated small, thoughtful gestures and exhibited affection towards those who made them. The human’s response, consequently, should have been positive. Complicated creatures; extravagantly over-engineered for their function, in Oscar’s opinion.
‘So,’ the human said (this time, he’d recovered in only one-point-eight-five seconds). ‘Are you going to be here full time, or are you just the messenger?’
‘I’ve been assigned to your case,’ Oscar replied. ‘Both here and -‘ it couldn’t help pausing for effect ‘- afterwards. We believe that continuity is important in ongoing situations,’ it explained. ‘Better the Devil you know, and so forth.’ Its little joke. Way over the human’s head, of course.
‘Right,’ the human said. ‘So we’ll be seeing quite a bit of each other, then.’
‘Yes indeed.’
‘Well.’ The human did that swallowing thing. ‘Pleased to meet you. My name’s’
‘I know your name.’ Had that been a trifle abrupt? Such subtleties of modulation. ‘You should call me Oscar,’ Oscar said.
‘Oscar.’
‘Yes.’
‘All right.’ The human appeared to be having trouble concentrating. ‘Well, that’s all for now, I guess. Unless you’ve got’
‘When do you anticipate being in a position to sign the contract?’
‘Oh, soon.’ Bluster. A symptom of being backed into a corner by the forces he had himself unleashed. Bluster’s last stand. Another little joke. ‘Just a few bits of mumbo-jumbo I want to thrash out. You know what the legal eagles are like.’
‘Yes,’ Oscar said. ‘Intimately.’
‘You Oh, I see.’ The human’s body trembled slightly. Low ambient temperature, perhaps, or possibly fear. ‘Well, don’t let me keep you.’
‘Apology,’ Oscar said. ‘I thought I’d made it clear - I’m on permanent assignment to you.’ It frowned. ‘Another expression?’
‘Yes.’
‘Understood. You dismiss me for the moment.’
‘Yes.’
Oscar nodded. Humans appreciate an exchange of formulaic salutations at leave-taking. ‘Ciao for now,’ it said, and vanished in a cloud of yellow smoke.
Reduced to its component atoms, hurtling at inconceivable speed through the interstices of time and space, Oscar reviewed its first impressions of the human. Adequate, it decided. Courage, as previously noted. A brittle, almost flamboyant display of fortitude in the face of the most terrifying entity he would ever meet; such fortitude resembles the snail’s shell, in that it generally conceals a soft and vulnerable interior. It would be rewarding to peel him in due course. Regrettably, no sense of humour; but that was such a rare attribute among mortals that it was pointless to hold it against him. A pity, nonetheless; shared humour can have a very positive part to play in the relationship with a colleague - which the human would be, in a sense; someone Oscar would be working with (and after that, of course, working on). Also, it realised at the moment of re-materialisation (as the full force of the hea
t closed in around it, and the shrieking, and the stench of molten metal), he’s hiding something. Even from me. Now that was intriguing, a rare gift among these shallow, bland creatures. Maybe this assignment would turn out to be more challenging than it had anticipated. Faced with the monotony of eternity, the wretched homogeneity of mankind, even the slightest difference was exceedingly welcome. Something to get my teeth into, Oscar thought. Another little joke.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Never work, they say, with children or animals; a doctrine that Benny Shumway had subscribed to for most of his adult life. Feeding the goats was, however, an exception. It was a pleasantly boring midday chore - sign out a sack of feed from the stores, lug it down to the cellar, fill the trough - which gave him a welcome opportunity to unwind and let his mind drift into neutral. He looked on it as an antidote to the daily trip to the Bank, even though the two tasks were, of course, intimately related.
A year or so ago, in order to take advantage of their highly competitive account structures for business customers, JWW had transferred its custom from Barclays to the Bank of the Dead. Accordingly, Benny’s daily trip to pay in the cheques, draw the petty cash, arrange for wire transfers and so on involved him in a trip to the Underworld, to which he gained access through a small door in the back wall of his office. In order for the living to contact the dead on their own turf, a blood sacrifice is required, and a detailed cost-efficiency analysis had shown that goats were the most economical option. Once you got used to it, it was no more of a hassle than topping up your mobile, except that you used a Stanley knife instead of a little plastic card.
Nevertheless, Benny couldn’t honestly say that he enjoyed his daily outing. The peace and quiet of the goat cellar was a welcome contrast. Leaning against the manger wall and listening to (he soft crunch of feeding ruminants, he could think things over in his own pace, a luxury usually denied him in the frantic rush of the working day. It was hard enough staying on top of his duties as cashier; since the demise of that fool Ricky Wurmtoter, however, he’d also been filling in as the firm’s pest-control specialist. Since the pests for which JWW generally got called in included dragons, werewolves, manticores, harpies, frost-giants, ogres, djinns, hydras and all known permutations of the Undead, it could at times be a rather demanding portfolio, especially for someone who stood five feet nothing in his socks and whose spectacle lenses were as thick as the bottom of a beer mug.
Esmeralda lifted her head and gazed at him, her jaws grinding in their slow, circular rhythm. She had character, Benny reckoned, and since she was the brood nanny she was safe from the demands of the financial sector. Benny fished in his pocket and took out a small apple. He felt a little like Lord Emsworth, feeding the Empress of Blandings.
Cassie’s problem, he thought; something of a collector’s item, ever since she’d told him about it, he’d had it constantly in the back of his mind, hanging like game to mature. Definitely, something was going on there. In many ways, it reminded him of examples he’d read about in textbooks long years ago: identify the catastrophic anomaly of which these are the perceived effects. The particulars didn’t fit any of the cases he’d studied, but it had that sort of feel about it, almost as though someone had made it up to illustrate a specific point.
Another good thing about the goat cellar was that it was a cracking place to hide when you didn’t want to be found. According to his watch, at that moment he should have been upstairs, in the interview room, having his assessment. The prospect hadn’t bothered him particularly (who the hell else could they find who’d do his job for the money?), but he reckoned it was one of those things you needed to be in the mood for, and he wasn’t. So let them bawl him out or send him a snotty memo. It’d do them good to be mucked about for a change. Meanwhile, he could roost down here for half an hour or so, and think about
About what?
From the sound of it (though Cassie wouldn’t appreciate him saying so), true love seemed like a logical starting point. She’d described at least half a dozen classic symptoms; true, the bloke as she’d described him sounded like a pathetic wimp, but Benny (who had to stop and think before he could recite the roster of his ex-wives in chronological order) had long since given up trying to figure out what women see in men.
But it wasn’t that. He wasn’t quite sure how he knew, but he was quite certain. You could tell when a girl was in love with someone - small modulations of voice, temper and body language, imperceptible as a dog-whistle - and he’d picked up on nothing of the sort. Instead, he kept on coming back to the test papers in the back of Eaton’s Theory & Practice of Commercial Sorcery (27th edition, Manchester, 1906). He could remember the kind of thing as though it were yesterday. A man walking down the street after murdering his grandfather meets an identical copy of himself coming the other way; a practical sorcerer engaged in summoning malevolent spirits in a village on the Equator in June discovers that his watch is running backwards; the distance between A and B is exactly nineteen miles, but measures twenty-one miles in a leap year. Explain, using diagrams if necessary.
Benny smiled. Of course, it wasn’t politically correct to say ‘sorcerer’ any more. He thought of himself yawning his way through night-school classes, the new suit he’d bought for the exam. Back then, it had all been so wonderfully straightforward - working-class boy from small mining village wins scholarship; a brilliant career; a partnership. It had all been about improving yourself in those days. Am I improved, he wondered, or just different?
Concentrate. A girl shows all the symptoms of being in love, but isn’t. Put like that, it could easily have been one of those test exercises; so, start by applying the rules you’ve been taught. First, find the paradox. Second, reduce it to its simplest terms. Third, formulate your equation.
Benny thought about it, leaning over the rail, brow furrowed. Esmeralda licked the side of his hand, then started eating his shirt cuff. He didn’t notice.
One of the rules he’d committed to memory (Friday night in the Working Men’s Institute; and it was always freezing cold, because they were too tight to turn on the heating until December) was that a small anomaly usually has big causes, look, therefore, to the wider picture.
Of course, Cassie wasn’t really in a position to supply reliable data; but suppose, just for argument’s sake, that the bloke (the wimp, the waste of space) was exhibiting the same symptoms. In which case, you’d have two people acting like they’re in love, but they aren’t. A small candle flickered in Benny’s mind, and he rummaged in his inside pocket for a pen and something to write on. A equals B, but doesn’t equal C. D equals E, but not F. Therefore let x (why does it always have to be x?) represent the
He scribbled for a minute or so, until the paying-in slip he’d been using was almost full of tiny, squiggly letters and symbols. Let x - let it be what? Whisper words of wisdom, let it be
Ah.
The trouble was, back in the Working Men’s Institute, you always had to show your working or you got no marks, even if the answer was the right one. He’d always bitterly resented that; it seemed arbitrary and unfair. Take Danny Earnshaw: nearly always got the wrong answer, nearly always got top marks. Benny, on the other hand, got the right answer ninety-nine times out of a hundred, but they’d put him back a year for lack of progress.
Bloody Earnshaw (whatever had become of him? Benny wondered), could do with him here right now; because Benny knew the answer, or something very like it, but he had no idea how he’d got there. Which was a bloody shame, since he couldn’t very well go to young Cassie and tell her what was going on, and then say, ‘Don’t ask, I just know.’ He sighed, and noticed that he was missing three-quarters of his left shirt cuff.
The answer was, not two people in love, but four.
The phone rang. Benny raised an eyebrow, because last time he’d looked there hadn’t been a phone down here in the cellar. He listened, located the source of the noise, picked it up.
‘There you are.’ Rosie Tanner. ‘I’ve
been turning the place upside down looking for you.’
Benny sighed. ‘Tell them to reschedule it for early next week. Before half-ten, for choice.’
‘I haven’t got a clue what you’re on about,’ Rosie replied. She used her own voice when she talked to him; flattering, in a way, but a pity. ‘You’ve got a client waiting in reception. Been there a quarter of an hour, and he’s not pleased.’
‘Can’t be. There wasn’t anything in my diary.’
‘It’s a new job, emergency.’
‘They always say that.’
‘This time it’s true. Apparently, a balrog’s just moved into the Burnside nuclear plant, and they want it shifted.’ Goblin chuckle. ‘You get all the rotten jobs.’
‘Yes,’ Benny growled, and hung up.
Burnside, he thought; that’s in bloody Scotland. Well, someone else’ll have to do the banking, that’s all. He gave Esmeralda her second apple, pulled his jacket sleeve down over the tatters of his cuff, and headed for the stairs.
Four, he thought. A crowd. Must remember to talk to young Cassie, soon as I get back.