You Don't Have To Be Evil To Work Here, But It Helps

by Tom Holt

  ‘You have entirely consumed your beverage,’ Oscar said. ‘Are you in need of a further supply?’

  Colin nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, with feeling.

  ‘I see. I believe it is your turn to buy.’

  ‘Right,’ Colin said. ‘Same again?’

  ‘Certainly. I have never sampled alcohol before. Its effects are curious. Although it is a depressant, by sedating the part of the brain that controls natural inhibitions it inspires a sense of well-being verging on recklessness. When you return with further beverages, we should play pool.’

  At the bar, Colin seriously considered running away. From the pub to the station - six hundred yards. A train would take him, via Clapham Junction, to Gatwick - bugger, no passport. He could go to Waterloo instead; someone had told him it was possible to dodge passport control on the Eurostar, though he doubted it. Or Dover, somewhere like that; perhaps he could stow away in the back of a lorry—

  ‘I have changed my mind.’ Colin’s head spun round; Oscar was standing next to him. ‘Instead of beer I think I would like to try a measure of fermented spirits. What is the colourless liquid in the bottle with the red label?’

  So much for unobtrusive escape. ‘Bacardi,’ Colin said mournfully. ‘It’s a sort of rum.’

  ‘Rum,’ Oscar repeated. ‘What is rum?’

  ‘What? Oh.’ Colin frowned, trying to remember. Somehow he found it hard to concentrate on anything with the common enemy of man standing eighteen inches away from him. ‘Sugar cane, I think. They sort of squash it up and distil it, and then I believe it’s put aside to mature in big barrels.’

  ‘Mature?’

  ‘You’ve got to keep it for several years before it’s ready to drink.’

  ‘Ah.’ Oscar nodded a couple of times. ‘Rum isn’t built in a day.’ It made a faint rattling noise, like the cough of a sixty-a-day Nazgul. ‘It seems that alcohol is also conducive to humour.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Colin replied. ‘Oh look, the pool table’s free.’

  When he’d racked up the coloured balls and positioned the black and the white, Colin asked, ‘Have you played this game before?’

  ‘No,’ Oscar replied. ‘Explain the rules, and the function of the long, tapered sticks.’ It picked up a cue and touched the tip as though expecting it to be sharp. ‘These implements have an aerodynamically efficient profile,’ it said. ‘Do we throw them at each other?’

  Colin explained the rules, and they played a game. Oscar’s first shot after the break was a fiendishly difficult long pot to the top left-hand corner, flawlessly executed. To his surprise, however, Colin won.

  ‘You have prevailed,’ Oscar said. ‘State your requirements.’

  “Scuse me?’

  ‘The nature of the penalty,’ Oscar replied, bowing its head. ‘At home, when we play games, the loser has to endure a punishment devised by the winner. Decapitation or ritual disembowelling are traditional choices, but the decision is, of course, yours.’

  A few heads were beginning to turn, glamour or no glamour. ‘Would you mind keeping your voice down?’ Colin muttered in mid-cringe. ‘Look, we don’t do things like that around here, all right? I mean, thanks for the offer, but—’

  ‘Oh.’ More than a trace of disappointment in Oscar’s voice. ‘Then please explain the purpose of playing the game.’

  ‘Well,’ Colin said, ‘for fun.’

  ‘Ah.’ Oscar shrugged, a complex operation. ‘In that case, we shall play again. We shall enjoy fun.’

  Depends, presumably, on how you define it, Colin thought.

  Oscar’s version seemed pretty hard to distinguish from outrageous showing off, culminating in a shot off three cushions that potted five balls simultaneously before nudging the black into the top left. As far as Colin was concerned, however, he was beginning to wonder if he wouldn’t have been better off with the ritual disembowelling; messier, maybe, but it wouldn’t have attracted quite so much attention. He was also starting to wonder whether pouring ardent spirits down a previously teetotal embodiment of pure evil was entirely sensible. Admittedly, his companion seemed to be having a great time; but there’s more to life than sheer naked altruism.

  ‘Right,’ he therefore said, after Oscar had won his sixth consecutive game. ‘Well, it’s been great, but I’ve got to be up early for work in the morning, so maybe—’

  ‘We should now,’ Oscar said, ‘play darts.’

  So they played darts. Then they had a go on the fruit machines (Colin had never seen anyone get eight jackpots on the trot before; when he mentioned this, however, Oscar replied that if he made it nine in a row there’d be the Devil to pay; into which, Colin later admitted to himself, he’d walked like Custer at the Little Big Horn), then more darts, and then it was closing time. Although Colin had been drinking at four times his accustomed rate in order to keep up with Oscar, when the cold outdoors air hit him he felt wretchedly sober, as though he’d been glugging nothing but Perrier for the past four hours.

  ‘Now,’ Oscar said, ‘we should consume fast food and become nauseous in a shop doorway. Also, we have not yet discussed football, motor vehicles or the sexual proclivities of female celebrities.’ It hiccoughed, then made a noise which Colin later figured out must’ve been a belch. ‘It will be a tight schedule, but not impossible.’

  ‘Actually,’ Colin said.

  Oscar nodded. ‘You would prefer to go to your house, where we can drink more alcohol and watch pornographic videos. Or would you rather encompass a violent encounter with a group of strangers?’

  ‘Actually,’ Colin said desperately, ‘I think it’d be nice if we—’ He racked his brains for a moderately innocuous suggestion. ‘We could walk down as far as Tesco’s and back,’ he said. ‘A bit of fresh air—’

  ‘That isn’t a traditional male bonding activity,’ Oscar objected. ‘However, if you insist.’ It shrugged very slightly and set off at a brisk march, picking up a traffic cone in each hand without breaking stride. ‘Once we’ve done that,’ it added hopefully, ‘we could steal a motor vehicle and set light to it.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Colin muttered.

  Maybe it was the fresh air, or simply a difference in metabolic rates; as soon as they reached the Tesco’s car park, Oscar folded abruptly at the knees, collided with a stray wire trolley, tripped over the kerb and fell over. For some reason it seemed to find this highly amusing; at any rate, it made a noise like bandsawn aluminium, which Colin assumed on the balance of probabilities to be laughter.

  Now was his chance. A quick sprint, he’d be round the corner and into Drake Street before the epitome of ultimate evil noticed that he’d gone. Straight home, up the stairs, grab his passport and a change of underwear, then a taxi (no faffing around with trains) to Gatwick and the first available flight to somewhere far away. He tensed his leg muscles for the first step.

  ‘Your girlfriend,’ said Oscar.

  Which was no reason at all for hesitating. After all, she wasn’t; they’d been out together once, and that hadn’t been a proper date or anything, and he’d stood her up for lunch. That didn’t constitute a formal relationship, not even in Utah. Besides, in his mind he’d already committed himself to fleeing the country, changing his name and therefore, by implication, never seeing her again, and he was perfectly fine with that. So why the hesitation?

  ‘We should talk about her,’ Oscar said, still lying face down in the gutter. ‘Man to man. Further wordplay,’ it added. ‘You may now tell me all about your feelings for her. It does good,’ it added, as if quoting, ‘to talk about it.’

  Colin checked his calf muscles: untensed, not going anywhere soon. His moment of resolution had passed. ‘Actually, no,’ he said; and added (because it does help to talk about it, even to the epitome of ultimate evil), ‘there’s no point. We had a row after I stood her up for lunch, and she hasn’t spoken to me since.’

  ‘I see,’ Oscar replied. ‘But this doesn’t accord with my information.’

  Colin blinked. ‘You what?’r />
  ‘According to my data,’ Oscar said, and then threw up. Objectively speaking, it was a sight worth paying money to see: blue fire and cascading fountains of sparks and all sorts. ‘According to my data,’ it repeated, ‘you can’t have failed to attend a lunch date, since you have never scheduled such an event with the relevant female.’

  There was a dribble of orange flame running down Oscar’s shirt front, but Colin didn’t seem to have noticed. ‘Yes, I did,’ he said. ‘And anyway, how did you—?’

  ‘Incorrect. You have never broached the subject of sharing food with Ms Clay. Had you done so, I would’ve been informed immediately.’

  ‘Ms—’ Colin shook his head, as though bewilderment was dandruff. ‘No, you’ve got it wrong. She’s not the one I—’

  He paused. None of ultimate evil’s beeswax, surely. And if it knew everything about him, so what? He was too insignificant to have any secrets worth hiding. Mostly, he wanted to go home to bed.

  ‘Not the one,’ Oscar repeated. ‘Perhaps I used the wrong word. By “girlfriend” I meant to convey a female for whom you feel powerful emotions of romantic and sexual—’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ Colin snapped. ‘Look, would you mind getting up? Because if a policeman sees you like that we’ll both be arrested, and that’d just about round off a perfect day.’

  ‘Certainly.’ He didn’t see Oscar move. One moment it was lying face down in the gutter, the next it was standing beside him looking relaxed and elegantly dressed. It spoiled the effect rather by falling over again almost straight away. ‘Allow me to clarify,’ it went on, as though nothing had happened. ‘You are passionately in love with Cassandra Clay, an assistant sorcerer with J. W. Wells & Co—’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  Zpp; Oscar was standing next to him again, this time hanging on to the wire trolley for support. ‘Please,’ it said reproachfully. ‘We have performed male-bonding procedures. We are now—’ It paused, waiting for the right word to drop into place. ‘We are now buddies,’ it said. ‘Accordingly, you feel able to confide in me, and there is no need to deny your true feelings. You madly adore Ms Clay, who returns your love with equal fervour.’

  ‘No,’ Colin said. ‘Sorry, but that’s simply not true. The girl I’m interested in is Fam Williams, our new receptionist, only like I told you, I stood her up for lunch and now—’

  ‘Incorrect.’ Colin could feel Oscar’s displeasure, like an ice cube down the back of the neck. I do not understand why you should feel the need to lie to me. Your mate,’ it added; and then the wire trolley skidded sideways under its weight, and it went down like a dynamited chimney stack. ‘Pain,’ it said, as though reading out a stage direction. ‘I can only assume that you are deliberately falsifying data with a view to generating humour. Ha ha. Now, will you please confirm that you are in love with Ms Clay?’

  Colin frowned. If only he’d been a bit quicker off the mark, he could be on his way to Vanuatu by now. On the other hand, somehow Oscar didn’t seem quite so terrifying now that he’d seen it go arse over tip over a wire trolley. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘If you get up off the floor and let me go home to bed, I’ll say anything you like. Deal?’

  ‘Deal.’

  ‘All right, then. I’m in love with the Clay woman.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Oscar said. ‘That concludes our lads’ night out. Would you like me to give you a lift home?’

  ‘In the state you’re in? No, tha—’

  It hadn’t been an offer, except in the Sicilian sense. Oscar reached out, grabbed a handful of Colin’s hair and swung him into the air like a carrier bag. ‘Shit, fuck you’re hurting me,’ Colin was about to say; but by then he was sitting on his bed, alone, with the bedside light on, staring at the Deep Space Nine poster his mum had bought for him ten years ago, and which he’d never got around to taking down off the wall.

  She was there, of course, next morning. Colin slouched past her, his head cloudy and fragmented with hangover; she looked straight through him, as though he didn’t exist.

  Dad intercepted him before he could crawl into his office and build himself a cosy nest out of brochures and envelopes. ‘Didn’t hear you come in last night,’ he growled. ‘Had a good time, did you?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Got a thick head, by the look of you.’

  Colin mumbled something about a touch of flu.

  ‘Like it matters. Anyhow, buck your ideas up - we’ve got a lot to get done today. Meet me in ten minutes in the tool room.’

  Aaargh, Colin thought; in the tool room lived a whole lot of big, noisy machines. There was the one that went scree-scree-scree, the one that cachunk-zee-chin’d its way through solid brass bar stock, the scrungle-scrungle-scrungle machine and the screamy-grindy thing. They were enough to set your teeth on edge at the best of times, and definitely not recommended for anybody with a head full of tactical flu. He gobbled a couple of aspirin, which had no effect whatsoever, and drank a glass of dusty, chalky tapwater.

  There was a welcome surprise waiting for him in the tool room. All the machines were still and silent; in fact, the place seemed to be deserted. Odd; usually there were half a dozen men working there. Colin looked round for some sort of clue, and saw his father approaching.

  ‘All right?’ Dad said. ‘Feeling better?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, try not to puke up all over the place, it’ll create a bad impression.’

  Colin thought about that for a moment. ‘We’re meeting someone here?’

  Dad nodded. ‘Our new best friend. Ah,’ he added, and maybe he winced just a little. ‘Here he is.’

  Something had just stepped out from behind the scree-scree machine. It hadn’t been there a moment ago, because Colin had looked. This morning, it was wearing a very sharp Italian light grey suit.

  ‘Talk of the Devil,’ it said. ‘Good morning. You have both rested sufficiently.’

  ‘Fine, thanks,’ Dad replied automatically. ‘Right, Colin,’ he went on, ‘this is primarily for your benefit, so pay attention. Now, you’ll have noticed there’s nobody here but us.’

  Colin nodded. Stupid thing to do.

  ‘That’s because yesterday I sent all the men home. We don’t need them any more, thanks to Mister —’ Dad froze, but Oscar simply bowed its head slightly. ‘Today we start doing things the new way, right?’

  ‘Correct,’ Oscar said, and snapped its fingers.

  It was a bit like Star Trek, only there was no hum and no shimmering lights. They just appeared, as though the cameraman had stopped filming and started again once they were in position. They didn’t look at all like Oscar; and Colin reflected wretchedly that, a mere twenty-four hours ago, he’d have expected that to be a good thing.

  They stood at attention until Oscar snapped out a word of command; then each of them headed for a different machine. They moved like second-rate computer animations and when they trod in oil stains or patches of wood shavings on the floor they left no marks. They really did have cloven hooves instead of feet, which goes to show that not all stereotypes are wrong.

  ‘They’ll be working twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,’ Dad was saying. ‘No tea breaks, no unions, no paternity leave, no minimum wage; no wage at all, come to that.’ His face darkened for a moment, and Colin saw him deliberately relax it. ‘You know,’ he went on, ‘if this idea catches on, the manufacturing sector in this country might just still have a snowball’s.’

  Oscar didn’t seem to be listening to him, it was concentrating very hard, like a conductor standing in front of his orchestra. One by one, the machines started to turn, spin and reciprocate. Colin braced himself for the noise, but there wasn’t any.

  ‘Completely silent,’ Dad said. ‘Mister, um, Whatsit here did explain it to me, but it’s all a bit technical. Bottom line is, they don’t even need the electric, so that’s another useful saving. And no noise means we don’t have the bloody Environmental Health down here every five minutes.’

  ‘The fu
ndamental principle,’ Oscar started reciting in a dead flat monotone, ‘is that of the elimination of entropy through temporal displacement. Because entropy only has effect in time, if you eliminate the passage of time you effectively negate the first law of thermodynamics, with the result …’

  ‘Something like that, anyhow,’ Dad said. ‘Bloody clever, these people.’

  ‘Give the Devil his due,’ Oscar said. ‘There are also significant ecological benefits, including reduced fossil-fuel usage, thereby helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—’

  Somehow, it came as no surprise to Colin that the powers of darkness were ecologically aware. They probably supported the Kyoto accords and everything.

  ‘And of course,’ Dad steamrollered on, ‘with these lads on the job the place’ll pretty well run itself without us needing to lift a finger. Which is why,’ he added, turning to Colin, ‘I’m promoting you. Director in charge of production, which means that from now on all this lot’s your responsibility. There’s no extra money or anything like that, but we might start looking around for a car for you; I was thinking a nice clean Fiesta, something like that.’

  Inside Colin’s head there was that split second of delay, like during a transatlantic phone call. ‘Did you say director?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s right. I mean, there’s no rush, sometime in the next six months, I was thinking, it’s a case of waiting till the right car comes along, because it’s daft running out and buying the first one you see—’

  ‘As in, seat on the board and everything?’

  Dad shrugged. ‘Theoretically yes, I suppose so,’ he said. ‘But don’t let it go to your head, we don’t actually have board meetings and stuff, we just all do as I say. Still, if it gives you any pleasure.’

  ‘Wow,’ Colin said quietly. ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  For some reason, his gratitude seemed to make Dad uneasy, so he packed it in. Even so. A director of the company, a seat on the board. If he was a company director, surely that meant everybody’d stop treating him like a twelve-year-old, and—