by Tom Holt
It’s no fun being put on deposit. You ask a five-pound note.
Bedevere stirred about in the straw, finding to his distress that there was rather more of him than he was used to, and that it took quite a lot of effort just to move it about. ‘You never know, there might be something clever we could do. Let’s just stop a minute and think, shall we?’
‘Fine.’ Turquine glowered at him, or at least where he remembered seeing him last. It was very dark in the cell. ‘Let’s take stock of the situation, okay? We’re in a cell in the depths of some sort of castle ...’
‘Vault,’ said Bedevere.
‘All right then, it’s a bloody vault, so what? We’re chained to the wall, in a vault, and ...’
‘In a bank,’ Bedevere went on, talking more or less to himself. He’d found over the course of a long acquaintance that when one has nobody but Sir Turquine for company, quite often talking to oneself is the only way to get an intelligent conversation. ‘In a bank,’ he repeated.
‘Fine,’ Turquine growled, ‘in a bank, if it makes you any happier. Chained to a wall, fat as pigs and getting fatter by the second ...’
‘And heavier.’
‘Thank you, Mr Tactful. And, as you so perceptively say, heavier. And...’
Bedevere opened his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘Heavier, and in a bank vault. On deposit. Yes, I think we’re on to something here.’
‘My God,’ Turquine went on, ignoring him, ‘I hate to think what this is doing to my arteries. They must be so hard by now you could use them for gun barrels. Ten years of eating high-polyunsaturated marge gone for nothing.’
‘Turkey,’ said Bedevere, ‘shut up whingeing for a moment, and listen to me.’
Turquine stopped in mid-complaint. There was something about the boy Bedevere - he’d half-noticed it a few times over the years - that made you listen to him when he sounded like that. Not that he ever said anything remotely sensible, of course; usually he’d come up with some remark like, ‘I think we’re lost,’ or, ‘It’s late, perhaps we should be heading for home now,’ or even, ‘Hitting people doesn’t really solve things, you know.’ The trouble with young Bedders, if the truth were known, was that there was a lot of good warehouse space standing idle between his ears.
‘Right,’ Bedevere said calmly, ‘I want you to stand up.’
Ah well, thought Sir Turquine, why not? Nothing else to do. He stood up.
‘You standing up, Turkey?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you. Now walk forward until you reach the end of the chain.’
‘Is this some sort of aerobics, Bedders? Because if it is, I’ve tried all that, and ...’
Bedevere shook his head. ‘Just do what I say, old man, all right? Thanks. You there yet?’
‘Yes.’
‘Great. Now, then,’ said Bedevere, ‘I want you to fall forwards.’
There was a faint clink in the darkness. ‘What did you say?’
‘Fall forwards, there’s a good fellow,’ said Bedevere. ‘As if you were trying to fall flat on your face. Just try it, would you, please?’
‘Are you feeling all right, Bedders?’ Turquine enquired cautiously. ‘Starvation isn’t getting to you, is it? Because I’ve heard stories, not eating makes you go all light-headed. You aren’t seeing things, or anything?’
‘No, thanks all the same,’ Bedevere replied calmly. ‘Now then, I’ll count to three. One. Two.’
On the count of three, there was a grinding noise, and the sound of unhappy stone.
‘Ah,’ said Turquine, catching his breath, ‘I think I see what you’re getting at. You think my increased weight will mean I can pull the chain out of the wall. Good thinking.’
Bedevere, masked by the kindly darkness, made an exasperated face and counted quietly up to five. ‘That’s it, Turkey. Give it another go, why don’t you?’
It took seven goes before finally there was a loud crash and a vulgar expression, muffled by having Sir Turquine’s bulk on top of it. Then a small whoop of joy.
‘Right,’ said Bedevere, ‘how are you doing?’
‘Fine,’ Turquine replied. ‘Chain came out of the wall like a cork out of a bottle. My God, Bedders, I must have put on a hell of a lot of weight to manage that!’
Bedevere sighed. ‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘Stout fellow, if you’ll pardon the expression. Now, come over here and help me with my chain.’
With two extremely tubby knights yanking away at it, the staple holding Bedevere’s chain to the wall didn’t stand a chance. Bedevere would have preferred it if his comrade-in-arms hadn’t landed on top of him when the staple gave way, but you can’t make an omelette, as they say. He struggled out, stood up and dusted himself off.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘we’re getting somewhere.’ He reached out with his foot and felt something cold, small and heavy. A pile of them. He nudged, and there was a heavy clunk, like a lead brick falling.
‘Like I said,’ he muttered to himself, ‘a bank vault. Hey, Turkey, did you know that we were in a bank vault?’
‘You may have mentioned it, yes.’
‘And do you know what we’re going to do next, Turkey? Well,’ said Bedevere, smiling to himself, ‘we’re going to rob it.’
There was a silence broken only by that blasted drip. If ever I get out of here, Turquine thought to himself, I’m going to beat the pudding out of the first plumber I meet.
‘What did you say?’ he asked.
‘We’re going to rob the bank, Turkey,’ Bedevere said cheerfully. ‘What’s up, got wax in your ears or something?’
Time, Turquine said to himself, to get a few things sorted out; such as priorities. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘a place for everything and everything in it’s place, that’s what my old mother used to say. Let’s get out of here first, and then we can think about—’
‘You’re an idiot, Turkey, do you know that?’ said Bedevere, highly pleased about something. ‘Listen. This is what we’re going to do.’
Deputy Cashier Callistes woke from his doze and pulled on his helmet. Bells were ringing all over his office. Either the world was coming to an end or someone was robbing the vault; which, in the circumstances, was six of one and half a dozen of the other.
With his five deputy clerks at his back and a big wooden club with nails in it clutched in his right hand, he tiptoed down the corridor, opened the safe door and went in. The deputy clerks, who were also brave men, followed him.
Once they were all inside, somebody with no sense of fair play hit them over the head with gold bars, took the keys, locked them in the safe and ran away. By the time they were rescued by a SWAT team of trained auditors, they were all so fat that it took hydraulic lifts to move them.
Because they were native Atlanteans, with their biorhythms linked by the central computer to their current accounts, their short spell on deposit meant that each of them came out of the vault not only many stones heavier but many millions of dollars richer; and they were therefore taken directly from the vault to the courthouse, tried and found guilty of embezzlement. Under Atlantean law there is only one possible penalty for such a terrible crime. They were loaded on to a lorry, taken to the Till and cashiered.
‘I knew a bit of exercise would get the fat off,’ gasped Turquine, leaning on a doorframe and wiping the sweat from his eyes. ‘Look!’ He pointed to the waistband of his trousers.
‘Good job too,’ Bedevere panted in reply. ‘Only I don’t think it’s the exercise, somehow.’
He was, of course, right. By leaving deposit without filling out the necessary withdrawal slips, both the knights had become hopelessly overdrawn, which accounted for the fact that they could barely stand up. It was probably just as well they didn’t know what was happening to them; or that if they hadn’t been picked up by a patrol fifteen minutes later, they would have been hit by massive bank charges and killed outright.
‘Where the hell are we?’ Turquine asked.
And that’s bloody typical of the m
an, Bedevere thought, as he leant on the doorpost and tried to coax some air into his traumatised lungs. I mean, Turkey, how am I supposed to know where the hell we are? You think I nip over here on my days off for a spot of being hunted or something?
‘Lord knows,’ he replied. ‘Look, is this actually getting us anywhere?’
Turquine stared at him. ‘Say that again,’ he said.
Bedevere put his back against the wall and slid down until he was crouching on his haunches. ‘Running away,’ he said. ‘I mean where’s the bloody point? It’s not as if we know where the door is. Why don’t we just ...?’
‘Well?’
Bedevere shrugged. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘Don’t mind me, I’m out of condition. Leave it to you.’
Turquine made no reply, and Bedevere suddenly realised that he - Turkey, of all people - was more or less at the end of his rope. Probably as a result of his habit of absent-mindedly eating the leftover pizzas.
‘Stuff it,’ said Turquine. ‘I vote we stand and fight. Or stand, at any rate. Better still, let’s sit down and fight.’
He sat down, let his head fall forward, and fell asleep.
About ten minutes later, the men from the Chief Clerk’s department arrived. They were clearly intended to be the heavies. You could tell this by the way the pencils in their top pockets all had rubbers on the ends.
‘Okay,’ said Bedevere, ‘it’s a fair cop. I’m easy, but I think my friend here wants to hold out for a better exchange rate.’
The clerks looked at each other, and Bedevere noticed that they were, in a curious way, all trying to stand behind each other. Then one of them was propelled forward, politely but firmly, and cleared his throat.
‘Resistance is useless,’ he said.
‘I know,’ said Bedevere.
‘Well, all right, then,’ said the clerk, nervously. ‘Try anything, buster, and you’re history. You got that?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Good.’
Nobody moved. It was all rather embarrassing, and Bedevere found he had this very strong urge to offer them all a cup of tea or something.
The spokesman made another soft, throat-clearing noise. He was standing on one foot now.
‘We can do this the hard way,’ he whispered. Or—?
‘Sorry,’ said Bedevere. ‘Do you think you could speak up a bit?’
‘Yes, certainly. We can do this the hard way, or we can do it the easy way. If that’s all right with you,’ he added. One of his colleagues gave him a shove. He turned round.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ve had enough, you hear? And I don’t give a monkeys what they said at the office party.’ He threw his clipboard to the ground, trod on it, slowly and rather majestically walked to the very back of the small knot of clerks and stood there with his arms folded.
Bedevere had had enough, too. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be a pest or anything, but perhaps you could see your way clear to taking me to your leader.’
‘Right,’ squeaked a voice from the middle of the posse. ‘And no tricks, okay?’
‘No tricks,’ Bedevere sighed.
One of the clerks pointed to Turquine. ‘What about him?’ he said to his comrades.
‘He looks so peaceful just sitting there.’
‘It seems a pity to wake him, doesn’t it?’
‘No law against sleeping.’
‘Doesn’t look dangerous to me. Does he look dangerous to you, George?’
Oh for crying out loud, Bedevere thought. ‘Please,’ he said abruptly, ‘can we make a start, if it’s all the same to you? Only—’
‘Cool it, all right?’ snapped a small clerk, and then ducked behind the shoulder of the man next to him. Bedevere came to a decision.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I expect you’re all quite busy, really. Perhaps it’d be easier all round if you just showed me the way - draw a map or something - and then you lot could get on with whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing. I mean, there’s no point all of us trooping around, is there?’
The clerks looked at each other.
‘Sounds all right to me,’ one of them said.
‘Great.’
‘Fine.’
‘Thank you.’ Bedevere reached down and pulled Turquine by the ear.
‘Go’way,’ Turquine growled. ‘’Nother ten minutes.’ He lolled forward and began to snore.
‘Turkey!’ Bedevere shouted. ‘Wake up!’ He turned round. ‘Sorry about this,’ he said.
‘Quite all right.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
Bedevere nodded amiably and kicked Turquine hard on the knee.
Ten minutes or so later, they were sitting in an office.
Quite a nice office, if you like them tidy, with matching matt-black in-tray, out-tray, anglepoise lamp and desk tidy. The chairs were comfortable, at any rate.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Bedevere said.
‘Likewise.’
The Atlantean was different, somehow. He was tall, young, with short hair and big ears. He looked at home in his surroundings; in fact, you could well believe that he was chosen to go with the decor.
‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ he said. ‘Diomedes, Chief Assistant Technical Officer, at your service.’
‘Thank you,’ Bedevere replied, and gave Turquine a savage nudge in the ribs. Turquine simply nodded and went back to sleep. Dioinedes smiled.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘It takes some people like that, being put on deposit. Especially if you’re not used to it.’
‘Um...’
‘Exactly. And now,’ Diomedes went on, ‘I expect you’d like to know what Atlantis is all about, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Bedevere lied. ‘Absolutely.’
‘Right.’ Diomedes nodded, and pulled a jar of paperclips towards him. As he spoke, he linked them up to form a chain.
‘In a sense,’ he said, ‘Atlantis is a bank.’
He stopped speaking, and gave Bedevere a keen look. Oh hell, thought the knight, he wants me to say something intelligent. ‘In a sense,’ he hazarded.
‘Spot on,’ Diomedes replied, nodding vigorously. ‘That is, in the same way Mussolini did his bit for the Italian railways, and Jesus Christ had his City and Guilds in carpentry, Atlantis is a bank. It’s also something else, something rather special.’ Diomedes smiled, catlike, and folded his fingers, by way of saying, Wow, this is going to curdle your brains.
Bedevere was uncomfortably aware that his right leg had gone to sleep.
‘Atlantis,’ Diomedes said, ‘is a repository for money.’
‘Right.’
‘Precisely.’ The smile widened, until it was in danger of losing itself behind Diomedes’ ears. ‘You’re starting to get the point now, aren’t you?’
At this point, Turquine woke up.
He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and then leant forward.
‘Hello, Trev,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’
Diplomats must feel this way, Bedevere thought. You spend hours in airplanes, hotel rooms, bloody uncomfortable conference rooms with hard seats and nowhere to stretch your legs out; and just when you think you’ve got something lashed together that might just possibly work, some idiot of a basketball player defects and you might as well have stayed in bed.
Leave them to it, he said to himself.
‘It is Trev, isn’t it?’ Turquine was saying. ‘Trev Hastings, used to be behind the counter at the Global Equitable in Perry Bar? You remember me, I used to deliver pizzas. Yours was always ... Hold it, I never forget a pizza. Double pepperoni and—’
‘That,’ said Diomedes coldly, ‘was a long time ago.’
In retrospect, Bedevere couldn’t remember actually moving from his seat, but he would have sworn blind he jumped about a mile in the air.
‘Perry Bar?’ he said.
‘We have many offices,’ Diomedes said. ‘It’s a big organisation.’ Something about the juxtaposition of his eyebrows a
nd the bridge of his nose passed messages to Turquine’s brain.
‘Anyway,’ said Turquine, ‘long time no see. Sorry, you were saying?’
Diomedes relaxed his eyebrows. ‘Money,’ he said. ‘What is money?’
Before Turquine could reply, Bedevere gave him a smart tap on the shins with his toe. Then he lifted an eyebrow and said, ‘Ah!’
It was the right thing to do. ‘I mean,’ Diomedes went on, ‘we all know what it does. Great. So the Son of Man was quite capable of knocking you up a perfectly decent Welsh dresser. But that’s not what he was all about, is it?’
Turquine, to Bedevere’s great relief, seemed to have got into the swing of it, because he scratched his ear, nodded and said, ‘Precisely.’ He spoilt it rather by winking at Bedevere immediately afterwards; luckily, though, Diomedes didn’t notice.
‘Gold 337,’ Diomedes said. He reached across the desk and caught hold of one of those Newton’s cradle things. ‘This continent is built on it. It’s anti-magnetic. Anti-magnetism makes the world turn. Okay so far?’
Bedevere nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said. He shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Everyone knows that. Tell me something I couldn’t get from the Sunday supplements.’
‘Right,’ said Diomedes, and just then, Bedevere realised that yes, this man could be called Trevor. In fact, he probably was. ‘So gold is money, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘And money is magic.’
In another part of the building, the bell rang for the afternoon history lesson.
Two junior Atlanteans took their place at the back of the class. One of them had a mouse in his pocket. Just as some flowers did manage to grow between the trenches in Flanders, so the schoolchildren in Atlantis do have mice.
They catch them. They build little hutches for them out of shoe-boxes. They feed them on breadcrumbs and bits of apple-core. Then they sell them.
By the time they reach the sixth form, some Atlanteans have already made their first million just from dealing in mouse futures.
The teacher, a tall lady with deceptively thin arms, rapped on her desk.