Bedevere quickened his step and drew alongside their guide.
`Where is this?' he asked. The guide chuckled, and the sound echoed away into the darkness, where something probably ate it. "We're just passing under the main bourse complex,' he said, `midway between the Old Exchange and the Rialto. We're about five hundred feet beneath cash level. Are you having trouble breathing?'
`No,' Bedevere replied.
The guide shrugged. `Well,' he said, `it takes all sorts. This way.'
He disappeared through a low archway; the sort of opening Jerry the mouse might have built if he'd had access to explosives. Turquine, who was too busy looking about him and sighing happily to look where he was going, banged his head and swore.
`Along here,' the guide was saying, `we're going directly under the registered office itself, so watch where you're going. Reality can be a bit iffy. . .'
As he spoke, the floor and ceiling vanished. When it came back again a few seconds later, Bedevere had the distinct impression that everything had moved about a yard to the right.
`It does that,' the guide explained. `It's because of the registered office's main relocation matrix.'
`Ah,' said Bedevere, `of course.'
The guide grinned at him. `Which works like this,' he said. `Because, you see, Atlantis is what you might call an offshore tax haven. In fact, the offshore tax haven.'
`Gosh.'
`Quite true. Now,' said the guide, `I expect you've often thought that one day, what with one thing and another, all the money in the world is gradually going to get sifted and slipped offshore, till there's nothing actually left to spend. Right? Thought so. Well, that already happened. A long time ago.'
Um.
`In fact,' the guide was saying, `that's what Atlantis is all about. You see, Atlantis is where money started...'
`Um, yes,' Bedevere said. `Someone just told us.'
`I wouldn't be at all surprised,' said the guide. `They love telling you all about it, don't they? Mind your head, it's off again.
In the two or three seconds when all the dimensions were up for grabs, Turquine yelled and said something very vulgar. This was because he hadn't ducked, but the world had. They were now four and a half metres lower than they had been.
`The registered office,' the guide was saying, `is not only offshore, it keeps dodging about. Brilliant, really. How can they ever assess you to tax if you never stay still for more than thirty seconds running?'
`Absolutely,' Bedevere agreed. `Look, are we nearly out of that bit, because . . .'
The guide laughed. `Depends, doesn't it?' he said. `You never know. I've known days when the registered office just sort of follows you about. Ah, that's better, we're clear of it now.'
They had come out under a broad dome; the sort of thing Justinian would have put on Saint Sophia if he'd had peculiar dreams and lots of money. Far above them was a tiny point of light.
`That's the blowhole,' the guide explained. `What with all the magical money directly underneath us, and the registered office darting about like a mouse in a maze, there's got to be some way the excess pressure can find its way out. It's the only point where Atlantis is open to the sky. We tend to like it in here.'
`Pardon me asking,' Bedevere asked, `but who's we?'
The guide smirked at him. `Thought you'd never ask,' he said. `We're the hackers. The Atlantis underground, so to speak.'
`Right,' said Turquine. `So you hate the little bastards too, do you?'
`Right on,' said the hacker. `That's why we're helping you.' Turquine extended a massive paw. `Put it there,' he said. `Right, let's get the little . . .'
The hacker smiled sadly. `Good idea,' he said, `but not practical. Instead, we just try and get as far up their noses as we possibly can.'
Turquine shrugged. `So why are you called hackers?' he asked.
`Partly,' the hacker replied, `because we live by tapping into the natural energy discharges of the money reserves and turning them into food. Partly because if ever we catch any of the Topsiders down here, we hack their-'
`Fine,' Bedevere interrupted, `point taken. You were explaining.'
`Was I?'
Bedevere glanced quickly at Turquine, on whom all this talk of hacking was probably having a bad effect. `Yes,' he said firmly. `So how does it all work?' he went on. `How come Atlantis can't be found from the outside?'
The hacker beckoned. `This way,' he said. `It's very simple, really. Atlantis is a corporation, right? And the address of a corporation is its registered office. That's where all its official letters and faxes are sent to, that's where its books of record are kept, and the place where the registered office is decides which tax jurisdiction it falls under. Follow?'
`I think so.'
`Well,' said the hacker, `the registered office of Atlantis moves every thirty seconds, so it follows that Atlantis isn't anywhere, or at least not anywhere in particular. It's mobile. It's flicking backwards and forwards all over the place. It therefore has no geographical reality; just a fax number. That's how you got here, isn't it?'
They were looking at a huge steel column which ran up from the ground into the roof. It was humming slightly, and when Turquine tried touching it he pulled his hand away quickly, yelped and sucked his fingers.
`That,' said the hacker, `is the main matrix coil. It controls the movement of the registered office; sort of generates the field which bobs it around. If we could only cut through that
. . `Yes?' said Turquine, enthusiastically.
`But we can't,' continued the guide. `Nobody can. That thing's driven down into a five-kilometre-thick layer of molten Gold 337, and it sort of pipes magic up into a network of conductors that runs through the whole structure. We've tried dynamite, we've tried diamond-tipped drills, we've tried walloping it with big hammers, but all we manage to do is have a really good time and break a few tools. It's magic, you see. Can't touch it without magic of your own.'
`I see,' said Bedevere, thoughtfully. `And what would happen if you did manage to . . .?'
The hacker grinned. `God only knows,' he said. `Probably the world would come to an end. Who cares? Come and have a coffee.'
He led the way to a little lean-to propped up on the side of the pillar, where a small group of people - more hackers, presumably - were boiling a kettle over a fire of what Bedevere recognised as thousand-dollar bills. The hackers grinned at them and waved.
`Hiya,' said one of them. `Grab a mug, sit down, help us blow up the world.'
Over a mug of truly awful coffee - Bedevere learnt later that it wasn't coffee at all but an ersatz made out of deutschmarks steeped in radiator oil - Bedevere tried to find out a bit more about their new hosts.
The hackers, it turned out, had been here almost since the beginning. They were, in fact, dissenting shareholders, who had refused to accept the recommended offer when Atlanticorp was taken over by the present holding company Lyonesse (Atlantis) plc . . .
`Lyonesse?' 'Bedevere asked suddenly.
`Who else?' replied a friendly, red-faced hackeress. 'Been in charge around here for - what, getting on for eighteen hundred years since the big takeover bid. We were all on the wrong side, of course. We held out for the rescue package offered by the White Knight-'
`Thought we had 'em, too,' interrupted a large, hairy hacker with a lot of scars on his neck. `Got it referred to Monopolies, full investigation, the works. Then they mounted a dawn raid.' He shuddered.
`We're the ones who got away,' went on the hackeress. `Most of us didn't, though.'
Bedevere tried to look sympathetic. `Killed?' he asked. The hackers started to laugh.
`God, no,' said their guide. `Atlanteans don't die. We're all companies, see, and you can't kill a company. You can only wind it up.' He made a horribly expressive gesture with his hands. `They're all up there somewhere,' he said, `in the Receiver's Department. Being wound up.'
The hairy hacker nodded. `We calculated the other day,' he said, `that if you attached a propeller t
o one of them and let him go suddenly, he'd probably fly from here to Jupiter before he ran out of-'
`Ah,' said Bedevere. `So, er, what is it exactly that you're hoping to, well, achieve?'
The hackers gave him a funny look.
`We don't want to achieve anything,' said their guide, after an uncomfortable pause. `Bugger achievement. We want to get our own back on the bastards. Pity, really,' he added.
`We're into impotent resentment, mostly,' explained a thin hackeress. `We harbour grudges, too, but mostly we resent. That and a bit of conspiracy.'
Bedevere was thinking. `This White Knight,' he said. `Anybody I'm likely to have heard of?'
The hackers looked at each other. `Come to think of it,' said the guide, `that's a very good question. Anybody here know who . . .?
'It was a consortium,' said the red-faced hackeress. `An international consortium negotiating a management buyout.'
`No it wasn't,' replied the hairy hacker. `It was the original shareholders on a rights issue. They issued a Declaration of Rights. I've got a copy of it.' He patted his pockets. `Somewhere,' he added.
`You're both wrong,' broke in a tall, freckled hacker, `it was a market-led refinancing programme backed by the Bank of Saturn.'
`It was the Martians. They were trying to break into the oxygen-based lifeform market, and they wanted a way round the tariff barriers . . .'
`I always thought it was us,' said a small, dumpy hacker, The others stared at him, and he went bright red.
`Anyway,' said the guide, `it was them. Have some mare coffee?'
`No thanks,' said Bedevere. `Anyway, there was this takeover, and these people - the Topsiders, you called them - they took over?'
`Absolutely,' said the guide. `They had new sorts of magic, you see. New ways of making the gold do what they wanted. We were decimalised.'
`You mean decimated.'
`I meant,' said the guide grimly, `what I said. Anyway, that's enough about us. What can we do for you?'
Bedevere kicked Turquine quickly on the shin and then smiled.
`Actually,' he said.
Chapter 5
The last tourist had long since gone, the bookstall was closed, the curator had
locked up. The place was empty.
Well, almost.
In the back room - in his day it had been
a sort of secondary scullery - the immortal remains of William Shakespeare sharpened a pencil, licked his lips and turned over a handbill about guided tours of Warwickshire.
Amazing, he said to himself, the cavalier attitude they have towards paper these days. The nerds. They only use one side of it, and then as often as not they screw it into a ball and chuck it on the floor. He sighed as his insubstantial fingers smoothed the paper out. Don't know they're born, the lot of them. In my day, he muttered under his breath, you wanted to write something, first you had to get a sheep, then you knocked it on the head, peeled off the wool, scraped the thing down with a whacking great knife . . . Made you choose your words that bit more carefully. But now . . .
Uncharacteristically, he hesitated for a moment before getting down to work and looked around him. This had always been a good room for writing in, he remembered;
which was just as well, seeing as how it was the only one he could ever get any peace in. Then, of course, the fact that it was only just big enough for a man to sit down in and close the door had been a problem. Now, it didn't matter very much.
He shook his head. Youth, he said to himself, ah, youth! You can stuff it.
A quick glance at the clock reminded him that time was getting on. Not that he'd ever had difficulties in meeting deadlines; far from it. Still, they'd been most insistent, and he had been in the game too long not to know that you're only as good as your word. He lowered his head and, his lips moving rhythmically, he began to write.
Scene Four, he wrote. The Rovers Return. Bet is checking the mixers while Alec puts the float in the till.
Well, yes. Structurally speaking, the situation demanded it, and these days, of course, you didn't have to bother about giving them time to change the set. You could have any scene you liked. Have a scene at the North Pole next, if you wanted to. Long live progress!
Bet: Jackos's late again.
Alec:
He scratched his head and thought hard. There was something about Alec; perhaps he hadn't yet got the voice properly fixed in his mind. It just wasn't coming; the true Alec hadn't yet come to life. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully and tried to think about the motivation behind the character. Here we have a man, he thought, apparently successful, in the prime of life, happily married, popular in the community. But something is lacking; and that which should accompany old age (honour, love, obedience, troops of friends) he cannot look for . . .
Ah! Gotcha.
Alec: (snorts) Typical! If he spent less time supping ale down the Legion and . . .
Just then, there was a faint but distinct noise from the old back parlour, as of somebody walking stealthily in the dark and barking his shins on the firedogs.
Burglars!
It had to be burglars. Nobody else was likely to be about at this time of night. He bit his lip, screwed his courage to the sticking point and reached for the poker.
If you're hunting burglars through a deserted and darkened house, it helps to have been born there and to have spent the last four hundred years haunting it. You tend to know the more important facts about the place, like where the chairs are. You aren't liable to walk straight into a . . .
`Sod it!' he howled, rubbing his toe and hopping up and down. `What bloody fool put that there?'
There were sounds of hurried movement from the back parlour, and a sliver of light appeared under the door. Voices, speaking urgently and low. More than one of them.
In situations like these, one has a choice. One can seek the bubble reputation, even in the cannon's mouth. Or one can hide in the grandfather clock.
There was a faint oath as something insubstantial but fragile collided with the pendulum, and then the door of the clock swung shut, just as the back parlour door flew open. They have their exits and their entrances, you might say.
A woman was silhouetted against the light; a tall, slim woman. Light flashed on a loose coil of golden hair. Behind her, the shape of a man loomed ominously. Inside the clockcase a mouse, searching for a light supper for herself and her nest, bumped into something she didn't recognise, squeaked in terror, and started to climb for all she was worth, until she banged her head against the escapement, staggered, and darted back.
For the record, the clock struck one. Life is full of these little coincidences.
`Hell's bells,' said the woman testily, `is it that late already? Come on, we'll leave it for now. Time we weren't here.'
It was difficult to tell from inside the clock what was going on; there was a series of bleeps, a whirring sort of noise, and then a sort of peculiar ringing. Then the sound of tiny rollers feeding something. Then another bleep. Then silence.
After about five minutes of the silence, the door of the grandfather clock swung open and nothing emerged carefully from it. This time he was properly dematerialised. Like the man said, discretion was the better part of valour.
A brief investigation showed that the funny noises had indeed come from the back parlour, which the tourist people used as a sort of office. The room was empty, but the strange white machine that sat by the telephone was winking its little red light at him. He sat down on the desk and looked at it. It was the thing he always thought of as the paper-wasting machine, in that during the day, whenever it was used, the tourist people were always complaining about bits of paper not feeding in properly and getting screwed up. A crying waste.
Just then, it bleeped once more and started to churn out a little slip with some numbers on it. He waited until the rollers had quite finished, shook his head sadly and pulled the little slip clear. You could get ten or twelve lines on that, if you wrote small. He folded it neatly, switc
hed out the light, and went back to the scullery.
Transmitting . . .
The Queen of Atlantis, Managing Director of the Lyonesse group of companies, stepped out of the fax and walked briskly towards her office. Behind her came her seven personal assistants, carrying the luggage.
The Queen sat at her desk, kicked off her shoes and looked through the sheaf of While-you-were-out notes that had gathered like a drift of wind-blown leaves in her absence. Some she put to one side, the rest she distributed like a sort of Royal Maundy among her PAs.
`What's this?' she demanded. `Unidentified transmission from - where? I'll swear that woman's handwriting is getting worse.'
`Stirchley, Your Majesty.'
`Stirchley . . .' The Queen bit her lip and pondered for a moment. `What's at Stirchley, somebody?'
The PAs looked at each other for a while, until the faint tapping of long nails on the leather of the desktop goaded one of them into action.
`Nothing, Your Majesty,' he said. `Or at least, nothing much. We maintain a small transmitting station there as part of the network, but it's never used.'
The Queen swivelled round in her chair and smiled at the unfortunate spokesman. `Well,' she said brightly, `somebody's been using it recently, haven't they? Perhaps you'd be awfully sweet and find out what's been going on.'
The PA blanched, bowed swiftly and hurried backwards out of the room, and his colleagues heard the sound of hurried footsteps climbing the stairs. The Queen, meanwhile, was looking at a security report and frowning.
`Listen to this,' she said. `Apparently, someone's been duffing up the cashiers while we've been away. Fancy! And what's more, two intruders were put on deposit but escaped. I didn't know it was possible to escape from deposit. One of you' - she swept the remaining PAs with a smile like a prisoncamp searchlight - `be a dear and look into that for me, will you?'
The smile stopped at the second PA from the left, who set his jaw, swallowed hard and dashed away. That just left five of them.
Grailblazers Tom Holt Page 14