by Tom Holt
“A little bit,” said Danny cautiously. “Quantum mechanics, fissile properties, that sort of thing.”
“Huh.” Cornelius was not impressed, apparently. “All that modern crap the skipper’s so hot on. Boring. Give me the old ways any time”
“Good, are they?” Danny asked. Cornelius grinned.
“Good?” he chuckled. “Watch this.”
He produced a Zippo from the battered leather pouch that hung from his sword-belt and opened the stove door. Then he messed about with a few of the jars. “Don’t tell the skipper,” he said, “he gets all snotty if I use his gear. But I’ve done it lots of times, it’s like falling off a log.”
“Dangerous, you mean?”
“Easy,” said Cornelius. “You got anything metal on you?”
Danny had a sudden flashback to a children’s party when he was six. There had been a conjuror, and he had ended up with a lot of coloured flags being pulled out of his ears. He pulled himself together and reached in his pocket for his car keys. “Will these do?” he said.
“Fine,” replied Cornelius. He took them and tossed them into the crucible before Danny could stop him. There was a flash of white light and a faint humming noise, like the sound you hear when you stand under an electric pylon.
“Takes about thirty seconds to do all the way through,” Cornelius said. “Beats your fission into a cocked hat, if you ask me.”
Thirty seconds later, Cornelius reached under the stove and produced what looked like a solid gold ladle. With this he extracted the car keys from the crucible and held them under Danny’s nose. They were glowing with the same blue light, and they seemed to have been turned into pure gold. Pure gold car keys. It reminded Danny of the time Gerald had taken him round the Stock Exchange.
“There you go,” Cornelius said, and tipped them out onto Danny’s hand. “Don’t worry, they aren’t hot or anything.”
Danny winced, but he could feel nothing. The blue light faded away. The keys felt unnaturally cold and heavy. Solid gold. What did solid gold feel like?
“Impressive, huh?” said Cornelius.
“Very,” Danny said. He stared at his car keys. In his mind, a strange and terrible alchemy of his own was taking place. All this meaningless garbage was turning into a story; a story about unlicensed, clandestine nuclear experiments on a weird ship manned by lunatics. Story. Story. Story. If only he could get off this dreadful ship and get to a telephone, he would be through with even the distant threat of sports reporting for ever and ever. Until then, however, there was investigative journalism to be done.
“Tell me something,” he said as casually as possible. What was that man’s name? The arch-fiend of the nuclear lobby, the man behind all those goings-on at Dounreay. There had been a protest, he remembered.
“What?”
“Do you know someone, a guy called Montalban? Professor Montalban? He’s into all this alchemy, isn’t he?”
Cornelius’ face split into a huge laugh. “Too right I know Montalban,” he said. “He’s the one who got us into this mess to start with.” Then something seemed to register inside Cornelius’ head. He looked at Danny again; eyes not friendly, not friendly at all. “How come you know Montalban?” he said.
Fortune, it has often been observed, favours the brave. At that particular crucial moment, two boats were approaching the Verdomde. On one, coming in to the starboard side, was Vanderdecker and Jane Doland. On the other side was a small motor-boat, containing a couple of stray newspaper photographers who thought the ship looked pretty and reckoned some of the glossies might be able to use a photograph. Because the bulk of the Verdomde was between them, of course, neither could see the other.
Danny spotted the motor-boat through an open gunport.
On the one hand, he said to himself, I cannot swim. Never mind.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Cornelius roared at him, and tried to grab his arm; but it was too late. Danny had already squeezed his slight shoulders through the gunport. A moment later he was in the water, bawling for help and thrashing about like a wounded shark. The motor-boat picked him up just before he drowned.
The first thing he saw when his eyes opened was a camera bag with lots of lenses and rolls of film in it. “Press?” he gasped.
“Well, sort of,” said one of his rescuers. “Freelance. Does it really matter, in the circumstances?”
Swing low, sweet chariot, said Danny’s soul inside him. “Listen…” he said.
NINE
There you go,” said Mrs Clarke, “I’ve brought you a nice cup of coffee. Don’t let it get cold.”
She put the cup down on the table, next to the other two cups. They were all full of cold coffee, with that pale off-white scum on the top that right-thinking people find so off-putting.
“Thank you,” said the man at the table without looking up. He reached out, located a cup by touch, lifted it to his mouth and drank half of its contents. It was one of the cold ones, but he didn’t seem to notice. Mrs Clarke shuddered and went away. Although she was not a religious woman, she knew where people who let hot drinks go cold went when they died. Back in front of her typewriter she shook her head sadly and wished, not for the first time, that she’d taken the job at the plastics factory instead.
Had Professor Montalban, who had recently returned from Geneva, realised how much pain he was inflicting on his secretary, he would have taken care to drink the hot coffee. He was by no means a callous person. Just now, however, his powers of concentration were directed elsewhere. His mind was centred on a small area of the table, which contained a foolscap pad, three pencils (sharpened at both ends), a calculator and ten or fifteen books, all open. He had a headache, but that was not a problem. He had had the same headache for three hundred and forty-two years, and he knew it was caused by eyestrain. Because of the elixir, it was impossible for his eyesight to deteriorate, however much he abused it, but it didn’t stop him getting headaches. He also knew that the optician in Cornmarket Street could fix him up in ten minutes with something that would cure his headache for ever. It was just a question of finding the time. Tomorrow, perhaps, or the next day.
Ironic, really, time was one thing that Professor Montalban had plenty of. Genius he most certainly lacked; he didn’t even have that little spark of intuition that the scientist so desperately needs if he is ever going to get anywhere. He was nothing more than a competent and careful follower of the proper scientific procedures. But, because he had plenty of time, this didn’t matter. He could do everything by a process of elimination. This may sound haphazard, but the true test of any scientific method is results, and Montalban’s results were quite astoundingly spectacular, if you chose to look at them that way. Every major scientific discovery from gravity to the electric toothbrush was based on the work of Professor Montalban. Every breakthrough, every quantum leap, ever new departure he had either initiated or, more usually, carried through himself to the verge of publication. In every case, someone had come in at the last moment and stolen all the credit, but that was what the professor wanted. He had reasons of his own for not wanting to make himself conspicuous.
Suppose a Neolithic cave-dweller had wanted to put some shelves up in his cave. All he has is a tree. What he must do is invent the refinement of metals, the saw, the plane, the chisel, the drill, the screwdriver, the screw, the rawlplug, sandpaper, polyurethane varnish, the spirit level, the carpenter’s pencil and, finally, the marble-look Formica veneer, and then he can set to work. Nothing intellectually taxing about it all, but it takes a lot of time.
Professor Montalban had not set out to discover electricity, nuclear fission, or the circulation of the blood, just as the caveman has no great urge to pioneer the Stanley knife: they were just tiresome and necessary stages in the quest for the final overriding objective, in the same way as modern mathematics is a by-product of Richard the Lion-Heart’s desire to recapture Jerusalem. Professor Montalban’s objective was, in his eyes at least, infinitely more importa
nt than the little side-shows on the way, such as splitting the atom: Professor Montalban was searching for the Ultimate Deodorant.
That had not always been the objective. When he was young, he had been more interested in the secret of eternal life and the transmigration of elements, which was how he had got into this mess in the first place. He now regarded his earlier ambitions in the way the managing director of a major multinational might review his childish intention to be an engine-driver. If he had any philosophy of life, it was that everything happens by accident, and that at any given time, ninety-nine-point-nine-five per cent of the human race are a confounded nuisance.
He worked on, as he had been doing for so many years, until his headache became so insistent that he could concentrate no longer; and by that time, of course, the optician had shut up shop and gone home. So the professor put on his jacket and took a stroll round the college yard to clear his head. It was a cool evening, and if Montalban hadn’t been so engrossed in a fallacy he had detected in the theory of Brownian motion he would probably have enjoyed the sunset. As it was, he wandered into the college bar without thinking and sat down at one of the badly-scarred chipboard tables in front of the television. He didn’t take any notice of what was on the screen—a sports programme of some sort—and let his thoughts wander back to the interplay of random particles. Then he became aware of somebody yelling something loudly in the very furthest part of his mind.
“Look!” it was yelling. Professor Montalban looked. On the screen, in the far corner of the picture but unmistakable, he saw something he recognised. It was a ship.
♦
“And?” Jane asked.
“And,” Vanderdecker said, “that’s about it, really. I have had other experiences, but none of them germane to the point at issue. Which reminds me.”
“Yes?”
Vanderdecker smiled, and lifted his glass to his lips. “What is the point at issue? Why were you looking for me?”
Despite the recent reform in British licensing laws, the only place you can get a drink at half-past three in the afternoon in West Bay is the Rockcliffe Inn. It is hard to imagine a thirst powerful enough to drive a person into the Rockcliffe Inn. It can therefore be taken as read that Vanderdecker was not smiling at his beer, which was thick, cloudy and infested with little white specks that reminded him of the stuff you find in the corners of your eyes after a long sleep.
“Because of the insurance policy,” Jane said.
Vanderdecker looked up. “What insurance policy?” he asked.
“The Vanderdecker policy,” Jane said.
“Don’t let’s be all cryptic,” Vanderdecker replied, “not when the beer’s so foul. If you want to be cryptic, I demand Stella Artois at the very least.”
“Who’s Stella Artois?”
“Barbarian.”
“Sorry.”
“Stella Artois,” said Vanderdecker, “is a brand of beer. I’m sorry, that was very rude of me. I shouldn’t have called you a barbarian just because you’ve never heard of it. Are you sure you’ve never heard of it?”
“Yes,” Jane replied. “I don’t like beer very much, I’m afraid.”
“Then you are a barbarian. What’s the Vanderdecker policy? Go on, it’s your turn.”
“Your life insurance policy,” said Jane. “With the House of Fugger.”
Vanderdecker was just about to object when two tiny leads connected in his memory. “My life insurance policy?” he repeated.
“That’s right.”
“Oh.” He frowned. “That’s all?”
“Yes.”
Vanderdecker put down his glass. “After four hundred and fifty years,” he said, “you want to sell me life insurance. Don’t you people ever give up?”
But Jane was shaking her head. “We don’t want to sell you any life insurance,” she said, “we want to buy it.”
As she stared at him, a tiny germen of a thought thrust a green blade through its shell in the back paddock of her mind. It was an extraordinary thought, but it was there.
“Why?” Vanderdecker said.
Jane said, “Surely that’s obvious,” but her heart wasn’t in it. She could feel an enormous, colossal wave of laughter welling up inside her. Her entire body wasn’t big enough to contain it. Meanwhile, Vanderdecker was talking.
“Are we talking about the same thing?” he was saying. “I remember taking out a policy with the Fuggers, sure, but that was years ago. Hundreds of years ago, come to that. I haven’t paid a premium for centuries; I mean, what was the point?”
“But you’ve still got the policy?” Jane could feel the laughter crashing against her teeth like the Severn Bore, but she kept it back.
“I don’t know,” Vanderdecker said. “I’m hopeless with things like that. Hang on, though.” He paused, and felt in the pocket of his overcoat. “I usually put important documents in here,” he said, and he pulled out a big sealskin envelope. “Not that I have all that many important documents, after all this time. Let’s see.” He lifted the flap and started to rummage about. “What’s this? Alchemical notes, that’s not it. Birth certificate, passport, the receipt for my electric razor, book of matches from Maxim’s, what’s this?” He peered at a curled yellow scrap of paper. “No, that’s not it. Ah, we’re in luck. Is this it?” He fished out a folded sheet of vellum with the remains of a crumbled seal attached to it.
♦
“I don’t know,” Jane said. “I can’t read it.”
“Can’t you?” Vanderdecker glanced at the tiny, illegible sixteenth-century script. “I suppose you can’t,” he said, “it’s in Latin. Yes, this is it. Is it important?”
“Have you ever read it?” Jane said. Of course, she realised, she shouldn’t be doing this. She should have got hold of it and destroyed it, and so saved the world. But the pressure of the laughter against the sides of her skull was too much for her; she had to let him in on the joke.
“To be honest with you,” Vanderdecker said, “no, I haven’t. I can’t be doing with all that legal-financial mumbo-jumbo.”
“You should,” Jane said.
Vanderdecker looked at her. His face had a tired, harassed look, as if this was starting to turn into a problem. “Let me guess,” he said. “You’re after me for four hundred and fifty years unpaid premiums. Well, you can forget that, because I just don’t have that sort of money.”
That was too much for Jane; she started to laugh. She laughed so much that the afternoon barmaid of the Rockcliffe Inn withdrew her attention from the Australian soap opera she was watching on the bar top portable and stared at her for at least three seconds. She laughed so much that her body ached with the strain, and her lungs nearly collapsed. Vanderdecker raised an eyebrow.
“What’s so funny?” he said.
With a Herculean effort Jane stopped laughing, just for a moment. “Read it,” she said. “Read it now.”
“If it’ll stop you making that extraordinary noise,” said the Flying Dutchman, and started to read. When he had finished, he looked up and said, “I still don’t get it.” Fortunately, Jane was incapable of further laughter.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“So you should be,” Vanderdecker said, “it’s very embarrassing. You’ve no idea how conspicuous it makes me feel. Do please try and keep a hold of yourself.” He folded the policy up and put it away again, along with the birth certificate and the receipt for his electric razor.
“Are you from the insurance company?” he asked.
“Yes,” Jane said. “It’s a bank now, of course, as well as an insurance company. And I’m not actually with them; I’m an accountant.”
“So you said.”
“So I did.” Jane wiped the tears from her eyes with a corner of her handkerchief.
“Do you know,” Vanderdecker said, “you remind me of someone.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.” Vanderdecker looked faintly embarrassed, as if he didn’t want to say what he was saying. “Someo
ne I used to know, years back. In fact,” he mumbled, “that was her address on the piece of paper you saw just now. She must have been dead for three hundred years now.”
“Go on,” Jane said.
“Greta,” said the Flying Dutchman, “from Schiedam. There’s nothing to tell, actually. We met at a dance and just seemed to hit it off. I told her a joke, I remember—actually, it wasn’t a joke as such, just something that had happened to me that she thought was funny—and she laughed so much she spilt wine all down my trouser leg. Anyway, it turned out that she was leaving for Bruges the next day, and it was the last day of my shore leave. She gave me her address. I wrote to her, seven years later, and seven years after that I picked up her reply from the poste restante in Nijmegen. Apparently she’d met this man, and perhaps he wasn’t the most wonderfully exciting human being there had ever been but by all accounts he was going to be very big in worsteds one day, and of course she would always think of me as a very dear friend. Undoubtedly for the best,” he went on, “things being as they are. Still.”
“And I remind you of her?” Jane asked.
“Only because you laugh so damned much,” replied Vanderdecker austerely.
“I see,” Jane replied. “Can I get you another drink?”
Vanderdecker swirled the white specks round in the bottom of his glass. “Yes,” he said. “Only this time I’ll try the mild.”
“Is that good?”
“No,” he said.
Shortly afterwards, Jane came back with the drinks. “If it’s nasty,” she said, “why do you drink it?”
“Because it’s there,” Vanderdecker replied. “What’s so special about my life policy, then? Do try not to laugh when you tell me.”
Jane took a deep breath. She was, she realised, gambling with the financial stability of the entire free world. On the other hand, it didn’t seem like that, and the strange man had turned out not to be all that strange after all. “Before I tell you,” she said, “do you mind if I ask you something?”
“Be my guest,” Vanderdecker replied.