Only Human

by Tom Holt

  Meskithial shrugged. ‘Could just be lousy labour relations,’ he said. ‘But, no disrespect, I can’t see why they’d want an office bod like you down here. What is it you’re doing these days? Accounts, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Personnel,’ Artofel replied. ‘Wages department. And I quite agree; I’d make a useless bogeyman, no question about that. If you remember, I flunked tempting at college and I only just scraped through basic tormenting because I had the Seven Exquisite Tortures scribbled down on the palm of my hand. Either they’re desperate or there’s been a bog-up. Anyway, more to the point, how do I get out again? You must have a radio or something I could get through to Central on.’

  ‘No can do,’ Meskithial replied, shaking his head and remembering too late his rheumatic neck. ‘Deep cover, this is. They call me sometimes, but I can’t contact them except through the embassy. That’d be your best bet, I guess.’

  ‘Oh, marvellous,’ Artofel grumbled. ‘Hang on, though. What embassy? I didn’t know we had . . .’

  Meskithial grinned. ‘Not common knowledge,’ he said. ‘It’s a fairly recent development, actually. Formal diplomatic relations were only established in 1968. Before that it was all about guys in hats and overcoats with fur collars feeding the ducks in Green Park, which was endearingly picturesque but not all that efficient. So we set up a chain of embassies and consulates; works reasonably well, but we do tend to keep quiet about it. Otherwise we’d be up to our horns in lunatics claiming amoral asylum or taking hostages or parading up and down outside chanting Evil, evil, evil - out, out, out! You can do without that sort of interruption when you’re negotiating complex trade agreements.’

  Part of Artofel’s brain wanted further and better particulars - trade agreements about what? for example - but it was heavily outvoted. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘where is this embassy? Is it far?’

  ‘I should have said embassies, plural, ’cos there’s an awful lot of them. And the consulates too, in the smaller towns. In fact,’ he added casually, ‘there’s one in pretty well every high street. ’Course, they don’t call themselves embassies. All part of the cover, you see.’

  Artofel nodded. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘And what do they call themselves?’

  ‘You keep saying that,’ muttered the Foreign Secretary. ‘I still think he’s behaving oddly.’

  The Home Secretary shrugged and lit a cigarette. ‘Of course he’s acting oddly,’ he replied. ‘He’s the Prime Minister. If he wasn’t acting oddly,’ he added, shaking out the match and dropping it into an ashtray, ‘that would be odd.’

  ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps?You may be right.’The Foreign Secretary swilled the remains of his Scotch round in the bottom of his glass. ‘In a sense,’ he added, instinctively.

  ‘Of course I’m right,’ his colleague said. ‘You don’t get to be Prime Minister unless you’re odder than a barrelful of ferrets to begin with.You don’t know the half of it. Take Lloyd George, for instance.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Kept seventeen goats in the cellars of Number Ten, and when he died they found enough ladies’ underwear in his safety deposit box at Coutts to clothe half the women in China. Why do you think they passed the Official Secrets Act? And he was as rational as the Speaking Clock compared with Ramsay MacDonald.’ He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘They say there’s a couple of offices in Downing Street they just bricked up after he resigned, ’cos nobody could face going in there. Didn’t stop him doing his job, though. Damn fine statesman. Father of his country.’

  The Foreign Secretary pursed his lips. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Point taken. I just wish he wouldn’t do it, that’s all. I mean, all it takes is one of the cameras to catch him, sitting there staring into space, twitching his nose and rubbing it between his hands, we’ll be a laughing stock. And that tatty old camel overcoat with the tea-stains on it could cost us a couple of marginals in the Home Counties if we’re not careful. Remember Michael Foot’s donkey jacket?’

  ‘True.’

  ‘More to the point,’ he added, frowning. ‘Nobody’s actually heard him say anything since he got out of hospital. I hope he’s going to snap out of it soon, because keeping the lid on that isn’t going to be easy.’

  The Home Secretary smiled. ‘Don’t knock it,’ he replied. ‘What this party’s needed these twenty-seven years is a leader who keeps his gob shut. Stands to reason. Man doesn’t talk, doesn’t say anything bloody stupid. If he carries on like that, he could be another Churchill.’

  ‘Churchill said lots of things.’

  His colleague nodded. ‘True,’ he replied. ‘Nobody’s perfect.’

  ‘And there’s another thing,’ the Foreign Secretary persisted, ostentatiously fanning aside the Home Secretary’s smoke. ‘All this jumping off things. You aren’t going to tell me that’s normal behaviour, even for the PM.’

  ‘Man’s got to have a hobby.’

  ‘Don’t be flippant,’ replied the Foreign Secretary sternly. ‘Yesterday he jumped off a filing cabinet and nearly broke the Cabinet Secretary’s arm. If he tries a stunt like that during the EC Summit, we’ll probably end up at war with somebody.’

  ‘If it was France, that could be a real votewinner. Better still if they broke his arm. We’d have an excuse to take out the centre of Paris in one hit.’

  ‘Well . . .’ The Foreign Secretary spread his hands in a gesture of self-absolution. ‘Last thing I want to do is rock the boat, as you well know. But if he’s going to make a habit of biting policemen’s legs—’

  The Home Secretary looked up sharply. A grin was trying to shoulder its way on to his face. ‘Do what? I hadn’t heard about that.’

  ‘Last night, apparently. He opened the front door of Number Ten - you know he sits by the door for hours at a time, don’t you? - saw the copper standing outside and bit him in the ankle. Then he slammed the door in his face and went and hid under the chair until his PPS came with some letters for him to sign. It’s not on, Vince, really it’s not. Someone’s going to have to talk to him about it.’

  On his way back from the bar, the Home Secretary put his head round the door of his chief researcher’s office, and demanded a copy of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Natural History.

  ‘Something I just heard rang a bell,’ he explained. ‘Hurry it up, there’s a good girl.’

  When the book came he waited till the researcher had gone away and leafed through till he came to L.

  LEMMING: a member of the vole family, the lemming is native to mountainous regions of Scandinavia. Lemmings average five inches in length and can be easily identified by their distinctive yellow-brown coats with dark-brown spots. During the day they tend to sit motionless at the entrance to their burrows unless disturbed. If a human being appears, however, they become excited and indeed violent, sitting up on their hindquarters to attack; there are many well-documented instances of passers-by being savagely bitten on the ankle. Lemmings are, of course, best known for their sporadic mass migrations when, following a period of frenzied activity, they set off in huge numbers across the country to the sea, whereupon they hurl themselves over cliffs and perish.

  He closed the book, steepled his hands and sat still for several minutes, deep in thought. It was, he reflected, a familiar pattern of behaviour - habitual mindless lethargy, sudden fits of uncontrollable violence, the urge to form parties and self-destruct every five years or so - and it befits a great leader to share the mindset of the electorate; it means he can empathise with them, understand how their minds work. Properly handled . . .

  He picked up the phone and put a call through to the head of the PM’s personal security squad, recommending that bars be put on all the upper windows of Number Ten.

  ‘And issue the copper on doorstep duty with a pair of shin-guards,’ he added. ‘I’ve got a feeling he’s going to need them.’

  ‘Kevin.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What have you been doing to this machine?’

  >DON’T
ASK.

  ‘I wasn’t talking to you.’ Martha glared at the screen for a moment, until Kevin was sure she was about to tell it to go and stand in the corner. ‘This is a right mess and no mistake, young Kevin,’ she said. ‘You know what you’ve gone and done, don’t you?’

  ‘No. That’s what’s so horrible; it wouldn’t tell me. Said I didn’t have the right clearance.’

  Martha tutted. ‘I’ll have a few things to say to this box of tricks before I’ve finished,’ she muttered darkly. ‘What you’ve done is, you’ve been messing about with psychomorphic waveband stabilisers, that’s what.’

  ‘Oh.’ Kevin looked blank, like a man who’s come to collect his car from the garage and is having explained to him exactly why a new fan belt is going to cost him two hundred and fifty pounds. ‘Is that bad?’

  Martha clicked her tongue. ‘It’s not good,’ she replied. ‘What it means is that some people have been whisked out of their bodies and put into things.’

  ‘Gosh.’

  ‘And versy-visa,’ Martha added. ‘The things have been put into the people, if you see what I’m getting at. There’s people’s bodies walking about with things’ minds in ’em, and things sitting there thinking they’re people. Well, not so much of the thinking, either. It’s a bit of a banjax, I’m afraid.’

  Kevin considered this information. ‘When you say things,’ he asked, ‘are we talking about, you know, things, like in the horror movies? Aliens from another galaxy, that sort of . . .?’

  ‘Things,’ Martha repeated. ‘Like in vacuum cleaners, lawnmowers, tumble driers. And animals too, probably. And maybe even statues and the like.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Not to mention,’ Martha said with distaste, ‘spirits and stuff. You know,’ she added nervously. ‘Angels and . . . wassnames. Doesn’t bear thinking about, really.’

  ‘No,’ Kevin agreed, his throat uncomfortably dry, ‘I can see that. Awkward.’

  Martha nodded. ‘Awkward’s right. I mean, what if one of ’em were to take it into his head to die? Right palaver there’d be. You’d have answering machines eligible for eternal salvation, and people going in the big squashers down the scrapyard. Your Father . . .’

  ‘Don’t,’ Kevin interrupted. ‘I don’t want to think about that.’

  ‘He’ll have to know sooner or later,’ Martha admonished. ‘Your best bet is to get the phones fixed soon as you can and let Him know so’s He can come and sort it all out. Otherwise; well, I shudder to think.’

  Kevin nodded slowly. ‘You don’t think,’ he said slowly, ‘that if we found some way of putting it all right, then at least we could say it wasn’t a problem any more. I mean, There was a bit of a flap but we fixed it sounds a bit less feeble than Help help, Dad, I bust the cosmos.’

  ‘Kevin! Haven’t you done enough damage already?’

  Kevin hung his head, embarrassed, while Martha prodded a few more keys and tutted, sounding like a busy turnstile. ‘Mind you,’ she said after a long while, ‘there must be an easy way to turn it all round. You know, send ’em back where they came from. Now if only I could . . . Computer.’

  >SORRY.

  ‘So I should think. Now then, which of these keys . . .?’

  >SORRY, MEANING NO I WON’T TELL YOU. MORE

  THAN MY FUSE IS WORTH.

  For a moment, everything seemed to stop. In the blue corner, so to speak, was Martha, the only person in the history of Existence to tell the Boss that his desk needed tidying. In the red corner, Mainframe, the only sentient entity in all twelve dimensions that could truly say it’s forgotten more than His Omniscience would ever know. There was enough static electricity in the air to allow Dr Frankenstein to set up a production line.

  ‘All right,’ Martha grumbled eventually. ‘You’re being very childish and silly, mind, and I’ll tell Himself so when He gets home, but if that’s the way you want it, that’s up to you. Kevin, pass me that manual.’

  Kevin grimaced. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but actually it’s not much . . .’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ Martha produced a pair of reading glasses from the pocket of her pinny and perched them on her nose. ‘Now then, let me see. Stabilisers, psychomorphic waveband, adjustment of: page three. And here we are . . . Oh.’

  Kevin chewed his lip for a moment. ‘What’s it say?’ he asked.

  ‘See for yourself.’ Martha handed him the book, and he read:

  Psychomorphic waveband stabilisers, to adjust; oh come off it, okay?You, an all-powerful, all-knowing supreme being, want us, a puny little mortal software company, to tell you how to do a simple little thing like that? What is this, an initiative test?

  ‘Told you it wasn’t much help,’ Kevin said. ‘Mind you, they’ve got a point. Under normal circumstances, I mean, because . . .’

  ‘Kevin. Stop babbling and give me the manual back.’ Martha took the book and flicked through the opening pages until she found what she was looking for. ‘Here we are!’ she cried. ‘“If you have any enquiries that are not covered by this handbook, consult our twenty-four-hour Freefone helpline service on 0666 66666.” As simple as that.’

  ‘Except that the phones are out.’

  Martha frowned. ‘So they are, what a nuisance. Just a moment, though. What about the payphone down in the staff canteen? That’s on a different circuit.’

  Kevin caught his breath. ‘Is it? Gosh. I didn’t know that. Come to think of it, I didn’t know there was a payphone in the staff canteen. Didn’t know there was a staff canteen, either. Is there a staff canteen?’

  Martha looked at him. ‘Of course there is,’ she replied. ‘It’s on level 5A. Actually, I don’t go there very often myself, because the food’s rather dull, but . . .’

  ‘Dull?’

  Martha nodded. ‘Bread and fish,’ she explained. ‘It’s a subsidised canteen. But they have got a phone. And I’m sure I heard someone say it was a separate line. Let’s try that, shall we?’

  ‘Huh? Oh, right,’ Kevin replied, his mind still trying to decode the bit about bread and fish. ‘And if we can’t get anything from the helpline, we can ring Dad, and . . .’

  Martha sighed. ‘It’s a payphone, Kevin. He’s in a different galaxy, remember. Even if we broke into the Social Club swear-box, I don’t think we’ve got enough small change for that.’

  ‘Then we could ring the operator. Try reversing the charges or something, I don’t know. There must be something . . .’ His eyebrows lifted. ‘Oh, I see,’ he exclaimed, ‘About the subsidised food.’

  Martha nodded. ‘Two loaves and five fishes,’ she said. ‘Good plain food and we get luncheon vouchers, but I’d just as soon have a Cornish pasty. Come on.’

  In the darkness, something scuttled.

  ‘You’re right,’ said a voice. ‘They have.’

  ‘Told you so.’

  Then there was silence for a while, an absence of sound as absolute as the absence of light. It wouldn’t do to try and give an impression of how long the silence lasted, because that might create an illusion that Time worked down here. The passage of time and the movement of light are, of course, linked by Einstein’s chain. They’re a double act, effectively inseparable; Time/Light Inc. Completely remove one, and the other ceases to have any real meaning.

  ‘Money?’ enquired the first voice.

  Welcome to Hell; which is like anywhere else, in that it has its nice bits and other bits which aren’t quite as nice. This is one of the least attractive districts, notorious for the complete absence of light or sound, smell, gravity or friction; in this part of Hell, the five senses are about as much use as an early-model Spectrum with a busted tube. The theory runs that physical agony is bad enough, but complete sensory deprivation makes being roasted alive on a bed of red-hot coals seem like wicked self-indulgence. In practice, however it’s not so much the absolute nullity of the place that makes people avoid it if they have the choice; it’s the people you tend to find here. Either they’re Customers (in which case they’ve been fa
irly monumentally naughty during their terrestrial existence, and are therefore probably worth avoiding); or else they’re Staff, which implies Dukes of Hell or above, since nobody with a lower-grade security code can get past the doors. In actual fact, if it’s Staff they need to be Dukes of Hell or above and either mechanically gifted or very, very thin, because the locks haven’t worked properly since Noah was a kid.

  ‘Of course money,’ replied the second, who, like his companions, was a Duke, Grade IV(c). ‘F equals MA squared. It’s one of the three Actually True Laws of Nature. Wherever there’s a misfortune, there’s a sum of money of commensurate size waiting to be made out of it.’

  A pause. ‘F equals MA squared?’

  ‘That’s right. F’s the fuck-up, M’s the money, A’s the dreams of avarice. In this case, we can only assume that avarice has been eating ripe Stilton last thing at night.’

  ‘Well of course, if there’s money . . .’

  The last word, money, drained away into the darkness like Lake Erie into the Sahara desert; a big word, but a bigger darkness. There was a distant slithering noise, then silence once again.

  ‘Wonder how it happened?’

  ‘Who knows?’ replied the second voice, sounding bored. ‘Likewise, who cares? Look, either we can hang around here speculating about chaos theory and the enzyme of entropy in the yeast-vat of eternity, or we can pull our fingers out and go make some money. Which would you rather?’

  ‘Sorry? Oh, the money, definitely. What are the other two?’

  More silence; only this time vaguely bewilderment-flavoured.

  ‘What other two?’

  ‘You said there were three Actually True Laws of Nature. What are the other two?’

  ‘Tell you later. Look, are you coming or what?’

  ‘Right behind you.’

  ‘Fine. Switch on the torch, and let’s get out of here.’