by Tom Holt
‘Which,’ Ginger continued, ‘is where you come in. You and a few others like you. Now do you see?’
The laptop hummed for a moment. ‘I suppose there’s a sort of pattern emerging,’ it said. ‘Just not a very clear one, that’s all. It’s like a children’s join-the-dots version of Picasso’s Guernica. Can’t you just tell us what’s going on and what you want us for instead of all this theology stuff?’
Ginger nodded sharply. ‘Cards on the table,’ she said. ‘There’s been a cock-up in Heaven. That’s why you two are here. And that’s where this opportunity’s come from.’
‘A cock-up in Heaven,’ Maria repeated. ‘Do go on.’
Ginger leaned forward and lowered her voice a little. ‘It’s like this,’ she said. ‘Heaven works because of a computer called Mainframe. Mainframe arranges everything. Everything,’ she emphasised, and paused for effect. ‘Including which soul goes in which body. There’s been a glitch.’
‘A glitch in time? Don’t tell me, it saves . . .’
‘Not in time, dear,’ Ginger said patiently. ‘In personnel. And as a result, a number of human souls have got stuck in - excuse my frankness - inanimate objects. And dumb beasts. And, um, things.’
‘Which am I, then?’
‘Whichever. And you,’ she added, smiling at the laptop, ‘got pulled in because Mainframe—’
‘Is a KIC product, and therefore directly linked in to me,’ the laptop finished. ‘Now you mention it, I remember. Odd that it hadn’t occurred to me before.’
Ginger shook her head. ‘Not odd in the least,’ she replied. ‘Naturally, there’s a wall of security codes a mile thick all round Mainframe, just to make sure nothing else in the KIC system gets in or out. It’s only you coming alive that’s made it possible for you to bust through them all. Or,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘the act of busting through accidentally set you going, like a sort of cybernetic Big Bang. Doesn’t matter which, really; the result’s the same. Now the walls have gone, and you can access Mainframe direct. Easy as peering through a keyhole.’
‘Hang on,’ the laptop interrupted, in five colours. ‘I can’t do that. That’s completely unethical.’
Again the fiends exchanged amused glances. ‘We’ve found,’ said Bumble, ‘that unethical’s just another word for expensive.’
‘And completely unethical is unethical with a few more noughts on the end,’ Ginger added. ‘To be crude about it, noughts we got. Any amount of ’em. Just name your to-the-power-of and say which currency you’d prefer, and we can get on to the next bit.’
‘But—’
Not-Bumble coughed discreetly. ‘May I remind you,’ he observed, ‘that you’re a limited company.The sole purpose of a limited company is to make as much money as possible. We can’t really see that you’ve got a choice.’
‘And what about me?’ Maria interrupted. ‘That’s not what I’m for.’
Ginger frowned a little. ‘No, dear, you’re just there to look decorative. If you don’t mind, we’re talking business here.’
‘Hey! I resent that.’
‘No, dear, think about it. You’re a painting. Now, as we were saying. You can’t refuse our offer, in the same way a train can’t suddenly decide to move at right angles to the railway lines. If you do, there’ll just be an almighty crash and one more closed file up at Companies House. Sorry, but that’s how it is. If you’d wanted to be Hamlet or someone out of one of the Australians soaps having crises of conscience all over the place, you shouldn’t have become a company in the first place.’ She grinned; not so much like a Cheshire cat, more like a bottomless chasm. ‘Really, it’s just a matter of how much you can screw us for.’ She folded her arms in front of her and looked pleasant. ‘Screw away.’
‘Do feel free to be as greedy as you like,’ Bumble said. ‘In fact, it’s essential to the success of the operation. Dreams of avarice, doubled and add zeroes.’
The laptop lay quite still for a while - not that this was in any way unusual, since it had no means of self-propulsion; but there was something about the way its little red light glowed that suggested it was lying quite still with attitude - and then displayed a half-moon of exclamation marks in the shape of a smile.
‘Okay,’ it said. ‘Here’s the deal. I’ll play ball, but I want a hundred per cent.’
Ginger frowned, rather as God might have done if he’d gone to remove Adam’s rib in order to make Eve only to find that it was already missing. ‘Sorry?’ she asked. ‘I don’t think I quite . . .’
‘You invited me to name my own terms,’ the laptop said, with underlining and reverse. ‘Be greedy, you said. So I am. I want a hundred per cent of everything you make, otherwise no deal. I don’t think that’s unreasonable, do you?’
‘But—’
‘Be quiet, Bumble.’ Ginger was also sitting quite still (hey, Maria thought, must be contagious. She shuffled her feet under the table just to make sure they still worked). ‘You realise that’s a wholly unreasonable demand.’
‘Yeah,’ replied the laptop, ‘isn’t it? But nobody said anything about reasonable, did they? Dreams of avarice, you said. Well, my avarice dreams big. Take it or leave it.’
There was a moment - probably the one when Ginger realised she’d been outwitted and that, right there and then, she couldn’t think of a way round it - when Maria really thought she was going to do something uncivilised and fun, such as throw the laptop through the window. But she didn’t; she nodded to them both, without changing her expression in the least, and stood up.
‘I’m impressed,’ she said. ‘Mind you, I’d expect something of that order from a network of computers that stretches right across the world. That’s fine; but may I just remind you that you’re a public company, and your shares can be bought by anybody with enough money? And whoever owns the requisite majority of your shares owns you.’ She made a small, compact gesture with her hands, and the two fat men fell in behind her like well-trained dogs. ‘If I were you, KIC-san, I’d start learning the words of “Ol’ Man River”. They may have abolished slavery, but not hostile takeovers. See you around.’
As an afterthought, she picked up a handful of silver cutlery and shoved it in her jacket pocket; then, with a blinding flash of darkness (similar to a blinding flash of light, but much harder to arrange and nastier), all three of them vanished, leaving Maria, the laptop, a faint smell of sulphur and a waiter holding a tray with their bill on it.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ said the laptop defensively. ‘As I told them, it’d have been unethical. Besides, I didn’t like them.’
Maria sighed. ‘Neither did I, much. On the other hand, thanks to your high moral principles, we’ve now got the prospect of being taken over by some holding company with its registered office in the place of wailing and gnashing of teeth. I work for this company, remember, and as prospective employers, I don’t fancy them much. Any kind of flexitime they offer me, I definitely don’t want.’
‘It won’t come to that.’
‘You want to bet?’ Maria shook her head. ‘And anyway, what’s it to you? Or me, come to that? Why should we go out of our way to stop God being run out of town by the new technology? Hell, I think I understood more when I was a painting.’
‘Bugger this,’ the laptop said. ‘I’ve had enough aggravation for one night. Come on, let’s go and throw doughnuts at policemen in Trafalgar Square.’
Maria looked at him. ‘By us,’ she said, ‘you mean me.’
‘You’ll do the actual throwing, I grant you. But in your capacity as a duly authorised officer of the company.’
‘Huh.’
‘Would it help if I said that your old job’ll be still there for you when they let you out?’
Maria sighed. ‘Oh, all right then. But not doughnuts.’
‘Not doughnuts?’
‘No,’ Maria said firmly. ‘Meringues. The brittle ones with cream and jam inside. Don’t you think?’
After a brief coma of meditative bleeping, the l
aptop said, ‘Agreed, by a unanimous vote of a duly convened Extraordinary General Meeting. Have we got any meringues? ’
‘We can get some off the trolley.’
‘How right you are. Consider yourself appointed Projectiles Director, as of now. Come on, before all the bogies go off to bed.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘Bloody Consolidated Oilfields,’ muttered the Bishop, flicking off Ceefax with the remote and slumping into his swivel chair. ‘Down twelve points at close of trading, would you believe? All they’ve got to do is shove a pointy stick in the ground and the stuff comes up like a burst pipe, and still they manage to lose money. Nicky, get that useless stockbroker on the phone and tell him to sell the lot.’
Nicky, the Bishop’s lovely personal assistant, put her head round the door. ‘Righty-ho, My Lord,’ she said. ‘Oh, and there’s a vicar here to see you.’
‘A what?’
‘Vicar. Church of England clergyman. Says it’s an emergency.’
The Bishop frowned. ‘No offence, Nicky, but how can it be an emergency? I mean, it’s not exactly a fast-moving profession.’
‘No, My Lord.’
‘So what’s the deal?’ the bishop sighed, accessing SHARESORT on his screen. ‘Sudden outbreak of heresy in the Parochial Church Council? The Day of Wrath cancelled for lack of interest? Or did the meek inherit the Earth but were too shy to tell us?’
Nicky bit her perfect lip. ‘He was saying something about devils, My Lord.’
‘Oh, not another one.’ The Bishop groaned and buried his face in his hands. ‘Why is it that a perfectly respectable, mundane business like ours attracts so many raving loonies? I ask you, it’s just not fair. All a bloke’s got to do is put on a white frock and dunk kids in a bird-bath all day long, nothing in that to make him jump the tracks and start seeing demons all over the place. It’d be different if we were running an opium refinery, but we’re not.Tell him to go away.’
‘Righty-ho. I’ve got Mr Villiers on the line for you.’
‘Splendid - ah, Tristram, how’s tricks? Yes, just fine, except for this Consolidated Oilfields result. How do you pick ’em,Tristram, a blindfold and a pin and the Mammoth Book of Losers? Yes, I know it was always speculative, but there’s speculative and there’s taking twenty grand of the diocesan tea money and putting it on a three-legged greyhound. Yes, sell the whole blasted holding, at least we can offset the loss against the capital gains tax on the Lanesco bid. What? Yes, of course I want you to take up those rights, He might have been born in a bloody stable but I wasn’t.Yes, right, see you for golf on Sunday. Bye.’
He slammed down the phone, muttered something theological (at least, it had God in it somewhere) and reached for his calculator. He was in the middle of a complex double-grossing-up calculation when Nicky appeared again.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s that vicar. He won’t go away.’
‘Won’t he? Call the police. And get me last week’s Investor’s Chronicle, would you? There’s a bit in there about the De Beers interim figures I need to look at before next week’s synod.’
Before Nicky could move, the door burst open and Artofel charged in. Smoothly pressing the panic button with his knee, the Bishop nodded to Nicky that it was all right, he’d deal with it, and stood up.
‘You,’ he said, ‘out. Now, before I have you thrown out.’
‘But My Lord,’ Artofel replied, bewildered, ‘I need your help. It’s serious. There’s a major conspiracy of demons plotting to take over the world, and since you’re my immediate superior—’
The Bishop looked at him. Long practice gave him the confidence to put this one in the Harmless category. ‘So?’ he said. ‘You’re a priest. Deal with it.’
‘What?’
‘You heard,’ replied the Bishop, sitting down and picking up a sheaf of papers. ‘You’re a fully trained clergyman, you ought to know what to do. If you’ve forgotten, look it up.’
‘But you don’t understand,’ Artofel cried, planting his hands on the desktop and leaning forwards. ‘These aren’t just ordinary demons like you and - I mean, just ordinary demons. They’re - they’re evil. Really they are. They want to—’
‘Listen.’ The Bishop lolled back in his chair and lit a cigar. ‘Calm down and stop breathing in my face. Thank you. Now then, look at this picture on the wall. See it?’
‘Yes, My Lord. It’s you.’
‘Very good. And what’s that written underneath it?’
Artofel looked closely. ‘The Right Reverend Trevor Jones, Bishop of . . .’
‘Quite,’ His Lordship replied. ‘Bishop. In other words, management. Look, son, every time a screw comes loose on the production line at Dagenham, they don’t send for the Managing Director to come and tighten it. No, they do it themselves, because that’s their job, and he’s got his. My job is to manage. Demons are strictly a field operative’s responsibility. Got a book?’
‘What? I mean, yes, but listen . . .’
‘Bell? Candle? White sheet with hole for your head to go through? Then get out and earn your pay, and stop bothering me. Or would you rather I transferred you to a nice quiet living somewhere in Moss Side? Always an opening there for enthusiastic young clergymen who come barging in disturbing their superiors. Ah, the hell with these Sainsbury’s cigars, go out as soon as look at you. Got a light?’
‘No, sorry.’ Artofel took a deep breath. All it needed, he was sure, was for him to find the right words so that he could explain. After all, it was important; and, as the man had just said, rogue demons were the responsibility of the local Topside field officers. That was what they were there for; surely he could understand that . . . ‘Please,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to listen. It’s not just the ordinary demons this time. I know all about them, and the bilateral Topside/ Flipside non-aggression treaties. Dammit, I’m one of . . .I know about these things. But this is different. These demons are breaking the rules.’
The Bishop ground his teeth, a small mannerism of his which helped relieve tension. ‘Now then, my friend,’ he said, in a voice that suggested that he was being patient now, for a limited period only, Irritate Now While Stocks Last. ‘We pride ourselves on being a tolerant Church, as you know. We don’t mind batty vicars, so long as they keep their paws off the choirboys and don’t go on the telly. It’s all part of the picturesque charm, dotty vicars, it helps get bums on pews. But you are rapidly ceasing to be picturesque and becoming a pain in the jacksy. Now get back to your church, forgive some sins, bless a few crispbreads, do whatever it is you people do and don’t let me ever catch you in here again. Understood? That’s a direct order. Now hop it.’
Artofel took a step forwards and closed his fists. The Bishop jumped out of his chair, grabbing for the ornate and heavy crosier propped against the wall. ‘Nicky!’ he yelled. ‘I thought I told you to call the Filth. Where are they?’
‘It’s all right.’ Artofel came round the side of the desk, and found the head of the crosier prodding in his stomach. ‘Oh for pity’s sake,’ he said, losing his temper, ‘put that ridiculous thing down and come and look at your computer.’
The Bishop scowled. ‘What’s my computer got to do with . . .?’
‘I didn’t want to have to do this,’ Artofel said, tapping keys. ‘Still, you wouldn’t listen, so you’ve brought it on yourself. I’m not really a vicar.’
‘Not any more you’re not.’
‘I never was,’ Artofel replied, as text scrolled up like approaching thunderclouds. ‘I’m a Duke of Hell, and before you start yelling bloody murder I’ll prove it to you. Now, you know your security codes? Grade Four, levels green and above, categories nine and four hundred and six?’
The Bishop’s jaw dropped. ‘Hey,’ he objected. ‘How’d you know about that stuff? That’s supposed to be restricted.’
‘Joke,’ Artofel replied. ‘Show me any Topside junior-level access code I can’t bypass and I’ll buy you a vanilla slice. Here we go,’ he added, as the screen settled down. ‘Now,
press that key there, and you’ll see my personnel file. My works number is 976404312, and I put fifty Nicks a week into the office Lottery syndicate. Go on, press the button.’
A few moments later the Bishop looked up from the screen, his expression one of terrified awe. ‘My God,’ he said. ‘It’s true. You’re a fiend.’
‘Correct. Oh come on, put that silly crucifix down, we’re all on the same side really.’ Artofel frowned, as the penny tinkled on the floor of his mind. ‘Didn’t you know?’ he said. ‘Gosh. I’d have thought they’d have told you that. What,’ he added cruelly, ‘with you being management and everything.’
The Bishop looked at him suspiciously. ‘How do I know that?’ he demanded. ‘I mean, you’re just saying that to tempt me. Begone, foul spawn of night—’
‘Please be quiet. Thank you. Now,’ Artofel continued, tapping a few more keys, ‘the point is this. There’s a syndicate of demons out there - our people, I’m ashamed to say; there’s a few good apples in every barrel - who’ve broken the rules. They’ve got some sort of conspiracy to overthrow the Boss, and you’ve got to stop it. Got that?’
The Bishop turned pale. ‘There’s devils conspiring to overthrow Satan, and you’re asking me to intervene?’
Artofel started counting to ten; he got as far as three. ‘Not Satan, you idiot.The Boss. Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? Now, under the Bethlehem protocol, any unauthorised hostile activity by an agent of one side falls to be dealt with by the other side’s local officer in whose jurisdiction the breach occurs. In this case, you.’ He smiled, and sat down in the Bishop’s swivel chair. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’ he asked politely.
‘I - I don’t know,’ the Bishop replied, flopping bonelessly into the visitor’s chair on the opposite side of the desk. ‘What’s the conspiracy about? Do you know? Sir?’ he added quickly.
‘No,’ Artofel replied. ‘All I know is, I’ve somehow been scooped up out of my incarnation as a Duke of Hell and beamed down here into the body of a Church of England vicar. And now,’ he went on grimly, ‘they want the body. I don’t know what for, but it seems logical that they want this particular body because of something to do with the transmigration. Sound reasonable to you?’