by Tom Holt
The Bishop scowled. He was trying to pour himself a stiff drink, but whisky kept sploshing all over the backs of his hands. ‘Sure,’ he replied harshly, ‘but what if it doesn’t work? They’ll crucify me.’
Artofel shrugged. ‘In your line of work, that’d probably be intended as a compliment. Now do shut up, I’m trying to concentrate.’
After a few more futile attempts, the Bishop decided to stop bothering with the glass and swig it straight from the bottle. A little while later, he felt better.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s getting to me. This blasted eclipse doesn’t help, either. It’s been going on for ages, and nobody seems to know what it’s about. For all I know, if it carries on for much longer the whole planet’ll cool off and we’ll all die.’
‘Which would mean,’ Artofel sighed, ‘you wouldn’t have to explain your actions to your diocesan board of finance. That’s what I like about you guys, the way you can find something positive in anything.’
The Bishop gazed at him owlishly over the neck of the bottle. ‘Makes you think, though,’ he muttered. ‘A bloke barges in here, announces he’s a Duke of Hell, next thing I know I’m selling perfectly good shares and helping undermine one of the world’s leading multinational corporations. It’s all a bit suss, if you ask me. I mean, there’s moving in mysterious ways and there’s doing the blindfold rumba with both legs in plaster and a bucket over your head.’
Artofel looked up and grinned. ‘And you know what?’ he said pleasantly. ‘I have this feeling it hasn’t even started to get serious yet. I’ll let you know when it does.’
He turned his head back to the screen; but not for long, because it was round about then that the doorframe cracked, the door burst open and—
‘FREEZE!’
Astonishing how people will do exactly what you say, provided you say it unpleasantly enough. People, mark you; not bottles. The whisky bottle, clearly not in the least impressed, slid elegantly through the Bishop’s fingers, hit the floor and smashed.
‘All right, which one of you’s the Duke?’
Inevitable, Artofel mused, that there were three of them; Hell always sent out its enforcers in groups of three. The time-honoured explanation was that one of them could read, one of them could write and the third one was there to keep an eye on the two intellectuals.
‘He is,’ he said, pointing to the Bishop. ‘Thank goodness you’ve come. I’ve been so frightened.’
There was no way of knowing what the chief enforcer made of that, since he was little more than a heavy-duty industrial-grade shadow with a voice. He stood still for a long time, chillingly majestic in his penumbra of darkness. Then he spoke.
‘Are you sure?’ he said.
‘Course I’m sure,’ Artofel replied promptly. ‘It’s not exactly a grey area. Don’t just stand there, Officer. Arrest him.’
‘Um . . .’
It was at this point that the significance of what Artofel had just said finally permeated through to the Bishop’s rather fuddled brain, like second-class mail over a Bank Holiday weekend. When the message eventually reached him, the effect was well worth seeing. He jumped four and a half inches in the air, his elbows and knees drawn in tight, and made a noise like a squirrel in a blender.
‘It’s not me,’ he quavered. ‘It’s him. Not me. I’m a bishop, for God’s sake.’
Artofel frowned, as if offended by the blasphemy. ‘Pack it in,’ he said, ‘there’s a good chap. You’re only making it harder on yourself, you know, imitating the clergy.’
‘But . . .’
‘But nothing. You’ve had a good run for your money, now it’s time to go along with these nice gentlemen.’
All three enforcers took a step forward; whereupon the Bishop lowered his head, screamed and charged straight at them, butting the chief enforcer in the pit of the stomach and sending him spinning against the wall. His colleague to the immediate left aimed an ineffectual blow at him with a pitchfork, impaling a tapestry cushion and a file of bank statements. Without slowing down, the Bishop dashed across the room and jumped out of the window, apparently not bothered by the glass.
‘He’s got away,’ observed the third enforcer; presumably, Artofel decided, the one who could read, since his eyesight was obviously first-rate. ‘Through the window,’ he added.
‘Quite,’ Artofel said. ‘Do you think it’d be a good idea if you went after him?’
‘Hang on,’ muttered the second demon, as he struggled to remove bank statement kebab from his left-hand tine. ‘We still don’t know he was him.’
‘Don’t talk thick, Darren,’ grunted the chief, extracting himself from the ruins of the rocking-chair he’d fallen on. ‘Stands to reason, if he wasn’t him, he wouldn’t have done a runner.’
(Ah, said Artofel to himself, that old police logic, works out every time.)
‘So what’ll we do, boss?’ asked the third fiend.
‘Go after the bugger, of course,’ replied the chief. ‘Don’t just stand there. Get him.’
Quick as mercury, the two subordinate enforcers piled out through the window, squashing a footstool and knocking over the laser printer as they went. The chief, however, stayed where he was.
‘Aren’t you going too?’ Artofel asked. ‘Not that I’m trying to get rid of you or anything,’ he added courteously. ‘Always delighted to pass the time of day with our boys in black.’
The chief enforcer was staring at him thoughtfully, like a customer in a Hong Kong restaurant choosing a carp from the pool. ‘So you’re a bishop, then,’ he said.
‘For my sins.’
‘Funny,’ the enforcer said. ‘You’re not a bit like I thought you’d be.’
‘Really.’
The enforcer nodded. ‘Nah. They told us bishops were these big heavy buggers in jackboots and leather who go around looting and killing and roasting live babies on their bayonets. You don’t look the type, somehow.’
‘It’s my day off,’ Artofel replied. ‘So you know a lot about bishops, do you?’
‘Yeah.’ The enforcer straightened his back, stood to attention. ‘Bishops,’ he recited, ‘are the scum of the heavens. The only good bishop is a dead bishop. That’s what they told us in Motivation, any road.’ His eyes, twin rubies in the encircling darkness, gleamed fiercely. ‘You sure you’re a bishop?’ he said.
‘Scout’s honour,’ Artofel replied. ‘I’m fresh out of babies at the moment, but if you can lend me a bayonet I’ll demonstrate the basic technique with this cushion and the storage heater.’
The enforcer shrugged his nebulous shoulders. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We shall meet again, Bishop,’ he spat. ‘And when we do, you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face.’
Whereupon the shadow climbed out of the window, nothing more than an impression of a deeper darkness passing through the frame, leaving Artofel to reflect that at least he had a face on the other side of which he could conduct laughter should the need arise. He also spared a little mental capacity for the question of whether it was really necessary for his side’s standing army to be quite so heavily motivated, and came to the conclusion that it probably was, or else how on earth could the poor chaps ever manage to take themselves seriously? Having dealt with these reflections he switched off the screen, took out the disk, swung open the mutilated door and left the house.
‘So, friends,’ orated Dermot Fraud, casting his eyes theatrically round the crowded burrow, ‘if we can learn to pull together, tighten our belts, put our shoulders to the wheel and march forward towards the light of this new dawn, then and only then we can be assured of a brighter tomorrow, not only for ourselves and our litters, but our litters’ litters; one small step for a lemming, a giant standing-still-and-not-leaping for lemmingkind.’
Stunned silence, followed by tumultuous applause as four hundred and sixty lemmings leapt up on to their hind legs, cracked their heads on the tunnel roof, sat down again and cheered until the ground shook. This is great, Fraud reflected, as he s
miled and waved graciously; almost as rapturous as the last party conference, and it didn’t take three days of rehearsal to get it right for the cameras. Got to hand it to these characters, they were born to be an electorate.
When the pandemonium had at last died down and you could just about have heard a large bomb go off two feet to your left over the residual clapping and cheering, a long, thin lemming rose cautiously to its hind legs, keeping its neck bent and feeling for the headspace with its offside front paw, and cleared its throat.
‘That’s wonderful,’ it said, ‘really. So what do you want us to do?’
Fraud cursed silently. It’s always the way; you’re going along swimmingly, got the audience in the palm of your hand, one word from you and they’d storm a whole arcade of Winter Palaces like a rat up a drainpipe, and then some bastard comes along and stops you dead in your tracks with a trick question. Fortunately, Fraud knew how to handle troublemakers.
‘That, my friend, is easy,’ he replied. ‘Go forth and prepare for not jumping.’
Which started the standing ovation up all over again, with two thirds of the lemmings clean forgetting about the low ceiling in their excitement. Fraud was feeling justifiably pleased with himself and was wondering whether this would be a good time to give them the strength-through-unity stuff when he noticed that the heckler was still on its hind feet.
‘How right you are,’ it said, and Fraud noticed big fat tears rolling down the sides of its snout. ‘But what do we actually do? You haven’t told us yet.’
Who did this creep think it was, Jeremy Paxman? ‘I’d have thought that was obvious,’ he said, still smiling. ‘Not jump, of course.’
As millisecond-perfect as the dream studio audience, the lemmings burst into hysterical laughter. And in spite of everything, the damned heckler was still on its damned hind legs. This was getting out of paw.
‘Yes, of course,’ it said, and this time the tears it brushed away were tears of laughter. ‘But apart from that. There must be something else, surely.’
For the first time since he was born, Fraud couldn’t think of anything to say; a terrible feeling, like not being able to breathe. He was about to choke on his own lack of speech when the heckler blinked a couple of times and nervously asked if it could possibly make a suggestion. Reluctantly, Fraud gestured that it could.
‘All I was thinking was,’ said the heckler, ‘how’d it be if we made you our new leader? If you wouldn’t mind, of course. Only it seems the only logical thing to do, doesn’t it?’
About a hundred birthdays and Christmases rolled into one, with the lingering deaths of all his enemies and two thirds of his cabinet colleagues thrown in for good measure, plus a really juicy disaster he could be statesmanlike about; dammit, this lot aren’t as good as people, they’re better than people. Then and there, Dermot Fraud decided that he didn’t want to go home, even if he could. He wanted to stay here for ever.
‘What, me?’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to say. The thought never even crossed my—’
‘Oh go on.’ ‘Please.’ ‘Oh you must, really.’ The babble was deafening, and Fraud glanced nervously at the roof of the burrow; so much sound, so many vibrations, how much more could it take before the whole lot caved in? But the crowd didn’t want to stop; they were enjoying themselves too much, like ordinary decent folk baying for the blood of an unfashionable minority, and their disparate cries had welded together into one inspiring chant: GO, LEMMINGS! GO, LEMMINGS!
It did your heart good to hear it. Finally, right at the back, a few bits of roof did start coming down, and that helped restore a modicum of order to the proceedings. Fraud held up a paw; immediately, there was silence.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Regardless of my own personal feelings, I cannot ignore the call of my people. Together, we shall not go forward. Together, we shall stay exactly where we are. Together—’
He was just about to say something really inspirational when a black shadow in the darkness behind him grabbed him by the scruff of the neck.
CHAPTER TEN
Seventy-two hours into the eclipse, and people were beginning to notice; it had, after all, been featured on World in Action and mentioned in passing in The Cook Report. Newshounds had shoved cameras at it and then stood in front of them, pointing out that it was there. Kilroy had interviewed it; and if the conversation had been more than a little one-sided, it only served to restore a touch of much-needed normality to the situation.
After the initial chaos, the first twenty-four hours had been fun. So long as you edit out the falling-bombs aspect, Spirit-of-the-Blitz is a rattling good game, and all over the Western Hemisphere mankind waggled a fist at the sky and cried, ‘We can cope!’ Mind you, it helped that this part of the twenty-four hours coincided with the time when it would have been night anyway. When they woke up in the morning and saw that the stupid thing was still there, people began to mutter. Then they filtered it out of their minds and ignored it, with the resilient defiance of a hedgehog curling up into an impenetrable ball of needles in the middle lane of the M6.
Now, what with it being As Seen on TV, and Mulder and Scully apparently not hurtling to the rescue, you could hear something thoroughly unnerving on every street corner in the world: namely silence. It was the silence of many millions of people doing mental arithmetic.
There were a few odd things about it, too. It wasn’t getting cold. People who’d succumbed to the last solar-energy craze were still getting hot water out of the taps. Holidaymakers returning from a day on the beach were examining themselves by torchlight on the way back to the hotel and finding they were acquiring a reasonable tan. According to those refugees from televised snooker who’d managed to find something more interesting to watch, paint still dried. As these facts began to sink in, there was a general unclenching of muscles, combined with a vague feeling of anticlimax. There was, according to the media, No Cause for Alarm, the first recorded instance of such an admission being made by any mass information system in the twentieth century. The Government gained seven points in the polls. The FT Index went nine hours without either a meteoric rise or a catastrophic fall, an all-time record.
For one interested observer of the human condition, it was bitterly frustrating, since it meant he couldn’t observe. Compared with the ambient light levels on his own planet, Earth was pretty fair average dark at the best of times. Now, thanks to this piece of unwarranted astronomical interference (obviously a regular event, judging by how calmly they all took it), Zxprxp couldn’t see worth spit; not without standing where he could be seen himself, something he’d decided was a bad move. Even navigation in his fully automated ship was hazardous - he’d already narrowly missed one completely unilluminated tower block (Government offices; conserve energy, no lights on between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m., rules is rules) and decapitated an awful lot of trees. No alternative but to put down somewhere and sit it out; which is what he did.
He couldn’t have been expected to know, or care, that what he’d landed on was the flat roof of a small backstreet industrial unit in the Fourth Ring of Birmingham. In fact, he’d been in a physical/mental recuperation coma for several hours when he realised that he was being talked at.
In his own language.
No, not his own language, because if he listened to it as a noise rather than a medium of communication, it didn’t sound like speech, it sounded like two female rgfesdq fighting inside an underwear resuscitation pod. Nevertheless, the translator unit wasn’t registering activity.
He scowled until all seven lobes met under his knees. Not a systems malfunction. Not a wiring burnout in the indicator array. Not his inflight entertainment unit picking up good ole Station ZZZ from two thirds of the way across the galaxy. Possibly not even his imagination.
It was the machine. Something was talking to it. Not through it. To it.
‘. . . where you come from. Sounds a bit like oil. Go on, try a drop. It’s just a cheap little forecourt SAE20/50 but I think you’ll be amused by
its . . .’
Something was talking directly to his ship; which was why it wasn’t registering on the translator. His ship was being chatted up by an alien intelligence. Dammit, how many times have I got to tell you not to use these circuits for private calls?
‘. . . what, this old thing? Just ordinary titanium, with a few scraps of 430F stainless I happened to have just lying about. If you like, I can give you the blueprints . . .’
He was about to shut down the circuits in a fit of pique when he realised: Hey, I’m jealous. I’m jealous because my ship’s talking to someone. Next thing I know, I’ll be waiting up for it and demanding to know where it’s been.This is . . .
This is not scientific, he told himself. More to the point, this is missing the point, which would seem to be that something on this planet can talk to machines.
‘Excuse me,’ he said.
‘. . . torque wrenches, there isn’t anything you can tell me about torque wrenches, here, you see this nut on my casing? See how he’s graunched all the shoulders off it? Bloody things shouldn’t be allowed . . .’
>Excuse me.
>I said excuse me.
>HEY YOU!
Hurriedly, as if buttoning up its blouse with its other hand, the console lit up and made the customary bleeps. >Confirm status.
>Go to vocal.
>Confirm vocal. Proceed.
‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your new friend?’
Computers can’t blush, but they can inadvertently light up the bright green ON LINE button. Oh, just some robot, it vodered slightly-too-carelessly. Nobody important.
‘Really? Sounded to me like you were getting on like a gfewihngb on fire.’
Really, protested the computer, if a ship’s system can’t just pass the time of day with a really totally uninteresting robot it just happened to ask what time it was without some people getting all uptight and coming the heavy navigator . . .
‘I was only...’