Grailblazers (18 page)

‘Resistance is useless,' he said.

‘I know,' said Bedevere.

‘Well, all right, then,' said the clerk, nervously. ‘Try anything, buster, and you're history. You got that?'

‘Absolutely.'

‘Good.'

Nobody moved. It was all rather embarrassing, and Bedevere found he had this very strong urge to offer them all a cup of tea or something.

The spokesman made another soft, throat-clearing noise. He was standing on one foot now.

‘We can do this the hard way,' he whispered. Or—?

‘Sorry,' said Bedevere. ‘Do you think you could speak up a bit?'

‘Yes, certainly. We can do this the hard way, or we can do it the easy way. If that's all right with you,' he added. One of his colleagues gave him a shove. He turned round.

‘All right,' he said, ‘I've had enough, you hear? And I don't give a monkeys what they said at the office party.' He threw his clipboard to the ground, trod on it, slowly and rather majestically walked to the very back of the small knot of clerks and stood there with his arms folded.

Bedevere had had enough, too. ‘Excuse me,' he said. ‘I don't want to be a pest or anything, but perhaps you could see your way clear to taking me to your leader.'

‘Right,' squeaked a voice from the middle of the posse. ‘And no tricks, okay?'

‘No tricks,' Bedevere sighed.

One of the clerks pointed to Turquine. ‘What about him?' he said to his comrades.

‘He looks so peaceful just sitting there.'

‘It seems a pity to wake him, doesn't it?'

‘No law against sleeping.'

‘Doesn't look dangerous to me. Does he look dangerous to you, George?'

Oh for crying out loud, Bedevere thought. ‘Please,' he said abruptly, ‘can we make a start, if it's all the same to you? Only—'

‘Cool it, all right?' snapped a small clerk, and then ducked behind the shoulder of the man next to him. Bedevere came to a decision.

‘Actually,' he said, ‘I expect you're all quite busy, really. Perhaps it'd be easier all round if you just showed me the way - draw a map or something - and then you lot could get on with whatever it is you're supposed to be doing. I mean, there's no point all of us trooping around, is there?'

The clerks looked at each other.

‘Sounds all right to me,' one of them said.

‘Great.'

‘Fine.'

‘Thank you.' Bedevere reached down and pulled Turquine by the ear.

‘Go'way,' Turquine growled. ‘'Nother ten minutes.' He lolled forward and began to snore.

‘Turkey!' Bedevere shouted. ‘Wake up!' He turned round. ‘Sorry about this,' he said.

‘Quite all right.'

‘Don't mention it.'

Bedevere nodded amiably and kicked Turquine hard on the knee.

 

 

Ten minutes or so later, they were sitting in an office.

Quite a nice office, if you like them tidy, with matching matt-black in-tray, out-tray, anglepoise lamp and desk tidy. The chairs were comfortable, at any rate.

‘Pleased to meet you,' Bedevere said.

‘Likewise.'

The Atlantean was different, somehow. He was tall, young, with short hair and big ears. He looked at home in his surroundings; in fact, you could well believe that he was chosen to go with the decor.

‘Allow me to introduce myself,' he said. ‘Diomedes, Chief Assistant Technical Officer, at your service.'

‘Thank you,' Bedevere replied, and gave Turquine a savage nudge in the ribs. Turquine simply nodded and went back to sleep. Dioinedes smiled.

‘Don't worry about it,' he said. ‘It takes some people like that, being put on deposit. Especially if you're not used to it.'

‘Um...'

‘Exactly. And now,' Diomedes went on, ‘I expect you'd like to know what Atlantis is all about, wouldn't you?'

‘Yes,' Bedevere lied. ‘Absolutely.'

‘Right.' Diomedes nodded, and pulled a jar of paperclips towards him. As he spoke, he linked them up to form a chain.

‘In a sense,' he said, ‘Atlantis is a bank.'

He stopped speaking, and gave Bedevere a keen look. Oh hell, thought the knight, he wants me to say something intelligent. ‘In a sense,' he hazarded.

‘Spot on,' Diomedes replied, nodding vigorously. ‘That is, in the same way Mussolini did his bit for the Italian railways, and Jesus Christ had his City and Guilds in carpentry, Atlantis is a bank. It's also something else, something rather special.' Diomedes smiled, catlike, and folded his fingers, by way of saying, Wow, this is going to curdle your brains.

Bedevere was uncomfortably aware that his right leg had gone to sleep.

‘Atlantis,' Diomedes said, ‘is a repository for money.'

‘Right.'

‘Precisely.' The smile widened, until it was in danger of losing itself behind Diomedes' ears. ‘You're starting to get the point now, aren't you?'

At this point, Turquine woke up.

He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and then leant forward.

‘Hello, Trev,' he said. ‘What are you doing here?'

Diplomats must feel this way, Bedevere thought. You spend hours in airplanes, hotel rooms, bloody uncomfortable conference rooms with hard seats and nowhere to stretch your legs out; and just when you think you've got something lashed together that might just possibly work, some idiot of a basketball player defects and you might as well have stayed in bed.

Leave them to it, he said to himself.

‘It is Trev, isn't it?' Turquine was saying. ‘Trev Hastings, used to be behind the counter at the Global Equitable in Perry Bar? You remember me, I used to deliver pizzas. Yours was always ... Hold it, I never forget a pizza. Double pepperoni and—'

‘That,' said Diomedes coldly, ‘was a long time ago.'

In retrospect, Bedevere couldn't remember actually moving from his seat, but he would have sworn blind he jumped about a mile in the air.

‘Perry Bar?' he said.

‘We have many offices,' Diomedes said. ‘It's a big organisation.' Something about the juxtaposition of his eyebrows and the bridge of his nose passed messages to Turquine's brain.

‘Anyway,' said Turquine, ‘long time no see. Sorry, you were saying?'

Diomedes relaxed his eyebrows. ‘Money,' he said. ‘What is money?'

Before Turquine could reply, Bedevere gave him a smart tap on the shins with his toe. Then he lifted an eyebrow and said, ‘Ah!'

It was the right thing to do. ‘I mean,' Diomedes went on, ‘we all know what it does. Great. So the Son of Man was quite capable of knocking you up a perfectly decent Welsh dresser. But that's not what he was all about, is it?'

Turquine, to Bedevere's great relief, seemed to have got into the swing of it, because he scratched his ear, nodded and said, ‘Precisely.' He spoilt it rather by winking at Bedevere immediately afterwards; luckily, though, Diomedes didn't notice.

‘Gold 337,' Diomedes said. He reached across the desk and caught hold of one of those Newton's cradle things. ‘This continent is built on it. It's anti-magnetic. Anti-magnetism makes the world turn. Okay so far?'

Bedevere nodded. ‘Sure,' he said. He shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Everyone knows that. Tell me something I couldn't get from the Sunday supplements.'

‘Right,' said Diomedes, and just then, Bedevere realised that yes, this man
could
be called Trevor. In fact, he probably was. ‘So gold is money, okay?'

‘Okay.'

‘And money is magic.'

 

In another part of the building, the bell rang for the afternoon history lesson.

Two junior Atlanteans took their place at the back of the class. One of them had a mouse in his pocket. Just as some flowers did manage to grow between the trenches in Flanders, so the schoolchildren in Atlantis do have mice.

They catch them. They build little hutches for them out of shoe-boxes. They feed them on breadcrumbs and bits of apple-core. Then they sell them.

By the time they reach the sixth form, some Atlanteans have already made their first million just from dealing in mouse futures.

The teacher, a tall lady with deceptively thin arms, rapped on her desk.

‘Good morning, children,' she said.

‘Good morning, teacher.'

‘Open your history books,' said the teacher, ‘and turn to page 58.'

She took a deep breath, and hesitated for a moment. She'd been teaching for twenty years, and this bit still gave her the willies.

‘Now then,' she said. ‘Which of you can tell me what money is?'

The usual bewildered silence. The usual rustle at the back of the class as a mouse changed hands under the desk. The usual blank faces.

‘Well?'

‘Please, miss.'

Isocrates Minor, the teacher noticed. Ten and a half years old, and already he's got a cellular phone strapped to the handlebars of his bike. The teacher nodded approvingly and made a mental note to ask him about moving heavily into short-dated gilts after the lesson.

‘Please, miss,' said Isocrates Minor, ‘money is magic, miss.'

‘Well done, Isocrates Minor. Now then...'

‘Miss.'

The teacher frowned. There is such a thing as showing off. ‘All right,' she said. ‘Questions later.'

‘Yes, but miss...'

‘Later! Now then, money is magic. What does magic do, anyone?'

‘Miss!'

‘No, someone else this time. Diogenes, let's hear from you for a change.'

A small face crumpled at the back of the room, as a daydream of a nationwide chain of mousebroking offices faded away and was replaced by panic.

‘Don't know, miss.'

‘Anyone else? Laodicea?'

A small girl stood up and smirked. ‘Magic,' she recited, ‘is the name commonly given to the technology based on the exploitation of the remarkable properties of the gold isotope Gold 337. Gold 337 was discovered by Simon Magus ...'

‘Yes, thank you, dear.'

‘... in the year 4000BC,' continued Laodicea,

‘when he was hoeing his turnip field. He quickly grasped the immense potential of—'

‘Thank you, dear,' said the teacher. ‘Now, as soon as the early Atlanteans realised how special gold was, they started digging it up and making magical things out of it. Now, can anyone give me an example of the sort of things ... yes, Lycophron?'

The small boy blushed under his freckles. ‘Buttons, miss?' he suggested.

The teacher sighed. ‘No, not buttons.' ‘Waste-paper baskets.'

‘Catapults.'

‘Space rockets.'

‘My uncle's got gold buttons, miss, on his blazer. He showed me ...'

‘The ancient Atlanteans,' said the teacher magisterially, ‘made
coins
out of the gold they found in the earth. When they'd got lots of these coins, they put them in a bank...'

A hand shot up. ‘Please, miss.'

‘Yes, Nicomedes?'

‘Why, miss?'

The teacher braced herself. ‘To keep them safe, of course. Now...'

‘Why didn't they put them under the bed, miss?'

‘That's not terribly safe, is it, dear? Now...'

‘My dad keeps all his money under the bed, miss.'

The teacher felt her knuckles tightening up. ‘Well, I don't think that's a very sensible thing to do, dear. Now ...'

‘My dad says he doesn't trust banks. He says if he put his money in the bank, Mummy would see the statements and know how much money he's got. What's a statement, miss?'

‘A bank,' said the teacher firmly. ‘And then the bank would lend money to people so that they could start up businesses, and so the money was all put to work, and the country prospered. But then something very peculiar started to happen. Now, does anyone know what that was?'

Silence again. This time, the teacher decided, just tell them. Then we'll all be home in time for tea.

‘What happened,' she said, therefore, ‘was that all the magic in the coins in the bank started
leaking out
—' She said it well. Several of the more nervous and imaginative children went quite pale. ‘- leaking all over the place. It got so bad that the rooms in the bank where they kept all the coins stopped being square and became round.'

Several hands shot up, but she ignored them. She didn't want to explain; it wasn't very nice to think about. When she'd been a student, she'd had to read the description of it by a clerk who'd got trapped in the vault overnight. The bit where he described what the gold ingots did to each other when they thought nobody was looking still made her feel ill to this day.

‘Quite round,' she said. ‘And that wasn't all, not by a long way. So the wise elders of Atlantis decided that they'd have to do something about it. Now, does anyone ...?'

A mistake. But it was too late by then.

‘Please, miss.'

‘Yes, Hippolyta.'

Hippolyta cleared her throat. ‘The Atlanteans founded the Central Research Institute (AD477), whose principal objects were research into the relationship between the gold's powerful anti-magnetic field and the rest of the world, which is of course attuned to positive magnetism, miss. Their researches revealed that if too much anti-magnetic material was released into the outside world, it would have drastic effects on the stability of the planet, miss. They...'

My God, thought the teacher, that girl will probably be Chief Cashier one day. She shuddered.