Here Comes the Sun (26 page)

‘Too right,' Jane interrupted. ‘Ask anyone who's ever been responsible for paperclip distribution. I never believed in black holes and time warps until they put me in charge of the stationery cupboard one week.'

‘But,' Staff went on, ‘it's not the whole story. You see, things in their natural state don't naturally gravitate into a mess. For instance, if you pour sand out of a bucket on to the ground, it forms a nice neat cone. If you spill water, you get a lovely pool with the sides all nicely level and a precisely flat top. It's only work that flops about all over the place if you drop it.'

‘That's because work isn't natural, you see,' Ganger interjected through a jawful of bap. ‘That's your basic thermodynamics.'

‘Is it?'

Ganger nodded, and wiped his lips neatly with the corner of his napkin. ‘Work,' he said, ‘is defined as the result of applying energy to a stationary mass . . .'

‘That's filing, surely,' Jane murmured. Ganger ignored her.

‘. . . Which in turn results in the mass acquiring momentum,' he went on, ‘which leads on to movement, which creates friction . . .'

‘Depends what you move. I once moved someone else's pot plant because it gave me hay fever, and there was friction for weeks after that.'

‘. . . Which dissipates energy, resulting in entropy.' He picked up a lemon-scented paper towel and began absent-mindedly folding it in ever-diminishing squares. ‘Because of entropy,' he continued, ‘work sort of frays at the edges. Bits come loose and fall off.These in turn become random particles of disorientated matter, possessing momentum but not direction . . .'

‘Ah,' Jane said. ‘You mean auditors.'

‘These particles wander about, collide with other bodies, and thereby create other little chips and splinters of disorientated matter. And eventually . . .'

‘Eventually,' Jane interrupted, ‘they end up in some poor devil's in-tray at a quarter past five on a Friday afternoon. I know, I've been there.'

Ganger looked down at his fingers. The paper towel had by now become so infinitesimally small that for all practical purposes it had ceased to exist. ‘It's these little bits of stray work that cause all the hassle,' he said. ‘But it's not in-trays they end up in. It's people.'

‘So,' Staff said, ‘in order to solve the problems, you
first have to solve the people. Agreed?'

Jane shrugged. As an original discovery, she felt the statement was on a par with trying to patent the wheel in 1986. ‘Of course,' she said. ‘But what's this got to do with . . . ?'

‘Tell her,' Staff said. Ganger opened his mouth and left it open. If a medieval cook had been passing, he'd instinctively have stuck an apple in it.

‘Well,' Ganger said at last, ‘what do you do if you've got a blocked drain? Get a drain-rod and give it a good sharp poke. And that's what we're trying to do. Trouble is,' he said, looking away, ‘it's not as straightforward as that, quite.'

‘Oh?' Jane said. ‘Why not?'

‘Because,' Staff replied.

‘Ah,' Jane said, nodding. ‘Now I get you.' She frowned. ‘But where do I come in?' she said.

‘Simple,' Ganger answered. ‘You're the drain-rod, as per the original brief. Except that we didn't tell you about the people, only about the problems.'

‘Exactly,' said Jane. ‘Why was that?'

Staff shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Well,' he said, ‘the thing is, you coming to work for the Administration was strictly our idea, Ganger's and mine. We were supposed to clear it with all sorts of people: committees, departmental managers, sub-committees, all that sort of thing. But we didn't.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because they wouldn't have agreed,' Ganger said. ‘Plus, they'd have guessed what we were up to.'

‘They're the wet leaves we were talking about just now, I take it?'

‘Some of them,' replied Staff, nodding. ‘So what we were doing, being absolutely frank and open about the whole thing, was sending you in without any backup or
support whatsoever, with the express purpose of getting up the noses of some of the most important people in the whole Administration. We knew they wouldn't let you do anything really useful; in fact, we're absolutely amazed how much you have managed to get done. No, the whole point of the exercise was to get them well and truly annoyed and angry; and then, with any luck, they'll make mistakes, and we'll have 'em.'

Jane sat for a moment. ‘I see,' she said. ‘But why didn't you tell me all that in the first place?'

‘Because you'd have refused,' Ganger replied. ‘Wouldn't you?'

‘I suppose so,' said Jane thoughtfully. ‘Probably not, actually. But I wouldn't have done it so well. I'd have been all furtive and apologetic about it, I expect, because I'd have known I was up to something sneaky.'

‘Sneaky?'

Jane nodded her head. ‘Sneaky in a good cause,' she said, ‘but definitely sneaky. As it is, I've charged along thinking I had right on my side and it's them who're being difficult and obstructive. Yes, I get the idea now.'

‘Good,' Ganger said, cheerfully. ‘This coffee, by the way, tastes as if it's spent the last year in a gearbox.'

‘It certainly explains,' Jane continued, ‘why you two have been taking such a keen interest in everything I've been doing.'

‘You noticed that, then?' Staff enquired.

‘Yes,' Jane said. ‘I thought it was odd at the time, two highranking officials personally supervising just one trainee. You said it was because I was a guinea-pig . . .'

‘Not so much a guinea-pig,' Ganger said, half to himself, ‘more one of those white rabbits you get in research . . .' Staff kicked him under the table.

‘Anyway,' Staff said, ‘we've come clean, so what about it? Are you still going to carry on?'

Jane scratched the tip of her nose with her plastic straw. ‘Oh, I don't see why not,' she said. ‘It's not as if I've got anything better to do.' Suddenly she stood up. ‘Of course not,' she said. ‘I think this whole thing is probably a bad dream I've been having, and unless I wake up pretty soon I'm going to miss my bus. What the hell do you two think you've been playing at, anyway?'

Staff was about to say something, but Ganger shushed him. Other diners turned their heads and looked at them.

‘First of all,' Jane continued, gathering momentum but not appearing to dissipate any energy in the process. ‘This weirdo here comes and tells me he's a . . .'

‘Not that word, please,' Ganger said softly.

‘. . . And that he wants me to come and work for him, and until I agree he's going to camp out permanently in my ear. Then,' she said, turning to Staff, who instinctively moved a little further behind his coffee-cup, ‘you turn up and tell me that unless I pack in my job with Burridge's and come and work for you instead, the world's going to end. And somehow,' she added, with feeling, ‘you convince me - probably because of a couple of conveniently timed natural disasters - and so that's what I do. And first I rescue a major city from a flood, and then I help you cover up the fact that you're so damned laid back that anybody can just walk in to your premises and help themselves to the major star of their choice, and I somehow start believing, Yes, maybe this is for real after all. And then . . .' She paused, scrabbling around for words in the same way a motorist at a toll booth searches for an elusive coin. ‘And then, just when I'm beginning to be able to look at myself in the mirror every morning without wanting to burst out laughing, you tell me that what I'm really doing is helping you two with some weird boardroom coup or other. Well,' she said, ‘you can take your job and you can stuff it, because . . .' She stopped dead.
‘My God,' she whispered, ‘I've been wanting to say that to somebody all my life, and now I actually have. Whee!' She pulled herself together, straightened her back and picked up her handbag. ‘Sorry,' she said, ‘but I'm through. I'd give you a month's notice, but after a week in the Department of Time I shudder to think what you'd do with it. Goodbye.'

She turned her head towards the door and started to walk towards it.

Bearing in mind the way the cosmos is run, and who runs it, credit has to be given for the fact that she got over halfway before the ground suddenly opened and swallowed her up.

 

 

 

 

B
jorn carefully took the basin off the fire and tested the water with his finger. Then he took off his boots and put his feet in it.

He'd been a long way: up as far as the first range of picturesque blue hills to the east and halfway to the shadowy forest-clad slopes in the west, and still without finding so much as a kebab house, let alone the Kentucky Fried Chicken of his dreams. Shadowy forests and verdant meadows, yes; food, no. He poked his little fire with a stick and cast a furtive glance over his shoulder at a shyly grazing fawn.

This place, he said to himself, is the absolute
pits
.

Above him the sun shone, casting long, sharp-edged shadows on the bowling-green grass of the river valley. He lay on his back and stuck his tongue out at it.

Years ago, he remembered, I worked for those bastards. Best years of my eternal bloody life I gave them, lugging great heavy boxes about mostly. It wasn't fun, exactly, but at least a bloke could go down the Social Club with his mates, play a few frames of pool, have a couple of pints and a bag of chips afterwards, throw up over a parked
car or two and trip over a dustbin before going home. At least there were pavements, and gutters, and the water came out of taps instead of lying around in river-beds where leaves and stuff can fall in it.

And then, he recalled, still years ago, I was working on the sun; nothing exciting, just cleaning it off at the end of the day, hosing it down, scraping the squashed flies off the windshield. And something went wrong or some daft bugger made a really big cock-up, and everybody reckoned I knew what it was, because I was in the sheds working when it happened, whatever it was. So they said, anyway. News to me, but still, they said that whatever it was had to be hushed up and I'd have to go, and I could either start a new life somewhere else, somewhere
idyllic
, or else . . . well, I can't remember what, I think it was just Or Else.

Bastards . . .

The fawn was looking up at him out of great round black eyes. He relaxed and smiled.

‘Here, baby,' he chirrupped. ‘Whooza preddy liddle deer, den?' With some of those wild leeks from under the trees over there and maybe some watercress, he whispered to himself, you could do worse.

And then the fawn pricked up its ears, swivelled its head, and darted away. A forlorn attempt to hit it with a rock at twenty yards failed. Bjorn sat down again and started to massage the soles of his feet.

And then looked up. There was a girl standing over him: a tall girl, with long, straight hair, a sort of chestnut brown, and light blue eyes and a kind of mischievous-angel half-smile on her slightly parted lips. And, more to the point, knockers like footballs. Bjorn opened his eyes wide and let his jaw drop.

‘Um,' he said, but it came out as a real thoroughbred mumble. ‘Sorry, was that your, um, deer?'

The girl brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and knelt down beside him on the grass. She was wearing a simple peasant blouse, the sort that they don't even bother putting the price on in Printemps, and in her right hand she held a basket of strawberries.

‘
Na searan thu chulain-bach ma?
'
²
she said. Bjorn had a couple of goes at swallowing his Adam's apple and grinned stupidly.

‘Er, yeah,' he said. ‘Right. Um.'

The girl laughed; and her laughter was like the soft splashing of a mountain tarn; or alternatively, ice-cold lager hitting the bottom of the glass. Bjorn blinked and instinctively started to pull on his boots.

‘
Be curailin suine pel-riath mo
,'
³
said the girl, and it occurred to Bjorn, apropos of nothing much, that her eyes were like . . . well, they were like . . . well, they were pretty neat eyes, you know?

‘Hi,' he croaked. ‘I'm Bjorn. Yup. Right.'

The girl laughed again, and this time, hell, you could almost taste the hops. Then she took a strawberry from the basket and popped it into his mouth before he could close it.

‘Er, right,' he said. ‘Thanks. Thanks a lot.'

The girl leaned forward and kissed the top of his head, and it seemed to Bjorn that the smell of her hair was like the first cigarette after a twelve-hour night shift in the explosives store. Then she giggled, stood up and walked away.

About five minutes later, Bjorn stopped staring at where she'd been, and spat out the strawberry. His left leg had gone to sleep and something small and hairy was running about inside his boot. In the shade of a thicket of wild
laurels, two shy, velvet-antlered fawns were laughing themselves sick.

 

Jane opened her eyes.

And a fat lot of good it did, too. In order for your eyes to be of any use, it helps if you're not in a windowless cavern hundreds of feet below ground, with the lights off.

‘Hello,' said a voice above her.

She tried to move, but that was a wash-out too. Somebody or something had done a pretty neat job of tying her to what her intuition told her was a railway sleeper. A long way over her head, more or less where her instincts suggested the voice was coming from, she became aware of a low crunching noise, like a steamroller creeping slowly up a gravel path.