Here Comes the Sun (36 page)

‘Which job?'

Buzz.

 

‘Don't ask me,' Rosa said. ‘Twenty years in catering and suddenly he decides he wants to be a monk. A monk,' she repeated. ‘Can you beat it?'

The County Palatine exchanged glances with the Count of the Saxon Shore. ‘It's a phase he's passing through,' said the County Palatine. ‘And even in monasteries they've gotta eat, you know?'

Rosa stared for a moment. ‘You know,' she said, ‘I think you guys are as crazy as my crazy brother. I'll get you the check.'

She walked away. The Electors looked at each other.

‘Pity,' the Lord High Cardinal said. ‘That Rocco, maybe
he makes a lousy Emperor, but give him a pound of mozzarella and a bucket of anchovies and you're in business. '

‘And the profiteroles,' groaned the County Palatine. ‘Don't forget the profiteroles.'

‘I mean,' added the Count of the Saxon Shore, ‘Charlemagne, yes. Charles the Fifth, yes. But could they do you tagliatelle verde that's absolutely
al dente
and still leave you change out of twenty bucks? Like hell.'

The Lord High Cardinal nodded sadly. ‘Still,' he said, ‘there it is.' He glanced down at his watch; and a strange-looking watch it was, at that. Where your watch has hands, it had eyes. ‘Hey, we'd better shoot.' He picked up the bill and signed it. ‘So long, Rosa,' he called out. ‘Our best to Rocco, tell him to say one for us.'

He stood up, emptied the toothpick-glass into his pocket, and led the way.

 

‘I see,' Jane said. ‘We were brought here.'

‘Yes, miss.'

‘Just so as to bring him here?'

‘That's right, miss.' George extended a largely non-existent arm and took firm hold of the carrycot. ‘And your friend, of course. He's our star witness, you see, miss.'

‘I see,' Jane repeated.

George hesitated, and bit the whirling expanse of nothingness that would have been his lip. ‘I expect you're a bit upset, miss, what with the way you've been treated and everything. Only to be expected if you are, miss, if I may say so.'

Jane shrugged. ‘You'd have thought so,' she said, ‘but I'm not really. Or at least I am, but . . . You see, all my life I've really wanted to know what was going on, and why it's all such a
mess
. And now I'm beginning to see. Or at least, I think I am.'

‘That's the spirit, miss,' said George. ‘Now, can I just see your passports a minute, please?'

Jane nodded, and produced them. After a moment's perusal, George handed them back to her. They were both open.

Jane's passport had her name, and her photograph, and the rather embarrassing bit where it says about any distinguishing marks, the bit she tended to keep her thumb over whenever possible. Bjorn's, however, had a name and a photograph, but . . .

Bjorn took it from her and grinned sheepishly. ‘When these lads say under cover,' he explained, ‘boy, do they mean
deep
cover.'

He reached up into his face and pulled. Jane gave a little scream, and then opened her eyes. Bjorn was holding a limp rubber mask in his hand and grinning.

Only his name wasn't Bjorn, of course.

‘Just one question,' she asked. ‘Why Bjorn?'

‘Because,' Bjorn replied, and shrugged. ‘I happened to see it on the back of a packet of cornflakes, if you must know, and . . .'

‘Thank you,' Jane said, bitterly. ‘Serves me right for asking, I suppose.'

(Because what Bjorn's passport gave as his name was, in fact, Gabriel; and what Jane really wanted most of all right now was somewhere where she could be sick in reasonable privacy.)

‘It wasn't easy for the lad,' George was saying. ‘Personality surgery, all that sort of thing. Very proud of him, we are, back in the department.'

Jane turned on him furiously. ‘Oh yes?' she said. ‘And what department would that be?'

There was a puff of yellow smoke.

‘Right,' said the General, ‘We go in, we zap everything that moves, we rescue the hostage, we come out again. All clear so far?'

The spectral warriors nodded uneasily. That wasn't what was worrying them.

‘And afterwards,' continued the General, ‘we have a full kit inspection for the survivors. If there are any survivors, that is. Do I make myself clear?'

There was a murmur of assent from the spectral warriors, and then they shuffled into battle formation, ready for the attack. Despite the mechanical precision of their combat drill, there was a certain amount of unseemly pushing and shoving for places in the front rank and other positions of maximum danger. Although spectral warriors naturally tend to think of survival as something that only happens to other people, there was no point in taking unnecessary risks.

‘On the command Charge,' the General snarled, ‘charge. Understood?'

‘Understood, chief.'

‘That's fine. Now then, boys.
Cha
. . .'

The word froze on his lips as a door, which hadn't been there a few seconds ago, opened and a figure in uniform came through it.

Spectral warriors are trained in destruction rather than mathematics, but they can count pips, and the newcomer had more pips on his shoulders than you'd expect to find in a fruit-juice factory.

He strolled along the line and stopped, about three yards away from the General, who for his part seemed to have frozen solid.

‘Stand easy, men,' murmured the newcomer, and the overhead strip lighting gleamed on the gold lace of his epaulettes and the peak of his cap. The odd thing about
his cap was the fact that it had two neat round holes in it just above his ears, for the horns to go through.

With a tremendous effort the General opened his mouth, but nothing came out except a few woodlice and a rather laid-back-looking spider.

‘Arrest that man,' said the newcomer. ‘Come on, look lively about it.'

Sixty-seven spectral warriors were suddenly very, very happy.

 

The world stopped.

It didn't come to an end, of course, it simply stopped. The sun jerked to a halt in mid-air and hung there, its engine idling. The earth seized on its axis, but without the juddering crash there should have been, as so much inertia suddenly found itself with nowhere to go. There was a general paralysis of clocks, water stood still in rivers, winds evaporated. Entropy's meter stopped running. Raindrops hung in the air like astronauts in zero gravity.

Except, of course, in New York, where they always have to be different. Anyone looking very closely indeed would have detected some movement there, but only a tiny amount. The majority of the citizens were caught in the general freeze-frame effect; but there was a small party of rather fat men strolling up Thirty-Sixth Street with their hands in their pockets. Three of them were smoking big cigars. They weren't in any obvious hurry.

At the corner of Thirty-Sixth and Broadway, they stopped and waved. A yellow cab without wheels floated noiselessly over the top of the motionless traffic and pulled in to the kerb. Metal steps extended themselves to sidewalk level, and the fat men climbed aboard. The cab pulled away, drifting at the speed of, say, a rather slow gondola, and slowly climbed up into the sky until it was lost among the clouds.

By an oversight of the sort which was only to be expected, given the overall level of efficiency of the Administration in general, there was another tiny cell of people left awake and functioning during the general shutdown. They were sitting in an office in Wall Street when it happened; two men and a girl. The girl was the first to speak.

‘Darren,' she said quietly, ‘I think it's the end of the world. What'll we do?'

The man called Darren thought for a moment. ‘You sure about that?' he said.

‘Jesus Christ, Darren,' the girl yelled back, ‘just come to the window and look for yourself.'

Slowly, Darren put down his telephone, stood up and walked to the window. Years in Wall Street had trained him to analyse situations immediately.

‘Yep,' he said, ‘it's the end of the world all right.' He sighed; then he strode back to his desk again. ‘Okay, guys,' he said. ‘Let's get to it.'

‘So,' the other man shouted, ‘so what do we
do
?'

Darren smiled. ‘Sell,' he said.

 

‘Basically,' the Lord High Cardinal summed up, ‘we find you guilty as charged of - what was it? Tony, where are my goddamn reading glasses, you know I'm as blind as a bat without . . . of gross negligence, failure to disclose material information, mismanagement, misappropriation of funds and - hey, what's that, I can't read your writing - yuh, being guilty. You have heard the testimony of Mr, uh, Gabriel. Have you anything to say?'

The accused, formerly head of the Finance and General Purposes committee, mumbled inarticulately but said nothing. The six layers of insulating tape over his mouth may have had something to do with it, of course.

‘No? You're sure? Well, okay then, I guess that just
leaves the sentence. Any thoughts on the sentence, guys?'

There was a brief exchange of whispers on the podium; then the Lord High Cardinal leaned back in his chair, straightened the white bands at his neck (which looked very like a napkin tucked into his collar if you looked closely) and set his features in a judicial expression.

‘Opinion,' he said, drumming his fingers on the desk in front of him, ‘is a bit divided here. Tony says rip your lungs out with a plastic fork, Louie says no, that's too good for a scumbag like you, you ought to be shoved down the toilet along with the alligators until you've learned your lesson, and my learned friend the Count of the Saxon Shore . . . Yeah, well, anyway, I disagree.'

There was absolute silence in court. Sixty-seven spectral warriors stood as still as rock-hewn statues, their faces behind their masks bathed in silly grins.

‘Personally,' continued the Lord High Cardinal, ‘I say, so what, everybody makes mistakes now and then.' He frowned. ‘The point is,' he added savagely, ‘only losers get found out. Hey, Tony, where's that stupid cap thing? No, not that, dumbo, that's somebody's sock. Right, now then, where were we?'

The other accused wailed, and waved his hands and feet in the air. Nobody took any notice. When it comes to changing the nappies of the guiltiest creature on God's earth, there are no volunteers.

‘This court,' said the Lord High Cardinal, ‘sentences the two of you as follows. You first. Stand up.'

The erstwhile General was lifted to his feet. He made a mooing noise against the tape, but no-one heard.

‘By the special request of the prosecuting advocate,' intoned the Lord High Cardinal, ‘and in recognition of your special talents in the field of administration and public relations, you are to be assigned to the staff of the Prosecuting Department.' The Lord High Cardinal
winced. ‘Hey, you know, that's
inhuman
. Oh well, never mind. As for you - somebody lift the kid up so he can hear, all right? - as for you, since you have temporarily taken up residence in the body of a mortal, this court - say, who thought this one up? It's
wicked
- this court has no jurisdiction over you. You will therefore be deported back to the world to live as a mortal.' The Lord High Cardinal grinned. ‘In Kansas City,' he added; then he turned to his closest colleague and winked. ‘Okay, Tony?' he said. ‘Does that beat the plastic fork idea, or what?'

There was a scuffle, and the two accused were taken away. The Lord High Cardinal settled himself more comfortably in his chair, and took off the black cap.

‘Which brings us finally,' he said, ‘to the last item on today's agenda.'

 

How, you may ask, does the Administration work?

It doesn't, of course; but supposing it does . . .

There are the Departments. Each separate department is manned by a permanent staff of officials, and is headed by an officer of Grade II or above. The heads of department form the Finance and General Purposes committee, which passes resolutions for the approval of the College of Electors. It is the job of the Electors to turn the recommendations of the committee into draft orders for ratification by the Main Boss.

The Main Boss. The Man Himself. Numero Uno. The Top Brass. The guy you'd eventually get to see if you absolutely
insisted
on seeing the manager. The Emperor.

All perfectly logical, yes? It would be quite wrong, after all, for the real power to lie in the hands of career civil servants who don't even belong to the same category of life-form as the people being governed. The main boss inevitably has to be a mortal. The trouble has always been finding the right mortal for the job.

Many centuries ago, the Electors hit on the clever idea of not actually telling the Emperor what his job consisted of.

They didn't lie to him, of course, perish the thought. But they were distinctly parsimonious with the truth. To begin with, they did at least tell him that he was the Emperor, without going into all the tedious details of what the job description actually entailed. But even that little snippet of information caused severe problems, so they got into the habit of making sure that when they told him, he wasn't actually listening.

In practical terms, it worked, up to a point. It was intended as a temporary measure only.

In the last hundred years or so, the Emperor has been encouraged to keep a low profile. Rocco VI, as already noted, made pizzas. His immediate predecessor, Wang XIV, ran a small bicycle repair workshop in the back streets of Hong Kong, right opposite the best Cantonese restaurant in the Colony. Neville III (better known to history as Neville the Magnificent) had a paper round outside Macclesfield, and did a little window-cleaning on the side, strictly cash in hand. Joseph XXXIX Ncoba carved little wooden elephants. Gupta IX moonlighted as a petrol pump attendant, and was one of the few Emperors ever to abdicate as a result of an irreconcilable conflict of interests. François XXIII spent his entire reign in a room nine feet by five, firmly convinced that he was a ratchet screwdriver. He was, everyone agrees, one of the better twentieth-century Emperors.