Overtime (26 page)

‘No, thank you,' the man replied, ‘a public
building.
Like a corn exchange or a guildhall or something like that. Something with
No Entry
on the door.'

‘I ...' Sir Isaac said. ‘Look, I don't want to seem inhospitable, but if this is some sort of a joke ...'

‘Really,' the man replied, ‘this is an emergency, so if you could just ...'

Sir Isaac closed his eyes. He had known it help sometimes. ‘George,' he said, ‘escort these people to the Municipal Hall.'

‘Yes, Sir Isaac.'

The man was staring; looking at Sir Isaac's clothes and his periwig, apparently making some connection in his mind.

‘Sir Isaac?' he said.

‘Yes,' said Sir Isaac, ‘that's right. Now if you'll just—'

‘Sir Isaac
Newton?'

‘That's right. Do I know you?'

The man was looking at him with something resembling awe.
‘The
Sir Isaac Newton? The Sir Isaac Newton who discovered gravity?'

‘I beg your ...' Sir Isaac stopped suddenly. In his ale-clogged mind, something suddenly clicked into place.
‘Gravity!'
he exclaimed. ‘Yes, of course, that's it! Gravity!'

The man was looking sheepish. ‘Whoops,' he said, ‘there I go again, putting my foot in it.'

Sir Isaac's face was alight with joy. ‘My dear sir,' he said, ‘how can I ever ...?'

But the man and the woman had gone.

 

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And God saw that it had potential, if it was handled properly.

Originally, he had in mind a three-tiered development programme, with a residential area of high-quality executive starter-homes, a business and light industrial park and a spacious, purpose-built shopping precinct, all centred round a general amenity area and linked with a grid-pattern road layout. It was good; and maybe it wouldn't have won any design awards, but it would have done the job and returned something like 400 per cent on the initial outlay.

The problem was the Eden (Phase II) Area Plan, and it was the same old story all over again. You hire an architect, he draws the plans, the quantity surveyor does the costings, the contractor does the schedules, everything's ready to roll and some shiny-trousered bureaucrat refuses to grant planning permission. And there you are, with a thousand billion acre site, eighty billion supernatural brickies, forty million miles of scaffolding, nine hundred thousand JCBs (all balanced on the head of a pin) and terminal planning blight.

God, however, has patience. With a shrug of his shoulders, he walked away from the whole mess and occupied himself with a forty billion acre office development on Alpha Centauri. By the time he'd finished that, plus a little infilling in Orion's Belt and a couple of nice barn conversions in the Pleiades, there had been a number of changes in the political makeup of Eden County Hall. At long last, there were people in charge there whom he could do business with.

Of course, there had to be a public enquiry; there always is. But the problem was that, since the earth was still without form and void, there were no human beings, therefore no public, therefore there could be no enquiry and the previous decision would have to stand. Deadlock.

It was then that the venture capital consortium funding the project, Beaumont Street Retrospective Developments Inc., took a hand. The three members of the consortium were admittedly domiciled millions of years in the future, but they were all bona fide human beings, and they would be delighted to hold an enquiry. No problem.

The result of their deliberation was that the whole purpose of planning controls is to preserve the environment ; but no development can actually damage the environment in the long term, because eventually, in the fullness of time, the physical laws of entropy will have effect, the world will come to an end, the Void will creep back, matter will implode into nothingness, and everything will be exactly the same as it originally was. The proposed development was, therefore, strictly temporary, and planning consent was not required for temporary structures.

In the end, they did a deal: God was granted a ten billion year lease, the paperwork was tidied up, bulldozers rolled, and the rest is theology. Almost.

It was, of course, the lawyers who cocked it up. When they sublet the development to the human race, there was some sort of snarl-up in the small print, and when the Antichrist turned up in AD 1000 to serve notice to quit, the human race grinned smugly, pointed to the appropriate page and refused to budge.

The various flies on the wall of God's office that afternoon of 31st December AD 1000 all agree that the ensuing meeting was stormy. There was a free and frank exchange of views, which resulted in the Antichrist being turned into a skeleton and split down the middle (or as we would say nowadays, promoted sideways) ; the upshot was that the Antichrist was sent off to find a loophole in the lease, which he did.

One of the conditions of the lease was that Mankind was obliged to worship the Landlord regularly and according to the forms prescribed by Mother Church. The Antichrist therefore immediately founded a rival church, presided over by Anti-Popes, with the aim of subverting religion, destroying faith, and nipping in to get the locks changed and the suitcases out on the street before 1690. It worked well to begin with, and eviction proceedings were actually under way when a minor human potentate called Richard Coeur de Lion started in motion a chain of events which would inevitably lead to universal peace, a return to the True Faith, and the building of the New Jerusalem. And there was abso- . lutely nothing that anybody could do about it.

Until, that is, the Antichrist overheard a minor Chastel des Larmes Chaudes functionary by the name of Pursuivant remarking that it would have been better all round if Richard had never been born. Something fell into place in the Antichrist's mind, and the result was the concept of time revision, editing and the archives. All they had to do was edit Richard out of history, and they could have Mankind out of there in a hundred years flat, with a massive bill for dilapidations thrown in.

It would have worked, if it hadn't been for one Blondel, a courtier, who inconveniently refused to accept that Richard had never existed, and started looking for him everywhere. As long as Blondel knew Richard had existed, Richard would have to continue to exist. The man was, to put it mildly, a menace.

Somehow, all the efforts of the Chastel staff to find Blondel failed - remarkable enough in itself, since he spent a material amount of his time appearing at wellpublicised concerts - until the day when the Antichrist received two tickets for the biggest Blondel gig of all; according to the pre-concert hype, the very last Blondel gig of all.

Well yes, the Antichrist said to himself, the very last. The very last ever.

 

‘Do come in,' Blondel said. ‘Would you like a drink? Do please sit down.'

The Antichrist found no difficulty in walking, despite the lack of one leg; he walked perfectly naturally, as if he refused to believe that the other leg wasn't there. He could even stroll, trot and run if he saw fit. Just now, he was swaggering.

‘Thanks,' he said. ‘I'll have a dry martini.'

Blondel nodded and fiddled with the bottles on the drinks tray. ‘What about you, Your Excellencies?'

The two Popes Julian - or, to be exact, Pope and Anti-Pope - shook their heads. ‘Not while they're on duty,' the Antichrist explained.

‘I thought that was only policemen.'

‘And Popes,' he replied, ‘but only when they're being simultaneous.'

‘Ah yes,' Blondel said, handing the Antichrist his drink. ‘I meant to ask you about that. They don't mind being discussed like this, do they?'

‘Not at all,' the Antichrist said. ‘Since they can't speak, I do the talking for them. Not that they matter a damn, anyway, since I'm here. I only brought them in case they wanted to see the show.'

‘Thank you,' Blondel said, accepting the compliment. ‘I gather that you're a fan, too.'

‘Absolutely,' the Antichrist replied. ‘I've got a complete set. In fact, quite soon I shall have the only complete set in existence. It'll be a nuisance having to go down to the Archives every time I want to hear it, but never mind.'

Blondel raised an eyebrow. ‘The Archives?' he said. ‘How do you mean?'

‘Now then,' the Antichrist said, ‘don't be obtuse. You're coming with me, Blondel, whether you like it or not. You've had your bit of fun, but it's all over. You do understand that, don't you?'

‘Have an olive,' Blondel replied. ‘They're quite good, actually.'

‘Thank you.'

‘Enjoying the show?'

‘Yes. Very much.'

Blondel sat down and put his hands behind his head. ‘Pity you won't hear the second half, then.'

The Antichrist shrugged. ‘That's how it is,' he said. ‘Why did you do it, Blondel? Have you just got tired of running? Or have you finally seen how much damage you've been doing all these years?'

‘You mean,' Blondel replied, ‘why did I invite you to my concert?'

‘That's right.'

Blondel leaned forward and rested his chin on his hands. ‘Simple,' he said. ‘I'd have invited you to all my concerts, but I've only just found out your address. Or at least your telephone and fax numbers. I've wanted to get in touch with you for a
very
long time.'

The Antichrist grinned. ‘I'll bet,' he said. ‘But why didn't you just go along with Pursuivant and Clarenceaux ? I sent them to fetch you, hundreds of times.'

‘And it was very kind of you,' Blondel said. ‘To be absolutely frank - another olive? - I don't feel entirely comfortable with Clarenceaux and Pursuivant and that lot. If I'd gone with them when you so kindly sent them to fetch me, I'd have felt - how shall I put it?'

‘Captured?'

‘Yes, that'll do. Captured. How is Richard, by the way?'

The Antichrist smiled. ‘I don't know,' he said. ‘I gather he's still down there, somewhere. Can't be very comfortable for him, what with the rats and the complete isolation and the darkness and the damp and everything, but until you've been sorted out, we can't send him on to his Archive. Pity, really; it's a nice Archive. He'll like it. And so will you.'

‘No doubt.' Blondel sat on the arm of the sofa and looked at his watch. ‘Look, I hate to rush you, but I've got to be back on stage in five minutes, and I want to have a word with the idiot in charge of the lights. Don't you think it's time we did a deal?'

The Antichrist laughed. It wasn't a pleasant sound.

‘Listen, mortal,' he said. ‘You're in no position to make a deal. You're coming with me, and that's that.'

‘Actually,' Blondel said, ‘you're wrong there. I took the liberty of putting something in your drink. Apart from vermouth and gin, that is. In a very short time you'll be sleeping like a baby.'

The Antichrist tried to get up, but his knee refused to operate. His mouth opened but nothing came out of it except an olive stone.

‘Oh good,' Blondel went on, ‘it's starting to work. I will be brief, for a change. What I propose is a simple exchange of hostages. You for Richard.'

‘But I'm not a ...' The words came very slowly out of his mouth, which was scarcely surprising, since his jaw was setting like concrete.

‘Very soon,' Blondel said gently, ‘you will be in the dungeons of the Chastel de Nesle. I'll try and make things as comfortable for you as I can. Clean straw once a year, all that sort of thing. Honestly, I'm surprised at you; and you, Julian and Julian. Didn't you realise this was likely to be a trap?'

The two Popes tried to get to their feet; unfortunately, the effort of manifesting themselves simultaneously without cocking up the balance of history was too great, and they flopped back against the cushions. Blondel pressed a buzzer and the door opened.

‘Be a good chap, Giovanni, and fetch that laundry basket,' he said. Giovanni nodded and left.

‘You won't get away with this,' the Antichrist managed to say; but by the time he'd finished the last word he was fast asleep. Blondel removed the glass from his hand, smiled gently and put a pillow behind his head. They might be mortal enemies, but there was no point in letting the fellow get a crick in his neck for no reason.

‘Here we are,' Giovanni said. ‘You two, give me a hand.'

The Galeazzo brothers gently transferred the Antichrist and the two Julians into the basket, secured the lid and sat on it. Blondel nodded his approval.

‘Right then,' he said. ‘Let's be getting on with it. You take the basket back to the Chastel and we'll meet there after the show.'

‘Will do,' Giovanni replied. ‘And I can be getting on with the ransom note.'

Blondel shrugged. ‘If you like,' he said. ‘I don't think that's entirely necessary, though, do you?'

‘Maybe not,' Giovanni said with a grin, ‘but it'll be fun.'