Wish You Were Here (40 page)

Calvin frowned. ‘I thought you got 'em all,' he replied. ‘Eventually, I mean.'

‘A good
living
lawyer,' Satan replied. ‘Someone with expertise in contract work particularly.'

‘Contract?'

‘Sales and purchases.' Satan grinned disconcertingly. ‘I need someone who can make an agreement that's
completely
watertight. For which,' he added, ‘I'm prepared to pay top dollar. Interested?'

Calvin couldn't speak, but he could nod. He nodded.

‘The package I had in mind,' Satan continued, ‘was basically a three-year fixed term. During that time, of course, you can have anything you want.'

‘Anything?'

‘Anything. Your dearest wish. Your heart's desire. You name it, you can have it.'

‘For three years?'

‘Three years.'

‘And after three years?' Calvin said, feeling as he did so that this was rather like shoving a mirror on a stick into a gift horse's mouth and asking it to say ‘Aaah'. ‘And after that?'

Satan shrugged. ‘Then,' he said, ‘we might consider a more permanent arrangement. What do you say?'

Calvin opened his mouth.

There's a word in the English language that could have been specially custom-coined to encapsulate Calvin's response. It's short, only three letters; it begins with Y and ends with S, and there's an E in it somewhere.

‘Yes,' Calvin said.

 

Janice DeWeese scrambled out of the shallow water at the lake's edge, cursed her own clumsiness, sat down and took off her boots. By the look of it, there was enough water in her left boot alone to irrigate the Nevada desert. Marvellous, she thought; just wonderful. I've got a nine-hour hike to look forward to, in wet boots. This is probably going to turn out to be my best holiday ever.

She was emptying an equivalent quantity of water out of her right boot, and wondering how come the lake seemed to be as full as ever when so much of its contents had found its way into her footwear, when she became aware that someone was watching her.

Maybe under other circumstances she'd have been intimidated; not, however, under these. The prospect of a twenty-two-mile squelch in sopping wet clothes had made her quite possibly the most dangerous life-form in Iowa.

‘Creep,' she called out imperiously. ‘Yoo-hoo, creep, come on out of there, where I can throttle you. I'm gonna count to three and—'

‘All right, all right.' The undergrowth to her right rustled a little.‘There's no need to get all snotty about it.'

The vegetation parted, and a very small anthropoid shape under an enormous hat waddled towards her. It looked like a mushroom; at least, it looked like the sort of weird mushroom you might see after eating too many weird mushrooms. In any event, it looked about as threatening as a bottle of ketchup, and not much bigger.

‘Fine,' Janice said, with a yawn. ‘Now piss off, before I cut you up and fry you.'

The rim of the hat tilted upwards, giving Janice a dim, overshadowed glimpse of a pointed nose-tip and two shining pink eyes. ‘Very droll,' it said. ‘All I need after the day I've had is amateur humour. I don't think I'll even bother with you now.'

The hat rotated through a hundred and eighty degrees and was about to disappear back into the bushes when Janice snapped, ‘Hoy!' in a tone of voice that'd have got her slung out of any army training camp for being too brusque. The hat stopped and swivelled back, like the turret of a floppy felt tank.

‘Well?' it said.

‘Just a minute, you,' Janice growled, stooping down to try and see under the brim. ‘Just why were you looking at me, anyway?'

‘Market research,' the hat replied.

‘Market what?'

‘Research. I thought you might be interested in buying something, that's all. But I can see I'm wasting my time.'

‘How can you see anything, underneath that thing?'

‘Ah,' the hat sighed, ‘humour again. What is it with you people, anyway? With you it's nothing but humour, humour, humour all the damn time.'

‘Sell me what?'

‘Oh, you wouldn't be—'

‘Sell me what, goddamnit?'

The hat wobbled, as if shrugging its brim. ‘Oh, just some old stuff. Gold, diamonds, that sort of thing. Nothing that's any use for—'

‘What did you say?'

This time the brim lifted at the front, until the long, droopy feather stuck in its band dipped in the mud. ‘Gold,' it said. ‘A dollar fifty a kilo. Diamonds. Ten dollars a kilo. Platinum. Ninety-five cents a kilo, or buy ten kilos of diamonds, get a kilo of platinum absolutely free. Can I go now, please?'

For a split second, Janice gawped, her mouth opening and closing again like a goldfish who's just been told it's won the Lottery. Then a bored expression took possession of her face and changed all the locks. ‘Get outa here,' she said. ‘Listen, shortass, I may be stupid but I'm not that stupid. An all-powerful supreme being couldn't create anybody
that
stupid, even if you gave him a pattern to work from. Go on, get lost.'

The hat bristled; that is, the pile of its felt seemed to stand on end. ‘Are you calling me a liar?' it demanded. ‘Well? Are you?'

‘Yup.'

‘Well, you're wrong, see? Because this is the genuine stuff. You want to see it?'

‘No.'

‘Tough, 'cos you're going to.' A tiny hand appeared from under the hat, clutching a fair-sized sports bag in defiance of all the laws of physics. ‘Go on, open it.'

Janice shrugged, and pulled back the zip—

‘Oh,' she said.

How she knew it was all good stuff, the genuine article, ninety-nine-point nine per cent pure, she didn't actually know; but she did. The gold had that dull shine that no brass can ever quite match. The diamonds had that cold, blue sparkle that glass has never quite got the hang of. As for the white stuff, she didn't actually know what platinum looked like but she was prepared to bet this was platinum. There was enough wealth in the bag to elect four presidents, assuming you could find anybody idiotic enough to want to do such a thing.

‘Satisfied?' asked the hat, coldly. ‘Right, then. Do the zip up and give it back, and I can be on my way.'

Janice shook her head. ‘No way,' she said. ‘Sorry, pal, but this lot goes with me. How much did you say you wanted for it?'

‘The whole lot?'

‘Yeah,' Janice said, her voice slightly wobbly, ‘why not? The whole lot.'

‘Well.' The front of the brim oscillated as the life-form under it made some calculations. ‘I couldn't take less than forty dollars,' it said. ‘For that, I'd throw in the bag as well.'

‘Forty dollars.'

‘OK, thirty-five. Damnit, the diamonds alone are worth that.'

‘Deal.'

‘All right, if you insist, thirty-two fifty. Jesus, but you know how to - what did you just say?'

‘I said Deal,' said Janice.

‘Cash?'

‘Sure.'

‘I'd need at least ten per cent up front, and the rest by—'

‘Here,' Janice pulled out three tens and a five from her top pocket and stuffed them under the hatband. ‘Paid in full.'

‘Really?'

‘Really.'

‘Wow.' The hand reappeared, grabbed the notes and pulled them in under the brim. ‘Thanks. Hey, that's really - thanks.'

‘Don't mention it,' Janice replied, gripping the bag firmly in both hands. ‘Can I ask you a question, mister?'

‘Sure thing. Shoot.'

‘You won't take this the wrong way?'

‘Guaranteed.'

‘Then how come,' Janice asked, as calmly and rationally as she could, ‘you've just sold me millions of bucks' worth of diamonds and stuff for thirty-five dollars? Not,' she added quickly, ‘that I'm complaining. And you can't have it back, either.'

The hat rotated backwards and forwards through a hundred and eighty degrees. ‘Don't want it back, lady. Thirty-five dollars in hard currency may not be all that much to you, but where I come from . . . Hell, you could buy where I come from for thirty-five dollars in US Treasury bills. In fact,' it added, after a moment's reflection, ‘I might just do that.'

‘Where's that, then?'

‘In there.' The hat nodded towards the lake. ‘And before you ask how can I live in a lake, please don't. I have this feeling that a serious credibility shortfall at this juncture might endanger our future trading relationship.'

‘How can you live in a lake?'

‘How can you live outside of one?'

Janice wrinkled her nose. ‘You're a fish? Actually, I've seen those jellyfish, the ones with the big—'

‘I am not a fish,' replied the hat austerely. ‘If you must know, my name is Captain Hat, of the Lake Chicopee Free Traders Association. And where I live,' he added, ‘we use that sparkly stuff for pebble-dashing houses.'

‘Diamonds?'

‘Sure. Whereas thirty-five dollars American—'

‘I see,' Janice said, inaccurately. ‘You've got a lot of, ah, unexploited mineral resources, then?'

‘You could say that. It's props.'

‘Props?'

‘From the scenarios.'The hat tilted a few degrees. ‘You know, the scenarios. The little shows they put on for the customers.'

‘Customers?' Janice raised an eyebrow. ‘You mean, this lake's some kind of holiday resort? Like a summer camp or something?'

‘You could say that,' the hat replied. ‘Better still, call it a theme park. But of course you . . . No, wait, of course, you don't remember a thing, do you?'

‘Remember what?'

‘About what happened to you, when you were in the lake.'

Janice rubbed her chin. ‘Let's see,' she said. ‘I fell in, I got wet, I splashed about a bit and then I got out again. Can't say there's any significant gaps in that.'

Although Janice couldn't see it, because of the brim of the hat, she could sense that somewhere in the shadows there was a big grin, generated at her expense. ‘Right. Now then. Did your entire life flash in front of your eyes, all in one split second? Probably happened in the moment between your head going under the water and coming back up again.'

‘No, I don't—' Janice paused. ‘Hey, now you mention it, maybe it did. Or at least there was
something
. More like a dream, I guess. I can't remember anything about it, but . . .'

The hat repeated its nodding manoeuvre. ‘That's it, then. I don't suppose you're going to believe this, but I'll tell you anyway. During that very short time, you went through this series of really weird adventures, courtesy of the ole Indian spirit that haunts the lake. She's called Okinawa, something like that.'

‘Okinawa's a city in Japan.'

‘Okeewana, then. Whatever. The way it works is,' the hat continued, ‘if you fall in the lake and make a wish, the wish comes true. Doesn't have to be a
conscious
wish, either. It works just as well if there's something you're secretly daydreaming about, like in your subconscious mind. That can be very hairy, believe me. You had a pretty strange time of it yourself, come to that. I'd tell you about it, but you don't want to know.'

‘Yeah?' Janice yawned. ‘You're right, I don't. But what's all this about props and scenarios? If this is some roundabout way of telling me this stuff 's all stolen—'

The hat quivered a little. ‘Of course it's
stolen
,' it said. ‘Who the hell do you think I am, Montezuma's rich brother-in-law? The scenarios are what happen on the other side of the lake.'

Janice turned her head towards the tall, round hill with trees on it that stood on the other side of the water. ‘What, you mean over by that clump of fir trees? I can't see—'

‘On the flipside,' the hat said patiently. ‘The obverse.' A finger emerged from under the brim and pointed at the middle of the water. ‘Under that.'

‘Under the lake?'

‘Not under,' said the hat, exasperated. ‘On the other side. Come on, it's not a difficult concept, surely. Anyhow, when they do these scenarios, sometimes they get careless with the props, leave them lying about and all, and my boys and me - well, we help keep the place tidy. We have very strong views about ecology and stuff.'

‘Tidy as in free of waste gold?'

The hat nodded. ‘You bet. Gold's a good example; I mean, it's one hundred per cent non biodegradable, gold. Leave damn great chunks of gold lying around the place, it's there for ever.'

‘And diamonds?'

‘Diamonds are forever, too. Well-known fact. So we, er, recycle them.'

‘I see.' Janice looked at the hat, and then down at the sports bag. On the one hand, she knew all about stealing and how wrong it was; but on the other hand, stealing from a fiction of the hallucinating imagination probably wasn't nearly so bad. On a par, perhaps, with murdering the imaginary friend you had when you were six. ‘Well,' she said, ‘you may be telling the truth or you may just have escaped from the home for deranged millinery, but to be honest with you, I don't give a damn. I think I'll go home now.'

‘Good idea,' said the hat. ‘I think I'll do the same. Call me superstitious if you like, but this place gives me the creeps.'

‘This hillside?'

‘This side of the lake. So long, Janice DeWeese.'

‘Hey, how do you know my—?'

The hat started to scuttle, like some experimental model of soft-shell crab that got shelved when the funding ran out. ‘I know all about you,' it said. ‘Sister, what I don't know about you ain't worth knowing. You and those priests! Wow!'