Faust Among Equals (32 page)

‘Oh, all right,' Machiavelli replied, flushing slightly. ‘They've made me a trusty now, actually.'

‘Have they really,' George said. ‘Well my goodness.'

‘Yeah.' Machiavelli looked down. ‘I got this job as a saloon bar bore.'

‘And what's it like, Nick?'

‘Boring.'

‘Uh-huh. Anyway, I interrupted you. You were saying.'

‘Was I?'

‘Yes. About Bunnet's book.'

Machiavelli cringed slightly. ‘Oh, that. His theory is,' he went on, without expression, eyes fixed on floor, ‘that the Martians have been behind all the major political cover-ups of the post-war era, which they have stage-managed by clever manipulation of the climate. This also,' Machiavelli concluded wretchedly, ‘accounts for deforestation, acid rain, the greenhouse effect . . .'

‘I see.' George scratched his ear. ‘Enjoy your work, do you?'

‘Not a lot, no.'

George's beer and sandwich arrived - the latter slightly charred and served on the tines of a pitchfork - and he devoted his attention to them for a moment. Then he looked up.

‘You know,' he said with his mouth full, ‘funny, isn't it, the way things pan out.'

‘Mmm.'

‘I mean,' George said, ‘think of what we were like back at school. Me the quiet, studious one. You the guy with the big ideas of everything you were going to do, big career in politics, get on the pundit circuit . . .'

Machiavelli made a noise; part agreement, part shame and part pain. Surreptitiously he bit a corner off George's sandwich.

‘And yet here you are,' George went on, ‘stuck in this dead-end job . . .'

‘No pension to look forward to,' Machiavelli interjected.

‘No fringe benefits.'

‘No travel. No input into the fate of nations.'

‘Bet you don't have your own reserved parking space.'

‘The hours are bloody terrible, George.'

‘I'll bet they are, Nick.'

Machiavelli sobbed slightly. ‘It's not just the hours, George,' he snuffled, ‘it's the hours and hours and
hours
of it that get me.'

‘They would,' George agreed. ‘I wouldn't stand for it.'

‘Oh, I've got to stand,' Machiavelli replied unhappily. ‘Stools are all reserved for the customers. I've worn this damn brass rail paper-thin, George, I could stick my finger through it any time I like.'

‘Yes.' George blinked. ‘What I meant was, I wouldn't put up with it.'

‘You wouldn't?'

‘Not if I were you, Nick. Not the Nick Machiavelli I used to know. By the way, seen anything of Kurt Lundqvist lately?'

Machiavelli shook his head. ‘Last I heard,' he said, ‘he was in business assassinating redundant gods. Good line of work to be in, I should say.'

‘Yup.' George nodded. ‘Good steady work.'

‘Must be interesting.'

‘Fascinating.'

‘Lucky little sod,' said Machiavelli bitterly. ‘When I think how he used to burst out blubbering every time we took his stiletto away from him.'

George sighed. ‘And yet,' he said, ‘look at him, and look at you. No, if I were you, Nick, I'd do something about it.'

Machiavelli looked up. There were the first ripe buds of tears sprouting at the edges of his bleared eyes. ‘Yeah?' he said. ‘Like what?'

George finished his sandwich and drained his glass. ‘Well,' he said, ‘first off, I'd start a diversion.'

 

‘Mr Lundqvist.'

‘Hi, Links.'

‘He's not in here, Mr Lundqvist.'

Lundqvist looked down into the pit, narrowing his eyes. ‘That so, Links?'

‘I'm pretty sure of it, Mr Lundqvist.'

‘You'd better come back up, then.'

Pause. ‘I've got a slight problem with that, Mr Lundqvist.' Lundqvist sighed. The term ‘idiot', he decided, fitted Links Jotapian like the proverbial glove. ‘I thought you might say that, Links,' he replied. ‘That's why I got this rope.'

‘Gee, Mr Lundqvist.'

Lundqvist unslung his rope and lowered it down into the pit. It was a very long rope, and when he'd paid it out completely and was just holding the end, he leant forward again and said, ‘Got it?'

‘Not yet exactly, boss.'

‘Jeez, Links, how deep is this pit?'

‘I think,' Links replied faintly, ‘it's more sort of bottomless. Like, I am in fact still falling.'

‘You are?'

‘I believe so, yes, Mr Lundqvist. And Mr Lundqvist, there's all sorts of really weird things down here, like—'

‘Fine.' Lundqvist stood for a moment, thinking. ‘Links,' he said, ‘I want you to think basic physical and mathematical theory.'

‘I'm doing just that, Mr Lundqvist.'

‘Okay. The universe is curved, right?'

‘If you say so, skip.'

‘In which case,' said Lundqvist, straightening his back and blowing the dust off his trouser knees, ‘if you keep falling, then sooner or later you're gonna end up exactly where you started. The trick at that point is to grab hold of something and haul yourself clear. Is that okay with you, Links? Save me having to clamber down with ropes and things.'

‘Anything you say, chief.'

‘It may take some time, you realise.'

‘I'm game, Mr Lundqvist.'

‘Thousands of years, maybe.'

‘No problem, Mr Lundqvist. I can catch up on my written coursework while I'm down here.'

‘Good lad. Well, if you do get free in the next hour or so, I'll be around here somewhere.'

‘Okay, Mr Lundqvist. Message received, over and out.'

And, of course, in Links' case, down as well. We down, we gone, in fact. Lundqvist stood up, stretched his cramped muscles, and walked off in the direction of the refreshment area.

 

‘You ready, Nick?'

Machiavelli nodded grimly. Since resolving to do this thing, he'd been bought several large brandies and a double measure of the native infernal liqueur, Evil Spirit. The result was that he was bloody, bold, resolute and quite incapable of standing up on his own. Standing up was not, however, a prerequisite for what George had in mind.

‘You got everything?'

‘Think so, George. In fact . . .'

‘Mm?'

‘Looks like I got two of everything,' Machiavelli burbled. ‘Looks remarkably like, acshlky, because . . .'

‘That's fine, Nick,' said George firmly, ‘that means you'll have a spare. Ready, you two?'

Two hovering seagulls dipped their wingtips in acknowledgement.

 

‘Okay.' Lundqvist straightened his back, blew into the loudspeaker a couple of times to check it was working, and took a deep breath. The fires of EuroBosch glinted off his mirror sunglasses, miraculously unbroken.

Around him, six concentric circles of apprehensive fiends crouched slightly lower and wished they were somewhere else.

‘OKAY, GEORGE,' Lundqvist amplified, ‘I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE. IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING I HAVE THE AREA SURROUNDED.'

Pause. No sound, except for the background screams, groans and hisses of hot iron on perpetually renewed flesh. You could have heard a twenty-foot molybdenum steel pin drop.

‘GEORGE,' Lundqvist boomed, ‘IT'S TIME TO CALL IT A DAY. COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS . . .'

A figure appeared, silhouetted against the background flames, in the doorway of the refreshment area. Its hands were above its head. Lundqvist relaxed perceptibly, until he was only as tense as a steel hawser at breaking point.

‘Hi,' the figure said.

The fiends edged back slightly. Sure thing, they were fiends, fiends are incapable of fear. It's just that there's no point in being bloody daft, that's all.

Lundqvist jumped up. ‘C'mon, guys,' he yelled, ‘what are you waiting for? Grab the sucker.'

A fiend turned its bird's head and gave him a look. ‘What, us?' it cheeped.

‘Yes.'

‘What do you take us for, cocker bloody spaniels?'

Lundqvist glanced round the various shoulder-ornaments around him. ‘Some of you,' he said, ‘yes. Now get on with it.'

With a whimper, the fiends threw themselves forward and sprang at the outline in the doorway. When they were within about ten paces . . .

. . . The figure suddenly went
whoosh!
and burst into flames.

Screaming with frustrated rage, Lundqvist shoved his way through the throng of gibbering, terrified fiends and hurled himself at the human torch; who hit him quite hard in the stomach, winding him, and grinned.

‘Hiya, Kurt,' he said. ‘Long time no see.'

Lundqvist rubbed the ash from his eyelashes out of his eyes and gurgled. ‘Machiavelli!' he howled. ‘You'll burn in hell for this!'

Machiavelli shrugged a pair of incandescent shoulders. ‘You really think so?' he said. ‘We'll see.'

Meanwhile, Lucky George, who had spent the last ten minutes breaking open all the disposable cigarette lighters from the display pack behind the bar and emptying them over Machiavelli's head, grinned and slipped quietly away down the fire escape. Every permanent structure in the complex, by the way, has to have a fire escape, because of the building regulations. Where on earth the fire is supposed to escape to is anybody's guess.

 

A quick dash across the frozen lake brought George out at the foot of the Try-Your-Strength machine. A nice idea, this; you push hard against a huge lever shaped like a flute, which sends the marker on the dial of the machine up the calibrated scale. If you're strong enough, the marker hits a little bell, and assorted nightmarish fiends spring out of a trapdoor in the side of the machine and carry you off to everlasting torment. Serves you right for showing off.

A seagull floated down from the top of the machine, came in on the glide, turned into the slight breeze and dropped on to George's shoulder.

‘Thanks,' George said.

‘It waff noffing,' replied Mike through his badly singed beak. ‘Pief of duff, onfe I'd got the matcheff lit.'

‘Where is he now?'

The seagull turned its head. ‘Ofer there by that horfe'f head fing,' he replied. ‘No more idea of tracking than my granny'f cat.'

‘Fine,' George said. ‘Found the emergency exit yet?'

‘Larry'f ftill looking. Af foon af he'f found it, we'll let you know.'

‘Good stuff,' George replied. ‘I'll go over there and make myself inconspicuous for a bit. Ciao.'

‘Here, boff . . .' But George had gone, stepping quickly and silently across the scorched grass. The seagull shrugged.

‘Big enuff and ugly enuff to look after himfelf,' he muttered, hopefully.

 

Over there turned out to be the activity described in the brochure as the ultimate in paintball games.

‘That was good timing,' remarked the round-bodied, owl-headed gatefiend as George strolled in. ‘Just in time for the next detail. You get the stuff from that shed over there, and they tell you what to do.'

‘Thanks,' George replied.

You must remember this; a shed is but a shed, a hut is but a hut. The fundamental things apply, as time goes by. True, it was apparently constructed out of a giant mother-of-pearl pumpkin with a hole smashed in the side for a doorway, but inside it was pure Portakabin.

‘What size?' demanded the attendant fiend.

‘Dunno,' George replied. ‘You're the man with the experienced eye, you tell me.'

‘67D,' the fiend replied. ‘You can change over there.'

He handed George a plastic carrier bag, and George retired into a sort of sub-shed, or cubicle, where he opened the bag and inspected the contents.

‘Hey!' he said, with admiration in his voice. ‘Now that's really something else.'

The bag contained a full-size replacement skin, with fitted scalp and all matching bits. He hoped very much that it was designed to be worn over one's existing skin. It was.

Sticking in the small of the skin's back was a dagger, driven in up to its hilt. There was no blade, fortuitously. George eased his way into the skin, settled his face as comfortably as possible into the mask, and stepped out of the cubicle.

‘Okay,' said the attendant fiend. ‘The rest of the detail are waiting outside.'

‘Just going.'

‘Hey.'

‘Yes.'

‘Forgotten something?'

‘Have I?'

‘In the rack,' said the fiend, pointing. ‘Take your pick. Limit of three per competitor.'

From the rack, George selected a nine-inch stiletto, a Venetian-pattern cinquedea dagger and a short Flemish falchion. Then he stepped outside.

There were about thirty competitors, all dressed (to take them at face value, so to speak) in skins with knives stuck through them. Some of them were having a crafty last cigarette, others were fine-tuning their eyebrows, polishing their elbows, or just standing around tapping their feet. An eagle-headed fiend with talons for hands waved an umbrella in the air to attract their attention.

‘Right, guys and girls,' it said. ‘Just a few ground rules before we start. Now, we all want to have a good time, so the key thing to remember is, don't get carried away. Right?'

A few of the competitors nodded. The fiend continued.

‘Now,' it said, ‘the objective is, to stab as many of your fellow competitors repeatedly through the body and neck as you can within the allotted time without getting stabbed yourself. Now, for your comfort and convenience, we have to say No Head Wounds. The skins are perfectly safe under normal use, but in the past we have had a
few
problems with direct hits on the temples and the eyes. That still leaves you a hell of a lot of body surface to be going on with, and I'm sure you'll all agree that safe's better than sorry.'