Valhalla, p.22
Valhalla, page 22
‘Well?’
‘How did you get here?’
She scowled. ‘Does it matter?’ she said. ‘I’m here now.’
‘How did you get here?’
She sighed, let go of him, shook herself like a wet dog and turned into Odin. Howard jumped about six feet in the air; apart from that, he handled it remarkably well.
‘I’ll say this for you,’ Odin said, straightening his tie. ‘You’re not as hopeless and pathetic as I thought you were. Or possibly you’re more hopeless and pathetic than I could ever hope to imagine. Come on, own up. What put you off? Did you suspect all along that it couldn’t possibly be true, or are you just terrified of girls?’
‘The first one,’ Howard said. ‘Well, maybe a bit of both. What the hell was all that about?’
‘Your heart’s desire,’ Odin replied. ‘I refer you to that rich fantasy life you used to have when you were alive. Just as well it was rich, because it was the only thing even vaguely resembling a life you’d got. Wasn’t it all fights to the death and steamy encounters with gorgeous women? And before you say anything, please bear in mind that I never ask a question I don’t already know the answer to.’
Howard shrugged. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘maybe once or twice I might have wondered what it’d be like. I still say the punishment’s a bit over the top.’
‘Punishment?’ Odin looked hurt. ‘Who said anything about punishment? You only get punished if you do something wrong, surely. Do you think having fantasies about your female colleagues was wrong?’
Howard shook his head. ‘I don’t want to play word games,’ he said. ‘I think this must be punishment, because it’s so horrible. ’
‘It’d be a neat way of doing it,’ Odin agreed, ‘punishing people for what they wish for by making their wishes come true. Maybe that’s what Valhalla’s for. Or maybe it’s just a place you go to when you die. Personally I think it’s the latter, but that’s just my opinion. And I’m not even dead, so I’m hardly qualified to comment.’
‘I should have known,’ Howard said gloomily, looking away. ‘I should have known when you caught those bullets in mid-air. So now what are you going to do?’
‘This,’ Odin replied. He snapped his fingers and vanished. A moment later, a bomb went off more or less exactly where he’d been standing, turning everything within a fifty-yard radius into fine white ash.
‘Guys,’ said Lin Kortright. ‘Now just wait a doggone minute.’
The fifty or so Lin Kortrights who’d been listening to him audition for as long as he could remember started to mutter and hiss, as usual. One of them emptied his ashtray on the floor and aimed it, discus-fashion. It was, Kortright admitted, just the sort of thing he’d do if he was in their shoes. Which, of course, he was. Odd, that; he’d never really figured himself as a centipede.
‘Whoa there, hold it,’ he shouted. ‘Guys, listen up. You gotta hear this, it’s important.’ They weren’t listening. Well, they wouldn’t, would they? Each and every one of them was him and they knew all his tricks and ploys, negotiating techniques, mind games, ways of unsettling an opponent while striking a deal; all his life, one thing had always been an unfailing source of comfort to Lin Kortright - the perfectly reasonable and justifiable belief that he could bullshit any life form composed of more than one cell. Now he had to face the unpleasant truth that the people out there were immune to anything he could throw at them—
(Which explains why that sadistic creep Odin brought them here to decide whether I’m fit to be me; Jesus, what a nasty thing to do! ) Frantically, he thought, If I were them (no, fuck it, if I weren’t them, if they weren’t me, whatever) what’d grab my attention? One thing and one thing only.
‘MONEY!’ he said.
Fifty Lin Kortrights froze in the act of launching a variety of missiles.
‘Money,’ he repeated. ‘So much money you just wouldn’t believe. Plus,’ he added, as inspiration lit up and kicked in, ‘overall creative control, major awards and a percentage of the gross.’ He’d got their attention; keeping it was going to be harder. ‘And a chance to direct,’ he added desperately. ‘And executive-produce.’
A Kortright three rows back frowned thoughtfully. ‘All of us?’ he called out.
‘You have my personal guarantee,’ Lin Kortright replied. ‘Trust me, you won’t regret it.’
The fifty Kortrights gazed at him so hard that he could almost feel the flesh stripping off his bones. Do I stare at people like that? I guess I must do. Man, I’m better than I thought.
‘Now you’re starting to sound a bit more like Lin Kortright,’ a Kortright said. ‘Man, you sure took your own sweet time getting here; you wouldn’t believe the bunch of deadheads and losers we’ve had in here auditioning to be you. Only make sure you aren’t just stringing us along, wasting our time. Hey, I wouldn’t want to be you if you are.’
‘Tell us about the money, Lin,’ said another.
Lin Kortright took a deep breath. ‘There’s this great deal,’ he said. ‘It’s a multinational syndicate backed by Japanese corporate money - if I mention that Toshi Kawaguchi himself is on board, I trust I don’t have to draw you a diagram - and they’ve developed this really cool thing called an anti-thanaton beam. It means you can, like, beam people backwards and forwards between life and death; and what does that immediately say to you, opportunities-wise? Yeah, obviously, tourism. Why wait till you’re dead to enjoy luxurious twelve-star afterlives custom-created to meet your special needs and requirements? It’s got the potential to be the biggest thing since Star Trek, and I got a slice of it; like, ten per cent if I can put together the right package.’ He took a deep breath and prayed; who to, even he wasn’t sure. ‘Which is where you guys come in,’ he added.
There was a brief silence.
‘Come on, Lin, we know all this. We’re you, remember?’
Lin Kortright shook his head. ‘Not quite,’ he replied. ‘Because if you were really me - this me - and you’d just had this idea, you wouldn’t be sitting here on your butts waiting for something to happen; you’d be out there pitching.’ He grinned unpleasantly. ‘And you surely wouldn’t be sharing this incredible idea with a bunch of yourselves.’
The fifty Kortrights looked at each other. He’s back, someone whispered.
‘We know you, Lin,’ said one of them. ‘We know you’re a bullshitter like there’s never been. But we also know that, very occasionally, you do have the big idea. Hey, Lin, we trust you. We believe in you, even. Don’t we, boys?’
The other forty-nine Kortrights nodded.
‘Okay,’ said Lin Kortright, ‘here’s the deal. We all go equal shares in this - hey, we’re all Lin Kortrights together and there’s gonna be enough to go round in any case - and in return, you help me get me - us - out of here. And Carol,’ he added quickly. ‘If she don’t walk, the deal’s off. Agreed?’
It took them five seconds to make up their minds. Five seconds can be a very long time.
‘Deal,’ said a Kortright.
‘That’s great,’ Lin Kortright replied. ‘And I know we aren’t going to regret this. Okay, here’s the idea. There’s fifty-one of us, right?’
‘We can count, thank you. Quit stalling and cut to the chase.’
‘Fifty-one of us,’ Kortright repeated. ‘And there’s one thing we now know about afterlives: if you happen to die in battle, you go to Valhalla and get what you’ve always wanted.’
‘That’s not true,’ a Kortright interrupted. ‘You died, you went to Valhalla. I don’t remember us having this secret burning ambition to get up on a stage and pretend to be somebody else for money. And talking about money, where is it? If this was really the place where we got what we always wanted, this whole building would be stuffed so thick with rolls of thousand-dollar bills there’d be no room left for the air. I can’t see no money, can you?’
Lin Kortright shook his head. ‘You’re missing the point,’ he said. ‘We aren’t in it for the money. If you were the real Lin Kortright instead of some cheap Taiwanese copy, you’d have known that.’ He smiled. ‘Maybe I just had this voice at the back of my mind that kept nagging away, asking, Who am I? What sort of guy, deep down, is Lin Kortright? Well, I guess I finally got an answer to that, just like I’d always wanted.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Turns out Lin Kortright’s a guy who thinks about nothing but deals and bullshit. Goes to show, guys; there’s no crummier break than getting a straight answer to a simple question.’
The Kortright who’d raised the point waved his hand. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I’ll buy that for now. So there’s fifty-one of us. So what?’
‘Easy,’ Lin Kortright said. ‘Suppose you come to me and say you want a fortnight’s vacation in Death, you want your afterlife like so - golden beaches, great surf, lots of hot chicks, cute boys in skintight rubber, whatever. I go away and I start wanting those things; wanting them real bad, like I really believe that was what I’d always longed for ever since I was a snot-nosed little kid. Then I pick a fight in a bar somewhere and get killed, and immediately there I am, in Valhalla, getting my heart’s desire.’
‘Like a tour guide?’ a Kortright hazarded.
‘You got it. Once I’ve gone to Valhalla and set up the afterlife according to the specifications, the customer beams in as well, has his vacation, beams out again. And me along with him, of course; all ready to start over again with the next customer. It’s the ultimate in leisure experiences, and the joy of it is, once you’ve paid for the anti-thanaton emitter, each trip costs peanuts. Forget virtual reality, people; this is the future of luxury entertainment and leisure management, and we’re in at the start; it’s like being back in the nineteen-fifties and buying Honda shares at a buck for fifty.’
A soft buzz of conversation, like the sound of a million woodworms munching seasoned oak, filled the still air as the fifty Kortrights discussed the idea. It wasn’t a lengthy discussion; fifty minds, as it were, with but a single thought.
‘Okay, we’re in,’ said a Kortright who’d apparently emerged as spokesman. ‘So what do we do now? First off, we’ve gotta get out of this place and make contact with the Kawaguchi people. You got any idea how we go about that?’
Kortright nodded. ‘You all do what I tell you and it’ll be fine, trust me,’ he said.
‘Trust you?’ The spokesKortright snickered. ‘Give me a break, man,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t trust you if you told me the sea is wet. I know you too well, remember. You’re Lin Kortright.’
Kortright gave him a wounded look. ‘Hey, pal,’ he said, ‘that was uncalled for. Hey, do you really think I’d lie to myself ?’
‘Why not?’ The spokesKortright grinned like a piranha fish in a dentist’s chair. ‘Isn’t that what you’ve done all your life?’
‘This submarine,’ Vinnie announced, ‘is doomed.’
The guys in the chunky polo-neck sweaters stared at him and backed away, muttering in what was probably Russian. A pity; they’d been really nice to him, given him towels and hot potato soup and vodka, taken him to meet the captain (a great big cuddly teddy bear of a man with a beard so long and wide he’d never have to waste money on a duvet), shown him snapshots of their smiling wives and cute children . . .
‘Doomed,’ he repeated, enunciating clearly. ‘You’re all going to die. I’m not going to die, oh no, not me. I couldn’t die if I soaked myself in gasoline, set light to myself and jumped off the Sears Tower into the reactor core of a nuclear power plant in the middle of meltdown. Dammit,’ he added with a stifled sob. ‘Hey, what are you guys staring at, anyhow? You never seen an immortal before?’
Cautiously, timidly, a submariner crept forward and cleared his throat nervously.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I am speaking a small English.’
‘You bet,’ Vinnie replied with a disconcerting grin. ‘And you wanna know something? Your English is very small, very small indeed, and it’s never ever gonna get any better, not unless you’re one hell of a quick study, ’cos any minute now you’re going to die. Now then, what can I do you for?’
The submariner gazed at him out of eyes the size of soup bowls. ‘We are to be dying?’ he whispered. ‘How is this to be?’
Vinnie shrugged wearily. ‘Don’t ask me,’ he said. ‘Could be any of a number of things. You could hit a submerged reef, or your engine blows up, or you spring a leak; hell, for all I know you could suddenly all go crazy and start killing each other. Does it matter? It’s the being dead that counts, not how you get there. All you gotta do is die. Me, I’ve gotta figure a way of getting outa this goddamn underwater coffin.’
The submariner swallowed a couple of times, then retreated and conferred nervously with his fellows.
‘Excuse,’ he said. ‘But if you are wanting to die, why will you be trying to escape?’
Vinnie laughed aloud. ‘Because that’s what I do, you poor fool,’ he said. ‘I escape from things. Shit, if I locked myself in the john right now and the sub blew up, I’d be thrown clear and float up to the surface in some kinda freak air bubble; but you know, that’d be so damn humiliating, bobbing up and down in the water in a Russian navy toilet with my pants round my knees . . . If I gotta keep surviving, then I might as well pretend to make an effort.’
Once again the submariner conferred with his colleagues. ‘We are saying,’ he pleaded, ‘you are not to be talking like so; it is bad lucky.’
Vinnie shook his head. ‘So sue me,’ he said. ‘And give my regards to Mr Jones. You’ll be seeing him long before I do.’
The submariners shook their heads and went away, with deeply troubled faces. Hell, I was just telling them what to expect, Vinnie thought. It was the least I could do.
But an hour went by; then another one, and another one after that, and still the submarine showed no signs of hitting anything or getting blown up. Cruel, Vinnie couldn’t help thinking, to toy with him like this, and not fair on the submarine guys either. Unless of course it was over; actually over, and the submarine wasn’t going to sink or explode, and the next time he saw daylight it’d be through an open hatchway, as the submarine chugged into Archangel harbour, with crowds cheering and waving little flags . . .
Still nothing. No crash or groaning of horrendously overstressed metal, just the ever-present subliminal vibration of the engines and the clank of boots on steel decking. Maybe it was over, then; in which case, what in Hell’s name had it all been about? That was a scary thought, because it would imply, surely, that all those other guys, the ones in the plane and the ship and the helicopter, hadn’t just been extras and eye-candy brought on to make the illusion convincing; they’d been real live (now ex-live) people who’d died while he’d gone on living. That thought made Vinnie feel very ill.
Ah c’mon; get on and sink, you bugger, before I go out of my mind. He could feel the tension nagging away at him, gnawing into him like bank charges sucking the blood out of a current account. Any more of this hanging about and there’d be only one thing he could possibly do; and he really didn’t want to have to do it.
After four hours of sitting on his bunk staring at the bulkheads, he reached the point of no return. No more fooling around, no more mind games; obviously this time it was up to him. He swung his legs off the bunk, winced at the pins and needles in his left foot, and hobbled off down some sort of corridor towards the source of the engine noise.
How do you go about sinking a submarine? he asked himself. Somehow he’d got into his head the idea that there was a big hatch thing set into the hull, like a plug in a bathtub, and to sink the sub, all you had to do was pull the plug out and stand well back. But there was nothing of the kind to be seen; furthermore, the sub seemed to be pretty robustly put together, with steel plates and big rivets, nothing you could poke a finger through or puncture with a penknife blade. The engines might be a better way to go; chances were that if he wandered into the engine room and started turning handles and opening valves at random, sooner or later he’d connect with something lethal. Or maybe he’d stumble across the ship’s armoury - it was a military vessel, after all, they’d be bound to have grenades and rockets and guns and stuff, something he could use to spring a big fat leak. Or what about the conning tower? If he opened that big lid thing, water’d come flooding in. Dammit, in every submarine movie he’d ever seen, the tricky part had been not sinking the frigging thing.
Nobody seemed to mind him wandering about; either they appeared not to notice him or they gave him cautious little smiles and waves, which was highly unnerving. Vinnie had never tried to murder anybody before, let alone a whole submarine crew who seemed for some reason to like him. It made the damn-fool games They were playing with him all the more thoughtless and cruel, and he made a solemn vow that one day, he’d make Them pay. All fine and splendid; but it wasn’t getting the ship scuttled. Still no sign of anything obviously dangerous, not (being realistic) that he had any reason to believe he’d recognise it when he saw it. In fact, it was looking ominously like he was going to have to ask someone.
‘Excuse me—’ The utterly blank expression on the submariner’s face reminded him: these guys can’t speak English. Except for one, the guy he’d talked with earlier. Vinnie nodded his head positively. He’d search the ship (after all, it wasn’t that big, so it shouldn’t take long), find his interpreter and ask him how to go about committing acts of sabotage. And the sooner he made a start, the sooner he’d be able to accomplish his mission and get on to whatever it was he had to doom and then escape from next.
He found the small-English guy sitting hunched over some kind of instrument panel, staring into space and looking preoccupied. ‘Hi,’ he said. The small-English guy jumped in his seat, banged his knee of some projecting item of naval architecture, and stared at Vinnie in obvious apprehension.
‘The ship?’ he asked nervously. ‘Is it that it sinks now?’
‘No, dammit, that’s the problem,’ Vinnie replied. ‘Which is why we need to talk. Just how do you sink one of these mothers? Hypothetically speaking, of course.’
