Valhalla, p.5
Valhalla, page 5
‘I agree,’ Lin Kortright said. ‘So why don’t we work together on this and do each other a favour?’
‘I’m listening,’ said Mr Kawaguchi. ‘Tell me what you have in mind.’
‘Simple. You use your anti-thanaton displacement beam to create a purpose-built afterlife for my Carol, and shift her across into it. Then all you gotta do is reverse the polarities and hey presto, there she’ll be.’
Mr Kawaguchi tilted his head twenty degrees to the left so he could confer with two of his associates. ‘I fear you misunderstand the technology,’ he said. ‘The anti-thanaton field can create a pocket in the Great Unknown where certain specified conditions prevail; where, for example, all the client’s wishes can appear to come true. If the client wants clouds and harps, we can provide them; likewise sherbet and houris, milk and honey, even perfect enlightenment. This is not a problem. But reversing the polarities would simply cancel the effects of the field; all you would bring back to this continuum is what already exists here of the dear departed. Nothing.’
Kortright nodded slowly. He’d been in this position before. Usually, it was the point in a contract negotiation where the guy on the other side, having produced as evidence that he had no more money to offer his bank statements, an inventory of his furniture and clothes and a formal valuation of what his dead body might be expected to fetch at auction, started opening his veins to prove he hadn’t hidden any secret assets in his bloodstream. And every time, Lin Kortright had found a way to squeeze out just one more per cent, because nothing - nothing - is ever final. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘here’s the deal. We create an afterlife that’s so like this life, nobody could ever tell the difference. Then your technical guys find a way to drill a hole or dig a tunnel - don’t let them tell you there isn’t a way, there’ll be a way - and we bring her out. Like, meet me halfway. Believe, Toshi-san; that’s how we do things in my business. We believe. And belief moves mountains; man, with enough belief, we could move ’em so much we could train them to deliver pizza. Just belief, that’s all.’
Mr Kawaguchi raised an immaculately trimmed eyebrow. ‘Belief, Mr Kortright?’
‘Yeah,’ Kortright replied. ‘Belief. Some deadbeat walks into my office, he’s got no talent, no personality, no charisma; hell, sometimes I find out I’ve been using their ears as ash-trays for a month before I even notice they’re there. But then I believe. I look at this guy and I believe he’s got what it takes, I believe he’s gonna be the next major property. I have faith, I generate faith and that faith makes things happen. That’s why I’m the best goddamn supernatural agent the universe has ever known, Mr Kawaguchi; all the gods there ever were, all the dragons and elves and saints and djinns and rakshasas, crop circles, unexplained lights in the sky, sightings of Elvis Presley, prophecies of Nostradamus - you bring ’em here, I’ll believe in them. And once I believe, you’ll believe too. And you’ll take out your pen and start writing cheques.’
Mr Kawaguchi was still and silent. For a horrible moment he’d felt himself believing too, without having the faintest idea what it was he was believing in. ‘You believe in my company’s anti-thanaton beam, Mr Kortright? You believe it can bring people back from the dead?’
‘Believe? I can make little kiddies hang out stockings for it on Christmas Eve. All you’ve got to do is give me something to believe in.’
Slowly, Mr Kawaguchi shook his head, fifteen degrees either side. ‘I wish I shared your faith, Mr Kortright,’ he said. ‘But I don’t. Thank you for your time, but we no longer require your services.’ He stood up, and suddenly all his associates were standing too, though Lin Kortright was sure he hadn’t seen them move. ‘If you submit an invoice in due course, I’ll tell my accounts department to believe it’s been paid. Good afternoon.’
When they’d gone, their helicopter shredding clouds twenty thousand feet above the Cleveland skyline, Lin Kortright sat down at his desk and let his head roll forward against his hands. He wasn’t beaten. He didn’t understand the meaning of the word defeat and, like most Americans, encountering a word he didn’t understand just prompted him to talk louder. On the other hand, he had to admit, he’d been bullshitting, making it up as he went along. All that crap about faith and belief—
‘Excuse me.’
He looked up. Sitting on the opposite side of the desk, in the client’s chair, was a little thin guy, a weedy little creep with thin sandy hair and enormous spectacles.
‘Hey,’ Kortright said. ‘How did you get in here?’
‘Faith,’ the little guy replied.
Lin Kortright though for a moment; then he picked up a heavy cut-glass paperweight shaped like a human heart (a Thanksgiving gift from Quetzalcoatl), took careful aim and threw hard. The little guy ducked just in time.
‘Don’t be like that,’ he said.
‘Who are you?’ Kortright snarled. ‘No, don’t bother telling me, I don’t want to know. Get out. And on your way, tell whoever let you in that he’s fired.’
‘But, Mr Kortright,’ said the weedy little guy, ‘you let me in yourself. Well, you called me in, anyhow. You sent for me.’
Kortright’s brow furrowed. ‘I did? I don’t think so. I think I’d remember it if I ever got that sad.’
‘You did too,’ said the little guy. ‘Don’t you remember? Just now, when you were telling that man about faith and belief. You believed in me and - heck, here I am. Mr Kortright, you created me.’
A vision flicked across Kortright’s mind, of the end result of the Frankenstein story as acted out by the Marx Brothers. ‘Get outa here,’ he said. ‘Go on, shoo. I’m busy.’
‘But, Mr Kortright, you did. You had faith. You believed, and I heard you.’ The little guy hitched his face into a winning smile. ‘I heard your prayer and, well, here I am.’
Kortright’s hand was just closing on the desk stapler - not as aerodynamic as the paperweight, but almost as heavy - when something clicked into place in his mind. He looked up and studied the little guy carefully. ‘God?’ he asked.
The little guy nodded. ‘Bless you, my child,’ he replied.
Lin Kortright took a moment to organise his thoughts. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay, suppose for a moment I’m buying what you’re telling me. Lord,’ he added. ‘Just what in God’s name kind of a god do you think you are?’
The little guy beamed at him happily. ‘I’m the god of a guy who really knows what gods are like,’ he said. ‘I’m the god of Lin Kortright.’
At which point, he leaned back in his chair, overbalanced and toppled to the floor, crashing into the waste-paper basket and knocking over a standard lamp and a filing cabinet in the process. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
Lin Kortright stared at him with a curious blend of awe and loathing. ‘Okay,’ he said wearily. ‘This time, I believe.’
The little guy looked pleased, but surprised. ‘You do?’ he said. ‘That’s great. Why?’
Kortright smiled sadly. ‘Because every time a god comes in here and sits in that chair and says “Hey, I’m a god, I also do children’s parties and bar mitzvahs”—’ Kortright shook his head. ‘I’ll tell you something. To me, they always look like you.’
The little guy laughed happily. ‘Isn’t that amazing?’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ Kortright said wearily. ‘Look at me. I’m amazed.’
On a street corner stood a little man.
He was somewhere between sixty and seventy, white-haired, and dressed in respectable, slightly shabby clothes that were obviously his best - a somewhat shiny blazer with a badge on the breast pocket, carefully ironed white shirt with a frayed collar, crisply creased grey flannel trousers with thin knees, ancient but brilliantly polished black shoes and an antique regimental tie. Hanging from a string round his neck was a plastic tray, and in his hand was a collecting tin. He peered at the world nervously through thick-lensed, utilitarian-framed spectacles. He had cut himself, very slightly, shaving.
Every ninety seconds or so he would shake the tin, producing a noise known to Zen masters the world over as the sound of one coin clunking. One brisk, rather severe shake, as if anything more flamboyant would embarrass him, followed by ninety seconds of perfect stillness.
A stout middle-aged lady, the sort who can generally be relied on to fling largesse to the masses for any cause that doesn’t actively endorse drug trafficking or boiling down small children to make glue, stopped and then approached him, her hand already inside her handbag groping for her purse. She stopped, looked into the tray, looked up sharply at the little man and walked away, terribly quickly. The little man seemed embarrassed, but not surprised.
Five or six rattles of the tin later, two nuns came round the corner, saw the tin and the tray (presumably the man too, but not necessarily: military authorities spend millions every year on disguising secret installations when all they really have to do is make them look unimportant and ever so slightly sad, like this little man) and stopped to investigate. One nun fumbled for loose change, while the other bobbed her head down to look into the tray; then she straightened up sharply, as if she’d got an electric shock, slapped the little man hard across the face, and stalked off, with her sister-in-Christ scuttling nervously behind. The little man sighed, dabbed a tiny smear of blood from the corner of his mouth, and solemnly shook his tin.
It wasn’t the busiest of street corners; it was ten minutes before anybody else came along, and the next passer-by was a seven-foot-tall-and-broad-to-match biker, with the shoulders of a wildebeest and a ginger beard that brushed softly against his Death’s Head belt-buckle. He walked on, then stopped and turned back; something quite unexpected had registered in his peripheral vision, drawing him ineluctably towards the tray. He inspected its contents, grinned evilly, muttered ‘Cool’ under his breath and squashed a ten-pound note through the slot in the top of the tin. The little man picked a small ornament out of the tray and with visible distaste hooked its shiny pin into the oily leather of the biker’s jacket, just below the shoulder. The biker looked at him, shuddered involuntarily and stalked off, craning his neck as he went to admire his new trophy.
Clunk; ninety seconds; clunk; ninety seconds; clunk. A small boy was standing on tiptoe, trying to peer into the tray. The little man lifted it out of his reach and sighed, ‘Push off, son.’
‘But I wanna buy a flag,’ the boy protested.
‘Well, you can’t. Now get lost.’
‘But it’s charity,’ the boy replied plaintively. ‘My mum says it’s good to give to charity.’
‘Go away.’
‘It’s my own money. I was going to spend it down the arcade, but I’d rather buy a flag.’
‘Clear off, before I smack you one.’
The boy trailed away, muttering; and the little man glanced down at his watch, visibly willing the hands to move faster through his allotted shift. No sooner had he gone than a policeman walked up. The little man looked at him guiltily.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the policeman, ‘but can I see your permit?’
The little man shuffled his feet. ‘I haven’t got one,’ he said.
The policeman looked sad but stern. ‘Then I’m going to have to ask you to move on,’ he said. ‘We’ve had complaints, you see, and—Bloody hell!’
He’d caught sight of the little badges in the tray. They were small and crisply moulded out of gold- and red-coloured plastic, and vividly depicted a still-beating human heart impaled to the trunk of a broad tree by a thin-bladed dagger. The text printed on the side of the tray read:VALHALLA FLAG DAY
Please Give Generously To Help Those Whose Fight
Still Goes On By
Wearing Their Heart On Your Sleeve
‘That’s disgusting,’ said the policeman. ‘Right, I’m arresting you under the provisions of the Public Order—’
And then he stopped speaking; not to mention moving, or breathing. The little man wasn’t doing much, just looking at him in a particularly sad and self-conscious way, but his gaze’s effect made Darth Vader’s lung-paralysing scowl look like a cheerful smile from a four-year-old. Seconds later the policeman dropped to his knees, then sprawled on the ground, then vanished altogether, leaving behind nothing but a small patch of oily liquid and a faintly distasteful smell.
‘Trouble?’
The little man turned his head and saw a smartly-dressed young woman in a grey business suit. He shook his head. ‘No, not really,’ he said.
‘Taken anything?’
The little man nodded. ‘More than all of last year already,’ he said, with no apparent satisfaction. ‘Never ceases to amaze me what people will give money to, provided they think it’s for charity.’
‘More fool them,’ the young woman replied briskly. ‘All right, Skyfather, I’ll take over now.’
‘Good,’ said the little man with feeling. ‘I feel such a fool standing here.’ He extricated himself awkwardly from the strap of the tray. ‘There’s some very strange people about, you know,’ he added with a shake of his head. ‘Very strange indeed. It makes me realise how—well, normal our lot are. By comparison, I mean.’
The young woman smiled thinly. ‘Homicidal lunatics,’ she said. ‘Bloodthirsty megalomaniacs. Psychotics. Sociopaths. Yes, reasonably normal for Homo sapiens. Did you know, by the way, that Homo sapiens is Latin for “man the wise”? I never realised anthropologists had such a sick sense of humour.’ She looked down and dabbed at the oily puddle with the toe of her black court shoe. ‘Policeman?’ she said. The little man nodded. ‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘That’s your good deed for the day, then. Last year, I got two Jehovah’s Witnesses and a traffic warden.’
The little man frowned. ‘It’s not a game, you know,’ he said; then, relaxing the frown a little, added, ‘Two Jehovahs? That’s a free go.’
‘On a triple points day, too,’ replied the young woman smugly. ‘Now I just need a journalist for House.’
The little man shuffled away - he had a slight limp in his right leg - and took a turning into a narrow, dark alley. After a moment fishing about behind some dustbins he hauled out a couple of black plastic sacks and a battered old cardboard suitcase. He slipped off his blazer and tie, folded them neatly into the case, laid a couple of sheets of tissue paper over them and closed the case up; then from the sacks he produced a shiny coat of steel chain mail, a close-fitting gilded helmet with a mask that covered his face, and a broad circular shield of gold-plated steel. With the air of a sewage worker getting kitted up before climbing down a manhole, he pulled these on, adjusted the chinstrap of the helmet, clasped a broad belt round his waist, folded the plastic sacks and packed them securely behind the handgrip of his shield. From nowhere, swooping low out of the shadow of the tall buildings that flanked the alley, came two oversize coal-black, ruby-eyed ravens. One perched on the man’s shoulder; the other one carried on past him, pitched on a burst dustbin bag and started poking about with its beak.
‘Hugin,’ the little man snapped. ‘Leave! Dirty! Honestly, from the way you carry on, anyone’d think I never fed you.’
The raven waggled its wings resentfully and flapped up to join its mate, just as a man in a boiler suit and a flat cap came marching down the alley, wheeling a barrow full of breeze-blocks. He stopped in his tracks and opened his mouth to say something; but before he could, the little man cleared his throat.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but is this the right way for the Opera House?’
The man with the wheelbarrow relaxed a little and started giving directions, for which the little man thanked him politely. When he’d passed out of sight, the little man drew something black and shiny from a special pocket in the inside of his shield and pressed something on it.
‘Odin to bridge,’ he said. ‘One to beam up.’
He vanished in a cloud of foul yellow smoke, and a moment later was standing in the dark, smelly wooden long-house where Carol Kortright had arrived the previous day. In fact, she was the angry-looking young woman who confronted him before he’d even had a chance to take his helmet off.
‘You’re Skyfather, right?’ she said.
He nodded. ‘That’s one of the things they call me,’ he replied. ‘And before you say anything, yes, it’s one of the politer ones. My real name is Odin.’
‘Whatever,’ Carol replied impatiently. ‘But you’re the guy who runs this joint, right?’
Odin dipped his head. ‘I run it,’ he said. ‘“Right” is a matter of opinion.’
Carol scowled away the feeble attempt at humour. ‘Then you’re the guy who’s going to send me back,’ she said. ‘Look, I don’t want an apology, I may not even sue. Just send me home and maybe we can forget—’
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Odin said. ‘But that’s out of the question. You see, I’m just the officer in charge, not much more than a glorified janitor, really. If you’ve got a complaint, you’ll have to take it up with the proper authorities.’
Carol made a visible show of keeping her temper. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘how do I go about doing that?’
Behind his steel-and-gold mask, Odin smiled ruefully. ‘I honestly haven’t the faintest idea. If you ever find out, do please tell me, I’d be ever so pleased to know. You see, I don’t even know who they are.’
The sharp hissing noise could easily have been a fight to the death between two very large sidewinders; in fact it was Carol, drawing her breath in sharply. ‘Bullshit,’ she said. ‘Of course you know.’
‘Do I? Oh confound it, you’ll have to excuse me while I take this damned helmet off. I suffer from mild claustrophobia, would you believe, but still I have to wear the wretched thing; it’s part of the uniform.’ He ducked out of the helmet and dumped it on a nearby table. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, smoothing back his thin hair. ‘Here’s a valuable tip for you: never work for a mythology with a strict dress code. Now, where were we? Oh yes. You were having difficulty believing me when I said I don’t know who’s actually in charge here.’
