Faust Among Equals (9 page)

‘Don't worry about it, George. Oh, George.'

‘Yes'

‘You didn't mind me reversing the charges, did you? Only they check the phone bills now, and—'

‘No problem, Ronnie. Ciao.'

History, most aggravating of the Nine Muses, has forgotten what the favour was that Lucky George did Hieronymus Bosch all those years ago, when they were students at Wittenberg together. History's other infuriating habit, apart from forgetting things, is using all the sugar in the communal kitchen and never replacing it.

The first thing George did after replacing the receiver was to turn round, very slowly. Nothing untoward happened. Good.

Next on the agenda was getting the hell out of town, but there were a couple of things he had to see to first. First Van Appin, then Nellie. Or maybe the other way round.

He was trying to make a decision on this point on his way downtown when a choice became unnecessary. A girl on a bicycle drew up beside him with a screech of brakes, walloped him on the back and said, ‘Hello, George.'

Now then. We want this to be a civilised book. There are some authors, prurient types with the morality of paparazzi, who stoop so low as to eavesdrop on their characters' most private and personal moments and then print the whole lot, verbatim. Well, not quite; they do leave some bits out. In all the works of D.H. Lawrence, for example, the girl never once says to the man, ‘Hold on a minute, my arm's gone to sleep.' Nevertheless, standards in this respect are deplorably low. It's time something was done about it.

We therefore rejoin the narrative at the moment when Helen of Troy and Lucky George have got over the emotional side of meeting again for the first time in over four hundred years, and are discussing what they should do next over coffee and pancakes.

‘It's looking hairy,' George said. ‘Apparently that toad Lundqvist is after me.'

Helen clicked her tongue sym pathetically. ‘Poor lamb,' she said, ‘what a bore. Is that what all the stuff with the credit cards and the biros and the golf courses was about?'

George nodded. ‘Actually,' he added, ‘I quite enjoyed all that. It's been a long time, you know.'

‘You always did have a childish streak.'

‘Maybe.' He shrugged. ‘Comes in handy. Anyway, it didn't do a blind bit of good. Sure, all the hobgoblins and so on were pulled off the street, but that's neither here nor there. The day I can't sort out a few idiots with pitchforks . . .'

Helen frowned. ‘Be that as it may,' she said. ‘Had you got something in mind?'

‘Not really. I was thinking of keeping my head down until the lawyer's ready, playing it by the book, that sort of thing. There's no point looking for trouble, after all; I don't want to start a fight if I don't have to.'

Helen considered this as she finished her pancake. ‘Somehow I don't think it's going to be as easy as that,' she said. ‘Besides, if turning all the traffic lights in Milan into sunflowers isn't starting a fight, it'll probably do to be going on with. That's always been your trouble, George,' she added sternly. ‘Too much of this silly artistic integrity stuff.'

By way of reply, George simply grinned. ‘All this,' he said, changing the subject, ‘may look to you like aggravation, but to me it's more like . . . What's the word I'm looking for?'

Helen of Troy applied her mind in the search for the appropriate word. ‘Extreme danger?' she hazarded.

George shook his head. ‘Fun. That's the word I'm looking for.'

‘Fun?'

‘Fun.'

Helen broke off a corner of bread to mop up the last of the maple syrup. ‘Breaking out of Hell,' she said. ‘Being hunted across the face of the earth by the most deadly contract killer history has ever known, who incidentally has a personal grudge against you. If that's your idea of the meaning of fun, I suggest you sue the compilers of your dictionary.'

George shrugged. ‘I get what you're driving at,' he replied, ‘in a way. On the other hand,' he said, smiling at the empty coffee pot, ‘compared to what I've been doing for the last four hundred years, it's absolutely bloody hysterical.'

Helen gave him what, in a poor light, could have been mistaken for a serious look.

‘And what have you been doing, George?' she demanded.

‘Time.'

 

Funny old stuff, Time.

There is, notoriously, a lot of it about. But it is, of course, a finite resource.

This could have been a problem. Back in the dark ages, pre-ecology, the powers that be had the curious notion that they could go on pumping the stuff out indefinitely. ‘Plenty more where this came from,' they reassured themselves, as they gaily sank new bore-holes and erected giant new rigs.

But they were wrong. Time, like everything else, is running out.

Not that you'd know it if you went by the commodities markets. Just now, for example, over-production has led to a serious glut. The price has, accordingly, tumbled. They're practically giving the stuff away, with free wineglasses.

This state of affairs can't last, of course, and the wiser heads are already planning for the day when the wells run dry. They're also at last grasping the nettle of what to do with all the enormous dumps of used Time which litter up the underprivileged back lots of the Sixth Dimension, slowly rotting their half-lives away and doing awful things to the environment.

This stuff, they say, can be recycled. All we need is a little more research, one tiny breakthrough.

Which is rather like saying that Death can be cured just as soon as we can find a way of making people live for ever.

 

‘I'm sorry,' the receptionist said. ‘Nobody can see Mr Van Appin without an appointment.'

The mirror sunglasses stared back at her, and she wriggled slightly.

‘That's okay,' said the man in the shades. ‘Seeing him is not essential. Just so long as I can kick his liver out through his ears, I'll pass up on the visual contact.'

Before she could press the panic button, Lundqvist leant over, ripped the wires out with a tiny flick of the wrist, wrapped them round a couple of pencils, and presented them to her, corsage-fashion. Then he kicked in the door.

‘Kurt,' said Mr Van Appin, not looking up, ‘great to see you, take a seat, I'll be with you in just a . . .'

Shit, Lundqvist thought, I'm getting slow. He'd managed to get the drawer open two millimetres before I grabbed him.

‘Help yourself to a revolver,' Mr Van Appin said. ‘I usually have one myself about this time.'

Lundqvist smiled without humour, removed the revolver from the drawer and pocketed it. Then he leant forward, thrusting his chin under Van Appin's nose.

‘So,' Mr Van Appin said, ‘what can I do for you? Thinking of making a will, perhaps?'

Lundqvist shook his head.

‘You should,' Van Appin said. ‘Dodgy business like yours, I'd have said it was a very sensible precaution. Thinking of buying a house, then?'

This time, Lundqvist didn't shake his head. For variety, he shook Mr Van Appin's.

‘Shall I take that,' remarked Mr Van Appin, spitting out the syllables like a boxer spitting teeth, ‘as a negative?'

‘Where is he?'

‘Who?'

‘Faust.'

Mr Van Appin smiled, his professional smile which does not mean, ‘Hello, I like you, shall we be friends?' Quite the opposite, in fact.

‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘Mr Faust is my client, and I cannot disclose confidential information. And,' he continued quickly, ‘just in case you were contemplating being so ill-mannered as to threaten me with bodily injury, may I just remind you that I practise the law in all the major centuries simultaneously, and I include your present employers among my most valued clients. One false move out of you, and I'll have an injunction out to stop you ever having been born before you can say “chronological dysfunction”.' He paused, and gave Lundqvist a patronising grin. ‘In your case,' he added, ‘that's probably being over-ambitious. Do you think you could manage “Jack Robinson”?'

There was a long pause.

‘You think you're really smart, don't you?'

Mr Van Appin looked modest. ‘In the same way that I think cold is the opposite of hot and that water is wet, yes, I do.'

‘Fine.' The telephone at Mr Van Appin's elbow rang. ‘Answer it, it's for you.'

For a moment, the lawyer hesitated; then he picked up the phone.

‘Yes,' he said, ‘Van Appin here.'

Mr Van Appin blinked twice. ‘Fine,' he said. ‘We're doing okay. A bit different from your day, of course, we're doing more in the commercial property line and not so much of the witchcraft trials, but we make a living. What can I do for you?'

If Mr Van Appin was thrown by this remark, he didn't let it show. ‘It's a small world,' he remarked.

Mr Van Appin (twentieth century) nodded slowly. ‘I can relate to that,' he said. ‘I would most strongly advocate not making any sudden movements.'

Mr Van Appin frowned. ‘I hear what you say,' he replied. ‘I'm just wondering how that would leave us from a professional ethics viewpoint.'

There was a gurgling noise from the tele phone, and for a brief moment, Mr Van Appin was aware of a most curious sensation; that of vaguely remembering that he didn't in fact exist, having died many years previously.
I think we're just going to have to take a view on that one, really. Like, I think we have a serious conflict of interests situation here, and maybe it's time we took a more flexible approach vis-á-vis the strict interpretation
. . .

There was a particularly vivid flashback, which made Mr Van Appin wince sharply. It wasn't so much the physical pain, or the fear, or the horror; it was the thought of the catastrophic effects that having been unwittingly dead for five hundred years while continuing to trade would have on his tax position that decided him.

‘What you're saying,' he therefore gurgled into the receiver,

‘is that maybe this is an instance where we should interpret the statute in its wider sense, having regard to all the circumstances and implications of the case.'

Absolutely, partner. I would also recommend doing it quickly, because otherwise
. . .

The sentence was not completed. Mr Van Appin, tearing himself away from a rather fascinating recollection of his own funeral, nodded sharply three or four times.

‘Okay,' he said, ‘you got it. I'll tell him right away. Oh, and by the way.'

‘You'll never guess who didn't even bother sending a wreath or anything.'

The line went dead; and, by dint of some rapid talking, Mr Van Appin narrowly avoided the sincerest form of flattery.

 

Lucky George came out of the phone booth, stopped, turned back and smiled at the coin slot, which promptly disgorged slightly more loose change than he'd originally fed into it. Slightly more, only because there's a limit to the amount of coins one man can conveniently carry, or one government can comfortably produce.

‘Right,' he said, ‘that's got that sorted. What do you fancy doing the rest of the day? If you like, we could go to the Rijksmuseum and wake up some of the paintings . . .'

Helen frowned. ‘Hold on,' she said. ‘When you say that's sorted . . .'

‘I mean,' George replied, ‘I've taken care of things. For now, anyway. Some friends of mine owe me a few favours. Things'll be okay, you'll see.'

‘In that case,' Helen said, ‘let's go eat. I'm hungry.'

One of George's telephone calls had been made to a small family-run Italian restaurant in Brooklyn.

Mrs Loredano had taken the call.

‘Hey, Lorenzo,' she called, over the rumble of simmering pans, ‘it's for you. Some guy called Buonaventura.'

There was a crash, as Mr Loredano dropped four helpings of osso bucco, two garlic breads and a side salad.

‘Giorgio Buonaventura?'

‘Yeah. You know him?'

‘Give me the phone.'

Mrs Loredano shrugged, handed over the receiver and went for the broom.

‘Larry?'

‘George,' replied Mr Loredano, with slightly too much emphasis on the ecstatic happiness. ‘Hey, it's been a long time. What you doing out?'

‘I absconded, Larry. I got bored. How's things?'

‘Fine, George, fine. Couldn't be better.'

‘Business okay?'

‘Well, you know, times are hard, not much money about, and then there's the overhead . . .'

‘Sure.' The voice on the other end of the line hardened slightly, like a carbon deposit suddenly subjected to billions of tons of top pressure. ‘Listen, Larry, I need a favour. Can you drop everything?'

‘I just did.'

‘Sorry?'

‘Nothing. I'm just taking off my apron, George, I'll be right with you.'