Here Comes the Sun (31 page)

Smiling, the minor but ambitious young official relaxed back into his seat, looked up at the endless blue ceiling above him and began to dream.

All right,
right now
he was doing a job that was little better than Executive Grade 2 status, but that wasn't going to last for ever. It wasn't as if they could just take a trainee, however talented, and plonk him straight down in a fifth-floor office; there were motions to be gone through, knees to be browned. Just as soon as you proved to them that you could do all this noddy stuff with one hand tied behind your back, they'd have you out of it and
sitting behind a desk in no time flat. That would mean Clerical status; and once you'd got that, you were halfway there. Anyone with an ounce of go in him could whizz up the Clerical ladder like a rat up a drain with the bailiffs on its tail; and then you'd be in Admin. No more dealing with actual things, no more flying suns or grading snowflakes or lugging about tectonic plates. In Admin, they only dealt with the really important, totally nebulous things - five-year plans, forecasts, projections, economic models, cost-effectiveness ratios, overall strategies. There would be committees, sub-committees, quasi-autonomous review panels, watchdog commissions, one-man working parties. You would have absolute control, and maybe even a chair that swivels.

And then would come the real quantum leap; first to departmental status, before soaring upwards to the Empyrean heights of supervisory management; to permanent chairmanship of a committee so vast and so indefinable that the whole curved universe itself would be only part of its jurisdiction. As yet, nothing so mindbendingly huge existed anywhere in the cosmos, apart from in the minor but ambitious official's imagination; but if it ever came to pass, it would have to have a name that was abstract to the point of stretching the parameters of applied metaphysics.

Finance and something. Finance and Ultimate Purposes.

Something like that.

The minor but ambitious official smiled. He and the world were young, talented and going places together. He and the world were like
that
.

Oh.

Actually, that too was way ahead in the future, but as we've already seen, the minor but ambitious official is way ahead of his time.

A long way below, but still rather closer than it ought to be, the surface of the sea boiled. Huge banks of water-vapour drifted up into the sky, bumped jarringly into temperature shifts, liquefied and fell back. Out of the water, jagged points of rock poked nervous and embarrassed fingertips, like guests who have turned up far too early for the birthday party of somebody they scarcely know. And deep down, in the very dregs of the ocean, something that had no business moving, moved.

It wasn't quite the way it's depicted on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. There's no inter-digital fireworks, no snap and crackle of white fire. There should have been, of course; and speeches, and a tape to cut, and a special presentation pair of silver shears, and a band. But there wasn't.

This is the way the world begins; not with a zap but a cock-up.

With a frenzied jerk on the joystick, the minor but ambitious official hauled the Sun back up to its proper place in the sky, and sagged forward against the straps of the safety harness. In his mind's eye, he saw two visions:

. . . The first, of the world as it should have been - the calm, dignified procession of perfectly formed organic pioneers rising serenely from the depths of the ocean to colonise the purpose-built land-masses, to evolve in a purposeful way into demi-gods, to begin the long but completely orthodox march towards reunion with their Creator, to the moment when they turn their smug faces to the sun and see only their own reflection . . .

The second, of the world as it was going to be - nasty green slimy things slopping up on to premature beaches, twitching apologies for mandibles in the germ-ridden air; slowly squeezing themselves into all manner of outlandish shapes - ammonites, dinosaurs, mammoths, monkeys, things even more obscenely ludicrous than monkeys;
things that would slip out of control and start smashing the place up, building motorways, exterminating whales, waging wars, wearing fluorescent green beachwear . . .

Very carefully, the minor but ambitious official looked all around him, and then down at the seas below.

Maybe nobody would notice.

Not yet, anyway. And by the time they did, who could possibly tell whose fault it had been? He fixed his eyes on the western horizon, steadied his grip on the joystick, and began to whistle aggressively.

Some time later, he made a faultless landing back at the hangar, cut the motors, and climbed rather unsteadily out of the cockpit. As he walked the long, long way across the hangar to the big double doors, nobody came running up, nobody called his name; there were no thick-set men in raincoats, no soldiers, nothing - just the erk with the broom and his headphones, prodding half-heartedly at the first few molecules of dust as they drifted through the still-pure air. He closed his mind to the problem, and gradually the problem began to disintegrate. Fragment of the imagination, trick of the light, nothing moved at all. Pretty good job, young ‘un. Thanks, sir, glad you liked it.

‘Bit low there, weren't you?'

The minor but ambitious official spun on his heel and stared. For his part, the erk with the broom made a more than usually half-hearted stab at an atom of grime, and scratched his ear where the headphones chafed the lobe.

‘Sorry?'

‘I said, bit low there this morning. Could've been an accident, going as low as that. You know, could've set something off before its time.' The erk raised his head and grinned. ‘You want to be more careful,' he added.

‘I don't know what you mean,' replied the official, apparently through a mouthful of cotton wool. ‘I kept at exactly the right height all the way.'

‘That's all right, then,' replied the erk, widening his grin. ‘Must've been imagining things.'

‘Well, don't do it again,' the official snapped. ‘And get on with your work. This place is an absolute tip.'

But the grin only became wider, and the official turned away and nearly ran for the doors. As he retreated, he may or may not have heard somebody muttering something like, Calls himself a
high
-flyer, big joke.
Low
-flyer'd be nearer the mark . . . He grabbed the door, hauled it open, and slammed it.

And it came to pass exactly as the minor but ambitious young official had foreseen. He got his promotion, the world got mankind, and nobody said anything. True, there were a few heads shaken at hyper-departmental level, and there was a full internal inquiry. And then nothing.

Nothing, except a face burned deep in the official's mental retina, a grin, the memory of a tiny movement in the depths of the sea. Meanwhile, two careers developed: one dizzily ascending, one sort of slithering along the bottom. Maybe, said the official to himself a hundred times a day, he's forgotten all about it. A brain like that needs all its capacity just to make sure the beer ends up in the mouth and not down the front of the shirt. If he was going to say something, he'd have said it by now. And then the grin would float by like a stray patch of anti-matter, and whisper,
Don't kid yourself. He hasn't forgotten
.

As an interesting footnote to all this, it's worth recording that the evolutionary development of the human waste disposal system was the result of the young official's subconscious desire to have something appropriate to mutter under his breath every time he thought of it.

‘Oh,' Bjorn said.

‘Exactly,' Ganger interrupted. ‘That's why, as soon as he was appointed chairman of the Finance and General Purposes committee, the first thing he did was have you spirited away to an idyll and kitted out with a brand-new identity. It was a good try, but doomed to failure from the start.'

‘Oh,' Bjorn repeated. He was thinking, Stuff me, what a lot of long words this jerk knows. ‘Come to think of it, I remember something like what you just said. But I never thought . . .'

From the floor there was a howl that set all the atoms in the cosmos on edge. Ganger stared.

‘You mean you hadn't . . . I mean, it didn't occur to you . . .'

‘Nah,' Bjorn replied. ‘Course, now you tell me, it all sort of makes sense. Yeah, you've got a point there.' He leaned down and put his lips close to Finance and General Purposes' ear. ‘
Bastard!
' he shouted.

‘Well,' said Ganger quickly, ‘anyway, that's beside the point. Now we all know, and that's what really matters, isn't it? In case you're wondering how I found out . . .'

‘You read his mind, didn't you?' said Staff quietly.

‘So?'

Staff was white as a sheet and trembling. ‘That's not
fair
,' he said. ‘You shouldn't do things like that.'

Ganger looked as if he'd just been kicked in the nuts by an angel. ‘Oh come off it,' he said. ‘You've just heard me say that this jerk is responsible for
everything
. He's a goddamn evolution criminal, that's what he is. You do understand that, don't you?'

‘Of course I do,' Staff shouted. ‘That still doesn't make it right.You can't just go about peering in through people's ears like that.' He turned away. Ganger shook his head in disbelief and turned to Jane.

‘You don't think it was wrong, do you?' he said.

Jane thought about it for a moment. On the one hand, she didn't hold with bugging. On the other hand . . . She thought for a moment about Homo sapiens, and many things crossed her mind: toothache, the division of the species into two genders, acne, comfort eating, split ends, clogged pores, catarrh, armpits. You could forgive most things, given time, but you've got to draw the line somewhere. And feet. If this guy was responsible for feet . . .

‘He had it coming,' she said; then she, too, leaned forward. ‘Why five toes, you scumbag? Go on, answer me. Why five, for God's sake? Four not good enough for you or something?'

Ganger nodded. ‘Motion carried, I think,' he said. ‘Now then, all we've got to do is . . .'

The room suddenly filled with white light. From the street below, a tannoy invited them to reflect on the fact that the building was surrounded. If they had weapons, it might be a shrewd move at this stage to throw them out of the window.

Jane cleared her throat.

‘Excuse me,' she said, ‘but who's that, exactly?'

Ganger looked round at her. ‘Out there, you mean? The ones with the searchlights and the PA system?'

‘That's right.'

‘I have an idea it's my colleagues from Security,' Staff interrupted. ‘This is just a wild guess, but I think they want to arrest us.'

‘I see,' said Jane. ‘Why?'

‘It's what they're best at, I suppose,' Gange said. ‘I mean, why do painters paint? Why do potters make pots? The question we should be addressing is, will they succeed?'

For his part, Bjorn gave them the kind of stare that large, stupid people reserve for their intellectual betters
when they're indulging in verbal fireworks instead of getting on with the job. That's great, it said, and you won't mind if I leave you to it and just look around for a gun or something. He started to search the drawers of the desk, and soon he'd found what he'd been looking for. The bad guys always have small, pearl-handled guns in their desk drawers.

‘Right,' he said.

He crossed to the window and hurled a chair through it. Then he flattened his back against the wall, extended his arm through the shattered glass, and pulled the trigger.

Down below, a spectral warrior felt something land on top of his head. Gingerly he reached up and felt the crown of his cowl. It was damp.

Meanwhile, Bjorn was staring at the prisoner with contemptuous disbelief.

‘A water-pistol,' he croaked. ‘What sort of chicken-shit wimp keeps a pearl-handled
water-pistol
in the top drawer of his desk?'

‘A pacifist?' Ganger suggested. Staff sighed and pointed at the three tall potted ferns on top of the filing cabinet, just before they disintegrated in a hail of automatic fire from the street below.

‘Not so much a pistol,' he mumbled (inevitable, since he was now hiding under the desk, with his head wedged sideways into the carpet) ‘as a novelty plant-mister. I seem to remember the lucky dip at the office party a few years back . . .'

‘They seem to be shooting at us,' Jane remarked, enunciating the words with bell-like clarity. ‘Should they be doing that, I wonder?'

Staff raised his head painfully and glowered at Bjorn. ‘I think we seem to have started it,' he growled. ‘They're just defending themselves.'

‘Fine,' Jane replied. ‘I can quite see their point. I mean, a water-pistol at this range, you could get absolutely
soaked
. You could get pneumonia.'

There was a hollow thump down below them somewhere, followed about half a second later by an explosion in the office. The room was suddenly full of charred and shredded paper.

‘Somebody would have appeared to have taken out the filing cabinet with a wire-guided missile,' Staff announced. He sounded for all the world like a BBC Radio Royal Wedding's compère commentating on Armageddon. ‘I can only assume they have their reasons, because . . .'

There was a faint
whoosh
, and something whirred past Staff 's hiding place and vanished into the hole in the far wall where the filing cabinet had once been. It was Bjorn, jumping up, grabbing Jane in one hand and the hostage in the other, and running for it.

Staff realised that he was on his own. It crossed his mind that he shouldn't be.