Faust Among Equals (36 page)

‘
F
reeze!'

Bleary eyed and thoroughly narked, Lundqvist swung the door open and slouched through.

‘Knock it off, Links,' he sighed wearily, ‘it's me.'

‘Oh.' Links Jotapian looked down at the revolver in his hand, and then at his mentor. ‘You got him, then?'

‘No.'

There was a moment's silence. The faint tinkling audible to the extra-perceptive ear was the sound of shattering dreams. ‘You mean you
didn't
get him?'

‘Mmm. Is there a bar round here, Links? I could murder a drink.'

‘But.' Links stared. ‘You must have got him, Mr Lundqvist. Kurt Lundqvist always gets his fiend.'

‘Not this time, son. Now be a good boy and go away.'

Jotapian's lower lip quivered ominously. ‘You let him escape?' A thought occurred to him. ‘I get it. So's he'll lead us to where he's got the money stashed. Sorry, Mr Lundqvist, I should've guessed.'

Lundqvist gave him a cold look. ‘What money, Links? There isn't any money. The little scumbag just escaped, that's all.'

‘And you're just walking away?'

‘You got it.'

Links pulled himself together with an effort, and stuck out his chest, what there was of it. ‘No, Mr Lundqvist. He may have gotten away from you. He ain't gonna get away from me.' He jammed his hand down on the butt of his revolver, jerked his chin up high and walked resolutely through the doorway. There was a thump.

‘It opens the other way, Links,' Lundqvist said. ‘To open it, you pull.'

‘Okay, Mr Lundqvist.' Pause. ‘Mr Lundqvist?'

‘Yes?'

‘You
sure
you're not coming?'

‘Sure, Links.' Lundqvist sat down on a rock, pulled off his left boot and massaged his foot. The lift had been out of order and it was a very, very long way down by the stairs.

‘Okay, boss,' Links said. He tried not to let too much irony creep into the word ‘boss'. ‘Be seeing you around, then.'

He pulled on the door, banged his nose, and was gone. For a moment Lundqvist sat motionless, thinking.

The boy was his apprentice. In his charge. His responsibility. It was hard going in there.

On the other hand . . . His roving eye lit on the sign outside the Hellza-Pop-Inn; bright enough to be coming out the other side of garish, but broadly hinting that strong liquor was kept on the premises.

The boy's never going to learn for himself if you keep him wrapped up in cotton wool all the time.

But . . .

He got up, put on his boot and pulled open the door.

‘Links,' he yelled down the corridor.

‘Yes, Mr Lundqvist?'

Kurt Lundqvist considered for a moment. ‘When he hits you, try and roll with the punch. Sometimes it helps.'

He closed the door and went to the bar.

 

‘I dunno,' said God, reaching for an old envelope and a stub of pencil. ‘Could work, I suppose.'

George held his breath. Maybe Lucky George was the right name for him, and he'd been riding his luck all these years. But luck's rather like sponge cake; it's always better if you make it yourself.

‘Tricky,' said God. ‘I mean, you'd have to go a bit steady. One slip and, well . . .'

‘I didn't say it was easy,' George interrupted. ‘I said it was possible. There's a difference.'

God grinned. ‘Just go through it again one more time,' he said, ‘make sure I've got it straight in my mind.'

‘Okay.' George took a deep breath. ‘The problem with recycling Time,' he said, ‘is that it's got History engraved all over it. You can't melt down Time without losing History. You lose History, nobody has the faintest idea who they are, or what's going on. Okay so far?'

God nodded.

‘Well then,' said George, ‘my idea is, you skim all the History off in thin sheets, using something like a very fine-bladed bandsaw. You've got something that can do the job?'

‘Somewhere,' God replied. ‘There's all sorts of bits and pieces out there. Like I said, one of these days I've got to have a really good tidy-up in here.'

‘That's fine,' George said. ‘So, you slice off the top three or four thousandths of an inch, leaving you with sort of tin foil stuff with all the History on. You can roll that up and store it in a fraction of the space you're using at the moment. The rest you melt down and use again. That's all there is to it.'

God took off his glasses and polished them on his sleeve. ‘Still going to run out one day, though, isn't it?' he said. ‘You're just putting off the problem, that's all.'

‘Ah,' George replied. ‘That's where the clever bit comes in, the new technology and all that.You set things up so that in future, the History foil is split off as soon as it's been processed, right? The rest of the stuff goes straight back in the melt. The history foil is then copied on to disc - it's absolutely amazing how much stuff you can get on a single disc these days - and then the foil can be melted down too. As and when you've got a moment, you can transfer the archives on to disc as well. Problem solved.'

‘Hmm.'

George waited.

‘Well,' God said at last, slowly unwrapping a peppermint, ‘there are still problems. Like, suppose when I was cutting off the foil, my hand slipped or something and a great chunk of History got torn or buggered up.'

‘Well . . .'

‘Or what about when it's actually on the discs? Bits could get wiped. It happens.'

‘Well . . .'

‘Take a case in point,' God went on. ‘The whole bit where you sell your soul to Them Buggers might get somehow lost. Think about it. We'd have to turn you loose, wouldn't we? Couldn't keep you banged up if what you did never happened. And if it's not in History, it never happened, did it?'

George opened both eyes wide. ‘Do you know,' he said, ‘that thought honestly never once crossed my mind.'

God laughed. ‘I'll believe you,' he chuckled. ‘Thousands wouldn't.'

Hard to gauge exactly how many years, or tens of years, passed in the world of mortal men while God crunched up his peppermint and drew faint, deft squiggles on the back of the envelope. George could feel time passing, just as you can feel lorries going by on the main road a mile away. Nothing to worry about, in context.

‘It's a bit crude, though,' God said at last. ‘It's not the way I'd have wanted to do it, really. In the first place, I mean.'

George shrugged. ‘In the first place,' he said casually, ‘was the Word, remember? You can only do your best with the materials available.'

God nodded his head slowly. ‘Damn silly word it was, too,' he said. ‘Took me a hell of a time just to get a good edge on it. Between me and you and these four walls,' he added confidentially, ‘I've always reckoned the daft beggars must've spelt it wrong.'

‘Get away.'

‘Straight up.' God drew a few more squiggles, shrugged his shoulders and laid down the pencil. ‘All right,' he said, ‘I'll give it a go. Why not?'

‘That's the spirit.'

‘Yeah. And those bits of History we were talking about just now.'

‘Yes?'

‘Well.' God looked away, into the darkness of the boiler room. ‘Trouble is, my old eyes aren't what they used to be. Could easily muck up quite a big bit before I knew what I'd done. And then where would we be?'

‘Exactly.'

‘In fact. I've got this horrible feeling that might just happen.'

‘Just a feeling?'

‘Virtual certainty.' God winked. ‘On your way, George. I've enjoyed having a natter like this.'

‘Me too.'

‘Yeah.' God turned, picked up another envelope and sharpened his pencil. ‘Mind how you go.'

 

In the darkness, Links froze. His hand tightened on the butt of his revolver.

There was something out there. He could smell the danger. Very slowly, he drew the gun and thumbed back the hammer.

A soft sound, like a footfall on a million years of dust. He opened his eyes wide, trying to make the most of each stray photon.

‘Jerome?'

Inside him his heart turned to water. Suddenly the gun became heavy, far too heavy to hold. His arms sagged, as rigid as overcooked tagliatelli.

‘You there, Jerome?'

‘Yes, Mom,' Links whimpered.

‘Jerome Jotapian, I've been looking all over for you. What do you mean by sneaking out like that and worrying us all near to death?'

‘Sorry, Mom.'

A shape loomed up in the darkness. Instinctively, Links shrank back.

‘You just wait till your Pa gets home,' said Mrs Jotapian.

‘
F
reeze!'

‘Piss off.'

‘Oh.'

Helen of Troy frowned. She'd been to great trouble to acquire the small, pearl-handled automatic, more trouble still to get here, and virtually infinite pains to sneak up on Lundqvist in the bar and jam the muzzle of the gun into his ear. A girl likes to be appreciated.

‘You do realise,' she said huffily, ‘that this is a
gun
I'm—'

‘Yeah,' Lundqvist sighed, ‘sure. To be precise, it's a .25 Bauer, chrome finish, early seventies at a guess, pearl grips and machine engraving on the rear of the slide. I imagine you chose it to go with your earrings.'

Helen was impressed. ‘You can tell all that from feeling it in your ear?'

‘Lady,' Lundqvist replied with dignity, ‘I've had more pieces shoved up my ear than you've had men. The difference is, I can tell them apart in the dark.'

‘Pig.'

Helen sat down on a bar stool. ‘It's still a gun,' she said, ‘and if you make a move, I'll pull the trigger. Understood?'

‘I was way ahead of you.'

‘Fine.' With her left hand, Helen grabbed a handful of peanuts from the dish on the bar and gobbled them. Seven hours since she'd last eaten, not counting the biscuits on the plane. ‘So what have you done with him?'

Lundqvist laughed bitterly. ‘What have
I
done with
him
? Get outa here, will you? It's been a long day.'

Helen caught her breath. ‘You mean he escaped?'

Lundqvist nodded. It takes practice to nod safely with a loaded gun in your ear, but Lundqvist had the experience. ‘Yeah,' he said. ‘If you're buying, mine's a very large Jack Daniels, no ice. If not, get lost.'

‘You're sure he escaped?'

Lundqvist allowed himself a wry smile. ‘Well,' he said, ‘he escaped from
me
. What became of him after that is entirely his own problem.'

‘You mean he's in danger?' Helen demanded angrily. ‘And you're just sitting drinking?'

‘I'm trying to drink. Idiots come and shove iron in my ears, but I guess I'll have to learn to take that sort of thing in my stride.'

‘Men!'

Helen finished the peanuts, then nudged a little harder with the gun. ‘If you don't find him this instant, I'll shoot you.'

A look of utter contempt flitted across Lundqvist's face, wiping its feet on his eyebrows as it passed. ‘I get you,' he said. ‘First you'll shoot me if I don't lay off, now you'll shoot me unless I find him. Consistency's not a big thing with you, right?'

‘Just shut up and get on with it.'

‘Anything you say, sister. Just one more drink, and I'll be—'

‘Now.' By way of reinforcing her remarks, Helen pressed what she took to be the safety catch. The net effect was to send the magazine shooting out of the bottom of the gun into the residue of Lundqvist's Jack Daniels. He fished it out, made a vulgar noise and handed it to her.

‘Does this mean you won't help me?' she said.

‘Yeah.'

‘Please?'

Lundqvist lifted his glass to his face, noticing the thin scum of gun oil on the meniscus just in time. He sighed, and waved to the barman.

‘I think you're
mean
,' said Helen, and started to cry. Everyone in the bar turned their heads and stared.

‘All
right
,' Lundqvist snapped. ‘Whatever you like. Just for the love of God shut up that goddamn . . .'

‘Sniff.'

‘. . . Sniffling.'

 

‘And no going arresting him when we do find him?'

Lundqvist chuckled bitterly. ‘Me?' he said. ‘Arrest anybody? That'll be the day.'

They stopped outside the emergency exit. ‘He went in there?' Helen demanded. Lundqvist nodded, sat down on the grass and started to make a daisy chain.