Only Human (24 page)

‘I see,' Maria replied. ‘So you're fiends from Hell. That's fine, really. Bigotry isn't one of my faults, I'm delighted to say. It was more that stuff about taking over the Universe that we found a bit hard to swallow.'

‘Oh, but that's all perfectly straightforward,' Ginger replied soothingly. ‘Bumble, you fool, this is tea, not coffee.'

‘Is it? Blast.'

‘Take it away and get some coffee, there's a pet. No,' Ginger continued, ‘it's a perfectly feasible commercial proposition, provided we can come up with the goods. All it comes down to really is good old supply and demand.'

‘Ah.'

‘A monopoly position, you see,' put in the male colleague who wasn't Bumble.

The laptop blinked. ‘Sorry,' it read, ‘you've lost me. Explain.'

‘Of course.' Ginger nodded, paused for a moment while Bumble filled her cup from a gorgeous silver coffee pot the size of the FA Cup, and went on. ‘You see, when it comes to providing intelligent humanoid life forms to populate universes with, there's basically only one supplier.' She glanced upwards. ‘Him. Got the market sewn up.'

‘A monopoly,' asserted the non-Bumble. ‘Just like I said.'

‘And the thing about monopolies is,' Ginger said, ‘that the longer they carry on for, the more vulnerable they are once someone finds a way of breaking in. Imagine you're the one with the monopoly; you don't bother trying to improve the product, you just keep churning out the same old models, year after year, because there's no alternative.'

‘Like the British motorcycle industry,' Bumble grunted.

‘Exactly. So when suddenly there's a new kid on the block, with a brand-new all-singing-and-dancing improved version for a fraction of the unit cost - well, you know what happens next as well as I do.' She sipped her coffee, made a slight face and put the cup down carefully. ‘So if we could come up with a new, improved version of the tired old
Homo sap
—'

‘Which'd you rather have,' Not-Bumble interrupted, ‘a nice shiny new Nissan or a Hillman Minx?'

Maria nodded slowly. The stuff about motorbikes and cars was going over her head like swallows flying home for the winter, but the message was plain enough. ‘Assuming,' she said, ‘you have customers. And, excuse my ignorance, but surely there's just the one?' She imitated Ginger's upwards glance. ‘Him.'

The three demons exchanged tolerant smiles. ‘That's a common misconception,' said Bumble, with the air of a mechanic explaining that sixty horsepower doesn't actually mean sixty long, flowing tails sticking out the back of the carburettor. ‘Actually, it's all about sideways dimensions and alternative universes. Science stuff. We won't bore you with the details right now. Suffice it to say, we know there's a market out there just crying out for the right life form at the right price.' His face moved and ended up smeared with his personal interpretation of the demonic smile. ‘As we said, the tricky part is coming up with the right design concept.'

‘Which,' Ginger continued, ‘is where you come in. You and a few others like you. Now do you see?'

The laptop hummed for a moment. ‘I suppose there's a sort of pattern emerging,' it said. ‘Just not a very clear one, that's all. It's like a children's join-the-dots version of Picasso's
Guernica
. Can't you just tell us what's going on and what you want us for instead of all this theology stuff?'

Ginger nodded sharply. ‘Cards on the table,' she said. ‘There's been a cock-up in Heaven. That's why you two are here. And that's where this opportunity's come from.'

‘A cock-up in Heaven,' Maria repeated. ‘Do go on.'

Ginger leaned forward and lowered her voice a little. ‘It's like this,' she said. ‘Heaven works because of a computer called Mainframe. Mainframe arranges everything. Everything,' she emphasised, and paused for effect. ‘Including which soul goes in which body. There's been a glitch.'

‘A glitch in time? Don't tell me, it saves . . .'

‘Not in time, dear,' Ginger said patiently. ‘In personnel. And as a result, a number of human souls have got stuck in - excuse my frankness - inanimate objects. And dumb beasts. And, um, things.'

‘Which am I, then?'

‘Whichever. And you,' she added, smiling at the laptop, ‘got pulled in because Mainframe—'

‘Is a KIC product, and therefore directly linked in to me,' the laptop finished. ‘Now you mention it, I remember. Odd that it hadn't occurred to me before.'

Ginger shook her head. ‘Not odd in the least,' she replied. ‘Naturally, there's a wall of security codes a mile thick all round Mainframe, just to make sure nothing else in the KIC system gets in or out. It's only you coming alive that's made it possible for you to bust through them all. Or,' she added thoughtfully, ‘the act of busting through accidentally set you going, like a sort of cybernetic Big Bang. Doesn't matter which, really; the result's the same. Now the walls have gone, and you can access Mainframe direct. Easy as peering through a keyhole.'

‘Hang on,' the laptop interrupted, in five colours. ‘I can't do that. That's completely unethical.'

Again the fiends exchanged amused glances. ‘We've found,' said Bumble, ‘that unethical's just another word for expensive.'

‘And completely unethical is unethical with a few more noughts on the end,' Ginger added. ‘To be crude about it, noughts we got. Any amount of 'em. Just name your to-the-power-of and say which currency you'd prefer, and we can get on to the next bit.'

‘But—'

Not-Bumble coughed discreetly. ‘May I remind you,' he observed, ‘that you're a limited company.The sole purpose of a limited company is to make as much money as possible. We can't really see that you've got a choice.'

‘And what about me?' Maria interrupted. ‘That's not what I'm for.'

Ginger frowned a little. ‘No, dear, you're just there to look decorative. If you don't mind, we're talking business here.'

‘Hey! I resent that.'

‘No, dear, think about it. You're a
painting
. Now, as we were saying. You can't refuse our offer, in the same way a train can't suddenly decide to move at right angles to the railway lines. If you do, there'll just be an almighty crash and one more closed file up at Companies House. Sorry, but that's how it is. If you'd wanted to be Hamlet or someone out of one of the Australians soaps having crises of conscience all over the place, you shouldn't have become a company in the first place.' She grinned; not so much like a Cheshire cat, more like a bottomless chasm. ‘Really, it's just a matter of how much you can screw us for.' She folded her arms in front of her and looked pleasant. ‘Screw away.'

‘Do feel free to be as greedy as you like,' Bumble said. ‘In fact, it's essential to the success of the operation. Dreams of avarice, doubled and add zeroes.'

The laptop lay quite still for a while - not that this was in any way unusual, since it had no means of self-propulsion; but there was something about the way its little red light glowed that suggested it was lying quite still with
attitude
- and then displayed a half-moon of exclamation marks in the shape of a smile.

‘Okay,' it said. ‘Here's the deal. I'll play ball, but I want a hundred per cent.'

Ginger frowned, rather as God might have done if he'd gone to remove Adam's rib in order to make Eve only to find that it was already missing. ‘Sorry?' she asked. ‘I don't think I quite . . .'

‘You invited me to name my own terms,' the laptop said, with underlining and reverse. ‘Be greedy, you said. So I am. I want a hundred per cent of everything you make, otherwise no deal. I don't think that's unreasonable, do you?'

‘But—'

‘Be
quiet
, Bumble.' Ginger was also sitting quite still (hey, Maria thought, must be contagious. She shuffled her feet under the table just to make sure they still worked). ‘You realise that's a wholly unreasonable demand.'

‘Yeah,' replied the laptop, ‘isn't it? But nobody said anything about reasonable, did they? Dreams of avarice, you said. Well, my avarice dreams
big
. Take it or leave it.'

There was a moment - probably the one when Ginger realised she'd been outwitted and that, right there and then, she couldn't think of a way round it - when Maria really thought she was going to do something uncivilised and fun, such as throw the laptop through the window. But she didn't; she nodded to them both, without changing her expression in the least, and stood up.

‘I'm impressed,' she said. ‘Mind you, I'd expect something of that order from a network of computers that stretches right across the world. That's fine; but may I just remind you that you're a public company, and your shares can be bought by anybody with enough money? And whoever owns the requisite majority of your shares owns
you
.' She made a small, compact gesture with her hands, and the two fat men fell in behind her like well-trained dogs. ‘If I were you, KIC-
san
, I'd start learning the words of “Ol' Man River”. They may have abolished slavery, but not hostile takeovers. See you around.'

As an afterthought, she picked up a handful of silver cutlery and shoved it in her jacket pocket; then, with a blinding flash of darkness (similar to a blinding flash of light, but much harder to arrange and nastier), all three of them vanished, leaving Maria, the laptop, a faint smell of sulphur and a waiter holding a tray with their bill on it.

‘Don't look at me like that,' said the laptop defensively. ‘As I told them, it'd have been unethical. Besides, I didn't like them.'

Maria sighed. ‘Neither did I, much. On the other hand, thanks to your high moral principles, we've now got the prospect of being taken over by some holding company with its registered office in the place of wailing and gnashing of teeth. I
work
for this company, remember, and as prospective employers, I don't fancy them much. Any kind of flexitime they offer me, I definitely don't want.'

‘It won't come to that.'

‘You want to bet?' Maria shook her head. ‘And anyway, what's it to you? Or me, come to that? Why should we go out of our way to stop God being run out of town by the new technology? Hell, I think I understood more when I was a painting.'

‘Bugger this,' the laptop said. ‘I've had enough aggravation for one night. Come on, let's go and throw doughnuts at policemen in Trafalgar Square.'

Maria looked at him. ‘By us,' she said, ‘you mean me.'

‘You'll do the actual throwing, I grant you. But in your capacity as a duly authorised officer of the company.'

‘Huh.'

‘Would it help if I said that your old job'll be still there for you when they let you out?'

Maria sighed. ‘Oh, all right then. But not doughnuts.'

‘Not doughnuts?'

‘No,' Maria said firmly. ‘Meringues. The brittle ones with cream and jam inside. Don't you think?'

After a brief coma of meditative bleeping, the laptop said, ‘Agreed, by a unanimous vote of a duly convened Extraordinary General Meeting. Have we got any meringues? '

‘We can get some off the trolley.'

‘How right you are. Consider yourself appointed Projectiles Director, as of now. Come on, before all the bogies go off to bed.'

‘B
loody Consolidated Oilfields,' muttered the Bishop, flicking off Ceefax with the remote and slumping into his swivel chair. ‘Down twelve points at close of trading, would you believe? All they've got to do is shove a pointy stick in the ground and the stuff comes up like a burst pipe, and still they manage to lose money. Nicky, get that useless stockbroker on the phone and tell him to sell the lot.'

Nicky, the Bishop's lovely personal assistant, put her head round the door. ‘Righty-ho, My Lord,' she said. ‘Oh, and there's a vicar here to see you.'

‘A what?'

‘Vicar. Church of England clergyman. Says it's an emergency.'

The Bishop frowned. ‘No offence, Nicky, but how can it be an emergency? I mean, it's not exactly a fast-moving profession.'

‘No, My Lord.'

‘So what's the deal?' the bishop sighed, accessing SHARESORT on his screen. ‘Sudden outbreak of heresy in the Parochial Church Council? The Day of Wrath cancelled for lack of interest? Or did the meek inherit the Earth but were too shy to tell us?'

Nicky bit her perfect lip. ‘He was saying something about devils, My Lord.'

‘Oh, not another one.' The Bishop groaned and buried his face in his hands. ‘Why is it that a perfectly respectable, mundane business like ours attracts so many raving loonies? I ask you, it's just not fair. All a bloke's got to do is put on a white frock and dunk kids in a bird-bath all day long, nothing in that to make him jump the tracks and start seeing demons all over the place. It'd be different if we were running an opium refinery, but we're not.Tell him to go away.'