The 2084 Precept (66 page)

I now expected a prolonged and difficult
discussion. But there wasn't one. There wasn't one because he
simply said no. He said it without hesitation and he explained why
and he repeated his comments just in case I hadn't understood him
the first time. What made things worse, he said that the bank had
for some time been having serious misgivings about the financial
situation of Naviera Pujol, and would be considering demanding a
reduction in the amount of the debt already existing. However, in
view of the fact we were a long-standing and traditional customer
and in view of the initiatives I had just described to him, they
would continue to watch developments for a further period of three
months before making a determination. And he wished me every
success in my difficult task.

I don't blame him. He was right. And it was
fair. He would have had to be mad to have said anything different.
I liked him. No beating about the bush, no bullshit, and he
communicated in a faultlessly civilized and courteous manner. I
liked him enough to stay on for another coffee and discuss the
pathetic economic situations created by the elected birdbrains in
his country and in the other countries around Europe and around the
world. He called in a member of his staff and I signed various
forms to have the company's signature and password authorizations
changed and I had the signature limits and the dual signatory
requirements amended at the same time. And then he had another
member of his staff come in and they opened up a personal account
for me as well.

Out in the street, the heat was reaching its
midday intensity and the shade I found to smoke my cigarette didn't
reduce it much, not noticeably anyway. But accustomed as we smokers
are to the various sacrifices required to maintain our compulsory
nicotine levels, I smoked the thing doggedly to the sweaty end
prior to disappearing into a nearby air-conditioned cafeteria for a
chicken salad and a glass of cool white wine as a prelude to my
return to the office.

I sat in my office chair and I thought about
the problems. And then I picked up the phone and called Sr. Pujol.
No, he said, there was no possibility of any money for any purpose
at all. The only thing the group was doing was to continue
subsidizing our negative cash flow in order to ensure the Naviera's
operational liquidity for the time being. And the banks, he said,
will lend you no more either.

As if I didn't now know. Well, I couldn't
blame Sr. Pujol either. His group was lending around €700,000 per
month to keep the Naviera afloat until that miracle worker, Peter
O'Donoghue, turned it around into a nice cash-generating and
financially independent entity. Very good, very pleasant indeed,
except for the fact that the miracle worker had absolutely no idea
as to how he might achieve that. And maybe he couldn't. And that
would be decided within another ten days or so at the most.

A completely unproductive day and so I took
a taxi back to the hotel as soon as the first of the employees
began to leave.
My
employees, I should now say, although for
how long that would be the case remained to be seen. My hotel was
an oasis, a much needed oasis after a day like that. I swam, I had
an early dinner and I settled into my lounge chair on the balcony
and I became immersed in that book I was reading,
Platform
.

Jeremy's mobile rang at around 11 p.m.

"Hi, Jeremy. How are things?"

"Things are fine, thank you, Peter. Oh, by
the way, since we got the world's leaders together, you are owed
the €300,000. I transferred it to you this morning."

Jingle Bells.

"Thank you very much, Jeremy. As it turned
out, I didn't have to do much for it. Easy money, for which thank
you again. Nevertheless, it might have turned out differently. I
suppose we might say that I got paid for the risk of the trials and
tribulations to which I
might
have been subjected. For my
readiness, as it were. And that I just got lucky."

"Now that would be a fair enough way to put
it, Peter. And I hope you enjoy the spending of it."

"Did you decide on your next and last
show?"

"Yes. But not very original, I'm afraid.
Frankly, I would have preferred to do something positive, something
that millions of people could enjoy and/or benefit from. But I
decided against it."

"Why?"

"Because fear is what they understand. We
are back to fear again. It is the only emotion which stands even
the smallest chance of getting them to agree to start doing
something about weapons, population and peace…and to commence the
research on how to achieve the necessary biological
transmutations."

"Don't tell me that it is going to be
another asteroid. Hitting our planet this time perhaps?"

"Yes, it will be another asteroid. Hitting
your planet. Without causing harm, needless to say. Except to a few
sub-aquatic and cold-blooded creatures. It's boring, I know, but it
will create the chance of the shit not only flying but of it also
hitting the fan."

"And don't tell me, Jeremy, it's a good
idea, if a repetitive one, because you just happen to be aware of
something like that which is due to occur anyway in the near
future. It coincidentally happens to be a period of considerable
activity as far as our solar system's asteroid belts are
concerned."

"Well, I do happen to be aware of such an
event and it will occur on Monday, as I have informed them. But it
is not going to be because of any undue asteroidal activity; it is
going to be because some of my colleagues are again arranging for
it to happen."

"Do you know what I am thinking,
Jeremy?"

"No, but I believe I could make a pretty
accurate guess."

"Yes, well, I am thinking that you
somehow—don't ask me how—have an extraordinarily advanced knowledge
of astronomy and that you are simply in the position of knowing
more or less what is going to happen and where."

"And also when, perhaps?" With a smile in
his voice. "O.K., as you prefer, Peter. But this one is really
fascinating for my colleagues. As usual, they have to perform their
normal calculations regarding the asteroid's size, which has to be
big enough to produce a massive impact effect, but also small
enough to avoid any massive destruction. And this time, because of
the unusual characteristics of your atmosphere, they need to work
through highly complex computations to calculate the exact approach
trajectory required, also the speed and angle of entry, and then
what the appropriate size of the asteroid needs to be. They also
have to select an object of a specific mineral composition. It
mustn't break up too much on its way in nor, indeed, not
enough."

“Really?" I said. Is it not amazing what
convoluted intricacies this guy was continuously capable of
creating in order to support his fabrications.

"And even then," he continued, "they needed
additional technical data from me."

"Such as?" I asked.

"They needed to know what the maximum
allowable area was which could be affected by the impact without
causing harm to human beings, and whether that area was land or
water or a mixture, and where the precise center of that area
was."

"And so you told them?"

"Yes, and I gave them the center's exact
coordinates."

"And they are?"

"They are 54˚26´S and 3˚24´E."

"And where is that?"

"That is the most remote island on your
planet. It is uninhabited and it sits in the South Atlantic and it
previously belonged to Britain and now it belongs to Norway. It is
called Bouvet Island and it has an area of 49 km
²
and it
is mostly covered by a glacier."

"And the nearest inhabited land?"

"The nearest inhabited land is the
archipelago of Tristan da Cunha which is 2,260 kilometers away.
Tristan da Cunha belongs to Britain and is the most remote
inhabited
island on your planet, although the population
consists of only a few hundred people."

"And that is the information you gave to
your colleagues?"

"Yes, and now they are performing
calculations on matters such as non-dangerous tsunami ranges and so
forth. They are, as you say, having a ball."

Well, if anyone was having a ball, it was
Jeremy. He must be a pretty good student, I thought, he knows how
to do his research. In fact by now, he probably knows more about my
planet than I do.

And so we said goodbye. He expected to hear
from his professor tomorrow about the ongoing interview agenda and
he would give me a call so that we could decide on some mutually
convenient dates.

But my neurons were in disarray. They were
in total disarray. If this event were to happen, and happen when
and where he said it would happen, and if it didn't turn out to be
bigger than he thought and destroy us all, well…what then? What
would my neurons do? My neurons were in
Zugzwang
as we chess
players say. They were even beginning to reconsider the possibility
of an extraterrestrial explanation. And this caused a short-circuit
and they shut down in confusion and I fell asleep.

I had brought a suitcase with me today for
my stay in Barcelona. I stuck it in a corner, got myself a cup of
coffee and began checking the day's invoices. There were only a
few, but one of them was a billing for 'monthly fee: consultancy
services as per contract'. The amount was for €20,000 but there was
no further indication as to what the services were.

I called María into my office and asked her
what services we were receiving from this company, 'Gestoría
Transbalear S.A.'.

"Well…they perform various different
services for us," she said.

"Yes?"

"Well…things like finding new customers.
Marketing services. Advice on publicity matters. Er…things like
that."

She was nervous and a bit red in the face
and I smelled a rat. Or maybe several of them.

"What exactly have they done for us this
past month, María?" I asked, "I mean, concretely?"

"Yes, well…it's an ongoing contract and is
not based on any precise actions taken in any particular individual
month."

I wasn't going to waste any more of my time
on this. "I would like to have the name of the contact person,
please," I said.

"That is not a problem," she said. "I will
get hold of him and have him contact you directly."

"No. I will contact him personally. What is
his name?"

She didn't like that. She became extremely
nervous, I even saw her hands twitching, and her face had taken on
a deep crimson color. There was a pause while she tried to think of
which would be the best answer to provide me with, but she failed
to find an acceptable alternative to the one she gave me.

"Actually…er…it's Alfonso."

"Alfonso Orfila?"

She nodded.

"The general manager of our company? The one
who has just left?"

She nodded again. She definitely looked as
if she would have preferred to be somewhere else, Bulgaria
maybe.

"And who manages this…gestoría for him,
María?" I asked.

Another long pause. Again, no alternatives
found.

"Well…he manages it himself," she said.

"Oh, he does, does he? And how many
employees does he have?"

This provoked even more discomfort. She now
looked as if she would like to be able to disappear through the
floorboards, an option suddenly superior to the Bulgaria one.

"Actually…he is the only one," she
managed.

"O.K., María," I said. "I will handle this.
Thank you."

She stood up and fled from this chamber of
horrors, and my neurons reacted with a couple of quick thoughts.
Maybe she was in on this obvious fraud. Maybe she wasn't even
having an affair with Alfonso, maybe she was just doing the books
for his gestoría and typing his invoices and processing the
payments for him as well? And receiving a decent fee for doing so?
And maybe she
was
having an affair with him on top of all
that, why not? A
paid
affair, not the first woman on the
planet to be doing that. And why not? If I were a woman, I would
probably be doing exactly the same thing myself. But I would be
doing it at a far higher monetary level than this one, let it be
said.

None of which was here or there. Whatever it
was would come out in the wash. I picked up the phone and informed
Sr. Pujol. I told him we were stopping the payments and that it was
up to him to decide whether we should begin the legal process which
would most likely send Sr. Alfonso Orfila into jail. He said he
would think about it. As for me, I was going to reflect on what to
do about María. She would have to go, no question about that, but I
would need to find a provable reason to dismiss her without having
to pay her any money. Which I would, shouldn't be too difficult. I
would look into it when I got back from Barcelona.

At lunchtime, Pedro came into my office. I
am astounded, he said. Every single one of our customers, except
for two of them who haven't yet replied, say that twice per week is
more than sufficient to cover their needs. They have no need for a
daily shipment service. I can't understand why Alfonso always
insisted that everyone demanded a daily service.

That's O.K., Pedro, I said, you
were
only 99% sure. And I gave him a broad smile to let him know that I
wasn't being serious. It was interesting information, that's for
sure, but it didn't tell me what I should now do about it. Mothball
one of the ships? And no change in revenues?

In the afternoon I had a meeting with our
dockworkers. I explained the company's situation in some detail,
exaggerating—probably unnecessarily—the extent of the predicament
and I told them that severe and painful cost reductions were
unavoidable. Unfortunately these reductions would have to affect
all areas of the business including cargo operations. I would like
to discuss, I said, the extent to which we could reduce the
headcount requirement for loading and unloading our ships.