Wish You Were Here (38 page)

Wesley shrugged. ‘Oh, that's easy,' he said. ‘I always wanted it to be like this. You know, magic and adventure and nothing really being what it seems.Which proves that you can be a really substantial idiot for a quarter of a century and never even know it.'

‘Ah,' Dieb nodded. ‘But do you feel at peace now you know you're an idiot?'

‘No.'

‘Oh, well. Whatever's right, I guess.' Calvin glanced down at his watch. ‘A quarter of an hour, the prince guy said. If it's gonna happen, it ought to be roughly now.'

‘Ah. That's . . .'

‘Yes, isn't it?'

And it was.

 

It began with a slight nodding of the heads of the tall trees that stood on the crest of the hills at the north end of the lake.They nodded reluctantly and with an ill grace, as if they'd just lost an argument and were being forced to agree with their opponents' views. As they swayed, birds left them in prodigious quantities, until the sky seemed full of them.

Next, the shape of the hills themselves began to change. Earlier, those same hills had reminded Wesley strongly of a sleeping man lying on his side; the long, low slope to the west being the line gradually ascending from the feet to the rounded prominence of the hip; a valley where the line falls from the hip-bone to the slimmest part of the waist; another long, steadily climbing gradient to the highest point at the shoulder; another valley falling away to the level of the neck; another, steeper increment to the summit of the head on the far eastern side of the lake, and finally a sharp drop almost to the level of the water. Now, as the two men stared at the skyline, the mountains seemed to -

- Swivel, as the peaks of hip and shoulder dropped down -

- And rise, as shoulder and head lifted up, propped on one arm -

- And the knees bend, bringing the feet round -

- And then He lifts His torso from the waist and sits up, stretches His arms up until they're lost to the elbow in the clouds too high to disturb the uniform blue of the sky. And He yawns -

- Filling the amphitheatre of the lake with sound, and rubs His hands into the sockets of his eyes, grinding away undergrowth and scrub and topsoil. He blinks, and yawns again, and stretches out His hands towards the surface of the lake, groping, as if He can't see -

- Without His spectacles. He's bigger now, of course; every moment He seems to become larger and larger, although He doesn't actually grow. He stays the same size, but where you're standing looking at Him becomes steadily further and further away. So; now He's big enough for the perspective to make sense, He picks up the surface of the lake and screws it into His eye, like Bertie Wooster's monocle.

‘Grrnghzhgr,' He says, and yawns again.

He peers round, looking for His slippers. He sees them, brushes snow and cloud off the high points of the uppers, and jams His feet into them, treading down the backs.

The mountain has woken up, and wants His coffee.

 

 

‘Y
up,'said the squirrel, her cheeks full of part- masticated nut, ‘that's him. The boss. Be careful how you talk to him, he can be a bit grumpy when he's just woken up.'

‘The boss,' Wesley repeated, as his mind tried to make sense of the sheer size of what he was looking at. ‘You mean like - well, God or somebody?'

‘God?' The squirrel nearly choked on its chewed nut. ‘Hell, no. He's just the boss, is all. The Proprietor. The guy who owns this valley.'

‘Ah.'

The Proprietor was standing upright now, and where the lake had been was an irrelevant emptiness filled with His shadow. The mountains were gone too, presumably; except that you couldn't see the space where they'd been because the Proprietor was in the way. He filled all available space, in the way light and air and water tend to do.

‘You sure he's not God?' Wesley hazarded. ‘There's a sort of family likeness, maybe something in the line of the jaw . . .'

‘Nah,' the squirrel replied cheerfully, dropping nutshell crumbs on Wesley's head. ‘He's just - tall.'

‘Bet he has trouble buying shoes,' Calvin muttered.

‘He can afford to have them specially made,' the squirrel replied. ‘Believe me.'

Wesley looked down; he was feeling dizzy. ‘What's he doing now?' he asked.

‘Not much,' the squirrel said. ‘Trying to remember what century this is, probably. Like I said, he's not at his best first thing.'

‘Just a moment,' said Janice, shading her eyes with the palm of her hand. ‘If he's the guy who owns all this, who're you?'

‘Me?' The squirrel lifted her head, ran round the bole of the tree three times and came to a halt, standing at ninety degrees to the ground with her nose pointed downwards. ‘I just run this place for him.'

‘You're the manager?'

‘That's right,' the squirrel said. ‘He finds it easier that way. You see, it can be awkward when you're a giant, relating to people and all. They tend to feel a tad overawed, you know? But I can be anybody or anything I choose to be, so it's not a problem for me. Nowadays, he stays out of things right up till the end.'

‘The end?' Calvin looked at her. ‘Excuse me for nit-picking, but that's an ambiguous phrase. Is that end as in goodbye, world or end as in school's out?'

The squirrel shrugged, sending a ripple running from her shoulders to the tip of her bushy tail. ‘You disappoint me,' she said wearily. ‘Sorry, but you do. I thought you'd understand about perspective and scale by now, specially since you've seen the giant. Most people get the hang of perspective after they've been looking at him for a minute or so.'

‘Pardon me for breathing,' Calvin muttered. The squirrel ignored him.

‘The point is,' she said, ‘what it's the end of depends on where you're looking from. Don't you see? If you were standing on the edge of the lake looking into it, what'd you see?'

‘Water,' Calvin said. ‘Pondweed. Maybe ducks. Sorry, was that the wrong answer?'

‘You'd see,' the squirrel said, her tail twitching, ‘your reflection. OK so far? Very good.You'd see this guy standing beside the lake, and behind him lots of trees and mountains and stuff, but they'd all be very small and far away. They'd look like they were all much smaller than the guy - that's you, of course; or else they'd be the normal size for trees and mountains, but the guy would be huge. Like a giant. You follow?'

Wesley nodded but Calvin shook his head. ‘Sorry,' he said, ‘but I don't reckon it'd stand up in court. I'd know the scenery was really bigger than me, 'cos it'd just be an optical effect. A trick; you know, like a figure of speech or something, like you use to make things seem other than they are. I know about these things, I'm a lawyer.'

The squirrel rubbed her nose with her paws and spat out a piece of walnut shrapnel. ‘Yes,' she said, ‘you probably are, at that. Still, we don't claim to succeed in every case. Fortunately, it's not us that have to live with the consequences.' She twitched her whiskers, changed into a beautiful girl and landed beside Wesley. ‘Ow,' she said, ‘my ankle.'

‘Hey.' It was Linda this time, emerging from some reverie of her own, admittance by ticket only. ‘That's no damn use. How'm I supposed to get that into a camera lens?'

‘You could try standing back,' the girl said. ‘But I wouldn't bother if I were you. Nobody'd believe it wasn't faked.'

Linda scowled horribly. ‘Then where's the fuckin'
point
? What earthly good to me is something like this if nobody's going to believe it? I'd be the laughing stock of the profession.'

‘That's interesting,' the giant said; and the force of His voice hitting them was like the great wind that blew Dorothy clean out of Kansas. ‘The journalist believes it herself, doesn't she?'

‘Sure,' Linda replied, hands on hips. ‘But nobody else will.'

The giant laughed, like His counterpart in the sweet-corn commercials, except that He wasn't green or noticeably jolly. ‘I like it,' he said. ‘The journalist thinks that it doesn't matter if she believes something; unless she can make someone else believe it, it can't be true.'

‘I didn't say that,' Linda replied irritably. Remarkable, the others thought, she isn't a bit afraid or overawed. ‘What I said was, it's no use. Doesn't matter a toss if it's true or not. What good is something only I believe in?'

‘This is wonderful,' the giant said. ‘And I suppose that if she can make other people believe in something, whether it's true or not, is equally unimportant. This one's been wasting my time. That's two of them.' He sighed, and His breath made ripples in the air that broke up vision. ‘Is that damned inspector still hanging around? We're going to be in trouble at this rate.'

Okeewana shrugged. ‘Can't be helped,' she said. ‘And I think the other two are going to be all right.'

‘I'll come to them in a moment,' the giant replied. ‘Don't confuse me, for God's sake, or I'll miss something. Let's deal with the lawyer and the journalist first. Ready?'

Okeewana nodded and produced notepad and pencil. ‘Shoot,' she said.

‘Right.' The giant thought for a moment. ‘The journalist is easy,' He said. ‘Obviously she's a dangerous pest and can't be allowed out again, but she'll be happy enough here. Find her something she'll enjoy, clear up the loose ends Flipside, put her on the staff. You can let one of the others go in exchange.'

The girl nodded, and turned a page in the book. ‘What about the lawyer?' she said.

‘His wish is granted,' the giant replied, ‘and let it be a lesson to him. All his life, ever since he was a kid, he wanted to be the big lawyer, the guy who could make the right seem wrong and the wrong seem right. But all the time, while he was hacking and slashing his way, like psychotic Jack scrambling up the beanstalk, there were always these niggling feelings of guilt holding him back, making him doubt whether it was all OK, whether he'd be able to get away with it. Very good; his wish was that those aggravating doubts should stop. Let it be.' The giant paused, while the girl tapped some keys on a pocket calculator. ‘What's the result?'

Okeewana nodded. ‘It's fine,' she said. ‘Happy ending.'

(She didn't say out loud what she saw; which was that seventy-two days later Calvin Dieb squeezed his partner Hernan Piranha out of the firm and almost immediately afterwards landed three new corporate clients of such staggering magnitude that even he was happy, for a while; and that three years to the day after that, he died, at his desk, of a massive coronary, aged forty-nine.)

‘That's all right, then,' said the giant. ‘Let's do the boot-faced girl next, shall we? Nice, easy job. She wanted to have men fall in love with her. Does she still want that?'

The girl looked at Janice, who made a peculiar noise. ‘I guess not,' she said. ‘Can she go?'

The giant nodded. ‘From now on, she'll wake up every morning, look in the mirror and thank heaven she was born lucky.' He grinned. ‘That just leaves the wetslap, yes?'

The girl nodded. Wesley was just about to ask Hey, what about him, when he realised—

‘Difficult,' the giant said. ‘After all, his wish was so peculiar. Do you think it's done him any good?'

‘Hard to tell,' the girl replied. ‘We've squeezed some of the godawfulness out of him, so I don't think he'd be too much of a nuisance if we let him go back. On the other hand . . .'

‘Hey,' Wesley objected, but his voice was completely inaudible against the giant's soft tongue-click.

‘I know,' the giant said. ‘Yes, got it, I know what we'll do to him. All right, that about covers it for now. Any more?'

The girl shook her head. ‘And next time there's going to be four at once,' she added, ‘I'd appreciate a bit more notice, if that's no problem.'

‘That's fair enough. Actually, you didn't do too badly, all things considered. What about that sonofabitch inspector, by the way?'

‘Leave him to me,' the girl replied with a smile. ‘Oh, and one last thing. You said I could lose one of the permanents now we've taken on the journalist. Any preferences?'

The giant shook his head. ‘I'll leave that one to you,' he said. ‘You know about these things.'

‘Fine. Actually,' she added with a wicked grin, ‘that'll help me deal with the inspector. Ciao, then.'

‘Whatever.' The giant waved vaguely, took out His monocle, breathed on it, polished it on His sleeve and walked through it, leaving only a few concentric circles of ripples behind, and a duck sitting on water.