Here Comes the Sun Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Also by Tom Holt

  Dedication

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  www.orbitbooks.net

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © Kim Holt 1993

  Cover illustration by Lauren Panepinto. Cover copyright © 2012 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First US e-book edition: September 2012

  ISBN: 978-0-316-23315-6

  Also by Tom Holt

  Expecting Someone Taller

  Who’s Afraid of Beowulf?

  Flying Dutch

  Ye Gods!

  Overtime

  Here Comes the Sun

  Grailblazers

  Faust Among Equals

  Odds and Gods

  Djinn Rummy

  My Hero

  Paint Your Dragon

  Open Sesame

  Wish You Were Here

  Only Human

  Snow White and the Seven Samurai

  Valhalla

  Nothing But Blue Skies

  Falling Sideways

  Little People

  The Portable Door

  In Your Dreams

  Earth, Air, Fire and Custard

  You Don’t Have to be Evil to Work Here, But It Helps

  Barking

  The Better Mousetrap

  May Contain Traces of Magic

  Blonde Bombshell

  Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Sausages

  Doughnut

  For MY MOTHER But for whose tireless encouragement And selfless dedication to the furtherance of my writing career (To the neglect and detriment of her own prodigious talent as a crime writer) I would now be the son and heir of a bestselling authoress Instead of just another Penniless Author

  ONE

  The sun rose. It was dirty. It was late. It was thirty billion miles overdue on its next service. There was a thin film of oil on its surface, the result of a sprung gasket. But it was up and running, and that in itself was something of a miracle, all things considered.

  ‘Over to you, son,’ said the Principal Technical Officer, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘Just don’t drop it, all right?’

  The Assistant Technical Officer scowled. ‘You always say that,’ he replied. ‘And have I ever . . . ?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  The older official looked down at the great fiery disc and smiled in spite of himself. True, he could hear the distinct grinding noise and smell the burning oil, but it was still an impressive sight. They’d built things to last in those days, which was just as well. Of course, they had the funding, then.

  ‘Here,’ said the younger official. ‘The gyro’s packed up again.’

  ‘Gyro,’ replied his colleague scornfully. ‘Bloody modern tat. You’ll just have to fly it on manual, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh no,’ whined the younger official. ‘That’s no good. If I gotta do that I’ll have to miss lunch again.’

  ‘Tough.’ The Principal Technical Officer’s soul passed a few observations about the younger generation, with particular reference to those members of it who wore earrings. ‘When I was your age . . .’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, you told me.’

  ‘Given anything, I would, for a chance to fly her solo.’ He paused, remembering. ‘We took a pride in our work in those days,’ he added.

  ‘Yeah. Well.’

  The younger official had a point. Things were different now, the Principal Technical Officer admitted to himself as he packed up his knapsack and put on his bicycle clips. Not quite so run down for one thing. The Great Bear wasn’t held in its place in the firmament by three hundred thousand miles of insulating tape and a bent nail.

  ‘You should think yourself lucky,’ he said without conviction, ‘that you’ve got a job at all.’

  His junior colleague didn’t even bother to reply; he was leaning on the dead man’s handle, eyes vacant, Walkman headphones on, staring down towards Betelgeuse. Something told the Principal Technical Officer that if humanity made it through to nightfall with nothing worse than a few hours of inexplicable darkness it should count itself lucky.

  Still, he said to himself, as he hoisted himself on to his ancient bicycle and pedalled stiffly away across the sparkling freeway of the stars, if you’re going to take a pride in your work, your work’s got to be something you can take a pride in. And if the whole shooting-match is virtually derelict, what can you expect? No wonder the boy’s demoralised. Where’s the point in bothering when nobody else seems to give a damn?

  His way home took him past the moon-sheds and, following this train of thought, he slowed to a halt, leaned on his handlebars and looked in through the great double doors. Inside, the moon was being winched back into dry dock for the day. From a distance, it never failed to take his breath away. Seen up close, it wasn’t a pretty sight.

  ‘Strewth,’ the old official muttered under his breath.

  Admittedly, it was quite some time - centuries, probably - since he’d taken the time to stop and look at it this closely, but there was no denying the fact that the old girl was in pretty poor shape.

  ‘What have they been doing to her?’ he said aloud.

  One of the maintenance engineers, an alarming-looking youth with a Mohican haircut and a ring through one nostril, looked round and stared at him. He didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘What’s up with you, grandad?’ the youth demanded.

  ‘You’re not going to use sandpaper on her, are you?’ the old official said, horrified.

  ‘You what?’

  No wonder, the old official reflected. No wonder the poor old bus has got all those great big pits and craters all over her once-smooth surfaces. He sighed; he knew there was no point uttering the words that were trying to squeeze their way through the gap in his teeth, but he said them anyway.

  ‘You shouldn’t use that stuff on the outer skin,’ he said. ‘First thing you know, you’ll get pitting.’

  ‘So what?’

  So what indeed? Nobody cared, obviously; and as he cycled away, the old official couldn’t fi
nd it in his heart to blame them. Where was the point in trying to keep it going when it was patently clapped out? They were going to scrap it soon in any case, they said, commission a brand new one. They’d been saying it for a long time now.

  As usual, he stopped off at the Social Club for a tea and a bacon sandwich before going home. He parked his bicycle, chained it to a lamppost, and walked into the room, which looked like one of the more run-down East German railway stations. Another example, he couldn’t help reflecting, of the way this whole operation is going downhill.

  ‘What’s happened to the pool table, Nev?’ he asked.

  ‘Jammed,’ replied the steward, washing glasses. ‘They’re sending someone later on.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Or at least,’ the steward added, ‘so they told me.’

  ‘Right.’

  The steward made an indeterminate noise and put the bacon sandwich in the microwave. Another bloody innovation.

  ‘Looking forward to the darts match tomorrow, Nev?’

  The steward sighed. ‘Cancelled, George old son,’ he said. ‘Due to lack of interest. Hadn’t you heard?’

  Jane stopped what she was doing and looked out of the window at the sun.

  This, she reflected, is what they call too much of a good thing. All very well looking fondly back on the long, hot summers of one’s childhood, but when you’re stuck in an office with a glass roof, windows that don’t open and a heating system mysteriously jammed on, even in summer, you start thinking nostalgically about good, solid rain.

  ‘I can remember rain,’ she said aloud. ‘Gosh, that dates me.’

  Three weeks, give or take a day, and already the news-readers were smugly saying gloomy things about standpipes and hosepipe bans. What’s wrong with a country where three weeks of sun turns the reservoirs into dustbowls?

  She turned away from the window and tried to concentrate on the VDU in front of her. It was staring back at her with a sort of blank look, as if it had been sniffing glue. She picked up the phone.

  ‘Trish,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong with the screens?’

  ‘System’s down at Reading,’ Trish replied. ‘Back on after lunch.’

  ‘Great,’ said Jane. ‘Tell them we’d be better off with a card index and a notched stick.’

  Never mind, there’s plenty I can be getting on with till then, said Jane to herself. Staring out of the window, for instance.

  Instead, she looked through her handbag, found her address book and dialled a number.

  ‘Apollo Staff Bureau,’ said a voice like a lady Dalek at the other end of the line. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jane said brightly, ‘I want a new job, please.’

  ‘We could advertise it,’ said the Chief of Staff.

  The rest of the committee looked at him.

  ‘Well,’ said Personnel eventually, ‘it’s an idea, certainly. Where would you suggest?’

  ‘Um.’

  ‘Tricky one to place, don’t you think?’ Personnel continued, with the air of someone getting ready to ram a point into the ground. ‘I mean, it’s not one for the Exchange and Mart, is it?’

  ‘Let’s try being positive for once,’ Staff replied testily. ‘That’s the problem, really, we’re all too keen to look at the disadvantages and not the . . .’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Branch interrupted. ‘With you all the way there. But I think Personnel’s got a point too, you know.’

  All God’s children gotta point, said Staff to himself, it’s just that some of them are bloody silly ones. He drew a spaceship on the agenda and tried to calm himself down.

  ‘I still think,’ he said, putting the tips of his fingers together as a means of stopping his hands clenching, ‘that we should advertise it. I mean, why not? It’s what they do in the private sector. They don’t keep staff vacancies a deadly secret, like they were something to be ashamed of. They go out and they ask people to apply.’

  ‘Right on,’ said Personnel, with all the enthusiasm of a corpse. ‘So where do we look?’

  There was a silence.

  ‘All right,’ said Staff, ‘what do you suggest? We need someone and we need someone quickly. You’re the Personnel Officer. What’s your considered opinion?’

  ‘I think it needs thinking about.’

  Another silence; during which Staff noticed that the burning thrones they sat on, as a mark of their superior executive status, didn’t burn any more. They just glowed intermittently and hummed.

  ‘Have you thought yet?’ he enquired.

  ‘Not yet, no.’

  ‘Fine,’ Staff replied. ‘You take your time.’ He crossed his legs and started to doodle ostentatiously.

  ‘Why don’t we use the usual procedure?’ asked a voice from the other end of the table.

  ‘Because . . .’ Staff started to say, but checked himself. There were times when his paranoia slipped the lead and got mixed up with his angst, when he sincerely believed that Finance and General Purposes was a management plant, deliberately seeded on to this committee to make sure that nothing ever got done. Since it was very probably true he invariably dismissed the idea from his mind; it is not just mankind who cannot bear too much reality. ‘Because,’ he went on, ‘there’s three feet of moss growing in the usual channels and something’s got to be done.’

  ‘Oh, we’re all agreed on that,’ Branch said. ‘No question about it, something’s got to be done. On the other hand, we don’t want to rush into something without having worked it carefully through. I mean. . .’ He made a slight but expressive gesture and went back to impersonating a doorstop. Staff took a grip on himself, straining something in his integrity, and tried to sound conciliatory.

  ‘All right, then,’ he said, ‘what about an agency? I gather they’re very good at this sort of thing. You know, head-hunting. ’

  ‘Which agency had you in mind?’ said Personnel.

  ‘Look,’ said Staff, ‘this is supposed to be an ideas session, right? We’re supposed to be a think tank, bouncing ideas off each other. Has anybody got any ideas at all?’

  There was a slightly embarrassed pause; and then Personnel, judging his timing to perfection, smiled and cleared his throat.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said. ‘I’ve got an idea that this needs thinking through carefully.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Branch. ‘Looking at it in the round, I mean.’

  ‘I think,’ said Finance and General Purposes, ‘that we should go through the established procedure.’

  Staff closed his eyes. ‘Good God, Norman,’ he said to the ceiling, ‘what an absolute stroke of genius. Yes, let’s all do that, shall we? Well, thank you very much for your time, gentlemen. I honestly believe we’ve all made very real progress today. Same time next week then?’

  Instead of going back to the main building, Staff turned left down the corridor, walked briskly on past the post room, turned right by the file store and pressed the button for the lift. Two minutes later, he swore at the lift-shaft and started to climb the seventeen flights of stairs that led to the DA’s office.

  ‘I’ll show the bastards,’ he muttered, rather breathlessly. ‘Just for once, I’ll damn well show the . . .’

  The further up he went the dustier it got. There was something about the decor, something very subtle which you couldn’t put your finger on, that suggested that nobody had been this way in a very long time, and that there was probably a very good reason for that. Perhaps, Staff said to himself, it’s the fact that all the treads on this staircase are rotted half through.

  At last, breathless and sweating, he found himself at the top of the building. It was dark here (no light bulb), and cold, and ever so slightly spooky. It was years since he’d been up this far. It was a fair bet that there was nobody here any more.

  In front of him there was a glass door so grimy that he had to wipe it with his sleeve before he could read the lettering on it. But there was a light behind it, implying the presence of sentient life. That, as far as S
taff was concerned, would make a pleasant change. He screwed up his eyes and read the inscription on the window.

  D. GANGER

  it said, and in smaller letters underneath:

  DEVIL’S ADVOCATE

  ‘Oh well,’ said Staff to himself, repressing a shudder, ‘I’m here now.’

  He knocked smartly on the door and turned the handle.

  ‘Try a bit of silver paper and some gunk,’ said the Technical Adviser into the receiver.

  The voice at the other end crackled at him. ‘Will that work?’ it enquired.

  ‘Dunno.’ The Technical Adviser leaned back in his chair and put a peppermint in his mouth. ‘Might do.’

  ‘Look,’ said the crackle. ‘I’ve got a bloody great disc of helium broken down over East Africa. Things are starting to get burnt. Suggest something.’

  ‘Not my fault,’ replied the Technical Adviser automatically. ‘I told ’em at Depot it needed a whole new gearbox, but would they listen? Nah.’ He crunched the peppermint into the mouthpiece, sending a noise like the end of the world down the wire. ‘Look,’ he said, after he had cleared the shrapnel off the roof of his mouth, ‘tell you what I’ll do for you. I’ll send out Maintenance with the van. They’ll have you back on the road again, no worries.’

  The crackle reminded him by way of reply that the Maintenance Unit had been disbanded two years ago as part of the cutbacks programme, and its staff reassigned to Oceans. ‘What about the backup team?’ it suggested.

  ‘Nice idea,’ replied the Technical Adviser, thumbing through a roster. ‘Trouble is, they’re down at the Social Club at Depot fixing a jammed pool table.You want them, you got to fill in a Yellow at least forty-eight hours in advance.’

  ‘Then what do you suggest?’

  ‘You could get out and push.’

  The crackle considered this, gave the Technical Officer some advice of an intimate nature, and disconnected itself.

  The fish in Lake Victoria were finding that the ceiling was rather nearer than usual.