Pizza To Go: The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy Read online

  PIZZA TO GO by Tom Holt

  Short Story

  From The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy

  “I see,” said Jesus Christ. “You forgot to tell them to bring sandwiches.”

  The green valley was full of people, as far as the eye could see: men and women of all ages sitting or reclining on the grass, children chasing and hiding and splashing in the shallow water of the little stream that ran down from the rocky crest above. There were thousands of them.

  “It’s Peter’s fault,” said Barnabas pre-emptively. “I asked him what we were going to do about catering, and he said no worries, he had a mate who could give us a really special price—”

  “I never said that,” Peter replied. “I said if we were going to organize caterers, then I might be able to get us a good deal, provided—”

  Five thousand eager new converts, filled with the grace of God and not much else, hummed in the valley like a hive of bees. A nice walk in the desert, a jolly good show with lots of parables, followed by a slap-up feed and home in plenty of time for Gladiators; who could ask for a better way to spend a bank holiday Monday?

  “We’re going to get lynched,” John groaned. “There’ll be little bits of us scattered about all the way to Caesarea.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said the Messiah. “Leave this to me. Honestly, if it wasn’t for me, I don’t know what you’d do.” From his sleeve he took a mobile phone and a small piece of card, on which was written:

  PIZZA. TO GO

  We deliver

  Any time

  Anywhere.

  The kitchen is an inferno. Can’t take the heat? Stay out. Even if you can survive in temperatures well in excess of 60°C, don’t go in there unless you know exactly what you’re supposed to be doing, and can do it faster and more efficiently than the most sophisticated machine. The penalty for getting under Zelda’s feet is getting spoken to by Zelda. Being eaten alive by termites would be infinitely preferable.

  Because this is Zelda’s kitchen, possibly the most extraordinary place in spacetime. From this small prefabricated industrial unit perched in the cleft of an anomalous singularity in the heart of the interface between the weirdest outposts of science and the credible end of magic, there flows a never-ending stream of wide, flat styrofoam trays, whisked away by the delivery guys through fissures and wormholes to every part of everywhere and everywhen. Because Zelda’s kitchen exists simultaneously in every moment of time, from the theoretical Beginning to the presumably inevitable End, all the countless billions of pizzas and dips and side-salads and portions of garlic bread ever sold by Pizza to Go, the greatest and most successful delivery service in the universe, have to be cooked and prepared at the same time. A certain degree of efficiency is, therefore, essential.

  When asked how she copes, Zelda shrugs. “It’s a family business,” she says. “We manage.”

  There’s Rocco and Tony, who make the bases; Freddy and Mike, who do the toppings; Carlo, who minds the ovens; Rosa and Vito, who chop the vegetables and deal with the side-orders; Frankie, Ennio and young Gino, who do the deliveries; and then there’s Zelda, who takes the orders, writes out the tickets and does everything. In the far corner sits Poppa Joe, grunting and mumbling in his sleep, very occasionally waking up and being allowed to slice pepperoni or fetch a new jar of olives. As soon as the rush is over, they’re going to take a break and sort out the physics of it all. But the rush is never over, because it hasn’t even started yet. And never will.

  “We’re nearly out of mozzarella,” Mike warned, not looking up from what he was doing. Nobody took any notice. There wasn’t time to run out of mozzarella, and so they never would.

  “Three Margeritas and a Seafood,” Zelda shouted, her hand over the mouthpiece, “and two garlic breads. Frankie, you still here? You shouldn’t be here. Get going.”

  “I been and came back,” Freddie replied calmly. “What’s next?”

  Zelda pointed to a stack of trays. “That lot for the seventeenth century,” she said, “and one for 1862; you can do it on your way back. Carlo, where’s that Double Pepperoni, hold the onion? There’s customers waiting.”

  Carlo, a bald, black-bearded giant with sweat pouring down his face, nodded and muttered “Inna minute.” The searing heat of the controlled fusion reactor, shielded by 70 ft of pure zephronite crystal, had long since roasted his skin into pink leather, but he didn’t have time to worry about things like that, not when customers were waiting.

  The mathematics were quite simple, when you thought about it. When you don’t have time, there is no time. When there is no time, you have all the time in the world. Or, as Zelda puts it, if you want something done, ask a busy woman.

  “Hello, Pizza to Go?” Zelda stuffed a finger in her other ear, the receiver cradled in the slot it had long ago worn between her shoulder and her jaw, while she wrote the ticket. “Two Neptunos extra sweetcorn and a salad, and where’s that for? Okay, I got it, that’ll be with you in twenty minutes.” She covered the mouthpiece, relayed the order and put the ticket on the spike. “Gino,” she called out, “instead of just standing there, do something. Address is on the ticket.”

  Gino had just got back from delivering six Quattro Stagioni to a bunker in the middle of the decisive battle of World War VI; he was glowing bright blue and whenever he touched anything, it crackled. That was okay; you got used to stuff like that when you delivered. He glanced at the ticket, nodded and grabbed the pile of trays.

  “On my way,” he said.

  “I don’t know where they could have got to,” said Lady Macbeth apologetically. “The woman who gave me their card said they were very reliable.”

  Typical, she thought. Unexpected guests, nothing in the larder, the obvious thing to do was to send out for pizza. Now she had twenty-six ravenous thanes sitting round her table looking as if they were ready to eat the wall-hangings. She caught her husband’s eye and gave him a savage look. Serve him right for bringing people home without telling her.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a slight movement. She was about to look round and investigate when her husband suddenly jumped up, knocking his chair over. He was pointing at an empty place at the table, and his eyes were as round as cartwheels.

  “Which of you has done this?” he croaked. “Thou canst not say I did it: never shake your gory locks at me.” He stepped back and trod on the cat’s tail.

  Everybody was staring; not at the empty place, but at King Macbeth, who was starting to froth at the mouth a bit, and at the cat, which was half-way up the arras and going like a train. If they’d looked to where he was pointing, some of them might just have made out a pale blue shimmer, in the shape of a human figure holding a stack of trays.

  “Excuse me?” Gino repeated. “Six tuna and anchovy and a meat feast?” Nobody was paying any attention, the host was having hysterics and a footman with a jug of water had just walked straight through him. He recognised the symptoms. Not again!

  It happened, sometimes. When the batteries in the interface frequency modulator started running down, or a bit of dirt got on the points of the symbionic condenser, there were these awkward moments when he wasn’t 100 per cent there. Either people couldn’t see him at all, or they saw something which wasn’t actually him; it had given rise to all kinds of problems, including a widespread belief in ghosts and a surprising number of successful religions, and it was bad for business. Carlo had promised to take a look at the equipment as soon as the rush was over.

  “Hello?” he said. “Can anybody hear me? Six tuna and anchovy and a meat feast?”

  There had been that awful time when King Belshazzar had ordered a
jumbo Four Cheeses and dips for 108. Gino never had worked out what had gone wrong there; as far as he could tell, the words ‘Service Not Included’ had come out as ‘Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin’, and there’d been some kind of minor war … Zelda was going to call them up and explain as soon as she had a spare moment. Gino pulled a face. He hoped this wasn’t going to turn out to be one of those deliveries.

  “Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,” the man was shrieking, “the armed rhinoceros or the Hyrcan tiger—” The guests were at the carefully-looking-the-other-way stage, and his wife had deliberately annihilated two napkins and a small floral ornament. And the pizzas were going cold. He put them down on the table with the ticket on top of the boxes, muttered something about coming back later for the money, and stepped back into the anomaly.

  “Yeah, sure,” Zelda muttered, when he got back. I’ll tell Carlo, soon as the-rush is over. Meanwhile, there’s pizzas waiting. You think they deliver themselves?”

  With a sigh, Gino picked up the stack of trays and glanced down at the ticket. He groaned. “Not them again,” he said unhappily. “Hey, Zelda, why can’t someone else go this time?”

  Zelda looked up from her table. “Get outa here,” she said. “You should be grateful you got a job at all.”

  “Okay, everyone,” said Lucrezia Borgia cheerfully, “pizza’s here.” She took the pile of trays, handed over a handful of gold coins and gave Gino an unpleasant grin. I’ll just heat them through and then it’s pizza time,” she called back over her shoulder. From behind her came happy, hungry noises; Lucrezia’s parties were always popular. For some reason.

  “Excuse me,” Gino said.

  Lucrezia looked at him. “Sorry,” she said, “wasn’t that the right money? Just a moment, I’ll get my purse.”

  Gino took a deep breath. “It’s not that,” he said cautiously. “Money’s exactly right, thank you. It’s just… “

  “Hm?”

  “Miz Borgia,” Gino said, “please, I’m sorry if I’m talking out of turn here, but these pizzas—”

  “Yes?”

  “You do like our pizzas, don’t you?”

  Lucrezia frowned. “They’re very good,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

  “And you know we can do you any extra toppings, whatever you want? All you gotta do is ask.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind. And now if you’ll excuse me—”

  “Only,” Gino said, “I get the impression you, urn, add things to them. Extra, er, toppings and stuff. There’s no need, really.”

  “Oh yes there is,” Lucrezia said, with a smile.

  “Really,” Gino said desperately, hopping from foot to foot, “you shouldn’t have to bother, a busy lady like yourself. Next time, if you just let us know—”

  “It’s fine, really,” Lucrezia replied. “Many thanks. Goodbye.”

  She closed the door. Gino raised his hand to knock again, but let his knuckles relax. Not his place to go interfering, after all. It wasn’t as if they were doing proper sit-down catering.

  He climbed back into the anomaly, pulled out the choke and pressed the starter. It wouldn’t go. That was another thing Carlo was going to have a look at as soon as the rush was over, and at times it was a damn nuisance. Once it had flatly refused to work at all, and he’d been left hanging around for thirty-six years until he’d made another delivery in the neighbourhood and had been able to hitch a ride back with himself.

  Sometimes it helped if you kicked it. He kicked it. It didn’t help.

  Bugger.

  He sat down and wondered what to do. If the worst came to the worst, it wouldn’t be long before Lucrezia placed another order; but Renaissance Italy wasn’t the sort of place he wanted to hang about in for too long if he could possibly help it. He could ask Lucrezia if he could borrow her phone; no, that wouldn’t work, because she didn’t have one. Only a few very special customers had fully operational anachronisms; the rest patched their orders through by leaving messages sealed in bottles or buried in lead cylinders, which were subsequently dug up by archaeologists and phoned in from the twentieth century or later; the pizzas could then be delivered retrospectively in the usual way. Stupidly, Gino had come out without a bottle or a lead cylinder; and somehow he didn’t fancy knocking on the door of the Borgia residence and asking if he could borrow a spade and bury something in their back garden. There was no telling what you might dig up if you tried that.

  He was considering scratching something on a nearby statue when someone coughed meaningfully behind him, trying to attract his attention. That was odd; apart from when he was making the actual delivery he wasn’t supposed to be visible.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Hello,” replied the stranger. “You’re Gino, aren’t you?”

  The stranger was a short, fat man with grey hair and a cigar sticking rather incongruously out of his Renaissance face. Gino wasn’t sure what to make of that; still, none of his business. “That’s right,” he said. “Sorry, do I know you?”

  The man smiled. “Not yet,” he replied, “But I have a feeling you will. You’re the pizza delivery boy, right?”

  Gino nodded. He wasn’t sure he liked what appeared to be going on. He didn’t know exactly how it worked (it was one of the things Zelda always did; she’d promised to explain it to him as soon as the rush was over), but there was a system whereby nobody was supposed to take any notice of the delivery guys. As far as the customers were concerned, they were just a collection of arms and legs who stood behind the pizza boxes when the door opened. If this man knew who he was, something had gone wrong. Still, he couldn’t say that without being rude.

  “That’s right,” he said. “But if you want to place an order, you’ve got to call in. I just do the deliveries.”

  The man shook his head. “It’s okay,” he said. “I already ate. There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. You got a minute?”

  Gino bit his lip. “Actually,” he replied, “we’re really busy right now.” He thought of something. “Maybe I could get back to you once the rush is over,” he suggested.

  “I don’t think so,” the man replied. “You aren’t going anywhere or anywhen, because the anomaly’s busted. Am I right?”

  “Yes. Hey, how do you know about that?”

  The man fished in his pocket and produced a brilliant node of blinding orange light. “Because I busted it,” he said, and put the light away again. “Now, let’s talk.”

  “Hey,” Zelda called out, “anybody seen Gino? He’s been gone a long time.”

  Keeping track of the deliveries was one of Zelda’s principal nightmares. Because, on paper at least, everything in the kitchen was happening at the same time, Frankie and Ennio and young Gino really ought to be making all the deliveries simultaneously, which should mean they were (a) always here, just about to go out or just coming back; (b) never here, because they were out delivering; and (c) never anywhere else, because nobody can be in two places at once. Sometimes it could get quite awkward, and it was then that she missed Nicky, who used to be the fourth delivery boy until he left to set up on his own as Father Christmas.

  Not, of course, that he’d left yet. Or, indeed, that he’d ever worked there at all. That was something else she was going to have to do once she had a moment’s peace; make up Nicky’s back wages. At a rough guess, she owed him something between an infinite sum of money and nothing at all.

  “Gino’s out on a call,” Frankie said as he dashed past, a quivering tower of boxes balanced in his arms. “Here, I’ll take his order if you like.”

  “Okay.” Zelda pointed, and Frankie seooped up twelve further trays. “But you can’t do it all. If he’s got held up in traffic or something, someone else‘11 have to make his calls instead.” She looked round, but there was no way she could spare anybody right now. Maybe later, when it wasn’t quite so busy, but…

  Unless—

  “Hey, Poppa,” she yelled, drowning out the scream of the antimatter blender. “You wan
na make a few calls for me? I don’t like to ask, but you can see how we’re fixed.”

  Poppa Joe opened one eye. “Sure, Zelda,” he muttered. “Anything you say.”

  Carlo looked up from the tray of pizzas he was watching. “Just a minute, Zelda, you can’t go sending Poppa out on calls. He ain’t up to that sort of thing no more.”

  Poppa glared at him out of his one good eye. “You shut your face, Carlo,” he grumbled. “I was delivering pizzas before you were even born.”

  “Poppa, I was delivering pizzas before I was ever born, that don’t mean to say you can go wandering off at your … “

  Wisely, he left the sentence unfinished. Most of the time, Poppa Joe sat in his chair, no trouble to anybody; but he was still the owner of the business, and their father. He wasn’t so old he couldn’t still give them a smack round the ear, even if, in Carlo’s case, he’d have to stand on a chair to reach.

  “Thanks, Poppa,” Zelda said. “The address is on the ticket. Mind how you go.”

  “It’s quite simple,” the man said. “All I want is a lift. Not far out of your way,” he added. “After all, what is?”

  Gino shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but we’re not allowed. If Zelda found out—”

  The man nodded. “Your sister Zelda. Formidable woman. But how’s she going to find out ever? And if you don’t, how are you going to get home without a main anomaly drive?”

  Gino fidgeted nervously. Things like this didn’t happen to Frankie or Ennio, only to him. Just because he was the youngest. It wasn’t fair.

  “All right,” he said. “Where do you want to go?”

  The man smiled. “That’s better,” he said. “Actually, it’s more a case of when. You wait there, I’ll be right back.”

  The man’s name was Edwin Potter, and he was an art dealer. Thanks to a chance discovery he’d made in his youth, he was the richest and most successful art dealer ever. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Edwin Potter, there probably wouldn’t be any art at all. That didn’t necessarily make him a nice man.

  Edwin Potter had a small but functional single-seater anomaly of his own, which he used to transport paintings by struggling young artists from the fifteenth century forward in time to where he could sell them for the sort of money that avarice only dreams of if it’s been breathing in glue fumes. If he wanted to, he could even sell the same painting over and over again (which is why there are several versions of the same Leonardos and Michelangelos, all fervently claimed as genuine by their owners, who have the receipts to prove it). True, there was only room in the anomaly for himself and one medium-sized canvas balanced awkwardly on his knees; but at approximately 9 million per cent pure profit per trip, he was prepared to rough it. Accordingly, he was rich; so rich, in fact, he could have anything he wanted.