Here Comes the Sun Page 4

  That seemed to work. She remembered that, for all its apparent show of bravado, she’d got the distinct impression that the voice had sounded apprehensive when she’d threatened to flush it out with music. She selected Fifty Favourite Marches By The Band Of The Coldstream Guards, a present from an elderly uncle with a very odd notion of generosity, put on her headphones and sat down. After ten minutes (‘Lilliburlero’, ‘Colonel Bogey’, ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’ and, incredibly, ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’) she came to the conclusion that demonaical possession was a damn sight better than premature deafness, and turned that off, too.

  She made a cup of tea.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I know you’re in there. Come out.’

  Absolute silence, both internal and external. Perhaps, she said to herself, I’m going mad.

  This possibility (oh hell, the milk’s gone off, I’ll have to use powdered) hadn’t occurred to her before, but her innate sense of logic recommended it to her most strongly as an explanation consistent with the known facts. If it was the right explanation, it would require serious thought and quite possibly a major adjustment to her lifestyle. Girls who hear voices inside their heads have only two options: they can raise armies and drive the English out of Aquitaine, or they can seek professional help.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ said the voice. ‘You’re not like her at all.’

  Jane relaxed. She wasn’t going mad after all.

  ‘Out,’ she said firmly. ‘Where I can see you.’

  ‘Very well.’

  The man materialised against the worktop, picked up her cup of tea, and sipped it. She switched the kettle back on and took another mug down from the rack.

  ‘Not like who?’ she said.

  ‘Joan of Arc,’ the man replied. ‘Funny girl, our Joan. Not mad, not by any stretch of the imagination, but definitely the sort that gives sanity a bad name.’

  ‘That’s my tea you’re drinking. The milk’s off, by the way.’

  ‘In addition to which,’ the man went on, ‘because she spent so much time in a helmet she had the most appalling build-up of wax in her ears. It really puts you off, that sort of thing.’

  ‘You’ve just made that up,’ Jane said. The man grinned.

  ‘Ten out of ten for intuition,’ he replied. ‘You’re quite right. When Joan of Arc was around I wasn’t more than a niggling little theory at the back of the European subconscious. I got all that stuff from one of the blokes in our department. Claims he invented the wax cotton jacket back in the fifteenth century just through having to crawl in and out of her ears all the time.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ Jane replied. ‘Look, is there any point to this persecution, or is it just my bad luck? I must add at this point that I’m not the slightest bit frightened of you.’

  ‘You’re not?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh shit. That’s a nuisance. I have this theory about fear as an organic component of any fully integrated recruitment programme.’The man sipped his tea thoughtfully and Jane observed that the level in the cup hadn’t changed at all. The little white flecks that signified needled milk, however, had vanished.

  ‘Now that’s odd,’ she said. ‘I thought your lot were supposed to turn fresh milk sour, not the other way round.’

  ‘Static electricity,’ the man replied, sipping again and pulling a face. ‘Personally, I hate fresh milk. It sets my teeth off edge. Nine out of ten for observation, by the way.’

  ‘Only nine?’ Jane enquired, as the kettle boiled. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because,’ the man replied, ‘you should have recalled that the milk was fresh on the doorstep this morning, and it’s been in the fridge all day. It’s my presence that turned it bad, and now I’m doing the decent thing and turning it good again, by reversing the flow of ions temporarily.’

  ‘You can do that, can you?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ the man replied, widening his grin as an archer draws his bow. ‘I’m very versatile. You might say that I’ve got a lot of ions in the fire.’

  ‘You might say that, yes.’

  Jane dropped a teabag into her cup and poured water on to it from the kettle. It was stone cold.

  ‘Childish,’ she said.

  The man lifted his left foot like a horse being shod and inspected the sole of his shoe. ‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘Empty it out and have a look.’

  Jane scowled at him and tipped the cup out into the sink. There was a clatter, and she saw four or five little lumps of what looked like glass.

  ‘Diamonds,’ the man remarked casually. ‘Produced by electrolysis. They’re not stable, mind,’ he added, as Jane scrabbled frantically for them. ‘They’ll turn back into quick-dissolving sugar in a moment, just you see.’

  So they did. Jane drew her breath in sharply.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ she said.

  ‘Nor have I,’ the man replied. He sat down on the kitchen stool, picked up a slice of Battenberg that Jane had been saving for a rainy day and bit into it. Its surface area remained undiminished, despite the crunching noises the man was making. ‘Another proverb bites the dust,’ he observed with his mouth full. ‘You want to know why I’m haunting you?’

  ‘I thought you said you weren’t a ghost.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m a . . .’ He hesitated.

  ‘You’re a devil,’ Jane said, calmly. ‘I’d gathered that.’

  But the man was frowning disapprovingly. ‘Not a devil,’ he said. ‘We don’t use that word, it’s got overtones. We consider that word pejorative and demeaning. We are a distinct metaphysical group with our own unique cultural and spiritual identity, and I’d be grateful if you’d respect that.’

  Jane nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I can understand that, just about. What are you, then?’

  The man’s frown deepened slightly and he put the cake back, apparently untouched, on the plate he had taken it from. ‘On the whole,’ he said, ‘we don’t hold with generalising descriptive nouns. We firmly believe that each and every being in the cosmos is an individual, and . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ Jane said, folding her arms, ‘that’s fine. You’re an individual. An individual what?’

  ‘We don’t like to . . .’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘Well.’ The man seemed distinctly embarrassed now. He picked up the salt cellar, shook a little out into the palm of his hand, and threw it over his right shoulder. ‘If pressed, we prefer to describe ourselves as dæmons.’

  ‘Demons.’

  ‘Dæmons,’ the man corrected her, hamming up the diphthong. ‘From the Greek daimon, meaning a spirit, supernumerary god or præternatural entity. We feel . . .’

  ‘But your leader is Satan, right?’

  The man now looked distinctly offended. ‘Wrong,’ he said. ‘Look, when you go out and buy takeaway chicken, you don’t honestly believe that the business is still run by a seventy-year-old Texan colonel with a little white beard, do you? It’s the same with us. We’ve kept the name, I suppose, or at least parts of the corporate identity, but we’ve moved on a long way from those days, I can tell you. We’ve diversified our interests into completely new areas.’

  ‘Like the Mafia.’

  ‘Not like the Mafia. Like Rupert Murdoch or Howard Hughes, even. We really aren’t in the same business that we used to be in at all, even say two hundred years ago.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Jane said. ‘You’re moving into the area of communications and information technology. Or financial services, maybe. I could believe that,’ she added thoughtfully.

  ‘Let me make you a cup of tea.’

  Jane shuddered involuntarily. ‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I like my tea made with wet water and organic tea-leaves. I don’t imagine there’s much of either of those in any cup of tea you’d make.’

  ‘You’re being very hostile,’ the man said.

  ‘And you still haven’t answered my question,’ Jane replied sweetly. ‘Why me?’

  ‘Like I said,
’ the man replied. ‘We want to offer you a job.’

  ‘As a devil? No thanks.’

  ‘Will you please not use that word.’

  ‘You look rather silly when you’re upset,’ Jane observed, ‘and not at all the way I’d expect a demon - sorry, dæmon, I hope I pronounced it right . . .’

  ‘Perfectly. And how should I look?’

  ‘Don’t change the subject. I know the one about Jesus wanting me for a sunbeam, but I reckon your idea’s a bit over the top, don’t you?’

  The man sighed, and Jane suddenly felt a pang of sympathy for someone else who’d had a long day. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Tell me about the job.’

  The man looked suitably grateful. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘And I’m sorry I sneezed you earlier,’ Jane added. ‘That was an accident, actually, honest. I get hay fever sometimes, in the summer.’

  ‘How unpleasant for you. Basically, the job . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  The man thought for a moment. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘it’s a bit tricky to put into words, really. If I could just pop into your head for a moment . . .’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ Jane said quickly, and then added, ‘But thank you for asking, anyway.’

  ‘Okay then,’ the man said. ‘I’ll see what I can do just explaining it verbally, and we’ll take it from there. Basically . . . Oh, nuts!’

  Jane looked startled. ‘What is it?’

  The man looked sheepish. ‘It’s my bleeper,’ he admitted. ‘I’m on call, you see. Can I possibly borrow your phone a minute?’

  Jane suppressed a giggle. ‘You’re the duty devil tonight, are you?’

  ‘Will you please . . . ?’

  ‘Be my guest,’ she said. ‘It’s in the other room. Not long distance, is it?’

  The man made a sort of simpering noise. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘It’s about a mile and a half to my office, as the lift-shaft plummets.’ He walked through, shutting the door behind him. Somehow, Jane managed to keep herself from listening at the keyhole.

  The door opened, and the man’s face appeared round it. ‘Sorry about this,’ he said. ‘Something’s cropped up, I’ve got to dash back to the office. Look, can you forget all about this for the time being and we’ll talk later?’

  Jane nodded. ‘Though I can’t promise to forget all about it.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that,’ the man said. ‘And I’ll take care of the phone bill, too. Thanks for the tea.’

  He vanished.

  Jane stood stock still for about twenty seconds. Then she blinked twice, shook herself, and realised that she was in the flat.

  ‘Funny,’ she said aloud. ‘I can’t remember taking my coat off.’

  She considered the matter for a while, until something at the back of her subconscious assured her that it really wasn’t worth worrying about. Instead, she decided, she’d have a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake, wash her hair and then watch the telly for an hour or so before going to bed.

  FIVE

  Wayne, trainee technical assistant (second grade), looked down over the dashboard of the sun and wondered if something was wrong.

  If it was, he told himself, then it wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t asked to be transferred at a moment’s notice from Tides, where he had just mastered sweeping up the staff canteen floor, and to be given this bloody great big thing to fly. Nobody had told him how to fly it, probably because nobody seemed to know. The sum total of hands-on vocational training he had received comprised the words ‘I think the ignition is that one there’.

  Why was everyone down there looking at him?

  He’d heard somewhere that mortals aren’t supposed to look directly at the sun, because it damages their eyes or something equally feeble. Pretty well everything damaged mortals, as far as he could gather. If half of what he’d heard was true, it was a miracle there were any of them left.

  It hadn’t been easy getting the stupid thing off the ground in the first place, and the damage wasn’t his fault either. After all, anybody with any sense would naturally assume that it took off vertically. Certainly nobody told him you had to drive it very fast along the ground for twenty minutes before it picked up enough speed to wobble off into the air.

  He pressed what he hoped was the speak button on the radio and tried once more to establish contact with the control tower. His voice, he noted, was thin with panic.

  ‘Oi,’ he said, ‘you down there. What the fuck am I meant to be doing up here, anyway?’

  It had been very slightly easier once he’d worked out how to operate the joystick; although that was a case in point. You’d think that if you pushed it back it would make the thing go upwards. It didn’t, though. Remarkable how quickly an ice-cap will melt if you do low swoops over it.

  ‘Is there anybody down there, for shit’s sake?’

  He gave up. On the left-hand side of the console there were some buttons he hadn’t pressed yet. He pressed them. They didn’t seem to make any difference.

  There had to be some way to make this thing fly steady. If he could get down lower, perhaps somebody on the ground would know what to do, and they could shout up at him and tell him. He noticed a lever with a red knob on it, and pulled. That certainly made a difference.

  ‘Help!’ he screamed.

  About five minutes later, once he’d got used to flying along upside down, he managed to grab hold of the lever again and tried to pull it back. It wouldn’t budge. It was stuck.

  At least, he said to himself, I can’t see what’s going on on the ground. I don’t think I’d want to know, somehow.

  Instinct told him that since he couldn’t see where he was going, the sensible thing would be to try and go higher, because the higher up you went, the fewer things there were that you could possibly bump into. The odd star, perhaps; maybe a comet or two. Not the ground. He wrestled with the joystick, but now that was jammed too. He had a notion that he was going into a spin, zooming downwards. If the great burning disc he was attempting to manipulate hit the ground, the chances were that it would probably perform a massive leg-break and whizz out into the back end of the universe for six byes.

  Not my fault, he muttered, as he strained against the stick. Not my fault, not my fault, not my fault . . .

  Jane woke up and sat bolt upright in bed. Something was wrong.

  It was, she realised, the dawn. It was doing something it shouldn’t be doing. It was flashing on and off.

  With her head still full of damp, heavy sleep, she stumbled out of bed, clumped to the window and hauled on the curtains. Dear God, she thought, I’m right.

  The sun, riding high - very high - in the morning heavens was flicking on and off like a huge, blazing indicator. Blinding flashes of light, then sudden darkness, twenty times a second. All the signs were that planet Earth was approaching a junction and preparing to turn left.

  Perhaps, Jane said to herself as she struggled into a pullover, it’s an eclipse. Lots of eclipses. Perhaps they’re using up an enormous backlog of eclipses before they pass their best-before date.

  She stopped and thought for a moment. There was, she realised, something else.

  Very slowly, she turned round and looked for her watch. It was difficult going, because the stroboscopic effect of the flashing sun made it impossible to focus or judge distances. Eventually, though, she found it and peered at the dial. It was half-past eleven. At night. She’d only gone to bed an hour ago. What the hell were they doing having dawn?

  Perhaps, she thought, there’ll be an announcement in a moment. There is no cause for alarm, it’s only a drill. We’re having a dawn-practice and we forgot to tell you. Sorry about that.

  Then she twigged. The sun was going the wrong way. Instead of East-West, it was going West-East. She could tell this because, in addition to flickering away like very old film footage, it was going at one hell of a lick.

  Jane stood there, one small mortal trying to make sense of the Universe. All things cons
idered, it was a pretty ambitious undertaking, and nobody could have blamed her if she’d not even tried. Aristotle had tried, after all, and Thomas Aquinas, and Descartes, and Einstein, and a lot of others too, all of them better qualified and probably far better paid than she was. The combined results of their researches, one had to admit, had not been impressive. Nobody could possibly have reproached Jane if she had failed. But she didn’t; in fact, although she wasn’t really conscious of it, she hit the nail on the head dead centre and with considerable force.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Somebody’s made a banjax.’

  As if to congratulate her on the accuracy of her summary, the moon rose from behind a clump of very frightened-looking clouds, zoomed across the sky, stopped just underneath the sun and hovered there. On the perfectly blank silver sphere of its face, Jane was sure she could make out an expression, and it reminded her of her geography teacher at school. Jane frowned.

  ‘Honestly!’ she said.

  Then she drew the curtains tightly and went back to bed.

  Wayne, trainee technical assistant (second grade), opened his eyes and looked up.

  Not that it was up, strictly speaking, because he was still flying along in a dead spin, upside down, straight towards the centre of the earth. As far as he was concerned, however, it was up. They call it relativity, and up to a point it works.

  ‘Ger,’ he said.

  Directly above, or perhaps below, his head, he could see the moon. What was more, he could see the man in the moon. And the man in the moon wasn’t pleased, apparently.

  To be precise, he was standing up in his cockpit waving his fists in the air and shouting. He was too far away for Wayne to be able to hear him, let alone read his lips, but he had a pretty shrewd idea of the general gist of what was being said.

  ‘Not my fault,’ he yelled. ‘Not my fault!’

  What the hell, the man couldn’t hear him anyway. Wayne shrugged, relaxed his shoulders, and leaned back in the seat. Any minute now, he reckoned, he’d collide with the earth and none of it would matter very much anyway.