The Outsorcerer's Apprentice (24 page)

“Um, yes,” he said. “You haven’t seen a phone, have you?”

The elf-girl grinned at him. “Often,” she said.

“Um, this particular phone. It’s a LoganBerry XPXX3000—”

“Ooh, nice.”

“Dark grey casing, with this and that and the other.”

“Cool.”

“It’s mine,” Benny said. “I dropped it.”

She gave him such a sad smile. “Sorry,” she said, “haven’t seen one of those. Give me your number, and if it turns up, we’ll call you.”

“That’s the point, I
haven’t got a phone
–Sorry,” he added, “I really didn’t mean to shout, I’ve been having a bad day.”

She nodded. “I hate those. Email address?”

“Just a minute.” He looked deep into her silver-grey eyes. “You know about technology and stuff.”

She laughed; silver bells and tinkling waterfalls. “Of course we do, silly. It’s our business.”

His heart stopped still. “Really?”

She half turned and pointed at the benches. “Precision electronic engineering,” she said. “It’s what we do.”

A little light came on in his head. Elves, but small and friendly. The music. The green smocks. Consumer electronics. “I know who you are,” he said. “You’re Santa’s little—”

“Please,” she said, and the pure silver of her eyes clouded just a little, but then she forgave him. “That’s a common misconception. We are, in fact, independent contractors, and for many years we did work almost exclusively for a client commonly associated with lists and reindeer.”

“But not any more?”

She shook her head. “Dreadfully sorry about your phone,” she said. “If it turns up, I’ll have them put it somewhere safe. Goodbye.”

Suddenly he wasn’t quite so welcome. Never mind. “Fine,” he said, “and thank you, that’d be really kind. Meanwhile—”

Her eyes were getting colder by the second. “Yes?”

“I was just wondering,” he said. “You know, kids nowadays, you must’ve made
zillions
of phones and laptops and tablets and things, you know, for the SC person.”

“We might have done.”

“Great. Um, you wouldn’t happen to have one left over I could buy off you, by any chance? Expense no object. I have gold.”

She shook her head. “Terribly sorry,” she said, in a voice that suggested she wasn’t sorry at all. “But under the terms of our agreement with our new exclusive client, we aren’t allowed to sell anything to anybody else. Have a nice day, now. That’s the door, over there.”

“New client?”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re the press, aren’t you? A journalist.”

“Me? Good God, no. Promise. Cross my heart. Look, this client. He’s got technology?”

“Oh yes.”

“Phones?”

“Undoubtedly.” She hesitated, and a hint of her earlier tone crept back into her voice. “But that’s not what we’re making now.”

“You don’t suppose your client would sell me a phone?”

She laughed, but this time it wasn’t silver bells. “I don’t think so, no. Not unless you’re a major government.”

“Allow me to introduce myself,” Benny said. “I’m Prince Florizel. Around here, they don’t come much majorer than me.”

“Um.” Her eyes narrowed. “That might be different. I’d have to ask the wizard, of course. But—”

“The wizard. That’s who you work for.”

“Of course, who else? But I happen to know he’s looking to expand his activities in this sector, so I can ask him, if you’re interested. Of course, there’s minimum-order requirements, end user certificates, that sort of thing. Still, there’s ways round everything.”

“Hold on,” Benny said. “End user certificates. Isn’t that just for—?”

“Well, yes. We’re making guidance systems for long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles.” She smiled confidingly. “It’s a bit of a step up from Xboxes and PlayStations, but that’s the direction the industry’s going in, so we reckoned we’d better keep up or get left behind. And when the wizard offered us such a good deal, which was so much better than what Mister Shave-Those-Margins-Ho-Ho-Ho used to pay us, we thought, heck, why not? After all, microcircuitry’s microcircuitry, and who gives a damn what it’s eventually used for?”

Benny was suddenly rather short of breath. “Just to clarify,”
he said. “You used to make toys for kiddies and now the wizard’s got you making missile parts.”

“Yes. So?”

“Well.” He took a deep breath. “It’s not very Christmassy, is it?”

She looked at him, and he knew that, yes, she was an elf all right. “So?”

He smiled. It came out all wrong. “Very sorry to have bothered you,” he said. “I think I’d better go now.”

She shook her head. “Security,” she called out. “Get him.”

Security were Elves, too, but with a distinct goblinish look. They stood maybe five feet in their iron-shod boots, but height isn’t everything. They advanced. Benny took a long step backwards, and stopped. The wall was in the way. Oh, he thought. Then, feeling incredibly self-conscious, he drew his sword.

Later, he rationalised that they weren’t to know he was the world’s foremost fencing klutz, and maybe the sword Tyrving was as famous as the guard captain had told him it was. In any event, Security stopped dead in their tracks and stared longingly at him, like a dog on a lead watching a cat. He edged along the wall until he could feel the door handle in the small of his back. “Sorry,” he said, then he turned the handle with his left hand, darted through the door and slammed it hard behind him.

Preoccupied as he was for the next three minutes with running down tunnels and being terrified, Benny nevertheless found spare capacity in his brain for a fierce burn of indignation. Missile guidance systems, for crying out loud. Really, there’s no call for that. Whoever this wizard was, evidently he was a nasty piece of work, and if only he could spare the time from doughnut-hunting he’d be inclined to send in the palace guard and have him arrested. And then he thought; really, so you’d pick a fight with someone with
magical powers, who would appear to have access to the sort of technology you need to get home. Besides, missile guidance systems aren’t all that bad. At least, if they’re any good, they stop the bombs falling in the wrong place. Practically humanitarian.

A sharp stitch in his chest made him stop for breath; he listened, and could hear no pursuing footsteps. Jurisdictional issues, presumably, goblins and Elves not being known for working and playing well together. Talking of goblins; in his headlong flight, he’d noticed several more apparently abandoned ore carts and neat stacks of tools, but not a single goblin. Which was, of course, delightful, but he couldn’t help wondering where they’d all got to. Another thing he hadn’t seen was any sign of his phone, though he hadn’t been searching quite as diligently as he’d have wished. So much for heroism.

His feet were sore from running, but he trudged on down the tunnel, gazing keenly into the shadows as if to make up for his earlier casual attitude, until he came to a three-way junction. His heart sank. Still, if he was right about why he was there at all, this was exactly the sort of challenge he ought to expect, a trial of diligence and perseverance. He called to mind the time he’d spent a whole day searching for a phone-jack adapter, when he could’ve gone online and ordered a replacement for the price of a slice of cheesecake. I can do this, he told himself, and took the left-hand fork.

Another long, arrow-straight tunnel, goblin-free and adequately lit. He walked down it for about three minutes, and came to a door. He tried it. Locked.

He turned away and was about to go back the way he’d come when he heard graunching noises, as of a key being turned in a rusty old lock. The door had opened a crack, and a nose was sticking out.

“Hello?” said the nose.

“Um,” Benny said.

The door opened enough to reveal the nose’s face. It was old, bald apart from a few wisps of white hair that really shouldn’t have bothered, and decorated with a pair of spectacles with the thickest lenses Benny had ever seen. “Yes?”

“What?”

“Does he want something?”

“Excuse me?”

“Does he want something?”

Ah, Benny thought, one of those conversations. He was about to back away when a vestigial remnant of his inner hero nudged him sharply and said,
go on, ask him
. “Actually, yes,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to have found a phone, would you?”

A blink, grotesquely magnified. “What’s a foan?”

Shucks. “Small grey sort of box thing, about so long and so wide, glass on one side.”

“Like a picture frame.”

“I guess so, a bit. Why, have you found one?”

“No,” said the bald man. “He’d better come inside.”

Benny was about to point out that he was actually rather busy and in a hurry, but a stick-thin arm shot out and grabbed his wrist in a surprisingly strong grip, and he found himself being hauled through the door before he could resist. He heard a clang, and a repeat of the graunching noise. “This way,” the bald man said, and vanished into the shadows.

“Um, excuse me,” Benny called out, but all he could hear was footsteps pattering away into the distance. He examined the door; locked, and the key not in the keyhole. Damn, he thought, and plunged into pitch darkness.

He went quite some distance, with nothing but the ring of his own footsteps for company, until he collided with an invisible barrier. He groped for it and found it was another
door, this time unlocked. He opened it and went through into the blinding glare of a single candle, stuck in the mouth of an empty beer bottle.

“Welcome,” the bald man said.

He was sitting in a chair, the only one in the huge chamber. Behind him, on all four walls, were huge floor-to-ceiling highly polished brass plates, which amplified the candle’s flicker into a blazing light show; and on the plates, so small he could barely read them, were hundreds of thousands of names. He squinted and read the closest ones. He recognised them at once—

Stardollars Coffee

Orinoco.com

Fleabay

Anglo-Latvian Petroleum plc

Booble inc

“Welcome,” the bald man repeated, “to the registered office. We,” he added, after a short pause, “are the Chairman. We can spare him two minutes.”

“Um, thank you,” Benny said. “But really, I ought to be—”

“Would he,” the bald man said, leaning forward and peering at him so hard that Benny was afraid the glare through those lenses would set him on fire, “like a job?”

“Um.”

“Of course he would,” the Chairman said. “Well, let’s see, we think we’ll start him off as CEO of Booble Holdings inc. It’s a nice straightforward job, nothing much to it.”

“Excuse me,” Benny said gently, “but I think you’ll find Booble’s already got one.”

“Oh no.” The Chairman shook his head. “Trust us, we know. We’re the Chairman.”

“Um, really,” Benny said, backing away a pace or two. “I mean, they’re the biggest dot-com company in the world,
I don’t see how they’d manage without someone running things.”

“Ah.” The Chairman laughed, revealing four teeth. “He’s thinking of Booble inc. We’re talking about Booble
Holdings
inc. The shell company.”

Benny wasn’t quite sure why he was arguing the toss with a man who looked like the Before photo in an advert for resurrection. But he said, “That’s the same thing, surely.”

“Oh no.” The Chairman shook his head, dislodging a carefully placed wisp of hair, which floated off and hung down over one ear. “Completely separate. Chinese walls. Got to be. Otherwise—” he stopped and looked carefully round. “Otherwise,
they
could get through, see?”

“No, not really.”

“Got to be separate,” the Chairman went on, rubbing his bony hands together. “All of them, all of our companies, all separate, all safe. Safe, in here, with us. This is the registered office.”

Benny took a deep breath. “You’re sure you haven’t seen a phone? It’s a LoganBerry XP—”

“
He
brought them all here,” the Chairman went on, sucking the tips of three fingers. “For us to keep them safe, from
them
, safe, separate, all our beautiful companies. They’re all ours, of course,” he added, suddenly throwing his arms wide. “All our companies, safe, in here, separate, with us.”

Benny looked at him. “It’s a tax thing, isn’t it?”

The Chairman let out a screech that went through Benny’s head like an ice pick. “No,” the Chairman yelled, scampering round and round in a tight circle, “mustn’t say it, not the T word,
they’ll
hear, it’s not safe. He mustn’t say the T word, not ever. Now then.” The Chairman seemed about to go from hysterical to calm in a heartbeat. He straightened up and went back to his chair. “We think we’ll also make him CEO of Orinoco Holdings and United Amalgamated
Tobacco (2013) inc. Too much for us to do on our own, see, not as young as we were, got to look after them, got to keep them
safe
. Can he start straight away? There’s a handsome remuneration package, and benefits.”

“Really,” Benny said, “it’s terribly kind of you, but I do have to get out of here and find my phone.” He stopped. It was worth a try. “Benefits?”

“Oh, yes. Lovely benefits. He can have all the benefits he wants.”

“Private jet? Penthouse suite?”

“Naturally. Nothing too good for the CEO of Orinoco Holdings.”

“Expense account lunches?”

“Well, of course.”

“With maybe a, um, doughnut to follow?”

The Chairman started to cackle wildly. “Of course,” he screeched, “of course. All the doughnuts he can eat, of course he can. So long as he does as he’s told. So long as he keeps them separate, keeps them
safe
, he can stuff his face all day long, bless him.”

“Ah.” Benny managed to find a smile from somewhere. “Actually, I could really do with a doughnut right now, if you’ve got one handy.”

The Chairman turned his head sharply and gave him a grave stare. “Not
now
,” he said. “He can’t have his benefits
now
, what can he be thinking of? Only when
He
comes, when the wizard comes, to settle the accounts for the Great Reckoning. Then he can have his doughnuts, the horrible greedy creature, then he can have all his benefits, and
they
won’t be able to touch them, they’ll be
deductible
. When the wizard comes, he can have a
bonus
. But not till then.”