The Quorum (50 page)

* * *

The Royal Suite was guarded by two three-piece suit samurai. They weren’t apparently armed, but something about their frozen faces told Sally they could kill in any one of twenty-five different ways with each individual finger. She kept on walking past them. They didn’t look at her, which was what tipped her off. Any male human being will take at least a glance at any female human being between the ages of 12 and 45 who happens to walk past. She paused at the turn of the corridor, and pulled out her compact to check her eyebrows. She wouldn’t wear makeup if it didn’t give her an excuse to carry around a mirror she could use for looking at people behind her. Baron Ghidrah and attendants came out of the lift. The samurai let them into the suite without a word. Double doors were quietly shut behind them. There was no way in from the front. She decided to try the Nice Mice first.

Cloud Incorporated had a drinks party going in their suite, and there was nobody on the door to check her ID. Which was a shame, since it was very convincing. Unbearably happy music burbled out of the loudspeakers - Mantovani Plays Nauseating Vomit or something - and brightly dressed children and adults were congregated around several chubby people in realistic, man-size Nice Mice costumes. The Nice Mice tended to come in colours Sally found offensive - dayglo pink, lemon yellow and eggshell blue, apricot white. Children laughed as their adorable whiskers twitched.

‘Shall we do our special Niceness Dance, children,’ squeaked a thinner-than-usual Nice Mouse who was striped like a barber’s pole, ‘and don’t forget to hum the Niceness Hum and smile the Niceness Smile.’

Some children cheered. Sally assumed they must be robots. No real kid would put up with this icky crap. But the children joined in, imitating the Nice Mouse’s epileptic gestures and humming like demented bees through risus sardonicus grins.

‘Oh hello, isn’t this fun?’ It was Tilly Barnes again. There was no escape. Perhaps she should have tried to get past the Godzilla Brothers. It could have been less painful. ‘You must meet my children. They’ve just been made into Honorary Nice Mice Little Ones. They’re so excited.’

Three little replicas of Tilly Barnes in pastel overalls grinned perkily up at Sally. Their names were sewn across already-prominent tummies - Jake, Jonquil and Dylan. They each had an armful of Nice Mice and were practically levitating with glee. Jonquil looked as if he was about to have an accident.

Sally guessed there must be a marijuana session going on in the back room. With all these hippies around, that would make sense. She sniffed the air. Nothing. Tilly Barnes handed her a paper cup full of thick cherry goo. There were no alcoholic drinks on offer. No wonder Cloud Incorporated didn’t need bouncers.

‘You must meet Cornfield, he’s so real.’

‘Gosh, I wish I were real.’

‘No, really. Here he is...’

Sally looked around, expecting some kind of executive longhair mutation. She only saw parents and children. And Nice Mice. One of the costumed characters - the stripey bastard -came over, its adorable whiskers erect with glee, and hugged Tilly Barnes until she went oomph.

‘Hi Sally,’ said the mouse through its perky grin, looking at her name-tag. ‘My handle is Cornfield Zwingli. What’s your starsign?’

‘You see. Real.’

The mask was very good, and the costume didn’t bag at all. Somehow, Sally thought that was obscene. She saw sharp little teeth in the mask’s snout, and no amount of adorableness around the whiskers could disguise the rattiness of the tail.

‘I’m new in the toy racket,’ Sally said. ‘I hear you run a very profitable business.’

‘It’s more than a business, Sally,’ squeaked Zwingli, ‘it’s a children’s crusade. We at Cloud Incorporated truly believe we’re doing something important, educating a generation for tomorrow. Who knows, Sally, if today’s world leaders had been Honorary Nice Mice Little Ones as children, perhaps the planet wouldn’t be the Bad Vibes Zone it is.’

Sally hated the indiscriminate use of her first name. She put on her hard, businesslike face. ‘That’s fine, but my shop has to stay going. What are your profit margins like?’

A faraway twinkle came into Zwingli’s eyes. ‘Negotiable, Sally. Whatever you can lay out is in harmony by us. We have no trouble scoring bread. I guess it’s because we’ve got Niceness on our side, Sally.’

‘How do you stack up against the Gargantuabots?’

Sally fancied a dark cloud passed over Zwingli’s gleam. The adorable whiskers trembled with a hint of indignation. ‘Well, Sally, far be it from me to badmouth our colleagues but I hardly think a dinosaur that turns into a nuclear weapon is the sort of bag future world leaders should be playing with. Pardon me, I see some really important people I have to rap with...’

Zwingli bent down, and wriggled his snout. ‘Hi, children. Jake, Jonquil, Dylan, what Nice Things have you done today?’

‘Isn’t he...?’ gasped Tilly Barnes, evidently near some sort of sexual climax, groping for an adjective.

‘Real? Maybe.’

Sally made the mistake of sipping her cherry goo, and quickly dumped the drink. She wasn’t sure she could take any more of this. Looking at Zwingli, she realised just how detailed his costume was. Under his tail, she thought she could see a tiny, pristine asterisk of asshole. And she couldn’t work out how his human head fit inside his rodent one allowing his moist and cheery eyes to be so prominent. Those heart-shaped patches of darker fur around the eyes were particularly creepy. She shivered, despite the heat of the party, and made a getaway. Mercifully, no one stopped to check her ID as she tried to get out of the suite.

* * *

The samurai were still on duty. For symmetry’s sake, Sally had to get into the Sphere Corporation suite and look around. So far, the whole set-up had only been strange. There was no evidence of actual brain-washing - unless there was something chemical in the goo. It was possible that an epidemic of appalling taste among parents and children could have turned the toy business into a two-horse race. But not likely.

‘Hi, Sally Rhodes, hotel security,’ she said, waving her bus pass at the samurai. ‘You got a bomb threat. Some ecology nuts complaining about your country’s animal rights record.’

The samurai didn’t look at her. They stood still as wooden Indians. She continued, ‘Me, I think if whales are so intelligent they should stop swimming near Japan, right? It’s probably a hoax. We get one every week. Have you let anyone in wearing a duffel coat, eating yoghurt and carrying a big ticking black ball with “BOMB” written on it?’

Neither moved a muscle, but the door opened. When she got through alive, Sally assumed her routine had worked.

‘Thanks fellas. Like I say, it’s bound to be a mix-up. But ever since Norman Tebbit got his wake-up call, the management has been jumpy.’

There was an army of Gargantuabots arrayed on the floor, ranked according to size, ferociousness, adaptability and kill-count. Baron Ghidrah sat in a throne-sized chair, surveying the formation. Executives were prostrate before him, foreheads to the carpet, bums in the air. No one took any notice of her.

Baron Ghidrah took out a sales chart from a folder on his lap and held it up like a magician demonstrating a trick. The graph line rose steadily, but was marred by a minuscule dip near the top. With great deliberation, Baron Ghidrah tore the chart in four and handed it to an executive. The man rose to his knees and took the paper. He balled it and put it into his mouth, gulping manfully. Baron Ghidrah clapped once, a sound as sharp as a pistol shot. The executive reached for his stomach and pulled his shirt open. From the back, Sally couldn’t see anything, but she heard burst buttons skittering on the polished wood floor.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘where’s the bomb?’

The executive on the point of seppuku froze, and Baron Ghidrah finally paid her some attention. He glared, his eyes red, and rose from his throne. His clothes creaked like cast iron. The head of the Sphere Corporation stepped past his executives, and walked slowly, lumbering like a copper giant, down the aisle. Multitudes of Gargantuabots turned. Sally smiled, but her patter seized up in the back of her throat.

The Baron’s eyes burned, making him look like the Shogun of Castle Dracula. The kimono slid from his shoulders. She saw where the skin joined the plastic, and where the plastic joined the metal. Lights went on and off behind a transparent plate in his chest. His shoulders heaved as the spiked epaulettes slid out of the flesh. His head raised six inches as he came apart at the waist, and his entire torso spun round. A tail snaked out. A new head, that of a bejewelled dragon, shot out of his former back. Steam gushed from holes in his body.

Shit, Baron Ghidrah was a Gargantuabot!

‘Never mind,’ Sally said, ‘wrong room number. It happens all the time. I’m a hooker. Some big shot wants me to dress up like a Sandie Doll and do it with some Nice Mice.’

The Dragon Ghidrah stalked towards her, its massive feet denting the floor. The executives were undergoing lesser transformations of their own. Sally saw four sets of claws extended. The upper set clacked wickedly, the others just dripped venom.

‘Uhhh,’ she tried to think of something to say, ‘Klaatu barada nikto?’ The dragon kept coming. ‘Don’t know that one, eh? Pax. Uncle.’

A set of claws lodged in her pullover, scrunching it tight around her spine. She was lifted up, wool biting into her armpits. Her jeans were dripping with hot water. She searched in vain for some trace of humanity in the creature’s face.

‘Hey, chill out, Baron babe,’ came a mellow voice from behind her. ‘Remember, you haven’t done your Nice Thing today.’

The dragon snarled, and dropped her. She landed painfully on one knee. Zwingli was in the room with them. He was still dressed up. Or, rather, he was still a Nice Mouse.

The dragon roared, and spat a gobbet of flame onto the carpet near her.

* * *

‘So, let me get this straight,’ the General began, ‘you two are representatives of, what did you call them, galactic empires? Like in Star Wars? Great toys, lousy movie, by the way. And you thought that rather than zap each other to spacedust in some border dispute, you’d all just beam on down to Earth and see who could sell the most toys?’ No one contradicted him. ‘Not only is that crazy, it’s immoral. Didn’t you think of the business ecology you’d be pissing all over? God, I hate extra-terrestrial know-it-all show-offs. Kick their alien asses back into orbit, that’s what I say.’

Baron Ghidrah, who had been prevailed upon to revert to his human disguise, grunted, and spat a hissing coal into an ashtray. Zwingli twitched his adorable whiskers, but nobody bothered with him.

‘Tell me, why did you have this war in the first place?’

‘Don’t lay that Bring Down City Jazz on me, dude,’ Zwingli squeaked. ‘They started it. We just want to live in peace and oneness with tolerance for all creeds and colours, and a respect for a wide variety of spiritual beliefs and ways of life.’

‘Then what was the war about?’

‘Them,’ croaked Baron Ghidrah. ‘Look at them. How do they make you feel... inside? Be honest.’

‘Nice Mice? They make me sick.’

‘Then how do you think we feel? Can you imagine the sheer pleasure of wiping out millions of these vermin with a single blast?’

‘Now you come to mention it,’ said the General, ‘I reckon I can.’

Everyone looked at Zwingli. He grinned perkily and hummed his Niceness Hum. His stripes revolved in serene contentment.

‘So, in conclusion, you guys want to piss off back to the stars and finish slugging it out, and you’re prepared to leave us alone?’

Baron Ghidrah cleared his throat in assent. Zwingli chirruped, ‘This isn’t settling anything. We’ve saturated the market, and no clear top dog has come out of it. Those are the breaks. Sorry, guys.’

‘Terrific. Miss Rhodes, here’s your thou. Although you didn’t do much to earn it, since these bozos were leaving anyway.’

Sally caught the envelope. ‘So that’s everything?’

‘Um, not quite.’ It was Woolavington. He’d been quiet since the meeting began, as usual. ‘Miss Rhodes, when you get home you’ll find a Woolavington Train Set waiting for you. It’s a vintage model from the thirties. I wish you every happiness with it. If you ever have children, please let them play with it. And, um, I have a little announcement. Miss Rhodes, General Jones, you’ll be pleased to know I’ve been talking with our friends here and it looks as if Woolavington and Company will be trading high again. I’ve secured the sole and exclusive rights to the manufacture, sale and exploitation of the Nice Mice and the Gargantuabots and, um, all related merchandise, including books, films, videos, cartoons, T-shirts, lunch-boxes, posters, and so on...’

The General’s cigar hit the floor before his jaw. ‘But...’

‘Yes, General. That means we will be competing in the modern market again. I’ll still make the trains, but I think the company will need such stronger products if it is to regain its pre-eminence in the field. And while the enterprises of Mr Zwingli and Baron Ghidrah might have failed to resolve their differences, they must be judged highly successful as business ventures. I’ve, um, spoken with your board of directors and we’ve agreed - as of now, I’m a majority shareholder in your firm, by the way - to turn over most of your factories to the production of, um, Gargantuabots and Nice Mice. We feel it’s time for Gung-Ho Jones to retire. Now, isn’t that, um, nice?’

General Jones’ cigar lay on the carpet, a burning circle radiating from it. Sally stepped on the fire before it could spread.

‘Settled?’ she asked. They all looked at each other. ‘Good. Let’s go home.’

* * *

Imperial High War Deathlord Ghidrah, First Exalted Killbastard of the Doomfleet, glared in fury at the screenspeaker. The rodent regatta stretched as far as the eye could see, the great pastel hulls of the starships twinkling with sticky glitter graffiti. The flagship Have a Nice Day was targeted dead centre, and the Niceness Hums of a myriad mice filled the airwaves.

Ghidrah’s metal chest swelled with steam as he recalled the victories of the Gargantuan Omnisphere. He remembered the Fall of the Perpetuum Dynasty, the degradation of the Pain Princes of Stagwald Carnasson, the humiliation of the 709 Warrior Popes of the Planet Shit, the extinction of the Eternity Pirates of Zeugma III.