The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse

Book 8: J.W. Wells & Co.

by Tom Holt

Genres: Humorous Fantasy; Urban Fantasy

Synopsis

Tom Holt’s brilliantly funny new novel set in the world of The Portable Door (now a delightful movie starring Patrick Gibson, Sophie Wilde, and Christoph Waltz).

The team of commercial sorcerers at Dawson, Ahriman & Dawson can help with any metaphysical engineering project, large or small (though by definition they all tend to be pretty large).
 
They can also create massive great puddles of chaos that might one day swallow up the entire universe.
 
Take, for example, the decision to recruit a certain bearded fellow whose previous work experience mainly involves reindeer and jingle bells. It might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but is he really the best person to save the world from Tiamat the Destroyer, who has literally gone ballistic? 

 

For more from Tom Holt, check out:
An Orc on the Wild Side
The Management Style of the Supreme Beings
The Good, The Bad, and the Smug
The Outsorcerer's Apprentice
When It's a Jar
Doughnut
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Sausages
Blonde Bombshell

Release date: October 10, 2023

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 384

Sample

DASHER

A dark and stormy night, a deserted country road, a solitary female motorist driving an elderly, unreliable Toyota. What could possibly go wrong?

Total failure of the car’s electrical systems, for one thing. The engine died, all the lights went out, the radio lapsed into silence, the car coasted to a halt and just sat there. Bother, thought Alice, or words to that effect. She reached in her pocket for her phone. Nothing, dead as a stone. She could only tell that it was there because she could feel it in her hand.

The scenario, she couldn’t help thinking, was not entirely unfamiliar; except, of course, that stuff like that didn’t actually happen, and there’s absolutely no such thing as—

She cried out and closed her eyes, a fraction of a second too late. The brilliant white light all around her was painful, unendurable. “Oh come on,” she screeched at it. She could feel its warmth on her skin.

The car was floating, as if on water. She risked opening one eye, just a bit, but all she could see was dazzle. A scooped-out feeling in her tummy suggested that the car was rising, none too steadily, as though a magnet had clamped to the roof and a winch was reeling her in. Terror flooded her, as if she’d left the window open in a car wash, together with the soft, scornful whisper of a tiny voice in the back of her head; this can’t be happening; this is silly.

A gentle shudder coming up through the floor via the shock absorbers. Not moving any more. A firm but not deafening metallic clunk. I’m dreaming all this, she told herself. Gentle forward motion, causing the seat belt to press lightly on her collarbone, contradicted her. Not a dream.

A tapping noise; close, insistent. Something banging against the driver’s side window. She ignored it. It grew louder. It was similar to the sound of a knuckle, but that bit clearer and sharper. It wasn’t going to go away. She opened her right eye, looked and screamed.

The reason, she later realised, why the knocking didn’t sound quite right was that human knuckles are covered in skin, whereas the tapper at her window had scales: small ones, about thumbnail size, a sort of iridescent greeny-gold. It wasn’t the scales she had a problem with, or the head being a third bigger than the body. It was the eyes: clusters and clusters and clusters of them, on long stalks.

She had no cogent reason to believe that if she shrieked loud enough, the monster would back off, she’d be put back where she’d been taken from and none of this would ever have happened. It was, she’d have cheerfully conceded, a long shot, at best. But she couldn’t think of anything else to do, so she gave it a go.

It didn’t work. The monster kept on tapping.

Somewhere inside her head, a voice said: anyone or anything capable of this level of technology isn’t going to be defeated by a car door. She stopped screaming and pressed the window wind-down button. It didn’t work, of course. Then it did.

The monster lowered its head, though it took care not to let any part of its anatomy actually enter the car. It was, she realised, respecting her personal space. Earth?

The voice was inside her head, but she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it hadn’t come from her. Telepathy, it said. This is Earth, right?

She discovered that you can’t lie to a telepathic species. Yes, said her mind, a moment before her lips could shape the word No. Oh well.

Parcel a for you.

Excuse me?

Parcel for you. Delivery.

Understanding gradually seeped through her, like melting ice dripping off a roof. Oh, she thought, right. Do you need me to sign for it?

A sea-blue laser beam

hit her between the eyes. No need, we scan. Have a nice 9.16030534351145-times-the-half-life-of-Silicon-31.

You what?

Something scrabbled in her mind for the right word. Day. Have a nice day.

The monster’s hand − nine-fingered and absolutely not something she wanted to think about, though she had a nasty feeling she would, every day for the rest of her life – came through the window, holding something about the size of a small cushion, wrapped in a shiny grey polymer. Somehow she forced herself to take it. The hand let go and withdrew. Her window wound up, all by itself. The monster took a step back, and she couldn’t see it any more, because of the dazzle.

The car was moving again, sinking this time. She heard the same soft clang she’d heard before, and felt a faint jar as the car stopped. Two seconds later, the terrible light went out. Five seconds after that, her car engine purred smoothly into life and the headlights and radio came on. You are my sunshine, it sang at her. She switched it off.

In her lap was the parcel. She turned on the interior light and stared at it. Just a parcel; and on it was a label. The label had signs on it, squiggles. She’d never seen anything remotely like them in her life, not even late at night after eating Limburger cheese. She discovered she could read them, quite easily. Telepathic reading, for crying out loud.

Q’xxw^etrqegr-3885/8a8!83/Z’ggwerq!tgr, Esq.

Unit 17, Sfhyoynxxxxx!xxyx Plaza,

ZZZxZ,

Alpha Centauri

− and underneath, a series of boxes, one of which was ticked:

Not at home; left with neighbour.

“I see,” said Mr Sunshine, pursing his lips. “Did you bring it with you?”

Alice nodded. “I haven’t opened it.”

“Of course not,” said Mr Sunshine. “It wasn’t addressed to you.”

“I hadn’t thought about it in quite those terms,” Alice said. “But, no, you’re right, it wasn’t. Look—”

Something nudged her kneecap. She was about to open her mouth and let fly when she realised it was one of the drawers of Mr Sunshine’s desk. It was trying to open. Mr Sunshine saw the look on her face and smiled. “That’s just Harmondsworth,” he said. “Stop it, Harmondsworth.” The drawer stopped nudging. “It means he likes you,” Mr Sunshine said. “You were saying.”

She looked at him. She saw a big man, somewhere around seventy, with a bald head

rising up through a fringe of snow-white hair like a volcano surrounded by jungle. The sleeves of his shirt – white with a pale red and green check, the sort of thing you still see occasionally being worn by old-fashioned chartered surveyors in market towns – were rolled up, revealing powerful forearms with a few faint scars and liver splodges. His thick spectacles magnified pale blue eyes, topped by dense hedges of white eyebrow. “Sorry,” she said, without really knowing why.

“That’s perfectly all right. You were going to ask me something.”

Far below, traffic swirled, but she couldn’t hear it. “What am I supposed to do with it?” she asked.

“The parcel.”

“Yes.”

Mr Sunshine leaned back in his chair and rubbed his upper lip with the ball of his thumb. “You know,” he said, “I’m not sure I’m quite the right person to help you with this. It sounds more like a science thing.”

“It’s weird shit,” Alice said. “My friend told me, weird shit is what you do.”

“Not that kind of weird shit,” Mr Sunshine said gently. He picked a business card off his desktop and handed it to her. “Read that,” he said.

DAWSON, AHRIMAN & DAWSON

Commercial and Industrial Sorcerors,

Thaumaturgical & Metaphysical Engineers

Edwin Sunshine – Consultant

“Some of our practice does overlap with science,” he went on, “a bit, the trailing edges of the Venn diagrams barely touching. But flying saucers and space aliens—” He shrugged, very slightly. “You might be better off talking to NASA,” he said. “Or the Air Force.”

She felt as though the roof had just caved in on her. “You don’t believe me,” she said. “You think I’m—”

“Entirely truthful and as sane as I am,” Mr Sunshine said. “In fact, I don’t just think that, I know.”

Something about the way he said it made her shudder. “Thank you,” she said, in a tiny voice.

“But that doesn’t alter the fact that this isn’t really my field of expertise. Basically, anything where E equals mc² isn’t our bag. We’re more sort of—”

A tiny starburst of golden flowers appeared from nowhere in front of her eyes. They hung in the air twinkling, then vanished, leaving behind a faint scent of lavender mixed with burnt gunpowder.

“Ah,” she said. “Right. But I don’t know any scientists, and if I did they’d laugh like a drain or have me locked up, and my friend Carol said—”

The name seemed to carry weight with Mr Sunshine. “I suppose I could have a word with one of my partn—” He stopped short and flushed. “One of the partners,” he said. “She’s had a certain amount of experience

in spatio-temporal dynamics. If she can’t help, she probably knows someone who can.” He frowned, as though listening to someone raising an objection. “It can’t hurt,” he said. “Of course, there’s the question of money. I’m afraid we’re rather expensive.”

“Money?”

“Well, yes.”

“I’ve got money,” Alice remembered. “What sort of figure are we talking about?”

Mr Sunshine took back the card, turned it over and wrote something on the back with a pencil. He showed it to her. It was as though there was a part for a zero in a Harry Potter movie, and all the noughts in the world were queuing up to audition. “Oh,” she said.

Mr Sunshine looked at her. “Quite,” he said. “Of course, if you’d gone to JWW or Zauberwerke or one of the big City firms, you’d be looking at twice that, and they don’t do free initial interviews like we do. Even so—” He opened a drawer, reached in and took something out. “Not exactly cheap. Still, anything worth having very rarely is.”

The thing he’d taken from the drawer was a tatty old purse. Alice looked at it. Her grandmother had had one just like it, many years ago. “How long did you say you’d known Carol?”

“We were in the same class at junior school.”

“Ah.” Mr Sunshine nodded. Then he made a show of looking for something – shuffling papers on the desk, moving his chair a few inches, glancing round at the floor. “Stupid of me,” he said. “I seem to have lost a bottomless purse. I had it a moment ago.”

“A—?”

Mr Sunshine rolled his eyes. She picked up the purse and opened it. Out of it tumbled a heap of cut diamonds, more or less enough to fill a soup bowl. She put down the purse and scooped the diamonds into her lap, then picked up the purse again. “Is this it?”

“Yes, that’s the one.” Mr Sunshine smiled, took it from her and put it back in his desk. “Silly me, I’m always losing things,” he said. “About the money.”

She piled the diamonds back onto the desk. “Would these do?”

“You dropped one.”

He was right, she had. She retrieved it and added it to the pile. “That’ll do nicely,” Mr Sunshine said. “It’s always nice when people give you the exact money. It saves having to fiddle about with small change.”

She tried to remember exactly what Carol had said about Mr Sunshine. He’s nice, she’d said. A bit weird, but nice. She shivered. “So you’ll—”

He nodded. “No promises,” he said, “but I’ll do my best. And like I said, Gina will probably know someone who knows about this sort of thing. Let’s see it, then.”

“Oh, the parcel.” She

picked up the carrier bag from the floor. “It’s in here.”

Mr Sunshine had suddenly gone very still and very quiet. “In there. No, don’t take it out,” he said. “Just leave it in the bag, would you?” He dipped his fingers into his shirt pocket and produced a magnifying glass. It was jet-black. He peered at the bag through it, then put it away. The look on his face was the most disconcerting thing she’d seen all morning. “Now that’s not something you come across every day,” he said, and his voice was ever so slightly shaky. “You know, I think we might be able to help you after all. You wouldn’t mind leaving that with us for a day or so? I’ll give you a receipt.”

“Sure,” said Alice. She tried to hand it to him, but he gestured to her to put it on the desk. “Keep it. Please.”

“No,” Mr Sunshine said, “I don’t think I will, thanks all the same. Just a temporary loan, while we run some tests, that sort of thing.” He wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist. “Just routine stuff.”

After she’d gone, Mr Sunshine went to a cupboard in the corner of the room and took out a pair of iron tongs, with which he lifted the carrier bag and put it in the dustbin. Then he looked round for something to put the tongs in.

“Mistake,” said a voice from his desk.

“Don’t you start.”

“Really bad mistake. All end in tears.”

Mr Sunshine sighed. “You didn’t happen to notice where I put the hazmat bucket?”

“Top left-hand drawer.”

Mr Sunshine found it and deposited the tongs. There was a faint sizzle. “She’s Carol’s friend,” he said. “I couldn’t very well send her away.”

“Factual error.”

“No, I couldn’t,” Mr Sunshine said firmly. “Not to worry, I’ll pass it on to Gina. She’ll know what to do.”

“Factual—”

“Oh shut up,” said Mr Sunshine.

In his office on the second floor, the big one that used to belong to Mr Sunshine before the office civil war, Mr Dawson was conducting an interview. Mr Dawson (207 last birthday and didn’t look a day over thirty-six, and there was a reason for that) handled the firm’s substantial executive recruitment portfolio. He smiled reassuringly and steepled his fingers. Usually at this point he’d look the candidate full in the eye, to gauge his self-confidence and sincerity, but in this instance, for obvious reasons, he couldn’t do that.

“Tell me,” he said, “about yourself.”

The interviewee billowed slightly, as his bush crackled but was not consumed. “Let’s see, now,” he said. “Eight hundred and seventy-five million years as Supreme Being on Delta Orionis Four. Of course when I started there it was all without form and void, the contractors had made a real pig’s ear of it, but I had it all up together and shipshape in eight days flat. Then seven hundred and forty million years as the All-Highest on Baynard’s Planet, to be honest with you I felt like I was really just marking time there, I mean, I ran a tight ship, don’t get me wrong, but when I look back and ask myself, did I really achieve anything, did I make a difference, the answer would have to be yes but I could possibly have done even more. Omnipotencewise,” he added, by way of clarification. “Then three billion years on New Kampala, but I can’t talk about that because strictly speaking that’s in the future in this continuum, and you know the rules as well as I do. Suffice to say it was a challenge, but that’s what it’s all about in this game, isn’t it?”

Mr Dawson was smiling, an ominous sign to all who knew him. “Quite,” he said. “What would you say are your greatest strengths?”

The interviewee flared up for a moment, filling the office with unearthly red light. “Everything,” he said.

“Right,” said Mr Dawson. “So, for example, you’d be hard put to it to create a rock, say, that you couldn’t lift.”

The interviewee was silent for a moment. “Why would I want to do a thing like that?” he asked.

Downhill all the way from there, in both senses of the expression. Mr Dawson asked the rest of the questions on his checklist, for form’s sake and just in case the interviewee might say something to strike a tiny spark of interest; he didn’t, and that was that. He thanked the interviewee for his time, mentioned in passing that he had a few more people to see, and said he’d let him know. Then there was a roar, like the rushing of a mighty wind, and Mr Dawson was alone. He sighed, tore his notes into seven thin strips and put them in the wastepaper basket. Then he leaned forward and prodded a toggle on his desk. “Next,” he said.

He leaned back in his chair and looked at the mantelpiece, which hadn’t been there a moment ago. Nor, Mr Dawson couldn’t help noticing, had the fireplace directly beneath it. He frowned. Impressing the interviewer with a startlingly original approach was all very well, but he drew the line at structural alterations.

A loud bump and a cloud of soot. Out of the fireplace stepped a fat man in a red dressing gown. He had a white beard and a sack. “Not late, am I?” he asked.

“Exactly on time,” Mr Dawson said. “Please, take a seat.”

The fat man looked at the chair, still smouldering gently. “I’ll use my own, if that’s all right with you,” he said, and from the sack he produced a three-legged stool carved with entwined tendrils of holly and ivy. “Right, then,” he said. “Fire away.”

Mr Dawson peered at him over the top of his spectacles. “Excuse me saying this,” he said, “but you do know what this interview is for?”

The fat man nodded .

 “Planet in an alternative universe is looking for a supreme being,” he said. “That’s what it said in the ad, anyhow.”

Mr Dawson nodded slowly. “No offence,” he said. “But are you sure you’re—?”

“Qualified?” The fat man laughed. “I should think so. I was laying the foundations of the Earth when old Smiler there was still in nappies.” He nodded towards the smouldering chair. “He’s after the job as well, is he? Might have guessed. He’s got a nerve, I’ll give him that.”

Mr Dawson was interested in spite of himself. “Has he?”

The fat man laughed again. It didn’t sound one little bit like ho-ho-ho. “After what happened at his last place? I take it you heard about that.”

“Actually, no. I gather it hasn’t happened yet.”

“Not in this continuum, I guess not.” The fat man nodded sagely. “Well, all I can say is, don’t book any holidays on New Kampala any time in the next three billion years. Not unless you’re into really extreme sports. Right, let’s get on with it. You got my CV?”

Mr Dawson discovered that he had, neatly wrapped in green paper, like a cracker. “That’s impressive,” he said, after a quick glance. “I didn’t know you used to be a thunder god.”

The fat man nodded. “Mostly thunder,” he said. “Bit of rain and general fertility thrown in, some smiting here and there, not that I ever really took to smiting. I always say, you can do more with a snarky word and a sarcastic comment than you can do with a thunderbolt any day of the week. Still, if what people want is smiting, I can smite.” He grinned. “You bet.”

A slight shiver ran down Mr Dawson’s spine. “Moving on,” he said. “I don’t think it’s exactly a secret that you’ve already got a job. So why do you want this one?”

The fat man stifled a yawn. “You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“Fair enough. Bit of a cock-up, if you must know.”

“Ah.”

“Really, I was only trying to help,” the fat man said, with a hint of anger. “That’s all I ever do, try and help.”

“I see.”

“I said to myself, I said, they’d better watch out, because if they don’t they’re going to find themselves in the candy floss right up to here, the way they’re going on. I tried to drop a few hints, you know, casually, but—” He spread his hands. “If they’re too thick to get it, what can you do?”

“Um.”

“So I laid it on the line for them,” the fat man said. “I told them, if you’re good and sensible and you listen to what your scientists tell you and don’t insist on screwing it all up for yourselves, I’ll give you a clean, cheap source of renewable energy to meet all your

industrial and domestic needs. But if you’re bad, you’ll get coal. And what happened?”

“Quite,” Mr Dawson said.

“Anyhow,” the fat man said, “that’s enough about me. Tell me about this gig. What are they after, exactly?”

Mr Dawson’s eyes opened a little bit wider. “They want a god,” he said.

“Fair enough,” the fat man said. “What happened to their old one?”

Mr Dawson looked down at the papers on his desk. “He died.”

“Ah,” the fat man said. “So I’m probably looking at a culture of self-destructive post-enlightenment nihilism. Bummer. What’s the dominant species like on this planet of yours, then?”

“Um,” said Mr Dawson, looking at the brief. “Mortal bipedal humanoid, omnivore, average lifespan eighty years, early post-industrial society. That sort of thing.”

The fat man frowned. “Nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere?”

“Afraid so.”

The fat man rolled his eyes. “Gravity?”

“Earth standard, give or take a smidge.”

“Magic?”

Mr Dawson nodded. “Within certain closely defined parameters, yes.”

The fat man relaxed slightly. “If there’s one thing I can’t be doing with, it’s orthodox Newtonian physics. Like wearing shoes a size too small, if you know what I mean. All right, you’d better fill me in on the details. I’m not saying I’ll do it, mind. But I guess it won’t hurt to listen.”

Mr Dawson realised that somehow he’d become the interviewee. His respect for the fat man went up a notch or two. Now he came to think of it, his clients could do worse. He told the fat man about the planet, its history, geography, cultural mores and underlying values. When he’d finished, the fat man was quiet for a while, thinking. Eventually he said, “Fair enough. Now for the big question. What’s in it for me?”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t play games, it doesn’t suit you. What’s the deal? How much do I get?”

“Um.” Mr Dawson looked at the brief, which was silent on that point. “I’m not sure my client was thinking of approaching it from that angle,” he said. “Remuneration per se—”

“In other words, what I can get out of the punters.” The fat man pursed his lips. “You know what,” he said, “that’s not really how I like to do business. What I like is so much in the bank at the end of the month, no deductions, no productivity bonuses or performance-related stock options, no mucking about. The other way may give you an incentive and a keener edge and all that malarkey, but it buggers up how you look at things when you’re doing the job. You’ve always got that percentage ticking away at the back of your mind when you’re making the big decisions. Whereas if you know that come hell, high water or Richard bloody Dawkins you're

still going to get your wedge come payday, you can afford to have whatsisname, begins in an in, integrity. I think that’s important when you’re a god, don’t you?”

“Um.”

“Not that I’m telling your clients how to run their planet. Not yet, at any rate. In fact, before I start doing that I want a properly detailed package, pension, health plan, the whole nine yards. That’s part and parcel of being a professional, don’t you think?”

“Um,” Mr Dawson repeated. “No offence, but what does God want with a health plan?”

The fat man gave him a look that should have frozen his blood but didn’t, then grinned. “Nice one,” he said. “All right, it’s a fair cop. So maybe I’m not exactly a god god.”

“I never really thought of it as a grey area.”

“More a sort of demiurge or genius loci. Still, a jerkwater alternative reality up the armpit of Nowhere can’t afford to be choosy, now can it?”

“Unfortunately,” said Mr Dawson, “yes, it can. It’s a great shame, but there we go. If you haven’t got that all-important bit of paper—”

The fat man clicked his tongue. “Never had the chance to go to college, me. By the time I was forty-five seconds old I was out on the street, earning a wage to support my widowed mother and seventy-four younger sisters.” He paused. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“No.”

“Shucks. Ah well, never mind.” He stood up. ...