The Management Style of the Supreme Beings
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Synopsis
When the Supreme Being and his son decide that being supreme isn’t for them any more, it’s inevitable that things get a bit of a shake-up.
It soon becomes apparent that our new owners, the Venturi brothers, have a very different perspective on all sorts of things. Take Good and Evil, for example. For them, it’s an outdated concept that never worked particularly well in the first place.
Unfortunately, the sudden disappearance of right and wrong, while welcomed by some, raises certain concerns amongst those still attached to the previous team’s management style.
In particular, there’s one of the old gods who didn’t move out with the others. A reclusive chap, he lives somewhere up north, and only a handful even believe in him.
But he’s watching. And he really does need to know if you’ve been naughty or nice.
A Blackstone Audio production.
Release date: June 20, 2017
Publisher: Orbit
Print pages: 400
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The Management Style of the Supreme Beings
Tom Holt
Dad, as is tolerably well known, is omnipotent and can do anything. Some things, however, are more difficult than others, even for him; most notably, finding windows in his busy schedule for a little quality time with his dearly beloved son, with whom he is well pleased. On the rare occasions when they can fit it in, they like to go fishing together on Sinderaan, a small yellowy-red planet in the Argolis cluster. The problem, of course, is who they leave behind to mind the store.
In front of Dad the rainbow bridge sparkled with all the glory of light being ripped apart into its constituent themes. For the third time he stopped and turned back. “Don’t forget,” he said. “One rotation every twenty-four hours.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Six hours of rain in Lithuania, Monday and Thursday morning.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“The keys to the thunderbolt cabinet are on the hook behind the bathroom door; don’t use them unless you absolutely have to.”
Kevin, the younger son of God, marginally less well beloved and with whom his father was not always quite so well pleased, stifled a yawn and pulled the collar of his dressing gown tight around his neck, because of the cold. “Yes, Dad,” he said. “You told me already, about a zillion times. It’s cool. I can handle it.”
His father winced. “If there’s a problem, you’ve got my number.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Just be careful, that’s all. Think about what you’re doing. And no parties.”
“Goodbye, Dad.”
With a shrug, Dad turned, shouldered his backpack and rods and walked slowly up the rainbow to where Jay was waiting. If he was tempted to turn back one last time, he thought better of it. Before long, they were two tiny specks against the multicoloured curve, and then they were gone. Kevin sighed, pulled a face, wriggled his toes as deep into his slippers as they’d go and wandered back to the house. A light in an upstairs window of the east wing (the house had many mansions) told him that Uncle Ghost was awake, though the chances were that he wouldn’t transubstantiate into anything fit to talk to until much later, after he’d had his coffee and read the papers.
Six-thirty a.m., a ghastly time to be awake. Kevin sat down on the rocking chair on the stoop, stretched out his feet and turned on his LoganBerry. He was playing War in Heaven 3 (he was being Dad for a change; usually he was Uncle Nick) when a sharp cough behind him broke his concentration and made him jam the tablet in his dressing-gown pocket. “Hi, Uncle Mike.”
He’d been quick, but not quick enough to deceive an archangel. Uncle Mike didn’t approve of War in Heaven 3 for some reason. “Kevin. Have you got a moment?”
Irony, except he was pretty sure Uncle Mike wasn’t capable of it. “All the time in the world. Something up?”
Mike was frowning. “Cusp in the causality flow. We need a policy decision.”
“What, from me?”
Mike nodded sadly. “Looks like it, doesn’t it?”
“But Dad said it was all sorted out for the next three days. He said nothing was likely to come up.”
“Well, it’s no big deal,” Uncle Mike said. “Not a very big deal, anyhow. You’d better come inside and sort it out.”
“Dad said I wouldn’t have to do any policy decisions.”
“Ah well.” Mike shrugged. “Mysterious ways, Kevin, mysterious ways. Come on if you’re coming.”
The interface console, where the individual case inputs were coordinated into the predestination stream, was a dingy shade of concrete-coloured plastic, and the lettering was starting to wear off the keyboard. Kevin had been on at Dad to upgrade to a higher-spec system for as long as he could remember; these old Kawaguchiya XP7740s belonged in a museum, he’d said over and over again, what this outfit needs is the new Axio 347D StreamLine. He punched in the laughably archaic 3 ½-inch floppy that held the startup codes and waited for the shameful green letters to appear on the antiquated black screen. Pointless explaining to Dad that he had over ten times as much computing power on his phone than this entire system. Oh no. It had been good enough for dividing the waters which were under the firmament from the waters that were above the firmament, it worked just fine and he was used to it. A fan whirred. Kevin tapped his fingers on the desktop and stifled a yawn.
A few minutes later he strolled back out onto the stoop, where Uncle Mike was refuelling his flaming sword from a butane cylinder. “Uncle Mike.”
“Kevin.”
“You know how it’s the house rule that as long as they honestly and sincerely believe, trivial differences of doctrine aren’t important?”
“Sure.”
“Well.” Kevin sat down, his hands folded in his lap. “There’s one sect that believes the entire Trinity is female.”
Uncle Mike nodded. “I’ve heard of them, yes.”
“So, according to them, and bearing in mind that in view of their irreproachable faith their interpretation is held to be equally valid, that would make me female too, right?”
Uncle Mike frowned. “I guess so.”
“You wouldn’t hit a girl, would you?”
Sigh. “What’ve you done?”
“It’s that stupid computer. I keep telling them, we’re so behind the times it’s unreal. It’s amazing stuff like this doesn’t happen every single day.”
“Stuff like what?”
“I think it’s the keyboard. Someone must’ve spilt coffee on it or something, because the springs don’t work properly. I told Dad a thousand times, that system is a disaster waiting to happen.”
Uncle Mike knew him too well. He frowned. “Kevin?”
“I guess it got tired of waiting.”
A long sigh. Uncle Mike turned down his flaming sword to the bare flicker of the pilot light and put it carefully on the table. “What have you done?”
“It wasn’t me. It’s all the fault of the system.”
For some reason Uncle Mike sort of smiled. “Sure,” he said. “You’d better show me.”
An hour later (linear time doesn’t pass in Heaven, but never mind) Uncle Mike leaned back in his chair, finished his now-cold coffee in three mammoth gulps and massaged his forehead between thumb and middle finger. Kevin stepped up and peered over his shoulder. “All done?”
Uncle Mike nodded. “Kevin.”
“Yes, Uncle Mike?”
“Where’s that list of stuff he left for you to do while he’s away?”
Kevin scrabbled in his pocket, found and uncrumpled it. “Here. Why?”
Mike took the list and tucked it away in the sleeve of his robe. “It’s OK, Kevin,” he said. “You leave all that to me. No need for you to bother. Just go and do whatever it is you do all day.”
For a moment or so Kevin stood perfectly still. Then he said, “Uncle Mike.”
“Yes, Kevin?”
“That’s not fair.”
Mike looked away. “Sorry, kid.”
“But it’s not. It says in the rules, doesn’t it? You’ve got to forgive. Not just seven times but seventy times seven. I think—”
Mike sighed. “Seventy times seven is four hundred and ninety,” he said. “Personally, I stopped counting back in the low thousands. It’s fine,” he added, and Kevin guessed he was genuinely trying to be kind. “Some people just aren’t cut out for this kind of work. That doesn’t make them bad people. I’m sure there’s all sorts of things you’d be good at, in an infinite Universe.”
On the other hand, Uncle Mike being kind made Vlad the Impaler look cissy. “Uncle Mike,” Kevin said, “I know I can do this stuff. I know I can.”
Mike pursed his lips. “No,” he said. “Sorry.”
There are times when you just can’t speak. This was one of them. Kevin turned away and walked out onto the stoop, sat down and poured himself a glass of orange juice. In the near distance a new galaxy hatched like a fiery egg. He threw a pretzel at it. He missed.
The family business.
Not everybody wants to follow in their daddy’s footsteps, as witness the considerable number of people called Smith who don’t spend their days pounding hot iron. Traditions fade. Teenage Amish dream of working for Google, and young Clark Kent leaves the farm and heads for Metropolis. But Kevin had always believed, always assumed …
Unlike so many kids his age, Kevin was pretty sure he knew who he was. If he’d had blood, the family business would’ve been in it. That was what made him so mad, sometimes. Take the computers. Why couldn’t Dad see that the whole system needed replacing? It was obvious that was why mistakes happened. True, they only seemed to happen when Kevin was at the keyboard, but that was simply because Dad and Jay had got used to the stupid, obsolete old machines and could anticipate their ridiculous quirks. That was what it came down to, basically. Which did Dad think more highly of, his own son or a beat-up old Kawaguchiya XP7740? And that was one of those questions you just don’t ask, for fear of the answer.
He picked up his LoganBerry. War in Heaven 3—a ridiculous game because the good guys always win, inevitably, no matter what you do. A thought crossed his mind, and he grinned. He switched the LoganBerry to phone mode and tapped in a number.
It rang six hundred and sixty-six times. Then an angry voice snapped, “What?”
“Uncle Nick?”
Sigh. “Oh, hi, Kevin. Look, can it wait? I’m a bit tied up right now.”
He could believe it. Uncle Nick’s department was chronically overworked and understaffed. Nevertheless, he hardened his heart and said, “Uncle Nick, you know how Dad’s always going on about me getting work experience in all the departments?”
Another sigh. “No, Kevin.”
“Uncle Nick—”
“Forget it. Not after the last time.”
Kevin scowled. He’d explained. It hadn’t been his fault that Hell had frozen over. “Uncle Nick—”
“It’s not up to me, kid,” the voice said. “I got strict instructions from your old man. Not allowed to set foot Flipside ever again. Not exactly a grey area.”
“He said that?”
“Gospel truth, son. Sorry. So, if you don’t like it, you’ll have to take it up with him. Gotta fly, I’ve got someone on the stove. Bye now.”
The line went dead. Kevin scowled horribly at the screen and switched off. Fine, he thought. No problem. If Dad and Jay want me to slob around the house all day, I can do that, you bet. Who needs the stupid business anyway? It was enough to make him turn atheist. (Except he’d tried that once, and it hadn’t been a conspicuous success. Dad had argued, plausibly enough, that if he didn’t exist, neither did the fridge, the sofa, the TV or Kevin’s bedroom. After twenty-four hours shivering in the existential void, Kevin had solemnly burned the collected works of Richard Dawkins and been allowed back into the kitchen. Never again.)
Ungrateful, he thought. Wicked, ungrateful. Right now there were countless millions of ex-humans (lawyers, politicians, investment bankers) who’d give the charred stumps of their right arms to be where he was now rather than down there in Uncle Nick’s gloomy jurisdiction. But that was the point. Countless millions of other ex-humans had striven all their lives to be virtuous and good, and had thereby achieved Heaven; he’d grown up there, never been anywhere else. So, if Uncle Mike and Uncle Nick were right and he wasn’t cut out for the business, if he didn’t belong here, if he didn’t belong in his own home …
The door opened, and Uncle Ghost wandered out onto the stoop. In one hand was a coffee cup, in the other yesterday’s Herald. “Kevin. You seen my glasses anywhere?”
“You’re wearing them.”
“My other glasses.”
Kevin stood up and made a show of searching. “What do you need to read the paper for, Uncle? You know everything that’s going on.”
“Passes the time.”
Time, that old thing. There had been a time when Uncle Ghost had been the driving force of the business: its energy, its spark, its dancing breath of fire. Hard to imagine that these days. He’s done his fair share, Dad would say, he’s earned the right to take it a bit easier. Trouble was, Uncle Ghost didn’t seem to be taking it easy at all. If anything, he was taking it very hard.
“Damn glasses,” Uncle muttered, lifting a tablecloth and putting it back crooked. “Can’t see a thing without ’em these days.”
Was Uncle Ghost old? Well, he’d existed before Existence itself, but sequential linear time didn’t apply to the family, in the same way that fish can’t drown. The mortals say you’re as old as you feel. So how do you feel when you’ve been everywhere and seen everything? The official answer to that was wise, compassionate and understanding.
The glasses turned out to be hiding under the cushion of the chair Kevin had just been sitting on. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll straighten them out for you.”
“Don’t you dare.” Uncle snatched them away and stuffed them down the front of his shirt. “I’ll have Mike or Gabe fix them. You break everything.”
“Thanks, Uncle. That’s just exactly what I wanted to hear right now.”
“Was it? Why?”
“Forget it.”
Uncle Ghost sighed. “Why not?” he said. “These days, forgetting’s what I’m best at.”
More than just trace elements of truth in that assertion, which was why Uncle Ghost didn’t do any actual work any more. Overdue sunrises, March winds and April showers in July … He’s a menace, Dad had told Jay one dark midnight as they hurriedly dragged clouds in front of a crescent moon that should have been full. Kevin hadn’t been meant to hear that, of course. It was also significant that celestial mechanics had been added to Jay’s chore list. It was the easiest part of the business; a child could do it, or a fool. But not a burned-out old man. And not, apparently, Kevin.
He yawned. Through the open door he could hear the mechanised voice of the answering service: Sorry, there’s no one here to hear your prayer right now, please leave your name and we’ll get right back to you. He felt ashamed. Of course he didn’t begrudge Dad—or even Jay—a little time off now and again; they worked so hard, they deserved it. But there should always be someone on call to hear the prayers, it was in the Covenant. (Or was it? Offhand he couldn’t remember. But if it wasn’t, it should be). Nominally, Uncle Ghost was the duty Trinitarian, which was good enough for the Compliance people but cold comfort for the poor saps down there who actually believed.
Face it, bro, you just aren’t cut out for this line of work. Jay had this unfortunate streak of honesty. He claimed it came with the territory, though why he couldn’t sometimes be content with just being the Way and the Light, Kevin couldn’t say. The truth can be unkind, and surely kindness was more in line with the essence of the mission statement than mere factual accuracy. But if he was right … Well, was he? So far, Kevin’s record wasn’t impressive, he’d be the first to admit that. But maybe that was because they’d never given him a chance, never explained to him how things should be done. And besides, Jay would add at this point, we’re so rushed off our feet we simply haven’t got the time to show you. Quicker to do it ourselves. Quite.
The soft buzzing noise was Uncle Ghost snoring. Kevin got up, went inside and fixed himself a coffee—just instant because when he’d tried to use the cappuccino machine something had gone wrong with it, and Dad hadn’t had time to mend it. He flicked on the TV, but it was just reruns of Touched by an Angel. I’d pray, Kevin said to himself, but who to?
Here’s a tricky one. How many drops of nitroglycerine, delivered by way of a standard laboratory pipette from a drop of sixteen feet, does it take to blow a three-foot-square hole in a four-thousand-year-old Egyptian basalt slab carved with bas-reliefs of Pharaoh doing obeisance to the Reinvigorated Sun, while doing as little collateral damage as possible?
The answer, Jersey devoutly hoped, was four. That was all the nitro he had left, having used the rest of the bottle getting this far, and it’d be a confounded shame to have gone to so much trouble, and done so much irreversible damage to a designated World Heritage Site, only to wind up one drop short. In the event, he was proved right. At which he was so mightily relieved that he actually smiled.
The echoes died away, gradually and with disconcerting echo effects. The acoustics in the basement of a pyramid are distinctly weird. Sound lingers, and just when you think you’ve heard the last of it, back it comes again, like audible stomach acid. Creepy like you wouldn’t believe, not to mention the risk of somebody outside hearing. That would be very bad. Naughty echo.
His timetable allowed three minutes for the dust to settle. Over-optimistic. He couldn’t really see worth a damn and had his handkerchief tied over his nose as he dropped his rope ladder through the newly blasted hole in the floor, checked one last time that it was securely anchored and slowly began to climb down into the darkness.
It had been a long day. To get this far, quite apart from the discomforts associated with setting off multiple explosions in a very confined space, he’d had to put up with a tiresome sequence of booby traps—walls that shifted and slabs that fell away when you trod on them, flights of poisoned arrows, razor-sharp pendulums and all manner of similar nonsense; how come, if ancient engineers could devise stuff like that, nobody had managed to come up with a functional flush toilet until 1778?—and his reserves of patience and energy were getting dangerously low. At this point he should be trembling with feverish anticipation, not fatigue. Somewhere in the gloom below him, if he’d got it right, was the secret he’d been searching for all his adult life, the greatest discovery in human history, the key to the last and greatest mystery of all. He should be feeling something, apart from a splitting headache and a dull pain in his chest which he unrealistically hoped wasn’t a cracked rib.
After what felt like a lifetime his feet touched down on something level and solid. Taking one hand nervously off the rope ladder, he fished out his flashlight and flicked it on. Floor. Thank God for that. He shone the beam up. The hole in the roof was a very, very long way above him, and he was glad he’d taken the trouble to secure the ladder with four molybdenum steel crampons hammered into the living rock (twenty-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents from eBay; he was on a budget, but the Chinese make good stuff these days).
Well, he was here now; might as well get on with it. He shone the torch around the walls. An Egyptologist, or anyone whose aesthetic sense hadn’t been blunted down to nothing by a really miserable day blowing holes in walls and dodging sudden death, would’ve been stunned by the beauty of the frescoes, their colours as fresh and vibrant as the day they’d been painted, two thousand years before a bunch of shepherds gazed across an Italian hillside and one of them said, “I know, let’s call it Rome.” He yawned and muffled a sneeze. He knew what he was looking for, and it had to be here somewhere. Now then. If I was the most carefully hidden secret in the Universe, where would I be?
“Dr. Thorpe.”
He spun round so fast he nearly stumbled, just in time to see his rope ladder drop to the floor in a heap at his feet. He swung the flashlight up and picked out a face peering down at him through the hole in the roof. The face had a big moustache and was grinning.
“Well done, Dr. Thorpe. We tried to warn you, but you just kept going.”
“I might have guessed,” Jersey said bitterly. “You’re one of them. You’ve been on their side all along.”
The man with the moustache grinned at him. “Of course,” he said. “You know me as Yusuf, a humble porter, but know that I am Constantine, two hundred and seventh Grand Master of the Guardians of the Secret. For a hundred and thirty-six generations my forefathers have striven to guard that which must never be revealed. Console yourself with the thought that nobody has ever come this close before, Dr. Thorpe. Be proud of it. Revel in that satisfaction until your dying day, which,” he added, “by my calculations will be Thursday. Or early Saturday morning if you remembered to bring sandwiches. Goodbye, Dr. Thorpe. I’d just like to say that I’ve enjoyed our little game of chess.”
“Thank you.”
“But I won’t because my order values the truth above all things. Farewell.”
Jersey stooped for something to throw. His hand closed around some small, heavy thing, but by the time he’d straightened up, the face had gone. He glanced at the object in his hand, recognised it as a priceless Eleventh Dynasty ushabti figurine, and threw it at the wall. “Constantine,” he roared, “your feet smell and your moustache looks ridiculous.” Echoes, then silence. Buggeration, he said to himself.
Still, if he was right about the secret, it wouldn’t really matter terribly much. Everything now depended on how long the batteries in his flashlight lasted. He set about examining the walls inch by inch, his practised eye effortlessly translating the columns of hieroglyphs at sight. All sorts of guff about the imperishable glory of His late Majesty, and a load of gloomy though probably accurate predictions about what would happen to any unauthorised person who reached this spot; all well and good, but not what he was looking for. Boast, threat, boast, boast, threat, boast … Hello, what’s this?
Suddenly the weariness and the ennui evaporated like spit on a griddle, and his heart started to pound. His hand shook as he fumbled for his notebook and pencil. Numbers, a string of hieroglyphic numerals. He leaned forward. The glow from his torch was yellowing as the batteries faded. Zero. Dear God, the first number was a zero.
His hand was shaking so much, he broke his pencil. It took an agonising forty seconds to sharpen it. Zero. Followed by an eight. Then zero, zero.
He could hardly breathe. An 0800 number. Could it really be true?
He wrote down the remaining six digits like a man in a dream. By the time he’d finished, the torchlight was the dying glimmer of a faint amber sunset. He squinted at the numbers scrawled on the page, then slowly drew out his cellphone and keyed them in.
The dialling tone. One ring. Two.
Hello. All our lines are busy right now. Your call is being held in a queue until an operator is available. Your call is important to us. Please hold.
He could hear music. It might have been a chorus of angels inside his head, but it was probably the phone playing Vivaldi. It didn’t matter. He was through.
Please hold, the voice repeated. Like a man with his fingertips hooked over the threshold of Heaven, he held.
When Kevin spoke to him on the phone, he’d assumed Uncle Nick was in his office. In fact, thanks to the miracle of cellular telephony, Uncle Nick, or Mr. Lucifer to his many subordinates, had taken the call on the thirteenth hole at Velvet Lawns, where he now spent a large proportion of his time. In his absence, the department was mostly run by Bernie Lachuk, his deputy assistant private secretary.
Bernie—he hated Bernard, with the stress on the second syllable—was a civilian, a fact he was painfully aware of and rarely allowed to forget. He’d joined Flipside as part of a major rationalisation and downsizing exercise about thirty years ago (Bernie was still only twenty-six; we don’t need no steenkin’ sequential linear time), when a considerable number of the straightforward administrative functions had been outsourced to private contractors. That hadn’t worked out for a number of reasons, but Bernie and quite a few other civilians had stayed in post nevertheless. A lot of the older team members were still uncomfortable about working alongside mortals, but most of the logistical difficulties—toilets, temperature controls, doors, floors, etc.—had long since been ironed out, and even the diehards couldn’t deny that the Squishies (you weren’t supposed to call them that, but everybody did, including the mortals themselves) got the work done in half the time and at a fraction of the cost. As for the Squishies, by and large they found the working environment congenial, the work itself challenging but rewarding, and the pay a whisker on the lowish side of acceptable. Bernie, for example, had been a trainee supermarket manager before he came to work Flipside. It’s like I’d died and gone to Heaven, he told his mother at the end of his first week. Or something like that, he added quickly.
Maybe he wasn’t quite so enthusiastic now. Mr. Lucifer, he suspected, tended to take advantage of him, and since he’d advanced as far up the hierarchy as a Squishy could get, the incentive to go the extra mile to accommodate his boss wasn’t quite as strong as it had been. Take this morning, for instance. Just mind the store for me, Mr. L. had said to him as he swept up his golf bag and stuck his brightly coloured cap on his head, I’ve got to go and shmooze a supplier. See you later, bye. Bernie wasn’t so sure about that. Mr. L. spent a lot of time shmoozing suppliers at the links or in restaurants and nightclubs, but the prices they paid for everyday consumables never seemed to go down; the opposite, in fact, and ten minutes research on the Net convinced Bernie that they could get an awful lot of the stuff considerably cheaper elsewhere, and without the need for a single golf ball to be inconvenienced or a single margarita consumed. He’d mentioned that, of course. Mr. L. had smiled at him and told him he didn’t understand How Things Worked. Fair enough. It was Mr. L.’s train set, after all.
Another concept Mr. L. seemed to have trouble with, probably because of the sequential linear time thing, was normal working hours and overtime. Minding the store, for example, seemed to Bernie to constitute days, weeks, sometimes months of frantic activity (but when you’re rushed off your feet you don’t notice the passage of time particularly, so that was all right), for which he received no additional payment and which didn’t leave him much scope for a personal life. He understood, of course. He was mortal, Mr. L. wasn’t. Naturally the boss had trouble seeing things from his perspective, just as a bird doesn’t find it easy to understand a fish. And someone had to do keep the place ticking over, and yes, he did want to keep this job, so …
Quite. And yet.
One of the phones—the green one, which always meant trouble—rang, and he grabbed it without looking up from the figures on his screen. “Lachuk.”
“This is Malephar.” Oh dear. “Number Six furnace is down again. Get me Maintenance.”
Malephar was a Duke of Hell, had been ever since the Fall. He didn’t like Squishies very much. He was also terrible at his job, but it wasn’t Bernie’s place to criticise. “I’ll get on to it straight away, Mr. Malephar, but they told me this morning they’re running just a bit behind on non-essentials, so it might not be today. Sorry for any—”
“Don’t give me that. I want them here, now. Got that?”
Or there’d be Hell to pay (acting senior payroll clerk, B. Lachuk). “Yes, Mr. Malephar, I’ll see what I can do. Thank you for—”
The line went dead. He put the phone down, counted to ten under his breath and picked it up again. “Hello, this is Bernie Lachuk, front office. Could I possibly speak to—?”
“Wait.”
You could never entirely forget where you were and who you were dealing with: a certain something in the way they spoke to you. “Sure,” Bernie said. “I’ll hold.”
A long, long time later a voice said, “Now what?”
“I’ve just had a call from Duke Malephar. Apparently Number Six is playing up again. He wonders if you could possibly see your way to—”
“Impossible.” He recognised the voice. Awkwardness lay ahead, because although Malephar was Head of Operations, which theoretically took precedence over Maintenance, Balam, the Clerk of the Works, was a King and outranked Malephar by two clear pay grades. In real terms, of course, Bernie was acting boss of them all and they had to do what he told them to; the skill, of course, lay in the telling. “I’ve got requisitions backed up to infinity and half my demons are off sick. Tell the old goat to fix it himself.”
Strictly speaking, there was only one old goat in the Department, and he was off playing golf. “I can certainly pass your message along,” Bernie said, “but you might care to consider—”
“What?”
“Well, I was just thinking,” Bernie said meekly. “Naturally, if you’ve got other, more pressing jobs on the list, then that’s absolutely fine. But it occurs to me, if the furnace is offline for very long, it’ll cool down and the lining will crack, and obviously that wouldn’t be your fault, but you k. . .
In front of Dad the rainbow bridge sparkled with all the glory of light being ripped apart into its constituent themes. For the third time he stopped and turned back. “Don’t forget,” he said. “One rotation every twenty-four hours.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Six hours of rain in Lithuania, Monday and Thursday morning.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“The keys to the thunderbolt cabinet are on the hook behind the bathroom door; don’t use them unless you absolutely have to.”
Kevin, the younger son of God, marginally less well beloved and with whom his father was not always quite so well pleased, stifled a yawn and pulled the collar of his dressing gown tight around his neck, because of the cold. “Yes, Dad,” he said. “You told me already, about a zillion times. It’s cool. I can handle it.”
His father winced. “If there’s a problem, you’ve got my number.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Just be careful, that’s all. Think about what you’re doing. And no parties.”
“Goodbye, Dad.”
With a shrug, Dad turned, shouldered his backpack and rods and walked slowly up the rainbow to where Jay was waiting. If he was tempted to turn back one last time, he thought better of it. Before long, they were two tiny specks against the multicoloured curve, and then they were gone. Kevin sighed, pulled a face, wriggled his toes as deep into his slippers as they’d go and wandered back to the house. A light in an upstairs window of the east wing (the house had many mansions) told him that Uncle Ghost was awake, though the chances were that he wouldn’t transubstantiate into anything fit to talk to until much later, after he’d had his coffee and read the papers.
Six-thirty a.m., a ghastly time to be awake. Kevin sat down on the rocking chair on the stoop, stretched out his feet and turned on his LoganBerry. He was playing War in Heaven 3 (he was being Dad for a change; usually he was Uncle Nick) when a sharp cough behind him broke his concentration and made him jam the tablet in his dressing-gown pocket. “Hi, Uncle Mike.”
He’d been quick, but not quick enough to deceive an archangel. Uncle Mike didn’t approve of War in Heaven 3 for some reason. “Kevin. Have you got a moment?”
Irony, except he was pretty sure Uncle Mike wasn’t capable of it. “All the time in the world. Something up?”
Mike was frowning. “Cusp in the causality flow. We need a policy decision.”
“What, from me?”
Mike nodded sadly. “Looks like it, doesn’t it?”
“But Dad said it was all sorted out for the next three days. He said nothing was likely to come up.”
“Well, it’s no big deal,” Uncle Mike said. “Not a very big deal, anyhow. You’d better come inside and sort it out.”
“Dad said I wouldn’t have to do any policy decisions.”
“Ah well.” Mike shrugged. “Mysterious ways, Kevin, mysterious ways. Come on if you’re coming.”
The interface console, where the individual case inputs were coordinated into the predestination stream, was a dingy shade of concrete-coloured plastic, and the lettering was starting to wear off the keyboard. Kevin had been on at Dad to upgrade to a higher-spec system for as long as he could remember; these old Kawaguchiya XP7740s belonged in a museum, he’d said over and over again, what this outfit needs is the new Axio 347D StreamLine. He punched in the laughably archaic 3 ½-inch floppy that held the startup codes and waited for the shameful green letters to appear on the antiquated black screen. Pointless explaining to Dad that he had over ten times as much computing power on his phone than this entire system. Oh no. It had been good enough for dividing the waters which were under the firmament from the waters that were above the firmament, it worked just fine and he was used to it. A fan whirred. Kevin tapped his fingers on the desktop and stifled a yawn.
A few minutes later he strolled back out onto the stoop, where Uncle Mike was refuelling his flaming sword from a butane cylinder. “Uncle Mike.”
“Kevin.”
“You know how it’s the house rule that as long as they honestly and sincerely believe, trivial differences of doctrine aren’t important?”
“Sure.”
“Well.” Kevin sat down, his hands folded in his lap. “There’s one sect that believes the entire Trinity is female.”
Uncle Mike nodded. “I’ve heard of them, yes.”
“So, according to them, and bearing in mind that in view of their irreproachable faith their interpretation is held to be equally valid, that would make me female too, right?”
Uncle Mike frowned. “I guess so.”
“You wouldn’t hit a girl, would you?”
Sigh. “What’ve you done?”
“It’s that stupid computer. I keep telling them, we’re so behind the times it’s unreal. It’s amazing stuff like this doesn’t happen every single day.”
“Stuff like what?”
“I think it’s the keyboard. Someone must’ve spilt coffee on it or something, because the springs don’t work properly. I told Dad a thousand times, that system is a disaster waiting to happen.”
Uncle Mike knew him too well. He frowned. “Kevin?”
“I guess it got tired of waiting.”
A long sigh. Uncle Mike turned down his flaming sword to the bare flicker of the pilot light and put it carefully on the table. “What have you done?”
“It wasn’t me. It’s all the fault of the system.”
For some reason Uncle Mike sort of smiled. “Sure,” he said. “You’d better show me.”
An hour later (linear time doesn’t pass in Heaven, but never mind) Uncle Mike leaned back in his chair, finished his now-cold coffee in three mammoth gulps and massaged his forehead between thumb and middle finger. Kevin stepped up and peered over his shoulder. “All done?”
Uncle Mike nodded. “Kevin.”
“Yes, Uncle Mike?”
“Where’s that list of stuff he left for you to do while he’s away?”
Kevin scrabbled in his pocket, found and uncrumpled it. “Here. Why?”
Mike took the list and tucked it away in the sleeve of his robe. “It’s OK, Kevin,” he said. “You leave all that to me. No need for you to bother. Just go and do whatever it is you do all day.”
For a moment or so Kevin stood perfectly still. Then he said, “Uncle Mike.”
“Yes, Kevin?”
“That’s not fair.”
Mike looked away. “Sorry, kid.”
“But it’s not. It says in the rules, doesn’t it? You’ve got to forgive. Not just seven times but seventy times seven. I think—”
Mike sighed. “Seventy times seven is four hundred and ninety,” he said. “Personally, I stopped counting back in the low thousands. It’s fine,” he added, and Kevin guessed he was genuinely trying to be kind. “Some people just aren’t cut out for this kind of work. That doesn’t make them bad people. I’m sure there’s all sorts of things you’d be good at, in an infinite Universe.”
On the other hand, Uncle Mike being kind made Vlad the Impaler look cissy. “Uncle Mike,” Kevin said, “I know I can do this stuff. I know I can.”
Mike pursed his lips. “No,” he said. “Sorry.”
There are times when you just can’t speak. This was one of them. Kevin turned away and walked out onto the stoop, sat down and poured himself a glass of orange juice. In the near distance a new galaxy hatched like a fiery egg. He threw a pretzel at it. He missed.
The family business.
Not everybody wants to follow in their daddy’s footsteps, as witness the considerable number of people called Smith who don’t spend their days pounding hot iron. Traditions fade. Teenage Amish dream of working for Google, and young Clark Kent leaves the farm and heads for Metropolis. But Kevin had always believed, always assumed …
Unlike so many kids his age, Kevin was pretty sure he knew who he was. If he’d had blood, the family business would’ve been in it. That was what made him so mad, sometimes. Take the computers. Why couldn’t Dad see that the whole system needed replacing? It was obvious that was why mistakes happened. True, they only seemed to happen when Kevin was at the keyboard, but that was simply because Dad and Jay had got used to the stupid, obsolete old machines and could anticipate their ridiculous quirks. That was what it came down to, basically. Which did Dad think more highly of, his own son or a beat-up old Kawaguchiya XP7740? And that was one of those questions you just don’t ask, for fear of the answer.
He picked up his LoganBerry. War in Heaven 3—a ridiculous game because the good guys always win, inevitably, no matter what you do. A thought crossed his mind, and he grinned. He switched the LoganBerry to phone mode and tapped in a number.
It rang six hundred and sixty-six times. Then an angry voice snapped, “What?”
“Uncle Nick?”
Sigh. “Oh, hi, Kevin. Look, can it wait? I’m a bit tied up right now.”
He could believe it. Uncle Nick’s department was chronically overworked and understaffed. Nevertheless, he hardened his heart and said, “Uncle Nick, you know how Dad’s always going on about me getting work experience in all the departments?”
Another sigh. “No, Kevin.”
“Uncle Nick—”
“Forget it. Not after the last time.”
Kevin scowled. He’d explained. It hadn’t been his fault that Hell had frozen over. “Uncle Nick—”
“It’s not up to me, kid,” the voice said. “I got strict instructions from your old man. Not allowed to set foot Flipside ever again. Not exactly a grey area.”
“He said that?”
“Gospel truth, son. Sorry. So, if you don’t like it, you’ll have to take it up with him. Gotta fly, I’ve got someone on the stove. Bye now.”
The line went dead. Kevin scowled horribly at the screen and switched off. Fine, he thought. No problem. If Dad and Jay want me to slob around the house all day, I can do that, you bet. Who needs the stupid business anyway? It was enough to make him turn atheist. (Except he’d tried that once, and it hadn’t been a conspicuous success. Dad had argued, plausibly enough, that if he didn’t exist, neither did the fridge, the sofa, the TV or Kevin’s bedroom. After twenty-four hours shivering in the existential void, Kevin had solemnly burned the collected works of Richard Dawkins and been allowed back into the kitchen. Never again.)
Ungrateful, he thought. Wicked, ungrateful. Right now there were countless millions of ex-humans (lawyers, politicians, investment bankers) who’d give the charred stumps of their right arms to be where he was now rather than down there in Uncle Nick’s gloomy jurisdiction. But that was the point. Countless millions of other ex-humans had striven all their lives to be virtuous and good, and had thereby achieved Heaven; he’d grown up there, never been anywhere else. So, if Uncle Mike and Uncle Nick were right and he wasn’t cut out for the business, if he didn’t belong here, if he didn’t belong in his own home …
The door opened, and Uncle Ghost wandered out onto the stoop. In one hand was a coffee cup, in the other yesterday’s Herald. “Kevin. You seen my glasses anywhere?”
“You’re wearing them.”
“My other glasses.”
Kevin stood up and made a show of searching. “What do you need to read the paper for, Uncle? You know everything that’s going on.”
“Passes the time.”
Time, that old thing. There had been a time when Uncle Ghost had been the driving force of the business: its energy, its spark, its dancing breath of fire. Hard to imagine that these days. He’s done his fair share, Dad would say, he’s earned the right to take it a bit easier. Trouble was, Uncle Ghost didn’t seem to be taking it easy at all. If anything, he was taking it very hard.
“Damn glasses,” Uncle muttered, lifting a tablecloth and putting it back crooked. “Can’t see a thing without ’em these days.”
Was Uncle Ghost old? Well, he’d existed before Existence itself, but sequential linear time didn’t apply to the family, in the same way that fish can’t drown. The mortals say you’re as old as you feel. So how do you feel when you’ve been everywhere and seen everything? The official answer to that was wise, compassionate and understanding.
The glasses turned out to be hiding under the cushion of the chair Kevin had just been sitting on. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll straighten them out for you.”
“Don’t you dare.” Uncle snatched them away and stuffed them down the front of his shirt. “I’ll have Mike or Gabe fix them. You break everything.”
“Thanks, Uncle. That’s just exactly what I wanted to hear right now.”
“Was it? Why?”
“Forget it.”
Uncle Ghost sighed. “Why not?” he said. “These days, forgetting’s what I’m best at.”
More than just trace elements of truth in that assertion, which was why Uncle Ghost didn’t do any actual work any more. Overdue sunrises, March winds and April showers in July … He’s a menace, Dad had told Jay one dark midnight as they hurriedly dragged clouds in front of a crescent moon that should have been full. Kevin hadn’t been meant to hear that, of course. It was also significant that celestial mechanics had been added to Jay’s chore list. It was the easiest part of the business; a child could do it, or a fool. But not a burned-out old man. And not, apparently, Kevin.
He yawned. Through the open door he could hear the mechanised voice of the answering service: Sorry, there’s no one here to hear your prayer right now, please leave your name and we’ll get right back to you. He felt ashamed. Of course he didn’t begrudge Dad—or even Jay—a little time off now and again; they worked so hard, they deserved it. But there should always be someone on call to hear the prayers, it was in the Covenant. (Or was it? Offhand he couldn’t remember. But if it wasn’t, it should be). Nominally, Uncle Ghost was the duty Trinitarian, which was good enough for the Compliance people but cold comfort for the poor saps down there who actually believed.
Face it, bro, you just aren’t cut out for this line of work. Jay had this unfortunate streak of honesty. He claimed it came with the territory, though why he couldn’t sometimes be content with just being the Way and the Light, Kevin couldn’t say. The truth can be unkind, and surely kindness was more in line with the essence of the mission statement than mere factual accuracy. But if he was right … Well, was he? So far, Kevin’s record wasn’t impressive, he’d be the first to admit that. But maybe that was because they’d never given him a chance, never explained to him how things should be done. And besides, Jay would add at this point, we’re so rushed off our feet we simply haven’t got the time to show you. Quicker to do it ourselves. Quite.
The soft buzzing noise was Uncle Ghost snoring. Kevin got up, went inside and fixed himself a coffee—just instant because when he’d tried to use the cappuccino machine something had gone wrong with it, and Dad hadn’t had time to mend it. He flicked on the TV, but it was just reruns of Touched by an Angel. I’d pray, Kevin said to himself, but who to?
Here’s a tricky one. How many drops of nitroglycerine, delivered by way of a standard laboratory pipette from a drop of sixteen feet, does it take to blow a three-foot-square hole in a four-thousand-year-old Egyptian basalt slab carved with bas-reliefs of Pharaoh doing obeisance to the Reinvigorated Sun, while doing as little collateral damage as possible?
The answer, Jersey devoutly hoped, was four. That was all the nitro he had left, having used the rest of the bottle getting this far, and it’d be a confounded shame to have gone to so much trouble, and done so much irreversible damage to a designated World Heritage Site, only to wind up one drop short. In the event, he was proved right. At which he was so mightily relieved that he actually smiled.
The echoes died away, gradually and with disconcerting echo effects. The acoustics in the basement of a pyramid are distinctly weird. Sound lingers, and just when you think you’ve heard the last of it, back it comes again, like audible stomach acid. Creepy like you wouldn’t believe, not to mention the risk of somebody outside hearing. That would be very bad. Naughty echo.
His timetable allowed three minutes for the dust to settle. Over-optimistic. He couldn’t really see worth a damn and had his handkerchief tied over his nose as he dropped his rope ladder through the newly blasted hole in the floor, checked one last time that it was securely anchored and slowly began to climb down into the darkness.
It had been a long day. To get this far, quite apart from the discomforts associated with setting off multiple explosions in a very confined space, he’d had to put up with a tiresome sequence of booby traps—walls that shifted and slabs that fell away when you trod on them, flights of poisoned arrows, razor-sharp pendulums and all manner of similar nonsense; how come, if ancient engineers could devise stuff like that, nobody had managed to come up with a functional flush toilet until 1778?—and his reserves of patience and energy were getting dangerously low. At this point he should be trembling with feverish anticipation, not fatigue. Somewhere in the gloom below him, if he’d got it right, was the secret he’d been searching for all his adult life, the greatest discovery in human history, the key to the last and greatest mystery of all. He should be feeling something, apart from a splitting headache and a dull pain in his chest which he unrealistically hoped wasn’t a cracked rib.
After what felt like a lifetime his feet touched down on something level and solid. Taking one hand nervously off the rope ladder, he fished out his flashlight and flicked it on. Floor. Thank God for that. He shone the beam up. The hole in the roof was a very, very long way above him, and he was glad he’d taken the trouble to secure the ladder with four molybdenum steel crampons hammered into the living rock (twenty-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents from eBay; he was on a budget, but the Chinese make good stuff these days).
Well, he was here now; might as well get on with it. He shone the torch around the walls. An Egyptologist, or anyone whose aesthetic sense hadn’t been blunted down to nothing by a really miserable day blowing holes in walls and dodging sudden death, would’ve been stunned by the beauty of the frescoes, their colours as fresh and vibrant as the day they’d been painted, two thousand years before a bunch of shepherds gazed across an Italian hillside and one of them said, “I know, let’s call it Rome.” He yawned and muffled a sneeze. He knew what he was looking for, and it had to be here somewhere. Now then. If I was the most carefully hidden secret in the Universe, where would I be?
“Dr. Thorpe.”
He spun round so fast he nearly stumbled, just in time to see his rope ladder drop to the floor in a heap at his feet. He swung the flashlight up and picked out a face peering down at him through the hole in the roof. The face had a big moustache and was grinning.
“Well done, Dr. Thorpe. We tried to warn you, but you just kept going.”
“I might have guessed,” Jersey said bitterly. “You’re one of them. You’ve been on their side all along.”
The man with the moustache grinned at him. “Of course,” he said. “You know me as Yusuf, a humble porter, but know that I am Constantine, two hundred and seventh Grand Master of the Guardians of the Secret. For a hundred and thirty-six generations my forefathers have striven to guard that which must never be revealed. Console yourself with the thought that nobody has ever come this close before, Dr. Thorpe. Be proud of it. Revel in that satisfaction until your dying day, which,” he added, “by my calculations will be Thursday. Or early Saturday morning if you remembered to bring sandwiches. Goodbye, Dr. Thorpe. I’d just like to say that I’ve enjoyed our little game of chess.”
“Thank you.”
“But I won’t because my order values the truth above all things. Farewell.”
Jersey stooped for something to throw. His hand closed around some small, heavy thing, but by the time he’d straightened up, the face had gone. He glanced at the object in his hand, recognised it as a priceless Eleventh Dynasty ushabti figurine, and threw it at the wall. “Constantine,” he roared, “your feet smell and your moustache looks ridiculous.” Echoes, then silence. Buggeration, he said to himself.
Still, if he was right about the secret, it wouldn’t really matter terribly much. Everything now depended on how long the batteries in his flashlight lasted. He set about examining the walls inch by inch, his practised eye effortlessly translating the columns of hieroglyphs at sight. All sorts of guff about the imperishable glory of His late Majesty, and a load of gloomy though probably accurate predictions about what would happen to any unauthorised person who reached this spot; all well and good, but not what he was looking for. Boast, threat, boast, boast, threat, boast … Hello, what’s this?
Suddenly the weariness and the ennui evaporated like spit on a griddle, and his heart started to pound. His hand shook as he fumbled for his notebook and pencil. Numbers, a string of hieroglyphic numerals. He leaned forward. The glow from his torch was yellowing as the batteries faded. Zero. Dear God, the first number was a zero.
His hand was shaking so much, he broke his pencil. It took an agonising forty seconds to sharpen it. Zero. Followed by an eight. Then zero, zero.
He could hardly breathe. An 0800 number. Could it really be true?
He wrote down the remaining six digits like a man in a dream. By the time he’d finished, the torchlight was the dying glimmer of a faint amber sunset. He squinted at the numbers scrawled on the page, then slowly drew out his cellphone and keyed them in.
The dialling tone. One ring. Two.
Hello. All our lines are busy right now. Your call is being held in a queue until an operator is available. Your call is important to us. Please hold.
He could hear music. It might have been a chorus of angels inside his head, but it was probably the phone playing Vivaldi. It didn’t matter. He was through.
Please hold, the voice repeated. Like a man with his fingertips hooked over the threshold of Heaven, he held.
When Kevin spoke to him on the phone, he’d assumed Uncle Nick was in his office. In fact, thanks to the miracle of cellular telephony, Uncle Nick, or Mr. Lucifer to his many subordinates, had taken the call on the thirteenth hole at Velvet Lawns, where he now spent a large proportion of his time. In his absence, the department was mostly run by Bernie Lachuk, his deputy assistant private secretary.
Bernie—he hated Bernard, with the stress on the second syllable—was a civilian, a fact he was painfully aware of and rarely allowed to forget. He’d joined Flipside as part of a major rationalisation and downsizing exercise about thirty years ago (Bernie was still only twenty-six; we don’t need no steenkin’ sequential linear time), when a considerable number of the straightforward administrative functions had been outsourced to private contractors. That hadn’t worked out for a number of reasons, but Bernie and quite a few other civilians had stayed in post nevertheless. A lot of the older team members were still uncomfortable about working alongside mortals, but most of the logistical difficulties—toilets, temperature controls, doors, floors, etc.—had long since been ironed out, and even the diehards couldn’t deny that the Squishies (you weren’t supposed to call them that, but everybody did, including the mortals themselves) got the work done in half the time and at a fraction of the cost. As for the Squishies, by and large they found the working environment congenial, the work itself challenging but rewarding, and the pay a whisker on the lowish side of acceptable. Bernie, for example, had been a trainee supermarket manager before he came to work Flipside. It’s like I’d died and gone to Heaven, he told his mother at the end of his first week. Or something like that, he added quickly.
Maybe he wasn’t quite so enthusiastic now. Mr. Lucifer, he suspected, tended to take advantage of him, and since he’d advanced as far up the hierarchy as a Squishy could get, the incentive to go the extra mile to accommodate his boss wasn’t quite as strong as it had been. Take this morning, for instance. Just mind the store for me, Mr. L. had said to him as he swept up his golf bag and stuck his brightly coloured cap on his head, I’ve got to go and shmooze a supplier. See you later, bye. Bernie wasn’t so sure about that. Mr. L. spent a lot of time shmoozing suppliers at the links or in restaurants and nightclubs, but the prices they paid for everyday consumables never seemed to go down; the opposite, in fact, and ten minutes research on the Net convinced Bernie that they could get an awful lot of the stuff considerably cheaper elsewhere, and without the need for a single golf ball to be inconvenienced or a single margarita consumed. He’d mentioned that, of course. Mr. L. had smiled at him and told him he didn’t understand How Things Worked. Fair enough. It was Mr. L.’s train set, after all.
Another concept Mr. L. seemed to have trouble with, probably because of the sequential linear time thing, was normal working hours and overtime. Minding the store, for example, seemed to Bernie to constitute days, weeks, sometimes months of frantic activity (but when you’re rushed off your feet you don’t notice the passage of time particularly, so that was all right), for which he received no additional payment and which didn’t leave him much scope for a personal life. He understood, of course. He was mortal, Mr. L. wasn’t. Naturally the boss had trouble seeing things from his perspective, just as a bird doesn’t find it easy to understand a fish. And someone had to do keep the place ticking over, and yes, he did want to keep this job, so …
Quite. And yet.
One of the phones—the green one, which always meant trouble—rang, and he grabbed it without looking up from the figures on his screen. “Lachuk.”
“This is Malephar.” Oh dear. “Number Six furnace is down again. Get me Maintenance.”
Malephar was a Duke of Hell, had been ever since the Fall. He didn’t like Squishies very much. He was also terrible at his job, but it wasn’t Bernie’s place to criticise. “I’ll get on to it straight away, Mr. Malephar, but they told me this morning they’re running just a bit behind on non-essentials, so it might not be today. Sorry for any—”
“Don’t give me that. I want them here, now. Got that?”
Or there’d be Hell to pay (acting senior payroll clerk, B. Lachuk). “Yes, Mr. Malephar, I’ll see what I can do. Thank you for—”
The line went dead. He put the phone down, counted to ten under his breath and picked it up again. “Hello, this is Bernie Lachuk, front office. Could I possibly speak to—?”
“Wait.”
You could never entirely forget where you were and who you were dealing with: a certain something in the way they spoke to you. “Sure,” Bernie said. “I’ll hold.”
A long, long time later a voice said, “Now what?”
“I’ve just had a call from Duke Malephar. Apparently Number Six is playing up again. He wonders if you could possibly see your way to—”
“Impossible.” He recognised the voice. Awkwardness lay ahead, because although Malephar was Head of Operations, which theoretically took precedence over Maintenance, Balam, the Clerk of the Works, was a King and outranked Malephar by two clear pay grades. In real terms, of course, Bernie was acting boss of them all and they had to do what he told them to; the skill, of course, lay in the telling. “I’ve got requisitions backed up to infinity and half my demons are off sick. Tell the old goat to fix it himself.”
Strictly speaking, there was only one old goat in the Department, and he was off playing golf. “I can certainly pass your message along,” Bernie said, “but you might care to consider—”
“What?”
“Well, I was just thinking,” Bernie said meekly. “Naturally, if you’ve got other, more pressing jobs on the list, then that’s absolutely fine. But it occurs to me, if the furnace is offline for very long, it’ll cool down and the lining will crack, and obviously that wouldn’t be your fault, but you k. . .
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The Management Style of the Supreme Beings
Tom Holt
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