Oddjobs Page 13

  “Absolutely not,” agreed Chad. “Easy access to contraception, online pornography, morbid obesity, and women choosing to have children later in life are all factors behind the falling birth rate in the western world.”

  “We’ve worked very hard on some of those,” said Leandra.

  “And in the States, the federal government diverted millions into that purity ring, virginity pledge organisation.”

  “Got it!” said Nina and flipped her tablet for all to see. “I give you… Tentacular!”

  Morag looked at the hastily photoshopped line-up of pretty young men, standing before a smoky pentacle-and-squid-thing background.

  “Wow. Someone’s been duck-paddling in the meeting,” said Chad. “Tentacular, eh?”

  “Mmm-hmmm,” nodded Nina. “Tentacular are a new five-piece boyband. Five generous portions of bare-chested hotness. They sing about love, longing and the unspeakable horror underpinning our universe. They make tentacles sexy.”

  “A boy band?” said Morag.

  “Don’t say you’re not excited by these.”

  Morag looked closely. “Well, I kind of prefer my men to be… well, actual men, to be honest.”

  “They’ll be a worldwide phenomenon and there’ll be copycat bands.”

  “Managed carefully, we could engineer a cultural paradigm shift,” said Leandra, genuinely taken by the idea.

  ‘Paradigm shift’ was on Morag’s bingo card. She was two buzzwords away from a line. The fates had decreed she was going to die that day but Morag was still surprisingly excited by the idea of winning five pounds.

  “That is indeed visionary,” said Chad. “It’s great what can come out of an open source ideas forum like this.”

  “Maybe,” Leandra said to Chad, “it’s time to bring out the plushies.”

  Chad nodded.

  “Okay,” he said to all. “There’s been some good ideas in the room and some good energy. Leandra and I would like to share with you some prototypes that came out of a focus group meeting in Belfast last month. We want eyeball reactions, from the eye to the gut to the mouth. No sugar coating.”

  Together, they brought out a half-dozen paper shopping bags from under the table and handed them out. Morag opened her bag and took out something pink and fluffy and misshapen beyond the realm of all known shapes. She turned it upside down, back and forth and was still none the wiser. Adages about an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters sprang to her mind. This cuddly… thing would be the first aborted product of an infinite number of monkeys with sewing machines. There were googly eyes sewn onto it and a row of card-stiffened tartan spines.

  “Is this meant to be Yoth Mammon?” she said in sudden recognition.

  “Well done,” said Leandra.

  “Yoth Mammon the corruptor, the defiler of souls, the dredger in the lake of desires?”

  “Yes.”

  “With cute little eyes and… and this is a smile. Yoth Mammon doesn’t smile.”

  “The Belfast group thought it would play better with a smile.”

  Archdeacon Silas held a winged Wind of Kaxeos at arm’s length. “You’ve made cute little effigies of major Venislarn,” he stated simply.

  “Toys,” said Chad. “You know, for kids.”

  Rod’s offering looked like the result of an unholy one-night stand between a cushion and a cow’s stomach, all tubes and tassels.

  “Yo-Morgantus?” he said.

  “Correct,” said Leandra.

  “Do the gods know you have turned them into Cabbage Patch Dolls?”

  “This is just the developmental stage,” she said. “Not ready to roll out.”

  “Aye, well don’t be surprised if he doesn’t take to it.”

  “What is this meant to be?” asked Vivian, holding hers up between finger and thumb.

  “That’s the – let me check – yes, that’s the Nadirian,” said Chad.

  “The Nadirian is said to take on whatever form the observer expects to see,” Vivian pointed out.

  “Then it’s an entirely accurate likeness,” said Leandra smugly.

  “This smacks of idolatry and worshipping false gods,” said Silas. Nina walked her Zildrohar-Cqulu across the table as though it were an EU-fire-regulation-compliant Godzilla on its way to Tokyo. “But my sister’s children would love them,” said Silas. “I assume this is to accustom us all to their appearance?”

  “My Little Venislarn,” suggested Morag.

  “So,” said Chad, “do you think these toys are going to have a positive brand impact?”

  “We’re looking for a steep uptake with a pebble-free runway,” said Leandra. “The Buzz Lightyear effect.”

  Morag crossed out ‘steep uptake’. One to go!

  “Hideous,” said Vivian simply.

  “Thank you,” said Leandra. “Honesty is good.”

  “Misguided.”

  “Good. Thank you.”

  “Based on false premises and executed with no consideration of the bigger picture.”

  “Lots of opinions there,” said Leandra with a forced smile.

  “Wrong-headed, naïve, stupid and –”

  “Okay, Vivian,” Leandra cut in. “Let’s not front up our idea shelves with just your thoughts. We’re sharing opinions here but we’re also sharing the floorspace.”

  “I do see a contradiction here,” said Silas. “You’ve already discussed ways of encouraging the public to seek oblivion – to seek death – and yet, simultaneously, you are encouraging acceptance of the Venislarn, a lessening of their fears.”

  Rod nodded. “On the one hand you’re saying ‘don’t worry, be happy’ and, on the other, you’re saying ‘kill yoursen’.”

  “Be happy. Kill yourself,” mused Nina. “That could work on a T-shirt.”

  Rod looked at her. “I can’t tell when you’re being sarcastic and when you’re being serious.”

  “Neither can I,” she agreed. “Curse of our times. But death and happiness don’t have to be opposite ends of the spectrum. We should get a member of Tentacular to commit suicide.”

  “Your fictitious boy band?” said Vivian.

  “Everything’s fictitious until someone makes it happen,” said Nina.

  Rod whispered to Morag. “She does this every time. By the end, she’s talking more dribbling arse gravy than Chad and Leandra. I can’t tell if she’s joining in or taking the mick.”

  “Tentacular should get their first couple of albums under their belt, maybe their first world tour too, and then Zeke, the cute quiet one, should announce his intention to kill himself. He’s not crying out for help. He’s not got mental health issues. He’s moving on to oblivion because the time is right and it’s what he wants to do. It will be beautiful. Every stage of it will be documented. He’ll do a poignant farewell track with his bandmates and, afterwards, after the beautifully choreographed funeral, Tentacular will record another album in his honour and do the ‘Oblivion Be Mine’ tour.”

  Chad frantically copied a shortened version on the flipchart.

  “This is sick,” said Silas.

  “It might just work,” said Vivian.

  “I think I’m dreaming,” said Rod.

  “I know,” agreed Leandra, completely failing to understand.

  “So, you’ve convinced a million screaming pre-teens to top themselves, Nina. How are you going to reach out to everyone else?” asked Rod.

  “Money is always a good incentive,” said Vivian. “If life insurance payouts were government subsidised, for example.”

  “You could make the Darwin Award an actual award,” said Morag, deciding to join in with the silliness.

  “Give out cash prizes to people who top themselves in ridiculous and amusing ways,” said Rod.

  “You’ve Been Fatally Framed.”

  “And we could get media pundits to advance nihilistic viewpoints.”

  “Let’s commission Will Self to write a series of sneering articles in the broadsheets about the futility of existence.”<
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  “Doesn’t he do that already?” said Silas.

  “Ingenious,” said Leandra.

  “This is positively an idea blizzard,” said Chad.

  Rod suddenly slammed his hand down on the table. Everyone looked.

  “Bingo,” he said softly, holding up his card. “Read ‘em and weep.”

  The Cube was a fifteen-minute walk from the Library, but Vivian found that Morag was dragging her heels, in a slight daze, her eyes following the white-grey clouds that scudded across the sky.

  “I am sure that, without too much additional effort, you could manage a faster pace,” said Vivian.

  “Sorry,” said Morag. “I was just… taking it all in. Savouring it.”

  Vivian contemplated the dull skies, the brown canal waters beside them, the indolent urban ducks on the towpath, the grass growing through cracks in the brickwork. Vivian wasn’t sure that there was much to take in or whether indeed, taking in any of it was advisable. The towpath from Holiday Road ran up to the rear of the Mailbox, once the Royal Mail sorting office and now given over to hotels, shops and bars that catered to people with more money than sense. Restaurant-lined pathways connected the Mailbox proper with the not-strictly-cubic Cube. The architect had apparently stated that the glass body of the Cube reflected the city’s jewellery-making past and the multi-shaped and multi-hued box of shapes around it spoke of the city’s more industrial heritage. To Vivian’s eyes, it still looked like a twenty-storey conservatory covered in titanic Lego bricks.

  “We’ve just sat through the most bizarre meeting with two people who are handsomely paid to come up with insane ways to sell the Venislarn to the public,” said Morag.

  “We have,” Vivian agreed.

  “Life is strange, isn’t it?”

  “Compared to what?”

  “Do you ever wonder what it all means?” Morag sighed.

  “No,” said Vivian without hesitation. Morag stopped in her tracks.

  “Meaning is created in the minds of intelligent beings. The ‘it’ you are referring to is the universe including those self-same minds. It is logically impossible, like trying to fit a gallon into a pint glass. Is this to do with you dying?”

  Vivian was aware that her tone was far from sympathetic but she didn’t have the energy or the ability to do anything about it.

  “Yes,” said Morag.

  “And why do you think you are going to die today?”

  “I’ve been told. I have enemies.”

  Vivian laughed drily. “We all do.” She looked at Morag straight in the eye. “Do you want the truth? A lot of things in this world hurt us and cause us pain. A small number of things do not. The only meaning to life involves avoiding the former and finding the latter. Death is the end of all of them, the good things and the bad ones. There is no more meaning than that.”

  They walked on in silence for a bit.

  “Do you know we have the Wittgenstein Volume in the Vault?” asked Vivian.

  “The Bloody Big Book? Yes.”

  “You should read it sometime,” said Vivian. “Then you will understand.”

  “I’m going to die today,” Morag pointed out.

  “True. Then don’t read it. You have probably got better things to do with your final hours.”

  In the white tiled aisles far below the Library, at the very spot where Rod had first found Izzy Wu, Dr Ingrid Spence showed the Vault catalogue to Rod and Nina. Ingrid’s T-shirt had a picture of Bruce Willis in Die Hard mode with a speech bubble that read ‘I got enough friends’.

  “Close to four thousand items,” said Rod. “Are all accounted for?”

  “They certainly were at the last audit,” said Ingrid. “But when that young woman broke in…”

  “How long did she have?” said Nina. “Ten, fifteen minutes.”

  “She was here for a reason,” said Rod. “She was sent here. Someone gave her the codes. They’d have also given her instructions.”

  “You came down here and apprehended her, Rod. From here to the detention room to the secure hospital she’s now drooling in. She stole nothing.”

  “That we saw,” said Rod. “Some of the items here are very small.”

  “She could have swallowed rings, trinkets, scales, scrapings or eyeballs,” said Ingrid.

  “Scrapings? Seriously?”

  “Or taken a page from a book. Just one page.”

  Rod looked at the reinforced chamber holding the Bloody Big Book and then crossed to look through the porthole. The heavy book inside was laid open to a centre page. Of course, it was always open to one of the central pages. When a book had an infinite number of pages, any page was as equally and infinitely far from the beginning as it was from the end.

  “There’s no way she could have accessed it,” said Ingrid.

  “Ah, let’s not rule anything out just yet,” said Rod. “But this is where she came. This is where we start looking.”

  Nina went to the case containing the Tiny Blue Innumerables. The sparkling stones sat on a black velvet square.

  “Maybe she stole some of these.”

  “I doubt it,” said Ingrid.

  “Really? When was the last time you counted them all?”

  “Nina,” Ingrid began, “they are Tiny Blue Innumerables. By their very nature, they cannot —” Ingrid stopped herself and pouted at Nina’s idiot grin. “A joke. I see.”

  “Maybe she didn’t steal anything,” said Rod.

  “That’s what I said,” said Nina.

  “Maybe she just moved some things.”

  “Why?”

  “Ooh,” said Ingrid darkly. “That’s a worrying thought.”

  “What?”

  “Well, there are certain things that need to be stored separately. Powerful items that could be dangerous when combined.”

  “Bullets and guns,” said Rod. “Nina and vodka shots.”

  Rod looked at the painting on the wall above the Bloody Big Book, Conroy Maddox’s surrealist painting of the Venislarn Apocalypse. He looked at the obscene carnival of monsters, cavorting and devouring the remnants of the world.

  “This is potentially very bad,” he said.

  “It is,” said Ingrid.

  “World-endingly bad?” he asked.

  “Hm.” Ingrid made a seesaw motion with her hand.

  The top two floors of the Cube were filled with monsters, crammed together like an art collaboration between Hieronymus Bosch and HR Giger.

  The concierge in the lobby, a fat man with uneven patches of hair sprouting out of his scalp, had recognised Vivian and directed them straight to the nearest lift. The ride up seemed to take an age and Morag felt a strange rolling sickness, not quite butterflies in her stomach – more like a bouncy castle full of sugar-fuelled five-year-olds.

  The lift opened onto a lobby with a view of the city to the north. Through the Tetris block shell of the building, Morag could see the canal network, the Library off to the right, a few lesser tower blocks off to the left and then a rapidly blurring mass of red, browns and black stretching out to low and distant hills. The air about them was stiflingly hot. Somewhere a heat vent droned.

  “Yo-Morgantus is expecting us,” said Vivian.

  “Right,” said Morag fatalistically. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “He won’t kill you,” said Vivian.

  “That’s optimistic.”

  “No. Yo-Morgantus will like you.”

  “You’re the third person to say that. How do you know?”

  “Hold that thought,” said Vivian. She led her to a set of double doors and pushed through into a carnival of monsters.

  The hall took up two floors. Weird tassel-like party streamers hung from the ceiling. There were no windows. Black drapes, irregular mirrors, steel tubing filigree and dim orb lights lined the walls, making it look like an eighties nightclub trying and failing to recreate a twenties nightclub. In the centre of the room, tables sat incongruously beside mysterious mounds and uninviting pools of slu
dge. This space was even hotter than the corridor they had come from. Large heating vents breathed warmly over the entire room.

  Presz’lings, Uriye Inai’e, Mammonites, draybbea, Croyi-Takk and samakha respectively stalked, wheeled, strutted, oozed, glided and lolloped about. In the heights and darker recesses, larger, more singular forms held back and watched their children and emissaries play.

  None of this surprised Morag. This was partly because Morag’s thoughts were less bothered with unearthly wonders and more with her imminent death. It was also partly because she encountered Venislarn horrors on a daily basis and had a very healthy Abyssal Rating of seven. But, mostly, it was because Morag was already surprised by the humans in the room.

  Human servants in the room carried platters and trays. They waited dutifully at their masters’ sides and they caressed, pummelled and scourged their betters’ hides. This wasn’t surprising or particularly unusual. That there were nearly a hundred of them in one space was uncommon but not unheard of. That they were all butt naked was an intriguing aesthetic but, no, the thing that almost floored Morag with surprise was that every single one of them was a redhead.

  From strawberry blondes to coppery reds, from deep auburns to fiery orange, every human in the room (apart from the grey-haired Vivian) was a ginger.

  “Hell,” said Morag softly.

  “Or something very much like it,” said Vivian. “Come.”

  They walked forward. Minor Venislarn stopped and glared at them. A stick-limbed presz’ling crossed their path and paused as though to bar their way but moved on when they showed no intention of stopping.

  “Yo-Morgantus likes red hair,” said Vivian.

  “I can see.”

  “It is not a visual thing. These are all natural redheads. We suspect Yo-Morgantus’s attraction is more to do with the high levels of pheomelanin.”

  “It’s a good theory but entirely wrong,” said a red-haired young man, coming up beside them.

  He was tall and built like an Olympic sprinter. His nose was wonky and his ears stuck out but he had a beautiful if lopsided smile that more than made up for his other facial shortcomings.

  “I’m sure you have a better theory,” said Vivian, “but I do not pay attention to the opinions of naked people. It is a little rule I have.”