Valhalla, p.2
Valhalla, page 2
‘’Scuse me,’ someone a bit further down the table said. ‘Oh God, did it land in your lap?’
‘Yes.’
‘Christ. Sorry. Look, it will come out. Most of it.’
—not because he was a slob or a nutcase who believed that it was all right to behave like a wild animal and blame it on History. Even in the real Valhalla, surely, people didn’t go around doing - that - and then carry on blithely stuffing and swilling as if nothing had happened. It was wrong and unfair to assume that people in history were like that; on a par with saying that people who live in council houses wash their socks in the bog and pee in the sink.
‘You’re right,’ said the bloke on his left. ‘It wasn’t quite like this. For one thing, the wall hangings are the wrong colour.’
‘Of course this isn’t like the genuine Valhalla. For one thing, Valhalla wasn’t a galvanised steel barn seventy-five yards from the northbound carriageway of the M5. For another thing,’ Howard added with a slight scowl, ‘there was no real Valhalla. Even the real Valhalla wasn’t real.’
The bloke on the left - Howard couldn’t remember having seen him before - shook his head. ‘You reckon,’ he said.
Howard nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I do. Likewise, I don’t hang up a stocking for Santa any more, and I don’t believe in the Tooth Fairy. I’ve even heard a rumour that it isn’t really the stork who brings babies.’
‘So my son assures me,’ the stranger replied, ‘though I prefer to keep an open mind on the issue. True, it doesn’t bring babies round where I live, but maybe that’s because it’s got enough sense to realise that if it landed for more than half a second, some bugger would steal its wing-feathers. Don’t you want that bit of pork fat? No? Mind if I—?’
‘Go ahead,’ Howard replied. ‘You aren’t from round here, then?’
The stranger dipped his head by way of confirmation. ‘Just passing through,’ he said. ‘On business, you know.’
‘Ah,’ Howard said. Then, to make conversation, he added, ‘What line of work are you in, then?’
‘Personnel,’ the stranger replied. ‘Executive recruitment. I’m what they call a headhunter.’
‘Right.’ There was something in the way he’d said headhunter that Howard didn’t like. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, except that it brought to his mind a mental image of a violin-maker rattling a spoon against a saucer and calling out ‘Here, kitty, kitty!’ He impaled another short section of leek, but it toppled off the point of his dagger and landed in his lap. ‘Must be an interesting job,’ he added.
The stranger shrugged his unusually broad shoulders. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I mean, a job’s always a job, whether you’re a shelf-stacker in the Co-Op or a Hollywood director; it still comes down to rolling out of bed on a cold winter morning and knowing your day’s not your own. That said, I’d rather do my job than most others.’
‘Good money?’ Howard ventured, wondering why he was bothering with this conversation. ‘Promising career structure? Opportunities for travel?’
‘Perks,’ the stranger replied. ‘Well, perk singular. But one hell of a big one.’
‘Really?’
The man grinned. ‘Oh yes. You don’t believe me, do you?’
Howard shook his head. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Truth is, I don’t know the first thing about head—about executive recruitment. Obviously you do, so I’m happy to take your word for it.’
‘Listen,’ the man said, ‘never take anyone’s word for anything. Golden rule of life, that is. No, I’ve made a pretty sweeping claim, so let me prove it to you.’
‘Oh,’ Howard said. ‘Well, all right, then.’
‘Good. Now, watch carefully.’
So saying, the stranger took the large, sharp knife out of Howard’s hand and drew it across his own jugular vein with a swift, firm movement. Then, quickly, he clamped his own hand across the cut. Howard stared in horror; he could see little beads of blood welling out from between the man’s clasped fingers.
The man was counting.
‘Five,’ he said. ‘Six.’ He removed his hand, revealing a deep gash and a thick slush of blood that appeared to be trickling upwards, back into the wound. ‘Had to put my hand there,’ he explained, ‘else there’d have been a spurt of blood like a burst water-main. You’d have been soaked to the skin, and I’d never have got it all back in again. Now, do you agree that’s one hell of a perk?’
The thin smear of blood that had been messing up the blade of Howard’s dagger turned to a fine mist and sprayed itself neatly into the rapidly closing wound. The stranger leaned forward and used the knife to spear another gobbet of pork fat. ‘And the money’s not bad,’ he went on, ‘not marvellous but not bad. Only,’ he added, ‘there’s nowhere to spend it except in the Company shop. No, the immortality’s got to be the main thing about this business. Once you’ve got eternal life, everything else just sort of gets left behind; you grow out of caring about anything else, like kids grow out of playing at being soldiers.’
He handed the knife back to Howard, who took it point first. ‘Eeek,’ he exclaimed and came within an inch of dropping it on his toe.
‘Anyway,’ the stranger said, his mouth full of pork fat. ‘Now then, is that proof or would you rather I took off something bigger - let me see, bigger, bigger. Well now, what about my head? Might be a bit messy, but I defy you to stay sceptical. ’
‘For God’s sake,’ Howard hissed. ‘Look, who are you? CIA?’
The stranger frowned. ‘Isn’t that the big chain store where you buy those rather old-fashioned shirts?’ he said. ‘If it is, I’m insulted. Do I look like I stand behind a till all day?’
‘Please,’ Howard groaned, quickly sneaking a look to see if anybody else was watching. ‘I believe you, really I do. I’ll believe anything; just stop cutting yourself up like a self-propelled bacon-slicer.’
‘Whatever you say,’ the man replied. ‘Well, then, ready when you are.’
Howard would have got up and made a run for it if his legs hadn’t turned to spaghetti. ‘Ready? What for?’
‘The journey, of course.’ The man was holding his own knife now. ‘It’s a longish haul, so if you want to take a quick pee before we set off—’
‘Set off? Where?’
The man smiled agreeably; then, as he quickly shoved out the hand with the knife in it and buried the full length of the blade in Howard’s heart, added, ‘Where do you think, silly? Valhalla, of course.’
The four horsemen reined in their ghastly steeds, lowered their weapons and waited anxiously. The Great Beast curled up at their feet and started washing itself with its tongue. Behind them, the back-projection of burning cities and erupting volcanoes faded into white. On the ground, brimstone hissed as it cooled.
‘That’s it?’ said the man with the cigar.
The rider of the pale horse assured him that was it, and his face fell; he looked like he’d been expecting a more animated response. But the man with the cigar looked, if anything, slightly bored.
‘You’ve got something,’ he said. ‘Definitely you’ve got something. But to be honest with you, and unless I’m really, savagely honest I don’t see how I can help you guys - to be brutally, viciously honest, I don’t really see you people in comedy.’
The look of disappointment on the four horsemen’s faces would have melted most hearts; it was like watching a bunch of six-year-olds being told that Christmas had just been cancelled. But the man with the cigar had a heart that not even an oxyacetylene flame would melt. Rumour had it, in fact, that this had been proved by experiment on a number of occasions.
‘If I were you,’ the man went on, ‘I’d stick to what you know. Doing the End of the World, I can get you all the gigs you want - well, one gig, guaranteed. But comedy, you’ve got to work on it. Lighten up a little. Lose the Beast. Till then,’ he added, relighting the cigar on a puddle of molten lava, ‘don’t give up the Doomsday job. I’ll call you, okay?’
The horsemen nodded and trooped out, with the Beast trotting at their heels like Jurassic Park’s answer to a Yorkshire terrier. When they’d gone, the man shook his head sadly and sat down behind his desk. On the window above it was written
LIN KORTRIGHT SUPERNATURAL AGENCY
only backwards.
The telephone rang. Kortright scowled at it and frowned. He wasn’t really in the mood for listening patiently to the neurotic witterings of some of his clients, and he was tempted to let the answering machine pick up the messages while he put his feet up on the desk and tried to get his head together.
On the other hand, a significant proportion of his client base was made up of gods of one sort or another; pretending you aren’t in when the guy on the other end of the line is all-seeing and omniscient isn’t the best way to foster a close working relationship. He sighed, picked up the phone and tucked it in the slot between shoulder and jaw.
‘Hey, Zeus,’ Kortright said, as his face reverted to its default smile. ‘This is great, I was just about to call . . . Yes, I spoke to the Disney people, I . . . No. Basically, Zee, the bottom line is no, nada, forget it. Why? Why? Well, it’s very simple, my friend, you can’t sue Disney, they got better lawyers than you do, they can afford better lawyers . . . Hey, don’t give me that, man. I mean, you may be God Almighty, but they’re the fucking Disney Corporation . . . Yes, okay. Yes, I’ll talk to them again. There must be some way to sort this out to our mutual advantage. Yeah, you bet. Of course I’m here for you, Zee, that’s my entire purpose in life, you know that. Lunch? Well, actually, lunch is kinda hard for me this week—’
Suddenly his desk was covered in plates of food. An ice-cold magnum of champagne landed in his lap, making him wince sharply.
‘—Except,’ he continued smoothly, ‘Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday. No, nothing I can’t put off. All right then, Friday. Yeah, you too, Zee. It’s been great talking. Ciao.’
The line went dead, and Kortright put the receiver back with a muted snarl. Then he pushed his chair back as far away from the desk as it would go, took a stopwatch from his vest pocket and started the countdown. Precisely five minutes later (over the hill, perhaps, but Zeus was still one hell of a special-effects man) the desk shook, the receiver was jolted out of its cradle and leaped like a friendly dolphin, sputtering with fat blue sparks. One minute later by Kortright’s watch, the firework display stopped, and he was able to flip the receiver back into its rest using the long, massively insulated hard plastic pipe he always kept handy for just such an emergency. Then, albeit reluctantly, he used the pipe to switch on the answering machine, at least until the receiver had cooled down enough to touch.
He used the unexpected respite period for some power thinking; and what he thought about was the big deal, the once-in-a-lifetime-even-if-you’re-immortal deal that was now so close to being closed that he could almost reach out and brush his fingertips against it. The Valhalla™ deal.
It had started, the way everything starts, with a phone call; and, to begin with, Kortright had had his work cut out taking it seriously, for all that it was, when you thought about it long enough, a viable (not to mention brilliant) concept - the universe of time and space’s first privately run, free-market afterlife. Once you got past the sniggering stage, it made sense: a specially designed, up-to-date, consumer-choice-driven, fee-paying Hereafter for wealthy, discriminating clients who wanted more than the traditional afterlives that the world’s religions could offer. It was, looked at from the right angle, an idea whose time had come, in a world where monolithic State monopolies were going down like dinosaurs at the start of an ice age. After all, once you’d dumped all the mystical trash, what was the difference between a heaven and a retirement park? One was life after death, the other was life before it, that was all.
The consortium behind the idea were businessmen, which was of course an advantage. By the time they had established contact with him, they’d already worked out the basic quantum astrotheology needed to make the idea technically viable, acquired all the rights to the name ‘Valhalla’ and trademarked them. That was as far as they were qualified to go. Being sensible men of commerce, they’d stopped there and called in an expert to advise them. Being men of wisdom and vision, they’d hired the best and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. The choice had been his, between a flat $10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 fee and 0.00001 per cent of gross turnover. It had taken Kortright less than half a nanosecond to make up his mind. Whatever else he might be, he was no cheapskate. He’d taken the percentage, and now all he needed to do was come up with the package. It would be that simple—
On his desk scratch pad, several days previously, he’d written the one big question:
WHAT DO PEOPLE WANT OUT OF DEATH?
- and under it, a coral reef of jottings was beginning to form as he’d turned the proposition over and over in his incredibly powerful mind. But it was one of those things where the more you thought about it, the more complicated it became, and the increasing complexity showed up visibly in the geological strata of his notes.
The first layer was nice and straightforward:
- Fun
- Relaxation
- Oneness with the cosmos
- Beach babes and margaritas round the pool
- A closer walk with Thee
- You wanna go where everybody knows your name
Then the doubts had started to creep in:
- ? Catering for special dietary requirements
- ? Disabled access; ramps for wheelchairs
- ? One man’s meat; some guys just aren’t into beach babes
- which had led to the first quantum leap into complexity: separate facilities for different interest groups, ethnic groups, cultural and philosophical mindsets, and socio-economic alignments. (What market are we targeting? Has anybody done any solid market research on this? What are we looking to build here: Plato’s Republic, Disneyland or Reno?) This had led him inexorably into the first of his El Dorado hunts, the quest for the universal common denominator. Rephrase the original question:
WHAT DOES EVERYBODY WANT OUT OF DEATH?
Unfortunately, there was only one possible answer to that. Namely -
TO AVOID IT.
All right, he’d thought, maybe this is the answer in disguise. Try this: what everybody wants out of death is immortality.
Back to the scratch pad; having to write very small indeed now, to fit it all in:
- Okay, define immortality. Immortality is not dying.
- Fine; but how do you know you’re not dying? How do you know you simply haven’t died yet?
- Immortality isn’t enough; you have to know you’re immortal, else you’ll just worry.
- Define death.
- No, that sucks. Define life. Life is what you lose when you die.
- So, if you’re constantly dying but at the same time still staying alive, you know you’re immortal.
- Valhalla.
- which was precisely where Kortright had started from. Next he’d pulled down his original list of suggestions and tried a little elucidatory annotation:
- Fun: fun is activities, games. Such as playing, swordfighting, paintball. Beating the shit out of people is fun, provided you don’t get arrested next day.
- Relaxation: relaxation is an absence of stress. Stress is worry. Okay, so if you know you’re immortal and no matter how many times you get your head cut off in a battle, it’ll always grow back and be good as new, what’s to worry about? On the other hand, it sounds unpleasantly like Groundhog Day. Needs work.
- Oneness with the cosmos: what exactly does this mean? Screw it.
- Beach babes and margaritas round the pool: well, no problem at all about what that means. Substitute Valkyries and horns of ale round a roaring fire, makes no odds. Subtlety isn’t really at a premium in this scenario.
- A closer walk with Thee: guys will want to feel that the experience has significance, some kind of meaning, otherwise it’s just non-stop party-party-party, no challenge, no sense of achievement. I guess we need a doctrine or dream of some kind.
- You wanna go where everybody knows your name. Indeed: community, a sense of belonging. Brand loyalty. Otherwise, a thousand years down the line, they’ll all start slipping quietly away and defecting to Mithraism or some such shit.
When he’d finished writing that, he’d felt rather good about it. There was a certain specious consistency, as if he’d discovered something that was actually true. This feeling lasted just as long as it took to visualise himself pitching the idea of a wooden shed where people bash each other with swords to a consortium of the universe’s richest and most influential life forms. At this point, he’d found himself stopping and thinking hard, and realised he’d bitten through and swallowed the top half of his pencil.
Now, nearly a week later, he was sitting staring at a scratch pad that only had enough space left on it for one word. Lin Kortright had been in the business long enough to know the value of signs and portents (hell, some of his best friends were signs and portents); if there was only space for one word, then that one word would be the answer. Unfortunately, every time he glanced across at the window ledge and caught sight of Mr Webster’s extremely fat book, he had to face the fact that he was spoilt for choice.
One word.
All that money.
One lousy little word.
The phone rang. Not the still-incandescent one on his desk; his mobile. He flicked it open and tucked it under his ear.
‘Julie? Julie? What’s come over you, doll? You know better than calling me at the office. Yes, yes, I know, but hey, I’m in a meeting. I’m in a meeting right now with some pretty fucking important gods, and—Yes, look, all right, I’m sorry, but talking right now is really out of the question—Carol? Who the hell’s Carol? Oh, right, that Carol, no, I hadn’t forgotten we’ve got a daughter. But listen, honey, this really isn’t the time, because—’
