Valhalla, page 14
Not fair . . .
‘Fat,’ the boy on head-bumping duty was chanting in his ear. ‘Fat fat fat fat fat fat.’
For some reason the persistent repetition was unbearable, worse even than the pain of having his head slammed down on a hard surface. ‘Stop it,’ he wailed, but that just made the boy slam harder and chant louder. This is ridiculous, he told himself, what kind of a fight do you call this? Obviously I can’t beat an enemy I’m not strong enough to deal with, so where the hell’s the point? ‘Stop it,’ he repeated, ‘you’re hurting.’ Why had he said that? It was true, but so what? Attila the Hun had always treated pain as a kind of speed limit, a theoretical barrier to be ignored except in cases of immediate and extreme danger. His problem was the humiliation and helplessness, not the pain; but instead of saying You’re showing me up or You’re cheating, he’d said, ‘You’re hurting me.’ damn silly thing to say, of course; tantamount to saying, ‘It’s working fine, lads, keep it up.’
‘Fat,’ the boy was chanting. ‘You’re fat, you’re fat, you’re fat, you’re . . .’
‘Stop it!’ That was the teacher’s voice, shrill and horrified. The two boys scrambled off him and turned to face her. Now, Attila realised, now’s my chance - punch to the kidneys to drop ’em, then a few kicks to the head, stamp on their windpipes to finish off. But he couldn’t even get up; he was too weak to move and he was having some kind of trouble with his breathing, because his breath was coming in jerky sobs—
—Because he was crying. Dammit, Attila roared in his mind, this is ridiculous, I don’t cry, I didn’t cry when the Clan Snow-Leopard captured me and dipped me in a vat of boiling tallow; stop it, whoever’s doing this to me, it’s not fair, it’s not—
The teacher was shouting at the two boys. Attila could hear the disgust in her voice, as if she’d witnessed something unspeakably obscene and revolting (odd; hadn’t she ever seen a fight before? Where had she been all her life?) and he could see the boys standing listlessly in front of her. It was almost as if he could hear what they were thinking - they were bored by the silly lecture, they were ashamed of themselves for being so careless that they let a silly old grown-up creep up on them like that, they were worried about what was going to happen to them - would she keep them in after school, would she tell their mums? - and they were angry, because it wasn’t fair that they should get caught like this when all they’d been doing was having some fun. All that was easily read from the droop of their heads and the slouch of their shoulders, though Attila could’ve guessed what was going through their minds even if he’d had his eyes shut. He’d have thought exactly the same thing in their place, obviously. (Because being careless was the only thing they’d done wrong, and the rest of it wasn’t fair on them. Certainly all that stuff the teacher was spouting about how wicked it is to bully the little ones was pure, unadulterated garbage.)
Eventually the teacher stopped her babbling and sent the boys away. ‘Are you all right?’ she said, her voice dripping with such a superfluity of concern that Attila had to swallow hard to avoid throwing up.
‘Y-yes,’ Attila snuffled - sob, grizzle, sniffle, whimper; for pity’s sake, man, get a grip! ‘Yes, I - boohoohoo!’
Kind, gentle hands that he wanted to rip off and snap over his knee like dead twigs helped him up and brushed the dust off him. ‘I know,’ the teacher was saying, ‘they’re just great big stupid bullies, and as soon as we’ve got you sorted out I’m going straight to Mr Thompson’s office and he’ll write a strong letter to their mummies and daddies—’
Oh for shame! A strong letter! You stupid cow, that’s no way to treat an enemy; even a dishonourable enemy deserves better than that. ‘Yes, Miss,’ he heard himself say - spirits of our ancestors rot that insipid simpering voice! - ‘Thank you, miss. I feel much better now.’ Hellfire and buggery, get a load of that crumpled little smile, that heart-melting look of trust and hero-worship; my hero, my preserver! You snivelling little crawler . . .
‘And if they ever do anything to you again,’ the nauseating bitch was saying, ‘you come straight to me and tell me. Promise?’
‘I promise,’ said Attila’s voice solemnly, while Attila’s soul screamed and drummed its heels.
‘They only do it because you’re a bit small for your age, and a bit—well, chubby,’ the bitch went on. ‘They’re cowardly bullies who wouldn’t dare pick on someone their own size.’
‘Yes, miss.’
‘Now then.’ She was kneeling down and smiling at him reassuringly with those huge round cow eyes. (You still a virgin, miss? Well, of course you are, I mean, a bloke’d have to be so desperate . . .) ‘You promise me you’ll be a brave little soldier. ’ She was dabbing at his face with a Kleenex, dammit. Among the rocky slopes of Central Anatolia he’d built cairns with the skulls of men who’d insulted him less. ‘There’s the bell. Come on, time for sums. And as a treat, you can hand out the exercise books.’
Seething inside like a supercharged volcano, Attila the Hun toddled beside her, his tiny moist hand slipped trustingly into hers, while in the back of his mind, hurling itself against the bars like a caged lion, the inner barbarian screamed for blood.
During sums (waste of his time; he knew sums already. You couldn’t feed and clothe a hundred thousand people as they marched from Central Asia to France without being able to do sums) he thought long and hard about what had happened and what Odin had told him. He could see the way he was supposed to take; a whole new life, taking advantage of everything this strange new world had to offer if only he’d put aside what remained of himself, if only he’d surrender and go quietly. But not to be himself any more - it was worse than that; he was being asked to become the opposite of himself, to join the enemy, the other side—
—who had, of course, ultimately won, as shown by the fact that this society was as it was; civilisation had survived him, healed over him as if he’d never been there, and now he was being told to change sides. It was like telling him to stop being a horse eating the grass and start being the grass, on the grounds that the horse eventually dies but the grass never stops growing, eventually grows up between the horse’s bones. Swizzle, thought Attila, not fair. I don’t want to be the grass. I don’t want to be the good guy.
Which means, I guess, I don’t want to win.
He stopped at that point and thought about it. Sure, he’d lost and they’d won. But what was the point of winning if you couldn’t win and still be you? If winning made you lose the thing you’d been fighting for? Where on earth would be the point in doing that?
Nah, he thought. Stuff that. Don’t want to win.
Winning’s for losers.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sometimes he tried, really hard. Sometimes he just went through the motions, saying the lines without hearing them. Sometimes he didn’t bother at all, and stood in the spotlight surrounded by darkness like a dilapidated barn in a hailstorm. It didn’t seem to make any difference what he did; thirty seconds or so into the audition, the unseen voices told him they’d let him know, and he shuffled off the way he’d come, feeling as if he’d just been born and his mother was staring at him in the midwife’s arms and demanding to see the manager. The only variable was the tune Willard hummed while he was getting cleaned up; it was either ‘No Business Like Show Business’, ‘That’s Entertainment’, ‘Make ’Em Laugh’ or ‘Be A Clown’. Kortright had never liked any of them much.
‘Next night on your dressing room they’ll—hi there, Lin, how’d it go?’ Willard put down the magazine he’d been reading and looked up. ‘Did you get it?’
‘As if you cared, you jerk.’ Kortright flopped into his chair, which always seemed to be on the point of giving way but never did - was this also the Valhalla for chairs, he wondered? Did chairs that betrayed their trust and collapsed under someone’s weight end up here, to spend the rest of eternity groaning and flexing and never quite falling to bits? - and mopped blood from his cheek with a hank of cotton wool. ‘If you were any kind of real god, you’d get me out of this dump.’
Willard chuckled. ‘You should hear yourself,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Better yet, you should talk to yourself.’
‘I might just do that. Probably my only chance of talking to somebody sane around here.’
‘Oh, funny.’ Willard’s jolly smile shapeshifted into a scowl without any apparent movement of the muscles of his face. ‘You’re damned lucky to be here at all, Lyndon. After all, what are you? Are you a god? No. Are you a hero? No. Personified force of nature? Dragon? No. Mermaid? No. Werewolf? No. Man, you aren’t even a goddamn prophet. You’d be nothing without me. If it wasn’t for me putting my butt on the line for you, you know where you’d be? Probably you’d be guardian spirit of a small rock somewhere in the Shinto heaven, or following round after Cerberus with a poopscooper. But no, I saw you right, I got you Valhalla, I even got you the big one, the chance to audition for Lin-fucking-Kortright , because I care about my people, Lyndon, I really care. And this is all the thanks—’
Kortright stared. ‘I see what you mean,’ he said quietly. ‘Say, Willard, do I really talk like that to clients?’
Willard nodded. ‘And that’s to the ones you like, the ones who’ve actually got talent. To the others, well, sometimes you can be a bitty-bit brusque.’
‘Oh.’ Kortright bit his lip; then a thought struck him. ‘Hey, Willard, is that what all this is about? A judgement on me for being insensitive with the talent? Because if it is, I promise on my mother’s life—’
‘No, it isn’t,’ Willard interrupted irritably. ‘And besides, your mother died years ago. Can’t you get it into that titanium-reinforced skull of yours, Kortright? You’re dead. You’re here because this is where people like you go when they die. Lyndon Kortright, this is your afterlife. Get used to it, pal, because this is where you live from now on. And if it wasn’t for me getting down on my knees and pleading with Odin, you’d be somewhere a whole lot worse because, between you and me, Odin doesn’t like you. Capisce?’
‘Sure Odin likes me,’ Kortright replied with a worried look on his face. ‘He’s a friend. Dammit, he’s a client. Of course he likes me.’
‘Lyndon, you got him the job, of course he hates you. That’s why we’ve gotta think of some way—’
‘Hold it.’ Kortright held up his hand. ‘You just said something interesting.’
‘Everything I say is interesting, Lyndon. I’m a god, for Chrissakes. Your god. By rights, you should be writing all this down on a stone tablet.’
Kortright wasn’t listening. ‘I’m Odin’s agent,’ he repeated. ‘I got him this job.’
‘That we know. Dumbest thing you ever did, with hindsight. ’
‘So if I’m his agent,’ Kortright went on, ‘then he owes me commission. Ten per cent of everything he makes out of this Valhalla racket should be mine.’ He blinked twice, then laughed. ‘Finally, one of my clients is getting money, instead of all that incense and prayers and crap, and wouldn’t you just know it, I’m dead and he reckons I can’t collect. Well, we’ll see about that.’
‘Lyndon. Be careful what you ask for.’
Kortright shook his head. ‘I don’t work for him,’ he said. ‘Effectively we’re partners. And this is no way to treat a partner. ’
‘Lyndon.’ There was more urgency in Willard’s voice than in the whole of the US Postal Service. ‘I really suggest that we talk about something else. Tell me, how did you get into the agenting business in the first place? Was it what you always wanted to do right from when you were a little boy, or did you get a sort of road-to-Damascus vocation?’
Kortright growled, then yelped as the iodine he was dabbing on to his cut cheek made its presence felt. ‘I’d have thought you’d have known that,’ he said sourly, ‘if you’re really my own personal god. Y’know, I’m beginning to have my doubts about that. I don’t think you’re a god at all.’
Willard gave him a reproving look. ‘Now then,’ he said, ‘I seem to remember something in the rule book about not taking names in vain.’
‘Nah,’ Kortright replied. ‘You’re getting names confused with heroin. Although in your case, I’d say a better comparison would be cocaine.’
‘Really?’ said Willard, uncomfortably. ‘Why’s that?’
‘Because you’re getting right up my nose. Now, do you think you could get lost for a while?’
‘No,’ Willard replied sadly, ‘I’m omniscient, remember? And, as you say, I know exactly why you decided to be an agent. Money.’
Kortright nodded. ‘No finer reason for doing anything in all of creation.’ He screwed the top back on the iodine bottle. ‘At least, that’s the theory. I reckon it’d be a whole lot of fun finding out if the theory holds. Now then, like I was saying before you tried to change the subject: Odin. That sucker owes me a lot of money, and I’m gonna remind him about that.’
Willard made a disparaging gesture. ‘Why bother?’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s not as if there’s anything here you could spend money on.’
‘That’s not the point,’ Kortright replied. ‘My guess is, faced with a choice between paying me what he owes me and finding some way for me to get out of here, and in return I forget about my commission from now onwards, I reckon I know which one he’ll choose. So,’ he added grimly, ‘when he comes out here to tell me I’m due on stage, I’ll tell him . . .’
‘Just a moment.’ Willard held up his hand. ‘Who are we talking about, exactly?’
‘Odin, of course. The producer. The guy holding the damn audition.’
‘You think Odin is the producer?’
Kortright spread his arms. ‘Who else? This is Valhalla, at least according to you it’s Valhalla and you’re supposed to be a god; this is Valhalla, he runs it, therefore he’s gotta be Odin.’
‘Hm.’
‘You mean he isn’t? Goddammit, then who is?’
‘I didn’t say he isn’t,’ Willard replied guardedly. ‘I said “Hm”. Look at it this way. If Odin’s your client, surely you can recognise him when you see him.’
Kortright shook his head. ‘What he looks like don’t mean spit,’ he said. ‘He’s a god. As you should know,’ he added, ‘better than anybody. Come on, tell me. Is that guy Odin or isn’t he?’
‘Um.’
‘Oh for—’ Kortright narrowed his eyes. ‘I get it,’ he said. ‘You can’t tell lies, can you? And you don’t want to tell me the truth. So you aren’t telling me anything. Am I right?’
‘Mm.’
Kortright grabbed a towel and hurled it across the room. ‘I don’t know why I bother listening to you,’ he said. ‘First you get me killed, because you tell me that’s the only way to find Carol. Fine; as a result, now I’m dead as well. Then you tell me this is Valhalla. I believe you, even though you don’t show me no evidence or nothing. Then, when I figure out a way of maybe escaping from here, you try and talk me out of it; now you’re trying to get me so confused about whether or not that geek of a producer is Odin that I won’t have the nerve to ask him.’ He leaned forward and put his hands threateningly on Willard’s shoulders. ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘you also told me you’re a god - my god, dammit - and I believe that too, though I can’t seem to call to mind any real hard evidence you gave me for that either. Maybe everything you’ve been telling me’s a whole pack of bull. In which case—’
‘Urggh,’ the god broke in. ‘Ggghhgh.’
‘See? If you’re a god, how come I can choke you with my bare hands? And if you ain’t a god, then all that other trash you’ve been spouting’s a lie too.’ He gathered two handfuls of jacket collar and twisted. ‘Where is this place? Who’s in charge? If this is Valhalla, is Odin the producer? And where in fuck’s name is Carol?’
‘Ngk.’
‘What? Oh, right.’ Kortright relaxed his grip a little, allowing Willard to breathe. ‘Well? I’m waiting.’
‘Just let me - get my breath back.’
Kortright scowled horribly. ‘See?’ he said. ‘I knew you weren’t any kinda stinking god, you’re just some jerk, right? A real god—’
He didn’t finish what he was saying, because a flash of blinding blue light hit him in the chest, picked him up off his feet and slammed him against the wall like a squash ball. He seemed to hang for a moment, two feet or so off the ground, then dribbled down the wall like a raindrop on a window and drained away into an untidy heap of limbs on the floor.
‘A real god,’ Willard said, massaging his bruised neck, ‘doesn’t take that kinda shit from anybody. And that,’ he added, flicking from his fingertips a big blue bogey of crackling fire that hit Kortright on the chin and slammed his head against the wall, ‘is for calling me a jerk. Sheesh, why is it you humans can only understand one thing? No wonder what you guys wanted Heaven to be was Valhalla.’
‘Sorry,’ Kortright croaked in a tiny voice.
‘That’s better.’
‘I found your arguments very convincing,’ Kortright said. ‘In fact, they’re so neat I believe.’
‘Good,’ Willard said, folding his short, stubby arms across his chest. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere. All right, prove to me you believe.’
‘Sure thing. What d’you want me to do?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Willard thought for a moment. ‘How about a great leap of faith?’ he said. ‘That ought to settle this once and for all. Walk off this plank into this bottomless pit.’
Kortright looked down. He found that he was standing with his legs apart, each foot resting precariously on the lip of an impossibly deep-looking hole. Fall down that, he reckoned, and the next thing he’d see was a bunch of bewildered-looking guys standing upside down and wearing broad-rimmed hats with corks dangling off them, staring at him as he rose into the sky like an early Apollo rocket. ‘That wasn’t there before,’ he commented.
