Wish You Were Here (27 page)

Hat winced. Too much of that sort of logic can rot a man's brain. ‘Anyway,' Hat said, as soon as he'd managed to jemmy his brain back into gear, ‘we're still stuck here, with nothing to steal and not much hope of getting out of here unless . . .'

‘Unless what, Chief?'

‘Well, not really unless anything,' Hat conceded despondently. ‘If I'm right, the only people who can let us out is us, and we don't seem to know how to go about it.'

Mr Snedge considered this for a moment. ‘D'you think we're giving it our best shot, Chief? I mean, we would give it our best shot, wouldn't we?'

‘Shut up, Snedge.'

‘Yes, Chief.'

Hat stood up again, and resumed his pacing. Being the only sentient life-form among so many pillocks had its positive side as well; in the country of the thick, the half-witted man is king. On the other hand, it made for a certain degree of isolation, not to mention stress. It'd be nice if, just once, they got themselves into some horrible jam and someone else figured out how to get them out again.

‘'Scuse me, Chief.'

Hat looked round and recognised Mr Flurt, the company's master-at-arms, who also doubled as their quarter-master and, when necessary, a battering-ram. Compared with the prospects of getting a sensible remark out of Mr Flurt, blood spouts out of stones like something out of Sam Peckinpah's nightmares.

‘Hm?' Hat said, allowing his mind to idle again.

‘Well,' said Flurt, ‘if it's us hiding, then if we knew who we was hiding from, we could go hide somewhere else where they still wouldn't find us.'

Just as Hat's subconscious was pressing the
Delete File
key to get all that gibberish out of his short-term memory, a gleam of sense caught his mind's eye. ‘Say that again,' he ordered.

‘If it's us hiding,' said Flurt, reciting carefully, ‘then if we knew who we was hiding from—'

Hat pounded his fist into his cupped palm excitedly. ‘Then,' he shouted, ‘we could go and hide somewhere else where they still wouldn't find us! Of course. That's brilliant.'

‘What's brilliant, Chief?'

‘What you just said, Flurt. Honestly, there are times . . .'

‘No, Chief,' said Flurt patiently. ‘What's it mean?'

Hat allowed his excitement to subside a little. Other things come out of the mouths of babes and sucklings beside wisdom, as anybody who has to clean up afterwards can testify. ‘I'll explain later,' he muttered. ‘Right now, I've got to think.'

 

Indians!

Janice froze. For all that it was the last decade of the twentieth century, and people don't think that way any more, she still had a residual level of sludge at the bottom of her mind in which lurked, secretly nourished by the cowboy movies of her youth, an irrational fear of being overtaken in the middle of nowhere by a Native American war-party on the rampage. What she was afraid of, she didn't know; that's often the way with irrational fears. Maybe they'd say unkind things about her, or accidentally drop tomahawks on her foot.

She looked again. Yes, there were Indians, right enough; but these particular Indians were unlikely to pose a threat to anyone, in the short term at least. If nothing was done about them for several days, it'd be a different matter.

‘Hello?' she said.

No reply; under the circumstances all to the good, because the last thing you want if you're of a sensitive disposition is dead people answering you when you say, ‘Hello.' It's bad enough when they knock once for yes, two times for no and start playing silly buggers with the table.

‘Um,' she went on nonetheless, ‘are you guys all right? Can I help anyone?'

But they continued to be dead, and took no notice. Or at least, the ones near to where Janice was standing continued to be dead. Further off, where the briars and undergrowth obscured her view, there was something moving about.

Janice ducked behind a moss-covered rock.

‘Bloody hell,' said a voice. ‘Just look at this lot, will you?'

‘They just don't think,' someone else replied.

Shivering, Janice peered over the top of the rock, and saw two men. They were wearing brown overalls and baseball caps with some sort of logo or crest on them, and they carried big red plastic toolboxes. One of them knelt down and picked up a stray arm.

‘Just look, will you?' he said. ‘Brand new 36D. Remember the trouble we had getting hold of these?'

The other man nodded as he unfastened his toolbox. ‘They're buggers, they are. Bloody old UNF threads, you need a special grommet or they just flop about.Well, he'll have to make do with a 41 metric, 'cos that's the nearest I got. Don't suppose he'll live long enough to notice, the way they're carrying on.'

‘That's if we've got a 41 metric,' said his colleague. ‘I got a feeling we bunged the last one on one of them Vikings. I ask you, how can you lose a bloody arm when you're drowning?'

‘They do it on purpose, if you ask me.' The man was doing something Janice didn't want to think about with a mangled torso and a ratchet screwdriver. ‘Just to be awkward. Fifteen holes I counted in one of them goblins. Well, that's this month's body putty gone, and the others'll just have to lump it.'

Whatever it was they were doing, they were certainly quick about it. They worked with the certain, economical movements of men who know what they're doing and have been doing it for a very long time. Janice could hear clicks and clunks and the occasional whirr of a cordless drill.

‘I only fixed this bugger dinner time,' growled one of the men. ‘Came in with his head on the wrong way round. Only been trying to mend it himself, the daft sod. Here, you got a 97B in heads, twelve mil. by thirty-six?'

‘Only in pink.'

The man shrugged. ‘Sling it over,' he said. ‘Don't suppose anybody'll notice under all that warpaint they wear.' Something round and soccer-ball-sized looped through the air and was caught. The drill whirred. A socket wrench clacked. The man swore.

‘Taken all the skin off me knuckles,' he explained. ‘Got any?'

‘Here.'

‘Ta. When's this lot got to be done by, anyway? There's a couple here ought to go back to the works.'

The other one shrugged. ‘They didn't say,' he replied. ‘They ought to keep a few back as spares, then we wouldn't have all these rush jobs. I've had it up to here with getting the blame when arms fall off, and it's only 'cos I haven't had time to do a proper job.'

‘Yeah. They just don't think.'

My God, Janice muttered to herself, they're repairing all those dead guys, this is
amazing
. Or maybe they aren't guys, maybe they're just robots. That'd still be pretty amazing.

‘Hey!'

This time, the voice was coming from a few yards away. Janice ducked down again and held her breath.

‘Hold yer water, son,' replied one of the men wearily. ‘We'll get to you soon as we can. Only got one pair of hands, you know.'

‘Here, that's a good one, Phil. Only one pair of hands.'

‘What? Oh, yes, right. Go and see what he wants, will you, Dave? I've got this one's liver all in pieces, and you know how those little return springs jump out soon as look at them.'

The man called Dave gathered up his tools and trudged over to where the voice had come from.‘Call out, will you?' he said. ‘Can't see bugger all in this long grass.'

‘Over here,' the voice replied. ‘Look, sorry to hassle you, but I'm due on in a minute and all that's left of me is a couple of toes.'

Dave located the source of the voice and stood for a moment or so, clicking his tongue and making well-I-dunno noises. ‘Tell you what,' he said after a while, ‘the best I can do for you is bung you in one of them other bodies, just for now.Then, when you've done your bit, I'll have you in down the depot and sort you out properly.'

‘Ah shit,' replied the toes, disgustedly. ‘Can't you just patch me up with a bit of insulating tape or something? It's only a non-speaking part.'

‘I'll pretend I didn't hear that,' Dave replied frostily. ‘You know what my boss'd say if he saw one of you buggers walking about all bodged up with sticky tape. Either you can go in someone else, or you'll have to wait till we get back to the works. It's up to you.'

‘Bloody prima donnas,' muttered the toes. ‘All right, then. But find me a good one, will you? And not that one, he's got rheumatism.'

Dave worked in silence for a while, clicking and clunking his way through a growing pile of small, bloody, oily bits. ‘What the hell happened to you lot anyway?' he asked eventually. ‘Looks like you got blown up.'

‘We did.'

‘How'd that happen, then?'

‘If you must know, I threw a stick of dynamite on the fire.'

‘You did?'

‘Yes. It was in the scenario. I don't enjoy getting blasted into catfood, you know.'

‘You lot, you just don't know how to look after decent kit. I mean, just look at this leg.'

‘All right, you've made your—'

‘With a bit of luck I might be able to salvage the universal joint, and that's it. Hold still, will you? Don't want to waste another heart valve, thank you very much. Now then . . .'

‘Hey!'

‘Shuttup,' hissed Dave. ‘And keep still. There's something behind that rock.'

‘So?'

‘Stay there. Don't move.'

‘Haven't really got any choice in the matter, have I?'

Janice contemplated flight, but not for very long; because before she could sweet-talk her limbs into unfreezing, Dave was standing over her, looking very apprehensive and gripping a big spanner tightly in both hands.

‘Oh balls,' he said.

‘Excuse me?'

Dave scowled at her as if she were a crossed thread. ‘You're one of them, aren't you?' he growled. ‘A customer.'

Janice nodded.

‘You're not supposed to see any of this.'

‘No?'

‘No.' Dave was looking at her differently now; that slightly bewildered, slightly boiled, slightly stuffed expression she was coming to know so well. ‘No,' he repeated, letting the spanner drop. ‘Well, er, no. Actually.'

Janice hauled herself back onto her feet, with rather more enthusiasm than dignity. ‘I'm terribly sorry,' she mumbled. ‘I'd better be going, then.'

‘No, don't go,' Dave said, looking even more boiled and stuffed. ‘I mean, no harm done, and we, er, don't want to seem unfriendly or anything.'

‘But I'm keeping you from your work,' Janice protested feebly. ‘I'm sure you've got ever such a lot to get on with, and . . .'

Dave made a dismissive, hang-spring-cleaning gesture. It was about as convincing as a four-dollar note, but he didn't seem to care. ‘Let it wait,' he said. ‘All rest and no play, eh? Why don't you, er, come and have a look at the, um trees and things. Flowers,' he added hopefully. ‘Sure we can find a flower or two around here if we look hard enough.'

‘Flowers?'

He nodded like a well-socked punchball. ‘Heaps of 'em, probably, unless the blast shrivelled 'em all up. Let's go and take a look, shall we?'

He made a wild grab for her hand, but she whisked it away.
Oh Christ, not again.Why can't everybody just ignore me, like they usually do?
Unfortunately, she knew the answer to that. ‘Look,' she said, trying to sound brisk and no-nonsenseish. ‘I know what you're thinking, it's been happening a lot lately, and I'm afraid it simply isn't on. It's not real, you see, it's only this dumb wildest-dreams thing, so perhaps I'd better just leave before we both say things we'll regret . . .'

He wasn't listening, needless to say. The look in his eyes was so intense that Janice could almost smell the formaldehyde. It'd be so nice if he'd just go away.

‘Excuse me saying this,' he burbled, ‘but you've put me in mind of something, let's see, it's on the tip of my tongue, memory like a tea-bag, my wife says. Oh, that's it, a summer's day.You and a summer's day could be sisters, really.'

The word
wife
fizzed in Janice's mind like an aspirin in water. ‘Talking of your wife,' she said, ‘d'you think she'd take kindly to you comparing strange girls to summer days? I really think you should—'

‘Don't care what
she
thinks, rancid old cow,' Dave replied savagely. ‘I can think of all sorts of things to compare her to, but they've mostly got four legs and horns. The only day she puts me in mind of was back along last February, that time all the pipes in the roof froze solid and we had water dripping in the soup. Got a temper on her, too.'

‘I . . .' Janice shrugged. Why risk getting involved, after all? Although, on balance, her sympathies were probably with Mrs Dave - it couldn't be pleasant washing his work clothes, given his trade, and the dirty marks he must leave on the towels didn't really bear thinking about - the fact that Dave's marriage appeared to have been made in Hell wasn't her fault, and she'd have nothing to reproach herself for if this particular brief encounter gave the wretched thing its final shove. ‘Whatever,' she said. ‘In the meantime, unless you get back to work right now, I'll tell your supervisor.You got that, or shall I write it down?'

‘Actually,' Dave said, ‘I'm the supervisor. Well, there's only two of us in the department, what with the cuts and all, but nominally I'm the supervisor and Phil's the foreman. Daft, really, but you try telling them anything.' He smiled, and the effect was something like a Death's head in a Comic Relief nose. A small, rebellious part of Janice sympathised, for in her time she'd been the unwanted admirer more often than she cared to remember, and she clearly recalled that one of the symptoms was being as unwilling to take a hint, or even a direct command, as a market trader is to take a cheque. Love is deaf as well as blind, and can construe, ‘Get stuffed, you prune-faced warthog's arse', as a thinly veiled come-on. Sympathy, however, is all very well.