Tom Holt - Flying Dutch

“Ouch!” said Montalban, startled. “My dear fellow, what…” Vanderdecker kicked him again, harder. One of his better ideas, he said to himself. He tried it again, but missed this time and put his foot through a complex piece of scientific equipment disguised as a glass-fronted cabinet full of netsuke. Although he didn’t know it, lights flickered in Montreal, Jodrell Bank and Geneva.

“Captain,” said the Professor, backing away while still trying to remain dignified, “what has come over you?”

“Getting me into this mess,” said Vanderdecker, “I can put up with. Causing me to sail round the world for nearly five hundred years I can take in my stride. Pissing off and leaving me under a ceiling and coming back here and stuffing yourself with macaroons is a bit too much, don’t you think?” He aimed another kick at the Professor; it glanced off the bunch of keys in his trouser pocket and wasted its force in empty air, making Vanderdecker totter slightly. He regained his balance and his composure at about the same moment.

“Well,” he said, “anyway, there we are. You will be delighted to know that that gimcrack Friday-afternoon job of a power station of yours is now safe again, absolutely no thanks to you. And you owe me and my lads for a complete set of clothes each. All right?”

“Yes, most certainly,” said Montalban. “My dear fellow, I am delighted to see you all in one piece. I…”

“I bet you are,” Vanderdecker said furiously. “Because if I hadn’t been, it’d have cost you plenty. Well, let me tell you that…”

“And even more delighted,” said the Professor, with all the smoothness he could manage, “to note that the treatment worked.”

Vanderdecker started. “ Treatment? ”

“Indeed,” said the Professor. “Just as I had hoped. The radiation charge has eliminated the smell entirely. My experiments are vindicated. You must be very pleased.”

And grateful, his tone implied. So grateful, in fact, that you really ought to do me a little favour in return. Vanderdecker caught the implication like Rodney Marsh fielding a large, slow football. “If you think,” he said, “I’m going to sign over that bloody policy after what you just did to me…”

“And what was that?”

“Leaving me There,” Vanderdecker roared. “Other things too, but just now, mostly that.”

“My dear fellow,” Montalban said. “I imagined you were—well, dead, to put it bluntly. I could see no sign of you; I feared that you and your companions had been simply atomised by the force of the blast. There was nothing I could do, I came away; my presence was needed here…”

Vanderdecker growled softly, but his indignation was leaking away like oil from a fractured sump. The Professor smiled kindly.

“And so,” he said, “everything has worked out for the best. You have no idea how much pleasure this moment gives me. The unpleasant side-effect of my elixir has successfully been counteracted. My work is over…”

The words froze on his lips, and Vanderdecker stared at him as he quietly repeated the words.

“Montalban?” Vanderdecker asked. “Are you all right?”

The Professor stood there like a dead Christmas tree for a moment and then grabbed Vanderdecker fiercely by the shoulders. “Vanderdecker,” he shouted, “did you hear what I just said? My work is over! I’ve finished! I don’t have to do it any more, it’s finished.”

Vanderdecker stepped back, wondering if the kick had affected the Professor’s brain. “Well,” he said, “that’s wonderful for you, I’m sure. Maybe now you can have a lie-in at weekends, read the paper, that sort of…”

Montalban filled his lungs and let out the loudest, least dignified whoop ever heard outside a Navajo encampment. “It’s over!” he screamed. “Yippee! No more work! No more work!” He danced—literally danced—round the room, kicking things as he went.

“Look, Professor,” Vanderdecker said, “I’m delighted for you, of course, but could we just have a quick chat about my policy? Then you can dance about all you like, but…”

“The policy?” Montalban stopped dead, turned round and stared Vanderdecker in the face. “You can stuff your policy!” he squealed. “That’s it, you can stuff it! I don’t care any more, I’m free.”

Something rather improbable fell into place in Vanderdecker’s mind, like the tumblers of a combination lock. “Professor,” he said, “are you trying to tell me you don’t like being a scientist?”

“My dear fellow,” gibbered the Professor, “I hate it. I hate it, do you hear? It’s horrible. It stinks . I’ve always hated it, even when I was a boy and my mother said I was wasting my time composing madrigals and I should grow up and learn alchemy like my father. I’ve always hated it, and…and I’ve had to do it for five hundred years! My God,” said Montalban savagely, “you think you’re hard done by, do you, sailing round the world with nothing to do all day? You don’t know you’re born. Imagine, just imagine what I’ve had to put up with. I’d have changed places with you like a shot. Day after day after day in a foul, stinking laboratory, fiddling with sulphate of this and nitrate of that, doing equations and square roots and…and now I’m free. I don’t have to do it any more. No more electrons. No more law of the conservation of matter. No more Brownian motion. Dear God, Vanderdecker, you can’t imagine how thoroughly depressing it all was, the endless, endless difficulties, five hundred years of them—having to do it all myself; nobody—absolutely nobody—to help, all up to me, all that bloody, bloody work! I hate … work! ”

“Oh good,” Vanderdecker said, calmly, “you won’t have to do that any more.”

“No,” said the Professor, quietly, grinning, “no, I won’t. I need a drink. Will you join me?”

“And the policy?” Vanderdecker said.

“Oh, sod the policy,” Montalban replied. “Now that that’s all done with, I don’t need the bank any more. Just so long as I never have to do another day’s work in my life, the bank can go bust for all I care and jolly good luck to it. Let someone else sort something out, just for once.”

“I know how you feel,” Vanderdecker said gently, “believe me.”

“Thirsty?”

Vanderdecker nodded. “That too. Look, I’ve just got to go and deal with something and then I’ll be right back.”

“You’d better hurry,” said the Professor, pouring whisky into a big glass, “because I’m not going to wait for you. Tea!” he sneered. “The devil with tea! I don’t have to keep a clear head any more, I can get as pissed as a mouse.”

“Rat.”

“Precisely, my dear fellow, as a rat. Hurry back!”

“I might just do that,” Vanderdecker said, and he ran off into the gardens again.

Some time later a car—more than a car; the biggest Mercedes you ever saw—pulled up outside the front door. It was full of accountants.

Mr Gleeson got out. He rang the doorbell. After a long, long time a drunken man in a kilt answered it. In the background, someone was playing “My Very Good Friend The Milkman Says” on the harpsichord.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Miss Doland,” said Mr Gleeson.

The man in the kilt sniggered. “You’re not the only one,” he said. He was slurring his words slightly.

“Just get her,” said Mr Gleeson. As befits a high-rolling accountant, Mr Gleeson had authority and presence. He was used to being obeyed.

“Piss off,” said the man in the kilt, and slammed the door. Mr Gleeson was surprised. According to the latest charging-rate guidelines, it costs at least fifteen pounds plus VAT to slam a door in the face of an accountant of partner status. He rang the bell again.