Flying Dutch Tom Holt Read online

  ‘You what?’

  ‘The phenomena I have just described,’ Montalban said, ‘are exhibited in the short term only, for no more than a few weeks at a time. They do, however, recur; like malaria, I suppose, although on a fascinatingly regular basis.’

  ‘How often?’

  Montalban shrugged non-committally, and Vanderdecker threw the biscuit-barrel at him. While he was reeling and picking smashed pottery and Bath Olivers out of his hair, Vanderdecker had time to find a spaghetti-jar and flourish it threateningly.

  ‘My best estimate,’ Montalban said, ‘at the present time is that the symptoms manifest themselves on average for two one-month periods in each calendar year. But I should stress,’ he said, ignoring the spaghetti jar, ‘that this is based on obser­vation of a small nest of field-voles, two of which escaped, and the tests only cover a three-year period, which is by any standards...

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My housekeeper,’ Montalban admitted, ‘is terrified of mice. Green luminous mice especially. So I had to get rid of them. Since they were immortal and invulnerable...’

  ‘That bit still works, does it?’

  ‘Most certainly, yes,’ said the Professor. ‘Since they were immortal and invulnerable and I couldn’t keep them around the house, they are now manning a small space-station in orbit three hundred thousand kilometres above the surface of Mars, providing invaluable data on...’

  ‘I see,’ Vanderdecker said. ‘Green luminous and noisy, and perhaps an extra arm or two. What happens with the arms, by the way?’

  ‘The additional limbs,’ said the Professor, ‘are also temporary.’

  ‘You mean they fall off?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Moult? Pine needles off a Christmas tree job? That sort of thing?’

  ‘Roughly, yes.’

  ‘I see,’ Vanderdecker said. ‘So I’ll need a pair of trousers with a detachable third leg, will I? As opposed to spending the rest of history going around like a human Manx emblem. Well, let me tell you...’

  Suddenly Vanderdecker fell silent and he lowered the spaghetti jar, spilling its contents. He furrowed his brows and then started to grin.

  ‘Montalban,’ he said at last, ‘that’s marvellous.’

  ‘Is it?’ Montalban raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, I’m delighted that...’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ Vanderdecker said, ‘Jane drank some too. A stiff double, approximately. Don’t you see, she’s going to live for ever too. She’s going to be one of us! Montalban — oh, look, just stay there, will you?’

  He dumped the spaghetti jar in the sink and rushed through into the drawing room. There, Jane was sitting crouched on the edge of a settee, moaning slightly. With one movement Vanderdecker lifted her up in the air, kissed her noisily on the lips and said, ‘Guess what?’

  ‘Ouch,’ Jane replied.

  ‘You’re going to go bright green and luminous, hum slightly, and grow an extra arm,’ he said cheerfully. ‘What do you think of that?’

  ‘I think I already did,’ Jane replied. ‘Will you please put me down before my head falls off?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Vanderdecker said. ‘Now, listen to this. No, better still, have some of the Professor’s mercury soup and then listen.’

  So Jane went, had some mercury soup, and listened. While Vanderdecker was explaining to her, and inducing Montalban with occasional prods from a rolling-pin to corroborate his narrative, he began to wonder whether Jane would in fact be pleased. He had no idea; all he knew was that he was pleased, very pleased indeed.

  ‘So there you are,’ he finished up. ‘What do you think?’

  Oddly enough, the only thing that passed through Jane’s mind for several minutes was the phrase ‘Death is a tax holi­day’, which she remembered from her tax-planning lectures.

  ‘Jane? What do you think?’

  ‘Death is a tax holiday,’ she said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘For the year of death,’ Jane said, ‘personal allowances against income tax are granted for the full year, regardless of the point in the tax year at which death occurs. There is no requirement to apportion unused allowances. Thus death can be said to be a tax holiday.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Jane said. ‘I was miles away. So I’m going to live for ever, am I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ah. Yes, I thought that was what you said. I...’

  ‘Jane.’ Vanderdecker grabbed her by the shoulders. ‘Would you like some advice?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘Don’t think about it,’ Vanderdecker said. ‘It’s not a good idea to think about it, believe you me.’

  ‘Oh,’ Jane said. ‘Right, okay then.’

  ‘Secondly,’ Vanderdecker said, and then he turned to the Professor. ‘Go away.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ the Professor asked.

  ‘I said go away. Vamos.’

  ‘Certainly, my dear fellow, certainly.’

  ‘Now then.’ Vanderdecker put on a serious expression and looked Jane squarely in the eye. ‘Miss Doland,’ he said, ‘since we are...’

  ‘All in the same boat?’ Jane suggested.

  ‘Precisely,’ Vanderdecker said. ‘Since we’ve both been acci­dentally lumbered with a common misfortune ... Look, do you see what I’m getting at, because this is rather tricky to put into words.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jane said.

  ‘Yes, you see what I’m getting at, or yes, you...?’

  ‘Both,’ Jane replied.

  ‘And,’ Jane continued, ‘some sort of through dining-room in a sort of light Wedgwood blue, with...’

  ‘Jane.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That’s fine. Now. .

  ‘And a dressing room,’ Jane added quickly. ‘I’ve always wanted a separate dressing-room. In a sort of pinky…

  ‘Absolutely,’ Vanderdecker said. ‘Can you play the harpsi­chord?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pity,’ Vanderdecker said, ‘because it’s years since I learnt, and they’ve put extra pedals and things on now.’

  ‘Couldn’t we have a stereo instead?’

  ‘A harpsichord linked to the computer,’ Vanderdecker explained. ‘To control the markets, whatever the hell they are.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Jane said. ‘God, you’re efficient, aren’t you? I’d forgotten all about...’

  ‘Habit,, Vanderdecker said. ‘I’ve got into the habit of looking after people, remember, making sure they don’t get into messes or start fighting each other. While I’m at it, I might as well use the Professor’s computer, since he’s obviously washed his hands of the whole affair.’

  Just then the kitchen door opened, and there was Sebastian. He was looking pleased with himself.

  ‘Hey, skip,’ he said, ‘it’s all fixed.’

  ‘I know,’ Vanderdecker said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ Vanderdecker said. ‘What’s fixed, Sebastian?’

  ‘The ship.’

  ‘What ship?’

  ‘The supertanker,’ Sebastian said. ‘We’ve booked one.’

  Vanderdecker stared. ‘You’ve booked one?’

  ‘That’s right, yes,’ Sebastian said. ‘We tried Harland and Wolf first, but they thought we were playing silly buggers and put the phone down. So then we tried this Korean firm, Kamamoto-something, Pieter wrote the name down, and they said they had an ex-demo tanker going cheap, low mileage, taxed till April, metallic grey with headrests, and when would we like to take delivery? So we said, can you run it over to Bristol, and they said would Thursday be all right, so we said fine...’

  Vanderdecker smiled. ‘Sebastian,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Ten out of ten for initiative,’ said the Flying Dutchman, ‘but let’s say four out of ten for judgement. They were having you on.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Pulling your leg,’ Vanderdecker said. ‘Playing games. Being funny. Laughing up their sleeves.’

&n
bsp; ‘How do you know?’

  Vanderdecker widened the smile slightly. ‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘I know. Why don’t you just let me...’

  Sebastian shrugged his shoulders. ‘Be like that,’ he said, offended. ‘We were only trying...’

  ‘Yes,, Vanderdecker said. ‘You always are. Very. Go away and count something, there’s a good lad.’

  Sebastian drifted off, and Vanderdecker turned to Jane. ‘You see?’ he said. Jane nodded.

  ‘And you still want to come?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  Fourteen months later, at half-past four in the morning, the biggest supertanker ever built slithered into the cold grey water of the North Sea and set off on its maiden voyage.

  Curiously enough, there were no celebrations to mark the launching of this magnificent vessel (named, for sound fiscal reasons, Lombard Venturer ID); no crowd, no band playing, not even a small Babycham cracked against her awe-inspiring bows. Only one camera-crew filmed her departure, and that was because the owners hadn’t the heart to refuse Danny Bennett a scoop to make up for the damage that the failure of his latest documentary ‘Close The Creamery Door, Lads, There’s Blood Inside’, had done to his career.

  This desire for privacy was understandable, because the owners weren’t looking their best.

  ‘I still say it suits you,’ Vanderdecker said.

  ‘People will think I’m seasick,’ Jane replied.

  ‘Let them,’ Vanderdecker said. He glanced down at the instrument console before him; a cross between a huge com­puter keyboard, the flight deck of an airliner and a Yamaha organ. ‘I wonder how you drive this thing.’

  ‘I lent Antonius the manual,’ Jane said. ‘He asked me what gyroscopic means.’

  ‘Oh well,’ Vanderdecker said, and shrugged, ‘never mind. It beats hauling in all those ropes, at any rate. Where shall we go first?’

  ‘Reykjavik.’

  ‘Why Reykjavik?’

  ‘Because we have all the time in the world,’ Jane answered, ‘and I want to save the good bits till later.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ Vanderdecker said. ‘I can see you’re getting the hang of this.’

  Through the tinted, double-glazed window they watched the coast receding into the distance. Just briefly, Jane felt her old life slipping away from her, and wondered if she ought to regret it. She was entering into a new timescale entirely now, and the next time she came back to England, perhaps everyone she knew there would be dead. But that was a very big thought, and there wasn’t enough room in her head for it; all the avail­able space was taken up with a calm, deliberate pleasure.

  ‘Another nice thing about this ship,’ Vanderdecker said, ‘is not having to take it to Bridport to be fixed every time some­thing goes wrong with it. God, I hate Bridport.’

  ‘I gathered,’ Jane said. ‘It can’t have been nice having to spend so many of your shore-leaves there.’

  ‘True,’ said the Flying Dutchman. ‘Mind you, if you go some­where often enough, you’re bound to get sort of attached to it after a time. Even,’ he added, ‘Bridport.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘No.’ Vanderdecker admitted. ‘Every time I went there, it had changed, ever so slightly, for the worse. A new car park here, a fish shop turned into an estate agent there. I really thought it had bottomed out in 1837, but they hadn’t built the bus station then.’

  ‘So is it fun,’ Jane queried, ‘watching history unfold itself? Being a witness to the long march of Everyman? I suppose it’s like being a God, really, except that usually you’re powerless to intervene.’

  ‘What long words Miss Doland is using,’ Vanderdecker replied. ‘It’s not a bit like that. Hell, you don’t notice, it’s too gradual; it would be like claiming that the turning of the earth made you dizzy. I don’t even feel particularly different, to be honest with you. I think I stopped feeling different when I turned nineteen and stopped growing, and since then I’ve always been the same. It’d be another matter if I’d gone to sleep and then woken up hundreds of years later, but... I guess going on a hovercraft must be like that.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever?’

  ‘What, been on a hovercraft? No fear. Those things are dangerous.’

  Jane giggled. ‘But Julius,’ she said, ‘you’re invulnerable and immortal, nothing’s dangerous to you. You can’t be afraid of hovercraft.’

  ‘Want to bet?’

  Jane smiled, and shook her head. Would she be like him in four hundred years or so, or would he always keep this start on her?

  ‘Nice of the Professor to come and see us off, wasn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Do you think he ever will get round to finding an antidote?’ Vanderdecker grinned. ‘Eventually,’ he said, ‘maybe. Where’s the hurry?’

  ‘There isn’t one.’

  In the distance, the environmentalist action ship Erdkrieger changed course sharply. The ship’s Geiger counter had suddenly started bleeping furiously and playing ‘Jerusalem’ and some­one had suggested that the huge ship on the skyline might have something to do with it.

  They launched a dinghy and set out to investigate. Business had been slack lately, what with the new initiative (nobody knew where it had started) to phase out nuclear power world­wide, and for once there was no shortage of volunteers.

  ‘Ahoy!’ shouted the captain of the Erdkrieger. ‘You there on the tanker!’

  He raised his binoculars and recognised a familiar face.

  ‘Fancy meeting you again,’ Vanderdecker replied through the loud-hailer. ‘How’s saving the world going?’

  ‘Sehr gut,’ the German replied. ‘Is your ship making the radiation?’

  ‘That’s not radiation,’ Vanderdecker replied, ‘not as such. Completely harmless.’

  ‘If that’s so,’ said the German, ‘why are you bright green and glowing slightly?’

  ‘Too much Limberger cheese,’ Vanderdecker shouted back. ‘Come on, you know me. I’m a Friend of the Earth too, you know. Me and the Earth are like that.’

  ‘Okay,’ said the German. ‘Sorry to have troubled you. Auf wiedersehen!’

  ‘Auf wiedersehen!’ Vanderdecker called back, and added ‘idiot’ under his breath. He left the bridge and went below to the library. Jane was in the drawing-room, comparing carpet samples. At the moment, she was dead set on a sort of beigy-pink with a faint texture in the pile. As he thought of it, Vander­decker shuddered, ever so slightly, until he remembered that carpets wear out, eventually, even the best of them. He’d just have to outlive the bugger.

  As he walked down the ladder, Vanderdecker paused and looked out over the sea. Very big, the sea, an awful lot of it, like history, or life. The hell with it.

  ‘Skip,’ said a voice from above his head. ‘You got a moment?’

  Vanderdecker sighed. ‘Of course I have, Antonius.’ He climbed the ladder again.

  ‘Skip,’ Antonius said. ‘I can’t find the mainmast.’

  ‘There isn’t one.’

  ‘No mainmast?’

  ‘No mainmast. Propellers instead.’

  Antonius reflected for a moment. ‘Skip,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How do you get the sail to stay up on a propeller?’

  ‘You don’t,’ Vanderdecker said. ‘It sits in the water and goes round and round.’

  Antonius frowned. ‘And they call that progress,’ he sneered. Vanderdecker smiled at him, nodded, and went below again, banging his head on a low girder as he did so. I’ll get used to it, he thought, in time.

  And so he did. And they all lived happily. Ever after.

 

 

 
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