Damnation For Beginners Part 2

Jack hadn't.

"I'll lend you the book sometime," Marley said.

"But why open a branch there, anyway?" Jack said. "The d.a.m.ned don't have money, do they?"

"The new branch wouldn't deal with money," Marley said. "They'd trade in souls."

Jack just stared at him.

"h.e.l.l itself is entirely constructed from souls," Marley said. "The Mesmerists use them to construct their cities. And if something is useful, then it's a commodity."

Jack couldn't imagine King Menoa, the Lord of h.e.l.l, ever agreeing to such a proposal. Why should his Mesmerists trade for a commodity they could simply mine for themselves? If h.e.l.l was, as Marley had just pointed out, composed entirely from souls, then what would be the point of trading in them? He put this to Marley.

"Some souls have more value than others," Marley replied. "That said, I don't suppose Henry Sill would ever be allowed to expand into Menoa's territory without offering him something in return. The details all have to be worked out, I'm sure, but I wouldn't underestimate Mr Sill's persistence and pa.s.sion in this thing. He has more money than all of the G.o.ds combined."

They worked for the next few hours without incident. Jack's customers brought him the usual complaints, while he sat behind his bra.s.s grille and gave them the standard answers. He tuned out the ever-present grumble of the ore crushers and lost himself in the paperwork. Of course, the fiscal labyrinth that kept the Henry Sill Banking Corporation in profit could not be navigated by its customers. That was its purpose. It was intended to confound. Monies borrowed; repayment schedules; demands and responses; aggregate and compound interest; charges and fines: Jack dealt with them all in a diligent fas.h.i.+on. He enjoyed working within a system with clear rules and boundaries, even if those boundaries changed biweekly to increase profit margins. Sanderson and Bree's system had been positively childlike by comparison. Patiently, he explained to customers why their accounts had been restructured in order to shuffle outstanding payments and fines into the three tier high interest channels. He explained why mandates had been adjusted, or no longer applied.

He explained why payments delayed by the bank itself incurred the same fines as those delayed by the customer and why the cost of an unauthorised sixty ducat overdraft had now increased to thirteen hundred ducats, with a twenty ducat charge for administration and a further ninety ducats for the necessary doc.u.ment re-management process, during which time the bank had a legal right to glean an additional nine ducats in primary interest and three more in secondary and tertiary interest and why authorised overdrafts would still be categorised as unauthorised if the Doc.u.ment Office failed to pa.s.s the relevant paperwork on to the Adjustment Bureau in time, which was, sadly, a regular occurrence and yet entirely preventable if only the customer had taken out Account Management Insurance.

Hadn't they enquired about Mr Sill's insurance products when they arranged the loan? Failure to do so could put their homes at risk.

Most of the customers Jack's department dealt with had reached the end of their use to the corporation. When all that could be wrung from a person had indeed been wrung, Jack gave them a reference number and filed their names and addresses to be pa.s.sed on to Reclamation. The majority of people left the cabin quickly, wrapped in shrouds of gloom-but, on that particular morning, three of them remained long enough to trigger the security trapdoor. Marley gave up trying to get Jack to wager, but he still chuckled every time the floor opened and another unfortunate soul hit the dust. More often than not, he was the one who pulled the reset lever to close the trapdoor. The bank, he said, was planning to introduce a customer fee for this.

It was after the third customer had fallen, when Marley peered down through the open trapdoor and said, "That looks like Carol."

Jack rose from his stool to see for himself.

He spotted her standing beside the disembarkation platform. From her posture and animated hand gestures he knew she was being defensive about something. She appeared to be arguing with two men. One was lean, about Jack's age, while his companion looked older and stouter. Both of them wore dark suits and pudding bowl hats. Carol had spread her hands, as if to fend them off. She talked quickly, with a kind of desperate energy that was unusual for her. Jack couldn't hear what she was saying, but it was evident that she didn't want to be there.

"You didn't borrow money from the bank did you, Jack?"

"Of course not."

The old timer's expression remained grim. "They look like Reclamation Men to me."

"We didn't borrow..."

"What about Carol?"

Jack shook his head. "She's not a fool, Marley."

"Then it must be a misunderstanding." Marley didn't quite manage to say that with conviction.

Their own cabin rose higher above the platform with every pa.s.sing moment. A further two minutes would elapse before it completed its revolution. Jack could do nothing but watch as the older of the two men took Carol by the arm and led her away. He lost sight of the trio momentarily among the great clutter of spokes, but soon spied them again walking towards the administration buildings. She didn't appear to be resisting, and yet her head hung low and her heeled shoes slipped and stumbled on the rocky ground.

COMPANY POLICY.

ACK LEFT CABIN WHEN it reached the disembarkation platform, and manoeuvred his way through the crowd of customers filing down the stairs. He couldn't see Carol anywhere.

"Jack?"

He turned back to find their s.h.i.+ft boss, Miles, frowning at him from the open doorway. "Where do you think you're going?"

"I'll be back soon," Jack said.

"I have to report it."

"Can't you just put me down for an extra s.h.i.+ft? I'll make up the time."

The other man shook his head. "Still have to report it," he said. "Company policy."

Jack waved his hand dismissively. He took off across the hard packed ground in the direction of the administration buildings, pa.s.sing under the shadow of the wooden tower that housed the great wheel's chains and gear a.s.semblies. A slowly revolving steel shaft ran from the base of this structure into a tunnel in the rock face. The processor building itself, where rock from the mines was crushed and separated into waste and ore for leaching, lay underground. Eleven other tunnels punctured the cliff face at various heights, all connected by a wobbling lattice of ropes and walkways and ladders. He could hear the chime of hammers and picks coming from within, as Sills miners clawed away at their debts with picks, wedges and hammers. A wailing siren warned of impending detonations somewhere deep within the earth.

The shock wave from those explosions shuddered through the ground just as Jack reached the entrance to the main administration building. A nondescript grey block, it housed the offices of Payroll, Taxes, Work Records, Recruitment, and Reclamation. He walked right past the queue of customers waiting outside, took out his handkerchief, and used it to turn the door handle.

The large woman behind the front desk did not look up from her typewriter. She was in her mid fifties and sported a remarkable sphere of orange-brown hair every bit as brash and fuzzy as something one might win at a travelling carnival. A huge red and pink floral dress constrained an unlikely collection of bulges. The stump of a burned-out cigarette wobbled between her lips as she struck the typewriter keys repeatedly with a single plump finger. Two doors leading into the interior of the building flanked her desk. In addition to the prerequisite coat of arms, each of these portals had been fitted with a large steel combination lock next to its handle. The woman's present client-a dowdy, middle-aged man wearing farmer's breeches and a cloth cap-sat on a tiny stool before her desk. He looked up as Jack approached, revealing a boil in his nostril the size and colour of a crab apple.

"I need to find my wife," Jack said to the woman.

She continued to hit her typewriter keys.

"Her name is Carol Aviso. There's been some sort of mix up with Reclamation."

The desk clerk slid the typewriter carriage back. "I'm presently dealing with a client," she said.

"I just need to know where she's been taken."

She ignored him for a while longer, then said, "We don't give out personal information. If your query concerns your wife, you'll need to ask her to come in here herself."

Jack closed his mouth, opened it, then closed it again. "You want me to ask her to come in, so that we can find out where she's been taken?"

The woman moved her lips, brandis.h.i.+ng the cigarette stub like a tiny sabre. "Company policy."

Her client turned to Jack. "Do you mind?" he said. "I was here first."

Jack ignored him. "Is there someone else I can speak to?"

"Do you have an appointment?"

"No."

"Would you like to make an appointment?"

"Can't I just speak to someone now?"

"Not without an appointment."

Jack took a deep breath. "Alright. Please make me an appointment."

The desk clerk stopped typing. She reached into a small cardboard shelving unit on her desk and withdrew a sheet of paper. "Name?"

"Jack Aviso."

"Which administrative department manager do you wish to see?"

"I don't know."

Her weary gaze rolled up to his face. "I can't make you an appointment for you if you don't tell me who you want to see."

"Let me speak to someone in Reclamation."

She shook her head. "You'll need a reference number for that. You can obtain one from the Complaints Department."

Jack leaned closer to the desk and whispered. "I work in the Complaints Department."

"Then you should be aware of the policy."

This route wasn't going to get him anywhere. Reference numbers could only be issued to complainants who had an account with the bank. And of course neither Jack nor Carol had such an account. He might work for Henry Sill, but it made no sense to trust the man with his own hard-earned money. He thought for a moment.

"What if I had information regarding a particular customer's undisclosed a.s.sets?" he said. "You would be compelled to let me speak to Reclamation as a matter of urgency. Wouldn't you?"

She narrowed her eyes. "Do you have such information?"

"Absolutely," he lied, raking his memory for the name of any of his customers. Who had he seen recently? He tried to picture their faces, tried to see the paperwork he'd handled for them that very morning, but not a single one of their names came to him.

"What's your employee reference number?" she asked.

"329-84777," Jack replied.

She opened a deep drawer under her desk, and rifled through some files. "Three two nine?"

"That's right." Jack's mind worked furiously as he struggled to remember one-just one-of his customer's surnames. The old lady who'd dropped through the trapdoor yesterday? She had been... Miss Angelina Clarin? Karen? Ka...

"There's nothing here," the desk clerk said.

"I've worked here for seven months," Jack replied. Keira? Clarion? Carlion? Carey? Clappy? Clarkson? Clarence? Clarin? Cle...? Cla...? Cli...? Clarina? Clamidia? Clipper? Claridma? Clint? Claw? Clawrin? Carin?

"Carin," he said. "Miss Angelina Carin."

"I'm sorry, Mr Aviso," the desk clerk insisted. "We have no record of you ever having worked for us."

"Excuse me?"

"You're sure it was three two nine?"

"Of course I am. It's on every one of my payslips."

"There's no such number in the files."

Jack reached for his back pocket automatically. But then he realised he didn't have a payslip on him. They would all be in the box on the dresser back in Highcliffe, and he wasn't due to receive another one until the end of the month. Could he have been mistaken about the number? No, that was impossible. The second part pleased him because it was divisible by three, and the first part vaguely irked him because it wasn't. Initially, he'd asked Carol if she thought they'd change it to correct this discrepancy, but she'd only looked at him in the odd way that people sometimes do. "Can't you look under Aviso?"

"Not without the employee reference. It's company policy not to divulge-"

A buzzing sound came from the clock on the wall.

The desk clerk glanced up at it, then turned back to the customer who had been waiting patiently before her all of this time. "I'm afraid we are out of time, Mr Drummond," she said. "Please send in the next customer on your way out."

"But what about my appointment?" he replied.

She pushed a sheet of paper towards him across the desk. "You'll need to get a new reference from Complaints now."

"I have to queue up all over again?"

She shrugged.

The man stood up and glared at Jack. Then he s.n.a.t.c.hed the doc.u.ment from the desk and walked away, red-faced and muttering to himself.

Jack barely noticed him go. He was looking at the two doors behind the desk.

"I'll have to ask you to leave, Mr Aviso."

"May I ask your name?" he said.

"I can't tell you that. It is against company policy for an employee to divulge any personal information without prior approval. "

"I thought as much," Jack muttered. He took out his handkerchief again, then strode around the desk and pulled the handle of the leftmost door. It was locked. He began trying different combinations. 999, 998, 997, 996...

"Mr Aviso?"

He gave up and marched over to the second door.

"I'm going to ring for Security."

The second door was also locked. He was about to roll the wheels to try a further combination, when alarm bells began to ring out from somewhere behind it. He turned back to the woman, and noticed that she had her foot firmly planted on a small pedal set in the floor. It had been hidden by the desk. Her cigarette moved in viscous little sweeps.

He hurried back outside.

The spokes of the Complaint Wheel fractured the cliff face above him, splitting the grey-brown rock into countless triangles and trapezoids. Steel and window gla.s.s glinted in the suns.h.i.+ne. He turned his back on the sight, gazing up instead at the main administration building. Its uniform facade gave no indications of the horrors said to be perpetrated within. Both staff and clients entered by the front doors, but clients didn't necessarily leave that way.

He turned away, then hesitated, and turned back. And then he began to jog along the front of the building, peering into every window he pa.s.sed. Most of the ground floor appeared to contain small offices no larger than prison cells. Men and women hunched over desks, s.h.i.+fting paperwork from one pile to another. From each wall hung an identical clock-a simple white circle embossed with black numerals. Most of the clocks displayed thirteen minutes past four, but one of them indicated nine minutes past. He stopped and stared at this one for a long moment, his annoyance building. And then he started to run, pa.s.sing room after room, cell after cell. He couldn't see his wife in any of them. When he reached the corner, he turned it and ran straight into two men.

These new arrivals both wore dark suits and pudding bowl hats. Jack recognised them at once: the stout, older man and the younger companion who had taken Carol from the Complaint Wheel less than ten minutes ago. He stopped, breathless, and opened his mouth to speak.

"Can we help you?" the younger man said.

"I'm looking for my wife," Jack replied. "You took her off the Wheel."

The two men exchanged a glance. The young man said, "What's your name?"