helpfully. “Anyhow, the only way to do that was by destruct testing. So, he blew up the VVLHC.” She smiled at him. “And blamed it on you.”
The top of Theo’s head was a tooth, and his brain was an abscess. “No.”
Mrs Duchene-Wilamowicz shrugged gracefully. “It’s the truth,” she said. “And I know it’s true, because Pieter told me so himself. All your misery and unhappiness, the shame, the disgrace, your wife leaving you, the whole thing, is all Pieter’s fault. All of it.”
“No.” He wanted to hit her, and presumably it showed, because Lunchbox hurriedly gulped down half a cherry Bakewell and flexed his long fingers. Theo didn’t notice. “And even if you’re right, it wasn’t all his fault. I mean, it wasn’t Pieter that made Schliemann Brothers go bust.”
She cleared her throat. “Actually,” she said, “yes, it was. Schliemanns had lent twelve billion dollars to a private consortium working on a roughly similar project to Pieter’s. When the VVLHC blew up, the other backers pulled out, the consortium folded and Schliemanns had to file for bankruptcy. Two birds with one stone, as far as Pieter was concerned. He got his test results and put his only rivals out of business, and you took the blame, got irradiated and lost all the money you inherited from your father. He’s smart, my brother.”
Enough is enough. With a wail of horrified fury, Theo lunged at her. She sidestepped neatly, and for a moment he seemed to hang in the air, like Tom the cat in the cartoons when he runs off a cliff. Then Lunchbox hit him over the head with a solid-steel thermos full of French onion soup, and for a while all his troubles seemed so far away.
Part Five
One Empty San Miguel Bottle To Bring Them All And In The Darkness Bind Them
Subconsciously, he didn’t want to wake up. What, me, his inner being said to his awareness-of-self, go back out there and deal with all that weird, crazy shit, when I could stay in here where it’s nice and snug and nobody wants to tell me anything or make me do stuff that screws up my world view to the core? Get lost, said his inner being. Go pester someone who gives a damn.
But, apparently, he had no say in the matter; and so, some indeterminate time later, he opened his eyes and –
(He’s smart, my brother. Oh boy.)
– saw a pair of flowery chintz curtains drawn across a window, set in a wall with brightly coloured wallpaper figured with nursery rhyme characters. There, for example, was Humpty Dumpty, sitting on a wall, looking uncannily like Dick Cheney; there were the three little pigs in their house of straw, on the point of finding out that good ventilation isn’t always an unalloyed blessing; there was Mary and her lamb, and –
He pulled his arm out from under the sheets and stared at it. Not visible. So he was in his native reality, at least. Small mercies.
“How are you feeling?”
The voice came from his left, and he was horribly afraid he knew who it belonged to. He rolled over, sighed and said, “You.”
The old man beamed at him and nodded. “Young Art’s just nipped out to get a bite to eat,” he said, “so I’m kind of minding the store, so to speak. Talking of which,” the old man went on, “I do hope you’re not going to get violent again, because I am authorised to use lethal force if absolutely necessary.”
“What do you—?”
“Sorry.” The old man tugged at something in his ear. “Hearing aid’s playing up,” he explained. “Say again?”
“What do you mean, lethal – forget it,” Theo sighed. “Look, where am I? What the hell is going on?”
The old man gave him a sympathetic half-smile half-frown. “Sorry,” he said. “Need-to-know basis, that is. If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
“You’d have to—”
“Say what?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Theo said, and let his head rest gently against the pillows. They were wonderfully soft, perhaps the most luxurious things he’d ever felt. A person could go to sleep, lying on pillows as soft as that.
“Art wanted me to tell you, he’s really sorry he had to hit you like that.”
“Why? Did he spill his soup?”
“He’s a good boy. Mr Bernstein, really he is,” the old man said passionately. “He’s not usually violent, you know, in fact he’s very sensitive and creative. You should see the drawings he done when he was a kid. Trees and sheep and all that. His mum’s