Complications and Other Stories by Brian Stableford

Author:Brian Stableford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, short stories, short story
ISBN: 9781434438461
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2011-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

SORTILEGE AND SERENDIPITY

Of all the words in all the world, the ones that Simon Sweetland most dreaded to hear were: “This is Ramsbottom in Accounts. Could you possibly spare me a few minutes to discuss your recent claim for expenses”.

In the eleven years he had worked as a tester for DPR Coventry, Simon had heard those words—exactly those words, spoken in exactly the same reedy voice—more than a dozen times, and they had always been a prelude to embarrassment, awkwardness and downright misery. By now, he had become conditioned; the moment he heard the fatal syllables his stomach would contract to the size and texture of a cricket ball and he would break out into a cold sweat.

This time, he had known that it was going to happen. In fact, he had been apprehensive about the call for two days, ever since the claim for the Paris trip had gone in. Every time the telephone had rung his symptoms had gone through a rapid ready-steady, poised for “go”, and every time he had heard the soft huskiness of Carol Cloxeter’s voice—or even Marcia’s petulant whine—instead of the fatal incantation, the abrupt relaxation had left him weak and confused. When he finally heard the words of doom he was so strung out that he was almost glad to know that the waiting was over.

Almost.

He knew that it was going to be worse this time than ever before. As he trudged down the stone staircase, wondering at the cruel irony of fate which had located Ramsbottom’s lair directly below his own office in the two-storey annexe that Testing and Accounts shared, he wished that he had never accepted the invitation to attend the conference, that the invitation had never been made, that the conference had never been planned, that the United Kingdom had never joined the EEC, that there was no such city as Paris....

Ramsbottom was sitting behind his desk as he always was: a tiny ratty little man with an absurd moustache which somehow reminded Simon of Hitler’s, H. G. Wells’s and Charlie Chaplin’s, all rolled into one. When Simon had first seen Ramsbottom, many years before, the accountant had been lurking behind massive piles of box-files arrayed like battlements on his desk, but Ramsbottom believed in moving with the times. Nowadays he skulked behind a trio of computer-terminals, which not only kept the world at bay but bathed his face in an eerie green glow.

Although Ramsbottom’s office was exactly the same size as Simon’s it seemed much smaller, because of the vast stacks of files piled high against every wall; they were all obsolete now that the ingenious Ramsbottom had computerized the entire Midlands Division system (five years ahead of the official time-target) but the DPR, like most branches of the civil service, had strong taboos against throwing things away. The hulking masses of ancient paper always made Ramsbottom’s den seem dingy and disgusting, although the cleaners presumably went in every morning to to give it the despairing stare which was all that NUPE’s new demarcation rules permitted them to do.

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