Read Online Here Comes the Sun by Tom Holt - Free Book Online

shaking his head. ‘It’s delicate. Um.
    Where do you suppose angels - public servants - come from?’
    Jane felt her tongue go dry with embarrassment. ‘Er, mummy public servants and daddy public servants?’
    The man scowled. ‘Certainly not,’ he said. ‘It’s a metaphysical impossibility. No, the stork brings them, of course. And do you know what’s happened to the natural habitat of storks in the last fifty years?’
    â€˜Um.’
    â€˜Well,’ said the man, ‘I think you can see what I’m getting at. The storks are dying out, so we’re . . . well, it makes recruitment a problem. A bloody great big problem. And that’s where you come in,’ he added.

    Jane felt herself going red all over. ‘Now look,’ she said.
    â€˜No, no,’ said the man quickly, ‘not like that. I mean, we’ve decided, or at least Mr Ganger and I have decided . . .’
    â€˜Mr Ganger?’
    â€˜You’ve met him,’ said the man.
    â€˜Oh.’
    â€˜We’ve decided,’ the man continued, ‘that the only way out is to start recruiting mortals - suitable mortals, obviously - and, well . . .’
    â€˜Well, what?’ said Jane. Her voice, incidentally, would have frozen oxygen. The man swallowed hard, and then made a show of noticing his watch.
    â€˜Good lord,’ he said, ‘is that the time? Anyway, you’ll think about it, won’t you? I mean, you’ll be, like, the guinea . . . I mean, a pioneer. That’s right, a pioneer. The whole success of the programme . . .’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜And if it works,’ the man said quickly, standing up and knocking over a small pile of tapes on the floor, ‘it’ll mean that we can start replacing key staff, reorganising the whole running of the department, and . . .’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜So you’ll think about it. Good. Well, I’ll be saying . . .’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜We’ll be in . . .’ The man suddenly became translucent, ‘touch. Please give it very serious . . .’ Then transparent, ‘thought.’ Then invisible. ‘Thank you.’
    â€˜No,’ Jane said. ‘Absolutely not. No way.’
    She stopped. She suddenly had the feeling that she was talking to herself.
    â€˜Honestly!’ she said.

SEVEN
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    L ook in Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica and you will learn all about gravity.
    Gravity, according to Sir Isaac, is a natural phenomenon, as immutable as it is impersonal. Because of gravity, objects stay attached to the surface of the planet instead of flying off into the void. There’s nothing mystical or even intentional about it; it just happens, because that’s how the great machine works.
    In all fundamentally important respects, Sir Isaac was right. Gravity is, as he observed, a physical force resulting from the interaction of bodies possessing mass upon each other. It is not dependent upon the whim of any deity or supernatural entity. It can, in other words, be relied on; provided, of course, that somebody remembers to grease the main drive-shaft once in a while.
    â€˜It’s not my job,’ complained the Head Technician loudly, above the ear-splitting scream of grinding diamonds. ‘By rights, it’s down to Maintenance to . . .’
    The Technical Supervisor snarled at him. ‘Well,’ he observed superfluously, ‘whoever was supposed to look after the sodding thing, it’s seized. The gearbox’s
completely stuffed. Look out!’ he added, as a chunk of diamond shrapnel flew past his ear. ‘Bugger me, Fred, the whole bloody thing’s breaking up. We’d better get it switched off quick.’
    The Head Technician stared at him. ‘You can’t do that, you lunatic,’ he said. ‘Switch this lot off, you’ll get people drifting off into space, we’ll be