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

lynched.’
    â€˜Look,’ replied the supervisor, ‘either we switch the bugger off or it’ll switch itself off. Something’s got to be done, right?’
    For the next second and a half, speech was impossible, as the bearing manifold suddenly shattered, spraying egg-sized diamonds about like birdshot. The Head Technician dived behind a flywheel and put his head between his knees.
    â€˜Come out of there, you coward!’ yelled the supervisor.
    â€˜Not my problem,’ the Head Technician shrieked back. ‘You look in the files, chum, you’ll see. I wrote a memo about it five years back. I warned you lot that if the whole gearbox wasn’t renewed . . .’
    â€˜Shut up,’ the supervisor observed, ‘and bring me a spanner. All we’ve got to do is slip the clutch and let it freewheel while we bodge up the transmission. Its own momentum’ll keep it turning for hours.’
    The Head Technician considered this for a moment. ‘Bollocks,’ he opined. ‘It’ll just grind to a halt, and then you’ll have all the mortals floating upwards yelling at us. You may not give a toss about your pension, chum, but . . .’
    The ball race chose that moment to fuse, filling the air with a sparkling cloud of diamond dust. Planet Earth wobbled sharply on its axis.
    â€˜All right,’ hissed the Head Technician, ‘only if this goes wrong, you just remember it was your idea, right? Like, you gave me a direct order and . . .’
    â€˜Shut up,’ the supervisor reiterated, ‘and find me that spanner.’

    A few moments later, Planet Earth stopped shuddering and began to spin noiselessly, easily round its axis. It began to slow down . . .
    Â 
    â€˜Ouch!’ said Jane, aloud.
    It hadn’t been her first choice as a flat; it wasn’t really her kind of neighbourhood: it was a fair old hike to the station every morning, the bedroom wall needed papering badly, the doors stuck in winter and there was something of a condensation problem in the kitchen; but hitherto at least, she’d never had any problems with the ceiling being too low. Until now, apparently.
    She looked down. Yes, there was the floor, just where she’d left it. There was her furniture. Same old furniture, mostly the unsuitable and heterogeneous offerings of relatives and friends, except that previously it hadn’t shown any signs of wanting to jump off the ground and float about the place like a shoal of dazed tuna. And there was her breakfast - mug of coffee, slice of toast - swimming obligingly towards her through thin air.
    She grabbed at the coffee-cup as it floated past, missed the cup but not the handle, and split the coffee. It fell upwards and splashed against the ceiling.
    Gingerly, and conscious that there were rather more cobwebs up here than Mrs Beeton would have approved of, Jane raised her left hand above her head and pushed the ceiling away from her. She felt herself bob downwards for a few feet, and then the current, or whatever the hell it was, caught her up again and lifted her slowly upwards. She kicked violently with her feet, but it didn’t help. She hit her head gently on the lampshade, pushed off again, and walked on her hands across to the door frame.
    â€˜Somebody,’ she said to a passing telephone directory, ‘is going to have some explaining to do.’
    The directory fluttered its pages and continued to drift
upwards, until it was splayed open against the plaster-work. Jane gripped the wooden frame of the door with both hands and tried to haul herself downwards.
    â€˜That’s better,’ she said, as her feet connected with the carpet. She looked down. The fibres were trying their best to stand on end, giving the impression of one very frightened Axminster. Worse still, all the dust she hadn’t got around to hoovering out of it was slowly rising. It got up her nose and she sneezed.
    A flower vase drifted past her,