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

upside-down and bobbing about erratically as air escaped out of its inside. This wouldn’t do at all. She managed to propel herself on to the back of the kitchen table, which was passing by slowly and ponderously, a mere foot or so above the ground. As she had hoped, her weight helped to push it down, and she found herself a mere six inches above floor-level. What she needed now, she reckoned, was some sort of punt-pole.
    A passing golf umbrella solved that problem, and soon she was punting cautiously across the floor, steering clear of drifting armchairs and trying not to hit the walls too hard, towards the window. She had an idea that things were going to be a bit surreal out there, and it was a pity that her camera was presently nuzzling against the ceiling-rose like a small black remora.
    â€˜Good lord,’ she said.
    In a way it was really rather beautiful. Peaceful, certainly. The drivers of the cars had mostly had the sense to switch off their engines and they were now simply drifting aimlessly, a few inches off the ground, while airborne pedestrians hung on to their door handles. A school of red buses sailed gently past the request stop opposite the corner shop, while the newsagent’s stock in trade sailed gracefully, almost majestically, into the air, flapping their leaves like enormous, slow-motion herons.
An open umbrella fluttered away past her window on its way to the stars.
    â€˜You see what I mean?’ said a voice above her.
    She looked upwards to see Staff flat on his back against the ceiling. She tried not to laugh, but there are limits.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But you look so . . .’
    â€˜I know,’ he replied sadly. ‘You think you’re having problems. Just count yourself lucky you’ve got a corporeal body. You have no idea how difficult it was getting here.’
    Jane pushed hard on her umbrella, and the table rose upwards. She was just able to grab hold of Staff’s left foot before it fell floorwards again, and she towed her visitor down with her. As she had expected, he weighed nothing.
    A little undignified scrambling enabled Staff to get on the table, and he secured himself to it by wrapping his arms round one of the legs. Even so, the lower half of his body pointed resolutely upwards, with the result that he looked like nothing so much as a large, respectable tadpole.
    â€˜Anyway,’ he said. ‘Surely now you can’t deny that there’s a problem.’
    â€˜Oh, there’s a problem all right,’ Jane agreed. ‘Like how I’m going to get coffee stains off the ceiling. It’s Artex, you know.’
    â€˜I gathered,’ Staff replied. ‘It’s like sandpaper, that stuff. Oughtn’t to be allowed.’
    â€˜Sorry.’
    â€˜Not your fault. Look,’ he went on, ‘unless we find some way of getting things sorted out, it’s going to get worse. You must see that.’
    â€˜But,’ Jane started to say; then she corrected herself. ‘Are you sure I’d be able to help?’ she said.
    â€˜Yes,’ Staff replied, ‘you and others like you, but you
first.You see, if you make a go of it, we can recruit others. Management won’t be able to stop us. We’ll be able to fill all the vacant posts, get the plant and machinery properly serviced; that way, we won’t have all our staff and resources tied down coping with emergencies.’ He paused to fence away a teapot that seemed to want to get inside his jacket. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘what do you say? Anything’s got to be better than this.’
    Suddenly, the world started to move again. For a split second, Jane felt it distinctly; the violent shock of an incredibly rapid acceleration, rather like the awful feeling you get the first time you’re in an aeroplane taking off. Then she was rather too preoccupied with the spectacle of all her possessions falling to the ground and smashing into