Read Online Only Human by Tom Holt - Free Book Online

said, ‘if you can let me have those costings for the Macclesfield thing, I should be able to get the rest of August done this afternoon. Any chance of that, d’you think?’
    â€˜Um,’ said Mr Elkins. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
    â€˜Great stuff.’ Maria nodded, folded her head on one side and closed her eyes. ‘It’d be a great help if you could. It gets very boring when there’s nothing to do.’
    â€˜Um. I mean, yes, of course. I’ll get on it right away.’
    â€˜Ciao.’
    The fact was that Maria was rather better at accountancy than Ms Esterling had ever been. She had all her host’s technical knowledge stored in the filing-cabinets of their shared mind, and the rest was just a matter of common sense and resisting the temptation to faff around. As a result, she’d done every scrap of work there was to do in the office in about ninety minutes that morning; and that in spite of a slight headache resulting from her series of scientific experiments into the effects on the human body of alcohol and syncopated movement the night before. She’d enjoyed it all; even the headache, since it was the first pain she’d ever suffered in nearly six hundred years of consciousness, and she was still at the stage where she was prepared to keep an open mind about everything.
    Except, she noted, boredom. Boredom was no good. According to the inherited and conditioned responses in the hardware, boredom could be counteracted by the use of fun; and one of the examples of fun she found in the files was sunbathing with a long cool drink and the latest Jackie Collins. She’d given it half an hour so far, and she didn’t think much of it. By and large, the boredom was more interesting.
    The telephone rang.
    She’d watched Rachel Esterling deal with the telephone thousands of times. The drill seemed to be that you picked it up, tucked it under your ear and apologised to it while carrying on with your work.That, at least, was what Rachel used to do; but she was already beginning to have her doubts about Ms Esterling’s suitability as a role model. So far she’d tried her best to duplicate her host’s behaviour pattern as closely as she could without actually dying of terminal dullness, but it was hard to see the point behind it all. Ms Esterling’s life seemed dedicated to vindicating the old saying about all work and no play with a degree of fundamentalist zeal that would make your hard-line mullahs look positively frivolous. In which case; been there, proved that, got the evidence. Now what?
    She picked up the phone.
    â€˜Hel- lo ,’ she trilled, ‘lovely to hear from you, whoever you are. Is there anything at all I can do for you? Don’t be shy.’
    Stunned silence at the end of the wire, followed by a slightly bewildered request to talk to Rachel Esterling, please.
    â€˜Speaking,’ she replied. ‘Hoozis?’
    The voice at the other end was male, but as immediately offputting as week-old underwear. Maria had high standards, as was only appropriate for an Italian master-piece. Of the twenty or so men she’d met since she’d got out of the picture, they’d all been about as attractive as something you find moving about in your salad on a hot day.
    The insipid male voice said it was Duncan Philips, and insisted that he’d like to speak to Rachel Esterling, please. He said the name slowly, as if to a moron or a foreigner. He couldn’t see Maria grinning, which was probably just as well for his peace of mind.
    â€˜Just a moment,’ she said, ‘I’ll get her for you.’ She put the phone down on the desk, took a deep breath and yelled ‘RACHEL!’ as loudly as she could. Then she counted to three, slammed a heavy book on the desk just next to the mouthpiece, made a few vaguely wild-animal noises, picked up the phone and said, ‘Rachel Esterling here, how can I help