You Don't Have To Be Evil To Work Here, But It Helps by Tom Holt Page B

matter. He was, he realised rather to his surprise, a man of principle who felt nothing but disgust at the kind of measures that his father seemed so blasé about; but he was also a coward. ‘And if like you say, it’s all completely legal—’
    ‘No doubt about it,’ Dad said. ‘All checked out with the lawyers, they even got counsel’s opinion from a top barrister. Five thousand quid for six sides of A4,’ he added with a shudder. ‘But no matter. Got to do these things properly. And yes, it’s completely legitimate and they can’t have us for it.’ He scowled violently at a blank space on the wall then shrugged. ‘It’s not like there’s any other way out,’ he said. ‘And I’m buggered if I’m going to stand by and watch the company go down the toilet. It means everything to me, son. You got problems with that, keep ‘em to yourself.’
    ‘No, really, that’s fine,’ Colin said awkwardly. There are few things on earth as embarrassing as a display of raw emotion by a parent. ‘I was just wondering. If this scheme or whatever you call it - if it’s so foolproof and easy and legal, then why doesn’t everybody do it?’
    Dad chuckled. It was, for some reason, a rather disturbing sound. ‘Because they don’t know about it, of course,’ he said. ‘It’s what you might call a well-kept secret.’
    ‘But for crying out loud,’ Colin broke in. ‘Magic. I thought that was just Harry Potter and stuff.’
    ‘Ah, well.’ Dad looked past him, as though he wasn’t there. ‘There’s all sorts of rules, apparently. Like, they aren’t allowed to advertise or anything like that; and they’re so bloody extortionately expensive, it’s kind of self-regulating. I don’t know,’ he said, with unexpected vehemence, ‘maybe half the blue-chip companies in the FT use magic, wouldn’t surprise me in the least, it’d explain a lot of things. Who gives a damn? All I know is, it works and we’ve got this chance to use it, and it’ll save us from ending up on the shit-heap along with the rest of the manufacturing sector. Look, if you’re drowning in the North Atlantic and someone chucks you a lifebelt, you don’t turn round and say, no thanks, I’m not using that, it’s not made out of eco-friendly recycled plastic’ He frowned. ‘Well, you might, because you’re an idiot, but a sensible person wouldn’t. All right?’
    Colin nodded. Only a small part of him was engaged in the debate. The rest of him was analysing the extraordinary fact that she was coming here, out of all the billions of places in the universe where she could be instead, and that he was going to see her again, in a matter of minutes. Compared to that incredible miracle, stuff like magic seemed practically mundane.
    Dad led the way to the small back office they used for meetings. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a pen and something to write on? Fine. I want you to take notes. That’s all. If anything occurs to you, any point you think needs clarifying or whatever, keep it to yourself.’
    The phone rang. Dad picked it up, listened, grunted, put it back. ‘She’s here,’ he said. ‘Remember. Seen and not heard, got it?’
    He left the room, closing the door behind him. Colin listened to his father’s footsteps (clump, clump, clump, like a heffalump in rigger boots). He thought: I don’t really care about the company. The thought of it not being there any more scares me, but really it’s just force of habit. And all that bullshit about magic being real; of course I believed it while Dad was talking, because I’ve been trained to believe him ever since I was a kid. But he lied to me about Father Christmas, so—
    Pause. In the light of what he’d just been told, maybe Father Christmas hadn’t been a lie after all. Think about it, he urged himself. Which is more likely: a thousand-year-old perfect stranger capable of defying all the fundamental laws of physics coming all the way from the North Pole to climb down our