“Lethal”
He seizes control over a variety of interests and enterprises.
He brings them under the control of a single umbrella and guides them towards his purpose: towards the shaping of a child and a world into a weapon, with which he hopes to kill a wolf.
At first the name is Gulley Enterprises.
This does not suit him. A notion trickles into his brain-pan that Gulley is a name of gold; that Gulley Enterprises, that to be Gulley Enterprises, is to be inextricably entangled with the wolf.
He meets with Ms. Dalca, his Vice-President of Marketing, to create a new brand and name.
. . .
“It should be abstract,” he says. “Something to which you cannot put a meaning.”
Inexplicably she fails to take his meaning.
“. . . abstract?” she asks.
He blinks at her. “Like Pepsi-Cola,” he says.
“Is their name abstract?”
Curiosity catches him. “Isn’t it?”
“I’d heard it was from the Pepsi-beast,” she says, “that dwells and roils in its lake below.”
. . .
Her eyes go far away.
“There is a chthonic beast,” she says, as if reciting, “that dwells and roils it in a vast and bubbly cavern; its revelries were furious, blasphemous, and delightful until the svart-elves caught it — bound it, chained it, tied it down, pinioned it with chains to the five corners of its cavern, held it down to bubble under the surface of its black and tasty lake. Then did the Pepsi-Cola Corporation send down its drills — so I am told — to pull up a delightful beverage from its veins; and this, as it keeps the beast quiescent and from raging out across the world, the svart-elves do allow.”
. . .
“Oh,” says Mr. Gulley.
She blinks back into focus. “It is only hearsay,” Ms. Dalca explains.
“Well,” he says, a little uncomfortably, “it is on the nose. Perhaps I am wrong in my search for abstraction — but seriously. You must know what I mean, Ms. Dalca. Levi’s?”
“. . . fabric prepared according to the directions of Leviticus?”
“Siemens?”
“An eccentric mathematical term,” she says, “I suspect, indicating the structure of their hyperspace geometries.”
He opens his mouth to speak again, but she interrupts him.
“Be honest with me, Mr. Gulley.”
He can feel the wolf twisting within him.
“Tell me what this new company is for.”
“It’s to kill the wolf,” he says, softly, and there is such guilt and fear and longing in his voice as to sicken her. “It’s all to kill my only wolf.”
. . .
“It’s to kill the wolf,” he says, softly, and there is such guilt and fear and longing in his voice as to sicken her. “It’s all to kill my only wolf.”
A VP of Marketing can’t hug her boss. She can’t even touch his hand. All she can do is help to market products and take home a ridiculous salary.
And, in this one special case, lead a newborn purpose to its name.
“‘Lethal,’” Ms. Dalca tells him.
It is the Lethal Corporation from that day forward; and to it the customers throng. They trust it. They love it. They buy from it and they buy its stock. They have only to look at it, you see, they have only to look at the Lethal logo on the company’s razors, its cherubs, its cleaning products, and its hard-core rock and roll to know: here is a product that’s going to kill somebody someday.
And not just anybody, either.
Somebody what needs killin’.
. . .
That’s how he becomes a giant. That’s how come Lethal Gulley gets his face on all the magazines. That’s why anyone who’s watching anyone in the industry, just about any industry, has their eye on Mr. Gulley.
He’s Lethal.
And maybe they read People, down below, in the caverns beneath the Earth. Maybe somebody saw the face of Gulley, remembered the wolf-gold, and thought they should do something about it.
. . . or maybe it was just Time.
. . .
Hans calls a svart-elf named Joffun into his parlor. Joffun’s all tense like a frightened cat.
“I haven’t been bad,” Joffun says.
And after a moment, “Please don’t sharpen me.”
“I don’t sharpen elves,” says Hans.
“Don’t whisk me, neither.”
Hans smiles thinly.
“I am old,” says Hans. “I am at the limit of my strength.”
Joffun snorts a laugh. He makes a gesture as if to brush away bad fortune. After a moment he realizes that Hans isn’t joking. He smiles, gleefully, like it’s his birthday; then he pales, like he’s just seen a crack in one of the pillars that holds up the cavern’s sky.
“Um,” he says.
“That is all,” Hans says. “That is all there is to it. That is why I have called you in. I can no longer keep them all back. Errors shall rage against my principles; all of the bonds I have forged shall break.”
. . .
“That is all,” Hans says. “That is all there is to it. That is why I have called you in. I can no longer keep them all back. Errors shall rage against my principles; all of the bonds I have forged shall break.”
“That is,” Joffun says. He squirms in his seat. “You mean. I. What? No.”
“They are already weakening,” Hans says. “I lost the nithrid just twenty years ago. The snake is loose and in the sea. Nevermind space’s wicked god and winter —”
“I must warn my family,” croaks Joffun.
“Sit down,” says Hans.
Joffun freezes.
“Consider the wolf,” says Hans.
Joffun licks his lips. He considers the wolf. Chills run up and down through him, for the wolf could eat the world.
. . .
“If the wolf breaks free,” says Hans, “then it will take a very, very large boot to kill it. And then there comes a conundrum: but who will stomp that boot?”
. . .
Hans looks evenly at Joffun.
“So what I need from you,” says Hans, “is for you to go up and find this Mr. Gulley and his wolf. Make sure that the chains on that wolf do not fail. I am hardly the only svart-elf who can bind these monsters, you know. When I am gone, you shall all have to step up and face the task. And I have heard good things of your work on bird spittling.”
The mood in the room suddenly shifts. Joffun is suddenly avid, joyous. “You have?”
It’s like having the Krampus praise your fashion sense, or Thon-Gul X admire your skill as an online tank. It’s not so much a reward for victory as a sneaky unexpected pump to the validation chamber of your heart. The categories of Joffun’s brain all suddenly go askew.
. . .
“When I was young,” Hans recollects, “I used to be a pretty dab hand at bird spittle. But I’m off my game; and you —”
“It’s all about the enzymes,” Joffun says excitedly, a grin spreading across his face, but Hans is holding up a hand.
“The wolf,” he says.
Joffun stands up. He straightens. He salutes Hans. It’s kind of goofy. It isn’t until he turns around that all the roiling emotions in him surge up and make spasms of fear, uncertainty, and confusion spurt here and there along his face.
Then he departs.
. . .
Joffun climbs through seamless passages. Months pass. He makes through hidden ways. Most of a year has gone. He pushes aside a flagstone and comes up by the ornamental bridge in the back yard of Mr. Gulley, whereupon he moves in under it. He makes a horrible face. He crosses his arms and he sits down firmly, like the bridge troll that he is not.
Helissent stares out the window at him for a while.
She calls Mr. Gulley over.
“Honey,” she says. She is weightily pregnant. “There is a dwarf in our back yard.”
“A svart-elf,” he says.
She looks at him.
“They’re called svart-alfar,” he says. “Because . . . well, because that is what they are called. They are presumably svarter than the other alfar, or alfer than the other svarts.”
“I see,” she says, because she does. “What does it want?”
“I don’t want to know,” says Mr. Gulley miserably.
. . .
Helissent looks at him. Then she sighs. She puts a hand on his face. She runs it down to his hand and squeezes it.
“I will come with you,” she says. “If you like.”
“No,” he says.
He pushes her gently away. Then he gives her a rictus of a grin.
He is thinking: what is the worst that can happen? If he kills me then I cannot be eaten by Fenris Wolf.
He goes out.
Joffun looks up at him. Joffun makes a hmph noise and looks back down.
Mr. Gulley sits down against the opposite pillar of the bridge.
He says, “So.”
“Thief,” mutters Joffun.
Mr. Gulley picks up a pebble. He tosses it. It clonks off of Joffun’s shoulder and falls down. Joffun looks up in outrage.
Mr. Gulley grins.
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