“So you are a poly and you wish to conceal that fact.” His tone was suddenly one of hushed jubilance.
A poly? Want a cracker? I was leaping from one fire into the next bigger one with impressive speed. How was I going to figure this one out? “A poly? Me? No, you silly goose.” Did I just refer to the god of business as a silly goose? Yup. I checked. I had. “I'm as not … poly as … as, well, as you are.”
He smiled conspiratorially. “Sure you are. Sure we are.” He actually shot a furtive glance around a full three-sixty. What was up with him? He leaned in. “So how many do you have?”
Fingers? Ten. Dicks? One. What the hell …
“Come on. You just showed me spearing and I saw invisibility. That's two. Wait, you might have been teleporting. Oooh, that's even more powerful than simple invisibility.”
“It is?”
He nudged me with an elbow. “No, I do not think teleporting is more powerful than invisibility either, Ryanmax.” He said my name especially hard. Who the hell was supposed to be taking notes?
“Wul, you been hitting the liquor a bit too hard? I think you're losing it.”
His crest fell. “I'm trying to help. I'm also trying to understand. Ryanmax, I've never known a poly. Sure, we all see them from time to time at conclave. But I've never shared a drink with one.”
“Only Monos?” I ventured a guess.
“Monos? What's that?”
“You know, folks with just one.” I held up a single digit because I was such a moron.
“You mean a singlet?”
Of course I did. “Of course I did. I was just messing with you.”
“Ah.” He smiled nervously. “I get it. Ha.”
Not even a ha ha. I think his mirth was forced. “It's no big deal.”
Wul literally sat involuntarily back where he'd been. “Not a big deal?” He stared at me like I was, I don't know, maybe a poly. “Oh,” he offered weakly, “I get it. It's not a big deal. It's a huge deal, right?”
I pointed at his nose. “You got it, big guy. There's no pulling the wool over Wul's eyes.”
He paled quickly. “Are you going to place a sheepskin over my head? Why? Do you mean to end me so your secret is safe? Ryanmax, please …”
I held up both hands. “Woah Nelly. It's a saying, an expression.” I patted all my pockets. “Do you see a sheepskin?”
“N … no. But who's to say you don't have that power too?”
“What, the power to pull wool out of thin air? Are you mental?”
He looked huffy. “It is possible, even if it'd be a somewhat useless gift.”
“I'm the god of sheep now?”
“You are?” He beamed sudden excitement. “But why just temporarily?”
This conversation was officially batty. “I'm not the interim god of sheep. Goats either. Wul, you gotta calm down before you have a stroke or I give you one.”
“You're a health god …”
I rested my finger over his lips. Thank the maker he stopped spewing nonsense. “I'm Ryanmax. I'm the god of warriors. That is it. Stop now or I'll summon medical aid for you.”
It took ten minutes, but I could sense he'd calmed down. “If I'm a poly,” I held up a hang-on-a-second palm before he shot off like a rocket again, “and I'm only saying if, what's the big deal? It would have to seem completely normal to me, right?”
His lips moved silently as he mulled that over. “I guess it would. Look, being a poly is very rare. Even you must know that. If you were, you know, a poly-poly, Ryanmax, that would be … it'd cause …”
“Any chance you'll just up and say it while I'm still young?”
“You'd be our god.”
Oh my. Sorry I asked.
TWENTY-THREE
“I'm not just as stupid as my husband,” Sapale snapped at Toño.
“Ah, really? In what manner is your lunacy different than his?”
“He didn't have the decency to say goodbye to you. I do. I am.”
Toño gritted his teeth and shook his head. “I'll grant that you're more considerate,” he raised an angry finger, “not that that's saying much given whom I compare you to. But your act is equally stupid. To march willingly into a trap set by vicious killers is—and you can ask anyone about this—cited in the dictionary as an example of stupidity.”
“Toño, I've lived two billion years. If I were to die due to this foolishness I'd be two billion years overdue anyway. I've filled my dance card on both sides. My brood-mate is missing and I might,” she wagged a finger, “just might be able to help him. If I die, who actually cares? I miss Jon and we'd both die for him, so what's the big deal?”
“There is so much that is wrong with that statement I don't know where to begin. First, there is no such thing as being overdue to die. You are gifted a very long life and must respect that gift. Use it wisely. You have much to offer and our needs are great. Second, if Jon died at their hands what chance would you stand? And don't bother to say you're just as skillful and lucky as him because no one is. Third, I care. You asked who did and I'm telling you. Fourth, you're not going after him. He's been gone a year. As I stated clearly before, that either means he is dead, or he's well-placed and some cockamamie scheme of his is working. Your arrival will only destabilize his efforts and cannot help them.”
“You can't know that,” she defended weakly.
“Oh I can't? So he's dug in like a tick, you show up and are about to be terminated and he's bound to try and rescue you. He has to expose himself abruptly and fly into a hopeless attempt to rescue you from what would have to be their strongest prison. What helpful aspect have I overlooked?”
“If you want to see things darkly, darkly you will see them. I've learned in my expansive life that the unpredictable often happens.”
“You frustrate me so.”
“Not what I anticipated hearing. I'll bite. Why have I frustrated you?”
“Because I will not be able to say I told you so when you don't return after having been killed quickly while providing Jon no assistance.”
She pointed a hand at her head. “Make a backup and tell it.”
“That's not funny.”
“No, but it might be therapeutic for you.”
“I will deal with my own therapies, thank you just the same. Now if you are hell-bent on acting out a grievous error, please do so now and leave me in my soon to be shattered peace.”
“Wow. That's the best Catholic guilt I've heard, well, since the last time you played that card.”
“And I hope you carry the burden of the guilt long after you pass Davdiad's sacred veils.” He turned his back on Sapale.
“Ouch. He really is mad.”
“No,” whispered Toño, “he's really frightened.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Jonathan Ryan, god of the gods. Hmm. Had a nice ring to it. I mean I wasn't going to let my new gig affect me, get into my head. Nah. I was going to be a humble, welcoming, and loving god of gods. Magnanimous. Can't forget magnanimous. Might even have to make that my official middle name. Jon Magnanimous Ryan, GOG. No, wait, that'd blow my cover. Ryanmax Magnanimous, GOG. There's the ticket. Man alive I just couldn't wait to spring that one on Al. He'd positively lay an egg, hell several species of eggs.
Damn, I hated to admit it but I missed the bucket of used bolts. I sure could use his analytical input in this Bizarro World. His annoying, grating commentary too. Sure, I missed Sapale. I missed Doc. But Al and I, we were partners from the get-go. Anyway, I missed him.
Seriously though, these Cleinoid gods were weak in the head. They had a bargain-basement prophecy about how they'd end—the gods will fall only when three miracles that are one work as two—and to top that off they're sitting with their thumbs up their butts, waiting for their god to materialize. Pathetic. Moronically pathetic. But weakness in an enemy was a good thing. Hell, if I did swing the GOG thing, I could just order them all to off themselves and save everyone a lot of grief.
Oh great master god, Ryanma
x Magnanimous, how best may we serve? they would ask while groveling.
Devotion to me involves but two steps. Find a black hole. Jump into that black hole, I would say with a mother's love.
Not a likely scenario, but a sweet fantasy.
Once we were fed and rested, our odd troop set off again to absorb bad vibrations. Now that I was in tune with the transmissions, I confirmed they did indeed get stronger nearer to a statue. Also there was a variation in the sense I got. Different “sins” must have produced different symptoms. With little else to do I focused most of my time on identifying the nature of the negative transmission. I knew I was up against the possibility that they were somehow magical, and hence unidentifiable, but it was something to keep my mind occupied. Otherwise I'd be forced to focus on Hemnoplop's nonstop childish babbling.
A factoid from the past came to mind. The Deft did their shape-shifting using exotic matter. That same exotic matter was the lifeblood of the Adamant Empire. That's why the dogs wanted to make the Deft completely extinct. But, thinking a bit more, that didn't help. I didn't care what the power source was. I wanted to know what the agent causing the feelings was. But I'd done darn near every test I knew of on the atmosphere other than tasting it. If I could … Yeah. That would be worth a try. If I concentrated the signal maybe I could analyze it. I set up a full membrane in the shape of a pointy-at-one-end ice cream cone. The wide opening faced the source, a statue base, and the tiny hole was away from the sender. By toying with the angle of the walls of the cone I could concentrate the signal. That was much the same principle for how a gamma ray detector worked. The particles slid along the edges and were slowly concentrated.
It took maybe half an hour to convince my stubborn self that approach wasn't going to work. Even though it had to work, it wasn't. No matter how I varied the size parameters of the system I detected nothing. That was impossible. I then guinea-pig confirmed that my cone did concentrate the awful feeling. I stood at the tiny-hole end and let the signal hit me. Wow, instant buzzkill. I was so depressed I jumped to one side. As I've said many times before, I hated dealing with an impossibility when confronted by one.
What if I slowed the beam down? Hmm. Might help. In a physics lab there was media that could slow speedy light to a walking pace. Seriously. They were clear. I did the experiment once where I fired a laser into one end of the block and walk right alongside the moving light beam without any effort. It was surreal.
But, naturally, no matter how high an index of refraction I subjected the concentrated beam to it didn't slow down. I was ready to kick something small and helpless. What doesn't slow down? Nothing known. Well, aside from my ex-wife Gloria while enumerating my shortcomings. As I mentioned, even light itself can be slowed to a crawl. For the second time that morning I wished the Als were present to help me see what I was missing.
Some force emanated from these ugly monoliths that I couldn't detect and that couldn't be decelerated to a speed where I could detect it. With enough energy any particle can be …
Energy?
Particle?
Can't slow to everyday speed?
Wow. Here's a question. What can't be slowed to a stop? Answer. A thing that cannot go slower than the speed of light. Bingo. The signal had to be in tachyons or some equivalent mystery particle that could only move faster than light. As counterintuitive as it might have sounded, one can slow a bullet from fast to zero. But one could only slow a tachyon down to almost as slow as the speed of light. It was in the tachyons’ nature. They were the Speedy Gonzaleses of creation. They could only go fast. I hadn't detected tachyons because I wasn't looking for them. In point of fact I doubted I could prove they were there. It wasn't like I could mosey over to Walmart and buy a tachyon meter. As far as I knew there was no way to detect them. For a long time they were theoretical particles that no proper scientist actually believed existed. But even in my lifetime on Earth they were shown to exist. But that documentation had been due only to indirect effects caused by the tachyons. Oh well, at least I had some understanding of what was occurring to me. And I had one more tiny insight into the ancient gods' technology.
Based on Hemnoplop's inability to move fast enough to disturb still air, it took us three weeks more to leave Beal's Point. I tell you I could not have been more ecstatic if Gina Lollobrigida and Marilyn Monroe said they wanted a threesome with me. Well, almost. Anyway, we made it back to the main road and there we split up. Hemnoplop said he needed to get back to sea. Fools were lining up to climb his shores as we spoke. With his announcement, Livryatous felt unbounded. He clomped over to my side and dumped a huge pile of horse poop on me, my boots, and the ground around me. He must have been saving it up for days. Then he dropped his tail and charged off into the distance without a word.
That left Wul and me there, staring down at all that manure.
“I'm climbing out on a limb here,” I said, “but I'm guessing he never warmed sufficiently to me.”
“I believe you could successfully argue that point,” replied Wul with a smirk. Then he burst into hardy laughter. I joined in quickly. It was kind of funny. Hell, if I was a centaur I'd have pulled the same stunt.
When we calmed back down, a very serious Wul asked, “So where are you heading now?”
I took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. “To try and soak all the bad karma out of the temple that is my body.”
He grunted. “And just how do you propose to do that?”
“I'll use a powerful and concentrated solvent.”
His eyebrows peaked.
“With fiery drinking whiskey,” I revealed.
He rapped me on the shoulder. “Count me in. I need all the solvent I can get myself.”
Because that darn Hemnoplop was so slow, there was no doubt Gorpedder would have recovered and likely returned to his digs. So it would be profoundly ill-advised of me to go there. “Where's your favorite establishment of intoxicating refreshment, my friend?” I asked jovially.
“My favorite? That's tough. There are a number of such havens.”
“Then I suggest we do this scientifically. We'll take 'em down in alphabetical order.”
He pointed to my nose. “You are a wise and thoughtful god, Ryanmax. Altruism's Failure just happens to be a short pleasant walk from here,” he signaled to his right, “that way.”
“Then why are we just standing here with our teeth in our mouth? March,” I said, gently shoving Wul in the proper direction.
You know me and dive bars. They're my happy places. Altruism's Failure was hence not my kind of saloon. No, it was posh, over the top to the point of garish in fact. Clouds lazied their way across the expansive room, gold was the metal of choice for everything solid, and the waitstaff was impeccable. The males were all hunks and the women were all stunning. They were also all buck naked. Gulp. It occurred to me that this was a bar for gods. Maybe they all looked like this?
We were seated at a great table, not surprisingly because all the tables were great. They were all centrally located, but subtly inconspicuous, favoring those inclined to dodgy rendezvous. And all the tables had commanding views of the decor and the stunning vistas outside. Mountains with exploding waterfalls, deep forest canopies, and peaceful seascapes with calming waves. God bars were impressive, even I had to admit it.
A woman blessed with spectacular attributes glided up to our table and bowed slightly. “I live to serve only you. How may I begin to make your days the best they could ever be?”
Now, I have to say that in all my days, in all the restaurants, bars, cafés, and hot-dog stands I’d ever visited, I'd never been offered such a friendly, welcoming greeting. I liked the girl immediately. Her commitment to the hospitality industry was palpable. She was a credit to her trade.
“We'll start with a bottle of Zeus Juice and, of course, a bottle of nectar of the gods.”
“I will get those immediately. Upon my return please tell me how else I might serve to honor you.”
I know what you were th
inking. The answer was no, a firm no. She was a Stepford waitress, not a real hotty with a fancy for yours truly. I mean, what sane knockout wouldn't want to jump these bones? But this was just too forced, too convenient. I should mention Wul appeared to have no similar reservations or pride. No, even through his loose-fitting clothes I could see he was prepared to test the full meaning of our server's open-ended invitation.
She returned with a large bottle. When close enough I could confirm the label indeed read Zeus Juice. Had a caricature of the old bearded guy and everything. Cupids firing arrows and nymphs abounding. Our waitress was followed by a second different-looking but equally over-endowed woman carrying a second bottle, no doubt the nectar. Now I have to say it would have been fully possible for our initial waitress to carry both bottles and several more easily. I think the second babe accompanied the first in case her commitment to the service industry was … also tested. Catching fish in a barrel with a shotgun was far more difficult than getting laid 'round these parts.
“I'll pour,” said Wul, taking the bottle from her hands. “You may leave.” He did pat her rump after she'd turned to leave. The #MeToo moment had a long ways to go in the land of the gods, it would seem.
“When you're ready let me know and I'll flag one of them down for you,” said Wul as he filled our glasses.
“When I'm ready for what?” I asked naively.
“Ready to … you know, divest yourself in the company of one of the staff.”
Divest myself. Never heard hiding-the-salami called that before. Live and learn.
“Thanks. I'll … I'll keep you posted.”
He shrugged.
“To a lousy adventure completed,” Wul called out as he raised a glass of Zeus Juice.
We toasted and threw back the whole tumbler. Three—two—one. Zawowzers. That rotgut burned like I'd swallowed a rocket engine at liftoff. If I wasn't an android it'd have stripped off my esophagus and begun spewing out the sides of my neck. It had to be seven-hundred proof, I'm talking concentrated pure alcohol. I wanted more immediately and lunged for the bottle.
Return of the Ancient Gods Page 13
