Wul snatched it up first and held it behind his chair. “Uh-uh.” He smiled wickedly. “Best to let the first salvo hit your brain before taking another hit.”
I rested back. “Whatever. You know this isn't my first rodeo? I'm a big boy. Big boys can hold their liquor. Plus, I'm not driving home.”
“Such bold words from the poly. I beg you not to roast me with your wrath.” He mock-withdrew in fright, covering his face with his arm.
“Ah, aren't you worried someone'll hear you mentioning that word?”
He gestured about generally. “What, here? No, my friend. No one can hear us unless they're sitting at our table. That's the way it works. You know that, right?”
“Of course I do. But that cute waitress may pop up under the table without warning, if you get my drift.”
“I do and you're gross.”
“So I've been misinformed before.”
“If she overheard that word, she'd ignore it just as she will any other gossipy tidbit she'll hear today.”
“A real pro?” I teased.
“No, a real golem. You know that, right?”
“What is this, a quiz? How many question can I miss before I flunk your class, teach?”
“I never can tell when you're joking or not.”
I raised both palms. “Duh! Kind of my plan, don't you think?”
He raised one eyebrow. Looked like that old actor-turned-politician Dwayne Johnson. Dude was said to have been a damn good president back when there was still a planet Earth.
“Since you brought it up, let's talk about this poly ability of yours.”
“Do we have to?” I whined. “If you let it go I'll pick up today's tab.” No freakin' clue where I'd come up with the scratch, but I really didn't want to talk poly.
“Such a magnanimous offer, especially seeing as everything’s free. Always has been. I'd say you know that, right too, but I don't need any more of your grief.” He poured from the other bottle.
The nectar was extremely viscous. It flowed like a sky-blue maple syrup. Drinking whiskey it was not. The only way to shoot it would be to down the full shot glass.
He picked up his glass and first stared at then sniffed the liquor. It was as if he were recalling long-dead lovers. He was as serious as a husband looking at his wife in bed with his brother. Finally his spell broke. “To new friends, new friend.” He offered me his rim.
“To friendship,” I returned and click his.
Nectar of the gods. What can I say? It was good. I had to laugh on the inside however, because it didn't hold a candle to Deavoriath nufe. But this thick, sweet, almost pungent concoction was compellingly appealing. Layer after layer peeled open the longer I held it in my mouth, like a synchronized swimming team. It had the mustiness of muscat grapes, the savory quality of smoked brisket, the tang of a green apple, and hints of cinnamon, clove, and rose water. Wild. It also packed a slow-motion kick of high alcohol. I was an instant fan.
You know how sometimes you see a situation developing before your eyes, but you can do nothing to stop it and you know it's going to go badly? A train heading for a bridge that's washed away, or a tiny baby seal swimming above a huge dark figure moving toward it? Yeah, picture me raising my hand. Remember the shiny annoying cloud that joined me inside my full membrane when I first arrived in Godville? It just walked through the arched doorway. Well, I guess I shouldn't say walked because nebulous manifestations didn't have legs, but you get my point. The thing was back, and it was heading straight for guess whose table. Oh boy.
“Hey,” I said quickly, “I need some fresh air. I'll be right back.” I started to rise.
“I knew you were a lightweight, Ryanmax,” Wul chortled knowingly.
I sat back down. The vague, annoying cloud might blow my cover and result proximately in my brutal death, but no one was calling me a lightweight. Yes, I would rather die than live with those words unchallenged in the ether. I slid my empty glass over to Wul. “Fill 'er up, cowboy. I'm suddenly quite thirsty.”
He gently rested his palms on his chest. “You don't need to further injure yourself in a vain attempt to impress me. We are not children, you and I.”
Boy did I want to wipe that smug smile off his face with a blowtorch. “And if I drink, you drink.”
That got him to tent an eyebrow. Yeah, bigmouth, what were you getting yourself into? Better think before you spout off next time. Be more mature like me.
He filled the glasses to about one third. I rattled the bottom of my glass as he was setting the bottle down. “You know, my friend, during my brief stay in Prime I ran across a most curious creature. It had feathers, two skinny legs, big wings, and a tiny beak. You know what it was called?”
He shook his head slightly.
“A chicken. You know why?”
He shrugged.
“Because it was afraid of everything, including its own shadow. Do you know what it says?”
He sat deadpan.
“Bwak bwak bwakaaah.” I flapped my arms like chicken wings to help the lesson along.
“Are you suggesting that I, a god of business and enterprise, am a chicken?”
“You said it, not me. But if the shoe fits, cut off your foot before the rumors start spreading.” I smiled like only I could. Sassy, mocking, and challenging. It grated on him instantly. Outstanding.
“My my, I seem to have left some vital room at the tops of our glasses, didn't I?” He glugged them full to the absolute rims.
“To our good health,” I said a microsecond before I threw the whole volume down my throat. “Ah, good stuff,” I exhaled robustly. Then, because, you know, I was me, I crushed the glass in my hand.
Wul raised his glass to his lips slowly and even more slowly drained his glass dry. Then he stared at it a second. He set it down gently. “Shame to ruin a perfectly good tool.” His finger shot up and our waitress basically ran over. “Another glass for my friend and another bottle for us.” He smiled like a cat eating shit and angled his head to one side.
“Make that two bottles and two glasses, sweet cheeks.” I returned the identical expression to Wul. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but I swear I saw his eyes widen as I finished. Perfecto mundo.
“You are getting along … better, better than you just … so recently were,” said the wavering ball of glitter floating at my side.
“I bet you wonder who my friend here is, don't you?”
Wul scanned to either side of me, then actually rested an elbow on the table and did a three-sixty sweep of the room. “What friend?”
He didn't see or hear floaty-boy? I hated situations where my next move was as unclear as mud. “You don't see my cloudy acquaintance here?” I said, passing my hand through the whatever.
“Is this a setup for a joke?”
“Wul, I never make jokes. I'm a somber and sober fellow.”
“Now I know you are kidding because it is impossible for you to be sober.” He nodded to what was left of my glass.
I made a show of turning to the apparition. “He claims he neither sees nor hears you. What am I to make of that?”
“You become even more odd when drunk, Ryanmax,” Wul said incredulously.
“He could but doesn't.”
“My, how typically vague and uninformative a response, yet again.”
“I get it,” shouted Wul. “You're doing one of those shows, you know, a ventriloquist and his dummy. I hate those acts.” He fingered his lower lip. “Now I just need to figure out which one's the dummy.”
“Which one is … zzz, the dummy,” mimicked the twinkling ball. “Wul is fun.”
“You know Wul?” I said without considering how I might extricate myself from the conversational quicksand I flailed in.
“Yes. All know Wul. He is a good god.”
“What'd he say?” begged Wul with significant anticipation.
“Good god,” I responded more as a question.
Wul twisted his neck thinking, then burst out laughing. “You are go
od, Ryanmax. I'm a good god or Wul? Good god! That's rich.”
I'm glad he thought I was funny. Of course he'd just slammed down toxic quantities of firewater.
“Wul believes we are … are fun.”
“You mean funny?” I said to the vapor.
“Of course I do,” wheezed Wul between belly laughs. Guy was making a spectacle of himself.
The mist rose and settled. “Yes. You are more right than … me. Wul believes you are funny.”
“The way you say it you suggest there's some distance between belief and actuality.” I had no idea what I was saying.
“No, I said nothing of the kind,” defended a suddenly serious Wul.
I looked back and forth from the apparition to Wul like an idiot. Then I pointed to Wul. “Got ya,” I taunted.
Thank goodness he was drunk. He burst out laughing again. “Yes, you did, you son of a thousand fathers.”
“That was not funny,” said my annoying shadow.
“Wasn't fun either,” I mumbled. I opened my arms to the cloud, again making a show of it. “Why are you here?”
“Why not here? Where should I … be?”
“Are you here to discuss something or just embarrass the hell out of me?”
“It would take more … more than embarrassment to remove the hell in y … you, Jon Ryan.”
I didn't recall telling him my name.
“Ryanmax, I'm dying here. What'd he say?” demanded Wul.
“He can't embarrass the hell out of me. He says it'd take nuclear weapons, not words.”
Wul snickered and gasped. “I have no doubt in that re … regard.”
“Could you please leave?” I snapped at the bobbing butthead.
“Yes.”
I waited long enough to realize he wasn't budging. “Would you please leave?” I clarified through gritted teeth.
“Yes.”
Like the Rock of Gibraltar he remained. “Why don't I see you leaving?”
“Because he's not,” howled Wul. Such an ugly drunk.
“The god is correct.”
“What'll it take?”
“You if I would leave. You failed to state the motivation on my part.”
“What the hell's that even mean?”
“His response, Ryanmax?”
“He said you're as drunk as you are ugly.”
Wul flared in anger.
“Hey, his words not mine.”
“But you're the puppeteer,” snarled Wul.
“No. I'm the dummy.” I pointed at him again. “Got ya.”
He literally collapsed to the floor in hysterics. Man was he a sucker for my gotchas. What a moron.
I took the opportunity of Wul's incapacity to speak more freely. “Where were you? You disappeared on me back in the Lower Chambers.”
He was silent a bit longer than I expected. “No … I … I did not.”
“Huh? Are you daft?”
“Likely. But I never left your side. You opened up your force field and we left the chambers together. We came directly here.”
A vapor cloud with a cloud-screw loose. Just exactly what I needed least. “No. That was several weeks ago. You and I never left the building together. Trust me.”
“Why?”
“Because I'm right, dipstick.”
“Does that make him left dipstick?” asked Wul, struggling back into his chair.
“Yah, and he told me where he wants to dip it, but he can't on account of your sitting on it.”
“I'm too old for this level of stimulation and abuse,” he protested while giggling.
“Funny, stimulation and abuse were what he was hoping for.”
Wul, the actual lightweight, hit the deck again in a humor seizure.
“Now look what you've done,” said my personal vision.
Was it the Zeus Juice affecting my circuits, or was the blob less … less blobby than last time? He seemed more orderly or something. “You were gone for weeks. Don't you remember that?”
Wul started snoring loudly.
I stood halfway and studied him on the floor, drooling and snoring like there was a wrecking ball in the back of his throat. I wished I had a camera. I could blackmail him forever with that shot.
I turned back to my buddy. Of course he was gone without a trace. Why wouldn't he be? Hell, if you're trying real hard to complicate my life and torture my soul, what else would you do? So there I sat, Wul passed out, cloud-boy vanished, and a naked-golem waitress walking slowly toward my table like this was a typical day's work. Man she was cute. Then again, magically animated mud-beings weren't exactly my thing. I did, however, consider calling out to her to stop walking and start jogging.
TWENTY-FIVE
“I feel we're fortunate to have documented no attacks or incursions for the last eighteen months,” Prime Minister Genter-ban-tol said to the assembled parliament. “I don't know if it's loss of interest on their part or dumb luck on ours, but all has been quiet.”
“How would you rate our readiness to defend ourselves?” asked No One Else of the Daxi Federation. The Daxi were a race of simian-looking clones. One genetic female and one genetic male had been copied over and over to achieve a Federation population of over ten billion. Their records no longer documented why this Darwinian oddity of a culture was established or who the Adam and Eve were. Those omissions bothered none of the Daxi. If asked, a Daxi would answer one-hundred percent of the time, “I am the original progenitor.” No amount of argument or cajoling could budge them from that stance.
“We cannot be certain, No One Else. We know so little about the capabilities of these ancient gods. Estimating what level or amount of defensive forces is needed to defend against them is unknowable.”
“That's a guess, you pathetic coward,” shouted Densest 87 X105, the new Suriliab minister. She replaced Denser 88 X105a few months earlier after self-promoting herself by assassinating her predecessor. For the record she wanted to be minister less than she wanted to kill Denser 88 X105. Suriliab culture was violently inclined.
“Our subcommittee for mutual defense has maintained all along that we are woefully unprepared. They reported to me last week that we are no less unprepared currently.”
“Unacceptable. I demand you be burned alive and that I be assigned the job you are incapable of performing,” spat the Suriliab representative.
First Coequal Di, the one who'd assumed the unrewarding task of trying to hold the Suriliab contingent in check, stood. “There are no protocols for either the incineration of the prime minister or the appointing of his successor. I must ask that you make more effort to abide by our cultural norms. Densest 87 X105.”
“No protocol? Look, it's easy. I've torched many idiots in my day. You pour gasoline over them and you strike a match. I'll do it.”
“Will the prime minister please answer the question posed. I see no need to dignify that last statement with a response,” said a very frustrated Di as she sat back down.
“I will paraphrase Densest 87 X105's earlier question as why are we not more prepared? I can assure everyone we have exceeded all estimates of how much progress we could achieve. To produce more weaponry or ships would not have been possible. The subcommittee blames no one. They state we simply have not accomplished the impossible.”
“Burn them too,” said Densest 87 X105 as if speaking to herself.
“Dr. De Jesus has a rather troubling update to share. I am honestly uncertain if distributing this news widely is the best approach, but the leadership council decided to release the information. The council felt the fullest disclosure might lead to some insights from unanticipated individuals. Dr. De Jesus,” Genter-ban-tol invited as he swept an antenna-like extension across the audience.
“Thank you, Prime Minister. Since we first became aware of the antimatter traps set by the ancient gods, I have spent a lot of time studying them. I was hopeful a better knowledge of the devices might help me understand their technology.”
“You were hopeful? Tha
t doesn't sound too hopeful,” Santamantasur said loudly. He was a Cholak from Lyra 3. If the Yeti existed anywhere in creation, it was on Lyra 3. Massive, furry, gigantic paws ending in formidable claws, and a disposition that matched their appearance.
“Yes, Master Santamantasur, your observation is correct. My quest came up remarkably short. If I might proceed …” Toño asked open-endedly.
“Don't stop now. Crash everyone's hopes against hostile rocks,” the Cholak replied dismissively.
“As you will recall, the traps were baited with exotic antimatter particles. Gold, platinum, and uranium to name a few. These elements in that form would be extremely unstable and short-lived in our universe. They were made to appear stable by basically setting them in micro-bulges from presumably the universe our enemy occupies. I wanted to understand what physical processes and energy expenditures would be required to assemble such a system.
“Naturally the ancient gods might exist in an antimatter universe. But were that the case they would never bother coming to our exclusively positive universe. They'd self-annihilate upon entry. So I modeled what conditions would need to be established to project these exotic elements into our universe.” Toño breathed heavily. “I could not postulate even one mechanism by which what we observed could possibly be reality.”
“For us non-fat brains,” growled Densest 87 X105angrily, “what are you saying so ineptly?”
“They perform the impossible.”
“What? Are you proposing that they use magic?” asked an incredulous Lenty Mo, a Novartoid-equivalent drone. “Are you insane?” Fairly strong words for a three-centimeter-long winged bug.
“If you would like to call it magic I would not bother to stop you. I will refrain from naming the force myself.”
“Prime Minister Genter,” Lenty Mo protested, “defeat is surely our fate with advisors who are idiots.”
“That accusation is neither helpful nor called for,” responded Genter-ban-tol. “Dr. De Jesus is doing his best to keep us all informed. The fact that the ancient gods' technology is impenetrable at this juncture is no one's fault.”
“It is good. I will tell this to my spawn as they die in agony. 'Don't feel badly, loved ones of my lineage. Yes, you die, but it is no one's fault.'” Lenty Mo buzzed from the room.
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