“Did I mention you really know how to pick 'em, Oh Great Chosen Butthead?” That Sapale. Once she was onto a thing she never let up.
“I'm going with the flow. You might dive in too, might help,” I replied.
“Not flowing there.”
“Come on, yaz two, I'm ready as I'll evers be,” announced Queeheg as he reentered the room. “I called for a cab, seeing’s how we’re late to get on.”
Out front you will never believe what was waiting to take us to the conclave. I was actually ready to fall to the ground in hysterics. It was a vintage red and white 1958 A8 Checkers cab with single headlights, 1953 Chevrolet taillights, and the original thick, single-bar grille. The whole nine yards. Our cab was a cab. I felt like railing against the heavens to rain down more of the bizarre, more lunacy, and I'd swear by all I held dear that I could take it. Yeah, I was Lieutenant Dan, and the whatever could keep trying with its best shots because I wasn't going to break.
Instead, I got in the cab last.
The trip to the conclave was short. I had no real preconception of what an all-hands-on-deck assembly of these bozos would look like. Still, I was surprised. Maybe I envisioned a round amphitheater with the principals seated at the low point of the ice cream cone. Or a plush meadow with babbling brooks. Hey, we were talking gods here, right? Nope. It looked just like any tacky convention at the Hilton, down to the cheesy red-patterned carpet and folding chairs no being in creation could be comfortable in. What? Were the Cleinoid gods hard up for cash and needed to do these gatherings on the cheap? Did I mention the undersized chandeliers that sported crystals that shined like plastic and the white tableclothed water stands?
We found seats and settled in. Some fluttering freakazoid was reciting flowery words, so we couldn't have missed anything important. When she rested back in her seat a man I knew to be Vorc stood. He was at the center of a long, gently concave table.
“My friends and fellow gods, I have called this conclave to make a major announcement.”
“Couldn't you have just simaged us and cut out the need for everyone having you lord over us?” shouted some immensely ugly blob of a woman seated near us.
“That Caprahammer never kin hold 'er tongue and let Vorc get to it and be done.” Queeheg shook his head in disapproval.
“I personally feel belittled,” Sapale remarked blandly.
I looked to her.
She just shrugged.
“An announcement of this magnitude, this import, could not be made via simage. The news …”
“What, a couple sentences couldn't be sent via the airwaves?” Caprahammer spat on the floor. “Hard to imagine why not.”
“Will the guards please assume their customary positions by Caprahammer's sides. She is now just two disrespects from ejection. I believe this is some kind of record for swiftness of being intolerable,” Vorc said in a tone suggesting he was less in control than he wished to be.
“No, ass-candy. You already hold that record,” she just had to snipe. What a piece of work Caprahammer was.
“Thank the powers she's down to one,” Vorc responded gleefully.
The guards inched closer to their prey.
“Yesterday,” began Vorc, sounding like every other two-bit politician I had ever heard in the last two billion years, “I told the Prophecy Sisters Fest and Deca to give me definitive news on our access to Prime, or else.” Dude really came down hard on the or else crap.
Caprahammer stood silently and walked to the nearest exit. Once there she turned and shouted, “Or else you'd do what you always do. You'd stick your thumb up your butt and then invite all present to please add their thumbs or whatever to the party.” With that, she turned and left before the guards could even approach her.
I snickered. That one was pretty good. I'd have to remember it, use it when the need arose.
“When I returned to the sisters earlier today, I reminded them of my demand. They duly informed me that fate favors the Cleinoid gods.” He spread his arms in the air, waiting to welcome the riotous response his words would invoke. Someone near the front clapped.
Vorc tapped the microphone with a finger. “Is this thing on?” he asked no one in particular.
The loud thumps confirmed it was fully functional.
“Did you hear me, brothers and sisters? Fate favors us.”
Queue the crickets.
A free-floating liquid mass rose a bit and said—how, I have no clue, by the by—“Bring back Caprahammer.”
“What?” squeaked Vorc.
A pencil-thin man in an ill-fitting three-piece suit stood and bowed slightly. Man did he look to be the god of drab morticians. “As one of the many gods of bureaucracy, it may fall upon me to clarify the lack of unbridled enthusiasm you witness, center seat. Some present might be recalling that you have in the past made similar statements that, if taken at face value, proved to be inaccurate in that they predicted events that never actually came to be.”
Yup, he was a bureaucrat. No doubt about that.
“People,” Vorc raged, “we're going to Prime.”
I could swear I heard a pin drop on the other side of the room. Maybe it was a button, but whatever it was it was small, light, and produced almost no sound.
Vorc spun to face Lusterless, the god who'd just made the clarification.
Lusterless pulled a small book or ledger from a pocket and scanned it quickly. Then he cleared his throat. “It is generally accepted by those present that we as a whole will at some time in the foreseeable or unforeseeable future make our way to Prime. Such a passage is considered by most authorities to be a certainty. It is more the time frame of the embarkation that restrains current jubilation based on a gross underperformance of accuracy on the center seat's part over the recent and remote pasts in demonstrating credibility in any stated or implied commitment to the aforementioned travel.”
Just before I nodded off, Lusterless sat back down. I was ready to cheer that.
“Fest, Deca, where are you?” howled Vorc.
They stood.
“Tell these morons what you told me earlier today.”
“Everything we told you?” asked Deca.
“We told you many things,” added Fest.
Vorc's head recoiled slightly. “No you didn't. You just told me the thing about fate.”
They shook their apple-core doll heads in synch.
“What?” he asked feebly.
“She told you that my bladder control issues were getting worse,” Deca snapped, looking angrily at the side of her sister's head.
“And she told you her hip hurt too much for you to be able to mount her anymore.” Fesh smiled contently.
“I did not, you horrible person,” screamed Deca. She did her best to tackle her wicked sister. She more or less bounced off.
There was a loud, bone-crunching peal of thunder in the auditorium. When everyone looked back up, all eyes went to Vorc.
“Do not make me repeat that disciplinary action. Clearly the Prophecy Sisters are in a playful and inappropriate mood today. That said, I will ask Deca,” he pointed in the direction of the women, “and Deca alone, to tell you what they discovered as a result of my mandate to them.”
Deca's ancient face turned to regard the crowd. Then she spoke clearly. “Fate favors us. Within a week we will all be able to cross the void and enter upon Prime. Prime, you witless toads, is yours.”
A deafening roar rose from the audience. The lustful and insatiable ancient gods were about to try and fill the bottomless pits of their desires and their depravity, their cruelty and their callous disregard for all life that wasn't Cleinoid. The ancient gods were about to be unleashed. Hell was coming to a theater near you.
THIRTY-ONE
Sapale and I were lost in a daze as we exited the assembly. One or the other of us would occasionally bump into a reveler, but they never seemed to notice. They were so euphoric it was frightening. I mean, those hateful gods were so enraptured about the prospect of pulver
izing a living, vibrant universe. Who's that callous, that psychotically evil? How can anyone live billions of years and come out so completely and jingoistically screwed up in the head? Wait, I could be. I was, in fact. Well, not me but the alternate time line version of me, the one I nicknamed EJ for Evil Jon. When I hooked back up with him after that period of time, he'd gone completely bad.
Or had he? He was bad, but after leaving him in the custody of a Deft master he eventually came around to being … er, not psycho. That's what Miraya, my sort of adopted daughter, told me at least. I hadn't seen EJ since the day I dumped him on Cala, the Deft witch. My mind reeled. Everything I'd come to know and love over my impossibly long life was about to end violently. EJ rehabed, why didn't these pigs?
You'll never guess what I fixated on the most, what really had me trippin'. Once the ancient gods destroyed my universe, there'd be no more Sunday mornings. Yeah, how odd. Of all the things to miss, I would not have presupposed that would be my greatest regret. But Sunday mornings were magical. Nestled safely between Saturday's off time and twenty-four hours more of relaxation, I always felt so safe, so buffered against the stresses of life. Sunday mornings I slept in. Sundays I ate a ridiculously big breakfast and it was all good. Bacon, hash browns, five eggs over-easy, maybe a steak tossed in for good measure. And the Sunday funnies. They were quicksilver. Precious but short, gone almost before I started them. But they radiated a gentle magic I soaked up like dry desert sand does the rain. Once the damn Cleinoid gods were done, there'd never be another Sunday morning.
I had to stop them. I knew then I would open up an industrial drum of whoop-ass on them or die trying. No one was entitled to end mystical memories, mine or anyone else's. I took Sapale's hand and pulled her to one side.
“I am more angry with these pieces of shit than anyone else I've hated, ever.”
She looked back at me and spoke with strength. “You've hated a lot of people, places, and things.”
“But none like these sorry excuses for living beings. These … these parasites will die, and I will kill every last one of them.”
Still a vision of power, she rested my hand on her chest. “No you won't.”
My hand, the one she held so gently, balled up into a fist. “Why not?”
“Because I'm killing at least half.” She smiled and rested my hand on her cheek.
What a gal, that brood's-mate of mine.
“Youz coming back to me place or what, Cho …”
I shot a stop-sign palm in Queeheg's massive face. “Ryanmax. Call me by my name or die.”
It was almost comical to see a creature so big and ugly and powerful pale as he began to tremble. I say almost because for me there would be nothing comical until these wastes of space were extinct.
“Yesz, sir. Sorry, Ryanm … max. Do you an’ the missus plan on comings back or heading out on your own recognizance?”
“We're going to walk,” Sapale said to him reassuringly. “You go on. Maybe we'll see you soon.”
“I prays we do, ma'am. You’re powerful good company.”
He took a few steps backward, then turned and hurried away. I started to say to Sapale that Queeheg was okay and that maybe I'd not kill him. But I belayed that thought. I was going to see them all dead. No exceptions. I would show them the mercy they were prepared to show. None. That was fine by me. The simpler the rules, the simpler the warfare.
We stepped out into a fading day. The shadows of the departing gods were long and the air was beginning to cool. It would have been in another time and place the start of a very fine evening. “Let's head that way,” I said, gesturing off to the west.
“Where are we going?” Sapale asked as she matched my brisk pace.
“No idea. Just away from this horrible place.”
“Are you looking for Wul?”
Was I? “No. We're on our own now. If we had time maybe I'd try and wriggle myself into a position of acceptance and maybe even power. But we're too close to go time.”
“So, what? Guerrilla warfare? Sabotage on a large scale? What's the plan?”
I shook my head. “Really, nothing. For now we keep moving and I search for inspiration.”
“Sounds like we're hunting for a Jon Plan.”
I smiled to her. “We're looking for a Jon Plan. How hard can that be? They're mostly so dumb and so simple there must be a dozen of them out there at any one time.”
We walked for hours. We'd left one city, passed through a small town or two, and then marched the wide-open expanse of the barren landscape. Toward dawn I saw the outline of Beal's Point off in the far distance. The twisted nature of the monument and the sad devotion the locals had to pay to it came back to me. What twisted bastards. Forced to adsorb toxic essence from past undesirables.
Wait. Toxic might be mighty useful to us. If in small amounts it sickened, there just had to be a dose that would be lethal. It was incumbent upon me to find that dose. The only way to do that would be to collect the bad mojo, duplicate it, and experiment on the locals. That would border on fun in my book.
I pointed to Beal's Point's silhouette. “We're heading toward that outcropping.”
“What's there?”
“Something that makes Cleinoids ill.”
“Can I get a franchise for myself?” She smiled up at me.
“No, sweet love. We're in business together.” I kissed the top of her head, turned, and picked up our pace.
It took us several hours to make Beal's Point. Along the way I filled Sapale in on my road trip there with the others. It took a while to convince her I was not kidding about my new buddy Hemnoplop, the walking talking island. I sent her holos and everything, but she still thought I was making it up to get her goat. She finally conceded that it would be stupid even for me to invent such a character, since his being an island and all didn't enhance the story I spun. She could also glean that my annoyance with Hemnoplop's slow pace and loquacious tendencies was genuine.
“So the ancient gods are required to make pilgrimages there with some regularity so they get sick by absorbing the bad mojo from those deemed by management to be bad team players?” The incredulity oozed in her tone.
“Yeah, that's kind of it.”
“How is it we're worried about defending ourselves? These wet rat droppings are too pathetic to beat up anybody.”
“Would that it were so,” I lamented. “They have strange rules and strange everything else. But they are incredibly powerful, and there are one whole hell of a lot of them.”
“I trust your take, but so far I haven't seen all that many.” She swept an arm across the barren landscape. “Pickings are pretty slim here. And the conclave thing was crowded, but there couldn't have been more than a thousand asswipes there. I mean, the meeting was mandatory. That had to be the sum total of their number, right?”
I clicked my tongue. “That's the hardest part to keep in mind. They're gods, magical beings. Everyone was there, but everyone wasn't at that meeting location.”
“You're sounding like an unemployed philosopher who likes to whiff airplane glue.”
I gestured my hands forward. “There's only one Vorc, one large table, and one Caprahammer being a turd in the punch bowl. But the Cleinoids can come to the conclave without being there.”
“Oh, now I get it.”
“Really?”
“Sure. You're deranged.” She elbowed me.
“We've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. We've seen a lot of strange stuff. You know that. This is another example of the inexplicable happening to be the case. I think they pull it off by being there but in parallel dimensions. I got Wul to tell me that much but couldn't press him because he'd get suspicious.”
“Yes, he might suspect you were deranged.”
I tried to look stern, but we both caught a bad case of the giggles.
“So how many are there?” she asked once we'd settled down.
“I don't know for a fact, but I suspect millions. One way I sold my
story about not being familiar with the local customs was to say I came from far away. Everyone accepted that straight away. I think this place is big.”
“Why does it always get worse? We fight the Listhelons, and at the time they seemed formidable. Then we knock out the Uhoor and next the Berrillians. But the next opponent was tougher and harder to defeat. Why can't we face off with, I don't know, Munchkins? Huh? Them we could pound and be home for an early lunch.”
“Munchkins? Never underestimate those players, honey. They have sharp teeth and are right at groin level. Yeah, try fighting one of those and remaining reproductively intact. No walk in the park, I'll tell you that for free.”
“You speak from personal experience?” She hip-bumped me.
I made a show of stopping and looking sideways toward my crotch. “This is my third one. Nasty little creatures, those Munchkins. Never cross 'em.”
It was midday when we were actually up on the plateau of Beal's Point. That's when the nausea and irrepressible sense of anxiety began to set in.
“You feel that?” I said as we slowed.
“What?”
“Being ill at ease, jumpy.”
She looked ahead and angled her head. “I do. Feels like I'm pregnant.”
“I wouldn't know,” I deferred.
“I could download all my experience to you if you'd like.” Man she seemed awfully gleeful at that prospect.
“Ah, maybe later. It's probably not safe to up here, you know, with the bad air.”
“Wimp.”
I let that pass. “Come on. Let's see what we're going to see.” I pointed to the nearest monument and headed toward it.
“Gal-y-saph-o-lis,” Sapale said, reading the inscription. “That's a mouthful and a half. What'd he do wrong?”
“No clue. Wul mentioned a few specifics farther on. Ol' Galy's crimes will have to remain a mystery.”
I circled the stone monolith the statue rested on. There had to be an opening or panel. If the stupid structure emitted badness, it had to come from inside. Then again, this was the land of quirky gods. Maybe those rules needn't apply. Finding nothing, I extended my probe fibers. Open, I said to the pedestal. The massive structure trembled briefly, then damn if a door didn't open on the far side.
Return of the Ancient Gods Page 18
