by Tom Holt
‘You might have warned us,’ Osiris protested.
‘There wasn’t time,’ Mithras replied, defensively. ‘Besides, I forgot it was there. Only came last evening. Bloke with a horse and cart came in for a haircut, and when I’d done he said he’d come out without his wallet, would I be interested in doing a bit of barter? And since I’ve got the allotment—’
‘Yes,’ Pan said, ‘all right. We get the message.’
Mithras turned on Pan, snarling. ‘Besides,’ he snapped, ‘I only did to you what you did to me all those years back, you bastard.’
‘Did I?’ Pan frowned in thought. ‘Oh, I see,’ he said, ‘it’s a sort of play on words. Yes, very good.’
Osiris raised a hand for silence. ‘Excuse me,’ he asked Mithras. ‘I’m sure it’s none of my business, but what exactly did he do to you?’
‘Hah!’
‘It was all perfectly innocent,’ Pan muttered, as he put the width of a barber’s chair between Mithras and himself. ‘Just bad luck, that’s—’
‘There I was,’ Mithras said, ‘at my retirement party. Super do it was, champers, horse doofers, bits of minced-up fish in pastry cases with thin slices of egg, the works. Three thousand years in the public service, and a nice comfortable retirement and a decent pension to look forward to.’ He paused to give Pan a look you could have freeze-dried coffee with, and went on. ‘And just when the party’s going well and I’ve had a few jars, up comes this creep here, all innocent like, with his, Excuse me, but have you given any thought to the long-term benefits of a personal pension scheme specially tailored to your individual requirements? Gordon Bennett, did he see me coming, or what?’
‘It was a perfectly legitimate investment proposal,’ Pan replied, his face covered with synthetic anger, as if he’d just been eating a doughnut filled with wrath. ‘You were at perfect liberty to take independent financial advice.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Mithras sneered. ‘Trust me, I’m a god. Went and stuck the while lot into Mount Olympus 12½ per cent unsecured loan stock, he did, just six weeks before the battle of the Milvian Bridge.’
‘Final defeat of the pagans by Constantine the Great,’ Osiris asided to Sandra, who hadn’t been listening anyway. ‘Christianity becomes the state religion and worship of the old gods forbidden.’ He nodded a few times. ‘I can see your point,’ he said to Mithras. ‘In the circumstances, I think ripping his lungs out would be perfectly reasonable behaviour.’
Pan smiled fiercely. ‘All water under the bridge, now, though,’ he said, ‘and anyway—’
‘Is it hell as like,’ Mithras growled. ‘I make it you owe me ninety billion gold dinars, plus interest. I’d prefer cash, if you’ve got it.’
‘So you couldn’t retire after all?’
‘Been working in this dump ever since,’ Mithras replied sullenly. ‘Only thing that’s kept me going was the thought of what I was going to do to chummy here just as soon as I got my hands on him.’
‘I think that’s very sad,’ Sandra said.
‘You think . . .’
Pan folded his arms. ‘It was an honest mistake,’ he said firmly. ‘And besides, think of all the tax you’ve saved just by virtue of being grindingly poor.’
A spasm of doubt flitted across Mithras’ face. ‘Cor,’ he said. ‘I never looked at it like that before.’
‘You see?’ Pan replied, simultaneously crushing Sandra’s foot beneath his own on the off chance that she might have been about to point out that gods don’t pay tax anyway. ‘That’s the trouble with laymen, of course, they’re incapable of adopting the holistic viewpoint. Strictly speaking, of course,’ he added, ‘I should be entitled to my ten per cent commission on everything you’ve saved, but as a gesture of goodwill . . .’
‘Gosh. Thanks.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘That’s really kind of you.’
‘Don’t mention it.’ Pan unfolded his arms and extended a hand to Mithras, who shook it warmly. ‘And by way of a thank you, maybe you could help us with this little job we’re doing.’
‘There’s a door,’ said Carl slowly, ‘in this wall.’
Everyone else in the room turned and looked at him. ‘Straight up,’ he added. ‘Look, you can see for yourselves. Here, under the wallpaper.’
Careful examination did indeed reveal the edges of a door, together with a slight bulge for the lockplate. ‘Well, bugger me,’ said Mithras. ‘I’ve been here one thousand, six hundred and eighty-three years, and would you believe I never even noticed it there.’
Pan knitted his brows. ‘That suggests,’ he observed, ‘that it’s a pretty old door. Does it lead anywhere, do you suppose?’
Mithras nodded. ‘Must do,’ he said. ‘That’s what doors are all about, stands to reason.’
‘Any idea where?’
To the gods all things are . . . Yes, well, in theory. Let’s instead say, To the gods all things are known, but most of them have memories like car boot sale colanders.
Osiris smiled. For some reason he had good vibes about this. Not that that was quite so significant as it seemed; among other things he’d had good vibes about the South Sea Bubble, Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 peace initiative, the groundnut scheme and Polly Peck. Nevertheless, he was prepared to ride his hunch. Being a god means never having to say you’re sorry.
‘Only one way to find out, then,’ he said.
Twenty minutes later, it looked very much like he was going to have to get off his hunch and walk. To the casual visitor, one catacomb is very much like another, and they all smell distressingly of distant sewage and bonemeal.
‘Don’t mind me,’ Pan said smugly. ‘What with my line of work and everything, the only time I really know where I am is when I’m hopelessly lost.’ He looked around ostentatiously and added, ‘Home sweet home.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Osiris, artificially calm. ‘Everything always leads somewhere. We’ll soon be—’
‘Sure. Has it occurred to you that this tunnel might have been undisturbed for two thousand years for a very good reason?’
Suddenly Osiris jammed on the brakes of his chair, licked one finger and held it up. ‘It’s a draught,’ he said. ‘I think we’re in business.’
‘Are there any of those prunes left, I wonder,’ said Sandra. ‘I’m hungry.’
The draught, it transpired, came from a low, unfinished-looking tunnel running off to their right. There was something about it which didn’t inspire confidence.
‘Right,’ said Mithras, ‘that’ll do me.You’re on your own from now on. I’ve got a shop to run.’
Osiris glowered at him. ‘You mean you’re scared. Admit it.’
Mithras shrugged. ‘All right, I’m scared. It’s spooky.’
‘Spooky? You’re a god, dammit.’
‘Retired. And anyway, I’m well off my own turf here. Sun gods aren’t meant to fool around in dark tunnels hundreds of feet underground. Well known fact, that.’
Osiris shrugged. ‘Please yourself,’ he said. ‘Right, on we—’
‘Hold on a moment, will you?’ Pan interrupted. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting we go down there, are you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
Osiris considered; and while he did so, Pan reminded him that their objectives were (a) short term, to escape from the two doctors and all those lunatic monks, and (b) long term, somehow to get their hands on enough loot to pay their incredibly, monumentally expensive lawyer. Neither purpose, he ventured to suggest, would be materially advanced by going down a dark, dodgy and probably entirely futile hole in the ground.
‘Okay,’ said Osiris. ‘Because it’s there. How does that grab you?’
‘Not much.’
‘Ah.’ Osiris smiled. ‘That’s because you lack insight, initiative and the holistic viewpoint. Last one down the tunnel’s a cissy.’
He grabbed the wheels of his chair, shoved off and vanished into the darkness. Sandra and Carl immediately followed, Sandra expr
essing the view that she doubted there was anything to eat down there but she supposed it was worth a try. For want of other company, Pan turned to his sworn enemy and smiled pleasantly.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘it takes all sorts, doesn’t it. Now, what’s the quickest way back up to the—?’
‘About my money,’ said Mithras. ‘Oh, and by the way, the interest is of course compound, at let’s say a flat rate of fifteen per cent, so that makes, let’s see, ten to the power of nine hundred and four times sixteen point three seven eight, divide by three hundred and sixty-five and multiply—’
‘Ciao,’ said Pan quickly, and darted up the tunnel.
What with falling over his feet and not having a torch, not to mention ominous scuttling sounds and the smell of bonemeal, Pan found it slow and hard going. It was pitch dark and he couldn’t see a thing; but, bearing in mind the scuttling sounds, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Don’t panic, he said to himself. Well, no, I wouldn’t would I? On the other hand, I could be rationally and reasonably terrified, no trouble at all. Let’s give that a try and see what happens.
HALT.
Pan halted. He had no idea where the voice had come from, if in fact it had been a voice at all.
STAY EXACTLY WHERE YOU ARE.
Pan did as he was told, and as the seconds turned into minutes, the white heat of his terror began to cool ever so slightly. There was something about the voice that reminded him very faintly of something else.
DO NOT MOVE OR IT WILL BE THE WORSE FOR YOU.
‘Okay. Point taken. What next?’
YOU ARE IN MY WHIRR CLUNK POWER. SURRENDER OR DIE.
‘I’ll take surrender, please, chief. So what’s next on the agenda?’
A full minute passed; a very long time, in context, and an even longer time down a dark, scuttling tunnel. Pan began to clap his hands together slowly.
DO NOT MOVE OR IT WILL BE THE—
Pan clicked his tongue. ‘I think we’ve covered that bit already, thanks. Can we please get on with it?’
SORRY. I SHOULD WHEEENG PINK I SHOULD HAVE SAID ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.
Slowly, a grin spread across Pan’s face. ‘You’re a recording, aren’t you?’
DO NOT MOVE OR IT WILL—
‘Who said anything about moving? Look, can’t we just fast-forward a bit and get on to the main feature?’
YOU ARE IN MY—
‘—Power, surrender or die. Yes, fine.’ He tapped his fingers noisily against the wall. ‘I know you’ve got your stuff to do and all that, but it’s really not a bundle of fun standing around in a dank tunnel, probably with nightmarish insects and giant rats and snakes and things loafing around the place, so if we could just—’
RATS?
‘Bound to be. There’s always rats in these claustrophobia sequences. So if we could—’
I HATE RATS.
Pan blinked twice. ‘Is that so?’
YES.
‘Funny,’ Pan said. ‘I thought you were just a recording.’
Pause.
DO NOT MOVE OR IT WILL BE THE WORSE—
‘Oh no you don’t. Come on, tell me what all this is in aid of, and then we can all go home.’
DO NOT MOVE OR—
‘Squeak.’
Silence. A long, eerie silence, broken only by a faint scuffling sound. This was in fact caused by Pan running his fingernails across the rough-hewn surface of the tunnel wall, but it did sound uncommonly like the scampering of rodent paws.
CUT THAT OUT, WILL YOU?
‘Cut what out? Squeak, squeak.’
THAT SCAMPERING NOISE. AND THE SQUEAKING.
‘What squeaking?’
ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT, YOU WIN. I AM AEACUS, GUARDIAN OF THE PORTALS OF DEATH AND WINDER-BACK OF THE TAPE OF OBLIVION. YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS HAVE TRESPASSED INTO THE KINGDOM OF DEATH, FROM WHOSE BOURN NO TRAVELLER RETURNS, AND—
‘Bourn?’
BOURN. SORT OF MILESTONE. FROM WHOSE BOURN NO TRAV—
‘From whose milestone no traveller returns?’
Pause. DON’T ASK ME WHAT IT MEANS, I DIDN’T WRITE IT. AND . . . OH NUTS, I’VE LOST THE PLACE NOW, I’LL HAVE TO GO BACK TO DO NOT MOVE OR IT WILL BE THE—
‘Gorblimey,’ said Pan, ‘that was a big ‘un. Great big brown hairy brute, tried to climb right up my trouser leg. Go on, shoo!’
EEEEEK!
Pan made some more scuffling noises and then called out, ‘It’s all right, I’ve got him. Here you are, have a nice piece of cheese. Sorry, you were saying?’
AND HERE YOU MUST STAY FOREVER UNTIL THE SEAS RUN DRY AND THE SKY CRACKS ARE YOU SURE YOU’VE GOT THAT THING UNDER CONTROL?
‘Absolutely,’ Pan replied. ‘No question - whoops, oh no you don’t, here boy, nice cheese.’
LOOK, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD—
In the darkness, Pan grinned and made a few extra-spine-shivering squeaking noises. ‘Gotcha,’ he said eventually. ‘Now then. Here I must stay forever, is that right? Oh well, if that’s the case I might as well let this rat go . . .’
It should be explained that the voice was not so much a voice as a reverberation at the back of the head, a mote on the mind’s eye, tinnitus of the inner ear, a septic memory. Hitherto, at any rate. Now it was beginning to sound - well, panicky.
HERE YOU MUST S-S-S-STAY FOREVER, it said quickly, UNLESS YOU HAPPEN TO GO THROUGH THE HIDDEN DOOR IMMEDIATELY TO YOUR RIGHT, TAKING YOUR SODDING RAT WITH YOU, IN WHICH CASE YOU’LL FIND YOURSELF IN THE ATTENDANT’S ROOM OF THE PUBLIC LAVATORY AT ROME AIRPORT. IT WAS NICE MEETING YOU, GOODBYE.
‘Hang on,’ said Pan, dragging his fingernails across a jagged piece of scree. ‘I may be many things but I’m not the sort to walk out on my friends. If they’ve got to stay here for ever, I guess I have to as well. No, ratty, stop that, come back! Who’s a naughty little tinker, then?’
ALL RIGHT; JUST A MINUTE, I’LL BE STRAIGHT BACK, DON’T MOVE.
‘Or it’ll be the worse for me?’
SOMETHING LIKE THAT.
‘Fortuitous,’ Osiris said.
‘Yeah, well.’ Pan shrugged his wide, thin shoulders - a poor choice of gesture, since Carl was standing on them, trying to reach up into the cistern. ‘Fortuitous is what being a god’s all about, innit? I mean,’ he added, remembering something he’d heard somewhere, ‘the way I look at it, we hold the Fates bound fast in iron chains, sort of thing, and with our hands turn Fortune’s wheel about. As it were.’
‘Do we?’
‘I think so. It sort of goes with the territory.’
Osiris shook his head. ‘Funny ideas you Mediterranean types have,’ he said. ‘Where I come from, godding is basically just making sure the crops grow and remembering to switch out the lights before going to bed. Has he found it yet?’
‘No,’ Carl replied. ‘You sure it’s here?’
‘Must be somewhere,’ Osiris replied. ‘Everything always is.’
‘Oh.’
‘You were there when those three old boilers gave us the directions,’ Osiris went on, ‘you know as well as I do. The Runes of Power are somewhere in the gentleman’s convenience immediately adjacent to the Kingdom of Death, which is where we’ve just been. I still think that was one hell of a coincidence, by the way.’
‘The Kingdom of Death has many doors.’
‘What say?’
‘The Kingdom of Death,’ repeated Pan firmly, ‘has many doors. Well known fact. And this is a gent’s bog immediately adjacent. And,’ he went on, ‘according to Herschel’s Law of Inverse Commodity, the bigger the public building, the fewer the number of khazis. The Kingdom of Death is probably the largest public building there is; ergo, a maximum of one bog, just enough to comply with the planning regulations.’
‘Cor,’ Osiris said. ‘Herschel’s Law and everything. Where did you learn all that stuff?’
‘I’ve been around, you know.’
‘So it would seem. All right, we’d better try the next one.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Sandra.
Pan winced and swore. ‘Mind where you’re putting your feet, you idiot,’ he said. ‘That was my ear.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Excuse me,’ Sandra reiterated, ‘but would these be them here?’
They turned and looked. Sandra was pointing to a small framed notice on the wall just above the electric hot-air hand dryer.
‘Oh.’
‘Only they do say,’ Sandra went on, ‘Directions for finding the Golden Teeth of El Dorado, and I gathered that was what we wanted.’
Osiris frowned. ‘They’re supposed to be Runes of Power,’ he muttered. ‘This whole carry-on is getting way above my head.’
‘They probably are Runes of Power by local standards,’ Pan interrupted. ‘Shall we just have a look and see what they say?’
Sandra, meanwhile, had produced a small notebook with flowers and bunnies and things on the cover and written the directions down. The two gods looked at each other and shrugged.
‘That’s what it says,’ Pan ventured after a while.
‘Well.’ Osiris rubbed his chin, making a noise like clapped-out sandpaper. ‘We might as well give it a go, then.’
Perversely, the traction engine started first time.
‘Hey,’ Thor enquired, dumbfounded, ‘how the devil did you do that?’
Lundqvist shrugged. ‘I just pulled this handle thing here,’ he said. ‘Look, let’s get the hell out of here, all right?’
‘Switch it off and do it again. You can’t have done it right.’
‘Oh, for crying out loud,’ Frey muttered. A Cistercian SWAT team had just discovered the stunned sentry. ‘Give it some welly and let’s go, quickly. Any more of this nonsense and I shan’t be responsible.’
The Vatican authorities plainly hadn’t had the faintest idea what one is supposed to do with a captured supernatural traction engine deposited out of the blue in one’s back courtyard. Anyone with an ounce of sense would have disconnected the main rotor arm from the forcing toggle and withdrawn the split pin from the auxiliary drive sprocket, thereby immobilising the entire subordinate transmission; but the helpless unworldly monks hadn’t even unclipped the Hodgson cable or overridden the HST. In all likelihood, Thor speculated, as the engine roared into life and lifted off vertically into the air, if a lightbulb goes they pray at it till it comes back on again. Idiots.
