The Age Of Zeus

by James Lovegrove

  "There's more," he said, and a number of websites popped up on other screens, all of them festooned liberally with his peacock censorship-icon. "Titan-advocating sites and blogs and homepages. These are the ones I've allowed to continue to exist, the ones where the approval expressed is only moderate. The more ardent ones I have, of course, wrecked beyond repair."

  "Still there are people rooting for you," said Zeus to Sam, "in spite of everything."

  The words sent a small chill through her. "What do you mean, in spite of everything?"

  "I mean, with no justification there are some poor misguided souls who still feel that the Titans are going to oust the Pantheon."

  "Aren't we?" said Sam. "Just because you've taken one of us captive... Ohhh." Light dawned. Hope fluttered. "That's it, isn't it? I'm a hostage. You think the Titans won't dare attack again, as long as you're keeping me here. Well, newsflash, Zeus. It won't deter them. They know I'd rather die than have them abandon the mission. Do what you like to me, but the war will go on."

  "You're misreading the situation completely, Sam," said Zeus. "You're not a hostage. To hold someone hostage implies that there are those for whom that person's continued survival matters."

  "Which in this instance there are."

  "She just isn't getting it, is she, Zeus?" said Ares, snickering. "I think you're going to have to give it to her in words of one syllable."

  "Better yet, in pictures. Argus?"

  "Yes, Zeus?"

  "Bleaney Island, please. Everything you've gathered over the last three days."

  "Your wish is my command."

  The screens stuttered, altered, refreshed. Now there were shots taken from various news helicopters, showing Bleaney from several different angles. Some focused on an expanse of charred, blackened, churned-up ground which Sam was just able to identify as the site of the battle with the Olympians. Others were more distant views of the island, all of them featuring a vast column of smoke that was roiling up from, if Sam's guess was correct, the entrance to the bunker.

  Argus turned up the volume on one screen where a microphone-toting reporter from CNN was doing a piece to camera on the landing jetty.

  "...and as you can see behind me," the reporter was saying, "there's still a huge amount of smoke coming from below ground, and we can only imagine the kind of inferno that's raging down there. This is the closest we're allowed to get to the subterranean complex, a former Second World War listening post which, reports suggest, the Titans were using as their base of operations. It hasn't been confirmed how the Olympians uncovered this fact, but what we do know is that yesterday they came here in force to put paid to the Titan insurgency once and for all. And it would appear, certainly on the available evidence, that they have succeeded..."

  Argus cross-faded to footage of another reporter, from the BBC this time, conducting street interviews with residents of the harbour town across the strait from Bleaney.

  "...dreadful noise it were," said an old lady. "Bangs, crashes, explosions. You could hear it across the water, clear as day. I said to my husband, 'That's on Bleaney,' I said, 'and I bet it's them Olympians. Something's going on there,' I said. You could see this big black stormcloud hanging over the place, and the lightning was coming down like you wouldn't believe, flash, flash, flash, like that, that quick. Never seen the like!"

  Cut to a bespectacled middle-class dad wrangling a restless toddler: "Yes, we've always been a bit suspicious about the goings-on over there. 'Research into cold fusion' we were told - keep still, Harry - but everyone was convinced there was more to it than that. For months people kept saying they'd heard, well, muffled gunfire, and no one believed them, but clearly they were right. Who knew? It's amazing what can go on right beneath your nose. Harry! No ice cream now. Later."

  Cut to a couple of acne-speckled youths in sportswear, hair gelled to a slick gloss. One did the talking while the other sipped from a can of the energy drink Ichor and grunted agreement every now and then: "Yeah, right, it's crazy, innit, like these people was right on our doorstep - so to speak - and nobody knew nuffink, kinda makes you proud, like they was goin' out all over the world and smackin' them Olympian w[bleep]ers up and comin' back to Bleaney of all places, like that lump of rock out there in the sea where there's nuffink but rabbits, but it's pretty cool to think they was right here 'cause nuffink happens round here, knowahmean?"

  Cut back to the BBC reporter herself. "So there you have it," she said, "a flavour of the local opinion about the astonishing events of the past twenty-four hours. To recap, the Olympians have attacked the island the Titans were calling home, just off the coast here, and from what we've seen and from what coastguard and police are saying, there are no survivors. No bodies have been found, but no Titans have been spotted alive either. We don't know where they are, where they've gone to, assuming any of them are left, but the likelihood is, given how thorough the Olympians are known to be, that the Titans are simply no more."

  And now another reporter, from ITN: "...must presume that the Titans' bold, perhaps foolhardy stance against the Olympians has come to its inevitably bitter end..."

  And now none other than Jennifer Konchalowsky from Fox News, flown over to England specifically to cover the breaking story: "...this is what you get for sowing whirlwinds. The Titans have reaped themselves a deadly harvest of Olympian wrath. They poked the hornets' nest, and boy have they got stung."

  And Prime Minister Bartlett, in Downing Street: "I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping that once and for all a line has been drawn under this scandalous and sordid chapter in modern history and that we can look forward to a future of continued entente cordiale with our friends in the Pantheon. The Titans may have been based in Britain but I can't emphasise enough that their antics were in no way representative of British policy and our Great British values..."

  And President Stavropoulos: "A buncha Limeys. Who woulda guessed?"

  And finally, Jennifer Konchalowsky again: "It's over. Finito. The Olympians have flushed the rats out of their hidey-hole and exterminated them. We can go back to living our lives again as normal. Time's up, Titans. You had your shot and you blew it. Goodnight."

  Argus faded the volume down to zero, and the chamber was filled with nothing but the hum and whine of the screens. Zeus and Ares stared expectantly at Sam. She kept her face rigid, her expression inscrutable. Inside, though, she was crumbling.

  "No bodies," she said finally. "No bodies equals no proof. They could still be alive. Did you actually kill them? Did you actually, personally see them all die? Well? Did you?"

  Ares looked at Zeus, Zeus at Ares.

  "We can account for one death for certain," Zeus said. "Hades used his death touch on one of you, and the man fell."

  "I saw that. I also saw Hades get shot."

  "He's better now. As for the other Titans, after Hermes whisked you from the battlefield I unleashed the full might of the lightning."

  "Scorched earth policy," said Ares.

  "I blasted every inch of ground. It was spectacular, if I say so myself. I can't remember when I last let rip like that. Not since Sjælland, that's for sure."

  "My ears are still ringing," said Ares.

  "Naturally, your teammates were routed. They panicked. Started lobbing smoke bombs."

  "White phosphorus grenades."

  "I kept up with the lightning strikes. It was pandemonium for a while."

  "Chaos!"

  "But at last it was done, and the smoke thinned, the air cleared, and there was nothing left of our enemies, not even smithereens. We searched all over the island, just to be sure. As the reporter said, we're nothing if not thorough. Then we entered that bunker of yours."

  "And had some fun," said Ares. "Nothing beats a bit of rampant post-victory vandalism."

  "All your equipment, your belongings."

  "Bashed. Smashed. Trashed."

  "A rather grand-looking office, ruined."

  "Your mission control, all that technology, shattered beyond
recognition."

  "And afterwards we set a fire. A fire that burned through the whole place, reducing it to cinders, turning your dream to ashes, and then we informed the media of what we had done, and you've just watched the fallout." Zeus studied Sam. "Do you get it now? That Konchalowsky woman, empty-headed language mangler that she is, summed it up pretty well. It's over. Finito. Goodnight, Titans. You're the last one left, Sam, the only survivor. We've won."

  Sam did all she could to keep her emotions in check, but the very effort of doing so set her body trembling.

  "She's sad," said Argus's everywhere-at-once voice.

  "Don't be sad," said Ares. "You were valiant to the end, all of you, despite the fact that there was never any doubt that you were going to lose. It was a glorious defeat. Courage like that should be celebrated."

  Sam continued to say nothing. All she could think was: no bodies equals no proof. That was the one last flimsy scrap of hope she had to hold on to. Ramsay, Barrington, Hamel, Sparks, all dead. Landesman too. But no bodies equals no proof. Captain Fuller's boat - it was just conceivable that the Titans had got to the jetty and joined Lillicrap and the techs aboard and got away. She had to believe that.

  No bodies equals no proof.

  She repeated it in her head like a mantra.

  No bodies equals no proof.

  Because otherwise, what else was there for her? What else was left?

  64. THE MUNDANE

  LIVES OF GODS

  Days came and went on that chilly mountain peak, and Sam drifted along, numb, observing the mundane lives of gods.

  The Olympians endured her presence among them with varying degrees of acceptance. Zeus was by far the friendliest, Hera by far the least friendly, and the others ranged along a scale between these two extremes but tending more towards the Hera end. Aphrodite and Dionysus did a marvellous job of pretending they were delighted to have Sam there but she could almost hear their smiles vanish the moment they turned their backs on her, and her own loathing of Aphrodite made smiling back out of the question. Hephaestus, meanwhile, seemed to grumble about almost everything, so it was hardly out of character that he grumbled about her ("Mortals have their place, and this isn't it."). He mostly kept to himself in his own temple, however, from where could be heard, now and then, the clank and groan of metal being worked.

  With Apollo Sam had very little interaction, and that was probably just as well, since the sight of him, proximity to him, made her feel physically unwell. He spent all his day honing his warrior skills at the amphitheatre, or else exercising, pumping weights, running, swimming, often in the company of Ares. He paid Sam no heed - she was beneath his dignity. If he considered her in some way responsible for the death of his twin sister, there was no sign of it, although she couldn't help noticing that, a few days after she arrived on Olympus, one of the mannequins he used for archery practice had received a splash of orange paint on its head, a crude approximation of auburn hair. Whenever she passed, this mannequin was always pin-cushioned with arrows.

  Poseidon was an infrequent visitor to Olympus. He regarded himself as an outsider, the one hard done by, the perpetual black sheep, although when he came he expected to be welcomed with open arms and made a fuss of. Otherwise, he got huffy and muttered about lack of kinship and respect. He didn't have much to say to or do with Sam.

  Would that Hades had been the same. He liked to hang around her and engage in conversation about the most trivial, inane things, all the while eyeing her up and licking his dry lips. With his cadaverous looks and those black leather gloves he reminded Sam of the kind of man who loitered outside school gates or got caught with unforgivable jpegs on his home computer hard drive, and she made every effort to avoid him if she could, but it wasn't easy. Wherever she went around the stronghold, Hades would sooner or later appear, smiling his far too toothsome smile. "Why, hello, Miss Akehurst. Fancy bumping into you." Or: "So we meet again. People will talk." It was hard to tell what he wanted from her, beyond a few minutes of stilted chitchat, but Sam couldn't escape the impression that he was sizing her up for something. What, she dreaded to think and wasn't keen to find out.

  Ares she quite liked - didn't despise so wholeheartedly, at any rate - and he in turn adopted a sort of prison officer attitude towards her. Formal, not at all kindly, but you knew where you stood with him. As long as you didn't give him any nonsense, he wouldn't give you any grief.

  Athena was an altogether different matter. The least well-known of the Olympians, the one who shunned the limelight as a rule, she was stern and no-nonsense and quite frank in her resentment of Sam. Just as Sam could seldom steer clear of Hades when she was out and about, she couldn't evade the contempt-filled looks that Athena sent her way, most often during meals, which were taken in the naos - the main central courtyard - of the communal Pantheonic temple. Every time Sam so much as glanced her way across the table, there was Athena, high-browed and haughty, glaring. Usually Athena would then lean over to Hera and whisper something, still with her eyes on Sam, and Hera would nod grimly. As Sam understood it, these two Olympians were not supposed to like one another. In the myths, being the offspring of Zeus and his first wife Metis had earned Athena the undying enmity of her stepmother. But, assuming the myths had any relevance here, the two of them looked to have overcome their differences. Possibly their shared dislike of Sam was helping bring them closer together.

  Demeter was also in the staunchly anti-Sam camp. So was Hermes, which didn't bother Sam in the least, since she was staunchly anti-Hermes. He was Darren Pugh, after all. Looked the same. Spoke the same. Walked the same. He might be dressed up as Hermes, and possess the requisite powers, but there wasn't a shred of doubt in her mind that this was the ex-con who had threatened her back on that first day at Bleaney and had then taken Landesman's cheque, agreeing to go away and not tell a soul about the invitation or the island.

  Only, he hadn't stuck to his promise, had he? It didn't take a genius to work out how things had gone. Maybe the money had run out, trickling through Pugh's slippery fingers faster than he could hold on to it, or maybe not but he had nonetheless spotted an opportunity to make some more, or just gain himself a leg-up in the world.

  She confronted him about it one afternoon, when she was heavily premenstrual and in a combative mood. Hermes was alone on the steps of his temple, burnishing his helmet with a cloth. Sam strode up and said, "Do you really not remember me?"

  Hermes looked blank. "Until I hauled you off that island, I'd never seen you before in my life."

  "January. In the bunker. I pegged you as a jailbird from the off. You got shirty and called me 'ginger tits,' then went off in a strop with a lot of Regis Landesman's money. Which you then, I bet, pissed away on booze, women and horses, am I right?"

  The blank look remained, although the phrase "ginger tits" seemed to spark something, albeit momentarily. In his eyes had there been just that tiniest flash of recollection?

  "Woman, I am Hermes the Thrice-Great, He Who Presides Over Contests," he said. "That's who I am and who I have always been."

  "And after the money was gone," Sara continued, "what? You saw something about the Titans on the telly and your cunning little mind put two and two together. You remembered the bunker, you remembered what Landesman was promising us, and next thing you're in touch with the Olympians, saying you know where we can be found. But you wanted something in return for that information. You probably asked for money but they made you a better offer. Power. They needed a new Hermes, so they offered you the job. That's what happened, isn't it?"

  "I've heard that you're not quite right in the head..."

  "That's what happened," Sam insisted. "You traded our whereabouts for speed, teleportation and that tin helmet there. You sold us out."

  Hermes smiled and shrugged. "Zeus has said you're not to be harmed, but I'm sorely tempted to take you up to a very high crag and -"

  "Have they done this before?" Sam cut in, musing aloud. "Replaced an Olympian who's died wi
th a substitute? It's conceivable. Maybe one of you was killed in action but the death was covered up and along comes a new face shortly afterwards, same outfit, same powers, but no one's looked further than that and spotted that it's an impostor. The brand continues, original packaging, new content. That really would make each of you immortal, after a fashion."

  "I'm going to go now," said Hermes.

  "And your memories get wiped, too. How does Zeus do that? I'm assuming it's Zeus behind all this. He gives the powers, takes away your past, somehow makes you convinced you're genuinely a Greek god..."

  "Really am going."

  "...and you're left none the wiser. Can it be done? More to the point, where is it done?"

  "Goodbye."

  Hermes vanished.

  "Yes, off you go," Sam said to the empty space where he had just been sitting. "Run off and polish your helmet somewhere else. I know who you are and what you did, Pugh. You're on my shit list too, you know."

  Empty as this threat was, she felt better for saying it.

  Later, Zeus drew her aside for a quiet word. "Hermes tells me you were haranguing him today with this - I can only call it conspiracy nonsense. That's him in addition to me, Ares, Aphrodite, Dionysus... Anyone else? Just please desist, Sam. None of us is interested. Your convictions aren't convincing. We don't believe your disbelief. It's irksome and tiresome, and frankly your position here is tenuous as it is without you imperilling it further. Try and fit in and behave. That's all I ask."

  "My position?" Sam retorted. "And just what position is that, Zeus? Because, me, I have no idea. Why am I even on Olympus? I hate it here. Everyone hates me. Why are you keeping me around? Am I a pet? Spoils of war? What? What the fuck do you want from me?"