Pantheon 00 - Age of Godpunk

by James Lovegrove

  Susanoo-no-Mikoto, said Anansi, indicating a young Japanese man with an imperious, brooding air. And over there, that’s Crow. A thickset Australian Aborigine with impossibly black eyes, as though he had no irises, only great dark pupils.

  Between us we put names to several other faces. A Chinese man with a certain simian cast to his appearance was Sun Wukong, the Monkey King. A swarthy little chap with quick green eyes had to be Gwydion from Wales. A young Greek with long ringleted hair who kept relentlessly checking his texts on his mobile phone was clearly Hermes, while next to him squatted a middle-aged Latino whose expression was as sinisterly sly as anyone’s I’ve seen.

  Eshu, from the Santería tradition, Anansi confirmed. And as for that Scandinavian blonde...

  Well, who could fail to identify Loki? The famous Norse gender-switcher had come in the guise of a woman. A beautiful one at that. Slender, angular and icily lovely.

  He’s pulled this stunt before, Anansi pointed out. And he’ll use it to his advantage, you mark my words. Someone or other will think with their penis, not their brains, and get caught out by him. It’s as inevitable as sunrise. Just make sure it’s not us, heh?

  I took the advice on board: think with brains, not penis. Ironic, coming from him.

  Then a figure went bounding up onto the small podium. He was a Native American with weathered ochre skin and iron-grey plaits. He wore jeans and a denim waistcoat, and his bootlace tie was secured by a silver clasp in the shape of a coyote’s head.

  Coyote – who else could it be? – raised a hand in order to command silence, although truth be told, the room wasn’t that noisy to begin with. We fellow avatars turned towards him, waiting for him to address us.

  Yawn, yawn, said Anansi.

  I told him to pipe down.

  “Greetings, all,” said the Native American. “My name is William Gad. I have another name, which I’m sure you know. For the time being, we all do. But you can call me Bill. I’d like to welcome you to my homeland. These are the desert plains from which I sprang. Here are the canyons and arroyos I haunt, the salt flats and mesas where story-craft and ritual continues to keep me vibrant and alive. It’s a harsh, unforgiving landscape, but it teems with secret life and its beauties are plain for all to see.”

  He smiled whitely – good, sturdy American dentistry.

  “So, we reunite again,” he said. “The wheel of seasons has turned, the years have flown by, a new generation has been born and grown to adulthood, and once more we are ready to compete. I see there are...”

  He performed a quick head count.

  “...forty-five of us. Not as many as last time. In fact, maybe the lowest turnout we’ve ever had. Sad to say, our numbers are in decline. Some of us cannot even muster the power to manifest on Earth now. Those guys’ stories are so poorly preserved, their reputations so sidelined and diminished, they may as well no longer exist. We mourn their absence. But...”

  He brightened.

  “But we should celebrate our presence, too. Our continued puissance, if you’ll forgive the fancy French word. We’re still here, still hanging on, still known and noted, even in a world as godless as this. That’s got to be worth a round of applause. Can I hear one?”

  Most of us did clap. I was one of the few that didn’t. Not my style.

  “All right,” said Bill Gad. “Down to business. At this stage in the proceedings, it’s customary to restate the rules of the contest, such as they are. So here goes. As of dawn tomorrow, each of us is entitled to bring mayhem, chaos and disarray into the lives of any or all of the others. The means can be fair or foul, pleasant or offensive, so long as the victim is left significantly and materially disadvantaged in some way. Anything that achieves this result is allowable. And those are the rules.”

  We thought he’d finished, but it seemed he had more to add.

  “Mischief. You know as well as I do that mischief is a broad term, a whole lot broader than most folk nowadays think. It isn’t just naughtiness, it’s the active upsetting of the order of things. Derangement, rearrangement. That’s what we do. That’s what we’ve always done, since creation. We live to undermine orthodoxy, mock the establishment, say and do what most wish to, but are too cowed and downtrodden to try. We’re the anarchy that lies in the heart of every man, woman and child, the urge to tear down what others build, the seething rebellion that lurks beneath the surface of every civilisation.

  “Our exploits tell people that it’s okay to bend the law, okay to be different, okay not to toe the line. Sometimes you’ve just got to stick a finger up, or two fingers, or whatever your culture’s preferred gesture demands. It frees you. It reminds you that individuals make a society, not the other way round. We’re the gods of that. We’re the worm in the apple barrel of every pantheon. We’re the ones who make deities fallible and human. The rest may look down on us, but they need us. They couldn’t do without us screwing up and dicking around. We’re the balloon prickers, the ego deflaters, the court jesters, the circus clowns. That’s us. Remember that.

  “So, to sum up. Have a ball. Let your hair down. Go wild. Do your thing. We keep the contest going until the last deceit has been played. That is all. Any questions?”

  A hand went up. It belonged to a Peruvian, short and flat-nosed, with a deadpan stare. He wore a zigzag-striped poncho and was carrying a brightly coloured cloth bag. Huehuecoyotl of the Aztecs.

  “Is it true that two of us have already been taken out of the running?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’ve heard that,” Gad confirmed. “I guess you could call it a violation of the rules, but what the hell. Those fellas should have been more cautious. Probably will be, next time. Any other questions?”

  None.

  “Then we’re done. Best of luck, all of you. May the tricksiest trickster win.”

  LATER, I WAS nursing a soda water with a lime twist at the hotel bar when Gad sidled up to me. He took the stool next to mine and ordered a double shot of Jim Beam, straight, no ice.

  “Bill,” he said.

  “I know. Dion.”

  He clinked his glass against mine. “Good to meet you. Again. For the first time.”

  We both smiled at his little witticism, him more than me. Around us, attendees of the joke shop trade fair milled and chatted. For people whose livelihoods centred around laughter, they were a morose bunch.

  Gad noted this. “Reckon running a joke shop must be a serious business.”

  “In the current economic climate, more than ever. Suicidally serious.”

  “Ha! Yeah. So tell me. Veles. That was you, right? That’s the rumour doing the rounds.”

  Say nothing, Anansi advised.

  Saying nothing is anathema to lawyers, so I said, “I can’t comment,” which amounts to the same thing.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to judge you for it,” Gad said. “And I’m certainly not going to demand you withdraw. If nothing else, it would be damn hypocritical of me.”

  I put two and two together. “Juha. That was you?”

  “I can’t comment,” he replied, his mouth creasing slightly at the corners. “What I will tell you is, I know you, spider man. I know you’re a down-and-dirty, stop-at-nothing kind of guy. We’ve done this dance so many times before, I’ve lost count, and the two of us, we’re among the best. The elite. I admire you and have respect for you. And I’m going to be watching out for you, or rather watching my back for as long as you’re around. That’s the highest compliment I can pay anyone in these circumstances.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I think.”

  “I have a feeling this is going to be one of those occasions where it comes down to you versus me at the end. And I just want you to know: it’s going to be me.”

  He gave a wolfish grin.

  “We clear on that?”

  “Crystal.”

  “Good.” Gad drained his whisky and melted into the crowd.

  Arrogant son of a bitch.

  Quite literally, assuming female coyo
tes are called bitches.

  I assured Anansi that Bill Gad didn’t bother me.

  But he’s beaten me before.

  “And you’ve beaten him too,” I said to my reflection in the mirror behind the bar. “And you can do it again.”

  “Excuse me?” said the bartender.

  “Nothing. Just talking to myself.”

  “Can I freshen that drink for you?”

  “No thanks. Long day ahead. Time I turned in.”

  “Sure, buddy. Sleep well.”

  I didn’t. But I slept enough.

  Dawn broke, and somebody screamed.

  THE COMMOTION CAME from the room three doors along from mine. A man was letting out hoarse yelps of horror and disgust. Several of us avatars gathered in the corridor outside.

  “Whose room is this?” someone asked.

  “That Frenchie’s,” said a redheaded Irishman so tiny he was almost a midget. “What’s the feller in him called? Ronald, something like that.”

  “Reynard,” I said.

  “That’s him, so it is. But what’s he setting up all that racket about? Yelling like he’s got a snake up his arse.” He pronounced it erse.

  “Maybe he has. Maybe someone put a poisonous snake in his bed, a rattler or some such.”

  “Jaysus, do you think so?” exclaimed the Irishman. Looking at him, the only word that sprang to mind was leprechaun. “Well then, who’s going to go in? Not me, that’s for sure. I’m from a land of no snakes and I’m happy with it that way.”

  “I will,” said an Egyptian with fine, almost feminine features. Anansi told me he was the host body of none other than Set, as if I couldn’t guess. “Snakes don’t bother me – if it is a snake.”

  “Could be a trick, of course,” I said.

  The Egyptian’s hand, raised to knock on the door, hesitated. “And you could be bluffing me by saying that,” he decided.

  “And you,” the Irishman said to him, “could be who’s behind this, and it’s all an elaborate ruse to sucker one of us in.”

  Oh, this is a hall of mirrors, said Anansi with approval. I’d forgotten how tangled these situations could become, and how quickly. Kidders kidding kidders, ad infinitum.

  “Just do it,” I said to the Egyptian. The Frenchman’s screaming had subsided to a loud, fretful gasping, but still the noise was getting on my nerves. So unseemly.

  “All right, I will,” the Egyptian replied. He knocked. “You in there. What’s going on? You’ve woken up half the hotel. What’s the matter?”

  The door was opened, not by the Frenchman, but by the Scandinavian woman, Loki’s chosen avatar. She was dressed only in a lace-trimmed black silk bra and matching panties. I have to say the sight of her left us all agog, some of us trying hard not to stare, others frankly staring.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said. Glacier-blue eyes sparkled. She knew full well the effect her body, in that underwear, was having on us. “Apologies for disturbing you. Not my fault, however.”

  I managed to tear my gaze from her and peer into the room. The Frenchman was sitting cross-legged, stark naked, in an armchair in the corner of the room. His lean, foxlike face was distraught. He was biting one knuckle and gibbering.

  “Excuse me?” I said. “Reynard? I know that’s not your given name, but we haven’t been formally introduced. Are you all right? What’s the matter?”

  “Elle...” the Frenchman stammered. “Elle va pisser... et elle...”

  “I don’t speak French. In English?”

  “Her.” He pointed a trembling finger at the Scandinavian. “She use the toilet.”

  “So?”

  “I see her. Through open door. She – she use it standing up.”

  I looked back at her.

  “What?” she said, innocently.

  “You’re...”

  As one, our gazes migrated down to her crotch. Now that we knew what we were looking for, it wasn’t hard to make out a telltale bulge in the front of her panties.

  “I’m Solveig, by the way,” she said. “Though that wasn’t the name I was christened with.”

  She held out a hand to me that was just a little larger and bonier than a woman’s hand ought to be.

  I couldn’t bring myself to shake it.

  Well, this is a new twist on an old theme, said Anansi.

  “A monster!” the Frenchman blurted out. “A crime against humanity!”

  “Oh, now you’re picky,” Solveig said to him. “You weren’t so bothered last night. You couldn’t have been more eager.”

  “Last night I did not know,” the Frenchman protested. “I was drunk.”

  “That’s what they all say. If you ask me, you knew damn well.”

  “But I’m French. A French man.” He let out a heartfelt groan of injured Gallic male pride.

  “I know, my love. That makes it even more delicious.” Solveig began gathering up her clothes from the floor. She slipped her feet into a pair of high-heeled slingbacks and walked out with her outerwear bunched to her chest. “One up to Loki, I’d say. Wouldn’t you? And Reynard is out of the contest.”

  “Noooo!” the Frenchman cried, but there was no getting round it. His humiliation had been public and total.

  Solveig sashayed down the corridor to her own room. We watched her go, and the Irishman spoke for all of us when he said, “Now that is one fine figure of a lady. If I didn’t know what I know now...”

  A FURTHER ELIMINATION occurred during breakfast. Someone left their table to fetch more pancakes from the restaurant’s self-service counter. When they returned, they discovered that someone else had put urine in their coffee.

  The culprit was a Filipino who was riding tandem with his people’s trickster, Tikbalang. The victim was an Inuit, avatar of Amaguq, the wolfish god of deception. The Inuit took his defeat stoically, clapping the Filipino on the shoulder and ruffling his horselike mane of hair.

  “You had it on you all along?” he asked.

  The Filipino produced an empty hospital sample jar. “Just waiting for my chance.”

  “You know, American coffee is so awful, you actually made it taste better.”

  The Filipino laughed.

  The Inuit clapped him on the shoulder again. “Kind of makes me feel bad about the piece of rotten walrus liver I slipped into your air con unit from the outside.”

  “Huh? When?”

  “Just this morning. Your room should be stinking up real bad by now.”

  The Filipino looked dubious.

  “Don’t believe me? Go check.”

  The Filipino left the restaurant and returned five minutes later looking green-gilled and rueful.

  “Bastard. That was awful. The smell...!”

  Bill Gad stood up and congratulated them. “Superb work, both of you. A textbook two-way strike. But now, I’m afraid, you both need to pack your bags and go. You are done here.”

  The trade fair people in the restaurant were pretty bemused by all this. They grasped the gist of what was going on, but not the purpose. To them we seemed to be prank specialists, a kind of elite force of jokers. I overheard one remarking to another that he thought we must be a form of entertainment laid on by the convention organisers.

  “Living theatre,” he said. “That’s what this is. These guys are showing us how it should be done.”

  “Yeah,” said his companion. “I see that. We peddle the stuff, but these guys are, like, improv geniuses. Experts. They’re the marines, and we’re just grunts. Never seen anything like it at the Joke Shop Jamboree before, but, I tell you, whatever they’re being paid, they’re worth every cent.”

  “Agreed. We should watch and learn, my friend. Watch and learn.”

  TAME, SO FAR, Anansi commented. But it’s only just getting under way.

  “Should we go for Coyote?” I wondered. I was back in my room, so speaking aloud was an option. “Take him out early?”

  Dear me, no. Start low, work our way up. Weed out the weaklings first. Show them who’s bo
ss. That’s how it’s done.

  “Who do you have in mind?”

  That obese German. The one with Till Eulenspiegel in him. Him or the Tibetan, Uncle Tompa. Or maybe your fellow countryman, Puck.

  “Why not all three in one fell swoop?”

  I admire your ambition, Dion. Tell me more.

  TILL EULENSPIEGEL, UNCLE Tompa and Puck. Quite a trio. Till Eulenspiegel, whose surname means ‘owl mirror’ in High German and ‘arse wipe’ in Low German, would do anything to fill his belly, once even taking the job of watchman and pretending the town was under attack so he could steal the food off the table of the count and his knights as they rode to defend the walls. Uncle Tompa was a real rascal, who among other things hoodwinked a naïve young virgin into having sex with him by asking her to go to the toilet for him and filling her with his semen, convincing her that it was urine. Puck, as any aficionado of Shakespearean comedy knows, waylaid travellers, whether for his own amusement or at his master King Oberon’s behest, and was also fond of stealing food at parties and blowing out candles with his farts, not to mention sexually teasing stallions.

  Did they have anything in common?

  Answer: not much.

  But they were all of them creatures of carnal appetite, and if I’ve learned anything from my years spent wearing an itchy horsehair wig and being obliged to come into regular contact with drunkards, thieves and rapists, it’s that such creatures are easily led. And indeed misled.

  Anansi himself, after all, wasn’t immune to the wiles of others. In one Anansesem he cheated a farm-owning chameleon out of his smallholding, but the chameleon turned the tables by stitching together a cloak from vines and decorating it with buzzing flies and offering it to Anansi, at a price. The price was enough food to fill a hole in the floor of his barn. Anansi, overcome with desire for the cloak, sent two of his children to the chameleon’s house with sacks of grain. What he didn’t know was how deep the chameleon had dug the hole. Day after day the children trekked to the barn and poured grain into the hole, and it never filled up. Eventually the chameleon got back in grain the value of the land which Anansi had stolen from him, and Anansi didn’t even have the cloak to show for it. By the time he got to wear it, months after agreeing to buy it, the vines had withered to bare twigs and the flies were all dead.