Pantheon 00 - Age of Godpunk

by James Lovegrove

  Without pausing, I yanked the door shut, then wedged a mop handle up inside the door handle, effectively locking Xhu in. I waited for Xhu to start hammering on the door and shouting, begging to be let out. But nothing happened.

  Was he all right? He had hit the shelves pretty hard. Perhaps he’d been knocked unconscious.

  So what if he has? said Anansi. He can stay in there ’til he comes round, nice and safe. You were going to leave him there anyway, so it doesn’t make much difference, except this way will be a whole lot quieter for everybody else.

  Which was true. But whereas shutting Xhu in the closet was a minor misdemeanour, shoving him so hard into the shelves that he was knocked cold was battery, maybe even GBH. A solid infringement of the law. A felony.

  Don’t worry about it.

  But Dion Yeboah was an upholder of the law, not a breaker of it.

  Oh, yes? And framing Veles with that cigarette lighter, lying to a law enforcement officer? What was that? And abandoning those three avatars in the desert? Reckless endangerment, at least. And what about attending the poker game this evening? That at least makes you a party to assault, if not an accessory. Face it, Dion, you crossed the line a while back. You’ve passed the point of no return. Better get used to it.

  “No,” I said aloud, covering my face.

  Yes. But it’s not a bad thing. How much freer do you feel now than you used to? How much more daring and untouchable? Admit it, you were a slave to conventionality. You were a big old stuffed shirt. Now look at you. You’ve broken out of all that. And you love it. I know you do. I can tell. You’ve never felt so powerful, so alive.

  With his words came a giddy rush of exhilaration. He was right. He was so right. The panic I’d just experienced was the last dying whimper of my old self, the man I had once been and no longer was. I had cast that Dion Yeboah off as a spider sheds its carapace as it grows. I was bigger and bolder and braver than he ever was, and I would never go back to being him, even after Anansi was gone.

  See? Anansi said. I may not live on in an avatar’s heart forever, but I always leave my mark.

  I LEFT XHU, a.k.a. Sun Wukong, in that closet. Whatever state he was in – even if he was lying there in a pool of his own blood – it was his problem, not mine. I had other fish to fry.

  The storm raged on. I stalked the benighted corridors of the Friendly Inn, steering by infrared like some nocturnal predator, attuned to wavelengths that were invisible to its prey. Ordinary people would be cowering in their rooms, waiting for the power to come back on and normality to return. Not me. And I didn’t think I’d be alone, either. My fellow avatars would be roaming the place too, superior beings engaged in an internecine war of wits.

  Sure enough, I soon encountered the Greek man, Apostolis, Hermes’s avatar. He didn’t spot me. He was making his way through the hotel using his phone’s screen as a torch. I followed him at a safe distance, intrigued and on the lookout for any opportunity to pull the rug out from under him. He walked with some stiffness, still in pain from the blows inflicted on him during the poker game. Soon he halted outside a room, which presumably was not his own because he knelt at the door and started working on the lock.

  Not for him the crudeness of forcing the latch. Producing a set of lockpicks, he selected two, which he inserted into the keyhole and manipulated gently and with obvious skill until the door came open. He kept his phone gripped sideways between his teeth all the while, training its glow on the lock.

  Hermes is a thief, Anansi pointed out. The Greek gods would send him to fetch whatever it was they wanted stolen or recovered – the maiden Io from the giant Argos, Zeus’s own sinews from the monster Typhoeus, Helen of Troy from Paris’s arms. Stands to reason that his avatar is a thief too.

  Into the room Apostolis went, leaving the door slightly ajar. I moved to a position whereby I could peer in by aiming the camera round the jamb. The bed was empty and appeared not to have been slept in, although there were signs of occupancy. A cloth bag sat on the dressing table, and there was what appeared to be a blanket of some kind slung over the back of a chair. But it wasn’t a blanket, I realised. I recognised the zigzag pattern on it. It was a poncho.

  The room, then, belonged to the man from Peru, Huehuecoyotl’s representative on earth. Not content with beating the Peruvian at punishment poker, he was now taking advantage of the fact that the man was presently at a hospital down the road in Barstow receiving treatment for his injuries. He was raiding his room in his absence.

  Very opportunistic. Very sneaky. Taking time out from the contest to line his own pockets. Anansi sounded anything but disapproving.

  First Apostolis tried the cloth bag, rifling through it on the hunt for valuables. He found none. Next he tried all the drawers, and finally, as I’d suspected he might, the wardrobe. Every room in the hotel had a small safe hidden there, the old-fashioned sort with a rotary dial rather than a digital code lock.

  He hunkered down and, still with phone between teeth, set to work fiddling with the dial. Sensitive fingers felt for the combination, the moments when tumblers clicked into place and the dial briefly, infinitesimally loosened.

  Meanwhile I configured my iPhone to record the image from the camera. This was it. I had Apostolis bang to rights. Footage of him opening the Peruvian’s safe would, when made public, surely guarantee his exit from the contest. The simple threat of uploading it onto the web ought to suffice. Hermes was about to join the ranks of the eliminated.

  Apostolis opened the safe door and delved in. What would it be? A passport? Credit cards? Cash?

  He let out a startled, involuntary yelp and snatched his hand back. There was something on it – several somethings – a host of small crawling black shapes. He yelped again and started frantically shaking his hand in the air, trying to dislodge whatever these things were. The shapes clung on.

  Spiders?

  Close, said Anansi. Scorpions.

  Apostolis began beating at the afflicted hand with his other hand. In his frenzy he dropped his phone and the light went out. He slapped desperately at the scorpions, but they hung on tight with their pincers while their tails stabbed again and again into his flesh. The stinging must have been agony. Apostolis’s face was contorted in disgust and distress.

  In the end he resorted to thumping the hand on the floor, crushing the little arachnids to a pulp. It took the best part of a minute before they were all dead, and then Apostolis collapsed against the wardrobe door, mewling and sobbing. He held up his hand as though it was no longer a part of him. He couldn’t see, as I could, that it was already swollen and looking horribly distended. He could surely feel it, though.

  Huehuecoyotl had had the last laugh. He must have suspected Hermes might go for his safe and had booby-trapped it. Exquisite revenge on the god who’d knocked him out of the contest.

  THERE WAS NOTHING I could do for Apostolis. Correction: there was nothing I was prepared to do. He had his phone, assuming he could find where he’d dropped it. He could call for an ambulance.

  It was every man for himself now. And every god.

  Through the drumming of the rain and the peals of thunder I heard a faint voice crying, “Help. Help me.” It was coming from outdoors – from the swimming pool area, if I didn’t miss my guess.

  You’re not going to fall for that, are you? sneered Anansi.

  Of course I wasn’t. Someone yelling for help? It couldn’t have been a more obvious ploy.

  But I felt compelled to investigate nevertheless, to see for myself what was going on.

  I went to the main conference hall, where the Joke Shop Jamboree stands stood, the ones still remaining after this afternoon’s partial exodus. The windows overlooked the pool. I peeked out.

  The pool was no longer empty. The rain was filling it, and there were already several inches of water in its deepest part. And, standing on tiptoes, I could just make out a body lying in the water, face to the sky. An arm reached up, flailing, imploring.

  “So
meone. Please. Help.”

  The accent was Middle Eastern, the voice the Egyptian’s. Set’s avatar was in the pool.

  “I am fallen in. I am hurt. My back. I cannot move.”

  I felt a twinge of concern.

  Really? said Anansi. We’re still that trusting? Even now?

  “I can’t help it,” I murmured. “He’s a fellow human being.”

  Have I taught you nothing?

  I bowed to his superior judgement, albeit with some reluctance.

  Someone else was not as circumspect as I. A figure emerged from the shadowy shelter of the loggia in the corner of the pool area. It was the Australian Aborigine, the man housing the spirit of Crow. He moved tentatively towards the rim of the pool, shoulders hunched against the onslaught of the rain.

  “Hey, mate!” he called out to Set. “What’s up?”

  “Someone heard. Oh, thank heaven!”

  “You all right?”

  “No. No, it’s not good. I have accident. Slip. Fall in. Now my back, it is bad. I try to move, but no good. The water, it keeps rising higher. If I do not get out, I drown. You must help.”

  Crow looked distinctly unconvinced. “Nah, mate. Not sure I can do that for you.”

  “Please. You must. Otherwise I die.”

  “Yeah, I see that, but you’ve got to look at it from my point of view. What if you’re lying?”

  “I am not lying. This is truth.”

  “I go down there, into that water, and there’s something nasty waiting for me. Like, I dunno, mantraps, for instance. Right next to you, under the surface where I can’t see ’em. One wrong step and snap! I’m bitten like a croc’s got my ankle.”

  Same as when Crow hid those echidna quills in a kangaroo rat’s nest, said Anansi, and got Swamp Hawk to fly down and land on them, and the quills got stuck in Swamp Hawk’s feet.

  “No! I swear,” said Set. “I am in trouble. I need rescue.”

  Crow was weighing it up. His posture said that he wanted to leave Set where he was, but his conscience wouldn’t allow it. If this wasn’t a trick, then his inaction could lead to a man’s death.

  I watched intently, wondering what I would do if I’d let myself become embroiled in the dilemma as Crow had, and feeling rather smug that I hadn’t.

  Finally the Aborigine gave a huge sigh.

  “Fair go,” he said. “I’ll get you out. But I’m not climbing into that pool, I can tell you that for free. The diving board. You’re right under it. I’ll shin along and reach down and grab hold. You stretch up, I reckon our hands can just about meet. Okay?”

  “Yes. Okay. Thank you,” Set said weakly. “But please, hurry. The water, it is almost up to my mouth.”

  Crow went round to the diving board and placed first one knee on it then the other. It seemed firm. He shuffled along until he was fully out over the pool. Then he lay himself flat and extended one arm down.

  The pool was perhaps seven feet deep at its deepest point. Set raised his hand. There was still a gap of five or six inches between his fingertips and Crow’s.

  “Try harder,” Crow said.

  “Come closer,” Set replied.

  Crow may or may not have been aware that manhandling the body of someone with a back injury was not advisable. If Set was suffering from a broken spine, it might leave him permanently paraplegic. As far as Crow was concerned, there was only one way to get the Egyptian to safety – only one way he was willing to do it – and that was hauling him out. Set didn’t seem bothered about the potential consequences, so why should he be?

  He wriggled further along the board so that he could lean over the tip of it. He lowered his hand again, his head and shoulders hanging down. Set clutched for the hand. Their fingers met and locked.

  “There we go,” said Crow. “Up you come now. She’ll be right.”

  But just as he uttered this optimistic phrase and took the strain, ready to heave, Set gave an almighty tug. Something creaked screechingly, and all at once the diving board toppled into the pool, taking Crow with it. His cry of shock was cut short by a heavy splash and a meaty thud.

  Set, who had rolled sideways to avoid being landed on, stood up. He had, of course, been shamming.

  “I win, you lose,” he crowed over Crow, dancing a little jig in the water. “I loosen bolts on the diving board. Ha ha! Next time you better check first, eh?”

  Crow’s only response was a pain-wracked groan. I couldn’t be certain, but judging by the way he had fallen and the angle at which one arm lay twisted beneath him, his shoulder had been broken, and perhaps his collarbone too. I felt sorry for him, but at the same time – one less opponent to think about.

  Set at least had the decency to move him out of the rising tide of rainwater. He dragged him by the ankles to the shallow end of the pool, then propped him up in a sitting position against the side wall. Crow’s head lolled. I think he had passed out, the pain too much for him.

  As Set clambered up the nearest stepladder to get out of the pool, I spotted movement on top of the hotel wing opposite. Someone was up there, a man, staggering across the flat concrete roof in a very erratic fashion. The rain-sodden figure came right to the very edge, where he teetered, gazing down, arms outstretched. He was naked, his pale and almost entirely hairless body exposed to the elements.

  Anansi identified him. Susanoo-no-Mikoto. But what’s he doing? He looks drunk.

  “Set!” the Japanese man called out. “Se-e-et! I see you. I see you, son of earth and sky, lord of the desert. One god of storms addresses another. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” the Egyptian answered. “How do you feel, Masayuki? Do you feel well?”

  “Well? I feel great! But my name is not Masayuki. It is Susanoo-no-Mikoto, brother of the sun and moon, born from the nose of Izanagi as he washed his face in the river to purge himself of his sins.”

  Set chuckled. “Are you sure about that?”

  “As sure as I am that you killed your brother out of spite. You cut Osiris into pieces and scattered them across the world, because he was loved so much and you were not.”

  “I did?”

  “Set did, and you are Set.”

  “Maybe it’s Susanoo who is saying this,” said Set. “Or maybe, I wonder, is it the LSD which I have put in your cigarettes?”

  The Japanese man, Masayuki, seemed not to understand. Bafflement replaced the imperious expression on his face, albeit briefly.

  “You speak nonsense,” he said. “Susanoo-no-Mikoto does not listen to your foolishness.”

  “Three drops of pure liquid acid,” said Set gleefully. “In all your cigarettes. Smoking is so bad for the health.”

  “Silence, horn-headed one!” Masayuki declared. He brandished a fist like some manga superhero. “Do not mock me. Do you not feel my power? It rages through the heavens. You should fear me. My anger could destroy us all.”

  As if to punctuate the remark, a fork of lightning rippled incandescently overhead. Thunder erupted a split-second later.

  “It is also Set’s storm,” the Egyptian replied. “It does not scare me. It will not harm one who has Set within him.”

  “If I wish, I could summon the lightning down. Then we shall see whose storm it is.”

  “I dare you to.”

  “Do not provoke me.”

  “You are no god. You are just a man. Susanoo talks inside you, but he does not walk in your skin. And also, you have lost. Thanks to me, you stand there naked, ridiculous. You babble like madman. You are not in this contest any more.”

  “That’s it! Enough!” Masayuki bellowed. Both arms shot up, and he began uttering a stream of words in his own language. Oaths, prayers, imprecations, who knows what they were, but he yelled them until he was hoarse, his body shivering from the cold and his hair plastered lankly against his scalp.

  Set just let him rave on, clearly relishing the Japanese man’s hallucinogenic lunacy. The crazier Masayuki behaved, the more it cemented Set’s victory.

  And then..
.

  I have to assume that Masayuki’s body acted as a lightning rod. A single raised point on top of an otherwise low, flat structure was simply asking to conduct the current from sky to earth. That’s the only way I can account for the immense flash that came, a blinding white brightness. It was accompanied by a percussion, a bang that seemed to blow my eardrums inward. I reeled back from the window, dazzled and stunned. For a time, perhaps as much as a minute, I couldn’t seem to get my bearings. My head rang. Fireworks were exploding in my vision.

  Finally I pulled myself together and returned to the window. Through the rain-spattered panes I saw the Egyptian sprawled by the poolside, supine, and Masayuki on top of him, prostrate, having been propelled off the roof. Masayuki’s hair was singed and smouldering and there were various scorch marks on his skin. Both men appeared stone dead, but as I watched, they stirred. The Egyptian tried to push Masayuki off him and get to his feet. Masayuki attempted to rise as well, but his efforts were as in vain as the other man’s. Their muscles seemed numbed and not working properly. They couldn’t disentangle themselves from each other, and in the end they sagged like exhausted lovers and let the rain pound down on their bodies.

  Storm gods’ avatars, struck down by a bolt of lightning, said Anansi. If that isn’t poetic justice, I don’t know what is.

  “Or just irony,” I observed. “A cosmic joke.”

  Either way, they’re out. Which, if I’m right, leaves only us, Coyote and Loki.

  “Hopefully, Coyote’s eliminated Loki by now, or vice versa.”

  “You could say that’s happened,” said a voice behind me, in a rough, worn-out croak. “Kind of.”

  I whirled round.

  It was Bill Gad. A glimmer of lightning showed me his weatherbeaten face, his double-plaited hair, his coyote-head tie clasp.

  Showed me something else as well.

  A knife in his hand.

  Blade glistening wetly.

  Dripping thick dark droplets onto the floor.

  FOR A MOMENT I was dumbstruck. A hundred thoughts rushed through my brain, a hundred different scenarios.