The Complete Afternet: All 3 Volumes In One Place (The Afternet)

by Peter Empringham

  Jenkin smiled; Ron wasn’t sure he’d seen that before.

  “They’ve never actually played a game, but maybe you could teach them the basics.” The girls went into a huddle to discuss the prospect. When Ron looked around, he saw that the Visigoths had done the same. After a moment the girl with the dark bob stepped forward.

  “Ok. But we stop if they get rough.”

  Ron looked at Jenkin, unsure. He hadn’t known the Visigoths for a long time and wasn’t sure they had any other mode. On the other hand, he was desperate to actually get Guntrick and his men playing, now that they had constructed the pitch. There were only so many times they could re-mark the lines. He said that would be fine and that he would need a moment to prepare his team, allowing the girls to borrow his precious football to go and warm up.

  When Ron turned to regard his friends they had managed to overcome earlier embarrassments and for the umpteenth time were looking at the small man expectantly. He dug deep for football knowledge.

  “Right. Guntrick, you need to pick a team of eleven. Only one of them can use his hands, and he’s called the goalkeeper. He stands between the sticks and tries to stop the ball. If it goes in between the sticks, that’s called a goal. Team with most goals wins. And, er- Jenkin, do you play football?”

  Jenkin had regained his surly face, and now lowered it to the turf.

  “Not really. I know a bit about it, though.”

  Jenkin gave the prospective team only a marginally more detailed brief. He used the sight of the opposition warm up to illustrate the basic points, along the lines of:

  You kick the ball to each other. With your foot. Like that.

  Why?

  So that you move forward up the field. When you are close enough to the other goal, you take a shot.

  How do you know if you are close enough?

  Take a guess. Roughly, it means you are past that line there (indicating the penalty area).

  When they have the ball, you can try to take it from them using your feet.

  Your feet?

  Yes, your feet.

  I can’t hold a ball with my feet.

  You don’t hold it, you kick it away from them.

  (It was around this point that Jenkin looked in desperation to Ron, who was scratching the base of his steering wheel).

  “Don’t look at me,” said Ron, “I’ve been going through this for years. Blind Man’s Buff took three days.” Jenkin didn’t really have three days. He decided that was nearly enough, though both he and Ron exhorted the Visigoths not to exert their physical superiority, and not to hurt the girls.

  “Are you sure,” asked Hansi, “that we should play against them? I mean, they’re little girls.” Ron looked to the far end of the pitch, where the Pennystone Pumas were passing the ball to each other without it touching the ground.

  “It’s just a practice, Hansi. Don’t worry if you lose.” The Germans roared with laughter at the very idea.

  Franzel was withdrawn from the team because the broadsword in his bottom made it difficult to run. Adrael was pulled away by Ron on the grounds that there was only one ball, and the German had a spear sticking out of his chest, but apart from that they were ready to go.

  Ron had decided to referee despite not knowing the rules, on the basis that if things got violent he had the best chance of imposing some kind of discipline. He also had a watch. As the teams prepared to start he looked around the arena his friends had created. There were a couple of hundred people seated on the surrounding hillsides, gazing towards the pitch with real anticipation. Ron spotted the young Brazilian boy, and beckoned him to sit close to the touchline, feeling that he qualified as an expert. Behind him, disconcertingly, was a Masai raiding party from the 19th century. He hoped they’d sit down, or no-one would be able to see a thing.

  He wandered to the centre circle, ball under his arm. The Visigoths were standing in a group, gazing at the Pumas, who were now in a pre match huddle, arms around each others’ shoulders as they formed a circle.

  “What are they doing, Ron?” asked Adwahl. “Have they dropped something?”

  “I have no idea.” Said Ron.

  “Should we do that too?”

  “No, I’d leave it. Just get ready.” For the Visigoths this involved them spreading across the pitch in a line, apart from Adwahl, who was in goal because he had good hands and didn’t want to get kicked.

  The Pumas cheered, jumped up in unison with their hands in the air, shouted “Go Pumas!”, and took up their positions for kick off, which were rather more traditional than the German line up.

  Ron whistled as loud as he could, and to an enormous cheer from the crowd, the girls started play. At first, they did exactly what they had been taught. The ball was passed back to the midfield, who then passed it a couple of times to each other, thence back to the centre half, who moved it on to the goalkeeper. The Visigoths hadn’t moved.

  Ron looked at the line of enormous bearded men, thinking that this was not a great deal like the few bits of football he had ever bothered to watch. He did also notice, however, that Guntrick, in the centre of the line, was mouthing instructions quietly, and his messages were being passed to the others, who were watching the movement of the ball like hawks.

  What they were waiting for, naturally, was an incursion into their territory. They were quite happy for the young women to tap the ball around in their own half, because of course they would eventually run out of food. An attack, on the other hand, was a different question.

  Thus, when the ball was played forward to Stacie, just inside the Visigoth’s half, there was an almighty roar, and in a wave they charged headlong towards the slim blonde. Stacie had six brothers, all older than her. She had fought them for thirteen years, and would have started earlier had she been old enough to stand. Many of the other girls would have dissolved into a flood of tears at the sight of the onrushing six-footers, but to Stacie it was just suppertime. When they were almost upon her she tapped the ball sideways to Linelle. She set off towards Adwahl, who was filing his nails on one of the posts.

  Something visceral had happened to the Visigoths. Ron had watched in alarm as they closed on the slender Stacie, recognising the fire in their eyes, the rising blood of warfare. They thundered towards her and he feared the worst, a reversion to their lifetime occupation, an orgy of violent bloodletting. The crowd, too, had given out a collective gasp as the mob accelerated, roaring incomprehensibly.

  Guntrick’s team, though, were nothing if not objective-driven. Storm a wall, beat down a gate, slaughter an enemy unit, they took it into their heads and delivered on exactly that. Even as they blundered towards Stacie they remembered that she was not what they were after, it was the ball. And the ball was gone. Those at the front slammed on the brakes first, variously tumbling forwards and then falling over each other into an ungainly heap. Stacie gazed at the pile of testosterone fuelled flesh roiling in front of her. Just suppertime.

  Adwahl had been studying his nails, only to look up and see Linelle running towards him with the ball. He, too, remembered his objective. Stop the ball from going in the goal. He sauntered towards the willowy girl running at him, confident that he could deliver. Linelle feinted to smack the ball hard at the six-foot marauder, and Adwahl, with a terrified high yelp, threw his hands in front of his face and lifted one knee to protect his groin. The girl dribbled around him and tapped the ball through the posts.

  There was silence around the arena as Linelle turned, arms in the air, and then the young Brazilian boy leapt to his feet.

  “Goooooooooooooooooooooooooal!” he cried. “Socrates Gooooal! Romero Goooal! Gooooal Braaaaasil!”

  The Masai leapt to their feet and began to bounce and the others in the crowd waved their arms in the air and yelled, some knowing why, most not.

  The Pumas surrounded their scorer; high fives were exchanged, and they ran back to prepare for the kick off. Ron looked at the Visigoth team, who were now pulling themselves to their feet, and t
urning to look at Adwahl, who had, in their minds, let them down so badly. He, in turn, was almost in tears, his evasion having caused him to break one of his newly buffed nails.

  The medieval warmongers were trooping off the pitch, bickering with each other, as the American girls watched with bemusement.

  “Guntrick! Where are you going?” Ron yelled above the hubbub from the crowd.

  The enormous man turned to Ron. He looked on the verge of tears. His crew stopped and also turned. They were bereft.

  “We lost, Ron. We lost to little girls. What game have you brought us to?”

  “It’s not over, Guntrick!” Ron threw his arms wide to display the hope he had for his friends, “There’s lots of time! You can still come back and win.”

  “You mean we have a chance to score goals as well?” Ron thought probably not but best not to say.

  “You play football for a time period.” He held up his watch. “There’s ages yet.”

  His friends were visibly lifted by this news. They clapped each other around the shoulders and marched determinedly back onto the pitch, where the girls had been waiting patiently.

  “Sorry.” Said Ron. “They’re from the fifth century. They’ve never played football before.”

  Stacie looked across to where the Visigoths were forming a square.

  “No shit.” She said.

  Time may be reputed to be a great healer, but it really didn’t help in these circumstances. The Pennystone Pumas were not massively successful in their local soccer league, but they had all been playing since they were six or seven and knew what they were doing. Guntrick’s Visigoths not only did not know what they were doing, but also had only the few words from Jenkin and Ron, who didn’t know what they were doing, to guide them.

  The girls scored at will. Headers, shots from inside the box, from outside the box. Overhead kicks. A goal direct from the goalkeeper. A goal scored in the absence of Adwahl, who had gone to take a throw-in on the understanding that he was the only person allowed to use his hands. Thankfully, the anger displayed by the losing team lessened with each reverse, and as each new formation failed to stem the flow.

  By the end the Visigoths were just running in random directions, chasing anyone with the ball and several people without it, panting and groaning with the effort as the young Americans stroked the ball around the field. In the last minute, with the score at 13-0, Vorg managed to collect the ball in the middle of the field and punt it forwards. The Germans didn’t take in the complete lack of effort by their opponents to chase the ball, their failure to take up defensive positions, nor the pathetic dive in the wrong direction by the goalkeeper as Zeiss, a second half substitute, nudged a shot goalwards. The ball bobbled on the uneven pitch, hit the inside of the post, and rolled along the goal line. Every player on the pitch stood and watched as the effort failed to cross the line. The Pumas, who had shared a short briefing, wondered how long they would have to feign ineptitude, until finally Guntrick lurched forward and smashed the ball definitively through the posts and into the woods behind the goal.

  As the Brazilian boy screamed his catchphrase, the Visigoths mimicked the high-fives of their opponents, and when Ron whistled loudly, walked from the pitch wreathed in sweat, chests puffed out with their success.

  “Ron!” Guntrick was grinning from ear to ear, his army around him in similar states of joy. “That was fantastic! They thought they had us, but we won in the end. Brilliant.”

  Ron tried to process this. “You think you won?”

  Guntrick smiled. “Oh, yes. I remember when we were fighting the Gauls at Reims. They slaughtered us for three days, but we turned it round in the end. I personally disembowelled their leader.” He smiled fondly at the memory and shook his head. “Happy days.” He said.

  Ron looked at the Pumas celebrating their victory, and at the cheering crowd. Ethel came and hugged him, excited at the success of the game, and they looked around for Jenkin hoping that he would be able to explain the concept of aggregate score to the deluded Visigoths. The boy was sitting on his own up on the hill, laptop open, deep in thought. The explanation could perhaps wait for another day.

  Eleven

  “I’ve been reading up on Dionysus,” said Mary, as she, Justin and Geoffrey strolled down the corridor which would take them to the party, “and I have to say he had a bit of a time of it, depending which story you believe. His dad killed him while he was still in the womb and then grew the baby out of his thigh.”

  “That was nice of him,” said Geoffrey, “it must have made it very difficult to walk.”

  “Why would we believe any of it?” asked Justin. “It’s all just myth.”

  Mary stopped and looked at him.

  “Justin! Yesterday you were invited to a party by the God of Poo. You are living in a room where a computer controls the entry to Heaven and Hell. You are going to a party thrown by another God in the company of a man who died hundreds of years ago. How can you still think that anything may not be true?”

  “I’m in a coma or something. I just intend to have as much fun as I can before I have to go back to work.” He stared at the amazed faces looking back at him. “What?” he said. Geoffrey threw open the door.

  Whatever drugs the health carers may have been giving to Justin in his imagined vegetative state, they were obviously very strong indeed. Their entry to the party was barred by two figures with the hind legs of goats, and thick hair to their waists. They were presumably there to provide some kind of filtering of guests, but their hooves slithered madly on a polished marble floor and they hung grimly to a purple rope that pointlessly cordoned off the entrance.

  “Are you satyrs?” asked Mary, who had been spending a bit of time researching. The goat men looked piqued.

  “Watch it, love. We’re fauns. Satyrs? Ugly bastards.”

  “Sorry.”

  The fauns nodded them in, and they wandered through a large Palladian hallway to an arch with swagged silk draped all around it. There was the sound of music below a vague murmur of conversation, a peal of quiet laughter, and Mary could feel a sense of anticipation building within her. A party, with the Gods! She had been almost blasé about pushing past a couple of mythical creatures, had barely been put out by the arrival of deities in the Control Room, but this was different. A gathering, a crowd of them, the chance to discuss momentous events, their influence on the affairs of men!

  Geoffrey pushed aside the heavy silken cloth and they peered into the room in front of them. It was not quite what they had expected.

  To their left was a table laden with cheese and a few strategically placed bunches of grapes. In the centre of the room, a tall, tanned man in a long robe was standing with a golden goblet in his hand, looking distinctly bored as he listened to a conversation between the other four people who were in attendance. There was a tall thin young man in a suit over in the corner where wine was running from a spigot in the wall. He was leaning against an alabaster statue of a naked warrior, slurping from a goblet and staring back into the room with the glazed look of one who was on the way to oblivion. “Look.” Said Justin, as the man turned and looked towards them, his face next to the very detailed carve genitals of the stone soldier, “Dickhead.”

  “Very good Justin,” said Mary, “ just remember, he may be the God of broken noses or something, so I would watch the smart comments until you know for sure. Geoff?” she turned to the older man, who was standing staring into the room, utterly motionless. She prodded him and he started as though awoken from a dream, then looked at her.

  “Are you going to be bowing and scraping every time you talk to one of these?” she indicated the small gathering with a sweep of her arm.

  Geoffrey followed the gesture.

  “Oh yes. If they are Gods I shall of course pay them due respect. Except for Thor, of course. Pretentious tosser.”

  “Quite. Well, I was thinking. That could get rather uncomfortable, down on your knees all the time. Why don’t you do one kind of gra
nd, all-purpose act of worship here, then you can get on with just having normal conversations for the rest of the time.”

  “Does that work?” he looked unconvinced. Actually, he looked very odd, since the others had spent some time preparing him for the outing. Having established that none of his own selection of smocks and bad cardigans was constituted of less than fifty percent food particles, they had managed to persuade Marcel to lend him one of his older tweed suits. Well, lend wasn’t really the operative word, because Marcel had done so only on the basis that the suit was burned after this one use.

  One of the smocks, which was encrusted with the debris of hundreds of years of masticated pulp, had managed to retain a back which was only mid-grey rather than the darker shades of the others, and Geoffrey had been willing to wear the item reversed. With a waistcoat buttoned up and a large handkerchief tied as a cravat, the shirt was barely visible, and once Mary had slicked his filthy hair with some Vaseline and parted it at the side, he looked only as bad as some kind of pervert ancient retainer at a down-at-heel hunting party.

  Now, he followed Mary’s advice. She and Justin watched with bemusement as he flung himself to the floor and kowtowed in a fulsome manner towards anyone who may have any connection with deity.

  It was this, rather than their entrance, which drew the attention of the host, and the tall, tanned figure in the fine robe moved towards them as though floating on air.

  “Welcome!” he said, “I am Dionysus, and you are welcome to my little gathering.” He looked down to the marble floor where Geoffrey was on his knees bowing deeply. He was mumbling in ancient Northumbrian what may have been an incantation but could equally have been his shopping list. “Is he alright?”

  “Hard to say.” Said Justin.

  “Only,” the God of the grape harvest gestured back into the room, where the few other attendees were watching the new arrivals, “Eir is here if he needs any medical attention.”

  Mary looked at Justin, who shrugged. Neither had any idea why that may be appropriate.