“I’m tired.” Ron said.
“Did you not sleep well, love?”
“Not that. Tired. I need to know that something is forever. When we built Everland I thought we could just be for a while. But they don’t let you do that, do they? They just come in, take it over. I thought we might have got away from all of that when we, you know.” He touched his fingers to the wheel in his chest.
Ethel turned and looked at him. She put her hands, aged and worn, to his face.
“I’m so proud of you, Ron. You know that, don’t you?”
He shrugged. “Why? What have I done?”
“Think. If we had lived, we would have kept on, happy, but doing the same things. Holidays in Selsey Bill, dreams of our own caravan. New beige windcheater every couple of years. But now you’ve done all of this. I know they are taking it from you, but that’s just the way it is, isn’t it? Here, there, who knows, even after? We’re not the kind of people who can ever really decide how our lives go, are we? Like most people.”
“Can’t we?” he asked. She looked at him, unsure of his meaning. She saw the familiar plumping of the chest, the physical manifestation that he was taking that defective electric screwdriver back to B&Q even if he didn’t have a receipt. “I need to talk to one of them…the Afternet people. Mary, I think.”
“Well, if you think it will help.”
“It might.”
As they strolled back, a group of people were cooking something over an open fire, they looked up as the couple approached.
“Ron. Ron!” A man stood from the fire. He was no-one Ron recognised, but even so, he stopped and waited, hooking his wife’s arm through his own.
“Ron. I’m Marty! Remember me?” His accent was American, thick with twisted vowels. Ron tried to look as though he did remember. Marty’s gunshot wounds really didn’t ring any bells.
“I was in the fancy dress competition two weeks ago. I was a sieve!” He mimed spurts of liquid from the punctures in his torso. “Third. The guy who came as a headless man won. Not sure, y’know, ‘cos he was a headless man, but it’s the taking part, isn’t it? Just wanted to say, great job with this place. We love it. I’m staying here until I get another turn.”
Ron stared at him, emotional.
“Thank you, Marty. That’s a really nice thing to say.”
“Hey! Wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. Me an’ the wife-“ he gestured towards a thin woman reclining outside their temporary shelter, “well, I say wife. We met a while ago, y’know. She’s Mohican.” Ron looked. She was immensely skinny, blond with very dark roots, and wearing a silver minidress.
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Well, Mohican, Latvian, Serbian. All them seem the same to me, yanowodImean? Anyway. We ain’t goin’ nowhere until we get in for another vacation. If these bastards ever go away of course. That Marcel. He knows the score, doesn’t he?” Ron swivelled involuntarily, as if he expected to see as band of obviously illegitimate beings heading down the hill. He looked back, gave Marty a quizzical look.
“Marcel? You know Marcel?”
“Sure. He put all of us straight. These dicks in the rubber suits. Who do they think they are? Come in here and take this place away from us all. Even more, who do we think they are?”
“Oh. I see.” Ron said, though he didn’t.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m as religious as the next guy. ‘Cept he’s pagan. Maybe the next but one guy. I never missed a Christmas, whatever anyone says. But this is goin’ too far. We die, they parachute us into this desert, and then when we get some fun, they just take it over and throw everyone out. Like I say. Who do they think they are?”
“Gods?” Ethel ventured.
“Yeah, they say. Gotta tell ya, you see some dude who says he’s runnin’ the earthquake system pitchin’ into a lake dressed as a Swiss milkmaid, you begin to think maybe the shakin’ can take some noo management, capiche?”
Not really. Non capisco. Ron smiled anyway, though. They shook hands and Marty gave him a hug, insofar as that is possible with a steering wheel in the way. On the walk back, Ron and Ethel were greeted numerous times, waved at, their names whispered and then yelled.
“What do we do?” asked Ethel.
“We could run.”
“When did you last run, Ron?”
Satan called it The War Room. He had gathered together his players, coaches, psychotherapists, fitness advisers, situational visualisers, nutritionalists, quantum strategists, and whichever other quacks he could fit into the available space. There was a separate and much larger room full of lawyers ready to leap into action at the slightest hint of impropriety.
Those who were to compete in the day’s games punched the walls, picked the meat from between their fangs, broke wind at will and listened in a desultory fashion to the briefing taking place from the head of the table. It was like a Barclay’s board meeting.
Satan leaned asymmetrically backwards in his swivel chair, head to toe in black Boss, a toothpick poking from his lips. Millennia of progress in so many places, but he had never really moved on from Goodfellas.
“So, look guys,” he said, his voice guttural, deep from a red raw throat, “yesterday just wasn’t good enough, was it? Listen to me. This is the very, very end. We win, happy days. I’ll drink champagne forever and ever and ever. We lose? You don’t want to know what happens if we lose.” The audience shifted uncomfortably in their chairs.
“I am telling you now. I’m going to hand you over to the coach, who has doped some of the best athletes in the world. We win. No two ways. We win. If it looks like we won’t, we kick ass. There’s a signal. You get the signal, the world goes dark, you read me? Coach will tell you the signal.”
They stopped jiggling and farting at the mention of violence, perked up at the thought that ferocity may replace wandering around trying to stay upright. The place reeked of undelivered retribution. In an hour they would appear, black tracksuits, black glasses, calm. Beneath that cool surface, a bloody eplimnion would drift unnoticed, waiting for the quiet seamount of fury beneath to burst and throw the waters into turmoil.
The atmosphere in the briefing room occupied by the opposition had less of an edge, displaying instead something of an air of nervousness, a dearth of confidence about what was yet to come. Sun Tzu stood at a desk facing his ragtag players, who concentrated their gazes upon him in the hope that he had some kind of answer, some single stratagem to take them to victory. Sun knew the mood would have been helped by the uplifting presence of God himself.
He actually had come, but had decided to appear before them in the guise of a pot of chrysanthemums; easy on the eye, but in fact as much use as most flora for fighting off the Devil’s hordes. They began by looking for a substitute for Thor, who told the assembly that he had split the big toe on his right foot when he dropped his hammer on it. Pheme, the plump Goddess who not so long ago helped Marcel to spread the rumour that cleared the entrance to the tunnels for he and Mary, leaned sideways in her chair and whispered something behind her hand to Aphrodite, who barked out a laugh of a huskiness more easily associated with a hefty stoker.
“What?” Thor asked suspiciously.
“Oh, nothing.” said Aphrodite, as Pheme sent her message off in another direction.
“Come on.” He said. “If it’s so funny, why don’t you bring us all in on it?”
“Oh, just that you haven’t dropped that hammer for centuries and then suddenly, when you are needed to sit above a pool, you somehow incur a minor injury. Just saying.”
“Just saying what?” Thor was on his feet.
“Wondered if you were worried about your hair, that’s all.”
Thor took a few paces towards her, and then stopped and winced theatrically, remembering the toe issue.
“Hey, hey!” said Sun. “This won’t get us anywhere. We need a replacement for Thor in the last game. Any ideas?” The Norse god glared at Aphrodite and then limped manfully back to his seat.
“I shall take his place.” The voice was deep, but when the heads turned towards its source, the frame from which it emerged was disappointingly lightweight. The goddess who was volunteering stood from her chair, although to be honest it didn’t make a great deal of difference to her height, notwithstanding the splendid pair of wings arcing from her shoulder blades. Sun looked puzzled, gave her an inquisitive look.
“Nike.” She said. “I am the goddess of victory. I shall be the Goddess who brings us victory in the final game.”
“With respect, Nike,” said Aphrodite, reaching for a pain au chocolat, “You basically fly around after everyone’s won. You’re a symbol of triumph rather than the source?”
“You’re a symbol of beauty, it doesn’t stop you being a dentally-challenged fat munter.” There was a collective intake of breath from the assembled deities. Aphrodite was on her feet, pushing between chairs with a look of rage on her puffy face. Nike spread her wings, sending a couple of cherubs plummeting to the floor, where they rolled, Reubensesque, ineptly attempting to get themselves to their chubby feet. Sun watched in horror as the two goddesses began to tug at each others’ clothes and hair, yelling epithets.
“Bitch!”
“Fat sow!”
They were separated only when the bowl of chrysanthemums first erupted in tremors and then exploded, filling the room with dense florally scented smoke. They edged back to their seats, pointing and mouthing silent threats, helped by acolytes who made a show of restraining limbs no longer seeking conflict. Sun looked at the room and shook his head.
When the calm Polynesian Goddess Atanue so long ago identified vanity as the fatal flaw in the Devil’s make-up, the one that would bring them to this solution, Sun seized upon it as a differentiator. He gazed miserably across the room, sotto voce mutterings abounding, Thor pausing from holding the supposedly injured toe only to flick his flowing locks back from his face, Nike’s feathers fluttering as she stretched and relaxed her splendid wings, Aphrodite with a compact, fingertips smoothing lipstick from the corners of her mouth. And the rest? Chests out, preening, desperately trying to be what they symbolised, apart from the fat child-figures still weebling on the floor. To play on the Devil’s vanity had seemed a coup, not least because it was proposed by a calm and unassuming woman who entered entirely into the defence of the greater good. This room was vanity incarnate, and the weakness of the opponent was revealed to be a figment.
They lounged on the terrace. Suddenly there was lots of coffee, pastries, bowls of scrambled eggs, and for the mainland Europeans, pig fat sausages. The air was becoming clearer as the mist burned away, the park emerging into brightness, early shafts of sunlight sparking off the corners of the tin chalets in starbursts. Outside the perimeter activity was accelerating, more legs tested the damp grass, more hands put flame to wood, lips touched to the first liquid of the day. It was, actually, beautiful; a mix of smoke, drifting wisps of mist, incipient heat, and this dreamlike landscape of Maggsy’s making.
“This reminds me of the last day of the sack of Rome.” Guntrick swirled the dregs of his latte, leaned his head back, a faint smile on his face. “We were 200 paces away. We could see the faces of them, could see them jeering. They had never lost. We had smoke and mist, like this. We could see their faces smile less as we gathered and they knew how many we were.” He waved a massive, hairy hand. “We killed them of course. All of them.”
“Women and children?” asked Mary.
“Especially women and children.” He said. “It demoralises men when they see their families slaughtered.” He looked at Mary, who had a look of disappointment. “It was a long time ago, Mary. We were different people. If you put a Roman in front of Adwahl now he would cook him spaghetti carbonara. Then sit there on the edge of his seat waiting for the Roman to say how it was.”
“How does it work, Mary?” asked Ethel.
“How does what work?”
“Where you go. Apart from it doesn’t work, obviously, or we wouldn’t all be here. We all know that more and more people are disappearing to…wherever. How does it pick you? How does it know where you want to go? You know, if you’re going to the good place.”
“Heaven, you mean?”
Ethel gazed sleepily out onto the field in front of them, where a group of Malaysian deities, all wide mouths and painted faces, were doing star jumps.
“I would have said Heaven,” she said, “but that was when I believed in God.”
She caught Mary’s puzzled look, shook her head, the loose, ageing skin below her chin wobbling. That wasn’t what she wanted to talk about.
“Well. Now, because of the backlog, it’s not massively logical. Mainly it takes the ones who’ve been here the longest first. Mainly it takes the oldest of those, now that it’s done with infants. But that’s mainly. Something went a bit awry when it stalled, and it would take longer to find out what it was than it’s worth.”
“And how does it know, you know, where you’re going?” There was a buzzing in the air, the sound of grass being cut in the early sunlight; the sound, if there is one, of foaming agents being added to a swimming pool. It was like the clubhouse at Augusta on the morning of the Masters, only with black people, Jews, and women.
“I don’t know how, but I know that everything you did, have done, is in there, and there’s an algorithm-“ she saw Ethel’s puzzled look, “-formula that figures out which side you drop.”
“That seems a bit random.” Ethel said.
“Well, I suppose so, but it used to be a two thousand year old fisherman, so it has to be a step forward, doesn’t it?”
Ethel grimaced in a kind of begrudging agreement.
“And how does it know. Let’s say it’s Heaven. What you want?”
“Apparently, it’s plugged into the global and individual psyche. Everything you’ve wanted is in there. Everything until the moment you are processed. When your time comes it establishes instantly what the Heaven you are dreaming of looks like, then, Bang! You’re there.”
Ethel gazed for a moment into the empty cup of Earl Grey in her hand.
“It all seems a bit unlikely.” she said. They both looked onto the chalet park and watched as the Japanese god of Peace performed a massive belly flop off the back of a lawnmower into the foaming pool.
“I know.”
27
What happened during the second day was curious. Not curious in the way that seeing creatures from Heaven and the Netherworld wearing inflated outfits and smashing each other into foam filled receptacles is curious, but in the way that humanity is curious (OED: exciting curiosity; strange; singular). The crowds around the perimeter had expanded constantly, drawn by the broadcasts on the screens around the Afterworld and magnetised by the very hubbub around Everland. Was it the desire to be there when this final conflict took place, or simply the fact that when you are dead and have no idea when you might be judged, you seek safety in numbers?
That wasn’t all there was to it, though. You might think that in such a clearly delineated competition the people who had believed all of their lives in gods of some nature, or had not really believed but accidentally lived their lives by tenets appropriated by gods, would be cheering frantically for the success of the lighter side. You might even think that some of those who knew that their lifetimes left them cursed might hope for a win for God and his team, dreaming of some kind of celebratory amnesty. At the same time it is reasonable to assume that in the throng there were irredeemable malcontents who knew all along there was a pot of shit at the end of the monotone arc of their existence and couldn’t care less.
It didn’t feel like that. Those observing the event from the relative luxury of the terrace in front of the Entertainment Complex sensed an atmosphere they could not have predicted. When Marcel and Geoffrey marched down the steps into the arena there was barely a murmur. Geoffrey now had enough sustenance clinging to his garish blazer/chino combo to enable a reasonable period of survival after a nuclear war. Marcel held
his arms out from his sides like a penguin, desperate to avoid the crackling caused when separate garments made contact, a look of supreme distaste on his face, glowering at anyone who crossed his path. They passed a TV interview taking place amidst the strange structures littering the arena.
“I’m Strand Crantum, and I have with me Charon, perhaps the longest-serving ferryman in the Underworld. Charon. The game is tied after day one. How do you and the other nasty guys see today going?”
“Well, Strand,” Charon adjusted his conical hat and tried to look interested, “we thought we played solid yesterday. We missed a few chances to go ahead, particularly in the Pilsbury dough game, but we always thought today was our stronger, and of course no-one has played their joker yet.”
“It must be tense in that dressing room?”
“Hey, we’re all fired up,” said the oarsman, “we just have to focus and execute.”
“You mean carry out your plans?” Charon’s face was blank, his eyes opaque as he calmly surveyed the people preparing the arena and the crowds massed around the perimeter, and then stared at the deeply tanned commentator.
“No. I mean execute.”
Crantum tried to take this in, failed, reverted to the only thing about which he knew anything, which in turn was not much.
“So you’re a rower? You must really dread those south-easterlies, huh?”
The action, when it resumed, continued to test the bounds of human endurance; not in the playing, but in the watching and understanding. Perhaps it was the sheer banality that caused the change in atmosphere, because whereas during the first day’s entertainment the congregation had at least paid some attention, now it appeared that whatever was happening amongst themselves had become more important. Adults huddled in groups, deep in conversation, the children kept running and hiding, and the battle for supremacy taking place became almost a mere backdrop to simple existence.
The Complete Afternet: All 3 Volumes In One Place (The Afternet) Page 86
