99 Gods: Odysseia

by Randall Farmer

  “Really really rough night. Anybody but me would be institutionalized afterwards.”

  24. (Dave)

  “You want me to do what?” Elorie said, startling Dave out of a reverie. He couldn’t focus his mind on the present, flashing back repeatedly to yesterday’s combat. He had heard about the earlier God-fights, seen them on the internet and cable, but he hadn’t ever been in one before. Rational thought fled his mind at the combat memories, replaced by recalled emotions of terror and hopelessness. When he wasn’t paying attention, his hands shook. He twitched and his heart raced whenever he heard a loud sound.

  Elorie finished tucking Zach and Alana in for their morning nap. They slept together in a single antique crib, in a nursery out of the nineteenth century except for more color, more carving, and a whole lot more money applied. Elorie quickly slid by Dave into the elegantly decorated hallway. He took a moment to check in on Nessa, still wounded and unconscious, Persona inside her (despite all their misgivings about Betrayer’s hold on the God) and Ken worrying on an overstuffed chair beside her bed. Elorie grabbed his sleeve and led him to one of the vacation mansion’s extra bedrooms that doubled as their family’s sitting room. She wanted an answer to her question.

  “The laundry,” Dave said, momentarily in doubt. Mismatched chairs appropriated from elsewhere in the house squeezed in against the bedroom furniture. Someone had left a scattered stack of magazines next to the bed. The top magazine said ‘Science News’, so Dave guessed Uffie as the culprit. “That’s what I said, right?” Was this post-traumatic stress disorder? “I’d like you to do, um, the laundry.” He never wanted to be in another God fight. “We haven’t, uh, had time in over a week, and since…”

  “So you just assigned the job to me?” Elorie said, raising her voice. “Woman’s work?”

  Dave blinked in surprise and backed up a step. Elorie strode forward and got in his face. “We’re supposed to be following your nose, not washing your clothes.”

  Ken sent. With Nessa down, Ken paid attention to his and Elorie’s minds. Dave couldn’t respond, as Ken couldn’t support Nessa’s fake telepathy trick. Ken’s telepathy ached with worry, barely covering his anger. His novel interest in their thoughts was obvious overcompensation for Nessa’s wounds.

  “But, but…” He couldn’t handle an angry Elorie right now.

  “What? You’ve forgotten how to do laundry?” Elorie stared at his chest, tense and angry. He continued to back up until his heel bumped into the leg of the leather recliner. “Do the laundry yourself.”

  Dave’s temper went from curled-up-wimp to furnace flare, leaving his entire body shaking and his mind confused. “I’m trying to keep us together and keep everything working. Ken keeps saying I’m the boss, so I’m doing the bossing. I think…”

  “You’re supposed to consult with people first, Dave,” Elorie said, exasperation on her face. “Some of us might have other plans.”

  Crap. He didn’t need this. Not with his hands shaking and his inability to keep his eyes from flickering to the left and to the right. He swore he saw things in his peripheral vision. “I was just going to talk to Dana,” Dave said. Hadn’t he promised himself to stop talking to Dana? He couldn’t remember, but he remembered remembering. Had some of his memories ended up in someone else’s mind? Damn, this fake telepathy crap was difficult! “We’ve got to find some way of beating some sense into Dana and Orlando, or get them to forget about the instant marriage shit before they knock all our boats out of the water, and since I can talk to Dana without getting peanut-butter mouth…”

  “It’s not my fault you’re overwhelmed by Orlando,” Elorie said. She sighed and sat down on the end of the bed, scrunching magazines under her feet. If she suffered from post-battle twitchies, she wasn’t showing any signs, physically or mentally. “I was going to go talk to the both of them, together. Until you assigned me to do the laundry.”

  “If I could talk to Orlando about this I would,” Dave said. He closed his eyes to take several deep breaths to wash the adrenaline out of his system. Big mistake. All he got from his efforts was a vivid battle flashback of one helix after the other. “How about a compromise?” he said, giving up on calming himself. “Let’s talk to both of them together and…”

  “Quit using me as a damned crutch, Dave!” Elorie said, raising her voice again. “That’s another thing that’s pissed me off.” No kidding. He would have never guessed. “Lots of people deal with Gods without access to Immunes. Use your own willpower, dammit.” She turned away from him and shook.

  Ken sent.

  Dave bit off his next comment: If you’re going to be angry with me, there’s no reason to talk to you now. Nor did he stalk off. Ken’s observation made sense. He flashed back on when he hung upside-down in the Burçak underground city in Cappadocia. He had promised himself he wouldn’t go running off bull-headed anymore. At least not too often. Hopefully less often. His unsaid comment, used in past arguments with Tiff, didn’t ever produce useful results.

  But now what? He was too angry to sit down next to Elorie, and he didn’t particularly want to give in, even if she was suffering the same PTSD as he was.

  So what could he do? His reaction to Dana – no, not ‘reaction’, attraction – rubbed Elorie the wrong way. Wasn’t covering that up, though, wrong in the ‘no lie’ Telepath way of thinking, which he needed to do to keep his sanity?

  He waited a moment but Ken didn’t interject.

  Fooey.

  Dave swallowed his anger, walked across the room and sat down on the bed beside Elorie anyway. “I have been using you as a crutch, Elorie, and I apologize,” Dave said. At least that wouldn’t make things worse. “I just don’t know what else to do.” He bent over and put his head in his shaking hands.

  “So dealing with Orlando scares you?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Good,” Elorie said. “Now you know how I am all the fucking time. Weakness sucks. Don’t forget what happened to Nessa, though. We’re all weak, we’re all targets, and our tricks are never going to be perfect black or white things.” Pause. “However, you shouldn’t use the fact we’re all at risk as an excuse to take things out on me or anyone else.”

  He couldn’t respond to that, directly, without restarting the fight. Dammit. Be safe! “Any suggestions?”

  “Just the one I made earlier: learn to deal with Orlando. Practice using your free will around him. Get used to him,” Elorie said. She sighed. “I also think if you practice on the, um, Dana effect you should be able to stop it as well. Practice does help.”

  Practice she had been doing, learning how to better stop the effects of the 99 Gods. Practice he hadn’t been doing, because he didn’t think he needed it. “Okay,” he said, reluctantly, not fully believing, at least about the ‘Dana effect’.

  “Another thing,” Elorie said. Dave grunted. She would zing him repeatedly until he either fought back or she ran out of zings. New Yorkers! He hissed breath through his partly clogged nose. “I think you’re slipping back into doing the same sorts of things that got you in trouble with Tiff: haring off on your own, making group decisions on your own, and sticking your significant other with the stereotypical women’s work. Making time with Dana and Diana only amplifies these mistakes.”

  He stiffened. Dave counted backwards starting from twenty. At six, he couldn’t hold back any longer. Instead of defending himself, he said: “I’m not the only one amplifying this. Your flirting with Orlando’s going to break his heart.”

  Elorie turned and glared at him. “You’re going to break Dana’s heart too. Orlando at least understands what happens between the sheets.”

  “We still need to deal with the Dana and Orlando problem,” Dave said. Elorie’s glare got hotter.

  Inspiration struck, what he needed to do: show Orlando how to solve the problem.
“I’ll deal with Orlando if you agree to deal with Dana.”

  Elorie’s glare said ‘asshole’, but she nodded. Reluctantly. “This will at least force me to learn how to cope with Orlando.”

 

  Right.

  “I’ll start off by doing the laundry,” Dave said, mock cheerful.

  This time Elorie lips said ‘asshole’. Her eyes dared him to respond.

  Dave nodded and went to gather up the laundry instead.

  The last load of laundry in the dryer, Dave knocked on Orlando’s office door, hands shaking.

  “Come,” Orlando said.

  Dave opened the door with a sweaty hand and forced his feet into Orlando’s office, which had once been a snazzy foosball parlor. Orlando now inhabited it, sitting behind an executive’s modern mahogany desk, all clean lines, high polish and no drawers, with two equally modern leather chairs in front. Dave guessed all the furniture came from willpower and Orlando’s imagination. He could barely flicker his eyes near Orlando without running. When he did, the urge to apologize for bothering the God nearly overwhelmed him. “I…” Dave said, his voice gagging to a halt. He tried again. “I have an idea about how…”

  “Yes?” Orlando said. “Sit down. Relax.”

  Dave obeyed without thinking. The leather chair did not creak.

  He couldn’t do this. This was impossible! The Territorial Gods were too strong for him to deal with. They said ‘jump’. He said ‘how high’.

  “Uh, I’m sorry I’m bothering you… Um… It’s that… Um… I, no, we…”

  Orlando tensed.

  Time’s up, Dave…

  “Something, uh, can help you,” Dave said. What? Where did those words come from? Not even a complete sentence! “I’d like to show you some things I’ve learned, about the effects, um…” Dave’s train of thought died, flooded by the twitchy and irrational sense the room was about to be attacked by Dubuque’s Supported minions.

  He had control of himself just a second ago! Where did it go?

  “Yes?” Orlando said, trying to be helpful. Dave heard the impatience in his voice.

  “Effects of the Gods on people. Project the both of us around.”

  “I understand what you’re trying to say, Dave,” Orlando said. “If I had time, I might agree, as I do want your insights. But I’m backlogged with work from the fight yesterday and the loss of the Supported is going to change everything. What you’re asking is too dangerous for all of us. Sorry.”

  “I’m sorry I took so much of your time,” Dave said, angry at his feeble performance and relieved that he wouldn’t need to further deal with Orlando. He stood. Elorie was going to chew the crap out of him for this. His hand missed the side of the chair as he stood, when he flashed on a mental image of Elorie flinging purple helixes at him.

  Ken sent.

  Dave sat, not because Ken’s command overwhelmed him, but because he suspected that if Ken threw his weight into the pot this might not be a lost cause.

 

  Dave couldn’t force himself to look at Orlando’s likely frowning face. “You’re making this official, Ken?” Orlando said, aloud.

 

  “Whatever for?” Orlando asked.

 

  “Why could either of us possibly need a bodyguard on a projection?” Orlando said.

  ‘Why is not important’, Dave thought, predicting. Ken said the same telepathically, meeting Dave’s expectations. Ken sent.

  “What about Nessa?” Dave asked.

 

  Oh. Good trick, Dave thought. It made sense Ken could do that. Dave had seen Ken use over a dozen ‘mental hands’ with his telekinesis, and Nessa had told him repeatedly Ken was still holding back on what he could do with his tricks. After yesterday, Dave had mentally appended ‘when not in battle’ to Nessa’s commentary, but this wasn’t a battle.

  “Let’s do this, then,” Orlando said. “Is now okay?”

  Dave nodded. He started to shiver; he had done this, he had started this, and now he would have to continue this. He didn’t fold when he dealt with Persona and the Kid God, but he feared he would never be able to deal with Orlando. He…

  Ken sent.

  Easy for you to say, Dave thought. We didn’t realize the Watchers were Gods when we dealt with them.

  “…uh, Newark. Uh, Irvington, actually…” Dave’s voice burbled a polluted river of stammer. “Near the Stuyvesant and Springfield intersection.” He had learned about this ducking fisaster from some of Elorie and his internet research.

  Orlando made projections of all three of them, and then unceremoniously yanked them into projection space. Unlike Dana’s method, Orlando didn’t need to touch Dave, which startled him. The ‘two places at once’ sensation had been easier to take with Dana’s method. With Dana’s gentle touch. Under Orlando’s control, though, Dave lost track of his real body, his thoughts stuck completely inside the projection. He panicked, yelping in surprise. The willpower buffeting was too much like yesterday.

  “No, Dave, open back up,” Ken said, aloud.

  Right. Don’t think. Do. Dave concentrated and undid the effects of the surprise, opening back up the hole in his mental shields. He felt Ken’s mind with him and around him, and that helped. Solidity. Implacability. A little mental disconnection wasn’t enough to throw Ken off his feed.

  “This place is still beautiful,” Dave said, about the place of projection. Even more beautiful because they were in motion.

  “You find beauty in this?” Orlando said. Dave reddened. He hadn’t meant to say his comment loud enough for anyone to hear. “There’s no beauty here. It’s just a place filled with unexplained distractions.”

  Oh, that explained a bunch of the problems Dana had with Orlando. “It’s the colors. I’m positive I can see more colors here than with my normal eyes,” Dave said. “These shapes froth with nearly visible mathematics, like those series of ten reddish blobs we’re passing that I’d swear increase their volume following the Fibonacci sequence. And that rotating dark purple cloud up ahead. It’s a perfect spiral, its tint varying by the square of the distance from the center.”

  “All unexplained, which makes them a distraction,” Orlando said. “And distractions are dangerous and annoying.”

  “So says the God who thinks he must be able to explain them,” Ken said. “So don’t explain them, just experience them in the now and be entertained.”

  “Tell that to the Jell-O phobia you get when you become a Territorial God. Or to the other thousand plus distractions.”

  “As I’ve said to Nessa many times: focus!” Ken said, wagging a finger at Orlando.

  Orlando didn’t respond.

  Dave smiled, realizing he had just said something coherent to Orlando for the first time.

  “The authorities, whoever’s taken charge, have gotten old fashioned about their organizational help,” Dave said, carefully watching the outside world instead of Orlando. The trick helped keep the stammers out of his voice and thoughts. “Not only is this a refugee camp, it’s racially segregated.”

  Orlando grunted. He had dropped them out of projection space where Dave had directed and turned them invisible without a suggestion from either Dave or Ken. Dave started to point. “Starving child.” Another point. “Child prostitute g
ang.” Point. “Beggar.” Point. “Drug runner.” Point. “Street barricade and gangbanger guards.” Point. “Public urination and defecation.” Point. “Alcoholic. This way.”

  Orlando followed Dave’s suggestion and moved their projections. “I don’t understand why you thought this was important, Dave,” Ken said. He had focused in on himself, almost huddled up, eyes slitted and darting side to side. Paranoid. Guarding them from unknown invisible enemies. “People do this.”

  “Uh huh. I saw all of this where I grew up,” Dave said. Brooklyn’s mean streets and his Puerto Rican gang background made this far too familiar. “Only, this is far worse. Amplified. Concentrated beyond the imaginable. They’ve hit critical mass, a chain reaction happened and this is spreading. There. Dead body. How many people died here last night in this refugee camp?”

  Ken winced. “Twenty two,” he said, whispering. Dave didn’t want to think about what happened here, but he had to. Death happened here, in one refugee camp of many, in the damned United States of America, every damned night.

  “This used to be a Catholic Church,” Dave said. He motioned them inside, where a mixed-race Islander stood behind the lectern, speaking to the masses huddled in the pews. Living in the pews. The Islander, a Dominican by Dave’s guess, rattled on and on, a never-ending sermon about the ills of the world.

  “…listen to my words without commenting, even if I know what might happen,” the Islander said. He wasn’t dressed in Catholic vestments, instead in a ratty business suit one size too large. “You speak ill about Dubuque and you convert. Suddenly, Dubuque’s Jesus Christ reborn, utter goodness, sweetness and light. Yet, look about you, all the misery you see was caused by the Gods, and Dubuque’s the head honcho God in North America.” The preacher’s passionate words boomed in the sanctuary. “This misery is his responsibility. But what does he do? He talks about souls, salvation, worship, morality and the City of God. People killing each other? Starving? Forced into refugee camps in America? Our lives are nothing he cares about. We don’t count, in his version of who’s God’s children and who’s not. So when I say that God Almighty appeared in my dreams and gave me the word, the revelation, that Dubuque’s the Antichrist, believe me. Understand me. But when I change my mind and say the opposite, don’t believe me. Just take my involuntary conversion as evidence the Antichrist has acted again. Where is our country? Where…”