99 Gods: Odysseia

by Randall Farmer

  “Technically, they aren’t neo-Supported,” Boise said, after Betrayer finished. “True neo-Supported are going to be personal to each God. These are something else, similar to Portland’s enchantment-wielders.”

  “Whatever,” Betrayer said. She found Boise and Portland’s endless discussions on proper terminology utterly boring. “Whatever they’re called, they’re still going to be a big danger.”

  Boise nodded. “How soon are we going to be seeing these abominations on our doorsteps?” he asked.

  “As soon as Dubuque finishes the last of his initial Paladin resurrections and Lodz gets his battle resurrection enchantment online. My bet is that they’re going to be going after Orlando’s rebel group within a few days.” She paused. “So, do you have anything for me?”

  “Yes,” Boise said. “After doing some analysis of the information on the Watchers and the dolphin group minds, I figured out something that’s been bothering me since the first Supported showed up. The Host was right, Betrayer – we’re not alone. The Watchers are Gods, same as we are. So are the dolphin group minds.”

  Betrayer turned to stare at the wall of the cave, practicing her anger management. “That makes sense. Dammit!” She had known about the Watchers’ divinity but not about the dolphins. They had to be the Ecumenists’ feared Ha-qodeshim. “Things are more complicated, now aren’t they?”

  Boise scratched himself and didn’t respond directly to her question. “Oh, and there’s a group of former Seven Suits Supported who were supposedly held in ‘Betrayer’s evil lair’ who’ve escaped.”

  Betrayer smiled.

  “The insane place they described is really yours?”

  “Oh yeah,” Betrayer said. “My real body’s not there, though.”

  “Interesting game you’re playing,” Boise said. He licked his lips. “By the way, what am I supposed to do with this information you gave me? The people who need this are Orlando’s group.”

  “No, I think you’re the one who needs this information,” Betrayer said. “Lodz and Dubuque’s work on those Paladins is way above my head, in an area of willpower expertise only someone intimate with worshipped Gods would know about. I’ve got copies of some of their work.” She dropped a box of enchantments gleaned from the Paladin project at Boise’s feet, all courtesy of her presence in Dubuque’s HQ. “I’ll leave the rest to you.”

  Boise nodded. He started to study the enchantments even before Betrayer left.

  When the time came, he would be ready.

  Knot sent, over their properly encoded enchantment-based pseudo-telepathy network, as they flew away in Projection Space.

  Jan sent.

 

  Jan sent, sarcastic.

  In the Place of Time, Betrayer found her plan’s chance of success stuck at zero. She also found a proposal waiting there from Orlando. “We’re really outside the envelope now,” she said, examining the ramifications of Orlando’s proposed agreement.

  He, too, had mastered the Place of Time.

  “…people who perpetuate destructive acts, from everyday peccadilloes to serial murders and genocides, never think they are doing anything wrong. How can there be so much evil in the world with so few evil people doing it?” – Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature

  “Other than feeling like I’m a foot shorter than normal, I’m fine.”

  34. (Dave)

  “Forget it,” Persona said as she walked through the door of Dave and Elorie’s bedroom. She stuck her hands on her curvaceous hips and her nose into the air. Dave ached all over, and his legs, done in last night by Elorie during their extravagance, still seeped blood. “I’m tired of healing the two of you nutcases every morning.”

  “But…” Elorie said. “Bitch. You’re supposed to be helping us.” She had accumulated a visible scratch on her face, some scrapes on her arms, and likely some bruising on her privates and torso.

  “All I’m doing is acting as your enabler, so you can snipe at each other all day and make us miserable and beat the crap out of each other every night and call it love,” Persona said. She sighed theatrically and stalked off. “Find another patsy…or act like adults and figure out a way to solve your problems for real,” Persona said, calling back over her left shoulder.

  Dave rubbed at the still bloody half-moons on his shoulders and sighed. Great. Now what? Walk around all day wounded? You would think Persona could cope with people having rough sex. “We should…”

  “We?” Elorie said, turning on Dave. “Go find your own bathroom to bleed in. Bastard. Your incessant questioning of Persona is what pissed her off.” She swished by him with a hard elbow to his ribs, stalked into their bathroom, slammed shut the door and locked it.

  Dave frowned. With Dana and Orlando safely married only mindless momentum kept their ‘sniping’ going. He walked off, looking for another bathroom, plotting out ideas in his head to solve this problem.

  Dave’s preparations took him past lunch to complete. After he grabbed a quick snack from the remains of everyone else’s lunch, he hunted down Elorie and found her sleeping on the day bed in the twin’s room.

  “Elorie,” Dave said, softly. “I’d like to talk, and I’d like to apologize.” She opened her eyes, bleary, and frowned. “I’ve been wrong.”

  Elorie sent. Dave, annoyed, nodded and stood up, offering Elorie his hand. She didn’t take his hand and brushed by him without a thought or a word. He followed.

  “I got you these,” Dave said, when they reached their bedroom. He presented Elorie with the roses in one hand and the fancy embroidered shirt in the other.

  She grabbed them out of his hands, cocked her arm and tossed the roses and their glass vase at him, full strength. Dave ducked the vase but ended up drenched by the roses and the rose water. The vase shattered when it hit the saltillo tile floor.

  “You should know better, dammit. You’re so filled with anger you’re half ready to explode. How the hell do you expect to make up with me in that condition?” Elorie said, tossing the embroidered shirt on the bed. “We’re not normal anymore and we can’t play those sort of lie-to-your-spouse games everyone else gets to play. Get the fuck out of here and don’t come back until you’re happy to see me!”

  Dave didn’t leave. Instead, he sat down on the floor, put his head in his hands and moaned. “I do want to apologize.”

  “Your anger ruins everything.”

  “My life makes me angry right now,” he said. “I’m trying to get past the anger.”

  “Lies like that don’t work. Not with us, not with the way we are here.”

  Dave slammed home the opening in his shields, unwilling to hear any more of Elorie’s spoken mental comments or her angry side band thoughts. “Mental shields aren’t going to help at all!” Elorie said.

  Half the time his mind felt so messed up and twisted he thought he could pull off Nessa’s left sock and right sock routine like a mature Telepath. Perhaps another day on these apologies, though, some day when he didn’t have the urge to chuck everything and go hide in a cave, writing poetry using movie and song titles.

  “I do have a concrete proposal to help us get through this, long term,” Dave said, eating his anger, working around the fight urges, absolutely positively not yelling no matter how much he wanted to. He picked roses off his shirt, ignoring the thorns. Perhaps he should have chosen some other color of rose than red.

  Perhaps he shouldn’t have ignored the thorns.

  “I can’t wait.”

  Dave sighed. “I’d like to formally make you my number two, the same way you had me be your number two after we left…”r />
  “Jesus! This isn’t at all like the Ecumenist Quest,” Elorie said. She sat down on the bed, though, and stopped towering over him. “Your offer is crass, as well as cold, condescending and pointless.”

  “The proposal isn’t pointless if I don’t make it pointless,” Dave said, bulling forward. “I’d rather have peace with you than lead this group. Ken wants to follow my nose, fine. You point my nose, then.”

  Elorie buried her head in her hands. “Do you really think Ken and Nessa will agree to this half-assed shit plan of yours? They’ll see through this in an instant and bypass me.”

  “Not if I mean what I’m offering. Not if I refuse to give any directions until after I’ve consulted with you.”

  Elorie took a deep breath and took her head out of her hands. “Fine. I accept your offer.”

  “I’m sorry to call you in like this, without any warning, but Orlando says something’s come up and I need to decide what I want, one way or another,” Bob said. The Kid God shifted his weight restlessly from foot to foot in the center of the small formal living room. Elorie sat in one luxuriously carved and embroidered chair, Dave sat in another, Orlando sat in a third, and Nessa and Ken shared the couch.

  “Decide what?” Dave said.

  “Decide what to charge you Telepaths for letting you get me involved with those Watcher things.”

  Dave frowned, but Nessa and Ken nodded. He hadn’t seen this coming. Elorie frowned at Dave. He wanted to say this wasn’t his fault. Instead, he waved his hand slightly at Elorie and sent something encouraging and non-verbal to her, to handle this if she wanted.

  “So, what’s the price going to be?” Elorie said.

  Bob grimaced. He still had a hard time talking to Elorie. “With the dolphin issue settled, Dubuque distracted by the Father Haus debates and weakened by the loss of his Supported, you and the other Telepaths need to leave and go do things again. I think the arguments you and Mom have come up with are right – there needs to be some way of humanizing the other Gods. I think it’s up to you Telepaths to do the job. Don’t tell us your exact plans, though: the fewer who know, the smaller the chance that Dubuque and his goons can find them out and ambush you.”

  Elorie glanced at Dave.

  Dave sent back.

  “We’ll do it, then,” Elorie said. “I do have a question, though. You said you found computer code in willpower.” Bob nodded; this was the basis for his computer-acting-on-willpower interface. “Is there code in telepathy, Lorenzi style magic, or the crazy Indigo stuff as well?” This was one of Dave’s bright ideas he and Elorie had talked about after they had worn out their minds and aggression with a rough sex session, and the source of Elorie’s comment about his incessant questioning of Persona.

  Bob froze for a moment. “I…I haven’t checked.”

  “You might,” Elorie said. Bob shrugged and then quickly skittered off, glad to be done with Elorie. Elorie turned to Orlando. “You have something you’re sitting on, Orlando, don’t you?”

  He nodded. “My ‘something’ can wait until after you figure out what you’re doing. I’ll leave a dormant projection here for when you’re done.”

  Something was off in Orlando’s comment, but Dave couldn’t put his finger on what. Dana wasn’t close by, and he didn’t know why.

  Nessa sent.

  he sent back. Elorie attracted Diana’s attention, then the attention of the rest of them, and led them over to the larger informal living room and to where they could sit. Elorie sat down beside Dave, protective, between him and Diana.

  She still showed battle scars from last night, as did Dave’s legs below his shorts. He wondered what Diana and Uffie thought.

  After they sat, he turned to Elorie. he sent to her.

  she sent back.

  Nessa sent, telepathically.

  Dead mental silence. Ken waved his hands in the air, which earned him a glare from Nessa and an eyeball roll.

  Elorie sent.

  Uffie said.

  Diana sent.

  Ken sent. Dave shook his head, attracting the usual ‘no head shaking in telepathy’ side comment from Nessa.

  Diana said.

  Diana’s response didn’t fit the pattern. Dave looked at Elorie, who looked back at him, similarly puzzled. Dave sent. Suddenly, something was off here, among their group.

  Nessa said.

  Elorie held Dave’s eyes. she sent, privately.

 

  Their side conversation earned them glares from both Uffie and Diana this time.

  Ken sent.

  Nessa sent.

  Ken sent.

  The sense of wrongness inside Dave continued to grow, bad enough so he fell one comment behind in the conversation and didn’t have anything constructive to say. Dave sent, privately, to Nessa. She completely ignored him, locked in tight high-density private telepathic communication with Ken. He glanced at Elorie and found panic on her face.

  Shit.

  Nessa sent. She stood. “Yoo hoo, Sir Richard of Orlando! We’ve finished planning. See yah in the funny pages!”

  Their suitcases, Ken-packed, wafted out of their bedrooms. The twins and their folded-up portacrib followed, along with the rest of the baby supplies. The twins wafted over to Nessa’s arms. Up Dave went; Elorie grabbed his hand. Ken wanted to get them out of here immediately, before the grim whatever happened. They accelerated, fast.

  Slam.

  The whole group stopped in midair, tossed akimbo and falling to the floor in front of the teeked open door to the patio and cheesy infinity pool. Two dark gray floor length cloaks and a pair of long black leather boots appeared in Dave’s eyesight, right beyond the invisible wall of whatever that had stopped them.

  Betrayer. Nobody else wore laughing skull intaglios on their boots.

  Shitfuck.

  “I accept your offer, Orlando, with one addendum,” Betrayer said. The two face-hidden cloaked w
omen with her, tall and taller, didn’t say a thing. Oh, hell, he thought. It’s Jan and Knot. They’ve switched sides! “I want experimentation rights.” Ken rolled away from where he landed next to the door, stood up, and reached out with his teek, attempting to blast Betrayer. The blast passed through her. Nessa clutched the twins to her chest as she sat on the floor, her back against an end table, defensive and snarly, and didn’t do a thing. “I have the Divine Compact contract right here and, heh heh heh, I’ll have you notice it’s not written in phony King James Bible English, like Dubuque’s sorry excuses are.”

  Orlando’s projection came alive and hustled over to Betrayer. He took the document from Betrayer’s hands.

  Nessa sent, easily distracted as usual. Nessa stood up, walked over to Orlando and tried to peer over Orlando’s shoulder at the document. Betrayer physically held Nessa and the twins back with her right arm.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Nessa said.

  “Betraying you, of course,” Betrayer said. “It’s Disney Boy’s idea. I think he thinks your group owes him one for Dave and Ken rubbing his nose in the grimy reality of modern life. I certainly can’t disagree, and I liked his idea enough to add in some stuff.” She laughed.

  Diana shrieked. “Aunt Jan, Knot, what the fuck do you two think you’re doing? I thought you came back to do good!” Pause. “Do you two need rescuing?”

  “We’re not here to be rescued. We’re here to win,” Jan said. “Now, back off.”

  Dave froze, as did Diana. Dammit, without Elorie’s help, he couldn’t fight off any of the Indigo command crap.