99 Gods: War

by Randall Farmer

  “She’s not Jewish,” Dave said. “She just looks that way. We didn’t fall into each other’s eyes. We both know violins and we’re both Perlman fans. We were just sharing the excitement of the party.” She had been stunning, though. They had hit it off…

  “Uh huh,” Steve said. “I had to do something to defend Tiff’s honor. Wrapping my arm around Dave’s neck, and hinting broadly he and I were lovers, did the trick right well.”

  It had; it also stuck in Dave’s memory as one of the top ten most humiliating experiences of his life. Actually, the humiliating part came afterwards as he tried to apologize for Steve’s behavior while haltingly explaining his recent marriage. He hadn’t danced the blithering blunderbuss so badly since he left High School.

  Marty cleared his throat, loudly. “Anyway. My official recommendation is that you and Tiff need to find something new to share.”

  “I’ve sort of figured that out myself,” Dave said. “Not that my health or Tiff’s schedule leaves us with many options.”

  Marty snorted. “So, next nosy counseling question…are you familiar with our needle exchange program?”

  “Huh?” Dave said. He paused and replayed Marty’s last nonsense sentence in his head. “Wait a second. What sort of counselor were you, anyway?”

  “Drug dependency, not marriage,” Marty said, with a shrug. Dave tossed a pillow at him and lay back down. “They’re both the same sort of thing, you know.”

  14. (Atlanta)

  They landed in Akron and found the God of the same name ensconced in a strip center storefront, directing some of her people on its set-up. She turned and looked at Atlanta and Dana as they landed.

  “Well,” Akron said. “You fly faster than I thought possible; I hadn’t expected you for hours. Why don’t we fly to my house, where it’s more comfortable?”

  They flew with Akron, this time slowly and across town. Akron lived in a mildly oversized tract house in a distant Akron suburb. “I got it after my divorce,” Akron said, after they landed. “The kids are at school.”

  “You have children?” Dana said, and put her hand over her face. “I’m sorry, Akron. I believe your children are in grave danger.”

  “From what?”

  “From some of the other 99 Gods,” Atlanta said.

  Akron raised her eyebrows. She dressed all business-like, in ordinary black slacks and gray jacket. Her muted divinity didn’t conflict in the slightest with her short and thin domesticity. “Such as, say, Atlanta?”

  Atlanta sighed. No, she couldn’t keep her doings secret from the other Gods. “Not unless your children are murderous thugs,” she said.

  Akron shook her head in disbelief. “So, why’d you want to talk to me?” She sat them down in her living room and offered them coke and snacks. Atlanta dodged a half dozen Matchbox cars, complete with a half-assembled race track, and a Polly Pocket Playhouse, to find a seat in a plush chair by the window.

  Atlanta went through the presentation, the whole list of problems: the activities of the Seven Suits, the problem of worshippers and whether to trust mortals, and the possible plots of the Angelic Host. Afterwards, Akron drummed her fingers on the table beside her. “I’m arranging for worshippers, but I understand fully what you’re talking about with the danger. Only I’d seen it as ‘this far, but no farther’. I don’t want anyone confusing me with Yahweh.” Oh, right, Akron was Jewish, Atlanta remembered. “On the other hand I do want those worshippers. We need a better word, because what I want is what you termed celebrity worship. The cable time slot’s already booked.”

  “Huh?” Atlanta said. Dana giggled and Atlanta shot her a dirty look.

  “You know, to spread the word. Sell the little charms and potions I’m making. Teach people how to get along better. Mass media.”

  “You’re going to sell things?” Atlanta said.

  Akron nodded. “If you just create hundred dollar bills, you’ll mess up the economy and cause runaway inflation. If you give things away, it’s wrong, and messes up our economic system the same way. Most of the money coming in, above the overhead of my operation, I’m donating to charity. Until I need the cash for something real, that is.”

  Another giggle from Dana. “I see,” Atlanta said, glowering at the similarity of Akron’s analysis and Dana’s. “Eventually, some unscrupulous God is going to come by, kidnap your children, and trade an Integrity hit for the power gain of having a God as a flunky. You need to take precautions.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Akron’s face darkened, as did the sky outside her house.

  Atlanta shook her head. “I’d never do such a thing. I live by my Integrity. That’s the reason why I’m here warning you.”

  “So, what, you’re the goddess of evil with a heart of gold?” Akron said.

  “I’m not evil,” Atlanta said, tired of the tedious judgments everyone wanted to make. “I’m effective.”

  “I can smell the blood from here.”

  “You think you can defend yourself?”

  “From other Gods?” Dana said.

  Thunder rumbled outside. Akron didn’t answer.

  Atlanta sighed. No, she wouldn’t want to be the one who threatened Akron’s children. “Going on to other topics, Akron…have you noticed any problems with being a God?”

  Akron relaxed. “Yes. I’m frankly tired of Gods stopping by to try and convert me to their cause. I don’t want your causes or your political problems, and I especially don’t want to get involved with whatever game you’ve got going with the Suits. I just want to stay here by myself and do my own thing.” She wiggled her fingers and four plates of quartered sandwiches, chips, salsa and soft drinks wafted their way out of her kitchen and over to the coffee table.

  “What other Gods stopped by?” Dana said.

  Akron cleared her throat. “Dubuque and Lawyer.”

  “So we’ve got one of the Practical Gods sticking his nose in?” Atlanta said. “I know Dubuque’s out to save the world from itself, the same as Portland. What’s Lawyer’s game?”

  “He thinks we need a new political system. Lunatic,” Akron said.

  “He’s right. The one we have was designed by people using quill pens in an age where news moved at the speed of sailing ships and nearly everyone lived and worked on a farm. It’s about as relevant to our daily lives as Roman numerals.”

  “Well, leave me out,” Akron said.

  “Okay,” Atlanta said. Cable television shows? Disgusting.

  Atlanta shook Worcester’s dainty hand, still a bit surprised the older-looking God had been willing to meet with her. “Come on in,” Worcester said. “Come on in.”

  ‘In’ was a brownstone in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston. Atlanta heard sawing and pounding in the background, took a peek, and realized Worcester had a crew remodeling her flat. Expanding it, actually, if Atlanta guessed correctly. Worcester had claimed a large section of the entire building and chased out the other owners and tenants.

  “Have a seat,” Worcester said. “Would you like some tea?” She spoke like an old Bostonian. She appeared to be in her late 40s.

  Both Atlanta and Dana accepted Worcester’s offer. “So, what can I do for you today?”

  “You’re messing with our minds, aren’t you?” Dana said. And heeeere we go again, Atlanta thought. Perhaps miraculous duct tape would work…

  “Enforced civility my dear, one of the few luxuries in the area I allow myself.”

  Atlanta didn’t really want to know. Visiting other Territorials had turned out to be an extended lesson in humility. She foresaw hours of work ahead of her, just to catch up with the other Gods. “What I’m here to talk about are the activities of the Seven Suits, the problem of worshippers, and several other more minor issues,” Atlanta said, and gave the rest of her presentation.

  “Well,” Worcester said, after Atlanta finished. She sipped her tea, birdlike. “I can’t say much about your problems. I haven’t had any, and I’m not looking to start them.” She segued in
to local Boston politics for quite a few minutes. “I must say, I have another appointment due any minute now.” She stood. “It’s been nice meeting the both of you.”

  And they were gone.

  In the air, after Worcester had seen them off, Dana shook her head. “Well, that was a waste.”

  “Not so,” Atlanta said. “We learned she’s a mind manipulator, she doesn’t have a visible organization, she doesn’t understand how to defend herself as a God beyond her mind games, and she’s cautious and smart.”

  “Uh, Atlanta?”

  “Yes, Dana?”

  “You know, everyone’s cautious around you.”

  “Right. They’re just all suffering from FTA.”

  “Huh?”

  “Failure to adapt.”

  They dropped like a bomb toward Montreal – the city – and toward whatever place Montreal the God lived. Atlanta’s thoughts still fixated on Miami, though part of her stayed attentive to her senses, overwhelmed in the wonder of being a God yet again. She had always liked to fly, and being a God had only made the flying better.

  According to the rumor blogs she didn’t wholly trust, Miami had shut down his territory’s drug trade the same way she had gone after the career criminals in her territory. Like her, he did so without explicit publicity, but he had mentioned his actions to an inquisitive reporter a few days after she and Dana visited him. He had a different game going than she did. A dangerous game Atlanta didn’t like one bit.

  The hackles on Atlanta’s neck rose, alerting her to pay attention. She scanned around her with one of her mental tracks and found the source of her subconscious distress, a yacht on the St. Laurence River. A recent corpse. A man actively being tortured. The stench of vile evil.

  Something she couldn’t ignore.

  “Change of plans,” she said to Dana. She yawed right, pitched down and accelerated toward the boat. Dana’s face turned green.

  A hundred feet above the boat, well into some high-G deceleration, a young woman’s voice boomed in Atlanta’s head.

  The voice had to be Montreal.

  Atlanta had never contemplated such a trick before. she attempted to send back, by matching the willpower associated with the mental message.

  It worked.

  Tedious.

 

  From the tone of Montreal’s mental voice, Atlanta had already exasperated the God. They hadn’t even met yet.

  Very tedious.

  “Remember your shields,” Atlanta said to Dana. Dana nodded and put up the bullet-proof shields Atlanta had insisted she learn. “Kill them if they attack, knock out the ones who don’t.”

  “I’m not killing anybody,” Dana said, with a hiss. “Remember?”

  Atlanta sighed. As they landed, she dropped their invisibility. Without thinking the nearest men on the boat opened up at them with their AKs. Atlanta strode forward and shredded them both with her knife, spraying their insides across several yards of deck. Dana didn’t let the other men approach. Instead, she stunned everyone on the yacht before Atlanta could exact any more punishment, with a range weapon she didn’t know Dana had.

  She had to get herself one of those! Dammit, it pissed her off for one of her own to show her up so trivially.

  After stunning everyone, Dana ran off toward the torture victim. Peeved, Atlanta scanned around until she found the yacht’s captain. She woke him up and made him talk.

  “They’re Kazaks on business,” the captain said. “I’m not the owner of the June Fee” the name of the boat “I was just hired to operate it.” He feared the Kazaks. Atlanta dropped him back unconscious.

  She stalked down into the yacht’s interior and found Dana healing the torture victim. The leader of the Kazaks lay on the floor, unconscious, at Dana’s feet. Atlanta took a moment to make sure the torture victim didn’t deserve the torture, and found he didn’t. She dragged the leader of the thugs up to the deck and forced him conscious.

  “Who’s your boss?” Atlanta said. “Where is he?”

  She got a name and a location, a city by the name of Karaganda.

  The thug had tortured and murdered before, a without-a-doubt career killer. She tossed him, impaling him on the yacht’s radar dish, where he slowly died, twitching, moaning and leaking various foul body fluids. She then searched until she found a junior thug in the galley she wouldn’t have to kill. She brought him up. “Tell your boss his men died from the justice of the God Atlanta. You will never set foot on North America again, nor your compatriots, and you will forget the mining executive you tortured ever existed.”

  Montreal sent, distaste in her mental voice.

 

  Atlanta waited until Dana finished healing the torture victim, her ire passing, replaced by the usual admiration for her chief of staff.

  Montreal’s rowhouse, in the middle of a short block of similar upscale rowhouses of hers, stank of sex. Her people, of which there were many, scattered like leaves before a wind as Atlanta searched in vain for a clean place to sit.

  “You’re a virgin,” Montreal said to Dana, with a smile. Montreal spoke with a gruff Quebecker French accent and looked all of nineteen. She was a well-rounded young woman, approaching plump, with dirty blonde hair worn to just above her shoulders. She exuded motherly comfort. “That I can fix.”

  “I’m not interest…” Dana’s voice tailed off as Montreal stroked her shoulders. “Please. Don’t.” Montreal came up behind Dana and gathered Dana in her arms.

  “You want the pleasure,” Montreal said. “You hunger for it. You even know this. But the lack of the pleasure is twisting you.”

  Dana’s eyes flickered to Atlanta. “Please? Help?”

  Atlanta smiled and didn’t intervene in Montreal’s payback of sorts for what Atlanta had done to the thugs. Fair. Atlanta didn’t see any problem with Montreal’s response. The God had a point. Dana could use some good sex.

  “You prefer men. I can be a man,” Montreal said, her voice now a man’s voice. Amused, Atlanta swept some well-used sexual paraphernalia off a kitchen chair and sat down. She hadn’t found any place cleaner. The vibes of Montreal’s lair hummed with scarcely hidden nervous pleasure, tempting her into indulgences she didn’t think proper for a God.

  Atlanta pushed a baggie of pot and two empty wine bottles from in front of her with her feet, and listened with half an ear as Montreal harassed Dana. Montreal’s visible age matched her real age, but classifying Montreal as a softie would be a serious mistake. She had shields and protections around her as good as Portland’s. She had a real mind in there as well.

  A door slammed with a flare of power. Atlanta looked up and noticed Dana had fled. Montreal shrugged and put up a form of barrier Atlanta had never seen before on the room, preventing entry and cutting off Atlanta’s godly senses. Dana’s too, now that she had fled. “She’s cute,” Montreal said, a voice that often came with lip-licking. “Repressed but cute.” Montreal carefully looked Atlanta over. “You could use some, too.”

  “I’m no fucking virgin.”

  “You haven’t had any, though, since d’Apotheosis.”

  “Lack of time,” Atlanta said. “Nor am I sure if it would be fair if I seduced a mortal lover.”

  “You’re into Integrity, then?” Montreal said. “So that’s how you’re balancing your evil.”

  “I’m not evil, dammit.”

  “Nobody ever thinks they’re evil. That’s for others to judge.”

  Atlanta tapped her foot on the floor. “Fine. Whatever. I’m here to warn you of some potential problems and find out if you’ve had any problems as a God.” She gave her presentation.


  Montreal sat down in the chair beside Atlanta, conspiratorially close. Her close presence comforted Atlanta. “You didn’t have to warn me of this,” Montreal said. “Why are you doing so?”

  “I’m looking for allies. Can’t you sense it? There’s trouble coming,” Atlanta said. “The Seven Suits are already a big problem and Miami is on the way to becoming a worshipper addict. We Territorials need to stick together, or we’re going to get run over and marginalized.”

  Montreal shrugged. “You’re taking this all too seriously.”

  “How else should I take it?”

  “You’re a hard case,” Montreal said, and shook her head. “Loosen up. We may be immortal, if you can believe the Angelic Host, but they made damned sure we knew we weren’t invulnerable. We can be killed, for instance by sticking our noses into the business of the other powers-that-be, some of whom have supernatural powers as potent as ours. However, for now, Atlanta, you’re alive. Enjoy yourself some. Give pleasure to others. What greater good could there be?”

  “How about keeping the bad guys and the misguided fools from wrecking everything?” Atlanta said. “Or keeping our own illusions and ignorance from destroying ourselves? What are you going to do about your worshippers?”

  Montreal shrugged and grabbed the baggie of pot from the floor by Atlanta’s feet. “The Suits? Well, the economy had better run itself, because I don’t know squat about economics.” This appeared to be universal among the Territorial Gods, which Atlanta suspected was an intentional choice of the Host. “I’m not sure I would be any help, even if I wanted. On the subject of worship, well, there aren’t many who worship me as a Goddess. I think I’ll hunt them down and get so intimate with them they’ll think of me as a person. The rest? Well, hell, you said celebrity worship wasn’t a problem. I’ll let them be.”

  Atlanta inhaled deeply the brothel smells and thought. “Stopping worshippers by getting intimate with them? That’s a new idea, and I think it’ll work.” Dana came to mind; she had become so intimate with the affairs of the Gods that she didn’t have an ounce of worship left in her. Atlanta studied Montreal closely, despite appearances not a dumb bimbo, not even close. Montreal studied back.