99 Gods: War

by Randall Farmer

  Just the sort of brainless-booby tactic John hoped to use against the 99, someday.

  “This doesn’t improve my trust of these Telepaths,” Atlanta said, flickering a look at Dana as she responded to John. “You’re saying that when it’s in their best interest to betray us, they will?”

  “Perhaps that’s what I’m saying,” John said. Although amusing as a mental exercise, he didn’t want to set Atlanta against the Telepaths, not after the behind-the-scenes work he had done to defuse the potential conflicts between them. “I look at the problem differently, as a form or a test of enhanced rationality, as do Nessa and Ken. I’m not sure about their newer recruits, but with Nessa and Ken teaching them, I’m sure they’ll eventually understand the conundrum the same way as well. Making agreements and holding to them is a rational thing to do, and they won’t lie to themselves about the consequences or lack of consequences of betraying their agreements.”

  Atlanta shook her head. “I find this difficult to believe. Nessa’s the most whack non-institutionalized person I’ve ever met, and I’ve met some real winners over the years. I can’t understand how you consider her rational and sane.”

  John smiled. “She’s not sane from a normal person’s viewpoint. She’s sane from a Telepath’s viewpoint. The difference is supremely important. They’re not perfect automatons, don’t make that mistake. They’re as human and flawed as the rest of us. However, realism and rationality are much more important to a Telepath than they are for us. Their very lives depend on being realists.”

  “I’m not sure you should be putting the Gods into the ‘us’ category, John,” Singularity said. “As I’ve pointed out to you several times, the price of our enhanced power over reality comes with lessened free will. I certainly don’t fully understand the ramifications of this, but I’ve met Gods who don’t possess even the slightest interest in realism and rationality.”

  John nodded, as did Atlanta. Dana frowned, unhappy.

  “There’s an interesting corollary to your comment on hatred and Telepaths,” Singularity said, pushing on. John expected Singularity to opine that his own mission required realism and rationality, but he didn’t. Perhaps Singularity thought it self-evident. “When we give in to hatred to cover our weaknesses and imperfections, we hold up as a guidepost for our thoughts the opposite. Strength and perfection, a vision of purity and power, a vision of perfect humanity. Perfected humanity. When we hate, we hate anyone who stands between us and this perfect vision. Who does this sound like to you?”

  “Dubuque,” Dana said. John nodded, and covered a shiver. Atlanta nodded, without the shiver. Singularity had hit the nail on the head. “Anyone who stands in the way of Dubuque’s faith-based City of God is fair game to be hated, judged inhuman and discarded,” John said. “Satan’s pawns, in his eyes.”

  “Which is why we must work together, as much as we can, to defend ourselves from being discarded,” Singularity said. He and Dana exchanged smiles.

  “I don’t believe being Nessa’s body double is going to be healthy for you in the long run, Celebrity,” John said. He had cornered Ken and the two Nessas on a couch by the ambrosia bar.

  “Diplomatic as always,” one of the Nessa’s said.

  “Definitely not a charm school graduate,” the other one said.

  John sighed. They had gotten good enough to make it impossible for him to tell them apart. If there was any way to talk them out of their game, he had to find the argument. “Surely you understand the danger?”

  “It’s more than a danger,” the Nessa on the left said.

  “It’s an opportunity,” the Nessa on the right said, finishing the other one’s sentence for her.

  “You’re playing games with me.”

  “We’re practicing,” both of the Nessas said, in unison.

  He knew of only one answer to their comments. John ate one of the tiny quarter-sandwiches Boise had conjured up and took a large swig of ambrosia.

  Ken sat between the two Nessas, a goofy grin on his face, similarly chugging ambrosia. Seven empty mugs littered the faux floor in front of him. When he needed another, he telekinesed a full mug over to him. The divine restorative had at least removed the pallor of death from his dark skinned face. “You must admit the body double trick fits Nessa’s personality,” Ken said. “There’s always been more of her than can be contained in one body.”

  The Nessas laughed.

  “You don’t fear being submerged in Nessa’s mind permanently?” John said, to whichever one of them was Celebrity. He pulled over a high-backed cushioned chair from the unoccupied conversation cluster behind him, and sat.

  Left Nessa shook her head. “If I was that sort of person, Celebrity wouldn’t have made this offer,” right Nessa said.

  “What about this messing up your marriage?”

  “Well, it’s either the best wet dream I’ve ever had,” Ken said. “Or the worst nightmare. I don’t know which, yet. At least the two of them made one concession. I get to call the shots.”

  “Wouldn’t be fair…”

  “…otherwise.”

  John shivered. It was one thing to talk about the fact that the mature Telepaths weren’t insane by their own standards and another to face the evidence in person. If he had been in Ken’s position, he would still be running. “I saw Inventor giving you pointers on your experimentation. How does the one body trick work, anyway? Or was it an illusion?”

  The two Nessa’s stood, held hands, and flowed into each other until they became one. John couldn’t repress a shiver. “What do you think, oh great magician?” the now single Nessa said.

  “I must admit this appears to my magical senses, such as they are, that the two of you overlap in space,” John said. “My mind, though, refuses to make sense of it.”

  “Remember when I showed you what Gods are made of?” Nessa said. Celebrity’s lesson, though, not Nessa’s. “Our internal pieces are so much smaller than atoms, and atoms are so much empty space, that my own substance can slip through atoms without any trouble. Which, of course, points out a talent I didn’t realize I had: I can walk through walls and other substances, a trick I don’t think any of the Territorials can ever match.”

  “How about the opposite?” John said. “Can you form your substance into a barrier capable of protecting you?”

  Nessa’s eyes widened. “You mean to avoid being vaporized or a way to protect my – Nessa’s – flesh?”

  “Both.”

  “Huh.” Nessa closed her eyes. She shimmered. “This is going to take practice, but I think the answer is yes. Perhaps I can be useful in a combat situation after all.”

  “Good,” John said. “Practice, when you have time.” He was about to go into the details of an appropriate practice regimen when a rang in his mind. John, wary, shut up.

  The two Nessas separated.

  “Don’t you worry about this merging trick affecting your pregnancy?” John said. He hoped this was a safer comment.

  Left Nessa shrugged. “Why should that be any different than my worries about my brain?”

  “Hormones.”

  Left Nessa snorted. “Compared to the fear hormones about brain damage, the Telepath’s worst nightmare?”

  “I get the point,” John said. “Can you flip back to being not-Nessa, Celebrity?”

  Flash. Celebrity, who had been right Nessa, at least after their merging, became the shape she had been wearing while working with John. “These changes are actually easier, now. I’ve picked up something from Nessa, some sort of added mental discipline,” Celebrity said. The thought of any of the Gods picking up lessons from Nessa made John’s stomach clench in terror, but he hid his reaction. “You know something? Nessa’s correct. When I’m Nessa, I’m pregnant.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” John said. “What sort of thing would that produce?”

  “Thing?” Celebrity shook her head. “You’re right. I’m not gestating a human baby. Babies. I wonder if I can produce
little baby Gods?”

  “You’re way too cavalier about this,” John said. Had Celebrity found a way to get back at her angelic creators she so loudly distrusted? John didn’t think such a payback worth the risk. “Nor do I understand how this works.”

  “Does it matter? Why sneer at miracles?” Celebrity said. “Besides, everyone loves babies.”

  “You’ve caught Nessa’s fey attitude about reality, Celebrity,” John said. “What you’re doing isn’t without cost.”

  “Your arrogance is showing again, John,” Celebrity said, her tone of voice and body language radically different. “Mental laziness. The so-called Angelic Host made me a divine actress. Taking on someone else’s viewpoint as a role is second nature to me. So too is taking on their physical reality. My Mission requires me to master this.”

  John readied a cutting comment, but kept the comment safe in his mind when he realized who Celebrity played now.

  Him.

  “You’ve convinced me,” John said. Celebrity flashed back into Nessa. “I do have one question, though. What was going on when Inventor convinced you to be three, not two?”

  “He wanted to see how many of us we could be,” Nessa said. “We stopped with three. You’ll like this, John.” She stood and merged with Celebrity, and then separated into three Nessas. Ken rolled his eyes and chugged ambrosia.

  “Okay, there’s three of you. I assume two of you are Celebrity and one is a flesh and blood Nessa?”

  “You assume wrong, you arrogant pustule,” the middle Nessa said. “You’d think a magician could learn to think allegorically. Instead, you’re trying to make physical sense out of real magic. You need to free your mind from its petty constraints, or some God’s going to turn you into their bootman.”

  John took a step back and took a deep breath. “If I remember the asperity and advanced vocabulary, you’re Nessa’s right sock, aren’t you? We haven’t had the dubious pleasure of speaking since the Blind Tom episode, may he rot in hell if he ever decides to die. Welcome back.”

  “I didn’t go anywhere,” the middle Nessa said. “At least you haven’t grown senile.”

  “Thank you for your kind words,” John said, and turned to the right Nessa. “I understand why you stopped at three.” Left sock, the obvious number four, would likely try to kill him again. He didn’t know what the darker and more emotional aspect of Nessa might do to the others at the meeting, but it wouldn’t be pretty. He turned back to the middle Nessa. “You should go back to being a personality fragment, though. This isn’t healthy.”

  “I’m not a personality fragment,” middle Nessa said. “Or a separate personality or anything of the sort. You know quite well that I don’t suffer from MPD.”

  “Then what are you?”

  “I just utilize a separate paradigm for interfacing with the world.”

  “It’s the part of me who wants to be more self-important and exacting,” left Nessa said. “Rather successful, too.”

  “It’s a left brain right brain thing,” right Nessa said. “I’ll bet, if we wanted to play around for a few weeks, we could come up with a method by which everyone could listen to their left and right brains. You want to volunteer for the experiment, John?”

  “No thanks,” John said. He shivered and backed off.

  “We lost,” Alt said. He paced, back and forth in front of a wide-eyed Dr. Horton, Boise, Dana and a now extremely quiet and observationally-oriented Singularity. Nicole, one of the Telepaths’ later recruits, sat at Dana’s side. Of all the wounded Telepaths, Nicole had come out the worst. She huddled under a blanket, a tiny figure in the corner of an oversized couch, and greeted the world with a glassy eyed stare. “We lost so bad that I can’t even call the fight a contest. If you hadn’t shown up, Boise, the last two assassins would have been able to finish us off in a few more minutes.”

  “I’m not sure I see the problem,” John said.

  “What?” Alt said. He seemed to have picked up Nessa’s over-emotionalism today, and as with Nessa normally, his emotions flew from one extreme to the other, the only constancy being loudness. “Oh, I get it. You don’t care that one of your allied groups is worth shit.”

  John shook his head and walked over to sit in the vacant chair next to Nicole. She shied away from him. To John’s surprise, the chair underneath him began to give him a back massage. He leaned back and relaxed.

  “I’m positive that one or more of your group will figure a way around the mental protections Worcester put on those assassins without too much difficulty,” John said. “I don’t see this as being a long term problem.”

  “Nonsense. You were right when you said the Gods have tremendous room for improvement and we…”

  “That was easier than I thought,” Nicole said, interrupting Alt. “Oh, and your mental protections aren’t very good, either, Mr. Lorenzi.”

  “Call me John,” John said. He really needed to take the time to upgrade his mental protections. This had become ridiculous; worse, he couldn’t ever remember a group of Mystics that included multiple Telepaths able to read him. The possibilities, good and bad, made his stomach churn. “You just penetrated the surviving assassins’ mental protections, didn’t you, Nicole?”

  “Yes,” Nicole said. She preened.

  “Damn,” Alt said. “I guess I owe you an apology, Mr. Lorenzi.”

  “You might as well call me John,” John said. “I’ve found, over the years, that formality around Telepaths is a waste of time.” He had thought that with his magic available to him for the first time, he would finally be able to keep Telepaths out of his mind. His assumption turned out to be incorrect.

  “Still, why do you think we’re at all useful to you? All the Gods need to do is come up with something new and we’re hosed. I mean, if they’d sent a dozen assassins in two vehicles, we’d be dead. If Nessa, Mary and I hadn’t been out walking, we’d be dead. The attack was too close for comfort.”

  “You need to trust yourself more,” Nicole said, brightening up. “Something inside you knew the attack was coming, Alt. That was why you were outside with Nessa.”

  “Then why didn’t I just warn everyone?” Alt said, loud and angry.

  Bingo. “Relax. You’re asking too much of yourself, and feeling guilty without cause,” John said. “None of you died in the attack, and your group learned many important lessons. You, for one, need to be better in tune with your own mental capabilities. Your hunches are important.”

  “I know that,” Alt said. His face flushed. “I haven’t been doing this for years, like the rest of you.” Nicole shrunk back in her corner of the couch. “I didn’t mean to bark at you, Nicole.”

  “We’re counting on you to get better,” Nicole said. “I’ve heard Nessa and Ken talking about how John thinks they don’t have much growth potential. John was only talking about them, not the rest of us. It’s been less than two weeks since Nessa cleaned out the trash in my mind, just a little while longer for you. We’re the ones who need to improve, because we do have the room to improve.”

  “Exactly,” John said.

  “What’s your opinion of the actions of the Seven Suits?” John said, to Boise. Boise’s projection stood near the wall, watching over his creation. Atlanta flickered over to them in an instant, likely primed to pick up anything dealing with those conspirators.

  “They don’t appreciate mortals with any sort of power, abnormal or otherwise. In addition, they’re building their own power base in the world of finance, and acting as enablers to certain powerful Territorial Gods, including Dubuque, Verona and Guangzhou,” Boise said.

  “Guangzhou? He’s joined up with Verona and Dubuque?”

  “Highly unlikely,” Atlanta said. “Guangzhou is extremely wary of Western philosophies and religions.”

  “Correct,” Boise said. “I think he’s working on starting up his own faction. Only time will tell if anything comes of it.”

  “Then the Suits are calling the shots?” John said.

  �
��They profess an extremely disdainful attitude toward the Territorial Gods, and they’ve made the mistake of thinking they can buy us,” Atlanta said. “However, Gods are more difficult to buy than corporations, even us Territorial ones. In that regard, we’re even worse than the slimiest of politicians. The requirements of our Missions make us far more apt to change sides at the slightest provocation.”

  John licked his lips. “I’m surprised you’re willing to admit such a thing.”

  Atlanta smiled hungrily at him. “Take it as a warning on all fronts,” she said, and wandered off.

  “We’re still going to need to do something about the Suits someday,” John said. It would be nice to get his stolen bank and brokerage accounts back. With the price of gold tanking, likely due to the activities of the other Gods, he was well on his way back to being a pauper. “I don’t know what, though.”

  “I don’t know either,” Boise said, scratching himself. “I’m afraid it may already be too late for us Territorials to do anything about them. That, I fear, is the strength of the Ideological Gods.” He paused. “I’ve got one for you, Mr. Lorenzi, and it pertains to the issue of the Seven Suits. A goodly number, if not all, of the Territorial Gods taught as mortals. Even Atlanta, who as a Marine officer spent much of her time teaching chopper pilots. I suspect the Angelic Host chose us specifically for our teaching experience. None of us are well suited to oppose the Seven Suits. We don’t possess the right backgrounds.”

  John shook his head, unhappy to hear this likely correct bit of analysis.

  The Nessas called them all together. John continued to sit and let his chair massage his back, so Ken telekinetically picked him up and moved him and his chair over near the two Nessas. John refused to let anything annoy him right now; all of his recruits and all of the Telepaths had gotten serious for once. He recognized Nessa and Ken’s training in their Telepaths; they all wore the narrow eyed ‘lies are evil’ masks on their faces, some more than others. The Telepaths’ two bodyguards were properly deferential in this situation, but in the fight, he had caught the woman thug successfully barking orders at the Telepaths. He would have liked to witness the male thug in action, but the man had been wounded and out of the fight by the time John arrived. The Mindbound turned out to be all he had hoped for when he gave them a once-over with his spy eyes: hardnosed, argumentative and properly difficult to control.