Ye Gods!

by Tom Holt

  The mortal frowned, puzzled. ‘What’s a door?’ he asked.

  Prometheus asked himself to give him strength. ‘No,’ he said, ‘listen. When is a door not a door?’

  The mortal shook his head. ‘Dunno,’ he replied. ‘Maybe if I knew what a door was in the . . .’

  ‘When,’ Prometheus howled desperately, ‘it’s ajar!’

  The mortal was about to wield the axe when something strange, something that had never happened before, started to take place inside him. It was, he remembered later, a bit like a cough, except it seemed to start in the pit of the stomach, float up into your brain, slosh around for a moment and then come out of your mouth.

  For the first time in the history of the human race, a mortal laughed.

  Prometheus sagged exhausted against the wall of the cave while the mortal staggered about, his sides heaving with laughter. The rest of the tribe came sprinting up and stood staring at him in disbelief.

  ‘That’s a good one, that is,’ said the mortal, wiping the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘When it’s a jar,’ he repeated, and dissolved into a fresh torrent of hysterical laughter.

  ‘Well,’ said Prometheus, ‘it’s not that good. There’s this other one about a chicken . . .’

  The mortal ignored him and turned to the rest of the tribe. ‘Here,’ he spluttered, ‘you lot, listen to this. When is a door not a door?’

  The tribe looked at each other. ‘What’s a . . .?’ one of them started to say.

  ‘When it’s a JAR!’ roared the mortal, and quickly stuffed his hand in his mouth. There was a deadly silence.

  ‘You’ve been chewing those funny leaves again,’ said the mortal’s wife at last. ‘I told you, didn’t I, they give you those turns . . .’ Then, simultaneously, something clicked in the tribal consciousness. They all started to laugh. No studio audience ever found anything quite so funny.

  ‘Well,’ said Prometheus, backing away, ‘I can see you’ve all got the hang of that quite nicely, so I’d better be getting back. Don’t bother to see me out . . .’ And that, of course, is why Prometheus was stripped of his divinity, hounded off Olympus, chained to a rock and condemned to everlasting punishment by his fellow gods, for the one crime that they could never forgive. But by then it was too late; the harm had been done. Even the Great Flood was powerless to eradicate the effects of Prometheus’s treachery from the Earth; for when the waters finally rolled back, a small pun was found clinging to the side of Mount Ararat, and eventually became the ancestor of all the Polish jokes in the history of the world. At last, after aeons of enslavement and repression, Mankind had found a weapon with which to fight the gods. A mere thousand or so years later, in fact, the gods gave the whole thing up as a bad job, as we have already heard, and retreated to the sun; where the few indigenous life-forms, if asked what’s black and white and red all over, will simply look at you and ask if you’re feeling all right.

  Actually, as you will have guessed, this triumph of Man over the gods was inevitable, ever since the Third Primordial, Thing, had made up his mind to get his own back on his uppity nephews. You will have worked out, without any assistance from the narrative staff, exactly what Thing was the God of and what it was that he inserted into each of the Words when Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto weren’t looking.

  What you may not have realised, however, is that deep down inside them, the gods still haven’t given up the fight. Oh no. Not quite. Not yet.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Jason scrambled up the last few feet, regained his balance, and looked about him.

  He wasn’t certain whether or not he was enjoying this.

  Up to a point, he said to himself, yes, fine. The belting large predators, charging machine-guns, beheading fabulous monsters, OK. The thinking, no. Nature had, after all, designed him as a superb natural fighting machine equipping him with shoulders like boulders, arms like tree-trunks, sinews like ships’ cables and thews (whatever they might be) of a similar high quality. He could lift articulated lorries, leap over crevasses, climb skyscrapers and shoot the eyebrows off a gnat at five hundred yards with anything from an assault rifle to a bow and arrow improvised from a TV aerial and a rubber band.

  These accomplishments tended to give him a rather straightforward, positive view of life; any lip off you, he said to the world, and you’d better watch out. Or rather he didn’t. You’d expect him to, of course; his father (the shiny one with the thunderbolts, not the one who grew dahlias) undoubtedly did. He didn’t. He tended to see the world as a rather endearing mistake that someone would be bound to put right sooner or later. It fascinated him. He rather liked it. The urge to kick seven kinds of shit out of it on the rare occasions when it offered him any hesitant resistance didn’t come easily to him.

  He liked flowers, too.

  Large predators, machine-guns and fabulous monsters had better look out when he was anywhere in the neighbourhood because he didn’t hold with them; that was simple enough. They were big enough to look after themselves, they annoyed people and they had it coming. And insofar as Heroism consisted of putting that sort of thing in its place, he was definitely in favour of it, particularly as against, say, accountancy, as a vocation.

  The problems were rather more subtle, but Jason wasn’t one of those Heroes who define subtlety as not walking off the edges of high buildings. What worried him most of all was the feeling that somehow or other he wasn’t in control. Not that he had any particular wish to control anything that wasn’t organically attached to him; if someone were to offer him a throne, he would probably decline on the grounds that they didn’t agree with him. But he did feel that it would be rather nice to be in control of his own body, actions and - above all - thoughts. And he had this nasty feeling that he wasn’t.

  Someone, somewhere, somehow was taking advantage of him to get things done which ought not to be done; and if only he were in full possession of the facts, he wouldn’t have any part of it. It was as if there was this little voice in the back of his head which sometimes asked him, as he was washing off the blood or scoring another notch on the gun-stock, whether that had really felt right. If it did, said the voice, that’s just great, I’m very happy for you. If not . . .

  The voice had this really aggravating habit of rounding off its remarks with three dots, and Jason was inclined to regard that as something of a cop-out. To which the voice replied that if that was how he felt, that was fine, really it was, but . . . Sometimes, Jason considered, the little voice got right up his nose. However . . .

  Jason’s brow furrowed, and he looked around for the Centaurs. No Centaurs. Funny. The Dream had implied that good, thoroughbred Centaurs were getting a bit scarce these days, and anybody who had any pretensions to being constellation material would be a fool to turn down the chance of kicking the shit out of the ten hand-picked guaranteed genuine specimens who would just happen to be passing through the Caucasus later on this afternoon. Chance of a lifetime. Go for it.

  Perhaps, Jason said to himself, they saw me coming and ran for it. That, he knew, would be the sensible course, and the mortal part of him told him that if he was a Thessalian Centaur and got word that a semi-divine headbanger was in the area and would be along as soon as he’d finished lopping the head off an Erymanthian Hydra, he’d be off out of it as fast as his hooves could carry him. But Centaurs, of course, aren’t like that. Probably explains why they’re getting so rare.

  Unless . . .

  Not you again, said Jason to the back of his head. Look, either finish the bloody sentence or shut up, will you? Not for the first time, he felt that the back of his head was becoming a pain in the neck.

  Perhaps, Jason said to himself, I’m lost. But if I were lost, there’d be George with the golf buggy; and George was nowhere to be seen. So I can’t be lost; therefore I must be here. Funny.

  Jason looked round once more, but he could see nothing except mountains, and from what he could remember of his Theory lessons, there weren’t any merit points t
o be gained by getting heavy with the geography. He scratched his head, sat down on a rock and waited for something to happen.

  He was hungry.

  It had been a long time since he’d had that apple, and there was nothing more edible than a small oak-tree for as far as he could see. That puzzled him, too. Food, like transport, is generally laid on for Heroes by the Management - when was the last time you saw a Hero breaking off in mid-pursuit for a quarter-pounder and a chocolate shake? - and Jason had come to take it for granted. Actually, the food was pretty terrible but Jason’s mother had been one of those women who think boiled potatoes are the staff of life and so he didn’t know any better. Army catering had come as a pleasant surprise to him.

  Time passed. The sun - when Apollo called it a day the contract for solar services had been put out to tender, and a consortium of Australian entrepreneurs had made the winning bid - rolled slowly across the sky. A mild breeze ruffled Jason’s hair, reminding him that he’d left his hat behind when he’d parachuted out of the doomed Hercules. He was still hungry. If anything, hungrier.

  He stood up, filled his lungs with air, and shouted.

  ‘George!’ he called. ‘Where’s my dinner?’

  Nothing. Not so much as a fruit pastille. Jason’s monumental jaw set in a firm line, and he gripped the Sword of Whatever-it-was with grim determination. Then he remembered something and drew a small, crumpled card from the top pocket of his battledress.

  PIZZA TO GO, it read. WE DELIVER - ANYTIME, ANYWHERE.

  That solved that, then. All he needed now was a callbox.

  Jason stopped, swore and threw the Sword of Thingy on the ground. He had had enough. It was just as well for the Thessalian Centaurs that they were nowhere in sight, or they’d have been lunch.

  After four hours of searching, Jason had failed to find a single phone booth in the Caucasus mountains. Well, there had been one; but it only took Phonecards.

  Nor had he found any food. The few stringy tufts of grass that clung to the rock were inedible, the leather of his boots was stale and the stones were off. He was starving.

  Pretty soon, he thought, I’m going to start seeing things. My brain will start playing tricks on me, and I’ll have visions of huge cheeseburgers.

  I said, he repeated to himself, I’ll have visions of huge cheeseburgers.

  Cheeseburgers . . .?

  Ah, so you’re still there, are you? Yes, cheeseburgers with a large fries, banana shake and an apple fritter. Chop chop. Now.

  Jason listened hard, but all he could hear was the distant sound of three dots laughing. He gave up, retrieved the sword, and plodded on towards the far summit of the mountain.

  Then, from nowhere, a huge eagle appeared. It hung in the air just long enough for Jason to see the paper bag and styrofoam cup clutched in its talons, then launched itself into a thermal and whirled away before he had time to pick up a stone and let fly. He stood motionless and watched it recede, until it was barely discernible among the rocky crags.

  Then it started to grow larger. It was circling. It was coming back.

  Jason muttered under his breath, grabbed an aerodynamic stone and started to run. The force of windpressure had probably turned the chips stone cold by now, but that didn’t seem to matter.

  The eagle seemed to sense that it was almost in range, for it wheeled sharply, lifted and soared away. A single chip spilled out of the bag and floated, sycamore-seed like and mocking, down to the ground. Jason ate it. Then he sprinted away after the eagle.

  Just when he’d given up all hope, the eagle turned a third time. This time, it dived. It came at Jason like a Rapier missile, low and exceedingly fast. He raised the stone and let fly, but his senses were weak from hunger and he missed, albeit by a fraction of an inch. As the eagle swept past him, Jason fancied that it gave him a filthy look. He ignored it and stooped for another stone, but too late. The eagle had gone again, this time for good.

  ‘Hell!’ Jason said. Then he licked his thumb, just in case there had been some vinegar on the chip.

  And then it was back again; this time, hanging absolutely still in the air, just out of range, watching him coldly from round yellow eyes. It’s waiting for me to give up, Jason thought. Bugger that. He lurched to his feet, wavered for a moment as his weary knees protested, and launched himself at the eagle.

  The eagle waited for a moment, then changed position ever so slightly. A chip wafted down, and Jason sprang on it like a tiger.

  Then the eagle moved again. Another chip descended. Then another movement, and another chip. Jason realised that he was being led, step by step, chip by agonisingly weary chip, towards the summit of the tallest mountain.

  He didn’t care. He didn’t care that his body was no longer his own, that he was being manipulated by a large bird, just so long as there was salt and vinegar on the manipulations. The eagle seemed to sense its triumph, for a small slice of tomato and a sliver of lettuce drifted out of the sky and settled on the grey stone.

  Jason did a quick calculation and worked out that at this rate he’d be in Istanbul before he got a square meal. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was the next chip. He gave in.

  Then the eagle fluttered down, pitched beside him and dropped the paper bag and the milk shake onto the ground.

  ‘Have a nice day,’ said the eagle.

  The explanation is as follows.

  Every choice, every seemingly irrevocable act - the white shirt rather than the blue one, Jane rather than Paula, dying and so on - is not an end but a beginning. The alternative is not sealed off; instead, reality is bifurcated and forks off at that particular point. At the critical moment, what was formerly one world becomes two, one a carbon copy of the other. In the one world, marmalade is spread on the slice of toast; in the other, honey.

  Thus, although there is only one planet Earth, and it is the only one in the galaxy capable of sustaining life, there are innumerable Earths each with its own subtle variations. The variations are not, of course, infinite, as there have been a finite number of event horizons calling a new Earth into existence. There are, however, an awful lot of them, and to a greater or lesser extent, depending on how things work out, each Earth has all of us on it. Thus there is somewhere - or was, at any rate - an Earth on which there are still dinosaurs, an Earth on which Napoleon captured Moscow, an Earth where all the videos are Betamax.

  There are, however, such things as the Laws of Possibility; and it is also universally acknowledged that everything in the world has an effect, direct or indirect, on everything else. On what we might call the Betamax worlds, therefore, the lesser or incorrect choice generally sets in motion a chain of causalities which eventually results in the Laws being infringed and the entire world slowly fading away into a tiny point of light, which then goes out.

  Only one of the Betamax worlds has yet to fade away completely, and this is because some extremely powerful forces are being exerted to keep it in existence. This is the world on which Prometheus, on that fateful night, tried telling the caveman the one about the Englishman, the Pole and the Corcyraean, thereby completely failing to communicate the divine spark of humour to the human race.

  Of course, the gods aren’t consciously keeping it going, because they know that this would be impossible. Any interference by the gods in the alternative-world process is strictly forbidden by the Laws - in particular, Section 45 (a) (ii) of the Possibility Act and Schedule 8, Article 57 of the Monkeying About With Time (Prohibition) Act, as amended - and the only thing the gods can truly be said to be afraid of is the Possibility Police; who, it is well known, have an innate bias against anyone who regularly flies without wings and walks on water, and have been waiting for a chance to catch the gods out of line ever since the Primeval Dawn. Subconsciously, however, the gods find it impossible to sever the final link between themselves and their counterparts in what they cannot help feeling were the Good Old Days; and some of them, who understand about such things, have recently taken to messing a
bout with the thin dividing line between the conscious and the subconscious. They realise that, as things stand, it can only be a matter of time before affairs on the Betamax world get so completely out of synch that they will have to let go, and therefore if there is ever to be a chance of going back, undoing Prometheus’s betrayal and snatching the Joke back from the human race, something will have to be done fairly quickly.

  The eagle dropped the last chip, wheeled in a dizzying spiral, and dived. As Jason lunged forward and caught the descending chip, he saw that the eagle had pitched on something, folded its wings and was sitting there, looking at him sideways.

  The thing looked remarkably like a telephone booth.

  Forgetting that he’d just had a quarter-pounder with cheese, large fries and a banana shake (albeit by instalments) Jason summed up his last remaining dregs of strength, hauled open the door and fell inside.

  He lifted the receiver to his ear. Against all his expectations, he heard the familiar bored-cat noise and searched in his pocket for some change. He had some. It fitted in the slot. He dialled the number on the crumpled card, and waited.

  ‘Hello,’ said a voice, ‘this is Pizza To Go. Sorry there’s no-one here to take your call right now, but if you’d like to leave a message after the tone . . .’

  Jason got no further than ‘thoughtless, stupid bastards’ before the pips went, taking with them his last coin. He slumped against the booth wall and replaced the receiver feebly.

  Then the phone rang.

  Odd, the way one can never resist the summons of a telephone ringing. There is, in fact, a reason for this. Purely by chance, the telephone engineers have chosen for the dialling tone the exact notes of the Last Summons, by which the Judges of the Dead will call up the souls of the departed to the final tribunal. Of course, the Last Summons will be considerably louder, since the dead are notoriously hard of hearing. However, some ghosts are sharper-eared than others, and the ringing of the telephone occasionally attracts them from the Asphodel Plains. This accounts for the phenomenon known to students of the paranormal as the Crossed Line.