by Tom Holt
‘My son,’ said the woman.
‘Name?’
The woman thought for a moment. ‘Mine or his?’ she asked.
‘Let’s start with yours, shall we?’ said the sergeant.
‘Derry,’ said the woman. ‘Phyllis Eva.’
‘Right,’ said a voice from the cloud of heat, ‘let’s all get our fingers out and clear up this mess, shall we?’
The other gods took his words as a sign that they could sit down now, and all began talking at once. Jupiter banged the altar in front of him with the butt end of his thunderbolt and cleared his throat with a sound like the Alps falling onto a drumskin.
‘First,’ - the word resounded in the utter silence ‘first,’ - said Jupiter, rather less loudly this time, ‘let’s find out who saw him last.’
Apollo stood up nervously, holding an envelope between shaking fingers. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve been trying to reconstruct his movements, and so far as I can make out, his driver took him up to the Witch’s hut. There he collected the Sword of . . . of . . .’ Apollo looked down at his notes. ‘Glycerion, used it to slay the Erymanthian, er, Hydra, and then went to make the Judgment of Jason.’ He paused self-consciously.
‘And?’ said Jupiter. ‘Presumably he then followed the Road of Virtue. What next?’
‘Actually,’ mumbled Apollo, ‘he didn’t.’
Jupiter frowned, his eyebrows like mating rain-forests. ‘Didn’t he?’
‘Strictly speaking, no,’ said Apollo. ‘Not as such.’
‘You mean he followed the Road of Luxury?’ Jupiter enquired. The Old Fool was keeping his temper remarkably well in the circumstances, the other gods felt, but they couldn’t help noticing that it had started raining quite heavily down below on the Earth. ‘This is something to do with this new Free Will crap everyone’s always on about, I suppose. Still . . .’
‘Actually,’ Apollo interrupted, ‘he followed the Road Marked Diversion . . .’
‘Sorry?’
‘Diversion,’ Apollo whispered.
There was a very long silence; so deep that the gods could hear the rain lashing down on Earth, millions of miles away. Good, Demeter said to herself, for the crops.
‘Diversion,’ said Jupiter quietly. ‘I see.’
‘It was my go, you see,’ Apollo went on, ‘and there was a ten-point Killer Scorpion left over from the Wanderings of Odysseus in a cave just round the corner, and I thought, since he was there it’d be no trouble if he just . . .’
‘You diverted him?’
‘More or less, yes, I suppose you could say that, really, though it was more a sort of short-cut, because it should have brought him out by the Thessalian Centaurs if only he’d followed the little yellow markers like he was supposed to, and the scorpion has been getting up the noses of the locals for ages now and it really did seem like a good idea at the . . .’ Apollo’s jaw gradually stopped moving and he swallowed hard, smiled and speculated as to where he would be likely to land.
‘And that,’ Jupiter said, ‘was the last anyone saw of him?’
Apollo nodded, rather more times than was necessary. Uncharacteristically, Jupiter managed to keep his feelings under control, admittedly only by blowing the stars known to astronomers as Orion’s Belt into a million pieces.
‘Ah well,’ he growled, ‘we all make mistakes, don’t we? And it wasn’t as if you did it on purpose, or could be expected to know what’d be likely to happen. I mean,’ he added savagely, ‘it’s not as if you’re bloody well omniscient, is it?’
‘No, er . . .’
‘The main thing,’ Jupiter went on, ‘is to keep calm, and not go doing anything silly’ - and as he spoke, a jagged fork of lightning crashed into a nuclear power station in the Urals - ‘which we all might regret later. It’s all too easy, in circumstances like these’ - a long-dormant volcano in the Andaman Islands let out a horrifying burp that was felt in Melbourne - ‘to go all to pieces and make matters very much worse, but if we all try and keep absolutely . . . WHAT THE HELL DID YOU THINK YOU WERE PLAYING AT, YOU DICKHEAD?
Out in the silence of deep space, the enormous masses of flaming matter released by the explosion in the constellation of Orion were suddenly drawn together as by an unseen hand to form new stars, thereby preserving the equilibrium of the cosmos and forming a new star-pattern known to future generations of astronomers as Orion’s Braces. A junior nuclear technician was declared a Hero of the Soviet Union for having the foresight to nail an improvised lightning conductor to the side of his generator, and as the seismic ripples in the Indian Ocean subsided, the major powers issued simultaneous denials and postponed all nuclear tests for a week. It even stopped raining.
‘OF ALL THE . . .’ Jupiter checked himself, closed his eyes and counted up to forty million. ‘Do you realise, you stupid little git, what you’ve done?’
Apollo shook his head.
‘Then,’ the Thunderer went on, ‘perhaps it’s time you had a little geography lesson. Starting,’ he added, ‘with a field trip.’
Observers at the new European Observatory in Switzerland later swore blind that a very large meteorite landed heavily in the Caucasus Mountains. However, it all happened so fast that nobody else saw it, and it was later put down to a bit of fluff getting on the lens of the telescope.
‘Can you hear me down there?’ Jupiter said.
Apollo picked himself up out of his crater, dusted himself off and said ‘Yes.’
‘You are now,’ Jupiter went on, ‘in the Caucasus Mountains, not far from the scene of the Choice of Jason. You have, in fact, been Diverted.’ Jupiter chuckled. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘just over there’ - forked lightning helpfully indicated the direction - ‘is where a Certain Very Bad Person is chained to a rock. Now do you see what I’m getting at?’
Apollo nodded.
‘Good,’ said Jupiter. ‘Now do you see what a silly billy you’ve been?’
The ex-God of the Sun said Yes, he saw perfectly and it went without saying that he’d never do anything so idiotic ever again and it was typical of Jupiter to take such a reasonable view of the whole episode and would it be too much trouble to send Aesculapius the Healer down when it was quite convenient because he thought that he’d clumsily managed to break his leg.
Jupiter sighed. ‘That’s all right, then,’ he said. ‘Go and fetch him, somebody. And fill in that hole,’ he added, scowling at the crater. ‘Mortals tend to notice things like that these days.’
Shortly afterwards, Apollo was restored to the Council of Heaven, smelling strongly of liniment but otherwise intact. Jupiter moved on to the next stage in the debate.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘where were we? Oh yes, Jason. Well, we now know where he went, but we still don’t know where he got to. Mercury!’
There was a sudden rush of air, and Mercury, messenger of the gods, was standing among them. On his feet were winged sandals, in his left hand the caduceus which is his badge of office, in his right hand three large, flat cardboard boxes.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘a Deep-pan Seafood Special, extra tuna, a Pepperoni Feast with . . . Oh.’
There was an awkward silence, broken only by the tapping of Jupiter’s jackhammer fingers on the arm of his throne.
‘Now look, Merc,’ he said, not unkindly, ‘sure, times are hard, but moonlighting . . . no. Get rid of it, all right?’
Mercury nodded passively, and the boxes vanished. Oddly enough, the pizzas did get delivered in the end, but in a totally different dimension and without the garlic bread.
‘Now,’ said Jupiter. ‘I want you to go to Earth, find Jason, come straight back. Do you think you can remember that, or shall I burn it onto the back of your brain for you?’
Mercury smiled thinly. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘I’ll manage.’
‘You sure?’ Jupiter asked. ‘It’d be no trouble.’
‘Sure,’ said Mercury. Paranoia, perhaps; but he had this feeling that Jupiter had never quite forgiven him for trying to get the other gods
to form a union. ‘I’ll be right back,’ he said.
A few minutes later, he was sitting cross-legged on a mountaintop in the Caucasus.
‘Here you are,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You did say hold the onions, didn’t you?’
Prometheus, his mouth full, nodded. ‘How’s business?’ he asked.
Mercury shrugged. ‘Could be worse,’ he said. ‘It’s not that there isn’t a demand; it’s the damned overheads. You seen a Hero about here lately?’
Prometheus frowned and spat out an olive-stone. ‘Hero?’
‘Yeah.’ Mercury scratched his ear. ‘Six nine, maybe six ten, serious muscles, chin like a snowplough, very bad attitude towards large carnivores. Ring any bells?’
Prometheus thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘maybe I’m not the person to ask. Try the eagle.’
‘Oh yes,’ Mercury said, ‘where is the eagle today? Last time I saw it, it was coming out of a Burger King. You not feeding it properly or something?’
‘Something like that,’ Prometheus said. ‘We had a quarrel. I said to it, “Look, just get off my back, okay?” and it took offence.’
‘Sensitive creatures, eagles.’
‘Very. Still, we’ve made it up since. In fact, we’re having lunch again soon. On me.’
‘Glad to hear it. Look,’ said Mercury, ‘love to stay, got to go. if you see that hero, just give me a shout, right?’
‘Will do.’ Prometheus stirred a little. ‘Oh, Merc, one last thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘Can I have my book back? Only I’ve just got to the bit where Perry Mason’s noticed the missing cake-tin, and . . .’
Mercury, patron god of thieves, grinned apologetically. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘force of habit. Cheers.’
Mercury departed, and Prometheus, having counted, lifted his head and whistled. From a cave in the nearest mountain, the eagle emerged.
‘Sometimes,’ it said, ‘life can be a real bitch, can’t it?’
Prometheus grinned. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘I reckon it’s a good sign. We’ve got them rattled.’
The eagle raised the area of its head-feathers most closely approximating to the human eyebrow. ‘Trouble with rattling gods,’ it remarked, ‘they tend to get nasty. Might take it out on you. And I’ve got to watch my diet. The quack keeps saying, eat more green vegetables. Last thing I need is having to stuff myself with kidneys as well as . . .’
Prometheus wiggled his ears reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Quite soon they’ll have other things on their minds, believe you me. Anyway, I suppose we’d better let them find him, or else they’ll do something to someone else and we can’t have that. What did you do with him, by the way?’
The eagle grinned. ‘I left him at Baisbekian’s Diner,’ it replied, ‘eating honey cakes. Shall I fetch him?’
‘Better had,’ said Prometheus. ‘Oh, and Eagle . . .’
The eagle stopped in mid-launch and beat the air with its huge wings for a moment. ‘Yes?’ it said.
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ said the Eagle, blushing under its feathers, and soared away.
Mercury, meanwhile, had completed a lightning-fast survey of the Caucasus and was starting to worry; so preoccupied was he, in fact, that he flew over the Kislovodsk People’s Bank without lifting so much as a kopeck. If he returned to the sun without finding the mortal, he was going to be in trouble; and with his record, that might not be pleasant.
Just when he had almost given up hope, a blinding flash of blue light caught his eye. He looked down and saw the sunlight sparkling on the Sword of Damn It’s On The Tip Of My Tongue, Begins With G. He dived.
Outside Baisbekian’s Diner, Jason was pulling his seventh plate of honey cakes towards him and lifting his fork when he became aware of a very old woman leading a donkey across the town’s dusty square. He noticed the glitter of gold5 under the hem of her long black skirt, sighed, and put the spoon down. ‘Over here,’ he called.
Mercury tied the donkey to a tree and hobbled over. ‘These look good,’ he said, and ate one.
‘I see,’ Jason observed. ‘You come all the way from the sun to help me eat my dinner. That’s service.’
Mercury scowled. ‘Leave it, all right?’ he said through a mouthful of baklava. ‘Things have been very tense round our way because of you, very tense indeed. Where have you been, anyway?’
Jason shrugged. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘eating. You ask the waiter.’
‘But why here?’
‘I was hungry. I fancied eating Caucasian for a change. You can get bored with pizza.’
Mercury gave him a look. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘ You’re supposed to be out there mutilating centaurs, but instead you’re having lunch. That’s great, really.’
‘Right,’ Jason replied dangerously, ‘glad you approve. Because today I’ve flown halfway across the world in a freezing cold Hercules air freighter with no buffet facilities, been shot down by surface-to-air missiles but not fed, chased by crack Soviet mountain troops who didn’t offer me so much as a KitKat, told my destiny by a witch who had nothing in her larder except dried newts’ tongues, attacked by an inedible giant lizard, and flirted with by two allegorical women on diets. I am now having breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. All right?’
Mercury shrugged. ‘All that starch and carbohydrate is doing the most appalling things to your body, you realise. You keep it up, in five years you’re going to have arteries like an underground railway.’
‘Suits me.’
‘Great.’ Mercury shook his head sadly and liberated another slice of honey cake. ‘Meanwhile,’ he said, ‘there’s centaurs out there getting impatient.’
‘Someone should try giving them something to eat,’ Jason replied. ‘Then perhaps they’d go away and stop bothering people. And give me back my magic sword before I brain you with it.’
Mercury sighed. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s not as if it gives me any pleasure, either. I’ve got this lock-up garage, right, absolutely stuffed with non-stick frying pans, car radios, synthetic fur coats . . . You couldn’t give half of it away.’ He smiled. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I can see you’re busy, so I’ll leave you to it. I’ll buzz your driver, OK? I expect he’s wondering where you’ve got to.’
‘What I need,’ Jason said, ‘is one of those bleeper things, you know, radio pagers. When you see George, tell him to put some bread rolls in the toolbox.’
The old woman got up painfully, stretched her stiff back, surreptitiously pocketed a spoon and retrieved her donkey. A few seconds later, a small electric wagon rumbled into the empty village square and the hungry stranger got up, left some money on the table, and climbed into the cart. The village blacksmith paused, a glowing red horseshoe, gripped in his pincers, and turned to his apprentice.
‘You saw that?’ he said. ‘That’s tourism, that is.’
The apprentice grinned, and the smith chucked the horseshoe into a bucket of water, where it fizzed angrily. Soon afterwards, the smith had smelted some more ore and was beating out a wrought-iron magazine-rack with ‘A Present From Bolshoy Kavkaz’ worked into it in flowing Cyrillic characters. Thirty years later, he managed to sell it for two roubles to the manager of the local farmers’ cooperative, who needed something to keep his delivery notes in.
‘Jason,’ Mrs. Derry said. Sergeant Smith looked up.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘I know that name from somewhere, don’t I?’
Mrs. Derry looked down at her shoes. ‘If it’s about the tiger,’ she said, ‘we told the man, we’ll pay for a new one. That’s no problem . . .’
Sergeant Smith gave her a startled look, and then thought better of it. ‘Isn’t he the one who’s out in the Carwardine Islands?’ he asked. ‘You know, the war hero?’
‘What?’ said Mrs. Derry. ‘Oh yes, that’s right, that’s Jason.’
‘Charged a machine-gun nest or something, didn’t he? Won the war and all that.’
�
�Yes,’ sighed Mrs. Derry, ‘that’s our Jason.’
‘Oh.’ Sergeant Smith bit his lip, drawing blood from sheer force of habit. ‘I see. Well, actually, Mrs. Derry . . .’
‘Yes?’ she said hopefully. ‘He didn’t write, you see. He always writes, and I was worried . . .’
The sergeant’s face became grave. ‘Actually, Mrs. Derry,’ he said, and hesitated. ‘Didn’t you hear the radio this morning, then?’
‘No. Was there something . . .?’
‘Mrs. Derry,’ said the sergeant, ‘I have to tell you that the plane he was on, coming home like, it sort of strayed over Soviet air space and got - well, shot down. Sort of.’
Mrs. Derry said nothing. The sergeant swallowed. How do you tell people?
‘There wasn’t anybody killed,’ he said, ‘like, no bodies or anything. Except, you see, they couldn’t find your Jason. I mean, it was definite he was on the ’plane but when the rescue party got there and they called the roll he, well, wasn’t there. If you follow me.’
‘Wasn’t there?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Oh,’ said Mrs. Derry, ‘that’s all right then, I expect his Dad fetched him home. You had me going there for a moment, you really did.’
‘His Dad . . .?’
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should ring the Defence people,’ she added, ‘in case they’re worried or anything. Well, thanks ever so much, sorry to have bothered you.’ She smiled and turned to go.
‘I . . .’ Sergeant Smith started to say something. It would have been tremendously helpful; about how it’s no good lying to yourself, you have to face the fact that he’s not coming home, I know, I know it’s bloody hard, Mrs. Derry, but sooner or later you’ll just have to come to terms with it, we all do, believe me, but that’s the only way you’re going to be able to pick up the pieces and start again . . .
Mrs. Derry turned back and smiled. ‘Was there something? ’ she said.
‘Mind how you go,’ said Sergeant Smith.
Megathoon, alias Crazy Horse, President of the Larissan Chapter of the Original Thessalian Centaurs, looked up and snarled.
