“Danama...” Lalael breathed. “Earth must be bursting at the seams with it.”
“So we are, in fact, gods. If they believe we are. Hence the –”
“The storm when you got angry! Yes!”
“Interesting. Downsides?”
“Can we change back when they stop believing?”
“Don't see why they would. We'll be around for a long time.”
Lalael looked out the window. “...Let's go downstairs.”
“As you wish, Mr. God.”
“You're looking quite well today, Mr. God.”
“Why thank you, Mr. God – say, are you of the Hampshire Gods? They are my distant cousins.”
“Never heard of them, Mr. God.”
***
An excited shriek tore through the air. “Look! It's THEM!”
“Never mind,” Lalael said promptly. “I don't want to deal with this.”
“Too late,” said Lucien, and blocked the door. The crowd surged forward around them, everyone talking at once. It was terribly unpleasant. They were, however, intriguingly and unusually clean.
Mara fought her way through to the front. “We are your humble servants, my lords,” she said, grinning. “And this is your cat, isn't it? He's really sweet. Mine got lost when I joined up with Watson.”
“Um. Yes,” Lucien said. Antichrist jumped out of Mara's arms, sniffed approvingly at Lucien's shoe (Lucien smiled at him), gave Lalael a friendly, semi-vicious scratch to the leg (Lalael yelped and mostly dodged), and wriggled past them indoors. “That's nice of you. Thank you. Can you make them calm down? We're just here to talk. About things.”
“Certainly.” She turned and waved at the crowd. “Get back!” she bawled at them. “They don't want to be bothered right now! All requests for them get told to me or put in the suggestion box!” She pointed at one end of the porch, where a cardboard box had been tacked to the railing. “The gods are in a smiting mood today so back the hell off!” The crowd slowly dispersed. “Shall we fetch you chairs?”
“We'll just sit on the steps,” Lalael mumbled.
“Of course, Your Eminence.”
“Right.” Lalael made himself comfortable, took a deep breath, and turned to Mara, who had settled a step below him. “First of all, why are you building a temple in the middle of the front yard?”
“The congregation wanted to be near you and we needed extra shelter. It's not a temple, though, it's just a nice place to be together while some of them wait upon your generosity. We've got more people down at the winery, fixing that place up to better house people. The solstice is nearly here: Just because it's fairly temperate here doesn't mean people don't get really cold at night.” She gave the two of them some kind of Look, as if she expected them to somehow do something about it.
Lucien rubbed his forehead. “What about other buildings in the area?”
“They're a little far away. Quarter of an hour walking. We've earmarked a couple for lower-priority renovations, but the winery isn't quite at capacity.”
“You seem to be managing very well without us,” Lalael said, a little testy.
She shrugged. “Can't do anything without people, and the people aren't here for me.”
“What do you want us to do about it, then?”
“Morale. And we're still getting possessions. Not as many out here in the country, but... People know we're here, and they know you're here, and we've been getting a steady increase in membership. The new ones all talk about how they heard we were some kind of promised land. No one hungry or cold or sick, that kind of thing.”
Lalael rubbed his temples. “Well, set up some kind of med shed like Watson had. That's something we can take care of right now.”
“Sure thing, Lord Asher.”
“My name's Lalael.”
“Oh. You never said. Nice to meet you properly, then.” She got up and dusted off her pants. “Anything else you want done?”
“Clean clothes. A water source.”
“Already done. Old-time water pump at the winery,” she said. “Not a problem.”
Lalael sat bolt upright. “Bring me a bath or I will smite someone, and don't bother heating it.”
“And I want to read what's in this suggestion box, but bring enough water up for me too.”
***
Lucien sat on the floor outside the bathroom and read choice excerpts from the suggestion box aloud through the door.
“Oh, this one's cute. Dear gods I would like a pony my mommy said you might give us stuff so that's what I want. Love, Annie, age seven. Badly spelled and no punctuation throughout. Adorable. Dear gods, please get a new high priestess, because Mara's a – she is not. Clearly someone was just annoyed. That one gets thrown out. Dear gods, I told everyone I knew in town about how great it is here, so I'm praying for you to send me a new... girlfriend??” Lucien shook his head. “I'm not sure that most of people know how this works.”
“The ones who did are all gone,” Lalael called through the door.
“True. I guess the Lucienists don't have great role models for evangelism.”
“They're not Lucienists, Lucien!”
“Well, they aren't Lalaelists either!”
“They might like me more than you!”
“They might like me more than you!”
A pause, and suddenly the angel began to laugh. Water sloshed behind the door. “I can just see it in the history books... 'The same day that the gods descended from the Holy Attic, the followers divided into two warring sects.'”
“Yes. 'Those who thought the Fallen was a sexy bastard followed him and became Lucienists,'” Lucien announced. “'Everyone else became Lalaelists. Unfortunately, Lalaelism only lasted a month, due to lack of popularity.'”
“Hey!” But the giggling continued.
***
“I don't know how you were so happy about that bath,” Lucien said as he came out toweling his hair. “It was icy.”
“Oh,” said Lalael, blinking. “You didn't heat it?”
Lucien raised one eyebrow.
“Remember the kettle? I thought I'd experiment... I just went in and – well, it's like exorcisms. But harder.”
“You heated the water because you could? Just because they're funneling belief into you?”
Lalael shrugged. “I wanted to try it. Things kept happening around us without us meaning to. It's different. You have to... kind of...” He waved his hands vaguely. “Wish for it and expect it'll happen at the same time. Like juggling.”
“I'll try it...”
“It made my hair less bright.”
Lucien put his head to one side and studied it. Lalael did look a little less vibrant. More normal.
“I tested some other things,” the angel continued. “It didn't seem to work as well... Maybe I'd used too much on the bathwater.”
“What things?”
“Levitating. Conjuring.”
“Breaking the laws of physics outright, in other words, rather than... gently squeezing them.” Lucien folded the towel and hung it on the rack in the bathroom. “Anything else?”
Lalael shook his head. “You weren't in there that long. I read the rest of the box, that's all.” He held one up. “Mara made a note that she'd like us to check out the supplies they have stored at the winery, whenever we get around to coming out of the attic.”
Lucien went into the bedroom he had appropriated as his own. “Is that really our problem? We're not in charge of anything. We're just gods now. Gods don't do anything but eat and sleep and have adventures and get awkwardly pregnant by supernatural stallions.”
“Oh come on. You don't want to be that guy, do you? You know who was like that? Michael. If he wasn't on a rampage, he was lounging around whining for grapes and medicine for his migraines. No one liked it. We're going to pull our weight just like in the marina.” Lalael waved Mara's note, even though Lucien wasn't in the room to see it. “It's not hard or a big deal. She just wants us to look at stuff. At the most, she wants us to count stu
ff, but probably they'll have things pre-counted for us.”
“I'm just saying this isn't exactly what I signed up for. I didn't mean this even when this-ish was my idea.” Lucien came out of the room in a brand new set of clothes, still tagged. He plucked one off the shirt as he said, “We could go do that now, if you want.”
“Also, the more god things we're seen doing, the more baths we'll be able to heat. This is my hypothesis.” Lalael pulled himself up off the floor. “I'll just go get my coat. Put on your shoes.”
When Lalael came back out of the room, Lucien looked up from tying his laces just in time to see the angel tucking his Beretta into the back of his waistband. Lalael glanced up and accidentally caught Lucien's eye. His shoulders visibly stiffened, and the tension in the room racketed up to a stifling level.
“Ready to go?” was all Lucien said.
***
Their primary resource was, of course, wine, and they were fortunate in that the wine-making operation here, established four generations ago, had a strong family tradition and was therefore mostly low-tech. Only two of the eight family members had been taken in the End, and neither of them had been the sole bearer of any trade secrets.
But while the harbor group had been mostly concerned with surviving day to day and sustaining themselves without relying upon anyone else's resources, and Sgt. Watson's survivors had been similarly minded (except with looting crews), the followers living at the winery had been thinking practically about their futures: They were already preserving food where they could, they had laid in stocks of crop seed for the spring, and many of them were unusually skilled in preindustrial hand craft. Lucien and Lalael were not sure why this was, but suspected it might have had something to do with why the guard at the gate wore full medieval plate armor and carried a spear made of some kind of bamboo-like material.
There was everything here, mostly focused for the moment on resources that would continue producing throughout the year: Someone had brought their flock of chickens (totaling eight), someone else apparently kept two sheep on their property not far away... They had even driven fifteen cows in from miles and miles out in the country.
There was no bread, but they were rolling in butter and cheese. With a couple boxes of crackers, they could have had a wine-tasting party.
***
By the time the shelter was finished, they'd reached capacity at the winery. No one was ever sure if there would be enough food the next day, but they seemed to be just barely scraping by – there were treaties now with the harbor, trading cheese and wine for fish and seaweed, and there were squads sent foraging for fresh greens and mushrooms daily, and hunting for game when necessary. If they could last until spring, they could plant crops – that was all anyone talked about. They lacked for starch – all the storage that anyone could find had been mostly picked bare in the last two and a half months. They had some flour, but it was carefully hoarded; they had some potatoes, but they had been stored or pared into eyes for spring planting. If they could just survive for three more months...
No one, at this point, expected the power to ever come back on. Anyone hoping for salvation to come roaring in from the skies in parachuted survival kits had long since given up. This was it, and now all anyone had to do was last a few days more, and then a few days after that.
The livestock were under 24-hour watch, particularly the cattle. No one was innocent of looking at them and thinking steak.
Mara seemed to be relishing her authority. The two gods let her do mostly as she liked. She had an assistant or co-priest now, Andrew; the best that could be said about him was that he was not quite as bland as instant mashed potatoes.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lalael laid on the floor and stared at the ceiling. “What do gods DO all day?”
“Not a lot, seems to me.”
“Maybe I'll get another vision or something.” Lalael said, turning over and lying on his front. “Remember when we had exciting lives and – and went on heists and had madcap adventures and escaped by the down of our wings?”
“You want visions now?”
“I liked it better before we did this. And I miss my things. I lost my things in the fire and then more things when we left the harbor... At least I had warning for leaving Watson's.”
Lucien hesitated. “You wish you had more things?”
“Things that were mine,” Lalael corrected. He waved his hand around at the contents of their audience chamber – the converted living room. It had been redecorated with deep, thick carpets in bright colors of burgundy red like spilled wine and rubies, the deep greens of live pine needles and emeralds, velvet-night blues, and purples like amethysts and deep water. The walls were no longer beige, but hung artistically with more intensely colored sweeps of fabric. “I left my plants behind on the apartment roof, and they're dead now if they weren't burned.”
Lucien paused again and got up. A moment later, he came back into the room holding a heavy-looking cardboard box. “I was going to give you this for... for Christmas, since it's coming up, but maybe that was a silly idea, and I guess you can just have it now because – because I want you to be happy,” Lucien's tone shifted into something clearly rehearsed, “And I know what I said when we were out in the woods, and – this is a stupid speech. Just... Open it, and I'm sorry about before, and that's all I was planning on saying whenever I gave it to you.”
He set it down on the rug next to Lalael, who sat up and pulled it towards him.
He opened the flaps and stared inside.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh. Ekite shkenval e zhevesh ke asheliminu, these are mine?” It was a box of guns. Lalael looked up from it, eyes shining with awe and glee.
Lucien nodded, shrugging. “Just because I don't like them doesn't mean... Well. Never mind, there they are. Now you have things. There's sixteen of them, all different kinds, and ammo and there's a guy with a blunderbuss he'll loan you, and he wouldn't let me buy it off him for anything, and a chemist who knows how to make gunpowder, and I was going to give you a book but then I thought, that's lame compared to a box of – those. They were very expensive, so just go... be the best at them or something.” Lucien stopped talking for a fraction of a second and then added, “I think Mara's calling, so I'm going to go see what she wants before she beats the door down,” and never mind that Mara had never done such a thing.
Lalael really, really wanted a wave of demons to attack. He wondered how many of the guns he could carry on his person at once and promptly hauled the box up to his room to find out.
***
There was a vague sense of vertigo a few weeks later when their congregation had swelled still further and they still hadn't quite run out of food yet. Lucien wasn't sure quite how this happened. Just in case, he kept juggling wishes and expectations: A wish in his head for it to continue and the expectation that it would do so without him worrying about it too much. Just in case. He had no idea if it worked like that.
“Lalael, I have the new census information and the minutes from the last priests' meeting, if you care to take a look,” Mara said, entering what the Followers called the 'sanctuary' and what the gods called their 'office'. “Also, I've scheduled the seamstresses to come in to tailor the ceremonial robes for you--”
“No. Waste of resources,” Lucien said promptly, as he said every time she brought it up.
“Morale is a resource.”
“Morale doesn't keep anyone warm in the winter, but fabric does. No. The decorations in here are ridiculous enough. You know, you could've had the rugs used as insulation in the new housing.”
“Just put the tablets over here,” Lalael said absently. He set down the sheaf of papers he'd been reading and rubbed his eyes. “Lucien, get up and stop lounging on things. Why don't you ever help with this?”
“Because neither of us,” Lucien said petulantly, “likes the decisions I make. No one does.”
“I'm glad we all agree on that, my lord,” said Mara. “I'll tell the seamstresse
s noon tomorrow –”
“No,” the gods said in unison.
“How many new ones, Mara?” asked Lalael, pulling the weekly census towards him and perusing it.
“Twelve this week, my lord,” answered Andrew, scuttling into the room.
The angel shrugged. “Not bad.”
“How are the visions, lord?”
“Haven't had any since we got into this,” Lalael said darkly, tossing aside the list.
“I'm sorry, lord.”
“No matter. Let's see what things these priests want now.” He pulled the stack of wax tablets toward him and began looking through them. It wasn't worth wasting paper on trivial temporary notes like these; any decisions they approved of would later be copied down if important, or more likely memorized.
“Really throwing themselves into it, aren't they?” Lucien grumbled from his place on the floor.
“Oh my... um. Oh my me.”
“Now isn't that the most egotistical thing I've heard all week,” came Lucien's voice from somewhere around Lalael's ankle. He'd lounged all the way down to the floor. “You could have said 'Oh my Lucien' or something. Sounds better.”
“No, it doesn't have the right ring.” Lalael leaned over the arm of his chair and looked down at him. “Oh my Antichrist?”
“No no, that's not right either. Oh My Us?”
“Um. Lords?”
Lalael sat up again and attended. “Right, let's see then. Haven't decided on an actual name yet, don't see why that's relevant right now –”
“Lucienism: Obviously the best option. I mean, try saying Lalaelianity three times fast.”
Lalael rolled his eyes hard. “They're overdoing the business meeting orderliness, but at least they have something to do besides have fistfights. Wait, what's this? Lucien, did you –?”
Lucien sat up and looked at the tablet Lalael handed him. “Oh for heaven's sake, where are they going to get the virgins to sacrifice to us? Why are these people priests?”
“Because the useful people are too busy doing useful things to bother,” Mara said.
Lalael rolled his eyes again. “Just tell them to stop all this foolishness about sorting out technical details of idiotic things and focus instead on keeping people alive.”
In the End Page 15
