Downfall of the Gods (7 page)

Counterproductive, I think is the word I’m groping for.” “I see,” he said. “In other words, you’re very powerful but hopelessly badly organised.”

E
VENTUALLY WE REACHED
the point we would’ve been at if my stupid uncle hadn’t been so bloody-minded and Archias had crossed the sea by boat. I don’t think Archias and I had said two words to each other for the past six days. He made a slight detour to a village, to sell sun-dried sturgeon and buy flour and stuff. I waited for him at the crossroads. He hadn’t been gone long when a golden eagle swooped down out of the sky and perched on the finger-post.

I was mildly surprised. My uncle Gyges is usually a kestrel.

“What?” I said.

“You’re in so much trouble.”

I sighed. “Now what am I supposed to have done?”

“More what you haven’t,” uncle said. “You do know what date it is?”

“Not a clue.”

He clicked his tongue. Eagles can’t do that, but luckily nobody was watching. “Wilfully blind, more like.”

“Fine. What’s the stupid date?”

“Yesterday was the last day of the Greater Athanasia.”

“But that’s not till—” I froze. “What month is this?”

“Goosefeather.”

Nuts. I’d lost track of time, plodding through the wilderness. The Greater Athanasia, held on the last three days of Deer Rut, is a huge and extremely important festival in my honour, held at the Great Theatre in Lyconessus. Every year I have to manifest myself as a thirty-foot pillar of fire on the last day. If I don’t, apparently, there will be famine and plague, or the world will come to an end, or something like that. Anyway, an awful lot of mortals will get frightfully upset, probably start doomsday movements and religious wars, burn heretics, make a dreadful fuss generally. I’d never ever missed it, not once, ever.

“What happened?” I said. “Were there riots?”

Uncle shook his head. “No, everything went off just fine. One of the best festivals in years, they said.”

“But I wasn’t there.”

“Ah.” He pecked under his wing, then went on, “The priests have contingency plans laid on, just in case. Obviously they know you quite well. They’ve got twenty thousand gallons of rock oil in a giant cistern at the back of the Theatre, and a very ingenious syphon arrangement, works by hydraulic pressure or something like that. When it was clear you weren’t going to show, they cranked it up, set light to it and hey presto, divine renewal for another year.”

I was relieved, naturally, but also somewhat—oh, I don’t know. Disappointed? Offended in some way? I couldn’t say.

“Well then,” I said. “No harm done.”

“You’re still in big trouble. He wants to see you, now. Quick sharp. If you won’t come, I’m to drag you by your hair.”

He was perfectly capable of doing that. “Can’t. I’m busy.”

My uncle Gyges doesn’t like me very much. “I was hoping you were going to say that.”

“Yes, but I really am genuinely busy. Dad knows all about it. He approves.”

I said the last two words in the shape of a dormouse, around which the talons of a golden eagle suddenly closed inexorably. “At least let me leave a note for the human,” I squeaked, but I don’t suppose he heard me over the rushing of the wind.

D
AD WAS SEATED
on the Throne of the Sun; always a bad sign. From there, he can look out over every corner of the world, and beyond, to the stars. It gives him a sense of perspective, he says; it reminds him that he really is the epicentre of the universe, master of all he surveys, the single most important entity in existence. I perceive it as a big gold chair, tastelessly overdecorated with prancing lions and anatomically impossible cherubim.

“You’ve done it this time,” he said.

“Come off it,” I said. “I missed a festival. The priests covered for me. It’s all right.”

He shook his head slowly, his beard touching one shoulder, then the other. “Afraid not,” he said. “Really and truly, pumpkin, you’ve gone and made a terrible mess of things.”

He explained. The festival was not, as I and ninety-nine per cent of the humans attending it believed, a bit of a spectacle and a chance to let off steam. It genuinely was an act of renewal—of the fertility of the earth, the balance of the forces of nature, the covenant between gods and mortals. Yes, the priests had faked it for me, so nobody but them knew that disaster was just around the corner; war, famine, pestilence, death. But within seventy-two hours there’d be earthquakes and a tidal wave. A week after that, a disease would start wiping out livestock. Bitter rain would fall, poisoning the rivers and killing the growing crops. The temperature would rise by at least three degrees, and so would sea level. All these disasters would cause panic among the mortals, who’d start blaming each other, giving credence to weird and savage religious cults; there’d be war, leading to floods of refugees crowding into the cities of the plain; more war, more famine, more pestilence and more death. All my fault. All because I couldn’t be bothered to show up.

“But that’s stupid,” I said. “And why the hell did nobody tell me?”

“You didn’t know?”

“Of course not, or else I’d have made damn sure I was there.”

He frowned. “How could you not know?”

“Maybe because nobody saw fit to tell me?”

“Well, we assumed—” He closed his eyes, and sighed. “Wonderful. What is it about this family? Why doesn’t anybody talk to anybody else?”

He didn’t need me to tell him that. “So,” I said. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Me?” He looked genuinely surprised. “Nothing.”

“You’re just going to sit there and let thousands of humans die.”

And I didn’t need to ask. I knew the answer. It would be yes. Yes, because there wasn’t really anything he could do. Theoretically, of course; theoretically, he could restrain the winds, order Thaumastus to hold back the sea, press down the earth’s crust with his foot to stop the fissures opening, reach out his hand and pluck the plague birds out of the sky and lock them in an adamantine cage, blow a mighty breath to scatter the poison clouds—he could do all that, because to the king of the gods all things are possible. But he didn’t have to, because nobody and nothing can make him do anything, and it wasn’t his fault. And, when it comes right down to it, why should he? After all, they’re only mortals. Plenty more, in a couple of dozen generations’ time, where they came from.

“Please?” I said.

I
KNEW IT
wouldn’t be that easy.

To do him justice, he saw to all the urgent business first, the holding back and the ordering and the stamping and the plucking and the puffing. Only when he’d finished with all that and was sure everything was going to be all right did he turn to me and pull a very sad face.

“Sorry, Pumpkin,” he said.

“Dad—”

“This is going to hurt me,” he said, “ a lot more than it hurts you.”

I got as far as “In that case—”. Then he grabbed me by the ankle, swung me round his head three times and hurled me from the ramparts of heaven.

I
T TAKES THREE
days to fall. I spent them reflecting on various aspects of ethical theory.

First, I reflected (my ankle hurt where he’d squashed it in his great paw; my ankle is divine substance, therefore in theory impervious to feeling, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. Presumably he wanted it to hurt, so it did), let’s start with the Givens. The prime Given is that Might is Right. Right is, by definition, the will of the strongest, just as among humans the law is by definition the king’s will. Pretty uncontroversial stuff. Nobody in their right mind’s going to argue with that.

Except, I found myself doing so; mostly to pass the time, because three days with nothing to do except fall is
boring
. Is what the strongest wants necessarily Right? Well, of course it is.

To understand that, consider the meaning of the word Right. Doesn’t take long to figure out that it doesn’t actually mean anything. It’s not like black or left or serrated or strawberry-flavoured; it has no objective meaning. ‘Right’ is just a shorthand way of saying ‘what we think is right’. Because the strongest must always prevail, therefore, their notion of what they think is right must also always prevail. Glad we’d got that settled.

And the alternative; simply doesn’t bear thinking about. The alternative would require the existence of some absolute ideal of Right, supervening and more powerful than the strength of the strongest. Right would confront the strong over some contentious issue, and the strong would back down, tails between legs. Bullshit. Pure fantasy.

No, go back to the true definition of right; what we think is right. The key words are ‘what we think’. Which is why I’d prevailed over my father, by using the magic word ‘Please’. Short for, if it please you. If it pleases you to do what I ask, regardless of the fact that you don’t have to and nobody can make you. Also implied; if it pleases you to do this thing and thereby win my gratitude and good opinion; because, for someone like you who can have any material thing he wants just by snapping his fingers, the only thing left that you might want and not be able to get just by commanding, is the gratitude and good opinion of others. Their love.

Objection, I objected. To the gods, all things are possible, and the strongest prevails even over the strong. If he were to
command
me to love him, I’d have no choice. But of course he’d know. He’d know I didn’t really love him, it was just magic.

That, of course, is why he’d thrown me off the ramparts of heaven (this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you); and why I really didn’t want to be thrown. Physical injury was out of the question. The true horror of the ultimate divine sanction isn’t mere bodily discomfort. It’s having all the others snigger at you behind their hands for the rest of eternity, the perpetual loss of face, which never goes away and never heals. Shame is the word I’m looking for here. Honour on the one hand, shame on the other. Right is what brings you honour, wrong is what brings you shame. Which is why we bother with mortals—all right, their good opinion isn’t worth a lot, they’re only mortals, but when you’re poor, dirt-poor as the gods when it comes to things of real value (meaning things you want and can’t have for the asking), even the good opinion of mortals counts for something. Like the love of a dog. It’s only a dog, but it still counts for something.

The amusing thing is that mortals don’t understand this. They believe in monolithic, abstract, objective Right and Wrong. Asked to define these terms, sooner or later they’re forced to admit that Right is that which pleases the gods, Wrong is what pisses them off. Even the few mortals who don’t believe in us think that way, except that in their case, right is defined as that which we were taught is pleasing to the gods, back when we believed in them—the ancient pie-in-the-sky confidence trick, whereby the stronger are kidded into subjugating themselves to the weaker, in consideration of goodies, trinkets and shiny beads once they’re dead. Lord, what fools these mortals be.

So, I thought; why am I doing this? To gain the good opinion of one lousy mortal. What makes him special? He’s met me, he’s seen me in my true form, he’s been granted the ultimate transcendental vision of the Deity, and he
doesn’t like me
. This makes him special; make that unique (blessed are those who have seen and yet have not believed). Therefore, I am doing this to win the good opinion of one mortal, because it’s precious to me; because I can’t have it.

A
ND THEN THE GROUND JUMPED OUT AT ME AND HIT ME
. I
N YEARS TO
come they’d call it the Great Asteroid Crater. I climbed out of it, dusted myself off and looked round to see where I was.

Believe it or not, even though I’ve been living on and around Earth for millennia beyond counting, there are still some places I’ve never been. This was one of them. It took me a moment to get my bearings, until I saw the unmistakable profile of the Sugarloaf Mountain far away on the western horizon. That put me about dead centre of the Sparkling Desert, on parts of which rain has never fallen, and where you can fry an egg on a rock. I was about to sprout wings and get the hell out of there when I happened to look down at my feet, and saw a nugget of gold the size of my thumb.

Oh dear, I thought.

It wasn’t the only one. My impact crater had revealed a phenomenally rich seam of gold-bearing quartz; one which, in the normal course of events, would have stayed safely hidden for more or less ever. Now, though—it was only a matter of time before some wretched mortal stumbled across it; another matter of time, probably weeks, before the dreary, lethal desert all around me was covered with shacks, shanties and the headstones of fools. I quickly conjured a freak rainstorm, which turned the crater into a lake, but I knew I was kidding myself. In a few days’ time the murderous heat of my uncle Actis would evaporate the water, leaving the deadly lure once more exposed. Unintended consequences, I thought. Hundreds, probably thousands of dead miners; billions of guldens’ worth of unsupported specie, fuelling inflation, destabilising economies, collapsing markets and ruining lives. Not my fault; I had no control over where I’d landed. Just one of those things.

Or, if you happen to be a true believer; if a god falls to Earth, naturally you’d expect to find something rich and rare at ground zero. Everything the gods do, every trace they leave is wonderful and perfect; pure gold. It’s the greed and folly of men that causes all the trouble.

T
HIS RELATIVITY
-
TIME
-
DISCREPANCY THING
is a total bitch. As far as I was concerned, I’d only been away long enough to fly to heaven and fall back down from it; twenty minutes plus three days. In Lord Archias’ timescale, however—

“I’m here to see the prisoner,” I said.

The warder looked at me. “What, 5677341 Archias?” I’d taken the precaution of dressing up as a dropdead-gorgeous honey blonde, a type that seems to appeal to prison guards everywhere. “Yes, if that’s all right.”

“Why?”

“I’m his wife,” I said sweetly.

Stunned silence, of a level of profundity I can’t remember having experienced since the world was very, very young. “You’re kidding. You, married to him?”