Little Gods (24 page)

Bogatryev laughed. “I don't need anything. I bought this moon for a studio because I wanted to be left alone."

“Surely you still seek models,” Lucifer said. “Especially those that might challenge you."

“You think you'll constitute a challenge? All right. Take off your robe and let's see."

Lucifer let the robe fall away. His wings opened, and his luminescence filled the room with harsh brightness. Bogatryev squinted, then picked up a piece of cobalt glass from his worktable. He put it over his left eye, then grunted again, more appreciatively this time. “Come back in a week, I'll have something to show you.” He returned to his task.

Lucifer's wings drooped. He considered burning Bogatryev to a cinder for daring such a dismissal, but his fury passed. The artist had agreed to do the portrait, and nothing else mattered. Long ago God had forbidden Lucifer the sight of his own reflection, as punishment for his original vanity. If Bogatryev created an accurate portrait, Lucifer could look upon himself again. He left his robe on the floor and stepped out of the studio, then sideways through space to Dis, his palace.

“It's just a glare,” Lucifer said. “Just a pillar of fire!"

Bogatryev nodded, arms crossed over his thin chest. “Put these on.” He handed Lucifer a pair of glasses, smoked almost to opacity. Lucifer put them on, scowling.

He looked, and after a moment sighed, the sound of a dying man's last breath, bringing release from pain. A perfect angelic shape rotated inside the cylinder of light, visible now that the dark glasses had cut the glare. Fairer than all the angels in heaven ... “Is it an accurate representation?” Lucifer asked.

“It's not a bad likeness,” Bogatryev said. “You can take it with you."

“How can I repay you?” Lucifer said, unwilling to take his eyes from the slowly turning angel.

Bogatryev didn't answer for a moment. Then, thoughtfully, he said “Tell your friends. I appreciated this challenge. I'm willing to take commissions from special clientele."

When the demon-king Puzuzzu came, Bogatryev fashioned a machine of bear-traps, pincers, and saws. “It captures your essence,” the artist explained, and Puzuzzu gibbered happily from his thousand mouths.

Not to be outdone by his fellow archfiend, Beelzebub came in his most fearsome shape. Bogatryev spent the best part of a year cloning genetic specimens, hybridizing, and rebuilding skeletal structures with nanomachines. In the end he presented Beelzebub with a creature part rhino, part kraken, part mantis, and part allosaur. It shambled on nine legs and slobbered over Bogatryev with affection.

Beelzebub, repulsed by the mindless creature that so perfectly matched his favorite form, declined to take possession. Bogatryev killed the animal with a painless injection, then stuffed and mounted it. He put it outside the dome to scare away trespassers.

Word of Bogatryev's infernal portraits spread across the pantheons. Alien gods came to him haughtily and left proclaiming his genius. Stroud, the carrion god worshipped by the scavenger peoples of Eblis, left with a twice-life-size sculpture of himself made of rotting, worm-riddled meat. Bogatryev released holographic projections of his work to the public, and critics hailed them as his most brilliant work yet. He did not tell anyone the pieces had been commissioned, and ignored all offers from wealthy collectors to buy his originals.

Then, abruptly, Bogatryev withdrew, turning away all divine and infernal commissions. Lucifer, who had become something of a friend, visited him. Seeing Bogatryev slumped at his work table, Lucifer once again marveled at human frailty. Bogatryev wheezed, a pallid caricature of himself. “I'm dying,” he said, stick-thin elbows planted on the table.

“Would you rather stay alive?” Lucifer had to ask. Humans had odd notions about dying, sometimes.

Bogatryev laughed, but it turned into a coughing spasm. “Very much, but I didn't think that was your area. I thought you worked in the receiving department."

Lucifer put a glowing finger to his lips. “I can't do anything for you personally, but I know the right people."

Leaning on his bench, Bogatryev nodded. “I'd appreciate anything you can do."

“Man,” the voice said. Bogatryev shivered from more than his fever. The voice summoned images of dust and airless spaces, of the pause between breaths. It had nothing to do with birth or regeneration, only cessation. The voice of final entropy, Bogatryev thought.

The artist lifted his head from the bench, but saw nothing except a shimmer in the air beside him, like hot air rising from a vent. “I hear,” he said, his voice a creaking whisper, his lungs clenched in his chest.

“You will make my portrait,” the voice said, “and you will live."

“I have to see you. Unless you want to be a skull in a black robe, or a dancing skeleton."

“No. This time metaphors will not do. It must be an accurate portrait. Look on me, man, and create."

Bogatryev's eyes, trained to find form, color, and simple shape in everything, rebelled when the air opened and Azrael (the Finality, the Undoing, the Last Cause) stepped through.

Darkness blotted over him, and Bogatryev saw nothing.

“Man,” Azrael said. “I am pleased."

Bogatryev felt exhausted in every joint and muscle, but his lungs worked painlessly, and his fever was gone. He looked around blankly. The voice came from the shimmer in the air.

Momentarily forgetting the gift of health, he frowned. “I don't remember seeing you, much less doing a portrait. How can I learn from my work if I can't remember it?"

The air rippled. “Whether you remember or not, it is a good likeness. You saw the truth of my nature, and your art described it. You may live for a while yet."

“But what medium did I use? Paint? Light? Metal? Flesh? Something else?"

Azrael was gone (though not far, the artist thought; he is never far). Bogatryev inventoried his studio's supplies and found nothing missing. He checked his chronometer. He'd only been unconscious a few hours, hardly time to do a work of any complexity. His portrait of Azrael remained a mystery, even to its creator.

Lucifer visited him a few days later. “You seem better, my friend."

“Yes,” Bogatryev said, carefully slotting fossilized shark's teeth into a carved wooden head. “Please tell everyone I'm willing to take commissions again."

She came to him three years and a hundred works later. She came mocking and teasing and sure Bogatryev could not do her portrait. When she told the artist her name, he only nodded. He'd known it already. “I thought you must have died, when people stopped worshipping."

“Everyone worships beauty, by whatever name. I am Beauty. You cannot make my portrait, artist. Your fame has spread far and wide, but I have come to demonstrate your limitations."

“Give me time and your presence, and I will do you justice,” Bogatryev said.

Aphrodite frowned and worlds trembled. “My husband Hephaestus would be jealous if I brought you to Olympus.” She smiled (though she had no face, properly; she existed beyond shape, approaching essence). “I'll take you with me right away. He has grown too complacent lately. But your portrait will fail, artist, and you'll go mad trying to capture me."

“I accept your challenge,” Bogatryev said.

Before beginning his work on Beauty, Bogatryev created a portrait of surly, club-footed Hephaestus. Bogatryev didn't want the jealous god's hammer to crush his head and ruin this opportunity.

Bogatryev made an animate statue from precious metals, designed to sweat mercury, piss molten lead, and sing bawdy songs at the forge. Hephaestus loved it. He grew quite fond of Bogatryev, and welcomed the artist to his house, often showing him bits of ornamental ironwork, which Bogatryev praised.

Aphrodite never formally sat for him. It wouldn't have helped. She had no single shape, no form Bogatryev could sketch and elaborate on. He simply watched her when she drifted near, and thought, and after a hundred years began working.

Finally, many centuries later, he completed Aphrodite's portrait. He considered it the final fruit of his talent. The portrait contained every great work of art (personally and perfectly reproduced by Bogatryev), images of every natural splendor (from the high peaks of Sevon to the last remaining grotto on Morel), every shape of woman, man, and alien that pleased any eye, and many other beauties besides. The images, carefully phased out of normal time and space, flickered at the rate of a thousand per second, and still it took a dozen years to complete the cycle a single time.

Bogatryev presented his portrait to Aphrodite.

“It's my masterpiece,” he said, standing against the wall in his Olympian studio. Aphrodite watched the portrait for a long time (long enough for Bogatryev to sleep and wake and sleep again many times).

“It is perfect,” she said at last, her voice strange and flat. “You are the greatest artist of all time, and you have captured my image. But now you must destroy it, and leave Olympus, for I cannot bear to have my perfection reproduced, and I grow angry."

Bogatryev gladly complied. He had made the portrait of perfect Beauty, and it didn't matter if the work remained. He never needed to create anything else. His time as an artist had passed.

He returned to his moon, which Lucifer had maintained over the past several centuries, and slept for three days.

When Wotan, god-father of Valhalla, petitioned him for a portrait, Bogatryev graciously declined, explaining that he had retired.

When the Valkyries appeared, armored and bearing spears, Bogatryev was irritated but not surprised. He went with them quietly to Wotan's hall in Valhalla.

“Well?” Wotan demanded, his single eye blazing, leaning forward in his ivory throne. “Will you make my portrait, or not?” The two ravens on his shoulder flapped their wings in sympathetic agitation.

Bogatryev could do it easily enough. The sculpture should idealize Wotan's broad shoulders and chest, and Bogatryev could weave tiny war hammers and battle axes into the statue's white beard. A pair of live ravens would be a nice touch.

He contemplated the work, and found it tedious.

“I am retired, all-father,” Bogatryev said respectfully. “I appreciate your interest, but I no longer make portraits.” Lucifer lounged conspicuously at one of the feasting tables, and he nodded to show his support.

Wotan quivered, furious. The Valkyries and Wotan's huge-muscled sons bristled on the edge of violence. Let them kill me, Bogatryev thought placidly. I have done my greatest work, and I'm not afraid to die.

“You will do as I say, or you will be bound under the rock with Loki. You will bathe in venom and writhe on coals.” Wotan's face gleamed red with sweaty impatience.

“That is not so,” a voice said from the back of the hall. Everyone recognized the voice, even those who'd never heard it before.

“Azrael,” Lucifer said, and shivered.

“How dare you come into my hall uninvited?” Wotan demanded.

“I go where I will, and I am seldom invited. This man is not yours to dispose of."

“I only wanted a portrait,” Wotan muttered, settling down on his throne, gripping one of the skulls on his armrest. “Everyone else had one. Why not me?"

“Your vanity is unimportant now. All your vanities. Things have passed beyond that."

“Do you mean—” Lucifer began, but didn't go on.

Wotan licked his lips. “Is it the end, then? Ragnarok?"

“Basically,” Azrael said, and Wotan jolted in his chair. Bogatryev stood close enough to see his single pupil dilate, and the white of his eye cloud with blood. Wotan slumped. The ravens flapped their wings and pecked at his eye.

The warrior-gods shouted in alarm, but only Thor had the bravery (or foolishness) to rush Azrael, his hammer raised. The shimmer in the air darkened with a streak of blackness as Thor fell face-forward onto the floor.

“Make your peace,” Azrael said, and the gods fell. Lucifer slouched with a strangled gasp, radiant to the last.

Bogatryev closed his eyes and swallowed, waiting for death, hoping it would come without pain. He hadn't feared dying in the abstract, but now his legs shook and his bladder felt full of needles.

“You will live, man,” Azrael said. “There is a final work for you to do."

“I'm retired,” Bogatryev said, opening one eye. Cracks appeared in the high gray walls. “Is this happening everywhere?"

“Everywhere,” Azrael agreed. “Things have come to a close."

Bogatryev touched his chest, his arms, his own face. “But why me? Why am I still here?"

“Come with me,” Azrael said, and Bogatryev found himself in darkness. He could no longer feel his body, only the nothing pressing in from all sides. He had come to terminal time, entropy's last result. He felt Azrael's cold presence, a frigid eddy in the neutrality, but sensed nothing else.

“This is your work, man. Your portrait of me. You made it well."

The nullity made Bogatryev want to scream, but he had no breath, and there was no air to hold sound. Even Azrael's voice somehow conveyed sense without breaking the silence. “You understood that I am just a blankness, and you created a picture of this place that is not a place, this place beyond everything. This was your true masterpiece, not your portrait of brief beauty. Yet there is another work for you to do, and it may be a masterpiece as well."

“I can't do a portrait,” Bogatryev said without voice. “There are no models here."

“No. This work must come from inside you, man. I am the end of it all, and I have brought this inevitable nothing, but nothing is only half the universe. It is only one end of the continuum. A painting begins as a blank canvas, does it not, Bogatryev? A space to be filled."

“Then, this last work—"

“Is really only the first. I trust you will do it justice.” Then he was gone.

Bogatryev stretched his nothing limbs in the emptiness. He considered. Then, with a pallet of stars and blackness, he began to paint the nothing into light.

My Night with Aphrodite

I met Aphrodite in a bar and picked her up (I asked her sign and she showed me her constellation—you know what starry nights do to women). We went back to my place and had a few drinks and went to bed. She was perfect, tongue like honey, body like love, and she said all the right things. I was done in no time