Tom Holt (14 page)

'Zippy,' said Ms. Fisichelli, impressed. 'You've done this before, haven't you?'

'No,' Mary said, looking away. 'What now?'

'Strictly speaking,' said the Pythoness, 'we should now sacrifice a kid, a lamb and a white dove. However, I have the neighbours to think of, so I generally skip all that. Sometimes, though, I do pop in a casserole. Less blood and saves me having to cook an evening meal.'

Mary shrugged. 'Sounds reasonable to me,' she said.

'Usually, though,' said Ms. Fisichelli, 'I don't bother. I've never noticed it make a blind bit of difference. You know how sometimes you can't be bothered sacrificing just for one,'

'Fine,' Mary said. 'So what do we do now?'

'We wait,' said Ms. Fisichelli. 'Sooner or later the god will manifest himself, and then we can... Oh hell!'

The flame flickered, rose up, crackled and went bright green. The patera bobbed on the crest of the flame and started to sink slowly down onto the tripod. There was a foul smell of sulphur.

'What's up?' Mary asked. 'Have we got something wrong?'

'No,' said Ms. Fisichelli, 'that's just the busy signal.'

'Oh.' Mary raised an eyebrow. 'Does that mean we have to start all over again?'

Ms. Fisichelli shook her head. 'Not any more,' she said. 'It used to, in the old days. But now there's a sort of Redial facility. Watch.'

She leaned forward and pressed an embossed lion's head on one of the legs of the tripod. The flame became blue again and the patera started to climb back.

'Look,' Ms. Fisichelli said, and pointed to the heart of the flame.

'Where?' Mary said. 'I can't see any...'

The words died on her lips. In the very centre of the flame a man's face was slowly becoming visible; first just the eyes, then the lips, nose and chin. Then the fire seemed to mould itself into the shape of a head, the flames curling up from a fiery neck and flickering wildly to form the thick, curly hair. Mary gasped. The lips parted and the fire spoke.

'Hello,' it said, 'this is Apollo speaking. I'm sorry there's no-one here just now to take your call but if you'd care to leave a message I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Please speak clearly after you hear the tone. Thank you.'

Ms. Fisichelli scowled. There was a sudden blare of trumpets that seemed to shake all the brains up inside Mary's head.

'This is Betty-Lou Fisichelli calling,' the Pythoness said. 'Er... Oh, dammit, I hate talking into these things ... Look, would you please very kindly sort of descend or send down a messenger or a dream or something, when it's convenient, of course, because we've had, well, it's rather hard to explain, some very funny things have been happening and perhaps you should know about them, so please do call back, thank you. Message ends,' she added.

The fiery head nodded three times and slowly became nothing more than a' random pattern of flames. The patera sank back. The fire went out.

'Well,' said the Pythoness, 'that was a complete waste of time, wasn't it?'

'It was the most amazing thing,' Mary whispered, as much to herself as to the Pythoness. 'He was so ...'

'And if he does call back,' Ms. Fisichelli went on, 'you can bet your shirt it'll be while I'm in the bath or washing my hair or something. I really hate that, you know, having this great big burning face pop up at you while you've got your head over the washbasin. Still, there it is.' She started to clear away the sacred implements.

'Betty-Lou,' said Mary, after a while.

'Yes, dear?'

'What exactly is happening?' Mary asked. 'I mean, I know it must be important, because of what the entrails say, but...'

'I'm not so sure,' Ms. Fisichelli replied. 'Maybe the entrails were wrong. I've never been entirely happy about divining with frozen chickens anyway, but I'm in enough trouble with the Residents' Association as it is without killing chickens all over the place. Probably all a storm in a teacup.'

'Yes, but...'

'I think something funny happens to them when you defrost them in the microwave ... Sorry, dear, what were you saying.'

'I was thinking,' said Mary. 'Maybe we could work it out for ourselves. What's happening, I mean.'

'I don't think so,' said the Pythoness stiffly. 'Best leave that to the experts, don't you think?'

'Yes,' Mary replied carefully, 'sure thing, but don't you think it's meant as an omen?'

'Absolutely; said Betty-Lou. 'That's why he's got to be told.'

'But surely the whole point of an omen is that it's a sort of coded message,' said her apprentice. 'Which means that whoever sent it expected us to be able to understand it. So I thought...'

'Fine,' said the Pythoness with unwonted irony. 'So you just tell me what it means when a red plastic nose suddenly materialises on the sacred image of Apollo.'

'Well...'

'Or how a whoopee-cushion managed to find its way onto the Throne of Prophesy.'

'I thought maybe...'

'Or,' said the Pythoness, 'why the three heads of the Eikon Triceraunion are all suddenly wearing brightly-coloured paper hats. I mean,' she said, 'any fool can answer that, no point in bothering the god, is there?'

'I'm sorry,' said Mary, humbly. 'I was only trying to help.'

The Pythoness clicked her tongue in a not altogether unfriendly manner. 'I know, dear,' she said, 'and it shows initiative and all the rest of it. But it's not our place to go guessing at things; and besides, he'll have to know sooner or later. It might be important.'

'I suppose you're right,' Mary said. 'But the message...'

'That,' said the Pythoness, 'proves my point, surely. I mean, it could be highly significant, or it could just be kids climbing in through the ventilation shaft again. Really, we have to leave that sort of thing to the Chief. Now, give me a hand washing up these last few bits and pieces, and then I think we've earned ourselves a drink, don't you?'

Mary nodded and Ms. Fisichelli tried to dismiss the whole business from her mind, but as she dried the patera and put it back in the Holy Chest she couldn't help thinking that somewhere there was a simple explanation for it all, particularly when you considered the message which had appeared, cut into the rock of the lintel of the Treasury of the Athenians, that same morning. After all, it spoke for itself:

'WISEACRES OF THE WORLD UNITE,' it said. 'YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS.'

About thirty thousand years ago, when telepathy was the only readily accessible form of mass entertainment, there was a popular game-show on the main brainwave channel called
Read My Mind.
A panel of guest celebrities had to guess what each of the contestants did for a living, and if they failed they were torn apart by wild dogs. It was good middlebrow family entertainment.

On the show in question, a panel consisting of two river-gods, a wood-nymph and the Queen of the Night were asked to guess the identity of a more than usually enigmatic character, who turned up wearing a loud check suit and a red nose, and answered all their questions by bursting into fits of laughter. The panel had got as far as the fact that the mystery guest was something to do with entertainment, but there they stuck. Time was running out. The mind-camera was playing lovingly on the slavering jaws of the dogs.

'He's a tax inspector,' guessed one of the river-gods wildly. The compere grinned, shook his head and made woof-woof noises. The Queen of the Night started to have hysterics.

'He's ...' said the wood-nymph desperately. 'Oh God, it's on the tip of my tongue. Whatsisname. Whatchamacallit... Um, you know, er, thing...'

The mystery guest looked up sharply and scowled.

'Someone told you; he said.

Then time ran out and there was an advertisement for soap powder, and so the telepaths at home never discovered the whole truth; namely that the mystery guest (whose name was Gelos) was in fact the personification of Laughter, the sworn enemy of the race of gods; in his previous incarnation one of the original Three. Another point which didn't get out was the fact that Gelos is the only force in the cosmos who stands between the gods and total universal domination, because only laughter and a sense of the absurd makes it possible for human beings to dismiss the gods as a figment of the imagination; whereas if Gelos ever finds a hero brave and strong enough to protect him from the gods, he will be able to rule the whole of creation.

Pluto stopped, took a plastic bag from his .pocket and opened it, revealing a sock.

'Here, boy,' he said nervously. 'Find!' He placed the sock in front of each of the dog's three noses in turn. The dog growled ominously, and two of its heads started snuffling at the ground. The third ate the sock and, shortly afterwards, was sick.

'C'mon, good dog,' Pluto muttered, and the ex-Hellhound suddenly lurched forward, heads down, and dragged his master into the corridors that led to the Piccadilly Line platforms.

It is often held that two heads are better than one, and so Cerberus should have represented the optimum in scent-following efficiency. However, after five minutes of enthusiastic baying, tracking, tail-wagging and snapping at the ankles of women with small children, he stopped opposite a fire-bucket, pointed like a gun-dog and sat resolutely down. Having emptied the bucket and found no trace of the missing Hero, Pluto began to lose patience.

'Look, you bloody animal,' he said, 'far be it from me to get heavy with a dumb beast, but unless you pack in the clever stuff and get back to work, you'll be up the vet's so fast your paws won't touch. Got it?'

That, Pluto later admitted, had been a mistake. Cerberus gave him a foul look in triplicate, snarled very convincingly, and bit through the lead. Pluto toyed briefly with the idea of blowing gently up the dog's nostrils, as recommended by the lady at the obedience classes, thought better of it, and ran for his everlasting life.

Cerberus, however, didn't follow. Having satisfied itself that its master was out of sight, it grinned widely and trotted off down the corridor in the opposite direction. A wall against which it paused briefly to cock its leg collapsed shortly afterwards into a pile of fizzing lime.

Cautiously, Jason Derry lifted his left foot, moved it approximately a metre forwards, and tried to put it down.

He immediately regretted it. There was nothing there; his foot simply continued moving, finding nothing on which to rest. The thoroughly disconcerting thing was that his balance was not upset, and as soon as he stopped applying pressure with his leg muscles, his foot stopped. He wasn't standing on anything, he discovered; he was just standing. Floating. Whatever.

The important thing at times like these, he told himself, is to stay calm. This environment may be decidedly hooky, but as yet it has exhibited no overtly hostile symptoms. You could probably get to like it in time. Let's be terribly laid-back and cool about this, and just take it as it comes. Who needs gravity, anyway?

'Help!' Jason said.

He listened as the word he had just spoken flopped aimlessly about in the darkness, slowly growing fainter and fainter and finally dissolving into a clatter of disjointed consonants. He breathed in deeply (there was no air, but fortunately he didn't know that) and tried moving his right leg.

'Woof,' said a voice behind him.

He froze, and after a few moments his heart began to beat again. He turned his head and stared; but there was no light.

'Woof.'

'Woof.'

Three different voices. Either I'm going potty or there are dogs down here. Given the choice, I'm going potty.

'Hello?' he ventured. 'Anybody there?'

'Woof.'

'Woof.'

Woof.'

Three dogs. Jason muttered something under his breath and speculated about whether the person responsible for all this had got his priorities right, exactly. Dogs are all very fine and splendid in their way -- absolutely nothing against dogs, either as pets or as part of an integrated sheep control system -- but what we really need most of all right now is a floor.

'Here, boy; he ventured. 'Who's a
good boy,
then?' he added.

'Woof; said three voices, and there was just a hint of ennui in them; as if they knew from experience that when somebody addressed them as Good Boy, it would soon be time to start retrieving sticks from freezing cold ponds. Jason plucked up his courage and extended a hand into the darkness behind him. 'Heel,' he murmured.

Almost at once, he was aware of something large and hairy brushing up against his leg and a violent rasping sensation on the back of his hand, consistent with it being licked by three very sharp tongues at the same time. It wasn't pleasant; but compared to a number of alternatives that suggested themselves to Jason at that moment, it did very nicely, thank you very much.

'Now then, doggies,' Jason quavered, 'you and I are going to be friends, aren't we?'

Three voices said Woof in such a way as to suggest that a temporary alliance might well prove expedient at the present moment, but any more of this mushy anthropomorphic crap and the deal was off.

'OK,' Jason replied, 'suits me. Have you got the faintest idea where in hell we are?'