Tom Holt (17 page)

'I think so,' Mary replied. 'She's a bit highly-strung, you know.

Apollo nodded. 'I wonder what made it suddenly do that?' he said, to himself but aloud.

'Too much current,' Mary replied.

Apollo nodded and then turned round quickly. 'Sorry?' he said, and stared at her.

'I'm just guessing,' said Mary modestly, 'but maybe you put too much strain on it, making it look down into the Forbidden Regions.'

Apollo's divine brain told his divine heart and divine body to stay cool and let it handle this. 'Just out of interest,' he said, as casually as he could, 'how did you know that was the Forbidden Regions?'

Mary caught her breath, gave Apollo a look of pure poison, turned into a huge eagle, and left the room.

In the dry heat of a Betamax sun, a column of Roman soldiers stopped in the market square of Tiberiopolis, until recently known as Jerusalem. A young man was led forward and made to take up a large wooden cross. As he did so, he instinctively examined the workmanship.

'Huh,' he said. 'Call that a mortice and tenon joint, 'cos I don't.'

The centurion snapped an impatient command to his troops, but they refused to budge. On his enquiring as to why this might be, they told him that Good Friday was a Bank holiday, and if they were expected to go around crucifying people, it was going to have to be time and a half.

The centurion fumed for a moment, said, 'Oh, bugger this for a game of soldiers,' and stalked off to the wineshop on the corner. After a long silence, the three condemned prisoners edged quietly away and went home, the soldiers lifting not a finger to stop them.

That was why it was a Betamax world, after all.

Unlike most Betamax worlds, however, this one survived the inevitable ensuing possibility crisis and remained extant. This was because of what can only be described as a spatio-temporal cock-up, involving the arrival of a team of interplanetary missionaries from the neighbouring Betamax world, where interstellar travel had been developed before the discovery of printing.* Soon after the mass conversion of the Betamax-human race to Methodism, however, the severe possibility problems caused thereby were all solved at a stroke by the timely intervention of a huge meteor, which smashed the planet into rubble.

The reason why possibility errors are treated so seriously by the authorities, however, is because once they start they tend to continue. It therefore came as no surprise to the Incident Room staff at Possibility Police HQ when particles of incandescent matter released by the destruction of Betamax 9567432 burst into the atmosphere of the world which originally sent out the missionaries, landed on the roofs of all the churches and burned them all down. The embarrassing result of this was that the majority of the population at once abandoned Christianity (thus cancelling the projected nuclear religious war against the Eastern Heretics which should have ended the planet) and set about persuading the remaining faithful of the error of their ways, inventing printing as a necessary method of information dissemination. The world thus created was so perilously close to the Absolutely Possible that the police were compelled to intervene, in the interests of Possibility Preservation, by planting a few absolute impossibilities in

*Which meant they could send probes to the moon but the astronauts were unable to sell their stories to the tabloids afterwards.

rarely-visited areas of the planet and then coming back next day and atomising the entire planetary system under Article 47(1) of the Sirius Convention.

Even then, however, their problems were far from over, since the force of the explosion of Betamax 5609765 was so violent that Planet VHS -- our planet -- was temporarily rocked on its axis, with the result that at a crucial moment a buckshee Thursday was suddenly introduced into the week, the Thursday, in fact, when Jason Derry went down to the Underground to find Gelos. More important, it meant that an extra day had been introduced which had not been foreseen when the Order of Play was drawn up at the very start of the Game. As a result, at the vital point of the story which follows, it was nobody's go at all.

'You mean to tell me,' Jupiter said, 'that all this time we've had a mole?'

Apollo wondered whether it was worth pointing out that it had been an eagle rather than a mole, but decided no, probably not.

'Yes,' he said.

'I see.' Jupiter had this knack of asking questions he already knew the answers to; a common mannerism among the omniscient, but aggravating nevertheless. 'And this mole has been collaborating with... with That Person all this time?'

'Yes.' Why is it, Apollo asked himself, that just because I'm the one who tells him, it's suddenly all my fault? There, I'm doing it now; I know exactly why. Because I'm a mug, that's why.

'And nobody noticed, is that it?'

'Yes.'

'And you lot,' Jupiter went on, 'call yourself gods, do you?'

'Yes.'

Jupiter laughed, and black clouds scurried guiltily across the skies of Earth to the positions they should have been in ten minutes ago. It can be tough, being a cloud.

'And now,' Jupiter said, 'that you have at last found out, may I ask what you're proposing to do about it?'

Apollo recognised that this was a question that couldn't be answered with Yes, and searched his divine mind for an answer. 'I don't know,' he said.

'The old brain a bit slow today, is it?'

Well...'

'GET IT SORTED OUT,' said Jupiter -- when you're the Great Sky God it's no problem at all to shout in capital letters. In fact, when he was really upset, he could shout in bold face, italics and pitch ten.

'Yes,' said Apollo, 'we...'

'NOW.'

'Yes indeed,' Apollo said, 'But...'

For all his omniscience, Jupiter didn't seem to understand the implications of But. He just frowned, with the result that race meetings on four continents were washed out. Apollo backed away, tripped over a self-propelled footstool (which apologised in Latin) and ran.

Not long after leaving the presence of the Father of Gods and Men, he bumped into Mars. To be exact, he trod on his foot.

Watch it,' said the ex-God of War, 'I've had enough of it today with Claymore mines without you as well.'

Apollo apologised -- he had often reflected on the aptness of his name -- and stopped running. Mars looked at him.

What's up, Pol?' he asked. 'You seem a bit flustered.'

'Flustered.' Apollo turned the adjective over in his mind.

A bit on the weak side perhaps, but it was in the right ball park, so to speak. 'Yes,' he added, from sheer habit.

'There's been a bit of a cock-up,' said Apollo -- everyone else was having a go at understatement, he said to himself, why not me too? -- 'and I've got to sort it out, apparently.'

'Hard luck,' Mars said sympathetically. 'Now what's happened?'.

'You know Prometheus's eagle?'

Mars nodded, making the shrapnel-shredded plume of his helmet nod. -

'Well,' Apollo went on, 'apparently it turns out that that bloody fowl's gone and changed sides on us. It's been working for You-Know-Who all along.'

'Really?'

'Yes.'

Mars thought for a moment. 'I wouldn't call ripping someone's liver out for him every morning and evening working for him exactly,' he said. 'Cheaper than a dialysis machine, I suppose, but...'

'It's not that,' said Apollo. 'It seems that that dratted eagle's been running errands for him. Subverting Heroes. Spying on us.'

'Spying?'

'That's right,' Apollo grunted. 'Been dressing up as a human and passing itself off as the apprentice Pythoness of Delphi.' Apollo reflected briefly on his brief infatuation with the feathered temptress, and shuddered. 'Which means that the Big P has known every move we make. Vexing, isn't it?'

Mars rubbed his chin, 'You mean like a sort of mole?' he asked. Apollo smiled. He could say it now.

'No, Ma,' he said, 'an eagle can't be a mole. Biologically impossible.'

Mars frowned impatiently. 'You know what I mean,' he said. 'Bit of a problem, that. You have my sympathy.'

'Also,' Apollo went on, 'though I'm pleased to say the Old Sod hasn't found out yet, he's also got Cerberus on his side.'

'Cerberus?'

'That's right. Bit poor, isn't it? Pluto's going to be in for a nasty shock any minute now, I can tell you.'

'He's down there?'

'At this very minute,' said Apollo, with just a hint of less than charitable feeling, 'looking for Jason Derry. He's the Hero who's been subverted...'

Just then, Minerva came in. She was somewhat red in the face and not in the best of moods. This was understandable, since she'd just had to tell Jupiter about a certain dog.

There you are,' she said. 'You are a pair of idiots, aren't you?'

Mars opened his mouth to protest but Minerva ignored him. 'Anyway,' she went on, 'here's your orders from the Boss. Pol, you get down to Earth and deal with Prometheus. Nail that eagle and get a replacement, right?'

'All right,' Apollo sighed.

'And you, Ma,' Minerva said, 'you'd better pop down and see that Pluto's all right. And deal with the Derry boy while you're at it. He's getting out of hand and...'

'You're joking,' Mars said. 'I was listening to the Commentary just now, and it said he's armed with the Sword of...'

'Don't be such a baby,' Minerva replied. 'You are supposed to be the Driver of the Spoil, Ma, or had you forgotten?'

'Driving the Spoil I can handle,' Mars said rebelliously.

'Driving the Spoil is what I'm good at. Getting snipped up into tagliatelli by muscular youths with magic swords doesn't feature in my job description. Sorry, but...'

'Mars.' Minerva looked at him sternly. 'You don't want me to tell Pa about your trip to Greenham Common, do you?'

Mars sagged like a tent with no pole. 'You wouldn't,' he said weakly.

'He wouldn't like it, would he?' she said. 'A son of his climbing over the wire and daubing
No Nukes Here
in green paint on the missile silos. I think you'd better do as you're told for once, don't you?'

Mars inflated his lungs to speak. 'Language,' said Minerva pre-emptively. 'Anyway,' said the ex-God of War, 'what does he mean by Deal With? You might at least tell me...'

'Jupiter thinks, said Minerva with an iceberg smile, 'that the constellation of Cassiopeia looks a bit lop-sided. Could do with an extra star somewhere in the middle. See to it, will you?'

Minerva turned, adjusted her owl, and walked serenely out. Mars drew in a deep breath, sighed and jerked his head at the space Minerva had just occupied.

'Daddy's girl,' he said.

'So,' said Gels, 'that's more or less it, I think. Is there. anything you'd like to ask me?'

Jason leaned forward in his chair until his elbows touched his knees and struggled for breath. When he had got some semblance of control over his body back, he removed the handkerchief from his mouth and gasped greedily for air. He hadn't laughed so much since the time the Nine-Headed Serpent of the Sun had tried to bite him.

Not, it should be stated, that Gelos had been in any way outstandingly witty, amusing or novel; it was, as far as Jason could make out, all in the way he told them. Otherwise, why had he nearly had a cerebral haemorrhage when the old gentleman had asked him if he wanted a scone?

'No,' he croaked, 'thank you, I think I've got all that.'

'The thing to remember...' Gelos paused politely while Jason rolled on the floor kicking his legs helplessly and making little wheezing noises. 'The thing to remember is that ... Look, are you feeling quite all right? Would you like a glass of water or something?'

'No,' Jason shrieked, 'I'm fine, really.' He dabbed ineffectually at the tears in his eyes and rose unsteadily to his. knees. 'Please do go on... I'm sorry, I'm not usually like this ... I ...' He collapsed into a private hell of giggles. Cerberus gave him a look. Three looks.

'This really only goes to prove,' said the old man equably, 'what I was saying. There's nothing in the world stronger than laughter. If it can have this sort of effect on someone like you, a Hero, son of Jupiter himself, just think what it could do to the ordinary man in the street, if only he came into contact with a strong enough dose. I could take over the world and be the One True God with no trouble at all. But I wouldn't want that.'

He paused while Jason ironed out the spasmodic convulsions in his chest and dragged air into his lungs. Sometimes, the old man was thinking, I don't seem to know my own strength. 'Look,' he said, 'perhaps it would be better if I changed back into the other shape -- you know, the threatening statue stuff. Would that help?'

Jason managed to find just enough strength to nod his head, and immediately the cosy little room vanished and Jason found himself lying on nothing again, looking at a pair of talons.

'Better?'

'Much,' Jason said. 'Go on with what you were saying.'

'I can cut out the hissing snakes if you like.'