Tom Holt (20 page)

This remark had an effect on Jason. 'Mine too,' he said. 'Push off.'

'How dare you speak...'

Jason grinned. For the first time in his life, he was beginning to wonder whether there might not be just as much fun in beating up small, weak, defenceless people as in beating up mighty demons. Probably not, but he would never know if he didn't try. 'I 'said push off,' he growled. The dog nodded his heads, wagged his tail and even managed to scratch one of his ears at the same time. Dogs have powers of balance that defy orthodox scientific explanation.

Pluto, for his part, remembered that he was a god, and a high-rolling, time-served god at that. He drew himself up to his false height* and folded his arms grimly.

'Impudent mortal...' he began to say. Then he became aware of an agonising pain in his left big toe, and looked down.

'Ouch!' he said, and hopped up into the air. Jason pulled the sword clear of the deep incision he had just made, and laughed unkindly. A drop of ichor -- god's blood -- sparkled on the blade.

'Now clear off out of it,' he said, 'or else you'll get this up your...'

Pluto, now withdrawn to a relatively safe distance, scowled horribly and called on the Legions of the Damned to assist him. There are perks to being a god, and instant access to a large number of semi-divine heavies is one of them. 'Arrest that mortal!' Pluto cried melodramatically. From the shadows behind him, about ten or twelve muscular, well-armed figures stepped forward and advanced towards Jason, truncheons out.

At the risk of spoiling the impact of what follows and interrupting the narrative curve, a word of explanation would seem called for. Although at one time service in the divine cohorts was regarded as a supreme honour, ever since the evacuation of Olympus the gods have found themselves with a serious recruiting problem on their hands. The sad fact is that the pay is so much better in the private sector, and the prestige of being an instrument of divine justice comes a poor second to flexible working hours, a company chariot and a free uniform, usually with a dragon logo on it. As a result, the gods have lately taken

*About fifteen feet six inches. Pluto's main fear was that one day he'd stick like it.

to recruiting from those inhabitants of Betamax 76249708 who have inadvertently sailed off the edge of the world in the course of an ill-fated attempt to find a shorter sea route from Leningrad to Kiev. This has resulted in an overall lowering of staff quality. In fact it is rumoured that the entire divine army could only extract itself from the proverbial paper bag with the aid of massed air support and covering fire from offshore naval batteries.

There was a blur, and not long afterwards a contingent of celestial men-at-arms picked themselves painfully off the ground, gathered up their severed limbs and limped away in search of something to stick them back on with.

Jason lowered his sword. 'Push off,' he said.

'You won't get away with this,' Pluto muttered. 'The mills of the gods grind slow but they grind exceeding small.'

'And cracked pitchers,' said Jason, 'have big ears. Hop it.'

Pluto is unusual among the gods in that he knows when he's beaten. But he had one last weapon in his armoury; and although he usually despised it as mere shallow mummery, there was nothing to be lost by using it. He shouted an arcane word, made a magic pass and snapped his fingers. At once he vanished, and was replaced by an apparition that Jason didn't manage to forget for a long time. Pluto changed himself into a skeleton.

No ordinary skeleton, at that, but a grotesquely large gaudily decorated and extremely animated skeleton. The general effect was designed to convey an impression of extreme and irreversible death, coupled with an urgent desire to impose a similar condition on anything in the near vicinity, and it worked. There wasn't the smallest scrap of flesh anywhere to be seen, and the bones looked like malevolent ivory; ivory that has never really got over being separated from a perfectly good, comfortable elephant. As for the eyes, you could have defrosted pizzas with them.

Jason, as has already been more than adequately recorded, didn't know the meaning of fear; but it is arguable that you don't need to know precisely what the word
Fischhandler
on a street sign means if directly under it you can see a shop with a slabful of dead cod in the window. He winced with his whole body and covered his eyes.

Not so the dog. He took one look at the biggest collection of jumbo-sized, yummy-looking bones ever gathered in one place, uttered a threefold yelp of pure pleasure, and broke for lunch.

In the newly-restored quiet of his study, Gelos was communicating with Prometheus. As usual, it wasn't easy --the thoughtwaves are horribly congested these days, and if you aren't careful you can end up getting a stray fax right between the ears -- but despite interruptions they were in the middle of a highly serious discussion.

'And what about the boy?' thought Gels.

'Don't worry about it,' replied Prometheus. 'It'll be the old, old story; boy meets eagle, boy loses eagle, boy finally gets eagle ...'

'Supposing he isn't interested?' Gelos objected. 'I mean, he may think there's more to life and being a Hero than just...'

'Pulling a bird?'

'Well...'

'Leave that to me,' thought Prometheus. 'Back to business. Has he got rid of those two clowns for you?'

Gelos laughed, something he tried not to do if he could help it. 'Yes indeed,' he thought. 'Young Jason has learned quite a lot today, I fancy. About life, and disappointment, and coming to terms with the way things really are; and, of course, that when all is said and done the only really effective way to deal with people is to hit them. Oh yes, he's coming along nicely, for a youngster.'

'Actually;' thought Prometheus, 'I didn't want to worry you with this, but Eagle says that a Certain Person has been to see a Certain Person, and...'

Gelos frowned. Telepathy is hard enough to understand as it is without archness as well. 'What?'

'J-U-P-I-T-E-R,' Prometheus spelt out in a mental whisper, 'has gone to see P-H-Y-L-L...'

'All right, I think I see what you're getting at. Problems?'

'Possibly,' Prometheus replied. 'You see, we've been concentrating so much on the fact that Jupit... that You Know Who is the boy's father that we may have neglected the other side of the equation.'

'You think so?' queried Gelos. 'I'm sure she's a very nice lady, but...'

'All I'm saying is,' thought Prometheus, 'oh hell, someone's coming. I'd better think you back later. Ciao.'

A long shadow fell across Prometheus's face and a voice spoke somewhere above him.

'Traitor,' said the voice.

Prometheus twisted his neck round until he could see a pair of golden sandals with a PA monogram on them, which he knew stood for Phoebus Apollo. They were the relic of an ill-fated sponsorship deal between a major multi-national sportswear company and the most photogenic of the male Olympians -- ill-fated because Jupiter doesn't hold with his family appearing in full-page colour on the backs of the Sunday supplements and took his wrath out on the company in question by turning them all into lizards.

'Hello, Pol,' Prometheus replied. 'I'd offer you a drink or something but I'm a bit tied up at the moment. Could you call back later?'

'Traitor,' Apollo repeated; not from any great depth of feeling in the matter but because he was embarrassed and couldn't think of anything else to say. Strictly unofficially, and then only outside the range of Jupiter's mental radar net, he had always considered the treatment meted out to Prometheus to be not only unjust but injudicious. The Titan, unlike the rest of the gods, was clever -- wise, even --and it was surely only a matter of time before he pulled a stroke that would deal the divine prestige of the Olympians such a blow that thereafter they would be hard put to it getting work doing conjuring tricks for children's parties.

'You think so?' enquired Prometheus, mildly.

'Yes.'

'Oh.' The Titan shrugged. 'I'm sorry about that, Pol. One does what one thinks is right, you know.'

'I don't.'

'Sorry,' said Prometheus, 'I forgot.
You're
a god, you don't have to worry about that sort of thing.'

'Are you implying...'

Prometheus chuckled. 'I never imply,, he said. 'Not any more. I occasionally implied a bit when I was younger, but at my age it takes me all my time to insinuate, let alone imply. Usually I just say things.'

'Are you saying...'

'I'm saying,' said Prometheus, 'that since you're a god and effectively beyond any form of retribution, you can do what you damn well like. Absolute power; is that right?'

Apollo tried to look stern. 'Correct,' he said, and his eyes sparkled with pale blue fire. 'Absolute power.'

'Then how come,' said Prometheus quietly, 'you can't afford a new chariot?'

This took Apollo by surprise, as if he had sliced into a hard-boiled egg to find a baby chicken sitting in there looking at him. 'What?' he said.

'You heard me,' Prometheus replied. 'I could hear the wheel-bearings squeaking from here. Also, from the sound of it, your suspension is completely shot, your axle is about as straight as a bent corkscrew, there's enough body putty in your wings to fill in the Cheddar Gorge and if your offside front shaft makes it through another five thousand miles you have my permission to use my head as a basketball. So?'

'Well,' said Apollo, weakly, 'You can't get the parts these days.

'So why not get a new one?' Prometheus answered. 'They tell me Vulcan does a very nice little two-seater, four-winged horsepower, ABS brakes, adjustable scythes on the wheels as standard, four thousand gold staters plus interest free credit.'

Apollo frowned. 'Where am I likely to get that sort of money?' he said. With no worshippers and no sacrifices?'

Prometheus made a mighty effort and nodded his head. 'Exactly,' he said. 'And whenever you try any little sideline, just for a bit of pin-money, the Old Fool puts a stop to it. You'll notice, by the way, that he never drives the same chariot two years running; and how many temples has he still got? Or Minerva? The last recorded sacrifice to Minerva took place in AD
512,
but she isn't driving round in a Gamma reg Vulcan Popular with knackered brake-linings.

'Look...'

'Or Venus,' Prometheus went on pitilessly. 'What's it she's got now? Vulcan XR7 GTS with front-dove drive, isn't it? Or Neptune, with that big new Valhalla Donnerschlag -
Vorsprung durch Zauber
and all that. Trust Nep to be the one to have a flash foreign chariot. Or Mercury - zippy little Vulcan Elite Turbo with a sticker saying
My Other Chariot's a Vulcan 696
on the rear sunguard. Or Diana...'

'All right,' said Apollo, 'you've made your point.'

'Maybe,' said Prometheus, 'and obviously you really don't care about such demeaning things as status. I'm impressed, honestly. If I was in your position and had to suffer the indignity of being burnt off at traffic lights by part-time river-gods in souped-up Vulcan Firebirds...'

'All
right,'
said Apollo. 'Look...'

'... with furry dice hanging from their rear mirrors...'

'Look...'

'Yes?'

'I...' Apollo had forgotten what he was going to say. He scowled ferociously and scratched the back of his neck.

'All I was trying to suggest,' Prometheus went on, 'is that you must be in it for the job satisfaction, not the material rewards. I'm right, aren't I?'

'Well...'

'I can understand that,' said Prometheus. 'You're a god's god, Pol, if you don't mind my saying so. Or you were, at any rate, before Jupiter decided to pack it all in and retire. Nice, is it, up there in the sun?'

'Very.'

'Playing the Game all day, so I hear. That must be very...' The Titan paused, as if mulling over his choice of word'... fulfilling, mustn't it?'

'Well...'

'Admittedly,' said Prometheus, 'there's not as much averting plagues and redressing wrongs as there used to be, but at least you can lie in of a morning. Now you couldn't do
that
when you were driving the chariot of the sun, could you?'

'I...'

'That must have been fun, I bet,' Prometheus said with a chuckle. 'Out of interest, what could the old bus do? On the flat, with the wind behind it?'

'Oh, a million and five, million and ten,' Apollo said dreamily. 'Nought to two hundred and fifty thousand in four point seven two, I once got out of her.' He stopped and made an impatient noise.
'Look...'
he said angrily.

'Whereas now,' Prometheus murmured, 'there isn't really any reason to get out of bed at all, is there? You could sleep in all day and nobody would either know or care. Still, if that's what you want out of everlasting life...'

'Prometheus...'

'But I was forgetting,' said the Titan. 'You may not get to drive the sun or answer the prayers of cities, but you do get to run little errands for the Big J. And Minerva, of course; I expect she keeps you pretty busy, doesn't she?'