Tom Holt (26 page)

The flap snapped shut and Jason could hear a sound like a heavy stone statue being dragged against the door.

Probably, he reflected, a double-glazing salesman. He shrugged, strolled round to the back door, and kicked it in.

It was a curiously furnished house, to say the least, what with everything in it being made of stone and there being no mirrors or reflective surfaces; but Jason had a cousin who lived in one of those new developments in Docklands, so it didn't come as too much of a surprise to him. He made his way through the kitchen -- there was a cup of coffee, literally stone cold, on the worktop; however did the poor creature ever manage to eat anything, he wondered; or did it live on nothing but gravel? -- and arrived at the living-room door only to find it locked. He sighed and knocked politely.

'Hello?' he said.

'Go away.'

'I can't,' Jason said. 'Sony.'

'No you're not,' replied the voice. Jason fingered the edge of the Sword and gave the surface of his brightly-polished shield a final rub.

'What I mean is,' he said. 'I'm not doing this for fun, you know. Left to myself, I couldn't care less. If you insist on turning people to stone, that's really a matter between you and your conscience. But I've got my job to do and I'm going to do it, so we can either do this the hard way or the easy way.'

There was a long silence. Then the voice said, 'So what's the easy way?'

'You come out,' Jason said, 'I cut your head off with this sword, that's it.'

'I see,' replied the voice. 'Let's give the hard way a shot, shall we?'

'I don't know what you're making all this fuss about,' Jason said. 'After all, I'm the one who should be scared. All you have to do is look me in the eye and I turn to stone, right? Me, now, I've got to smash my way in, avoiding looking at you, of course, then fight with you, somehow keep myself from getting bitten by your hairstyle, cut your head off and wrap the bits up in a black velvet bag. Just ask yourself, where's the smart money going to be on this one?'

There was no reply. Jason considered this for a moment, then dashed quickly out through the kitchen and back to the front door. It was open.

'Oh bugger!' Jason said.

He lifted the shield and examined the reflection of his surroundings in it. There was a statue just by the door which hadn't been there before. He considered his next move carefully, while whistling.

'Ouch!
'said the Gorgon, shortly afterwards.

'Don't blame me,' Jason replied. 'I gave you the choice, remember. Now, this may hurt a little.'

'You cheated.'

Jason drew his brows together, offended. 'I did not cheat,' he said. 'I just used my intelligence, that's all.'

'You cheated.'

'Rubbish.'

'If you don't call pretending to wander away and then rushing back and jamming a flowerpot over my head cheating,' said the Gorgon, 'then I do. A real Hero wouldn't have done that.'

Jason drew the Gorgon's attention to the fact that there were quite a few very realistic statues of real Heroes lining the drive, most of them with birds nesting in highly improbable places.

'Cheat.'

'You brought it on yourself, you know,' Jason said. 'Anybody else would have been satisfied with a couple of gnomes pushing wheelbarrows or fishing in the water-butt; but no, you had to be different.'

'So what's wrong with being different?'

'Nothing,' Jason said, 'so long as you don't leave large flowerpots lying about the place as well. You can do one or the other, but not both. Now, the next bit is rather tricky, so if you'll just hold still...'

A single snake's head pushed its way up through the hole in the bottom of the pot and hissed spitefully at Jason. 'Bully,' said the Gorgon.

'Sticks and stones,' said Jason. 'Now, then ...' He pressed his foot firmly into the small of the Gorgon's back, swung the Sword up above his head, and made ready to strike. Then he saw something.

'Hey,' said the Gorgon. 'Just get on with it, will you?'

'Yes, all right,' Jason said. 'Just give me a minute, will you?' He was staring at the sky or, to be more precise, at an eagle.

Not, let it be stressed immediately, that Jason was or ever had been a bird-watcher; whatever else he may or may not have done, his conscience was clean on that score. In the normal run of events, if a bird wasn't sitting on a plate with roast potatoes on one side and runner beans on the other, then he didn't want to know. But this bird was unusual in that it was being chased by a chariotful of Spectral Warriors, who were throwing bits of lightning at it. He lowered the Sword and stood watching.

'What,' said a resentful voice, slightly but not unduly muffled by a five-millimetre thickness of terracotta, 'the hell do you think you're doing?'

'Shut up,' said Jason, preoccupied. All eagles looked the same to him, but he could have sworn he'd seen that one before. Twice.

'Look,' he said, 'just wait there a minute, will you? I won't be two shakes.' Then he took his foot off the Gorgon's back and darted away.

For at least ten seconds the Gorgon simply lay there, too bewildered to move. Then it leapt to its feet, dashed its head against the flank of a life-sized marble effigy of an Avon lady, shook the fragments of flowerpot out of its snakes, and bolted. Compilers of dictionaries of mythology might like to note that the orthodox view that it was never seen or heard of again is not strictly true; it was, in fact, shortly afterwards offered a job by Faberge staring at eggs and became a useful and productive member of society.

It was definitely the same eagle, and as he stood watching it struggling through the air Jason remembered that he owed it a hamburger. He sheathed the Sword, cupped his hands round his mouth and shouted, 'Hey!'

Aboard the winged chariot, the Captain of Spectral Warriors looked down at the figure on the ground below him.

'Hold it,' he said. 'That's the Derry kid.'

The charioteer turned his head and glanced quickly. 'So what?' he said. 'We're way out of range up here. Let's just keep going and...'

'What's he doing with that lump of
ouch!'

Jason swivelled round, broke the other arm off the fossilised political canvasser who had at last proved useful to somebody, and let fly. The winged chariot banked violently and hurtled away across the sky like a frightened comet. The eagle fluttered for a few seconds, flopped to the ground and turned into a girl. Jason hurried across.

'Hiya, Mary; he called out. Then he stepped back, looking puzzled. 'Or rather,' he said, 'Sharon.'

Betty-Lou Fisichelli polished her spectacles on her handkerchief, parked them on her nose and drew in a deep breath. She had never done this before.

Nobody now living -- nobody now living and capable of death -- had ever done this before. Partly because it was the most sacred of sacred mysteries; mostly because there just hadn't been any call for it. With a slightly moistened J-cloth she wiped away a thousand years of dust from the imperishable bronze of the statue's face, opened the manual on her knee, and looked for the place.

She was nervous. Apart from the perfectly understandable apprehension that anyone would feel about attempting the most sacred of sacred mysteries, there was also the fact that she was inside the vaults of the Delphi Archaeological Museum at half-past one in the morning without a pass. If she got caught, what with the Greek police being as they are, she doubted if even Apollo himself could save her.

CHAPTER ONE, she read, SETTING UP.

With trembling fingers, she took the two small, shining chips of metal from the matchbox in her handbag and pressed them carefully into the statue's empty eye-sockets. They fitted easily, and there was a faint click. At once, the broad bronze shield on the statue's arm began to glow, the verdigris giving off a bright green light. Then, suddenly, it went black, and a row of green lines materialised from nowhere. Once she had got her breath back, the Pythoness glanced down at the manual again.

Operating the Keyboard,
it read.

The shield had stopped flashing green lines at her. Instead it displayed a message in sparkling green letters. It said: (c)
Copyright Olympian Software dlc. Unauthorised use of program material shall render the user liable to civil and criminal penalties.

Then it went black again, and the statue said bleep, though without moving its lips. And then there were more letters on the screen, which read:
Hi!

Ms. Fisichelli hopped that
Hi!
would disappear and be replaced by something rather less disconcertingly jovial, but it didn't. She dragged her attention back to the manual. Operating the keyboard.

Oh, very clever. Each of the fingertips of the statue's outstretched hands was a key, and to operate the upper case you stood on its toes. Tentatively she touched the left index finger. The shield flickered, and then read:
Error!!!

Marvellous. She looked back at the manual and pressed the left middle finger. At once, a whole shieldful of words appeared, and a little green dot of light flashed on and off underneath them. That, the manual explained, was the Cursor. Ms. Fisichelli wondered idly what the Curse might turn out to be, and studied what the manual had to say about selecting a functions menu.

After a few minutes of bewildered concentration, she decided that what she wanted was Feedback Input Scan, and pressed the appropriate finger. The shield responded immediately. It now read:
Hiya!!!!

Wouldn't it be easier, Ms. Fisichelli asked herself, to try and muddle through with a card index and a notched stick? Probably not. The manual now advised her to press the right ring fingertip and the left big toe simultaneously. She did.

Ouch!

Ms. Fisichelli apologised instinctively and looked down. No, she'd done it right. She glanced back at the screen, which now said:
Only kidding!!!

Oh-for-crying-out-loud. If this was the state of the art in Olympian micro-electronics, perhaps now was the time to consider converting to Zen Buddhism.

Fun, this, isn't it!?

Painstakingly, Ms. Fisichelli selected the necessary fingertips to type in
No.

The shield gave her a puzzled look and read
Error!!!
but she ignored it and went back to the right ring fingertip and the left big toe stage. She then remained aloof while the thing went through its tired little joke. Clearly you had to be something of a micro-electronics wizard if you wanted to input humour of your own into this gadget.

By this stage the shield read
Ready!!
which was apparently what it should do. Unfortunately, the next page of the manual was missing.

'Oh nuts!' said Ms. Fisichelli, uncharacteristically. She tried reading on, but it was hopeless. There was only one thing to do. Feeling slightly self-conscious, she stood on both the statue's feet and grabbed both its hands.

The result was incomprehensible but gratifyingly large-scale. The shield shimmered with a brilliant coruscation of messages in all the known languages and alphabets, alive, dead and intermediate. The statue said bleep, not once but many times. Its left ear began printing out.

After a while, things appeared to settle down, until there were only four words left on the shield. They were:
All right, you win.

Ms. Fisichelli beamed, and then wondered what to do next. Fortunately, the shield told her.

Vocal input acceptable,
it said.
Speak now.

'Er,' she said.

The statue's lips quivered, then parted.

'Hi!', said the statue.

Ms. Fisichelli's jaw swung open and she forgot what she was going to say next. Probably just as well.

'C in a circle Copyright,' the statue went on, in a clear, high monotone, like a Dalek newsreader. 'Olympian Software dlc. Unauthorised use of programme material shall render the user liable to civil and criminal penalties.'

'I...'

'Error!!'

'But...'

'Error!!'

'Scumbag!!'

'Ready!!'

'Oh.' Ms. Fisichelli wondered about that for a moment, and then decided that maybe you were supposed to lose your temper with the doggone thing. 'Look...'

'Input mode selected,' said the statue. 'Receiving,' it added helpfully. Ms. Fisichelli took a deep breath and started to talk, on the grounds that if the blasted thing said 'Ready!!' just one more time she would quite probably scream.

'Well,' she said, 'I'm terribly sorry to bother you like this, but none of the other divining instruments seemed to work, and I tried conjuring but of course you need an assistant for that really, and mine just turned into an eagle and left, so I wasn't able to get through that way and I was at my wits' end and then I suddenly thought, Wait a minute, I thought, there's always the Holy Icon, why don't I try that, and if you say "Error!!" at me I shall melt you down and have you recast as a bedstead, so be very careful.'