Odds and Gods (2 page)

Hence the institution of the godchildren. Everybody knows that when it comes to affairs of the heart, gods come second only to the characters in a long-running soap opera for spreading it around. At the height of the Heroic Age, the average god scarcely dared set foot outside his own temple for fear of process-servers with paternity suits.

And the mortal children of the gods had children, and so on, and so forth; and eventually the divine spark became sufficiently dilute to allow the ultimate descendents to pack in minotaur-slaying and damsel-rescuing and become chartered accountants instead.

But in each generation there are throwbacks, particularly where the bloodlines of two or more gods happen to coincide; and from this genetic sump Humanity has always tended to draw its statesmen, its generals, its social reformers, its idealists, its princes of commerce and all the other unmitigated pests who have contrived to make a ball of wet rock spinning in an infinite void into the camel’s armpit it is today.

These are the godchildren. And, sooner or later, they find out who they are; and, more to the point, what they stand to inherit, if only . . .

 

‘It’s not supposed to do that.’

Predictably enough, there was a moment of complete silence.

‘Yes, George, we know that,’ said Sir Michael Arlington, breaker of awkward silences to Her Majesty’s Nuclear Inspectorate. ‘That’s why we sent for you, all the way from bloody Iowa. Do you feel up to hazarding a guess as to why?’

‘You could do really good baked potatoes in it,’ said a white-haired scientist at the back of the gathering. ‘I mean, a quarter of a nanosecond in there, add a knob of butter and there you go.’

‘You could indeed,’ replied Sir Michael. ‘And when it was ready it’d probably be able to walk out on its own. Any
sensible
suggestions would be very welcome.’

‘It’s gone wrong.’ Professor George Eisenkopf, resident nuclear genius at the University of Chicopee Falls, Iowa, and the State Department’s leading authority on civilian atomic power, scratched his nose with the plastic coffee-stirrer he’d been given on the plane. ‘It isn’t working properly,’ he added, in case there were any laymen present.

Sir Michael winced. ‘Please, George,’ he muttered, ‘don’t worry too much about blinding us with science. In what way has it gone wrong?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Great. Is it about to blow up?’

‘Too early to say.’ Professor Eisenkopf leaned forward and tapped a couple of keys on the computer keyboard in front of him. The screen flickered, flashed a few columns of figures and announced itself ready to play Monster Nintendo.

‘Sorry,’ mumbled the baked potato enthusiast, nudging past and pressing some other keys. ‘Only my wife’s nephew came to see the place the other day, and I haven’t had time to . . .’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ Professor Eisenkopf studied the data he’d called up, and pursed his lips. ‘You’re going to find this a bit hard to relate to, guys, but there’s something alive in there.’

‘In where, George?’

‘In the core,’ the professor replied. ‘As far as I can tell from this box of tricks, sitting on top of the goddamn pile.’

Sir Michael nodded. ‘Probably grilling a few sausages,’ he said.

‘Pardon me?’

‘To go with the potatoes.’

Not all the gods retired. Some of them still soldier on, mainly because they’re horribly overworked and never had time to train a successor.

Just such a one was having a well-earned sit-down and a cold beef sandwich in the infernal heart of Bosworth Pike power station. His name was Pan, and if you add -ic to his name, you get his portfolio in the sublime Cabinet.

‘Knit
one
,’ he said to himself, squinting at the diagram, ‘and pearl
two
.’

He was knitting a matinée jacket for Truth (who, as is tolerably well known, is the daughter of Time) and he had an uneasy feeling that he’d gone wrong somewhere. He had a further unpleasant suspicion that the faint brown check which had crept into the pattern about twelve rows back was in fact his beard.

‘Nuts,’ he said, and let go of the needles. The knitting flopped, suspended from his chin. He reached for the scissors.

The fact remained that his analyst had recommended knitting as tremendous therapy for hypertension and stress, and over the last few millennia he’d tried just about everything else, several times.

Under him, the ground started to glow green. He licked a fingertip, pressed it ever so gently against the side of the pile, and was rewarded with a loud sizzle. Just nicely ready, in fact. He stood up.

Pan is, of course, a nice god; or at least it’s wise to believe so, because our beliefs have a profound effect on the divine self-image. This isn’t a comfortable thing for the gods themselves - the Egyptian deity Serapis, for example, never tries to eat a piece of toast without cursing the Faithful for believing in the existence of a crocodile-headed god - and it’s by no means unknown for a god to wake up one morning to find himself a totally different shape or species simply because of some thoughtlessly imaginative revival meeting held on the previous evening. Mortals believe that Pan, although an incurable practical joker with a sense of humour that would have appalled Josef Goebbels, is fundamentally one of the good guys and incapable of doing anything that would actually result in lasting harm.

He was going to have his work cut out this time, though. On the other hand, he was a god; and to the gods, all things are possible, at least in theory. Thus it was that when the emergency repair squad broke into the reactor cell three days later, wearing their lead suits and clinging like covetous limpets to their lucky rabbits’ feet, their Geiger counters showed up a radiation level several points below the normal ambient reading.

What they did find was a toasting fork, an unopened pat of butter and five stone cold baked potatoes.

 

There are some people who like lawyers.

For example, Ashtoreth, the antediluvian moon goddess of southern Palestine, was thrilled to bits when her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-godson Hyman was made a partner in the leading New York firm of Kaplan and Hart, and drove the other occupants of Sunflower Annexe to the brink of violence by talking loudly and incessantly about Her Godson Hymie, The Lawyer.

Other deities with whom lawyers are popular include: Ahriman, the Father of Darkness; Hermes, patron god of thieves; the Scandinavian Loki, god of lies and deceit; and Belenos, in whose honour the Druids burnt men alive in wicker cages. You can’t beat a lawyer, according to Belenos, for the generation of plenty of hot air.

Osiris, for his part, had always reckoned that he could take them or leave them alone, with a marked preference for the latter option. Visits from his current godson were therefore as welcome as a rat in a morgue.

And that, he felt, remembering where he was, is no bad analogy. I really shouldn’t be in this place. Hellfire, if only the dozy old bat hadn’t had the exploded diagram the wrong way up the last night we did the reassembly, I wouldn’t be. I’d be out there, bombarding snotty little tykes like Julian with meteorites.

‘How do, Julian,’ he said, as his godson entered the room. ‘Brought me some grapes, then.’

‘Yup.’

‘Can’t stand grapes.’

‘No matter.’ There was a gonglike sound as the bag of grapes hit the bottom of the tin wastepaper basket. ‘Look, I’ve got to be quick, I’m due in a meeting in forty minutes. How’s life treating you, anyway?’

Osiris paused, stroking his chin. ‘Life,’ he pronounced, ‘is a bit like mashed swede. A little bit’s nice for a change now and then, but you wouldn’t want to live on it.’

‘Yup.’ Julian stared at him for a few seconds and blinked twice. ‘The leg still playing you up, then?’

‘Aren’t you going to write it down?’

‘Write what down?’

‘What I just said,’ replied Osiris testily. ‘That was a Teaching, that was. You’re supposed to write down Teachings.’

‘Um.’

‘And don’t give me that boiled cod look, because there’s been dafter things than that said out of burning bushes, take it from me. How’s Phyllida?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Your wife.’

‘Oh.’ Julian glanced at his watch. ‘Fine. I’d have heard if she wasn’t. Look, I hate to rush off like this but it really is a very important meeting . . .’

‘And Ben? And little Julia?’

‘They’re fine too. Ask after you all the time. Anyway, it’s been great seeing you.’

‘Your children,’ said Osiris icily, ‘are in fact called Emma and Clinton. Keeping busy, are you?’

‘Yup, thanks. It’s been an uphill job, holistically speaking, with the recession bottoming out, but the medium- to long-term overview of our bedrock client base is definitely more positive than negative, and . . .’

‘Just remind me,’ said Osiris, ‘what it is you do.’

Julian sighed. ‘I’m a lawyer, Oz,’ he replied.

‘Oh,’ said Osiris. ‘Oh well, never mind. You’ve just got to try not to give up hope, that’s all. I heard a good joke about lawyers the other day.’

‘I know them all, thanks, Oz. Look, I’ll call you. You look after yourself. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, okay?’

‘Son,’ replied Osiris with conviction, ‘I wouldn’t do anything you would. Shut the door on your way out.’

Julian looked at him. ‘You feeling okay, Oz?’ he asked.

Osiris looked up, startled by his tone of voice. ‘I believe so,’ he replied. ‘As well as can be expected for someone whose small intestine now runs slap bang through the middle of his bile duct. Why?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ Julian replied absently, as he picked at the handle of his briefcase. ‘You just seem kind of odd today, that’s all.’

‘Odd. Right.’

‘Not quite, you know, a hundred and ten per cent.’

‘Julian, my boy, if I was a hundred and ten per cent, there’d be a seven-and-a-quarter-inch-high replica of me standing beside me on the hearthrug. Go on, now, sling your hook.’

‘You haven’t been, for example, hearing strange voices or anything?’

‘Yes,’ Osiris snapped, ‘yours. Now piss off.’

‘Okay, okay. Same time next week, right?’

‘Right.’ Osiris sighed. ‘Unless, of course, I’m in a meeting. The doorknob is the round brass thing about three feet up from the floor. A half-turn to the right usually does the trick.’

As Julian retreated down the corridor, he played back his mental tape of the interview, ignoring the crackles. Yes, the old fool had sounded strange; but on reflection, no stranger than usual.

Julian stopped, standing on one foot; and suddenly grinned.

He’d just had an idea.

O
nce, long ago and far away, a bard sang in the mead-hall of King Hrolf Kraki.

There was dead silence from the King’s warriors, his carls and servants as the poet traced the intricate pathways of kenning and metaphor, trope and simile, in the still, tense circle of the tawny glow of the hearth. Nobody moved, and the dark yellow mead glistened untasted in the drinkhorns, as the words of the lay sparkled in the air like frozen dewdrops on a spider’s web. This moment, this splinter of time, caught like a fly in amber, mounted in a ring of golden firelight.

It was an old song, so old that nobody knew where it had come from or when it had first been sung. It began at the beginning, when Ymir the Sky-Father had first opened his eyes and seen nothing, nothing but the cold and the wind and the loneliness of the first day. On it swept, gathering pace as the singer peopled the shadowy corners with ghosts: Sigurd the Dragon-Slayer; Arvarodd, who once strayed into the land of the Giants; Weyland the craftsman without equal, whose skill brought him only sorrow; Brynhild, who slept for a thousand years on the fire-girt mountain. And now it crawled on to its terrible end, this song without pity, under the control of no singer; the last days, the rising of the Frost-Trolls, the swallowing of the sun and moon by the Wolf, the last battle on the Glittering Plains, the going-down of the gods themselves. As the poet sang, the world seemed to grow tight and brittle, and King Hrolf nervously motioned for more logs to be heaped on the fire.