Odds and Gods (26 page)

‘He’s your friend,’ Osiris retorted. ‘I naturally assumed . . .’

Pan shook his head, while his lungs went into overdraft. ‘I knew the man once, many years ago, but I wouldn’t say we were friends. Generally I try not to associate too closely with people who spend most of their time bloody to the elbow.’

Osiris sighed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’re here now, we might as well do the job. Then I suggest we get out of here as quickly as possible. This whole thing is getting unnecessarily complicated, if you ask me.’

‘Behind you all the way,’ Pan replied, and in his mind added, Yeah, pushing. Same as usual. Why do I get all the rotten jobs?

‘Excuse me.’

Osiris looked back over his shoulder. ‘Well?’ he asked.

‘Excuse me,’ said Sandra, ‘but the gold teeth things. What did you do with them?’

By way of reply Osiris grinned and patted his trouser pocket. Then the grin became a frown, the patting became frantic thumping, and spread to his other pockets like plague in a sixteenth-century seaport.

‘You’re not going to believe this,’ he said.

But Pan believed it all right. In fact, he’d been waiting for it for a long time, and in a sense he was relieved it was over.

‘Where,’ he asked tonelessly, ‘did you have them last?’

All living things are good at something; and Osiris’ innate gift was for losing things out of pockets. When he was still an active god, before his retirement, this unfortunate habit was the main thing standing between him and high office within the Federation. (To give just one example: the lost kingdom of Atlantis was a centre of Mediterranean trade and marked on all the maps until one day it was Osiris’ turn to lock up and switch off all the lights after the other gods had gone home. Atlantis remained lost for over four thousand years, until it eventually turned up, dusty and covered in bits of grey fluff, down the back of Osiris’ sofa.)

‘They’re here somewhere,’ Osiris was saying, in the tone of voice that implies that everything will come right just so long as you have faith. This didn’t convince Pan, who knew from long experience that faith does indeed move mountains, but always puts them down again in the wrong place and invariably loses or breaks a couple of foothills in the process. ‘Just bear with me a second and I’ll . . .’

‘You’ve lost them, haven’t you?’ he said.

‘Of course I haven’t lost them. How can anyone lose a set of false teeth the size of Mount Rushmore?’

‘To the gods all things are possible.’

‘Ah,’ Osiris said, ‘here they are.’

From his inside jacket pocket he produced a shiny yellow object which, on closer inspection, proved to be the upper set. Of the lower set there was no trace.

‘Brilliant,’ Pan said. ‘Well, there’s nothing for it, we’ll just have to retrace our steps. It shouldn’t be too hard a job,’ he added grimly. ‘All we have to do is find a country we’ve passed through or flown over which has suddenly quadrupled its national wealth overnight. Look out for new, expensive-looking warplanes with the cellophane still on the seats, that sort of thing.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Carl.

‘Or maybe we could try the lost property offices,’ Pan continued. ‘Ask if anyone’s handed in any gold icebergs. There are some honest people left in the world, after all, and—’

‘Excuse me.’

The two gods turned round, to see Carl balancing the missing dentures on the palm of his hand. Pan swallowed hard, and grabbed.

‘I think,’ he said, gently but determinedly relieving Osiris of the other set, ‘I’ll take charge of these little tinkers for the time being. I’d prefer it if any further outbreaks of alarm and despondency were my fault. After all, that’s what I’m good at.’

Osiris nodded meekly. ‘Best thing to do,’ he said, ‘would be to get this lot cashed in as quickly as possible.’

‘Cashed in?’

‘Realised. Turned into money.’ He hesitated, musing. ‘Mind you,’ he added, ‘that’s easier said than done. I don’t think we can just wander into a jeweller’s shop and expect to be paid cash.’

‘We need a specialist, you mean?’

Osiris nodded. ‘And come to think of it,’ he said, ‘I know just the very chap. More or less down my old neck of the woods. Retired now, of course, but stayed in those parts. Don’t think he had much choice.’

‘Excuse me.’

‘Yes, thank you, Carl, we’ve found them now,’ Pan said irritably. ‘Get on with evolving into a sentient life-form or something, there’s a good—’

‘It’s them doctors,’ Carl said. ‘I thought you’d want to know, that’s all.’

‘Where?’

‘Over there.’

‘
Where?
’

‘Look,’ said Carl, pointing. ‘Just there, behind that big grey thing.’

‘Oh.’

 

‘You know something,’ said one of the doctors to his colleague, as they lowered the lid of the tank into place and tightened up the restraining bolts, ‘when this job is over I think I might retire. Pack all this in.’

His colleague wiped sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his white coat. ‘Yeah?’ he said.

The doctor nodded. ‘Think so,’ he replied. ‘Retire, open a little clinic somewhere, make people better. You know, sick people.’

His colleague frowned. ‘You reckon there’s a future in that, do you?’

‘Could be. I mean, it’s worth a shot, isn’t it?’

‘Might work, I suppose. Right,’ he added, lighting the blowtorch. ‘We’ll just seal up the interstices with molten lead, and then that’s that job done.’

 

It had been a remarkably efficient operation; basically a larger-scale version of catching rabbits with the aid of a ferret, except that the net had been a three-foot-thick sheet of invisible glass dumped across the road, and the ferret had been the two doctors plus a large group of stage extras hired for the day, equipped with uniforms, collecting tins, leaflets and Gideon Bibles.

‘How was I to know,’ said Pan, inside the tank, bitterly. ‘They looked just like real Jehovah’s Witnesses to me.’

‘We should have stood our ground, in any case,’ Osiris replied. ‘You don’t just turn tail and run as soon as you see a lot of God-botherers walking up the path.’

‘I do. And so, I seem to remember, did you.’

‘True.’ Osiris nodded sadly. ‘Basic inbuilt reflex action.’ He scratched his head sadly. ‘And another thing,’ he went on. ‘They call themselves witnesses, but they can’t be. They’re all too young, for a start.’

The tank was a masterpiece of applied theology. Specially built in Germany, where they still know a thing or two about craftsmanship, to exquisitely precise specifications, it was proofed to withstand internal pressures which would make the Big Bang seem like a car back-firing, while the lining of pulped copies of standard nineteenth-century Nihilist philosophical texts was capable of damping out supernatural manifestations equivalent to 7.9 miracles. Anyone able to get out of there would have to have been capable not only of parting the Red Sea but folding it up like a newly ironed tea towel.

‘Well,’ Sandra said, ‘you’d better hurry up and get us out of here. I really am starving, you know?’

‘I’m doing my best,’ Osiris replied. ‘Who do you think I am?’

‘Well . . .’

‘Yes, point taken. Any suggestions?’

Sandra considered. Her mythological knowledge was limited to stray particles of legendary matter that had adhered to the fly-paper of her imagination. ‘How about turning yourself into a shower of gold?’ she suggested.

Pan and Osiris looked at each other, and simultaneously sighed.

‘Listen, love,’ said Pan. ‘Two thousand years ago, no problem. These days, with the best will in the world, I think that at our age, between us, the best we could manage would be a small wad of Italian lire. It’s a case,’ he explained, ‘of the spirit being willing but the currency being weak.’

Sandra wrinkled her nose. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘All right, what about a burning bush? You could cut your way out, like one of those oxy-acetylene torch things.’

‘Nah,’ Osiris replied, ‘that’s not us, that’s more your Judaeo-Christian touch. Different cultural heritage entirely.’

‘Not solar-based,’ Pan agreed. ‘Completely different technology. Besides, we’d need goggles. We’ve just got to face facts, we’re stuck in this bloody thing until somebody lets us out.’

‘Oh yes?’ Sandra enquired. ‘Who, for instance?’

‘Gawd only knows.’

L
undqvist woke up.

He found himself in a dark, gloomy cave, rank with the smell of stale air and rotting vegetation. His arms and legs were securely bound with thick electric cable; he was gagged with what tasted like a very old and lonely sock, and there was a guard with an Armalite rifle sitting about five yards away, reading a pornographic magazine.

Ah, he said to himself, back to normal. I was beginning to worry back there.

It had been, he reflected, a pretty bad run so far, by his standards. He’d divided his time on this project so far between standing about like a bottle of brown sauce at a state banquet, getting under people’s feet and being in the way (which was bad enough) and being chased, scared out of his wits, abducted and made to run away (which was
awful
). He was confused, unarmed and thoroughly depressed, and he hadn’t killed anything except time for as long as he could remember. The way he’d been feeling, if a spider had run up his leg he’d probably have tried to trap it in a matchbox and put it outside the door.

Now, however, things were looking up.

It was the work of a moment to fray through the cable against the rock behind him; a mere bagatelle to chew the sock in half; a trifling inconvenience to roll over, break free from his bonds and stun the guard with one blow. In fact, if he hadn’t slipped on (of all things) a banana skin and nutted himself on a low shelf of rock, he’d have been out of there in less than six minutes, thereby shattering for ever the record set by Clignancourt and O’Reilly at the Grande Convention Mondiale des Assassins et Espions Professionels in 1967. As it was, he merely equalled it.

Once outside, with a rifle in his hands and (presumably) people to rescue against overwhelming odds in the face of certain death, he felt much better. His manner as he worked a steady and decidedly businesslike way through the various heavily armed men he found here and there about the place was positively jovial. He smiled as he dodged the hail of bullets from the Browning .50 calibre machine gun mounted on the back of the half-track beside the big grey rectangular box, and grinned as he kicked open the rear cargo doors and beat the occupants into insensibility with the butt of his rifle. Somwhere nearby, he felt sure, he could hear nightingales singing.

Then he caught sight of the two doctors.

Yum, he thought.

Please, he said to himself, please let them open up with a couple of Uzis, so that I can take cover, return fire, lob in a couple of these beautiful stun-grenades I found lying about over by the jeep and then go in with the cold steel. And please let them be wearing Kevlar body armour. And please let them have reinforcements standing by to try and keep me pinned down while I dynamite the lid off that big box thing.

A few helicopters wouldn’t come amiss, either.

And so the day went on. The sun shone, bullets flew, plastic explosive detonated, and for once someone somewhere in the world was, for a while at least, completely well-adjusted and happy with his lot. There were, admittedly, only three helicopters; but one of them had an Oerlikon 20mm cannon, which made up for quite a lot, particularly when it crashed.

And finally, to round off a beautifully mellow afternoon, he found a tub of Semtex, blew the lid off the tank, and threw down a rope.

‘
The sun has got his hat on
. . . Come on, you guys, it’s time to split,’ he yelled. ‘Grab the rope and let’s get our butts outa here . . .
The sun has got his hat on and he’s coming out today
. . . Come on, let’s
move
!’

In the gloom inside the tank, Osiris stirred and looked up. Someone had just dropped a rope on his head.

‘Good grief,’ he exclaimed, ‘it’s that maniac friend of yours. The one who got us all in this mess in the first place.’

Lundqvist froze. He could feel the confidence and
joie de vivre
ebbing away. God, he hated being around gods. They did something to him.

‘Took your bloody time, didn’t you?’ Pan said, yawning and massaging his leg, which had gone to sleep. ‘Next time, a bit less of the prancing about shooting at people and more attention to the job in hand, all right?’

‘Yeah, okay,’ Lundqvist mumbled. ‘Look, could you kinda get it moving, because they outnumber us fifteen to one and—’

‘Is that all? I thought you did this sort of thing for a living.’

‘I do.’ Lundqvist ducked as a bullet skimmed off the side of the tank a mere inch from his head. ‘I’m doing pretty damn good, if you must know. Now can we—?’