Odds and Gods (36 page)

 

‘Yes, boss.’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘Yes, boss.’

Splendid
.

 

Lundqvist looked up, and whimpered.

Outside, in the arena, he was going to win; he knew it as a depressing certainty, as hopeless and ineluctable as Monday. At his side was the .40 Glock, his trademark, with which he could shoot the ash off a cigarette at a hundred yards. Strapped to his ankle, the Sykes-Fairbarin fighting knife. In his left hand, the slide-action Remington twelve-gauge. And this, he reflected bitterly, was the absolute minimum he’d been able to select when offered choice of weapons without laying himself open to a charge of throwing the match.

The other side had chosen a baseball bat and a bag of sand. Probably thought it was funny.

It goes with the territory. He could just about refuse to fight gods, on conscientious grounds, but there was no way he could turn down a contract to fight a fellow human being. It was part of the price he had to pay for being a professional, and being the best. If he hadn’t been the best, he could have chickened out on grounds of cowardice - perfectly legitimate for any other member of the profession except himself to do that. And if he hadn’t been a professional - but he had been, for more years (thanks to the exemption from the rules of chronology that came with his Federal licence) than anybody could remember. If he wasn’t a professional, one hundred per cent impartial and doing it purely and simply for the money, then there were one hell of a lot of dead people out there who had grounds for some extremely trenchant criticism. The defence of only-obeying-orders only holds good so long as the orders are actually obeyed.

LAYDEES AN GENNULMENN YOUR ATTEN-SHUN PLEEEZ . . .

It was a very special arena - unique, the first and last of its kind. They’d had to search long and hard to find a site that was a temporal anomaly and a moral vacuum and also had adequate parking for seventy million cars. The beer tent alone had required licences from no less than sixty-four different authorities, many of them the same authority at different points in time. The floodlights were all dying stars, and the PA system had been in the Beginning, and had been with God and (according to some versions of the story) was God. Certainly it hadn’t come cheap.

FOR THE HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE UNIVERSE . . .

And it’ll all be my fault, Lundqvist said to himself. The bastards, they’ve gone and made me into a lawyer, a
lawyer
, for gods’ sake. I may have done some pretty filthy things in my time, but I never thought it’d come to this. I wish I’d never been born.

IN THE
BLUE
CORNER REPRESENTING HEAVEN . . .

Too late now to make a bad day’s work good. Eventually there comes a time when all that matters, or at least all you think about, is doing the job and doing it well, and it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s a lousy rotten job that someone has to do. At the end abide integrity, skill at arms and the money, these three, and the greatest of these is the money. Everything else is vanity, vanity of vanities.

AND IN THE
RED
CORNER REPRESENTING MARKET FORCES . . .

A very great deal of money, it went without saying.

 

‘Well?’ demanded Bragi, the blind Norse god of poetry. ‘Have they started yet?’

There are those who’d have you believe that the post of Norse god of poetry must be, at best, a sinecure and, in all likelihood, a leg-pull (like the First Lord of the Swiss Admiralty or the Australian cultural attaché). Very few such sceptics have ever said anything of the sort to Bragi’s face, however, and those foolish enough to have done so tend to be easily identified by their false teeth and crooked smiles. It’s amazing how much damage a lead-weighted white stick can do at close quarters.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Ahriman, the Parsee Prince of Darkness. ‘That dozy cow in front of me’s got her hat on, so I can’t see a damn thing.’

‘I heard that. And it’s not a hat, it’s the top of my head.’

‘Sorry, Medusa, didn’t realise it was you. Look,
have
they started yet?’

The serpent-haired Queen of Terror shook her head. ‘Our chap’s out there already but their bloke hasn’t shown yet. With luck he’ll be out of time and we can claim victory by def . . . No, here he is, dammit. Booo!’

Medusa scowled. If looks could kill - if looks could still kill despite cataracts and glaucoma . . .

‘What’s he got?’ Bragi demanded.

‘Um.’ Medusa squinted. ‘Guns and things, I think. To be honest with you, I’m not very well up on these modern gadgets.’

‘If it’s Kurt Lundqvist,’ Ahriman interrupted knowledgeably, ‘it’ll be the .40 Glock and the Remington 870. He’s done all his best jobs with them.’

Bragi raised a redundant eyebrow. ‘What’s a Glock?’ he asked.

‘It’s a sort of gun. Actually it’s a state-of-the-art compact polymer-framed double-action semi-automatic handgun with—’

‘
Glock?
’

‘That’s right, Glock.’

‘Oh for crying out loud,’ exclaimed Bragi. ‘You sure it’s not a Colt or something? There’s masses of rhymes for Colt.’

Ahriman pushed aside a dreadlock of vipers and peered through his binoculars. ‘No,’ he said, ‘definitely the Glock. Adopted by law enforcement agencies worldwide, this revolutionary design—’

‘Block,’ muttered Bragi, ‘clock, dock, hock, jock, knock. What are they doing now, by the way?’

‘Shaking hands, I think. That or arm-wrestling.’

‘Lock, mock, nock, rock, sock . . .’

‘And now,’ said Ahriman, ‘the referee’s talking to them. Saying he wants a good clean fight, I expect, though personally I never saw a clean fight in all my life. Dust on your trouser knees at the very least.’

‘Is there such a word as yock?’

‘I have a feeling,’ said Medusa sadly, ‘that this is going to be a very short fight. Anyone like a sugared almond?’

‘Not for me, thanks. Here, did you know some of your green mambas’ve got split ends?’

‘That’s their tongues, idiot.’

‘There’s absolutely nothing at all that rhymes with Remington,’ Bragi complained bitterly, ‘except possibly Leamington, and really that should be Leamington Spa, so you’d have to have Spa as an enjambement on the next line. Why can’t the bastard use a spear like everybody else?’

‘Hey up,’ Ahriman interrupted. ‘They’re going back to their corners. I don’t think I want to watch this.’

‘Frock, crock, broch, pill
ock
. . .’

 

The whistle went.

Nothing personal; Lundqvist jacked a round into the chamber of the Remington and fired. There was the usual universe-filling boom . . .

He blinked. At a target fifteen yards away, with a short-barrelled shotgun loaded with #00 Buck, it’s virtually impossible to miss unless you’re inadvertently standing with your back to your opponent. For a moment his brain was in freefall; and then he picked up a voice on the short wave of his subconscious. Or rather, not a voice. A smirk.

Osiris, you bastard, you’re helping him.

You’re cheating.

We’ll see about that, Lundqvist growled. He slammed back the action, chambered another round and fired.

Before his conscious mind could override, Carl was on to him. Sand exploded in his face while the baseball bat sent the shotgun spinning across the arena into the crowd . . .

(‘Stock, shock, cock,
who
threw that? Just wait till I get my hands on whoever . . .’)

Oh good, said Lundqvist’s subconscious mind, mortal danger; now we know where we are. Before Carl could bring the bat down, Lundqvist dropped his shoulder, side-stepped, hit the ground and rolled. By the time Carl knew where he’d got to he was on his feet, the knife in his right hand. Carl struck out hard, and if he’d connected there can be no doubt that Lundqvist’s head would have ended up in the press box. As it was, the bat whistled through empty air and a fraction of a second later, Carl was on the sand, vaguely wondering in those parts of his mind still open for business exactly why his legs had suddenly folded up like a Taiwanese shooting stick, and what had happened to the lungful of air he’d invested in only moments previously.

Lundqvist straightened his back and drew his pistol. It was extremely likely that he’d broken a bone in his foot, and there were small bits of glass from his watch sticking in his ear. Apart from that, he was back on top . . .

When you’re around gods, time tends to have all the value and relevance of a fifty-lire note. In the short space of time between the front pad of Lundqvist’s forefinger tightening on the trigger of the Glock and the hammer falling, the following subliminal dialogue took place:

Do I?

But I don’t want to.

Apparently not.

But hey, I’m on your side, you fucker. You want me to do this?

The hammer quivered as the sear began to roll out of its notch. In the members’ enclosure, Julian was smiling. And something deep inside Lundqvist’s head grabbed the mike, and shouted.

‘Dragon King of the South-East,’ it shouted, ‘get your great scaly ass over here.’

‘Third wish, right?’

‘I need,’ said Lundqvist, ‘an act of God. Can you manage that?’

‘Do something.’

‘Jam the gun. Take all the powder out of the cartridge. I don’t know. Just do it, okay?’

The hammer fell.

Nothing happened.

 

‘What’s happening?’

‘I can’t see,’ Ahriman snapped. ‘Look, either keep your bloody pets under control or get a haircut, all right?’

‘I’m sorry. I washed my snakes last night and now I can’t do a thing with them.’

‘He’s just standing there,’ Ahriman said. ‘The gun didn’t go off and he’s just standing there like he’s waiting for ivy to grow up him or something. He’s not even trying to clear the gun, although with the unique toggle action of the Glock, clearing a first position stoppage is an extremely simple—’

‘Why?’ Bragi howled. ‘This is ludicrous. Blow yer whistle, you great fairy!’

‘Now he’s looking up,’ Ahriman went on. ‘Blowed if I know what it is he’s seen. Hang about, though, there’s something . . . Looks like some kind of bird. No, it’s too big, it’s more like a . . . Well, if I didn’t know better I’d say it was a . . .’

 

‘Doesn’t look like Old Trafford to me,’ Thor objected.

‘I can’t help it if you can’t read a map.’

‘And even if it is,’ Thor continued, ‘somehow I don’t think they’d be overjoyed if we go and park this damn great thing right in the middle of the playing area.’

‘Ah,’ said Odin. ‘Actually, it’s not as if we’ve got a great deal of choice in the matter.’

‘I see.’

Odin braced himself in his seat and gripped the joystick firmly in his right hand. ‘Hold on tight,’ he said. ‘I should be able to bring her in smoothly if only I could just . . .’

 

‘Yes, boss.’

‘Yes, boss. Boss?’

‘How far should I go, boss?’