Tom Holt (33 page)

'I believe,' Jupiter said -- why is there no word meaning 'said' but having lots of harsh, grating consonants in it? --'that Mars wishes to address the meeting?'

'Well,' Mars said, 'I'm terribly sorry to interrupt, break the flow and so forth, but did Your Um just say something about the destruction of Earth? On a point of order, and so on.'

'Yes.'

'Ah. Thank you.'

'And the transfer,' Jupiter went on, 'of our entire field of operations to Betamax 87659807, ultimately to be renamed--' Jupiter paused melodramatically -- 'New Earth. I leave the motion to the floor.'

If the floor had any opinions on the subject, it kept them to itself, as did all the gods sitting on
it.
The discovery that the Supreme Being has finally flipped his lid is always likely to cause disorientation, even among gods.

'If nobody has any comments to make,' Jupiter said, 'then I shall put the motion to the vote. Seconded and carried...'

'No.'

Everyone swivelled round and stared at Mars, Demeter going so far as to count his legs. Jupiter frowned.

'No.' Mars was standing up. 'You can't,' he added.

'Oh can't I?'

'No you can't.'

'Yes I can.'

'No you can't.'

'Yes I can.'

'Look,' interrupted Mercury, who was taking the minutes, 'do I have to put all this down, because if it's going to go on much longer I'm going to need a new notebook.'

'It's not going to go on very much longer, said Jupiter, 'as dung-beetles have no
locus standi
to address a meeting of the gods.'

'You still can't do it,' Mars said. His right hand was creeping upwards towards his mouth, with the general idea of tearing his own tongue out by the roots; but it was naturally cautious and had only reached chest height. In the meantime, Mars carried on. 'Because if you destroy Earth, we all cease to exist. There's no way out of that, and you know it.'

'He's right.' Minerva looked round to see who had spoken and realised it was her.

'Who asked your opinion?' Jupiter snarled.

'You did. You left the motion to the floor, and...'

'But you're not a floor,' Jupiter replied. 'Though that could be arranged,' he added.

'If you destroy the Earth,' she said, ignoring him -- ignoring Jupiter is rather like trying to fly through rather than round a mountain, but to the gods all things are possible -'then the laws of possibility require that we cease to exist, at least in our present form.'

Jupiter considered this before saying 'Balls,' and the Olympians held their breath. Minerva continued:

'What will happen is that there'll be a reality bifurcation into a world where you decided to destroy the world --which won't be around for very long -- and a world where you changed your mind at the last minute. Since that's impossible, because you never change your mind at the last minute, that world will quickly fizzle out, and all of us with it. On the world where you destroyed the world, we'll all be destroyed with it. Curtains.'

Jupiter scratched the tip of his nose. 'You're right, of course,' he said.

'I'm so glad,' Minerva started to say, 'and please forgive me for having the temerity to remind you of the fact, but...'

'Nevertheless...'

Apollo grinned nervously, straightened his laurel wreath and stared at the monitor.

'Six -- five -- four -- three -- two -- one -- on air!'

Danny Bennet switched on a smile that Amundsen could have driven a sled over, and leaned forwards.

'Your Majesty,' he said, 'is it true that the gods are conspiring to bring about the end of the world?'

Apollo opened his mouth to speak, and then something happened to his vocal chords. Difficult to say what, exactly; either they'd all fused together or someone had nipped quietly down his throat in the last five seconds and removed them. Something funny had definitely happened. In any case they weren't there any more. Meanwhile there were ninety billion people or whatever it was, all out there looking at him. Live.

'You know,' Apollo managed to say, 'I'm glad you asked me that question.'

'So what's the answer?' Danny demanded. 'Your Majesty,' he added.

When his agent had told him about this wonderful offer from the satellite TV people, Danny had taken all that stuff about the sky being the limit with a pinch of salt. You know where you are with the BBC, he had told himself, even if it is on the scrapheap. It had only been the promise that if he signed on the dotted line he could at last make the epoch-shattering documentary, based on shocking revelations by a renegade astrotheology don and provisionally entitled
Death of a Carpenter,
that had induced him to turn his back on the Corporation and hoist the Jolly Roger. And now here he was interviewing this strange, distinctly luminous person whom his producer assured him was the god Apollo. For approximately five minutes, he had panicked, before he had remembered the interviewer's golden rule: the bigger they are, the harder you hit 'em.

'The people,' he added, 'have a right to know.'

'No they don't.'

'You're admitting there's been.--' Danny's lips caressed the magic words as they passed the gate of his teeth -- 'a cover-up?'

'Of course there's been a cover-up,' Apollo replied. 'There's always a cover-up. That's what it's all about. That's not the point. Look, unless you want me to turn you into a frog or something...'

'Mr ... Your Majesty,' Danny retorted, 'I think you'll find that threats are rivet rivet rivet rivet.'

Apollo blinked. Did I do that, he asked himself. Must have. Oh well. He unhooked the microphone from its stand and placed it on the chair beside the frog.

'Now I think you've put your finger on what I might call the nub of the problem, Mr. Bennet,' he said smoothly.

'Basically, when it comes down to it, in the final analysis . .

'Rivet rivet rivet rivet rivet, said the frog. 'Rivet.'

'Quite so,' Apollo replied. 'Your point is, of course, entirely valid. But the message I'm trying to get across...'

Apollo fell silent. Hell, it was on the tip of his tongue. Something about something important At that moment some words drifted down out of the air into his mouth, and he spoke them. They had come a long way, were slightly scorched and tasted disconcertingly of marzipan.

'Oh yes,' he said. 'The world is about to end.'

'Riv...'

'There is,' Apollo went on, 'absolutely no cause for alarm. The situation is under control, and even as I speak negotiations are in hand to attempt to reach a settlement that will be satisfactory in the eyes of all parties.' Just then, a cloud passed over the sun, and Apollo drew himself up short. Why was it, he wondered, that sitting in this chair being stared at by a camera made you say all sorts of silly things you didn't mean? 'They'll all fail, of course,' he added. 'Absolutely bugger all
you
lot can do about it, anyway. It's all up to the Derry boy and the dog and the eagle. And Prometheus, of course, and Gelos too, if he's turned up yet. But all I can say is they're cutting it a bit fine, because, well, there's a board meeting going on right now up in the sun and pretty soon they're all going to start chucking thunderbolts about and then it'll be you lot for the chop and why have you switched the cameras off, I haven't finished yet.'

'Now. look, said the producer's voice, 'I've had some nut cases on this show in my time but if you think I'm going to put my job on the line letting you say things like that over the ark ark ark ark...'

Apollo turned slightly in his chair and smiled at the camera, smiling as brightly as the sun (which had just emerged from the clouds overhead). The camera was being operated by a natterjack toad in a leather jacket and designer jeans. Do what you like to him, a television cameraman will always basically remain the same.

'Ladies and gentlemen of humanity,' Apollo said. It was easy once you got the hang of it, which was basically bearing in mind that if you let your brain register the fact that there are
ninety billion people out there staring right at you
then you're inevitably going to dry up, but if you just don't think about it then there's no problem, no problem at all. 'This is the god Apollo speaking. Throughout history it has been my pleasant task to pass on the messages of heaven to mortal men. Well, all good things must come to an end. The world's been a good thing, by and large; hasn't it? Well, it's got to come to an end, too. Now I know that's going to be hard on some of you, perhaps even all of you, but in the final analysis you'll all have the satisfaction of knowing that it's part of a divine plan that stretches back many thousands of years to the time of the creation of mankind itself.'

Apollo paused for a moment, rallied his mental forces, and tilted his head slightly on one side as if he'd been doing this sort of thing all his life. After all, he reasoned, PR is PR, whether it's done by television broadcasts or the entrails of sacrificial animals or posters on the sides of buses.

Now some of you,' he went on, 'will be saying to yourselves "Now hang on, that's a bit thick, isn't it?" And let me assure you that the Divine community as a whole has a great deal of sympathy with this view. We know only too well how hard it is to make sacrifices -- or in our case, how to go without sacrifices. We understand, and we're going to do everything in our power to make what I would call the transitional period as painless as we possibly can. But...'

At that moment, a large eagle smashed its way through a skylight and pitched on Danny's chair, with the result that about nine hundred thousand viewers who had just come back from the kitchen with the tea got the impression that it was one of those ventriloquism acts that never quite ring true on television.

Apollo frowned, trying to remember who he'd turned into what, and while his mind was temporarily engaged in this fashion, the eagle spoke to him.

This statement simply cries out for qualification. The eagle didn't speak as much as transmit telepathic messages direct from its brain to his; and the messages were in fact being relayed via the eagle from a huge composite brain presently in possibility orbit round the entire concept of Earth. To complicate matters, there was a mild thunderstorm in the vicinity and the composite voice was transmitting on a rather popular mental frequency, with the result that there was a lot of crackling and a few distant snippets of a conversation between two CB Radio enthusiasts driving Leyland Roadmasters round the M25, but the messages were more or less intelligible.

'What the hell do you think you're playing at?' he they said.

'I beg your pardon?'

'Come on, Pol, pull your finger out. Have you heard what you've just been saying?'

'I...'

'Listen.' The entire interview so far was played back through the eagle's brain. Telepathic communication is very rapid indeed; compared with two seasoned telepaths thinking quickly, words are second-class letters to Penzance posted in Dundee on a Sunday. 'Is that what you intended to say?'

'No,' Apollo replied, puzzled. 'Far from it.'

'What were you going to say?'

'I was going to say that the gods were about to betray humanity, and the only way out of it was for everyone to believe in them as quickly and as sincerely as possible. I was going to help by doing a few miracles.'

'Do you know what's happened?'

'I've been got at.'

'Who by?'

'Jupiter.'

'Correct. He's just passed a resolution that you aren't a god any more.'

'He's done what?'

'You heard me. You've been reduced to the ranks. As soon as the meeting's over, they're going to snatch you back to Olympus, and then it'll be a career in the real estate business for you. Meanwhile, he's using you as a mouthpiece, beaming signals down from the sun into your brain. Fortunately, I we have just put a green baize cloth over the sun...'

'How...'

'Don't ask. I we reckon that gives you about three minutes. Whose side are you on, Pol?'

'Reduced to the ranks!' Divine wrath filled Apollo's mind. He fizzed slightly, and the tubular steel arms of his chair were transmuted into pure gold. I'll show that jumped-up son of a concept exactly where he gets off...'

'That's the ticket, Pol. Now, why don't you tell the folks at home the truth?'

'Roll em.'

It seemed to Jason as if he were flying, and also standing still at the same time. Air appeared to be rushing past him, but he wasn't conscious of any movement on his part. He was standing still and the world was turning very fast. You could get travel sick very quickly this way.

There was a click, the world jolted to a halt, paused for a stomach churning fraction of a second, and rushed back in the other direction. Then another click.

'This looks like it,' he they said. 'Right. Watch very carefully.'

The world was moving yet again, but this time at its normal pace; in fact, Jason wouldn't have noticed the motion if he hadn't been aware of the lack of it in between clicks. This was time running on playback speed.