Zeus is Dead

by Michael G. Munz

  It mattered not. In truth, getting her to renounce her love of the false gods took up valuable time anyway. Even with the starving and constant berating, her resistance was almost exuberant. Such defiance was not to be permitted. Before he’d left, Kindgood gave orders for her to be water-boarded, hoping that would put her in a more receptive mood. Even with the promising captured parchment in his possession, the girl’s recalcitrance occupied his mind for the entire plane ride. Now she was no longer his problem. Yes, he’d failed to fix her, but it wasn’t his fault the FBI stormed the place and rescued the witch, was it? It was out of his hands now. His cup runneth over, or the Lord giveth and He taketh away, or . . . whatever.

  It occurred to Kindgood that those at the compound who’d seen fit to question his methods with respect to the girl were now about to be thrown into a prison of their own.

  “She’s just a girl!” they’d said.

  A girl who worshipped the false ones they were sworn to oppose, Kindgood had answered. Clearly that was why they’d fallen while he and Stout had escaped. In hindsight the others' devotion was no greater than those “tolerant” Christians who’d turned the other cheek and failed to take up arms against the false gods. “Love thine enemy”? Where did they get that fool idea?

  So good riddance to them, really.

  Of course, now he had no one but Stout to command, but the NCMA would fix that soon. The glory of his discovery could not be denied. (He was also pretty sure he could pin the compound’s fall on the others who’d remained there. Or Stout, if it came to that. Gabriel Stout would certainly jump at the chance to suffer penance for the cause. It was part of why Kindgood liked him so much.) He patted the parchment tube happily, recalling the writing.

  Within nine cans depicted here

  Resides that which Olympians fear.

  It chilled him to think that they’d nearly destroyed it before realizing what they’d found! From the clues scrawled in the margins in the girl’s hasty handwriting, plus the half-finished drawings of what appeared to be nine cans—or cylinders, at the very least—they adopted the theory that the cans somehow contained the Titans, supposedly banished by the false gods many millennia ago. It was half an educated guess, half faith, but the pieces fit.

  Kindgood and Stout certainly didn’t believe the cans contained actual “Titans,” of course. That the false gods of Olympus actually existed was insulting enough, Stout pointed out. The existence of even more false gods whom the Olympian gods had defeated—that was simply more ludicrous than any thinking person could contemplate. The tale was merely propaganda to further the Olympian agenda. Whatever the cans truly held was still a terror to the Olympians, certainly, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend. If the NCMA could gain control of the cans’ secrets, use them for their own advantage . . .

  In truth, Kindgood did wonder a little if the cans somehow held the Titans (though if that was the case, such cans surely must be of impressive size). Yet even if they did, it was plain that, if the Titans were released, the two groups would annihilate each other. Two birds with one stone, problem solved, and once again the meek would inherit the Earth.

  “Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out” was also a fully viable position.

  If they were released. That was the problem. The parchment made mention of a “great and powerful secret ritual” that would do the trick, the details of which were imprinted on the cans themselves. So really all they needed to do was find the cans, and the parchment held a hint or two toward that end, as well. The words Sidgwick’s and Swindon were both listed on the parchment and were presumably location names. Perhaps. The experts would tell them.

  Then they would see. Everyone across the globe would see the glory of the Neo-Christian Movement of America and their triumph over the false gods, and it would be he, Richard Kindgood, who brought the truth to their eyes!

  At the very least he’d get some sort of promotion out of it. After all, tithe revenues would shoot through the roof.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “The names of the three Fates are as follows: Clotho, who spins the threads of mortal lives; Lachesis, who measures their allotted lifetimes; and Atropos, who cuts them off. These facts alone have been confirmed since the Olympians’ Return. Unlike the majority of the beings recently returned to our world, the Fates have made no public appearances, sought no worship, and arranged no book deals. We have, in effect, only a single laconic press release and the other Olympians’ word that they even exist.”

  —A Mortal’s Guidebook to the Olympians’ Return

  “The Fates are not Zeus’s daughters. The ancient Greeks just made that up because they couldn’t stomach the idea of women in charge. The Fates are . . . beyond.”

  —Athena’s Little Book of Wisdom, p. 872

  “WE MUST ENTERTAIN THEM,” Clotho whispered.

  “Briefly,” Lachesis agreed.

  “It will end, soon enough.” Atropos answered.

  They nodded, together, to the sound of shears.

  The Fates had always been. The Fates will always be. It was clearly printed on their pamphlets and on the gateway to their abode, and anyone wishing to argue the point did so at his or her peril.

  No one could disprove it, after all. None (who were talking) could recall a time when they did not exist, and none had any conclusive evidence that they would cease to be in the foreseeable future. The Fates were as old as memory, as omnipresent as time, as unceasing as—well, you get the point. Lather with awe, rinse with amazement, repeat. Show some respect is the concept we’re trying to get across here.

  The Fates toiled, currently, in a serviceable room above a convenience store at the intersection of the two parallel streets of Sparkwood and 23rd on the eastern side of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. No doors led into the Room. No doors led out. No one in the area could look at the space above that convenience store and tell you what was inside, what caused the strange lights to shine out of the shaded windows at precisely 9:53 p.m. every Thursday, or why no one even remembered a second story being built. These were not the sorts of things people near the Room wondered if they knew what was good for them. These were not the sorts of things people wondered even if (as was more often the case) they did not know what was good for them, either—for the simple reason that no one was fated to do so.

  Or at least not yet. There would eventually come a time when someone would wonder. Someone would care. Someone would have a spare moment in the middle of a Tuesday evening when there was nothing much else to do and the good shows didn’t come on for another hour, and someone would try to investigate. In that moment, the Room would be gone. There would be little fanfare. The Room would simply move itself elsewhere in a way that would please Heisenberg, were it possible to simultaneously find him and ask his opinion.

  “He is coming, then,” spoke Clotho.

  “We all know this,” Lachesis remarked. “Why do you announce it?”

  “Because it is too quiet.” Clotho’s eyes did not rise from her spindle. “And because you told me I would.”

  Lachesis measured the length of the life of a man, into which Clotho had already spun the inability to properly use an apostrophe. He would be born in New York, spend most of his time in London, and get beaten to death by a drunken horde at a proofreaders’ convention. “Ah. Yes. I knew this.”

  “You offer humor.” Atropos cocked her head to one side, considering. “I express my amusement.”

  The others fixed her with a stare. “Exuberant,” one observed.

  “Calm yourself,” said another. “He comes by the moment.”

  The Fates resumed their work, anticipating.

  Lachesis halted. “Where is Poppy?”

  “In the back.”

  “Vexing.”

  “Easy now. He arrives.”

  Apollo stepped from the portal into the Fates’ abode. The transition was utterly unremarkable. He wasn’t dizzy. There was no amazing light show or tumbling through any twisting conduits of swirling
mists. In fact, there was no feeling of movement at all. It just worked, transparently, akin to the way that all software is supposed to work but never does. It was completely non-disorienting. In fact, it was so non-disorienting that it actually could be said to be orienting, were it not for the fact that its unexpected unremarkability was, in itself, so darned disorienting— which might possibly explain why this narrative goes to such lengths to describe something so unremarkable.

  Apollo took a moment to blink as his eyes adjusted. The light was dimmer than the distant chamber on Olympus from whence he’d come, yet more florid. He stood amid a haze of color that shined through—or was emitted from—a wall of stained glass behind him. There was no portal there, no evidence of anything he’d actually stepped through, just glass and the distinctly bothersome thought that he might not be able to return under his own power. As he’d asked of her, Artemis had opened the door for him without following. If the Fates decided they didn’t want him to leave, he might be stuck.

  So that was swell.

  The Room was perfectly cubical. The really mind-boggling thing— and this was when the legitimate disorientation set in—was that the walls contained a space much larger than geometrically possible. A regulation soccer game could be played within the space between them, provided one removed the spiral staircase and table after table covered in carefully wrapped strings. Yet, somehow, the walls themselves appeared to measure no more than twenty feet long. It gave the distinct impression that if M. C. Escher attempted to walk a tape measure across one wall, he would throw up.

  The less said about the Möbius balcony that encircled the place, the better.

  While a god could gaze at the Room without going mad, Apollo in his diminished state figured he should stop gaping and get down to business before his eyeballs needed a Dramamine.

  In the center of the room sat the Fates, beautiful crones of youthful maturity who paid him no heed as they spun, measured, and cut threads at a hummingbird’s pace. Figuring he couldn’t go wrong with proper etiquette, Apollo approached a few steps, bowed low, and addressed them.

  “Honored Moirae, to whom wise Zeus gave greatest honor, weavers of destiny, ladies of Fate, I seek an audience. May I approach?”

  The three turned their attention to him, continuing their work even so. Their eyes were clear black orbs, sharklike and deep.

  “You have come,” spoke Clotho.

  “You may approach,” spoke Lachesis.

  “You will be disappointed,” spoke Atropos.

  Apollo nodded, doing his best to hide his discouragement. “Then I thank you, for without disappointment, how can we know joy?”

  The Fates were unimpressed with his dime-store philosophizing. He focused on why he came. “Ladies of Fate, I have come regarding Father Zeus’s murder, though I expect you may already know that. I must ask: Do you know how he was killed?”

  Lachesis cocked her head. “Do you speak of the means or those responsible?”

  “I refer to the means, but if you know the responsible party . . .”

  The answer, when it came, was simultaneous. “No.”

  Atropos was right; that was disappointing. “To the former,” he asked, “or the latter?”

  “The latter,” spoke Atropos.

  “As to the former,” Clotho began, “we suspect.”

  “But we do not have confirmation,” Lachesis continued.

  “Yet,” Atropos finished.

  “Do you know of a living weapon that might end an immortal?” Apollo tried. “Pewter skin, perhaps this big, with glowing red eyes and a stinger?”

  The three Fates quickly glanced at each other before Clotho and Lachesis turned back to their work. Only Atropos regarded him now. “You believe this to be the weapon that slew Zeus?”

  Apollo hesitated. So far they’d answered his questions without a price, but he didn’t know how long that would last. Best to hold on to any answers he could trade for as long as possible. “I suspect.”

  “But you do not have confirmation.”

  “No.”

  Atropos turned her attention completely to her work. Any minute now, Apollo expected, she would ask the source of his suspicion. In the meantime he pondered the wisdom of using that particular piece of knowledge as a bargaining chip. He was still pondering when he realized that she wasn’t going to ask at all.

  “You would know more,” Atropos spoke finally.

  “I would,” he answered, summoning up a few persuasive talking points. “Zeus was the king of all of us, more powerful than the rest of the Dodekatheon put together. An artifact that may slay a god represents a grave danger to all, to say nothing of the justice required for the murder of a king.”

  Atropos regarded him with the boundless compassion of a stone wall. “Passionate entreaties hold no meaning in this place, godling. There is only what has been, is, and will be. You will ask each of us three more questions. No more. Then your time in this place will be ended.”

  Ended?

  He only barely managed not to speak it, lest he waste a question like some half-wit fairy-tale lummox. Apollo paused to consider the best use of the unexpectedly generous offer. Atropos had asked no price for their answers; he’d come expecting that much at least.

  Of course, there was that ominously ambiguous “ended” bit. Don’t count your chimeras before they hatch, Apollo. Did chimeras hatch? He couldn’t recall. That was unsettling.

  “Time is limited, godling,” Atropos warned. “You will ask your questions now.”

  Apollo wished she wouldn’t call him “godling,” but he’d have to worry about his self-esteem later. (Styx! Even having to worry about that at all was humiliating.) Not without effort, he pushed his ego aside and seized on his first question.

  “The living weapon I described: What is it?”

  “The UnMaking Nexus,” Atropos said. “It was created long ago, commissioned in the last days of the Titan War, carved from a meteorite drawn of Saturn’s rings and imbued with the power to destroy an immortal. It was not completed until after the war and, as such, never used.” She gave the slightest scowl. “Disappointing.”

  “Until now,” Apollo suggested.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Er, that was not a question.”

  She nodded. “Nor was that. You will now ask your second question of Atropos.”

  Great. Third-person. Atropos had some sort of slightly more lively Miss Manners thing going on. “Very well, then. Second question: Who created it?”

  Shears ended more than fifty threads in rapid succession before the answer came. “It was our work, commissioned by Zeus.”

  Again, he hesitated, absorbing that. If the Fates created the UnMaking Nexus, they might very well still have possession of it. It was even possible they were at the heart of the entire assassination. It hadn’t occurred to him until then. He cursed his exuberance in coming to the Fates so heedlessly.

  Except, he thought, they claimed to only suspect that it was the weapon that killed Zeus, and the Fates did not lie . . . as far as he knew. Then again, he wasn’t exactly the right person to judge that for sure, and there was still that “ended” bit. Time for another question.

  “What happened to the Nexus after you created it?”

  “We presented the weapon to Zeus. Having no more use for it, he kept it secret. We know neither where nor how. You will ask no more questions of Atropos.” With that, she gathered up a corded group of threads, cutting through them all in one snip.

  “Clown-car pileup,” she explained.

  Apollo wondered whom he was to ask next. He then pondered what he was to ask next before catching Clotho’s stare from across the flying shuttle on her spinning wheel. Beginnings were her specialty. Zeus, he recalled, would begin again—if returning from death could be termed as such. Time to focus on that for the moment. After all, if the Fates were participants in Zeus's death, Apollo wasn’t likely to get out of the Room himself anyway. He may as well assume the Fates were at least still
neutral.

  He’d deal with the philosophical topic of optimism in the face of fatalism some other time.

  “Is the effect of the Nexus permanent?” he asked of Clotho.

  “To the unprepared, the UnMaking Nexus is utterly fatal.”

  Now that sounded promising. “To the unprepared?” he asked. “What does that mean?”

  “Yes, to the unprepared. There is a loophole, for those who are aware of it and prepare to use it. Immortality is the steel beam to the fragile mortal straw; it is not so easily and utterly broken. A resourceful immortal may yet return, should events play themselves out in time.”

  “I assume you told Zeus of this loophole when you gave him the weapon.”

  Clotho watched him as she worked, the corners of her lips turning into a faint smile. “You may assume what you wish, but assumption has little effect on reality outside of the stock market.”

  “I actually meant that as a question.”

  “Then you must ask it of Lachesis. You have asked three of me already.”

  Apollo opened his mouth to protest as he made a quick mental tally and realized . . . Damnation.

  “If my expressing contrition will aid your acceptance of this,” Clotho told him, “then I shall do so.”

  Apollo frowned, deciding he was a half-witted lummox after all. At least he was still smarter than Ares. It was petty but comforting. “No, that’s all right. Thank you, Clotho.”

  She nodded and turned away. Lachesis raised an expectant gaze from amid a tangle of threads, looking like nothing more than a kitten at play amid the lives of mankind. Apollo filed the metaphor in a mental drawer for later poetical expression. Or was it a simile? By the Styx, being diminished in this room was affecting his wits.

  It occurred to him that the question of whether or not the Fates told Zeus of the loophole was moot. If Tracy’s vision was to be believed, Zeus was aware of it and even took steps to use it to protect himself. All well and good for Zeus, thought Apollo, but what if Ares and the others came after him with it?