“What?”
“You could go down there and get her back. They’d have to let you! It’s been done before! All you’d have to do is prove that you love her, and it’s obvious to me that you do.”
Neil felt disgusted. With Artemis, and, even more than that, with himself for having got into this situation.
“You’re mad,” he said.
“No, I’m not,” said Artemis. “I’m trying to help you. Let me just explain.”
“You told me,” he said, “we were here to talk about Alice. I listened to you. I talked to you. I told you things that nobody else knows . . .”
“You don’t understand!” said Artemis. “I can make it happen! I can get you down there!”
She reached out to put her hand on his arm.
“Don’t touch me!” Neil jumped up and started backing away from her. “I should have known it would be something like this. I should have left when you started talking about seeing faces in the sky. You live in that house with Apollo and obviously you’re just like him.”
“But I’m not!” cried Artemis, jumping up to face him. “We’re total opposites! Trust me, Neil.”
“Trust is not the issue,” said Neil. “You seem like a nice woman, a well-meaning woman, and I’m sure you believe what you’re saying. But I don’t believe you. I don’t believe any of it. When you die, you die. It’s over. Don’t try to give me false hope. You think you’re helping, but you’re not helping at all. You’re just hurting me.”
“But Neil—”
“No. If you really care about my well-being you’ll leave me alone. I used to think this kind of thing was funny, but it’s not. You’re all the same, you just hurt people when they’re too weak to resist.”
“But you’re wrong,” pleaded Artemis. “I can help you. I know what you mean, I understand you more than you can imagine, I know all about those so-called religious people who are just peddling lies and false comfort, believe me, I know. But I’m different. I promise. Everything I’ve told you, it’s all true.”
“They all say that.”
“But I’m different! I’m a goddess, Neil.”
“What?”
“Let me show you.”
Seeing the earnestness on her face as she reached out to him, Neil was filled with such revulsion that all he wanted to do was to punch her in the jaw. The only way he could avoid hitting her was to do what he actually did, which was to turn around and run as fast as he could down the hill and away from where she was standing. When he was at a safe distance from her, he was filled with sudden embarrassment, and he looked over his shoulder, half expecting to see her running after him. But she was still standing at the top of the hill, watching him go.
He didn’t slow his pace but ran on, following the path into a copse of trees. Then suddenly he felt what seemed to be a gust of wind blowing past him, and there was Artemis, standing in front of him. He stumbled and half fell at her feet, gasping for breath.
“How . . . h-how did you . . . ,” he stuttered.
“I ran,” said Artemis.
“But . . .”
“I am a goddess,” she said.
“There’s no such thing,” said Neil.
“How else could I get down here so fast?” said Artemis.
“I don’t know, roller skates? A tunnel?” said Neil. “It’ll take more than some trick to convince me.”
“I know deep down you believe me. I know this is what you want to do.”
“You’re wrong,” said Neil.
“You will change your mind,” said Artemis.
Neil shook his head. Artemis took a small white card out of the pocket of her tracksuit.
“You know as well as I do that we can’t let Apollo win,” she said. “Don’t come back to the house, it isn’t safe. This is Hermes’s number. You can call it any time of the day or night, he’ll always answer, and he can get a message to me.”
She handed him the card. He looked at it. There were only three digits on it.
“This can’t be his number,” he said.
“It is,” said Artemis. “Call him when you’re ready.”
“I’ll never be ready,” said Neil.
“Yes, you will,” said Artemis.
Without saying another word, she turned from him and began to run, and in what seemed to be only a split second, she was gone.
27
ALICE HAD NO idea how long she had been in the underworld. All of the things she was accustomed to using to measure time had been lost the moment she had stepped down the escalators at Angel Tube station and Upper Street had disappeared behind her, taking the real world with it. There was no sense of the time of day here; the light never changed. There was no sense of time of year either. There was nothing that she could class as weather, no sun or rain or snow, and she didn’t have a body with which to feel the temperature. Having no body meant that she felt no sensations that marked the passing of time, like needing to eat or to sleep, and she had no menstrual cycle to help her keep track of the days. Had she been here weeks, months, years, or merely hours? And did it matter? In the scheme of things, it wasn’t very long, considering that she still had all of eternity left to go.
She had walked for what seemed like a very long way before finally getting out of the suburbs of hell. She didn’t see any more monsters. She did, though, pass other people. Veteran dead, they glanced at her without curiosity. There were white people, black people, Asian people, Indians, Arabs, Aborigines, Pygmies, Maoris, Inuit, and people the likes of whom she had never seen before, people who looked completely different from anyone she was familiar with, from populations that had become extinct centuries before she was born. As with her own consignment, there were people of every possible age, including the tiniest of babies, who seemed to propel themselves along the pavement with no effort or movement of their bodies at all.
After some time—hours? days?—some tall buildings began to emerge from the dim light ahead of her, so she headed toward them. As she approached, the skyline looked almost but not quite familiar; like Manhattan, but drawn from memory, by a committee. This was, she discovered later, pretty much exactly what it was. The Tudors ran straight up to the skyscraper district. The last houses on the row looked like tiny pieces of striped licorice, dwarfed by their gleaming steel-and-glass neighbors.
Despite a higher density of people, the streets of the city center were no less silent than the suburbs. And the cleanliness was almost eerie—no litter, no graffiti, no pollution, no grime of any kind. Even Alice, who hated dirt, felt uncomfortable, as if she was tarnishing the place just by being there. The buildings were stunning, massive and glorious, seeming to shine with the reflected light of a sun that wasn’t here. She couldn’t believe that such beauty could exist in hell, and she wondered what the buildings were for. There didn’t seem to be any doormen or restrictions on entry, and streams of the dead passed constantly in and out. Alice waited for a small group to go inside one of the buildings and followed them in through the automatic doors, hoping she wouldn’t be noticed.
The building had an immense marble-and-gilt lobby that had been modified for practical purposes. Carpeting had been laid down in orange-brown felt, and the room was divided into more manageable spaces by enormous filing cabinets. Some of these makeshift rooms had desks inside them where dead people were engaged in a series of earnest-looking interviews. Alice, who didn’t like being interviewed, started to back away, but she caught the eye of a beautiful, fine-boned black woman in her forties wearing a hospital gown, who was seated behind one of the desks. The woman beckoned to her. Not wishing to be rude, Alice went over and sat down. The woman had no hair, and only one breast. A small sign on her desk revealed her name as Mary.
“Do you speak English?” said Alice.
Mary replied something that Alice couldn’t understand.
“I’m so sorry, I speak many languages but I don’t understand what you just said,” said Alice. “Je ne comprend pas. Ich verstehe nicht?
”
“I said, ‘Newbie?’ My meaning was ‘Are you a newbie?’ ” said Mary in a lilting African accent. “Of course, you are. Otherwise you would know that we all understand each other here. There is no real language. We are not really speaking, you see. We cannot move the air with our lungs. It is metaphysical communication that we are sharing. It sounds like words, but it is not, really.”
Alice tried to understand, but there was too much to take in.
“What is this place?” she asked, trying to start with something simple.
Mary’s eyes widened with concern. She reached out and patted Alice on the hand. Alice could see the patting, but she felt nothing.
“It is the underworld, darling,” Mary said. “Do not worry, many people suffer from such confusion. You are dead, my dear.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Alice. “That’s not what I meant. I know that I’m dead. What I meant was, where am I now? Is this hell?”
“No, my dear, this is not hell,” said Mary. “All of the dead are here. Do not worry. You are not being punished.”
“What is this building?” said Alice.
“Ah,” said Mary. “This is Building F of the administrative center for Sector A. Sector A is the arrivals district.”
“I thought this was the center of the underworld,” said Alice. “It’s just one small sector?”
“Do you know how many billions of people have died?” said Mary. “Do you think that they all fit into one city?” Seeing Alice’s stricken face, she softened her tone. “It takes a long time to get used to it,” she said. “But you will get used to it, slowly by slowly. Do not worry. I am still uncertain about many things myself.”
“How long have you been dead?” said Alice.
“I do not know,” said Mary. “Not so long, I think. I died in Kampala, Uganda, in 1956.”
“That’s about fifty years,” said Alice.
“A very short time,” said Mary. “But already I have learned much. Soon I will move out of the arrivals sector myself. Now, what can I help you with today?”
“I’m not sure,” said Alice. “I’ve only just got here.”
“If you are here, it is because you are ready to be here,” said Mary with a smile, clear and warm like tropical water. “There are many, many thousands of dead, arriving every day. They move in their own time. Those who can already walk find their way here. Those who cannot walk find their way here too, but it takes longer.”
“But from the station you could go in any direction,” said Alice. “How do you know people won’t get lost?”
“All directions lead here,” said Mary. “And when you are ready, you arrive.”
“So now what do I do?” said Alice.
“It is up to you,” said Mary. “There is no need for you to do anything at all. You have no body. You have no needs. You require no food, no shelter. There is no money. Many people choose not to have a home. Others have homes that they never leave. If you wish to have a home, I can find one for you.”
Alice thought of the endless rows of houses outside and tried to imagine living in one, all alone.
“Equally, if you wish, I can help you to find a job. Many people when they arrive, they do not wish to be in employment. They feel they have worked hard enough already. But I would not advise this. It is good to work. You have purpose. You meet people. You do not get depressed. Depression is a very bad thing in the underworld. Many people are depressed here. It is a terrible thing. People become motionless. You will see them. They stand by the sides of roads or they lie in their beds in their houses, and they do not move. They may not move for many centuries, many thousands of years. They cannot see the point of moving. Because there is no point.”
“Oh dear,” said Alice. “Poor things.”
“So I ask you again. What can I help you with today?”
“I think I would like a job, please,” said Alice.
“Very good, very good!” said Mary, clapping her hands silently. “That is what I had hoped you would say. You are a very intelligent girl. I will send you up to our careers department immediately.”
The careers adviser was a nude Aboriginal boy aged around four who introduced himself as Mr. Kunmanara. He took her through her options, explaining to her that the employment market among the dead was both highly competitive and exceptionally fluid.
“People only work because they want to,” he said, “so the waiting list for the most popular jobs is, shall we say, a little daunting. You’ll find you can only become a movie star or a pop singer if you have a lengthy CV showing your commitment to postlife employment by having taken on some of the less prestigious, but perhaps more necessary, positions. Working as a careers adviser, for example.”
He waited for the laughter, but Alice forgot to laugh.
“Having said that,” he continued in a slightly piqued tone, “if you are prepared to wait for long enough, an opening will always arise, and of course waiting is a luxury that you most certainly can afford.”
Alice smiled weakly and nodded.
“Now, tell me,” said Mr. Kunmanara, “what is your predeath work experience?”
“I am—I mean, I was—a cleaner.”
The boy shook his head and tutted. “I’ll put it down,” he said, “but we don’t really need cleaners here. No dirt. Anything else?”
“Not really,” said Alice. “After I left university I temped for a while, but I wasn’t very good at it. I’m not very comfortable in an office environment. I don’t like talking.”
“That will be a hindrance,” said Mr. Kunmanara, “but we’ll put it down all the same, just in case. What did you study at university?”
“Linguistics,” said Alice.
The child sighed. “I’m afraid there’s very little use for that here.”
“Yes, the woman downstairs explained,” said Alice. “No languages.”
“I fear I’m going to find you very hard to place,” said the boy, leaning back in his specially designed high chair. “There are certain fields here that are endlessly in demand. Architecture, for example. Engineering.”
Alice, who had been trying hard all of this time not to think of Neil, flinched. The boy misunderstood her.
“You may well think these professions beneath your contempt, Miss Mulholland, but you will find that the whole fabric of the underworld is held together by such people. Without them, there would be literally nothing here. What do you think holds these buildings together? None of it is real. It’s all done with the power of the mind. And that takes skill and training. If you were to try to hold up this building, Miss Mulholland, with the power of your mind, I have no doubt that we would be conducting this interview waist deep in rubble. You need proper structural knowledge.”
“Yes,” said Alice. “Of course.”
“It is a shame,” mused the boy, “that no kind of predeath training program can be established, to make sure that we have enough of these useful skills to keep us going here and to dissuade people from pursuing the areas that have no function here at all. Such as cleaning. And linguistics.”
“I’m sorry,” said Alice.
“To resume,” said Mr. Kunmanara. “Do you have any other abilities at all? Any hobbies? Interests? Anything?”
“I collect porcelain miniatures,” said Alice.
The boy yawned.
“And I like playing Scrabble.”
The boy snapped to attention.
“Scrabble? Why didn’t you say that in the first instance?” He sat forward eagerly. “Are you gifted?”
“Not really,” said Alice. “I did come third in the British national under-sixteen championship.”
“You are too modest,” said Mr. Kunmanara. “At last this is something which can be of some use! Leisure, entertainment, these are the lifebloods of the dead community. You cannot yet imagine, Miss Mulholland, how very boring it is to exist here. A person of advanced skill at board games—this is a rare find indeed! Believe me, you will find yourself endles
sly in demand.”
“But—” said Alice.
“Of course, we will have to train you up first, in the precision movements you will require to pick up the Scrabble pieces. Then we can put you to work in one of our highest class gaming establishments.”
“I’m not really sure that I—”
“Congratulations, Miss Mulholland!” The boy leaned back in his chair and smiled. “I believe we have found your vocation.”
28
APOLLO WAS DEPRESSED. At first he thought he was just bored, which was a sensation he was familiar with, having suffered from boredom for the best part of several thousand years. But none of his usual distractions seemed to work this time: getting drunk and watching near-impossible acts of lewdness at Bacchanalia; re-creating those lewd acts with Aphrodite back at home; writing songs about himself on his guitar and performing them to whichever members of the household he could bribe to listen, then basking in their efforts to conceal their enjoyment; taking long walks through London and attempting to seduce whichever mortals caught his eye—this last failing, even when he did manage to persuade them to have sex with him, because no mortal could live up to his memories of Alice. He thought losing himself in work might help, but when he phoned them, both his agent and the production company that made the pilot of Apollo’s Oracle told him they were busy and promised to call him back, but neither of them ever did. Subsequent calls were diverted to voicemail. After the first few attempts, he took to picking up his guitar and singing his messages to them on the phone, but it did no good.
What he really wanted to do was lie in bed and not move for a few years, but sharing a bedroom with Ares made that impossible. The war between Athena and Hera was reaching a critical stage, and Ares was using his half of the room as a center of operations, with Athena constantly dropping by and requesting updates and changes in that way that she had—“What would be the plausibility of countermanding the redeployment of rearmost forces in consideration of the UN amendment?”—while Hera sent down peacocks with notes tied around their necks who inevitably took the opportunity to shit on the floor as they passed. That the shit was never cleaned up was yet another reminder of Alice’s absence from the house, an absence that he felt more keenly than the presence of any of the members of his family, infuriating as they were.
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