Marie Phillips

by Gods Behaving Badly

  “We’ve been terribly weakened over time,” she made herself say. “Most of the gods only have the bare minimum of power left—enough to fulfill their own function, but no more. Some gods don’t even have that anymore. So if Poseidon, for example, were to put his power into reviving Apollo, he might be able to help, but the seas could dry up. So yes, if we work together, we could probably wake him up again, but in our current state, we could do ourselves so much harm that we wouldn’t have the collective force left to keep the rest of the world going. You might get the sun back but lose everything else.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a great option,” said Neil.

  “And then on top of that, if it’s Styx who put him in this state, we wouldn’t be able to undo it anyway, no matter how much force we used. A god can’t undo what another god has done. That’s why we can’t restore the sun ourselves, even if we were strong enough to, which I doubt.”

  “So what are we going to do?” said Neil.

  “We?” said Artemis.

  Neil nodded. Artemis looked at her twin, silent and still, impotent in sleep. Now that it seemed that she might lose him, she felt more love and protectiveness toward him than she could remember ever having felt in their long, long past.

  “I think the first thing to do is to go to the underworld and find Styx, see if she has anything to do with this, and if she can reverse it,” she said. “And if it’s nothing to do with her, maybe while we’re there I can persuade Hades and Persephone to use their power to help us keep the world turning until we can figure out what else to do.”

  “Won’t that take too long?” said Neil, shivering inside his dressing gown.

  Artemis shook her head. “Not in dead time,” she said.

  32

  IT WASN’T THE notion of going down into the underworld that bothered Neil, so much as having to leave his body behind at the flat. He could take it with him, Artemis explained, but then he would stay in live time, and they couldn’t afford that luxury. Apollo was still on the sofa, with a blanket over him to protect against the growing cold, so Neil got into bed and then, with Artemis’s help, his spirit got out again.

  “That was easier than I expected,” said Artemis. “It’s strange, usually I feel drained after using so much power, but actually I feel quite energized.”

  “It was easier than I expected,” said Neil, but then he caught sight of his own body lying between the sheets. “I wish I’d thought to close my eyes,” he said.

  “Nobody will see you, unless Apollo wakes up, and I doubt he’ll care,” said Artemis.

  “All the same,” said Neil.

  “Come on, we’d better go,” said Artemis.

  Neil took a last look at his body, lying still as tarmac, as they left the room.

  “I hope no looters set fire to my flat while we’re gone,” he said.

  “You wouldn’t feel a thing,” said Artemis. “And you’d already be in the underworld, which would save you the trouble of getting there.”

  “Thanks,” said Neil. “That’s very comforting.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Artemis.

  Walking out of the flat quite literally through the front door was easy but felt wrong. At least that way the flat stayed locked. Though any looter, Neil reflected, was likely to get the shock of his life when he found the two comatose men inside. Or the second biggest shock of his life, after the sun going out, anyway.

  “So how do we get to the underworld?” asked Neil.

  “There’s a portal in Islington,” said Artemis.

  “Islington?”

  “Yes.”

  “Islington?”

  Artemis did not elaborate but led the way along the pavement.

  Outside, the streets were completely iced over. Neil negotiated the slippery surface without difficulty, oblivious to the cold. As he craned his neck to catch a last glimpse of the house with his body in it disappearing behind them, he wondered whether this was how a mother might feel if her baby was taken away from her. One part of his awareness was desperately trying to reach out to his body, but the bond between them was completely severed. It was funny; while he was still corporeal, he had thought his body and his mind were quite separate, but now that he was leaving his body behind he realized just how attached to it, so to speak, he was. Out of his body, he didn’t feel quite real—in fact, he didn’t feel anything at all. There was a shallowness to his experience now, with only his intellectual responses to rely on. And he hadn’t realized to what extent it was his body that was missing Alice. Of course, his mind missed her too. But it was his body that felt it. His grief was like an illness, had caused him actual pain in his heart, his stomach, his limbs. Fever, dizziness, weakness: all of this had been part of the intricate patchwork of misery he had been carrying around with him ever since Alice had died; and now it, too, was gone. He missed her, and now he missed missing her, as well.

  Neil was going down into the underworld to save the planet. This was ridiculous enough; it was like something out of the books he read and the films he loved, all that science fiction—with the emphasis on fiction. But deep down, he knew that he was also going there to save Alice, and this seemed even more absurd. How many times had he already failed her? What made him think that this time would be different? But he knew he had to try again. He had known it ever since the moment that he had exploded into belief and picked up the phone to call Hermes: that if only he could bring Apollo and the sun back for humanity, he would take as reward Artemis’s offer to help him bring back Alice. If he couldn’t find Alice in the underworld, he would do his best to save the world anyway—he was nice like that—but it would be more like a Cub Scout good deed, a virtuous chore. Without Alice, his world had already ended.

  Looking up, he noticed that while he’d been deep in thought, he had started lagging behind Artemis, and he trotted faster to keep up with her, the increase in speed coming to him effortlessly. The streets were still gridlocked with cars escaping to who knew where, but the freezing pavements were deserted, except for around a church up ahead of them, which appeared to be full, with more people on the porch outside clamoring for admittance. As Neil and Artemis got closer, they heard the sounds of sobbing, singing, and amplified prayers coming from within.

  “That’s not going to do any of them much good,” commented Artemis. “They’d be better off staying at home and deciding which item of furniture they want to burn first.”

  “They don’t know that,” said Neil, surprised to find himself defending organized religion. “They don’t know which god they’re supposed to believe in. And I suppose it provides comfort.”

  “A big duvet would provide more comfort,” said Artemis.

  “Was that a joke?” said Neil.

  Artemis smiled quickly at him. “It might have been,” she said.

  “You know,” said Neil, “until today, I was an atheist. I wasn’t even Church of England. I thought I was so superior to anyone who believed any of that crap. Not just religion but psychics and ghosts and everything. I went out of my way to laugh at it. I enjoyed laughing at it.”

  “So?” said Artemis.

  “I’m starting to feel a bit guilty about it now.”

  “Why should you have believed in any of it?” retorted Artemis. “I’m just as contemptuous of those other religions as you are. More so, if anything. After all, if it wasn’t for Jesus, I’d probably still be living on Olympus, running on the hillsides with my beautiful dogs. Frankly, I respect you more for not having bought into any of these modern superstitions.”

  “Thanks,” said Neil.

  “Although of course some of it is true.”

  “It is?” said Neil. “Like what?”

  “There are a lot of ghosts about,” said Artemis. “Not that most mortals can see them, and even if you could, I doubt very much that you’d notice them. But that means most of the television mediums you see are in fact really talking to the dead. They’re about the only people who will listen to them. Ghost
s never stop complaining. Personally, I’m not impressed. There’s no real difference between talking to a dead mortal and talking to a live one.”

  Neil took a moment to absorb this new, somewhat disappointing knowledge.

  “So can cats really see ghosts?” he asked.

  “Oh no,” said Artemis. “They’re very inferior creatures, cats.”

  Then Neil had a thought that almost made him stop walking.

  “And Apollo, could he really tell the future then?”

  “He used to be able to,” said Artemis. “I’m not sure how much he can now.”

  “In that case, I owe him an apology,” said Neil.

  “I don’t see why,” said Artemis. “He still tried to seduce the woman you love. And killed her. That god has got all the morality of a rabbit.”

  The reminder hurt, but Neil couldn’t help but smile at the primness of Artemis’s tone. He was beginning to grow quite fond of her.

  When they got to Upper Street, the road was deserted except for a few gangs of young men, hoodies pulled up less to hide their faces and more against the cold, looking for shops to loot. Angel Tube station was closed, grilles pulled forbiddingly across its entrance like teeth clenched shut.

  “This way,” said Artemis, leading the way inside.

  “Into the station?”

  “Hermes says that there’s a secret platform on the other side of the wall at the bottom that leads to a train to the underworld.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Hermes says’? Haven’t you ever been there before?”

  “Of course not.”

  Neil stopped halfway through the grille.

  “If you don’t know the way, why are you the one taking me? Why isn’t Hermes going?”

  “Hermes has never been either. He just brings the dead this far. None of us are supposed to go down there, otherwise it would interfere with the boundary between the living and the dead, and apparently we’d spend our whole time bringing back mortals that we liked; it would be chaos. Hades and Persephone say we can’t be trusted.”

  “Can you be?”

  “Of course not. So aside from the two of them, the only other god who’s ever been to the underworld was Dionysus, and I wouldn’t recommend going on any kind of a journey with him—he’d just get drunk and forget what he was doing there in the first place. That’s probably okay for what you mortals call a stag weekend, but not so good when you’re trying to save the planet. Now, are you coming?”

  Neil sighed. “Yes, of course I am.”

  They crept into the entrance hall of the tube station. It was pitch black and completely silent. Neil walked close behind Artemis, afraid to lose her in the darkness. Everything was wrong: he associated the station with noise, people, bustle, life, and the absence of all these things made him feel as if he had actually died, as if this trip to the underworld was one that he would never return from. With each step he took into the blackness he wanted to turn back, to run to his familiar flat and crawl back inside his body and hide, but what good would that do? If the world ended he’d only be straight back here again, following another god down these stalled metal steps.

  Finally, the ground flattened out, and Neil understood that they had reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “Wait,” whispered Artemis before they crossed through the back wall. “This is very important. I don’t know if the train is going to be there when we get through the wall, but if it is, don’t get on it.”

  “Why not?” said Neil. “I thought we were going to the underworld?”

  “We are,” said Artemis. “But we’re sneaking in. If Charon—the train driver—finds us on the train, he’ll throw us out and feed us to Cerberus.”

  “Cerberus?”

  “The triple-headed hound of death who guards the gates of hell. He eats the souls of those who try to escape from Hades. And those that try to break in.”

  “Why didn’t you mention any of this before?”

  “It’s all right, we’ll creep down the tunnel, and with any luck they won’t see us.”

  “With any luck? What if they do see us?”

  “For a hero you ask a lot of questions.”

  On the far side of the wall it was light, although the light was dim and came from no discernible source. There were a lot of dead people on the Tube platform. In fact, there were more dead people gathered here than Neil could ever remember having seen live people gathered anywhere, and most of them were all standing completely quiet and utterly still, as if they were observing a two-minute silence marking their own demise. He tried not to look too closely at some of the individuals who had died in ways that he was pretty sure he’d prefer to avoid trying himself.

  “Is this how many people normally die every day?” whispered Neil to Artemis. “Or is it because of the sun thing?”

  Artemis gave the dead multitudes an appraising look. “No, I’d say this was pretty standard,” she said.

  “This many people die every day?”

  “More or less.”

  “I’m never going to find her,” said Neil.

  “Styx? She’s easy to spot. She’s a river.”

  “I meant Alice,” said Neil.

  “Oh,” said Artemis. “Of course. I’d forgotten about her.”

  She looked again at all of the gathered dead and turned back to him.

  “Do you know much about Heracles? It is relevant.”

  “No,” said Neil.

  “I’ll tell you on the way. Jump down onto the tracks.”

  “We can’t just jump down in front of them all, what’s everyone going to think?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Artemis. “They’re just mortals, and dead ones at that. Don’t worry about what they think. They probably won’t even notice. Everything’s strange to them, they won’t know what’s supposed to happen and what isn’t. The only ones we need to worry about are Charon and Cerberus. And Hades and Persephone, but that’s not until later.”

  “Hades and Persephone? Is there anybody else who wants to eat our souls that you care to mention?”

  “As long as the mortals don’t guess that we’re trying to sneak into the underworld, we’ll be fine,” insisted Artemis. “And right now I don’t think any of them are expecting that the underworld will be somewhere worth sneaking into. And even if they do guess, we’re fine as long as they don’t tell anyone. And who exactly are they going to tell? So go on, jump.”

  Neil looked at the group of dead people nearest him: a cluster of bewildered old Japanese men in hospital pajamas, who, almost in sync, kept looking down at themselves and then over at the crowds of variously mutilated people disappearing off to their right and then down at themselves again, but never at one another.

  “I take your point,” he said, and jumped down onto the tracks, a long drop, but of course he felt nothing as he landed.

  As Artemis landed lightly beside him, a confused and apparently completely normal mouse ran through their feet and then disappeared under a rail.

  “So,” said Artemis, walking off in the direction of the tunnel, “Heracles. One of our better heroes, aside from that unfortunate incident when he went mad and killed his wife and children, but that was really Hera’s fault. Anyway, among his many other endeavors, he successfully performed twelve near-impossible labors. Twelve! And you only have to do two! The first one was to kill the Nemean lion, a truly ferocious beast that even I would have found difficult, though of course not impossible, to defeat . . .”

  Oddly comforted by the sound of her voice, Neil followed Artemis into the tunnel that snaked off ahead of them in an absolute darkness that would only be relieved once they reached the world of the dead.

  33

  IT WAS EASY enough to avoid Charon. He had got lazy, Artemis remembered; both Hermes and Persephone had mentioned it. Hundreds of years of driving his train back and forth between the worlds of the dead and the living, and thousands before that taking them over by ferry. It was a task of Sisyphean monotony and these days
Charon did the bare minimum to get it done, barely aware of the passengers whom he transported, his only pleasure being throwing the occasional soul overboard; he had more than once mooted replacing the whole setup with a conveyor belt, which after all would only have to run one way. So when they heard the train rattling down the track toward them to pick up its consignment of dead and then go back underworldward packed tight full of freshly culled souls, all they had to do was throw themselves to the ground and lie flat as the carriages rattled harmlessly over their heads. Of course, the train could have rattled equally harmlessly through their heads, but even Charon might have noticed two skulls poking up through the floor.

  Cerberus was going to be more of a problem. If Charon had become lazy, Cerberus was hungry, starving for the souls of incursers or escapees. As they neared the end of the tunnel, a thin tendril of deathly light clawing its way back to them, Artemis made Neil stop as they considered their strategy.

  “Orpheus,” said Artemis, “sang Cerberus to sleep. But we’ve already established that you can’t sing.”

  “My singing,” said Neil, “would only incite him to eat me all the faster.”

  “Heracles tempted him out of the underworld by being nice to him.”

  “I can be nice,” said Neil. “I’m actually very nice. It’s one of my best qualities.”

  “But it won’t work again,” said Artemis. “He doesn’t trust nice anymore. He’ll know what we’re up to.”

  “That’s a shame,” said Neil, “because I think it’s the only thing I’m good at. What else do you suggest?”

  “Aeneas and Psyche both used drugged honeycakes. Cerberus likes a honeycake.”

  “Do we have any drugged honeycakes with us?”

  “No.”

  “That’s handy. What else?”

  “There’s a golden bough that guarantees entry . . .”

  “Which we haven’t got?”

  “Correct.”

  “Any other suggestions?”

  “That’s it as far as I know,” said Artemis. “People don’t make it down here very often. They make it past Cerberus even less often.”