Odds and Gods

by Tom Holt

  ‘Must I?’ Frey gave him a troubled look. ‘Come on, Odin, you know about me and heights, I get vertigo standing on tiptoe. Can’t someone else do it?’

  ‘Leave it to me,’Thor grumbled. He knelt down, tucked his socks inside his boots and laid a hand on the nearest treetrunk. ‘I’m going up now,’ he said. ‘I may be gone for some time. If I’m not back in half an hour, bloody well come and find me, okay?’

  ‘Okay. Oh, Thor . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Before you go . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Have one of these plums, they’re not at all bad.’

  With a bad grace, Thor started to climb the tree. Odin, meanwhile, was studying the AA book of town centre plans. Frey had found a rather squashed, almost two-dimensional banana and was eating it.

  After a less than flawless climb - the tree was designed more for aesthetic and horticultural purposes than ease of ascent-Thor reached the top. He rested for a moment, then shaded his eyes with his hand and looked out. And saw . . .

  ‘Hey, you two!’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘You’ll never guess what I can see.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, you’ll never guess.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ said Frey, through a mouthful of banana, ‘proposing to try. Are you going to tell us, or are we going to have to wait for your collected letters and diaries?’

  ‘I think,’ said Thor, ‘we’re actually inside the Vatican.’

  Frey glanced up. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I read a book about it once, the decor’s all wrong. For a start, it’s not the right ceiling.’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘The ceiling in the Vatican,’ Frey continued obliviously, ‘is sort of wide and covered in these paintings. I never heard anything about plain navy blue ceilings with tiny white dots.’

  ‘Listen . . .’

  ‘Very famous, the Vatican ceiling,’ Frey went on. ‘There’s this really famous picture of the two electricians wiring something up, only they’ve obviously not earthed it properly, because where one geezer is handing something to the other one - probably a screwdriver or a pair of tinsnips - there’s this big flash and sparks running up and down the guys’ arms. I think it’s one of those public information posters, something like Increasing Safety in the Home.’

  ‘I meant to say,’ said Thor patiently, ‘inside the Vatican grounds.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Divine intuition.’

  ‘Oh.’ Frey folded the banana skin neatly and threw it over his shoulder. ‘Any people about?’

  ‘Odd you should mention that,’ Thor replied. ‘Yes, there’s quite a few milling about down here. You know something? This place is crawling with priests.’

  At the bottom of the tree there was a hurried conference.

  ‘Ask them,’ Frey called out, ‘if we can borrow a set of welding gear.’

  One of the few remaining advantages of being a god, Pan said to himself, as he raced along behind Osiris’ wheelchair through the darkened streets of Rome, is that you don’t have any hang-ups about believing in miracles. For instance, there we all were, trapped, no way out. Next minute, something like an enormous traction engine materialises in the sky, swoops down, smashes a gap in the outer wall, ploughs through the plum trees and lands slap bang on top of the lorry, allowing us to make a smart getaway while the priests and monks are having severe hysterics and crises of faith. Not many mortals could handle something like that, but for a god it’s all in a day’s work.

  ‘Any idea where we are?’

  ‘No,’ Pan replied. ‘Years since I was in Rome. Last time I was here, in fact, I remember watching the Christians being thrown to the hamsters.’

  ‘You mean lions.’

  ‘No,’ said Pan, ‘hamsters. It was a Wednesday matinée. Are they following us, do you know?’

  Osiris glanced back over his shoulder. ‘I don’t think so,’ he replied, ‘but let’s not take any chances. Go easy a minute, let the mortals catch up.’

  ‘Any idea what that big engine thing was?’

  ‘I reckon it must have been a deus ex machina.’

  ‘Fancy.’ said Pan. ‘I always wondered how those things worked. Bloody handy, the way it just turned up like that.’

  ‘Maybe it was fate, or something.’

  ‘I didn’t think we were supposed to get any of that,’ Pan said, ‘being gods.’

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t for us. Maybe it was for the mortals. Anyway, who cares? Let’s just accept it and be grateful, eh?’

  ‘Sort of a fate accompli, you mean?’

  Osiris sighed. He was tired, frustrated, disorientated and very, very full of prunes. It was probably just as well that the Lady Isis had at some stage mislaid most of his pancreas, because otherwise he would probably be feeling a bit under the weather by now.

  ‘We lost Lundqvist, then,’ he observed.

  Pan shrugged. ‘You can’t make omelettes,’ he said. ‘I expect he’ll be all right. After all, he is a professional assassin, and they’re a load of monks and things. Supposed to turn the other cheek and all that. Knowing Kurt Lundqvist, he’ll have no difficulty knowing what to do with a turned cheek.’

  ‘You know him from somewhere, I gather.’

  Pan nodded. ‘A long time ago,’ he said. ‘I was up around Thessaly someplace, on a job. He was there doing his thing. Not a very nice person to be around when he’s working, unless you know exactly who it is he’s there to see to. I was very relieved to find out it wasn’t me.’

  ‘It wasn’t, then?’

  Pan shook his head. ‘Nah,’ he replied, ‘just some local fertility spirit they needed knocking off. You know, one of those matinée idol types who has to die each winter so that the crops may germinate and the corn ripen.’

  ‘And Lundqvist was there to assassinate him?’

  Pan nodded. ‘At the time he specialised in that sort of thing,’ he said. ‘I believe he’s what they call a cereal killer.’

  ‘If I never see another prune as long as I live,’ Osiris remarked, ‘that’ll be absolutely fine by me. Ah, here they are. Come on, you two, we may be immortal but we haven’t got all day.’

  Sandra and Carl came round the corner, red-faced and panting; the result, Pan presumed, of violent exertion on a full stomach.

  ‘Are you being followed?’ Osiris demanded.

  ‘I don’t,’ Sandra gasped, took a deep breath, and went on, ‘think so. Haven’t looked for a while. Haven’t heard anything.’

  ‘Prunes getting to you?’ asked Pan, sympathetically. Sandra nodded.

  ‘No custard,’ she explained.

  For some reason the mention of custard made Osiris restless. ‘Right then,’ he said, ‘time we weren’t here. Lead on.’

  Pan frowned. ‘Where?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’ Osiris replied. ‘You’re supposed to be a god, use your flaming initiative.’

  He had hardly finished speaking when they all heard an ominous sound in the distance: the blowing of whistles, and the faint sussuration of many men singing the 23rd Psalm under their breath while running. ‘This way,’ said Pan, decisively, and he put his weight behind Osiris’ wheelchair and started to push strenuously. The two mortals found themselves struggling to keep up.

  As observed previously, the art of leading the way down narrow alleys on the pretext of knowing a neat little shortcut is an essential part of the craft of spreading confusion, and accordingly Pan set a brisk pace through a maze of back-streets. By the time the mortals gave up the struggle and sagged in a shop doorway, announcing that they were incapable of one more step, it was nearly light, and several tradesmen were rolling up their shutters to catch the early customers on their way to work. Into one such shop Pan led the way.

  It turned out to be a typical old-fashioned small back-street barber’s shop, with four well-worn chairs, a foxed mirror and a small bald man with a brown liver-spotted head and enormous eyebrows standing
ready to greet them. On seeing him, Pan did an immediate double-take.

  ‘Buon giorno, signori, signorina,’ trilled the barber, indicating his chairs with a fine, practised flourish. ‘Per favore, si sedrai qui. Che bella giornata oh my gawd it’s you!’

  Pan grinned sheepishly. ‘Hiya, Miffy,’ he said. ‘Nice place you’ve got here.’

  The barber drew his substantial eyebrows together like curtains. ‘Gitonoutavityabastard,’ he snarled. ‘How you’ve got the bloody cheek to come waltzing in here after all you—’

  ‘Excuse me.’

  The barber turned on Osiris with an angry gesture, registered the wheelchair and moderated his tone with a visible effort. ‘Look here, chum,’ he said, ‘you tell your mate here to sling his hook, otherwise I’m bleedin’ well gonna sling it for him, okay? If he’s not out of here by the time I count to . . .’

  Osiris raised an eyebrow. ‘You two know each other, then?’

  The barber laughed savagely. Pan, who had stepped behind the wheelchair at the start of the exchange, nodded.

  ‘We go way back,’ he said. ‘This is Miffy - sorry, Mithras, God of the Morning. He’s a sun god.’

  ‘Was,’ said Miffy emphatically. ‘Was a sun god. Packed it in fifteen hundred years ago. And keep your bloody voice down, will you?’

  In the street outside, Osiris could hear the tramp of sandalled feet, the ominous clinking of censers. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘we’re gods. I’m Osiris, in fact, used to do the sun lark, just like you. Egypt and Upper Nubia. We’re in a bit of a jam, and we’d really appreciate it if you’d just let us hide out the back there for a while. All right?’

  Mithras narrowed his eyes and peered. ‘You’re Osiris?’ he said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Cor,’ said the barber, with a faint chuckle, ‘stone me! I had you down as this big tall geezer with a broad chest and a sort of Kirk Douglas chin.’

  ‘That was me two thousand years ago,’ Osiris replied. ‘Rather let myself go a bit since then.’

  ‘I used to know your lad once. Horace.’

  ‘Horus.’

  ‘That’s it, Horus. Great lanky ponce with the head of a sparrowhawk or something.’

  ‘That’s him.’

  The barber considered the position for a minute. ‘All right, then,’ he said, ‘straight through there, you can hide in the stockroom. But as soon as you’ve got rid of who’s chasing you, I’m gonna pull his lungs out!’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Osiris said. ‘This way?’

  Time was when the dungeons of the Vatican were the most fashionable in Europe, attracting a cosmopolitan elite; and the post of Chief Jailer was regarded as the ne plus ultra of the turnkey’s profession. Nowadays, most of the cells have been turned into offices for the lesser officials or closed file stores, and the Chief Jailership has been amalgamated with the office of Assistant Downstairs Caretaker and Deputy Inspector of Drains.

  The Vatican is, however, a proudly conservative and traditionalist institution; and therefore there is always one proper, old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness dungeon ready and waiting, just in case a really important heretic turns up out of the blue, with its own specialist jailer and genuine fitted rats. True, the Health and Safety insist that the rats be kept in a cage and fed and watered regularly by a fully certified and trained rat care operative, in accordance with the EC Statement of Practice; but it’s the thought that counts.

  ‘Definitely over-reacted, if you ask me,’ Odin said, for the fifth time. ‘Granted we were trespassing, and maybe we did inadvertently damage some masonry and a few trees, but even so.’ He scowled with indignation. ‘This would never have happened,’ he added darkly, ‘in Accrington.’

  ‘Whosa woosa itty bitty ratty, then?’ said Frey in the corner. ‘Who’s got the dearest little ratty paw-paws in the whole wide world?’

  ‘You still haven’t explained,’ said Thor, ‘why we can’t just beat the shit out of them and push off. I mean, for crying out loud, Odin, we’re gods.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘What do you mean, exactly?’ Thor snapped, standing up in the escape tunnel he’d already started digging. It was already shoulder high; they’d only been there twenty minutes and the equipment available to him was a half broken china mug and a toothbrush. ‘One of these days, Odin, you’re going to wake up and find the bailiffs have repossessed your brain.’

  ‘Exactly because we’re gods,’ Odin replied. ‘This is a Christian jurisdiction; we shouldn’t be here. If we cause trouble, it could lead to a serious theological incident.’

  ‘Not if we only pulped them a bit. Just enough so’s we could escape, plus a few kicks up the jacksie for luck. I don’t suppose anyone’d even notice.’

  ‘Little rattikins want nice piece of coconut ice? Very nice, yum yum? No? Not want nice bit of—?’

  ‘Frey, will you stop talking to that sodding rodent!’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ Frey replied. ‘And where else am I going to get an intelligent conversation in here?’

  ‘Serious,’ Odin went on, ‘theological incident. Which in turn means the Pope or whatever he calls himself writing a stiff letter to the Henderson. Which means . . .’

  ‘All right,’ said Thor, ‘point taken. If only I hadn’t listened to you in the first place.’

  ‘I like that, coming from you. You knew we were in Rome all along. Why the devil didn’t you say anything?’

  Thor made a rude noise and returned to his digging. Being a god (and to the gods all things are known) he had already worked out that his tunnel, if continued on its existing course for seven hundred and fifty yards, would bring him out slap bang in the middle of the main laundry room. They could dress up in sheets and pretend to be ghosts.

  ‘By the way,’ said Frey, in between enquiring of his new friend who exactly had the sweetest little iskery whiskery woos in the whole world ever, ‘anybody got any idea who he is?’ He jerked his head towards the slumped figure by the door. ‘Whoever he is, looks like they gave him a right old seeing-to.’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Thor. ‘He was in here when we arrived, I think. You could wake him up if you wanted.’

  ‘All right,’ said Frey. He leant across, took a firm hold of the figure’s ear, and twisted smartly.

  ‘Ow!’ said Kurt Lundqvist, waking up. ‘Gug. Where . . . ?’

  Frey smiled reassuringly. ‘We don’t actually know that ourselves,’ he said, ‘But we think it’s the Vatican. I’m Frey, by the way, that’s Thor and he’s Odin.’

  ‘Kurt Lundqvist. Hey, what am I doing here?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Frey replied. ‘Actually,’ he admitted, ‘I should, because in theory I know everything, but there it is. We were supposed to go on refresher courses, but we never bothered.’

  Lundqvist looked them over. ‘You’re gods, aren’t you?’ he said.

  ‘Give the man a big cigar,’ Frey replied. ‘Of course, we’re retired now. How about you?’

  Lundqvist considered. As noted above he was basically a very religious man - you had to be in his line of work. Atheism to a supernatural hit-man would be as unthinkable as freeze-dried rain - but he was painfully aware that from time to time he’d been called upon to commit some fairly sacrilegious acts in the course of his duties, up to and including the destruct-testing of some deities’ eternal lives; and for the life of him he couldn’t remember whether this particular pantheon had crossed his path before. Best, he decided, to be a little bit discreet.

  ‘I’m a journalist,’ he therefore said. ‘War correspondent with the Chicopee Falls Evening Intelligencer. Hey, what are you guys doing in here? And why don’t you just—?’

  ‘Because,’ Thor said, ‘that great jessie over there won’t let us. Don’t thump the guards, he says. Don’t smash down the walls, he says. Wait for someone from the High Commission to come and bail us out. Fat chance.’

  ‘Thor, you know perfectly well there are proper procedures . . .’

  ‘Bearing in mind,’ Thor went on,
‘that the High Commission was closed down in AD 332 on the orders of Constantine the Great. Yes, I know Nkulunkulu the Great Sky Spirit of Zululand has a chargé d’affaires still, but I gather he consists of a few small clouds and a buildup of latent static electricity, which really isn’t going to be much use to us in here.’

  ‘Oh I don’t know,’ Frey yawned. ‘Sounds like he could cause dry rot in the joists or something, and then they’d have to move us out to a hotel. Take time, though.’

  Kurt Lundqvist levered himself up on to his hands and knees and looked around. As always with him, ever since he popped out of the womb and immediately grabbed the forceps and dived for strategic cover under the incubator, his first thought was to locate a usable weapon and a defensible position to fall back on. Limited scope in the conditions prevailing, and he had to content himself with seizing Frey’s left shoe and crouching in the corner of the cell.

  ‘Let’s get this straight, shall we?’ he said. ‘You guys are gods, right?’

  Thor nodded.

  ‘And you want to bust out, but you can’t.’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Not,’ Lundqvist went on, ‘because you haven’t the capability, but because it’d be a serious breach of protocol, right?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Lundqvist nodded. ‘So,’ he said, ‘if you could secure the services of, say, a highly trained soldier of fortune who could bash in the guards without any nasty theological comebacks, you could do all the rest of the escaping, like, you know, the rope ladders and waiting helicopters bit, standing on your heads.’

  ‘I guess so,’ Thor replied.

  ‘Fine.’ Lundqvist smiled and felt in his pocket. ‘Allow me,’ he said, ‘to give you my card.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Mithras, ‘they’ve gone.’

  (From the same team that brought you How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? we proudly present the very latest in abstruse theological conundra; namely, what do retired sun gods now running small hairdressing-businesses in the backstreets of Rome keep in their back rooms? Answers on a postcard, please.)