Odds and Gods

by Tom Holt

  On TV screens across half the globe, the test card flickered and vanished, and was replaced by what could loosely be described as drama: a huge giant kicking the innards out of a diminutive figure with a gun wrapped round its neck. We interrupt our scheduled programme to bring you up-to-the-minute reports from our newsdesk. The attempt on the life of the Guardian of the Teeth earlier today has led to violent clashes between the Guardian and an unidentified burglar . . .

  Slowly, and with a certain amount of subdued fizzing, the Guardian stood up, wobbled for a moment and looked round. Because he was looking for one individual human being in particular, he failed to notice Pan, Osiris and party making a sharp tactical withdrawal in the opposite direction (taking the Teeth with them). Eventually he found what he was looking for. After a moment’s thought he stooped down, uprooted a substantial boulder, and hefted it for weight and balance. Then he advanced.

  Kurt Lundqvist, meanwhile, had dumped the RPG-7 and most of the rest of his captured arsenal, and was running like hell back towards where he’d left his transport. It went without saying that he did so with panther-like stealth, gliding like a dim ghost across the rocky terrain, or at least would have done if his feet hadn’t kept jumping out of the tiny shoes.

  He was almost in sight of safety when the light was blotted out in front of him by, he realised, a very large shadow. No need to look round and see what was causing it. Oh god, he muttered as he slithered and scrambled his way over the treacherous shale. God, I wish I . . .

  ‘Good on yer, mate. Told you you’d need the third wish sooner or later, didn’t I?’

  ‘Screaming Jesus,’ Lundqvist gasped. Although there was nothing to see, he could feel the Dragon King’s presence in the air, smell its beery breath. ‘You again.’

  ‘G’day. Looks like you’ve landed yourself in a spot of grief here, mate. Want me to sort it out for you?’

  ‘No,’ Lundqvist shouted, ‘absolutely not, no way. I have the situation perfectly under—’

  A giant foot thundered down a mere thirty yards away, making the ground shake. The shadow grew slightly darker, if that was possible.

  ‘Fair go, sport, looks to me like unless you have some help smartish, you’re gonna be history.You’re sure about this?’

  ‘Yes, positive. Bugger off.’

  ‘I’ll be saying g’day, then.’

  The air cleared around him, which only left the problem of the Guardian and his enormous rock. The latter was presently hovering about a hundred and twenty feet above Lundqvist’s head, as the Guardian took aim and allowed for ground speed and windage.

  Getting out of this one, Lundqvist admitted to himself, was going to be one of the most challenging problems of his professional career; and he had about half a second to do it in.

  It’s a truism to say that Fortune favours the brave; but the thing to remember about truisms is that they got that way by frequently being true.

  Lundqvist got out of there with a margin of perhaps a fiftieth of a second; but get out he did. When the rock finally hit the ground, smashing a crater which, if flooded, would have made a wonderful yachting marina, Lundqvist was already a fair distance away, and moving fast. A specialist in gift horse dentistry might have pointed out to him that he was gripped firmly in an enormous, apparently disembodied, hand, which had appeared out of nowhere, scooped him up and carried him off; but Lundqvist was in no mood to find fault. Better, he reflected, a Lundqvist in the hand than a mangled corpse in the bush. Or words to that effect.

  ‘Thanks,’ Lundqvist called out. ‘I owe you one, whoever the hell you are. Just drop me anywhere here and that’ll be fine.’

  ‘Don’t tempt me.’

  Lundqvist looked down. They were still many hundreds of feet above sea level, but at least they were over dry land. An island, to be precise. What was more, it had a strangely familiar look, although Lundqvist knew for a certainty that he’d never been there before.

  ‘It was very kind of you to rescue me,’ he called out. The hand tightened its grip very slightly; just enough to allow Lundqvist’s circulation to continue working.

  ‘What makes you think you’ve been rescued?’

  Obviously, Lundqvist assured himself, a joke. After all, whoever this hand belongs to saved me from certain death.

  He looked down again, and then up. You had to say this for certain death: at least it was certain. And, Lundqvist added, drawing on wide experience obtained over many years as Death’s leading sales rep, it didn’t usually involve hovering high up above islands tucked in the palm of giant hands, or at least not when he was administering it. A 200-grain full metal jacket slug from a .40 Glock was more his style, and by and large he had seen nothing in this character’s modus operandi to make him revise his views. Death Lundqvist-style might be prosaic, but it avoided the vertigo and the travel sickness, and was over rather more quickly.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he asked, ‘but where the hell are we?’

  The air above him quivered as the proprietor of the hand chuckled disconcertingly. ‘You don’t recognise it?’

  ‘Can’t say that I do.’

  ‘Look closer.’

  Lundqvist did so; and it didn’t take him long to notice the long rows of large, bleak, stylised anthropomorphic statues that stood in rows all over the beach and immediately contiguous area. The land mass below was Easter Island.

  Ah.

  ‘Look,’ he shouted, as soon as he was able to get his larynx up and running again. ‘If it’s about the hijack I can explain.’

  ‘I see. That’s another useless talent you’ve got, is it?’

  When the hand eventually stopped and the fingers relaxed a trifle, Lundqvist was no more than twelve feet off the ground, and was able to make a perfectly competent emergency landing on his head.

  ‘By the time I’ve finished with you,’ said the voice, ‘I’ll make you wish you’d never been born.’

  The air swam for a moment; and then the rest of the body to which the hand was attached materialised in front of him. Still no clues as to who or what it was, but it made the Guardian look like something found at the bottom of a breakfast cereal packet.

  ‘Welcome,’ it said, ‘to Easter Island. I am Hotduyrtdx.’

  ‘Gesundheit.’

  ‘No,’ said Hotduyrtdx, ‘that’s my name. And this,’ it went on, making a sweeping gesture around the whole island, ‘is my home. Or it was, at any rate. You see the statues?’

  Lundqvist nodded.

  ‘That’s your fault.’

  ‘But I’ve never been here in my life before.’

  ‘Irrelevant. You’re sure you don’t remember what it is you’ve done?’

  ‘Positive.’

  The voice sighed. ‘Then I’ll explain,’ it said.

  A long time ago (said Hotduyrtdx) there was an island.

  It had a population, of sorts; but far too many for the island to be self-sufficient in food. When Hotduyrtdx arrived to take up his new post as divine observer and acting pro-consul, the first thing he did was cast about in his mind for a suitable cash crop; something that would show a high, quick return on capital with minimum risk and no tax implications, making the most of locally available raw materials.

  Now then, Hotduyrtdx asked himself, what is it that we have the most of? Answer: rocks. Lots of them. A fine crop, in its way, requiring the minimum of watering and potting on; but not, unfortunately, readily marketable. Think of something else.

  And so Hotduyrtdx went away and thought hard and because he was a god (to whom all things are possible) and blessed with an elementary knowledge of economic theory, it wasn’t long before the solution presented itself. Forget agriculture entirely. Go for broke with light industry. Make something for which there is an insatiable demand, and you’re home and dry.

  Such as?

  Such as toupees for gods. Do you have difficulty in finding cranial accessories in your size, given that in your natural shape you’re a hundred foot high and morphologically unstable? Have ove
r-work and the pressures of executive office resulted in hair loss and premature baldness, leading in turn to a decline in worshipper credibility? Worry no longer. Easter Island Head Cosmetics will come to your rescue. Nobody, not even your fellow gods, will ever be able to see the join.

  Hence the statues. None of your cheapskate synthetic rugs in a high-class establishment like this; each hairpiece was hand-made from only the very finest materials by dedicated craftsmen bound by the most dreadful oaths not to make sarcastic comments, no matter how illustrious the customer. For reasons that will shortly be made clear, the hairpieces themselves are now all long gone; but the wigstands remain behind, relics of a once massive industrial civilisation. Hundreds of them; tall angular stylised heads carved out of huge blocks of granite and basalt, all of them bald as billiard balls. Most of them, in fact, are still there to this day.

  ‘Hey,’ Lundqvist said, backing away, ‘I think maybe you’re overreacting a bit here. The plane’s perfectly safe, I promise you. I even stopped off on the way and filled her up with gas on my AmEx card.’

  Hotduyrtdx snarled, and advanced a step further. ‘I’m not talking about the aeroplane,’ he said. ‘In fact, how do you think the plane came to be there, all nice and conveniently waiting for you? Why do you think you were able to overpower the guard and hijack it so easily?’ He grinned, revealing a mouthful of teeth like the ‘Before’ stage of a hard-sell orthodontics advert. ‘I think set up is the phrase you people use,’ he added.

  ‘But what have I done, man?’

  A spasm of rage briefly contorted Hotduyrtdx’s face (which hadn’t exactly been cuddly-looking to start with; imagine a Hieronymus Bosch watercolour left outside in the rain, and you’ll get the general idea). ‘For one thing,’ he growled, ‘I am not a man. Thanks to you I’m not a god either, not any more. But I think you’ve done enough damage already without adding insult to . . .’

  Lundqvist tried to back away further, but an ill-mannered tree impeded his progress. ‘What did I do?’ he repeated. ‘And when?’

  ‘July 17th, 1469. Don’t pretend you don’t remember.’

  ‘I don’t have to pretend.’

  ‘Ah well.’ Hotduyrtdx shrugged. ‘Actually, they say extreme agony sharpens the memory, so don’t give up hope just yet.’

  He swept out a talon, which Lundqvist only just avoided, and made a sound like tearing calico.

  ‘Hey . . .’ Lundqvist was just about to protest further when the librarians of his memory emerged, dusty and with cricks in their necks, from the uttermost filing cabinet of his mind. Easter Island. Yes.

  It had been a very long time ago; back in the days when business had been slow and he’d supplemented his income by doing odd jobs for the Theological Survey Department. It had all been a bit of fun - his five-year mission; to explore new worlds, seek out new life forms, that sort of thing - and on the way home they’d stopped off, yes, here, dammit, to mend a puncture and take on water and garlic butter for the final leg of the journey. This place had changed a lot since then, of course. He shuddered.

  ‘Remember now?’ Hotduyrtdx asked. Lundqvist nodded.

  One of the responsibilities of the Survey was to make routine checks on any gods or purported gods they came across, to ensure that they were complying with the various Practice Directions issued by the Department on various matters, most of them to do with the keeping of full accounts in the prescribed form and maintaining a proper level of professional indemnity insurance. It so happened that, on inspection, Lundqvist had found discrepancies and breaches of the rules, and had reported them. That, as far as he had been concerned, was the end of the matter. Certainly he’d heard no more about it at the time.

  ‘They struck you off?’ he said.

  Hotduyrtdx nodded. ‘And you know what for?’ he went on. ‘You know what it was I’d done that was so terrible I wasn’t allowed to be a god any more? Go on, guess.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I hadn’t been filling out my green sheets in duplicate, like I was supposed to. Instead I was just filling out the top copy and taking a photocopy for the file. That was it. Heinous stuff, yes?’

  Lundqvist cast his mind back. Green sheets - god, yes, them. He remembered now. Back then, all gods were supposed to fill out these idiotic forms each time they did a miracle. It was something to do with input tax, and the whole scheme was abandoned a short while afterwards.

  ‘They struck you off for that?’

  ‘Conduct unbecoming, they said.’ Hotduyrtdx smiled grimly. ‘The way they saw it, it was just an administrative error, and to err is human. If it’d been something really heavy, like bringing the dead back to life or wiping out a century’s worth of history, I’d have got away with a reprimand, because to forgive is divine. Marvellous system, huh?’

  Lundqvist nodded. He couldn’t think of very much to say.

  ‘The business had to close down, of course,’ Hotduyrtdx continued remorselessly. ‘All my customers were gods, see, and so I wasn’t allowed to trade with them. As a result the whole population were put out of a job, they drifted back into subsistence agriculture and died out. I’ve been here ever since. Thanks to you.’

  ‘I never meant . . .’

  Hotduyrtdx scowled, and wisps of strange brown vapour drifted from his nostrils. ‘I don’t imagine you did. Your sort never do. Ever since, I’ve been holed up here, brewing up moonshine magic out of anything I could lay my hands on, ready for the day when I could get even with you, you scumbag. It’s been a long time.’

  He advanced another two paces, until his shadow engulfed Lundqvist completely. It was hard not to notice the claws on the end of his feet.

  ‘Would it help,’ Lundqvist said tentatively, ‘if I told you I was in a position to put a good word in for you with some very high-ranking gods indeed? I mean, like really top-flight . . .’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay.’ He sighed. ‘In that case,’ he went on, ‘you leave me no alternative.’

  Hotduyrtdx blinked. ‘What d’you mean, I leave you no alter . . .’

  Lundqvist braced himself for the desperate expenditure of energy that was to come. Good old pineal gland, always been there for me when I needed you most, come through for Daddy just one more time, we all know you’ve got it in you. ‘I just want you to know,’ he said solemnly, looking for the right spot, ‘that I really hate doing this. If there was any other way at all . . .’

  ‘Doing what, for pity’s sake?’

  With a violent explosion of muscular effort, possible only because of countless years of specialist training, Lundqvist jumped between Hotduyrtdx’s legs, hit the ground, rolled, regained his feet and used them.

  ‘Running away,’ he shouted back over his shoulder. ‘I’ll get you for this, you sucker!’

  ‘Now just a flaming minute . . .’

  But Lundqvist wasn’t there any more. He had always been a good runner, although in different circumstances (he had always specialised in after rather than away from) and the thought of the claws and the quite staggering size of the horrible thing somehow made him able to set a pace that would have had Carl Lewis tripping over his feet in about twelve seconds. As tactical withdrawals went, it was pretty slick.

  There is only so much percentage, however, in running away from someone when you’re on an island; and running, as the man said, is one thing, hiding is quite another. As he ran, Lundqvist’s mind kept itself occupied with figuring out how many of Hotduyrtdx’s strides it would take to traverse the island from one side to the other. Not many, he decided. Not nearly many enough.

  ‘Ready yet?’

  ‘I told you,’ Lundqvist panted, ‘bugger off. I’ve got enough problems of my own without you to contend with.’

  The Dragon King of the South-East shrugged his shoulders. ‘Blimey, mate,’ he said, ‘you’re a hard bloke to help, no worries. Just say the word and I’ll have you out of there in two shakes of a possum’s—’

  ‘Go away! Piss off! Get the hell outa here!’ Lu
ndqvist yelled. ‘This is your last warning, okay?’

  ‘Be like that,’ said the Dragon King huffily, and vanished.

  Five minutes of flat-out running later, Lundqvist was so demoralised that he was beginning to wonder whether the Dragon King mightn’t have been such a bad idea after all when he came to an unscheduled and quite involuntary stop. Some idiot, it seemed, had built a damn great wall right across the road. To make matters worse, they’d painted it invisible.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ said a disembodied voice.

  Kurt tried to move; but the parts of his brain responsible for motor functions told him to forget it. He groaned.

  ‘Because if you are,’ the voice went on, ‘we might be able to help. We’re doctors, you see.’

  At which point, the two doctors stepped out from behind the invisible wall.They were carrying the inevitable black bags, together with assorted firearms, hand grenades, surface-to-air missile launchers and extremely hi-tech edged weapons; in other words, almost exactly the way the young Kurt Lundqvist had imagined Santa Claus looked, except that they didn’t have red robes, long white beards and flak jackets.

  ‘Mind you,’ said one of the doctors, ‘it’s partly your own fault for not looking at the signs.’

  Lundqvist spat out a tooth. ‘Signs?’ he croaked.

  A doctor nodded. ‘Back there,’ he replied, pointing. ‘Big signs saying, Caution, invisible wall. Of course they’re invisible too, but . . .’

  Numb, Lundqvist lay still while they examined him and, eventually, prescribed two aspirin and a good lie down. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he asked.

  A doctor looked at him. ‘You are Kurt Lundqvist, aren’t you?’ he asked.

  Lundqvist nodded. ‘Why?’

  ‘Good.’The doctor took out his stethoscope, blew down one earpiece and listened to Lundqvist’s chest. ‘Your friends are coming to rescue you,’ he said. ‘That’s why we’re setting up these invisible road-blocks. Clever, yes?’

  ‘How did they know I was here?’