Odds and Gods

by Tom Holt

  It is one thing, however, to storm the Bastille; quite another to consolidate your position to the extent that you can start issuing your own postage stamps. The godchildren had immediately retaliated by sequestrating all divine assets invested in the World Below; and, since these consisted of about ninety-five per cent of the World Below, this constituted one of the few known cases of effective economic sanctions. The next step could only be war; and, as is well known, you can’t have a proper war without a failed peace conference first. It’s like having dinner in a really expensive restaurant and skipping the starter.

  Pan looked round and conferred briefly with his colleagues.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I think we’re not as far apart on this as you imagine.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘We’ll hold our hands up on the pastrami if you’ll consent to a multilateral regulatory agreement on the mineral water.’

  ‘Policed by UN observers?’

  ‘If necessary, yes.’

  The lawyer frowned. ‘We must insist.’

  ‘Sure.’ Pan nodded gravely. ‘It should be plain by now that we have nothing to hide. Can we move on now, please?’

  There was a general shuffling of papers. ‘We now come,’ said the lawyer, ‘to item number two on the agenda, and I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that your party are already in flagrant breach of the pre-conference consensus on this one.’ He shook his head, like a wet dog trying to shake off the sins of the world. ‘I mean, come on, guys. We specifically agreed that the five coathooks nearest the doors were going to be ours.’

  Pan hesitated. True, the first rule of negotiation is, Give the bastards a hard time on absolutely everything. On the other hand, his knee itched and he was getting pins and needles in his left foot. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘It’s no big deal. You can have ’em.’

  There was stunned silence on the other side of the table. ‘We can?’

  ‘Certainly. Be my guest.’

  Frenzied conferring on the other side. ‘But,’ the lawyer pointed out, ‘your coats are already in position.’

  ‘Move ’em.’

  ‘Are we talking a phased withdrawal here, under the auspices of a UN watchdog force, or—’

  ‘Sling ’em on the floor,’ Pan replied, smiling. ‘They’re only a couple of old anoraks and a parka.’

  It was, one of the godchildrens’ delegation admitted later, profoundly unnerving, the way Pan just sat there for the next thirty-seven minutes, giving way on every single piece of trivia they could contrive to throw at him. You got the impression, he went on, that either the guy was an absolute pro or a complete novice. When negotiating at this level, it’s hard to say which is more deadly.

  ‘We now come on,’ said the lawyer, sweating, ‘to item seventy-six. Who’s going to rule the universe? Well, I think we can probably just flash past this one—’

  ‘No, we can’t,’ Pan said. The lawyer looked the god straight in the eyes and turned quickly away. Pan didn’t just have a poker face; his was the sort of expression that would convince you that he held at least four aces even before the seal had been broken on the deck of cards.

  ‘All right,’ the lawyer said, stifling a yawn. ‘We propose that it should be us. You got a problem with that?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Nothing we can’t handle, I’m sure. What’s the bottom line here?’

  Pan grinned. ‘It’s because you’re useless,’ he said. ‘Totally and utterly incompetent. If the very best of you was given the job of organising the Budweiser annual Christmas staff party, sooner or later someone’d have to go to the off-licence. I rest my case.’

  ‘You call that a case?’ the lawyer sneered. ‘Man, that’d be hard pressed to be a handbag. Where’s your evidence?’

  Pan laughed, raucously and on his own, for at least seventy seconds (which is a very long time), before wiping his eyes with his sleeve. ‘If you want evidence,’ he said, ‘look around. There’s nothing in the universe that isn’t evidence.’

  ‘Except woodlice.’

  Pan stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the small, plump lawyer who had just spoken. ‘Beg pardon?’ he said.

  ‘Woodlice,’ replied the small lawyer. ‘If (as if not admitted) we’ve cocked anything up, we sure haven’t cocked up wood-lice. They’re doing really well under this administration. Productivity up and everything. You just go and ask one if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘And stalagmites,’ added a senior accountant. ‘Under this administration, stalagmites have risen by an average of sixteen point four seven two per cent. I call that a pretty conclusive argument, don’t you?’

  ‘Look . . .’ said Pan.

  ‘And,’ interrupted a bald, almost circular lawyer who had hitherto been asleep, ‘rotary washing lines. What did your people ever do to help facilitate open air laundry dehydration?’

  ‘Look . . .’

  ‘Or time,’ said an even more senior accountant, pointing at Pan with a forefinger like a bratwurst. ‘No fewer than five centuries actually completed ahead of schedule. That’s the sort of results you just can’t argue with.’

  ‘Look . . .’

  ‘Mountains, now,’ chirruped a thin, brittle-looking actuary from the back row. ‘This administration can truthfully say that it hasn’t lost a single major peak since it took office. In fact, I’d venture to say that there are more quality mountains now than at any time in the last—’

  ‘LOOK.’

  Thank you (said Pan).

  Be still and know that we are your gods. In the beginning we created the heavens and the earth, and we were without form and void.

  Don’t get me wrong. That was cool. It was like slopping round in your old clothes on a Sunday morning, not having to shave or put your teeth in. That’s basically the way a god ought to be. And then you came along.

  I remember saying to Osiris at the time, Look, Oz, just create them in your own image, it’ll be a whole lot less hassle in the long run. But no, he said, that’s not good enough, I want them to have all the advantages we never had. I want them to have souls, and know right from wrong. I want them to have good and evil, otherwise what purpose will there be in their poxy little lives? I want them to be better than us.

  So we gave you morals. We gave you sensibilities. We gave you ethics - and it wasn’t easy, believe you me. You ask the average god to explain the difference between right and wrong, he’ll look puzzled and ask if wrong’s a dialect word for ‘left’. But we wanted you to have the best of everything, and we managed, somehow.

  And that meant (Pan said) that instead of just hanging loose in the void having a good time, we had to look after you. We shaped your destinies, judged your dead, zapped your perjurors, grew your crops, all that stuff. It wasn’t what we wanted to do, but we did it.

  And what thanks did we get? Prayers? Sacrifices? Temples with nice cosy armchairs where a god can put his feet up with the paper and have forty thousand winks? Not a bit of it. We had to put up with your suffering, your complaining, your why-me-whatever-did-I-do whingeing, your goddamned holier-than-thou attitudes. You made us doubt ourselves in everything we did. Every time we rained, we had to ask ourselves, Do the crops need rain this time of year, are they having droughts or floods down there? We couldn’t so much as sneeze without running the risk of flattening one of your rotten little cities. We tried our best, and yes, I think we did a bloody good job; but every time we made just one little mistake, you were on us like a ton of bricks, with your sickeningly smug ours-not-to-reason-whying and your agnosticism and your general air of putting up with us out of the kindness of your hearts. And you know what? We respected you for it. We admired you. You made us feel really small.

  And (Pan said) in the end we thought, Why bother? They’re much better than we are, they’ve got justice and morality and all that sort of thing, and all we do is the flies-to-wanton-boys stuff. Let’s hand it all over to them and call it a day. So we did. Dammit, we believed in you.

  And look what happened. Y
e have made of my Father’s house a suite of offices. You’ve given the world over to the charge of lawyers and accountants and politicians - men whose only function in life is to make the truth appear lies and lies appear the truth. No more gratuitous violence, you said, no more inexplicable disasters, no more meaningless suffering, no more war, no more hunger, no more hatred, no more oppression.

  Yes. Well.

  Which is why (Pan said, and his voice shook the carriage and the surrounding hills) we’re calling a halt. We never claimed to be better than you, but at least when we destroy a city or flatten a harvest we don’t mean anything by it. No god ever killed anything for a principle or ruined the lives of millions for ten per cent of the gross. We may be clumsy, but evil is something you thought up all by yourselves, along with martyrdom, litigation and financial services.

  And that is all I have to say on the matter.

  ‘Fine,’ said the lawyer, ‘so it’ll have to be war. Unless,’ he added innocuously, ‘you’d rather we did it the civilised way and took it to law. Just a suggestion.’

  Pan thought for a moment, and grinned. ‘Law?’ he said. ‘You mean have a trial and may the best man win?’

  ‘Sure.’ The lawyer managed to keep a straight face, because it’s something you learn over the years, but his heart was rubbing its hands. We’ve got them, the dozy old buggers, it was saying.

  ‘Done with you,’ said Pan. ‘We elect for trial by combat. We find that it’s cheaper, quicker, fairer and a damn sight less traumatic for the participants. Agreed?’

  The lawyer hesitated. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but it’ll have to be by mortal rules, and with champions. You’ve got to admit, we’d be on a hiding to nothing fighting to the death with one of you lot.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘And,’ said the lawyer quickly, ‘we have first choice of champions, okay?’

  ‘I suppose so, yes.’

  ‘In that case,’ said the lawyer, ‘we nominate Kurt Lundqvist.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ‘You sure about this?’ asked Pan, for the forty-third time. ‘I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to.’

  ‘He’s sure,’ Sandra replied.

  The heat from the floodlights was enough to fry eggs in sweat, and the air was the consistency of lard. Everyone who was anybody, everybody who had been anybody, and seventy-five per cent of everyone who was going to be somebody at some indeterminate point in the future, were here, shuffling in their seats, whispering excitedly, eating popcorn. In his private box in the epicentre of the dress circle, Lin Kortright, supernatural agent, focused his opera glasses, every fibre of his being intent on spotting the fresh, raw theological talent that would set the twenty-seventh century alight. On the western side of the arena, broadly speaking, sat the mortal contingent, the godchildren, their aides, assistants and support staff, demurely charcoal-suited and poised like hawks to pounce on any technical infringement of the rules. On the eastern benches sprawled the gods, a pan-dimensional charabanc trip to Weymouth, opening paper bags, pouring from thermoses, arranging rugs, crossing legs against importunate bladders, complaining incessantly and (in the front three rows at least) setting up the chant of, ‘Come on, you Reds.’

  Pan shook his head. ‘I want you to know,’ he said, ‘that I have grave reservations about this whole thing.’

  Carl looked up and peered at Pan through his visor. ‘Grave reservations?’ he repeated.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Oh. I didn’t realise you had to book. I thought you just turned up in a box and they—’

  ‘It’s going to be all right,’ Sandra said firmly, looking up from buckling on a shinguard. ‘Don’t fluster him.’

  ‘I see. It’s going to be all right, is it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know this for a fact, do you?’

  Sandra nodded. ‘Osiris told me so himself.’

  Pan’s face exhibited a smile the consistency of office canteen coffee. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘Osiris said so, point taken. Sandra, I don’t want to be a wet blanket here, but I’ve known him rather longer than you have, and—’

  ‘He’s a god, isn’t he?’

  Pan blinked. Right now, he realised, her faith was strong enough to send Mont Blanc whizzing into orbit like a marble from a catapult. ‘True,’ he said. ‘So’m I. So are all those incontinent old duffers you can see over there. For crying out loud, Sandra, you used to have to put them to bed and remind them what day of the week it was, surely you don’t imagine . . .’

  Sandra shook her head. ‘They’re not gods,’ she said, ‘they’re just very old people. Mr Osiris is a real god, you can tell.’

  ‘Oh?’ Pan scowled. ‘How?’

  ‘Because,’ Sandra replied with utter conviction (and it may be worth mentioning at this juncture that her grand-mother was the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-grand-daughter of Joan of Arc’s second cousin), ‘he’s the only person I know who can put a hot cup of tea down on a french-polished table and not leave a white ring. Only a true god could do that.’

  ‘Um . . .’

  ‘Only a true god would be that considerate. If it was someone else’s table, I mean.’

  Pan shook his head and wandered away. In his considered opinion, they’d been hopelessly outflanked at the very last moment, and it was time to pack it in and call it a day. It had been a good try, they’d had some fun (although offhand it was hard to call to mind a specific instance of this) but one had to be brutally realistic. The other side had Kurt Lundqvist - despite his recent mediocre form indisputably the deadliest two-legged fighting machine in the history of combat - whereas the only mortal the gods had been able to call on to fight their corner was Sandra’s boyfriend Carl, he of the big ears and vacant expression large enough to store furniture in.

  Carl. He’d been along from the start, Pan reflected as he marched along looking for a bookie who’d accept any odds at all on a Lundqvist victory, ever since they’d broken out and set off on this fatuous exercise; but try as he might, he couldn’t actually call to mind anything the boy had done, except stand about and help with the heavy suitcases. There were some positive things about him, sure enough. He was toilet trained, he didn’t seem particularly fussy about what he ate and his shoes were always dazzlingly brightly polished. More relevantly, he stood about six feet in his socks and had shoulders like an American footballer. His brain, however, seemed to be another matter entirely; like the vestigial vein of gold-bearing quartz directly underneath Bloomingdales or the Ascension Island tourist industry, it was an understandably under-exploited resource. Face facts, the lad was only slightly more sentient than a traffic light.

  We’re going to lose, Pan muttered to himself. What a pity. And where the devil has Osiris got to?

  Ready?

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  You know what to do?

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  Remember, when I said leave all the thinking to me, I really did mean all the thinking, all right?

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  Got everything? The baseball bat? The bag of sand?

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  Clean underpants?

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  Splendid.

  Lundqvist looked up, and whimpered.

  Outside, in the arena, he was going to win; he knew it as a depressing certainty, as hopeless and ineluctable as Monday. At his side was the .40 Glock, his trademark, with which he could shoot the ash off a cigarette at a hundred yards. Strapped to his ankle, the Sykes-Fairbarin fighting knife. In his left hand, the slide-action Remington twelve-gauge. And this, he reflected bitterly, was the absolute minimum he’d been able to select when offered choice of weapons without laying himself open to a charge of throwing the match.

  The other side had chosen a baseball bat and a bag of sand. Probably thought it was funny.

  It goes with the territory. He could just about refuse to fi
ght gods, on conscientious grounds, but there was no way he could turn down a contract to fight a fellow human being. It was part of the price he had to pay for being a professional, and being the best. If he hadn’t been the best, he could have chickened out on grounds of cowardice - perfectly legitimate for any other member of the profession except himself to do that. And if he hadn’t been a professional - but he had been, for more years (thanks to the exemption from the rules of chronology that came with his Federal licence) than anybody could remember. If he wasn’t a professional, one hundred per cent impartial and doing it purely and simply for the money, then there were one hell of a lot of dead people out there who had grounds for some extremely trenchant criticism. The defence of only-obeying-orders only holds good so long as the orders are actually obeyed.

  LAYDEES AN GENNULMENN YOUR ATTEN-SHUN PLEEEZ . . .

  It was a very special arena - unique, the first and last of its kind. They’d had to search long and hard to find a site that was a temporal anomaly and a moral vacuum and also had adequate parking for seventy million cars. The beer tent alone had required licences from no less than sixty-four different authorities, many of them the same authority at different points in time. The floodlights were all dying stars, and the PA system had been in the Beginning, and had been with God and (according to some versions of the story) was God. Certainly it hadn’t come cheap.

  FOR THE HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE UNIVERSE . . .

  And it’ll all be my fault, Lundqvist said to himself. The bastards, they’ve gone and made me into a lawyer, a lawyer, for gods’ sake. I may have done some pretty filthy things in my time, but I never thought it’d come to this. I wish I’d never been born.