"Strike me blind, are you for real?" asked Barrington. "Way you talk, it's like something out of flaming Jane Austen."
"I shall take that as a compliment, Mr Barrington."
"You can take it however you like, mate."
"I could," Landesman resumed, "resent the Olympians, the entire Pantheon as a whole, for causing the severe contraction of what was once an expansive and lucrative business empire. I should. In a sense, I do. They are the ones who, by taking it upon themselves to establish and enforce a regime of peace all across the world, have knocked the bottom out of the war market.
"But it would be churlish of me to deny that their rise to prominence has brought with it a global stability the like of which has never been known. We all must acknowledge this as a fact. Your faces disagree, but you nevertheless must concede that over the past decade and more the world has experienced no major conflicts, not one, nor any minor ones. For the first time in history there is no region where the human race is engaged in factional in-fighting, civil war, religion-based strife, a battle for resources, any kind of large-scale violence. Power blocs are no longer flexing their muscles. Terrorists are no longer targeting civilians with bombs, suicide and otherwise. Territorial tussles are a thing of the past. And who do we have to thank for that? Zeus and co. You may not like it but you know that it is so."
"But they are murderers," said Anders Sondergaard. "They have killed to further their aims, and continue to kill, recklessly, sometimes deliberately."
"Wouldn't you rather have that, the odd death here and there as the price for overall peace? Isn't that, in the broad scheme of things, a fair exchange?"
"No," said Sondergaard, and the sentiment was echoed round the table.
"But think about it," said Landesman. "The Olympians have picked off every dangerous religious-fundamentalist leader there is. They've eliminated every single tyrant and tinpot dictator, not least the ones with nuclear ambitions. Warmongers, oppressors, right-wing extremist cells, despots, jumped-up paramilitary lunatics everywhere — all gone. Assassinated. Eradicated. Only democratically elected politicians remain in power, and they're all too cowed to start any kind of trouble, knowing it would bring the wrath of the Pantheon down on their heads. They've even handed over the keys to the world's nuclear arsenals to the Olympians, so the spectre of Mutually Assured Destruction, or of even a limited nuclear skirmish, no longer hovers over us.
"And the funds originally earmarked for war budgets have been diverted to schools, hospitals, care homes, civil engineering projects, research into renewable energy, just as the greens and the peacenik brigade have been campaigning for for ages. Isn't this the kind of society we're supposed to have been working towards? The end-point of the human narrative? Every nation in harmony. Rogue states under control. Planet-wide detente. Better use of natural resources. Isn't this paradise? Utopia? We have gods in charge of us now. Surely that's desirable, preferable to being at the whim and mercy of mere, fallible men?"
"They ain't gods," said Sparks with a vehement nod.
"Are they not, Miss Sparks?" said Landesman. "They certainly look that way to me. The Ancient Greek pantheon, in the flesh."
"I read somewhere they're aliens," said Mahmoud.
"Do you believe that?"
"That's what some people say. Not just the barmpots, some scientists even. They've come from outer space and taken on a recognisable humanoid shape and are using their powers to save us from ourselves."
"Only they don't have powers," Harryhausen chimed in. "Just incredibly advanced technology made to look like godlike powers."
"And there's another theory," said Tsang. "It goes that the Olympians are creations of Mother Earth. They have sprung up from the collective consciousness. I can't remember it but there's a specific word for them."
"Avatars," said Chisholm.
"That's the one. Avatars of nature. You've heard that one too?"
"Oh yes," said Chisholm. "I've studied the Olympians in great depth. They've become quite a little hobby of mine. I've scoured the internet, read the books and newspaper articles, watched the documentaries. The Gaia Self-Defence Mechanism Hypothesis, that's the name for what you're talking about. Essentially, the Olympians are the planetary ecosystem's response to our species' rapacity and destructiveness, a kind of environmental failsafe. They've manifested from the pool of our dreams, conforming to a pre-existing set of archetypes, and the purpose of their presence is to curb our violent tendencies and steer us off the path of self-annihilation that we're on." Chisholm laughed hollowly. "I think it's a load of tosh, myself. But this kind of wild supposition is only to be expected. In the absence of any hard facts about the Olympians, there'll inevitably be crackpots coming out with harebrained ideas."
"You have your own theory about them, then?" asked Barrington. "All that research you've done, you've got to."
"Sorry to disappoint, but no. Frankly I have no idea who or what they are. Nor do I think it matters. Knowing the truth of the Olympians' origins wouldn't lessen my contempt for them one little bit. Yours either, I'd imagine."
"So it seems we all hate the Olympians, Mr Landesman," said Therese Hamel, "apart from you. Are you here to try and convert us? Is that what all this is about? You're some kind of emissary? An evangelist? You want to help us, cure us of our loathing somehow?"
"Did I say I approved of the Olympians, Miss Hamel?"
"You appear to."
"Equally I might merely be advancing an argument, putting a positive spin on their achievements, showing how their arrival and intervention has unquestionably had some benefits. After all, their avowed intent has always been the protection and nurturing of ordinary people. Zeus himself has said so, hasn't he? On numerous occasions. I recall his speech to the United Nations, the day the Olympians first made themselves known to the world. 'We have come here, incarnate again, in order to save you from the worst among you. We are here to liberate you from fear and the shadow of war. We want nothing more than for the human race to be free to live lives of contentment and mutual prosperity.' A noble goal, without a doubt. As a mission statement, it can't be faulted."
"Oh yes it can," said Sam.
"Miss Akehurst?" Landesman raised his eyebrows, inviting her to expound.
"Well, it's self-evidently flawed," Sam said, after a moment's pause to collect her thoughts. "There's implied coercion. Between the lines, there's a threat. It's not an offer, it's an order. 'Behave, or else.' And that's how the Olympians have been ruling us: we do as they want, or suffer. And if we fail to toe the line they back up the threat with violence, or else send one of their monsters to do their dirty work for them. All of which you know perfectly well, Mr Landesman. I think you detest the Olympians as strongly as any of us, maybe more so. This grand speech of yours has simply been a way of gauging how the twelve of us feel — a test, of sorts — as well as a way of stoking us up so that we'll be all hot and bothered and keen to find out what it is you actually want from us."
Landesman smiled broadly. "Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Akehurst was until not so long ago a detective sergeant with the London Metropolitan police force, on the fast track, well on her way to becoming one of the Met's youngest ever detective inspectors, before her career was, shall we say, diverted. Clearly in the intervening period her mind has lost none of its acuity and deductive capability. She is entirely right. I have been leading you up the garden path somewhat. I have been testing you. Brava, Miss Akehurst. I am most impressed."
Sam could not detect even a hint of a patronising tone in Landesman's voice. To all appearances his comments were sincere, his admiration genuine.
Not that she liked flattery much, either.
"Then while I'm your star pupil, Mr Landesman," she said, "let me tell you something else I've figured out."
"Go for it," murmured Ramsay.
"We each of us have a personal reason for wanting to get back at one or more of the Pantheon. Rick spotted that almost from the off. But my feeling is there's som
ething else, an additional criterion for us being selected by you."
"Namely?" Landesman looked very pleased with her — and with himself.
"We have training. We all do, or used to do, jobs that require giving and receiving orders, jobs that rely on discipline and a chain of command."
"Go on."
"Fred here" — she gestured at Tsang — "was a Hong Kong cop. I was a cop. I'm looking at Miss Mahmoud over there and I'm pretty sure she is or was a cop as well."
Zaina Mahmoud's eyes widened. "How the bloomin' heck did you…?"
"Instinct. Takes one to know one. I call it copdar. And how you wear your hair, that short plait of yours, very WPC. Greater Manchester Police?"
The eyes widened still further.
"You're Mancunian." Sam shrugged. "It wasn't rocket science. Therese is also police. Royal Canadian Mounted, yes?"
Hamel nodded.
Sam nodded at Ramsay.
"Rick I reckon is American military. If you pushed me to narrow it down, I'd have to go with navy."
Ramsay twisted up the corner of his mouth. "US Marine Corps. Not bad."
"It's the way you stood on the boat," Sam said. "You looked at home. And the way you stand generally."
"Good to know you've been studying my physique so closely."
"As for Soleil, she told us herself she's a guerrilla fighter. Maybe you don't need formal training for that but it still means working within a hierarchy, understanding the need for a command structure. Dez, you said something about thirteen years of taking orders, or rather not taking orders. I don't think you meant waiting tables. That tattoo on your neck, poking out above your shirt collar, is another clue. Kangaroo, crown, crossed rifles… Looks like a regimental emblem to me. Australian army?"
Barrington fired off an ironic salute at her. "Infantryman, Eighth Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. Never rose above the rank of private. Never tried to."
"Kayla, American military too?"
"Almost. National Guard."
"Thought so. That signet ring you're wearing has a military logo of some kind on it. Stars and a man carrying a musket. National Guard would have been my guess." Sam turned to Harryhausen. "Kerstin. German army, like your late husband?"
"Reservist in the Bundeswehr."
"Nigel, pilot. RAF?"
"Well done."
"Anders told us he was a tank commander, so that just leaves Darren. Darren… I'm going to go out on a limb and say SAS."
His jaw dropped a few millimetres, the prison-yard facade cracking ever so slightly.
"That's what you tell people, at any rate," Sam went on. First the sucker punch, now the right hook. "Truth is, you're in the Territorials. Weekend soldier. Or you were, 'til they had to kick you out."
Bullseye. Darren's expression soured. He fixed her with a glare of pure venom, and then the shutters came down again. His face returned to its default setting, loose indifference.
"Miss Akehurst!" Landesman exclaimed. He applauded softly. "A remarkable feat. Truly remarkable. Accurate on every count, including Mr Pugh" — Darren — "and his somewhat less than stellar CV. Not that we hold that against him. He has qualities that could well prove useful. But really, Sam — you don't mind if it's Sam? Lillicrap tells me you prefer it to Samantha. Really, Sam, you've excelled yourself. When it came to putting together this little assemblage of ours, your name was at the top of my list. You've shown that I wasn't wrong to rate you so highly."
"I wouldn't be surprised if you spent quite a long time compiling that list," Sam said.
"Fully a year's worth of work went into it. It wasn't easy. Digging up records, going through psychological profiles, locating personnel files, some of them quite confidential. One other basic requirement for selection was a good working knowledge of English at the least, and preferably native fluency."
"Well then, I'm buggered, aren't I?" laughed Barrington. "Me and the Queen's English, we're barely on speaking terms."
"Clear lines of communication are vital for the enterprise I have planned," said Landesman. "Eventually I arrived at a long-list of just over thirty potential candidates. I winnowed it down to twelve, my ideal twelve, sent out invitations worded carefully so as to intrigue — and lo and behold all twelve of you turned up. A very gratifying result."
"So what is it?" Ramsay said. "You've got us all here, you've dropped a few teasing hints, now's the time for the big reveal, chief. We've been patient. We're ready for it. I think we deserve it."
"Yes, yes indeed," said Landesman. "Just one further moment of your time."
There were groans.
"I assure you, this is the very last thing. A question. One that begs a simple yes-or-no response. One that will determine which of you wish to proceed to the next stage and which are happy to go no further."
"Go ahead," said Ramsay. "Shoot."
"If," Landesman asked, "you had the power to kill gods — gods and monsters — would you use it?"
5. DROPOUT
The room fell ponderingly silent.
"A show of hands will suffice," said Landesman.
"Kill gods," said Ramsay. "The Olympians."
"And their assorted monstrous hangers-on, that misbegotten menagerie of theirs — Typhon, the Minotaur, the Gorgons, all the rest."
"You can do that? You can give us that power?"
"Let's focus on the question itself for the moment, shall we?"
"No, wait, you're seriously saying you could make it so that we, the twelve of us here round this table, could hurt the Olympians?"
"Not merely hurt. Destroy."
"Impossible," said Harryhausen. "Can't be done. Whole armies have tried. Tried and failed. I know this."
"The Olympians are hard bastards," said Barrington. "Hardest of the hard. The stuff they can do…"
"I realise it seems far-fetched," said Landesman. "Let's treat this as a hypothetical, then. A thought exercise. Given sufficient means to kill an Olympian, would you? Don't tell me none of you has ever considered it. In your dreams, in your blackest, bleakest moments, you've all fantasised about it — avenging the loved ones the Olympians took from you. They've caused you such grief, such pain. It would be only natural to want to strike back at them. Of course you've also told yourselves that this is idle, wasteful speculation. Better to forget, forgive if you are able, move on with your lives. You can't exact revenge on the Pantheon in the same way that you can't exact revenge on a tornado or an earthquake. But what if you could? What if you were presented with the chance to do just that? Would you reject it or grasp it?"
"Grasp." Soleil Eto'o put up her hand. "What else have I been doing since my parents' deaths? Trying to kill Olympians whenever possible. That's what we in the resistance do. We don't succeed. With our nail bombs and our rocket-propelled grenades we try, but we don't succeed, and mostly we wind up getting ourselves killed. But if you are telling me you know of a better way, Mr Landesman, a way that might actually bring success, count me in."
"I'm a yes too," said Sondergaard, raising his hand. "At Sj?lland we gave the Olympians a fight to remember. We lost. We knew going in that we would. But we showed them that Denmark wasn't going to just sit back and let the world be taken over. I'd like another chance to make that point."
"Sj?lland was an empty gesture, Herr Sondergaard," Harryhausen snorted. "Were the Olympians impressed? Did they congratulate your whole country afterwards for so kindly volunteering to be crushed by them? Perhaps they were glad for the target practice."
"So you would rather we had done nothing?"
"I can't speak for Denmark, but I would rather Germany had done nothing. Then my Dietrich would still be alive. But it is my nation's curse always to follow its leaders, however misguided they are."
"So it's a nein from you, Frau Harryhausen?" said Landesman.
"No, not a nein." She raised a hand. "Unless this gesture of yours proves to be an empty one as well…"
"Trust me, it won't."
"I'm in too," said Tsang.
"I'm not sure why, but I am."
Other hands followed his into the air: Sparks's, Chisholm's, Hamel's.
"That's more than half," said Landesman. "Looking good so far. Anyone else?"
Mahmoud put hers up. "Can't do any harm to find out what you're offering. I'm not promising I'm in this all the way — but I'm definitely interested."
"Good enough. Rick, what about you?"
"Either you're a deluded nutjob or a nutjob hiding one hell of an ace up your sleeve. Lucky for you, I like nutjobs." Hand up. "Former gunnery sergeant Richard Ramsay, reporting for duty."
"Mr Barrington?"
"Ah, what the hell." Up went a meaty paw. "You have the Barracuda's services. What's the pay like and will there be beer?"
"Generous, and occasionally," said Landesman. "Your salaries will be enough to leave you living in reasonable comfort for the rest of your lives without having to work again. Alcohol, on the other hand, will be in limited supply. We'll make every effort to cater to all your domestic wants and needs. Mrs Fuller, Captain Fuller's wife, makes regular trips to supermarkets on our behalf, and is happy to take orders for specific items. Booze, however, will have to be consumed in moderation, I'm afraid, and inebriation will not be tolerated at all. Rules of the house, and non-negotiable."
"Right-o. Well, that could be a deal breaker. I might have to reconsider."
"Too late now. Miss Akehurst. Sam. It goes without saying that I'd be overjoyed to have you on board. What's the verdict? Yea or nay?"
Sam felt all eyes on her. The centre of attention was not a place she liked to be. Once, in younger days, it had been. Not any more.
The Age of Zeus a-2 Page 3