The Age of Zeus a-2

by James Lovegrove

  "It ain't any worse," he mumbled.

  "If we've managed to give the Olympians a bloody nose," Sam went on, "and if, as a result, they're going to behave more leniently, as they seem to be doing right now, then maybe we've done all we can and all we needed to. We've restrained them. Under the circumstances, I'd call that a win."

  "I can't believe you're saying that. You're no better than your prime minister."

  "There's no call for insults. I'm only making the point, Rick, that killing all the Olympians, even if we could, isn't going to help us and might not help anyone else either."

  "All right then," said Mahmoud, nodding. "We go to Plan B."

  "And what's Plan B? Clonk me on the head and drag me back to Bleaney kicking and screaming?"

  "Nope," said Ramsay. "From what you've just been saying, I reckon Plan B might be right up your alley."

  54. THE LOTUS EATERS

  T he black cab dropped them off in the southern part of Mayfair, between Piccadilly and Pall Mall, outside a Georgian building with a discreet brass plaque that read The Hellenium — Members Only. A white-gloved doorman greeted them with a tip of his top hat, polite because they looked the part. Ramsay wore a Savile Row suit and hand-stitched shoes. Sam and Mahmoud were in Donna Karan evening gowns cut in the fashionable Doric chiton style and accessorised with Louboutin ribbon sandals and Givenchy clutch bags. To the casual passer-by they certainly were dressed like people who would belong to a club like the Hellenium, or at any rate be friends with someone who did.

  "We're guests of Mr D and Miss A," Ramsay said.

  The doorman's expression altered a fraction, just perceptibly hardening. "Welcome," he said, part opening the door for them, but not all the way.

  A clerk at a desk in the foyer likewise stiffened as Ramsay repeated the code phrase. "This way," the clerk said, leading them a private lift which he summoned by turning a key chained to his belt. "The basement."

  Creaking downwards in the elderly lift, the three Titans exchanged apprehensive glances.

  "Into the lion's den," said Sam. "They could kill us at any moment."

  "I don't think so," Ramsay replied. "My gut says they're on the level. The offer's genuine."

  "In any case, we're carrying protection," Mahmoud said, tapping her clutch bag. "We just have to be quick enough with it. By the way, Sam, rocking that dress."

  "True that," said Ramsay appreciatively.

  A bell dinged. The lift halted. The cage-like metal doors concertinaed open.

  Another doorman waited to check them over. This wasn't a courteous old retainer like the one upstairs. This was a thick-necked bouncer type, ex-military to judge by his razor-edged crew cut, who made little effort to hide the shoulder holster he wore beneath his jacket. He frisked them from top to toe and rummaged through the women's bags. Both bags contained, among other requisites, plastic tampon holders. Sam and Mahmoud exchanged a quick glance of concern, but the man could barely bring himself to touch the tampon holders, let alone open them to check inside.

  "Right," he said, jerking a thumb. "I don't recognise you, so that means you must be them. The special visitors. Go on in."

  Above street level the Hellenium was an entirely respectable establishment. Judges, civil servants, politicians, captains of industry, bankers, and others of the British upper crust drank in its bars, dined in its restaurant, and dozed in its wingback armchairs before blazing fireplaces with glasses of port wilting in their hands. The Hellenium had its own club tie, an exorbitant membership fee, and a ten-year waiting list. To join, you had to be recommended by no fewer than seven current members, and a single word of dissent from any other member would instantly and indelibly scupper your chances. Only the most stainless and well connected could get in.

  Downstairs, however, was another story. For nigh on a decade the Hellenium's basement had played host to an event whose existence was a secret even to many of the club regulars. Down there, perhaps once every four months, perhaps less frequently than that, the Lotus Eaters congregated.

  They didn't necessarily have to be members of the Hellenium. They didn't necessarily have to be British or even European. The criteria for being a Lotus Eater were simple. You must be powerful, not just influential, not just some elected official, truly powerful, which in almost every instance equated to being rich. And not just the ordinary kind of rich — fabulously, insanely rich. The kind of rich that rich people dreamed of being. Rich enough to have the ear of statesmen, the attention of generals, the adoration of supermodels, and the fawning respect of luxury yacht salesmen and high-end real estate brokers everywhere. You also had to have no shame. Shame was a commodity that ill befit a Lotus Eater. Shame, if you carried any about your person, had to be left at the entrance with the thick-necked doorman, along with firearms, knives, any other weapons, sharp implements, and narcotic substances.

  Beyond the entrance, in the basement's many chambers and partitioned-off subchambers, you became someone else. You shrugged off care and inhibition. You slipped out of the skin of your life and surrendered yourself to euphoria and carnal indulgence the likes of which could be found nowhere else on the planet.

  As Sam, Ramsay and Mahmoud moved through the basement they saw, through open doorways, sights that would have had the editors of downmarket tabloids wetting themselves with glee. Here was the most successful director in Hollywood history lolling languidly on a divan with his flies open, fondling his tumescent (if still rather unimpressive) cock while a pair of prostitutes cavorted in front of him, pouring honey over each other's immaculately depilated bodies. Here was a billionaire Russian oligarch letting himself be rigorously penetrated with a gold-plated dildo strapped to a gimp-masked dominatrix. Here was the lead singer of the top-selling rock act of all time happily fellating a man who closely resembled, but surely could not be, the present incumbent of the Throne of St Peter. Here was a diva-esque fashion house owner who, having just had three young men ejaculate on her suspiciously smooth face, was now inviting them to rinse their semen off with their urine.

  It was a jaw-dropping parade of famous and notorious personalities engaged in acts of depravity and self-pollution, all with smiles of pure bliss irradiating their faces, all with dreamy, delirious looks in their eyes, as if never before had they scaled such peaks of ecstasy and never before been so totally not at home to themselves. Their actions were slow, almost robotic, reminiscent of animatronic mannequins at a theme park ride. Time had wound down in the Hellenium's basement, the world's elite operating at a mere fraction of their usual meteoric pace of life, squeezing a minute's worth of joy from every second, relishing the prolonged savour of normally fleeting pleasures.

  Incense covered up the smell of the emissions and effluvia that spurted all around — or almost did. But the miasma of rank sourness was pervasive, and choking, and somehow, in its way, more offensive than the deeds that gave rise to it. Sam struggled not to gag. And she thought the stench of the Hydra had been bad…

  All the corridors in the basement branched off a central hub, and in this central hub was the source of the glazed looks and the heightened orgiastic sensitivity.

  Dionysus and Aphrodite were perched on two thrones, side by side. A mismatched pair if ever there was one: plump, jocose Dionysus, slender, exquisite Aphrodite. Before them stretched a line of the ultra-wealthy, all queuing up to make their obeisance and receive the boon of the Olympians' powers. As the three Titans arrived, a bearded British entrepreneur who'd made his millions franchising a single brand name was on his knees before the god and goddess, promising to honour and serve the Pantheon with all the assets at his disposal. Dionysus beamed twinklingly down at him, Aphrodite nodded graciously, and then both of them closed their eyes and the bearded entrepreneur shuddered as their combined benison flooded into him. When it was over he tottered upright and left the room like a sleepwalker, already loosening his shirt buttons as he headed off towards whatever sexual scenario he had scheduled for himself tonight.

  Nex
t in line was the heiress to a prestigious hotel chain, but before she had a chance to prostrate herself, pet Chihuahua and all, Dionysus raised a hand.

  "So sorry," he said to the young woman. "It will have to wait. I see we have newcomers, and if I'm not mistaken they're here in answer to a certain invitation that Aphrodite and I extended."

  He was looking at Sam, Ramsay and Mahmoud.

  " Am I mistaken?"

  "You aren't," said Ramsay.

  "Then come," said Dionysus. "Let us repair to a private room."

  He and Aphrodite stood, to a collective groan of disappointment. The hotel heiress huffed and pouted and stamped her foot, but was ignored.

  "Follow us," Aphrodite told the three Titans. "This is a highly significant moment, and one, I believe, that may resolve a great many things."

  55. CONGRESS

  "W ine?" said Dionysus. He proffered a carafe of red.

  "Thanks," said Ramsay, "but no."

  "Mind if I help myself?"

  "You go right ahead."

  The two Olympians were one side of a small table, the three Titans the other. The room had been set aside specially for this congress. Congress of a different kind could be heard going on all around, muffled grunts and groans and gasps echoing through the walls.

  Sam still couldn't get her head round the notion that she was sitting less than a couple of metres away from two of the enemy. She found herself longing for her battlesuit, for the invulnerability that came with being Tethys. Longing for a weapon, too. Just in case.

  "Wine clouds most men's judgement," said Dionysus, quaffing liberally, "but mine it clarifies. Claret, especially, clarifies." He tittered at his little bon mot, and quaffed some more.

  "So," said Aphrodite. "Three of our foes. Hmm." She appraised. Sam appraised back. Aphrodite really was one of the most beautiful women she had ever seen. Even close up, there were no flaws. Pristine skin, clear eyes, full lips, a toned but still curvaceous body. She tried to hate her but could only envy. She wondered what this ravishing creature made of the comparatively plain Sam Akehurst. To someone as perfect as Aphrodite, did everyone else look disfigured, malformed?

  "I'm more impressed than I thought I was going to be," Aphrodite said at last. "Three ordinary people — I mean no disrespect by that — ordinary, seemingly unremarkable, and yet you have caused us no end of trouble. Brave, too. To come here tonight, unarmed. What makes you think this isn't a trap?"

  "What makes you think we don't think it is and we're not prepared?" Sam replied.

  "Ah, the spokesperson. The other two defer to you, I can see that. I like a woman who takes charge. I like your hair, too. Such a striking shade of red."

  "Thank you," Sam said, then rued it. She wasn't here to accept compliments about her looks.

  "Natural as well," Aphrodite went on. "You don't get coppery highlights like that out of a bottle."

  "Listen," Sam said. "I'm well aware what you're capable of, Aphrodite, and if I detect the slightest hint of funny business, if I even suspect that you're trying to snake-charm me and my colleagues, I have this." She produced a rape alarm from her bag. "Hundred and fifty decibel siren. It'll drown you out and give us plenty of time to make an exit. Same goes for you, Dionysus. Any of us starts to feel the least bit merry or light-headed, then these come into play." She uncapped a tampon holder and tipped out a couple of small, single-use hypodermics with a clear liquid inside. They were part of the Titans' array of countermeasures, a specific defence against Dionysus, and Ramsay had pocketed a few of them before leaving Bleaney. "Solute epinephrine, with added cortisol to speed up the absorption rate. Enough of a dose to negate the effect of your intoxication power, at least until we can get out of range. So, if you want to discuss the possibility of a truce, fine, let's discuss it. The first whiff of treachery, and this is over."

  Dionysus and Aphrodite glanced at one another.

  "Well-prepared," she said.

  "And so businesslike," he said, somewhat reproachfully.

  "Not everyone has your laidback attitude, Dionysus." Aphrodite turned to Sam. "My admiration for you increases. May we know your names? What should we call you?"

  "Tethys," Sam said. "And he's Hyperion, she's Mnemosyne."

  "Titans," Aphrodite said, quick as a flash. "Of course. The ancient enemy. Obvious. Apt. But how about some real names?"

  "You give us yours, we'll give you ours."

  "You know ours. Dionysus, Aphrodite."

  "No, that's who you want everyone to think you are. You were born human. You know that."

  "I was born from the sea," Aphrodite said. "When Cronus cast Uranus's severed genitals into the ocean, the waves swirled and foamed around them, and I emerged fully-formed from that foam."

  "Whereas I was born not once but three times," said Dionysus. "First, to my mother Semele, a princess of Thebes, whom Zeus impregnated. She died while I was still in the womb so Zeus removed me from her body and sewed me up inside his thigh, a second womb where I grew to term. Then as a child I was killed, at the behest of jealous Hera, by none other than the Titans, the real ones. They rent me limb from limb, roasted me and ate me, but Athena and Zeus buried my heart and my other remains and Rhea re-combined the parts and brought me back to life, my third birth. Thus, like the grapevine dying each winter and flourishing again each spring, I can be seen to embody the cycle of death and resurrect-"

  "Yeah, yeah," said Ramsay. "This isn't you talking. This is stuff outta some Greek myth textbook."

  "I assure you — Hyperion, is it? — I assure you, Hyperion, I speak nothing but fact."

  "And Athena sprang from Zeus's brow," said Sam, "and Hera gave birth to Hephaestus through parthenogenesis, in retaliation for Zeus not conceiving Athena with her, and so on and so on. All these old stories, they're not true, and they're not how you Olympians really came to be."

  "Oh?" said Aphrodite, narrowing her starry-lashed eyes. "And how did we come to be, if not in those ways which the poets and bards have long enshrined in song?"

  Sam studied the two of them. She was usually pretty good at spotting liars, and neither was giving any of the telltale signs. Yet they were no more genuinely Dionysus and Aphrodite than Xander Landesman was genuinely Zeus. Did they not understand that they were impostors? And if not, how not?

  Not germane to the matter at hand, said the voice of DI Prothero in the back of her mind.

  "It doesn't matter," she said, "and anyway it's off-topic. You two put out word that you wanted a friendly meeting with us."

  "Yes," said Dionysus. "How did you get to hear? Was it directly from one of the Lotus Eaters? No point cultivating an association with these people if we can't put them to work for us every once in a while."

  "I'd rather not say." In the event, the message had come via a roundabout route, from a Lotus Eater who was an acquaintance of Landesman's. According to Ramsay, the Lotus Eater had mentioned it in passing during a phone conversation — an invitation from Dionysus and Aphrodite to their anonymous opponents to come for a parley — and Landesman had in turn mentioned it to Lillicrap, who'd just happened to let it slip to a tech within earshot of Ramsay. Ramsay had no idea whether the last had been a setup deliberately contrived by Landesman or just mere happenstance. Either way, he'd decided that here was an opportunity too good to pass up.

  "We get to scope out two of the opposition at first hand," he'd told Sam, "and if it turns out the Olympians really are desperate for peace, then we'll know for sure that we've got 'em scared." A tap of his forehead. "The mental edge."

  For her part, Sam had begun to wonder whether a truce might not be the best solution available. A compromise, yes, but better than the alternative, which was a war of attrition she didn't believe the Titans could win.

  "Would I be right in thinking," she continued, "that you're doing this without Zeus's permission?"

  "Without even his knowledge," said Dionysus, rubbing his head in such a way that he accidentally nudged his wreath of entwined vine stems. For the r
est of the meeting it sat cocked at an angle, no longer the dignified symbol of dominion. "This is purely our own initiative, mine and Beautiful-Buttocked Aphrodite's. You don't mind me using that particular epithet, do you, Aphrodite?"

  "There are worse."

  "Mighty Zeus would strike us down with a thunderbolt if he got wind of what we're up to," Dionysus went on. "He is consumed utterly with hatred of you people. He shan't be content until you're all dead. You should hear him ranting on about you. Your hubris! Your impiety! Ares and Athena are absolutely on his side, as is Hera, of course, and the Twins. Hades too. Even Aphrodite's husband Hephaestus spits tacks whenever the subject of you comes up on Olympus, as you can imagine happens quite often."

  "We two," said Aphrodite, "like to think we're more reasonable than the rest of the Pantheon. More kindly disposed toward mortals, as well. We're actually rather fond of you lot, on the whole."

  "Both of us like a bit of fun," said Dionysus, "and don't you mortals too? After all, without intoxicants and fornication, how dull would life be? Our Lotus Eaters understand that. One needs to let go from time to time, go wild, take leave of one's senses, otherwise existence is an airless tomb that slowly suffocates."

  "Dionysus the Blossoming and I believe," said Aphrodite, "that you — you Titans, as we now know to call you — and we Olympians could keep going at one another hammer and tongs, and all that will result will be just more unpleasantness, more bloodshed, more deaths. There is another way. There must be. Hopefully, you and we can establish some common ground here this evening. We can lay the foundation for further talks in which we can work out a way for Olympians and Titans to coexist. What, for example, is your ultimate goal? Tell us. Perhaps it's something that can be achieved through negotiation rather than conflict."