The Age of Zeus a-2

by James Lovegrove

  Sam glanced around as she said this, and noticed that several of the screens were tuned to surveillance satellite images — orbital views of Greece and the Mediterranean — while on others there were news broadcasts showing smartly dressed people, quite possibly diplomats, stepping out of limousines and walking quickly into imposing buildings. One screen featured warships at sea, another a series of military transport aircraft taking off. This was as much as she could take in before, with an "ah-ah-ah!" Argus swapped all these feeds for his peacock insignia. Hundreds of feather-mounted eyes glared reprovingly at Sam.

  "Zeus," Argus said. "Not you. Kindly go and get him."

  She came back shortly with a yawning Zeus. He didn't tell her to wait outside, so she went in with him.

  "A bit early for our morning update, isn't it?" Zeus said to Argus.

  "I regret getting you out of bed, but it just couldn't wait. Although," Argus added, "perhaps this should be for your ears only."

  With a look at Sam, Zeus said, "Perhaps I should be the judge of that."

  "But she's a mortal."

  "So she is. But presumably what you have to tell me is news from the mortal world, meaning other mortals will know about it already, so why not her too? Besides, Sam is one of us for the time being, whether she likes it or not. Your tact is commendable, Argus, but unnecessary."

  "As you wish, Cloud-Gatherer." The screens reverted from the peacock to the disparate images they'd been showing before. "This began late yesterday evening. I've been monitoring developments overnight."

  "What am I looking at?"

  "We have what amounts to a military coup taking place in the United Kingdom."

  "What!?" Zeus exclaimed.

  "General Sir Neville Armstrong-Hall is the instigator," said Argus. "Although he's calling himself Field Marshal now, because he believes Britain is on a war footing. He's invoked a law drawn up during the Cold War that's become redundant but hasn't been removed from the statute books. It was drafted to allow the mobilisation of British armed forces without parliamentary authority in the event of a Soviet nuclear strike."

  "Mobilise them to do what?"

  "Anything they like, more or less. In this instance, move on Olympus."

  Sam saw Zeus's mouth drop open. "Preposterous! They can't. Why would they do that?"

  By way of answer, Argus pulled up footage of a trim, grey-haired old soldier holding an impromptu press conference at an airbase, surrounded by a jostling mob of reporters all yelling, "Sir Neville! Sir Neville!"

  "It's a nettle that needs to be grasped," Field Marshal Armstrong-Hall said, "and now seems to be the time to grasp it. People at home should rest assured that this is not, I repeat not, a declaration of martial law. Parliament is only being pre-empted, not supplanted. This is military action against an outside power, in retaliation for an attack that took place on British soil a few weeks ago — an attack that was, in my view, no less disruptive and impactful than a nuclear warhead would have been. I am simply doing now what the vast majority of the British public wish to be done and what our elected representatives, shirking their democratic mandate, have stubbornly refused to do. I regret that it's come to this. Since Bleaney Island I have been holding frequent behind-the-scenes meetings with Mr Bartlett, urging him to harden his stance towards the Olympians, but frankly I've been wasting my breath. Now, at a time when the Olympians have been proved to be vulnerable, and after an example has been so bravely and tragically set to us by these Titans, now is the moment to be decisive and take action of the kind that, God willing, has a decent prospect of success."

  "There's more," Argus said. "The Americans are offering logistical support. The US Joint Chiefs of Staff have issued a statement in the past hour backing Armstrong-Hall."

  At the Pentagon, a much-medalled general at a podium was addressing a rowdy press pack. It was 11pm Eastern Standard Time.

  "We're pledging the Brits all of our Chinooks," the general drawled in iron-edged Texas tones, "plus ordnance, body armour, because we know how underequipped those fellas can be in that department, and last but not least the use of our one remaining aircraft carrier — the Nimitz — class USS Prometheus, which happens to be in the eastern Atlantic even as we speak, just off the Straits of Gibraltar — as a floating command post and field hospital."

  "General! General! General!" the reporters cried.

  "That's as much materiel as we can spare for now," he continued, "but we'll be keeping a weather eye on things, and should the situation alter radically we'll be prepared to maybe escalate our involvement further."

  "What about the President?" somebody shouted.

  The general's gimlet eyes glinted. "What about him?" he said, dismissively, and quit the podium amid a blitzkrieg of camera flashes.

  "The Japanese navy is sailing back this way," Argus said, "and there've been reports of other nations putting their armed forces on a state of high alert."

  "How could this all have sprung up so suddenly?" said Zeus.

  "The pressure has been building for some while. If the internet is anything to go by, the global consensus has steadily been turning against us."

  "Yes, I was aware of that, but I assumed that would die down eventually. It normally does."

  "But it seems to have come to a head instead," said Argus. "And if you think you're having trouble believing what Armstrong-Hall has done, take a look at Mr Bartlett."

  A late-night emergency session at the Commons. A harassed Bartlett was standing at the despatch box, trying to make himself heard above a House packed with restive, baying MPs.

  "Mr Speaker, I would ask Sir Neville, beg him, to reconsider. He — he is knowingly endangering — knowingly endangering the Great British public. If he persists in these actions, it will place this country in the firing line. He cannot go down to Greece. He cannot position troops on the territory of — on the territory of another sovereign nation without their consent. That is a violation of international law. More than that, it's sheer folly, and I will not stand for it!"

  The cry, Sam thought, of an impotent man. Bartlett knew there was nothing he could do but bluster and remonstrate. He'd been undermined by events. The ground beneath his feet was crumbling. He had become a victim of his own lily-liveredness.

  "Can we all not just — " Bartlett went on, but the rest of what he had to say was drowned by massed bleating from the ranks of the Honourable Opposition, Shadow Cabinet and backbenchers alike.

  "Baa!" they all went, "Baa! Baa!" taunting him like playground bullies, until the Prime Minister had no choice but to drop back into the seat behind him and sit there with his arms crossed, red-cheeked and fuming.

  Argus said, "Other communications chatter I've been intercepting suggests that paramilitary organisations are throwing their hats in the ring as well. The Resistenza Contru-Diu Corsu, to name but one."

  Galetti! He'd told Sam the RCDC owed the Titans a debt of gratitude. Now, if a little late to be of direct benefit to them, it seemed he was going to pay it.

  "And the Agonides are podcasting about sourcing themselves weapons and volunteering."

  Zeus rubbed his brow hard. Outside, distantly, thunder growled.

  "Here," he said. "They're coming here."

  "RAF planes have already touched down at Larisa and Tanagra airbases. The Greek government hasn't granted them permission, but the Hellenic Air Force hasn't lifted a finger to turn them away."

  "Fellow travellers. They're in on it too."

  "Not against it, certainly."

  "Don't these people understand?" The thunder crackled louder, sharper, clearer. "They'll never win. They cannot."

  "It's your own fault," said Sam.

  Zeus swivelled round. "Excuse me? Who asked your opinion?"

  "Nobody, but I'm going to give it to you anyway. You Olympians have brought this on yourselves, by killing the Titans. You made martyrs of them, and if there's one thing people love, it's a martyr."

  "But we've killed countless others over the years
. What makes the Titans so different? Why were they — you — special?"

  "Because we hurt you," Sam said. "We did what no one else had done and showed there were chinks in the Olympian armour. That raised us in people's estimation. We gave the world what nobody else had been able to before — hope. You stamped down on us and crushed us out of existence, but it was too late. Hope's a pesky thing. You only have to think of Pandora. Hope won't stay in the box. Once it's out, it's out, and nothing you can do will put it back in or stop it spreading." She was mangling the myth somewhat but Zeus didn't seem to notice.

  "But what good is this hope, if all it's going to do is create thousands more martyrs?"

  "That's not the point, is it? People have been inspired to rise up against you again, en masse. And if they die, that's likely to inspire still others. Hope's like that."

  "I do not accept this!" Zeus shouted, and a thunderclap detonated right overhead, making the chamber shake. Zigzags of static fizzed across all of Argus's screens, and the images on some rolled upwards, vertical hold lost.

  "O God Of Gain, if you wouldn't mind," said Argus, sounding pained. "You're interfering with my signals…"

  Zeus's eyes blazed. Sam wondered if she hadn't pushed him too far.

  Then, slowly, he calmed. His jaw unclenched. The storm abated.

  "Lay siege to Olympus then, would they?" he said. "Well, let them. Let them come. Let them try. All they'll find here is nemesis, divine retribution. Argus, keep abreast of events, figure out how long we've got until the first troops reach our doorstep. I'm going to call together the Pantheon. We need to discuss strategy. But before that — Sam." He grabbed her roughly by the arm. "You are coming with me."

  67. THE SHRINE OF APOTHEOSIS

  This is it, Sam thought as Zeus frogmarched her out of Argus's lair. It's over. I'm done.

  A formal execution? Perhaps. Ares with his axe. A beheading. Or maybe Zeus would opt for something slower and more gruesome. Evict her from the stronghold and let the Harpies have their way with her. Or else he'd just fry her himself with a lightning bolt. She only had herself to blame. She had provoked him. She had spoken out of turn. Her own big mouth had got her into this. It was either that or Zeus simply didn't want her around any longer, now troops were on their way to mount an attack on Olympus. He didn't want someone in his camp who'd be sympathetic to the enemy's aims, a potential Fifth Columnist. Whatever the reason, Hera was about to get her wish. Her husband's latest dalliance, such as it was, was at an end.

  As in the run-up to the battle at Bleaney, Sam felt calm, fatalistic, resigned. She didn't want to die but you had to accept that which you could not change. Death had hovered over her life since her late teens, when her parents were taken from her. Death had been omnipresent during her police career, when scarcely a month went by without her being confronted by some corpse or other — a murder victim, an accidental drowning, an overdose, a suicide. Then there was Ade's death, and her own subsequent flirtations with ending it all, and following that the progressive, one-by-one deaths of the Titans, climaxing with the Pantheon's mass destruction of those of them that death had so far spared, all save her (except: no bodies equals no proof). Death had been stalking Sam over the years, at times breathing down her neck, at other times standing off at a distance but still at the periphery of her consciousness. Now, having flagged her up for special attention, it was zeroing in, coming to claim her once and for all.

  Zeus dragged her back along the route she herself had not so long ago taken, to the low windowless building she had stumbled upon earlier, the storage unit or unmarked temple or whatever it was. They halted outside the door, and Sam understood that this structure must in fact be what it most resembled, a mausoleum, a place of death and entombment. Handy for Zeus to have had it included in the plans for the stronghold. This would be where he disposed of his ex-lovers and other nuisances. Hence the lightning rod. She envisaged an electric chair inside, wired up so that Zeus could provide the juice for it himself with his divine powers, delivering a personal send-off to his strapped-in victims. It would have been absurd if it hadn't been so grimly plausible.

  "This, Sam," said Zeus, "in case you're wondering, is the Shrine of Apotheosis. It is for my own private use. None of the other Olympians can readily gain access to it, not that they would dare even try. They know and fear my wrath."

  Yeah, yeah, thought Sam. Let's just get this over with, shall we?

  "The door is secured with a magnetic clamp lock, which responds only to a single charge of some hundred million volts. The size of current that the average lightning bolt provides."

  With that, he conjured a small cloud out of nowhere in the clear alpine sky, and an instant later there was a flash, a static crackle, and Sam felt all her hair stand on end. A blue glow wreathed the lightning rod briefly, and from the door there came a loud, resounding clank. Zeus dispersed the cloud, then reached for the brass ring handle.

  As the door opened, lights flickered on inside. Zeus thrust Sam in ahead of him, and slammed the door shut behind them.

  This wasn't a place of execution, that much Sam gathered straight away. There was a kind of chair, however.

  The room filled the entire volume of the Shrine and was of similar dimensions to the interior of a trailer park home. In the very middle stood a padded leather chair with a tubular steel frame and a curved headrest. It looked not unlike something you'd find in a dental surgery. Sam could see that it articulated in at least two places and was controlled by two pedals attached to its pedestal base.

  Around the edges of the room there were medical refrigeration cabinets with glass doors, through which were visible shelves laden with test tubes, flasks and phials. All these were stoppered, labelled, and filled with various different-coloured opaque serums. Other furnishings included a metal desk with a laptop on it, a washstand, an alcohol gel dispenser for hand disinfection, several wheeled tray-stacks full of stainless steel surgical implements, and, the truly sinister touch, a set of restraints hanging on the wall — wrist and ankle cuffs made of leather, with perforated straps and buckles.

  "Sex dungeon," Sam said. "Zeus, I'd never have pegged you for the S and M type. Hercules definitely, but not you."

  She was able to quip, but only because her inner ice had melted, thawed by a sudden, unexpected flare-up of hot terror, which she needed to control. Death was one thing, but she sensed she had just been ushered into a torture chamber. That the room reeked of antiseptic only added to this impression. Things had had to be swabbed up in here, bodily fluids and the like. The walls were thick — solid stone. The Shrine of Apotheosis was set well apart from the main section of the stronghold. Screams that emanated from this building would be heard by no one.

  Not that she was going to be screaming. No way was Zeus fastening her to that chair. Never in a million years. She would kill herself first. Beat her own brains out against the floor if need be.

  "Sam," said Zeus, "first of all, whatever you're imagining this room is, one thing it is not is a place of cruelty. Please trust me on that. Suffering has occurred in that chair, yes, but suffering in a good cause, endured in the name of self-enhancement and the fulfilment of greatness. Do you know what apotheosis means?"

  Sam fumbled for an answer. "Isn't it the epitome of something? A perfect specimen?"

  "It can be used in that auxiliary sense, but its original, principal definition is deification. The attainment of divinity. From the Greek apo, a prepositional prefix meaning 'towards,' and theosis, 'godhood.'"

  Sam said, "Zeus has left the building. I'm talking to Xander Landesman now, aren't I?"

  Without missing a beat, Zeus said, "Of course."

  "And I always have been."

  Again: "Of course."

  "And this is where it happens. This is where you do it. Where you make Olympians."

  For a third time, veneered with a smile: "Of course."

  "Fuck," she breathed. "Fuck me, I knew it. I knew you lot were faking. I knew it!"

>   "Oh, I know you did," Zeus said. "You've been telling us that constantly. Trouble is, no one has been listening. You're like Cassandra, blessed with the gift of accurate prophecy, cursed with the inability to convince others that what you're saying it true. It's been amusing, and heartbreaking, watching you try and trip us up, make us admit we're not gods. Thwarted every time. Coming up against a wall of incomprehension again and again."

  "They have no idea, do they?" Sam said. "The rest of them."

  "Not a clue. Only one person in the whole wide world knows the truth about the Olympians. Me. Make that two people now. Although, the knowledge won't remain yours for long."

  "Ah. You are going to kill me after all."

  Zeus shook his head wonderingly, bemused. "Don't you see, Sam? Don't you get it? I have no wish to kill you. Not any more."

  "You don't?"

  "Nor harm you in any way. Right now, all I want to do is make myself understood to you. Will you hear me out?"

  "Do I have an alternative?"

  "Not as such."

  "Then go ahead, talk."

  68. AN AUDACIOUS LIE

  "My father must have told you all about me," said Zeus. "How else could you have known that someone called Xander Landesman ever existed? Not that he does any longer. I had Argus wipe every trace he could find of that person from the public record. There may be scraps of paper here or there in some national archive confirming that a Xander Landesman once walked the earth, but nothing easily located. From the databases that people habitually consult, he is gone. That was necessary to do before the Olympians went public, partly so that my wretched father couldn't stand up and say, 'Wait. That's not Zeus. That's my son.'"

  "He still could have," said Sam. "Why not? Even if you'd left nothing to prove Xander was alive, plenty of people would surely remember him — schoolmates, teachers, staff at your father's house. Your dad could've found someone to back him up."

  "I'd disappeared for five years, and come back looking nothing like I used to. My hair was long and had gone completely silver. I'd grown a beard. And memories are short. I'd passed through various educational establishments like a poltergeist, causing plenty of havoc but never staying long enough to leave a lasting impression. Also, the turnover of staff chez Landesman was quite rapid. I was counting on all that preventing people from recognising me, and I calculated that my father would realise he'd have difficulty backing up his claims about Zeus's true identity and so would refrain from making them."