The Age of Zeus a-2

by James Lovegrove

  "I still have one more day."

  "Tomorrow, then. If your answer's yes — and I believe it will be — you won't regret it, Sam."

  "And if it's no?"

  "Then regret will be the least of your concerns."

  It was a long night. And bitterly cold. It never got truly warm up on Olympus, which didn't seem to bother any of the Pantheon but certainly didn't agree with Sam, especially when she couldn't sleep. She piled blankets on herself until there was such a weight of them she could hardly breathe, but still the chill seeped through. There was a chill inside her too, to match. An icy dread.

  How much did she want to live?

  That was what it boiled down to. The alternatives were: agree to become Artemis, or die.

  Being Artemis would mean survival but it would be a kind of half-life at best. Zeus had promised an existence untrammelled by doubt or scruple, absolute godlike freedom. The price, though, would be the loss of everything that she had been up to that point, all her memories, her essential Sam-ness. Wasn't that, in itself, tantamount to death? The other Olympians had embraced the opportunity of oblivion, the chance to forget all their inadequacies and misdeeds, and she could see the allure of that. Her own life hadn't exactly been an unblemished catalogue of triumphs. But had it been so bad that she'd be prepared simply to dump it all and start again as someone else? Wasn't that just a little too easy?

  Then again, wasn't taking the other option, death, also just a little too easy? If nothing else, as Artemis she would have influence. Not to mention power. The same kind of power she had enjoyed while clad in her TITAN suit, had luxuriated in, been exhilarated by. And it would not be just while she had the suit on but all the time. All the time. Power in perpetuity. To be able to spring and strike as she'd seen Artemis do, to wield that spear like a darting needle, to be preternaturally strong, indefatigable, a creature of enhanced senses and reflexes — that would be something, wouldn't it?

  There was a third way, though. Tomorrow was crate delivery day. That was why she'd haggled with Zeus for an extra day in which to make up her mind. Assuming that the helicopter was still coming in as scheduled despite the rapidly changing circumstances on the ground, Sam could always make that desperate leap onto the departing crate and hope to be choppered clear of the stronghold.

  Which would be the equivalent of giving Zeus a big no and would almost certainly lead to her death. But at least it wouldn't be a cheap death — an easy death — and that would count for something.

  Tomorrow.

  Sunday.

  Sunday came, and with the dawn there arose one of those mists that often plagued Olympus, a dense white shroud that was turbulent and wind-tormented but also, conversely, brought a stillness and hush to the mountaintop, muffling the stronghold, cutting it off from the rest of the world. The moment Sam stepped outdoors into the damp milkiness of the mist, she felt a crushing sense of despair. The helicopter would not be coming. Not in these conditions, surely.

  She wandered, disconsolate, hearing the cries of the Harpies as they called to one another through the mist, a sound that was deadened and distant and strangely forlorn. She noticed that the bird-women seemed agitated this morning, chittering querulously rather than screeching as normal. Perhaps it was the mist. Their primary sense of perception, their eyesight, was useless, and this unnerved them.

  Ares was up early too. She came across him in the amphitheatre. He was clad in his full copper armour, swinging his battle axe, lunging at invisible foes, his feet kicking up plumes of the sand that covered the arena floor. He looked avid, aroused, like a young man on a first date.

  "Athena says an attack is likely today," he told Sam, "and I believe her. I can smell it on the wind, can't you? The scent of impending conflict. Iron and blood. My axe will be dripping wet by evening's end."

  She moved on, leaving him to his limbering up. Her footsteps took her eventually to the agora, where she sat and waited, even though it was pointless because there would be no helicopter. She sat and waited because there was nothing else to do. Time was up. Zeus needed to know if she was to be his new Artemis or not. She still wasn't sure, which suggested she was coming round to the idea. That was the thing about her and dying, Sam had discovered. Unless she had no choice in the matter, she invariably preferred living. As a certain sage individual, Dai Prothero no less, once put it: "There's only one place where death is worth more than life, Akehurst, and that's on the Scrabble board."

  Shortly before nine, when the helicopter was due, the Olympians began arriving at the agora in ones and twos. Soon they had all assembled, and when Sam expressed surprise, Zeus said, "The delivery always comes, whatever the weather. The helicopter's a Super Puma, equipped with the full array of navigation sensors and synthetic radar imaging. A good pilot can fly by instruments alone, thanks to that. Takes a steady nerve, I understand, but these are brave men — and the Greeks wouldn't want to disappoint us, would they?"

  In a lower voice, and with an expectant twitch of those circumflex eyebrows of his, he added, "So? Sunday is here. Are we near an answer?"

  "Almost," said Sam, and Zeus seemed satisfied with this and turned away, and so did she. Suddenly all a-tingle, she focused her attention on last week's crate, which was sitting near the centre of the agora, ready for pick-up. It was sheathed in a cargo net whose corners were gathered together and attached to a figure-of-eight loop at the top. The cargo net's matrix of ropes would make it easy to scramble up the side and would provide something to cling on to as the crate was being flown away. If the pilot climbed quickly, Sam might just manage to disappear into the mist before the Olympians could react. Zeus wouldn't be able to zap the helicopter with lightning if he couldn't see it, and likewise Apollo, who was toting bow and quiver this morning, couldn't hit her with an arrow if his target was not clearly visible. As for Hermes, he might be able to teleport onto the crate but as long as she didn't let him grab her he couldn't teleport off again with her. He might, besides, think twice about landing on a moving object, especially if he was jumping blind and if the moving object was swaying around none too far from a set of whirring rotor blades. A slight miscalculation, and Hermes the Luck-Bringer would be Hermes the Headless.

  The mist, then, far from being a catastrophe, might just be the best thing to have happened to Sam in ages.

  All she had to go was get the timing right. Usually the Olympians were so eager to crack open the new crate that they didn't pay much heed to the old one as it was being hoisted away. She'd have to dash for it at the very instant it lifted off from the agora, though, and she'd have to keep an eye out, also, for Hephaestus. He alone never got particularly excited about the divulging of the new crate's contents, so his attention would not be fully on it. He, of all of them, might catch her in the act and raise the alarm. If she made sure to sneak round so that she was out of his line of sight… yes, then this could work. Sam could hardly believe it. Finally, finally, a chance of getting out of the stronghold. A slim chance, to be sure, the thinnest of slivers, but that was better than before, when there had been none whatsoever.

  And now the beating of rotor blades could be heard, ever so faint but distinct nonetheless, like the purr of some gigantic cat, and the most wonderful sound in all the world as far as Sam was concerned. The sound of hope.

  She sidled over to the perimeter of the agora, away from the Olympians, who were clustered together peering skyward, and then she diverted towards the empty crate, getting as close as she dared without it looking suspicious. The helicopter noise grew louder, becoming a pulsating roar, and then there it was, a dark shape looming overhead in the mist, a giant grey tadpole, and its downwash tore the vaporous air into sharp, spiralling vortices, and at last the Super Puma came clearly into view, searchlight ablaze, with the crate swinging below in its cargo-net papoose. The Olympians' robes whipped around them as the chopper descended, their hair thrashed in all directions, and then the crate touched down and Hermes darted on top of it and detached it from the wi
nch hook. The cargo net slid away like a negligee, puddling around the crate's base. Hermes vanished and reappeared on the other crate, lifting up the figure-of-eight loop and beckoning to the pilot to come over. Ares, meanwhile, slotted the blade of his axe into the edge where two sides of the new crate met and started to jemmy them apart. The screech of nails being wrenched out of wood was audible even above the cacophony of the helicopter's vanes and turbines.

  Sam braced herself. Thirty yards or so to the empty crate. How many seconds to sprint that far? Four? Five? She could do this. She just needed to choose the exact right moment to start her run. Wait for it. Wait for it.

  The pilot seemed to be taking an abnormally long time manoeuvring over to the empty crate, or perhaps that was just how Sam perceived it with her adrenaline flowing and her heart rate speeding up with anticipation. The hook glided towards Hermes slowly, so slowly she began to think it was never going to get there.

  In the meantime, Ares had set down his axe and was levering the side off the crate with his bare hands, and now it came free, and he stepped back to let it fall, and it did, an eight-foot-square slab of plywood boards swung outwards with a weird kind of grace, slumping flat onto the flagstones, and the Olympians craned their necks to look inside, and Athena was at the front, and Sam heard the gunshot, a loud and extraordinarily familiar percussive snap, and Athena's proud, large, magnificent forehead disintegrated, her helmet flew backwards as though yanked off by an invisible wire, and she reeled away from the crate with a shattered cavity where the front of her skull had been, and her eyes rolled white, and brains spilled like pink blancmange from a broken bowl, and she collapsed into Zeus's arms and he caught her, held her, and his expression was incomprehension, bafflement, as were all the Olympians' expressions, but not Sam's.

  She understood.

  Even before five TITAN-suited figures burst forth from the crate, she understood.

  No bodies equals no proof.

  Hyperion led the way, and he was yelling, "Trojan horse! Trojan goddamn horse! We're in! We did it! Now let's plug as many of these motherfuckers as we can before they figure out we're not the weekly drop-off from the Athens Stop And Shop."

  71. RETURN OF

  THE TITANS

  It was the enormity of it, the effrontery of it, that took the Olympians aback so. More than the fact that there were still Titans alive and they were pouring out of the crate with guns blazing: the sheer gall of these mortals, to hijack the Greek government's act of weekly tribute and use it as a method of gaining ingress into the stronghold.

  The shock took several seconds to process, and during those seconds two of the Pantheon perished. Athena first, then Hades. As bullets began whipping towards the Olympians, the Lord of the Underworld raised his gloved hands defensively, as though somehow his death touch might ward off the hailstorm of ammunition and preserve him from harm. The bullets, however, raked through his hands, shattering them to pieces and also shattering the face behind them. His sallow, skeletal features disappeared as if flayed. He went down with nothing but a bloody mess between jaw and brow, jigsaw pieces of skull falling away, one eye socket a ragged hole, his other eye staring bleakly out through all the gore with a look that seemed to say, This can't be happening. I give, not receive. This can't be happening to me!

  The less combat-orientated Olympians scattered to the edges of the agora, taking refuge among the colonnades of the buildings adjacent. The others — principally Ares, Apollo, Zeus and Poseidon — recovered their wits and marshalled themselves to retaliate. The five Titans, meanwhile, fanned out across the agora, still firing for all they were worth. Sam watched them with a dizzying mixture of gratitude and joy. They'd survived Bleaney. Not just Hyperion but Rhea, Iapetus, Theia and Cronus. All of them. They'd got away, and now they were here, heading up the international assault on Olympus.

  And they'd infiltrated the stronghold in a time-honoured fashion, what's more. Xander Landesman, under any other circumstances, would surely have appreciated the irony.

  Apollo nocked and loosed arrows, while Ares went on the offensive in his own way, charging at the Titans with axe aloft and letting out a battlecry as he went, a wordless ululation that was intended to intimidate but also to express a kind of ecstasy. He picked Iapetus as his target, but the Titan accelerated, side-stepping at speed as the axe came down. Blade sparked on flagstone, chips of limestone flew, and then Iapetus's shotgun shouted. The blast caught Ares between greave and thigh-plate, disintegrating much of the Olympian's kneecap. Ares roared and swung his axe sidelong. The blow was swift, and the shotgun was sliced in two near the top of its stock. Iapetus was lucky not to lose a hand. He backed off, fast, and Ares lurched after him, limping but not hobbled — too lost in bloodlust to be hindered by a small thing like a ruined knee.

  The helicopter had risen swiftly once the crate deception was laid bare. The pilot wanted to get out of the vicinity as fast as possible, for fear of becoming embroiled in events below. Tragically for him, he failed. Hephaestus reached out with his mind and took hold of the Super Puma. First he stalled its engine, freezing the working parts. Then, with a furious scowl of concentration, he assumed full command of the great five-ton mass of metal, bringing it straight back down into the agora. The pilot struggled with collective and cyclic, stamped his anti-torque pedals, but nothing was working. He was in a dead weight of aircraft, plummeting through the mist. Rotors groaned, windscreens shattered, he was bucked about helplessly in his seat, and still he fought to maintain control and keep the helicopter aloft, a true professional to the end.

  Cronus happened to glance up just in time and yell a warning. The Titans scattered as the Super Puma came hurtling down. It missed them all, bellying onto the flagstones with an immense, ground-shaking crunch. Parts shot everywhere like shrapnel. Sam ducked for cover behind the empty crate as the tail rotor came cartwheeling past her. Several more fragments of chopper slammed into the crate itself, shunting it against her hard enough to send her sprawling onto the ground.

  A brief lull, and then the gunfire resumed, and above it could be detected another sound, the trundle of massing stormclouds. The atmosphere became charged with static. Sam knew she had to get to her feet and move. Once Zeus started tossing lightning bolts around, anyone could be hit.

  As she rose, a Titan appeared in front of her.

  Hyperion.

  Mostly she saw just his grin through his visor, but that was enough. More than enough.

  "Sam," he said, reaching out to her, "you have no idea how good it is to see you again. And you have no idea how long I've waited for a chance to say these words. Come with me if you want to live."

  72. FANTASIA OF GHOULISHNESS

  She took Hyperion's gauntleted hand, and together they ran, out of the agora, away from the oncoming electrical blitz. Behind them flashes lit up the air, turning the mist brightly pearlescent, and then came a tremendous crackle and clatter as the lightning struck, and the grinding of flagstones behind torn up, and beneath their feet the booming groan of the mountainside as it cavilled at the harsh treatment being meted out on it.

  "Where are we going?" Sam yelled.

  "Anywhere but there," Hyperion yelled back.

  "And the others?"

  "They've got their orders. There's a plan, believe it or not, and part of it is you and I need to get somewhere sheltered and safe. See this thing on my back? Santa's sack. I have a present for you."

  She hadn't noticed in all the melee, but Hyperion had a large container strapped to his shoulders, somewhat like a hiker's backpack but made of solid plastic. It looked big enough to contain…

  "My suit!" Sam gasped.

  "Not quite, but good as. Now shut up and run."

  She shut up and they ran, hand in hand, while the lightning apocalypse raged on in the agora. Hyperion appeared to be making a beeline for the amphitheatre but Sam had a better idea. With a tug she diverted him toward the nearest temple, which happened to be Hades's. They darted through the entrance, pa
ssing along a shadowy passageway and emerging into the naos.

  Sam hadn't ventured in here before — had had no desire to — but she was not surprised to find the courtyard decked out with all manner of death-related paraphernalia. There were coffins, crematorium urns, headstones, skulls, wax death masks, embalmed foetuses in jars of formaldehyde, and even a lifesize mock-up, like a museum diorama, showing Charon the underworld ferryman punting his skiff across the Styx, the river represented by a sheet of rippled glass.

  "Jesus," muttered Hyperion, "who did the interior design here — Tim Burton?"

  The centrepiece of this fantasia of ghoulishness was a stone bier on which lay a naked woman, clad in diaphanous nightwear, garlanded with silk flowers and surrounded by candles. Hyperion approached the bier for closer inspection, assuming the woman was another model like Charon. Sam grabbed him by the arm.

  "I wouldn't."

  "It's just a waxwork."

  "I don't think so."

  Hyperion looked again, and his lip curled in revulsion. "You have got to be shitting me."

  Not an effigy. A cadaver. The skin puffy in places, grey-tinged, not shinily smooth like the Charon replica's. The undersides of the arms and legs empurpled with livor mortis. The make-up overdone to compensate for pallor. The hair matt and listless but too thick and wavy to be anything but the hair of a once-living person.

  Sam would have bet anything that Hades called this embalmed corpse Persephone, and what he got up to with it in the privacy of his temple didn't bear thinking about, although the half-used tube of lubricating jelly that lay at the foot of the bier was something of a clue.

  She would have bet anything, too, that Hades had been considering her, Sam, as a substitute Persephone for when he got bored of this one here or the relevant parts of the corpse wore out their welcome. Hence his constant speculative interest in her. He'd been sizing her up as the next candidate for the role of necrophiliac fuck-dummy.