She didn't dare stop. She planned to keep battering Poseidon until there was nothing left of him. It was Hyperion, however, who delivered the coup de grace. He bent down and grabbed the sides of the Olympian's head while Sam was still belabouring it with her fist, and he wrenched it up double-handed, detaching base of skull from topmost vertebra. Poseidon's face, such as it now was, froze as if in shock. His mouth gaped, revealing two runs of shattered teeth. His head lolled to the side. Another Olympian had been scratched off the list.
78. GODS' END
"Rhea…"
Sam rolled off Poseidon's body and crawled over to her fellow Titan.
"I'm all right," Rhea rasped. She didn't sound it, though. She wasn't moving, and through her visor Sam could see a face that was perplexed and slightly panicked. "I just can't — can't feel anything. My arms, my legs… Won't move. Nothing works. I think he might have — "
"Uh, all Titans." McCann. "It's Cronus. The old geezer's been doing pretty well for himself 'til now, but he's squaring off against Zeus, and it's just him, and I think he could do with reinforcements."
Sam looked at Hyperion, then Rhea.
"Go," Rhea said. "There's nothing you can do for me right now. Go help him."
"Hang in there. I'll be back as soon as I can."
Rhea gave a short, mirthless laugh. "I'm not going anywhere."
They didn't need transponder sensors to tell them where Cronus was. All they had to do was follow the lightning, which crackled in the air above the agora, darting this way and that through the mist in silvery veins. In the agora itself, the flashes weirdly illuminated a tableau of ruin and death. At one end, amid tumbled columns, lay Dionysus. He had been crushed by falling masonry. His eyes were wide and unseeing. All colour and jollity were gone from his face.
Not far from him Demeter sat hunched over, cradling Hera's head in her lap. Hera was as lifeless as Dionysus, Sam could tell that at a glance. Demeter, however, refused to accept it.
"I can heal you," she sobbed. "I can bring you back, O Hera Of The Height." Her hands probed the many bullet wounds that riddled Hera's body, but nothing happened. The wounds stayed open. Hera was in a state that not even Demeter's curative power could remedy.
But the main business of the scene was taking place in the centre of the agora, beside the wreckage of the Super Puma. There, Zeus and Cronus stood face to face, their bodies rigid and bowed, bent towards each other like two sides of an arch that didn't quite meet at the top.
Father and son reunion. For the first time in a decade and a half Regis and Xander Landesman were in each other's presence, and talking.
Or rather shouting.
"This was mine!" said Zeus. " My dream! My achievement! I did it without any help from you. I worked hard, I struggled to make it happen, but you just couldn't let me have it, could you? You just couldn't bear the idea of your son being better than you, more powerful, more successful. So you had to come along and tear it all down."
"This isn't about me and you, Xander," Landesman retorted. He had his visor up so that he could look his son straight in the eye. "You think I'd go to all this trouble to destroy you and your Olympians out of some kind of jealousy? You're mad. You've turned into a power-crazed megalomaniac — a mass-murdering monster. Someone had to stop you. Someone had to end this tyranny of yours."
"And it simply had to be you, did it?"
"I'm your father. I brought you into the world. I bear some of the responsibility for what you've done, what you've become. The blood-guilt is mine. Therefore it's only right that I should be the one who brings you down."
The lightning flashes were coming thicker and faster overhead. Hyperion took a step towards Zeus and Cronus, levelling his coilgun, but Sam restrained him with a hand.
"This is their moment. Let them be."
"I can take out Zeus while his guard's down."
"It's a standoff. It might resolve itself peacefully."
Hyperion let out a sceptical huff of breath, but stayed where he was, coilgun not fully raised.
"You're a danger to everyone," Cronus told his son.
"No, only to anyone who opposes me," said Zeus. "Do you not understand what I've managed to do here? Do you not realise how good I've made life for billions of people?"
"Do you not realise how bad you've made it, Xander? So bad it makes me ashamed. That's all I've felt these past ten years, nothing but shame."
"Your feelings aren't my concern. I don't seek your approval. I never have."
"Your mother would have been ashamed too."
"Don't bring her into this! Don't you dare!" Zeus bellowed. "You never deserved her. She was worth a thousand of you."
"You barely even knew her."
"I remember enough about her to know that she loved me more than your ever did or could."
"I loved you."
"No, you tolerated me at first. Then you resented me, and finally you despised me."
"I despise what you are now."
It struck Sam how truly alike these two men were. Their faces, pressed up to each other, were mirror images, almost. The level of antipathy radiating from both of them was near identical too.
"Then here I am, Dad," said Zeus, making the last word a vindictive snarl, a kind of accusation. "This is your chance to finish me. Take it. You won't get a better one. Or a second one."
"I don't want to kill you, Xander. I should, given how you did your level best to kill me. I ought to, in the light of all your crimes against humanity. But I don't. Can't you see that it's over? Your Olympians are dead. Olympus is overrun. You've nothing left. You're beaten. But you can still walk away from all this. Come back with me. Come home. Let's start again. I can protect you, look after you, give you a new shot at life."
"After fifteen years? After all that's happened? Hah! You must be joking."
Cronus looked saddened but not surprised. "I thought I should offer. You've refused. So I'm afraid you leave me with no choice."
Seizing Zeus's shoulder with one hand, he produced an oscillo-knife with the other.
"Let the punishment fit the crime," he said, and before Zeus could so much as blink, he plunged the buzzing blade into his son's crotch.
A sideways torque of the wrist.
A blossoming of blood across the front of Zeus's robe.
"Dad…?" Zeus said, his voice wavery, strangulated.
Cronus worked the oscillo-knife like a saw, hacking away at Zeus's genitals with a cold and remorseless efficiency. His other hand bore down, keeping Zeus planted firmly in place.
"This is the fate of kings of pantheons," he hissed. "And of fathers."
"Dad…"
The lightning began to coalesce. The brightness overhead grew as though a new sun was forming within the mist.
"Oh shit," muttered Hyperion.
Cronus was concentrating too hard on what he was doing to notice. Relishing the moment too much. "You took mine." The words were a hoarse hiss, only just audible. "Now I take yours."
"Daddy," Zeus moaned. "Please. No. Stop."
But Cronus paid no heed.
The lightning swelled into a vast, lambent sphere. Plasmic sparks wormed and veined across every surface in the agora. The air felt alive with power.
"We gotta get out of here," Hyperion said.
And Sam knew he was right, but she couldn't move. Couldn't turn. Couldn't tear herself away.
"Daddy!"
Something plopped wetly onto the flagstones between Zeus's feet. He was shuddering. The lower half of his robe was nothing but redness.
"Daddeeeee!!!"
Then the lightning broke, and the world went white. Not the filmy white of the mist. A pure, bleaching, incandescent white that penetrated every crack and corner and left no room for shadows, no dark crevices, nothing unilluminated. A whiteness like the beginning of Creation, or its end. Accompanied by a bang that was beyond sound, beyond comprehension, loud enough that it made any other noise a whisper by comparison — and a wave of intens
e heat and pressure that came like a giant, sweeping hand and drove all before it. A hurricane of burning brilliance that picked up Sam and Hyperion and whirled them and tangled them and tossed them aside, and left only a howling blackness in its wake.
PART 3
THREE YEARS LATER
EPILOGUE:
THE CHICAGOANS
The L-Day event in Lincoln Park was the usual contrasting mix of solemn memorial and joyful celebration. At noon on a baking-hot June day several thousand Chicagoans gathered, some to sing hymns, some to light candles, some to sit in quiet contemplation, some to share beers, some to play music and dance, some to march in circles and chant slogans, and some just to spectate from the sidelines. It was disorganised, rowdy in places, not sanctioned by the authorities, and with no point of focus — no special monument to rally around, no single person to conduct the proceedings, no distinguished figure to stand up and make a speech and be a mouthpiece for all. Similar improvised assemblies were occurring all over the world on this, the third anniversary of the overthrow of the Olympians.
Despite much campaigning and petitioning, not one government would overtly acknowledge Liberation Day as a formal annual calendar occasion. There was a desire among the powers-that-be to move on from the age of Olympian rule, draw a line under it, act as if it had never happened. The people, however, disagreed. Let their elected representatives sweep that decade under the carpet and the dust of political cowardice with it. They might wish to forget, but seven billion others did not.
Furthermore, many felt that their leaders should be held to account — the ones, at least, who had bent the knee most abjectly to the Pantheon. Here at Lincoln Park voices called for ex-president Stavropoulos, whose term of office had just ended and not been renewed, to be retroactively impeached. Similarly, at Trafalgar Square in London where an L-Day event had been held some six hours earlier, there'd been renewed demands for Catesby Bartlett to face prosecution in the High Court. Bartlett had stepped down as prime minister not long after the Olympians' demise, citing health reasons, but the vilification of him in the press and online — criminal, coward, collaborator — continued unabated. For all that he was currently serving in an ill-defined role as some sort of goodwill ambassador for the UN, he was seldom seen in public, and had not set foot on British soil since leaving 10 Downing Street, perhaps for fear of being arrested, or lynched.
At this same hour, in New York, a big band struck up show tunes on Governors Island at the spot where the giant statue of Zeus no longer stood, and people started to dance. In Paris, where it was evening, a firework display splash-painted the sky above the recently restored Eiffel Tower. In Sydney, where day was just breaking, the Australian prime minister delved a spade into the ground, declaring building work on a new Opera House begun. In Bruges, a statue was unveiled with all due pomp and circumstance — and the imbibing of a great deal of pale lager — in the centre of the Markt. It was a memorial to the Unknown Titan, to add to the countless other similar memorials that had been erected all across the planet.
Meanwhile, a breeze off Lake Michigan kept the throng of Chicagoan L-Day celebrants cool as they milled about. Conversations returned again and again to that day three years ago when it had become apparent that the Olympians were no more, all killed at the hands of Sir Neville Armstrong-Hall's little impromptu army and the last remaining Titans. Where were you when you first heard the news? Wasn't it amazing to see those interviews with troops who had taken part and listen to their accounts of shooting monsters and combating a metal giant? And how about that footage of the JDS Inazuma Maru bombarding Olympus from just off the coast, razing the Pantheonic stronghold to the ground? And the helicopter shots of the smouldering ruin afterwards? The long-distance images of the mountain with smoke billowing up from its summit?
Armstrong-Hall's name received repeated mention. After the attack on Olympus the distinguished old soldier had gone home to face the music: a court martial, and even the possibility of trial at the Hague on charges of being a war criminal. A vast international public outcry, however, had soon put paid to that, and he was quietly discharged and pensioned off instead. Now in retirement at his home in the Cotswolds, Britain's erstwhile Chief of General Staff divided his time between penning his memoirs and cultivating rare strains of apple in his orchard. On L-Day it could be guaranteed that at least fifty different TV stations and newspapers from all over the globe would ring him up to ask for a comment, but all he would say was: "I did what I had to do and what was right. It isn't me you should be talking to. It's the soldiers I led. They did all the work and took far greater risks than I. They and the Titans — whoever they were."
And of course there was much discussion of the Titans at Lincoln Park, as at every other L-Day event, most of it favourable, some of it speculative. The Titans remained anonymous. Identities, nationalities, origins — all a mystery. Even the bodies of the ones killed in action had never been found. Ghostly, they had appeared. Ghostly, they had gone. In a way, that was preferable to knowing everything about them, every last personal detail. They were blank slates, everymen who had emerged from nowhere to fulfil a function, then melted away back into the shadows. What they'd helped bring about meant more than who they'd actually been.
So in Lincoln Park, on this summery and boisterous L-Day, it was possible to imagine that a Titan might be standing right next to you. Might be that man in the queue for the hot dog vendor. Might be that woman sipping bottled water while leaning on a lakefront lamppost. Might be that rollerblader whizzing around in a cutoff L-Day T-shirt (motto: Waking Up From A 10-Year Nightmare). Might be that rich-voiced gospel singer leading a chorus of "Amazing Grace."
Might even be one or other (or both) of that mixed-race couple who were pushing a baby-stroller through the crowd and observing the goings-on with a detached, wry amusement.
"Don't you just feel like standing up and telling them?" said he to her. "Shouting it out loud? 'That's me you guys are all so jazzed up about. I'm the one. Come and give me a pat on the back. Maybe the key to the city too.'"
" You might," said she to him. "I wouldn't."
"Pride ain't a crime."
"No, but modesty's a virtue."
"You're not even tempted? Don't tell me you're not tempted."
"Not for a moment. Besides, what makes you think they'd believe us? Dozens of people have come out of the woodwork in the past three years claiming they were a Titan. They've all been debunked and laughed at. Why would we get treated any differently?"
"Uh, because it's true?"
"Face it, Rick, we're better off this way. We have a nice, quiet life. Be a pity to ruin it."
"Quiet?" said Ramsay, casting a dubious glance at the occupant of the stroller, who was fast asleep.
Sam followed his gaze. "Well, for another few minutes, at any rate. Hey, ice-cream van. Fancy a snow cone?"
They ate the cones on a bench overlooking the brilliant expanse of the lake, where pleasure cruisers, jet-skis and water skiers leashed to speedboats all vied for space, cross-hatching one another's wakes.
"Oh, I got an email from Jamie this morning," Sam said.
"And how is yon bonnie laddie?"
"Your Scottish accent is even worse than your English."
"Did I not sound like Sean Connery?"
"Not even close. And Jamie's fine. He's got a girlfriend now, so I don't hear from him as often as I used to."
"McCann has a girlfriend?"
"Don't sound so surprised. He's cute — in a boyish way. He's also pretty wealthy, thanks to Landesman."
"Aren't we all?" said Ramsay.
Jolyon Lillicrap, as executor of Regis Landesman's will, had supervised the disbursement of funds from his late boss's estate. Channelling the money through various offshore accounts so as to render it untraceable, he had ensured that everyone involved in the Titanomachy II campaign, from techs to surviving Titans, had been duly and amply rewarded for their services, himself included. By this means Sam and Ramsay
had been able to buy a handsome, serviced penthouse apartment on North Lake Shore Drive, with spectacular views of the lake. They'd also established financial security for themselves for the rest of their lives.
"And Therese?" Ramsay enquired. "She called lately?"
"No, but the trip to Quebec to visit her is still on." Sam nodded at the stroller. "I'll take him with me so she can see how big he's getting."
"The poor woman. Any, you know, progress?"
Sam shook her head. "Every treatment in the book's been tried. If it's not made any difference by now, it's never going to."
Hamel had been left quadriplegic by Poseidon's attack. Sam's intervention had prevented him from fully coagulating the blood in Hamel's veins but he'd done enough damage to trigger a series of small ischemic strokes, the result of which was complete loss of function and sensation below the neck. Hamel could afford the best of healthcare and occupational therapy and, tough old broad that she was, she remained resolutely upbeat about her condition, arguing that it could have been worse, she could be dead, and moreover it had all been in a good cause. Sam, though, still felt an ache in the pit of her stomach every time she thought of her.
"If I'd only been a fraction quicker off the mark…"
Ramsay lodged a reassuring arm around her shoulders. "Stop it. You always beat yourself up about this, and it isn't going to change anything. Therese doesn't blame you, so neither should you."
Sam nestled her head against the muscled firmness of his shoulder. "Rick," she said after a few moments, "what do you think about, when you think about that day?"
He gazed out over the lake. On the grass nearby a drummer was pounding on bongos, beating out a complex polyrythym for a throng of neo-hippie L-Dayers to freak out to.
"Mostly I think how goddamn lucky you and me were to get out alive. When Zeus went all self-destructo on us… I mean, Jesus, if it hadn't been for our suits, we'd have been toast. Crispy-fried bacon. Done to a turn and carbon round the edges."
The Age of Zeus a-2 Page 47