"Me, I can't forget Zeus's face as Landesman — you know."
"Castrated him."
"The sheer disbelief. His own father. After all the feuding and bad blood between them, suddenly he was just a kid again, ten years old, not understanding how his daddy could be so cruel."
"Yeah, it was a regular Greek tragedy. Bet Landesman himself regretted it, in the last few seconds. Not even a TITAN suit could save him from the shitstorm Zeus called down. The two of us just got blown off our feet. Landesman was right at the epicentre…" His voice tailed off.
Sam wasn't listening. She was back there, on Olympus, reliving it — the lightning explosion and its aftermath. Tottering to her feet, dazed, dazzled, half deafened. Her battlesuit seared all over, partially melted, no longer functioning. Useless, just so much high-tech clutter. Discarding most of it, piece by piece. Helping Ramsay upright, helping him pick off the majority of his armour too. Then surveying the agora — blasted and blackened on every surface, a negative print of itself. Trawling through the rubble to find scorched bits of Cronus's battlesuit, with scorched bits of Cronus inside it. Finding even less of the Olympians, just a few charred, scattered bone fragments, some held together with tar-like scraps of skin. All that remained of Zeus, Hera, Demeter and Dionysus.
Then the journey back through the stronghold to Rhea, amid grinning, triumphant soldiers who sensed now that the battle was truly won. On the way, encountering a group of men who'd unearthed Argus from his chamber. Seeing them drag him into the open with detached wires dangling from his head. Seeing them push him to his knees, his belly flopping over his thighs. Seeing them retreat to form a line, rifles raised — a firing squad. Seeing a vague smile creep onto Argus's corpulent face, as if he knew what was about to happen and it was a relief, an end to the stench and suffering of his existence. Or else the smile was just the idiot smile of a creature disconnected from all contact with the world, not realising what awaited.
The multiple report of the guns, and the slumping thud of a fleshy body falling, and her and Ramsay trudging on. To Rhea, who was still lying at the poolside, and lying so still, with Armstrong-Hall squatting solicitously beside her, doing his best to soothe her. The Field Marshal, in his water-soaked battledress, standing up as he saw the other two Titans approach. Snapping off a salute. Catching their expressions. Understanding. Saying, Done?
Sam confirming it. Done.
Armstrong-Hall relaying this into a walkie-talkie: Stand down. I repeat, all units stand down. It's over.
And Sam and Ramsay walking on as the mist began to lift from Olympus, thinning, the air brightening. Making for the gate, and the mountainside, and somewhere, elsewhere, anywhere that wasn't here.
On the bench, Ramsay could see Sam unreeling this vivid memory-movie in her mind.
"Come back, Sam," he said. "Come back to me. That was then. This is now. You don't have to be there any more. It's over."
"You know what's odd?" she said, finally.
"Your accent? You pronounce the 'r's in the middle of words, and your sentences go up at the end. You're becoming a local girl."
"Well, I have to, to make myself understood. Otherwise, I say something and I get looked at like I'm speaking in tongues."
"Fitting in."
"Yeah. I'm a mistress of disguise. Who needs a TITAN suit with chameleon function?"
"And the less English you come across as, the less likely it is someone might recognise you as that woman who's still wanted in the UK for murder."
"I'm not in hiding, Rick. If the British government finds me and wants to have me extradited, I'll go back and face the music. I'm innocent."
"I'd testify to that."
"And Dai Prothero would be in my corner too. The only trouble is, to clear my name I'd have to admit to being a Titan, and that'd open this huge great can of worms. Life's simpler if I just keep my head down. Anyway, as I was saying. You know what's odd? I still can't get used to the idea that, in the end, I only actually killed one of the Pantheon. Hermes — Pugh. I never got my reckoning with Apollo and Artemis, or with Aphrodite."
"That bother you?"
"Not as much as it might have. I wanted revenge badly, so badly, but maybe it was better that I didn't get it."
"Better for you," Ramsay said. "Better for your soul."
"Right. But still I'm left with this feeling of, So what was that all about then? "
"You did your bit, and the Olympians got what was coming to them. Guess it doesn't matter who from, long as they got it. The only one who didn't really deserve to die was Argus, but that was necessary."
"A mercy, almost."
"Yeah. And soon as he was pulled off his machinery, NORAD got back control of its nukes, and so did all the world's other missile commands — Russia, France, and so on. Big whoop all round when his firewalls suddenly went down. 'Hooray, we can blow up the planet again, if we want to.'"
"Only, we won't, will we?" Sam said. "We're grown-up enough as a race, aren't we? We can manage things for ourselves. We certainly don't need self-styled gods lording it over us, telling us how to behave and treating us like infants. We're capable of making sure humankind carries on and prospers. Aren't we?"
"Hell if I know," said Ramsay. He jerked a thumb at the L-Day celebrants. "But maybe that's what all this is in aid of, and why it should carry on year after year, even become an official event. Long as people remember what they were liberated from, they'll do their best to enjoy the freedom and make sure it continues. We've been slaves a while. Freed slaves tend to treasure what they've gained."
A soft burble from the stroller was followed by the sound of small limbs furiously shifting.
"Ah," said Sam. "Nap time's over."
She unfastened straps and hauled a pudgy, clammy eighteen-month-old out of the stroller and onto her lap.
William Dai Ramsay rolled a sleepy eye at his mother, and then at his father. His light-brown face set into a grumpy pout, and he nuzzled against Sam's breast with a sigh that sounded far too heartfelt and careworn for one so young. He'd been named after his paternal grandfather. Sam had lobbied to have Dai as his first name, but Ramsay had vetoed this. "Sounds too morbid," he'd said. So William it was, Will for short.
Ramsay stroked his son's head, with just a hint of wistfulness, briefly recollecting another small boy, another head of dark nappy curls like this one.
"You wake up in your own sweet time, kiddo," he said, and kissed Will's crown.
In response, Will just snuffled, and Sam hugged him close, feeling the heat radiating off him and inhaling the mix of milk and sweat that was his unique, heady musk.
Will.
Her Will.
Will, Will, Will.
What more fitting name to give to the future?
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The Age of Zeus a-2 Page 48