Goddesses Never Die

by George B Mair

  Because by that time both Harmony and she knew that they had the power to do it!

  Mehmet suddenly interrupted. ‘The Goddess is tired, Doctor. She has given you a long interview. You can meet again tomorrow and she will finish her story.’ He bowed low towards the old lady and there was a subtle note of command in his words. ‘The crowds expect you to throw the first soil round the man who must die. Our three guests can sleep or talk while we work.’ He clapped his hands and four bearers arrived carrying a sort of sedan-chair into which the Goddess walked with dignity unusual even for Asiatics, while Mehmet smiled with satisfaction. ‘My men will give you fresh fruit or anything you wish. You may also smoke. But please remain inside. We wish no further complications and the situation may not yet be entirely under control. Forgive also if we leave a few men to carry out your instructions.’

  He spoke rapidly to a few youths who wore the same uniform of nondescript blue which seemed to be current domestic rig, and then with a final bow he was gone.

  Grant turned to the windows and was adjusting the cords of the slats when a young man gently touched his arm and shook his head. ‘Sorry, sahib. Not for now. Maybe later. You like some passion fruit?’

  Lu thoughtfully drew out a slender case and cautiously lit a thin cigarette. It was the first time that Grant had seen him smoke and he guessed that the man was more tense than he admitted. There was also an unspoken message in his eyes and Grant guessed that this was a time for silence. At least until someone else who knew the local ropes decided to break the spell.

  Harmony’s eyes were also brooding and Grant saw her fumble for her lighter: a thing which had never happened before to the girl whose image, in his eyes at least, did everything with an economy of movement which was remarkable. ‘I morse say,’ she said at last, ‘that there are morse places than this. I like it.’

  Morse!

  It was a cunningly worded sentence, and slurred as she said it in such a way as to disguise the word almost completely.

  He nodded agreement. ‘Me too.’

  She smiled contentedly. ‘Yes, sir. I hand it to them. They know how to make a chap comfortable.’

  And as she spoke both Lu and Grant studied the fingers of her right hand which were now tapping idly against the shaft of her cigarette holder. Though her message was brief.

  Charlie probably told the truth about the Goddess being doped.

  Mehmet probably knew that and took her away when he saw signs of her needing a shot of something.

  Her memory is confused about some things.

  I guess that Mehmet is top man here. Can’t say if he is friend or not.

  Play it cool.

  They all knew when not to force their luck and Grant remembered other occasions when morse had saved his life. ‘I’m for a sleep,’ he said briefly. ‘Been a tiring afternoon.’

  Lu had slipped off his shoes and Grant watched with interest as he slipped once again into a Yoga position of meditation while Harmony curled up on the divan and closed her eyes. ‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘And there’s a time and a place for passion fruit. Right now a good kip would be worth a thousand dollars.’

  The guards watched with eyes like cats while all three made themselves comfortable and Grant unhooked his trouser belt. Five minutes later he heard a phone click quietly in the distance and a voice speak a few words in what sounded like Nepalese. There was a second click as the phone was hung up and he heard soft feet slither across the room to stop beside a chair.

  He smiled inwardly. Even guards might be tired.

  Chapter Twelve – ‘We can play together too’

  Two hours passed before a knock at the door wakened Harmony, who had dropped off to sleep in spite of herself, and Mehmet Ali came alone into the room.

  The Turk was smiling cynically. ‘The crowd is now satisfied. We have had some local trouble recently but most of it is now blamed upon the man you called Charlie. So he has been buried to the neck as promised and his face baited with honey. I imagine he will have a disturbed night.’

  Harmony switched on maximal charm. ‘Mehmet dear, I want to spend a penny. Where is the loo?’

  Grant smiled as he watched the man’s reaction. Harmony had a wonderful gift of being able to produce a totally irrelevant remark at precisely the correct time. The atmosphere needed thawing and she thawed it. The Turk became slightly embarrassed and pointed to a door not far from the Goddess’s throne. ‘You know where to go, Miss Dove. Make yourself at home.’

  The girl threw the hair back from her eyes and laughed. ‘You were always a perfect host, Mehmet. Look after the boys till I come back.’

  Mehmet unexpectedly produced a string of prayer-beads, or worry-beads as Grant preferred to call them, and even apologised as he began to fiddle with them. ‘It cuts down smoking,’ he said in explanation. ‘Anyhow, forgive if it annoys you.’

  Lu again unfolded himself and slowly stood up. ‘I too could do with some exercise. But maybe later. Is the old lady well?’

  Lu was no fool and Grant knew that his choice of words was intended to force a situation, because until then she had always been the Goddess. ‘She seemed a shade off colour,’ he added. ‘Or was she just tired?’

  ‘As good a way of asking a question as any other,’ said Mehmet. ‘What Charlie said was largely true. He is fiendishly clever in a quiet unobtrusive way and his influence over my mistress was gained without my even knowing it. His friends worked without fuss and even I can’t be sure how it was done. But of course you are a doctor, sir, and saw for yourself. She is a heroin addict. And not even her bathing women reported the needle marks on her arms. So it was only very good luck plus up-to-date scientific devices which saved our lives, because without that television camera we would certainly have been taken over.’

  Grant decided to force his luck. ‘Anything we can do to help?’

  Mehmet Ali stared thoughtfully at his beads and as Harmony rejoined them looked up with the air of a man who has made a decision which matters. ‘As I see it the Australian’s Mafia plan to use my mistress in a world take-over bid is now impossible. He is dead and his key men are also likely to be dead within the next few days since we collected their names some time ago.’

  ‘How?’ snapped Grant.

  The Turk shrugged his shoulders carelessly. ‘Not so excited, Doctor. Remember that I am from your own world, from the world outside. I wasn’t born here. But I now know almost everything which happens. So when I saw the influence which the Australian was beginning to have on events here I made a point of having him followed on several occasions. In fact he was studied for almost all of last year by different teams of men hired from a professional agency. His contacts then began to emerge and I hope to send a telephone call tonight to finish most of them off. The world can do without them. So that end has been taken care of.’

  ‘And of course,’ Grant added, ‘Charlie has also been taken care of. Which leaves only ourselves,’ he said carelessly. ‘So now would you care to comment?’

  Harmony was first to speak. If Mehmet had trailed Lofty it was an even bet that he had also read her own dossier, so did he rate her as a goody or a baddy?

  The Turk hesitated and Grant guessed that he was seconds behind any of them in reaction time. Which could be important if it came to a show-down! ‘Let us recap,’ he said at last. ‘Charlie represents communist bloc idealists who wish to see a People’s United Communist and Socialist republics of Asia established. The thing some people have called P.U.C.S.A.

  ‘But the Australian worked only for power or money, and used both the Mafia and Cosa Nostra as weapons. Though, like some other people, he also hoped to use eccentrics like hippies or beatnicks, flower people or yippies to help him corrupt the world. But he never forgot the importance of that five per cent rule which says that only five per cent of people are capable of leadership, so he had a death list completed of the five per cent who might have opposed him. But now he himself is dead, and soon his own most intimate associates will ha
ve been removed. So we can forget about both Mafia and Cosa Nostra.’

  He turned towards Harmony. ‘I’ve really only one decision to make. Do you people stand for trouble or progress? And on balance I’m inclined to think you mean trouble, because you want to interfere too much. You aren’t content to let mankind work out its own salvation. You want to use force. Though I grant that it is a different kind of force. But for a person like myself force is not the recipe. I prefer a natural evolution. And if man decides to destroy himself I wouldn’t stand in his way. Man must be free, even the ninety-five per cent drones, to work out their own destiny. At best they are a poor lot. And at best it can only be a bad destiny. Just birth and fighting to survive: the misery of being young with inexperience or older with lack of wisdom. Just marriage, disappointment, children and sickness or death. But,’ he added gently, ‘that is how God wants it. Every man’s fate is written on his destiny and I am not willing to let people interfere with God’s will.’

  ‘Why,’ asked Lu unexpectedly.

  The Turk lifted his beads. ‘Because I’m a Muslim.’ He pointed, vaguely, outside. ‘But you don’t know what this valley holds in secret weapons. Do you?’

  ‘No,’ said Grant briefly.

  ‘We are on the roof of the world,’ said Mehmet. ‘So it is possible to direct rays of one sort or another over quite a wide area and the Mafia finalised an apparatus which could control some aspects of climate. Indeed the famine of India was probably due to its influence, since the Mafia made it possible to stop rain over any given area and create a drought. But famine conditions people to desperation and it was part of their campaign to promote a take-over by their own agencies. In fact it could have marked the end of India. Whereas, now we can stop the thing and get back to normal.’

  Grant’s curiosity was roused. The idea seemed preposterous.

  But the Turk simply shook his head. ‘Mafia and Cosa Nostra scientists installed a machine on a hill above this valley. It beams direct towards space over the famine area and works by preventing the accumulation of moisture. It is really an American invention and one day might be developed into something worth while. But right now there is no happy medium. When the machine is operating, its radiation affects the sky above any given area of ground, so no clouds form and no rain falls. Simple. But if you study a globe you’ll find that the famine area isn’t so far from here, and that there are no mountains between us to obstruct whatever ray this may be. It has uninterrupted access to the target area and millions have died over the last few years because of this and this alone.’

  Grant had heard, a few years earlier, of research into such a project. But he had never imagined it to be so far advanced. ‘What else?’ he asked quietly.

  Mehmet systematically operated his ivory beads. ‘We have one other weapon developed separately in both Russia and the States plus a little know-how from Britain, but which could make various governments alter their tactics quite a bit. It was installed by Lofty’s people and the Mafia figured it could be their ultimate weapon. Seems that it interested even my mistress more than most things, and it was she who first told me about it around six months ago. In fact,’ he added, ‘it was thought of this which frightened me more than anything else. Remember that American bomber which went through the ice in Greenland?’

  He said after a pause, ‘There was a lot of top scientific activity at that time when news broke that a load of hydrogen bombs had been lost. But no one ever said too much about how or why the crew escaped. It never seemed to cross any one’s mind that the whole thing might have been arranged and that something very different from hydrogen bombs really went through the ice at high velocity while the crew made an escape by election with rescue teams standing by to see that they didn’t freeze. In fact the whole thing sounded plausible until one knew the real facts.’

  ‘Which were?’

  ‘That an apparatus exists which could melt much of the ice cap and flood every coastal city in the world. America believed that Russia, which didn’t stand to lose much from either Arctic or Black Sea flooding was ready to use it. So Washington arranged for a form of antidote to be put into position at a critical point from which its rays would neutralise the device and save a lot of trouble. But,’ continued Mehmet, ‘once again Mafia scientists managed to find a way round this and right now we could flood the world from this valley. Indeed we can do it so accurately that we could prove our power by raising the sea level say two feet as a demonstration. After which,’ he said quietly, ‘we could get governments almost anywhere to listen to reason.’

  Melting the Greenland ice-cap was old hat to Grant, and he knew that technically the thing might soon be possible. But again, he was surprised only to find that events had moved faster than he had expected. ‘Where is it and how does it work?’ he asked. ‘Because this demonstration’ll have to be darned clever or someone’ll fix it, and fix it good.’

  Mehmet smiled cynically. ‘Not so easy. The American antidote—if one as a layman can call it that—had only a few years of life. But that life stops being effective some time in the very near future. And I can guarantee that I know what I’m talking about.’

  Give me just one clue,’ said Grant slowly. ‘Is it a ray? Or do you have to drop it on Greenland? Or what?’

  Mehmet hesitated. And then, his mind made up, he again began to relax. Like so many Turks he was more tense deep down than appeared on the surface. ‘It is dropped. A simple matter considering a target the size of Greenland But the actual strength of the weapon is decided elsewhere. In fact technicians have computed exactly how to set it to raise the world’s oceans by one foot, or two, or three, or even six and more. Which would create fantastic havoc.’

  ‘In a nutshell,’ said Harmony, ‘a sort of portable bomb thing is set before take off and then dropped somewhere over a target area. But in this case the control would be decided up here and one of your kites would drop it over Greenland where it would operate on schedule, since whatever the Americans did a few years back to neutralise such a possibility is now washed up and waiting a replacement. Not forgetting, of course, that you think you also possess a way of coping in any case.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Mehmet Ali. ‘But I would never allow that to happen.’

  ‘And the Mother Goddess?’ asked Grant.

  The Turk shook his head. ‘She is very old and will die one day. But until then we can keep her supplied with heroin, because withdrawal would kill an addict of her age.’

  ‘And speaking of drugs,’ said Grant slowly, ‘as we understand the situation you have a cache of dope here which the Mafia hoped to ferry down to world markets. In fact it was going to be, for them, much the same as the gold in Fort Knox. Any ideas?’

  The Turk swung his beads in a careless gesture of disinterest. ‘The old woman was friendly with that Australian. She allowed him freedom of movement which enabled him to go almost anywhere. Anyhow neither hashish or LSD interest me much. Only weak-minded people are harmed by them. And if they didn’t use drugs of that sort they would be taking alcohol or something else instead. It is really publicity media, television discussions and press reports which have seeded ideas into people’s minds about these things. “Suggestible” people, people who can be talked into believing almost anything hear exaggerated stories, and when they sample one of these drugs their subconscious mind reacts in the way they’ve been trained by society to expect. They are not really drug addicts. They are just inadequate people who take drugs and I could make any of them an addict to tangerine juice or dried figs if I cared to take the trouble. Nor was there any sort of thought in the average person’s head of turning to heroin or cocaine till the same television people and newspapers reported that the real dangers of hashish and LSD were that they caused people later to promote themselves to hard drugs which could kill. Which then introduced a death wish. And since many of these kinky people live close to suicide it is easy for them to start on heroin, and, literally, expect to die after a few years.’


  He paused and stared for a long time into the distance. ‘And I am certain that I’m right. So if you do find some store of drugs hidden up here by the Mafia I wouldn’t really be interested in what you did with it. The loss of a few tons of stuff here will simply mean that there will be a greater demand through Hong Kong or Istanbul. It is impossible to stop, and the world’s newsmen plus society’s need for thrilling documentaries has only given birth to a kind of Frankenstein monster which will never be controlled this side of the grave.’

  ‘And you believe all this?’ Lu both looked and sounded sceptical. ‘You don’t rate drugs as important?’

  ‘No,’ said Mehmet Ali. ‘Because no matter what you do to stop one source of supply, enterprising crooks will cater for the ninety-five per cent of drones and inadequate people by opening up another. So I believe only in dealing with things which are important: like the apparatus installed in this valley, for example. Because that does mean something worth while and I expect to destroy it. It is just a question of priorities.’ He paused and then added slowly, ‘Which leads back to yourselves. Your disposal is important and I don’t want to make a mistake.’

  ‘Such as what?’ said Harmony.

  The Turk glanced round the room and they guessed that he was checking on the position of the guards. ‘You all know too much,’ he said at last. ‘And you are all too competent. Now I want the world to continue without interference from either evil people or what have been called “do-gooders”. But if you are allowed to go home you may start some sort of crusade to try and interfere with the will of God.’

  Grant risked a critical question. ‘Might that not simply mean that we were really carrying out the will of God?’

  The Turk nodded briefly. ‘Of course. And if I killed you here that too would be carrying out the will of God. But I must be sure in my own mind that whatever decision I make is right.’