99 Gods: Odysseia

by Randall Farmer

  “What, acting like a God?” Maria said, in a ‘duh’ voice. “Yah think?”

  Dana felt much better after a meal, eaten in a willpower constructed building, of willpower constructed food. Bland food. She suspected Richard had run himself dry of creativity.

  She recovered enough to see she had been doing Angelic magic, a ‘back off I’m awesome’ field, clearly something she had used unconsciously to protect herself from Betrayer. She turned off the awesomeness field as soon as she realized, which relieved the non-Godly around her, and the chatter in the dining hall increased to a normal cacophany. She still couldn’t integrate her senses, not fully. Her sense of touch, the worst, kept wandering off away from her body – another bit of Angelic magic.

  “So, can I ask a few questions?” Dana said, to Richard. She pushed tasteless chunks of grilled chicken around her plate.

  He nodded but gave her a horror filled gaze. He didn’t understand her anymore, she realized.

  “Where’s my wedding band?”

  The horror deepened. “We finally had to bury your remains. The band’s there. Back in Georgia.”

  “I want the wedding band back,” she said. Those real Telepath-charmed wedding bands had their own magic, though magic didn’t describe things correctly. They resonated with the World-as-Story, Mission and the Psychosphere, which were all aspects of something someone somewhere in creation termed the Psionic Mind Field, visualized with far more mathematical physics than Dana knew. The rings also held the blessing of the Ha-qodeshim, she now realized. For what this was worth, which could be a lot. “Wait.” She grabbed Richard, took over his willpower, and teleported the wedding band back onto the table, where the ring hissed and froze the air around itself. Must have been something to do with the distance of the teleport. She heated the ring with her own magic and put it on. “Much better.”

  “You don’t seem bothered by what you’re doing, like you’ve become comfortable being who you are.”

  “Everything pales before what I was told by Weeping for Cordoba,” Dana said. “Where are we? This isn’t Georgia or Florida.”

  “We’re in North Carolina, in the Blue Ridge mountains.”

  “Dubuque’s Paladins?”

  “There’ve been two more attacks. Each one’s gone better for us. In the last one we didn’t take any losses. However, Dubuque hasn’t stopped chasing us; before the second attack he dropped about a megaton of boulders on our camp from three miles up. Before the last one, he hit us with about a half billion dollars of missiles to soften us up before he attacked. Nearly wore us out.”

  “He’s getting desperate, things aren’t going well for him,” Dana said. “Everything he holds dear is unraveling. Solis of Portland’s declaration’s weakened him tremendously. Can’t you sense the change?”

  “All I sense is that we’re a target and that there’s not a single hope of victory I can find in the Place of Time. We have another week, perhaps ten days, perhaps less, before Dubuque nerves himself up and sends the entire City of God crew after us.”

  She put her hand on Richard’s hand. “The Angelic Host’s judgment is going against the City of God. Dubuque’s thousand year Reich is in its final days.” She closed her eyes. “This is true. Trust me.”

  “Bob says the same thing.”

  “Listen to Bob.”

  “I do, though through logic and the Place of Time, I can’t believe what you and Bob are saying.” He kissed her hand and held it to his face. “How much of an Angel are you, Dana? Can this help us at all?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure, Richard. I’ve become utterly useless in a fight, at the physical level. I changed. I died. A lot of my old crap problems are gone, but I’ve got new ones. I’ve been enlightened. Sort of like a new-made Buddha.” This would be hard. Her words were a betrayal. “I can’t fight anymore, not like I used to. I’m a pacifist at a very deep level. A Saint.”

  “Can you defend yourself?”

  Ever practical Richard.

  “Yes, unlike some of the other varieties of Angel, I can protect myself in the real world.”

  “What more can you do? As an Angel?”

  She shrugged. “My Angelic magic isn’t made for doing tangible things in the tangible world. On the other hand, I can be a conduit to God; God Almighty can work through me, meaning anything God wants can happen.” She shivered. “What I can do is scary, Richard.” Her voice dropped to a whisper and she told him Weeping for Cordoba’s comments about her and God.

  “How holy have you become?”

  Ah. That question. “Take me to bed and find out, husband.” Jan had told her only Warrior Angels did sex. Could Saints?

  He relaxed. “Later. Can you see the future? The present? Distant events?”

  “I don’t think so,” Dana said. She reached out and spent several minutes living the lives of a family of nine, their livestock and their pets. “Richard, don’t count on me for anything with this new Angelic magic, okay? I can still use my Natural Supported magic.” She concentrated and moved plates around on the table. “I can use your willpower, too, as with the ring. Only…”

  “Only the pacifism isn’t only a limitation on your Angelic powers, it’s a real change in you.” Richard gazed into her eyes, very concerned.

  “I’ve become myself for once,” Dana said. “I’m who I want to be now. I never wanted to be a warrior; I hated what I had become. Now that I’m no longer a warrior, it’s a very pleasant thing. I’ve lost the self-loathing.” She paused, thinking. “You need to be always moving, Richard. Even these day camps are too dangerous.” Dubuque had been attacking every other day. The attacks had to stop, and the way to stop them was to keep moving.

  “Oh?”

  She nodded. “I think the Angelic magic is wielding me right now more than I’m wielding it. Sorry. My Indigo training, the inseer stuff, is starting to integrate with the Angelic magic.” She could also wield the Indigo: as catalyst, Queen of the World-as-Story, as word of command, and as something else hidden from her mind. Those she would save for emergencies, though, until she had time for a long talk with the Godslayer. “I should have everything under control soon.”

  “Don’t be sorry, don’t be sorry at all,” Richard said. He took her hands and came around the table to gather her into his arms. “Losing you devastated me. Having you back…”

  “You made this possible, you know,” Dana said. “I wasn’t eligible to be an Angel before I ditched the hatred.” ‘No hate’ appeared to be one of the major prerequisites for holiness.

  Tears gathered at the corners of Richard’s eyes. “I love you so very…”

  “Don’t say the word,” she said, putting a finger over his lips. “Remember Betrayer’s price.”

  “I’m not about to forget her price.” He paused and stuck his mouth down close to her ear. “What is she, Dana? What’s her game, her plan? She’s frightfully powerful, frightfully talented, and I don’t understand her at all.”

  Dana snickered. “Do what Jan and Knot did – put aside the chortling mad God act and pay attention to what she’s doing. She’s on our side, but our lives mean nothing to her. The price she has to pay to succeed has skewed her and stressed her beyond all measure, and the price is us. I think her choice is eating her up inside, because if all of us have to die to defeat Dubuque’s City of God, she’ll arrange our deaths.”

  “By ‘our side’ you mean the side of the mortals, governments and nations, then.”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t say that I’m happy, but I can’t say I disagree either.”

  “I know,” Dana said. “That’s the worst part. I can’t disagree either. I’m just glad I don’t have her responsibility. Her life’s an endless living nightmare.”

  “Dana, all our lives are living nightmares now,” Richard said. “Things would have been better if we 99 Gods hadn’t been.”

  “Don’t give me that!” Dana said. She must be glowing because she cast shadows. If she didn’t look through
her eyes. The noise of the dining hall had faded to silence again. “You Gods are humanity’s only hope for surviving the singularity thing of yours you identified.”

  Richard stiffened hearing Dana’s Angelic prophesy. “Then I was correct.”

  “You were correct.”

  “Then we have work to do before we resume our personal lives,” Richard said. “We’ve got to talk to the Tradition Gods. This could sway them to our side.”

  Dana closed her eyes. This time she caught all the nuances from the God’s perspective. The immense threat of the singularity, even though a future event, at a minimum a decade off, perhaps a century or more, couldn’t be ignored. The gauntlet had destroyed far too many extraterrestrial tech-using species and far too many Earth timelines, the reason why God Almighty allowed the 99 Gods gambit. “Yes. Immediately,” she said. She would have to tell her story as well to the Tradition Gods, whichever ones deigned to show.

  This time her story would be enough.

  “It’s not just that there are two sides to every dispute. It’s that each side sincerely believes its version of the story, namely that it is an innocent and long-suffering victim and the other side a malevolent and treacherous sadist. And each side has assembled a historical narrative and database of facts consistent with its sincere belief.” – Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature

  “The Virgin Bride can dance peace into your hearts so I can send you back to where you should be with a simple kiss.”

  48. (Dave)

  “My turn, my turn, uh, harder, harder!” Elorie said into Dave’s ear. The jailhouse cot began to squeak toward failure under them…as Dave caught sight of Betrayer’s projection appearing, right next to the bed. His mind went into overdrive, always ready for Betrayer’s next appearance and attack. This wasn’t the first time Betrayer had attacked while they had been making love.

  “Shields!” he said, and then “Out!” their prearranged signal for their breakout attempt. In the day and a half since they had come up with their plan, Betrayer hadn’t ever popped in where they could get themselves between her and the jail door, their necessary prerequisite.

  Betrayer let loose with a combination white lightning and blue helix, both stopped by Elorie’s immunities. Dave felt pressure on his mind, the sign of an invisible and perfectly emulated telepathic takeover attempt. He and Elorie rolled out of the narrow cot, making sure they faced the correct direction, Elorie’s hand on Dave’s left shoulder.

  Dammit! This would have worked better if they hadn’t ditched their rags. Without them, Elorie couldn’t pull on Dave’s rags to keep him upright while he hopped backwards toward their tray stash. He hopped backwards anyway and fell on his second hop. He trusted to Elorie’s protections as he turned to hunt for the tray stash, but found the trays just beyond his arm’s reach. He wiggled back toward them as the floor of the room jumped from the impact of three reality-bending blue helixes aimed at his chest. They dissipated on Elorie’s projected immunities, thankfully.

  His heart hammered wildly and he felt naked not only because of his lack of clothes, but also because Elorie had lost contact with him. He got to his knees, hands nervous, grabbed the top tray and tossed. Following her recent pattern, Betrayer didn’t speak as she continued to blast at him with blue helixes. From a prior discussion during Betrayer’s all-day training session – when the bitch had been voluble and personable, actually teaching detailed defensive techniques but not rewarding their cooperation with better living arrangements – he knew Betrayer could keep up these low-powered attacks of hers indefinitely. He also knew that if they tried to trick her or counterattack, such as after Dave’s attempt to distract her by sticking his ratty shirt over Betrayer’s projected head, Betrayer would amp up her attack to lethal power levels.

  Thus the risk.

  Betrayer ignored Dave’s first thrown plastic cafeteria tray, but as the second and third twirled toward her they successfully blocked her vision of them long enough to trigger a lethal level attack. Dave didn’t have time to react as the combined white lightning and blue helix passed by his head, close enough to send a sharp pain hammering through the side of his face.

  Metal hissed and moaned behind him. Dave, frozen with terror for a moment, stole a look. Their trick worked! Elorie’s plan targeted the jail cell door, creating a hole in her projected immunity shaped so an attack would pass through to what lay behind. The jail cell door hung as normal, save for the hole blown through it by Betrayer’s blue helix attack.

  Very risky, very risky. Elorie couldn’t control her immunity shape a hundred percent of the time. They needed a lethal-level Betrayer attack to have a chance at punching a hole through the door, and Elorie had needed to guide it to the proper spot on the door. Dangerous. They could have both ended up nicely Betrayer-fried.

  Elorie reached through the basketball sized hole and opened the lunatic cell door from the outside, pushing down the available handle. She leaned back, offered her arm to Dave, and helped him to his foot. Betrayer kept up her attacks, but the attack intensity returned to its previous non-lethal levels, and their captor didn’t seem to react to their impending escape.

  “There’s nobody home, El!” They had talked about the possibility Betrayer’s projections were on automatic when Betrayer didn’t speak. “Ace the damned thing!”

  Elorie didn’t answer as she helped Dave hop past the now open cell door. Once both of them reached the iron walled hallway outside, though, she turned on the Betrayer projection and pushed with her immunity, concentrating on her target.

  Betrayer’s projection vanished. Hah!

  “I can’t believe this worked,” Elorie said. “Not during an escape.”

  “Trust my hunches, okay.”

  “How… Dave! You’re bleeding and burnt,” Elorie said, grabbing him tightly. “Fuck, hun, I’m sorry. I cut things too close.”

  Dave raised his hand to the side of his head, felt blood, and yanked his hand back from the stinging singed flesh. He hadn’t felt any pain until he touched his head. He turned to Elorie and saw a cauterized chunk taken out of her side, showing ribs.

  Shit.

  “You’re hit, too. Badly.”

  “Hush. All this means is that we need to rescue Persona, and quickly,” Elorie said with her iron voice, not even taking a moment to react or even glance at her wounds. Elorie-the-death-wish rides again. “Which way?”

  React, move. Don’t think. Suppress his conscious thoughts. Let the ideas bubbling up from his subconscious flow. “Ahead and to the left.”

  I’m as much of an insane Telepath as any of the rest of them, Dave told himself. I’m just different. I’m not going to freeze up. I can do this.

  We can do this. We’re heroes now.

  Hop hop hop.

  The dimly lit corridor they stood in exited into a well-lit room; when they arrived they found two robots, one of them the one who brought them their food, playing checkers using lug nuts as pieces. They sat on violin cases. Around them, soft but cheesy haunted house background music filled in for real ambience.

  The robots turned to them and began to stand. Slowly.

  Dave ignored the insanity, trying not to think about the implications of large ungainly robots playing checkers, or the violin cases, or the background music, and pointed down the corridor. “Fourth door on the right.”

  He hopped faster as Elorie started to jog. The robots clanked raucously behind them, pealing out at least a half dozen heavy clanks between each of their slow steps. Had to be sound effects.

  “No handle!” Elorie said, when they reached the fourth door.

  Shit. Dave looked around for anything obvious and cursed. He had grown used to their own jail cell and its ‘not escape proof’ nature and hadn’t given any thought to the idea Persona’s jail cell might be different.

  Of course, Persona’s jail cell held a God.

  “Is the door an enchantment?” Dave said. The robots clanked closer.

  “Can’t tell. Hell. Sc
ream bloody murder, Dave, if you get a glimpse of Betrayer or those damned robots start to use willpower or you get even the slightest hunch of trouble.”

  Which meant Elorie was going to concentrate her immunity on the door and leave him unprotected. More hammering heart time.

  His heart obliged, and hammered.

  “There!” Elorie said, momentarily. The robots were now within seconds of them.

  Dave glanced at the door and the expected handle. Betrayer had just covered the pre-existing real-world metal door with a fancy willpower creation.

  “Door handle’s stuck,” Elorie said. Someone must have been banging on the cell door from the inside, and only one guess as to who, Dave thought. He glanced back to see the robots almost next to them. Too close!

  “Don’t mind me,” Dave said, as Elorie let go. He hopped over to the wall beside the door and didn’t fall. The lead robot reached toward him. He weaved out of the way and fell to the floor.

  Elorie grunted and put her entire weight on the handle, which went down, slowly, under her. When the handle got about three quarters of the way down, the door slowly slipped open on its own with Elorie balanced, ass in the air, perched on the cell door handle.

  Persona ran through the inch-wide opening, doing the God-body-squeeze. She blasted the nearest robot with a yellow helix strong enough to bounce hundreds of robot parts down the corridor. She blasted the second robot an instant later with the same result.

  “What the fuck are the two of you doing here?” Persona said, her voice painfully loud. “Elorie! What did you do to the wonderful body I made for you!”

  “We’re rescuing you whadda yah think,” Elorie said, instinctively New Yawking back at Persona. Dave smiled at the wonderful comeback, his smile turning to frowning fear as Elorie slipped off the door, fell to the steel floor eyes rolled up only whites showing, unmoving, and didn’t get up.

  “…and after we figured out Betrayer’s been training us we started to cooperate,” Dave said. “But after our cooperation didn’t win us any favors, Elorie hatched our escape plan.”