99 Gods: Odysseia

by Randall Farmer

  “Oh like I’m going to be taking orders from a slicer like you?” S’up said. “I still think the way around the Paladin resurrection problem is to camp their fucking spawn.” Dave found S’up to be refreshingly adolescent, making no attempt to be anything other than the overeager fuckwad he was.

  “Dubuque’s Living Aints may be a bunch of kill stealing noobs, but even they’ll be able to sense that coming, no matter how I buff you ahead of time,” Bob said. “As I’ve said before, the caper’s too dangerous.”

  “Okay, how about we spike their canteens with roofies,” S’up said. “That’ll degrade their hits.”

  PheareChylde rolled her raccoon eyes. “Their bodies are made entirely of metal, you moronasaurus,” she said, a harsh whisper. “That’s about as useful as…”

  As they walked off, Nessa snorted. “And I thought translating the dolphins was difficult…”

  Then Dave flashed on the answer, and understood what lay behind Nessa’s brand of inhumanity as well as the Indigo’s fear of Telepaths and Psychics for the first time. He stuffed his hunch back into the depths of his mind, hopefully to forget.

  Until the proper time, of course.

  “Dammit!” Ken said. In his anger he left one of the broken enchanted robots in tiny twisted-up pieces on the lawn surrounding the iron double doors of the entry. No road exited the lair, not even a driveway. The doors led out onto a lawn, and then into the dense trees of the West Virginia hills. The doors stood open now, and Dave joined the small crowd gathered a few feet outside the lair.

  “Betrayer got you too?” Richard said.

  Ken nodded. “I can’t believe it. None of the Gods is supposed to know this much about us Telepaths. I used tricks I’ve never shown anyone but Nessa! Worse, I could swear the outer defensive shell, the one stopping me, wasn’t even there when we came in. I’m sure it wasn’t.”

  “She is the master of betrayal,” Richard said. “She got us the same way with her inner defensive shell, which definitely wasn’t there until after I solved the front door.” The defensive shells extended thousands of feet away from Betrayer’s lair, powered by Richard and Bob’s own Territories. They let people in, but not out.

  Nessa giggled, ogling Betrayer’s lair and apparently having the time of her life.

  One of the Lair’s exterior gargoyles stuck its tongue out at her.

  Standard gargoyle behavior.

  She stuck out her tongue back.

  Typical Nessa behavior.

  “So, what’s been going on?” Dana asked.

  Uffie told the tale, starting from when their group had left Richard and Bob’s army and ending with an all-night flight here from northern South America.

  “Fun,” Dana said. “I guess you get to help us fight off Dubuque and Santa Fe’s Paladins.”

  “That’s just for starters,” Nessa said. “My spy in Europe told me you’re going to get the European Paladin contingent. The whole thing.”

  “My hunch is we’re going to be facing over two hundred Paladins,” Ken said. “Which means Dubuque’s also got use of some of the South American Paladin contingent.”

  Shit.

  “There,” Maria said. She had only spent six hours merged with the enchantments in Betrayer’s lair before resuming her role as resident crazy God. She hadn’t been able to give them any clues about how she had changed, save that yes, she knew she wasn’t just an Ideological God any more.

  A few of the Indigo people had set up a couple of the infinite supply of mad scientist laboratories as proper living spaces, smaller and less intimidating than the larger rooms designed for that sort of thing. They had found a few real items of furniture and moved them in to replace the bizarre and mostly non-functional laboratory equipment. Now Nessa had Maria showing one of her new tricks in the larger of the two. Maria detached a finger and expanded it, turning her finger into a stiffer-than-normal projection.

  Nessa concentrated for a moment, and then refocused her eyes and turned to Elorie. “You two need to take a few steps back for a few moments.”

  Elorie took Dave’s hand and stepped back. The movement joggled both twins awake, and Elorie stepped back farther and found a couch. Feeding time. Dave helped Elorie situate herself.

  Through the Nessa connection, the projection woke up and turned into a frumpy Latino woman who reminded Dave of his mother. Patricia Solis of Portland, he guessed. “This worked,” the Territorial God said. She looked around the room, and her glance paused a short moment on the twisted pile of neo-Gothic lab equipment shoved to the side. She didn’t comment on it, though. “You’re right, there’s something here to prevent me from completely disinhabiting this projection when I’m done talking. So, if you want, I can tell you what’s about to happen.”

  “Great. Tell us,” Nessa said, and made mouths of her hands.

  “Dubuque’s formally requested all the City of God members to donate battle projections for the siege. I’ll be bringing in an honor guard of Natural Supported, not my enchantment-based army. At the moment I’m toeing the line and following the rules. In public. All but a dozen of the City of God Paladins will be in on the attack.”

  “You’re going to help in the attack?” Nessa asked. “I was hoping you could loan us your army!”

  “Not yet. I am going be helping Dubuque in this, if he stays reasonable. No killing, though; I’m going to demand I get you Telepaths. You don’t want Santa Fe to grab you. He wants to work out some dark fantasy desires and torture the lot of you to death in the guise of saving your souls.”

  Dave inhaled a hiss. He had heard stories about Solis of Portland’s ever-changing plots, plans and schemes. She supposedly changed her mind more often than she changed her underwear. “You can’t be serious,” Nessa said. “This isn’t going to work. Dubuque and Verona won’t agree.”

  “Perhaps,” Solis said. “But that’s what I’m going to try. If my idea fails, we’ll wing it.”

  “I thought you agreed to help us, Patricia,” Nessa said.

  “I am helping you! You’re just too muddle-headed to understand,” Solis said. “Look, one wrong move here and we’re going to start a Divine world war. Billions will die before the world war ends. Billions! This is what the Host created us to stop! I have to try to find a peaceful way out of this; far too many Tradition Gods are wondering if this is the moment to strike.” Implying Solis of Portland had extensive contacts with the Tradition Gods. Dave didn’t doubt the implication for one moment.

  “Well, that’s because you wouldn’t commit earlier,” Maria said. “We didn’t have any choice but to go to Tradition.”

  “I understand,” Solis said. “You needed to act in your own best interests. So am I, and my goal, my ‘best interests’, is ‘no war’.”

  “Well, ‘duh’,” Nessa said. “I’d just expected more out of you, Patricia.”

  “Have faith, Daughter. I’d rather be in your position than Dubuque’s, or even mine.” Solis’s projection went to sleep.

  Dave feared he had fallen into one of those marches of folly, like the one that led to the start of World War I. He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just huddled up next to Elorie and waited for the insanity to start.

  Had Solis been playing along, selling Nessa and Ken a story?

  Which side was she on, anyway?

  His gut said she could end up on either side.

  55. (Dana)

  “Richard and Bob joined with Tradition for several reasons,” Dana said, responding to Uffie’s third question. She spoke to Nessa, Ken, Uffie and Diana; according to Ken they needed to know all of this. Dave and Elorie had quietly joined them, sitting separately, hesitant on many levels. They had the twins and the twins’ ubiquitous portacrib with them. Dana had invited Abe’s Indigo group to the confab, but they had declined, today avoiding Nessa and Ken like bats avoid the sun. Even Nessa’s mother.

  Their group spread out across the gold gargoyle room, ignoring the way the gargoyles’ eyes tracked their every movement.
Even the unsettling gargoyles couldn’t keep the room from being the most comfortable of the large informal living spaces. The furniture was made of actual low-carat gold, with gargoyles extruding from every surface, but at least it had cushions. If only they has something better to eat in this place than MREs. Richard made them seem to be gourmet meals, his creativity revived by some rest and a desire to one-up Betrayer, but Dana didn’t think his trick fooled a single person in this room.

  “First, we decided joining Tradition would help us more in our quest to stop the Armageddon War than being a third faction,” Dana said. “Second, Tradition was willing to join – use, that is – the Divine Compact method of dispute resolution. Third, Tradition isn’t opposed to our ideas about humanizing the 99 Gods. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not in favor of the idea, but they’re willing to listen. The originators of Tradition are opposed, and they do carry a lot of weight in Tradition, but the most recently recruited Tradition Gods are more open to the idea, seeing humanization as a counterbalance to the pressures of Westernization. Fourthly, Tradition won’t require us to ditch Western civilization; instead, preserving it would become our responsibility.”

  “So in the end you end up with something akin to the status quo ante?” Elorie said, voice quiet and hesitant. “Only with the 99 Gods involved at a lower level than right now. Is this really an improvement?”

  “That brings me to the last point. Richard sold them on the idea that the 99 Gods are here on Earth to moderate the singularity, his big bugaboo worry about the future. The Tradition Gods understand this at a gut level, as part of their worries has always been unconstrained technical advancement.”

  Somewhere nearby Dana heard water start to drip, more of this place’s crazy ambience. Nessa’s group chewed on her answer, telepathy churning madly, especially between Diana and Nessa. “Why isn’t this the feared ‘dictatorship of the Gods’?” Uffie said.

  Zach started to cry. Elorie and Nessa exchanged glances, and Nessa took Zach from Elorie’s arms and put him on her breast. A moment later, Alana chimed in and Nessa took her, too.

  “If we pull this off, the idea of popular sovereignty, commonly termed ‘democracy’ by the media, would return to its slow spread,” Dana said. “The 99 Gods are better suited for two roles: technology police and distant monarchs slash ceremonial presidents. Tradition hasn’t fully accepted the change, but at least they’ve given us an in, a seat at the table and leverage for peaceful change.”

  “Hmm. Working from within, exactly the same complaint you’ve been barking about with Solis of Portland,” Uffie said. “Inconsistent, perhaps?”

  Dana reddened. “Yes, but Patricia’s allied with the wolf at the door, a wolf that won’t compromise at all.”

  Uffie nodded. “Just wanting to make sure you understood the hole in your argument. I believe you had the next question, Ken?”

  Ken’s eyes returned from wherever and focused on Dana. “What’s going on with this resurrection business? Why were you resurrected and no one else?”

  Dana had known that question would come up. She had been dodging Nessa, Diana and Uffie’s probing hints on the subject ever since their arrival.

  “The best explanation comes from the mouth of the person who passed the information on to us, and given who this is, this will also allow you to share in the disquiet that Richard and the rest of us have.” Dana fumbled around with her iPad, and cued the video on one of the large flat screens, set up on a circular gold table with a ring of dancing gargoyles around the edge. She bit her lower lip when every gargoyle in the room turned as one to watch the video. As far as she knew, the gargoyles had never done this before. In the video, Betrayer gave her vulgarity-spiced bwah hah hah spiel, teaching Richard everything he needed to know about resurrection.

  “Enough!” Ken said, about two thirds of the way through. The video turned off, Ken’s doing. “Betrayer. Betrayer. Betrayer. I don’t like this, not at all. It’s disruptive.”

  “What is?”

  “Resurrections. Don’t you see?” Ken said. “It’s Sauron’s Ring. It’s Aladdin’s Lamp. Resurrection is a trap. You fear a world war among the Gods? Well, the ability to resurrect and its limitations will trivially tear the Gods’ mortal allies apart, not for ideological but personal reasons. If we’re not careful. We could have wars over resurrection’s use and lack of use. Resurrection is so good it’s evil!”

  Ken’s rant, which ended in a shout, drew frowns from everyone in his crew, and they all turned to Ken and stared, as did Dana.

  “You talking short term or long term?” Elorie said.

  Ken winced. “Yes. Both. Like, okay, say we win the battle against Dubuque and beat him off. Afterwards comes the question of who gets raised from the dead. The question might break us apart. This shouldn’t have ever come up.”

  “Dubuque resurrected first,” Diana said. “Live, on television. If not Betrayer, some other God would have figured out the details. The trick was already out there, waiting to disrupt.”

  “Pointing fingers won’t fix the problem,” Ken said, ice cold. Metal moaned nearby. The gargoyles scattered and took cover, crouching down, putting their metal hands over their metal eyes, and making squeaky metal-on-metal chirps.

  “Divine Compact contracts,” Dana said, half to herself. “The Gods should be able to tell who they can resurrect. Provide contracts for all, stating their resurrection status; let the ones who don’t like the idea of fighting without the hope of resurrection leave.”

  “Your idea doesn’t help us one bit,” Ken said. “The Gods won’t be able to resurrect more than a handful. This is going to drown us under an ocean of resentment.”

  “Yoo hoo,” Nessa said, eyes opening and glistening, as if she had been crying. Her voice didn’t match the mood of her face, though. “This won’t be a problem, Ken, not for many a year. With enough resurrectees like Dana around to weird people out, people will be signing these contracts to prevent their resurrections.”

  “Very few will be coming back as Angels,” Dana said. She blushed. “I’m sorry, but I am a special case.”

  Nessa rolled her eyes. “Everyone’s a special case. Besides, we’ve got tangible proof of the afterlife now. At least I do and Dana does. Though it’s not comic page heaven with gramps and grannies looking down from clouds; it’s dissolving your ego into God Almighty’s freaky oversized mind and becoming one with his multi-universal multi-timeline transfinite oneness and as always in the ‘act-as-one’ state, you think you’re in charge. Going back to God’s certainly good enough for me.” She sniffed. “So what are you all looking at me for, anyway?”

  “That’s all?” Dana said. Bob and Richard had been integrating Betrayer’s control room into their willpower computer tricks; they were now able to grab videos from anywhere within eighty miles of the Lair. Without cameras, of course. Bob and Richard’s picture showed twenty Paladins patrolling above a forested hillside in Kentucky, near Cumberland, about sixty miles away from Betrayer’s Lair on the slopes of High Knob.

  “Those Paladins are just their scouts,” Bob said. “The rest are being transported by projections of their originating Gods. As predicted, he’s sending his entire horde at us this time.”

  Dana stiffened and looked away. This was the big attack they all feared. The end of the world as they knew it. Nessa and Ken’s group hadn’t even been in Betrayer’s Lair twenty four hours. Tendrils of anticipatory fear ran through her; she didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to be attacked, didn’t want the violence. Her instincts told her she shouldn’t participate, that this was all bad and should not, must not happen. She ignored her instincts for now.

  They watched as the projections arrived and dropped Paladin squads. Dubuque, Worcester, San Jose, Verona, Lodz, and Cologne all made their projected appearances, followed by Santa Fe in person.

  “Scared now,” PheareChylde said, quiet, as she counted Paladins. Dana put the total at a hundred eighty seven.

  “Nope, we’re not going to
have fun,” Bob said.

  Projections of Portland, Montreal, Akron, Bogotá, Cordoba, Marseille, Budapest and Athens followed the Paladins, each with their own Godly various retinues and guards, another two hundred, a motley array of neo-Supported, Natural Supported mercenaries, and enchantment toting guards.

  “This thing bothers me,” Richard said, pointing at one screen. There, ten Paladins unpacked a crate the size of a house, exposing a thirty foot long sleek and mechanical art deco toaster merged with a 90’s style meat slicer. “I’ve never seen a portable enchantment so large.”

  Dana blinked. The toaster monument to giantism reeked of evil and death. People had died in the enchantment’s creation.

  “The enchantment is a one shot weapon,” Bob said. “Think Leyden jar or capacitor.”

  “I think the enchantment has more than one shot.”

  “Okay, okay, perhaps the enchantment has six or ten,” Bob said. “But it’s not an engine. The enchantment’s a limited weapon at best. Its main purpose may be to scare the crap out of us.”

  “I think the plan’s working,” Dana said, through thin lips.

  “Now that’s annoying,” Bob said, pointing at a different screen. “Portland’s bodyguards are using our computer-aided-willpower technology!” He frowned. “Not a direct steal, but close.”

  “I sense Betrayer’s hand in this,” Richard said.

  Dana nodded.

  Not at all unexpected.

  “The barrier we can’t breech runs about a half mile out from the Lair,” Dana said to the team commanders gathered in the throne room. Richard had created a scaled version of the immediate area, and another of the lair itself, and they occupied a large fraction of the center of the room. Right now, everyone gathered around the model of the immediate area. Dana highlighted features on the model with an angelic purple glow as she pointed. “So the barrier defines the battlefield. The walls and interior of the Lair will serve as our main defensive bastion, but we’ll be doing sorties as needed. To start with, until they find some way of breaching the Lair’s enchanted walls, we’re staying inside unless an absolute tactical necessity arises.” Dana hadn’t been able to ditch her traditional leadership position. Notwithstanding her newfound pacifism and her disgust at this war, she was able to cope (a little) if she firmly kept in the front of her mind the self-defense aspects of the battle. “There are no innocents in the battle and no civilians save the media. The Paladins don’t even have living bodies. I still expect you to behave as civilized people, though.”