“Out of line, eh? That’s open to far too much interpretation. I think we need a divine…”
“I’m outside the Divine Compact,” Odysseia said. “Listen to the Daughter of Light. Listen to her stories about how she and Ken defeated Blind Tom – twice; listen to her story about how her mother, Dave and Elorie and the Godslayer’s followers, the Indigo, killed the God Santa Fe and destroyed the multi-Paladin, at the cost of too many lives; listen to her story about how Alt’s team of Telepaths, supposedly betrayed by me, helped me strike down Dubuque and Verona…and understand the lesson: none of us can succeed if we work alone. That’s the lesson of Betrayer’s Victory. Understand the Daughter of Light’s conception of the sweet mirror of reason as well. I will certainly be listening to her.”
“We don’t need a divine kneecapper,” Patricia said, angry, exasperated.
“Our history, from Apotheosis to this blood-drenched moment, says otherwise. Humanity might have haltingly gone past war, but we haven’t grown up enough to have surpassed our violent, criminal and factional urges. Whether you want it or not, I am here,” Odysseia said. “And I will be watching.”
Her comment was an exit line if she had ever heard one, so Odysseia left, following Nessa’s secret thoughts as to her destination.
Said destination turned out to be cold, mountainous, rocky, and bare of vegetation. With thin air.
Tibet.
Odysseia spied a small monastery carved into a rocky mount several hundred yards away. She flew over, wondering why Nessa would send her to such an empty place.
Inside, food smells, people smells. The place wasn’t empty.
A Han Chinese bowed to her when she reached the door. Other than by sight, he lay just beyond all her willpower detections. He reeked of immense and unfamiliar power.
“We are One Mind,” the Han Chinese said. For a moment Odysseia caught the presence of the rest of the men and women in this place, east and south Asians all. There were many and as the man said, they were one. “It is good of you to come and visit. We have much to talk about and much to teach you. We feel like we know you already.”
“Ah,” Odysseia said. One Mind was another source of hidden interference, yet more mental offspring of the Ha-qodeshim. Dozens of questions came to her mind – for one thing, One Mind ached with a desire for more knowledge, any knowledge, about her new peers, the dolphin Ha-qodeshim. The finny bastards had hidden themselves from One Mind, of all the crazy things. Learning why would reveal much. “So my travels continue.”
“Of course, of course. Always traveling, always learning, always teaching. Would you like some tea?”
66. (Dana)
“Dana!” Lydia said. Dana hugged the young woman, tears brimming from her eyes. Her call had worked! She did it!
“Wait a second. Dana? But…” Lydia paused and looked around the gray featureless void, Dana’s home away from home. “…you’re dead.” Another looong pause. “I’m dead.”
“Yes.” Sniff.
“How? What?”
“I snagged you on the way by.” The truth was far more complicated, but Dana didn’t want to get into the details. She wiped false tears from her false eyes.
“Why?”
“Why not?” Dana said, still struggling to breathe. “You’re young, there are those who love you, and if I have anything to say about it, your life isn’t finished yet.”
“You’re shaking,” Lydia said.
“Exertion.”
“You? Not your normal behavior, Boss. Where’s the blood?”
“Lydia….” Dana said. “Okay, grabbing you to me wasn’t easy, and my death this time was bad. I keep having flashbacks. That’s why I’m exhausted. You?”
“I…” Lydia began to shiver. “I don’t remember. Dana, I died but I don’t remember!”
Lydia bawled and Dana comforted her. As she held Lydia in her arms, Lydia would occasionally relax, mind elsewhere.
“What’s happening to me?” Lydia said, much later.
“You’re reliving your life. A good thing. Reliving your life will help you understand yourself and the world around you.”
“Oh. Yay for me. So do I become an Angel when I’m done?”
“Normally, no,” Dana said. “Normally you go to Heaven, into the mind of God Almighty.”
“This isn’t ‘normally’, is it?”
“Correct. Because there’s me. Because I grabbed you.” Dana had given up on worrying about being special. Now she embraced her specialness for all it was worth. A bunch of special purpose training from the Godslayer, after Dana’s latest death, hadn’t hurt, either. “Do you want to be an Angel, under my tutelage?”
“But… But you’re going to be resurrected. If we win.”
“If we win. If we win and Richard and Bob survive.”
“What about me?”
“I have another offer,” Dana said. “Yes, even if I am resurrected again, eventually I will die. No high tech immortality for me, as Richard sees for everybody in his vast post-singularity future. You, too, if you’re resurrected. Do you still want to be resurrected? Do you want to join me in this strange post-life I’m crafting?”
“Well, of course. Who wouldn’t?”
Most people, Dana suspected. “You won’t be the same, Lydia. Life won’t be the same; consider what happened to me. My changes reflected my own personal wants and desires. This place purifies,” Dana said. “You’ll be more Lydia than you’ve ever been before. And…”
“Yes?”
“At the moment, the only way back for those of us who aren’t celebrity corpses is the overwhelming love of a God.”
“You mean Bob.”
Dana nodded.
“Bob dumped me, Dana.”
“He did, but he’s young, and if he survived the battle, he’s going to be challenged. He’s going to need help, a partner, a mortal partner if he wants to retain any aspect of humanity. You could be that partner. But you have to want this. You have to pray for it.” Praying, here, worked wonders.
“You’re talking marriage.”
“Not necessarily legal marriage, but marriage in the eyes of God Almighty.”
Lydia shivered. “This is the crazy stuff again, the department of telepathic coincidence pools and loony-toons insanity, right?” Dana nodded. “Okay, sucks to be me. I think I can be dead with that.”
Dana giggled and gave Lydia a hug. “Well, I don’t know exactly what the backwards marriage story’s going to do to you, but given that Richard and my addition to the story is self-awareness and control, it’s clear to me that if you take this on, you become the next owner. You’ll inherit the responsibility over the backwards marriage story, over how and where it propagates to next,” Dana said. “It’s a new world we’re making, Lydia. New stories and new mythology. Do you want to be a part of this?”
“Dana, this place is like the spoon stuck in the morning oatmeal that is my soul. How the fuck should I know?”
“Lydia?”
Lydia sighed. “Sorry. Go ahead and bitchslap me if I try to metaphor again. This whole situation is way too freaky for a simple homie like me.” Lydia shook her head and ran her hands up and down her body. “You know, unlike when I’m astral, I’d swear I still have all my girl parts…”
“Lyyyydeeeeaaaah.”
“Okay, okay. My real objection to all this myth-making morosity is the fact we’re not Gods.”
“Yet. Richard’s point about the post-singularity world is that eventually everybody can become a God. Of sorts. We’re defining the how, from the bottom up, one babble at a time, unlike Dubuque and Verona’s top-down approach. Eventually, our babbling will become a language, and once we can speak the language we can talk our way through the singularity without it doing us in. There’ll be many varieties of godlike beings, including Angels like us. If we do this right, lots of Angelic Hosts will be visible to the people of Earth. That’s what I’m trying to build, along with the Indigo’s angelic backer, Kara the Godslayer. I’m her par
tner, now.”
“Nrrrr. Definitely crazy stuff,” Lydia said. She chewed on her lip and thought hard. “Okay. I must be feeling ass-stupid today, if you’re talking me into joining the Indigo. Count me in.”
“Good. Glad to have you on board,” Dana said. “You go back to reliving your life. You can’t do the review all at once. I still have a lot to review myself. Re-review. Despite what it may seem, it’s not all bad. You’ll find pieces you like so much you’ll almost fall in love with yourself. Those parts are what will be amplified if we can get you resurrected.”
“I hear an ‘and’.”
“You do. One of these times you wake up from the review, if all goes right, I’ll be gone,” Dana said. “Don’t panic. Remember I love you.”
Lydia’s eyes opened wider than wide as she hugged Dana. “I won’t forget. I promise.”
“Now, I’ve got to get to work. I’ve got some more Indigo souls to catch.”
Dana’s eyes flew open. Eyes, yay! She sat up in a rubble-strewn lawn, much more mentally aware of herself and her time in limbo than after her first resurrection. A canvas canopy hung a few feet above her, and beyond the edges she saw a few clouds occupying a bright blue sky. She found Richard, Bob and Maria. She didn’t see Kay. Another God had joined them, a tall African-American woman with familiar facial features and almost shiny obsidian-black skin. The new God dressed all in black, save for a red silk cloak. A Practical God by the feel of her.
Bob had morphed into an Ideological God, Maria into a Territorial, and from her aura, one of the kick ass strong ones. Changes, always changes.
Beyond them, Dana spotted a small audience, Nessa and Ken’s wary family. Farther away, just out of sight, the Indigo had pitched a large and – natch – indigo-colored tent. More people were stuffed into the place than she knew belonged to the Indigo. The ruins of Betrayer’s Lair slumped around all of them, smoke and steam rising from parts of it. A full day had passed since Dana’s last death.
Yes, they had won and – applause, applause – they had brought down the house.
“What are you doing with Atlanta’s voice?” Dana asked the Practical God.
“I was Atlanta, War and Betrayer. I’m Odysseia, the Great Satan now.”
“Oh, you?” Dana said, cocking an eyebrow. “Angelica didn’t fit, eh?”
Odysseia sighed and crossed her arms. “You are fucking impossible to one up, you know?”
“I do now,” Dana said. “I’m even comfortable with my impossibility.”
Dana stood and realized Odysseia was exactly her height and build. Odysseia’s face was familiar because Dana had seen it all her adult life every morning in the mirror. Change her race from Middle Eastern to African and they had become twins.
“Well.”
“Well.”
Welcome to the world of no coincidences, Dana told herself.
“I’m not going to hate you, despite the ‘hate me’ sign in your Mission,” Dana said. “I hope you won’t mind.”
“The Host won’t be happy with you.”
“Odysseia, I’m my own Host. Sort of.” She and the Godslayer remained too intertwined to be separate. They would need to define the details later. She flashed some Indigo at Odysseia, who nodded.
Dana gave in and hugged Odysseia, and to her surprise, the hard-bodied God hugged back. Were those tears in the corner of Odysseia’s hot red eyes?
“Where’s Kay?” Dana said.
“Kay, Master of Progress, died in the battle,” Richard said. Bob, unhappy to start with, became even more unhappy.
“Let’s resurrect her, too,” Dana said. This was fun, this becoming a power in the world, in its own sick way. Alive, dead, alive, dead, alive – and through it all, sane. She hoped. She looked at her hands and again they were both flesh and Angel.
“There’s no resurrection for Gods; being a God is a resurrection,” Odysseia said. “That’s intuitive for me, now; Richard says this is also a logical and technological truth.”
Dana nodded; once said she understood at both the logical and the intuitive levels. “Makes sense. Why are you here?” Dana said. Richard hadn’t rushed forward to comfort her; he looked upon her with wariness mixed with calm love. He didn’t need to protect her now.
Now she could stand alone.
“They needed a fourth,” Odysseia said.
Dana glanced again at Maria, Nessa, Ken, Dave and Elorie, who remained wary. The truth crouched in Odysseia’s insanely strong Mission, right next to the ‘hate me’ sign: ‘I give death to those who don’t play by the rules the Gods and mortals set up to govern their dealings’. She made her own friends and allies skittish.
Dana felt perfectly comfortable with Odysseia. Richard and Bob didn’t. Well.
“So we’re the bad guys again?” Dana said. Would this make her some form of fallen Living Saint? She didn’t feel fallen, though.
“Only me,” Odysseia said. “And only when necessary. The rest of you, you’re the dark and edgy ones who are going to be my companions.” The ‘you’ included the Telepaths, Dana decided, as well as Maria, Richard and Bob, and the Indigo. “Enjoy.”
“There’s one more,” Dana said. She turned to Bob. “Kid, you up for this?”
“You’re talking riddles, Mom.”
“I snagged Lydia to be one of my eventual Angelic Host. I know Lydia’s secret heart. She’s one of us. You, with our help, can resurrect her.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Eventual happens sooner.”
Bob sighed in his still fake-human fashion. “You’re worse than Patricia.”
“Patricia brought me into this world of you Gods,” Dana said. “I’m not surprised we remind you of each other.”
“Does Lydia know that if I resurrect her, there’s no going back?” Bob said. “I can’t bring her back without pledging my love for her.”
His comment brought smiles to Nessa’s and Ken’s faces and a warm glow to Richard’s aura. Richard held up a worn and crinkled manila envelope which contained two now well-used rings and waved them in the air.
Perfect. “I told her so, yes.”
“She even wants it, even after our fights?”
“Everybody fights, Bob. Breaks up, makes up. Life goes on.”
Nessa chortled. “Dana, you sound worldly.”
“Everybody grows, too,” Dana said, leaving it open whether she referred to her more worldly self or completing the ‘everybody fights’ sequence. “This is up to you, Bob.” She paused. “As an Ideological God, what are you pushing?”
“Reality,” he said and bowed. “Bob, Child of Morning, at your service, also known of as Singularity v2.0 to the cognoscenti. Maria of Birmingham’s the new Territorial God, all Odysseia’s fault, due to her weaponization of the piece of Maria she held in her lair.” Maria preened, radiating a Portland-powerful Mission. She liked being a kick-ass Territorial God. “Let’s do it,” Bob said.
They did. The resurrection worked. Bob and Lydia exchanged rings.
“Can I do my neo-Supported?” Bob said, after. “Do I have to marry them too?”
Dana shook her head. “Nah, they’ll marry each other. Eventually. They’re not as far along in their relationship as you and Lydia. They have to have the big fight first, remember?” Bob’s love for his neo-Supported was what counted. Hers too, especially for PheareChylde.
They raised them both.
“Now, the Natural Supported,” Dana said.
They tried and failed. Dana’s connections to them weren’t strong enough to offset their lack of connections to any of the Gods.
Dana wept.
Abe and Karen Stevens held court outside the Indigo tent, of all things talking to reporters and, to Dana’s ears, telling all and showing off Abe’s dramatic and mortal scars from yesterday’s fight. She avoided the media mob like the plague they were and, with Odysseia at her side, entered the tent and its reeking Hell vibes.
The Hell vibes were due to an open and stable portal to Hell. Befo
re her resurrection, Dana had handed over the souls she had caught to the Godslayer. Some of them were already alive again, but as expected on the other side of the portal.
“Jan! Knot!” Dana said, seeing the most improbable of the Indigo resurrectees. On the Earth side of the portal. “What are you doing alive, here?” Jan and Knot had been two of the souls she had caught.
January Cox, naked under her black silk cloak, came over and gave Dana a hug. “Tricks,” she said. Dana looked over Jan’s shoulder and Knot, and figured out at least part of what was going on.
“You two are no longer Indigo, are you?”
“Yes and no,” Knot said. “The Indigo is slowly transforming itself from Dream to Vision, and we’re in the process of creating the Traveler Dream underneath it.” Jan didn’t seem to be able to stop hugging Dana. Or purring. This, again.
“I guess Saint-style Angels must be as addictive as Warrior Angels,” the Godslayer said, walking over and peering under Jan’s eyelids. Dana had left the steampunk-attired Godslayer behind with Dave and Elorie, but here was a second one, this one wearing her usual Indigo grubbies, an ‘Atlanta University’ sweatshirt over ragged blue jeans. Odysseia, a bit annoyed at the Godslayer’s visual humor, sent over the fact that the place was actually called ‘Clark Atlanta University’, a predominantly African-American institution.
Dana smiled. “Let her hug,” she said. “I can feel the power boost.” The Godslayer laughed.
“Thank you, Dana, for coming over. We’ve got a problem to sort out.”
“What sort of problem can I help with? You’re quite a bit farther along with this, ahem, Angel thing than I am.” Two bodies at once? That was a real Archangel trick.
“Come over and I’ll show you.” The Godslayer led Dana – and the still attached Jan – over to where the Hell-portal curdled space. “My namesake wants to come back to Earth, but since she took the Path of Death to Hell, she can’t. Or, at least, I can’t help her.”
99 Gods: Odysseia Page 67