“Oh ah,” said Dirk.
“Oh ah.”
“So, er, Thor’s challenge then,” said Dirk tentatively.
“Oh ah.”
“What was it?”
“Oh ah.”
Dirk lost his patience entirely and rounded on the man.
“What was Thor’s challenge to Odin?” he insisted angrily.
The man looked round at him in slow surprise, looked him up and down with his big sagging eyes.
“You’re a mortal, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” said Dirk testily, “I’m a mortal. Of course I’m a mortal. What has being a mortal got to do with it?”
“How did you get here?”
“I followed you.” He pulled the screwed-up, empty cigarette packet out of his pocket and put it on the table. “Thanks,” he said, “I owe you.”
It was a pretty feeble type of apology, he thought, but it was the best he could manage.
“Oh ah.” The man looked away.
“What was Thor’s challenge to Odin?” said Dirk, trying hard to keep the impatience out of his voice this time.
“What does it matter to you?” the old immortal said bitterly. “You’re a mortal. Why should you care? You’ve got what you want out of it, you and your kind, for what little it’s now worth.”
“Got what we want out of what?”
“The deal,” said the old immortal. “The contract that Thor claims Odin has entered into.”
“Contract?” said Dirk. “What contract?”
The man’s face filled with an expression of slow anger. The bonfires of Valhalla danced deeply in his eyes as he looked at Dirk.
“The sale,” he said darkly, “of an immortal soul.”
“What?” said Dirk. He had already considered this idea and discounted it. “You mean a man has sold his soul to him? What man? It doesn’t make sense.”
“No,” said the man, “that wouldn’t make sense at all. I said an immortal soul. Thor says that Odin has sold his soul to Man.”
Dirk stared at him with horror and then slowly raised his eyes to the balcony. Something was happening there. The great drum beat out again, and the hall of Valhalla began to hush itself once more. But a second or third drumbeat failed to come. Something unexpected seemed to have occurred, and the figures on the balcony were moving in some confusion. The Challenging Hour was just expiring, but a challenge of some kind seemed to have arrived.
Dirk beat his palms to his forehead and swayed where he sat as all kinds of realizations finally dawned on him.
“Not to Man,” he said, “but to a man, and a woman. A lawyer and an advertiser. I said it was all her fault the moment I saw her. I didn’t realize I might actually be right.” He rounded on his companion urgently. “I have to get up there,” he said, “for gods’ sake, help me.”
29
“O . . . DDDDIIIIIIINNNNNN!!!!!”
Thor let out a bellow of rage which made the sky shake. The heavy clouds let out a surprised grunt of thunder at the sheer volume of air that moved beneath them. Kate started back, white with fear and shock, with her ears ringing.
“Toe Rag!!!!!”
He hurled his hammer to the ground right at his very feet with both hands. He hurled it this short distance with such astounding force that it hit and rebounded into the air up to about a hundred feet.
“Ggggrrrraaaaaaaaah!!!!!!” With an immense explosion of air from his lungs he hurled himself up into the air after it, caught it just as it was beginning to drop and hurled it straight back down at the ground again, catching it again as it bounded back up, twisting violently around in midair and hurling it with all the force he could muster out to sea before falling to the ground himself on his back, and pounding the earth with his ankles, elbows and fists in an incredible tattoo of rage.
The hammer shot out over the sea on a very low trajectory. The head went down into the water and planed through it at a constant depth of about six inches. A sharp ripple opened slowly but easily across its surface, extending eventually to about a mile as the hammer sliced its way through it like a surgeon’s knife. The inner walls of the ripple deepened smoothly in its wake, falling away from the sheer force of the hammer, till a vast valley had opened in the face of the sea. The walls of the valley wobbled and swayed uncertainly, then folded up and crashed together in crazed and foaming tumult. The hammer lifted its head and swung up high into the air. Thor leaped to his feet and watched it, still pounding his feet on the ground like a boxer, but like a boxer who was perhaps about to precipitate a major earthquake. When the hammer reached the top of its trajectory, Thor hurled his fist downward like a conductor, and the hammer hurtled down into the crashing mass of sea.
That seemed to calm the sea for a moment in the same way that a smack in the face will calm a hysteric. The moment passed. An immense column of water erupted out of the smack, and seconds later the hammer exploded upward out of its center, pulling another huge column of water up from the middle of the first one.
The hammer somersaulted at the top of its rise, turned, spun, and rushed back to its owner like a wildly over-excited puppy. Thor caught at it, but instead of stopping it he allowed it to carry him backward, and together they tumbled back through the rocks for about a hundred yards and scuffled to a halt in some soft earth.
Instantly Thor was back on his feet again. He turned round and round, bounding from one leg to the other with strides of nearly ten feet, swinging the hammer around him at arm’s length. When he released it again it raced out to sea once more, but this time it tore around the surface in a giant semicircle, causing the sea to rear up around its circumference to form for a moment a gigantic amphitheater of water. When it fell forward it crashed like a tidal wave, ran forward and threw itself, enraged, against the short wall of the cliff.
The hammer returned to Thor, who threw it off again instantly in a great overarm. It flew into a rock, hitting off a fat angry spark. It bounded off farther and hit a spark off another rock, and another. Thor threw himself forward onto his knees, and with each rock the hammer hit he pounded the ground with his fist to make the rock rise to meet the hammer. Spark after spark erupted from the rocks. The hammer hit each successive one harder and harder, until one spark provoked a warning lick of lightning from the clouds.
And then the sky began to move, slowly, like a great angry animal uncoiling in its lair. The pounding sparks flew faster and heavier from the hammer, more lightning licks arced down to meet them from the sky, and the whole earth was beginning to tremble in something very like fearful excitement.
Thor hauled his elbows up above his head and then thrust them hard down with another ringing bellow at the sky.
“O . . . ddddiiiiiiinnnnnn!!!!!”
The sky seemed about to crack open.
“Toe Raaaaagggggggg!!!!!!!!”
Thor threw himself into the ground, heaving aside about two skipsful of rocky earth. He shook with expanding rage. With a deep groan, the whole of the side of the cliff began slowly to lean forward into the sea as he pushed and shook. In a few seconds more it tumbled heavily into the seething torment beneath it as Thor clambered back, seized a rock the size of a grand piano and held it above his head.
Everything seemed still for a fleeting moment.
Thor hurled the rock into the sea.
He regained his hammer.
“O . . . !” he bellowed.
“ . . . Ddddddddinnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!”
His hammer cracked down.
A torrent of water erupted from the ground, and the sky exploded. Lightning flickered down like a white wall of light for miles along the coast in either direction. Thunder roared like colliding worlds and the clouds vomited rain that shattered the ground. Thor stood exulting in the torrent.
A few minutes later the violence abated. A strong and steady rain continued to fall. The clouds were cleansing themselves and the weak rays of the early morning light began to find their way through the thinning cover.
Thor t
rudged back up from where he had been standing, slapping and washing the mud from his hands. He caught at his hammer when it flew to him.
He found Kate standing watching him, shivering with astonishment, fear and fury.
“What was that all about?” she yelled at him.
“I just needed to be able to lose my temper properly,” he said. When this didn’t seem to satisfy her he added, “A god can show off once in a while, can’t he?”
The huddled figure of Tsuliwaënsis came hurrying out through the rain toward them.
“You’re a noisy boy, Thor,” she scolded. “A noisy boy.”
But Thor was gone. When they looked, they guessed that he must be the tiny speck hurtling northward through the clearing sky.
30
CYNTHIA DRAYCOTT PEERED over the balcony at the scene below them with distaste. Valhalla was back in full swing.
“I hate this,” she said. “I don’t want this going on in my life.”
“You don’t have to, my darling,” said Clive Draycott quietly from behind her, with his hands on her shoulders. “It’s all going to be taken care of right now, and it’s going to work out just fine. Couldn’t be better, in fact. It’s just what we wanted. You know, you look fantastic in those glasses. They really suit you. I mean really. They’re very chic.”
“Clive, it was meant to have been taken care of originally. The whole point was that we weren’t to be troubled, we could just do it, deal with it, and forget about it. That was the whole point. I’ve put up with enough shit in my life. I just wanted it to be good, one hundred percent. I don’t want all this.”
“Exactly. And that’s why this is so perfect for us. So perfect. Clear breach of contract. We get everything we wanted now, and we’re released from all obligations. Perfecto. We come out of it smelling of roses, and we have a life that is just one hundred percent good. One hundred percent. And clean. Just exactly as you wanted it. Really, it couldn’t be better for us. Trust me.”
Cynthia Draycott hugged herself irritably.
“So what about this new . . . person? Something else we have to deal with.”
“It’ll be so easy. So easy. Listen, this is nothing. We either cut him in to it, or we cut him right out. It’ll be taken care of before we leave here. We’ll buy him something. A new coat. Maybe we’ll have to buy him a new house. Know what that’ll cost us?” He gave a charming laugh. “It’s nothing. You won’t ever even need to think about it. You won’t ever even need to think about not thinking about it. It’s . . . that . . . easy. OK?”
“Hm.”
“OK. I’ll be right back.”
He turned and headed back into the antechamber of the hall of the All-Father, smiling all the way.
“So, Mr.—” he made a show of looking at the card again—“Gently. You want to act for these people, do you?”
“These immortal gods,” said Dirk.
“OK, gods,” said Draycott. “That’s fine. Perhaps you’ll do a better job than the manic little hustler I had to deal with first time out. You know, he’s really quite a little character, our Mr. Rag, Mr. Rag. You know, that guy was really quite amazing. He did everything he could, tried every oldest trick in the book to freak me out, and give me the runaround. You know how I deal with people like that? Simple. I ignore it. I just . . . ignore it. If he wants to play around and threaten and screech, and shovel in five hundred and seventeen subclauses that he thinks he’s going to catch me out on, that’s OK. He’s just taking up time, but so what? I’ve got time. I’ve got plenty of time for people like Mr. Rag. Because you know what the really crazy thing is? You know what’s really crazy? The guy cannot draw up an actual contract to save his life. Really. To save . . . his . . . life. And I tell you something, that’s fine by me. He can thrash around and spit all he likes—when he gets tired I just reel him in. Listen. I draw up contracts in the record business. These guys are just minnows by comparison. They’re primitive savages. You’ve met them. You’ve dealt with them. They’re primitive savages. Well, aren’t they? Like the Red Indians. They don’t even know what they’ve got. You know, these people are lucky they didn’t meet some real shark. I mean it. You know what America cost? You know what the whole United States of America actually cost? You don’t, and neither do I. And shall I tell you why? The sum is so negligible that someone could tell us what it was and two minutes later we would have forgotten. It would have gone clean out of our minds.
“Now, compared with that, let me tell you, I am providing. I am really providing. A private suite in the Woodshead Hospital? Lavish attention, food, sensational quantities of linen. Sensational. You could practically buy the United States of America at today’s prices for what that’s all costing. But you know what? I said, if he wants the linen, let him have the linen. Just let him have it. It’s fine. The guy’s earned it. He can have all the linen . . . he . . . wants. Just don’t fuck with me is all.
“Now let me tell you, this guy has a nice life. A nice life. And I think that’s what we all want, isn’t it? A nice life. This guy certainly did. And he didn’t know how to have it. None of these guys did. They’re just kind of helpless in the modern world. It’s kind of tough for them and I’m just trying to help out. Let me tell you how naive they are, and I mean naive.
“My wife, Cynthia, you’ve met her, and let me tell you, she is the best. I tell you, my relationship with Cynthia is so good—”
“I don’t want to hear about your relationship with your wife.”
“OK. That’s fine. That’s absolutely fine. I just think maybe it’s worth you getting to know a few things. But whatever you want is fine. OK. Cynthia’s in advertising. You know that. She is a senior partner in a major agency. Major. They did some big campaign, really big, a few years back in which some actor is playing a god in this commercial. And he’s endorsing something, I don’t know, a soft drink, you know, tooth rot for kids.
“And Odin at this time is just a down-and-out. He’s living on the streets. He simply can’t get anything together because he’s just not adapted for this world. All that power, but he doesn’t know how to make it work for him here, today. Now here’s the crazy part.
“Odin sees this commercial on the television and he thinks to himself, ‘Hey, I could do that, I’m a god.’ He thinks maybe he could get paid for being in a commercial. And you know what that would be. Pays even less than the United States of America cost, you follow me? Think about it. Odin, the chief and fount of all the power of all of the Norse gods, thinks he might be able to get paid for being in a television commercial to sell soft drinks.
“And this guy, this god, literally goes out and tries to find someone who’ll let him in a TV commercial. Pathetically naive. But also greedy—let’s not forget greedy.
“Anyway, he happens to come to Cynthia’s attention. She’s just a lowly account executive at the time, doesn’t pay any attention, thinks he’s just a wacko, but then she gets kind of fascinated by how odd he is, and I get to see him. And you know what? It dawns on us he’s for real. The guy is for real. A real actual god with the whole panoply of divine powers. And not only a god, but like, the main one. The one all the others depend on for their power. And he wants to be in a commercial. Let’s just say the word again, shall we? A commercial.
“The idea was dumbfounding. Didn’t the guy know what he had? Didn’t he realize what his power could get him?
“Apparently not. I have to tell you, this was the most astounding moment in our lives. A . . . stoun . . . ding. Let me tell you, Cynthia and I have always known that we were, well, special people, and that something special would happen to us, and here it was. Something special.
“But look. We’re not greedy. We don’t want all that power, all that wealth. And I mean, we’re looking at the world here. The whole . . . fucking . . . world. We could own the world if we wanted to. But who wants to own the world? Think of the trouble. We don’t even want huge wealth, all those lawyers and accountants to deal with, and let me tell you, I�
��m a lawyer. OK, so you can hire people to look after your lawyers and accountants for you, but who are those people going to be? Just more lawyers and accountants And you know, we don’t even want the responsibility for it all. It’s too much.
“So then I have this idea. It’s like you buy a big property, and then you sell off what you don’t want. That way you get what you want, and a lot of other people get what they want, only they get it through you, and they feel a little obligated to you, and they remember who they got it through because they sign a piece of paper which says how obligated they feel to you. And money flows back to pay for our Mr. Odin’s very, very, very expensive private medical care.
“So we don’t have much, Mr. Gently. One or two modestly nice houses. One or two modestly nice cars. We have a very nice life. Very, very nice indeed. We don’t need much because anything we need is always made available to us, it’s taken care of. All we demanded, and it was a very reasonable demand in the circumstances, was that we didn’t want to know any more about it. We take our modest requirements and we bow out. We want nothing more than absolute peace and absolute quiet, and a nice life because Cynthia’s sometimes a little nervous. OK.
“And then what happens this morning? Right on our own doorstep. Pow. It’s disgusting. I mean it is really a disgusting little number. And you know how it happened?
“Here’s how it happened. It’s our friend Mr. Rag again, and he’s tried to be a clever tricky little voodoo lawyer. It’s so pathetic. He has fun trying to waste my time with all his little tricks and games and runarounds, and then he tries to faze me by presenting me with a bill for his time. That’s nothing. It’s work creation. All lawyers do it. OK. So I say, I’ll take your bill. I’ll take it, I don’t care what it is. You give me your bill and I’ll see it’s taken care of. It’s OK. So he gives it to me.
“It’s only later I see it’s got this tricky kind of subtotal thing in it. So what? He’s trying to be clever. He’s given me a hot potato. Listen, the record business is full of hot potatoes. You just get them taken care of. There are always people happy to take care of things for you when they want to make their way up the ladder. If they’re worthy of their place on the ladder, well, they’ll get it taken care of in return. You get a hot potato, you pass it on. I passed it on. Listen, there were a lot of people who are very happy to get things taken care of for me. Hey, you know? It was really funny seeing how far and how fast that particular potato got passed on. That told me a lot about who was bright and who was not. But then it lands up in my back garden, and that’s a penalty-clause job, I’m afraid. The Woodshead stuff is a very expensive little number, and I think your clients may have blown it on that particular score. We have the whip hand here. We can just cancel this whole thing. Believe me, I have everything I could possibly want now.
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