Tom Holt

by 4 Ye Gods!

  'We are saying out loud what the Thought in your head would be saying if it could speak out loud,' said the dog.

  'Really?'

  'Yes.'

  'You mean to say,' Jason said, 'that I'm actually thinking all this garbage?'

  'No; said the dog.

  Jason whimpered ever so slightly. 'Oh be fair, please,' he said. 'I can cope with gibberish just as long as it's consistent. I thought you just told me...'

  'The Thought is not you; said the dog. 'The Thought is the god-turned-backwards. Previously I have spoken to you in the quiet of your mind. Here I am speaking to you through the dog.'

  'Why?'

  'Why not?'

  There was another very long silence.

  'Had you going there for a minute, didn't we?' said the dog.

  Stuff it, Jason said to himself, enough is enough. He made a careful estimate of the position of the dog's rear end and kicked hard. There was a triune yelp and a sharp stabbing pain in the back of his head, but he really didn't mind about that. He felt better now.

  'Ouch,' said the dog.

  'Serves you right,' Jason replied. 'You had it coming.'

  'Can't you take a joke or something?' growled the dog.

  'No.'

  The dog growled ominously; and was that a very faint breath of moving air Jason could feel on his cheek? 'Would you care to rephrase that?' ventured one of the dog's heads.

  'Why should I?'

  'Because,' said a different head, 'in the circumstances that wasn't the cleverest thing you've ever said, that's all.'

  'So what?' Jason snarled. 'You can have too much of being clever if you ask me. Right now I fancy being mindlessly violent.'

  'Keep your voice down, for dog's sake,' whispered all three voices (but not simultaneously). 'This is not the right time for aggressive posturing.'

  Jason shook his head. 'I don't care,' he said. 'I've had enough and I want to go home. Failing that, I want an explanation. My final, fall-back option is a heavily-mangled dog, but perhaps we can sort something out if we work at it.

  'You want an explanation?' said the dog.

  'Yes.'

  'Then you shall have it.

  Jason suddenly became extremely still, as if someone had just unplugged him. 'Did you say something?' he asked.

  'No; whispered three very nervous dog-heads.

  'Somebody said something.'

  'We know.'

  'Who?'

  Woof.'

  'Woof?'

  Then Jason felt something in the back of his head; not felt as in an emotional response; more like felt as in there being a large, heavy weight behind his ears which was swinging in a semicircle, taking the head with it.

  'Come here,' commanded the darkness. But a tiny spark of courage flashed across the contacts of what remained of Jason's personality, and he stayed where he was. Fear of death, the unknown, darkness and the Devil were one thing, he decided; bad manners were something else.

  'Only if you put the lights on,' he replied.

  The darkness laughed. 'Sure?'

  'Sure.'

  And there was light.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  On his way back up Virgil was stopped by a hairy old man long fingernails whom he recognised at once. He shuddered and tried very hard to look like somebody else.

  'Excuse me,' said Pluto, 'but have you seen a dog?'

  'Frequently,' Virgil replied. 'So thank you all the same, but...'

  'No,' Pluto said, 'what I mean is, have you seen a dog recently?'

  Virgil considered for a moment. 'Can't say I have,' he said. 'Not for ages. But I'm trying to give them up, actually, so it's no skin off my nose. Good Lord, is that the...'

  Pluto looked at him carefully. 'Here,' he said, 'I know you, don't I?'

  'Me?' Virgil shook his head vigorously. 'That's highly unlikely, isn't it?'

  Pluto frowned. 'I do know you,' he said accusingly. 'You're dead.'

  'Well yes; Virgil said, 'If you want to be biologically exact I suppose I am, but I try not to dwell on it too much. Clearly where you come from, tact is held in roughly the same esteem as personal appearance. And now I must be...'

  'Then what are you doing here?'

  'Where?'

  'Here,' Pluto said, 'in the land of the living. You should be in...'

  'And the same to you too,' Virgil said quickly. 'Must rush. Bye.'

  It was fortunate for the poet that Pluto had other things on his mind, for the ex-God of the Dead has never, despite his best efforts, completely retired, and he has extremely strong views on dead people who wander about topside, fiddling about with the Great Chain of Being and startling old ladies. Instead of taking the matter further, however, Pluto simply shrugged and carried on following the dog.

  It wasn't difficult, actually; in many places, the tiles on the walls of the corridors were already starting to bubble, and the smell was unmistakable. He might be three-headed, immortal and capable of human speech, but Cerberus was very much a dog.

  Down past the normal, everyday levels now, and Pluto began to feel that familiar feeling of uneasiness, together with a certain very faint nostalgia. It had been years since he last visited Hell (or, as he had always tried to think of it, the Autumn Leaves Rest Home); and -- well, you can never completely let go, can you?

  My God, Pluto said to himself as he wandered through the endless passageways, what have they done to the old place? All right, it had never exactly been what you'd call cosy -- too many souls-in-torment for that -- but at least he'd tried his best. You can do a lot with the odd pot plant here and framed print there, the occasional lick of paint and roil of woodchip when the budget could run to it; even just little things, like a table, a couple of chairs and a few old colour supplements, made a great deal of difference to the guests (Pluto always thought of them as guests). After all, a lot of people have to spend a lot of time here, and the least you can do is try to encourage them to think of it as their home ... He shook his head sadly and tried to remember where the laundry cupboard used to be.

  He arrived on the platform just as the train was pulling in and jumped nimbly through the doors, stepping over the crushed bodies with the ease of long practice. The train was always pretty full at this time of day, he remembered, but he found one of those corner seats which have a little blue notice above it saying Please give up this seat if an irrevocably damned person needs it, put a damned expression on his face, and sat down. He was just starting to wonder where the dog could have got to when he became aware of someone standing over him.

  'I said, Tickets please.'

  Pluto looked up into what he took at first to be a pair of blue industrial lasers, and nearly jumped Out of his skin.

  'Look,' said the spectre, 'have you got a ticket or not?' Pluto twitched slightly and the spectre glowered at him, if yellow-fanged, goat-headed monsters can glower; the point has never been properly researched, understandably.

  Pluto pulled himself together. 'Well, no,' he admitted. 'You're new here, aren't you?'

  'If you haven't got a ticket,' said the spectre -- how, Pluto asked himself, does he manage to avoid skewering his own upper lip every time he speaks? -- 'you'll have to buy one now. That or I put you off at the next stop.'

  Pluto, who knew what the next stop was, rummaged vigorously in his pocket for change. Being a god is all very well, but one doesn't like to push one's luck. Mercifully, he found some money.

  'How much?' he asked, and the spectre told him. While it was writing out a ticket, Pluto laid the two coins across his own closed eyelids and waited.

  'Here,' said the spectre, 'haven't you got anything smaller?' Pluto apologised, took his ticket and his change, and started breathing again. Spectres were definitely new since last dine, although he remembered that there had been demons. State-registered demons, naturally. They had been pretty horrible, true; but at least they were polite and had their watches pinned to their frontal scales.

  The panic over, he leaned back in his sea
t and watched the stations go by -- Lechery, Gluttony, Wrath (change here for Murder, Parricide and Regicide), Sloth, Sloth Circus, High Street Sloth, Sloth Central, Sloth Broadway, Greed (escalator link to Simony), Pride and Being Found Out...

  Being Found Out? Yes, thought Pluto, I guess I really am out of touch. He shrugged and started reading the advertisements.

  'Ah,' Jason said, 'hello there.'

  Me and my big mouth, he said to himself. Who was it insisted on having the lights on, then? Old Mister Dickhead, that's who.

  'Hello yourself.'

  There was a long pause, and Jason took a cautious look at his new companion.

  Say what you like about Jason, he is not one of those idiots who takes against people just because of the colour of their skin. But he does like them to have skin, and this chap palpably didn't. Instead, he seemed to have masonry.

  Description is the lifeblood of narrative, so let us start with the furniture. The throne he sat in was made from some sort of very shiny black metal, and its four feet, carved in the shape of disconcertingly realistic dragons' heads, rested on nothing at all. The little light that there was seemed to be coming from the throne, but it wasn't as if there were little bulbs hidden discreetly behind the reliefs of writhing serpents and contorted bull-headed shapes. The light just seemed to ooze out of the metal, like acid from a very old battery. There were other things oozing out of the throne apart from the light, of course, but since they seemed to be turning into snakes and spiders and other nasty things as soon as they got clear of the throne Jason decided to do the sensible thing and pretend he hadn't seen them.

  So much for the furniture. Now for the clothes. He wore a flowing black robe, heavy with glittering black gemstones; jet and obsidian, that sort of thing, although ordinary gemstones don't hurt your eyes so much when you look at them. The cloth -- Jason assumed for the sake of a quiet life that it was cloth -- was simply the colour and texture of the absence of light. On his feet he wore shoes in the shape of huge hooked talons, except that they weren't shoes.

  We are pussyfooting, we know; but that is because since the Great Adjective Shortage of 1976, we simply can't get the materials. We will therefore leave it at Very Horrible and hope that you will bear with us and use your imaginations. Carefully.

  'Have a sausage roll,' he said.

  Jason grinned weakly. 'No thanks,' he said. 'I had something before I came out, really. Er...'

  'Yes?'

  'Well, it's... I mean... Like, don't let me keep you or anything, I...'

  'You're not.'

  'I don't get many visitors. It's nice to speak to someone occasionally, even just a mortal.'

  'Well, that's very kind of you to say so, but I'm sure you're very busy really, and...'

  'No I'm not.'

  'Ah. Yes. Um...'

  'Are you,' he said, 'Jason Derry?'

  That, Jason felt, was one of those trick questions, like Was it you who broke the window? He made a small, indecisive gesture. 'Er...' he said.

  'You are, aren't you?'

  'Urn...'

  'Your dog seems to think you are.'

  'My dog?'

  'I take it that's your dog? Who's a good boy, then?'

  Jason looked round to see Cerberus nodding all three heads at once. Not for the first time, Jason remembered that he didn't much like dogs.

  'Yes,' he said.

  'Ah,' he said, 'that's all right, then.'

  There was a blinding flash of multi-coloured light and the throne and its occupant vanished. The sheer force of so much light knocked Jason clean off his feet (not that he was exactly on them to begin with) and he fell headlong onto nothing at all.

  Or, to be pedantically accurate, a carpet. Quite a nice carpet, in fact. Woolly, deep-pile, the colour of spilt tea.

  'Sorry about that,' said a voice above his head. 'That was clumsy of me.'

  Slowly, Jason looked up, and his eyes met the toes of a pair of slippers. Blue, slightly scuffed, comfortable-looking.

  'Pleased to meet you, Jason,' said the voice. 'You don't mind if I call you Jason, do you?'

  Jason managed to detach his eyes from the slippers and looked up further still. The throne and the living statue had gone; however, the floor had come back. Also the walls, the ceiling, the Sword of Whatsit (but not its name), and the bag of sandwiches. The latter two exhibits were on a coffee-table beside an armchair in which was seated a very nice, apparently quite friendly old gentleman in a dressing-gown and blue slippers. He had a plate of the most delicious-looking sausage rolls on his lap, and he offered one to Jason.

  'Sorry about all the black stuff,' he said, 'but in my position you can't be too careful. It's supposed to scare -the crap out of people. Of course, I've never actually seen it myself so I don't know if it works. Does it?'

  'Yes; said Jason with his mouth full. For some reason, which he couldn't quite fathom, he felt a strong urge to burst out laughing at this point; being possessed of semi-divine willpower, however, he managed to keep it to a discreet snurge.

  'Oh good,' the nice man replied. 'Now, let me introduce myself, and then we can have a cup of tea and a chat. My name's Gelos. I gather you wanted to meet me.'

  'Your economy; said Diana carefully, 'and raise you fifty.' Apollo nodded listlessly. Diana muttered something under her breath and rolled the dice.

  'More fool you!' she crowed. 'We're welching on our National Debt, so sucks to you.'

  Apollo hardly seemed to notice. 'That's nice,' he said distractedly. 'Look, tell me when it's my go, will you, I'm just watching something over here.'

  Diana scowled. 'Pol,' she said, 'I've just wiped out three of your major clearing banks. Aren't you interested?'

  'Sorry?'

  'Pol!' Diana banged her goblet of ambrosia sharply on the table. 'Will you please pay attention to the Game!'

  'Mmmm,' Apollo replied. 'Could you just bear with me a moment while I just nip down to Earth? Perhaps you could just ask Ma or someone to play my hand for me while I'm away.'

  Diana was now seriously worried. Asking a fellow god to take your go for you was like offering the Big Bad Wolf a job in a creche. 'Is it, er, important?' she asked.

  'Quite,' Apollo answered, 'yes.'

  'Shouldn't I call Mm, then?'

  'No,' Apollo said firmly, 'decidedly not.'

  'Why?'

  Apollo considered his choice of words carefully. 'For the same reason,' he said at last, 'why you shouldn't remove rings from coffee-tables with coarse grain sandpaper. Won't be long.'

  Diana watched as he disappeared into the far darkness, shrugged, and tentatively moved the Chinese army into Nepal. As she did so, a single golden rose leaf drifted slowly down from above her head, twirled gracefully and settled on her knee. She picked it up and saw that there were tiny letters picked out on it in fire.

  I saw that, they said.

  'Ah nuts,' Diana said, and removed her army.

  'What do you mean,' said Ms. Fisichelli, 'there aren't any?'

  'I'm sorry,' Mary replied ruefully. 'The jar's empty.'

  Ms. Fisichelli scratched her head. 'That's funny,' she said. 'There were plenty when I looked this morning.'

  'I know,' said Mary.

  'Pardon me?'

  'I ate them,' Mary explained.

  Ms. Fisichelli suddenly became very still and cold, like a mammoth in a glacier. 'You ate them,' she repeated.

  'Well, er, yes.'

  'Apollo's sacred olives.'

  'Yes. I...'

  'I see,' said Ms. Fisichelli. 'Well,' she went on, 'that's fine. Thank you so much for letting me know. I suppose Mr. A is going to have to make do with tinned olives from the deli just this once but I'm sure he won't mind.'

  'I...'

  'And now,' Ms. Fisichelli continued remorselessly, 'provided always that you haven't eaten the altar and the sacred tripod I think it's time we made a start. Pass me the simpulum, please.'

  Mary bowed her head and handed the Pythoness the simpulum without commen
t. Nuts, said a voice at the back of her head. I was just hungry, that's all...

  Ms. Fisichelli, meanwhile, had turned on the Sacred Gas and was just trying to get the Sacred Lighter to work (guess who forgot to change the Holy Flint again) when the Sacred Flame suddenly leapt up of its own accord, nearly taking her eyebrows off.

  'Goddamnit, you clumsy... Gee, I'm sorry., In the presence of her god, Ms. Fisichelli's aggravation dissolved. 'I wasn't expecting.'

  The divine head nodded on its neck of flame. 'Okay,' it said, 'my fault, sorry. Look, can we do without all this mumbo-jumbo for once? I've only popped out for a moment, and I don't want Mm ... I mean, this can only be a brief audience. I've got to, well, see a man.'

  'Master?'

  'About a dog.'

  'I see, Master.'

  'So,' said the divine head, 'if it's all the same to you girls, I'm just going to slip into something more comfortable. Back in a tick.'

  The sacred flame went suddenly out and the patera, deprived of its support, dropped like a stone and shattered on the rim of the tripod. Apollo materialised next to it just in time to be hit on the back of the hand by a flying potsherd.

  'Ouch,' he said.

  'Master!'

  'Betty,' said Apollo irritably, 'let's just leave all that stuff, shall we? As a matter of fact, I'm perfectly capable of getting here on my own without having to be conjured up, dematerialised, transmuted into the Spirit, sucked up through eight yards of narrow copper pipe and set fire to, so m future I'll trouble you just to leave a message with Reception, all right?'

  Mary giggled very slightly, thinking of the olives. Ms. Fisichelli, if she noticed her disciple's lapse, ignored it.

  'I'm terribly sorry to have bothered you...' she said.

  Apollo sighed, removed a back issue of the Journal of Byzantine Studies from the armchair, and sat down. 'That's all right,' he said wearily. 'Can we get on now, please?'

  Ms. Fisichelli flushed and sat down on the sofa. For her part, Mary folded her legs gracefully and kneeled on the floor. Apollo noticed, reflected that he was old enough to be her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grand-father, and looked firmly at 'the Pythoness, who became suddenly flustered.