Tom Holt

by 4 Ye Gods!

  'Very.'

  'Playing the Game all day, so I hear. That must be very...' The Titan paused, as if mulling over his choice of word'... fulfilling, mustn't it?'

  'Well...'

  'Admittedly,' said Prometheus, 'there's not as much averting plagues and redressing wrongs as there used to be, but at least you can lie in of a morning. Now you couldn't do that when you were driving the chariot of the sun, could you?'

  'I...'

  'That must have been fun, I bet,' Prometheus said with a chuckle. 'Out of interest, what could the old bus do? On the flat, with the wind behind it?'

  'Oh, a million and five, million and ten,' Apollo said dreamily. 'Nought to two hundred and fifty thousand in four point seven two, I once got out of her.' He stopped and made an impatient noise. 'Look...' he said angrily.

  'Whereas now,' Prometheus murmured, 'there isn't really any reason to get out of bed at all, is there? You could sleep in all day and nobody would either know or care. Still, if that's what you want out of everlasting life...'

  'Prometheus...'

  'But I was forgetting,' said the Titan. 'You may not get to drive the sun or answer the prayers of cities, but you do get to run little errands for the Big J. And Minerva, of course; I expect she keeps you pretty busy, doesn't she?'

  'It's...'

  'Odd that,' Prometheus mused, 'the way she bosses you about, when strictly speaking ... But that's none of my business. Forgive me, please; I don't get many people to talk to these days, except the eagle. You've met the eagle, haven't you? Nice girl -- it's a she, you know. In fact, more she than eagle.'

  Apollo couldn't help asking what Prometheus meant by that, exactly.

  'Didn't you know?' replied the Titan. 'I thought they'd have told you -- how strange. No, Eagle isn't really an eagle at all.'

  'Isn't it?'

  'She,' Prometheus corrected him. 'She's actually a wood-nymph, name of Charionessa. Nice name, don't you think? Jupiter turned her into an eagle as a punishment.'

  'What for?'

  'Unfriendliness,' Prometheus replied. 'Jupiter likes his wood-nymphs friendly, you see. Unlike Juno; she likes Jupiter's wood-nymphs decidedly hostile. In fact,' Prometheus went on blandly, 'that's why there are so few of them about these days, what with Jupiter turning them into things if they don't and Juno turning them into things if they do. Still, it's not for me to pass comments on the morals of my betters. Now, what's the little errand they've sent you on this time?'

  Apollo struggled for some words and found a phrase that Minerva had supplied him with. 'I've been sent,' he said, 'to punish a traitor.'

  'Really?'

  'Yes.'

  'Anyone I know?'

  'Yes.'

  'Are you going to tell me,' said Prometheus, 'or is it a secret?'

  Apollo ground his teeth wretchedly. 'I think you can guess,' he said.

  'Not me,' Prometheus replied. 'Always was hopeless at guessing. Do you remember all those games of Twenty Questions we used to play when you were a boy?'

  Apollo remembered very well; he had had the misfortune to be a plump, querulous child with a tendency to burst into tears when rebuked, and the Titan was the only grown-up who could ever be bothered with him. 'No,' he said.

  'Don't you? Ah well,' said Prometheus, 'never mind. Like they say, just because you're omniscient doesn't mean you don't forget the occasional birthday.'

  Apollo suddenly recollected that today was Prometheus's birthday; his five-million-and-fifth. Now gods are very sensitive about such things, and the phenomenon that mortals know as the Milky Way is in fact the reflection in the Space-Time continuum of the seven million candles on Jupiter's birthday cake. It was therefore not unnatural that Apollo's somewhat soft heart should have been affected by this, particularly when he noticed, out of the corner of his all-seeing eye, a milk bottle with a single dandelion in it standing on an adjacent rock, and next to it a piece of plain card with Hapy Birthday Pormeethius From Eegle scrawled on it in crayon. In fact, a tiny tear lurched out of the corner of one sky-blue eye, until the heat of His gaze evaporated it into a tiny saline deposit.

  'All right,' said Apollo with a badly muffled sob, 'if you must know, I've been sent to punish you.'

  'Oh yes?' said Prometheus mildly. Why's that?'

  'For subverting Heroes,' Apollo snuffled.

  'Subverting Heroes,' Prometheus repeated. 'I see. And what are you going to do to me?'

  'First,' Apollo sobbed, 'I'm supposed to flay you alive with a lash made of vipers; then I've got to hang you by your ankles from the Firmament and have vultures gnaw at your... Oh, Uncle Pro, I'm so unhappy!'

  Apollo sank to his knees and subsided into a small, whimpering heap. Just like when he was a boy, Prometheus reflected, and Minerva and Diana used to take his golden bow away from him and put comets down his back. For a moment, he felt ashamed of taking advantage of the boy's kind heart (it was hard to think of Little Pol as anything but a boy); then he thought of the vultures and hardened his mind. It's a nasty world, he told himself; god eat god is the rule, and the one thing a superhuman being can't afford to have is humanity.

  'It's all right,' said the Titan softly. 'Now then, what's the matter with you?'

  Jupiter paused for a moment, searching for the right word, and looked out of the window.

  'It's not as if,' he said, 'he's done anything wrong...'

  'But you just said...'

  'Well,' Jupiter replied, 'that's not quite true. He's been very naughty. Conspiring with prohibited persons. Duffing up gods. Can't be allowed to do that sort of thing. But nothing serious; nothing we can't deal with ...' Jupiter's words tailed off and he squinted at something sticking up out of the ground between the rose bushes and the Arum lily. 'Excuse my asking,' he enquired, 'but is that the skeleton of a tyrannosaurus I can see out there?'

  'Where?'

  'There.'

  Mrs. Derry looked closely. 'Oh that,' she said. 'Yes.'

  'Where did he get that from?'

  'I don't know,' said Mrs. Derry. 'I don't want to know, either. Hopefully, he's given up doing that.'

  'Has he?'

  'Well,' replied the Hero's mother, 'last month there were a couple of Rottweilers and a big sort of lizard thing, but apart from that there hasn't been anything since the mammoth. Just as well, if you ask me; it's a small garden and it was getting so bad we were having to double-bank them in places. And it only takes a shower of rain or something like that...'

  'Yes,' said Jupiter, shuddering, 'yes, quite. Well, as I was saying, I really don't want to have to come the heavy father with the lad. It's really not my style at all. So if you could see your way to having a word with him...'

  'I'll try,' said Mrs. Derry doubtfully. 'But you know what they're like at that age.'

  'Not Jason,' said Jupiter. 'And I always knew that if you told him not to do it, then he'd stop. You know he always listens to you.'

  'Well...'

  Jupiter managed to restrain his grin of triumph. 'Just tell him,' he said, 'that you've heard he's been getting into trouble and how worried you've been and ask him to stop it; that'll do the trick, I promise you. He looks up to you, you know.'

  'Well,' said Mrs. Derry again. 'If you think it's for the best...'

  'Stands to reason, doesn't it?' Jupiter said. 'Not that I'd ever willingly let him come to any harm, you understand, but even I can't be in more than four places at once, and these people he's been seeing -- Prometheus and Gelos and that crowd -- really, they're no good. I mean that. Sooner or later they'll get him into real trouble, and it may well be that I won't be able to do anything for him. It's for his own good,' Jupiter added, recalling the phrase from the back of his mind. 'You'll see.'

  'All right, then,' Mrs. Derry said. 'I'll see what I can do.'

  Jupiter smiled. That's splendid, then,' he said. 'Right, well, it's been great seeing you again, Phyl, but it's time I wasn't here. Give my regards to ... er, you know, your husband.'

  'Douglas.'

&nb
sp; 'Quite so, yes, Douglas. How are things in the -- what is it he does?'

  'He repairs television sets.'

  'Does he really? How very clever of him. Not that I watch much television myself, actually, but ... well, do give him my regards, anyway.'

  'I will.'

  Jupiter's smile became slightly more glassy, if anything. 'And you take care of yourself too, of course. How's the back?'

  'Painful.'

  'Still? I am sorry. I must remember to get Aesculapius to fix you something for it.'

  Mrs. Derry's eyes said You promised me that the last time, but she said nothing. She had a thin, crimped look on her face, and Jupiter felt very strongly that he wanted to go now. He went.

  Halfway down the street, on his way to his rendezvous with his driver, he met a policeman on his beat. Being omniscient, he knew that the officer's name was Sergeant Smith and that he had acquired a wholly unjustified reputation for seeing things. Being possessed of a rather anti-social sense of humour, he transformed himself into a twelve-foot-high djinn with ten arms and three heads, stepped deliberately into the policeman's path, raised his three hats, nodded affably, and vanished in a cloud of opalescent light.

  Jason stepped back, whipped the Sword of Glycerion from its scabbard, shouted his battle cry, and sprang forward.

  The Hoplites of Hell grinned at him, clashed their swords on their shields, and advanced to meet him. There was a crunch, like a huge crab being run over by a lorry, and a number of thin screams.

  'Next!' Jason demanded.

  The Hell-Captain looked at his twelve decapitated warriors, shrugged disinterestedly, and felt in the pouch that hung from his belt. It contained dragon's teeth which, when scattered on the ground, turned into hideous and well-armed warriors. Warriors with no mercy. Warriors who knew no fear. Warriors who were insensible to pain. Warriors who didn't need to be paid. The Hell-Captain broadcast a handful of teeth, stepped back, and folded his arms.

  Perhaps because he was getting a little bit tired, and this time there had been fifteen of them rather than twelve, it took Jason all of twenty seconds to reduce this contingent of draconian by-products to rubble. On the other hand, one of them had contrived, in his death throes, to tread on Jason's foot, thereby kindling his fury. For the first time, the Hell-Captain felt a trifle uneasy. He felt in the bag and found there were only another fifty or so teeth left. Being prudent rather than chivalrous, he sowed the lot.

  'That's more like it,' Jason yelled. 'If there's one thing I can't stand, it's all this hanging about.' He flourished the Sword like a tennis player practising flowing backhand smashes.

  A spectral warrior, taller by a skull than its fellow-demons, grounded its shield and scimitar with a clang.

  'Right,' it said, 'that does it.'

  Jason and the Hell-Captain both stared at it. It folded its arms defiantly.

  'It's all right for you,' it said. 'You just look at it from our point of view for a second, will you?'

  'Can we please get on now?' Jason interrupted. 'I haven't got all day, you know.'

  'Stuff you,' said the spectral warrior. 'And don't you start, either,' it went on, turning and giving the Hell-Captain a filthy look through the eyeslits of its coal-black helm. We've had it up to here with the both of you, haven't we, lads?'

  The other spectral warriors nodded their inky plumes in agreement. There was a small autumn of falling shields.

  'I mean,' the spectral warrior spokesthing went on, 'just think about it, will you? We start off life in the mouth of a bloody great dragon, right? Now that's not exactly fun and games, what with the bad breath and the fireworks display sloshing round you every time the sodding thing sneezes. You wouldn't think it could get worse, would you? Only it does, because some nerd whips us out of it with a pair of rusty pliers, dunks us in a vat of magic potion, and the next thing we know we're a phalanx of doomed psychopaths getting smashed to buggery by some eight-foot jerk with a sword. Somebody tell me, for crying out loud, what is the point?'

  The other spectral warriors clapped their fleshless hands and cheered. Jason frowned ominously. The Hell-Captain tried hiding behind his shield. This sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen, was it?

  'All right,' he said. 'So what am I supposed to do about it? Explain it all away to Management while you lot all puddle off and become hairdressers?'

  His words were drowned out by the clamour of furious serpentine dentistry. He closed his eyes and banged on the ground with his shield for quiet. Eventually, he got it.

  'Look,' he said, 'believe me, I'm not unsympathetic. I know how you feel. It can't be easy, I know. But you've got to accept that in this life...'

  The spokesthing made a rude noise. 'But we're not in this life, are we?' it pointed out. 'We aren't even human, that's the bloody galling part of it. We're just a job lot of recycled bridgework, and we aren't going to stand for it. You want this job done, you get some of your precious fellow-humans to do it. Right?'

  The Hell-Captain went as red as a tomato. 'Who are you calling human?' he demanded.

  'Oh yeah?' replied the spokesthing. Want to make something of it, do you?'

  There was another crunch like a huge crab being run over by a lorry, and a number of thin screams. Jason leaned on the hilt of the Sword, scratching his head and wondering, as he did from time to time, exactly why he bothered. There was a quiet cough at his elbow.

  He swivelled round, Sword uplifted, to find a small fiend with a pitchfork in one hand and a cellular telephone in the other looking up at him.

  'Jason Derry?' it asked.

  'Yes.'

  'Call for you,' said the fiend and offered him the telephone. Jason. took it, nodded and thanked him. The fiend didn't move, except to extend its hand meaningfully. Jason sighed, felt in his pocket and produced a fifty pence and two tens, the sum of his monetary wealth at that moment. Heroes rarely carry money around with them, as it spoils the line of their clothes. The fiend gave him a contemptuous look and withdrew.

  'Hello?' Jason said into the phone.

  'Jason?' said a female voice, 'is that you?'

  'Hi, Mum!' Jason replied. 'How did you get my number?' he asked suspiciously.

  There was a brief pause. 'I ... I got it from your Dad,' said Mrs. Derry.

  'Dad?' Jason asked. 'Which one?'

  'Big Dad.'

  'Oh,' Jason said. 'I might have known. What did he want?'

  'Jason,' said his mother, 'I want you to come home right now, do you hear me? I'm very worried about you.'

  'But Mum ...' He ducked to avoid a severed arm. 'I can't come now, I'm busy.'

  'Don't give me that, Jason,' said Mrs. Derry severely. 'You're to come home right now, or I'll be seriously angry. Do you hear?'

  'But Mum...'

  'And no buts,' said Mrs. Derry. 'I'll expect you back for tea.'

  The line went dead, and Jason handed the phone to the dwarf. While he had been otherwise occupied, the Hell-Captain had reduced his fifty remaining myrmidons to a mound of battered and dismembered calcium, and his martial ardour was beginning to ebb slightly. That, he realised, only left him.

  'Now, then,' Jason said, hefting the Sword and wafting a graceful square cut through the clammy air. 'Let's make this as quick as possible, because I really do have to go soon.'

  'Suits me,' said the Hell-Captain. 'In fact, why not let's just leave it at that, shall we? Call it a draw or something.'

  'A draw?'

  'Why not?' replied the Hell-Captain. 'I make it fifty spectral warriors each. A tie.'

  Jason shook his head and advanced crabwise, whirling the Sword above his head like an enchanted rotor-blade.

  'Actually,' remarked the Hell-Captain, backing away, 'on reflection I find that you win, on higher scoring-rate. Congratulations. You played a fair match, hard but fair, and the best man won.'

  'Will win,' Jason corrected him. 'As soon as you stop moving about.'

  'Did I happen to mention,' said the Hell-Captain, 'that I've done my should
er? You can't expect me to fight you with a dicky shoulder, now can you?'

  'Shut up and fight.'

  'Shan't.' The Hell-Captain sheathed his sword, dropped his shield and jumped on it. 'I yield,' he said. 'Got you there, haven't I?'

  Jason considered this for a moment; then he sheathed the Sword and hit him.

  'Nobody loves a smartass,' he remarked; then he marched off up the tunnel towards the distant crack of daylight.

  About five minutes later, the Hell-Captain stopped shamming dead, picked himself up, and looked cautiously round. As far as he could tell, there was nothing there except the butchered components of a hundred spectral warriors, but he wasn't taking any chances.

  'I,' he said, 'am dead. I was killed in the fight. This is just my astral body talking. Since I am dead, I am excused further duty. If you want any other Heroes catching, you can bloody well catch them yourself.'

  He stripped off his dented helm, tossed it aside and limped off towards the topside, Piccadilly and a new life. For the record, he later became a successful and highly respected chiropodist. Further details have been suppressed at his own request.

  CHAPTER TEN

  'I dunno,' Vulcan said doubtfully. 'Tricky.' 'But you can do it?'

  Vulcan scratched his head, walked three times round the vehicle, kicked the offside front wheel and said, 'Maybe.'

  'That's great,' Apollo said. 'How soon can you start?'

  'It'll cost you, though.'

  'Never mind that.'

  'It's all right your saying never mind that,' Vulcan replied seriously. 'First there's your parts, that's...' he made a few rough calculations on the back of an envelope. 'Plus your labour, at a hundred staters an hour, let's call that...'

  'Just forget all that,' said Apollo impatiently. 'Expense is no object. Just get started, will you? We can discuss the rest of it later.'

  Vulcan shook his head. 'Beats me why you can't be satisfied with something simpler,' he said. 'Look, I can do you a Vulcan Mustang Sports Turbo, alloy wheels, hot cams, hydraulic suspension, one careful owner, still in warranty, yours for...'