99 Gods: War

by Randall Farmer

  Nessa grabbed Ken’s hand and led him farther into Eklutna, through what passed as the Eklutna business district. The village had one now, mostly because of the suburbanites, the Anchorage commuters, who had started to fill the community. Past the business district were lawns with grass needing real mowing and lawnmowers to pollute the air to make the neighborhood smell like home. The houses wouldn’t look out of place in a well-off Minneapolis suburb, where they should be, dammit. If she knew of a way to get rid of them, she would.

  “What’s this place?” Ken said, after they passed the center of the village and went on to the manicured town fringe.

  “Historical park.” Its manicured lawn fit in with the expensive commuter houses.

  “That’s a strange looking church,” he said, about the building where she led him.

  “Russian Orthodox,” she said. “The native Athabascans are predominantly Russian Orthodox, and they still make up nearly a quarter of the community, despite people like me who keep coming here.”

  The white clapboard church had turquoise window frames and two steeples, both with gold onion-domes on them, topped with crosses. “I’ve worked here, occasionally,” she said. She had tried being a tour guide once, but she had to quit. Too many random people. She hadn’t expected crowds in Alaska.

  The historical park’s summer beauty had fled, the once glowing green grass perfectly offset by towering pines and distant mountains now chased away by grass browned by early frosts. The tourists hadn’t all fled, much to her annoyance. Three rental cars polluted the parking lot, and if she concentrated she could hear the soft mutters of tourists in action.

  Worse, the clouds above began to spit rain.

  “I can’t marry you because marriage is tied in my mind to Ron,” Nessa said. “I don’t want to hate you. I hate marriage.” She couldn’t marry anyone ever again unless it was part of a scheme. Then the marriage wouldn’t be real. Ken had made it too real for schemes.

  “How about something informal? We could marry ourselves, no witnesses, no minister.”

  Nessa pondered Ken’s words. His desire touched her. She didn’t know if she still loved him, despite her confused mental voices and her physical needs. He had always been in the back of her mind, though, as someone she respected, someone she had once loved. She hoped respect and old emotions would be enough. “I could do that. In fact, I have just the place.”

  She took Ken’s hand and walked him away from the church, down a trail deeper into the historical park. She repressed the urge to skip. Ken held back.

  “You’re nervous.”

  “Of course I’m nervous,” Ken said. “You scare the crap out of me. You’ve always scared the crap out of me.”

  “I thought you said you’ve always loved me.”

  “I’ve always loved you and you’ve always scared the crap out of me,” he said. “I’ve always felt like a twig in a tornado around you.”

  “You have? You, the great private investigator?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever told me,” Nessa said. She practically purred. Perhaps her life wasn’t the failure she feared. “There’s nothing worse than not meeting your own high expectations.”

  “What?”

  “Huh? Oh, damn, I hadn’t meant to say that aloud. Forget I said anything.” She took her hand from Ken’s and hugged herself again. After the big success she had put no limits on her ambition. It wasn’t a question of whether she would make the history books and encyclopedias, but how long the articles would be.

  Life hadn’t cooperated. Her ambitions had diminished, and now she worried about keeping up her used trailer and making sure her rented land didn’t vanish out from under her. Mr. Panechko, the owner, had thoughts in his head about selling all of his land to a subdivision developer who wanted to blast basements into the living rock and put heated swimming pools out back, next to the natural gas barbeque. She had kept him from doing so, so far, but she feared she couldn’t hold off the sale much longer. She expected to fail at that, too.

  “What are those things?” Ken said, as the trail they walked turned around a stand of pines and opened up into a clearing.

  Nessa sighed. “Those, Ken, are spirit houses.” The area in front of them held three dozen or so miniature houses, all about eight feet long and three feet wide, complete with roofs, miniature windows and doors. The caretakers and family had painted the spirit houses in a riot of bright colors, no two the same.

  “This is a cemetery,” Ken said. “What are we doing in a cemetery?”

  Nessa grimaced. When she had found this place, a tour guide had to tell her this was a cemetery. Damn him. “They’re a native tradition that grew up after the conversion of the Athabascans to Russian Orthodox Christianity,” she said, ignoring his question.

  “Strange. The vibes here are immense. What’s that, another church?” Ken said, and pointed.

  “You want to go visit Santa Claus?”

  Nessa turned and smiled perkily at Ken, followed by a few coy blinks. He shook his head. “You’re getting stranger by the moment.”

  “This isn’t my strangeness,” she said. “Reality is strange enough as it is. It doesn’t need my dubious help.” She walked across the cemetery to a larger building, a much smaller and ruder church than the first one, up on cinder blocks and blocked from entry. This church didn’t have gold-painted onion domes on top. “Behold the old Saint Nicholas Church of the town of Knik. Some park service people moved the building here years ago. I don’t know why.” She paused. “Let’s marry ourselves in front of the church. Have St. Nick marry us. His holy Icon’s in the church, and you can even see it from here.” Ken nodded as she pointed. “The witnesses will be respectful and quiet from their spirit houses. I can’t say they all love me, but I am appreciated.”

  Ken shivered. “I’m not sure they like me.”

  “They will afterwards, I promise,” Nessa said. “You still up for this?”

  “Yes.” He closed his eyes, reached into his suit coat pocket, and pulled out a credit card-sized manila envelope. Nessa’s eyes opened wide. “I had a hunch these might come in handy, after I escaped Miami. I wasn’t sure for what. I hope you don’t mind.” He opened the manila envelope and shook out two plain gold rings. Nessa frowned and licked her lips, noting they weren’t specifically wedding bands, but general multipurpose rings.

  “Freaky as always,” Nessa said. Typical Ken, doing things without knowing why. “But who am I to talk about freaky?” She paused and looked at the rings again. “You got them too big.”

  Ken nodded. “I don’t think they’re meant for us, but we can borrow them for now.”

  “Sure,” Nessa said. She liked being on the inside of the freaky stuff again, though this did edge her toward her old bad memories of the confrontation.

  Ken turned to Nessa, took her hands in his, and moved them so the church opening was to their left and the spirit houses to their right. “I, Kendrick Bolnick, take Vanessa Binglehauser as my lawfully wedded wife, to love and protect, till death do us part.” He slipped the smaller of the rings on Nessa’s left ring finger, where the ring hung loose.

  Nessa paused to question her gut, goose pimples on her arms. Ken stood waiting, patiently understanding her qualms. It didn’t matter that this was her idea. These days she always had qualms about her ideas, part of growing older and hopefully wiser. Even though she didn’t like the part about having gray hairs before she turned forty. She took in Ken, how his perfectly tailored dark brown suit set off his only slightly lighter brown skin, and smiled. His gold ear stud glinted minutely for a moment, lit by a gap in the overcast, for a moment reminding her of LA and her fonder memories of her life with Ken.

  “I, Vanessa Binglehauser, take Kendrick Bolnick as my lawfully wedded husband, to love and protect, till death do us part or until terminal insanity, whichever comes first.” She put the remaining ring on Ken’s ring finger, where the ring also hung loose.

  “Ness
a!”

  “Hush, you’re supposed to kiss the bride,” Nessa said. Ken did so, rekindling Nessa’s former urge to find a quiet place for them to boink. She knew of a place off the trail, perhaps a bit wet, but perfect for what she wanted. Besides, she told herself as she led Ken to the secluded clearing, I’ll just straddle him. He’ll be the one lying on his back who gets wet…

  Nessa covered her mouth to stifle a giggle as Ken looked at the mud prints on the back of his shirt. “It’s brutally cold out here, at least for me. I have icicles growing in my hair. I know you Snow Queen types don’t mind the cold, but…” The sun was setting behind the endless hemlocks, and taking what little remained of the day’s warmth with it. They lay in a bower of bunchberry and cow parsnips, with the bright purple flowers of fireweed towering over their feet. Nessa looked underneath her to make sure she hadn’t taken them into a bower of poison ivy. That would totally ruin the afterglow. No, a couple of vines clambered up a couple of nearby hemlocks, but none in the small clearing.

  She sniffed at his endless drama. “I left that book behind years ago. I still do like snowflakes, though.”

  “Okay,” Ken said. “So when did you get the sunrise tattoo?”

  “Oh, crap, I forgot you hadn’t seen my tat before,” she said, peering over to look at her right buttocks, which wasn’t easy for her any more. She had grown less flexible with age. “I got some ink when I did the drug dealer thing. Hope this isn’t too weird for you.”

  “For me? You’ve got to be kidding.” Ken paused and took a deep breath. “You still messing with dope?”

  “Hey, how’d you know I…” She rolled onto her stomach and looked him over. “Let me guess. When I went through the period where I thought I could use my little tricks to be a world-class drug dealer and got into sampling the wares, you had the urge as well.”

  “Of course. We’ve always been linked.”

  “True, oh so true. More true now. Hopefully not true blue.” She had needed to use her full kaleidoscope of tricks, on herself, to beat her drug habit, something she was quite proud of. Not that she had ever been able to talk to anyone about it.

  Ken snorted. “So, after what you’ve read on the net, do you think any of these so-called Gods are on the real?”

  Nessa shrugged at the subject change. “You don’t?”

  “No. Something’s wrong with the whole lot of them,” Ken said. “The story they’ve told, about God Almighty just up and deciding one day to send us the 99, doesn’t feel right.”

  “Ken, this isn’t helpful,” Nessa said. She slipped her jeans back on, glad she couldn’t see her face. She had to look like a demon hag right now. No matter how she tried to arrange it, her hair had flopped into the mud at least once. At least she had kept her pistol dry.

  Ken stood up to put his own clothes back on. “It’s a good hunch.”

  Ouch. Ken’s hunches tended to be right.

  “I’m not sure we need to know what’s behind them,” she said. Examining causes never got people like her and Ken anywhere. She tried to straighten her hair, but the more she worked the worse it got.

  “What if we have another Blind Tom type behind this?”

  Nessa growled, radiating hostility. “Come up with a better hunch,” she said, between gritted teeth. She didn’t want to think about anything having to do with the confrontation.

  “Okay.” Ken closed his eyes and concentrated. “I’ll bet Opartuth is involved with this 99 Gods mess,” he said.

  “No way.” She crossed her arms and looked away. A strong gust of wind shook the trees above, dropping a few fat droplets of rain down on her.

  “This is Opartuth’s style. Besides…”

  “Dammit, Ken, Opartuth gave his word. Hell, insulting Opartuth is an opening for him to meddle again.” Ken had the brains, but dammit, he didn’t seem to have any sense.

  “But Opartuth isn’t human. What does…”

  Nessa screamed “Stop!” and turned on Ken. “Look, you have your problems and I have mine, but we’re going to leave Opartuth out of all of our discussions. This isn’t right and it is hateful. You’re being an insensitive clod already and we’ve not been married an hour. Give it a rest, Ken.”

  “It’s a valid thought,” he said, and drew himself up to his full height, crushing cow parsnips under his feet. “We can’t disregard valid ideas just because it makes you a little uncomfortable.”

  “A little uncomfortable?” Nessa snarled. “Look, dickwad, we’re talking a real god here, not in the sense of being worshipped, but in the sense of knowing a hell of a lot and possessing scads of tremendous fucking power. Do not take Opartuth’s name in vain.”

  “I refuse to be blinkered in our investigation by minor bits of sentimentalism, even yours,” Ken said, his eyes practically glowing black coals. “We’re going to have to keep our eyes open and keep all our possible options open. We can’t afford to ignore any possibility. Dammit, the two of us could end up at war with 99 fucking Gods.”

  Nessa balled her fists and glared at Ken. “This is my call. Back off.”

  “You can’t force me,” Ken said. He crossed his arms and glared back. Trees groaned behind him, and began to drop leaves and needles in number.

  “Bets?”

  “Yah. I’ve gotten better,” he said. “Lots better. What the distant ones call full mature power.”

  “Well, me too, asshole,” Nessa said. Only she didn’t use such pompous terms as ‘full mature power’. Overblown windbag.

  Nessa pushed. Not with her hands. An invisible push. Not real, at least not in the ‘catch it on camera’ form of real, or in the ‘you can touch it’ form of real. Ken staggered back, nevertheless. Nessa pushed again. Ken fell to his knees, muddying them further. His eyes bugged out. Leaves swirled around Nessa as Ken fought back with his tricks, which were of the ‘you can touch it’ variety. The leaves picked up speed, to where they roared gale force and hurricane, but they never reached her. She pushed harder, and tears came to her eyes. Invisible forces slapped at her, grabbed at her, but she held firm and kept herself out of their reach.

  Ken slowly stood. “You can’t force me,” he said.

  “And you can’t touch me,” Nessa said. She let go the push and cocked her head to the side. With an audible snap, the invisible forces around her vanished and the whirlwind of leaves stopped cold, the leaves falling gently to the ground. Last time he had challenged her she hadn’t been able to slap his trick away. Now such things came easily.

  “Fine,” Ken said. “How about a compromise: we go visit Opartuth and ask for Opartuth’s help against the 99 Gods.”

  “You mean ‘ask Opartuth’s help in rescuing Uffie’, Ken. Right?”

  Ken sighed. “Yes.”

  “Good,” Nessa said. “I agree. We can go and ask Opartuth for help. Politely. But Ken, stop with the ‘let’s go confront all the possible perps and accuse them to their face’ idiot detective routine. Dammit, if we’re doing this, we’re going to be playing with the big boys. Would you hail any of the distant ones and ask them if they’re behind the 99 Gods? What do you think Joan D’Ark would do to someone like you? Hell, would you walk up to John Lorenzi and ask him if he’s behind the 99 Gods?”

  Ken’s face pinched with fear. “No way. I’m not that stupid.”

  “Good,” Nessa said. “I was beginning to wonder.” She turned her back on Ken and crossed her arms again. She spoke in a quiet voice. “Do you think you might be able to sit down and grab me some more safe information using the internet? I’m going to need lots more information about what those 99 Gods have been doing since they showed up if I’m going to make heads or tails about this mess, and the internet seems to me to be the easiest way to learn about them. I don’t see any big problems so far. I need more.”

  “Sure.”

  “After we do, we can go exercise the bed springs.”

  Ken sighed. “I’m forty three years old and I don’t have your never-ending-stamina trick. I’m going to be dead on my
feet just from the walk back to your trailer, oh great and wonderful uber-Telepath.”

  “Well, shucks,” Nessa said. She started back home, striding out in front of Ken. She swung her (slightly muddy) hair around back, swayed her nearly non-existent hips and smiled regularly over her shoulder. She figured she had the cure for his exhaustion. “Come on. Home’s not that far.”

  5. (Atlanta)

  “So, is this your lair?” Dana said. Atlanta had flown them back to her Tuscaloosa estate, a converted horse farm she had bought, on mildly illicitly wheedled credit, one week post-Apotheosis. Dana had kept her teeth gritted the entire flight, ignoring the innate beauty of their sub-orbital hop. Too much of a tight ass.

  “You could call it that,” Atlanta said, having never in her mind thought to use the term ‘lair’ regarding her home. She had depleted her bank accounts for the down payment to buy this estate and didn’t have a penny for the upkeep. She didn’t want to steal the money. It felt wrong to do so. Instead, she sold miracles, a slow one-at-a-time and utterly embarrassing process.

  “Thanks for the rescue, Atlanta,” Dana said, cheeky and of all things, exasperated. “Am I free to go?” She looked around Atlanta’s underfurnished living room and wrinkled her nose at the musty air. Atlanta hadn’t been running the AC.

  “We’re going to talk, and if I can arrange it, we’re both going to go talk to Portland and Phoenix.” The intel she had picked up from the Suits disturbed her.

  Dana gave Atlanta a close look, and shrugged. She did something to put up shields around her, shields as strong as one of the Suits’ shields. She walked across the room and found one of the two chairs to sit in, nervous. She picked a comfortable old wing-back, a pleasant enough piece of furniture, but a far cry from the overdone opulence of the Suits’ business headquarters. Nothing in Atlanta’s home was more than reasonable. It was clean, though. Eight years in the Marines made sure Atlanta took care of appearances.