99 Gods: War

by Randall Farmer

  “We can do this,” Dave said. “I’m sure we can.” His head throbbed, and he rubbed his forehead and tried to relax.

  “What to cut, though?”

  “The after-school day care and Olinda, for one.”

  Tiff frowned. “Are you volunteering to be home when the kids come home? You’re going to be out of town drumming up clients, or so I thought.”

  Ouch. “What’s your suggestion?”

  “I don’t have any good suggestions. Everything either nukes our careers or forces us to dip into our investments.”

  “We may need…”

  Tiff shook her head. “Short term, perhaps. Long term? I won’t hear of it.” She paused. “I don’t think we can count on being able to sell our house, either. If you want, I can show you what’s happened to the real estate market in the past month. It’s gotten 2009 ugly again.”

  “You worried about the place you work for?”

  “Yes, long term,” Tiff said. “Not short term.” She took a sip of water. “Dave, cutting the day care is not an option.”

  “Fine,” he said, and went on to the next topic.

  “You need to give up sponsorship of your chamber music group,” Tiff said. They had already decided to yank their kids out of their private school and send them to the local public school. Although the school didn’t meet Tiff’s high standards, Parmalee was the area’s best local elementary school. Tiff had made sure of that before they built the home, just in case.

  Oh, and they had agreed to drop the lawn service, the maid service, their planned vacation to Majorca, and the once a month expensive night out.

  Dave grimaced, his head pounding. “My sponsorship isn’t much money.” They had already told Olinda the bad news; she hadn’t taken it well and had stalked off in a huff before putting the kids to bed. He and Tiff had finished that unfamiliar activity a half hour ago, attracting too-adult questions from the kids. Excess domesticity didn’t agree with Dave any more than it ever had. Tiff just lied with a straight face.

  “It’s as much as our maid service,” Tiff said. “Look, I know how much this means to you, but it is a luxury.”

  “The chamber music is my main hobby.”

  “It’s budget fat. Besides, if you’re going to be out drumming up clients, you’re going to be living up to the demands of your career for the first time and…”

  “Hey,” Dave said, interrupting his wife. “I’m not sure I like the ‘living up to the demands of your career’ comment, Tiff.” He and Tiff hadn’t talked for so long on one subject for years. Tiff’s commentary wore on him, an itchy shrunken woolen sweater.

  “You could grow up about this,” Tiff said.

  “You could cut your hours,” he said. “You’re putting in seventy hour weeks. Those are desperate hours suitable for a desperate twenty-something, not the hours a successful someone in her late thirties should be forced to put in.”

  Tiff frowned back at him. “I’m not being forced to put in those hours, Dave. I like what I’m doing. If anything, I’d like to be able to work eighty or ninety hours a week. For what I’m trying to accomplish, I need the hours.”

  Gad. He knew Tiff had become a workaholic grind, but he hadn’t expected her comment. “It’s just, well…I have a life and I don’t want to lose it,” Dave said. “I’m being honest, here.” He had thought Tiff’s long hours a phase, not a goal. No, she didn’t just work with the computers. It appeared she wanted to become one.

  “I can be honest, too,” she said, typing on her screen as she spoke. “What I see is someone who doesn’t want to lose their youth. I mean, amateur chamber music, in your forties? Opera, ballet and plays? Peter Pan doesn’t have anything on you, Dave. That’s not a life, just a bunch of childish whims.”

  Dave turned away, shocked. He hadn’t realized Tiff felt so intensely on the subject. He enjoyed his life. Hell, he even thought people were supposed to enjoy life. He enjoyed his work, too, but not enough to throw away the rest of his life.

  His dearest wife had locked her inner child in a safety deposit box and thrown away the key.

  I don’t know this person anymore, he realized. He looked away at their living room decorations, put there either by Dave or the decorator. The ceramic chickens were out of place again. Through the curtains, he saw a few drops of rain spattering the two story windows, singing down the dust in narrow twisted rows. He couldn’t remember the last time Tiff had done anything positive around the house other than throw money at things that needed doing. Other than her office, of course.

  I’m not sure I want to know this person anymore, he continued in thought.

  For the first time ever, the word ‘divorce’ crossed his mind.

  “It’s my choice,” Dave said. “You could have mentioned it earlier…”

  “I lied,” Tiff said. She did lie. Often. “I’ve haven’t been coming to your plays and your recitals because I like them.” He didn’t perform in the plays, he was a volunteer assistant stage manager and costume whiz. “It’s because they’re an obligation. You sure you want to hear about this?”

  Save me. “I don’t want to hear about this at all, but I do think this is necessary,” Dave said. “In fact, I think you’re going to need to tell me what you’re actually doing in this all-consuming job of yours. I don’t have the information necessary to argue my point. How can I judge how important your hours are, anyway?”

  “Take my word for it, they’re important,” Tiff the admitted liar said, very tense.

  “I disagree. I need to know why.”

  Tiff balled her fists, closed her eyes, and tensed even more. Slowly, during the ensuing quiet, she relaxed. “Do you mind if I can’t tell you everything?” she said, curling her upper lip. “I’ve signed confidentiality agreements on the subject, you should already know.”

  “Fine.”

  She didn’t turn toward him as she spoke. Instead, she stared longingly at the hallway leading to her gigantic home office. “Let me give you a fake example of one of our clients, right out of one of our training manuals. The fake client’s called Happy Friends, and their corporate motto is ‘detailed personal information examination makes everyone a happy friend’. The name and motto are fake, but there are dozens of companies in the United States with similar names and mottoes, all brazen, brass and in your face. They come to us for the basics and also when they run into very difficult information problems.”

  “You’re an illicit data broker?” Dave said, the bottom dropping out of his gut, a sudden elevator lurch.

  “Your reaction is why I never talk about what I do, Dave. Everybody has such an unjust view of companies like mine,” Tiff said. “We’re not illicit. Companies like Happy Friends have their own clients: car dealerships, mortgage lenders, investors, politicians, political consultants, political parties, lobbyists, insurance companies, law enforcement agencies, private investigators and so on and so forth. They hire Happy Friends to provide information about the lives of the people they’re going to be financially or commercially entangled with. It’s these clients’ money, so they have every right to know absolutely everything relevant about who’s going to be receiving their money. What we do is make it possible for Happy Friends to do this without having to re-invent the wheel.”

  How to break the law and cover it up, basically. “And your part in all this?” Dave fought the bad taste in his mouth. Tiff had grown a hunchback, snaggleteeth and warts.

  “I’m a supervisor in the social engineering department,” Tiff said.

  “Which means nothing to me.” Tiff had said she had a purely IT job. Clearly not, just another lie.

  “The social engineering department handles the difficult cases,” Tiff said. “I can’t tell you about our methods, as they’re confidential, but I can give you the goal: when we’re given a difficult case, our social engineers are trained to immerse themselves in the data we’ve gathered to where they and our helper AIs become the person or company they’re investigating. Once they immerse, th
ey can usually ferret out all the inconvenient secrets.”

  Grotesque. Monstrous. Enough to make him want to grab a placard and lead a Libertarian protest march. “And this is all legal and everything? I find this hard to believe.” His headache got worse.

  Tiff rolled her head back, with a little eyeball skyward roll as well. ‘Of course you don’t believe me, you prejudiced fool’ he read. She had joined the bad guys.

  “Our company doesn’t deal with individual clients, just companies like Happy Friends. It’s up to the companies who hire us as consultants to decide whether their activities are legal and fit under the current corporate free speech Supreme Court rulings. All we do is gather data, give reports and do some judicious consulting on difficult cases. We’re fully and legally inoculated.”

  And if he believed this, he ought to drop weights on his toes to see if any of the weights perhaps fell up. She hadn’t just joined the bad guys, she had joined the super-slimy smarmy suck-ass bad guys.

  Tiff turned to him and looked him in the eye. “I’m Social Engineering’s top supervisor and my boss is thinking of moving to a more relaxing position in the company. I want his job, Dave. That’s why I need to work those hours.”

  So stick a fucking knife in his back, Dave thought. He couldn’t keep a grimace off his face.

  12. (Nessa)

  “…and take this ring and stick it up your ass as far as you can reach!” Nessa said. She threw her wedding band at Ken and stalked out of the Palm Beach motel room, shaking with anger. Her mind filled with unwanted thoughts, from the driver who thought her a lunatic bag lady to the grifter on the lookout for retiree men who smiled. Nessa jaywalked across Ocean Boulevard to the honking of horns, stalked across the parking lot of the less seedy multi-story beach resort blocking their dive’s view of the Atlantic, and trotted down the resort’s sidewalk to the beach. She took a deep breath, an attempt to calm herself.

  Nothing. Nessa sat on the sand at the edge of the beach, a hundred feet from the water, and steamed. The bright mid-day sun hurt her eyes, despite her dark sunglasses. She tried to relax, to let her mind open to the world around, but couldn’t.

  No Opartuth. Nothing. How could she ask for help rescuing Uffie, or find out what it had to do with the 99 Gods or whatever, if the damned thing wouldn’t show up? She balled her fist and beat it on the sand three times, then stood and stalked down to the beach, into the wash from the crashing waves.

  “Miss, is something wrong?”

  Nessa turned to look at the person who had the temerity to talk to her, and found an official looking young man in a resort uniform giving her the once over. She took a good look at herself from his eyes and realized she wore a long-sleeve pajama top, blue jeans, and mid-heel pumps. And she stood in the surf running up to her knees.

  “You must think I’m bizarre,” she said to the man. “Now go away.”

  He went away.

  She called out to Opartuth again; again she got no answer.

  Nessa took a deep breath and closed her eyes. The headache pounded worse. She turned and walked back up the beach, across the resort, and back toward the motel room. She and Ken had been fighting, but her anger had evaporated. She couldn’t remember what the fight had been about. The headache remained, as did her feeling of utter failure. She wondered if there had ever been anyone as pathetic as her.

  Through the open door to their motel room wafted out moldy skanky air-conditioned air and the humid fish-market stench of the Atlantic. She walked in and found Ken punching clothes in a suitcase. Anger filled the room, a tremulous cloud. Everything in the hotel room was in the wrong place, upside down, or bent out of shape, typical effects of Ken’s anger. He looked up at her, eyes hot.

  “Lunatic bitch,” he said, and turned back to his packing.

  “Uh huh, yup, yessireediedeedie, that’s me,” Nessa said. She ended with a false cackle worthy of a bad nightclub act. “What were we fighting about, anyway?”

  Ken stopped mid stuff and melted to the floor to lay face down. A moan escaped his lips, and he pounded the compacted pile carpeting three times, reminding Nessa of when she had pounded the sand. Only, when he pounded, the slab rumbled underneath her feet.

  “This is impossible,” he said.

  “What’s impossible?”

  “You are.”

  “Uh huh,” she said, tone rising and turning the ‘huh’ into a two syllable word.

  Ken made a noise somewhere between an ‘aargh’ and a yelp. No words, thoughts hidden.

  “This place brings out the worst in me,” Nessa said, a wheedle. She wanted sympathy. She needed sympathy. A bar of chocolate, too. Lindt would be good. Valrhona would be better. “I hate the sun. It’s why when I worked for you, back in Los Angeles, I preferred to work nights. Except when Ron made me work days.” This place also reminded her of all her failed attempts at life before her move to Eklutna.

  “You hate the sun,” he said, deadpan. “Let me guess, Nessa. You always hated the sun. You just never got around to telling me.”

  “I didn’t always hate the sun.” She walked over to Ken’s prone body, sat down beside him, and rubbed his back. “I get headaches. The headaches started after I had my breakdown in college.” After six months of nightmares, from looking into things normal mortal humans shouldn’t ever look into. She still blamed those others. “They weren’t as bad back when I was working for you as they got later.” He tried to slap her hand away, but she avoided his arm and he gave up. She kneaded his neck. That’s what she wanted right now, someone kneading her neck.

  “Wonderful. Well, if that’s what the problem is, we can switch around and sleep in the daytime,” Ken said. “I’m not sure what this has to do with cooperation.”

  “What about cooperation?” Nessa said. Rubbing his back didn’t help. His anger remained. She took off her sunglasses, lay down beside Ken and buried her head, at eye level, into the corner of his arm. She let the smell of his body drive away the odor of the beach air, moldy air conditioner, and the indescribable foul salty odor of the floor. Her mind relaxed in the darkness.

  “You aren’t being the least cooperative. You didn’t like me bringing that up or something, because when I did you exploded, tossed your wedding ring at me and stalked out.”

  Oh, so that’s what I did? Nessa sniffed, tears dewing the corners of her eyes. “Can I have the wedding ring back? I’ll try to be better.” Ken didn’t answer or move his body, which did a fine imitation of concrete. “I’ll even cooperate, though I don’t know what I wasn’t cooperating with you on.” No answer. “When did I start not cooperating?” Pause. “If I wasn’t cooperating.” Longer pause. “Which in your opinion I was. Wasn’t. Whatever.” Seven blocks away, a guy got a tattoo in a tattoo parlor. In pain. She couldn’t stand his pain, so she blocked out everything.

  “I don’t want to go through this again,” Ken said. Nessa wiggled her head ‘no’. “Okay, this started after you said you sensed a couple of strange types flying up in outer space when we were on the airplane. You haven’t cooperated since.”

  “Well, you didn’t believe me,” she said. “I wasn’t making it up. What am I supposed to do?”

  Ken groaned.

  “You don’t like admitting I can be better than you in something,” Nessa said. “Is that your problem?”

  Ken groaned again. “I know you’re better than I am in lots of things. It’s, uh, just what you claimed didn’t make any sense.”

  Nessa sighed. Ken kept picking at her! She tried to remember what she said about the two strange types. She hadn’t been informative, she recalled. Perhaps that was the problem.

  Of course, she wasn’t informative because Ken doubted her from the start. She wanted to make up with him now, though. Get him to rub her neck. She liked that. Or would, if he started. “Well, one of them was a person and the other one wasn’t. It didn’t make any sense to me. Then the I-am-not-a-person person projected herself into the airplane and I poofed her projection.”

&
nbsp; “You didn’t say this before,” Ken said.

  “I know I didn’t.” Ken always had to be so difficult about things. She thought about the problem for a few seconds, and decided she would go halfway and not say she hadn’t told him about the projection because he had interrupted her. “They were both women.”

  “You were sure they were in space?”

  “I said so,” she said. She wasn’t sure that’s what she meant. “Well, I don’t know for sure. I’m not sure how high planes fly or anything.” She had gotten through high school by leeching off the memories of others and hadn’t realized until later that by doing so she hadn’t formed any memories in her own mind of what she thought she had learned. By then it was too late for her to learn any other way. She hadn’t been able to read textbooks without having fits for years and years.

  “How many plane-heights were they, then?”

  “Plane-heights?”

  “You can sense how high you are above the ground when you’re in an airplane, I know you can,” Ken said.

  “Yes. So?” She hated to discuss her limitations and handicaps. But, well, this was Ken, her husband, her partner in this mess. He had a right to know about her problems, even if they terminally embarrassed her. She had agreed to marry him just for this reason.

  Or so she thought, right now.

  “Think of measuring their height in multiples of the distance the plane was above the ground,” Ken said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “Because it involves fractions.” She didn’t understand what one exactly did with fractions. She used to, but she had lost the knowledge somewhere. Too many ‘nominators’ among the terms. She wouldn’t mind getting the knowledge back.

  “Nessa, I know you can do fractions,” Ken said. She didn’t respond. “Round down.”