‘Ah,’ thought Denny. ‘I was wondering when we’d get on to the complaining.’
‘I see what you mean,’ he said gravely.
‘Ah, you’re young,’ said the old man. ‘You don’t really understand … Wow, what a woman!’ He had spotted Tamar. ‘Yours?’ he asked dubiously looking from one to the other.
‘My wife,’ said Denny just narrowly escaping bursting with pride.
‘Must have money,’ muttered the old man. Denny heard this but did not take offence. He was used to this attitude. It was fortunate, though, that Tamar did not hear it.
‘Right,’ said the old man. ‘Welcome to my paradise.’ he walked easily through a sweeping wall of water that was gushing down over a cave mouth. Denny had not even noticed it.
The old man had not been kidding. Hell on Earth was too good a name for what turned out to be a dank cavern, dimly lighted with grubby looking candles, spread far and wide over a vast area. In the approximate centre of the cavern was a pool of clear spring water. Denny wandered towards it.
‘Don’t do it lad,’ said the old man. ‘Eternal life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Just look at me.’
To the old man’s surprise, Denny did not drink any of the water. Most people just ignored him and drank anyway. People always thought they knew better. He just looked at it for a few minutes with a frown on his face, and then called Tamar over. Then she looked at it for a few minutes. Neither of them seemed remotely interested in drinking the water. The old man could not understand it.
‘You see them?’ said Tamar. ‘In the water.’
‘Yeah, what the hell are they?’
‘See what?’ said the old man, alarmed.
‘Nanobes,’ said Tamar. ‘Very very tiny er … things. That’s what’s prolonging your life, not the water.’
‘Are they dangerous?’ asked Denny.
‘Let me put it this way,’ she said drawing him aside and talking in a low voice so that the old man could not hear. ‘That’s not an old man, not any more. That’s a swarm of nanobes. It just doesn’t know it. It thinks it’s an old man. It’s like vampires. They take over the host body, but the old personality remains. It has the old man’s memories and personality, but it isn’t him.’
‘A swarm?’ asked Denny.
‘Like cells in a body, all packed together. They can form any shape and follow any brain patterns. But they don’t have a central intelligence of their own. Just like humans.’
‘That’s horrible.’ said Denny shuddering. ‘What do we do?’
‘We can’t do anything,’ said Tamar. ‘And it doesn’t matter anyway, he can’t leave. If he leaves here, he’ll die for sure. He has to drink every day.’
‘So he – it isn’t going anywhere then?’
‘No and neither are they,’
Denny spun round at these words to see three … well to call them ancient, raddled hags was being charitable. They were walking corpses dressed in disturbingly girlish and revealing outfits. There was nothing about them that Denny wished to see revealed.
They homed in on him, lurching toward him like night of the living dead, and surrounded him cooing flirtatiously. Denny was reminded irresistibly of the Houris – this was worse though. He shrank away nervously.
‘Forget it girls,’ said the old man laughing until he coughed at Denny’s horrified face. ‘He can see you.’
The creatures stopped immediately and backed away looking embarrassed as if caught doing something wrong. Denny’s feelings changed instantly from disgust to pity.
Tamar saw this and smiled. He was a good guy.
‘Just doing their jobs,’ said the old man. This is Hasti, Mahnoosh andZohreh. I can never remember which is which. Okay girls you can go. No point in staying here, this one’s not for turning.’
‘Stop,’ ordered Denny as they turned to leave. They turned and looked hopefully at him. One of them nudged her neighbour suggestively, and Tamar heard a sotto voce reference to ‘… handsome boy.’
Even Tamar did not think of Denny as handsome, not exactly. (While at the same time, being convinced that he was the most attractive man in the world and prepared to flatten anybody who said different.) But she supposed it depended on your point of view. Considering what they had had to look at for hundreds of years Denny probably did look pretty handsome – comparatively.
Denny caught some of what was going through Tamar’s head, and he said absently ‘comparatively?’
‘Compared to him, you are.’ said Tamar out loud.
‘That’s close enough ladies,’ said Denny, noticing the surreptitious approach of the old man’s harem. He held up his hands defensively, and they stopped confused.
‘I want to ask you some questions,’ said Denny, whereupon they all turned, as one, to look at the old man.
‘Don’t mind him,’ said Denny. ‘He can’t hurt you, not as long as I’m here.’
There was a collective sigh. Tamar smothered a laugh. What was it with Denny and older women?
‘But what about when you’ve gone?’ asked one of them, pragmatically.
‘You are …?’ asked Denny.
‘Mahnoosh,’ she said.
‘Pretty name,’ said Denny.
And Tamar realised what it was. Just as Stiles had a knack for all boys together camaraderie, Denny was good at talking to women. Old women, young women, he treated them all the same, the same careless courtesy. He would never have dreamed of addressing a woman of any age, as “Madam”. Older women did not feel older with Denny. It was a gift really.
‘Thank you’ said Mahnoosh.’
Denny leaned in conspiratorially. ‘How long have you been stuck here with this old bastard Mahnoosh?’ he asked.
‘Long enough to wish I was dead,’ said Mahnoosh.’
Denny raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’ he said sceptically. ‘And if you could leave?’
Mahnoosh shrugged. ‘Where would I go, looking like this?’
Tamar was frowning. What was he up to?’
Denny turned and beckoned Tamar into a private corner. ‘These nanobes?’ he asked. ‘Why don’t they keep the hosts looking like they did when they were young?’
Tamar thought for a moment ‘Because they follow the host’s brain patterns. They don’t expect to stay young, so they don’t.’
‘You’re just guessing,’ said Denny.
Tamar shrugged. ‘Makes sense,’ she said.
‘Yes it does,’ agreed Denny. ‘I have an idea.’
Denny turned back to the huddled women. The old man was getting increasingly restless. But he was too afraid of Denny to interfere, so he stood to one side muttering mutinously.
‘How would you feel about being young again?’ asked Denny. ‘Not just a glamour but real youth that you can take out into the world with you?’
‘It’s not possible.’ said Mahnoosh.
‘What if I said it was?’
Tamar nodded. She saw where this was going now. ‘He can do it, you know,’ she put in. He’s a very powerful sorcerer.’
The women looked at Denny doubtfully. ‘He was a handsome boy, but he did not look like a powerful sorcerer to them. Powerful sorcerers tended to be bearded, black browed and forbidding.
‘I am actually five hundred and forty three years old,’ Denny lied shamelessly.’
‘Show them something,’ said Tamar. ‘Do some magic.’
Denny hesitated, the way people do when, having talked easily for their whole lives, they are suddenly asked to “say something”.
Everyone waited.
Come on, Tamar’s voice resounded in his head. You have to prove it. If they don’t believe it, it won’t work. It’s all in the mind.
I know! Denny replied snappily. I can’t think of anything.
Oh, hell, start chanting some mumbo jumbo, I’ll do it. This was your stupid idea in the first place.
Denny started muttering in Latin as he had often seen Cindy do.
There was a loud flash and a bang, presumably fr
om Tamar (who did not usually go in for showy side effects, but felt that the occasion demanded it this time) and the cavern vanished.
The women gasped and clung nervously to each other in the open air for the first time in no one knew how many centuries.
Denny clapped his hands, and the cavern rematerialised.
There was a flabbergasted silence.
‘What about Alaodin?’ asked Mahnoosh, meaning the old man.
‘He stays here,’ said Denny. ‘I’m afraid he can’t be trusted.
The women nodded uncertainly.
‘You certainly don’t owe him anything,’ snapped Tamar. This was like Stockholm syndrome on a bad scale.
But Denny was not worried. When they regained their youthful looks, they would abandon him like old cheese. Which he reminded Denny of in a way – perhaps it was the smell.
Denny started the mumbo jumbo and Tamar provided the special effects but really, it was the nanobes that were doing the work. The women just had to believe. And having seen the cavern vanish before their very eyes, they really believed.
Nanobes work fast, and it was only a few minutes before the crones had transformed into three moderately attractive young women. Without the aid of the old man’s glamour they were not the ravishing beauties that other men saw when they entered the cave, but they were a vast improvement on what Denny had seen.
After the excitement had passed (and it lasted some considerable time) the women began to eye Denny speculatively again.
‘Sorry ladies,’ he told them. ‘I’m married.’
‘You’re a good guy,’ said Tamar as they made their way down the mountain.
Denny inclined his head. ‘And I’m glad to see that you have finally realised to the full that I am comparatively handsome,’ he said.
‘I love you,’ she said simply.
‘Mmm, me too,’ he said. But clearly, his head was elsewhere.
‘You did a good thing,’ said Tamar.
‘They won’t last five minutes outside of that cave,’ said Denny.
‘Who knows’ said Tamar. ‘Perhaps nature will find a way. She often does. In any case, you did the right thing either way, now at least they’re free.’
‘And he isn’t.’ said Denny.
‘Exactly,’ said Tamar. ‘Isn’t that how it should be? And now we really have to get on, Loki won’t have been stopping to do good deeds along the way, and we’re running out of time.’
~ Chapter Eleven ~
‘Oh this year we’re off to Shangri La,’ warbled Stiles tonelessly. ‘Eh, viva er um …’
‘Do stop it sweetheart,’ said Hecaté mildly. She was used to this. Every time her husband went on a trip to an unknown and possibly dangerous location, he felt the need to sing cheerfully about it, always the most ludicrous songs too. At least, she thought, Tamar was not here, it really got on her nerves for some reason. Slick, Melissa and Ray, however, merely looked nonplussed.
Stiles was taking Melissa along again; he said she was quiet and efficient – which was another way of saying that she did as she was told.
‘Eh viva Shangri La-a-a.’ Stiles finished defiantly.
Ray was staying behind to continue the research that Denny had left him with on possible alternate identities of the Tuatha within the Norse legends. Slick had been appropriated by Hecaté who felt an inexplicable motherliness toward him, and they were going to the Borges valley. Cindy was nowhere to be found. This was accounted odd, but they did not have time to worry about it right now and Hecaté assumed that if it became necessary, she would be able to locate her as she could all witches.
No one mentioned that they had covered a lot of ground in the last two days (had it really only been two days? – it seemed far longer) and had so far turned up nothing. Denny’s little homily to Melissa and Ray had permeated the whole group and seemed to have affected everyone’s thinking. There was a solid determination, all the stronger for being unspoken, to push on until the answer was found or it was too late.
Even Finvarra (who was even more laid back than Denny) was, in his lazy way, making a contribution by searching for the hidden Tuatha.
* * *
In the beautiful and fertile Blue Moon valley between the softly outlined snow capped mountains lay the earthly paradise of Shangri La. Stiles felt no desire to sing stupid songs about this place now that he was here. Unlike the hidden land of Alaodin, this was a real paradise.
They had found it in a most unusual way, as suggested by Melissa when she had been presented with the problem of finding the valley of Borges, for which there was also no known location. Having been briefed on the various uses if mainframe and its access to different files in history and mythology etc. she asked, quite ingenuously, if there wasn’t a file for the valley?
It was not quite that simple of course, (it never is) but it gave Ray an idea.
All the accumulated data on these various legends could be said to constitute a file in themselves. Particularly in the case of that data that was accessed on the Aethernet. Ray assembled the data into a file on the Aethernet and saved it to mainframe. This was the easy part, accessing mainframe was the hard part, or would have been if Tamar and Denny had not been in and out of mainframe so many times in recent years that they might as well have installed a revolving door.
Ray had been astounded and frankly envious when he had heard this. He bowed down to Denny as his master. To actually break into the mainframe was, for Ray, the summit of all hacking achievement. However, Denny and Tamar had already gone to the Alborz Mountains so Ray was on his own with this one. Luckily he had paid attention to his teacher, and he knew a bit about computers in his own right in any case. Besides, mainframe was always open on Denny’s computer anyway.
It was, as he explained it, a bit like stepping into a storybook.
So, it was in this way that he sent Stiles, and Melissa to Shangri La and Hecaté and Slick (or Tony as he still thought of him, although nobody else did) to find the Borges valley. It was not until after they had gone that he realised what an idiot he was.
* * *
‘Is it real?’ asked Melissa in a hushed voice.
‘Oh, I think so,’ said Stiles in a voice that meant “definitely”
‘It’s wonderful.’
‘Yes.’ answered Stiles dully.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Melissa nervously. These people seemed to have an instinct for trouble that she had not been endowed with.
‘Nothing,’ said Stiles to her immense relief. ‘But it’s real, you see. Not magical – or is it?’ He looked enquiringly at her.
‘There’s magic here,’ she said. ‘But of an Earthly kind if you see what I mean. It’s deep, old magic from before the mainframe and all the gods and well, everything really.’
‘I feel like an intruder,’ said Stiles.
‘Yes, no human being has ever set foot here before,’ she said. ‘But I don’t feel like an intruder here. It feels like home in a funny sort of way. There’s a welcome here, can’t you feel it? This place is filled with love.’
‘No,’ said Stiles stolidly. ‘I can’t feel it. We don’t belong here. And Loki definitely wasn’t, isn’t or never will be here.’
‘No,’ said Melissa in a distant voice.
Stiles looked sharply at her. She was like a woman on drugs, lost somewhere far away in her own head. Stiles knew an instant addiction when he saw it. He could feel the power of this place too, but it was beating uselessly on his consciousness from the outside as it were. As a former addict (of alcohol) and a man whose brain was on permanent suspicious alert his resistance was stronger than hers. She was so far under the influence of this place that she could not feel the influence any more. But he could. He was going to have trouble getting her out of here; he could see that. And worse, when she left, she would suffer a terrible withdrawal. He had seen it before.
Best to take her by surprise he decided. If he gave her time to argue, he might never catch her. She was a witch after all.
As the beautiful paradise of Shangri La dissolved away, Melissa let out the visceral scream of a creature being torn away from its mother’s womb.
* * *
The path inside the mountain led into a giant labyrinth. Rooms of seven doors each, with six of them leading backwards, and only one leading deeper into the maze.
‘Why is it always a labyrinth?’ sighed Hecaté. ‘Why is there never just a door with a sign on it? Always so difficult. No wonder Tamar hates quests.’
‘Does she?’ asked Slick. ‘I really know very little about her, now I come to think of it.’
‘Yes, she is very secretive,’ affirmed Hecaté. ‘I believe that she fears what will happen if anyone knows too much about her. Her story is quite a tragic one really.’
‘She must have been delighted then, to have reporters all over her ass,’ said Slick.
‘Ah, yes, a trying time for us all, it contributed considerably to the recent upheavals in our lives.’
Slick thought about this for a moment and then decided he did not care. ‘So what about Cindy?’ he asked. ‘What’s her story?’ He decided that this was too pointed and added. ‘And Denny and everyone, what’s everyone’s story?’
Hecaté laughed. ‘My goodness,’ she said. ‘Just how long do you think we have here?’
They were pushing on through cavern after cavern always taking what they assumed to be the inner door leading farther into the mountain.
‘Not too bloody long I hope,’ admitted Slick. ‘I never thought this sort of thing could be so boring.’
‘No, no one tells you about the boring bits in stories,’ she said. ‘But they happen all too often.’
‘Followed by brief periods of extreme excitement and danger?’ asked Slick hopefully.
‘Excitement is not all it is cracked up to be,’ said Hecaté severely. And not all danger is exciting either. You are, for example, very much mistaken if you believe that you are not in great danger at this very moment.’
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