by Tom Holt
‘And what sort of time do you call ouch?’ he said. Then he fell over.
The other Centaurs looked at each other for a moment then, very sheepishly, they started backing away, taking off their leather jackets and crash helmets as they did so.
‘And where do you think you’re going?’ Jason said.
‘Who, us?’
‘Yes,’ he replied, drawing the Sword of Sounds Like Mice Weary On Or Something and tapping the blade with his fingers. ‘You.’
‘We’re just innocent bystanders,’ said a Centaur, trying to cover his more equine parts with his helmet, ‘who just happened to be passing. Nothing to do with us, honestly.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Jason. ‘Then how come you’ve all got the bodies and legs of horses?’
‘Have we?’ asked the Centaur. It looked down and feigned amazement. ‘Well,’ it said at last, ‘as soon as I get back to Thessaly I’m going to sue that bloody pharmaceuticals company.’
‘Come off it,’ Jason said. ‘I know perfectly well you’re bloodthirsty, subhuman cannibal mutants, the result of the morbid nuptials of Chaos and Darkness. So the sooner we get started, the sooner I can have something to eat. Ready?’
‘Mutants, yes,’ said the Centaur. ‘Yes, I think we’re all prepared to hold our hands up to that one, you’ve got us there. But the rest of it, bloodthirsty and cannibalistic, I think that’s being a bit extreme, don’t you, lads?’
The other Centaurs grunted - or whinnied - their agreement. Jason raised an eyebrow.
‘In fact,’ said the Centaur quickly, ‘I would say even mutants is a bit of a misnomer, really. More like disabled, I’d say. Like, if you could see your way to regarding these as a sort of rather more convenient substitute for a wheelchair, perhaps we could all understand each other a lot better. You know, raise your consciousness a bit, abandon your deeply-ingrained cultural stereotypes, that sort of thing. In fact, I’d go so far as to say you’re being a bit, well, horsist, wouldn’t you?’
‘Horsist?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought,’ said Jason, ‘he was a Saxon king who invaded Kent.’
‘Hengist,’ the Centaur corrected him. ‘And Horsa. A Horsist is someone who has this outmoded bias against horses.’
‘Horses I like,’ said Jason, ‘Centaurs I beat into pulp. Who’s next?’
The Centaur went white under its fur. ‘Toss you for it?’ he suggested.
‘No,’ Jason replied.
‘Best of three?’
‘No.’
‘Would it help if I also pointed out that we are an ethnic minority?’
‘No.’
The Centaur gulped. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘perhaps if we just talked it over, as between intelligent human . . . well, subhuman . . .’
‘Nobody,’ said Jason grimly, ‘calls me prejudiced and gets away with it.’
The Centaur swore miserably, drew its sword and charged. The last thought that passed through its mind before it lost consciousness was that the real trouble with Heroes was that they always had to know best.
At approximately half-past eleven that night, a small electric cart whirred its way up Pool Street, past the Friendship House, past the George and Dragon, past the butcher’s, and stopped at the Post Office. A tall man in a golden helmet and battledress jumped out and posted a letter. As he was about to get back in, a policeman came round the corner and stared at him.
‘Bugger me,’ said the policeman. ‘You again!’
The man stopped and turned round slowly. His hand tightened on a canvas sack he was carrying, but since it was dark the policeman didn’t see that. Instead he strode forward and stood between the tall man and the small electric cart, which he appeared not to have seen.
‘I want a word with you,’ said the policeman.
The tall man frowned. ‘Can’t it wait?’ he said. ‘My mum’ll be worried and besides, my dinner’ll be going cold.’
‘Never mind about your bloody dinner, son,’ said the policeman, ‘what about my reputation in the force?’
‘What about it?’ said the tall man.
‘Look,’ said the policeman. ‘I don’t want none of your lip. You’re coming straight down the station and you’re going to tell me what you were doing outside the George and Dragon this time five years ago. And don’t tell me you were . . .’
The policeman’s words trailed away into a sort of gibbering murmur which three dots are really quite inadequate to express.
‘You know what this is?’ said the tall man.
‘Erg,’ replied the policeman.
‘This,’ said the tall man, ‘is the Sword of . . . of . . . Anyway, if you don’t take your hand off my sleeve in five seconds flat, I’ll take it off for you. Got that?’
‘Erg,’ the policeman assured him.
‘Thank you,’ said the tall man. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘for your information, five years ago I was still at school, and I didn’t hang around pubs at half-eleven at night. Got that?’
‘Erg.’
‘Sure?’
‘Erg.’
‘Good.’ He turned and put one foot in the golf cart. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘by the way.’
‘Erg.’
‘In case you were wondering, I’m a figment of your imagination. You’ve either been drinking or working too hard, and you didn’t see me. Clear?’
‘Erg.’
‘Because,’ the tall man said, ‘I’ve had just about enough of everything today, with the definite exception of food, and I really can’t be bothered with the likes of you, so I suggest you go home and sleep it off. Right?’
‘Ouch!’
About five minutes later, a small group of youths who had just been thrown out of the George and Dragon for extremely antisocial behaviour happened to trip over a recumbent police sergeant in the middle of Pool Street. Having tripped over him a few more times (for luck) they assisted him to his feet and enquired as to his health. They also stole his radio and his handcuffs, but the labourer is worthy of his hire.
‘Fine,’ said the policeman, wiping the blood absently from his chin. ‘I’m fine, really. Now you go on home before I . . .’
‘Wassup, Smithy?’ asked one of the youths. ‘You been seeing things again or something?’
The police sergeant shook his head vigorously. ‘I ain’t seen nothing,’ he said. ‘I just walked into a lamppost, that’s all.’
Jason Derry opened the front door, waved goodnight to his driver and walked in.
‘Hiya, Mum, Dad,’ he called, ‘I’m home.’
‘That you, Jason?’ came his mother’s voice from the kitchen.
‘Yes,’ Jason replied. ‘Anything to eat? I’m starving.’
‘There’s some sandwiches,’ Mrs. Derry replied. ‘Jason.’
‘Yes, Mum?’
‘You haven’t . . . well, got anything with you? Anything that needs burying, or . . .’
Jason quietly opened the door of the cupboard under the stairs and hid the Sword of Glycerion behind the ironing board. ‘Course not,’ he said.
The kitchen door opened. ‘Your Dad’s out,’ she said. ‘How was the war?’
‘Oh,’ said Jason, ‘we won.’
‘That’s nice, dear.’
Jason remembered something. ‘Sorry I forgot to write,’ he said. ‘You weren’t worried, were you?’
‘Of course not, dear,’ said Mrs. Derry, looking away. ‘Why should I be worried, when your dad . . . your other dad, I mean, said he’d keep an eye on you?’
‘Him!’ Jason said contemptuously.
‘Jason!’ replied his mother. ‘How many times have I told you not to speak disrespectfully of your father? You really . . .’
Jason scowled. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Forget it, all right? I’ve had a hard day. What’s in the sandwiches?’
His mother noticed a slight cut on the knuckles of his right hand. ‘You’ve been fighting,’ she said.
‘That’s right,’ Jason replied. ‘You remember, the war, all that stuf
f. Ham, is it?’
‘Yes, dear,’ said Mrs. Derry. ‘You going to have a bath before you go to bed?’
‘In the morning,’ Jason said, yawning. ‘Right now . . .’
Mrs. Derry gave him a meaningful look and said ‘Sharon rang.’
Jason yawned again. ‘Oh yes?’ he replied and yawned again, this time artificially.
‘Twice.’
‘Wouldn’t want her ’phone bill, then,’ said Jason. ‘Any Coke in the fridge?’
‘Yes,’ sighed Mrs. Derry. ‘I think so. You could phone Sharon tomorrow. It’s her day off.’
Jason winced. ‘Look, Mum,’ he said, ‘that’d be really great, only I’ve got a lot on tomorrow. Maybe next week, all right?’
His mother sniffed and went up to bed. Jason stood in the hall for a few seconds longer, shrugged and went to look for the sandwiches.
It is the tradition, now well over three thousand years old, that the Sybil or Pythoness of Delphi trains her successor in her priestly duties. Betty-Lou Fisichelli, for example, had been trained by the Old Pythoness (confusingly named Sybil), who in turn had been initiated into the Mysteries by her predecessor, the great Madam Arcati.
In her small but well-appointed flat in the suburbs of Delphi, Ms. Fisichelli was on the point of explaining the Great Primordial to her apprentice.
‘Have you got all that?’ she said, ‘or would you like me to run through it one more time?’
‘No,’ said the apprentice, helping herself to a handful of olives, ‘that’s fine. So then what happened?’
‘Well,’ said Betty-Lou, ‘after Prometheus had told the Joke to the caveman, of course all the gods were furious. They just sort of flipped.’
‘Really,’ said the apprentice, removing a stone from her mouth with more grace than the act properly required. ‘And?’
‘And so,’ said the Pythoness, ‘once they’d gotten control of themselves again . . .’
‘Have an olive.’
Ms. Fisichelli hesitated. ‘No thanks,’ she said.
‘They’re good, really.’
‘Well . . .’
A moment later, the Pythoness spat out a stone into the ashtray and continued, ‘When they’d gotten control of themselves, they all decided to see if they couldn’t do something about it. So first they grabbed Prometheus and chained him to this rock up in the Caucasus somewhere, and they got this eagle . . .’
‘Go on,’ said the apprentice, crossing the room to the drinks tray, ‘I’m listening.’
‘They got this eagle . . .’
‘Can I get you something?’
‘No, thanks,’ said the Pythoness. There was no doubt about it, Mary was a natural Pythoness, virtually, well, instinctive, but she sometimes wished she didn’t find it all quite so easy. When she’d been doing basic training, she’d had to sit up nights learning this stuff by heart. ‘They got this eagle,’ she said, ‘and every morning and every evening, it tears out Prometheus’s liver with its beak.’
‘Heavy!’
‘And every afternoon,’ Ms. Fisichelli went on, slightly shaken, ‘and every night, the liver sort of, well, grows again. And that’s how Prometheus was punished for his betrayal of the gods.’
Mary was sitting down again, cross-legged on the sofa, her mouth full of olives and retsina. ‘Haven’t you missed something?’ she said.
‘Have I?’
‘About the Unbinding,’ Mary said. ‘You know, how one day . . .’
‘Oh yes,’ the Pythoness said, ‘right. One day, it is prophesied, a Hero will come who will cut the chains, slay the eagle, and release the god . . .’
‘You sure?’
The Pythoness frowned. ‘About what?’
‘About the eagle,’ Mary said. ‘That bit doesn’t sound right.’
‘Doesn’t it?’ Betty-Lou asked, puzzled. ‘Why not?’
Mary shrugged and removed another olive-stone. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Don’t mind me. Go on.’
Betty-Lou folded her hands in her lap. ‘The next thing the gods did,’ she continued, ‘was try to devise a plan to remove Laughter from the world. Unfortunately, everything they did failed; whatever they inflicted on the mortals, the one thing they steadfastly refused to give up was Laughter. And so the Divine Plan has yet to be carried out, and Laughter lies hidden somewhere in the bowels of the earth, so deep that even winged Mercury, the messenger of the gods, cannot find him. One day, however, it is written that a young demi-god, son of Jupiter himself, will discover the hiding-place of the unseemly sprite and will carry him back to heaven where he belongs. Then the gods will return, mortals will once again respect them and know their place, and the new Golden Age will begin . . .’
The Pythoness broke off her narrative. Her apprentice was giving her one of those disconcerting looks of hers. ‘Well?’ she asked brusquely.
‘A new Golden Age?’
‘Yes,’ said the Pythoness firmly, ‘that’s right.’
‘Just like the first one, huh?’
‘Yes,’ said the Pythoness, firmly. Nobody could object to that, surely?
‘That would be,’ the apprentice went on, ‘the time when we mortals lived in caves, dressed in skins and ate raw meat, couldn’t read or write, died young of horrible diseases, got eaten by wild animals, were thoroughly scared of the dark, and couldn’t even take our minds off it all by having a good laugh about something.’
‘Yes,’ said the Pythoness.
‘And that was the Golden Age?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fine,’ said the apprentice. ‘I see. Sorry, you were saying?’
‘Yes,’ said Ms. Fisichelli, ‘well, I think that’s about enough for one evening, don’t you? Anyhow, it’s getting late, and I’ve got essays to mark and . . .’
‘Okay,’ Mary said, uncurling herself enchantingly from the sofa, ‘thanks a lot. See you tomorrow at the seminar.’
‘Yes, yes indeed,’ said the Pythoness, absently. ‘Early Classical epigraphy, isn’t it?’
‘The use of computers in modern archaeology,’ Mary corrected her. ‘Or is that Friday?’ she added kindly.
‘No,’ said the Pythoness, ‘you’re quite right. What could I have been thinking of? See you then.’
‘Goodnight, then.’
‘Goodnight.’
The Pythoness listened for the soft click of the door closing, and then sat down to do some nice, comfy worrying. It was, she reminded herself, her duty to select a suitable successor from the archaeology students who attended her classes at the American School, and by and large she was convinced that she’d made the right choice. Such aptitude. Such intuition. Such ability to learn. Greek, even, on her mother’s side, though her father was a nicely prosaic mining engineer from Pennsylvania. It was almost, Betty-Lou told herself, as if she knew it all already. And yet there was something not quite exactly right about Mary Stamnos.
‘It’s no good, dammit,’ she said to herself as she poured out two saucers of milk (one for her cat and one for the Sacred Serpent). ‘He’ll have to be told.’
‘Well?’ Minerva demanded, ‘so where was he?’
‘Eating,’ Apollo replied.
Minerva frowned. ‘I don’t seem to remember asking you what he was doing,’ she said. ‘Where was he?’
‘At some sort of village café in the Caucasus,’ Apollo said, trying his best to be very sweet to his sister, ‘eating.’
‘All the time?’
‘Yes,’ Apollo confirmed. ‘Mercury interviewed the waiter specially. It all tallies perfectly. He was there from when they opened right through to closing time. The waiter remembers him very well because he left a tip big enough to enable the waiter to open his own tractor factory, and he says . . .’
Minerva gave him a look. ‘No, you mark my words, something has been going on, and the only possible explanation is that You-Know-Who was involved.’
‘I don’t, actually.’
‘What?’
‘Know who.’
&nb
sp; Minerva made an exasperated gesture and mimed someone laughing while carrying a stalk of fennel. ‘Oh, him,’ Apollo said quickly. ‘No, apparently Merc questioned him very closely. And, of course, the Eagle. Nothing. Couldn’t have been lying, he reckoned, or he’d have known. Very shrewd, Merc is, sometimes, and lying . . . well, it’s a sort of hobby of his, so . . .’
He could tell from the way she was looking at him and the owl on her shoulder was sniggering into its wing-feathers that his big sister wasn’t convinced. So what, Apollo thought, neither am I, particularly. I just want to get Min off my back so I can look into it myself.
‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘one thing’s for sure - there’s no harm done. Mission accomplished, ten Centaurs reduced to quick-fry steak and the Golden Fleece safely recovered and restored to the Sacred Grove at Blachernas,6 so I guess the best thing is just to pretend it never happened, okay?’
‘No it is not,’ Minerva said. ‘There’s going to have to be an enquiry.’
Apollo nodded vigorously. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘there’ll definitely have to be an enquiry, no doubt about that. In fact, I’d say you’d better get it set up straight away. Sooner the better, really, don’t you think?’
Minerva nodded and stalked away, and Apollo grinned. How Minerva had got to be Goddess of Wisdom, he said to himself, was another story entirely but nothing to do with her IQ.
Having satisfied himself that Minerva really had gone away and wasn’t hiding behind a helium flare eavesdropping, Apollo put down the lyre he’d been pretending to restring and switched on the Commentary.
‘And now we’re going over to the ringside where Derek is just about to have a word with President George Jones, the American premier, whose team the Yankees have just succeeded in putting a manned space station into lunar orbit. Well, George, I bet you’re over the moon about this one . . .’
A scowl flitted over Apollo’s face and he clicked the switch off. There was more to all this, he felt, than met the All-Seeing Eye, even if the effects hadn’t immediately made themselves noticeable. He went to find Mars.