by Tom Holt
‘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.’
‘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 deaththroes, 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 yo
u? 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 shoulder? 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 . . .’
‘Forget it,’ Apollo snapped. ‘It’s this or nothing, OK? If you can’t handle it,’ he added menacingly, ‘I know dwarves who can.’
Vulcan scowled at him. ‘You please yourself,’ he said. ‘It’s your money.’
‘Exactly,’ Apollo said. ‘I’ll need it by the weekend, so get busy.’ Then he left, thereby neatly guillotining the debate.
After he had gone, Vulcan spent about twenty minutes scribbling little sketches on the envelope. Then he looked at it, turned it upside down, shrugged, tore it up and summoned his assistants. His assistants are the Cyclopes, the monstrous one-eyed cannibalistic thunder-giants of Sicily. At that particular moment, they were sitting round the tyre-changing press with the transistor radio turned up to full volume, playing poker and ogling the Pirelli calendar (not easy if you’re one-eyed).
‘Brontes!’ Vulcan called. ‘Sthenos! Bias! Kratos! Gather round, we’ve got work to do.’
Grumbling, the Cyclopes abandoned their game and trooped through into the main bodyshop, their knuckles ploughing furrows in the dust as they came.
‘Yeah, boss?’ said Brontes.
Vulcan pointed to the thing on the hydraulic ramp. ‘You see that?’ he demanded.
‘Yeah, boss.’
‘What is it?’
Brontes sc
ratched his head. Thinking, as opposed to overtightening bolts and hitting things with a mole wrench, was not his forte. ‘Looks like a Volkswagen to me, boss.’
‘Well done,’ said Vulcan. ‘Now listen to this . . .’
‘Thanks, George,’ Jason said. ‘Call back at about half past nine tomorrow, okay?’
George scowled. ‘You said that the last time, remember?’
‘All right, all right . . .’
‘Meet you here in about half an hour, you said.’
‘George . . .’
‘Fourteen hours,’ George said.
‘I lost track of time a bit,’ Jason snapped. ‘I said I’m sorry, okay?’
George made no reply. Instead he shook his head resentfully, put the golf cart into gear and drove away.
Jason fumbled for his key, opened the door and walked in. ‘Hi, Mum,’ he called out, ‘I’m home.’
‘Is that you, Jason?’ came a voice from the kitchen.
Jason, as usual, mumbled ‘No, it’s the Pope’ to himself under his breath and went through.
Mrs. Derry was making biscuits. There had not been a time, as far as Jason could remember, when his mother hadn’t been making biscuits. And that was the funny thing; he was fond of biscuits and had eaten a great many. So was his father fond of biscuits. So was his mother. But the three of them, eating in shifts round the clock, couldn’t possibly have stuffed away the infinity of Melting Moments, gingernuts, Maryland cookies and Viennese fingers that had poured out of this kitchen in the last fifteen years or so. Which meant that most of them must still be here, somewhere. In the cupboard under the stairs, the greenhouse, the tool-shed, wherever, one of these days, he would open a door and they’d all come pouring out . . .
‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said, ‘I got - held up. Spectral warriors. ’
‘That’s nice, dear. Your father came round.’
‘I know,’ said Jason, ‘Big Dad, you said. What did he want?’