Lesser Gods

by Adrian Howell

  “You wouldn’t!” I cried, wide-eyed.

  Terry’s smile broadened. “Why not? Don’t you want Cindy to know how courageous you are?”

  “No! Terry, please!”

  Terry laughed loudly. “I’m kidding, Adrian! You think I want to be the one who gives her a heart attack?”

  Entering the penthouse with Terry, I just barely braced myself in time to keep from being knocked over as Alia jumped on me, wrapping her arms around my neck. She didn’t say anything, but it seemed that she had at least temporarily stowed her upset with my going away. I spun her around a few times before setting her back on the floor, by which time Cindy had come rushing from the kitchen to give Terry and me big bear hugs.

  “Wow!” said Terry, laughing. “You’d think we were gone for a year!”

  “I’m just glad you’re both home safe,” said Cindy.

  “That much is obvious.”

  “No injuries, Addy?” Alia asked aloud.

  “Fortunately, not this trip,” I told her. “But next time, ask that before you jump on me.”

  “So how was it?” asked Cindy. “Did you enjoy your mission?”

  We gave her the abridged version over lunch, and I let Terry do most of the talking. I suspected that Cindy knew Terry was leaving certain details out, but Cindy didn’t probe the fine points.

  We had not only taken our target wild-born intact, but did so without firing a single shot or using even one grenade. While it had been a close call with the Wolves, our mission was nevertheless a one-hundred-percent success, due in large part to me, and Terry was kind enough to give me that credit without letting Cindy know exactly what I had done.

  “Sounds like you both had quite an adventure,” commented Cindy.

  “I’m just glad we got him to come on his own,” I said, a little embarrassed by Terry’s praise. “I really wanted him to make the choice himself.”

  Terry laughed. “I thought you didn’t believe in choices, Adrian.”

  “Well, technically, he didn’t really have a choice,” I replied. “But at least he thinks he made one.”

  Two days later, I learned from Cindy that Art Barnum had agreed to officially join the Guardians, and once he settled down in New Haven, he would be given the option of joining the Knights if he felt up to it. Otherwise, he was perfectly welcome to peacefully live out his life as a librarian or something.

  “That’s good to hear, Cindy,” I said, smiling. “I hope he finds peace here.”

  Success is addictive. The euphoria that comes from it invariably demands more. As the days slowly became hotter, I found myself wondering when we would be called upon next, and what kind of mission it would be. With the exception of one short phone call to Terry congratulating our success, Mr. Simms had not spoken to us since our fishing trip. I knew he was busy with his secret project, but that just made me all the more impatient.

  Terry merely shrugged, saying, “We’ve already proven ourselves. If they want us, they’ll contact us. Until then, keep training.”

  That didn’t sound at all like What’s-Life-Without-Adventure Terry, but she was right. We were already asking a lot of the Knights to allow us on missions, and if Terry could patiently wait for a summons, I certainly could too. Meanwhile, Cindy would be happy knowing that we were living peacefully in New Haven and Alia wouldn’t have to feel left out of anything. Now that Cindy had Alia and me officially on summer vacation, aside from my combat training with Terry, I had no responsibilities and thus lots of time to waste. It was not yet July, but I could tell that it was going to be another hot summer.

  On the last day of June, Alia, who had learned to swim last year and loved it, asked Terry and me to take her to the pool. We didn’t need too much persuading. Packing our swimsuits and lunch money, the three of us headed out in the late morning.

  “You can’t wear a headband in the pool, Adrian,” said Terry as we walked toward the recreational outdoor pool several blocks down the street from our building.

  “Oh yeah?” I said defiantly, adjusting the thick band around my ears. “Watch me.”

  I was also wearing a large waterproof Band-Aid over my P-47 tattoo. The Guardian families knew who I was even if I covered up my distinguishing features, but there were plenty of normal people living in this neighborhood who didn’t even know that they were in New Haven.

  “That band is going to slip off in the water,” warned Terry, “and then everyone will see how ugly you really are.”

  “Look who’s talking, Five-fingers!” I retorted. “Hope you brought enough sunscreen!”

  Alia started giggling, and then let out a little shriek as Terry used her prosthetic hand to poke my sister in the stomach.

  We borrowed towels at the reception counter, and then I met the girls on the other side of the changing rooms.

  Having left her left arm in her locker, Terry’s rather obvious lopsidedness drew some sidelong glances from the other pool guests. If anyone asked, the official line was that Terry had lost her arm in a car accident. We certainly weren’t about to tell anyone that I had hacked it off with an ax to save her from drowning.

  Of the three of us, Alia was the only one who looked at all normal. Her deep red one-piece swimsuit hid both of her two disturbingly unique features.

  The more obvious of these were the terrible crisscrossing scars all over her back which, if seen by the public, would probably attract far more alarmed looks than Terry’s missing arm. Alia had spent the first few years of her life in the hands of religious fanatics that tried to “cure her psionic abnormality” by torturing the devil out of her. Sharing a room with my sister meant that I frequently saw those scars when we were changing, but I could never quite get used to it. I couldn’t begin to imagine what she must have gone through. Never once had I heard her mention anything from her life prior to being rescued by Cindy, and I wasn’t about to bring it up in conversation.

  Also hidden by Alia’s swimsuit was a round palm-size scar on her lower left side, the result of being hit by a powerful telekinetic blast from none other than myself earlier this year when my body had been hijacked by an Angel puppeteer. I would never forget the horror I felt watching my psionically controlled arm fire the blast that smashed Alia against a wall. I had almost killed my sister that night, but Alia jokingly called the scar her “Addy mark.” Much like Terry’s shortened left arm, whenever I saw it, I was reminded of how precarious life could suddenly become.

  Grabbing Terry’s right hand and my left, Alia tugged us toward the pool as she said loudly but not nearly correctly, “Come on!”

  As we jumped into the water, I noticed the lifeguard staring at us. What a sight we must have been: me with my ridiculous headband and Band-Aid, Terry without an arm, and Alia talking like she had glue in her mouth.

  “I wonder when Laila’s coming,” said Terry as she and I treaded water, watching Alia splash happily around us.

  “Laila’s coming?” I asked.

  “I invited her to join us before we left,” replied Terry. “She said she’d try to be here before noon.”

  “Oh.”

  Terry smirked. “Don’t worry, Adrian. I won’t tell her how you feel about her.”

  “Terry!” I said warningly, but at the exact same moment, I heard another girl’s voice shout out Terry’s name as well. It was Laila Brown.

  “Laila!” Terry called back as Laila jumped into the pool and swam up to us. “You’re early.”

  “My mom said I could do my chores later,” Laila said happily. “Hello, Adrian. Hi, Alia!”

  “Hi,” Alia and I said together, though for once, my sister spoke more clearly than I.

  “Is Ms. Gifford here too?” asked Laila.

  “No,” replied Terry.

  We had invited her, but as was often the case, Cindy had a meeting to attend. It was only recently that I discovered that half of the time, Cindy’s “meetings” were spent giving Guardian Knights her two weeks’ worth of individual hiding protection before they shipped
off on missions where other hiders were not available. Cindy hadn’t wanted to share this with us, but Terry knew and told me.

  “I heard about your fishing trip from my mom,” said Laila, beaming at me. “I thought it was really–”

  But I didn’t get to hear what Laila really thought it was because, at that moment, another girl’s voice called out, “Laila! Hey, Laila!”

  I turned around in the water and saw two teenage girls standing on the poolside and waving to us. Terry and Laila’s classmates, no doubt.

  Laila waved back, calling their names, and then said, “You want to join us for lunch later?”

  The girls looked at Terry and me uncomfortably, and then the one who had called to us said, “Uh, sorry, but we can’t. We promised we’d be home before noon.”

  “Then you better get swimming,” Terry called up to them brightly. “You only have about twenty minutes here if you’re going to be home by noon!”

  “Actually, we’re just on our way out,” replied the girl. “We’ve been here since morning.”

  “Must be nice to have hair that dries so fast!” said Laila, and I noticed that neither girl on the poolside had damp hair.

  “Yeah, well...” said the girl, looking around uneasily. “We’ll, uh, see you later, Laila.”

  “See you!” Terry and Laila shouted together.

  As the pair of dry-haired girls retreated toward the doors to the changing rooms, Terry and Laila burst out laughing. Alia joined in too, though she probably didn’t know what was funny. I didn’t see much humor in the matter myself.

  There was a fairly consistent flow of people coming out of and returning into the changing rooms, so I couldn’t be sure how many people were leaving because we had arrived, but I was sure those girls weren’t the only ones. Well, tough luck for them! If they were too gutless to share a public space with the family of the hider that was protecting their way of life, then I had as much pity for them as I had for the Wolves.

  Ignoring the lifeguard’s curious looks and occasional stares from other visitors, we swam freely and played water-tag until Alia tired out, and then we decided to take a break for lunch. Terry had been wrong on one count: my headband had stayed on.

  Getting out of the water, we gathered some pool chairs into a corner where we could have some privacy.

  “I’ll take Alia and get us some hotdogs,” said Terry. “You two can guard our chairs and get better acquainted.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Terry took Alia’s hand and led her off toward the crowded hotdog stand at the far end of the pool area, leaving Laila and me in an awkward silence. I shrugged, gave Laila a half-smile and sat down with her on the pool chairs. I wasn’t sure what to say to her. After all, Laila was Terry’s friend, not mine.

  Laila turned to me and said, “Terry told me all about her last mission, and what you two did there.”

  “She didn’t tell you that...” I began uneasily.

  “That you stepped in front of a loaded shotgun?” Laila grinned. “Yes, she did.”

  “Oh,” I said, scratching the back of my neck. “You know, I didn’t really plan it that way. It’s just sort of how it happened.”

  “Well, planned or not, Adrian, I have to agree with Terry that it probably wasn’t a very smart thing to do.”

  I shrugged.

  Laila smiled and continued, “But I’m glad you got the man to come peacefully. I actually met Mr. Barnum when I was walking with my mother to her Council meeting the other day. He seemed like a really nice man. It’s good that no one forced him to join us.”

  “It’s scary being a wild-born,” I said quietly.

  “I can imagine,” said Laila.

  If it had been someone else, I might have dismissed that comment as an empty politeness, but I thought perhaps Laila could imagine what it was like.

  I smiled at her, and she said hesitantly, “Hey, Adrian? I know this is kind of sudden, but before I came here today, my mom told me to ask you if you and Alia might want to come with us to church next Sunday. Terry’s welcome too, of course, but I’m sure she’s not interested.”

  “I didn’t know you were a church-goer,” I said.

  “All my life,” said Laila, nodding.

  “Well, sorry to disappoint you, Laila, but I’m not really into religion. Actually, I’m an agnostic.”

  “An agnostic?”

  “It means I don’t believe in God.”

  “I know what ‘agnostic’ means, Adrian,” said Laila, chuckling. “Terry’s an atheist too.”

  “But I’m not an atheist,” I insisted. “I’m an agnostic. I’m not saying God doesn’t exist. But there’s no way to know for sure, so I just don’t bother with religion one way or the other.”

  Laila smiled mischievously. “And yet the sisters tell me you sometimes visit the church.”

  “I do, but not to pray,” I told her. “You know that I’m friends with Mark Parnell, right? I sometimes talk to him at the church, but I don’t intrude on the services.”

  Laila gave me a dubious look. “You’re friends with a priest and you’re not at all religious?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Is that so hard to believe?”

  “Well, Adrian, you have to admit it’s a bit unusual.”

  “I’m not against faith, Laila. I just don’t have time for it.”

  “Why not?”

  I pondered that for a few seconds before answering, “Well, even assuming that God really exists, he’s never done me any favors, so I have nothing to return. I don’t thank God for my blessings any more than I blame him for my curses. I think life is easier when you don’t have to rely on some invisible, untouchable force.”

  Laila pursed her lips. “Hmm...”

  I shifted my weight uneasily on my chair. I couldn’t believe that my first private conversation with Laila had suddenly turned into a theological argument. I wondered how much longer Terry would take getting the hotdogs.

  “I’m not against religion, Laila,” I said again, not wanting to offend her. “I have nothing against God or the people who believe in God. I don’t go around telling people not to go to church. If believing in God helps them get through their day-to-day lives, I’m happy for them, but I can’t simply choose to believe in something without any kind of proof. And I’ve never seen anything that could convince me that there’s a higher being running this world.”

  Suddenly Laila started laughing really hard. Laughing! I couldn’t have been more surprised if she had grown an extra head.

  “Why do you laugh?” I asked, lost but nevertheless relieved that she wasn’t upset with me.

  “I’m sorry,” Laila said between giggles. “I just find it funny that there are people out there who regard you as a god of sorts, and yet you don’t even believe in God yourself.”

  I blinked back at her for a moment. “People who regard me as a... What? Who thinks we’re gods?”

  “Lots of people,” said Laila, still laughing. “You know that psionics are sometimes called ‘lesser gods,’ don’t you?”

  Now that she mentioned it, I remembered how even Mr. Baker had once called New Haven a city of “lesser gods” during an important speech. The Guardian leader had said it jokingly and I doubted he really believed that psionics were gods. But then there were the crazy God-slayers out there who really did think of psionics as gods – to be hunted down. And that was no joke.

  “I’ve heard the expression before, Laila,” I replied carefully. “But I never really understood it. Personally, I think that anyone who honestly believes that psionics are gods has very low standards for their gods. We are not gods. Not even lesser gods, if there could be such a thing.”

  “Oh,” said Laila, looking disappointed. “You know, Adrian, my mother once called you a godsend for bringing Ms. Gifford to New Haven and then helping to rescue her this spring. She said it was the Lord’s will that you came to us when you did.”

  I laughed as I patted the little round scar on my stomach, saying, “If you
call being shot by Wolves ‘the Lord’s will,’ then you’ll understand why I don’t bother with God.”

  Laila laughed a bit too. “You don’t even believe in a higher spirit or anything?”

  “I don’t believe one way or the other, Laila,” I said, eager to end this line of questioning.

  “But if you’re not religious, what do you think happens when you die?”

  “To be honest, I don’t dwell on it,” I replied. “Everyone dies eventually. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

  Terry and Alia returned with our lunch, and not a moment too soon.

  “What kept you?” I asked Terry as Alia handed me one of the hotdogs and passed another to Laila.

  “Perhaps you didn’t notice the line!” snapped Terry. “But you two seemed to be having a nice little conversation.”

  I chuckled. “Laila and I were just talking about death.”

  “There’s a happy thought!” laughed Terry. “She asked you to go to that church with her, didn’t she?”

  Laila looked embarrassedly at Terry and me, and suddenly, without exactly knowing why, I said, “Tell you what, Laila, if your mother doesn’t mind taking a non-believer into the house of God, I think I will join you this Sunday.”

  “Really?!” Laila exclaimed happily. “I’m sure my mother would be very happy. You might not remember her, but she met you last year at the Welcome to New Haven party, and at the New Year’s party too. She said she’d like to see you again in a quieter situation.”

  Laila was right: I didn’t remember her mother. I had been introduced to many people at both parties and I couldn’t remember a fraction of them.

  “What does she want with me?” I asked, trying not to sound too suspicious.

  “Nothing!” laughed Laila. “She just wants to talk, you being one of Ms. Gifford’s children and all.”

  It was political.

  “But are you really sure you want to come to church service, Adrian?” Laila asked hesitantly. “You might find it a bit boring.”

  I shook my head. “No, I think it might be fun. I’ve yet to see Mark in action.”

  “Ali?” I asked. “You want to come, too?”

  My sister was too busy chewing to reply verbally, but she nodded her head vigorously.