Because, then, these were not really gods in the way I had been taught to think of gods. Even the gods I had been told were the one and only real and they’re-gonna-send-all-them-infidels-to-burn-in-hell gods just belonged to the same bunch of transdimensional refugees. Or fugitives?
“Cat, did these gods come here by choice?”
“What?”
“It occurs to me they might be exiles. Thrown out of the old home for bad behavior or just excessive stupidity.”
“No. None of them want to go back. That’s what the fighting is all about.”
“Maybe.” I had some thoughts that included suspicions of setups. I surveyed the audience. More gods had settled into their earthly forms. I saw some really big names. Out here, though, they just looked luckier than bunches like the Godoroth and Shayir. Probably had better publicity wazoos.
What I didn’t see anymore was a goddess named Imara. What I didn’t see was a redhead maybe called Adeth hanging out with raggedy-ass jungle gods. I did see Shinrise the Destroyer — or maybe Bogge the Sucker — standing around stupidly now, looking like he had just lost something.
The ranks of the Godoroth and Shayir seemed short handed on females.
I checked some of the more successful gangs but couldn’t tell if they had gone shorthanded, too. They just looked more prosperous. A supply of believers surely helped, but maybe also a knack for drawing power from beyond this reality.
Maybe gods are like sausages and politics and should not be examined closely.
I always expect the worst. That means I can be pleasantly surprised sometimes. This didn’t seem to be one of those times. Circumstances appeared to support my most cynical suspicions.
There were thousands of gods there, though most were hangers-on, many even smaller than Fourteen.
The cherub seemed to have settled down. Maybe he realized that nobody was paying him any attention. I knew I was invisible but still felt naked to every divine eye.
There was some subtle movement out there, and tension rising. The hair on my arms tingled.
52
There was big anger in the air again, much worse than before. Fourteen whimpered. Something had happened. The crowd around Lang and Imar were all in a rage.
“We need to leave now,” Cat said. Her voice squeaked. “A ruling was handed down. The Shayir and Godoroth refuse to accept it.”
Holding hands, in step, each laboring under the weight of a garbage-mouthed curse, we headed for our horses. “Explain,” I squeaked. My throat was tight, too. I noticed Magodor drifting through the mob. She seemed intent on tracking us. I wondered why.
“Because of their behavior in town, the senior gods have banished the Godoroth and the Shayir from the Street of the Gods and TunFaire.”
“And our boys won’t go quietly?”
“Imar and Lang pretty much said, ‘Stick it in your ear!’”
“Can they do that?” Of course they could. Anybody can tell anybody anything, anytime. The tricky part is surviving the aftermath.
“There may be a confrontation.”
Oh. “Uh-oh.”
“And this is definitely the wrong place for that. This is where the gods originally arrived. It takes a lot longer than ten thousand years for wounds like that to heal. The walls here are tissue.”
Which might explain why the little guys thought they could thumb their noses, except that I didn’t credit them with sense enough to consider that subtle an angle.
“Keep hiking, girl. Runt, you stop sniveling or I’ll kick you out of here.”
Fourteen sneered. He wasn’t afraid of any mortal. I was too busy staying in step with Cat to follow up.
I glanced back. I didn’t see Magodor anymore. I did see a whirlwind of black paper chips and a mist of golden light around Lang, who raised his left fist and pumped his thumb in and out of his clenched fingers in a classic obscene gesture directed at the big boys. Then he struck suddenly right-handed, swinging a sword of lightning at Imar’s throat. Just as suddenly, you had Jorken streaking around, the ugly guys looking for throats to crush, Imar flailing around with his own lightning. Trog went berserk with his hammer. Torbit, Quilraq, and others went wild. Black Mona galloped in with her hounds, her weapons flying everywhere.
“Hang on, Cat. Just a second.” I watched as the fray disappeared inside a cloud of dust, then a light storm as those incredibly brilliant pops began ripping the fabric of reality. In seconds it began to snow. And Cat and I were moving again, faster than ever.
“Why did you stop?”
“Wanted to make sure I’d seen something right.”
“What?”
“None of the females are in that mess, except Black Mona. And she’s got more hair on her ass than anybody but Trog.” Not even Magodor was involved. Maybe especially not even Magodor. What’s an end of the world dustup without a Destroyer?
53
The temperature plummeted. My headache worsened till Cat had to help me stay on my feet. Numerous top god types tried to break up the fight. The Godoroth and Shayir went on like fools with nothing to lose and a complete willingness to take everybody with them. And they seemed to get support from some odds and ends of petty pewter types from other pantheons, mainly of the strike-from-behind, score-settling sort.
We made good time despite being inside the bag. We were behind the knee of a hill when the Bohdan Zhibak lit up with the grandaddy of all light pops.
I went down. “Bet they saw that back in town.” My headache grew so intense I blacked out.
I recovered in seconds. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to get us out of this.”
Trying to take a powder, actually. Hell. Give her the benefit. Say she was trying to scram because I was out and she couldn’t move the sack with all that dead weight in it.
My head didn’t hurt nearly so much now. I found the knot, got us out in seconds. Fourteen went catatonic with terror. I restored my cord to normal, wrapped it around my waist again.
There was a lot of noise from the other side of the hill. Cat told me, “We’ve got to keep going.”
“In a minute.” I wanted a peek. Just one little look. I was pretty sure my Midnight of the Gods was cooking now. Be a shame not to witness some of the action.
I kept a tight grip on Cat. Just in case. Much as I hate horses and heights, I hated the prospect of walking home more. Especially walking home while suffering a headache and a psychotic parrot. She had the strength to break away. She just didn’t try. Ever seen a sea anemone? Thing like a little flower a couple inches across, pale tentacles that just drift around? Maybe not. I had the advantage of an all-but-the-pain expenses-paid trip to remote islands. Anyway, these little guys just sit there with their arms up and when something drifts by they snag it.
A black version thirty feet in diameter with two hundred tentacles fifty feet long was stuck in a hole in the air where Lang and Imar had been banging on each other. It was twenty feet off the ground, tilted forty degrees and wiggling like crazy. “No wonder the gods wanted to come over here.”
The thing plugged the hole so tight no cold could come through. The snow had begun to melt.
The gods were active. Frantically. Some tried to deal with the interloper. Some tried to get loose from it. The really big guys were feeding it. I saw Ringo get flung into the middle of the tentacle forest. Many of the visible victims, in fact, seemed to be of Shayir or Godoroth extraction. Guess this will settle that question.
Other old scores were being recalculated as well. A general trimming of the divine population was under way.
There seemed to be enough gods actually taking care of business to push that thing back. While I watched, the hole shrank several feet.
Nog is inescapable. Oh my. Somebody fell through the cracks.
“Time to go.”
Cat had gotten it, too. She outran me, though not by much. Wonder of wonders, her flying pals had not left us twisting in the wind. Considering Fourteen’s timidity, I’d figured t
o find them long gone.
Nog is inescapable.
Maybe so. He was closing in fast.
He was so close, in fact, that he leaped and landed a raking blow on my mount’s left flank as we went airborne. Which naturally irritated the horse. It gained some altitude, turned, dove, did a fine job of thunking all four hooves off Nog’s noggin. Nog said, Ow Stop! That hurts!
The retard had double the vocabulary I had thought. But I didn’t dwell on that. I was too busy screaming at the horse to get the hell out of there before I fell off or Nog showed us what other divine talents he possessed — or Magodor caught up or the other gods got bored with feeding each other to their new pet.
The winged horse took my advice.
As we gained altitude again my headache diminished. I was soaked with sweat from gutting it out.
The moon had climbed only slightly higher. At this rate, if we hustled, we could get back to town before we left. Or at least meet ourselves on the way. I could warn me not to go.
I looked down. The Haunted Circle crawled like the proverbial anthill. There had been a lot of breakthroughs. The one I had seen was just the biggest. In numerous places one or two tentacles reached through and tried to find something to grab. But the gods had covered themselves. There wasn’t so much as a bush out there. When a tentacle grabbed a boulder somebody zapped that into pea gravel. The home gods were winning. Rah! The wannabes were being driven back. Rah!
Rah! But at terrible cost. Boo! This insanity would decimate every pantheon in the Dream Quarter. Wait! Would that be so awful?
None of this was likely to touch the man on the street. I could not see, for example, the New Concord Managerial Recidivist gods informing their faithful that good old Gerona the Tallykeeper was no more, so they needn’t trouble themselves with bringing in those tithes. More likely they would hear about several new diocesan appeals, maybe aimed at fixing up the mother temple in TimsNoroe or financing another mission to the heathen Venageti. And one sceat out of every silver mark really would go toward carrying out the fund’s dedicated purpose.
Not that the gods would themselves be much concerned about money or precious metals.
Well! Look at this. Not every god is woven of the stuff of heroes. I was too far up there to recognize individuals, but quite a few had run from the bad place. Was it all cowardice, though? One group of several dozen was headed north in a purposeful manner. I had a notion that if I dared swoop down there, I would find some very familiar folks.
In fact...
54
In fact, a pair of familiar shapes hurtled past, zip! zap! to my right front from my left rear, angling down from above, too swift to see but trailing giggles that gave them away. One looped back and took a seat right in front of me, where she changed into a half-naked girl. The other one circled and complained.
“I got here first, slowpoke. Hi, Garrett! Surprised? Can we talk? We’re lots smarter than we always acted.”
“I’m real uncomfortable up here. That first step down is a killer. No offense, but do you think you could maybe keep your hands to yourself till we get a little closer to the ground? I don’t have your advantages over gravity. If I get distracted I just fall.”
The circling owl girl giggled. The other answered peevishly, “He is not! He’s just behaving like a mortal.” She did not take her hands off me. “Wouldn’t it be exciting way up here, Garrett? I’ve never played with mortals anywhere but down on the ground.”
Does a bimbo become any less a bimbo because she is smarter than everybody thinks?
“For about as long as it takes for me to lose track and let go here.” I tried to get a hint of the color of her rags. “Look, Dimna, darling, you’re just about the greatest thing that ever happened to me.” Wow! I got it right first try! “But now just isn’t the time to show you just how much I mean that. I hate horses. I’m terrified of heights. I have a murderous headache from all the power in that mess back there, and I haven’t eaten or slept since this insanity began.”
So I exaggerated. We all do that to save somebody’s feelings. Or to avoid getting tossed off a two-thousand-foot drop for our thoughtlessness. She sure did look good, though. I am a pig, I know. I have been told. But I can’t help it. Maybe if I didn’t run into this kind of woman all the time? Maybe if I got into a more boring line of work? Maybe I could just drop over the side right now, die happy making Dimna squeal all the way down.
She rubbed her firm little puffies up against me, let a hand drop familiarly, told me, “I don’t think you’re that incapacitated.”
“Darling, I promise you, if I give in now I’ll be incapacitated forever. Because I’ll fall off here for sure. And I can’t turn into anything else but a tired old ex-Marine.”
The owl girl actually seemed flattered that I considered a dalliance with her potentially suicidal. Who am I to argue?
“Awk?” said the Goddamn Parrot, making a sound for the first time since the latter stage of the journey outward.
“You aren’t going to believe this, Old Bones.” I didn’t know if he was listening, but anticipating his nags about paying attention to business, I turned Dimna’s temptations back upon her, a tickle here and a pinch there that she seemed happy to accept. She sneered at Lila, closed her eyes and relaxed. Her twin flapped off in a huff.
I kept talking, mostly just making noise with a little content in case the Dead Man could hear but occasionally asking a question and leaving a silence for Dimna to fill.
She might claim to be smarter than she let on, but she was no genius. Too bad that was recognized by others. She had been let in on very little of substance. But she definitely enjoyed being interrogated.
I felt so used.
Right.
“Talk to me,” the Goddamn Parrot squawked.
You get distracted.
“You know I have company.”
“Not, I suspect, another No-Neck.”
Did he hear in monotones? Couldn’t he see through Mr. Big’s eyes? Interesting. “The sweetest company a growing boy could imagine, Chuckles. Every boy ought to meet Dimna on his sixteenth birthday.” I gave Dimna a strained smile and a kiss. If she wanted anything more out of life she sure didn’t tell me.
In pain still, sweaty, tired, and hungry, all I really wanted was to get home. I felt safe enough now.
I could not tell what Cat thought about the owl girls. She was too far away and staying slightly ahead, navigating.
55
Cat landed in Brookside Park. The snow there had not yet all melted. I told her, “Cat, I’ve had all the fun I can stand with you and your mom and your friends. Suppose you all carry on without me? The Shayir and Godoroth shouldn’t be a problem anymore.”
She dismissed the horses. They trotted into the darkness. Fourteen stayed with Cat. He was about as active as a twelve-pound brick. Cat stuck with me. So did Lila and Dimna. Maybe they just didn’t know where else to go now that the Shayir pantheon was defunct. I can’t say I was thrilled, though it would be fun to walk into Morley’s joint with an owl girl on each arm.
At first Cat wouldn’t talk in front of them, but finally she grumbled, “If you add everything up, you have to believe my mother and her cronies engineered what happened.”
“That bothers you?”
“Because it looks like they didn’t think about the consequences. They wanted rid of some deadwood, so they put Imar and Lang in a spot where they would betray themselves for the duds they were. I don’t think Mom realized that could damage the barriers between the worlds.”
I reserved my opinion, naturally, but that told me Mom was as much a dud as her husband. She just hadn’t had as much chance to show it.
“Cat, you glance over history, you’ll see that females, on average, aren’t brighter or better than males. They can be stupid or wise, foolish or crafty, too. They can be petty or magnanimous, and blind to the blazingly obvious. One thing some religions push that I agree with is that people ought to be trying to improve themselves
as a whole. But I’m a cynic. I see no evidence that it’s ever going to happen.”
“You may be a realist, not a cynic. I’ve been closer to more gods and goddesses than anyone who ever lived.”
She did not seem inclined to expand upon her remarks.
I didn’t get to bed. I didn’t even get to eat right away. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the Dead Man pushing Dean, I wouldn’t have gotten in until morning. The old man had all the chains on and was sound asleep.
I gave it to him good.
An hour later I was in the Dead Man’s room. Cat and Fourteen were with us. The owl girls were in the small front room with the Goddamn Parrot. I was barely awake. Dean was sulking in the kitchen, fixing something to eat. I think he was waiting for it to grow up so he could butcher it. I thought about siccing the twins on him. He needed an attitude boost. Unfortunately, only the Dead Man, Cat, and I could see them or Fourteen.
His Nibs issued an opinion. Imara and several other goddesses engineered this thing. I imagine they just intended to rid themselves of stupid males who...
“Cat already told me that.”
... gave no thought to consequences.
“And didn’t listen, no doubt.”
He ignored me, began spinning out a storm of dreamlike images and speculations. My weary brain tried to translate them, but his thinking was alien because he experienced the world in so different a way. Once my mind processed his thoughts I drifted through a fairy-tale realm where all lies and surface posturings were illusions to be ignored because truths and real motives could not be hidden behind them. “Can you get anything from the girls?”
They are exactly what they appear to be. They do not have the depth to he anything else. They could if they so desire, but they are perfectly happy with themselves just as they are. This should thrill you. For you they are a dream come true, saddled by no more inhibitions than alley cats in heat.
“That is wonderful, isn’t it? But, to paraphrase the immoral philosopher Morley Dotes, what do I do with them the other twenty-three hours a day?”