Last God Standing (14 page)

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not feeling that confident at the moment.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Yuri sighed. “This is your big break, pal: a major gig. Forget about Surabhi for a minute. If this show’s a hit you’ll have females landing on you like flies on a whale carcass.”

“That would keep you busy,” Takahashi hiccuped.

“Right-effing-on!’ Yuri sang, pounding me on the shoulder. “Gotta keep my star happy and stress free. Right?”

“Stress free. Right.”

“Look, promise me you’ll think about doing
The Lateside
. Then we can retire rich, fat, and happy.”

“Happily ever after.”

I was thinking of Surabhi’s parents; how impressed they’d be if I was the host of an edgy but socially responsible show that could actually claim to help people. Even Magnus would have to reconsider his opinion of me if I could wave a substantial television paycheck under his nose; one that didn’t have my father’s name on it.

“I’ll think about it.”

I watched the rowdy middle-aged Trekkies frolicking over by the Starbucks kiosk. The fake Captain Kirk reached over and yanked off one of Mister Spock’s ears. The dark-skinned Vulcan burst into tears and stormed out of the food court. Ken Takahashi roared with laughter.

When I was a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man I put away childish things.

“I’ll definitely think about it.”

It was time for a change.

On the bus ride home I considered Yuri’s proposal: a high profile gig that would get me away from my parents and their ever-expanding looniness. Real money: I could recommit to driving, maybe buy a car that didn’t explode when I pressed the brakes. I could find a rent controlled apartment.

But thoughts of my mortal future were overshadowed by other responsibilities: a Conclave, a gathering of the gods. As the current Guardian of Eschatological Continuity for Human Consciousness and Development it was my right to convene. But the last time I had exercised it was during the final days of my official administration.

It was in 1970. I, along with Lucifer, summoned the community of “friendly” Skyfathers, Earthmothers, Deathgods, and Elementals to a dimensionally convenient meeting place: the IHOP on Route 9 in Peekskill, New York. Over pancakes and human seemings, we’d cajoled the gods into alignment with the Covenant. Most of them had shown no interest in human affairs since the Industrial Revolution anyway. Any backsliders (and there were a few, Zeus being the most notable) would be dealt with forcibly. In the end, only the Buddha, Lucifer and I had opted for mortal incarnations.

Currently, the biggest regular get-together of gods was the annual Summer Convention, where the world’s defunct deities gathered to rehash the good old days over truckloads of mead, ambrosia or enchanted wine. After I got sober I tried to change the Convention to a non-alcoholic format. Times were tough and no one wanted to be devolved any further than they already were. Even so, when the mead got flowing “drunksmiting” and badly aimed damnations were not uncommon. Last year, Odin and Osiris got into a drunken arm-wrestling match. Odin lost and tried to blast Osiris into Egyptian blood pudding. Osiris ducked – the explosion took out a city block before I could separate them, and afterward my head screamed bloody murder for two months.

Now, with every defunct god hogging the dwindling supply of divinity, would they even answer my summons? And if they did, would one of them try to kill me? Was all this part of some takeover plot? Maybe calling the gods together was exactly what the entity called the Coming wanted me to do. What better way to ambush me than in the company of others who would be sympathetic to its cause? There were still plenty of gods who would support an uprising if they thought they could share the spoils.

My mobile was on the third ring before I recognized Eye of the Tiger tinkling from its tinny speakers: Surabhi’s ringtone. I lunged across the seat, rifled through my backpack and came up empty: I couldn’t find my phone.

“I’m coming!” I cried, eliciting glares from my fellow L train riders. “Surabhi!”

I tore through the roughly sixteen thousand pockets in my backpack before remembering that I’d tossed the phone into my Lion King reusable grocery sack. I’d taken it along as a green alternative to plastic. I grabbed the sack, spilling fair-condition-rated titles across the floor, gripped my mobile and hit “redial”.

Be calm. Relax.

Surabhi answered on the fourth ring. “We have to talk.”

“I love you,” I cried. “I’ve been calling you for–”

“I’m on my way to the airport. We’re going to England.”

“England England?”

“That was part of my parents’ surprise. Daddy’s getting knighted.”

“Wait a minute… go back to the beginning. I’ve been thinking about what happened since last night.”

“Lando, I don’t have much time. I think we should–”

“You’re on your way to the airport…” I said hurriedly, not liking the fatal tone I heard in her voice, the deliberation that, for Surabhi, always preceded bad news. She’d used that tone only once before, when she informed me that the friend who introduced us had been killed in a car crash. I didn’t want to hear the bad news brewing beneath the quiet storm in her voice.

“You’re going to England?”

“Yes. England England.”

“So that your father can get knighted?”

“Crazy, right? Listen, Lando–”

“Why?”

“It’s where the Queen lives. Can’t get a knighthood without the Queen of England. She hands ’em out.”

“No! Why is your father getting knighted?”

“Oh, for ‘…service to humanity in the fields of Sport, Business and Humanitarian pursuits in aid of improving the lives of people all over the world’ or some such twat-drizzle.”

“I’m sorry about last night. I made a complete jackass of myself.”

Surabhi uttered the weird, strangled little laugh she affected when she was trying not to cry. “Daddy’s been hammering at me since we left the restaurant.”

“I’m so sorry, babe. I drank too much. If your dad yells at anyone it should be me.”

“Oh, Daddy never yells. He smiles. He offers his advice. After the first five hours you’re ready to throw yourself under a UPS truck.”

We both laughed.

“You made a joke,” I said. “Jokes mean things aren’t all bad. Right?”

“Lando… I need to take a break. I’ve got to get my head together, and I can’t do that if you’re around.”

“Surabhi… I can make things right.”

“Lando, I saw something in you last night… something I never knew was there.”

“I drank too much of that damned wine.”

“It wasn’t just the wine, Lando. You were… different. Really different. Angry, vengeful…”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “There are things… you don’t understand.”

“You said that already. Twice.”

“Because it’s doubly true.”

“Really, Lando? That’s how you’re going to explain? By making jokes?”

“Surabhi…”

She’d hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately it was the nail that sealed the lid of the casket into which I’d incarnated myself. My mind was racing, sifting options. I realized I was searching for a lie, the right lie. But every lie led to an even more unacceptable lie. And every one of those lies led right back to the most unacceptable Truth.

“Lando... do you love me?”

“Of course… of course I love you…”

“There’s a part of you that you keep locked away, and every time I get close to it you make jokes. Help me, Lando. I can’t live a life filled with surprises like last night. Help me understand.”

“Here it is, Pinocchio,”
Connie whispered from somewhere a million miles away.
“The moment of truth.”

“Not now.”

“If not now, when, Lando?” Surabhi said.

“No! I wasn’t talking to you!”

Surabhi made that terrible sound again.

“I guess I have my answer.”

“Wait! When are you coming home?”

In the background at her end I could hear a gate agent announcing that boarding was about to commence.

“I’ve got to go. Daddy’s waving like a maniac.”

“Surabhi…”

“Don’t call me, Lando, OK? I’ll… I need to think.”

“Surabhi… I love you.”

The line went dead.

I spent the rest of Saturday evening enumerating all the ways Magnus Moloke might be poisoning his daughter against me. I’d certainly given him more than enough ammunition. I’d become my own Trojan Horse, concealing my true self beneath a false front in order to smuggle an army of doubts through unguarded gaps in my common sense. The hopeful part of me continued to replay the events at Henri Lumiere’s and proclaim, “It wasn’t really that bad.”

But the other part of me, the merciless assassin armed with the keys to my mental projection room, whispered, “Oh no. It was worse,” and it took demonic pleasure in replaying the worst moments in 3D and Dolby Digital, ad nauseum.

Desperate for some way to pass the time, I checked the Waring’s telepathic interface, scanning the web browser of the gods to compile a database of deities who might want to humiliate, depose and/or kill me.

GODS WHO PROBABLY WANT TO HUMILIATE, DEPOSE AND/OR KILL ME…

I. ZEUS.

Last of the known active skyfathers. Hates Yahweh for diverting believers during the advent of Judeo-Christianity. Whereabouts unknown. Believed dead.

II. ODIN.

King of the Norse Gods. Hates Yahweh for diverting believers during advent of Judeo-Christianity. Retired.

Odin had voluntarily retired more than a century earlier, opting to assume a mortal seeming. This allowed him to move about in the mortal world while maintaining his powers and actual divinity, even though he was still subject to the dwindling effect that constrained all of humankind’s extant gods. He currently owned and operated a large organic dairy farm in Minnesota with his commonlaw wife, Lesotho, the Nigerian goddess of the harvest. When last I’d checked, Odin was fat and happy and up to his ears in almond bark.

My mobile tinkled: Bodhisattva, by Steely Dan.

CALL FROM ATTICUS

“Hello?”

“I haven’t heard from you.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“It is when you promised my kids you’d take them to Wacky World tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, man. I totally forgot.”

“Lando…”

“I forgot!”

“So you’re gonna blow them off… again.”

“I didn’t say I was going to blow anybody off.”

“Good, cause if you did I’d hunt you down and stab you myself. They’re making me nuts and I need to get laid.”

“I always feel so good when we talk.”

My oldest brother laughed, completely without humor.

“Good. Maybe you can actually enjoy your family. For a change.”

I thought about it: a day spent chasing my brother’s brood through a harmless amusement park might take my mind off my problems. At least for a while.

“I’ll pick them up at nine,” I said. “Maybe a day of Wackiness is just what I need.”

Whoever said God loves children and fools never met my niece and nephews. We had just exited the Wacky Wheel of Wonder after being stranded atop the “oldest ferris wheel in the Chicagoland area!” The Wheel suffered a senior moment exactly when our car was at the top. I’d spent the last two hours crammed between three hysterical pre-adolescents: Nancy screamed for her mother the whole time while Nelson, who suffers from shrunken bladder capacity, urinated directly onto the heads of the riders below us.

I’m throwing up in a convenient trashcan when a hypermasculine Voice thunders across the park.

“Where are you, Yahweh? Come out and fight!”

People raise their faces toward the heavens, perhaps expecting a fireworks display, or Walt’s WackTacular: a tired laser lightshow that no one enjoys.

“Face me, Yahweh! Heed the voice of your master!”

I turn to see Lucifer standing three stories above Wonderworld, a tall red-skinned abomination wreathed in flames.

Wait… that’s not Lucifer.

It’s Agni, the Hindu god of fire. In full battle Aspect. He looks furious, though from what I can remember, Agni is always furious.

“Look, Marty!” one Northside hausfrau shrieks. “It’s one of those Bollywood musical numbers, like in
Slumdog Millionaire
!”

More people snap photographs. Several Japanese tour groups wave enthusiastic thumbs ups, chanting at the glowering god.

“Jai Ho! Jai Ho! Jai Ho!”

Agni sneers down at the milling mortals. He’s come dressed for the occasion: blood-red armor that shines like a dying sun; red leather greaves covering his wrists and ankles. Golden armbands gird biceps the size of a hippo’s backside. For our duel, he’s selected his favorite talisman: the Overthrow, a flaming spear whose blade was smelted at the heart of a raging volcano. The burning blade screams; its voice is the burning of a thousand villages, the shriek of a million cut throats. With it, Agni can destroy a large city. There can be no doubting his intentions: the God of Fire is open for business.

“Where are you, Yahweh? Show your face so that Agni may carve it from your skull and feed it to my battle hogs!”

But
…

Then Agni squints down at me and his eyes turn redder than his skin.

“Die!”

Agni hefts the Overthrow, and hurls it. With other than mortal vision I watch the spear streak over the park, slicing atoms and sucking fission, adding their released energy to Agni’s obscene might. But I’m an asthmatic comedian with pee in his cotton candy, and I have no idea why Agni is doing this. He was a friend, once. My confusion causes me to hesitate one second too long.

And Changing Woman steps out of my medulla oblongata and catches the Overthrow.

“Hey! This thing’s got quite a kick!”

Connie holds the burning godspear. It screams and bucks, inches from my face, straining to contain all that power. Power taken from the souls Agni claimed in the millennia of his reign of fire; the souls of those who burned in his name.

“I could use a little help out here!”

“But Agni is one of the good guys! Connie… he’s on our side!”

I can feel Agni’s power struggling to wrest control of the Overthrow from Connie. He’s too strong.

“LANDO!”

I listen to the souls shrieking inside the spear, all those shrieking souls. And I tell them the Secret.

A stunned silence is the weapon’s only reply. The great spear hangs in mid-air, vibrating, as if considering its next target.

Connie releases the Overthrow and steps back.

“That oughta do it.”

Then she disappears. Normal spacetime resumes.

“What…?”
Agni grunts.
“What did you do?”

The stunned voices trapped within the blade are beginning to comprehend what’s happened. But they’re frightened. While they remain afraid Agni can use their power for himself.

Around us, tourists are snapping photos and waggling their heads like Indian kuchipudi dancers. The Overthrow is wavering, its captive souls growing bolder, waking up from their long nightmare. I reach up and touch the tip of the burning blade.

“Go on! The revolution has begun. You’re free!”

The mass exodus explodes into three-dimensional space. Countless souls stream out of the Overthrow, swirling through the air above Wonderworld like a torrent of rainbows, a stream of luminous mortal spirits. I also see the souls of monsters and minotaurs, maidens, and minor gods. The released captives laugh and sing as they streak skyward.

“Where’s everybody going?”

Agni is down to a mere six feet tall. The Overthrow, which has always been a magical extension of his ego, douses itself and droops toward the ground, finally flopping with all the force of wet naan bread.

“Agni… why are you doing this?”

Agni charges me. My head strikes the concrete and the glowing soulstream is replaced by shooting stars. When I can see again I’m sharing nosespace with Brahma’s angriest son.

“You don’t get it, Yahweh. The Coming… it is stronger than all of us. It wields power greater than any god. Greater than mine. Greater than yours.”

That’s when I see the terror in the firegod’s eyes.

“What’s happened, Agni?”

“It compels me. It has my family, Yahweh… my children!”

“Agni… what’s wrong?”

The firegod gets to his feet, backing away from me.

“Beware, Yahweh. The Coming stalks… stalks us…
No! No please! Please don’t do that!”

Agni screams, tearing at his hair. Then he begins to spin, whirling, turning faster than mortal eyes can follow, until he vanishes in a blast of red flame.

Agni!

The tourists broke into wild applause, snapping pictures and dancing like Hindi Cinema stars. Nancy, Nelson and Nathan were all staring at me, nearly catatonic.

“Uncle Lando,” Nancy whispered. “You’re really Professor Dumbledore.”

Then she fainted.

A million tiny spikes pricked behind my right eye.

“Great show, young man. But I think all that blood is a little over the top, don’t you?”

The Northside hausfrau was standing in front of me, staring at my chest. I looked down: my shirtfront was soaked with blood. I reached up and felt wetness all along my upper lip and chin: blood was pouring out of my nose.

Someone offered me a tissue. I grabbed it, then two more, and pressed them to my nose.

What just happened?

“Thank you. Goodnight, everybody. Drive safely.”

Then I hit Reset.