Tom Holt (16 page)

'You're not.'

'I don't get many visitors. It's nice to speak to someone occasionally, even just a mortal.'

'Well, that's very kind of you to say so, but I'm sure you're very busy really, and...'

'No I'm not.'

'Ah. Yes. Um...'

'Are you,' he said, 'Jason Derry?'

That, Jason felt, was one of those trick questions, like
Was it you who broke the window?
He made a small, indecisive gesture. 'Er...' he said.

'You are, aren't you?'

'Urn...'

'Your dog seems to think you are.'

'My dog?'

'I take it that's your dog? Who's a
good
boy, then?'

Jason looked round to see Cerberus nodding all three heads at once. Not for the first time, Jason remembered that he didn't much like dogs.

'Yes,' he said.

'Ah,' he said, 'that's all right, then.'

There was a blinding flash of multi-coloured light and the throne and its occupant vanished. The sheer force of so much light knocked Jason clean off his feet (not that he was exactly on them to begin with) and he fell headlong onto nothing at all.

Or, to be pedantically accurate, a carpet. Quite a nice carpet, in fact. Woolly, deep-pile, the colour of spilt tea.

'Sorry about that,' said a voice above his head. 'That was clumsy of me.'

Slowly, Jason looked up, and his eyes met the toes of a pair of slippers. Blue, slightly scuffed, comfortable-looking.

'Pleased to meet you, Jason,' said the voice. 'You don't mind if I call you Jason, do you?'

Jason managed to detach his eyes from the slippers and looked up further still. The throne and the living statue had gone; however, the floor had come back. Also the walls, the ceiling, the Sword of Whatsit (but not its name), and the bag of sandwiches. The latter two exhibits were on a coffee-table beside an armchair in which was seated a very nice, apparently quite friendly old gentleman in a dressing-gown and blue slippers. He had a plate of the most delicious-looking sausage rolls on his lap, and he offered one to Jason.

'Sorry about all the black stuff,' he said, 'but in my position you can't be too careful. It's supposed to scare -the crap out of people. Of course, I've never actually seen it myself so I don't know if it works. Does it?'

'Yes; said Jason with his mouth full. For some reason, which he couldn't quite fathom, he felt a strong urge to burst out laughing at this point; being possessed of semi-divine willpower, however, he managed to keep it to a discreet snurge.

'Oh good,' the nice man replied. 'Now, let me introduce myself, and then we can have a cup of tea and a chat. My name's Gelos. I gather you wanted to meet me.'

'Your economy; said Diana carefully, 'and raise you fifty.' Apollo nodded listlessly. Diana muttered something under her breath and rolled the dice.

'More fool you!' she crowed. 'We're welching on our National Debt, so sucks to you.'

Apollo hardly seemed to notice. 'That's nice,' he said distractedly. 'Look, tell me when it's my go, will you, I'm just watching something over here.'

Diana scowled. 'Pol,' she said, 'I've just wiped out three of your major clearing banks. Aren't you interested?'

'Sorry?'

'Pol!' Diana banged her goblet of ambrosia sharply on the table. 'Will you please pay attention to the Game!'

'Mmmm,' Apollo replied. 'Could you just bear with me a moment while I just nip down to Earth? Perhaps you could just ask Ma or someone to play my hand for me while I'm away.'

Diana was now seriously worried. Asking a fellow god to take your go for you was like offering the Big Bad Wolf a job in a creche. 'Is it, er, important?' she asked.

'Quite,' Apollo answered, 'yes.'

'Shouldn't I call Mm, then?'

'No,' Apollo said firmly, 'decidedly not.'

'Why?'

Apollo considered his choice of words carefully. 'For the same reason,' he said at last, 'why you shouldn't remove rings from coffee-tables with coarse grain sandpaper. Won't be long.'

Diana watched as he disappeared into the far darkness, shrugged, and tentatively moved the Chinese army into Nepal. As she did so, a single golden rose leaf drifted slowly down from above her head, twirled gracefully and settled on her knee. She picked it up and saw that there were tiny letters picked out on it in fire.

I saw that,
they said.

'Ah nuts,' Diana said, and removed her army.

'What do you mean,' said Ms. Fisichelli, 'there aren't any?'

'I'm sorry,' Mary replied ruefully. 'The jar's empty.'

Ms. Fisichelli scratched her head. 'That's funny,' she said. 'There were plenty when I looked this morning.'

'I know,' said Mary.

'Pardon me?'

'I ate them,' Mary explained.

Ms. Fisichelli suddenly became very still and cold, like a mammoth in a glacier. 'You ate them,' she repeated.

'Well, er, yes.'

'Apollo's sacred olives.'

'Yes. I...'

'I see,' said Ms. Fisichelli. 'Well,' she went on, 'that's fine. Thank you so much for letting me know. I suppose Mr. A is going to have to make do with tinned olives from the deli just this once but I'm sure he won't mind.'

'I...'

'And now,' Ms. Fisichelli continued remorselessly, 'provided always that you haven't eaten the altar and the sacred tripod I think it's time we made a start. Pass me the simpulum, please.'

Mary bowed her head and handed the Pythoness the simpulum without comment. Nuts, said a voice at the back of her head. I was just hungry, that's all...

Ms. Fisichelli, meanwhile, had turned on the Sacred Gas and was just trying to get the Sacred Lighter to work (guess who forgot to change the Holy Flint again) when the Sacred Flame suddenly leapt up of its own accord, nearly taking her eyebrows off.

'Goddamnit, you clumsy... Gee, I'm sorry., In the presence of her god, Ms. Fisichelli's aggravation dissolved. 'I wasn't expecting.'

The divine head nodded on its neck of flame. 'Okay,' it said, 'my fault, sorry. Look, can we do without all this mumbo-jumbo for once? I've only popped out for a moment, and I don't want Mm ... I mean, this can only be a brief audience. I've got to, well, see a man.'

'Master?'

'About a dog.'

'I see, Master.'

'So,' said the divine head, 'if it's all the same to you girls, I'm just going to slip into something more comfortable. Back in a tick.'

The sacred flame went suddenly out and the patera, deprived of its support, dropped like a stone and shattered on the rim of the tripod. Apollo materialised next to it just in time to be hit on the back of the hand by a flying potsherd.

'Ouch,' he said.

'Master!'

'Betty,' said Apollo irritably, 'let's just leave all that stuff, shall we? As a matter of fact, I'm perfectly capable of getting here on my own without having to be conjured up, dematerialised, transmuted into the Spirit, sucked up through eight yards of narrow copper pipe and set fire to, so m future I'll trouble you just to leave a message with Reception, all right?'

Mary giggled very slightly, thinking of the olives. Ms. Fisichelli, if she noticed her disciple's lapse, ignored it.

'I'm terribly sorry to have bothered you...' she said.

Apollo sighed, removed a back issue of the
Journal of Byzantine Studies
from the armchair, and sat down. 'That's all right,' he said wearily. 'Can we get on now, please?'

Ms. Fisichelli flushed and sat down on the sofa. For her part, Mary folded her legs gracefully and kneeled on the floor. Apollo noticed, reflected that he was old enough to be her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grand-father, and looked firmly at 'the Pythoness, who became suddenly flustered.

'It's nothing really,' she stammered. 'It's just, you did say to let you know if I came across anything unusual about the Derry boy, and there have been other things too, and you know how sometimes even things that don't seem important at the time...'

The gods can be cruel, terrible, illogical and heartless, but sometimes they can be patient too. Apollo smiled reassuringly. 'I'm sure you're right,' he said. 'Please tell me all about it.'

Ms. Fisichelli swallowed the large clot of mud that had apparently formed in her throat and said 'Well...'

'Yes?'

'It's like this. Er.'

Apollo smiled even more, until Ms. Fisichelli could feel little flakes of skin detaching themselves from the tip of her nose. 'Perhaps,' she said, 'you should see for yourself.'

Apollo frowned. 'How do you mean?'

The Pythoness twitched nervously. 'In the Sacred Bowl,' she said.

'The Sacred Bowl?' Apollo looked puzzled. 'You mean that thing still works?'

'Well...'

'Well, I never,' Apollo went on. 'I thought t had packed up in the fifth century, when that clown Amaryllis IV used it for frying anchovies. Have you got it working again?'

'I cleaned it,' Ms. Fisichelli murmured, 'and it seemed OK. You don't mind, do you? Only it can be a great help sometimes and ... Well, she said quickly, 'actually, I've been using it
m
watch the baseball. You can't get the baseball on Greek TV, not even with a satellite dish, and Chicago have got to the Rose Bowl this year, and...'

'It works, then,' Apollo said.

'Seems to,' said Ms. Fisichelli. 'I'll fetch it.'

She jumped up and scurried off into the kitchen. While she was gone, Apollo tried hard not to look at her new disciple out of the corner of his eye. To the gods, Homer was fond of saying, all things are possible. He was wrong.

'Er,' Apollo said.

'Sorry?' Mary smiled, warmly but respectfully. Apollo suddenly felt a bit tongue-tied.

'Urn -- are you, well, doing anything tomorrow evening?'

Mary continued to smile.

'Only,' Apollo went on, 'I happen to have two tickets for the open air Bad Vibes concert in Central Park, and I thought...'

'Sorry,' Mary said, 'only I'm washing my hair tomorrow night.'

'Oh.'

Mary smiled again.

'Another time, then, maybe?'

Smile. And then Ms. Fisichelli came back with the Sacred Bowl and Apollo wrenched his attention back to far less important things. More important.
Damn.

'I'm all out of holy water,' she said, 'so I used Perrier. It's generally okay, I've found.'

She put the bowl down on the tripod, fumbled in her pocket for her sistrum, and started to hum the incantation. Apollo (who is also ex-God of music) winced, thanked her, and hummed it for her.

At once, a pale golden glow filled the room, while the electric light quietly went away and found something else to do. There was also a strange, mysterious fragrance, but that had more to do with the fact that Ms. Fisichelli's lemon curd was boiling over on the gas-stove than anything particularly divine. Apollo stood up and peered into the depths of the bowl.

'Hey,' he said, 'this is good.' Ms. Fisichelli simpered.

On the meniscus of the still slightly effervescent water there was an image. There was a dog.

It was lying on a carpet gnawing three bones.

It was doing this at the feet of a man who was sitting in a very comfortable looking chair in an almost unbearably cosy looking room eating what appeared to be a slice of exquisitely yummy chocolate cake. Opposite him sat what could only be described as a very nice, friendly looking old gentleman who tended to wave his hands about a lot, making his companion laugh with his mouth full.

Well,' said Apollo, 'I'll be a son of a thunderbolt. How do you turn the sound up on this thing?'

'Urn,' said Ms. Fisichelli.

'Sorry?'

'You can't.'

'Oh,' said Apollo. 'No sound, then.'

'No.'

'Never mind... Hey, now what's happening?'

Ms. Fisichelli flushed. 'It does that,' she said.

The picture of the nice room had vanished as suddenly as it had come, and in its place was the image of another man, a man with long hair and long fingernails. He appeared for all the world to be standing up in an Underground carriage. Now he was walking to the connecting door between the carriages. He was opening it, and getting out...

There was a terrific hiss and all the water in the bowl suddenly became steam and flew upwards. The bowl overheated, cracked and shattered into splinters, one of which hit Apollo on the nose.

'Ouch!'
he said.

Ms. Fisichelli looked as if she'd just gone into deep shock, and Apollo, as soon as he had recovered himself, helped her to a seat. 'Is she all right?' he asked, nervously.