Tom Holt (22 page)

'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 scratched his head. Thinking, as opposed to over tightening 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?'

Mrs. Derry stopped kneading and dusted her hands off purposefully. 'He's very angry with you, Jason,' she said.

'So?' Jason said wearily. It had been a long day, his head was buzzing and his knuckles were sore. He wanted a cup of tea, a nice warm bath, and bed.

'Jason,' his mother said.

Now some names, as we know, have meanings. Dorothy means Gift of God, Winifred means White Wave and Stephen means Crown. Jason, to the best of our knowledge, doesn't mean anything. Except, of course, when said in a significant tone by somebody's mother.

'Mum,' Jason complained, 'I'm tired. Can't it wait?'

'Your father,' said Mrs. Derry, 'is very angry with you.' Tough,' Jason replied. 'But I really couldn't care less. I've had it up to here with him, and . .

'Jason,' Mrs. Derry said, 'you mustn't disobey your father. It's not right.'

'Mum...' Jason was on the point of pleading.

'Now you promise me you won't do it again,' said Mrs. Derry, 'and we'll say no more about it, all right?'

'Mum,' Jason said -- it took a lot of strength of will to say it, too -- 'I can't do what Dad says. It's wrong.'

'Jason,' said Mrs. Derry sternly. 'That's nonsense and you know it. He's your father.'

Jason wanted to object. He wanted to say that Attila the Hun had had a son, and so had Genghis Khan; that there was a flaw in the logic of her argument you could drive a very large vehicle through without even clipping your wing mirrors; that what Jupiter wanted him to do was as gross a betrayal of his mortality as it was possible to get; that Jupiter had sent a god -- his own half-brother -- to kill him today, and if that hadn't dissolved the filial contract, he wanted to know what would. What he actually said was 'Mum...'

'He's your father,' Mrs. Derry said again. 'And he's worried about you.'

That was almost too much -- almost -- for Jason. He was about to say that if he was worried about his son's safety, why was he sending divine assassins to have him forcibly stellified, but somehow he didn't. Instead, he said 'Look...' Which was a change from 'Mum...' but not an improvement on it.

When the gods first designed Heroes, they intended them to be a special reserve category of super-mortals with all the good mortal features souped to competition standard and all the bad mortal features either sublimated or omitted. The design team assigned to the job had obviously enjoyed it, because they took a pride in their work that was notably absent from the standard production mortal. The everyday hatchback model, on leaving the showroom, has inbuilt design flaws: cowardice, greed, spite, frailty, appalling power-to-weight ratio and fuel consumption, and a tendency to measles. Not so Heroes; they are godlike in their strength and prowess, but most ungodlike in that they exhibit nobility, courage and altruism; seek to alleviate the sufferings of mankind instead of scoring five points (ten for a double Woe Score) for them; right wrongs; succour rather than sucker the weak; generally speaking, don't bicker like tired, spoilt children at every opportunity. In fact, Heroes are such a successful design concept that not long after the first batch were released, the gods realised that they'd cocked it up again and recalled the whole issue with almost indecent haste. Something had to be done.

What was done was this. Into each Hero, a tragic flaw was introduced, individually tailored to self-destruct the Hero just as soon as he began to show signs of getting too big for his seven-league boots. Achilles his pride; Oedipus his curiosity; Hamlet his indecision; David Gower his tendency to flap at deliveries aimed at his leg stump -- each Hero has been deliberately sabotaged to prevent him making that final leap across the terminals of the sparkplug from imperfect to perfect. Jason, of course, was no exception.

'Mum...' he said.

'Jason,' said his mother, 'what is that dog doing in my kitchen?'

The words 'what dog?' froze on Jason's lips. 'Oh,' he said, 'yes. That's Cerberus.'

'Outside.'

'But Mum...'

'Outside.'

'But Mum...'

'Outside.'

Miserably, Jason grabbed hold of Cerberus by one ear and led him out to the garage.

'Good dog,' Jason said guiltily. 'Stay.'

Cerberus gave him a threefold look that reflected perfectly what Jason was himself thinking at precisely that moment, right down to the three dots. But Jason could only shrug his shoulders and look extremely silly.

'I know,' he said. 'But what can I do?'

He closed the door, locked it and went back into the house, trying to ignore the stereophonic whimpering and scratching noises coming from the garage.

'I don't mind your bringing them back dead,' said his mother. 'Alive is another matter. First thing in the morning you're taking him up the kennels.'

Jason could have said 'But Mum' again; but he felt it was beginning to lose its impact. So he tried sulking instead. Eighteen years of experience told him that it didn't work, but so what? They'd said the same thing about Edison and the light bulb.

'Now, then,' said Mrs. Derry cheerfully, 'now that we've got that sorted out, you can have a biscuit. I made some Melting Moments. You know how you like Melting Moments.'

Jason nodded resignedly. Yes, he liked Melting Moments and would do what he was told. Pity about the human race, but whoever said life was fair?

'Another thing,' said Mrs. Derry as she made more biscuits. 'Sharon's coming round for her tea tomorrow, so don't be late home.'

'Mum.'

Mothers since the creation of mankind have learned that the best way to stifle objections from their offspring is to stuff biscuits in their mouths. Nobody, not even Lenin, can preach rebellion effectively with a mouth full of Melting Moment. 'Six-thirty sharp,' she said. 'I'm doing lamb with pearl barley. You like lamb with pearl barley,' she reminded him.