Odds and Gods (21 page)

Hence the notorious human sacrifices of the Aztecs, at the culmination of which the blood and hearts of the victims were laid on the altars as a banquet for the gods. The way the gods saw things, suffering isn’t something you hoard, it’s something you share.

Except for one god, the Highest, the Most Supreme; Azctlanhuilptlil, God of War and Dental Hygiene, aloof and apart in his unutterable splendour (or, as his colleagues muttered to themselves, bloody selfish). When all the other Aztec deities finally gave up the unequal struggle and retired to Sunnyvoyde and meagre helpings of chicken soup, Azctlanhuilptlil remained behind, able to keep going by virtue of his unique, jealously guarded, most valued possession: a gigantic set of false teeth, wrought (for this is Mexico, land of inexhaustible mineral wealth) of the finest, purest gold.

Finally, when Cortes and his conquistadores burst into Mexico, smashed the centuries-old civilisation of the Aztecs and suppressed the worship of the old gods, Azctlanhuilptlil in turn was overthrown and reduced by a unanimous vote of his extremely resentful erstwhile devotees to mortal status. His eventual fate is shrouded in obscurity, although legend has it that he ended his days, dentureless and utterly miserable, as a quality control officer at Hershey’s.

As to what became of his teeth, nobody knew; but a garbled recollection of their memory circulated among the Spaniards, leading many brave fools to their deaths in the fruitless quest for the Man of Gold.The truth of the matter (so the Dragon King asserted) is that the teeth are still there, soaking the centuries away in the bowl of an extinct volcano, guarded by a dragon or something such and preserved imperishably in sixty billion gallons of Steradent.

 

‘Thanks,’ said Lundqvist, getting up and brushing mud off his legs. ‘I’ll be going, then.’

The Dragon King stirred.
‘What about the third wish, mate?’

‘That’s all right,’ Lundqvist replied, ‘keep the change.’

 

Half past twelve. Lunchtime at Sunnyvoyde.

It was a favourite adage of Mrs Henderson that one of the greatest problems with gods is that they have no sense of time. For them, day merges seamlessly with day, year with year, century with century. The result: vagueness, leading to dementia, leading to wet beds and residents tottering about the corridors on zimmers at three in the morning demanding to see a doctor. Accordingly, there was a routine at Sunnyvoyde, and nothing interfered with it. Breakfast at seven sharp; lunch at twelve thirty, on the dot; afternoon tea at four exactly; evening meal at six thirty, come rain or shine; and finally, the Twilight of the Gods at nine fifteen, lights out and not a peep do I expect to hear out of you lot until breakfast.

By and large the system worked. It instilled a sense of order into many a hitherto purposeless and unstructured divine existence. It is, to put it mildly, embarrassing for a supreme being to find himself waking up in the middle of the night asking himself questions like ‘Why am I here?’ and ‘Is there a reason behind it all?’ In Sunnyvoyde, the gods knew that they existed for the sole purpose of being present at the ordained mealtimes. Maybe it cut down on the free will side of things; but you can’t be a god for very long without realising that free will and the proverbial free lunch have a great deal in common.

‘Kedgeree,’ grunted Nkulunkulu, Great Sky Spirit of the Zulus. ‘Why does it always have to be flaming kedgeree for Friday dinner?’

‘Such a bore,’ agreed Ilmater, the Finnish Queen of the Air, adding that the custom of always having fish on Fridays must be somebody’s idea of a sick joke, in context. Nkulunkulu nodded, and asked her to pass the salt.

‘No salt at table any more, I’m afraid,’ Ilmater replied. ‘It’s bad for us, apparently. Too much potassium or some such, or at least that’s what She said. Really, it’s enough to drive one frantic, don’t you think?’

‘No salt?’ Yama, the blue-faced Hindu god of Death, scowled horribly. ‘We’ll bloody well see about that. Here, you. Get the manageress. I demand to see the manageress.’

The nursing auxiliary thus addressed looked through Yama as if he wasn’t there and swept past, wheeling her trolley laden with covered aluminium dishes. In theory she was perfectly within her rights in doing so; Sunnyvoyde houses no less than forty-six different Kings of Death, which is far in excess of the number permitted under the Health and Safety Regulations. In order to get round this, Mrs Henderson had long ago organised a rota, whereby each one of them had a number of days on as duty King of Death; on their off days, the various Kings were deemed not to exist (but they still had to be punctual for meals).

‘Haven’t seen Osiris in a long time,’ Nkulunkulu remarked, surreptitiously calling a small pillar of salt into being under cover of his table napkin. ‘Wonder if the poor old sod has finally pegged out.’

‘Pegged out what?’

‘You know, pegged out. Handed in his dinner pail. Shuffled off this mortal coil. You know,’ he added with rising frustration, ‘kicked the bucket.’

Ilmater looked up from her plate. She had been forking through, picking out the pieces of boiled egg and depositing them carefully on her sideplate. ‘Sounds like he’s been terribly busy doing all those strenuous things,’ she said. ‘No wonder we haven’t seen him for a while.’

‘Died, you dozy old bat. I wonder whether Osiris has finally died.’

Yama shook his head. ‘I doubt that very much,’ he said, ‘’cos I’d have been notified if he had. We get a circular every evening,’ he explained, ‘to avoid duplication and conflict of interests.’

There was a flash, as Nkulunkulu’s pillar of salt turned itself into a miniature model of Lot’s wife, holding in her hands an LCD display reading
I told you, no salt
. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You work your fingers to the bone creating the world, making it nice for them, stocking it up with edible plants and gullible animals, and what do you get at the end of it all? Stone cold kedgeree and no bloody salt to go on it. It’s enough to turn you Methodist.’

‘Maybe he’s on holiday.’

‘Who?’

‘Osiris.’

‘Excuse me, young man, but are you a doctor?’

‘Last time I saw him,’ said Yama, ‘he was talking to that nurse, you know, the chubby one. Haven’t seen her in a while either, come to think of it.’

‘Pity,’ Nkulunkulu replied. ‘Had a bit of meat on her, that one did. Not like so many of these nurses you seem to get nowadays.’

‘I don’t think you’re actually supposed to eat them, Nk.’

‘I was speaking figuratively.’

‘Oh.’ Yama shrugged. ‘Maybe Osiris got fed up with kedgeree and booked out,’ he went on. ‘I wouldn’t be all that surprised, knowing him. Always did have balls - not in the right place, I’ll grant you, but . . .’

Ilmater shook her head. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I rather believe booking out is against the Rules, otherwise we’d all have done it by . . . Nk, who is this strange old woman and why is she showing me her knee?’

‘That’s Minerva,’ the sky god replied. ‘Ignore her and she’ll go away. Tell you what, though, I’d like to see precisely where in the Rules it says you can’t book out. Worth looking into, that.’

‘Maybe he and the nurse eloped,’ Yama mused. ‘Difficult, of course, with the wheelchair and everything, but to the gods all things are - I don’t believe it, rhubarb
again
. Take it away, woman, take it away, I don’t want any.’

‘Custard?’ asked the waitress.

‘No.’

The waitress looked over his head at Ilmater. ‘Would you ask him if he wants custard?’ she asked. ‘Only I haven’t got all day.’

Ilmater smiled, what she hoped was her patronising reassuring-the-servants smile. ‘I don’t believe he does, thank you,’ she said. ‘Sorry, Nk, you were saying?’

‘About getting out of here,’ Nkulunkulu replied. ‘There probably is a way, you know, if only we could find out what it is. I’d be game, for one.’

‘Just look, will you, that stupid woman’s just poured custard all over my pudding. I really must insist on seeing the manageress.’

After lunch, say the Rules, residents will enjoy the peace and quiet of the common room. Nobody knows what the penalties for not enjoying the peace and quiet of the common room are, but only because nobody has ever had enough foolhardy courage to find out. As Nkulunkulu sat and stared at the television set, however, his mind remained unwontedly clear. Something was buzzing around in it like a fly in a bottle, and he wasn’t quite sure what it was. Then he noticed the empty chairs.

Three of them, over by the repulsive picture of a small child with a kitten. Frantic ransacking of his memory turned up three names: Odin, Thor, Frey.

Stone me, muttered Nkulunkulu to himself, four of them AWOL. Four of them not enjoying the peace and quiet.

How many does it take, he wondered, to make up a Precedent?

 

‘It was somewhere around here, I seem to remember,’ said Osiris, looking up from the map, ‘that they had the final shoot-out.’

Pan, who was trying to stand on one hoof while extracting a stone from his shoe, quivered. ‘Who did?’ he asked nervously.

‘Butch Cassidy,’ replied Osiris, ‘and the Sundance Kid.’

Gravity is an evil bastard, Pan reflected as he wobbled, staggered and put his bare hoof down hard on a jagged flint. ‘that was Bolivia,’ he muttered.

‘Oh.’ Osiris shrugged. ‘That’s just down the road that way, I think. We might stop and have a look on the way back, if we have time.’

Pan silently vowed that they wouldn’t have time, not unless he could have a nice comfy wheelchair too. ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘This volcano,’ he went on. ‘Shouldn’t we be able to see it from here?’

‘Look for yourself.’

Pan took the map. ‘Oh hell,’ he said, ‘it’s one of these awful modern ones, I can’t read them. If it hasn’t got dragons and Jerusalem in the middle I can’t make head nor tail of it.’ He screwed up his eyes. Not that he needed glasses - to the gods, all things are visible - but another reason why modern maps were so useless was the minuscule nature of the print. ‘I’m sure you know what you’re doing,’ he said, and handed it back.

Nevertheless, he continued to have reservations - not a particularly unusual state of affairs; on any given subject, Pan generally had more reservations than the entire Sioux and Blackfoot nations combined - and the complete lack of distant prospects of volcanoes did little to resolve them. Nuts, he said to himself, we’re lost. Again. And it’s not even my fault.

‘Where exactly,’ he was therefore moved to ask next time they stopped, ‘did you get that map from?’

‘The airport,’ Osiris replied. ‘And you know, I have to say I don’t think very much of it. That range of mountains over there, for example. Not a sign of it in here. Must be new, I suppose,’ he hazarded, narrowing his eyes. ‘Still, it’s a poor show selling out-of-date maps, if you ask me.’

Pan nodded. ‘New mountains, I see.’ He took the map, looked at the cover and handed it back. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is a street plan of Mexico City. According to which,’ he added, ‘that lot over there is the headquarters of the municipal fire service. How’d it be if we went back the way we came and tried to hire a taxi?’

As he spoke, the earth shook. Gods ought to be used to such things, but Pan never quite managed it; he still felt terribly guilty when, in spring, at the time of the quickening of the soil and the reawakening of the life force, he walked across somebody’s nice new carpet without thinking and left behind him a trail of newly flowering primroses.

‘Look,’ Osiris said, and pointed.

Three of the distant mountains appeared to be on fire. Sheets of red flame were rising hundreds of feet into the air, which was now full of soft grey ash and little hot cinders, some of which settled on the back of Pan’s neck.

‘Headquarters of the municipal fire service,’ Osiris repeated. ‘Yes, you could say that. Lads, I think we’re in business.’

It was, apparently, a good day for pyrotechnic displays of all kinds; because they hadn’t gone more than a few hundred yards towards the mountains when the sky was lit up by a dazzling flash, and some huge fiery object streaked across it, travelling at some bizarrely high speed, and vanished over the horizon, followed for a relatively long time after by a deafening sonic boom.

 

‘I told you,’ Thor screamed, as the controls writhed in Odin’s hands. ‘Those head coil gaskets, I said, they’re only sealed in with beeswax, go up too close to the sun and they’ll melt. And what does the stupid prawn go and do?’

‘Calm down,’ Odin bellowed, as the slipstream ripped off his white silk scarf and sent it fluttering away into the air. ‘Panicking won’t solve anything. Now, when I say the word, I want you both to lean as far as you can over to your left. Right?’

The engine wobbled, jinked and turned a complete revolution around its central axis, but with no noticeable effect on its speed or trajectory. Frey, however, lost his left glove, ripped from his hand by the wind.

‘I think we’ll have to try an emergency landing,’ Odin shouted. ‘I’m just going to look around for a suitable spot.’

‘Great.’ Thor tried to wriggle down further into his seat. ‘We’re in enough trouble as it is without you crashing this poxy thing
deliberately
. Why not just sit back and let nature take its course?’

‘I . . .’

A fraction of a second ago, the mountains hadn’t been there; then, all of a sudden, there they were. Later, Thor swore blind that they missed the peak of the tallest and sharpest of them by no more than twelve thousandths of an inch.

‘That was interesting, what you just said,’ roared Frey, with his eyes shut.

‘Was it?’

‘You said
Oh my god
. Didn’t know you were religious, Thor.’

‘Just an expression.’

‘Ah.’ Frey’s knuckles whitened on the grab handle. ‘Pity. We could do with some divine assistance right now.’