Odds and Gods (30 page)

The first really ominous thing that Osiris and his companions came across on what was, they fervently hoped, the last leg of the journey was a big notice nailed to a tree. It said, in big capitals:
and below, in small italics:

‘That’s all right,’ Pan commented, ‘I haven’t got any with me anyway. How about the rest of you?’

Nobody said anything; but nobody made an effort to abandon anything either; and into the valley of death trudged the five.

‘Is where we’re going hard to get to?’ Sandra asked.

‘To get to, no problem,’ Pan replied. ‘To get out of is an entirely different proposition. In theory, Ozzie and I have sort of implied return tickets - well, season tickets, really - but what I always say is, theory is fine in theory. As for you three,
if
I was in your shoes I’d be using them to get out of here fast. This place,’ he summarised, ‘gives me the creeps.’

‘It does?’

‘Always has.’

Sandra raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve been here before, then?’

‘A couple of times, yes. Trade delegations, diplomatic junkets, that sort of thing.’

‘You got out all right then, didn’t you?’

Pan shrugged. ‘It was different,’ he replied. ‘Those times, I was meant to be there. They gave me one of those little plastic badges you pin on your lapel that says who you are. You’ve no idea how comforting it is having one of them when you’re down among the dead men.’

Thus far, the environment had been fairly normal, if not exactly welcoming. From Reykjavik they had caught the scheduled bus north as far as Thingvellir, and thence by a succession of progressively older and more decrepit minibuses up into Vididal. The last conveyance, which had been held together by insulating tape and force of habit, had shaken itself to bits ten miles back, since when they had dragged themselves over rocks and past the messy dribblings of volcanoes, taking it in turns to push the wheelchair, until they had arrived . . .

... Well, here; wherever the hell (so to speak) it was. It consisted of a cave in a cliff, which someone had rather half-heartedly tried to disguise as the result of perfectly natural seismic activity. There was a marked smell of sulphur, brimstone and stale vinegar.

Lundqvist shifted his rucksack on his back and suppressed an urge to whimper. His work had taken him to some pretty unpleasant places - the mountain lair of Mazdrhahn, King of Bats, being one example that stuck in his memory, the Los Angeles sewer network another - but while those places had been terrifying, nauseating, spine-melting et cetera, none of them had ever come anywhere close to this in sheer unmitigated dreariness. He also felt virtually nude, armed as he was with little more than a Macmillan .50BMG rifle, a .454 Casull revolver, an Ingrams sub-machine gun custom-chambered for .44 Magnum and a big sack full of hand grenades; which was the basic minimum as far as he was concerned, the sort of things he stuffed in his dressing-gown pockets if he had to get up in the night for a pee (for his motto had always been not so much
Have gun, will travel as Haven’t gun, won’t
). What he really needed in this context, he felt sure, was a squadron of main battle tanks, tactical air support, two divisions of special forces and, for choice, his mummy.

‘This is it, huh?’ he asked, trying to keep his voice gruffly baritone and failing.

‘Sort of,’ Osiris replied, aggravatingly chirpy. ‘Tradesmen’s entrance, really. This is the laundry chute.’

Lundqvist did a double-take. ‘Laundry?’

‘Oh yes,’ Osiris replied airily. ‘Guards’ uniforms, bed-linen, tablecloths, winding-sheets, that sort of thing. They used to do it in-house but now they use a lot of outside contractors. That’s why,’ he added, jerking this thumb at the mysterious laundry basket thing they’d been taking it in turns to lug over the rocks and mountains, ‘we need that.’

‘I was wondering when you’d explain about that,’ Pan said. ‘What is it, exactly?’

‘It’s a laundry basket.’

‘And what’s in it?’

‘Laundry.’

‘I see.’

‘It’s our cover.’

‘I thought he said it was laundry.’

‘Shut up, Carl.’

‘It’s a freshly laundered cover,’ Pan explained. ‘Has to be dry-cleaned to get the bloodstains out.’

‘What bloodstains?’

‘Ignore him, everyone. Now,’ Osiris went on, ‘if you open the lid you’ll find some uniforms. White coats, that sort of thing. Also, like I said, lots of pillow-cases, table-napkins, socks and the like. When you’ve got into the uniforms, I want you to put me in the basket and carry me through the doorway. And try and look natural, all right?’

A few minutes later, the procession found itself in total darkness, which was a blessing in fairly transparent disguise; anything you could see in a tunnel like that would probably keep you awake at nights for several years. The way the floor crunched underfoot was particularly evocative.

‘It’s all right him saying act natural,’ Pan grumbled,

‘but it’s not as easy as that. I’ve been trying to do it all my life and I’ve never quite seemed to get the hang of it . . .’

The floor shook. To those of the party who had never experienced anything of the kind, it was an eerie moment; not violent, certainly not enough to shake you off your feet, but quite remarkably disorientating; rather like being told by your mother that she never really liked you anyway. And then the lights came on.

Not much to see, but what there was of it wasn’t precisely reassuring. A huge wooden doorway, without a door; and nothing but shadows and a heavy smell of something unpleasant (but extremely familiar).

‘Oh balls,’ Pan muttered. ‘I’d forgotten all about this bit. I still maintain we should have gone to the seaside again. Even Weymouth would be better than—’

‘Hey,’ Lundqvist interrupted. ‘What goes on here, then?’

Osiris chuckled. ‘You don’t know?’ he said. ‘Read what it says over the door.’

Lundqvist did as he said, and saw the words:

The fact that none of the three mortals turned and fled at this stage only goes to show what a disadvantage it is to try and make out in life without the inestimable benefit of a classical education.

‘That’s it, is it?’ Lundqvist said, and relief slugged it out with disappointment for control of his voice. ‘A dog. Hell, for a minute there you had me wor—’

Enter the Dog.

 

‘Gaskets?’

‘Yes.’

‘Cotter pins?’

‘Yes.’

‘Camchains?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tappet return springs?’

‘Yes.’

‘Reciprocating mainshaft lubricator baffles?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mendelssohn cables?’

‘Yes.’

‘Cigar lighter?’

‘
Yes!
’

Thor shrugged. ‘Okay, then,’ he said. ‘Fire her up.’

The engine quivered, chugged, roared, raced and died. Thor and Frey looked at each other.

‘I take it,’ Thor said pleasantly, ‘that you did remember to put some coal in the furnace.’

‘Ah.’ Odin frowned. ‘There’s always something, isn’t there?’

‘Not always, no. Only when you have anything to do with it.’

Odin ignored that, and shovelled some coal into the firebox. A few minutes later the engine quivered, chugged, roared, raced and then went catumple-catumple-catumple quietly under its breath.

‘Right,’ said Thor, ‘and off we go.’

Slowly but with gathering momentum, the enormous engine rolled forward and thundered across the improvised jungle runway. It took it rather longer than anticipated; but the environmentally aware can rest assured that none of the trees flattened as it cut a swathe through the virgin forest was an endangered hardwood, and most of them were run-of-the-mill renewable resource softwoods.

‘I’m sorry if this is a silly question,’ Frey shouted, pulling bits of twig out of his beard, ‘but this time are we sure we know where we’re going?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ Thor called back, ‘this time I’m navigating. All right?’

‘Yes. I feel better now.’

‘Thought you’d say that.’ Thor glanced down at the map on his knees, consulted the position of the sun and nodded approvingly. ‘Now then,’ he said, ‘those hills over there are quite definitely the Pennines, so that down there must be Leeds, and in another five minutes or so we’ll see the M6 directly below us.’

Slowly, ponderously, in its own unique way magnificently, the giant traction engine flew on across the Amazon jungle.

 

‘It’s not,’ hissed Pan, backing away, ‘quite as bad as it seems.’

‘No?’

‘No. It’s still pretty bad, but not that bad.’

‘Ah.’

The Dog, also known as Cerberus and the Hound of Hell, rolled its six eyes and bared its three pairs of teeth, but stayed where it was. The massive iron chain fastened to the collar that surrounded the place just below where the three necks diverged probably had some influence on this, but probably not a decisive one. The chain hadn’t been forged which could withstand a determined tug from Cerberus.

‘Basically,’ Pan went on, trying to back behind the laundry basket but finding it hard because all the space was already taken, ‘it’s just another official. A civil servant, if you like. Only doing its job, and all that.’

‘Really.’

‘Really. That explains why it says everything in triplicate. ’ Pan tried to sidle an extra few microns in the direction of relative safety and tripped over his own feet. ‘Good boy,’ he mumbled.

‘Okay,’ said Lundqvist, ‘you guys just leave this to me.’

With the deftness of long practice he heeled a round into the chamber of the Macmillan. Bloody great big animals with teeth were what he was good at, and the combination of his skill and experience and six hundred and fifty grains of jacketed hollow-pointed bullet flying at three thousand feet a second ought, he reasoned with himself, to give him the slight edge that, in the final analysis, makes all the difference.

He stood up, took aim and fired. The bullet sang in the air for a fraction of a second too small to quantify on even the most modern equipment, and hit the Dog more or less where the heart should have been.

And bounced off.

The second, third and fourth bullets landed within half a minute of angle of the first, were flattened into thin lead and copper discs, and fell to the ground. The fifth went high, ricocheted off the Dog’s collar, cannoned backwards and forwards down the passageway, and embedded itself in a large nugget of hard quartz sunk into the wall. The chips of stone thereby caused would, if properly cut, have made the Kohinoor look like the tip of a very cheap industrial glasscutter.

The grenades weren’t much more use, either; and all the armour-piercing rocket that constituted Lundqvist’s ultimate rainy-day backup managed to achieve was to cut the chain neatly in two. The Dog, deprived of the chain’s support, lurched forward a pace or so, and growled.

‘Don’t be such a lot of babies,’ remarked a voice, apparently inside the basket. ‘They’re far more afraid of you than you are of them.’

‘In which case,’ Pan replied, ‘the poor thing must be absolutely fucking terrified. Doesn’t look it, though.’

‘Talk to it,’ urged the voice. ‘Firmly. Let it know who’s the boss.’

By now there were flecks of foam on the Dog’s jaw; exactly the same amount in precisely the same place on each of its three heads. It had its eye, or four of them at least, on Lundqvist’s neck.

‘There, boy. Sit.’

The Dog sat. After a breathless second, it wagged its tail, panted and held out one paw.

‘I think,’ said Carl, ‘he wants to shake hands. Don’t you, boy?’

‘Excuse me.’

‘Yeah?’

Pan swallowed and pointed. ‘You sure this is working?’ he asked.

Carl nodded. ‘I’m used to dogs, see,’ he explained. ‘My sister in Neath, she’s got a dog. Bigger’n this one, too.’

Two gods and two mortals stared at him as if he’d just pulled a blackcurrant and kirsch gateau out of his ear. The Dog, meanwhile, had produced three identical rubber bones out of nowhere and was offering them to Carl with the air of an envoy trying to interest Tamburlaine the Great in a spot of tribute.

‘Here,’ said Carl, ‘fetch.’

He stooped down, picked up a stone and hurled it away. From the outer darkness there came an indignant cry. The Dog picked up its feet and scampered away, its tail thrashing like an amphetamine-crazed metronome.

‘It’s gone,’ said Carl. ‘We can go on now.’

Pan and Osiris looked at each other.

‘So that’s why we brought him,’ said Pan, his voice heavy with enlightenment. ‘I knew there had to be a reason, what with us being gods and all that.’

‘Suppose so, yes.’

‘We must have foreseen the Dog, or something.’

‘Must have done.’

‘Aren’t we clever.’

‘Very.’

Pan nodded. ‘Absolutely bloody brilliant,’ he said. ‘Now, let’s get out of here before it comes back.’

 

It was, they found, the sort of tunnel or corridor that grows on you less and less the further down it you go. It was still as dark as three feet up a drain, but by now their eyes were getting used to it, showing thereby a degree of zeal that was quite uncalled for in the circumstances; and the ill-defined shapes that loomed up at them through the darkness as they passed weren’t the sort of thing you like to be in the same frame of reference with, let alone the same narrow, winding, slippery-floored, underground passage.

‘Can you smell something?’ Osiris asked.

‘Kippers.’

‘Which of you said that?’