Odds and Gods (18 page)

In the street outside, Osiris could hear the tramp of sandalled feet, the ominous clinking of censers. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘we’re gods. I’m Osiris, in fact, used to do the sun lark, just like you. Egypt and Upper Nubia. We’re in a bit of a jam, and we’d really appreciate it if you’d just let us hide out the back there for a while. All right?’

Mithras narrowed his eyes and peered. ‘You’re Osiris?’ he said.

‘That’s right.’

‘Cor,’ said the barber, with a faint chuckle, ‘stone me! I had you down as this big tall geezer with a broad chest and a sort of Kirk Douglas chin.’

‘That was me two thousand years ago,’ Osiris replied. ‘Rather let myself go a bit since then.’

‘I used to know your lad once. Horace.’

‘Horus.’

‘That’s it, Horus. Great lanky ponce with the head of a sparrowhawk or something.’

‘That’s him.’

The barber considered the position for a minute. ‘All right, then,’ he said, ‘straight through there, you can hide in the stockroom. But as soon as you’ve got rid of who’s chasing you, I’m gonna pull his lungs out!’

‘Fair enough,’ Osiris said. ‘This way?’

Time was when the dungeons of the Vatican were the most fashionable in Europe, attracting a cosmopolitan elite; and the post of Chief Jailer was regarded as the
ne plus ultra
of the turnkey’s profession. Nowadays, most of the cells have been turned into offices for the lesser officials or closed file stores, and the Chief Jailership has been amalgamated with the office of Assistant Downstairs Caretaker and Deputy Inspector of Drains.

The Vatican is, however, a proudly conservative and traditionalist institution; and therefore there is always one proper, old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness dungeon ready and waiting, just in case a really important heretic turns up out of the blue, with its own specialist jailer and genuine fitted rats. True, the Health and Safety insist that the rats be kept in a cage and fed and watered regularly by a fully certified and trained rat care operative, in accordance with the EC Statement of Practice; but it’s the thought that counts.

‘Definitely over-reacted, if you ask me,’ Odin said, for the fifth time. ‘Granted we were trespassing, and maybe we did inadvertently damage some masonry and a few trees, but even so.’ He scowled with indignation. ‘This would never have happened,’ he added darkly, ‘in Accrington.’

‘Whosa woosa itty bitty ratty, then?’ said Frey in the corner. ‘Who’s got the dearest little ratty paw-paws in the whole wide world?’

‘You still haven’t explained,’ said Thor, ‘why we can’t just beat the shit out of them and push off. I mean, for crying out loud, Odin, we’re
gods
.’

‘Exactly.’

‘What do you mean,
exactly
?’ Thor snapped, standing up in the escape tunnel he’d already started digging. It was already shoulder high; they’d only been there twenty minutes and the equipment available to him was a half broken china mug and a toothbrush. ‘One of these days, Odin, you’re going to wake up and find the bailiffs have repossessed your brain.’

‘Exactly because we’re gods,’ Odin replied. ‘This is a Christian jurisdiction; we shouldn’t be here. If we cause trouble, it could lead to a serious theological incident.’

‘Not if we only pulped them a bit. Just enough so’s we could escape, plus a few kicks up the jacksie for luck. I don’t suppose anyone’d even notice.’

‘Little rattikins want nice piece of coconut ice? Very nice, yum yum? No? Not want nice bit of—?’

‘Frey, will you stop talking to that sodding rodent!’

‘Oh, yeah?’ Frey replied. ‘And where else am I going to get an intelligent conversation in here?’

‘Serious,’ Odin went on, ‘theological incident. Which in turn means the Pope or whatever he calls himself writing a stiff letter to the Henderson. Which means . . .’

‘All right,’ said Thor, ‘point taken. If only I hadn’t listened to you in the first place.’

‘I like that, coming from you. You knew we were in Rome all along. Why the devil didn’t you say anything?’

Thor made a rude noise and returned to his digging. Being a god (and to the gods all things are known) he had already worked out that his tunnel, if continued on its existing course for seven hundred and fifty yards, would bring him out slap bang in the middle of the main laundry room. They could dress up in sheets and pretend to be ghosts.

‘By the way,’ said Frey, in between enquiring of his new friend who exactly had the sweetest little iskery whiskery woos in the whole world ever, ‘anybody got any idea who he is?’ He jerked his head towards the slumped figure by the door. ‘Whoever he is, looks like they gave him a right old seeing-to.’

‘Dunno,’ said Thor. ‘He was in here when we arrived, I think. You could wake him up if you wanted.’

‘All right,’ said Frey. He leant across, took a firm hold of the figure’s ear, and twisted smartly.

‘Ow!’ said Kurt Lundqvist, waking up. ‘Gug. Where . . . ?’

Frey smiled reassuringly. ‘We don’t actually know that ourselves,’ he said, ‘But we think it’s the Vatican. I’m Frey, by the way, that’s Thor and he’s Odin.’

‘Kurt Lundqvist. Hey, what am I doing here?’

‘How should I know?’ Frey replied. ‘Actually,’ he admitted, ‘I should, because in theory I know everything, but there it is. We were supposed to go on refresher courses, but we never bothered.’

Lundqvist looked them over. ‘You’re gods, aren’t you?’ he said.

‘Give the man a big cigar,’ Frey replied. ‘Of course, we’re retired now. How about you?’

Lundqvist considered. As noted above he was basically a very religious man - you had to be in his line of work. Atheism to a supernatural hit-man would be as unthinkable as freeze-dried rain - but he was painfully aware that from time to time he’d been called upon to commit some fairly sacrilegious acts in the course of his duties, up to and including the destruct-testing of some deities’ eternal lives; and for the life of him he couldn’t remember whether this particular pantheon had crossed his path before. Best, he decided, to be a little bit discreet.

‘I’m a journalist,’ he therefore said. ‘War correspondent with the Chicopee Falls Evening Intelligencer. Hey, what are you guys doing in here? And why don’t you just—?’

‘Because,’ Thor said, ‘that great jessie over there won’t let us. Don’t thump the guards, he says. Don’t smash down the walls, he says. Wait for someone from the High Commission to come and bail us out. Fat chance.’

‘Thor, you know perfectly well there are proper procedures . . .’

‘Bearing in mind,’ Thor went on, ‘that the High Commission was closed down in AD 332 on the orders of Constantine the Great. Yes, I know Nkulunkulu the Great Sky Spirit of Zululand has a chargé d’affaires still, but I gather he consists of a few small clouds and a buildup of latent static electricity, which really isn’t going to be much use to us in here.’

‘Oh I don’t know,’ Frey yawned. ‘Sounds like he could cause dry rot in the joists or something, and then they’d have to move us out to a hotel. Take time, though.’

Kurt Lundqvist levered himself up on to his hands and knees and looked around. As always with him, ever since he popped out of the womb and immediately grabbed the forceps and dived for strategic cover under the incubator, his first thought was to locate a usable weapon and a defensible position to fall back on. Limited scope in the conditions prevailing, and he had to content himself with seizing Frey’s left shoe and crouching in the corner of the cell.

‘Let’s get this straight, shall we?’ he said. ‘You guys are gods, right?’

Thor nodded.

‘And you want to bust out, but you can’t.’

‘Yup.’

‘Not,’ Lundqvist went on, ‘because you haven’t the capability, but because it’d be a serious breach of protocol, right?’

‘Exactly.’

Lundqvist nodded. ‘So,’ he said, ‘if you could secure the services of, say, a highly trained soldier of fortune who could bash in the guards without any nasty theological comebacks, you could do all the rest of the escaping, like, you know, the rope ladders and waiting helicopters bit, standing on your heads.’

‘I guess so,’ Thor replied.

‘Fine.’ Lundqvist smiled and felt in his pocket. ‘Allow me,’ he said, ‘to give you my card.’

‘I
t’s all right,’ said Mithras, ‘they’ve gone.’

(From the same team that brought you
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
we proudly present the very latest in abstruse theological conundra; namely, what do retired sun gods now running small hairdressing-businesses in the backstreets of Rome keep in their back rooms? Answers on a postcard, please.)

‘You might have warned us,’ Osiris protested.

‘There wasn’t time,’ Mithras replied, defensively. ‘Besides, I forgot it was there. Only came last evening. Bloke with a horse and cart came in for a haircut, and when I’d done he said he’d come out without his wallet, would I be interested in doing a bit of barter? And since I’ve got the allotment—’

‘Yes,’ Pan said, ‘all right. We get the message.’

Mithras turned on Pan, snarling. ‘Besides,’ he snapped, ‘I only did to you what you did to me all those years back, you bastard.’

‘Did I?’ Pan frowned in thought. ‘Oh, I see,’ he said, ‘it’s a sort of play on words. Yes, very good.’

Osiris raised a hand for silence. ‘Excuse me,’ he asked Mithras. ‘I’m sure it’s none of my business, but what exactly did he do to you?’

‘Hah!’

‘It was all perfectly innocent,’ Pan muttered, as he put the width of a barber’s chair between Mithras and himself. ‘Just bad luck, that’s—’

‘There I was,’ Mithras said, ‘at my retirement party. Super do it was, champers, horse doofers, bits of minced-up fish in pastry cases with thin slices of egg, the works. Three thousand years in the public service, and a nice comfortable retirement and a decent pension to look forward to.’ He paused to give Pan a look you could have freeze-dried coffee with, and went on. ‘And just when the party’s going well and I’ve had a few jars, up comes this creep here, all innocent like, with his, Excuse me, but have you given any thought to the long-term benefits of a personal pension scheme specially tailored to your individual requirements? Gordon Bennett, did he see me coming, or what?’

‘It was a perfectly legitimate investment proposal,’ Pan replied, his face covered with synthetic anger, as if he’d just been eating a doughnut filled with wrath. ‘You were at perfect liberty to take independent financial advice.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Mithras sneered. ‘
Trust me, I’m a god
. Went and stuck the while lot into Mount Olympus 12½ per cent unsecured loan stock, he did, just six weeks before the battle of the Milvian Bridge.’

‘Final defeat of the pagans by Constantine the Great,’ Osiris asided to Sandra, who hadn’t been listening anyway. ‘Christianity becomes the state religion and worship of the old gods forbidden.’ He nodded a few times. ‘I can see your point,’ he said to Mithras. ‘In the circumstances, I think ripping his lungs out would be perfectly reasonable behaviour.’

Pan smiled fiercely. ‘All water under the bridge, now, though,’ he said, ‘and anyway—’

‘Is it hell as like,’ Mithras growled. ‘I make it you owe me ninety billion gold dinars, plus interest. I’d prefer cash, if you’ve got it.’

‘So you couldn’t retire after all?’

‘Been working in this dump ever since,’ Mithras replied sullenly. ‘Only thing that’s kept me going was the thought of what I was going to do to chummy here just as soon as I got my hands on him.’

‘I think that’s very sad,’ Sandra said.

‘
You
think . . .’

Pan folded his arms. ‘It was an honest mistake,’ he said firmly. ‘And besides, think of all the tax you’ve saved just by virtue of being grindingly poor.’

A spasm of doubt flitted across Mithras’ face. ‘Cor,’ he said. ‘I never looked at it like that before.’

‘You see?’ Pan replied, simultaneously crushing Sandra’s foot beneath his own on the off chance that she might have been about to point out that gods don’t pay tax anyway. ‘That’s the trouble with laymen, of course, they’re incapable of adopting the holistic viewpoint. Strictly speaking, of course,’ he added, ‘I should be entitled to my ten per cent commission on everything you’ve saved, but as a gesture of goodwill . . .’