Pantheon 00 - Age of Godpunk (2 page)

FOREWORD

T
HE THREE NOVELLAS
which make up
Age of Godpunk
were published originally as three separate ebooks. This is the first time they have appeared in physical form. They weren’t designed to be read as an ensemble, but now that they’ve been united between two covers, I think they sit together pretty well, each counterpointing and complementing the others in interesting ways.

Those who have read any of my Pantheon series of novels may feel they know what to expect of a story by me with a title beginning
Age of...
The novels are military-SF action-adventure thrillers which take time out to muse on the nature of the relationship between humankind and its various gods. Each standalone book offers its own particular slant on the material. They’re as alike, and at the same time as different, as I can make them.

These
Godpunk
novellas take another tack. They’re lighter in tone, with the science fictional elements stripped out. They’re still about us and our deities and our myths and belief systems, but they allow room for greater ambiguity and a buttload of irony. They demonstrate, I think, the potential breadth and scope of this subgenre I’ve invented (or, if not invented, defined). They are, I hope, above all else
fun
.

A novella is a strange chimera, a hybrid I’m very fond of. It gives an author the chance to be experimental, as a short story does, but also to let the narrative breathe, as a novel does. You can have a slightly unsympathetic protagonist whom the reader is prepared to stick with for a hundred-odd pages but would lose all patience with over any greater length. You can pack a great deal of plot into a novella and make it feel momentous even when it’s only modestly proportioned. It’s a format that’s both epic and intimate.

Age of Anansi
is itself about storytelling, about the fabrications that sustain us and the tricks we’re prepared to play to keep ahead of our peers and rivals. Is it coincidence that the words “liar” and “lawyer” sound so similar? Yes, of course it is. But still...

Age of Satan
pays tribute to Dennis Wheatley’s fiction and the Satanic-horror cinema of the 1970s, but is also an enquiry into ethics and – oxymoron alert – political morality. Plus: blood sacrifice.

Age of Gaia
takes a sidelong look at eco-activism and rampant capitalism, at the same time riffing on a certain recent publishing phenomenon (I won’t say which one – no spoilers here). I have never been mistaken for James Lovelock, the scientist who formulated the Gaia Hypothesis, despite the closeness of our names.

I must once again give credit to my publishers, Solaris, for coming along with me on this Pantheon lark and being as encouraging and supportive as they have been. Particular tribute is due to editor-in-chief Jon Oliver, who was very accepting of
Age of Satan
’s rather jaundiced irreligiosity in spite of his own faith. Jon is that rare thing, a broadminded Christian with a sense of humour and a refreshing lack of piety. He even fucking swears. Thanks must also go to publishing manager Ben Smith, who suggested the basic concept of
Age of Gaia
. It’s a good one and I hope I’ve done it justice. Finally, desk editor David Moore should take credit for being the coiner of the term “godpunk,” although Pornokitsch’s Jared Shurin came up with the word at roughly the same time and so can lay equal claim to that honour. They have yet to settle the matter between them decisively, and a bout in Thunderdome surely beckons. Two men enter. One man leaves.

Off with you now. Go and read the stories. You’re about to meet the African spider-god, the Devil incarnate and the living embodiment of Mother Nature. You wouldn’t want to keep that lot waiting, would you?

J. M. H. L.

¹
No, actually I tell a lie. A dentist once asked me, somewhat grumpily, if I was the man who publicly advocated building more nuclear power stations as a way of solving the energy crisis, as Lovelock does. This was as she was on the point of injecting anaesthetic into my gum. I assured her she’d got the wrong writer. She said, “Just as well. Otherwise this might have been a very unpleasant experience for you.” True story.

E
VERYTHING WOULD HAVE
been fine, if it wasn’t for the spider.

The spider came along, took a perfect life, a life that was well planned and blameless –
my
life – and wrecked it.

M
AYBE
I
SHOULD
begin this the way my grandmother taught me to, by reciting the traditional incantation: “We do not really mean, we do not really mean that what we are about to say is true. A story, a story. Let it come, let it go.”

Nanabaa Oboshie smelled of spices and fat-lady sweat. I’d cuddle up on her capacious lap and she would tell me the old Ashanti myths. Her English wasn’t good, thickly accented, but I loved the cadences of her speech, the singsong rhythms, the occasional incomprehensible lapses into Kwa phraseology.

Most of the stories, the best ones, were about Anansi.

Anansi is lord of stories. He won ownership of them off his father Nyame, the Sky God. He bought them by trapping Onini the Python, Osebo the Leopard, the Mmoboro Hornets and Mmoatia the Dwarf, and handing these prizes to Nyame. Through stealth and subterfuge he captured the creatures, and so all the world’s stories became Anansesem – Anansi stories.

Which is, of course, a story in itself.

“We do not mean that what we are about to say is true.”

Only it
is
true.

It happened to me.

M
Y NAME IS
Dion Yeboah, and up until not so long ago I was a respectable and respected barrister, specialising in criminal law. I had a sterling reputation as a defence QC, the man you want on your side when you’re in a jam, the man whose silver tongue and sharp legal brain could scoop you out of hot water and land you safely on the right side of the bars of a prison cell.

I charged the going rate for my services, which is to say ‘a lot,’ and I can’t confess to ever feeling guilty about that. And yes, there may have been a time or two when I acted as counsel for a client whose innocence I wasn’t entirely convinced of. But everyone is entitled to a fair trial, and that means a robust defence. Besides, I did my share of
pro bono
work as well, mostly on behalf of kids from rough council estates who’d got unlucky, been busted for first-time possession – drugs, concealed weapons, whatever a random police stop-and-search turned up – or else were facing charges of assault or GBH when they were only trying to protect themselves or their family.

Those kids, they’d look at me in frank wonder sometimes. Never seen someone with the same skin colour as them who wore a suit and spoke the way I did. “What, you posh or summink, bruv? You Prince Charles or summink? How come you don’t talk right?”

No, not posh, I would tell them. I come from the same place you do. I grew up on the London streets. My parents had no money, same as yours. But I studied hard at school. I went to university on a scholarship and got a Graduate Diploma in Law. I was called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn. I worked my backside off to make a success of myself.

And you can too.

I
WAS
A
success, I don’t mind admitting it. Nice flat in St John’s Wood. Tenancy in a well regarded set of chambers based near the Barbican. Steady and enviable income. I kept myself in trim – weight training twice a week, a jog round Regent’s Park every other morning. I kept my home in trim, too. Very house-proud, me. Had that instilled into me by my mum. “A clean home is a good home,” she’d say as she hurricaned from room to room with vacuum cleaner and feather duster, hands gauntleted in Marigolds. We had a tiny council flat, and it was always immaculate, not a speck of dust anywhere. My pad in St John’s Wood was the same – spotless. Windows gleaming bright. Floors swept to within an inch of their lives. Bathroom dazzling. Did it all myself, what’s more. I could easily afford a cleaner, but nobody else could keep things to my exacting standards. My mother, God rest her soul, would have approved. She cleaned other people’s houses for a living and felt no shame in that, but she did believe a person should be responsible for their own domestic hygiene.

“It’s your mess. Don’t do you no good paying someone else to make it go away.”

I
CAN’T REMEMBER
when exactly I noticed the first web. Sometime in midsummer, late July, but I can’t be any more precise than that. It wasn’t big, covering one windowpane. Flick of a dustcloth and it was gone.

The second appeared a couple of days later, stretched between a bookcase and the ceiling cornice. Bigger than the first, but just as easily got rid of.

The flat had never been troubled by spiders before. Insufficient prey. Flies and their ilk didn’t flourish at my place. Not enough of the dirt and debris they thrived on.

A week passed, and one day I came home and there were a good half-dozen webs. They hadn’t been there when I’d left that morning. One was draped around the light fixture in the living room. One linked the kitchen sink taps to the drying rack. One neatly filled the ring-seat on the toilet.

They were beautiful webs, I have to give them that. Pristine. Exactly how you imagine a spider web should look. The radial strands neatly equidistant, the concentric rings laddering out at steadily larger intervals, as though according to some fundamental mathematical principle. A certain silveriness to the silk, a gossamer iridescence. If they’d been anywhere else, anywhere but my home, I’d have admired them, marvelled at them.

As it was, I eradicated them. Angrily. Then I called in a pest control company.

T
HE MAN IN
the Bug Blasterz overalls searched and searched, but couldn’t find any trace of spider infestation.

“No eggs,” he said. “No cocoons. No husks. Nothing. You’re sure they were webs?”

“Yes, I’m damn well sure they were webs,” I replied sharply. “What else would they have been?”

“Only asking.”

He squirted insect repellent everywhere and advised me to stay outdoors for at least three hours. When I returned, the flat reeked of chemicals but felt somehow purified, as though I’d had ghosts and a priest had come and exorcised them.

My orderly life resumed. For a fortnight, my routine was as it had ever been. Work, fitness, cleaning, sleep. I found time to go on a date – a blind date set up by a well-meaning colleague, who thought I was working too hard and not “playing” enough. She was a nice enough girl, a solicitor, petite but curvy where it counts. West Indian, though, and sorry, I can’t help it, but my parents’ prejudices are my own. I remember my dad saying, “The stupid ones got caught. The clever ones knew how to run and hide. Those slave traders did Africa a favour, leaving the best and taking the rest.” It’s not true; what many of the clever Africans did was sell their countrymen to the slave traders. That’s how they survived. But we all tell lies to ourselves about our ancestors, to make us feel better, and those lies are persuasive.

So the date ended with a polite peck on the cheek and me about a hundred and fifty quid out of pocket for dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant.

And I got in that night to find my flat
swathed
in spider webs. Literally hundreds of them. Spider webs everywhere.

It was like some sort of practical joke. As though a prankster had broken in and gone mad with those spray cans they use to make cobwebs on movie sets. I couldn’t move without sticky silk wrapping itself round my hands, my legs, my head. I scarcely dared breathe for fear of getting some of the stuff in my mouth or up my nose.

This is insane
, I thought.
This can’t be happening
.

I took myself in hand, told myself to get a grip. It was just spider webs. Just dirt that shouldn’t be there.