Pantheon 00 - Age of Godpunk (5 page)

“Rather like getting into a car.”

Rather like, only in my case it’s taking
with
owner’s consent, not
without
. I’d never dream of entering a body unbidden. It’s more of a... a
cohabitation
than an act of possession. Think how it’s been lately, with me inside you. I’m not riding roughshod over you, am I? I’m not making you behave in any way against your own wishes. We’ve just been rubbing along, mutually cooperating, haven’t we? And it hasn’t been so bad. I think you’ve been finding it quite bracing, as a matter of fact. Quite liberating
.

I couldn’t deny this. “But,” I said, “perhaps I’m not keen on going any further. In fact, perhaps the time’s come for you and I to discuss dissolving this partnership of ours.”

Oh, I wouldn’t advise that, Dion. Not at all
.

“Why not?”

Well, remember how it went for you after we first met? When you refused to acknowledge my existence? Remember how bad things got for you?

I did – the coincidences that had left my secure little world wobbling perilously on its axis.

My doing, of course
, said Anansi.
And I was hardly even trying. If I wished, I could make your life a living hell. What I did then would seem like paradise compared with what I
could
do. The torments I could put you through... You’d be begging me to stop, and do you know what I would say? I would say “No,” and just carry on
.

His voice had become brittle and awful, like ice cracking underfoot, like tinder sticks breaking, like dry bones snapping. I felt a surge of nauseating dread, unlike anything I’d ever known. I stopped in my tracks and bent double, bracing my hands on my knees. To a passerby it would have looked as though I had paused to catch my breath and maybe work out a stitch in my side, not as though I was fighting to keep myself from throwing up, which I was.

Could Anansi truly do as he threatened and throw my life into utter chaos?

I had no doubt that he could.

But let’s not make this a matter of browbeating and intimidation
, he wheedled.
That’s really not how I prefer to operate. I’d much rather you just agreed to do as I ask of your own free will. Everything would be much more agreeable that way
.

I straightened up. At that moment, the canal looked very tempting. To hurl oneself beneath that greasy brown surface, to expel the air from one’s lungs and let the cold brackish water come flooding in...

“No,” I said, determinedly.

No?

“I mean yes. Yes, I’ll do it. Not because you’re forcing me to. Because, never let it be said that Dion Yeboah does not repay his debts.”

Excellent. I knew I could count on you
.

“But Anansi?”

Yes?

“If we do this, we do it to win. Get me? No half measures. I do not take on a challenge unless I’m going to go flat out, all guns blazing, to come out on top. That is my way.”

Of course, of course
.

“You have brought me further along in just a few months than I could ever have managed alone. I owe you for that, and I will honour my side of the bargain, but in return I must have your full and unstinting collaboration. I must be able to rely on you.”

You will, believe me
, said Anansi.

“Good. I’ll hold you to that.”

Oh, I have chosen well
. I could feel him inside me, happily rubbing his forelegs together.
It was worth leaving Africa to find you. Aso told me I should stay home, content myself with someone local again, but she was wrong. I’ve tried that so many times and it hasn’t worked. You may not be
African
-African, Dion, but your bloodline is still strong in you. You’re only one step removed from your true homeland, and you carry its traditions within you, with all the sophistication of the industrialised West. You’re the best of both worlds, and with you, I’m sure, this time I will take the crown
.

“
We
,” I corrected him. “We will take the crown.”

T
HERE WERE PRACTICAL
preparations to be made. The contest was taking place at the end of the month, in America. I needed to book tickets and block out a week of holiday in my hectic work schedule. There was also research to be done. I hate to go into anything half-cocked, uninformed. Just ask any of my juniors. We know our brief inside-out before we enter the courtroom. We’ve looked up the precedents and nailed down the references and made provision for every contingency we can think of. Nothing should catch us by surprise, if we’ve done our homework properly beforehand.

And so it was in this instance. With Anansi’s help I drew up a list of our potential opponents and studied them and their histories and habits. Not every trickster god makes it to every contest. Some balk, some fail to recruit a suitable avatar in time, and some are so neglected and forgotten about that they lack the will or the strength to put in an appearance. A god is only as mighty as the obeisance he or she can command. The less revered, the less remembered, the less empowered.

Not all the contest entrants are gods, either. At least, not in the sense that we understand the term “god.” Figures from folk tales also attend – the wily fictional characters whose exploits have been celebrated down through the centuries and become the stuff of legend. Adored, if not necessarily worshipped, by many, they have carved out a place for themselves among the trickster fraternity. Lesser cousins, perhaps, but entitled to show up and compete nonetheless.

I researched them all, focusing especially on a core of regular attendees. In my spare hours I trawled the internet, finding out what I could about them. I haunted the Mythology sections of bookshops, buying armfuls of material. I immersed myself in lore, rather than law, for a change. Within a fortnight, I was as well informed as any comparative religion student on the subject. I was armed with knowledge, and ready.

I
FLEW FROM
Heathrow to Las Vegas on a grey Thursday morning. As I approached the departure gate, Anansi proposed we try a little stunt.
It might work, it might not
, he said.
Let’s see
.

I had bought a Club Class ticket – though I have money, I’m not reckless – but at Anansi’s prompted I elected to give myself an unofficial upgrade. When the plane was fully boarded but not yet moving, I sauntered through to the First Class cabin and plumped myself down in the nearest empty seat. I acted as though I belonged there and nobody had the right to tell me otherwise. I waited to be questioned, challenged, checked, but none of the team of flight attendants batted an eyelid. One of them poured me my complimentary glass of champagne. Another took my meal order.

Sometimes it’s all about balls and bravado
, said Anansi as the plane taxied towards the runway.
A confidence trick doesn’t involve just gaining a victim’s confidence. It’s your own confidence that matters too. Have plenty of it, and results are more or less guaranteed
.

We took off, and England and its sheath of cloud fell behind. I sat back in my seat, lacing my hands behind my head and stretching out into the acres of legroom available. Eleven luxurious hours later, we were descending over the dry sunburnt plains of the American south-west.

A
T
M
C
C
ARRAN
I
NTERNATIONAL
, I witnessed what turned out to be the contest’s first elimination.

In baggage reclaim, as I waited for my suitcase to appear on the carousel, I caught sight of a Middle Eastern man haring across the hall. He was being pursued by half a dozen plainclothes and uniformed security officials in full cry, all demanding that he stop. The man darted a glance over his shoulder, then collided headlong with a luggage trolley. He sprawled to the floor and the security men pounced. The man struggled, and someone produced a Taser. There was a high-voltage sizzle, and the man shrieked, writhed and lay still. The security men carted him off unceremoniously. A passenger asked them what was going on. The curt reply: “Terrorist suspect.”

It was enough. It was all anyone needed. Almost everyone present started cheering and applauding, and a couple of suggestions were offered as to what should be done with the Middle Easterner: essentially, imprisonment, interrogation and execution.

That’s no terrorist
, Anansi scoffed.
If he’s an Islamic extremist, I’m a tarantula. That’s Juha, that is
.

I didn’t have my Bluetooth on just then, so I gave a kind of mental shrug, as if to say
Really?

Oh yes. Undoubtedly. Juha’s avatar. And if I don’t miss my guess, one of our opponents “dropped a dime on him,” as they say
.

It made sense. In the paranoid post-9/11 United States, anyone looking remotely Arabic was automatically under suspicion. A phone call to the authorities, or a tap on the shoulder and a few words whispered in the right ear, and people would see bomb vests and phials of anthrax where there were none, and overreact accordingly.

Juha, who, annoyed by his local muezzin’s calls to prayer, cut off the man’s head and threw it down a well, then threw a ram’s head down there too in order to allay suspicion...

Juha, who sold his house but drove a nail into the wall before he left, then kept coming back on the pretext of inspecting the nail, meanwhile preying on the new owner’s hospitality until eventually the new owner fled the property in high dudgeon without asking for his money back...

Juha, who borrowed a large sum of money off his rich-but-stingy neighbour and refused to return it, then asked the neighbour to lend him his horse, robe and shoes as they made their way to see the judge, who he hoodwinked into believing that Juha himself must be the rich one and the neighbour a liar...

Now out of contention.

One entrant down already, and the contest hadn’t even officially begun.

T
HOUGH IT PERHAPS
ought to have been, Las Vegas was not the location of the contest. Our ultimate destination lay some one hundred and fifty miles outside the world capital of tourist fleecing: a tiny town that went by the name of Sweetwater, stuck out in the Mojave Desert.

So, after a night in a decent enough hotel some distance from the lights and hurly-burly of the Strip, I caught a westbound Greyhound. The bus rolled away from the city into a landscape so arid and barren it almost hurt to look at it. Everything that was not rocks was scrubby, barely-there plant life.

Anansi was enthralled.
Reminds me of the savannahs of home
, he said wistfully.
The Serengeti. The Rift Valley. Olduvai Gorge.

“I’m a city boy,” I told him. “All I see is wasteland, without a Starbucks or a Marks and Spencer in sight.”

“Is like Mars,” said a voice from across the bus aisle.

“Excuse me?”

He was big and thickly bearded, with a lumberjack shirt and a snake tattoo on his forearm. His accent put him somewhere east of the Caucasus. “I said is like Mars. All this red desert. No wonder peoples is always seeing flying spaceships out here. If Martians are coming to this planet, here is where they are likely to be landing. Somewhere like their own home.”

“Oh. Yes. Fair point.”

“Do I know you?” The man squinted at me, his bushy eyebrows knotting together like a pair of caterpillars mating. “I am thinking we have met before.”

“No, I’m sure I –”

Veles
, whispered Anansi.

“I’m sure we –”

He is Veles. Trickster god of the Slavic folk.

I consulted my trove of research data. Veles. Storm god. Able to transform himself into various kinds of animals and even people. Protector of sheep and cows. Famous for...

Anansi chipped in.
Famous for fighting Perun, god of war, after stealing Perun’s wife, or his son, or some of his cattle – depends which version of the story you read. Their battle raged in the heavens as a lightning storm. Veles lost, and his blood fell like rain. He looks after peasants, bringing them wealth, and is also the god of sorcerers. Those who weave spells as well as those who weave wool look to him for patronage and inspiration
. He concluded,
Slippery customer. These shapeshifter types always are. Keep your wits about you, Dion
.

“Yes,” said the man. “I am recognising you. We are both here for the same reason, no?”

Without being invited, he heaved himself across the aisle and squeezed his bulk into the seat next to mine.

“Ivan Rodchenko.”

I shook a hot, powerful paw.

“Dion Yeboah.”

“Someone is riding with you, yes? As with me.” He tapped his skull. “A secret traveller.”

I glanced around at our fellow passengers. The bus was a quarter full. Nobody seemed to be interested in us. People were dozing, reading, messing around on their phones and tablets, or listening to music through earbuds. Nobody was eavesdropping.

I nodded to Rodchenko.

“Yes,” he said. “I thought so. I know for sure when I am hearing you talk to yourself. Is hard sometimes to remember to not speak aloud when you are having conversation with guest in head. Maybe, to others, you are looking like mad person, or too much this...” He mimed glugging down alcohol.

“Normally I’m careful,” I said. “I must be feeling a touch of jet lag.”

“We have come long way to compete,” said Rodchenko. “Others are coming from even further. China, Japan, Australia, all over. Is big world. Many gods. Only a few from America itself. Including last time’s winner.”

“Coyote.”

“Yes, yes. The oh-so-wily Coyote. He wins, meaning he is getting to choose site for next contest. He chooses home turf. Well, of course. Why not? And you are being from... England, is correct?”

“Is correct.”

“You are with Robin Goodfellow, then? Also known as Puck?”

I shook my head. “Anansi.”