The Age Of Zeus (56 page)

"Ordinary food?" said Sam. "I thought you lot only ate ambrosia and nectar."

"If the locals wish to pay tribute in this way," Zeus replied blithely, "who are we to turn down their largesse? Not that the gifts the Greeks come bearing are given entirely selflessly. We have brought renewed prestige to their country. Our presence has put what had become a minor, some might say inconsequential, European power firmly back on the map. It's a more than fair exchange, in my opinion."

"The Greek government may think that. The people aren't so sure. They don't like their taxes being spent on you."

"The building work was costly, I grant you, but nonetheless a small fraction of the national GDP. And the food is a very modest outlay indeed."

"Even so, other nations are forever grumbling about how Greece mollycoddles you."

"Mollycoddles?" Zeus looked amused. "Pure jealousy. The whingeing of the wishful. Besides, correct me if I'm wrong, but I've not heard anything to that effect from your own Mr Bartlett."

"I said nations, not leaders."

"Are leaders not the mouthpieces for nations?"

"Not always," Sam said. "And only a totalitarian dictator would make that assumption."

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, Sam..." said Zeus.

"Not mine they don't," Ares averred.

The tour continued, and as they walked Sam kept casting surreptitious sidelong glances at Zeus. He was unmistakably his father's son. Close up, in the flesh, the resemblance was marked. Cut the hair, trim the beard to a goatee, and you'd have a younger Regis Landesman, only with Arianna Landesman's dark eyes. The body language was a match as well.

What was this absurd pose, then, that he wasn't Xander? A bluff? An attempt to deny any connection with his past, sever himself entirely from his despised father? Or was there a deeper, stranger explanation? Had he somehow made himself forget who he'd been, and done the same to his fellow Olympians? If so, how?

Above and beyond these puzzles, though, what perplexed Sam most of all was why Zeus was being so polite and hospitable. Dionysus had told her that Zeus was consumed utterly with hatred of the Titans and wouldn't rest until they were dead, or words to that effect. Yet here she was, a Titan, alive, having been brought back from the brink by Demeter at Zeus's request, and he was treating her with a courtesy that bordered on deferential. What was going on? What was his gameplan here? She couldn't fathom it.

A sweeping flight of stone steps took them down to the stronghold's main gate, which was immense, several trees' worth of wood planed and planked and dovetailed together. The gate's rear, reflecting pictures Sam had seen of its front, was embossed with bronze plaques. Each plaque carried the emblem of an Olympian - a thundercloud for Zeus, an owl for Athena, an anvil for Hephaestus, a bunch of grapes for Dionysus, and so on.

The towering gateposts on either side were topped with platforms, and here Harpies perched. One of the monsters took flight as the three neared. It soared on batlike wings into the dusk-purpled sky and circled a few times, letting out shrill cries that resounded out across the sheer slopes below and down into the valleys. When it returned to its roost on the vacant gatepost it found another Harpy had moved in to take its place, and a vicious altercation broke out, the two bird-woman creatures going at each other with beak and talon until finally the interloper, with a flustered squawk, beat a retreat and flew to a platform further along the battlements. There, in a true demonstration of the meaning of "pecking order," it turfed off the Harpy already sitting there and settled down in its stead.

"Should you be contemplating some kind of breakout," Zeus informed Sam, "I wouldn't advise it. Our Harpies are incredibly vigilant. When I say they sleep with one eye open, I mean it. They do. And such eyes, too. Sharp as a hawk's, with night vision to rival an owl's. So even supposing you were able to open the gate, Sam, which I very much doubt, you would not get far on the other side. A dozen Harpies would be on you in a trice."

"They have, after all, been exceptionally well trained," said a female voice.

It was Hera, who sidled up to join them, accompanied by a three-headed dog on a triple leash - Cerberus.

"No one," she said, "comes within a mile of here on foot. From bitter experience people have learned better than to do that. Death by Harpy is neither quick nor painless."

"My dear," said Zeus, "may I introduce Sam Akehurst."

"I'm well aware who she is," Hera replied, giving Sam a disdainful once-over. "One of the monster killers."

Cerberus gave a threefold growl and strained on its leashes towards Sam. A trio of large, near-spherical heads came within inches of her, so close that the slobber from the knifelike fangs flecked her dress. Sam couldn't help but shy away, much to Ares's amusement.

"Scared of a stupid mutt?" he scoffed. He patted one of Cerberus's heads, which suddenly rounded on him and bit his hand while the other two heads kept their attention fixed on Sam. "Ach! You fucker," Ares hissed, shaking the hand in the air.

"Your own fault, Ares," said Hera. "You startled him. He doesn't like people coming at him from the side."

"Yes, well," Ares said, sucking his hand, "let that be a lesson to you, Sam. That dog's got a hell of a nip on him. Didn't even break my skin, mind, but if it'd been you, you'd be looking at the bleeding stump of your wrist."

"So I was sensible to be scared of him then?" Sam said tartly.

"Hmph," was Ares's reply.

"If I had my way, Miss Akehurst," said Hera, with a doughty swell of her chest, "Cerberus would right this very moment be feasting on your vitals. The way you Titans massacred my menagerie was unforgivable. Quite, quite unforgivable. However..." A glance at Zeus. "My husband is adamant that you are not to be harmed, and what the Aegis-Bearing decrees, all must obey."

"Spoken like a good little wifey," Sam murmured.

Hera flashed a glare at her. "You would do well to mind your manners, mortal. Zeus is prone to whims and fancies, like any male, but that which he gives he can also take away. Without his protection, trust me, you would not last long here."

She stalked off, dragging the thrice-whining Cerberus with her.

Zeus chuckled indulgently. "Hera the Ox-Eyed does not like it if even I so much as look at another woman. I have a history of dalliances, of course, I won't deny it. But what she ought to know by now is that I always come back to her in the end. All said and done, she is the only one for me."

Sam was aghast. "Oh my God, is
that
what this is? You've taken a shine to me? I'm just another of your 'dalliances'?"

"Certainly not."

"That's repulsive. It's never going to happen, you hear me? One hundred per cent never."

"Hera spoke out of turn," Zeus said, spinning on his heel. "Now come. There's still more to see."

Sam turned incredulously to Ares. "Please tell me I'm not a dalliance."

"Zeus has always had a taste for nubile mortal females," said Ares, "and ever since he saw your picture on television he's been going on about capturing Titans if possible, rather than killing them. Although," he added, "that could just be coincidence. The main thing as far as you're concerned is that, while you don't annoy him, you get to live. So, if you want my advice, try not to annoy him."

"OK," said Sam. "But no way am I sleeping with him, ever, and if that means I'll be signing my own death warrant, fine."

Ares nodded, perhaps with a touch of admiration. "Nobly put. When the time comes, should the Fates decide that I am to be your executioner, I promise I shall do you the honour of making it swift and clean."

"Thanks for that, much appreciated," said Sam, and she set off to catch up with Zeus.

63. ARGUS

T
he final stop on the Olympus tour was a chamber hewn deep in the rock of the mountainside and reminiscent in many ways of the command centre at Bleaney. Here, as there, could be found a plethora of screens and cables. The former provided the only illumination in the room, a wavering bluish glow, while the latter fed, presumably, to the meter-diameter parabolic antenna dish which Sam had spotted outside, nestled between two buildings, an incongruous sliver of modernity amid all the Classicism.

A smell reached Sam's nose as she followed Zeus and Ares into the chamber, a drab, musty odour that put her in mind of a teenage boy's bedroom. It was worse inside the chamber itself, stronger and more noxious. It spoke of unwashed flesh and fungal growth.

The source was - could only be - the corpulent figure who reclined in the centre of the room on a mound of silk cushions. He was near naked, his modesty preserved by a cloth draped across his groin, and his pallid, vein-marbled skin looked like it hadn't seen the sun in ages. It also looked like it hadn't seen soap and water in ages. There were blotches all over it that could have been food stains, encrustations that could have been rashes, a whole host of scummy dried-on marks of indeterminate origin. The covers of the cushions the figure half sat, half lay on were similarly bespattered and besmirched.

What was even more repellent about this bloated monstrosity, though, were the wires protruding from his head. A score of them were plugged into his hairless scalp, sticking out at all angles like rubber-insulated dreadlocks, and around the point at which each wire pierced the skin there was inflammation and scabbing. It reminded Sam of something from an anti-vivisection poster, a laboratory monkey with electrodes implanted in its brain.

He was slumped there with his eyes closed, as though blissfully asleep. However, as Sam drew (reluctantly) closer, she saw that his eyelids were puckered at the join, like pursed lips, and concave, sunken. There were no eyeballs beneath them.

"Argus?" said Zeus softly. "O Hundred-Eyed One? Can you hear me? Are you with us?"

Argus did not stir, but all round the chamber the screens flickered and changed. They had been displaying websites, live news broadcasts, CCTV footage, webcam images, a range of data input streaming in from across the globe, but now all at once each showed the same thing: a computer-generated peacock, its tailfeathers fanned, and the eye markings on the fan actual human-style eyes, different-coloured, intermittently blinking.

"Greetings to you, O mighty Zeus," said a warm, mellow voice that came from several directions simultaneously. The words echoed, cascaded, overlapped. "And to you, Ares. And to you too, Samantha Akehurst, former detective sergeant, resident of Kensal Rise, London." The voice proceeded to list Sam's driving licence and National Health numbers, gave the name of the high street bank she banked with, and threw in her credit rating for good measure. "Currently wanted by the London Metropolitan Police for questioning," it added.

"And my dress size?" Sam asked, trying not to sound unnerved.

A pause. Then: "You look like an eight to me."

"Actually I'm a ten."

"It's always wise to underestimate."

As the voice said this the man on the cushions, eerily, smiled.

"Argus," said Zeus, "Sam is, as you know, a member of the resistance group who were until not so long ago our mortal enemies - in more senses than one."

"Ah, yes, the Titans," said Argus. Several of the screens shifted from the peacock image to display stills from the Agonides clip, a blurry security-camera shot of a Titan haring through Manhattan, several newspaper pictures of dead and decaying Olympian monsters, a forensics photo of Søndergaard's skeleton half-buried in the dust of his battlesuit, and Titan-related soundbites from the press conference Zeus and Hercules gave in the shadow of the World Trade Centre and from Zeus and Hera's appearance on
Paulita
.

"There's more," he said, and a number of websites popped up on other screens, all of them festooned liberally with his peacock censorship-icon. "Titan-advocating sites and blogs and homepages. These are the ones I've allowed to continue to exist, the ones where the approval expressed is only moderate. The more ardent ones I have, of course, wrecked beyond repair."

"Still there are people rooting for you," said Zeus to Sam, "in spite of everything."

The words sent a small chill through her. "What do you mean, in spite of everything?"

"I mean, with no justification there are some poor misguided souls who still feel that the Titans are going to oust the Pantheon."