The Age Of Zeus (58 page)

Demeter was also in the staunchly anti-Sam camp. So was Hermes, which didn't bother Sam in the least, since she was staunchly anti-Hermes. He was Darren Pugh, after all. Looked the same. Spoke the same. Walked the same. He might be dressed up as Hermes, and possess the requisite powers, but there wasn't a shred of doubt in her mind that this was the ex-con who had threatened her back on that first day at Bleaney and had then taken Landesman's cheque, agreeing to go away and not tell a soul about the invitation or the island.

Only, he hadn't stuck to his promise, had he? It didn't take a genius to work out how things had gone. Maybe the money had run out, trickling through Pugh's slippery fingers faster than he could hold on to it, or maybe not but he had nonetheless spotted an opportunity to make some more, or just gain himself a leg-up in the world.

She confronted him about it one afternoon, when she was heavily premenstrual and in a combative mood. Hermes was alone on the steps of his temple, burnishing his helmet with a cloth. Sam strode up and said, "Do you really not remember me?"

Hermes looked blank. "Until I hauled you off that island, I'd never seen you before in my life."

"January. In the bunker. I pegged you as a jailbird from the off. You got shirty and called me 'ginger tits,' then went off in a strop with a lot of Regis Landesman's money. Which you then, I bet, pissed away on booze, women and horses, am I right?"

The blank look remained, although the phrase "ginger tits" seemed to spark something, albeit momentarily. In his eyes had there been just that tiniest flash of recollection?

"Woman, I am Hermes the Thrice-Great, He Who Presides Over Contests," he said. "That's who I am and who I have always been."

"And after the money was gone," Sara continued, "what? You saw something about the Titans on the telly and your cunning little mind put two and two together. You remembered the bunker, you remembered what Landesman was promising us, and next thing you're in touch with the Olympians, saying you know where we can be found. But you wanted something in return for that information. You probably asked for money but they made you a better offer. Power. They needed a new Hermes, so they offered you the job. That's what happened, isn't it?"

"I've heard that you're not quite right in the head..."

"That's what happened," Sam insisted. "You traded our whereabouts for speed, teleportation and that tin helmet there. You sold us out."

Hermes smiled and shrugged. "Zeus has said you're not to be harmed, but I'm sorely tempted to take you up to a very high crag and -"

"Have they done this before?" Sam cut in, musing aloud. "Replaced an Olympian who's died with a substitute? It's conceivable. Maybe one of you was killed in action but the death was covered up and along comes a new face shortly afterwards, same outfit, same powers, but no one's looked further than that and spotted that it's an impostor. The brand continues, original packaging, new content. That really would make each of you immortal, after a fashion."

"I'm going to go now," said Hermes.

"And your memories get wiped, too. How does Zeus do that? I'm assuming it's Zeus behind all this. He gives the powers, takes away your past, somehow makes you convinced you're genuinely a Greek god..."

"Really am going."

"...and you're left none the wiser. Can it be done? More to the point, where is it done?"

"Goodbye."

Hermes vanished.

"Yes, off you go," Sam said to the empty space where he had just been sitting. "Run off and polish your helmet somewhere else. I know who you are and what you did, Pugh. You're on my shit list too, you know."

Empty as this threat was, she felt better for saying it.

Later, Zeus drew her aside for a quiet word. "Hermes tells me you were haranguing him today with this - I can only call it conspiracy nonsense. That's him in addition to me, Ares, Aphrodite, Dionysus... Anyone else? Just please desist, Sam. None of us is interested. Your convictions aren't convincing. We don't believe your disbelief. It's irksome and tiresome, and frankly your position here is tenuous as it is without you imperilling it further. Try and fit in and behave. That's all I ask."

"My position?" Sam retorted. "And just what position is that, Zeus? Because, me, I have no idea. Why am I even on Olympus? I hate it here. Everyone hates
me
. Why are you keeping me around? Am I a pet? Spoils of war? What?
What the fuck do you want from me?
"

Zeus took a step back, eyeing her with a lofty, paternalistic gaze. Behind it, though, she thought he looked hurt.

"I want nothing from you," he said, "that isn't given voluntarily."

"And that's supposed to mean...?"

He didn't elaborate.

"Zeus, either kill me or set me free. Those are the only two things I'm after. One or the other, you choose. I don't much mind which it is. Anything rather than stay on here with this dysfunctional so-called family of yours, half of who hate my guts and the rest of who either don't even notice me or else keep sniffing around me like a dog on heat."

"Who keeps 'sniffing around' you?"

"No one."

"Hades? It is, isn't it? Is he bothering you? I've seen him and you together a lot. I'll have words. You won't have to worry about him any more."

And from that moment on, she didn't. Hades kept his distance, although she often felt the weight of his stare on her, sulky now, baleful, offended. She noticed, too, that he had started making a point of removing his gloves in her presence and articulating his fingers, like a pianist warming up, practising invisible arpeggios in the air. It was a show for her benefit, and she resolved to be more careful around him from now on. A single touch of those skeletal fingers and she'd be dead in a flash, as had happened to Fred Tsang, as had happened to countless others. It didn't even have to be deliberate. A chance collision, an accidental misstep that brought her skin into contact with one of those hands, and it would all be over.

That she was anxious about Hades's hands told her a truth about herself.

She wasn't willing to die, for all that she had claimed she was.

She wanted to live.

And that meant escaping.

65. CRATES

B
ut still she couldn't see
how
to actually escape. There was no way in or out of the stronghold except via the gate, which lacked an operating mechanism and indeed seemed designed to be openable only by hand. And the hand that opened it would have to be an Olympian's. So huge a portal would yield to the strength of an Ares, say, or a Hercules. Not, though, to the comparatively feeble strength of a Sam Akehurst.

Then, of course, there were the Harpies to take into account.

Gate apart, the one other route out of the stronghold worth consideration was the freight helicopter which came once a week, on Sundays, bearing a crate full of supplies. The crate, an eight-foot plywood cube with Greek script and right-way-up arrows stencilled on it, was winched down into the
agora
, then an Olympian, normally Hermes, would detach the cable and hook it to the previous week's now-empty crate for the hovering chopper to take away. If, Sam thought, she could somehow get herself into that empty crate without being seen, she could be flown to Katerini and safety.

It was a very big if, though. Each empty crate was sealed up in readiness the day before pick-up, usually sometime in the morning but never later than the evening. Assuming she managed to clamber inside and not be discovered during the sealing-up process, there was still the problem of her absence being noted over the course of the Saturday night - and it would be, by Zeus if nobody else, and he would raise the alarm, and then perhaps Hera would set Cerberus on her trail, all three of its noses sniffing out her place of concealment...

No, she had to accept that that particular crate plan was a non-starter.

Then how about leaping onto the empty crate and clinging on as it was being hoisted away?

This had potential. Except, the Sunday helicopter drops were a source of great excitement to the Olympians. Almost the entire Pantheon would turn out to watch the chopper fly in and out, and then be on hand for the opening of the new crate, the unveiling of all the essentials and luxuries inside. Sam would never make it onto the departing crate without one of them seeing, and Hermes would have her back down off it and onto the ground in no time.

Each time the helicopter arrived Sam steeled herself to put this plan into action. Each time, the sheer unfeasibility of a success overwhelmed her and left her paralysed.

Then all she could do was watch, crestfallen, disappointed in herself, as the Olympians clustered around the new crate and pried it open. There would be delight at some fresh seasonal delicacy the Greek government had decided to treat them to, disgust over some unfavoured foodstuff, affront that a particular item had not been included even though it had been on the request form which Argus had emailed to Athens the previous Monday. Then there was the division of the crate's non-edible contents, which really showed the Pantheonic hierarchy in operation. Hera had first pick and snapped up the best of the boudoir products for herself - this fragrance, that lip balm, those bath salts - before any of the other female Olympians got a look-in. Zeus likewise had first pick of the male-orientated toiletries. Then it was Athena's turn, then Poseidon's if he was there, then Ares's, then Demeter's, and so on all the way down to Dionysus and Hephaestus. Fortunately Dionysus was interested only in wine, which none of the others had quite such a penchant for, so he was quite happy to get dibs on the Beaujolais Nouveau or the retsina and forgo all else. Lame old Hephaestus, however, was invariably left with little, the dregs of the crate, and just as invariably he would fume and grouse about this to anyone who would listen, which was no one, until his wife Aphrodite told him to be quiet.

The weekly airdrop was a highlight of the Olympians' week, and it became clear to Sam, as her stay on the mountaintop wore on, that if there was one thing that characterised the general mood of the Pantheon, it was boredom. They had set the world to rights and now, interruptions like the Titans aside, there wasn't much to do except monitor the global situation and make sure the lid stayed tightly pressed down.

That, then, would be why they loved to argue amongst themselves so much - it helped pass the time. Bickering at table was commonplace. In fact, it seemed almost compulsory. Hardly a meal went by without someone dragging out some long-held grudge for an airing, and more often than not Zeus was the one who instigated these spats.

"Ares, remind me again," he said one lunchtime, seemingly
à propos
of nothing. "Your little fling with Aphrodite, how did that end?"

"It ended," declared Hephaestus before Ares could reply, "because I ended it! Caught them out, didn't I? Ares seduced her, soiled her, my own wife, with his grubby, hairy paws, but I -"

"Seduced her?" Ares said, a scornful bark. "Oh, believe me, He Who Dwells In Etna, nobody seduces Aphrodite. She was willing, let me tell you. More than willing, downright eager. Couldn't keep her hands off me. Could you, O Beautiful-Buttocked? She craved the touch of a real man, a man with vigour and stamina, having had to suffer the attentions of a stunted, crippled blacksmith for so long. Tell me, Hephaestus, does 'limp' apply to everything about you or just the way you walk?"

"Oh, how funny," Hephaestus said. "Haven't heard that one in a long time. But I got you back. Got you back good and proper. With my bronze net I trapped the pair of you in bed together, and then the rest of us gathered round and how we laughed." He roared with laughter, to illustrate.

Aphrodite, throughout, kept her head down and her gaze fixed firmly on her plate.

On another occasion, again after a spot of none-too-subtle nudging from Zeus, Demeter started having a go at Hades for his having abducted her daughter and dragged her down into the underworld to be his queen.

"My poor dear Persephone," she said, "forced to be a consort in such a gloomy, sunless place when she was born a creature of the daylight, the breezes, the sky."

"She gets all that in spring, summer and autumn," Hades said. "She spends only the three winter months with me. That was our deal, after she ate three of the twelve seeds in that pomegranate, and it seems a more than reasonable one. If there's anyone you should feel sorry for it's me, deprived of the comforts of a wife for three quarters of the year. Besides, the kingdom of the dead isn't so bad, once you get used to it."