99 Gods: War

““Mr. B., I have got a grand humbug in my head which I shall put in practice within a year, and it shall double the sale of my pencils. Don’t ask me what it is, but within a year, you shall see it for yourself, and you shall acknowledge Monsieur Mangin knows something of human nature. My idea is magnifique, but it is one grand secret.” … But, poor fellow! Within four months after I bade him adieu, the Paris newspapers announced his sudden death. … I confess I felt somewhat chagrined that the Monsieur had thus suddenly taken “French leave” without imparting to me the “grand secret” by which he was to double the sales of his pencils. But I had not long to mourn on that account; for after Monsieur Mangin had been for six months … “mouldering in his grave” judge of the astonishment and delight of all Paris at his reappearance in his native city … It now turned out that Monsieur Mangin had lived in the most rigid seclusion for half a year, and that the extensively-circulated announcements of his sudden death had been made by himself, merely as an “advertising dodge” to bring him still more into notice, and give the public something to talk about.” – P.T. Barnum, Humbugs of the World

  “You know, there’s a trend here.”

  13. (Dave)

  “Life’s not been treating me well recently,” Dave said, explaining why he had to lie down and rest his aching head.

  “In your shoes, I would have already cratered and done something stupid,” Steve said. He strolled into the kitchen, snagged a bag of chips from the counter, and strolled back. “I mean, gimmie a break. You’ve been tossed from the company you founded, your job-related chronic illness from cadmium poisoning is causing you severe problems, and Tiff’s giving you such wonderful support she now thinks you’re Peter Pan. That’s a hell of a lot to handle at once. You thinking of moving out on the B?”

  Steve didn’t like women socially, either, unlike Marty, who exuded ‘safe’ and who had more women friends than everyone else Dave knew, combined. Dave thought about Steve’s comment and realized Steve had a point. Dave’s life had gone totally south, more than he had ever believed possible. What a ducking fisaster!

  “The thought’s crossed my mind, but, no. We’re just going through a rough time. I’m sure we’ll patch things up. We always have before.”

  “Mr. Nice Guy, as always,” Steve said.

  “Some people who used to work at Hernandez would disagree with your assessment.”

  “Okay, you’re a hard ass bargainer and you can get into people’s faces when you need to, but you’re still a nice guy.”

  “I want the full story,” Marty said.

  “I didn’t come over to vent, just to visit,” Dave said.

  “Vent away,” Marty said.

  Dave sighed, and vented. At length.

  “…so, without me realizing, she’s become the Princess of Darkness,” Dave said, eyeing ceiling. “She’s more machine than woman these days…”

  Steve tried to look sympathetic, but he couldn’t keep a ‘this is what you get for marrying a woman’ look off his face. Marty did a much better job of appearing sympathetic. “Okay, I understand. You’re feeling betrayed. Come on, continue talking. I’ve done enough counseling to know the benefits of expressing your feelings.”

  Dave didn’t know Marty had done any counseling, but didn’t doubt it. Marty’s chaotic life had led him through all sorts of strange places. Inside sales for a company selling only to shoe repair companies had been the most obscure job Dave knew about. “What’s to say? It’s a disaster,” Dave said.

  Marty didn’t accept his explanation, but he didn’t say so. Instead, he said: “So tell me…how’d you and Tiff get together, anyway?” Marty hadn’t been around in those days, only circling into Dave’s orbit five years ago, after he and Steve had partnered up.

  Steve laughed. “You won’t believe it,” he said. “I was there. Well, not physically there, but Dave and I were already doing amateur chamber music. I heard about it firsthand.”

  “So do you want to tell the story?” Dave said. Steve opened his eyes, mock frightened, and shook his head ‘no’. Dave smiled. “I’d broken off an affair the previous night, with… what was her name, anyway?”

  “Donna. The geologist. Worked in a different department at Clochard,” Steve said, deadpan. Dave had worked at Clochard after getting his PhD from Mines; when he left Clochard he had hooked up with Pete Dias and started their consulting firm.

  “Oh, right. It hadn’t been much of an affair; I broke it off before it got too serious,” Dave said. He had attended a drunken industry party with her and had woken up the next morning alone in a hotel bed, and found Donna asleep, curled up on the floor in the other room. That had set off alarm bells in his head, not about infidelity but about the strength of Donna’s commitment to him. Not the first alarm bells, either. He had decided Donna had been lying to him about being serious. “Then I ran into Tiff. Literally.”

  Steve laughed softly. He tossed a potato chip into the air and caught it in his mouth.

  “This sounds interesting,” Marty said, pointedly ignoring Steve. “Tell me.”

  “I’d checked out early and was out walking on the Cheesman Park jogging trail, trying to straighten out my mind and walk off a hangover. I had my briefcase tied to my backpack and the damned thing had come loose, and I was trying to reattach it with my bungee cords without having to stop and take it off, and I blundered into Tiff on her morning walking commute and knocked her down. After I apologized and helped her up, we got to talking. She’d never seen anyone with a lunatic arrangement of backpack and briefcase like mine, and I was intrigued about someone who worked in an IT department and was a professional athlete.”

  “What did you have in common that attracted the two of you to each other?” Marty asked.

  “We both worked with computers,” Dave said. “We both liked ballet. We were both reasonable people who didn’t like the nasties we worked with.” He sighed, remembering the early times and the early love. “We were both, uh, smart.” Frustrated with the idiots around them might be a better way to explain how they felt, but Dave didn’t want to phrase it that way.

  “It took them forever to get into bed with each other,” Steve said. Dave nodded. He and Tiff had been wary, both burned badly in their previous relationships. “I practically had to order them into bed.”

  Dave laughed. “That’s not quite what I remember.”

  “I figured if I dropped enough hints about Dave’s hot bod around her, that would do the trick,” Steve said.

  Marty looked away. “Well… Then you both got older. You’ve been married, what, thirteen years.”

  “Not for a couple more months,” Dave said, after doing a quick mental calculation. His life with Tiff felt longer, much longer.

  “If you don’t mind an official counselor question, how’s your sex life these days?”

  “What sex life?” Dave said.

  “In the past month?” Dave didn’t twitch. “Year?”

  Dave sighed. “I’d say every other month or so.” He paused in thought. “It’s a combination of my illness and, well, Tiff’s lack of interest since Stacy’s birth.”

  “Uh, Dave? Stacy’s seven, isn’t she?” Marty said.

  Dave nodded.

  “That’s over half your marriage, Dave.”

  He nodded again.

  “What changed about then?” Marty asked. “Besides Stacy’s birth.”

  “Well, lots of things,” Dave said. “Miguel Santos bought into DPJ and we became DPMJ about then, and that’s when Hernandez became our biggest client and I dropped my other clients. That’s also when Tiff, after her pregnancy leave cost her her previous position, took a new one at Donner, which changed its name a year later to Prime Data Services, and a year later to Smith Masters.” Still the name of the rough beast she rode as it slouched toward wherever. “She hadn’t gone overboard at any of her other jobs before then.”

  “So you’re saying you have your life
and she has hers, and they no longer meet often?”

  Dave nodded.

  “You started your extensive travel then, didn’t you?” Marty tapped his fingers together, now lost in thought.

  “I’ve always traveled, but my other clients had been local to central and southern Colorado. Hernandez is all over the world, and the only client of mine that I couldn’t do all of my trips out of a car. Before then, Pete and Jose had handled the long trips.”

  “So both of your lives were consumed by work,” Marty said. “Who does the housework?”

  “Maids. Same for most of the cooking.”

  Steve sighed as he paced around his and Marty’s living room, trying and failing to remain calm. “Too much work, too much money, too little time for each other.”

  “You’re probably right,” Dave said. Looking at the events of the past half-dozen years from the outside, he picked up the whiff of failure, on his part, in his personal life.

  “Then you got sick and she lets you down,” Steve said.

  “Ignore him,” Marty said. “I’m betting your illness drew the two of you together and kept things from getting worse. Right?” Dave nodded. “Next nasty question: any infidelities?”

  “Neither Tiff nor I are that sort of people,” Dave said.

  “You’d be surprised. How many lovers did you and Tiff have before you hooked up with each other?” Marty asked. Dave turned to him and frowned. Marty elaborately shrugged. “It’s a common question…”

  Dave sighed. “Four each. Tiff and I have always had a giggle about the fact we’re each other’s lucky fifth.”

  “So few,” Steve said. “One wonders how you breeder types cope…”

  “Steve,” Marty said, tossing a pillow at his life partner. “Hush up.” He turned to Dave. “All long affairs?”

  “No, all short. Okay,” Dave said. “Short from Tiff and my perspective. Both of us expected better of ourselves and were guilty about how short our previous affairs had been. Our respective guilts were one of the reasons we were so slow about getting together.”

  “Hmm,” Marty said. “Not a very exciting romantic career, then.”

  “Au contraire. You didn’t have the pleasure of meeting one of his ex’s,” Steve said. “She was a knockout. Not at all the sort of person you’d think Dave would have ever had an affair with.”

  Another pillow from Marty thudded into Steve’s stomach. “You’re not helping, you know.” He paused. “You met one of Dave’s exes? When was this, anyway?”

  “Hell, I’d almost forgotten about that,” Dave said, lying. “Tiff’s pregnancy with Ron had slowed her down, to where she didn’t want to come with on a trip to New York to see Itzhak Perlman at the Lincoln Center, so I asked Steve to go with me. I used my connections to get us into a party to honor Perlman and ran into Elorie…”

  “Hmm. Her name you didn’t forget, did you?” Marty said.

  Dave blushed. “Uh, no. Steve didn’t like the way we were getting along with each other so he, ah, presented himself as my…”

  “You didn’t,” Marty said, turning to Steve. “That’s evil.”

  “You had to be there,” Steve said. “Young Dave, all brilliant, successful and still incredibly good looking…”

  “Hey!” Dave said. He looked down at the offending potbelly and glowered. He had always been good looking until middle age set in and his illness made him nearly sedentary.

  “…and still with a full head of hair; and he and this stunning Jewish glamour puss run into each other and fall totally into each other’s eyes…”

  “She’s not Jewish,” Dave said. “She just looks that way. We didn’t fall into each other’s eyes. We both know violins and we’re both Perlman fans. We were just sharing the excitement of the party.” She had been stunning, though. They had hit it off…

  “Uh huh,” Steve said. “I had to do something to defend Tiff’s honor. Wrapping my arm around Dave’s neck, and hinting broadly he and I were lovers, did the trick right well.”

  It had; it also stuck in Dave’s memory as one of the top ten most humiliating experiences of his life. Actually, the humiliating part came afterwards as he tried to apologize for Steve’s behavior while haltingly explaining his recent marriage. He hadn’t danced the blithering blunderbuss so badly since he left High School.

  Marty cleared his throat, loudly. “Anyway. My official recommendation is that you and Tiff need to find something new to share.”

  “I’ve sort of figured that out myself,” Dave said. “Not that my health or Tiff’s schedule leaves us with many options.”

  Marty snorted. “So, next nosy counseling question…are you familiar with our needle exchange program?”

  “Huh?” Dave said. He paused and replayed Marty’s last nonsense sentence in his head. “Wait a second. What sort of counselor were you, anyway?”

  “Drug dependency, not marriage,” Marty said, with a shrug. Dave tossed a pillow at him and lay back down. “They’re both the same sort of thing, you know.”

  14. (Atlanta)

  They landed in Akron and found the God of the same name ensconced in a strip center storefront, directing some of her people on its set-up. She turned and looked at Atlanta and Dana as they landed.

  “Well,” Akron said. “You fly faster than I thought possible; I hadn’t expected you for hours. Why don’t we fly to my house, where it’s more comfortable?”

  They flew with Akron, this time slowly and across town. Akron lived in a mildly oversized tract house in a distant Akron suburb. “I got it after my divorce,” Akron said, after they landed. “The kids are at school.”

  “You have children?” Dana said, and put her hand over her face. “I’m sorry, Akron. I believe your children are in grave danger.”

  “From what?”

  “From some of the other 99 Gods,” Atlanta said.

  Akron raised her eyebrows. She dressed all business-like, in ordinary black slacks and gray jacket. Her muted divinity didn’t conflict in the slightest with her short and thin domesticity. “Such as, say, Atlanta?”

  Atlanta sighed. No, she couldn’t keep her doings secret from the other Gods. “Not unless your children are murderous thugs,” she said.

  Akron shook her head in disbelief. “So, why’d you want to talk to me?” She sat them down in her living room and offered them coke and snacks. Atlanta dodged a half dozen Matchbox cars, complete with a half-assembled race track, and a Polly Pocket Playhouse, to find a seat in a plush chair by the window.

  Atlanta went through the presentation, the whole list of problems: the activities of the Seven Suits, the problem of worshippers and whether to trust mortals, and the possible plots of the Angelic Host. Afterwards, Akron drummed her fingers on the table beside her. “I’m arranging for worshippers, but I understand fully what you’re talking about with the danger. Only I’d seen it as ‘this far, but no farther’. I don’t want anyone confusing me with Yahweh.” Oh, right, Akron was Jewish, Atlanta remembered. “On the other hand I do want those worshippers. We need a better word, because what I want is what you termed celebrity worship. The cable time slot’s already booked.”

  “Huh?” Atlanta said. Dana giggled and Atlanta shot her a dirty look.

  “You know, to spread the word. Sell the little charms and potions I’m making. Teach people how to get along better. Mass media.”

  “You’re going to sell things?” Atlanta said.

  Akron nodded. “If you just create hundred dollar bills, you’ll mess up the economy and cause runaway inflation. If you give things away, it’s wrong, and messes up our economic system the same way. Most of the money coming in, above the overhead of my operation, I’m donating to charity. Until I need the cash for something real, that is.”

  Another giggle from Dana. “I see,” Atlanta said, glowering at the similarity of Akron’s analysis and Dana’s. “Eventually, some unscrupulous God is going to come
by, kidnap your children, and trade an Integrity hit for the power gain of having a God as a flunky. You need to take precautions.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Akron’s face darkened, as did the sky outside her house.

  Atlanta shook her head. “I’d never do such a thing. I live by my Integrity. That’s the reason why I’m here warning you.”

  “So, what, you’re the goddess of evil with a heart of gold?” Akron said.

  “I’m not evil,” Atlanta said, tired of the tedious judgments everyone wanted to make. “I’m effective.”

  “I can smell the blood from here.”

  “You think you can defend yourself?”

  “From other Gods?” Dana said.

  Thunder rumbled outside. Akron didn’t answer.

  Atlanta sighed. No, she wouldn’t want to be the one who threatened Akron’s children. “Going on to other topics, Akron…have you noticed any problems with being a God?”

  Akron relaxed. “Yes. I’m frankly tired of Gods stopping by to try and convert me to their cause. I don’t want your causes or your political problems, and I especially don’t want to get involved with whatever game you’ve got going with the Suits. I just want to stay here by myself and do my own thing.” She wiggled her fingers and four plates of quartered sandwiches, chips, salsa and soft drinks wafted their way out of her kitchen and over to the coffee table.

  “What other Gods stopped by?” Dana said.

  Akron cleared her throat. “Dubuque and Lawyer.”

  “So we’ve got one of the Practical Gods sticking his nose in?” Atlanta said. “I know Dubuque’s out to save the world from itself, the same as Portland. What’s Lawyer’s game?”

  “He thinks we need a new political system. Lunatic,” Akron said.

  “He’s right. The one we have was designed by people using quill pens in an age where news moved at the speed of sailing ships and nearly everyone lived and worked on a farm. It’s about as relevant to our daily lives as Roman numerals.”

  “Well, leave me out,” Akron said.

  “Okay,” Atlanta said. Cable television shows? Disgusting.

  Atlanta shook Worcester’s dainty hand, still a bit surprised the older-looking God had been willing to meet with her. “Come on in,” Worcester said. “Come on in.”

  ‘In’ was a brownstone in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston. Atlanta heard sawing and pounding in the background, took a peek, and realized Worcester had a crew remodeling her flat. Expanding it, actually, if Atlanta guessed correctly. Worcester had claimed a large section of the entire building and chased out the other owners and tenants.

  “Have a seat,” Worcester said. “Would you like some tea?” She spoke like an old Bostonian. She appeared to be in her late 40s.

  Both Atlanta and Dana accepted Worcester’s offer. “So, what can I do for you today?”

  “You’re messing with our minds, aren’t you?” Dana said. And heeeere we go again, Atlanta thought. Perhaps miraculous duct tape would work…

  “Enforced civility my dear, one of the few luxuries in the area I allow myself.”

  Atlanta didn’t really want to know. Visiting other Territorials had turned out to be an extended lesson in humility. She foresaw hours of work ahead of her, just to catch up with the other Gods. “What I’m here to talk about are the activities of the Seven Suits, the problem of worshippers, and several other more minor issues,” Atlanta said, and gave the rest of her presentation.

  “Well,” Worcester said, after Atlanta finished. She sipped her tea, birdlike. “I can’t say much about your problems. I haven’t had any, and I’m not looking to start them.” She segued into local Boston politics for quite a few minutes. “I must say, I have another appointment due any minute now.” She stood. “It’s been nice meeting the both of you.”

  And they were gone.

  In the air, after Worcester had seen them off, Dana shook her head. “Well, that was a waste.”

  “Not so,” Atlanta said. “We learned she’s a mind manipulator, she doesn’t have a visible organization, she doesn’t understand how to defend herself as a God beyond her mind games, and she’s cautious and smart.”

  “Uh, Atlanta?”

  “Yes, Dana?”

  “You know, everyone’s cautious around you.”

  “Right. They’re just all suffering from FTA.”

  “Huh?”

  “Failure to adapt.”

  They dropped like a bomb toward Montreal – the city – and toward whatever place Montreal the God lived. Atlanta’s thoughts still fixated on Miami, though part of her stayed attentive to her senses, overwhelmed in the wonder of being a God yet again. She had always liked to fly, and being a God had only made the flying better.

  According to the rumor blogs she didn’t wholly trust, Miami had shut down his territory’s drug trade the same way she had gone after the career criminals in her territory. Like her, he did so without explicit publicity, but he had mentioned his actions to an inquisitive reporter a few days after she and Dana visited him. He had a different game going than she did. A dangerous game Atlanta didn’t like one bit.

  The hackles on Atlanta’s neck rose, alerting her to pay attention. She scanned around her with one of her mental tracks and found the source of her subconscious distress, a yacht on the St. Laurence River. A recent corpse. A man actively being tortured. The stench of vile evil.

  Something she couldn’t ignore.

  “Change of plans,” she said to Dana. She yawed right, pitched down and accelerated toward the boat. Dana’s face turned green.

  A hundred feet above the boat, well into some high-G deceleration, a young woman’s voice boomed in Atlanta’s head.

  The voice had to be Montreal.

  Atlanta had never contemplated such a trick before. she attempted to send back, by matching the willpower associated with the mental message.

  It worked.

  Tedious.

  From the tone of Montreal’s mental voice, Atlanta had already exasperated the God. They hadn’t even met yet.

  Very tedious.

  “Remember your shields,” Atlanta said to Dana. Dana nodded and put up the bullet-proof shields Atlanta had insisted she learn. “Kill them if they attack, knock out the ones who don’t.”

  “I’m not killing anybody,” Dana said, with a hiss. “Remember?”

  Atlanta sighed. As they landed, she dropped their invisibility. Without thinking the nearest men on the boat opened up at them with their AKs. Atlanta strode forward and shredded them both with her knife, spraying their insides across several yards of deck. Dana didn’t let the other men approach. Instead, she stunned everyone on the yacht before Atlanta could exact any more punishment, with a range weapon she didn’t know Dana had.

  She had to get herself one of those! Dammit, it pissed her off for one of her own to show her up so trivially.

  After stunning everyone, Dana ran off toward the torture victim. Peeved, Atlanta scanned around until she found the yacht’s captain. She woke him up and made him talk.

  “They’re Kazaks on business,” the captain said. “I’m not the owner of the June Fee” the name of the boat “I was just hired to operate it.” He feared the Kazaks. Atlanta dropped him back unconscious.

  She stalked down into the yacht’s interior and found Dana healing the torture victim. The leader of the Kazaks lay on the floor, unconscious, at Dana’s feet. Atlanta took a moment to make sure the torture victim didn’t deserve the torture, and found he didn’t. She dragged the leader of the thugs up to the deck and forced him conscious.

  “Who’s your boss?” Atlanta said. “Where is he?”

  She got a name and a location, a city by the name of Karaganda.

  The thug had tortured and murdered before, a without-a-doubt career killer. She tossed him, impaling him on the yacht’s radar dish, where he slowly died, twitching, moaning and leaking various foul body fluids. S
he then searched until she found a junior thug in the galley she wouldn’t have to kill. She brought him up. “Tell your boss his men died from the justice of the God Atlanta. You will never set foot on North America again, nor your compatriots, and you will forget the mining executive you tortured ever existed.”

  Montreal sent, distaste in her mental voice.

  Atlanta waited until Dana finished healing the torture victim, her ire passing, replaced by the usual admiration for her chief of staff.

  Montreal’s rowhouse, in the middle of a short block of similar upscale rowhouses of hers, stank of sex. Her people, of which there were many, scattered like leaves before a wind as Atlanta searched in vain for a clean place to sit.

  “You’re a virgin,” Montreal said to Dana, with a smile. Montreal spoke with a gruff Quebecker French accent and looked all of nineteen. She was a well-rounded young woman, approaching plump, with dirty blonde hair worn to just above her shoulders. She exuded motherly comfort. “That I can fix.”

  “I’m not interest…” Dana’s voice tailed off as Montreal stroked her shoulders. “Please. Don’t.” Montreal came up behind Dana and gathered Dana in her arms.

  “You want the pleasure,” Montreal said. “You hunger for it. You even know this. But the lack of the pleasure is twisting you.”

  Dana’s eyes flickered to Atlanta. “Please? Help?”

  Atlanta smiled and didn’t intervene in Montreal’s payback of sorts for what Atlanta had done to the thugs. Fair. Atlanta didn’t see any problem with Montreal’s response. The God had a point. Dana could use some good sex.

  “You prefer men. I can be a man,” Montreal said, her voice now a man’s voice. Amused, Atlanta swept some well-used sexual paraphernalia off a kitchen chair and sat down. She hadn’t found any place cleaner. The vibes of Montreal’s lair hummed with scarcely hidden nervous pleasure, tempting her into indulgences she didn’t think proper for a God.

  Atlanta pushed a baggie of pot and two empty wine bottles from in front of her with her feet, and listened with half an ear as Montreal harassed Dana. Montreal’s visible age matched her real age, but classifying Montreal as a softie would be a serious mistake. She had shields and protections around her as good as Portland’s. She had a real mind in there as well.

  A door slammed with a flare of power. Atlanta looked up and noticed Dana had fled. Montreal shrugged and put up a form of barrier Atlanta had never seen before on the room, preventing entry and cutting off Atlanta’s godly senses. Dana’s too, now that she had fled. “She’s cute,” Montreal said, a voice that often came with lip-licking. “Repressed but cute.” Montreal carefully looked Atlanta over. “You could use some, too.”

  “I’m no fucking virgin.”

  “You haven’t had any, though, since d’Apotheosis.”

  “Lack of time,” Atlanta said. “Nor am I sure if it would be fair if I seduced a mortal lover.”

  “You’re into Integrity, then?” Montreal said. “So that’s how you’re balancing your evil.”

  “I’m not evil, dammit.”

  “Nobody ever thinks they’re evil. That’s for others to judge.”

  Atlanta tapped her foot on the floor. “Fine. Whatever. I’m here to warn you of some potential problems and find out if you’ve had any problems as a God.” She gave her presentation.

  Montreal sat down in the chair beside Atlanta, conspiratorially close. Her close presence comforted Atlanta. “You didn’t have to warn me of this,” Montreal said. “Why are you doing so?”

  “I’m looking for allies. Can’t you sense it? There’s trouble coming,” Atlanta said. “The Seven Suits are already a big problem and Miami is on the way to becoming a worshipper addict. We Territorials need to stick together, or we’re going to get run over and marginalized.”

  Montreal shrugged. “You’re taking this all too seriously.”

  “How else should I take it?”

  “You’re a hard case,” Montreal said, and shook her head. “Loosen up. We may be immortal, if you can believe the Angelic Host, but they made damned sure we knew we weren’t invulnerable. We can be killed, for instance by sticking our noses into the business of the other powers-that-be, some of whom have supernatural powers as potent as ours. However, for now, Atlanta, you’re alive. Enjoy yourself some. Give pleasure to others. What greater good could there be?”

  “How about keeping the bad guys and the misguided fools from wrecking everything?” Atlanta said. “Or keeping our own illusions and ignorance from destroying ourselves? What are you going to do about your worshippers?”

  Montreal shrugged and grabbed the baggie of pot from the floor by Atlanta’s feet. “The Suits? Well, the economy had better run itself, because I don’t know squat about economics.” This appeared to be universal among the Territorial Gods, which Atlanta suspected was an intentional choice of the Host. “I’m not sure I would be any help, even if I wanted. On the subject of worship, well, there aren’t many who worship me as a Goddess. I think I’ll hunt them down and get so intimate with them they’ll think of me as a person. The rest? Well, hell, you said celebrity worship wasn’t a problem. I’ll let them be.”

  Atlanta inhaled deeply the brothel smells and thought. “Stopping worshippers by getting intimate with them? That’s a new idea, and I think it’ll work.” Dana came to mind; she had become so intimate with the affairs of the Gods that she didn’t have an ounce of worship left in her. Atlanta studied Montreal closely, despite appearances not a dumb bimbo, not even close. Montreal studied back.

  “Our stone cold killer’s a party girl, isn’t she,” Montreal said as she rolled the loose pot into a cigarette paper.

  “I know how to let loose.” She had enjoyed all aspects of Marine life. “Or at least I used to.”

  “Being a God’s made you a loner against your will.”

  Atlanta nodded.

  “Perhaps I’ll arrange a party soon, for all the local Gods. Local to North America,” Montreal said, with a laugh. “Though it won’t be a replacement for your old Marine buddies. Joint?”

  Atlanta shook her head. “No, it won’t.” She stood and paced. Montreal saw through her too easily. “It would be better than mortals, though.”

  “You need to work on that,” Montreal said. “Consider Dana. Consider a world with a lot of Danas in it.” She waved the joint in a circle. “Or, if you want to think about something else insane, think of a world where a substantial number of mortals possess abilities and natures similar to us. That’s what a couple of the Practical Gods think, by the way.”

  “Go on,” Atlanta said, intrigued about the so-far-invisible-to-her Practical Gods.

  She had picked up absolutely nothing about Montreal that Montreal hadn’t shown her, and Montreal hadn’t shown her anything about Montreal’s real Mission. Which made Montreal more powerful than Atlanta. The thought had always gnawed at the back of Atlanta’s mind that she would find another of the Gods who had grown past her. It bothered her, a little, that the first God she found more powerful than her turned out to be a damned sex goddess.

  “It was Singularity and Inventor. Inventor’s a typical pencil-necked geek, but Singularity’s one of these teeth-gnashing types who’s good at everything. Skier. Scholar. Sculptor. Musician. Good in bed, too.”

  Atlanta couldn’t resist Montreal’s chatter. “So, is God-God sex any better than normal sex?” She didn’t remember Inventor from the Apotheosis, but she did remember Singularity, not the sort of person you ever forgot. She had pegged him as a Japanese movie star. She didn’t understand his name or what it had to do with practicalities.

  Montreal didn’t answer, but she did purse her lips and roll her eyes skyward. “They’re of the opinion that it’s inevitable that with us as examples, humanity will over time join us as Gods, unless you get the Gods doing the dictatorship-of-the-Gods thing and repressing the growth of technology.”

  “Which si
de are you on?”

  “You first.” Montreal dragged slowly on the joint.

  Montreal had introduced the subject. This demand lay within Montreal’s rights. “The latter, of course. However, I must admit my dictatorship-of-the-Gods idea is looking less appealing to me with each God I meet,” Atlanta said. “Present company excluded.”

  “Why thank you,” Montreal said. “I think I’ve decided Singularity and Inventor are on my side. I hope you’ll join me as well.”

  “So, did you enjoy yourself?” Dana said, after they were out of Montreal and back in the air. Dana intimated sex.

  “No,” Atlanta said, not correcting Dana. She couldn’t figure out Montreal’s game. Montreal had implied she leaned pro-mortal, but no mortals had been present when they talked. “Do me a favor and play with the willpower. Distract me. I need to think.”

  “Sure,” Dana said, relaxing into the game she played with the willpower, letting the willpower loose one strand at a time, leafing through all the possibilities and admiring the beauty. Atlanta lost herself in wonder, cataloging everything Dana dreamt up, especially any tricks usable as weaponry, half wondering why they could do so much with the willpower they didn’t have any uses for.

  She didn’t say another word on their way back home. Three Gods was enough for one day. Not one showed the slightest interest in the problem of the Seven Suits, or even Miami’s worshipper addiction. One mental track stayed pissed, while several others worked on a better presentation.

  Something wasn’t right, here, and Atlanta couldn’t figure out what.

  15. (Dave)

  “Here we go,” Steve said, hunched over his old iPad. Dave licked his chapped lips and tried to relax his aching back. He had just returned from a fruitless two day jaunt to Los Angeles, and airplane air and the seats had done their thing to him again. Everyone he talked to in private while on his trip had been worried about the economy, which meant ‘the effects of the 99 Gods’, but in public, sweetness and light about the 99 still prevailed. Tiff? He couldn’t talk to Tiff about anything now, not after their heart to heart talk about their finances and Tiff’s appalling job. She wanted him to grow up and likely wanted him to take a job with one of the no-conscience firms in his field. Learn to lie about toxic waste. Phooey. He wouldn’t have done so even before he had been poisoned, and now the thought of it made his skin crawl.

  “Tell me,” Dave said. He moved books from Steve and Marty’s coffee table and eased his feet up.

  Marty had fled in horror when Steve and Dave told him the evening’s plans. He didn’t want any part of any ‘investigations of the Gods’. “This is from the Seven Suits press conference on the 2nd of October.” A week ago, four days before Hernandez cratered. “They said, quote, The world is filled with too many improper corporations who pollute peoples’ minds and bodies, pollute the Earth, and whose unethical business practices sour everyone’s view of the business world, unquote. They go on to say that despite their beliefs, they pledged to be extra cautious when they removed these infectious corporations from the corporate biosphere. In their words.”

  “So we’ve got a bunch of radical lefty Gods taking down corporate baddies?” Dave asked. “Send me the link.”

  Steve did. Dave started in on the Seven Suits, hunched over his own tablet computer, which sat beside him on the couch. Outside Steve’s apartment, a vehicle with a straight pipe muffler roared by, playing wall-shaking old-style rap.

  “This is interesting,” Dave said, minutes of data hip-hopping later. “The Suits are all male, all Ideological Gods, and they recently bought the entire Trump Tower in New York City.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a bunch of radical lefties to me,” Steve said. He stood and stretched, sending Marty’s lap-cat yowling to the floor. Dave didn’t mind. He didn’t like Marty’s cat either. “Too bad. We could have used a little of that.”

  “No, what this sounds like to me is that their public comments were a smoke screen,” Dave said. He lay back down on the couch and rubbed his temples.

  “You doing okay, Dave?”

  Dave shook his head. “Give me a moment,” he whispered. The pain came and went, randomly, not stress related as far as he could tell. His doctors suspected an environmental trigger, probably in the food he ate. They had given him instructions on how to figure out the food trigger, but because of all his traveling, he hadn’t been able to come up with anything. Now, because of his work hunting for a new client, his problem would only get worse.

  “You’re a wreck, you know,” Steve said.

  “I’ve seen myself in the mirror,” Dave said. He avoided such things as best he could. He didn’t like how his compromised immune system slowed his healing. Or how the doctors thought both the severity of his headaches and his ‘general overall health’ were anomalous, given the toxic waste floating around his body. The doctors thought he should be even worse off.

  “I’ll just have to take your lying ass word for it, then,” Steve said. He tapped on his screen. “Here’s another. The God who goes by the name Science says that, um, corporate activities which impact the environment in a non-local fashion should be required to go through a peer review before the corporations are allowed to act in such a fashion; the peer review to be done by relevant academics and PhD level government bureaucrats.”

  “Now that would slow things down,” Dave said. “I’m not sure this is related. I think it’s the Suits.”

  “Don’t be so hasty,” Steve said.

  “Hasty? It’s my life that’s gone down the toilet,” Dave said. “It’s the Suits. I’m sure they did the dirty deed.”

  Steve tut-tutted. “This doesn’t sound like the always-optimistic Dave I know.”

  “Well, that’s too bad,” Dave said. “So what does it sound like? Like I’ve gone around the bend, or my logic’s gone spotty?” Frustrating. His whole life had turned utterly frustrating. Nor could he ditch the little voice in his mind reminding him about the fact he and Tiff forgot to include car maintenance in their budget. His SUV would need its 30 K checkup in a few months.

  “You’re worried about the effects of the cadmium on your mind again, aren’t you?” Steve asked.

  “Uh huh,” Dave said, seething. “I haven’t been able to properly focus my mind ever since this started. What if I’m finally losing it? Perhaps I should just let myself go crazy. Chuck everything. Throw my life into meaningless chaos. Lie about looking for clients and go sightseeing, for instance. Divorce Tiff and really stick it to her. Go join the panhandlers and live on the street.”

  “Calm down, calm down,” Steve said. “Things are bad, but not that bad. Not yet.”

  Dave rubbed his temples again and sighed. “Calm’s a good thing? Since when?”

  “You’re acting goofy.”

  “Hell,” Dave said. “I’ve always been more than a little goofy, all my life, always marching to the different drummer. My devotion to music and the arts. My crazy dreams as a kid when I thought I was someone else. The Sasquatch sentences. My choice of friends.” Steve sighed. “Only…” He paused, hesitant. “Only the genius professional soccer player I married has turned into a Wicked Witch of the West workaholic and it’s thrown me off my feed.”

  “Sasquatch sentences?” Steve said. “What are those?”

  Dave didn’t like to explain himself, or open himself up to others, but things just kept blurting out. “For instance, when you say ‘I’m gay but I’m not happy’, I restate what you say as ‘I’m happy but I’m not gay’ or ‘I’m gray but I’m not rappy’.”

  “Oh, those,” Steve said. “I’m not surprised you’ve named the damned things, but you don’t say them often. Not enough for me to consider you goofy.” True. Most people thought him obscenely dull.

  “I don’t say them often out loud.”

  Steve tapped screen while Dave concentrated on memories of spa massages in Hawaii. “Got another one f
or you, Dave,” Steve said, a couple minutes later. “Four of the other public Ideological Gods hanging around the United States – Change, Freedom, Honor and Progress – got together down in Berkley last Monday. After their meeting they held an impromptu news conference, attended only by science writers. Those four don’t appear to understand publicity at all, which is why this little confab didn’t make the cable news or the normal news websites. Listen to this quote, Dave: ‘In time, extraction industries will be moved into space, all products will be screened for improper biomimetic chemicals, such as hormone mimics, and the Earth returned to its pre-industrial splendor’. They’re another group who could have done in Hernandez.” Steve paused. “The more I learn about the 99 Gods, the less I like. They’re working as disparate groups with divergent agendas, and they’re going to make a hash of everything, despite how wonderful their intentions sound. I’ll bet those four did in Hernandez. That’s the sort of thing I’d expect from such an unworldly group of Gods.”

  “It’s the Suits,” Dave said.

  Steve sighed, long and overblown. He slapped shut his tablet cover in disgust. “You keep saying that, but how do you know?”

  “The Suits don’t dress in goofy costumes, they dress in business suits,” Dave said. “To me, this means they’re already acting in the real world, and in a big way. Add in their purchase of the Trump Tower and I think they’ve got a plan in action to become mind-boggling huge. I wonder how much of the global stock market slide can be attributed to their activities?”

  Steve offered a bowl of popcorn to Dave, but Dave shook his head. His potbelly had grown large enough already. Steve marched the popcorn bowl back into the kitchen. “Okay, I’ll give you they dress like nutjobs.” Scientist walked around in a lab coat, Change dressed like the ultimate tourist, Freedom made like John Wayne, Honor wore a Marine Corp sergeant’s uniform and Progress dressed like a cyberpunk heroine. “Even so, they can still be the ones who nuked Hernandez,” Steve said.

  “Their costumes rob them of credibility,” Dave said. “Hernandez got taken out in a business-like fashion, an orchestrated loan-calling attack followed by the group resignation of their operating officers.” He had looked into their bankruptcy, and although secrecy still shrouded much of Hernandez’s fall, he had found out that much. “Whoever took out Hernandez was organized and tied into the world of business. If Scientist and his companions did the corporate hit job, they would have done so differently.” Dave paused and watched Steve move kitchen items from one place to another, nervous. “You know, there’s a trend here, though, Steve.”

  “They’re all Ideological Gods, aren’t they. All the suspects.”

  “Uh huh,” Dave said. “The Territorial Gods are hard-ass miracle workers, the most public of the lot, all apparently dreaming big dreams – but aside from sticking their mugs on the tops of all the headlines, they’re not doing anything big individually. On the other hand, the Ideologicals are pushing things and doing things. They’re trouble makers, not publicity hounds. I don’t have a feel for the Practical Gods, though.”

  “Few of those have even stuck their noses up to be counted,” Steve said. He walked back to sit in his recliner, flipped open his iPad and tapped screen. “Politician’s been spotted in Washington and New York, giving advice, some apparently unwanted, in private to those in power. She’s already met with the President.” Tap tap tap. “Engineer got introduced at a news conference in Japan, at Toyota, but didn’t say a thing. According to the article, he’s helping Toyota with their work on improved batteries for their EVs.” Tap tap tap. “One of them’s named Teacher. She’s mentioned in several articles from France and Germany; she’s apparently arguing that the Euros still have too many class-oriented obstacles in their higher education system and offering suggestions as to how these problems can be fixed.”

  “They’re do-gooders, then. Advisors,” Dave said. “That sounds backwards. It should be the Ideologicals giving the advice and the Practicals out doing things.”

  “So you understand the Gods, eh?” Steve said, and laughed.

  “Clearly not,” Dave said. He lay back down, trying to ease his worsening headache. It didn’t help that on the street outside an ambulance dopplered by, accompanied by the deep diesel low magnitude earthquake rumble of a fire truck. “I think I’d have to hang with them for a while to understand them, not that someone like me will ever get the chance to, given how many mortals there are and how few Gods.”