Valhalla, page 16
(‘Again here is Warfather,’ groaned the Viking to Carol’s left, putting his hands in front of his eyes. ‘Of this more with difficulty shall I endure.’)
—Because all Odin did was stroll up and down in front of the picket line holding a two-foot-square mirror, not saying a word.
‘To be departing entreat him,’ said the red-haired Viking with a catch in his voice. ‘That the day to see I should be dead, when not fighting in Valholl useless I stand here, like at a wedding—’
‘Don’t let him bug you,’ Carol whispered. ‘That’s not what you should be seeing there. You know what I see when I look in that mirror?’
‘Yes,’ the Viking replied. ‘You.’
‘Apart from me. I see a bunch of guys who’re slugging it out to the last drop of unshed blood, that’s what I see. And you know what that makes you?’
‘Wussies?’
‘Heroes,’ Carol replied firmly. ‘Real heroes. Think about it, guys. If you were fighting like Odin wants you to, would it hurt? Every time you got a leg or a hand chopped off, would it matter? Hell, no, it’s all strictly temporary, it’ll all get put right as soon as he pushes that old reset button. But this—’ She gestured towards the line. ‘Because of this, you people are really suffering. And if you don’t suffer, it ain’t proper heroism, is it?’
‘A point she is having,’ said a thin, lanky Viking. ‘But Warfather also. And Warfather,’ he went on, ‘when our demands we are presenting, most definite he is, of fighting he cheats us not a whit. That Warfather should lie, hard to credit.’
That remark produced a rumble of agreement, deep and low as Mother Earth after eating too many onions. It made Carol nervous. She knew better than anybody that Odin was telling the truth; he couldn’t give way to the Vikings’ demands because he hadn’t been cheating them to begin with. All in all, the situation was getting out of hand, and none of it looked to be getting her anywhere nearer to what she wanted. The thought of what it would be like spending the rest of forever here if the Vikings found out she’d been taking them all for a bunch of idiots wasn’t a pleasant one.
‘All right,’ she said, ‘tell you what I’ll do. I’ll go talk to Odin, one last time. Dammit, he’s got to listen to reason sometime.’
‘Why? A god he is. Reason he would not be acknowledging if in the bum it him was biting.’
Inside Odin’s office, with the door firmly shut, Carol felt a little more relaxed. At least she didn’t have to keep up the act here, and Odin was that much easier to understand than her loyal followers.
‘It’s pointless,’ he said, after he’d poured them both a glass of orange juice (she hadn’t been in the least surprised when he’d told her he was teetotal as well as a vegan). ‘You’ve made your point, it’s helped pass the time, now give it up. If you like, we’ll cook up some load of bullshit about extended fighting hours, maybe even an extra hour’s light-weapons drill between supper and lights out. That’ll get us both off the hook, and then we can get back to normal.’
Carol shook her head. ‘You know I can’t do that,’ she said. ‘And you know what it’ll take to break the strike. Let me go. It’s that simple.’
Odin smiled at her, with something that could almost have been mistaken for affection. ‘I’ll say this for you,’ he said, ‘you’ve inherited your fair share of the Kortright negotiating skills. It’s exactly what I’d expect Lin to do; never give in, bullshit to the very end, because the longer you refuse to give up, the further away the very end tends to get. There’s a whole skyful of gods with thousands of temples and millions of worshippers who’d still be stacking shelves and working in gas stations if Lin Kortright ever admitted he was beaten.’
‘Leave Dad out of this,’ Carol said firmly. ‘I know you’ve got some kind of crazy grudge against him, but that’s nothing to do with me. Hell, if you didn’t want the job you should never have taken it.’
‘Really? Disobey my agent when he gave me a direct suggestion? Tell me, Ms Kortright, how would you define the term “professional suicide”? The core subject at kamikaze training college?’
Carol shrugged. ‘But you’re a god,’ she said. ‘What does it matter to you, anyway? In fact,’ she added, wrinkling her nose, ‘that’s a question I’ve been wanting to ask one of you people ever since I was a little kid. If you’re all gods, what do you need an agent for anyhow?’
Odin sat perfectly still. ‘I don’t quite follow, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Nobody just becomes a god, you know; just like you can’t go marching on to the main lot at Paramount and announce that you’ve decided to star in a fifty-million-dollar movie. There’s a limited number of openings for gods, so we apply, we audition, we get shortlisted, we sit by the phone for days on end not daring to move—’
‘Why?’ Carol interrupted. ‘If you’re omniscient, you’d know whether you’d gotten the job or not without having to wait for the phone to ring. And you have to be omniscient, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to be a god. Dammit, if you’ve got what it takes to be a god, you can make them give you the job just by nodding your head or whatever it is you do when you’re making magic; omnipotent, isn’t that what they call it? If a guy says to you, “Thanks, we’ll let you know”, and next moment there’s this hole in the floor where the guy used to be and a strong smell of sulphur, somehow I don’t see how you’d have any trouble finding work.’
Odin rubbed his knuckles with the palm of his other hand, as if he had an itch or eczema or something. ‘Poor Lin,’ he said. ‘He always hoped that one day you’d follow him into the business, you know. Really set his heart on it, he did. Ode, he’d say to me, one of these days that little girl of mine’ll be representing every major deity this side of Andromeda. But if that’s all you know about how these things work, all I can say is, he had a lucky escape.’
Carol carried on staring at him. ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ she said. ‘Why do gods need agents? And how come, if Dad gets ten per cent of everything you make, how come he isn’t the biggest god of them all? I mean, ten per cent of every god in the world: that’s a lot of ambrosia. And there’s Dad, still living in a twelfth-storey apartment in Cleveland and driving a three-year-old Toyota. Doesn’t add up, does it?’
Odin pursed his lips. ‘Maybe he just likes Cleveland,’ he said.
‘Really?’ Carol shook her head. ‘Get real, will you? Cleveland only exists because Hell has a waiting list. Quit stalling; you’re a god, you have to know the answer to this.’
Odin sighed, and massaged his temples with the tips of his fingers. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘You want to know, I’ll tell you. Lin Kortright gets ten per cent of everything his clients get. What do gods get? Money?’
Carol thought for a moment. ‘I guess not,’ she replied. ‘I mean, there’s a hell of a lot of money floats around wherever there’s a religion, but I never heard where the god saw any of it. Well, of course not,’ she added. ‘What would a god need money for?’
‘What indeed?’ Odin said, reaching in his pocket and producing a battered old pipe. Carol noticed that the bowl was attached to the stem with insulating tape. ‘No, what gods get is worship. Belief. Faith. In other words, credit. And every last bit of credit we get, Lin gets ten per cent of.’
Carol bit her lip. ‘When you say credit—’
‘Belief.’ Odin smiled. ‘People believe in us. We believe in Lin Kortright; precisely one-tenth as firmly as all our worshippers believe in us. Now that’s an awful lot of faith. You can’t buy stuff with it, though. Not a hell of a lot you can do with it. What your father lives on isn’t what he gets from us; it’s the income from Kortright Civil Engineering Inc, the world leader in ecologically friendly landscape seismology.’
‘What?’
‘He has a company that moves mountains,’ Odin explained. ‘Using faith. Does a nice clean job, but it’s slow and not all that precise, either, which is why most people who have mountains they want shifting tend to go for JCBs and dynamite; just as well, because even if he had queues a mile long outside his office door he’d only be able to do one or two jobs a year. I’m not sure of the exact figures, but it’s something like five hundred kilocongregations to move one small tussock three inches to the right. It’s a living, but that’s all you can say for it. Enough to pay his business expenses and the rent on a dog kennel in the sky in the armpit of the State of Ohio, with just enough left over for the payments on the car and pizza once a month as a special treat. Oh, in the old days it was different; back a thousand years or so, he was raking in all the blood and lightly charred human entrails he could use, just from his South American clients. All it took was a little imagination and a touch of flair to see the possibilities for a fast-food chain in the Trobriand Islands—’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Cannibals,’ Odin replied. ‘Well, business is business, and if the guys are getting killed anyway, where’s the big deal? All that’s gone now, though; it’s just faith and a bit of incense smoke now and again.’
Carol nodded. ‘Figures,’ she said. ‘I always wondered where the smell in the bathroom came from. I assumed it was the drains.’ She frowned. ‘Trobriand-fried people, though; even by Dad’s standards, that’s gross.’
‘It was also long before you were born,’ Odin pointed out. ‘Everything was different then. Have you any idea how old your father is?’
‘No,’ Carol admitted. ‘Late fifties, I always thought.’
‘You’re not far off,’ Odin said, ‘in millions. And you know what keeps him alive?’
‘Don’t tell me. Faith.’
‘That’s right. All those gods out there needing him to be there for them, getting old and dying just isn’t an option. You think it’s bad that he never takes a holiday; the poor man can’t even afford the time to die.’
For some reason, Carol thought Valhalla. ‘Really?’ she said.
‘Of course. Every day, with every deal he makes, he gets that old blast of faith hitting him smack in the face and he’s reborn, all his aches and pains and grey hairs leached out of him, ready to keep on doing his best for the people who’re relying on him. And that,’ Odin added, ‘answers your first question, doesn’t it?’
‘Excuse me? I’m sorry,’ Carol went on, ‘but all this stuff you’re telling me, I feel like I’m drowning in chicken soup. There’s too much of it and I can’t digest it fast enough. Not to mention,’ she added, ‘the nasty taste it leaves in your mouth.’
‘You don’t like chicken soup, obviously.’
‘How exactly does what you just told me answer my question? ’
Odin leaned back in his chair and lit his pipe. ‘Well now,’ he said, ‘you asked me what a god needs an agent for. And I’m saying the answer is pretty obvious. It’s the same reason people need gods; because everybody, no matter who they are, needs someone to believe in.’
Carol thought about that for quite some time. ‘I didn’t see that one coming,’ she said eventually. ‘Then again, I guess I’ve never ever really thought about what Dad does. Guess I’ve never really, you know, thought about Dad at all. Well,’ she added defensively, ‘you don’t, do you? It’s like how you can live in a house for twenty years and never really think about the roof. Fathers are just, like, there; unless your parents split up or something, and your dad’s a strange man who turns up twice a month to take you to the zoo and buy you a pizza. Funny, really; all I ever wanted to be was as unlike him as possible, and now you’re telling me that he’s the one thing even a god can have faith in. Except you, I guess,’ she added. ‘Because you hate him, don’t you?’
‘Oh yes.’ Odin nodded emphatically. ‘I believe in him all right. I have absolute and unquestioning faith in your father, because he was the one who made me take this fucking job. The only difference,’ he went on, scowling, ‘is that I believe in Lin Kortright in his aspect as a complete arsehole.’
Carol looked up at him sharply. ‘You watch what you’re saying,’ she said. ‘That happens to be my father you’re talking about.’
Odin raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought you just said you hated him too.’
‘I said no such thing.’
‘Pardon me.’ Odin shook his head. ‘You just said that your dearest wish was to be nothing like him.’
‘That’s different.’ Carol clenched her hands and let them relax again. ‘It’s like I assumed that I ought to be different, because—well, he was always so goddamn grown-up, you know? Always coming home late and tired out, in a bad mood, never had any time for Mom and me. He never seemed interested in us, so I guess I decided not to be interested in him or any of the stuff he did. And he never talked about his work anyhow. Hell, until I was sixteen I thought he did sports personalities, not gods. It was only when I asked him if he could get me Carl Lewis’s autograph and he said no, but he could get me a signed photograph of Quetzalcoatl if that was any use; and I said, “Who’s Quetzalcoatl?” and he said, “Who’s Carl Lewis?”’
Odin took his pipe out of his mouth and nodded. ‘Lack of communication. Actually, I remember when he was trying to put together that Quetzalcoatl comeback tour—sorry, you were pouring your heart out, do go on.’
Carol glared at him. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘You hate him. Why should you care?’
‘Oh, I care,’ Odin replied. ‘And I know that he cares more about you than anything else in the world, and you’ve caused him more unhappiness than anything else, come to that. Which is why,’ he added sadly, getting to his feet and opening the door, ‘you’re here.’
Carol stared at him. ‘You mean you had me killed just to get at Dad?’
‘In a sense,’ Odin said. ‘I could confuse the issue by talking about a lot of things like allegory and poetic justice, but basically I chose you, as opposed to a whole lot of other stupid kids who should know better than to fritter their lives away in idiotic gestures but do it anyway, because you’re Lin’s daughter. ’
‘To hurt him.’
Odin nodded. ‘Partly. But mostly to bring him here.’
‘In your dreams,’ Carol sneered, trying to ignore the stab of panic Odin’s revelations had caused. ‘He’s way too smart to be caught like that.’
‘Really? I imagine he’ll be thoroughly delighted to hear you think so highly of him. Well, you’ll be able to tell him yourself, of course; he’ll be along in a day or two, once he’s gone through immigration and general processing.’
‘You mean—’
‘Sorry, didn’t I mention it? Me and my teabag memory. No, your father came in a while ago, been here some time, in fact. He actually came strolling in of his own free will, would you believe? Terrific gesture. Dramatic as two short planks.’
It took Carol a while to find any words at all. ‘You really must hate us a whole bunch,’ she said.
‘Hate you?’ Odin looked hurt and offended. ‘I don’t hate you, Carol,’ he said. ‘How could I? I’ve known you ever since you were born, watched you growing up and everything. You know what? This is the very same pair of trousers I’m wearing now that you puked up all over when you were twenty-one months old. That’s an awful lot of history we share, Carol, and in all those years you’ve never done a single thing that’s upset me or even annoyed me a little bit.’ He breathed out through his nose, like a tired horse. ‘And you see these shoes? They’re the ones I bought specially for your sixth birthday party, the one where you had all your friends from school round and your dad hired a conjuror. At least, he told you it was a conjuror; what you actually got was the genuine article. How many kids do you know who had a god doing real magic at their sixth-birthday parties? Not that you’d have appreciated it even if you had known all those years ago; you’d have cried your eyes out because you wanted a proper human magician, same as all the other kids had at their parties.’
‘I remember you now,’ Carol said suddenly. ‘You pulled a white rabbit out of my ear. And I was in floods of tears for a week because I really wanted a rabbit and Dad wouldn’t let me keep it.’
‘Ah,’ Odin said. ‘Well, we can do something about that.’ He reached across and pulled a huge, fat white rabbit out of Carol’s ear, then dropped it into her arms. It bit the top joint of her little finger. ‘His name’s Deathgrip,’ he added. ‘Docile enough for a wild rabbit but for heaven’s sake keep it away from leads and flexes and phone cables. It’ll be through anything plastic faster than the proverbial speeding bullet.’
Carol looked at him over the frantically scrabbling back legs of the rabbit. ‘Get this thing off me,’ she said.
‘But it’s what you’ve always wanted.’
‘Not any more.’ A spring-loaded paw caught her on the tip of her nose, making her eyes water. ‘I changed my mind, somewhere around nineteen eighty-two. Please, take it back.’
Odin shook his head. ‘Can’t do that,’ he said. ‘Admin and all that. Once I’ve booked it out of the stores I can’t book it back in again. If you’ve really and truly gone off the idea of having one as a pet, you could do worse than try it marinaded in red wine, with bacon and roast potatoes and something like a light Australian Riesling—’
Carol shuddered so much that she dropped the rabbit; it landed on all fours, hit the ground running and vanished into the space between the old-fashioned storage heater and the wall.
‘I don’t know,’ Odin said, shaking his head, ‘There’s no pleasing some people. You don’t like chicken soup, you don’t like rabbit à la mode paysanne de Provence; what do you like? It’s important that I know, now that you’re here.’
Carol backed away. Unfortunately, Odin was very much between her and the open door. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘You just had me killed so you could trap my dad; what do you care?’
Odin shook his head wearily. ‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ he said. ‘This is Valhalla. Here, everything you’ve ever wanted, your every dream, comes true. You wanted a pet bunny, you got a pet bunny. You wanted a nice quiet, mindless job waiting on tables in a bar - complete antithesis of what Daddy does for a living - you got it. You wanted to organise a strike - you finally succeeded. Most of all, your greatest wish, all your life, you wanted your dad to forget all about business and come and spend some - what’s the phrase you Americans use? Quality time - some quality time with you. And now here you both are, with a whole eternity of quality time—’
