Petty Pewter Gods

31

You do overestimate Miss Winger's cupidity and amorality.

The front door had not yet closed behind the overestimated lady, who had started swapping compliments with the Goddamn Parrot. I had to wait till the door slapped her behind before I could respond.

"I really doubt that."

She has a code of right and wrong. She sticks to it firmly.

"Yeah. Her code is, If it ain't nailed down it's hers to carry away. And if it can be pried loose it ain't nailed down."

You do the woman an injustice. But, then, you feel you have been through trying times and are justified in demonstrating a foul temper.

"It's no feeling, Smiley, it's fact. And my temper is going to turn even more foul if you keep indulging your hobbies while I'm getting batted around by characters who actually make you look attractive."

I stormed across the hall, burst into the Dead Man's room. Dean entered behind me, stood around nervously waiting to find out what was going on. He was scared. However casual or indifferent the Dead Man seemed, Dean's intuition told him we had big trouble. Usually he copes with big trouble by going wild in the kitchen.

Though you want to believe otherwise, I have given your god problem some attention. Your friend Linda Lee brought a cartload of books here last evening. She and your friend Tinnie and her friend Alyx and their friend Nicks spent hours reading for me. I learned very little that you do not already know. Neither the Godoroth nor the Shayir pantheons represent golden examples of the brilliantly absurd natural imaginings of humanity. If some unimaginably great beings were to be connoisseurs of absurdities, these would form the centerpieces of their collections. These pantheons slithered from the bottom depths of lowest-common-denominator minds. Thud and blunder, sex and scandal, and afflict your mortal followers with pestilences and famines, disasters and humiliations, for fun, is what they are all about. And in that, of course, they mirror the souls in their care. All gods are shaped by the hearts of their believers.

What a sight that must have been, the Dead Man surrounded by beautiful women reading aloud, him absorbing the information they provided while smugly ignoring the fact that I was flailing around on the bottom in the deep smelly stuff somewhere else. And he had been aware of my plight—the Goddamn Parrot, having abandoned me to my fate, had flown home to him.

There is one aspect in need of deeper consideration. The girl who brought you out of Shayir captivity does not appear in any recorded account of either pantheon. Nor does your air-mobile infant. Which, by the by, is usually called a cherub.

"Hell, I remember cherubs now." They were part of the mythological hardware of my mother's religion. Mostly they just appeared in religious art.

They are part of the background populations of divine beings common to most religions springing from the same roots as the Church.

So he still had a spying eye inside my head.

For efficiency's sake only, Garrett. About the girl. It is your feeling that she is the by-blow of either Lang or Imar, her mother having been a mortal woman?

"She didn't tell me a whole lot about herself."

No. She did not. And you were too taken by the imaginary possibilities of your circumstances to try to elicit any useful information.

"Hey!... "

I reiterate. She does not figure in either mythology. The cherub springs from another family of religions entirely.

"I heard you. Give me a break. Imar and Lang are both the kinds of guys who grab whatever and whoever wherever and whenever they think they can get away with it. And probably don't much care if they get caught."

Stipulated. That is not in dispute. It is beyond dispute. But it may not be relevant. What troubles me is this anomaly, these players who do not fit the game. This girl, the cherub, even the winged horses. Anomalies always worry me. Your better course may have been to stay with the girl until you learned who she was and what she wanted.

"Maybe." Hindsight makes geniuses of us all. "And maybe if I had done that, right now I would be the meat in somebody's stew."

We really are contrary this morning, are we not?

"Damned straight. The whole crew. Me, myself, and I. Happens every time I find my partner blowing my hard-earned in order to collect political rumors. Wasting it on people like Winger, that we know too well, and on that Agonistes, that we don't know at all."

Both are entirely trustworthy within the limits of the tasks they were asked to perform.

"Yeah? What happens when somebody out there starts wondering why you're asking questions? Political people are born paranoid. If they interrogate Winger, she'll tell them anything she thinks they want to hear to get herself out of it. We could end up with Relway's thugs all over us, or The Call, or somebody out of the Cantard, or the for gods' sake Pan-Tantactuan Fairy Liberation Army... "

You are becoming excited. Please restrain yourself.

Grumble grumble.

You fail to appreciate the real magnitude of the crisis gripping TunFaire. And you fail to accept my ability to protect myself.

"It ain't you looking out for your butt that I'm worried about, Old Bones. You've always done a truly outstanding job of covering number one. It's my ass ending up in a sling that worries me."

Always the self-centered, demanding...

"Don't play that game with me, Chuckles. It's time you paid your rent. I'm calling. Tell me how to deal with this gods mess."

What do you know about the rash of strange fires in the Baden neighborhood?

"Huh?" Talk about your blindsider. But he does that. One of his minds will be mulling over something not remotely related to anything under discussion and it will pop right out. "I've been busy. You would have noticed if you weren't worrying about things like fires and Glory Mooncalled. What about these fires?"

I do not know. Several of my visitors have mentioned a series of unexplained, fatal fires. Not arson. Nothing burns but the victim himself, apparently, unless he sets fire to something himself.

"Sounds grisly."

Perhaps. It is only a curiosity, of course, but I gather there was no connection between the victims, none of whom were the kind of people who get themselves assassinated.

"Great. Sounds like the perfect puzzle to keep you out of my hair on a long winter's day. So put it on the shelf till the snows come back. Give me a hint here. What about these gods? Are we even dealing with gods?"

Again, the amount of energy being expended and the number of players involved militates against it being a confidence action. Indeed, it would be possible for a cabal of wizards to produce the effects you have encountered. But to what purpose such effort? There is no hint of any stake other than that proclaimed by the principals. This appears to be a straightforward struggle for divine status.

"Status?" Got me again. Another blindsider.

Of course. Do you accept as absolute and literal their expectation of total oblivion if they are driven from the Dream Quarter?

"Pretty much. They were real intense about it. You're right, though. They could set up in a storefront somewhere. Plenty of crackpot outfits do."

And there you have it. If you are not established in the Dream Quarter, yours is not a serious religion. You are a focus for lunacy. A bad joke. Even if you have a hundred times the followers of a respectable cult.

"But that would win you a place in the Dream Quarter."

True. Although you would carry a stigma for generations. Like new money amidst old. You see my point?

"Theirs, too. You got only a couple, three followers left and you get the old eviction notice, then you try to set up shop in an abandoned sausage cookery, your followers maybe won't show up for services anymore. Too embarrassing. They might sign on with some other crew who knew the right people and worshipped in the right place. So maybe you are dead if you're out. It's just not sudden."

They might see it that way.

"So suggest me a plan. Sit tight?"

I am applying some thought to the matter. I feel it is unlikely that the pantheons remain ignorant of your whereabouts, despite our precautions. It remains to be seen if they will accept inactivity—especially once someone realizes that you are the key.

"You think they will?"

I reasoned it out easily enough. They are less able, constitutionally, to consider a mortal closely, but eventually it will occur to someone that you entered that temple as though there was no seal upon it.

"Could have been No-Neck. He was with me."

No doubt he will pay for that.

"He deserves a warning."

He does. I will see to it. He seemed to mull something over. I let him ferment. Events could become exciting, I fear, once that conclusion is reached. Particularly if one of the Godoroth reaches it first.

"Huh? You want to explain?"

He was in a mood. His usual response would be to tell me to work it out for myself. You suggested that Lang had eyewitness knowledge of your visit with the Godoroth. I suggest we seriously entertain the possibility that, in fact, he did hear from an eyewitness.

"You think one of the Godoroth is a traitor?" There was a boggler. Not that treachery isn't a favorite divine sport inside any given pantheon.

And perhaps the other way as well. During your encounter with Magodor there were hints. In fact, you were, apparently, intercepted on your way to a rendezvous with the Shayir, though there is no mention of any Adeth amongst them, according to Linda Lee.

"The more you complicate this the worse it smells. It could get real nasty."

Indeed it could. That is why I have devoted such a great store of energy to ferreting out potential twists before we find ourselves caught in the claws of an unexpected turnaround.

Although he was probably blowing smoke and wasn't really doing anything, it was refreshing to hear him claim that he was.

"Sit tight?" I asked again.

Sit tight. And keep your hands off that rope.

"I'd say something about grandmas and egg-sucking, but it would fly right over your head."

Like a child who cannot focus its attention long, you require frequent reminders. It is inevitable that some will be superfluous or redundant.

Was that a put-down?

Yes. It was. He was in full command of his powers, which meant there would be no getting any last word.

I jerked my hand away from my waist. That rope was damned seductive. It was hard not to fiddle with its ends.

A pity that we cannot interview the Cat person. She might be a sizable gap in these gods' wall of secrecy. It is possible she is knowledgeable but unable to protect her knowledge.

"Guess I should have turned on the Garrett charm and sweet-talked her right on home here. Eh?" His opinion of my ability to cope with women has no connection with reality.

He responded with an unfocused mental sneer.

I countered with another grumble about him spending my hard-earned, then retreated to my office.