The Age Of Odin

Twenty-Eight

The tape ended. Skuld snapped the television off.

For a time no one said anything, so I felt pressure to break the silence.

"She's a foxy lady and no mistake," I said. "Not sure she's completely all there, up top." I tapped my temple. "But that's not necessarily a drawback. The more screws a girl has loose, the looser a screw she is."

Odin and the Norns just looked at me.

"What? I grant you, not the most PC remark ever made, but…"

Still looking at me.

"What? Am I missing something here? I am, aren't I? I thought I was going to find out who your Big Bad is, and then all you do is show me a programme about…"

Gid Coxall, king of the slowly dropping pennies.

"Oh no. You are kidding."

Their faces.

"You're not kidding."

I recalled the book Odin had lent me while I was recuperating from the accident.

"When you gave me her autobiography," I said to him, "I thought it was just… Well, at first I thought you must be a fan of hers. Admired her politics. I was halfway to thinking the Valhalla Mission was some kind of neo-Nazi outfit, and you approved of her views on gays and abortion rights and the rest. And then I thought, maybe not. Maybe you oppose her because she's big government. She's The Man. That was before I got the whole Norse gods thing clear, of course. But if you're against her, if she's the enemy… It is her, isn't it? You haven't got anything against Peter Makepeace? Because he's smarmy, yes, a bit of a prick and a know-all, but that's not a reason to set up an army. I mean, there are plenty of other TV personalities I can think of that deserve merciless hounding and execution. Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan spring to mind. Nothing wrong with those two that couldn't be solved with a Claymore mine down the underpants. But not Makepeace."

"It isn't him," Odin said.

"So — Keener. Christ. Shit. You really… Mrs Keener. You want to eliminate the President of the United States. The most powerful human being on the planet. Well, good luck with that."

"Don't you want to know why she's our foe?"

"No, Odin, I do not. What I want is not to know anything about any of this, not any more. Fuck, you nearly had me. I was thinking, 'Join the Norse gods on some military campaign? That could be cool.' But all you're after is assassinating President Keener. Bit tawdry, isn't it? And when's this going to happen? Her state visit, I suppose. You're going to bundle in with all your troops while she's on a tour of the Houses of Parliament or Buckingham Palace or wherever, take out her secret service detail, then take her out — and all because she's a warmonger, right? Forgive me, but that's not exactly very godly of you, is it? Or is it? Is that what gods do when they're at a loose end? Get in there amongst the mortals and create havoc? Throw their divine weight around, because they can?"

"Gid, you're coming at this from entirely the wrong angle," Odin said.

"Mortal," said Urd dismissively. Like someone else might have said simpleton or moron.

"Only seeing the superficial details," Verdande agreed.

"The broader picture eludes him," said Skuld.

I blanked them. Smug fucking bitches. "If you hate her so much," I said to Odin, "by all means feel free to. She's hardly my favourite politician, although her being a hot babe does take the edge off her for me. But what we Midgarders do in these situations is we try to vote the person out of office if we don't like them, or we go out on the streets and protest against them, or else we ignore them because if you do that long enough, eventually they go away. We don't just kill them. All right, sometimes we do. But not often, and only the real scumbags, the Ceausescus, the Saddams, the tyrants, the ones who wouldn't know a free and fair election if it came up and bit them on the ballot box. And also — America. Come on. You don't launch an attack on the leader of fucking America. That's inviting a complete deluge of shit to come down on your heads. Gods or not, the USA is one nation whose bad books you truly do not want to get into."

I paused for breath.

"Finished?" Odin said.

"Only getting started, mate."

"I ask because you haven't let me put forward my side of things."

"You haven't got a side to put forward. At least, not one I'm willing to hear."

"Please just give me a minute to explain."

"Explain what? That you're trying to get Britain into deep shit with the States? Because, mark my words, you manage to bump off Mrs Keener and this country's going to take the blame. Clasen'll tell the Yanks we had nothing to do with it, but with his track record of complaining about her they won't believe a word, and the fucking cruise missiles will be raining down before you can even sneeze. And that's if we're lucky. I wouldn't put it past them to drop daisy cutters or even go nuclear. They'd be that narked."

"What if I told you Mrs Keener is the one who wants to destroy us, not the other way round?"

"That's pretty far-fetched. How's she even know you exist? There's only one god as far as she's concerned, the big daddy of them all, Jehovah. You lot are a pagan aberration. You're not real to her. That'd be like saying she wants to get rid of unicorns. Or dinosaurs, which she doesn't believe in either." It said so in her book. Dinosaurs were a lie invented by evolutionary scientists to prove that life on earth had developed over millions of years when, as any sensible Creationist knew, the universe had been put together by God in just under a week. Must have come in kit form. Probably from Ikea.

"Unless," I went on slowly, "she does know you exist and wants to wipe you out precisely because you're non-Christian. Fuck. Is that it? Her game's heathen god genocide? The Man Upstairs has told her to do that for Him?"

Odin shook his grey head. "Would that it were that simple."

"But it doesn't bother her too much, attacking other countries. So why not pantheons as well? Your lot, the Greek ones, the Egyptian ones — I'm assuming they're all still around too."

"Not to my knowledge. As I told you before, I don't consort with deities from other faiths. I have no evidence to believe they were ever out there. Perhaps we are all isolated from one another in such a way that we can never meet. Perhaps, by cosmic design, every pantheon is an island, known only to itself and its worshippers. Every monotheist god too. This is not germane, anyway. Mrs Keener is not aggrieved with us on religious grounds, you have my assurance on that. Her hatred stems from a much closer, more personal source."

"He still hasn't fathomed it," Urd hissed to her sisters, with a nod at me.

"But he knows enough to make the connection," said Verdande.

"He is just about to," said Skuld. "It is due."

"Mrs Keener is holding a grudge against the Norse gods," I said. I was beginning to grasp the shape of something — a realisation that was immense and profound. The clues were all there. Principally I was remembering the tale Paddy had told while we were waiting for Sleipnir to arrive, and what Thor had said afterwards. Somehow I knew that was where the answer lay.

President Keener. Mrs Keener. Lois Keener.

Ping. Lightbulb popping on.

Oh no. No fucking way.

It couldn't be that straightforward, could it? That completely stupidly glaringly obvious?

I was about to speak again. Then there came an urgent rapping at the front door.