The Age of Zeus

63. ARGUS

The final stop on the Olympus tour was a chamber hewn deep in the rock of the mountainside and reminiscent in many ways of the command centre at Bleaney. Here, as there, could be found a plethora of screens and cables. The former provided the only illumination in the room, a wavering bluish glow, while the latter fed, presumably, to the meter-diameter parabolic antenna dish which Sam had spotted outside, nestled between two buildings, an incongruous sliver of modernity amid all the Classicism.

A smell reached Sam's nose as she followed Zeus and Ares into the chamber, a drab, musty odour that put her in mind of a teenage boy's bedroom. It was worse inside the chamber itself, stronger and more noxious. It spoke of unwashed flesh and fungal growth.

The source was — could only be — the corpulent figure who reclined in the centre of the room on a mound of silk cushions. He was near naked, his modesty preserved by a cloth draped across his groin, and his pallid, vein-marbled skin looked like it hadn't seen the sun in ages. It also looked like it hadn't seen soap and water in ages. There were blotches all over it that could have been food stains, encrustations that could have been rashes, a whole host of scummy dried-on marks of indeterminate origin. The covers of the cushions the figure half sat, half lay on were similarly bespattered and besmirched.

What was even more repellent about this bloated monstrosity, though, were the wires protruding from his head. A score of them were plugged into his hairless scalp, sticking out at all angles like rubber-insulated dreadlocks, and around the point at which each wire pierced the skin there was inflammation and scabbing. It reminded Sam of something from an anti-vivisection poster, a laboratory monkey with electrodes implanted in its brain.

He was slumped there with his eyes closed, as though blissfully asleep. However, as Sam drew (reluctantly) closer, she saw that his eyelids were puckered at the join, like pursed lips, and concave, sunken. There were no eyeballs beneath them.

"Argus?" said Zeus softly. "O Hundred-Eyed One? Can you hear me? Are you with us?"

Argus did not stir, but all round the chamber the screens flickered and changed. They had been displaying websites, live news broadcasts, CCTV footage, webcam images, a range of data input streaming in from across the globe, but now all at once each showed the same thing: a computer-generated peacock, its tailfeathers fanned, and the eye markings on the fan actual human-style eyes, different-coloured, intermittently blinking.

"Greetings to you, O mighty Zeus," said a warm, mellow voice that came from several directions simultaneously. The words echoed, cascaded, overlapped. "And to you, Ares. And to you too, Samantha Akehurst, former detective sergeant, resident of Kensal Rise, London." The voice proceeded to list Sam's driving licence and National Health numbers, gave the name of the high street bank she banked with, and threw in her credit rating for good measure. "Currently wanted by the London Metropolitan Police for questioning," it added.

"And my dress size?" Sam asked, trying not to sound unnerved.

A pause. Then: "You look like an eight to me."

"Actually I'm a ten."

"It's always wise to underestimate."

As the voice said this the man on the cushions, eerily, smiled.

"Argus," said Zeus, "Sam is, as you know, a member of the resistance group who were until not so long ago our mortal enemies — in more senses than one."

"Ah, yes, the Titans," said Argus. Several of the screens shifted from the peacock image to display stills from the Agonides clip, a blurry security-camera shot of a Titan haring through Manhattan, several newspaper pictures of dead and decaying Olympian monsters, a forensics photo of Sondergaard's skeleton half-buried in the dust of his battlesuit, and Titan-related soundbites from the press conference Zeus and Hercules gave in the shadow of the World Trade Centre and from Zeus and Hera's appearance on Paulita.

"There's more," he said, and a number of websites popped up on other screens, all of them festooned liberally with his peacock censorship-icon. "Titan-advocating sites and blogs and homepages. These are the ones I've allowed to continue to exist, the ones where the approval expressed is only moderate. The more ardent ones I have, of course, wrecked beyond repair."

"Still there are people rooting for you," said Zeus to Sam, "in spite of everything."

The words sent a small chill through her. "What do you mean, in spite of everything?"

"I mean, with no justification there are some poor misguided souls who still feel that the Titans are going to oust the Pantheon."

"Aren't we?" said Sam. "Just because you've taken one of us captive… Ohhh." Light dawned. Hope fluttered. "That's it, isn't it? I'm a hostage. You think the Titans won't dare attack again, as long as you're keeping me here. Well, newsflash, Zeus. It won't deter them. They know I'd rather die than have them abandon the mission. Do what you like to me, but the war will go on."

"You're misreading the situation completely, Sam," said Zeus. "You're not a hostage. To hold someone hostage implies that there are those for whom that person's continued survival matters."

"Which in this instance there are."

"She just isn't getting it, is she, Zeus?" said Ares, snickering. "I think you're going to have to give it to her in words of one syllable."

"Better yet, in pictures. Argus?"

"Yes, Zeus?"

"Bleaney Island, please. Everything you've gathered over the last three days."

"Your wish is my command."

The screens stuttered, altered, refreshed. Now there were shots taken from various news helicopters, showing Bleaney from several different angles. Some focused on an expanse of charred, blackened, churned-up ground which Sam was just able to identify as the site of the battle with the Olympians. Others were more distant views of the island, all of them featuring a vast column of smoke that was roiling up from, if Sam's guess was correct, the entrance to the bunker.

Argus turned up the volume on one screen where a microphone-toting reporter from CNN was doing a piece to camera on the landing jetty.

"…and as you can see behind me," the reporter was saying, "there's still a huge amount of smoke coming from below ground, and we can only imagine the kind of inferno that's raging down there. This is the closest we're allowed to get to the subterranean complex, a former Second World War listening post which, reports suggest, the Titans were using as their base of operations. It hasn't been confirmed how the Olympians uncovered this fact, but what we do know is that yesterday they came here in force to put paid to the Titan insurgency once and for all. And it would appear, certainly on the available evidence, that they have succeeded…"

Argus cross-faded to footage of another reporter, from the BBC this time, conducting street interviews with residents of the harbour town across the strait from Bleaney.

"…dreadful noise it were," said an old lady. "Bangs, crashes, explosions. You could hear it across the water, clear as day. I said to my husband, 'That's on Bleaney,' I said, 'and I bet it's them Olympians. Something's going on there,' I said. You could see this big black stormcloud hanging over the place, and the lightning was coming down like you wouldn't believe, flash, flash, flash, like that, that quick. Never seen the like!"

Cut to a bespectacled middle-class dad wrangling a restless toddler: "Yes, we've always been a bit suspicious about the goings-on over there. 'Research into cold fusion' we were told — keep still, Harry — but everyone was convinced there was more to it than that. For months people kept saying they'd heard, well, muffled gunfire, and no one believed them, but clearly they were right. Who knew? It's amazing what can go on right beneath your nose. Harry! No ice cream now. Later."

Cut to a couple of acne-speckled youths in sportswear, hair gelled to a slick gloss. One did the talking while the other sipped from a can of the energy drink Ichor and grunted agreement every now and then: "Yeah, right, it's crazy, innit, like these people was right on our doorstep — so to speak — and nobody knew nuffink, kinda makes you proud, like they was goin' out all over the world and smackin' them Olympian w[bleep]ers up and comin' back to Bleaney of all places, like that lump of rock out there in the sea where there's nuffink but rabbits, but it's pretty cool to think they was right here 'cause nuffink happens round here, knowahmean?"

Cut back to the BBC reporter herself. "So there you have it," she said, "a flavour of the local opinion about the astonishing events of the past twenty-four hours. To recap, the Olympians have attacked the island the Titans were calling home, just off the coast here, and from what we've seen and from what coastguard and police are saying, there are no survivors. No bodies have been found, but no Titans have been spotted alive either. We don't know where they are, where they've gone to, assuming any of them are left, but the likelihood is, given how thorough the Olympians are known to be, that the Titans are simply no more."

And now another reporter, from ITN: "…must presume that the Titans' bold, perhaps foolhardy stance against the Olympians has come to its inevitably bitter end…"

And now none other than Jennifer Konchalowsky from Fox News, flown over to England specifically to cover the breaking story: "…this is what you get for sowing whirlwinds. The Titans have reaped themselves a deadly harvest of Olympian wrath. They poked the hornets' nest, and boy have they got stung."

And Prime Minister Bartlett, in Downing Street: "I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping that once and for all a line has been drawn under this scandalous and sordid chapter in modern history and that we can look forward to a future of continued entente cordiale with our friends in the Pantheon. The Titans may have been based in Britain but I can't emphasise enough that their antics were in no way representative of British policy and our Great British values…"

And President Stavropoulos: "A buncha Limeys. Who woulda guessed?"

And finally, Jennifer Konchalowsky again: "It's over. Finito. The Olympians have flushed the rats out of their hidey-hole and exterminated them. We can go back to living our lives again as normal. Time's up, Titans. You had your shot and you blew it. Goodnight."

Argus faded the volume down to zero, and the chamber was filled with nothing but the hum and whine of the screens. Zeus and Ares stared expectantly at Sam. She kept her face rigid, her expression inscrutable. Inside, though, she was crumbling.

"No bodies," she said finally. "No bodies equals no proof. They could still be alive. Did you actually kill them? Did you actually, personally see them all die? Well? Did you?"

Ares looked at Zeus, Zeus at Ares.

"We can account for one death for certain," Zeus said. "Hades used his death touch on one of you, and the man fell."

"I saw that. I also saw Hades get shot."

"He's better now. As for the other Titans, after Hermes whisked you from the battlefield I unleashed the full might of the lightning."

"Scorched earth policy," said Ares.

"I blasted every inch of ground. It was spectacular, if I say so myself. I can't remember when I last let rip like that. Not since Sj?lland, that's for sure."

"My ears are still ringing," said Ares.

"Naturally, your teammates were routed. They panicked. Started lobbing smoke bombs."

"White phosphorus grenades."

"I kept up with the lightning strikes. It was pandemonium for a while."

"Chaos!"

"But at last it was done, and the smoke thinned, the air cleared, and there was nothing left of our enemies, not even smithereens. We searched all over the island, just to be sure. As the reporter said, we're nothing if not thorough. Then we entered that bunker of yours."

"And had some fun," said Ares. "Nothing beats a bit of rampant post-victory vandalism."

"All your equipment, your belongings."

"Bashed. Smashed. Trashed."

"A rather grand-looking office, ruined."

"Your mission control, all that technology, shattered beyond recognition."

"And afterwards we set a fire. A fire that burned through the whole place, reducing it to cinders, turning your dream to ashes, and then we informed the media of what we had done, and you've just watched the fallout." Zeus studied Sam. "Do you get it now? That Konchalowsky woman, empty-headed language mangler that she is, summed it up pretty well. It's over. Finito. Goodnight, Titans. You're the last one left, Sam, the only survivor. We've won."

Sam did all she could to keep her emotions in check, but the very effort of doing so set her body trembling.

"She's sad," said Argus's everywhere-at-once voice.

"Don't be sad," said Ares. "You were valiant to the end, all of you, despite the fact that there was never any doubt that you were going to lose. It was a glorious defeat. Courage like that should be celebrated."

Sam continued to say nothing. All she could think was: no bodies equals no proof. That was the one last flimsy scrap of hope she had to hold on to. Ramsay, Barrington, Hamel, Sparks, all dead. Landesman too. But no bodies equals no proof. Captain Fuller's boat — it was just conceivable that the Titans had got to the jetty and joined Lillicrap and the techs aboard and got away. She had to believe that.

No bodies equals no proof.

She repeated it in her head like a mantra.

No bodies equals no proof.

Because otherwise, what else was there for her? What else was left?