The Age of Zeus

67. THE SHRINE OF APOTHEOSIS

This is it, Sam thought as Zeus frogmarched her out of Argus's lair. It's over. I'm done.

A formal execution? Perhaps. Ares with his axe. A beheading. Or maybe Zeus would opt for something slower and more gruesome. Evict her from the stronghold and let the Harpies have their way with her. Or else he'd just fry her himself with a lightning bolt. She only had herself to blame. She had provoked him. She had spoken out of turn. Her own big mouth had got her into this. It was either that or Zeus simply didn't want her around any longer, now troops were on their way to mount an attack on Olympus. He didn't want someone in his camp who'd be sympathetic to the enemy's aims, a potential Fifth Columnist. Whatever the reason, Hera was about to get her wish. Her husband's latest dalliance, such as it was, was at an end.

As in the run-up to the battle at Bleaney, Sam felt calm, fatalistic, resigned. She didn't want to die but you had to accept that which you could not change. Death had hovered over her life since her late teens, when her parents were taken from her. Death had been omnipresent during her police career, when scarcely a month went by without her being confronted by some corpse or other — a murder victim, an accidental drowning, an overdose, a suicide. Then there was Ade's death, and her own subsequent flirtations with ending it all, and following that the progressive, one-by-one deaths of the Titans, climaxing with the Pantheon's mass destruction of those of them that death had so far spared, all save her (except: no bodies equals no proof). Death had been stalking Sam over the years, at times breathing down her neck, at other times standing off at a distance but still at the periphery of her consciousness. Now, having flagged her up for special attention, it was zeroing in, coming to claim her once and for all.

Zeus dragged her back along the route she herself had not so long ago taken, to the low windowless building she had stumbled upon earlier, the storage unit or unmarked temple or whatever it was. They halted outside the door, and Sam understood that this structure must in fact be what it most resembled, a mausoleum, a place of death and entombment. Handy for Zeus to have had it included in the plans for the stronghold. This would be where he disposed of his ex-lovers and other nuisances. Hence the lightning rod. She envisaged an electric chair inside, wired up so that Zeus could provide the juice for it himself with his divine powers, delivering a personal send-off to his strapped-in victims. It would have been absurd if it hadn't been so grimly plausible.

"This, Sam," said Zeus, "in case you're wondering, is the Shrine of Apotheosis. It is for my own private use. None of the other Olympians can readily gain access to it, not that they would dare even try. They know and fear my wrath."

Yeah, yeah, thought Sam. Let's just get this over with, shall we?

"The door is secured with a magnetic clamp lock, which responds only to a single charge of some hundred million volts. The size of current that the average lightning bolt provides."

With that, he conjured a small cloud out of nowhere in the clear alpine sky, and an instant later there was a flash, a static crackle, and Sam felt all her hair stand on end. A blue glow wreathed the lightning rod briefly, and from the door there came a loud, resounding clank. Zeus dispersed the cloud, then reached for the brass ring handle.

As the door opened, lights flickered on inside. Zeus thrust Sam in ahead of him, and slammed the door shut behind them.

This wasn't a place of execution, that much Sam gathered straight away. There was a kind of chair, however.

The room filled the entire volume of the Shrine and was of similar dimensions to the interior of a trailer park home. In the very middle stood a padded leather chair with a tubular steel frame and a curved headrest. It looked not unlike something you'd find in a dental surgery. Sam could see that it articulated in at least two places and was controlled by two pedals attached to its pedestal base.

Around the edges of the room there were medical refrigeration cabinets with glass doors, through which were visible shelves laden with test tubes, flasks and phials. All these were stoppered, labelled, and filled with various different-coloured opaque serums. Other furnishings included a metal desk with a laptop on it, a washstand, an alcohol gel dispenser for hand disinfection, several wheeled tray-stacks full of stainless steel surgical implements, and, the truly sinister touch, a set of restraints hanging on the wall — wrist and ankle cuffs made of leather, with perforated straps and buckles.

"Sex dungeon," Sam said. "Zeus, I'd never have pegged you for the S and M type. Hercules definitely, but not you."

She was able to quip, but only because her inner ice had melted, thawed by a sudden, unexpected flare-up of hot terror, which she needed to control. Death was one thing, but she sensed she had just been ushered into a torture chamber. That the room reeked of antiseptic only added to this impression. Things had had to be swabbed up in here, bodily fluids and the like. The walls were thick — solid stone. The Shrine of Apotheosis was set well apart from the main section of the stronghold. Screams that emanated from this building would be heard by no one.

Not that she was going to be screaming. No way was Zeus fastening her to that chair. Never in a million years. She would kill herself first. Beat her own brains out against the floor if need be.

"Sam," said Zeus, "first of all, whatever you're imagining this room is, one thing it is not is a place of cruelty. Please trust me on that. Suffering has occurred in that chair, yes, but suffering in a good cause, endured in the name of self-enhancement and the fulfilment of greatness. Do you know what apotheosis means?"

Sam fumbled for an answer. "Isn't it the epitome of something? A perfect specimen?"

"It can be used in that auxiliary sense, but its original, principal definition is deification. The attainment of divinity. From the Greek apo, a prepositional prefix meaning 'towards,' and theosis, 'godhood.'"

Sam said, "Zeus has left the building. I'm talking to Xander Landesman now, aren't I?"

Without missing a beat, Zeus said, "Of course."

"And I always have been."

Again: "Of course."

"And this is where it happens. This is where you do it. Where you make Olympians."

For a third time, veneered with a smile: "Of course."

"Fuck," she breathed. "Fuck me, I knew it. I knew you lot were faking. I knew it!"

"Oh, I know you did," Zeus said. "You've been telling us that constantly. Trouble is, no one has been listening. You're like Cassandra, blessed with the gift of accurate prophecy, cursed with the inability to convince others that what you're saying it true. It's been amusing, and heartbreaking, watching you try and trip us up, make us admit we're not gods. Thwarted every time. Coming up against a wall of incomprehension again and again."

"They have no idea, do they?" Sam said. "The rest of them."

"Not a clue. Only one person in the whole wide world knows the truth about the Olympians. Me. Make that two people now. Although, the knowledge won't remain yours for long."

"Ah. You are going to kill me after all."

Zeus shook his head wonderingly, bemused. "Don't you see, Sam? Don't you get it? I have no wish to kill you. Not any more."

"You don't?"

"Nor harm you in any way. Right now, all I want to do is make myself understood to you. Will you hear me out?"

"Do I have an alternative?"

"Not as such."

"Then go ahead, talk."