99 Gods: Odysseia Read online

  The mirror held Jeanne D’Ark, or at least her face. She appeared to be half-dead, with hollow eyes, bruises, and a chain around her neck. “Finally,” Joanie said. “Nessa, I need some help.”

  “You? Mistress of the dark nasty universe needs my help?” Nessa said. Will wonders never cease?

  “Who the gruck are you talking to?” the woman kneeling at Nessa’s side asked. Nessa sighed and put her other arm, the one not holding the mirror, on the woman’s thigh and pushed. “Yikes!” the woman said.

  Yes, the usual reaction to one of her tricks working right.

  “Joanie the Darkie, meet woman-at-my-side,” Nessa said. Both Jeanne and the woman introduced themselves to each other with their real names. “Joanie’s a kick-ass Telepath who’s been telling me to keep my head down for years and years. Someone should have been heeding her own advice.” Nessa had never gotten along with the older dominatrix. Too parental.

  “You’re no more immune to the 99 Gods than I am,” Joanie said. “I mean, look at you, no arms and legs. Well, not counting the start of the little replacements. That’s not one of your or Ken’s tricks. A God’s?”

  “Uh huh,” Nessa said, and clicked on the no arms or legs. “Oh, that’s what’s wrong with me. Pardon me. I’m going to emote and scream for a minute or so.” No arms or legs, stuck in a prosthesis made by Orlando? She screamed until she remembered she had worked through the emotions already. The woman at her side and Joanie covered their ears, and the sleeping bags of people pupae moaned and writhed. Nessa took a deep breath. “All done for now.” Ewwww, dismembered! This would cramp her dancing style.

  “In any event, Bristol kidnapped me and he’s got me stored in his dungeon. Actually,” Joanie said, “I think Bristol made the dungeon just for me. He’s trying to break me into his service. Torture, you know.” Joanie sniffed.

  “Well, then, just say the ‘safe word’,” Nessa said.

  “This is for-real torture, you addle-brained nit!”

  Nessa laughed, as did the woman at her side. “I’d say you look perfect in chains.”

  “Help me. Please?”

  A ‘please’! How unique for Joanie. “What do I get out of this?” Nessa said.

  “I’ll do your bidding for a week.” Lascivious, insatiable.

  Typical Joanie.

  “I don’t want you, I want your talents,” Nessa said. “We need someone spying on Verona. For more than a week.”

  “That’s your price?”

  “The spying and your passing along the information you learn,” Nessa said.

  Joanie shrugged. “I’ll agree.”

  Nessa suspected she missed something here, likely ripped off again. Pah. So what else was new? “Okay. So. What can I do to help you?” Nessa went into another rendition of the she-was-here-and-you-are-there explanation for why she couldn’t do anything, but Joanie interrupted.

  “Since you can do astral now, my dear, you should be able to reach through to where I am and rip the shackles off of me,” Joanie said.

  “Uh, my control hasn’t improved one bit with my teek. I’d vaporize you if I tried. Or nothing would happen.”

  “You’re one with Ken, dear. Use his teek.” At least with Joanie the funky terms meant the same thing.

  “Oh, right,” Nessa said. She concentrated for a moment, and swore she heard the clattering of shackles. Joanie’s image in the makeup mirror now didn’t wear a chain around her neck. “Better?”

  “Yes,” Joanie said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to cut this connection and get my arse the bloody hell out of here before my so-called ‘master’ can grab me.” The mirror turned dark.

  “Nessa, you know something?” the woman not in the mirror said, ready to make some-edging-toward nasty comment about Nessa’s mental state and the absurd world of Nessa’s consciousness.

  “Sure.”

  ‘Yes’ was always a safe answer.

  Nessa woke up and sat up, disentangling herself from her family. “I’m starting to think my life’s become monotonous,” she said, waiting for the inevitable strangeness to start. Alana started to cry, which woke Zachary and the rest of Nessa’s family.

  “I don’t think ‘monotonous’ could ever describe you, Nessa,” Elorie said, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

  “Well, if this is real, for once, then we should do our morning things,” Nessa said. Like morning things involving far too full bladders filled with far too many nasty bad chemicals from nasty bad healing. She bounced out of the big bed, which didn’t work quite right and included a lurch to the side before she righted herself. She extracted Alana from her silly baroque crib, and that didn’t work quite right either, because Alana kept trying to slip through Nessa’s fingers and arms. Despite the shaking limbs, Nessa found the nice wooden rocking chair and got Alana on one of her breasts.

  Ken, Elorie and Dave watched her closely. “Nothing you haven’t seen before,” Nessa said, embarrassed to be their center of attention.

  “You okay?” Ken said. He lightly touched Nessa’s arm. He was worried about her reaction to the willpower prostheses. How sweet!

  “Rough night,” Nessa said, and shrugged. Why did everyone think she was so fragile? And what was with the bits of dried blood under everyone’s noses? “Anybody but me would be institutionalized afterwards.” She paused, wondered about herself, and dismissed the worry. “We need to get a move on, people, and do dolphin things before the next inevitable attack or interruption.”

  Nessa let Ken carry her after she wore herself out hobbling and falling the first hour after she awoke, despite the invitation to comments about her needing to eat more. She actually ate a real breakfast, something besides chocolate. Regeneration, according to Dana, required lots of food, some sort of mental quirk of Orlando’s.

  “Korua, knockity knock,” Nessa said, settling in on the beach in Ken’s arms. Dave and Elorie had begged off, wanting to be alone to discuss some of their difficulties without telepathic and divine interference, the two latter conditions obvious because Nessa couldn’t sense either of them now. Neither of them took battle stress well. Nessa’s injuries in the battle hadn’t helped. Neither did Sorrow’s ‘cost’. The unknown cost even bothered Nessa.

  The waves pounded the shore with early morning enthusiasm, and the sand was still cool. Nessa dug her toes into the cool damp below the top layer of sand and then gave up. The damp sand didn’t feel the way it ought to.

  Diana and Uffie each kept a hand on Nessa’s shoulder, truthfully not necessary any more after so many dolphin sessions, but the hands thing did help them reassure themselves they had some control over the situation. Diana, not used to rubbing shoulders with anyone higher on the human food chain than successful scum, hardly said anything these days, content to just observe and learn.

  Korua sent.

  Uffie sent.

 

  Uffie snorted. Some dolphin answers were predictable.

  Korua sent. The ‘sonar’ term was a very bad translation of Nessa’s, she knew. She had long ago noted that to Uffie.

 

  Uffie and Korua went off into their detailed blathering. Nessa relaxed and vaguely listened in as Uffie learned the details of dolphin thinking.

  This learning wasn’t all one-sided. Nessa understood what Korua got out of these conversations: a greater understanding of human individuality. Human individuality wasn’t quite as bad as describing color to a blind man, but close. Individual dolphin minds didn’t think in language.

  Korua sent, with a mental poke to get
Nessa’s attention away from her ruminations.

  Uffie sent.

  She would have rather stayed fuzzed out.

  Korua sent.

  Ken sent. He normally stayed out of these conversations as well, a bit in awe of Uffie and Uffie’s mind, mostly in areas of Uffie’s thoughts Nessa tried not to dive into because of their complexity and connection with other scientist minds.

  Uffie purred.

  Nessa sent, petulant.

  Uffie sent.

  Nessa sighed at the extremely familiar Nessa – Uffie conversation topic. The concepts pushed her, all this thinking about thinking and thinking about talking and talking about thinking. Putting these thoughts into words took work and Nessa preferred to be lazy. she sent a concept along with that word another concept sent

  Uffie asked.

  Korua sent, exasperated. Much like a Telepath, Korua didn’t like to think about the ‘why’ things.

  Uffie sent to Nessa.

  Nessa sent back.

  Ken sent.

  Uffie sent. This reminded Nessa about a conversation with Orlando about the nature of the 99 Gods’ place of time.

  Korua sent. Nessa had the same problem with dolphin sonar, which to the dolphins had colors and textures and other esthetic measures that totally baffled Uffie and made Nessa’s mind hurt. Anything beyond simple counting was beyond Korua.

  Uffie sent. She continued into another discussion about the dolphin group minds, of which there were more than forty, and their functioning. Opartuth, for one, wasn’t dead, just ‘sleeping’. Korua’s comment attracted Nessa’s attention.

  Nessa sent. She would love to encounter Opartuth again.

 

  Nessa likely would never get to deal with Opartuth again.

 

  Ken whistled and Uffie shushed him.

  Korua sent.

  Uffie sent.

 

  Uffie sent.

  Sheesh! Nessa tasted this in Uffie’s mind, the inevitable march toward scientific details she had no interest in following.

  She sucked on chocolate and let part of her mind wander over to Dana, who Nessa would dearly love to understand.

  For one thing, how could someone so talented in so many ways remain a virgin?

  26. (Dana)

  Dana watched Dubuque’s news conference on CSPAN from the family room of the borrowed mansion and fretted. Noise from the kitchen intruded, but here in the family room, silence reigned except for the immense television above a purely decorative hearth. The putative Living Saint droned on and on about the continuing promise of the City of God, not deigning to mention the current massive anti-99 God protests in Europe and North America. “I must also speak about the sudden loss of the Supported, who had been the deputies of the Living Saints, and who no longer share in our power,” Dubuque said. He appeared calm and collected on the television, but Dana heard a new subtle stress to his words. “Their loss of power is a sad thing, and we will of course continue their employment, but in other ways this is an event of great promise. In my mind, this is a sign from God Almighty for the Living Saints. I believe the training wheels are off. This doesn’t mean the City of God is in any danger. On the contrary, the loss of the Supported means the so-called Gods who relied upon their Supported instead of prayer for their good works have received an answer from Above about their heresy and lack of faith. They must now join with the Living Saints and partake in the answering of prayers from the people of faith, or they face falling into oblivion.”

  As do you, Dubuque, Dana thought. The sooner the better for all.

  “Mr. Living Saint! Mr. Living Saint!” the reporters shouted. Dubuque pointed, and the cameras turned to one of the reporters. “Tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the street in favor of a restoration of the United States Constitution. Have you given any thought to a Constitutional restoration?”

  “Certainly not, Ms. Reynolds,” Dubuque said. Dana sighed in inevitable regret. “The United States Constitution had its day and served its purpose, but the old piece of parchment and the bloated government it fostered had grown tired and weary, unresponsive to the will of the people, corrupted by the money of lobbyists and divorced from faith-driven morality. We supersede the old failed ways. There is no going back.”

  Dana turned away from the television, leaving Lydia and the other Natural Supported to listen. Orlando – or a piece of him, Dana wasn’t sure – followed. Since the last attack by Dubuque’s army he kept an almost angelic watch over her.

  Most of Orlando’s army had long since dispersed, taking the survivors of Dubuque’s army with them to unspecified locations. The remainder of Orlando’s army kept the borrowed Van Der Smessen estate house clean and took Natural Supported lessons from Orlando and Lydia’s crew. Orlando had picked through Dana’s mind for hours before he figured out the obvious: nine out of ten former Grade One Supported could also learn to be Natural Supported, after proper training, but none of his Grade Twos or the others. Dana hadn’t lost her uniqueness, as none of the other former Grade One Supported had been able to figure out how to become Natural Supported on their own, or figure out how to do so in a seeming instant. Most would take weeks to months to learn the basics of Natural Supported.

  “Orlando, I keep thinking we should be doing something proactive,” Dana said, again admiring the décor of the mansion. The formal living room belonged as the feature of some magazine somewhere, with princely furniture, sculptures of all sorts, and a gorgeous view of the formal gardens, with a tree shaded bubbling fountain only a few feet beyond the doors. “Are we wasting an advantage by sitting here?” Acting would distract her from Dave, at least. Her thoughts flashed on Dave for a moment and she repressed a sigh as the thought warmed her soul.

  “Well, if the Telepaths flame out with the dolphins, yes, this will turn out to be a waste of time,” Orlando said. He held his hand out for Dana to take, and she did. “Let’s get some fresh air.” She nodded.

  Orlando led her through the double French doors to the rear of the Van Der Smessen estate house, wh
ere Dana could admire the many rose-beds on the estate grounds. Somehow, they seemed appropriate. Orlando led her down the boardwalk and to the beach. The Telepaths sunned themselves on the beach three hundred yards to their left, seemingly lazy, but Dana sensed their radiated telepathy hard at work, communing with the dolphin mind or minds or whatever. Orlando, thankfully, led them the other way.

  “Unfortunately, we can’t be proactive right now. No army,” Orlando said as they walked along the edge of the surf. Gulls shrieked hopefully above them, but Dana had no food and Orlando ignored them.

  “Your new Natural Supported don’t count?”

  “For one, they aren’t fully trained. For another, they don’t have any real personal ties to me. Several are already thinking about going independent after their training.”

  My my. What a horror: independence! “We could stop training them,” Dana said. She, Lydia and Orlando had gotten all caught up in the training; some of the other Natural Supported would soon be training others as well. Some of the Natural Supported learned significantly faster than the rest. Perhaps they should emulate the universities and charge so much to train their students the students ended up in lifelong peonage, as well as creating a hotly traded commodified student debt vehicle.

  Ick.

  “If we did, this would mess up the group dynamic and cause others to doubt my commitment.” Orlando reached down and picked up a piece of driftwood off the sand. He smiled. “We need to win them over on merit and keep them won over, which, because of our desperate situation is a pain in the derriere. They need a charismatic leader and it can’t be me.”

  “Nor me,” Dana said, smiling back. “But we’ve already got just the person you need. Lydia. She’s a natural. When she talks people listen.”

  “Lydia?” Orlando said. “She’s one of yours and the Kid God’s, and she’s too young.”

  “She’s wise beyond her years, Orlando. Talk to her. She’s here for the cause now.” Dana cocked her head and took a good look at Orlando. Something distracted him. “Certainly not for me or for Bob. Their relationship’s cooled off.” The intense difference in Lydia and Bob’s experiences had forced them apart. Dana always caught herself about to chastise one or the other for their immature fights, but so far she hadn’t stepped hard on either one. Lydia and Bob had to work out their relationship themselves, without Dana’s so-called help.