99 Gods: Odysseia Read online

  “This is something Mom or Knot could have done, save for the story issues,” Diana said. “Trance scry?”

  Jan made a face. “If we have to.”

  Dave smiled in anticipation; he had heard of trance scrys from Diana, but had never seen one.

  “We’ll let them do their work,” the Godslayer said, interrupting his curiosity. “For what you want, you two need to give me a hug and believe we’re all on the same side.” Dave looked at Elorie, who shrugged. This was what he wanted, even though he had to override a feeling of emotional disgust to do so. The Godslayer hugged them, and all became right with the world. Definitely divine stuff, not too dissimilar to his in-depth prayers to Dubuque back when he was an addled worshipper, or his and Elorie’s bedroom antics with Persona. To his left, Dave watched Knot, Jan and Diana sit in a circle and hold hands. Nessa sat down behind Knot and continued to radiate bliss. Ken walked over and sat beside Nessa.

  “I don’t know if we can join in on this trance scry or not – whatever a trance scry is,” Ken said. “But the people behind the alteration of our former piece of Miami are nasty bad guys, or they’re fooling my metry into thinking they are, and if you don’t mind, Nessa and I can protect you from them. From them noticing what you’re doing.”

  Jan made an ick face, but Knot said “Thank you, Ken.”

  The five of them zoned out, gone to the world. So much for satisfying his curiosity!

  “Let’s sit,” the Godslayer said, now holding Dave and Elorie’s hands. They sat. “We’re the good guys, right?” Dave and Elorie nodded. “You pledge to oppose the bad guys?”

  “Of course,” Elorie said.

  “That’s what bad guys are for, so you can oppose them,” Dave said.

  The Godslayer gave him a funny look and a smile. “Asshole.”

  Dave nodded. He was starting to get the feeling the Godslayer was a kindred spirit, or at least she had been back when she had been mortal.

  The Godslayer sighed. “Fine. Don’t fight this.” The world flashed indigo around Dave. Elorie, too. Now Dave felt the divine love, and, following Diana’s warning about the Godslayer’s effect on people, fought off the urge to invite the Godslayer into his and Elorie’s bed for some hot sex. With difficulty. The way she kept eyeing him, he knew she thought he would be fun in bed. “You two have had interesting, albeit stressful, lives, haven’t you? I certainly don’t need to worry about the two of you following me around like lost puppy dogs. If you two want, though, I can give you some help.”

  “What sort?” Elorie said.

  He wished Elorie had enough control to immunize his privates.

  “You’re both heroes at the world-as-story level,” the Godslayer said. She had such interesting hair; he couldn’t stop watching it as she talked. “I trust Diana’s lack of shut-mouth on the subject, so you know what that means.”

  Dave nodded, as did Elorie. “Your actions since the coming of the 99 has given both of you a tiny toe in the water of a set of learned skills we in the Indigo call Heroing. I can catalyze this on you and give you several years of training in Heroing, and make it easier for you to self-train these skills.”

  “You’re talking about things like my instinctive need to stand up to Cox, and Elorie’s extreme sports, aren’t you?” Dave said. Diana didn’t talk much about the Heroing skills, save that they were subtle and similar to what Dave and Elorie did naturally.

  The Godslayer nodded. “This will give you more control over your heroic urges, and allow you to master your fears and emotions in dangerous circumstances, among other things,” she said. From the love she radiated, Dave realized the Godslayer deeply loved Heroes. “This isn’t cookie cutter stuff – the Heroing skills work differently for different people. Consider the personality differences between Abe and Jan, who you’ve both met. They’re both top-end at Heroing. Would Abe have blundered into a confrontation like this? Of course not. Then again, he wouldn’t have called me in, either.” Pause. Dave did understand. Or – better guess – the Godslayer had downloaded a crapload of information on Heroing into his mind to help him understand. As with everything he had heard about the Indigo’s trained tricks, this was all subtle beyond subtle. This would at least help him with his peanut butter mouth problem. “This won’t give you Indigo style pseudo-immortality – that takes a far larger life-commitment than I suspect either of you would be comfortable with.” Dave nodded again. Elorie smiled in agreement. “So, what do you think?”

  “Of course I want this,” Elorie said, now smiling. She stopped and turned to look at Dave. “Uh…”

  “I’m not opposed,” Dave said, flashing on the memories of the last Dubuque fight and having another PTSD moment. “Given what’s been going on in our lives, I think we’re going to need help like this.”

  A tidal wave of divine love brought sparkles to Dave’s eyes, and he nearly passed out in wonder and bliss. Something in the back of his mind, though, told him there was a karmic cost associated with good deeds, as much as there was from bad deeds, and he and Elorie would be the ones paying for it.

  He ignored the annoying hunch. For now.

  28. (Dana)

  Dana glanced up from where she worked with Bob on improving the iPad user interface. Orlando, finally, walked into the lab, what used to be the giant four car garage of the mansion. “I’d like to talk,” Dana said. She had signaled a desire to talk hours ago. He hadn’t responded until now.

  “Okay,” Orlando said, distracted. He bent over to peer over Dana and Bob’s shoulder. “What are you two working on?”

  “I’m scripting up a better UI for the iPad willpower connection. Almost done,” Bob said.

  “Java script?”

  “Uh huh.” Bob led Orlando through the interface.

  “That’s a good design,” Orlando said. “You’re getting better.”

  Bob snorted. “Compliment Dana, then. She’s the one who came up with the UI.”

  Orlando frowned. “Dana? I didn’t know you knew anything about computers.”

  “Well, I’ve used them all my life; besides, Bob did the real work turning my ideas into code,” she said. “Coming up with a better user interface design was just obvious.”

  Orlando and Bob eyed each other, and both shrugged. “That’s a salable skill,” Orlando said.

  “Save us,” Dana said. Making money was the last thing she wanted out of her life.

  “Whatever,” Bob said, and turned back to his computer screen. Dana stood and motioned for Orlando to follow her. He did.

  She led him to the library, her so-called bedroom she shared with the other Natural Supported. Uffie had suggested they all sleep in the same room. The trick worked, in as much as the tension between them dropped after they started to do so. Uffie called them a skill-based tribe and made some veiled references to incipient eusociality, officer corps and music conservatories, all far above Dana’s head.

  She sat at one of the tables and put her hands in her lap, loosening the wedding band. “I think, Orlando, I…”

  “Let me go first,” Orlando said. “I’ve come to the conclusion you’re right about the name business you brought up yesterday.”

  Oh shock and amazement, Dana thought. She stopped fiddling with the wedding band. “Okay. What have you decided on for a name?”

  “My real name, Richard Yoshitome,” Orlando said.

  “You want to go back to be Dr. Yoshitome?”

  He nodded. “The name was good enough for my parents. It’s good enough for me.” He smiled. “My friends called me Richie.”

  Richie. Blech. “When I hear ‘Richie’ I think of the man who bedded groupies,” Dana said. Orlando tensed in an obvious ‘now what’ anger. “You’re a more serious person now, Richard.”

  Orlando – Richard – paused to think and savor the change. “The name’s a present for you, not for the public.”

  Dana sighed and repressed the urge to
beat her head on the nearest baroque carved faux-palm tree estate house pillar. “Then the change isn’t real.”

  “What do you want?” Richard said, anger in his voice.

  “I want Dr. Richard Yoshitome, the man who was resurrected by the evil Angelic Host, given immense power, who despite his origins chooses to use the power he was given to do good.”

  Richard stared at her, and slowly relaxed, his anger draining away. “I’m sorry. I can’t. Not yet.”

  “Not yet?” Dana fiddled with the wedding band again. In a moment she wiggled the ring off her finger. The metal lay heavy and warm in the palm of her hand. “I’m sorry, too.” She marshaled her thoughts, tried to put them into words, and failed.

  “May I look?”

  “Look where?”

  “The place of time. I want to understand my ‘not yet’ hunch.”

  “Sure,” Dana said, glad to have the chance to rehearse her necessary refusal of the proposal and the returning of the ring. She would have to give the talisman rings back to Dave as well and hopefully not fall into his arms and mess up his strained marriage in the process.

  She feared she would give in to temptation and fail.

  Her voice had grown glacial, no lie there. Richard – Orlando – cheated, trying to slide his way around her demand. She fought anger and Nessa’s damned voice in the back of her mind saying ‘have a good fight and remember to be loud and throw things’. This she didn’t need.

  Five minutes later, and after Dana intervened to shoo a couple of the Natural Supported out of the library, Richard’s mind returned.

  “The Angelic Host has a plan to rein in Bob, to force him to take a place name,” Richard said. “They’re going to spring the plan on him at some point where he’s weak and has to agree. There are many possibilities, but they’re going to blackmail him before he’s fully come into his power. If I’m publicly Richard then, supporting Bob’s example, Bob will refuse and the Host will destroy him. Later? If several of us Gods take our birth names or new human names, as a group, the Host won’t be able to say ‘no’. Until then, I can’t be Richard in public.” He held out his arms, sad. “I’m sorry.”

  Dana closed her eyes. She had the right idea with human names for the Gods, but as with so many other things she had somehow jumped the gun. Was that her curse? Should she just wait until then? Could she?

  Her cheating body wanted a hug – badly, madly, sadly. She wanted lips on hers. She wanted hands on her body. She wanted…

  She wanted what Nessa, Elorie and Lydia had. With her own lover.

  Orlando – Richard, dammit – was the right person. He wasn’t taken, they got along well, and he stirred her feelings. His mind soared Divine.

  She hated being flustered, so inconsistent in her thoughts, so mortal, so damned human. Her feelings and actions, though…didn’t they prove her entire argument? To do this right they both had to be human, remain human, act human, which meant all the messy illogical relationship stuff she experienced through the fallen Supported and the Natural Supported corp. She kept her hands in her lap and stuck the wedding band back on her finger.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Dana said. Three more chattering Natural Supported walked into the library, paying Dana and Richard no mind. “We need to find some place more private than this, Richard.”

  Dana rested her head on Richard’s chest and relaxed on her miraculously now much larger bed. She had consented to shirt removal, and they had kissed and intertwined and roused all the animalistic emotions she both feared and welcomed. Lydia had been right about the hand slapping, although with Richard, a touch was all she needed to keep his hands away from what Dana didn’t want him to touch.

  Richard ran his right hand through Dana’s hair. “I’m being selfish, wanting to take things so slow, wanting to savor each new emotion that washes over me,” Dana said. “I’m not playing with you.”

  “Are so,” Richard said, and laughed. “But I know what you mean. Go slow. I don’t mind.”

  Dana reddened. She had reddened so often this evening she felt she had become a rose.

  “Why do people rush through this, anyway?”

  “As in ‘why did I rush through this as a mortal?’ Well, as a mortal, I was a much more uncomplicated fellow. Most mortals are. You’re different. You experience a wider spectrum of emotions, emotional nuances actually, than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  “You’re cheating, Richard. Only a God could sense how I experience emotions.”

  “You’re the one who asked,” Richard said.

  No, Richard wasn’t in the least a pushover. He made her soar.

  “Okay, so I asked,” Dana said. Love, its four letters, didn’t do the emotion or emotions justice. Neither did the word ‘lust’. Her time this evening with Richard gave her a gut-level understanding for why love poetry and love songs needed to exist. Her experiences covered far too many fine gradations for her comfort level. She needed a good bit of allegory here, some alliteration, some nuance, a few similes, and everything would be better. Metaphorically speaking. “Um. Betrayer told me, not too long ago, that my, um, carnal inexperience lies behind my special tricks. I thought she was just yanking my chain, but she’s often right…”

  “She likes to lie by misdirection, saying the truth in such an absurd fashion that you don’t believe her words,” Richard said. “I’d be careful here. Either way.” He paused. “You won’t lose anything you have now, I’m certain of that.”

  Dana burrowed closer to Richard and relaxed. She would rather trust Richard than Betrayer.

  “If you’re feeling like freaking people out, though, I can teach you Lorenzi-style magician,” Richard said, in his nerdy jape voice. “The brain patterns are almost identical, and…”

  “Okay, then, what’s so darned wrong with me that I can do such things?” She didn’t mind a little standing out in a crowd, but there were times recently when all these revelations felt like far-too-much.

  “I don’t think anything’s wrong. You’re just at the far end of the bell curve, what Diana terms an indigo, someone open to learning all the unnatural ways of power. I’m not surprised that the first Supported turned out to be someone of your nature, and I’m not surprised the Indigo organization grabbed you the same way a drowning man grabs a life preserver.”

  “But, but…how long can I be what I am and not become evil?” There. She said the often buried thought. For once.

  “You’ve been sitting on this worry for a long time, haven’t you?”

  “Uh huh.” Freaky Dana pushed life out of her way like a snowplow. Eventually she feared she would push herself somewhere she didn’t want to go. Someplace Atlanta-like or worse. She would match God Almighty’s own evil. What a nice rationalization!

  “This isn’t something that happens to you, this is something you choose,” Richard said.

  “Oh? Dubuque’s minions didn’t seem to have much choice in the matter.”

  “Oh, they did. Dubuque can seduce and convert, but he can’t take people who don’t believe and make them into loyal slaves. Remember what happened with him and Dave, for one example. We think Dubuque’s ideas and methods as evil, but not everybody does, and his recruits do believe in Dubuque’s cause. The conflict’s all about free will; allowing yourself to be sold is still a free willed decision.” Richard paused. “This is the same for everyone, including us Gods. God Almighty’s universe wasn’t made so thinking beings, when they arose, would rise as robots. We’re designed by evolution, which from my archly scientific perspective is itself God’s creation, to be free willed and have the choice to take God’s revelations and twist them however we like. So far we have. Otherwise there wouldn’t be all these disparate religions that are all true in their own way.”

  “What I’m afraid of is I’m going to end up – choose – to be evil out of necessity,” Dana said. “I can feel the choice coming, because of the violence.” Even thinking about the violence dogging her life made her angry. “I’ve taken too many steps
along the path of evil already.”

  Richard paused. “This is because of your response to the violence, a normal human response: anger and hatred of your enemies.”

  “What? Are you saying that I should love them?”

  “Perhaps. Loving an enemy is one of Jesus Christ’s main lessons, and, if the Angelic Host wasn’t fibbing to Boise when he asked and they answered, this is a lesson with God Almighty’s current and full backing.” He paused. “It’s just a hard lesson.”

  “One that I vow to learn,” she said. She wanted to get back to being ‘save the whales’ Dana.

  He rubbed Dana’s back and she moaned. Richard rolled her over on her back and began to kiss her. Dana decided to guide his hands to areas previously taboo.

  Hand in hand with Richard, Dana followed the sound of the argument to its source. The estate’s small formal living room choked tight with voices, taking up far more room than the people and disturbing the early morning calm. Nessa’s family. Lydia. Bob. Someone had put a bouquet of red roses in the center of the coffee table. Lydia and Nessa’s family were arguing over some bit of telepathic craziness.

  Nessa glanced at Dana and then rolled her eyes.

  Dana sent back. Nessa’s eyes turned dreamy and Dana caught a side telepathic comment from Ken about schemes. The skin crawled on the back of Dana’s neck.

  “Your cadre of Natural Supported is all we have, Lydia,” Dave said. “No matter what you think, we’re not combatants. We can’t help in this battle idea of yours.”