Pantheon 00 - Age of Godpunk Read online

  You may also be familiar with the plight of a Member of Parliament who chose to claim the cost of a visit to a massage parlour in Pimlico on expenses. Remember the tabloid headlines? “We Pay So He Can Get His End Away”? It wasn’t difficult for me to rescue him from ignominy by drawing attention to the stresses and the long working hours that his job entailed. I implied that the use of parliamentary allowances to reimburse him for this particular form of relaxation was in fact a wise investment of public funds. A rested, revitalised politician was apt to make calm and clear-headed decisions, was he not? Certainly more so than a tense, frustrated one.

  And what of the footballer with a couple of dozen England caps to his name? Snapped by paparazzi leaving a Mayfair hotel in the company of a girl reputedly several months shy of the age of consent? I obtained a High Court injunction on all reporting of the case and ensured that it never came to trial. Beyond the paparazzi photos, there was no proof of any sexual liaison between the two. Demonstrably my client had adopted an avuncular role towards the child, as evidenced by the arm he placed fondly round her shoulders in several of the pictures and the chaste kiss he gave her on the forehead. I maintained that he and she had enjoyed an innocent breakfast together at the hotel, where the topics of conversation had been his career and her education. Furthermore, the meeting might be regarded as being in the nature of an interview, for the girl had her eye on a media career and could well have been intending to contribute an article about the footballer to her school magazine as a first step on the road to becoming a journalist. Far from being her lover, he was merely her scoop.

  The judge swallowed it. The press were more sceptical but, gagged by the injunction, could do little but mutter obliquely and darkly.

  Anansi, inside me, simply squirmed with glee. Pulling the wool over other people’s eyes – there was nothing that delighted him more.

  PLEASE DON’T GET me wrong, I didn’t represent only unscrupulous rogues. There were plenty of cases during this time in which the innocent were exonerated and justice was done. None, however, demanded much in the way of ingenuity or subterfuge; nor was any of them especially dramatic or memorable. It’s a sad truth about being a barrister that one gains greater satisfaction from reversing the course of the law than from merely seeing its natural status quo preserved. It is when one is the law’s master, not its servant, that one feels one has genuinely achieved something. It is like being in a daily battle of wits with the ponderous, imposing bulk of jurisprudence, and sometimes, if one is clever, one wrestles it to the mat.

  Anansi is a trickster god, a creature of intrigue and stratagems, weaving artful ploys like he weaves webs.

  Perhaps we lawyers are the same, in our way. If we brethren of the law were to worship a god, by rights it would be Anansi.

  IT WAS A terrific joyride, those months of one spectacular victory after another.

  But like all joyrides, it couldn’t last. It had to come to a screeching, crashing halt.

  I was out jogging when Anansi announced that our partnership would be entering a new phase. It was not long after sunrise on an autumn morning, and there was a misty haze in the air that you could taste as well as see. While I huffed and puffed along the Regent’s Canal towpath, Anansi and I chatted, as we often did, about an upcoming trial, the various tacks the prosecution might take and how best to deal with them.

  Then Anansi dropped the bombshell.

  You realise, of course, Dion, that there’s a price for all this, don’t you?

  “What? What do you mean?”

  You don’t get the services of a god for free. No one does.

  “What are you talking about?”

  I’d fallen into the habit of speaking aloud during my conversations with Anansi, even in public. It was easier than keeping them confined to my head. At first I’d received some strange looks when doing this, but I’d got around the problem by the simple expedient of wearing a Bluetooth headset whenever I was out and about. It wasn’t switched on or even connected to a mobile, but people didn’t know that. All they saw was a man taking a phone call on the hoof. I didn’t appear to be different from any number of businesspeople you see on the street, working as they walk. The only distinction was that whereas they were talking to a colleague or a stranger, I was talking to a god.

  “Explain yourself,” I said. “Is this some sort of joke?”

  No joke, Dion. We’ve been working well together, haven’t we? Quite a streak of wins we’ve had. We make a good team. But who’s benefited from it more, do you think? You or me?

  “Me,” I admitted.

  Absolutely. Your stock has never been higher. Dion Yeboah is in demand like never before. You’ve been billing enough in fees to make your peers and rivals gnash their teeth. Your name has cropped up in the papers – not just the Law Society Gazette, but the national dailies. You’re a star in the legal firmament. But Anansi... Well, what has poor old Anansi got out of this?

  “Entertainment,” I offered, lamely.

  Oh, yes, entertainment indeed. But is that enough? I’m a god, after all. Gods cannot be expected to get by on entertainment alone.

  I was passing London Zoo. My pace had slowed. The animals were grumbling and hooting to themselves, a soft, wild dawn chorus.

  No, Anansi continued. Our association is a two-way street, Dion. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. You’ve had your go. I’ve done you a favour. Now it’s my turn.

  “You want something from me.”

  Naturally I do. But don’t panic. It’s nothing terrible. You might even enjoy the challenge.

  “I won’t do anything illegal,” I said firmly. “I just won’t.”

  Nor would I expect you to. What if I said I’d like to give you the opportunity to exercise your skills at coercion and skulduggery in another theatre of combat, outside the courtroom?

  “Go on.”

  You’d be pitting yourself against some of the greatest swindlers, backstabbers and double-dealers the world has ever known.

  “I’d say my career so far has been ample preparation for such a thing.”

  A pair of pretty women ran past me, bouncing beautifully in Lycra. I followed them with my gaze, and Anansi, with his many eyes inside me, looking out through mine, followed them too. Neither of us could help himself.

  Yes – ahem – now, where was I? said Anansi. Oh, yes. You see, Dion, once in every generation an event occurs – an event like no other. You could call it a convocation of likeminded individuals. A competition. A kind of divine Olympics.

  “Divine...?”

  I am not the only trickster god in existence. You must realise that. There are, oh, dozens of us. Perhaps even hundreds – no one’s done a census. Just about every pantheon that’s ever been counts a trickster amongst its number. We’re kind of fitted as standard. You don’t get the full set of gods if it doesn’t have one of us, just as you don’t get a full pack of cards if it doesn’t have a joker in.

  “But they don’t... I mean, they’re not...”

  Not real? Anansi chuckled. But I am, aren’t I? And if I am, then all gods must be too, surely. Stands to reason.

  By this point I had slowed until I was plodding along like a donkey, almost at a standstill. What Anansi was telling me was hard to process. Somehow, without meaning to, I’d become embroiled in something far bigger than I’d thought, far bigger than I could readily imagine. Until now, Anansi and I had just been fooling around, toying with the legal system, enjoying ourselves, getting one over on judges and juries. But this – all at once, this seemed serious. Deadly serious.

  “Other trickster gods,” I said. “And what do you do when you get together once in a generation? Drink? Party? Dance ’til the early hours?”

  There’s a certain amount of that, sometimes, said Anansi. Depends on the venue and the circumstances. Mostly we play tricks one another.

  “Play tricks? That’s it?”

  We are, are we not, trickster gods? Clue’s in the name. It’s a free-for-all
contest of chicanery. Each of us attempts to outwit the others. Last one standing is the winner.

  “Why do you need me for this?” I asked. I was searching desperately for a way to excuse myself from participating in this contest. Anansi was doing his best to make it sound like it was all just one jolly jape, but I wasn’t convinced. I sensed there was more to this contest than he was letting on. “Does it have to involve me at all? Isn’t there some sort of divine meeting place where all you gods can go, up in heaven or another dimension or wherever?”

  That’s not how it works, said Anansi. All of the pantheons dwell in separate, discrete planes that don’t intersect with one another. The only place they do all meet up is here, the mortal realm, where our followers and worshippers are, where our stories are told and retold and spread.

  “Earth.”

  Exactly. Earth. And the only way we can manifest on Earth is by assuming a living form. For some that’s simply a matter of transubstantiating their incorporeal selves into flesh. For most of us, however, the vast majority, it’s a case of temporarily ‘borrowing’ a host body, usually a human one, and using that as an avatar.

  “Rather like getting into a car.”

  Rather like, only in my case it’s taking with owner’s consent, not without. I’d never dream of entering a body unbidden. It’s more of a... a cohabitation than an act of possession. Think how it’s been lately, with me inside you. I’m not riding roughshod over you, am I? I’m not making you behave in any way against your own wishes. We’ve just been rubbing along, mutually cooperating, haven’t we? And it hasn’t been so bad. I think you’ve been finding it quite bracing, as a matter of fact. Quite liberating.

  I couldn’t deny this. “But,” I said, “perhaps I’m not keen on going any further. In fact, perhaps the time’s come for you and I to discuss dissolving this partnership of ours.”

  Oh, I wouldn’t advise that, Dion. Not at all.

  “Why not?”

  Well, remember how it went for you after we first met? When you refused to acknowledge my existence? Remember how bad things got for you?

  I did – the coincidences that had left my secure little world wobbling perilously on its axis.

  My doing, of course, said Anansi. And I was hardly even trying. If I wished, I could make your life a living hell. What I did then would seem like paradise compared with what I could do. The torments I could put you through... You’d be begging me to stop, and do you know what I would say? I would say “No,” and just carry on.

  His voice had become brittle and awful, like ice cracking underfoot, like tinder sticks breaking, like dry bones snapping. I felt a surge of nauseating dread, unlike anything I’d ever known. I stopped in my tracks and bent double, bracing my hands on my knees. To a passerby it would have looked as though I had paused to catch my breath and maybe work out a stitch in my side, not as though I was fighting to keep myself from throwing up, which I was.

  Could Anansi truly do as he threatened and throw my life into utter chaos?

  I had no doubt that he could.

  But let’s not make this a matter of browbeating and intimidation, he wheedled. That’s really not how I prefer to operate. I’d much rather you just agreed to do as I ask of your own free will. Everything would be much more agreeable that way.

  I straightened up. At that moment, the canal looked very tempting. To hurl oneself beneath that greasy brown surface, to expel the air from one’s lungs and let the cold brackish water come flooding in...

  “No,” I said, determinedly.

  No?

  “I mean yes. Yes, I’ll do it. Not because you’re forcing me to. Because, never let it be said that Dion Yeboah does not repay his debts.”

  Excellent. I knew I could count on you.

  “But Anansi?”

  Yes?

  “If we do this, we do it to win. Get me? No half measures. I do not take on a challenge unless I’m going to go flat out, all guns blazing, to come out on top. That is my way.”

  Of course, of course.

  “You have brought me further along in just a few months than I could ever have managed alone. I owe you for that, and I will honour my side of the bargain, but in return I must have your full and unstinting collaboration. I must be able to rely on you.”

  You will, believe me, said Anansi.

  “Good. I’ll hold you to that.”

  Oh, I have chosen well. I could feel him inside me, happily rubbing his forelegs together. It was worth leaving Africa to find you. Aso told me I should stay home, content myself with someone local again, but she was wrong. I’ve tried that so many times and it hasn’t worked. You may not be African-African, Dion, but your bloodline is still strong in you. You’re only one step removed from your true homeland, and you carry its traditions within you, with all the sophistication of the industrialised West. You’re the best of both worlds, and with you, I’m sure, this time I will take the crown.

  “We,” I corrected him. “We will take the crown.”

  THERE WERE PRACTICAL preparations to be made. The contest was taking place at the end of the month, in America. I needed to book tickets and block out a week of holiday in my hectic work schedule. There was also research to be done. I hate to go into anything half-cocked, uninformed. Just ask any of my juniors. We know our brief inside-out before we enter the courtroom. We’ve looked up the precedents and nailed down the references and made provision for every contingency we can think of. Nothing should catch us by surprise, if we’ve done our homework properly beforehand.

  And so it was in this instance. With Anansi’s help I drew up a list of our potential opponents and studied them and their histories and habits. Not every trickster god makes it to every contest. Some balk, some fail to recruit a suitable avatar in time, and some are so neglected and forgotten about that they lack the will or the strength to put in an appearance. A god is only as mighty as the obeisance he or she can command. The less revered, the less remembered, the less empowered.

  Not all the contest entrants are gods, either. At least, not in the sense that we understand the term “god.” Figures from folk tales also attend – the wily fictional characters whose exploits have been celebrated down through the centuries and become the stuff of legend. Adored, if not necessarily worshipped, by many, they have carved out a place for themselves among the trickster fraternity. Lesser cousins, perhaps, but entitled to show up and compete nonetheless.

  I researched them all, focusing especially on a core of regular attendees. In my spare hours I trawled the internet, finding out what I could about them. I haunted the Mythology sections of bookshops, buying armfuls of material. I immersed myself in lore, rather than law, for a change. Within a fortnight, I was as well informed as any comparative religion student on the subject. I was armed with knowledge, and ready.

  I FLEW FROM Heathrow to Las Vegas on a grey Thursday morning. As I approached the departure gate, Anansi proposed we try a little stunt. It might work, it might not, he said. Let’s see.

  I had bought a Club Class ticket – though I have money, I’m not reckless – but at Anansi’s prompted I elected to give myself an unofficial upgrade. When the plane was fully boarded but not yet moving, I sauntered through to the First Class cabin and plumped myself down in the nearest empty seat. I acted as though I belonged there and nobody had the right to tell me otherwise. I waited to be questioned, challenged, checked, but none of the team of flight attendants batted an eyelid. One of them poured me my complimentary glass of champagne. Another took my meal order.

  Sometimes it’s all about balls and bravado, said Anansi as the plane taxied towards the runway. A confidence trick doesn’t involve just gaining a victim’s confidence. It’s your own confidence that matters too. Have plenty of it, and results are more or less guaranteed.

  We took off, and England and its sheath of cloud fell behind. I sat back in my seat, lacing my hands behind my head and stretching out into the acres of legroom available. Eleven luxurious hours later, we were de
scending over the dry sunburnt plains of the American south-west.

  AT MCCARRAN INTERNATIONAL, I witnessed what turned out to be the contest’s first elimination.

  In baggage reclaim, as I waited for my suitcase to appear on the carousel, I caught sight of a Middle Eastern man haring across the hall. He was being pursued by half a dozen plainclothes and uniformed security officials in full cry, all demanding that he stop. The man darted a glance over his shoulder, then collided headlong with a luggage trolley. He sprawled to the floor and the security men pounced. The man struggled, and someone produced a Taser. There was a high-voltage sizzle, and the man shrieked, writhed and lay still. The security men carted him off unceremoniously. A passenger asked them what was going on. The curt reply: “Terrorist suspect.”

  It was enough. It was all anyone needed. Almost everyone present started cheering and applauding, and a couple of suggestions were offered as to what should be done with the Middle Easterner: essentially, imprisonment, interrogation and execution.

  That’s no terrorist, Anansi scoffed. If he’s an Islamic extremist, I’m a tarantula. That’s Juha, that is.

  I didn’t have my Bluetooth on just then, so I gave a kind of mental shrug, as if to say Really?

  Oh yes. Undoubtedly. Juha’s avatar. And if I don’t miss my guess, one of our opponents “dropped a dime on him,” as they say.

  It made sense. In the paranoid post-9/11 United States, anyone looking remotely Arabic was automatically under suspicion. A phone call to the authorities, or a tap on the shoulder and a few words whispered in the right ear, and people would see bomb vests and phials of anthrax where there were none, and overreact accordingly.