The Age Of Odin aog-3 Page 6

  Now, a sex scandal is one thing. A governor getting caught on camera with his pants down in the company of three women of ill repute — in this day and age, sad though it is to say, that's not unusual. Politically it can be survived. State-level officials have bounced back from worse, national-level ones too.

  Not the use of the n-word, though. There was Jerry on the tape hollering it at that trio of busty African-American ladies he was cavorting with, all "Take that, you n***** b****" and "I'm gonna spank that hot n***** a** of yours." White men can't get away with talk like that except, maybe, if they're paying for it.

  And Jerry Forbush surely did pay for it. With his job.

  Which then became mine.

  I can't say I was surprised when a consortium of certain rich and powerful Republican individuals approached me about throwing my hat into the Presidential ring. After all, these were all churchgoing men and women, God-fearing folks. They may not have realized it but the Holy Spirit was moving within them, steering them towards me.

  They told me they'd been impressed by my gubernatorial sass and savvy, and they wanted to see me go further and felt I had the, pardon me, balls to. They said they had people who could oversee and organise my candidacy. They had financial backers up the wazoo, a whole bunch of them, including a couple of Fortune 50 °CEOs, all ready to bankroll me. Was I willing?

  Little old me, willing to run for the top job in the land? The girl born Lois Lynchmore, now Mrs Edward Keener, soccer mom and car dealer's wife turned state's governor… president?

  Well of course, what else I could say to those guys but "Sure!"

  I'll never forget the day of my investiture. The first female President of the United States of America! I appreciate that that is of great significance to some people, and I'm no feminist, but I can see that it's a giant leap for womankind.

  But more important than any of that were the proud, teary-eyed looks my Ted, Brian and Carol Ann gave me as I strode up to the podium to deliver my inaugural speech. That, to me, meant more than anything — my family being so overjoyed at what I'd done, what I'd achieved in just a few short years, how far I'd come.

  I've heard a lot from the carpers, the naysayers, the critics, the commentators, all the heathen so-called intelligentsia who talk down my policies time and again. They say my pro-life and anti-gay-marriage bills — passed through both Senate and House of Representatives with scarcely a murmur of dissent, I'd like to remind you — are an affront to human rights. They say my giving increased powers to the police to stop, search, arrest and robustly interrogate whomsoever they like, as a means of preventing Terror, infringes civil liberties. They say my proactive approach to overseas military intervention is hawkish, anti-UN, inflammatory, and possibly illegal under international law, and that my doubling our annual defense spending budget to two trillion dollars is unsustainable and threatens to derail the economy.

  I have a number of counterarguments which I will set out below. But mainly, in response to the people who make these accusations, I have three words.

  Get. A. Life.

  Was it wrong of me to send US troops to Venezuela to root out political corruption there? Was I mistaken to invade Iran in order to put a stop to their uranium enrichment program and head off the prospect of nuclear conflict in the Middle East? Was the bombing of North Korea an act of warmongering?

  As far as I'm concerned, these aren't even questions. They don't merit addressing. The answers are obvious.

  Growing up in Wonder Springs, I used to hear this saying a lot: Good fences make good neighbors.

  I would add to that.

  If your neighbors misbehave, sometimes you gotta aim the garden hose over the fence and give 'em a darned good soaking!

  I'm just an ordinary girl still, even after all that's happened to me. Come the evening, when the workday's done, all the paperwork's been gone over and signed, the staff have been dismissed for the night, I check on the kids, make sure they're keeping up on their homework and not just goofing around on Facebook, and then Ted and I curl up on the sofa together with a glass of Chardonnay and catch up on TiVo'ed Judge Judy and watch Fox News (which always gets it right, unlike the biased left-wing liberals at CNN and CBS). We devour DVD box sets of our favorite series. Leno is the late-night chatshow we like to round off our evening's viewing with — I adore Jay's jokes, and he's been kinda sweet on me ever since I went on the show and launched the old Lois charm missiles at him.

  I'm usually worn out by bedtime, but never so much that I'm not up for a little cuddling and canoodling. Ted and I are still very much active in that respect, thank you very much, even after nearly twenty years together. In fact, since I got sworn in Ted's been even more of a tiger in the boudoir than before. They say power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, and boy, are they right! Ladies, if your husband's letting you down in the divan department, let me tell you — just get yourself elected to high office and those he-turns-out-the-lights-rolls-over-and-starts-snoring nights will be a thing of the past!

  I still feel I have much to offer, and if it is God's will that I get a second term — and I know it is — then I'll gladly show the American people that their First Lady has plenty of fresh schemes bubbling away on the back burners of her stove, plenty of fresh ideas keeping cool in the pantry. Some of them'll surprise you, some of them might give you pause for thought, but I guarantee, none of them'll bore you or make you regret re-electing me.

  But this book isn't a manifesto. I'll leave the promises and the pledges for the actual election campaign. The one pledge I'll give you now is that if you thought my first term was a wild ride, well heck, mister, you ain't seen nothin' yet!

  Eight

  A couple of days later Odin returned. And he brought a walking stick with him. Nice-looking chestnut one with a crook handle.

  "For you, Gid. Time you got up and stretched those legs. Don't dither. This is the grand tour."

  The castle was well lit, airy, with bare beams, white plastered walls, and little in the way of decoration apart from tapestries, usually showing a forest or a hunting scene. All the furniture was solid oak, the chairs richly carved and adorned with images of animals and helmeted warriors. Spiral staircases wound everywhere, and Odin took me on such a twisty turny route through the building that within about five minutes I'd completely lost my bearings. I couldn't have found my way back to my room if you'd paid me to.

  There was a huge kitchen, and next to it a splendid banqueting hall with a high vaulted ceiling and tables and benches to seat a couple of hundred. These were arranged in long rows leading to a top table dominated by a single massive chair, a kind of wooden throne, backed up next to a large open hearth.

  "Yours, I take it," I said, with a gesture at the throne.

  Odin twisted his mouth. "I preside at mealtimes, yes. Someone has to. Things can get rowdy. Someone must very evidently be in charge, to maintain order."

  We went outside. It was a crisp, clear day, the sky bluer and the sunshine brighter than I could remember them being in a long time. Snow lay knee-deep all around, but a series of paths had been cut through, tidily spaded out.

  We followed one of them towards a vast tree which stood a couple of hundred metres from the castle. It was, honestly, the biggest fucking tree I'd ever clapped eyes on, and — surely an optical illusion, this — it seemed to expand as we approached, the squat, gnarly trunk thickening, the branches increasing in number and spreading, the leaves multiplying into infinity, the whole of it rising higher and higher from the ground, arching up further and further into the sky. I didn't think I was imagining this, but probably I was. The tree was growing, swelling, right before me. From a distance it had looked as though it would have given a Californian redwood a run for its money, but up close, absolutely no contest. It was the daddy. The mother of all evergreens. The three roots anchoring it in place were the size of buses, and you could have built a house inside that trunk — not just a house, a ruddy great mansion — and still had room to spare.
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br />   "That," I said, gazing up, "is reasonably large. What is it, a cedar?"

  "An ash," said Odin.

  "That was going to be my next guess." I shivered. It was chilly in the tree's shadow, chillier than elsewhere. Barely a chink of sunlight penetrated its maze of bare branches. But that wasn't the only reason I shivered. No form of plant life had any right being so enormous. It was wrong. Unnatural.

  "It has a name," Odin said.

  "Thing that size, it bloody well ought to. What's it called, then? Treezilla? Humong-ash? King Conifer?" I was quite pleased with that last one.

  "Yggdrasil."

  "Come again?"

  "Yggdrasil."

  "Bless you."

  "I suspect however many times I repeat the name, you'll keep pretending to mishear."

  "Try me."

  "Yggdrasil."

  "About a quarter to eleven."

  That wolfish grin. "You have quite an… insistent sense of humour, Gid."

  "Keeps me sane," I said. "Just about. Yggdrasil, eh? Well, it's better than Bert or John, I suppose. Tree like this, an ordinary name just wouldn't cut it. How old?"

  "As old as the world."

  "No, but really."

  "Really." Odin winked — or maybe blinked. With that left eye of his hidden, it was hard to tell. "Yggdrasil sprang up at the moment of creation, when the Nine Worlds were formed."

  "The Nine Worlds? You mean the nine planets of the solar system?"

  "No, the Nine Worlds. Earth, also known as Midgard, is one. The others are Muspelheim, the world of fire, Alfheim, the world of the elves, Svartalfheim, the world of the gnomes, Niflheim, the world of — "

  "Whoa, whoa, whoa." I tapped the fingertips of one hand against the palm of the other to form a T. "That's it, Odin. Time out. Let's stop right there. I don't mean to be rude, but this is starting to get ridiculous."

  "Ridiculous? How so?"

  "Granted, I'm not the sharpest tool in the box. Hardly what you might call Oxbridge material. But I'm not stupid either. I've worked out that there's a theme going on here. Asgard Hall. Valhalla Mission. Your name — Odin. Took me a while to piece it all together but I got there in the end. The Norse gods, the Norse myths, whatever. That's where all this comes from. The Valykries too, and old Iggy Pop here. All based on old Norse stuff. I'm not that familiar with the legends, but I did read a few Marvel comics when I was young. You know, the Mighty Thor. He was always popping off across the Rainbow Bridge to Asgard and getting into trouble with Odin, his dad. Wasn't my favourite superhero, with his girly long hair and all those 'thous' and 'verilys' and 'forsooths.' I was more of an Incredible Hulk fan myself. But some of the Thor stories had their moments. And you've borrowed from the same legends, kitted yourself out with the old names, and that's all fine and well if you're into that sort of thing. It's just…"

  "Just…?"

  "It's… I don't know what it is," I said, lamely. "I'm finding it a bit of a struggle to take in, that's all. There's you going on about nine worlds, and gnomes, and trolls, let's not forget the trolls, and you're doing it absolutely straight-faced and… and I just don't get what it's all in aid of. What's the point? It's like some weird, obscure game you're playing, and I have no idea what the rules are. I came here — me and my friend came here — because we thought, we were led to believe, that you lot were looking for a few good men, as the saying goes. We had the impression there was soldiering to be done, for money, decent money, and you'd take almost anyone who applied, never mind their track record. Now, maybe we were mistaken about that, maybe we misread the signs, maybe we got entirely the wrong end of the stick, but what I wasn't expecting, the last thing I was expecting, was to find that the person running this place is some old geezer who spouts Dark Ages storybook stuff like it's true and has even named himself after the king of the Norse gods. It's — it's confusing. And that's putting it mildly. I feel like I tuned in to watch Where Eagles Dare, and Lord of the Rings is on instead, and there was no warning on the TV listings page about the change to the schedule."

  "I understand," Odin said. "I sympathise. If it's any consolation, disorientation like yours is quite common. You'll adjust. Everyone does. Please be assured that I am not mad."

  "Did I call you mad?"

  "No, but you're thinking it. Doubtless you'll think it all the more when I tell you that, when I was much younger, I hung myself upon this very tree." He slapped the ash's silvery, honeycomb-like bark.

  "Hung yourself," I echoed.

  "Nailed myself in place, for nine days and nine nights." He winced. "It was not a pleasant experience. An act of sacrifice, so that I might gain knowledge."

  "Knowledge. Right. And did it work?"

  "I like to think it did. I observed the patterns Yggdrasil's fallen twigs made on the ground. I perceived that they made letter shapes, spelled out words. That was how the runic alphabet came about. I was the one who discovered it, and with it the magic of written language, the power of ideas expressed in a form intelligible to all. This made me wiser than my brothers Hoenir and Lodur, which in turn elevated me to the position of All-Father, head of my family, the Aesir. A fair exchange, I'd say, for those many long hours of suffering."

  "Bargain."

  His eye narrowed. "If you want proof, look." He pointed to something about three metres above us on the trunk. "See? Up there? Those stains. Bloodstains. Mine. My blood."

  I squinted. Certainly there were a few streaks of discolouration running in long thin lines down the bark. Some dark, sticky substance had trickled there once. Long dried now.

  "Sap," I said. "Trees do that, you know. Leak sap."

  Odin stared at me for a moment.

  "I can see," he said, "that you're not going to make the leap of faith today. One good look at Yggdrasil usually does the trick, but not in your case. That's fine. A shame, but it's still early. You'll come around in time. You would prefer, I imagine, to be shown something more concrete. Something more in line with what you envisaged when you set out on your journey here. Very well. This way."

  He set off at a fair old pace, slightly faster than I and my still sore ankle could keep up with. If Odin was miffed with me, which he seemed to be, there was sod-all I could about it. I wasn't prepared to indulge his whims and fancies, this bizarre blather of his. Norse god? The All-Father? Nine days nailed to a tree? Do me a favour! I followed him out of curiosity alone, to find out if there really was any more to this place than a crazy man and his wife and their castle and a handful of equally deluded followers. I didn't think there was, and already I was planning, like the undercover journalist in the brothel, to make my excuses and leave. Soon as I was fully mobile again, I was out of here. The whole thing was a bust. A waste of time. London beckoned, and the ordinary life. Nothing on earth was going to convince me to stay.

  Nine

  Around past the castle Odin went, sticking to the paths dug out in the snow, and I limped after him, quick as I could manage.

  Soon the paths petered out and we were forging across open countryside. Ahead on the horizon I could make out a huddle of low buildings. A dozen log cabins, each with a smokestack chimney sending up a pencil-grey plume into the air. Cosy-looking, despite — or maybe thanks to — all the snow heaped high on their roofs. Chalet-like, the sort of thing you might find up in the Alps or on the shores of a Norwegian fjord.

  Through the hut windows I spotted metal bunks. Each cabin slept perhaps twenty. The beds were made, and I glimpsed enough clutter and clobber around them to tell me that somebody was resident here, even if no one was actually at home at this precise moment.

  The sound of voices came pealing across the roofs, dulled somewhat by the snow. Men yelling, roaring, cheering, jeering. Beyond the last of the cabins Odin had halted, waiting for me to catch up. As I joined him I found myself confronted with a field full of people dressed in extreme cold weather gear. Uniforms. Grey and white snow-pattern camouflage. Scores of them.

  An army.

  Some were at tr
estle tables, stripping down and reassembling firearms. A few were being given skiing lessons by a pixie-like woman bundled up in animal furs. Others were exercising — star jumps, sit-ups, burpees — their faces pink with effort, their breath coming in sharp bursts of white, their boots churning the snow and the mud beneath to chocolate mousse. The fitness instructor who strutted around bellowing at them was also a woman, tall and blonde. She was too far away for me to make out her features distinctly but she was, from her figure alone, striking, and I knew I'd like to see more. The guys doing the workout certainly seemed to be doing their best to impress her.

  The majority of the soldiers, however, were gathered in a large crowd focused inward, and from their cries and jostling and the avid looks on their faces, it wasn't hard to guess on what. Not to mention, money was changing hands. Bets were being placed, and argued over.

  "A fight?"

  "A sparring match," said Odin. "Useful for morale, every so often. Vents steam. And if I don't miss my guess, one of the participants will be my son."

  "Your son. Don't tell me — Thor."

  "Naturally. Of all my offspring, he is the most combative. Loves a good brawl, does Thor. Nothing he likes more. Come on, let's go in for a closer look."

  The crowd parted to let Odin through, and I trailed along in his wake. The men might have been caught up in the fever of the fight but as soon as they recognised Odin they gave him a wide, respectful berth. Anybody who didn't see him coming was alerted by a sharp tap on the shoulder or a nudge with an elbow, either from a neighbour or Odin himself, and instantly stepped aside.

  At the centre of the throng were two men, grappling and trading blows. One was more or less my size, young, black, with peroxided cornrows and a terrific scar down one cheek. Seriously hard-looking sort. While the other was… well, a giant. Seven feet tall, and proportionately broad and brawny. Long red hair, huge red beard, and yes, because this was Thor, could only be, he had a hammer lodged into his belt. A short-handled, square-headed mallet, a stubby affair, looking more ornamental than functional but heavy enough to do some damage all the same if used offensively.