“Where?”
“There.”
“There?”
“That’s right.”
He played with the remote and a new inset appeared. This time it was an overhead color shot, but not from Gojiro’s POV. (How the fuck was this being done?)
“There he is!”
And there he was. Canine head swiveling anxiously, Anubis, God-King of Necropolis, stood surrounded by harem, courtiers, and guards, both ceremonial Nubian and the more practical rocketeers with their automatic weapons, who looked equally perturbed by their situation.
Mr. Thomas shook his head in puzzlement. “What does he think he’s going to achieve by waiting around up there?”
“Maybe he’s hoping to be airlifted out.”
“You think he’s got any planes left?”
Jesus studied the screen. “Never underestimate a deity when it comes to self-preservation.”
Gojiro didn’t seem to have noticed Anubis and his court or their ongoing attempt to save themselves. He was too busy on the other side of the palace complex playing the saurian bulldozer. Semple looked at the screen more closely. “People I know are down there.”
It took the goat to state the obvious. “Hardly surprising, considering you were one of his concubines.”
“There’s Zipporah, and Parsis, and that bloody Dream Warden.”
Mr. Thomas snorted. “If Anubis had half a brain, he’d simply wind-walk out of there.”
Jesus shook his head, as though he totally understood the underlying psychology of Anubis. And quite possibly he did. “He won’t. He’s enjoyed being a god for too long. For him, starting over somewhere else would be unthinkable. He couldn’t face rebuilding his power and his environment. To re-create the entire city all over again would be close to unthinkable.”
“He isn’t going to have too much city left after the Big Green gets through with it.”
“He not only has to escape but be seen to escape, at least by what he thinks of as his loyal followers. Kind of like Hitler at the end of World War II, getting away to Argentina in the U-boat.”
Mr. Thomas belched. “Nasty little shit, that Hitler. A vegetarian, used to fart all the time. Also he didn’t drink. Never trust a man who doesn’t drink or eat meat.”
“Aren’t you a vegetarian?”
“I’m a goat. I eat anything. Barbed wire, nails, you name it.”
“I take it back.”
“You know the weirdest thing about Hitler?”
“Aside from the mustache?”
“The bastard was a lazy son of a bitch. Never got out of bed before noon, and would sit up all night watching movies.”
Semple smiled. “Just like some others we could mention.” She paused and frowned. “But how could you have known Adolf Hitler? The time frames don’t compute.”
Mr. Thomas looked a little shamefaced. “It was on this side. After the boyo had laid low for a couple of decades, Der Fuehrer decided he’d have another stab at Goetterdoemmerung and I, for my sins-quite literally for my sins-got a gig as a regimental goat in the Nibelungen Division of the Afterlife. Of course, I deserted once the Barbiturate Wars got started.”
Jesus ignored the entire exchange, even the passing reference to himself. “It’s like I was saying, if Anubis can pull off a spectacular last-minute escape, at least he’d be able to play the god in exile, and sit around conspiring and planning acts of revenge and terrorism against his supposed enemies.”
“What would be the point of that?”
“To his mind, he’d be maintaining an accepted and traditional continuation. He’d still be able to consider himself a god, albeit a god fallen on hard times. In fact, he might quite enjoy the situation. It would give him infinite scope for self-pity and acts of paranoid violence.”
“I’d be very upset if he were to get away.”
Jesus glanced at Semple. “You don’t forgive easily, do you?”
“I don’t usually forgive at all. I’m the dark half of the deal, don’t forget. Let Aimee run around granting dispensations and forgiving trespasses.” She looked at the screen, where Gojiro was still ignoring Anubis and his entourage of refugees. He appeared fixated on one particular section of palace near the lower left point of the pentagram. Not content with reducing it to rubble, he was actually digging in the rubble he’d created with his huge hands, delving into foundations and subbasements, like a dog after a deep-buried bone, tossing bits of debris over his shoulder like Henry VIII eating chicken. Semple pointed angrily. “What’s his problem? Why doesn’t he notice Anubis and his crew and do something really unpleasant to them?”
Gojiro unearthed what looked uncommonly like a large chunk of a cyclotron. Scrutinized it for about twenty seconds, licked it, and then pitched it away. Jesus turned to Semple. “Where did Anubis keep his weapons-grade uranium?”
Semple looked at him blankly. “How the hell should I know? Concubines weren’t party to that kind of information.”
“But was it someplace in the palace?”
“Yeah, I guess so. There was supposed to be this bit that no one was allowed into, with guards and steel doors and big chrome Tesla things that sparked and flashed. Anubis and the Dream Warden were always in and out of there. Sometimes girls were sent in for the scientists. At least, that was the story. I wasn’t around long enough to find out for sure.”
“That’s it, then.”
“That’s what, then?”
“He’s going after the U-248.”
Semple shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Pigs go rooting for truffles. The Big Green goes for super-enriched uranium. It’s his favorite delicacy.”
“Fuck the great green overgrown retard and his favorite delicacies. Can’t you do anything to distract him? I want that bastard Anubis chewed up and spat out.”
Mr. Thomas stared at Semple as if to bring her back to earth. People who lived in brain tumors didn’t throw rocks at the Big Green when he was on a roll. “There’s no stopping him when he’s digging for uranium.”
But, as the goat spoke, Gojiro hit paydirt. He dragged up what must have been, on any human scale, a safe the size of a large room, raised it to his mouth, and squeezed it like Popeye opening a can of spinach. Something gray and metallic squirted into his mouth. After swallowing, he sat back on his haunches with a satisfied gloat on his face. Almost immediately, all hell broke loose in the dome. The screens instantly degenerated into distorted acid-trip light shows. A distended arterial system appeared in the fabric of the structure, pulsing green-death radiance. A high-frequency shriek forced Jesus and Semple to cover their ears and almost sent Mr. Thomas into convulsions, unable as he was to do likewise with his hooves. The disruption seemed to last for around a hundred seconds and then subsided. Afterward, Mr. Thomas looked decidedly sick. “I hate it when he eats fissionable material. I swear that’s what gives him tumors.”
Semple, on the other hand, was immediately back to taking care of business. So the goat thought she was pushy. She hadn’t come all this way to be bilked out of watching Anubis get his. She rounded on Jesus. “So now that he’s had his fun, let’s get him moving again.”
Jesus shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Semple was uncomprehending. “What do you mean, you don’t think so?”
“I fear our jolly green buddy is going to be a bit sluggish for a while.”
“Sluggish?”
Mr. Thomas, who had regained some of his equilibrium, explained. “His usual pattern is to go to sleep for a while after a snack of uranium. Especially enriched uranium.”
“He can’t go to sleep now.”
Jesus shrugged. “There’s not much we can do about it.”
The picture was now back intact on the auxiliary screens and it showed a King of the Monsters who was definitely looking smug and somnolent. Semple, on the other hand, was close to throwing a temper tantrum. “Can’t you give him some kind of shock?”