Finally he sat back, sighing. "Mr Landesman's personal accounts. We're coming to the end of the tax year. It's a nightmare keeping it all straight. So many different holdings in so many different places."
"You're his bookkeeper as well as his personal assistant?"
"I'm Mr Landesman's everything, Miss Akehurst. PA, secretary, general factotum, chief cook and bottle washer. And now aide de camp. Been with him for more than twenty-five years. Quarter of a century! Right from the inception of Daedalus Industries, almost, when I was a graduate fresh out of university, the ink still wet on my diploma."
"Congratulations on your silver wedding anniversary."
"Thank you," Lillicrap replied, his tone no less droll than hers. "I think it's safe to say my employer couldn't ever manage without me. I know the man better than anyone. I'm indispensible to him. Which is why this whole business here…"
Sam's antennae twitched. "What? What about it?"
"Well, I'm going to be candid, Miss Akehurst — the Titan project, it's been an obsession for Mr Landesman, it's consumed his life for the best part of a decade, and it's also consumed a great deal of his finances."
"He told us that. Half a billion. Half his worldly wealth."
"He was being somewhat economical with the truth there. Which is about the only area where he's being economical." Lillicrap took off his spectacles and polished the lenses on one shirttail. His eyes, exposed, looked small and lost. "Mr Landesman… What I'm about to tell you goes no further than this room, of course."
"Of course."
Lillicrap replaced his spectacles on his nose, adjusting them until they were immaculately balanced. "Mr Landesman has all but bankrupted himself pursuing this dream of his, this vendetta against the Olympians. I've warned him countless times to be more cautious, less spendthrift. These account spreadsheets I've been preparing for him — they make for grim reading. Will he listen to me, though? Will he hell. Deaf to all my protests. I find it… I find it distressing to see such prosperity, such affluence, being recklessly squandered. It hurts me. It causes me physical pain."
"Mr Landesman doesn't look at it as squandering," Sam pointed out. "And it is his money. He can do with it as he likes."
"Granted. All these years, though, I've served as his conscience, the little warning voice that tells him if he's gone too far or if he's in danger of doing so, and always he's paid attention to me and valued my judgement. My advice has got him out of more than a couple of nasty scrapes, believe you me, and steered him clear of numerous others. Until now. Now he simply won't be told. Won't be swayed. And it makes me feel like I'm nothing to him any more. Just another one of his employees."
Sam didn't know whether to laugh at Lillicrap or pity him. The man clearly loved Landesman. It wasn't some mere romantic attachment, it was a sincere Platonic love buried at a level so deep that not even he himself was aware of it. He adored his boss as a dog adores its master. The master in this case, unfortunately, did not reciprocate. Doubtless Landesman considered Lillicrap nothing more than a useful functionary. He had no idea of the slavish devotion he inspired in his assistant.
"You said 'vendetta' just now," Sam said, wanting to change the subject, and also curious about the choice of word.
"Did I?"
"Did you mean that? This war against the Olympians is somehow personal for Mr Landesman?"
"No. No, you must have misinterpreted. If that's what I said, it's not what I meant."
"Oh. OK."
"Anyway," Lillicrap said, resuming his usual brisk and businesslike demeanour, "you didn't come to speak to me, I'm sure, and you certainly didn't expect to have to stand there and listen to me witter on about my problems. You want to know where our fearless leader is. Last time I saw him, he was in the command centre. Try there."
Sam did, and found Landesman, alone, standing before the huge mural with his hands clasped together behind his back. He looked as if he'd been in this pose a while. The gods on the wall, each at least 15 feet tall, loomed over him, dwarfing him.
"Sam," he said, then turned back and resumed his study of the picture. Sam waited. Eventually, after a minute or two of contemplative silence, he spoke again. "What's remarkable about this painting, I find, what's so psychologically intriguing, and why it never fails to fascinate me, is the way Vasari and his collaborator Cristofano Gherardi have managed to make the act of castration seem painless, functional, almost desirable even. There's no blood, for one thing. Not a drop of it in sight. But look at Uranus, too. There he is with the tip of a scythe buried in his crotch, and no trace of anguish on his face, no hint of distress, only a kind of dull, bovine bewilderment. He's supine, hands on the ground beside him, hardly resisting as Cronus digs the blade in. He's looking up at his son more with resignation than anything. It's as if he's at least a half-willing participant in his own unmanning. The other gods are distraught but Uranus himself is just taking it, as if it's unavoidable, just something that needs to be done."
"Why isn't he fighting back?"
"Well now, that's the question, isn't it? Maybe all sons emasculate their fathers, maybe that's the point Vasari is making. When, as a father, you bring a son into the world, what you're in effect doing, consciously or not, is acknowledging that your days of usefulness and productivity are numbered. You've sired your replacement, the boy who is going to grow up into the man who will usurp your position in the world. You raise him, nurture him, teach him, knowing all along that once he reaches adulthood you yourself are going to be superseded, rendered surplus to requirements — your vitality, your vigour as a man, no longer called for. To put it bluntly, every son cuts his dad's balls off sooner or later. Not always knowingly, and certainly not literally, not like Cronus there, or like Zeus later on. But every son does, and every father is more or less complicit in the deed. That's what Vasari is getting at, I believe. That's why Uranus is so passive. Myths are metaphors, and Vasari has chosen to interpret this one in that way. The next generation…"
He shook his head.
"Well, enough of that," he said. "You came to ask if you Titans can resume operations."
"Yes."
"I've been leaving you lot be, giving you some breathing space so that you can make the necessary inner adjustments. I thought a couple of days would be enough, and it seems it is. Back into action, Sam? Eager for more? But of course, of course. Still plenty of monsters left on the hit-list, not to mention the Olympians themselves. Do you really think everyone's ready?"
"I do."
"And you." He looked at her levelly. "Are you ready?"
She met and matched his gaze. "I am."
"The Sphinx. It was a humanoid creature. You were there at the kill. Did that trouble you?"
"It was humanoid, but still a monster. I didn't find that a problem. Not too much. Besides, Rick did most of the work."
"Rick is experienced in that field," Landesman said. "And I believe he saw in it something of his own personal bete noire, the Lamia, another monster with female-human attributes. Hence it was little trouble for him, pulling the trigger on the Sphinx. It was a dry run, you might say, for his upcoming appointment with the murderer of his son. He's a soldier. In his eyes one can see the look of a man who has come to an accommodation with the act of discriminate killing. And in yours, I can see it too, now. It's there. Faint, but there, discernible. You understand the demands that are being placed on you, the sacrifices you're having to make. You know what all this is doing to you. You realise how it's going to change you irrevocably."
"If it doesn't finish me off altogether."
"Quite. Death: the most irrevocable change of all." Landesman leaned back. "Very well, let's get to it then. No need to ask me twice. Back in the saddle and on with the hunt!"