29. THE GORGONS
T he Gulfstream flew south-west to the Malay Peninsula, passing Hong Kong en route.
What was left of Hong Kong.
The Titans gazed out at the remnants of the city from the plane's starboard portholes. A few skeletal skyscrapers still stood, canted at angles like gravestones in an untended cemetery. The coastline was pitted with craters, many of them awash with seawater like small lagoons. Wrecked jumbo jets lay sprawled across the runways of the reclaimed-land airport. Houses high in the hills were hollow, roofless shells, overrun with vines and creepers.
Here and there could be seen pockets of makeshift habitation — tents set up on streets in the central business district, clusters of junks and sampans moored in Victoria Harbour, shanty towns along the waterfront. Cooking fires sent up thin trails of smoke between the devastated buildings. Many survivors of the Obliteration still could not bear to leave Hong Kong — it would seem like abandoning the corpse of a loved one — and a number of non-residents had moved there, coming from as nearby as Kowloon and as far away as America, in a gesture of protest against the city's destroyers. Some had even set themselves the task of burying the dead, a huge undertaking. Mass ossuaries had been established in the basements of banks and financial services corporations. Vaults that had once been crammed with wealth and treasure were now gradually being filled with millions of sun-bleached bones.
"Glad Fred's not with us," Ramsay said sombrely, as the shattered, humiliated city receded into the distance. "Imagine that was Chicago… Nah, doesn't bear thinking about."
They landed at Singapore, at a freight airport where, in sweltering equatorial heat, the techs unloaded the TITAN suits and weapons into the back of a waiting hire truck. It had become a routine procedure by now. The battlesuits and weapons were brought out in locked steel flightcases embossed with the Daedalus Industries logo. Permits were checked by officials. Import duties were paid on the "product" contained in the flightcases. Bribes were also paid where required, and they almost always were required. That way, airport officials were disincentivised from opening the flightcases to make sure what was stated on the computer docket — components for keeping missile defence systems in basic working order — matched what actually lay inside. Then began the road journey to the site of enemy engagement.
In Singapore itself, a strict nighttime curfew was in effect. This was because, after dark, the entire island city-state belonged to the Gorgons. Every evening at sundown the trio of snake-haired creatures would emerge from their lair, a pit they had dug for themselves at the Botanic Gardens on Tanglin Road, and wander the streets in a group, communicating with one another by means of hisses, their forked tongues flickering. Singaporeans lived in terror of them. Blinds were kept tightly drawn between dusk and daybreak, and only a fool would venture outdoors during that time. One look from a Gorgon, one moment's exposure to those slitted serpentine eyes, and…
Well, the evidence of what would happen was all around, plain to see. On pavements, in parks, street corners, temple steps, everywhere — the statues. Statues of people, some cowering or shying away, others with their arms extended imploringly, still others frozen in the act of fleeing, looking over their shoulders. The statues appeared to be made of stone but in fact were composed of a carbon compound that had the ashy, powdery texture of pumice. Samples tested by scientists had shown that this substance was living tissue after it had been scorched by a sudden, massive burst of heat from the inside out, desiccated and hardened to a rocklike texture. The statues were the mortal remains of those who had been baked on the spot, instantaneously cooked somehow by a Gorgon's stare. To the locals they had become objects of superstition and dread. Living Singaporeans refused to touch them or, for that matter, move them or dispose of them. They simply walked around them, eyes averted, and hoped they themselves wouldn't share the same fate.
Singapore's crime, for which the Gorgons were the punishment, was that it had been the venue for a failed attempt to overthrow the Olympians. A group of businesspeople, principally weapons manufacturers and oil sheiks, had got together, united by their disgust at the steep decline in profits that had come about as a result of Olympian policies on defence spending and renewable energy sources. This, the so-called Raffles Syndicate — named not after the fictional gentleman thief, as some literary-minded wags liked to suggest, but after the sumptuous colonial-era hotel where their conspiratorial meetings took place — had provided funding for a battalion of international paratrooper mercenaries to launch a direct assault on Mount Olympus.
The raid had been well-intentioned, but doomed to disaster. In all, it had lasted a little under half an hour, from the moment the first mercenary had his heart clawed out in midair by a shrieking Harpy to the moment the final remaining mercenary died on the ground, choking on the spear which Artemis had plunged through his neck; and not once during that half an hour had the Olympians' stronghold been in danger of being breached. Nor had any Olympian suffered any injury beyond the odd bullet wound, which was well within the powers of their resident healer, Demeter, to cure.
The members of the Raffles Syndicate had all, naturally, been tracked down and executed in various messy ways, and the Gorgons had ever since been teaching Singapore, and the world, a lesson — the lesson being it wasn't just wrong to plot against the Pantheon, it was wrong even to harbour those who would plot against the Pantheon.
Nightfall. Six Titans fanned out through the Down-town Core, Singapore's oldest urbanised area and one of the Gorgons' preferred haunts. They moved in pairs along the deserted streets, Tethys with Mnemosyne, Phoebe with Rhea, Hyperion with Oceanus. The city's nocturnal stillness, combined with its immaculate cleanliness, was more than a little eerie. The place seemed more museum, or mausoleum, than municipality. It felt like a specimen of the modern world that had been isolated and preserved for future generations to admire. Adding to this impression were the statues, rough-featured but in all-too-real poses of horror and fear, caught in the pure amber glow of the streetlights. What a contrast they made with the statue of the city's founder Sir Stamford Raffles who stood on the east of the Singapore River, polymarble arms folded, looking out with monumental pride over all he surveyed.
"Base — Tethys," Sam said, after the Titans had spent an hour quartering the Downtown Core, without sign of the Gorgons. "No luck so far. Suggest we widen our sweep."
"Roger that," Landesman replied. Satellite bounce lent a faint echo to his voice. "Remember, if you spot one of them, for God's sake get away as fast as you can and take cover. Unlike the mythical Gorgons these ones don't need eye-to-eye contact. They just need to be able to see you."
"And then they roast you," said Hyperion. "Does anyone else think that's just plain wack? These bitches being able to flash-fry you just by looking at you?"
"I've known a couple of ladies in my time who could do that," Oceanus chipped in.
Mnemosyne groaned. "And we're sharing open comms with a pair of Neanderthals."
"Ah, you've just never been around real men before," said Hyperion.
"Oh, that's right. Silly me. I should be grateful to be in the company of such prime specimens of macho manhood. In fact, just talking to you, hearing your butch voices, it's made me come in my trolleys."
"Do any of you people even speak English?" Hyperion said. "I mean, 'trolleys'? What the hell does — ?"
"Titans," Landesman cut in tersely, "need I remind you that the Gorgons appear to exhibit an advanced and refined form of pyrokinesis. They can superheat any object to a core temperature of two thousand degrees Fahrenheit or higher, as long as they have direct line of sight of it. I'd suggest, therefore, that you concentrate all your energies on looking for them, because if they see you first…"