Untitled Part 18
MY ADVICE: IF YOU'RE EVER GIVEN A CHOICE between drinking skink soup or serving yourself up as the troglodytes' main course, just flip a coin. Neither option is survivable.
We sat on cushions around a communal mushroom pit with a hundred or so troglodytes. As barbarian guests, we were each given headwear, so as not to offend our hosts' sensibilities. Meg wore a beekeeper's hat. Rachel got a pith helmet. I was given a New York Mets cap because, I was told, no one else wanted it. I found this insulting both to me and the franchise.
Nico and Will sat on Screech-Bling's right. Nico sported a top hat, which worked well with his black-and-white aesthetic. Will, my poor boy, had been given a lampshade. No respect for the light-bringers of the world.
Sitting to my left was the chef, who introduced himself as Click-Wrong (pronounce the W ). His name made me wonder if he'd been an impulse buy for his parents on Cyber Monday, but I thought it would be rude to enquire.
The trog children had the job of serving. A tiny boy in a propeller beanie offered me a black stone cup filled to the brim, then ran away giggling. The soup bubbled a rich golden brown.
'The secret is lots of turmeric,' Click-Wrong confided.
'Ah.' I raised my cup, as everyone else was doing. The trogs began slurping with blissful expressions and many clicks , grrs and yummy sounds.
The smell was not bad: like tangy chicken broth. Then I spotted a lizard foot floating in the foam, and I just couldn't.
I pressed my lips to the rim and pretended to sip. I waited for what I thought was a credible amount of time, allowing most of the trogs to finish their portions.
'Mmm!' I said. 'Click -Wrong, your culinary skills astound me! Partaking in this soup is a great honour. In fact, having any more of it would be too much of an honour. May I give the rest to someone who can better appreciate the succulent flavours?'
'Me!' shouted a nearby trog.
'Me!' shouted another.
I passed the cup down the circle, where it was soon drained by happy troglodytes.
Click-Wrong did not appear insulted. He patted my shoulder sympathetically. 'I remember my first skink. It is a potent soup! You will be able to handle more next time.'
I was glad to hear he thought there would be a next time. It implied we would not be killed this time. Rachel, looking relieved, announced that she, too, was overwhelmed with honour and would be happy to share her portion.
I looked at Meg's bowl, which was already empty. 'Did you actually –?'
'What?' Her expression was unreadable behind the netting of her beekeeper's hat.
'Nothing.'
My stomach convulsed with a combination of nausea and hunger. I wondered if we would be honoured with a second course. Perhaps some breadsticks. Or really anything that wasn't garnished with skink feet.
Screech-Bling raised his hands and click-click-click ed for attention. 'Friends! Shareholders! I see you all!'
The troglodytes tapped their spoons against their stone cups, making a sound like a thousand clattering bones.
'Out of courtesy for our uncivilized guests,' Screech-Bling continued, 'I shall speak in the barbaric language of the crust-dwellers.'
Nico tipped his fine top hat. 'I see the honour you give us. Thank you, CEO Screech -Bling, for not eating us, and also speaking in our tongue.'
Screech-Bling nodded with a smug expression that said, No problem, kid. We're just awesome that way. 'The Italian wall lizard has told us many things!'
A board member standing behind him, the one with the cowboy hat, whispered in his ear.
'I mean the Italian son of Hades!' Screech-Bling corrected. 'He has explained the evil plans of Emperor Nero!'
The trogs muttered and hissed. Apparently, Nero's infamy had spread even to the deepest-dwelling corporations of hat-wearers. Screech-Bling pronounced the name NeeACK-row , with a sound in the middle like a cat being strangled, which seemed appropriate.
'The son of Hades wishes our help!' said Screech-Bling. 'The emperor has vats of fire-liquid. Many of you know the ones I speak of. Loud and clumsy was the digging when they installed those vats. Shoddy the workmanship!'
'Shoddy!' agreed many of the trogs.
'Soon,' said the CEO, 'Nee-ACK -row will unleash burning death across the Crusty Crust. The son of Hades has asked our help to dig to these vats and eat them!' 'You mean disable them?'
Nico suggested.
'Yes, that!' Screech-Bling agreed. 'Your language is crude and difficult!'
On the opposite side of the circle, the board member with the police hat made a small notice-me sort of growl. 'O Screech -Bling, these fires will not reach us. We are too deep! Should we not let the Crusty Crust burn?'
'Hey!' Will spoke for the first time, looking about as serious as someone can while wearing a lampshade. 'We're talking about millions of innocent lives.'
Police Hat snarled. 'We trogs are only hundreds. We do not breed and breed and choke the world with our waste. Our lives are rare and precious. You crust-dwellers? No. Besides, you are blind to our existence. You would not help us.'
'Grr -Fred speaks the truth,' said Cowboy Hat. 'No offence to our guests.'
The child with the propeller beanie chose this moment to appear at my side, grinning and offering me a wicker basket covered by a napkin. 'Breadsticks?'
I was so upset I declined.
'– assure our guests,' Screech-Bling was saying. 'We have welcomed you to our table. We see you as intelligent beings. You must not think we are against your kind. We bear you no ill will! We simply do not care whether you live or die.'
There was a general muttering of agreement. ClickWrong gave me a kindly glance that implied, You can't argue with that logic!
The scary thing was, back when I was a god, I might have agreed with the trogs. I'd destroyed a few cities myself in the old days. Humans always popped up again like weeds. Why fret about one little fiery apocalypse in New York?
Now, though, one of those 'not-so-rare' lives was Estelle Blofis's, giggler and future ruler of the Crusty Crust. And her parents, Sally and Paul ... In fact, there wasn't a single mortal I considered expendable. Not one deserved to be snuffed out by Nero's cruelty. The revelation stunned me. I had become a human-life hoarder!
'It's not just crust-dwellers,' Nico was saying, his tone remarkably calm. 'Lizards, skinks, frogs, snakes ... Your food supply will burn.'
This caused some uneasy mumbling, but I sensed that the trogs were still not swayed. They might have to range as far as New Jersey or Long Island to gather their reptiles. They might have to live on breadsticks for a while. But so what? The threat wasn't critical to their lives or their stock prices.
'What about hats?' Will asked. 'How many haberdasheries will burn if we don't stop Nero? Dead haberdashers cannot make trog haberdashery.'
More grumbling, but clearly this argument wasn't enough, either.
With a growing sense of helplessness, I realized that we wouldn't be able to convince the troglodytes by appealing to their self-interest. If only a few hundred of them existed, why should they gamble their own lives by tunnelling into Nero's doomsday reservoir? No god or corporation would accept that level of risk.
Before I realized what I was doing, I had risen to my feet. 'Stop! Hear me, troglodytes!'
The crowd grew dangerously still. Hundreds of large brown eyes fixed on me.
One trog whispered, 'Who is that?'
His companion whispered back, 'Don't know, but he can't be important. He's wearing a Mets hat.'
Nico gave me an urgent sit-down-before-you-get-us-killed look.
'Friends,' I said, 'this is not about reptiles and hats.'
The trogs gasped. I had just implied that two of their favourite things were no more important than crust-dweller lives.
I forged ahead. 'The trogs are civilized! But what makes a people civilized?'
'Hats!' yelled one.
'Language!' yelled another.
'Soup?' enquired a third.
'You can see ,' I said. 'That is how you greeted us. You saw the son of Hades. And I don't mean just seeing with your eyes. You see value, and honour, and worthiness. You see things as they are. Is this not true?'
The trogs nodded reluctantly, confirming that, yes, in terms of importance, seeing was probably up there with reptiles and hats.
'You're right about the crust-dwellers being blind,' I admitted. 'In many ways, they are. So was I, for centuries.'
'Centuries?' Click-Wrong leaned away as if realizing I was well past my expiration date. 'Who are you?'
'I was Apollo,' I said. 'God of the sun. Now I am a mortal named Lester.'
No one seemed awed or incredulous – just confused. Someone whispered to a friend, 'What's a sun?' Another asked, 'What's a Lester?'
'I thought I knew all the races of the world,' I continued, 'but I didn't believe troglodytes existed until Nico brought me here. I see your importance now! Like you, I once thought crust-dwellers' lives were common and unimportant. I have learned otherwise. I would like to help you see them as I have. Their value has nothing to do with hats.'
Screech-Bling narrowed his large brown eyes. 'Nothing to do with hats?'
'If I may?' As nonthreateningly as I could, I brought out my ukulele.
Nico's expression changed from urgency to despair, like I had signed our death warrants. I was used to such silent criticism from his father. Hades has zero appreciation for the fine arts.
I strummed a C major chord. The sound reverberated through the cavern like tonal thunder. Trogs covered their ears. Their jaws dropped. They stared in wonder as I began to sing.
As I had at Camp Jupiter, I made up the words as I went along. I sang of my trials, my travels with Meg and all the heroes who had helped us along the way. I sang of sacrifices and triumphs. I sang of Jason, our fallen shareholder, with honesty and heartache, though I may have embellished the number of fine hats he wore. I sang of the challenges we now faced – Nero's ultimatum for my surrender, the fiery death he had in mind for New York, and the even greater menace of Python, waiting in the caverns of Delphi, hoping to strangle the future itself.
The trogs listened with rapt attention. No one so much as crunched a breadstick. If our hosts had any inkling that I was recycling the melody from Hall and Oates's 'Kiss on My List', they gave no indication. (What can I tell you? Under pressure, I sometimes default to Hall and Oates.)
When the last chord ceased echoing through the cavern, no one moved.
Finally, Screech-Bling wiped tears from his eyes. 'That sound ... was the most – GRR – horrible thing I have ever heard. Were the words true?'
'They were.' I decided perhaps the CEO had confused horrible with wonderful , the same way he'd confused eat with disable . 'I know this because my friend here, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, sees it. She is a prophetess and has the gift of clear sight.'
Rachel waved, her expression hidden under the shadow of her pith helmet. 'If Nero isn't stopped,' she said, 'he won't just take over the wor– the Crusty Crust. Eventually he will come for the trogs, too, and every other hat-wearing people. Python will do worse. He will take away the future from all of us. Nothing will happen unless he decrees it. Imagine your destiny controlled by a giant reptile.'
This last comment hit the crowd like a blast of Arctic air. Mothers hugged their children. Children hugged their breadstick baskets. Stacks of hats trembled on every troglodyte head. I supposed the trogs, being eaters of reptiles, could well imagine what a giant reptile might do to them.
'But that is not why you should help us,' I added. 'Not just because it is good for trogs, but because we must all help one another. That is the only way to be civilized. We ... We must see the right way, and we must take it.'
Nico closed his eyes, as if saying his final prayers. Will glowed quietly under his lampshade. Meg gave me a stealthy thumbs-up, which I did not find encouraging.
The trogs waited for Screech-Bling to make his decision as to whether or not we would be added to the dinner menu.
I felt strangely calm. I was convinced we'd made our best case. I had appealed to their altruism. Rachel had appealed to their fear of a giant reptile eating the future. Who could say which argument was stronger?
Screech-Bling studied me and my New York Mets hat. 'What would you have me do, Lester-Apollo?'
He used Lester the same way he used screeches or clicks before other names, almost like a title – as if showing me respect.
'Could you dig under the emperor's tower undetected?' I asked. 'Allowing my friends to disable the vats of Greek fire?'
He nodded curtly. 'It could be done.'
'Then I would ask you to take Will and Nico –'
Rachel coughed.
'And Rachel,' I added, hoping I was not sentencing my favourite priestess to die in a pith helmet. 'Meanwhile, Meg and I must go to the emperor's front door so we can surrender.'
The trogs shifted uneasily. Either they did not like what I said, or the skink soup had started to reach their intestines.
Grr-Fred glared at me from under his police hat. 'I still do not trust you. Why would you surrender to Nero?'
'I see you, O Grr -Fred,' Nico said, 'Mighty of Hats, Corporate Security Chief! You are right to be wary, but Apollo's surrender is a distraction, a trick. He will keep the emperor's eyes away from us while we tunnel. If we can fool the emperor into letting down his guard ...'
His voice trailed off. He looked at the ceiling as if he'd heard something far above.
A heartbeat later, the trogs stirred. They shot to their feet, overturning soup bowls and breadbaskets. Many grabbed obsidian knives and spears.
Screech-Bling snarled at Nico. 'Tauri silvestres approach! What have you done, son of Hades?'
Nico looked dumbfounded. 'Nothing! W-we fought a herd on the surface. But we shadow-travelled away. There's no chance they could've –'
'Foolish crust-dwellers!' howled Grr-Fred. 'Tauri silvestres can track their prey anywhere! You have brought our enemies to our headquarters. Creak -Morris, take charge of the tunnel-lings! Get them to safety!'
Creak-Morris began gathering up the children. Other adults started pulling down tents, collecting their best rocks, hats and other supplies.
'It is well for you we are the fastest runners in existence,' snarled Click-Wrong, his chef's hat quivering with rage. 'You have endangered us all!' He hefted his empty soup cauldron, jumped onto the roadway and vanished in a skink-scented whoosh .
'What of the crust-dwellers?' Grr-Fred asked his CEO. 'Do we kill them or leave them for the bulls?'
Screech-Bling glowered at me. 'Grr -Fred, take LesterApollo and Meg-Girl to the Tower of Nero. If they wish to surrender, we will not stop them. As for these other three, I will –'
The platform shook, the ceiling cracked, and cows rained down on the encampment.
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