Jim Baen's Universe

Serials - parts and parts.

Fish Story, Episode 6

Written by Andrew Dennis, Dave Freer and Eric Flint

Where we left matters in the last installment was a little ways up Bifrost. I was there; it actually happened. You can call me all the kinds of drunk you want, but I'd had nothing but American beer for hours, so we can rule that nonsense right out. Had I been at the Old Tom I'd be the first to hold my hand up to a charge of delirium. Riggwelter would cause me, indeed, to question my own veracity, and if it could be proven to my entire satisfaction that I'd been at the brandy, island single malt or any of the other ardent spirits I'm partial to, I'd be a very relieved man. Because it would mean none of this ever happened. Alas, while I was definitely under the influence, I wasn't anywhere near the edges of reality and certainly not off hunting the white-eared elephant (don't ask, or at least don't ask me when I'm drunk. I'm apt to show you.)

Existential musings aside, the next bit was beyond the most arrantly peculiar hallucination. There was a tollbooth. On Bifrost.

Thor began patting his pockets and rummaging in the capacious nail pockets on his tool belt. "Change, change," he murmured.

"I've a few nuggets," Sheila said, brightly. I kept mum—humorous protestations notwithstanding, I don't mind getting a few drinks in, but paying the toll on a ride I'd never have agreed to go on without being chased into it by a giant and frankly mythical serpent was a bit steep—and peered ahead at this altogether unlikely cash sieve. The usual barrier and booth was present, manned by the standard-issue elderly bloke who looked like he'd lost ten bob and found a farthing, and other time-honoured metaphors for tight-mouthed miserygutsitude.

"Very Norse, he looks," Sheila remarked.

"Danelaw," said Thor, shrugging. "Yorkshire. One of our cultural remnants. Side effect of being gods."

Never one to miss a point of experimental theology, I wondered aloud how that worked. "Is this the old trope about gods existing because of belief?" I asked, after a brief, but not presently germane, disquisition on the Gnostic heresies and the works of Fritz Leiber.

"Not . . . quite," Thor averred, as he finally cracked and produced coin for Heimdall, who was sat in his booth apparently enjoying the aftertaste of the multitude of lemons he'd just sucked.

"Exact change only," Heimdall snapped. "And I'm this way because I got the Danelaw. You think I like being a mean-spirited Yorkshireman? Or, for that matter, spending eternity on stage here?"

Thor handed over change . "Give it a rest," he said to his fellow Aesir, "rank has its privileges, and I was ahead of you and got Minnesota."

"And can still follow the Vikings, even if they're playing that poncey American football stuff. What's my choice? Sheffield Wednesday or Leeds United." Heimdall harrumphed and gave us the most peevish beady eye I, for one, have ever seen.

I shuddered in sympathy. There was a certain amount of logic to it, if by "certain amount" you mean "completely demented and insane." The Danelaw, the north and east of England, was settled by assorted Scandihoovian nut cases—and if you think that culture didn't survive, bear in mind that one of the most notorious football hooligan gangs was the Leeds Wrecking Crew. Which meant that a sports-minded Aesir was stuck with what was, in those days, two of the most deadly dull premiership teams to follow. Oh, certainly, Liverpool and Manchester—hack, spit—United were in the technical Danelaw, but the east side had been counter-invaded by the Celts from the other direction.

"Don't get started on football," Sheila snapped, this being in the days before the likes of Beckham—and their massive salaries, but that's a darkly cynical rant for another time—got ladies interested in football.

"That's right, don't," Thor said, "and it's soccer, anyway. Girls' game."

Both Heimdall and I bristled. "Take a hacking in the six-yard box and say that," Heimdall snapped.

"Right!" I said, "and no fairy armour to keep you from messing up your nails, either." They'd tried to get American football going in the UK at about the time this was going on, to widespread derision.

"Both games for great wet wendies," Sheila snapped. "Rugby, that's a proper game."

I contented myself with harrumphing. If I was going to make remarks about sports for outsize specimens with no pain centres, teeth and muscles between the ears, my voce would have to be pretty damned sotto to avoid getting my head kicked in. Besides, when it came to following sports, it was cricket first and last, for me. Now there's a sport for people with attention spans.

Even Thor could see it was time to move swiftly on. "Quit whining," he told Heimdall. "You could've gotten Swedish Lutherans. Or Danish Hippies."

Both Aesir and I shuddered at that last.

"Who got the Norwegian Death Metal fans?" I asked, unable to resist.

"Modi and Magni," Heimdall said, a wry smile of schadenfreude ghosting over his prune-like features. "Only consolation of being out here on Bifrost at all hours. Can't hear that racket."

"Don't ask," Thor sighed, "those boys are a disappointment in so many ways."

I wasn't terribly well informed on Norse mythology, beyond a vague sense that Kirk Douglas was involved somewhere, but I could recognize the sound of parental disappointment from long experience of being on the receiving end. And it wasn't like the whole purposes of thrash metal wasn't to piss off your dad in any event. Not hard to do with my own father, whose tastes ran to the Carpenters of all things. To this day he thinks the Beatles were a bit racy.

As our conveyance moved off, Spivey sighed loudly. "You know, you sidestepped the subject rather neatly there, big fella. You're going to lose that reputation for lunkheadedness you worked on."

"Since we're headed for Asgard anyway we ought to let the old man fill them in," Thor said, keeping his eyes on the road ahead, "You know how he hates to miss an opportunity to lecture."

"We're going to meet Odin?" Sheila asked, more than a hint of the fangirl creeping in to her voice. Now I thought about it, she'd seemed a tad shiny-eyed since she'd learned that she'd shared a round of drinks with Thor. One of the more elaborate tattoos was a Valkyrie, and given enough drink she'd flex her back muscles to make the horse's wings flap while singing Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries—the Apocalypse Now tune, for those of you not paying attention at the back there. As for Sheila's singing voice, all I can say is that Wagner has had that coming a long time.

Sheila's sudden perkiness of manner caused me to mutter an unkind remark, which earned me a withering look. "A lady," she said, rime-frost condensing around her, "does not ask to see anyone's horn on first meeting, let alone Heimdall's."

"Lady," said Watters, "if I took all the cheap shots . . ."

But he didn't. Without looking, she straight-armed him in the side of the head. His eyes rolled up white and he slumped in his seat to trouble us no further for the rest of the journey.

"Nice," Thor remarked.

What to say of Asgard? All of the mythological stuff was there—Gimli, plain of Idavoll, Yggdrasil clearly visible. Looking it up after, I see that it's supposed to be the most beautiful place imaginable, but bear in mind that in Sweden "Adequate" is considered high praise. It was very nice, if you like bland. I found my self—north of England boy that I am—longing for a few Dark Satanic Mills to liven up the landscape. There's something about a massive rectangular pile of mid-Victorian brickwork with a huge chimney stack that makes me feel right at home. And before you start scrambling teams of world-class Freudians to shoot down the remark about big chimneys, I know, alright? Mill-owners used to compete as to who had the biggest ahem chimney. There's one still standing in Blackburn—yes, the place from the Sergeant Pepper album, and take it from me, there's no need to count the holes, the place is one big one—with a big bulge at the top end. The owner said he was styling it to look like the Campanile of Venice, but really, there is such a thing as overdoing it.

Gladsheim looked, much as a lot of Scandinavia does, like the architect had been given a budget for nothing but concrete and light pine wood and told to knock himself out. And, indeed, concussion would probably have produced something less account for the breathtaking display of anodyne. Inside was another matter. All was dark. Bright lights illuminated a great hall with audience seating. A spotlight picked out Odin himself, at a desk. It also picked out a chair clearly meant for whoever was there for an audience with the chief of the Aesir himself. A black, leather-and-chrome, swivel chair.

I looked from the chair to Odin. If this was Nordic influence, the old boy was taking it a bit too far, I thought.

"Your name is Thor, your occupation is Aesir Section Chief, and your specialist subject . . ." Odin began.

"You!" I cried in astonished recognition.

"It makes perfect sense!" Sheila cried in glee.

"Dad, do we have to go through this crap?" Thor asked, wearily.

"I've started so I'll finish," Odin went on, in a style familiar to British TV viewers for twenty-five years.

I should explain. Wherever connoisseurs of TV quiz shows—not their boorish cousins, the game shows, mind, I'm talking about the serious stuff here—foregather, the recognised leader, the doyenne, the heavyweight, is the BBC's "Mastermind." Two minutes of questions on a chosen specialist subject—and no cop-outs were accepted in those days, there was one poltroon on last year's series answering questions on comic-books, showing how far downhill it's gone—and two minutes on general knowledge. The show's format was based on Nazi POW interrogation techniques, the questions were fiendish and there were no cash prizes. Contestants competed to get on and win purely for the honour. It was hosted for twenty-five years by a piercing-eyed Icelander, name of Magnus Magnusson, who was the very antithesis of the charming, smooth game-show host. Brusque, no-nonsense and, apparently, avatar of a major Norse deity. Odin, minus the eye-patch, was the living spit of the Deadliest Quizmaster Who Ever Lived.

Or actually a Norse deity. "It all fits!" Sheila exclaimed. "All that knowledge, constantly testing the wits of mankind. I watch every show!" It was still on back then, and Odin hadn't left the world under cover of a tragically early death.

Please, I silently prayed, not at the time wondering about the irony of offering up prayers in another religion's notion of heaven, let her not ask for Odin's autograph.

"Can I have—"

Me and my big mouth—

"I said," Odin said, apparently growing testy in ways one does not want to see in a deity at close quarters, "I've started so I'll finish. Two minutes on what in Asgard do you want this time, Thor?"

"The serpent is active again," Thor said, easing himself into the contestants' hot-seat with an air of reluctance.

"Where?"

"Los Angeles."

"What provoked it to rise?"

"I don't know—"

Odin cut Thor off with a glare.

Thor sighed. "Pass, but—"

"Were any of the whales involved?"

"Yes—" The familiar end-of-round beeper sounded. A little early, I thought, but perhaps time ran differently here.

"At the end of that round, Thor, you scored three points with one pass." Odin laid down his question-cards.

Thor rolled his eyes. "Perhaps we could do this without the TV rigmarole?"

"Humour your father, eh?" Odin said, with the avuncular twinkle with which he addressed contestants between rounds. "You know it's the only interaction I get with Midgard these days. Disguise was so much easier when I wasn't a television personality. Autograph hunters are murder." This last with a hairy eyeball of understandably godlike proportions in Sheila's direction.

Thor muttered something.

"I heard that," Odin barked, suddenly all quizmaster again, "and you know I can't be gallivanting about doing fieldwork any more. It's this ineffability business, it's all the rage in theology this last millennium. A bloody nuisance, but if was pure gravy being a god everyone would want in."

Well, I was a bit shell-shocked what with discovering that a major figure in my homeland's mythology was also a Norse god, but I couldn't let that one lie. "Isn't that the wrong theology?" I asked, "I mean, the Christian god's supposed to be ineffable, but you've got all manner of myths about you, and ineffability's supposed to mean—"

I've been given quelling looks by all manner of folks, being as I am a forthright and outspoken sort, and the one I was getting from both of the deities present was a classic of the "shut up now" genre. Definitely more withering than the ones you get from High Court judges—and the wig gives them a certain presence in this regard, so this is no mean feat—and approaching the ones my mother dishes out. Not that I'm suggesting my mother is out of the ordinary in this regard, it's all mothers. Prenatal classes aren't all about how to breathe while giving birth. Apparently it takes weeks to learn how to clean a child's face with spit and a hankie in the most embarrassing way possible.

I digress. "The correct answer," Odin went on, "is that our shapes, identities, and what we can do in the real world is constrained by human belief and culture, and we are tied to the cultures we were first adopted by, however they grow and adapt. Which is why the boy here—" He gestured at Thor, who scowled as any grown man will. "—has to go incognito as a carpenter from the Northern Tier and I raise the standard of television when in Midgard. It makes our sponsorship of the Brotherhood difficult. I'm not going to mention what my grandsons get up to—"

"What's Loki doing?" I had to ask.

"Writing assembly instruction leaflets for IKEA," Sheila said.

"Correct," Odin said.

"How did you know?" Thor asked.

"Logic," Sheila said, "I could probably make some guesses about the rest of the Aesir and Vanir."

"Keep them to yourself," Thor admonished, and whatever his other divine powers, I could tell he would make an abysmal poker player. His feelings on the subject—clearly miffed—were written all over his divine countenance. I could take his point.