Pious in the Mornings





Andrew Starling












A novel available free from www.foxglove.co.uk
Copyright retained by the author. May be redistributed, but not for profit.








1
Christ was the last to arrive. He was late and he knew it and in defence wore the resigned, pained expression found on millions of crucifixes throughout the world, a pleading look that said: Life's tough enough already, please don't give me a hard time. His robe, his hair, his build - these too were perfect matches for all the varied icons in existence, from Poland to Guatemala, with a touch of Leonardo's The Last Supper thrown in. Somehow he managed to resemble them all. He appeared suddenly through the surrounding curtain of white firmament and stomped across to the green baize table where the other three gods were sitting. 
	"You're late," said Aphrodite, without looking at him. She was wearing one of her long diaphanous gowns, translucent and inviting. Christ kept his eyes turned away.
	"I know." He took the last free chair at the table. "What's this?" he asked, looking even more unhappy than when he'd arrived. "Two Greeks? What's the story?"
	Pan ignored Christ and carried on blatantly staring at Aphrodite. For the last ten minutes his mouth had been hanging open and he'd rarely blinked. When he'd first met her, over 3000 years ago, she'd been using the name Astarte. She'd been dark, a swarthy Mediterranean fireball, at the peak of that short bloom of beauty found in countries where the sun bakes all plums into prunes. But that hadn't happened to Aphrodite. A honey-blonde she was now, with glorious tresses of  long wavy hair. Her skin had lightened too. She'd transformed into a gorgeous Californian thirty year old, full of wicked knowledge and self-confidence. 
	She looked up and snapped her fingers across Pan's gaze. "Hey, space cadet, is it time for your cold shower?" Even her accent was more Muscle Beach than Cyprus olive grove.
	Pan grinned without embarrassment, huge rills and gullies forming high on his cheeks. His hair and beard were white and flaxen, he'd aged forty years to Aphrodite's ten, but there was still more than a touch of animal magic in those electric blue eyes.
	"I was thinking of a bath in warm goats' milk." He stared directly into Aphrodite's glare. "King size."
	Aphrodite's lips twitched.
	"Om," said Buddha, like a clock striking one. The other three waited for him to continue, but he didn't. He sat quietly in the lotus position looking sexless and overweight, although with perfect skin. Was it brown, bronze or gold? Difficult to tell. It seemed to vary depending how the light caught it.
	"I said, what's the score? Why two Greeks?" repeated Christ.
	Pan turned to face him, still grinning. "Luck of the draw."
	"There's no such thing as luck in Heaven."
	"OK then, randomness of the draw."
	Christ snorted and pulled in his chair. The furniture had a colonial air about it, dark tropical wood and foldable. Three of the walls were white firmament, the fourth was a bar. A sparse collection of bottles, glasses and mugs stood on white shelves behind the bartender's aisle and serving counter: Glenlivet, Quervo, small Carlsbergs, dusty flagons of wine. There were no other customers. The place should have looked run down but instead had a pleasant, homely atmosphere. Slow moving fans were strung from the fuzzy whiteness where in a normal room the ceiling would have been.
	"Would anyone like a drink?" Vishnu, the blue-skinned Hindu preserver and restorer, stood a few feet to one side of the table, wearing a formal penguin suit with a crisp white cloth over one of his four arms. He was perfecting his Maitre D's air of superiority. He was very good at it.
	"Ah yes," said Christ. "A glass of red wine please, Vishnu. My goblet's somewhere behind the bar."
	"Galilee region?"
	"A good Burgundy would be nice."
	"Any bread with that?"
	"Just the wine, thank you very much." 
	Vishnu moved on. "Distilled water for you, Buddha?"
	Buddha grunted a yes.
	"Can I tempt you with a double?"
	"No, not now, thank you." Buddha's voice was rich and knowledgeable but had its usual strange edge - some wayward element controlled in there.
	"Pan?"
	"Tequila."
	"A bottle?"
	"Yes please. With salt and lemon." 
	"And for you, Aphrodite?"
	"Finally got around to asking the one female, eh? Hmmm. I'll have a Bloody Mary."
	Christ glared at her. "Remind me how you were conceived, Aphrodite." 
	"I wasn't exactly conceived. I was born out of the phallus of the god Ouranus, when it was sliced off by some crazy with a sickle and thrown into the sea."
	"Hardly a regular dunk and deliver, was it?"
	"No." Aphrodite shook her head, sending ripples down her hair and Pan's spine.
	"So why keep on at my mother? A virgin birth seems quite reasonable compared to yours."
	"I'm not having a go at your mother, I'm ordering a drink. But if you want to fight about it, then remind me of something - which animal is it that has the highest rate of virgin births? It's the turkey, isn't it?"
	"Ooh, you..."
	Before Christ could continue, she added sweetly, "Well, now we're all here, shall we begin the game?"
	"Om," said Buddha. "That's a good idea."
	"Who's got the first envelope? You have, don't you, Pan?"
	Pan patted his chest and his haunches to check his pockets, then remembered that being half-animal he never wore clothes. He must have put the envelope down somewhere.
	"It's under your chair," said Buddha, helpfully. "Next to your pipes."
	"My syrinx," corrected Pan. He picked up the white manila and took out the single sheet of instructions inside. "Now, let's see. The game is... Ethereal Cluedo."
	"Interesting," said Buddha, without sounding the least bit interested.
	"What's Cluedo?" asked Christ.
	Pan silently scanned the paper. "Yeah. I've never heard of it, either."
	Vishnu came back to the table with a full tray and carefully placed the drinks on their Vishnu's Bar and Grill coasters.
	"It's a game mortals play," explained Aphrodite. "A kind of detective game. You have to work out who the murderer is, and what weapon was used..."
	"Mr Mustard did it in the dining room with the dagger. That kind of thing," interrupted Buddha.
	"...It's played on a board, with dice and special cards."
	"And plastic playing pieces." Buddha struggled to remain droll. "Miss Scarlet. That's my favourite. Have we got a board?"
	"No." Pan was still reading the instructions. He looked puzzled. "If I understand this right, we're going to use mortal Earth as our board."
	"Fascinating," breathed Aphrodite.
	"And we're to choose playing pieces from the mortal population, but create the weapons ourselves."
	"What?" queried Christ. "Real mortals?"
	"But we don't necessarily finish up with the pieces we choose, or the weapons we create. It's all a bit cryptic. Listen." And Pan read from the sheet:..

"The name of the game is Ethereal Cluedo, 
A game with a murder in mind.
There's mystery and intrigue and only one winner 
When all's played and ended, you'll find.
Take the Earth as your board and four mortals for pieces, 
One each, but select them with care,
For the pieces you choose will be dealt out at random 
Between you to keep the game fair.
Create weaponry too, in potential, 
For each piece some odd latent power.
Not an object but something more abstract and playful, 
The seed of a dangerous flower.
In potential, you hear, for the weaponry too 
Will be shuffled and dealt on a whim.
But let's leave that as part of the mystery for now. 
Good luck. May the best god win."



2
Although it could never be described as religious, THE SCENE magazine certainly contained plenty of gods' names. Eos, Greek goddess of the dawn, and Athena, the warlike virgin, were there. And Mazda, the Japanese god of light; Nike, the ancient Greek goddess of victory; Mars, the war god of the Romans, and Mercury, their celestial messenger. All helping to promote cameras, cards, cars, sports shoes, chocolate and telephones. Destined, like sports and TV personalities, to spend their later years doing product endorsements.
	THE SCENE's claim to fame, as it proudly announced on its front cover, was that it was 'First with the Trends'. Whether this was true or not, Jimmy couldn't be sure. He'd started reading it regularly almost five years ago, and during that time not a single worthwhile trend had come along. He'd been fighting off maturity, holding on for the big one to arrive, something the size of flower-power or the mods or the teds, but it hadn't. Finally he'd recognised that his adolescence was coming to an extended end without him ever experiencing the pleasure of belonging to a cult. He'd caught the tail end of the rave scene, just as it was becoming hip to abandon it. Patiently he'd waited for something else to appear and fill the gap, something he'd have to wear utterly ridiculous clothes for. But it hadn't happened. 
	There'd been the odd false start, like the re-teds scare two years ago. Three days to find the right size brothel creepers and drainpipes, another two for the long jacket with velvet collar. And puff! The whole thing had collapsed over the weekend. He was just thankful he hadn't been able to get an appointment at the hairdresser.
	At least the trendlessness bothered him less these days. For years he'd been wearing the waiting uniform of teeshirt and jeans, a sign of neutral readiness, and eventually he'd realised they suited his scrawny body rather well. They were exactly right for that bored, listless look he'd been cultivating since the age of fifteen.  
	He turned to an article on designer car tyres but found he couldn't take it seriously. A random flick brought him to a fashion piece that began with the words, "Blue is the new black". He shook his head and moved on. The wild and wacky world of flower arranging? Hardly. In disgust he threw the magazine down on the kitchen table.
	Feeling restless, he stepped across the gaudy linoleum floor to the window and out of habit rather than need wiped his hands on the curtains. The view took in twenty metres of neglected grass and the back of an identical block of north London flats, their black wastepipes running sideways and down from the kitchens and bathrooms. The poor old building had varicose veins. 
	A light drizzle was beginning to fall. For a while he opened the window and watched the little drops of rain meandering down in slow motion, then turned his back to the wet outside world, let wind quietly and admired the awfulness of his kitchen. Each separate item of furniture was appalling: the blue Formica table, the wonky fridge, the work units with their balding veneer. All except the yellow cupboard with its oddly-shaped glass panels - ancient and so bad it was adorable.
	Jimmy was unsettled by that cupboard. He really liked it. He always tried to stay completely neutral to his surroundings, to hold no affection for a place or the things inside it. It was important to have that attitude, important for freedom of mind, important that everything you had inside a house you could happily take an axe to, although of course the landlord might see things differently. But not that yellow cupboard.
	He walked across and opened the left hand door. Two tins of baked beans, one mulligatawny soup, a bottle of chilli sauce, and tucked away in the warmest corner a very special carton of fruit juice. He peered inside at the layer of froth. Coming along nicely. It would be ready just in time.
	It wasn't easy getting drunk when two pints in a pub cost ten percent of your dole money. Home-brewing might not be trendy but it was cheap. Just a carton of Five Alive fruit juice, winemaker's yeast and a few tablespoons of sugar. The finished brew still tasted like juice but had a hit like poteen. His friends called it Five Dead, Six Injured, and wouldn't go near the stuff. But it was perfect for offering to nubile young ladies at parties. There was a party at Freddie's on Saturday, in two days' time.
	He dipped a finger in and licked the tip. Hmmm. A delicate number with ripe acidity and a touch of apple in the aftertaste. Bloody marvellous, actually. Nothing like the normal
crap he turned out. Touched by the hand of God, it seemed.	


3
"So, this Jimmy character," said Pan, disdainfully, "is presumably somebody's playing piece?"
	"Mine," replied Aphrodite.
	"I see. A young and thoughtless party animal. What a fine choice."
	"I do believe you were young once, Pan."
	"And what's the weapon?" asked Christ. "Something to do with the homebrew?" 
	"If I recall correctly," said Aphrodite, "we're only creating latent weapons at this stage. I don't really see that I need to tell you what the weapon is."
  "Om," agreed Buddha, and there was a pause for him to continue, but he didn't.


4
Cath looked up from her book and pushed her sunspecs back to stop the strong Majorcan sun creeping over the top of them and making her squint. She looked directly into the sky. A few cotton wool clouds. She liked clouds. Not, for preference, a whole sky full of them. Just one or two like these. Little counterpoints. She took another sip from her banana daiquiri and sighed. "These taste so nice."
	Helping out with the sunbeam collection was a second body lying nearby, this one belonging to Gloria and far more Amazonian than Cath's model frame. Bigger hips, boobs - now bared to the sun - and shoulders, all topped by a Medusa mass of hennaed hair. Cath had wondered about taking her own top off, but with long blonde hair and everything in perfect proportion she got enough attention without adding to the problem. 
	The red snakes stirred. Gloria nodded lightly without raising her head or opening her eyes. A copy of Cosmopolitan lay discarded next to her, half on her towel and half on the beach. 
	"How's the mag?" asked Cath. They'd been lying together silently for an hour. It was time for a conversation break.
	"I'm having trouble with it."
	"In what way?"
	"I was looking for the article on orgasms."
	"And?"
	"There wasn't one."
	"Oh," said Cath, mildly surprised.
	"Or maybe there was, but I just couldn't reach it."
	Cath sniggered. They'd only met two days ago, but already there was a nice rapport. At first Cath had assumed that someone as vivacious as Gloria wouldn't be interested in her regular mundane company. It was nice to be proved wrong. Maybe it was their common aims that had drawn them together. Sun, sea, reading. Nothing complicated like relationships or men. Though that didn't stop them talking about sex.
	"No lack of rumpty-pumpty in this." Cath held up Rompers, the latest Jacqueline Cooper. She'd left the heroine on page 157 at the end of her fourth sexual adventure of the day. The gorgeous bronzed tongue-artist was about to be dismissed and drive away in his white Mercedes, leaving the heroine just enough time to slip out to the Beverly Hills Jacuzzi shop for a touch of retail therapy before the sun went down. Then of course there'd be the ball in the evening. And a ball at the ball if she could fit one in.  
	"Do you know what really turns me on?" began Gloria.
	"No?"
	"Wearing a uniform in front of thousands of people. I can't explain it. But there's a real buzz. I think that's half the reason I stay in my job. It doesn't pay well, looking after showbiz types, guarding stage doors. It's a bit dull most of the time. But every so often it gives me this totally ridiculous thrill. I get all tingly, horny as hell."
	Cath lit a Marlboro. She hated uniforms, her own especially. She held her glass in her hand and looked wistfully out to sea. "It would be so nice to stay here longer. A couple of days isn't enough."
	"Mmmm," agreed Gloria. "Unfortunately I've got a gig back in England the day after tomorrow."
	"And I've got my damned rota to follow."
	"All the glamour of the stage and the sky."
	Cath didn't want to think about work. Tomorrow she'd be back in uniform, back on the aircraft, serving diabolical food and dealing with stupidity and whims. Being a cabin attendant wasn't half as much fun as people imagined. For a moment, her mind drifted off into a strange variation on her role. Through the little glass and Perspex portholes in an imaginary fuselage the sun disappeared into its slot beyond the horizon, joining all the used-up suns of previous days, and she became a were-stewardess, wandering up and down the aisles biting passengers' necks with her long fangs while the full moon shone off the silver wings outside.
	"Where are you flying off to?" asked Gloria.
	"Heathrow, then a Bangkok, Perth, Sydney run, but a few days to kill in the UK first." 
	"So have I. Just the one evening gig, otherwise slow days. Why don't we kill them together? A nice big house in Sussex. You'll have to put up with the RTGs, but they're harmless enough."
	"RTGs?"
	"Random Thought Generators. It's what I call my parents. Mother's not too bad, but father's a waste of space."
	Cath didn't think about it for long. A few more days in Gloria's company would fill the gap perfectly. "It's a deal."
	The conversation break was over. Gloria lay still. Cath stubbed her cigarette out in the sand. It didn't suit the heat. She picked up Rompers and stared at page 157.
	Such a shame, she thought, that even women couldn't write properly about women. The heroine of Rompers was a scheming, ambitious philosophy graduate, and just as dismissive of blondes as the average male. Why couldn't even female writers see that blondes weren't dizzy or dumb, they were just blessed with very active theatres of the mind? There was so much great entertainment going on inside that they didn't need to interact with the outside world.   
	She stared at the page for a long time. Something very strange had happened to it.  She couldn't make out the words. They were distinct, not fuzzy or dim, but they didn't mean anything, nothing more than a series of elaborate squiggles on paper, like Japanese letters or Arabic, artistic in a graphical sort of way but meaningless. The entire page was an intricate patterned mass of grey. How weird, she thought, that all those squiggles could form pictures in the mind, create emotions, change a mood, change a lifetime's direction, even. Not that Rompers could do that, but something heavyweight like The Grapes of Wrath or Animal Farm. Yet now the squiggles were little black curves and lines that meant nothing.
	Then it struck her, the very thoughts running around her head could become unrecognisable in exactly the same way, all deconstructed into electrical signals and chemicals. Not meaning anything. Simply firing across the synapses and travelling between cells in an orderly fashion but with no significance. Electrical activity without comprehension. She tried to see her thoughts this way, like the unreadable curves and lines on the page. And there were no thoughts.
	There was nothing in her mind. It went blank.
	It went blank for some time.
	"Cath?"   
	Gloria was sitting upright, shaking Cath's arm.
	"Cath?"
	"What? Oh, Gloria."
	"Cath, what happened?"
	"Nothing." Cath came back to reality. No damage done. But what a peculiar experience.
	"What were you thinking about?" asked Gloria.
	"Nothing. Absolutely nothing."
	Gloria regarded her for a moment, then took a sip of daiquiri. "This is going to sound very strange, but I could feel you were thinking something odd. I didn't get Nothing, I got a very strange perspective. I had my eyes closed and I saw everything in great clarity, everything relative to everything else, true values, and very small everything was too. And that was all down to you and your empty mind, I swear."
	Cath blushed. "Gloria, I'm so sorry."
	Gloria raised her hand to her hair. "Don't worry. It wasn't unpleasant. I suppose it could have been. But it wasn't."
	"I don't know what happened. Very strange."
	"You say you were thinking of nothing? Absolutely blank?"
	Cath nodded.
	Gloria frowned. "Don't tell any men."
	
	
5
"If I didn't know better," said Christ, glancing in Aphrodite's direction, "I'd have said Cath was your piece."
	"Well you do know better."
	"Mine," said Buddha.
	That was a surprise.
	"And what's the weapon?" asked Christ.
	Buddha only smiled.
	"A blank mind doesn't sound especially dangerous," prompted Christ.
	"Don't push him if I were you," said Pan. "You'll only get one of his damned riddles."
	"A thoughtless mind may enlighten," said Buddha with a twinkle in his eye.
  "Told you so."


6
The hands that picked up Dorothy's embroidery frame and placed it on her lap were her own but so wrinkled she barely recognised them. Whenever she looked in the mirror an unfamiliar face smiled back. She was still thirty in her mind, but the owner of a seventy year old body, one that had gone in its own direction. Vertically down. Eyelids, bosom, backside. 
	She'd nearly finished the homely Welsh stitch-by-numbers scene. A cottage with a tabby cat in the window, a smiling lady in traditional dress, a winding path, lollipop trees, cotton-wool clouds, and her own minor additions.	
	"It says here," began her husband, from behind his newspaper, "St Belvedere's church is closing down. Lack of support from the local community."
	"Maybe we should go," suggested Dorothy.
	"Don't you think that's taking things a bit far?"
	Around the Peterhurst Chronicle Dorothy could see the shoulders of his tweed jacket, his khaki shirt and tightly knotted club tie. He might have been a retired colonel but wasn't red enough in the face. The closest he could manage was retired merchant banker. 
	If only you weren't such an old stick in the mud, she thought, then tried to pretend it wasn't a thought she'd had at all, since it was so ungracious. It was just... when their children had grown up and left them rattling around the big house in the countryside, she'd seen it as freedom. She'd wanted to go on a world cruise, still did. They had the money. Arthur had always been well paid. But he wouldn't contemplate the idea. Even looking at travel brochures seemed to make him homesick. It was hard work just getting him to drive to the local town. 
	"If they stop using St Belvedere's as a church," said Arthur. "what do you think they'll do with it? You don't think they'll turn it into a youth club, do you?"
	Dorothy could tell from the way he said "youth club" that he was very pleased by the idea. It was so rare for anything to happen in the community that was worthy of bitter complaint. She imagined he was mentally drafting the letter to the Chronicle right now. He loved to complain. This was convenient because old people are supposed to whine about things and Dorothy, despite her dissatisfactions, simply wasn't up to it. But measured as a couple they did just fine.
	She put down her embroidery without adding a single stitch. She hated bloody embroidery. At least she'd finished all the kitsch little stitch-by-numbers bits. All she had to do now was fill in the low-flying Jaguar jet she'd added to the sky and the two travellers smoking a joint in the bottom left hand corner. She picked up the remote control and hit button 1. The screen came to life with its characteristic ping and crackle.
	 "Martha will be on in a moment," she said, more to herself than to Arthur.
	That was something else old people were supposed to do - watch enormous amounts of television. Dorothy felt that this was one of the more acceptable duties of age. Most evenings she and Arthur would prop themselves with cushions in their separate easy chairs, the cat between them on the three-seater sofa and dog lying on its side on the hearthrug, and plug their eyes and ears  into the electric lectern, soaking up its visions and aural stimulation, enjoying the beautiful trance-like state of thoughtlessness it invoked, a state that in past ages might have taken an ascetic ten years of Zen to reach but could now be found at the push of a button. They still called this room by its old-fashioned names of sitting room or living room or lounge, but clearly it was a TV room, dominated by the big electronic shrine in the corner.	
	After a few minutes of BBC promotions, the starting sequence of Dorothy's favourite soap opera, Bathroom, began. There was Martha Naaktgeboren, superbitch and undisputed star of the show, on screen in all her bejewelled glory, looking as radiant as an artificial coal fire turned full on. It was an episode covering colonoscopy and the lack of an expected wedding invitation. That much was established in the first telephone call.
	Dorothy realised with alarm that she hadn't switched the video on. She picked up the zapper and tried to press the correct four tiny buttons. There were 82 in total on the remote control - some NASA control consoles have less -  and by each one was a symbol in what appeared to be Mayan or Aztec writing. She always recorded Bathroom. On her shelves she had every single episode - at least that was the theory. In practice, twenty percent were wildlife documentaries, fifteen percent game-shows and another ten percent anything from testcards to elephants playing football. But that still left more than half as episodes of Bathroom. She was proud of her video operating skills.
	On-screen, Martha was already about to have her first showdown of the evening, with her sister's gorgeous doctor.
	"I need a pee," said Arthur. He put the paper down and sat there perfectly still for a few minutes, as if one might come to him. Just as Martha got to the exciting bit where she was starting to threaten the doctor with a scalpel, Arthur groaned and rose to his feet.
	"Geronimo," said Dorothy.
	"Thank you, dear." 




7
The producer and director of Bathroom had put a lot of thought into the programme's peculiar name. Its connection with soap was no more than a happy coincidence. Actually he'd arrived at the name through careful analysis of competing programmes, such as Dallas, Knot's Landing, Eastenders and Coronation Street. He'd recognised that their names all described the places the characters came from. 
	He also recognised that nobody in a soap opera ever went for a leak, even in an omnibus edition. So obviously they'd gone just before the programme started. They'd all come from the bathroom. 


8 
Christ lowered his goblet, wiped the residue of red wine from his lips and pointed his finger at Pan.
	"Dorothy's yours."
	"How did you know?" Pan was genuinely surprised. A small pile of sucked lemon pieces grew at his elbow. Every so often he picked up a fresh wedge from the saucer that Vishnu had provided, and used it to dampen the crescent of his left hand where the thumb and forefinger joined. Then he touched the crescent in a bowl of salt, poured himself a stiff tequila, and shot it: salt-lick, liquor-slug, lemon-suck, a two second bounce around the walls for the taste buds. A third of the bottle had gone and his voice had picked up a trace of a slur.
	"Aphrodite's got the young idiot," explained Christ, redirecting his finger, "Buddha's got the pretty one, and I know this one isn't mine, so it must be yours."
	"I think you're probably going to be very good at this game," breathed Aphrodite.
	"Om," said Buddha. The other three waited expectantly, but he didn't continue, so they carried on.
	"And the weapon?" asked Christ.
	"A secret," said Pan. "Nobody else is giving away their weapon, so why should I?"
	"The weapon is transferable?" checked Christ.
	Pan nodded.
  "Good. Now hang on to your seats, it's my turn."


9
"So as you see," the woman's voice droned on, "the elements of successful employee management are symbolised by these communication indicators." Here she wafted her pointing stick across a pull-down screen covered with squares joined together by arrows.
	It was the third in a series of company pep talks and Max had absolutely no idea what the previous two had been about either. The amazing deal with this kind of stuff was that you could pay full attention and still not know what was going on.
	Not that anybody was paying attention. He looked around at his fellow workers, gathered in a crescent of office chairs. He was thirty-eight now, married with one kid and a mortgage. Give or take a bairn or two and half a lifetime, his fellow workers were exactly the same, all working for the loan repayments and the two week family holiday, all somehow quirkily shaped - too thin, too fat, too short, too tall - the kind of people you only ever came across in dull offices like these or in the supermarket on Saturday afternoons. The mis-shapes, he called them. 
	Max's own body shape was also very special, with marginally undersized shoulders and chest but a little pot of a belly, so he could manage to look scrawny yet overweight at the same time; the type of body that never suited any clothes apart from heavily creased raincoats. Amongst the mis-shapes he blended in perfectly. They were excellent camouflage. Nobody could see that he was a cunning impostor, that he was the emerald in this handful of stones, that in reality he was a brilliant inventor just a hair's-breadth from success.
	He looked around at the crescent again. The vacant faces suggested that nobody had managed to digest much pep. If they were thinking about anything at all it was probably sex. Max smiled, which was a mistake because the young and plasticky woman they'd brought in to give the talk started looking at him more often. She appeared to be trying to stir the squares and arrows with her pointing stick. "...Some of these being of a supervisory nature, some of a feedback nature, and others" - here she paused to stare over the top of her credibility glasses - "interpersonal."
	Never mind, it was nearly over.
	"And don't forget," she added, "prioritise. Any questions?"
	Max thought of two. Is it lunchtime yet? And what's my pay rise this year?
	"Good. I think that's enough for now. I'll see you the same time next week when we'll look at the concept of individual goals within a corporate philosophy. Ciao for now."
	A tall gentleman with greying hair and a tired demeanour rose from his chair next to the screen of squares and arrows. It was Elston, Maintenance, the acting office manager. The company hadn't got around to appointing a genuine office manager since the last one had retired a year ago. "Well, that was very interesting and I think we'd all like to thank Miss Buzzward for coming along this morning." He clapped his hands very loudly and a smattering of return fire was offered by the assembled staff. Miss Buzzward bowed her head in acknowledgement. The twenty workers rose and rolled their wheelie chairs back to where they belonged.  
	Max was back amongst his filing cabinets again. They surrounded him on three sides like walls, defining his own personal space in the open plan room. Elsewhere in the exhibitions office draughtsmen toiled amongst heaps of rolled-up drawings and administrative colleagues peeked out over desks piled high with exhibition catalogues and order forms. On Max's desk there was just one sheet of paper. As a clerical minion he felt obliged to keep his working area tidy. Unfortunately that single piece of paper had been bothering him for days.

144 Imperial Moths (main course)      	 @ 50p  = £72
24  Chinese Lacewings (appetiser)          	 @ £1   = £24
12  Craneflies (dessert)    		            F.O.C. off workshop walls  = £0
                                                  	  	     Total £96
The Ecologically Sound Butterfly Company Ltd, Wells, Somerset.

Max worked at the London headquarters of Hutch Holdings Limited, wholly owned by Philip K Hutch, an Englishman who thought his name sounded wealthier with an American-style K in the middle, and with a Hutch at the end instead of a Myers - his original surname. Hutch Holdings built and sold houses. "Ding Dong," went the jingle. "Why get a house when you can get a Hutch?"
	Hutch Developments did the actual construction, using bricks fired in Hutch Kilns Ltd and partition walls rolled in Hutch Paper Mills. Max worked for Hutch Sales, in the exhibitions department, which dealt with permanent showhouses and with the single collapsible building that did the rounds of exhibitions in the UK. This unique structure was affectionately known as the Portawarren.
	It was the Portawarren that lay at the heart of Max's current invoice problem. At the last exhibition a colony of horseshoe bats had been discovered living in its eaves. Great publicity, said Hutch Marketing, let's get them on local TV. Next day the RSPCA had been in touch, pointing out that horseshoe bats were a protected species and mustn't be removed. "Public service... high profile.... look forward to hearing about them next year... etc." All very well except that nobody had a budget for bat food.
	The bat colony was still in the roof of the Portawarren, which was currently on the back of a truck travelling down the A1 somewhere near Newcastle. And the invoice was still on Max's desk looking for sponsorship from a kind accounts heading.
	"Don't be daft," McFarlane, in charge of Transport, had said. "Of course I haven't got any budget for it. You can't expect me to feed hitch-hikers, can you? Try Maintenance." 
	"Are you joking?" said Elston, Maintenance and acting office manager. "Do you know what those bat droppings are doing to my overheads? Overheads. Ha, ha! Get it? No, don't put them under Maintenance. Try Catering."
	"Moths?" said Jones C, Catering. "Moths? Has somebody been using that Nigerian catering company again? For the bats, eh? Well I'd like to help, but I don't think the auditors would swallow it. Swallow it. Ha ha! Get it? No, never mind. Try McFarlane in Transport."
	He'd have to put it under Sundries. That was always bad news. Whenever anybody checked a set of accounts they always picked a quarrel with Sundries. Still, if he was going to make the progression from filing and accounts clerk, grade 3, to accounts clerk grade 2, he'd better start using his initiative.
	Progress into accounts, a lifetime's opportunity in invoices, ledgers and numbers. A sudden wave of dizziness and nausea swept through him and he had to grip his desk hard to remain upright. Better not to think about his future career. He caught sight of the family photo on the corner of the desk, his wife Judy and son Keith. Worth suffering for, he reminded himself. Better to think about what he'd really like to be doing - advancing the inventiveness of mankind in his workshop at the bottom of his garden.
	Maybe he'd still get that big break one day. The Refrigerated Waistcoat hadn't been such a bad idea. Same for the Triple Toilet Roll Dispenser and the Place To Put A Washbag Down - two more very practical and useful inventions surely on the verge of breakthrough.  And the Foodfax. That was the best of all. Fresh food at the touch of a button, wired direct from the shop. Of course there were one or two technical difficulties to be ironed out, like how to transfer food along copper wire and fibre optic cable, but in time... 
	He'd even been down to Hutch Research and Development (floor three, room 15a, the desk in the left hand corner) to explain the idea to Davies, R&D. Wouldn't it be just perfect for Hutch Homes? Davies, R&D, had agreed, and asked how it worked.
	"It doesn't yet," explained Max. "It's very difficult to move food down a telephone cable."
	Davies, after a brief grimace, had been very positive about the idea. He'd fully inspected the broken microwave oven that Max planned to use at the receiving end, and nodded his approval. "That's an excellent concept, Max. Why don't you leave it with me and I'll see what we can do?" Any day now, Max knew, Davies would be dropping by his desk with a contract and a bonus cheque.
	"Hey, Max." Elston, Maintenance, broke jaggedly into the current daydream. He stood by the side of Max's desk sucking his pipe. Smoking was forbidden in the exhibitions office, but Elston had discovered a special tobacco so strong that he could get his fix without even lighting it. "You remember asking me about those bats? You know what puzzles me - how do the little perishers make such a mess? How do they manage to shit upside down? Great lumps of it - that's what I can't understand. Oh, and don't put the bill under Sundries, there's a good chap."
	And Elston, Maintenance, was gone.
	Max fell back into the gloom of regular employment. He could never escape it for long. Every day Hutch Holdings added a new bundle of faggots to his smouldering dissatisfaction. No biros, coarse paper, less space, more files, change floors, miss lunch, a pointless talk, petty squabbles, bad decisions, pass the buck, kick the butt (Harvard rules) stupid rules, stupid bloody job and Max was sick of it. Ten years. He'd already had ten years of this, working himself up from filing clerk fifth grade, with maybe accounts clerk first grade on the horizon. There was that nausea again. Forty times almost fifty, times ten - around twenty thousand hours in this concrete hole. A great chunk of his free-fall life frittered away.
	Life, he'd decided as he trimmed his nasal hairs one day, was like a free-fall parachute jump. Great fun to begin with, but then somewhere around the mid-thirties you realised that you were half way down, the ground was approaching at speed and you weren't equipped with a parachute. 
	He looked around at his colleagues, at the unsmiling sky-diving team. There wasn't any confusion in his mind, strangely, everything seemed perfectly clear. The office was poxy, the strip lights were hellish. All he could see through the windows was another concrete and glass monolith forty feet away. The place was shit. He'd always suspected it was so but had never been so absolutely sure. Abruptly he turned to a filing cabinet and filed the invoice under M for Moths. Then changed his mind and filed it under B for bats, bills, bastards and bugger it.
	The nearest window was twenty feet away. Max abandoned his post and wandered over to it, feeling rather queer. Everything was so... obvious. He looked out at the grey concrete block with square windows opposite. 
	"The coffee machine's over the other side, Max," said a voice. It didn't really matter whose. A voice from a desk, a voice with its own twenty thousand hours. "Mine's white with two sugars." 
	Max already knew. Take any voice in that room and he could tell you if it liked white or black and how many sugars it had. He'd make a fine blind coffee maker. Or maybe he already was one.
	Outside he could see a line, like a tightrope wire, joining his building to the next. And balancing on the wire was an ape, a big brown primate like an orang-utan, but far bigger and with wings. The ape was smiling and unfurling a banner which read, "Your job stinks, Max." Max repeated this to himself under his breath. "Your job stinks, Max." Everything was very clear. Great clarity. If the world had been out of focus before it was now crisp and well defined. He felt calm.
	"This job stinks," he said loudly, and turned to face the room. "This whole place stinks."
	His colleagues stared. 
	"We sell shitty houses to stupid people so the man on the top floor can collect more toys, and so the bank can take half our wages for our personal set of bricks piled in rows, which we call home, and which we own when we die thank you very much. We spend half our waking lives in this poxy room, trying to joke and make the best of it, while real life is passing us by. Real life. Out there. We're prostitutes, selling time. Prostitutes. Do you hear me? Prostituting time. Slaves chained to mortgages as surely as any surf in ancient..."


10
"Hold on, hold on, hold on," shouted Buddha, very agitated and waving his arms around so it looked like he had eight or twelve of them. He almost knocked over his glass of water. "This is your piece, right, Christ?"
	"Yes."
	"What's the weapon?"
	"Well, I don't see why..."
	"Come on, come on. Is it enlightenment?"
	Christ paused. "Yes."
	Buddha shook his head. "Already bagged. Sorry. That's mine."
	"What?" spluttered Christ. "The stewardess on the beach? All that happened to her was she got confused looking at a page of writing."
	"Reached the Nirvana of thoughtlessness," corrected Buddha. "And more importantly, has the ability to enlighten those around her without ever becoming fully enlightened herself, since a truly enlightened person would be about as much use to their player as a... a..." he searched for the right words, "swan at a Karaoke contest." He was referring to white (mute) swans of course. Black swans do a nifty rendition of Bridge Over Troubled Waters. 
	"Wicked," said Pan, gazing at the fans on the ceiling. "A game within a game. Yeah."
	"You'll have to change yours," Buddha instructed Christ. "I thought of mine first." 
	"The weapons aren't identical," protested Christ. "Yours is the ability to..."
	"Christ," growled Aphrodite in her deepest and most dangerous voice, "stop wasting time and think of new weapon. They're far too similar."
	"Oh, for my sake," snapped Christ. "All right then. If you insist. It was a dumb weapon anyway. I'll think of another one."
	"Thank you." Buddha leaned back in his chair and started one of his breathing exercises to try to calm himself down.
	"We're all playing cagily, aren't we?" mused Aphrodite. "None of the pieces are wildly brilliant or powerful. They're all very average."
	"Starting with yours," replied Christ. "That Jimmy character. You set the standard, we're just following it."
	"Pan," moaned Aphrodite. Pan was rolling his head like an unbalanced spinning top as he tried, unsuccessfully, to keep a fix on one particular blade of a ceiling fan. "Pan, you're not taking this seriously, are you?"


11
"...Rome," finished Max. Everybody in the room turned back to their desks and carried on working.
	"Don't worry," said the voice. "I'll get the coffees this time. White with no sugar, isn't it?"
	Max looked around open-mouthed. Nobody had taken the slightest notice of him. He looked out of the window again. The ape with the wings had gone. What on earth had possessed him to launch into that diatribe? There was a lot of truth in it, but people didn't go around saying those sorts of things.
	"I er... I think I'll take a breath of fresh air."
	Definitely weird.
	"It must be lunchtime," said the voice.
	"Yes, must be lunchtime," muttered Max, shuffling out of the room in the direction of the lifts and the outside world.
	As usual, the narrow City street in front of the office had turned into an accidental parking lot. Max picked his way between the stationary four-wheelers, all the while keeping an eye on the two-wheeled maniacs practising their slalom turns amongst the brightly coloured metal. He looked at his watch. It really was lunchtime, thank God.
	Most of his colleagues in the office brought packed lunches with them. They ate silently at their desks, each mulling over their own separate photocopy of The Telegraph crossword. Max invariably popped out to Fil the Greek's on the other side of the road for a cheese or ham sandwich and to avoid going stir-crazy. He'd been coming to Fil's ever since it opened, eight years ago. It was a sandwich bar with seats, and on four occasions he'd got one, although one was after he fainted when a counter assistant cut herself, so that didn't really count. For the past three years, Fil, a tall aristocratic looking man with a balding pate, nodded hello if Max caught his eye. In another five they would probably be on first name terms.
	"Cheese and ham on white," said Max, feeling extravagant. 
	"£3.80."
	"Thanks."
	A little social contact outside work always helped to break up the day. He was starting to feel better already. Fortunately, when it came to the ups and downs of existence, especially the downs, Max was blessed with a short memory. His outburst in the office was fading fast.
	He took his prize and elbowed his way through to stand by the sandwich bar window, hoping there might be something outside worth watching as he ate. A small grey delivery van, red hot-hatch and telecom van queued in the street. He recognised them from when he'd crossed the road. The man in the grey van had a cigarette dangling from his lips. It seemed to weigh that side of his mouth down. The other two drivers looked glum too.
	Stress, thought Max, as he bit into his sandwich, it's getting to us all. In the traffic, in the office, in the sandwich bar, on the pavement. Wherever you look, people are sad, frustrated, grey and unsmiling. That's what he really needed to invent - a stress reliever.
	Fil the Greek, of course, had his worry beads, all covered in margarine and shrapnel from making sandwiches, so they didn't run properly on their cord. After five seconds of battling with their stickiness he generally threw them down in disgust, swearing in his ancient language and setting fire to them with his eyes.
	No, not worry beads. They didn't make the grade. No novelty in them, anyway. He needed something different. Max studied the drivers outside for clues, and the cyclists too, grim in their weaving as if chased by demons. The drivers white-knuckled their steering wheels, the cyclists their handlebars. Max wrapped the remaining two thirds of his cheese and ham sandwich in its Fil the Greek tissue, held it centrally in his palm and, following the road users' lead, squeezed hard. 
	And that, as he would tell anybody who cared to listen to him many years later, was how he came to invent the famous worry-sausage. 


12
"Wow!" exclaimed Pan. "A worry-sausage. Wicked."
	"That's the weapon, is it?" asked Buddha, cautiously.
	"A potential weapon," answered Christ. "Like your fuzzy page business."
	"And what do you do with it?" Pan was now two thirds of the way down his tequila bottle and quite animated. "Cosh somebody over the head?"
	Christ didn't bother to answer.
	"So we've all chosen pieces and created weapons, or potential weapons at least," observed Aphrodite.
	"Looks that way," answered Buddha.
	"That's the first part over, then. I've got the second envelope. Shall I open it now?" 
	Buddha and Christ averted their eyes as Aphrodite reached down the front of her dress to liberate the white manila. Pan simply stared.
	"Is it still warm?" he asked. 
	"Oh, Pan!" scolded Christ.
	"Barely touchable." Aphrodite ripped the seal open with her fingernails. "Hmmm. There's a set of cards. Eight of them. Four bear the names of the pieces: Jimmy, Cath, Dorothy and Max. The other four show the names of the potential weapons. So much for our little secrets."
	"Sometimes you wonder about free will versus destiny in this place," said Christ. 
	"The instructions are - surprise, surprise - to shuffle and deal the cards." Aphrodite read on. "Oh!"
	"Go on," said Buddha. "Let's hear it."
	"One step at a time. There's quite a lot here. Listen:

"Four pieces you've chosen and four latent weapons 
Your four twisted minds have designed. (Hmmph!)
Here's a card for each piece and a card for each weapon, 
Now all eight can be re-assigned.
Shuffle well for a while, then deal out at random 
One card each from both sets of four. 
Not yourselves, for an impartial dealer stands by 
With a clear mind and hands true and sure."

	"And?" prompted Christ.
	"Let's do that part first, shall we?" said Aphrodite. "Then move on to the rest. Vishnu?"
	"You called?" said a voice by her side.
	"I guess you're the impartial dealer."
	"With a clear mind and hands true and sure," sniggered Pan.
	"A damn sight clearer than yours," said Aphrodite.
	"Thank you," said Vishnu, ambiguously, as he picked up the cards.
	"One each from the two sets," instructed Christ.
	"I imagine I can accomplish that." Vishnu shuffled four cards with one pair of his arms and four cards with the other, for extra effect matching diagonal arms rather than uppers and lowers. The cards blurred together from the pace of the shuffle, then smoothly the movement transformed into a sweep of crossed arms and Vishnu walked away. In front of each player, on the green baize table, lay two cards in perfect alignment.
	"School of Life," muttered Christ, quietly. He picked up his pair. "Oh me!"
	"What have you got?" asked Pan, darting forward to pick up his own.
	"Not telling."
	"Om," said Buddha.
	"The next..." started Aphrodite.
	"Excuse me," said Buddha, testily. He raised his eyes from his cards. "If you don't mind, I hadn't finished speaking. I was going to say: 'Om, what a bum hand.'"
	After a moment's pause, Aphrodite began again. "The next part of the instructions is pretty interesting...

"Then each player shall make themselves known to their piece, 
In person before their wide eyes.
Melt their mortal resistance, ensure their assistance, 
For the game must rule over their lives."
	
	"What?!" cried Buddha. "I never, ever, make personal appearances."
	"Those are the instructions," said Aphrodite. "And we have to follow them to the letter."
	Pan prepared himself with a little more tequila.
	Christ fingered his beard, thoughtfully. "Haven't done one for ages. Mum usually does most of mine."


13
Jimmy stood in the hallway watching Freddy's party take place around him like he was a goldfish in a bowl. He was feeling down. There were beautiful women everywhere and they all seemed to find him invisible. It was hormone hell.
	Maybe they could tell that he wasn't the healthiest male specimen around. Maybe they could hear his stomach rumbling, even above the noise of the stereo. In the last 48 hours he'd had more tins of beans than a cartoon cowboy, three eggs, six pints of beer, a take-away curry and a chilliburger. Like many immature party animals he got a strange enjoyment out of farting and made sure his diet was up to the job. But even he knew on this occasion he might have overdone it a little. It would be highly embarrassing if he did managed to pick up somebody and finished up zipping around the bedroom ceiling like a released balloon.
	He shifted to the kitchen and poured himself a plastic cup of wine from one of the six open bottles of Liebfraumilch, then went back to stand in the hall, depressed. No doubt if he searched hard enough there'd be somebody around whom he knew and liked, but for the moment he was content to wallow alone in self-pity. 
	Women, women, women. In the past few months there'd been Lucy (I'm sorry to tell you this but I've met someone else. He's ever so sweet.) Sandra (No, I'm washing my hair. Yes, I do wash it a lot, don't I?) Tina (Go out again? You must be joking.) and Felicity (Piss off, creep.). He opened his wallet and checked the prophylactic for roots. No. Getting close to its Use By date though. If only he could find a girl young enough not to have heard that line.
	A version of La Bomba played in the front room. A happy dancer squealed out of time. Despite the dim lighting, Jimmy could see the fug of sweaty odours, perfume and smoke rolling out of the doorway and into the hall.
	A new arrival knocked on the front door and Jimmy let them in. "Yeah. Freddy's place. The kitchen's through there." He didn't care who they were or whether they'd been invited. He'd never been very keen on Freddy at the best of times. The man was past thirty and his only claim to fame was that as a child he'd once gobbed on Sid Vicious.
	Sod it, he thought, time for some homebrew. It was supposed to be used on unsuspecting females, but right now he needed the alcohol. The carton in the yellow cupboard had come to maturity just in time. From his jacket pocket he took the half-pint whisky flask he'd filled with the murky brown liquid and raised it to his lips. It tasted very good. Far better than usual.
	More partygoers arrived. Freddy played his seventies tapes. A whiff of ganja occasionally wafted into the hall. Jimmy sat on the stairs and tapped his feet to Hey Ho Silver Lining and sang along with the chorus like everybody else. Maybe he was feeling a touch happier. Perhaps it was down to that extra rush of alcohol. 
	Oh dear. Here came Tina (Go out again? You must be joking.) taking a break from dancing in the front room. Jimmy tried to blend with the stairs but couldn't manage the right-angles. 
	"Hellooo, Jimmy," said Tina, with a big smile.
	Normally she totally ignored him. It was difficult to take the smile seriously. Perhaps she was feeling facetious. He stayed silent.
	"Good to see you again." She bent down to his hiding place on the step and to his great surprise forced her tongue into his mouth and kept it there, moving it around and probing and doing all the kind of things girls can do with their tongues when they've really got the inclination. Finally, after what seemed like two or three days, she was wrenched off, rather roughly, by a total stranger.
	"He's mine. I arrived here with him and he's mine. Hands off." This was a lie. Jimmy had arrived alone. But he wasn't going to argue. She was simply gorgeous. Beautiful long dark hair, lovely green eyes, and a domes and dales body squeezed into a tight party dress.
	He stared at her in a gormless daze. Tina scowled but moved away. Whatever-her-name-was picked Jimmy up by the sleeve of his jacket and shuffled him into a corner by the door. Then she stuck her tongue in his mouth and did things with it that made Tina's tricks seem like Aunt Nellie pecking goodbye. And for longer. A week later the tongue popped out and started wiggling in his ear. "I want to do it," she whispered, "I want to do it, now."
	Despite the shock of the last few minutes to most of his system, especially the rational thinking part, one sector of his body had been saying right from the start, "Nice. Mmmm. Yeah. Nice," and rounding up bloodcells and nerve signals in battle formation. That same sector of his body now sent a boarding party of special forces to his brain to establish overall control.
	"Uh huh?" he answered.
	"All the bedrooms are full, but I've got an idea," she whispered. "Don't go away." And she swept off.
	A partly normal service was restored. Jimmy noticed he was facing a number of other partygoers and was the proud owner of an enormous bulge in his jeans. He blushed and turned round to examine the coat-hooks.
	Whatever-her-name-was returned in a moment and grabbed him urgently by the arm. "Follow me." She had a grip like a tourniquet.	They were only going a few yards. Whatever-her-name-was opened the panel door of the closet below the stairs. "Get in."
	"Er..." said the rational side of his mind. "Yes ma'am," said the special forces.  An easy victory for the side with more conviction.
	A couple of amused partygoers looked on as Whatever-her-name-was followed him and closed the door behind her. It was pitch black inside. Jimmy bumped his head on the electricity meter and elbowed the handle of a vacuum cleaner, but didn't feel any pain.
	"Hold on," said Whatever-her-name-was. "I've got some matches." 
	She lit one. They could now clearly see the electricity meter and the vacuum cleaner. And the cardboard boxes full of winter clothes, the rowing machine, both the suitcases, the hat rack, ironing board, camp bed, tool box, old TV, step ladders, wine rack and spare washing machine.
	"Meow, clunk, meow, clunk, meow, clunk. No, I thought not," mimicked Jimmy. 
	"I found a candle in the kitchen," said Whatever-her-name-was, lighting it with the remains of the match.
	"That was the easy part," said Jimmy. "Now you've got to find somewhere to put it down."
	"Looks like knee-trembler time," she giggled.
	"Be serious. I can't even stand up straight."
	"Listen. If you put the TV where you're standing now, the rowing machine can go on top of the suitcases." She lunged forward and her tongue surprised his ear again. "And I do so much need some exercise."
	Jimmy moved the TV to the floor and stood on it, then heaved the rowing machine on to the suitcases. Meanwhile Whatever-her-name-was moved her panties and tights to her ankles and hung them on the handle of the vacuum cleaner, then leaped on top of Jimmy's sculpture.
	"Come on, big boy."
	"Don't you want to..."
	"I'm ready, darling."
	So was Jimmy but, bless his heart, he still fumbled for the little mackintosh in his wallet and managed, for only the second time in his life, to put it on flawlessly. The rational side of his mind was stunned. Normally it went on inside out, half way down, with a big balloon of air in the teat - if that was still intact. Past attempts had also been made at upside down and back to front, but these had failed due to the laws of symmetry and physics.
	Fortunately, the rational side of his mind was no longer at the helm. The current captain, with a leering grin, sailed full steam for the comforts of harbour.
	"Nyurgh," said Whatever-her-name-was.
	Squeak, squeak, said the saddle of the rowing machine.
	"The candle," said Jimmy. "I've knocked the candle over."
	"Put it at the bottom of the machine," said Whatever-her-name-was, "behind your bum, then at least if it gets knocked over I can easily right it again."
	"Right," said Jimmy, thinking it wasn't really right but doing it anyway, because he didn't have any better ideas. With his pelvis immobile the manoeuvre wasn't easy, but with a few grunts he managed it, then turned back to the major game. 
	In the front room of the party, and seemingly half a million miles away, Elton John's Crocodile Rock was playing.

The problem with the candle's position at the bottom of the machine was its proximity to the bottom of Jimmy. As the couple wallowed in what some would call depravity and others natural pleasure, the saddle of the rowing machine moved back and forth exactly as it was designed to do. Stroke, stroke, as the cox would say before drowning in a tide of double entendres.
	Whatever-her-name-was exercised herself with great forcefulness, bracing herself against the wall and pushing the saddle down to the far limit of it's travel, and giving Jimmy great pleasure as she did so. Such sexual pleasure is often accompanied by relaxation of the rectal muscles, unfortunately. 
	Phh-boof! A burst of orange-blue flame lit up their cosy little chamber.
	Jimmy, with afterburners on, shot forward at speed, bringing the saddle to its other limit of travel.
	"Oh yes!" screeched Whatever-her-name-was, squashed against the wall, and in a flush of excitement she pushed even harder to force the saddle back again. That same old reflex action hit Jimmy once more.
	Phh-boof! 
	"Oh, yes!"
	Phh-boof!
	"Yeeeeesss."
	Phh-boof!
	Jimmy wasn't thinking in any normal sense at all, but if he had been, he would have thanked himself for taking on enough fuel to last the whole of the journey.
	Phh-boof!
	"Yes!"
	Phh-boof!
	"Yeeeeeeeeees."
	"Ngh," said Jimmy. 
	And on that note, they flew. Each in their own craft but leaving the rest of the world a long way behind.
	Jimmy's ship took him out through the firework displays of November Five, with star bursts and Catherine wheels and Roman candles, then on to the multicoloured stars beyond, all reds and blues and twinkling gaily in the calm and beautiful blackness.
	He passed the moons of Sirius Minor, asteroids and clouds of phosphorescing gas, passed the space rangers stations of the Nylaam race and crossed their safe space lanes of blue light, with brigands and bandits in strange craft lurking elsewhere, in a comforting way, sloth-like against his speed. He passed the star ship of Zephilee, the Barisan Whore, mounting her latest rich pig and smiling and waving to him through her spaceliner's porthole, passed planet Z and at some featureless point in the vacuum stopped in front of Aphrodite's dress, and body vaguely visible beneath it.
	"Hello," said Aphrodite.
	"Hello," said Jimmy.
	"I'm Aphrodite." 
	"Yes."
	Their dialogue was very slow.
	"Are you enjoying yourself?" 
	"I seem to be."
	"Good."
	Jimmy, in his ecstatic state, was very calm and unexcitable and didn't have a great desire to say anything. 
	For a while Aphrodite was silent too.
	"I'd like you to do me a favour," she said, finally.
	"Oh, yes?"
	"A task. I'm not quite sure exactly what it is yet. But when I know I'll get back to you. All right?"
	"All right," said Jimmy, without giving the matter much thought. It seemed obvious that if a god appeared in front of you and asked you to do something then you did it unquestioningly.
	"Are you sure?" asked Aphrodite, who was far more aware of the true nature of things.
	"Yes," answered Jimmy.
	"Good."
	They gazed silently at each other for a while. Aphrodite eventually drew the communion to a close.  "Well, bye for now."
	"Woahwoahwoahwoahyargh!" yelled Jimmy, and filled up the inside of his little pocket mackintosh.


14
"Would you mind closing the blind for me, please? The film's about to begin." Cath was on the Bangkok to London run, performing her cabin crew duties with customary ease, smiling the window-seat passengers into submission. It didn't surprise her that they were reluctant to close their blinds. The view outside was spectacular. 
	The sun was on the verge of setting. Beneath the plane flowed a layer of boiling cloud, dappled fluffy white and grey, with hills and valleys, cliffs and knotted craters. And from this vapoury base rose a second cloud, a mushroom, triple oyster, flattening at its peak to spread wide in filigree bands, some above the plane, even at thirty-five thousand feet. Bangladesh was down below, just one thousand feet from the bottom of the monsoon cloud and a few feet above the ocean. Chaos and destruction were raining down, sweeping the fragile people out to sea. But from above it all looked very beautiful: the reddening sun sending oblique shafts between the layered bands and the knobbled floor, throwing shadows in the valleys and gilding the edges of fairytale waisted pillars.
	The view had caught Cath's imagination too. She was talking and smiling as normal but her mind was far away. All the hard work of the drinks, food trays and clear-up trolley was over. The mediocre food had been served and the mediocre film was about to begin. Walking down the isles amongst the serried ranks of zoo-class, catching glimpses of the sunset, its rouge on passengers' cheeks and in their eyes, she couldn't help herself falling into a you-are-what-you-eat daydream. 
	The passengers had been guzzling their gin and tonics, their diet Cokes, going into a feeding frenzy on electrocuted sheep, asphyxiated fish, unborn chickens, once-frozen vegetables, mixed carbohydrates, processed sugars and twenty-three assorted preservatives, colourings and artificial flavours. Her airline had won prizes for its food.
	And you are what you eat, quite literally. Fish and chips, lobsters, tomatoes, peanuts, frozen pig fat disguised as ice cream, big white turkeys as plump as beach balls and equally intelligent, and a thousand different additives with long names - little traces of them, accidental homoeopathy. Those molecules all peel apart and recombine as triceps, ribs, skin, liver, teeth, fingernails and nipples. Especially skin and fingernails and hair, the bits on the dead surface of the live body that slough off in time and fall away, like the bark of a plane tree wise to pollution.
	And if you are what you eat then you are even more what you drink, since bodies are, like the surface of the planet, around two thirds water. Water from different sources. Birmingham tap water piped from Wales, making Brummies' bodies more than half Welsh. Evian drinkers, their bodies partly French. Tennents Extra addicts turning Glaswegian. And in London, with its tap water that's been passed and recycled a dozen times... it gets quite complicated.
	All those people she was looking at - especially the regular travellers - bits of the bits she could see, some of their skin and their hair, she might have served them to them many weeks earlier on a tray. Even their eyes.
	An odd thought.
	Cath needed a break. As the film began she quietly slipped forward to the most restful part of the airplane, the dim and twinkling cone of the pilots' lair, the cockpit. As always, the place somehow managed to smell of electronics.
	Everybody was asleep
	The first time Cath had walked into the pilots' section, many years ago, and found everybody slumbering, she'd been alarmed.
	"Wake up, wake up!" she'd yelled, shaking the nearest pilot.
	"Eh? Uh? What's up? Emergency?"
	"No, I mean yes. You're all asleep. There's nobody at the controls."
	The man had looked her up and down - as they often did - sighed and reclined again. "Is this one of you first flights, dear?" You don't really expect us all to stay awake for ten hours, twiddling our thumbs, do you?"
	"But who's flying the plane?"
	"The plane's flying itself. It's on auto-pilot. It's always on auto-pilot."
	"Don't you have to hold the joystick or something?"
	"Darling, we're not allowed to touch the controls. Every time a human interferes the fuel bills go crazy. The auto-pilot's far more efficient than we are. It's in the company rules - don't touch the controls."
	Cath was puzzled. "Don't you ever fly it, then?"
	"Take offs. We do the take offs, and a little bit of the landings - like steering, putting the brakes on. Basically we're more drivers than pilots.
	"Otherwise it flies itself?"
	"Precisely."
	Cath still wasn't convinced. "What if there's an emergency?"
	"The auto-pilot makes a noise like a ram being castrated and everybody wakes up very quickly."
	There was one obvious weakness to this system, which Cath spotted straight away. "What if there's something wrong but all this electronic wizardry doesn't spot it?"
	"My dear, if the electronics decide to stop working properly then you're probably better off sleeping than being awake. Unless you've got some important last wish, like making love with the nearest available nubile. Talking of which..."
	"Can I get you anything? A glass of iced water for your lap, maybe?"
	"I was just wondering what you were doing tonight, that's all."
	"I was thinking of growing an oak tree from scratch. You know, from an acorn. I'll give you a call when it's fully grown and maybe we can go out for dinner."
	"Hmmm." The figure had closed its eyes and slipped back into compliant unconsciousness.
	This time Cath didn't wake anybody up. She moved noiselessly to the main windscreen.
	The sunset today really was spectacular. Fiercely red with golden trimmings amongst the dark and shadowy clouds. The light was even more oblique now and showed the plateau in clear relief, with its waves and rising bubbles, rocks and islands, inlets, headlands, mountains looming on the land beyond. It looks just like a sea, thought Cath, and we're a speedboat skimming over it as the sun goes down. Indeed, the floor of clouds usually did look like a sea, and the analogy became boring after a few months in the air, just like the view. But this one was a special sea, with magic, a sea where things might happen, a sea for a honeymoon voyage with a handsome captain.

Talking of honeymoons. Out of view, in the engines, marriages were all the rage. Tiny carbon and hydrogen atoms sped through the labyrinth of fuel lines to keep their appointments with oxygen atoms rushing past the turbines to meet them. They wed - a very short ceremony - and with their new partners spilled out of the exhaust for a new life in the atmosphere. Most of the hydrocarbons had spent half a million years in stupid oilfields so they greatly appreciated the change of scene.

Cath stared harder at the clouds. With good grace they changed their shapes and formed dark images for a daydreaming child. A water buffalo over there, sleeping, with one twisted horn and occasional misty breaths from its nose. A face from an Indian totem pole, with closed eyes and a serious jaw. Two mice scurrying along the cloud horizon. A domed temple, half hidden in a coll. A floating statue, legs a-trailing, looking down. An alligator. No, was it a crocodile? And finally a devilish figure with little horns and cloven feet but smiling and with sparkling eyes.
	The devilish figure moved in ever-closer and became more real. It hung in the air, approaching without moving its feet, and stopped just the other side of the cockpit glass. Cath, sunset-hypnotised, tried to ignore it for a moment, looking over its wiry shoulder at the brilliant sunbeams behind. 
	The devilish figure turned its head to follow Cath's gaze, then jerked back in surprise. 
	"Wow!" it said. "What a mother of a sunset. That's brilliant. And look at the clouds. Look." It pointed. "I can see an elephant over there, and something that looks like Mount Rushmore, and... and an alligator..."
	"I think it's a crocodile," said Cath. They were the first words she said to the apparition, and in future years would take a lot of explaining at dinner parties when she drank too much and recounted the tale.
	"It's amazing," said the devilish figure.
	"Don't you see this kind of thing all the time if you're floating around the sky?" asked Cath. The fact that they could easily converse through almost soundproof armoured glass while travelling at more than 500 miles an hour didn't puzzle her in the slightest.
	"No. It's always gentle sunshine where I stay. Apart from the white firmament - and that's terrible stuff. You can't judge distances and you've got to watch out for snow blindness."
	"Really? I thought it was all flames and boiling oil?" 
	The figure turned towards her "Eh?"
	"Hell."
	"Oh, not that again. I'm not the devil. I'm Pan. Look." He produced his syrinx as identification.
	"Oh, your pipes,"
	"Syrinx," corrected Pan.
	"Can you play that thing?"
	"I can do the scales," he said, cagily.
	"You do look like the devil."
	Pan grimaced. "Personally, I blame the Christians for that.  Not content with a civilised bit of empire building, they had to give me a load of bad press as well. I get on all right with Christ, don't get me wrong. Great guy, good company. It's just that... give mortals any form of organised religion and..." He raised his hands in despair.
	"Do you live with Christ then?"
	"Not in the, er, current sense of the word, but we stay in the same place."
	"In heaven?"
	"Yeah. Personally I was happier with the old Vallhala scene. But then Thor started throwing the lightning bolts around one night in a drunken rage. Once the smouldering had died down we had to start from nothing again."
	Pan scratched his rump and for the first time Cath noticed that her conversation partner wasn't wearing any clothes. She looked him up and down. Half human, half goat, eh? And enough confusion where the two joined for a touch of horse to be slipped in, though it was hardly unnoticeable. 
	He definitely wasn't her type, though. Too old, for a start. It was hard to characterise him, but he came across as some kind of nude and jovial drunken uncle. 
	"So," said Pan, "I suppose I'd better get to the point, hadn't I? The reason I've come to see you is that I need you to do something for me."
	"Do what?"
	"Er... I'm not sure, really. We're playing this game, and you come in to it somewhere. I'll be giving you a weapon at some point soon. Then I expect you'll have to do something with it."
	"Sounds pretty vague."
	"Yes. It does rather. But I'm a vague type of guy, so it suits me fine. Are you happy to be involved?"
	Instructions from a god? Surely one could hardly refuse? Cath had no hesitation. "Yes."
	"Good. Well I'll be getting in touch again later, when I've got more idea of what's going on. Bye for now."
	He turned to leave. "I know," he said, pointing. "Look at the jaw. It's a caiman."
	And then he drifted away, legs still not moving, until he merged with the spectacular clouds.


15
Dorothy's Revelation of Christ occurred in Ye Olde Tea Shoppe, Peterhurst, Sussex, a few miles  from the Thompson family home. Arthur wasn't with her. He couldn't face the journey. 
	She was indulging herself in a cup of tea and home-made breadcakes with strawberry jam and fresh cream. She'd been feeling slightly depressed, which was unusual for her, but one of the few advantages of age was that she knew how to get herself out of the gloomy mood - by treating herself to something delicious.
	She took her first bite and sighed. All those textures; doughy bread with a crunchy crust, heavy jam and glutinous cream all gooey on the palate.  On the second bite she groaned and closed her eyes. It couldn't get better. On the third, Christ appeared. She recognised him from a reproduction of Leonardo's The Last Supper in a Readers Digest book. He sat down in the vacant chair opposite her.
	"Hello," he said, impassively. "I don't usually do personal appearances. I hope I haven't startled you."
	Dorothy's first thought was to wonder whether she was dressed properly for the occasion. Although she didn't go to church, if she did would she go like this? Then she sensed that her visitor really didn't give a damn about respectability. It was a strong sensation and after a lifetime of conformity mixed with trivial rebellion it felt very pleasant indeed.
	"Not at all."  Her mouth was still full but to her mild surprise she found that she could speak perfectly clearly, without the embarrassment of half-chewed debris gushing out as if from a volcano on its side. "Are you sure you came to the right person? I'm not a very strong Christian, you know."
	"Yes, I do know." 
	"If you're looking for the vicar, he only lives down the road. The house with the big yew trees. On the left." She pointed. "You can't miss it. And actually Canterbury's not very far away." But she hoped he wasn't going to leave. He had a presence. It wasn't awe inspiring, it wasn't humbling, it was intimate, elating and rather nice, even if he did look a touch grumpy.
	"I'm not a great one for religious hierarchy. That's all human powerplay. Nothing much to do with me."
	"I haven't even read the Bible," said Dorothy, apologetically.
	"Don't worry. Neither have I. Or at least not all of it." He paused for a badly silenced truck to pass the tea shoppe window. "It was first written down eighty years after I died. Ever heard of a game called Chinese Whispers?"  	
	"Oh, I am sorry," said Dorothy genuinely. "Still, I am glad to meet you. You're not at all what I expected. I thought you'd be all stern and unapproachable."
	"Hmmm," murmured Christ unhappily. "For some people, I am."
	"You do look the same though. Just like that painting - The Last Supper. How did Leonardo know? Did you visit him too?"
	"It's a long story. I haven't always looked like this. I had to change when the painting became popular."
	Since it didn't seem to interfere with conversation, Dorothy took another bite of her slice of sensual heaven. If anything, it tasted even better. It came close to bringing tears to her eyes. "I might even go to church," she said, perfectly clearly, "now that I've met you." After all, it was something that old people did, one of the traditional duties she'd neglected so far.
	"If you like the singing and the community atmosphere," advised Christ. "The vicars are often nice, too."
	"Tell me," Dorothy didn't want the opportunity to slip away, "are you really...  all-powerful?"
	"Ah." Christ allowed himself a smile. "The old omnipotency business."
	"Hmmm."
	"Let me ask you something first. How many Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists are born into the world every year?"
	"Lots of them."
	"Indeed. Tens of millions. And if I were omnipotent, do you think I'd be letting that happen?"
	"I suppose not."
	"There you are then. Beats me how anybody can see that happening and still think I'm all-powerful."
	"People do."
	"My dear," said Christ. "There are lots of nutters in the world, and many of them are deeply religious."
	Dorothy stared at her teacup for a moment. She hadn't touched her tea. "I'd never thought of it that way. So all the little children dying of cot-death and leukemia, you can't do anything about it?"
	"Not really. I'm a philosopher. I don't know very much about medicine."
	"I'd often wondered about it. People do, you know."
	"I should think so too. I certainly would if somebody told me there was an all-powerful god." Another very loud truck was approaching. Christ looked out of the window and frowned. Either the truck suddenly gained a perfect exhaust or the shoppe was instantly double glazed. Whichever, the noise was no longer there. He might not be all-powerful but he could still manage the odd party trick or two.
	"Surely you could do something about wars, especially religious wars? Maybe come down and visit the military chaplain, give him a good talking to."
	Christ leaned forward in his chair and explained gently: "Believe me, dear, I've tried. I used to descend on the field marshals, the cardinals, and the chaplains, and really give them a good ticking off. Lay down thy sword, peace and brotherly love, that sort of thing."
	"And what's happened?"
	"Nothing. They'd wake up the next morning and blame the wine or dodgy foreign food. Never a peep out of them."
	"Oh."
	"On the other hand, once or twice when I really felt a cause was worthwhile, I'd come down and fill somebody full of fire and brimstone and the righteousness of battle. Next morning they'd be waving their arms and ranting to capacity crowds." He leaned back, clearly happy to have put his point across. "But there you are. That's human nature for you."
	Dorothy was fascinated. She wanted to ask a lot more questions, but realised she ought not to be giving Christ an interrogation. She didn't want to appear rude. Anyway, he'd probably got better things to do. "Talking of visitations..." 
	"Oh, yes. I'd almost forgotten. I'd like you to do me a favour."
	"Certainly." She pointed at his gown. "Is that a bloodstain? From the crucifixion?"
	Christ looked down and brushed the mark with his hands. "Red wine."
	"The last supper?"
	"This lunchtime, actually. Anyway, about this favour, I'm not sure what it is yet, but it's quite important. I'll be giving you a special weapon to accomplish it with."
	Dorothy looked puzzled. "You mean a weapon that hurts people. Like a sword?"
	"More subtle than that, but at least as dangerous."
	"I don't normally hurt people. But still, if you say it's all right."
	"Oooh!" groaned Christ. "Please don't phrase it that way. Too many people do."
	"Sorry."
	They were quiet for a moment. Christ reached across the table and placed his hand in hers. "You're a nice lady. I'm actually enjoying this visit, but I should be going now. I probably won't see you again, so, good luck."
	Dorothy looked thoughtful. "Not ever?"
	"Probably not."
	"So there isn't an afterlife?"
	Christ frowned. "Oh dear. That was a bit of a giveaway, wasn't it? I... er... come to think of it, there is one, yes. Just, I don't always get involved with it."
	"Never mind. I never really thought there was one."
	"Now close your eyes and take another bite, I'm going to disappear."
	"Can't I watch?"
	"I don't mean it that way, at least... not here. I'll have to go out of the door. There's somebody watching."
	Dorothy glanced towards the counter. The shoppe's proprietress was staring at them. "Better hurry." Quickly she withdrew her palm. In an odd way she felt like a teenager once again.
	Christ rose and looked out of the window. "Bit busy outside," he muttered. "Looks like I'll have to take a taxi to a quiet field. Sorry to ask you this, but can I borrow some money?"
	"Pieces of silver?"
	"A note would be easier," said Christ, completely missing the wordplay. 
	Dorothy took out her purse and handed him ten pounds, then, as instructed, picked up her treat and took another delicious mouthful. When she opened her eyes, Christ had gone.
	

16
Back in north London, Max was busy tinkering in his garden shed, or workshop, as he preferred to call it. Through a tiny sample of fibre-optic cable he could make out the refrigerated waistcoat hanging on its reinforced hook. It brought a smile to his lips. His most famous invention yet. It had even managed to get into the newspapers. The articles were facetious, even Max could recognise that. Still, it was nice to be famous for a day.
	The waistcoat looked utterly futuristic. Dan Dare would have been happy to find it in his wardrobe. He would have been especially fond of the epaulettes, festooned with radiator coils where the heat from the back-mounted refrigeration plant was released. Unfortunately, although the waistcoat cooled the torso effectively, the radiator coils braised the head. A trivial design flaw that the press had been quick to pick up on. 	
	Max twisted the fibre-optic cable around as he looked through it, a single eye from an alien in War Of The Worlds. He was trying to figure out how to transfer food down it, as part of his development of the Foodfax, though so far he hadn't made much progress. Abruptly, he gave up and put the fibre down, accidentally catching the perpetual motion machine with his elbow. "Oops." Three weeks now and still going strong. A shame he kept bumping into it. 
	Ah, this was the life. Real work at last. Saturday morning in the freedom of his workshop. Not the mind-numbing tedium of the Hutch office with the mis-shapes, but real work, for pleasure, testing the limits of human ingenuity and beyond. He looked around proudly. On the wall opposite the refrigerated waistcoat hung the triple toilet roll dispenser, unbeaten for issuing tissue in thicknesses of three, no awkward folding involved. Nearby was the portable Place To Put A Washbag Down - a little invention he'd seen the need for on a camping holiday, since so many communal showers didn't have shelves. It looked like a miniature pew. And there, leaning against the bench, looking to the casual eye like a pair of prosthetic limbs, were the two arse-kicking machines.
  	Enough of this smug contemplation of past victories. To work. The original worry sausage from Fil The Greek's was turning green and furry, he needed to devise a synthetic replacement. Already he'd worked out what he could use for the outside skin, but what about the inside?
	He rifled through his raw materials beneath the workshop bench, the crates of dead biros, fast-food containers, plastic bottles and other useful items that people call rubbish. In one crate lay four gross of used condoms waiting for their own inanimate version of the afterlife. All his own work and well washed of course. His sex life, and that of Judy, his wife, varied in intensity according to his inventive confidence, which, as Judy was the first to point out, was a reasonably enjoyable kind of regulator.
	In one of the crates he found a few hundred small off-cuts of foam. Too soft as a filling on their own. Ha! But there behind the carpet trimmings was a biscuit tin full of soap scraps from the bathroom. Excitedly he worked the soap into the foam, like a baker kneading dough. It was perfect. The texture was exactly right. No matter how much time he spent, he wouldn't be able to improve on this.   
	He looked up, feeling very pleased with himself, and it was at that moment that he noticed the fat man sitting on the stool at the other side of the workshop. Max couldn't understand how he'd managed to creep in, then, with a shock, he recognised the aura of a god.
	"Om."
	A big fat god wearing a loincloth and sitting in the lotus position. That would be Buddha, then. What did he know about Buddhists? According to The News, that they lived in Tibet and were so harmless they were getting wiped out by the Chinese. So that was all right. No danger there.
	"Aren't you supposed to have eight or twelve arms?" began Max. "I saw a statue once in the British Museum." 
	Buddha waved his arms around at speed forming that certain impression.
	"That's amazing! Ever tried juggling?" Max, without realizing it, had started on one of his confidence trips. Not as major as his outburst at the office, but still a long way from his customary meekness - the meekness that Life, as a supervisory power, felt best suited him.
	"I leave that to my Californian disciples," replied Buddha. "Personally I'm never quite sure if the ball is truly where the eye sees it, or is elsewhere, or exists at all. Or actually whether the hand is really mine. It all gets very confusing."
	"Yes, I have that same problem, bad hand-eye co-ordination. I'm terrible at squash. Never play it. Problem is, with sedentary jobs, like yours and mine, if you don't play sport you get a gut." Max patted his protruding belly.
	Buddha looked down at his own. "It enhances the power of the solar plexus, a very important energy point."
	"I don't know about that. When mine gets too big, Judy, my wife, starts leaving pregnancy testing kits lying around." Max kneaded the soap and foam mixture in his hand. It felt very comforting. "Aren't you a little off your patch? Wouldn't you be better off visiting Tibet or Thailand? We're all lapsed Christians around here. Not really your territory."
	"That's an interesting concept," said Buddha. "I'd never thought of it that way before. Patches, territories. You mean, like urban gang warfare, with all the different gods squabbling over who controls where, who gets the rights to supply all the drugs. You know, religion being the opium of the masses and all that."
	"Eh?" said Max. This was getting a bit too metaphysical. 
	"Priests instead of warlords," continued Buddha. "Colours for the gang. Blue for Christian nuns. Black for the Orthodox Coptics and Jews, saffron for my lot." He chuckled to himself. "I like it." Then turned almost serious for a while. "Of course I never intended that, you know, Buddhist priests and idols and uniforms. It's supposed to be an individual's religion. But for some reason humans just don't seem able to cope with that. Give them a religion - any religion - and they'll add on temples, holy books, strict rules, priests and personality cults. Makes you wonder if it's all worthwhile sometimes."
	"I don't really understand," said Max.
	"Congratulations. Only when we say we don't know, can we be sure we're telling the truth."
	Max pulled a face. The aura was fine, but he was beginning to worry about the god's sanity.
	"Einstein was almost one of mine, you know," started Buddha.
	"What?"
	"Almost one of my disciples. Almost quite a coup."
	"Listen. All due respect, but I'm starting to find this conversation a bit weird."
	"And I haven't even told you why I've come yet, have I?"
	"Will I know if you tell me?"
	"Well said." Buddha nodded approvingly. "I want you to do me a favour, a task."
	"I can't say I'm very keen."
	"Good."
	More than weird, thought Max. The conversation was more than weird. "What is the task?" he asked, rationally. Somebody had to be rational here.
	"I don't know yet. I'll tell you when I know."
	"Listen Mr er..."
	"Buddha, but you can call me Sid if you like, short for Siddhartha. It does wonders for my humility."
	"Listen, Sid. If you want something done, surely you'd be better off visiting a religious freak. I'm too sane for all this."
	"Ah. I'm afraid the deeply religious usually have their own agendas: power, money, security, that sort of thing, even in Buddhism. But you're fine. Just the man I need. Will you help?"
	"I don't think so."
	"I'll take that as a yes."
	"I think I just said no."
	"It's a very interpretive religion, mine."
	Max shook his head in disbelief. He stared at the floor and tried to work out what to say next. But when he looked up he found that Buddha had gone. 


17
"So we've all made our personal appearances?" asked Aphrodite, a few moments after Buddha had re-seated himself at the playing table. Vishnu glared at the feet regaining full lotus position on the classic furniture but on the grounds of religious tolerance didn't say anything. 
	There was a general round of grunts and nodding.
	"Can we do visits at shower time next?" Pan rubbed his hands together vigorously. 
	"No," said Buddha, with emphasis.
	Vishnu made his presence felt at the side of the table.
	"Ah, yes." Christ placed his empty goblet on Vishnu's tray. "Something celebratory. A Montrachet 64 would go down nicely, thank you."
	"Same again," said Aphrodite.
	Buddha waved his hand over his glass, giving a momentary display of forty fingers and thumbs.
	"Very wise," said Vishnu. "We wouldn't want to peak too early, would we?" He started to walk away.
	"Oi!" shouted Pan. "If we're not moving yet, then I'd better have a beer."
	Vishnu's didn't break stride.
	"Please?" added Pan.
	"Right," began Aphrodite. "Let's keep going. The last section of my instruction sheet: 

"And to finish stage two, move the weapons between you 
And unveil their powers concealed.
Let the traffic in arms match the cards in your palms 
And potentials of all be revealed."

	Aphrodite frowned. 
	"That's simple enough," said Christ, seeing her expression. "Is there something else?"
	"No. It's just that I'm wondering why we bothered to deal the cards face down. We already know who's got which piece. That came out when we did our appearances. And now, when we swap the weapons around, we'll find out who gets which weapon."
	"Hmmm." mused Buddha.
	Pan placed his cards face up on the table. "No reason why not."  
	Christ followed his example. "I can't think of one."
	Aphrodite and Buddha did likewise. The gods leaned over the table and inspected each other's cards, their heads darting from side to side like curious chickens.
	"Interesting," said Christ.
	"Hmmm," pondered Aphrodite. "Shall we get on with it?"
	"Let's," agreed Pan. "I want to go on a ride."
	 "Om," said Buddha, because he hadn't said it for a while. 


18
	Their own inexplicable desires, actions and the coincidences of life often make human beings wonder what on earth's going on. But they rarely wonder for long enough or with great clarity. If only they had the intelligence to realise that they're nothing more than little pieces on a god's board-game, that free-will is a load of bollocks, then everything would make perfect sense.
	Jimmy couldn't understand why he was in his local pub, The Trouble With Fish, drinking a pint on Saturday lunchtime after the party, when what he really needed was sleep. Whatever-her-name-was had turned out to be one awesomely energetic nymphomaniac, taking him way beyond the pleasure threshold into a world of sweat, pain and utter exhaustion. Despite his pleas, she'd only released him from the broom cupboard a few hours ago. He looked like he'd just spent a wet weekend outrunning timber wolves. He sat quietly at the bar sipping his malt and hop medicine. A few half-familiar faces nodded greetings from time to time.
	The Trouble With Fish was a beautiful pub, built in the heyday of stern morality and gin guzzling - the Victorian era - complete with stained glass windows, etched mirrors, glazed tiles, flocked wallpaper and carved wooden fittings. Foliage trailed down wall pillars and spilled out of free-standing urns. In two months' time the management company would gut the place and turn it into a plastic and Polyester paradise.
	"Max!" said Jimmy. "What are you doing here? You never come in on Saturdays."
	By grand ethereal coincidence, The Trouble With Fish was geographically Max's local too. Max and Jimmy had known each other as pub acquaintances since Jimmy was old enough to pretend he was eighteen. As a family man, Max didn't visit very often, once a week, maybe twice, never on Saturdays. He usually drank two pints and always went home happy and refreshed, which made Judy happy too. She didn't like pubs but felt that one of them ought to go now and again, if only for the sake of tradition.
	Max took off his well-creased raincoat, folded it badly, placed it on the bar, and scratched his head. "I dunno. I ought to be at Sainsbury's, mixing with the Saturday-afternooners, but I got the urge to come down here. Celebrate a new invention, I suppose. Whew! Jimmy, you look awful. What happened to you?"
	"I got attacked by a mad woman."
	"On the street?"
	"In a broom cupboard."
	"Ah," said Max. "A party."
	"I think so. I think there was a party going on. I could hear music."
	"Me too," said Max. "It kept me awake until 3am." He didn't seem too upset. He looked at Jimmy's half-empty glass. "What are you drinking?"
	"Not sure. Whatever it is I need something stronger."
	The bartender arrived. Max looked at the range of beer pumps and made his order. "I'll have a pint of Elsewhere's Best, and for Jimmy a Wesley's Old Embolism." He turned to Jimmy. "Still on the dole?"
	Jimmy nodded. "They're trying to cut off my rent, force me to move back in with my parents. Can you believe it? They've got some weird ideas about age in this country. At sixteen you can have sex and buy a packet of fags. At seventeen you can drive a car. At eighteen you can have sex, smoke a fag to celebrate, drive home afterwards, pop down the pub, drink eight pints and stagger out to vote for the nation's government. But at twenty, like me, they want to know why you're not still living with your mum." A pint of ruddy liquid arrived on the bar in front of him. "How's work, Max?"
	Max smiled. "Same as ever. The better I do my job, the more people live in crap cardboard houses and the more money that shark on the top floor makes."
	"He was on TV the other day, your boss."
	"Party political for the neo-Nazis?"
	"No, it was a BBC2 programme about work, how English companies are learning from the Japs and Americans and getting more involved in things like - what was it? - worker participation and training and things like that."
	"What?" said Max incredulously. "Philip K Hutch? Are you joking?"
	"No. That's him. It was on in the afternoon. I watched it at my Mum's. Then she switched over to that stupid soap - Bathroom. Martha Naaktgeboren's going into counselling. Mum never shuts up about it."
	"On in the afternoon?" Max looked puzzled at first. "Ah. So nobody at work would have been able to watch it. That figures."
	"You don't rate your boss, do you?"
	Max struggled for the right words. Eventually one came to him. "No."
	"What's wrong with him?"
	"He's a monster, Jimmy. If I stepped into the road in front of his Bentley he'd have me fired for wearing down his tyres and brakes."
	Jimmy rubbed the light stubble on his chin. "If you had the choice, how would you like to earn a living, Max?"
	"You know what they say: find something you like doing and persuade somebody to pay you to do it."
	Jimmy thought about this advice for a moment. Perhaps he could apply it to himself. But then who on earth would pay him to masturbate? Maybe he should give the sperm bank a ring.
	"Personally," continued Max, "I'd just like to be paid to invent things all the time. I know it's what I should be doing. Look, I invented something this morning."
	Jimmy didn't hold his breath. He'd seen some of Max's inventions before. The refrigerated waistcoat, the electric baby-belcher - out of kindness nobody mentioned the incident with that one. Max's son seemed to be growing up normally.
	Max flopped the new version of the worry sausage on the bar. "If you're feeling dodgy it could be just the job."
	"It looks like a stuffed Durex," said Jimmy.
	"It's been cleaned."
	"How did it get dirty?" 
	Max sidestepped the question. "It's a worry sausage. Like worry beads, but you squeeze it instead."
	Jimmy picked it up and did as suggested, then burst out laughing. "Max... you can't... you know what that feels like?" Eventually he stopped laughing. "Bloody hell, Max. It works. It really does get rid of tension. I feel more relaxed already."
	"You think so?"
	"How did you think of it?"
	Max told him the whole sandwich bar story, from beginning to end. 
	"Ham and cheese, eh? And now bits of foam and soap? I think it's great, Max. Wonderful." An idea was beginning to form in Jimmy's mind, as inexplicable as his decision to go from broom cupboard to pub. There was a definite childlike quality to Max. Throw him a new toy and it was likely he'd forget the old one.
	"I invented something the other day, Max. Or at least I think I did. It was supposed to be a regular batch of homebrew, but I think it's turned out to be a love potion. I took some of it last night and women started molesting me right away. I'm sure that's what did it."
	"Wow. If it really works, it would be worth a fortune." Max was enthusiastic. "What's in it?"
	"Just fruit juice, yeast and sugar."
	"Sounds too good to be true."
	"Here." Jimmy dug the flask out of his pocket. It was still half full. "Don't try any, for God's sake. Look at the state it got me into."
	Max held the flask tenderly and peered inside.
	"Tell you what, Max. This may sound odd, but you like the love potion, and I really like the worry sausage. Why don't we do a swap? A straight exchange. There's plenty more of this poison back at home. You can have the lot. After what it's done to me I'd be glad to get rid of it."
	"You mean, like a formal transfer? We swop all the rights and everything. So it's just as if you really invented the worry-sausage and I really invented the love potion?"
	"Exactly."
	"You're on." 

	
19
Max's boss, Philip K Hutch, would have sued for slander if he'd heard Max associating him with the neo-Nazi party. In his view they were a bunch of raving pinko softies.
	Monetarism. Now there was an ideology a man could do business with. Restrict the money supply. Make sure the man on the street doesn't have any. Even squeeze him out of a job. That way the retailers are forced to keep their prices down, and inflation, that statistical Beelzebub, is vanquished.
	Philip K Hutch did his bit for monetarism by paying his employees as little as possible and always spending the millions that he himself personally earned. So there was no nasty cash lying around anywhere, no even in a bank's computer memory. Of course all this had nothing whatsoever to do with monetarism, but Philip K Hutch liked the word, so had adapted its meaning to match his point of view.
	Through spending all that cash he'd collected many possessions. He had six mansions, five of them uninhabited, unless he was currently living on one of his two yachts, in which case it became six. They were great places to store his cars and paintings. Each garage contained two classic automobiles, well-greased, covered in protective wax and vacuum-sealed in polyethylene. They were never driven, since that would have reduced their value. 
	Nor did anybody every look at the great works of art he'd collected. They too were chemically embalmed, wrapped and sealed to protect them against the rigours of light and wrong levels of humidity. He felt that the painters would have been proud to know that their works were so well preserved and had risen in value so much after they'd died. Some had even become more valuable before their painters had perished. Philip K Hutch's favourite was a modern art masterpiece. He couldn't stand the sight of it but adored its value. One of New York's most famous artists had dipped the feet of a duck in paint and allowed it to meander over a canvas. It rose in value five thousand percent a year later when the duck died. 
	Philip K Hutch had never talked to Max, but had glimpsed him once when the Bentley was being driven through the underground car park from one side of the London office to the other. A weedy looking man in an awful raincoat had stepped out from behind a pillar and got in the way. The driver had braked so hard that half Philip K Hutch's rejuvenating tonic had spilled out of his glass on to the floor. Who knows how that had affected the value of the vehicle? Unfortunately the car park lights were dim, helping to keep overheads down, and the Bentley wasn't using any at all, so he hadn't been able to get a proper look at the face through the darkened window glass. But at least he'd been able to fire the driver. 


20
"Lovely meal," said Cath, as Gloria's arm snaked around her from behind to carry her empty dessert plate away. The summer pudding had been exquisite. 
	"I hope the chef's listening," prompted Gloria, since her mother hadn't replied.
	"Oh. Yes. Thank you," said Dorothy, rather blankly. 
	Another grand ethereal coincidence was falling into place. Gloria's full name was Gloria Thompson. Her parents were Dorothy and Arthur. When Gloria, on the Majorcan beach, had invited Cath to stay in the Sussex countryside, it was at Dorothy and Arthur's house near Peterhurst. 
	And they say miracles are a thing of the past.
	"Where did you say you'd just been, dear? Thailand? What was the food like there?" asked Dorothy.
	"Hot and spicy," replied Cath. "Delicious seafood."
 	"Don't like seafood," snapped Arthur. "You never know where it's come from."
	Dorothy must have noticed the puzzled expression that Cath was trying to hide, because she said: "He means you don't know what nationality it is, dear."
	"No, I suppose not," said Cath, weakly. Was that an explanation? She turned to Arthur, hoping to steer the conversation on to fresh grass. "Have you ever been to the Far East, Arthur?"
	"No. I like it here."
	Even after a just few hours, Cath had reached full agreement with Gloria's views on her parents. Dorothy was sweet, even if a little batty. Arthur was a right royal pain in the backside.
	"Did you learn any mystical secrets in the Orient?" asked Dorothy.
	Not in Thailand, thought Cath, but I did learn a strange trick with a book in Majorca.
	"Martha Naaktgeboren's going into counselling," continued Dorothy. "You missed it."
	"I'm sorry?"
	"Do you watch Bathroom, dear?" asked Dorothy.
	Ah. The soap opera. "Yes," lied Cath, though she wasn't sure why.
	Gloria gave her a puzzled look. Cath remembered telling  Gloria she hated soaps. But then Gloria's expression changed, as if she understood. "You should see mum's video collection. She's got almost every episode."
	"I've recorded the last one, if you missed it," said Dorothy.
	"Why don't you go into the lounge with mum and watch it, Cath?" suggested Gloria, forcefully. "I'll stay here with father and try to loosen the knot in his tie."
	
	"I don't suppose people watch much TV in Thailand, do they?" said Dorothy, as they entered the lounge.
	Cath chuckled. "You'd be surprised. You can find twenty or thirty Thais crammed into one room watching soap. I mean... not that that's a bad thing. Everywhere I've been, people watch soap operas and game shows and detergent adverts. I suppose it's nice that across the world we all have something in common."
	Dorothy sat in her usual chair. Cath took the end of the sofa next to her. The Thompsons' cat, Russ, snoozing in the middle of the sofa, opened her eyes and looked at Cath expectantly. Cath stroked the car's neck.
	"Last week's tape is still in the machine," said Dorothy. "I can't wait for next week. Martha's first counselling session. All those skeletons in the cupboard coming out."
	"Right," said Cath, neutrally. What she was looking forward to was half an hour's innocuous TV with no conversation. Only now did she realise that lunch with Arthur had worn her out. Gloria had obviously noticed and helped with the getaway.
	Dorothy reached to her side and switched on a reading lamp, then picked up a paperback and opened it on her lap. Cath wasn't sure what to do. "Are you going to read?" she asked.
	"You go ahead and watch the tape, dear," said Dorothy, passing her the remote control.
	Cath held it in her hand but didn't use it.
	Dorothy looked at her book, the TV, then at Cath. "The book's just in case Gloria walks in. She thinks I watch too much TV. I'm going to watch, but if she comes in the room, I'll be reading." She flashed Cath a conspiratorial smile.
	"OK." Cath smiled too, but still didn't operate the remote.
"What are you reading?"
	"A Mills and Boon. It's all the romance and adventure you get at my age, dear. Believe me." 
	Later, in recollection, Cath couldn't work out why she'd brought the subject up. But right now it seemed an important thing to do. "I was reading a book a few days ago, and the strangest thing happened. All the letters and words turned into squiggles and didn't mean anything any more."
	Dorothy frowned and looked down at the page. Her mouth opened to say something, but then she seemed to change her mind.
	"Just a lot of dots and curved and straight lines, like patterns," continued Cath. "Pretty, but with no message to them."
	"Hmmm," grunted Dorothy. The frown had gone.
	"Blocks of grey on a page. No meaning. And then I thought - I can do the same thing with my mind. Instead of thoughts, just a lot of electrical signals zapping between cells. All meaningless. Not making any sense. A kind of nothing."
	Dorothy was motionless, unblinking, as if she were asleep with her eyes open.
	"Silly, isn't it," said Cath, laughing. "Really silly." Whatever had possessed her? Trying to pass along a delusion created by far too many daiquiris on a beach. Listening to herself now, she couldn't imagine anything more stupid. "Dorothy?"
	Dorothy raised her eyes and looked at Cath. But it was a different Dorothy, with powerful, vacuous eyes. Not madly staring, but relentlessly sucking, absorbing Cath's mind and all the sense that lay there, replacing it with a vision, a revelation. 
	Cath could see, almost but not quite, the extent of her own power within the world. And it was small. A tiny pathetic figure in a laughing universe. A female David doing battle with a molecule of Goliath's toenail, a trivial irrelevant organism holding on to a joke-shop package of self-importance. An insight into unimportance. A vision of enlightenment. On the brink of arriving...
	"Whew!" breathed Dorothy. She closed her eyes.
	Cath came back to reality, a little dazed but aware that something very strange had happened - almost happened - had certainly happened to Dorothy. "Dorothy?"
	No reply.
	"Dorothy? Dorothy, are you all right? Are you feeling OK?"
	"Ooh. Sorry, dear. I came over all funny for a moment. But I'm feeling better now." Under the light of the reading lamp Dorothy looked pale. 
	"I'm terribly sorry. I hope it wasn't..."
	"Don't worry, dear. I really enjoyed... I think I should lie down for a while."
	Cath felt so guilty she blushed with shame. Upsetting her friend's mother like this, and as a guest in their home. How awful. She helped Dorothy move from the chair to the sofa. Russ, sensing an emergency in progress, gave up her place without complaint. Cath checked Dorothy's pulse. A little fast but otherwise fine.
	"I'm all right, dear," muttered Dorothy, opening her eyes a little. Her colour had returned. "A worn-out body that needs its rest, that's all. You watch the tape. I'll have a little nap. I'll be back on my feet in a minute."
	It was true, decided Cath. Dorothy was going to be OK. It was her guilt that blowing the crisis out of proportion. She sat in Dorothy's chair. She wanted to smoke a cigarette, but couldn't smoke one here. 
	Russ meowed and jumped on her lap, which was comforting.
	Not knowing how else to distract herself, Cath reached for the remote and zapped the electric lectern into life.
	
As was too often the case, Dorothy hadn't been successful in taping the last episode of Bathroom. The remote control and its 82 buttons had overwhelmed her yet again. What she'd got instead was a Channel 5 documentary on talking to animals.
	If she'd kept it, and not accidentally recorded over it in two months' time, it would have been a very valuable tape, in fact the only one in existence. Channel 5 was going through a bit of a bad patch, and nobody in the entire country had actually watched the programme. Cath was the only person who ever saw it, which was a shame because it was superb.	
	As the presenter, Jomond Morris, demonstrated the tones and inflections available in a bark or meow, Cath watched with increasing fascination. Her worries over Dorothy faded away.
	
"Brilliant. That makes a lot of sense," said Cath. "Meow," she mimicked, following Jomond's lead very precisely.
	"That took you long enough," said Russ.
	"What?"
	"I said that took you long enough," repeated Russ, still curled up on Cath's lap but now with one eye partially open.
	Cath meowed again - a more complicated pattern this time that said: "It works then? You understand me?"
	"Of course," said Russ.
	"The man's brilliant," said Cath, continuing in animal talk. She was finding it extremely easy. "He's an undiscovered genius."
	"Who? The man on the TV?"
	"Yes."
	"Don't be silly. He's talking gibberish. Listen to him. 'The man on the mat sat.' What kind of sentence is that?"
	Cath listened. "I think it's just... like teaching material. But you're right. How strange. Sometimes he gets it completely wrong. This is mine house. Those am my lampposts. That's nonsense."

Russ would have been very amused to learn the real reason for Jomond's wayward grammar. 
	Jomond was a clever researcher, but not very good at keeping animals. He had ten dogs and eight cats in his research laboratory, all highly intelligent and all unhappy with their cramped living conditions.
	At night the two lines of cages were a hotbed of rebellion.
	"What a foul tyrant."
	"No better than a common gaoler."
	"There's hardly enough room to swing a research assistant in here."
	"We've got to get back at him somehow."
	"How about a nip on the ankle?"
	"No, you'd get the needle for that. We need to be more subtle."
	"Woof."
	"He's not doing badly at learning our language, though, is he?"
	"Hmm, that gives me an idea."
	And that was how Jomond Morris came to learn a very special set of syntax rules.
	In their individual daytime sessions the animals fed Jomond consistent babble and laughed uproariously as he repeated it back to them or juggled around with it to produce something even worse. Fortunately their laughter came across as intense tail-wagging or a few extra decibels of purr, so Jomond remained none the wiser. It never occurred to him that animals might have a sense of humour.
	At night, soft barking and meowing carried on for hours as the animals recounted the craziest things they'd heard Jomond say during the day. Tails wagged and larynxes throbbed. Conditions didn't seem to bad after all. 
	
"Complete crackpot," added Russ, rising from Cath's lap for a perfectly elastic stretch and yawn. "So, down to business. The tickling under the ears is great, but not the pats on the rump. They give me a strange feeling that something's missing in my life. Ten out of ten for the tuna, but the rabbit and liver variety has to go off the menu. And now, the thorny issue of can-openers. Why..."
	"Hold on, hold on," protested Cath. "I'm not your owner."
	"Owner? What on earth are you talking about, woman?"
	Cath thought about cats for a moment. "Hmmm" (this was very easy in cat language: hmmm, hmmph and dickhead were available in roughly twenty nuances each) "Let's rephrase that. I'm not the person who feeds you, am I?"
	"No. That's the old woman on the sofa."
	"Dorothy."
	"Is that her name? I always wondered what that word meant. I thought it was something to do with food. I usually get fed after I hear it. But this is all a trivial distraction. What we should be talking about is can-openers. Now listen to me for a moment..."
	Later, Cath had a chat with Ditto, the Thompsons' dog, who was far less obsessed with food and animal-operable can-openers. They were just getting to the interesting bit about why Dorothy kept throwing her best sticks away, when Arthur arrived to put a stop to all the stupid barking.


21
"Still got me," said Aphrodite, leaning forward to rest her glass on the green baize table. "My love potion's pretty obvious. The old lady gets the gift of giving enlightenment - Buddha's already explained that - and the stewardess can talk to animals. But what's my young idiot got? A worry-sausage? What kind of weapon is that?"
	"That was yours, wasn't it Christ?" asked Pan. "You must admit, it's not very fair. Aphrodite has got a point."
	"Money," said Christ. "The weapon is money. Neat, isn't it? The worry-sausage produces money, which is an excellent weapon."
	"Oh," said Aphrodite, "I see. Yes. That's OK."
	"Original too," said Pan, admiringly.
	"Blue rosette for best weapon," said Buddha, and it wasn't clear whether he was being serious or not, "goes to... Christ!" No, he wasn't.
	"Next envelope," commanded Aphrodite.
	"Om," said Buddha reaching in to his modesty sash.
	"Go on," said Aphrodite to Pan, "ask him if it's still tepid."
	Pan muttered something unintelligible
	Buddha tore open the envelope and read from the instruction sheet inside: 

"Now behold four more cards to be shuffled and dealt as before,
Bearing names of the blessed,
The four privileged targets, the prey for the weapons 
Your seconds on earth now possess."

"So that's it," said Aphrodite, nodding slowly. "I wondered how the candidates would fit in."
	There were murmurs and nods of understanding all round.
	"Wicked," said Pan. 
	"And the first to be murdered is the appointee," mused Christ. "We surely move in mysterious ways."
	"There's a hint of that here," said Buddha, "but not the full details."
	"Well?" asked Christ. "What does it say?"
	"One thing at a time," protested Buddha. "Vishnu!" he shouted, looking around for the august waiter. He heard a cough behind his ear. "Oh, there you are. Do you think you could..."
	"Four cards, eh? One each. A real tester, this. Still, I may just be able to manage it."
	Vishnu picked up the cards in one hand and manipulated them between thumb and forefinger by way of shuffling, then fanned them into a clover shape, which seemed impossible but there it was, and suddenly flicked open his palm, sending them flying perfectly to the compass points of the table.
	The Gods looked at their target cards in silence.
	"Right," said Buddha. "Now we have to show our pieces who their targets are."
	"How do we do that?" asked Pan.
	"It says here, we have to send them a sign, but for the moment we don't explain the reasons behind it."
	"Here we go again," complained Christ. "More melodrama."
	"What kind of sign?" asked Aphrodite. "A halo round the moon? A black cat taking a stroll?"
	"An arrow," said Buddha.
	"What, fired at the murderee?" asked Pan. "I haven't done archery for years. Does it mention anything about - what do they call it nowadays - collateral damage?"
	"Not that kind of arrow, stupid," said Buddha. "The symbolic kind that you pin on diagrams." And he read aloud the final part of this stage of the instructions:

"Send a sign to reveal to each piece,
Who the murderee is in each case,
Use an arrow in red hanging over the head
Of the target that they must erase." 

	"Poetry's tailing off a bit, isn't it?" murmured Pan.
	"Om."


22
Some people say that it's extremely difficult to convert a good inventive idea, no matter how brilliant, into a commercial success. Presumably these people don't have a god on their side.
	At first Jimmy wasn't sure how to begin exploiting the worry sausage, but he did know that he should abandon Max's soap and foam filling in favour of the real thing, a proper cheese and ham sandwich to Fil the Greek's recipe, including paper tissue. So he began by ringing a sandwich manufacturer, picked at random from Yellow Pages, to ask them if they were interested in his idea.
	They weren't. They were utterly rapt, spellbound and enthralled by it. The managing director invited Jimmy to his office straight away, where he offered him £20,000 for the rights to manufacture.
	"What?" said Jimmy.
	"OK," said the MD, a big jolly man with a chalk-stripe suit and a ruddy face. "Let's say £50,000, plus ten percent royalties."
	"What?" repeated Jimmy, mouth agape.
	"£100,000. That's the best I can do. I've got that in cash in the safe at this moment. And twenty percent."
	"Er... right," said Jimmy, since he felt he ought to say something, and he couldn't think of anything sensible to say. 
	Within an hour the company had drawn up a generous partnership agreement. Jimmy suddenly found himself the managing director of an entity called The Worry Sausage Company. Within another hour the manufacturer had started tooling up for the first batch of five thousand. A number that would turn out to be far too low.
	Huge pallets of cheese and ham arrived, bread by the lorryful, and a consignment of custom-made smooth synthetic skins.
	To prevent the filling going off, turning green, or simply changing texture, at the end of the production line the complete item was irradiated to neutralise all bacteria. In emergencies, if a touch of sausage manipulation just wasn't up to the job and a full-blooded nervous pig-out was called for, the sausage could safely be broken into and eaten. Selling irradiated food was still currently illegal, but then this product wasn't going to be sold as food.
	And every eaten sausage would lead to a replacement sale. 
	A lot of money was about to be made.
	Jimmy already had more money than he knew what to do with. Early in the afternoon he left the sandwich company's office with his £100,000 carried in a Sainsbury's carrier bag. Not surprisingly, he was feeling a little shellshocked. 
	He went to the nearest bank to deposit the cash. The manager called the police, as he was legally obliged to do, and the drug squad arrived to check out Jimmy's story. He had to give them five hundred for "destructive counterfeit testing" as they called it. All in used fivers, which seemed a bit strange.


23
Like any good prolific inventor, Max pursued the commercial side of the love potion with equal vigour, until 8.30pm on the day of the invention exchange, when he thought of a brilliant way of extracting corks with a hair grip and a broken pair of sunglasses. He didn't think about the potion again until Buddha phoned. 


24
The next episode of Bathroom, the one that Jimmy's mum and Dorothy were so looking forward to, covered how to deal with water shortages as well as introducing Martha Naaktgeboren's personal counsellor.
	In real life many parts of the USA were suffering from chronic water shortages and equally severe outbreaks of uninformed discussion about global warming, especially California, where the series sold well and, unusually, Indianapolis, where it was filmed. 
	The forty-seven scriptwriters, ever keen to tackle topical issues, had decided to devote most of an episode to the subject, almost as a public service. They wrote a fine script showing Martha Naaktgeboren's family doing its bit for water conservation: showering with less water and soap, using only a little dab of toothpaste and turning the tap off while brushing, coiling up the hose and allowing the lawn to go brown, and abandoning the daily washing of the five family automobiles, which soon looked unkempt and unattractive. This fine script was then presented to the sponsors for approval - a collection of soap, detergent, agrochemical and car companies.
	In the final version, Martha's family still presented a selection of methods for coping with the water crisis. Martha's daughter, Firebird, the twenty two year old with the incredibly long legs and slightly open lips, used more water than before on the basis that soon there wouldn't be any, so she'd better make the most of it while it was still there. She started showering five times a day instead of her normal three, which gave great scope for shower scenes through translucent glass covered in dripping condensation, plus twelve dressing and undressing scenes, including getting in and out of bed.
	Martha's son, Randy, the hunk who was doing so well at college football, even though he was already a star at law school, bought a new car whenever his old one became dirty, rather than wash it, which was very public-spirited of him.
	Martha herself rented a condominium for the family in Louisiana, where there was lots of water.
	Of course none of them ever went to the toilet, so at least they were all doing their bit in that way.
	The counselling part of the show concerned Martha alone. The reason for its inclusion was very simple. Martha had a very nice counsellor whom she liked very much and wanted on the show, or else. And since the counsellor - a young English lady by the name of Helene - was on the production set every day anyway, prompting Martha from some lofty position with tidbits like, "You have the power Martha, use it," or, "Be kind to yourself Martha, you're your own best friend," and since the production company was paying Martha's counselling bills, they thought - why not? Helene couldn't act, so she wouldn't look out of place. Slightly awkward her being English, but that was best ignored. After all, nobody ever said to Edward Woodward in the Equalizer, "Hey, your accent's real cute, say something for me." or, "How come you're allowed to carry a gun, limey?" So Helene was introduced as apple-pie American.

Dorothy was glued to the set, one of literally millions of minds locked into anticipated voyeurism, the collective unconscious being entertained. What dark secrets, what primordial urges and blind spots was Martha about to reveal? 
	Cath and Gloria were watching with her and Arthur was also in the so-called living room, facing the TV.
	Elsewhere, Jimmy was watching too. He'd chosen the wrong time to visit his mother and explain to her that he was becoming a very rich man, but he knew he wouldn't be able to get her attention for such trivia until Martha had finished baring her soul.
	Max was also watching TV, but a different programme. He'd taped an early Sunday morning repeat of the BBC2 series on new working practices and was watching at home alone. He was listening to his boss, Philip K Hutch, talk about wonderful Japanese working practices, and wallowing in the hypocrisy. 
	Watch carefully.
	On the taped BBC 2 programme Philip K Hutch finally hit the screen. 
	On BBC1 Martha Naaktgeboren lay back in the comfortable counselling chair while Helene leaned forward attentively from her office-style seat, without the barrier of a desk between.
	At which point Dorothy noticed an arrow hovering above Martha Naaktgeboren's head. A bright red one, ghostly and rather unreal even allowing for the fluorescing TV screen. It was quite distracting, and although Dorothy wasn't sure exactly what it meant, she knew it was important. Some kind of message. A personal one that she should remember.
	Jimmy also saw an arrow on the screen and had the same kind of feelings. But his was above Martha's counsellor, Helene.
	Max's arrow was above his boss, Philip K Hutch.
	Cath didn't see an arrow on the TV. Hers was elsewhere in the room, pointing down at Arthur.


25
"Final envelope," demanded Aphrodite.
	The other three gods looked expectantly at Christ, who reached slowly and dramatically into the depths of his robe, then struggled with something for a long time and became rather agitated.
	"What's wrong?" asked Aphrodite.
	"Zip on my money-belt's stuck. Ah. There we go." He opened the released envelope. "Four more cards." 
	"What are they?" asked Pan.
	"Places. The places that the murders must be committed."
	Vishnu was already at the table. Without being asked he took the cards from Christ's hand and started his shuffling wizardry. They spilled out of his hand on to the floor.
	"Oops," said Vishnu, picking them up with an embarrassed grin. He didn't try his clover-leaf trick again but simply dealt them out like any normal human being, which for a god was quite an achievement.
	"Now, this is more like Cluedo," said Aphrodite. "Has everybody else got rooms in a house?"
	The other three nodded.
	"So we're all set," said Buddha. "All ready for the main game."
	Christ read aloud from the instruction sheet:

"A last foursome to fumble and fit with the rest, 
A behest on positions to slay.
And the first death in place is the winning manoeuvre, 
No matter by whom or what way.
Let the real play commence, give the final instructions 
To the pieces on earth you command, 
All riddled with weaknesses, talents, capriciousness. 
Let's find out which fish they first land."

	"I see," murmured Aphrodite, without much enthusiasm. "So we have to get in touch with our pieces again."
	"Great!" exclaimed Pan. "Shower time!"
	"Om. I notice that it doesn't specify that we have to make personal appearances." 
	"Ye-es," agreed Christ, slowly drawing out the word. "The last visit was pleasant enough, but I'm not dying to make another. I don't want to devalue the currency."
	"I'm pretty neutral to it myself," said Aphrodite.
	"Me too," agreed Buddha.
	"Oh, boo," sulked Pan. 
	Vishnu had sneakily crept away earlier during the conversation and now he returned and with a clatter unloaded an armful of mobile phones on the green baize table.
	"We don't know their numbers," complained Pan. He was the only one to look displeased.
	"I've already been in touch with directory enquiries," explained Vishnu. "The correct numbers are programmed in."
	Within a few seconds they were all facing away from each other, with eyes blankly unfocused somewhere in the middle distance, quietly absorbed in semi-private conversations. Once again except for Pan, who had been a little slow on the uptake.
	"Can't get through. Engaged," he whined.
	"Try again in a moment," said Vishnu, softly.
	"How come I can't get through?"
	"Because the phone at the other end is in use."
	Pan wasn't happy. "It's getting very complicated," he moaned. "Who's got who, which weapon, what room."
	"Don't worry," said Vishnu. "You don't need to follow it in detail. But if you like, I'll draw up a little chart soon, something you can refer to."
	"That would be nice. Thank you." The news perked Pan up a little. "Do you think we'll be able to go on a ride after this?"
	"I expect so," 
	"Oh good." 
	"Try again now," suggested Vishnu, gently, noticing that Christ's conversation had finished. 
	 Pan did, and got through.


26
Dorothy glanced again at the slip of telephone notepad in her hand. On it was written the single word, Kitchen. She hadn't bothered to write down kill or murder or Martha Naaktgeboren's name. Actually she needn't have bothered to write down Kitchen. She was unlikely to forget. It wasn't every day that Christ phoned and asked you to murder someone. 
	Murder? Still, if it was Christ's wish. She'd read about murderers in America claiming in court that they'd received instructions personally from the Lord. Maybe they weren't crackpots after all. She was more worried about whether she was suitable for the task than any moral misgivings. Martha Naaktgeboren lived in America and Dorothy lived on the outskirts of Peterhurst, Sussex, with an old man who had never learned how to make tea. She could hardly fly over to America and leave him to fend for himself in the booby-trapped world of suburbia. He'd soon fall victim to can-openers, plastic bags, coathangers and electric sockets.
	And how was she supposed to use her strange power, the power to enlighten, or whatever it was, when her only contact with Martha was through TV? 
	Now there was a thought. 
	Dorothy bustled through to the living room and energised the Zen screen. She settled into her easy chair. A middle-ranking politician was being interviewed live on a small-potatoes afternoon talk show.
	"Yes, I must agree. The overcrowding of British prisons is indeed a serious problem. As you are no doubt aware, the government has commissioned a further pink paper on this issue, with the full intention of consulting all the relevant parties - a very positive step in our search for an equitable solution, and one which..." 
	Dorothy frowned. What a lot of twaddle. Now an enlightened politician... She stared at the talking head on the screen, then closed her eyes and thought hard about grey squiggles on a page. The politician broke off in mid-sentence, looking very surprised. After a few moments he regained his composure.
	"Let's face it," he said, "nobody outside prisons gives a shit about them."
	Dorothy beamed. So it worked. She'd thought it might.
	The interviewer, mouth agape, struggled to respond.
	Oops, thought Dorothy, I've done it now. Oh well, once you start meddling you might as well go the whole way. She concentrated a second time.
	"Indeed not," said the interviewer, "but these are the kind of stupid questions that people expect us to ask. It's all just a game. But since we're in the mood, let's jump straight to the all-important issue of personal rates of taxation."
	"Absolutely," agreed the politician. "That's the only issue of any importance in government. If we can keep taxes down, we get elected again. Things like prisons are completely irrelevant. The way I see it, an election is just the voter putting his or her vote out for tax rate tender. The lowest price wins."
	The interviewer nodded. "Very true. Unfortunately the current price is less than the running cost of a stable and safe society," 
	"I couldn't agree more. But this is a democracy and that's what people want. Low taxes and fuck society. And that's what they get. It couldn't be fairer, could it?"
	"No. But things might be better if the economy wasn't in such a mess. You must admit that your lot are completely bungling it."
	"Absolutely."
	"Can't say I fancy the other team very much, though," said the interviewer, and then the screen went blank. 
	An apology message was displayed, followed fifteen seconds later by a Bugs Bunny cartoon, looking rather like it was settling in for the afternoon, like drizzling rain but slightly funnier.
	Hmmm, mused Dorothy, a powerful weapon indeed, but one that would have to be used with care. Maybe she would be able to deal with Martha Naaktgeboren through the medium of TV. But perhaps she ought to learn a little bit more about the woman first, so she could use her gift with precision.
	She smiled. Maybe she really was the right person for the job. Christ could certainly have faith in her. Could she phrase it that way?


27
A few minutes after Dorothy had finished her conversation with Christ, the Thomsons' phone rang aga