The Rebellion Of The Goddesses: A
Mythopoetic Interlude
Back in the dawn of the “men’s movement’ in the 1980s
and 1990s, there was a strongly-feminist school of thought that saw the way
toward revalorizing masculinity lay through story, song, performance art, and
other abstract representations of masculinity.
The “Mythopoetics” were particularly influenced by the works of Joseph
Campbell and Robert Graves, as well as the wave of New Age spiritualism that
was rising. Among them were authors like
Robert Bly, whose Iron John started
some very intriguing discussions until the feminists got wind of it and shut it
down.
If the Mythopoetics had a crime, it was that they
refused to acknowledge the role that women and feminism played in the decline
of masculinity. They saw the tragic
assassination of the father figure from American life as a “social” problem,
not a “planned feminist outcome”.
When their attempt to talk about men as something
other than an inherent problem got popular, Bly and the other Mythopoetics had
their hesitantly-worded prose crushed
by the hobnail boot of the feminist
intellectual establishment. Even though
their approach involved kissing feminist ass on a galactic scale, compared to
the Manosphere, feminism could not handle when men got together when they
weren’t looking and overseeing every word.
It’s a common theme: pro-feminist men try to apply
the same ideas expressed in feminism toward masculinity . . . only to discover
that that’s the last thing feminism wants.
But the Mythopoetics did have a few things to teach
the modern Manosphere.
One, men enjoy teaching and learning in story form,
and we have an innate understanding of archetypical myth as cultural icon.
And two, sometimes you get something quicker when
Homer Simpson says it.
Scattered in each chapter throughout this book,
therefore, is my homegrown ode to the misguided Mythopoetic movement. Instead of shaggy green men or manifestations
of manly sensitivity they chose, I’m using the Olympian Greek Gods (h/t to
Percy Jackson) as my Mythopoetic canvas.
Firstly because almost everyone is familiar with them, and secondly
because they are – firmly – in the public domain, and therefore free.
Enjoy!
The Conspiracy of Athena
August, 1945
The kitchen of the
nondescript house in suburban Virginia was tense, despite the celebratory nature of the
event. For the first time in four years
the blackout curtains were drawn, letting light from the house spill out over
the lawn, the windows open to permit a hint of breeze to push against the
oppressive heat of a Virginia
summer. Despite the scent of honeysuckle
and magnolia in the air, the mood inside was anything but serene.
The women congregated here,
as custom dictated, while the men dominated the living room, clustered around the
radio with cigars and nectar. They had
started the evening together, of course, but soon segregated by sex so that the
women could feel comfortable doing unladylike things like smoke and drink and
swear. Athena had been dying for a smoke
all night, waiting patiently for her father’s long, dull, boring speech about
Victory and the Future and how by working together the family had
triumphed. She was ready to run from the
room the moment he was done, and only a disapproving look from his wife had
kept her from sprinting in a most un-ladylike manner.
But the moment she hit the
kitchen, she had a Lucky in her lipsticked mouth.
She was seething. Her father had made certain to thank everyone
for their help in defeating the Teutonic madness over the ocean – all the
males, at least. He’d gone on and on
about how important his brother’s work had been, slapping the huge bearded man
with the Naval uniform repeatedly on the back while he recounted the brilliant
naval victories. Her other uncle, the
tall funereal-looking gentleman dressed all in black looked uncommonly pleased
with himself as her father had recounted how invaluable he was to concluding
the war so decisively. Athena couldn’t
fault her uncle much – Hades rarely got much credit for his work, but the
Atomic Bomb had earned him some additional respect in the family.
Then there were “the boys”:
Apollo got a ten minute paen to his brilliance with both medicines and
inspiration, that twisted little snot Hephaestus got five minutes of glory from
Zeus recounting his contributions to innovation and industrial production, and
Hermes got nearly all the credit for the essential code-breaking and
clandestine work that had proved so instrumental in the Allies’ victory.
And of course Ares got the
lion’s share of credit. The largest,
bloodiest war in history. The most
heroic war since Helen’s pretty face launched a thousand ships. Who better to credit for the hard-fought
victory than the God of War?
“How about the fucking Goddess of War?” Athena fumed to herself
in a whisper.
“Did you say something,
Dear?” the matronly Demeter asked, as she took her accustomed seat to the left
of the head of the kitchen table.
“No, not really,” Athena
said, resigned. Dragging the old goddess
into a political discussion wasn’t a wise idea, and as the goddess of Wisdom
she was pretty much obligated to behave wisely.
Demeter was as devoted to Zeus and the cause against fascism as any
deity, despite her personal feelings about him.
The raw adoration she gave the King of the Gods – her father – made her
a little nauseated. She sucked even more
powerfully on the Lucky Strike to help keep herself from opening her mouth and
saying something provocative.
Behind Demeter came Artemis,
in a smart-looking WAC uniform, a silver-handled automatic on her hip and
only the barest hint of make-up on her boyish face. Behind her tottered Hestia, Goddess of the
Hearth, who of course immediately made her way to the stovetop and began
putting a teakettle on. And behind her,
always making an entrance, was Aphrodite.
The Goddess of Love and
Beauty had been exempted from official military service, so she was in a
spectacularly low-cut gown that would have been scandalous without the fur
stole. She had been working with the
USO, however, keeping the spirits of the troops up and ensuring that there was
still enough mating going on to keep the population levels up in the face of
the millions of deaths. She looked
tired, but relieved and relaxed. She had
utterly eclipsed mousy little Persephone, Queen of the Dead, who scurried in
and promptly perched on a stool by the back door where she could fade from
notice.
And behind her came . . .
Hera. Goddess of Marriage and
Childbirth, Queen of Olympus , Matrona Mundi. The very definition of divine regality, Hera
had traded in her own WAF uniform for a splendid, conservatively-cut silk
dress. She seemed much more at ease in
civilian garb, though she had been as ardent a supporter of the cause as
Demeter.
As long as Daddy kept it in
his pants, there was no length the Queen of the Gods would not travel to
support her holy Husband.
Bitch. Athena conjured a glass of nectar and sipped
as she smoked and regarded Hera. She had
just stood there, stood there and
taken Daddy’s insult. After he had thanked
and regaled the male gods who had worked so hard, Zeus had turned to Hera and
simply added, “And let’s not forget to thank the little ladies for all of their
hard work, too!”
And that was it.
There was no mention of how
important Athena’s own strategies had been, especially the work she’d done on
D-Day. Twenty weeks of preparation and
then seventy-two hours of bloody hell . . . but she was still just “a little
lady”. Or Persephone’s clandestine work
helping ferry Jewish scientists out of the Nazi-occupied territories to aid in
her husband’s Manhattan Project. Another
“little lady”. Demeter’ tireless
promotion of Victory Gardens . “Little lady”. Aphrodite had toured and promoted and
strutted and posed for lurid paintings on the sides of bombers. “Little lady”.
Even that decrepit old bag Hestia had been forced to work seriously for
the first time in centuries, keeping the Home Fires burning . . . literally. Another “little lady”.
Athena was sick of it. She stabbed out her Lucky in the glass ashtray
and instantly lit another. That earned
another disapproving look from Mother.
Step-mother, Athena amended in her mind.
“Young lady, it is bad
enough you smoke those things,” she began, her tone strident. “But must you smoke so many? I swear to Styx , it is just not ladylike.”
“Either is a blowjob,”
Aphrodite quipped, “but you don’t hear the fellas complaining about that, do
you?”
“Daughter!” snapped Hera,
indignantly, as the other goddesses tittered – even Artemis.
“Oh, lighten up,” snorted
Persephone. “If she hadn’t been making
sure the boys all had a taste of what they were fighting for, we might be
having this conversation in Asgard, in German.”
“The necessities of war do
require a certain amount of . . . personal
sacrifice,” Hera grudgingly admitted, even as she blushed, “but a sense of
propriety about discussing those . . . activities should never be sacrificed, Daughters.
Victory is ours. Let us not find
in our haste to divide the spoils that we have mislaid our dignity.”
“I ain’t been mislaid once
this whole war,” mused Aphrodite.
“Try Hades,” Persephone
said, dreamily. “If he can find a way to
screw up a sex act, he will.”
“Girls!” exploded Hera. “That is quite enough! I expect all of you to maintain your sense of
decorum! We did not ruin Tokyo , Berlin and Mother Rome just so you could go running about
like a bunch of wild nymphs! You are
Goddesses of Olympus!”
“Running around like a nymph
is kind of what I do,” Artemis pointed out.
That earned her a glare from Mother.
“Yes, well I’m hardly
worried about you carrying on with
men, now am I?” she snorted.
“You know, you’d be sooo
pretty if you’d just try a little lipstick . . .”
“Enough, Mother,” Aphrodite
said, stuffing a cigarette into a slim holder and delicately lighting it. “The war is over. We’ll all be getting back to normal, soon . .
. without as much oversight, I’m hoping?”
It was as much a statement
as a question – but Hera chewed her lip.
Never a good sign.
“Girls,” she began, gently,
“I know you’ve all done so much to
help—”
“Really?” snorted
Artemis. “According to Zeus we’ve done
squat!”
“Your Father means well,”
the Goddess of Marriage continued. “He’s
very proud of all of you. As am I.
This was as big as Troy ,
and for a change we were all on the same time.
But while the war is over, the struggle isn’t.”
There were groans from
around the kitchen – even Hestia rolled her eyes.
“I’m serious!” Hera insisted.
“Communism is a real threat to our way of life. Perhaps worse than even the Nazis. The Reds are already half-way into Europe , and in another few months they’ll be entrenched. Communism isn’t just going to evaporate
without a lot of hard work by us all.
Your father has asked that we keep the current organizational structure
until we’re reasonably secure from the godsless Commies.”
She sounded so reasonable . . .
“Bullshit,” Athena said,
exhaling tiredly. “That’s utter
bullshit, Mother, and you know it.”
“Language, young lady!” she sang reprovingly.
“Oh, go to Hades,” Athena
grumbled. “I saw what he just did to us
in there, how he treated us, even if you
want to play queen of denial. Almost
forty minutes on the boys, bless their silly little peckers. One sentence for us. One.
Fucking. Sentence.”
“That’s hardly fair,” agreed
Artemis, evenly. She usually stayed out
of these little divinely feminine dust-ups, so if she was speaking up, that
said a lot.
“I like boys as much – well,
more than anyone, but I was kind of
pissed off about that, too,” agreed Aphrodite, being uncharacteristically
helpful. “I didn’t spend the last four
years shaking my ass for the troops, inspiring fuselage art and selling war bonds so I could do the same
thing for the next century. I signed up
for the duration – and the duration is over.”
Athena didn’t bother to
correct the other goddess’s diction, she was used to such mis-speakings from
the blonde. As much as it irritated her,
she was making Athena’s point. She was
about to jump on that when support came from an even more unexpected
quarter. Hestia, the grandmotherly
goddess of the Hearth, stepped away from her gas stove for a moment and
addressed the Queen of the Gods.
“Hera, with all due respect,
I find I agree with the girls on this,” she said with dignity. “We’ve all labored mightily, each in our way,
to see this war through. At its
conclusion it is only proper that the glory be distributed equally. This wasn’t the usual scrap where we mostly
kept to the sidelines—”
“Speak for yourself!” the
Goddess of War and Wisdom snorted. There
had been few wars she hadn’t been involved in.
“—this war required all of
our ingenuity and all of our efforts.
For the King of Heaven to speak so briefly about our role in the
triumph, when the work of women was so vital, is near to an insult. Back during the Great War there would have
been more, even.”
“Why, Hestia!” Hera said,
taken aback. “What’s gotten into
you? Zeus meant no disrespect—”
“Yes, but he meant no respect, either,” Artemis said,
evenly. “And now he wants us to keep
giving our all . . . and he doesn’t even have the balls to tell us
directly? He sends the orders through
his wife? I’m sorry, but I do feel
thoroughly insulted!”
“ ‘His wife’ is Queen of
Heaven, I would remind you, Daughter,” Hera said, coldly, even as she
blushed. “For the last five thousand
years you have condescended to take your instruction through me – for I am the
ultimate representation of fulfilled womanhood.
The power in the sacred marriage is mine! Without me, what would the women of the world
be?”
“Free?” offered Persephone
with a derisive snort. “As a wife –
under protest – let me just mention how unpleasant married life can be?”
“And if you were to force me
to wed any man, I would renounce my immortality and die by my own hand,”
Artemis agreed. “I need a husband like I
need an iron cowbell around my neck.”
“Yes, your . . .
proclivities are well-known,” Hera said, disapprovingly. “But without marriage, woman is nothing. Only through union with the male principal
can the magic of the replenishment of the species come to pass—”
“Actually, I have more to do
with that than you do,” Aphrodite giggled wickedly. “But I’ll admit, you do handle the boring,
not-so-much fun parts.”
Hera shook her head in
disgust. “Don’t think I’m unaware of
your influence, Daughter.”
“Good,” Aphrodite said,
shaking her hair out of the tight bun it had been in since the war
started. It cascaded down her shoulders
like a shower of golden silk, and when she shook the knots out of it her
influence filled the air. “Because I
have a lot of bottled-up energy after sending half the menfolk overseas, and I
plan on seeing plenty of action for the next few years. War-brides, homecomings, drunken fumbling in
the back of dance halls – I’m done with the war. I want to set the world to screwing, and I don’t
really care whether it’s lawful or not.”
“Aphrodite!” Hera said,
accusingly. “You will control yourself,
young lady! I understand you have
tremendous power, but to use it unwisely—”
“Oh, relax you old biddy,”
the Goddess of Love dismissed. “There
will be weddings aplenty. But I doubt
there will be many virgin brides. You
can’t bottle up erotic energy like that for five long years and not expect it
to explode.”
“There will be no
exploding!” Hera demanded. “I’m
serious! A little celebration is one
thing – we all need to blow off steam.
I’ll probably cut loose and inspire a few thousand elopements,
myself. But there are limits, young
lady, and I will not have you turning the proud women of this civilization into
a bunch of lecherous whores!”
“I guess you’ll have your
hands full then, won’t you?” Aphrodite said, with mock sweetness. “There are some seriously unsatisfied slits
out there. I foresee a lot of babies in the
near future. And a lot of blowjobs.”
“Language!”
Athena felt it was time to
jump in again – she hadn’t expected the other goddesses to be so quick to rebel
against Hera’s matronly authority, but perhaps she had underestimated the level
of discontent amongst her sister goddesses.
Artemis had been all but
marginalized for centuries. She was a
holdover from earliest times, when hunting had been how most people put food on
the table. Even as the Olympian Pantheon
had been forming, her Significance had waned.
Her spheres of influence had faded in importance to humanity as they had
adopted agriculture. Artemis had been
kept around as a courtesy to an older time, when a man’s skill with a bow was
the difference between life and death for his family. Now she plied the bitter wastes of the
frontiers, the last wild places on Earth, with no male’s help or guidance,
while the huddled masses of civilization gorged themselves on field-grown
carbohydrates. She had the least to lose
among the goddesses.
Aphrodite had been tightly
controlled, constrained to subtleties and innuendo, using raw sexuality to fuel
the war effort – and before that, after one free-wheeling decade of bathtub
booze, she had been nearly confined to her palace. Sex in the 1930s had been all but
nonexistent, from a cultural perspective.
After the flappers had gone, the goddess had been consigned to burlesque
shows and cat houses. Only as Germany had begun its assent had Aphrodite come into her
own. She had inspired countless acts of
bravery and determination, by inspiring the fighting men in the trenches. She’d also been forced to largely avoid
inflaming the lusts of women, apart from a few hundred thousand parting screws
before troops were deployed.
Demeter had always been
obedient, and honestly could care less about war except how it affected winter
wheat futures. Athena stared at her in
silence, knowing that she was the real power behind the throne. Zeus’ alliance with his sister Demeter was
actually more important than his marriage to his other sister, Hera, Athena
knew. Hera might govern marriage and family,
but without Demeter there would not be the all-important grain that had built
civilization.
But despite her devotion to
the current order, she still held a quiet grudge against Zeus and his brothers
over how they had all been complicit in the rape and forcible marriage of her
daughter, Persephone. No matter how many
times Zeus tried to explain the political necessity of the pairing, Demeter was
not happy – and mostly people just didn’t talk about it. And it was easy to see why. All you had to do was watch Persephone.
The once-gorgeous Goddess of
Spring was now a pale shadow of herself, the Queen of the Dead in person, as
well as name. Her divine husband had
been busy for the last five years, and never more so than now, between the
final battles and atomic weapons.
Persephone may have been spared his dour company, but her three-month
annual stay in Hades had driven her mad, over the centuries. She was still lucid enough, even reasonable,
but she had a very odd perspective, sometimes.
A macabre fascination with the intricacies of death and beauty. And she always smelled a little like a musty
tomb, no matter how many flowers she manifested.
She could have been so
beautiful, and she wasn’t stupid, like some other goddesses. But she had not lived up to her
potential. How could she? Flowers needed sun and rain to grow, and
there was neither in the cold realm of the underworld. Demeter saw that. Everyone saw that. And Zeus had allowed it. Sure, it was thousands of years in the past,
but you still couldn’t forget something like that. Every goddess had been offended by the
actions of the male triad at the top of the pantheon, and had protested the
“wedding” in various ways.
But knowing that her
daughter was being raped in her own marital bed by the God of Death, winter
after winter, wasn’t enough to move Demeter from her loyalty to her brother and
king. Between her, Hera, and their
sister Hestia, the three old Olympian bauds had kept the younger goddesses in
line for millennia. If one of them
departed from what Zeus demanded, Hera and her sisters were the first to defend
him and administer discipline.
But Athena had had
enough. It was bad enough that Hera
lectured her continuously on the merits of blissful matrimony – ignoring how
rocky her own marriage to the storm god had been. But to have her dismiss the work they had
done and then compound it with another task, easily as big, with no real reward
in sight? That was too much to take.
“Mother,” Athena said,
standing to face the Queen. “That’s
it. We’re not going to keep going like
this. We might help out, but we’re done
being good little soldiers.”
“Athena, you have an
obligation to your father—”
“Well, what about his
obligation to us?” she demanded. “We’ve
earned his respect. All of their
respect. Does he realize what has
happened?”
“The Nazis and the Japs are
done,” Hera replied, as if Athena were an idiot. “That’s what was supposed to happen!”
“Not that,” Athena said,
patiently. “Since the war began how many
millions of women went to work in factories?” she asked, pointedly. “They’ve done everything that was asked of
them, and got paid a fraction to do it.”
“So? Now that the war is over,” Hera reasoned,
“they won’t have to work any more. We
don’t need them to – they can go back home and raise a family.”
“Why the hell should they?”
Artemis asked, belligerently. “Mother,
you should know better than anyone how important it is for a woman to have
security. If they don’t need a man’s
support, why get married at all?”
And that was Athena’s secret
weapon: Demeter had once been a goddess of the most profound religious rites of
Western Civilization, the Eleusinian Mysteries.
At the very dawn of the Agricultural Age, she had taken her daughter’s
abduction by her brother and transformed it into a meaningful rite empowering
the initiates to by-pass the regular after-death process. Once her magic and mystery had inflamed the
hearts of mortals as the importance of her grains became known across the
world. But after her alliance to Zeus
and his scheming sister-wife, Demeter had become just a dumpy old pawn under
the control of the King of Olympus.
And it would become even
worse after the war, Athena knew. All of
the technological breatkthroughs that made bigger and better tanks in Detroit would also lead to bigger and better tractors. With mechanization, one man could do the work
of twenty on a farm. The assembly line
had been a product of Athena’s imagination, and she had immediately seen its
potential to revolutionize manufacturing . . . but the idea that mechanical
assistance would conquer the ancient mysteries of the grain goddess hadn’t
occurred to her until now.
And that was her
weapon. Man could grow enough grain –
thanks to Science and Technology – to feed everyone in the world, now, using
fewer man-hours. You didn’t need half of
the population to be on the farm to grow food.
So they would naturally head to her province, cities. Soon the urbanization of America would become permanent, with cities growing
everywhere, the vast farms merely places to drive through between them. Ceres’ power was waning, though she didn’t
even suspect it. And with her power, so
went the power of the Divine Couple, Zeus and Hera, locked in eternal
matrimony.
“Artemis is correct,” Athena
said, clearly. “Why should they return
to the farm and the home? If they can
make their own money, they won’t need a man.”
“Don’t need a man?” Hera
said, scandalized. “Of course you need a
man! How can you get married and have
children if you don’t need a man?”
“Maybe that’s not the most
important thing in the world anymore,” Persephone replied.
“How could it not be
important?” Hera demanded.
“It’s not as important as it
was,” Athena corrected. “Hera, I’m
serious: either Zeus and the boys start giving us the respect we deserve or . .
. we’re going to have to take some action.”
She stubbed out the Lucky for emphasis.
“It would kill your father
to hear you talk like this,” the mother goddess said, shaking her head in
disappointment. “You’ve always been his
special little girl—”
“I sprung fully-formed out
of his head, Mother,” Athena reminded her, dryly, “after he swallowed my birth
mother. I was never his ‘special little
girl’.”
“You know very well what I
mean! He’s been so proud of you, proud
of you all. And now you reward that
pride with insolence and disrespect?”
“No, we’re standing up for
ourselves, Hera,” Aphrodite said, standing to demonstrate. The fact that her tits nearly popped the
buttons on her dress was not lost to everyone.
She used her sexuality like a club, sometimes. “We’ve done our time. It’s time for fun. Let Ares and Apollo go chasing after Commies,
if they want. But I’m done following
orders, too. I want to go to Los Angeles , get the film business doing something other than
newsreels and war movies. Maybe have a
little fun,” she said, arching an eyebrow suggestively.
“And I want to take all of
this great progress we made during the war and make life easier for mankind,”
Athena agreed. “Between what we captured
from the Germans and the Japs, we really have the possibility of refining
production and manufacturing capacity, really giving the common people their
first real taste at upper-class luxury.
Think about it? Every man in the
West able to enjoy the comforts and entertainments available only to the rich
and powerful once? You remember how
Radio changed things,” she prodded.
“That is quite beside the
point,” Hera said, haughtily. “But if
you are in agreement . . .” she sighed, heavily, “then I will take your concerns
to Zeus Almighty, Lord of Heaven and Earth, King of—”
“We know who he is, Mother,”
Artemis said, rolling her eyes.
“But I want to prevent a
united front,” she continued, eyes flashing angrily at the Goddess of
Wisdom. “Demeter? Hestia?
Would you mind accompanying me to go talk to our brother? Perhaps we can find some compromise . . .”
As the older goddesses filed
from the room, looks of grim determination on their faces, the remaining
deities gathered around the kitchen table.
“Can you believe those old
bats?” Artemis asked, incredulous. “Like
they’ve done jack squat!”
“I’m serious, I’m done,”
Aphrodite declared, fluffing her perfect blonde hair. “I’m going to tear things up. Then I’m going to relax, and then I’m going
to do it all over again.”
“Me, too!” Artemis
said. “I’ve had all the crap from Zeus
I’m willing to take. If he tries to
order me around one more time, I’m going to resign my seat and spend the rest
of eternity hunting and watching women’s golf.”
Persephone looked around,
her wide eyes not seeming to focus on anything in particular. “Gosh, you guys are really going to try to overthrow Zeus? You know what they say: only a son can overthrow his father to become king of the world. Cronos did it to Uranus, Zeus did it to Cronos. Unless you can get Ares or Hephaestus or
Apollo or – Fates forbid! – Dionysus to take him out, you aren’t going to get
his ass out of that throne.”
“I don’t need his throne,”
Athena said, derisively. “I just need
him out of the way. Then we can get some
real reforms going. Most of the world is
in ruins, and we have a chance to reshape things in a way that could really
help a lot of women. We can’t ignore
that opportunity.”
“But . . . to rebel against
the King of the Gods?” asked Aphrodite.
“I mean, I’ll be the first to agree that Zeus is a pain in the ass, but
. . . you know, he did keep the Nazis at bay.
That should count for something.”
“It does,” Athena
soothed. “Look, I didn’t say anything
about killing Zeus. I love my father—”
“So do a lot of other
dames,” Aphrodite quipped. Athena
ignored her.
“—but this isn’t the 19th
century any more. He’s still thinking in
terms of empires and acreages. The age
of the Plow is over. The age of the
Machine is at hand.”
“Well that’s all very well
and good for little miss inventor,” Artemis said, coldly, “but I don’t see how
that helps the rest of us.”
Athena sighed. “Which is why I’m the goddess of Wisdom, and
you’re the goddess of catching rabbits.
Look, the War taught us something very valuable: women don’t need men to
support themselves. It also shook up a
lot of other things, and there’s going to be advancements that will bring
fortunes to many. But Rosie the Riveter
isn’t going to just hand in her timecard and go home, get married and have
babies,” she continued, passionately.
“They deserve much more than that for their sacrifice. Hell, we all do. And if you all will trust me, and keep my
secrets, I think we can get it for them – and us. But I have to know I can count on you,” she said,
looking at each of them intently in turn.
“I’m in,” Artemis said,
instantly. “I’m tired of this bullshit.”
“Me, too,” Aphrodite said
absently as she admired herself in the reflection in her coffee. “I love a man in uniform, but then I love a
man out of a uniform as well.”
Athena looked at
Persephone. “How about you, Blossom?”
The youngest goddess
shrugged. “Hell, if they didn’t need my
ass to get the God of Death laid, I’d still be sitting at the kids’ table. Besides, Mom is pissing me off . . . a
lot. So, yeah, I’m in. For what it’s worth.”
“It might be worth more than
you think,” Athena said, her eyes narrowing as she began to plot, once her
co-conspirators were chosen. “You know
what’s going to happen out there: Hera’s going to pull Zeus aside, she’s going
to very earnestly complain with her sisters over each shoulder, and then Zeus
is going to say some soothing crap, make another patronizing speech about how
he loves his ‘little ladies’, and then he’s going to make jokes about it to the
men. It’s the same old crap, even with
the war over.
“But I have a plan,” she
said, excitedly. “I will need your help,
but if we do it right we should be able to take Zeus out of the equation.”
“I told you,” Persephone
said, shaking her head, “Only the son of the king of the gods can kill him.”
“I don’t want to kill him –
I love my father,” she repeated. “But I think we can work it so he has a lot
less power over us. And that has to happen. We’ve come too far, ladies, to stay in the
kitchen any more. We’ve proven we’re
just as good as men in factories and offices.
Let’s show them how much we can do without their help.”
“So what’s the plan?” asked
Artemis.
Athena looked around again,
and glanced at the kitchen door before she turned back. “All right, first we need to find a safe
place to meet and talk more openly. You
wanted to go to Los
Angeles , we can
meet there in about five years. I just
need to take care of a few things.”
“I just need to get out of
these stockings,” agreed Aphrodite. “Five
years? Sure, I don’t think I have
anything planned for then.”
“Just don’t have it in the
winter, okay?” Persephone asked. “You
don’t want to know what he does when I try to leave during ‘his time’. I could so kill mother for making me do this, sometimes . . .”
“Don’t worry, Blossom,”
Athena said, darkly, as she patted her hand.
“By the time we’re done with them, you’ll never have to go back to Hades
again.”
The Theft of Artemis
Athena tried to ignore the
interested stares from the trendy boys in the blazers – she wasn’t here to
attract attention. In fact, the severe
black turtleneck she wore was as close to anti-sexual armor as she could think
of – and once she added the sunglasses, she should
have been unassailable.
She had thought the giant
mug of hot tea would be enough to show them she wasn’t looking for a Hollywood party to attend. Still the three
young men in the restaurant booth behind her were continually stealing glances
at her. With a frustrated snort she removed
a white beret from her big cloth purses and . . . disappeared.
To the young men in the
booth next to her, it looked like she had just gotten up to use the lady’s
room, and they left her alone. If it wasn’t for the damned Helm of
Invisibility I couldn’t go anywhere, she thought sourly. And if
my stupid sisters could be on time
once in their lives, maybe I could get somewhere worth going.
It was another fifteen
minutes before Persephone showed up, wearing a simple black headband and – of
all things – a poodle skirt. At least it
was black, she noted. The Goddess of
Death and Flowers looked around guiltily before she slid into the booth.
“I’m right here,” Athena whispered harshly. “Invisible.”
“Oh!” squeaked the
goddess. “I forgot you could do that.”
“It’s a useful trick,” she
agreed. “Especially when people forget
you can do it. Any word from the
others?”
“Aphrodite is on her way –
has to make an entrance, you know her. I
haven’t heard from Artemis, however.
Athena, are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, I know you were pissed off that night
– we all were! – but to do this . . . this is .
. . isn’t it . . . treason?”
she whispered.
“Relax,” soothed the Goddess
of Wisdom. “We’re just a couple of gals
getting together for some girl talk. We
haven’t done anything. “ Yet, she silently added to herself.
Before they could continue,
an old War-era truck pulled into the gravel parking lot, raising a cloud of
dust. The only two things unusual about
it were the name (“Diana Freight”) and the driver.
Artemis had taken pains to
keep from attracting attention by dressing in a workshirt and dungarees. It made her look like she owned a truck farm,
one of the hard-working women of the valley who made sure that there was plenty
of lettuce and onions on LA’s fashionable tables. She’d also cut her hair scandalously short –
almost to her chin. And that chin was
downcast.
She found them without
incident, and with there being three of them now Athena felt comfortable enough
to lose the beret and regain her image.
“Long time, Sisters,” the
Goddess of the Hunt said, nodding to them both.
“Been well?”
“I’ve been doing a lot in Europe with the reconstruction,” offered Athena, first.
“Still sleeping with the
Dead Guy. Still writing poetry. Oh, I’ve been up in San Francisco , and there’s the most wonderful—”
“Just the Reader’s Digest version, please,”
Artemis said, frowning. “I’ve been on
the road since dawn. Let’s order. Is Blondie coming?”
“She says she is,” Persephone nodded.
“She said she had to break a date to do it, and then made me fish for
his name, as if I cared, but she said she wouldn’t miss it. Apparently your message really intrigued
her,” she said to Artemis.
“I thought it might,” she
nodded. “Hell, it will benefit her most
of all.”
They made small talk about
inconsequential things for a while, until a speedy red Italian convertible
rumbled into the parking lot trailing a cloud of dust. A gorgeous blonde woman wearing a headscarf
and huge sunglasses got out.
She was wearing bright
yellow denim jeans and a yellow-and-blue plaid shirt over a snug white
blouse. Her fingers were adorned with
rings and she sported three necklaces.
In an instant there were young men circling around her, sure that she
was some Hollywood starlet trying not to be recognized. Of course, the opposite happened, and before
long the entire place was watching the Goddess of Love tip-toe daintily across
the gravel to the door.
“So much for a ‘low
profile’. Why the hell did you want to
meet here?” asked Athena,
annoyed. She could think of a hundred
more suitable places to plot rebellion than a hamburger stand.
“Are you kidding?” asked Artemis. “Just wait until you taste the
hamburgers. They put cheese on ‘em, and it’s amazing. That and a chocolate malted, and a woman
don’t need much else.”
“It does look like all the
cool kids are eating here,” Persephone nodded wistfully, looking around. “There are a lot of teenagers,” she
noted.
“Exactly,” agreed the
Goddess of the Hunt, “there’s so much activity here we won’t even be
noticed. And the hamburgers are
outstanding,” she repeated.
“I just don’t know how we’re
going to think with all of that racket,” muttered Athena.
“Bienvinedo, ladies!” squealed Aphrodite as she sat down. “Just got back from the Riviera ! Just as
lovely as you remember it, if you ignore the Russian subs off the coast. Have you ordered? I just want a salad,” she said, demurely.
“We were waiting on you,”
Artemis said gruffly. “But I’ll order
for all of us when the waitress comes over – I eat here all the time. And they don’t do salads. This ain’t Italy . Okay, so I
said in my message I had something big.
I do. Something as big as Zeus’ bolt of lightning.”
“A weapon?” asked Persephone
fearfully. “Believe it or not, I don’t
want to see anyone die.”
“Not that kind of weapon,” chuckled Artemis. “This one doesn’t kill – it keeps you from
being born.” She reached into the pocket
of her dungarees and pulled out a small object.
Athena had a moment’s impulse to dive for cover, as if it were some sort
of atomic grenade. She’d heard Hades was
working on one.
But instead Artemis laid a
glass bottle of little white pills on the table. “This, Ladies, is the first viable birth regulation therapy. I was at my brother’s lab recently, and he
told me all about them. Though the theory has been around for a
while, he only recently perfected them.
And . . . they work.”
“They work?” Athena asked, interested.
“You mean, you take a pill, you won’t get pregnant?”
“That’s what the lab results
say,” Artemis nodded, her eyes gleaming.
“He’s doing human trials now, but they’re just for show. His formula works. A woman who takes one
of these pills every day will not get
pregnant. No matter how much sex she has. Or
with whom,” she added, blushing a little.
As a Virgin Goddess, Artemis had little experience with such things,
even though she understood the vital importance of sexuality.
“Oh, my,” whispered
Aphrodite, taking off her sunglasses and staring at the pills, enchanted. “Are you serious? Are you fucking serious? If you’re joking,
Art, so help me—”
“You want me to swear by the
River Styx? C’mon, it’s me.
And it’s Apollo, the fucking God of Medicine and Sunshine. Of
course it works. Only . . . get
this: he doesn’t want to release it.”
“What?”
Athena asked, sharply.
“He doesn’t want to release
it into the general public. He wants to
study it for a while – say a few hundred years – before he does it. Then he wants to do it very gradually.”
“For Olympus ’ sake, why?” asked Persephone. “Doesn’t he know what this means?”
“Well, yeah,” Artemis said,
a little derisively. “He’s a genius,
remember? Why do you think he’s reluctant? He doesn’t want to upset the Status Quo.”
“You mean he doesn’t want to
mess with Zeus’ prerogatives,” Athena said.
“And that’s criminal. There are
almost three billion people on this
planet, half on the brink of starvation.
How do you think we’re going to handle twice that many? They’ll be
resorting to Malthusian cannibalism at that point. Even after all the death from the war, global
population growth has barely slowed down.”
“Maybe Korea will go nuclear,” said Persephone hopefully, like it
was a good thing.
“Not a chance,” Athena
countered. “The Communists are focusing
their efforts on consolidating China right now.
And they don’t have the Bomb yet.
Or at least not officially. If
the conflict was in Europe , maybe. But
who’s going to use atomics over someplace like Korea ? ”
“It doesn’t matter,”
Aphrodite said, her eyes gleaming. “We
have a duty to ensure that the world
doesn’t starve itself into oblivion. We
cannot allow widespread unrestricted breeding to endanger the human race. We have a duty,”
she repeated.
“You’re just saying that
because this means a lot more sex,” growled Artemis. Before Aphrodite could respond, the waitress
came and the Goddess of the Moon ordered six cheese-covered hamburgers, four
chocolate malted shakes, and a basket of fried potatoes. “Those are even better,” she assured
them.
“Well, yes, birth control would
mean more sex . . . perhaps,” Aphrodite said, innocently. “But what about all of those married couples
who only want three or four children?
This way they can enjoy the comforts of marriage without having to worry
about any anxious surprises!”
“Riiiight,”
Artemis said with a snort. “I’m sure marital bliss and population
control are your prime motivators. Give
me a break, Sister. If Apollo released
these, the moment they hit the market you’d have orgies in the streets. Or at least that’s what you’re hoping.”
“Well, what’s wrong with a
girl having a little fun?” she demanded, pouting prettily. “The boys get to do it all the time! And we do it
better, too! Forget over-population and
happy marriages – women deserve the
right to enjoy sex without worrying about babies!”
“You mean, without worrying
about the wrong babies,” Persephone
corrected. “These pills are basically
infidelity pills, aren’t they? Take
these . . . and you can have sex with whomever you want, and no one will ever know!” The goddess seemed deliciously scandalized by
the idea.
“That’s not why they’re needed!” insisted Athena. “There are plenty of ways a woman can have
sex without having a baby—”
“I hate condoms, and while I
like anal as much as the next girl – more,
probably,” Aphrodite added, not being able to resist the scandalous admission,
“that’s not the point. The point is we’ve earned this! For five
thousand years we’ve been slaves to the land, using our vaginas to spit out
brats to carry on the family name, dying in childbirth, and being married off
to whatever relic made our fathers the most money. Fuck
that. I’m done. I’ve been toeing Hera’s line because I had to – Marriage first, then sex, except where I could get away with it. And what has that gotten me? Centuries of illegitimate kids and disgraced
mothers, and half of the time the women didn’t want to get screwed in the first
place!”
“Exactly, this is an issue
of moral justice,” Athena
emphasized. “We do deserve this. We’ve
earned it. Five thousand years of
grain-based marital customs are more than enough. We can lick the food problem in one human
lifetime, if we can get the population under control. This isn’t just about women, this is about
everyone. The entire human race. And if Hera and Demeter and those other old
biddies can’t see that, then maybe they have outlived their usefulness as
anthropomorphic expressions!”
“Okay, that’s getting close
to treason,” whispered Persephone.
“So? I say we unleash these on the world,
girls. Let’s see what happens to the men
and their stupid military power structures and capitalist aspirations when
suddenly they don’t have to engineer a way to kill off the excess population
every twenty years! We’ll give them
birth control, the population will stabilize – maybe even shrink a little – and
then we can let the industrial and agricultural surpluses we’re predicting
catch up and enrich everyone.”
“Fewer babies means fewer
dead babies,” Persephone agreed. “Not my
favorite kind. I’m in. Besides, I’m wondering what sex with someone
besides Mr. Grumpy Pants would be.
Someone like . . . Ares,” she said, dreamily.
“Uh, he’s out of your
ballpark, Sister,” Aphrodite said warningly.
Persephone shrunk, but she should have known better. Ares had been Aphrodite’s “bit on the side”
for centuries, even millennia. War and
Sex were as close as War and Death, after all.
“But if you want to go get your oil changed, then go ahead!”
“He’s actually pretty
faithful,” Persephone admitted, self-consciously. “Boring, but stable. But boring.”
“’Natch,” grunted
Artemis. “But I got ‘em for you. You all can figure out what to do with them.”
“I’m curious,” Athena said,
as their burgers arrived – magnificent creations of protein and fat and ketchup
and onions. “What’s your interest in all
this? Besides pissing off Zeus, that
is. I wouldn’t think that a virgin
goddess would be interested in a sex drug.”
“I’m not,” Artemis
admitted. “Never had much use for
it. Just complicates things. But people,”
she said, gesturing with her wax paper-wrapped hamburger, “people interest
me. As in, ‘if there are too many more
damn people, there aren’t going to be any more wildernesses’. No wilderness, no animals. No animals, no hunt.”
“I . . . I guess that makes
sense,” sighed Athena.
“Oh, I’m in with you, don’t
worry about my motives,” she said, matter-of-factly. “But it’s going to be a wild ride. You’re too young to remember the last time
something like this happened. When they
shifted from a Hunter-Gatherer to an Agricultural civilization. There was chaos for a thousand years. But they eventually got the hang of it. The chaos was bad, though. Wars, heroes, famine, disease, murder, a
monster around every corner . . . those were some good times,” she said,
dreamily. “Back then if you wanted your
kids to eat, you had to be a good hunter.
It was all wilderness, with just a few little settlements, never more
than a thousand or so . . .
“But the pact between Zeus
and Demeter changed that. Once they had
grain and fire . . . well, hunting was what you did in your leisure time. And there wasn’t ever any leisure time in
subsistence farming. But without
farming, we wouldn’t have civilization.
And that’s where Hera came in.
She made sex a condition of marriage to ensure that the legitimate – she
used that word, ‘legitimate’ – heirs would inherit the land. That meant no more screwing around, but it
also meant more kids that survived.
Trade offs,” she sighed.
“And what else has Demeter’s
grain gotten us?” Athena continued, trying to stir up the resentment of the
goddesses against the old matronly titaness.
“This delicious bun, for one
thing,” Persephone pointed out. “Oh, I’m
in Elysium!” she sighed around the messy, greasy bite she took. “The cheese . . . oh, the cheese . . .”
“I told you,” Artemis said,
demanding credit for finding the place.
“Best hamburgers in the world, right here in southern California . And those
fried potatoes? Better than ambrosia!”
“Sacrilege, adultery and
treason, all in one meal,” Persephone giggled.
“I feel like such a bad girl!”
“This is almost as good as
sex,” Aphrodite said, washing down her burger with a dainty sip of her
chocolate malted. “What’s the name of
this place?”
“McDonald’s Hamburgers,”
Athena said, reading the sign over the grill.
“They really are quite good,” she admitted, trying the golden-brown
fried potato strip that accompanied their meal.
“You know,” Artemis said,
seriously, as she swallowed a bite fit for a Titaness, “we should come eat here
every day.”
The Visit Of Zeus
Athena was enjoying a cup of
hot tea at her highly-polished mahogany desk in the Administration
building. She had no “official” title
here, of course – although the goddess could have fabricated the credentials
necessary to teach in an instant – but it hadn’t taken much to convince the
President of the college that an additional scholar on staff who didn’t take a
salary was worth the cost of an unused office.
Athena liked it here in
That was changing, Athena
nodded to herself as she sipped her tea, the newly-translated copy of The Second Sex open before her to her
favorite passage. If she had her way,
then this women’s college and every one in the Valley would prepare a whole
generation of intelligent, well-educated women who – for the first time in
history – were gaining an education not to make themselves more attractive to a
successful husband, but for the betterment of their own minds and careers. That was the plan, anyway.
The problem was doing it
without attracting the attention of Senior Management – Dad and Hera –
prematurely. That was tricky, but not
impossible.
Wasn’t she the goddess of
warcraft and guile, after all? Ares
preferred the brute-force method of warfare.
Athena was far more thoughtful and stealthy in how she ran a campaign. And this was War, even if the Senior
Management didn’t know it yet.
Things had been going well,
so far. Aphrodite was glamming up Hollywood with the stars and their hangers-on, keeping the
public distracted with glamour and entertainment while Artemis, Athena, and
even Persephone were working behind the scenes according to the Plan.
The Cabal of Goddesses was
working slowly and patiently under Athena’s direction, but so far it had held
strong, and – more importantly – hadn’t tipped its hand yet. Seeds were being planted. Things were being prepared. Champions were being groomed. Athena had retreated to this small women’s
liberal arts college two years ago for two reasons: first, because it and its
sister-schools would become the hot-bed for the mortal portion of the
Plan.
And secondly, such a quiet
and feminine institution was the last place Zeus and the boys would consider
looking for any signs of sedition.
Pursuing studies with intelligent-but-unpretty female scholars was
expected of the Good Girl’s Goddess.
Things like poetry, art, literature, dance, sculpture, music . . . the
Boys would never suspect what her oak-paneled office and Ear Grey tea
obfuscated.
Athena was daydreaming over
the idea of a female-led pantheon, a female president of the United States , and women in power everywhere when there was an
unexpected knock on the door.
“Come in!” she said, shaking
herself from her reverie. It wasn’t
often she got visitors, but every now and then a freshwoman student would get
lost trying to find the Financial Aid office, and required redirection.
The door opened and revealed
– literally – the last being she wanted to be here.
“Daddy!” she said,
enthusiastically – and then chided herself that the reaction wasn’t entirely
feigned. Her gifted mind still burned
with the insult her father had given the Goddesses of Olympus, but her heart
still had a significant attachment to her father.
The old man’s beard was
neatly trimmed and his suit was dark, broad-shouldered, and
double-breasted. He wore a dark fedora
and a understated tie, one with a lightning-bolt tie-clip. He didn’t hesitate to cross the room and
gather his daughter in his big brawny arms for a hug.
Athena endured it for a moment, then broke away, kissed her father on the cheek, and offered him tea and a seat. “So what brings the King of the Gods to this quiet little corner of the Earth?” she asked, doing her best to hide her nervousness. Did he suspect the plot, yet?
“Oh, I was just in the
neighborhood,” he admitted. “Apollo and
Heph wanted me to stop by MIT and see some of the new stuff they’ve been
working on – just wait until you see the improvements in Hydrogen Bomb designs
they’ve come up with – it’ll make that one the Russkies just tested look like a
firecracker!” he chortled. Athena tried
to suppress her disgust. She was the
Goddess of War, but she loathed the megaton-minded approach that was becoming
standard. War should be more personal
and less destructive than that.
But the Big Three were all
Gung-Ho on big bombs. They were all
betting that that’s how the next big war would play out. Athena disagreed, but they hadn’t bothered to
ask her opinion. Had they ever?
“So you just decided to drop
by?” she asked, innocently. “Tea?”
“No thanks,” he
dismissed. “Sure why not? You’re my favorite daughter, after all, a
chip off of the ol’ block. I haven’t
seen you back home except for formal occasions.
I thought I’d check up on you, make sure you were staying out of
mischief.” He chuckled as he said it –
of all the Olympian goddesses, Athena was the least prone to what the Old Man
considered “mischief” – that was Aphrodite’s job.
But his assertion had come
dangerously close to the truth. Athena
smiled wanly. “Oh, Daddy, what possible
trouble could I get into here? I like
it, is all. It’s quiet. It’s peaceful. And it’s full of intelligent, creative
women,” she said, firmly.
“I know, I know, Honey, just
teasing you,” he chuckled, amused at his own joke. “But when you’re gone from home for so long,
we get worried. Mother misses you.”
“She’s NOT my mother,”
Athena said, coldly.
“You know what I mean. She’s everyone’s mother – she’s the goddess of Motherhood, after all. And she worries about you. So do I.”
“Why?” demanded Athena. “Because I’m being quiet for a change?”
“Any time a woman gets quiet, there’s trouble around the corner,” he agreed, sagely. His patronizing attitude made her sick. “But it’s more a concern than a worry, on my part. Everyone else seems to be doing really well – Apollo is ushering in huge new advances in science and technology, just look at what Heph has done with manufacturing here, and every time they launch one of these new atomic air-craft carriers, Poseidon’s woody just gets bigger. Even Hades is looking cheerful these days – you saw how he was at the Nuremberg Trials. Everyone seems to be doing well, but you and Dionysus.”
“I can’t help but notice
that you failed to mention any goddesses
there,” Athena said, quietly but matter-of-factly.
Zeus shrugged. “Grain, marriage, homelife and beauty? Honey, those things haven’t changed since I
took this job. They’re eternal.
Apart from the electric range and the combine harvester, there really
hasn’t been much going on for them in the last few centuries, you know?” He noticed her troubled expression and
realized he’d said something rude. “You know I don’t put you in the same class
as the rest of the girls,” he soothed.
Athena’s rage burned, but
hid it behind her cold gray eyes. The rest of the girls. Not women.
Not goddesses. Girls.
“Well, gosh, Daddy, I sure
do appreciate that,” she said, and noted Zeus utterly failed to get the
sarcasm. “But you know me . . . since
the Jacquard loom, I’ve really been too busy to really make much of a splash. But I’m not idle, I promise. I’m doing some very fascinating analysis on
world population trends towards a greater degree of—”
“Oh, I’m certain it is
fascinating, Honey, but Daddy doesn’t have a lot of time today,” he said,
looking at his watch. “I just wanted to
stop and make sure you’re doing okay. Mother
asked me to. To be honest, Aphrodite has
me worried, between you and me – have
you seen the crowd she’s hanging
around these days? Disgraceful. Hollywood starlets
and pretty-boys. Faggots and drug
abusers,” he added, scornfully, carefully forgetting his own days of buggery in
the ancient past.
“I’m sure the 1960s will
calm things down, Father,” she said, her tone like honey. “They can’t possibly be as turbulent.
Aphrodite is just blowing off a little steam after the war, and Dionysus . . . well, he’s rumored to drink.”
“And scriptwriters – did you
know she’s been hanging around a bunch of Pinko Jews?” he demanded, still
talking about Aphrodite. The attention
made Athena mad, for some reason. “Damn
commies, every one of them, you can just tell.
I just know she’s going to do something awful that’s going to embarrass
us all.”
“You’re just feeling a
little cooped up, Father, and you know that if she’s off the reservation, then
you won’t be able to indulge in your . . . extra-curricular activities,” she
reasoned. Zeus gave her a sudden, sharp
look, but there wasn’t any lightning.
His pact with Hera was powerful and binding, but Aphrodite had a way of
finding loopholes just large enough for Zeus to stick his dick through. Without her . . . he’d be dependent upon Hera
for sex.
She could imagine how
horrible that was.
“Maybe you’re right,
Sweetheart. I swear, she gives me more
problems than every other goddess put together,” he smiled, shaking his
head. “Why can’t she be a good girl, like you?
Or Artie? You two have always
been model goddesses.”
“She’s a sex goddess, Daddy—” Athena began, ready
to unnecessarily lecture her father on the divine birds and sacred bees.
“Goddess of Love and Beauty,” he corrected. “Let’s not get crude, shall we?”
“She’s a sex goddess,” Athena repeated, a little more firmly. “That’s the fact of the matter, and we both know it. Love and beauty are just euphemisms for it. All of those returning soldiers coming back at once, she was doing big business and got used to it. So did the people. And she’s just following their lead. People are cutting loose a little more after the war, and you had to expect that.”
“I know, I know,” Zeus
sighed. “I mean, your Mother—sorry, my
wife, she’s been giddy as a schoolgirl since V-J Day. All those marriages after the war, all of
those babies . . . haven’t seen her like that since after the Great War. And Aphrodite was right there with her,
providing the carnal forces. But that
wave is over, Sweetheart, and has
been for ten years – we needed to repopulate, but you’ve seen the figures. If we let her go wild, then we could possibly
see the global population get to as much as three or four billion by the end of the century.”
“There’s always birth
control,” Athena forced herself to say.
Zeus shook his head,
sadly. “Oh, sure, rubbers are helpful,
but until you can design a better one we’re still
looking at too many babies.”
“I was speaking of the Pill,” she said, knowingly. It took the King of the Gods a few moments to
figure out which pill she meant. There
had been so many in the last hundred years.
“The birth control pill could prevent pregnancy.”
Zeus looked disturbed, and shook his head. “It’s a lovely idea, Athena, but it wouldn’t be practical. Besides, it’s still in the early stages of development. And I don’t have to remind you that You Know Who isn’t very happy about it,” he said, knowingly. He always called Hera that when he wanted to defer blame for policy to her. She knew he was trying to invoke the Daddy/Daughter conspiracy against Mother – classic Freudian move – and while it sickened her to play along, she smiled wanly.
“Of course, she would be
against it,” she sighed. “That’s the
last thing she’d want: millions of nubile young women being able to have sex
with just . . . anyone who shows up in a shower of gold. That would be awful!” she said,
mockingly. She felt pathetic, even as
she made the face. But anything for the
Cause.
But it had worked. Zeus’ weakness had always been nubile young
maidens (with the occasional youth, when it was fashionable), especially
princesses. America was filled with “princesses” now, a whole new crop
of them growing in the protected environs of the post-war security. Not even Atomic weapons could put a damper on
their enthusiasm. And she could tell by
the look in his eyes that her legendarily horny old man was suddenly very
interested in sampling their . . . enthusiasm.
“Perhaps I have been hasty,”
he said, reconsidering. “I’m sure that
in the right hands, this could allow married couples to enjoy the benefits of
the institution without the worry of unplanned children. Tell you what, I’ll stop by and talk to
Apollo, see if we can make something happen.
It would be a shame to let the course of Progress falter, because of
some antiquated ideas. And there is the
global population to consider,” he added, rationalizing his decision with
divine precision.
“If you think so, Daddy,”
Athena said, softly. “Oh, while you’re
here, do you want to see the new fabrics I’ve been working on for the space
program? The new pressure suits—”
“Perhaps another time,
Sweetheart,” Zeus promised, straightening.
She knew that would get him – he almost never looked at her work.
Especially the textiles. Make him
a new anti-tank gun and he’d hang it on the refrigerator of Olympus , but a space-age polymer fabric?
That was pure Zeus-bane.
“I’ve got a busy schedule,
just wanted to stop in and check on you.
Keep up the good work,” he said, kissing her on the forehead
patronizingly before vanishing in a flash.
“Oh, I will, Daddy,” she
whispered to the emptiness he left behind.
“You can count on it!”
The Separation Of Zeus And Hera
New York, 1963
The atmosphere was tense in
the stately old mansion in upstate New York where the meeting had been arranged. It would be odd for it not to be, Athena
reasoned, considering it was the first time in centuries that a meeting of the
Olympians who had charge over Western Civilization had taken place due to the
instigation of a goddess.
And not just any goddess . .
. the Queen of the Gods. Hera, herself,
had summoned the Twelve and their adherents here to discuss “recent events” –
that’s all the note Hermes had dutifully delivered to her office had alluded
to. But the Goddess of Wisdom knew what
it was about. Everyone did. It had been weeks since the event, but Athena
doubted that any one of the divine sphincters that sat around the big table in
the Grand Hall had unclenched much since then.
Hera was seated at one end
of the long mahogany table when Athena arrived, with Demeter (looking extremely
well-fed) on her left and Hestia on her right, grim expressions on their
faces. At the other end of the table,
Zeus, Poseidon and Hades had congregated, drinks in hand, murmuring amongst
themselves and looking anxious.
Good, thought Athena. They should be anxious after that debacle.
Other divinities were
arriving all the time – not just the Twelve who had control of the council, but
spouses and avatars and divinities who hadn’t been seen in council since the
Civil War. Athena was somewhat taken
aback. She had expected there to be a
robust attendance, but such minor deities as Tyche and Nike and Eros and Eris
had showed up. Everyone was concerned,
it seemed, not just the major players.
She smiled wanly as she
dodged by Eris – no need to get on her bad side – and slid into a seat on the
goddesses’ side of the table, across from Hephaestus. The lame young god looked troubled as well,
which was a bad sign. He had been so
delighted with the technology developments lately, particularly the transistor,
but there was a grim and slightly guiltily look on his face as he grimaced a
smile at Athena.
“Are we all here?” Zeus
asked, loudly, sounding a little impatient.
He rattled ice cubes in his Scotch glass to get everyone’s attention,
and then held it out to Hebe for a re-fill.
“Waiting on Hermes,” sighed
Apollo. “Again.” The two young gods always had a bit of a
rivalry, ever since the Messenger of the Gods had stolen a prized heard of the
Sun God’s when he was still just an infant.
Even though they worked fairly closely these days, Athena knew they
still grated on each others’ nerves.
“For a fellow with winged
feet, he sure isn’t on time very much,” chuckled the God of Smithcraft.
“He’s on a mission for me,”
Hera said flatly, and Hephaestus shut up.
He’d always been a bit of a mama’s boy, considering his big brother was
the God of War, strong, handsome, and kind of an asshole. “He will be arriving presently.”
Just how presently was answered
a moment later when he burst into existence overhead, and then brought his
winged penny loafers to a skidding stop next to Zeus’ chair. He looked guiltily at the King of the Gods,
made a proper bow, and then took three large strides across the room and handed
a large manila envelope to Hera without a word.
Then he slunk over and sat between Apollo and Ares, and sat down, trying
not to look at anyone.
That didn’t bode well.
“Now that everyone—” Zeus
began, when he was interrupted. By his
wife.
“I believe it was I was the
one who called this meeting,” Hera said, icily.
“Therefore it’s only reasonable that I call it to order.” She looked a challenge at Zeus, but he shrugged
it off.
“All right, Dear, be my
guest,” he said, taking a seat at the head of the table – or the foot,
depending upon your perspective. He lit
a cigarette and waved out his finger while he regarded his wife. A patronizing smirk came over Zeus’ face as
his brothers joined him – Poseidon looking stern and Hades looking bored. Persephone was hovering behind her husband,
again, but the Goddess of Flowers and Death caught Athena’s eye quickly enough
to give her the barest of winks.
Aphrodite slid in next to Athena, and smiled prettily, while Artemis
plodded over to her seat. When all
Twelve were seated, and the rest of the gods came to order, everyone looked at
the Queen expectantly.
“I’ve summoned you all here
today,” she began after taking a deep breath, “to hold Zeus to account for the
recent actions off the coast of Florida that—”
“You dare?” Zeus asked, his
bushy brows settling over his blue eyes like thunderheads. “That is a matter of warfare and diplomacy,
Hera, quite outside your purview. I—”
“I called this meeting,”
Hera reminded him. “I called it, I get
to run it. And it is difficult to see,
my lord husband, how something as basic as the survival of the human race is
‘outside of my purview’. Quit being an
ass.”
“I’m not!” Zeus said,
indignantly. “The crisis was clearly a
matter of war, which in the hands of your son, and of diplomacy, which is in
the hand of your husband. We’ll let you
know if the Russians suddenly want to get married,” he joked, earning some
chuckles from his end of the table. And
icy stares from the other.
“How dare you,” Hera said in
a quiet, deadly-sounding voice Athena had rarely heard before. But it sent chills up her spine, goddess or
not. Few thought of Hera as a dangerous
goddess, but she could be relentless when her ire was roused. Athena hadn’t seen her this worked up since
Heracles. “You brought the world within
thirty minutes of annihilation, and you speak to me as if you knew what you
were doing?”
“Of course I know what I’m
doing!” Zeus said, angrily. “That was an
extremely complicated, very delicate situation that required—”
“I am not finished!” Hera
said with divine force. “I hereby call
to order this special session of the Olympic Council.”
“For what purpose has the
Queen called this session?” asked Hades in a funereal voice, polite but
inherently challenging. Persephone stood
near her husband, but from the frown on her face it was clear where her
loyalties truly lay.
“Will the Goddess of Wisdom
read the charges?” asked Hera, as polite as a Junior League chairwoman
organizing a charity event. Athena
swallowed. This was her big part – she
had prepared the charges on behalf of the goddesses.
“Charges?” Zeus asked, eyes
flashing as his fists clenched and unclenched.
Athena stood and unfurled the parchment scroll she’d prepared before her
father could
“Certain members of this
august council, being concerned with the direction of the current leadership in
light of recent developments, do hereby call this session for the purpose of
holding that leadership to account to answer for its actions.” Athena looked around – everyone was staring
at her. She swallowed and continued.
“To whit: that Zeus, King of
the Gods and God of the Heavens, did allow the forces of War, under the
auspices of Ares, God of War, to run rampant over the Homelands of Europe with
the power of mechanization and industrialization.”
“That’s preposterous!” her
father said, angrily. “You know that
Teutonic crowd started throwing its weight around, I had no choice but to let
the boy respond!” Ares looked darkly at
his mother, who stared back coldly.
“To whit,” Athena continued,
her voice shaking, “that Hades, God of Death, allowed the development of the
industrialization of mass-murder of millions without recourse to a proper
defense.” The awful pictures from Auschwitz , with stacks of corpses and living cadavers who had barely survived,
had haunted the memory even the gods, so brutal and inhumane had the Nazis
been. While Hades had, technically, been
fighting for the Allies, he had profited greatly from their barbaric excesses,
and everyone had known that.
“To whit: that Poseidon, God
of the Sea and the raw forces of Nature, did willingly allow the development
and deployment of Atomic Weaponry, used in war and capable of threatening the
existence of Man. ”
“Ended a war, you mean!” the
old God of the Sea snorted. “Or did you
forget how you all voted for the President to proceed? Come now, Ladies, you are far beyond your
element, here—”
“To whit!” Athena said,
loudly and fiercely, interrupting her uncle and rival. “That the present
triumvirate managing the affairs of the Olympian Council, being all male and of
an age, no longer represent the best interests of the Council or Mankind in
general. That the recent developments in
technology and advances in civilization call for a more restrained and . . .
feminine approach,” she said, almost choking over the word as a chorus of gasps
came from her right.
That was the real treason,
here. A goddess hadn’t seriously
challenged a god for control of Western Civilization since Apollo had defeated
the chthonic Pythia at Delphi , thousands of years before.
It had been a Boys Club ever
since, with the goddesses supporting the male-oriented power structure out of
obligation and fear. They were lucky there
even were goddesses – no one had seen
a couple of radical Semitic monotheisms coming to extinguish even the idea of
the Divine Feminine in the middle of the high point of Classical civilization.
When the Olympians had been
reduced to mere anthropomorphic representations of abstract thought, rather
than demiurgic divinities worthy of true worship, the goddesses had been glad
enough of the protection of the gods of the Council, who were less suspect by
the patriarchal Monotheists – Zeus had even stood-in for the faceless Jehovah
when Da Vinci needed a model for the Sistine Chapel.
But now . . . this was what all her years of planning
and plotting since the War had led to.
Her father and uncles would not concede them respect, so they were
forced to use their places on the Council to demand it.
“You would replace the King
of the Gods with a Queen?” scoffed Ares.
“Why not?” snapped
Aphrodite. “Are you suggesting your
mother is not up to the task?”
Ares blinked, but didn’t say
anything. Not even the God of War could
challenge the love of mother. He looked
at Hera, but said no more.
“To whit—” Athena began
again.
Hermes gasped. “What, there’s more?”
“I could go on all day,” the
Goddess of Wisdom said, smoothly. “You
want the whole list? It goes back
centuries, and is soaked in blood due to the indifference and callous disregard
for human rights displayed by the King of the Gods and his – male – advisers.”
“Aren’t you one of his advisers?” Hermes shot back, an eyebrow arched.
“When has he ever taken my advice?” Athena riposted. “The last time he seriously considered it was
Korea , and he ended up going with Ares and MacArthur. I never
would have accepted the number of casualties at Inchon !”
“We won, didn’t we?” Ares barked.
“They stopped shooting,” she
conceded, “but it will be another few years before the two sides sign a
permanent peace treaty. I don’t really
count that as a ‘win’ just yet.”
“We stopped the Commies,
that’s all that matters,” Ares shrugged.
“Sorry you didn’t get to try your fancy war games, Sis. Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance. Things are already heating up in Southeast Asia .”
“And just where will it stop
this time?” Aphrodite asked,
pointedly. “A couple of missiles in Cuba , and we were ready to launch the bombers. You and MacArthur wanted Atomics in Korea – think what would have happened if we hadn’t
over-ridden you? Your sister proved to
have much better sense than
you.”
“Or just not enough stones,”
muttered the War god.
“Do you think this is a
pissing contest?” asked Hera, her voice dripping with divine rage. “Really?
Because that’s why you are here! Because you . . . you men have been treating the world like your own personal little
sandbox, and now that you have Atomic toys the whole place is poised to go up
like a match! And then what will you be
god of? Ashes? Fallout?
No, my son, you and your father and your uncles – and yes, your
brother,” she added, glaring at Hephaestus, who shriveled under his mother’s
gaze, “you all are responsible for
this! You and your egos, always competing, always struggling, always
fighting. Well, we are done.”
“What do you mean?” Zeus
asked, suspiciously.
“The goddesses of the Council
have caucused,” Hera said, referring to the many small meetings they’d had in
the last few years, meetings where Athena, Persephone, Aphrodite and Artemis
had pushed the older three goddesses around, subtly, until even corpulent
Demeter was angry with the gods. “We
demand a greater say in policy decisions, greater access to resources, and
equal treatment and respect, according to our station. The reign of the phallus is over.
We can no longer afford to let you . . . boys play games with the
world. This isn’t the 19th century any
more. There is just too much at stake,
now. As Above, So Below. The leadership of the Council must reflect –
equally – the views of both the gods
and the goddesses in order for Mankind to survive.”
“And just how do you propose
doing that?” asked Apollo, curiously. Of
all the gods, only he and Dionysus seemed unfazed by the challenge from the
goddesses. “I mean, with all due
respect, look at you all. Marriage? The Hearth?
The Hunt? Love and Beauty? You expect to run the world on that?”
“Don’t forget Wisdom!”
Athena shot back, furious. “Of course,
that’s pretty typical for you all. You
forget the power we have and try to diminish the power you see. What would the world be without
Marriage? Without the comforts of
home? Without the pursuit of happiness
and love?”
“Look, I’m all for love and
sex and such as much as anyone – more,” Dionysus claimed, a smirk on his
face. “Any time there’s a party, I’m
there. You know that. But . . . ladies, really, consider it: the
Communists are called ‘godless’ for a reason.
They have over half the world and now they have Atomics, too. Sure, it might be a second-rate civilization
covering over its rustic religious roots with a thin veneer of progressivism
and radical Western thought – but now they
have Atomics. You might fear Zeus will
foul things up . . . but I guarantee
that whatever he does will be a birthday party, compared to how your lives
would be under Marx. And while I have a
healthy respect for your skills and powers, Ladies, I’m just not sure that you
gals are up to the challenge.”
“Your point is well-taken,
God of . . . Wine,” Hera said,
disdainfully. She had never liked the
Thracian divinity. “But that merely supports our case. Because the Communists have Atomics now,
there is just no room for careless error based on male insecurities and
senseless competition. The Council must
consider the policy perspectives of the female members, or . . .”
“Or what?” Zeus asked, casually, as he drummed his fingers on the
table.
That was the question. After all, just what power did the goddess
have, compared to the might of the Triumvirate?
Zeus’ thunderbolt, the trident of Poseidon, the deathly bone scepter of
Hades were elemental powers – elemental male
powers. Against them, in open
competition, not even Athena could stand in her full guise as Warrior
Goddess.
But there was more than one
way to wield power. It came not just
from a thunderbolt . . . but from the strength of a promise. That was what Athena had had to convince Hera
and the others: that they were strong, despite the disdain with which the male
gods treated their Spheres of influence.
By using the leverage that
they had, cleverly, then they could convince the Triumvirate to make
concessions without a direct and violent challenge that the goddesses could not
hope to win. Victory by guile, while frowned
upon by Ares as unheroic, was one of Athena’s favorite tactics. She had talked to her step-mother so many
times about it in the last few years that at this point Hera thought it was her
own idea. Just as Athena had planned.
“Or . . . I’ll demand a divorce,” the Goddess of
Marriage and Family said. Everyone in
the room stared at her. Hestia was
shocked: without Hera, the Hearthfires at the heart of the human family would
grow pale. That was part of the ancient
ritual of the Great Marriage. “Let’s
hope it doesn’t come to that,” she added, quietly.
“You’ll . . . demand . . . a divorce?” her husband
asked, incredulously. “From me?”
“If you force me to. Otherwise, I don’t see much hope of a future. Or much point in the gods, or this Council,
if the world dies due to your neglect.”
“So its neglect now, is it?” snarled Poseidon. “Were we ‘neglecting’ things at Midway Island ? At Normandy ?”
“Old glories, fading fast,”
dismissed Artemis. “We live in a new
Age. Things are changing.”
“Things are always
changing,” Apollo pointed out, in that serious way of his.
“Then let them change for
the better,” insisted Hestia, rapping her frail old knuckles on the table for
attention. “We do live in a new Age. Yet am I obsolete? Will any of you willingly dismiss the warmth
of the hearth in the hearts of men? The
fire of lovingkindness? The center of
the family? Yield to our demands, I
implore you, my King,” she said smoothly.
“If you must contend against the Hun, or the Commies, or whatever it is
this time, then play your little games quietly. Without Atomics,” she clarified.
“A thunderbolt isn’t much
use if it can only hang on the wall as trophy,” Zeus said, darkly.
“This weapon is far deadlier
than lightning. You can lay waste all of
humanity with one hasty decision. The
women of the council are in consensus: this is too deadly a game to let you
dice with the lives of the people. You
men are wasteful. Prideful. Arrogant.
You feel, even now, that we reach above our station in this glorious new
Age. That we should become the goddesses
of housewives and harlots, not your co-equals in administration and policy. How many women are earning a working wage,
now?” she challenged. “How many are
running businesses, working in their community, making things better while men
argue about pointless things?”
“The freedom of Western Civilization
is not pointless!” Poseidon insisted.
“Nor are we saying
otherwise,” Athena countered. “Personally,
while I recognize the threat, I believe it is woefully overstated. If you must, then continue this struggle without imperiling the world. But just one more Atomic Bomb used in anger .
. .”
“We have a strong avatar in
Kennedy,” argued the Sea God. “He’s
smart, he’s tough, he’s adept. With him
in charge, we could see real change in Russia in the next decade.
And maybe even get the Nationalists out of Formosa and back in Peking where they belong!”
“Who cares?” Aphrodite
asked, angrily. “Who really cares which
group of men is running which crappy little country? Here or there? For the first time in ages, we have a chance
at World Peace. Something almost
everyone can agree upon,” she said, glancing at Ares. “I agree, Jack is great, he’s a good speaker,
a leader of men in a difficult time. And
he’s got a certain . . . magnetism . . .” the Love Goddess said, dreamily. “I really enjoyed singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to
him.”
“We guessed,” Ares said,
dryly.
“He cheats on his wife,”
Hera said, disapprovingly. Aphrodite
ignored the goddess.
“But that doesn’t mean he’s
the new Alexander. He’s not going to
conquer Russia . He couldn’t
even conquer Cuba ,” she reminded everyone, making Ares blush. The Bay of Pigs had been
his foul-up. “And this adventurism in
southeast Asia isn’t likely to amount to much, let’s be honest. Kennedy is great, but does it really matter
if he’s at the top of the page or someone else?
I mean, it’s just another man with a penis telling everyone else what to
do.”
“You would prefer a man without a penis?” Dionysus asked,
earning him a stuck-out tongue from his occasional partner-in-crime.
“I would prefer it not be a
man at all occasionally,” Athena
answered, smoothly. “It’s not like
Kennedy is going to go pick up a rifle and charge into Moscow himself. He
commands men to do that for him. There’s
no reason a woman couldn’t do the same job.
Physical prowess is no longer a major factor in leading a nation. Or even a city.”
“Not that he doesn’t have
it,” Aphrodite said, sotto voce. “What a man!”
Athena looked daggers at the
goddess, but continued. “What we have
here is a very reasonable list of requests for power sharing on the Council. Under the circumstances, one would have to be
a fanatic to object to them. It’s fairly
simple: the goddesses are to have a veto over the use of any further Atomics or
other weapons that can cause mass murder.”
“How mass is ‘mass’?” asked
Ares. “Professional interest.”
“Anything over a city,”
Athena decided. “Conventional weaponry,
only. Further, no more widespread,
continent-spanning conflicts. We cannot
afford any more Great Wars, even conventional ones.”
“Anything else?” Zeus asked,
darkly.
“Yes, actually, Father,”
Athena continued, feeling equal measures fear and excitement as she challenged
her sire. “Hera is to be the co-leader
of the Council. The Queen must be equal
to the King. And you must start treating
her – treating all of us ‘gals’ –
with the respect we’re due. Larger
portions of developing technologies should go to more goddesses, rather than
gods, until they’re more equal. Public
policy will continue the effort to improve the lives of women and children, the
poor and the elderly. All those areas
you men are afraid to handle.”
“We aren’t afraid,” Hades
said, simply. “We’re just busy. Are these all of your requests?”
“Here’s the list,” she said,
handing over the second parchment.
“And if we don’t grant these
requests?” Poseidon asked, one big eyebrow arched.
“Then you may consider them
‘demands’,” Hera said, coolly. “You
agree . . . or I’ll demand a divorce.
And then you can all go to blazes,” she warned. “I have reached the end of my rope over this,
Zeus.”
Zeus eyed his wife
thoughtfully, while Hades – his legal adviser – read the demands. The Big Three huddled for a few tense moments
discussing the matter, while Apollo, Ares and Hephaestus hovered around the
edges, and Dionysus flirted with Nike.
Finally, the three eldest of
the gods turned to face the rest of the table.
“I shall speak for my
brothers,” Zeus intoned. “As King of the
Gods, I resent this attempt at usurping my traditional role as leader of the
council. Nevertheless, I am bound by our
previous agreement to concede to many of your . . . ‘requests’.” He held up his hand over the parchment, and
with a peal of thunder he approved it.
“But that does not come without consequence,” he said, warningly.
Suddenly Athena was
concerned. She knew how her Father could
be, when he was upset. She still
remembered what he did to poor Prometheus.
“What kind of consequences?”
asked Hestia, hesitantly, when no one else dared say it.
“The worst kind: exactly what you want. You want an equal say? That’s fine.
I suppose you gals have earned it,” he said, arrogantly. “You think you can run things? Outstanding.
If you really think you can swing that bat, step up to the plate. Be my guest,” he said, disgusted. “Frankly, we fellas have been working our
asses off to protect and serve humanity, and
this is the thanks we get for it?
Accused of inhumanity? Charged
with . . . what, being male? Doing what we were charged to do by this very
Council, by our sisters and daughters and wives? Then take control, Hera. Take it all.
But we won’t sit here and be disrespected by you, and we won’t submit to you.”
“This was not
disrespectful,” Hera said, angrily. “We
had every legitimate right—”
“Oh, no, you had your say,
it’s my turn,” Zeus said, as thunder
rumbled in the distance in accord with his mood. “I’m not planning on throwing any sparks
around, but you’re damned sure going to listen to me while I still have the Chair. When I’ve said my piece, we’ll leave. But we will be heard.”
Athena was relieved – she’d
feared that her father would react violently, causing a conflict they couldn’t
hope to win – but she was also a little afraid of his non-violent wrath. Zeus was deep and devious, and he did not
take betrayal well. She almost shivered
as his judgmental gaze washed accusingly over her. She had prepared herself for it, but enduring
it was another matter.
He continued, when it was
clear no one was going to stop him. “But
you’re right: things are changing again.
After a century of building you the finest civilization in the history
of the world, you want to take over?
Fine. Do it.
“But do it without my or my
brothers’ help. We’ll stick to our Spheres
of influence, you stick to yours. Let’s
see how long you can hold on before Chaos strikes. And when it does, you can call us. Maybe we’ll answer. Maybe we won’t.”
“I’m certain we will do fine
without you,” Artemis said,
coolly.
“Do you, Daughter? I look forward to it. Because the last time it happened, it took all of our power to tame it. All of it.
And all of us.”
While the other Olympians
considered that dreadful statement, Hera rose.
“Are you quite through now?”
“Almost,” Zeus said, looking
to his brothers and his sons for support.
“This was . . . this was intolerable,
Hera. And it was disrespectful to me, as
your King and as your husband. You want
me gone as one station? You’ll lose
both, then. I won’t make you demand a
divorce,” he said, gently, “and completely
break the Council, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to be disrespected like
this.
“Perhaps we did have some
problems this last hundred years – I’ll be the first to admit it. The Jews in Europe , the Great War, and, yes, Atomics.
But . . . think of all the good we did, too. Industrialization. Electricity,” he said, snapping his fingers
and letting a miniature bolt demonstrate.
“Radio. Radar. Television. Hitler and Hirohito and Benny the Moose, all
gone. Give us another couple of years,
we can send Khrushchev the same way. We’re
at the beginning of a great Age. Look at
the promise of atomic energy, or the rockets we’re building, or—”
“Your accomplishments aren’t
the issue,” Demeter shot back. “Your accountability is.”
“So I’ll be accountable,” Zeus said, angrily. “This was a shit job from the start, keeping
you idiots in line. You think you can do
it? Run the world for a while. Walk a mile in my sandals. You’ll see it’s not all ambrosia and
nectar. But if you think you can do it,
‘dear Sister’, then you enjoy the attempt.
“But as far as you and I?”
he added, turning back to his sister, wife, and queen, “we’re over. We are hereby separated, by royal decree.
We can discuss the details later, but I won’t put up with this kind of
shit in my own house, from my own wife.
You have a problem with our marriage?
Fine. Then you talk to me.
You don’t bring it up before the whole Council. The only reason you’d do that is to humiliate me. That’s disrespectful. And I won’t have that.”
He looked down at the
parchment he’d just agreed to. “We’ll
handle the war – as agreed – you gals can handle the rest. But as far as cooperation . . . we’re done
with that.” He looked at both of his
brothers for support, and when he received a nod from each of them, the three
vanished in unison.
“Wow,” Persephone said,
shaking her head. “That was hard!”
“You girls really shouldn’t have pissed them off
like that,” Apollo said with a sigh and a shake of his golden head. “You know how they get. Father, especially. Nothing good will come of
this.”
“We ‘girls’ don’t care if we
pissed them off,” Hera said. “In fact, I
quit caring about that a while ago. And
when you address me in the future, God of the Sun, you will do it with respect. I am not a ‘girl’. I am a ‘woman’. More specifically, I’m now your sovereign goddess.” Hera looked around at the rest of the
Olympians at the table, clearly judging their position on the coup she’d led. “Is there anyone else who cannot abide
that? Then join my brothers in exile
now.”
There was one objector who
was immediately apparent.
“Yeah, I’m with Dad on
this,” Ares said, shaking his head with sad amusement. “You ladies just bit off more than you could
chew whether you know it or not. Maybe
if you had approached it differently . . . but now you went and did it. You alienated the greatest source of Order in
the West. That’s poor strategy.”
The War God looked over at his female
counterpart and shook his head. “I
thought you had more brains that that, ‘Tina.
Or you’re just playing a bigger game and hiding behind the
hysteria. Either way, I’m not stupid
enough to stand around after some idiot pulls the pin on a hand grenade. Good luck.
You’re gonna need it.” He
vanished in a cloud of red smoke.
“How about you, Heph?”
Aphrodite asked, licking her lips. The
two were technically married, but it had been one of those divine marriages-of-convenience
that was rarely consummated, even less so than even Persephone’s union with
Hades. Technology and industry had very
little to do with the primal nature of sex, after all. “Which side will my super-smart hubby be on?” she asked condescendingly.
“Uh, I dunno,” the crippled
deity said, nervously. “I don’t think
you guys realize what you just did. I
mean, that was Zeus. And now my parents are . . . separated,” he said in disbelief. “Mom, you’re the goddess of marriage! You can’t be separated! And that’s . . . that’s Zeus! That’s Dad!”
“I’m well aware of who it
was, Son,” Hera agreed. “That wasn’t my
question. Will you help us? Will you stand with your mother and
sisters? Or will you be as intransigent
as the other men? Which one do you want
to live with, boy, your mother or your father?”
“I’ll . . . try to help,” he
conceded, with a nervous swallow. “But I
don’t want to be the only one . . .”
Athena frowned. Of the remaining gods, she’d expected Heph to
be the quickest to agree to new leadership.
The fact that he was so hesitant just meant that the patriarchal hold Zeus
had over him was stronger than she’d suspected.
If Heph wasn’t going to be easy, then the rest of the gods might be even
more challenging than she expected. They
all looked toward the other two Olympian gods left at the table.
“Hey, I’m not really a
joiner,” Hermes shrugged. “I’ll be your
go-between, but don’t ask me to take sides. If things get rough, you know you
can count on me, but . . . well, I’m not the kind of guy who can take sides
lightly, y’know? If the phone doesn’t go
to both sides, it isn’t worth much.”
That left just the Sun God
and the God of Wine, and all eyes turned toward Apollo’s handsome face.
“I admit I admire your
forcefulness,” Apollo said. “And I can’t
disagree that some changes need to be made around here. But this?”
He shook his head doubtfully. “I
mean, you just essentially broke the
Council. The one responsible for five
thousand years of human civilization. It
all works only when we all work together.
I’ll stick with the majority, I suppose, but I have to say, I’m having serious doubts about this.” That was a problem. Apollo’s avatar, Kennedy, was in charge,
now. A lot of her plan would be
dependent upon his cooperation, at least for now.
“I’m not,”
Dionysus said, flamboyantly. “Are you
kidding? That stuffy old fart has been
limiting me to Scotch and soda for the last fifty years – and what about
Prohibition? Tell me that wasn’t aimed
straight for me! For me, this couldn’t
have happened at a better time. The
loveliest new pharmaceuticals and herbal intoxicants are just coming into vogue
. . .” The God of Wine clapped his hands eagerly. “I’ll stick with you ladies just for the
better buzz. My gods, have you seen what
they’re doing with cannabis these days?
It’s not just rope anymore!
Remarkable! Not since the
absinthe days has it been this promising!”
“Then we have a quorum,”
Athena said, relieved. “Enough to govern
with.” But enough to rule? Hera would have her hands full, keeping them
in line.
“Yet I’m uncomfortable with
how we got here,” Hephaestus admitted.
“Not trying to piss you off, Mom, but damn . . . did you have to go and
do that?” He had a whiny tone to his
voice that got on Athena’s nerves – and a quick glance at his bride
demonstrated she wasn’t alone. “I’ll
stay if the other fellas do, but . . . well, I’m not sure that it would be best
for one of you to take nominal head of the Council under the
circumstances.” He didn’t have to
elaborate just whom he meant by “you”.
“Why?” asked Persephone, who
came forward to take her husband’s vacant seat, “are we incapable?”
“No, but it would be politically
indelicate,” pointed out Apollo.
“Consider, if a goddess was to reign in Zeus’ place, it would seem to be
an attempt to usurp his throne, not just share power. Perhaps if you chose a nominal head of the Council
and ruled from behind him . . .?”
Hera looked troubled. Athena silently raged – that wasn’t what this
was about. Replacing Zeus with Zeus,
Junior wasn’t progress. It was Hera who
was supposed to take the throne! But the
Goddess of Marriage was already starting to panic over her husband’s
flight. “I suppose I see your
point. All right, since you gentlemen
have been so reasonable about this, I hereby nominate Apollo to lead us for a
while. You’re on the ascendant anyway,
what with that rocket named after you and the Polio vaccine and such. Will that be acceptable, Hermes? Son?”
The Messenger of the Gods
shrugged. “I guess so. It’s not going to make Zeus feel any better.”
“That wasn’t my
intention. My intention is to ensure the
wise and steady governance of the Council . . . with a lot of input from the
Queen. Very well, tomorrow at dawn
begins the regency of Apollo. This
session is hereby dismissed.”
As the remaining gods and
goddesses got up to stretch their legs and gossip, or took to thin air and
left, Athena, Aphrodite, Artemis and Persephone quickly found each other in one
corner of the room.
“That was well played,”
Athena praised her sisters. “Although
I’m not thrilled with the outcome. It
was supposed to be one of us who took
the throne – Hera, maybe, or . . . one of us.” She meant “me”, but she didn’t want to say
it. That might sound awkward.
“My brother isn’t that bad,”
Artemis insisted, half-heartedly.
Clearly she was just as disappointed as Athena over his regency . . .
but she had to agree, after working with the God of Science and Medicine so
many times over the years, Apollo was often the god she felt closest too. “Really, for a man he’s all right. And Hera is right: he is in the
ascendant. Kennedy is practically cut
from Apollinian cloth.”
“Not for long,” Persephone
said, quietly.
“Why?” asked Athena,
suddenly concerned. The Goddess of Death
and Flowers glanced guiltily at Artemis.
“I put together a little
something special, in case just this sort of thing happened. I knew they wouldn’t let us lead, I just knew it.
So I prepared a contingency.”
“What?” asked Artemis,
suspiciously.
“I can’t really say. Let’s just say you should stay the hell out
of Dallas for a while,” Persephone whispered. “That’s all I’m going to say. . . .”
The Rebellion of Aphrodite
Athena was troubled as she
made her way up the long driveway toward the mansion in the distance. Unlike the scene of her successful exile of
her father and his brothers from the Council, this mansion was less stately and
refined than the old Edwardian. This mansion was a classic French design
of limestome, . And instead of quiet
Irish and Negro servants, this mansion was filled with incredibly attractive, scantily-clad women.
Wearing bunny ears.
It was revolting. The Goddess shook her head in disgust as she
snuck by them, invisibly. She usually
wouldn’t have resorted to such theatrics, but usually she wouldn’t have stood
out much in a crowd. Being surrounded by
gorgeous, buxom and usually blonde bikini-clad women would have made her stand
out like a goat amongst ewes. Even the
ornate Latin inscription on the brass doorplate had made her scowl: Si Non Oscillas, Noli Tintinnare.
“If you don’t swing, don’t ring.”
Even at this early time of
day, there were “bunnies” making breakfast cheerfully in the kitchen and a few
were wandering around in bathtowls, having come from the showers in some
elaborate bathroom. She scowled at how
they flaunted their bodies – had they no respect
for themselves as women?
But she was on a mission. She didn’t have time to correct the foolish
mortals.
Things had been chaotic
since the exile of Zeus . . . closely followed by the maelstrom surrounding the
president’s assassination. While Apollo
held the chairmanship, it was Hera (and through Hera, Athena) who was making
policy these days. Only there had been
some cracks in her coalition, starting with Persephone’s mad assassination
plot. She had been trying to reduce the
power of the Patriarchy – Athena understood that much – but in arranging the
slaying of Apollo’s avatar while he was on the throne, even temporarily, had
sent a shock through the Council. No one
suspected the Goddess of the Dead, and the Goddess of Snipers who had backed
her, but Athena was terrified that someone would link them.
The assassination of Kennedy
had been telling. Apollo had left the
Council “temporarily” while he recovered, Hermes had ineffectively filled in
for a few years, but the God of Magic and Thieves wasn’t really up to the task
the way Apollo had been. He didn’t even
make a good puppet. You couldn’t just
make guns and butter appear, not for very long, and that way lay madness.
But she wasn’t here for
Hermes. As ineffective as he was, he was
still keeping order, of a sort, while Hera whispered in his ears. But elsewhere, things were falling apart
without a full Council. The crazy Cold
War raged on, with puppet regimes fighting each other, insurgencies and
counter-insurgencies toppling governments and importing propaganda while the
two Major Powers postured and glared at each other. She knew her father and uncles were still
manipulating that great conflict, as promised, but she and the others had not
even heard from them. Persephone, even,
had not seen her husband at all in the last few winters.
So much of what they had
worked for had come to pass . . . but so much was left undone and might not
ever get done. Unforeseen problems had
arisen at every turn, and even as one of Hera’s most powerful aides, the Goddess
of Wisdom had little idea how to handle them.
Zeus had made governance seem so easy, keeping all of the diverse forces
of the universe in balance and order.
Hermes, who never did get along very well with Hera, was barely holding
on.
Part of the problem was
here. Athena had been tracking one of
the wayward Olympians for weeks, now, one who had run wild without the stern
gaze of Zeus to contain her. Aphrodite
had been AWOL from Council for three years, something she never would have done
with Zeus at the head of the table. And
her absence was felt. Already there were
rumblings of a sexual nature that were making waves across the fabric of
humanity. The Pill had been a mighty
gift to women, Athena knew for certain in her heart of hearts. But Aphrodite had taken it as license in a
way Hera was very, very unhappy with.
The Goddess of Wisdom found
her colleague in the thirty-first room of the seventy she would have had to
search. A large, ornate bathroom with an
extravagant tub, complete with gold plated fittings, was decorated in a comfortable
Classical motif, white granite and all.
The Goddess of Love and Beauty was submerged in the expansive tub up to
her chin, cucumber slices on her eyes and a large drink near her elbow.
Athena watched her silently
for a few moments and let her rage build.
This was not what the
rebellion had been about. This was pure
perversion of the movement. Yes, the
Pill had been designed to prevent unwanted pregnancies, but it was supposed to
be an aide to family planning, not a license for debauchery. Yet the young, nubile girls who passed her in
the corridors of the venerable Chicago mansion were all clearly sexually active. Indeed, this mansion had been turned into
nothing less than a modern day Temple to Aphrodite.
And that was dangerous. If she
wasn’t careful, the goddess would soon be spawning such harlotry across the
globe.
Frustrated with Aphrodite's casual attitude, Athena picked up the frozen drink and dropped it into the
steaming hot bathwater. Aphrodite
instantly squealed and stood up, revealing her famous beauty in all of its
glory.
They sag more than they did
back on the real Olympus , Athena caught herself thinking as the blonde
sputtered and splashed.
“What the hell was that?”
shrieked Aphrodite.
“I just thought you needed a
wake-up call,” Athena explained, taking off her Beret of Invisibility.
“Who gave you the right to
barge in here and—” the furious deity sputtered.
“Hera, Queen of Heaven,”
Athena replied casually. “Or more
precisely, Hermes, Steward of Heaven.
But it was Hera who sent me to fetch you.”
“Tell Hera she can blow it
out of her wrinkly old twat!” snarled the goddess as she stepped out of the
tub. A thick bathrobe floated over to
her, and she allowed it to wrap around her attractively. “I’m keeping my sphere going. I don’t need to be under her thumb.”
“Under her direction,”
Athena corrected, patiently. “And you
are not. She’s trying to hold the family
together, and look what you’re doing?”
“And just what am I doing?”
she asked as she dried her hair with a luxurious towel. “I’m just having a good time.”
“You’re having too much of a
good time,” objected Athena. “You’re
letting your sphere get out of hand. Did
you see the spike in teen pregnancies in the last few years?”
“Hey, I can give them the
Pill, I can’t make them take it as directed,” countered the love goddess. “Mistakes get made. I’d figure the Goddess of Childbirth would
appreciate the occasionally fumble.”
“Out of wedlock? Please.
She’s more old-fashioned than that.
And she’s got trouble of her own.”
“Oh? Do tell!” Aphrodite said, eagerly. “What’s got Mom’s panties in a bunch?”
“Well, not seeing her
husband, apparently,” Athena said, biting her lip. “She’s plenty capable, of course, but every
now and then I catch her looking around like she’s afraid he’s going to walk in
and start throwing thunderbolts.”
“And why is this my problem?” the blonde goddess asked
haughtily.
“It’s not,” agreed
Athena. “But the . . . well, the licentiousness is. Hera is not pleased, and orders you to hustle
your can back to Olympus and fix it.
Otherwise we’re looking at more babies.
You remember after the war? It
could be that bad, in a few years.”
“Again, why is this my problem?” she continued, casually.
Athena stared. “You’re the Goddess of Love and Beauty. You
control the sexual impulse. You can turn
things down a ways, let us catch up—”
The shrill, mocking laugh of
the Love Goddess filled the bathroom.
“Turn things down? Dear heart, I’m just warming up!”
“What? You can’t be serious!” Athena said, angrily. She knew what was happening perhaps better
than Hera did. It was one thing to relax
the sexual restrictions on well-brought-up women on the campuses of Ivy League
schools as they pursued their careers . . . it was quite another to permit the
growing infidelity and polyamory and homosexuality that was starting to cause
friction with the Church. They couldn’t
afford to let that ancient agreement falter.
The Church had agreed to allow the Olympians to linger as theologic
remnants, mere personifications and idioms, rather than fully-fledged deities
in the old sense of the word. But it
wouldn’t take much to get the more flatheaded amongst the Faithful to take
issue with the Classical world. It had
happened plenty of times before. And
nothing got those conservative preachers riled as much as sex, unless it was
dancing.
“Why not? We’ve already introduced the Pill and its
wonders to the upper classes. People are
fucking like goats once again. In a few years, we’ll make it safe and
affordable enough for the middle classes.
And there are a lot more of them.”
She sounded positively delighted at the prospect, which annoyed
Athena.
“And there’s going to be
lots more mistakes!” Athena pointed out.
“Damn it, Aphrodite, you have to rein yourself in!”
“Fuck that,” she said,
calmly. “I was a good little girl long
enough. Now it’s my turn. The Pill let sex out of the box. You can’t put it back in, just ask Pandora.
I’m done towing the party line, Tina.
It’s my turn, after ten thousand years of bullshit agricultural cults
and the sacred bonds of marriage, I’m going to turn this whole civilization
into one big orgy. People are going to
get laid any way they can think of, and you know what an imaginative lot they are,” she said, suggestively.
“Stop it!” said Athena in
exasperation. “I’ve come to bring you
back to the Council. We need your
help. Things are starting to get . . .
complicated.”
“How so?” she asked,
bemused.
“Like the homosexuals . . .
they’re starting to agitate. There are
sexual affairs springing up all over the place.
It’s become commonplace. Men with
their secretaries. Housewives with . . .
well, just about anyone. Goodness, even
. . . wife swapping!” she said, scandalized.
“ ‘Wife swapping’?” asked the goddess, amused. “That’s a novel term. Actually, it’s not so much swapping as it is
. . . sampling. Get a bunch of horny young couples together
with some cocktails, put everyone’s car key into a bowl—”
“I said, stop it!” Athena repeated, annoyed. “The Queen has summoned you, and you have to put a stop to all of this . . .
anarchy,” she said, looking for the proper term.
“Anarchy? You call wife swapping anarchy? It’s just good clean fun, you goody two-shoes
plain Jane. A little harmless nookie on
the side – and no one gets pregnant. At
least, not often. But that’s just the beginning.” Taking the towel from her hair, the goddess
went to an exquisite marble vanity and began brushing to brush it. “Just wait until we liberalize the divorce
laws. Then the fun really begins. Just imagine a world where a gal can get her
cookies any time she likes . . . with anyone she fancies,” she said,
dreamily. “Just like a man. Only no babies to worry about. No husbands to care. Just independent women, pursuing pleasure for
no better reason than they can.”
“That sounds like anarchy to
me!” Athena protested, aghast.
“You pathetic old prude,”
the other goddess said, shaking her golden head sadly. “It sounds like a golden age of pussy to me!”
giggled her rival. “While you’ve been
plotting Zeus’ downfall, honey, I’ve been doing a little research of my
own. Ever hear of the Kinseys? My people.
Bringing science to nookie in a whole new way. They’re kicking the whole thing on its head,”
she said, wickedly. “Soon every gal will know where her button is
and what to do with it . . . whenever she
wants. Sex and the single girl . . .
and they’ll all be single before
long!”
“But that’s not why we rebelled!” protested Athena.
“That may not be why you rebelled, sister, but I never made
any secret of my motivations. You wanted
your Daddy gone for your reasons. I had
my own. Our interests may have
dovetailed nicely for a while, but honestly, honey, I think the ride is
over. I’ve got my own show, now.”
“Are you saying that you
will refuse a summons from the Queen?”
“I’m saying she can kiss my
gorgeous, perfect ass,” agreed Aphrodite, sweetly. “I could put up with her bullshit while Zeus
was around, but now? If she wants me at
Council, she can come try to get me.”
“That’s . . . that’s open
rebellion!” Athena accused. She almost
summoned her spear and shield at the thought, but it would have been a little
out of place in a pornographer’s mansion.
“Isn’t that what we signed
up for?” Aphrodite said sweetly as she put down the brush and began magically
applying make-up. “Rebellion? Toppling the old order? Shaking things up?”
“We wanted revolution, not
petty rebellion,” Athena countered.
“This only works if we all stick together. You want more sex? Fine.
I don’t think there’s any way we can stop it anyway. But you have to be more responsible. You have to keep it moving slowly. Or else all of this . . .” she said, gesturing
to the mansion around them, “this will bring it down on us all. Did you know that he’s putting those filthy
magazines of his everywhere these days?”
“Well I hope so!” Aphrodite
said, feigning shock. “Heff is such a dear. A real man’s man, and a woman’s man,
too. But this old pile of bricks is so
draughty – I’m trying to convince him to move to El Lay. And soon there will be a night club, and then
a string of them, then eventually every town will have one. You’ll be able to get tits over lunch and
pussy over cocktails after work.”
“And then what happens when
those men go home to their wives?”
“They’ll get divorced,”
Aphrodite said, a little sadly, as she pouted her lips in the mirror to check
the application of her divinely red lipstick.
“Then the wives will be in the clubs, too.”
“They can’t all get
divorced—” Athena began.
“Why not?” Aphrodite
interrupted. “Why the hell not?”
“Because that will wreck the family structure!” exploded
Athena.
“Well, isn’t that what you
wanted? I’m just finishing the job,
honey. You didn’t like the old farm wife
tradition – me either. One single dick
for life? A girl has needs . . . well, most of us do,” she added, giving Athena
a judging look. “Now we don’t even need
the husband to get the dick.”
“So where are they going to
get husbands, then?” Athena asked skeptically.
“That’s the thing –
eventually they won’t. People will stop
marrying, or at least mostly. I mean,
why tie yourself down when the world is your proverbial oyster?” she asked,
grandly.
“But . . . but that will
absolutely . . . kill . . . the Queen’s . . .” Athena said, finally catching
on.
“Now wise girl has it,”
Aphrodite said, her voice low and filled with menace. “That’s right, I joined your stupid
revolution to get rid of the Big Guy . . . but I really wanted to cripple the Head Bitch. I have been under her thumb for millennia and
I’m fucking sick of it. You don’t like
being bossed around by men? I don’t like
being told who can fuck who by some self-righteous Goddess of Marriage and
Family. So from now on, I’m on my
own. You gals can go play princesses or
whatever, but I’ve got a party to go to.”
With a snap of her fingers she was clad in the most elegant red evening
gown Athena had ever seen.
“But . . . but what about
sticking together?”
“You ladies can stick
together . . . Diana is into that sort of thing, I believe. I’m going to go stick to a couple of thousand
penises that have just come on the market.
And then we’re going to hit the college campuses and light a fire under
those pussies, too. After that, we’ll
hit the suburbs, and then who knows?” she asked, amused.
“ ‘We’?” Athena asked,
cautiously. Which of her sisters had
thrown in their lot with Aphrodite?
Certainly not Perspepone and Diana – they were polar opposites. That old bag Demeter, or granny Hestia?
“My very close and personal
friend, the God of Intoxication,” she said, as Dionysus appeared clad in a
stunning red smoking jacket.
“Hiya, ‘Tina,” he said with
a sly smile. His eyes looked glassy, and
while he was holding a very full glass of Burgundy in one hand, his other held a hand-rolled
cigarette. Marijuana, she knew at
once. She’d never liked that weed. “I see you’ve discovered our new little
temple. How do you like it?”
“It’s a bit draughty in
December,” she said, sourly.
“I keep telling Heff that California is the future,” the God of Wine said with a
shrug. “One of these days he’ll listen.”
“When did you start working
with her?”
“Don’t be an idiot,”
Aphrodite said, rolling her eyes. “Dion
and I have always been working together.
And since pot started getting popular, we’ve been peas in a pod. Hell, we practically invented Rock and Roll when you ivory tower types weren’t looking,”
she said, smugly. “Ready to go?”
“Always,” Dionysus nodded. “Jazz festival,” he explained to
the Goddess of Wisdom. “But there’s this
new stuff the labs have whipped up that might be a better fit than this stinky
ol’ weed,” he said, taking a powerful drag on the joint. “I mean, I love this stuff, but sometimes it
just doesn’t quite . . .” he said, trailing off self-indulgently.
“Aphrodite, in the name of
the Council I forbid you, and I summon you to account for your sphere of
influence before the—”
“You can summon all you
like, honey, but it still won’t work,” Aphrodite said, pouting prettily. “I’ve hung out my own shingle. I’m sure you and the gals will keep everything
else moving – let me handle the pussy, okay?
It’s my job.”
Hera wasn’t going to like
this at all, Athena knew as she watched the other two Olympians finish primping
before the prepared to transport themselves to their next debauchery. “There will be consequences for this,” she
promised them.
“Of course their will be
consequences,” dismissed Dionysus. “Let
the chips fall and all that. We don’t
care – we’re going to have a good time.
Everyone is going to have a good time.
Sex plus wine plus music – did I tell you we got the Nine Sisters to
come to the party? Most of them,
anyway. It’s going to be a fun time,
‘Tina, trust me.”
“Life is not a party,” she said, defiantly.
“It is when you’re us,”
Aphrodite said with a toss of her head.
“Now get along little wallflower, you’re boring us.” And with that,
the two divinities dematerialized.
That was the problem with
overthrowing the dominant paradigm, Athena mused angrily. It left little respect for authority among
the survivors.
Athena didn’t follow them to
pursue the conversation – she was too preoccupied trying to figure out how to
break it to Hera that a major force of human motivation had gone off the
reservation at such a critical time.
Instead she walked back through the mansion, past buxom beauties with
girlish dreams of handsome movie stars and powerful playboys offering them big
diamond rings. Or not.
This was a disturbing
development, to be sure – revolting against the male gods was one thing, but
using the opportunity to settle a petty feud between goddesses was just
foolish. Using sex to manipulate men was
the very antithesis of what she and the others had been fighting for. Sex was the equal birthright of both men and
women, and it should not be constrained or denied in this glorious new world.
But . . . the idea of packs
of young women unrestrained by the fear of pregnancy and emboldened by a
permissive social view of sexuality worried Athena. Sure, it would allow far more time for a
woman to devote to pursuing a career that could sustain her, but it also made
the bonds of marriage a lot looser.
Athena wasn’t particularly fond of the institution herself – she had
never wed – but without it, the important continuation of the family dynamic
was damaged. Her head swam as she considered
the possibilities.
Just what would the young
girls do, liberated of sexual expectations and free to marry whom they chose .
. . or no one at all? As disturbing an
idea as it was, Athena could also see its merits. It had never been tried before, for one, and
innovation was well within her sphere.
Perhaps Aphrodite was right,
she thought to herself distastefully as she happened upon one “bunny”
enthusiastically French kissing a man in the drawing room. Perhaps young women deserved the same sexual
freedoms that young men enjoyed. After
all, what could it hurt? The idea of
sexually-aggressive women using their wits, charms, and educations to storm the
all-male corridors of power had an appeal – you couldn’t get rid of sex, after
all, but you could co-opt it wisely.
What was the worst that
could happen?
The Withdrawal of Apollo
A remote cabin in western Colorado was the last place Athena would have guessed the Sun
God would be sulking, but that’s where the oracles led her when she
inquired. That disturbed her – Apollo
was a social deity, one of the more extroverted Olympians, other than Dionysus and Aphrodite. He had spent most of his
career at the center of civilization, not out here on the periphery.
But here he was, and had
been for a while. The cabin itself was a nondescript, made-on-the-spot affair more suitable for a trapper than the
glorious Apollo. There were signs of him
all about, if you knew what to look for: the bow and quiver near the door. The bright yellow Ford truck. The longhorn skull on the outside wall. Two rattlesnake skins entwined around a
stick.
“What a dump,” she
whispered, shaking her head as she manifested in the driveway. It looked like a thousand other white trash
shotgun shacks she’d seen over the years.
At least the scenery was pretty.
The wild frontier seemed just over the horizon here, unspoiled mountains
loomed all around, and the sky seemed a majestic dome above . . . which made
the humble cabin all the more plain in comparison.
She didn’t want to be here
any more than she’d wanted to be at the Playboy Mansion in Chicago a few years ago.
But she didn’t have much choice.
Things were going to Hades back at the Council, and had been for a
while.
Hera had almost fallen apart
after the departure of Zeus and his brothers.
Oh, the goddesses had rallied, doing what they could to ensure the
balance of nature the Olympians represented was maintained . . . but things
were starting to get fragile. Apollo was
supposed to have been a figurehead, and he had served as such for a few years
after Zeus’ exile. But then Kennedys had
been assassinated. The important ones,
anyway. And with his avatar gone, Apollo
just didn’t show up at the Council one day.
The rest of them had to move on without his help.
Athena had resented the
imposition of a male deity as the Chair of the Council, but it hadn’t taken
long for her to appreciate the wisdom of it.
Of all of the male gods, Apollo was the most reasonable by far. His brief reign had kept him at odds with
Hera and her advisors several times, but it had always been a civil dialogue,
and nearly all of the policy issues had ended with a reasonable compromise.
But after he withdrew from
the Council, things had gone to hell in a handbasket. Aphrodite had revolted. The senior gods hadn’t shown themselves
openly in almost a decade. Hera was
reigning, with the constant support of the increasingly-plump Demeter, but the
real powers were Artemis and Persephone.
And Persephone wasn’t even a proper Olympian, merely a spouse. Hephaestus was nominally the Chair for
propriety’s sake, but the coven of goddesses was running things. When things actually ran.
Athena had used her
influence over Hera for a few years to keep things together, but after the Queen
of Heaven and the Goddess of Love had quarreled. Aphrodite had been running a low-level
insurgent campaign ever since. Every now
and then someone would catch a glimpse of Ares, but he hadn’t helped one
bit. And while Hermes was helpful, he
had his limitations.
The signs of the Olympian’s
imbalance were starting to spring up everywhere in western society now. The tumultuous 1960s had nearly started a war
thanks to social upheaval, but had slid back from the brink. Barely.
Now the loss of the elder gods was starting to tell. The oil embargo had been a clear sign from
Poseidon just who held the real power in the world. Ares had allowed the West to lose in Viet Nam in a fit of disgust – something Athena never thought
he’d do. Zeus’ sky was filled with
satellites and spacecraft, and even the sanctity of the Moon, Herself, had been
violated by those phallic rockets he loved so much.
And Hades . . . the God of
Death was plotting. She couldn’t prove
anything, of course, but Hades had been far too quiet for far too long. While small conflicts broke out all over the
globe, thanks to the machinations of the Cold War, there had been relatively
few deaths.
And then she had learned
about the Neutron Bomb. The God of Death
had a dark new lance, far more lethal than the triumph of the Atomic bomb, or
even the Hydrogen bomb. The Neutron bomb
was Hades’ finest creation. It robbed
the living of their souls while leaving their treasure intact. It made Athena shudder whenever she thought
about the weapon ever being deployed – and she was a Goddess of War.
“Apollo?” she called
out. She expected a dog or something, at
least, but there were no animals around.
“What?” came a reply from
the cabin. “What do you want?” Gone was the
politely civil tone, the attitude that had guided civilization for three
thousand years. The voice was filled
with pain and anger, disgust and contempt all at once.
“It’s me,” Athena said,
unnecessarily. “I just want to
talk.” It took a few moments for the god
to come out, but when he did Athena had to stifle a gasp.
Gone was his elegant raiment
and sophisticated look. Instead he was
dressed in plaid flannel, blue jeans, and a fringed buckskin jacket. Muttonchop sideburns bisected his face unflatteringly,
and the eyes that had been filled with compassion and intelligence were just
hard.
“Isn’t this Hermes’
gig? What do you want to talk about?” he asked, warily. Athena blanched. She didn’t expect so hostile reaction – not
from Apollo. Not toward her.
“He said he couldn’t find
you, but I think he was sandbagging and wanted us to respect your privacy. But Her Majesty wants you to return to the
Council,” Athena replied, after a moment’s hesitation. That brought an unexpectedly wry laugh.
“Oh, I’ll just bet she does,” he said, shaking his
head. “No. All right, we’ve talked. See you in the funny pages.” He turned to leave.
“Wait! Apollo, no!”
Athena said, as near to begging as she had been in centuries. “We want you back!”
“No, you don’t,” he said,
halting, but not turning to face her.
“You don’t want me back at
all. You might need me back, but you don’t really want me.”
“That’s not true!” she
said. “We do want you!”
“As what, your token?” he
demanded, angrily. “After the way we’ve
been treated?” Don’t think I don’t know
about that cabal of yours. Don’t think I
don’t know who was behind Lee Harvey
Oswald’s trigger finger. The Queen of
the Damned. And my bitch of a sister,”
he said, bitterly. “And that was just
their latest trick. They were also
behind Zeus and Hades and Poseidon being exiled. But you
were the ringleader. Not Hera. Not Aphrodite. And certainly not Artemis. It had to be you or Persephone, and honestly
she’s just not that smart. Shooting
Kennedy was bad enough, Athena, but you exiled Father and our Uncles.” He turned to walk back toward his hovel.
His tone was accusatory, and
was so near to the truth that Athena couldn’t deny it. “It was for the best,” she said, after
struggling with what to say. “Look where
they were leading us.”
“Look where they led us!” Apollo spat, whirling around to
face her angrily. “Past war and famine
and plague, they took us. Through
inquisition and empire. They faced every
threat. They bested every
challenge. Napoleon. Bismarck . Hitler. Stalin.
Small pox. Malaria. Polio.
Western Civilization was poised to take over the world, and then you . .
.” he said, and suddenly stopped.
Athena’s face burned with embarrassment.
“It was for the best,” she repeated, quietly. “It was that, or risk the survival of
humanity. You should know that better
than anyone.”
“It was a dumb-ass move,
Athena, and you know it!” he retorted.
“The three most powerful gods – four, let’s be honest, Ares is still
quite potent – are absent from the affairs of the Council. And then, for good measure, you girls got rid
of me, too. That leaves you Heph and Hermes, now that
Dion has gone AWOL. A smith and a
messenger. US Steel and Western Union .”
“That’s why we want you to come back!” she said, pleased
that he appreciated the reality of the situation. “You’re not like the others, Apollo. You’re one of the good ones. You’ve never
tried to oppress us, or hurt us, and you’ve always given us due credit. That’s why we were so supportive of your
taking the Chair,” she said, a little overly-enthusiastic.
“Right,” he sighed. “And that’s why you were so supportive of
putting a bullet in me, once I was there.
Which effectively cripples me, as you know. I won’t be back up to speed for another fifty
years. If then.”
“You’ll manage,” Athena
said, rolling her eyes.
“So will you,” Apollo said, after studying her a
moment. “I’m out of the game for a
while. Enjoy your power – you’ve earned
it.”
“Apollo, why won’t you come
back?” Athena asked. She tried to be
casual about the whole thing, but there was a lot riding on this
conversation. Her instructions from
Hera were clear: Don’t come back without him.
Athena wasn’t sure what the displeasure of the Queen of Heaven would be
like – she’d been wise enough to steer clear of the Mother Goddess and her
sphere over the years – but now that she could be the target of it, she was
worried. “The Council isn’t working very
well right now. Even the mortals are
picking up on it – ‘malaise’ is all over the news. It would be very helpful if there was a
little inspirational ‘spark’ right now to combat that malaise.”
The sandy blonde man
scratched his scrabbly jaw – an aberration, she noted, as Apollo almost always
went clean-shaven – and sighed with disgust.
“It would be helpful to whom?” he asked, patiently.
Athena studied him
carefully. “It would be helpful to
us. To the whole world. We can’t have the sun hidden from view, now,
can we?” she asked, smiling slightly.
She was awful at flattery, but she was trying.
“You mean ‘it would be
helpful to the Council’,” he said, flatly.
“Well, yes,” she
agreed. “It would be. You know how rocky things get . . .”
“I suppose the Goddess of Wisdom should have thought
about that before she got rid of a third of the members,” he chided, nastily. He looked really disgusted. That bothered her, for some reason. “Really, ‘Tina, after all we’ve been
through.”
“That’s not fair!” she said, automatically, as the color rose on her
cheeks. “Things change, Apollo! We’ve got a whole new world, now, and the old
order had to change. Just like it did
when we went from being deities to archetypes.
Just like it did when going to work in a factory became more predominant
than going to work in the fields. Things
change, and this time around it was our turn!” she said, boldly. She hadn’t intended to be this defensive
about it, but she couldn’t seem to help it.
“This time around, we’re not going to sit on the sidelines and do your
bidding and look pretty!”
“Well, then you got your
wish, didn’t you?” he asked, snidely, as he popped open a can of Coors. Apollo drinking? Something other than nectar or the very
finest of wines? That was the most
disturbing thing of all. “Now you don’t
have to sit on the sidelines OR look pretty.
Enjoy. But enjoy it without my help. If Aphrodite can leave the Council, so can
I. Especially
after what happened in Dallas . And at Watergate. By the Styx , Athena, haven’t you figured it out?
You just can’t kick every man you meet in the balls and then expect him
to respectfully consider your opinion.
Sorry, but it just doesn’t work that way.”
“Since when have you gotten kicked in the balls?” she
asked, with a sneer. “You’re literally the Golden Boy. Sure, Jack Kennedy was an unfortunate loss,
but we all lose avatars, Apollo. You can contend with that. But what else do you have to bitch
about? Look at the scientific
developments! The rule of
democracy! The increase in the standard
of living! You’re pretty high on the hog
to be shooting your mouth off about getting kicked in the balls. From where I see it, after Zeus and our
uncles left, that put you in charge.
Hell, you were in charge.”
“No, you were in
charge. I was a figurehead, at best,” he
said, taking a seat in a battered lawn chair around an outdoor fire pit. “Any actions I took were vetted and approved
by the Queen, who you and your cabal had under your thumb. I didn’t make policy. I didn’t do jack squat, except sit there and
be your token penis.”
“You weren’t just a token,”
she said, trying to repair the damage, “you made valuable contributions.”
“And yet I was attacked
anyway. I know how my sister is. We were . . . womb-mates, remember?” he
asked, wryly. “She’s vicious.
And she doesn’t like men – any men. Even me.
Pair her up with that depressing underworld lily and that scheming
siren, and the Bitch Squad had their hand so far up Hera’s twat that I almost
couldn’t see it over her hand up my ass.
I got sick of it.”
“We treated you like a king!”
“You treated me like an ignorant pet. You were so condescending it was
ridiculous. You tired to pretend we were
‘equals’, but that was bullshit and you know it. And while our father and our elders were
being disrespected in their own hall, you not only stood there and did nothing,
you set the whole thing up! Things had to change? Great.
They changed. Live with the
consequences. But do so without my participation. I’m not going to be your puppet any more,
pretending things are okay when they are clearly not.” There was an odd,
warning tone to his voice that Athena had rarely heard before.
“That’s completely unfair,”
she snorted. “And rather selfish of you,
too. Do you want all of this to fall
apart? Do you want the fall of Western
Civilization to be on your hands?”
“It’s not,” Apollo said, after
taking a long, slow pull on the beer.
“It’s yours. I’ve done my part. I’ve been a good little soldier. You ladies were upset, I get that. And things may have needed to change. But the way you went about it wasn’t just an
insult to Zeus, but to all of us
men. You kicked us in the balls collectively. Now you’re appealing to me because I’m
‘different’. I’m ‘not like the
others’. You’re right, I’m not. I’ve never done anything to you ladies, and
yet you still kicked me in the balls like
I had.”
“It was a simple power
exchange,” she reasoned. “The age of the
Great Powers was over. What did you
expect us to do, just lie there and take—”
“You, you, you, it’s all
about you,” he said, laughing
mirthlessly. “You always were jealous of
Dad. You always wanted that throne – or his approval – more than nectar and
ambrosia. I’ve always respected you,
‘Tina, because you’ve always been the most reasonable woman on the
Council. But this? This is bullshit!”
he said, forcefully. “You split the
Council and exiled Dad. I’m not about to forget that. I don’t care how you try to kiss my ass, I’m
not going to do squat to help you now.”
She stiffened. “You dare refuse a summons from the Queen of
Heaven? You risk incurring her wrath?”
Apollo laughed derisively. “Yes.
She can kiss my big shiny heliocentric ass. All
of you girls can. Because whatever else
your little revolution has established, one thing is perfectly clear: you want my involvement only to the point
where it benefits you. When I
foresee what the benefit is for me,
there’s nothing there. Not that I wanted
the Chair, but you were never going to really put me there, anyway. You just wanted to use me for cover, to make
everything look normal, and I’m not going to be that patsy anymore.”
“By the Styx , you’re a whiny one,” Athena said, exasperated. “Don’t you have any pride? Do you want
everything to fall apart?”
“Nope,” he conceded. “And I don’t think it will. But since you wanted a chance to run things,
I’m just going to kick back, go camping, and have a few beers while I watch.”
“Apollo, you have a responsibility—”
“You had a responsibility, too,” he interrupted, quietly. “But things change, ‘Tina. Don’t they?”
Her heart fell. She could tell by the look in his eyes he
wasn’t coming back. He was pissed. The most level-headed, well-adjusted deity of
them all, and he was pissed off to the point of inaction. “Well, I suppose you probably couldn’t have
handled it, anyway,” she added, huffily.
“Oh, bullshit,” he
dismissed. “Word of advice? In the future, when you ask a man for a favor
and he says no? Try not to shame him
into it afterwards. It’s not even good
as a last resort. It just makes us trust
you less and resent you more.”
“Why did you have to go and
make this between the genders?” she asked, biting her lip. “You were the one I figured would be on our
side the most.”
“Then you should have tried
to get me on your side,” the Sun God
pointed out. “Instead of emasculating us
all and then offering one of my testicles back for good behavior. No thank you, ‘Tina. You keep ‘em.
You earned ‘em. And whatever happens, that’s your fault, now. I’ll keep my Sphere going, and I’m working
with a few folks independently on some projects – Hermes and I have some cool
stuff cooking up at DARPA, just some communications stuff but it might be fun
– but as far as my active participation
and cooperation with that hen party you’re calling a Council? I repeat: kiss
my big shiny heliocentric ass.”
The Frustration Of Hera
1983
Athena looked at her desk,
packed with papers and orders and reports, and she sagged in despair. Things were not going well, not going well at
all.
First, there was . . . that man. After Nixon, she’d figured that the West
would understand the danger of powerful men in office, and Ford and Carter had
been nearly ideal. By the Styx , Carter had been a positive delight – not since Thomas Jefferson had
she been feted so much at the White House.
But now . . . that man was
in office, and he threatened everything she had worked for for decades. Already he had rolled back plenty of
initiatives she had fought hard for. He
was standing up to the Soviets and being a belligerent protector of Israel and acting the role of a Hollywood Cowboy from
behind the desk of the Oval Office. How
had she let him slip past her notice?
Perhaps it was the sheer
state of chaos she found herself in.
Like it or not, Athena was
running most of the business of the Council, now. For years Hera had run it with all the
efficiency and attention to detail of a upscale charity. But when it became obvious that Zeus’
storming off wasn’t a mere snit, she started to go downhill rapidly. When Apollo and Aphrodite left, she had been
nearly comatose, skipping meetings and playing bridge with Demeter and Hestia
and whichever of the Muses wasn’t busy.
And drinking lots of wine. Most
days she was still lucid, but when the Goddess of Marriage can’t get her
husband on the phone for more than a decade, it had an affect.
Meanwhile, a kind of
triumvirate had arisen to rule while Hera reigned. Athena had taken over most of the day-to-day
tasks – sunrise, tides, phases of the moon, change of seasons, sunset, same
shit, different day – while Persephone had gone into Damage Control and Artemis
had pursued reform. For a couple of
years they were actually quite productive.
But eventually things started to get frayed around the edges, and the
more Damage Control ‘Seph did, the worse things seem to get.
And taking John Lennon had
just been uncalled for.
Artemis was supposed to be
pursuing reform, but ever since the ERA was left for dead, she had set her jaw
to reform society in other ways.
Anti-war toys. Cruelty to
animals. Sex slavery. Pornography.
Especially pornography. She was
even getting buddy-buddy to the damn monotheistic patriarchs to pursue their
common foe. Such censorship made the
Goddess of Wisdom sick at heart . . . but she couldn’t say anything. Hells, she was barely keeping the sun in the
sky.
“Athena dear, do you have a
minute?” asked Hestia from the doorway to her office. Athena blinked and then rose automatically
for the low-key but universally respected divinity.
“Always,” she nodded. “Have a seat.
Do you need something done?” she asked, gesturing at the pile of
Requests For Divine Intervention that were stacking up. She’d be happy to subvert the process if it
helped out an ally, however.
“No, no, dear, I just wanted
to chat for a moment. I was going to go
talk to Zeus, like I used to, but . . . well, that is kind of what I wanted to
speak to you about, dear. I’m starting
to think this silly fight has gone on long enough.”
“Tell them, not me,” Athena
said, frustrated. “I’m not the one who
stomped away mad.”
“But you were the one who
convinced Hera to stand up to them,” she reminded, gently. “And you were the one who convinced the other
ladies of the Council to come to a consensus.
But it’s been – goodness! Almost
twenty years, now? Twice the length of
the Trojan War, and we’re still not speaking.
That’s bad for everyone, my dear.”
“Oh, I know,” she agreed,
“but there’s not much I can do. They
left. They have to come back. I certainly can’t compel them, nor would I if
I could.”
“Well, couldn’t you talk to
them, at least?” asked the old lady, thoughtfully. “There was a day when I could say anything to
the Thunderer, or his brothers, and they would listen to me with respect.”
“They never treated you with
respect,” dismissed Athena. “Honestly,
you were a token, nothing more. A symbol
of a bygone era. They didn’t want you
and your fire, they were forced to accept it by circumstance. Look how quickly they replaced you with Dionysus,” she pointed out. When the new
Thracian divinity had come along, Hestia had resigned her official position on
the Council. She was still a Member
Emeritus, and included in any big decisions as a courtesy, but she had been the
first to go when a – male – rival had come along.
“I was more than a mere
symbol, dear,” she said, licking her lips.
“Remember, if it wasn’t for the Hearth and the Flame, there was no
survival. Around the Hearth the men of
old gathered for warmth and food and instruction. Around the Hearth the family grows like a
well-tended flame. Around the Hearth
laughter and merriment are heard.” She
paused, sadly, and looked at Athena with great sorrow. “And I hear that laughter and merriment less
and less every year.”
“That’s . . . that’s because
of the social upheaval,” she admitted.
Hells, she couldn’t deny that – there were millions of “broken families”
out there, now, thanks to the liberation of women. Broken.
Like they ever really worked.
“Divorce rates have made the . . . laughter and merriment at a premium.”
“I know that dear, that’s
why I’m talking to you,” Hestia said, patiently. “We need to fix that.”
‘We Need To Fix That’. That should be my new motto, Athena thought.
“The situation is more complicated than that,” she sighed. “Even if I could find Zeus and the others,
they would have to be persuaded to come back.”
“So persuade them!”
“They’d want to roll back
certain changes in the status quo,”
she said, carefully.
“So let them!”
“Well, we can’t really do that, can we?” Athena said,
carefully. “Do you want to go back to
the days when our daughters could only become mothers? Where they existed entirely at the pleasure
of men? Where they were all but chattel,
to be bartered and married off without even a consultation?”
“Well of course not,”
grumbled the old goddess. “Don’t be
silly. But that’s unlikely to happen,
don’t you think?”
“It could, if they come
back,” Athena warned. “Zeus was pretty
upset when he left. I don’t know if a
couple of decades is enough for him to cool down.”
“Oh, don’t sell him short –
he is the King of the Gods, after
all.”
“Was the king of the gods,” Athena reminded her.
“Back when things ran
properly,” agreed Hestia. Athena was
surprised but didn’t show it. Was the
old bitch challenging her?
“Things are running just
fine, now,” Athena said, evenly. “Never
better. Feminine leadership has brought
us to a new, unparalleled level of prosperity.
I’ve kept the dogs of war at bay.
No new extremist movements, no trouble from Russia – okay, Afghanistan , but that was minor – and no communist
revolution. What more could you ask
for?” she demanded.
“The sound of laughter and
merriment,” Hestia said, quietly. “Do think about it, dear,” she said,
soothingly. “I know you have a lot on
your plate, but that’s the point: if you got some help, then things might . . .
go more smoothly,” she offered.
“I’ll take it under
advisement,” Athena agreed, dully, as the elder goddess left her office. Not that she actually would. The last thing she
wanted was Zeus back, just now. The
whole point of her revolution had been to demonstrate how a goddess could rule
as easily and as efficiently as a god.
Only she kept running into unanticipated problems and unforeseen
obstacles.
Take this computer thing
that the boys had put together for the space program. She hadn’t thought anything of it, at first –
it was just math, and she was good at math so she didn’t really need one – but
now it was starting to be trouble.
Especially since they had gotten so cheap and so powerful. The problem was, it was an all-boys club. There were precious few women involved with
their development, and almost as few working with the things now. Hermes had shown them one a few years ago,
and it had been impressive, she guessed.
He and Apollo had put it together at DARPA, and they were pretty proud
of it.
It was just another damn
box, as far as Athena was concerned. She
had bigger concerns. Like a Sun God and
Messenger God who were playing around with a damn box of electronics instead of
doing their jobs. Computers were nifty and all, but Atari
wasn’t going to solve all of the world’s problems.
Just one more thing.
Or take the depressing new
attitude that Persephone and Artemis had developed. They saw the flight of men from the Council
as an abundantly positive thing, an opportunity for them to re-arrange the
universe more to their liking. They were
constantly whispering suggestions into Hera’s ear – not that she always took
them – and were egging on Athena’s own efforts to equalize things between the
sexes . . . but the way they were going about it was disturbing.
Persephone had grown in
power and stature, but she had also grown in the melancholia and other odd
behavior she’d always suffered since becoming the Bride of Death. She had championed reproductive rights, and
saw the legalization of abortion as a personal triumph. Athena had to agree – the men had demonized
the practice since the gods were in charge of the universe of man, starting
with that zit Hippocrates. She’d never
liked that man.
But the obsession with the
subject Persephone demonstrated put off nearly all the others left at the
table. Hestia and Demeter looked
troubled by it, Hephaestus and Hermes tried to ignore it, and Athena herself
usually changed the subject after issuing some hollow-sounding
congratulations. Only Artemis didn’t
seem bothered by that . . . and of course Hera was angry about it even if she
recognized the necessity. You can’t very
well be a Goddess of Marriage and Family and be pro-choice.
Artemis herself was the one
that Athena was starting to fear. She
had been walking the halls of power for a decade, now, and was intensely
interested in any issues that had an affect on women. Her personal triumph had started innocuously
enough with Title IX – how she got that past Nixon, even Athena didn’t know –
but after that victory she had begun to go after other issues. Not even very important issues, and sometimes
things that got her involved in the Spheres of the other goddesses. When that happened, it wasn’t pretty.
But then again, Artemis had
never been about what was pretty.
The arrogance she felt was
palpable. She now directed Council
meetings, such as they were, with iron purpose, deferring to her seniors and
superiors only when she was forced to, or it suited her purposes. She usually affected the appearance of a
pant-suited corporate businesswoman – and she kept making the shoulder pads
bigger and bigger. Athena didn’t know
why that bothered her, but it did.
She sighed as she got back
to work. She was so behind – there was
always three times more than even a divinity could get done in a workweek, and
she’d had to cut back on some of her other duties to make up the slack. Not just the cabal’s special missions and
policy corrections, but all of the mundane, ordinary paperwork, too. That still had to be done, revolution or no.
Then she came across
something that disturbed her.
Deeply. Getting abruptly to her
feet, she grabbed the piece of paper and went to look for the Queen of Heaven.
She was in the work-out room
of the mansion, going through some of the Canadian Air Force exercises that
were becoming so popular, her big mature calves spilling out of her dark pink
leg warmers. Hera had been working out
more and more since Zeus left. There
were even rumors she’d had a few flirtations with other divinities. Not that Athena could ever see the
conservative Mother Goddess getting freaky on the sly. Would she?
“Mother?” Athena asked,
after clearing her throat. “A word?”
“Oh, you must be cross with
me,” Hera said as she snapped her fingers.
The satyrs playing synthesizers in the corner took five, sharing a pack
of cigarettes. “You only call me
‘mother’ when you’re cross with me. Or
you want something. Which is it?”
“I’m just . . . concerned,
is all,” Athena said, carefully. “I was
going through the backlog of reports and I saw a disturbing note. Something about a request for divine
guidance?”
“Well, yes, not everyone can
manifest an avatar exactly when you need one, and since I didn’t have one
around I figured I’d just settle for a little matronly influence, instead. It’s almost as good, don’t you think?”
“It’s not your methodology
that I question, Mother, it’s your target.
Nancy Reagan, Mother? You’re
guiding the wife of the man who is causing us so much trouble?”
“ ‘Us’, who, Athena?” Hera
said as she summoned a towel to wipe away the sheen of her exertions. “It’s traditional for us to influence the
power centers of culture. Goodness,
that’s our primary job description, almost!”
“Yes, I know, but . . .
Mother, that man, that man is trying to wreck everything we’ve worked for!”
“Oh, I don’t know about
that,” Hera said absently as she opened a bottle of nectar. “He’s standing up to the Russians, for one
thing. He got the hostages back from Persia . He’s making
NATO relevant again. He’s fighting
against drugs, he’s encouraging the lads to keep it in their pants, and he’s so
. . . so handsome. He reminds me of your
father,” she confided with a giggle.
“He’s a right-wing fascist!”
Athena protested.
“Oh, don’t be silly – he’s
the only sitting president ever to preside over a labor union! That’s hardly a fascist, dear. No, he’s actually quite nice, in person. Incredible charisma.”
“So why are you targeting
his wife?” Athena asked, confused. “Why
not just him?”
“Because it’s outside of my
Sphere to guide a man like that,” Hera chided.
“You should know that by now. My
powers lie within the bonds of matrimony.
That’s why I submitted that request a few years back. A little helpful advice through an
astrologer, and things have already started to improve, don’t you think?”
“No, Mother, I do not!”
Athena said angrily. “After all that
we’ve worked for, all that we’ve sacrificed, you’re . . . you’re sleeping with
the enemy!”
“Athena!” Hera said,
whirling around angrily. “How dare
you! Reagan is not the enemy – neither
is your father and uncles! They just see
things differently than you, that’s all.”
“He’s trying to roll back
reproductive rights! He’s trying to get
rid of sex education! He’s promoting
ketchup as a vegetable! Mother, can’t
you see? He’s charming, but he’s just
working you. He’s telling you a few
flattering things and you’re folding like a cheap chair!”
“I am doing nothing of the
sort! Young lady, you wanted me to take
power, so I took power. Now don’t try to
tell me how to use it.”
“Someone’s already tried to
take him out once,” Athena reminded her.
“No one ever figured out who was behind Hinkley.”
“Or Oswald, but I think we
all know how that worked out. Just grant
the request retroactively and move on,” ordered Hera, re-capping her
ambrosia. “That’s the way I want it,
Daughter. Now, if you’ll just let me
finish my work-out, I have a bridge game this afternoon.” Without waiting for a reply, she snapped her
fingers and the satyrs came off of break.
Athena fumed as she
left. First Hestia pushes for a
reconciliation, and then Hera reveals that she’s working with the other side on
the sly . . . honestly, she didn’t know why she worked so hard when those old
biddies went and messed it up!
She was still fuming as she
passed one of the lounges – and got an eyeful.
Dionysus was sitting on a
couch with Hephaestus, a bowl of popcorn between them. They were watching TV, but nothing wholesome
like Battle of the Network Stars or ChIPs. No, what was on the giant 29” screen was
something more in Aphrodite line of work than Artemis’.
“What the hell?” she asked,
loudly. Heph scrambled clumsily to his
feet and looked guilty . . . but Dion didn’t budge.
“Hey! You’re blocking the screen! Look at the size of those things!”
“I’m right here!” Athena
screamed. “I cannot believe you would
defile the sacred halls of Olympus with this garbage!
This is so offensive—”
“Oh, don’t get your panties
in a wad, Nerd Girl,” dismissed the offensive deity. “I was just showing my brother here the finer
points of Betamax. Like, for instance,
the knockers on that one!”
“They’re not even real!”
complained Athena with a glance. “By the
Styx , how you thought you’d get away with bringing this
filth here, I don’t know, but—”
“It’s not that bad,”
complained Heph, lamely. “I mean, the
music is better than that crappy guitar stuff.”
“It’s not the aesthetic I
object to,” Athena shot back. “It’s the
subject. Those women are being sexually
exploited for your pleasure!”
Dionysus looked at her,
unimpressed. “Yeah, so?”
“So, don’t you have any
respect for them? Any respect for
yourself?”
The God of Wine and hors
d’Oeuvres shrugged. “Not
particularly. Why, are they worthy of respect? Hell, am I
worthy of respect? I’m sure they’re
all nice girls with engaging personalities and thoughtful perspectives but . .
. who cares? We just want to see some
titties. All these goddesses walking
around, and none of you gals wears your jugs out like you did back in the Good
Ol’ Days.”
Athena blushed. “Nor shall we! Except maybe for Aphrodite—”
“Huh!” Dionysus
snorted. “Fat chance of seeing her around here anytime soon!”
“Why? Have you been in touch?” demanded the Goddess
of Wisdom. The Goddess of Love and
Beauty had been AWOL for years.
“Maybe,” the God of Wine
said, slyly. Heph fidgeted uncomfortably. After all, she was technically his wife.
“Well? Tell me where! Tell me what she’s up to! Styx , why hasn’t she
been to a meeting in a decade?”
“Oh, I see her at the
occasional party,” demurred Dion, enjoying the attention. “Probably at Studio 54 last . . . or was it
Plato’s Retreat? Someplace in New York , I think. But
that’s really none of your concern.
She’s freelance, now.”
“She’s hurting the Council!”
Athena protested.
“She’s hurting your Council,” Heph pointed out,
hesitantly, “but she’s doing fine on her own.
Her Sphere has never been stronger!”
“And that’s a problem!”
Athena complained. “Everyone is so
obsessed with sex that none of the other problems are getting dealt with!”
“I don’t see a problem
there,” Dion said, smirking. “As long as
California ’s grape harvest is good, I’m good. Let Blondie have her fun – she’s not hurting
anyone. After what you hens did to her
poor avatar . . .”
“That wasn’t me,” Athena
said, patiently, “that was—“ she stopped
herself before she said too much. Some
goddess of wisdom, she chided herself silently.
And of course Dionysus picked up on it.
“Ah! So poor Marilyn took a fanny full of
barbiturates because of one of us –
or, should I say, one of you. Aphrodite has always suspected, but this confirms
it. The most beautiful woman to come
along in a hundred years, having a torrid affair with the most handsome
president, and then both die under mysterious circumstances . . .?”
“I will not have this house
get filled with your silly conspiracy theories,” Athena countered. “Marilyn was a danger to us all. Had she allowed her unrestrained sexuality to
go much further, there would have been chaos.
This stuff,” she said, gesturing to the screen where a buxom blonde
actress was giving herself a gynecological examination, “would be everywhere.”
“You say that like it’s a
bad thing,” complained Hephaestus.
“It is a bad thing! Pornography degrades women. It makes men into rapacious beasts. It encourages them to disrespect women. It’s a hallmark of rape culture, and—”
“ ‘Rape culture’?” asked Dionysus, amused. “What is that?”
“Well . . . pretty much
everything in patriarchal western culture, honestly, but specifically targeting
women as sexual objects. That’s rape culture.”
“Sounds like a party to me,”
Dion smirked. “Look, sweetie-pie, Heph
is missing his lovely wife, I’m bored as hell, and this Betamax is the best
thing since cable television.”
“Pornography is the ‘best
thing’?” she said, disgustedly.
“Well, there’s not really
anything else for us to do, is
there?” Heph pointed out. “Just work and
stuff. Without the missus around, hey, a
man’s gotta . . .” he said, trailing off under Athena’s withering gaze.
“A man’s gotta . . . what?” she demanded.
“Oh, get over yourself,
Owlgirl, a man’s got to jerk off!”
snorted Dionysus.
“That’s disgusting!”
“So is menstruation,” Dion
riposted, “but you ladies seem pretty wedded to it.”
“That’s not fair!
And that’s not funny!”
“Life’s not fair,” Dion
said, derisively. “But it is oh, so
funny. For example, seeing your owl-ass
smelling wig getting flipped because your Daddy issues made you take a job you
aren’t handling, with you trying to pretend that you can. You’re demanding respect, but there’s no reason to respect you. First you rag on Dad until he leaves in
disgust, then you get the chicks in a tizzy, and now you’re ragging on two of
the last boys left in your club because you think watching titties is
disrespectful? That’s funny. Lighten up,
sister. “
“Don’t you lecture me,” she
snarled. “I will not stand for this!”
“You have precious little
choice in the matter, unless you wanna tell Mom that you pissed us off,
too. And then who’s going to take out
your trash and kill your bugs for you?”
“ Dionysus, you go too far!”
she said, angrily. She nearly wished her
spear into her hand. The laws of Olympus prohibited violence between members of the Council, but she was
tempted.
But while the Smith God
looked very uncomfortable, Dion was barely affected by her anger.
“Oh, shut
up,” he said with a sneer. “The
vengeful goddess thing was intriguing back when you were burning bras, but now
you just sound like a shrew. What are
you going to do? Fry me with a bolt of
lightning? Or give me a stern
lecture? Unless you can do the former,
I’m going to ignore you now. Those boobs
are far more interesting, and I don’t
really care if you feel disrespected
anymore.
“Now you know how Dad felt,”
Hephaestus added, petulantly. Of all of
them, only Hera missed Zeus’ presence more.
“This isn’t over,” she
vowed, as she realized the little snot was right. “I cannot build a world safe for women when
trash like this is allowed to persist!”
“What, you’re going to stop porn?
Good luck with that, Sister. You
might as well outlaw masturbation entirely, for all the good it will do. Besides, why is building a world safe for
women the goal? Why not safe for all
people?”
“If it’s safe for women, it
is safe for all people!” she spat.
“We’ll be safe from the evil
power of boobies, perhaps, but still subjected to your judgmental crap all the
time. I just don’t see the advantage,”
he dismissed.
“What is best for women is
best for all,” she said, as she angrily stormed out. “Why can’t everyone just see that?”
She hadn’t taken four steps
when she overheard the two gods muttering to each other.
“Styx , what is her problem?”
“Either she’s on the rag, or
she just hasn’t had enough male companionship lately. Hey, let’s put on Too Naughty To Say No
next, okay? I hear one of the girls
shaves her bush.”
August 1989
Athena was growing weary of
the strain.
Even a goddess has limits,
and for the last few years she’d been running things almost single-handedly
while the other gods were in exile, hiding, or keeping a low profile . . .
while the world went to hell in a handbasket.
Hermes was the only male god
to consistently and reliably show up for meetings, now. The others were scattered. Dionysus had been touring with the Grateful
Dead, she’d heard, Hephaestus was hiding out tinkering somewhere and not
answering the divine calls. Ares was
AWOL. Zeus, Poseidon and Hades had not
shown their faces at Olympus for years, although their Spheres seemed
well-enough.
Athena really didn’t mind
that – much. Persephone and Artemis were
helping out a lot, and she had to admit that things, while rough, were running
more-or-less smoothly under their governance.
While the other two goddesses seemed even more fundamental about their
cause, Athena was starting to see the downsides – particularly when she was the
only one she could trust – of their rebellion.
Perhaps Zeus would have the last laugh, after all. Once something really big screwed up, for
instance.
The older goddesses – Queen
Hera, Demeter, and Hestia, were spending their days playing cards in some Florida community.
They still showed up for meetings, occasionally, but they rarely had
much constructive to say. The last one
had been rough, though, as Hera was starting to get frustrated about their
progress. The lack of a male presence on
the Council was reflecting in the mortal realms – if there was a man
less-suited to the term than the one that sat in the White House now, she’d yet
to make his acquaintance.
But Hera wasn’t happy, and
that meant no one was happy. Athena
secretly thought that it was her long estrangement from Zeus that was turning
her a little batty, but she’d never say as much. These days the Queen of the Gods seemed
content to listen to reports, suggest some policy, and then back to the
Chardonnay.
That is, until a few weeks
ago.
Instead of the usual scant
attendance, the Table had been almost half full for the first time in
years. Not only had Athena, Artemis and
Persephone been there, but Hera had come with her sister goddesses. Demeter, Persephone’s mom, was now obesely
fat. Her huge XXXL t-shirt was almost
tight, advertising ARCHER-DANIELS-MIDLAND across her abundant bust – but
Demeter barely spoke. Neither had
Hestia, who jus glared into the shadows.
Hera had enough to say for
all of them.
We are displeased with the
governance of the mortal realm by our Regent, Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, she
had pronounced at the last meeting. It
has come to Our attention that several Spheres have been attended to poorly or
abandoned under her administration, and the lack of support from major deities
(read: the male gods) denotes a lack of confidence. Find you then some way to repair this
Council, returning some or all of its members back under Our rule.
Hera wasn’t happy . . . now
Athena wasn’t happy. Mom wanted the
rogue goddesses rounded up, and that meant Aphrodite, first and foremost. Hell, Hera was livid with the Sex Goddess
over the whole Madonna thing – not to mention the plague that had come to
affect all of them, mortals and deities alike.
She had called in a few
favors with some minor gods good at such things, and she had eventually managed
to track the Goddess of Love to this trendy little suburb outside of Milwaukee . Hardly a
hotbed of fleshpots, but it was always difficult to pin Aphrodite down about her
interests. But the intelligence had
been accurate – there were empty bottles of nectar in the recycling.
The big white house looked
majestic . . . and conservative. Hardly the hippy pad she expected a sex
goddess to inhabit. This place was
ritzy, but in a tasteful, upper-middle-class sort of way. The whole place stank of bourgeois smugness –
perhaps Aphrodite was seducing the married man of the house into some illicit
affair, she reasoned. That was the only
thing that could explain her presence. For Styx ’s sake, there
was even a BMW and a minivan in the driveway, though the garage door was
closed. Utterly suburban. It was about as far from the Playboy Mansion as you could get . . . and that bothered Athena.
Sex had been off lately,
she’d heard.
She didn’t pay much
attention to that end of things because that Sphere more or less ran
itself. People didn’t need much
encouragement to screw – quite the opposite.
She remembered all of the thousands of construction jobs and projects
that had gotten delayed or even cancelled because of humanity’s inability to
keep it in its pants, even up to that whole Marilyn/Jack affair that had caused
so much strife. She’d often thought that
humans would be better off with some less intense, more productive means of
reproduction. And the way that Aphrodite
ran things was positively . . . sordid.
But not lately. Ever since that horrible disease had jumped
from the Gay community (it still amused her to think of homoerotic unions as
such) to heterosexuals, there had been a distinct sexual chill over the
lands. Only a few years ago Aphrodite
had been raging her randy twat all over the place – swinging, orgies,
bisexuality, affairs, casual sex and anonymous sex . . . but not now.
Athena had taken some small,
grim pleasure in that fact. She’d never
been a fan of Aphrodite’s obsessive sexual enthusiasm, even as she recognized
the importance. Personally, she thought
the deity took things entirely too far most of the time. Sex should be about mutual respect and pleasure,
she reasoned, not about conquest or power or lust. There was a perfectly legitimate place for
sex in society, now. It didn’t need to
be hawked on television like soap, or celebrated in sleazy clubs like Plato’s
Retreat and Studio 54.
But those days seemed to be
over. Now . . . now things were looking
dire. Apollo was working furiously on a
cure for the sexually-transmitted scourge, but hadn’t hit on anything yet. In the meantime it looked like the only way
to combat the plague was prevention. Condoms,
if necessary – they had shown strong promise as a preventative – but more than
likely Athena saw a shift away from casual sex and perhaps even a new period of
general celibacy as people realized that casual sex was now dangerous, or even
fatal. Certainly if humans knew that any
clandestine fuck they enjoyed could be the death of them, they’d become wise
enough to stay faithful.
That was the wise thing to do, after all.
But that couldn’t happen
unless Aphrodite could be convinced to rein-in her Sphere. Hera was always fuming about how shoddily
“that Jezebel” ran her Sphere, and Demeter and Hestia weren’t much more polite
about it. Of the three, Hestia was a
virgin and Demeter unwed . . . and with her girth expanding like that, likely
unsatisfied sexually. Athena resented
the push toward a thinner body for women, purely to be more sexually attractive
to men. But she also understood there
was such a thing as physical attraction.
Hestia was just old and dry, never touched by a man or god. None of them really appreciated what
Aphrodite did for everyone, and none of them enjoyed dealing with the picture
of divine beauty when she was in heat.
But now . . . well, there
were problems. Problems only Aphrodite
could fix. And no one could find her.
Athena had been looking for
months, and only her divine intuition and a little clandestine intelligence had
led her here, finally. The Sex Goddess
didn’t want to be found, apparently. No
doubt she’d guessed that the Queen of the Gods was vexed with her wanton
ways. In the Old Days, sex had been in
service to marriage, or with a slave if you could afford it. When Aphrodite broke out of that narrow field
of socially-acceptable behaviors, the lust could overflow to enflame
society. That’s why Zeus had authorized
so many secret orgies amongst the peasantry, back then. You had to allow sex an escape valve, or it
could destroy a civilization.
The Goddess of Wisdom took a
deep breath and rang the lighted doorbell.
It took a few moments for
someone to come to the door, but soon a small, squat Mexican housekeeper looked
out into the street, through Athena, who was invisible. The goddess stepped lithely around the
servant and started walking through the spacious, if tacky home.
It was mid-morning, but
Athena was unsurprised to find Aphrodite just stumbling toward the coffee
pot. Not even other gods could detect
her when she wore her famous cap, and she observed her sister goddess as she
poured a cup of brew and add sugar and nectar to it. Aphrodite inhaled deeply before taking a
sip. That’s when Athena chose to
reappear.
“Best part of waking up,”
she observed, wisely, as Aphrodite spewed coffee from her mouth in
surprise. “Long time, no see, Big Tits.”
“Styx damn you!” she swore, heatedly, as she shook coffee from her
exquisite baby-blue bathrobe. “Why the
hell would you go sneaking up on someone like that?”
“Because I can,” Athena said, mockingly. “Really, it’s just a little coffee. Relax.
Maybe switch to decaf?” she offered.
“Blow it out your Aegis,” the other goddess scowled. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Athena took a seat at the kitchen table – wood-grained formica. “I’m looking for you. You are wanted by the Council.”
“I’m wanted by every man in the universe – okay, maybe 90%. And the other 10% want my clothes. But I don’t seem to need to be wanted by the
Council.”
“Hera is vexed,” warned Athena.
“You know that—”
“And that’s supposed to be the compelling argument that drags me back
to her bunioned feet?” snorted Aphrodite.
“If she’s vexed, Council is the last
place I want to be.”
“She wants you to take better care of your Sphere, is all,” Athena
said, cautiously. Actually, she wanted a
great deal more than that – an end to this computerized pornography that was
taking over, reducing the number and variety of strip clubs, close down the
pornography industry all over the world.
But Athena was a diplomat. “Sexuality has become just too complicated, she
thinks, and a more tempered management style—“
Aphrodite guffawed
daintily. “You have got to be
kidding! Honey, I’m just getting
started!”
Athena frowned. That’s not how this was supposed to go. “Under the circumstances,” she said, evenly,
“an increase in sexual activity may prove a Public Health issue.”
“That’s what rubbers are
for,” dismissed the goddess with a yawn.
“They do work, you know – oh, you probably don’t,” she corrected herself, cattily. Athena’s virginal status was a constant
source of amusement to her. “But Hera
shouldn’t sweat it. I plan on focusing
more on masturbation for a while – something you can relate to. The porn business is booming, and thanks to
Her Cuntiness’ split with Zeus and the resulting wave of divorces, there are
plenty of horny, bitter men out there ready to buy it.”
“Aphrodite, that’s not the direction Hera wants to go!”
Athena said, angrily. “The others on the
Council are also against it. Hera sees
it as a threat to marriage, Perspehone sees it as insulting to the nature of
womanhood, Artemis says it’s exploitive of women, and Demeter and Hestia are
just scandalized.”
“And you, ‘Tina?” Aphrodite
asked. “What about you? Do you think it’s all right to tell a woman
what she can and can’t do with her own body?”
That was a loaded question, she knew.
She had fought adamantly over the abortion issue, even against the
senior goddesses, when necessary. But
porn . . . and sex in general . . . she had very mixed feelings about
that.
“It is exploitive to women,”
Athena agreed. “I can’t condone
that. It’s institutionalized rape. Thousands of innocent victims every year get
involved in it. Porn is part of the rape
culture, and—”
“ ‘Rape culture’?” Aphrodite scoffed.
“Oh, you poor stupid thing. How
about you leave the sexual terms to me and I won’t go design any buildings or
anything. Sure, it’s a rough industry,
but show me one that isn’t for a
woman. Has it ever occurred to you that
some of those girls enthusiastically enjoy their work? I’ve got a couple of potential avatars in
there, thankyouverymuch.”
“How can you support – and
rule – and industry that does so much harm to so many women? To all women?” she asked in disbelief. It was time to abandon diplomacy. The porn industry was virtually indefensible,
“You’ve got a lot of nerve,
oh Goddess of Textiles!” Aphrodite laughed bitterly. “Thousands of women? At least they’re getting paid decently for
their ‘rapes’. How many thousands of
women – little girls – in the third world had to put out for their managers
just to keep showing up for their sweat-shop jobs, Athena? Spend six hard hours stitching up stylish
fashions for fat Yankee bitches in the First World, get raped on your lunch
hour because it’s your turn today and you have to buy food at the end of the
week, and then back for another six hours of piecework so that some cunt in
Jersey can talk about the huge savings she got at the clearance sale! Shit, Athena, at least my girls know what
they’re getting into!”
“What about . . . kiddie
porn?” Athena said, accusingly.
“It’s a problem,” admitted
the Goddess of Sex, unexpectedly. “I
agree. It needs regulation. Next?”
“Prostitution?” Athena shot
back.
“Like that’s going to
disappear if you get rid of porn,” she scoffed.
“It’s been around as long as I have.
It has nothing to do with some hot 21 year old college girl with big
boobs getting her ashes hauled on camera for a couple of hundred. Not in California ,” she stressed.
“What about children getting a hold of it?” Athena
riposted.
“You wanna hide the National
Geographics next? And here
you’re the goddess of liberty and freedom of thought, too. Honestly, ‘Tina, you bore me. Porn’s here to
stay. VHS is just the beginning. Hermes has been showing me how people will be
watching movies in the future, and it’s perfect for porn. Hell, once video cameras drop below two grand,
folks will be making their own. And then
what will you do? Stop consenting adults
from doing it in the privacy of their own homes, on their own video cameras?”
Athena paled. “The women of America will not stand for such filth and perversion—”
“Once again, MY Sphere!”
Aphrodite interrupted. “And once again, wrong.
The women of America are a bunch of horny old broads who will stop at
nothing to get their jollies. Even the
prudes in the Upper Midwest ,” she said, wrinkling her nose as she looked around. “Bunch of horny old Swedes and Germans, you
remember how they are. Believe me, there
are enough women out there whose vanity is flattered by the idea that
eventually most of the women in America will be performing such filth and perversion on
their own.”
“Not if we can stop it now!”
Athena countered. The vision Aphrodite
outlined was just what Hera and the others were afraid of. “Increased licentiousness is only going to
add to the AIDS problem. The more fuel
you add to that fire, the worse the damage!”
“I wish you people would let
me do my job,” she complained,
angrily, lighting a cigarette. “Look,
we’re already seeing a chill – that’s
why I’m doubling down on porn, rubbers, and vibrators. You harpies created a generation of sexually
frustrated men and bitchy, sexually aggressive women. Congratulations, everyone’s cranky now. That energy has got to go somewhere. The
traditional choices are sex and violence.
Which would you prefer?”
“Why does it have to be sex
or violence?” complained Athena. “Why
can’t it be worked out with a devotion to the arts, or science, or perhaps
poetry or—“
“Because they’re men, you arrogant bitch!” Aphrodite
said, playfully acidic. “I just love the
way you think that the Enlightenment allowed you to re-write the rules of human
nature to suit your sense of idealism, but industrialization and education
didn’t make men any less . . . men, it just made them more civilized. Still the same lusty hunter under all of
those slick Members Only
jackets. Still the same cocks wanting
the same pussies. Among other
things. Sure, they can build the Sistine
fucking Chapel when they’re inspired, but what the hell do you think inspires them? It isn’t your warm personality and insightful
observations, chick, it’s your titties and your pussy. That will never change.”
“That’s disgusting!” snarled
Athena.
“That’s my job description,”
shrugged Aphrodite.
“In case you haven’t
noticed, there’s been a big change in men over the last few decades,” Athena
pointed out. “They’re more sensitive,
now, less prone to anger and aggression.
They’re willing to be equal partners in a relationship, not dominate
everything they see. They’re willing to
let women take the lead and follow them, to take the higher road and not
exploit them senselessly.”
“Oh, please, they haven’t evolved!” scoffed Aphrodite as she
flicked her cigarette viciously into a clam shell ashtray. “They’re just scared. You’ve fucked them,
and they know it. They’re afraid, not
enlightened.”
“There will come a time when
men won’t fear strong women,” Athena pronounced with certainty.
“Sure there will, ‘Tina,”
Aphrodite said soothingly. “But that’s
not what’s happening here, no matter what you and the other bra-burners have to
say—”
“By the Styx !” swore Athena. “No one ever
really burned their bra!”
“It’s a helpful
metaphor. No, what you’re seeing here
isn’t men being afraid of strong women.
It’s men being afraid of all women.
Even the weak ones. Thanks to you
and the Bitch Patrol, you’ve created a generation of the most pussy-whipped
losers the world has ever known. Hell,
half of the porn sales now are due purely to men who can’t talk to women
because it’s a fucking train wreck every time they do. It’s easier to spend fifty bucks on a VHS
tape and whack away all weekend.
Cheaper, too. All of those
‘strong women’ you have strutting around the office these days are killing
erections faster than a knitting convention.”
“We’re just striving for a
workplace with equal opportunities for all, one in which historical inequities
are dealt with in a reasonable and proper way.
There is no room for sex in the workplace.”
“There is no place where
there is no room for sex,” countered Aphrodite.
“Please. All you’ve done is make
it frustratingly difficult to do it with women.
Not to mention dangerous to your health and safety, now, not to mention
your livelihood.”
“Men will adapt.”
“Men will. Men are.
They’re buying porn and getting divorced.”
“That’s what’s concerning
Hera. This porn addiction has started to
become a problem for marital fidelity.”
“No, marriage is the problem
with marital fidelity. And divorce. You’ve screwed it all up. There’s no equality in it anymore – there’s
no incentive.”
“There is no reason at all
why two consenting adults cannot join together on equal terms and jointly steer
the marriage.”
“Only, doesn’t work that
way. You know why? Because while Mr. Poindexter is trying
desperately to be an equal and reasonable partner in all things, Mrs.
Poindexter is frigging herself madly in the shower and thinking about the stud
who ‘changed her tire’ the other day, you moron. And once Mrs. Poindexter stops wanting Mr.
Poindexter’s average-sized dick and average-sized paycheck, she’s gonna get
dolled up and start looking around for the next size up in both.
And that
leaves Mr. Poindexter sitting there with his dick in his hands, wondering what
the fuck he did wrong while he’s filling out his child support check. That little chickenshit bitch who begs for
sex from his wife every weekend and buys her tampons and proudly holds her
purse at the mall is the heir of Leonidas.
Of Sparta . Of
Heracles. And you’ve got him asking his
wife’s permission if he can whack his own dick.”
That stung – Athena didn’t
know a lot about marriage, but she’d learned a lot about divorce recently. And the crude scenario Aphrodite described
was almost stereotypical at this point.
“Well, maybe if someone
would turn down the heat a little,”
she reasoned, “then maybe Mrs. Poindexter could focus on the good of the family
and not her own sense of sexual disillusionment.”
“That ship has sailed. Mrs. Poindexter doesn’t give a crap about the family anymore. She’s all empowered and shit – have you seen the shoulder pads?” she said,
shaking her blonde mane sadly. “These
days they look like fullbacks, not females.
Look, if Hera wants me to turn down the heat a bit, I can. I could use the rest, honestly – I’ve been
going full steam since the Sixties. But
don’t expect things to go all sweetness and light.”
“I’ll take what I can get,”
Athena sighed. “But why won’t you come
back to the Council?”
“Because it’s a taco fest,
and I prefer sausage most days,” Aphrodite explained, sipping her coffee. “All those women and no men? It’s like a fucking convent up there. None of
you have gotten laid in forever, not even the ones who can. It’s making you all bitchy and cranky and I’m
sick of it. Remember the last meeting I
showed up for? We spent the whole time
talking about our moral indignation about South African apartheid and the plight of the homeless. Depressed the fuck out of me. Zeus may not have been the best leader,
sometimes, but he knew how to have a good time.”
“Have you . . . have you
seen him, lately?” Athena asked.
“Not my secret to tell,”
Aphrodite said. “Now, is that all? I’ve got some post-coital routines to run
through, if you don’t mind.”
“Yes, that’s all,” the
Goddess of Wisdom said, resigned that she’d gotten all she could out of her
fellow goddess. “Oh, just one more thing
– why here? I figured you’d be in Vegas
or El Lay or Miami , even. Why Milwaukee ?”
For the first time in years
Aphrodite looked guilty. “Hey, we all
have our kinks,” she said, blushing slightly.
“We all do things that are . . . out of character, from time to time. It’s part of being a sexual being. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I just . . . well, some things a girl likes
to keep private.”
That intrigued Athena most
of all. Just what depraved kinks did the
Goddess of Sex indulge in behind closed doors?
What got her off, she who got everyone else off? Athena’s mind raced to a number of wild and
increasingly unlikely scenarios before she had to admit she’d reached the
limits of her erotic imagination.
“Like what?” was all she
could bring herself to ask. Before Aphrodite could answer, the answer itself entered the kitchen dressed in a
much-too-tight pink bathrobe.
“Hephaestus?” Athena
observed, her mouth agape.
The Smith god looked even
guiltier than Aphrodite.
“Athena? What in Hades are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same
thing!” she accused. “Haven’t I asked
you about a hundred times where the hell Aphrodite was hiding? And you never told me?”
“Hey, I didn’t know!” he
protested. “At the time, that is.”
“So this is your big secret?
Athena said, turning back to Aphrodite accusingly. “You’re hiding out, living covertly, and
having an affair . . . with your husband?”
Heph stood protectively near
his wife, and Aphrodite put her arm around his broad waist. “It was an arranged marriage, but it was a
marriage,” she reminded her sister goddess.
“Heph and I are technically the last married couple on the Council.”
“But . . . but you cheat on
him like all the time!”
“That’s just work,”
Hephaestus dismissed with a shrug of his shaggy shoulders. “I know she loves me, in her way. Hell, she can’t really help it, now, can
she?”
“Sometimes a girl just wants
to curl up and get righteously laid by her hubby,” agreed Aphrodite with a
wicked little smile. “Again, something
you wouldn’t know about. I’m a career
woman, don’t get me wrong. But I’m also
a wife. Not a good one, but a wife. I have a husband. A husband who loves me despite my
proclivities. And when things get just
too . . . well, too much, then we meet up here or there for a couple of weeks
of playing house. There’s just something
about having the same dick inside you every night that lends stability and
order to the universe. He might not be
the epitome of manhood, but to a wife her husband is all the man she needs,
most of the time. Even a piss-poor wife
like me.”
“Aww, Honey, you aren’t so
bad . . .” Hephaestus said with genuine sympathy.
“See what I mean? I fuck up, he still loves me. He got as bad a deal in this marriage as I
did, but you work on it. You have each
other. In the middle of the night, when
the nightmares invade, you have a big strong man to cling to that’s all your
very own . . . and that’s a comfort that financial security and sensible shoes
can’t provide.”
“That’s . . .”
“That’s marriage,” Aphrodite stressed.
“Or at least what’s left of it.
Oh, I suck at it – I’m a slut by nature, of course. But every wife has the chance to be a slut
with her husband. That’s one of the few
places where my Sphere and Hera’s overlap.
Marital sex is still sex. Having
sex is still a part of marriage. It
might not be all ambrosia and nectar all the time, but damn, sometimes you just
want a hot dog, y’know?” she asked, looking up at her big husband with obvious
affection. “This big lug? We don’t act all lovey-dovey in public, but
when he gets me into bed he gives it everything he’s got, and I appreciate
that. When was the last time you
appreciated a man, Athena? For
anything?”
“It’s just . . . odd, is
all,” Athena confessed. “This was the
last thing I expected you to be into on the sly.”
“We all have our kinks,”
Aphrodite repeated. “And I know them
all. Zeus hits the bathhouses when he
thinks no one is looking, Hermes whacks off to Asian schoolgirls, Artemis watches
professional tennis, Demeter reads trashy romance novels, Apollo has dabbled
with autoerotic asphyxiation – a unique experience for an immortal, he assures
me – and you . . . well, you know what you do, Owl Girl.”
“What about him?” asked
Athena, gesturing toward the Smith god., desperate to change the
subject. Invent one little vibrator . . .
“Heph? My big ol’ Teddy Bear? When he’s not working here at the Harley
plant, helping design the next generation of hot crotch rockets, this fella
loves to screw his wife. Hard. In all sorts of unusual places and
interesting ways. He’s not exotic . . .
but he is thorough. Just . . . let’s
keep this between ourselves, shall we? I
do have a reputation to keep.”
“You want me to keep the
fact you sleep with your husband a secret?”
“If you don’t mind,” Heph
said, seriously. “Look, I know what
everyone says about us . . . that I’m just a cuckolded fool. But shit, Athena, it’s a marriage. You do the best
you can. Aphrodite doesn’t mind if I get
up in the middle of the night to invent something, and if she’s got to slip out
. . . for work . . . then, well, I guess I got to deal with it. But what we got, we’ve made work mostly
because everyone thinks it’s one of those marriages of divine convenience. If folks knew we, y’know, loved each other
and stuff, then she’d lose credibility.
I can’t hurt her career like that.
Besides, she likes it when I’m in charge,” he said, smugly.
“You . . . let him be in
charge?” Athena asked, incredulous. That
was even more outrageous than the idea of the mis-matched deities being happily
married in the first place. Aphrodite
was the very definition of an Alpha female.
Hephaestus was valued for his skills, of course, but hardly seemed very
attractive in any way. The limp
certainly didn’t help, and his beard looked like a biker’s.
“That’s what husbands are for, you idiot!” cackled Aphrodite. “Or did you miss something over the last ten
thousand years? Of course he’s in charge. Styx , do you have any idea how hard
it is to reign over a complicated Sphere like sex, love, and beauty? I have to make millions of decisions, all the time. So when I seek the solace of my marriage, the
last thing I want to do is have to be in charge there, too. Home is the one place where I can safely let
someone else take over and not worry
about anything. Just feed me, fuck me,
and tell me I’m pretty.”
“But . . . that smacks of
patriarchy!” Athena said with disgust.
“Of course it does! So
what? Patriarchy built our fucking civilization.
Big strong men like Heph, here, listening to orders and getting shit
done. Innovating and building. What has your little coven of dykes and
sexual rejects accomplished since you’ve been in power, Athena? Joint resolutions condemning blah blah blah
patriarchy blah blah blah women’s rights blah blah blah. The biggest thing that’s happened since you
bitches killed Kennedy is computers, and that’s almost entirely Apollo and
Hermes. You’re barely involved. You’ve been in power for over a decade and
we’ve got jack shit to show for it.
Title IX? You’re proud of that
when there are still hundreds of nukes pointing at us? Please!” she scoffed. “I feel safe with Heph around. I feel . . . owned. Claimed.
Like the old days. And that’s a
good thing, ‘Tina, because the way things are going, we might be the last married couple left in Olympus .”
“I still just don’t get what
you two have in common,” Athena said, shaking her head.
“Let me show you a present
he brought me for Valentine’s Day,” Aphrodite said, eagerly, after checking
with her husband for approval. “It’s by Hitachi , it plugs into the wall and it will blow your pretty little mind . . .”
The
Emergence Of Heracles
September 11, 2001
Athena was in her office
going over next year’s new Spring fashions, a perk of being the Goddess of
Textiles on her laptop, when the first plane hit.
Hermes was at her doorstep
in an instant, the harbinger of bad tidings yet again.
“A jetliner just crashed
into the World Trade Center ,” he informed her, breathlessly. “Several hundred casualties, minimum.” He stared at her expectantly. She blinked.
“What?”
“A big freakin’ plane just
hit the biggest building in lower Manhattan ,” the
Messenger of the Gods
explained patiently. “It’ll be all over
CNN in a minute. Thought you’d want to
be the first to know.”
That didn’t exactly make
sense. It was tragic, but . . . “Why?” she asked. “Air travel is Zeus’ domain. And you know where he is and I don’t.”
“He’s been informed. But so have you. You’re in the Chair,” he reminded her.
She blinked again, and
remembered that yes, technically, Hera had installed her as Chairman Pro Tem of the
Council after that Lewinski fiasco.
She’d been doing most of the work anyway. “Also,” he added, as an afterthought,
“Goddess of War.”
“War?”
“Not real eloquent today,
are you, ‘Tina?” Hermes said, smirking.
“There were a number of Saudi nationals on that plane. That’s not conclusive, but . . . just
sayin’.”
“Terrorism?”
“Maaaaybe,” Hermes
nodded. “But that’s all I know. Not exactly my Sphere, and mine is a little
hectic at the moment. Must dash, the
cell network is about to explode. So is
the internet. I have a feeling I’m going
to be crazy busy over this.” He was gone
in an instant.
Athena directed a helpful
servant to bring in a television, but even as he did so she was calling up news
sites on the internet. The first views
looked bad. Really bad. There had been several cameras watching, the
usual morning news gibberish, and then in the distance the roar, the boom, the
smoke. Traffic helicopters were on the
scene in moments, and every second-string weather girl in town seemed
determined to use the tragedy as a springboard to the national networks. Athena scowled as she sipped her coffee. People were dead – people were dying.
A few moments later
Persephone flounced in.
“Did you see it? Tragic!
At least five hundred dead, and—”
“Isn’t that kind of morbid?”
Athena complained.
“Queen of the Dead,” the goddess of flowers shrugged. “I have a professional interest.”
“Well, something this big is
bound to attract Zeus’ attention,” she reasoned. “Perhaps if we can pin him down, get a few
words in, we can persuade him to see reason and at least participate in the
Council. Just because he doesn’t get the
Chair doesn’t mean—Mother Gaia!” the goddess screamed, her eyes wide, as the
second plane hit the second tower.
“Fuck!”
Persephone just stared, her
mouth agape.
It didn’t take Athena long
to put it together. One airliner hitting
the tallest building in Manhattan
was a terrible tragedy, a freak accident.
A
second airliner ruled out any possibility of it being an accident. It was deliberate. A deliberate act . . . of war.
Suddenly
her spear was in her hand, and the gorgon-headed shield Aegis was on her
arm. A thick helmet of exquisite bronze
crowned her head. She was in full
regalia. As Goddess of War.
“Fuck!” she repeated, as the Fates tore her from where she
stood with unseen hands and deposited her at the base of the towers. Glass and debris and fiery death was spilling
down from the obscene hole torn in the beautiful buildings. A thick, ugly pall of black smoke spilled out
of the wound like blood, and painted the sky the color of death.
She wasn’t the first to
arrive. As she predicted, nearby stood
Zeus, God of the Skies, looking up at the twin smears across the firmament with
a dangerous scowl on his face. He was
dressed in the attire of a corporate CEO, allowing him to blend in to the
screaming crowds of civilians streaming out of the buildings. Only the beard and hair, iron gray and waving
in the autumn wind, gave him away as otherwise.
“Zeus!” Athena called,
automatically. The deposed King of the
Gods tore his attention away from the disaster only grudgingly. He recognized her – it was hard for a god not
to recognize another, though their appearance was concealed from mortal eyes –
and his scowl changed only a little.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
He took two big strides and
was at her side.
“Apparently, those two
skyscrapers leapt out in front of those planes,” he said, lightly. “Big mess.”
Athena scowled in
return. “Damn it! What’s the tactical situation?”
Zeus fixed her with the
stare that had brought Titans of a greater age to their knees in
supplication. “You’re in the Chair. That’s your
problem. I’m just here to see to my
Sphere.”
Red hot anger blazed through
her mind. Damn him! He was being purposefully obstinate, at a
time like this. “We are at war!” she
declared, her nostrils flaring.
“Yeah, well no shit,
Owlfart,” Ares growled, materializing next to her. He was likewise arrayed for war in the
traditional bronze of the hoplite infantryman.
The Sword of War was clutched in his fist, as yet unbloodied. “I vote for a full scale nuclear retaliation,
as soon as we find out which fuckers did this!”
Zeus smirked. Athena whirled. “Don’t you think we have more important
things to deal with at the moment?” she asked, pointing toward the two impact
craters above. “Styx ! There are people jumping to
their death!” she pointed out.
“Can you think of a better excuse to use a nuke?” the God of
War asked, heatedly. “If you’re worried
about supply, don’t. We’ve got plenty!”
“Shut up!” she spat. “I’m not looking for an excuse to use a
nuke! I need to—“ she was interrupted
when Hermes appeared, dressed as a bike messenger, complete with ten-speed,
winged sneakers (Nikes, of course) and bike helmet with painted wings growing
from each temple.
“Thought you might want to
know,” he said, skidding to a halt.
“This just in: a third plane has struck Washington D.C. The
Pentagon,” he added, after pausing for dramatic effect.
“Shit!” the God and Goddess
of War said, simultaneously. Zeus’ frown
grew even more severe. Ares’ mouth
twisted into a rictus of anger and he dematerialized without a word. Though they shared responsibilities for the
Sphere, Ares saw the five-sided building that led the most powerful fighting
force in human history as his own private citadel. To be honest, Athena felt more at home in Langley .
“So what do ya wanna do,
Chief?” Hermes asked, casually. He was
chewing gum. She suddenly wanted to
shove it down his throat. Before she
could reply, Hades materialized in a pall of smoke blacker than that from the
towers.
“Ah, I knew I felt
something,” he said in a funeral tone.
“This is exciting.” He was also
in a suit, but one of a classic cut, complete with vest and pocket watch.
Persephone appeared a moment
later, startled to see her estranged husband.
“You? What convinced your bony ass to climb out of bed this
morning? We’ve got this,” she said, scornfully.
Hades’ dark eyes narrowed,
and he gave Persephone a long, thoughtful look.
“Hear that, bro? They got this. We’re not needed. Let’s go get a pizza or something.”
Zeus glanced back at the
devestation. More and more people were
flooding out as fire engines were arriving and firemen started spilling
out. Cops were already trying to keep order
in the evacuation of the towers. He
snorted in disgust, and looked at Athena.
There was a grim smile on his face.
“Since those things aren’t
actually in the air anymore, I guess my part here is—”
“Damn it, Father!” screamed
Athena. “We’re at war! There have been three attacks already, and no
one knows how many more on the way!”
“That must really suck for
you,” Hades said, sympathetically. “I
figure it will be a few hours before everyone is good and dead, and I’m still
on European time, so I’m starved.
Luigi’s?” he asked his younger brother.
Before Zeus could answer,
Athena decided she’d had enough. This
was a crisis.
“Zeus, I order you to lend assistance to the
Council! As regent for the Queen, I command you—”
Somewhere there was a
distant peal of thunder, although it could have been an explosion from
above. Maybe.
“And just how do you plan to
compel my assistance, Chairwoman?” he asked, with a sneer. Suddenly his raiment shifted, and he was
wearing the short toga and leather bracers he favored. A golden circlet hugged his brow. And in his hand appeared the thunderbolt
which had tamed the chthonic beasts of prehistory and beaten the Titans and
their offspring into submission. He
nodded toward her powerful shield. “With
that? Are you willing to try the power
of Aegis against the lightning bolt?” he asked softly.
“I am the Chair of the
Council!” she said, her lip trembling as she stared down her father. “I am the lawful Regent! I have the authority to command all the
Council!”
“Ah, but do you have the
power to back up that authority?” asked Hades, conversationally. “Any idiot can sit in a chair, my dear
niece. But the Chair is just a chair,
your regency just a title. Unless you
have the power and the will to back up your authority, you’re just . . . well,
I’m sure you can figure all of this out on your own. My brother and I are going to go get a pizza
– shall we get Posidon in on this?” he asked Zeus.
The God of the Skies
wrinkled up his nose. “Only if you want
to suffer through anchovies,” he pointed out.
“Posidon will be deploying
the navies and ensuring the protection of the power grid,” she declared.
“And you think he’s any
better disposed to you than your father?” Hades snickered. “He’s never liked you, my dear. I thought you had figured that out.”
“He will follow the lawful
orders of the Chair of the Council!” she demanded.
“Or what?” Hades
prompted. Persephone glared at her
husband.
“Or he will face its
displeasure!” she shouted, finally.
“It’s . . . displeasure?” Hades asked, mockingly. “He has been facing its displeasure for
decades, now. He has been in exile, in
case you have forgotten. You deposed
him, you and your entire little coven.
So let the sisterhood deal with this mess – you clearly don’t want our
help, you can’t compel it, and we don’t really feel like giving it. So, if you’ll excuse us—”
“You are NOT excused!” she
bellowed, brandishing her spear. Hades
didn’t look impressed. It was hard to
impress the Lord of the Dead. “The
Council has need of your services, all of you, in this time of crisis! And I will compel action, if I have to!” she warned.
“Kiss my big hairy ass!”
Ares said, materializing again. “Dad,
the Pentagon got creamed. Bad, but not
terminal. But there’s one more thing . .
. there’s at least one more bird in the air.
Headed for D.C. Probably the
White House, or the Capital building.
Something symbolic – W. is on some damn educational junket in Florida , so he’s not even home.”
“Don’t worry, Vice President
Chaney is on the job,” assured Hades with a smile. “He’s a charmer, that one. One of my boys.”
Athena’s heart sank.
“Well, do something, Zeus!”
Persephone said, finally, when no one spoke.
“I don’t have the authority,
sorry,” the god shrugged. “And pizza is
sounding better and better.” The rain of
debris had grown thicker as streams of shocked-looking, confused civilians
streamed from the emergency exits. “I’ll
be damned if I take orders from my own daughter. After what she did. And you,
Sister-in-law,” he added, looking darkly at Persephone.
“Fuck you!” the Queen of the
Dead screamed. “We’re fucking at war,
and you want to play politics? You can
handle this situation, damn you, and you won’t!” She was in tears as another body plummeted
nearby.
“The Lord of the Air will
not be ordered around like a lackey,” Hades pointed out. “He accepted exile voluntarily,
remember. He will return only when he is
ready. And only to his rightful seat as
Chair.”
So that was it. They were using this crisis as leverage.
“Fuck you!” Athena replied,
heatedly. “If you do not comply, I will
. . . “ she said, searching around for something that could compel Zeus. Nothing was suggesting itself. She considered using the power of Aegis – her
most powerful weapon was the shield with Medusa’s head on it – against Zeus,
but not only was she unsure if it would have any effect, she knew for a fact
that Zeus was at least highly resistant.
He had screwed the titaness in prehistory and survived.
“You want to try to make me,
then?” Zeus asked, quietly, his fist clenching around the lightning bolt. “Or do you want to ask me, nicely, politely,
respectfully . . . and give me back what is mine?”
Athena’s mind raced. “How about a temporary truce, you take the
Chair for the duration of the crisis, and we negotiate a permanent solution
when the dust has settled?”
Zeus glanced at his legal adviser. Hades gave the barest hint of a
nod.
“Done. Give me the Chair.”
Athena’s heart sank further
– she did not realize how much she had coveted the position until she had it,
and despite it’s problems she discovered she was loathe to surrender it. But she knew this was the best tactical move
under the circumstances. The male gods
were not going to cooperate otherwise.
And, she realized with frustration, the fact was that the Council needed
them.
It was almost physically
painful to admit it, but under the circumstances she knew the strategic truth:
they needed Poseidon’s strength and power.
They needed Hades’ keen mind and thoughtful deliberation. And they needed Zeus’ robust leadership, most
of all. Only he could keep Ares on a
leash, after all, and they needed Ares.
Even in exile, the God of War had looked to his father for leadership,
and Athena knew that he would never follow her.
He and his uncle Poseidon nearly hated her as it was. If this was war – and she knew it was – then
Ares’ assistance would be vital.
She hung her head, the
weight of her helm suddenly oppressive.
“The Chair is yours,” she finally admitted, wearily.
Zeus smiled, and permitted
himself half a second to appreciate the return to power before he sprang into
action. “Hermes, get Poseidon, Apollo
and Hephaestus here, yesterday. Artemis and Dionysus, too – keep Aphrodite
out of it, for now, we’ll need her later.
And . . . yes, bring Hera, too.
Request her, actually. Go.” The Messenger of the Gods nodded once, and
then he and his bike were off into the ether.
“Ares, back to the Pentagon,
find out who did this—”
“Dad, the building is still on fire,” Ares pointed out.
“That’s a big building, and
it’s not all on fire,” Zeus retorted,
angrily. “It can handle a nuclear
strike. Get your people on it. Figure out who the fuck blew up two of my
skyscrapers, damn it!”
“Yes, my King!” the God of
War said, saluting with his sword before he dutifully left. If Ares seemed upset about being ordered
around so brusquely, he didn’t show it.
In fact, he looked relieved. That
burned Athena.
“Hades, we’re going to need
. . . reinforcements,” Zeus said, knowingly.
The King of the Dead looked
at his younger brother thoughtfully.
“Are you sure? He’s—”
“Did I stutter?” Zeus asked,
lightly. “Do it.” Hades nodded once and was gone. “Athena, coordinate with Apollo and
Hephaestus on this site, rescue and recovery.
I’ll send more help as I can, but get those people out of those
buildings as fast as possible.
Persephone . . . start compiling a list of the dead. I’ll be looking in on that other plane and
seeing if there are more. And I’m
pulling every goddamn bird out of the sky that doesn’t have my permission to be
there.” He gave one more thoughtful
glance up into the skies before he transformed again, this time into a Captain
of the New York Police Department.
“Let’s get busy, people,” he said with firm but quiet authority.
As much as she resented it,
within minutes of his taken control Zeus had established an orderly
response. Largely due to the
intransigence of his fellow male gods, but in a few brief sentences he had
commanded legions into action. Even
Persephone was strangely quiet as she began the tabulation of the dead.
“And Daughter?” Zeus said,
as he turned to plunge into the nearest tower and assist in the
evacuation. “You didn’t suck. As the Chair, I mean. I was proud.
Mostly. But I’m still very, very
angry with you.”
“I know, Daddy,” she sighed,
feeling like the little girl she had never been.
“We’ll talk later,” he
promised. “After things settle, but . .
. this isn’t over.”
“I know, Daddy,” she
repeated, quietly, as he strode into danger.
That didn’t bode well.
But neither did the
situation at hand. The fires from the
jet fuel had continued to burn away, bisecting the buildings. They were well-designed enough to allow
several detours around the damage, but there was something else going on.
“I’m not sure those towers
are going to stand,” she realized, as Goddess of Architecture. She could feel the steel within the shattered
concrete melting away under the heat of high-octane kerosene. It wouldn’t take very long, she realized . .
. and suddenly she was moving with renewed purpose.
* * *
As dusk began to fall over Manhattan , the chaos around the disaster at the World Trade Center settled into a mournful, desperate struggle to find survivors and tend
to the wounded. For once, the skies
around the magnificent island were clear, only a few military helicopters and
heavily-armed F-15s patrolling the empty skies.
The crews worked through the night, and the gods beside them, lending
what assistance they could.
Hermes had been everywhere,
bringing messages and intelligence from every corner of the world. He was the one who had brought news of the
foe they faced. Ares had been busy
preparing a response – already troops at Fort Bragg were boarding, in preparation for flight. Hera had been doing her best to keep the
families of the land strong under the stress.
Apollo had provided important information about their new enemy and
outstanding medical response. Zeus had
set Dionysis up with the help of some minor gods drafted for the duration
bringing refreshment to the rescue workers . . . many of whom were still
desperately trying to rescue comrades presumed trapped under the rubble.
When Persephone had finished
her final tabulation for the day, Athena was stunned. Only three thousand. The buildings held ten times that many – it
was a miracle of Fate that so few perished.
Unfortunately, many had been
among the strongest New Yorkers. Even as
the towers collapsed, one after another, their great weight too much for the
weakened steel supports, the brave men of the New York Police Department and
the Fire Department of New York had continued to fearlessly run toward the
danger while screaming civilians ran in the other direction. They had paid for that bravery with their lives. Athena knew, as inventor of the polis that had given the Police their
vocation, that these brave men were but the first casualty in a war they did
not know they were fighting. New York had suffered egregiously that day.
At dawn, Zeus had commanded
an emergency meeting of the Council . . . at the site.
“Is this really
appropriate?” complained Demeter, attempting to move her morbidly obese body
through the ruins. “I mean, there are
still bodies down there, somewhere!” Her
massive Archer-Daniels-Midland t-shirt was stained with food and sweat, but she
had lumbered out of her Florida
condo and pitched in, such as she could.
“They lie in sacred ground,”
growled Ares, from behind her.
“Hey! Move it along, lard-ass!”
“Pig!” spat back Demeter in
disgust.
“Where are we meeting?”
asked Persephone in a daze. Artemis had
arrived in the night, driving a convoy of trucks packed with medical supplies
that weren’t needed. Even Aphrodite had
managed to make it, dressed like a stripper after a hard Saturday night.
“Are we all here?” asked
Apollo. “Where’s Hephaestus?”
“That’s where we’re
meeting,” agreed Hermes. “Over there,
where they’re cutting steel. He’s got a
crew going.”
The gods finished trickling
in, making their way carefully through the mountain of twisted steel, concrete,
glass, and corpses toward the spot where Hephaestus and a crew of steel workers
hastily-imported from New Jersey were frantically hacking through girders with
oxyacetylene torches. Hades and Poseidon
were overseeing the work, while Zeus stood to one side, speaking to his
estranged wife in quiet, urgent tones.
“I believe we have a
quorum,” Hermes announced, when the last of them made it to the clearing in the
rubble. “We are ready to hear you, my
King.”
Zeus nodded, said one final
word to Hera, and then stepped forward.
He was about to speak when another scream of metal from the torches
interrupted him.
“Hey! Heph!
Take a break! We’re ready to
begin!” he called. His son looked up,
nodded, and flipped the dark goggles up from his head as he turned the gas off
his torch.
“Mitch! Tell the boys to
take ten. Get some water. We’re going to be at this for days, we need
to pace ourselves,” he warned. A skinny,
red-headed steel cutter nodded and turned to tell the rest of the men to stop
working.
When it was properly quiet,
Zeus began again.
“I don’t think I need to
tell you all just how important this was,” he said, gesturing around to the
rubble field. “This was an attack not
just on this nation, but on our entire civilization. This wasn’t just the Palestinians making a
statement, this was a purposeful assault on the center of the Western
empire. The men who planned and executed
this attack were on a mission to not just protest policy, but to wage war on
all we have jointly built over thousands of years.
“This was no less than a
massive human sacrifice,” Hades spoke up.
“The man responsible for this wished to upset the cosmic balance of
power on this planet. He used this
immolation and sacrifice to release the djinn
bound by the Prophet Mohammad, so that those foul spirits could torment our
civilization while he seeks to overthrow it.
He will not be successful,” he
prophesied, firmly.
“I can’t help but notice
that you said the ‘men’ who planned this,” pointed out Artemis. “Once again, it looks like you boys got us in
trouble! From what I understand they’re
protesting troops in the Middle
East . We have no business—”
“SILENCE!” roared the King
of the Gods, inspiring a peal of thunder.
“This is neither the time or the place, Daughter,” he said, warningly.
“She does have a point,”
Persephone said, ignoring the Thunderer.
“This was an entirely male-planned, male-led, and male-executed
enterprise. Once again our entire
civilization is held hostage to you little boys having a pissing contest!”
“Does this
look like a pissing contest to you,
Daisy?” Ares asked, angrily, gesturing to the towering rubble. “Yeah, men were responsible for the
attack. Men were also responsible for the fucking building that was attacked. And the fucking airplane that flew into it,
too. And you wanna know what else? Those were men who were at the bottom of the fucking towers trying to save
everyone even as the fucking sky fell on their heads. Not women.
Men. Damn good ones, too. The best.
And you want to throw a hysterical hissy-cow because the people
responsible for this crime stand up to pee?
Damn, you dames are dumb, some times,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“I will not have you
insulting my daughter like that!” Demeter mewed ineffectively.
“Oh, shut up, Mother,” Hades
said, rolling his eyes. He and his
mother-in-law/sister rarely got along, and he never hesitated to remind her of
it. “My wife is right. But so is Ares. You want to blame men for this? Go ahead.
Then blame men for the civilization you’re fretting so much about. And blame the men who are going to go to war
and die in some godsforsaken country to defend it.”
“That’s not the point,”
Athena said, testily. “We have worked
too hard—”
“You have worked too hard?”
Poseidon asked, skeptically. “What, was
the fall fashion line just particularly
hideous this year?”
“That’s a cheap shot!” Athena tossed back angrily at her rival.
“Shut up, both of you,” Zeus
declared. The God of the Sea glared at
her, but was silent. “Persephone, you
are here by courtesy only. With your
husband at Council, I remind you that you have only an advisory role.
“But before I continue with
our plans going forward, I want to bring your attention to something related to
your . . . topic,” he said, carefully.
“The nature of this emergency required me to deploy someone who has been
visibly absent of late. Someone quite
germane to this very topic. I was going
to wait for his report until after I had addressed you all, but this seems like
an opportune time. You all know what
happened here, and at the Pentagon. Do
you know what happened on that fourth plane?”
There were blank and curious
stares. They were gods – they weren’t
omniscient. Outside of their Spheres,
they had little more access to information than mortals did.
“I’ll let him tell you,”
Zeus decided. “I was there, since it was
in my Sphere. But with Ares and Athena
busy elsewhere, I had little assistance to deal with the problem. So I summoned some, from the mists of
time. He’s always been around,” Zeus
explained, “but the current age is so hostile to his Sphere he’s been in
seclusion . . . for a long, long time.”
He turned toward Hermes and gave him a signal.
The god that materialized at
the Messenger’s summons made Athena – and most of the other Olympians – gasp.
His massive bulk dwarfed
Zeus and even Poseidon, and his chiseled musculature made them both appear
underfed and puny. Dressed in a lionskin
coat stretched wide over his massive shoulders, the demigod strode quietly into
the center of the circle, barely meeting anyone’s gaze.
Athena’s breath caught. She hadn’t seen him in decades. Perhaps centuries.
“The fourth plane was United
Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 with forty-four passengers,” Heracles intoned
quietly in his deep, majestic voice. “It
was taken over by a group of four Arab men early on in the flight, who slit
the throat of the pilot and co-pilot.
They intended on completing their mission, likely to fly the plane into
the U.S. Capitol Building. It crashed in
Shanksville , Pennsylvania , instead.”
“Stupid towelheads can’t fly
a fucking plane,” Ares mused with a chuckle.
“No, my brother,” Heracles
said. “The hijackers were trained to fly
the plane. They were on course. There were still plenty of planes in the sky
to confuse things.”
“Then what went wrong?”
Apollo asked, curious.
“First, Captain Jason Dahl
attempted to sabotage the controls, placing the plane on autopilot and
re-routing the radio frequency before he was mortally wounded,” Heracles
said. “After that, the hijackers were
firmly in control of the plane. They
told the passengers there was a bomb on board to keep them quiet, but the
passengers were already aware of the attacks on New York and Washington when they called their families by cell phone.
“When the passengers
realized that their plane was on a suicide mission, they decided to take
action. They took a vote. Then the men of the plane revolted against
their captors. They used makeshift arms,
whatever they could, and they went up against armed terrorists. They defeated them. They used a beverage cart as a battering ram
and were forcing the door of the cockpit when the terrorist crashed the
plane. Off target.”
The huge figure looked quietly into the faces of every god and goddess in attendance. “Those . . . men could have quietly sat in their seats and allowed their fates to be determined by others. They could have allowed the greater tragedy to unfold around them, and clung to their fear like blankets.
The huge figure looked quietly into the faces of every god and goddess in attendance. “Those . . . men could have quietly sat in their seats and allowed their fates to be determined by others. They could have allowed the greater tragedy to unfold around them, and clung to their fear like blankets.
“They did not. When fate threw them into a situation where
bravery counted for more than fear, they did what they needed to do to protect
their homeland. They got up and fought
trained killers with their bare hands.
They bled and died and killed, their hearts filled with defiance and
sacrifice. They fought, knowing that
they were dead already, knowing that they would never see their families
again. They fought and they triumphed,
though all aboard perished. They kept
the mission from succeeding. Their
sacrifice.” He paused, his great head
turning deliberately to meet every gaze.
“When you desire to speak ill of men,” he continued, “and count out
their flaws and their shortcomings and hold them to account for their crimes,
forget you not this moment. And these men. The men who ran into the flames. The men who kept fighting to get into that
cockpit even as the plane hit the ground.
How many people will see their families tonight because these men, these
brave, courageous men, gave up their lives?”
His expression finally broke – into a scowl.
“You all have wondered where
I have hidden myself. For my Sphere is
the Sphere of Man, and his heroic nature.
I am Man’s strength, his courage, his dedication and determination. You call me atavistic and barbaric,
uncultured and unrefined, yet you need me . . . you need us . . . more now than
ever.
“You think this war will be
won on consensus and cooperation? It
will not. Do you think justice will be
done through the force of law and civilized discourse? That time has past. Now we face the bitter road of retribution,
and the strength and courage of Man is needed.
You fear men, and see us as violent, ladies? Indeed, we are. And it is through our grace, alone, that we
hold this violence in check. Me, of all
of you, should know the danger of rage,” he said, sadly.
“Yet I would submit that
rage and anger are our tools as much as our courage and strength. You may not have the use of one without
contending with the other. If the Age of
Man is over, then the Sphere of Man, at least, persists. And that Sphere, ladies of Olympus , remains mighty to behold.”
There was silence as the
other gods stood in awe of Heracles.
Even Athena, a virtual stranger to the call of the flesh, felt
overwhelmed by his physical presence.
There was something noble and untamed in that huge frame. He represented all that a thousand
generations of bronze-age warriors aspired to: the pure pursuit of physical and
moral strength. Of all the gods, Heracles
had been the most popular with the most people, under a plethora of names. Of all the gods, Heracles had been the one
most visibly absent in the last century.
“Fuckin’ A, man,” Ares said,
slinging his M-16.
“A single example of heroism
does not excuse the sins of the past,” Artemis continued. Even she, the perpetual virgin goddess, was
not unaffected by Heracles’ masculine presentation. He looked like the epitome of malehood . . .
and he was. Every masculine virtue was
represented, hard-won through trial and labor.
Even his understanding of women – he had lived as one for a year – made
him more . . . male. Heracles had
universal appeal. And Athena realized,
with a sudden start, that she had missed the quiet giant of strength as she had
tried to haul Olympus into the 21st century.
“No, but it demonstrates the
error of your perspective,” Apollo argued with his sister. “You and the other women on the Council have
decided that you do not need our assistance.
Now that you do, you must also recognize that you may not have it
without our grace . . . and if that includes our leadership, then that is what
you must accept.”
“I will not be managed by any man!” Artemis said defiantly.
“What, are you incapable of
being managed?” Apollo shot back. “Or
are you so attached to your philosophy that you would turn your back on what we
all have created together? Will you let
our civilization fall into ruin because of your stubbornness?”
“MY stubbornness?” Artemis
said, angrily. “Zeus has been sulking
for years—”
“Sulking? Nay.
But I am wounded, betrayed by those beloved to me. My wife.
My sisters. My daughters. More wounded than I ever was in battle. When this crisis is over, you can count on
there being a reckoning. You want a
negotiation?” he asked, moving to stand next to his semi-divine son. “Then we shall endeavor to negotiate from a
position of strength,” he said, clapping him on his great shoulder. “And we will not hold ourselves subject to
the chivalry you seem to count upon so dearly.”
“We didn’t ask you to,”
Artemis scowled.
“We wouldn’t have listened
if you had,” Ares chuckled. “Gloves are
off, Sister. This new century is going
to be a hoot . . . but don’t think you’re going to get it all your way.”
“We’ll see about that,”
Persephone said, evenly. “We’re not done
here. Not by a long shot.”
“This discussion is tabled,”
announced Zeus. “We’ll come back to it,
though, I promise. Right now, let’s get
some reporting out of the way. Hermes,
want to bring us up to speed on what the President has planned?”
“Idiot,” muttered Athena
under her breath as Hermes gave a somewhat-amusing account of the president’s
last twenty-four hours. “I can’t believe
he won . . . a fucking C-student legacy.”
“You do know he’ll probably
get re-elected over this?” Apollo asked, quietly, as their father continued to
speak.
“I know,” the Goddess of
Wisdom said, sullenly. “Can’t be
helped. Don’t worry, I’ve got something
lined up for him. Just wait until 2008. My avatar Hillary is going to destroy whoever
W. picks to succeed him. She’s perfect:
calm, cool, collected, a good diplomat, a good politician. She’s a shoo-in for the first woman president in2008, I’ve already got her endorsements lined up . . . then we’ll see how Zeus and his brothers like things!” she vowed.
She looked up to see how
Apollo had taken her soliloquy. Instead
of looking thoughtful and concerned, he had a little smirk on his face.
“What?” demanded Athena.
This was fun.
ReplyDeletea long read but worth it! very entertaining and insightful, I enjoyed it a lot.
ReplyDelete