Pantheon 00 - Age of Godpunk by James Lovegrove Read Free Book Online Page A

technological device was complete without fake-wood panelling; a window-mounted air-con unit that crackled and wheezed like a catarrh sufferer’s windpipe; and a bed which crunched when sat on. The mattress had a deep hollow in the middle, and I imagined countless coupled bodies thrusting up and down, hammering out this concavity over the years – then tried not to imagine it.
    Just jealous , said Anansi.
    “Am not.”
    You need a woman. Why don’t you have a woman in your life?
    “You sound like my mother.”
    You’re thirty-two. Why aren’t you married yet?
    “You’re married. Has it made you happy? Complete?”
    Of course .
    “And yet you’re a serial philanderer.”
    A man has needs , Anansi said defensively. Besides, my marriage has brought me children, and they definitely make me happy. He reeled off his offspring’s names . Akaki. Toto Abuo. Twa Akwan. Hwe Nuso. Adwafo. Da Yi Ya. And my precious little Intikuma. I love them all more than life itself. I fought Death for them, did I not?
    “I know.”
    If you had children of your own, you’d realise how important it is, being a father , said Anansi. How it fixes your priorities and grounds you in the nitty-gritty of life. Then you would understand, too, why I dared trick Brother Death to protect them .
    “You were so brave.”
    I was. I was. I know you’re being sarcastic, but I was. Death had us cornered in our house...
    “After you antagonised him by eating his food and drinking his water and not thanking him.”
    True, but let’s ignore that, shall we? I and my family were clinging to the rafters while Death prowled below us with a burlap sack, catching each of us one after another as we lost our grip and fell, until only I was left, grimly clinging on .
    “But you persuaded him to use the flour barrel to catch you instead, saying it meant you’d be nicely crumb-coated for him, all ready to be fried and eaten.”
    And I landed on his head and his face went in the flour and he was blinded for a moment, and we all escaped. Hee, hee, hee! Anansi wriggled inside me, overcome with his own cleverness. But, Dion , he continued, serious again, I mean it. You need a family of your own. Nanabaa Oboshie, wherever she is, must be beginning to think there’s something wrong with her grandson. A proper Ghanaian, by your age, should have a brood of rug rats scuttling around him and a nice plump wife in the kitchen .
    “Busy,” I said. “High standards. And I’m British, not Ghanaian.”
    Too uptight , Anansi opined. Too self-obsessed .
    “Are we here to criticise Dion Yeboah or are we here to win a competition?” I said testily.
    A pause. Then: A competition .
    “Very well. So let me rest. I’m worn out.”
    I lay down on the much-used bed and closed my eyes, trying to blot out all distractions.
    But it was hard when one of those distractions was a rustling voice inside my head that wouldn’t ever be fully silent but perpetually whispered and nagged, nagged and whispered...
     
     
    T HAT EVENING, WE gathered in one of the hotel’s small conference rooms, the Sagebrush Suite, for a preliminary meeting. Several of the joke shop people wandered in with a view to joining us, then wandered out again. Instinctively, they sensed this sidebar event had nothing to do with them. They didn’t belong. One man, dressed in full mime makeup and costume, pretended he kept bumping up against an invisible wall just inside the doorway which wouldn’t allow him into the room. The wall could almost have been real. If you weren’t a living vehicle for a trickster god, something inside told you you were barred from entry.
    We took our seats on plastic chairs, eyeing one another up. It was weird, seeing the faces of all these strangers, random individuals culled from across the planet, and somehow recognising them. It was like meeting one’s own extended family. We looked utterly unalike and yet there were similarities, something in the set of everyone’s features, a