Read Online Hellenic Immortal by Gene Doucette - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Gene Doucette
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SAID. “YOU MAY CALL ME THAT IF YOU WISH. NOW ANSWER. DO YOU SAIL? FOR I FEAR I CANNOT GUIDE THIS SHIP ALONE AND DO NOT WISH TO GUESS WHERE WE WILL SETTLE IF LEFT TO THE WHIMS OF THE OCEAN.”
SIL. I KNOW THIS TO BE TRUE AS SURELY AS THE STARS ARE FIXED, AND ALL MEN MUST EVENTUALLY PERISH UNTO HADES.
DION. THIS IS A POOR CHOICE, AS NOT ALL MEN PERISH, NOR ARE THE STARS TRULY FIXED IN THE HEAVENS.
From the dialogues of Silenus the Younger. Text corrected and translated by Ariadne
About two hours passed before I felt like it was okay to exhale. I spent that time in the back of Mike’s Chevy convertible partly covered by an afghan that smelled like someone’s basement, and working on half a bottle of scotch I found rolling along on the floor.
I was lucky the FBI only used humans when tracking me, because that casino trick would have never worked otherwise. It was modestly clever, sure, but I could think a bunch of non-human species that wouldn’t have lost me. Granted, there would have been other issues hiring, say, a demon or a vampire, and pixies and iffrits don’t have much use for steady employment (or money, or clothing). But there are plenty of species left that could have blended in, would have been happy with the job, and would never have been fooled by a clothing change.
A goblin, for instance. Most of them look nearly human, and a healthy one could keep track of a housefly in a snowstorm. They prefer swords and knives to guns, but I always thought of that as a personal preference, not a racial mandate. A goblin would have caught me.
Mike Lycos could be a goblin. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but if he had come in through the balcony of my room, he was less human than I am, and goblin was a decent enough guess. Except goblins aren’t tremendous leapers, per se. And I know enough about both the Northern and Southern breed to recognize one; he didn’t look like either type. No, he was something else.
We hadn’t really talked much, Mike and I. He had yet to tell me where we were going, but I figured once I was out of the city I’d take my chances. I was nearly ready to trust him. It helped that if we were caught, he’d be in as much trouble as me, and probably more. Trust built on mutually assured destruction may sound risky (especially in the nuclear age) but it’s got a solid pedigree historically.
I could have probably climbed into the front seat if I wanted, but I was actually pretty comfortable lying there and looking up at the stars. It had been a while.
* * *
Looking at the night sky is one of the first things I can remember doing, and I used to do it a lot. We all did. Granted, before television and books it was all we had to do, but the sky is sometimes more interesting than television or books.
For a fair number of early cultures, the night sky was more real than anything that was happening beneath it. That might be a perspective that’s difficult to get your mind around, but look at it this way—on earth things are born, live, and die in a state of pretty constant change. But the heavens are static and evidently eternal. It’s why so many cultures thought the stars were gods. I’d felt that way myself for a time, although I was careful about attaching names to any of them since culturally, the gods were different depending on whom I hung out with. So I adhered to a sort of amorphous polytheism that worked pretty well.
I don’t know when I decided there were no gods, but I can definitely identify the moment when the concept first occurred to me. It followed a somewhat extraordinary event.
This was during the ascendancy of the Sumerian empire, which is to say very long ago, even by my somewhat unique standards.
The Sumerians have been lauded in recent history books as the earliest culture worthy of the term empire , which is just flat-out untrue. I will grant they are the oldest civilization to leave behind a decent historical record that doesn’t also involve cave
SIL. I KNOW THIS TO BE TRUE AS SURELY AS THE STARS ARE FIXED, AND ALL MEN MUST EVENTUALLY PERISH UNTO HADES.
DION. THIS IS A POOR CHOICE, AS NOT ALL MEN PERISH, NOR ARE THE STARS TRULY FIXED IN THE HEAVENS.
From the dialogues of Silenus the Younger. Text corrected and translated by Ariadne
About two hours passed before I felt like it was okay to exhale. I spent that time in the back of Mike’s Chevy convertible partly covered by an afghan that smelled like someone’s basement, and working on half a bottle of scotch I found rolling along on the floor.
I was lucky the FBI only used humans when tracking me, because that casino trick would have never worked otherwise. It was modestly clever, sure, but I could think a bunch of non-human species that wouldn’t have lost me. Granted, there would have been other issues hiring, say, a demon or a vampire, and pixies and iffrits don’t have much use for steady employment (or money, or clothing). But there are plenty of species left that could have blended in, would have been happy with the job, and would never have been fooled by a clothing change.
A goblin, for instance. Most of them look nearly human, and a healthy one could keep track of a housefly in a snowstorm. They prefer swords and knives to guns, but I always thought of that as a personal preference, not a racial mandate. A goblin would have caught me.
Mike Lycos could be a goblin. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but if he had come in through the balcony of my room, he was less human than I am, and goblin was a decent enough guess. Except goblins aren’t tremendous leapers, per se. And I know enough about both the Northern and Southern breed to recognize one; he didn’t look like either type. No, he was something else.
We hadn’t really talked much, Mike and I. He had yet to tell me where we were going, but I figured once I was out of the city I’d take my chances. I was nearly ready to trust him. It helped that if we were caught, he’d be in as much trouble as me, and probably more. Trust built on mutually assured destruction may sound risky (especially in the nuclear age) but it’s got a solid pedigree historically.
I could have probably climbed into the front seat if I wanted, but I was actually pretty comfortable lying there and looking up at the stars. It had been a while.
* * *
Looking at the night sky is one of the first things I can remember doing, and I used to do it a lot. We all did. Granted, before television and books it was all we had to do, but the sky is sometimes more interesting than television or books.
For a fair number of early cultures, the night sky was more real than anything that was happening beneath it. That might be a perspective that’s difficult to get your mind around, but look at it this way—on earth things are born, live, and die in a state of pretty constant change. But the heavens are static and evidently eternal. It’s why so many cultures thought the stars were gods. I’d felt that way myself for a time, although I was careful about attaching names to any of them since culturally, the gods were different depending on whom I hung out with. So I adhered to a sort of amorphous polytheism that worked pretty well.
I don’t know when I decided there were no gods, but I can definitely identify the moment when the concept first occurred to me. It followed a somewhat extraordinary event.
This was during the ascendancy of the Sumerian empire, which is to say very long ago, even by my somewhat unique standards.
The Sumerians have been lauded in recent history books as the earliest culture worthy of the term empire , which is just flat-out untrue. I will grant they are the oldest civilization to leave behind a decent historical record that doesn’t also involve cave
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