Jim Baen's Universe

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Fantasy Stories

Fossilized Gods

Written by J. Simon

Illustrated by Chantelle Thorne

Henry Goss smiled coldly. His father thought he lacked ambition. The old fool, wallowing in his wealth, as if money were the only power. There were far vaster worlds than boardrooms and banks to hold under one's dominion. People, too, could be owned. Like Professor Harrington, the world's foremost expert on fossilized gods, who had no idea what power lay under his fingertips. That prissy graduate assistant, Walter something, from whom he'd copied most of his work. Even the professor's daughter. She'd been cold so far, but power could change a great many things—voluntarily or not. Henry Goss did not lack for ambition. He simply aimed for a total solution.

The Royal Museum was deserted at this hour, as it always was. Henry's key (stolen from prissy Walter) got him through every door. The back rooms were jammed to the rafters with old gods, or what was left of them. An African mask captured Henry's gaze and held it, filling him with an unreasoning rush of awe and dread. Oh yes, there was power here! He hurried down the aisle, struggling to ignore the magnetic pull of ancient idols, massive stone figures, painted icons. Mounted animals seemed to watch him with their dead eyes. Even the great brass bottles, forever bound by Solomon's seal, radiated an eerie sense of presence. Far in the back he found it—an unnaturally cold obelisk of black stone, carved with the merest suggestion of tentacles and eyes. All he'd needed was a note forged in the professor's handwriting to have Walter locate it for him: An elder god, a force of raw fear and wonderment from the dawn of humanity, yet one empowered and nearly awakened by the famed author and his following. That was quite good enough for Henry Goss.

Henry didn't bother with black candles or inane ritual. He made a small cut in his wrist, allowed a few drops to fall, then closed off the bleeding with a handkerchief.

"There's more where that came from," he said. "But make no mistake—you exist at my sufferance. You want worship? You can have it—on my terms and under my control. I can be very generous with those who understand their . . . place . . ."

Henry's pocket felt heavy and wet. In fact, it seemed to have gotten filled up with a faintly greenish jelly. Stepping back, he felt his shoes squish with a similar clammy wetness.

"Listen up," he said sharply, "you don't seem to understand your position here. Cross me and I'll personally wipe your name from every book that hack's ever written. If you . . . guh . . ."

Henry gagged as more of the greenish jelly oozed out of his mouth. Choking, he grabbed for the obelisk—and stared, despite himself, as a little worm of a tendril emerged from the cut on his wrist and waved around.

The obelisk cracked with a sound like thunder. Something was emerging. Something was very much coming back into the world. Henry tried to run, but by then there wasn't much left to run with.

****

Professor Harrington dressed immaculately, expected total obedience, and ruled his students with the terror they deserved. Take that fellow, Walter something, who thought he knew so much. Five attempts to publish papers! He'd put a stop to that. Professor Harrington wasn't sure which were worse, the papers that disagreed with him and were therefore wrong, or the ones that agreed with him and were therefore stolen from his own work. He preferred his students frightened and a little obsequious. Take Henry Goss—handsome, intelligent, well-spoken. Now there was a fellow who understood fossilized gods, who agreed with all the professor's many ideas! What a shame Samantha hadn't taken to him yet. Well, in time . . .

The cafe didn't do much business in the early afternoon, which was fine with Professor Harrington. A cup of coffee, a bit of quiet, notes for his next monograph on chronodeific encephalization. Actually writing tests . . . administering them . . . grading them . . . he left to Walter. Let the lad be useful for something. Professor Harrington sipped his coffee. A bit odd that it was so dark out all of a sudden. Where had all those storm clouds come from, anyway? For that matter, why was a gigantic, well-dressed slug oozing away from the Royal Museum on a trail of greenish jelly? And why did it remind him of Henry Goss?

"Professor!" someone shouted. At that moment, a mighty flash of lightning struck, momentarily illuminating the clouds. There was something in them. Something huge. Alien. Beyond description, though it gave the flash impression of a daisy chain of monstrous squid.

"Professor!" came the cry—Walter, of course, come to invade even this sanctum of caffeinated peace. "Someone let out a re-energized Ur-deity exapted to a horror/destruction/grotesquerie axis by means of literary pseudo-worship!"

Professor Harrington blew air out his cheeks. "Always grandstanding, aren't you, boy?"

"But sir!"

The professor fixed the lad with a gimlet stare. "I've seen the like plenty of times. It's no more than some bored housewife's bad dream, possibly aided by special mushrooms and obsessive re-reading of Revelation. An altered-consciousness reflexiplexor quasi-power. Stop believing in it and it'll stop believing in you."

"But sir!" Walter insisted. Professor Harrington sighed. The boy wanted so badly to be important, but he just didn't have a sense of perspective. Chasing after South American kachina-spirits, trying to bottle them in dolls before the coyotes could mass to attack, that was a challenge. Baiting an angry hippo so you could collect the Golden Tic-Bird of Naraiba riding in its mouth, that was science. Carefully arranging ropes to let three hundred natives simultaneously open Chirontep's tomb and dilute the death-curse to a mere three-hundredth strength head cold, that was intellect. Still, if the boy was going to go around believing in some pathetic, paper-thin deity, it might just gain substance.

"Fine," the professor said. "I'll gather a couple dozen frat boys into the stadium and get them to unbelieve the new god out of existence. A free keg of beer ought to do it."

"But sir!"

"That will be all, Walter." Paying for his coffee, Professor Harrington shook his head and headed toward Frat Row.

****

Walter Hittenmiller knew that what he lacked in looks, physique, and breeding were more than made up for by a total lack of charm. He was invisible. Exploited, perhaps, but also free to pursue his own interests with practically no outside interference. He took the threat of the elder gods seriously. Not the gods themselves: The idiot authors who had to romanticize eldritch forces of inexplicable horror and creeping madness and thereby both shaped them and gave them power. This had been coming for a long time.

Too bad he still didn't have any idea what to do about it.

Walter dashed back to the museum, almost falling on an inexplicable trail of jelly. He spent half an hour making calls, leaving messages for anyone who might be even vaguely helpful. That done, he hurried back downstairs. Fighting the god seemed impossible, at least directly: Perhaps he'd find inspiration among the collections.

Leering idols mocked him, but told no secrets. Shimmering blobs of coalesced metaphysics just sat there, waiting for someone to believe in them. Petrified saints proudly displayed their agonies, but none rose to bless him. Struggling to keep calm, Walter decided on a more systematic search, working his way up through the ages. Stone age, bronze age, Sumerian, Egyptian . . .

Samantha Harrington was hanging around the Egyptian collections, as she so often did, her green eyes dancing with amusement above a catty smile. Walter despaired, as he always did, of getting the professor's daughter to notice him—all the more so because that smile aroused a pesky flutter of hope in his breast. "No" is absolute. It's "maybe" that keeps hurting.

"Hullo, Wally," she purred.

"Hi, Sammy. You got any way to kill off a real bitch of an elder god?"

"You should call Zelazny. He's tops on man-god relations."

"Can't. Merged with a raksha and soared off on a tour of the universe."

"What about his exorcism manual? A Night In The Lonesome October?"

"No good. Entry's already occurred. We've got an elder deity, partially re-shaped by modern literary worship . . ." Walter snapped his fingers. "Hold it! Re-shaped. Maybe that's the key!"

Samantha uncoiled from the sarcophagus she'd been perched on, slinking over to him. "It's a little late to start writing books about the elder gods of happy giggling flower kittens."

"Ew," Walter said. "No, it's like this: Necro has been resurrecting those arrogant Greek guys to give talks for years. What if we resurrected one of this god's original worshippers? Maybe old Squid-Bag would throw off the modern taint and go back to being a basic earth-force!"

"That's pretty flimsy," Samantha objected. "Primacy doesn't imply potency where a large and temporally entrenched readership is concerned."

He gave her an odd glance. "Well, it's better than doing nothing. And I think I know just a little more about gods than you, hm?"

"You think?" she asked, batting her eyelashes.

"Anyway, I'd better get going. I have to rouse someone in Necro, then ask Archeo for bones of the proper region and antiquity. Stay here! It's too risky to go outside!"

He ran for the door. It looked bad outside—black sky with a greenish-yellow tint—but he didn't have much choice. He didn't even notice Samantha's green eyes, slitted like a cat's, tracking him as he ran out the door.

****

Samanthahotep curled up atop the sarcophagus and started to purr. Playing with mortal minds was so easy. Enchanting the Professor to think he had a daughter was just good business, since she remained tied to her mortal remains and therefore the museum. Henry Goss she'd considered gutting for tennis rackets until he solved the matter for her. But Walter . . . Walter made her smile. Someday, perhaps, she'd let him see her true form. Then again, maybe not. He wasn't really high-priest material, and he spent enough time staring at her bosom as it was. Hard to tell what he'd make of a nude woman with a cat's head. Well, she could afford to be patient. She had until the end of time to gather a handful of believers and restore what little glory she'd once had as an Egyptian princess of minor and brief divinity.

Still . . . what would be so bad about having just one odd little high priest, if his worship was given with a sweet and joyous heart?

"Miss Harrington?"

The voice belonged to a gigantic, rough-necked, one-eyed man with a staggering array of knives, daggers, guns, and mystic wands slung on his person. Samanthahotep sprang from her perch and bounded up to him, genuinely delighted.

"Iggy!"

"That's Lord Eagleton to you, missy," he said warmly. "I got a call from this kid, says there's a god fixin' to cause some trouble—not that I wouldn't'a noticed the sky soon enough myself. I wasn't your father's chief safari guide all those years for nothin'. I figger I can take 'er out—if I've got the right ammunition. You got any saint's bones? Big ones?"

"And how!"

"Mm-hm. How's about little gods, whole, about the size of bullets, say?"

"I think we can do you."

She led Iggy along towering dark shelves packed with muted, dormant powers, collecting all manner of relics for him to shoot at the new god. After Walter, Iggy was the one mortal she took unalloyed pleasure in knowing. He'd fought a thousand malicious spirits and had a ripping good yarn to go with each of them—yet for every story he told, there were enough intriguing hints to make you hunger for two more. She was happy to help.

It wasn't until Iggy lumbered out into the dark that Samanthahotep realized how nervous she was. Look what I've come to, she chided herself. A god—pacing the floor like a short-lived mortal? That's not the way of the Eternal. Patience. Fleshly creatures come and go in the blink of an eye. To care is only to be hurt. Accept their worship in austere isolation.

Except that Wally and Iggy were both out there, now. She could lose everyone. Even her bombastic, grandiose, sometime-father didn't deserve that.

"So it comes to this," she sighed, and stalked off toward the Greek collection.

****

Something like a giant slug assaulted Eagleton as he left the museum, but it was well-dressed and seemed more intent on getting past him than causing trouble, so he let it go. Hurry, hurry, hurry, he reflected. On safari, you start when you start and get there when you get there. Leave it to civilized man to invent time cards and bus schedules.

The sky was blacker than zombie piss, rougher than that little Thai bitch with the diamond eyes and icepick fingernails. Eagleton smiled grimly. Not that he liked trouble, but he was only comfortable in one of two places—out in the field, or in the club telling stories. He had a great drafty house all to himself, trophies mounted on every wall, and he was miserable there. He found himself sitting. Drinking. Waiting. Waiting for the next safari. Waiting for the club to open. Waiting the next identical day to dawn so he could wait it out, too. But this, now . . .!

As Eagleton passed the stadium, he heard ragged, drunken singing, accompanied by howls of laughter.

"Ain't no such thing as a squid god

Squishy squashy wishy washy squid god

Imagin-ary cali-mari

Fight for good old U., rah rah!"

As he watched, tendrils of purest black curled down out of the clouds. In a matter of moments, eighteen brightly clad young gentlemen were hoisted screaming into the sky, though the screams, to be fair, didn't last long. Professor Harrington ran bellowing for the cathedral across the street, proving wonderfully spry for a man of his age, and made it with half a second to spare. The bones that came clattering back down