2012.

The Last Will and Testament of The G.o.ds.

by Mike Cooper.

Book 1.

Chapter 1.

'Promise me ....'

His voice was croaky and hard to hear. To look at him was a test of Penny's young strength. She was frightened because she hardly knew him. She struggled to comprehend his extreme palor. To grasp the meaning of the deep, livid lesions in his skin. She was horribly appalled at his loss of hair. Her child's mind only knew it was so difficult. She tried gazing half and half at him, but felt bad about not making real contact. She forced herself to glance at him. Yes; it was still him, even though it did not seem like him any more. She was wracked by her childish helplessness. She was however, alert enough to know she would never be able to forget that there was nothing she could do.

A cough racked out from him, a sound she had come to hate.

'Promise...me,' he rasped, scratchy like an old record.

'I promise Daddy.'

'Ssh dear, he doesn't know what he is saying. He isn't talking to you,'whispered her mother from behind her. But it was too late, she had heard him and she had promised.

'You must fight it...' the voice faltered and then rallied into a gravelly half shout. 'You...have to see it...to know...what it really is.' He said this over and over again. 'You have to see it...to know...'

A bright white nurse held her arm and turned her from the bed to the arms of her mother whose tears wet her hair.

'Let him rest now my dear,' said her mother. His rest was eternal. She never spoke to him again. Penny pledged an innocent's vow to fight until it was beaten. All she knew then was that it could kill millions. She couldn't imagine why anyone would want to do that. The death of her own father was devastating enough, her mind was unable to grasp the killing of millions at one go. Why would you even think of it? H bomb Mike (such a friendly name) was a true wonder of modern science. His mushroom cloud soared twenty seven miles up, his canopy spread a hundred miles. His radio-active mud rained eighty million tons of vapourised coral and earth. The word 'mega' arrived in the language. Mouths gaped in nameless fear and awed disbelief at what they had done.

They said it was lung cancer from heavy smoking, but Penny at ten years old, felt the lie as a body blow which shook her belief in the world, perhaps more than his death. It simply stood to reason that what killed him was the irradiated white stuff which had rained down horribly as, for the Army, he observed the event from as far as thirty miles away.

So she and his widow marched. Wrote about the bomb. Pet.i.tioned governments. Demonstrated. Peacefully at first.

Penny learned all she could about the bomb. At university Her politics and sociology course taught her to place its existence in a political and social context. She believed the threat of atomic catastrophe was basic to modern society and its defensive structures. In her essays she agreed with Marcuse that the needs of post-war society had become identical with individual needs and aspirations, the satisfaction of which promoted big business and thus a consumerist sense of well-being which needed an ultimate defence. She argued in seminars that this was seen by society as the embodiment of reason even while it terrified her and many others. West and East looked over the same brink and both despoiled the Earth. She agreed with her father it had to be stopped. The writings of Herbert Marcuse became her bible and in 1968 when things were really on the move, Invited by friends, she headed for Paris to join in the revolution for the future, to be there and join in, to make a difference.

She and her fellow mortals were not alone in their fear of the bomb and the consequences for the people of the Earth. While Penny Conway was enrolling in the Sorbonne wondering which demo's to go on, another champion of change was starting a parallel revolution.

Zeus, Chief of the Olympians, completed the slender scroll of his last will and testament and rose stiffly. He had experienced the latest thermonuclear test while in a mind meld with his grandmother Gaia. He too was aghast. It was enough. It was time to act. It wasn't just the bomb, it was everything else. They swarmed like locusts. They were too many and they destroyed what they could not make. This last was an idiocy too far.

Just larger than life, his whole body felt stiff as if age gripped him at last. He shook his leonine head and sank it onto his hands, his elbows on the desk. He contemplated the fragment of papyrus before him and smiled wryly to himself. This statement of very few words contained a metaphysical bomb to make H bomb Mike seem like a damp squib. This abominable last race of people would know past any doubt, that he was not yet done in this world.

He sighed heavily, in truth, his time was past. He hadn't paid attention. It was as simple as that really. He'd been too idle, too complacent.

He cast his eye again over the doc.u.ment on his desk. As he re-read it for errors he decided to take out the punctuation marks, like lawyers do, just in case anyone misinterpreted.

Thus engaged, the door of his magnificent office opened and his wife Hera entered, the gold of the open door highlighting the colour of her cheeks. She walked the vast length of the polished marble floor and sat in her queenly fashion on the ornamental chaise-long kept exclusively for her own use and fixed him with her eye.

'My Lord you called.'

Zeus lifted his eyes from the acreage his vast desk. Saw her mood. 'Aye wife. I want you to see this. I will post it on the Chronosphere.' He finished his work, stood and handed the scroll to her.

'What is it my one alone?' she asked. 'It is very little.'

'Not so little as it seems.' Read it to me my consort. I would hear how it resonates.'

Hera, was expecting something big from him. While he was normally playful he was not to be taken lightly. He didn't ever summon her unless he had a reason.

She unrolled the short scroll and holding it up to the light of the long window which spanned one entire wall of the office, her eyes were not what they once were, she read in her clear bell like voice. He loved her voice. He loved all of her all the time. He had only given her the scroll to read to hear her voice. To have an excuse to call her. She wasn't much with him these days. He missed her. Not enough to do really. She was bored too. It made her touchy. Well this will get more than her going, he thought.

She read aloud the doc.u.ment which was to cause so much stir throughout the Chronosphere.

I Zeus being of sound mind do hereby bequeath Mother Earth hereinafter known as Gaia to the fifth race of Earthly people hereinafter known as Mortals on the proviso that the harm they do her be forthwith reversed this being achieved I leave Gaia in their hands for ever the beneficence of whom is theirs and their descendants for as long as there are mortals if at midnight on the last day of December 2012 there remains complaint from the aforesaid Gaia in any whit whatsoever with respect to her welfare well-being or other deficiency whatsoever she shall speak of to me she shall have leave to destroy Mortals by whatever means will bring her relief from hurt this to be enacted notwithstanding the efforts of any member of my family other G.o.ds or non-mortal interested parties whatsoever Signed: Zeus: Chief Executive and Major Shareholder - Olympus Holdings.

Hera rolled up the scroll and pa.s.sed it back to her husband. Outwardly calm she withheld her mounting anger with practised will power.

'Well wife? What do you say?'

'I say my Lord? I say do you mean this?'

'I do my cuckoo, I do. They think we old G.o.ds are dead. They will find out how far they are wrong. Afterwards we can go elsewhere. Start again. Why not? The Firmament is large. This is showdown time my sweet bird.'

He thought grimly, he could go elsewhere, finally. He would have gone on indefinitely, eyeball to eyeball with Yahweh; had not these frustratingly eye-catching mortals of Prometheus, forced his hand by their mistreatment of Gaia, with this latest and most dangerous toy. Gaia, the basis of their lives, of all life. Born after the beginning, when Chaos bore Erebus the night, and before Eros bore Love; She who with Aether, first gave birth to Ura.n.u.s the mountains and Pontus the sea. She was not to be destroyed by her imperfect creation.

Zeus walked over to his wife and indicated imperiously he would sit with her. She moved over and he drew her into his arms. She nestled into him. He was her Lord after all. He had the right. He had the need. Thus in charge, he contemplated the future with some satisfaction.

'At last,' he breathed, his mouth close to her finely chiselled ear. 'I have found the means to disengage both myself and the unreachable Yhawhe from the fate of humankind and leave them to themselves forever. I will commit this doc.u.ment to the Chronosphere and by this throw my last bolt.' He laughed. 'I will give the scroll to Prometheus to broadcast. It is fitting.'

Hera, involuntarily stiffened. Zeus held her tightly. There was latent antagonism between them. She wanted to shake him, take the scroll and hurl it from the window. 'Aye my Lord, she ground out between barely gritted teeth. 'It is poetic justice. But be aware Lord, That even in this the mortals can rely on my help and I will not be alone,' Hera continued, defiant.

'I never interfered with Prometheus' mortals,' muttered Zeus tightening his grip.'Unless I was forced. But you may not, my cuckoo, may not,' his breath hissed in her ear. 'Think to undermine my desire in this final action.' He thrust her from him and walked to the window. His back to her he contemplated the dark clouds brewing on the horizon over the Hudson river. 'Help them if you will, but remember it is my will and I will not allow you to think for them. In that I will not relent even though we may all thereby at be at an end. The Defining Moment is upon us!' His final and worrying thought, was that Gaia, much as he revered her, was always mistrustful of him, as she was of any who claimed all power and in consequence maintained her links with his brother Hades in Erebus, thus keeping her options open.

She spoke bitterly to his broad back. 'You can be certain, my Lord, I will a.s.sist.' He did not turn to face her, infuriated by this silent arrogance she dispensed with her usual hurried curtsey and left his presence, an ugly grimace on her n.o.ble face. He thought he heard her stifle a shout and stamp her well shod feet on the marble of the hallway and smiled indulgently. He'd been sure he could rely on her. What a wife!

Hera left New York in a turmoil and made haste for Ios. The insignificant dot of dry land in the Aegean Cyclades was her current refuge from the commercial hubbub of Zeus' New York offices. Here was peace and real people making a living. People who still believed in her and hers. People close to the earth and their origins. She mistrusted her husband and with reason. She could do nothing about his decision but she could manage the means. If she knew him at all, she knew he would leave it up to everyone else to realise his desires. It did not matter what she thought about him and Yhawhe disengaging themselves from the fate of humankind. For it to happen one thing had to occur. The past had to be reconciled with the future. Since the halls of Hades, who ruled over the past, were forbidden to all of the Pantheon except the handful who came and went on the strictest terms, only a mortal could enter Hades. She reasoned there was no mortal currently alive who truly understood the proper connection between Hades and Zeus and theirs with Yhawhe, and who knowing, was capable of such a thing.

Stepping lightly off a timeline at her villa in Psathi on the Eastern side of Ios - her gleaming isle, she met Elithia who was spinning peacefully in the pretty courtyard in the shade of a vast fig tree. 'Welcome back my Lady,' she said. 'How is the great world out there today? How is my Lord? I do hope he is well.'

Hera was still out of sorts but the journey along the timelines fast as it was, had given her some time to think.

'Ah Elithia, fetch Themis and Mnemosyne, I need both now. Hurry, we have much work to do.'

Elithia gazed quizzically at her mother, who's expression allowed no s.p.a.ce for query or explanation. She had the patience to wait until Hera was ready to explain. She called to Themis and Mnemosyne immediately on the Chronosphere. In the distance, Zeus felt the call and knew he had been right. Almost immediately, Themis stepped off a timeline from only she knew where, into the courtyard.

'Good day children,' she said to Hera and Elithia. as her foot touched ground. As a t.i.tan she used the prerogative of age and seniority to address this later generation in her own terms. 'I know,' she said, suddenly grave. 'You don't have to explain, Prometheus has posted the scroll on the 'sphere. Everybody knows. I was on my way here already when Elithia called. 'You couldn't manage some sustenance by the way, I've come a long way and I'm famished.'

Elithia clapped her hands. A pretty young woman appeared and was given orders. Themis, Elithia and Hera arranged themselves comfortably on the terrace. As they ate the food of the G.o.ds, Mnemosyne arrived on her timeline.

'Greetings girls, I see you've heard the news.'

'A warm welcome sister' said Themis.

'Eat aunt,' said Hera. 'I'm about to tell you the whole story.'

'So he really means to do this?'said Elithia when Hera had finished speaking.

'There's no doubt,' said Themis. 'He's thrown down the gauntlet. After you'd left Hera, I went straight into his office. Prometheus was already there. He must have been timelining in as you got into the elevator. He'd given him the scroll and they were arguing. Zeus did his I'm in charge and I dare you to make something of it routine and wouldn't brook any discussion. He wasn't angry but he had that I've decided look he gets now and then. So Prometheus and I stold him we would help mortals all we could and he seemed indifferent. He thought there wasn't enough time and that Gaia would take her own steps. Whether we helped them or not was a matter of supreme unconcern. He was more bbothered with the aftermath, something about a new Trinity. Him, Hades and Yhawhe. I didn't get it. It seems that that's going to be his preoccupation from now on and mortals are on their own or down to us, or whatever.'

'You don't think it's worth trying to change his mind,' Mnemosyne asked. 'I mean about ultimately leaving mortals alone without us.'

'No, I don't see it,' replied Themis. 'Though we can help them all we like it seems, but he's clear that Gaia will decide and anyway he means to leave them to it.' A thoughtful silence followed this comment.

'So what are we going to do about helping our mortals?' said Hera.

'Well,' replied Themis. 'It seems to me that there are two things we can do. One is to help mortals change things in time for Gaia to recover. Personally I have no idea how to do that. It's going to be difficult to...'

'I'll manage that with Hephaestos,' Hera interrupted impatiently. 'What's the second thing?'

'I think you've guessed it, so don't take it out on me, I'm doing my best. Zeus wasn't my choice for top gun as you well know.'

'Alright. Just get on with it,' muttered Hera.

'For the quick to enter the realms of the dead and stay sane enough to achieve change in that realm would need an immortal, able to manage the two realms with understanding.'

'And that can only mean one thing,' Mnemosyne offered. 'Sorry Hera.

'Yes, yes okay. But I'm afraid it is so,' muttered Hera. 'It's just a question of finding out whom he chooses and controlling things from there.'

'I can do that, leave it to me,' Elithia volunteered.

'And then what?' Mnemosyne asked.

'I think she should be brought here to us,' replied Hera.

Penny Conway, travelling alone, leaned her rucksack against a bench on the sun bleached deck of the aged Aegean ferry, lowered her young body, rested her back and gratefully stretched her long limbs. She was glad of the shade from the awning flapping in the warm sea breeze above her. Her fine, dark hair was cut ear length and flicked forward. Despite her advanced pregnancy, it was her height, long waist, and elegance of posture that invariably produced a second, more appraising, glance. Her face did not immediately add up to beauty, but she had large dark eyes and good bones. Her poise and bearing denoted a strong core of a.s.surance rarely found in one so young. Exhausted by the interminable, jolting train journey through Yugoslavia and Northern Greece, by the heat and her condition; her fatigue was dispelled by excitement tinged with trepidation. The clarity of the light made her strangely buoyant. This was her first time in Greece but it felt more like a homecoming. Yesterday, through the train window she had watched the sun rise over Mount Olympus and was strangely moved. She had been deeply thrilled by Athens, the disorderly sprawling life of the ancient city, its foundations rooted in time. She was especially stirred by the Acropolis shimmering in the heat haze.

She squinted against the brightness of the sea. This dazzling land was driving her onward. Everything would work out right on her journey, pregnant and alone, towards the islands of the Cyclades. The life within her was coming home to its own land.

The child in her belly had kicked her awake. She had slept a long time on the hard deck. The low sun pinked the white buildings on the hills of Naxos as they came to harbour. She rose stiffly, arched herself backwards to gain balance and walked to the rail for a better view. She watched the boat inch cleverly to a stop. A handful of pa.s.sengers disembarked, to be immediately swallowed on the quay by a clamour of people. The ship cast off again in the hot evening air. The next island was already visible in the distance, another bead in the string of jewels set in the 'wine dark' bevel of the sea. Trees and rocks outlined the hills against the darkening skyline, hard edged, near enough to touch.

Wrapped in the landscape, she was close to tears. She was drawn into the island, into the sea and the sky by a strong sense of belonging. She grasped the rail as if to prevent herself being physically drawn into the water as she had been drawn into the totality of Alexis.

He had filled her mind, had filled all the corners of her being. He had shifted the axis of her life. Transfixed by him, she could hardly remember anything other than his presence. It had been simple possession. She had given herself utterly. He had coloured the days and when he was not beside her she was empty. As summer turned into winter she knew his child was in her. When he went away she had begged to go with him but he had refused, it was better he went alone. The friend calling from Germany simply said he was dead, shot by German riot police in a chaotic demonstration. The friend was desperately sorry but it was a kind of war. Alexis had told him to tell her if anything happened. He had been particular about that. He had made him carry her number to call.

The papers had been full of 'The Mysterious Red Greek.' The body was flown to an unknown destination in Greece, she could not even attend his funeral. She deliberately refused to read the papers - dead was for other people. Her other world fell away. She stopped writing to her mother, stopped meeting her friends and spent her time finding out as much as she could about him. There was little to discover. He had appeared suddenly in Paris, carried a Greek pa.s.sport, and led 'La Flamme Rouge.' He was a tireless worker, had many influential contacts, was prepared to hazard risks beyond the ordinary and undertook dangerous tasks requiring travel across Europe and America. He was calm in a crisis, a born leader and totally dedicated to the cause.

In his room, almost blinded by her tears she went through his few possessions. Her most significant find was a single air-mail letter in Greek from an address in Ios, Cyclades. An atlas informed her the Cyclades were a group of islands in the Aegean between the Greek mainland and Crete. Ios was an insignificant lozenge of land, the name in such small print she needed a magnifying gla.s.s to make it out. A student of Greek, a friend, translated the letter for her. He said it was written in ancient Greek, probably as a sort of code between scholars. Translated, the letter was from someone who appeared to be an older sister, she called him 'my one alone' - a strange endearment, probably an effect of the translation.

It read: Ios, Cyclades My one alone, Please do not think I do not understand, even though I fail fully to appreciate your motives. Being far from me diminishes not a whit my sense of the danger of what you do. I have known you and loved you long enough to understand well the needs which drive you. I know my attempts to prevent or deflect you from these perilous actions may lead to misadventure. So be it. You will no doubt expect me to handle the consequences in my own way and I am, as you might expect, already setting the scene for what I will do to cope adequately with conceivable difficulties in the future.

I beg you to come home and put an end to taking risks for the betterment of humankind. Remember I am your equal in sisterhood.

I wait hopefully for your return but prepare for what is to come.

It was signed 'Lucina.'

Penny read and re-read the translation. Pleased at the allusion to sisterhood, for this meant here was someone else who knew Alexis. This Lucina seemed to know him better than she. She would find out the truth of his life from her.

Beyond what she already knew, no one else seemed to have any real idea about him. So she had written to 'Lucina' Ios, Cyclades. Greece; without expectation of reply. The address seemed far fetched and inadequate, as if the island were too insignificant to receive letters. She used the opportunity to pour out her feelings. She had avoided discussing Alexis with her friends after she discovered some of them had considered her 'fling' as just another student romance, born from the incredible events of the summer of '68. The tragedy of his end, which they considered with some awe, had not happened near them. The ensuing drama also had the effect of distancing her from them. Alexis was fast becoming part of the folklore of the time. She refused to engage with them in the media driven excitement of his death. Consequently she told no one of her pregnancy. She kept away from everyone as soon as she began to show, ate her meals in cafes and kept to her room. It was a great relief to find this Lucina, maybe there was a solution to her predicament here, in the only member of his family she had been able to find.

She wrote back: Dear Lucina, Forgive this intrusion into your grief for Alexis. I don't know if he ever mentioned me to you, I don't think he was much of a letter writer, so I am probably a total stranger to you. But I feel so strongly we have so much of him in common. I found out about you from a letter you wrote which I found in his room, which I read - I was trying to find out something about him, not prying really, just desperately wanting to stay close to him. You will probably think me stupid and over-romantic but you see for me he is not dead, even though his physical presence is gone, somehow he remains so strongly in my own being I do not mourn, I have no grief. I don't understand these feelings at all. I am usually very good at coping with realities and was prepared to grieve, but find I do not.

I have no religious views really and so no spiritual beliefs. I am practical, a doer rather than a thinker and so I find myself unusually agitated by my feelings. Alexis bowled me over in a way I never experienced or even expected to feel.

You seem to love him too, and so despite my feeling that I'm being unwise, I feel a bond between us already. A bond strengthened by the fact that I am having his child. So I suppose I am now linked to his family. I have withdrawn from my life here in the Sorbonne, here in Paris, pregnancy in public produces too much interest from the people I normally mix with.

But there is no question I must have his child. There is nothing else I desire so much, other, of course, than to see Alexis again, but I am so glad he lives on inside me. However the pregnancy raises the practical problem of where to have the baby. I have arranged with a doctor friend to go south to a clinic near the Spanish border. You may ask why I do not go home to England but my mother who has already sacrificed much for my education would want me to continue with my studies and not have the child, and an abortion is unthinkable! In terms of my life, the timing of this pregnancy couldn't have been worse! In the middle of my studies to a dead, foreign father, no I cannot go home and face her; it would be too difficult. I will tell my mother when it's all over.

So, Lucina, the sister of my beloved, I tell you this so that you know how things were for me with Alexis. Perhaps one day we will meet?

Yours most sincerely, Penelope Conway.

She signed and posted it to the improbable address. When she received the Greek air-mail letter, it was written in a bold woman's hand, in English. It was short, remarkable, friendly and held the solution to all her problems, while at the same time sending her into a whirl of confusion.

It ran: Dear Penelope, Trust Alexis to find a beauty with a resonant name. For I know you are lovely. Yes, he is without doubt a crazy fellow. I suppose he came to you like a G.o.d. He has a way of overpowering and empowering at the same time. I too love him with an enduring affection, but he is proud, reckless and capricious.

Arrangements are now made here for you to come and have our baby. All is taken care of, train tickets are in the post, together with a cheque for your immediate expenses.

Alexis is our common love, his child is a gift to the world, we must take extra special care of you. You will have the best of attention. Do not worry about your mother, I have already written to her explaining you are to be our guest for the summer, at our expense, and I have asked for permission to release you to us. Do not fear she will agree. Make your own way to Ios, you will be met at the quayside.

I yearn to kiss you and bring forth the child In a common love, affectionately yours, Lucina Dodona Penny was stunned. She realised there had been an implied plea for help in her own letter, but she bridled at the simple presumption that she would obey what she could only think of as instructions, however well meant. How did this Lucina know where to find her mother? What audacity to a.s.sume she would go! She was angry at the imperious - 'Do not fear she will agree.' Indeed! How did she know! Who does she think she is? Taking over my life. I may be in trouble, but it takes two to tango and I knew what I was doing, and I'm quite prepared to carry my own can. I can also pay my own way - just about!

But Alexis was a common love and she needed to find out as much about him as possible she owed that much to the child and she had to agree that this was a far better way to have the baby in secret than to go to the South of France on flimsy arrangements. The affirmation of a common love, gave the imperious Lucina credibility despite the extraordinary lengths to which she was going to make everything come right. She must be rich, Alexis had been said to have good, if mysterious, connections. But yet, it was more of a journey into the unknown than her own plans for the Pyrenees. But, she thought, there was no sense of menace, there was even a pull towards this island, which she had felt the moment she found the original letter. I have everything to gain and nothing to lose - except perhaps full control over events.

Control was something she prized highly. She had had to argue forcefully with her mother to let her go to Paris at such a precarious time. Lucina's apparent yearning for the child suggested a natural claim to a child of her dead brother, which Penny thought a mite alarming together with the overbearing tone. It could be simply the exuberance of the Greek spirit. In any case, she had no absolute right to think of the child as her exclusive property. With the father dead, it was natural his family would want to make much of him. So why was she denying this to her own mother and potentially granting it to strangers? She could go home and let things find their own level without all this Greek island stuff. But she couldn't shake off the idea that to go to England was likely to be full of difficulties and unwelcome recriminations.

To go to Greece made all the sense in the world especially as it was all set up for her, no questions asked. The most astounding thing about the letter, which jangled her nerves and put electric shocks up and down her spine, was the way Lucina referred to Alexis in the present tense. When the next day the money and tickets came, there was only one choice. The tickets were dated. Lucina had determined the timetable of her journey.

Forward motion had ceased and they were anch.o.r.ed some way from the sh.o.r.e. Surrounded by the night and the silky wind on her skin, partially asleep, she was lulled by the action of the boat. In her drowsy state the sky with its teeming lights of far worlds felt far beyond anything she knew.