'It's true. According to Thea, people like Barboncito are one of the few who represent the peoples of the earth still in touch with their ancestors. She said that once they were all linked up, through GAIANET, any one of them would be able to provide a ready means to give Hades a bridge between past and present through which the long dead could emerge and take over the present for ever. If people in the present continued to fail Gaia, Hades through the likes of Barboncito might be able to use this as a means to position himself to merge the past with the present and thus cut off the future to save Her. She said it was a risk, but she couldn't say how much of a one. By preventing his brother Hades from using the Chronosphere to communicate in the present, important logical step though it was, it made it possible that he might find his way through one day by a separate route of any a.n.a.logue that mortals would inevitably invent.'

'Dead right pard'ner. Ole Hep's partic'larly afeared a' that hap'nin'.

'She said it's one of those critical details that Zeus always ignores. She was sure that if Zeus' grand scheme was to have any chance of success, it was inevitable that mortals would need some kind of sophisticated communication system of their own to help Gaia so that their information data base would be equal to the task of self-governance in partnership with Her.'

'Thet's one of them gripes 'ole Hep's got with Zeus. I dunno if the 'ole Thunderer's thought it through, like, but Hep's 'oppin mad, he don't take no cognisance of it 'ap'nin. 'He said if Hep was worrit about it 'e'd better do summat about it hisself.'

'That makes sense of Nemmi's anxiety,' said Alexander. 'She said there were real dangers in the challenge set by Zeus' Last Will and Testament, and this was seen by Hephaestos in particular, as well as Hera, Prometheus and Athena, as a probable sign of feebleness not lost on Hades in the real-politik of the G.o.ds.

'Sure thing. Once 'old Hades gets wind 'e kin get through to an 'ole bunch'a folks on the other side there'll be no stoppin' 'im.'

'So why are you stopping me following Barboncito? He's an expert on the Earth side's communication system and one who's in contact with the Underworld. I've got to stop him getting there at all costs. Given all this why you're holding me up with all this chit-chat is incomprehensible.'

They were still melded on L1. With the rest of his mind, Alexander tried to make contact with Thea. He discovered with a jolt that he could maintain a meld with Pannie in the here and now, but on the other side of the Sipapu there was no communication with the 'sphere to the other world. Of course he knew it, it just hadn't registered it wouldn't work till he'd tried.

Alexander thought once again with a flicker of fear there was a difference between knowing a thing and experiencing it. Feeling Thea and Hep in touch helped him keep sane. Knowing they were out of reach filled him with levels of anxiety that were by now being picked up by Pannie.

On L2 however he detected other presence's on a parallel 'sphere which he had been taught existed on the wrong side of the Sipapu. He did not recognise any of them, but could guess who they were. Meanwhile he had other more pressing things to handle, like finding Barboncito and getting Pannie out of his hair. While this was going through his head the comic voice of Pannie thrust itself into the forefront of his consciousness.

'If'n you'd'a bin inna' a bit less of a hurry boychik, we could'ha worked out a better way of gittin' in here and what's more to the point, how ter git out. Now we're bothern us stuck onner wrong side without any ways a' knowin' the way back! Like I said, you weren't ready ter git in here. And what's more pardner, you got me in here with ya!'

'n.o.body asked you to come, if it wasn't for you I'd still be on Barboncito's trail and not spending time in this stupid chat with you.'

'Stoopid chat is it!' Pannie drew himself up to the most considerable height he could muster, which as he remained sitting on the boulder, made him even more comical. Alexander was inclined to laugh, but something in the other's demeanour conveyed caution.

The little manikin was so absurd both as Gabby Hayes and as Pannie Lejeschi that the mixture fed Alexander's sense of the ridiculous and inclined him to ignore the little man. Pannie was genuinely infuriated. His cynical temperament and farcical appearance were not enough to disguise a real level of feeling. Alexander, despite himself recognised this, calmed down, partially admitting to himself he may have done something to genuinely cause his ire and said less petulantly than he felt. 'So? Go on, what's getting to you?'

'Oh! So now y'all 'll listen - now boychik, now when it's too late ter do anything about it! Now we're there he wants ter know what's gittin' ter me!' Pannie stood on the rock and threw his hands aloft, his goatee waggling brightly in the sun.

'I'm prepared to listen if you're going to talk sense. Where exactly are we?'

'In the shee-ite, that's where we is 'xactly' sonny, in deepest shee'ite up to 'ere!' He indicated his Adam's apple with the flat of his hairy hand. 'An' he wants ter know where we are!'

Pannie jumped from his perch with the agility that always managed to surprise Alexander. He strode off towards the sandy bank of the creek which glittered away into the distance between the high bluffs on either side.

'Jest look about ya boychick! Where d'yer think y'are? What's it all like eh? Where was yer and where is yer now?' Pannie danced around the boulder flinging his arm about him indicating the river, sky and the distance.

'It's like another canyon to me. We've come through one into another. And I need to get after Barboncito,' Alexander said gazing about him.

'Look harder boychik!' Pannie demanded with more than a hint of sarcasm.

Alexander, who had spent the whole of this communication seated on the ground where his mule had unceremoniously deposited him, now stood up, and stared about him. He was indeed in another canyon, but it had a different feel from the others that morning. There was something different about the light. Although the sun was still high there was a distant gloominess towards the glimpse of horizon visible at the end of the canyon where the bluffs petered out into what appeared to be a flood-plain. Where he would have expected the light of the sun to be brightly illuminating the middle distance, an ashen grey melancholy seemed to have settled. The cause was not apparent. The sky overhead was as bright a blue as he could have wished.

It was as if a smog grew up from the earth or the river in the distance to cover the terrain with a different light from that cast by the sun. It was definitely eerie. Added to which he had the feeling of having been here before. The river dashed boisterously for a long way, at least two miles by his reckoning, and then changed to a leaden colour more as if the light ebbed from its white-water of its own accord, giving up its light to an absorbing darkness. He turned to take in the way he had come in such haste. To his astonishment he seemed to have come through a solid wall of granite. Gone were the travertine limestone terraces, this ancient rock was impenetrable with none of the softness of the Matkatamiba, it was hard and cold, with no visible sign of where he might have issued. He stared back at Pannie registering a new anxiety.

'Hades?' he asked tremulously.

'You got it Boychik, Hades! But you knew that's where you was headed didn't ya? But what you didn't stop to consider was, what it would be like when you got here. Never gave it a thought did ya? Too busy follerin' that Navajo ter take notice a' me sittin' there ter git yer ready fer what yer was lettin' yerself into.'

Alexander considered the goat-like manikin again. The exasperation in the tone of the communication was very real. Beneath the comic external trappings and the silly accent was a genuine emotion. Alexander recalled Lucina's words and began to believe there were things he should learn from Pannie. Pannie registered the sincerity of Alexander's feeling and was more conciliatory in his approach.

'Listen good, I'm goin' ter git inter L2 with ya.'

The meld lasted a while as they considered their position. When it was over they set off up-stream in the opposite direction towards the closed end of the canyon. The river was in full spate and even deeper than Alexander had at first realised. Without a means of bridging it or some kind of easier ford, there was no way across. It was hot and dusty. Alexander rode his mule while Pannie skipped along in front. Every now and then the little man would crouch on all fours, put his ear to the ground and listen intently. On his signal the oddly quixotic trio would move forward again. After some two hours of this Pannie turned to face Alexander on the mule.

'It's no use, there's no way 'cross this creek in this direction. I didn't think there was, but it was worth a try. Iff'n there'd be a way old Hecate would'a' stopped it up by now. 'Istry says there wus a back-way in. The Sipapu was one of 'em but it only gets us as far as this side a' the bank. An' now we're in, that's bin and got itself stopped up. I spec' the Navajo'll 'ave ter find 'is own way out agin same as us. 'Cep 'e's allowed ter come 'n go. I don't have much hope it'll be thet easy fer us.'

They retraced their steps, pa.s.sed the boulder where Alexander was thrown from the mule and went on. Pannie travelled even more carefully now than when going in the other direction. As they breasted a low ridge Alexander caught a view of the leaden stream losing itself in the gloom. About a thousand yards before the atmosphere of the canyon changed, just at the point where the granite bluffs ended on his left-hand side, a cloud of white steam billowed along what he took to be a tributary of the main creek they were following.

The river Plegethon, the burning river, thought Alexander, tributary of the Styx they were following into the shade. The Styx was unable to be crossed except at one control point. They had tried up-stream first to find a crossing Pannie had heard of aeons ago. If it had existed then it no longer was where he thought it to be. They had no choice but to cross where they were supposed to, via the Charon Checkpoint.

Well in front of the River Plegethon, which literally boiled its way into the mother-stream contributing its steaming heat to the atmosphere far ahead, Alexander spotted what Pannie had told him to watch for in the L2 meld. A wide, dark, well beaten, path leading from a dim grove of black poplars which lost itself among fantastical rocky outcrops in which black fingers of leafless aspens, shook uncannily in the windless air.

As his eyes became used to the changed perspective he saw the path was moving. Closer observation showed it was thronged with a procession of hundreds of people. This constant stream brushing past the trees made them sway in the airlessness. More amazingly, as he saw further into the middle-distance, the stream of people became a veritable lake milling around a dilapidated wooden building and spilling right up to the left bank of the Styx.

'Okay pardner, this is where I go - see ya on the other side - maybe?'

Pannie grinned and taking Alexander by the shoulder with his hairy left paw, pumped his hand with his right.

'Good luck Boychick, it won't be easy. Remember what I said, if'n yer hears barking when yer gets across, stick ter the main trail and whatever yer do show no emotion of any kind - Here's lookin at yer kid.'

With that he hopped behind an outcrop and disappeared from view.

Mindful of the strategy they had worked out on L2 Alexander worked his way round to the eastern side of the dark grove of poplars. He was aided by the gathering gloom that shadowed his approach. He felt silly, trying to move as if he were invisible. Pannie's instructions however, were quite clear. He was to get as close to the throng of people as possible without being seen, there to wait for Hermes. While the dangers on this side of the Styx were not life-threatening, the discovery of a live being pa.s.sing without permission from the Hadean authorities would be disastrous for his mission. Of that Lucina had been adamant. This was an essential point of his training with Thea. He had to make his own way into the presence of Hades and Persephone.

Direct help by the Pantheon in Hades' own territory would break the covenant between Zeus and Hades. His task was to act as his own man and use what help was available locally. This was easier said than done. When he had tried to be his own man in recent times - with Marina, Barboncito and then Pannie - he had made little impression. Now he was waiting for Hermes - hardly a case of self-reliance. Still he had got so far, without so far losing his senses and had no bright ideas of his own about how to cross the river. He found his way as instructed, to the interior of the dark wood, and in the dim light, accompanied by a creeping coldness, he lay in a ditch fragrant with pine-needles, beside the road, watching the endless movement of people.

They were of all races and nationalities. The vast majority was elderly, some quite ancient. The most striking feature of the wayfarers was that despite their age and probable infirmities they all walked easily unaided by sticks, wheel-chairs or other paraphernalia a.s.sociated with this age-group. There were a substantial number of young men, who laughed and joked, pushing each other about, and being scolded by their elders. Many were in military uniform of different kinds. There were a good number of young women with babes in arms and a surprising number of children alone carrying or leading younger children. While he had no real reason to be amazed, he knew people were dying in their thousands all over the world by the minute. To see a snapshot in time of a selection pa.s.sing along the road towards Charon's Crossing on their way to the Underworld was nonetheless a shock to the senses.

The thousands who pa.s.sed on at the same moment all over the world went unremarked, except by their own relatives, unknown and invisible to everyone else apart from the demise of an occasional celebrity. At Charon's Crossing they all converged, unseen by any living eye.

From this perspective Alexander observed first hand how the exponentially increasing throngs of Hades posed an ultimate threat which the Pantheon could hardly ignore. Charon Crossing clearly acted as a census checkpoint so Hadean bureaucracy knew not only exactly how many exhausted souls were in their hegemony at any time, but also of what each was capable.

Zeus on the other hand had no way of knowing the numbers of births moment by moment, the potential of each new person nor the moment of their deaths. Only the Fates knew this and a computer trawl of their library was far too tedious a task, even if it was possible. They had enough on keeping up themselves. Life by comparison with death was too dynamic to lend itself to such regimentation. Furthermore, thought Alexander as he waited in his ditch, if Gaia was to fail because Zeus' challenge failed, people would die from flood, starvation, war and every other kind of mayhem in the a.r.s.enal of torments specially available to his species and thus play right into Hadean hands.

An increased sense of his mission came home to him more forcefully moment by moment as he watched the host of travellers heading for the crossing. Every fibre of his being told him he was incapable of seeing his task through. He had no resources of his own to match the might of Hades. The Pantheon in this place was powerless to help him their powers didn't even reach into these realms.

Pannie was somewhere about, but up to who knows what? It occurred to him fleetingly that it was odd that he was having such a difficult time of it getting across the river, while Pannie seemed to have other plans for himself. The comic demi-G.o.d was almost a complete enigma to him, he supposed that over the aeons, Pannie had laid down enough of his own entries and escape routes to find his way around anywhere.

The 'sphere was however empty of activity. While there was no communication between the realms there were beings in this realm, confirmed by the net round his shoulders, that were able to communicate with him.

They were not tuned into his existence since he had made no attempt to connect. Thea had almost incinerated his mind when, during training he suggested using the localised 'sphere to contact the likes of Hermes or Persephone or any others who had the ability to cross the sealed time-loop which separated the domains. She retorted that if he was to be convincing in this place he had to behave as a living mortal not as a half-baked apology for a G.o.d, whatever his antecedents. If Hades or any of his acolytes in the underworld got a whiff of his Olympian connections that would be the end of his mission. His chances of getting out of the underworld, slim as they already were, depended on n.o.body knowing he was there as Zeus' envoy.

Thea kept from him Zeus' view that he was too feeble by half to do this work and was all for Ares and Athena to tool-up the whole of Olympia with the latest weaponry, and do the job properly. As it was he and Athena were secretly getting the equipment together and talking to their generals. The only thing which prevented Zeus from pulling Alexander off the job and going at it hammer and tongs with Hades, was Hera's sensible reminder to Zeus that only genuine striving by mortals would have the right affect on Yhawhe. So he agreed to see what Hera and her people could pull-off before he made his own preferred moves with Ares and Athena.

Pannie had been right, thought Alexander, I should have waited at the gate of the Sipapu for a better understanding of how to handle this place. It's so out of my ken that the maps implanted by Thea and Mnemosyne are no more than one-dimensional representations of what was turning out to be an unearthly experience for which he was not mentally prepared and for which his physical powers and knowledge of useful survival strategies were wholly inadequate.

This new thought struck him the hardest. Until now he had felt the whole adventure was in some way out of his hands, that the Firm was in ultimate control - but this was a place where its all-seeing eye did not reach.

He felt a strong surge of emotion for Marina who seemed so far away as if it were she in the land of the dead and he on the right side of life. There was no warmth or softness to be had in this land and...if he never got out...the thought was unbearable. He was alone, more alone than it was possible to be. The excruciating heart-rending loneliness of a complete body and soul in the world of shades and half-beings, of arrested development where everything that was going to be, had already happened. Where no new thing was possible, where there was no future. A constant reliving, going over and over what was done - no wonder, he thought, the place was gloomy. Only the previous doings of the new arrivals added anything to the entirety of what was already here. There was some leaven in that knowledge except the sum-total of what was coming in despite the numbers, added only a little to the sum-total of what was already known. The idea of Hadean authority being allowed to break the strict bounds of the Underworld and emerge into the light of the quick, was unthinkable. It might save Gaia but at what a price. The end of all creativity.

He really was on his own, the only life force present in the vastness of this parallel and growing world. There was no other living soul here to a.s.sist him. He would have to do his work alone, any help he got might be a bonus but equally he had been warned by Thea that help might well be disguised as an attempt to use his life-force as a precious commodity in this futureless world. He had to rely on his own resources such as they were, to not only get to Hades on his own account but to get both of them out and back to Lucina. Fortunately the mind-melds with Lucina, Thea and Mnemosyne gave him some understanding of Hades.

This they had from Persephone on her excursions to Olympus, and only partially from Heracles and Hermes who rarely got as far as the central square at Erebus. A lot of the information was aeons out of date. Persephone was renowned for her loyalty to Hades despite the fact she refused to have his children and she was always tight-lipped. Hera suspected her of deliberate misinformation in the interests of keeping anyone from getting very far if they managed to penetrate the Underworld alive.

Hera badgered Demeter unmercifully to find out what Persephone said to her about her visits to the living world and had decided this was a subject mother and daughter rarely if ever discussed. Demeter was too cowardly to risk losing her dearest girl again to attempt the third-degree on her - however nasty Hera might get. In any event Gaia had told Zeus to forbid such unfair extortion.

A sound in the trees behind his position by the road made him attend to more pressing realities. Turning his back on the pa.s.sing hordes Alexander moved into a particularly dark part of the wood. As he moved, for the first time he was aware of his hands in the darkness. In contrast to the pallor of the limbs of the people on the path, the healthy glow of his body shone brightly with a luminosity that easily marked him out from the lifeless forms on the road. He quickly rubbed soil on his hands which had some effect, but not nearly enough. His face similarly shone in the grey light and he rubbed dirt into his cheeks and forehead and pulled his hat down over his eyes. He thought he heard a sound nearby as of something moving. The uneasy fear he had felt as he entered this place from the brightness of the canyon grew, at the sound into terror. The realisation of where he was had been heightened by the spectral forms flowing down the road. This was no flight along the 'sphere with Hep behind him ready to rescue him from a dreamlike state. This was reality substantiated by the feel of the bark of the tree against which he leaned.

He crouched to make himself as small as possible, and strained every nerve to locate the sound. Whatever it was, it was now silent. Perhaps something was watching him as he was watching for it. Like a s.p.a.ce-traveller in an alien world, nothing was like anything at home and any similarities may be dangerous false-clues. Added to which, the sight of the dead along the road had made a kind of sense intellectually, but now he had reached the end of the time-lag before his senses cried out against the sight. His own shining life-force, brought home the nature of the place quite differently from the way it seemed in a mind-meld with Lucina and Thea or in a bed-time story from Nemmi.

Again the difference between theory and practice, rhetoric and reality struck him into a mindless heap. He fully expected to be caught by some demon-monster of this terrible place and simply devoured. His fear was physical and engulfed him of its own, he could smell his fear through his clothes and worried that the thing out there could smell it too.

He drew himself in tightly and girded himself for whatever might appear out of the shadows. It was no wonder the fears of the ancients carried through into the present sub-consciousness of people to maintain the belief in the horrors of h.e.l.l. While unable to contain his physical dread he fought with his mind to get his thoughts in some order to be able to act when the time came. How he wished he had been less hasty with Pannie at the entrance!

As a basis, he had the visions of Hades given by Lucina and the others. None of them had actually been here and much of what was known was myth anyway. Maybe what he feared were merely figures from his imagination, a pattern developing inside his own mind to give him pictures he could handle. The whole of Hades may merely be built from his imagination. What if there was no reality? What if he used his mind to confront his real fears as irrational? Would they turn out to be merely spectres without substance? Having nothing but his imagining and the maps from the Named together with a pastiche of the nature of h.e.l.l from books films and religious instruction at school, his conception of Hadean territory could only be provided through the notions existing within him. Perhaps that was why Pannie had disappeared, he had no place here.

This was helpful thinking. While it did not distract him from the physical horror of the 'reality' in the wood it gave him something to grab hold of. If the sensation of place was real, maybe its dread population was more drawn from the imagination.

Suspended thus between an unknown reality and a fertile fantasy nightmare, Alexander peered into the dimness between the trees, waiting. Long seconds ticked by, turning to even longer minutes. Every shade hid a dreadful unknown. Every whisper of leaves and dank, drip of dew from fronds of rustling ferns, rose up demons of h.e.l.l on every side.

'Don't move a muscle,' he voiced to himself. 'The important thing for your mission is not to be discovered. 'Is that not so?'

It was the interrogative that froze his bones. He had thought nothing himself. The noise in his head was external - someone had melded with him. Still crouching, he pulled his hat down as far as possible to hide his face and still be able to see, he slowly and with utter trepidation crept round the thick trunk of the tree against which he had been leaning. Something unknown, unseen behind him, was the worst thing he could imagine. Whatever appeared in front would be what it would be and he thought he could manage that. The idea of something behind him, unseen, made the hairs stand up on his neck.

'Why do you not engage? I was told you could.' The voice on L1 thrust itself into his mind like someone impatiently prodding with a finger.

'Who is that?' Alexander sent out a thought wave. The response conveyed the weariness and resignation of a public servant who had dealt with too many boring members of the public to have any interest in his work and was getting close to retirement.

'The G.o.ds help us! I am the messenger you were told to expect. Don't tell me...,' the voice went on in its disinterested way, almost a monotone,'...you are frightened of the wood, and to be consistent with your fear you want me to be a horrific monster. I can do it if you want, or better still I can get one for you to fight if that's what you want. That used to be the way of it. There's not been much call for my services as guide for ages and ages. To call up a juicy monster or demon for you to vanquish with the greatest of hardship would liven things up. Wait a bit I'll get one for you. Do you want something in the dragon line or would a big, hairy, multi-headed monster be more to your taste? Don't go away. I'll be back with something suitably horrid.'

'Stop, don't go anywhere!' shouted Alexander aloud, looking around him frantically. 'Who are you? Where are you? Are you far away or nearby?

'I'm right here brother,' said the voice on L1. 'And I'd prefer you to keep in touch on L1 if you please, noise travels far here and you have your mission to consider.'

A tap on the shoulder caused Alexander to swivel on his heel to stare into the eyes of a tall, athletic man who without warning pressed him to his sinewy bosom and rained kisses over his face.'

'Pthaa! you're all covered in dirt! The apparition rubbed the soil from Alexander's face rather more roughly than he liked.

'It's so boring here, It's really nice to have a live person to protect, especially a half-brother.'

'Hermes?'

'The same! I wondered how long it would take you to recognise me. Sorry about the bit about monsters. Couldn't resist it. So boring here. Of course you are right about this place. It is both real and imagined at the same time, full of tricks of the light and darkness, peopled with your own demons and unknown potentialities. But it's as real as a place of the past can be.'

He chuckled lightly to himself, 'I just appeared didn't I - like that. I'm not usually a jack-in-the box like Panni. It's just that I was here waiting for you and I was bored so I played a bit of a prank.'

Hermes released Alexander from the tightness of his grip which gave him the opportunity to regard him more clearly. He was tall, about six-three but slight, like a long-distance runner, sinewy and meagre. He had the appearance of someone who could run all day without fatigue. He wore a tight-fitting, silver, lycra-style costume with golden embroidered wing motifs.

In his hand he carried a round helmet, equipped with an opaque visor which could be pulled down to cover the eyes. His thin beaky face, was split into a broad grin and he held Alexander at arm's length in deep contemplation. He was such an utter contrast to the dread of the place that Alexander was unable to react, fear was still his dominant emotion.

'I expect you've noticed the helmet.'

Alexander's mind was slowly adjusting to this new invasion of his sanity. Hermes continued unabashed and was clearly taken with the visor element of the helmet he carried.

'It's only a prototype at present, a gift from your friend Hephaestos. What you do is to cover your eyes with the visor thing here which you just pull down, see, like this; then what happens is that...'

'Hermes! You are Hermes?' Alexander communicated credulously. 'You're not a figment of my imagination welled up from some deep sub-conscious of my mind?'

'What did you say?' Hermes turned his attention from the visor. 'Oh, I don't know about that! Since we are both in it, it's probable that neither of us is here really. But that's not the important thing. This is the important thing.'

He indicated the helmet. Alexander was slowly coming out of his state of terror and while he was aware that for some reason his half-brother through Zeus was preoccupied with the visor to the helmet, he was fully preoccupied with the thoughts of a little while ago.

'What do you mean by - we are neither of us here really? - I thought this was Hades - the Underworld.'

'So it is, but to get back to the...'

Alexander interrupted again. 'But you talk like it's an illusion!'

'Yes. So?'

'What does that mean?'

'There you go again,' Hermes complained. 'Here am I about to explain the only way you'll be able to cross the Styx without getting caught and being sent packing with a flea in your ear, and probably much worse to boot, and you behave just like all the other tourists I guide round here, few as they are; asking a lot of unanswerable questions. And you're a difficult one, most of them come with Hades' knowledge, even with his express wish. The last one was a young Navajo name of Barboncito, he, unlike some I could mention, was very attentive. He was specially invited by the Master. You on the other hand are here on Zeus' orders, and probably without Hades' knowledge, though he probably already has an inkling someone's illegally here. So you had better pay close attention to the visor I'm going to give you. Don't worry about them hearing us on L1 if we stay at this level we only transmit very locally. Unless..,' he giggled,'...'Hecate or Persephone are up in one of those trees...'

'What!' Alexander lifled his eyes in consternation.

'Only joking!'

'Please answer my question, and please don't play any more jokes, I promise to keep quiet afterwards.'

'Don't make promises you can't keep my little G.o.dling. All mortals or half-mortals ask me questions when I'm showing them around. It's not an easy place to make sense of for sentient beings, it raises too many questions for their own good. It beats me why people find it necessary to come, when they'll get here soon enough for ever - still, that's not my business, I'm just the messenger. What was it you wanted to know? Articulate simply my lad this is a very complex place.'

'You said - It's possible I don't really exist any more than the past exists - You said it easily as if it was normal. Well it's not normal for me, if this is the past, how can we be in a place that no longer exists? There, that's put simply isn't it?'

'It may be a simple question I grant you, but there's no simple answer. Also I'll better be brief. If what usually happens down here applies in your case, and it may not, given who sent you and why, we don't have a great deal of time to waste chatting rather than getting on with things. What I say will make no real difference to your mission, but I suppose it will help you carry it out better if you can master the basics and make them work for you. Okay? You ready for this?'

Alexander nodded.

'It's a time thing and a now thing and a memory thing. There's a guest in Elysium over there,' he pointed to a blue haze to the far south-west of where they stood, just visible as a blue-silver light on the far horizon. 'He knows a lot about time and relativity and so on. Mind you this place still foxes him mainly because he can't add any new knowledge - has to apply all the old reasoning you see. But I'm getting off the point - the point is - to take the time-thing part of it: timelines exist endlessly, from Chronos onwards and if they have an end no one knows when it will be, or at least didn't until Zeus set the cat among the pigeons with this last will and 2012 and all that - Okay? Now then, people exist on a timeline at any point. That's the now-thing. So depending on who you are, that is to say when you are, or were, or will be, determines your place in time. Simple see? Now for mortals it's a fixed place on the line, you call it a 'life-time'.'

Hermes picked up a twig from the ground and drew a long line in the sandy ground.

'From here to say - here...,' he made a mark at right angles to the line at two places about an inch apart. '...Might be the life of a mortal. A fraction of the infinity of a timeline. Another mortal might be here, the distance between them might be a minute or ten thousand years; and there might be a few or tens of millions sharing the same or overlapping lifetimes. We G.o.ds, who can range up and down the timelines have no such thing as time, as it doesn't affect us, no 'life-times, see? Only being. Now when Uncle Zeus made his treaty with Uncle Hades after the battle of the t.i.tans, mortal people were created soon after. For them Zeus arranged for some timelines to be made into a special skein, with connections so they can link up with the G.o.ds during their 'life-times'. Now, because people only live in the now, that's the only time they've got to connect with the G.o.ds. After their lives were over; their used up time went with them to Hades and Zeus made new connections to the G.o.ds for all the new lives. Similarly with the futures they had left-over, because not everyone lives as long as they could, you know, violent death, pestilence and all that kind of stuff, Zeus ignored their redundant futures as no one in the Pantheon had any use for the future, Olympus is mostly based on the now, Zeus only allows in small doses of future, it's too confusing to dwell too much on the unknown, so they kind of floated about. They were eventually gathered up by Yahweh after flapping about on the timelines like discarded old plastic bags for quite a bit. So you see, Hades has got the acc.u.mulated past and Yahweh picked up the previously discarded but now acc.u.mulated future. Now it turns out that Zeus, who is only concerned with present 'life-times', has an unforeseen problem with Gaia. His predicament is that consecutive 'life-times' are destroying her; and both Hades and Yahweh have their own different solutions for Her; neither of which include the now or the individual creativity of people, which has been compromised by their treatment of Gaia and their own lost faith in G.o.ds to manage things for them.

'So all those dead souls pa.s.sing down the road there, are sorted out for their past and future value by Hades and Yahweh to be used against Zeus for the benefit of Gaia?'

'Exactly, except I don't think either Yahweh nor Hades really cares about Gaia or people and that's what Zeus thinks too. What they really want is the power to be in control of people. But what you see over there making for the checkpoint at Charon Crossing are not even souls. The idea of souls going back into oblivion or forward into a hereafter is a purely mortal conception. It kind of anthropomorphises a heaven and a h.e.l.l as dwelling places for souls. Actually there's no such thing as either. Because there is no such thing as a soul.'