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  Odin put him down. "Bind him and guard him. We've searched every inch of this building, and I think that Loki has escaped, from what happened in the kitchen. But I'll check."

  So Jerry was tied up and left to finish chewing the piece of apple. He had a feeling he'd better enjoy it, and that the next while was going to be rough.

  He was dead right.

  Odin came back, fuming. And then began a long, exhausting, unrelenting interrogation. The only thing Jerry had to hold on to was what Loki had told him: to tell Odin what he wanted to know was also to die. And there were no two ways about it, that bit of apple had done him the world of good. He wasn't ready to die.

  Gradually the questioning shifted. Now Odin wanted to know how Jerry had helped Loki to free himself. And just what Jerry had done with Kvasir's mead and Heimdall's horn.

  At least it was easy not to betray anything about the last two. But what he did say was enough to convince Odin that he was a very powerful sorcerer. Or maybe it was whatever Skadi—still apparently stuck in Loki's pit under an enchanted and only slightly used handkerchief—had said to Odin.

  Eventually, after what seemed like several eternities, Odin stopped questioning him, and Jerry was put into a fairly ordinary cell under constant guard. It would appear that whatever Odin had said to his Einherjar it had included some pretty harsh words on the value of staying sober and not ending up in the pit with Skadi.

  The Krim registered protests with the device. The Krim-possessed god needed some self-will. It was no pleasure, no vicarious experience otherwise, to enjoy the pain and death energies, to revel in the flesh. But this one had far too much and it was as stupid as it was devious. Yes. There was a need for the belief-constructs necessary to animate this Ur-world, but this prukrin-energy source had threatened the Krim before. It must die, and die soon. As soon as possible!

  The device was not designed to agree or disagree with the masters. But if it could have nodded its head it would have. The energy requirements of keeping a prukrin transfer portal active were too high when there was no fresh material to input.

  Fortunately, from what it had gleaned of the physiology of the victim species, what the local god planned would perhaps not be fatal for a god, but was going to be rapidly so for a man.

  Chapter 21

  "I've been thinking," said Cruz, herding them all ahead of him like a flock of geese, "that we'd better stay indoors and away from the windows for a while. Professor Tremelo says we can camp out here in his Chicago headquarters for a while. And, uh, I told the dragons they could hold, and probably eat—with permission and ketchup—anyone they caught sneaking around this place. We're awkward witnesses. And I got the feeling from the PSA crowd that this business they dragged us into isn't really legit. And the other thing I got was that they don't care about staying within the limits of what is. That Megane clown, for sure. Whether he's acting on orders from higher up or not, who knows?"

  Mac hugged Arachne again. "If the Pissants don't go over the colonel's head and suddenly get us posted to Colombia or Afghanistan or something."

  There was a tremendous uproar outside.

  "Keep back. Keep low." Cruz moved up to the window along the wall and took a careful look outside. Then, grinned. "It's okay. The next wave of the Seventh Cavalry just arrived. Maybe Prof Tremelo should have told the guys on entry control that Bes was on his way. I'd better go down and get him to put them down."

  "Bes!" said Throttler delightedly. "Let's go."

  The dwarf-god from Punt, the Egyptian god of protection, was standing just outside the building with two MPs and they were making the racket for him. People tend to do that when you hold them upside down by one leg and swing them around.

  Bes still wore a loin-cloth and a cloak made from a very short, wide leopard. He still had a top-knot with bobbing ostrich feathers. He'd acquired a broad wrestling championship belt, and an awful lot of gold bling since they'd last seen him. His laugh and his beard were as broad as ever. "Cruz!" he said delightedly. "And my favorite lady friend!"

  Throttler blushed. "Hello handsome," she said coyly, as Bes dropped the two dazed men and leaped to hug them. It was almost as dangerous as an affectionate squeeze from a dragon.

  "The Prof sent for him," said Cruz to one of the victims, who was reaching for a side arm.

  Bes looked sternly at the man. "Never ever call a man 'shorty' unless you are very sure that he is."

  Cruz shook his head at the MP. "Man, are you crazy! Look, confirm it if you like, but this is Bes. As the guys from the WWF will explain, you don't get in his way or mess with him."

  "He assaulted us!"

  "So you've got a story to tell your grandkids one day," said Cruz with a grin.

  "And you're alive to tell it," said Bes with a growl. "It appears that I'm acquiring believers here. So . . . how does that American saying go, friend Cruz? Yeah. Go ahead," he said cheerfully to the MP fumbling with his side arm. "Take that weapon out. Make my deus."

  "Don't let's get hasty, Bes. He was just trying to do his job," said Throttler. "I wonder how many riddles he knows?"

  "He's not kidding," said Cruz, quietly, to the other MP. "Nobody got too badly hurt, yet. Let's just call it a day. He's a sort of special bodyguard the Prof called in."

  The guy blinked and shook his head. "I saw him on The Best Damned Sports Show Ever. I thought it was faked. Hey, Dodson, cool off, willya? It's just a misunderstanding, I guess, and like you said, nobody got hurt too badly." He turned to Bes. "You wouldn't autograph something for me?"

  "Sure," said Bes, showing how fast Las Vegas had accustomed him to certain American customs.

  After Bes signed the man's gunbelt, they moved into the building to fill Bes in on developments, using the service garage entrance at the back. The garage had the only door big enough for Throttler to pass through. Cruz couldn't help noticing that Throttler had a wing protectively over Bes. As if anyone needed it less!

  When Bes had heard the whole story, in various choruses, and had somehow gotten Tina to sit on his knee—when she wouldn't go too close to anyone else—he said, "Well? When do we leave? The sphinx-image in Vegas will do for a point of departure. It's about time I popped back in to Egypt anyway. I need to tell Harmakhis to sit on anyone he sees going near his nose. Best way to teach them the meaning of 'fundamentalism.' "

  Cruz had to think who Harmakhis was—oh, yeah. The Egyptian sphinx. With a nose, Jerry had explained, that had been hacked off by some Muslim fanatic in the fifteenth century. Being sat on by a sphinx might put his ideas about defacing other people's monuments into a new perspective.

  Mac shook his head. "It's not that simple, Bes. They haven't gone to Greece or Egypt. Prof Tremelo thinks it's Scandinavian myth."

  "Got any giants for me to beat up?" asked Bes curiously.

  "Lots. And lots of other dwarves there too. But it's kind of a tricky question just how we'd get there."

  "Can't you fly there, my dear?" asked Bes of Throttler.

  "I don't think so," said Throttler. "They're heathens. They don't believe in the sphinx."

  "We'll have to get there and do some missionary work then," said Bes, rubbing his hands.

  She nodded. "And some riddling."

  The secretary came in. "I have a call from Professor Tremelo for Sergeant Cruz," she said, trying not to look at the Sphinx's exposed frontage. Cruz had to admit that he'd almost forgotten that she wasn't wearing anything.

  Miggy Tremelo sounded exasperated. And like he wanted their company with whatever was making him feel that way. Which was why he was ordering them—in the politest fashion—to get everyone, including the dragons, to Washington.

  "I've spoken with the Air Force. They're arranging air transport. Someone will be in touch shortly."

  Cruz had encountered dragon feelings about air-traffic before. The skies belonged to them, not these upstarts. "Uh . . . Professor. Wouldn't it be more sensible to fly everyone here?"

  "Much," said the professor. "But it would
also be easier to take a tortoise out of its shell."

  Or get a dragon into a plane, thought Cruz, but he didn't say anything. There was a dangerously explosive quality to Professor Tremelo's voice, that said "don't argue."

  They did, after a while, settle down to sleep that night in their jury-rigged bedrooms in Tremelo's offices.

  Well, most of them. Bes, the protector, sat like a gargoyle, silent and unmoving on the roof of the building. Cruz felt genuinely sorry for any Pissant who might try anything during those dark hours. Bes would just take them by the scruff of the neck and give them a shake. It was a quick and efficient way of dealing with rats.

  But the night passed with no untoward events. So, the next morning, the dragons on flat-beds ("don't want them flying in city limits") and the rest in appropriate vehicles were whisked off to meet their airplane. The Air Force cargo plane would be landing at Midway airport instead of O'Hare, since that was closer. Nobody—certainly not the drivers—particularly wanted to be hauling two dragons all the way across the metropolitan Chicago area.

  Cruz was dead right. Once they got there, the dragons were not impressed. Not impressed to the point of open rebellion.

  "If the gods had intended us to fly in one of those devices they would have given us hand luggage, not wings," said Smitar, so convincingly you might almost think that he knew what hand luggage was.

  "Besides, I want to accumulate those frequent flier miles. I can't do that if I'm not flying," said Bitar, showing that he too could eavesdrop without understanding a word.

  "It flies. You don't have to," said the misguided fellow they'd sent to organize this flight. "Now please get your animals in the plane, Sergeant."

  "With respect, sir," said Cruz. "They're not my animals. And even if they were how do you expect me do that? I can't carry them on my back."

  "Soldier, if I needed your cheek . . ." He stopped because Bes had stepped between them, reached up, and pulled him down to Bes height.

  Bes had an airplane wheel chock in his other hand. He let go of the air force officer, took it in both hands and squeezed it flat. "I don't think I can carry a dragon that doesn't want to go either," Bes said, "and I'm fairly strong. So why don't you show us how it is done, eh? You get Bitar in and we'll follow with Smitar."

  He twisted the steel wheel chock into a pretzel. "Now. We'll watch."

  The officer stepped back.

  "Piece of advice, sir," said Mac. "The dragons are a rare and protected species. And don't argue with Bes. He's got no respect for rank. No real understanding of it, in fact."

  That, thought Cruz, was the understatement of a lifetime. Bes was a gen-u-ine god—so what did he care about the difference between a captain, a major and a colonel?

  But all he said was, "Bitar, don't eat him."

  "Phtt. Too small and smelly," said Bitar, tasting the fellow with his tongue.

  Now looking nervous instead of belligerent, the officer took a walkie-talkie from his waist-band. "Look. I'm just doing my job. But if you want to make it difficult, I'll need some heavy equipment."

  Cruz kept his face impassive and said nothing. When the low-loader device came trundling along, along with a team of burly loaders, the officer said, "Now get on, beast."

  "Why?" asked Bitar curiously.

  "We need to move you. Or we can hoist you on with a crane."

  Bitar brightened. "Cranes are biggish birds. Do you mind having it plucked first? The feathers get stuck in my teeth."

  He leaned over and took a small nibble at the lowbed-forklift thing. "Terrible flavor. Anyway, you're supposed to carry me. Not put me on that thing. And I am not going into that flying machine. Not into its mouth." He swung his tail, putting a twenty-foot-long, six-inch-deep dent into the hangar's steel door. Then he tipped the lowbed-forklift onto its side with negligent ease. The operator had to hurriedly clamber out of his little cubicle, onto the ground.

  Cruz took pity on the man. "Sir, can I suggest something?"

  The officer took a deep breath. "Besides telling me that I have just made a fool of myself? But it can be done, Sergeant. I'm not beaten yet."

  "Yes, sir. It probably can be done. But Smitar will probably also knock the airplane apart if he doesn't want to be in there. And they haven't got a tranquilizer that can deal with the dragons either."

  "Oh." The officer studied the dent in the hangar's steel door and the tonnage of his loader.

  Cruz cleared his throat. "Generally the dragons are pretty fond of food, sir. And you can reason with them. You could try bribery."

  "You said 'food,' " said Bitar. "Don't tell me you didn't, Cruz. I heard you!"

  "Yes, I did," said Cruz. "You were just going to tell me about in-flight catering, weren't you, sir?"

  Smitar licked his lips. "Do you serve maidens?"

  The officer took a deep breath. "We serve nearly anyone, as long as they're over twenty-one, and on the airplane. And I hear you're going first class. Food and drinks on the house."

  "Now can you put the drinks trolley back on its wheels?" said Cruz.

  Bitar did, nearly effortlessly. "Is it normal to eat on a house?"

  "Of course," said Smitar. "Bigger than a plate, isn't it? How do they get the house inside the plane?"

  It took a lot more cajoling and a substantial menu, with ketchup and hot sauce in industrial quantities, before the two dragons were persuaded aboard. And there was no way they were staying there without the others for company.

  The dragons filled up a lot of floor space, and persuading them that they could not leave their tails out, and then strapping them down took even more diplomacy. It would have taken the dragons a few days to fly to Washington under their own steam. But it might have been easier.

  The rest of them were at least cooperative about getting on and strapping in, but finally they and a small mountain of dragonish delicacies parted with a sweating officer, and taxied onto the runway.

  "I need to go to the bathroom," said Priones.

  "Tie a knot in it and pray the dragons didn't hear you," said Medea nervously. "Otherwise they'll want to go too."

  That wasn't a pretty thought. But it was only when they were coming in to land at the end of their journey that Cruz realized that there was another ugly thought he hadn't had. Dragons need to eat to fly. They produced huge volumes of lighter-than-air biogas that made them bulge like oversize balloons. Liz De Beer said that was the only possible way they could get airborne. It was a smelly if effective solution to getting something really big to fly under its own muscle power.

  Only now they were stuck in an airplane with them. And not only was it not going to be nice to be here—that gas was flammable. It was also toxic.

  And by the looks of it, their in-flight greed had seen to it that the dragons were not likely to fit out of the cargo bay. Cruz, his mouth suddenly dry, ignored the seatbelt warning and went up to talk to the pilots.

  The copilot came and had a look. And then there was some very hasty consultation with the flight-controllers.

  It was not a textbook landing. But it was a wise one. So was opening the nose cone and the tail bay . . . and retreating a long way to a fire truck while the C-5A rocked . . .

  Miggy Tremelo appeared to be in a far better temper when he met up with them upon their arrival in Washington. "Easy flight, I trust?" he asked cheerfully. "Let me introduce you all to our Norse mythology consultant, Dr. Lars Gunnarsson."

  Mac had expected all mythology experts to look like Jerry Lukacs. It was a bit of a shock to find that this one looked as if he'd be more at home in a Norse myth himself. Okay, so he was a little old for it, with some white hair in his beard, but you sort of expected him to be wearing a mailshirt and a bear cloak.