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  He was filled with righteous indignation. How dare these people mislead him like that? Not only had this Liz, Lamont and these children wrecked the mission, and destroyed his way home, they'd also deceived him about his mission objective.

  "I have a message for you from Harkness," the raven continued. "The Americans you are associating with are known collaborators and sympathizers with unfriendly foreign powers. We need you to act as our eyes and ears in their midst."

  Chapter 29

  "So now we need to know what you plan, Jerry," said Loki, once they returned to Ran's cliff dwelling. "After all, you have now received two of the perceived sources of wisdom in the Norse world. You should be, if not a match for Odin, at least able to see through some of his strategies."

  "Yes," rumbled Thor. "I've heard Loki's side of the story. There is some truth in what he says. Actually, to be fair, everything I've looked closely at proved to be true. Not polite, but true. Odin bespelled Loki and Sigyn's son Váli—a blameless boy—and thereby killed their son Narfi. That calls for a blood-price. Loki has put that price as Odin's own life. Many of us, myself among them, played a part in Loki's capture. Odin, Heimdall and Skadi imprisoned Loki for what Odin told us was for the benefit of all. Odin was always too good at talking us into doing things for his benefit."

  Loki snorted. "And he was very good at telling us we would not understand his reasons for doing them, because they were high matters which only he could understand."

  "It's always a mistake to hand over too much thinking to someone else," said Liz. She nudged Thrúd. "Especially men."

  Thor's daughter giggled.

  Jerry rubbed his brow. "Wisdom is maybe the wrong word for what I've acquired. Or rather maybe it is the right word, but we understand it wrongly. We all drank from the well. I didn't mean to, but I swallowed enough."

  Lamont held out his hands. "And I can't say it gave me any insights into how to treat Marie's cancer or that it made Tolly and Ty any older or wiser."

  "If I have my geography right, Mirmir's well is one of the deepest places in this Ur-universe. You've got to understand the symbolism here. The water in Mirmir's well has passed through every place in this world, filtering ever downwards. By the laws of contagion it's therefore still part of all the things it has passed through. You were drinking in the land . . . I suspect you would find it very hard to get lost, or starve now. You wouldn't know precisely how you knew, but you'd know."

  "Great. Really useful," said Lamont. "Especially to someone wanting to find his wife, and cure her. Not to mention organizing a great apocalyptic battle."

  Jerry raised an eyebrow. "If you think about it, Lamont, it at least would help you find her. And to a general it should be priceless."

  "But how does it help us to capture Odin? We should have struck when he was at Mirmir's well," said Thor, cheerfully ignoring the fact that they had been vastly outnumbered.

  Counting, Jerry suspected, was not one of Thor's strengths. Or perhaps his strength lay in the fact that he didn't count, before he got into a fight.

  Jerry tugged his straggly little goatee-beard. "I need to think about it. Asgard's defenses are designed to keep out frost and mountain giants. If I recall rightly, it is the flood caused by Jörmungand and the fire caused by Surt that destroys the world at Ragnarok."

  "Surt and the sons of Muspell did figure in my plans," admitted Loki. "An alliance of convenience against a common enemy, as it were."

  "A mistake," rumbled Thor. "We've got a sort of common background with the frost and mountain giants. We've married them, had them live amongst us, like Loki, been friends with some like Ægir, and Grid, fought with them, wandered their lands. We share much of the same opinions and attitudes. The South and East are closed lands. Muspell and Surt's dominions have an ancient enmity with the Vanir, but no common blood or traditions."

  Jerry was surprised by the perspicacity of Thor's analysis. "Yes, culture," he said knowledgeably. "You know why Americans stir the honey into their tea clockwise, and South Africans like Liz, do so counterclockwise?"

  "What is clockwise?" asked Thor.

  Jerry demonstrated with a twirling finger. "Like this. Counterclockwise is like that."

  Thor thought hard. "To symbolize the movement of the whirlpool . . . but then why the other way?"

  "Coriolis force!" said Emmitt. "It goes the other way in the southern hemisphere."

  "Nope," said Jerry. "To dissolve the honey and make the tea sweet."

  Loki cracked up. Liz scowled. Thor was still standing and tugging at his beard. "So: what you are saying is that we may do things entirely differently for the same reason? That despite our differences we have similar needs?"

  "I suppose that's true. But what I was saying was that sometimes the superficiality of culture and tradition stop us thinking about things clearly and differently. They set our patterns of thought and hide the underlying truth. We come from outside your culture without that baggage. Maybe we can find the right answers."

  "And there I thought that you had just found an opportunity to make a dumb joke," said Liz. "How I maligned you."

  "Well, that too," admitted Jerry, grinning. "But seriously, I need more information, preferably inside information about Asgard, and about what Odin plans."

  "I have a spy. A very greedy spy and I am nearly out of his price," admitted Liz. "One of Odin's ravens, Hugin. He's not the brightest, but he did tell us that you were being taken to Mirmir's well."

  "What do you bribe him with? Roadkill?" asked Jerry.

  "Sort of," said Liz. "You know how all our American stuff changed to being whatever was contemporaneous here?"

  Jerry nodded. "It at least has to be within the framework of reference for the Ur-universe."

  "Well, I had a large box of those multiflavored jelly beans. I bought them for Lamont and Marie's kids, not just because we don't get them in South Africa," she said defensively. "And one of the flavors they changed to is something quite gross, but Hugin regards it as a sort of gastronomic heroin. But I only have one left."

  Loki coughed. "Ran, dear. Would there be any chance of using Grotti's handmill?"

  The giantess who had been quietly listening nodded. "If you are careful." She got up and walked out.

  "A grotty handmill?" Liz asked.

  "As I remember the story," Jerry said, "some king of Denmark bought the mill and two giant slave-girls. The mill would grind out whatever you told it to. So he made it grind gold, but he did not give the slave-girls any rest so they ground out a horde of Vikings."

  "Mysing's horde," said Loki. "A terrible menace."

  "And Mysing set the slave-girls to grinding salt," said Thor.

  "Salt?" Liz looked puzzled.

  Jerry grinned. "It was very precious in those days. It was the chief preservative before we had deep freezes, Liz."

  "True. We still salt tons of fish on the west coast in South Africa."

  "And in those days the sea itself was not salty," explained Thor. "So Mysing made them grind salt."

  "But once again he neglected to give them rest," said Loki, in a sing-song voice. "So they ground faster and faster until Mysing's ships sank under the weight of the salt, and they went on churning the wheels in a whirlpool, spilling salt into the sea."

  "That's labor activism!" said Liz. "So what happened next?"

  Loki shrugged. "The giantesses Fenja and Menja fell into Ran's embrace, which is what happens if you cling onto a millstone in the open ocean. The stones stopped turning before the sea became solid salt, and the stones found their way into Ran's net, as all the treasures lost under the sea do."

  Ran came back carrying two enormous millstones linked with a rusty contraption.

  "And here I thought I'd said goodbye to rusted bolts forever," said Lamont. "Give it to me. I'll do my best to fix it." He looked critically at the rust. "No guarantees, though."

  "Lamont, if anyone can fix it, it'll be you," said Liz.

  "Flattery gets you time sanding and oil
ing." Lamont tried to pick it up, and failed. "And I'll need some help from Thor and his belt of strength to carry it to the workshop."

  Lamont restored the handmill to working order with some patience, a lot of swearing, more oil, and a grave shortage of Miles Davis to listen to. It was the latter he complained about most. "Unfortunately, I didn't find any giantess attached to it to restore. And the idea was plainly that with the heavy wheels, inertia would keep them turning. But trust me, starting them is not going to be easy."

  "A job for you and me, Papa," said Thrúd.

  Thor looked alarmed. "It's hardly a job for a warrior. Or even a male, working a mill-stone."

  Liz prodded him in the kidneys. "The times they are a changing."

  "And not always for the better," Thor grumbled, taking the handle.

  "Consider it an opportunity to get in touch with your feminine side, which every artist needs to do," said Liz. "You need it for your ikabena skills to flourish. And if you need more help with it I'm sure I can find you a mop."

  Thor strained to look over his shoulder.

  "What are you doing?" asked Thrúd.

  "Trying to look at my back," answered Thor.

  "Why?"

  "Well, I've seen my front," explained Thor, "and that's not the feminine side of me. It must be in the middle of my back where I can't reach."

  For someone without a feminine back-side he churned the wheel very effectively. Perhaps he had one after all.

  "It seems to have made them in all the flavors," said Liz, inspecting some of the jelly beans. They'd made an enormous pile—about thirty yards wide—and they'd barely set the wheels spinning.

  "That's a relief," said Loki, "as you said the ones that the ravens liked were revolting, and you have enough here for bribes for half the ravens in Midgard." He picked up one of the beans. "What are the other flavors like?"

  "Some of them are delicious. Lamont, lucky fellow, got Arctic cloudberry."

  Loki put the jelly bean into his mouth, and chewed. Then, nodded appreciatively. "Very good, these. This one is like fine rakfisk. Delicious! So what do the revolting ones taste like?"

  It was all a question of what you were used to and had been brought up with, Liz supposed. But she decided it would be wise to avoid answering Loki's question. "Well, we have bribes aplenty. I think I probably have provisions for an army."

  A little later Jerry sat with Liz, on the cliff top, their fingers entwined.

  "I need to work on Sigyn," said Jerry.

  "Why?"

  "Well, Sigyn and Odin are similar in a way."

  Liz snorted. "What? Is one of her eyes false?"

  Jerry grinned. "No, Odin would destroy everything rather than give up power and accept punishment. And Sigyn is just as implacable in her quest for revenge. She would destroy the entire universe rather than let Odin go unpunished. Loki wants vengeance. But if all the people in the world begged him . . . well, he might compromise. Sigyn, never. Odin must die. She might compromise on Heimdall, and she was prepared to let Skadi off the hook to a large extent. But Odin is non-negotiable. If the universe must die to kill him, so be it. So: Their reasons are vastly different, but the end result will be the same."

  Liz grimaced. "Classic African dictatorship dilemma. Compromise isn't possible, Jerry. Even if you could talk Sigyn into it, Odin would never agree. By the sounds of it, he's made so many enemies that if he stopped being top dog everyone would come hunting for a piece of his hide. Just like Mengistu or Mugabe or Charles Taylor, Odin either has to flee somewhere he can enjoy his ill-gotten gains in safety—or stay in absolute power. People like that will only flee if it is that or die, and they'll only go just before the absolute end with lots of dead bodies around them—if you manage to convince them that their precious selves will be safe and comfortable. Otherwise they'd destroy the universe rather than lose. They are the universe as far as they're concerned."

  "I suppose so," Jerry chewed his lip. "Megalomania's not exactly limited to Africa, for sure. No other lives have any value to Odin at all."

  "So what are you going to do?" she asked.

  Jerry shrugged. "Rattle some very large sabers. And then offer him a safe out."

  "You're going to find him a safe haven?" Liz shook her head. "Honey, this universe isn't big enough for him and Sigyn."

  "Offer him a way out of this universe, is what I meant."

  Home! Well, the U.S. Funny, since she'd recovered Jerry she hadn't thought much about it. Coffee, toilet paper and deodorant would be nice. But home for her was really where the heart was, and the trial by ordeal had given her a good idea just where hers was located. "Have you thought of a way?"

  "No," said Jerry grimly. "But he doesn't have to know that. He just has to know we've come from outside."

  "I suppose so. So now we need to raise recruits. Lots of them."

  Jerry raised his eyebrows. "Well, 'raise' is the right word. We're due to leave for a visit to Loki's youngest daughter. The responsible member of the family."

  Liz snorted. "Compared to Loki or Fenrir, that's not hard."

  Jerry gave her a wry grin. "Jörmungand and Fenrir refuse to go along because little Hel always preaches at them."

  "Jörgy is just misunderstood," said Liz defensively. "She's still very young, and having trouble with her emotions and her hormones."

  "Hel is younger. But she has both of them, and Loki too, doing avoidance. Fortunately, she likes Sigyn."

  "And is she a really yummy recruiting poster?" asked Liz.

  "In a morbid sense, yes," answered Jerry. "She is queen of the dead that do not die in battle."

  "Oh. So we're getting all the grannies armed with their zimmer frames are we? Odin, quiver in your boots."

  Jerry shook his head. "Liz, you're the best proof I could ever find of the need to teach real history at schools."

  She reached over and gave him a one-armed squeeze. "We only ever did SA history. And there wasn't all that much of it, so we did the Great Trek many times. All right. Tell me what obvious thing I have missed."

  "That most people in history died young of things we now consider treatable. And that during wars a lot of warriors died from everything from septic wounds to diarrhea—far more than ever died in actual fighting. Hel's warriors alone outnumber those in Valhöll by five to one, at least. And Hel is a ministering angel, laboring without the advantages of Odin and Asgard. She treats as well as she can."

  "I do remember someone telling me that it needs a multiple of people to the defenders' number . . . could have been three, could have been five, to take a fortified position."

  "I imagine it depends on the fortifications and what you've got to throw at them," said Jerry. "Artillery, and the like, you know. And we have one thing that Odin fears most, by the way he was trying to find out."

  "What? Wisdom?"

  "Yes. Well, knowledge. We have knowledge that a Norse god could not have acquired."

  She pulled him closer. "Balloons again?"

  "Maybe. I must talk to those agent types. I wish they were as useful as Cruz and Mac were. Anyway, right now I'm finding it hard to concentrate on such distant matters." He pushed back an errant curl from her forehead.

  She kissed him. "Good. Come and concentrate on something closer at hand. And don't get distracted!"