The Inconvenient God Read online

  “Any time you want the tracks to go, you’d just press it,” Mr. Haksola continued, caressing the tip of the detonator.

  “So, maybe best not to fiddle with it,” I said, laying a hand on Mr. Haksola’s arm. He frowned and jerked his arm away with surprising force.

  “Put it down is what the decommissioner’s trying to say,” said Derok, tackling Mr. Haksola and pinning his arms spread-eagled. I pried the detonator from Mr. Haksola’s fingers.

  “I don’t get it,” said Dila plaintively. “What’s going on?”

  “I think your friend just stopped us from getting blown up,” An-maya replied.

  “Can you deactivate it or, or disarm it, or do whatever needs to be done to it to keep it from detonating anything?” I asked Derok.

  “Yeah, but that still leaves explosives on the tracks,” he said, releasing Mr. Haksola and taking the detonator from me.

  Being tackled seemed to have brought Mr. Haksola back to himself. He clutched his head and moaned, then, catching sight of me and the others, spluttered out, “Decommissioner, what are you doing here? Who are these young people?”

  “We’re here for the same reason you are—to prevent Ohin from causing an incident. That is why you’re out here, right?”

  “I thought—I wanted…” He flinched for no discernable reason, and glanced about furtively.

  I turned to the crew chief and put my hands on her shoulders. “I need you to put the explosives you laid down back in that case,” I said, staring at her steadily.

  She blinked, and her eyes came into focus on my face. She scowled.

  “You again. First you mess up my schedule at the shrine and now…” She looked round at the tracks and the dark hills. “What the… What in seven hells are we doing out here?”

  “My work—which you’re interrupting, Sweeting.”

  That was Ohin, letting the nickname I’d shared with An-maya fall carelessly from his lips the way only a delinquent god could, but he wasn’t presenting as Ohin, divine failure. This was Ohin the angry novice, with his shaved head and full skirts, but now surrounded by a golden light that blotted everything from sight but him and pulled the breath from my lungs. I couldn’t hope to deal with him in his glory; I had to bleed off some of his power.

  “You’re far from your precinct—it must be taxing you,” I said, hoping to goad him. “Do you feel attenuated?”

  “My weakness is stronger than anything in your bag of tricks,” he replied. “Where is that bag, by the way? Ah. On fire, I see.” Beyond the aureole of Ohin’s radiance, I was dimly aware of a snapping, crackling sound and the dance of flames against the night sky, up on the lookout.

  “If you’re so powerful, why are you making innocent people do your dirty work for you? Can’t manage on your own?”

  “Those are not innocent people,” he shot back. “He employed you to destroy me, and they tried to dismantle my shrine.”

  “That shrine’s to a god you should never have become: a layabout, a laughingstock, a minor irritation.”

  Ohin’s aura flared to blinding brightness, accompanied by a blast of heat that sent me staggering back. I heard cries from Mr. Haksola, An-maya, and the others. I touched my face, felt blisters. I blinked but could see nothing.

  “You shouldn’t taunt me,” Ohin said, a disembodied voice in the blackness.

  “I’m not taunting; I’m speaking truth. And yet however worthless the god Ohin is, he isn’t a murderer, and nor was the novice Ohin. Now, though—this sabotage you’re planning will almost certainly kill people.” Sight was returning to my eyes; I could make out silhouettes and shades of gray.

  “Consider it restitution. They didn’t kill just one novice when they killed me; they killed a sacred language—you told me that.” Anger still threaded through Ohin’s words, but what I felt from him more strongly was grief—and exhaustion. As my vision grew clearer, I saw that his aura had faded entirely. He looked no more substantial than a common graveyard ghost.

  In that condition, Ohin was eminently decommissionable, but that had ceased to be my task—when? When Amaya had first manifested? When Mr. Haksola had released me from the obligation? Or maybe from my first encounter with Ohin.

  “That language can live again, with your help,” I said. “You know all the litanies and prayers. If you were the god of the sacred tongue of Amaya, you could help bring it back to life.”

  “I’m what the university made me,” Ohin said, the embers of his anger brightening, but only for a moment. With alarm, I realized Ohin was very nearly gone.

  “They were trying to protect—”

  “—their own skins,” he interrupted, in bitter tones.

  “Yes,” I conceded, “but also the students, the institution, Amaya even, from the wrath of the Polity. And in the end, thanks to that self-serving action, you survive to be reborn as a new divinity.” My heart was racing as I put the suggestion forward.

  Silence. Was he still there?

  “I can decommission Ohin, the god of dropouts,” I continued. “Your worshipers will easily switch their allegiance to Mischief, which suits the Ministry of Divinities’ long-term goals. Mr. Haksola can testify that you’ve fulfilled the mandate placed upon you at your apotheosis—both the ostensible one and the actual one. Once you are freed of that role, and before your spirit flies from here, I can elevate you with the new mandate. How does that sound to you? Acceptable?”

  There was no answer, nothing but the sound of the wind in the cypresses and the crackling of the flames on the lookout.

  “Has he died? Have you killed him?” Anger and panic in An-maya’s voice.

  “Acceptable.” Ohin’s reply was no more than a whisper in the wind.

  With shaking hands, I motioned everyone back a few paces.

  “I call on those gathered here to attest to the completion of service of the apotheosis Ohin,” I intoned. The flames from the wildfire on the lookout surged higher, and the fragrance of the resin beads enveloped us. Mr. Haksola spoke up firmly, and after the barest hesitation, An-maya and the boys joined in.

  Ohin’s spirit was lifting, and the air and ground grew cold in mourning for the departure of divinity.

  Quickly, before he could disappear, I had to re-apotheosize him. I’d learned the ceremony, but hadn’t had to recite the words since my qualifying exams, more than ten years ago. Worse, in that cold-and-growing-colder air, I feared I lacked the spiritual authority to do it. I tried to commandeer Mr. Haksola’s—he represented the university, and the university had elevated Ohin in the first place—but only a trickle of authority was flowing from him.

  “Let my action be guided by your desire, honored one!” I called out. It was a desperate prayer.

  An-maya’s face sprang into visibility in the gloom, illuminated by a sourceless light. Her expression was uncharacteristically mature and affectionate: The goddess Amaya was gracing us in the body of her namesake.

  She spoke. “Thank you, Sweeting, for your good work. Ohin my friend! I call on you to join me. You shall be called Lian, and you will teach the youngsters who serve me the words that delight me.”

  And there he was again, the novice with the shaved head and woolen skirts, but all the sorrow and anger had departed from him. His face was open and there was wonderment in his eyes.

  “You, Haksola Krayik, will proclaim this elevation,” ordered Amaya, with An-maya’s voice.

  “Yes, honored one,” gasped Mr. Haksola.

  “You, Matene Funa, will oversee the building of precincts for Lian near to my own ancient shrine.”

  “Yes, honored one,” said the work crew chief.

  “And you, my addled children, will learn my tongue,” the goddess continued, addressing Derok and Dila.

  “Begging your pardon, honored one, but we’re engineers,” said Derok, with astonishing temerity.

  “Not very good ones—you should try something new.” There was a smile in the words.

  “Yes, honored one.”

  And
then the figure of Ohin—now Lian—dissolved into a bright glow. Silent explosions of light at several points along the railroad tracks rose to join that luminous cloud, which condensed into a shooting-star pinprick and disappeared skyward. The light went out from An-maya’s face.

  “Wait, come back!” she called, whether to Amaya or Lian I wasn’t sure.

  “I’m calling in that wildfire,” the crew chief remarked, tapping her unicom. On the lookout, orange flames reached for the stars.

  “Seven hells, the moto-velos!” I said. There was no way we could return the way we’d come. “Looks like we’ll be walking back.”

  “Like the Polity delegation two hundred years ago, only instead of bringing a new exam, we’re bringing news of a new god,” mused An-maya.

  “I hope this is satisfactory… I think this will be satisfactory,” Mr. Haksola muttered to himself.

  I hoped so too. I was going to have to find an acceptable way to report the results of this assignment to my superiors.

  “Let’s get going,” said Derok. “I’m getting hungry.”

  We set off toward the university, the scent of divinity still clinging to us.

  About the Author

  Francesca Forrest is the author of Pen Pal (2013), a hard-to-classify novel from the margins, as well as short stories that have appeared in Not One of Us, Strange Horizons, and other online and print venues. She’s currently working on a post-apocalypse novel that focuses on the hope rather than the horror.

  She blogs at asakiyume.dreamwidth.org, and you can follow her on Twitter at @morinotsuma.

  About the Publisher

  Annorlunda Books is a small press that publishes books to inform, entertain, and make you think. We publish short writing (novella length or shorter), fiction or non-fiction.

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  Copyright

  Copyright © 2018 Francesca Forrest.

  Cover design and ilustration by Likhain.

  Editing Services from Nerine Dorman.

  All Rights Reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced without express permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations.

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  Published in the United States by Annorlunda Books.

  Queries: [email protected].

  First edition.

  ISBN: 978-1-944354-43-5