“Yeah, him too. But they were talking about Herodotus saying there were giant ants and gryphons guarding gold mines, and how he made this stuff up.”
“I don’t think so. He wrote what he’d been told. It’s like, he’s writing these histories. And they’re mostly pretty good histories. Loads of weird little details—like, did you know, in Egypt, if a particularly beautiful girl or the wife of a lord or whatever died, they wouldn’t send her to the embalmer for three days? They’d let her body spoil in the heat first.”
“Why? Oh, hold on. Okay, I think I know why. Oh, that’s disgusting.”
“And there’re battles in there, all sorts of normal things. And then there are the gods. Some guy is running back to report on the outcome of a battle and he’s running and running, and he sees Pan in a glade. And Pan says, ‘TeH them to build me a temple here.’ So he says okay, and runs the rest of the way back. And he reports the battle news, and then says, ‘Oh, and by the way, Pan wants you to build him a temple.’ It’s really matter-of-fact, you know?”
“So there are stories with gods in them. What are you trying to say? That these guys had hallucinations?”
“No,” said Shadow. “That’s not it.”
She chewed a hangnail. “I read some book about brains,” she said. “My roommate had it and she kept waving it around. It was like, how five thousand years ago the lobes of the brain fused and before that people thought when the right lobe of the brain said anything it was the voice of some god telling them what to do. It’s just brains.”
“I like my theory better,” said Shadow.
“What’s your theory?”
“That back then people used to run into the gods from time to time.”
“Oh.” Silence: only the rattling of the car, the roar of the engine, the growling of the muffler—which did not sound healthy. Then, “Do you think they’re still there?”
“Where?”
“Greece. Egypt. The islands. Those places. Do you think if you walked where those people walked you’d see the gods?”
“Maybe. But I don’t think people’d know that was what they’d seen.”
“I bet it’s like space aliens,” she said. “These days, people see space aliens. Back then they saw gods. Maybe the space aliens come from the right side of the brain.”
“I don’t think the gods ever gave rectal probes,” said Shadow. “And they didn’t mutilate cattle themselves. They got people to do it for them.”
She chuckled. They drove in silence for a few minutes, and then she said, “Hey, that reminds me of my favorite god story, from Comparative Religion One-oh-one. You want to hear it?”
“Sure,” said Shadow.
“Okay. This is one about Odin. The Norse god. You know? There was some Viking king on a Viking ship—this was back in the Viking times, obviously—and they were becalmed, so he says he’ll sacrifice one of his men to Odin if Odin will send them a wind and get them to land. Okay. The wind comes up, and they get to land. So, on land, they draw lots to figure out who gets sacrificed—and it’s the king himself. Well, he’s not happy about this, but they figure out that they can hang him in effigy and not hurt him. They take a calf’s intestines and loop them loosely around the guy’s neck, and they tie the other end to a thin branch, and they take a reed instead of a spear and poke him with it and go ‘Okay, you’ve been hung’—hanged?—whatever—’you’ve been sacrificed to Odin.’ “
The road curved: Another Town (pop. 300)T,Ti0me of the runner-up to the state under-12s speed-skating championship, two huge giant-economy-sized funeral parlors on each side of the road, and how many funeral jjarlors do you need, Shadow wondered, when you only have three hundred people ... ?
“Okay. As soon as they say Odin’s name, the reed transforms into a spear and stabs the guy in the side, the calf intestines become a thick rope, the branch becomes the bough of a tree, and the tree pulls up, and the ground drops away, and the king is left hanging there to die with a wound in his side and his face going black. End of story. White people have some fucked-up gods, Mister Shadow.”
“Yes,” said Shadow. “You’re not white?”
“I’m Cherokee,” she said.
“Full-blooded?”
“Nope. Only four pints. My mom was white. My dad was a real reservation Indian. He came out this way, eventually married my mom, had me, then when they split he went back to Oklahoma.”
“He went back to the reservation?”
“No. He borrowed money and opened a Taco Bell knock-off called Taco Bill’s. He does okay. He doesn’t like me. Says I’m half-breed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He’s a jerk. I’m proud of my Indian blood. It helps pay my college tuition. Hell, one day it’ll probably help get me a job, if I can’t sell my bronzes.”
“There’s always that,” said Shadow.