Sam could see the logic in this. It was inhuman logic, but logic nonetheless.
"So," Zeus said. "What's it to be? What's the answer? Yes or no?"
Another Landesman presenting her with another life-defining decision.
"I need time," Sam said. "Time to think."
Zeus leaned back. Sighed. "I feared you might say that."
"Just a few days."
"Sounds like a no to me."
"No, it's not definitely a no," Sam said, and was surprised to find that this was the truth. It was 99 % a no, but somewhere in her that 1 % of yes was whispering softly, wheedling, saying, Why not? Why not?
At last Zeus had relented. A few days. No, pin it down. She had to decide by this coming Saturday.
Sunday, Sam had said. Three whole days from now.
Sunday, Zeus had agreed. He couldn't spare her any longer than that. He needed his Artemis, especially with the mortals making their move on Olympus. This lot could be fought off, but if Sam was right and more followed in their wake, then he wanted the full Dodekatheonic complement of Olympians available.
Now, at the council of war, having heard out his fellow Olympians, Zeus delivered his verdict.
"I am of the view," he said, "that any attack on Olympus must be met with immediate and devastating counterforce. Let us wait, though, until whoever is coming has got here. Let us let the mortals assemble outside, and let us let them make the opening gambit. That will save us the trouble of going to seek them out and also make us look like the aggrieved party, the provoked rather than the provokers. Surely you can all see the beneficial aspects of that. Athena, a nuclear strike is simply not on. If we need to level a city — well, we've shown we can do that ourselves, haven't we, without recourse to manmade technological armaments. Having Argus assume control of the nuclear arsenals was to prevent their use, not commandeer them for our own purposes. It ill befits us as gods to drop bombs. What mortals can do, we cannot, and vice versa. That," he said, addressing all of them once more, "is my thinking on this. Let none demur."
None did. Athena looked disgruntled but resigned. The Cloud-Gatherer had spoken. His word was diktat.
"My daughter," he said, taking her under his arm as the meeting broke up, "don't be downcast. Your great mind will be vital in the coming days, apportioning our resources across the field of battle, deploying your family against the foe. Surely you relish such a challenge."
A smile played about Athena's serious lips. It seemed she did relish it, as a matter of fact.
Then Zeus came over to Sam.
"Three days," he murmured, too low for anyone else to hear. "I shall be patiently waiting."
"And if the answer isn't the one you want? Isn't this whole thing supposed to be voluntary?"
"You won't disappoint me," Zeus told her, genially but with the force of conviction. "I know you won't."
70. THREE DAYS
Friday.
British troops, nearly a thousand of them in all, were massing to the south-west and east of Olympus. Satellite imagery showed them bivouacked on the plains north of Larisa and along the coast in the mountain's shadow. American supplies were being airlifted in and distributed. Japanese ships, meanwhile, were cruising through the Straits of Gibraltar, bound once more for the Thermaikos Gulf.
Internationally, diplomatic efforts were under way to defuse the situation. Plenty of people weren't comfortable with the idea of armies taking action independently of their governments, but the unease was felt most keenly at executive level. Catesby Bartlett flew to New York to try to obtain a UN Security Council resolution forbidding Field Marshal Armstrong-Hall from going through with a siege of the Olympians' stronghold. The Prime Minister's hope was that fear of contravening the will of the UN, and of being branded a war criminal as a result, would deter Sir Neville. However, both America and Russia vetoed the proposal, China abstained from voting, and Bartlett's transatlantic trip was all for naught.
University students across the globe abandoned their lectures and libraries for a day in order to take part in protest rallies, but with one or two exceptions these took the form of pro- rather than anti-military demonstrations. The vast majority of the world's undergraduates were supportive of the stance taken by Britain's armed forces, which led to the unusual sight of youths carrying placards with crossed-out peace symbols on them and drawings of doves surrounded by a red circle with a diagonal red line through the middle, brandishing these as they chanted slogans such as "Hell yes — make a mess" and "All we are saying is don't give them a chance." On the more liberal campuses, such as Berkeley and Paris, scuffles broke out between the protestors and their professors, who were of the old school and angered that the ideals they themselves had once marched for, back in the day, were being so roundly spurned by the post-Olympian generation. As was often the case with academics, they'd failed to grasp that society around them had changed and they had not changed with it. The times were topsy-turvy now. The enemy was not the Man any more, it was the God.
Saturday.
The British troops' numbers were bolstered by the arrival of contingents from France, Australia, Spain, Italy and Russia, along with handfuls of soldiers from Israel and several north African nations, all of whom had come of their own accord, without the express consent (but probably with the tacit approval) of their superiors. Freelancers, among them a couple of dozen RCDC members, swelled the ranks. All at once the landscape around Larisa was smattered with impromptu camps, rows of tents in oblongs like patches of corduroy on a jacket.
On that afternoon the Harpies spotted British scouts who had crept to within binocular distance of the stronghold in order to reconnoitre. The bird-women swooped, and the scouts were plucked from the ground and carried screaming into the sky, where the Harpies proceeded to tear them apart in a leisurely, almost playful fashion. Limbs were tossed from taloned foot to taloned foot, a gruesome game of catch. Entrails were flung high, snapped up as they fell, gobbled on the wing. The Olympians looked on from the battlements with some satisfaction, not least Hera. Sam, on the other hand, went to her room and stayed there until the whole ghastly spectacle was over.
Zeus came to her afterwards, to find out if she was any closer to a decision.
"Not yet."
"I have no wish to put any pressure on you," he said. "I just want to be sure that you're not prevaricating in the hope that some sort of salvation is going to arrive. Remember Penelope."
"Penelope?"
"Odysseus's wife. While her husband was off on his wanderings and widely believed to be dead, she was beset by suitors, so she told them she wouldn't consider marrying any of them until she had finished weaving a shroud for her husband's late father Laertes. Every day she wove a little more of the shroud. Every night she unpicked the work she had done during the day. It was in vain. She was found out eventually. And if this is all some ruse of yours, a way to buy time for yourself, rest assured that it, too, is in vain. Those troops gathering around us will not get within a hundred yards of this stronghold, let alone set foot inside. If what the Harpies have just done hasn't driven home that fact, it ought to have."
"I still have one more day."
"Tomorrow, then. If your answer's yes — and I believe it will be — you won't regret it, Sam."
"And if it's no?"
"Then regret will be the least of your concerns."
It was a long night. And bitterly cold. It never got truly warm up on Olympus, which didn't seem to bother any of the Pantheon but certainly didn't agree with Sam, especially when she couldn't sleep. She piled blankets on herself until there was such a weight of them she could hardly breathe, but still the chill seeped through. There was a chill inside her too, to match. An icy dread.