seen him, even hired a private investigator for a while.
'But Xander was gone. He had vanished utterly. That much money can buy you a great deal of privacy and anonymity if you use it right. It can also buy you the time and the wherewithal to carry out further scientific research and to perfect certain methods you have already established.'
'He was carrying on with his genetic manipulation experiments?'
'Clearly he was. At some undisclosed location — I suspect in South America, where laws are generally lax and lawmakers bribable, but possibly China — Xander got very busy. And made great strides. And the results are now in evidence for all to see.'
'The Olympians.'
'The Olympians. I imagine the non-human monsters were Xander's earliest successes, his prototypes and his first concrete results — splicing various different animal species together or super-enhancing existing ones. Once he'd made them work, and they didn't die as that rat had, similar hybridisation techniques with human subjects would be the next step.'
'For example, the Minotaur.'
'That malodorous beast over there, yes. It would have been a man once, as your instinct told you, Sam, until Xander got his hands on him. Who? Who was the person that now resides within that bull-like form? I've no idea. The same with all the other humanoid monsters, and with the Olympians themselves. Who used they to be, before? I do not know. Volunteers, one must assume, if not all then at least some of them. You'd have to ask Xander himself for the full answer.
'All I know is, at the Olympians' very first public appearance, when they gatecrashed that General Assembly session of the United Nations, I recognised Zeus and fathomed immediately what my son had been up to during those five wilderness years. It was obvious to me, too, what he intended to do thereafter, and sure enough the world was soon under the jackboot of the kind of powerful, authoritarian leadership he'd spoken of so often and with such relish.
'What's more, what was worse as far as I was concerned, was that Xander had dressed himself and his cronies in the guise of the Greek pantheon, from the weaponry right down to the ringleted hair and the peplos gowns. It was a personal insult, a direct slap in the face to me. 'Here,' he was telling me, 'these are the myths you love, Dad. Look what I've done with them. See how I've perverted them. See what I've turned them into.'
'I'm not ashamed to admit that it was when this sank in — the way my son was making a mockery of something dear to me — that I felt for the first time true loathing for him. That is not a thing a parent will do lightly, hate their own offspring. You can resent your kids, be exasperated by them, wish they were less spiteful, be driven to distraction by them, but beneath it all you keep on loving them. But not me, not any more.
'Now I hated Xander. I hated him beyond all compare. Beyond all enduring. It was agony to me that I hated him so much. It made me physically unwell. But there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn't help myself. I wanted to wring the vile, contemptuous, ungrateful little wretch's neck. And that feeling only got worse as the Olympians began rampaging all over the earth, behaving far more intemperately and irresponsibly than their mythical exemplars ever did. Gods unfettered. Deities who treated humans with no more care or respect than we do ants. The Obliteration… I watched the reports of that with sickness in my heart, more so than anyone else, I'm sure. Not only was it unspeakably appalling, but to some extent I was to blame. I was to blame for that and for all of the Olympians' acts of bloodshed. Because the Olympians' ringleader, their progenitor, was my son. My own flesh and blood, who had spurned me, who had used money I'd given him to finance this grandiose exercise in super- powered fascism, and who was, as a happy by-product of his mission to 'save' the planet, rendering my business empire increasingly invalid and driving it almost to the brink of bankruptcy.'
'So you decided to fight back.'
'Absolutely I did.'
'You couldn't just have tried to unmask him publicly instead? Gone on telly and told everyone the truth about the Olympians?'
'Would anyone have believed me? And might Xander simply not have had me silenced if I had? Besides, that was not my way. I knew what I must do. Where Xander had used biotechnology, I would use plain old technology. Where he had turned people into living weapons, I would give people weapons. Where he had enhanced them from the inside out, I would do it from the outside in. Whatever he had achieved, I would achieve too, in inverted form. I would take him on at his own game and I would win!'
'Which brings us to where we are now.'
'In the throes of Titanomachy II. And not doing too badly so far, either. Tell me, Sam, what was it that made you finally twig? About Xander, I mean. Was it something I said? What about the mural? Did that have anything to do with it?'
'There is a whole fathers-and-son theme in evidence here, Mr Landesman. You and Xander, the mural — it's all there. But what actually made something click in my brain was Zeus quoting Sophocles on TV.'
'Ah, Xander's classical education showing through. He did pay attention in some of his lessons other than biology.'
'Not only was it a line about wishing not to be have been born — '
'A sly dig.'
'— but it was from a play about Oedipus.'
'A tragedy centring on a son who, among other things, murders his father.'
'A veiled threat from Xander to his own father.'
'Not so veiled, if you're the person being threatened and the threat is couched specifically for you alone to understand.'
'Dez also noticed that you and Zeus talk alike.'
'The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, much though the tree might wish it otherwise.'
'And the two of you are physically similar. The resemblance is there if you look for it. So it was a combination of all those things, but the Sophocles line was the key, the rope that lassoed them all together.'
'Well, now that everything is out in the open and we've cleared the air, Sam, what next? What do you propose to do?'
51. WELL AND TRULY SNOOKERED
I t was a question Sam had done some considerable soul-searching over.
'I know what I personally am going to do,' she told Landesman. 'But I think that needn't concern you so much as the rest of the Titans and what they're going to do.'
'I was rather hoping they might not have to find out about any of this,' Landesman said. 'I was counting on you agreeing to be discreet.'
'Discreet? You mean keep the others in the dark. Lie to them.'
'If that's how you want to put it. It could be a secret between the two of us.'
'The three of us.'
'The Minotaur?' said Landesman, eyeing the monster sceptically. 'I don't believe it can — '
'Not the Minotaur. Jolyon out there in the corridor. Who's been listening in all this time.'
'And who knows the truth anyway.'
'Of course he does. He accidentally let slip that he does, too, not so long ago. But,' Sam went on, 'I really can't let it stay our secret. Couldn't even if I wanted to.'
'I'll up your pay.'
'It's always about money with you, Mr Landesman! Not everyone can be bought.'
'They can't?'
'No, and what I'm trying to tell you is that the other Titans already know by now.'
'Oh really?'
'Look over there. On that shelf. Among the stacked dishes. Do you see?'
Landesman squinted, frowned uncomprehendingly, then did see.
A battlesuit helmet lay half-hidden among the crockery, visor facing out.
