Robert Asprin - E.Godz

"Shut up." Dov whipped out his cell phone and fired off a ring in the direction of the Temple of Seshat-by-the-Shore. He wrapped an insulating spell around it so that it would cause the phone on the receiving end of the call to ring at the decibel level of a Heavy Metal band. The selfsame spell would also make Dov's summons shoot straight through any call-waiting or call-screening devices like a bullet through butter.

The phone rang once and only once before someone answered. That was usually about all it took.

"Who in the blessed Afterlife is this?" a harried male voice boomed.

"Are you Ray Rah?" Dov barked.

"I am. Who are you and what did you do to my phone?"

"Why ... don't ... you ... just ... guess?" Dov said slowly, between gritted teeth. He was feeling more than a little testy and he had no qualms about letting it show.

"Oh!" A gasp of embarrassment filled the phone. Good. Dov wanted his neglectful host to suffer.

"Is that all you can say? I've been standing in this baggage claim area for an hour," he lied.

"But the last we heard from you, your plane wasn't supposed to get in until now."

"Ever hear of someone taking an earlier flight? Or even of a flight getting in early?"

"Yes, but this is Chicago-O'Hare we're talking about and—"

"And even if I did come in at my original arrival time, which is now, so what? There's still no one here to meet me!" Dov was piling it on heavy and enjoying doing it. He had not had a good flight from Seattle. There was bad weather over the Rockies, the first- class cabin ran out of the Pinot Grigio he'd ordered and he'd had to make do with Chardonnay, and the coffee they'd served tasted so dreadfully ... weak. He knew he shouldn't have felt quite so homicidal over something as ordinary as coffee, but this was a commonplace, documented reaction among people who had spent more than fifteen minutes in Seattle. Medical journals called it "bean lag."

Perhaps it was unwise of him to take out his irritability on someone whose support he'd come here to woo. Dov was aware that his snippy behavior might alienate the leader of the Chicago group, but the possibility didn't faze him. He placed absolute trust in his own charisma, sure that no matter how badly he antagonized someone, he had the power to convert any foe into a friend by the judicious application of charm. It might take a little time to undo this bit of preliminary damage, but what was time to him? He had plenty to spare.

Besides, if you made someone feel guilty and then forgave them, even when they hadn't done anything so bad in the first place, they became a little less likely to take you for granted, a lot more likely to jump when you said "frog." By Dov's calculations, Rah Ray should be just about ready to offer an intense, humiliating apology for leaving a top executive from E. Godz, Inc. stranded at the airport in so barbarous a fashion. He grinned at the phone and waited for the inevitable groveling.

It did not come. Instead, to his shock, he heard a hearty chuckle in his ear. "Oh, I see what happened. I had Billy-hotep down to pick you up, only then we all decided to do this lovely ceremony and I sent him out for extra pomegranates. You can't have enough pomegranates when you're trying to get Isis to pay attention. You do know how important it is that the rites of Isis be properly performed, don't you, Mr. Godz?"

"Uh ... I mean, yes; yes, of course I do. What do you take me for, an ignoramus?" Dov tried to lob the guilt back into Ray Rah's court, but the man wasn't even in the game.

"Of course you do! Doesn't everyone? I guess what happened is that I just got a little carried away and double-booked Billy-hotep. I mean, you can't be in two places at once until after you're dead, right? It happens. I'll tell you what: It's too late to send someone for you now. There's so much left to do before the ceremony if we're going to have everything ready in time, and I'm a little shorthanded. This happens whenever I schedule a holy rite for the same day as a Cubs game. Okay, so you nab a cab, get a receipt, and I'll reimburse you for it as soon as you get here. Unless you want to hold onto it yourself as a business expense, for taxes?"

Dov snapped his phone shut without another word and wished it were an old- fashioned desktop model of 1940's vintage. You just couldn't slam the receiver of a cell phone in a truly satisfying manner.

All the way to the Temple of Seshat-by-the-Shore, Dov's cabdriver labored under the impression that his fare was one of those oddballs who had to sing along to whatever music was playing in his portable CD player. That was the illusion conjured up by the ARS Dov had invoked to veil his angry conversation with Ammi.

"The nerve of that idiot! The bloody, unmitigated nerve, giving me the brush-off like that!"

"I thought that the only thing that could ever be unmitigated was gall," the silver amulet remarked. "Gall and your chest hair."

"Does he even know who I am? Does he realize where he and his group will be when I take over the company?"

"Out in the cold?" Ammi offered helpfully. "Out in left field? Out on their butts? Out of time? Out of luck?"

"Try 'out of patience,' which is what I am with you, so don't push it."

"Hey, what's with the bruised ego?" The amulet clicked its nonexistent tongue. "All they did was forget to pick you up at the airport. You upset because no one gave you a big ol' gooey apology? That sort of thing never bothered you before. You'd just shrug it off. If it did bug you, you'd still act like everything was aces, file it away, and drag it out later on, when you could use it at the bargaining table. What's eating you all of a sudden?"

"I don't know, Ammi. I just don't know." He sounded just a little scared. "Maybe— maybe it's all that coffee I've been drinking. It's made me nervous, hypersensitive. You're right: This isn't like me."

"Coffee ..." Ammi gave a deprecating snort. "Never touch the stuff if I can help it. I'm already awake 24/7."

"You lie. You slept through Seattle."

"I was not asleep," the amulet responded a trifle huffily. "I was simply taking some downtime to reconfigure my systems."

"What systems? You're an amulet, not a computer! A magically enhanced talisman!"

"Hey, spells need periodic upgrades too! And don't try changing the subject: You're acting weird, even for you. What gives?"

"I told you: I don't know!"

Dov's angry shout was loud enough to make the cabbie turn around and ask him not to do that again, unless he really, really wanted to scare an honest driver into making an unscheduled swerve into Lake Michigan. Chastened, Dov didn't utter another word until they reached their destination.

After paying the fare and obtaining a receipt for tax purposes (Ray Rah had gotten that right, at least) Dov went up to the great front door of the Temple of Seshat-by-the- Shore and rang the bell. No one answered. He rang again, longer, with the same lack of result. Only when he switched to pummeling the wood with his fist and it swung back under the first blow did he discover that it had been unlocked, unlatched, and waiting for a gentle push all along.

"No one at the airport, no one at the door ..." He was still muttering his way through a growing list of grievances as he entered the house. The interior glories of the quasi- Egyptian temple made as striking an impression on Dov as they had on his sister, though in his case, admiration was severely tempered by resentment.

"Where are they? Playing hide and seek? Stupid Ray Rah. Stupid pomegranates. Stupid—whoa!" While searching for another human soul, Dov had failed to watch where he was going, tripped over a monumental black and white cat, and sprawled full length at the feet of the image of Thoth. "Stupid cat!" he hollered, shaking a fist after the retreating animal.