Hermes: Chapter 8

When The Chaos worsened, Eros closed the passage between the worlds. The gods could no longer use Hermes to fetch goods to compensate for the farmers’ losses.

Eros wanted Olympus’s gods to pay for what they’d caused. He wanted them to lose followers. He wanted Olympus to collapse.

Many gods had already departed—as had many citizens. Out of the citizens that lingered, Zeus and Hera recruited their replacements. Hermes had seen to that. Over several months, he brought any reasonably suitable citizens—not the druggies or drunks (minimum standard)—to Zeus and Hera’s temple, a replica of the Lake Point Tower. He didn’t think about philosophies or administrative abilities or experience with governance. He only knew that Zeus and Hera spoke of leaving, and he didn’t want Olympus to lose its gods, didn’t want Olympus to change, to fail the way Eros wanted.

He was a child and innocent-looking. He took citizens’ hands and towed them along, and they didn’t resist. Zeus and Hera capitulated—Jes-Jer took over. Olympus survived. Eros grudgingly reopened the gate.

Merc had left before The Chaos. He was no longer a god, but he agreed to trade with Hermes the moment Hermes crossed back through to fetch food and supplies and, of course, to find more gods. Olympus was in Portland, Maine by then. Merc and Hermes used the building that housed the new Portland Public Market as a spot to meet.

And then Merc was killed by muggers, idiots who didn’t simply steal the merchandise. They beat Merc up and left him to die in a cold warehouse. Hermes had taken his revenge on the muggers years ago. He couldn’t forget the pointlessness of Merc’s death. Jes-Jer might play with the rules, but at least they acted within a framework; Olympus allowed them to work within a framework.

The “real” world with its “real” natural laws was truly random, beyond the “natural consequences” that Kouros and Hades defended. An evil place.

 * * *

Crossings to the other world occurred at specific shared locations. In present-day Olympus, the crossover points were Monument Square—a plaza in the other world; a park on Olympus—and the former Union Station on St. John Street—a strip mall in the other world; Hephaestus’s workshop on Olympus.

Hermes crossed through at Monument Square because he needed to arrange a deal for pastries with a patisserie in the area. Olympus’s most notable baker, Micah Miller, was temporarily refurnishing his café. The other-world’s pastries were a stop-gap measure. They would be delivered to Hermes’s office in one of the flat-fronted brick buildings that bordered the square. He would take them through when he returned from Boston.

Hermes also had the paving contract to sign and money from trades to deposit. He stopped by the bank, then caught the bus for the Amtrak Downeaster and boarded a train for Boston. His contact in Boston was one of very few humans who remembered Olympus, mostly because he had never been there.

Beyond Hades’s realm were underground corridors that connected to possible other worlds or to places in Olympus’s world that couldn’t be reached aboveground. Terry Nicholson had visited one of those places and returned through the Fates’ cavern. He brought a boy back with him, Alim. Hermes didn’t envy them that experience but Terry seemed content to send yearly tributes—goods, not people—to the Fates. And he was useful to Hermes.

Hermes had emailed Terry several days earlier to arrange a meeting. Now, he rode the train into Boston’s North Station. He settled his backpack on his shoulders like a salaryman. He trekked south, past Boston Common and Trinity Church. He stopped on the sidewalk near the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and looked up a side street at a three-story brick building. He took a deep breath, pulling in air and seemed to swallow car and plane and construction noises at the same time.

Noisy, noisy world.  

Hermes rolled his shoulders and walked up the street. He had visited Terry before; once inside the brick building, he walked directly into the elevator and selected the top floor button. The elevator doors opened on a lobby containing a front desk perpendicular to the elevator bank. Terry—a big wide-shouldered man with a mess of dark hair—was leaning there as he signed paperwork.

“Ah, Hermes,” he said with a quick glance sideways. His pen didn’t stop moving.  

Terry had become an adequate substitute for Merc though Terry, unlike Merc, never traded in stolen goods. Hermes supposed that meant Terry was less at risk for being murdered. He kept their relationship professional nonetheless.  

Now he said, “You've offered to trade paper for tools." 

Terry’s firm dealt in high-end museum, archival, and archaeology equipment, everything from display cases to mapping devices. Olympus wasn’t prepared to produce cameras and GPR machines but Hephaestus could make finely crafted and inexpensive picks, trowels, and sieves.

The paper would be for a possible paper mill. Currently, citizens bleached paper pulp to create homemade sheets or used the empty pages in books or journals that they brought with them from the other world—or ones that Hermes bought on request. But a paper mill might attract some of the more recent arrivals, who were somewhat nonplussed by the idea of farming. (As Kouros said, “This is my generation that doesn’t know where meat in grocery stores comes from--or their school notebooks.")

Hermes wondered sometimes how much reliance on the other world prevented Olympus from becoming entirely industrial rather than what Kouros called “steam punk agricultural.” But it wasn’t his job to advance or end or fix whatever one called Olympus’s civil order. He simply sustained it. For now, pre-paper mill, Damia and Mnemosyne wanted to stock up on stationary—Hermes would find out what was available.

He finished signing papers, asked the receptionist to overnight a contract, and motioned Hermes down the hall to a corner office. It was really more of a corner storeroom, a wide space that contained smaller items sold by the firm. The floors below held larger items, including, Hermes happened to know, suction tables and floor-to-ceiling display cases.

Terry walked to the far end of the brightly lit space to shelves of stacked and draped paper sheets, including the type that fed blueprint machines.

“You said this would be paper for civilian use,” he murmured and indicated stacks of plain newsprint. “Cheap,” he said. “Not good for printers—but you suggested that these would be for multiple uses.”

“Yes.”

“Direct trade?”

Hermes pulled a leather bag from his backpack and unwrapped it to demonstrate the tools Hephaestus had given him to show Terry. Terry made an appreciative grunt over the spoon excavator and probe.

“Your ironsmith could create dentistry tools,” he pointed out to Hermes.

In some ways (Hermes occasionally admitted to himself) Terry was better at trades than Merc. Terry thought long-range.

“I’ll mention it,” Hermes said as Terry began to fill out a form (X amount at tools at X dollars each, translated into X amount of paper).

Terry said, “You also want me to find someone. Is that right?”

“You may already know him. Billy Stowe.”

“The risk manager? Alim did a wilderness internship for one of his clients. One of those capitalistic corrupt money hoarders who use the environment to get people to forget their druggy, court-mandated probation pasts. Alim wants to do legal things for protected land.” Terry shrugged. “Taking money from compromised billionaires is a good start.”

Hermes didn’t bother to feel gratified or surprised by Terry's nows. Perhaps one-percenters always ran in each other’s orbits. Perhaps, as Humbaba suggested, those who contacted Olympus, even indirectly, were drawn together. Or—

“Alim knew about Billy,” Terry said.

Alim came from one of the other worlds or places that could be reached through Tartarus’s corridors to the east. Terry brought Alim to this world—on purpose; apparently, Alim wanted to come—but Alim sent news back to his other family through Rhadamanthus. It appeared Rhadamanthus shared selected information in return. Hermes couldn’t complain. His job became easier when other people took risks.

“I wouldn’t have thought Olympus needed Billy’s help,” Terry said. “That is, I’m sure your Zeus and Hera would love to hire their own PR team, but the place is kind of hush-hush. No?”

“Billy Stowe is—we think he came from Olympus originally.”

Terry harrumphed. Hermes was fairly sure Terry saw Olympus as a kind of island city-state without a Customs office. He might be aware of a supernatural or magical or otherworldly component, but he dealt with it as just another everyday place—one that didn’t tax him. A duty-free airport gift shop.

“I’ll reach out to Billy,” Terry said.