The Age of Odin - James Lovegrove [126]
The siege wore on, and what really got on my tits was that, being as it was a siege, we had no real way of taking the fight to the enemy. We could only react, not act. A full-on assault by Loki would have been something we could deal with directly - meet and grapple with - and it was surely coming. Until then, we were perpetually on the back foot, fending off and playing catch-up. Not my idea of fun.
Meanwhile Odin, in spare moments, was following events in Midgard via raven-cam. Mrs Keener's state visit was turning out to be a surprising success. It was a charm offensive of epic proportions, the President glad-handing and back-slapping and generally winning round her UK detractors. The London protest march coincided with her first chat-show appearance, and that may have accounted for the low turnout on the streets of the capital. The organisers surmised that people had stayed home to watch her on TV so that they could fuel themselves with indignation and come out afterwards all fired up and ready to demonstrate.
They must have been disappointed, then, when a second London protest march, hastily scheduled for the next day, was even more poorly attended than the first. The public, it seemed, didn't dislike Mrs Keener as much as it had been assumed they did. After having seen her on telly, where she'd defended her policies, dismissed the climate doomsayers and their fears about the neverending winter, and gone on at length about her family and her love of the Good Lord Jesus, they were coming to the conclusion that she really wasn't as bad as everyone made out. And with each subsequent interview broadcast, British opinion of her rose. This had the result that, when she began a tour of the regions, the marches intended to dovetail with her itinerary never materialised. They had to be called off due to lack of interest.
The papers even started talking about a "Keener effect." One editorial described her as "an all too rare ray of sunshine" and another "an antidote to the dismalness of the times." Even The Guardian admitted she had a certain something.
It drove me into a frenzy to hear Odin report all this.
"She's Loki!" I yelled. "Fucking Loki! Why doesn't anyone see through her? I thought only Yanks were gullible, but us lot are just as bad. Worse, even. We shouldn't be falling for any of this guff. Are we not British? Naturally cynical? Don't we laugh when we see sincerity and Christian faith?"
Not any more, it seemed. Not in these dark, difficult days. Mrs Keener was offering hope and simple answers, something Clasen had been failing to do. Loki had honed his craft over centuries of misleading and hoodwinking the Aesir and Vanir. Frightened mortals were easy marks for him.
"And thus his might increases," Odin said. "In the guise of President Keener he makes them love him, or fear him, and are not love and fear both forms of reverence? Are they not both the prostration of the lesser before the greater? He said it himself - he has billions under his thumb now, either through intimidation or enthralment. They celebrate him. They speak of his deeds, and whether approvingly or not doesn't matter, as long as they're speaking of him at all. Their words augment him. He becomes more puissant with every mention, more energised, capable of ever greater, ever bolder feats of wickedness and mayhem. He feeds off their expressions of adulation and detestation. Millions of your countrymen, Gid, are adding further to his stores of power."
"Simply by feeling strongly about him and talking about it?"
"It's a kind of worship. As his reputation grows, so does his divinity."
"Gods are stories, Bragi told me."
"And my blood brother's tale is now being retold millions of times a day," Odin said with a sad, sage shake of the head. "He is on countless mortal tongues. Not realising it, they imbue him with significance whenever they praise Mrs Keener, or criticise her. They lend him their belief and that enhances the myth of him and armours him. Oh, it's a grand deceit he's practised this time, a hoax of unparalleled proportions.