The Big Over Easy

TITAN ESCAPES ROCK, ZEUS, CAUCASUS, EAGLE

A controversial punishment came to an end yesterday when Prometheus, immortal Titan, creator of mankind and fire-giver, escaped the shackles that bound him to his rock in the Caucasus. Details of the escape are uncertain, but Zeus’ press secretary, Ralph Mercury, was quick to issue a statement declaring that Prometheus’ confinement was purely an “internal god-Titan matter” and that having eagles pick out Prometheus’ liver every day, only to have it grow back at night, was “a reasonable response given the crime.” Joyous supporters of the “Free Prometheus” campaign crowded the dockside at Dover upon the Titan’s arrival, whereupon he was taken into custody pending applications for extradition.

—From The London Illustrated Mole, June 3, 1814

Jack walked up the creaky steps to the upstairs landing. He had just raised his hand to knock on the door opposite Humpty’s when a deep male voice, preempting his knock, boomed, “One moment!”

Jack, puzzled, lowered his hand. There was a sound of movement from within, and presently the door opened six inches. A youthful-looking, darkly tanned man with tightly curled black hair answered the door. He had deep black eyes and a strong Grecian nose that was so straight you could have laid a set-square on it. He looked as though he had just got out of the shower, as he had a grubby towel wrapped around his waist. On his muscular abdomen were so many crisscrossed scars on top of one another that his midriff was a solid mass of scar tissue. He was so cleanly shaven that Jack wondered whether he had any facial hair at all, and his eyes bored into Jack with the look of a man used to physical hardship.

“Yes?” he asked in a voice that seemed to rumble on after he had spoken.

“Mr. Prometheus?”

“Just Prometheus.”

“I’m Detective Inspector Spratt, Nursery Crime Division. We’re investigating Mr. Dumpty’s death. I wondered if I might talk to you?”

Prometheus looked relieved and invited him in, his voice losing its rumble as he no longer took Jack to be a threat.

The room was similar to Humpty’s in levels of shabbiness, but Prometheus had tried to make it look a little more like home by pinning up holiday posters of the Greek islands. Stuffed in the frame of the mirror was an assortment of postcards from other Titans and minor demigods, wishing him well with his ongoing asylum application. A mattress covered with rumpled sheets lay on the floor, and on the bedside table, next to a copy of Plato’s Republic, was an empty bottle of retsina and a small bowl of olive stones. A copy of Shelley’s account of Prometheus’ escape from the rock in the Caucasus lay open on the only table, and Jack picked it up.

“A bit fanciful,” remarked the Titan. “He took a few liberties with the truth. I had only ever met Asia and Panthea once at a party and I certainly was never in love with Asia. As I recall, she was myopic and couldn’t pronounce her r’s. The bit about us having a child was pure invention. I would have sued him for libel, but he died—which was most inconvenient.”

“Yes,” agreed Jack, knowing that to an immortal such as Prometheus, death really was something that only happened to other people, “it generally is.”

“I was sorry to hear about Humpty,” said the Titan, thumping the vibrating pipes with a wooden mallet to get the water flowing out of the rusty tap and onto his toothbrush.

“You knew him well?”

Prometheus squeezed the remains of a toothpaste tube onto the brush. “Not really, but well enough to know he was a good man, Inspector. Good and evil are subjects I know quite a lot about. He had righteousness in spades, despite his criminal past.”

Prometheus rinsed his mouth, popped the toothbrush back in its glass, immodestly dispensed with the towel and wrapped himself in a dressing gown that had once belonged to the Majestic Hotel.

“We chatted quite a lot when we bumped into each other,” continued the Titan. “He was always busy but made the effort.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Last night at about six. He called me over to help him tie his cummerbund.”

“Cummerbund?”

“Or cravat. It’s difficult to tell with him. He’d had an argument with his girlfriend. Did Mrs. Hubbard tell you?”