Mercury Rests (10 page)

Mercury dozed off, awakening hours later with a start. “What’s that?” he exclaimed, thinking that he had heard Job say something. But it was just the boy.

“Wheeeee!” yelled the boy, running circles around Job, the kite still fluttering just inches above his head.

Mercury took a deep breath and leaned back against the tree. He tried to remember if he had ever had a worse assignment than this. Even working for that scheming megalomaniac Tiamat had been leagues ahead of sitting in the sun all day waiting for some diseased fool to curse God.

“Seriously,” he said to no one in particular. “What have I done to deserve this? No one deserves this sort of treatment.”

Job swatted absently with a pot shard at a fly that was buzzing around his head.

“Wheeeee!” yelled the boy again. Seeing that Mercury was awake, he ran over to him. “You got any more of those mangoes?”

Mercury handed the boy a second mango, which he devoured furiously in a matter of seconds. He then returned to his tireless running with the kite.

An hour or so later, Mercury thought he heard something behind him and turned to see three men approaching. He stood to meet them.

“Greetings,” said one of the men. “I am Eliphaz. These are my friends Bildad and Zophar. We have come to comfort our friend Job. Is he around?”

Mercury’s brow furrowed. “You didn’t notice the guy sitting over there in the ashes, scraping his sores with pot shards?”

The men’s eyes went wide. “Holy shit,” said Eliphaz. “
That’s
Job? I didn’t even recognize him. He looks
awful
.”

“Well, yeah,” said Mercury. “I mean, I didn’t know him pre–oozing sores, but I’d have to agree, he’s not the picture of health.”

“Has he said anything?” asked Zophar.

“Like cursed God, you mean? I don’t think so. He might have muttered some anti-God sentiments under his breath, but nothing I was able to pick up on. I hope you guys can talk some sense into him.”

“What do you mean, talk some sense into him?”

“Er,” said Mercury, “I meant, I hope you guys can give him some small measure of comfort. He’s been through so much. A lesser man probably would have cursed God by now, you know? Really loudly too, so that there would be no question about it.”

The men muttered confusedly among themselves and left Mercury so they could go sit in the ashes by Job.

Mercury’s hopes for a quick resolution of his situation were not met. Eliphas, Bildad, and Zophar sat in silence for a full week, commiserating with Job. At last Job spoke, but not loudly enough for Mercury to make out what he was saying.

“Hey, kid!” Mercury whispered to the boy, who was, incredibly, still trying to get the kite airborne. The boy ran over to Mercury.

“Tell me what he’s saying. Quick!”

The boy ran over and perched behind Job. After a moment he ran back to Mercury. “He says, ‘May the day of my birth perish, and the night that said, “A boy is conceived!” ’ ”

“OK,” said Mercury. “He’s still talking. Tell me the rest.”

The boy ran over to listen and then returned again to Mercury. “He says, ‘That day—may it turn to darkness; may God above not care about it.’ ”

“Got it,” said Mercury. “Go!”

The boy ran over again to listen and returned. “He says, ‘May no light shine on it. May gloom and utter darkness claim it once more; may a cloud settle over it; may blackness overwhelm it.’ ”

“Utter darkness,” said Mercury, nodding. “OK, go!”

The boy returned again. “He says, ‘That night—may thick darkness seize it; may it not be included among the days of the year nor be entered in any of the months.’ ”

“Jeez, more about the day, huh? OK, go get the rest.”

“He says, ‘May that night be barren; may no shout of joy be heard in it. May those who curse days curse that day, those who are ready to rouse Leviathan.’ ”

“Rousing Leviathan, got it. OK, go.”

The boy returned again. “You got any more mangoes?”

“He’s asking for mangoes?”

“No, I want more mangoes.”

“Fine, here. What’s he saying?”

“He says, ‘May its morning stars become dark; may it wait for daylight in vain and not see the first rays of dawn.’ ”

“Seriously? He’s still talking about the day he was born? Tell you what: wake me up when he either curses God or gets to the point in the story where he soils his first nappy.” Mercury leaned back against the tree for another snooze. It didn’t look like his torment was going to end anytime soon.

Christine and Jacob found themselves once again in the back of a black SUV. Agent Daltrey was driving while another agent, a tight-faced, thickly built woman named Ruiz, rode shotgun. The vehicle was barely moving, hemmed in by traffic. Christine was exhausted, and the glare of headlights was giving her a headache.

“How much farther?” she asked.

“Just a few blocks,” said Agent Ruiz. “Traffic is bad tonight. Riots.”

“Riots?” asked Christine. “What are they rioting about?”

Ruiz glanced back at her. “Whaddaya got?”

Jacob was gazing out his window, apparently enraptured by the city lights. Christine turned to look out hers. She saw throngs of pedestrians on the street, but they seemed peaceful enough.

Ruiz spoke again, without looking back. “Charlie Nyx fanatics, antiwar protesters, and end-of-the-world fanatics, not to mention a grab bag of assorted lunatics. You’re going to want to stay off the streets. Not that you have any choice in the matter.”

The FBI agents were escorting Christine and Jacob to a nearby hotel, where they would evidently be staying indefinitely. It was made quite clear to them that the FBI would be more than happy
to save money by letting them sleep in underground holding cells if they objected to their accommodations. A second SUV was following them, carrying agents who would stand guard outside their hotel rooms.

Anger rose in her throat as she thought of Director Lubbers’s arrogance and presumptuousness. What gave him the right to hold her and Jacob against their will? If they knew what we’ve done, they’d throw us a parade. Not that she particularly wanted a parade, of course. In fact, a hot shower and a hotel bed sounded pretty damn good when she thought about it. This thought was augmented by the occasional whiff of overripe sweat emanating from Jacob in the seat next to her. In his present condition, with his hair mussed and his clothes torn and stained, he bore an uncanny resemblance to Pig Pen from the
Peanuts
comic strip. He stared out the window as if wondering, Pig Pen–like, where all the dirt kept coming from.

Jacob still hadn’t snapped out of the trancelike state he had fallen into during their interrogation. Christine felt a tinge of pity for him. He hadn’t had as much time as Christine to adjust to how strange a place the Universe really was, and now he was being asked to account for his behavior by his employer, which happened to be one of the more hard-nosed and humorless extensions of the federal government. Jacob seemed like the type to chafe at contact with his superiors in even the best of circumstances, and these circumstances were far from the best. He now seemed to have shut down completely. Every so often he would lean his head back and make a strange sound in his throat, but he hadn’t spoken since they had left the underground facility.

What did Lubbers want with them? He had asked about the angels’ “defensive systems.” Was he just taking precautions, or was he actually planning some sort of attack?

An attack on Heaven, she thought. The idea was insane. Even if you could somehow get through the planeport’s security and get to Heaven, you’d be facing the full might of the Heavenly army commanded by Michelle herself. How many angels was that? Hundreds? Thousands? She had no idea, but she imagined that each of them was easily a match for an entire platoon of Special Forces commandoes. She had witnessed Mercury restarting Karl Grissom’s heart simply by laying his hand on him. How much harder could it be to
stop
a heart? Or a hundred hearts, for that matter? You’d have to be a madman to send human soldiers up against angels.

And what could Lubbers hope to accomplish with such an invasion, even if, against all odds, it somehow succeeded? Sure, the angels could be manipulative troublemakers on occasion, but their overall effect seemed to be benign. Well, there was the whole Apocalypse thing, of course, but Heaven had lost control over that plan weeks ago. At this point, they were mostly doing damage control. In fact, the last she knew, Michelle was mobilizing her troops to help with earthquake relief efforts. This memory made her a bit uncomfortable. If Lubbers were to launch an attack, now would be a good time: the Heavenly army was scattered all over the globe, with probably only a small remnant left behind to guard Heaven.

She tried to see things from Lubbers’s perspective. The implosion of the moon was unsettling, to say the least. There would be political pressure to figure out what had happened and to keep it from happening again. But Heaven wasn’t responsible for what happened to the moon. Nor were they responsible for the Anaheim Event, for that matter. Those events were both the doing of a few rogue angels, primarily Lucifer, Tiamat, and Mercury’s exboss, Uzziel. Assuming the account that Lubbers had read about
the Anaheim event was accurate, then he knew that Heaven was not to blame. And Christine herself had told him what had happened with the moon. Why would he plot an invasion of Heaven when he
knew
Heaven was not responsible for these tragedies?

In any case, a military action against a foreign power would have to go through President Babcock, who was a right-wing Bible thumper. Harry Giddings, Christine’s late fundamentalist boss, had been a major contributor to Babcock’s campaign. Babcock had ultimately lost the contest for the Republican nomination to the more moderate Alexis Friedman, but she had added him to the ticket as a sop to the Religious Right. The idea of Babcock launching an attack on Heaven was ludicrous. One of the charges of the Left had been that Babcock intended to make the United States into a theocracy; that if given the option, he’d hand the keys over to Jesus Himself. Babcock launching an assault on Heaven would be like Fidel Castro attacking Moscow.

Still, Christine’s grilling by Lubbers about the “defensive systems” of Heaven had unnerved her. Clearly he was planning
something
. She wondered how much information was in that report. Who had written it? How had it fallen into the hands of the FBI? And most importantly, how much havoc would it allow Lubbers to wreak? One thing was certain: no good could come from it. Both Heaven and the United States government had done just fine over the past two hundred years without the latter having a backdoor into the former. Christine needed to warn the Heavenly authorities so they could shut the portal down.

Christine’s musings were cut short when the SUV came to an abrupt halt. On a whim, she tried opening her door. As she expected, pulling the latch had no effect. The door was rigged to be locked by the driver in cases where he might be transporting people who might be tempted to escape from the vehicle.

“Shit,” growled Daltrey.

Christine looked out the windshield to see the source of his frustration: several cars up, a minivan had stalled in the middle of the street, and a gaggle of youths had climbed on top of it. They were jumping and dancing on top of the vehicle, and a crowd had followed them into the street, either to egg them on or to persuade them to get off the car. As a result, traffic was now completely stopped in both directions.

Daltrey checked the rearview mirror and then turned to look behind him. “Shit,” he growled again. “We’re boxed in.” His hands alternately tightened and released his grip on the steering wheel as he assessed the situation.

Ruiz had her cell phone to her ear and was speaking quietly in a near monotone to someone about their situation. After a moment, she put the phone down on her lap. “They say to hold tight,” she informed Daltrey. “DC Metro is en route. ETA twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes,” grumbled Daltrey, his knuckles going white. “This crowd will hit the flashpoint in ten. It’ll be like something out of Hieronymus Bosch by the time DC Metro gets here.”

Ruiz scowled at him, presumably because she recognized what his tone portended and not because of her distaste for sixteenth-century moralistic painters. “Chill,” she said with a hint of motherly concern. “You’ll only make things worse if you go out there.”

In the minute or so that they had been waiting, the crowd had already gotten larger, and now a squirrelly-looking young man in a tank top and baggy shorts was approaching the minivan with an aluminum baseball bat.

“Things are getting worse on their own,” said Daltrey. “Wait here.” Daltrey pushed open his door and stepped outside.

“Damn it, Daltrey...” began Ruiz. The force drained from her words as she realized the futility of trying to prevent Daltrey from intervening.

Daltrey slammed the door and strode boldly through the crowd, his right palm hovering an inch above his sidearm. With his left hand, he pointed directly at the teen with the baseball bat and shouted something at him. Christine couldn’t make out what he was saying over the sound of the engine and the cacophony of the crowd.

The throng shrank back from Daltrey’s impressive form, and the kid with the baseball bat froze like a spooked animal. Several people who were about to step onto the street from the sidewalk took a step back. Daltrey seemed on the verge of calming the maelstrom through sheer force of will.

Then something strange happened.

Something small, maybe the size of a baseball, flew from somewhere on the right side of the street toward Daltrey, striking him square in the temple. The object splattered against Daltrey’s skull, falling in juicy chunks from the side of his head. It took Christine a second to realize that it was an apple. Not the imploding sort of apple, fortunately, just a regular apple. Still, not something you want to get hit in the head with. Daltrey went down.

He fell to his knees, stunned, his right hand pressed against his temple. The kid with the bat snapped out of his daze and took a step toward Daltrey. The crowd went wild.