Mercury Revolts (10 page)

“He did,” said Eddie. “How do you think the Holocaust
happened? You don’t get millions of people to close their eyes to something
like that without some demonic influence.”

“To answer your question, though,” Rosenfeld said, “we don’t
know why he didn’t infiltrate the U.S. on a large scale before now. He did have
quite a bit of influence over some policies—we think that he had something to
do with dropping the bomb on Nagasaki, and probably the internment camps during
World War II, for example. But there was never any major effort to get demons
into positions of importance in Washington before now. The few agents that
Lucifer did have in the capital were all corrupted humans, which
leads
us to think that there may have been some kind of
shield around Washington that prevented demons from entering. But whatever was
keeping the demons out, it’s gone now. The place is completely overrun.”

“But this Michelle, the archangel, she’s in charge now,
right? So that’s good?”

Rosenfeld sighed. “From what Eddie tells me, Michelle has
mostly been on the right side throughout history. But now her biggest enemy,
Lucifer, is out of the picture, and she’s cut off from Heaven, so she has no
one to point her in the right direction. Eddie’s theory is that she’s trying to
create Heaven on Earth.”

“And… that’s a bad thing?”

“Michelle is all about control,” Eddie said. “You can’t
create paradise if you give people freedom to screw it up. So she’s going to
keep looking for ways to increase her control—over the United States, and over
the world as a whole. So far she’s been pretty subtle about it, but she’ll use
fear if she needs to.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,”
replied
Rosenfeld,
“that her turning Brimstone into Wormwood Two is a very worrisome development.”

“Well, we agree on that much,” said Suzy. “Is there any way
to stop Brimstone before they finish the bomb?”

Rosenfeld chuckled. “Not without going back in time,” he
said.

“Wait, what?” said Suzy. “Are you saying…?”

“They’ve done it. According to my sources, the bomb already
exists. God knows what they’re planning on doing with it. Hey, what’s this?”
Rosenfeld was looking at something on his screen.

“What?” asked
Suzy.
“I didn’t have
time to look through it very closely.”

“It’s a PowerPoint presentation that seems to have been
saved in the wrong directory. The rest of the stuff in there is all technical
crap, but this is higher level strategic stuff.
Some kind of
briefing for the higher-ups.”

“Anything interesting on it?” asked Suzy.

“Hmm,” replied Rosenfeld.
“Mostly
buzzwords and bullshit.
But hey, check this out. The slide labeled
‘Areas of Concern.’”

Suzy and Eddie peered over his shoulder.

There was only a single bullet point on the slide. It read

·
        
Mercury—Milhaus, TX?

“What’s Mercury?” asked Suzy.

“Mercury isn’t a what,” said Eddie. “It’s
a
who
. But I thought he was gone, exiled on another plane.”

“Well, somebody thinks he’s in Milhaus, Texas,” observed
Suzy.

“But if that’s true…” started Eddie.

“What?” asked Rosenfeld, who was apparently as much in the
dark on this one as
Suzy.

“Then we may have a chance to stop Michelle before things
get out of hand.”

“How?” asked Suzy.

“Well,” said Eddie. “It isn’t completely true that nobody
knows why Lucifer didn’t infiltrate Washington before this century.”

“What are you talking about, Eddie?” demanded Rosenfeld.
“What haven’t you told me?”

Eddie shrugged sheepishly. “I never mentioned it before because
I never thought we’d see him again… but I’m pretty sure Mercury knows how the
demons were kept out of D.C.”

Chapter Ten
      
 

The English Moor;
Spring
, 1773

Angels and demons have fought with
each other for control over the course of history since Lucifer first made an
unauthorized appearance in the Garden of Eden. This struggle is rarely overt;
it occurs almost entirely behind the scenes, unnoticed and unrecorded, save for
the tireless efforts of the Mundane Observation Corps. In some cases the machinations
of Heaven or Hell are so subtle that it’s difficult even for a seasoned member
of the MOC to determine who is working for whom, or what exactly they are
trying to accomplish. Double agents and subterfuge abound, on both sides. The
byzantine nature of the Heavenly bureaucracy also complicates matters;
occasionally an MOC agent has found two different branches of Heaven to be
working at cross purposes, such as when Apocalypse Bureau had assigned several
agents to stoke the fires of the Crusades at the very moment Morality &
Scruples were doing everything they could to get everybody in Christendom to
just calm the hell down and think things over.

Sometimes one side or the other will achieve what appears to
be a decisive victory only for the pendulum of history to swing dramatically
the opposite direction. Heaven fought long and hard to bring about the
ascendancy of Rome, for example, only to have the Republic devolve into a
corrupt, despotic regime. Lucifer, working to corrupt Rome from within and urging
the barbarian tribes on the borders to attack, eventually got his wish when the
great city itself was sacked and the Empire dissolved. But Lucifer was
powerless to stop the spread of Christianity and the diffusion of new ideas and
technology throughout Western Europe that eventually led to the Renaissance and
the Reformation. Good follows evil and evil follows good, and it isn’t always
clear which is which—even to the angels and demons who fighting for one side or
the other.

Such was the case in the British colonies in North America
toward the end of the eighteenth century. It was generally agreed in both
Heaven and Hell that the acquisition and settlement of the American territories
had been a positive development for the British Commonwealth. Heaven thus
tended to assign its agents with the purpose of assisting the colonists in
their efforts to subdue the new land and thereby increase Britain’s hold on the
continent. Lucifer, being opposed to positive developments on principle, did
everything he could to wreak chaos with the situation. He wanted to see the
nascent settlements devolve into chaos and cannibalism, and to make Britain
regret ever staking a claim in the New World. Or, at the very least, he wanted
to see France or Spain take the lead in the new continent. The French and
Spanish were still in love with the idea of a centralized, autocratic
authority. They loved their Popes and their Kings—and Lucifer loved them too,
because they were so much easier to manipulate than those damned British assemblies
and parliaments. Sure, occasionally you’d get stuck with an incorruptible
pontiff like Gregory or a strong-willed and well-intentioned king like
Frederick II of Prussia, but for the most part autocrats were pretty easy to
control. The main advantage for Lucifer, of course, was that he had to corrupt
one man instead of a hundred. Ever since the advent of parliamentary government
in England, he’d had half his field agents running back and forth across the
English countryside to whisper in the ear of some minister or other. It was
exhausting.

So when Lucifer saw the possibility of sowing a rift between
the colonists and the mother country, he took full advantage. Initially a
full-scale revolution seemed unlikely; Lucifer hoped only to incite King George
III into strong-arming parliament to pass some particularly onerous laws
affecting the colonies. He would then encourage the colonists to overreact,
preferably by rioting and maybe lynching a few British soldiers. The Brits
would react by clamping down even harder on the rights of the colonists. And as
an added bonus, once a precedent had been established for denying rights to
certain subjects of the British Crown, the same principles could be applied
elsewhere—even within England itself, and Britain would be well on its way back
to an autocratic form of government.

Lucifer expected to encounter resistance to his plan from
Heaven, but after working on the king and parliament for a few years he was
surprised at how smoothly it was going. Guys like Edmund Burke tried to talk
some sense into parliament, but Lucifer had George III in his pocket, and there
were still enough sycophants to the throne that it was no great feat for the
more intemperate minds to shout down the voices of reason. The Brits went along
with every bad idea Lucifer whispered into George’s ear, culminating with the
Tea Act in 1773.

The only difficulty Lucifer had in his plan was his failure
up to this point to incite the colonists to do anything particularly rash.
Other than a mild riot in 1768 and the so-called Boston Massacre in 1770, his
agents had been unable to foment any large-scale violence whatsoever. The
Boston Massacre was a particular disappointment: months of groundwork had
resulted in the killing of a grand total of six colonists, followed by the
orderly arrest and trial of the implicated soldiers. Lucifer began to wonder
whether there was something congenitally wrong with the colonists that left
them so ill-disposed toward violence. They weren’t cowards; he knew that.
They’d shown no qualms about letting King George know exactly what they thought
of his unreasonable demands. But if Lucifer was going to get the crown to crush
the colonists with an iron fist, he needed the Americans to lash out in anger.
He’d had several of his agents assigned to trying to stir up the rabble in
Boston, but nothing had come of it. Finally, having decided that the matter
required a more subtle touch, he summoned an old acquaintance who had no
shortage of experience in plotting coups, revolutions, and other sorts of
mayhem. The two met on a moonless night on the English moor in the spring of
1773.

“You’re late, Tiamat,” grumbled Lucifer. They had agreed to
meet at the stroke of midnight.

“Humblest apologies, dear,” replied Tiamat. “I’ve been
dreadfully busy suppressing Jesuits in Portugal.”

“Hmph,” replied Lucifer. Tiamat’s new thing was religious
persecution. Lucifer had given up on persecution as a means to bloodshed and
chaos when Constantine converted in 312 AD. As Christianity was a religion
based on love, peace, and respect for the conscience of the individual, Lucifer
had presumed that the dominance of Christianity would mean the end of orthodoxy
enforced at swordpoint. As usual, though, Lucifer had underestimated humanity’s
capacity for irony. Tiamat, who had long been jockeying to get in on the
religious persecution game, had taken over where Lucifer left off, inciting the
emperor to outlaw various heresies and gleefully overseeing the execution of
Pelagians, Antinomialists, Donatists and anyone else not willing to toe the
line on any of the various complex and obscure Church doctrines that had been
settled on. Lucifer still wasn’t sure what Tiamat’s endgame was; he suspected
that partly she was just resentful of organized religion ever since the
Babylonians picked that pinhead Marduk over her as their patron deity. As with
most haters of religion, her hatred was more about herself than any particular
creed.

“In any case, I’m here now, love,” said Tiamat, in the highly
affected aristocratic accent she adopted whenever she was in Britain. “How
might I be of service to your lordship?”

“You can drop the ‘love’ nonsense,” said Lucifer. “I’m well
aware that you hate me, and be assured the feeling is mutual. And it would be
ever so wonderful if you’d stop trying to sound like you’re at high tea at the
palace.”

“Fine,” said Tiamat, dropping the accent. “What do you want,
Luce? I’m busy.”

“I need your help,” replied Lucifer. He’d practiced the
words, but he still had a terrible time getting them out.

“Wow, that must have just about killed you,” said Tiamat.
“Must be important.
Are the seeds of rebellion you’ve been
sowing not bearing fruit?”

“A bit of a mixed bag,” said Lucifer. “I’ve got King George
and parliament passing repressive laws left and right. And from what my agents
in America tell me, the colonists are just about fed up. The only problem is
,
I can’t get them to react. Ordinarily I’d expect angry
mobs burning King George in effigy and the like, but these Americans are
impossible to get riled up. You know
me,
I’m all about
violence and mayhem. If I don’t see peasants with pitchforks, I start to
worry.”

“So you want me to stir up some trouble in the colonies?”

“Not necessarily,” replied Lucifer. “I was hoping you could
make some calls, figure out if Heaven’s running some kind of psy ops campaign.”

Tiamat chuckled. “What, an angel on Sam Adams’ shoulder,
that sort of thing? You have demons in Boston, don’t you? Wouldn’t they have
noticed something like that?”

“I would have thought so, yes,” replied Lucifer. “But maybe
it’s something subtler than that. Something my agents are missing. I’d just
like to know what I’m dealing with.”

“I can look into it,” said Tiamat. “I’ve still got quite a
few well-placed angels feeding me information. What are you going to do for
me?”

“Well, what do you want?”

Tiamat smiled. “France.”

Lucifer coughed. “What?
The country?”

“No, the laundry detergent.
Yes,
the country. I want you and your demons out of France.”

“What are you planning?”

“None of your business.”

Lucifer thought for a moment. He, Tiamat, and several other
demons had been fighting for dominion over Western Europe ever since the fall
of Rome. Tiamat had substantial influence in most of the Catholic countries,
but Lucifer had free rein in Britain, Germany and the lowland countries. He
only had enough agents in France to keep Tiamat in check.

“For how long?” he asked.

“Fifty years,” said Tiamat.

“Thirty,” said Lucifer. “And I want your spies out of
Britain for the same period of time. Don’t insult my intelligence by acting
like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

Tiamat smiled. “Deal,” she said.

“Hang on,” said Lucifer. “You haven’t said what you’re going
to deliver to earn your prize.”

“What’s your goal?” asked Tiamat. “What do you really want
out of this?”

“The usual,” replied Lucifer.
“Mayhem and
destruction.”

Tiamat sighed. “You know what drives me nuts about you,
Lucifer?”

“My impeccable fashion sense?”

“Your complete lack of imagination.
It’s all riots and lynchings and massacres with you. You don’t see the big
picture.”

Lucifer didn’t argue the matter. When Tiamat wanted to
expound on something, it was usually best just to let her. And if he was honest
with himself, she did have a point: Tiamat had always been better at seeing the
big picture than he. The whole religious persecution thing was only one
example. But Tiamat’s focus on the big picture was also her downfall: her
tendency to overlook details had more than once brought one of her grand
schemes crashing down. It was how Lucifer had been able to maintain the edge in
their rivalry over the past 4,000 years.

“So I ask you again,” Tiamat went on, “What do you really
want out of this mess in the colonies? What’s your endgame?”

Lucifer tried to think like Tiamat, focusing not on petty
crimes and minor massacres, but on the big picture.

“War,” he said.

Tiamat smiled. “Better,” she said. “I’ll give you a war.”

“When?” asked Lucifer. “I don’t want to have to wait a
century for this thing to boil over.”

“Within two years of today,” said Tiamat. “There’ll be a
pitched battle between the Americans and the British.”

“Two years?” said Lucifer dubiously. “You realize I’ve been
working on this for close to a decade. These people do nothing but talk. The
British pass an outrageous law and the Americans tear it up and send an angry
letter to the king. That’s all they’ve done for five years now. It’s like
trying to start a fire underwater.”

“Give me two years,” said Tiamat. “You’ll have your war.”

Lucifer shrugged. “Then you’ll have France, my dear.”

Chapter Eleven
      
 

San Francisco; August 2016

“So this Mercury,” Suzy said. “Is he
an angel or a demon?”

“Ehhh…” Eddie replied.

“What does that mean?”

“Well, you remember when the Moon got imploded?”

“Doesn’t ring any bells.”

“Seriously?”

“Of course I remember when the Moon got imploded. How would
I not remember something like that? A third of the Moon just disappeared, and
nobody knows why.”