Mercury Rises (15 page)

The offices of the archangels, he knew, were on the top floor of the Seraphic Administration Building. Up there are answers, he thought. I should just fly up there and demand an explanation. Michael, or Michelle, or whoever, owes me that much.

"You'll never make it," said a gravelly voice behind him.

Mercury turned. A tall, hooded angel stood before him. He removed his hood to reveal a thin, stern face and locks of curly blond hair. "I'm Malchediel," he said.

"Michael's bodyguard," Mercury said. "I saw you at the planeport."

Malchediel nodded. "Michael thanks you for your assistance. And asks that you refrain from trying to contact him again."

"Does 'he'?" said Mercury. "And what happens if I just fly up there and introduce myself?"

"You'll be decapitated again, for one. Hidden in those clouds is a squad of heavily armed seraphim just itching to slice and dice an uppity cherub who doesn't know his place."

"Look," said Mercury. "I'm not going to cause any trouble. I just want some answers. Can I just talk to Michael for two minutes? I did get my head hacked off in an attempt to foil her---
his
---abduction, after all."

"And someday he will return the favor," said Malchediel. "But I'm afraid I can't let you talk to him. What I can do is give you some advice."

"Ooh!" exclaimed Mercury. "Being given advice is my second-favorite thing!"

"Your first favorite being..."

"Not being given advice."

"Of course," said Malchediel. "But this is advice worth heeding. You're not going to find the answers you want up there." He waved his hand in the direction of the Seraphic Administration Building. "If you want to know why it's raining, go back to Babylon. Look around you."

"Super," said Mercury. "I'll get right on that."

"Also, I have this," said Malchediel, handing Mercury a small envelope sealed with wax. "Good luck."

With that, Malchediel shot into the sky and disappeared in the clouds.

Mercury opened the envelope. Inside was a business card with the seal of the archangel Michael. On the flip side had been written:

The rain comes from above.

---M.

"Wonderful," said Mercury. "Riddles." Michael and Malchediel couldn't even get their stories straight. Was he supposed to look around him or look up? Maybe, he thought, the answer is in my heart. He shoved the card in his pocket and trudged back to the planeport. Tiamat would be waiting.

SEVENTEEN

In the morning, Horace Finch and Christine arose before dawn to join the elders of the tribe on their climb up Mbutuokoti. The elders, a group of twenty men, had feasted on a concoction of milk and cattle blood the previous night and fasted in the morning in preparation for the climb. Christine and Finch snacked surreptitiously on packets of jerky he had brought with him.

Mbutuokoti, it turned out, was a dormant volcano that arose incongruously from the plain to the north of the encampment. The hike from the village to the base of the slope took nearly two hours. After a brief respite, the group began to ascend the side of the volcano. The climb was steep but not overly arduous; even in her weakened state, Christine was able to keep up with the men. She was aided in this by the fact that the men were carrying heavy bundles of bark and sticks on their backs and several of them were attempting to coax a stubborn goat up the rocky path along with them. Christine didn't know what they needed the goat for exactly, but neither she nor the goat saw this little excursion having a goat-friendly ending.

They reached the crest of the mountain by midmorning. Before them lay an oval crater, about three hundred yards across at its narrowest point and nearly fifty yards deep. The bottom of the crater was made of smooth black rock that was veined with dozens of crevices that spread out from its center.

The group clambered down the side of the crater and made its way to the center of the crater's floor. They had to take a meandering route to avoid the crevice, many of which were wide enough to fall into. Finch seemed particularly interested in the crevice, stopping frequently to shine his flashlight into the depths. Christine stopped next to him and peered into the crack, but could see nothing but walls of rock disappearing into darkness many yards below.

Upon reaching the center of the crater floor, the elders immediately began a complex set of rituals to prepare them for communing with the spirits. Christine and Finch stood awkwardly to the side. Finch admitted that he didn't really know what to expect; this was the first such pilgrimage the Tawani had undertaken since he had been among them, and they hadn't been very forthcoming with details. Only Tawani elders were privy to the arcane wisdom of communing with the spirits; the rest of the tribe would have to be content with receiving their spiritual guidance secondhand. As for pink-skinned strangers, they could tag along if they liked, but it was clear that they would receive little more deference than the goat.

After nearly an hour of dances, prayers, and chants, the twenty men encircled the goat and the shaman produced a knife. Two of the men approached the goat with cords to bind its legs. As tension mounted, Christine could no longer take it. She screamed.

Her unexpected outburst had the effect of panicking the goat and distracting several of the men. The goat took advantage of their lack of attention and darted between the legs of a particularly tall, bowlegged elder. It ran across the crater's floor for a good twenty yards before vanishing abruptly into a crevice. The men turned to face Christine in unison, howling incomprehensible curses at her. "Oh come on," Christine protested. "It's not all my fault. You're just looking for someone to blame."

The next hour was spent trying to retrieve the goat, which bleated pathetically somewhere in the blackness below. Finch lowered a flashlight on a length of nylon rope he had brought along, but the goat remained hidden among the twists and turns of the rock walls.

"How important is the goat, really?" Christine finally ventured. "Can't we do the rest of the ceremony without it?"

"For your sake, I'm not going to translate that," Finch replied. "They just might oblige you."

Christine was afraid to ask what he meant. Eventually one of the men volunteered to be lowered into the crevice on the rope. Finch made a loop at the end of it and the man put his foot through it and lowered himself into the fissure. He was one of the smaller of the men, but the Tawani were tall, gangly people, and it was clear he wasn't going to get very far.

Finch began, "Maybe I should..."

Christine stepped forward. "I'll do it," she said. "It is
partly
my fault the goat fell in, and in any case, I'm the smallest. I'm the only one who has a chance to get down there. You guys are all knees and elbows."

As she approached, the men became agitated, apparently convinced that she wasn't through wreaking havoc with their ceremony.

"It's OK," Finch said to the men. "She's just trying to get your goat."

"Nice," said Christine. "How long have you been saving
that
one?"

Finch tried to explain to the men in their own language what she had said. Christine could tell his grasp of the language was rudimentary; he spoke slowly and often struggled to find the right words. Still, it was amazing what he had picked up in one month with the tribe; evidently he was something of a linguistic genius, having already mastered Japanese, Hindi, and several Slavic languages in addition to his native English. After a few moments, the man in the crevice reluctantly climbed out and handed the end of the rope to Christine.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" asked Finch. "You haven't been feeling well. I think I could probably fit down there."

Christine was a bit taken aback by Finch's chivalry. He didn't seem like the type. She said, "Thanks for the offer, but I'll do it. I feel better with you up here. I don't completely trust our hosts."

Finch opened his mouth to protest, but Christine had already slipped her foot through the loop in the rope and began lowering herself into the crevice. Finch grabbed the rope and indicated for the Tawani to anchor the other end.

Gradually they lowered Christine into the crevice. At first the opening was almost impossibly tight, but after a few feet it opened up into a wider chasm. She heard the goat bleating not far away, but it was difficult to pinpoint the source. Stopping on a small ledge that sloped downward, she shone the flashlight around her. She still couldn't see the bottom of the fissure, but a cavern opened in the rock wall below her. Shining the light into the opening, she thought she saw, for just a split-second, something moving inside. It was possible, she thought, that the goat had hit the ledge and bounced across the crevice, landing on the floor of the cavern. She hoped so, at least, because otherwise it probably lay wedged somewhere in the blackness below.

She shouted to Finch to give her some slack, and he responded by letting down some more rope and making a stupid pun that she mercifully couldn't hear. Kicking off against the crevice wall, she swung to the far side and landed just within the cavern. "More rope!" she hollered up the crevice, and the rope slackened some more. Shining the flashlight into the cavern, she was suddenly met by two glowing green eyes. After a momentary start, she realized she had found her prey: it was the errant goat.

The animal lay on the rocky floor of the cave, barely moving. Christine approached it slowly, speaking in low, soothing tones. The goat appeared stunned and frightened but unhurt, and it actually seemed happy to see her. That changed when she slipped the rope off her foot and slipped it around the goat's horns, tightening the loop quickly and wrapping the rope around a few more times for good measure. She gave the rope a jerk and it slithered across the floor until it became taut. The goat bucked and bleated, but it didn't have a chance against the men dragging it to its doom above. It was dragged, scraping and kicking, to the cavern opening, and then it lifted headfirst off the ground.

"Sorry about that," Christine said sincerely. "There just isn't any other way." She watched the goat recede against the blue sky as if being carried by some celestial dumbwaiter.

Pointing the flashlight further down the narrow cavern, she saw that it opened up again a few feet past where the goat had been lying. While the goat made its slow, clattering ascent to the heavens, she walked gingerly to the opening. Once through, she looked around and gasped.

The chamber was maybe thirty feet across, and a domed ceiling rose about twenty feet above. In the center of the room stood a simple stone pedestal, on which rested a nearly spherical object that glittered in the flashlight's beam. It was a glass apple.

EIGHTEEN

For some reason it didn't really surprise Eddie to hear that Tiamat was herself in the dark about who actually wrote the Charlie Nyx books. Lucifer, who had created the character known as Katie Midford and masterminded the whole Charlie Nyx phenomenon, would no doubt have played the matter as closely to his chest as possible. He wouldn't have given Tiamat any more information than she absolutely needed in order to play her role.

Still, Eddie was at first skeptical regarding whether Tiamat would have hired a mortal (and a young, attractive, female mortal at that) to locate the real author of the books. This skepticism, however, dissipated after only a few minutes with Cody Lang. In addition to being handy with a Glock, Cody knew her stuff. In fact, Cody seemed to know just about everyone's stuff. She was a walking, talking, Glock-toting encyclopedia of what she referred to as "the secret history of Los Angeles." Whether or not she actually had any idea of who the mystery author was, it wasn't difficult to imagine a paranoid, power-mad schemer like Tiamat falling for her spiel. She was Rasputin to Tiamat's Tsarina. To Eddie it sounded like a load of nicely-dressed-up bollocks.

"
Chinatown
was a completely sterilized version of L.A.'s history," she was saying. "They foisted that little fairy tale on the public to keep people from looking into what really happened here. Give 'em a happy little story about water rights and incest and they'll eat it up. If only it were so simple!" She chuckled and shook her head, downing the rest of her drink. "Want another?" she asked Eddie, who had barely touched his drink. Eddie shook his head and she made herself another.

"And the so-called 'General Motors streetcar conspiracy,'" she went on. "What a joke. I mean, sure, GM, Firestone, and the lot wanted to get rid of the streetcars and replace them with buses. But that was going to happen anyway---and it did happen, even in cities where the conspirators had little or no influence. The only reason anybody took notice was that in Los Angeles they pushed a little too hard. Which prompts the question, 'why?' Why did they work so hard to get rid of the streetcars in L.A. when they were on their way out anyway?"

Eddie shrugged. "Water rights and incest?" he ventured. He didn't have a clue what Cody was talking about. What did Chinatown have to do with streetcars and General Motors? And what did any of it have to do with the mysterious author of the Charlie Nyx books?

"Ha!" Cody replied. "No, I'm afraid the truth goes much deeper than that. Now you're probably wondering what any of this has to do with Essie," she said.

"Actually, yes," Eddie said. "I was starting to...wait, with what?"

"Sorry," Cody said. "I've developed my own jargon for this case. Essie is my code name for the author of the Charlie Nix books. From the Latin,
scriptor Carolingus
, meaning 'Charlie's author.' Abbreviated S.C., or 'Essie' for short."

"Of course," replied Eddie. "That makes perfect sense."

Cody went on, "The truth is, I don't know yet how it's all connected. I just know it is, somehow. Do you know how many corporations were indicted in the conspiracy to form a transportation monopoly in Los Angeles in 1947? Nine. In the Bible, the number nine represents divine justice and the end of human endeavors. There were six parent companies named in the indictment: Firestone, Standard Oil of California, Phillips, General Motors, Federal Engineering, and Mack; and three subsidiaries: National City Lines, Pacific City Lines, and American City Lines. Yellow Truck & Coach, which had been absorbed by GM by the time of the trial, was also involved. That's ten companies. Seven individual executives of these companies were also named as defendants. Revelation speaks of 'a beast rising out of the sea having
ten horns and seven heads
.' Is it such a stretch to conclude this beast is the petroleum-automotive complex, with its offshore drilling platforms and fleets of oil tankers?"