The Devil's Secret (2 page)

God didn’t seem to notice his ungrateful musings, however. The Lord graciously motioned to the large fountain behind Thorn. “Please take a sip. You’ll find the water here quite good. Heaven is the only place in the universe where physical and spiritual realms are one and the same, and you may have forgotten how vivid the senses can be up here.”

Water poured from the mouths of four griffins at the fountain’s center. On top of the griffins stood a nude statue of the long-dead archangel Tobrius, posed with hands raised gratefully, as if to God. An odd-looking bird staggered off the rim of the fountain as Thorn knelt to drink; he couldn’t be sure, but it looked awfully like a dodo bird. It squawked at him as he dipped his head toward the water.

“No, don’t stick your face in. It tastes better if you cup your hands.”

Thorn froze, afraid he’d accidentally committed a sin, but when he glanced back, God urged him on with a kind look.

Thorn cupped his hands and drank. This was the first time he’d ever tasted water, and he found it delicious, relieving, worthy of all the hype. He swished the liquid around in his mouth, delighting in the new sensation, then swallowed.

“Do you like My animals?” God asked, gesturing to a family of platypuses playing in a stream. “I keep them around to remind Myself how much I value all life.” Just after saying this, He noticed a Doberman Pinscher defecating on the grass behind Him. “Ah, clean this up, please?”

An angel—apparently the designated picker-up of dog shit—ran out from behind a tree, a plastic shopping bag ready in his hand. The large canine loped off.

“They are nice animals,” Thorn said before drinking from the fountain again. Then he asked, “Am I human?”

“At the moment, yes, your demon spirit has been given a human body,” said God. “The same as at the beginning of the Sanctuary. The same as when you appeared to Amy on Earth.” The Lord Most High stroked one of the plants growing from His collar, and muttered a small postscript: “I’m still trying to figure out how that happened.”

“You’ve been following my plight?”

“Of course. We observe the journey of any demon walking toward goodness, few though they are. And if you accept My offer to enter My service, your plight will have ended. You will again be Balthior, a cherub with wings, clothed in the righteousness of God.”
Or in the generic white robes of the angels.
“You will serve My will in Heaven and on Earth, love Me and be loved by Me.”

Thorn wiped the wetness from his chin and stood. In spite of the potential danger, he decided it was time to test these new waters in which he now swam. “What have I done to earn this?”

God squinted. “I thought you already knew. You earned this because you acted selflessly, and because you think. I do love thinkers. They’re quite valuable to Me.”

“And this is why You
ask
me into Your service instead of snapping Your fingers and brainwashing me into it? You value thinkers, so You also value free will.” Thorn spoke as humbly as he could, for this was the God who had once started a war because Lucifer had asked the wrong question.

God smiled as if proud of His child. “You have the truth of it, Balthior. I never wanted a world of automatons. Goodness and critical thought can only exist when chosen freely.”

Thorn’s anxiety threatened to subdue his inquisitive mind, but he pressed on. “In that case, I’ve always wondered… Why is it necessary for us to be able to hurt others? Why is that a part of free will? If the whole purpose of life is for a human or angel to choose Your side or the demons’ side, then couldn’t You have created a world where it was literally impossible for us to hurt each other? With no natural disasters either? To let us make our choice in peace?”

God nodded magnanimously, which relieved Thorn a bit. “Both on Earth and in the Sanctuaries, the suffering is a test, to reveal the content of your hearts.”

Thorn echoed Crystal’s words from the Sanctuary. “But You’re all-knowing. You should know what’s in my heart without having to test me.”

“The testing was for your sake, not Mine. The testing was meant to teach you, to refine and perfect you. Look, I apologize for the suffering that you and everyone else endures, Balthior. But it’s the only way to develop intelligent beings who are perfectly good. That’s My goal for everyone, human and angel alike.”

“Well,
You’re
perfectly good. Prior to creation, did You once have to suffer too?”

God flinched at that. He sighed, then looked worriedly at Thilial and the other angels behind Him.

Thorn’s decision to question God had crept up on him, surprised him. Perhaps it had been caused by the desperation of finding no answers after months of searching. Perhaps it was a vestige of his brief time as an Angel of Reason long ago. Or perhaps it was just madness resulting from his near brush with Hell. Regardless, Thorn found that he didn’t care if his questions annoyed God so much that he was sent straight back. He had to
know
.

“You’re just as much of a thinker as I hoped and expected, Thorn. Come. Walk with Me. We’ll discuss everything in time. A demon returning to us is a rare event, requiring celebration. For now, you should take in the sights of Heaven.” He started walking down one of the room’s many gravel paths. “Can I get you anything? Bread? Wine?”

“Answers.” Thorn stood resolute, making no move to follow God.

The finicky, timid fellow who had created the universe turned slowly. His bodyguards readied their swords. Thorn stepped back, but God raised a hand in peace. “Walk with Me, and I will give you answers.”

Thorn noticed that although God stood twenty feet away, His voiced sounded as clear and sharp as if He were standing right next to Thorn’s ears. Thinking over the past few minutes, Thorn couldn’t remember His voice ever having seemed any farther away than that.
This is a truly powerful Being. And quirky. I must proceed with care.
Hesitantly, Thorn heeded God’s words, and moved toward Him. The bodyguards allowed him into their midst, and Thorn strolled side by side with God.

The Enemy led him beneath a pergola filled with red, blue, and purple flowers, toward a distant colonnade that, Thorn remembered, led out to the rest of Heaven. As they walked, Thorn noticed various animals loitering in the vast room. A group of pangolins were gathered by a brook, and some shoebills nested in the garden nearby. A little echidna waddled across his path.

“Where should we begin?” God asked.

“Begin with the Sanctuaries. Did You truly create them as tests for demons?”

“Yes.”

“Why not just test demons on Earth?”

“I tried that, in the beginning. But you demons have your Rules and mores, keeping any of you from questioning your beliefs. And as your society cemented itself on Earth, fewer and fewer of you were coming back to Me. Sanctuaries offered a perfect lure: the promise of killing humans drew demons in, yet also isolated you from your peers in a controlled environment where I could test you. We started saving more of you that way.”

“Ah. And that’s why only demons who enter Sanctuaries alone—or at least well before the rest of a group—are given a human body…”
Like the one I abandoned, just twelve hours ago.
“Because a lone demon in a human body might identify with the humans and question his place in the universe, but a group would just murder the humans and celebrate. Their beliefs reinforce each other’s. They’d never change.” Thorn distastefully recalled a memory of his old acquaintance Aponon, who’d once killed a human in a Sanctuary then found the same man alive later on Earth. “But the humans all survive, don’t they? The Sanctuaries are only for demons.”

“Yes, yes, the humans in Sanctuaries are only there for your sake.” God plucked an orange from a passing tree and examined it as they walked. “If they die or don’t pass their test, I just send them to another Sanctuary, and then another, until they pass. Their lives on Earth are their true tests.”

Using real humans as bait seemed grossly inhumane to Thorn. “Then why use real humans at all? Wouldn’t it be less cruel to them if You used fake humans to lure us in?”

“You had to think you could earn prestige in Sanctuaries. You had to think I was protecting something valuable in there. The illusion had to be maintained. Ah, here we are. Behold.” God led Thorn off the gravel path to an expansive area with a marble floor and a large, paneless window that looked out on the city. Thorn stopped short when he walked through a screen of trees and saw what lay beyond the window. Outdoors, a short distance across the city, stood a great wall, hundreds of stories tall and immeasurably wide. It jutted into the sky and nearly blocked out the sun. Numbers and statistics covered its surface. Thorn looked closer, and saw that the digits moved and changed, yet never left the small boxes to which they were confined. The wall thus resembled a giant television screen, divided into tens of thousands of smaller screens, which seemed to alternate to a new set of figures every few seconds. It reminded Thorn of the New York Stock Exchange, which he’d frequented in the late eighties.

God’s attempt to change the topic bothered Thorn, but the wall was so majestic that he didn’t retort. “What is this?”

“A surveillance system of sorts. And also a map. Each box you see represents a Sanctuary. I built this wall and the entire Sanctuary system in the hope that many thousands of you would join us daily, but we only get one of you every few months.”

Now this is downright strange.
Thorn wondered if God realized how frightened most demons were of the mysterious Sanctuaries, and how this fear might be foiling His plans to reconnect with His fallen angels. Thorn was still having trouble processing the fact that God even
wanted
to reconnect. “Why didn’t You simply tell us that You wanted us back? Why go to all this trouble?”

God chuckled indignantly. He tossed His orange upward then caught it as gravity pulled it back down. “Have you heard of a demon called Altherios?”

“I knew him.”

“He’s the reason why.”

Seriously?
“Altherios only killed a few dozen angels during his defection ploy. What were their lives compared to the millions of demons who’d return to You if You simply
told us
that You’ll let us defect?”

“I—You see, I—” God exhaled sharply and shook His head in irritation.

Thorn sensed that he’d touched on something—some secret that God was trying to keep hidden. He continued his onslaught of questions. “Why don’t demons who’ve gone over to Your side ever try to save the rest of us?” The question was rhetorical; Thorn already had a good guess about the answer. “Because it would make the right choice obvious and ruin Your precious tests?”

The exasperated look on God’s face told Thorn that he was right.

“Why did You create anything in the first place? Clearly not to bring glory to Yourself. An omnipotent being would have been able to satisfy all its needs and desires instantly, long ago, having no need to create—”

“I’m not omnipotent!”

Thilial and the bodyguards retreated a few steps at God’s outburst. The harpist, who had followed them here, stopped playing. The revelatory words hung between God and Thorn, the first piece in an enigmatic puzzle that Thorn had been trying to solve for months, if not centuries.

Thorn was stunned. Yet the angels’ expressions remained stoic.
They all knew. Of course they all knew.

“I can’t see people’s thoughts, I can’t be present wherever I wish, and I don’t know everything, much less the outcome of My tests. I’m a limited god.” He spun to the harpist. “Keep playing!”

The angel’s fingers darted back to his harp with a fearsome urgency. Sweat drizzled down his brow.

God breathed in and out a few times, calming Himself. Then He smiled and nodded a polite apology. “Sorry.”

He seemed to notice the fear in Thorn’s expression. He waved His hand and a huge rock the size of a bulldozer appeared next to them out of thin air. God made a show of pushing on it, but it didn’t budge. He laughed, for Thorn’s sake—a phony chuckling likely meant to ease Thorn’s tension. “Look,” God said. “I created a rock so big even I can’t move it.”

Thorn laughed politely at the joke. He was angry, but also glad that God had chosen to be benevolent in the face of criticism.

The limited deity gave a long sigh, as if the weight of the universe had just left His shoulders but would soon return. “Uh, clean this rock up, guys.” A dozen angels sprang into action. Each moved with a sense of desperation, like they all had guns to their heads.

God lumbered toward the immense window, and Thorn followed, full of questions. He kept his silence for a few moments though, since God’s confession had illustrated just how little Thorn knew about this being to whom he spoke.

A chinchilla leaped out of the way as God rested His elbows on the sill and gazed out on His celestial city. Leaning out, Thorn realized that this room rested atop a steep cliff face: the mountainside beneath the window dropped straight down. And far below, at the base of the cliff, lay the city: dense masses of hulking buildings overshadowing a network of golden roads, the Sanctuary feed looming over all. In the distance, another part of the city had been built into the mountain range, lending the cityscape an impressive scale in height as well as width. The dreary red sun loomed just above the mountains as if setting, although mere minutes ago, it had appeared bright and yellow in the sky. Thorn wondered if God’s mood had affected the change. The Creator looked sad. More than sad. Wounded.

“I come from a place you could only dream of,” God started, then coughed a little. “In your nightmares.” He shook His head as He searched for more words. “I needed—I
need
to create minds. I need to atone—” He turned His gaze from the city to Thorn, who found difficulty meeting those piercing eyes with his own. “I can’t create morally flawless beings. I’d do it if I knew how, but every time I’ve tried, they’ve disappointed Me. They’re dumb robots, and they make horrible companions.

“I can only create beings like Myself, you see: emergent from natural evolution. Flawed beings. But beings who aspire! Who grow! Beings who can become better than they are!” He waved His orange fervently at the rotating planet Earth, floating past the drop-off from Heaven nearly a mile away. Central Africa was coming up.