Lesser Gods (12 page)

“Well, sorry to disappoint you, Laila, but I’m not really into religion. Actually, I’m an agnostic.”

“An agnostic?”

“It means I don’t believe in God.”

“I know what ‘agnostic’ means, Adrian,” said Laila, chuckling. “Terry’s an atheist too.”

“But I’m not an atheist,” I insisted. “I’m an agnostic. I’m not saying God doesn’t exist. But there’s no way to know for sure, so I just don’t bother with religion one way or the other.”

Laila smiled mischievously. “And yet the sisters tell me you sometimes visit the church.”

“I do, but not to pray,” I told her. “You know that I’m friends with Mark Parnell, right? I sometimes talk to him at the church, but I don’t intrude on the services.”

Laila gave me a dubious look. “You’re friends with a priest and you’re not at all religious?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“Well, Adrian, you have to admit it’s a bit unusual.”

“I’m not against faith, Laila. I just don’t have time for it.”

“Why not?”

I pondered that for a few seconds before answering, “Well, even assuming that God really exists, he’s never done me any favors, so I have nothing to return. I don’t thank God for my blessings any more than I blame him for my curses. I think life is easier when you don’t have to rely on some invisible, untouchable force.”

Laila pursed her lips. “Hmm...”

I shifted my weight uneasily on my chair. I couldn’t believe that my first private conversation with Laila had suddenly turned into a theological argument. I wondered how much longer Terry would take getting the hotdogs.

“I’m not against religion, Laila,” I said again, not wanting to offend her. “I have nothing against God or the people who believe in God. I don’t go around telling people
not
to go to church. If believing in God helps them get through their day-to-day lives, I’m happy for them, but I can’t simply choose to believe in something without any kind of proof. And I’ve never seen anything that could convince me that there’s a higher being running this world.”

Suddenly Laila started laughing really hard. Laughing! I couldn’t have been more surprised if she had grown an extra head.

“Why do you laugh?” I asked, lost but nevertheless relieved that she wasn’t upset with me.

“I’m sorry,” Laila said between giggles. “I just find it funny that there are people out there who regard you as a god of sorts, and yet you don’t even believe in God yourself.”

I blinked back at her for a moment. “People who regard me as a... What? Who thinks we’re gods?”

“Lots of people,” said Laila, still laughing. “You know that psionics are sometimes called ‘lesser gods,’ don’t you?”

Now that she mentioned it, I remembered how even Mr. Baker had once called New Haven a city of “lesser gods” during an important speech. The Guardian leader had said it jokingly and I doubted he really believed that psionics were gods. But then there were the crazy God-slayers out there who really did think of psionics as gods – to be hunted down. And that was no joke.

“I’ve heard the expression before, Laila,” I replied carefully. “But I never really understood it. Personally, I think that anyone who honestly believes that psionics are gods has very low standards for their gods. We are not gods. Not even lesser gods, if there could be such a thing.”

“Oh,” said Laila, looking disappointed. “You know, Adrian, my mother once called you a godsend for bringing Ms. Gifford to New Haven and then helping to rescue her this spring. She said it was the Lord’s will that you came to us when you did.”

I laughed as I patted the little round scar on my stomach, saying, “If you call being shot by Wolves ‘the Lord’s will,’ then you’ll understand why I don’t bother with God.”

Laila laughed a bit too. “You don’t even believe in a higher spirit or anything?”

“I don’t believe one way or the other, Laila,” I said, eager to end this line of questioning.

“But if you’re not religious, what do you think happens when you die?”

“To be honest, I don’t dwell on it,” I replied. “Everyone dies eventually. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

Terry and Alia returned with our lunch, and not a moment too soon.

“What kept you?” I asked Terry as Alia handed me one of the hotdogs and passed another to Laila.

“Perhaps you didn’t notice the line!” snapped Terry. “But you two seemed to be having a nice little conversation.”

I chuckled. “Laila and I were just talking about death.”

“There’s a happy thought!” laughed Terry. “She asked you to go to that church with her, didn’t she?”

Laila looked embarrassedly at Terry and me, and suddenly, without exactly knowing why, I said, “Tell you what, Laila, if your mother doesn’t mind taking a non-believer into the house of God, I think I will join you this Sunday.”

“Really?!” Laila exclaimed happily. “I’m sure my mother would be very happy. You might not remember her, but she met you last year at the Welcome to New Haven party, and at the New Year’s party too. She said she’d like to see you again in a quieter situation.”

Laila was right: I didn’t remember her mother. I had been introduced to many people at both parties and I couldn’t remember a fraction of them.

“What does she want with me?” I asked, trying not to sound too suspicious.

“Nothing!” laughed Laila. “She just wants to talk, you being one of Ms. Gifford’s children and all.”

It was political.

“But are you really sure you want to come to church service, Adrian?” Laila asked hesitantly. “You might find it a bit boring.”

I shook my head. “No, I think it might be fun. I’ve yet to see Mark in action.”

“Ali?” I asked. “You want to come, too?”

My sister was too busy chewing to reply verbally, but she nodded her head vigorously.

Terry just rolled her eyes.

After eating, we swam and played in the pool for a while longer before Laila announced that she had to get home and do her chores, and the rest of us decided to call it a day as well. Despite having a mother on the Council, Laila lived in another building, New Haven Six, so we parted with her at the pool.

As we walked back toward New Haven One, Terry poked my shoulder with her prosthetic fingers and said, “Looks like I didn’t need to help set up a date for you after all.”

I shook my head. “Terry, I’m going to church service with her and her mother, with Alia tagging along as well. That’s hardly a date.”

“Incidentally, Adrian, why did you agree to go? You don’t believe in God any more than I do.”

“So what?” I said. “Mark’s my friend. I still don’t know why Laila’s mother wants to talk to me, but–”

“Oh, you are so thick, Half-head!” Terry cried exasperatedly. “No wonder you can’t even figure out how to use a grenade. Laila just wanted an excuse to see you more.”

“By asking me to church?” I asked skeptically.

“Anywhere else and it would’ve been like a date, dummy! Laila’s old fashioned, just like her mom. She wants you to ask her out. And she’s real close to her mom, so no doubt her mom’s in on it too.”

I said uncertainly, “I don’t know about this dating thing.”

“Laila’s not that much older than you, Adrian. She wastes time on Sundays, but otherwise she’s a good girl. What’s the matter?”

I didn’t reply. It was all a little too sudden and I wasn’t sure yet how I felt about Laila. I liked her, of course, but I hadn’t considered us as being anything more than friends. Besides, aside from Terry’s claim, what guarantee did I have that Laila really wanted to be asked on a date by someone like me?

Terry laughed. “If it mattered to Laila that you were an ugly midget, she wouldn’t have asked you in the first place.”

If I thought I could get away with it, I would have given Terry a good whack on the head, but I had to settle for an angry glare.

Though Terry continued to tease me about it, I really would have gone to church with Laila that Sunday had something else not gotten in the way.

Thursday was pouring outside and Terry had dragged me down to the dojo for an extra-long CQC session. Alia joined us as usual, which meant I could take mildly frequent breaks as Terry humored my sister by showing her some of the easier moves.

“Be careful, Adrian,” said Terry, grappling with Alia, “one of these days, your sister’s going to be better at this than you.”

“Will I really?” asked Alia, smiling up at Terry.

“Trust me, kid,” said Terry, nodding. “Girls are naturally stronger.”

I wasn’t about to contest that.

Alia’s small size precluded any real test of her skill, but Terry claimed that my sister had made a good deal of progress over the last year. Even Terry, who rarely complimented anyone without good reason, might have just been saying that to make Alia happy, but I suspected Terry’s praise wasn’t entirely unjustified. Alia had, after all, managed to break free of Riles when he took her hostage.

“Adrian!” I heard a man’s voice call from behind me. Turning, I saw Mr. Simms at the bottom of the stairs leading out of the dojo. “Might I have a word with you in private?” he called to me.

I looked at Terry, who said, “Go, Adrian. Don’t keep him waiting.”

Alia was watching Mr. Simms with a touch of apprehension in her eyes, but she didn’t say anything.

Leaving Terry and Alia to their practice, I jogged over to Mr. Simms, who smiled down at me and gestured toward the stairs.

As we walked up them, he said, “I’m sorry we haven’t had a chance to speak sooner, Adrian.”

“I know you’ve been busy,” I said.

The top of the stairs opened into the entrance hall of the underground gathering place, and at the far end of it was the elevator that led back up into our building. Several doors lined both sides of the hall, and Mr. Simms opened the one that led to the shooting range. Mr. Simms walked briskly, and it took us but half a minute to arrive.

Sandwiched between sound barriers at each lane’s firing point, there were several people practicing here. I couldn’t see the shooters because of the barriers, but I could see the paper targets hanging from ceiling-mounted rails at various distances downrange. Each target sported a black silhouette of a man with white circles over his chest. Some were being shot at by guns, others by telekinetic blasts or small balls of pyroid flame.

“Let’s see your arm,” said Mr. Simms, handing me a pistol and a box of bullets from the storage cabinet behind us.

As I loaded the clip, Mr. Simms attached a fresh paper target onto the rail, and then slid the target twenty yards downrange. This was farther than I usually practiced at.

Flipping off the safety, I slowly squeezed off five rounds, carefully aiming each. They all hit the inner circle on the target man’s chest, and one was nearly a bull’s-eye.

“You have been practicing,” Mr. Simms stated the obvious.

“Almost every day,” I replied. “Terry’s relentless about these things.”

“I’m sure she is. How about your telekinesis?”

Flipping the safety back on, I placed the pistol on the table and stretched my right arm toward the target, pointing my right index finger at the man’s silhouette. A telekinetic blast focused through a finger took longer to prepare than one fired from an outstretched arm, but it was much stronger. I put a hole through the middle of the paper man’s head, right between his eyes. At twenty yards, had the target been a real person, I probably couldn’t hurt him that much, but Mr. Simms was visibly impressed.

“Terry was right,” he said, looking pleased. “You are quite a Knight already.”

“Thank you, Mr. Simms,” I said.

Mr. Simms sighed quietly and said, “The truth is I’ve been putting this off for a while now and I realize it can no longer wait. Here’s my minor dilemma, Adrian. First off, I was very impressed with your work on your first assignment. Thanks to you talking Mr. Barnum into coming of his own free will, convincing him to join us has been a comparatively easy task.”

I smiled up at him for a moment before I noticed that Mr. Simms wasn’t smiling back.

Mr. Simms continued in a slightly harsher voice, “What you should have done, Adrian, is let Terry shoot the man. The Wolves were fast approaching and you risked your team unnecessarily.”

“But–”

“Let me finish, Adrian. The reason I’m here today is to invite you on our next assignment. You are an Honorary Knight, so I can’t order you, but I could definitely use every man capable and willing, and I can see that you are both. Before allowing you to join, however, I must ask you to promise me that henceforth, you will leave the tactical decisions to your superiors and follow orders to the word.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, forgetting Terry’s words about this not being the military. “I promise, sir.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Simms. “We leave tomorrow.”

“What about Terry?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t she coming too?”

Mr. Simms looked surprised. “But of course she is! I told her long ago. Didn’t she tell you?”

“No,” I said, quite irked. So that was why Terry had been so nonchalant about not knowing when our next mission was going to be.

“Then you don’t even know where we’re going, do you, Adrian?”

“No, I don’t,” I said.

“We should go somewhere private,” said Mr. Simms, and led me out of the shooting range.

We walked back to the entrance hall and through another door and a corridor until Mr. Simms found what he was looking for. He opened a heavy steel door and motioned me inside a musty, claustrophobically small concrete room. There was a table and two chairs in the middle, and it uncomfortably reminded me of an interrogation chamber, which it probably was. We didn’t sit down.

Turning to me, Mr. Simms grinned and said, “This is better. You can never be too careful, after all.”

“What’s the mission, Mr. Simms?” I asked, forcing myself to remain relaxed.

“You can ask Terry for the specific details, Adrian, but you got yourself a big one this time. You see, we’re going after a major God-slayer training camp that’s shared by a number of their groups. It’s up in the mountains, in a spot so secret that even the trainees are taken to and from it blindfolded, which is why it has been so hard to locate.” Mr. Simms rubbed his hands together gleefully. “But we have them now. The Slayers have many of their weapons stockpiled there, but much more importantly, we have good reason to believe that this camp has valuable information concerning the Angels. Perhaps even the identity of the Angels’ second master controller.”