Mercury Rises (20 page)

"One angel, at least," said Finch. "That's the main reason I'm calling. I have every confidence in my operatives, but even my best men are no match for an angel. I'm going to need some help retrieving Slater."

"Say no more," said the figure. "I will take care of it. My minions will deliver this Jacob Slater into your hands."

"Excellent," said the Finch, rubbing his hands together. "Soon the secrets of the Universe will be ours!"

TWENTY-FOUR

Christine took the first flight back to Los Angeles. She had debated trying to find Finch at the Eden Two site, but she would have had to charter a flight to get there and she had no guarantee Finch would be there. And even if he were, what would she do, knock on the door and ask for her apple back? Finch must have some idea what the apple was; otherwise, why would he have stolen it and disappeared like that? No, if she was going to keep him from doing something stupid or malicious with the anti-bomb, she needed to pull rank on Horace Finch. She needed angels on her side. For the first time she found herself hoping the interplanar portal in her breakfast nook was still working. If it was, she could find her way to the planeport and maybe get a hold of Uzziel or someone else in the Heavenly bureaucracy who would know what to do about the missing anti-bomb.

She took a cab from LAX to her condo in Glendale. It was unrealistic, she knew, to expect that she could get away with never setting foot in the ill-fated condo again, but she hoped to at least make it to Labor Day, when she would need her fall wardrobe. She stood in front of the door, took a deep breath, and opened the door. She was unprepared for what she found inside.

"Hi!" shouted a small, wiry man from the kitchen. "Man, am I glad to see you. Did you get ketchup?"

Christine stood dumbly in the doorway. She shook her head.

"Oh, and before I forget," said the man, "your sandwich grill appears to be missing. I've looked
everywhere
."

Another man, who had been sitting at the table in Christine's breakfast nook reading her newspaper, stood up and approached her with his hand extended. "Sorry about my dumbass friend," he said. "He's not the brightest angel in the choir." He shook Christine's hand. "I'm Ramiel," he said. "The idiot eating all of your SpaghettiOs is Nisroc."

Nisroc waved politely from the kitchen. "I forget," he said. "Microwave first or can opener first?"

"Can opener, you moron. And use a friggin' bowl this time. I swear to God, you're going to burn this place down yet. Pardon my French." Ramiel was slightly taller than Nisroc, and he sported the thick-necked, crew-cutted look of a high school wrestler. Christine instantly hated him. She wasn't as certain about Nisroc; he seemed well-meaning if a little dim.

She was so shocked by their unapologetic presence in her condo that she forgot to be upset at the intrusion. "You're angels," she said at last. "What are you doing here?"

"It's not by choice, I'll tell you that," Ramiel said. "What a dump. The only selling point of the whole place is the linoleum."

Sure enough, the linoleum remained in the breakfast nook, looking as pleasant and innocuous as the last time Christine saw it. It really was a welcoming pattern, she thought.

"The portal," she said flatly. "It's still here."

"Well of course it's still here," Ramiel replied. "Do you know how convenient it is to have a portal in the middle of Glendale? Thanks to Lucifer's brilliant scheme, Los Angeles is a twenty-minute commute from the planeport,
max
. The powers-that-be weren't about to mothball such a useful portal."

"You make it sound like Lucifer's grand plan was to improve interplanar mass transit," Christine said. "As I recall, he was trying to nuke this whole plane."

"Hey, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs," Ramiel replied.

"Break the eggs!" exclaimed Nisroc, slapping his forehead with his palm. "I wondered about the crunchiness."

"You still haven't answered my question," Christine said. "What are you two doing here?"

Before Ramiel could answer, Nisroc announced excitedly, "We're being punished!"

"
You're
being punished," Ramiel said. "
I'm
performing a vital function in the service of Lucifer."

Christine shrunk away from Ramiel. "Wait, you work for Lucifer? You're
demons
?"

"
He's
a demon," Nisroc said. "I'm still an angel. Well, I was on my way to becoming a demon, but now I'm doing penance to get my old job back. And don't let Ramiel scare you; he's OK, except before he's had his coffee in the morning. We've been assigned to watch your condo."

"Assigned by whom?"

"Heaven and Hell, respectively," replied Ramiel. "It's a joint mission. We're supposed to prevent any unauthorized use of the portal."

Further inquiry revealed that Nisroc and Ramiel were the angels responsible for the earthquakes in Southern California that had reconfigured the transplanar energy channels, thereby creating an interplanar portal in Christine's breakfast nook. When Lucifer's plan to send an army of demons through the portal to wreak havoc on the Mundane Plane failed, Ramiel had returned to the Infernal Plane and Nisroc had fallen on the mercy of Heaven, claiming that he wasn't fully aware of the gravity of what he had done. The Council of Independent Planes had decided that while they worked out the legal implications of Lucifer's violation of the Apocalypse Accord, the portal should remain open and Heaven and Hell should each send a representative to ensure that no unauthorized use of the portal occurred. As this job consisted of sitting in Christine's apartment all day and keeping an eye on her linoleum, there weren't many volunteers from either side. Eventually Nisroc and Ramiel, who were each in a fair amount of hot water with their respective bosses, were drafted for the job. Neither of them had left her condo for six weeks.

"Also," Nisroc said, "I have instructions for you. From Uzziel."

"Uzziel?" Christine asked. "Mercury's boss?"

Nisroc nodded. "He said to tell you..." Nisroc trailed off uncertainly. He looked at Ramiel.

"Good lord, you're useless," Ramiel grumbled. He turned to Christine. "You're supposed to step on the portal. You'll be transported to the Floor, where you'll be met by an escort who will take you to Uzziel."

"What does Uzziel want with me?" Christine asked.

"I don't know," Nisroc said. "Uzziel didn't tell me. He just came here a few days ago and said that if a pretty woman with brown hair and a nose that was a little too pointy showed up, I was supposed to tell you to step on the portal. That's basically it, I think." He looked to Ramiel again, who rolled his eyes.

"Hmph," said Christine. "OK, I'll do it, not because Uzziel summoned me, but because I happen to have something to discuss with Uzziel."

Ramiel shrugged. "Whatever floats your halo," he said.

Christine took a deep breath and stepped onto the linoleum.

"Oh, one more thing!" Nisroc exclaimed as the portal began to glow beneath her. "Get ketchup!"

TWENTY-FIVE

Circa 2,000 B.C.

A few weeks after the waters began to recede, Mercury stood on a hilltop north of Babylon, overlooking the aftermath of the flood. Tiamat had instructed him to determine the state of the surrounding territories so that she would know how much of the labor force she would have to expend on defense. The deluge had been nearly as bad as Noah had suggested: very few signs of civilization remained anywhere in the region. The Egyptians and Babylonians had survived, albeit with significant losses, but nearly everyone else had been wiped out.

His eye alighted on something that looked a bit like an upside-down hut on a rocky hillside further to the north. As he stared at it, trying to figure out why somebody would build such a bizarre structure, he realized that it was Noah's boat, the
Rainbow Warrior
, having run aground when the hill was still an island. He leaped into the air, soaring toward the boat. It was much farther away than he had thought; as he got closer, he was struck again by just how gigantic Noah's boat was. Had he really built that thing with just the help of his three sons? Noah may be a little crazy, Mercury thought, but he's got to be the greatest carpenter the world will ever see.

Passing over the valley between the two hills, he noticed a pair of large round boulders that looked remarkably like a couple of grazing elephants. The illusion was impressive even before one of the boulders reared its neck, stuck its prehensile trunk in the air, and made a sound like a trumpet.

"Wow," said Mercury, rubbing his eyes. You didn't see a lot of elephants in the Middle East. Presumably this pair came from Noah's boat, but where did he find them in the first place?

Mercury zoomed down to take a closer look. Not far from the elephants were several small garden plots and a smattering of pens holding various domesticated animals. A number of men and women worked at various tasks: chopping firewood, feeding animals, building fences, and the like. A gaggle of small children raced around the encampment, shouting and playing games, their shouts echoing off the hillsides. Up the hillside, closer to Mercury, was a plateau on which rested a number of tents of varying sizes. Obviously the
Rainbow Warrior
had come to rest on the hillside, across the valley and its crew---Noah's extended family---had settled here. They had pitched their tents on the plateau as a defensive measure: the area would be difficult to reach from the rocky hillside above, and any invader approaching from below would have to make his way through a maze of corrals populated by geese, dogs, donkeys, and other animals that didn't take kindly to being disturbed. Of course, they hadn't planned on being visited by an angel.

Mercury landed on the plateau and made his way to the tents. He hadn't specifically been looking for Noah, but now that he had found his camp, he was determined to have a talk with him. The last time they had met, Mercury had been too preoccupied with survival to give much thought to this Noah character, but over the past few weeks he had done some thinking, and something didn't sit right. However eccentric Noah was, it was undeniable that he had somehow known the flood was coming---known it for quite some time, in fact. After all, how long would it take to build a boat like that? Decades, probably. If Noah was insane, he happened to be just the right kind of insane at just the right time to ensure his family's survival. And if he wasn't insane, well, then he was certainly worth talking to. In fact, he was probably worth talking to either way. As hard as it was to believe, this peculiar mortal had figured out---or had been told---something that even the highest tiers of the Heavenly bureaucracy were in the dark about.

As Mercury neared the first tent, he came across a small boy sitting alone on the ground. His legs were splayed at right angles in front of him, and in between his knees sat a wooden crate. The boy was peering between the slats of the crate and occasionally poking something inside with his finger.

"Hey, buddy," said Mercury amicably. "What's in the box?"

The boy looked up for a moment and then, apparently unimpressed with this stranger, resumed his study of the crate.

"Hello?" said Mercury.

The boy made no reply.

Mercury studied the child. He was maybe eight years old, his skin dark with some indeterminate combination of suntan and dirt, his dark brown hair long and ratty. Presumably he was the offspring of one of Noah's sons.

"Should you be out here by yourself?" asked Mercury. "There could be..." He was going to say "wild animals," but he wasn't sure what constituted a "wild animal" to a kid who has just spent half a year living in a massive waterborne zoo. "Anyway, wouldn't you be safer with the other kids?"

Still the boy said nothing.

Mercury kneeled across from him and peered into the crate. Inside was a very frightened-looking rabbit.

"Your rabbit doesn't look too good," said Mercury.

"She's going to have babies," said the boy, in a monotone.

"Oh," said Mercury. "And you're going to take care of them when they're born?"

The boy laughed. "I'm going SQUASH them."

Mercury stared at the boy in alarm. "I'm sorry, did you say you were going to---"

"SQUASH!" the boy squealed. He was clenching a stone in his fist. "SQUASH SQUASH SQUASH!"

The rabbit was now pressing its body as tightly as possible against Mercury's side of the crate. It was obviously terrified.

"Now, look here," said Mercury. "There's no call to---"

"SQUASH SQUASH SQUASH SQUASH SQUASH SQUASH SQUASH SQUASH SQUAH SQUASH SQUASH SQUASH SQUASH SQUASH SQUASH!"

"Stop it!" cried Mercury. "What the hell is wrong with you? Do you know how much trouble your grandfather went through to save this rabbit? What is your name, young man?"

"I'm Canaan and my dad is Ham and he's going to SQUASH you!" the boy screamed.

"I can assure you that's very unlikely," said Mercury.

"SQUASH! SQUASH SQUASH SQUASH SQUASH SQUASH!"

"OK, that's quite enough," Mercury snapped. "Now, we're going to let this poor little thing out of the crate..." He lifted the crate and the boy howled. Canaan tried to grab the frightened creature, but Mercury seized both of his wrists with his unnaturally long fingers and hoisted the boy into the air. The rabbit darted into the nearby brush as Canaan continued to scream.

"Dad!" the boy shrieked. "Dad! This man is hurting me! My dad is going to SQUASH you. SQUASH SQUASH SQUASH---"

"Wow, I bet you're TIRED!" exclaimed Mercury, and suddenly the boy's eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp. Mercury set him down on the ground.

"Good grief," he muttered. If the purpose of the flood was to wipe out humanity's violent streak, then God or whoever was responsible had seriously dropped the ball with this little socio-path. "Hey!" Mercury yelled to the heavens. "You missed one!"

He continued down the path to the tents. As he passed the largest of the tents he heard a voice emanating from inside. Someone with a deep, gravelly voice was singing---loudly and off-key. The song went: