Mercury Rises (4 page)

As ambivalent as Christine had been about the
Banner
's strategy of combining proselytizing and news reporting, she found the
Beacon
's methodology even more distasteful. At least Harry was up-front about his motivations (excluding the bit about proclaiming the Apocalypse); there was never any attempt to conceal the faith-driven agenda of the
Banner
. The
Beacon
, however, was another story.

The
Beacon
was run by the sort of cynical atheists who stuck four-legged fish symbols labeled "DARWIN" on their cars in response to the Jesus fish that marked the hatchbacks of their Christian counterparts. Admittedly, the Jesus fish trend had always seemed a little silly to Christine. The fish had been used as a secret identifier by the early Church in the days of persecution by the Romans; sticking it on your car in the twenty-first century reeked of the sort of smug camaraderie that afflicted aging fraternity brothers and those old women who wore red hats when they met for brunch at Denny's. But the Darwin fish---that was something else entirely. Once it stopped being an amusing, ironic commentary (after about the eight hundredth time she had seen one), it began to strike her as somewhat petty and mean-spirited. Beyond that, it had the unintentional effect of elevating Darwin to the position of secular messiah, which seemed to Christine to be a telling marker of the subconscious motivations of the amphibianists, the automotive decal version of a Freudian slip.
²

In other words, the
Beacon
's staff patted themselves on the back for advancing the cause of Reason and Science, but in reality their motivation was more negative than positive; more anti-religion than pro-science. This wasn't entirely their fault; it's much easier to rally people behind the idea of a miraculous savior than the idea that the purpose of the Universe, if there is one, can only be pieced together through a painstakingly dull process intelligible only to the sort of people who took honors calculus in high school. And since magazine editors tended to be yearbook committee people, the
Beacon
's involvement in the scientific process was essentially reduced to the role of yelling, "GO SCIENCE! BEAT RELIGION!"

That sort of deluded secularism was the last thing Christine needed after three years of dealing with deluded religiosity, and in any case she was more convinced than ever, thanks to her involvement in the events of the almost-Apocalypse, that she was not cut out to be a reporter. Unlike the
Banner
's other employees, she had the additional burden of knowing exactly what had happened in Anaheim and not being able to tell a soul.

What had happened was that her boss and sometimes friend, Harry Giddings, had been duped into proclaiming the onset of the Apocalypse by a Machiavellian schemer who turned out to be not only a demoness but a bad sport and a plagiarist. As a result of his duping, Anaheim Stadium and everyone in it had imploded, sucked through a pinpoint portal into an adjacent plane. That was a tough truth to face, and an even tougher one to keep quiet about. And as skeptical as anyone at the
Banner
might have been about that story, she knew that the smug twits at the
Beacon
would be even less receptive. Not that she planned on telling anyone, but somehow the idea of working among diehard skeptics filled her with dread. It would be like Troy Van Dellen moving to the rural Midwest: he still showed no signs of coming out of the closet, but even a closeted homosexual had to feel more comfortable in a place like Los Angeles than a place like Iowa.

"What are we going to do?" she asked Troy.

Troy shook his head, trying manfully to maintain his characteristic smirk-smile. "Maybe I'll finally finish that novel," he said. Troy had been working for the past five years on a novel that was, as he described it, a cross between
In Cold Blood
and
My Fair Lady
---a cross that Christine wasn't sure anyone could bear.

"What about you?" Troy asked. "I hear the
Times
is looking for copy editors. Not glamorous, but you'd get your foot in the door."

"Ugh," said Christine. "Maybe I'll go back to substitute teaching for a while. I need a change. Something drastic." Her eye fell on the poster of the African child. "YOU CAN HELP," reminded the poster. Below the words was the logo of Eternal Harvest, an interdenominational organization founded by Harry to alleviate poverty, famine, and disease in Africa. The logo was comprised of the letters EH followed by a sheaf of grain and a soaring dove, a combination of icons that had always looked to Christine like a question mark, so that the logo seemed to be saying, "EH?"

Despite its ambiguous logo, Eternal Harvest was a worthwhile organization, probably Harry's greatest legacy, despite his belief that his primary mission on Earth was to usher in the Apocalypse. Eternal Harvest had provided hands-on assistance to remote tribes in various areas of eastern Africa, digging cisterns to provide them with clean drinking water, building chicken coops to supply them with eggs, and inoculating them against diseases, among other worthy endeavors. Christine had on occasion thought to herself that Harry's efforts to promote the Christian faith would be better served if he were to shut down the
Banner
and send the whole staff to Africa to work for Eternal Harvest.

She had not, of course, been inclined to move to Africa
herself
, as she had a career as a journalist to pursue and linoleum to pay for. Things had changed, though. She jotted down the phone number of Eternal Harvest on the back of the envelope and walked out of the cavernous building for the last time.

FOUR

Circa 2,000 B.C.

After doing his best to rally the workers at the top of the ziggurat, Mercury reluctantly returned to Tiamat's palace to report on the situation. He sat across from her in the drawing room---so named because it was where she drew up the plans for the ziggurats.

"I'm not going to lie to you," Mercury said. "We've got problems on the ziggurat. I'm starting to think we should tell these guys we're doing eight levels next time. When they begin to lose steam after level seven, we'd be like, 'Hey, guess what? We're done!'"

Tiamat was busily examining sheaves of parchment laid out on a marble slab before her. "It doesn't matter," she said finally. "We're building in the wrong place.
Again
."

"Are you kidding?" cried Mercury. "This is the perfect spot for a ziggurat. High elevation, close to shopping, a stone's throw from the Euphrates...The only way someone could have picked a better spot for a ziggurat is if they, you know, actually knew what the hell a ziggurat was for."

Tiamat looked up from the papers and regarded him piteously. "Poor Mercury," she said. "Your problem is that you're too smart to be a cherub. You'd make a pretty good seraph, but alas, it was not to be."

"I'd make a lousy seraph," Mercury replied. "Too much pressure. Besides, I'd probably get stuck with some two-bit civilization like those idiots pushing stones around Britain. I don't know who's running that civilization, but whoever it is evidently has no idea we're in the middle of a global pyramid race here."

Tiamat laughed. "You should be so lucky as to get your own civilization," she said. "Do you know what the competition is like to get into the Seraphic Civilization Shepherding Program? I could hardly believe it when they told me I got the Babylonians. I mean, I was hoping for Egypt; we all wanted Egypt, but Babylon is pretty damn good."

Mercury nodded in assent. "It was lucky that Babylon opened up after Marduk got caught using alchemy to prop up the economy. If he had melted down those solid gold pigs before trying to sell them to the Egyptians, the muckety-mucks at the SCSP might never have caught him."

"Marduk!" Tiamat spat. "What a horse's ass. Have you heard what he's up to these days?"

"I'm sure I have no idea."

Tiamat peered at him suspiciously. "Mercury."

"What?"

"You know something."

"No, I swear," Mercury insisted. "I don't know where he is."

"Uh-huh. Tell me what you
do
know."

Mercury threw up his hands dismissively. "Oh, you know how the guys talk at the jobsite. They've got this whole mythology they've built up about you and Marduk. Crazy stuff. Just talk, you know."

"What are they saying, Mercury? Tell me. Now."

"Well, they've got this nutty idea that you're, you know, evil."

"Evil!" she howled. "Evil! No one accuses me of being evil! Tell me who it was and I'll throw him off the ziggurat! Never mind, I'll throw them
all
off the ziggurat! It's not like the lazy, incompetent, slandering fools are doing any work anyway. But first, I'll boil their children in oil while they watch! Call me evil, will they? I'll show them!"

"Yes, and as you've noted," Mercury went on, "Marduk hasn't been around much lately, so you get all the blame for, you know, throwing people off the ziggurat and whatnot..."

"Lies!" Tiamat hissed. "Scandalous lies! Tell me who it was and I'll throw them off the ziggurat!"

"Meanwhile," Mercury continued, "they've built up this exaggerated image of Marduk as some sort of conquering hero who's going to come back and save them."

"Save them!" Tiamat cried. "From what? Gainful employment? The chance to be part of history? The excitement of knowing that at any moment you could be thrown to your death from a ziggurat?"

"I told you it was crazy," Mercury said.

"So," Tiamat asked, "what do they say the great Marduk is doing these days, while his worshipers await his triumphant return?"

"Well, supposedly he's preparing for battle with you," Mercury said. "Of course, as you know, he's been away for longer than anyone expected, so the stories of his preparations are getting pretty involved.

"Involved?"

"Yeah, they asked me to write it down for them because they were starting to lose track of it all." He felt around in his satchel until he found a scrap of well-worn parchment. "Ah, here it is. OK, first Marduk has to make a bow, which takes a while, then he has to make the arrows for it, then he has to get his mace...Don't ask me how he's going to use a mace and a bow at the same time; maybe he's got like six arms in this scenario or something. Let's see, he throws lightning before him, fills his body with flame...wow, that's a good one, huh? Filling his body with flame. Nice. Makes a net to encircle you, gathers the four winds, creates seven
new
winds, such as the whirlwind, tornado, um, I don't seem to have the others written down, but they were all pretty similar. Dust devil, funnel cloud, that sort of thing. Oh, and they just added this one, the rain-flood. That's as far as they've gotten. Crazy stuff, like I said."

"Insolent fools," Tiamat muttered.

"It's just talk," assured Mercury. "I wouldn't take it too seriously. Anyway, now that I've told you all this stuff, you're probably going to want to finally level with me about what we're doing here in Babylon."

"We're building a great civilization," chided Tiamat.

"Right, sure," said Mercury, nodding. "But I can't help think how much greater it could be if we didn't spend thirty percent of our GDP on ziggurats. I mean, I get the national pride angle, but seriously, we've got like eighteen of these things now. What's the point?"

"The point," Tiamat growled through gritted teeth, "is to keep building them until we get it right!"

Her statement was punctuated by a distant rumble of thunder. "What the hell?" Mercury exclaimed. "I've been trying to get it to thunder for weeks, and now, out of the blue..."

"You've been trying to get it to thunder?"

"A little side project I've been working on," Mercury admitted. "I always thought it would be neat to be able to make a grave pronouncement and have it punctuated with thunder. You know, something like, 'You shall pay dearly for eating the last chicken dumpling!'"

Thunder rumbled obediently in the distance.

"Oh, I do like that!" Tiamat exclaimed. "Let me try again." She cleared her throat and growled, "I shall cast you and your descendents to twelve generations to your deaths off the top of the highest ziggurat!"

A light drizzle began to fall. Tiamat frowned.

"I think maybe you used too many prepositional phrases," ventured Mercury. "Keep it simple, like 'Stop teasing your sister or I'll turn this oxcart around!'"

Thunder boomed again, closer this time.

"Forget it," grumbled Tiamat. "I don't need cheap parlor tricks to make my point."

"Or
do
you?" Mercury asked, an ominous tone in his voice. There was another rumbling in the distance.

"Stop that!" Tiamat barked.

"Stop what?" asked Mercury spookily. "I'm
not doing anything
." There was a flash of lightning followed by a loud clap of thunder.

"Damn you, I said stop it! If you persist, I shall boil you in oil until you cry to the heavens for mercy!"

The rain intensified slightly.

"Huh," said Mercury. "I honestly thought you nailed it with that one."

They watched out the window as the rain continued to fall harder and harder.

"Quarry's gonna flood again," said Mercury.

Tiamat nodded.

A few minutes later, he spoke again. "Probably the kilns as well."

Tiamat nodded again. Shouts arose throughout the city as streets turned into rivers. The sound of fists banging against wood could be heard below them.

"Did you remember to lock the palace doors?" Tiamat asked.

"Yep."

A moat began to form around the palace.

"Second-floor windows?" Tiamat asked.

"Yep."

Mud-brick houses deteriorated in the torrent. The city's wretched denizens slogged desperately against the current to get to higher ground. As the water rose higher and higher, it became clear that only one place would be safe.

"Look at them, scurrying up the ziggurat like ants!" Tiamat laughed. "Pathetic!"