Something More Than Night (8 page)

But then Gabriel’s demise lit the night sky.

So I whittled a cork and beat a hasty retreat. Because the faction that had twisted my arm threw a lot of weight in the Pleroma. More than I thought possible. Enough to rub a Seraph. Enough to send a pair of Cherubim to brace flametop.

Didn’t know the why of their beef with Molly, but I did know it was bad news for me. Accident or no, I’d tagged her, but they didn’t like her. I sighed. Dames.

I dragged her into this mess. She’d been having a rough time of it thanks to me. As much as I hated to admit it, I did feel like a prize heel. Guess I owed her for the train thing. But if I were to make good on my words to flametop, I’d have to know what got Gabby croaked.

Plan in hand, I flicked my pill into a flower bed overflowing with bedraggled snapdragons and wilted daisies. I tipped my hat at the gargoyle. “Don’t be a stranger.” It spat again.

A fat American pointed his Kodak at the flower beds, and me, just as I shifted into the Pleroma. If he ever bothered to develop that film, he’d find a ghostly wisp of vapor making an obscene gesture. Back home I went.

Gabriel had been one of the oldest and most powerful of us. Rumor said he’d even interceded with METATRON on behalf of the Choir once or twice. Don’t know if I believe that. But I did know he’d been a load-bearing member of the MOC.

So much so, in fact, that I hadn’t needed to worry about anybody ribbing me over my reluctant return to the Pleroma. Nobody noticed. Gabby’s death had kicked a hell of a dent in the MOC. Flametop’s ascension was the equivalent of cramming a matchbook under the wobbly table leg—it fixed the worst of the problem, but this didn’t mean the table was good as new. Likewise, mortal physics and mathematics still chugged along with the monkeys blissfully unaware of the chaos behind the scenes. Because while the twist and I had managed to shore up the MOC just enough to prevent it from toppling over completely, an impossible murder had produced a steep conceptual gradient. Gabby’s absence caused a certain lack of intellectual pressure; it created ideational lacunae that had the MOC listing to port like a waterlogged cruise liner.

I’d never seen so many members of the Choir together. Well, together and not bickering like the Council of Nicaea. Everyone had turned out to put things right: Angels, Archangels, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Dominions, Thrones, Cherubim … I even glimpsed a few flaming swords in the mix, meaning the remaining Seraphim had lent a paw. The monkeys like to believe the best part of their nature comes out in times of crisis. But never underestimate the power of enlightened self-interest: the Choir had rolled up its sleeves because Gabby’s death threatened to upset the whole damn apple cart. And that would have been the end of pie for everybody.

Speaking of which, a Dominion brushed past me carrying the final digits to a half-dozen transcendental numbers. It passed them along to a whirling Throne who appeared to be acting as an impromptu sub-foreman, who passed them up the chain to where they could do some good. A cloud of Powers surveyed the damage and orchestrated the repair effort with a thousand-dimensional bird’s-eye view. Somebody had built scaffolding out of a mathematics both consistent and complete (chew on that, Gödel) and now the spackle went on one axiom at a time.

A pretty picture of cooperation. But I wasn’t about to forget that crowd contained Gabby’s killer, or killers. I steered clear. And besides, they seemed to have the whole mess under control. My clumsy mitts weren’t likely to make a difference. I had an errand to run.

Even money said Gabby’s Magisterium wasn’t likely to decay any time soon. In fact, if I knew the Choir, and unfortunately I did, they’d freeze it in place as a memorial to our fallen colleague. So, assuming I could find them, a once-over of his digs might tell me what he’d been up to these last few eons. If I was lucky, it might tell me what had gotten him pinked. If I was unlucky, it might tell me who had done the job, and how—the kinds of things I didn’t want to know. Things that make a target of a guy. And if I was cursed, the trigger boys would know I knew. If that happened, I figured my and flametop’s lives weren’t worth a plugged nickel. Anybody hard enough to croak a Seraph should get a wide berth. Berth? They get their own private car, meals courtesy of Mr. Pullman.

But first things first. I needed to find somebody who could point me to Gabby’s Magisterium. But I figured I’d let the rubes come to me. Once the hard work was done, the sappier members of the Choir would drift off to gnash their teeth and weep.

The raw Pleroma, outside a Magisterium, isn’t all clouds and pearly gates. Even that would have been something. The real Pleroma is dull. Not quite a flat featureless plain, but on a cosmic scale, it’s close. It’s the raw material for our Magisteria, the sand that makes the concrete. It’s the liminal space in the corner of the eye; the darkened shadows at the edges of the stage. It’s the crawl spaces, the plumbing and pneumatic tubes, behind the MOC. Nobody ever oohs and aahs over wiring conduits and sewer lines. The view from the high window ain’t terrible: universe above, Earth below. But it does get boring.

I’ll say this for the celestial spheres, though: great acoustics. We’re talking Platonic ideals here. Pythagoras would have smashed his corny little harp across his knee if he’d heard it. And it just so happens that if you exist near the proper event locus, manifesting the concept of sound in just the right way—something akin to hitting E below middle C, give or take ten thousand octaves—the tingle isn’t all that unpleasant. Which makes this spot the closest thing the Pleroma has to a watering hole or a corner newsstand. Everybody passes through here, eventually. All I needed to do was stake it out and wait.

So I racked out behind a thicket of zodiacal light and waited. It took longer than I’d thought it would. I dozed off until a cosmic four-part harmony rattled my dreams.

“Holy, holy, holy!”

I peeked out from my blind. The racket came from the celestial equivalent of a barbershop quartet: two Principalities, an Archangel, and one little hanger-on Angel like me and flametop, its
heiligenschein
barely bright enough to out-twinkle the dimmest star. But damn if that kid didn’t have some pipes; no wonder it sang with the varsity team.

The Principalities stood on the hooves of oxen but had the visages of lions, and each wore four wings that gleamed like brass. The humaniform Archangel had on its pan a third eye that constantly wept tears of blood, for it had been pierced with the shrapnel of Creation. The Angel looked as though it had taken fashion advice from a Botticelli painting. Each wore a cowl darker than a starless expanse. Mourning rags. At least they hadn’t smeared themselves with ash, the mopes.

“You kids ever think about trying out for the talent show? I think you’ve got a shot at a ribbon this year.”

As one, they turned to regard me. And then they scrammed like their lives depended on it.

“Aw, you lousy lollipops!” I called after them.

They must not have recognized me. Gabby’s death had everyone on edge; they weren’t taking chances with some fresh face they didn’t know. Even a clean piece of beef like mine.

I fished out a pocketknife and cleaned my nails while waiting for them to return. They sidled back a few astronomical units at a time. I kept to myself, making no sudden moves, until they decided I was on the level. Eventually, they started crooning again.

Over the racket, I said, “I missed Gabriel’s funeral. Guess I need to start reading the obits more regularly. Any of you birds know where I can go to pay my respects?”

The Angel sang, in a voice like the ringing of a golden tuning fork, “Gabriel is gone, gone, gone. Oh, holy of holies, the Pleroma is bereft—”

“Yeah, yeah. I got that postcard. But thanks, kid. Anybody else?”

One of the Principalities stretched its wings; they clanged together like church bells. Its voice sent lightning storms across the Pacific. “The Pleroma mourns for Gabriel. Our sorrow is boundless. All is sackcloth, the fairest starlight naught but the bitterest ash. Do as thou wouldst.”

I recognized its voice. We’d met a long time ago. It didn’t recognize me. I chose not to complicate things.

“Look,” I said. “Gabby was a pal. I’d like a chance to say a private good-bye.” I made a show of lighting another pill. Took my time with it. Only after the smoke wreathed the heavens, tarnishing wings and stinging bleeding eyeballs, did I continue. “’Course, without knowing where to go, I’m stuck hanging around here.”

That sent the Ps and the Archangel into a huddle. Seemed nobody wanted to talk about the poor guy. How annoying would I have to get before they coughed up some answers? My next course of action was to sing along with them. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

The heavens wheeled. A star died while I waited; its cobalt corona sent a gamma-ray shimmer cascading across the MOC. I occupied myself by writing blue words in the rain of neutrinos sleeting through the Earth. Too bad none of the monkey wise-heads would ever pick up on it.

Finally, the Archangel spoke up. “Gabriel’s Magisterium exists inside the teleological conundrum of unbeing. It is the tremor of awe begat by contemplation of perfect, empty eternity.”

As a rule I don’t talk to Archangels unless I can’t avoid it. They speak by projecting thought through that extra peeper. Imagine shaking hands with a midwife right after an emergency C-section. And then imagine it’s not your hand smeared with gore but the inside of your mind.

But I had what I needed, so I let it ride.

“Thanks. This is real ducky of you.”

They went back to their glee club antics almost before the sentiment crossed my lips. “Holy, holy, holy!” they sang. I didn’t stick around for the rest. I already knew the lyrics to this ditty. It wasn’t a favorite.

In the Pleroma, the shortest distance between two points is to contemplate a reality where that distance is zero. And so I did. Teleology? Sounded to me like Gabby had been spending too much time with the navel-gazing crowd. I was sorry to hear it. Always thought he was smarter than that. But I followed little Redeye’s instructions, thought long and hard about primal and final causes in a universe perpetually empty both forward and backward, and before I knew it I was speeding like an arrow toward a foreign Magisterium.

And then I bounced off.

The impact spent me spinning into distant corners of the Pleroma. But I hurried back before I got slapped with a trespassing rap.

Having learned my lesson, I didn’t go diving headfirst the second time around. Instead, I decided to use my brain and my peepers. Even so it took a bit of effort before I could perceive a faint fuzziness rippling through the ontological boundary to Gabby’s digs. That was a sign of recent alterations. By then I had a fairly good idea what I’d find, but still I looked more closely.

Yeah. Somebody had barricaded the door.

They’d constructed a bevy of razor-thin micro-Magisteria, laid down willy-nilly like the scales on a snake who’d overslept and didn’t have time to groom himself before slithering off to work. They fit together nice and tight, leaving just enough room between them for a whisper of Pleroma. No interpenetration; nothing to offend the consensual basis of reality. I knew there had to be seams, but I couldn’t find ’em without squinting. It was fine work. Green-label juju.

Each magisterial sliver held a different arrow of time. Some didn’t keep to a single arrow; some had a whole damn quiver. Some used thermodynamic entropy to define it. Some used the passage of time as perceived by the beings that might have evolved on Earth had the amino acids ferried on the comets been right-handed rather than left-handed. Some used the expansion/contraction cycle of a two-pronged Carnot multiverse for a metronome. One dispensed with the arrow altogether for a zero-dimensional dot of time; another replaced the linear arrow with something that looked like the offspring of an octopus and a Klein bottle.

No wonder I bounced. Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to ensure nobody swiped Gabby’s silverware.

But I’d been around the block a couple of times. I had a few tricks of my own.

I shaved off a sliver of my consciousness, folded it over, and gave one end a few kinks. Then I wedged the thin end of my new hairpin into the first seam, sat back, and let it go about its business. It inched along, wiggling and limboing, until the view from inside the seams gave me what I needed. The lock popped. The scales, as the poets say, fell from my eyes. I was in.

Funny thing about Gabby: you wouldn’t know it from looking at him, with his golden halo and platonic beauty, but the guy was something of a pack rat. He’d been collecting little odds and ends since at least the double-digit redshifts. The interior reality of Gabriel’s Magisterium burbled and shifted like convection currents in a star on the zaftig end of the main sequence. Because, I realized, that’s what they were. Dull dim light, from IR to X-ray, oozed past me like the wax in a million-mile lava lamp while carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen nuclei did little do-si-dos about my toes. Every bubble, every sizzle, every new nucleus, every photodissociation tagged something of interest to Gabriel. The heart of this star smelled of roses and musty libraries. Nuclear reactions unfolded with the calm susurration of solar wind upon Earth’s atmosphere, seeding cloud formation and rain. Convective cells furled about me with the low, slow, sonorous peal of cathedral bells mourning a monarch’s death. X-rays fizzed on my tongue like champagne bubbles; I loosened my tie, and felt the silky play of elemental gradients across my skin. Somewhere far below me, and just for a moment, the jangle of clashing nuclei became the faint chiming of a single silver bell.

I wandered around, getting the layout of the joint. Gabby’s flaming sword leaned point-down in one corner. A work of art, that thing: the hilt of silvered starlight; the edge sharp as the now that separates past and future; each tongue of flame bright as the embers of Creation. It was dusty. Strange that he hadn’t been packing when he fell; whoever did him in must have been counting on that. Just for grins I took the hilt and gave the star a stir. But I put the sword down just as quickly. A few centuries hence, assuming the monkeys managed to fix their little junk problem and get working satellites back in orbit by then, the X-ray flare from the attendant coronal mass ejection would knock high-energy electrons screaming through the electronics. But probably not enough to cause more than a coverage brownout in geostationary orbit.