The Book of Joby (4 page)

“I’m sorry, Michael . . . deeply sorry. There
are
reasons. You know Me at least that well. . . . You also know how damned little I can say about it. That slippery eel claims I’ve compromised the wager; I’ll have to forfeit. None of us wants that—’specially this time. I only came to warn you and make sure that when the storm blows in you make no move to stop it, even though the poor lad’s wake’ll surely be full of sharks and worse. You’ve guarded this place well, My friend. You have My heartfelt thanks. But when he comes, you’ll have to let the whole filthy cargo come ashore with him. That’s about all I can say. You, better than most, know the usual rules of this engagement.”

“Then . . . I may do nothing,” the angel pleaded, “but stand and watch all we love here trampled by that pestilent boar?”

“There’s times it doesn’t serve our friends to fight their battles for ’em, Michael.”

“But, who
here
knows the first thing about fighting?” Michael pressed in frustration. “Half of them are utter innocents! The rest are refugees! They’ll be helpless as feathers in a gale! If I’m forbidden to interfere—”

“With the
candidate,
Michael
.
Don’t go belly up on Me now. The folks here are still under your care. The wager don’t change that. You’ve many years by
their
reckoning. Mustn’t tell them of the wager itself, of course. That would be blatant grounds for defaulting to Old Sulfur Stacks. But there’s no law sayin’ you can’t teach your little flock to read the weather, and rig a tarp or two against the smell of rain.”

Michael’s troubled heart grew calmer as understanding dawned. “That much I will surely do,” he answered grimly.

“Good. . . . I don’t mean to sound insensitive, Michael, but I haven’t seen your wits this addled since that old blowfish made war on Heaven.”

Then something else occurred to Michael. “Are they to lose the Cup then?”

“No,” the Creator said. “It stays, if they can keep it.” He sighed heavily, and
looked up at the sky in consternation, or a damn good impression of it. “I’ve got pretty deep faith in the boats I build,” he said. Then, more quietly, “May
they
have faith in
Me.
”

“How am I to know when it is time to step aside?” Michael asked.

“You’ll know him when the time comes,” the Creator said sadly. “He’ll be pretty banged up and full of leaks by then, I imagine. But you’ll know him. ’Til then, keep guarding the borders, and teach the villagers . . . something of caution. Once it starts, everyone’s on their own.”

There was a long silence on the beach then. Even the surf seemed pensive.

“He’ll need a friend, Michael. Awful bad, I expect. A whole fleet of friends, if he can find ’em. That’ll likely be harder than it sounds, by then.” The Creator looked out to sea, and Michael wondered if it were tears he saw in the fisherman’s rough gray eyes, or just the watery seep of old age. “You should see him
now,
” the old man sighed. “You’d love him, Michael. You’d love him
fiercely.
”

They were tears, all right. And Michael understood them all too well.

Miriam turned to gaze back through Joby’s bedroom doorway at her son’s shadow-softened face. Locks of shiny raven hair covered one closed eye. His breath had already fallen into the soft, slow rhythms of sleep, and, under the worn red bedspread that served as Joby’s cape by day, he still clutched his precious storybook. She smiled, wishing her father could see how much Joby had come to treasure the simple gift. Her father had always seemed to know precisely what was wanted, quietly providing no more, no less.

As joyful as her own childhood had been, Miriam was certain she’d never shone half so brightly as Joby did. Like a cascade of pennies, images flashed through her mind: Joby standing utterly still to watch a spider spin its iridescent orb; charging shirtless through the house in summer with all the frightening combustibility little boys so wantonly squander; Joby lost in his storybook, wide blue eyes like whirlpools sweeping streams of dream and glory into the insatiable sea of his imagination. He was an intelligent and thoughtful boy, the sort who might have been cruelly treated by other children, she thought, had he not been such a charismatic little athlete, gleefully pulling a train of other boys behind him half the time, all parroting the things he said and did, for good or ill. Her smile widened. This marvelous, incandescent little boy was all her joy . . . he and Frank.

Though Frank sometimes laughed at her “silly superstitions,” Miriam had
sensed a kind of ambient brightness around their son from the very day of his birth. Times had been far harder then. Frank’s mother had been killed by a drunk driver two months after Miriam and Frank were married, and his father had died eight months later of “severe angina”—the medical name for a broken heart, Frank had insisted. Frank had been unable to find work both equal to his talent and sufficient to support a family, and as Miriam had grown larger with Joby, he had begun to grow more distant.

Then Joby had been born.

She could still see Frank’s radiant expression as he’d held their son at her hospital bedside, a renewed confidence in his voice and gestures, and an affectionate delight in her that she had feared gone forever. He’d gone home that evening to find a message on the answering machine from an architectural firm he’d applied to three months earlier, offering him a good job more than lucrative enough to meet their needs. Ever since, life had been almost alarmingly kind to them.

Now Frank was a partner in the firm. Surrounded by wonderful friends, they had a lovely home in a pleasant California suburb, completely paid for thanks to the surprising sum left them when Miriam’s father had died. With the exception of her father’s sudden but peaceful death five years before, they had encountered not a single crisis or hardship since Joby’s arrival.

While Frank seemed to take all their remarkable fortune appreciatively in stride, Miriam occasionally found herself wondering what price might be demanded of them later. Now, watching Joby sleep, she found herself chasing that ridiculous thought away again.
Sorry,
she apologized silently to the empty air.
I can’t seem to help my silly superstitions. No one’s perfect, I suppose.

Frank topped the stairs just then, coming quietly up behind her to wrap his arms around her waist and kiss the back of her neck before looking in at their sleeping son.

“Dropped off pretty quick, huh?” he whispered.

“It’s tiring work,” she smiled, “saving the world again every day.”

Over dinner, Joby had told them all about routing Zoltan and his horde of evil monsters before lunch, then of being sent by King Arthur to slay two bloodthirsty ogres under the backyard deck before coming in to wash up for dinner. It had been a pretty big day, even for a great knight like their son.

“Did you read to him?” Frank asked.

She nodded. “The last one again. He keeps wanting that one lately. I really don’t know why. It’s so depressing.”

“Arthur’s death?” Frank asked.

She nodded again. “I asked him what he liked about it, and he said it was the part about Arthur coming back when the world’s in trouble again.”

Frank chuckled under his breath. “That boy wants to be a knight so bad. . . . I think he’ll take the news about Santa okay; but I dread the day we have to tell him Arthur’s just a fairy tale too.”

She turned and kissed him sweetly on the lips. “That would be a
father’s
job.”

“I would never presume to diminish a woman’s potential like that,” Frank murmured. “Besides,
I’m
the one who’ll have to tell him about sex. What happened to fair distribution of labor?”

Her smile widened, and she put her arms around his neck. “The way things work these days, he’ll be telling
you
about sex.”

“Then we’d better make sure I’m savvy enough not to embarrass us, hadn’t we?” He took her hand and led her smiling toward their own room at the end of the hall.

“Can’t help her silly superstitions,” Lucifer drawled, watching them tease each other down the hall into their bedroom. “Did you hear that? Oh, the irony!”

Neither the Creator nor Gabriel replied.

“So this is Your candidate,” Lucifer mused, gazing down at Joby as the three of them settled invisibly around his bed. “It’s hardly surprising he’s so well behaved. Look at the life You’ve given him! One long, golden stream of blessings! We’ll see how long that cheery disposition lasts when his picnic gets rained on, won’t we.” He looked up at God expectantly. Still no response. “Dying to be a knight, is he? And you’ve decided to grant his wish. I never cease to be astonished at Your capacity for
kindness,
Sir. Your proclivity for subjecting innocent children to these rather gruesome trials is rather intriguing. Perhaps I’ve failed to appreciate the
complexity
of Your character.”

The Creator only waited patiently without reply. That, Lucifer realized, was what irked him most about God: His smugly passive-aggressive tendencies. The Creator never allowed the anger He must surely be feeling to slip out where anyone might see it. Lucifer found such saccharine duplicity disgusting.

“Who proposes this wager?” Gabriel asked, launching the timeworn ritual without preamble.

“I, Lucifer, Angel of Light, Mirror of Dawn, propose this wager.”

“Who joins in this wager?” Gabriel intoned again.

“I do,” the Creator answered.

Between them, Joby sighed in his sleep, and turned to rest facing God.

“Who will witness our agreement,” Lucifer asked in accordance with the ancient rite, “and truthfully attest to its conditions and outcome if so required?”

“I will,” Gabriel answered. “Is this acceptable?”

“It is,” answered the Creator and Lucifer in unison. And it was. Lucifer might despise his younger brother, but the dusky little do-gooder had never demonstrated the wit to lie, and Lucifer doubted him capable of it, even if he wanted to.

“Then speak your terms with care,” Gabriel said, “for each word spoken here will henceforth be binding and immutable. What do you wager, Lucifer?”

“I wager,” Lucifer smiled, “that this candidate, deemed faithful and steadfast to our Lord, will, when put to the test and left to choose of his own free will, unequivocally renounce the Creator, brazenly defy His will, and commit great wickedness instead.”

Joby’s hand moved toward his mouth, as if he might suck his thumb. But the habit had fallen beneath his dignity even in sleep many years before, and the gesture was arrested as suddenly as it had begun.

“What would you claim if this were proven?” Gabriel asked.

“That this creation be immediately and completely expunged from space and time,” Lucifer breathed, overwhelmed by an almost erotic longing, “and another commenced by the Creator in its place, subject to whatever specifications
I
shall advise.”

“Your terms?” Gabriel asked Lucifer.

“First, that the Creator forbid all immortal beings in His service from intervening unless directly asked to do so by the candidate, lest his fate be decided for him by others. Second, given the Creator’s advantage as first cause, and His supremacy over even me, I propose that He promise not to intervene directly, or by command, or by any word or act that may be construed as expression of His will in this matter for the trial’s duration.”

Gabriel turned to the Creator, forbidden to call Him God or Lord within the ritual, and asked, “Are You content with these terms?”