The Paradise Prophecy (42 page)

Authors: Robert Browne

BOOK: The Paradise Prophecy

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“Looking for the missing pages.”

“What?”

Batty opened the book and quickly flipped to the last page. He stared at the imperfect binding, the faintly ragged edges where the seven pages had been removed. If they’d been torn out after Milton died, then the history here was centuries old, and it wouldn’t be easy to grab hold of. He’d have to concentrate harder than he’d ever concentrated before, and there was no telling what it would do to him.

Bracing himself, he took a deep breath, then put his palm against those edges and closed his eyes.

But nothing happened.

He stopped. Centered himself. Tried again.

Concentrate, Batty.
Concentrate.

He wasn’t getting anything.

Desperate, he grabbed the Saint Christopher medal and hung it around his neck.

He turned back to the manuscript. And then he felt it. Heat radiating up his arm and into his brain. The medal had been the key. And instead of the usual dark tunnel, he was assaulted by an explosion of light, like fireworks inside his head. Then the light seemed to consume him, to suck him in—

—and he was gone.

W
hen he opened his eyes he was standing. But as he realized this, he wasn’t quite sure
where.
All he saw was a wash of colors, vibrant blues and greens and yellows so bright that they hurt to look at.

He squinted against them, willing them to come into focus, shielding his eyes with a cupped hand as they slowly adjusted to the light. And then he saw before him a place more beautiful than any he could ever have imagined.

Rolling hills. Blue, cloudless sky. Fields of yellow flowers so far and so wide they seemed to go on forever. And trees. Trees bearing flawless fruit—reminding him, oddly enough, of the bowl of plastic apples and pears on his mother’s dining table.

This world vibrated against him, seeping into his skin, releasing some kind of drug into his system, a drug that produced a pleasure so intense that he wondered if he could remain standing.

“This is the world as it could have been,” a voice behind him said. Male. British. Refined.

Batty turned and saw a shimmering, ghostlike image walking toward him, moving with a graceful fluidity. And as the image came into focus, he saw that the man wore his hair long, in a style from another time, his suit and collar from another century.

His eyes clouded over by cataracts.

The man—who Batty now knew was the poet—turned to the tree beside him and plucked a bright red pomegranate. “But because of the frailty of mankind,” he continued, “our world will soon be this.”

He bit into the fruit and the moment he did, the tree beside him caught fire and began to melt. Batty turned and saw that
all
the trees were on fire, their fruit withering. Then the sky darkened, the flowers beneath it wilting and dying as the hills grew barren. And soon everything around him was the color of slate, as a dark, cold wind kicked up and blew through him, rattling his soul.

Within seconds he was caught in the center of a black tornado, a cacophony of sounds rising in his mind as the wind whirled around him growing tighter and denser with each revolution. Batty opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out, as the tornado gathered speed, the growing darkness threatening to swallow him whole...

Then abruptly it was gone.

He stood on a hilltop overlooking a small, crumbling villa, the poet beside him. Below, a young man exited the front door, moved quickly across the courtyard and mounted a horse.

“When he first told me about the Devil’s Bible,” the poet said, “I thought poor Galileo has lost his senses. A dark, pernicious toxicant seemed to have spread throughout that place, making it impossible for me to breathe.”

The young man rode his horse to the front gates, signaling for the guard to open it.

“The astronomer had wanted to use me as his eyes, now that his own were gone. He had thought I would understand, but I saw him only as a feeble old man whose wild imagination had taken possession of him.”

A flash of light assaulted Batty’s eyes, and when it cleared, they were standing in a study lined with bookshelves, the young man—slightly older now—sitting at a writing desk, hard at work with pen and paper.

“Shortly after his death, I made only mention of that meeting, unable to tell the world that one of our most cherished minds had grown feeble in his last years.”

Again the light assaulted Batty, then they were standing in a room lit by candlelight, several men—including the poet—sitting around a table, deep in conversation.

“But imagine my surprise, when shortly after the end of the Thirty Years’ War, I got word that the Swedish army had plundered the treasures of Rudolf the Second, and had brought back with them the very book the astronomer had spoken of—the Codex Gigas. The Devil’s Bible.”

Now Batty had a bird’s-eye view of a grand parlor surrounded by books, and at its center a large glass case containing an enormous tome. It lay open at a page that featured an elaborate, multicolored portrait of a demon with horns, and the poet stood with another man, staring at it in awe.

“Within a year, I found myself in Stockholm, where the book was on display at the Swedish Royal Library. The curator not only confirmed the tale of its creation, but that seven pages were indeed missing, just as the astronomer had told me.”

Light flashed and they were once again standing over the field of yellow flowers, the poet’s blank gaze fixed on Batty.

“I soon became obsessed with finding those pages, wanting to know what secret they held. The astronomer’s estate had no knowledge of them, so I prepared to travel to Rome, to the private archive where he claimed to have viewed them. But before I left, I received correspondence that the collection they were part of had been sold to an antiquities dealer in London. They had been close to me all along.”

The poet paused, reflecting for a moment, then said, “The antiquities dealer had since died, and the collections he had most recently obtained were languishing in a vault beneath his shop in London while his children quarreled over his estate.”

The light once again flashed and now Batty found himself in a small cluttered vault, the room lit only by flickering lamplight. The poet sat a table, carefully removing several enormous sheets of parchment from an equally large portfolio. His hands were shaking, and Batty strained to see what was on those pages, but they wouldn’t come into focus.

“I cannot explain to you what I felt at the moment I saw them. Joy, elation—yes—but also a power, a power so overwhelming that they seemed to draw me in, to wrap themselves around me in a loving embrace, and I knew I was in the power of God. These were
His
pages that He had once hidden in that enormous book forged by the Devil.”

But now the poet began rubbing his eyes, moving the lamp closer. “The astronomer had warned me that only those whose motives are pure can read the pages without fear of the curse, but I had foolishly ignored him, believing his blindness to have been caused by the constant use of his telescope. I was wrong, however, and within minutes my vision began to blur.”

Batty saw the poet on the street now, the portfolio tucked under his arm as he stumbled toward a horse and carriage.

“But I had seen enough to know that what was on those pages was an ancient prophecy, the key to a miraculous duality of power, a power so rich that should it fall into the wrong hands, all of humankind could be in danger. That the gates of the bottomless pit—of the Abaddon itself—would be opened, spewing forth all the horrors of Pandemonium and beyond.”

Suddenly Batty was looking down at a view of a city ravaged by war, cracks opening up in the earth between the buildings, spraying molten lava into the air.

Now the poet was back in his study, surrounded by flickering candles; his eyes clouded over, his hands extended, palms outward, as his lips moved in silent prayer.

“But what frightened me most of all was my sudden desire to invoke that power myself, under the grace of God, even though I knew that such an invocation would be impossible without its source. The sacred traveler. So I began searching for that source, and soon found myself consumed by the black arts, in hopes that I might hear the song of a wandering soul.

“The astronomer had told me of the coming eclipse, and I knew that if I could free that soul during the darkness of the fourth moon, I could deliver to the world a new paradise, and I alone would be the
ruler
of that paradise, the new creator.

“But in a moment of clarity I came to realize that what I was seeking was a product of my own false pride and my selfish desire to control my world. That what I was trying to do could only end in disaster. So in a moment of strength, I destroyed the pages.”

The poet now stood before a fireplace, tossing the portfolio into the roaring fire. The light of the fire flared, and Batty and the poet were once against standing on the hillside, beneath a cloudless blue sky.

Batty finally found his voice. “But that wasn’t the end of it.”

The poet slowly shook his head. “Years later I had finally moved on, had learned to live with my blindness and had renewed my devotion to God and the gift he had given me. My poetry. I had long wanted to write an epic, but I thought, what if I could write one that not only celebrated God’s grace—a prayer of contrition, you might say—but examined the corruption of man. A corruption I knew all too well.

“I asked God to assist me, but I never received an answer. I made claims of a divine muse, but the truth was that no such muse came to me until the very last chapter of my epic was long finished.

“Late one night, I was visited in my sleep. Despite my blindness, I could suddenly see, and before I knew it, I had several sheets of paper in front of me, my finger etching itself into them as if controlled by another being, and I knew in my heart that these were the very pages I had destroyed. They had taken on a life of their own, insisting to be seen.

“Then the angel Michael came to me and told me that I was to be the first guardian of the pages. That I had proven myself trustworthy when I had attempted to destroy them, and now I must hide them away, so that they never fall into the wrong hands. Until the time came that they could be used to serve God.

“The original copy of my epic still lay on my writing table. A final transcription had already been prepared and sent to the publisher, and though I was blind, the manuscript still had sentimental value to me. So the following morning, I gathered up these new pages, added them to the bottom of the stack—my own personal Book Eleven, you might say—and asked my daughter to summon a bookbinder. I stood there with him in the room as he bound all the pages together, then I locked it away in my personal vault.

“It stayed there for nearly ten years. And as Michael continued his long search for the sacred traveler, he asked others to join me in protecting her secret.”

The poet lowered his head, as if exhausted by the story, and Batty said, “But the pages were removed after you died. Who removed them?”

“One of the new guardians, of course.”

“And where were they taken?”

“To where I could continue to watch over them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Let me show you,” the poet said, then waved a hand in front of Batty’s face.

Suddenly the world went dark again and Batty found himself at the center of a swirling tornado, its walls closing in on him. Then, with startling abruptness, the whirlwind came to a stop and he was floating—floating above an open wooden coffin, looking down on the poet’s body as those milky, sightless eyes stared up at him.

“They are with me,” the poet rasped.

Then, with equal abruptness, Batty awoke. He was sitting in the chair in the all-night bookstore, his palm pressed against the binding of the manuscript as Callahan eyed him with grave concern. He slumped back, feeling as if every bit of energy had been sucked out of his body.

He was barely able to move his lips.

“You were right,” he gasped. “We need to get to London. Now.”

BOOK X

Orgy of Disorder