Authors: Robert Kroese
"All of these people are going to see Harry speak?" asked Mercury incredulously. "Is he that good?"
Christine shrugged. "Don't underestimate the appeal of unwarranted moral certainty."
They were sitting at the back of a city bus, surrounded by overly cheerful people who were on their way to the Covenant Holders conference. They had just transported through a temporary portal, appearing about a mile from Anaheim Stadium. Evidently that was as close as Uzziel could get them without raising suspicion that the Hosts of Heaven were violating the Accord. Having been handed a program by one of their fellow conference-goers, they were relieved to see that they had a good twenty minutes before Harry was scheduled to take the stage. Still, they were anxious to get to Karl before that happened.
"You're a stubborn bunch," said Mercury to a gaggle of folks wearing bright yellow T-shirts emblazoned with a giant
CH
logo. "Hard to shake, as it were."
A middle-aged woman in the center smiled back at him. "I'm sorry?" she said.
"The earthquakes," he said. "They'd have scared a lot of people away."
"Not us," said a teenage boy. "It would take Armageddon to keep me away."
"That's an interesting coincidence," said Mercury. "It took Armageddon to get me here."
The Covenant Holders nodded and smiled, their mood not dimmed by their obvious confusion at Mercury's comments.
Mercury turned to Christine. "Most people would think twice about holding a conference like this only a few hours after two relatively major earthquakes," he said.
"It takes more than a couple of earthquakes to derail an event like this," said Christine. "Especially in Los Angeles."
The Covenant Holders nodded and smiled.
"I hear it might rain later," said Christine.
Their faces paled.
Mercury looked quizzically at Christine. She shrugged and rolled her eyes. "Los Angeles."
Mercury nodded understandingly.
"Speaking of earthquakes," said Christine, "there's one thing I still don't get."
"Only one?" said Mercury. "Are you sure this is your first Apocalypse?"
"Well," said Christine, "I've frankly given up trying to understand most of what's going on. A lot of this stuff is over my head. I've decided it's pointless to try to understand the angelic bureaucracy with its panels and committees and bureaus. And I've come to the conclusion that in the end, none of you really understands where this SPAM, or the so-called Divine Plan, is coming from. You all just sort of assume that someone else understands the details."
"True enough," said Mercury. "You're starting to see why I decided to sit out the whole business."
"But there is one specific thing that has been bugging me. The Four Attache Cases of the Apocalypse. What's the story there?"
"What do you mean?"
"Who created them? And why?"
"Ah," said Mercury. "The creation of the cases was a joint effort, the result of complex negotiations between Heaven and Hell. You see, as long as human conflict is conducted with human weapons, the chances of things getting truly out of hand are rather small. It was hoped that the creation of nuclear and biochemical weapons in the twentieth century would help Armageddon along, but there are some problems inherent in weapons of such destructive power."
"Because there are no winners in a full-on nuclear war, you mean."
"That's MAD."
"Of course it is."
"No, I mean Mutual Assured Destruction. MAD. And that's only part of it. As you imply, the problem with MAD, from the standpoint of one trying to bring about Armageddon, is that there is no rational motivation on either side that would prompt a first strike. And if no one strikes first, there's no war. That's the first problem."
"And the second?"
"MAD only applies when there is approximate parity between two nuclear powers," Mercury explained. "If you have disparity, such as at the end of the Second World War, when the United States had nuclear weapons but no one else did, the side with nuclear weapons is so much stronger than its competitors that there's no need to use them. I mean, after the initial demonstration. It didn't matter that the United States had only two bombs, because they never had to use another one. For that matter, they probably didn't need to use the second one."
"So in either case, whether there is parity or disparity, there's no incentive to use nuclear weapons."
"No
rational
incentive," corrected Mercury. "A crazy person might still use them, but it takes more than a single crazy person to start Armageddon. Armageddon requires escalation, and the only escalation you're going to get with a lunatic launching a nuclear missile strike is every other nation on earth uniting to wipe the lunatic off the map. It's not pretty, but it's not Armageddon either."
"What if the lunatic has control over a vast nuclear arsenal, like Russia's?"
"Well, first of all, that's harder to bring about than you might expect. Truly crazy people—not just paranoid like Richard Nixon or sociopathic like Pol Pot, but truly batshit crazy—have a hard time working their way up the ladder of political power, even with supernatural assistance. And again, even if he did manage to get control of such an arsenal and launch a first strike, you'd have every other nation in the world retaliating instantaneously. There'd be massive casualties but no war to speak of. It would be over in hours."
"And that's not good enough for the psychotic bastards who are planning this thing?"
"It's not Armageddon. Armageddon is a battle. A struggle between good and evil. The point is to put human society in the crucible and see what happens. To do that, you need to provoke a conflict that involves everyone in the entire world. More than a conflict, in fact. A global crisis. Something that threatens to turn brother against brother. Something that strikes at the core of humanity itself, thereby revealing the true nature of humanity."
"So Armageddon is a test?" asked Christine.
"Something like that, yes. That's my understanding, anyway. Personally, I've never seen the point of deliberately bringing about suffering just to see what happens. There's quite enough suffering on this plane to satisfy one's curiosity."
"OK, so how do the attache cases fit into this?"
"Ah. The deal with the cases is that they give the user what appears to be the power to change the balance of the problem in his or her favor. But the cases also create collateral damage, as you've seen. They all have some deliberate design flaw built into them so that they are reliable only two-thirds of the time. That thirty-three point three percent chance of error ends up creating just enough side effects that you end up with slightly more problems than you started out with. I mean, you might solve the problem you were trying to solve, but more problems will crop up in its place. So you use the case to solve
those
problems, and still more problems arise. It's deceptive because you feel like you're making progress, and sometimes you really are, but in the end it's like playing roulette. The house always wins."
"And the house, in this case, is the angels who are trying to bring about Armageddon."
"Correct."
"So Izzy was right. There really are only two sides: pro-Apocalypse and anti-Apocalypse."
"Izzy's a liar," said Mercury. "He's working for Lucifer."
"But if he weren't, if he really believed what he said. . .that would be the right side, wouldn't it?"
"The side that wanted to put a bullet in Karl's head, you mean?"
"Oh," said Christine. She had forgotten about that.
"There aren't any good guys here, I'm afraid," Mercury said.
"Just you and me," said Christine.
"Yeah," said Mercury. Then, after a moment's pause, he went on. "You know, about that. . ."
"Don't you dare abandon me now, Mercury!" snapped Christine, more afraid than angry. The situation seemed hopeless even with Mercury on her side, and without him. . .
"Oh, I'm not going anywhere," said Mercury. "You're stuck with me. I'm just not sure you want to count me as one of the good guys. I haven't always been very helpful in the past."
"Forget about it," said Christine. "I mean, I'll admit I don't understand what would possess one to play ping-pong at the brink of the Apocalypse, but then I don't understand half of what you angels do. The important thing is that you're on the right side now."
"Yeah," said Mercury. "I guess I feel like I should tell you, in case something goes wrong or whatever. . .that is, I wouldn't want you to hear from Uzziel or somebody. . ."
"What? What are you talking about?"
"Well," said Mercury. "Uh, you know how I said that I wasn't sure what my assignment was in the Apocalypse?"
"Yes," said Christine coldly. "You said you had missed some meetings. Of course, you also said you gave the Attache Case of War to General Isaacson, so I assume that you weren't quite so much out of the loop as you led me to believe."
"I did miss some meetings," said Mercury. "That is, I stopped attending after. . ."
"After what, Mercury?"
Mercury bit his lower lip, betraying. . .what? Embarrassment? Guilt?
"After the last round of assignments were handed out."
"So you did get your assignment?"
"Well, not the details, you know. . .I missed the tactical meetings. . ."
"The
what
?"
"Yeah, that's what they called them. It was a bit silly because I have very little military training, just the minimum, you know, Flaming Sword 101 stuff. Nothing that would have come in handy for this assignment, but I guess they figured I was personable enough to get in close. . ."
"Mercury, what in hell are you talking about?"
Mercury sighed with resignation. "My assignment. What I was supposed to do, before I went AWOL. The reason I was in Northern California in the first place. Keep in mind that when I checked Lodi for Karl's whereabouts, it was really out of curiosity. I don't want you to get the impression that I was doing reconnaissance, or that I had any intention at that point of. . ."
"Of
what
, Mercury?"
Mercury took a deep breath. He said, "Killing the Antichrist. Killing Karl Grissom. That was my assignment, Christine. Heaven assigned me to take out Karl."
Christine was incredulous. "But you didn't. You saved his life."
"Yes," said Mercury. "Of course, it was too early at that point, legally speaking. It wouldn't do Heaven any good to assassinate Karl before he was formally denounced. Technically, in fact, they need to wait three days after his denunciation. There's a sort of a grace period during which Karl is the official Antichrist but can't legally be harmed by the agents of Heaven. After that, though. . ."
"So," said Christine icily, "your plan was to get close to Karl, earn his trust, maybe save his life from an apparent assassination attempt by a couple of bungling demons. . ."
"No," said Mercury firmly. "I swear, I didn't know anything about Izbazel's plot. That part was just. . ."
"What? A lucky break? You get to be the big hero, saving Karl's life, and then when he's not expecting it, you snap his neck with one of your little miracles? Sounds like a pretty good plan. Maybe this whole thing—" she waved her hands to indicate the busload of excited Covenant Holders "—is part of your plan, too. You save Karl's life again, and he'll be like putty in your hands. In fact, as you say, if you were working for Heaven, you'd
have
to save his life, wouldn't you? You can't afford to have it look like Heaven broke the rules by assassinating Karl early."
Mercury was getting desperate. "Christine, please," he implored. "You can't really believe I orchestrated this whole conference, complete with another assassination attempt, just to solidify Karl's trust. I mean, that would take months of planning. And I don't know if you've noticed, but Karl isn't that difficult to sway. Getting forty thousand people into a stadium to fool Karl Grissom is like trying to kill a mouse with an F-15."
"Fine," Christine said. "You didn't orchestrate this whole thing. But how do I know that if we save Karl's life, you're not just going to kill him in three days to get back into Uzziel's good graces?"
"You don't," agreed Mercury. "You just have to trust me. I have no intention of harming Karl. Come on, the whole reason I'm here is to save his life."
"Because it fits your agenda."
"The agenda of preventing people from being killed for no good reason, yes," countered Mercury.
"And you promise me that you haven't once considered taking advantage of this situation to kill Karl."
Mercury paused just long enough for Christine to be certain that he had.
A look of disgust and defeat washed over Christine's face. Once again she felt completely alone in her struggle against the incomprehensible forces threatening to tear her world apart.
"Oh, like you've never thought of killing Karl," said Mercury defensively. "The important thing, like you said, is that I'm on the right side now."
Christine took a deep breath and looked out the window of the bus.
They had reached the stadium.
"So," said Gamaliel. "You told him?"
"I told him," said Eddie, barely audible, his head resting on the counter of the pub.
"And he seemed. . .receptive?"
Eddie groaned. "He's always receptive."
"So he'll denounce Karl tonight." Gamaliel glanced at his watch. "Er, this morning. Damn time change."
Eddie groaned again.
"Excellent. Then I need to get back to California. It's time to wrap up this business."
Eddie's head lifted slightly off the bar. "And then I can leave?"
"And then you can leave. I'll make an anonymous call to the MOC tomorrow."
"And tell them what exactly?"
"That you're still here."
"I think they know that. They don't care."
"They don't care because it's convenient for them not to care."
"And you're going to make it convenient for them to care?"
"I'm going to make it more inconvenient for them not to care. I'll let the director of the MOC know that if they don't extract you, I'm going to tell somebody higher up the food chain that they misplaced a cherub several decades ago. It will become inconvenient for them not to extract you."
"Whatever," groaned Eddie. "As long as I get out."
"You're just lucky we found you."
"Sounds like
you're
lucky you found me."
"In the end," said Gamaliel, "it will be the best thing for everyone—even the pathetic souls that occupy this plane. This place is in desperate need of a regime change, and you've been instrumental in making that happen."
"Great," said Eddie weakly. He didn't like the idea of being an errand boy for Gamaliel—or whomever it was that Gamaliel was really working for. But what choice did he have? Another decade stuck on this plane and he would go stark raving mad. Even the prospect of divine wrath began to pale in comparison to a century in Cork. Still, divine wrath was something to be avoided if at all possible.
"You're absolutely certain I won't get in trouble for this?" he asked, knowing full well that Gamaliel was a peerless liar.
"One hundred percent," said Gamaliel reassuringly. "There is no way anyone in Heaven can connect you to any of this. You're thousands of miles away from the action, and nobody at the MOC has any incentive to bring up the timing of your extraction. They'll give you a cushy desk job and hope nobody ever mentions your unintentional incarceration on this plane again. Nobody in my organization has any reason to make an issue of it either. Even if we fail, we have nothing to gain by turning you in. Interfering with an agent of the MOC is a serious offense, so we'd be crazy to admit that we even talked to you. In any case—and you understand that I mean no offense—we're not going to score a lot of points with Heaven by turning in a cherub of your rank anyway."
"I suppose not," admitted Eddie. Sometimes it was beneficial to be a little fish. Not when one has been forgotten for half a century on another plane, of course, but sometimes.
"Look at it this way," said Gamaliel, sensing that Eddie was still not entirely convinced. "If Heaven cared about this place, they wouldn't treat it like some kind of backwater province where they can exile angels that they'd rather forget about. For that matter, they wouldn't permit all the war, disease, and general stupidity that go on here. This plane clearly needs more hands-on management.
"In fact," Gamaliel went on, "now that I think about it, it's almost like they left you down here on purpose so that you could help us whip this place into shape. I mean, we considered other ways to get a leader of the faithful to denounce Karl, but it's difficult to do without raising any red flags upstairs. So when we found out about your relationship with Harry. . .it was just too perfect. Who knows, maybe on some level it was meant to be."
Eddie grunted.