by Tad Williams
Something about the stark horror on Clarence’s face almost made me sorry to have told him the Deathwatch story. He looked like a whipped puppy. I glanced up and saw the first of the Halls of Records looming in front of us, a literal ivory tower covered with gold and silver scrollwork, a massive needle without a haystack. It was quite interesting on the inside, too, but I wasn’t going to be seeing it, at least not today. If I even stepped inside I might as well have set off an alarm throughout the Celestial City announcing “Bobby Dollar’s back in town.”
“Here’s what I want,” I told him, and recited the list of half a dozen names, beginning with the Rev. Dr. Moses Habari. “Get me whatever you can find on all of them. Everything of interest.”
“But I can’t bring the records out!” he said, horrified. “I’m not even supposed to go back there after being transferred!”
“You still have friends there, I’m sure,” I said. “Sam must have taught you at least a little by now, Junior. Schmooze them up. If you can’t bring me copies just memorize them-remember, you’re an angel. I’ll meet you when you’re done. Go on, get to it, or I’ll have to report you for loitering.”
He stared at me as I turned away. When I looked back he was slouching toward the door of the Records Hall like he’d been called to the principal’s office.
I headed off to the building where the fixers hang out to explain what exactly had made The Compasses fall down go boom.
The Mule looked up from his work, if that was what the ball of cold fire in front of him represented. The face inside the angelic glow changed expression, but it was hard to tell from what to what. Archangels aren’t anywhere near as inhuman as Principalities, but they’re still hard to read. “Angel Doloriel!” His tone was guardedly friendly. “God loves you! What a surprise. Are you well?”
Well, not actually. I’m in love with one of Satan’s little helpers, and one of his poker buddies is trying to kill me-and that’s if I’m lucky. But even in Heaven, that’s a question I seldom answer honestly. “Yes, I am, Archangel Temuel, thank you for asking.”
“The Ministry of Inquiry wants to talk to you. Have you communicated with them?
“Just finished up with them before I came here. But I also wanted to check in with you. Do you have a moment to spare?”
He hesitated an almost undetectable instant, but I was looking for it. “Of course. Let’s go out. Do you like Contemplation Park?”
“Lovely spot.” Does he know how deep I’m in? I wondered. Has he somehow heard about Caz? Why else would he want to take me somewhere beyond the reach of eavesdroppers?
My next thought was even creepier. Does such a place even exist in Heaven?
We made that strange Heavenly transition between inside and outside, the one where you kind of just melt your way through everything in a matter of moments, then walked in a more normal fashion through the crowds to Contemplation Park. (The folks in the City are busier and more focused than the folks in the Fields. They’re also off in their own worlds, but their worlds seem to be part of now. If you stop them and ask them something they’ll even directly answer your question, if they can. In some ways they’re almost like people in an ordinary city, but there’s still that vagueness I’ve never quite been able to penetrate, and that sense of undifferentiating happiness that just…well, it makes me nervous. I can’t help it.)
An idea struck me-one that I realized I would have to give some serious consideration: What if I’m not the only one who feels this way? It was important, somehow, my instincts told me, though I didn’t know why. I prayed I’d be able to remember it later, since many things that happened in Heaven seemed to melt away like dreams back on Earth.
“So things are still a bit difficult for you, I hear,” the Mule told me as we traveled along the flower-edged paths. I saw a group of children playing on top of one of the grassy knolls, a charming sight until I began to wonder how they’d died, and why it had happened to them so soon in life.
I am one badly screwed-up angel, there’s no question about it.
“Difficult. Yes, you could say that. Did you get my message, Archangel, that I needed a few days without clients? Is that possible?”
Temuel did whatever archangels do when they nod their heads. I can understand it but I can’t describe it. “Yes. And although not everyone was happy about it, you’ve been given some leeway, at least for the present. I think it’s because of the summit conference.”
“The what?”
“Ah. Then you haven’t heard.” The song of a solitary bird, oddly haunting, twittered through the park, and it made me aware for the first time how quiet it was in this part of Heaven. “The conference will be about the matter of the missing souls, of course. We have been given to understand that the Highest is disturbed. The Opposition claim they know nothing more about it than we do. It’s a vanishingly small chance they’re telling the truth, but a meeting has been agreed anyway. You will be invited to attend, of course, Angel Doloriel.” His calm voice took on a momentary edge. “It will not be the sort of invitation that can be turned down.”
“Why me?”
“Because you were the first advocate this happened to, although by now you have a great deal of company. And since that unfortunate hour you have also been pursued by a malign spirit, which may be related, or may not.” A change in Temuel’s glow led me to guess he was showing me a half-smile. “After all, you have made a few enemies in your years on Earth, Doloriel.”
I politely ignored this. “Please tell me the whole truth, Archangel Temuel. Is this a real inquiry or are they simply looking for scapegoats? Because as the first poor bastard this happened to I see myself as a likely candidate to get tied to the post.”
“It’s a large, important inquiry, and I believe the intent is honest. Whatever our superiors think of you, this is a problem that cannot simply be blamed on someone-it must be solved.” Temuel’s attention turned slowly past me, and I wondered what he was thinking. He seemed to be looking out over the misty vastness of the park toward the distant gleam of the Empyrean. Temuel was opaque to me, and not just because he was an archangel. I simply had never been able to get a fix on him. “I think unless there is something else you need of me, we should go back now,” he said. “Rest assured that for a few more days I will do my best to give you the freedom you feel you need on Earth. But do not-what is that old expression? Do not push your luck.”
That had the sound of something you didn’t want to be told twice. Unfortunately, I’d heard it several times already just in the last little while. “Thank you, Archangel. When is this summit conference happening? And do you know who’ll be there?”
“Who will be there? Everyone of importance in the matter, I suspect-from both sides, too. Nobody can afford to be seen ignoring this. As to when-soon. You will be given the rest of the details when they’re available.”
It was a real joy to know all my enemies would be together with me in one place. Was I just being paranoid again, or was Heaven doing its best to get me bumped off? “Oh, one last thing,” I said as we drifted back toward the California building and Temuel’s office. “Do you remember when you asked me to keep an eye on the new advocate, Haraheliel? The one Sam has been training?”
I swear when I said that, the Mule’s glow dwindled-for a moment I even thought I saw the edges of it flutter, like flames in a sudden wind-but then everything was as it had been. “No. I do not remember that.”
For a moment I could only stand there with my angelic mouth hanging open. I’ve never known one of my superiors to forget anything. “Hang on,” I said, “maybe I’m confusing things somehow. I’m talking about Haraheliel-the one we call ‘Clarence,’ but that’s just a joke. His earthly name is Harrison Ely, and he’s been working with Sam. When I was here before you asked me-”
“No.” I hadn’t heard the Mule so stern. Ever. “You are mistaken.”
“But…!”
“You are mistaken, Angel Doloriel. Do you understand? I’m afraid
you have misremembered. Such a conversation never took place.”
He left me standing there all by myself, completely surrounded by angels.
twenty-six
the pride that goeth
I dreamed I was reaching out for Caz. The dream should have been sweet or sexy or full of Catholic guilt or something, but instead I was scrabbling in dirt like a dog as she was being pulled away from me down a hole into dark, crumbling earth. At last she was gone, and though I scratched frantically all I could hear were muffled screams. I woke up in my Earthly body, streaming sweat, and for long moments my limbs felt like they belonged to somebody else.
Earthbound angels dream, but not very often. I almost never do, but occasionally a disturbing experience brings one on, and Temuel’s response counted as just that. I’ve always had a kneejerk distrust of Heaven, especially when it came to whether or not they had Bobby Dollar’s best interests in mind, and although my superiors could be stingy with the truth I’d never known any of them to lie straight to my face. I mean, could they even do that? They were important angels of the Lord! But unless the Mule had forgotten an extremely important conversation with me, something angels definitely don’t do, he was baldfacedly denying something that we both knew had happened.
There was a third option, of course: I might have lost my mind, or at least the parts that I’d always counted on, my memory and my sense of logic. That wasn’t a possibility I could afford to entertain very seriously, since I had become more and more isolated from my Heavenly support system in recent days. My best friend was in the hospital, maybe in a coma, my favorite hangout was wrecked, and my bosses were pissed off at me. If I couldn’t trust my own judgement I was in real trouble.
Morning light was filtering in on me through the curtains of Clarence’s rented basement room. Well, I say rented, but it looked a lot like the kind of room an adult son might have waiting for him in his parents’ house, always ready for a visit. A fancy (and dust-free) model of a biplane dangled from the ceiling on a nearly invisible thread, a Giants team poster hung on the wall, and the bookcase was crammed with science fiction and sports and travel books. Even the bed where Clarence’s currently untenanted body lay looked as though it had once belonged to a child. The coverlet was decorated with the logo of the San Judas Jacks, a local minor-league basketball franchise that had gone under some years ago.
But just because Clarence’s soul was still in Heaven didn’t mean his body was dead. Our masters had arranged things much more sensibly than that, and the kid gave every sign (and sound) of merely being asleep. I lay waiting for him to wake up, and while I did, I ran through everything that had happened to me on this last strange trip Upstairs. I knew I had particularly wanted to remember the idea that I might not be the only one with authority problems, but as often happens, whatever had made it seem so significant at the time had not remained attached to the concept. Still, it was something to mull over while I listened to Clarence’s quiet snoring.
I thought about calling Caz. I’d actually thought about it a lot in the last twenty-four hours, but I didn’t know what to say to her. Hell, I didn’t even know how I felt. Well, actually, I did, but that was part of the problem-I wasn’t supposed to feel that way about someone from the other side.
“Where’s the coffee?” I said when Clarence’s eyes began to flutter open.
He groaned. “Come on, man, give me a minute!”
“A minute? Angel, please. I’ve been lying here waiting and listening to you wheeze like an asthmatic basset hound for at least half an hour. You should get checked for whatever that is. Sleep apnea. You sounded like you were trying to swallow your tongue.”
“Really?” Alarmed, he sat up.
“No. But I’m glad your heart’s actually beating now. Find me coffee, and then tell me what you discovered in the Records Hall.”
“You’re an asshole, Bobby.”
“Just trying to do the Lord’s holy work.”
He led me upstairs to the kitchen and got something going in a French press that looked appropriately black and strong. “Are you going to be pissed off at me if I didn’t find all the stuff you wanted?” he asked.
“Depends. Talk.”
He looked like a kid who was certain he’d be grounded for a month. “It’s just…well, except for that Patrillo guy, there wasn’t anything on any of the rest of those names.”
“Really?” I gave him a stern look, but inside I was pleased. He’d passed the test, as well as confirming what I’d guessed about the names. Jose Maria Patrillo, head of some Christian charity called the Sixth Angel Foundation, was the only person whose name I’d given the kid that wasn’t one of the names Fatback had told me showed up in connection with the Magian Society. As I’d suspected, Clarence hadn’t been able to find any records on Habari or any of the others, just the ringer, Patrillo, which meant the Magian-related names all had to be pseudonyms. “Really, kid? You couldn’t find anything on the others? Nothing at all? Not even rumors?”
“It doesn’t work like that!” He looked upset at being doubted. Really it was what I had expected to hear, and I was happy to have the confirmation. It also made me feel better about Clarence’s truthfulness, although by no means did it prove he was legit. “This isn’t like an internet search or something,” he explained as I did my best to act as though I didn’t already know. “The Records are about real people, see. I found all kinds of stuff on that Patrillo guy, but all the other names-that Habari and the Germans, those others-they just don’t give anything back. They’re not among the living right now, if they ever were.”
“Which is probably because they aren’t real people,” I said. “Cool your jets, kid. I believe that’s all you found, and I don’t think anyone else would have found anything more, but-”
I didn’t get a chance to finish because just that moment Sheila, Clarence’s roommate/surrogate mom, walked into the kitchen. She was wearing slippers and a dark green velour housecoat. “Good morning, Harrison,” she fluted as she came in, then stopped, clearly a little surprised to see me. “Oh! Did your friend stay over?” Her look was confusion mixed with an unwillingness to intrude on what she obviously considered private matters.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said cheerfully. “We were up so late playing Twister that I just crashed out on Harrison’s floor.” I turned to the kid, who had spluttered coffee down his front. “You okay, buddy?”
“Twister?” she said doubtfully.
“Yeah, it’s a card game. A variant on Two-Man Stud. Hope you don’t mind me spending the night. It got a bit late to drive home.”
“Of course I don’t mind,” she said. “Do you fellows want some breakfast?”
“He might,” I said, standing up. “I need to get to work. See you, Harrison. Thanks for the game.”
Clarence looked as though he wished the ghallu had got me after all.
I only knew part of the reason that Eligor had sent his pet monster after me; I knew why he thought I had the golden feather, but not why Grasswax had blamed it on me, or exactly what kind of weird bargain the feather signified. But one thing I’d decided was that it was too much of a coincidence that Grasswax, Caz, Eligor, and I should all be involved somehow with both the disappearing souls and the disappearing feather, especially since it was now looking like it had all gone down on the same day. In fact, I was becoming more and more certain that the feather had some bearing on the whole missing-souls mess that started with Edward Walker’s death. I also wanted to know why Walker and the others had been souljacked in the first place. Were they just random victims? But if so, why would Walker have been checked out so closely ahead of time, including personal visits from Habari? Was Habari working with the soul-stealers or against them?
The fact that the Rev. Dr. Habari and the others from apparently Magian-related groups seemed to have no independent existence only strengthened my belief in a link between Eligor’s feather and the missing souls. The Magian paper trail leading to Eligor suggested that, whethe
r or not he was the author of the Great Soul Snatch, the grand duke clearly had something to hide about his role in the whole apocalyptic mess. It also made me realize that I needed to get a better handle on the souls who had already disappeared, or at least find out enough about them to look for patterns. I needed to speed things up, and I had very little hope that the summit conference between Heaven and Hell was going to come up with answers that would help me-not with so many asses to cover, both those bearing tails and otherwise.
When I hit the Camino Real I found myself a coffee shop that looked just busy enough that I wouldn’t be the only patron and ordered a late breakfast, then pulled up all the memos Fatback had sent me about the individuals in San Judas whose souls Monica had told me were among the missing. It wasn’t the first time I’d looked the information over but it had been more than a few days, and I was hoping something new would jump out at me.
Even the atheist angle, which was quite strong with Walker and a few others, didn’t hold up all the way through. Several of the missing souls belonged to men who seemed to have a fairly ordinary connection to religion, and one of them was even a well-known Christian minister, leader of a successful, modern, evangelical church that was big among the lapsed Catholics of Spanishtown. On the surface, the missing souls seemed to be a pretty random lot.
I had worked through hash browns, bacon, my second cup of coffee, and was poking at the fruit cup when I finally realized I’d been spending my time looking for secondary connections like neighborhoods and workplaces and committees and even children’s schools without giving any attention to perhaps the most important thing they all had in common-their deaths. Walker was a suicide. Rubios, the minister, had fallen from an office balcony when a railing had given way. An esteemed Stanford researcher had slipped off a BART platform in front of a moving train with nobody nearby. The police had concluded her death was nothing but a tragic accident. The rest? Two suicides and three more natural deaths.
