The Book of Joby
The
BOOK
of
JOBY
MARK J. FERRARI
A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
NEW YORK
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE BOOK OF JOBY
Copyright © 2007 by Mark J. Ferrari
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
“The Song of the Blackthorn Fairy” from Flower Fairies of the Winter by Cicely Mary Barker, copyright © The Estate of Cicely Mary Barker, 1923, 1926, 1940, 1944, 1948, 1990.
“The Eternal Cave,” “My Life,” “Wind Song,” and “Child’s Wheel” are all from Purple Sky Flowers by Jenny Rose Gealey, copyright © The Estate of Jenny Rose Gealey, 1992, 1996.
Edited by David G. Hartwell
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ferrari, Mark J. (Mark Joseph), 1956–
The book of Joby / Mark J. Ferrari.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-1686-8 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-7653-1686-2 (hardcover)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-1753-7 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 0-7653-1753-2 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PS3606.E735B66 2007
813'.6—dc22
2007009554
First Edition: August 2007
Printed in the United States of America
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Josh Morsell,
who rekindled my desire to write,
Debbie Notkin,
who taught me how,
and the children of Taubolt,
to whom I owe more than I can ever pay
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’ve been improbably fortunate in both the number and quality of people who helped make this book a reality. Among the many, many who have helped and encouraged me, I am particularly grateful to:
Steve Ettinger and Kyala Shea for wading through very, very early drafts that were not the polished work of genius presented here; Will Stenberg, Kenyon Zimmer, Pam Wilson, Patrick Curl, and other members of the occasional Weekly Writers Group, who suffered through eons of revision because they wouldn’t stop providing such valuable feedback; my good friend, Brendan McGuigan, without whom this book would be of far poorer quality if it had ever been finished at all; Bill Jones and Marcia Muggleberg for their invaluable input, encouragement, and beyond-the-call promotional support; Nyssa Baugher, who is the World’s BEST listener; Debbie Notkin, whose editorial assistance, professional advice, and tenacious friendship have literally made this book—and no small part of my preceding illustration career—possible; John Dalmas, Dean Wesley Smith, Jane Fancher, Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta, and Jon Gustafson (if you’re watching up there), who all kept my faith alive with their generous interest and counsel; and Patricia Briggs, who provided not only encouragement and counsel, but steered me toward an agent too!
My particular thanks to Tom Doherty, David Hartwell, Denis Wong, and everyone else at Tor for daring to publish such an—er—unusual first novel, and prodding me to make it even better; and to my agent, Linn Prentis, for her good advice and patient, persistent support through fair weather and foul.
Love and thanks to my parents, Andrew and Jackie, and my brothers, Matt and John, for their faith in my ability to do this crazy thing.
Finally, my lasting gratitude to Jenny Rose Gealey, whose inspiring life and death spurred and informed much of the story I’ve tried to tell here, and to her wise, warm, and generous family for allowing me to incorporate some of her extraordinary poems into this work.
I can think of no remotely sufficient way to reward these people except to say that I am inexpressibly grateful, and otherwise unable to pay, so don’t call us, we’ll call you, et cetera, et cetera . . . (mischievous grin, fade to black).
The Book of Joby
PROLOGUE
( This Same Stupid Bet )
When he unlocked the verandah that morning, the young waiter found two men near his own age already sitting at a table there, quietly watching the new sun drift from orange to gold above the sleepy Atlantic harbor beyond. He had no idea how they’d gotten in an hour before the restaurant opened, and headed out to make them leave, but found himself apologizing for the wait instead, and asking if they wanted menus. They already knew what they wanted, so he took their order and went vacantly back inside wondering why his head felt so cotton-stuffed this morning.
“It’s magnificent,” said the younger patron, gazing at the opalescent sky. His liquid brown eyes and beautiful copper features were framed in curly locks so black one might have looked for stars among them. His feet were bare—a blatant violation of restaurant rules, though the waiter had not seemed to notice—and the soft white T-shirt untucked over his khaki shorts reflected more radiance than the sunrise alone should reasonably have lent it. “I could watch just this one thousands of times,” he murmured. “Thank you for bringing me.”
“The presence of a friend improves the view, Gabe,” replied his host, the smile in his wide gray eyes spilling out across a face both older and younger in some elusive way than his companion’s. He wore ragged tennis shoes, weathered blue jeans that precisely matched the changing sky above him, and a short sleeve, gray cotton shirt that seemed to shift between shades of warm shale and cool morning fog.
No sooner had they resumed their silent contemplation of the sunrise than a dignified gentleman appeared, wearing an impeccably tailored suit of charcoal tweed. His pale, handsome features were set in stony determination at odds with the pleasant morning as he tugged natty pant cuffs away from elegant dress shoes, tossed an early paper onto the table, and sat down across from the two younger men, largely eclipsing their view of the bay.
“Lovely view,” he offered without looking back to see. “Bit chilly for summer, but nice enough, I suppose. Imagine my excitement when I heard you were in the neighborhood!” he added with overtly false enthusiasm, then gestured at the newspaper lying between them. “Seen the latest on that massacre of villagers in Abudaweh? It seems the international tribunal has found no one to blame at all.” He smiled and shrugged. “Perhaps the tricky bastards slew themselves, just to stir up trouble. Can no one be trusted anymore?”
The waiter arrived with two lattes and a plate of pastry, taking the newcomer’s unexpected appearance in stride as well. “Shall I bring a menu, Sir?” he asked.
“I’d like everything they have,” the gentleman said severely.
“Certainly. Will that be whole, low-fat, or nonfat?”
“What?”
“Your latte, Sir.”
The man regarded the waiter sternly, as if deciding what to do to him, then laughed suddenly. “Men of my age can hardly be too vigilant, young man. Better make it nonfat.” He sent the waiter away with an ingratiating smile that faded to deadpan contempt as soon as his back was turned. Looking back to his tablemates, the gentleman’s icy blue eyes came to rest on the dark-haired youth. “So, what do you think, Gabe? Did the buggers do for themselves, or is the tribunal in bed with Abudaweh’s military elite?”
“I’d say you’ve been as busy as ever, brother,” Gabriel replied coldly.
“Let’s stick with proper names, shall we?” replied the older man with even
greater chilliness.
“Which one?” Gabriel shrugged. “You keep so many.”
“Morgan, at the moment. Mister Morgan, to you.”
“Boys,” their gray-eyed companion interjected mildly, “you know I hate it when you fight like this. It demeans you both, and it’s ruining my all too brief vacation.”
“Were I allowed to visit you at home, Sir,” Morgan protested politely, “I would gladly do so. But, given the circumstances, I have little choice but to intrude upon your . . . ‘vacations,’ especially when they’re held right here in my humble little cell.”
“Gabe was just telling me how lovely he finds your cell,” mused the gray-eyed man, tearing off a morsel of the pastry none of them had touched, and tossing it to a gull who’d come to perch on the railing behind his adversary. “Said he could have watched that one sunrise a thousand times.”
“I haven’t my little brother’s overweening ambition to be Teacher’s pet,” Morgan replied, turning to grimace at the bird as it gobbled down the offering. “Such filthy creatures,” he complained. “Really, you demean yourself by catering to their mindless, vulgar greed.”
“Why have you come to darken such a splendid morning?” the gray-eyed man asked wearily, tossing the gull another scrap. “If I wanted this sort of thing, I’d have gone to work today, Lucifer. You don’t mind, do you, if I use that name? On you, Morgan seems so guttural.”
Lucifer turned away as if to appreciate the view, and asked, “How long must You disgrace us all by propping up this doomed and depressing enterprise?” When his Lord made no reply, Lucifer’s expression soured. “Is it my fault this blighted orchard bears such bitter fruit? I did not invent their deceitful hearts. Yet I am punished for their disobedience. Why? You cannot really believe I ever wished to challenge Your supremacy. Principle has ever been my only motive. I am guilty of nothing but insisting that Your laws be obeyed, that Your perfection be perfectly reflected!” Trembling with the effort of reining in his own consuming frustration, Lucifer whirled back to face his Master, the illusion of his human form dissolving into brilliant auroras of such dazzling beauty that the morning behind him suddenly seemed little more than a dingy rag thrown up against the heavens. “Look at me!” he demanded in a voice that rolled like muted thunder from all directions. “Do I belong here, penned up in this failed experiment with a race of flawed apes who, by their very nature, mock Your majesty?” Gabriel looked away, finding his fallen brother’s awesome beauty too painful to endure. “Why do You fear me so?” Lucifer demanded, reluctantly surrendering to human form again. “What ambition do I entertain but to serve a God not degraded at every turn by His own creation? You’re the omniscient One! You must know it’s true! Why will You never listen to me?” He fixed his Creator with a gaze of fearful defiance and desperate longing for recognition as old and unresolved as their dispute. “Admit it, Sir. This race of churls You indulge is the flop I have always said it would be. By now, the rot in this insufferable contrivance of Yours has gone clear to the core.”
The Creator grew very quiet, and his gray eyes closed in concentration. He cocked His head, as if listening for something very small or far away. “No,” He insisted quietly. “The core is as sound as ever . . . better, I’d say.” He opened his eyes and gazed gravely at Lucifer. “But I do have this awful feeling that I know what’s coming next.”
“Then, as You doubtless know,” Lucifer said with a feral grin devoid of mirth, “my sources are fearful of a monstrous new civil war brewing in the Congo that will make anything they’ve seen before pale in comparison. . . . I know how You despise all that death and suffering; and this could easily spill across all of Africa before it’s done. Then there’s all the influence even hotter heads, warheads one might say, are stealthily cultivating in India’s parliament these days. After so many delays, the nuclear fruit is nearly ripe, and I have an almost infallible inside tip that by century’s end nothing will remain of poor Kashmir but a glowing, glassy crater. It could all get so much messier in such a hurry then. All the global shock, the righteous rage. So many great nations at fault,” he said with almost bestial ecstasy. “So much blame to go around. Messy, messy, messy,” he lamented, shaking his head in a hideous parody of regret. “I’m not sure even I will be able to restrain such an angry world. The whole thing could just blow up in my—”
“Your point?” the Creator asked with a placidity that immediately reduced the rabid inferno in Lucifer’s eyes to mere embers of sullen resentment.
“My point,” Lucifer said, with a sudden bland smile, “is that I might be able to pull some strings and slow things down a bit . . . at least, long enough to resolve a small wager, if You—”
“I thought so,” the Creator sighed. “This same stupid bet. How many times have we done this, Lucifer? Ten thousand? Twice that, perhaps?” He leaned forward, bringing the full weight of His suddenly devastating gray gaze to bear. “And how many times have you won?”
For a moment there was silence. Then, “Twice,” Lucifer breathed, neither looking away nor, to his credit, losing his smile.
The Creator shrugged. “They are allowed to fail.”
“Yes, yes,” Lucifer sighed, the steam seeming to leave his pipes all at once. “Free will. . . . I heard You the first time. Of all Your reckless gestures, that’s the one that really lost You my vote.”
“If you had heard Him the first time,” Gabriel taunted, “the night sky would be far brighter now, wouldn’t it.”
“In a more perfect world,” Lucifer retorted, rounding acidly on his onetime sibling, “servants would know not to interrupt their betters during adult conversation!”
“I believe your conversation was with me, Lucifer,” the Creator reminded him. “And I really don’t see why you—”
“I will not be mocked!” Lucifer snapped, forgetting himself entirely. “Certainly not by simpering songbirds like this impudent youngster you insist on—”
“What were you just saying about interrupting one’s betters, Lucifer?” the Lord of all creation asked with a level quiet that brought the devil instantly to wise if sullen silence. “As I was saying, I don’t see why you keep subjecting yourself to these punishing humiliations. Even your two so-called victories did little but improve things.”
“My only mistake with that wide-eyed couple in the garden was aiming too low,” Lucifer complained. “As for the second time, I still insist You cheated. Judas failed solidly, and we clearly agreed that if I won, Jesus—”
“We’ve been through this a million times,” the Creator interrupted. “I never suggested that Jesus would stay dead. It’s hardly My fault you didn’t think to inquire about that ahead of time.”
“Well, what was I supposed to think?” Lucifer protested. “You said, dead! And dead is—”
“Evidently not,” his Master cut him off again, then smiled and shook His head. “Really, Lucifer, if I’d been you, I’d have quit while I was still just way, way behind.”
“Well, You’d best not count on my errors this time,” Lucifer insisted, visibly leashing his temper. “I’ve a delicious feeling that it’s finally Your turn to blow it.”
“Aren’t you gung ho!” the Creator observed. “I don’t recall having agreed to any wager yet.”
In a moment of atypical unself-consciousness, Lucifer’s face scrunched comically around so much constipated ambition.
“What would you want this time, if My candidate failed?” the Creator asked, tossing still more pastry to the flock of gulls that had gathered densely around them.
“Everything,” Lucifer said, unable to suppress his eagerness. “This whole declining ball of sepsis You’ve indulged for so long goes! Its people, these vulgar birds, the whole planet! We start again, and this time You listen to my advice. Oh, You’ll still be God, of course. I do know my place, whatever You think. But this time we’ll try it without any of that free will. We’ll have an orderly universe. A virtuous creation! No debauched little freelancers running about blit
hely denigrating their Maker and, by inference, the rest of us who must obey Your will. You do not seem to appreciate, My Lord, how deeply wounded I am by Your failure to recognize the value I place on Your dignity! If You had—”
“Stop,” the Creator said patiently. “I heard you the first time as well. . . . Let’s make sure I understand this. You’ll spare a few thousand lives in the Congo, and a few million more from whatever atomic debacle you’re arranging after that, if I agree to wipe every last scrap of My creation utterly from existence, should My candidate lose, and start over heeding your instructions. Is that right?”
Lucifer spent a moment scrutinizing the Creator’s wording more carefully than he had on certain other occasions, then said, “That seems accurate.”
“And if My candidate wins?” the Creator mused.
“Negotiable.”
“Beyond that, the usual terms?” the Creator asked.
“Of course,” Lucifer answered, his hopes visibly inflamed. “Are You agreeing?”
Gabriel turned to the Creator in clear concern. “My Lord, You’re not seriously—”
“What did our distinguished guest say about interrupting?” the Creator interrupted.
“Of course,” Gabriel said, glancing nervously away. “I apologize.”
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