Bad Cow

by Andrew Hindle

  “Gabriel, it’s me,” Ash called in through the door.

  “Let her in, Gordon,” Gabriel’s rough voice echoed from inside the chapel. Reverend Gordon, looking troubled, stepped aside and ushered Ash inside.

  Gabriel was sitting at the front of the airy nave, on the row of comfortable seats before the open space for prayer mats began. He had his feet up on a padded stool. Ash hadn’t appreciated the Archangel’s feet amongst all his other hairy, primitive features the first time she’d seen him, because he’d been wearing a wide, scuffed pair of old shoes to match his odd, antiquated suit. Now, swathed in a robe of deep blue cloth that was rumpled up to halfway along his stunted, bandy, long-haired shins, he was comfortably barefoot. His toes weren’t quite fingers, and his big toes weren’t quite thumbs, but there was more than a hint of both going on down there.

  “Is this how you greeted the parishioners this morning?” Ash asked the Archangel, stepping in alongside and seating herself next to him.

  “Believe it or not, I kept out of the way,” Gabriel said, and cast her a look of grudging approval from beneath his craggy overhanging monobrow. “You’re each going to take turns, eh? Compare notes at the end? That’s smart.”

  “We each like to do things in our own ways.”

  “How much of our conversation did Roon tell you about?” Gabriel asked, then chuckled again when Ash gave him a wry look. “Alright, fine,” he said. “Did she leave you with any particular impression? Draw you any pictures? Do any pantomime?”

  “She gave me enough to work on,” she said. She’d spent the morning reading through the notepad pages Roon had filled and then shared with her sisters, but she didn’t feel inclined to share in turn. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Yes you are,” Gabriel acknowledged.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to go on talking,” Ash said, “although I might contribute a bit more to the conversation than Roon did. Tell me about the job you have for us.”

  “I want to keep this world’s human population intact,” Gabriel said. “Indefinitely, is my preference – since we have no idea how long the exile of this world is going to last.”

  “The exile where the Angels have to hide and the Pinians – us – are stuck in human guise,” Ash said, “with no memory of our true selves,” she paused, thinking of Roon’s strange insights, Ariel’s glamour and strength, her own talent for combat and affinity with fire. “No real memory,” she amended.

  “That’s about it,” Gabriel said. “I think the job itself will help clear things up.”

  “Well then by all means, let’s talk about the damn job.”

  Gabriel glanced at her sidelong. “Sure you wouldn’t rather wait until you’re all together?” he asked.

  “You made it sound like this was a job that overlapped all our areas of expertise,” Ash replied. “Let me in on some of the military overlap.”

  “Okay,” Gabriel said, and gusted out a long sigh. “Alright,” he frowned, thinking, then went on. “See, there are several different … what do you call them? Objective tiers? Something like that. Like, primary objective, secondary, tertiary … miss one target, hit the one behind.”

  “Okay,” Ash said. “We don’t call them that, but fine. Why don’t you list some of the objectives for me?”

  “Alright,” Gabriel said. “Primary objective – and one, I might add in the interests of openness, I’m not at all certain is even possible, and had risks that greatly outweigh the potential benefits involved–”

  “Primary objective?”

  Gabriel grinned. “Primary objective, we bring the three Pinian Disciples back into focus. Full focus, not this partial focus you have going on in your current generation. Incarnation. Whatever you call it.”

  “And that would…?”

  “Pinians are a source of power unto themselves,” Gabriel said. “Even cut off with this veil, separated from the outside urverse and all other avenues of energy, they – you – have abilities far beyond Angels and Demons. Beyond what the priests were capable of when they were conduits of God.”

  “Because we don’t need the conduit,” Ash said.

  “Basically, no,” Gabriel agreed. “You’re like little extensions of God. You’re not Gods, but you’re like representatives … more than that, you’re like pieces of God. Giela, they call it in Xidh. The whole, writ small. Not a God, but an extension of the God’s awareness, the eyes and ears and right hand.”

  “And what is Xidh?” Ash asked. “Some ancient language, I assume?”

  Gabriel snorted in amusement. “Not too ancient, I hope. Although – I guess it has been around for a long time, but it’s … well, more universal than ancient. I don’t really remember, it was always the common tongue people used when they all had their own languages. Anyway, a giela represents a shadow of the truth – and in the case of the Firstmades, you’re autonomous. Gods don’t generally create autonomous giela – not that I remember how They operate, exactly, but … Gods sort of extend Themselves into little avatars, They slum it among mortals … basically whenever a God even appears to mortals it’s just an extension of an unimaginable whole in unreality, but with Firstmade Gods and Their Disciples it’s slightly different, you’re separate individuals even if you’re part–”

  “Enough with the extensions of the unimaginable whole,” Ash suggested. “Unless there’s a God inside this veil that you’d like to tell me about…”

  “Not that I know of,” Gabriel smiled, “but They don’t talk to me. Not even our God had much to say to the Angels and Archangels, and that was before the veil cut off communications.”

  “We don’t need a hole through the veil, but we can make one,” Ash said. “To keep the Earth running.”

  “Exactly. Primary objective,” Gabriel concluded. “You wake up, you take your places as the threefold representative committee of God. You assume command of Earth and its people, you re-establish order and the rule of law, and carry us through the rest of the exile. You use your power to communicate with the outside, and supply the planet with energy and other resources. Maybe the other planets too.”

  Ash blinked. “The other planets?”

  “Venus,” Gabriel said, “and Mars, were meant to be inhabitable. Now, they were also meant to be self-contained, and travelling from one to another is a larger problem than was perhaps taken into account at the start, but … well, it would lessen the pressure on Earth if even a quarter of the population could go somewhere else.”

  “That’s an ambitious objective,” Ash conceded.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s much point in trying to tell you that even if three element-powered superbeings turned up on Earth, they’d be unlikely to be given any seats on any international councils,” she said.

  “The churches would fall in behind you,” Gabriel said. “You of all people know how far that would take you already.”

  “Not exactly a shining endorsement,” Ash said, “or a human trait I’d enjoy reinforcing. And I suppose if I tried to tell you there’s already order and the rule of law–” Gabriel guffawed. “Fair enough,” Ash muttered. “What about the secondary objective?”

  “Similar to the primary,” Gabriel replied, “but the Pinians don’t activate fully. They remain much as you are now. Exactly as you are now, ideally.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you’d be capable of activating the same measures, bringing the same level of resource-independence to the world, maybe even jump-restarting the space travel boom that tailed off into a space travel embarrassed mutter sometime in the Twenty-First Century,” Gabriel said. “But none of that problematic ‘Goddess-Empresses on Earth’ stuff.”

  “What about the tertiary objective?” Ash asked.

  “Hammer a hole in the veil for humanity to breathe through, then go back into hiding,” Gabriel replied, promptly enough to convince Ash this was not his tertiary objective. “Permanently, for all I care.”

  As
h raised her eyebrows. “That’s pretty harsh, considering the Pinians are the three-headed eagle of your entire religion.”

  “You don’t remember the past four hundred years the way I do,” Gabriel growled. “I just want humanity to survive. That, to me, is the primary objective. Anything else – anything else – is a distant secondary priority,” he sat back against his wings, grimaced, and let out a little grunt of discomfort.

  Ash eyed him uncertainly. “Rough night with my sister in a dingy reclamation bar?”

  “Not even Archangels last forever,” he said, “especially in the conditions this world is forcing on us. I may be functionally immortal, but that just means I get to be uncomfortable for longer.”

  “You’ve had all this time to make humans install comfortable seating in churches,” Ash said. “I can’t help but feel you can blame yourself a bit on this one.”

  Gabriel gave her a sour glance, then conceded with a grunt. “Another few hundred years of this, and I’ll be ready to just curl up in a church catacomb and sleep.”

  “Now you decide you’re too old for adventures and intrigue? You became an Archangel so long ago humans didn’t need to bend to scratch their knees.”

  “They didn’t cook up the local megafauna by burning synthetic polyhydro-supercarbon whatever-the-fuck-it-is, either,” Gabriel said, and grimaced again. “I doesn’t matter,” he went on. “By the time I burn out, it will be over. My work will be done. I’d like to still be awake to see it end – or at least begin – but if I’m not…” he squinted at Ash. “Clever,” he said again, “sending Roon first. I forgot how much chatter is required to fill in both sides of a conversation.”

  “It’s part of her long-term plan to make the human race small-talk itself to death,” Ash said. “She gave a lecture at Tremaine University in February. She said ‘thank you’ after the round of welcome applause, then she put on a slideshow and did the whole thing silent.”

  Gabriel chuckled. “Not even an ‘any questions?’ at the end?”

  “She’d foreseen the questions,” Ash said. “She had slideshows to answer them too. So,” she went on, “that’s your retirement plan? Catacombs? I don’t think there even are any catacombs anymore. Maybe under a monastery in the mountains somewhere. The rest are … afflicted with rising damp, at best.”

  Gabriel shrugged. “I won’t need to fly around forever,” he said, “that’s the point. I just need to get things working in the right direction, and they’ll gather impetus on their own. I’ve been at this a long time, I can tell momentum when it starts.”

  “You could just lie down there, could you?” Ash narrowed her eyes. “You don’t burn energy?”

  “Not the sort you mean,” Gabriel replied. He gestured around the chapel, and Ash realised the Reverend Gordon hadn’t come back in. She glanced behind her, and saw his mohawked silhouette hovering in the bright rectangle of the doorway. Keeping watch. “I get my strength from holy ground,” the Archangel went on. “Don’t ask me to explain it because I can’t. Call it the focussed energy of the human collective consciousness and dust your hands off. It’s directed at much larger and vaguer concepts than me, but I can siphon it away and use it. Apparently.”

  “Trees don’t make their air for us,” Ash suggested.

  “Oh, you know what a tree is, then?” Gabriel remarked. “Looking around, I thought maybe you’d all started to plant them upside-down.”

  “You’re cute when you’re scolding us for destroying the planet.”

  “I don’t know if I’d actually die,” Gabriel mused. “In the catacombs. Or even sleep in any meaningful sense. Not even stranded Angels really die, they just go dormant. And catacombs are solid holy ground – most of them, anyway. It’s just … the quality of consecrated land has been changing. It feels tight, dusty, stifling. And the air has gotten sick, and the sun has gotten more savage, and the food … not that I really eat much, but…” he shuddered. “The food.”

  “So you do take in some sort of resources from the environment,” Ash said, feeling that this was far more Roon’s area of expertise.

  “In some ways, yeah,” Gabriel seemed to be equally aware that Ash was out of her depth, because he shifted uncomfortably in his seat again and sighed. “The endless bounty of land and sea has been spread too thin, its diversity demolished, its every corner ravaged with poisons,” he said. “It’s a wonder humanity has kept itself alive, but that’s your genius. And your bloody-mindedness,” he shook his head. “No,” he said. “I can’t see myself lasting, unless something changes.”

  “Which brings us back to the job we’re supposed to do to achieve these objectives of yours,” Ash prompted.

  “Right,” Gabriel nodded. “Now, don’t explode into a perfectly choreographed ballet of punches and explosive-tipped bullets,” he went on, “but you know how the primary objective – the official one – is pulled off.”

  “In the next life,” Ash said calmly. “You already said.”

  “Right,” Gabriel repeated. “Well, more specifically, there’s some setup in this life, and then you all need to die at the same time. Within a day or two of each other, anyway.”

  Ash looked at him narrowly again. “And you thought we’d go for that?”

  Gabriel laughed aloud. “Hell no,” he said. “Maybe once you’re all ninety years old and have a nasty case of the drybones, you’ll decide there’s nothing to lose and all head off together. But we can’t wait for that to happen.”

  “You don’t think the planet has another seventy years in it?” Ash asked, without much surprise.

  “Oh, the planet will be fine,” Gabriel said. “Venus and Mars are doing alright too. They just don’t have many fast food restaurants on them.”

  “If waiting for us to die simultaneously of old age didn’t pan out, how were your mysterious associates planning on getting us to finish this phase of the grand plan and make way for our better-focussed reincarnations?”

  “Good question,” Gabriel muttered. “Maybe once I’ve actually got you convinced that dying will allow you to be reborn together, closer to your true forms…”

  “You might want to work on phrasing that more reassuringly.”

  “Well, we don’t really want it to happen that way anyway,” the Archangel waved a hand. “At least I don’t.”

  “Right,” Ash said, “your associates’ tertiary objective is your primary objective, and it involves us figuring out a way of getting through this veil you keep talking about, but not going full Pinian and taking over.”

  “I’m not even going to pretend to be able to control you,” Gabriel said earnestly. “All I can do is lay out all the alternatives, tell you what my agenda is and about any other agendas that might be at work, and let you do whatever it is you’re going to do.”

  “I assume the ‘other agendas’ you mentioned also fold into our mission,” Ash said.

  “Sort of.”

  “The mission you’re still no closer to telling me about.”

  “Come now,” Gabriel said mildly. “We’re definitely closer.”

  “A lazier Archangel might just not bother approaching us at all,” Ash remarked, “and see what happens. Although at this point I’m having a hard time envisioning a lazier Archangel.”

  Gabriel laced his fingers behind his head. “You’re pretty sassy when your Auntie Agñasta isn’t around.”

  “She has limited patience for sass,” Ash admitted. “I have to save it up.”

  “Well, I can’t sit back and wait and see what happens,” Gabriel said. “That option’s off the table. And we all know what happens in the next seventy years. I like my lungs on the inside, thank you very much. No, something’s got to give, because this,” he unlaced his hands and gestured, “I can’t be having with this.”

  “So,” Ash said. “The job.”

  “Oh come on,” Gabriel protested. “If I tell you, I don’t get a date in a trendy Perth nightspot with the glamorous Ariel tonight.”

  Ash was surpris
ed into laughter. “Are you serious?”

  “Come on, Senior Sergeant Balrog,” Gabriel said. “Have a heart.”

  BAD COW

  The Bad Cow on Williams Street was already crowded, although it was a Sunday night. Sunday sessions were usually popular in summer, and mostly in the big waterfront bars with outdoor areas. The Bad Cow was a pleasantly cave-like two-storey establishment with no beer garden, it was pissing with rain at the tail-end of winter, and the place was jumping.

  It also wasn’t really a pub, since you didn’t manage a Williams Street rent pouring pints. Indeed, to hear Aunt Agñasta discuss it, the Bad Cow had never really been just a pub. It had led the pub-restaurant renaissance of bygone years, so it made sense that its more exclusive and upscale branches had waiting lists and all the accompanying pomp.

  Ariel, of course, walked straight in past the line that straggled down the street, smiling at the bouncers and waving and blowing a silly little showbiz air-kiss to the people at the front of the line who – instead of rightly demanding to know just who the fuck she thought she was and that she get to the back of the goddamn line – had recognised her and begun screaming and waving and clamouring for photographs. She anticipated the line getting a whole lot longer and more unruly as word got around, and so she made a point to add a separate set to the tip she swiped to the maître d’.

  “For the security boys,” she said play-sternly, tapping one set, then the other. “For you.”

  “Thank you, miw,” the maître d’ said smoothly, and Ariel spent a confusing moment wondering why the middle-aged man had made a cat-noise before remembering that miw had been in style a year or two back as a gender-nonspecific honorific to join the ranks of sir, ma’am, miss, mx, ind, set, and the multitude of others. Like most of these silly new terms, it didn’t have a sufficiently universal following to really become a convention outside its specialised bubble consisting of the people who came up with it and the people who were trying to sell things to the people who came up with it, and so it fizzled out except in a handful of places where the aforementioned groups gathered. Apparently this was one of them, although she didn’t remember having it inflicted on her during previous visits.