by Tad Williams
“Don’t!” I said, pointing with the gun.
“No worries.” Sam held up his blazing hand and drew a line with his index finger down the air in front of the mirror. A Zipper appeared, or something that would have been a Zipper had it been more sharply defined; a cloud of radiance, a miniature nebula appearing three feet off the ground in the middle of Crazy Town. “Kephas gave this gauntlet to me,” he explained. “It’s how I could take a living mortal like Edward Walker Outside, through a Zipper, and manage a lot of other stuff. Duplicates the powers of the higher angels, I guess. I don’t know what it is or how it works—I just call it the God Glove.” Sam gestured again, and the misty light dispersed, leaving a soft-focus hole in the center of the mirror. I could see objects and colors there, like one of those little scenes inside a sugary Easter egg. “I’ll step back,” he said. “I swear I won’t try anything. Just look.”
I trusted him, but of course I also didn’t trust him, so as I leaned forward I kept the dart gun pointing in Sam’s general direction. It wasn’t like looking at an image. What I saw had depth, another entire world beyond the scuffed, rusted mirror. I saw oak and willow trees and a stream and, when I bent a little closer, a ramshackle Victorian house perched on a hill in the distance, at the end of a long dirt road. I fancied I could even see a couple of tiny figures standing on the porch, perhaps looking back at me. I wondered if one of them was Edward Lynes Walker. “Is that it?” I said, unexpectedly touched by the modesty of the rustic scene. “That’s your great alternative to Heaven and Hell? The Little House on the Prairie?”
“That’s the beginning,” Sam said. “But it’ll get bigger. It will get more real. There’s only a few hundred souls there now but it will grow, even without me. Kephas recruited lots of other angels. We may even know some of them.”
I filed that thought away for later. “And you really think this is going to be better than what we’ve already got?”
“If we can make it that way, yes.” He sounded sincere—almost stupidly sincere. “You know…you could be there too, Bobby. I know you’ve thought about the same things I have. I know you get tired of all the secrets and the other nasty shit we’ve had to do.”
“Yeah, thanks.” I straightened up. “But I’m not quite ready to drink that Kool-Aid. Not yet.” I was bone-weary, and Clarence would be regaining consciousness soon. “Go on. Get out of here, Sam.”
He stared. “Wait—you mean…?”
“Yes, I mean. Get the hell out of here. Go join your crazy friends and build your little afterlife commune. Better you than me. I’ll tell them you got away.”
“They’ll never believe you.”
“That I screwed up again? They’ll fall over themselves in their hurry to believe that.” I winced a little at the thought of what General Karael was going to make of my newest dazzling failure. “Go on! I’m not going to beg you.”
But instead of stepping through the misty portal, he turned and came toward me. For a moment I was terrified he was going to hug me. I’m not afraid of being hugged, mind you—not too much—but the idea of Sam doing the hugging was like the idea of your parents making love: it might actually happen occasionally, but you didn’t want to be a witness. Luckily he stopped a little out of embracing range. “Hold on,” he said. “I have to give you something before you go. Now, don’t get your undies in a bunch, B, but I have to reach into your pocket.”
“My pocket?” I began, but he had already slipped the glowing, God-Gloved hand into my jacket pocket: I could feel it against me like a hot stone. A moment later he straightened up again and transferred whatever he’d found to his other hand and held it out.
For several seconds I couldn’t do anything but stare. It was an astonishing thing, as amazing in its own way as anything else he had shown me. It was a golden feather—the feather, obviously—but it was just as clearly not of this world. It glowed and sparkled, not like a window display of jewelry, but with an inner light that made it seem more real, more present than anything else around, most definitely including me, Sam, and the Door Into Thirdwaysville.
“What…?” Okay, it wasn’t my sharpest moment. “How did that get there?”
“It’s been there all along—sort of.” He laughed. “You remember that night with the lady who drove into the bay? Clarence’s first night? When you got into a fight with Howlingfell?”
“Some fight,” I said. “I stomped him like a grape.”
“Well, when Grasswax was pulling Howlingfell off you, I saw him slip something into your pocket. I couldn’t imagine what a prosecutor would be planting on you, and I knew Howlingfell worked for Eligor, the other party in—” he indicated the rustic view, “—my little project. I thought it might be some kind of frame-up or something. I only realized when I touched it what it was, so I decided to hide it. With this.” He lifted the God Glove and displayed it like he was modeling a Lady Bulova on a shopping channel. “I made a little piece of Outside right there in your pocket while I was dusting you off, and I put the feather in it. It’s been there all along, but nobody could reach it because it also wasn’t there, if you know what I mean. Sorry if it got you into trouble, but it was a spur of the moment improvisation.”
Which must have been why my weird friend Foxy could smell something that wasn’t there. “So Grasswax was actually telling the truth,” I said. “At least as he knew it. That’s one for the books, huh?” I reached out and carefully took the smoldering golden thing from Sam. It lay in my palm with no weight at all, but it did not waver or move even as I swayed my hand from side to side. It was hard to look at anything else. “And do you know who this belongs to? Who made the deal with Eligor?”
“Kephas, as far as I know—whoever or whatever that is.” He gestured for me to take it. “You can do whatever you want with it. Give it to our bosses, if it will keep you out of trouble.”
“But if Eligor kept it to blackmail this Kephas, our bosses could probably trace it.”
Sam shrugged. “It doesn’t matter—our thing is too big now. It’s already rolling. Me, Kephas, we could lose dozens more and the idea would still go on.”
I thought about it. “Put it back in my pocket. With the God-Glove. I don’t want to have to hide it somewhere ordinary.”
“You sure?” He lifted it in his glowing hand. I felt the warmth through my coat as he put it back.
“Okay. Now go. Get out of here.”
He turned toward the funhouse mirror, then paused, looking at me over his shoulder. I couldn’t read his expression. “Stay in touch, Bobby.”
“How?” I’d almost said “Why?” but although I still didn’t quite know how I felt about him and what he’d done, I knew I’d miss him.
“We’ll figure something out.” And then he stepped into the mirror. The hole closed behind him, so I didn’t get a chance to watch him go, but I’m guessing he walked up that long road like a man finally going home.
I started back toward the Kingsport Plunge. As I patted my pocket to make sure the feather was undetectable, I discovered something else nestled there already—Howlingfell’s phone. It had got very wet, as I had too, but like me it was still functioning, so I rang the last number Howlingfell had called. Someone picked up but didn’t speak. Still, I was pretty sure I knew who was listening on the other end.
“Guess what,” I said. “That whole ‘Mission Accomplished’ thing? A bit premature, as it turned out.” I looked up at the sky, which was beginning to cloud over, shrouding the moon. I was tired of being wet, so I walked a little faster. “But what I really wanted to tell you was that I do have the feather, and if you fuck with me or anyone I care about—anyone I care about, do you understand?—I’m going to use it as proof when I tell your Hell-buddies about the deals you’ve been making with Heaven. Is that clear? Oh, and tell the Countess that I’ll see her again. That’s a promise.”
I didn’t wait to see if Eligor would respond, I just threw the phone as far as I could, then listened until I heard it hit and shatter so
mewhere in the shadows. I knew that what I’d said was true: I was going to find Caz. I was going to find her even if I had to go to Hell and yank her out of Eligor’s arms to do it. I was going to free her so that someday she could stand in front of me and at least tell me honestly how much of what we’d had was real. I wasn’t going to rest until I knew the answer.
Clarence was sitting up when I got back to the pool, dabbing at his mouth with his sleeve. He’d obviously thrown up, but otherwise he didn’t look too bad. “What happened?”
“To Sam? He got away when you went down, I’m afraid.”
“No, what happened to me? What hit me?”
“The ghallu must have had a reflex twitch. Got you with its tail. Knocked you silly.”
Clarence squinted at the monster’s corpse, which was already beginning to turn into sludge, little rivers of gray and black trickling away into the cracks between the tiles. “That thing doesn’t have a tail.”
“Its leg, then. Doesn’t matter. Come on, let’s see if your ride is still waiting. I’m too tired to walk all the way back home.”
He asked for his dart gun, but I didn’t give it to him. He made a face at me like an angry third-grader. “You’d better start trusting me, Bobby. We’re on the same side.”
“Trust you?” I laughed. “Kid, you tried to arrest my best friend! And you hacked my phone.”
“It was nothing personal,” he protested. “I was doing my job.” He gave me a significant look. “I don’t have to tell them anything except what I learned about Sam and the Third Way. Everything else is your own business. Including your pal, the Countess.”
It was friendly blackmail, but it was still blackmail. “Where did you come from, anyway, kid?” I asked him. “Where did they find a piece of work like you?”
“Took me right out of Records because they knew you and Sam’d be too suspicious of anyone with a background more like yours.”
“A competent background, you mean? Yeah, well, they definitely fooled me, I’ll admit it. But I’ll decide for myself whether we’re on the same side. You’re still on probation with me.”
Clarence was outraged. “Probation? You’re the one who should have to prove yourself to me! You let Sam get away.”
I tucked his needle gun into my pocket. “Yeah, kid, but you’re the one who got your skinny ass kicked by something I’d already killed.”
thirty-nine
the dirty streets of heaven
ONE MORE nasty surprise awaited me. As Clarence and I made our way (in my case, my staggering, exhausted, stinking way) off the footbridge on the mainland side a car waited for us in the Garcia Park lot. But it wasn’t a Lincoln Continental or any other kind of old lady car, it was the ugliest, pimped-out red gangsta mobile imaginable.
I’d seen it before.
Garcia Windhover was wearing what I imagine was his idea of a stealth-mission suit—all black, including a do rag that made him look like L’il Wayne’s severely anemic nephew. The stealth aspect was undercut a bit by the immense words “FUCK ALLA Y’ALL!” written across the front of his baggy XXXL t-shirt in screaming white letters.
“Mr. D!” He spread his arms exactly like he was welcoming me back from a tour of combat duty. Although in some ways it was true—in fact I felt like I’d been dropped out of an airplane without a parachute—G-Man was not exactly the person I would have hoped to find waiting for me when I got back on home soil. I ducked his enthusiastic bro-hug like a weary matador.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I turned to Clarence, who at least had the good grace to look sheepish. “Why is he here? How do you two even know each other?”
“I told you, I knew where you were, where you went,” Clarence said. “Because I didn’t know what you were doing—I didn’t know whether you were in cahoots with Sam. And so…well, I was kind of checking up after you.”
“Then he told me how he was your partner,” said Garcia with all the relish of a teenager confirming an urban legend he had heard from someone who had heard it from the guy it happened to. “So here I am, dude!”
I glared at Clarence, who shrugged and couldn’t quite meet my eye.
“I needed a ride,” he admitted. “I could tell something big was going down when you guys left the hotel, then I heard what had happened to the hotel on the television news.”
“You called him for a ride?” I said quietly as Garcia opened all four car doors, even though there were only three of us. “Shit, Clarence, you’re the worst undercover agent ever.”
“It takes about half an hour to get a cab up to Brittan Heights, Bobby. I was in a hurry, and he told me that he’d worked for you before.”
“Totally,” said Garcia, brushing some loose popcorn kernels out of the back seat. “I can be your wheel man.”
“No fucking way,” I said. “We are not ‘partners.’ I am not partners with you, Windhover, or you, Special Agent Treacherous Bastard.” I glared at Clarence.
Garcia looked intrigued. “Can I have a code name too, Mr. D?”
“Yes. ‘Idiot.’ And you may not call me ‘Mr. D.,’ either.”
“Then what should I call you?”
“Five minutes ago I would have said, ‘an ambulance.’” I dragged my weary bones into the back seat, then stretched out, dripping all over Garcia’s leather upholstery. My head was pressed uncomfortably against the door, but I didn’t care. “Now I just want to take three or four showers and sleep until August. So let’s go.”
“We could be your ‘associates,’” Garcia said cheerfully. “That sounds more bad-ass anyway.”
I groaned and closed my eyes and let the dizzy darkness climb back over me. I dimly felt the thump of Garcia backing over a concrete parking stop, the hydraulics in his stupid car setting the whole thing wobbling like a waterbed, then I surrendered to oblivion.
I finally made it to The Compasses about eleven the next evening, limping and bruised and burned but finally clean and at least partially rested. I waved to Kool Filter who was puffing furiously and talking into his Bluetooth, then I trudged up the stairs.
The place looked pretty good considering that the end facing the street had been reduced to rubble only a short time earlier. The floor had been swept, the worst damage hauled away or covered with plastic tarps, and Chico had a makeshift bar going, a big slab of one-and-a-quarter-inch plywood on trestles with boxes of booze stacked behind it. He had also salvaged enough chairs and tables from the wreckage that, if you squinted, it didn’t look all that different from an ordinary weekday night. Monica was sitting with Sweetheart, but she trotted over when she saw me and gave me a hug. The mere fact of her being kind and female was enough to make me mist up, but I didn’t want to mist up, and I certainly didn’t want to confuse Monica with all my weird emotions, so after just a few seconds I broke free. She let go only reluctantly.
“When we heard about the Ralston we thought you were dead or worse!” she said. “I was so worried about you, Bobby. Where’s Sam? Is he okay?”
Obviously the real news had not got out yet—Clarence had actually kept his word. I wondered how hard my bosses were going to try to hush everything up. “He’s okay, yeah. But I think he may be taking a long leave of absence.”
While Monica and Sweetheart pondered this, I asked Chico for one of his pricier iced vodkas and some orange juice—in two separate glasses; discovering how out of shape I was had made me consider adopting a healthier lifestyle. Drinking the orange juice separately seemed like it might fit the bill.
For about an hour I chatted amiably (and in large part untruthfully) with the Whole Sick Choir in ones and twos, but Monica and the rest could see I mostly wanted to be on my own in a room full of people, and so they didn’t stay long at my table. We’ve all been there, all had something go so bad that it clung to your mind for weeks. That’s one of the best things about The Compasses—everybody gets it. Besides, I knew I’d have to go to Mecca the next morning and make my official report, and since I didn’t know exactly what I wa
s going to say, I didn’t want to box myself in too much now—a lot of people were going to be looking over my version of what went down at the Ralston and afterward. And of course, my bosses must already have been wondering if I’d been contaminated by my friendship with Sam—which was, of course, quite true. I’d let him go, hadn’t I?
While everybody else talked and laughed, I sat and rehearsed a few possibilities of how I could play it with my bosses. I was feeling flimsy and weightless, but not in an entirely bad way. Like a feather, maybe. Like the invisible feather I’d been carrying with me without even knowing it, and which I still carried. It was strange to think I was sitting here surrounded by the old familiar while I had something in my pocket that could blow everything familiar sky high. I had to hope that Heaven really was Heaven, or at least a good copy, because otherwise I knew way too much about too many things to be left walking around.
Thoughts like these kept swirling round and round until at last I gave up thinking for the evening. You can overthink until you get paralyzed. I’d decided I’d come up with some useful half-truth for the bosses, and then I’d hang onto those half-truths no matter what anyone said. At least I’d find out once and for all if anyone can lie to Heaven.
It wasn’t that different from what I’d been doing for years, anyway, I told myself—just a more straightforward approach to deception. Another day at the office, really. The streets of Heaven might be paved with bullshit and paperwork, but I’d been walking those dirty streets for a good long time now. I felt pretty sure I knew what to say and what not to say. After that, it would all be in His hands.
Eventually Young Elvis started a stupid discussion about the hotel fire, yammering on and on about how he was certain it was one of the demon-lords trying to off a rival (which was partly true, but his list of suspects had no relationship to the real events). I stopped listening when Walter Sanders suggested that Young Elvis had blown up the building himself because they wouldn’t let him into the conference.
