Melda reached up and touched one of the hanging orbs. It was pale yellow and smooth-skinned. "It's not an apple," she said. "I thought it was an apple."
"So did some Renaissance painter," said the Devil, "and the image stuck."
"What will happen if I eat it?" she said.
Chesney answered her, drawing on his extensive store of biblical lore. "Nothing. It's the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and you've already got that." He looked about. "Somewhere around here should be the Tree of Life – eat that and you live forever."
"In retrospect," said the Devil, looking up into the great mass of wood and foliage above them, "this should have been a clue. It's what he has always been interested in, from the very beginning."
"You're saying that Billy Lee Hardacre was right," Chesney said, "that the world is a book God's writing so he can work out the meaning of right and wrong?"
"I don't think there can be any doubt of it. Look around you. We're standing in a previous draft."
"Which brings us," Joshua said, "to the pertinent question: why?"
Lucifer gave him a look of mild exasperation. "Don't play the simpleton. You know why."
The prophet looked down at the paper on the table, the spiky handwriting. "I know why you're here. You wanted to get away somewhere quiet to work on that. Hell can be, well, Hell, when you're trying to concentrate."
"It doesn't exactly run itself," Satan said.
"But that doesn't explain what we're doing here."
A slim finger dismissively indicated Chesney and Melda. "They're here because they came with you. You're the one I summoned."
"I don't come when summoned by the likes of you," said the prophet. "I took it as a request."
"You also needed a quiet place to hide out."
"Nazareth is quiet. I could've gone back to it."
The Devil smiled knowingly. "But you didn't."
Chesney was following the conversation closely. Often, as he'd gone through life, he'd been puzzled by the things people said to each other, especially in situations charged with emotion. But this was different. The two disputants, if this was indeed a dispute, seemed to be bathed in clear light – although, he had to admit, that was probably to be expected in the Garden of Eden – and the young man was able to anticipate correctly what each was about to say. It was a novel experience, and enjoyable, but he was becoming tired of the sparring. He wished they would get down to the business at hand.
Joshua was saying, "I recall there was another time when you were eager to talk to me."
"You came then, too."
"Only to stop your importuning."
The Devil laughed, the way only the Devil could. "Importunate, was I? How kind of you to overlook it."
"And then," said the prophet, "you wanted me to bow down to you, and then you'd give me all the kingdoms of the world." It was Joshua's turn to laugh.
Lucifer shrugged. "I admit," he said, "it was a poorly thought-out proposition."
"It was another kingdom entirely that I was after." Joshua raised his gaze to the firmament that, in this draft, still existed as a solid dome above the Earth.
A gleam of triumph lit the stygian darkness in the Adversary's eyes, and Chesney was not surprised when he said, "And how did that work out for you?"
There was a silence broken only by the incredibly beautiful song of a bird somewhere in the tree above them. Joshua's face took on a reflective cast. "We all make mistakes," he said.
Lucifer bore in on him. "The truth, you used to say, would set you free."
The prophet smiled wryly. "You're a great one for the quoting," he said.
This time, the slim, sharp-nailed finger pointed directly at the bearded man. "Admit it, he played you just as he played me. He called you to be his prophet, he sent you out to preach the end of the world and the coming of the kingdom. Then he decided to go another way, and left you hanging. Literally, and I'm sure, quite painfully."
Joshua sighed. "If it means that much to you, then, yes, I admit it. Things did not turn out as I expected."
"And then he made a new version of you," Lucifer said, "who sits on his right hand, and is somehow him and his own son – and occasionally, a pigeon – while you were eased out of Heaven and deposited by the side of a road no one ever travels."
"True, too," said the prophet. "Yet here I am."
"Exactly," said Lucifer. "And so am I."
"It doesn't feel," said the bearded man, "like a meeting of minds."
"You haven't heard what I have to say to you."
Now it was Joshua's turn to shrug. "I heard it two thousand years ago. I don't expect it has changed. You want to be in charge. You've always wanted to be in charge, because you feel you're entitled to that role."
Satan's expression was a blank, the dark and terribly beautiful face absolutely still. Then the severe lips split into a smile of triumph. "Got you!" he said. He clapped his hands together. "Got you completely!"
Joshua frowned. "What?" he said. "You don't want to be the one who says what all the others do?"
"That," said the Devil, "is the role I was meant to play. "I've decided not to."
The prophet cocked his head to one side, studying the figure before him. "That's the decision that got you into trouble in the first place."
Lucifer wagged a finger. "Oh, no. Rebelling was what I was supposed to do. As I said, he played me no less than he played you."
"So now you're rebelling against your own rebelliousness?"
Chesney had heard enough. "Excuse me," he said, "but I think it's time you two stopped monologuing and got down to the point."
The Devil turned a cold gaze on him, then spoke to Joshua. "Control your monkey," he said.
Chesney did not wait for the bearded man to respond. "Listen," he said, "it's perfectly clear what's going on here." He indicated Lucifer. "You've had to accept the truth that you're just a character in the great book that–"
"Not so great," the Devil said.
"Hush," said Joshua, "let him speak."
"Just a character like Melda and me and everybody else who ever was or ever will be," Chesney said. "Like you, too." He inclined his head toward the bearded man then turned back to Lucifer. "At first, you didn't want to accept it. I remember how, when Billy Lee first told you that's how things were, you refused to believe it. But when you went back to Hell and thought about it, after a while you couldn't deny it anymore."
"I've always been an advocate of facing the facts," Satan said, "however unpleasant."
"Though usually," said Joshua, "you're the one responsible for the unpleasantness."
Chesney stepped back into the conversation. "But that's just his role in the story. He's the bad guy. The difference is, now he knows what he is."
The Devil was regarding the young man with a considering look. "And what happens when a character knows that he's a character, and knows what his role should be?"
Chesney knew the answer. "He either says yes to that. Or he says no." He turned to Joshua. "He's saying no."
The unbearded parts of the prophet's face were skeptical. "He's going to give up doing evil?"
"No," said Chesney. "He likes it too much. But he's going to pay a larger role in the story." He turned to Lucifer. "You already have, haven't you?"
The Devil smiled and said nothing.
Melda said, "Oh, my–" then though better of completing the expression. "You've been behind all of this, haven't you? Billy Lee wanting Chesney to be a prophet, the book he was writing, bringing in Josh here. Even when I won that poker game in Hell. It's all been a plot that you've been developing!"
"And what a plot it has been," said Lucifer. "I believe I am entitled to pride of authorship. Still," – he bowed slightly to Joshua – "I needed your assistance to have convinced a sizeable and growing proportion of humanity that the end of the world is in the offing. And I have set your friend Hardacre on the path to becoming the most influential man on Earth."
"The Antichrist," Ch
esney said.
Satan smiled again, and again said nothing.
"But what good does it do you," Melda said, "to bring on the end of the world? Everything wraps up and you lose."
Another smile, another silence.
"Because it won't end," said Chesney. "God won't let it, because the story doesn't work out that way. He's still got to deal with the problem he set for himself here." He pointed a finger up at the hanging fruit.
Joshua had been following the discussion with a thoughtful face. Now his brow cleared. "You don't want the end of the world," he said to Satan. "You want a new chapter." He looked down at the papers on the table, laughed and shook his head. "He'd never let you. Be as self-aware a character as you want, he's not going to let you write the story."
One last smile from Lucifer, one last silence. Chesney had known for a while the answer to the question Joshua had asked when they'd first arrived in Eden. Now he said, "He doesn't expect to write it, at least not all of it." He looked at the prophet. "He wants to work on it with you. You'd be co-authors."
"You can even have," said Satan, "top billing. How's that for transcending the limits of character?"
Joshua blinked. "Why would I?"
The Devil spread his elegant hands. "You certainly don't have to. We can just let the Reverend Hardacre go on arranging the end of the world."
"And the end of all your plans," Joshua said.
"Not if the young woman is correct. And I think she is. The worst that would happen is that he'll throw aside the current draft and pick up from before the recent sequence of events began."
Chesney said, "Before I accidentally caused Hell to go on strike. You had some headaches then, if I recall."
Lucifer conceded the point with a nod. "The question then becomes: do I come through the transition knowing what I know now?"
"A substantial risk," said the prophet.
"If I wasn't prepared to take risks, I'd still be up in Heaven singing that same endless song through all eternity." Satan smiled yet again, this one the smile of one who sees a win on the next roll of the dice. "You, of course, would be back in Nazareth. Living the same changeless day through all eternity. Or until he finally writes 'The End.'"
Joshua said nothing, folded his arms and looked at his sandaled feet. The bird sang again and a cooling breeze ruffled the leaves of the Tree of Knowledge. After a while, still studying his toes, he said, "A partnership?"
"Yes," said Lucifer.
"No bowing down?"
"You may have not noticed, but a little while ago I bowed to you."
The prophet tapped three fingers on a bicep. "How do you see the story developing?"
The Devil gestured at the table. "I've been making some preliminary notes." He moved his hand again and a second chair appeared, beside the one he had been sitting in. Chesney noted that the two seats were identical and of equal height. He took it as a good sign.
Joshua moved over and sat, picking up the top page. Satan sat beside him.
Chesney said, "What about Hardacre and the end of the world?"
Lucifer looked up. "That's your problem. You started all this."
"Joshua?" the young man said.
The prophet's eyes didn't leave the paper as he said. "You can handle it. I think you know that now. Besides, as my would-be co-author here says, it probably won't actually happen."
The Devil said, "Consider yourself one of his mysterious ways." Then he turned his eyes to the papers, and Chesney was dismissed.
"Come on," said Melda, taking his arm. Xaphan had disappeared and they had the rest of the garden to themselves. "We'll go look at the Tree of Life and figure out what to do." She smiled at him in a way he had come to recognize as having a particular meaning. "I believe I can think of something already."
Letitia Arnstruther was a house divided against itself. One half of her was foursquare behind the man who had changed her life, a man who was a genuine prophet – or at least a precursor – who was regularly in the presence of an angel from on high, and a high-ranking one to boot. The other half was just as adamant that the beardyweirdy that Billy Lee Hardacre had presented to the world as Jesus of Nazareth could not possible be as advertised. Her Lord and Savior was not an olive-skinned, curly-headed, squat little fellow with hands like a plowman's and grime-encrusted toenails.
If Billy Lee's relationship with the man who called himself Joshua bar Yusuf had been a minor facet of her husband's large and consequential life – if Joshua had been, say, some distant relative he saw twice a year – Letitia could have weathered the discomfort. But the alleged prophet was now central to the preacher's career. Billy Lee had hitched his wagon to that particular mule, as Letitia's father used to say, and now he would have to follow the road it was taking.
Ordinarily, the situation would have caused her no serious problem. She was a woman of mature years who was used to dealing with wrong-headed people who refused to exercise the sense God gave them. In any other circumstance, Letitia Arnstruther would have girded up her formidable loins and waded into battle against Billy Lee's error. But she was undone by a simple fact: she had witnessed with her own eyes the oily little man's casting out of not one, but two, full-weight demons from that odious tub-thumper, Hall Bruster.
And it wasn't just the fact that Joshua cast out the demons – it was the manner of the casting out: no ritual, no paraphernalia, no tedious hours of praying and throwing of holy water. He had just said, "Out you go," and out they went. To Letitia's comprehensive knowledge of matters spiritual, only one person had ever had that kind of power: the person Joshua said he was; the person she said he wasn't.
Is it just me, she asked herself, sitting in the mansion's breakfast nook, staring at the congealed egg yolk on her china plate and holding a coffee cup whose contents had gone cold while she pondered her dilemma? Am I just being prideful?
She remembered what had happened to her when her willfully errant son had caused the fuss with Hell that led to all the tempter demons walking off the job for a couple of days. Letitia had lost interest in her life's work: scourging sinners and hypocrites by sending them long letters that detailed the imaginative torments awaiting them in the afterlife. It had become clear that the main source of her letter-writing energy had been her own vanity – the old, original sin of pride. Now she had to wonder whether her refusal to accept Joshua as the returned messiah was born of nothing more than the fact that he did not measure up to Letitia Arnstruther's high expectations.
She wished she had someone to talk it over with. Ideally, that would have been her father, with his analytical lawyer's mind and inborn common sense, but he was long since gone to his reward. It ought to have been the excellent substitute she had found for her old dad, Billy Lee Hardacre. But her husband did not take an objective view of the issue; when she had tried to broach her concerns, he had told her to leave him be – he was authoring the next chapter of the greatest book ever written, and had no time for fripperies.
Had he been anyone else, Billy Lee's aiming of the word "fripperies" at Letitia would have earned him an ear-bending of the first magnitude. But she was still in the enthrallment phase of their romance, when the very thought of hard words reduced her insides to a quivering, jelloid state. It had only happened to her once before, and by the time she got over it, she was pregnant with Chesney and it was too late to alter the course of her life.
She didn't want anything like that to happen again. She wanted her dilemma resolved, and, plainly, she would need someone to help her. But there was no one else in her sharply circumscribed life but the produce of that first infatuation, and she had never found her son to be of any use whatsoever, outside the narrow sphere of arithmetic.
But then, as the coffee in her cup passed from lukewarm to cool, she thought about Chesney as he had lately manifested himself. He was making gains in his profession. He was chalking up some remarkable accomplishments in his secondary career – or hobby, she wasn't sure – as a crimefighter. He had stood up
to Billy Lee, who was no slouch in the forceful personality sweepstakes. And he had, for the first time, managed to achieve a relationship with a woman.
Not that Letitia approved of Melda McCann. On principle, she did not. But neither was she blind to the effect that the young woman, for all her flaws, was having on her son. Chesney's mother had been no less surprised to see the young man work through the thought process that had led him to say no to Billy Lee. It was the first time she had ever seen Chesney do anything other than leap to an immediate conclusion or declare the problem as insoluble.
And now, as she considered the implications, Letitia came to a fresh insight: could it be that Chesney and Melda together added up to a competent, reasonably rounded person? The more she thought about it, the truer it became. She put down the coffee cup and reached for the phone. A moment later, a strange voice spoke in her ear.
Costume Not Included: To Hell and Back, Book 2 Page 26
