Mercury Rests

by Robert Kroese

  If I had any decency, I’d tell him his daughter is dead, thought Eddie. But I don’t. Anyway, screw Cain. He’s a murderer and a manipulative jerk. Let him find out on his own.

  “Eddie!”

  “Go away! I don’t want to talk to you!”

  “I’m not leaving, Eddie.”

  “I’ll call hotel security.”

  “Just let me in, Eddie. I need to talk to you. I’ve got some information for you.”

  “Information about what?”

  “About the story you’re writing.”

  “I’m not writing any story. I’m done with that. Go away!”

  “So you don’t want to know how it ends?”

  “No!”

  “OK. But I’m leaving something for you. In case you get curious.” He heard Cain slip something under the door. “Good-bye, Eddie,” said Cain.

  Eddie said nothing. He sat in the dark for another hour before his curiosity got the better of him. He turned on a lamp and walked to the door. On the carpet just inside the door lay a red plastic item the size and shape of a penknife. Eddie picked it up. It was a USB drive.

  He walked to his laptop, which was resting on the small hotel desk, and plugged the drive into one of the slots in the back. The laptop had been a gift from Finch Publishing, to facilitate his writing of the final Charlie Nyx book. Eddie normally wrote all of his reports longhand, but Wanda Kwan had insisted. They had even scanned his manuscript and the boxes and boxes of background information Cain had given him, because he had refused to come to Los Angeles without them. Over the past few days, he had learned how to type passably and had become enamored of the little magic box.

  The USB drive held hundreds of pages of information: everything from high-resolution scans of the Sumerian manuscript Cain had been tasked to rewrite to the six completed Charlie Nyx books to ramblings on the “secret history of Los Angeles.” Cain had evidently stolen his own daughter’s notes. Classy.

  The Sumerian manuscript was a chaotic mishmash of unintelligible symbols and pictograms, and Cody’s notes weren’t much better. Her notes were composed mostly of bizarre and probably imagined correlations between disparate people and events that resembled a demented game of word association. For example:

  Six of seven Mercury astronauts attended the opening of Space Mountain in Anaheim. Exception: Gus Grissom—died in mysterious launchpad fire.

  Gus Grissom was a MASON: Also possible relative of Karl Grissom, antichrist???

  Who is Mercury???

  Poor Cody, running around trying to make sense of conspiracies far above her pay grade. Eddie couldn’t imagine there was any real connection between the Mercury astronauts, the Masons, and the Antichrist. And yet, somehow this chaotic method of paranoia-riddled word association had allowed her to piece together much of the convoluted scheming of Tiamat and Lucifer. Her obsession with the Los Angeles streetcar conspiracy led her to believe that diabolical entities had manipulated the development of the Los Angeles suburbs to enable the construction of a vast system of underground tunnels—a ridiculous conclusion that was nevertheless completely true. And that wasn’t all. Cody believed that she had discovered the true purpose of the tunnels.

  According to her notes, the tunnels were part of something called a Chrono-Collider Device, which had been built by an occult organization known as the Order of the Pillars of Babylon. The OPB—spearheaded by billionaire Horace Finch—had intended to use the CCD to unearth the most profound mysteries of the cosmos, thereby asserting their dominance over time and space. The OPB had been founded thousands of years ago in the wake of Tiamat’s own failed attempts to exert control over the time-space continuum. It was unclear from Cody’s notes what Tiamat’s current relationship to the OPB was. Was she now its leader?

  Besides the Sumerian scrawlings and Cody’s ramblings, there was one other file on the drive, modestly titled “Supplemental Information.” Eddie opened it and was stunned at what he found. The document was an encyclopedic accounting of virtually everything that had happened over the past three days, from Eddie’s encounter with Wanda Kwan in Cork to the implosion of the moon. It was hundreds of pages long. Eddie spent the next six hours poring through the document, barely taking time to blink.

  “Unbelievable,” he gasped as he read of the existence of a second Chrono-Collider Device underneath Eden II, Horace Finch’s vanity project in Kenya. That lunatic Finch had nearly destroyed the world with his scheme to use the CCD to trap mysterious subatomic particles called chrotons. The receptacle he was planning to use to store the chrotons was an anti-bomb—a millennia-old glass apple that Christine Temetri had found hidden in a cave. The anti-bomb would have killed everyone on Earth if he had succeeded. Fortunately, Jacob Slater had sabotaged the CCD and stolen the apple, and Mercury flew it to the moon before it went off.

  Eddie got to the end of the document and cursed under his breath. “Damn it,” he muttered. “Where’s the ending? What happened to Mercury after the implosion?” There was nothing worse than a cliff-hanger.

  But then Eddie realized the reason for the cliff-hanger: the ending hadn’t happened yet. As Cain said, the levels of reality were converging on each other. Cain had told Eddie that it was Eddie’s job to write the story, but as the ending approached, events were occurring almost as fast as they could be recorded. And when Eddie got to the very end, that would mean the end in real life as well. The Sumerian myth, the fictional story of Charlie Nyx, and the story of reality itself would all collapse into a sort of chronological and narrative singularity.

  It wasn’t completely clear to him whether his writing the story would cause the world to end, or if the impending end of the world was causing him to write it. Cain/Culain had laughed at the very notion of causality. To him, time was just a series of random events occurring in succession. And yet, he had insisted that Eddie had to write the story; that it was his destiny. Was his insistence due to a belief that Eddie’s book would bring about the end of the world? Or was Cain, too, simply playing a part in a drama that had already been written? In that case, Cain’s actions became a self-fulfilling prophecy: he was telling Eddie to write the story because it was Cain’s destiny to tell Eddie to write the story.

  But what if Eddie didn’t write the story? What if he didn’t feel like being part of the end of everything? After all, it was his life. Didn’t he have any say in the matter? What right did that jerk Cain have to tell him what to do?

  But it wasn’t just Cain. He could feel that there was more to this than the ravings of a man driven mad by the inexorable succession of days. Even Cody had known it. It comes down to you, Eddie! You’re the author of the seventh book! Eddie had gotten her killed. She died because she had tried to tell him something. Something about Wormwood.

  Eddie did a search for “Wormwood” on the USB drive. It popped up in three different places: in a note in Cain’s document about the Sumerian manuscript, in the sixth Charlie Nyx book, and in Cody’s notes. In the Sumerian myth, Wormwood was an evil artifact that threatened to destroy the world, and in the Charlie Nyx books Wormood was an evil sorcerer, the nemesis of the hero, Charlie Nyx. But it was the reference in Cody’s notes that made Eddie’s blood run cold. He realized now how it was all going to come together, how the Universe itself was going to end.

  “My God,” Eddie gasped, regarding a crude drawing of a rectangular object in Cody’s notes. “The bastards finally did it.”

  EIGHT

  “I have to admit,” said Jacob Slater, staring out the window of the 747 at the blighted moon. “It’s rather Apocalyptic.”

  “No, it isn’t,” replied Christine Temetri irritably.

  “I’m sorry?” said Jacob. “A third of the moon falling out of the sky? Isn’t that in Revelations?”

  Christine sighed. “First of all, there’s no book in the Bible called Revelations. It’s Revelation. Singular. The Revelation of John of Patmos. Second, I happen to know the people running the Apocalypse, and this wasn’t part of the plan.�
�

  Jacob frowned uncertainly. “Did you say you know the people running the Apocalypse?”

  “People, angels, whatever,” said Christine wearily. “The little girl at Finch’s place, Michelle? She’s one of them. And that jerk Uzziel used to be, before he fell in with Tiamat. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to try to get some sleep.” She closed her eyes and turned away from Jacob, who went back to staring out the window.

  Jacob found his thoughts drifting to the scene in It’s a Wonderful Life where George Bailey promises to throw a lasso around the moon and bring it down to Earth for his sweetheart. That plan was stymied by the stock market crash of October 1929—another Black Monday. Things worked out OK in the end for George, but it was hard to imagine a happy ending to this story. There would be no recovery from this Black Monday: the world had lost something that it was never going to get back.

  Jacob still didn’t fully comprehend what had happened in Kenya. He had prevented Horace Finch from annihilating the universe, and that Mercury fellow had somehow flown to the moon, causing a Texas-sized chunk of it to disappear into another dimension. There had been a general consensus that this was preferable to a Texas-sized chunk of Earth disappearing.

  He hadn’t been able to get a firm answer to the question of where the anti-bomb had come from, and he couldn’t keep straight the cast of strange characters who had showed up at Finch’s complex the night of his fateful experiment. Christine referred to them as angels, and he supposed that was as good a name as any, but he resisted the name on principle. It was clear that they had access to some very advanced technology, and he allowed the possibility that they were extraterrestrial—or even extradimensional—visitors. But to call them “angels” was to adopt a metaphor that was rife with potential for misunderstanding. He preferred to think of them as Beings of Indeterminate Origin.

  Adding to his consternation was a vague, not fully accessible memory that before being abducted by Horace Finch, he had himself been abducted by a BIO with the unlikely name of Eddie. He remembered being carried around a parking lot on Eddie’s shoulders, and he thought he recalled an intimidating blonde woman firing a gun at someone. He assumed this partially recalled episode had something to do with Horace Finch and the Chrono-Collider Device, but he couldn’t imagine what.

  Jacob closed the window shade and tried to get the flight attendant’s attention. His Coke was empty, and he was feeling very thirsty all of a sudden. The attendants on this flight, he noted, were somewhat less attentive than those on his flight to Kenya. Not only that, but he and Christine had to change planes twice, whereas his flight on Finch’s plane had been nonstop. He was starting to think that being kidnapped by an insane billionaire wasn’t such a bad way to travel.

  Jacob felt a little guilty that they had left Alistair Breem, his old physics mentor, in Kenya, but there really wasn’t anything else to do. Having been abducted by Finch years earlier, he didn’t have a valid passport or any means of identification, and contacting the British embassy in Nairobi hadn’t been as helpful as they had hoped. Ally had been declared legally dead five years prior and was having trouble getting anyone in London to accept that he was alive and well and stranded in Africa. There wasn’t anything Jacob or Christine could do, and Jacob needed to get to Washington, DC, as quickly as possible if he was going to have any chance of keeping his job. Christine had agreed to fly with Jacob as far as Washington, after which she would catch another plane to Los Angeles.

  Eventually Jacob fell asleep as well and was awakened by the pilot announcing their descent into Dulles International Airport. He nudged Christine, who awoke with a start, shouting, “I told you, it’s not the Apocalypse!” Jacob smiled apologetically at the passengers around them while Christine rubbed her eyes.

  The plane landed without incident, and Christine and Jacob exited onto the concourse. Christine half expected Perpetiel the cherub to come buzzing down the corridor toward them. What she saw was almost as surprising.

  A few yards from the gate stood a tall, bulky man with closely cropped black hair, wearing a dark suit. In his hands was a neatly printed sign that read:

  SLATER/TEMETRI J

  Christine pulled on Jacob’s sleeve and cocked her head in the man’s direction.

  “Huh,” said Jacob. “Somebody’s expecting us.”

  “You think?” replied Christine irritably. “Who is it?”

  “How would I know?” asked Jacob defensively.

  “Aren’t you in the FBI?”

  “I’m a forensic blast investigator, Christine. Do you want me to defuse him?”

  Christine rolled her eyes and strode toward the man. “That’s us,” she said.

  “I know,” replied the man.

  “Then what’s with the sign?”

  “The sign was to get you over here.”

  “Why didn’t you just walk up and introduce yourself?”

  “Some people find me intimidating,” the man explained. “The sign is meant to empower you. You see your name and you think, ‘Hey, that’s me. Somebody is here waiting for me.’ ”

  “Frankly, it’s a little intimidating seeing a stranger holding a sign with your name on it,” said Christine.

  The man frowned and cocked his head to look at the sign. “Even with the smiley face?”

  “Who are you?” asked Christine.

  “My name,” said the man, “is Special Agent Roger Daltrey.”

  “Roger Daltrey?” asked Christine. “Like the singer?”

  “The who?” asked Jacob.

  Agent Daltrey glared at Jacob. “Never gets old,” he said evenly. “Come with me, please. Both of you.”

  “Hang on,” said Christine. “I don’t work for the FBI. I don’t have to come with you if I don’t want to.”

  “Well,” said Agent Daltrey. “I can arrest you if I need to, but I’d rather not. It cheapens the smiley face, in my opinion.”

  “Fine,” replied Christine curtly. “Where are you taking us?”

  “Best not to say right now,” said Agent Daltrey. “Follow me.” He spun on his heel and made for the airport exit. Christine had to admire the way he assumed that she and Jacob would follow; clearly Agent Daltrey was accustomed to people doing what he told them to do. It was only when they were outside, being herded into a waiting SUV, that she realized that they had been tailed by half a dozen plainclothes agents. No wonder Daltrey hadn’t been worried about her and Jacob bolting.

  An identical SUV in front of them peeled out, and half a second later the vehicle carrying Christine and Jacob did as well. She caught a glimpse of another following close behind. Two agents who had been posing as a married couple sat in the rear seat behind Jacob and Christine, and Agent Daltrey sat in the front passenger’s seat. A tense-jawed black man, also wearing a dark suit, was driving.

  The SUV glided through the nighttime traffic like some giant manta ray skimming the freeway for plankton. The vehicle’s speedometer needle was hovering just below 95. Wherever we’re going, Christine thought, we’re in a hurry.

  Soon they were passing the Lincoln Memorial on their right, and the unmistakable obelisk of the Washington Monument was visible ahead of them. The monument made Christine think of the Egyptians and the pyramids. She wondered if there was any truth to the myth that Washington, DC, had been laid out according to some sort of mystical Masonic plan. A few weeks ago, she wouldn’t have believed it, but knowing what she did now about the engineering of Los Angeles by the secret society known as the Order of the Pillars of Babylon, she didn’t know what to believe anymore. The Universe was turning out to be a pretty strange place.

  The SUV turned sharply into an unmarked parking garage and was waved in by a uniformed attendant. They continued underground for a few minutes and then came to an abrupt halt, the other two vehicles sliding in alongside them. Doors flew open, and Christine and Jacob were escorted through a steel door into a dimly lit tunnel. After some ten minutes of brisk walking, the procession reached another door. Age
nt Daltrey held his thumb to a scanner, and a green light went on. Daltrey beckoned for them to go through, and he followed, leaving the bulk of the procession behind. At first Christine thought it strange that all these agents would come along only to be left here in the hallway, presumably just short of their destination, but then she realized that their job was finished: the whole point of this convoy was to ensure the successful delivery of her and Jacob. Somebody very important had decided that they were either very important or in a lot of danger—or possibly both.

  Behind the door was a hallway lined with nondescript offices—the sort of place where government interns and other denizens clutching to the lowest rungs of the DC bureaucracy toiled late into the night drinking Starbucks coffee and pissing out press releases and legislation. After a few more minutes, with Agent Daltrey barking an occasional “Left here!” or “Keep right!” they found themselves in a somewhat better neighborhood. The offices were larger and featured floor-to-ceiling windows that were covered by shuttered blinds rather than actual walls. Clearly they were still underground, but this was the sort of underground where important people went to be protected from bombs and other unpleasant aboveground happenings, not the sort of underground where you got stuffed because there wasn’t enough room for you on the surface. Daltrey led them to a door at the end of a hallway and knocked. A muffled reply came from within and he opened the door.

  They shuffled inside and Daltrey directed them to sit in two black leather chairs across from a large desk. Behind the desk sat a stocky gray-haired man with thick, stubby fingers. A stern look gripped his face. He appeared to be in his early sixties. A plaque on his desk read:

  D.A.D. Dirk Lubbers

  “Director Lubbers,” Jacob said nervously. “What are you...that is, if I may ask...”