Jacob said nothing.
“All right, then. Men, I’m giving you a chance to do penance for trying to help the Prince of Darkness turn Heaven into a radioactive slag heap. Jacob will take you to the portal. Once you’re through, you’re free to do whatever you want. I would really appreciate it, though, if you’d help Jacob here rescue a friend of mine. She went looking for a glass apple a while ago, and I’m afraid she may have run into a bad element.”
The officer nodded. “We’ll do what we can,” said the officer. “Good luck.”
Mercury nodded. “Go get her, Jacob,” he said, doing his best to smile.
Jacob nodded and took off in a loping run.
“Let’s move!” shouted the officer. And the seven SEALs followed Jacob down the concourse.
Mercury waited until they had time to reach the portal, then took a deep breath and took a last look at the timer.
00:10...00:09...00:08...
“Eenie, meenie, miny moe. Pull a wire and let ’er blow.”
He pulled the blue wire.
FORTY-TWO
The experiment was over in a few minutes. The apple rolled back down the tube, landing with a gentle thump in the receptacle. The demon at the console pressed a button, and the receptacle slid out with the apple inside. Christine was simultaneously disappointed and relieved that it looked no different. She didn’t suppose that meant anything, though. Chrotons wouldn’t be visible to the naked eye.
Tiamat plucked the apple from its cradle, looking into it with wonder. “Did it work?” she asked.
Finch examined the reading on the console. “Energy readings are consistent with chroton release,” he said. “So yes, I would say it worked. You hold in your hand the power to control time itself.”
Tiamat regarded the apple. “So, um, how do I...you know, exert mastery over time and space?”
Finch frowned. “Hmm. I’m actually not sure. The ancient writings are a bit vague on that point. Maybe, uh, shake it or something?”
“Shake it?” Tiamat asked coldly. “I exert mastery over time and space by shaking it?”
“Or something,” muttered Finch.
“Like a Polaroid picture,” offered one of the demons.
She tried shaking it. “Nothing,” she said.
“Hold it up to your ear,” suggested Christine.
Tiamat scowled at her and then held it up to her ear. “I hear the ocean.”
“Really?” asked Finch.
“No, you dipshit, not really,” Tiamat snapped. “It’s a glass apple. Why would it sound like the ocean?” She regarded the apple again, holding it in front of her face and frowning as if willing it to reveal its secrets.
“Maybe it would work better if we were aboveground,” said the demon at the control panel.
Tiamat turned to scowl at him, then barked, “Everyone! We’re heading aboveground!”
The group assembled in the elevator, with Christine crammed in the back between two sweaty demons.
Christine couldn’t see how getting aboveground was going to help Tiamat exert mastery over time and space. “Mastery over time and space” was kind of a misnomer if it didn’t work underground. What did mastery over time and space entail, exactly, she wondered? How would you even know if you possessed it? Maybe I have complete mastery over time and space, thought Christine. She closed her eyes, trying to think herself home in Glendale, back before her breakfast nook had become a beachhead in the ultimate war between good and evil, but her concentration was broken by the sulfurous stench emanating from the demons on either side of her. “Yikes,” she muttered. “You guys shower this millennium?”
The demons sniffed self-consciously at themselves.
Ding!
The elevator had reached the surface. Tiamat led the group through the command center and to a grassy clearing just behind it. The battle continued to rage in the sky, on both sides of the dome. The sounds of the jungle at night were occasionally drowned out by automatic-weapon fire somewhere far above. A few dozen demons patrolled the area around the compound to prevent Heavenly agents from intruding on Tiamat’s party, but the angels seemed to have their hands full with the battle in the sky.
Tiamat led them through the dark to the center of the clearing. There was a burst of light as a ring of torches suddenly flared to life around them. They seemed to be in a sort of meeting area, some forty feet in diameter, with torches on bamboo poles spaced about every five feet. Tiamat stood in the center, with her entourage falling into a semicircle in front of her. Tiamat held the apple before them in her palm and cleared her throat.
Fantastic, thought Christine. She’s going to make a speech. Speeches always help. Her mind drifted to First Prophet Jonas Bitters, trying to bring about the End of the World with his ten would-be virgins in Elko, Nevada. People like Tiamat and Jonas Bitters were good with the big-picture stuff, but their plans tended to break down in the execution.
“I, Tiamat, Queen of the Damned, proclaim myself...”
Perplexed muttering arose from several of the demons.
“What?” Tiamat demanded. “What is it, blast you?”
“It’s just...” started one of the demons. “You know, that movie.”
“What movie?”
“Queen of the Damned.”
“There’s a movie called Queen of the Damned?”
The demon nodded. “Terrible movie. I mean, like Catwoman bad.”
“That’s pretty harsh,” countered another demon. “I thought it had a sort of campy charm.”
“Plus, that chick, what’s her name...”
“Aaliyah.”
“Yeah, she died in a plane crash before the movie came out. So it’s rather in bad taste to, you know...”
“Fine!” growled Tiamat. “Now everybody shut up. I, Tiamat—”
At this moment there was a disturbance of some kind at the edge of the clearing in the opposite direction from the compound. Figures could be seen moving in the dim light beyond the torches. As they approached, Christine gasped. It was Jacob, being hauled toward the circle by two demons.
“Look what we found wandering around,” said one of the demons as they thrust Jacob forward, causing him to stumble to his knees in front of Tiamat.
“I should have guessed,” said Tiamat. “I suppose that traitor Mercury is hanging out nearby as well?”
Jacob didn’t answer.
“No matter,” said Tiamat. “Once I have exerted mastery over space and time, no one will be able to stop me. Get him out of my way!”
The demons dragged Jacob next to Christine. He got to his feet uneasily and stood next to her. “Unck,” he said.
“How’d it go with the bomb? Did you stop it?” Christine whispered.
“Sort of,” replied Jacob.
Christine shot him a puzzled look. Before he could clarify, however, a demon smacked him in the back of the head. “Silence!” he hissed.
Tiamat started once again. “I, Tiamat, Queen of the Underworld...”
Christine let out an involuntary snort of laughter, prompting a smack from the demon.
“And what do you find so amusing, dear?” Tiamat demanded, barely controlling her rage.
“It’s just that, you know,” said Christine. “As Queen of the Underworld, I’d have thought you’d have better luck underground.”
“Ha-ha,” sneered Tiamat. “Very droll, Christine. We’ll see who’s laughing when I have complete mastery over time and space! I, Tiamat, Queen of All That I Survey...” She paused a moment to make sure she wasn’t going to be interrupted again.
Jacob leaned over and whispered in Christine’s ear. “When I make my move, run as fast as you can into the jungle. Loop back to the path we took here and keep running.”
“When you make your...” Christine started.
Tiamat repeated, more boldly, “Queen of All That I Survey...hereby proclaim myself the absolute despot over all space and time!”
Shouts of exultation and adulation went up from the d
emonic assembly.
Tiamat held the apple in her palm as if expecting something wondrous to happen. It did: the apple disappeared.
“What the...?” Tiamat blustered. It took a moment for her to realize what had happened. “Shoot him! Shoot Jacob! He has the apple!”
But Jacob was already behind her, disappearing into the darkness.
Ninja powers! thought Christine. While the demons were distracted, she turned and ran into the jungle behind her.
The demons had their rifles trained on Jacob, ready to fire, when something else entirely unexpected happened. The jungle lit up with the blaze of gunfire. Nearly in unison, every one of Tiamat’s minions howled in pain and fell to the ground. Then Tiamat herself was hit several times and she too fell.
As quickly as the barrage started, it ceased, followed by the sound of men scurrying through the jungle. “After him! After Jacob!” barked Tiamat, struggling to get to her feet.
Christine stumbled through the jungle, headed in what she hoped was the direction of the trail. It was so dark under the cover of the foliage that she wasn’t sure she’d even know when she reached it. Then she noticed a light up ahead. A voice called her name softly. It was Jacob.
She stumbled toward the light, ending up nearly falling into Jacob. He was carrying a small flashlight. “This way!” he whispered, leading the way down the path. Christine followed. Behind her she saw more lights.
“Someone’s behind us,” she said.
“Seven SEALs,” said Jacob.
“You’re joking.”
“Nope.”
“Like, Navy SEALs?”
“Yeah. They’re helping us.”
“Thank God,” whispered Christine. She’d have preferred angels, but SEALs would have to do. She wondered how long seven SEALs could hold off a demonic horde. Hopefully long enough for her and Jacob to get to...
“Where are we going?” Christine asked. The portal would have disappeared by now.
“Anywhere but here,” replied Jacob.
That was not the answer Christine was hoping for.
Gunfire erupted behind them again, mingled with incomprehensible shouts and screams. Then, after a moment, silence. That wasn’t good either.
“Come on!” urged Jacob.
Christine knew she was slowing him down. She was exhausted and just couldn’t run as fast as Jacob. “Go on without me,” she panted. “Keep the apple away from Tiamat.”
“Not a chance,” said Jacob. “I’d let her—unck—have mastery over space and time before I let her have you.”
“That’s awfully sweet,” panted Christine. “But it makes no fucking sense.”
They had emerged into the clearing where the portal had been. As expected, it was no longer there.
Christine fell to the ground, spent and defeated. “Gotta rest,” she gasped, holding her side. “Seriously, you keep going...We’ll meet up after...” After what? Jacob could run for only so long. Eventually, the demons would hunt him down. Tiamat would get the apple. Eventually, she would figure out how to use it. And then the Universe as they knew it would be over.
“Not leaving you,” insisted Jacob. “Take a minute to catch your breath, then we’ll keep moving.”
Christine didn’t have the energy to argue. Unfortunately, before she had even caught her breath, half a dozen demons came crashing through the jungle, followed quickly by Tiamat herself, carrying a flashlight, which she pointed at Christine and Jacob. Jacob gripped the apple tightly and held it to his chest.
To Jacob, everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. This was the longest he had ever been off his Tourette meds since he had hit puberty. Between that and the adrenaline shooting through his system, he felt like a hummingbird on crystal meth. Every muscle in his body seemed to want to move in sixteen directions at once.
“Enough of this,” he heard Tiamat bark over the next three hundred years. “Kill them both.”
The demons opened fire.
Jacob knew something was seriously wrong when it seemed like he could see the bullets coming at him. No one was that fast. Bullets from a rifle traveled faster than the speed of sound, which was to say around 768 miles per hour. More than seven times as fast as the fastest fastball on record. So fast that you wouldn’t even hear the gunshot until the bullet had hit you.
It further occurred to Jacob that he couldn’t possibly be reflecting on whether or not he could see bullets coming at him, because as little time as there was for bullet-watching, there was even less for considering whether or not he could be watching bullets. When he realized that this train of thought too was impossible, he began to think something really unusual was happening.
He could see the bullets traveling through the air. He could see himself and Christine cowering helplessly. He could see the demons standing before them, fire bursting from their gun barrels. And he could see Tiamat, a mixture of hatred and glee on her face as she oversaw the execution.
Events were unfolding at an almost incomprehensibly slow rate now, but they were unfolding, the differences from one moment to the next almost negligibly tiny. A bullet crept forward a fraction of a millimeter, a puff of smoke swirled a fraction of a degree, some minute number of Jacob’s neurons fired. Impossible, he thought once again. I can’t be seeing myself think. That makes no sense, unless...
Unless consciousness could somehow exist outside of the material confines of the brain. Clearly, he was observing this situation from somewhere, regarding himself from some external vantage point. Was this a near-death experience? Astral projection? Something even more absurd? And most importantly, could he, in this state, do more than observe?
He willed himself to move out of the path of the bullets, to shove Christine out of the way of danger, but his material self remained paralyzed, glued to the ground. As the rate of change between one moment and the next continued to slow, the unsettling thought occurred to him that perhaps he would be stuck in this moment for eternity. This would be his purgatory, a million billion years waiting for that first bullet to strike. But then he noticed something else: time was no longer slowing. In fact he knew, somehow, that it couldn’t go any slower. No, that wasn’t exactly right. What had happened was that he had reached the smallest possible unit of change between one moment and the next, the point where the entire universe was completely identical between two consecutive moments except for a single, infinitesimal movement of one single particle. And, terrifyingly, Jacob realized that if he concentrated, he’d be able to pinpoint that one particle in the entire universe that was out of place. It was as if his mind spanned all of time and all of space in every direction. He also knew, however—and not knew as an abstract theoretical postulate, but as a viscerally real brute fact—that if he exercised this power, even once, even to ascertain the location of the smallest particle in the remotest part of the universe, he would throw the universe ever so slightly out of whack, and that this violation would spread throughout the universe, backward and forward, through space and time, wreaking untold havoc.
Jacob decided he didn’t want that sort of responsibility.
This was less a conscious choice than a visceral aversion. Despite being completely divorced from his own body, he was overwhelmed with nausea. If this was complete mastery over time and space, he wanted nothing to do with it. As his mind reeled, he was vaguely aware that the moments had begun ticking away again—but this time in the wrong direction. Billows of smoke gathered themselves into compact formations and jumped down gun barrels. Carbon dioxide split into its constituent atoms and reentered Jacob’s bloodstream. Tiamat snarled, “!htob meht lliK.”
The demons disappeared backward into the jungle, followed by Christine and Jacob. Jacob placed the apple in Tiamat’s hand and then broke free from his captors. Jacob and the SEALs disappeared into the portal. Christine and the demons retreated underground, where the chroton experiment was undone. Christine gained and lost the apple again, then disappeared through the portal.
The apple
grew smaller, and the tree shriveled to a seed. Finch dug up the seed. A full moon appeared. Mercury returned from space. Jacob put the apple in the CCD. Finch pulled the apple out.
Workmen filled the CCD with dirt. The dome became a metal frame that disintegrated, leaving only scaffolding. The scaffolding disappeared. The site became desert. The desert became jungle. The jungle became grassland.
Jacob felt himself disappear.
FORTY-THREE
“Cease fire, you morons!” barked Tiamat.
The cacophonous blare of gunfire gradually ceased, leaving only silence and a cloud of smoke.
Tiamat scanned the clearing with the flashlight. But it soon became evident that not only were Christine and Jacob missing, the clearing itself was missing. Well, the clearing was still there in the sense that it still existed as a flat area with no vegetation, but the vegetation around it was gone, making it more of an open field than a clearing. Not only that, but the stars and broken moon were now visible above them—the dome had disappeared. Above them, now clearly visible in the night sky, were hundreds of befuddled angels and demons, who seemed to have come to an implicit agreement to temporarily suspend their combat while they figured out what the hell was going on.
The apple, thought Tiamat. Somehow Jacob had tapped into its power, transporting himself and Christine—along with the rest of Eden II—out of danger. Only the angels and demons had been left behind. There was no telling where the two meddlers were now; the apple may have taken them to the farthest reaches of outer space, back to the Big Bang, or forward to the complete dissolution of the Universe.
“Damn it all!” Tiamat cried, shaking her fists at the heavens. “Why must I be subjected to such torments?”
“Torments?” asked a small voice behind her. “Tiamat, my dear, your torments have not yet begun.”
Tiamat whirled to face the interloper. Her minions aimed their weapons in the direction of the voice.
Before them stood a young girl with dark skin and chestnut hair, almost invisible in the dim light. Despite this, there was no doubt of her identity.
Mercury Rests Page 25
