Mercury Rests

by Robert Kroese

  “Michelle,” Tiamat spat. “I hope my demonic hordes haven’t been giving you too much trouble.”

  “Lower your weapons,” said Michelle, in a tone you might use to instruct your cell phone to call your mother. There was no question of disobedience in that voice. The demons lowered their weapons.

  “What are you doing, fools?” Tiamat growled. “You answer to me, not this presumptuous whelp!” But as she spoke she became aware of a light growing above her—not the cold light of the moon but a panoply of yellow-orange sparks rapidly increasing in brilliance. Streaks of orange fire traced their way to the ground all around her, becoming a fence of flaming swords around the perimeter of the clearing. Her paltry force was surrounded by a platoon of cherubim.

  “Raise your weapons!” Tiamat squealed. “Fire on them! We can punch through them and escape!”

  The demons dropped their rifles on the ground and raised their hands.

  “Bind them,” said Michelle with a wave of her hand. Her men bound the hands and feet of everyone in Tiamat’s group, including Horace Finch, despite his impassioned claims that he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Michelle turned to confer with Malchediel, her personal attaché. “Tell Cravutius to prepare cells for Tiamat and her entourage.”

  Malchediel shook his head. “Can’t get through,” he said. “Something has disrupted interplanar communications. Never seen anything like it. I can’t get through to anybody, even on the priority channels.”

  Michelle’s brow furrowed. “No word on Lucifer, then?”

  “Nothing since the distress call. We’ve been trying to get the planeport to open a portal so we can send reinforcements, but we haven’t been able to get through.”

  Michelle nodded. “All right. Keep trying.” But Michelle had a feeling that she wouldn’t be returning to Heaven any time soon.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Mercury found himself standing in what seemed to be the foyer of a Victorian-style house. Beneath his feet was a dark cherry hardwood floor. Matching wainscoting ran three feet up the walls, which were covered with bluish-gray wallpaper decorated with fleurs-de-lis. A tasteful chandelier hung from the cathedral ceiling. In front of Mercury was a large wooden door. It appeared to be the only door in the room. Mercury took a deep breath and turned the handle.

  The door opened to a square room, perhaps forty feet on a side. There was a single door in the center of the wall to his left. Straight ahead was a great stone fireplace, in which a fire was contentedly crackling. Lining every square inch of the walls of the room were great cherrywood bookshelves, each of them filled to capacity with hardbound books of various sizes and colors. The plaster ceiling was slightly domed, with the peak perhaps twenty feet above the floor. A chandelier like the one in the foyer hung from the center. It was unlit, but what appeared to be natural light streamed into the room from a gap about two feet tall between the top of the shelves and the bottom of the ceiling. Two oversized burgundy leather armchairs faced the fireplace. To Mercury’s left was an ornate sliding ladder that could be used to retrieve books from the upper shelves. Standing on the ladder was a small woman with closely cropped reddish-gold hair. She wore a dark-green blouse with black slacks and comfortable black shoes. She looked to be maybe sixty years old.

  “Well,” said Mercury, by way of introducing himself, “I suppose I pulled the wrong wire.”

  The woman turned toward him and smiled. “Depends,” she said. “Did you mean to blow up the planeport?”

  “Not exactly,” replied Mercury.

  “In that case,” said the woman, “yes, you pulled the wrong wire.”

  So, thought Mercury, the planeport was gone, blown to smithereens by Wormwood. Too bad. Better than Heaven being blown to smithereens, that much was certain, but destroying the planeport would certainly disrupt things a bit. The planeport had been around since before Mercury came into being. He never even knew who built it, or how it got there, or, for that matter, where “there” was. It was just a given fact of existence. He had assumed that, just as with a million other things, nobody really knew the whole story. It was difficult to imagine the Universe without it. All interplanar transport and communications went through the planeport. The planes were now completely cut off from each other, at least until another planeport could be constructed—if that was even possible. And even if it was possible, probably no one in Heaven remembered how the first one had been built. It could be thousands of years before contact between planes was reestablished. By then, who knew what might become of Earth?

  “Just as well,” said the woman. “All this interplanar interference was getting out of hand.”

  Mercury found he couldn’t argue with her. “Where am I?” he asked.

  “Why, the Library, of course,” said the woman, seemingly puzzled at having to answer the question.

  “And you are?”

  “The Librarian, clearly.”

  “Of course. And these books?”

  “Stories,” said the Librarian. “All the great stories, and plenty of not-so-great ones. I was just putting yours on the shelf.” She held out a thick blue tome.

  “How is it?” Mercury asked.

  She smiled. “Better than some, worse than others.”

  “How does it end? Are Christine and Jacob OK?”

  She nodded. “They’re fine.”

  “So they stopped Tiamat? And Lucifer? We stopped him too, right?”

  “Here,” said the Librarian, stepping down to the floor with the book cradled in her arm. She opened the book near the end and showed the page to Mercury.

  “Ha!” Mercury exclaimed. “I wish I had been there to see the look on his face.”

  “I like the image of Lucifer running down the streets of Heaven with Eddie’s manuscript under his arm.”

  Mercury chuckled. “Yeah, the devil running, like...you know.”

  “Hmm?” asked the Librarian.

  “Sorry,” said Mercury. “I thought I had a Van Halen joke, but I couldn’t quite pull it together.”

  “Ah. Do you want to try again? I’ll wait.”

  “Right now? Nah. The moment has passed. So...am I stuck here forever?”

  “Only if you wish to be,” said the Librarian. “Every angel’s existence has to come to an end eventually. But if you feel your story’s not over yet, you’re free to leave at any time.”

  “And until then?”

  “Have a seat. Pick a book. Rest for a while.”

  Mercury smiled, looking into the embers of the fire. “I could use a bit of a rest, I think.”

  He took a seat in front of the fire and promptly fell asleep.

  FORTY-FIVE

  “Any word from Rezon?” asked President Travis Babcock, hunched over his desk, regarding Dirk Lubbers. It had been three days since the SEAL team had gone through the portal. Rezon was supposed to have returned to the White House the next day to confirm that the mission had been completed.

  Lubbers shook his head. “Nothing.”

  When the SEALs hadn’t returned after several hours, Lubbers had tried to send a few of his men in to investigate, but they ended up congregating anticlimactically in Christine’s breakfast nook, marveling at the culinary carnage left behind by the two demons. Her counter was littered with scorched and dented SpaghettiOs cans and other detritus. The portal seemed to have been shut down.

  Babcock frowned. “I thought you said you had something for me.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Lubbers. “Mr. President, I got a call from the Washington Post this morning. A reporter is asking some very specific questions about suitcase nukes. She used the name Wormwood.”

  “So we’ve got a leak, is that it? You didn’t confirm anything, did you?”

  “No, sir. But I’m not sure she needs confirmation. She claimed to have technical specifications as well as information on the Winnemucca enrichment site. Sir, I think someone gave her a complete dossier on Wormwood. Someone with access to a lot of sensitive informati
on.”

  “You think it was Rezon?” asked the president.

  “Could be,” said Lubbers. “Although I’m not sure what his motive would be. I suspect it was someone else. The BIO called Ederatz. The one we intercepted the report from in Los Angeles.”

  “What would make you think it was him?”

  “He showed up at the portal site, at Christine Temetri’s condo. It’s in the official report. We think he may have done something to interfere with our mission.”

  “Like what?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” said Lubbers apologetically. “We thought he was some sort of BIO intelligence analyst. He never seemed to actually do anything, so we weren’t real concerned about him. But he did apparently have access to a lot of high-level information, and his presence at the portal site makes me suspicious.”

  “Why didn’t you detain him?” asked Babcock.

  “We tried,” said Lubbers. “We had him handcuffed in the back of a truck with two agents watching him. We found the agents asleep and handcuffed together. Ederatz was gone.”

  “Hmm,” said the president, pressing his fingertips together. “All right, no problem. We’ve got protocols in place to shut the whole Wormwood project down. By tomorrow morning, the Winnemucca site will be an empty hole in the ground. They won’t be able to prove a thing.”

  Lubbers gritted his teeth. Babcock wasn’t getting it.

  “Sir, I’m not sure you understand the gravity of the situation,” he continued. “The Post claimed to have the technical specifications, including documentation on the enrichment process for ultra-grade plutonium. They can go to MIT and have their experts verify that the specs are legit. At that point, we’ve got two options: we can admit that we’ve been running a secret program to create a suitcase nuke without Congressional approval, or we can claim that some rogue terrorist organization is running a secret program to create a suitcase nuke. Nobody is going to believe the latter, and even if they did, it would mean that we were asleep at the switch. You’d be the president who let terrorists get a nuke. And if you admit to the existence of the program, all the details will come out. People are going to want to know where the bomb is. And that’s going to be hard to explain. In short, sir, you’re fucked. Pardon my language.”

  “I’m fucked?” asked Travis, anger creeping into his voice. “I’m fucked? What happened to ‘we,’ Lubbers? What happened to the triumvirate?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I submitted my letter of resignation to Director Hansen this morning. As of this Monday, I’m retired from the FBI.”

  “Retired? You son of a bitch. We’re in this together!”

  “No, sir, Mr. President. I’ve done my part. I’m out.”

  “Oh, no you’re not. I’ll...”

  “You’ll what, sir? Have me strung up for following your orders? Admit that you put me in charge of a secret operation to deliver a portable nuclear device to another dimension via an interdimensional portal located in Glendale? No, sir. I think your interests are best served by letting me retire quietly. Good luck, sir.” And he meant it, even though he knew Babcock’s presidency was doomed. The fallout from Wormwood couldn’t be contained.

  Lubbers spun on his heel and marched out of the Oval Office, leaving Travis Babcock alone with his thoughts. Travis’s thoughts went like this:

  Step right up and visit ring number one.

  The show’s just begun. Meet the president.

  I am here to see that the laws get done.

  The ringmaster of the government.

  On with the show!

  FORTY-SIX

  Christine and Jacob stood blinking as the midday sun shone through a dozen gaping holes in the vast dome above them.

  “What happened?” Christine whispered. “Where did everyone go?”

  “Not where,” said Jacob. “When. I think I just sent Eden II back in time.”

  Christine took a moment to process this information. “How far back?”

  “I think about seven thousand years.”

  “Seven...” started Christine. She found herself getting light-headed and sank into a crouch to avoid fainting. After a moment, she asked, “With the apple?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, um, can you send us forward again?”

  “You mean to when we get shot?”

  “Oh,” Christine replied, thinking for a moment. “Maybe a few hours before that.”

  Jacob shrugged, looking at the apple. “I’m not sure. I don’t know how I did it the first time. It just sort of happened.”

  He spent the next twenty minutes staring intently at the apple, trying to tap into its mysterious power. It refused to do anything but quietly refract the sunlight into his palm. “Maybe I’m not in the right frame of mind. Here, you try.”

  She got to her feet and took the apple. “What do I do?”

  “Does it look like I have the answer to that question?”

  Christine shrugged and tried to focus on the apple. Home, she thought. Take us home.

  “Maybe click your heels together,” said Jacob, as if reading her mind.

  “Shut up,” said Christine. She tried shaking it and then holding it to her ear. Nothing. “Maybe it’s empty,” she said.

  “Empty?”

  “Didn’t you say it was like a battery? Maybe you used up all the whatchamajiggers...”

  “Chrotons.”

  “...when you sent us back in time. Maybe it just needs to be recharged.”

  “Hmm,” said Jacob. “Follow me.”

  He led her back inside the compound to the elevator that led to the CCD control room. He pressed the button, and the doors obediently opened. He wasn’t terribly surprised that the electricity still worked—the outside of the dome was entirely covered in solar panels, providing plenty of power for the compound and outbuildings. The CCD would require massive amounts of power in short bursts; he suspected that there was some other power source for it underground—probably a coal plant, or maybe even a fission reactor. The question was whether the underground infrastructure had come along for the ride.

  “Wait,” said Jacob as Christine made to step into the elevator. He leaned in and pressed the button that would take the elevator to the CCD and then stepped back, letting the door close. There was a whooshing sound as the elevator shot downward and then a sickening sound like metal grinding against metal. This was followed by a loud thunk! and then a noise like a hippopotamus sneezing half a dozen times, followed by a long, slow grinding noise, a series of ticking sounds, a long hiss, and then silence.

  “I think you broke the elevator,” said Christine.

  “Unck,” said Jacob. “The bottom floor is missing. Looks like I didn’t bring the CCD with us.”

  “Everything but the kitchen sink,” said Christine. “So no recharging the apple.”

  Jacob shook his head.

  They stood for a moment, trying to adjust to the idea of spending the rest of their lives in 5000 BC. Fortunately, although the CCD had remained behind, Jacob had brought with them everything they would need to survive for many years. Eden II had been billed as a completely self-contained ecosystem, and even if it was no longer technically self-contained (by virtue of the dozens of holes punched in it), there was still plenty of food and more-than-adequate shelter. They performed a cursory inventory of the premises and found that there was enough frozen, canned, and dried food for them to live on for six years.

  It didn’t take them long to adjust. After a week they could no longer remember why they wanted to return to their own time. The very idea was insane. They had everything they needed: food, water, clothing, shelter, and a vast library of books and movies. They went for walks through the jungle in the cool of the morning and then retired to the bungalow they had claimed as their residence. The dome protected them from the punishing afternoon sun but let in enough natural light to keep the jungle from seeming oppressive. Jacob had started a garden behind the bungalow, planting seeds that he had found in the horticulture
lab next to the main compound. Christine had decided, now that she finally had time, she would sit down and do some writing. She thought about writing her account of everything that had happened with her and Jacob and Mercury and the Apocalypse, but quickly decided she didn’t want to think about the end of the world anymore. It was time for something new.

  “What are you writing?” Jacob asked, wiping the sweat from his brow as he came in from the garden. Gardening seemed to soothe him; his tics had gotten progressively less noticeable over the past several days.

  “Nothing,” said Christine. “Just something for fun.”

  “What, like a journal?”

  Christine shook her head. “No, just a story that’s been rattling around in my head. It’s about a little boy who finds a magic staff that lets him cast spells. I’m mostly making it up as I go along. Like I said, just for fun.”

  “I bet it will be great,” said Jacob. “I want to read it when you’re done.”

  “OK,” said Christine, rolling her eyes. “As soon as your nectarines are ready.”

  “You’ve got a deal,” said Jacob. He had planted the nectarine sapling that morning.

  Their conversation was interrupted by the sound of someone knocking at the door to the bungalow.

  Christine and Jacob stared at each other, unspeaking. They hadn’t seen another person for a week. Jacob opened the door.

  “Hello!” said a figure standing in their doorway. The voice seemed familiar, but with the sunlight behind him, Christine couldn’t make out who it was. “May I come in?”

  Jacob nodded slowly, stepping back from the door. The figure stepped inside.

  “Nisroc!” exclaimed Christine. “I thought you were still guarding the portal in my condo.”

  “Ah,” replied Nisroc, seemingly puzzled. “No.”

  “Don’t tell me the planeport blew up,” said Christine.

  “All right,” said Nisroc.

  “Well, did it?”