by Stuart Slade
“But for all that, it’s Hell that we’re really worried about. We’ve had word that there is a resistance movement staring up in Hell, possibly headed by Belial.”
“That wretched Baldrick tasks us.” The President’s voice was tinged with bitterness.
“He’s escaped us twice and all the reports we’ve had, from Heaven and Hell, stress that his hatred for us is surpassed only by that he has for Euryale. I wouldn’t like to be in her hooves if he gets hold of her. The point is, Mister President, we have a massive peacekeeping problem that has no easily-visible end to it.” Warner paused to take breath, “and to make matters worse, we have no real idea what is out there. We’ve only explored a tiny proportion of the land surface of Hell and even less of Heaven. There could be entire civilizations out there we haven’t even spotted yet.
“And that brings us to another problem. We know that there are other bubble-worlds in the new universe we have stumbled into. Some of their occupants have been on Earth in earlier days and either got run off by Yahweh and Satan or decided that we weren’t worth the effort of staying here for. Michael-Lan mentioned the Aesir and the Baals, we also have cause to believe that the Olympian pantheon has some foundation in reality. We know that Heaven and Hell were virtually stagnant but can we be sure that those others are? Might they have developed with the same speed as we have? If so they could be most formidable opponents.”
“If they are opponents.” Secretary Clinton made the point uncharacteristically tentatively.
“That’s right Hillary. They may well be benign; the stories about them certainly suggest they might be but how can we be sure. And if there is a basis of truth behind them, there might also be behind other pantheons. We wouldn’t, for example, like to run into the Aztec pantheon unprepared would we?”
There was a general shaking of heads at that. The President sighed. “One point six billion it is then. Hillary, what’s the feeling at Yamantau on this.”
“Much the same as Defense has outlined Sir. Too many responsibilities, too many potential and actual enemies, too many unknowns. All the other fourteen members are agreed, our present force levels have to be maintained, probably for at least a decade.”
The President’s air of general depression deepened. “Does the United Nations have much to say about that?”
Clinton smiles sadly at him. “Have you been there recently Sir? I wouldn’t be surprised if there are tumbleweeds blowing around the main assembly room. The U.N. just doesn’t count for much any more, not the main body of it anyway. Yamantau has taken its functions over almost completely. That’s not surprising though. It’s a much better war headquarters after all. Fifteen members can actually get things done. We have less to consider there as well. If a country wants to bring up an issue, it has to get one of the fifteen to present it for them. If they can’t convince one country of the virtues of their case, they shouldn’t be bothering people with it.
“Having said all that, the U.N. special agencies are healthy. UNESCO, World Bank, World Health Organization are all prospering. So much so that a couple of them are talking of changing their names to make the ‘world’ bit plural. The UNHCR is coordinating the rescue of people from the Hell Pit. But, for all that, as a policy-deciding organization, the U.N. has been sidelined. After all, in the final analysis, Yamantau has a massive army to back up its decisions. I have no doubt that Yamantau will change in the future but here and now, it’s the best approach to a world government we’ve got.”
“Damn.” The President’s word seemed strangely archaic, as if it belonged to a different era. It did, of course, that was all too true. Whole classes of expletives had become obsolete over the last two years and few had grown up to replace them. Not yet, anyway. “How are we going to pay for all this?”
“It’s much worse than just the amount by which we are overspending.” Timothy Geithner sounded almost amused by the depth of gloom in his own voice. “The ban on deceased First-Life people leaving their assets to themselves to fund their Second Life failed to get past the Senate. In fact, they voted it down 94 – 5 with one abstention. We should have anticipated that Mister President.”
This time, Geithner’s voice held disapproval and there was no trace of amusement in it. In his opinion, the President had committed the worst political sin of all; he had put both his personal credibility and the stature of his office into fighting a battle he wasn’t quite certain he would win. As a result, he had turned what would otherwise been a minor administrative matter, or at least something that could be spun as one, into a major defeat for his presidency. Geithner suspected that the resulting political blow was mortal.
“But it was the right thing to do. And the assets the dead are taking with them are bleeding resources from our economy.”
“That doesn’t matter Mister President. Really it doesn’t. What does matter is that opinions on the legislation were split down the middle by age. The older people were, the more they wanted freedom to take some or all of their First-Life assets with them. The younger people were, the more they saw those assets as their inheritance. Virtually the entire administration are in the former group. They saw this legislation as an attack on them. Frankly, Mister President, the Senate throwing this legislation out was probably a good thing. If they hadn’t, I suspect the Supreme Court would have tossed it out. That would have been even more embarrassing.
“That leaves us with the problem of course. My Department is working on a proposal for a death tax, one that should stand up to constitutional scrutiny provided it stops short of total confiscation. Death taxes are an accepted part of the portfolio so applying them should be no problem. If we make the tax applicable only to the monies that a person takes into their Second Life, I think it might be a compromise people will accept. The First Lifers will still get an inheritance and the Second Lifers still get their seed money.”
“What about a flow of resources from Heaven and Hell?”
“Heaven is pretty much a bust Sir. Thomas Vilsack sounded regretful. “They really haven’t got much that we want other than agricultural produce and most of the production there is used to keep The Eternal City fed. A city that size is a massive liability and resources sink. If we take any significant level of their present production, we’ll start a famine.”
“I though angels and daemons didn’t need to eat.”
“They don’t need to eat for regular sustenance meaning they won’t starve the way we do if deprived of food. As far as we can make out, they do need to eat if their energy consumption goes beyond a specific level. Then, the nourishment they get from food makes up the difference.” Doctor Surlethe frowned, “but there’s still so much we don’t understand about this.”
“As for Hell, we are getting resources from there.” Vilsack sounded pleased about that. “Oil particularly; Hell is absurdly oil-rich. The bottleneck is refining the stuff.”
“Let me guess.” The President lifted a finger in the traditional gesture of sudden enlightenment. “Gaius Julius Caesar is building an oil refinery.”
A laugh ran around the room. “Yes Sir, he is. In fact, he was the first person to start building one. He’s in partnership with Sunoco on that. If it’s any consolation, things aren’t going entirely smoothly there. The idea was to build some parts in New Rome and bring others in from Earth. Only, there’s problems matching the parts up. Hell-built and Earth-built don’t go well together. Anyway, we are getting crude from there and a lot of valuable minerals as well.”
“There’s one good thing Sir.” Kathleen Sebelius spoke up, grimly determined to be cheerful. “Health care costs are showing a marked decline. It’s the big ticket items that are showing the largest fall. Now people know what lies after death, they aren’t fighting it so hard. Rather than use massively expensive treatment to delay their death by a few days or weeks, they’re now letting go. Why live for a few months hooked up to tubes and meters and suffering every day of that time when one can go to Hell – or even Heaven – and have
a healthy reborn body?”
“What about the costs of treating refugees from the Hell-Pit.”
“Not high Sir. Most of the work there is done by volunteers and the dead ones don’t need to eat of course. So, its lower than one might think. However, there is a long-term problem here in that some of the refugees are in really bad shape. Hell wasn’t a very kind place Sir.”
“Do we know why people go to Heaven rather than Hell?” The President was curious.
“No.” Doctor Surlethe rather wished the subject hadn’t come up. “We have only a very thin trickle of new bodies turning up in Heaven, one or two a day at most. We can identify no pattern behind their selection. It seems to be completely random. At the moment, the Army unit we have stationed at the Heavenly Gates is looking after them. Actually, they’re shipping them to the reception center at Hell and processing them like all the others when they wake up. We’re watching the ones that came back through Heaven of course; but at the moment we’re showing nothing of any significance. Which leaves us with the problem of who lives in Heaven and who stays in Hell.”
“Sort of related to that, I’ve placed a moratorium on the use of the death penalty.” Eric Holder had a degree of defiance in his voice. “I can’t see that it performs any useful function at this time. Life imprisonment without possibility of parole remains a viable punishment. Keeping a person locked up for the rest of their life is a penalty all right. But killing them just gives another escape route. They get away with their offence cold and just get to start their Second Life a little earlier.”
“We could always arrange to meet them when they get reborn and whack them again.”
Raymond LaHood made that suggestion tentatively yet it caused Holder to bristle and respond aggressively. “That would be an unconstitutional exercise of double jeopardy as well as being morally reprehensible. I will not allow it.”
“Moderate your tone Eric.” The President spoke calmly. “Raymond has a valid point even if you disagree with it. Do we carry over offenses committed in the First Life to people in their Second Lives? And Eric, the Cabinet has collective responsibility. It allows or disallows things, not you. When we reach a decision on that issue, you can either support that decision or resign. I trust I make myself clear?”
Holder nodded, resentfully and reluctantly. The President looked at his and nodded slightly before continuing. “That issue also gives rise to a related one. What happens when one of the great monsters of history is found? Pol Pot died quite recently I believe; he may well turn up quite soon. And what about Hitler? Or Idi Amin?”
“We’re been really lucky.” General Schatten, the new Director of Celestial Intelligence spoke firmly. “So far, the issue hasn’t come up. Most of the people we’ve recovered have been common people, very few of any distinction have re-appeared. Partly that may be because the rings we are emptying fastest, the first ring for example where they starved in a desolate wasteland or the second where they were either blown about by great winds or pushed giant rocks around, were the easiest to get people out of. The rings get progressively harder to explore and recover as we go down and I suspect that the more distinguished of our ancestors are down there. We do have evidence that a certain degree of private vengeance is already taking place though. When Belial’s fortress fell, one of his human assistants was an SS guard from Majdanak concentration camp. An Israeli officer, most of whose family died in that camp, took him away and is believed to have killed him. Again. Both we and the Israelis are trying to find him but no luck so far.”
“A nightmare lies that way.” Hillary Clinton spoke reflectively, her voice penetrating the silence that had dominated the room. “We go after people, our enemies come after ours, we could end up fighting a war that will kill us all. Haven’t enough people died in this war already?”
That caused the silence to deepen. The death toll from the Salvation War was indeed enough. Millions of humans were dead, almost all civilians. The death toll in the daemons and angels was much, much greater. Most of their dead had been warriors, victims of the massive disparity in sheer, raw firepower that had dominated the war. From a military point of view, it was true that the humans had shattered their enemies without breaking into a sweat over it. Economically and socially, the cost had been so much higher. Even now, with the super-hurricanes and super-tornados a thing of the past, it would take decades for the south east cost to recover. The dust storms and the tornados had made the great plains a liability, one that would be put right eventually of course but the short term consequences were still there. The United States was actually a net food importer this year and would be next as well. Another economic fact to be considered. And that brought the meeting full circle.
The President walked over to the great windows that dominated the room and stared out at the world beyond. There had been so much he had wanted to do, so much that he had felt needed to be done and none of it was going to happen. He was quite sure of that. In his heart, he guessed that he was a one-term President and his time in office was already more than half done. It would be for others to take up the dreams he had nurtured and turn them into reality. It would be years before that could happen, the briefing he had just received made that painfully clear.
Ideals and dreams could be gods as well. They were a part of a pantheon just as much as the more tangible ‘gods’ had been. This had been a war where the human war machine had ruthlessly killed all the gods that had stood in its path. The Pantheon of ideals and dreams had proved no more resilient than the rest.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Chapter Thirty Two
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Four
Chapter Thirty Five
Chapter Thirty Six
Chapter Thirty Seven
Chapter Thirty Eight
Chapter Thirty Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty One
Chapter Forty Two
Chapter Forty Three
Chapter Forty Four
Chapter Forty Five
Chapter Forty Six
Chapter Forty Seven
Chapter Forty Eight
Chapter Forty Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty One
Chapter Fifty Two
Chapter Fifty Three
Chapter Fifty Four
Chapter Fifty Five
Chapter Fifty Six
Chapter Fifty Seven
Chapter Fifty Eight
Chapter Fifty Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty One
Chapter Sixty Two
Chapter Sixty Three
Chapter Sixty Four
Chapter Sixty Five
Chapter Sixty Six
Chapter Sixty Seven
Chapter Sixty Eight
Chapter Sixty Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy One
Chapter Seventy Two
Chapter Seventy Three
Chapter Seventy Four
&
nbsp; Chapter Seventy Five
Chapter Seventy Six
Chapter Seventy Seven
Chapter Seventy Eight
Chapter Seventy Nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty One
Chapter Eighty Two
Chapter Eighty Three
Chapter Eighty Four
Epilogue
