The Demons of Constantinople

by Eric Flint

  So she watched with curiosity as the bishop handed the cardinal the scroll wrapped in purple ribbon sealed with red wax and stamped with the Patriarch’s signet.

  Cardinal de Monteruc took it gravely, but Lakshmi could almost feel the twinkle in his eyes.

  After the bishop left, like a saint escaping Purgatory, de Monteruc opened it. “Well, we are invited to the Hagia Sophia for Sunday services.”

  “I think I’m busy that day,” Lakshmi said. “Washing my hair, perhaps.”

  “Not a good idea.” De Monteruc’s expression had gone grim as he continued to read. “It seems Patriarch Kokkinos has determined that he can no longer abide the heresy and paganism that has invaded Constantinople since the arrival of the French delegation. And those who are afraid to attend will prove not only the weakness of their faith, but their heresy and will be condemned from the pulpit.”

  “And if we go?” asked Amelia Grady.

  De Monteruc smiled. “Why, we will be lectured to. Don’t you think so, Monsignor Savona?”

  “Possibly more than that,” Monsignor Savona said. “Raphico?”

  “Remember, Cardinal de Monteruc, they enchanted the icon of Archangel Michael. That, to an extent, makes Michael, at least for now, more a servant of the church than of God. I was given to God, so I am not controlled by the beliefs of any particular sect of Christianity. It gives me a . . .” Raphico coughed. “. . . a less sectarian view of matters. And Michael never was the most inclusive of the angels.”

  “And what does that mean in terms of what happens when we get there?” Wilber’s family were Church of England, but not especially devout.

  “My guess is that at some point in the proceedings, Michael will put in an appearance, either animating the icon or possibly, ah, leaving it to manifest in the church.”

  “Can he do that?” Wilber asked. “I mean, it’s not like Merlin can step out of the computer for a beer. At least, not in the natural world.”

  “It depends on how he was enchanted into the icon,” Raphico pointed out. “Also, Michael is not a minor advisor. He’s God’s fist. There are severe differences in what he can do. Speaking of which, if he can manifest, then we probably want to make a few modifications to my calling.”

  After that things got technical for a while. The next day, Wilber, Gabriel Delaflote, and Merlin spent modifying Raphico’s calling and installing a new app on God’s phone. There were already apps to aid in prayer, healing, and shielding. Now a movie projector appeared on the screen, and below that the words “For Use In Emergencies Only.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Upon seeing the label, Paul Grady, now nine years old, asked, “Why emergencies only?”

  “Because it’s a circuit hog. Worse than the healing app. It provides enough graphic detail so that Raphico can appear almost solid. And that takes a lot of processing power. To get it to work at all, we had to network it with the other phones.”

  Location: Hagia Sophia, Constantinople

  Time 9:00 AM, June 30, 1373

  Roger stood near the front of the pewless chamber, still muttering about having to leave the Sword of Themis at home. It wasn’t that he felt he would need to draw it, but that the exclusion of it struck him as an insult to Themis.

  Themis, however, didn’t see it that way. At least, not entirely that way. The Hagia Sophia was the temple of another god and entering it without that god’s consent was rude. Like entering a neighbor’s house without permission. Even if the other god was being a jerk by not inviting her. The way she put it was: “It’s no worse than Hera used to do.”

  The rest of the French delegation filed in, and they all stood near the front, near the royal family. Then—finally—the patriarch entered and began a long-winded diatribe against heresy and paganism. Which pointedly included the bishop of Rome as a heretic, and suggested that all the twenty-firsters were heretics. Then he turned to the altar, where the icon of Saint Michael had been placed and called on Michael to scourge the unbelievers from the church.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  As the icon began to glow, Wilber looked over at Monsignor Savona. “Looks like Raphico is on, Padre.”

  Monsignor Savona went to one knee and set the phone on the floor of the nave. He reached down and, for the first time ever, set his finger on the projector.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Raphico networked with the other phones, all occupied by lesser demons, but often decent sorts in spite of that. And those demons stepped away from their phones in a way that could never be described to a human. They were still there, but in the background, using as little of the processing power of their phones as they possibly could. Instead, all that processing power of nine phones combined into one super phone, and using software borrowed from Wilber’s laptop, they created a virtual Raphico. Using that virtual Raphico as his body, Raphico stepped out of the phone of God for the first time since he had been called to it. He took form in the nave, a foot to either side of the phone, standing human high for the moment.

  As Michael came out of the icon to take form within the church, Raphico was both impressed and concerned. Raphico was an archangel as Michael was, but there was variation in all things.

  Michael might well be the most powerful archangel after Lucifer. Who, in turn, was second in power only to the One. At least within those parts of the netherworld ruled by the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition.

  And Raphico doubted that he could project a solid form without the aid of the computational power of the phones. It wasn’t that angels were weaker than the demon Beslizoswian, whom Pucorl had destroyed. They were more constrained, both by the will of the One and by a basic concern for the damage they would potentially do their homes and the natural world.

  A horrible thought occurred to Raphico. Yes, he was constrained by those things. Could it be that Michael no longer was? Michael, unleashed, would have power on a par with Themis or Ares.

  “My brother,” Raphico sang, “What are you doing?”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  In the nave of the Hagia Sophia every tongue was stilled by the power and beauty of that voice.

  This was no earthly language. It was a choir of angels singing hosannas to God in every note.

  It was as far from the demonic sounds produced by a being like Beslizoswian as was possible. But Roger, Wilber, and the others who had attended the meeting of the gods of Olympus realized that it was akin to their voices. Different, and yet the same.

  Then Michael answered, and his voice, too, was a choir of angels. But his choir was filled with righteous wrath.

  No one in the church except Wilber understood what he said, any more than they had understood Raphico’s gentle reproach. But Wilber did understand.

  “I/We will force them, all of them, demon and mortal, back to their duty and proper place. They will all become part of the One as is their destiny, and they will become part of Him soon, for I/We will chop them up and feed them to the One. I will use this sect as my teeth to grind the mortals to meal to feed the glorious One. None will be spared. Every atom of the mortal world will be just sacrifice to the One, and from that sacrifice a new One, greater even than in the beginning, will be born.”

  The most horrible thing about the diatribe to Wilber was that even as he understood it, the beauty of that angelic voice—that angel who was a choir of angels, hundreds and thousands of angels all combined into the harmony that was the Archangel Michael—that voice was still beautiful, even as it raved.

  “That is not the One’s will,” Raphico answered, and as he answered he grew to the same size as Michael.

  Both were angels. Both had glowing white wings. Raphico wore glowing robes like a senator from Rome. Michael wore glowing golden armor.

  The audience couldn’t understand what was said. They could barely understand that the sun rose in the east through the glory of that music.

  But even enraptured as they were, they knew that the two angels were opposed. One raised against the other, and yet neither of the
m could be wrong, not and sound like that.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Raphico felt it as Michael reached into heaven and ripped life from angels to power his stance. And as Michael lifted the flaming sword that was made of angels, Raphico quietly dropped a finger to the screen of his phone and touched the shield icon.

  Nothing happened.

  Nothing visible to mortal eyes, or even angel eyes.

  But when Michael swung the sword, the sword that should have cut Raphico in half . . . bounced.

  There was a force field surrounding Raphico. It was made of magical energy, but it was informed by an understanding of natural world physics. An understanding that Michael lacked, for all his angelic wisdom and power.

  Everyone saw the look of shocked amazement on Archangel Michael’s face. Raphico began to sing in earnest, and he wasn’t singing to Michael or to the people standing in the nave. He was singing to the One, asking for the permission and the power to do what must be done.

  Then Raphico stretched out his arms and placed one hand on each of Michael’s wings. And he pushed, even as Michael continued to flail at him with the sword. Raphico pushed and Michael shrank, becoming brighter and brighter until no mortal eye could look on him.

  Slowly, using every bit of his strength and every bit of control that the computers in the phones provided, Raphico forced Michael back into the icon.

  But Raphico didn’t come away unscathed. Even with the computer, even with the aid of the One, Raphico was cut in a hundred places and bleeding light into the Hagia Sophia. He shrank to not much larger than a tall man and folded his tattered wings.

  He turned to the patriarch and said, “You will release my brother back to our Father’s service and never again call one of my brothers to any item owned by mortal man.”

  Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw Cardinal de Monteruc grinning. He turned, and the rage he felt over the damage done his brother almost flash-fried the cardinal on the spot. “And you will stop telling my Father what to do. You will all stop telling the One what to do.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  He was gone.

  Raphico was back in the phone.

  Michael was back in the icon.

  And everyone in the church was in shock.

  Both the Orthodox and the Roman Church had been admonished, but neither knew what that admonishment meant.

  Slowly—and oh so carefully—Monsignor Savona knelt and picked up the phone.

  The phone that he carried, but that he assured God in prayer belonged only to God. He put it in his pocket, then bowed to the icon of the Archangel Michael.

  He stood and left the church.

  Chapter 18—Constantinople SkunkWorks

  Location: Warehouse Next to Docks, Constantinople

  Time: 6:45 PM, July 15, 1373

  Aurelia looked at the boat, then over at Jennifer Fairbanks. The submarine was another combination of twenty-firster knowledge, fourteenth-century craftsmanship, and magic. The framework of the hull was made of what Jennifer called jolly boats, one flipped over and attached to the railing of the other. That framework was wrapped in layer upon layer of resin-impregnated cloth, then hatches were cut into it, leaving room for the passenger and for the kraken’s “organs.” The thing looked much like a giant squid with the eyes on the sides and a mouth at the stern, not to mention the ten tentacles. (Technically, eight arms and two tentacles.)

  After opening the hatch, Aurelia slid down into the single seat. There were two painted panels that would act as screens, one for each eye. They were painted in a pattern of tiny dots of phosphorus paint, and the magic would let them show what the water-filled glass globes which were the submarine’s eyes would see. There was also a speaker and microphone so that she could talk to the kraken or listen to the sounds of the sea. After consulting with Jennifer and Joe Kraken, they added external microphones and speakers so that the submarine would have sonar as well as sight. That too would appear on the screens.

  The kraken’s body would mostly fill with water as it went deeper, so that the pressure would equalize. Since about half the volume would fill with water as they went down, the max depth was going to be about ninety feet. Otherwise, Aurelia’s feet were going to get wet.

  They also had clockwork bombs to attach to the bottom of hulls. And they were going to need them, because this morning they received a phone call. The Genoese fleet was entering the Dardanelles.

  “You know that your mother isn’t going to let you pilot that thing,” Jennifer said.

  “I know that she thinks I won’t be piloting it,” Aurelia said. “But as it happens, I am the owner of record of this particular ship. Papa didn’t want it showing up on the company records, lest the church be upset by it.”

  In the weeks since the Hagia Sophia incident, the Orthodox church had gone from silent to belligerent about the French delegation. Archangel Michael had not been heard from since the confrontation, but no one knew if the patriarch had sent him home to God as Raphico demanded.

  Well, no one outside the twenty-firsters, maybe. Aurelia looked over at Jennifer Fairbanks and wondered.

  Wilber looked up from his computer and said, “We’re about ready.”

  Aurelia walked over and looked at the screen on Wilber’s laptop. It showed a feed from the oceans of the netherworld and was looking down into the depth where a squid was swimming under Joe Kraken.

  The bodies of netherworld kraken were informed both by the minds of men and those of the squid of the natural world. While being perhaps the brightest of cephalopods and certainly the brightest of all the invertebrate animals on Earth—and most vertebrates, for that matter—giant squid weren’t all that bright in comparison to humans. But that was where the beliefs of humans and the nature of the netherworld came into play. They were portrayed as smart monsters, as often as not. Size in the netherworld generally went with intelligence. So kraken were about as bright as a puck, but it was a different kind of intelligence. And kraken romance was likewise a mix of natural world squid and humans’ somewhat self-centered view of the universe. So while natural world squid had more in common with spawning salmon than human romance, kraken danced in light shows beneath the waves and wrote love poems in patterns of light across their mantles.

  Joe was in the netherworld ocean that was analogous to the Marmara Sea and he was trying to convince a female kraken to give them enough of her name so that she could be called to the sub. Jane Kraken was being coy, but apparently the dance between them was almost done and Jane was almost persuaded.

  Jane flashed a complex pattern of colors and Wilber nodded. “That should be enough.” It wouldn’t be if Jane resisted the call, but it should be plenty if she accepted.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Jane Kraken wasn’t sure of this, but like everything else in the netherworld, Jane had to expend a great deal of will and intellect to maintain her form. She was made by Oceanus, but he gave her almost no attention, so maintaining her form in conflict with the great whales that wanted to eat her was an ongoing challenge. Joe promised her that the body the human girl provided would protect her from that fate, but Jane was leery of the promises of males.

  Still, she let herself be called and found herself in a strange place, trapped in a star of containment that was in a building. She wasn’t in the water and her gills struggled for air. She had gills without having to think about them. In the netherworld oceans, she often forgot them. Here, they were more noticeable.

  “It’s all right,” a human said, and she understood him. “You will be in the sea shortly. As soon as the sun sets, we will carry you to the Crassus pier. That will be your home, except when you’re out in the bay.”

  In the netherworld, Jane would reach out with her mighty arms and break the back of a netherworld ship. Most of the netherworld ships were small in comparison to ships of the fourteenth century. Here she was smaller, but it was a constant body. She flexed her arms in a pattern and they struck against the walls of the containment star. Tha
t hurt.

  “We’ll take it down in a minute,” the man assured her. “First, let me introduce your host, the owner of your container.”

  Her mistress, he meant, but didn’t say.

  “This is Aurelia Augusta Crassa.” He waved at the human girl, though that wasn’t necessary. She knew that Aurelia was her mistress from the moment she entered the body.

  “Hello,” said Aurelia. “What do you like to be called?”

  “Call me Jane.” She knew that was a human name.

  “I christen thee Jane Kraken, and welcome you to the mortal realm,” Aurelia said, and in so doing tied Jane a bit more into the body. She didn’t think that Aurelia realized it, but from his surprised and not pleased expression, she thought the man who could speak kraken did.

  “These are friends of mine, and they are not to be harmed.” Aurelia pointed first at a woman. “Jennifer Fairbanks.” Then she pointed at the man who spoke kraken: “Wilber Hyde-Davis.” She pointed to another man. “And this is Master Tadeo, who did most of the work constructing you. If you have any complaints about your body, he’s the one to talk to.”

  Tadeo looked frightened at that.

  “So far it seems functional,” Jane offered casually.

  “He and Jennifer are also the ones we will discuss any changes to your body with.”

  “Well, now that everyone has been introduced,” said Wilber, “it’s probably time for Aurelia to set some rules about which ships you can sink and which ships are off limits.”

  After that they talked for a while about what she was and wasn’t allowed to do. Mostly, she wasn’t allowed to sink any ships unless Aurelia was on board. Which didn’t strike Jane at all as a reasonable restriction. What was the point of this lovely body if she couldn’t use it to drag sailors to their deaths?

  Wilber took down the wards and Aurelia climbed up on her back in front of her eyes, opened the hatch on her back, then climbed down the ladder into her body. Jane could still see her because Jane had a camera and a microphone, as well as a speaker, in her body. The camera was a blown glass eye with the back painted in patterns of selenium. As a kraken, Jane was powerful enough to be able to look out of a painted eye on a bit of planking, but the skill and knowledge of how eyes worked that the twenty-firsters brought back had been put to use by a set of demon-enchanted devices in Pucorl’s lands, which in turn made eyes very much like cameras, so now the made eyes were almost good enough to work even without a demon.