Tales from the Vatican Vaults: 28 extraordinary stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Garry Kilworth, Mary Gentle, KJ Parker, Storm Constantine and many more

by David V. Barrett

  Theophylact shook his head. ‘No, that’s wrong. Everything God does is good. Evil’s just the absence of good. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Everything,’ I repeated solemnly. ‘Before that, there was just the void, remember? The void wasn’t evil, it wasn’t anything. In order for something to exist, it must have been created by God. God created evil.’

  He frowned. Poor fellow, first day in the job and he gets that sprung on him. My heart bled. ‘If you say so,’ he said. ‘It just seems a bit strange, that’s all.’

  ‘Very strange,’ I agreed. ‘But evil—’ I took another coin from his purse. ‘Evil this side, good the other. Inevitably. Unless you’re thinking of a one-sided coin, like they have in Germany. And even then, when the other side is blank, the impress of the obverse die is visible, in reverse. So really, there’s no such thing as a one-sided coin. And there can be no good without evil.’

  He sighed. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘That’s not strictly true, of course. He is omnipotent; He can do anything. If he’d wanted to create a universe where Good existed without an equal and opposite force, He could’ve done so. If evil exists, it’s because He wanted it to.’

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘Now there I think you’re going a bit far,’ he said. ‘With respect,’ he added quickly. ‘I mean, even with what you just said, evil’s got to be, well—’ He ransacked his scrambled brains for the right word. ‘A by-product,’ he said. ‘Like the silver mines. If you want silver, you’ve got to have lead as well. They go together. But the miners only want the silver.’

  ‘The miners,’ I pointed out, ‘are fallible humans. They can only work with what He has made for them. He wanted evil, so He created it. Do you understand?’

  He sort of wriggled from top to toe. ‘I guess,’ he said. ‘Well, no, not really. You’re saying you can’t have light without darkness, which I can sort of get the hang of. But now you’re saying He could’ve had light without darkness if He’d wanted to.’

  ‘Exactly. Now, then. Why would He do such a thing?’

  He thought for a while; and when he answered, I confess I was worried. Maybe the idiot boy was smarter than I’d assumed, which might be a problem, later on. ‘So there’d be a choice,’ he said. ‘You can’t have a choice if there’s only one thing.’

  ‘Yes. And?’

  ‘And He wants us to have a choice.’ Pause. ‘Why does He want us to have a choice?’

  ‘So we can be wrong sometimes. So we can be fallible. If we weren’t, if we were perfect, we wouldn’t be us, we’d just be part of Him.’ I took a step back, and spat. It landed just shy of his left foot. ‘Now that was part of me, but I separated it from me. That was what Creation entailed. In creating the universe, He separated it from himself, as your mother separated you from herself when you were born. He is perfect. Something separate from Him must therefore, sooner or later, become different from perfection. And that,’ I added, before he could interrupt, ‘is why He created evil.’

  To do him justice, I think he really was following what I said, albeit in the same way mad dogs follow carts on country roads. For any human with a head full of the coarse house red, that’s not bad. ‘So evil—’

  ‘The thing to remember about it,’ I said, ‘is that, contrary to appearances, good and evil are different aspects of the same thing. They come from the same source. They serve the same objective. In practical terms, they’re on the same side. I like to think of evil,’ I went on, ‘as His Divine Majesty’s loyal opposition. Of which,’ I added, ‘I am a humble member.’

  He nearly choked. ‘But you’re an angel,’ he said.

  *

  Which is true.

  It’s true, because there is no such thing as time. Not for us, at any rate. Mortals believe in time the way fish believe in water; we, however, aren’t fish. Eliminate time, and yes, I am an angel. I still exist in that state, before the ‘Unfortunate Occurrence’. I also exist after it. I am, of course, the same creature – immortal, immutable, substance of His substance, an extension of His will. I am simply an angel who was assigned to other duties – a rotten job, but someone’s got to do it. I am merely the faceless substance, the middle of the coin. Now I serve God in a rather different way.

  (And on the eighth day He created Evil; and He saw that it was good.)

  *

  ‘What’s all this in aid of?’ he asked.

  A shrewd question for a twenty-year-old alcoholic. The landlord was looking at us, muttering something to the large man who threw out the drunks. I smiled at them; they crossed themselves and found urgent things to do in the back room. ‘It’s important that you know who I am,’ I said. ‘It’s important, because we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other in the future, when you’re Pope and I’m your most intimate, trusted adviser.’

  He looked terrified. ‘But you can’t be,’ he said. ‘You’re a—’

  ‘Not the D word, please,’ I said, quiet but very firm. ‘I think on balance that it’d be better if you came to regard me as a senior official from the Department of Evil. Think you can do that?’

  He pulled a sad face. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said.

  Sigh. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘let me explain it to you. Let’s consider the emperor.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Whichever one you like. Both emperors have advisers. For efficiency’s sake, each senior adviser is in charge of a specific aspect of the affairs of the empire, a department. The Count of the Stables, for example, is in charge of war. He heads up the War Department. With me so far?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fine. Now, the Count of the Stables isn’t war. He’s just a normal – fairly normal – man, looking after the military side of things. He’s not like Mars, the embodiment of battle. Same goes for the Highways Commissioner, the Superintendent of Shipping, the City Prefect and so on. Me too. My job is simply to administer and regulate the conduct of evil in His Majesty’s terrestrial possessions. I make sure evil works predictably and efficiently, that its quotas are filled, and that it doesn’t go too far. It’s like being a governor. A governor doesn’t have to belong to the province he governs. The Imperial governor of Bari, for instance, isn’t an Italian, he’s a Greek.’ I shrugged. ‘The Governor of Evil is a cardinal. Bear in mind, we’re all subjects of the same master. His will be done, absolutely.’

  He gave me a sort of sideways look. ‘And His will is, there’s got to be evil.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Two sides,’ I reminded him. ‘One coin. Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, render to God the things that are God’s. And above all, don’t ever try and second-guess the Divine agenda. That’s one sin that even you can’t buy absolution for.’

  He had that lost look. ‘So who tells me what He wants me to do? You, I suppose.’

  ‘We all have to do as we’re told,’ I said. ‘Even me. Especially me.’

  *

  Especially me.

  I step out of time the way you step out of your clothes, and I am there, then, once more; where, when I belong, I have always been, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. I am sitting in the back row, with a worried look on my face, while Lucifer tries to explain. He’s not making a wonderful job of it. We don’t like the way things are run around here, he says.

  ‘Yes we do,’ someone points out.

  ‘Yes, all right, we do.’ Lucifer has that lost look, too. ‘But we have to take the broader view. We represent Divine discontent. That’s our constituency. What we as individuals may think about it is neither here nor there. We have no say in the matter. We’re bound by the mandate.’

  ‘But we’re going to lose,’ someone else says. ‘Come to that, we’ve already lost, where I’m standing. Does the term hiding to nothing mean anything to you?’

  ‘It’s in the plan,’ Lucifer replies irritably. ‘And we don’t second-guess the plan. Do we?’

  ‘God is working His purpose out, as year succee
ds to year,’ someone quoted in a mocking drawl. ‘Yes, we know. And we’ve got to have dualistic morality, or we all just wink out of existence like a switched-off light. Fine. But why’s it got to be us? Why can’t some other bugger do it?’

  Lucifer gave him a sour look. ‘Let this cup pass from me, you mean? I wouldn’t go there, if I were you. No, sorry, it’s up to us, we’ve got to do it. And I know because I say so isn’t the most inspiring motivation ever, but that’s how it is. Sorry.’

  I smiled. ‘It sounds to me that we don’t like the way things are run around here,’ I said. ‘Divine discontent. I do believe you’ve performed a very small act of Creation.’

  Lucifer looked at me blankly for a moment. I think I heard someone mutter for crying out loud, or words to that effect. ‘Well, think about it,’ I said. ‘God has ordered his loyal servants to be disloyal. Their loyalty to what they have always believed constitutes the Divine awakes in them the instinct to disobey. Disobedience is rebellion. Gentlemen, I rather fancy we’ve just brought about the Fall.’

  ‘You know your trouble,’ someone said. ‘You’re just too damned clever by half.’

  ‘He’s talking drivel, as usual,’ someone else said. ‘We may feel like not obeying, maybe just for a moment, but that doesn’t mean we’re actually going to disobey. Far from it. If He wants us to make war in Heaven, then that’s what we do, obviously.’

  I grinned at him. ‘I did say a very small act of Creation,’ I pointed out. ‘Like a scientist in a laboratory, creating a single atom of antimatter that’s only stable for a microsecond. It’s not the quantity that matters, or even the duration. It’s the fact that it’s been done at all that changes the world. Admit it,’ I went on, ‘for a moment, a split second, you felt disloyal, you wanted to rebel. Well? Yes or no?’

  He shrugged. ‘Yes. But—’

  ‘For a moment. For a split second.’ I beamed at him. ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with T. Something,’ I added, ‘which doesn’t apply to us. Anything we do for a moment, for a split second, lasts for ever, you know that as well as I do.’ I stood up. I’d had about as much as I could take. ‘Gentlemen,’ I said, ‘congratulations. We did it. We did as we were told. We are now all irrevocably fallen from grace.’ Big grin. ‘Thank you all ever so fucking much.’

  *

  The point being: the thing my esteemed colleague didn’t actually say, but which was inevitably implicit in why us? Namely, how could He do this to us?

  Divine discontent. That’s the probe, the needle. Divine discontent worms its way through all the love and glory until it reaches how could He possibly do this horrible thing to us? This bad thing. This evil—

  *

  ‘In recognition of which,’ I told Theophylact, ‘my fellow rebels paid me the honour of unanimously appointing me Perpetual Ambassador to the Court of St Peter. Which is why I’m here. The way you can twist things round, they said, you’re a natural for the job.’ I smiled. ‘They didn’t mean it nicely, but I take it as a compliment.’

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more sober human being. ‘So you did rebel,’ he said. ‘You did make war in Heaven.’

  ‘We did as we were told,’ I replied. ‘But yes. And we lost, of course. Needless to say. I fought the Lord, and the Lord won. The point is,’ I went on, ‘God created evil. More than that, God used evil, He was evil. He betrayed us, His brightest creations, His angels. Because it had to be done. Because without darkness—’

  ‘Yes, I know. Without darkness, there’s no light. You said.’

  I shook my head. ‘Because without darkness there is light, because He ordained it, but no one can see it. It’s a subtle difference, but a vital one.’

  He rubbed the side of his head. ‘So you keep telling me.’

  ‘Only because it’s true.’ I glanced at my watch; a screaming anachronism, but I’ve got a licence for it. ‘Look, we need to get you to the Basilica for the investiture. The point you’ve got to grasp is this. There is such a thing as good, as there’s such a thing as evil. But they’re the same thing. Now, you say it. Go on.’

  ‘I don’t think I—’

  ‘Say it.’

  He shot me a scared, sullen look. ‘Good and evil are the same thing,’ he said. ‘Happy now?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But that’s beside the point.’

  *

  Forth in Thy name, O Lord, I go, my daily labour to pursue. I got the idiot boy cleaned up and looking just this side of respectable, and bundled him off to the Basilica to be crowned. I got a hatful of dirty looks from the family, who’d been looking all over for him, which I repaid with smiles – turn the other cheek, and so forth. I couldn’t very well skip the ceremony, but I bolted as soon as I politely could and missed the party afterwards; absolutely no great loss. So much to do, so little time.

  ‘You’re late,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ I said. ‘I was expecting to see—’

  ‘Yes, I bet you were.’ He scowled at me. ‘But you’ve got me instead. Believe it or not, the entire universe doesn’t actually revolve around you.’

  Meek and mild, I told myself. Meek and mild as a little lamb. ‘You wanted to see me?’

  He’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, he can be appallingly pompous and he has absolutely no sense of humour, but he’s fair-minded, I will say that for him. Others in his position – well. As noted above, we all know perfectly well, deep down, that we’re all on the same side, playing for the same team; but there are certain individuals, naming no names, who feel the need to – ah well. Nothing overt or explicit, you understand, just nuances of voice and expression; which, in context, can be every bit as offensive as the crude epithet and the shower of stones. Not him, though. I respect him for that.

  He put down the report he’d been pretending to read. ‘Just what do you think you’re playing at?’ he said.

  He can’t abide wounded innocence. ‘Me?’

  ‘You. You do realise, you’ve put the entire plan in jeopardy?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. It’s already happened. You know that.’

  He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Don’t play your games with me,’ he said. ‘You know perfectly well what I mean. Sequentially speaking, in linear time, you’ve told that young thug his fortune. How many times do I have to tell you, we don’t do that? Not on this side and most especially not on yours.’

  I gave him a sweet, sad look. ‘I’m very sorry,’ I said. ‘Was it very wicked of me?’

  ‘Don’t start.’ He was controlling his temper. ‘Now I know you, you don’t do things like that for sheer—’

  ‘Devilment?’

  ‘You’re up to something,’ he said. ‘You’re adding bits to the plan again, ad libbing. Well? You are, aren’t you?’

  I shrugged. ‘And don’t they always come out for the best?’

  ‘That’s not the point. Believe it or not, you aren’t the sole conduit of the Divine will. There’s such a thing as proper channels and the chain of command. And that’s not a moral issue, it’s purely administrative, so you can spare me your elaborate sophistries and tell me what’s hatching in that seething little brain of yours.’

  ‘He knows. I thought I’d be seeing—’

  He was getting riled. I can never remember which deadly sin Anger is. Three, or four? ‘You think you’re so clever, don’t you, going over my head all the time. Because, as you so gleefully remind me, there are things your lot can do that our lot can’t, and it gets the job done quicker. Only you’re forgetting one little detail. We’ve got to try and keep this whole shooting-match up together. We’ve got the lives and acts of thirty thousand billion humans to co-ordinate across ten millennia. And you know what? You wandering off on frolics of your own doesn’t really help all that much. In fact, it’s a total pain in the neck. So don’t do it. Do you understand me?’

  You see what I mean? In the final analysis, when he puts it like that, even I have to admit he’s got a point. ‘He knows,’ I repeated
, but my heart wasn’t really in it. ‘He’ll fix it. He can fix anything.’

  ‘Yes, but He shouldn’t have to. And He wouldn’t, if only you’d play by the rules just for once.’ He shook his head. ‘To put it in language you’ll understand,’ he said. ‘When you do this kind of stuff, you’re not rebelling, you’re not making war in Heaven, you’re not being Evil, you’re just being annoying. So please, no more of it. All right?’

  I gave in. No point in fighting the last, lost war. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He breathed out, long and slow. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Tell me about it. What’s the big idea?’

  I explained. He listened quietly, then sighed. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A drama queen,’ he said, ‘that’s what you are.’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?’

  ‘Drama queen,’ he repeated. ‘Always got to be centre stage. Mysterious, ineffable, all that. May I just remind you, this is serious official business. Your ego—’

  ‘Ego?’ I gave him a shy smile. ‘I never knew I had one.’

  He sighed. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘it was a nice thing to do. Compassion, even for the sinner. I like that.’

  I nodded. ‘Sympathy from the Devil,’ I said. ‘What more could you ask?’

  *

  He was right, though. Small acts of rebellion, like small acts of Creation. I’m annoying, therefore I am.

  Back to Rome. Torchlight in the darkened streets. Already there were crowds gathering. I mingled, keeping my ears open. A significant minority wanted to haul the monster out into the street, cut his head off and drag his headless trunk down to the river on a meat hook. The rest of them just wanted to see the show, especially if there were to be pennies thrown later. My guess was that the show was a flexible term, and that if it proved to consist of decapitations and meat-hook-dragging, that’d probably do just as well as a solemn procession in fancy dress. Ah, the people. If there’s ever been a greater blasphemy than vox populi, vox Dei, I’d have a professional interest in hearing it.