by R. E. Vance
Michael came into the back with the envelope. Inside were the three addresses. He handed one case to me, the other to Penemue and retained the third for himself. We examined each and traded files until we’d read all three.
Each case file had the same three details: 1) the disabling of the security systems; 2) a break-in that seemingly did not use magic or computer hacking; and 3) children taken without so much as a peep. There were no fingerprints, signs of break-in or reports of children crying, screaming or making a peep of any kind. What’s more, there were no witnesses. It was as if in each case the perpetrators just walked right in.
Or the kids just walked out.
These three cases also shared a distinct difference from the security breach at the Compound—the disappearance of Sarah—where the kidnappers actually left a bit of a mess behind. But there were two things that made that particular case special: 1) by all indications, Sarah was the first kid to go missing; and 2) the monster-under-your-bed woke up her dad. If the kidnappers had had more time, they might have cleaned up after themselves—or maybe they were quick learners and adapted appropriately. But generally, teams like theirs were not so quick to adapt. They’d spent too much time preparing; to adapt so quickly would upgrade them to supervillain status—and I prayed to the GoneGods that it was that little shadow monster that mucked things up, and there wasn’t some other puzzle piece I was missing.
I put down my file and turned to Penemue. “Well, what do you think?”
He put down his own file, although he’d probably committed the whole lot to memory by now. “The writing style is atrocious and very sparse in detail. Where is the gravitas, the oomph that makes the words jump from the page?”
“Not the documents, idiot … Mr. Cain?”
“As far as I can tell”—Penemue hesitated—“he is not lying.”
“But …?” I asked.
“But there is something else going on.”
“Like what? Maybe he’s nervous. If his tech is hackable, he has a lot to lose.”
“True … but there is more to it.”
“Like what?”
“He believed what he was saying completely.”
To this, Michael groaned in that all-bass way of his that shook the room.
“So?” I asked, obviously missing something.
“So,” Penemue said, “when a human is involved in something, even marginally, they usually have some sort of self-doubt. Mr. Cain had none. He completely believes that this is not his technology’s fault and that his company has nothing to do with it. The thought that someone in his organization could betray him was completely dismissed without even a second thought. Even”—Penemue whistled and pointed up, refusing to say the name—“doubted His angels from time to time.”
“Indeed,” Michael bellowed. “Humans are incapable of experiencing anything without a part of them doubting. Even if it is only a single cell in their body, something in them will always doubt. That is the essence of faith.”
“What? To doubt?”
“To believe despite doubt,” Michael corrected me.
“OK … so no doubt. But he’s not exactly human, is he? I mean, no human lives for thousands of years. Maybe what you are interpreting as a lack of doubt is actually just one super old dude’s way of communicating.”
“Perhaps,” Penemue mused.
“Either way, we’re not scratching him off the list. But I think we can agree that we need to explore other leads.”
Michael nodded. “Human Jean-Luc is correct. We will continue to pursue Mr. Cain, but we must also look into the mainland disappearances. I suggest that you and Conner go there. And as for Angel Penemue—we thank you for your time.”
“Actually,” I cut in. “I was kind of hoping Penemue would join us on the mainland. His talents could prove to be quite useful.”
“And what of his other ‘talents’?” Michael asked.
“Oh, Michael, I will be on my best behavior.” Penemue held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
Chapter 6
Sailors, Jackals, Succubae and Passports
We left the precinct and headed home on foot.
Paradise Lot’s Downtown wasn’t very large, with only a Main Street and a few tributaries sprouting off the main core. I guess when you didn’t have a lot of money to spend, cafés and restaurants didn’t exactly spring up all over the place. Still, there were some staples that catered to specific clientele: the Perched Café and the Steak Stalker House; Adawin’s Playhouse and the Maze Cave; apothecaries equally stocked with Advil and St. John’s Root; supermarkets with broccoli and bales of hay; clothing shops with super-XXXL all the way down to super-XXXS—complete with tailors to put in holes for non-human appendages such as wings and tails; and then, of course, charity shops filled with worn-out home goods, donated by humans who thought the occasional Goodwill bag was them satisfying their civic duty to the Earth’s unfortunate refugees.
I sighed in dejected remorse as Penemue and I walked down the main strip. Penemue pulled a brown-bagged bottle that I was sure was Drambuie from only the GoneGods knew where and took a long, hard pull. He sighed in relief. “Oh, sweet Mother of—”
“BLASPHEMY,” I boomed.
Penemue chuckled. “Indeed. But the best moments in life have a little blasphemy in them, and I swear to the GoneGods that this is one of those moments. I thought I was going to pass out from sobriety.” He took another swig and offered me the bottle.
I declined as usual and said, “OK—spill it.”
“I will. But first, tell me everything that transpired at the Tree. Everything. I sense knowing what happened there will take great lengths toward my understanding.”
I looked up at the angel and considered this. He was a OnceImmortal being filled with knowledge both ancient and forbidden. “OK,” I said.
And then I told him everything. Absolutely everything. When I finished, the angel looked down at me and nodded. “Makes perfect sense.”
“Does it now?” I said. “OK, then—sensitize me.”
“Very well … where should I start? Ah, yes, our little pirate friend. She is quite the handful. Energetic, feisty, playful and completely not real.”
“Excuse me?”
“She’s not real, Jean-Luc. As in, she is a figment of an imagination.”
“Our imagination?”
“No, not our imagination. An imagination. Somewhere in this world, someone is dreaming of our little Sinbad, and that dream is so vivid that the little sailor manifested in the flesh. Well, sort of in the flesh. I haven’t seen that kind of magic since the Garden.”
“What garden?”
“The Garden, Jean-Luc. The Garden where Mr. Cain’s parents originated from. You see, amongst the many gifts given to young Adam and slightly younger Eve was the ability to manifest everything their overactive yet sheltered minds could come up with. And thank all that is good and holy for that … Angels are many things, but creative we are not. Without Adam and Eve, so much of what we take for granted would never have come into being. Almonds, platypuses, blue jays and mangos … to name a few. I mean, can you imagine a world without mangos?”
I shook my head. A world without mangos would be sadder than the one we have now. That was for sure. “But then they ate the forbidden fruit which showed them the knowledge of Good and Evil, and they were kicked out. I know, I’ve read the story.”
“Indeed, Human Jean-Luc. But what your story doesn’t tell you is why they were kicked out.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Because they could not be trusted to create anymore. Imagine what the human mind would conjure with the knowledge of Good and Evil! They spent one day in the Garden with that knowledge and they created all sorts of things we can never take back.”
“Like what?”
“What would you create with that knowledge?”
I thought about it … and my mind kept going to things that were already detrimental to us: abuse, power-hungry maniacs, fam
ine because neighboring countries didn’t share, disease-covered blankets, war. But the more I thought about it, the more my mind went to things that didn’t exist that were evil: alien slavers, crippling viruses, pools of fire, Terminator-like mosquitos who sucked us dry, pianos falling from the sky, rampaging Teletubbies. The list went on and on.
I nodded in understanding.
“Imagine what would have come into existence if they had eaten from the Tree of Life and Death. Two concepts that most gods did not understand fully … in the hands of the human imagination. Who knows what life and death would look and feel like now.” Penemue took another swig. “The Garden was the only time that I am aware of in which humans were allowed to create unencumbered. That is, until now.”
“I don’t understand. You think Sinbad was created?” I said, stopping mid-stride.
“Indeed.”
My mind immediately jumped to the anomalies. But those anomalies did not think … not really. They more reacted than acted—followed orders and fought without fear, direction or understanding. Like machines. Complex, ugly, magical machines, sure … but machines, nonetheless. Sinbad was nothing like them. She had heart, she thought and fought and she experienced emotions typical of any little girl.
“GoneGodDamn,” I said. “I assumed she was a shapeshifter, taking on the form and emotions of a human child. It would have never occurred to me that she was anything else. Especially imagination.”
“It hasn’t even occurred to her, I don’t think. She thinks she is a little girl and she believes that she is Sinbad the Sailor. Question her on where she came from, how she got here, and, well, you’ve seen the results.” He lifted up his neck and exposed a bruise from his earlier altercation. “But ask her why she is here and where she is going? That is something she is all too happy to talk about.”
“And what’s that?”
“She’s on a rescue mission, Jean-Luc. It seems her little dreamer has manifested Sinbad to save her.”
I gave Penemue a ‘Spell it out for me’ look.
“In other words, Sinbad is the product of child imagination – one obsessed with pirates.”
“That’s basically all of them, Penemue.”
“Indeed, Jean-Luc. Indeed.”
Hellelujah!
↔
“The idea that Sinbad was actually created by some scared child as a way to save him- or herself doesn’t make sense,” I said. “For one thing, it means that whoever is kidnapping children is then exposing them to something that allows their dreams or subconscious to come to life. That is a lot of power to give children. And what’s more, if someone was doing this, how? Humans can’t burn time, nor can we access magic.”
Penemue shrugged. “I don’t know. I doubt that even Michael knows. I fear that the knowledge of how exactly it is that Adam and Eve were able to create is one of the greatest guarded secrets in history.”
“Sure, except … maybe Mr. Cain’s parents told him how it was done before he—you know.” I slid my finger across my throat.
“Abel was bludgeoned to death,” Penemue corrected me. “And I sincerely doubt that they told Cain. They wouldn’t know. It was just something they could do, and then they couldn’t. At best they could have given him a vague recollection of their time in the Garden.”
“Are you sure? He’s a smart guy. He could have gleaned some stuff from their stories and pieced the puzzle together himself. Remember, he had literally centuries to do so.”
“Again, I doubt it,” Penemue said, taking another swig. “You don’t know what it was like back then. Superstition and paranoia abounded. No way Cain would have been allowed to live forever if there was a one-percent chance that he replicates Creation itself.”
“OK … I hear you. And what’s more, I want Mr. Cain to be innocent, as much as I dislike the guy. For one thing, the world needs someone like him who is trying to bring peace between us. And for another …”
“Yes?” Penemue gave me a look that said Come on, you can’t clam up just when the conversation is getting good.
“For another … I need to believe that redemption is possible.” I was referring to the hope that I could cleanse my own sordid past, of course, but what I left out was that I wanted to be able to take the ticket that Mr. Cain had offered me. I could never take it from the hands of a bad man. I could, however, take it from—to borrow Conner’s words—a good man who did bad things.
“Me, too, Jean-Luc,” Penemue said, looking at his own stained hands. “Me, too.”
“OK—but I’ve got one more question for you. How did Sinbad find us?”
“Ahh, that was the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. Apparently she’d been walking around downtown asking if anyone saw a little girl named Sarah. On her quest, she encountered strange Others—Others who stalked into the hotel and, well, started rampaging. They attacked me and she attacked them, cutting off their heads and—”
“They turned to water and foam.”
“But not the bubble-bath stuff—more like toxic-sludge kind of froth.”
“Anomalies.”
“Exactly.”
“More Creation stuff?” I asked.
“Creation stuff? Your ability to articulate the nuances of the situation astounds me.”
“Indeed,” I said in a posh English accent. “And let me simplify the situation a wee bit more.”
“English and Scottish do not mix,” Penemue said.
I ignored the angel and said, “What is painfully apparent is that someone is getting into the Creation game. What’s more … whomever created those anomalies also created Sinbad. Who and how?”
“Who would be another Other aspiring to be a god,” Penemue said.
“He would have to be very powerful, wouldn’t he? Or she?”
“And that’s just the thing … no one—not even Michael—could create. There is not a single human or Other on this planet powerful enough to do so.”
“OK, next question, then—how?”
“Again … that knowledge is gone. No one on Earth has the know-how. And even if they did, they couldn’t do it. Not without …” Penemue’s thoughts trailed off as he considered his next words.
“Not without …?” I coaxed.
“Not without understanding what it is to create,” Penemue said, his voice distant. “And that knowledge does not come easily.”
“Oh great,” I said. “Well it’s not like there are any gods around to ask about the ins and outs of Creation.”
“Actually,” Penemue drew out the word. “There was a committee.”
“Excuse me?”
“A committee—and not all gods, too. There were nineteen of us on it.”
“ ‘Us’?” I felt like I was having one of those surreal moments robots have when they become self-aware and realize that they’re essentially nuts and bolts.
“Others. Mostly angels, but we had to expand the committee when encountering certain issues.”
“Like what?” I did my best to sound as nonchalant as I could.
“Well, like eyebrows, for example.”
“Eyebrows?” I eyed Penemue’s bottle of Drambuie to see how much of its contents he’d drained.
“Eyebrows keep sweat out of your eyes, as well as serving other practical functions. But angels don’t sweat, so we had no idea they were necessary. The first versions of … well … humans were constantly tripping over things because they’d get sweat in their eyes. So we outsourced that particular design element to a hobgoblin named Hajib Al-Eayn. Industrious fellow. Sweat like crazy, and he had the bushiest eyebrows you could imagine. Eventually he was promoted to be in charge of all body hair.”
“Let me start off my cross examination with a ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ and conclude with a ‘Whatever happened to being made in His image?’ Don’t tell me you’re an evolutionist?”
“I am,” Penemue said in a matter-of-fact tone. “As are you, Jean-Luc.”
I nodded. Before the gods left, reconc
iling the sanctified and the irreverent was easy, with the irreverent all the way for me. But after they left with their final message and the mass migration of Others to Earth, well, denying that gods existed was damn near impossible. Reconciling things like the existence of miracles, evolution versus Creation, and our purpose in the Universe could no longer be colored without taking them into account.
You’d think.
Truth was, most people didn’t really change their opinions. They were either atheists or religious or spiritual or whatever overlap they could come up with in the engram of the sacred and profane.
I believed in science. Always have, always will. And my belief was that evolution was responsible for the way humans were, and the gods … well, they kind of tried to take credit.
Penemue shook his head and pulled out a second bottle. When I refused, he pushed it on me and said, “Take a sip. Trust me.”
I did.
“As for your first question: nineteen Others designed humans. Or rather, we designed the ultimate version of you. Secondly: evolution is real. We just created the ideal human blueprint. Then we let Nature and Chaos do their thing.”
“And let me guess … this version of us,” I gestured at myself like a model displaying a car, “isn’t the best version?”
“Oh no,” Penemue said without a hint of sarcasm. “Not even close. You guys have a long, looong way to go. No, the notion that God created man in His image is a … miscommunication. First of all, it doesn’t take into account women. You and I both know that the female version of the evolved monkey”—he pointed at me and I bowed, accepting the title on behalf of my fellow Homo sapiens—“is far closer to the Divine than their brutish, often smelly male human counterpart. Second, the translation ‘in His image’ is wrong. It is ‘to be in His image’ or, if you take the progressive form, ‘to become in His image.’ ”
“I never heard that version before,” I said. “I mean, I know about the ‘iota of difference’ debate, but ‘is’ versus ‘to be’ or ‘to become’ … that’s completely new to me.”
