by Edward Lee
Here, though, it just hung, as if it had grown out of the barren sub-asteroid’s flat surface.
“Alpha bias set at zero,” Tom recited, trying to retain some semblance of protocol. “Data bus and OMS inhibitors enabled on my mark.”
At 20,000 miles they could see it all. Tom adjusted the LRV’s forward trim, upped the port magnification to 3.0, then 100.0.
“God in Heaven,” someone said.
You got that right, Tom thought. A cube. Golden glass. Nothing more.
“Turn up the magnification,” Luke ordered.
“We’re maxed out, sir.”
Another order. “Engage all sensor systems. I want everything recorded.”
“All holosystems are running. Stereoisometers enabled. Spectral chromatographs enabled. Photo-spec, hexo-recorders, and elemental index systems are on,” Tom reeled off.
Luke maintained a scrutinizing gaze at the viewport. “But I don’t see any—”
The object’s surface seemed totally bereft of features.
“You don’t see any what, sir?” Tom asked.
“No signs of any point of ingress,” Simon remarked. “No entrance, no exit.”
“No gates,” Luke finished. “But they’ve got to be there. Each vertical surface should possess three gates.” He quoted John the Divine: “‘And the City had twelve gates, and the gates twelve angels.’”
“I don’t see no angels,” Tom said, “and I don’t see no gates.”
“Each surface of the cube is over two million square miles,” Simon figured. “It might take some looking.”
“So unless Saint John was drunk off his ass,” Tom queried, “when we find one of these gates, there’s gonna be an angel waiting for us? Come on, this is crap. It’s a metaphor.”
“Shut up, Private!” Luke barked. “Just do your job and shut up.”
Tom didn’t shut up. “Since nobody else is making suggestions, then I will. Saint John also mentioned the wall, the wall of jasper and eleven other precious gems that surrounds the firmament of Heaven. That would be at the foundation of the cube, right?”
Luke considered this. “Yes. Go to the wall,” he ordered.
««—»»
At 1431 hrs, they were there.
««—»»
At 1450 hrs, they found a gate.
««—»»
At 1515 hrs, the EVA team disembarked. The feet of human beings walked upon the blazing gold skin of Heaven.
(IV)
Poor Brigid.
Sharon looked down at the comatose body of her friend. They’d moved her to the better-equipped ICU in the Med Unit. Monitor lights flashed feebly. The steady beeps seemed drastically slower than Sharon’s own heartbeat.
She touched the white skin of Brigid’s hand. It felt deathly cold.
Don’t worry, Brigid. 'Fear ye not, be still, and behold the salvation of the Lord.’
Sharon left the cove. Her own monitoring duties were moot now; no abort directive would be forthcoming. In the nearest holomural, space stared back at her. The LRV was long dispatched.
Suddenly she felt desperately alone. She thought of Jonah trapped in the belly of a massive fish as God persuaded him to go to Nineveh.
This, she thought, peering into space, is our Nineveh. We travail to love and serve the Lord.
Commander-Deaconness Esther was nowhere to be found. Shouldn’t she be here, trying to revive Brigid? But this was just naive and wishful thinking. Brigid’s not coming back. Eventually, she’ll die, and go to Heaven.
Sharon’s eyes focused on the holomural.
Out there. So close. Heaven…
She tried not to contemplate it. Perhaps she wasn’t supposed to. Nevertheless, errant questions pried their way into her mind.
What will it be like?
What will they find?
Will they truly find God?
General-Vicar Luke had implied that the mission was expressly not to find God; instead, their EVA excursion would be brief and precise—just a quick topographical survey, some elemental probe readings, little else.
But then she wondered about simple human nature. How could they limit themselves to those parameters once they were there? Would it even be possible?
Sharon wandered about the ship. It seemed much larger—and so much more vast—when she considered its emptiness. Eventually she found herself in the vacant Central Communications Unit.
They’d be close enough for standard radio contact.
Would she be violating her orders by establishing radio communication? I don’t see why, she reasoned. After all, nobody told her not to.
It can’t hurt to at least listen in.
Sharon knew she had no authorization, but she turned the main commset on anyway, then clicked in the LRV’s frequency discriminators.
Immediately, the transmission indicator began to blink.
The ship’s transmitter is picking up a direct signal from the LRV, she realized at once. But—
No sound.
She couldn’t hear the transmission even though the system was on.
Doesn’t make sense. She considered looking for Dr. Esther but what good would that do? Esther was just a physician. She had no technical expertise in communications protocol.
Then Sharon considered something else:
Maybe the transmission is encrypted. And maybe…
Sharon remembered what Tom had given her.
The biochip that he found on Major Matthew’s body.
She’d put it in her pocket, hadn’t she?
Her finger slipped into her pocket. She plucked out the chip.
Should I or shouldn’t I?
She decided that she should. There’s no harm in trying, she asserted to herself, and I’m probably wrong anyway.
When she plugged the tiny chip into the peripheral jack, it occurred to her at once that she wasn’t wrong.
The transmission came through loud and clear: the LRV’s cabin intercom evidently.
Voices exploded:
“—for emergency thrust-off now!”
“What the fuck for?”
“Just do it!”
Sharon recognized the voices. Tom and Warrant Officer Simon. They were yelling.
Tom: “Where’s Luke?”
Simon: “Dead!”
Tom: “Where are the securitechs?”
Simon: “Dead! All dead! Those things out there killed them all!”
Sharon froze up.
What’s happening down there!
She grabbed the handset, was about to call back to them when—
She squealed.
She was grabbed by the hair from behind, yanked backward. She heard a soft fffft, felt a tiny sting at the side of her neck. Then she collapsed.
Sharon was paralyzed.
“Snoopy bitch. I never did like you.” Commander-Deaconness Esther smiled down at Sharon’s fully conscious yet completely immobile form. She held an air-shot injector in her hand. “Don’t worry, little virgin. It’s just a paralytic agent. You won’t die.”
Sharon’s brain commanded her to get up, to flee. But nothing happened.
She tried to scream but couldn’t even open her mouth.
“Let’s go, little virgin,” the voice boomed above. Sharon was lifted up and slammed down hard on a lev-slat. Then she was being carried away.
— | — | —
Part Eight
“Lucifer, the morning star,
hath infinite faces.”
—Mammon 1:3
— | — | —
(I)
Nightmare.
Or—was she dead?
Utter blackness prolapsed into a nameless demense.
The ushers rose…
She saw a vast scarlet twilight and a black moon and six black stars whose black light bathed an infernal terrascape. Beyond stood a city, a firmament of inversions—a raging mephistopolis whose highest edifice winked at its peak like a beacon of luminous blood. Sharon’s vision trailed away on stinki
ng, hot winds, shooting through abyssal canyons and abhorrent boulevards as though it were a scream itself. In one canyon, a horde of the naked and the starved had been packed like cattle within a fence of fiery bones. Golem-like attendants shouldered through their midst, hand-picking—with stout three-fingered hands—this horrid night’s select play-things. They were dragged over the fence by fingers hooked into eyes, screaming blood, ejecting innards with their shrieks. Heads were prized apart, raw brains rowed through by the fat taloned fingers. One man was being broiled alive on a spit, another was eviscerated with one fast swipe of a talon. The guts were then summarily forced into the victim’s mouth and he was forced to eat. Women fared worse, plundered for sexual possibilities that defied all human imagination. Gravid wombs were pricked by ancient bone-slivers, jettisoning fetuses and placentae onto hot slabs of stone. Afterbirth was lapped up by demon tongues, like stew; children were slowly garroted by glistening, blood-swollen umbilicals.
Hail, Belphegor!
Oily smoke bubbled from pores in million-year-old rock.
Hail, Asmodeus!
Screams rose as a song.
Hail, Satan!
Dark chuckles abounded as the endless workings of hell ground on and on.
One woman, whose face had been peeled off her skull as effortlessly as a stocking mask, flailed as she was raped en masse by these ushers of the abyss, and when they’d all sated themselves, they drowned the woman in a steaming stack of their own feces.
Horns sprouted from the lead usher’s wedgelike head. He picked up the woman’s flensed face and stretched it over a stalagmite, displaying it, like a trophy, for all to see. It was Sharon’s face.
She jerked awake, a dead scream on her lips.
“That must’ve been some nightmare.”
Eventually Sharon’s clouded vision began to focus. Dr. Esther was looking with some interest at a diagnostic holoscreen. In a few blinks, Sharon knew that she’d been relocated to the main Med Unit.
“Your EET was all over the place,” Esther pointed out, “your little locus ceruleus throbbing away, delta activity spiking off the screen.” Esther patted Sharon’s thigh. “Poor little virgin had a bad dream.”
Sharon tried to speak but only a coarse mutter escaped. She’d been spread out on a lev-gurney, her waist braced down. The brace, though, seemed hardly necessary. When she tried to move her fingers, nothing happened. Her toes—nothing. She couldn’t even incline her head.
“You’ll be able to talk soon. The Curarix will wear off in an hour or so.” Esther held up the minuscule biochip. “Where did you get this? From Matthew, I’ll bet. We knew he was suspicious about something. Good thing we killed the old man when we did.”
We? Sharon thought. She tried to talk again, failed again. But this time, her lips seemed to actually move a little.
Esther held up the silver de-jam gun, clacked its trigger several times to watch the bolt fire and then retract. “You should’ve seen the way he was flopping on the floor when I punched this bolt into his brain.” Then she set down the gun and returned her attention to her console, into which she plugged the biochip. “You’re industrious, I’ll give you that.” Another holo-screen opened. “I’ll bet you’d love to know what went on down there, hmm? On Heaven?”
Sharon stared up through dry eyes.
“It really is Heaven, you know. Federate Intel has known all about it since the initial probes were launched last year.” Esther smiled. “But we sent the probes without informing the Vatican. We know what’s really there, but the Pope doesn’t.”
Sharon’s thought processes churned through the diminishing paralysis.
Esther’s smile tightened. “God’s not there anymore, little virgin, and He hasn’t been for a long time.”
It can’t be true!
Esther’s graceful hand smoothed up over Sharon’s uniform front, smoothed over the young breasts and squeezed.
The words warbled through the grin. “Heaven has been infested by demons…”
Still a dream, Sharon forced the thought. Still a nightmare. God lives! God is all-powerful and He will protect the righteous!
“Saint Matthew said, ‘How great is that darkness!’ and John: ‘Men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.’” The hand rubbed more urgently, sliding lower. “And you know what? They were right. God and Christ and all the Angels got so disgusted with the evil of mankind that They left.” Sharon refused to believe it.
“And someone else moved in.”
Sharon fought against the agent in her blood, shouting at herself to move. Feeling was beginning to return—unfortunately through the demented caresses of the doctor. Her utilities, now, had been unseamed down to the braces, Esther’s warm hand probing the bare breasts.
“Don’t worry, the EVA team weren’t all killed. Simon’s on his way back now, in the LRV. And so is Tom.”
Tom!
“And now you’re wondering, aren’t you? You’re wondering if Tom is in on the conspiracy too.” She switched on the holoscreen which showed a live-feed from the LRV’s cockpit. Tom sat at the control, his face runneled in anger. There was a milliwave pistol at his head—held by Simon.
“Poor Private Thomas—a perfect dupe. Too bad you’ll never get your chance to fuck him.” Esther’s hand cupped Sharon’s pubis, rubbing intently down. “You wanted to give your virginity to him, didn’t you? That vulgar uneducated flunky. I’ll tell you what—I’ll fuck him, and make you watch. Then I’ll cuff him in the tome and transfuse his blood with butylmercuric acid. And I’ll make you watch that too.”
Sharon’s paralysis felt like a ton of dead weight on her chest. Tendons stood out in her neck as she continued to try to move.
“But here’s something for you to watch first.” Esther walked a few steps deeper in the cove, to the exam table on which Brigid lay even more paralyzed than Sharon. Brigid had been stripped naked. “I injected her with nanobots,” Esther informed. “They severed all the synaptic connections in the central sulcus—she can’t move, but she can feel.” She sealed Brigid’s mouth with a tight palm, then pinched the nostrils shut. In a few moments Brigid’s prone body began to convulse.
Stop it! You’ll kill her!
Next, the unit’s surgical microlaser was powered up; Esther deftly wielded its hand-held emission tip in her hand and—
pzzzzt! pzzzzt!
—cleanly sliced off Brigid’s expansive nipples, leaving cauterized circles in their place. Brigid’s back arched up once, then slapped back down to the table.
“Feel good?” Esther asked the comatose form. “Well, I think we can do better than that.” She set the laser-head down and picked up a clunky-looking attachment that consisted of a large vulcanized cup connected to a stout tube. “I found this in the Engineering Unit. It’s a bilge-pump—they use it to cycle condensation out of the fuel-cell traps.” Esther nodded to herself. “But it also works great on humans.” Now she pressed the cup firmly over Brigid’s mouth and hit a switch.
A tremendous mechanical roar ensued. Brigid’s abdomen sucked in.
The roar rose against some preliminary resistance and then broke. The entirety of Brigid’s gastrointestinal tract was promptly vacuumed out of her abdominal cavity and redeposited, via the hose, into a large shelved collection bottle on the wall.
For a moment, Brigid’s body quivered where it lay, then fell still.
“I like that,” Esther said. She hung up the cup and retrieved the laser-head. “But, damn it, call me a completist. …”
Sharon screamed within herself as the doctor upped the laser’s amperage and intricately severed all of Brigid’s toes and fingers, then the hands and feet.
Then the arms and legs in neat six-inch rendings.
The pile of smoking debris grew larger on the floor as each piece fell. Finally, the trunk was sectioned, until all that remained on the table was Brigid’s head.
“There.” Esther glared down proudly at the pile of pieces. “See if your Jesus Ch
rist can resurrect that.”
Sharon could only stare in bald horror.
“Hmm. Now. What should we do with you?” Esther traipsed back over to the lev-gurney. She lit the laser, waved it before Sharon’s eyes. “Cut off that cute little nose and those cute little ears? Section your brain?” Esther shrugged. “Or why not just autopsy you alive?” Next, she displayed a milliwave pistol. “Or maybe I’ll bake your heart in your chest with this—until it explodes. Wouldn’t that be fascinating?”
Sharon’s eyes squeezed shut in prayer. Please, God. Defend me, deliver me, and protect me. And protect Tom. Please, somehow give Tom the strength to get us out of this…
A red light blinked overhead. An alarm blared.
“They’re back, Sharon. The LRV’s pulling back into the launch-dock. And now you’re more than likely praying, praying to your God that Tom will somehow save you. But look.”
Sharon’s eyes flicked up to the holoscreen. Tom was unstrapping himself from the operator’s chair, was standing up. But before he could fully rise—
Do it! Please, get it!
—he spun, lunged toward Simon, tried to grab the milliwave pistol.
Too late.
Simon was grinning as he discharged the pistol right between Tom’s eyes.
The eyes exploded.
Then the top of Tom’s head blew off.
Sharon fainted on the gurney.
««—»»
It was a snake.
A serpent.
As her consciousness reassembled, Sharon immediately thought of the serpent that coerced Eve. The serpent was Satan.
Memory crashed back.
Tom was dead.
Brigid was dead.
General-Vicar Luke, the securitechs—everyone. They were all dead. Only Sharon remained now, still fettered to the lev-gurney, and Esther and Simon. She watched through the slits of her eyelids. The pieces of Brigid’s body had been removed from the exam table, dropped into the cremator, no doubt. Sharon had trouble seeing in detail across the cove, but there was one thing she was sure of: a stout snake lay on the table now, four or five feet long, dead or paralyzed. Esther and Simon hovered over the table, intently examining the snake.
