“Don’t forget Archistrategos.”
“How could I? I’m really talking to a messenger of God?” And she couldn’t believe it. Not wouldn’t, couldn’t. That nearly made her stop breathing again, cold beneath the joy. Could she believe anything, anymore? The man’s smile dropped and he laid a hand on her shoulder. It was warm.
“Fear not, Hope. What is an apparition?”
She responded automatically, the memory of the Sunday School lesson suddenly crystal clear. “‘A vision in which a person or being not normally within the visionary’s perceptual range appears to that person, not in a world apart as in a dream but as part of the environment, without connection to verifiable visual stimuli.’” She blinked. “You did that?”
“It was important for you to remember.”
“Well, knowing about apparitions, miracles, stuff like that, is an important part of religious education after The Event.”
“Of course it is. I’m certainly a bit more physical than the usual apparition, but what’s the important thing to remember about them?”
Again the memory was crystal clear. “‘An apparition is treated as private revelation that may emphasize some facet of the received public revelation for a specific purpose, but it can never add anything new to the deposit of faith.’” Hope felt her panic receding. “‘The Church may pronounce an apparition as worthy of belief, but belief is never required by divine faith.’”
“Exactly. Belief is not required. Want alternatives?” He chuckled and went on before she could think what to say. “Maybe I’m an agent of the future, come back to ensure that humanity’s destiny to advance and conquer all reality, past, present, and future, is fulfilled. I’m the ambassador of a future paradise of human apotheosis. Or perhaps I’m an agent of an ancient and supremely advanced being running a supremely advanced simulation with AI inhabitants who have no idea they’re living inside an artifact. You’re part of the matrix.”
“What?”
“I do like that one. It would explain the empty universe, wouldn’t it? A simulation that allows more than ten billion or so self-aware Ais in it is probably a bit much, so the full simulation only applies to a single solar system, this one. I represent the simulation creator, and the Asura-Mikaboshi is a ‘glitch’ in the system.”
“What?”
“Just offering you alternate explanations. It’s important to have choices.”
Was it possible for an archangel to be a smug ass? “But you’re not a messenger of hyper-advanced simulation creators.”
“No. But would I know if I was?” He studied her while she sputtered, nodded. “Good. The truth you can take away, Hope, is I don’t need your belief. I didn’t come with a revelation for you to share with all the world. I don’t have a mission for you that you’re not already on. To save everyone you can, were your words, I believe.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
“Amatsu-Mikaboshi.”
“Kitsune was right?”
“Yes, and no.” He sighed, no longer smiling at all. “It’s a force and it’s real. Your fox got that right. Mind is spirit, Hope. It shapes reality on more levels than just itself. The minds of mankind are infinitely less than God’s but you’re still creators. Self-aware, you can choose association, even though you only dimly perceive each other right now and barely perceive His presence at all. And you can choose to disassociate, to close yourself from others and make it all about you.” He sighed again and through the joy Hope felt a sadness too deep for words. “Many of you make that second choice, over a lifetime and as easily as breathing. That’s not a judgment on you, it’s natural, but it’s a choice.”
He stopped talking, and Hope followed his gaze to the gilded screen with its beautiful icons. His eyes rested on the Christos and his smile returned.
“There’s a reason why one of the central images of Catholicism is Jesus’ wounded and bleeding heart, a heart bound in piercing thorns but crowned with fire and shining glory. It’s the perfect image of the open heart, the feeling heart, the heart that knows and loves. Its opposite is the hardened heart, the cold heart, the heart of unfeeling stone, the heart that knows only itself and its desires. Amatsu-Mikaboshi is, well I suppose you could call it the projection of humanity’s selfish will to power. Pure, self-destroying will to power with no boundaries, no limits because it recognizes none in its desire to dominate. The heart of stone.”
And loud they sang, and loud they sang— Even in the warmth of an archangel’s presence, Hope felt dipped in ice. Michael’s hand on her shoulder tightened, pulling her back from sudden despair.
“But Asura-Mikaboshi isn’t some Manichean opposite of God, Hope. The purpose of the universe is to give you space and experience to grow into your potential, to be able to freely accept or reject loving association with each other and ultimately with God. Asura-Mikaboshi can’t break that purpose. The worst it can do is rebel against the purpose—at a terrible cost to you. I’m sorry.” He looked in her eyes, willing her to look back. “But in the end, to use one of your favorite phrases, all manner of things will be well. Do you understand?”
“I—I think so.”
“Good. Because the Adversary is being more direct than usual. You’ve put yourself in the way of its latest chosen agent, and what you’re fighting is—well, let’s say it’s out of your power class. How did you feel this second time?”
“I—” Hope tried to remember. “I hardly had time to feel it before I was out.”
“Yes. Much of your pain, the first time, was your resistance. Your body heals fast, Hope, but your spirit was wounded by a poison that’s still in you. It leaves you more vulnerable. It would fade with time and your own will to fight it, but time is what you don’t have and so . . . poink.” He reached out and gently poked her cheek. Warmth spread from his finger, liquid and golden as honey. It flowed through every vein, she could feel it in her skin, in her eyes, on her tongue, through her heart and down the column of her body and into her fingers and toes.
Burning through her it left her light, like great weights had been put on her and she hadn’t even known she was being pressed to death until they’d been lifted, destroyed.
She started laughing and couldn’t stop. “Poink? Poink?”
“Be grateful. I could have honked your nose. And, here.” He handed her Malleus, and when she wrapped her fingers around its hilt she almost dropped it on the pew.
“It’s heavy. Well, heavier.” Swinging Ajax’ weapon—a hundred pounds of titanium alloy—had always felt like swinging her old field-hockey stick; tiring after a long hard match, but never so heavy she couldn’t swing it. This . . . She hefted it. This could wear her out. Eventually. Like a free-weight she’d used to do training workouts with had suddenly tripled in heft.
“I improved it a little,” he said as she examined it. “It looks the same but it’s denser than osmium, more than twice as dense as lead, and you’ll find it more durable than platinum-gold alloy. It’s nonferrous and nonconductive thermally and electrically. And it has some nonphysical qualities you’ll discover. May it be a light to you in dark places.”
“Funny. You stole that line.”
“Or inspired it, and it’s a fitting line. Have fun figuring the rest out.” He patted her knee, stood and adjusted his jacket. “You’ll see me again. In the meantime . . . be brave, Hope. Always, be brave. Only when you’re brave, can you find the good things.”
He walked out through the nave and into the night and Hope sat there. Eventually she realized her little votive candle was half-melted and making a mess. Picking it up, she cleaned up the wax.
Did any of that just happen? The feeling of joyful peace was fading, but the black despair she’d been carrying inside without realizing it—breathing deep and testing her heart, she could touch only a memory, an impotent shadow of it. No darkness, barely a dimming of the light. She ran her hand over Malleus. It looked like the weapon she’d brought to Brussels—Ajax’s spare short-handled battle maul,
the one she’d shattered in her second, short fight and left on the street. Its added weight was an unignorable testament that it wasn’t. “Shell?”
“Mmhm?”
“I know you keep a request-accessible memory of all my sensory experiences, through our quantum-neural link.”
“Right. . . .” Virtual Shell popped in, her t-shirt of the day reading I’m here because you broke something. “Is there something you want to review?”
“Everything from when I entered the church until now.”
“Gotcha, here we— What have you been doing? There’s a big block of nothing, and that’s not possible.”
She sighed. “I was afraid of that. I might have just witnessed a holy apparition.”
“No way!”
Chapter Twenty
Militia (noun): from Latin, miles, meaning soldier. A militia is 1) a military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency, 2) a military force that engages in rebel or terrorist activities in opposition to a regular army, and 3) the militia, all able-bodied civilians eligible by law for military service.
Blackstone poured the single fifth of scotch he allowed himself for the day. He’d been reserving it for this hour, and he swirled the golden liquid in its tumbler, inhaled, and sipped. Legal Eagle waited patiently on the other side of the desk; he’d passed on the offer, but knew the ritual. Finally Blackstone sighed. “How bad is it, Tom?”
“You mean, ‘How many laws did Astra break?’ Just the one, but it could be a big one. It depends on if the governor decides to take notice of it. Shall I spell it out?”
“I think you’re going to have to.”
“Alright.” Tommy Brannigan, esquire, pulled a thin folder from his briefcase and dropped it on Blackstone’s desk. “That’s the applicable case law. Materially, Astra is guilty of abandoning her area of responsibility under conditions of a declared state of emergency. It’s not desertion, since she has every intention of returning, but that just means the worst penalties don’t apply. I honestly don’t know how bad it can get. Given the lack of precedent decisions, the State Guard Uniform Code isn’t exactly clear on the subject.”
“Explain.”
“It comes down to how the State Guard system evolved, after the Event. Look, we have the US Military Services, under direct control of the President of the United States as Commander in Chief. But the US isn’t just a single unitary state; it’s also a federation of fifty semi-sovereign states. It’s in our name. The idea originally was the states would all field state militias of citizen-soldiers that could be called to national service to defend the country. A small national military of professional soldiers and sailors would form the trained core. I know this seems like ancient history, but it’s important.”
“Go on.”
“Okay, so the state militias were to be called up from the body of the unorganized militia—that’s all able-bodied adult males that are citizens or want to become citizens capable of serving and not disbarred from service by law. When called up, they had a duty to report for service in their militia unit with the weapons they were obligated to keep and practice with during peacetime. That’s what the second amendment in the Bill of Rights is all about—it protected the states from the possibility of a tyrannical national government in Washington by recognizing the people’s rights to possess the necessary means of their own personal and communal defense. Washington couldn’t tyrannize the armed states with its small national army, and couldn’t disarm the state militias because under the Bill of Rights it couldn’t disarm the states’ citizens.”
He shrugged. “Of course it didn’t work out that way in practice. Frankly, the states always struggled to maintain their militias in any semblance of military readiness. Eventually our national armed services were allowed to expand to fill the need but they still didn’t get very big. Are you with me so far?”
Blackstone took another sip and nodded.
“Okay, so bringing us up to the 20th Century, it took a lot to ramp our small national army up to what we needed for World Wars One and Two, and after that with the Cold War we found ourselves in a situation where we might need to do it again and do it fast. So Washington by stages augmented and reorganized the old state National Guard System as a federal reserve force, and mobilized trained guard units to support regular units when needed. But that left the state governments with no local forces that couldn’t be drawn into federal service at need.”
He laughed. “So to leave them something for their own emergencies, Washington recognized full state control over State Defense Forces. The federal government has no authority over them.” He waved a hand at the slim file.
“So here’s the point. The governor is the Commander-In-Chief of the Illinois State Guard, our SDF. Not the president. And there were two states of emergency declared, one by Washington, the other by Springfield. A national emergency, and a state emergency. As a member of the State Guard, Astra isn’t under federal authority at all—only the governor’s orders to the State Guard matter.”
He laughed again, but not like it was funny. “To other countries our system looks insane. But there it is. And the fact is Astra disobeyed orders from the governor, her Commander-In-Chief, in a matter involving the State Guard.”
Finishing his fifth, Blackstone rubbed his brow. “So again, how bad is it?”
“Only Astra’s on the hook for this. As one of the Sentinels’ two designated field leaders, in a fast-moving emergency she had the authority to mobilize any Sentinel, active and reserve. So materially, only Astra willfully abandoned her area of responsibility—but in a state of emergency, she took most of the team’s currently fieldable heavy-hitters completely out of the country.”
Blackstone winced. Only hours after the governor had publicly and officially told Washington to go piss up a rope, too. And I was the one who said I hoped she made flying to the rescue from halfway round the world a habit.
Cameras in Brussels had managed to catch images of the fighting: Iron Jack, Morrigan, Artemis, Kukkuu, The Harlequin, that mystery man Malmsturm, the mobilized Rotterdam Guard, even a few new attack-created breakthroughs— A 6-year-old Ajax-Type, for God’s sake! —but especially Astra. All of them were the heroes of the attack, but a photo of Astra bringing in the fallen Wunderkind, wrapped in the blue EU flag, had become the story image for news media across the EU. Hell, around the world. It had to be the most public willful abandonment of responsibility in history.
“If she told you what she was doing, could you have kept her from going spectacularly AWOL?” Tommy asked.
Not for all the money in the world. “No. With no fresh emergencies here, she wouldn’t have listened for a second.” And she’d already been upset enough about not being able to help elsewhere, where they’d needed it. I should have medically grounded her from the field for weeks.
“No.” Tommy suddenly smiled; the first cheerful expression Blackstone had seen on his face today. “And the governor and Adjutant General aren’t insane—they know how it will look if they slap her hard for it after our people helped save who knows how many people over there. But the State Guard system just won’t work if they don’t hand down some form of disciplinary action—the offense will require a court martial, even if one with a quick plea deal. I’ll talk with the Guard lawyers, see what we can come up with. Think she’ll take her medicine?”
“Like a trooper.” Or a damn martyr. He needed another drink, and that wasn’t going to happen.
“A solid apparition’s a contradiction in terms,” Shell said as Hope swung her new maul. She’d identified the looter as a transforming Dutch villain, Ijsselsteen—ironically Dutch Brick, for his solidity and color. Hope’d been flying back to their temporary base after filling in Shell and Jacky when she’d spotted the hulking figure robbing a jewelry store in a quarantine-emptied neighborhood.
“I know, Shell.” The heavier maul met stone-solid flesh with satisfying force and Ijsselsteen bounced off the stre
et. “‘Apparition’ is used as a Catholic term for—you’re having fun with me.”
She could see the glow of work lights from the crater, far from their dark street. The EU’s capes were busy digging—no more survivors were being found, but there were still remains and that was important—or helping emergency workers fight the deadline imposed by Rabies Lyssavirus Variant A. Europe didn’t have an Ozma with a Magic Belt, and the clock was ticking. The least she could do was help take care of the petty crime, and she’d decided to handle it herself. Jacky was content to let her; she’d dropped out of mist ready for action but stood back to watch and listen.
Shell laughed. “Is it? I missed the part about fun in Sunday School. Are you going to tell Father Nolan about it?”
Hope gave the villain time to climb to his feet and charge. “No. Unless I told him under the seal of the confessional, he’d have to report it. Then Rome would get involved and I’d be talking to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.” Spinning away from the Ajax-Type’s lunge, Hope smacked him in the side.
“The Inquisition? Why? Do you think they’d send Father Graff?”
Hope grinned at the thought of being interviewed by the gruff and tough inquisitor. He’d be cutting. “They’d want to get a preliminary ruling on whether or not it was an authentic holy apparition. Just like they do with miracle claims. And it might go public.”
Ijsselsteen yelled something in Dutch.
“Oooh, that was rude. That’s really what you’re afraid of, aren’t you? That everyone would know you’re carrying around a weapon given to you by the Archangel Michael. Would people want to touch it? One of Michael’s titles is Healer of The Sick. Hey, it’s not really Malleus anymore, is it?”
Hope threw herself forward to crash into Ijsselsteen, smacking him hard again on the bounce. Sooner or later the idiot was going to realize he just wasn’t in her class. “You can name it if you want, and yes that’s totally what I’m afraid of.”
Repercussions (Wearing the Cape Book 8) Page 18
