Chapter 11 Before You Were Born
That same afternoon, after returning from her page duties, Prevarica Leasing finally worked up the courage to show her father what she had stolen from Chief Sordid’s office. But even then she handed Guiles not the report she had printed off but a photocopy of it. Neither did she tell him that Wisdom had been present during the theft, for her father would not praise her heartily for her larceny if he knew she had allowed a witness.
They were having one of their cozy times in the basement, that is, the only inhabitable part of the near ruin that was Leasing House, and enjoying these times as he did, Guiles did not at first spoil things by saying anything negative. With his darling and favorite practically on his lap, he read through the document with her, exclaiming over its priceless secrets and praising her for her cleverness in filching it. He shuddered with her over the memo’s apocalyptic disclosures concerning the dark fate of the City—though she noted he did not seem as surprised about the threats from Heaven and Hell as might have been expected. But when she spoke to him of the memo’s value as a blackmail weapon, even he, who never corrected her, had to contradict her.
“Yes, I’m proud of you, princess, very proud,” he said, “but we don’t dare try to manipulate the City bosses, you see, for fear of being silenced. Daddy has heard of people who have tried this sort of thing on Mr. Power, and the remains of their bodies were so widely scattered that—well, let’s just say that their families concluded that open casket was not an option.”
He put a finger under her chin. “Honey, I know it would be delightful to blackmail the City leaders and to deprive the whole town of the benefit of the Mammon’s money, plunging everyone into a panic of desperation and fear. Oh yes, daddy dreams of such things too. But we are humble people, Prevarica, and must content ourselves with creating misery in smaller ways.”
“Yes, daddy,” she said trustingly.
“A more lowly path can be fulfilling in its way. Just today I got our car repaired at a struggling garage and paid with a bad check. I can’t be sure, but it just might be the last blow that puts Charlie and his wife out of business. Who knows? Sometimes you just have to believe that what you’re doing stabs people in ways that will finish them. Do you know what I mean, Princess?”
“Yes, daddy.”
“Of course you do. Well, let’s do what we have to with this,” he said sadly, picking up the memo again. He rose and inserted the two sheets into a shredder which buzzed for a few seconds. “Princess, you didn’t make any copies, did you?”
“No, daddy.”
“That’s my girl. Now go and torment one of your brothers.”
“Yes, daddy.”
She kissed his cheek and left the room, silently assuring herself that she would not try to use the original copy in any way.
The inhabitants of Grace House and Hope House received an email that afternoon from Love Orchard, one that was not cheery and encouraging as was her usual. She had been talking with her husband Captain Mercy, she said, and had learned from him, to her amazement, that the status of the Heavenite Invasion had changed. Though Mercy had kept the intended date of the invasion a secret even from her, its status had been no secret. The Orchards had known for years that it had been code green—that is, absolutely commanded to take place. But the status now was code yellow, that is, not called off but on hold. Young officers, such as Lt. Justice and Lt. Retribution, who had been planning the rebuilding of the New City, had been called back to the ship and reassigned. The ship’s land vehicles, that had freely patrolled near the massive ship’s hull, and sometime’s across the City, had also been called in.
Something was dreadfully wrong then, for Mercy had told her that yellow was a code often used shortly before a mission was cancelled. Certainly, the Gloria Dothan was ready to sail away at short notice if ordered to do so. And if that happened, Love wrote with uncharacteristic alarm, the Lord’s glory would depart with her. The City would be doomed.
She ended by saying that nothing but the return of her brother Patience would prevent a disaster, at this point making mysterious reference to enemy agents who must be coped with. She said that she had sent her message to Patience, begging him to hurry home.
Wisdom read this email after school (for unlike Prevarica, he was attending school again, having given up on being a page) while visiting with his chum Quake Hope and making use of his friend’s computer. Quake reacted with typical anxiety, but Wisdom, taking it in thoughtfully, simply walked the short distance home from Hope House, intending to ask his father about it.
He was in time for dinner, but found the Grace household so upset that meal preparations were on hold. This was due not to Love’s email but to another and more recent alarm. Several of the Orchard siblings led him to the backyard to show him something that must have happened the previous night but that had only just been discovered, for it happened that no one had been in back of the house that day until a short time earlier when Miss Honesty had gone out to fetch a watering can. The homely little convert to Heaven, they told Wisdom, had come running back into the house yelling, ‘My brother! My brother!’
Led forward through the spring flowers and near to the fountain, he now saw that a large and deep hole had been dug in the damp soil, in the process destroying quite a few of the flowers. At the bottom of the hole, with its lid off, was something that looked for all the world like an ancient sarcophagus and stood empty. Standing at the edge of the hole, the house security expert Mrs. Obscurity was taking pictures of the damage in order to preserve a record of it before leading a cleanup effort.
Nearby, Ambassador Grace was speaking reassuringly to some of the younger Orchards, who stood about him with taut expressions.
“It was not unexpected,” he said to them. “Don’t they always fill up the measure of their sins?”
“What did this?” Wisdom asked.
“It’s about something that happened before you were born,” Faithfulness said to him. The thirty year old woman was standing with her arm around the bony little shoulders of Honesty, who appeared to need comforting. “On the night we moved in here, dad and some of the others found Honesty’s brother Edgar in the house and brought him out here and buried him.”
Wisdom thought his parents had told him something of this once, when he had been so young that it had been of little interest to him.
“They didn’t bury him alive?” he asked. That hardly seemed likely, but would make the story far more interesting.
“No dead,” Honesty said hollowly. “His real name is Death. ‘Edgar’ was just a pseudonym. My name was Doubt then, and I brought him into the house to live with me. After the King came to the house, Death had to go.”
“And he was supposed to stay buried,” Faithfulness said almost fiercely. “Why would anyone dig him up?”
“Because some people think he will be useful to them,” Grace said. “Though he can only be bones now, Edgar will have his effect on others.”
“Yes, Death is not what you think,” Honesty said, looking straight into Wisdom’s face. “He doesn’t speak or walk, but he plans and he grasps and he holds on. Oh yes, we Hellites always found him useful.”
Wisdom understood that, when she spoke of herself as a Hellite, she referred only to what she once had been—before he was born. That night when she had fallen over dead and had been resurrected, that night when Edgar had been buried, was the same night when his parents had become engaged. Truth had proposed to Reason, he suddenly remembered, while this very grave was being dug. Somehow that made it seem less scary.
“What should we do, sir?” Goodness Orchard, another of the girls, said to the Ambassador. “Love thinks the invasion may not come at all, ever, and now this.”
To Wisdom’s surprise, Grace did not answer at once, and when he did speak, his words were less than heartening.
“Do?” he said rather roughly. “You will continue to work as you have these fourteen ye
ars. I won’t hide from you that something is deeply wrong with the plans for the liberation of the City. Our two greatest enemies have combined in such a way as to make the invasion impossible. That’s why the King has ordered the status changed.”
“Will Paish come back?” Faithfulness asked, using her favorite name for her younger brother Patience. “Not just Love but all of us think he should be here at a time like this.”
“That’s the only consolation I can give you,” said the old man. “I have received word that Patience has been allowed a change of assignment. I can’t say exactly when he will be here, but I believe it won’t be long. Ah, I see you all look relieved at that, even in the midst of troubles, and well you should. The City may think they have acquired a mighty ally in Death, but we have Patience, and I prophesy that they will regret that they ever escalated the fight to such a degree that he was brought in against them.” He paused and looked from one of them to another. “Wisdom, lad! You are positively beaming. Good, teach the rest of us not to be so gloomy and serious. Come, all of you do your work, as I say, and let’s see what a week will bring. Some of you finish getting dinner ready. Obscurity, carry on with the cleanup.”