So I gave up, at least for the moment. “Do I get a mouthpiece?”
“I’m Sorry, I Don’t Understand.”
“A lawyer. An advocate—the same job I do for humans? Do I get someone to argue for me?”
The coolness in the voice told me before I heard the words. “This Is Not An Adversary System, Doloriel, Such As We Have With The Opposition. The Object Is Not Victory, The Object Is Truth.” I could hear that damned capital T like it was printed ten feet high on the emptiness in front of me. If Chamuel had possessed a face at that moment, I would most likely have punched it, because Truth was clearly the one thing that was not going to play any part at all in this farce.
“And so the five of you are going to decide whether I live or die?”
“Nobody Dies, Angel Doloriel.” Chamuel’s tone told me he had finished with me for the present, and was glad of it. “That Is The Good Word We Of Heaven Know And The Good Word We Speak. No Soul Is Ever Truly Lost. It Is Only A Question Of Where—And How—You Will Spend Eternity.”
Then he left me alone in the white again.
• • •
The next time I came back, it started with points of color. At first I thought I was hallucinating. I’d been doing a lot of that, although, in that odd situation, the difference between hallucinations and regular old dreaming would be hard to define. Here and there in the vast, depthless, edgeless white, I noticed what seemed like miniature rainbows, disturbances that had color and even movement. I had been drifting, thinking about my archangel Temuel and how stupid I’d been to trust him when he had obviously planned to throw me under the heavenly bus at the first sign of trouble. But partway through an elaborate fantasy of ratting him out and letting him spend a few thousand years in his beloved Hell, singing “Kumbaya” to demons, I had begun to realize that the way Temuel had given me up didn’t quite make sense. In fact, he’d gone about it in a very complicated way that I needed to consider more carefully. Then the slow swirl of colors distracted me.
The colorful spots became brighter, first gleaming, then actually shining, and with that shine came a certain form. No, five forms. Five shining lights. My judges, my jury, and probably my executioners, the Ephorate.
As they became more substantial—although calling these ephemeral, vaguely human shapes made of light “substantial” is stretching it a bit—I could even recognize them, but only because I’d seen them all before—Terentia, the leader, Raziel, mysterious as a locked box, Chamuel, the color of a dying sun, and Karael, the only one who had ever seemed like he thought I was more than a bug to be splattered on God’s windshield. And of course my old friend, Anaita, the monster who was going to walk away clean while I flame-broiled in Hell. Oh, how I wished I’d dropped a dime on her while I still could, before she got into my mind and soul and neutered me.
“Doloriel,” said the cool but somehow benevolent glow that was Terentia. “God Loves You. You Have Had Time To Contemplate The Charges Against You, And To Consider The Health Of Your Immortal Soul. Is There Anything You Would Like To Say Before We Begin?”
Just as an experiment, with no real hope it would succeed, I tried to say “Yeah, Anaita over there is framing me,” but it only came out as “No.” Just “no.” So that was definitely how it was going to be. “Let’s get on with it,” is what I said next. That came out fine.
“Your Judgement Will Take Place Before The Assembled Hosts Of Heaven,” Terentia said.
“Sure. Wouldn’t want anyone to miss this much fun.” No problem with those words either—even the fine edge of sarcasm was left intact, because it was useless to me and harmless to Anaita, of course. I wondered how tight her control over me might be. Was it active? Was she hearing everything I was thinking before I said it? Or were there blocks in place, like some kind of automatic censorship program?
“Terentia, The Hosts Are Waiting.” If Chamuel had been a man instead of a glowing, man-shaped hole in the pearly emptiness, I would have said he seemed to be irritated that this was taking so long, but since this was Heaven and angels famously don’t give a shit about time, I must have been wrong.
“Yes, The Moment Has Come.” Terentia’s radiance widened, as though she raised her arms or spread her wings. “Come, Doloriel. And Fear Not—God Truly Does Love You.”
“Yeah. I’ll try to remember that.” It wasn’t entirely sarcasm this time. A part of me still hoped, like a very young child hopes, that Somebody really was going to step in and save me. Because minus divine intervention, these good, kind, all-knowing angels were going to hang me. What made it really upsetting, though, was that they were going to hang me for the one thing I actually hadn’t done.
• • •
So they paraded me through Heaven.
Of course, just by saying that, I’ve given you the wrong impression. They didn’t literally put me in a tumbrel and wheel me through the shining streets like a French aristocrat going to the guillotine. I could barely tell it was going on, except for the fact that it actually took time to reach the High Hall of Heaven’s Judgement. Normally when you go somewhere in Heaven, you just leave the place you were and arrive in the place you’re going; there’s no more sense of transition than a film dissolve. But instead I could perceive myself moving past and through the hordes of Heaven, and could feel them all reacting to me. As with so many things up there, it’s not very easy to describe. I felt like a soap bubble in a tub full of suds: I traveled not so much by actually moving as by sort of sliding from being one bubble to being the next, as though I was not even a bubble but some color or bit of surface tension that could slip from one connection to the next without disturbing the whole. But still, I felt the curiosity of Heaven’s citizens as I moved past them and through them, and more than a little of their discomfort at what was happening. Everybody’s happy in Heaven, but there are gradations; wherever I passed on my way to judgement I could sense a little ripple of less-than-perfect happiness spreading outward behind me.
A smart guy once said, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture,” and trying to explain Heaven is the same way: words just don’t do it. Words have to come afterward, and usually they’re very bad tools for defining what actually happens Upstairs.
Anyway, I slipped, I slid, I lingered long enough in some spots to become a fact and briefly enough in others to be only a feeling. Whatever else they were doing, most of the angelic throng gave part of themselves to the spectacle, following me and communicating among themselves about it. Almost none of them knew me personally, of course, but by the time I reached the Hall of Judgement most of them felt they did. My anonymity—the anonymity of most angels, individual happiness bugs in a giant, joyful hive—had changed. I was more than a single angel now, but also something less—an Idea, perhaps, or a Concern. But what I felt pretty sure Heaven actually wanted me to be was an Example.
I too had experienced things like this and had even participated, during the innocence of my earliest days in Heaven. I remembered being certain that justice would always be served, that no matter how odd or confusing the situation, the hand of the Highest was guiding the proceedings. Because it was Heaven, truth had to win out. I guess I’d lost a little faith since then.
The Hall of Judgement was full, not with physical bodies, but with presences. I don’t know how many angels were there to see what happened to me close up, to learn what I’d done and what would be done with me, but I could feel them and even sort of see them all around me, filling the vast space like a billion dandelion puffs. The great Paslogion loomed over us, a sort of clock tower (that’s my best guess) which dominates the hall, a huge, powerful something made of translucent layers of transparent wheels. As far as I knew, it measured the reality of everything that ever was or ever would be. The shining tower reminded me now of what a small thing I was in the larger scheme: my trial and my inevitable sentence would be no more significant to the eternities the Paslogion studied than the
pinging of a single subatomic particle.
And that’s where you and I came in together, remember? Where this story began, with me in the dock, as they used to say in old English murder mysteries, and five judges getting ready to hand down a guilty verdict. Of course there were a few formalities to be observed first, like the trial.
• • •
What seemed hours of discussion passed solely in laying out the charges, but I won’t bore you with that, or the even longer parade of “evidence” that followed. As I had been told, the charges boiled down to, “All that Third Way shit was Doloriel’s fault.” But the fine points of heavenly justice had to be observed, and each block in the false edifice of my guilt had to be carefully crafted and put into place. I answered all questions to the best of my ability, usually honestly, because the crimes of which I was accused weren’t mine. But since I could never name the truly guilty party, I didn’t help my own cause much. Basically, the case against me was that Sam and I had connived to overthrow the Heavenly order. Yes, that was the claim: the two of us low-level angelic schmuckos had come up with a plan to create an entire new reality all by ourselves, and then found a demon lord (to help us get around the Tartarean Convention agreements between Heaven and Hell) to build the place. And with no Sam and no mysterious Kephas-angel present in the courtroom to say otherwise, nobody bothered to disagree with this preposterous nonsense.
So that was me, apparently: Bobby Dollar, king of the rebel angels, the greatest traitor since Lucifer demanded his own key to the executive washroom. And this time I’d be the one to get the brimstone parachute.
The Great Frame-Up started with the fact that I’d been on the scene when the first Third Way soul disappeared, the now infamous Edward L. Walker. Of course, it had been as big a surprise to me at the time as anyone else, but as they piled on other guilty-looking things I’d done, such as letting Sam escape me at Shoreline Park, it wasn’t hard to see that my participation would seem pretty obvious to anyone who didn’t know the whole truth. The odd thing I noticed after a while, though, was that other than the Walker disappearance, they weren’t using any of the most damning evidence against me—the things that had actually happened.
For instance, it’s a Bobby Dollar Fact that I’d coshed junior angel Clarence with the butt of my gun out at Shoreline so Sam could get away (because at the time, Clarence was working undercover for our bosses) but that little bit of assault wasn’t even mentioned. It would have been a perfect example of my obvious guilt, but apparently Clarence hadn’t told them. I was glad to know even at this hopeless stage of things that the kid really was my friend, even though it wasn’t going to make any difference in the verdict—just one less “crime” to consider when they already had quite enough to measure me for the gallows-drop.
That wasn’t the only strange omission, either. The ephors knew I’d been in touch with demons—they mentioned it about ninety times—but for some reason nothing at all was said about my actual trip to Hell, which was an extremely major crime and one I’d actually committed. I had to assume they simply didn’t know about it, because it sure would have made a nice piece of evidence of my total guilt. I mean, even demons only go to Hell because they have to.
And even weirder, they didn’t mention Caz at all, at least not any of the things that would have really put the last knot in my noose, like the fact of us having vigorous angel-demon sex, or me pledging my undying love to her in front of the Ralston Hotel (the hotel Eligor would blow up about ten minutes later). Now, since Temuel, the guy who handed me over to the heavenly authorities, had been deeply involved in me getting to Hell, it seemed like the Ephorate should know all about my little trip, but not a word was said. Maybe the ephors were just protecting their archangel minion, but it still didn’t seem quite right. It would have been easy to claim Temuel was acting under orders when he helped me—that he had just been giving me enough rope to hang myself. So why no mention of Hell, which was a slam-dunk fact?
No mention of Hell and no mention of Caz, either—the reason I’d gone to Hell in the first place. Both of them would have been perfect additions to the case against me. The only reason I could imagine was a strange one: Temuel hadn’t told them about any of it.
Was the Mule protecting his missionary work in Hell? Or some swindle of his own? Or had he genuinely been trying to help me? I couldn’t hope to figure it out while on trial, and there almost certainly wasn’t going to be a later—at least not a later where I’d have leisure to think about stuff like that, because I’d be too busy trying to breathe burning sewage while getting pitchforked repeatedly in the ass—so I let it go.
I have no idea how long the trial went on, because, you know, Heaven. The questioning itself was generally formal and straightforward, and there wasn’t much open debate between the angelic judges, at least not so the heavenly public could hear, but I was pretty certain that a great deal of conversation was going on between the five of them. I could almost sense their thoughts buzzing back and forth through the heavenly ether like overexcited electrons or some game of multihyperdimensional Pong. I sometimes thought I could get a glimpse of the argument in the tone of their voices when they did speak, and the colors that flickered through their flames. Anaita took the lead in a prosecutorial sense, and generally, Chamuel backed her. Terentia and sexless Raziel were more careful and asked more general questions, as though trying to better understand what happened. And Karael, although he seldom spoke up, tried to keep the evidence against me from being overstated, balking at exaggerations like the bluff, military type he often seemed to be. He wasn’t exactly on my side, but he didn’t seem intent on bundling me into the Down elevator as quickly as possible, either. I decided if I ever had another afterlife in which to do it, I’d thank him for his open-mindedness.
One thing I did learn, which I hadn’t known before (and hadn’t particularly wanted to know, either) was that Anaita had more clout with the others than I realized. In fact, she was apparently the ephor closest to being anything as simple as “in charge” of San Judas and all its earthbound angels, and I understood for the first time how she could have gotten away with something as big and crazy as the creation of Kainos. Which raised another question: Had Temuel been working for her all along? Maybe that was why nothing that would make him look bad had come up during the trial. Maybe she’d picked me out as her sucker from the first and had used Temuel to lead me right up the ramp into the slaughterhouse.
That still didn’t feel quite right, either, and, as I said, I had other things to worry about just then. Still, there were some angles I definitely didn’t understand about the Mule’s role in my downfall.
• • •
“I Sense That There Are No More Questions Relating To The Accusations,” Terentia said at last when the examination had slowed a bit. I could feel a bodiless stir of anticipation pass through the countless spectators, wherever they might actually have been, at the signal that the end of this whole sordid affair was near. Now it was time for Justice, or so they thought. “Does Anyone Wish To Add Anything?”
And then Karael, warrior angel and hero of the Fall, said something that, for the second time in my otherwise bi-incurious life, made me want to wrap him in my arms and just smooch the holy heck out of him.
“Actually,” he said, “I’d Like To Hear Whether The Accused Has Anything Else To Say In His Own Defense.”
“Why?” asked Anaita in her sweetest little doll-baby voice, but I thought I could feel the fury she was hiding. “Has This Doloriel Not Been Given Ample Chance To Respond Already? Instead He Has Mocked The Proceedings At Every Chance, Avoided Direct Answers, And Trifled With This Ephorate’s Generosity By Making Unnecessarily Snide Remarks.”
“I’m Afraid I Agree With Anaita, Our Blessed Sister,” intoned Chamuel. “The Only Value To Heaven This Angel Retains Is That Of A Bad Example, And We Will Not Receive Any Value For That Until He Has Been Sentenced.”
“Raz
iel?” Terentia asked. “What Say You, Comrade?”
The mystery that was the fifth ephor didn’t come any closer to revealing itself, but did add (after a long, deliberate silence that would have made me sweat bullets if I’d been wearing a physical body) “I Would Be Willing To Listen To What The Prisoner Has To Say.”
I almost cried out with relief, though my doom had probably been postponed only by a few seconds. Now it was down to Terentia to cast the deciding vote. Her glow dimmed just the smallest bit, and I felt a sense of growing fear that she would deny me this one, tiny chance. Because I had an idea. Yes, it was a bad one. Many of mine are, especially when I’m nervous because someone’s about to destroy me, but it was the only idea I had and the only chance I would get.
“I See No Harm In It,” she said at last. “Doloriel, You May Speak.”
I knew that if I said anything that implicated Anaita, the safeguards she’d put in place would stop me before I got it out. I had to be careful. I’d only have one try.
“Thank you, Masters and Mistresses,” I said. “Instead of making a statement, I have something to ask—a request. I ask you to consider it carefully.” Anaita’s manipulation wasn’t just passive: I could feel her hovering over my thoughts like a fearful miser, ready to snatch back anything useful before I could speak it. My only hope was that I’d surprise her by taking a different direction, so I took a deep, metaphorical breath before plunging in.
“We Are Waiting, Doloriel.” Terentia sounded like her patience was fading.
“Very well. I respectfully request that you delay your judgement in this matter until all the facts are known.”
“What Can This Mean?” demanded Chamuel, like a grumpy old man kept up past bedtime. “Facts? We Have Uncovered All The Facts!”