“I don’t think anyone’s here,” I called back to Clarence. My voice echoed. A furious, fiery angel made of broken shards of glass and pottery did not appear. I walked over to the big, square cabinet and pulled open its hinged doors. Light leaped out, startling me, but it was not the bright beams of a psychotic angel about to burn me to charcoal but the cool, misty light of Heaven, or at least as much of it as we ever saw outside of the real place, Upstairs.
What was inside the out-of-place cabinet was a cube of solid, shifting light—something I’d seen before. We had one in the advocate’s office downtown, where it was kept under lock, key, and the grumpy, watchful eyes of Alice the dispatcher. The cube looked like it was made from a single piece of crystal, but it was a lot more powerful than even the wildest New Age imagination could grasp. It was used to communicate directly with Heaven. Sam called that, “Going to Mecca.” I’ve never been the reverent type myself, so I only used the one downtown when I absolutely had to.
The problem with this particular cube was that it was almost certainly linked not to Heaven but to Anaita, and only to Anaita. I immediately shut the cabinet doors and moved away from it.
Continuing the investigation, I poked my head briefly into a large side room that appeared to be a kitchen, except the only appliance was a huge, beehive clay oven built into one wall. The ash in front of it was undisturbed. Whatever had destroyed the outside hadn’t even shaken the floor in here. I headed upstairs to the next level. The stairs, like the walls and roof, were very, very solid. I was beginning to think the house had been brought here—or created here—as a whole, and then the cruder furniture had been added by Sam’s Third Way souls as part of their new life.
But where were all those Soul Family Robinsons? And where was Sam? A nasty thought kept whispering that if I went outside and looked carefully, I might find ash outlines of more than just buildings—maybe even of something Sam-shaped—but I kept pushing that thought away.
The upstairs floors seemed to be mostly bedrooms, although that word is stretching it a bit. They were a lot more like the barracks at Camp Zion, with wall-to-wall bunk beds made in the same Tom Sawyer Island style as the rest of the furniture. These, at least, gave some sign of being slept in, the thin wool (and, again, very handmade) blankets tossed in disarray. It had clearly been something less expected than a military reveille that had got this group moving.
I was inspecting the dorms on the next floor up, trying to get a rough idea of how many people had lived here, when I heard Clarence call me from down below. He sounded a bit uptight, but why shouldn’t he be? “Be there in a second.”
“No, I think you should come. Now.”
Oh, shit, was my first thought. He’s found a body. I reached into my pocket out of habit, but there was no gun to be drawn. Usually I hate carrying them, because then I keep having to use them, but I hate it even more when I need one, and I don’t have one. My gun control dilemma in a nutshell.
“Bobby!”
“Coming, Junior.” I clomped down the stairs, making lots of noise so he’d hear me and unclench. “Just take a deep breath and hold your . . .”
I didn’t finish the sentence, because as soon as I saw Clarence standing in the middle of the dining hall I also saw the guy who was aiming a drawn bow at him, a very wicked-looking arrow balanced on the string, pointing right at the kid’s guts.
“Well,” I said in my calmest voice. “What have we here?”
The man with the bow turned to look at me. He was whipcord thin, with a narrow face, somewhere between twenty and thirty years old, and smeared with ash. He also had a healing scar on his forehead that went through one eyebrow like the San Andreas fault, giving him an expression of mild surprise, but his eyes were cold and hard, and his mouth was set in a thin line that said, “Don’t push me, because I’d love to put an arrow into this guy’s chitlins.” The weird thing, though, is that he looked somehow familiar.
“Who are you?” he demanded. It’s always a bit hinky when you change astral planes, since everything sounds like what you’re used to speaking, but I was pretty sure he was speaking actual modern English, despite being dressed like one of those guys in Last of the Mohicans, pseudo-Native-American gear of leather and fur and ragged cloth. (Okay, I didn’t actually read it, but I watched the hell out of that movie.)
“We’re not the ones who burned this place up, if that’s what you’re asking.”
The line of his mouth stayed as taut as his bowstring. “It’s not. I saw what happened here. Who are you?”
I wasn’t quite sure if somebody who’d watched Anaita trash the area was going to be thrilled with more angels, and I didn’t know what the rules here were as far as me and the kid dying painfully with arrows sticking through us. Would we come back? Not that I could afford to trust resurrection these days anyway. “Bobby. My name is Bobby. And this is—”
“Harrison,” said Clarence, and despite being on the verge of kebab-hood, the kid shot me an evil look. “My name is Harrison Ely. We’re not your enemies.”
“Be interested to know why you think that’s true,” said the man. There was still something about his face that struck a chord, at least what I could see of it under the ashy pseudo-camouflage. “But I think I’d better leave the questions up to the rest.” He moved the drawn bow off Clarence long enough to gesture toward the door. If I’d been close enough I might have tackled him then, but I wasn’t. So I didn’t. “Go on,” he said. “You first. And make it quick—I’m not staying here any longer than I need to.”
• • •
I won’t bore you with a description of our entire journey, except to say that as we left the house and its charred perimeter behind, the scenery became increasingly impressive. No, that’s a stupid, weaselly word. It wasn’t impressive, it was stunning. Gorgeous. Transcendent, even; as affecting as the first time I’d seen it. As we made our way out of the grassy foothills and up into the lower reaches of the mountains, I again had the strangest sensation of being under the influence of psychedelics. I don’t know if you’ve ever taken them, but the “is”-ness of everything becomes almost heartbreaking. Water is so unbearably transparent and yet full of color, and moves so strangely. Light is more refracted. Textures are astounding, and details you would otherwise overlook, like the pattern of bark on a tree, become as intricately fascinating as the most engrossing piece of art. And everything, simply everything, seems almost to glow from within, as if it has been constructed just for you to see at that moment and admire in its peak of perfection.
Kainos, once we got away from the site of Anaita’s apparent hissy fit, was a lot like that. Not because we were on drugs, and not because it was somehow supernatural, but because it was sort of ultimately natural, like a landscape created to remind people that we were part of nature and nature was part of us. Each tree seemed to bask in a certainty of its place in the universe. The soil was pungent with the smells that soil can give you, and they were all, even the slightly foul ones, just glorious. Even the rocks seemed to have a presence, like fascinating people. But I think it was the sky that really did me in. It was just a sky—blue, high, and full of streaky clouds—but for nearly the first time in my life it felt like something that was truly the crown of creation, the milky sapphire that surrounded us, and in which we were all fortunate to live.
“It’s a beautiful place,” I said at last, because I felt like if I didn’t say something the feelings would make my chest explode.
“It is,” the stranger replied, and for a moment the watchful look on his face eased. “When I first came here, I’d just walk. Walk and walk for hours. Lie on my back and watch the clouds. Like being a kid again.”
And then I recognized him. It was something in the light as he looked up that brought back a photograph I’d seen in his house, one that had been taken when he was about the age he appeared to be now, hiking up a mountain somewhere, looking young, healthy, and fu
ll of purpose. Completely unlike what he’d looked like when I’d first seen him in the flesh, in fact. He had been pink then, very pink, and very, very dead.
“Edward Walker,” I said. “You’re Edward Lynes Walker.”
He turned so quickly I didn’t even have a chance to step back. The arrow on the tight-drawn string was only about three inches from my left eye. “How do you know me?”
I considered telling him how his death and the disappearance of his soul had started me on a journey through a world of craziness, had nearly got me killed or worse a couple of dozen times, and eventually led me even into Hell itself, but I decided it could wait until I had a better idea of how things stood here. “I knew you when you were alive,” I said, which wasn’t exactly true, but I had spent a lot of time studying the living Ed Walker, so it wasn’t a complete lie, either.
He wasn’t content with that, but I drew the line and politely refused to say more until we got to wherever we were going. He threatened me a little, but I could see his heart wasn’t really in it. He might have shot me if I’d tried to disarm him, or maybe even if I’d tried to run, but he was at heart a scientist and a humanist and couldn’t quite work up the anger to skewer me in cold blood. At last, and none too graciously, he told me to get going again.
The journey lasted through the dying afternoon, and I had the pleasure of watching the sun setting in a world I’d never visited before. Except I felt pretty sure I had.
“This is Earth, isn’t it?” I said.
“Bobby!” Clarence thought I was going to try to trick Walker, and he clearly didn’t feel as confident about the man’s unwillingness to murder as I did.
“Yeah, it is,” Walker said. “Seems to be, anyway. An Earth without people. No farms, no cities, no dykes or canals or roads. Not even Native Americans stringing salmon nets across the river.”
“Huh,” I said. “Place looks a lot happier without us, doesn’t it?”
“I guess so,” Walker said. “Now, a little less chatter or someone’s going to hear an unfamiliar voice and put some arrows in you, and maybe hit me by accident. I hate those kind of accidents.”
I took the hint.
We hiked up what looked like a deer track, out of the scrubby oak forest and into something altogether more northern and more hoodoo. The air turned tangy with the smell of resin, and soon we were surrounded by redwoods and pines tall enough to block the light. I thought we must be getting close, since the cover was deep enough for hiding pretty much anything you wanted to hide, but I was still startled when a high-pitched voice out of the trees said, “Stop or you’re dead.”
“It’s me, Sharif,” Ed Walker called. “We’ve got company. Run ahead and tell them.”
“Will do!” said the voice, which sounded like it belonged to a young boy.
A few moments later we reached a level promontory. Men dressed in the same caveman-chic as Ed Walker appeared from the shadows, quickly surrounding us. They all had homemade weapons, cudgels, spears, and more bows, so I kept my hands visible and tried to look harmless. Clarence was doing it too, like a new kid on his first day of school.
“Give them some room,” a familiar voice called from back in the woods. Our captor walked us forward, through a good-sized crowd who had come to stare at us, until I could see a group of men and women around a small fire whose glow was almost completely blocked by the stones piled around it. Sitting in the middle, still wearing the tattered remains of the suit he’d had on the last time I’d seen him, but also wrapped in skins and rags as well, sat Sam. “That you, B?” he called. “Hey, and the kid, too! I was beginning to wonder if you were coming. Took you guys long enough.”
“I just got your message,” I said. “In fact, you were over in my neck of the woods, what, yesterday? So it hasn’t been very long. You okay, man?”
“Yesterday on Earth. It’s been a good bit longer here.” Sam laughed—not the cheerful kind. “So, what do you think of the place? I hope you like it, old buddy, because I don’t think any of us are going to be leaving.”
forty-three
another fine mess
“WELL, DAMN, Ollie,” I said to Sam as we seated ourselves on a couple of the rocks ranged around the fire. “Sorry about this.”
“It’s one of your best, Stanley.” He shook his head in his best Oliver Hardy style. Usually this is funny, sort of, even when we’re in a horrible situation, but I don’t think either of us was feeling very cheerful. Knowing how much water you’ve both seen go under the bridge isn’t much comfort when the bridge finally collapses.
We all sat in silence and tried to warm our hands. Many of the Kainos-folk, who’d been watching our exchange like worried kids spying on the grown-ups, began to relax, or at least not to feel actively endangered. There were no real children, of course. Even the sentry Sharif, who in person turned out to look like a teenager, had probably lived a long full life, since that was the only kind of volunteer the Magians had recruited to come here, experienced adults willing to trade in the coin-flip of Heaven or Hell for a more nuanced afterlife. I imagine by now some of them were regretting the decision. Ragged, many of them bandaged, the Third Way pioneers looked a lot more like international refugees than the souls of the great and good enjoying their reward. A quick estimate of the number of campfires scattered through the woods told me there were probably only a few hundred survivors here in total. Not exactly an army.
The ground was hard and the air was raw and chilly, but at least whatever version of Earth this resembled wasn’t in the middle of winter. That was a good thing, because the fire wasn’t big enough to cook a single strip of bacon.
“How did everything go bad so fast, Sam? How much time’s gone by here since I saw you?”
“About two weeks, I guess. But it happened pretty quickly. You-Know-Who showed up the same day I got back. Luckily, most of us were away from the settlement when she came. Man, that angel’s not just ambitious, or complicated—she’s insane, or at least she was when she got here. Some of our bosses are complete assholes, literally holier-than-thou, but her . . . there’s something really wrong.”
“Doctor Gustibus,” I began, then realized Sam didn’t know who he was. It was another small blow, since in the old days Sam knew everything I knew, but things were different now and had been ever since this Third Way thing started. “This guy I know, kind of a researcher, said that she’s not like all the other angels because she was a goddess first.”
“Yeah, and not the nice kind.” Sam was bleak. “She came in here like gangbusters.”
I shook my head in frustration. “But we still don’t know why she built this place, what the whole thing is about. Why would she make such a risky deal? And what did Eligor get out of it?”
Clarence spoke up. “Is there something here she needs?”
Sam grunted. “What does a Heavenly Power need that she doesn’t already have? Or can’t already make?”
“This is horseshit,” said a third, clearly angry voice. I turned. It was Ed Walker, who was sitting a few feet away, giving us a bit less respectful distance than the others. “We’ve got more important things to do than talk about crap like that. Like surviving.”
“Simmer down, Ed.” Sam turned to me. “I assume you’ve figured out who this is by now. He’s a good man, but things have been a little difficult for all of us—”
“You don’t have to apologize for me, Sammariel,” said Walker. “We’ve got several hundred people here to protect, and she’s coming back. She’s coming back because of you.” He spat. “You Magians, you . . . angels.” It was a curse word. “You’re the cause of this. And now your crazy boss is going to destroy us all.”
“Or maybe your souls will go where they should have gone in the first place,” Clarence said. “The Highest won’t just let you disappear.”
“I had years left to live!” Walker stood up. “We need to kill that monster o
r buy her off somehow, because we can’t beat her. And if you can’t think of a way to do either of those things, then we’re all just wasting time here when we should be trying to get as far away as possible.” He gave Clarence and me a nasty look. “And when we run for it, our chances will be a lot better if we don’t take any angels with us—not even you, Sam.” He picked up his bow, turned, and marched away from the fire.
“Don’t mind Ed,” Sam told me as he watched Walker go. “He’s been patrolling night and day. He’s tired and scared. We all are.” But he looked bothered.
“How many people do you have here?” I asked. “And how do you keep them all fed?”
Sam actually smiled. “Fed? This was going to be a paradise, son! Souls don’t have to eat here in Kainos, although they can. Some of the settlers eat fruit or edible roots and vegetables, just because they like to. And of course we use the plants to make things.” He held up the blanket he wore over his suit coat. The coarse-woven fabric looked a lot like burlap. “There’s a plant fiber that we’ve learned to weave. And there are sheep and other animals, so I’m sure we’ll learn how to make proper clothing someday soon.”
“We? You sound like you’ve gone native, Sammy-boy.”
He didn’t smile this time. “I’ve had to pitch in. After all, I’m the one who brought a lot of these people here. And there’s plenty to learn—or re-learn, in a sense. Kainos has only existed for a few years, after all, and we recruited more scholars than farmers. That was Kephas’s—You-Know-Who’s doing. It’s like she went out of her way to pick the philosophical over the practical.”