by Graeme Smith
Haures clutched his head. “And just how are you going to get there, Barbas?”
Barbas-Jack looked puzzled. “Get where, traitor?”
“Any-bloody-where! He broke the Rules!”
Barbas-Jack stopped raising eyebrows, and went back to looking worried. His brow furrowed, and a sullen red glow began to spread from him. It reached the walls of 350—and stopped. “What? It cannot be!” He tried to glare at me. The glare took one look, and gave up its seat to fear. “What have you done, mortal?”
“IT’S A RIGHT BUGGER, ISN’T IT?” The old man in the red overalls and a blinding white t-shirt wasn’t anyone I’d put behind a wall. That didn’t stop him walking through it. “OH. HELLO, JACK.”
Haures blanched. “Er … you’re … aren’t you?” He dropped to one knee.
Barbas-Jack laughed. “Fool. It is my Prince! He has come for—” He stopped. “Er—you are my Prince, are you not?” He dropped to one knee as well.
“YES.”
“Hah!” Haures and Barbas both laughed. Then they looked at each other. Then at the old man.
“But….”
“But….”
“YES.” The old man grinned. “LIKE I SAID. IT’S A RIGHT BUGGER.” The old man looked at me. “Look, do you mind if I don’t keep doing the whole ‘do you mind’ thing?”
I shrugged.
“YOU SEE—er—you see, they’re a little miffed with you, Jack.”
I shrugged again.
The old man grinned. “Mostly because you just destroyed the universe.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Nudge
What do you do when an old man in overalls tells you just destroyed the universe? Most folk either laugh at the poor crazy guy, or panic. Me? I tried the door. Well I would have. If the one I’d come in by had still been there at least. Since it wasn’t, I raised an eyebrow at the old man and grabbed the pick I kept near for when someone else needed a new home behind the wall. I swung it—hard.
I was going to need a new pick.
“Jack?” Prowess was starting to look pale.
“P?”
“I’m … I’m kind of hungry, Jack.”
Prowess doesn’t eat. Not people food. When she isn’t gorging at concert, she grazes on the scraps of soul people leave behind them and call memory. And there’s always soul for her to feed on. So long as there’s more people than two Fallen Angels, a guy without a soul and an old guy I was pretty convinced qualified as old, but that was probably about it. I looked at the old guy. “So what happens now?”
The old man shrugged. “BUGGERED IF … I mean, buggered if I know, Jack.”
Haures gasped. “But….”
The old guy shook his head. “I know. Omniscient.” He sighed. “Look. If I know everything that’s going to happen, how can….” he waved at Prowess, me and Blondie, “how can they have Free Will? How can they Choose?” He looked at me and shook his head. “They just don’t think.” He grinned. “Of course, they were made that way. You see, Jack, I messed up. I made a deal” the white t-shirt glowed bright, “with, well, with me.” The red overalls burned sullen red. “Of course, neither of me told, um, me about it. That’s what happens when you delegate. I don’t know what I was thinking.” If I was looking as glazed as Prowess was, the eyebrow he raised made sense. Which was more than he did. He sighed. “Look. Part of me agreed to look the other way while the other part of me gave poor Haures there a new job downstairs. Or what was going to be downstairs. And part of me agreed not to notice when Barbas over there tempted one of the Unborn, and gave young Tepes a way to create an army of un-souls to storm the Gates of Heaven. That was the deal.”
“The deal?” I didn’t mind poker. Just this time it looked like I was one of the cards. We all were.
The old guy shrugged. “See, you just can’t get the staff these days. Even when you are the bloody staff.” He stopped, frowning. “Oh, bugger. Is that a Paradox again? Damn. Well, and bless I suppose. I was going to leave that out this time. Oh, well. Let there be, like, Paradox.” He waved his hand vaguely at the wall and tilted his head. Whatever he was listening for, he seemed to think he heard it. Which was more than I did. “Lucky for you my tongue slipped there, Jack. Accidentally, like.” For some reason, he winked. At me.
Haures looked at me. He looked at Barbas. “Oh. Ohhh….”
Barbas was looking as scared as Haures was. And I hadn’t even hit him recently. “Please, Haures. Allow me. I am not quite so … restricted.” He looked at me, still scared. “Oh shit. Oh crap.”
If it was my turn, I had no idea what it was my turn to do. So I didn’t. I waited.
The old man waved a hand again. “Let there be chairs.” A chair appeared behind everybody, including him. He sat down. “That’s better. All that standing. Plays merry hell with my knees, it does. Well, it would if there was, like, a Hell right now.” Everybody sat. Me, I leaned against a wall. If the room we were in was all there was, I figured I could trust it for a while. I wasn’t so sure about the old guy. There series of thuds as various rears hit floor where chairs used to be told me I was right. The old guy sniggered. “Heh. Sorry. Couldn’t resi—”
The end of what I figured would be ‘resist’ lost itself in the smack. The smack that came when he hit the wall. The wall I’d thrown him into.
“Jack! You can’t!” Prowess blanched.
“Mortal! You will doom us all!” Barbas sounded like he was giving up on scared and trying to remember how to be terrified.
“Oh crap.” Haures seemed to have forgotten about any restrictions. “Barbas. I think you missed the point.”
“What point, Traitor?”
“He’s still here.”
Everybody looked at me. Me, still being there. Still being there and not, I supposed, being blasted into not-being by the old guy I’d just smacked. Which was mostly why I’d done the smacking. To find out. I yanked him up. “Chairs.”
“What? Tough guy, huh? Hitting old men like me?”
I smacked him into the wall again. “Chairs.”
The old guy shrugged, and waved his hand. “Alright, already! Just my little joke, it was. So you want chairs? Let there be chairs!”
I threw him down into the chair I’d smacked him out of. I waited.
The old guy grinned. “Damn, boy. You’re good. I did alright when I—” He stopped. “Let’s pretend I didn’t say that, shall we?” He waved his hand. “Since they won’t REMEMBER IT ANYWAY.” Prowess, Heuras, Barbas—they just froze solid. Stopped moving. The old guy raised an eyebrow. “YOU GONNA SMACK ME NOW JACK?” Someone once said there are more questions than answers. That’s mostly because people don’t answer the easy ones. This one was easy. So I answered. He picked himself up from where I’d smacked him to, and nodded. “GOOD ANSWER. SO. LET’S TALK.”
A chair appeared. I leaned against the wall. Sometimes, you just gotta take your victories where you find them. “So. I broke the universe, huh? I must have missed that bit.”
The old guy grinned. “Well, early model, see. Couldn’t get the parts.” He blushed. “Mostly ‘cos I hadn’t made ‘em yet. Nope. Left. Right. Up, Down. Dark—and light. Even Noah! Not that he listened to me. I told him, I did. Bloody gills! You’ll thank me later! So what does he do? He goes off looking for cedar wood.” He sighed. “You just can’t help some people.” He shook his head. “Sorry, Jack. Where were we?”
I pointed. To the door. The one that wasn’t there.
“Oh. Right. Universe. The one you broke. See, it’s all your fault, Jack. It’s fine if it’s only got two ways to go. Then you came along. Heh. Wonder how that happened, huh?” He grinned wider. I figured any grin that big wasn’t likely to mean good news. Not for me, at least. “See, you cheated. Ain’t supposed to be able to do that. Ain’t nobody supposed to be able to do that. Universe knew if you had to bloody exist at all, even if the jury was still out on that, there was only two things you could do. Go with Haures’ plan, or let it slide. Game over, right? But
you went and did something else. Damn universe was still keeping one eye on Door A, one on Door B. Never saw you coming. Slammed right into the wall and….” The old guy frowned. “Well, it ain’t like it’s really a wall. It’s—”
Sometimes, making a point is enough. Or a hole at least. The old guy put his finger into the hole my bullet had made in his forehead and pulled out the slug. He grinned again. “Boy. Are you going to piss people off. Well, you will if you get to exist, anyway.” He waited. I figured I was supposed to say something dumb, so he could say something smart. So I didn’t. He grinned. “I almost feel sorry for me. Er, both of me.” His face turned serious. “But I don’t, Jack. That’s why you’re here. If you’re here at all, that is. Bloody pains in the asses, both of me. See, they—um, I—er, both of me—well, they got bored, Jack.”
I raised an eyebrow. It beat the heck out of anything else I could think of.
“Look. It wasn’t like I didn’t do all the hard work. So I delegated! I made, well, me. Both of me. I mean, heck. I figured I deserved a vacation!”
Raising one eyebrow works. Both just look silly. So I didn’t raise the other one. “So?”
“So they got bored! I go to all the trouble to make them—me—so neither of me can win—and they got bored! They cheated! They figured, they cheat, one of them comes out on top, winner takes all. AND THAT’S AGAINST THE BLOODY RULE.”
I figured I’d give him a break. “Rules?”
“Not Rules. I tried that. Nearly put the bloody chisel through my thumb, I did. Of course, it didn’t work. So I fixed it. Rule, Jack. Just one. One even I can’t break.”
“Why not?”
He looked unhappy. “Because I made it, Jack. Or it made me … one or the other.”
“So what is it?”
The old guy hunched over in his chair. “I already told you, Jack. You just weren’t listening. Anyway. I’m not telling you again. It’s a riddle, and it’s my best one. But they’re cheating. So I’m going to cheat too. Or I already have. Or I didn’t. One of those, anyway. But they cheated real good. There’s just nothing as exists can stop ‘em.”
I shrugged. “Guess you’re screwed, then.”
The old man looked sly. “Guess so, Jack. Unless they get stopped anyway.”
“But you said nothing that exists can stop them.”
The old man winked. “Guess I did. Guess it’s one of them pesky Paradoxes. Know where you might find one, Jack?” He waved his hand. What little there was left of the universe decided it was still around and started happening again. Prowess threw out a tentacle. It wrapped round me, clamping my arms to my sides. She gasped. “No hitting, Jack! There’s got … got to be some way….”
Of course, there was. I wondered if that was another of the old guy’s Rules. That there was always another way. “Let go, P. I won’t hit anyone.” The tentacle relaxed. I raised an eyebrow at the old guy.
He pouted. I knew he was just playing to the gallery, but I filed the image under ‘never think of this again’. “Oh, if you insist.” He waved his hand. “Let there be, like, um, stuff.” He cocked his head as though listening. “Oh, bloody heck. Yes, and things. Things and stuff….” He looked over at a still-pale Prowess. “Right. And souls.” He listened some more. “So look in the big box. The one under the….” He looked at me and shrugged. “You really can’t. Get the staff, I mean.” He sighed. “Oh, bugger it. REBOOT!” There was a deafening crash. Or there would have been, if it hadn’t stayed totally quiet. My ears still hurt though, from the sound there would have been. The old man looked down at the shiny, well-polished black leather boots he was suddenly wearing. He looked at me. “You know, I’d bloody fire them. If they weren’t, like, me.”
I nodded towards his blinding white vest, and the red overalls. “You mean…?”
He sighed again. “No, not that me. Er, those them. No. Different union.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Stop messing about. If I have to come out there … now bloody REBOOT! Oh. And add some of those Higgs-Bosons. They’re in the jar by the—yes. Those. A friend of mine’s going to need them. Or not….” He winked at me. “Call it a field upgrade, Jack.” And he was gone. On the other hand, the door was back. I opened it. Then I closed it. Then I opened it again.
“Er—Jack?” Prowess sounded worried.
“Yes, P?”
“What are you doing, Jack?”
“Seeing if he’s still outside, P.”
“Er—if who is, Jack?”
That saved a few questions I’d been wondering how to ask. So I didn’t ask them. Because it was past time for questions, and into time for answers. Somehow, something that nothing that existed could stop had to be stopped. The massed powers of Heaven and Hell had to be kicked where they couldn’t be kicked.
I grinned. This was going to be fun. Or it wasn’t. either way, it was just a job. Even if it looked like I’d never really known what my job was.
Or who I worked for.
What do you do when someone’s picked you as the sucker who’s going to fix what he can’t fix? Who’s going to nudge things the only way that stops them going to hell?
You cheat.
Barbas-Jack was almost gone. There really wasn’t much time. “Barbas?”
“Mortal?”
“Maybe there really is a deal we can make.”
* * * * *
Now
The thing about cheating, it’s only cheating when the other guy does it. On the one hand, things could go the way it looked like they was supposed to go. Which meant one way—I never existed. Vlad got to build an army of undead and storm the gates of Heaven. Or the other way. The way Prowess got to die in a dream that never happened, just so I’d get motivated to go kill Vlad myself.
And then there was my way. Door C, but this time I didn’t destroy the universe. I know I won’t, because the old guy over there behind the bar told me so. And there we are. Or rather, here we are. And that’s the problem. Because we can’t be here.
At least, not both of us.
Barbas saw it my way. Not just because he knew I wasn’t going to stop hurting him until he did. More because I was offering him something he’d never get if he won. And Haures? He wanted Barbas to get what I was offering. Mostly because that was the only way he was going to avoid getting burned. And you can do a lot with two Fallen Angels. Trust me, I know. After she got back, Blondie spent most of her time trying. But if Diogenes had it bad just looking for an honest man, what about one totally innocent? After all, there ain’t no such thing, right?
Right. There really ain’t no such thing. So I cheated.
Seems when the old guy made things start over, he accidentally-on-purpose missed a bit. Kind of careless, huh? A little bit of nothing much. But off the books. Off anybody’s books. A bit just big enough to make this place. Sure, it’s a bar now. It just wasn’t always. Remember fifth grade? Blondie over there was the girl you almost lusted over. Barbas—he was Bennie Walters. The guy who got there before you kissed her. This innocence thing. It’s tricky stuff. Keeping you straight for—well, I’m sure if felt like twenty years. It wasn’t. Not quite. Or not even near.
Where did you come from? You didn’t. See, you don’t exist. Well, you do. But just like this place, you’re not on their books. Not on any books. But everything has to be on the books. So just as soon as the old guy behind the bar stops being accidentally absentminded, this place will be too. On the books. Real. This place—and whoever’s in it. Right now, they’re waiting. There’s a huge boiling spiral of Paradox in the stuff people who can see unicorns get locked up for seeing. So the Dragon, they’re out there, waiting. To see what it’s about. And what they don’t know is, they’re part of what it’s about.
So are you.
So am I.
See, Blondie—she’s UnBorn. Dragon. So she’s not on the books yet either. It’s tough to cut a dragon. To break one. But like I said. It’s amazing what you can do with two Fallen Angels. Especially if the dragon’s helping. So we bro
ke a bit off her. That’s you. Then? Then we raised you. Innocent. Clean.
Call me dad, I’ll kill you.
Actually, I won’t. I sort of can’t. Because you’re not just you. You’re me as well. Or you might be. See, right now, there’s two futures. Only two. I didn’t like the one where Prowess died. Not because she died. But I might need her some time. If I exist, that is. So I’m going to cheat. Door A, you walk out of here. You’ll live your life, you’ll be happy—you’ll die. And you’ll go to Heaven. But Vlad will take the world to Hell. Because I won’t be here to stop him. Haures knows. He’s seen it now. He argued a bit, and he’s got some holes in him he didn’t have before, but he saw things my way. Eventually. Door B, you don’t. Walk out of here, I mean. Door B, my friend Prowess over there rips your dragon soul right out of you. Because I need it. So she can put you into Barbas. But don’t worry. You ain’t staying there.
You’ll just wish you were.
Barbas, he knows all there is to know about being good at what I do. He’ll make sure I do too. Of course, I can’t remember, not having a soul and all. So I’ll need some help. A bit of Blondie—that’s why she can read me, see?—a Higgs Boson or ten—and Haures over there makes a new leather jacket. And I get to kill Barbas. He’ll even help. Because once you’re inside Barbas, he’ll have a soul. He’ll be mortal. And that’s why he made the deal. What’s in B will be you. Innocent. Pure. And after I’ve killed him, Mr B’ll go back to Heaven. And they’ll see all that innocence, that purity—and they won’t be able to kick him out. But it’s OK. They’ve got a great PR team up there. The books’ll change—all the books. He’ll never have Fallen. And if he never Fell, he never made a deal with Vlad. Blondie never lost her necklace. The Dragon waiting outside? They’ll never have been there. But I will. Because you made me. Then I drink some Horn. There’s a road, or there was. Somewhere between Bucharest and Giurgiu, I’ll do what I do best. And Haures knows that’s true. He’s seen that as well. So yay—well, just yay. Someone wins. Or at least—they get to keep not losing.