Lucas viewed the scene with some amusement. If this really was the end of the world, what did these people hope to accomplish by running away? Did they think God or the Devil had opened a matter-obliterating rift in the cosmos only to spare them if they could manage a respectable time in the hundred-yard dash?
As the terrified congregants began to work their way back to the road, though, Lucas’s detached cynicism gave way to concern for his own survival. If he was going to be obliterated by a rift in the space-time continuum, so be it, but he wasn’t about to be trampled by a stampede of terrified fanatics.
“Run, Lucas!” his father cried. Lucas nodded and the three of them set off running back to the car. His mother still had her flashlight out, but it was practically worthless, as the road was lit from behind them by the dazzling glow emanating from the rift. Their shadows stretched out before them, obscuring rocks and dips in the road, and the flashlight seemed to do nothing to dispel them. Lucas tried to be cautious, but the crowd was gaining on them, and he made the mistake of glancing back. His foot struck a jagged rock sticking out of the road and he fell.
It was a few seconds before his parents noticed, and the wind had been knocked out of him, preventing him from calling after them. He managed to get to his knees, but as agitated shadows washed over him, he realized the throng was almost upon him.
And then, suddenly, the shadows were gone. Or, more precisely, they were lost in a sea of even bigger shadows: the light behind them had gone out.
The fleeing throng, now blinded, lost its momentum and devolved into a mass of individuals trying to get their bearings in the near-total darkness. Lucas got to his feet and turned to look behind him. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but after a few seconds he could make out several dots of light in the distance. He realized it was the lanterns ringing the plateau; from his vantage point higher on the hill, he could just see over the heads of the congregants.
“Lucas, come on!” his mother yelled. She sounded frightened and, Lucas thought, guilty—like a mother who knew her family was in mortal danger, and that it was her fault.
But Lucas felt no need to do her bidding and even less need to reassure her. While his mother continued to bark at him from behind and the crowd milled about confusedly in front of him, he kept his eyes on the area in between the torches. The rift had disappeared, but as his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could see three figures standing there, in the exact spot from which Reverend Jonas had just vanished. What the hell was going on?
“Lucas!” cried his mother again, now closer to him. Lucas continued to ignore her. He dived into the crowd, his small frame dodging congregants left and right as he worked his way back toward the plateau. Confusion reigned in the crowd; no one seemed to know whether to continue fleeing, return to the plateau to see what had happened, or simply wait for something else to happen. Lucas managed to navigate the chattering masses of people and soon emerged from the other side of the crowd. It was far easier than he expected; apparently the congregants had taken the most direct route away from the plateau rather than try to escape via the road. In the distance, Lucas saw vague shadows of hundreds more people scattered across the desert, apparently just as confused as the group on the road. Some of them seem to still be trying to put more ground between them and whatever had just happened; others had paused to talk or assess their situation. Only one person was walking boldly back toward the plateau: Lucas Jelonek.
Lucas thought that he might find, when he got through the crowd, that the light had been playing tricks on his eyes, but to his surprise he now saw four figures on the plateau. He couldn’t make out their features, but he was certain that none of them was Reverend Jonas. All four appeared to be men, but three of them were much taller than Jonas and the third was too short and squat. They had appeared from out of nowhere.
The four figures stood uncertainly, peering into the darkness. The crowd had dispersed too far to be seen from the plateau, but presumably the four figures could hear the uncertain murmuring in the distance. Lucas imagined that wherever they had come from, it had to be rather unsettling to suddenly materialize in the middle of a ring of torches on a desert plateau, surrounded by the confused murmurs of hundreds of people.
A strange sort of cold clarity came over Lucas. Sensing the fear of the people behind him and the fear of the three strange men who had just appeared below, he realized that something momentous was happening, and that whatever happened over the next few seconds would determine how it played out.
“Lucas!” he heard his mother call again from behind, but he pressed on, not listening. He stopped a dozen paces from the base of the plateau and, before the nagging doubts at the back of his mind had a chance to take over, opened his mouth to speak.
“Hey!” Lucas called. “Who are you?”
One of the tall men peered out of the darkness at him. Lucas was just now barely inside the penumbra of light cast by the torches. The tall man turned toward the others and the four conversed for a moment. Then the tall man turned toward Lucas again and took a few steps his direction. Lucas took a deep breath and clenched his fists at his side, expecting at any moment to be vaporized by some powerful alien death ray.
But the man simply walked to one of the lanterns, removed it from its pole, and held it out in front of him. Lucas breathed a sigh of relief: this man was definitely human. He was very tall and his hair had a weird, silvery sheen, but the latter might have been an artifact of the unnatural blue-white light of the lantern. Peering at Lucas, the man cleared his throat and said, “Is this planet Hooston?”
Lucas frowned, unsure how to respond. The crowd murmured uncertainly in the dark beyond the lanterns.
“Um, what?” said Lucas after a moment.
“I asked if this is planet Hooston,” said the tall man. “It’s a joke.”
“Oh,” said Lucas. “I, um, don’t get it.”
“Can’t you see the kid is like twelve?” said one of the other tall men, coming up next to him. Lucas couldn’t see the second man very well, but judging from his frame and his voice, he could very well be the first man’s brother. The second man went on, “When Superman II came out, he wasn’t even...” He trailed off and the two men exchanged glances. Then they said, in unison, “Wait, what’s the date?”
“April 29,” replied Lucas.
“The year!” cried the first tall man. “Tell me the year!”
“Um, 2013,” said Lucas.
The two men were visibly relieved by this information. A third man came up alongside them, and they briefly exchanged words. The three had uncannily similar builds. Triplets?
“Then it worked,” said the third tall man.
“That was the easy part,” said the first tall man.
“Why are all you people on our land?” said the shorter man, coming up behind them. His face was shrouded in shadow as well.
“It’s not ours yet,” said the first tall man.
“Get out of our yard!” yelled the shorter man, ignoring him.
The first tall man turned and said something to the shorter man, and the shorter man grumbled and walked away. The first tall man held the lantern out in front of him again, peering at the throng of people that was slowly beginning to re-coalesce around the plateau. “Say, what’s going on out here?” he said.
“Some kind of campout?” asked the second tall man, as if completing the first man’s thought.
“Um, it’s a kind of religious thing, I guess,” said Lucas. “Supposed to be the end of the world. But I think it’s over now.”
“Oh yeah,” said the third tall man. “The big Apocalypse scare. I almost forgot.”
Where did you guys come from?” Lucas asked.
“Not where,” said the second tall man. “When.”
“We’re from the future,” said the third tall man. “But don’t worry, we don’t intend to stay long. This is just a pit stop.”
“We’ll be out of your hair in a jiffy,” said the first tall man, �
��and you can get back to your apocalyptic ritual. Although, spoiler alert: the world is still here four years from now.”
“We can’t go on,” said a man’s voice behind Lucas.
“Sure you can,” said the first tall man. “Seriously, we’ll be gone as soon as we get the shard adapter connected to the portal generator. Twenty minutes, max. Then you can get on with your primitive dumbfuckery. Not that I’m judging.”
“You killed our leader,” said the man, emerging into the light to Lucas’s right. “First Prophet Jonas Bitters. I’m his brother, Noah. Technically I’m Second Prophet, but he was entrusted with divine secrets to which I am not privy. We can’t continue the ceremony without him.”
“Well,” said the third tall man, “That sucks. Usually the portal generator will adjust its target location to avoid solid objects. The universe must have had it in for your leader.”
“If it’s any consolation,” the first tall man said, “killing him was an accident. We honestly thought this whole area would be uninhabited.”
“Who are you people?” demanded Noah Bitters.
The first tall man, still holding the lantern, walked to the edge of the plateau and stepped off. Gasps went up from the crowd. It was only fifteen feet or so down, but a fall from that height could easily break a leg. The man floated gracefully to the ground, landing a few paces in front of Lucas. The other three men stepped off a moment later, the second tall man on his right and the other two on his left.
“Behind me,” said the man with the lantern, indicating the shorter man, who was still on the plateau, “is the famed inventor Balderhaz.”
The shorter man gave a wave from the plateau.
“My name is Mercury.” Then he moved the lantern in front of the tall man on his left and Lucas saw that there was good reason he suspected the two tall men were brothers: they were identical. The man with the lantern said, “This is my friend Mercury.” He moved the lantern in front of the tall man on his right, and Lucas saw that he was identical to the other two. “And this,” said the tall man, “is my other friend Mercury.”
Chapter Five
Lucifer’s cell; July 10, 2015
“God damn it, Pazusu!” shrieked Gurien, and launched himself over the stack of rulebooks toward Pazusu.
Azrael took a step as if intending to break up the struggle, but Lucifer shook his head. Azrael shrugged and stepped back to continue his conversation with Lucifer. “You’re sure the authorities don’t know the location of the lab?” asked Azrael.
“If they did,” Lucifer replied, “they’d have built a new portal generator themselves by now. You know how desperate they are to reestablish contact with the Mundane Plane and the other planes.”
“Maybe they lack the expertise.”
“Possibly,” said Lucifer. “But if that’s the case, they’d have still less interest in locating the lab. Either way, it’s unlikely they’ve found it—and even if they have, it’s doubtful they will look for us there.”
“But you don’t have the expertise to build a portal generator either,” said Azrael.
“No,” said Lucifer. “But he does.” He nodded toward Drekavac, who was trying to extricate one of the rulebooks from underneath Pazusu, who was being pummeled in the face by Gurien. Drekavac managed to get the book free but accidentally elbowed another demon in the process, who retaliated by punching Drekavac in the jaw. Drekavac, dazed, swung back, but missed his attacker entirely and stumbled into another demon. Soon the entire group was embroiled in the fracas, each demon punching and kicking whoever happened to be nearby. The quarrel between Pazusu and Gurien had merely been the match on the pile of oil-soaked rags; demons—particularly those who had been locked in a cage for several years—didn’t really need an excuse to engage in violence.
“Who?” asked Azrael, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the fracas. “The new guy?”
“Indeed,” said Lucifer. “Believe it or not, our longsuffering Dungeon Master over there is something of a savant with interplanar physics.” He motioned toward Drekavac. “I pulled some strings to get him thrown in here with us. If anyone can figure out how to get off this plane, it’s him.” Drekavac had only been in the cage with them for the past week; an archivist at the Heavenly library, he had been shocked to find himself dragged away from his job without warning, arrested on trumped-up charges and thrown into a cage with Lucifer and his minions. He’d been doing his best to fit in since then, but it was clear he didn’t belong with this gang of miscreants.
“I thought he was a librarian,” said Azrael doubtfully.
“He was,” replied Lucifer. “But five hundred years ago or so, he worked for Balderhaz. They had a falling out, and since then he’s worked at the Heavenly Library. At one point, though, he was intimately familiar with the workings of the planeport.”
“And you think he has the expertise to build another planeport?”
“Not an entire planeport,” said Lucifer. “Just a single portal generator, with a single destination.”
“I assume you have another plane picked out,” said Azrael. “Where do you plan to go?”
Pazusu had managed to turn the tables on Gurien, having gotten him into a headlock. The other demons continued to brawl around them. Malcazar was now only about twenty paces away, but the acoustics in the cavern were such that even though Lucifer and Azrael were speaking at normal volume, the guard would have a hard time making anything out over the bickering going on behind them.
“Not where,” replied Lucifer with a grin. “When.”
Azrael snorted. “Time travel? It’s a myth, Lucifer.”
“Not true,” said Lucifer. “Balderhaz figured it out. The authorities have suppressed most of the evidence, but I’ve managed to determine, in theory, how it could be done.”
“You’re a liar, Lucifer. If you knew the secret of time travel, you wouldn’t be stuck in here with us.”
Malcazar, flaming sword in hand, stopped in his tracks and turned to study escalating melee, frowning as if he were uncertain whether to intervene. Lucifer and Azrael continued to take no notice of him.
“I said I know in theory how it could be done, not that I can do it at will,” Lucifer said, a hint of irritation in his voice. He was doing his best to be tactful with Azrael, but he was more accustomed to intimidating his underlings into submission than having to cajole them into action. He calmed himself and went on, “I’ve always suspected it was possible, but I never had time to look into it before.”
“So that’s what you’ve been doing?” said Azrael. “Researching time travel?” Lucifer had spent much of the past two years poring over ancient tomes from the Heavenly library that he’d bribed guards to deliver to the prison. In fact, it was—ironically—these deliveries that had gotten Drekavac tossed into the pokey with them. Lucifer had arranged for one of the guards to get caught with a sensitive book on the metaphysics of interplanar energy channels, and the guard had rolled over on Drekavac, blaming him for not following proper security procedures. Drekavac was thrown into prison and the guard was replaced by Malcazar—evidently another element in Lucifer’s escape plan.
“In part,” answered Lucifer. “The key is the—”
He broke off as a Gurien stumbled into him, having been shoved by Amalech. Without taking his eyes off Azrael, Lucifer gripped Gurien’s throat with his right hand and hurled him back into the fray. The brawl showed no signs of abating; in fact, it seemed to be intensifying. These free-for-alls happened once every few days, and they tended to go on until Azrael put a stop to them. Inside the Balderhaz Cube’s sphere of influence, the demons were incapable of performing miracles, but they remained demons—which is to say, short-tempered, thin-skinned, and capable of absorbing an infinite amount of physical punishment. It wasn’t uncommon for them to literally tear each other’s limbs off over some minor slight. All their wounds would heal eventually, but in the meantime the scene could get pretty gruesome.
Azrael sighed, observing the
escalating violence. “I guess I’d better step in.” Azrael was by far the largest and most intimidating of the demons; he tended to dominate the other demons through sheer force of will.
“No,” said Lucifer, holding up his hand as Azrael took a step toward the fracas. “This is our chance.”
As the melee went on and neither Lucifer nor Azrael showed any signs of stepping in, Malcazar grew impatient. “Get your lackeys under control, Lucifer,” growled the guard, holding his flaming sword in front of him.
Lucifer waved his hand dismissively toward Malcazar without making eye contact. “Nothing I can do,” he said. “They get rambunctious sometimes.”
“Then have your enforcer do it,” Malcazar said, pointing the sword at Azrael.
Azrael glanced at Lucifer, who gave him a slight nod. Azrael sighed. “It’s not my job to keep your inmates quiet, Malcazar,” he said. “Why don’t you try doing your job?”
“My job?” Malcazar snapped. “Do you know what I was doing before I got summoned down into this rat hole to babysit you goofballs? I was the head of security for Cravutius’s security detail. Cushiest job in Heaven. Then one day they tell me I’ve got to spend the next hundred years in this mother-loving cave.”
“Such language, Malcazar!” Lucifer jeered, turning to face the angel. “Careful, boy. If you fall any farther out of the good graces of the Heavenly authorities, they might throw you in here with us.”
“You wish,” said Malcazar. “In fact, I’ve already filed an appeal to get reassigned. I never should have been stuck down here in the first place. Some kind of bureaucratic snafu. I’ll be out of here in a week.”
“Not if you can’t keep control of your prisoners,” said Lucifer. “Have you considered that this is a test? Your bosses have this cave under surveillance, you know. They’re watching you right now, wondering when you’re going to get off your ass and do something about this brawl.”
Mercury Shrugs Page 4