“Absolutely not!” said Banewill. “Maternus would be comfortable anywhere there is physical work to be done or where he might be surrounded by other rough men. We can’t let him be anywhere rural. I had in mind the Front Range, say suburban Denver. Specifically Aurora.”
“Why?”
“Because Adam and Eve do not live there any more,” said the demon. “The town’s citizens come from elsewhere and cherish no memories of whence they arose. They have no history, no connection to the land or to any particular culture; like the economic man of theory, they want what they want and think the best and most righteous outcome of every situation is getting what they desire. Yet they have the pretensions of those self-deluded folk the world used to call bohemians. Notions of Good and Evil and of Original Sin are as far removed from Aurora as they are from any place on earth — excluding, of course, college towns and capital cities, but I know you would never agree to send him to one of those latter spots. Maternus will find no truly bad people in Aurora. In moral terms, what he will find is a mountain of glass, a grand and hazardous surface on which he will struggle to find his footing. Mere intelligence or courage won’t help him much there; he will need subtlety, and subtle he ain’t.”
“You underestimate him, as you do humanity in general,” said Mr. Worthy. “Before I agree to your three trials, we need to give him an ability.”
“Certainly, that’s standard practice, but nothing fancy in his case. I want him to remain in a decidedly humble station.”
“I want him to be literate,” said the angel. “He has yearned to read and write throughout his long career in arms. Maternus used to sleep with his head on the letters he took from the body of a fallen comrade; he vainly hoped the words would somehow seep into his mind.”
“How touching,” said Banewill. “But reading can lead to books, and while some books are our best friends, others have been more implacable enemies to our side than the loyal angels themselves.”
“Another risk you have to take. If he remains illiterate in his new life, people will wonder why. You’ve already given him an American accent; others in suburbia may accept a recent immigrant as being illiterate in English, but not one who already talks as they do. As he is, Maternus would attract unwanted attention, even special assistance. ‘Surely,’ his neighbors would think, ‘surely such a peculiar man must have an interesting life story.’”
“For once being ignorant would give him a leg up,” conceded Banewill. “All right, he can read. He still has to do something menial to make his living. I don’t want him enjoying himself up there.”
“There’s nobility in any sort of honest work,” said the angel and took the page from the demon so he could read it more closely. “He can do these,” he said of the items on the paper. “I see no reason to delay him here. It is time to begin,” he said to Maternus. “Say good-bye to all this.”
The angel waved his right hand through the air in a wide arc, and everything around Maternus passed into a dense darkness.
II
In a Distant Land
This time when he came to his senses, Maternus found himself standing beside Mr. Worthy in a grain field. The wind was out, tossing the soldier’s hair and making the air smell fresher than anything the Roman had known in many centuries. He had to close his eyes and inhale the aroma of fresh foliage for several seconds, or else the thousands of stimuli he was feeling with every one of his senses would have been too much when crammed into his first seconds in this new and beautiful world. To his surprise, there was also something sour and unpleasant on the wind along with the scent of green grass and sun-warmed wheat. He opened his eyes and beheld on the horizon a line of strange, self-propelled vehicles speeding along at rates that were much faster than any traffic Maternus had seen before.
“They are called automobiles,” said Mr. Worthy. “Their engine exhausts are what you smell.”
“Are there horses within them?” asked the soldier.
“Some would say there are,” said the angel. “They are machines, my friend; collections of cogs and pulleys driven by a liquid fuel that burns as wood does. You will see many of them, everywhere you go in this land. The cities here were built to accommodate their kind. Come along, we are near your new home.”
Before he took his first step in the direction the angel was attempting to lead him, Maternus looked down at the long blue trousers and the light gray jacket he was wearing.
“Those are working clothes of this time and place,” said Mr. Worthy. “We had to make you look as though you belong here.”
“Celts wear long breeches of wool,” said Maternus and examined the heavy fabric that clad his legs. “What is this material?”
“A type of fiber called cotton. It comes from a plant, as linen does. You will find it quite comfortable. I’ll explain more of your new home as we go along. The journey won’t be far, and we need to hurry. We don’t have all day.”
Together they walked toward the busy highway and then passed under it via a weedy underpass built to handle the spring runoff.
“A spring day,” said Maternus, scanning the open fields around him.
“Yes,” agreed the angel.
“Look at those mountains!” exclaimed Maternus as soon as they were beyond the highway and could behold the mighty blue-green peaks dominating the western skyline. “Are those the Alps?”
“No,” said the angel. “You are no longer in Europe. This is a land called America; it lies far, far to the west of the Ocean Sea that marked the limits of your long departed empire.”
“Is this beyond the blessed Western Isles, where the Hesperides guard the tree bearing the golden apples?” asked Maternus.
“We’re well beyond that,” chuckled the angel. “Yet there is no doubt we are in the land of the blessed.”
He led Maternus a little farther to the northwest until they looked down a gentle slope to a place the grain and foxtail grass gave way to lines of small, boxy, wooden structures that so strongly resembled one another they appeared to be cast from the same mold. There were thousands of them. The closer the two of them came to the buildings, the larger the settlement seemed to become. At a distance of three hundred paces to the nearest structure, the buildings were everything Maternus could see, unless he turned all the way around and looked at the open land behind them.
“A city,” said the soldier. “The houses stretch from one side of the sky to the other. Rome itself was not nearly so big. Tens of millions must live here.”
“In fact, only two and a half million people live in the greater Denver-Boulder-Greeley area,” said the angel. “That’s only a little more than twice the population of the city of Rome when you knew it.”
“It extends forever,” said the soldier.
“Or so it would seem. The two and a half million souls before us occupy an area as large as the whole of central Italy. Don’t be amazed, my friend; the first fact one learns in regard to American cities is that they consist more of space and structure than of living inhabitants. Aurora, the suburb of Denver that will be your new home, has a quarter million citizens, maybe more by the time we arrive. The place is growing that quickly, you see.”
They progressed from the fields onto the concrete walkways of the town, and Maternus remarked how smooth and black the streets were. He said he could not imagine wheels ever making a sound on such a perfectly flat surface. He also wondered aloud how the people in the city made every blade of the grass in front of their houses grow the same length. He additionally wondered why were there no trees growing here when he could see what appeared to be a forest in the larger city to the west.
“Is the soil bad here?” he asked.
“We are not on bad land, my friend,” said Mr. Worthy. “This is new land. A year ago the pavement here supported rows of winter wheat, a grain created in the land of the Scythians, by the way. Notice how even these new buildings are laid out on a grid pattern? This is something that has not changed since your day.”
“Evergreen,” said Maternus upon seeing a street sign.
“Yes, you can read the names of the streets now.”
Mr. Worthy explained to the soldier that the numbers on the houses — which the ancient trooper could also understand — distinguished each residence from the others. If one knew the name of the street and the number of the building, one could locate any residence in the city.
“If one also knows the name of the city, one can now find any location in the world,” mused the soldier. “These moderns have figured out everything.”
“So it may appear,” said the angel and offered the soldier a gentle but inscrutable smile.
They passed an elderly man standing in his front yard, watering his grass with the hose he held at his side. The stranger was seventy-five, at least, as old a man as any Maternus had seen in his lifetime, yet he had the golden, tanned skin of a man thirty years his junior and the bare legs his plaid shorts revealed had a runner’s muscle tone. With his free hand, the man made an abrupt, sweeping gesture, as if he were polishing an invisible object directly before him. Since an open hand was rarely a gesture of hostility, and because the old man did not appear disagreeable, Maternus guessed the movement must be some sort of greeting.
“Health to you, citizen,” said Maternus and made a similar waving gesture with his right hand.
“Right back at ya, big guy,” said the man, who was amused by the soldier’s awkward salutation. “Hot enough for you?”
This was the same thing a demon had said to Maternus only an hour earlier. The soldier stopped and examined the old man more closely; sensing something dangerous in theses words just heard from an enemy of mankind, the soldier’s muscles tensed for a split second, as though he were preparing to parry a blow.
“He meant nothing,” whispered the angel. “That’s merely a silly thing people say when they cannot think of anything else to utter on a summer day. Say something pleasant in response.”
“The sun is more than hot enough to warm the entire world,” said the soldier, thus making another singular response.
“You’re not from around here, are you, son?” observed the man with the hose.
“Tell him you are from Montana,” whispered the angel into Maternus’ ear.
“I am from Montana,” said the soldier, and the man in the yard nodded in understanding.
“Well, have a nice day,” said the old man as Maternus and Mr. Worthy walked onward.
“Why did he not speak to you?” the soldier asked the angel as soon as they were out of earshot.
“Because he cannot see or hear me,” said Mr. Worthy. “No one here can, save for you.”
“What is Montana?”
“A place, a rather beautiful place,” said the angel. “Citizens in America have certain expectations of those who come from there. You will come to understand more, the longer you live here.”
As they strolled along, Mr. Worthy showed Maternus a leather bundle in a pocket of the soldier’s new jacket. Inside the small package — the angel called it a wallet — were a stiff card that had the name Matthew August on it and Maternus’s portrait, a papery card bearing his name and a ten digit number, and several dozen green and black paper strips with a picture of a jolly bald man identified simply as “Franklin.”
“Take away his dress and the odd equipment on his nose and he resembles one of the smarmy tribunes Rome regularly sent out to feast upon the provinces,” said Maternus of the man on the bills.
“Looks can be misleading, my friend,” said the angel. “Mr. Franklin was, in fact, a revolutionary thinker in his day; he could be self-serving and had a tart tongue on him, but he could never have settled for being a mere government functionary.”
“Most tribunes were glib men capable of mouthing progressive ideas while they pursued their own interests,” said Maternus. “How was this Franklin any different?”
“This is another complicated matter,” said the angel, slightly piqued when the soldier sounded as clever as the demon Banewill predicted he would be. “At any rate, those objects are valuable.”
They progressed on foot through the blocks of strikingly similar houses and the angel continued to explain the various phenomena they encountered. The first time the soldier beheld a moving automobile headed toward him on one of the quiet side streets, he jumped from the sidewalk onto the closest lawn; the thing growled like an angry watchdog and was rolling slowly down the pavement. Maternus knew — because he had seen similar contraptions speeding along the highway — the object was capable of moving much faster than it was. To the Roman, the machine appeared as if it were slowing to make a closer study of him, the way a lion does when it creeps through the tall grass to get a better view of its prey.
“You’re in no danger,” the angel whispered. “Look — people are inside. It’s not a living entity.”
Through the windows of the sedan Maternus saw the wide eyes of two young children and those of their somewhat horrified mother as they gaped at him. As benumbed as his long stretch in darkness had made the soldier’s senses, he could still discern the mixture of terror and amazement on the family’s faces.
“They are afraid of me?” he asked the angel, astonished that his appearance alone could elicit such emotions from those he meant no harm. “I’m not even armed. Do these Americans find me that terrible to look upon?”
“I regret to tell you they do,” confessed Mr. Worthy. “You carry yourself differently than the men they know. You have an air of anticipation about you, as if you sense danger is ever immediately at hand. Your hands never dangle completely relaxed at your sides. Experience has taught you to assume a defensive position — your left leg out and your right held behind you like a brace — whenever another person approaches. You are not like the citizens in this city, my friend. You have known dangers they cannot imagine, and you have killed other men, something only the criminally insane or the very evil would do in this place and time. Then, too, unlike these modern folk, you have only once seen yourself in a mirror, and never have you seen your own photograph or viewed your person on film. You have no feeling for how you look or how to adjust your look, and thereby mask your inner self. Consequently, you do not have the range of expression they do. You appear eternally sullen to them. The people here can see your wretched past in you as surely as they can see the battle scars on your face and hands. Every violent act you committed has diminished your soul until your face tells others you have become only a little more than animal.”
“Then what is the point of bringing me here?” asked Maternus. “If I am an animal, then I will surely fail to gain my redemption.”
“Don’t despair of your future, although you do indeed have a long journey ahead of you,” said the angel. “Mark that I said: ‘A little more than animal.’ You yet retain a portion of the soul you were born with, enough to make you love gentle Maria and enough to let you feel compassion for your brother soldiers. Do you not remember what you did three days before you died?”
The angel extended his right hand and drew it across the firmament, and — as if watching himself in a dream — Maternus saw himself among the small band of rebels he would personally lead during the assassination attempt in Rome.
He and his men were on the Via Flamina, a few hours north of the capital. They were dressed in the loose, white clothes of rustic pilgrims and were wearing large straw hats to protect themselves from the spring sun. The short swords the group carried were hidden beneath the layers of simple white cloth dangling from their bodies. It was the fourteenth of March, and already it was hot on the roadway; old Marcellus, the centurion Maternus had served under during the first seven years of his military career, was perspiring heavily as he yammered on endlessly concerning campaigns he alone was alive to remember. When he tired of recounting forgotten history, the centurion started singing one of the ribald ballads soldiers compose about their generals.
“Is your leg good?” Maternus asked young Casio, in part because the legion
naire was not putting his full weight on his left foot, and in part because asking the question caused Marcellus to shut up for a few moments.
“It’s only a blister,” lied the young man, who had been injured months earlier when the band of rebels retreated from an army of loyalist soldiers on the eastern slope of the Pyrenees.
“I was thinking,” said Maternus, “perhaps we should post a man here on the road. He could run into the city and warn us if the emperor brings any legions from the north. And such additional men would have to come from this direction.”
“A fool’s errand,” commented Marcellus. “The emperor will never allow any of the frontier legions to come to Rome. Otherwise there may be a rebellion in the army. The Praetorians are the only armed men let into the capital. It’s the law.”
“We can’t be too cautious,” said Maternus and told young Casio to sit behind an oak beside the roadway and keep watch. “The emperor is as cunning as he is wicked. Laws will mean little to him in a crisis.”
Marcellus continued to complain while Maternus took from his pack a pouch filled with cold polenta, leaving it and a wine skin with Casio.
The angel moved his hands back across the sky, and he and the Roman were once again strolling down a suburban sidewalk.
“You left Casio behind, not to watch for frontier legions you knew would never come, but because you feared he might perish when you attacked the emperor’s entourage,” said Mr. Worthy. “You wanted the young man to live. That was not the action of an animal, sir. In the last days of your life, your rage and your propensity for violence had not so diminished you that you forgot your concern for a young man.
“Now mark this: one learns to do better by being better, my friend. Do good today, then the day after, and soon doing good will become as much of a habit to you as doing ill once was. In your instance, it is imperative you learn to contain your anger every day. During your first weeks as Matthew August you will be asked to do nothing beyond live a normal life while you keep your temper in check. In this new land, there is no one who has ever done you wrong; here, you have no enemies, no old grudges that need to be settled. You have no reason to lash out at anyone you might encounter. As strange as the people here may seem, none of them is your enemy. Your enemies are all in Hell, where you shall return — mark me well — where you shall return if you cannot learn to keep your rage in check. The fault in you, I regret to tell you, is not a small matter. Harming others as you have done is as terrible a crime as any lost soul has ever committed, and those cast lower into Hell than you are there only because their crimes were of a greater scale, not because they did worse. Several of my fellow angels hold that you have done too much to be forgiven; they say you are a lost cause and will soon fail in your new environs. If you do fail, my friend, if you bring violence to another living human and prove the other angels right, I promise you I will personally see you thrown so far into the dark caverns of the damned you will soon forget how sunlight felt upon your skin. Are we understood?”
Hell Can Wait Page 3