Elihu frowned. “Curse God? You mean Marduk?”
Mercury snorted. “No, not Marduk, you dope. I curse Marduk sixteen times a day before lunch. Mucking Farduk. That hammer-brained jackaninny can suck a pig’s knuckle. No, Elihu, I’m talking about the God.”
Elihu’s brow furrowed.
“Jeez, you people. Monotheism is not that complicated. Don’t you live around here somewhere? Didn’t you ever listen to anything Job said? There’s just the one God. The rest of us are, you know, middle management.”
“So there’s one big God who’s in charge of the whole universe?” asked Elihu.
“Yep.”
“Wow,” said Elihu, staring open-mouthed at the sky, trying to take in this new information. “Like, in charge of the sun and the moon and the earth and the oceans and the deserts?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And all the people of the world, and all the animals and plants?”
“Correct.”
“And night and day and the seasons?”
“Right.”
“And the rain and clouds and wind and sickness and health and life and death?”
“Everything, Elihu. Ev-er-ree-thing. Everything. He’s in charge of everything.”
“And, uh, you want Job to curse him?”
“That’s the plan.”
Elihu was silent for some time, considering this notion. Finally he said, “That sounds like a bad idea.”
“Look, Elihu,” replied Mercury irritably. “If you’ve got a better idea, I’d love to hear it. Maybe you should go back to poking him with a stick. That damn kite is never going to fly, you know. You can run around like a moron all you want, but it’s not going anywhere without wind.”
Elihu began to cry.
“Oh, jeez,” muttered Mercury. “Hey, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I’m just frustrated. I used to be in charge of some pretty important ziggurats, and now I’m stuck here indefinitely, watching this blithering lump of self-righteousness bitch and moan about the day of his birth.”
Elihu nodded, wiping the tears from his face. He probably didn’t understand half of what Mercury was saying, but he seemed to get the gist of it.
“Seriously,” Mercury continued. “This guy has no freaking clue. I mean, I’m an angel. An angel, Elihu. I could torch this whole estate by calling down a pillar of fire if I wanted to. And even I have no idea why Job’s been singled out for this sort of treatment.” He was telling Elihu far more than he was authorized to, but he needed to vent to someone. Besides, the kid was nine. It’s not like anybody was going to believe anything he said.
Mercury continued, “Even my boss, Uzziel, director of the Apocalypse Bureau—I’m willing to bet you ten thousand mangoes that even he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on with Job. ‘Classified,’ he says. You know what that means. It means he doesn’t have a freaking clue!”
Mercury was now pacing back and forth under the palm tree, shaking his fists in agitation. “And Cravutius? One of the top seraphim. You think he knows anything? Of course not! I mean, sure, maybe he’s got a few more details than Uzziel, but does he really know anything? Does he know, in the grand scheme of things, why any of this is happening? Hell, even these supposed ‘Eternals,’ if they exist, probably don’t even know the full story. You see what I’m saying? This guy sits here in a pile of ashes trying to make sense of the Universe, and he has absolutely no idea just how far out of his league he is. He wants to know why God is picking on him. I mean, hello? Assuming that God exists, Job should be thrilled that God takes any notice of him at all. You know what I mean, Elihu?”
Mercury looked around, but Elihu was not to be found. Mercury had been talking to himself. “Brilliant,” he muttered. He looked over at Job and found that Elihu was addressing him and the other men.
“What the hell...?” Mercury murmured. He strained to hear what Elihu was saying, but a breeze had picked up and was muffling his speech. A storm was gathering in the west.
After some time, Elihu ran off, trailing the kite in the air behind him. A gust of wind caught the kite, and the boy let out a bit of string, letting it climb higher.
Meanwhile, Job’s hands were raised and he was crying out to the heavens. It began to rain.
“Wait!” yelled Mercury after Elihu. “What did you tell him?”
Elihu smiled and yelled something back.
“What?” yelled Mercury.
“It works!” hollered Elihu.
“What works?”
“The kite!” hollered Elihu. “There was nothing wrong with it! It just needs wind to fly!”
“That’s fantastic,” said Mercury. “But what did you...” But Elihu was too far away to hear him.
Rain was now coming down hard. Lightning flashed in the distance. Job’s three friends were trying desperately to get him to leave his ash heap, but he was oblivious to them, raising his hands to the heavens and shouting incomprehensibly. Finally, the three men left without him to seek shelter.
Mercury, confused and now soaking wet and shivering in the cold, tried to make sense of the situation. What had Elihu said to Job? And what the hell was Job doing? Had he finally lost his mind completely? And what was up with the weather?
“Hey!” he yelled to Job, forgetting his oath of noninterference. Job, taking no notice, continued to yell and wave his hands in the air.
Mercury walked a few steps closer. “Hey!” he yelled. “What are you doing? Are you cursing—”
As he spoke, there was a blinding flash and a tremendous boom. The earth shook and Mercury fell to the ground. Looking behind him, he saw that the tree he had been sitting under had splintered into thousands of pieces. A fire blazed on the remains of the stump, sizzling and hissing violently in the downpour. Still Job took no notice.
“OK, then!” Mercury exclaimed. “I’m going to go ahead and figure that you’ve cursed God and that it’s not really safe to hang around you anymore. Good luck!” And he left Job alone to howl in the rain.
TWELVE
It took Christine and Jacob a good ten minutes to break free of the unruly crowd. Once they were alone on the street, however, they became painfully aware of how exposed they were. Daltrey and Ruiz had probably put out an APB on them as soon as they had noticed their captives were missing. The area was swarming with police; it was only a matter of time before they were spotted. To make matters worse, Jacob and Christine were both bleary-eyed and exhausted. Adrenaline and hyperawareness had given way to the barely conscious placing of one foot in front of the other to keep moving. They were in no shape to run or even to spot danger in time to run from it. They were, in short, sitting ducks.
“We need to find a place to rest,” said Christine. “Someplace out of sight.”
Jacob nodded. “There are some hotels up ahead. I think the Ritz-Carlton is up here somewhere.”
“Do you have any money?” Christine asked.
Jacob shook his head grimly. Daltrey had taken his wallet, as well as Christine’s purse and both of their cell phones. Christine felt in her pocket, pulling out a few crumpled bills and some change.
“Seven dollars and thirty-six cents,” she said. “Too bad the Ritz-Carlton isn’t a Motel 6. And it’s not 1962.”
“Maybe they’ll let us rest in the lobby for a bit,” Jacob suggested.
They trudged down the street in the direction of the Ritz.
Christine was jolted out of her reverie by the strident hiccup of a siren behind her, the sound that a squad car makes when the polyester-clad misanthrope behind the wheel wants to remind pedestrians who’s boss. Christine and Jacob were suddenly bathed in harsh white light. Glancing over her shoulder, Christine judged that the car was maybe fifty feet away.
“This way!” whispered Jacob, tugging on Christine’s sleeve. He took off down an alley between a 7-Eleven and a Taco Bell. The police car halted at the curb in front of the alley, its spotlight throwing long shadows ahead of them. Behind them they heard the squawking of polic
e radio but no footsteps. The cop wasn’t chasing them.
That didn’t mean much, of course. These days, cops don’t do much chasing, either by car or on foot. Chasing is strenuous and dangerous work. Everybody knows that car chases are dangerous, of course, but people often unfairly discount the pitfalls of an old-fashioned foot chase. You could trip over something, or get shot at, or get hit in the face with a two-by-four. Your car could get broken into or stolen while you’re out pursuing justice the old-fashioned way. And that’s not even to mention the ever-present threat of pulling a hamstring. Even the most robust agent of the law was at risk for a pulled hamstring when breaking into a sprint after sitting behind the wheel of a squad car for six hours. Much is made of the long arm of the law, but its Achilles’ heel is insufficiently limber hamstrings.
What modern police forces lack in tendonal pliancy, though, they make up for in numbers and good use of controlled bursts of radiation. The officer who declined to chase Christine and Jacob, for instance, was instead transmitting a burst of radiation that was the analog equivalent of the phrase Two fugitives heading north on foot in an alley off K Street, between Twenty-First and Twenty-Second. Caucasian female and an African American male. May be armed. Request backup.
This message was received by another police car, and as a result, by the time Christine and Jacob emerged from the alley onto L Street, that police car was lying in wait for them at the end of the street. “You two, stop right there!” called an amplified voice.
“This way!” Jacob urged again, leading Christine into the middle of the street. Tires screeched and horns blared. Christine was too frazzled and worn down to fully appreciate the danger of their situation, her awareness lost in a myriad of glaring lights and loud noises. It was all she could do to keep Jacob in sight and follow numbly after him. He darted down another alley, and Christine followed. Twenty seconds later they emerged in the parking lot of a Best Western. Yet another police car was pulling into the lot, maybe a hundred yards away. It stopped just inside, shining its spotlight around the lot. Christine and Jacob ducked behind a nearby minivan.
They were fenced in. The only ways out were past the police car at the exit or back through the alley they had just come through. Very soon, more police cars would arrive. The police would form a perimeter and execute a thorough search of the area. There was no escape.
“Hey,” said Jacob, pointing to something in the distance. “Isn’t that Harry Giddings’s organization?”
Christine looked where he was pointing. Behind the hotel, a bus pulled up that bore the unmistakable CH of her late boss’s grassroots evangelical organization known as the Covenant Holders.
“Damn it,” moaned Christine.
“What?” asked Jacob. “I thought you worked for Harry. Maybe these folks can help us.”
“Ugh,” said Christine ambivalently. When Harry was alive, Christine hated relying on his largesse, and she had always vaguely looked down on the Covenant Holders, thinking of them as mindless sheep. The last thing she wanted was to beg them for help. She imagined Harry looking down on her from Heaven and laughing.
“I don’t think we have much choice,” said Jacob. “It looks like they’re about to pull out. If we can get on that bus, we might be able to slip out of here before the trap closes.”
Too exhausted to fight, Christine mumbled assent, and they made their way across the parking lot, sprinting from car to car while the spotlight was pointed in another direction. Finally they reached the bus and made their way as nonchalantly as possible through the assembled Covenant Holders loading up their luggage and sipping at Styrofoam cups of coffee in the wee morning hours.
No begging turned out to be necessary. Christine and Jacob presented themselves as tourists from Los Angeles who had been mugged, and the Covenant Holders practically tripped over each other offering them aid. Several of them even made the point of mentioning what an “attractive couple” they were—which Christine belatedly realized was a reference to Jacob being black. It was like they expected to get extra righteousness points for overlooking the fact that they were a “mixed couple.” Christine was too tired to make an issue of it.
The group had traveled from Los Angeles to Washington to meet with President Babcock about the Anaheim Event. Many of them had lost friends and family members in the mysterious implosion of Anaheim Stadium, and they had been invited to the White House for a special ceremony. Now they were packing up for their trip home. They seemed oddly upbeat, considering the somber purpose of their trip.
“We’ve got plenty of room, if you want to ride back with us,” said a young man named Gary, who was evidently a youth pastor at a church in Glendale. Christine and Jacob anxiously agreed. Jacob had no particular reason to go to Los Angeles, but he certainly couldn’t stay in DC.
The bus pulled out not five minutes later, passing several more police cars on the way in. Christine smiled as she watched police officers erecting a cordon behind them. “Somebody must be looking out for us,” she said, turning to Jacob across the aisle.
Jacob grunted noncommittally.
“You OK?” asked Christine.
“Fine,” said Jacob. But he seemed to be slipping back into his pre-escape trance.
“Seriously,” Christine went on, trying to prod him out of his funk. “It’s a miracle we got out of there. I mean, what are the odds...”
“One in one,” Jacob muttered.
“What?”
“The odds of what has already happened having happened are always one in one. One hundred percent.”
“That’s dumb,” replied Christine.
Jacob shrugged.
“You’re saying that we were bound to escape, no matter what we did?”
“I’m saying that what happened happened and that it’s pointless to talk about probability in that context.”
“So you never look back on something that just happened and think, ‘Wow, that was really strange. I didn’t expect that to happen’?”
“Of course some events are unexpected,” Jacob answered tiredly. “And if you compare similar situations, there are going to be outliers. That is, in some cases, events are going to occur that appear out of the norm. But the fact is that every situation is unique, and that unusual events are expected to occur occasionally, as part of a long-term distribution pattern. You just happen to notice the unusual events, because they are unusual.”
“Unusual,” repeated Christine. “You mean like someone flying into outer space and imploding the moon with a glass apple?”
“That was an atypical scenario,” said Jacob, in what Christine thought was a solid candidate for Biggest Understatement of All Time. “I will grant you that there were some natural forces at work there that I don’t fully comprehend.”
“What makes you think they were natural forces?” Christine asked. “What qualifies as supernatural in your book?”
“I don’t think there’s any such thing as supernatural forces,” answered Jacob. “More precisely, I don’t think supernatural is a useful term. When you say something is supernatural, what you’re really saying is that it’s unnatural, which is a negative definition. It’s basically saying that there is a class of phenomena that we understand, which we call natural phenomena, and then there’s a class of stuff that we don’t understand, which we call supernatural. So when you say something is supernatural, all you’re really saying is that you don’t understand it. And that’s not a property of the phenomenon; it’s a property of the observer of the phenomenon. In other words, a television set would be supernatural to a Neanderthal, because television falls outside of the Neanderthal’s understanding of what is natural. But you and I know there is nothing supernatural about television. A smart Neanderthal would classify television as something that he doesn’t understand, not as something that is intrinsically inexplicable—that is, not something that’s supernatural.” Jacob’s eyes drooped as he talked. His speech had become almost robotic; he seemed to be lulling himself to sleep with
his own postulating.
“So you think Mercury flew to the moon with some kind of invisible jetpack? Some sort of technological innovation that the angels haven’t shared with humans?”
“I’m sure it’s not that simple,” said Jacob, yawning widely. “But yes, I think there is some sort of natural explanation. As Arthur C. Clarke said, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ Maybe these so-called angels are more technologically advanced than we are. Or maybe their technology has simply advanced in a different direction than ours.”
“So-called angels?” asked Christine. “You don’t think those were angels in Kenya? You don’t believe that Mercury and Michelle and the lot are angels?”
Jacob shrugged. “I don’t know what they are. But angel is a word with supernatural connotations. Using a word like that indicates that you’ve given up trying to understand them. That they are somehow beyond the realm of human understanding, which I don’t buy. I’m going to get some sleep.”
With that, he curled up on the seat and closed his eyes.
“You know what I think?” asked Christine. “I think that refusing to use a word says just as much about someone’s biases as using the word.”
Jacob didn’t respond. Within a minute, he was snoring.
Christine sighed and lay down in her own seat, using her wadded-up shirt as a pillow. She felt too wound up to sleep but was powerless against the comforting hum of the diesel engine reverberating through the bus.
THIRTEEN
“So what did Elihu say to you?” Mercury asked.
“Basically,” said Job, “he told me that I was looking at things all wrong. It’s kind of an obvious point in retrospect, but he helped me understand that everything isn’t about me.”
“Huh?” asked Mercury dimly.
“I was looking at it like, ‘Why is this happening to me? What did I do wrong? How do I fix it?’ But that’s a dead-end way of thinking. I mean, self-reflection is all well and good, but ultimately you have to accept that there are going to be some things that you’re never going to understand. If you insist that things make sense from your own finite, selfish perspective, you’re never going to be happy. I accepted that there is a God who is running things, and that everything that was happening to me happened for a reason, even if I wasn’t privy to what that reason was.”
Mercury Rests Page 9