John used the laptop only as a prop, as he had slaved his vision from his Persona body to the portable computer. The screen showed Orlando’s temporary camp in the Florida Keys and the current siege of it by the army of Dubuque Supported. He panned his second body around, doing camera detail.
“That’s true, but this is a copper-bottomed emergency,” John said. “What choice do we have?” The coincidence level in this bothered him – no, it made him physically sick to his stomach. Manipulation didn’t half cover this mess. He felt used, abused and his free will raped.
He had never been Betrayer’s target before, but now understood why the rogue mad God upset everyone. This was beyond disgusting.
“I agree,” Sorrow said, giving him the hairy eyeball. She reclined on a stack of large pillows covered with woven geometric designs. “If they must die, then the will of God will be revealed, not only against your allies, but against us as well.”
Grover and Lara, standing beside and behind John, audibly growled. “John,” Lara said. “You must.” He understood Lara’s cryptic suggestion, but he wasn’t going to toss his hole card in until he had to.
“Your Daughter of Light’s being attacked,” John said. He turned his Persona-body to view Nessa, huddled in Ken’s arms, both of them joining the twins in the arms of Dave and Elorie. “She’s been declared anathema by the Angelic Host; they want her dead because of what she knows about you.”
“Then this is our responsibility,” Cunning said. He sat on the bench opposite John with his arms crossed.
A flurry of hot commentary passed among the nine Fallen Angels in attendance this early morning.
Satan, who sat beside John, tapped her cane on the stone floor and snarled. Despite not having functional telepathy something in Satan’s makeup allowed her to pick up the meaning of the Fallen Angel’s hidden communications. “Give up on this already,” Satan said. She had woken grumpy this morning, having planned to sleep in after a late night of conversations with some of the lesser Fallen Angels. “This is the sort of talk that destroyed your support from God and your flight of Angels during your time with the Harappans.”
Satan’s comment didn’t draw the usual rejoinder, that the Harappans called themselves something entirely different and tongue twisting. “That is none of your business,” Wisdom said. The male leader of the Fallen Angels looked no happier than Satan to be ‘awake’ early this morning.
“You deny that the political infighting leading to your Divine War was wrong?”
“The war was necessary,” Wisdom said. “Like with your 99 Gods, a great many of us had turned to the power of worship. Those of us you speak to, here, viewed worship as a damning moral corruption, not because of hubris but because of the effect of the worshippers on the free will of those Watchers who allowed themselves to be worshipped as Gods. From our perspective, they grew stupid.” He turned to wave at John’s throng. “To my surprise, the Indigo group considers this the main problem with the 99. The worshipped among the 99 are growing noticeably stupid.” This didn’t surprise John; the Indigo was less worried about the moral corruption, hubris and challenge to God Almighty by worship of the 99, and more about the effects on the worshipped Gods. “We didn’t come to that realization for a millennium, though, and many other long-simmering interpersonal squabbles got tied into that fight.”
John’s aged skin tingled at this new revelation and he tried to pay as much attention to Wisdom as possible. He almost lost his linkage to the laptop, prompting some rare blasphemous thoughts.
“When your conflict turned to violence and divine death, then what?” Satan said. The cane tapped louder. “You were warned, told to stop, right? When you didn’t, and once your conflict destroyed the Harappan civilization, God and your Angels abandoned you. Why?” She paused, looked at Reed and shook her head. Reed had likely prompted Satan on this subject but kept quiet, not able to stand off any of the Fallen Angels on his own. “Why did it take you a thousand years to figure out the danger of worshippers? Why are the problems of worshippers among the 99 Gods so instantly evident?”
“Because of numbers. Our worshippers were small cults, secret cults, mystery religions, nothing like your mass-media religions,” Wisdom said. “We did not proselytize or evangelize. The opposite was true, in fact. We put stiff tests in the way of prospective adherents and we also encouraged the continuance of worship of tribal deities, their long-established road to God. We set this up as a privilege. We made Supported only as a high and infrequent reward.”
“Hmm,” Satan said. Although they had talked to the Fallen Angels on this subject, this was the most any of them had ever been willing to say about their past.
“Back to the original jibjab,” John said. “When your gamme are destroyed, the power and skill in them comes back to you.”
“Yes,” Cunning said.
“So there is no harm to you when they are destroyed.”
“The harm is in the loss of what the gamme did and the work that went into their creation. The ones you speak of took decades to manufacture; what is lost are those decades of work.”
“Yet, if I am correct, you cannot be sent back to God until you are returned to your early primitive selves, without gamme.”
“The one you speak of and wish to destroy to save the Daughter of Light and her compatriots, is as we have said before, the keystone gamme. Even you wanted the keystone gamme left for last,” Cunning said. John nodded, but he didn’t have to say ‘things change’. Cunning understood. “This ties into Bais’s commentary regarding the early days and the aftermath of the war that lost us our Angelic support. As you know, the purpose of the keystone gamme is suppression of worship. To us, this gamme is holy beyond measure, analogous to your New Testament. The benefit you will gain by breaking the keystone, the reason you wish this for this fight is only a minor side effect; nor is it assured that what you desire will occur. There are other side effects as well.”
“Which you have not deigned to speak of,” John said. “Will any be noticeable by the common man?”
“Not for generations,” Cunning said. “One you need to know of as a Priest of Christ is that this gamme has a secondary effect of encouraging monotheism. Worship of God Almighty.”
Satan gave Cunning a dark look. “Nice to know,” Satan said. “Encouragement? Bah. I’ll have to think on the subject.”
“Does humanity have any free will left at all?” Lara asked.
“Your question reveals your relative youth and muddled thinking,” Cunning said. “Consider your group’s decision to place one of your headquarters in a town filled with intelligent young adults. Humanity has always had its Skeptics, and most commonly among the youth. Both the Skeptics and the Believers are necessary, you will find. In our way, we have encouraged both.”
Just the usual good mixed with evil. The Fallen Angels couldn’t help doing so, ever.
“We cannot go back to God, whole, if we are worshipped,” Sorrow said. She turned from studying the battle on the computer screen to studying Reed. Reed intrigued Sorrow. The religions the Fallen Angels encouraged, until the rise of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all utilized homosexual male priests and prostitute priestesses. John hadn’t had time yet to corner Sorrow or any of the others on ‘why’, though. He doubted he would ever truly understand.
“I think you’re going back to God much faster than it will take for cults worshipping you to arise,” John said. “Or, if you let this group die, you’ll get the lungs kicked out of you by the 99 Gods and be destroyed.”
“Nevertheless,” Sorrow said. “This would be similar to being unclothed in a formal social event.” She paused and without warning began to radiate anger. “You know something you haven’t told us, John. I sense its importance. Grover and Lara know of this as well, but I’ve already learned this isn’t their tale to tell. You must tell us, as it is yours.”
Oh. Lara’s cryptic request. Important yes, surpassingly important, but the timing of this revelation was, as
usual, totally messed up.
“Reed, why don’t you explain, as this is truthfully of yours,” John said. Reed sat on a pillow on the floor in front of John, leaning back on the bench John sat on. John wanted a few moments to study the battle, which wasn’t going well, and Reed had been the one to ferret this information out of the Telepath group, as a trusted fellow Telepath.
Nessa and Ken had handed off the twins to Dave and Elorie to protect. Those two, hand in hand and sharing immunities, had the best chance of surviving the battle, though they could be done in by the attackers once the rest had fallen by use of a simple bullet. Or a boulder, from above.
Satan gave Reed a slap on the back, buoying him up. “Okay. Sorrow, see this one, sitting in front of all those laptops?” Reed said. “What is he?”
“He’s a reincarnated God,” Sorrow said. “In him resides the power of one named Miami, who fell; the knowledge of his mother, the Goddess Persona, and the soul of a third, the father.”
“Oh?” Reed said. This was new knowledge to all of them. Sickening, too, about the Kid God having Persona’s fluffhead knowledge to work with. Talk about years of crap to unlearn! “An aside, who’s the father?”
“The Daughter of Light’s husband Ken. The fatherhood isn’t completely clean, as some of the Daughter of Light’s soul is mixed in as well,” Sorrow said. “This is not what you were speaking of, was it?”
“No,” Reed said. “Elorie, the insightful mortal who correctly named you Gods when all others failed to notice, has identified this God as the Child of Morning.”
The Fallen Angels meeting with them stopped in unison, as did all the work done by all nearby Fallen Angels. Their intense scrutiny focused on him.
“John, move your distant vision over to this God and approach,” Sorrow said, ignoring courtesy and stating her desire as an order.
He did as the Fallen Angel wanted.
“By the Departed! Yes, this is true, but he is not fully formed,” Sorrow said. “He will be, but is not. Yet. Today, this is only potential.”
“He’s in danger of losing that potential,” Reed said. “There’s no telling what Dubuque would do to him if…”
“You do not have to belabor the obvious, minion,” Sorrow said, cutting Reed off. “I have changed my mind. We must do as John asks and destroy the keystone gamme today, before the battle is over. If all goes to plan, this destruction will save them.”
“Any excuse to save our Daughter of Light, who you’ve fallen for?” Wisdom said. He snorted. “Let nature do as nature always does. God will provide.”
“Fool!” Sorrow said. “Given the means to act, we are the ones who are doing God’s providing! That is part of what we are doing, going back to God!”
Sorrow hadn’t swayed the other Fallen Angels. Pity.
“Your gamme have also become the repository for your evil, and…”
Cunning interrupted John. “You have said that already, you do not have to repeat,” Cunning said. “Look at that! This child God is working willpower with computer commands! By mortal-produced thinking machines! Oh, yes, Sorrow is right, he is the one. He leads the way for your Gods as well as for us, perhaps even for the Ha-qodeshim! God’s hand is heavy on this one. He just needs time to finish maturing.”
“He is as promised,” Glory said, apropos of nothing, lost in rapture. She had moved over to stand elbow-to-elbow with Grover and Lara, who didn’t appear to mind.
“There’s more, Cunning,” Reed said. “Consider: you mourned the loss of the gamme destroyed by Elorie, Nessa and Ken, but you couldn’t see the evil within the gamme, even the one in Cappadocia that had turned on you. You are blind to this,” Reed said. He took on the aura of the Fallen Angels, linked to them by his empathy, and with other subtler Telepath tricks he preserved his free will. “The destruction of those two gamme opened the way for the message of the Daughter of Light. Destroying the rest of the gamme will allow you to reclaim the rest of your goodness.”
“This destruction will leave us infinitely weaker,” Cunning said. “The gamme hold our skills, our highest talents. Without them, we are like the 99 Gods, dependent only on direct use of magic.”
“Without evil you can go back to God, with evil you can’t,” Satan said, and emphasized the ‘can’t’ with a thunk of her cane on the floor. “The evil in these gamme, corrupted over the millennia, is what corrupted magicians like John. The evil in these gamme is what worries the current Angelic Host.”
“You are wrong,” Glory said. “What you call our corruption was an attempt to save the magicians from the corruption coming from the Parasite.” Their word for Hell.
“You had another solution you didn’t use, th-th-though, G.,” Grover said, meeting Glory’s gaze. “Our world is full of that solution, and wi-wi-we don’t need the old methods any longer.”
“Yes, and one more evil to us than the evil you sense in the gamme, the deadly combination of post-classical technology and self-rule by the masses. The true reason we must go back to God,” Sorrow said. “To us, the world has become horrifically evil.”
John nodded in understanding. Even he felt this way on occasion, and he had, or at least he thought he had, adapted to modern times.
Around him, the other Fallen Angels started work on something, doing magic, individual and group, faster than a bunch of Piccadilly commandoes in a food shortage.
“There is another thing to consider,” Cunning said. “John’s evil is his own, and must be expiated as well before he can return to God. You know this, Bais, you have said so yourself.”
John winced. She had said the same. For centuries. He had long known he had done evil. Only at the prompting of Satan and the realization of the deeper machinations of the Ecumenists and the Fallen Angels had he realized how much evil had he done in his life.
“So?” John said.
“Have you thought through the obvious consequences of your actions, Father?” Cunning said. “Do you know that when we go to God, you come with us?”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” John said. This wasn’t something he wanted to think about. “I’m expiating my sins with my current actions by undoing your evil without doing evil.”
“Your actions won’t be enough.”
“If by his actions here he also helps save humanity from the worshipper-addled Gods, it will be,” Satan said.
“And you?” Cunning asked Satan. “Your power is not ours, yet if you are here when we pass on, you will not be able to resist God’s holy call. Because of your unnatural lifespan your hold on life is weak.”
Satan frowned. “Perhaps.” She paused. “You’re right. It would be wrong of me to fight the call. I’m confident I can face God and at least argue for my salvation, and dying here, in this way, this sounds better than anything I’ve thought of in a goodly long while. I trust my work opposing tyrants will suffice.”
“Is that how you perceive us?”
“How else?” Satan said. “Back to the Child of Morning. The question I pose to you is whether the Kid God can fulfill the precursor prophesies of the Child of Morning if he is enslaved by the worshipper-addled Dubuque? To lead, either directly or by example, he must retain his free will. If you wait too long he’ll no longer be a child when he again becomes free to act, eternally dooming you. Would you rather be consigned to oblivion?”
“She understands,” Sorrow said. “We must allow the Father of Darkness to destroy the keystone gamme. We must decide to do so now.”
Glory turned to study Grover, then Lara, before fixing her gaze on the Kid God. “Yes,” she said. “The time has indeed arrived.”
A flock of Fallen Angels disagreed and the wrangling started yet again.
John winced. He, in his Persona body, had been hit. He concentrated for a moment, moving his mental focus to the fight.
22. (Nessa)
Orlando’s defensi
ve shell had shrunk to a few dozen feet around the remains of the camp. Dozens of Orlando’s Supported lay dead or incapacitated on the limestone and sand. The air filled solid with streamers of energy – attacks, defenses and help, from one beleaguered defender to another. Nessa, sickened by the carnage, could barely reach Ken with her telepathy. She had never experienced anything like this before.
Nessa stood outside the Kid God’s tent, between Dave, Elorie and the twins and the attackers, willing to throw her body on the knives and guns of the attackers if it would save her children for a few precious moments longer. She feared the chaos and violence of the battle had ripped her rational mind to flinders. Without rational thoughts, her puzzle-mind self would soon be lost to the screaming multitude.
“Dammit, John!” Ken said, barking and pleading. “Do something! We’re dead on our feet here!” Ken rushed back to join Nessa and put his body between the twins and the attackers. Ken still had ample teek left, but his body shook and he was close to passing out, his body pushed far beyond its normal limits. She offered him her arm, and body, and he leaned into her. Physically, she was perfectly fine. Her mind, though – bad, very bad. Almost fragmented into puzzle pieces. Nearly gone, perhaps for good. In the back of her mind she sensed Korua working hard to keep everything inside her functional.
“The Fallen Angels are discussing whether to help or not; I can’t hurry this discussion,” PersonaJohn said.
Oh God, I didn’t mean what I said when I said you were a lazy bum addicted to watching mortals die like my Mom watching a soap opera and prayers were pointless, Nessa prayed. Save our asses, God. Pretty please? Pretty pretty please?
She caught sight of Dana bouncing around at the edge of Orlando’s defenses, personally going after the enemy. She swore Dana’s body had died and she animated her remains out of sheer willpower and cussedness. Love filled Nessa’s heart, a greater love than for any of the others who had instant married. If only Dana didn’t have to die…
99 Gods: Odysseia Page 23