“Well, duh. How else am I talking to you from inside a stove? Jeeze, Marvin, I was beaten to death with an axe and my dick hacked off and stuffed in my dead mouth. Didn’t you get the Instagram? Yeah, I’m pretty much dead dead.”
“And you’re in Hell?”
“Two for two, Marvin. I have a condo with a balcony overlooking the Lake of Fire. Here, have a look.”
Poppy used the poker to open the stove door wide while keeping his distance. The little man was sitting in an armchair on a deck that was awash in flames. Poppy didn’t recognize his friend in the wretched soul before him, whose face blistered and popped as it broiled in the intense heat. Even as Poppy watched, the poor bastard’s full bushy beard exploded in a ball of flames, engulfing his entire head for a full minute.
Meanwhile, over NJB’s shoulder Poppy could see the famous lake where naked men and women writhed in liquid fire. Their shrieks of anguish and prayers for mercy combined to form a continuous background noise, like ocean surf, only higher pitched.
“Sorry about that,” NJB continued. “My beard likes to flare up at the most inconvenient times. You know, I’ve been trying to reach you for days. I was about to give up.”
“If you are my friend,” Poppy said, “why are you tormenting me like this?”
“Excuse me? Tormenting you?” The poor soul’s beard went up again. He hacked and coughed. “Get over yourself, Marvin. I’m the damned here. For all eternity, I might add. The only reason I can slip away to visit you like this is because the war in Heaven is heating up and the devils are pretty short-handed. So there’s no one left to stand guard over all of us all of the time. So, if you don’t want the news from the warfront, then I’ll just mosey along.”
Poppy pulled a chair in front of the stove and draped a blanket over himself. “I saw a flyer in Wallis, you and a nigger,” he said. “A disgusting, filthy picture of you performing an abomination. Tell me it isn’t true what I saw.”
“It isn’t. At least not that photo. Didn’t I show you Photoshop? That particular photo was shooped; it was a fake. But I was a true sinner. How else do you figure I ended up down here?”
“But you wrote me that you never harmed anyone!” If he could reach his trousers without getting up, Poppy would have pulled the little note out of his wallet to show to his guest. It was the note that accompanied the quarter-million dollars in NJB’s floor safe. It was addressed to him. Was it a lie?
“Marvin, making love to a consenting adult is not harming anyone.”
Upon hearing this, Poppy was filled to overflowing with disgust and indignation, but he held back his emotions and mildly said, “You call that love? That’s perversion, friend, plain and simple, and that makes you a sodomite. And though I hate to say it, it makes you deserving of the way things played out. For all eternity.”
His guest only laughed. “Hey, chill out, dude, will you?” His scorched face literally cracked a grin. “Chill out — get it? That’s what we tell each other down here. Chill out, asshole.”
Poppy reached over and shut the door.
“Hey, I came a long way to tell you something, Prophecy. Don’t you even want to hear it?” Poppy made no reply, and NJB added, “It’s about Beezus.”
Despite his misgivings, Poppy reopened the door. “What about Beezus?”
“I don’t know what you did to him, but you sure managed to piss him off big league. He’s one of the head honchos down here, and, boy, does he have a hard on for you. On the other hand, all the devils seem to have hard ons, but Beezus is a bad motherfucker to cross, believe me. You’d best stay clear of him.”
“Too late. He already took one of my boys and led one of my girls astray.”
“Sorry about that, but that’s just the beginning. The special treatment you get won’t stop till he’s broken you.”
“What can I do?”
“In the long term, all you can do is pray that Michael and Gabriel win this war as soon as possible and cage up Beezus and the others for a thousand years, like the Bible promises. In the short term, you gotta get rid of his spies. He’s too busy to watch you all by himself, so he puts demons on you to report back to him.”
“You mean the ravens?”
“Those winged bastards are a favorite tool of his. You have to destroy them.”
“How? By burning them? I already tried that.”
“I know; I was watching you. You didn’t get the bird hot enough. You need a sustained, intense heat to get ’em started. But once they catch fire, look out! Use a blowtorch if you can get close enough. Or try napalm.”
“Napalm? Where am I supposed to get my hands on napalm?”
“Make your own. It’s easy enough, and you already have all the ingredients.”
AS IT TURNED out, poor-man’s napalm was easy to make. Proverbs had copied the formula from a survivalist magazine article. Basically, you mixed gasoline with crushed-up styrofoam, of which they had plenty. It made a sticky goo that clung to stuff and burned long and hot. They tried it out.
Proverbs held the bird in his rifle sights and let out his breath. Crack went the .22, and the bird dropped into the snow-shrouded undergrowth. Proverbs and Poppy hustled through the woods to catch it before it could heal.
The raven’s chest heaved rapidly, and it looked to be leaking real blood. It did not seem to be repairing itself but lay still and died. They waited a long time to make sure it was dead, and it didn’t come back. Not a demon but a regular creature of God.
“Don’t you know it’s against the law to kill ravens?” Proverbs said mockingly. He hadn’t gotten over Ginger. Some days he mocked her like this, and some days he sulked and was very unpleasant to be around.
They spotted another raven and Proverbs shot it. It had almost self-repaired by the time they reached it in the woods. Poppy hit it with a round of birdshot to slow it down. Proverbs waded up to it, opened the old Heinz ketchup bottle, and squeezed a bead of napalm jelly on the bird’s belly like dressing a hot dog. He lit it with a lighter and stepped back to watch.
At first it appeared that the napalm would just burn off like the gasoline had, but gradually the black feathers glowed red and began to smoke. The demon’s little pet began to squirm, and a moment later it ignited with a towering whoosh of flames. The fire was so fast and hot, it burned the needles of an overhanging spruce bough. A minute later there was nothing left of the bird, no tiny snakes, no ashes, no nothing, only a puddle of melted snow.
“Good,” Poppy said. “That’ll do.”
PM2 1.0
FOR THE FIRST time in his life, Jace felt the urge to admit defeat and seek help from someone wiser than he.
What if he condemned three thousand people to death only to later learn the rogue planet was never going to hit Earth in the first place? All he had to go on was the alien’s word. That’s right, the word of a reverse cyborg. How much was that worth? What if it was all a trick? But why would Found One lie about something like this? It could harvest as many humans as it liked, with or without Jace’s blessing.
Jace really needed to phone a friend. He went down a mental list of everyone he knew and respected and was surprised by how few names he came up with. He’d always thought of himself as a likable guy with plenty of friends, but the list made him out to be a loner. Am I a loner?
He could always ask Kate. His sister would listen to the whole story, from the cone of welder’s glass in the sky to the true cause of the Skyburn, without interruption or judgment. But she wouldn’t believe him. Come down, she would beg. We have a room for you. We know good people here you can talk to.
Jace considered unburdening himself on a local. Chas Bunyan, Ed Sulzer, maybe Kelly Cobweal. They didn’t have to believe him because he could take them out to see the tulips for themselves.
No, wait, the tulips had disintegrated.
ONLY AFTER JACE exhausted his short list of prospective confidants did he flash on a certain non-person who might fit the bill.
“Scrappy, tell me, can I
make a private connection through you? That is, without Found One listening in? Or even knowing about it?”
Most assuredly. Who would you like to call?
“Really, really private?”
Yes. As I’ve already explained, I can defeat all known methods of eavesdropping, even those used by Found One.
“Okay, good. Call Ranger Ethan Masterson.”
Ranger Masterson is deceased.
“I know that. I meant striver Masterson.”
A moment later the golem of his former colleague was strutting around his living room examining the decor with a critical eye.
“This place is even shittier than I imagined, Kuliak. What a dump.”
“Thanks. Listen, I called to get your take on something. You know about the rogue planet, right?”
“Sure. Found One keeps me in the loop.”
“Good. Then you know that Found One asked me to decide how to defend Earth from total destruction.”
“Yeah, what a joke. You deciding anything.”
“Again, thanks. Can we discuss this in confidence? Will you promise not to pass anything I say to Found One?”
“Sure, if you insist.”
“Then promise.”
“I promise.”
“No, spell it out. Promise me that you’ll keep everything we say during this conversation confidential.”
The striver placed a hand over the place where his heart used to be. “I do solemnly swear, on pain of death, ha ha, to keep everything we say here confidential. There, are we good? What do you want to discuss?”
Jace stepped closer and lowered his voice. “A few days ago you told me you considered the alien to be one of the ‘good guys.’ Do you still believe that to be true?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“First off, keep in mind that strivers like me are on the same Machine hit list as you baby cyborgs. Machine considers me to be just as deserving of purging as you. So, our friend is remembering for me as much as for you. I don’t know about you, but that makes the little martian one of the good guys.”
Jace nodded his head; that made sense. “How?” he said. “The tulip thingies it uses to remember are falling apart. I’ve seen them in heaps of dust.”
“Maybe, but Found One is planting two new ones for every one that fails. And just yesterday it remembered how to harden itself against a planetary Armageddon.”
“I know; it told me.”
“And today it’s busy remembering how to build an escape pod to leave Earth before the rogue gets here. Which is what it will do if you crap out on us.
“Listen, Kuliak, I have no idea how you managed to con the little guy into defending Earth, but, buddy, don’t blow it now!”
THE DOG RAN to her from the yard, wagging her whole rear end in joy and jumping up repeatedly to lick her face.
“Down, down, you crazy dog.” Deut held the dog down and hugged her around the neck. “What are you doing here?”
“Don’t be afraid,” someone called from the porch. “She won’t bite.”
Deut looked for the source of the voice. “I know she won’t bite, mister; she’s our dog.” The man’s face fell. It was pitiful to see. “You must be Charlie Moses.” Barbara Jean had told her where Mr. Moses lived. (It felt so odd calling someone Moses.)
“And you must be one of the Prophecy girls.”
“I am, and I want to thank you for taking Crissy Lou in like that.”
“Her name is . . .” he began but trailed off when he saw the futility of his case. Princess had obviously found her true owner. “If you ever need a good dog sitter . . .”
“We’ll keep you in mind. And thanks again, Mr. Moses.”
Crissy Lou followed Deut back to Barbara Jean’s house, trotting and dancing the whole way. In actual fact, Uzzie was her true owner, but Deut would do.
HEY, BOSS, YOU should check out the news.
Jace was in the yard, chipping ice from the pump spout. “Is there news about the planet?”
There was: An amateur astronomer in Jastrzebia-Zdrój, Poland, was the first person to announce the discovery of the rogue planet. A few hours later the Keck Observatory in Hawaii confirmed the sighting, and by that evening astronomers around the world were calculating its size, speed, and trajectory. Good news! The planet was not expected to collide with any planet in the solar system.
Scrappy displayed grainy images from NASA of the rogue world that was provisionally designated as 2013 BU. The Earth-sized visitor was tan in color, but the initial photos were too blurry to make out detailed surface features or to deduce whether or not the planet supported life.
Meanwhile, world media dubbed it Planet X (though die-hard Maya Doomsday fans maintained that it was actually Nibiru making a tardy appearance). Planet X’s harmless flyby would occur on the morning of Friday, March 8, seven weeks away.
People around the world reacted with a combination of skepticism and fear. Public demonstrations were breaking out in dozens of cities still reeling from the shock of the Skyburn only a week earlier. Citizens everywhere were demanding answers from their leaders who had none to offer.
“Get me Found One,” Jace said when he’d heard enough. “Get that sausage over here right away.”
Right away it was. When Jace entered his house, Found One was waiting for him in the kitchen, sitting on a boulder.
“So,” Found One said, “you finally make up your mind?”
“Yes. Yes, I did. Cancel your Little Nudge; it’s not necessary. The rogue planet will miss us.” He went to the kitchen and wagged his finger in the alien’s face. “If I had listened to you, I would be guilty of mass murder for nothing.”
The alien’s cheeks pinched its nose. “Do you doubt the competency of a trained, veteran space voyager to calculate celestial trajectories?”
“No, but our scientists do apparently.”
“The early course projections by your astronomers are in error. They will refine them over the next few days as they gather more data, but by then it will be too late to effectively intervene. You have run out of time. What’ll it be, the Little Nudge or destruction?”
Jace didn’t feel as confident as he had a moment ago. “I need another hour.”
“No, sorry.”
“A half hour then.”
“Fine! Take all the time you want. Send this one a postcard.”
Found One vanished without another word.
Sorry, boss. The creature cut out rather abruptly.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Jace had been gnawing on a thought for a while, whether to ask his communicator what it thought about his dilemma. Talk about desperation. Like asking the fridge for dating advice. But maybe a purely machine perspective, sans sentience, could shed some light.
“Scrappy, what do you think about my decision? Should I consent to Found One’s plan for the Little Nudge and condemn three thousand humans to die?”
Without a nanosecond of processing, the thing replied:
In the long term, try to plumb this alien’s hidden agenda. There’s always a hidden agenda in these kinds of First Contact. Also, explore further this “road not taken.” What exactly does the lightening bolt icon represent?
In the short term, Boss, you are royally screwed. But you put yourself into this situation and can only blame yourself for the grief.
With that said, since you asked, I judge Found One to be correct when it concludes that you are the one human most suited to stand in for humanity at this critical junction. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. There is no time to bring anyone else up to speed. Therefore, I think you should stand tall and take responsibility for your world.
Well, Jace thought, that was unexpected. The little machine had insight.
PM3 1.0
AT MILEPOST 58 on the McHardy Road, the corrugated steel maintenance facility was screened from view by a stand of cottonwood and aspen. It was a 1970s-era barn for DOT vehicles and heavy equipment, and Vera had
sent Bradd to check it out as a possible Regional Action Center site. There were no state personnel permanently stationed there, so Bradd brought along Delinda Jones of the Department of Administration with the keys to the facility and the inspection checklist. He also brought along Colonel Beaver Swayne, who complained that he was way too busy with responsibilities closer to home to conduct remote scoping inspections. But Bradd hinted there was another, covert reason for including him.
Bradd piloted his own small airplane from Wallis and touched down on the public airstrip in McHardy where they met Ed Sulzer who volunteered to drive the party to the DOT facility in his old Suburban. They forded the frozen Caldecott River above the footbridge.
The warehouse building turned out to be on the small side, but Jones judged it adequate for RAC needs. It sat on a gravel pad on a 10-acre (4-ha) lot, had its own power generation and septic systems.
Ed Sulzer, who had already heard about the state preparedness plan, expressed his incredulity that the governor would even consider placing one of the six initial RACs in McHardy.
“I mean,” he said, “we’re not exactly a high-population area here. Why not Glennallen? Why not Valdez?”
Colonel Swayne harbored similar doubts of his own, but he kept them to himself for now.
Back at the airstrip, Bradd asked Delinda Jones to hang back at the Sulzers’ while he and Swayne made a brief side trip. One hour, two hours tops, he told her.
Once in the air again for the short hop to the Stubborn Mine, Bradd filled Swayne in.
“It’s a possible bug-out destination for Vera’s administration in case things go south in a hurry. There’s supposed to be an old sourdough with a big family here who fixed up a copper mine as a shelter. Vera says he offered it to us for our use.”
“That’s why you want to put the RAC site in McHardy. Smart.”
ADAM AND PROVERBS ran their remaining two sno-gos up and down the airstrip a dozen times to create a lane of packed snow. A small plane with skis could land on loose snow, but it might not be able to take off again. So unless the strip looked good from the air, the pilot might not land in the first place.
Glassing the Orgachine Page 29