“Three, four hours, before Bais’s presence messes us up,” Ken said. Nessa fiddled with her braid, nervous.
Willie delivered the tea and bread, and Satan took a sip. “I do so enjoy working with sane mature Telepaths. Truth doesn’t bother you as much as it bothers the others. You’re familiar with the cold calculations, especially you, Nessa.”
“Just don’t get in your way, right?” Nessa said. Satan read banked hostility in her eyes. This one saw well.
“Oh, you’re precious. Your anger warms me. Nor will I deny what you sense.” Satan held her hands out in surrender. “I’m not perfect, and like you I worship truth and reality along with God.” Lies twisted themselves fatal. Hate became corruption. Obsession beat a path to Hell. Nessa and Ken understood all of this already; she didn’t have to preach the truth to them.
The Minds of the Sea taught them, the only true way. The realization made her relax, happy.
Nessa turned to Ken. “Now, what was it that makes you think she isn’t human?”
“Oh, you’re the one who figured that out,” Satan said, to Ken. “You two do make a good team; I bless your marriage and children.” May they lead absolutely normal lives, she thought and commanded. “I can answer your question. Instinct. To a mental deep delver, I don’t feel right. To the shallow, I’m merely disgusting. Why? Only in this wonderful modern era have I found any hints of who and what my people were. As best my naturally terrified contacts can figure, my people and I were archaic Homo Sapiens who’d separated ourselves and were on the way to becoming a new species when we got wiped out.”
“What wiped you out?” Ken asked.
“Our own telepathy. We dwindled down to a few, and the few scattered and bred back into the general population of Central Asia.”
“So your people were responsible for human Telepaths?”
“I didn’t say that. Nessa, who made my people into Telepaths? We weren’t to start with. Whoever made us Telepaths are the ones who’re responsible for the existence of Telepaths and for killing off my people. My tribe’s legends spoke of powerful commanding spirits who taught my people to speak mind-to-mind, sense far away and cause objects to move without touching. Only they weren’t old legends. I had an ancient great-grandmother who told stories about being the last of our people who had been in communion with the spirit teachers. The origin of telepathy was a recent event in the history of my tribe. My elders witnessed the origin of telepathy. Our decline in numbers dated to the time of Telepaths.”
“There’re always damned meddlers, and there’s so many of them,” Nessa said. She rubbed her head in her hands. “I just wish you hadn’t driven off Persona. She’s been keeping me from having one of my bad fits for months. My fits aren’t something you’ll want to witness, Bais. I won’t be polite.”
“I apologize, but I didn’t choose to drive off Persona,” Satan said. Poor Nessa, stuck with the thought powers. Nothing Satan knew would help her. Each moment she trod another step along on the path to inescapable madness. Poor harmless Nessa… “I tried to keep Persona with you, but I failed. These things happen.”
Ken cleared his throat. “Ken?” Nessa said.
“If Alt’s going to lead the Telepaths, Persona needs to be protecting him, not you.”
“You did it?” Nessa said. “You made Persona go with Alt? How?” Satan expected hatred or at least anger. Instead? Befuddlement and exasperation. They loved each other but didn’t understand each other. She thought about this for a moment and realized their lack of understanding was a good thing. Many Telepaths sank into lassitude and immobility after a while, basking in the glory of the patterns of their minds. Not understanding each other might give them the edge to keep active and keep each other alive.
If only they realized how abnormal, how inhuman, they both were, they would be even better prepared for the trials ahead. Satan knew she didn’t have time to explain or to concoct the proper lessons which might teach them the essential truth.
“I’m not sure what I did, or how,” Ken said. “It’s like telekinesis, but something else. Like moving luck. The ‘why’ is easier: a hunch followed by logical understanding.”
“Neat. Only I wish you’d talked to me about this first,” Nessa said. “I’m going to miss Persona. I love her in about a dozen different ways.”
Some even involving orgasm. Satan smiled. “It’s a proximity effect,” Satan said. “Ken can move luck because I can move luck, because we’re similar as Telepaths. This isn’t a curse, and there’s no necessity that he become what I am. There’s no reason he needs to duplicate the mistakes that led me into my horrific form of immortality.
“When you leave, Ken, you won’t be able to do this on your own. On the other hand, if you know about a dicey battle coming up, we can work together again. This would be bad for your enemies. If you stay with me long enough, I might even be able to teach you the basics.” Satan paused to gather her thoughts. “You don’t mind that I split you off of the other Telepaths? The split seemed to me to be a good idea, but this sort of thing annoys most people.”
Nessa laughed. “Hey, you didn’t do anything that I can complain about. I’ve done the same myself dozens of times. I’ll trust a Telepath’s hunches any day over the rational thoughts of a normal human.”
“I’m not so trusting, but I understand what’s going on,” Ken said. “Nessa’s got a mission she’s been sitting on out of a general obligation to help Portland’s alliance in this fight.”
“Uh huh,” Nessa said. “I’ve got a friend to rescue in Africa. She got grabbed by a God, and rescuing her is way overdue. Now that Alt’s dumped us, the rescue no longer feels wrong.”
“It’s nice to see my tricks work right for once,” Satan said. Too bad her work took a sane mature Telepath to appreciate. “John’s going to try and get you back, you know.”
“He’s fucking inescapable,” Nessa said. “I won’t be at all surprised if he tries. As usual, we’ll listen to his blathering and blandishments. Sometimes we even do what he suggests. Not often, though.”
Ken nodded. “I can fix your osteo, Bais. If I flex your spine back into its normal shape, you would heal it straight. Your life would be more pleasant.”
“The trick’s been done before, most often with a rack,” Satan said. “I would face months of agony…and my spine would go back hunched in forty, fifty years. Not worth the pain.”
“I can teach you to ignore the pain,” Nessa said.
Satan snorted. “Pain’s what keeps me alive, my dear. Keep your trick. Besides, even if I didn’t feel the pain, I’d still be laid up for months. You can’t want that, not now. Not with these 99 Gods to deal with. You said you had some information about what’s going on?”
Willie presented them with more tea, black bread and honey. Ken ate like a horse. Nessa sipped tea and nibbled on chocolate. Satan took a half slice of black bread, put honey on it, and dipped it in her tea.
“Yes, information,” Nessa said. “Portland’s our leader. She’s strong, cautious and inclusive. However, she’s a total failure at male autocrat.” They all laughed. “Our main opposition is Dubuque.”
“He seemed so pleasant on television.” Certainly more impressive than his putative ally, Verona. Satan had a mild hope that she might be able to drive a wedge between them. From what she had seen, their alliance was quite contentious.
“He is. Unfortunately, his hidden activities are rotten. Let me tell you about what he’s done,” Nessa said. “You’ll need to know the full roster of our allies, our enemies and the neutrals.”
“Yes, I do. Thank you,” Satan said, and smiled.
Nessa and Ken told all, giving Satan so much information her fears about the hidden puppetmasters vanished, forcing her fears about impending doom and serial apocalypses right out of her mind.
Progress, for once.
“The scooter, please,” Satan said. Willie hopped out of the van, went around back and lowered the scooter to pavement level. Then he brought it
up front for Satan to sit in. She turned it on and smiled.
“Such a wonderful suggestion of that Nessa,” Satan said. Wheelchairs, motorized or not, had no appeal. They reinforced her infirmity. On the other hand, scooters were cool. She could hop right off any time she wanted, and the basket up front would hold a purse and her canes. This one even had an option for voice commands!
Whir.
She had spent two days driving around on the scooter in Sarasota, her home-base town in the United States. Wonderful place. Filled with nasty old people, just the way she liked things.
Dubuque’s Oklahoma City headquarters was an over-commercialized version of Vatican City, newly rebranded as the ‘Foundation of the City of God’. She appreciated the multiple meanings. The megachurch toad-squatted over the northwest section of the main city, out in the suburbs, just north of Lake Hefner. Dubuque had opened his City of God Foundation to the public, but getting in required passing through a security checkpoint, which Satan arranged without difficulty. The church-city had a white brick exterior with a red tile roof and a southwestern architectural feel to it. The main entrance reminded Satan of the Alamo, though she didn’t understand exactly why. Inside, the City of God Foundation hummed with hustle and bustle, without even the tinge of evil. “If not for what you and Nessa said, I’d think this was the headquarters of a good guy,” Satan said to Willie.
Willie shrugged. “Dubuque’s main skill is to appear good even while he does evil,” Willie said. “That’s what makes him a problem.”
Well, Nessa and Willie might be mistaken. Lorenzi did that to people, spinning them in circles with his logic and arguments until they had no idea whether they walked on their feet or their bald heads. Satan definitely had to check out this, um, Living Saint. She had met several before, people she had actually and humbly served, but suspected this one used the name as a lie, and was, alas, just another of the damned 99.
While she drove the scooter across the large parking lot and into the City of God Foundation, she quizzed Willie on what sorts of energy attacks he knew how to stop. When she realized he only knew how to stop heat, light, telekinesis and several colors of divine energy attacks, Satan assigned him to learn to cover the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum, ionizing radiation, and all the colors of divine attacks she had been able to learn about. The most worrisome one was an attack by Confucianism, demonstrated against some renegade Chinese mobsters, in which he used a five-helix aquamarine beam to disintegrate the ground out from under his opponents. When the ground reappeared several seconds later, it buried the miscreants alive, where they still lay. Satan had no idea how her subconscious defenses would cope with such an egregious violation of physics, if they coped at all.
No matter which course she chose, the results sounded painful.
They ran into another security barricade at the Foundation door and the expected long lines. Satan chose the VIP line. “We’re here to meet with Dubuque,” she said to the officials at the head of the line. She nudged Willie, who magicked up a holy white light to surround them. The guards nodded appreciatively, waved them through and assigned them a cute adolescent kid to guide them.
“Got a name, son?” Satan asked, concentrating on the boy so he would not get disgusted.
“Name’s Elroy,” the boy said.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“I’m in the City of God school,” he said, backing out of range. “Eighth grade group Home School. This counts as part of my classwork. Where you heading, ma’am?”
“We’re here to meet with Dubuque.”
“Okay,” Elroy said, smoothly, as if he got to meet with Dubuque every day. Possibly he did; untrustworthy internet articles claimed Dubuque was kid-happy and donated his time and effort to teaching children as often as possible. And, if Satan hadn’t forgotten how to read individual and group auras, Dubuque wasn’t a pedophile, either. If anything, the place reeked of a different perversion, the chaste.
“Walk beside me and tell me about your home,” Satan said. Elroy did so, chattering away, uneasy with Satan’s presence despite her best efforts at making him comfortable and insensitive to her stench. Poor Dubuque. Attendance had fallen at Dubuque’s megachurch after the Miami-Atlanta fight, all due to the despicable efforts of Portland’s Helping Hands alliance (according to Elroy). The number of VIP visitors had dwindled down to a small number every week. Despite the setbacks Dubuque said things would be improving soon.
Elroy’s big news involved the new dormitory for the Foundation’s best, now under construction behind the main building. Dozens of the Foundation’s full time members bird-dogged the construction full time to prevent fraud.
Several times along the way they passed picture walls of smiling faces, each with a caption underneath detailing their miraculous recovery from illness. Much of Elroy’s chatter involved cant phrases that couldn’t be literal, such as ‘The Room of Utter Stillness’. “I even got to heal people,” Elroy said, after they had passed the Room of Holy Healing.
“You did?” Satan asked.
“At some public schools inside Oklahoma City,” Elroy said, with obvious distaste. “I got to wield the Holy Rod of Acne Healing. It was way cool.”
“I’m sure it was,” Satan said, amused.
As Nessa said, all the modern buildings in the United States, including this one, were set up to be, as she put it, ‘handicap accessible’, which meant scooter accessible. Satan hadn’t had so much fun in years.
“It’s two twenty, so if He’s following his normal schedule, the Living Saint’s spending His usual hour with the Light of Truth,” Elroy said, after he had finished giving Satan the nickel tour.
“Take me there.”
The farther Satan got into the Foundation, the more ‘good’ she felt in this place. All the goodness she expected of the best of the Gods was here: physical healing, mental healing, life counseling, holy teaching and platonic love. She felt buoyed by the deeds done here and the many environmentally conscious proclamations and design features of the place. Dubuque’s detractors had to be wrong. No evil being would be able to do such things.
Elroy told Satan the Living Saint met with the Light of Truth in one of the youth gyms. He led them there, past shrines of several martyrs, including one to the fallen God, Miami. Satan stopped for a moment to read the plaque underneath the mundane statue. According to the plaque, Atlanta had slain Miami while he had been on a mission to bring the felonious Telepath, Alton Freudenberger, to justice. Miami died pure, only hours beforehand absolved of his former sins by Dubuque. Unfortunately, Miami had fallen at the last, goaded into an unwise attack on Atlanta by the magnitude of Atlanta’s sins.
All the plaque’s commentary misled without being total falsehoods, save for the lies about this Freudenberger fellow and his felonies. According to everything she had seen on the internet and in her meeting with him, Freudenberger appeared to be a mild mannered fellow, if anything, too much the straight arrow. She had a hard time seeing Freudenberger committing misdemeanors, let alone felonies.
“Interesting. Let’s go meet Living Saint Dubuque,” Satan said, finished with the plaque. Lies, eh? Lies weren’t evil, but bespoke a deeper corruption, a devotion to mistruth. Even the most evil might seem pure and good if they strategically shaded the truth. Willie opened the gym door and Satan piloted the scooter inside. She found herself in a typical multi-purpose gym and auditorium, the size of a basketball court, with a raised stage along the long end of it, and folded bleachers opposite, to the left of Satan as she entered. The place stank of male sweat and its reality quivered from the use of God-style abilities.
Over a dozen eyes turned to her as her scooter rounded the folded bleachers. The quivers in reality died away, save those associated with detection and analysis. The ‘Light of Truth’ didn’t turn out to be an advanced Bible study group, as Satan expected, but some form of combat brigade of normal mortals with God-borrowed abilities. All male. Dubuque floated to the ground from his air per
ch, where he had likely been directing a mock combat. He glared in Satan’s direction, an angry frown on his face. A Telepath stood at Dubuque’s right side, an old blind man with Parkinson’s or something, who twitched as he stood. His presence rattled some old bad memories of Satan, but Dubuque had the old blind man shielded so strongly she couldn’t tell anything else about him.
“Who are you and what is the meaning of this?” Dubuque said, peremptorily.
“My name’s Bais, and I’d like to talk to you, Holy Dubuque,” Satan said. Despite the plaque, she still couldn’t sense anything evil about Dubuque, and she had an excellent feel for evil. Since Portland and her crew of Telepaths weren’t evil either, she wondered if there was instead some simple but stupid misunderstanding between these two factions. She had no interest in being a go-between, but if she got lucky Dubuque might tell her about someone truly evil to bedevil. “There’s much…”
As Satan spoke her first sentence, Dubuque wiggled reality, some sort of signal. When she started to speak her second sentence, he and his men summoned divine energies. As her breath caught, he and his Light of Truth blasted at her with so many different divine attack forms – red, yellow, blue and gold helixes, all whispering of death and well-bent reality – that she couldn’t make sense of them all. Willie’s concentric defenses vanished around them, bing bing bing, each overwhelmed in a few tenths of a second.
Satan leapt off the scooter and grabbed Willie. She had put a lot of work into the damned magician and had no desire to see him slain by a surprise attack. Reality fire surrounded her in an instant, inches from her and Willie’s clothes. The attacks didn’t stop and pushed closer. Satan closed her eyes and huddled in Willie’s arms, trusting her unconscious to save her. Certainly none of her conscious abilities could protect her from an attack of this magnitude. She had never been hit by anything of the sort before, and for a moment she feared she might at long last lose her misbegotten life.
99 Gods: Betrayer Page 11