Portland didn’t look at all amused by Satan’s presence.
“Satan.”
“War.”
“I’ve decided you shouldn’t exist.”
“Neither should you.”
“So, you’ve decided that Portland needs bedeviling?” War said, instead of defending her own existence. Just when she thought her day couldn’t get any worse. Her projection with Alt and her real Leo body both spent the morning playing ‘target’ for Angela Pilovich, Akron’s discarded skeezer of a Telepath, who had turned out to still have mental blockages, and was poorly trained, besides. Still, Alt was right. His team did need a telekinetic, even if they had to cope with the not-horribly-bright Angela, the formerly unhinged real estate saleslady, whose subconscious had a bad habit of redecorating furnished houses she showed. Alt was positive he could make Angela a proper mature Telepath.
War wasn’t sure what to do with someone who had a dream lover made from her own telekinesis. Her prince. She really wished they had Nessa available to clean the gibbering nonsense out of Angela’s mind, but she and Ken were about to land in the city of Nairobi.
“We’re examining the possibility,” Willie said. Obviously Satan was giving her rat bastard companion the reins today, even though he stank of magical corruption and the urge for evil. “I’m still hacked that your idiots attacked us awhile back, when we were bothering Dubuque.”
“It shows a lack of wisdom.” Satan.
“It wasn’t an attack. Removing you was a military necessity,” War said.
“Sending those fools was your idea?” Satan said.
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you’re the one I should consider counseling,” Satan said.
“Good luck on that, sister. So, why were you harassing Portland’s charity efforts?”
Both Satan and Willie glowered at War. War smiled back, intrigued. Willie whispered to Satan the truth: War only appeared by projection.
“So why do you think you’re here?” War asked Satan.
“I’ve already said all I’m going to say on that subject,” Satan said. Which meant she had said her piece to Portland, before War’s arrival. War turned to Portland.
“The botched diplomatic attempt has, apparently, revealed that I’m a tyrant, and the fact I’m using a form of mental control on my charity managers to keep them from skimming makes me a worse tyrant,” Portland said. She raised an eyebrow. “Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion.”
“Diplomatic attempt? Weasel words,” Willie said. “I know an attack when I’m its victim.”
“They weren’t sent in to attack,” War said. “They were sent in to negotiate. We still don’t know what set them off.” The survivors of that attack not only didn’t agree on their observations, the story changed in their minds every few days. That response, and Dubuque’s lunatic actions immediately after Satan’s arrival, served as a big red-letter warning to War: ‘Do not attack Satan, under any circumstances’.
“Weakness,” Willie said. “Lack of discipline. This entire organization reeks.” He turned to Portland. “Starting at the top.” Portland glared at him. “From what I’ve learned from Bais, more than half of all the tyrants she bedevils got into the tyrant game because of weakness and lack of discipline.”
Portland cleared her throat and took her hands off the arms of her chair. She left hand-prints behind. “War, how wonderful it is to see you again,” she said. As if. “Any news?”
“Battle, or the warning thereof,” War said. Satan wrinkled her nose. War wrinkled her nose back. Bitch. “Alt’s picked up some Dubuque plans. Mr. Sole Intermediary has a crew on the way to attack our research team in Citrus Heights.”
“Them?” Portland said, her normal tightly controlled composure joggled. No, having Satan here wasn’t good for any of them, Portland included. “But they’re harmless!”
“What are they researching, pray tell?” Satan said.
War shook her head, a signal that she didn’t think they should pass the information along to Satan. Portland disagreed and spoke. “They’re a bunch of academics, primarily mathematicians but some of a great many specialties, chosen by Alt, Orlando, Inventor and Researcher. Currently, the only God on site is Researcher. They’re investigating willpower from a scientific perspective. Researcher, unfortunately, is no good in a fight.”
Portland’s comment hit the nail into the forehead quite nicely. Researcher, the wonk, was so pathetic in real-world willpower applications he hadn’t even mastered the ability to call in projections. Unfortunately for everybody, they hadn’t thought the group would need defensive resources. Given the number of groups and projects the Helping Hands Gods sponsored, Portland couldn’t provide top-level defense for them all.
Satan smacked her lips and took a sip of coffee. She sat in a powered scooter today and her stronger-than-normal sulfurous reek wafted downwind to War. War decided to go sit at Portland’s feet.
“What do you think of the Divine Compact idea?” Satan said, to War.
War took a moment to compose her thoughts, annoyed at the amount of knowledge Satan already possessed. “Me? I like the idea, but the intermediate stage, where the Compact has only a few adherents, carries big risks. I think the Divine Compact end state is worth the risks. Portland, here, says that if I’m right about the risks we shouldn’t start, but she’s not convinced the risks I see are real.” The dilemma bothered War. If she exposed the Place of Time to Portland, Portland would drop the Compact, learn time viewing, and get seduced into direct world domination, ensuring one of the three dystopias if they were lucky and utter Armageddon if they weren’t. If War kept the Place of Time to herself, Portland might still have a chance to avoid disaster. War wasn’t sure how throwing Satan into the mix changed things, save that it did. Satan was a chaos factor, unpredictable because she often changed her so-called mind in unpredictable ways.
“What risks?” Satan said.
“Both center around what Dubuque chooses to do after he learns of the Compact. For instance, Dubuque could join the Compact and take over from within, which I consider the worst scenario. On the other hand, Dubuque might decide to open up a can of whoop ass on the Compact Gods and make them the target of his opposition. Then the conflict becomes a Cold War. Because each side has strongly bound Gods and mortals, the prospects for compromise vanish.” Ergo, dystopia one.
“Why would he bother with either?” Satan said. “His most intelligent option is to ignore the Divine Compact as irrelevant, and continue to push his City of God idea.”
“That’s my analysis as well,” Portland said.
“You’re assuming Dubuque’s a rational actor, acting in his own best interest,” War said. “If Alt’s correct, he’s now working for his worshippers’ best interests.”
Satan slurped coffee. “You make a telling point. However, the risk feels low to me.”
“How low?” Portland said.
“You ask me this? Me? I can only make guesses, and only from logic, as I don’t have any unnatural future prediction tricks. Less than twenty five percent for both, combined, would be my guess,” Satan said. “Bah. Be bold, ignore the risks. I like the Divine Compact idea. It feels like the correct solution. For one thing, if you go the Divine Compact route, I won’t stay. There’s no reason for me to stay here if you’re going to give up voluntarily on your path to tyranny, Portland.”
This in itself was a strong reason to finalize the Compact, War thought.
Portland agreed. “Provisionally, I’m going with the Divine Compact, unless something comes up. However, I’m not ready to either implement it or go public,” Portland said. “I still have some meditation and investigation to do on the subject. You’re welcome to stay here if you want, Satan. The only thing I ask of you is to stop harassing my Supported. Although I can control my aggressive urges around you with difficulty, many of my Supported won’t be able to.”
“No deal,” Satan said. “I will do as I want, when I choose to.”
&nbs
p; “If you really want to bother troublemakers, I’d suggest the Seven Suits in New York City,” Portland said. “We’ve just had two of our own captured by the Suits, who we’ve discovered are capturing and enslaving other Practical and Ideological Gods and making them work for them. The Suits need to be stopped.”
“It’s amazing how many people make that suggestion,” Willie said. “Yet, what wars have they started? What fights? They’re just venal.”
The schiz didn’t have to mention that, War thought. Wars always became unpopular if you lost.
“Besides enslaving Gods and powered mortals, they’re trying to erase the middle class worldwide,” Portland said. “Make everyone work for a pittance save for what few business owners survive under their economic domination. What could be worse?”
“You’re too stuck on materialism,” Willie said. “Besides, all they’re doing is accelerating a forty year old trend.”
Portland snorted. “Material wealth makes people happy. I’m not saying that improvements can’t be made, but instituting a monopoly-dominated economy takes us back nearly three centuries, and won’t bring any improvements.”
Satan shrugged and slurped coffee. “Tell you what, Portland. Declare the Divine Compact publicly and start the contractual binding process, and I’ll go pester these Suits. Big business tyrants are just as bad as political tyrants, if they’re big enough.”
“As I said, I’ll think on… War?”
“The Citrus Heights group is about to be attacked and Alt’s team hasn’t arrived yet. All we’ve got in Citrus Heights, besides Researcher, are a dozen Supported who’ve just arrived from San Francisco.” Alt’s team wasn’t the only group she had scrambled when Alt had raised the warning.
“Have them call us in,” Portland said. “I’m afraid that duty calls, Satan.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Portland clenched her teeth. War sensed Portland’s temper about to explode, but somehow she held herself in check. War doubted she would have been able to do the same if bedeviled by Satan.
“There,” the Boise projection said. He lowered the research team down into the hole in the ground, and put a solidified earthen plug on top. Palms, flowers and green landscaped lawn lay to all sides, hastily torn from the research building’s parklike grounds to make room for the sunken shelter. War did a five-way projection duplication, which she hated doing where the attackers could sense. She didn’t have time to do otherwise, though, and sprang into the air with three.
Portland’s trick of the day was to grow her projection into an opaque green cloud, which kept the attackers from targeting anyone. War sensed Blind Tom in this attack, to her surprise, but the attackers appeared led by Supported. Given the amount of energy Blind Tom and the Supported pumped into Portland’s expanded projection, War doubted Portland’s projection would last much longer.
The projection needed to last two and a half minutes, because Alt’s Telepaths, flown here by another War projection, were still two and a half minutes out. The Supported and the projections weren’t potent enough to chase off Dubuque’s team.
War approached the attackers, who swooped down from the north, with three projections and blasted. The attackers had to respond, and did. They landed and took out her projections. Meanwhile, she duplicated her remaining projections, and sent three more out.
They did their job before the enemy annihilated them.
War duplicated herself one last time. Losing projections was a painful and exhausting process, and although she had improved tremendously in the past several weeks, she still paid when she lost a projection.
She sent out the last three duplicates. The attackers disposed of them, though to War’s surprise she was able to knock one of the Supported into a full defensive mode.
Nine projections and all she had been able to do with them was delay the attackers and take one of the Supported attackers out of the fight. One. The recent strengthening of Dubuque’s Supported made everything more difficult.
War sent out the last three of her original projections, which would leave her with no projections in the fight. They winked out just as the rest had.
War’s mental focus shifted to Alt’s group, now in sight of the Citrus Heights fight. In the fight, Boise rose to the attack and Portland’s cloud vanished. Portland fell out of the fight as well. The attackers hit Boise’s projection with blue helix attacks but he didn’t fall. War smiled when she figured out Boise’s new trick: he made his projection out of animated sand and mud. Blue Helix attacks were worthless against him.
The attackers noticed as well, shifted to fire rays, and melted his projection into slag.
Now the only thing defending the researchers was a plug of earth and the nine surviving Supported. Well, not quite. The Supported had summoned in Montreal and Orlando projections.
More importantly, Alt’s group reached attack range, less than a hundred yards away. Dubuque’s Supported fell out of the fight momentarily, telepathically stunned. Blind Tom swiveled and fired at them from close range and missed. He tried again, and missed again. One of Dubuque’s Supported, taken over by one of the Telepaths, began to spray her own compatriots with worshipper-backed blue helixes. Annoyingly, all this did was trigger their shields, but the trick succeeded because (as War’s post-Dubuque-siege analysis had shown) they couldn’t use their worshipper-amplification trick simultaneously on both offense and defense.
Blind Tom grabbed the shoulder of one of Dubuque’s Supported and force-freed her mind. Then the entire group took off, Supported style flying, away from the combat.
“Focus on Blind Tom’s mind,” Alt said.
They did. Blind Tom gave them the finger and shot his deadly one-shot exsanguination attack at them. Portland’s standard anti-exsanguination defense didn’t hold and Walter’s body exploded, blood shooting in jets and messing up his fancy clothes. Persona leapt from Alt to Walter and stabilized him, keeping him alive. “Damn,” Alt said. “Amplified exsanguination. That’s the last fucking weapon I’d ever hoped to face.”
“Meh,” War said, indifferent to the long-term ramifications. “Let them go for now. We’re all titsup here. We can’t beat them.”
“Sure we can.”
“Once they’re out of range of the Portland Supported, they can turn on us and overwhelm. If they manage to take down my projection, you’re all dead.”
“Okay, we let them go,” Alt said. War slowed the pursuit, but stayed in the air long enough to make sure Dubuque’s attack squad didn’t return.
War meditated and brought herself into the Place of Time for a quick look-see. Her instincts said this wasn’t a victory, and she wanted to figure out why. She looked and saw this style of battle repeated many times in the coming weeks and months. She also caught a glimpse of something she hadn’t seen before, an unexpected outcome, an actual chance for victory. Not a method, but a piece of the future where they had found a way to both defeat the worshipped Gods and avoid dystopia. Chills of anticipation rushed over her.
She hadn’t seen any way out of this mess since she had found the Place of Time. This bit of hope lay along the timestream leading to the secular dystopia, and the change allowed the Divine Compact to become the fulcrum of that set of futures. Could this change give the Divine Compact a chance?
Yes.
What changes allowed this future, though? Why did this future show her enslaved by Dubuque along the way? (She would rather die than let that happen, or so she thought.) Unfortunately, she hadn’t glimpsed the means, just the goal. She didn’t have time now to find the means. Piecing this together would take hours of work on her part.
Later.
War returned her focus back to the here and now. Portland had called in another projection, and with her second projection she healed the minds of the discombobulated and terrified crew of research dweebs. “Our tricks worked,” Portland said. “Any hope we can expand on them and go after Dubuque’s lair again?”
“Absolutely none,” War sai
d. “Hell, we’re going to have to keep innovating so in the next fight, when we face their responses to these tricks, we still have a fighting chance.”
“I was afraid of that, but I’d hoped I was wrong and you had a better answer.”
Boise, with a careworn projection that floated through the air as a fused statue, mentally sighed.
“Satan’s visiting Portland today, Boise,” War said. Her comment attracted the attention of Montreal and Orlando’s projections as well. “Let’s go back and finalize the Divine Compact.”
“But I’m not ready to make that decision,” Portland said.
Boise sent to War.
They all transferred their focus back to Portland’s lair. Boise looked pleased to be back in a functional projection again. Montreal and Orlando’s projections walked into Portland’s office behind Boise.
Satan still sat in her wheelchair, sipping coffee. All the God projections save Boise’s wrinkled their noses and turned off their sense of smell.
“Why right this instant?” Portland said, to Boise. “You’ve picked up on something, haven’t you?”
“Yes. Because of this ridiculous game the Angelic Host is playing with you, cutting you out of their Sight until you rein in Lorenzi’s projects, you are more open to what I call infernal forces.” War snorted. Boise was now spouting Lorenzi and Indigo cant. They did have a good feel for whom they might be able to safely deal with, now didn’t they?
“Which are nothing more than your imagination, your way of viewing the way the world works,” Portland said. “No danger to me.”
“Let me put it a different way, then,” Boise said. “Your goodness comes from your connection to humanity, which at the moment comes through the Angelic Host, because you are a spiritual being now. Without…”
“The Host says I still retain too much of my mortality.”
War snorted. Portland must have gotten the same story on the subject of mortality as War.
99 Gods: Betrayer Page 42