99 Gods: Betrayer

by Randall Farmer

  “How soon before they go after our territories?” Montreal said. “I don’t know of any movements along those lines in the national and provincial legislatures I monitor, but that’s the next obvious step.”

  “They aren’t going to advertise ahead of time,” Boise said. “What they did in Mississippi is quite instructive. First, they trolled for Dubuque worshippers in the area and selected one to go visit a likely sympathetic state senator. When they got this state senator on their side they had him call a small meeting of state legislators who could conceivably be convinced. The meeting lasted just a half hour, and they all walked out fanatics. They then found some less likely legislators and dragooned them into meetings, one at a time. These too walked out convinced, and so on and so forth. Throughout, they showed no overt sign of Supported or Willpower use, but, trust me, there was. The whole process took less than four hours. My guess is the Dubuque worshippers channeled Dubuque’s own personal charisma – you know how potent that is – and used it to change minds. In essence, with Dubuque loaning his personal power to his worshippers, he’s now got the functional equivalent of the Holy Spirit working for him at his beck and call.”

  War understood how such a trick could work. She knew the inevitable takeovers were coming, and she hadn’t bothered to look into the details.

  “We’re doomed,” San Jose said. “There’s no way we can fight this.” All the Territorial Gods whose territories covered the easily subverted developing countries looked pained. Nairobi looked the most pained of the bunch.

  “I know of several possibilities for combating this particular attack,” Boise said. “The most obvious is strength of numbers. An agreement among the Territorial Gods forbidding the City of God Territorials’ actions would stop Dubuque and Verona in their tracks.”

  Which was true, because the only Territorial Gods who were part of the City of God were Dubuque, Santa Fe, Verona and Lodz. The rest were Ideologicals and Practicals, and more were under the thumbs of the Seven Suits than Dubuque and the gang. The agreement wouldn’t happen; she hadn’t seen such an agreement in the Place of Time.

  “Why don’t we give it a try, right now,” Portland said. “Boise, go to.”

  Boise had all the God-projections hold hands – which took some convincing – and Boise led them on a group willpower use. War immediately thought of the battle possibilities of group willpower use, and then decided that if they tried this in battle the Angelic Host would boot every God involved all the way back to the Almighty.

  “Stockholm,” Boise said. A powerless projection of Stockholm appeared in the center of their circle. War expected an immediate ‘you cannot coerce me this way’ comment from the touchy underground leader of the European branch of the World Peace faction. Stockholm surprised War and didn’t.

  “Yes. An interesting trick you’ve developed,” Stockholm said. “The answer is ‘no’. None of us in World Peace will join your coercive Divine Compact.”

  “I was wondering if you might consider a lesser agreement,” Portland said. “Are you willing to join us in declaring against the anti-government activities of the City of God Territorials?”

  Stockholm thought for a moment and shrugged. “Perhaps. Personally, I agree. What they are doing is wrong, although as long as they act only in their own territories I see no reason to complain.”

  “Dubuque’s going after the Kid God in Atlanta’s former territory.”

  “Can you provide proof?”

  “By noon today, Eastern Standard Time, the proof will be all over the Internet. Dubuque’s found a way to dissolve two State governments not in his territory.”

  “If true, you’ve got my personal support,” Stockholm said. “I’ll talk to the others in World Peace. I cannot speak for them, you know.”

  War knew. The World Peace gaggle made Portland’s pre-Divine Compact ‘Helping Hands’ Gods look like the epitome of organization and centralized control. They indulged in endless arguments over everything from grand strategy down to table shape, and Gods joined, left and rejoined as the mood suited them.

  After a bit of polite chatter with Stockholm, Boise called in Guangzhou, the Tradition boss. He was a tall man, painfully thin, wearing a traditional Chinese robe. “You cannot coerce me this way,” Guangzhou said.

  Well, at least some of the enemy knew and followed the script.

  Boise explained why they called Guangzhou in. “All we want is an agreement to declare what Verona and Dubuque are doing is wrong.”

  Guangzhou laughed. “Wrong? Fah. This sounds to me like a wonderful idea. If the Host doesn’t rule the trick illegitimate. I have a neighbor who I wouldn’t mind subjecting to the same.”

  Boise let Guangzhou go. “That’s it, then. Guangzhou runs the Tradition Territorials with an iron hand; if he says they won’t support this, they won’t. Without Tradition, we won’t be able to get enough Territorials to be able to stop this as a group.”

  “What about the independents?” Montreal said.

  “Guangzhou is also the de-facto leader of the remaining independent Territorials,” Boise said. “We can try, but I doubt it will work.”

  They did try, and while they brought in one independent after another, War ran errands through her other projections. Two hours later, Portland called a halt and War readied herself.

  “This is futile,” Portland said. “War, on the other hand, mentioned another possibility. She thinks that a stealth attack on Dubuque is possible.”

  “Not this again,” Worcester said. “I thought we’d given up on strong-arm tactics.”

  “If you have any other ideas, feel free to propose them.”

  Worcester shrugged, exasperated.

  “War?”

  “Taking out Dubuque with a covert attack is our only possibility for victory,” War said. She even told the truth, if you looked at victory as War did, in the long term. Militarily, the best response to the immediate problem would be at the level of a popular revolt. Get the normal citizens involved. Let the City of God coerce governments out of existence and give the people the pretext they need to demonstrate, strike and even riot. The strategy would be a mess, but if the Divine Compact supported such a popular movement, the revolts might even succeed. War had looked at that possibility in the Place of Time; the problem with using this strategy right now was the time streams flowing from the revolts led to the Portland-led secular autocracy.

  Under no circumstances would she mention the idea of popular revolt.

  “This isn’t something we can do today,” War said. “I took it upon myself to start the training, and we’ve made progress, but we’re not ready. The Telepaths are naturals at stealth.”

  “If we wait too long, the City of God puppet governments will be in place and we won’t be able to do anything,” Portland said. “If you’re going to strike, you need to do so soon.”

  War smiled, inwardly. Perfect. With Portland pushing for a time limit, this gave her more cover than she thought she would be able to scrape up. “Give me a few days,” War said. “I agree we can’t wait too long, not if Dubuque’s making his big push.”

  War moved her mental focus to the Telepath’ training session, in the apparently deserted cabins on Lorenzi’s lake. “It’s been decided,” War said, to the open air. Alt and the group practiced invisibility. They had gotten to where they could even fool War.

  The Telepaths appeared, scattered around the grassy sward at the edge of the lake.

  “War’s right,” Javier said. He hacked up something nasty and wiped his face with a fast-food napkin. “The Divine Compact is going to sponsor our covert attack on Dubuque.”

  “Damn,” Alt said. “I still don’t think there’s any chance of success.”

  War had been expecting Alt’s complaint. “You may never see success,” War said. “Your hunches aren’t infallible, and there are going to be too many independent powers involved.”

  “True,” Alt said. “But when my hunches were wrong, they always erred the other
way, not seeing a danger as opposed to sensing false dangers.”

  “There’s always a first time,” War said, hesitant to use such weak logic. She decided to explain. “When you picked up on false dangers before, you ran from them. You’ve never tested the idea you might sense too many dangers. If you recall, you thought we needed to commit far more resources than we proved we needed on the attack on Phoenix.”

  Alt nodded, reluctantly. “I still don’t like this.”

  “Perhaps once we practice some more you’ll get a better read,” Phil said. “As you’ve told me repeatedly, you’re not predicting the future, you’re just seeing the present.”

  Alt turned away and walked to the edge of the lake. “There’s something not right about this.”

  Crap. He sensed the Betrayal. War couldn’t think of anything to say, though. She had to keep Alt and the Telepaths dancing so fast they didn’t have time to think.

  “Hey, guys, we’ve got a problem,” Vicki Mathews said. The PI ran out of the woman’s cabin. “President Perry’s resigned and the House and Senate have adjourned without replacing him. Indefinitely.”

  “That means that Dubuque’s gotten to them as well,” Alt said. “Perry’s resignation isn’t a shock. He’s what, the fourth President to resign or be impeached this year?”

  War nodded. She had expected this. “Portland says we need to do this attack as soon as possible. We’re not going to get weeks of preparation time. We only have a few days, which means we need to train. Full time.”

  The Telepaths groaned.

  And there I saw One who had a head of days,

  And His head was white like wool,

  And with Him was another being whose countenance had the appearance of a man,

  And his face was full of graciousness, like one of the holy angels.

  And I asked the angel who went with me and showed me all the hidden things, concerning that

  Son of Man, who he was, and whence he was, (and) why he went with the Head of Days? And he answered and said unto me:

  This is the son of Man who hath righteousness,

  With whom dwelleth righteousness,

  And who revealeth all the treasures of that which is hidden,

  Because the Lord of Spirits hath chosen him,

  And whose lot hath the pre-eminence before the Lord of Spirits in uprightness for ever.

  -- The Book of Enoch 46, 1:3

  “I’m talking end of the world bad.”

  45. (Satan)

  The last guard fled.

  “Okay, I don’t understand,” Willie said. He had been hiding behind Satan, cowering from the hail of bullets. “You said you were positive you needed me here. If you’re not going to let me magically blast these idiots out of existence, and you don’t need me to protect you from attacks like this, then what?” He paused and looked over the writhing bodies of the guards, shot by their peers. “At least let me finish them off. It would be nice.”

  “That’s only the voices in your head talking again,” Satan said. She smiled and pressed the knob on her scooter and it whirred forward. Whir! Whir! Such an amazing toy. Where did these crazy Americans come up with all these brilliant ideas, anyway? “Corruption, Willie. Corruption. You can’t let the voices in your head be your conscience.” Soon this would all end, her point made. John would either see reason or his own allies would strip him of power.

  “Bah.” Willie jogged in front of Satan and kicked a couple of fallen guards out of the way. That problem passed, they crossed the ground floor of the Empire State Building, heading toward an information desk bearing the symbols of the Unified World Corporation, the visible face of the Seven Suit’s financial empire, and today the world’s largest corporation.

  Willie’s corruption wasn’t the only corruption in evidence here. To the left, a kiosk had been set up to dispense free food supplied by the Seven Suits. People with haunted eyes stood quietly in line, waiting for the meager pittance the Suits handed out. Once they got the ration, functionaries escorted them outside to eat. The Suits had destroyed the economy, driven the unemployment rate to nearly thirty percent, and then out of the goodness of their hearts supplied the unemployed with food. Satan predicted the Suits would continue this nasty trick until they acquired a large coterie of the populace dependent on them – serfs, essentially. The other Gods ran breadlines as well in the cities hit hardest by the economic collapse, but they tended to supply cookable food instead of meals and worked hard to find people useful employment. Not the Suits. To them, the greatest evil of mankind was the minimum wage law, and to them, high unemployment was a necessity. They were, from Satan’s perspective, batshit crazy evil.

  The four people at the information desk cowered in fear. Normal humans would have run at Satan’s approach, given her bad mood, but these people just stood there.

  “What’s wrong with these people, Willie?” Satan asked. Her body ached today, but in an emergency she could walk across a room now without her canes. Improvement, vast improvement. Her bodily reek had even subsided a little.

  “Now you need me, for this? Utility magic?” Willie snorted. Satan glanced at him and read his thoughts on his face – he thought the peaceful uses of his magic a waste of time, dishonoring magic itself. She didn’t call him on his assertion, because in this area the infernal voices had already won the fight in Willie’s head.

  “Okay, I’ll do it, just this once,” Willie said, and muttered. When he finished his spell, he shook his head. “These slaves are mentally held in place by Seven Suits willpower. They’re the opposite of Supported. Everything they’re getting from these fucking Gods is bad news.”

  “Watch that language, Willie,” Satan said, after she maneuvered the scooter in front of the information desk. “You there,” she said, pointing to the man in charge. “Where’re the Suits? What floor?”

  “99th floor, ma’am,” the slave said. Satan rolled her eyes. 99th floor, how droll!

  The Suits had cleared everything else out of the Empire State Building, especially the ground floor and concourse-level retail shops. The result of their buyout left the ground floor looking like a war zone, filled with hastily emptied shells of banks, restaurants, and random shops, including the remains of a drug store. On the way to the elevators, Satan noticed an abandoned currency exchange and a strangely named shop, equally abandoned.

  “What was that place?” Satan said, pointing.

  “They did copying and printing,” Willie said. “They’re a chain.”

  “I thought the word ‘kinky’ had bad connotations in the English language?”

  “It does, but I believe the chain is based on a person’s last name,” Willie said. Satan snorted and continued to scoot, soon reaching the elevators. She studied them and took the elevator that led to the highest floor number, 80.

  “Be alert, very alert,” Satan said, after she motored her scooter into the elevator.

  “Why?”

  “I’m not invulnerable, and this is a perfect place for an attack that would work on me,” Satan said.

  “Oh.”

  The elevator did its thing, far too fast for Satan. Nor did she like it when it slowed. They exited on the 80th floor and looked around. “Son of a bitch,” Willie said, reading the typewritten information under a plaque. “There’s no real 99th floor. In fact, everything above here is space occupied by telecommunication companies and their broadcast equipment, and that’s only to the 86th floor.”

  “Oh, big surprise. They lied to us,” Satan said. She motored her scooter back to the elevator lobby and pressed the button. Waited. No elevators came.

  “Cute trick,” she said. “Find the stairs.”

  “You’ll have to leave your scooter behind.”

  Satan shook her head. “Not if you levitate it.”

  Willie rolled his eyes. “Here we go again.”

  “Magical levitation isn’t easy,” Willie said, beads of sweat covering his face. They were down to the 77th floor.

  “Let
’s try the elevators here,” Satan said. Willie lowered her and her scooter to the landing, and opened the door. Satan motored through, cackling mightily at the antics of the whirring scooter and its tendency to drift to the left. Such a strange device!

  The floor bustled with activity, half of the offices bearing nameplates with European names, some of which Satan recognized. “They’ve bought up Credit Lyonnais? The bastards,” Satan said. She had some of her stash stored there. She wondered if they knew.

  The elevator to this floor worked. “What are we going to do now?” Willie said.

  “Use your magic to find the idiots.”

  “That’s loud. They’ll know we’re here and what we’re doing.”

  “They already know we’re here,” Satan said. Idiot. Why else had the Suits trapped them on the 80th floor with their elevator games? “Just find them.”

  The elevator came. Willie closed his eyes in concentration. Satan held the elevator door open with her scooter.

  “There’s over a dozen Gods here. No, there’s over twenty of them.”

  “Twenty!” Satan said, her cackle almost a shriek. More than twenty percent of the Gods in one place? Insane. The Seven Suits had been busy; she wondered if the Suits had these Gods directly coerced by divine willpower, indirectly by thug-style crap, or some combination of the two. “Any Territorial Gods?”

  “Nuh uh,” Willie said.

  There were only 55 combined Practical and Ideological Gods. Although most of them were American and Western European, there were a sizeable number of them in China and Japan as well. Or had been. It lent credence to Dana’s hypothesis that the Suits used enslaved Gods to run their financial empire.

  “The Suits themselves?”

  “Their stench rules the 27th through 33rd floors.”

  Satan shook her head. “Take us to the…” She looked at the elevator’s interior. “This one doesn’t go all the way down. Any suggestions?”

  “Try the 40th floor,” Willie said. “We should be able to get an elevator from there that goes to the 33rd.”