The bothersome undercurrents lay buried in his words. “You’re hiding your ideas from me,” Atlanta said. “You’re trying to talk me into something without actually making the argument. I won’t tolerate that shit.”
Lorenzi sighed. “You prefer blunt over suave, then. No problemo. I can do blunt. What I’m holding back is an observation I don’t feel right to propose without an invitation.”
Atlanta stared him down. Lorenzi struck her as slimy and evasive, but not dishonest. Worse, the more she studied his layered defenses, the more she suspected he had the power to attack her and defeat her. If he made any moves on her, she would need to run. Like the two Telepaths, he had power and a Mission, and worse, his mortality ebbed and flowed, hazy and inconstant. He didn’t understand her, though, based on his statement of worry. “You have my permission to make this observation. I’ll do you no harm over an observation.”
Lorenzi licked his lips. “Ma’am, we’re the bad guys.”
Dana winced and threw Atlanta a hot look. Lorenzi’s comment had just ruined Dana’s day. Atlanta carefully didn’t react.
“Explain,” Atlanta said. She felt her Mission quiver from his words. His observation wasn’t news to her, but she hadn’t ever said it out loud.
After a slow deep breath, Lorenzi continued. “Dubuque has attacked both of us, indirectly and directly, in the arena of public opinion. Slowly and surely, he’s building the case that we’re wrong, misguided, and in the end evil and unsalvageable. The proverbial other, the enemy outside the gates. He even calls us the ‘other side’. We’re people they can rub out without the slightest moral taint, which they have already tried. This is very dangerous to us, for a great many reasons.
“For instance, to my senses, your abilities are as mine: magical. In my experience, I know magic reacts to public opinion. To oversimplify, what we can do is based in part on what people believe we can do. As the bad guys, we need to be aware of this and take it into account, or risk falling into true evil.”
She might say the same thing about the various aspects of Mission. “Okay, how do we take this into account?” Atlanta said, harsh.
“Subtly. With deeds.”
“You mean good deeds, don’t you?” Lorenzi nodded. “Stopping my violent activities, too?” Another nod. “Dammit. I can’t afford an alliance with a self-professed pacifist who’s going to spend his time trying to convince me to ‘mend my ways’. I’ve already got one of those and I don’t need another.”
Dana flushed. Atlanta was glad neither Velma nor Lara were here for this debacle.
“Nevertheless, until the situation changes the only way to combat what Dubuque’s tyranny of the mind is doing to us is by not doing what he’s accusing us of. Instead we must do as much of the opposite as our opposition allows us.”
Lorenzi’s twisty logic made her brain hurt. Yet, she understood his point, even if she didn’t like it. “Why me?” Atlanta said, without formally giving up on her necessary violent activities. The other Gods hadn’t been able to convince her, but Lorenzi’s annoying logic and Dana’s justified opprobrium over what she had done to State Congressman Lloyd had. “Surely you can find more compatible Gods.”
She could always go back to her old ways, if she needed. Later. Or if she couldn’t ally with Lorenzi.
To her surprise, Lorenzi nodded. “God led me here, ma’am, in circular ways.” She glared at him. He took another slow deep breath, and started the necessary explanation. “In my problematic meeting with Dubuque, he attempted to exorcise me, thinking I was demon possessed. As he did I sensed something wrong with him, something profoundly bad.” He held up his hands, in surrender, before she interrupted. “Later, after I met with more Gods and prayed about this wrongness, I realized this wrongness wasn’t a part of the make-up of all you Gods. I had misinterpreted God’s will.” He chuckled. “Not the first time in my long life, but I do learn. It’s this wrongness I find I’m called to oppose.”
“I take it I don’t have this wrongness?”
Lorenzi nodded.
“Who else does?”
“Of the Gods I was able to check out, surreptitiously and otherwise, only Miami, Phoenix and Worcester possess this taint, in addition to Dubuque. Each has a different magnitude of taint, Miami the most, Worcester the least, and, worse, in each the taint is growing. I’m afraid, in the long run, this taint may take them over and cause them to oppose God’s will.”
Shit. Atlanta, in her gut, knew what this ‘taint’ had to represent. Dubuque, though? Impossible. He had opposed the idea of worshipers the most of all of them! Still, it would explain Dubuque’s mind-shielding when he took the information from Phoenix’s mind. She needed more data. Real data, not the observations of a magician contaminated by his own past deeds or her own speculations. “Do you have any hypotheses about what this taint represents?”
“Just answers to my prayers, answers I know you, as Gods, will not trust,” Lorenzi said. He reached into his battered professorial briefcase and brought out a multi-page printout. “However, I also filched these. Read. These are from behind some of the spiderweb’s lock and keys.”
Atlanta frowned at Lorenzi’s baffling words. “Network passwords and heavy encryption, ma’am,” Reed said, in explanation.
She read the papers, instructions on how to pray to Dubuque for miraculous help, and winced. “You’re implying this taint is the result of worship.” Lorenzi nodded. “These documents don’t constitute proof.”
“It’s the only thing that logically fits, though,” he said. She glared. He raised his hands again in mock surrender. “You are quite correct that I have no proof beyond the answers I’ve received to my prayers and these documents, ma’am. These are the best bits of proof I’ve been able to come up with, so far.”
His words implied far more. “You can spy on all of us, can’t you?” She hadn’t been able to learn anything about Dubuque’s organization, as they all had an extremely bad case of shut-mouth. Probably divinely reinforced through Dubuque’s appalling skill at mental control.
“A talent I would be willing to help you with, ma’am, if we allied.” Evasive. Very evasive. He lowered his eyebrows. “Atlanta, ma’am, spies or no spies, Dubuque’s beating me like a drum. We must ally.”
“You’re desperate.” In truth, her desperation echoed his.
The ‘bad guys’, indeed. In truth, they sucked.
“Desperate and cautious,” Lorenzi said. “Right now, Portland’s hearing a predictable screaming session between the two of us about morality.” He looked at Dana with a smile, and shrugged. He knew about Dana’s link to Portland. “I do have my uses.”
Atlanta revised her opinion of him to slimy, evasive and devious. She had uses for devious. Both she and Dana were straightforward to a fault. She also appreciated the fact she hadn’t picked up on this particular use of power.
Lorenzi studied her intently as she thought. His flunky still hadn’t figured out if Atlanta had agreed to ally with his boss or not, despite the fact said flunky was able to read her hidden emotions. Atlanta had the urge to secretly flash some hidden murderous anger at him just to get the nervous white guy to jump.
“So if you’ve got a spy in Dubuque’s camp, what have you learned?” Atlanta said.
“Many things,” Lorenzi said. No, this information wasn’t for free. “For instance, he’s been practicing his mind control. He apparently hadn’t realized he could control Gods until you confronted him on the subject.”
Damn. Still… “Okay, what’s he doing right now?”
“I can show you, if you want.” Atlanta nodded, and Lorenzi had his aide bring out a bowl. He asked for water, filled the bowl, and breathed on it. Atlanta ignored the itch of Lorenzi’s foul magic and leaned over to look at what he had done. Yes, he had created a scry bowl, right out of the most unbelievable fictions she had ever read.
Gah. Worse, she could hear as well as see…
Dubuque sat somewhere and talked with some formally-dressed men.
Completely normal defenseless men. Atlanta felt for them.
“…problem is straightforward,” the older of the normal men said. “The label ‘liberal’ is the last thing you want to be known by. Liberalism fosters pluralism, denying any one faith the power to organize the whole of social life, which is what God wants. The number of sins…”
“So you say,” Dubuque said, interrupting the older man. He looked exasperated. “It also signifies the fact the Living Saints represent a change from the past, which is true and undeniable. Like it or not, we are ushering in a new biblical era.”
“If you want righteous men, like us, to support you at all, you must not use the term. The L-word is tainted!”
Dubuque paused and chewed his lip. Atlanta thought he did a very good job of feigning politeness. “Tell me, from your point of view, what is so wrong with pluralism?”
“It isn’t just pluralism, it’s the entire edifice of liberalism,” the older man said. Dubuque leaned back and folded his hands in his lap. “Liberalism teaches that power flows from below, from the sinners we must teach, through the nonsense they call the ‘consent of the governed’. Liberalism encourages the use of the scientific method to settle questions of morality, God’s eternal morality, and the Word of God is not up for debate. Liberalism encourages consumerism, unleashing sinful human appetites and unfettered freedom to satisfy these appetites. The waste of liberalism pollutes the world.”
“It also gives men of God the freedom to teach God’s word,” Dubuque said. “I find little wrong with such freedom.”
Another of the men, dark haired, dark eyed and fierce faced, spoke up then. “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” He paused for a moment of emphasis before continuing. “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.”
They all nodded.
“I don’t feel I possess the right you hint at,” Dubuque said. “I want to teach, not demand.”
“Those who listen to your message, those who support you with their very souls, are giving you this right. Living Saint Dubuque, it is your responsibility to make these demands,” the older man said. “Indeed, all Christians have it, a holy responsibility to reclaim this nation and others for Jesus Christ. To possess, as some call it, dominion in civil structures, in all aspects of life and Godliness. Christ commissioned us to convert everyone, demanding we win over the entire world with the word of the Gospel, and to settle for nothing less. This is your City of God in a nutshell.”
Atlanta realized, from the way the scene in the scry bowl moved, that she looked at this through the eyes of Lorenzi’s spy, who must have been one of Dubuque’s chief flunkies. She found herself impressed with Lorenzi’s trick.
“There’s a difference, though, between ends and means,” Dubuque said. “About which I am afraid we disagree.”
“Your goals cannot be accomplished without these means.”
Dubuque smiled. “So now you’re limiting God’s miracles?” he said, opening up yet another can of worms. Of all things, he took this nonsense seriously. She read this in his Mission.
Atlanta rolled her eyes and waved her hands in dismissal. Theology of the most boring kind. Lorenzi took the hint and dismissed his magical scry.
“I possess lots more where this came from,” Lorenzi said, after stowing away his scrying bowl.
Not exactly Mr. Small Ego, is he, she thought. “You’re going to give me ulcers,” Atlanta said.
“You don’t have a stomach to get ulcers in,” Lorenzi said, after a moment’s hesitation.
A little revealing, his hesitation. His minor revelation tied into his earlier evasions. “So you know about our bodies then?”
“Some.” More evasion. He knew much more.
“What are they?”
“Like nothing else on this Earth.” Yet more evasion.
“You know something extremely important you’re not saying,” Atlanta said, pressing her willpower on Lorenzi. “Tell me.”
Lorenzi’s flunky looked ready to die of fear. If Lorenzi didn’t spring, Atlanta decided she would take the information out of the flunky’s mind, just before she abandoned yet another lair, with Lorenzi on her heels. He would take an attack on a flunky as an attack on him, a positive in Atlanta’s mind.
“I’m not giving this tidbit away for free,” Lorenzi said, showing off his resistance to divine charisma. “This is information for allies only.”
Interesting, Atlanta decided. The great human magician hadn’t figured her out, either. “Lucky for you I’m a patient woman who doesn’t consider arrogance a fatal flaw in those I deal with,” Atlanta said, accompanied by a short glare at Dana. “Alright. You’ve convinced me we can ally.”
“Thank you,” Lorenzi said. “I should start by telling you I know about your Anime Café friends, and I’ve had contact with them for years, and worked with them many times. I’m even friends with a few of them, though most of the people in that crew of crazies would rather I didn’t exist.”
“Thank you for being up-front about this,” she said. “They mentioned you, obliquely, and I was wondering if you were going to fess up about knowing them.” She lowered her eyebrows. “I assume you need a safe place to rest and recuperate your magical batteries or whatever magicians have?”
Lorenzi relaxed. “Yes. My greatest fear is that Dubuque will figure out how vulnerable I am to exhaustion.”
Which he just revealed to me, giving himself into my power, she thought. Why? What had he seen? How had he missed the fact I decided to ally with him?
It meant he couldn’t read her mind or her intentions, but he was able to read her Mission.
Which means I’ll have damned few Mission-level secrets from him, Atlanta thought. Which means he’s going to be a pain in the ass.
She suspected all her true allies would turn out to be pains in the ass.
“So?” Atlanta said.
“To the gory details, then,” Lorenzi said, with a half-smile. “After I got cued in by a Practical God who wants to remain hidden, I did some research and figured out that all the Gods died before they became Gods. They all died on the same day.”
“I don’t remember dying,” Atlanta said, unexpectedly uncertain. She had been positive she hadn’t died. Kidnapped by her creators, yes, died, no.
“None of you do, as far as I can tell.” Lorenzi reached into his battered briefcase and brought out another sheaf of papers. He laid them on Atlanta’s desk. She read the papers and used her willpower to verify their authenticity.
“This is who you were. Yes?”
Atlanta nodded, fighting emotions she hadn’t suspected remained in her. Grief. Tears. Fear.
“You’re buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Your helicopter was shot down by enemy fire.”
Stomach or not, Lorenzi did induce ulcers. “I hate you for this,” Atlanta said. “I hate those who did this to me. I hate the ones who made me into a God. They had no right.”
“If you want, we’ll leave you…”
“Fuck you,” Atlanta said, unwanted emotions coloring her words. “Shut the fuck up.” He shut up and waited. She studied the documents, the crash site, the date. She had thought the Host had grabbed her while she slept, which turned out to be the night before she died. “What the fuck is going on? Our creators implied we’d been specifically selected for the job of being Gods. If we all died on the same day, that isn’t much of a selection process.”
“Ma’am, you’re correct,” Lorenzi said, his voice supportive. At least he realized the serious nature of his presentation. “Nevertheless, you were a rarity, a black woman Marine helicopter pilot. Officer. The first to die in action, if my meager ability to search such things is correct. They, whoever or whatever they are, did not choose randomly. People always die, every day. I believe
they chose the best of the lot.”
“You’re right. I do want to be left alone,” Atlanta said. “Go. All of you.” This changed everything. She didn’t understand all of the ramifications, but it did change everything. The cheap piece of shit trick passing as her ‘divine’ body began to unravel, what their creators called Imago loss. In such a way the 99 Gods might die for real.
She had died once.
She hadn’t gone to Heaven, though she died a Christian in good standing and thought she deserved Heaven. She hadn’t gone to Hell either, a place she no longer understood due to what she had learned from her Indigo friends. Instead, the Host made her into this thing and sent her back to Earth.
She no longer knew herself.
Part 3
The Memory of Pain
“One of their most surprising instances in fact, perhaps, absolutely the leading impostor was the sage or charlatan (for it is difficult to determine which) known as Apollonius Tyanaus so called from Tyana, in Cappadocia, Asia Minor, his birthplace, where he first saw the light about four years earlier than Christ, and consequently more than eighteen and a half centuries ago.
“His arrival upon this planet was attended with some very amazing demonstrations. With his first cry, a flash of lightning darted from the heavens to the earth and back again, dogs howled, cats mewed, roosters crowed, and flocks of swans, so say the olden chroniclers probably geese, every one of them clapped their wings in the adjacent meadows with a supernatural clatter.” – P.T. Barnum, Humbugs of the World
Three weeks later…
“Thank you, Saint Dubuque, for all you have already done for me…”
35. (Nessa)
Nicole moaned and took her head out of her pale hands. “I’m done? That’s all there is to this?” Her birdlike form shook with exhaustion and she leaned back against the headboard of the hard motel bed, which shivered unsteadily in sympathy.
“Uh huh,” Nessa said. “If you can keep me out of your head, you should be able to, I hope, keep the Gods from reading your mind and taking you over. If they don’t try too hard.” Nessa toweled off her sweat-drenched hair and stood to stretch. Three hours of work today, after another ten over the last week, and all Nicole had been able to learn was how to block Nessa’s mind probes. When Nessa started training the recruits two weeks ago she had nurtured high hopes, but reality had reared its ugly head and reminded her that most Telepaths didn’t measure up to her or to Ken. Nessa feared she had picked up more benefits from the hard training than her students.
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