“I understand,” Dave said, unable to keep the disappointment out of his voice.
Tiff chewed her lower lip, glanced at one of the blank flat panel displays, and glanced up at him. Then she flicked her gaze at the roses in their vase. Dave kneaded Tiff’s tight shoulder muscles and waited while Tiff thought, hoping that despite his ‘understanding’ she might still be seducible.
“You are feeling frisky tonight, aren’t you?” Tiff said, her voice a studied neutral. Dave grunted an affirmative. She clenched her hands together and took a deep breath; as she did her muted trembling stopped and her shoulders relaxed a little. “I’ve been thinking about this morning, Dave. I think you owe it to yourself, and to the world, to detail your experiences with Saint Dubuque.”
“You want me to proselytize?” Dave said. “I didn’t think you liked Dubuque very much. Besides, I can’t see myself as a streetcorner preacher type.” Hell, his preferred social media site was Parryscope, the site made for lurkers, which had the opposite of the old Facebook rule and forbade you from using your real name. Dave had eleven accounts, one each for his various interests, and several hundred dollars in the site’s secretkitty, allowing him to use the site’s always-believable one-time guest accounts and fake mobile and laptop OSes as buffers, when he wanted to investigate something interesting and not attract spam or bacn.
“I was thinking of something less exposing,” she said, relaxing into his shoulder massage. “I’ve found several blogs and discussion boards that are collecting and collating stories and people’s experiences with the 99 Gods, to better help us understand them, but I haven’t seen many at all about Dubuque. I think it would be a wonderful idea if you wrote up your experiences and posted them. I’ll email you the safe URLs.”
Anonymous. Yes, this sounded like Tiff. “I could do that,” Dave said, distracted by his now more successful seduction. Twinges of wrongness, though, rattled around in his gut, a fear of embarrassing himself by exposing his private thoughts and emotions, perhaps. Exposing Dubuque’s secrets. He would have to think about this. “Is there a way I could post these without leaving a trail back to me, Tiff?”
“Of course. I can set you up,” Tiff said. “That’s a good idea. If there’s anything I can do to help you, just ask. I think this is important.” She stood and put her arms around his neck, pressing up against him. Her eyes didn’t lose their wariness, though.
The wrongness didn’t leave his gut, which he didn’t appreciate. He focused on Tiff and her wary eyes, willing the wrongness inside him away.
Away it went.
With it went his sea of calm. He realized Steve and Mirabelle had been right. He should have gotten in Steve’s face earlier in the conversation. He should have played the ‘this saved my fucking life’ card, and played it hard. Everything else had just been frosting on the cake. He had served them the frosting but forgotten the cake.
He refused to let his rekindled anger ruin his mood, though. He bent down to kiss Tiff, but got her cheek instead of her mouth. He pulled back a bit, but Tiff didn’t let go of him. “Let’s find somewhere dark,” Tiff said, shifting one hand down to his lower back, and pulling him toward her. “I’ve got just the place.”
37. (Nessa)
“Hey!” Javier said, his beard shedding crumbs. They hadn’t yet managed to get him into the shower. Nessa looked up from her telepathic scanning as he put down his poker hand and concentrated, agitated. She kept half a mind on her scans, carefully investigating anything out of the ordinary that had ventured close by. Nothing.
“What’s up?” Ken said. He, Javier, Prep and Mary played poker around the small hotel table, the stakes improbably chocolate bars. Ken and Nessa’s bed sat pushed against the wall and two extra chairs extracted from Prep and Phil’s room crowded around the table with Ken and Nessa’s chairs in the area freed up by the bed. They had been in the city of Miami for three days, without a peep from the God of that name. Nessa wondered if Miami had figured out they were there and why, despite their mental shielding, and decided to avoid them. Alt said he could only track Miami if he stayed put and lost him when he moved. Today, Alt placed Miami in western Cuba.
Javier shook his shaggy mane and kept on concentrating. He had hooked up with some sort of telepathic message, and Nessa hoped one of the distant ones called; she had leaned on Javier to send messages to all of them before they left Indianapolis. Alt, bless his impossible talents, had given her a first-ever worldwide count of the distant ones, the Telepaths who worked at her, Ken’s and Alt’s level of power. The smallness of the number shocked Nessa. Alt had only found six distant ones with the requisite power level and enough Telepathy for Javier to contact (not that it took much). Four of the six had been located near Gods, perhaps associated with them. None had yet attempted any answer.
Normally the distant ones contacted her, but with a group of active Telepaths around her, Nessa felt cocky enough to prod them.
“There’s a God coming to visit us,” Javier said. “She wants to talk.”
Nessa looked over to where Alt sat on the floor in the corner reading, as did Ken. Alt shrugged and did his thing, a few moments of concentration on his part. “She’s legit, and not hostile,” Alt said.
“Damn,” Phil said. He looked up from his laptop computer and frowned. “You’re going to talk to one of the damned lunatic Gods, aren’t you?”
Phil hated the Gods with a passion. He didn’t like Nessa and Ken’s tacit alliance with Dubuque in the slightest.
“I don’t see a problem with talking to a friendly God,” Ken said. “Nessa?”
“Fine by me,” she said. She exercised the limits of her telekinesis to grab a Hachez 77% Dark Classic from Ken’s stack of ‘poker chips’ and took a large bite, eliciting a ‘hey’ from him. He shouldn’t complain. She had accidentally caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror yesterday, emaciated no more. She had bulked up to merely thin.
The God knocked at the door and Mary opened it. The God stood perhaps five three, Hollywood near-anorexic thin, with mousy brown hair and a below average bust line, but she had one of those precious-almost-beyond-belief faces that made Nessa want to weep. Her mental presence didn’t fit with any of the Gods Nessa had met before, intricate and highly complex.
“Come in,” Mary said. She and the God eyed each other for a moment, Mary from a head taller than the God. Mary’s tattoos, corded muscles, and assorted weaponry made an odd contrast to the God’s refined elegance. Mary backed off, chagrined for some unknown reason, and the God walked by. The God’s mind leaked thoughts like a frozen pipe and Nessa could pick out fifteen separate trains of thought, one of which involved active long-distance communications with a distant someone and a second train of thought filled entirely with terror-filled prayers to God Almighty.
Ken waved the God over to the couch and Nessa patted the seat next to her. “Folks, this is Celebrity,” Nessa said, and introduced everyone in the room to her. Celebrity sat, twice as wary as before. Nessa caught Nicole’s thoughts of instant love, echoed more strongly by Prep. The God had gotten through to their weakest mind-shielders. Nessa smiled and tossed Celebrity’s trick out of Prep and Nicole’s minds.
Celebrity chewed a perfect oversized pouty lip. Nicole thanked Nessa and Prep continued to fantasize lustily about Celebrity, now entirely of his own doing.
“I’m here as a favor to John Lorenzi. He has a message for you,” Celebrity said. Her voice was rich, musical, room-filling and attention grabbing. One of Celebrity’s mental tracks watched her own emotional state and commanded several of the God’s other mental tracks to forget any hope of chit-chat and get down to business. Nessa smirked appreciatively. This was nearly as much fun as a two sock conversation.
“Hey, we’re not enemies,” Nessa said. Her voice sounded like a steel file rubbed against old wood in comparison to the God’s. “Relax.” Ken frowned at Nessa’s words, afraid Nessa would give too much away.
;
Celebrity didn’t relax her delicately curved shoulders in the slightest. Or say anything. Or give any hint that she could pick up on telepathy.
Nessa laughed. “You’ve been listening to too many of John’s tall tales. I don’t always attack everyone I meet for the first time.” Especially since the group she, Ken and Alt had gathered had enough of the undefined but necessary mental whatsis to stabilize her sanity. “Just patronizing holier-than-thou bastards.”
Celebrity gulped. “My mind’s totally open to you, isn’t it, Nessa?”
Nessa nodded.
“Wouldn’t you be terrified in a situation like this?”
“No,” Nessa said. “I’d be pissed off and aggressive.”
Alt chuckled from the far wall. He hadn’t taken his eyes off of Celebrity since she had walked through the door. He hadn’t ever met a God in person before and he studied her closely with his deep telepathy. “You’re pissed off and aggressive in most situations,” Alt said.
Nessa glared at him. She didn’t appreciate him screwing up her negotiations. She gave up on the glare when the rest of the room exploded in laughter. Celebrity tried to shield her mind, not hopeless, as Celebrity’s mind shields were nearly as good as Alt’s had been when he had joined them, and she had her memories and deep emotions well shielded, but she didn’t have a clue about stray thought leakages and the emotions they carried.
Then again, neither did John.
“Who do you fear?” Nessa said, to Celebrity. Nessa skooched over several inches closer to the God. She held her hand about a half inch above the God’s arm, poised.
“Besides you?”
“You’re filled with fear. That’s your motivation, although my guess is there’s more behind your motivation than fear.”
Celebrity’s thoughts went blank, all the different thought tracks in her mind now off. Nessa felt a pang of jealousy; she would nearly kill to have that level of self-discipline. “I’m angry at those creatures who made me what I am,” Celebrity said.
“The Angelic Host?”
The God nodded. “Some of the other Gods call them that, and some don’t. I have my doubts.”
“You fear what they’ve done to humanity by making the 99 Gods, and you see the other Gods as fellow victims,” Nessa said. “That’s an interesting viewpoint. I’d never thought of that.”
“What sort of victims can do miracles and alter reality?” Phil said. Celebrity’s eyes turned to him, and she had to lean forward to do so. Nessa grabbed the smooth curve of the God’s arm.
Love.
Nessa slammed a mental barrier down to block the God’s trick. She picked up a mental image from the God, who she had been in her previous life, and what she had looked like. Yes, Celebrity had cause to be annoyed at her creators. She had earned the name her creators had stamped on her, legit, without having to be a God.
“You’re sharing a room with a group of people with potent tricks of a dozen varieties, most of whom are victims of circumstances as far out of their control as the Gods are, several of whom were street people,” Celebrity said to Phil, her voice filled with anger. “You have no…”
“Stop,” Ken said, forceful but not angry. Celebrity stopped. “Phil, back off the anti-God rant for a few moments.” He turned to Celebrity. “I apologize. We’re of several opinions about the Gods.”
Celebrity extracted her arm from Nessa’s hand and forced herself to relax. “I understand,” she said. “John Lorenzi’s group is just as fractious.”
“I’ll bet,” Nessa said. “He’s still hiding under Atlanta’s defenses, and Atlanta’s not one to reduce fractiousness.”
Celebrity almost jumped off the couch. “You weren’t supposed to know where he is,” Celebrity said.
“Just like we’re not supposed to know about the spy magics he has on us,” Nessa said. “Forget about it. We have to spy on each other. If either of us went after the other…”
“But…” Celebrity shook her head. “He was sure you didn’t know. You’ve never mentioned anything.”
“We’re a group of Telepaths,” Ken said, smiling. “Half of what we say we don’t say, if you catch my drift.”
“Right,” Celebrity said. She leaked thoughts of what she planned to say to John on the subject, and Nessa smiled at the expletives. As she expected, John’s arrogance had led him wrong again. She doubted John could keep his group together much longer; his arrogance would walk them into another trap and get them all killed. “Which brings us to the reason I’m here. John’s picked up something with his spying he’s convinced you need to know about.”
“Such as?”
“Rather than explain, let me show you,” Celebrity said.
Nessa grabbed Celebrity’s arm again. “Tell me what you’re about to do before you go and do it.”
“Image projection,” Celebrity said, and looked down at Nessa’s hand on her arm. “Not an attack.”
“Okay, I believe you,” Nessa said, which beat having to tell a God not to lie to a Telepath. Much more polite, in Nessa’s opinion.
The room darkened and a three dimensional image appeared in the center of the room. The image showed Dubuque and another man, one dressed in priestly vestments, walking down a deserted hallway. Light showed through the other man, and Nessa realized the other man was some sort of Godly astral projection.
“…are right, Verona, my conscience has been bothered recently,” Dubuque said. He wore a white on white suit and walked as if he owned the world.
“Tell me,” the other God, Verona, said. Nessa recognized the name; Verona held the same position in Europe as Dubuque did here in the United States, the chief European Territorial God. Unlike Dubuque, Verona didn’t publicly lead. He had never let his picture become public. Verona spoke with a noticeable foreign accent.
“A group of allies of mine has joined up with a man who is a mortal danger to me.”
“Interesting,” Verona said. The two men continued to walk in unison. Nessa saw three other people at the vision’s edges, and she realized a person provided the vision’s viewpoint, a Dubuque functionary with a Lorenzi spy eye on him. Lorenzi didn’t lack for brass; Nessa hadn’t had near enough nerve to peek into the lairs of any of the Territorial Gods. “How did you learn of this danger?”
“I prayed. The Angelic Host answered.”
“I see,” Verona said. “Be wary of the information they provide. Their interests are by necessity pure good, but this doesn’t mean their interests are fully congruent with ours.”
“Yes, you are correct,” Dubuque said. Nessa could sense his caution crabbing around his glow of power. He didn’t trust this Verona, not at all. The two Gods reached the end of the corridor and turned left into a security area, complete with an airport-style X-Ray scanner, likely left over from the place’s earlier life as a standard American Oklahoma City mega-church. They ignored the device and the guards, passed through a door and walked to a large stage. “I just can’t imagine them lying to me, save by omission. For instance, the man they pointed out to me may not be my worst mortal enemy, but he is one of the worst and definitely an enemy.”
“What makes him an enemy?”
“His Mission is to stop the Gods, starting at the top,” Dubuque said. The stage was padded and ornate, a soft place of dim lights. Beyon
d the stage lay a stadium or auditorium, the mega-church’s main sanctuary. The two Gods stopped in the edge of the stage and looked out over the empty hall. “His presence among these allies of mine is twisting them away from me, even as we speak.”
Verona grunted and shook his head. “This place isn’t my style,” Verona said, a moment later, as he looked out over the sanctuary. “I understand why you like it, though. Very American.”
“Yes, wonderfully so,” Dubuque said. He shook his head. “Verona, my friend, what do you know about Telepaths?”
Everyone in the room groaned.
“Some,” Verona said. “Most of them try to stay as far away from us as they can, out of fear. I have one on staff, a powerful mind reader, but apparently not one of the better Telepaths.” Verona paused, eyes vacant. “Through me he found the light of God, and I use him to probe the minds of those near me for loyalty problems. The abilities of the Telepaths pale before ours, of course, but they are different enough to be of some use.” Verona looked out over the auditorium, his eyes falling on the AV equipment. “I don’t believe the Telepaths pose any danger to us.”
“I didn’t think so, either, until I received the answer to my prayer,” Dubuque said. “Now I’m caught in a nasty dilemma partly of my own making.”
If he hadn’t thought Telepaths were any danger to the Gods, then why did Dubuque send Ken and her off after Miami and Atlanta? Nessa wondered. None of the possible answers to the question she posed pleased her.
“You know what you must do, then,” Verona said.
“I’m not convinced this is the proper thing to do.”
“Dubuque, you must act to defend yourself,” Verona said. “You’re the one who convinced me that establishing the City of God is God’s true work, the only true answer to the Host’s desire for us to do good. The world is ours if we do this. The entire world, the souls of all mankind, for us to save forever. My answer to you is this: now is no time to be squeamish, to worry about what prices we must pay to establish God’s Utopia.”
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