And Eric was here with her. He was the only touchstone of familiarity. She remembered the feel of his hand on her shoulder yesterday. Amazing that it was only yesterday, when this had all started. Eric’s touch had been warm and reassuring at the time. That was the real Eric. The one who was her most trusted employee. She could almost feel his hand, solid and comforting, resting there again. But it was something more. Eric was a place she found comfort in a world she’d learned offered it far too rarely.
She startled when she realized there really was a hand on her shoulder. She turned to see the look of dismay on Eric’s face as he took it away.
Before she could think about the consequences, she reached out and took his hand. His look changed slowly from uncertainty to bemusement as she pulled him onto the Devil’s living room couch next to her, but she didn’t care. She snuggled shamelessly against him, not giving a damn who was watching or what they were thinking. It felt wonderful. He kept his arm uncertainly around her shoulders for a moment before slowly sliding it down to her waist and holding her.
This felt new, was new. And it felt good. She didn’t care how out of character it was for either of them. They were in Hell. What did it matter? She leaned her head on Eric’s shoulder, glad he was there, like a rock in Michelle’s ocean.
Across the room, Michelle lowered herself gently into a wing-back armchair upholstered in what appeared to a be a poodle brocade. She settled very slowly. As if nursing a severe hangover. Plato moved into another armchair, this one in velvet the color of blood, with twice the care. St. Peter dropped comfortably onto a chair he’d dragged in far too loudly from the dining room. Clearly he had a Heaven-sent metabolism that didn’t turn excess alcohol directly into hangover.
“Well,” Michelle looked at everyone red-eyed. “I’m out of ideas. Anyone else feeling brilliant?”
# # #
Eric wasn’t feeling especially brilliant, but he had to say something to counter the sensations of Valerie curled up against his side. He could feel her nerves settling as she leaned against him on the Devil’s sofa.
And he could feel his own ratcheting up. The curve of her waist, so warm and soft against his palm. The smell of her hair. The—
“Well,” he said really trying to find something in his brain to distract his hormones. “So, you can’t trace the software anymore.”
Peter shook his head. “No. We lost the trace when you turned off the wireless networking on the laptop.”
Okay, maybe not his best idea, but it had made sense at the time.
“Who else would know?”
“Between Peter and myself we’ve got Heaven and Hell accounted for here. Do you have any other bright ideas?” Michelle tone was acerbic.
Did he?
Maybe.
“What about the Buddhist software? If it’s a separate piece of software, it should still be running. Can it track the Hungry Ghost?”
Peter looked at Michelle. She in turn looked at Peter. They each sat up stage by stage until they both looked very wide awake.
“That’s actually a good idea. Really well done for a mortal.”
Valerie squeezed his hand against her waist with pressure from her elbow. It was the highest accolade a man could want.
Chapter 25
Michelle reached out for a phone that had been buried under a fallen stack of books beside the glass-topped coffee table. She dialed a long series of numbers.
She noticed Valerie’s curiosity, “A trunk call between software systems is a really long number. Different area code, very different.” She jerked the phone away from her ear and slammed it down, “What in the name of Heaven?”
“What’s wrong?” Peter started out of his seat.
“That was a bloody pizza parlor in Chicago.”
“Maybe you misdialed.”
“Okay, Mr. Know-it-all, you try.”
Peter did.
Peter finished, listened for a moment, said something in a foreign language and hung up the handset. “I don’t like this. That was the president’s personal line in Zimbabwe. The software must be unraveling faster than we’d thought.”
He started dialing again.
Eric’s voice was hesitant as he spoke.“Perhaps it isn’t as bad as it looks. Maybe the most technical aspects of the system are being affected first, but we’re all still safe?”
Michelle wished he hadn’t turned that into a question.
Peter nodded his head, listening for a moment. Looking relieved he handed the phone back to Michelle. “I got us in on the front line. The main numbers are still working.”
She took the phone, “Hello?”
All she got was hold music, a Russian pop version of a Bollywood song stolen from an M. C. Hammer rap song. Something about how his music made him say, “Oh My Lord,” but done by Russian Goth teenyboppers. The Buddhist Wheel really was beyond comprehension.
She did her best to keep her patience through Dolly Parton lending a whole different meaning to the Beatles “Help.” Then six ABBA tracks in a row, all different versions of “Dancing Queen,” almost did her in.
Michelle almost missed the, “Hello, Buddhist Technical Support… Hello, is anyone there?” in the mellifluous voice of the Buddhist operator.
“Is Ananda there?”
Valerie whispered to Eric, “Who’s Ananda?”
Peter answered quietly as he sat back down, “He’s sort of my counterpart. He was the Buddha’s first convert and has been with him ever since.”
Michelle did her best to block them out and pay attention to the Indian accent of the woman on the phone. The connection snapped and crackled with switching interference as it usually did traveling through all of the translators and boosting stations between the two realms.
“Could you repeat that please? A bit slower.”
“So very sorry,” the woman on the far end of the line spoke faster and with an even heavier accent. “Mister Ananda has just begun a meditation rounding retreat. He should be available in three months time, perhaps four.”
Michelle considered waiting. The software had been gone from Heaven for eighteen hundred years, she was tempted to wait just to spite it. But it had only been gone from Hell for forty-eight hours and already systems were collapsing. Who knew what was happening over at Soul In-processing.
“That would be awkward. Is himself available?”
Not, “One moment please.” or “Hold please.” The phone simply clunked down on the table and the voices softened in the background.
Eventually the woman came back. “I will transfer you now to—” She didn’t quite finish speaking before she changed the connection.
Michelle did her best to not reach down the line and kill the woman. Tension crept into her body, the fear that the transfer would fail and she’d be forced to go through the whole process again. If it included six more ABBA songs, she would commit murder.
But the voice that answered with a soft, “Hello, Gautama here,” soothed her nerves and made her actually smile. A smile that started somewhere down inside. He always did that to her.
“Hello. Devil from Hell here. How have you been?”
He rambled on for a bit.
“Really? That’s simply super.” Michelle covered the phone for a moment to explain to the listeners gathered about her living room. “Ghandi won a major tournament of Go. The finale came down to an intramural match against John the Baptist.”
She spoke into the phone again, “Please do pass on my congratulations to the old chap.”
“Go?” Eric whispered to Valerie not realizing how far male voices carried.
“It’s the Chinese game. It’s said to be easy to learn and harder than chess to master.” Valerie’s whisper was soft enough that, in order to hear it, Michelle missed some of what the Buddha was saying about improved prayer-wheel efficiency research.
“I’ll tell you why I called Oh Wise One,” Michelle cut him off as he began talking about post-mortem neural-integration tests with Transcendental Meditation that were truly possible for the first time now that Maharishi had died and transcended the Wheel of Life. “Some friends and I are working on a bit of a worry we’re experiencing. Could we pop over and have a chat?”
Michelle slouched lower in the chair and rested her head on the top of the back cushion.
“Really? Capital. Simply capital. In the morning would be perfect. In Bodhgaya? That should be quite amusing. See you then. Tah.” She hung up the phone.
Peter stared at the ceiling for a few moments, obviously calculating in his head. “It will be morning there in three…maybe four hours.”
Valerie leaned against Eric and looked far too comfortable there. “In for a penny, in for a pound. India it is. I’ll go get dressed in a minute. Why the accent?”
Michelle pushed herself forward, rested her elbows on her knees, and hung her head. It ached enough that it hurt to talk.
“Many of Gautama Buddha’s followers learned British-English during the Raj, the Brits’ occupation of India. He learned it as a lingua franca. He claims it’s easier than trying to remember the thirteen official languages and over three hundred dialects of India. Though speaking English makes Indians feel quite schizophrenic. They hated the Raj, but English is the only way many of them can talk to one another especially across state lines. The Buddha studied at Oxford. He was apparently a stunning bowler, that’s cricket to you Americans. I speak High British to rib him because he insists that my accent is bad enough to give him hives.”
“Bodhgaya?” Plato stood in the doorway from kitchen. “That’s where he gave his first enlightened speech, isn’t it?”
“Full points. Good morning.” Michelle looked at Plato and wondered if she should have dragged the man to her bed last night. The thought felt rather presumptuous, but also like a good opportunity missed. “The Buddha still loves to sit under the bodhi tree and watch what he started. So, we have several hours to get there, and I need to talk to someone at the office.”
“Who?”
“I need to talk with someone who can hopefully tell us how to get to India without the software.” Michelle rose to her feet and indicated they should follow her out onto the porch. Stopping on the steps down to the sand, she stuck two fingers between her teeth and let out a shrill whistle that echoed off the distant metal mountain peaks and had the mortals covering their ears. It was just as well, she was getting tired of the lovey-dovey cuddling on her couch. If there was going to be any lovey-dovey cuddling on her couch, she damn well wanted it to be her own. Not that she could picture herself being lovey-dovey. Not under any circumstances.
A garage door ground open and a blood-red Rolls Royce rolled out into the sunlight, wallowing a little as it struggled across the packed sand.
Michelle indicated the car, “One of the benefits of running the place. Used to belong to the Bagwan Shri Rajneesh. He actually succeeded in taking one with him. I nicked it in a poker game. He was cheating, but he’ll have to get a lot better before he’ll beat me.”
“The Bagwan who?” Plato asked from where he remained on the porch.
The car stopped and a little demon with a cap perched on his horns hopped out and ran around the car to open the door for them.
“Oh, he was a classic, well after your time. A religious cult leader who made all of his followers give him all of their money. He dressed them in red and had them shower him with flowers every time he drove by in one of the ninety-three Rolls Royces he bought with their money.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Could I make up something like that? Life is far weirder than fiction. He’s for real. I expect he’ll be stuck here for a long time. At least until he learns to cheat better at poker.”
The demon hauled open a car door that was far taller and heavier than it was.
Peter and the two mortals climbed aboard and she could hear them admiring the luxury.
Plato remained on the porch.
“Are you coming?”
Plato considered the car and the ocean and the sky. His gray eyes finally focusing on her.
“I think,” he brushed a hand over his beard a little sadly. “I think that one software system may be sufficient for me to contemplate.”
Michelle climbed back up all but the last stair to the porch and rested a hand on his arm. It was warm and strong beneath her fingers. His eyes didn’t look away from hers as so many others did. He didn’t even struggle to remain focused, he made it look easy for him to contemplate her visage.
“My friend, will you at least consider a vacation?”
He began to shake his head, but she squeezed his arm to stop him.
“We will be gone some several days I expect. Stay here. Relax, read a book, or watch a movie. Then when I’m back, perhaps we can talk.”
He hesitated, then a reluctant nod. He looked as exhausted by the never-ending battle as she felt.
Michelle returned to the car and joined the others.
When she rolled down the window to return his wave, he looked very small.
Chapter 26
All Hell had broken loose. It was the only way that Valerie could think to describe it.
The great, gray edifice of Hell’s Executive Control Keep had oppressed her the moment they crested the hills behind Michelle’s house. The more they drove over the sluggish brown rivers and through the tangled woods that belonged in Bilbo’s Mirkwood, the more that the monstrous building loomed above them.
The entry arch, over a rusted iron drawbridge, burned with blinding red logo, H.E.C.K.
“ ‘Keep’ as in castle dungeon?” Valerie asked Michelle
“Yep. Like it?”
“It’s horrid.”
“That’s the point. It’s much nicer inside, once you get past the public offices, but it does chase off the tourists and most of the whiners. You’ve got to have a Hell of a problem before you’ll brave these gates.”
Valerie acknowledged that it was effective. Her feet dug deep into the lush pile carpet of the Rolls Royce, driving her back against the seat in an effort to keep her distance, even as the sparks and cinders from the logo showered down and pattered on the roof of the car.
Eric and Peter, in the rearward-facing seats, didn’t even appear to notice. Of course, they probably wouldn’t notice if the car itself caught on fire, they were lost in another one of their logic loop discussions. There was another version of Valerie Hell, endless babble treated as if it had meaning to everyone except her. Drove her nuts.
Inside H.E.C.K. they drove past something much worse than mere sulfur, brimstone, and demons with whips. Gigantic lines of people snaked back and forth beneath endless banks of fluorescent lights, half glaring and half doing that awful flickering-failure thing. The lines led toward three narrow service windows in the barely discernible distance.
At the entry, one sign warned, “Be sure to choose correct line.” She couldn’t spot anything that said which line was for what. Another, “Changing or departing lines is prohibited.” The last one she could bear to look at, well down the twisting path that supplicants had to follow and out of sight from the point of entry, stated, “Average wait from this point:” and a flashing electronic readout with a third of its bulbs burned out, strobed uncertainly between “40 days and 40 nights” and “15 minutes.” The former looked more likely based on the length of the lines.
She turned to face the Devil, “You’re nasty.”
The woman simply grinned. “Hey, if you’re dumb enough to get in the line in the first place, because you can’t think for yourself, then you get what you deserve. Everything you need to know is over there.”
Michelle pointed out the other window of the car at a small display rack sporting little tri-fold brochu
res like bus route flyers. There was plenty of stock, no line, and only about four people browsing the options.
“There’s even a sign out front stating that, but almost no one believes me.”
“You are the Devil.” This place was creepily evil in really interesting ways. Ways she might have devised herself if set the challenge.
“Thanks,” Michelle sat back as the demon negotiated the long red car down a narrow aisle between desks piled high with paperwork. “It was fun enough to set it up, but the whole thing has grown a little tedious.”
The car slid up alongside an office door, the front bumper just nudging someone’s office chair, which planted the man face first into a towering in-basket filled higher than he was. The stack started a domino cascade that fell into the next guy, knocking him into his stack of forms and so on. The whole disaster was in clear view of the waiting lines, many still clutching their own forms in desperate hands.
Michelle didn’t even turn to watch the ripple effect that cascaded across the huge office as she climbed from the car.
“How do they get stuck here?” Valerie shuddered as she watched the disaster widen and cascade across multiple desks simultaneously.
“Notice anything about their gender?”
Valerie scanned the crowded desks as well as she could through the near whiteout blizzard of flying forms in triplicate swirled about by the heating-and-heating system’s air drafts.
“They’re all male.”
“Treat enough female secretaries and assistants like shit, this is where you end up.”
At first Valerie liked the sound of that one, but then it turned into a sour taste that settled uncomfortably in the pit of her stomach. She treated both her male and female staff exactly the same, which, she had to admit, was like shit.
# # #
Michelle stepped over the shattered adamantine doors that partially blocked the entry to her office.
Valerie had finally clued in that Michelle had hustled her out the door still wearing a bathrobe and a borrowed nightgown. Michelle’s offer to get Valerie a towel had done little to improve the woman’s complete lack of amusement at the joke. So, Michelle sent a demon off to buy her some decent clothes.
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