Mercury Falls (4 page)

Harry Giddings sat in his office on the fifth and top floor of the
Banner
's headquarters and fretted. Harry had spent his life preparing, and now that he had done everything he could think of to prepare, he wasn't sure what to do. He would have paced, but he had noticed that pacing tended to have a disquieting effect on the
Banner
's staff, who could see his movements at the bottom of the horizontal shutters covering the plate glass windows on either side of his office door. He could have lowered the shutters all the way, but that would have tipped off the staff that he was pacing. So he fretted quietly in his office, unaware that what the staff feared most was the idea of Harry Giddings fretting quietly in his office.

Harry Giddings was a man of convictions—formidable, impregnable, inspirational, and often contradictory convictions. Harry believed so many ridiculous and unjustified notions that the sheer weight of probability dictated that at least a few of them would end up being true. Thus it was that Harry's belief that he would play a pivotal role in the impending Apocalypse was misguided, completely absurd, and entirely accurate.

The Apocalypse was not, for Harry, a matter of faith or conjecture but rather a certain, if somewhat imprecisely defined, event. It was, in his mind, somewhat like an earthquake or a surprise visit from one's in-laws: something for which one could never be fully prepared but which was destined to occur sooner or later. Harry knew with certainty that the Apocalypse would occur during his lifetime and that he would play some significant part in it.

Harry couldn't be fully blamed for believing this bit of silliness because, after all, he had been informed of it by an angel. He couldn't be entirely let off the hook either, though, because the angel in question was himself not only out of the loop but transparently drunk and not a little deranged.

More on that later.

Harry's belief that he was guided by the voices of angels that only he could hear was, surprisingly, one of the least unreasonable of his many absurd beliefs. For example, he also believed that God created photosynthesis before He created the sun and that all of the world's animals had once taken a Mediterranean cruise together. Having convinced oneself of those unlikely propositions, accepting the notion that one is hearing the voices of angels is pretty much a cakewalk.
⁵

Fortunately, most of these beliefs were so far removed from the day-to-day operations of a Christian media empire that Harry managed to become far more rich and successful, by any reasonable standard, than almost any of his (ostensibly more rational) critics. It seemed that at the end of the day, what mattered wasn't whether one believed, for example, that the Creator of the Universe had once stopped the Earth from revolving around the Sun in order to skew the odds in a skirmish between two Bronze Age tribes, but whether one had had the foresight to short-sell WorldCom in May of 2002. Materialists scoffed at Harry's world-view while secretly coveting his portfolio.

Harry was always in the right place at the right time. He fore-saw the Internet bubble, the housing bubble, the renewable fuels bubble—even the hydrogen bubble, which was virtually impossible to see even when one knew it was there. How much of Harry's success was due to angelic guidance and how much was due to his own instincts or just dumb luck is impossible to say. What we do know is that through a series of shrewd acquisitions, well-timed expansions, and tax loophole exploits so convoluted that they bordered on poetic, Harry Giddings built the most powerful Christian media empire on Earth. He owned radio stations, television stations, publishing companies, newspapers, and recording studios, along with fourteen donut shops and a surprisingly large factory in Vietnam that made those little plastic things that they use to tie off loaves of bread.

The true reach of Harry's empire was unknown even to the angels of the Mundane Observation Corps, as it was as much a legal fiction as an actual corporation, comprised mostly of dizzyingly complex licensing agreements, syndication arrangements, shell companies, and small stakes in a variety of other similarly Byzantine corporations. Our accountants found one particular branch of Harry's empire that served only to obfuscate the activities of the other branches. This branch was so good at what it did, however, that it eventually succeeded in becoming completely ignorant of what the other branches were actually doing, and at last inspection existed as a completely independent entity, busily hiding the details of what it was doing from itself.

There wasn't necessarily any malice in any of these activities; Harry, for his part, did his best to run a reasonably respectable business. Shell companies, plausible deniability, and intentional obfuscation were merely a routine part of business in the twenty-first century. Such defense mechanisms helped forestall audits, hostile takeovers, and intelligent questions from shareholders, all at a cost of only a few hundred million dollars in lost productivity per year. Like the monarch butterfly, which has evolved a body chemistry that causes it to taste like burnt Styrofoam to predators, Harry's empire was a thing to behold—but you wouldn't want to take a bite out of it.

The jewel in Harry's crown was the
Banner
, which was within spitting distance of being the most popular news magazine in the world. News magazines were admittedly a bit old-school by the twenty-first century, but an old-fashioned weekly publication made from actual dead trees lent his enterprise some much-needed respectability. An organization that could afford to lose as much money as the
Banner
did week after week was a force to be reckoned with.

The
Banner
also helped keep Harry focused on his ultimate mission—to usher in the Apocalypse. Unlike the other elements of his empire, which he had mostly acquired and then either built upon their untapped potential or looted them for all they were worth, the
Banner
was Harry's baby. He had built the
Banner
from nothing—deliberately passing over several magazines on the verge of bankruptcy that he could have picked up for pennies on the dollar—because he wanted its focus to be pure: when the Apocalypse occurred, the
Banner
would announce it first.

That wasn't his stated intent, of course. One had to maintain appearances. The mission statement of the
Banner
was to be the best news magazine in the world. So he had assembled a vast network of reporters—in LA; New York; Washington, DC; London; Tokyo—all with the ostensible purpose of providing the most timely, accurate, and insightful news coverage possible. But the Big One, the one story he was really waiting for, was still out there. And he was going to get it.

Christine Temetri had, through her own blind initiative, become an integral part of the plan. Harry, preoccupied with powers and principalities, hadn't initially thought to cover the fringe elements—the crazy cultists who kept popping up and predicting The End. But when Christine sent in her first story, he realized that the
Banner
's readers would eat it up. And hell, didn't John the Baptist himself start out as a lunatic eating locusts and ranting about the arrival of the Messiah? Maybe one of these commune-dwelling crackpots had the inside track. Harry certainly wasn't about to miss out on the big story just because it came from a disreputable source. And now more than ever, he needed all of his eyes open. If what he had been able to glean from the angelic voices was true, then The End was very close indeed. And this business in the Middle East with the Israelis and the Syrians, didn't it seem to point to a dispensational acceleration? Sure, there had been a lot of abortive skirmishes in the Middle East in recent years, but this one seemed like it had some legs. And yet, his next move remained unclear—and so he fretted.

Harry's fretting was, however, cut short when he heard the voice of the
Banner
's news editor, Troy Van Dellen, somewhere in the cubicle maze outside Harry's office.

"Hello, gorgeous!" said Troy's lilting voice.

That kind of labored flirtation could only mean one thing: Christine was back from. . .Wisconsin, or wherever she had been. Harry had some vague idea that Christine had been somewhere remote and insignificant—Michigan? Minnesota?—following up on another crackpot lead. Harry rarely got involved in the dispensing of assignments; although his fondness for Christine afforded her more direct access than his other reporters, he ordinarily allowed Troy to manage Christine. Troy Van Dellen was a perky blond Baylor graduate who had started three years earlier as copy editor and worked his way into his current position through a combination of shrewd political maneuvering and unparalleled journalistic instincts. It was said of Troy Van Dellen—not to his face—that the only story he couldn't sniff out was that of his own sexual orientation. Or maybe he did realize it and was merely adhering to the
Banner
's unofficial "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Harry opened his door to see Christine trying desperately to disengage herself from conversation with Troy. Christine had never gotten along with Troy; it seemed to Harry—who was admittedly not the best judge of other people's emotions—that she was frightened by his intensity, resentful of his age, and, perhaps, jealous of his hair. Harry generally tried to at least make a show of discouraging Christine's attempts to make an end run around Troy to get to him, but today he wasn't in the mood.

"Christine," Harry said authoritatively. "I need to see you in my office."

Troy, evidently assuming that Christine was in trouble, gave a smirk and sauntered away. Christine trudged down the corridor to Harry's office, walking right past him and collapsing with a
whoomf!
onto Harry's leather couch.

"Did Lexus not seed fans to light Mike Hondo," Harry heard Christine say.

Harry didn't know what this meant and didn't feel particularly like asking for clarification. Whatever nonsense was on Christine's mind, Harry had more pressing concerns.

"How was Nebraska?" he asked, trying to steer her onto the desired path.

"Did you hear what I said?" Christine asked tersely. "Dyslexic Nazis vandalized my condo."

"Oh!" exclaimed Harry. "I thought you said. . ." He trailed off as he realized that he had most likely misheard her again.

"What?" Christine asked.

"Sorry?"

"You thought I said what?"

"Oh, nothing," Harry said. "I just misheard you the first time. Anyway, I'm sorry to hear about. . .that." He hoped he was supposed to be sorry to hear whatever he was supposed to have heard. It seemed like that was what she was angling for. "So, when did you get back?"

"Yesterday. I walk down the hall to my condo, exhausted from this idiocy in the desert with that creep Jonas Bitters, and somebody has smashed—"

"Bitters! Wow, I forgot all about that. I guess the Bridegroom didn't arrive as expected. Sorry you had to fly out to Utah to—"

"Nevada."

"Yeah, Nevada, to do that story. . ."

"I'm not doing the story, Harry."

"No problem," said Harry, who was a bit relieved not to have to tell Christine that they had no room in the upcoming issue for the Bitters piece. "I've got something better for you anyway. Have you heard of this wacko in Berkeley, Galileo Mercury?"

"Gosh, a wacko in Berkeley," Christine replied. "How exciting. Tell me more."

"So. . .you're not interested."

"Harry, I'm not doing this anymore."

"Doing what?"

"The Apocalypse circuit. I can't take it any longer."

"Really?" Harry said. "I thought you enjoyed doing these stories."

"Why would you think that?"

"Didn't you say something at the Christmas party about how much you enjoyed talking to all these eccentric, charismatic figures?"

"Yeah, that sounds like me," said Christine dryly. "Except instead of 'eccentric, charismatic figures,' I said 'narcissistic sociopaths.' And then I did this." She pointed her index finger at her temple, firing an imaginary pistol. "I can see how you would misinterpret that."

Now that Harry thought about it, he did remember Christine doing that. This sort of misunderstanding was one of the reasons Harry tried not to get involved in the day-to-day management of people. He had the prevalent weakness among dominant human males of assuming that everything was just peachy with their subordinates until one of them did something really drastic to get their leader's attention, like keeling over dead. If he had realized how dissatisfied Christine was with these assignments, he'd have found someone else to cover them. But this wasn't the best time to be hunting for a replacement.

"I think you might like this Mercury guy," Harry said. "He's not your typical Doomsday cult leader."

"So," Christine asked, "he's not a narcissistic sociopath?"

"Er. . ." Harry had to admit that he couldn't make that guarantee. In fact, from the little he knew about Mercury, he had to assume that he
was
a narcissistic sociopath. Being a narcissistic sociopath was, after all, the major qualification for being on his list of interview candidates for Christine.

"Look, Harry, I'm sure this Galileo Mercury—the name alone inspires confidence, by the way—is one of the new breed of enlightened Doomsday cult leaders. But I'm just not interested. The Armageddon thing is getting old. Hell, even our readers are getting bored. You're not even running half my stories anymore."

"Christine, trust me. This is important stuff. We may not run a story on every End Times cult out there, but it's important to have someone there, in case. . ."

"In case what?"

Harry changed course. "OK, fine," he said, getting up and walking to the door. He yanked the door open and yelled, "Troy! Get in here."

Troy strode in, looking puzzled but still hopeful that Christine was in trouble. Harry closed the door behind him and once again took his seat.