Mercury Falls (9 page)

"Really. I suppose you're a Person of Apoplectic Interest as well?"

"I'm an angel, Christine. That doesn't even make any sense. Your friend Karl the Antichrist has recently become a PAI though."

"Of course."

"It's all connected, all of these events. It's going to get weirder. There are no such things as coincidences."

"Really?"

"No, not really. Of course there are coincidences. I was trying to sound deep."

Christine glared. "You're not a very convincing angel," she said.

"That's pretty much what the other angels tell me," Mercury agreed.

"So in your mind," said Christine, "Charlie Nyx, the Olive Branch War, and Karl the Antichrist are all related somehow."

"Not in my mind. I'd keep them all separate if I could, but it's too late for that. Clock's ticking, you know. I have to say, Karl as the Antichrist was an unexpected casting choice. Wish I was in on
that
meeting."

"I thought he was chosen randomly. In a contest."

"Random! God doesn't play dice with the Universe, Christine."

"I don't blame Him. The Universe cheats."

"The contest was a facade. Lucifer handpicked this guy. God knows why."

Christine's curiosity about the extent of Mercury's delusion got the better of her. "So the author of the books, Katie Midford, she's an agent of Satan?"

"Not sure about Katie Midford. She may just be a prawn."

"A pawn."

"No, a prawn. You know, a little fish."

"Prawns aren't fish," said Christine irritably. "They're shrimp. I think you mean 'pawn.' Like the little pieces in chess that get sacrificed for the queen."

"I thought those were prawns."

"They're
pawns
. Prawns are shellfish."

"Yeah, that's her all right. A greedy little prawn."

Christine resisted the urge to scream. "Walnut Creek," said a sign.

"How about I drop you off in Walnut Creek?" she said, trying to make it sound like an attractive option.

"Why, what's in Walnut Creek?"

"Cherub convention," Christine said. It was worth a shot.

"Really?" Mercury actually sounded excited. "American Cherub Society or North American Council of Cherubim?"

"Uh. . .the second one."

"Ha! There is no North American Council of Cherubim! They merged with the International Cherub Association in 1994!"

"Seriously?"

"No, not seriously. Wow, are you gullible. So when were you going to tell me about the briefcase in the trunk?"

The Antichrist was clearly out of his element.

All that was really expected of him was to cut the ceremonial ribbon in front of the newest Charlie's Grill, but he was having difficulty with the giant ceremonial scissors. Finally, he bit into an edge with his teeth and tore the ribbon the rest of the way. Red-faced and drenched with sweat in the hundred-degree heat, he muttered an obscenity and stomped off.

The crowd cheered this display of mildly satanic behavior.

"The Antichrist, Karl Grissom!" shouted a diminutive man who had presumably been standing next to Karl the entire time.

The crowd clapped politely for the Antichrist and the man they assumed was the Antichrist's dwarf henchman, but was, in fact, the director of marketing for Charlie's Grill, Inc. The dwarf henchman marketing director proceeded to hand out free cheeseburgers while the Antichrist made his way to the parking lot. A local high school marching band began to play a jazzed-up version of the Charlie Nyx movie theme.

Behind a line of police tape, in the parking lot of the Burger Giant next door, a group of several dozen protesters held signs with slogans like "Pray for Karl Grissom" and "Karl Grissom GO TO HELL." Despite their lack of both logical consistency and complimentary cheeseburgers, they were a spirited group.

Having fulfilled his contractual obligations as Antichrist, Karl plodded through the crowd toward his mother's Saturn. This whole business was getting a little old. He had half a mind just to call it quits. And at this point he didn't even know about the man with a high-powered rifle who was lying in wait on the roof of the Burger Giant across the street.

The man's name was Danny Pilvers, and he was a would-be assassin.

Would-be assassins are often virtually indistinguishable from actual assassins, the one vital difference being that the former are, generally speaking, far less dangerous. If anyone had seen Danny on the roof with his rifle, they would have assumed that he was an actual assassin. Even Danny himself thought he was an assassin.

Danny was wearing army camouflage and had his crosshairs trained on Karl Grissom, the Antichrist. As Danny was on the opposite side of the roof from the crowd and was making a point of being very still, no one seemed to have noticed him.

Danny's hands shook, not because he was afraid, but because he was angry. He was angry with Karl the Antichrist. He was angry with Katie Midford and her dwarf henchmen. He was angry with Charlie Nyx, despite the fact that Charlie Nyx was only a twelve-year-old boy, and a fictional one at that. Danny was angry at all of these people because he believed that they made a tapestry of religion. Hadn't the angels told him so?

The angels had not, in fact, told him so. What they had said was "travesty." In fact, they had repeated it several times. "A travesty," they said. "A
travesty
of religion." Finally they had given up, satisfied that Danny understood the gist of what they were saying.

Despite having served three tours in Afghanistan, the only civilian employment Danny could find was as a fry cook at Burger Giant—an injustice made no less severe in Danny's mind by the fact that his highest ranking position in the military was also that of fry cook. Danny was, in summary, a very angry person with a high-powered rifle and a fifth-grade education. It had taken very little in the way of supernatural guidance to get him to direct both his anger and his rifle at Karl Grissom, the Antichrist.

Danny took a deep breath, trying to steady his hands. "A tapestry of religion," he muttered, and flicked off the gun's safety.

Across the street, Karl Grissom fumbled with his keys.

Preternaturally dexterous fingers spun the tumblers.

6. . .6. . .6.

Click.

"I should have known," Christine said.

The case opened to reveal what appeared to be an ordinary notebook computer.

"Ask and it shall be opened," Mercury said.

"Isn't it 'knock and it shall be opened'?"

"Whatever. I opened it, didn't I?"

"So what does five oh seven mean?"

"Five oh seven?"

"The date the Apocalypse is supposed to start. That was the number the lock was set to before."

"Ah," Mercury said. "Synchronicity. Don't read too much into it. It tends to happen when there is a spike of activity in the SPAM. You'll likely see more of it as things progress."

"Things?"

"The End Times. Armageddon. The Second Coming. The seams are starting to show."

"So this is. . .really happening?"

They were sitting at a park bench at a rest area off Highway 4, just west of Sacramento. In light of Mercury's inexplicable knowledge of the attache case in her trunk and General Isaacson's death, Christine was finding herself entertaining some truly absurd notions regarding all that had transpired recently.

"Like clockwork," Mercury said. "They're following the SPAM to the letter. Guess they didn't need me after all. Although I bet they're freaking out about Isaacson's missing briefcase by now."

"And you're really. . ."

"An angel, yes. Wanna see another card trick?"

"No!"

"Easy. Man, you're jumpy."

"Jumpy? This is the end of the world you're talking about!"

"I know," Mercury said. "Blows, doesn't it?"

"Can't you do something to stop it?"

"Not likely. Somebody's obviously got a transplanar energy trace on me. You saw what happened with my card trick. Imagine what would happen if I really started to interfere with things."

"So you're just going to let this happen?"

"Who do you think I am, Christine? I'm a friggin'
cherub
. Do you know where I rank in the angel hierarchy? Cherubim are the bottom of the angel food chain. Hell, if we were any lower, we'd be. . ."

"What?"

"It's not important. Trust me, there's nothing I can do. It's not personal; I like this place. I'd rather not see it end. That's the main reason I'm not helping out with the. . ."

"The
main
reason? You kinda sorta like Earth, so you're not going to help out with blowing it all to hell? What other reasons do you have?"

"Well. . .I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not really a team player."

"Oh for. . .remind me to thank you for your lack of participation when the moon falls out of the sky. So what is this damn thing anyway?"

Mercury tapped the power switch, and the computer began to boot up.

"This," he said, with a flourish, "is one of the Four Attache Cases of the Apocalypse."

"One of the four. . .isn't that supposed to be
horsemen
of the Apocalypse?"

"You have to understand that these things are allegorical. They didn't have laptop computers when John had his vision on Patmos."

"And the closest thing he could come up with was
horsemen
? That's not even
close
. How about. . .I don't know. . .magic boxes of the Apocalypse?"

"Oh, yeah, because 'the Four Magic Boxes of the Apocalypse' sounds really ominous."

"It's just the first thing I thought of. I'm sure he could have—"

"Watch out!" Mercury cried. "Here come the Four Magic Boxes of the Apocalypse!"

A nearby family moved to a more distant picnic bench.

"Fine," said Christine. "So this is one of the Four Attache Cases of the Apocalypse. What do they do?"

"Depends which one it is. This happens to be the Attache Case of War. See?"

He held the case so she could see the black insignia of a sword-bearing horseman. Christine recalled wondering about the symbol when the case was on Isaacson's table. Mercury set it back down. The screen now showed what looked like a satellite image of the globe.

"Got it. So what do we have to do, teach this thing tic-tac-toe so that it will understand the futility of war?"

"Not that simple, I'm afraid. The case isn't much use to us. But in the right hands. . ."

"Like General Isaacson's."

"Right. Potentially very useful. It's basically an intelligence device. Watch."

Mercury brushed his finger across the screen. The globe spun obediently. He tapped it and it stopped moving. He tapped it twice, in the vicinity of the Middle East. The screen zoomed in on the area west of the Mediterranean. He double-tapped it two more times, until the screen showed the border of Israel and Syria. She noticed that near the border on both sides were clusters of red dots.

"What are those?" she asked.

"Violence," Mercury said. "More precisely, violent intentions. The Attache Case of War is patched into an extraplanar system that monitors violent thoughts occurring anywhere on Earth. Red patches are generally battlefields or gatherings of terrorists. Or soldiers."

"So this is how the Israelis knew where to hit. How they were able to move so quickly into Syria."

"Correct."

"But the Palestinian school. . .Isaacson said something about getting bad information. One-third of the 'tips' were wrong, he said."

"Yeah, that's the rub with the Attache Cases of the Apocalypse. They're rigged to give you inaccurate information. Only two-thirds of those dots are actually centers of violence. The others could be. . ."

"Schools. Libraries. Mosques."

"Anything," Mercury said. "Generally something that looks like it could be a legitimate target."

"Why two-thirds?"

"That seems to be the maximum acceptable threshold. If it were less accurate, the political backlash would be too great. But using the case in conjunction with conventional intelligence, the Israelis could be certain of being right often enough to outweigh the costs."

The phrase echoed in Christine's brain.
Outweigh the costs. . .

"Also, there is some significance to the fraction
two-thirds
."

"And that is. . .?"

"In the Bible, perfection is represented by the number seven. Imperfection is represented by the number six. The decimal representation of two-thirds is point six repeating."

"So the number goes on forever," said Christine.

"Yeah," replied Mercury. "Always falling just a little bit short."

"So the number of the beast isn't six six six. . ."

"Technically, no. It's point six repeating."

"But. . .why?"

"Why what?"

"Why give the Israelis a faulty intelligence tool?"

"In a word," said Mercury, "mayhem."

"Mayhem?"

"I'm only guessing, but I think the idea is to provoke the Israelis into escalating the violence in the Middle East. Give them a weapon that promises to shift the fundamentals of the conflict in their favor, but at the cost of additional, entirely pointless violence."

"Violence that will inevitably provoke a response from the other side."

"Right," said Mercury. "Humans are nothing if not predictable."

"Why did General Isaacson want you to have the case?"

"He said that?"

"His last words were, 'Take it to Mercury.'"

"Well," said Mercury. "That could mean anything."

"He was holding the case when he said it."

"OK, but maybe he meant another Mercury."

"That's what I thought at first," said Christine. "I actually thought he meant the planet."

"The planet?"

"You do realize you share your name with a planet?"

"Don't remind me. Smallest planet in the solar system," said Mercury. "After everything I did for the Romans. That's gratitude for you."

"Mercury isn't the smallest. . .wait, you're saying the planet is
named after you
?"

"You know any other Mercurys?"

"Well, there's the god. . ."

Mercury grinned.

"You're not a god," said Christine.

"No," admitted Mercury, "but you'd be amazed at the impression you can make with a few miracles and a funny hat."

"How old
are
you?"

"Let's just say that I could tell you some stories about Tarquin the Proud that would make your hair curl."

"I have no idea what that means. And you haven't answered my question. Why did General Isaacson want you to have it? How does he even know you?"

"I may have. . .sort of. . .given it to him."

"What? Why? I thought you said you hardly knew anything about him."

Mercury shrugged. "I don't. It was my job. Besides, I thought it might be a good thing, you know, helping the Israelis get rid of the terrorists and suicide bombers. I didn't know the whole thing with the olive branch was going to happen. I hadn't really thought it through at that point."

"You didn't know it was one of the Four Attache Cases of the Apocalypse?"

"Why would I? I thought they were supposed to be
horsemen
."

"So who told you to do this?"

"My boss, a seraph named Uzziel. He assured me it was in the SPAM."

"And was it?"

"Honestly, I'm not sure," said Mercury. "The SPAM is ridiculously long and hard to interpret. Nobody knows who wrote it, and it's written in High Seraphic, a language hardly anybody speaks anymore. I understand it has something like fifty different words for snow."

"You're thinking of the Eskimos."

Mercury snorted. "I think I would know if the SPAM was written by Eskimos. The point is that sometimes we just have to take it for granted that the higher-ups know what they're doing. So I did what I was told. But when I found out about the plans for the Apocalypse, I went AWOL."

Christine thought for a moment. "How did you know I had the case?"

"Lucky guess. I knew you were with Isaacson when he died. And I'm one of the few—angels or humans—who knew he had the case. I figured he must have mentioned me, which is why you showed up at the house."

"That girl, Ariel—she seemed to be expecting me."

"She was, in a sense," replied Mercury. "I gave her a list of the PAIs, along with pictures when I had them. I figured it was only a matter of time before one of them showed up. Synchronicity, you know. The illusion of free will is straining under the weight of determinism."

"The what is doing what under what?"

"Certain things have to happen for the Apocalypse to take place. They're going to happen, no matter what you and I do. We can go with the flow, or we can fight it, but the river is going where it's going. All we're doing is splashing around in the stream."

"So then. . .what's the point, if nothing you do is going to make any difference in the long run?"

Mercury shrugged. "Splashing is more fun."

Christine's eyes fell to the scattered red dots on the screen. "May I try?"

"Sure."

"How do I get it to. . ."

Mercury tapped a globe icon in the corner, and the blue-green image of Earth appeared again.

Christine spun the globe until the western coast of North America was visible. She tapped until the Bay Area filled the screen. Dots of red appeared here and there, seeming to spiral out from an epicenter in Oakland. She zoomed to their approximate location. No state boundaries or other markings were present; she had to go purely by the topography and the masses of red dots marking congested areas.

"Allow me," said Mercury. He deftly navigated the terrain until Highway 4 was visible—not a red line marking the highway, but what looked like the actual highway. His finger zipped along the highway until he found a pathetic patch of green amid the desert-like landscape.
Tap-tap
, and a little brown building was visible.
Tap-tap
, picnic tables.
Tap-tap
.

"Holy crap, that's
us
," said Christine.

"That's about as close as it'll go," Mercury said. He looked up and waved.

A tiny figure on the screen, barely recognizable as Mercury, waved up at Christine.

"Now slap me," he said.

"OK," she said, and slapped him across the face.

"Ow! What the hell?"

"You said to slap you."

"Yeah, but normal people hesitate a little."

"Sorry. I don't really like you."

"Clearly. OK, now watch the screen, and
then
slap me."

"OK."

She drew her hand back to slap him again, then looked at the screen. Next to the figure of Mercury was a smaller figure cloaked in a bright red aura.

"See that? Violent intentions. You don't even need to actually slap me for the. . ."

She slapped him again.

A flash of red lit up the screen.

"Ow!"

"Sorry, I wanted to see what would happen."

"Glad to be able to satisfy your curiosity," Mercury said, rubbing his reddened cheek.

"Also, I wanted to slap you again."

"Yeah, I got that."

"So in this instance at least, the case was accurate."

"Yes," Mercury said. "It will reflect any violent intentions. It also gives a lot of false positives, however. So it's pretty accurate if you know what to look for, but if you just scan an area for violent intentions, you'll get a lot of bogus info."

He tapped a spyglass icon, and then double-tapped the screen several times, causing the view to zoom out. He then drew a circle on the screen with his finger and tapped a button bearing a sword icon. An hourglass appeared for a second, and then the screen zoomed in on an area south of Sacramento.

"Hmmm," said Mercury. "Maybe something happening in Lodi." He zoomed in further until a bright red pinpoint appeared on the screen. He zoomed in on the red point until a brightly glowing red figure was visible in the center of the screen. The figure appeared to be climbing onto the roof of a small building. A few yards away was another building, over which waved a flag bearing the familiar logo of Charlie's Grill.