Mercury Rests (19 page)

“Is that going to be a problem?” asked the president. His question was directed at Lucifer, but he was sitting back in his chair, observing Lubbers coolly.

“Oh, not for me,” clarified Lucifer. “I try to be tolerant of others’ religious beliefs—or lack thereof. But I believe that I am on
a holy mission, directed by God himself. If I may be so bold, I believe that each of us here has an important role to play. President Babcock is obviously the ultimate authority, the one God has chosen to oversee the operation. I am to act as his humble counselor. That leaves you, Director Lubbers, to be the hands and feet. To make a theological analogy, you are Son to our Father and Holy Spirit. This is a lot to ask of a skeptic.”

“I’ll be fine,” Lubbers said through gritted teeth. They weren’t getting rid of him that easily. After all, he was the one who had brought Rezon to the president. This whole thing was
his idea
.

“Dirk,” said Travis earnestly, leaning over his desk, “would you like to commit your life to Jesus Christ right now?”

Oh, for fuck’s sake, thought Lubbers. No! No, I don’t want to fucking commit my life to Jesus Christ. All I want to do is fucking kill the motherfuckers who blew up the moon! What in fucking fuck does this namby-pamby Jesus bullshit have to do with anything?

“Yes,” Lubbers said, as evenly as he could. “Yes, I would.”

“You would like to what?” asked Lucifer.

“I would like...” said Lubbers. Fucking fuckety fuck! “...to dedicate my life to Jesus Christ.”

“Mr. President, would you pray for our brother Dirk?”

Babcock nodded. “I would be honored.”

Lubbers reluctantly sat down, trying to hide the revulsion that was boiling up from his gut. Lucifer held out his hands and the three of them joined together in a circle. The president led the prayer, thanking Jesus for accepting a degenerate sinner like Lubbers into the Kingdom, with Lucifer interjecting the occasional
Amen!
or
Preach it, brother!

Lubbers, for his part, was having none of it. He was acting a part, pure and simple. If accepting Jesus into your heart was the
price for admission to this club, then he would pretend to do that. While Babcock prayed, he was going over budget numbers in his head, stopping to mutter “Amen” whenever the president paused. At some point, though, he started to worry that they weren’t buying his act, that they could tell he was just going through the motions. I need to accept somebody into my heart, thought Lubbers. Not Jesus, but somebody. Otherwise they’re going to know.

The first image that popped into Lubbers’s head was that of Nixon shaking hands with Elvis. Nixon was out of the question, of course. He’d rather have Jesus in his heart than Nixon. So, Elvis then.

“Elvis,” Lubbers mouthed. “Come into my heart.” And as soon as he said it, a profound feeling of peace came over him.

“Wow,” Lubbers said, opening his eyes. Travis and Lucifer were staring expectantly at him. Evidently the prayer was over.

“How do you feel?” asked President Babcock.

Lubbers smiled crookedly at him. “Man,” he said, “I feel great. Whattaya say we take care of business?”

Mercury watched from a crack in the utility room closet as his double was escorted through the planeport by security. “Poor bastard,” he muttered. “I hope they’re not too hard on me.”

The only thing that had saved him the first time around was the mysterious appearance of the battered and unconscious Gamaliel in the planeport. He still wasn’t sure who had actually captured Gamaliel and brought him to the planeport, but he hadn’t complained about them giving him credit for it. Hopefully whoever had caught him last time would catch him again this time around. Otherwise, past-Mercury was going to be in a lot of trouble, with no “tokens of goodwill” to help balance the scales. They’d lock him up for a couple hundred years at least. Uzziel would never assign him to retrieve the missing Attaché Case of Famine, which meant that he would never be captured by Tiamat’s agents and brought to Finch’s facility in Kenya, which meant that he would never fly the anti-bomb to the moon and be transported to the post-Apocalyptic future, which meant that he would not now be here in a utility closet, watching himself be marched down the concourse by cherubim with flaming swords.

He shook his head. That sort of thinking could drive a cherub crazy. He couldn’t worry about what would or wouldn’t happen to the other Mercury and how that would affect him in the present. Or the future, or whatever it was. The important thing was that he was now a step ahead of Tiamat and Finch: he knew what they were up to, and now that the other Mercury was in custody, he could slip back down to the Mundane Plane and intercept the glass apple before Christine ever found it. He’d deliver the anti-bomb to the authorities and then tell them about Wormwood, saving the Earth
and
Heaven. Not bad for a day’s work.

But not quite yet. He had to wait for Perp to get back to help him get out of the planeport safely. At this point, while he wasn’t technically wanted anymore, security still might stop him, thinking he’d escaped. Then they’d have two Mercurys in custody, which would be extremely difficult to explain—especially to the other Mercury.

After another three hours, he began to worry. What was taking Perp so long? Presumably, he’d have taken the Megiddo portal, which meant that he should have returned a good hour before the other Mercury turned himself in. The flight from the Megiddo portal to the Azores and back from the Middle East would take about eight hours. That was about a four-hour flight each way. But it had been almost eleven hours now since Perp had left.

Finally, the door opened, and an exhausted-looking Perp fluttered inside and closed the door behind him.

“Demon dogs, Perp!” exclaimed Mercury. “What the hell took you so long? I thought I was going to have to come out of the closet on my own. Er, you know what I mean.”

“You know,” replied Perp irritably, “I do have a job to do around here. When I disappear for half the day, things get backed
up. Put this on.” He had somehow pulled a tan fedora from his swaddling clothes.

“A fedora?” asked Mercury distastefully. “What am I, hipster cherub now?”

“It’s to hide your hair. I got you a security escort back to the Megiddo portal. If anybody asks, your name is Todd. Microwave a smelly sponge to kill bacteria.”

Mercury donned the fedora. He grinned broadly and held out his hand to Perp. “Hey there, guy,” he oozed. “I’m Todd, the hipster cherub.”

“Cut it out,” Perp growled. “Just keep your head down.”

“Can do, chief!” said Mercury, adjusting the hat.

“I don’t know why I put up with this crap,” grumbled Perp, peering out the cracked door. “OK, let’s go.”

He led Mercury back out onto the concourse toward a pair of waiting security guards.

“What kind of music does Todd like?” asked Mercury. “He strikes me as a Maroon 5 fan.”

“Shut up, Mercury,” hissed Perp. “I mean it.”

Mercury trailed after him in silence. When they reached the guards, Perp said, “This is the VIA I was telling you about.”

The guards nodded sternly at him and regarded Mercury.

“I’m Todd!” exclaimed Mercury. “I wear this hat because it’s ironic.”

“Let’s go,” said one of the guards. “Stay close.”

Mercury touched the brim of his hat and nodded toward Perp. “Thanks, Perp,” he said, and they trudged off down the concourse toward the Megiddo portal.

“Good luck,” said Perp. “A vinegar and salt solution can help relieve pain associated with a bladder infection.” He added, in a whisper, “I hope you’re not batshit crazy.”

The guards got Mercury safely to the portal. He thanked them for their service and then blinked out of existence, reappearing on a rocky outcropping in the Jezreel Valley. Megiddo. This was supposed to have been the location of the final battle between good and evil. Man, had that plan ever gone off track.

Mercury ditched the ridiculous hat and took off again, this time due south toward Kenya. The sun was already rising in the east, which meant that in only a few hours, Christine and Horace Finch would reach Mount Mbutuokoti, where the glass apple was hidden. Mercury needed to get to it first. Perp had taken longer than expected, but he should still have time to get to the apple before they crested the top of the mountain. He could get in and out without them ever seeing him.

Soaring high above the clouds, Mercury pushed top speed at around three hundred miles per hour all the way to sub-Saharan Africa. Once he was above Kenya, he sank below the cloud layer and looked for the distinctive shape of Mount Mbutuokoti. He had never been there but knew roughly where it was, and Christine had described it as a near-perfect cone, rising some two thousand feet above the plain.

As expected, it wasn’t difficult to spot. Mbutuokoti stuck out incongruously from the flat plain surrounding it. As Mercury descended toward the plateau at its peak, his heart jumped. A few hundred feet directly below him, a group of people were ascending the rocky slope of the mountain. There were maybe a dozen tall, dark-skinned, nearly naked men and two light-skinned people wearing Western clothing. One of them was short, squat, and male, the other a thin female with brown hair. Christine.

If they thought to look up, they’d see him soaring above them, but they were intent on keeping their footing on the treacherous terrain. Mercury flew silently over their heads, landing softly on
the plateau. He had only a few minutes to find the glass apple before the group reached the summit. Unfortunately, all he knew was that Christine found the apple in a cave accessible from one of the fissures in the mountain. There were dozens of fissures big enough for Christine to have climbed into—and some of them would be too tight for someone of Mercury’s size. Best to just start with the largest ones and work his way down through the smaller ones.

As he approached one of the fissures, something hard struck him on the back of the head, knocking him to his knees and almost causing him to fall into the crevice. Stars danced in front of his eyes and pain shot through his skull. What the hell?

Dazed, he turned in the direction from which the projectile had come. Standing maybe thirty feet away, with a fist-sized rock in his hand, was a tall, muscular angel with an evil grin on his face. Gamaliel.

“Hey, Merc,” said Gamaliel. “Catch!”

Gamaliel wound up like a major league baseball pitcher and hurled the rock at Mercury. Mercury rolled so the rock glanced more or less harmlessly off his left shoulder.

“Gamaliel. What the hell are you doing here?” Mercury stammered.

“I have interests in the area,” said Gamaliel, bending to pick up another rock. “I patrol the region, looking for suspicious characters. Heads up!” He pitched another rock at Mercury. Mercury flattened himself against the ground, and the rock sailed over his head.

“I’ll let you know if I see anybody suspicious,” said Mercury, pulling himself to his feet.

“Hey, you’re quick!” said Gamaliel, picking up another rock. There seemed to be an endless supply at his feet. “Not quick enough though!” He hurled the rock.

This time Mercury couldn’t get out of the way. He held his hands in front of his face, and the rock smacked into his right wrist. He heard a bone break. Grunting in pain, Mercury grabbed his wrist and turned his back to Gamaliel. He stumbled away, trying to get some distance between himself and Gamaliel’s throwing arm.

“Coward,” Mercury growled. “Sneaking up on a guy...”

A rock smacked him in the back, thumping the wind out of his lungs and nearly knocking him over. Gamaliel wasn’t going to give him a chance to catch his breath. He had caught Mercury off guard, and he wasn’t going to give up the advantage. He’d keep pummeling Mercury until he was a bloody remnant of a cherub.
⁸
Mercury stumbled a few more steps and was struck again, this time in the right shoulder. He fell to his knees. Another rock knocked him forward onto his palms. He winced as pain shot through his right arm. Angel bones heal quickly, but not
that
quickly.

“Damn it, Gamaliel,” Mercury muttered. “I can’t believe you’re going to make me do this.” He fell flat on his stomach, unmoving.

Gamaliel stepped closer. “Give up, Merc? I can keep this up all day, you know.”

Mercury said nothing.

Gamaliel wound up and hurled another rock, hitting Mercury squarely in the small of his back. The pain was nearly unbearable. Mercury couldn’t be certain, but he suspected Gamaliel had broken his spine. Still he didn’t make a sound.

Gamaliel stepped closer. Now he was only a few feet away. “Give up?”

Mercury didn’t move.

Gamaliel stepped up to Mercury and kicked him hard in the side. Mercury winced but didn’t make a sound.

“Come on, Merc,” Gamaliel chided, kneeling down next to him. “I was just getting—”

Mercury turned to face Gamaliel, bringing his left hand up from underneath him. His fist was full of sand.

The sand hit Gamaliel squarely in the eyes. “Gaaaahhh!” he yelled, stumbling backward. “You bastard!”

“I didn’t want to have to do it, you asshole,” grumbled Mercury. “It’s like the oldest action movie cliché ever. Throw sand in the bad guy’s face when he comes in close to gloat. Don’t think I feel good about it, because I don’t!”

As he spoke, he managed to get to his feet. His spine was bruised but not broken. He staggered toward the edge of the plateau, which was now only about fifty feet away. If he could get to the edge, he might have a chance to get away and regroup.

Gamaliel was stumbling toward him, trying to rub the sand out of his eyes. The two angels moved in a sort of slow-motion parody of a chase sequence, getting ever closer to the edge of the plateau.

As he neared the edge, Mercury heard voices from the far side of the plateau. Men speaking in a strange tribal tongue. Then what sounded like a goat bleating, followed by a woman’s voice. He couldn’t make out what she was saying, but he would know that voice anywhere. Christine. The expedition had reached the summit.

Mercury reached the brink of the plateau. Looking back, he saw that Gamaliel had picked up another rock—this one nearly
the size of his head. He hoisted the rock over his shoulder as he blinked the sand out of his eyes. Mercury leaped off the edge.