Mercury Rests (20 page)

The rock face fell away at a sharp angle, allowing Mercury to use minimal energy to keep himself aloft, skimming just a few feet above the slope. Glancing back, he saw Gamaliel hurling the rock. Fortunately, it was too large for Gamaliel to throw with much force; it arced through the air toward Mercury, and he dodged it without much difficulty.

Gamaliel cursed and took off after Mercury. He knew that he had to catch him before Mercury had recovered from his pummeling. Once Mercury was back to full health, Gamaliel would have a hard time beating him.

Mercury soared down the slope until he reached the plain below, touched down briefly, and then shot into the air again. His back and wrist still ached, but he could fly at close to full speed for as long as he needed to in order to keep Gamaliel at bay. As he rose above the plain, something whizzed past his ear. Another rock? He turned to see Gamaliel coming toward him from below. He had something small and bluish-white in his right palm. It seemed to be growing as Mercury watched.

Mercury changed course just in time to dodge the projectile, which turned out to be a baseball-sized ball of ice. Gamaliel was pulling moisture out of the air and freezing it into hailstones! Mercury had experimented with controlling the weather for a while but had never had much luck with it. He’d be no match for Gamaliel in an ice-ball fight.

Rather than engage Gamaliel, he darted back and forth at random, trying to keep distance between them while dodging the onslaught of hailstones. Occasionally he would fly close enough to the plateau to catch a glimpse of Christine and the men, who seemed to be engaged in some sort of ritual involving a goat.
After a few minutes of evading Gamaliel’s volleys, the aches in his wrist and back had nearly subsided. If he was going to have any chance of retrieving the anti-bomb, he was going to have to go on the offensive.

Changing tacks abruptly, he soared directly toward Gamaliel. Gamaliel hurled an ice ball as he approached, but Mercury managed to deflect it with his right arm. Before Gamaliel could form another, Mercury’s shoulder slammed into his stomach.

Gamaliel brought both of his fists down hard on Mercury’s back. Mercury cried out in pain but held tight to Gamaliel’s midsection, squeezing until he heard ribs crack. Gamaliel howled.

The two angels tumbled through the sky above the Kenyan plain, locked tightly together, neither able to seize an advantage. Dark clouds had begun to gather as a result of Gamaliel’s unnatural hailstorm, natural forces doing their best to change their behavior to accommodate the supernatural occurrences. The clouds seemed to darken further in response to the celestial struggle. Thunder rumbled in the distance and a spattering of rain began to fall. This was the downside to screwing with the weather: if you gave weather ideas, it tended to run with them. A few miraculous hailstones were about to snowball into a full-on thunderstorm.

Out of the corner of his eye, Mercury caught a glimpse of something glowing bright yellow on the top of Mbutuokoti. A fire?

Suddenly Mercury realized how he was going to end the stalemate. Christine had said that the tribesmen had been burning a goat carcass when the mountaintop had been struck by lightning. He remembered Christine’s vivid description of a flaming goat head flying through the air and landing inches in front of her.

Mercury broke free of Gamaliel’s grasp and darted in the direction of the mountain. Gamaliel cursed and followed him. Mercury soared over the flaming pyre, stopping when he was even with the far edge of the plateau. He spun around to face Gamaliel, who was clearly puzzled at Mercury’s tactics. By stopping in midair, it seemed as if Mercury was deliberately skewing the odds in Gamaliel’s favor. But Gamaliel was a cherub of action, and he wasted little time deliberating on Mercury’s mistake. He paused some two hundred feet directly above the pyre, a ball of ice growing rapidly in his palm. Lightning flashed in the distance, followed quickly by a loud clap of thunder.

Gamaliel wound up and hurled another fastball.

President Babcock had wanted to call several of his advisors and cabinet members into the Oval Office to discuss their next steps against the BIOs, but Lucifer was cool on the idea. He claimed that he had reason to believe that the federal government was riddled with BIO spies.

“How do you know?” asked Lubbers.

“Simple,” said Lucifer. “Some of the spies are double agents, working for me. In fact, I am here because of certain information I have learned from these spies.”

“You have spies in our government?” demanded Babcock, suddenly angry. “Who? What information?”

“You misunderstand me,” said Lucifer. “And frankly, you’re missing the point. The spies don’t
belong
to me. The BIOs have spent decades, if not centuries, infiltrating your government. Some of them are human, some of them are BIOs. We are fortunate that some of these spies sympathize with my cause and have been feeding me information. But I only know a handful of them. I have no way of knowing what other members of your government are BIO spies. And truth be told, some of the agents who have revealed themselves to me could very well be triple agents,
providing information about me to their bosses, or intentionally providing me with faulty intelligence. Espionage, as you know, can be exasperatingly complicated. So you understand my reluctance to reveal my plan to your advisors.”

“Sure,” said Babcock. “But I can personally vouch for several of them. Gabe Horton, my chief of staff, for example. I’ve known him since high school.”

“Understand, Mr. President,” said Lucifer, “that we BIOs are, for all practical purposes, immortal. Many of us are several thousand years old. Do not underestimate the patience or foresight of your enemy. It’s quite possible that my superiors anticipated that you would one day be in a position of importance and placed Gabe Horton next to you as second trombonist in your high school marching band back in 1985.”

Babcock was stunned for a moment at Lucifer’s recall. “That’s absurd,” he said at last.

“Is it?” asked Lucifer. “Tell me, did you know in 1985 that you were going to run for President?”

Travis was silent. The fact was that he
did
know. He had felt that he was destined for greatness since first watching
Star Wars
in 1977. Maybe it wasn’t such a stretch to think that these mysterious BIOs had somehow seen incipient greatness in him, like Darth Vader feeling the presence of Luke Skywalker. Now that he thought about it, he did remember being a little suspicious about Gabe when his family had first arrived from Delaware. What kind of kid willingly played trombone in a high school marching band? And who had ever heard of anyone being from
Delaware
? If he couldn’t trust Gabe, he realized, he couldn’t trust anyone.

“In any case,” Lucifer went on, “I am not as worried about betrayal as I am about being misunderstood. Not many people
are capable of understanding the true scope of the threat you are facing. My people—the BIOs—will not take kindly to having their authority questioned. Your politicians will understandably want to act cautiously, but there is no room for half measures. If you attack the giant, you must kill the giant. You are in a war for your survival. You did not start the war, but you must finish it.”

“I understand,” said Travis.

“I knew you would,” replied Lucifer. “Because you are a man of action. And more importantly, a man of faith. You see, I believe it is no accident that you are president at this time. I believe that I was led to seek you out, to provide you the tools you require to vanquish the greatest threat your race has ever known. Gentlemen, will you pray with me?”

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.

“Pray?” Lubbers said, unable to fully conceal his disdain. He had hoped they were done with that crap now that he had accepted the King into his heart.

Travis nodded. “Absolutely,” he said. “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

Lubbers bit his tongue. Better to just go along with this nonsense than to make an issue of it. Whatever it took to get Rezon to give them the information they needed.

Lucifer held out his hands to Travis and Lubbers. The three of them joined hands and closed their eyes. Lucifer turned his face skyward.

“FATHER IN HEAVEN,” Lucifer began, theatrically. “We come before Thee, a triumvirate of supplicants seeking Thy favor and guidance, in this great egg-shaped room cradled in the uterus of this White House, an edifice built in the style of the temples of the wise pagans of old, who might very well have been saved
by Thy grace were it not for their poor timing and penchant for buggery.”

“Amen,” muttered Travis.

“Father,” Lucifer continued, “this nation—a nation founded by Thy divine providence and dedicated to the principles of democracy and free market capitalism espoused in Thy holy scriptures, a nation saved by the blood of Thy Son and sustained by the blood of patriots—is under siege. Yea! Under siege by the very powers and principalities of which Thou warned us about in Thy word. But we believe that Thou in Thy excellent wisdom will reward the remnant who has remained true to Thy word and grant unto us salvation, for it is written:

“ ‘From millions of men...one man must step forward who with apodictic force will form granite principles from the wavering idea-world of the broad masses and take up the struggle for their sole correctness, until from the shifting waves of a fire thought-world there will arise a brazen cliff of solid unity in faith and will.’

“Father,” implored Lucifer, “we ask that Thou wouldst allow President Travis Babcock to be that man.”

“Amen,” muttered Travis again, not realizing that Lucifer was quoting from
Mein Kampf
.

Lucifer went on, “We know, Lord, that Thou art a merciful God, delighting in forgiveness and peace. But we also know that Thou art a just God, pummeling Thy enemies into submission with Thy powerful fists. We beseech thee, O Heavenly Despot, to allow the fighting men and women of the US military to be the iron gauntlets sheathing those fists, and to bless our mission to blast these blaspheming motherfuckers to Kingdom Come. In JESUS’S NAME, AMEN!”

“Amen!” exclaimed Travis.

Lucifer opened his eyes, and the men released each other’s hands. Lubbers was all shook up. If it weren’t for the calming presence of Elvis in his heart, he might have lost his head.

“That was some prayer,” Travis said after a moment. He was clearly in awe. Anyone who could pray like that couldn’t be a bad guy—although Travis thought he could have done without
motherfuckers
.

“I believe very strongly in the cause,” explained Lucifer. “It makes me emotional.”

Travis nodded. Lucifer’s sincerity could not be doubted. It was comforting to know that even this stranger from another dimension recognized the truth of the Christian faith and American ideals. If Travis could be sure of anything, it was this: God was on their side.

The fastest pitch ever recorded in the history of Major League Baseball was thrown by Cincinnati Reds southpaw Aroldis Chapman on Saturday, September 24, 2010. The ball traveled at 105 miles per hour for roughly half a second before smacking into the catcher’s mitt. The batter, Tony Gwynn, Jr., said that he never saw the ball until it was behind him. A pitch that fast can kill a man. If you drove a car that fast on the interstate, you’d likely be thrown in jail for the reckless endangerment of your fellow motorists.

The least vigorous angel in all of creation
⁹
is stronger and faster than any Olympic athlete. A baseball team made up of the nine clumsiest angels in existence, playing in clown shoes while wearing burlap sacks filled with angry wasps tied around their heads, could beat any All-Star team in history like they stole something, as the saying goes.

Gamaliel was not a particularly unathletic angel. Gamaliel was, in fact, the quarterback of the cherubic football team, the starting pitcher for the cherubic baseball team, and—during the off-season—a surprisingly competent scrapbooker. On a good day, he could throw a baseball over two hundred miles per hour
into the strike zone of a legless dwarf, if the situation called for it. And Gamaliel was having a good day.

The ball of ice spun off his fingers so fast that merely the friction of the air caused it to release a fine spray of water as the surface vaporized. It shot from his hand like a bullet aimed squarely for Mercury’s heart. Mercury didn’t even have time to duck.

Whoopf!

Mercury’s sternum cracked, and the air gushed from his lungs. The shock sent him tumbling backward. For a few seconds, his heart stopped. He lost consciousness and began to plummet to the mountainside below. Lightning flashed again, closer this time. The thunderclap was deafening.

When he had fallen fifty feet or so, he regained his senses. Gasping for breath and clutching his chest in agony, he rose again to meet Gamaliel in the air.

Gamaliel fired one more. This time the ice ball struck Mercury in the shoulder, nearly tearing his left arm off. He screamed. The pain was intolerable. Still he did not yield.

“I’ll never understand you, Mercury,” said Gamaliel, a tinge of pity in his voice. “You flit about without any sense of duty until you get some misguided idea of purpose in your head, and then you just won’t give it up, like a bird trying to get out of a closed window. What are you even doing here? Why don’t you stop bothering the grownups and go play on an island somewhere?”

Mercury was making a small noise in his throat. After a moment, Gamaliel realized he was laughing.

“What’s so funny, Merc?” demanded Gamaliel, readying another hailstone.

Mercury smiled. “You said
doody
,” he chuckled.

“Goddamn you, Mercury!” Gamaliel howled in rage. “I’m going to shut that idiotic mouth of yours for—”

Unfortunately, Mercury never learned what it was that Gamaliel was going to shut his mouth for, due to an unlucky imbalance of electric charge between the mass of Mount Mbutuokoti and the clouds above it. Given that Gamaliel was the proximate cause of this imbalance, he really had only himself to blame. Anyone who is going to play with weather needs to know a little basic meteorology—or at the very least fulminology. Fulminology is the study of lightning.