The Devil's Evidence (9 page)

“Yes.”
Yes, because that's my job, that's what I have to do, I have to understand.

Benjamin turned to face Fool, and for the first time, he wasn't smiling. “Heaven is of the dreams of its inhabitants and the places they feel safest and happiest. Before, people dreamed of the sea, and some still do, but many have moved on and they think of other things.” He gestured at the view beyond the window.

“Now they dream of rolling fields and warm summers.”

Fool closed his eyes again, trying to understand, and immediately his head was filled with music.

“Can you hear it?” asked Benjamin.

“Yes,” said Fool, and opened his eyes. The music stopped. “What is it?”

“The sound of Heaven,” said Benjamin simply. “It jolts you because you are not of Heaven.”

“How do I stop it?”

Benjamin reached forward, and stroked Fool's cheeks with both hands; his touch was soft and cool. “If it bothers you, I can ease it.”

“Please,” said Fool, thinking that if he heard the sound every time he shut his eyes, he'd never sleep, might eventually go mad. Even when he blinked, he caught slivers of it, tiny sliced fragments of the sound, pure and delicate and maddening.

Benjamin removed his hands from Fool's face and licked the tips of his forefingers. He then pushed the spittled fingers into Fool's ears, rubbing the warm liquid around the edges of his ear canals.

“Close your eyes,” said Benjamin. Fool did so; the sound was gone.

“Thank you.”

“It was my pleasure, Thomas Fool. It is an honor to assist you. If you wish to hear the music again, simply rub away the barrier I have placed in your ears.”

They turned back to the window. The view was still farmland, but Fool was sure that the arrangement of the lines, the edges, had shifted, creating a new patchwork.
I've held a feather from an angel's back, watched one fall and burn, and now I have one's spittle in my ears protecting me from music that I should find beautiful, that I
do
find beautiful but that's also oppressive. It's Heaven,
he thought,
how did I ever think I would understand it? Concentrate on the thing you can understand, on being Fool, and on the job. Concentrate on the Delegation.

Catarinch was doing most of the talking, although Wambwark was making occasional injections in a low rumble, the smell of which reached Fool at the window a second or two later. The angels seemed to understand Wambwark well enough and replied to whatever it had said or asked. The discussion ranged around, but concentrated most on something that Fool thought might have been a border dispute, about the edges of Hell and the edges of Heaven, rather than souls taken or given. Both the angels and demons had concerns and raised them.

None of the four referred to Fool except to tell him when the meeting was finished, and the angels didn't come for him until later, when he was alone in his room.

Fool's room was little more than a large cell, containing a bed with soft cotton sheets and a woolen blanket, a desk, and a chair. A globe of glass was mounted to the wall on a bracket, and it grew brighter as the day outside the small window grew darker. When Fool touched it, he found it was not hot, and he could make it dimmer or brighter by stroking it up or down.

In the globe's light, Fool stripped and looked down at the tattoos that now snaked across his skin. Were they changed? Different from the designs that he had first seen? Hadn't there been a spiral under his left nipple, where now there was a thing that might have been an ear? Hadn't that stretch that looked like a branch been a series of linked circles? He ran his finger along some of the thicker lines, feeling them as a set of ridges under his skin, pushing out the scarring in a raised set of whorls and loops. They hurt when he pressed down, not terribly but enough so that the pain left its ghosts when he raised his finger and released the pressure. He sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the lines that wound around his legs and knotted across his thighs and hips, and wondered if he would ever truly recognize himself again. He was born an adult, fished from Limbo, and given flesh and a role in Hell little more than five years ago, and although he had been scarred during his time as an Information Man, his flesh had always been his own when he looked at it before.

Now it was marked with something else's design. He was owned, defined, and branded by Rhakshasas. He clenched his fists, tightened his tendons, and gritted his teeth.
Owned Fool,
he thought,
little owned Fool, like cattle.

There was nothing he could do; that was always the endpoint in Hell. He was as helpless as ever, as controlled as ever, a man whose purpose and actions seemed always to be dictated by others. Best to try not to worry about it, he supposed, to carve out what little freedoms he could from the defined patterns of his life. Best to be Fool, his Fool, whenever he could rather than theirs.

He sat on the bed, the mattress relaxing under him, and wondered if he might be about to have a good night's sleep in sheets that were clean and thick and soft. He reached out and turned the glass lamp until the room was a warm and dark cocoon around him. He lay back, feeling every ache from the last few days work its way out into his muscles, feeling his heart finally settle into a slower beat as he tried to put his thoughts in order.

The shadows spoke his name.

As the words emerged from the darkness, a mouth formed in the air above Fool's head, the gloom shifting and twisting, creating a pair of lips several feet long. They reddened, taking on a cherry gleam, and then drew back, split to reveal a tongue and teeth that were white and smooth. They spoke again in a voice that rumbled and crashed, made Fool reach for his ears in pain. It was so loud, so heavy, and it pierced his covering hands and stabbed into his ears, through his ears and into his head.

“Thomas Fool, we apologize for the intrusion, but we have need of your skills.”

Fool rolled off the bed, reaching out for his gun but unable to find it in the darkness. His skin tightened, prickles rising across it as a pale, ghostly blue light flickered around the room.

“Do not be afraid, Thomas Fool. We are the Malakim, the messengers of Heaven, and we must ask a boon.”

Fool scuttled back, feeling behind him until he found the wall, and then pressed himself back against it. The mouthed darkness moved with him, hovering above him.

“My ears,” he managed to gasp. “Please.”

“Another apology, Thomas Fool,” said the voice, volume lowering, still loud but less painful now. “We sometimes forget ourselves.

“There have been…” and the voice paused, the mouth pursing before continuing, “incidents that we do not understand but that you may. We have been told of your skills. We asked for your presence in this Delegation specifically, Thomas Fool. We need your help.”

The voice filled the room and surely everyone in the building could hear it, surely the walls themselves had to be shaking at its crashing and roaring, even now, even at this lower level. Fool clamped his hands over his ears, spoke even though he couldn't properly hear himself.

“You asked for me?”

“Indeed. We asked for Thomas Fool, the Information Man, and Hell obliged, for which we are grateful. There will be a price to pay in future dealings with the Delegations from the Great Enemy, we are sure, but we considered that the price was worth paying.”

“What do you want? How can I help you? I don't understand,” Fool said, still scrabbling for the gun, knowing it would be of no use but wanting the security of it. Still it eluded his grasp.

“For you to be yourself,” said the voice, the mouth in the air coming lower, shrinking, its volume finally dropping to something like a normal pitch, becoming almost conspiratorial. The blue glow shimmered around them, painting the walls with ripples and darts of light.

“To be myself?”

“To be an investigator, Thomas Fool, to ask the questions that investigators ask.”

“Why?”

“There's an irregularity in Heaven, Thomas Fool, the first of its type in an age, maybe the first of its type ever.”

“Surely you have someone who can investigate it for you?”

“We have soldiers, Thomas Fool, angels that guard against the return of the rebellious and the mistaken, but we have no investigators. Until now, we have had no need of them. This is a thing beyond our understanding, and we have need of you. We can learn, but it takes time. Please, Thomas Fool, assist us?”

He was being asked, not ordered. Did that mean he could say no, return to his soft bed and to sleep? Tell them to ask God, the all-seeing deity with a hundred hidden names, for the solution? Tell them that it wasn't his problem, his problem was staying safe, returning to Hell, and trying to stay safe there as well?

No.

No, of course not, because he was an Information Man, once Hell's only Information Man but now Commander of the Information Office, and it was what he did and what he was. He stood, watching the mouth, still several feet away, as it drifted across the room and came to a halt above his bed, the flickering glow shivering around the room creating shadows that swayed and turned.

“What do you want me to do?”

“You will help?”

“Yes,” he said.

“We are told that you had a feather once, Thomas Fool, a feather from an angel who served Heaven? That you held his feather and assisted him?”

“Yes,” said Fool, remembering the feather burning, the smoke of it greasy yet somehow clean.

“Then please, take this as a mark of our thanks and as a token of our respect.”

A feather fell from the ceiling above Fool, drifting down to land at his feet. It was long and nearly white, curved gently, and glowed with a light that came from within it, tiny streaks of gleam drifting from it like sparks. Crouching, he picked it up, and where its light fell on his arm his skin instantly felt soothed and calm.

“You have our gratitude. Your guide will arrive any moment,” said the Malakim, and the mouth dwindled, the shadows untwisting, becoming simply shadows again. Fool raised the light in the room again by touching the globe, not letting go of the feather, feeling its clarity, feeling its purity, and dressed rapidly. He was just strapping his holster on when there was a knock at his door.

Thomas Fool, Commander of the Information Office of Hell, went to investigate a mystery in Heaven.

The dead man was lying on the carousel platform at the foot of a wooden horse, calliope music filling the air around him.

Fool stepped up onto the slowly revolving platform, looking around at the other horses gently rising and falling on their brightly painted poles in a constant wave, and at the humans on the horses' backs. A single angel moved among the riders, walking silently, occasionally repositioning a rider who had slipped or patting one of the horses' wooden necks.

The angel had arrived at Fool's door minutes after the Malakim had vanished, knocking on the door and waiting until Fool opened it before speaking. The angel was almost as tall as Mr. Tap, and it was burning. Its entire body was encased in bright fires, although no heat came from the flames, and at the center of the conflagration was the first female angel that Fool had met.

“Thomas Fool,” she said, and bowed her head. “I am Israfil, and I am sent by the Bureaucracy of Heaven.” Her long hair was hanging down, and the flames glittered and danced across it and played across her skin. The flames reminded Fool of the buildings in Hell, burning and glowing, the light of them a rich and moving thing. Israfil's glow spread along the corridor outside his room and, as he stepped out, showed him Benjamin waiting, wings still hooked over his head, face still partially shadowed. The angel nodded at him but did not speak.

Fool put the feather into his jacket pocket, pushing it deep in to ensure he didn't lose it, and said, “Shall we go? You can tell me about the mystery on the way.”

“Mystery?”

“I've been asked to investigate a mystery.”

“We know nothing about a mystery,” said Benjamin. “We have simply been asked to act as your guides.”

“We do not need him,” said Israfil quietly. “There is nothing for the human to see.”

“Israfil,” said Benjamin, equally quietly. “We have our orders.”
Dissent, little Fool, you're already the cause of angelic dissent.
Curiously, Fool found the notion oddly pleasing.

The angels hadn't been told that there was a mystery to solve. Why? Fool wondered. Because the mystery was shameful? Because they weren't senior enough? It was intriguing and Fool felt a first flicker of curiosity in his stomach.
This,
he thought,
is going to be interesting.

The two angels led Fool through the corridors of the Anbidstow, down a flight of stairs at the rear of the building, and out into a small courtyard in which a transport waited. The vehicle was black, smaller than the one that had brought the Delegation to the building had been. It had no driver, and was roofed over with matte-black metal.

“I will not travel with him,” said Israfil.

“Very well,” said Benjamin, “meet us there.”

The angel and Fool climbed into the rear of the transport and, as Israfil unfolded her wings and flapped them, rising into the air, they started moving. The journey to the fairground was quick, the transport finding or creating a straight road down which to travel, moving faster than the one that had brought him from the gate to the Anbidstow. It made him think again that their first journey through Heaven had been one intended to make a point; much as Hell had put Heaven's Delegation in the oldest and smallest transport it had, so Heaven had deliberately moved the demons and Fool slowly and through as many places as possible, showing them the sights, giving them comfortable traveling conditions, to prove who was in charge. He thought about it as they traveled, Benjamin silent beside him.
Heaven is as capable as Hell of pettiness and one-upmanship,
he decided.
It's all games.

Games, and another journey that ended in a body.

The dead man was dressed in a simple robe; most of Heaven's inhabitants were, Fool saw. The robe was torn at the man's shoulder and the flesh beneath the tear was sliced open, the cut not deep but long, reaching from the center of the man's shoulder blade right around to just above his armpit. Fingering the edge of the cloth, he found that it was thick and soft, unlike the thin and scratchy material used to make the clothing given to Hell's inhabitants; he didn't look at his own new uniform as he made the comparison, simply carried on looking at the body, having his silent conversation with the corpse.

The cut hadn't bled much, which meant something, didn't it? But what?

The man had died, Fool thought, from a broken neck. His head was twisted too far around, looking back over his shoulder, and drool had spilled from his mouth to the carousel's wooden-deck floor. The spittle was pink with strings of blood and was stretched out in a long line, the man's eyes open and staring but clouded as though a film had grown over them.

He was dead before he was cut, Fool realized. Dead bodies didn't bleed, so the injury to the neck occurred first, followed by the one to the shoulder. Experimentally, he placed his hand against the man's shoulder, lining up the cuts in robe and flesh. The cut and rents matched, and when he looked more closely, he saw pale threads driven into the wound and a line of blood along the inner surface of the torn robe.

Something had slashed across the man, tearing from rear to front, pressing the robe into the cut and fraying its edge slightly, but only after he had died.

Fool stood again, moved away from the body, and went to the nearest horse and rider.

“Did you see anything?” he asked. The woman on the horse did not answer. Her eyes were closed, and behind the pale lids was a constant flicker of movement. She was asleep.

“None of them will have seen anything,” said the carousel angel, coming up to Fool. This one appeared older, its hair short and gray, its wings folding away into a robe similar to that which the humans wore.

“Are they all asleep?” asked Fool. “None of them are awake?”

“It is not sleep,” said the angel. “They are in Heaven.”

“I know,” said Fool, “but surely some must be awake?”

“None are asleep,” repeated the angel. “They are in Heaven.”

“He doesn't understand your confusion,” said Benjamin from behind Fool. Both he and Israfil were standing close to the carousel watching him as he worked. Beyond them were other carousels, rides in which people traveled in cars along rails, and stalls at which clusters of people stood motionless or making that odd swaying, dreamlike movement.

“He is of a lower order of angel,” continued Benjamin. “His job is menial, simply to mind our residents as they move through the fairground.”

“How can they all be asleep?”

“They are not. Heaven is unlike Hell, Thomas Fool. In Hell, pain can be shared, can be seen in others, fear can travel from one person to the next, infecting, like a contagion. Rumors and lies can expand, yes? But joy is individual, and can only be experienced alone. Hell is communal, but Heaven is personal. Heaven is individual.” Benjamin came up the steps to the carousel's platform floor and stood by the woman Fool had tried to speak to. “This one, for example, her Heaven is different from everyone else's.”

Benjamin leaned in toward the woman, and as he did so, something beneath the skin of his face flexed, his bones seeming to shift and re-form, his cheeks stretching down as his mouth opened and opened and opened, bottom jaw unhinging and dropping away to reveal a maw that was huge and black. Before Fool could stop him, Benjamin had clamped his mouth across the back of the woman's head and taken her in his arms, wings shivering and expanding, curling around the two of them like a feathered cage.

Before Fool had managed to draw his gun, Benjamin had broken his hold of the woman and placed her carefully back on the horse, making sure she was stable and balanced. His mouth closed, jaw moving from side to side as it folded back up into a semblance of a human face.

“This one is with her husband and children,” he said after a moment. “Her memories, the place she feels safest and happiest, are a day they spent in a park near her home. They ate food and played together. The sun was shining and they were all happy, so she's created her Heaven there. Everyone here has a different Heaven, the place they create for themselves from the lives they lived or wanted to live. They cannot mix, these Heavens, are often at odds with each other, because people's joys are not as people's pains. They do not often sit comfortably next to each other. One may like noise, another peace, one crowds and another solitude, and these cannot easily exist alongside one another, so Heaven is created in each of them and we merely caretake the bodies and see them to the next stage of their journeys.”

“They're all in separate Heavens?”

“Yes.”

“And all this?” Fool asked, waving his hand around at the carousel and the fairground, at the fields he'd seen yesterday, at the sun and the breeze and the air.

“Places that make them feel safe, places from their childhood, or places they imagined being at in their childhood. When enough of them think about a type of place, Heaven forms it around them, a beach or a field or a town. Other times, like this, Heaven creates itself from their childhoods, from the books they read and loved, from memories and ideas, and it simply becomes a place where people are happy, are secure. There was no carousel in this woman's past, but there was a park and enjoyment and her memories of that and her memories of the stories she read as a child, of fairgrounds and adventures, merge to create this place.”

“And they're all like this? All the time?”

“Yes,” said Benjamin, and then, seeing Fool still staring at him, intently asked, “What I did disturbs you?”

“Yes.”

“We must eat, Thomas Fool. No one here is unhappy, everyone is in the place they love the most, often with the people they love and who love them. Angels must eat, and we feed on happiness and love and joy. We do not harm those we feed off, and we take only a little.”

As if to prove Benjamin right, the carousel angel wandered over to another rider, mouth opening, jaw lowering, and latched onto the back of her head, remaining attached for only a few seconds before backing off. The person on the horse did not react to the angel's touch, stayed in her own private place, eyes closed and arms around the horse's neck.

Fool lifted his head and sniffed, liking the smell, of burned sugar and sweetness, the faint waft of oil and grease, liking the music that hung in the air, a constantly looping calliope tune. He looked at all the humans sitting on rides and the angels on the carousels and platforms who tended them.
They're the opposite of the Sorrowful, they're the Joyful,
he thought,
and they're replete with all that happiness, stuffed full and just waiting to be harvested.

“Heaven is vast and filled with joy, Thomas Fool,” said Benjamin. “It is a place of safety.”

Fool, looking down at the body, said, “Tell that to this poor bastard.”

“It was an accident,” said Israfil, speaking for the first time since arriving at the fairground.

Fool climbed down from the carousel and began to walk around it, looking at the ground. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, whether he was looking for anything, but something about the man's death wasn't right. “Do accidents happen here often?”

“No,” said Israfil, “but what else can it be? The attendant was careless and did not watch his charges properly, and this man fell and died.”

Fool looked down at the corpse, its torn flesh, thinking of death and lies and truths hidden and not seen, and wondered. After a moment, he said, “How can he die? He's already died and come to Heaven, surely?”

“How do people die in Hell, Thomas Fool? Their bodies become damaged, their souls released. Heaven and Hell are just part of the greater journeys everyone takes.”

Fool didn't reply. “And what about you?” he called to the carousel angel. “Did you see anything?”

“No,” the angel replied. “I came across the body and reported it.”

Fool looked around. The carousel was at the edge of the fairground, close to a fence constructed of ropes and brightly colored pennants, triangles of material fluttering gently in the soft wind. Beyond the fence was a field filled with some kind of crop, high and moving in rhythm with the dancing air, the sound of it a long sloughing sigh under the fairground's music. He walked to the fence and turned. Anyone coming to the fairground through the field would see and be able to easily get to the carousel upon which the dead man now lay and to two other rides, each equidistant from the field.

Turning back, Fool studied the crops. Ducking under the fence, he walked to the edge of the planting, finding several areas where the stems were broken or bent. The earth was churned but there were no recognizable prints on its surface, and the damage could easily have been done by farmhands tending the plants.

Fool circled back to the fair and went to a smaller ride close to the fence. It consisted of a set of the oversize cups that each held four people, spinning around as they traveled on a circular track. The ride was slowing as Fool approached it, the cups spinning slower and slower until they stopped. No one got out; each inhabitant simply sat there until the ride started over again, gradually building up speed until the riders' hair was whipping about their faces, and trying to keep track of individuals made Fool feel dizzy.

One of the cups was empty.

Fool went to the ride on the other side of the carousel, a simple arrangement of cars, linked together and each holding two people traveling along a set of rails, traveling up small slopes and dropping into low dips as they went. It, too, had an empty car. Intrigued now, he went deeper into the fairground, looking at each ride and carousel as he went; none had empty cars except the three near the fence.

Back to the fence and looking at the ground again. Was there a trail leading from the crops to the fairground? Faint and not well traveled, but yes, maybe so. There were definitely marks in the grass, trampled areas, a point where something had dug through the surface of the earth to reveal a thin streak of mud below. Here and there in the damaged grass, tiny blue flowers grew. He picked one idly, thinking; the plant smelled unpleasant and he dropped it, straightening, still wondering. Broken crops and grass that may have been trodden down?