Mercury Rests (16 page)

Mercury and Job were unable to get Cain to tell them any more about Wormwood. Mentioning the name seemed to have triggered something in him. Cain simply sat on the curb staring at the fog rolling in, laughed, and muttered incomprehensibly to himself. Mercury began to reconsider his conclusion that Cain was the saner of the two.

“So what happens if I just step into the fog?” Mercury asked.

“Hard to say,” replied Job. “Maybe nothing.”

Mercury sighed. “Again, what kind of nothing are we talking about? Do you mean nothing happens, like it’s just regular fog? Or
nothing
happens, where I get erased from history and all that?”

“I honestly don’t know,” said Job. “Cain tried it, and nothing happened. Which is to say, he simply reemerged from the fog, as if he had walked in a circle and ended up where he started. Presumably the same thing would happen to me, although I haven’t tried it. I remain hopeful that there is something else beyond the fog, but that may just be my own bias.”

“Why don’t you try it?” asked Mercury.

Job shrugged. “I have no great desire to end this life. Whatever is coming will come soon enough. In any case, as I said, I
suspect the same thing would happen to me as happened to Cain. He and I seem to be in this until the end.”

“But you have thought about it,” Mercury insisted. “You must have some idea what’s out there.”

Job nodded. “What’s out there,” said Job, his gaze lost in the fog, “is only what you take with you.”

“Really?” asked Mercury, peering into the fog in awe.

“What am I, Yoda?” asked Job. “I told you, I don’t know what’s out there. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. My best guess is that what’s out there depends on what you bring with you. Your hopes and fears will determine your reality, as they always have.”

Cain momentarily broke from his deranged giggling to snort in disgust. “
Your hopes and fears!
” he repeated in a gushing mockery of Job’s optimistic tone.

Job sighed and shook his head. “For his sake, I kind of hope he’s right,” said Job. “If we get swallowed by the fog and it turns out that it’s just the beginning of some entirely new reality—or worse, a continuation of the old one—he’s going to lose it completely. Look at him. He can’t take much more.”

But Mercury was still staring into the fog. “I’m going to do it,” he said.

“Do what?” Job asked.

“Go into the fog. The waiting is killing me. And who knows, maybe it’s not too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“I don’t know. To fix this somehow. Keep reality from disintegrating completely.”

Job smiled. “I sure hope you’re right. So when are you going to do this?”

“I was thinking now-ish.”

“Well, don’t let me stop you.”

“Tell me it’s going to be OK.”

“It’s going to be OK.”

“All right then,” said Mercury. “Here goes nothing.” And with that, he walked into the fog.

After a few steps, he was completely enveloped by the gray haze. He felt nothing: no dampness in the air, no thickness in his lungs. Whatever the fog was, it wasn’t water vapor. Striding boldly forward into the blinding cloud, he began to think that Job and Cain had been putting him on. Clearly there was something a little weird about the fog, the way it moved in from all sides and the way it felt—or didn’t feel—on his skin, but—

Suddenly his right hand felt like it was waking up. Pinpricks of something unpleasant but not exactly painful shot through his hand. He tried to pull his hand back, but it was immobilized, as if encased in amber. The sensation then crept into his left toes and swept across the right side of his face. Then the right foot, the left hand, his ears, his lips. Soon his whole body was paralyzed, enveloped by some nauseating hybrid of numbness and agony.

Hopes and fears! thought Mercury frantically. What are my hopes and fears?

The only thing that popped into his mind was the face of Christine Temetri. I hope nothing bad happened to Christine, he thought. I hope she’s OK.

The fog was inside him, tearing him apart—limb from limb, cell from cell, atom from atom. Somehow, amid all of this, he remained conscious of what was happening—of his very physical essence exploding and expanding in every direction, until it filled all of reality in every dimension. Mercury screamed, and his scream was the sound of a universe dying.

And then—

Falling. The sensation of air blowing past. Condensation collecting on his skin. And then a blinding light in an azure sky dotted with clouds. The sun!

Orienting himself, he spun to see a vast expanse of darker blue below him. Ocean? He gradually slowed his descent until he was hovering maybe a mile above the water. There was plenty of interplanar energy here, wherever he was. Closing his eyes, he felt the tendrils of energy around him, emanating in different strengths from the east, south, north, west...Yes, this was definitely Earth, and not the far-future Earth he had just left, either. The strength and configuration of the streams matched that of Earth just after the reconfiguration caused by the LA earthquake. The LA convergence was a long way from here, though—several thousand miles to the west. About the same distance to the southeast he could feel the Kenyan convergence, where Horace Finch had constructed his chrono-collider device. That put Mercury somewhere above the Atlantic, just off the coast of southern Europe.

Sure enough, peering into the distance he spotted the familiar outline of the Azores. He had spent some time in these islands not long ago, when he had been on the run from the Heavenly authorities. They were a good place for an angel to get lost because they were so far from the routes that angels typically traveled on the Mundane Plane.

Now what?

Somehow he had to stop whatever had happened to unleash the fog, whatever had made the world such a miserable, hopeless place. He had to warn Heaven about Wormwood.

He took off toward the Megiddo portal. It would take him about four hours to get there. He could always request a temporary
portal from the Azores, but Heaven had really been cracking down on unbudgeted expenditures and he wasn’t exactly sure where he stood with the Heavenly bureaucracy at this point. Presumably he’d earned some goodwill by saving Earth from annihilation, but there was also a chance that he’d be held accountable for unauthorized travel outside the stratosphere. In fact, with Uzziel out of the Bureau, he wasn’t even sure whom to call about authorizing a portal. No, it was better for him to just show up in Heaven in person and tell whoever would listen what Cain had said about Wormwood.

With a tailwind coming in from the Atlantic, Mercury made it to the Megiddo portal in just over three hours. Slipping out of Mundane Reality, he appeared in the planeport and made his way toward the portal that would take him to Heaven. He hadn’t even made it halfway when he ran into a familiar figure.

“Hey, Perp,” Mercury called, waving at the infantile winged cherub buzzing down the concourse. Perp was the only cherub Mercury knew who still sported the classical winged baby look, in defiance of angelic fashion trends of the last four hundred years. This was, surprisingly, not the most jarring of his personal attributes; Perp was also well known for his tendency to pepper his speech with impertinent and banal maxims of dubious quality.

“Mercury!” Perp hissed, altering his course to make a beeline toward Mercury. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? To keep potatoes from budding in the bag, put an apple in with them.”

“Long story,” said Mercury, ignoring Perp’s tuber truism. “After I imploded the moon, I got sucked into some far-future version of Earth where Job and Cain—you know, from the Bible—were playing Ping-Pong and—”

“By Heaven’s Gates,” said Perp, staring aghast at Mercury, “you’ve completely lost it.”

“Look, I know it sounds crazy, but there was this fog that was going to erase everything, and Cain said the fog was because of Heaven being destroyed by something called Wormwood, so I—”

“Shhhh,” said Perp. “We’re going to get you the help you need. But first, come with me. If you have bubblegum stuck to your shirt, put it in the freezer and then scrape it off with a knife. Come on now, quickly!” Perp spun around and darted off toward a door that read PERMITTED PERSONNEL ONLY.

“Look, Perp,” said Mercury. “I don’t really have time to explain everything to you. I need to get to Heaven and tell them—”

“Heaven!” exclaimed Perp. “Goodness, no! The last place you need to be right now is Heaven. Come with me. Hurry! Security could spot you at any moment!”

Mercury sighed and trudged after Perp. Hopefully Wormwood, whatever it was, could wait for another five minutes.

Perp opened the door with a key that hung from a key ring that he pulled from the cloths wrapping his loins and ushered Mercury inside. It was some sort of utility closet. Cleaning supplies and tools hung from the walls. The room was dimly lit by a small fluorescent panel in the ceiling.

“You know I like you,” said Merc, “but if you take your diaper off, I’m screaming.”

Perp didn’t seem to hear him. “What in blazes do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?”

Mercury frowned. “You mean for imploding the moon? Perp, come on. I don’t think that’s even technically illegal. And in any case, there were extenuating circumstances. Michelle was there, she can back me up. It was the only way to save the Earth.”

Perp stared at him, open-mouthed. “Mercury, what are you talking about? This isn’t about the moon. It’s about going AWOL and screwing up the Apocalypse. You’re in a lot of trouble. When designing an outdoor pen for a tortoise, you should provide a pen that is at least ten times the length and five times the width of the tortoise.”

Mercury shook his head. “No, I worked that out with Uzziel when I turned myself in. The Apocalypse thing, not the tortoise thing. He’s going to have to sort out his own tortoise husbandry issues. They gave me leniency because I turned in Gamaliel.”

“You turned in Gamaliel?”

“Well, no. But Uzziel seemed to think I did. He called it a ‘token of goodwill.’ I wasn’t about to contradict him.”

“Mercury, Gamaliel is still on the loose. He’s still out there somewhere, doing Tiamat’s dirty work. They’ve got about a hundred angels scouring the Mundane Plane for him.”

“Well, sure, he’s out there
now
. Because Uzziel let him go. Uzziel’s in league with Tiamat. I thought you were supposed to be in the know, Perp. Next thing you’re going to tell me you haven’t heard about the moon.”

“Mercury, listen to me,” said Perp. “Don’t pull the choke in a motor boat if the motor was running within the past forty minutes. You never turned in Gamaliel. I don’t know anything about Uzziel working with Tiamat. And your obsession with the moon is frankly scaring me. What on Earth happened to you?”

A queasy feeling arose in Mercury’s stomach. Something wasn’t right here. Perp always knew everything before anyone else. If he didn’t know about it, it hadn’t happened.

“Perp, what day is it?” Mercury asked.

“It’s Saturday. October twenty-seventh. Two thousand twelve
Anno Domini
.”

All the air rushed out of Mercury’s lungs. He leaned against the wall of the closet to steady himself.

“What is it, Merc? What’s wrong?”

“I came back before I left,” Mercury said numbly. “The moon hasn’t been destroyed yet.”

“I’m not sure I like the way you said ‘yet’ at the end there,” replied Perp.

“And I haven’t turned myself in yet. I’m still wanted by Heaven. And Gamaliel is still out there.”

“OK, so now we’re both up to speed on what hasn’t happened yet,” remarked Perp. “I feel like we’ve made real progress today.”

“I’ve got to turn myself in,” said Mercury.

“What?” exclaimed Perp. “No!”

“I have to warn them about Wormwood. It’s the only way.”

“What the hell is Wormwood?”

“Not sure, exactly. But apparently it’s the cause of a lot of bad shit. I have to warn them.”

Perp frowned. “OK, first? They aren’t going to listen to you. You have no credibility at this point. Second, even if they did listen, what are they going to do about it? You don’t seem to know anything other than the fact that some ‘bad shit’ is going to happen. And third, you keep forgetting that you’re in a lot of trouble. If you turn yourself in, you’re going to spend the next couple hundred years in lockup.”

Mercury rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Perp had a point. Turning himself in now would be futile. It also occurred to him that if it was only Saturday, that meant that Christine hadn’t yet found the anti-bomb inside Mount Mbutuokoti. And that meant that there was still a chance to intercept the anti-bomb before it fell into the hands of Horace Finch. This time around, Mercury
would have time to get the anti-bomb somewhere safe before it detonated. There was still time to save the moon.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” Mercury said. “Back to Kenya.”

Perp shook his head furiously. “You’ll never make it out of the planeport,” he said. “It was a miracle that I intercepted you before security ID’d you. The odds that you’ll make it back to the Megiddo portal are practically nil.”

“I’ve got to try,” said Mercury.

“And if you fail? If they catch you?”

Mercury considered this for a moment. If he got caught, then he wouldn’t be able to intercept the anti-bomb
or
stop Wormwood. And he’d get thrown in prison.

“You know what?” said Mercury. “You’re right. Change of plans. I need to turn myself in.”

“Good, now you’re starting to...wait, what? Didn’t we already decide that was a bad idea?”

“I mean, not me. I’m going to turn in the other Mercury.”

“The other...?”

“I need a pen and a sheet of paper.”

Perp produced both from his swaddling clothes. Mercury regarded the implements suspiciously for a moment, then shrugged. It was best not to think about Perp’s storage system. He put the paper on the floor and pulled the archangel Michelle’s card from his pocket. On the back was written:

The rain comes from above.

- M.