Mercury Rests (6 page)

“It comes down to you, Eddie!” Cody exclaimed. “You’re the author of the seventh book!”

Eddie smiled grimly. “I know,” he said. “That is, your father, Cain, he told me. But Cody, it’s not true. I’ve already written the book. And the publisher has rejected it. In any case, none of this makes any sense. My book isn’t a Charlie Nyx book. It doesn’t fit in with the rest of the series. Cain is just going to have to find someone else to write the final Charlie Nyx book. As much as he wants me to fill that role for him, I’m simply not able.”

Cody shook her head. “No, don’t you see? There can’t be a final Charlie Nyx book. At least not in the sense that people are expecting. The tunnels under Anaheim have been destroyed. And the authorities aren’t going to admit it, but they know that the tunnels were real. There’s no way they can keep this secret much longer. They may never be able to fully excavate the shafts under Anaheim Stadium, but they know there is something down there. Something huge. And it’s too big to keep covered up, Eddie. Rumors are already circulating about the ACHOO people finding something under the site.”

“ACHOO people?” asked Eddie, confused. “Can you help me out here?”

“Anaheim Command Headquarters, Onsite Operations. ACHOO.”

“Bless you,” replied Eddie.

Cody continued, undeterred by the interruption. “Everybody is conjecturing about what ACHOO found down there. I mean, there are anti–Charlie Nyx fanatics protesting the site because
they think that Charlie Nyx, this fictional warlock, somehow created a network of tunnels underneath Anaheim!”

“OK...” said Eddie, “but I still don’t see what this has to do with my book.”

“Think, Eddie!” snapped Cody. “A book doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Every story has an audience. And who is the audience for the Charlie Nyx books? What would be a satisfactory conclusion, from their point of view?”

“Um,” replied Eddie. Where was Cody going with this?

“Man, you are dense,” said Cody. “Don’t you see? Everybody who was once transfixed by the plight of Charlie Nyx, teen warlock, is now obsessed with what’s really under Anaheim Stadium and what happened at the Anaheim Event. If you wrote a Charlie Nyx book that just continued where the sixth book left off, without addressing the elephant in the tent, nobody would want to read it. The final book, the book that explains everything, is
your book
.”

Eddie frowned. That did make a twisted sort of sense. Except for one thing.

“But my book doesn’t explain anything,” said Eddie. “I mean, it mentions the tunnels, but any Charlie Nyx reader expecting a satisfying conclusion is going to be disappointed.”

“That’s because it’s not done yet.”

“Not done? It’s three hundred pages long already! Although I suppose I could cut out a few dozen pages of dialogue if it came down to it.”

“What does that matter? The story ends when it ends.”

“But it could go on forever! How do I know when I’m done?”

Cody studied Eddie somberly for a moment. “I know how it ends, Eddie. That’s why I wanted to meet with you. I know my
father has probably told you much of this already, but there’s something he hasn’t told you. Something very important. Does the word
Wormwood
mean anything to you?”

“Wormwood? You mean like in Revelation? The star that falls from the sky?”

Cody nodded. “It also appears in the Sumerian manuscript that my father was working on. Except, in the manuscript, it’s not a star but a sort of evil talisman. It brings about the end of the world. It’s the crux of everything. It’s where all the different layers of reality intersect—the book of Revelation, the Charlie Nyx story, and
our
story. When I figured out what Wormwood was, that’s when everything fell into place. When I figured out how the story ends.”

“OK,” Eddie said. “So what is Wormwood?”

“Wormwood is...” Cody started, but then stopped and made a sort of snorting sound, as if Eddie had done something to offend her. She looked at him with shock and horror in her eyes. Then she fell backward onto the grass. A dark stain spread across the center of her shirt.

“Cody!” Eddie cried, crouching down beside her. Cody had been shot. Judging from the fountain of blood pouring from her chest, she had been hit directly in her heart. This was beyond Eddie’s ability to fix.

“Oh God,” said Eddie. “Cody, you’ve been shot!” He glanced around, but the shooter was not visible. Of course, from his standpoint on the ground next to Cody, roofs of the nearby buildings were concealed by the brick wall of the courtyard.

The color had been flushed from Cody’s face, and her body was contorted with pain. Still, she leaned toward Eddie as if trying to tell him something. “Eddie...” she gasped. “Wormwood...”
Her eyes rolled back and her head fell to the grass. Her lips were still moving. Eddie put his ear to her mouth and she whispered something that sounded like “Pull the switch.” Then her body went limp. Just like that, Cody Lang was dead.

The story of Job is one that everybody thinks they know, at least in broad strokes: man becomes fabulously wealthy; man is held up as an example of righteousness; man is subjected to horrific torments to prove his loyalty to God; man is subjected to a lot of really unhelpful advice from his friends; man gives up trying to figure out where he went wrong; man gets all his stuff back.

The full story, however, is known only to very few. Even Job himself, playing Ping-Pong at the End of Time, remained largely ignorant of much of the backstory. It is only with the help of some recently declassified Heavenly documents that we can piece together something like the whole narrative. Observe:

After the Great Flood, there had been a lot of bickering and recriminations among the wise men of the various Fertile Crescent civilizations about who was to blame for the unprecedented calamity. There was widespread agreement that large numbers of people had been acting immorally and worshiping false gods, but that was where the agreement ended. There was no consensus on what constituted moral behavior or who the true gods were. The best the wise men could do was to come to a general agreement that everybody would be better off if people weren’t such assholes
all the time. Even this modest principle was undermined by the fact that the gods themselves seemed to be mostly assholes, doing a lot of assholish things like dismembering each other and scattering each other’s limbs along the Nile.

One man who didn’t have a lot of patience for either people or gods who acted like assholes was a young farmer in the land of Uz by the name of Job. Nobody knew where Job got his ideas exactly, but Job was convinced that life wasn’t as complicated as everybody made it out to be. He believed that if you were nice to other people and you worked hard, you tended to do OK. There was no need to remember eighty-seven different deities and the specific behavior required to keep from pissing each of them off, nor was there any need to remember who had pissed you off and who you had pissed off, and which of these people were important enough to worry about having pissed them off or being pissed off at. Just be nice to people and work hard; that was Job’s motto. And surprisingly enough, it worked. People liked Job. They trusted him. They liked working for him, and they liked having him work for them. With all the time and emotional energy that Job saved by not worrying about petty shit that didn’t matter, he was able to get more work done and make sure he always met his commitments to other people. Job believed in just one God, who was not an asshole. He believe that his God would reward him for being nice to people and working hard. By all accounts, he was right.

Job became very wealthy. He had seven sons and three daughters, and at the peak of his wealth he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred donkeys.
³
Pretty soon other landowners and
merchants were traveling from miles around to ask Job what his secret was. He was happy to explain his philosophy to them, but these impromptu meetings started to cut into his schedule. One of his servants suggested that he write his principles down on some clay tablets, which would then be copied and delivered to anyone who requested them, for a small fee. The result was an eighteen-pound, three-tablet book called
The Success God Wants for You!
It was an instant bestseller by the admittedly low standards of mostly preliterate Mesopotamia, outselling nearly three to one
The Seven Habits of Those Who Avoid the Wrath of Ereshkigal, Supreme Goddess of the Underworld
.

Job’s success did not go unnoticed in Heaven. Members of the Seraphic Senate began to hold up Job as a model human being, proof that that the Divine Plan was back on track after the Flood. Many in Heaven believed that Job’s message of working hard and being nice to people would spread across the Mundane Plane. People would cooperate against famine, poverty, and disease. War would end. Peace and prosperity would sweep the plane.

Lucifer, consolidating his power on the Infernal Plane, took notice as well. He was determined that Job’s simplistic yet powerful principles would not prevail on the Mundane Plane. He would find a flaw in Job’s principles and exploit it, exposing him as the simple-minded fool he was. But doing so would not be easy. Heaven, having taken an interest in Job’s success, had him under constant cherubic guard. Lucifer’s minions couldn’t get near him.

Fortunately for Lucifer, one of his first diabolical projects after being kicked out of Heaven began to bear fruit around this time. Realizing that the interplanar hub known as the planeport was the key to all interplanar travel and communication, he expended
a great deal of effort covertly corrupting a variety of planeport personnel. This allowed him to stay in the loop regarding Heavenly activities and to occasionally make a trip to the Mundane Plane to oversee his schemes without being arrested by security.

By a fortuitous coincidence, right around the time that Job reached the pinnacle of his success, Lucifer received a report from one of his spies that the archangel Michael would be making a brief stopover at the planeport on the way to the Mundane Plane. Michael rarely left Heaven, but the flooding on the Mundane Plane had gotten so bad that Michael wanted to survey the damage himself. Lucifer spotted an opportunity.

He pulled some strings to have his own agents placed on Michael’s security detail. When Michael appeared, right on schedule, they incapacitated Michael’s personal bodyguard—as well as an unlucky interloper by the name of Mercury—and abducted the celestial general.
⁴

Of course, “Michael” was actually Michelle: her security precautions involved promoting the misconception that Michelle was a tall, brawny, white male, rather than a diminutive, dark-skinned female. It made no difference to Lucifer: the important thing was that he had captured the general of the Heavenly army, embarrassing the Senate. He knew they would do just about anything to get her back. Lucifer proposed a meeting with representatives of Heaven on neutral ground
⁵
to discuss the matter.

The Senate formed a special Ad Hoc Committee on Ensuring the Security of Key Military Personnel, which met Lucifer in an unremarkable conference room. Cravutius, the head of the Committee, spoke first:

“So, Lucifer. Where have you come from?”

Lucifer waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Oh, you know,” he said nonchalantly. “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”

The committee members grumbled to each other. Lucifer smiled. He knew that the Senate liked to think he was uncomfortably sequestered on the Infernal Plane (and, truth be told, most of the time he was), and he loved to tease them with the notion that he spent his time leisurely touring the Mundane Plane.

“You know why we’re here,” said Cravutius. “You need to release Michael. If you expect any sort of leniency for your crimes—”

“Leniency!” Lucifer cried. “Let’s not kid ourselves. I’m well past leniency. What are you going to do, shave a few months off my ten-thousand-year sentence? No, I’ll tell you how this is going to work. I’m going to give you
Michelle
, and you are going to grant me absolute power over the entire Mundane Plane.”

Cravutius stifled a laugh. The committee erupted in grumbles and snarls. “See here, you insolent fool!” hissed one member.

“Silence!” barked Cravutius. “Lucifer, if you’re not going to take these negotiations seriously, then I’ll end these proceedings right now.”

“Oh, I’m deadly serious,” said Lucifer. “I’ve seen how you yahoos are running things down there. Wars, corruption, human sacrifice...and this damned flood! Nearly wiped out every living thing on Earth! Even your vaunted Seraphic Civilization Shepherding Program is in danger of being shut down. Tiamat has gone rogue, and now you’ve got that idiot Marduk running Babylon. How long do you think
that’s
going to last? Gentlemen, please. This is no way to run the Universe’s showcase plane. You need to put somebody competent in charge before things go completely to hell. So to speak.”

He lifted a leather briefcase from beside his chair and laid it on the table in front of him. “I’ve taken the liberty of making several copies of my résumé for your perusal. I think you’ll find that I have all the necessary qualifications.” He flipped the catches on the briefcase and opened it, then pulled out a stack of papers, which he distributed to the committee members. Most of them muttered to themselves, refusing to even touch the paper, but Cravutius picked up his copy with a weary sigh and began reading:

Lucifer a.k.a. Satan a.k.a. “The Devil”
666 Lucifer Way
Diabopolis, Plane 3774d

Career Objective

I am looking for a position as the unquestioned despot of a major plane occupied by at least ten million sentient beings whom I can manipulate for my own diabolical purposes.

Key Skills

• Proficient in corrupting mortals
  
• Independent thinker
  
• Experience overseeing a rebellious throng of demonic minions
  
• PowerPoint