“Bobby. It’s okay. You’re in the hospital. Don’t fight, you’ll tear out the stitches!”
It took me a long moment to focus. Part of me was still seeing that sparking hole in the air, the huge dark shape stepping through to take Caz. “Clarence?”
“Shit.” He almost smiled, but he looked worried. “I guess even almost dying isn’t going to get you to use my real name, is it?”
“Almost?” I fell back against the pillow, or at least something shaped like a pillow, but with no actual pillow-ish qualities like softness or comfort. “Are you sure?” I couldn’t understand what I was doing here. “Are you still holding my hand?”
“Does it make you nervous?”
“No, I was just checking. I’m trying to figure out what’s what.” What’s what included a standard-issue hospital room with the window blinds shut and everything around me the same institutional beige color. “Why am I alive?”
“Because God loves you?”
I was tired already and wanted to go back to sleep, to drop into darkness where I could at least dream about Caz. “Could be. Or maybe it’s more of a curse than a reward.” I felt like the hacked remains of a Thanksgiving turkey. I swear I could feel places where the neo-Nazi bastard’s knife had scraped the bones in my chest on its way to my vital organs. “The guy who stabbed me?”
“Dead. Very dead. Name was Geoffrey something. One of the Black Sun guys.”
“Yeah. I recognized him.” I was feeling waves of weariness now. “What’s the news? How long have I been out?”
“A good while—several days. The doctors barely saved you. Monica and a bunch of others have been here a couple of times to see you, but you were unconscious, full of tubes, and not much fun. As far as how things are going, Heaven-wise, pretty much the same. Still the big hush-hush about you-know-who.”
“I wish they’d give her a golden parachute. A real one. Let her try to use it from high Earth orbit.” I changed my position on the bed. It hurt, but not so badly that I couldn’t feel my body already healing itself. Soon I’d be back to normal in a world without Sam and Caz or any point at all. Fucking Heaven. They’d found the best way to punish me. Simply keep me alive and stupid and suffering forever.
Clarence squeezed my hand and then let go. “I’m so sorry, Bobby. About Sam. Do you think there’s any chance he’ll be back?”
“He sure didn’t think so.”
After a short silence, he said, “I miss him too, you know. A lot.”
I almost said something sarcastic, but the impulse just evaporated. “I know, kid. He really liked you, and that wasn’t all that common with him.”
“Sam spent a lot of time with me in the last few months. It was like he was coaching me to take over for him. I think maybe he had a feeling. That something would happen.”
“Coaching you to what? Say that again.”
The kid looked embarrassed. “He knew you’d need a partner. Someone to watch your back.”
I gave him a long look. Sam was right, of course. Sometimes I’m a half-empty balloon, but sometimes I’m a kite. It’s nice to have someone around who knows when to grab the string and keep me anchored. “We’ll see.”
“Or, if you’d rather start interviewing other applicants, I’ll let G-Man know.”
“Fuck you. I’m not that happy about being alive, so don’t you dare make me laugh. It feels like I’ve got stitches holding my stitches together. I still want to know why I’m not a corpse. And don’t tell me it’s because God loves me.”
“Okay, I won’t.” Clarence smiled and stood up. “But you ought to at least entertain the possibility.”
“You’re dead to me, Harrison. Dead.”
“And you’re alive, Bobby, whether it’s convenient or not. See you visiting hours tomorrow.”
I almost let him get out the door before I remembered. “Hey, Junior.”
“What?”
“Just wanted to check something. Samkiel, right?”
“Sorry?”
“The guy who sent you for training, an archangel. Samkiel, that was his name, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He gave me a look. “What made you think of that?”
“Nothing. Next time you come back, bring alcohol.”
“Not happening, B.” He went out, closing the door quietly, as if loud noises might be particularly upsetting to the recently dead. Because I had been dead, or at least as dead as an angel ever gets, I was sure of that, but here I still was, and I hadn’t even been recycled into a new body.
The things I’d been considering when the guy with the knife jumped me on my doorstep were coming back to me, definitely including my most recent conversation with Gustibus. But I was tired from being awake, worn out just from that little give-and-take with Clarence, so I didn’t get much thinking done before I was asleep again.
• • •
I was standing in the middle of so much beauty that even the hardest of hearts would have broken, even the most stiff-necked would have bowed his head, but even in the middle of the Elysian Fields, with the shining towers of the Celestial City on view before me, I felt oddly hollow.
Angel Doloriel, a voice boomed, filling the green world with implied echoes, although only I heard the words. You are wanted in Heaven.
I wasn’t surprised. I hadn’t come here by my own choice, so I had been expecting a summons. I could have taken the slow way and appreciated the glory that was Humanity Beyond Death, the contented souls in the Lord’s fields and the tuneful, heart-healing songs of the Choir Invisible, but I was tired—not body-tired, but soul-tired, which is deeper. I let myself be carried directly to whatever fate was waiting for me.
I found myself somewhere I’d never been before. From the way the light fell (or didn’t fall—it’s hard to explain) I was pretty sure I was actually within the Heavenly City, but it felt like a part where I’d never been before. For a moment I wondered if I’d finally made it into the Empyrean, the center of everything, forbidden to the rank and file, but I guess I’ll never know. All I could say for certain was that it was a place that felt both indoor and outdoor at the same time, with the silence and solemnity of a crypt under a cathedral, but the airiness of a tent on a windy hillside. The walls even seemed to be some kind of fabric, light as cloud, moving in a breeze I couldn’t actually feel. Except for the intimations of size and the heavenly light, it could have been the field headquarters of an important general. Which gave me a clue about who I was going to see.
“Angel Doloriel. God loves you.”
I found myself facing a figure wrapped in brilliance. The angel was seated, but on what I couldn’t see, and although I couldn’t make out face or features, only a manlike shape of light and cloud, the voice confirmed my guess. “Lord Karael. You called me?”
“Come here, son.” A moment later I was much closer, and also seated, but as with the Angel Militant himself, I couldn’t tell if I was on a throne or a camp stool or somehow perched in midair. “You’ve been through a lot, haven’t you?”
“With respect, Master, yes, I have.”
“And now someone else has tried to kill you. How fortunate he failed. These mortals are stubborn things.” Karael smiled. I don’t know how I knew that, since he didn’t really have a face I could make out, but I felt it like a curtain pulled back a bit to let the sunshine through. “Believe it or not, Doloriel, not everyone in Heaven is out to get you,” he said. “Some of us admire your intelligence and your—how shall I put it? Your determination. And, of course, some don’t.”
“Anaita would be one of those, I guess.”
A cloud rolled in front of the sun, or the curtain fell closed again. “We don’t really need to talk about her. Nobody is proud of what she did or how far it got. But you don’t have to take the blame for that any longer.”
“I don’t?”
“No, sir. You, son, are even going to be rewarded a bit. From now on, consider yourself restored to duty and cleared of charges. But that duty will only be half-time for as long as we need until you’re back to your old troublemaking self. We’ll make sure the San Judas central office has its caseload covered.” He said it with such an air of generous, cheerful finality that he might have been God explaining to Adam about how this direction was going to be called “up” and the opposite would be named “down.”