“Yeah. I’ll try to remember that.” It wasn’t entirely sarcasm this time. A part of me still hoped, like a very young child hopes, that Somebody really was going to step in and save me. Because minus divine intervention, these good, kind, all-knowing angels were going to hang me. What made it really upsetting, though, was that they were going to hang me for the one thing I actually hadn’t done.
• • •
So they paraded me through Heaven.
Of course, just by saying that, I’ve given you the wrong impression. They didn’t literally put me in a tumbrel and wheel me through the shining streets like a French aristocrat going to the guillotine. I could barely tell it was going on, except for the fact that it actually took time to reach the High Hall of Heaven’s Judgement. Normally when you go somewhere in Heaven, you just leave the place you were and arrive in the place you’re going; there’s no more sense of transition than a film dissolve. But instead I could perceive myself moving past and through the hordes of Heaven, and could feel them all reacting to me. As with so many things up there, it’s not very easy to describe. I felt like a soap bubble in a tub full of suds: I traveled not so much by actually moving as by sort of sliding from being one bubble to being the next, as though I was not even a bubble but some color or bit of surface tension that could slip from one connection to the next without disturbing the whole. But still, I felt the curiosity of Heaven’s citizens as I moved past them and through them, and more than a little of their discomfort at what was happening. Everybody’s happy in Heaven, but there are gradations; wherever I passed on my way to judgement I could sense a little ripple of less-than-perfect happiness spreading outward behind me.
A smart guy once said, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture,” and trying to explain Heaven is the same way: words just don’t do it. Words have to come afterward, and usually they’re very bad tools for defining what actually happens Upstairs.
Anyway, I slipped, I slid, I lingered long enough in some spots to become a fact and briefly enough in others to be only a feeling. Whatever else they were doing, most of the angelic throng gave part of themselves to the spectacle, following me and communicating among themselves about it. Almost none of them knew me personally, of course, but by the time I reached the Hall of Judgement most of them felt they did. My anonymity—the anonymity of most angels, individual happiness bugs in a giant, joyful hive—had changed. I was more than a single angel now, but also something less—an Idea, perhaps, or a Concern. But what I felt pretty sure Heaven actually wanted me to be was an Example.
I too had experienced things like this and had even participated, during the innocence of my earliest days in Heaven. I remembered being certain that justice would always be served, that no matter how odd or confusing the situation, the hand of the Highest was guiding the proceedings. Because it was Heaven, truth had to win out. I guess I’d lost a little faith since then.
The Hall of Judgement was full, not with physical bodies, but with presences. I don’t know how many angels were there to see what happened to me close up, to learn what I’d done and what would be done with me, but I could feel them and even sort of see them all around me, filling the vast space like a billion dandelion puffs. The great Paslogion loomed over us, a sort of clock tower (that’s my best guess) which dominates the hall, a huge, powerful something made of translucent layers of transparent wheels. As far as I knew, it measured the reality of everything that ever was or ever would be. The shining tower reminded me now of what a small thing I was in the larger scheme: my trial and my inevitable sentence would be no more significant to the eternities the Paslogion studied than the pinging of a single subatomic particle.
And that’s where you and I came in together, remember? Where this story began, with me in the dock, as they used to say in old English murder mysteries, and five judges getting ready to hand down a guilty verdict. Of course there were a few formalities to be observed first, like the trial.
• • •
What seemed hours of discussion passed solely in laying out the charges, but I won’t bore you with that, or the even longer parade of “evidence” that followed. As I had been told, the charges boiled down to, “All that Third Way shit was Doloriel’s fault.” But the fine points of heavenly justice had to be observed, and each block in the false edifice of my guilt had to be carefully crafted and put into place. I answered all questions to the best of my ability, usually honestly, because the crimes of which I was accused weren’t mine. But since I could never name the truly guilty party, I didn’t help my own cause much. Basically, the case against me was that Sam and I had connived to overthrow the Heavenly order. Yes, that was the claim: the two of us low-level angelic schmuckos had come up with a plan to create an entire new reality all by ourselves, and then found a demon lord (to help us get around the Tartarean Convention agreements between Heaven and Hell) to build the place. And with no Sam and no mysterious Kephas-angel present in the courtroom to say otherwise, nobody bothered to disagree with this preposterous nonsense.
So that was me, apparently: Bobby Dollar, king of the rebel angels, the greatest traitor since Lucifer demanded his own key to the executive washroom. And this time I’d be the one to get the brimstone parachute.
The Great Frame-Up started with the fact that I’d been on the scene when the first Third Way soul disappeared, the now infamous Edward L. Walker. Of course, it had been as big a surprise to me at the time as anyone else, but as they piled on other guilty-looking things I’d done, such as letting Sam escape me at Shoreline Park, it wasn’t hard to see that my participation would seem pretty obvious to anyone who didn’t know the whole truth. The odd thing I noticed after a while, though, was that other than the Walker disappearance, they weren’t using any of the most damning evidence against me—the things that had actually happened.
For instance, it’s a Bobby Dollar Fact that I’d coshed junior angel Clarence with the butt of my gun out at Shoreline so Sam could get away (because at the time, Clarence was working undercover for our bosses) but that little bit of assault wasn’t even mentioned. It would have been a perfect example of my obvious guilt, but apparently Clarence hadn’t told them. I was glad to know even at this hopeless stage of things that the kid really was my friend, even though it wasn’t going to make any difference in the verdict—just one less “crime” to consider when they already had quite enough to measure me for the gallows-drop.
That wasn’t the only strange omission, either. The ephors knew I’d been in touch with demons—they mentioned it about ninety times—but for some reason nothing at all was said about my actual trip to Hell, which was an extremely major crime and one I’d actually committed. I had to assume they simply didn’t know about it, because it sure would have made a nice piece of evidence of my total guilt. I mean, even demons only go to Hell because they have to.
And even weirder, they didn’t mention Caz at all, at least not any of the things that would have really put the last knot in my noose, like the fact of us having vigorous angel-demon sex, or me pledging my undying love to her in front of the Ralston Hotel (the hotel Eligor would blow up about ten minutes later). Now, since Temuel, the guy who handed me over to the heavenly authorities, had been deeply involved in me getting to Hell, it seemed like the Ephorate should know all about my little trip, but not a word was said. Maybe the ephors were just protecting their archangel minion, but it still didn’t seem quite right. It would have been easy to claim Temuel was acting under orders when he helped me—that he had just been giving me enough rope to hang myself. So why no mention of Hell, which was a slam-dunk fact?