“What you told me is fascinating.” He turned from the window. “What do you need to know?”
“The horn. Since the last time we talked I broke Anaita’s civilian cover and researched her movements. She poses as a Persian-American philanthropist named Donya Sepanta, and she’s been in San Jude for about thirty years or so. She seems to have first met with Eligor at the Stanford Museum, where she’s a major donor, but that’s just a guess, and it isn’t where she’s hidden the horn. We found that out the hard way. What is there is a hidden doorway to Kainos.”
“Ah. The heretical Third Way, as the authorities in Heaven call it.”
“Right. So for all I know she and Eligor could have made their deal decades ago when they first met, or only recently. And there’s a jillion places where she could have hidden the horn just here in San Judas alone. What happened in the museum tells me I can’t afford another confrontation with her until I find where it is for real. I mean, that damned horn could be literally anywhere, couldn’t it? If she could do what my friend Sam did with me when he hid Anaita’s feather in a kind of time-pocket . . . well, the horn could even be here in this room, and I wouldn’t have a chance of finding it.” And as I said it, I realized how arrogant I’d been from the start, how incredibly self-absorbed. An object perhaps the size of a cigarette lighter, that could literally be made invisible and hidden outside of the flow of time itself, and I’d cheerfully set off to find it, as certain of success as the only grown-up at an Easter egg hunt.
“And that’s the problem,” I said when I was done hating myself for the moment. “The more I search, the less I know. How could a demon’s horn or an angel’s feather get from one world to another, anyway? I mean, humans can’t cross over from Earth to Heaven without dying, right?” Like Oxana, stuck in that timeless nowhere between worlds with only her lover’s body for company. “How does travel between places like Earth and Heaven or Hell even work?”
Gustibus nodded. “How does it work? That is indeed the question, and one I’ve been puzzling over for longer than you can imagine. Are you comfortable?”
I shrugged. “Reasonably.”
“Good. Because this may take a while.” He folded his hands behind his back and looked down, like a schoolboy getting ready to recite his times tables. “Very well. Here is what I know, or have enough evidence to guess at fairly confidently. For the purpose of this discussion, remember we are not bodies, but souls.”
Which was a weird thing to say—“for the purpose of this discussion,” like it wasn’t always true—but I ignored it and tried to focus. My previous experience with Gustibus had been that he liked to take people for Socratic roller-coaster rides.
“Now, angels and demons are nothing but souls. That is, although they can inhabit bodies, they exist primarily as bodiless spirits. However, in that state they can experience very little of actual life and certainly nothing that you would recognize as ordinary earthly pain or pleasure. A rather arid existence, I’d call it.” He nodded. “Humans, while they live, are bound to a physical body. When they die, the soul is free of the body and can then leave what we call the Earth and pass into other places like Heaven and Hell. When they reach those places, the soul will be re-embodied in a form that is more fitted for that existence.”
“I already understand all that.”
A small frown. “Please don’t hurry me, Mr. Dollar. Now, as I mentioned, angels and demons—and certain others—are not bound to bodies and so can enter and leave them at will, and in fact, if they want to appear and function on Earth they must take on earthly bodies. Yes? That is clear?”
I nodded.
“Good. Now, if an angel, let us say, wishes to use part of his or her earthly body as a token of agreement—a feather, for instance—then it is not enough simply to hand it over to someone. A feather on Earth, even an angel’s feather, is only a feather, a part of an earthly body—an earthly thing. It is of no probative value whatsoever.”
I raised my hand. “Probative?”
“It proves nothing. So in order for that token to mean something, it must be invested with at least a tiny bit of the essence of the angel who gives it away. Some of that angel’s soul must enter that article, and I’ve never heard of it happening by accident. The same would be true for a demon and his horn.”
I thought about this. “So the reason it was so obvious that Anaita’s feather was an angel’s feather is because she made it an angel’s feather?”
“Yes, more or less. She had to release something of herself into it when she gave it away. Similarly, Eligor would have had to imbue the horn with part of himself.”
“Okay. But what does that mean for me?”
“It means that the object itself is not the important thing, although the essence of it is. And because it is in truth an essence, like a soul, it is not confined to the earthly realm but can go anywhere the angel or demon in question can go. Do you understand?”
The only thing I understood was that my impossible task had just become even more so. I had single-handedly discovered a previously unmapped realm of impossibility—Bobby wins again! “So, basically, I’m fucked. The horn could literally be anywhere, and there’s no way to tell. I’m just massively, totally, permanently fucked. Is that what you’re saying?”
He might have shown the ghost of a smile. “Knowing the truth is always better, Mr. Dollar. You’re still in the same situation but better informed. And I haven’t finished.”
“Oh, it gets better?”
“That depends on what you make of it. But the first time I met you here, when we discussed Anaita and her motives and history, set me thinking. Something else came to me later that I think could be important.”
I was almost too depressed to reply. “I don’t have anything left to trade.”
“You’d be surprised—but this is, how do you say it, a bonus? I am throwing it in. Yes, Anaita could have hidden the horn anywhere she could go herself. But remember, she has that horn for a reason. It is her protection against Eligor’s informing on her. They are sworn to mutual destruction if either one breaks faith. Now that Eligor has recovered the feather, his horn is even more important to her.”
“So?”
“So she will not hide it anywhere it would be difficult to reach. She might be able to hide it somewhere in the Holy City itself, but that would only make it difficult to recover it in an emergency, especially because Heaven and Earth sometimes move through time at different rates. The chances are, she will have it somewhere available to her at a moment’s notice.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t get it.”
“I am not intentionally tormenting you, Mr. Dollar. I don’t have the answer myself, but I feel that the answer can be found, and what I’ve just told you seems likely to help you do it.”
I stood up. “Well, that’s helpful, then. I guess.” But what I actually felt was helpless. I hadn’t thought I was Mr. Lucky after escaping judgement by the width of an angel hair, just Mr. Delayed Doom, and now I had fallen all the way back to square one, or even square zero.
“One last thing,” said Gustibus. “Remember this, too—Anaita is not an angel who happened to have once been a goddess. She is a goddess who became an angel. She is not like most of the rest of her heavenly peers. She may have existed before humankind, as with the rest of the angels, but she was not as they were. She became what she is because humans worshipped her.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ll have to ponder that yourself, I’m afraid, Mr. Dollar. I’ve enjoyed seeing you again, but I have promised to make dinner for the sisters tonight, and the kitchen awaits me.”
Part of me wanted to thank him for his time, another part wanted to pick him up and kick out his window and hold him over the rocks and the foaming waves until he told me why he was always being such a mysterious dick. I don’t handle the Socratic method well, I guess.
I got back in my car instead and drove home through the wet, green hills, listening to the monotonous percussion of the December rain.