The ground was hard and the air was raw and chilly, but at least whatever version of Earth this resembled wasn’t in the middle of winter. That was a good thing, because the fire wasn’t big enough to cook a single strip of bacon.
“How did everything go bad so fast, Sam? How much time’s gone by here since I saw you?”
“About two weeks, I guess. But it happened pretty quickly. You-Know-Who showed up the same day I got back. Luckily, most of us were away from the settlement when she came. Man, that angel’s not just ambitious, or complicated—she’s insane, or at least she was when she got here. Some of our bosses are complete assholes, literally holier-than-thou, but her . . . there’s something really wrong.”
“Doctor Gustibus,” I began, then realized Sam didn’t know who he was. It was another small blow, since in the old days Sam knew everything I knew, but things were different now and had been ever since this Third Way thing started. “This guy I know, kind of a researcher, said that she’s not like all the other angels because she was a goddess first.”
“Yeah, and not the nice kind.” Sam was bleak. “She came in here like gangbusters.”
I shook my head in frustration. “But we still don’t know why she built this place, what the whole thing is about. Why would she make such a risky deal? And what did Eligor get out of it?”
Clarence spoke up. “Is there something here she needs?”
Sam grunted. “What does a Heavenly Power need that she doesn’t already have? Or can’t already make?”
“This is horseshit,” said a third, clearly angry voice. I turned. It was Ed Walker, who was sitting a few feet away, giving us a bit less respectful distance than the others. “We’ve got more important things to do than talk about crap like that. Like surviving.”
“Simmer down, Ed.” Sam turned to me. “I assume you’ve figured out who this is by now. He’s a good man, but things have been a little difficult for all of us—”
“You don’t have to apologize for me, Sammariel,” said Walker. “We’ve got several hundred people here to protect, and she’s coming back. She’s coming back because of you.” He spat. “You Magians, you . . . angels.” It was a curse word. “You’re the cause of this. And now your crazy boss is going to destroy us all.”
“Or maybe your souls will go where they should have gone in the first place,” Clarence said. “The Highest won’t just let you disappear.”
“I had years left to live!” Walker stood up. “We need to kill that monster or buy her off somehow, because we can’t beat her. And if you can’t think of a way to do either of those things, then we’re all just wasting time here when we should be trying to get as far away as possible.” He gave Clarence and me a nasty look. “And when we run for it, our chances will be a lot better if we don’t take any angels with us—not even you, Sam.” He picked up his bow, turned, and marched away from the fire.
“Don’t mind Ed,” Sam told me as he watched Walker go. “He’s been patrolling night and day. He’s tired and scared. We all are.” But he looked bothered.
“How many people do you have here?” I asked. “And how do you keep them all fed?”
Sam actually smiled. “Fed? This was going to be a paradise, son! Souls don’t have to eat here in Kainos, although they can. Some of the settlers eat fruit or edible roots and vegetables, just because they like to. And of course we use the plants to make things.” He held up the blanket he wore over his suit coat. The coarse-woven fabric looked a lot like burlap. “There’s a plant fiber that we’ve learned to weave. And there are sheep and other animals, so I’m sure we’ll learn how to make proper clothing someday soon.”
“We? You sound like you’ve gone native, Sammy-boy.”
He didn’t smile this time. “I’ve had to pitch in. After all, I’m the one who brought a lot of these people here. And there’s plenty to learn—or re-learn, in a sense. Kainos has only existed for a few years, after all, and we recruited more scholars than farmers. That was Kephas’s—You-Know-Who’s doing. It’s like she went out of her way to pick the philosophical over the practical.”
“Yeah.” Then something clicked. “Her enemies.”
“What do you mean, Bobby?” Clarence asked.
I looked around, but with Walker’s departure most of the other inhabitants of the Third Way had turned from us, perhaps because they didn’t want to know what we were talking about. I could tell by their faces that they were frightened, that angels didn’t mean many good things to them anymore. “I think that’s it,” I said quietly. “She wants to be worshipped. I think that’s what Gustibus was pointing toward. As an angel, she was just one of many doing the Highest’s work, however important she might have been compared to you and me. But I saw her in her home, and if you want to talk about a five-thousand-year-old Persian-American princess, that’s our girl. And if she was going to be worshipped again, like in the old days, she didn’t want lumps and idiots doing it, she wanted the best and the brightest. Like these.” I made a small gesture to indicate the people around us. “She wanted the smart ones, the rationalists, the kind who back on Earth hardly even believed in Heaven.”
“Really? All this—just to be somebody’s deity again?” asked Clarence.
“You don’t get the goddess out of your system that easily, kid. Yeah, it makes sense.” I felt like a piece of the puzzle—only a small one in our present situation, but still a piece—had finally fallen into place. “Why else would she risk everything to build something like this? First of all, it takes balls, serious angel balls, to go against Heaven this way, not to mention bargaining with Hell. Why else would she strike out on her own and build what’s basically a colony? Because she wanted worshippers again, her very own. That’s what she’s done here. But it’s gone wrong, and so she’s pissed off.”
“Ha. Pissed off doesn’t begin to describe it,” Sam said. “She came in on a chariot of light. I didn’t see it, but Ed Walker did—it’s one of the reasons he’s so angry. She came in on her chariot. It was pulled by those two lions, but they flew. They were made of light and diamonds, and they flew. She came in like a Phantom jet and she scorched everything around the house. You saw that, I’m sure.”
“But she didn’t burn the house,” I pointed out.
“I think that’s because the Going-To-Mecca cube is in there, but I’m not sure.”
“Or because it’s her church.”
“Huh?” Sam wiped his hand across his face, wearily. “Sorry, say that again. Even us angels need sleep here sometimes, just like on Earth.”
“Haven’t you wondered about the way the house is built? Taller than it should be? That big tower? It’s a stealth temple. It’s where she expected to be worshipped.”
Sam pursed his lips. “Maybe, but I’m doubting she expects much worshipping now. Not after what she did. Those of us who weren’t there could still hear her, even from miles away, so loud her voice echoed in the mountains, demanding that we turn over the traitors.” He looked at me. “By the way, those traitors are you and me, buddy—but mostly you, I’m afraid. Still, I’m pretty sure she won’t deal too kindly with me, either. Besides me, the last two Magians still here, Kelathiel and Phidorathon—we called them Kiley and Fred—were watching the settlement, and she vaporized them, along with a couple of dozen poor souls who happened to be there at the time. The only good thing was that she didn’t stay long, that she didn’t hunt the rest of us down and wipe us out right then.”