“But not always, surely? Some resolutions are harder to keep than others… You must certainly have been invited.”
I nodded in bitter silence.
“And you had to stay in character for an angel.”
“Damn you! Yes—I did what they asked! And yes, I enjoyed it.”
“But yet you feel guilty? How curious.” Michael considered me for a moment in silence. “Few would. Well, so I bent the Compact. I gave your mother a token for you. I doubted that she would even remember it when the time came, and I certainly had no real expectation that it would ever reach Heaven. Even hope died a long time ago.”
“I did not exactly come by the fastest route.”
“Obviously! I want to hear your story, all your story—son!” He laughed. “How strange to say that word! I am very grateful that you did not speak of the token.”
“You’re not supposed to make angelbrats, are you?” I was recalling Violet then.
“We’re not supposed to recognize angelbrats!” Michael said. “The more we make, the better. But they’ll guess soon enough. I don’t usually condone my lads dying in mysterious circumstances. I saved your life just now, you know?”
“No.”
“I did. Uriel was going to take you both out and shoot you.”
I started to protest and he waved a thin pale hand, like a dead child’s. “Don’t be any stupider than you must. You and the other one killed Red—it’s quite obvious. I twisted Uriel’s neck to get that acquittal. They’ll gossip. They’ll guess. We have records. I was the only wetlander on the grasslands two months ago. Longer ago, maybe? Anyway, there are records, so they’ll know. I can offer you hospitality, son, but no more than that. The Great Compact…but let’s leave it to the saints. You can’t be an angel, obviously.”
The only reason I had not asked to be a cherub, as Quetti had, was that I did not want to be a cherub. Yet now I felt an irrational spasm of annoyance. So I would have been refused? Did he think that my disability disqualified me? I had already proved that I could do anything an angel could do, in chariot or elsewhere. Still, the last thing I wanted was to be an angel.
I had been staring absently at the dusty, sun-gilded casement. I turned a wary eye on the shrewd little spidery man before me, hunched in his white robe, gently rubbing his tiny hands as he watched my thoughts roll. If I antagonized this long-lost father of mine, I would not be able to collect on the debts he owed me.
“You look tired, and I expect you are hungry,” Michael said. “We’ll have to put you in with the cherubim, for we have no guest rooms. The food is plain, but plentiful.” He stopped, frowning. “But I forgot. You won’t be able to manage the ladders.”
“I can! I did! I may be slow on them, but I can manage.”
“You came up. Going down may be harder. If you fall, you’ll snap your pelvis for certain.”
“I’ll manage.”
Michael was not accustomed to argument. Anger flared in his wan cheeks. “Ice can build up on those rungs at any time, with no warning. Cherubim fall all the time, and angels, too. Broken legs are one thing, but a broken back—”
“I’ll manage,” I said flatly.
He scowled testily. “It’s your pelvis! But I don’t suppose you’ll be here long… When you’ve rested, we’ll talk again. You’re going to have many eager audiences during your stay, Knobil. And you will be very useful to one of my little campaigns…” He rose then. Chairs are difficult for me, but I eventually restored myself to vertical without having to ask for help.
“Angels cross the grasslands often,” Michael was saying while I struggled, “as you might guess. I’ve been trying to persuade them to hand out tokens there. They do it everywhere else! All those loners—such a waste! I could use them here. They’d certainly have enough heft to make good wood-chopping seraphim, even if their brains are too woolly for angels.”
I stared down at him in silence.
Despite his pale skin, he did not blush. He chuckled instead. “Ah! You see? Even I do it!” He reached up and squeezed my shoulder. “Accept my apologies, Knobil. Please? Then go and show my lads that herdmen are human, too.”
I trusted him even less when he tried to be charming.
—2—
MICHAEL LIVED AND WORKED in a building borne by a snortoise named Throne, which happened to be one of the smallest and therefore a fortunate choice for my first attempt at descending a ladder. While I was still wrestling with my borrowed furs on the porch, peering out at twilight fading before a gathering snowstorm, and wondering how I could find a bed, I heard a chorus of barking and shouting. Three dogsleds came into view, racing through the trees. Four young men scrambled up the steps and burst in upon me, armed with ropes and pulleys.
Two-green-red had sent them, they announced breathlessly, to lower a cripple down to ground level.
I rejected that offer with a few corrosive expressions I had learned in the ants’ nest, which earned their instant approval. Then I went outside, lay down on the platform, and prepared to break my back on the ladder or the jagged tree stumps below it. I didn’t, and by the time the cherubim were tucking me in on a dogsled, they were already addressing me as Old Man. They had been too considerate to offer sympathy, but they had granted me patience, which was all I wanted. They must have spread the word afterward, I suppose, and it must have become an immediate tradition, for thereafter the cherubim always behaved that way toward me.
We set off then on a hair-raising twilight ride through fungus jungle and dead trees, through looming rocks and flying snow. Snortoises bellowed unseen all around, dogs yowled, and young men yelled insults. I just sat with my eyes closed and a fixed smile on my face until we arrived at the cherubim feeding trough, a room invariably referred to by the name of its snortoise, Cloud Nine.
There I found Quetti already boxed in a corner, being plied with beer and questions by a dozen or so cherubim and a few angels. Forced from his usual reticence, he seemed mainly to be telling more lies about me. As soon as I had taken the edge off my hunger and thirst, therefore, I began to relate some of Quetti’s own exploits. His prowess with women was noteworthy, as I have said, but I raised it now to the status of legend, making the younger cherubim in the audience wide-eyed and their more discerning elders purse-lipped. Quetti’s less salacious tales were soon finding few listeners and no believers.
In one hundred cycles Heaven has seen almost anything possible, but imposter angels were new. The audience varied as men came and went, and the two of us were kept there talking until we were both ready to fall off our chairs. I felt as if I had recounted my whole life story three times before we were at last released and escorted over to Nightmare, the snortoise that bore the cherubim’s dormitory.
Heavenly beer is not especially potent. Quetti and I had learned during our long trek to accept hospitality with moderation, so I am certain we had both been discreet when describing the death of Red-yellow-green. Yet before that long meeting ended, the cherubim, with deadly intuition, were addressing Quetti as “Snake.” He accepted the name with placid amusement, as if it were a compliment, and Snake he remained until he became an angel.
I was the Old Man. Some time later, while learning to use snow-shoes, I earned a second name. Snowshoes are tricky even for a man with real knees. Although I eventually became proficient on them, my early attempts caused me to thoroughly lose my temper. One of the spectators, a young swampman named Tiny, grew intolerably raucous over my tangled efforts to walk.
“Faster than the wind,” he exclaimed, “it moves over the grasslands in mighty bounds!”