And Eternity Part 32

"About four thousand of that name answer that description," Ozymandias said, checking a notepad which appeared in his hand.

"She ran away about thirty years ago." He flipped a page. "Three hundred."

"She has a brother named Kane."

"Twelve."

"Who is five years younger than she."

"Two."

"If I could interview those two-"

"One moment." Ozymandias disappeared.

"Good man," Satan said. "I bless, if you will pardon the expression, the day I rescued him from anonymity.

Laurel is the client's older sister?"

"Yes. I think she will have influence on him, if we can put them together."

"That would be irregular."

Orlene repressed a smile. "Just how serious is your interest in the client's cooperation, Satan?"

He almost smiled in return. "No doubt a deal can be made."

Jolie knew that Satan was pleased, but she wasn't sure why. Normally he did not appreciate backtalk from the denizens of h.e.l.l. Of course this was his stepdaughter; he liked seeing her take hold. But Jolie wasn't sure that was all of it.

Ozymandias reappeared. Behind him stood two young women. Both were pretty, but both had had hard use. Neither quite fitted Kane's mental picture.

But Orlene didn't give up. ' 'Which one of you promised to return for your ten-year-old brother?"

"What's it to you?" the left one asked.

"He is here."

She put her hands to her face. "Oh, the poor boy! I was sure he was bound for H-" she choked.

"Heaven," Satan said. "The d.a.m.ned cannot say that word."

"She is the one," Orlene said. "I must talk to her, and then have her talk to him. What can I offer her for her cooperation?"

"One minute per hour, with him," Satan said. "If she is instrumental in making him cooperate." Get a load of his generosity! Vita thought. Orlene decided not to argue. "May I talk to her alone?"

"One minute," Satan said. He and Ozymandias and the other Laurel disappeared, leaving only Orlene and the woman in the office.

"We have only one minute," Orlene said. "Laurel, your brother loves you, and I think will do anything you ask of him. You are his madonna figure, his perfect woman. He is a ma.s.s murderer who was knifed to death at age forty, but he loves you. His Atonement can proceed faster if he cooperates. You can spend one minute of each hour with him if you get him to do that. Will you?"

"No!" Laurel cried. "He mustn't know how far I sank! Let him keep his good image of me!"

"If you don't tell him about your life, I won't. Just tell him to cooperate. Then, every hour, you can console him. I don't think he'll ever ask how you died, or how you came to be here. All he will care is that you have returned for him, even here in h.e.l.l. For one minute each hour he won't suffer so much. You can keep your promise."

"My promise!" she breathed. "My one good hope-"

Satan reappeared. "Well?"

"I must take her to the client's cell," Orlene said. She took Laurel by the arm and guided her out the door and down the hall. "You can enter," she told Laurel. "I cannot. Talk to him. Get him to cooperate, and the reward is yours."

Laurel saw the suffering man lying on the blood-soaked bed. Suddenly he a.s.sumed the form of a ten-year-old boy, uninjured. "Oh, Kane!" she cried, running in to him. Now she, too, was younger, fifteen and lovely.

"Laurel! You came!" he cried.

They embraced. "I said I would! But I cannot stay! You know this is h.e.l.l, Kane; you must do what they want, or you will never get out of it!"

"If you ask me-"

"We can be together-one minute each hour!"

"Then I will do it." His capitulation was that simple, once his deepest dream had been tapped. Orlene's effort of understanding and compa.s.sion had accomplished what h.e.l.l's torture had not.

Ozymandias appeared in the cell. "The names."

Kane, still held by his loving sister, started giving the names. Ozymandias noted them on a scroll with deft strikes of a quill.

Then he gestured. Laurel vanished, and Kane was back as an adult, with the knife. "She will return next hour," Ozymandias said, and vanished himself.

Kane gazed at Orlene. "You did this," he said.

"Yes."

He grunted something that almost sounded like "Thanks."

I still can't stand him, but I'm glad we did it. Vita thought. She spoke for them all.

Oriene turned away. She walked down the hall toward the exit. But when she came to the man she had talked with before, she paused.

"I asked Satan, but he said he couldn't change the rules. I am going to visit G.o.d next, and I will ask Him."

"I thank you," the man gasped, turning color. He was going into his suffocation stage.

"No, this isn't fair!" Oriene cried. "Atonement, yes, but not pointless torture!" She stepped into the chamber.

Halt! Jolie thought in desperation. You can't go there! It's off the But Oriene had already done it. Vita's mortal body came up against an invisible barrier and stopped, but Orlene's spirit went on. It was leaving the host, glowing.

What happens now? Vita thought, horrified.

We must pull her back! Jolie responded. She must not be discorporate in h.e.l.l!

They both grabbed at Orlene's spirit. But it stretched, the bulk of it going on into the cell. They were left holding the tail of the ghost, while the front reached the man.

Oriene put her faint hand on the man's head. The glow intensified, surrounding him. Go on to the next! she thought. Break the chain! You must do it!

The man stopped choking. He sat up, becoming gaunt. "I'm starving!" he exclaimed.

The joint pull exerted by Jolie and Vita finally prevailed. Oriene was drawn back into the host.

He's in the next torture! Vita thought, amazed.

"That boy-he stole money from a friend, and so the friend went hungry," the man said. "I am suffering that hunger. Oh, thank you, lovely spirit!"

I didn't know you could do such magic! Jolie thought.

"I can't," Oriene said, dazed. "He must have done it himself. I only encouraged him."

But Jolie had seen the glow. She knew that it required more than encouragement. Apparently there was an active component as well as a pa.s.sive one to Orlene's lifelong magic.

Oriene went on, not quite understanding the significance of what she had done, at the dire risk of her soul. Had she not been hauled back, she would have been trapped in h.e.l.l, unable to escape despite her evident goodness.

They reached the end of the pa.s.sage. The vapor closed about them. They moved upward, out of h.e.l.l.

Chapter 13 - GOOD.

They emerged before Gaea's Treehouse. They heard the voice of the Purgatory News announcer coming from within; evidently the set was on. "All Purgatory is agog over the visit of one 'Natasha' to the abode of the Incarnation of Nature. Gaea is, of course, married to the Incarnation of Evil, and remains nominally faithful to him, though the marriage was never consummated. For her to entertain another man ..."

Orlene smiled briefly as she knocked on the door. They knew who Natasha was, now, and why he had come. There was no scandal. The Purgatory News, like that of the mortals, was sensationalist and not too scrupulous about its implications.

Gaea opened the door. "You succeeded?"

"Yes. But now I must go to Heaven, and not with my soul alone, because I mean to return. I have no idea how to get there."

"I think Natasha will have to guide you again," Gaea said, with a smile similar to Orlene's own.

"I shall be glad to," Natasha said, appearing outside. "As it happens, I have a friend who knows the way through chaos."

Yeah, that b.i.t.c.h Nox! Vita thought.

"Oh? Perhaps I should come too," Gaea said.

I keep forgetting they can hear us! Vita thought, chagrined.

"By all means come along!" Natasha said, extending one elbow to her and the other to Orlene.

They took the elbows. The region darkened, then turned gray. They were traveling into the vagueness of the Void.

Then Natasha called to someone beyond. His voice made the ether ripple magically; the pattern of it could be seen all around them, curling in strange wave patterns into diminis.h.i.+ng spirals and out to infinity. The effect was weird and beautiful and hypnotic, both auditory and visual.

It's an aspect of the Llano, Jolie explained. The Llano is one of the only things that penetrates the Void. Gaea uses it to control the forces of nature, but she's not adept with chaos.

There came an answering call. The waves and spirals changed, a.s.suming a new configuration. The restless tapestry of their convolutions became the walls of an austere chamber.

They faced a kindly, bearded man. "Thank You for answering, JHVH," Natasha said. "This is Gaea, the Incarnation of Nature."

"I have admired your work," JHVH said politely.

"And this is Orlene, her daughter. My stepdaughter, in the mortal host of another person."

"And Jolie too," JHVH remarked, glancing at them.

"Jolie too," Natasha agreed. "I asked Jolie to watch over Orlene in life, and when Orlene died, she felt responsible, and is helping her accomplish a task set by the Incarnation of Night."

"Ah, I have known Nox of old."

"Have I been named?" It was Nox, coalescing beside them. Her vague outline solidified, until she had the form of a stunningly beautiful woman. But she was in black and white, while the others were in full color.

That's weird! Vita thought.

"Nox has my baby," Orlene said. "He has a malady of the soul, which can be cured only by special things provided by each of the major Incarnations. I have obtained the agreements of six, and now must gain the last from G.o.d."

"I shall be happy to guide you to Heaven," JHVH said. "But I am curious about the involvement of the Incarnation of Night, who is not of your pantheon, any more than I am. I am not conversant with the politics of such interactions, but suspect this is rare."

"It is the first time in the current millennium I have done so," Nox said.

"I should think you would have a more important concern than the welfare of a single baby," JHVH said. "Such as the approaching termination of most mortal existence."

"I have no power over that. I do have power over the baby." As she spoke, the baby appeared in her arms. Nox opened her robe to expose one breast, and nursed him.

The three sharing the host reacted in different ways. Orlene felt an exquisite pang to see another woman nursing her baby, yet noted that the baby was being well cared for. Nox held him closely, with evident concern and even love, and Gaw-Two seemed quite comfortable with her. Orlene remembered how her own mother, here right now, had given her up; was this the way it felt? She wanted so much to go and take her baby back! She made an effort and buried her mixed emotions, lest she embarra.s.s herself by breaking down in tears. Her thoughts, hitherto unguarded, abruptly became opaque to Jolie.

How can she nurse when she hasn't given birth? Vita thought, amazed. She had no awareness of the pang of separation Orlene felt, but was simply curious about the technical aspect.

She isn't human, Jolie replied. She can adapt herself to any form and function she chooses. But Jolie herself was amazed that Nox, the most aloof of Incarnations, should have chosen to do this, and indeed to be so open about it. There was no need for the baby to feed in the Afterlife; this was only to give him comfort. Why should Nox care? Or was Nox deliberately torturing Orlene? Was she trying to make Orlene do something foolish, and so forfeit the recovery of her baby which she had labored so hard to achieve?

Gaea looked at the Incarnation of Night. "Dreams may seem to the uninformed to be the stuff of chaos, but it is only ignorance that makes it seem so. Your realm mirrors ours, Nox; what is it you see that we do not?"

Nox merely smiled and faded out, still nursing Gaw.

"She is up to something," JHVH remarked. "But let us attend to the business at hand. I will guide you to Heaven, Orlene, though I will not enter it with you. Take My hand."

Orlene took his hand. Suddenly chaos was rus.h.i.+ng past them. It was formless, yet seemed to suggest form; efforts to perceive it were frustrating, yet it was hard to ignore.

Ahead loomed a star. It expanded to a sun, and then to a globe of light which filled their vision. They came right up to the fringe, and the brilliance diminished with proximity. Beyond it lay a s.h.i.+ning terrain.