Pantheocide

Chapter Thirty Four

Home of Lemuel-Lan-Michael, Eternal City, Heaven

Onniel-Lan-Lemuel, mate of Lemuel-Lan-Michael, still resented the reprimands she had received from the guardians of the local temple. They’d noted the growing unhappiness in the Lemuel household and made their own quiet investigations. That had led them to summon her to the temple for advice and counsel. That was what they had called it anyway. Onniel remembered it as being her kneeling in front of the altar for five hours while the Temple Elders lectured her on her failings as a mate and her negligence as a householder. It had been all the worse for the fact that the session had been held in the nave of the temple, open to the view of all. Onniel had no doubt that word of her reprimands would be spreading around the community. She knew without any shadow of doubt, that when she next went to the market, fingers would be pointed at her behind her back and caustic comments made about her failures.

It was made worse by the fact that she knew the comments were justified. She had treated her mate badly, resenting the way his position in the League of the Holy Court was taking up his time. Heaven was facing an existential crisis, that much was whispered in the markets and meeting places. Nobody admitted it but all knew the war with the humans on Earth was not going well. The sheer speed with which they had overrun Hell and killed Satan had been bad enough. The Angels who were old enough to remember the Great Celestial War had spoken of the long, drawn-out deadlock, the inability of either side to gain an advantage over the other. The pointless fighting that had gone on for millennia after millennia was still a sore memory that had led to Satan being called “the Eternal Enemy”. Yet the human armies had not just withstood his assault, they had counter-attacked and defeated him within a few short weeks. It was whispered, very quietly, with great caution, if humans could score such a rapid victory against Hell, why could they not do the same against Heaven? And why wasn’t Heaven crushing them?

Onniel knew the answers whispered in the street. The humans gained their power from the fact there were traitors in Heaven. There were those in high places who sided with them, obstructing the plans long-developed by the All-Knowing and protecting the humans who defied His will. It was only as she had knelt before the altar with the constant chanting of condemnation and criticism pouring over her that she had finally realized the League of Holy Court was the primary line of defense against such treason. Lemuel was its leading investigator and in devoting himself to its work, he was directly shielding The One Above All from the treachery that threatened all of Heaven. Her petty grievances were of no importance at all compared with the vital work he was engaged in. That had been made clear in the remorseless censure that had been her lot. Lemuel and his work were important, she was not and if she couldn’t adapt to it, there were plenty of others who would be pleased to take her place. By placing her own petty needs ahead of those that affected all of Heaven, she was succumbing to the deadly sin of pride.

That ultimatum was the turning point, the prospect that had made her decide to change her attitude. The fact was, she liked being the mate of such an important person. It gave her power and influence, it meant that others stopped and gave way to her. If she was displaced and it became known that this had been so because the sin of pride had caused her to fail in her duties, her descent would be far and fast. She could not bear to contemplate that so she had laid her grievances aside to labor on behalf of Lemuel. She had spent the rest of the day watching the servants clean the house until not a speck of dust remained anywhere. The stones that inlaid the walls had been polished until they glowed and the refractions of light from their hearts filled their rooms. Finally, she had sent other servants out to procure Lemuel’s favorite foods and she had prepared their evening meal for them herself. It had been a long time since she had done that. Now, the table was laid and everything was ready. She took one last look to ensure the room and meal was perfect, then went to greet her mate.

She reached the entrance hall as Lemuel closed the doors behind him. There, she dropped to her knees and swept her wings in front of her face. Lemuel barely nodded at her, still swept up in his attempts to understand the arrays of conspiracy that existed in Heaven. Onniel bit back a sarcastic comment and, instead gave the traditional greeting to her returning mate. “Most Noble One, your home is tranquil and a haven of rest. Food and wine have been prepared for your pleasure.”

She saw Lemuel look at her and frown slightly. Had she got the formal greeting wrong? She hadn’t used it for a long time but she was sure that she remembered it properly. It wasn’t as if it was a long or complex chant.

“There will be no time for that. I must go out again, to worship The One Above All and continue my dedication to his service. I will be out very late again so do not wait up for me.”

Onniel blinked and looked up at him. “But I have prepared our meal myself and remembered all your favorites. Surely this evening’s worship can wait for such a short period?”

She saw Lemuel shake his head. “This is work of such great importance that it goes to the highest of the high. I must leave right away. If there is too much food prepared, throw the rest away, there is no need for us to be concerned about such things.” Then Lemuel turned and left.

Almost blind with rage, Onniel forgot her new resolutions and ran back to where the meal table had been arranged. She grabbed the food-loaded central plate and hurled it at the closed doors, watching it explode against them with spiteful satisfaction.

Temple of Ceaseless Compliance, Eternal City, Heaven

Once more, Lemuel-Lan-Michael was sprawled on his face in front of the altar chanting his choruses of praise while his companions followed his lead. It was nice to find somewhere he was treated with the respect due to his rank and position. That thought made him slightly guilty, not just because of the deception he was practicing on these people but because he was only going through the motions of prayer. His mind was focussed on his home and the neglect that Onniel seemed to regard as adequate performance of her duties. He had heard the crash behind the doors of his home and seen them shake as the things she had thrown struck them. There just was no way to understand what made women act as they did. He resolved to have another word with the local priests, obviously they hadn’t spoken to Onniel forcefully enough.

The Chorus completed, Lemuel straightened up and eased the kink out of his back. His eyes were itching again and he felt his chest filled with the urge to cough. Behind him, Perpetiel-Lan-Paschar smirked slightly, it was amazing what the addition of a little Mace to the bowls of burning incense could achieve. The humans really were so very clever, packaging such a useful chemical in those easy-to-use spray cans. Two of his co-conspirators had upped the effect of the Mace-doped incense by giving Lemuel a couple of discrete puffs of the undiluted product at suitable points in the chorus. As a result, Lemuel was in a slightly improved state of distress. Well, it was time to “cure” him.

“Some Gatorade, Most Noble One? To ease your throat and add extra harmony to the praises we sing to the One Above All. We have the green one this evening.”

“That would be most acceptable.” Lemuel liked the green Gatorade. He accepted the glass gratefully and drank the contents down, hot noticing the small quantity of hash oil that had been mixed in with it. He felt the warm glow though, and the world began to pick up a rosier hue. Then, to his embarrassment, his stomach rumbled slightly.

“Most Noble One, you have not eaten this evening?” Perpetiel-Lan-Paschar faked the concern beautifully.

“No, I came straight here, feeling a most urgent need to join in a chorus of praise to The Nameless One.”

Perpetiel grinned to himself, this urgent need to pray was a lot more chemical than emotional. In fact, it put a whole new meaning on the phrase ‘hooked on phonics’. The amount of opiates he was consuming was beginning to have its effects of Lemuel. Even the Tylenol he took for his headaches, ones that were growing more frequent every day, was actually Tylenol 4 and contained sixty milligrams of codeine per tablet. It was time to up the ante a little.

“Most Noble One, you are not alone in this problem. One of our experiences here is that so many of our congregation come here straight from their daily duties and do not have time to eat. So, as part of our temple we have a small eating place, one where food can be properly reverences and then served to the needy. After all, is not sharing good fortune and spreading one’s advantages to those in need also a form of service to the One Above All?”

Lemuel nodded, that made sense after all. He followed Perpetiel out of the main chamber of the temple to a central courtyard where the smell of cooking meat wafted deliciously across the garden. Perpetiel waved in the direction where two female angels were tending what appeared to be an old-style reverential altar, one where hot coals were placed underneath a metal grid and food offerings were placed over the flames, to cook in the heat. Humans had once made their offerings to The Almighty One that way, but they had ceased doing so. Lemuel reflected it was good to see the old traditions being restored. Perhaps if they hadn’t fallen into abeyance, things would not have reached this pass. Then he shook his head, for some reason his thinking seemed a little fuzzy these days.

One of the angels had been working quickly. She had taken a small, round loaf of leavened bread and split it in half. Then, she had placed some green leaves on the bottom half, added a red sauce and put it to one side. A white sauce had been added to the top half before it too was put to one side. Then, she lifted a cake of cooking meat off the altar, placed it in the loaf and handed it to him with a respectful smile. “It is called a hamburger Most Noble One. Enjoy it in the spirit in which it is intended.”

Lemuel took a bite of the meal and found it was good. So much so that he had finished it almost before he was aware of the juice dribbling down his chin. One of the female angels wiped it for him and respectfully offered him another hamburger. This one took him a little longer to eat but the sensation in his stomach was that of warmth and satisfaction. He suddenly realized he was actually happy, for the first time in a long time.

“This is most kind of you Perpetiel-Lan. Your community here is an example to us all. I am sure He Who Must Not Be Named would be profound in his recognition of your services to him and to our community.”

Like Hell, Perpetiel thought. He’d massacre us all on the spot. “That thought is profoundly pleasing to us Most Noble One. Might I suggest you try these poor snacks? They are called fries.”

An hour later, a well-fed Lemuel left the Temple, already writing his report in his mind. There was no doubt, no doubt at all, that this Temple was the center of human influence and the portal by which human goods were arriving in Heaven. The situation saddened him, it was obvious that the people here were working from the best of motives but the whole Temple of Ceaseless Compliance set-up was an example of how sin and depravity wormed its way into the heart under guise of honest virtue. Lemuel sighed, he really didn’t want to go home this evening. Compared with the temple, it was a cold, unwelcoming place and after Onniel’s behavior earlier, he had no doubt that it would be even more so. Instead, he decided to go back to his office and write up the report that was forming in his mind. That decision made, as he stepped out of the door of the temple, he turned right for his office, not left for his home.

That change saved his life. The concentrated sound blast that hit the wall of the temple was above and behind him, not directly over his head. The outer wall collapsed under the blast, dropping a great pile of masonry where he would have been standing. Lemuel was caught on the outside of the avalanche, rocks hit him and threw him to one side. His skin was lacerated by the shattered sheets of sapphire that followed the masonry down. But, he lived and was merely stunned by the explosion. Dumbly, his mind still fuzzy and confused, he realized that an attempt had been made on his life. This was unhead of, nobody ever tried to harm another being in Heaven. Well, not another Angel anyway, humans didn’t count of course. Then a shocking thought struck him. The assassination wasn’t aimed at him as a casual worshipper at the Temple of Ceaseless Compliance, it was aimed at him as an investigator of the League of the Holy Court. Somebody knew exactly who he was and had tried to take him out.

Inside the temple, the meeting was breaking up as the ‘worshippers’ got ready to head back to the Montmartre Club for a few badly-needed drinks. The crash of the front wall’s collapse brought the hasty preparations to a grinding halt. Perpetiel led the race to see what had happened and stopped dead at the sight of Lemuel, sprawled out on the sidewalk with masonry on top of him.

“If I’d known we were going to kill him, I wouldn’t have used the top-grade hamburger.” Lailah-Lan sounded slightly grumpy. She was justifiably proud of her hamburgers.

“We weren’t going to kill him. This is somebody else.” Perpetiel looked at the figure on the ground. It was moving, trying to get up. “He’s alive, get him inside, make sure he stays that way. Whoever did this might try again.”

DIMO(N) Conference Suite, Pentagon.

“Books Luga?” Colonel Baylor was surprised. Somehow he hadn’t thought of Luga actually studying anything. Surreptitiously he put his foot near one of the floor vents. To his relief he could feel the air current, the system was running full blast.

“Law books. I have decided to study law. I think it is hard to live here unless I am a lawyer. There are so many laws covering so many things. So I must study law.”

“Didn’t you have laws in Hell?”

“Only one. If Satan gets mad, take cover. Other than that, the law is what the strongest person says it is. Here it is different.”

“Our Luga a lawyer. Now there’s a terrifying thought.” The voice came from the stenographer sitting in the corner. The interjection got her a stern glance from Colonel Baylor, stenographers by job definition were supposed to be neither heard nor seen.

“What about Heaven Luga? Do you know much about the laws there? Do they have any?”

“They do although I do not know much about them More or less the same as your ten commandants. That should not surprise you. They came from the same place after all. They have a sort of police in Heaven, it is called The League of the Holy Court. I think it is mostly concerned with keeping the humans in Heaven in order.”

“There are humans in Heaven then?”

“Of course, there are many of them. The Angels use them as menial servants.”

Baylor sighed. If Lugasharmanaska could be believed, and that was always open to question, everything in the Second Life was very different from the pictures that had been presented. “Right Luga, today, I’d like to talk about the wars here on Earth. Particularly about the other beings, ones we think of as gods.”

“Why do you want to know about that bunch of losers?” Luga was openly scornful.

“They existed then?”

“Certainly. They probably still do. We ran them off Earth, Yahweh and Satan together did. They had a good-cop, bad-cop act going for them.”

“I wonder who the Bad Cop was?” The stenographer got another angry glance from Baylor.

“Usually Satan. But we converted their followers and deprived them of power. By the time we’d finished they had so few followers it wasn’t worth them staying. Only one of the groups really put up a fight and we had to strike a deal. If they went, their followers wouldn’t be tormented in Hell.”

“So that’s what Gaius Julius Caesar meant when he said he and his friends were protected by powerful gods.” Baylor spoke thoughtfully. “There always were rumors that he and some other Romans were part of a mystical cult. Whatever it was, it must have saved their necks.”

“You’ll have to talk to him about that.’ Luga was dismissive. “There were quite a few others as well. I think they were the first ones out of the Hell-pit.”

“Hardly surprising. So there are other beings from other bubble-worlds in Universe-Two.”

Luga took a moment to work that one out. “Certainly. But they haven’t been seen on Earth for millennia. We saw the last of them off at least three thousand years ago.”

Luga spoke for a couple of hours, describing the battle for control of Earth. “So, you see, most of the religions are based on memories of those other groups. That’s all I know really.”

Baylor relaxed and the stenographer signed off on the transcript she’d created. Then, he leaned forward again. “Do you really want to become a lawyer Luga?”

“No, but I want to understand the law. These laws you have are a new concept to me. My television show makes me too much money for me to give it up.”

Baylor couldn’t resist asking. “How much do you make on that show Luga.”

She grinned exposing her long yellow fangs. “When we broadcast, one thousand dollars per day. Or, as my bank manager says, ‘how now, green thou’.”