"Nothing," answered Uzziel. "You're going to wait out the Apocalypse here. I've summoned Perp to come back and keep you comfortable. Just don't be stingy with the tips."

Christine got to her feet, open-mouthed, trying to decide whether she was going to protest, and if so, what she was going to protest about.

"Listen, Christine," Uzziel said, as he ushered Harry and Karl to the door. "There are two reasons for someone to be designated as a Person of Apocalyptic Interest. There are people who have a clearly prescribed mission, such as Harry Giddings, General Isaakson or and I can only a.s.sume here Karl Grissom. Then there are the wildcard P.A.I.s the people that a representative from either side has identified as a potential troublemaker. People who have the potential to derail the plan. People like you."

"People like me me?" Christine protested. "What did I I do?" do?"

"It's nothing you've done... that I know of. But you're an unknown quant.i.ty. Too risky to leave you down there. Anyway, it will be over before you know it."

"Why can't I just go home? I never wanted to be involved in any of this anyway. I don't even understand half of what's going on. How would I interfere with it?"

"You're a little too close to the action to be an unknown quant.i.ty. We've been watching you, of course. The Apocalypse Division has its agents, and then there's the M.O.C., but we're spread a little thin and we have to wait for the M.O.C.'s reports to be approved by the Observation Committee..."

"Does it matter at all to you," Christine said, "that I have no freaking clue what you're talking about?"

"Angel politics," said Uzziel. "Forget it. Hopefully none of it will matter by the time I get back."

Perp opened the door and buzzed back into the room. "You rang?"

Uzziel said to him, "I need you to take care of this one for a little while."

"Of course," said Perp. "You can subst.i.tute olive oil for b.u.t.ter in most recipes."

"If you have more questions," said Uzziel to Christine, "Perp here can help you out."

Uzziel escorted Harry and Karl out of the room and closed the door, leaving her alone in the interplanar limbo with Perpetiel.

TWENTY.

"Do you suppose it was a trick?" asked Gamaliel.

Izbazel glared at him.

"Some kind of trick spoon? What kind of angel carries a trick spoon?"

"Forget it," said Izbazel.

After ditching their motorcycles and changing into civilian clothes, Izbazel and Gamaliel had checked into a depressing motel in East L.A. With the Covenant Holders conference going on, it was the closest vacancy they could find to Anaheim Stadium. The motel was called the "Aloha," presumably because for any sane traveler pulling into this place, h.e.l.lo would also be goodbye. There was no evidence beyond the name of any kind of Hawaiian theme unless the toilets in Hawaii made a horrific screeching sound that resembled a hippopotamus gasping for air through a saxophone. The two angels sat on the edge of the lone double bed in the room, plotting their next move.

Izbazel prided himself on being a particularly clever angel, and he didn't like the idea of being outsmarted by an interloping amateur like Mercury. Nor did he like the idea of Gamaliel knowing he had been outsmarted by Mercury. Gamaliel's involvement in the angelic rebellion was an important element of Izbazel's plan, and his involvement depended on his confidence in Izbazel. Gamaliel was a rather malleable angel, if you knew which b.u.t.tons to push, but it hadn't been easy to get him to go along with a plan to a.s.sa.s.sinate the Antichrist. And if he started to get the feeling that Izbazel didn't know what he was doing....

Izbazel didn't need Gamaliel in order to execute the plan, certainly. But his involvement lent their project a certain legitimacy. No one would be particularly surprised to see Izbazel rebelling against Heaven in fact, they might even figure out who he was really working for. But Gamaliel... it was hard to see him as an agent of Lucifer. It wouldn't be at all difficult to convince the authorities that Gamaliel was only pretending to be rebelling, and that he was, in fact, working undercover on orders from someone higher up in the angelic bureaucracy. And that's exactly what Izbazel was counting on.

"So, what now?" asked Gamaliel.

"Nothing has changed," replied Izbazel. "Things have progressed far enough in the Middle East that the Case of War is no longer necessary. We've ensured that the gaze of Heaven is fixed on the Olive Branch War."

"What about Karl?"

"It would have been nice to have disposed of the Antichrist," admitted Izbazel. "But in a way, it's better to let things progress a bit first. If we wait until Karl has been formally denounced, then there's no wiggle room for either side. They can't try to pull a designated hitter on us."

"A what?"

"A designated hitter," said Izbazel a bit condescendingly. "You don't follow Mundane baseball?"

"Not much of a sports fan," said Gamaliel.

"In the American League, you can designate an alternate hitter if your pitcher can't hit the ball."

"Isn't the idea of baseball that everybody on the team has to hit? It seems like that rule kind of goes against the spirit of the game."

"One of Lucifer's more ingenious ideas," Izbazel mused in a thoughtful tone.

"To be sure," conceded Gamaliel.

"The point is, we don't want to kill Karl only to have Heaven claim that he wasn't really the Antichrist after all. Once he's been formally denounced, there will be no legal recourse. Both sides will have to admit that the Antichrist has been taken out of the game. Lucifer will cry foul, and the whole business will be tied up in the courts for the next five thousand years."

"No Antichrist, no Apocalypse."

"Exactly."

"And we're certain he will be formally denounced at the Covenant Holders conference tonight?"

"Absolutely," said Izbazel. "Christine will take him to Harry, and Harry has been led to believe that his whole life has been leading up to this. He won't let us down."

"It's helpful that these people are so predictable," said Gamaliel. "It takes a lot of the guesswork out of these sorts of schemes."

"Quite," Izbazel said. "That's the great thing about these Covenant Holders. You publish a book with the right words in it, and they'll burn it. Call somebody the Antichrist, and they'll denounce him. They're well trained."

"What I don't get," said Gamaliel, "is what's in it for them. I don't understand what makes someone want to accept what amounts to a prepackaged belief system. Wouldn't the sane thing be to evaluate every part of any belief system, in case there were mistakes in it somewhere?"

"Ah, but that would lead to anarchy," chided Izbazel. "You can't have every adherent of a religion picking and choosing from among the different elements of the religion, as if it were some sort of buffet."

This answer seemed to puzzle Gamaliel. He said, "But there must be something like a thousand different religions on this plane. Don't you already have to pick a religion? I mean, using your buffet ill.u.s.tration, hasn't a person already had to choose which restaurant to go to, before they even get to the buffet? What sense does it make to force everybody at a particular restaurant to order the same thing, when they can just go to a different restaurant? You're letting them make one big decision, but denying them a bunch of little ones. It makes no sense."

"What you're failing to understand," said Izbazel, taking the tone of a patient teacher imparting wisdom to an eager but slightly dim pupil, "is that people find it comforting not to have to make all those little decisions. Sometimes it's easier to pretend that all the little decisions have been made, so one doesn't have to worry about them. We angels don't fully appreciate the complexity of living on the Mundane Plane. The number of choices that a person has to make in a typical day can be overwhelming."

"But these people," Gamaliel replied, "these Covenant Holders, they keep talking about growing spiritually. How can you 'grow spiritually' when you refuse to grapple with any of these little questions? Aren't the little questions the ones that really matter in the end? The big questions don't matter if you get all the little ones wrong."

"It's not that they don't grapple with them," said Izbazel. "It's just that they have all the answers given to them in advance. Their version of grappling is to keep asking themselves the questions over and over until they get what they've been told are the right answers."

"That sounds to me more like conditioning than growing."

"True," admitted Izbazel, "which is what makes them so useful to us. But don't be too hard on them. Angels often act the same way. We a.s.sume that the higher-ups have thought through the ramifications of the SPAM. We a.s.sume that we're part of a system that ultimately makes sense to Michael, or G.o.d, or someone someone. All the little details may not make sense to us, but we go along with it anyway."

"But we we have a responsibility," said Gamaliel. "We're soldiers in a conflict that is much greater than us. If every individual soldier were to question his role in the conflict, you'd have...." have a responsibility," said Gamaliel. "We're soldiers in a conflict that is much greater than us. If every individual soldier were to question his role in the conflict, you'd have...."

"Anarchy," said Izbazel. "Soldiers refusing to follow orders for the sake of following orders. A military-style organization becomes impossible to maintain. War itself ultimately becomes impossible."

Izbazel went on, "Look, don't you think that humans feel the same way about their role in the universe? They have to believe that they have a responsibility to a higher power, or their lives mean nothing. So they give up some of their free will, telling themselves that at least some of the questions have already been answered, and some of the decisions have already been made. Life becomes livable, at the expense of a little freedom. Humans and angels are no different in this respect."

"But we..." said Gamaliel. "We're different, you and I."

"Certainly," said Izbazel. "We're doing the right thing, despite the fact that we're going against what we've been told is right."

"I suppose," said Gamaliel. "But for some reason it still doesn't feel feel right." right."

"Such feelings are the result of the conditioning you mentioned earlier. We've been trained to feel bad when we break from the SPAM."

"Maybe," said Gamaliel. "Sometimes I have the nagging sense that it's more than that."

"Listen, Gamaliel," said Izbazel. "I used to feel the same way. But now I know know what we're doing is right. You'll get to that point too. For now, I just need you to trust me. This is going to work out. Do you trust me?" what we're doing is right. You'll get to that point too. For now, I just need you to trust me. This is going to work out. Do you trust me?"

"Yes," said Gamaliel. "I do."

"Good," said Izbazel. "Now I have some business to attend to. You wait here."

"What kind of business?"

"Nothing you need to concern yourself with, Gamaliel. It's better if you're not privy to all the little details. Plausible deniability, you know."

Gamaliel nodded. "Yeah, okay."

"We'll meet back here at four. That should give us plenty of time to get to the stadium and kill Karl after Harry denounces him."

"Okay," said Gamaliel. He didn't look happy that Izbazel was leaving to attend to some secret business, but he was resigned to his limited role in the scheme. Poor sap, thought Izbazel. He has no idea what he's mixed up in.

"See you at four," said Izbazel, walking out the door.

It was a good thing Gamaliel was so malleable, thought Izbazel. With incompetents like Ramiel and Nisroc on the team, Izbazel ended up having to micromanage everything. Somehow the two of them had managed to burn through nearly two dozen corpses and caused two earthquakes, yet still hadn't gotten the channel reconfiguration right. Izbazel wasn't going to let them screw it up this time. If the reconfiguration wasn't done by the time Karl was killed, Heaven might have a chance to figure out what Lucifer was really up to before he could put his plan into action. And Lucifer would blame Izbazel.

"b.l.o.o.d.y incompetents," muttered Izbazel, as he miraculously popped the locks of a Nissan Pathfinder in the motel's parking lot. He jump-started the vehicle and got on the northbound freeway, heading for the desert north of Los Angeles.

Back at the motel, Gamaliel was breathing a sigh of relief that that pedantic twit Izbazel was finally gone. He found it excruciating to listen to Izbazel wax philosophical when it was clear that Izbazel didn't even fully understand the mission that Lucifer had entrusted to him. It was all Gamaliel could do to play the dutiful lackey while trying to keep Izbazel from irreparably s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up Lucifer's plan.

Lucifer's weakness, Gamaliel had concluded, was his pathological need to be demonstrably superior to anyone around him a trait that precluded him from hiring underlings who were more than marginally competent. Izbazel was the epitome of this sort of minion, a sycophant untainted by conscience or even critical thinking. Izbazel was so intent on pleasing Lucifer that he had jumped the gun, so to speak, with that psychopath Danny Pilvers, trying to get Karl killed before he was even officially denounced. That would have been disastrous for Lucifer; Gamaliel had been on the verge of intervening when Christine and Mercury showed up at Charlie's Grill. Now, thanks to Mercury, Lucifer's scheme could proceed as planned. Up to a point, anyway. Gamaliel had his own reasons for wanting to subvert Lucifer's plan, but the time had not yet come for that.

For now, he had to do his best to keep events proceeding as Lucifer expected and this required more work than Izbazel realized. Gamaliel made a brief encoded call over Angel Band, requesting two temporary portals. He needed to get to the planeport to make a quick trip across the Atlantic and back again before Izbazel returned. He had some last minute details to take care of.

TWENTY-ONE.

With some difficulty, Christine managed to convince Perpetiel to give her a tour of the planeport. Despite the obvious differences, it really was about as interesting as a mid-sized airline hub. In place of lettered signs with the names of destinations on them, the gates were marked with exotic symbols that represented each of the different planes. The same symbol was repeated in more intricate fashion in the portal itself. There were no ordinary windows or doors; the planeport seemed to exist in a sort of self-contained s.p.a.ce outside of any of the planes to which it connected. Harried interplanar travelers tramped down the concourse, vanishing into thin air as they reached their respective portals.

Most impressive were the security guards, great hulking winged angels who carried flaming swords. Christine was almost disappointed not to actually have the chance to see them in action; mostly they were standing around at various checkpoints, patting down travelers and examining their luggage for G.o.d-knows-what. The guards' mighty blades smoldered harmlessly in jeweled scabbards hanging from their belts.

While she and Perp walked, Christine managed to squeeze some answers out of Perp to her more pressing questions about the Apocalypse, in exchange for first listening to long stretches of advice of dubious value.

"If you're going to keep me here while my world is destroyed," Christine said, "the least you could do is explain to me a little more clearly what the h.e.l.l is going on. Like, who is Uzziel, in the scheme of things?"

"Fine," Perp sighed. "When ants travel in a straight line, expect rain. When they scatter, expect fair weather. Uzziel works for the Apocalypse Bureau. He's what you'd call middle management. His boss well, he has several bosses, but his main boss is one of seven a.s.sistant directors of the Apocalypse, who report to the undersecretary for the Apocalypse, who reports to the Secretary for Apocalyptic Affairs, Michael, whom you've probably heard of."

"You mean, the the Michael?" Michael?"

"Correct. Archangel. Important guy."

"Wow. Okay."

"Then there's the Mundane Observation Corps. Completely separate ent.i.ty, with entirely different concerns. They report ultimately to the Observation Committee, which answers to the Seraphic Senate. The M.O.C. has far more in the way of intelligence resources than the Apocalypse Bureau does. They observe virtually everything that happens on the Mundane that is, on earth. On a lightweight bicycle, the tires should last 2,000 to 3,000 miles. If they last longer, they're too heavy. Unfortunately, the raw data is not available to the Apocalypse Bureau, for various reasons having to do with interplanar security, checks and balances, that sort of thing. There were concerns that if the Bureau had direct access to M.O.C. intelligence, there would be... abuses. In fact, much of the current separation of functionality goes back to the Vesuvius Scandal, when agents of the Bureau misinterpreted data from the M.O.C. that seemed to indicate "

"Good lord," said Christine. "I mean, this is fascinating and all, but is there any way we can stay in the current century?"

"Hmph," said Perp. "There's no biological difference between a puma, a cougar and a mountain lion."

"Thanks for clearing that up," said Christine. "Now if you could"

"So the M.O.C. observes everything, but the Bureau usually doesn't get the data until a few days or even weeks later. And they often only get summaries and have to fight to get the really sensitive information decla.s.sified. It's a constant battle between the two organizations."

"And how do you know all this?"

"Me? I'm under Transport and Communications. We hear everything. Well, not the most sensitive information, but generally the T&C angels are the best informed. If the cats aren't sleeping on the radiators, turn down the heat. As I understand it, the Bureau has been trying to keep tabs on you, but it's been rather difficult. And right now, they can't risk losing track of you."

"I suppose you know who it was that rescued me from the rubble of that house in Syria then?"

"Hmm, no. I don't think anything of that sort was in the SPAM. In fact, that whole bit with Isaakson was unplanned. Presumably the renegades were responsible for Isaakson's death, but I've got no information regarding your rescue."

"So," said Christine. "Here I sit, in the waiting room of the Apocalypse."

"Precisely. You have no idea how much planning has gone into this. Can you imagine what it's like trying to get the angel hierarchy and the demon hierarchy to agree on anything? The angels alone are bad enough. You've heard the joke about the three seraphim, right?"

"No."

"Ah, well, I think the joke is 'What has eighteen wings and nineteen opinions?' But I've kind of ruined it. In any case, a lot of people would be very upset if things went sour now."