"But, presumably, some people would like very much to see the Apocalypse fail," Christine said.

"I suppose," admitted Perp.

"That's what all this is about, isn't it? That's why I'm here. Because somebody is trying to throw a wrench in the works?"

"True. And between you and me, I wouldn't be surprised if Lucifer is trying to gain some kind of unfair advantage through all of these unplanned events."

"Well," said Christine, "He is Satan Satan, right? Treachery would seem to go with the territory."

"I imagine so. Even grizzly bears won't attack groups of four or more people."

A thought nagged at Christine. "You said that Uzziel's boss is the archangel Michael?"

"His boss's boss's boss, yes."

"And he reports directly to...?"

"Erm, well, that's where things get complicated. Above the archangels is another tier of beings.... There's no word for them in English. The word in Seraphic means something like 'Eternals.' The Eternals are, essentially, to the angels what angels are to humans. I've never seen one, of course, but I'm a.s.sured that they are quite real."

"And above the Eternals...?"

"Erm," said Perp. "Above the Eternals. Not sure about that. There may be another tier above them." the Eternals. Not sure about that. There may be another tier above them."

"And above that tier...."

"Well, there's no point in speculating. Let's just say that we all have a place in the Divine Order."

"But for all you know, it could be turtles all the way up."

"I'm sorry?"

"Forget it. Human expression. The point is, you never stopped to think that maybe the Universe is just an endless hierarchy of bureaucrats, all doing what they've been told, without any understanding of why why? Or worse yet, maybe Michael and his pals are just pretending pretending to be getting orders from On High?" to be getting orders from On High?"

Perp stared blankly at her. He began again, "You see, Uzziel works for one of seven a.s.sistant Directors of the Apocalypse, who report to "

"Yeah, I got it," said Christine. "So you're saying that Heaven's bureaucrats and h.e.l.l's bureaucrats negotiated a plan for the Apocalypse, and now you think Lucifer is double-crossing you?"

"Well, that's a rather simplistic... Basically, yes."

"What do you think they're after?"

"Oh, the usual, I suspect. Power, control, et cetera et cetera."

"Right, but specifically, what are they trying to do?"

"Hmmm," said Perp. "Hmmm. Ahhhh. Hmmm."

"You're completely incapable of thinking treacherously, aren't you?"

"Hey, I'm the one who told you I thought Lucifer was up to no good."

"Yeah, congrats on that. Everybody else seems to think that Lucifer is such a straight shooter. Way to see through the facade."

A hurt look swept over Perp's fleshy face. "It's not easy, you know, working with angels all day and then trying to deal with the minions of Lucifer. People are more likely to remember you if you always wear the same outfit."

"Exactly!" said Christine. "I mean, not about the outfit thing. That's ridiculous. But you need someone like me to help you figure this stuff out. Someone who is used to dealing with.... What's that?"

Christine's gaze had drifted to a portal that looked eerily familiar.

"That?" Perp said. "Just another portal."

"Where does it go?"

"Oh, nowhere you'd be interested in."

"Really," said Christine flatly. She had seen this particular pattern before. There was no mistaking it. It was, she mused ruefully, a very welcoming pattern.

"Tell me," said Christine, standing in front of the portal, her eyes transfixed. "How do these portals work exactly? Could I just draw one of these patterns on the ground and open a portal to anywhere I want?"

"Certainly not," said Perp. "There is a very precise method for creating the pattern. Also, on most planes there are only a handful of geographic locations where the transplanar energy channels converge in such a way as to make a portal possible. And you can only travel between adjacent planes."

"So what planes are adjacent to earth?"

"Erm," said Perp. "It doesn't really work like that. You understand that terms like 'adjacent' and 'planes' are really metaphors. We're not talking about 'planes' as in two-dimensional figures, like sheets of paper. It might be more helpful to think of a plane as a sheet of paper that is rolled up as cylinder, and then stretched out like a garden hose. And then, ah, tied up with several thousand other hoses, crushed flat again, crumpled up like a tissue, and then had holes punched in it at various places. And then the holes are filled with, oh, say macaroni."

"Yes," said Christine. "That's very helpful."

"The point is that the whole thing might seem rather arbitrary to a mortal being such as yourself. For example, earth only has a single feasible portal location at present."

"Is it in Glendale, by any chance?" Christine asked.

"Glendale? Never heard of it. No, it's in a place called Megiddo. As I understand it, there are two adjacent planes with portals to Megiddo. One is from a plane within the Heavenly sphere of interest, and the other is from some G.o.dforsaken place under Lucifer's control."

"So there's a portal between the Middle East and h.e.l.l?"

Perp shot Christine a pained look. "Well, first of all, there's no plane called 'h.e.l.l.' h.e.l.l is the absence of G.o.d, and there is no plane where G.o.d is completely absent. Conversely, Heaven is the presence of G.o.d."

"So... whatever plane G.o.d is on, that's Heaven?"

"Erm, in a manner of speaking."

"So," Christine mused, "Heaven is like G.o.d's Air Force One."

"Excuse me?"

"Nevermind. Wait, if Megiddo is the only place you can open a portal on earth, then how did Uzziel open a portal to Harry's office in L.A.?"

"Oh, temporary portals are another thing entirely. They're very expensive, and they only last a few minutes. Also, you can only use them to get to an interplanar hub, like this planeport. When boiling eggs, add a pinch of salt to keep the sh.e.l.ls from cracking."

"So there's no reason anyone would create a portal in my condominium in Glendale?"

"Not unless they planned to move the building to Megiddo at some point. Or reconfigure the interplanar energy channels. The former being the simpler option, by far."

"Hmmm," said Christine, regarding the familiar pattern of the portal with interest.

"You don't just reconfigure the channels. You'd need some kind of ma.s.sive "

"Oh my!" Christine suddenly exclaimed, pointing at something over the cherub's shoulder. "Is that Joseph Smith?"

Perp turned, a sour expression on his face. "I wasn't informed of any... hey, wait!"

But it was too late. Christine had disappeared through the portal.

"Duplicitous race," muttered Perp.

TWENTY-TWO.

Harry's affinity for Christine was threatening to spoil what would otherwise be a moment of unmitigated triumph. His feelings of exhilaration at the imminent realization of his destiny were intermingled with guilt about getting her mixed up in this whole sordid business. Of course in a sense everyone was mixed up in it it was, after all, the Apocalypse but he had rather hoped to keep things on a professional level. His unplanned and prolonged proximity to Karl wasn't helping his state of mind either.

"This blows," said Karl. "That dude coulda at least called us a cab or something. And I'm freaking starved. We need to get a pizza. You should call for a pizza."

"My house is just a few blocks up," said Harry. "You're welcome to whatever food I've got."

He and Karl had been unceremoniously transported to a cul-de-sac in Harry's Pasadena neighborhood and were now trudging toward his house. Harry hoped to change his clothes and take a shower before the conference, and he had high hopes that Karl would shower as well. The smell emanating from Karl's sweaty body was the only thing distracting him from Karl's incessant whining.

"You should call for a pizza. It could, like, be there by the time we get there."

"," said Harry.

"Is there a Charlie's Grill around here? I can eat there for free."

"No."

"Are you sure? I think I've been here before. Let's go that way."

"Karl, this is my neighborhood. I live live here. There's no Charlie's Grill around here." here. There's no Charlie's Grill around here."

"What a stupid place to live."

"Yeah," Harry replied. "I really wasn't thinking when I bought a house in a residential neighborhood."

As Karl's recitation of grievances dulled to a nearly indecipherable, monotonous hum, Harry's thoughts drifted back to Christine. What was it about her? He had, he a.s.sured himself with some success, no romantic interest in her. He was a happily married man. In any case, he was married, and he was perfectly okay with how that situation had turned out. His wife supported him in his career, although she wasn't privy to the details of his visions. She was under the impression that G.o.d spoke to him in the sort of vague but rea.s.suring way that allows one to achieve great things without being clinically insane.

Harry, for his part, allowed those around him to believe he was somehow privy to some sort of ineffable spiritual knowledge while steadfastly denying that G.o.d ever spoke to him a statement that was accurate if somewhat misleading. In point of fact it was the angels, not G.o.d himself, who spoke. And they did not speak to to him so much as him so much as around around him. He seemed to be receiving random snippets of conversations and images, as if he were an AM radio tuned to the same frequency as the cell phones of commuters whizzing past on a nearby freeway. It was a frustrating way to receive information, tending to be comprised of snippets such as: him. He seemed to be receiving random snippets of conversations and images, as if he were an AM radio tuned to the same frequency as the cell phones of commuters whizzing past on a nearby freeway. It was a frustrating way to receive information, tending to be comprised of snippets such as: .

"...the inexorable fate of the universe to be..."

or .

"...decree the immediate and total destruction of every..."

This had been going on for his entire life; it had, in fact, been a bit of a shock to realize in his youth that not everyone on earth was subjected to the occasional incoherent snippet of a conversation about incomprehensible matters being held by mysterious and invisible beings.

Most of these beings seemed to have no idea that he could hear them, which tended to undermine the hypothesis that Harry had been chosen to be some sort of modern day prophet. Prophets were generally thought to be recipients of intentional communication from On High, not accidental receptors of the occasional errant angelic missive. Harry chose to believe, however, that G.o.d had allowed him to eavesdrop on these communications for reasons of His own.

He was aided in this belief by two individuals. The first was his devoutly religious mother, who had been convinced since before Harry was even born he was destined to be a great prophet. It was never quite clear to Harry why she believed this, but he did his best to play his part, as this conviction seemed to provide his mother a good deal of pleasure.

The other individual was an ent.i.ty that Harry referred to or would have referred to, if he ever spoke of such things as "The Messenger." The Messenger, it seemed, spoke directly to Harry. Or, in any case, didn't seem to be talking to anyone else and seemed to have a vague understanding that Harry could hear him. And Harry could hear him, alright. Loud and clear. Many times, in fact, Harry had wished that the Messenger's semi-coherent ramblings didn't come through quite so clearly. The Messenger was a real downer.

The Messenger didn't provide much in the way of new information, but he provided a sort of framework in which to place the snippets that Harry received. Through these fragments, filtered through morose a.s.sessments of The Messenger and colored to some extent by the impa.s.sioned religiosity of his mother, Harry managed to get an overall sense of how the Apocalypse was going to go down. It was his knowledge of these imminent events that had propelled him to build his media empire. He wanted to be ready to proclaim the end when it came.

Harry had always been cognizant of the danger of becoming too wrapped up in the business of empire building that he would miss out on his true calling, to be the harbinger of the Apocalypse. He was, however, unprepared for the distraction caused by his feelings for Christine. It's the Apocalypse, he kept telling himself. What does one person matter in the scheme of things?

But he couldn't shake the feeling, as he trudged along the quiet streets of Pasadena toward his destiny, that Christine's fate was somehow linked to the fate of the world itself.

TWENTY-THREE.

Christine stood in the middle of what appeared to be the lobby of an office building. There were four doors, one in each wall. She was standing on a shimmering circular pattern of light. Next to the portal was the sort of dull abstract sculpture that inspires office building workers to think dull abstract office building thoughts.

This was not at all what Christine was expecting. This was not, after all, her condo in Glendale.

Was she wrong, then, about the pattern she had seen at the planeport? No, it couldn't be. She would know that pattern anywhere; she had seen Don from Don's Discount Flooring install that very pattern in her breakfast nook only a few days ago.

She stepped off the portal and regarded it studiously. Strangely, the pattern didn't match that of the portal she had stepped through in the planeport. She had seen this pattern before as well, though: it matched the one that had appeared mysteriously in Harry's office.

Presumably if she were to step back onto the portal, she would be transported back to the planeport. So that explained why the pattern on this one matched the one she had seen in Harry's office: they both had the same destination: the planeport.

Wheels turned slowly in her head. If portals with the same pattern went to the same place, then she was wrong about the portal she had seen at the planeport. It matched her linoleum there was no question about that. But the pattern matched not because the portal in the planeport went to her condo, but because they both had the same destination: here.

"So," she said to herself. "Someone has built a portal between my condo and this place, whatever this place is." But this portal wasn't it, because this one went to the planeport. That meant that somewhere near here there was another portal that would take her to her condo.

This comforting thought quickly gave way to a troubling realization. Someone had installed the linoleum portal for a reason. That meant someone intended to use the portal to travel from here to her condo, or from her condo to here. Why? And where was here here anyway? anyway?