Challenging Destiny #25 Read online

  Oh crap, now I'm going to cry. I never though being dead would feel this shitty.

  Being dead. I get an idea, and it pulls me together. “Hey! If we're already dead, why are we worried about whether old Gary-Yawn is going to eat us?"

  * * * *

  So we all clamber out of the cave. And the dragon with his grizzly, ugly, human head whips around and springs. And I'm thinking, frickin’ hell, K., worst idea of your life. This tornado from his wings hits us, and we're tumbling on the rocks and bruised. He bellows this chest-rattling human-trying-to-be-lion-through-a-vocoder roar. And we're running downhill about warp six.

  Then, somehow we're at the bottom of the cliff. And the dragon's gone.

  Good call, Karen.

  We sit there, pseudo-hyperventilating and brushing off dust. Once I catch my breath, I notice how cold it is. Not Antarctic cold, but creepy-horror-movie-cellar cold. And it's dark, like dusk. The ground's smooth, not like dirt or rock—more like tile. It's flat but with lumps; that's how come it looked rocky from above.

  "It's a cinch,” I hear Tea whisper.

  "What-huh?” I ask him.

  "Hell,” he says, all quiet. “The lowest Circle."

  Charlie moves toward one of the lumps and jerks back. “Dear God. They're people."

  Like Soylent Green. Inappropriate thought number ... 666, I guess.

  "The betrayers,” says Tea. “The betrayers in the ice."

  I creep up for a closer look. It is a head, covered over with plasticky stuff—not cold like ice. I think the face is all contorted underneath. I can't really tell, don't want to.

  Charlie and Pete are talking. Pete sniffles. I feel sorry for him. He must be wondering what he did so bad that God put him down here with the Judases. At least, I know I don't deserve it.

  "Are they real?” I ask Charlie, figuring he'll say no.

  "I th-think, they may be, uh, statuary.” Not 100 percent convincing. Way to comfort the poor little Oriental girl, Charlie.

  "You think they're conscious?” I ask Tea.

  He doesn't answer for a long time. “I hope not forever."

  I'm picturing all of us sitting here till the plastic goo grows over us and sets solid.

  "We're heading for the light, right?” I say. As the sky's gotten darker, the light's brightened up, like the glow before moonrise. “Right?” They just sit there. Come on, guys, resist the goo. “Well, I'm heading for the light.” I stand up and march off, thinking, bastards, you better follow me. And they do.

  So we walk. And, dang, is it ever boring. Heads, arms, torsos all sticking up out of the plastic. It would be freaky if they moved, but they don't. Maybe Charlie was right and they're statues. God's hoax.

  Suddenly, I see something on the ground that's not a frozen betrayer. It's a little box. Holy crap.

  "My iPod!” Earphones and everything.

  I scamper over and pick it up. I've never been happier to see anything in my life. Not ‘cause I'm some techno-freak, but because it's a piece of home. Thank God, the screen comes on. I hit play; I don't even look at which song I've selected. Hallelujah, lovely strains of my Beatles download. Yes, I'm into the Beatles, okay? Guess I have been ever since that hoopla over the twenty-fifth anniversary of Lennon's death.

  "Dudes, it's playing!” I split the earphones, so they can hear the left side. They crowd around, trying to figure out what the deal is.

  Then, Pete leaps back like I zapped him with a cattle prod. “Quis Cahn-tat?"

  And Charlie's all, “Good heavens!"

  And Tea says, “A miniature radio.” He perks up. “That means someone's broadcasting."

  Jeez, I hate to burst his bubble. “Uh-uh. Sorry. It's just songs I downloaded off the web."

  They're staring, like they're picturing a giant spider winching my iPod down on a thread.

  "A gramophone?” asks Tea.

  "Kind of."

  Tea goes over to Pete, to explain, like, a thousand years of technology. Good luck.

  As for me, I'm feeling good, going hippie-trippie to my Beatles, thinking, man, their lyrics are so profound!

  And then it freezes.

  It's just skipping, I tell myself. It'll play again in a minute. But it doesn't. It's dead.

  Then, I lose it. I'm standing there, shaking my iPod, going, “No, no, no! God dammit! No!” Then, I'm bawling and screaming, on my knees. Jesus Christ, this is so unfair.

  When I feel something touch my shoulder, I jump. But it's just Charlie, going, “There, there, dear Miss Karen. You have a good cry.” Like that's what girls do. That makes me suck it up.

  "Whatever,” I sniff.

  It's darker now, like a half-moon night, but without the moon. I suddenly register how far we've walked. We're at the edge of the hills, black, jagged, like a wall in front of us. And from behind, that glow, a weird chartreuse, is getting brighter.

  I'm not hungry or thirsty—why should I be? I'm dead. But, man, am I beat. I could lie down next to these plastic-head dudes and sleep forever. Creepy thought, but I'm too tired to care.

  So I sit. “I'm not tackling those slopes without a break."

  "Of course, Miss Karen.” Charlie sits down too, and Tea and Pete follow suit. “You have a rest. You've performed admirably under most taxing conditions."

  Oh my God, final straw on the camel: “Can we just cut out the condescension crap? Freaking hell, Charlie, wake up to the coffee: girls are better at distance walking than guys. Oh, but that can't be true, right? ‘Cause guys are better at everything. Especially white guys. I mean, you must be ‘superior,’ ‘cause, hell, you own the world. You've made up all the best ways to kill. You dropped atomic bombs on Japan. And I frickin’ well bet you wouldn't have done that to the Nazis. ‘Cause Hitler may have killed six million Jews, but, hey, at least he was white, right?"

  I see Pete tapping Tea on the shoulder, and Tea trying to translate.

  "So here I am,” I go on, “trapped with three white imperialists in this white guy's version of Hell. And I don't give a flying fuck what Pete says about sin, this is not fair! I don't belong here! If I've been such a bad person, then take it out of my karma. But no white guy's God has the right to put me here."

  I run out of gas and put my head in my hands.

  "Well, I say,” says Charlie after a second.

  Then I hear Pete. He's glaring at me, going on in this cold, stern voice, and Tea starts translating line-by-line: “You are a contemptuous woman ... No wonder your contempt is repaid with God's contempt ... You complain of your persecution ... yet Christ suffered crucifixion ... and prayed forgiveness for His murderers ... He suffered the cross ... so that, reflecting on His suffering ... our hearts might be opened to compassion ... Who among us, thinking of the sacrifice of the Lamb ... can find the vanity within himself ... to pity his own pains? ... You, Karen, find yourself too noble for God's judgment ... I find you a vain, self-willed child ... and your disdain for your betters causes me to question ... whether, as a scholar, I erred to assert ... that the education of the female ... would make her a better Christian ... and not a prideful and rebellious contagion ... You are like the man who would remove the splinter from his neighbor's eye ... yet never sees the beam in his own ... I have no patience with you."

  Damn, he's going to make me cry, even though I shouldn't care what some old medieval monk thinks. It still hurts, and I'm thinking, so unfair!

  "Look,” I say, “I'm not Christian. I'm a Buddhist.” Tea looks stumped translating “Buddhist,” but I go on: “I never said I was a good Buddhist, like with the not desiring stuff—not too good. I always assumed I'd figure that out later, like someday, I'd be this female, Vietnamese Yoda ... Buddha. I totally know I'm flawed. And I'm not saying I'm as good as Jesus. It's just...” I stop to wipe my eyes. “Okay. I said some unfair shit. I've got a lot of anger. But you guys don't know ... about the Vietnam War. Like America was all, ‘If we attack the Soviets, they'll nuke us, so let's napalm this wimpy little country instead.’ My dad was a
kid then. They blew up his village when he was ten. And my Grampa Jack—he was the soldier who adopted my dad—he's been an on-and-off alcoholic ever since, ‘cause he still can't deal with the stuff that went down there, even after thirty years.

  "But the worst part is it never stops. Now, it's Iraq. Got to be all antiterrorist, so we drop bombs on this impoverished country ‘cause like, oo, they're so scary to the American Way of Life. Meanwhile, there's just more terrorists and global warming. The rich get richer, and two billion people are starving. And I get so scared that pretty soon all the nukes and droughts and mass extinction will ruin the Earth forever. Like why do I even care if I died as a teen in a bus accident? I would've died young anyway.” I'm sniffling; I try to stop. “So yeah, I get mad. I don't know what else to do."

  Tea's translating that for a long time after I stop talking. Then, Pete says, “Such destruction is surely born of the same pride I see in you ... Mankind bereft of humility ... A sign His Judgment is near."

  Man, this guy's one cold-ass bastard.

  I turn away, ‘cause I gotta think.

  I don't know how much time has gone by when I hear singing, real quiet. I look up through the gloom. It's Pete—and not Gregorian stuff either; in fact, I'm pretty sure it's not Latin. Charlie looks all droopy, like he's almost catatonic. And Tea's face is screwed up like he's gonna cry.

  And I think, holy shit, foot in mouth again!

  I go over to sit by him. “Hey. I should've shut up about Iraq. You really tried to help the Middle East; it's got to suck to hear it's still crappy over there."

  After a sec, he says, “Iraq was ... cobbled together out of factions never meant to form a single nation. I'm rather surprised it's held together so long."

  "I think we should make for those hills before it gets too dark to see."

  "I've been thinking,” he says, “of Buddhism—and Milton's Lucifer. Both teach that the mind is supreme, that we make our own heavens and hells. Magister,” he says to Pete, and some Latin stuff.

  Pete looks thoughtful and finally says, “Sick Et Non."

  Tea chuckles. “Li-bear Tu-us?"

  Pete grins, and Charlie smiles.

  "Okay, what?” I ask.

  Tea says, “I asked him if he thought we make our own hell in our hearts, and he said, ‘yes and no'—which is the title of his famous exegesis."

  "And he says I've got an ego?"

  Pete's saying something else: “Our afterlife reflects our own souls’ state ... yet it reflects God's justice too ... If God consigns me to Hell ... I cannot will myself out of it."

  Tea grins and says some Latin; Charlie translates: “If this is hell, then, and you are condemned for eternity no matter what you do ... why bother to praise God?"

  Pete laughs. “Said Sim in Purgatorio...” i.e. but if he's in Purgatory, then he's still got to play nice. Mr. Fire-n-Brimstone cracks a joke. Then he gets serious. “I would not choose evil, even in hell ... for to do good only for fear of punishment is an evil in itself."

  I say, “But if you're in hell, you are evil, so if you're not choosing evil, this must only be Purgatory, right?"

  Once Charlie's tranzled, Pete smiles at me, and I swear he's looking younger, and I can kinda-sorta see what a babe like Heloïse saw in him. Freaky.

  Charlie says some Latin, then, “I've told him I approve his sentiment. Goodness is its own reward. Only errant children need the rod to compel them to behave."

  Now Tea's translating Pete again, and Pete's looking right at me. “Hell is the absence of what one loves ... and I fear, for me, Hell is to be ... forever without Heloïse, my dear sister in Christ ... more than to be without Christ himself ... I fear even more for her that she would rather be with me than Christ ... and that, therefore, she belongs to Hell ... In that case, even if I merited Heaven ... I would be in Hell without her ... and longing for her even in the presence of Christ ... makes me worthy of Hell ... Such is the infallibility of God's justice."

  This guy thinks way too much—and about weird things. But I guess he did—does—love that chick.

  Charlie mumbles, “I wonder if I shall see ... no, surely not here."

  I'm thinking about Pete without Heloïse and how he thought Dragon Boy of Deceit came to get him, maybe for lying to her uncle or some crap, and of Tea with his I-don't-specifically-recall-being-a-suicide thing in the Forest o’ Suicides.

  "Tea, you really think we're making this place up, like, subconsciously?” It would explain the Dante.

  "I think ... I ought to stay here."

  "Nonsense, man,” says Charlie. But he sounds like he's flying on auto.

  "Here?” I say. “Among the plastic haunted-house props?"

  "Among the betrayers."

  Betrayers. I try to remember the movie. “You mean ‘cause you knew the British and the French were going to stay all colonial in Arabia, but you still told the Arabs they'd be free?"

  He looks at me, like dang-you-know-too-much-about-my-life. But he says, “It's more fundamental than that."

  "Yeah? How?"

  "I've betrayed ... everything. My own life, Karen."

  "How?"

  "By ... not being the man I'd hoped to be, by being ... pusillanimous."

  "Pew-what?"

  "Craven enough to hope that if I stay here and do nothing, perhaps, eventually, I'll cease to be. That's all I want at the heart of it."

  I don't get what his deal is—and it's really not my business, so I say, “Dude, have all the issues you want. But you're going to make that climb with us, ‘cause I'm not budging without you."

  He smiles at me. After a sec, he says, “Well, if we make our own hells, I shan't be leaving anything behind, shall I?"

  "Um, yeah, that's the spirit."

  * * * *

  We hit the slopes. It's not too steep. Only problem is, it's really gotten dark; the hill's silhouetted by that glow, so it's almost black where we're walking. There's a lot of toe-stubbing, especially for me, ‘cause I've just got the one free hand—I tried sticking my iPod in my pocket, but it kept feeling like it wanted to fall out, so I'm carrying it, sure as heck ain't gonna lose it. The climb's not fun—but not “Hell” exactly.

  After maybe an hour, we round a bend—and I'm in Shangri-La. The glow is pouring from behind rolling woods, like the sun rising behind the trees, but it's not bright enough for the sun. Everything's bathed in a green-golden light, like the air itself is essence-o-spring. There's green grass up to our shins and rocks with green moss. It's kind of like ... a super-advanced CGI version of fantasy land out of My Little Pony.

  Charlie's on his hands and knees, picking bits of grass and peering at them.

  After a while, he goes, “No, no, no ... no.” Real quiet. He drops this stalk of grass like he's just found something icky.

  "What's up, Charlie?” I ask, getting down beside him.

  "It isn't real.” He stands up and takes it in, this beautiful, glimmering garden. “There isn't anything underneath it. The grass is all one variety. There's no smaller plant life growing between the stalks like it ought.” He huffs. “It would be Hell to my grandfather Erasmus, I warrant. What botanist could manage here? And ... there are no insects: no gnats, no ants, no beetles. Imagine a meadow and not an insect. This is a sham world."

  I look around at the utter gorgeousness and try to see what he's seeing. Can't do it.

  "Were this Heaven itself,” he's saying, “I should pray God send me back to earth, back to what is, of all things, most blessed and most miraculous: to life. For what could be more wondrous than life of itself, blind and yet unerring, struggling under the power of natural selection to create ever more complex and marvelous varieties so that all things—even the evils of killing and death—come to good? All life is as one ... tangled bank, so once I called it, each organism playing its parts, from the mighty elephant to the tiny protozoa. Scripture teaches that the lion shall lie down with the lamb. Yet what a deplorable fate for the lion, robbed of his natural food and denied h
is native habits—and deplorable for the lamb, as well, robbed of all hope for natural selection to transform it into a greater being. All proportion, all the grandeur of creation stripped away ... All ties of love stripped away: to my Emma, my children, my grandchildren. All the creatures that crawl the earth, reduced to common things, merely ... existing, each alone.” There are tears in his eyes.

  Tea's trying to translate, but Pete's got that generations-gap expression.

  Then, Charlie's shoulders start to shake, and he covers his eyes with his hand. Man, in school it's all “Darwin-equals-cold-science,” but that old guy really loves, like, the Earth—and everything on it.

  I get all impulsive and go up and hug him. “It's okay, Charlie."

  He hugs me back in this reserved, shoulder-patty way. “I am quite an old fool. But...” He pulls away, stooping down to squint at something in the grass. Guy's like a cat stalking a bug. He is stalking a bug. A big, old Hell bug. Jeez, he's picking it up, this reddish beetle, over an inch long.

  "Bless my soul!” Charlie's got the beetle pinched in his fingers, and it's waving its legs at him. He laughs. “If it isn't a female North-American giant stag-beetle (Lucanus elaphus)! Hallo, my dear, how did you get here? And what have you been eating? And where are grasshoppers you'll be laying your eggs in?"

  Gross.

  Dead beetle, Charlie. It doesn't need food and it doesn't need baby beetles. But I don't have the heart to say that. He's like a kid at Christmas.

  "So there's life here after all,” he says.

  Tea smiles. “If we make our own heavens and hells, then you can conjure beetles to your heart's content."

  "Oh no, my dear sir, not in the slightest. I know a stag beetle on sight—but the precision of her: I could never imagine that. No, my good man, there is a world here.” He looks around, all smiley. “I haven't begun to fathom it. But it is a world, and like every world, it must be governed by laws that dictate how its parts connect. And if I am dead, and by whatever means, find myself in this place, hale and hearty, I may be graced with time enough to discover the wonders at work here.” He puts the beetle in his pocket.