Saviors 101

Prologue the Last

Prologue the Last

One week until Armageddon (finally!)

Only three of them had answered when Michelle called this second meeting of CABER, Mary, Dionysus, and the Buddha. Last night’s party at the rebuilt Valhalla lodge—a curiously stark and uncomfortable building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and Walt Disney in the early Cubist motif—had left enough deities strewn across the floor to make a Roman emperor’s eyes bug out, if a single one had been allowed into Heaven to see, which none had. The others looked like she felt, as if they had crawled the entire distance to the CABER meeting room.

They waited an extra fifteen minutes, it had been almost twenty years since the last meeting so she decided to give folks a little leeway, but no one else showed.

Parvati hadn’t only shunned Shiva since the last meeting, she’d moved in with Isis. And apparently as rather more than roommates if rumors were to be trusted.

Shiva had grabbed his sword and throwing knives, and he and Apollo, who’d been dumped by yet another Goddess for being a macho jerk, had decided to go hunting innocent beasts of the forests to prove they were still men. They still didn’t get that it was a new eon and neither handsome nor machismo played as well as it used to. The newly required factors of tolerance and at least appearing to listen were outside either of their abilities to comprehend.

And Loki, of course, no one had seen him at all in the last twenty-one years.

She had lost track of time herself until Henrietta reminded her that the Second Messiah would start remembering her past on her twenty-first birthday on December 25th, and it was already October. Michelle hadn’t forgotten the plan; it was just damned inconvenient that it was happening so soon.

Twenty-one years? Where did the time go? She’d been the one to get Diana the Huntress drunk enough to agree to the role of Second Messiah. She, Mary, Jesus, and Diana had swilled entirely too much grappa one night. They’d all had enough to make anyone’s blood flow smoothly and Diana had agreed that it was a great idea and left right away. The twelve weeks of colic after her rebirth on Earth, everyone agreed, was due to a truly awe-inspiring hangover.

“Anyone remember what happens to our Messiah on her twenty-first birthday?”

Mary blinked several times.

“Oh my.”

“Oh my, is right. Anyone else?”

Dionysus poured them all a glass of wine.

“Hair of the dog,” was his whispered answer to Michelle’s arched eyebrow. “Don’t worry, if I sang I think my head would explode.”

The Buddha simply shook his head, slowly, and inspected the glass of glittering gold wine cautiously.

Henrietta popped in and began waving her hand in the air.

“Oh, I know! I know what happens to her!”

The four of them winced at Henrietta’s bright and piercing voice and all raised their glasses immediately. They would need a great deal of fortification if they were going to survive this.

Once Michelle got past the glandular reaction to wine first thing in the morning, it was barely noon after all, the taste flooded into her being. Dionysus’ wines were always unique, and surprising. Who would have thought that an apricot wine could remind her of climbing into a 1957 Chevy, but it did. All power and chrome and leather, with a gentle hint of apricot.

By now Henrietta floated up and down in her excitement, squeaking loud enough to split eardrums, even ones not plagued with hangovers.

Michelle let her have her moment. It was tough enough on Henrietta’s ego being the shortest member of the lowest choir of angels.

“She changes. She shifts from being a normal child into a slow realization of her true powers as the next Messiah. The first Goddess on Earth since Dante’s Beatrice.”

Michelle nodded, but before she could speak, Henrietta rambled on.

“You would think growing up in such a modern city as Seattle, that she wouldn’t have discovered so many of the old ways. The things she’s done have just been so fun to watch. I’d forgotten how much I missed them.” She began talking faster and faster, her tiny hands accenting her stream of thoughts with little shapes and pokes and finger wigglings.

“My stars but the day she caused her lusty old professor to spend an entire class of Physics 304 practicing headstands on the front bench while reciting Ginsberg’s Howl had the choirs in stitches for days.” She leaned in and whispered the next bit conspiratorially.

“One of the Seraphim passed almost an entire glass of scotch through his nose. You should have heard the words he came up with.” She blushed a delicate pink that rippled across her face and spilled right over onto her wings.

The Devil Incarnate leaned forward until she was nose-to-nose with CABER’s secretary-angel.

“Hold on, she doesn’t have any powers yet. And they aren’t supposed to let her do things like tha…” Michelle trailed off. Something there that she’d missed.

Something important. She muddled around in what had once been her brain and hopefully would be again some day.

“Did you say physics?”

Henrietta nodded happily and reached for her teacup.

Michelle laid a finger across the rim so that Henrietta couldn’t lift it.

“She’s supposed to be a speaker, and a writer. We sent her down to Earth as a politician, not a scientist.”

The angel tugged at the teacup handle trying to work it free.

“Personally,” she grunted quietly as she clasped both hands around the teacup handle, braced her feet on the saucer and leaned back, “I’m quite proud of her.”

Michelle tried to ignore the combination of a cold internal chill and the burning hot liquid splashing against her restraining finger.

“She’s a straight ‘A’ student, majoring in astrophysics.” A final sharp twist and Henrietta secured her cup without either of them wearing too much tea. Before she could drink any, Mary topped it up from the pot but failed to add another sugar cube, so Henrietta had to walk across the table to retrieve one.

“Well, not exactly straight ‘A.’ ” She stopped in front of Michelle and shifted the sugar cube to a more comfortable position on her hip. “She earned a low B in ‘Rhetoric and Debate.’ Just too bored by it to show up except for the tests. Bad girl never even did the homework.”

Mary groaned and Michelle wasn’t feeling so fine herself as Henrietta hefted the sugar cube over the rim and slid it carefully into the steaming cup.

“Well, we’ve got to straighten her out.”

“She’s also on the campus archery team. She’s great, but I guess she comes by that naturally because of who she is and all. The team hasn’t lost all year with Diana the Huntress on their side.”

Henrietta wielded a teaspoon like a witch on the heath stirring her cauldron. Apparently satisfied, she sat down and tipped the cup back for a long drink.

“Those arrows fly like hawks at the target. Whap! They smack clear through the canvas bullseye like it wasn’t even there.”

“We need to send a someone down there.” The Buddha again with his rarely offered but again, inevitably, wise advice.

Michelle did her best to tune out the angel, who had now moved on to bad football teams and sled dogs for reasons not even being the Devil allowed her to fathom.

Mary was carefully studying the window that showed the corner of Main and West Hill Road in a small upstate New York dairy town where nothing much ever happened. But Jesus did enjoy coaching a Little League team there on summer weekends. He and several other Gods had volunteered for teams in that area and used the kids to work out their various rivalries. Mohammed was fine now with the co-ed nature of the team, but the only thing that worked on the Little League moms was threatening them with God’s wrath…He was careful not to say which God.

They would have to send a CABER member down to Seattle. But who? Dionysus would just get Dana Murphy drunk and teach her to sing operettas. The Buddha was a good candidate, except he rarely spoke, having already transcended and all that. Diana had hated Apollo in real life, even if he were willing to go. It was not likely that a mere incarnation on Earth had tempered those feelings, even without the soon-to-awaken memories.

And Mary was just far too nice. She’d never manage to straighten anyone out, she just made everyone around her feel good and happy to be alive.

Michelle had to admit that she wasn’t able to get inspired herself. Having the Devil act as babysitter to the Second Messiah didn’t strike her as a formula for success.

Her eyes landed on the room’s only other occupant.

She discarded the idea savagely.

It came back.

She searched desperately for another possibility.

Any other possibility.

There wasn’t one.

Her sigh attracted everyone’s attention, except for Henrietta who was wrestling a tea biscuit from the plate and dragging it across the table like a hunter headed through the forest back to her 4x4. Her kill left a trail of crumbs across the tabletop.

“I know who to send.”

Dionysus created a fresh glass of wine and knocked it back. Mary gripped her teacup. The Buddha fought a shiver as if the room temperature had plummeted.

They all knew that whichever of them Michelle picked, the others would vote for. Partly because it would spare themselves the task and partly because she’d been right too often in the fourteen billion years since the universe’s creation.