Dave Duncan - West of January

“I can so!” I retorted. “But…but not that far, I guess.”

Uriel dismissed me with a shrug and looked to Quetti. “How did you manage?”

Quetti scratched his chin loudly with a knuckle. “I didn’t.”

Then he flashed me a sly grin out of the corner of his eye, and I saw what was coming. I cursed under my breath and glared back warningly. Quetti and I had been good companions on our long trek together, but never close. If fires burned within Quetti, he kept them well banked; no man could ever warm himself on Quetti’s friendship. He was self-contained and taciturn. Usually. But now, I could tell, he was winding up to make a speech that he had promised me he wouldn’t. Admittedly I had twisted his arm very hard to get that promise. I had almost dislocated his shoulder.

Quetti turned his grin on Uriel. “It was Knobil, all Knobil. I collapsed. I was a useless heap, crazy. He worked out how to sail the chariot. He brewed up some sort of dye from tree bark and colored us both brown, just in case. He did it all.”

“That’s not true!” I said quickly.

Idiot! Once he had recovered his health, Quetti had also recovered his ambition to become an angel, for his only real alternative was to head home with FAILURE written on his heart.

My case was different. I had my revenge planned in detail now, and all I needed from Heaven was a ride back to the grasslands. I had hoped to earn that favor by returning the lost chariot. Once we had arrived north of the desert, I could have dropped Quetti off to walk and then turned my course westward, but that would have been unkind, so I had agreed to sail to Heaven. Besides, the chariot was in bad disrepair by then. In any event, we had been intercepted by an astonished angel, White-gray-orange, and brought in under guard as murder suspects.

“It’s true!” Quetti said. “He repaired the wheels more than once—and the ropes, and the sails. He made traps and caught game. He’s a devil of a fine cook, too! He worked out where we were and which way we should go. I went right out of my mind and—”

“He’s out of his mind now!” I howled. “Don’t believe all this.” Yes, Quetti had been sick for a while in the forest—that was hardly surprising after what he had been through. I had warned him not to mention that, but he was not to be stopped…

“Knobil knew how the gun worked. He once held off three men in a canoe with it. He was bringing down birds on the wing by the time we ran out of those tube things you put in it.”

The snortoise roared, drowning out both my protests and Quetti’s tales, but he didn’t even pause for breath.

“…fished me out one-handed and brained the brute with an oar at the same time. And after that he kept me tied up until I got my head back. He fed me like a baby! He treated my wounds with herbs. He found out how—”

“Oh stop it!” I yelled. “This is nonsense! Quetti caught a fever—” What the angels thought of me was of no importance. I would not care if they believed I had been helpless dead weight on our journey. Quetti was the one who wanted to stay in Heaven, and by talking like this he was steadily ruining his own chances—but he was determined to spare me not a single blush.

“…grabbed its head in a way that paralyzed it, and I ran for the ax. So we ate snake until…”

I had never suspected that his cool, sane exterior hid this outrageous juvenile hero worship. I wanted to scream.

“…in trade for the snake’s skin, and used it to haul the chariot through the swamp. He knows all about horses, and later he sold it off to some sandmen. I tell you, Knobil could talk an anteater out of his sandals!”

“Quetti!” I yelled. “You needn’t go into all this!” It was intolerable.

“…treemen and hawkers and beekeepers…mends clothes—”

“I do birdsong imitations too!”

“…best shot with a bow I have ever—”

“You sound like Jat Lon selling a horse!”

“…catch fish without—”

“I also sing and dance!” I shouted. “Now will you shut up!”

“He’s the finest, bravest man I’ve ever met!” With that final outrageous untruth, Quetti stopped and sat back to leer at me.

Silence followed, broken by another roar from the snortoise.

“Obviously one of you is lying,” Uriel said acidly. “And I know Knobil is an expert at that, at least.”

Everyone else laughed. I choked between several angry retorts and eventually used none of them.

“Where did you learn all this?” Kettle asked me.

I shrugged grumpily. “I’d seen Violet-indigo-red drive a chariot on land and Red-yellow do it in the water. I’d watched Violet use a gun. Brown-yellow-white taught me a little about maps, so I could use Red’s. Black, here, told me about geography, and I had a few trader tricks. Quetti knew that Heaven was somewhere in Dusk, north of the deserts. As for the rest… Well, I’ve been a herdman, a seaman, a miner, an all-purpose slave, a trader—I just picked it up here and there.”

The three men opposite me all looked up as the watcher in the corner chuckled wryly. He spoke up for the first time. “I always told you gentlemen that wetlanders make the best angels.”

Two of the three laughed enthusiastically, and I twisted around to stare at this cryptic onlooker. He was a small, slight man, well muffled in a white gown. He was sitting at an angle to the light and had pulled his hood forward to conceal his face, although I was sure he had been watching us earlier.

“Quetti’s a wetlander,” I said. “I’m a herdman.”

“I can tell.” He was old, his voice thin as a lark’s ankle. He did not turn toward me.

“The purpose of this meeting…” Uriel’s voice had fallen into yet a lower, sadder range, and I was uneasily aware that the proceedings were not the forgone formality I had been expecting. “…is to investigate the death of Red-yellow-green. Obviously we should have questioned these two vagabonds separately Does anyone believe their nonsensical tale about a snake? Kettle?”

“Certainly!” the plump man said. “I vote for acquittal.”

“What?” Outraged, Uriel turned to the angel on his other side. “Two-green? I can rely on you, surely?”

Two-green avoided his eye, glancing unhappily at the cryptic onlooker in white. Getting crosswise between two archangels was a Heavenly nightmare, but in this case one of the two was Michael, and that made his decision easy. “I lean toward acquittal also, Uriel,” he said miserably.

Kettle beamed. “Then shall I record the death as due to snake attack?”

Uriel uttered a growl that was almost a roar. “Michael! Red was a friend of yours! He was murdered!”

“It’s your inquiry. But I think you’re outvoted.”

Uriel sprang up, tall and black against the window, and also furious. “Do it, then, Saint! And may your ink freeze!” He leaned big fists on the table and stared menacingly down at Quetti and me. “We can discuss your future at a later time—”

“Let’s do that now,” said the quiet voice from behind my shoulder. The man in the white gown rose and walked around to the far side of the table. The angel jumped off his chair, and he ended up without one as Michael took the middle spot and Uriel angrily settled where Two-green had been, leaving him to lean back against the wall, fold his arms, and glower. The face of the little man in white—Michael, of course—was now against the light and no more visible than it had been earlier.

He looked up at Uriel. “Well? There are two pilgrims here. Have you no questions to ask the candidates?”

I was about to interject that I was no pilgrim. I might even have been rash enough to spit out a few of my opinions about angels in general as hypocritical, lecherous posers and of Heaven itself as callous and ineffectual, but I needed transportation back to the grasslands, so I would probably have managed to restrain myself. As it was, I caught sight of Michael’s hands on the table, and my thoughts suddenly began to jump in all other directions like a pack of roos.