Tad Williams - The Dirty Streets of Heaven

“Doloriel,” I said, starting introductions.

“Yurath,” said the glow.

“Who is he?”

“Don’t you recognize him?” Little Yurath seemed a bit anxious, bobbing like a firefly in a strong breeze. Of course, its job of several decades was just about to end. Yurath might even have liked the guy. That happens sometimes. “Edward Lynes Walker. Founded a bunch of companies, including one of the biggest in Northern California. Philanthropist. Community leader. They even named a satellite after him.”

“Sadly, he’s still just as dead,” I pointed out. “Okay, so everyone loves him. Any reason this shouldn’t be a slam dunk for our side? Besides it being a suicide, I mean?” The rules on offing yourself have loosened up a bit. If Yurath could provide me with even the slightest history of painful medical problems or serious emotional trauma I was pretty sure the way Walker went out wouldn’t hurt our case too much.

“I can think of at least one reason,” the guardian said. “Look behind you.”

I could already feel him, but I turned and pretended to be surprised. “Prosecutor Grasswax. Goodness, this is my lucky week! Two days in a row! And Mr. Howlingfell-say, that’s a nasty bruise on your throat.”

Howlingfell just balled his fists and looked away but Grasswax showed me all his teeth. It took a while. “Doloriel. I’m sure you and your friends sat up late last night celebrating your victory.”

“Nope. I went home early, then visited old friends. Not that it’s your business.”

Grasswax leaned forward. Even Outside, where there was no air in the normal sense, his breath was like standing downwind from a slaughterhouse. “You like to make jokes, don’t you, Doloriel-no, Bobby Dollar, isn’t that what they call you at…what is it? The Compasses?” He said the bar’s name as if it tasted bad. “You must have found it very amusing when your little clot of an apprentice made me look bad in front of one of the Principalities.”

Anybody else that disgusting and standing that close to me would have got slugged, but you just don’t take a swing at one of Hell’s official prosecutors. Keeping the balance between the two sides is very, very delicate and the rules of what we do make it clear that loss of control is no different than going renegade, so I did my best to breathe through my mouth. “He’s not my apprentice, Grasswax, and I didn’t have anything to do with that. Let’s just get on with business. I’ve got no quarrel with you.”

He gave me a long look that actually made my skin itch. “If you say so.”

“But that’s the problem!” It was Yurath, the guardian, still bouncing around like it had to go to the bathroom-which, believe me, is not a problem guardian angels have. Its voice was unpleasantly shrill. “How can we? We can’t!”

Grasswax rubbed his fingers on the lapels of his magma-colored suit as though even talking to such a low-ranking angel left something unpleasant on him. “What are you talking about?”

“Where is he?” squeaked Yurath. “Where did he go?”

“What?” Grasswax looked around at the tableau of frozen police and unmoving paramedics. “Who?”

It suddenly hit me. It hit me hard. “The deceased,” I said. “He’s talking about the deceased. Walker’s not here.”

And it was true. The gurney containing Walker’s body was frozen on its way to the ambulance, but the man’s soul-the permanent, immortal portion of Edward Lynes Walker that was our particular responsibility-was nowhere to be seen.

There’s not a lot of territory Outside to search when you step through a Zipper. The farther you get from the egress, the less real it becomes until eventually it’s just gray nothing. Nevertheless, we all searched carefully, even Grasswax, but the timeless bubble we inhabited was unquestionably short one soul.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said with real feeling, making the guardian flutter in distress. “Oh, sweet Jesus.” This had never happened before-not to me, not to anyone as far as I knew. My so-called lucky week had just gone fully thermonuclear.

Grasswax swore too. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I remember being impressed-they can really curse in Hell. In fact, if I hadn’t been so damn terrified at that moment I would have written some of it down.

“What kind of crude, stupid trick…?” Grasswax happy would have been unpleasant; Grasswax angry was a lot worse. For one thing, he was bubbling out the slits in his cheek. “You think you can humiliate me twice in two days? I don’t care how far up I have to go or how many ladders I have to shake, Doloriel, I’ll see you skinned and screaming for this!”

Do not strike even the most deserving members of the opposition, I reminded myself, especially prosecutors, who will purposefully incite you-that is the stuff of which interhierarchical incidents are made. Right out of the advocate’s manual. “I didn’t have anything to do with this, Grasswax. I got here when you did!”

“Souls do not simply disappear.”

“I didn’t say this one did. I just said it wasn’t here. Probably just some minor screw-up.”

“Minor screw-up?” The prosecutor was practically shrieking. Red froth flew through the air. “Pearl Harbor was a minor screw-up-this is a problem!”

He was right, of course. Things like this didn’t happen. Ever. “Okay, okay, you call your supervisor, I’ll call mine. We’ll get it all straightened out.”

But even before the words were out of my mouth angels and demons started popping out of the air on all sides, more Zippers opening than half-price night at the Nevada Cottontail Ranch. Security had been breached bigtime, and now the emergency troops were showing up. This wasn’t just a problem, I realized, it was an actual, honest-to-front-office crisis , and yours truly was stuck right in the middle of it.

I suppose I’d better take a few moments to explain how some of this angel stuff works. It’s a little different than what you learned in Sunday school, and it definitely comes up short on harps and clouds.

First of all, don’t bother asking me about what my life used to be like when I was alive or how I died, because I don’t know. None of the folks I work with do. We might always have been angels but we tend not to think so, since our memories only go back a few decades at most, and we all feel pretty comfortable inhabiting living bodies and hanging around in the actual world. The oldest angel I ever met in terms of service time was my first boss, Leo, who could remember working all the way back in the 1940s. That doesn’t prove anything, of course. They might recycle us like glass bottles for all I know, steam us out each time and then fill us up again, century after century. When you’re an angel of the Lord you just have to get used to certain ambiguities.

There are tons of angels, and not just in Heaven. For one thing, every single man, woman, and child on this planet has a guardian angel. You can’t see ’em, feel ’em, or usually even sense ’em, but they’re right there with you from your first slap on the backside until the moment you take your last breath…and a little bit beyond. Some people think they also work to keep you safe from physical danger and from the snares of the Opposition, which could be true, but I haven’t heard anything for certain about that. Anyway, it’s not my jurisdiction. As you may have gathered, I’m an advocate.

Okay, so at one per living soul that means there’s got to be seven billion guardians at any one time. I’m assuming when they finish with one person’s life they start on another’s, but again, this is all guesswork. We advocates are a bit more rare. Me and Sam and Monica and the others each seem to work about five deaths a week, so let’s call it 250 or so per year per angel. At a rate of 50 million or so deaths worldwide every year that makes work for about 200,000 advocates (assuming everyone in Timbuktu and Katmandu is on the same afterlife system as us, which is far from certain). For every ten or so there’s also one or two working field support for the others, but other than Chico the bartender (and did I mention Alice?) you haven’t met any of those yet.