Lucifer's Odyssey

  Chapter 20

  The Mad Scientist

  Lucifer led Elandril to Jehovah’s lab at the urging of Gaea. Since the confrontation in the lab, Lucifer had gone out of his way to avoid the crazed god, but Gaea insisted that her husband would be interested in seeing the Elven King because Jehovah had spent so much time in Arnessa doing research before the creation of Order.

  Elandril clung to his sister like she was a lifeline, and Anne was just as reciprocating. Lucifer gave them plenty of space and admired his future wife from afar.

  “I take it you are satisfied with the pairing?” Lucifer asked as he tossed Elandril an apple from a market basket.

  “My father couldn’t have hoped for a better match,” Elandril said. “I know that if he were alive today, he would be smiling down on this bond. He always dreamed of a stronger relationship between the children of Archimedes, and here we are.”

  “Archimedes?”

  “Archimedes, the architect. Our father.”

  “What are you blathering about?” Lucifer asked.

  “The Elven Primal was the first pattern he made. The Chaos Primal was the last.” Elandril bit into his apple. “This is delicious. Are these apples everywhere around here?”

  Gaea nodded emphatically. “We can go to the gardens and pick some before you return home, if you like.”

  “What happened to him?” Lucifer asked, diverting the conversation. “Archimedes, I mean.”

  “Jehovah came to Arnessa to find out the same thing. He had questions, but Archimedes never appeared for him. In truth, I have no idea where he is. Every once in a while, someone will go on the news and claim they were abducted by him, or we’ll see a body fall from the sky and elves will blame it on him, but for the most part, Archimedes makes himself scarce. He came to my throne room once, just after the coronation, to report on the progress of some ancient prophecies that I wasn’t even aware of. That has been the extent of my interaction with the Architect.”

  The lab loomed large ahead, and Lucifer fought the urge to put his wings into the ground and take them all somewhere else. When Elandril and Anne made a stop to point out architecture and plant types to each other, he waited for Gaea. “Gaea, are you sure he’ll be OK with us stopping in?”

  “Of course, he will.”

  “The last time I went into his lab, he didn’t seem very receptive to creatures of other patterns. I really don’t want him offending Elandril.”

  “I’ll try to keep him in line,” she promised.

  Gaea walked up to a terminal and placed her hand on a sensor. The machine whirled and buzzed obediently and gears creaked inside the walls. Slowly, the metal door opened, and the party entered.

  “Lights,” Gaea commanded. “Locate Jehovah.”

  “Ninety-eighth floor, room 9804,” a voice replied from the speakers in the ceiling. “Current status: do not disturb.”

  She made a face to the guests. “He’s always in that state.”

  Lucifer looked around at the now empty room. There were no toxic fish in containers. There weren’t even containers.

  “This room could use some furniture,” Gaea said. “And some plants. Maybe an exotic animal or two.”

  “Just as long as they’re not fish,” Lucifer agreed.

  She giggled and patted his shoulder reassuringly.

  “We can leave if he’s busy,” Lucifer said. “Maybe see him at dinner or something. He would probably be in a better mood outside of the lab.”

  “He has been eating in here since before you arrived,” she explained. “He’s just going to have to get over it.”

  They slipped into an elevator, and Lucifer pressed the button with the 98 on it. He flexed his hands as the elevator plummeted down and shifted from sole to heel to stretch in case Jehovah decided to make this into another confrontation. Anne slid her fingers between his and pressed her head into his shoulder, and he laughed at his own silliness.

  “I’m sure everything will be all right,” he reassured himself.

  She nodded with her cheek planted into his triceps.

  The elevator announced its arrival, and the doors opened. A small, furry animal in a white lab coat coasted past them on a cart filled with a silvery-white metal. A muscular, rhinoceros-like assistant pushed the wheeled buggy out of view.

  “Which way?” Lucifer asked Gaea.

  “Where there is a lab assistant in a hurry, you’ll find Jehovah.”

  They turned down the hallway in pursuit of the furry creature and his companion.

  “I said zinanbar, you twits,” Jehovah’s voice carried to Lucifer. “That’s refined actinium. It’s radioactive, which is probably a good thing. The chance of you two reproducing has been effectively cut in half.”

  “Jehovah!” Gaea chided him as she entered the room.

  “Honey, sweetie,” he said as he kissed her on the cheeks. “What are you doing here?”

  And then he saw the guests and froze in mid-smooch.

  “We can leave,” Lucifer offered. “We can go right now.”

  Elandril offered a hand, and Jehovah accepted it. Behind Jehovah, a single water-filled container held a red human-like creature in suspension.

  “Nice to see you again,” Elandril said before breaking away and walking around the room to play with the contraptions along the wall. Lucifer joined him but kept an eye on Jehovah, who was closing his eyes.

  Lucifer flipped a switch on a machine that looked like it was turned off. The lights didn’t come on, and nothing seemed to change. He reset the switch location.

  “What did you change?” Jehovah asked.

  “I just toggled a switch here,” Lucifer said. “It didn’t seem to do anything.”

  “I’m not talking to you,” he muttered. “The elf. What did you do? Everything’s a void.”

  “Excuse me?” Elandril asked.

  “Jehovah!” Gaea said. “You mind your manners.”

  Jehovah gave her a look that clearly told her to shut up.

  “The future is gone,” Jehovah said. “You’ve done something here. What did you do?” He counted the people in the room. “Where is Sariel?”

  “He’s entering the Council,” Elandril said, apparently viewing the building in Alurabum through the eyes of a singulus. “That’s odd. He’s under guard … Actually, he’s bound … They’re turning my singulus away. I don’t think they’re pleased with my presence.”

  “That makes two of us,” Jehovah said.

  “Jehovah!” Gaea yelled at him. “You will treat our guests with respect!”

  “Honey, they’ve just destroyed our universe,” he explained before focusing on Elandril. “What did you tell him?”

  Elandril shook his head as he struggled to remember. “Lots of jokes about olden times. And then I told him that the Kadingir clan had been all but eradicated by Eranos.”

  Jehovah brought his hand to his mouth, and Lucifer could see that he was smiling. Lucifer tried to fight down his fury.

  “They’ve irrevocably harmed the Chaos Primal,” Jehovah explained. “And the Garrotes too, I see. That’s just plain ignorant.”

  Jehovah closed his eyes and steadied himself against the container. “Sariel tells the Council that Batarel is dead. Rabishu becomes furious. She doesn’t believe in rebirth, and she knows Anne gave him the poison. They have a device: the anur quppu. They’re bringing it here. It will destroy the pattern, just like the others that Chaos has destroyed.”

  He looked up at the container and summoned an assistant. “Tell Michael we have to prepare a preemptive strike into Chaos. Eranos is supporting the Council with at least two legions. I can’t be sure, but the image is getting clearer as they come to the fringe of the universes at Bulger’s Pass. That’s where we have to meet them.”

  The assistant obediently ran out of the room.

  Lucifer felt a pang of jealousy. How was he supposed to fight this kind of omniscience? He used to laugh at the humans on Earth for being in awe of a god that could but speak a wor
d and create a universe. He wasn't laughing at the humans because these abilities were impossible. He found humor in their beliefs because the truth was far scarier than that.

  This god could see the interactions of a trillion galaxies over billions of years. And he was so damned intelligent and gifted that he could make but a small change in a primal pattern or in the interaction of a dozen galaxies over billions of light years apart and effectively create a particular species he wanted, millions of years later. To a layman, it would just appear to be an asteroid hitting a planet, and sometimes it might even be just that. But for Jehovah, he may have just added a necessary amino acid to the planet’s ecosystem 300 million years later which would one day result in human beings in an additional billion. Lucifer would rather face an opponent that conjured cheap tricks quickly or that improvised as he did.

  But according to Batarel, there was a weakpoint—a kink in Jehovah's chain. If coaxed out of Order, he would be vulnerable again. His vision would become cloudy, and he could even be killed. And yet, here Jehovah was, proposing a fight outside of Order.

  “In the heart of the Harpathian Vortex?” Lucifer asked. “You intend to fight the best of our legions inside a twenty-mile-wide maelstrom outside of Order?”

  “Honey,” Gaea said. “If our forces meet them inside that vortex, they’ll be in Chaos. If they die, they’ll be out of reach of the Halls.”

  Jehovah looked up at the container.

  “Is there anything we can do, brother?” Anne asked. “Perhaps we could raise an elven army.”

  “There aren’t any transports available from the Elven Realm to that area,” Elandril said. “We’d be decades too late.”

  Lucifer slipped beside Jehovah and watched him for a reaction. “We need you to reincarnate Batarel. I know you’ve been holding back his resurrection, but he could help us.”

  Jehovah continued to stare into the vessel. “His body’s not ready yet.”

  “You’ve reincarnated Michael in days,” Lucifer said. “I know because I’ve killed him two more times since I’ve arrived here. What’s the hold up? Put Batarel into a body. Give us our friend back. You probably need him just as much as we do now.”

  Jehovah closed his eyes again. His head twitched, and his jaws clenched.

  “What do you see?” Lucifer asked.

  “You’re risking your lives doing this,” Jehovah said. “You would be safer getting married, going deep into the multiverse, and having children.”

  “Me and Anne?”

  “It’s an available path.”

  “How many immortals can you put into the field?” Lucifer asked.

  “Maybe twenty thousand,”

  “That’s not enough,” Lucifer said. “There will be a hundred thousand in those legions. I can help you. My presence in your ranks will make the first legion defect. That is my legion. Bury this feud between us and give me back Batarel, and I’ll give you a great victory to begin our friendship in earnest.”

  “His body is not done,” Jehovah said. “Besides, it will be your feud soon enough. I’ll have earned it.”

  More future talk. Well, Lucifer had a counter for that, too.

  “You didn’t see this attack coming?”

  Jehovah glanced at Elandril. “No. There was interference.”

  “I’m an agent of another pattern,” Lucifer said. “My presence here probably throws just as much haze into your plans as my future brother-in-law over there, but we are all entering a new era. If old enemies like the Elven Realm and Chaos can become fast friends, then there is still hope for you and I. End your assault on my pattern.”

  Jehovah diverted his eyes. “If you join the battle at Bulger’s Pass, Lucifer, I’ll give you the option to decide the fate of our universes and our allegiances. My path was set the moment I created the Order Primal. Yours will be set during this engagement.”

  “Anne,” Lucifer said. “What do you think?”

  “I think we’re going to miss our own wedding,” Anne said. “It’s OK. I didn’t like you anyway.”

  Lucifer smiled as he hugged her, and Elandril joined them. Jehovah turned back to the container. He put a hand over the face of the red creature, and Lucifer noticed wings inside the liquid for the first time.

  “We’ll postpone the wedding until after we get back,” Gaea said, worrying at her lip. “I’ll just have to send some messengers, reschedule the caterers, un-reserve the rental equipment, store the dresses …”

  “I’ll provide as much inside information about Eranos’s plans as I can,” Elandril said. “Even if it costs me a singulus. Consider it a wedding gift.”

  “But that’s more for Jehovah’s benefit than mine!” Anne pouted. “I’d be happier with a new set of armor: one with more zinanbar plating and painted blue, to match my royal heritage. It’s time the multiverse knew where our allegiances lie.”

  Elandril kissed her on the head and turned quickly to the man in the white lab coat. “Jehovah, I assume you have supplies available.”

  He nodded but didn’t reply. He turned around and squeezed by the two elves as he made his way to the door. Gaea started to scold him again, but her face became worried instead, and she chased after him as he exited the room.

  “What was that about?” Elandril asked.

  Lucifer shook his head and wiped away the moisture on the vessel. The creature was slightly bigger than a demon, but had two horns protruding from its skull.

  “Elandril, come here.”

  Elandril pulled his sister along with him. “What is it?”

  Lucifer cleared more of the moisture from the glass container. “Look at it.”

  “Scary,” Elandril said.

  “Look at the face.”

  Elandril and Anne pressed their noses against the glass.

  “Now, imagine it with scars across most of its body and face,” Lucifer added as he pointed at the head of the creature.

  Elandril gulped and backed away from the vessel.

  “You see it, too?” Lucifer asked.

  Anne breathed on the glass, removed her black jacket and rubbed the condensation and smudges from the window face. “Father?”