When Woody's heart jump-started up, he backed against the undeniable reality of the door. "Milt?"
"Uncle Milty, live and in person. More or less." Milt grinned expectantly. "Dummy, you can't say hello?"
"Uh ... hi, Milt."
"Semper fi, Barnes."
The groan of his unoiled clock was conspicuous by its absence, the second hand petrified just short of 2. "Milt, is this really happening? Aren't you . . . you know?" Then, in panic: "God, am I? All I had was a burger and - "
"Relax, it's not the big one." Milt laughed, swinging his legs off the bed. "Got us a gig, that's all. See your vest?"
The garment was an impossible still life where Woody had thrown it, one edge caught mid-crumple, the rest still defying gravity over the chair.
"That's - interesting."
"Boss calls that trick time out of joint. Lets me prove my point without a lot of Topper dialogue."
Woody swallowed hard. "Yeah, well, I definitely believe it."
"Just like the Corps, Woodrow: the Boss is looking for a couple of good men on brass who can also bullshit a little in a good cause." Milt raised his horn and spurted a clean run up to high C.
"Haven't lost your lip, Milt."
"Never." As usual, Milt Kahane looked like he was thinking something funny and sad at the same time. "Why do you hang out with that putz Stride?"
"Roy? I dunno," Woody hedged, hands in his pockets. "We grew up together. He's kind of crazy, but - "
"But he loves his mother, yeah, I know. Personally I'd like to give him a briss from the neck down, but the Boss works in mysterious ways."
"What you got against Roy? You don't even know him."
"I've known that shmuck for two thousand years," Milt said. "And you just follow him around. A natural follower, Barnes. You were following me the day that Shiite mother fragged us. Our fire team got him a few minutes later. Man, was he surprised to see me! Don't ask." Milt Kahane chuckled. "Tell you about him sometime. Roy Stride in a polka-dot headdress."
Milt rose, tucking the trumpet under one arm. 'Time to ship out, Barnes. Travel and adventure! The Boss wants to brief us."
"The Boss?" Woody hesitated, still trying to get a handle on all this. "You mean - "
"Numero Uno," Milt corroborated with a bright smile. "But most of the clowns Topside don't know it. He keeps a very low profile. I said relax, Barnes. This is no shit detail. He's a cool guy, very laid-back. Doesn't come on or anything like that."
The walls of Woody's room began to blur, fade, darkening to the midnight blue of infinity.
"First time I saw him," Milt remembered, "I thought he was some shlub from California."
10 - The woman taken in adultery, and other set pieces
Roy was very still beside her. Charity thought he might be asleep. They had to go home soon. Late she could explain; all night was pretty obvious.
When Charity sorted out her feelings as a retired virgin, they resolved to disappointment. Nothing specific; she couldn't make any kind of comparison because she wasn't that kind of girl. All the same, this was what all the shouting was about? Her expectations had come mostly from a little petting in Roy's car, mostly from the movies and TV. Reverend Falwell was right: certain things just shouldn't be brought right into your living room where you might have company or children. Movies went even further, soft lights and softer music with the man and woman photographed from the shoulders up, and you knew what they were doing and that they enjoyed it. Transports of joy - that was the phrase she heard somewhere, except she wasn't transported at all, just stayed there.
Roy seemed to have some kind of trouble, she couldn't tell what, but he acted embarrassed even after the lights were out. The whole thing was over in a hurry, just when she was beginning to relax and enjoy it. Afterward he asked if it was special for her. She said yes.
Charity stared up into the darkness with emotional second thoughts. They had sinned - well, not much since they were practically married, but still a sin. Come down to it, she wasn't sure bad girls got punished all that much. What they got were children.
Which it's just about the same thing in this town. I love Roy, I guess, so it'll be all right when we're married.
How? How would anything be all right or even different? She had married friends; when did anything change for them?
The though was so clear and frightening that Charity blotted it out, shifting closer to the warmth of Roy beside her. There were a lot of thoughts like that in the last year that she kept from Roy and Woody, notions she barely had words for. Like Reverend Simco saying most of the world was unsaved. That meant a lot of people. All those people and the way they lived, were they all wrong? Like, when you were poor, you couldn't afford to waste anything. Saving got to be a part of you, so God must hate waste as much as she did.
So would he waste all those million-billion people just because they're not exactly like us? Gol-lee, that's like chopping down a whole forest just to get one toothpick. If I got better sense than that, God sure has.
Roy lay on his side facing her. In the dim light she could just see the dark smudge on his shoulder that would be his White Paladin tattoo with the skull. He got more excitement out of belonging to the Paladins than anything else. All those secret communications with groups in Alabama and maneuvers in the woods, when all Charity could see was a bunch of out-of-work hunks who liked to play with guns, drink beer and talk about the "coming Armageddon."
They ought to get up soon and go home . . .
She must have dozed. Charity was suddenly aware of Roy turning over. The air in the room smelled horrible. Roy sniffed distastefully. "What's that?"
"Like sulphur." Charity tested the air. 'Ten times worse." Besides the intolerable odor, something else. "Roy," she quavered. "L-look."
"What?"
"There," said Charity, terror rising like a tide. "There!"
"Where? There ain't any - "
"Look!"
The darkness around them had taken on the hue of blood. As Charity stared, numb with fright, the blood resolved to a smoky, infernal scarlet. With a deafening whoosh the room seemed to implode. The light went garish fire engine red as the far wall sprang up in a solid barrier of flame.
Charity screamed. Roy tried to.
Against the wall of fire, amid the choking stink, two nightmare images were silhouetted. One of them Charity knew in every detail from God-fearing childhood: the horns jutting from the narrow, saturnine head, the pointed beard, eyes like hot coals. The lashing tail and hooves. Her deepest fears incarnate.
"Heel, Damocles!"
The huge figure of Satan jerked at the chain wound on his wrist. Straining at its check, something scaly with large bat wings gurgled uncleanly and slavered at Charity. As she and Roy cringed on the bed, Satan stroked his beard with the back of one claw and smirked at his leashed minion.
"I call him Damocles because, like the mythical sword, he hangs over wretches like you." An exquisite sneer. "Just waiting to fall. And you yourselves have cut the thread."
Charity felt for the silver cross around her neck. It felt hot. "Please . . . God in heaven, please ..."
"Too late for that," Satan told her in tones that would have thrilled Bellini or Gounod. "You're both dead."
"Dead?" Roy found his voice somewhere. "We're too young to die."
"Coronary, you clods. Both of you. Unusual in humans so young, the more so during a fornication not rigorous enough to tire a terminal emphysemic. Nevertheless, dead in the act."
"With no relish of salvation," the scaly demon paraphrased in a voice that made the Exorcist demon sound like Linda Ronstadt. Damocles' leathery wings flexed with impatience. He ravaged the rug with his foreclaws.