Down: Trilogy Box Set (136 page)

“Are we not still human?” he had asked his acolytes who hung on every utterance. “We have done wrong. We have done evil. We have been rightly punished and we cannot be redeemed. We are in this most unhappy place for all of eternity and we will surely suffer greatly at every turn. But must we condemn ourselves further by stripping ourselves and our fellow man of dignity? Is there not a better way, a way with less fear, less degradation, less war, more, dare I say, hope?”

He had been in Hell for such a short time compared to many others, fewer than one hundred fifty years. At the time of his death he was already acclaimed as father of the fatherland, a unifier of a fractured Italy. Only he remembered his shameful act of violence as a young soldier that condemned him to Hell. Since his arrival he had been privately contemplating a humane unification of the warring fiefdoms of Hell. Looking back on the lightning-fast events of the past few months he was astonished at how fast his plan had come together. First, Italia came under his control, then Francia, and now Iberia. He was under no illusion as to the role one man had played in realizing these gains, one living man. And now he had been awakened with the incredible news that John Camp was back. Here in Paris, at his very palace.

Garibaldi threw on his ever-present red shirt and black trousers and fought his sore wrists to pull up high black boots. As king of this large empire he might be expected to wear clothes befitting a monarch but his egalitarian sensibility prevented it. Likewise, he refused to sleep in King Maximilien’s bedchamber that had stayed empty ever since he was toppled. Instead he slept in a modest room down the hall from the royal apartments, a room that Robespierre had used as one of several dressing rooms, this one for his hunting clothes.

Walking down the wide hall Garibaldi heard someone running behind him. He turned to see his friend and compatriot, Michelangelo Amerighi da Caravaggio, flashing a joyful smile.

“Is it true?” Caravaggio said.

“I haven’t seen them yet but I’m sure it’s true,” Garibaldi said.

“Them? I only heard about John Camp.”

“The lady Emily is here also, and others.”

Caravaggio caught up and put an arm around his master’s waist. “Emily too! I don’t know if I should be happy to see them or sad they did not reach home.”

“Well, we shall see. They’re in one of our ridiculously opulent state rooms.”

“Don’t let the French nobles hear you, Giuseppe. They don’t understand your philosophy yet.”

Down another corridor, they ran into Guy Forneau, Robespierre’s principal minister and now Garibaldi’s.

Without being asked Forneau said, “Yes, I’ve heard too. I am overwhelmed, positively overwhelmed.”

“Have you notified Simon?” Caravaggio asked.

“I sent someone to his room,” Forneau said. “He will be along.”

“You mean they will be along,” Caravaggio said with a wink.

Forneau smiled. “Yes, the lady Alice as well, I am quite sure.”

Alice Hart, one of the Earthers caught up in the South Ockendon incident had astonished her companions by refusing to return home with them, electing to stay in Hell with the man she had fallen for, Simon Wright, the English boilermaker. Since then the two of them had never been seen apart, not once, and the Italians and French ribbed Simon mercilessly, dubbing him Signore or Monsieur Hart.

On cue, Simon and Alice came running down the hall until they caught up with them.

“I don’t know if this is the worst news or the best news I’ve heard,” Alice said. “Didn’t they make it home?”

“Do we know why they’re here?” Simon asked.

Garibaldi pushed open the large double-doors. “Let’s ask them, shall we?”

The greeting was chaotic. John and Emily were mobbed like rock stars, bouncing from embrace to embrace, all the while pelted with questions.

“Let them breathe!” Garibaldi said, grinning from ear to ear. “Give them a chance to talk.”

“Giuseppe,” John said, clapping Garibaldi’s shoulders. “It’s good to see you.”

“I don’t know if I am supposed to be happy or sad,” Garibaldi said. “But in any event, simply allow me to be pleased to lay these old eyes upon you and Emily.”

Emily kissed his cheeks. “You look well,” she said.

“You are a liar,” he said. “A charming liar. I am an old, tired man.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “You put us all to shame.”

Caravaggio came up behind Emily and whispered, “So, have you finally decided to leave John for me?”

“Not exactly,” she laughed, “but it is splendid seeing you again.”

“I have something to show you later,” he promised.

When Emily hugged her, Alice broke down in tears.

“I’ve thought of you every day,” Emily said.

“And I, you. Did you and the others not get home?”

“We did but we had to come back. We’ll explain. Have you had second thoughts?” Emily asked.

“Of course, how could I not? But I do love Simon and I’m needed here. I wasn’t loved or needed back home. So I’m good. I’m really good.”

“Everyone,” John announced. “I’d like you all to meet my brother, Kyle, and these two fine British soldiers who’ve risked their lives to get us here, Sergeant Tom O’Malley and Trooper Jack Culpepper.”

“Gentlemen,” Garibaldi said, “I could not be more pleased to meet you.”

“John’s told me all about you, sir,” Kyle said.

“If you are John’s brother, then you are also my brother,” Garibaldi said. “I noticed you are limping. Were you injured?”

“A long time ago,” Kyle said.

“And these fine young soldiers,” Garibaldi said, addressing the SAS men. “I couldn’t help notice your rifles. What are they?”

“AK-47s, sir,” O’Malley said. “Thirty-round magazines, capable of firing in full-auto or semi-auto modes.”

“Wherever did you get them? I’ve seen nothing like them in Hell.”

“Kyle Camp’s responsible for them, sir. He’s a gunsmith. He made them here in a forge in England—sorry, Brittania I guess it’s called.”

“Well, I will wish to see what they are capable of,” Garibaldi said.

Forneau ordered wine and food brought in and everyone took to chairs and sofas to listen to John talk.

“I suppose I’d better start with what happened when we got to Bulogne-sur-Mer,” he said.

“We know all about it,” Simon said. “Brian Kilmeade came to Paris and gave us a full accounting.”

“Where is he?” John asked.

“He returned to Iberia with Queen Mécia,” Forneau said. “The queen has committed to raising a large army to assist our alliance. We do expect them in Paris any day now.”

“Brian saved the day,” John said. “If it hadn’t been for him we’d all be learning Russian in one of Stalin’s prisons. But getting out of Francia wasn’t the end of it. We had more fun and games when we got back to Brittania.”

He told them about returning to Dartford only to be ambushed by King Henry and Thomas Cromwell, about taking Henry hostage moments before they were transported back to Earth, about learning that the MAAC technical staff, a class of schoolboys, and untold numbers of Londoners had been lost to Hell, and about the spontaneous opening of passages between the two worlds that had unleashed a veritable floodgate of Hellers to Earth, rovers included.

“There have been whispers about a passageway back to Earth,” Simon said. “I didn’t believe it but it’s really true?”

“It’s true,” Emily said.

Caravaggio said, “Can you imagine? Who wouldn’t wish to return to the living, if only for one day, one hour?”

“Put it out of your mind,” Garibaldi said. “This is our home now and we have much work to do.”

Caravaggio bowed. “Of course, maestro.”

“What happened to Trevor, Arabel and the children, and all my friends from South Ockendon?” Alice asked.

“They all got back safely,” John said. “Trevor returned with us and a squadron of British special forces soldiers, colleagues of Tom O’Malley and Jack Culpepper. He’s trying to find the schoolboys. The soldiers have deployed to the four known passageways with Kyle’s rifles to block more Hellers coming through.”

The wine and food arrived. Kyle lifted his full glass and caught John’s eye. His brother gave him a nod and a smile, brotherly permission to hit the bottle.

“And what is your mission?” Garibaldi asked John.

“It’s Emily’s mission. The rest of us are here to support her.”

“We need to find my former colleague, Paul Loomis,” Emily said. “He’s with Stalin who’s latched on to him as a science advisor. When we saw Paul in Germania he told me he knew how to plug the passages. No one else on Earth has an idea how to do it. We’ve got to find him, learn the method, and return home to put it into place.”

Simon swallowed a mouthful of pheasant and asked, “What will happen if you can’t, as you say, plug the holes?”

“The passageways could widen on their own,” Emily said. “There’s no way of predicting where it could lead. A connection as large as all of London? All of England? All of Europe? It would lead to complete and utter chaos and destruction.”

“A tide of bad souls polluting your shores,” Caravaggio said.

“We need to know where Stalin is,” John said. “We find Stalin, we find Loomis.”

Forneau said, “We know precisely where he is. He went to Cologne to prepare for a coordinated assault upon us. Our spies tell us he is seeking allegiances to surpass our own forces.”

“He is likely to get the Slavic kingdom to join with him,” Garibaldi said.

“How significant would that be?” John asked.

“It would not be good for us,” Garibaldi said. “But I am more troubled by reports suggesting he is having negotiations with Alexander, the Macedonian. Here I am in Francia. If I were to turn south to meet him in Italia, then the Russians and Germans would take Francia. If I stay here, then he will continue to lay waste to my kingdom.”

“Then maybe it’s for the best if he joins Stalin so you can whip both their asses,” John said.

Garibaldi almost fell off his chair laughing. “Whip their asses! You Americans are priceless.”

Forneau frowned. “I do not know what would be gained by whipping enemy donkeys but if I understand the point John is making, one decisive victory over all our foes would be sweet indeed.”

“And to that end,” Garibaldi said, “Simon has assembled a team of French and Italians, some of them modern men. They have been working tirelessly at the principal forge in Paris to use the knowledge from your books to build better weapons.”

“How’s it going?” John asked.

Simon began talking with a full mouth only to be gently rebuked by Alice.

“She’s trying to teach me manners which is like teaching a pig to fly,” he said. “To be honest with you, John, it will be some time, a good year I should think, to modify the forge’s chimney stack and build a steam engine to achieve the kinds of heat the blast furnaces are meant to put out. Only then can we make this marvelous Bessemer steel and really get somewhere.”

“Not a short-term solution,” John said.

“That is so.”

“Stalin has the books too,” John said. “So we have to believe he’s no further ahead.”

“I don’t see how he could be going any faster than us,” Simon said. “And he doesn’t have what we have: Simon the boilermaker.”

Alice patted his curly head. “If this melon gets any larger he won’t be able to pull on his undershirt.”

“If Stalin has Paul Loomis working on the same project, I’m sure you’re in the lead,” Emily said. “I’d put my money on a boilermaker over a particle physicist every day of the week.”

“So how do we get to Loomis in Cologne?” John asked.

“Let’s finish our meal,” Garibaldi said. “Then I’d like to see these new rifles of yours in action. My old brain is slowly forming a plan.”

After they had eaten, Garibaldi led them toward a courtyard but Caravaggio asked Emily if she would come with him instead. She agreed, saying she had no interest in watching men shoot.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Come, it’s not far.”

The destination was a room toward the rear of the palace, not far from the bustling kitchen. He asked her to wait in the hall while he went inside and when, moments later, he returned to bring her in, she saw it was a painter’s studio. There were pots of brightly colored paints and artist’s palettes on the tables. A cloth he had thrown over the easel was concealing a large canvas.

“This is what I wanted you to see,” he said, pulling the cloth away.

She gasped at the nearly completed painting.

It was Emily, standing at the window of a castle turret, her blonde hair caught in a breeze, gazing at a green, sun-splashed countryside. He had imagined her in a sumptuous red and green Renaissance frock with a low-cut bodice and heaving breasts, her cheeks flushed with excitement, her lively eyes searching below.

“Is this how you see me?” she asked softly.

“Yes, in Earth, not in Hell, with the sun shining and birds singing and love in the air.”

“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she said. “Thank you.”

“It is I who must thank you. You have given me this inspiration. It led me to remember what it felt like to be alive and in the presence of beautiful women.”

They heard loud gunshots.

“Soldiers at play,” she said.

He touched her wrist. “Do not forget my offer, Emily.”

“I remember it and I’m flattered but John Camp is the love of my life.”

Caravaggio sighed and re-draped the painting. “And he doesn’t have the aroma of a dead artist. Let us go and watch the soldiers at play.”

They arrived at the courtyard to the aftermath of the shooting exhibition. Splintered wood from the small round table set on its side as a target littered the grass.

“Michelangelo,” Garibaldi called out to Caravaggio. “You must see these incredible repeating rifles. Go ahead and show him.”

Trooper Culpepper seated a new magazine and destroyed what was left of the table in a series of deafening booms.

“Bravo!” Caravaggio shouted. “May I hold it?”

Culpepper got a nod from John and put the rifle on safe mode.

Caravaggio tested its weight and exclaimed, “This merchant of doom is lighter than the archebuser I myself carry. How many of these do you possess, John?”