The Book of Joby (2 page)

Lucifer turned away as if to appreciate the view, and asked, “How long must You disgrace us all by propping up this doomed and depressing enterprise?” When his Lord made no reply, Lucifer’s expression soured. “Is it my fault this blighted orchard bears such bitter fruit?
I
did not invent their deceitful hearts. Yet
I
am punished for their disobedience.
Why?
You cannot really believe I ever wished to challenge Your supremacy.
Principle
has ever been my only motive. I am guilty of nothing but insisting that
Your
laws be obeyed, that
Your
perfection be
perfectly
reflected!” Trembling with the effort of reining in his own consuming frustration, Lucifer whirled back to face his Master, the illusion of his human form dissolving into brilliant auroras of such dazzling beauty that the morning behind him suddenly seemed little more than a dingy rag thrown up against the heavens.
“Look at me!”
he demanded in a voice that rolled like muted thunder from all directions. “Do
I
belong
here,
penned up in this failed experiment with a race of flawed apes who, by their very nature, mock Your majesty?” Gabriel looked away, finding his fallen brother’s awesome beauty too painful to endure.
“Why do You fear me so?”
Lucifer demanded, reluctantly surrendering to human form again. “What ambition do I entertain but to serve a God not degraded at every turn by His own creation? You’re the
omniscient
One! You must know it’s true! Why will You never
listen
to me?” He fixed his Creator with a gaze of fearful defiance and desperate longing for recognition as old and unresolved as their dispute. “Admit it, Sir. This race of churls You indulge is the flop I have always said it would be. By now, the rot in this insufferable contrivance of Yours has gone clear to the core.”

The Creator grew very quiet, and his gray eyes closed in concentration. He cocked His head, as if listening for something very small or far away. “No,” He insisted quietly. “The core is as sound as ever . . . better, I’d say.” He opened his eyes and gazed gravely at Lucifer. “But I do have this awful feeling that I know what’s coming next.”

“Then, as You doubtless
know,
” Lucifer said with a feral grin devoid of
mirth, “my sources are fearful of a monstrous new civil war brewing in the Congo that will make anything they’ve seen before pale in comparison. . . . I know how You despise all that death and suffering; and this could easily spill across all of Africa before it’s done. Then there’s all the influence even hotter heads,
war
heads one might say, are stealthily cultivating in India’s parliament these days. After so many delays, the nuclear fruit is nearly ripe, and I have an almost infallible inside tip that by century’s end nothing will remain of poor Kashmir but a glowing, glassy crater. It could all get so much messier in such a hurry then. All the global shock, the
righteous rage.
So
many
great nations at fault,” he said with almost bestial ecstasy. “So much
blame
to go around. Messy, messy, messy,” he lamented, shaking his head in a hideous parody of regret. “I’m not sure even
I
will be able to restrain such an
angry
world. The whole thing could just blow up in my—”

“Your point?” the Creator asked with a placidity that immediately reduced the rabid inferno in Lucifer’s eyes to mere embers of sullen resentment.

“My
point,
” Lucifer said, with a sudden bland smile, “is that I might be able to pull some strings and slow things down a bit . . . at least, long enough to resolve a small wager, if You—”

“I thought so,” the Creator sighed. “This same stupid bet. How many times have we done this, Lucifer? Ten thousand? Twice that, perhaps?” He leaned forward, bringing the full weight of His suddenly devastating gray gaze to bear. “And how many times have you won?”

For a moment there was silence. Then,
“Twice,”
Lucifer breathed, neither looking away nor, to his credit, losing his smile.

The Creator shrugged. “They are allowed to fail.”

“Yes, yes,” Lucifer sighed, the steam seeming to leave his pipes all at once. “
Free will. . . .
I heard You the
first
time. Of all Your reckless gestures, that’s the one that really lost You my vote.”

“If you
had
heard Him the first time,” Gabriel taunted, “the night sky would be far brighter now, wouldn’t it.”

“In a more
perfect
world,” Lucifer retorted, rounding acidly on his onetime sibling, “
servants
would know not to interrupt their
betters
during
adult
conversation!”

“I believe your conversation was with me, Lucifer,” the Creator reminded him. “And I really don’t see why you—”

“I will not be mocked!”
Lucifer snapped, forgetting himself entirely. “Certainly not by simpering songbirds like this impudent youngster you insist on—”

“What were you just saying about interrupting one’s betters, Lucifer?” the
Lord of all creation asked with a level quiet that brought the devil instantly to wise if sullen silence. “As I was saying, I don’t see why you keep subjecting yourself to these punishing humiliations. Even your two so-called victories did little but improve things.”

“My only mistake with that wide-eyed couple in the garden was aiming too low,” Lucifer complained. “As for the second time, I still insist You cheated. Judas
failed solidly,
and we clearly agreed that if I won, Jesus—”

“We’ve been through this a million times,” the Creator interrupted. “I never suggested that Jesus would
stay
dead. It’s hardly My fault you didn’t think to inquire about that ahead of time.”

“Well, what was I supposed to think?” Lucifer protested. “You said,
dead
! And dead is—”

“Evidently not,” his Master cut him off again, then smiled and shook His head. “Really, Lucifer, if I’d been you, I’d have quit while I was still just way, way behind.”

“Well, You’d best not count on my errors this time,” Lucifer insisted, visibly leashing his temper. “I’ve a delicious feeling that it’s finally Your turn to blow it.”

“Aren’t you gung ho!” the Creator observed. “I don’t recall having agreed to any wager yet.”

In a moment of atypical unself-consciousness, Lucifer’s face scrunched comically around so much constipated ambition.

“What would you want
this
time, if My candidate failed?” the Creator asked, tossing still more pastry to the flock of gulls that had gathered densely around them.

“Everything,”
Lucifer said, unable to suppress his eagerness. “This whole declining ball of sepsis You’ve indulged for so long goes! Its people, these vulgar birds,
the whole planet
! We start again, and this time You
listen
to
my
advice. Oh, You’ll still be God, of course. I do know my place, whatever You think. But this time we’ll try it without any of that
free will.
We’ll have an
orderly
universe. A
virtuous
creation! No debauched little freelancers running about blithely denigrating their Maker and, by inference, the rest of us who must
obey
Your will. You do not seem to appreciate, My Lord, how deeply wounded I am by Your failure to recognize the value I place on Your dignity! If You had—”

“Stop,” the Creator said patiently. “I heard
you
the first time as well. . . . Let’s make sure I understand this. You’ll spare a few thousand lives in the Congo, and a few million more from whatever atomic debacle you’re arranging after
that, if I agree to wipe every last scrap of My creation utterly from existence, should My candidate lose, and start over heeding
your
instructions. Is that right?”

Lucifer spent a moment scrutinizing the Creator’s wording more carefully than he had on certain other occasions, then said, “That seems accurate.”

“And if My candidate wins?” the Creator mused.

“Negotiable.”

“Beyond that, the usual terms?” the Creator asked.

“Of course,” Lucifer answered, his hopes visibly inflamed. “Are You
agreeing
?”

Gabriel turned to the Creator in clear concern. “My Lord, You’re not seriously—”

“What did our distinguished guest say about interrupting?” the Creator interrupted.

“Of course,” Gabriel said, glancing nervously away. “I apologize.”

Throwing the last of their pastry to the gulls, the Supreme Being turned back to Lucifer. “I’m game. I’ll want a little extra time to find a candidate, of course. Such stakes demand a certain attention to detail, and I do have the whole world to sift through. Shall we say . . . tonight sometime? Gabriel will officiate. I’ll send him to tell you where and when, so don’t make yourself too hard to find.”

“Of course not!”
Lucifer exclaimed, nearly swallowing his long tongue in euphoric astonishment. “I will be at Your every beck and call, My Lord. . . . At least, for a short while longer.”

Lucifer was so excited, he failed to notice that one of the freshly glutted gulls had just defecated on his shoulder, and another on his expensive shoe. In fact, he had so forgotten himself that he carelessly popped from sight right in front of the waiter just arriving with his latte and another plate of pastry. There was only so much even mortal minds could be made to ignore. The Creator sighed and shook His head as the young man hit the pavement in a dead faint, his tray of food falling with him.

“Leave a generous tip,” He told Gabriel. “I’ve got a lot to do before tonight.” He turned to go, then stopped to smile mischievously back at His beloved angel. “I’m sorry if I seemed harsh with you a moment ago, My friend; but you nearly blew the whole deal. What if you’d made that ass stop to think things through?” He gave the unconscious waiter another rueful glance. “In fact, see that
all
his tips today are generous.”

Then He was gone, leaving Gabriel to contrive some damage control, and
wonder anxiously what on earth his Master knew that he had overlooked. It seemed a terribly reckless bet to him. Did the Creator not care that Gabriel himself was part of the creation to be erased should their human champion fail? Still, doubt was not strong in Gabriel’s nature, especially regarding his Lord’s judgment, so he just shrugged uncomfortably and bent to care for the fallen waiter.

“
Run! . . . Run, you scaredy cat!
The king will always beat you, Zoltan! And all your dumb ugly creatures too!
Ha!
Just
one
of Arthur’s knights is better than your
whole stupid army
!
Ha, ha ha haaaa
!” Joby laughed in unrestrained exultation, brandishing his wooden sword from the castle walls as the humiliated enemy fled yet another great battle in disarray.

“Joooooby! . . . Joby?”

Joby’s shoulders slumped, but he ignored his mother’s voice and waved his sword once more at the fleeing horde. “I’ve got better monsters than
you
out of my
cereal
!” he hollered in contempt.

“Joby. I know you can hear me,” his mother called, from the side yard this time. “Did you leave all this stuff on the driveway again?”

It was the kind of question Joby had never figured out how, or why, he was supposed to answer.

“I don’t
think
so,” he called back lamely, turning reluctantly from the battlefield beyond their backyard fence.

His mother came around the corner of the house carrying a large disk of cardboard in one hand, painted yellow, a red dragon scrawled uncertainly at its center, a banged-up book in the other hand, and a tattered red bedspread draped over her arm.

“It must have been some other knight then,” she said with the grim half smile that meant she was annoyed, but not enough to cause him any real trouble.

Joby remembered having left these encumberments behind in the heat of battle, but, like any knight worth his salt, he knew when to keep his own counsel. Did she really think warriors could run around
cleaning up
in the middle of a
battle
? Girls could be so pathetic!

His mother set his book, cape, and shield on the lawn in front of him and said, “If you do find the knight who left these there, please point out that your father could have driven right over them when he comes home. Unless
that
other
knight wants tire tracks added to his family crest, he should find someplace better to leave his things.” Her grin widened. She seemed very pleased with herself for no reason Joby could see, but since this meant he was in even less trouble than he’d thought, he obliged her by grinning back. “You might also tell him,” his mother added, “how tired I get of reminding Arthur’s knights not to leave their things where someone will break a leg on them.”