The Code War (47 page)

'Best wishes, Dan.'

Luke's Farm, Mountain
Meadows, Paradise

Luke, Ruth and Agatha were
meeting, in the flesh, at Luke's farm in a vast area of rolling
pastureland in Heaven's green belt. To the west and south were more
farmsteads and ranches whose buildings and barns were constructed
of pillars made of local marble infilled with timbers of white oak
and topped with thatched roofs that curved upwards in praise. Each
one's unique design reached out and interlaced with the beauty of
its neighbour and then carried on the pattern to the next, building
the whole community into an eye-catching configuration. To the
north and east were mountains with glaciers reaching down to their
foothills and pine forests reaching up like green fingers. The
mountains gathered snow in the winter time and released it
gradually over the rest of the year, frothing the rivers and
canyons with white water and tickling a hundred species of fish as
it flowed down to irrigate the fields below.

But on this occasion the mood inside
Luke's farm was not as bright as the sunshine outside. The quartet
was a trio and the trio were in mourning for their missing player
and his eager, if sometimes naïve, leadership.

For once Ruth was dressed down,
wearing a simple white dress but no colour to her wings and no
jewellery. Agatha as usual was in denims with a blue and white
hooped mariner-style top while Luke was in lumberjack shirt and
jeans. His Stetson hung at his back.

It was Luke's pad
so he was first to speak.

'Well guys, we've been punched
right in the nose by Hades. Our brother Jabez is missing as a
result. Ruth, you were right to say that we should concentrate on
solving the problem, not on blaming ourselves and I agree with you.
It's hard to be optimistic and carry on, but I know that we must.
Sometime in the future when Jabez is back and we've concluded this
project successfully we can conduct a fail review to work out what
went wrong at this point. But for now, we have to put aside our
misery. We still have a mission to carry out.'

'That's right,' agreed Agatha, 'Nancy is
still there on Earth and, unfortunately, what happened to her in
San Po Kong is even more likely, not less, to drive her into the
enemy camp. Any trust she ever had in others, especially men, is
gone. That doesn't bode well for our plan for her to meet up with
Dan.'

'There's an added complication you two
might not be aware of,' said Ruth with a sigh.

Luke and Agatha regarded her with
foreboding.

'The enemy want Dan's life. They
want him to die soon, in pain. They've also offered to give us back
Jabez, but only if we agree to something else they're asking.' She
sighed, unable to continue for a moment. 'I'm under orders not to
tell you what that is, at least for now. Anyway, Augustine says we
are running out of time. Jabez is very sick and we need him back
soon. If we agree to what they want, there may not be enough time
to arrange the all-important meeting between Nancy and Dan, the one
where she discovers the meaning of 1.11.'

'That's bad' said Luke.
'But there's something else about Nancy that
worries me. She's alone and far from home, with few friends around
her. Apart from Jenny Ling. I'm seriously worried that she may take
her own life. I mean, she's just had this horrific thing happen to
her, a gang rape. She must be very low indeed. Obviously if she
dies she can't take over Brother, as the enemy wants. But right now
we need to fight for her soul. That comes first.'

'Let's also remember that the
entire region around Nancy is now highly dangerous and infested
with demons,' said Agatha. 'None of us must go there unless
accompanied by a strong armed escort. Luke, you went to Yaumati
with a dozen cavalry, but even you nearly got trounced.'

'That's right,' smiled Luke,
bringing the first warm note into the conversation. 'I'll remember
that fight for ever. The challenge by Bohemond. That brute Baalbul.
The satyrs reaching to light their arrows. Then the full-on cavalry
charge as our forces crashed into the enemy lines and destroyed
their formation. I was way below them heading for Nathan Road but
there were lights flashing in the skies for many minutes. Hong Kong
citizens probably thought they saw UFOs above them.'

'Well that's a lesson to us.
N
o visits to Earth without a guard,' said
Agatha.

'Amen to that,' agreed Luke.

Ruth was silent.

'Ruth, do you agree?' asked Agatha.

'Oh ah was just thinking that we need to
continue with Jabez's work, even if remotely, from Paradise. In
fact ah think we might be able to encourage Nancy out of her
depressed state and deliver one more of Jabez's prepared 1.11
messages at the same time. Jabez got it all set up before he was
captured. It just needs activating and we can do that from
here.'

'OK
,'
said Agatha, 'just so long as none of us goes down to the Fourth
alone. That's really important.'

'Uh huh,' agreed Luke.

Ruth said nothing.

Golden Luck Casino,
Yaumati, Kowloon

Nancy sat on her bed with her legs drawn
up beneath her, staring into the emptiness in front of her. Jenny
Ling and the two other girls slept and snored in the narrow beds
beside.

Then the emptiness took form and
became an entity in itself. It separated itself from the rest of
the room, became real, took on boundaries and moved closer. It
promised that it would not hurt her. It crept up the bed and swept
over Nancy like a cloudy eiderdown, untouching, covering her like a
mother's scent at tucking-in time. The emptiness brought with it an
anaesthetic that enveloped her mind like a warm breeze on a
Caribbean afternoon. The stinging pain in her woman's body
retreated. It vanished like an army of tiny spearmen lost in fog,
their cries muffled, distant, then gone.

Sleep was out of reach, but on its
borders where waves of memory roll and crash against consciousness
and the soul stretches out to reshape its understanding of the
world after a tragedy, Nancy had a vision.

She was back in London, outside
the travel shop. Her eyes were drawn to the sky and she saw a
fearsome angel of death that flew forward and back over all the
Earth, causing a noise like thunder.

As the angel passed overhead it
called out loudly 'time's up and you can't put no more money in the
meter' and she saw one man throw his shoe at it and heard other
people cry out as they do in the moment before a road accident. She
looked around and saw men and women staggering along the street as
if heart-attacked. Some were shouting in fear and they seemed to be
looking for places to hide, but they didn't know from what. Two
people unhooked man-hole covers in the road, peered down into the
circular darkness for a place of refuge and then abruptly ran
away.

In front of each person in the street,
as if they had burst out of their chest, were balloon-like shapes
that displayed all the bad things that they had ever done, all the
spiteful words, all the mean sneaky things, the plans to hurt
others and all the hidden deceits, the ones that they thought
no-one would ever know about. All of these balloon shapes smelt of
rot and buzzed with fat black flies. They were displayed in front
of each person like cinema screens which you could watch. The angel
flying over them had made this happen. Nancy was amazed for she
looked at each person's balloon screens and was able to see their
life’s deeds and misdeeds in one glance. The deeds came out from
each person in these balloons of words, images and moving pictures,
some of them so hideous and shameful that it hurt to look at them.
Nancy fell to her knees, she thought some of the pictures were so
unspeakably horrible that she did not know how their owners had
kept them hidden.

All of the balloon-shapes showed
acts of caring or of uncaring, but in almost all the people in the
street the hurtful, selfish actions they had made in their lives
far outweighed the caring ones. There was something more. Each
balloon-shape showed images of the victims who had been hurt by the
balloon-carrier’s misdeeds and just how much they had been hurt.
Some of them showed how the victims had been brought low, to
sadness, anger, suicide or murder by the balloon owner's words or
acts.

The angel came over again
shouting, 'It's J-Day. Make way for the assizes to end all bloody
assizes. Take your places. Everyone gets to see everyone's
show'.

Yet Nancy could hardly take her eyes
away for the balloon-shapes were as fascinating as they were
grotesque. They were so detailed that it was like watching a
million films all at the same time but with the same clarity as if
the events were happening right beside you.

Nancy knew that she was looking at
Judgement. The Big Judgement. But it was not like a court scene
with God as judge, wielding a gavel and sending people to heaven or
hell with a Roman tilt of his thumb. It was more down to Earth than
that. This wasn’t judgement imposed from outside. It was judgement
that came from the inside of each person, from all the stored up
memories that lay inside each one’s soul. All the actions,
thoughts, words and deeds of each man and woman which were
indissolubly and irreversibly held inside them had now been spilled
out into the open. All knew that the balloon-shapes in front of
them, with their words, images and moving pictures, were real and
unarguable. There was no denying them. No disputation was possible.
All that men thought was hidden was now visible to all.

The people were crying and casting about
fearfully. Their despair lay in the knowledge that their chance for
remorse and a promise to change their ways was gone.

'The exam is over, close your
answer-books and hand them in please, no more writing,' bellowed
the angel. People could not bear to look at the coloured
cloud-balloons and shapes in front of them. But these visual
tormentors were unavoidable, attached to them as if for eternity
and constantly swinging around as though blown by a malevolent wind
so they were ever in front of the person’s gaze no matter where
they looked. People saw their own life histories and they saw their
neighbours’ and friends’ past lives laid out. Many were as amazed
and stupefied at others’ laid-bare stories as they were appalled at
the revelation of their own. Nancy saw one man whom she recognised
as a librarian from the library she used as a girl. He had always
seemed harmless; she had never thought badly of him. But now Nancy
saw the librarian as he really was and was horrified and astonished
at the same time as she saw his entire life in front of him,
hanging from his chest in all its grotesquerie. She could see the
thousands of boys and girls he had hurt, some with his body, some
with his words and many, many with his eyes and his will. The
damage the old librarian had caused to so many young lives was so
great that Nancy didn’t know if even Hell could take it all in.

Then Nancy realised she was being pulled
away. She was not part of all this, she was just witnessing it,
looking into a vision that may or may not have been real, may or
may not have meant something.

She was back in her dormitory. The
emptiness began to retreat. The eiderdown cloud fell to the floor
and dissipated like theatre dry-ice. The sweet scent of a
long-forgotten mother was gone. The bed and doors took shape again.
The vision was over. Nancy looked at the beds around her and
listened.

For once, the sound of women breathing
loudly nearby was oddly comforting.

More time passed and for several hours
Nancy didn't think of very much. A clock ticking. The traffic on
the street. A burglar alarm somewhere. Street lights finding the
flaws in the room's defences and streaming through like a yellow
disease. Crumpled sheets. A bug patrolling the skirting board.
Cockroach? Don't care. Come here, my lovely and I'll give you a
cuddle. You'll die of surprise. Monkey. Damn him. Chu. Cheat. Why
me? Jenny's hair, so silky. Foot itch. Snoring from girl three.
Wossername?

I can't pretend it didn't happen. They
all know I was there. With Monkey and Chu dying it will all come
out. The others will talk. Word will get about. If I don't speak up
they'll think I wanted it. They'll snigger at me behind my back.
Cockroach. Creeping into crevice. Want into my bed? Want nice, warm
crack to crawl into? Not mine, you wouldn't want mine. Not now. Men
are cockroaches. No, cockroaches are men. Disgusting, furtive
creatures. Leave interesting colours on the wall when you splat
them. All they're good for. Who, men or cockroaches? You know damn
well.

Razor in the bathroom. Proper
blades, not safety. So tempting. End it. Let's do it now, no-one
will miss you. Street lights have gone out. Room's gone dark.
Nearly dark. Single light outside. Pattern on the window blind.
Shining through the pattern. Wall. 1.11 on the wall. Someone trying
to tell me something. But I'm so tired. And sore. Tired of it all.
Unequal struggle. 1.11 All right, I'll try again. Once more into
the breach. Who said that? One more try. Then it's razors into
wrists at dawn.

Nancy unwound her tight legs and
slipped off the bed. She swung herself across the gap and perched
on the edge of Jenny's mattress. 'Jenny,' she whispered.

Nothing.

'Jenny, wake up. Jenny, you know you
said I could talk to you any time. Now's the time.'

'Huh?'

'Jenny, if ever I needed a friend I need
one now. Jenny, wake up.'

Nancy pulled the covers gently away from
Jenny's shoulders.