Abaddon - Chapter 24

3: The Obedient Servants of His Lordship

The house of the Franj and the German was made of heavy blocks of abyssite, tiled on top with votive tablets, with small bright windows. Smoke and electric white sparks issued from the single chimney. A crowd of locals, ragged and disreputable, knowing their bodies would heal any abuse inflicted on them, stood around the house gawping at the firework display.

"WHATSAMATTER", yelled Ahasuerus as he pushed through them, "AINTCHA NEVER SEEN METAL BURN BEFORE?"

The door of the house was made of light fabric stretched over rigid frames, like a traditional Japanese screen door. The windows seemed made of a similar material. Fringes of stiff fibre had been painstakingly tacked round the edges of the windows, presumably as draught excluders. "Glass is dear", explained Ahasuerus. "When things are dear, the Franj and the German find other ways of doing things."

Percival run his finger down the door fabric. "They do indeed. This door has hairs."

Ahasuerus shrugged. "What do you expect? Imperfectly cured, poor workmanship. We are not rich men down here."

"Ahasuere, the door is made of human skin."

"And the man it was taken off was probably got so drunk he didn't feel it, and his wound would have healed immediately. Your point being?"

Percival swallowed uncomfortably. "Nothing. I can see I'm in a different world."

"The only raw materials we have down here", said Kane, "are stone, people's idiotic wants and needs that they write on slivers of stainless steel and bung down the pit at us, and the cast-off bits of our own bodies."

Inside, the place was a junkyard. A collection of twisted, smashed, unwanted metal, both very old and very new, with nothing in between. Only stainless steel and bronze, after all, would survive the thousand-kilometre hurtle down from Planet Earth - Percival was, by now, certain he was no longer on Planet Earth - and the all-pervasive corrosive moisture that seeped out of every surface in the Abyss. Percival saw Ancient Egyptian sickle-swords next to the twisted remains of AK47's. Most of the objects were so battered as to be unrecognizable. At one end of the room, a miscellany of combustible items was crammed into the mouth of what must be at the same time both fireplace and forge. The fire was burning white hot, gurgling happily on a diet of V-2 aluminium. The greater part of the remaining space was taken up by an enormous makeshift still, dripping what Percival hoped against hope were unmethylated spirits into poorly-made earthenware bottles. There were also two hammocks - on reflection, probably the best and only way of keeping a bed dry down here - slung up among the jumble. Other technological devices were dotted here and there - a spinning wheel, a weaver's loom, a bellows feeding air to the forge, an ominous-looking frame for stretching and scraping hides for parchment.

There were books too - small ones, easily portable, and clearly precious, as dog-eared as Anubis, kept carefully on high dry shelves. There was at least one Holy Bible, along with some literature - a Doctor Faustus, a Faust, a Huis Clos, a Jurgen, and the ever-popular Inferno. There were, however, far more works by Euclid, Newton, Einstein, and Hawking. A Mein Kampf sat unashamedly next to a Das Kapital.

Poking the fire was a man in his thirties, or his thirty thousands, naked to the waist and bearded, wearing a cross and rosary. His poker was a cavalry sabre. At the other end of the room, a man sat darning a grey uniform jacket.

"Louis, Werther, we have a new arrival."

The man at the fire did not look round. "I can tell that, Kane. I can recognize new faces. What languages does he speak? What can he do?"

"I speak English, Latin, und ein paar schlechte Wörter Deutsch", said Percival.

The darner gave a start, and looked up in amazement.

"Man spricht noch Deutsch dort oben?"

"Jawohl." Percival grinned. "In Deutschland, meistens."

"Ein deutschsprechender Engländer...war Unternehmen Seelöwe erfolgreich?"

"Nein", said Percival. "Hitler tötete sich in Berlin in 1945. Er hat Rußland nie angriffen sollen."

The darner shrugged, and turned his attention to his darning again. "C'est la guerre."

"And what's your trade?" said the stoker. "You come from a civilization far more technologically advanced than ours. Can you rivet? Can you weld? Can you fettle?"

Percival shrugged. "I can program in Fortran."

The stoker snorted in disgust, and turned his attention back to his stoking. But he carried on talking. "Technology has moved on, on the surface...how many years?"

"It is now the year 2016", said Percival.

"I imagine", said the stoker, and here his eyes gleamed, "that the skies are now filled with enormous montgolfières."

"Hardly anybody has built a zeppelin since the Hindenburg and R101 disasters", said Percival. "Virtually all flight is now carried out in fixed-wing aircraft."

"Impossible! The imbeciles! Such a waste of energy! Who won the Second World War?"

"The Allies. Which is to say, the British, the Russians, the French, and the Americans."

The stoker scowled. "Vaudrait mieux si c'était les allemands", he muttered.

The darner looked up. "We, too, had built no zeppelins since the Hindenburg, Louis." He looked at his darning sorrowfully. "They were no use in war."

"Sit down", said the stoker. "You will be tired and confused. My name is Louis du Mont des Chênes, though many here call me the Franj, as they remember Frenchmen mainly from the Crusades. I am a minor marquis. I was formerly a lieutenant in the Grande Armée. Does this surprise you?"

Percival shook his head. "I am acquainted with the behaviour of the Abyss."

The stoker's eyebrows raised. "Iter? Alors. I was dispatched into the depths by our great leader Bonaparte himself, who had been written many unsolicited letters by me regarding the new invention of the brothers Montgolfier, letters in which I had urged him at great length to consider this revolutionary device for use in military reconnaissance and artillery spotting. Eventually, when our army entered the streets of Na, he acquiesced gracefully and allowed me to commandeer enough ladies' silk underwear to construct a Montgolfière and descend into the depths."

"What did he hope you'd find?"

Du Mont des Chênes smiled ruefully. "I don't think he greatly cared. Certainly his commandeering of ladies' silk underwear greatly improved morale." He indicated the darner. "This is SS-Haupsturmführer Markus Laszlo, an officer in the Leibstandarte Dacia of Adolf Hitler, trained to be a paratrooper. I was already familiar with the principles of parachutism from the works of Leonardo, but it was most surprising to discover that you surface dwellers had actually been so foolhardy as to try it. Kapitän Laszlo volunteered to use his parachuting skills to descend into the Abyssal depths and flash back messages via a heliograph. Unfortunately for him, his parachute failed to open. In civilian life, he was an apprentice engineer, and his assistance has proved invaluable in the construction of many fascinating technological devices. In my own first life, I considered myself a keen student of natural philosophy, though I was not so gauche as to take this to the extent of having a profession...so you, sir, you claim to have no trade but 'programming in Fortran'?"

"That's not my trade. I was a chaplain. Un curé militaire."

"Valde te Deum laudo! You are a student of the science most useful to us! Have you visited our host yet?"

"What do you think?" said the darner. "Is he an angel, or a devil?"

"He is an evil devil", said Kane. "Imprisoned here by a just God who has sent both us and him here for our sins. Hammering men to crosses and so forth." For some reason, he looked hard at Ahasuerus as he said this.

"He is Satan", said Ahasuerus. "He is sent by Yahweh to tempt the righteous, and punish the wicked. This is a testing ground to determine which we are. We should strive to be good."

"God", said the darner, without looking up, "is dead." He bit the end off his thread, which Percival was certain would be made of human hair.

"I am convinced he is a devil", said the stoker. "But what is the purpose of his and our being here? Are we in Hell? And are we damned?" He held up an admonitory finger. "This, I believe, is the crux of the matter. If he is a devil, might he not pretend to have taken us to Hell, so that we mistakenly believe ourselves to be damned? For what does a man who believes himself damned do? Does he not run round committing all the deadly sins he can, for how can he become any more damned? This is an elaborate charade created in order to harvest the souls of the just." He kissed a crucifix hanging at his throat.

"The Devil", said Percival, "has no power over Death. Only God does."

"And yet", continued Du Mont des Chênes, "might not a devil's supreme act of cruelty in Hell be to let sinners somehow retain hope that escape might be possible? To lead us to the false conclusion that we are not in Hell? To torture us with a vain expectation of release?"

"I've never escaped this place", said Kane sadly. "Even when I left it."

"The official Christian position on characters such as yourself", said Percival, "is that, as you were never baptised, you cannot achieve Paradise. However, this is also viewed to be no fault of your own, and as soon as Christ descends into Hell at the Second Coming, He will raise all the Old Testament Prophets up to sit with him in the New Jerusalem."

"Hallelujah", said Kane, with feeling. "Though I always preferred Jericho to Jerusalem. Jerusalem's way too crowded."

"Can it, Judaean", said Ahasuerus.

"And yet", said Du Mont des Chênes, "a benevolent angel might pretend to be a devil, in order to test the souls of the just. Our host has never claimed to be a devil in my hearing. Nor will he answer if he is asked whether he is an angel. This would be necessary if he were an angel, as it is, of course, widely known that angels cannot lie. Of course, if he were a devil, he might gain much from pretending to be an angel. Which do you believe our host to be?"

"He's neither", said Percival.

The Franj stood for a long time staring at Percival with his iron in the fire, for so long that, when he pulled it out again, the tip had bent and softened. He clucked his annoyance and walked over to the anvil to re-straighten it.

"Then is he", said the Franj, "a Middle Spirit? One of the creatures who inhabit the air between heaven and earth? Wizards may conjure such beings, so we are told by sources such as your own Doctor John Dee. And they were once angels, but are not quite devils. They did not rebel against God, but deserted from His armies in the battle against Lucifer, and thus were not condemned to Hell. Instead, they were condemned never again to see Paradise, much as was Adam for his primal sin."

"You watch whose family you're bad-mouthing", warned Kane.

"I have never seen a devil", mused Percival, "that I know of, though I'm not sure about certain third world dictators, traffic wardens and driving examiners. Neither have I ever seen angels, saving my late wife, or middle spirits. Much though I hate, as a clergyman, to be a champion of reason over blind Christian superstition, I think what we're looking at here is none of the above. Looking at the problem scientifically, what are the properties of Abaddon?"

Du Mont des Chênes thought a moment. "The cold does not affect him. I have never seen him eat. And he is very old".

"Older than your devil", said Ahasuerus. "Older, I think, than God."

"He was here before me", said Kane. "And there's folks down here older than me he was here before too."

"We know", said Du Mont des Chênes, "that he did not originate in this place. He came here from elsewhere. And there are others of his kind. He speaks to them on occasion. Our sources in the Bridge confirm this. We imagined these others to be some form of devils-in-chief."

"How does he speak to them? Do they visit him?"

Laszlo shook his head. "There is a room in the Bridge, jealously guarded, where he consults with them. There are no other rooms around it, only a long corridor leading to it, which suggests that the room itself is dangerous in some way, requiring the presence of a large amount of shielding between it and the inhabited parts of the Bridge...I have heard there is now a thing called radiation?"

"Yes. A large amount of solid stone would block radiation."

Du Mont des Chênes nodded. "The voices of those he consults are indistinct and distant. He can only either listen to them, or speak. He cannot do both in the same session. We have no idea why this is...have I said something of interest?"

Percival was smiling like a Cheshire cat.

"Because", said Percival, "they are very, very distant. A message from Abaddon has to cross so much space to reach home that even the radio waves or light beams or whatever it is he uses to send it will take years to get there. We can even find out just how long."

"We can?" Kane pouted, mystified. "How?"

"How long does it take between Abaddon issuing a question to one of his devils-in-chief and him receiving an answer?"

"I don't know", said Du Mont des Chênes. "But we have sources. Those of us who serve in the Bridge can find out."

"So the people in the Bridge are real? Not some sort of illusion or automaton?"

"Good Lord, no, they're just like us. Women and boys, mostly. He prefers women and boys. More compliant. Although he likes to pretend he keeps them up there to feed his rampant appetites, he seems to be quite indifferent to conducting actual sexual acts with them."

"Yes. That would be biologically impossible, I'll bet. Now, listen - the time between Abaddon issuing a question and receiving an answer, measured in years, is the distance in light years between Earth and Abaddon's homeworld, or at least his people's nearest base."

"Distance in light years?" said Kane. "How about a distance in heavy gallons?"

"I have heard of Light Years", said Laszlo. "They are a measure of distance. Astronomers use them. A Light Year is the distance travelled by light in a year."

Percival nodded. "A very great distance. If the time lag is about eight and a half years, Abaddon's homeworld would be near Alpha or Proxima Centauri, for example. But if the time lag is under a year, Abaddon's compatriots are probably inside our own solar system."

"You're saying that Abaddon is an..." the German struggled for a phrase "...an Allmensch?"

"A man from space, yes. Nothing more than a man. Though probably not what you or I would think of as a man. Am I confusing you?"

"Yes", said Kane, glassy-eyed.

"I apologize. But when you were young, there were people your people didn't know about, yes? Tribesmen and barbarians from strange places, who didn't speak your language, didn't look like you, whose skin was the wrong colour, white, black or yellow. Maybe they didn't even seem human. But they were."

Kane nodded. "Apart from the Israelites", he added, darting a glance at Ahasuerus.

"Well, that's what Abaddon is. He is just a man from a very long way away. The difference is that he came from so far away he really and truly isn't human."

"Oh", said Kane. "He's an alien. I've heard of aliens. I've been up top recently, don't you forget. Nineteen fifty nine. I've seen movies. Aliens have green skin, tentacles and heads like balloons, and travel in little silver saucers. Bullets are useless against them, and they Want Our Women."

"Not quite", said Percival.

“Can Your Heart Stand The Shocking Facts About Graverobbers From Outer Space?", quoted Kane from memory.

"Surely aliens have grey skin and abduct people from trailer parks?" said Ahasuerus. "I last went up in the nineteen nineties", he added apologetically.

"Aliens", said Percival with an air of firm authority, "do neither. What you were experiencing were the twentieth-century equivalent of children's nursery rhymes, which we call Hollywood. This is different from serious scientific speculation. For all we know, Abaddon could have any physical form. He might not have a physical form. He doesn't have to be similar to us in any way. Except one. I believe Abaddon is as trapped down here as we are."

"Vlad said you would understand things", said Kane. "It was him as told us you'd be coming."

Percival thought about this. "Vlad short for Vladimir? Beardy guy, about the length of an Stylite's cell, big gold crucifix covered in valuable minerals?"

"That would be him, yes. In the end, before he left, he made me a gift of that crucifix. Though he was convinced I was a devil when he first met me."

"I'm not entirely convinced, said Percival, "that you aren't."

"And he proclaimed me forever damned", said Ahasuerus. "On account of my having killed Christ. Me! I mean, I'd been a good and holy man. I'd never worked on the Sabbath, and I crossed over the road whenever I saw a Samaritan -"

"Vlad believed you'd be the one to make it all the way through", said Kane.

"What'd'you mean, 'make it all the way through'?"

"Well - all the way through the Abyss, of course, past the Parts of Satan."

Percival considered this. "You're talking about the Inferno. Dante made the world a sphere centred around Satan, who was buried in the ice at the centre of the Earth in Caïna, surrounded by all the tiers of Hell. In order to reach Purgatory and escape Hell, Dante had to clamber across Satan's nether regions -" he leaned nonchalantly on a tin outcropping of the forge, and had to pull away hastily when he burned himself.

"We know all about the Inferno", beamed Kane. "We're up to the minute, technologically aware chaps. We're in with all the latest advances in demonology."

"Dante", said Percival, sucking his fingers, "wrote the Inferno in the 13th century AD."

"Well, it's AD", complained Kane. "It's recent."

"For you it might be, old codging geezer", muttered Ahasuerus, rubbing the arthritis out of his hands as he warmed them on the forge.

"You watch it, young timer. In any case, down is the Parts of Satan. And he believes that if you go down far enough, you start going up."

"Which is why he has no problem with launching montgolfières that go down", observed Percival.

"Won't allow burners in them", said the stoker sadly. "Which forces the pilot to go down."

"But he believes that, at some point, gravity will reverse itself, just as if the pilot has travelled right through the centre of the Earth...which means a balloon would end up the wrong way up. Be unable to sink further. It would remain trapped at the centre of gravity."

The balloonaut nodded, stoking the liquefying coals while shielding his eyes. "We believe this may be the reason why his most recent experiments have sanctioned the use of powered flying machines driven by propellers. Although his earliest devices were gliders. And it was in just such a glider that the Blessed Vladimir left us."

"I thought he was a saint."

"He was only blessed back then."

"And he made it all the way through the Abyss."

"Well", shrugged Du Mont des Chênes, "they never found his body."

"And usually they do", said Percival. "Find the body."

"Well...sight the body. He has telescopes, and a fresh body can be seen a long way down. Particularly by the light that comes upon it, each time it revives itself."

Percival felt his face going numb. "You mean they're still not really dead."

"Well, naturally they're not. We can't really die. You ought to know that by now."

"So they lie down there, all smashed and broken, and -"

"Regenerate. The heat of repeated regenerations sometimes wears a hole around them in the rock over time."

"Starving to death, dying of their injuries, dying of thirst, over and over and over again."

Kane nodded. "For thousands on thousands of years. But it is still only the very best of us Abaddon chooses for the journey. Some of us", he said bitterly, "are no longer considered suitable material."

"So why does he still keep you here?"

"Because he's not quite sure in his own mind how to pick the best", said Laszlo. "His requirements change from day to day. Some weeks it's men with a large and perfectly formed amygdala. Other days it's manic depressives and haemophiliacs. To get rid of us would be to discard valuable raw material."

"Raw material for what?" said Percival.

"The grand objective", said Du Mont des Chênes. "Getting through the Abyss. Tunnelling all the way downward into Hell's centre."

"Trying to reach the Centre of Gravity and climb through it out of Dante's Hell."

Du Mont des Chênes tossed a rocket fin fragment into the furnace. "It had crossed our minds that this might be his purpose."

"So isn't the next logical question Why Can't He Go Himself? Why does he have to make us do it?"

Laszlo shrugged. "Because we aren't damned?"

Percival clicked his fingers. "The Stylite! The Stylite suggested the Abyss acted like a filter, excluding bad input. And like a filter, it gets clogged up with all manner of crap. Really bad people, human vermin, get stopped at the hundred metre level. Genocidal lunatics get stopped a few metres lower down, barbarous imperialists a little further still. Only the very best and finest pass through the filter right to the very bottom." He eyed Kane, Ahasuerus, Laszlo, and Du Mont des Chênes with frank disbelief. "Unfortunately, according to that theory, that means you. And, I'm afraid, me."

Du Mont des Chênes grinned, exposing aristocratic incisors. "A very egotistical theory, I fear."

"But certainly, Abaddon is constantly searching for the mental or physical quality that will enable a man to pass all the way to Hell's bottom. Constantly changing tack. What is the current fashion?"

"He currently believes that only a knight pure in heart can pass through the Abyss", said Laszlo.

"That's insane."

"You noticed." Laszlo lost patience with his sock and began darning at such a speed that little red pinpricks of blood polka-dotted his fingers, along with little emerald starbursts of unnatural healing. "He's been down here longer than Kane, remember. Probably was here for something very like forever all by himself. Sometimes he claims he created us. The whole human race. So he'd have some guinea pigs to send through the Abyss. It is an understatement to say his cups are not all correctly located in the cupboard."

"It's not as unusual as it sounds", said Kane, licking his lips. "Back when I was on Abyss-spelunking duty, roped up wriggling down the rock, I saw things on the lower cliffs that weren't what you and I would think about as human. But they were regenerating, just like us. They were once Kane's servants too. Big huge heavy things, with shoulders like horses' quarters. Some things that looked more monkey than man. Some lying there on the rock half dead, half alive, some as didn't look quite so dead, that was lying doggo but watching you sly-like out of the corner of their eye. Not quite so daft as they was monkey-looking, and a fierce set of teeth on them. One of them that healed up green as grass right as I was looking at him, then jumped up and come at me."

"In any case", said Laszlo, "Him upstairs has decided in his putative wisdom that we will henceforth all joust for the privilege of doing battle with the Abyss. Someone foolishly drew his attention to a mediaeval manual on knighthood by Taliesin."

"Oh?" said Percival. "Who was that?"

"Taliesin, I think. He lives over the way. A man with mental issues. Believes he's in the realm of Manannan MacLir, Ahriman, and Satan all at once."

"But who'd joust for the right to be hurled into a pit?"

"Oh, the alternative is always something far worse. I believe you're in the lists for tomorrow."

"But I can't use a lance." Percival's eyes bulged in panic.

"Oh. Him upstairs will be disappointed. You've got the Arthurian name and everything. I suppose now you're going to tell me you can't ride a horse either."

"Just barely."

"Oh dear. And you're up against Bertilak de Hautdesert. Originally, I believe he was a Sassanid mercenary, a knight in armour. In parts of his subsequent existence, he was a knight errant."

"A highwayman."

"A Raubritter, indeed."

"You may have heard of him in your poets' stories of the Green Knight", said Du Mont des Chênes. "He terrorized Dark Ages Britain by hanging around crossroads betting passers-by they couldn't knock off his head in one stroke with an axe. Some of them took up the offer, and then a month later Bertilak would knock on their door grinning and asking for a chance to return the favour."

"How did he end up back down here?"

Du Mont des Chênes grimaced across the room. "Kane dealt with him."

"How?"

Kane appeared almost reluctant to admit to his misdeeds. "I rode to the crossroads, hacked his head from off his body, and buried it under an anthill for a year. I'd dig it up out every now and again and pass it round court to entertain the ladies." His face brightened. "Oh, the contorted and amusing expressions!"

"I was brought up to respect such men", said Laszlo, raising his dark Magyar eyebrows, "to revere them as paragons of the Aryan ideal. I must confess, at times, I find this difficult."

"Because?" said Percival.

"Because Bertilak has difficulty stringing a sentence together and scratching his arse at the same time", said Laszlo. "Though he has no problem scratching his arse per se, it must be said. He can also, I'm afraid, hack an armed opponent in two with a broadsword before the man has even moved his own weapon to defend himself. I'm sorry."

"But I'll regenerate", said Percival. "I'll wake up, won't I?"

"Oh, yes", said Kane. "Oh yes, you will. You'll wake up somewhere truly horrible. I guarantee it. Him upstairs has no patience with failures."