Sunset ^beta

Everything had been on fire for quite some time, and Vehuel was comfortable with that.

Well, no.  She wasn't.  That would be a lie.  She was resigned to that, but if she was honest with herself she was desperately uncomfortable, sweaty and sooty and bone-tired.

Currently she was dragging a man out of a haberdashery.  Vehuel wasn't sure if it was his shop or someone else's, but idiots had been trying to save things instead of their own skins all night, so of course, of course it fell to her to

rush into the flames and drag him to safety.  Heaven had been very specific about this one; something about founding a city.  As if they didn't have plenty of decent cities already, she thought.  Maybe if they could stop blowing some of them up they wouldn't need to have humans build new ones.

"This better be a really good city," she muttered under her breath, slinging Aeneas over her shoulder.  He was unconscious this time, which was good; the last few times she'd dragged Aeneas away from certain death he'd been inconveniently awake and very annoying.  On the other hand, the longer he was unconscious the more likely he was to die, and she wondered if maybe she should try and wake him up, only not now, not in the middle of the street.  The city was burning around her and there were Acheans goddamn everywhere, and she had to keep moving.

Aeneas moaned.

"I guess we're doing this now, then," she muttered, and

put him down in the middle of the street, sparing a miracle to keep him from losing his balance as he regained consciousness.

The man's eyes opened and he stared at her.  "What?  Who are --"

"Leave," she snapped.  "Run!  Now.  Don't even remember me!"  He stumbled out of the building and into the throng of people rushing north.

The building burst into flames as soon as they were out, and the shop windows exploded outward, flames licking through them and up the sides of the building.

They'd been nice hats, Vehuel had to admit, but no hat was that nice.  Humans had stupid priorities, sometimes.

She hurried northward, pausing for a moment to watch work at the Field & Letier building with interest.  As before, Vehuel couldn't imagine any dry goods could be worth more than lives, but she couldn't drag all of these people away, and it was a beautiful marble building.  It would be a pity if it went up in flames.  Unlike the little haberdashery, the store surely had firehoses inside; maybe they could save it.  She did a quick blessing -- If it goes up in flames, everyone will get out all right, she told reality firmly -- and left them to their work.

The press of the crowd made the stifling heat even worse, and she'd had to save a few people from being trampled while mentally cursing out whoever's idea it had been to build the streets and sidewalks out of wood, honestly, what idiot had done that?  She would have to talk to the -- the -- whoever was in charge of that nonsense.  Elders?  No.  Aldermen.  Yeah.

Assuming they survived, of course.

The bridge was made of wood, too, because of course it was.  They might destroy it to stop the fire from jumping the river again, but she decided to stand watch here and make sure anyone who tried to cross could do so before that happened, and maybe keep it unburnt for as long as possible.  But the wind was going to be a problem; it had been the main problem in San Francisco -- San Francisco, had Heaven even reassigned that one yet?  Why was it always her cities going up in smoke?  Two cities in twenty years was a record even for her, though.

In a crowded place like this she normally wouldn't have opened her wings, but people kept pausing to stare at the flames roaring through the city behind them, so it was easy enough to slip into the sky, unnoticed, and circle over the bridge.  She watched the crowd for an hour or so, trying to instill in them a sense of community and responsibility to their fellow humans.  It almost worked; she didn't see any pickpockets, although there were a few opportunistic people trying to seize things other people had dropped.  They nearly got trampled for their troubles, but Vehuel kept them out of trouble.

A terrible clanging noise nearly made her fall out of the sky, and she saw that the courthouse had collapsed.  That had been the bell.  She flew closer, sparks streaking across her skin, and spared another miracle to keep the flames from engulfing the prisoners as they fled the ruined courthouse.

She looked back northward.  The wind was picking up again, and the rising air was carrying her too far above the city to see much, so she dove back down to soar over the north side of the river, hoping she could keep the wind from carrying the fire over.  It had already leapt over the river once; she'd be damned if she would let it happen again.

Well.  No.  She'd be reassigned, probably.  Heaven had always been merciful to her despite her many mistakes.

She pushed sparks and flaming debris southward with wingbeats when she saw them.  There were little flames along the surface of the river now, and several barges were on fire.  The throng fleeing across the bridge was pushing and shoving as the fire raged on the southern bank of the river.

She landed next to the railroad tracks on the northern bank, needing to take a moment and recover her strength.  It was too much, too much to keep people from being crushed on the bridge and hover in the air and notice all the sparks and keep them away and oh, she just wanted to go back to hanging around in saloons with good music and better beer, smoothing over barfights and cleaning card hustlers out of their hard-swindled money.

But as she was thinking this, something niggled at the back of her mind, and she noticed a scrap of something aflame floating on the breeze towards a tank car, and she reached for it with a miracle, to extinguish it, to transform the liquid inside to water, to -- to -- anything, really -- but she was too slow, and the flame landed on the train car.

"Oh come on, that's

not fair, you can't just -- you can't just take my miracles away!" he shouted at the skies, and immediately regretted it, because, well.  Of course they could.

Vehuel looked around for anyone he could save, anything he could do now, his plan shattered by the complete and utter indifference of Heaven to the plight of a vacation town known for its baths and brothels.  It wasn't a good city, but it was beautiful in its way; it was human.

Just then, a little scroll floated down from the sky, which was much more welcome than the rain of ash and pumice they'd been having.  He ripped it open, and read, hoping it was the answer to his prayers.

It was not.  It was the answer to a question he'd asked nearly a week ago, when he'd suspected Vesuvius was going to erupt and wanted to know if there was anyone Heaven wanted to keep alive.  He'd learned his lesson from Aeneas; much easier to save somebody by dragging him out of the city well before it was aflame.

The note simply read:

Whole town expendable.

Fine.  Fine, that was fine, then.  He would just -- he would just have to deal with it.  He'd get a new body, at least; he didn't much like this one, it couldn't handle solar radiation nearly as well as the last one.  He unfurled his wings and braced them against the rolling cloud of acid and heat he knew was coming.

Not that they would help.  It was just instinct.

And suddenly his feathers were aflame and his flesh was melting off, and oh, he couldn't breathe for coughing, everything was

pain and fire and she was lying flat on her back and the ground was hot.

"Come on, get up," said somebody, and pulled her to her feet, only her eyes were watering and she was coughing up maybe both her lungs at once?  "Calm down, Vehuel, you don't need to breathe," said the voice, not unkindly but still impatiently.

She did that.  "Oh.  Oh, ow."  One of her wings was still on fire, and she shook it out.  She wouldn't be flying for a while.  She looked at her rescuer.  "Michael!" she said, and then she couldn't think of anything more to say, because!  Michael!

All around them, the world was on fire.  "A beam of wood just fell on the waterworks," said Michael, "so the fire department will be useless."

"They're already useless," grumbled Vehuel.  "Why are you here?"  She could dare to hope, if Michael was here.  Michael actually took her seriously, which was itself a little terrifying, because Vehuel knew she didn't merit that, but it meant she would help, and at this point Vehuel would've taken help from anyone except maybe Satan.

"I have a church protected with miracles on North Avenue and Church Street," said Michael, "but this is -- this is, frankly, an extraordinary fire, worse than I'd expected.  It's far north but I don't know if the fire will peter out before it gets there.  Work on getting people out of danger, but if it looks like the fire is going to get that far north, meet me there.  Understood?"

Vehuel nodded numbly.  "But why are you here?" she blurted out.

Michael ignored her, and took off.  Vehuel watched her go, then took a deep, non-coughing breath to steady herself, and waded back into the flames.

Vehuel made her way northward slowly, trying to help all she could without being burnt up herself, gently pushing people westward if she could. Now that she knew Michael was here she was less worried about having her miracles cut off, but the fire was spreading so quickly and there were so many people. She pushed through the crowd, keeping children with their parents, healing burns and cuts, and plaguing pickpockets with sudden fits of conscience.

People were starting to run into the lake, and Vehuel hesitated as to what to do about them, but then Michigan Avenue caught fire and there was nothing for it but to leave them there. She realized suddenly that the fire was a few blocks from North Avenue, and here she was, nowhere near the church, so she ran west, praying (in an informal way, knowing that she couldn't answer such a prayer herself) that she wasn't leaving the people in the lake to drown or boil. She remembered the crowds at the docks in Lisbon, and reminded herself that no great wave would come out of Lake Michigan. Or at least, probably not.

Michael was standing on the roof, looking out over the city in a resigned sort of way. The flames were only a block away now.

"I'm here!" Vehuel called from the ground, feeling like she was absolutely ridiculous not to be able to fly.

Michael flitted down to meet her, though. "Quite a fire," she said, and frowned. "I don't think my miracle is going to hold it off."

Vehuel, soot-stained and exhausted, could not imagine what she could possibly say to this. "But how?" she asked; those were the only two coherent words she could come up with.

Michael was silent for a few moments. "Have you heard of Peshtigo?" she asked, finally.

Vehuel shook her head.

"It was a town, but it burned down yesterday. The whole town. Two thousand people are dead."

This was not at all helping Vehuel's urge to cry. "I'm sorry."

"Well, it's obviously not your fault," said Michael, frowning at her.

It wasn't obvious to her. She should have known this would happen, it was one of her towns so of course it was going to be destroyed; she should've influenced the city government for better fire safety, or slowed building, or something.

She remembered, queasily, all those building projects she'd helped along for the sheer delight of showing up Cerviel, that smug asshole, who had a New York-centric view of the solar system. How close was Peshtigo? Should she have been checking up on that instead of indulging her stupid competitiveness?

"There've been a few other fires today," said Michael. "Near here, geographically. This is the only place of any real significance, of course, but..." Michael continued talking, but Vehuel had a hard time listening, because a town of two thousand people was of real significance to those people, and now they were all dead, and they weren't even Vehuel's people, but really, all people were Her people, so they were significant, weren't they? But Michael hadn't meant that like it sounded, of course. Michael was brusque by necessity, and very important and busy and probably shouldn't even be here, and certainly didn't have time for Vehuel's philosophizing, and she was the only person in Heaven who'd ever listened to Vehuel so really, Vehuel owed her everything. "...to hunt up any evidence of a demonic firebug. What do you think?"

"Ah." Vehuel did not panic. "I think -- that -- maybe? But it hasn't rained for a long time, and it is prairie and forest up here. Could just be natural."

"I'll keep that in mind," said Michael, and she sounded like she actually would. The fire was almost upon them, and people trailed past. Many carried belongings -- hopefully their own, but Vehuel had seen looting on her way here. "And I think it's time to evacuate this church. Go in and hold the walls, Vehuel; I'll get the people out."

Vehuel walked straight through the wall of the church, and found an out-of-the-way place in the aisles to stand and keep the walls up. She watched Michael, unseen by humans, nudging them into greater efficiency, reminding them of things they'd forgotten, keeping people from being trampled underfoot. Vehuel was good at that kind of thing, but it was a relief not to have to think just now. No quick calculations about how fast someone could run, no moral conundrums about which person to save, no care to be taken to avoid startling the horses or the humans. Just bricks to protect.

And she cried, finally, wiping tears off her face and got soot in her eyes, which made the crying worse, of course. She let down the miracle that made her seem unremarkable to human eyes anywhere she went, and put everything into the walls. A few people stared openly at her; at a guess, this mostly-German congregation did not contain many colored women who dressed in men's suits. (Eventually, a man approached her and offered her a handkerchief, which she waved off.)

The church emptied out, and Vehuel could feel flames licking at the walls. She pushed back against them, leaned into them, but it was no use, because

the church was burning and everything was on fire, everyone was on fire in their good church clothes. The ground kept shaking and the All Souls' Day candles kept falling to the ground; flames rushed up over the pews, and it was all Vehuel could do to save a few people from being trampled as they fled. She tried to calm the ground, foolishly, but she couldn't stop an earthquake once it had hit, and it had hit hard. Flying over the town, she saw that there were fires springing up everywhere, walls coming down, people pouring out of churches, headed to the docks -- good. They would be safe by the water, away from walls, she was certain. She tried to keep the church from falling down around them, but it was too much to ask of reality, to ignore the ground buckling beneath, and the walls came down

right on top of her, and her whole left side was -- on fire? Was that fire? She couldn't even tell anymore.

"Why didn't you leave?" someone asked her, and she didn't know what to say. There were people inside! There was an earthquake! she wanted to say, but -- but -- everything hurt so badly she couldn't think. Someone was pulling her out from under the rubble -- someone was telling her she should have run -- someone was being, frankly, very annoying, and she tried to tell them to shut up but she couldn't seem to move anything.

She decided, to preserve whatever sanity she had left, that she didn't really need to be conscious for whatever was happening now. Either she would be discorporated or she wouldn't. It was in God's hands now.

* * *

"Oh, no, you don't want to go in there," said the Archangel Michael. "That's the infinite frictionless surface, we'll never get you out of there. Looks fun, though, doesn't it? Come along, my office is this way." She smiled, and led Vehuel further into the central offices of Heaven. She caught a brief glimpse of several angels skidding across a blindingly white floor, using their wings to balance.

There were so many other angels here, and so much light; it was strange and amazing and terrifying, and so unlike her posting in the far reaches of space. Everything looked so perfect, so correct. But it also hurt her eyes, so she closed most of them.

Michael sat down behind her desk, and Vehuel tried not to fidget, sitting in the seat across from it. She stared at the nameplate. Who is like God? Definitely not me, she thought. That was the point, probably. "You had some concerns about the behavior of light?"

This was it. She could say what she'd actually come here to say, or she could talk about the wave-particle glitch. She took a breath. "Actually. It's about my supervisor? Lucifer. He's...

There was too much light, and Vehuel tried to keep her eyes closed, but somebody was standing above her, telling her to do something she couldn't quite make out.

She felt the prickle of a medical miracle settle over her, and suddenly the gibberish resolved into "Vehuel, wake up, please?"

Everything hurt like Hell and she absolutely did not want to be awake right now. Still, an order was an order. She opened her eyes, or tried to. Something was wrong. Her left eye wouldn't open. "I'm awake," she muttered. She tried to focus. Was that Raphael? Possibly. She didn't entirely remember what Raphael looked like. Honestly, it could be anyone with a face.

"Good, good," said possibly-Raphael, although she could barely hear him. "You need to be awake for a while, I have to rebuild some parts of your brain."

"Are you Raphael?" she asked. "I can't tell. He has a face, you have a face, so I'm thinking... probably?"

The angel gave her a tight, worried smile. "Yes. We've met. You're in here every few centuries."

They probably had, but Vehuel was having trouble recalling specifics. "I feel really calm about this," she said. It seemed unusual, that she should be calm.

"That tracks," said Raphael, grimacing.

"I don't remember being calm about anything, ever," she said. "I think maybe I was calm once in 1450 BC, and then my island exploded.  Should I be concerned?  That doesn't seem like a good calmness result."

"You might be experiencing some memory issues," said Raphael, who was looking kind of upset now. "It's probably because you're missing half of your brain because somebody let an entire church that was on fire fall on you."  He sounded a little hysterical.

"Oh, don't be dramatic, Raphael, it was just one wall," said somebody on the other side of her.  "And it's not half of her brain.  A third at most."

Raphael glowered at whoever-it-was.  "Michael, this is ridiculous, we can't just send her back," he snapped. "She needs a full recorporation, or at least -- at least let me get her out of this body while I fix it.  Send her somewhere nice on holiday!  This is Heaven, there's got to be somewhere nice.  Damned if I've been there, though."

"Don't even joke about that," said Michael, darkly.  "How long would it take to fix the body without her in it?"

"About a year to do it properly. Maybe six months if I push the miracles to their limits.  Got to do testing, see that all the connections connect up right; it's easier with her in it but it's harder on her."

"We don't have time for that," said Michael.  "We need the city up and running, so we need her up and running."

"You seem really upset about this," Vehuel told Raphael. "I think, I think probably if I'm going to have a doctor they should be more calm about it than I am.  Maybe you should take a break?"

"You stay out of this!" Raphael snapped.  "Michael, how long do we have?"

Michael sighed.  "I'd like to get her back in a few hours.  This wasn't supposed to happen."

"Well, obviously it did, so on some level it was," said Raphael.  "A few hours, are you -- you know what, never mind, I'll just -- I'll see what I can do.  Get out of here, Michael."  Presumably, Michael left.  "Some people," Raphael muttered, "could use a full brain replacement."

"Is this going to hurt?" Vehuel asked.

"It's going to be... it's going to be odd," said Raphael.  "I'm sorry, we don't usually do these with the inhabitant still in the body the whole time.  For reasons I will not go into, because if you had your whole brain they would probably worry you."

Well, it wasn't like she had anything better to do.  "Okay."

"And you won't be able to speak or understand things for a while," said Raphael.  "See, if I could take you out of this body it'd be fine but -- never mind.  A few hours?  A few hours!  I can't believe..."  And then the medical miracle fell away and he was speaking gibberish again.

It was definitely very, very uncomfortable.  Vehuel had had worse deaths, but none of them had ever felt as itchy and invasive as an archangel remaking her brain.  Intermixed with the discomfort, though, were strange little fragments of sensation.  She heard a song that had been inescapably, obnoxiously popular one year in Pompeii, so much so that somebody had rewritten it to be about his campaign for city council.  (He had not won.)  She tasted, vividly, the food at the best uttapam place in all of Vijayanagara, a weird little hole in the wall she used to go to after wrestling matches, and then, centuries and oceans apart, felt the press and the sound of the crowd at a chunkey match in Cahokia.  She saw the brilliant lights of the central bulge of the Milky Way galaxy, and the terrible darkness forming in the center, and thought, Oh fuck, what are we gonna tell Lucifer?

"Vehuel?"  It was Raphael.  "Vehuel, can you understand me?"

"Yeah?"  She remembered where she was.  She remembered what had happened.  "Shit shit shit I have to go, why can't I move?  Is it over?  Am I done?  I need to get back down there, there's a fire."

"Ah.  Yes, you're definitely back," Raphael said.  "Don't try to move, I still have to put your skull back on.  And your arm.  And your wings."  He sighed.

"Okay but I have to -- the city's on fire, the whole thing is --"

"That's exactly what I thought you'd say," said Raphael, unhappily.  "I think it would be best for both of us if you were asleep for the rest of this."

"But --"

Raphael waved his hand over her.

"You will have to make him trust you," said Michael.  Vehuel nodded.  "You will have to..."  She paused, as if feeling out what words she might use.  "You will have to say things that aren't true.  Can you do that?"

Vehuel didn't think she was very good at making people trust her.  She was good with fire and gravity and dust; other angels were more difficult.  But she had some experience with untruths.  Which she probably shouldn't admit to.  "I think so," she said.

"Good," said Michael.

"Um.  What if -- what if he -- what if he finds out early?"  Michael looked at her sharply.  "I mean!  I mean I wasn't planning to fail, but what if I do?"

She'd expected a bland reassurance; she wasn't meant to fail, so she wouldn't.  Michael did not give her that.  Michael manifested, from out of nowhere, an infinitely thin line with an arrow at the top.  "This is something called a weapon."  She handed it to Vehuel, or tried to.

Vehuel looked at it skeptically.  "That looks like a ray.  Like on your diagrams."  She gestured to the scratchpad in front of Michael.  "Or a line of force."

"Well."  Michael paused, looking a bit embarrassed.  "Well, it is a line of force, really, but it's -- it's pointy, see?"  She jabbed the weapon into the wall, where it stuck.  "It should hurt him."

"Hurt him?"

"An unpleasant feeling.  He won't want to keep having it.  You'll be able to hold him off and get back here.  But I'd like the rest of them here too, if at all possible.  And once they're all here, I'll see to them personally."

Vehuel took the weapon, and turned it over in her hands.  "Well.  All right."  That sounded fair.  Michael would yell at Lucifer and everyone else, and they'd stop making terrible, frightening plans, and everything would be good again.

"Heaven is counting on you, Vehuel," said Michael.

She nodded.  "I -- I actually did have a problem to report about the light waves, though?"

"I'm sorry, I think I've got a meeting to go to," said Michael.  She made a face.  "I think it's about ions.  So fiddly!  Later, you can tell me what's wrong with the light waves."  She smiled, and showed Vehuel out.

Vehuel opened her eyes.  All of them.  All of them.  She closed thirteen of them.  Way too bright.

She remembered about the fire again, and sat up, and nearly overbalanced and fell to the floor.  "The fire!" she said, not that that would help anything.  She looked around, and saw Haniel, Michael, and Raphael watching her.

"Don't worry, we sent some rain," said Haniel, looking very concerned.  "I'm sure that'll help!  Don't you think?  Anyway, you can relax.  You don't have to go back right away.  You can rest."  She patted Vehuel's shoulder.

"She's needed for the rebuilding," said Michael.  "She's very good at rebuilding," she added.

"I am, I really am!  Let me go back!" said Vehuel.

Haniel glared -- actually glared -- at Michael.  Haniel had never glared in her life.  "I'm sure the humans can manage for a month or so, Michael, they're not idiots.  Well, they're not complete idiots, anyway."

"That's true," said Michael, considering.  "We could have Cerviel check in on Chicago from time to time --"

"No!" said Vehuel.  "No, no, absolutely not."  Cerviel was not touching her city.  He'd probably forget to add alleys when they rebuilt.

"No, definitely not Cerviel, he's very busy," said Haniel.  "What about... we have someone in Los Angeles, don't we?  Can't we send them?"

Michael frowned at this.  "It's a long way to travel, though.  Do you remember who we have there?" she asked Haniel.

Haniel frowned.  "I..."

Vehuel decided to cut that line of thought short before it got anywhere worrisome.  "No, no, Michael's right, LA's too far to travel," said Vehuel, "and it'd be cruel to him to make him deal with Chicago weather.  I have to go back.  Just for a few years.  Come on, I've been through worse."

Haniel looked unhappy.  "That doesn't mean --"

"Well, I'm glad that's settled," said Michael.  She turned to Vehuel.  "Good luck with the rebuilding!  I know you can handle it."  Then she left.

"I still think this is a terrible idea," said Raphael.

Haniel shrugged at him.  "Apparently she's made up her mind," she said, nodding at the direction Michael had left in.  She turned to Vehuel.  "Really, though, if you need some time..."  She looked hopeful.

"No, no, I -- I can't let Michael down," said Vehuel.

"Vehuel..."  Raphael sighed.  "The day you let Michael down I will shake your hand and get you a box or a basket or a bottle of whatever weird disgusting human thing you like best, all right?  I know there must be something, all you Principalities have got something like that."

Vehuel blinked at him.  "Thanks?  I guess.  But look, I really have to go."  She got up to leave.  "But thanks!"

* * *

The surviving population of Chicago clustered raggedly in a few places along the lakefront and on the prairie north of the city.  They were drenched and burnt both, and many of them had lost everything; even if not, many of them had lost family.

Vehuel went from cluster to cluster, shepherding lost children back to their parents when she could, and healing burns -- except on pickpockets, because she was so tired of pickpockets by now -- and miracling up food.  The ruins of the city were so hot she could barely stand to fly over them, even at a great height, but she did, once.

And she remembered -- but did not see -- the population of Thera, saved by too many miracles and still homeless and terrified but alive. She recalled Lisbon after the earthquake and fire and tsunami, and the reprimand she'd earned from Gabriel when she'd allowed the prime minister to have the corpses burned rather than backing the church to make sure they were buried -- she'd seen Pestilence lurking in the ruins and would give him no foothold.  She'd earned that reprimand, and she was proud of it.

She remembered guiding that idiot Aeneas for a while.  Not her proudest achievement, but she'd managed to get him where he was supposed to be.  (And promptly gotten lost again for several years on her way back to Troy.  What had been wrong with the Aegean sea back then?)

Looking over the ruins of Chicago was difficult, and looking at the ruins of its citizens was even harder, in some ways.  But it was still a city.  It was just a city without a lot of buildings, for now.  And she was going to have to do her best with it.