Lucifer's Lottery - Edward Lee [78]
Coolness.
Quiet.
Your gourd-head clears, and you find yourself back in the bedimmed Turnstile. It’s uneven, flat black walls emit the faintest indescribable luminescence.
“Ah,” Howard utters. He sits down on a squat, companulated protrusion made of the same material of the Turnstile itself. He loosens his frayed gray tie and smiles at you.
“Just as sleep is nature’s balm, I daresay quietude is its sedative.”
Your stick has been leaned against a corner whose angles are precisely sixty-six degrees. Within the polygon’s inner vault, you’re finally able to relax. The only sound you’re aware of arrives as the most distant hum, which is somehow organic, not electronic. That and an occasional tick of the steam-car’s cooling engine.
Howard unwraps a napkin and removes a cookie of some sort. “I’d offer you a Uneeda biscuit but, lo, your Auric Carrier doesn’t allow you to consume food.”
“Thanks just the same . . .” You try to collect your thoughts but aren’t sure how to; you’re not even sure what to think. But you know that Howard is merely giving you time to either consider or recover from all the detestable things you’ve seen.
You jerk your gaze at a sudden sound: a grunt, a shuffle. Torchlight sputters from a farther corner, and then a shadow lengthens.
The Imperial Truncator—the watchman of this place—shuffles nonchalantly across the black floor, his cleaver-hands swinging, the Ghor-Hound helmet high on his head.
“I forgot all about him,” you remark, but then: “Hey! What happened to the—”
“Ah, yes. Our lithe chauffeur, the Golemess . . .” Howard squints; then his shoulders slump. “Ostensibly not so lithe any longer.”
Now another, less lively shuffle, and from the same corner the Golemess appears. She seems winded, wearied now, and when she trudges into more torchlight, you see why.
She’s pregnant.
“The dude with the meat cleavers for hands got her pregnant!” you exclaim. The gray clay belly looks stuffed, the breasts doubled in volume, presumably full of Golem milk now.
“I was unaware that our Golemess came equipped with fertility features. No doubt before her clay was Hexegenated, the Master Sculptors at the Edward Kelly Institute of Inanimate Enchantment implanted her with a reproductive tract and ovarian process. This is another Luciferic Law that’s gradually activating: the Public Gravidity Initiative. Lucifer desires that anything female—even things unalive—be fertile. More progeny, more fodder for the machinations of the Mephistopolis. God invented reproduction via Human passion, to bring forth more Children of God to one day enjoy the Firmament of Heaven. Lucifer, therefore, perverts God’s endeavor, to reduce femalekind to repositories of lust, and bring forth more meat and building material.”
You stare at the huge stomach as the fatigued Golemess lumbers to the steam-car. “But what . . . what’s going to come out?”
“Immaterial,” Howard answers. “It’s purpose is served, and the Initiative is duly discharged.”
Meat, you recite Howard’s information. Building material.
“And now, Mr. Hudson,” Howard intones. “You’ve had this moment of respite. I’m curious as to the constitution of your thoughts.”
Your hideous head swivels to meet his gaze. “I’m thinking that everything here is illogical—”
“Which serves as the perfect logic within the confines of an antithetical demesne.”
“—including my being here.” You blink. “What, I win this Senary because I’ve tipped some scale of sin, some fulcrum. It makes more sense to go after some guy who’s a hundred percent. A cardinal, a bishop . . .”
“Perhaps in your own purview of logic. Just as popes don’t question God, we don’t question Satan.”
You smirk. “Okay, fine. But in that case, your methods are terrible.”
“Really?” Howard seems intrigued. “Be kind enough to articulate your impression.”
You recite them thus far. “I’m a good enough person that if I died right now, I’d go to Heaven, right?”
“Beyond doubt.”
“But Lucifer wants me to give that up so that when