The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [127]
“No.”
“A hand, gripping the key that tuned the cord. The hand of God, who made the world.”
She looked again at a few equations, moved things around a bit. “Now, it's really more complicated than that, but in a way the picture said something, the same thing that a philosopher named Newton said—”
“I know who Newton was.”
“Good. They've attended to your education, then. What the picture said was this: the universe needn't be as it is. It can be changed, just as the pitch of a violin string can be changed. And yet it is not a great change—after all, even if you tune a violin up or down a few notes, you can still play the same songs, only in a different key.”
“I still don't understand.”
“We're going to put the universe in a different key, that's all. That's why I have this hand—that's why they gave it to me, the angels, so I could twist the key. That's why you were born, to do the same thing.” Her throat tightened again. Would Nico know if she lied to him?
“And we're ready to do that?”
“Yes.”
“That's good, then.”
“Yes, that's good.”
And she was ready. Her castle was the monochord, anchored at the poles of creation, held at one end by her son and at the other by herself. She had turned the key once already— when the death attacked her, in Saint Petersburg. She had tightened it just slightly, just enough so the death her son had created to kill her could no longer exist—and then let it go back to where it had been.
When it passed over, it twisted everything in me, the Siberian woman had said. And of course, it had. He did. She did. Tree, monochord, castle—all the same.
“When I turn, you must hold fast, Nico. Do you understand?”
“Yes. I can do that.”
She hesitated, remembering him as he had been—a strange, silent child. But she loved him—he had given her a reason to live when all other reasons were gone.
“Do you remember?” she asked softly. “Do you remember when I showed you the moon? La lune?”
The boy's eyes grew even wider then, and he pursed his lips. “La loooon,” he said.
“Yes. You do remember. Will you take my hand?”
Hesitantly, he reached out, and as their fingers touched, the monochord she had written became real, rushing into existence with all of the certainty in her.
But something was wrong. There was the monochord, yes, but there was—something else, something climbing up it, something she hadn't made. In her angel sight it was a tree of fire, then a serpent uncoiling—its tail in the deeps and its eyes in the stars. It was Red Shoes, and then it was a creature with six times sixty wings, and on each wing as many eyes, and black scales covering all. And it was a diagram, a scientific drawing of some hellish thing dissected.
“Thank you,” the creature said, as always, in her own voice. Now Red Shoes, now a fountain of blackness.
“Thank you,” it said again. “At last!”
“No,” she said. “Red Shoes?”
Its laugh was fingernails on slate. “Yes. Or no. I move through him, my little clay doll. Do you prefer him?”
It formed into Red Shoes again, squinted at the long strand.
“Ah, you see? It was well that I did not trust you. You and Franklin—you made this to deceive me. So similar, but so wrong. You would tune it the wrong way.”
“Who are you?”
“What could a name possibly matter? I think I have been called Metatron, and Lucifer, and Jehovah. No such names matter.”
“You are God's enemy.”
“And you are a superstitious beast of clay. There is no God. There is only us, and you. Soon there will be only us. Everything else is a lie, a pandering to your idiot minds.”
“I have heard differently, from your enemies among your own kind. You—”
“They are gone. The war in your imaginary heaven is over. I won.”
Tug howled as the scalped man ducked under his swing and snapped the tomahawk into his arm with such force it sent him smashing into the wall.
“Futt'r y', but y'r not gettin’ near him,” he growled, and slashed