Demons by John Shirley Read Free Book Online

wondering which way to jump. Wondering if angels were next, Michael wielding a fiery sword. The world sank onto its haunches and let its shoulders sag as it panted for breath and wiped its brow.
    During the first Lull there was time for pundits to argue on television. Back then they were still babbling the tediously familiar polemic of denial, with their “not demons but anarchists in rubber suits, bulletproof vests, cyborg enhancement,” their “hallucinations, and the hallucinating attacking people, some of them in costume and makeup . . . water poisoned by terrorists,” their “mind-control projections combined with bombings.”
    Then there was the inevitable countersuggestion: The demons are indicators that the moment has come for complete resignation and submission to Jesus (or Allah or angry ancestral spirits or Yahweh or . . . Lord Satan). Long lines formed outside churches, synagogues, Buddhist temples, and outside both the Church of Satan and the First Church of Interstellar Contact—this latter an extraterrestrial contactee outfit run by channelers. It was a riot of metaphysical confusion.
    Only Paymenz and a few others kept their heads.
    “We will go to the Council for Global Interdependence,” Paymenz said to me. “We need an objective. That will be our first one.”
    “What,” I asked, eating bread and jam in the bedroom, “is the council for . . . ?” Most of my attention was bent on sounds from the drainpipes on the outer walls that might have been the clicking of large claws.
    “CFGI. The Council for Global Interdependence. It’s not much of anything yet—it’s just a gleam in Mendel’s eye, compared with his plans for it. But there are real contacts there, and I was preparing to go over there yesterday morning. It happens that the very day of the demonic coming, about seventy representatives from twenty countries came to town for a conference funded by the Council. Shephard’s conference, actually. One that’s not going to go on, but— Most of the conferees are here and may be in the convention center yet . . . and Shephard . . .” His voice trailed off. He looked at me but said nothing. I was thinking the same thing: Hadn’t Shephard suggested perhaps that the conference wouldn’t happen?
    Paymenz seemed to shake himself and went on. “The council is sheer talk so far, but it represents those who’ve made other initiatives.”
    He sipped his tea. I saw his eyes wander to a vodka bottle leaning precariously on one of Melissa’s stacks of magazines, but he looked resolutely away from it. Melissa was sleeping—twitching in her sleep. She would sleep for five minutes, till something unspeakable drove her out of the dream, and she would sit up and then sink slowly back.
    “What sort of initiatives?” I asked.
    “Hm?”
    “You said ‘those who’ve made other initiatives.’ ”
    “The initiatives . . . well, it actually began in the middle of the last century. Or perhaps much earlier . . . but most notably, the formation of the League of Nations and then the United Nations. Then came the U.N. Peacekeeping force—the NATO actions in Kosovo, the global peacekeeping forces in East Timor. A slow movement toward a real global society with real global policemen, with uniform human rights rules . . . and it was not all as spontaneous as it seemed. It was planned, as much as it could be. They didn’t know that the Indonesians would do what they did in Timor—but they knew what to do if a situation like that arose. And they did. The Council is another project of those same planners. I was one of many consultants. It’s something still in its infancy, still unformed and tentative. It could go very wrong—or it could be something wonderful. At any rate, my boy, that’s what I’d have said a few days ago. Now, all considerations of the future are subject to redefinition. The future itself is problematic. All our paradigms are in ruins. Let us go, however. Wake my poor daughter, and let