Limbo 56 by Mike Morris (suggested reading .TXT) 📕

Inn used to stand.”

“You have to locate Osama for me,” O’Grady said across the hissing phone line.

“Why should we locate him for you?” Arthur exclaimed angrily. “Why the Hell should we do anything for you?”

“Because I’m the Arbitrator,” O’Grady said calmly, and Arthur bit back a confused and angry reply. “I can hold him from destroying Las Vegas,” he continued, “at least I can for three hours.” The hissing on the phone line was getting louder. “While you, Arthur, were spending all of the collective money on your new boy-friend, and you, Gladys were doing what you do so well to get some of that money back, and you, Jasper, were trying, unsuccessfully to contact Hell, he was getting ready for martyrdom.” He paused. “Arthur, these two are a bit more up to date than you. Have you ever heard of biological weapons?” He paused. “I thought not. Nowadays, they’re cheap, easy to produce and deadlier than nuclear weapons. Take two fragile glass tubes, fill them with two substances that are rare, but unfortunately not too rare, then tape the two tubes together, and set up a dead-man’s switch.” He paused again. “You know what a dead-man’s switch is on a train, don’t you?” Arthur nodded. “A train driver has to keep pressure on a steel plate all the time the train is running. If he – or she, suffers a stroke, or heart attack, the pressure on the plate eases, and the brakes come on. Osama’s switch is just the opposite. If he releases pressure on the device, the tubes are smashed, and the liquids mingle, and either some very powerful nerve gas is released into the air, or Anthrax comes back to haunt the world. I’m not sure which.”

His voice was getting weaker, the hissing on the line broken by clicks and whistles, as if from a distant storm. “By the way, he’s not in the Penthouse suite in the Wynn, Las Vegas hotel,” he said. “Do you have any other ideas? Once Osama has hooked himself up, he’s going to break into a so-called secure military channel. He’s going to give them enough detail and enough proof so that they know what he’s capable of. Then he’s going to demand air time and make demands that will cripple the Free World.” The line went dead for a second. “…hate that expression,” he said.

“How many souls are we talking about,” Jasper said. “It’s a big hotel. Two thousand? Three thousand?”

“There are a million and a half souls in Greater Las Vegas,” O’Grady answered. “Then it depends which way the winds blow, and how strong they are. There are just a few people to the north, unless the stuff reaches Reno or Sacramento. There are thirteen million in greater Los ….” The voice trailed off again, amid pops and hisses.

They were all speechless, and then Arthur broke in. “The floor,” he cried excitedly, “what floor was the Howard Whoever-he-is Penthouse on?”

“Internet,” Jasper said tensely. “Lucky I brought along the Limbo Laptop. Ninth floor,” he said a minute later.

The phone went dead for a moment for a moment. “Correct,” O’Grady said. “Now, he’s going to contact the military in about two minutes.”

“Why didn’t you stop him,” Arthur yelled.

“Because I’m not an Angel,” O’Grady answered faintly. “Neither am I a Devil. I’m a Composite, an extremist who was willing to die for a cause, just like Osama.” Arthur started forward. “I’m a Composite,” he explained. “Don’t you understand, I’m a mad bomber who kills and dies for a cause, I’m a hero, a Saint, someone who saves and dies for a cause. There is a bit of General Cross in me and a bit of Corporal Williams, a bit of Osama, a bit of Gandhi, I could go on forever.”

“A bit of Gabriel, a bit of Lucifer,” Jasper murmured. “You see, Arthur, the Devils and the Angels are at an impasse, what I believe is called in this part of the world, ‘A Mexican Standoff’. For once, I find myself on the side of the An.. Ang… - those things up there. There are countless potential sinners in Las Vegas, but if Osama poisons them, they become Martyrs. That’s no good to Hell, and there are enough martyrs up there as it is.” The little Demon pointed to the ceiling and coughed smoke. “Well, ghost, what are you going to do for us?”

They listened to the rising and falling murmur on the phone line, straining to hear the faint whisper from wherever the ghost was. “I’ve stopped Osama for three hours,” O’Grady said. The words struggled through the hiss and crackle of a distant storm. “The three of you have an hour each to shake this man’s faith in himself. Once his faith is gone, the Devils have promised to drag him down to Hell before he can move. … three hours,” they heard faintly. “….. need to know, he’s not……, not…,” and the voice was gone, and they were on the ninth floor of the Wynn hotel, facing a large ceiling-to-floor set of golden doors.

“What was that last thing he said?” Jason asked, and the other two shook there heads.

“It was probably about him being a clone,” Gladys muttered. “I knew that anyway.” They looked around at the opulent room, and looked at each other. “He likes to do well for himself.” Gladys said. “I’ll go first.”

Arthur and Jasper stared uneasily at the luminescent second hand of Jasper’s little traveling clock as it slowly swept across the faintly glowing face. “What will you try to persuade him with?” Jasper asked, but Arthur only grunted. ”You still don’t trust me, do you,” Jasper continued. “Well, I’m going to tempt him as no man has been tempted. Thirteen virgins - ha; I’ll offer him a thousand virgins and a thousand whores, all shapes and colours and sizes. I’ll offer him mountains of gold, and trunks full of jewelry. Don’t worry Arthur; you won’t even have to speak to him.”

Behind the door, the gypsy was preparing to offer herself. In a room full of furniture that might have come from the Las Vegas of the nineteen-sixties, Osama sat in front of an old ticking clock. He gazed at her from deep brown eyes, an almost dreamlike gaze that engulfed her, pulling her down into a dark pool. She braced herself, pulled back, regained control. Even O’Grady had not affected her like this. She began to talk to him in her deep voice. She was, she told him, a Western woman, a woman the like of whom he had never before seen, a woman who had given herself freely to a thousand men, unlike the virgins he was used to, trembling behind their Chadors, unlike the Vegas hookers who never gave, only sold. As she talked, she gently unbuttoned her blouse.

An hour later, she opened the door, buttoning up her blouse. She walked over to the lush settee and sank down between Arthur and Jasper with a sigh. “It was like being in Hell with him,” she said. “I was afraid of him, and I’ve never been afraid of a man before.” She looked at them both, almost puzzled. “I couldn’t get any emotion from him.”

“I’ll talk to him, Demon to Demon,” Jasper told them. “Don’t worry, everyone has a price, and I’ll find his.” He walked to the door and grinned back at them.

They sat in silence for a while, as the minutes stretched out, and the hands of the clock moved forward. “Arthur, what are you going to say to that monster,” Gladys asked him, and Arthur realized that, inside the next room Jasper was going down in flames. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m a foundry worker, from a place with no dreams and no hopes. What do I have to say to a person like that?” They sat in silence for a while longer, and an almost unrecognizable Jasper opened the door.

“He laughed at me. He thinks he’s going to Hhheav…. Dammit, up there,” he shrieked, his tail lashing wildly. Jasper turned red eyes on them, lowering his head, pointing his horns at them. “No, he won’t take any sort of bribe because he knows he’s going to join the Angels, except that there won’t be any angels, just him and his kind, and, and, a few virgins for them to sample when they get bored.” Jasper was calming down, retracting his horns. “You two had better leave now, in a fast car. Even the undead can’t survive a blast of nerve gas. You’ll be living forever with an electrical storm in you head, an endless nightmare. You may as well be in Hell.”

Arthur shook his head and walked towards the golden door. He pushed, and it opened smoothly and silently. The terrorist Osama gazed at him from the chair, his hand clenched around the dead-man’s-switch, a small, black plastic box that looked like no dead-man’s-switch that Arthur had ever seen. He knew the rules as well as Arthur, and he was convinced that he would succeed in his plan.

“Do you speak English,” Arthur said, and cursed himself for his stupidity.

The dark features arranged themselves into a smile, but the eyes remained blank. “Rather better than you,” the tall man said with scarcely an accent.

Arthur arranged his hard work-scarred hands on his knees. Dressed for Las Vegas, he was still a manual worker from a small corner of a gritty town. ‘Not a man,’ he thought. “They probably programmed that into you,” he said. “After all, you are a custom-built clown – sorry clone.” The eyes of Osama flickered briefly. “They probably programmed you to deny that you’re a clone, but you must know that you are one.” He waited, but Osama said nothing. “There are four of you,” he pressed on. “Only one of you can make it to Heaven.”

“Why,” Osama asked calmly. “Where does it say that?”

Arthur had no idea where, or even if, clones were ever mentioned in the most modern edition of the Bible. But then, he thought, neither would Osama. “New Testament,” he said confidently, “A clone is an abomination on the Earth and shall never enter into the kingdom of Heaven.”

“What do I care about your filthy bible,” Osama cried. “I mean the Koran, the true book,” he shifted a little in the chair. “Please don’t try to lie to me, you filthy peasant. I know every word in the Koran by heart. I know that I shall ascend to Heaven, for the Koran says "When we decide to destroy a population, we send a definite order to them who have the good things in life and yet sin. So that Allah's word is proven true against them, then we destroy them utterly." He laughed. “I’m going to destroy the entire population of Sin City, and I shall ascend to Heaven as a martyr.”

“You’re a clone,” Arthur explained patiently. “What will happen when the real Osama arrives. Do you really believe that you will remain in Heaven? You will be consigned to Hell with the other clones, and you will burn in eternal Hellfire.”

“The little Demon told me I’d burn in Hell, and I knew he was wrong,” Osama said. “Why should I believe an ignorant excuse for a man like you?” His eyes suddenly burned with rage. “What kind of a test is this,” he cried, “to ask me to listen to a stupid, uneducated man with no soul, no soaring vision, and no glory in him. In a few minutes, I’ll press the button,” his eyes flicked to