reopened them they were the eyes of someone who was about to go off, Viking-style.
“I sense that what you say is true. How dare he? How dare he! The sacrifice of my child was a painful and beautiful act. A solitary sacrifice for the people of this fallen world. And he makes a mockery of me? Of my son? Of my compassion? He thinks killing his own child even compares to what I did?”
“From what I understand, he cursed your name and laughed while he did it,” Michael said, relaxing.
“He will suffer for this. You know the sin of Judas was not in betraying me, the sin of Judas was in thinking himself beyond forgiveness. His sin was arrogance. That was Satan’s original sin, and that is his sin now. Arrogance. Outrageous arrogance!”
“My Lord, I have a plan,” Michael said.
“Will it hurt him?”
“Badly, my Lord. The Heavenly Host is unsatisfied with the administration of Hell. We propose to invade it preemptively. We wish to annex it to Heaven and make it part of our realm. Lucifer will be given the choice to rejoin the Host or to be uncreated.”
“There is no choice,” God thundered. “Take his realm from him. Uncreate him. I am the Lord thy God and I have spoken.”
“Thy will be done,” Michael said, and bowed deeply.
In his heart, Michael was smiling. All his pawns were in place. All his plans were in motion. He would carry this victory in his heart and it would make the trip back through The Room that much shorter.
When news of the verdict hit, the crowd outside the courthouse went nuclear. They sent up a roar that shattered every window within a quarter mile. So many people stomped the earth, leaping up and down in joy, that it felt like an earthquake. So many tears of jubilation were shed that the shredded landscaping outside the courthouse turned to mud.
Inside the courtroom, the verdict had caused an instant chaos fiesta and Sheriff Furlough had hustled everyone to their various ready rooms. Judge Cody Gold was double-timed to his waiting chopper by the Segway cavalry. Out in Hollywood there was a reality TV producer who wanted to talk to him about a third season of his hit show, Cody Gold: Justice Touches You, and he had to get there, pronto.
Eric Horton, Ted Hunter and Frita Babbit were taken to what remained of the lawn outside the Sheriff’s Department where they held an impromptu press conference, notable mostly for the fact that Eric Horton was very sulky because Ted Hunter was hogging all the cameras. The only people who weren’t happy were Satan and Nero, and no one really cared about them anymore. No one wants to interview the losers. Sheriff Furlough had them shunted off to their conference room and left them alone. His plan was to wait until nightfall and then load them into a bulletproof Escalade and drive them fast to the airport where they could return to Hell and finally be out of what remained of his hair.
Satan lay on the floor of the conference room like someone with a bad back who has been on a plane for thirty-six straight hours. His eyes were open but they looked as dull and lifeless as old golf balls. His face was slack, his tongue white, his muscles sagged into the floor.
“They’ll have a hard time enforcing that judgment,” Nero said, trying to look on the bright side. “Although, I suppose that this could be the justification Heaven needs to violate our autonomy. That we owe a debt we cannot pay and that we’ve walked the Earth openly, and we’ve created an enormous mess...I mean, they could use that as a rationale to...to take us over.”
Satan died a little inside.
“We’ll make these numbers work, sir,” Nero said. “As soon as we get back down to Hell we’ll go over them and find a way to raise four hundred million dollars. I know we can do it.”
Satan didn’t say anything.
“We can lease out parts of Hell to the oil companies, maybe work out a deal with the United States to serve as a containment facility for terrorists, you know, get them out of Guantanamo and into Hell. Government contracts are big money! And on top of that there are plenty of other ways to make money such as...such as selling some souls? Or maybe starting an AOL call center? We’ve got a captive work force.”
Satan didn’t take the conversational bait.
“We won’t have to sell