Trapped

Much heavier. And bulging tautly, like a rubbery black soccer ball inflated to maximum pressure.

I opened the purse. A rush of gunpowder grains spilled dryly onto my hands.

For a moment, I stared stupidly at the dark sandy flecks. How could a shovelful of cellules get into my purse? Only one answer: it must have happened while I was mindlinked with the good Lucifer — while I was surrounded by the mound, blind to the outside world. And it couldn't have happened by accident. The purse always sealed hermetically shut, airtight, watertight, impenetrable. The angelic Lucifer must have shaped itself into fingers, opened the purse, deliberately crammed the interior with cellules, then closed it up again… all while I was oblivious.

I turned toward Annah, intending to tell her about this strange development; but I never opened my mouth. All around the cage, the blobs that had been blundering blindly were now slithering my way: moving with sudden purpose, converging on my position. Cellules rasped against each other and the moondust beneath them — a hiss like the sound of the great black heap when the lasers had winked out and evil poured in.

Uh-oh. I dropped the purse, then ran to Annah and Sebastian, vowing I'd protect them from whatever happened next.

The closest blob reached the purse and flowed over it, merging with the cellules that had been inside. A ripple went through the dark mass, like a shudder of pleasure. Then another blob arrived and the process repeated: a melding, a ripple, the sounds of grain on grain.

'What now?' Annah asked.

'I had a stowaway. It seems to have given the other cellules a new lease on life.'

'Was it a good stowaway or a bad one?'

'That's the question, isn't it?'

More blobs coalesced in the center of the cage — like tumbleweeds blown into a rock niche and massing in a single snarl. When all those cellules finished coming together, they'd create a mound as big as the one in Niagara… and judging by the purposeful way the blobs were moving, I was sure the mound would be intelligent.

Intelligent, yes; but good or evil? It had to be evil, didn't it? The good Lucifer's consciousness had been erased as soon as the laser cage lost power.

Unless…

Could my purse have kept the angelic Lucifer safe? The angel had stuffed its cellules into my purse before the protective field collapsed. Therefore the little black grains had been angelic when they went in. Could the purse have kept them isolated from the onslaught of Satan?

A normal purse couldn't… but this purse was a gift from the Sparks to my grandmother… who bequeathed the purse to me…

I suddenly found myself laughing. Laughing freely out loud — not with hysteria but truly appreciating the joke.

'What is it?' Annah asked. 'What's so funny?'

'My purpose in life,' I said. 'To carry…' I broke up again, unable to speak.

I inherited the purse from my grandmother. She'd received it from the Sparks thirty years ago. The Sparks got it from their mysterious sponsors in the League of Peoples. And the League, with flabbergasting prescience, had produced this high-tech purse way back when because they'd foreseen that on this very night they'd need a small container to protect the sanity of a few million 'angelic' cellules.

My purpose in life was to carry the purse. Just that. My brains, my scientific training, whatever other virtues I counted as points of pride — they weren't important. I was merely intended to carry the purse.

Curiosity made me wonder how much the League had tampered with my life. I didn't believe for an instant they could actually see thirty years into the future; no, they'd made this happen by subtle pushes and shoves. Not just the haunting and prophecy that aimed me in this direction — how much had they influenced me back in the past? The League controlled the nanites that pervaded my brain; had those nanites been the reason I chose to leave Sheba? Why I crossed the ocean and took a teaching position at Feliss Academy? And what about my friends? Were they manipulated too, prodded this way and that to satisfy the League's scheme? Probably. Without the sacrifices of everyone else, I never would have arrived at the right place and time to save the Lucifer.

To carry the purse.

'Insh'allah,' I said, still laughing.

'What?' Annah asked.

'It shall be however God wills. Or if you prefer King Lear, 'As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.' '

'Now you're doing quotations too?'

'Why not?' I smiled… but the smile was bitter. 'We've done what we were supposed to, Annah. We've fulfilled the quest and redeemed Lucifer. We've won.'

'How?'

I gestured toward the accumulating heap of cellules. Just as big as the mound in Niagara. Lucifers had been sent here over the years and rendered mindless by the suppressing laser field — turned into blank slates ready to be assimilated when the good Lucifer arrived. That had been part of the League's plan too: assembling sufficient mass to be reclaimed. Now the angel had arrived; now the mindless cellules had become part of a new consciousness. A good consciousness… or at least one that pleased the League better than the roaringly defiant Satan.

Now we had a saintly mound as big as the demonic one back in Niagara. I didn't have the prophetic powers of the League of Peoples, but I could guess what would happen next.

A humanoid clump of black pulled away from the pile in front of us. It shivered as if it were cold; then the outer crust of gunpowder flaked away to reveal a smiling, radiant Rosalind.

'Hello again,' the Lucifer-Rosalind said. Her voice was soft; her eyes shone. 'Do you understand what's happened?'

Annah didn't answer. I said, 'I understand in general. You might explain a few specifics.'

'Such as?'

'How much of this the League made happen. How much they interfered in all our lives.'

'I can't answer that,' the Rosalind said.

'Can't or won't?'

'Can't.' The girl lowered her eyes. 'Your purse is roomy for a purse, but it couldn't hold enough to preserve my entire consciousness. I saved the most important parts of my personality — at least I think I did — but I had to sacrifice almost all of my memories. Whatever I knew about the League's plans… the knowledge is gone. I'm virtually tabula rasa.'

'How convenient for the League.'

'Very. I'm as curious as you are about the League's influence. How, for example, did I choose which memories I'd discard and which I'd keep? Did the League do that, or did I choose of my own free will? Does free will exist at all?' The Rosalind shrugged. 'I have no answers. Considering that the amount I stuffed into your purse was roughly the size of a human brain, at this point I'm no wiser than you.'

'At this point?'

The duplicate Rosalind smiled and gestured to the looming black heap behind her. 'I've acquired new brain cells. With each passing moment, I can feel my mind expanding.'

'Lucky you. The laser cage isn't trying to expunge your intelligence?'

'No. The suppression effect turned off as soon as you showed up with the purse. I believe the purse sends out a signal.'

'Oh.' I shook my head ruefully. 'The League thinks of everything, doesn't it?'

'They do plan for contingencies.'

'But you don't know what their plan is?'

'No.' The Lucifer-Rosalind gave an apologetic look. 'Short term, I'm sure you can figure it out for yourself.'

I nodded. 'We wake Sebastian… or rather, you wake Sebastian. In your current form, he'll listen to you more than Annah or me.'

'That's likely,' the Rosalind agreed.

'Then,' I continued, 'Sebastian uses one of the ‹BINK›-rods to return to Niagara. He undams the Falls, fixes the wires, and re-activates the laser cage… trapping inside any bits of Satan that are waiting to ambush the Spark Lords.'

'Correct.'

'Then you use the other ‹BINK›-rod to go back to Niagara. After a brief struggle, you assimilate the evil cellules that are still in the cage.'

The pseudo-Rosalind smiled. 'Let's say I restore them to sanity.'

'So you increase your mass significantly and you get practice in bringing evil Lucifers back to the straight and narrow. One step closer to fulfilling the League's plans for you.'

'I'm sure they have my best interests at heart.'

I couldn't tell if the alien was being sarcastic. An upswell of bitterness made me say, 'The League has everybody's best interests at heart. They're the good guys, aren't they? Supremely powerful, yet generous enough to let lesser beings take part in their schemes. Like Gretchen. And Myoko. And Oberon and Pelinor and all the others who died in this mess. If the League is so omniscient, they must have foreseen my friends' deaths. But the League let it happen anyway; in fact, they instigated everything, because we'd all be safe in Simka if the League hadn't nudged us into getting involved.'

'You don't care that I'd have become evil?'

'The League could have prevented it without our help. A voice from the sky might have told Sebastian, 'That thing beside you isn't Rosalind.' Or the League could have gone to the Sparks. If the League had warned Mind-Lord Priest what was waiting for him at the winter anchorage, Jode could have been stopped right there. But instead, they left Priest in ignorance. So Priest died, Rosalind died, my friends died…'

I stopped. The Lucifer-Rosalind had her head cocked to one side as if she were listening to something. But the cage seemed very silent — the great black mound had stopped its rustling, leaving only the sounds of Annah's soft breathing and my own heartbeat. At last the Lucifer in Rosalind's form lifted her eyes to meet mine. 'That was the League,' she whispered.

'Speaking to you?'

She nodded. 'They say… they don't interfere as much as you think. They can't. They think there's a chance some human will do something — they won't say