Green Monkey Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page A

heaven. Again I feel the whoosh of the explosions, and the flaring heat of the flames as they coiled around me. The sound of Glory dying was the sound of my anguish.
    â€˜Tell me again what happened at the end,’ Erasemus said. ‘I know you have written it, but . . .’
    He stopped, not wanting to say what I saw so clearly in his face. That if I thought Sorrow had truly been sent by heaven, then perhaps I was mad. If that was so, perhaps I had been mistaken in reporting that the control centre had been annihilated, and was incapable of detonating the explosives hidden in the other cities, in Freedom.
    â€˜He showed me the control room, and when I had the chance, I went back to destroy it. I rewired it so that it would be blown up. I didn’t realise the city would go up with it. I thought it would just be the room.’
    â€˜He might have lied when he said the control room was the only control centre. Maybe the weapons could be triggered some other way.’
    I looked at the wall, and after a moment he went out. Unless he believed Sorrow had been an Angel, he must doubt. He could not understand that an Angel is truth. Erasemus believed Sorrow had been mad, and I could not tell him any different. People see what they want to see. Sorrow told me that. People can look into the face of the sun, and see only the eternal night.
    â€˜It was foreseen that it would come to this moment of balance,’ Sorrow had said, standing in the doorway of the control room. His eyes were on the weapon I held. Jack Rose had made it himself – a little sheathed knife that, triggered, ejected its blade. My hand trembled.
    â€˜You love me,’ the Angel said.
    I nodded, weeping. ‘I do, but I have to stop you. I can’t let you destroy everything.’
    â€˜Only flesh, my love. Only the material world. I would never harm you.’ He was smiling because he was an Angel and Angels are love and only know love. He loved me, but he did not understand the nature of flesh, the need of it to survive. The drive to go on which is stronger than fear or hate or even love.
    â€˜Heaven calls – can’t you feel it?’ he said, his face exalted. ‘It is time. It is not too late, even with all you have done. We will end it together.’
    He reached for the lever which would bring Geddon to the world before the control room could explode and sever Glory from the other cities.
    I triggered Jack’s knife and a red flower bloomed over the Angel’s heart. He fell like a snowflake, as the city around us juddered. His head was in my lap. He smiled and tried to lift his fingers to my face.
    â€˜Too late,’ he whispered, his hand falling back. ‘I failed heaven. I failed you, my dear love. We must part.’
    â€˜No,’ I whispered, but he was gone, flesh and spirit.
    I do not know what it means that I have survived. I meant to follow him, for we had begun the High Path together. Yet I live and suffer. Perhaps the path is longer for me, because of my betrayal. But in one thing, I did not betray. He went to heaven, I saw the pain in his eyes as his spirit left the flesh – his name was a foretelling – for his Anguish at the last was terrible.
    â€˜What will you do now?’ Jack Rose asks.
    â€˜I will survive,’ I say. ‘That is what we humans do. You taught me that. It’s what flesh does best, you said. Nothing is more important than that. To survive, we will do anything – starve, hunger, claw. Kill an Angel.’
    â€˜We are what we are now, Rian,’ he says softly. ‘If we once were just spirit, we’re not that any more. We’re flesh and maybe we have a different path to tread than heaven intended. Maybe heaven will leave us alone now.’
    â€˜Maybe,’ I murmur, and my heart twists, but I do not let my pain show. ‘I heard you are leaving.’
    He nods. ‘I’ve had enough of being a watcher. The authorities have heard