On a Pale Horse (30 page)

THE MOTIVE OF THE SOURCE OF THE DIRECTIVE IS NOT ON RECORD IN MY FILE
, the screen reminded him.

“Who is the source of that directive?”

THAT INFORMATION IS NOT—

“Are you giving me a runaround?” Zane demanded.

YES
.

Zane paused, taken aback. He had underestimated the literal way the computer took things! “You are? Clarify.”

I AM NOT PROVIDING THE INFORMATION I KNOW YOU SEEK
.

Zane was interested in this aspect. Was the machine trying to help him in its fashion? “What information is that?”

THE SOURCE OF THE DIRECTIVE OF EARLY RETIREMENT OF LUNA KAFTAN
.

“And the reason for it,” Zane concluded. “Is there information you could provide, if I phrased the question properly?”

NEGATIVE
. But there was a pause before the word was printed. What did that mean?

“If I phrased the question improperly?” Zane asked without much hope.

AFFIRMATIVE
.

Intriguing! There was a way around this barrier, if he could figure it out, but normal channels would not suffice. “How should I phrase it to gain the desired information?”

NEGATIVELY
.

Negatively. Zane pondered that a moment. Did this mean the computer was not permitted to answer directly, but could do so indirectly? How should he phrase his questions, then? It wouldn’t make sense to ask who had
not
issued the directive—or would it? Maybe that was worth a try.

“What is not the source of the aforementioned directive?” he asked, mentally holding his breath.

ANY NATURAL AGENCY
.

That covered a lot! What was left, except a supernatural agency? The Incarnations were partly supernatural, but did not make Eternal policy; they only implemented it. That seemed to leave God and Satan. Yet why would God do such a thing? Satan, on the other hand—

“What supernatural agency lacks any motive for such an order?”

GOD
.

Sure enough. But why would Satan do it?

Zane saw the answer to that: Luna was now doomed to Hell at death, while if she lived longer, she would have a chance to redeem herself. Satan had to catch her now, or lose her.

But why hadn’t the computer simply told him this?

Zane sat for a while and pondered. Something didn’t
add up. This machine was acting the way Nature had, never quite expressing the essence. Was there a reason?

Magician Kaftan had been indirect, too. He had also taken care not to name Satan, lest the Prince of Evil be alerted. A machine, in Purgatory, should not fear Satan in the same manner—but maybe the computer had been ordered not to print Satan’s name in this connection. Thus it could respond negatively, but not positively.

If Satan was behind this thing, feeding in a spurious order—Satan was a dread prime mover, second in power only to God—how could anyone or anything oppose him? Not the Purgatory computer, certainly! If it aroused Satan’s ire, it might find itself replaced by a competitive make of machine. It might not have any emotion about such an occurrence, but perhaps did have the intelligence not to pursue a self-destructive course.

Yet if Satan had the power to abort a person’s life, to cut the thread early, why hadn’t he simply claimed Luna openly? Why go to the trouble of concealing his part in it?

Concealment—that suggested wrongdoing. Satan, of course, was the Father of Lies, so that was consistent. But he was taking Luna the hard way, and that did not make sense—unless he could not take her any other way.

Was Satan himself constrained by rules? Surely so, for otherwise he would simply grab the whole world, and to Hell—literally!—with formalities. God and Satan had been opposing each other for all eternity past, and would continue for eternity future; neither could afford to squander strength in wild anarchy. So of course there were rules, tacit if not express, and the mariner in which any given person died was surely central to such an understanding.

Zane decided not to push this matter further at the moment. If Satan were cheating, it would be best for Death to make no protest—until he could establish his case absolutely. For sure as Hell—literally, again—Satan would not change his ways merely because someone on Earth objected. Zane had no intention of dropping the case; he just needed to make it airtight.

This matter did, after all, relate to his area of expertise—the death of a person. Nature had advised him that
each Incarnation was supreme in his own bailiwick, if he chose to be. The computer had shown him one avenue of investigation by being indirect. What he needed now was to put it all together and find a way to accomplish his desire, despite the opposition of Satan. Certainly he would not prevail if he barged blindly ahead.

“Thank you, computer,” Zane said. “You have been very—” As he spoke, the screen flickered as if shorting out, and it occurred to him that he could get the machine in trouble if he acknowledged its help. “Uncommunicative,” he finished.

ANY TIME, DEATH
, the screen flashed, with a picture of an hourglass.

Zane departed Purgatory and punched his client timer. His case load got crowded whenever he took time off, but he was used to that now. He wondered how Fate managed to schedule the fatalities of these clients so that they were ready only when Death was ready to collect them. How could anybody know when Death was going to take a few hours off? Obviously there was a great deal of organization behind the surface that he glimpsed only in passing.

Who could know the random future? Chronos, of course! The realization struck Zane with a minor glow of excitement. He had just gained another insight into the operation of the system. Obviously Chronos did not just dawdle; Time had to be constantly on watch, tracking events and advising Fate of the necessary schedules. Chronos was well aware of Death’s activity, past and future, as he had shown when Zane left his Deathwatch on hold too long.

And the computer had signed off with the words
ANY TIME
, and with Time’s hourglass. That was more than a note of parting; that was a reference to Chronos. Surely that Incarnation knew what was going to happen and could tell Zane.

Yet what use would that be? He could ask Chronos about the future and get a confirmation that within the month Luna was going to Hell, where her demon lover would put it to her for the rest of eternity. Some revelation!

Zane was now close to his client, driving through a slum development in the immense eastern city of New York. He smelled smoke. In a moment he saw it—a tenement house ablaze. His gem pointed right to it; his client was trapped inside.

It was already too late; the red hand of the Deathwatch was touching zero. Zane drew his protective cloak tightly about him and walked into the flames. The fire could not hurt him; the only awkwardness was in getting to the upstairs where his client was, when the stairs were burning and insecure. Fire couldn’t stop him, but how about a fall? “Support me,” he murmured in a kind of spell, and the footing firmed. Once more Death had power to reach his destination. Again he remembered Nature’s remark: an Incarnation could not be balked unless he allowed it.

The figure was struggling in the linen of a bed that had become a minor inferno. Obviously it—for in this situation Zane could not tell whether his client was male or female—had tried to flee the fire by delving into the bed. Instead, the sheets had ignited, taking hair and skin with them. Zane understood that death by fire was the most painful possible; he believed it.

Quickly he strode across and hooked out the soul. The flayed body relaxed, its pain abruptly gone. This was the one unmitigated blessing Death brought—the relief of the agony of living. Yet what good was that, he wondered, if that soul was destined to pass from the flames of life to the eternal flames of Hell? The pains of life were temporary, but the pains of Hell were not.

On his way to the next client, Zane reviewed the soul. He was getting steadily more efficient at this, classifying more than half his clients on the run. He had become conversant with the broad categories of sin, so could generally tell not only how much, but what kind of sin weighted a given soul.

This soul belonged to a boy of about ten, whose principal burden was a major sexual transgression.

Zane paused. At this age?

He examined the soul more carefully and pieced the story together. Things were crowded in the slums, with several families or branches of families sharing facilities.
Intense friendships and enmities occurred. He understood that crowding tended to intensify the natural traits of people, so in this instance, interaction had been extreme. This boy’s curiosity had been aroused, naturally enough, by the secretive mechanisms of adult romance. He had naïvely inquired of a mature woman who was nominally baby-sitting him while his folks worked. She, perhaps dissatisfied with her own life, had taken the mischievous opportunity to educate him with considerable thoroughness.

Zane pondered this. When a grown man seduced a female child, it was molestation, for surely his attentions were forced on her; but when a grown woman did it to a male child, it was apt to be considered generosity. Zane could understand that; force was unlikely to be a component. But evidently the burden of sin attached to the boy as well as to the woman, especially if the child believed the liaison was wrong. There seemed to have been several repetitions, so the sin now amounted to fifty percent. The boy had been overwhelmed by the personality of the mature woman; fear of discovery mixed with the erotic joy she provided him. He had been caught in a kind of trap that an older person could readily have broken, but he lacked the courage or experience. It was quite understandable; he was a victim of circumstance—but still the accretions of sin had been charged against him.

This bothered Zane. He remembered how Fate had quoted from Henley’s poem about a man being the captain of his soul—but surely this was not as true for an impressionable boy. It seemed to him that an adult standard of responsibility was being applied to a juvenile person, and this was unfair. As a man who had once been a child, he could appreciate the appeal of an available woman at any age. He himself had longed for information at that age and had been denied it. He had tried to purchase a charm to summon a succubus, but the vendor had refused to deliver such magic to a child. Zane still regretted that; since succubi were nonhuman, yet the essence of sex, he could have learned a lot without involving anyone who counted. But of course there were laws, and they did tend to discriminate against children. Theoretically, this was
to protect those children; actually it had seemed more like punishment for being young, inflicted by those who wished they themselves had not aged.

At any rate, he deeply regretted taking this lad, who had only responded to the urges Nature had provided him. The Green Mother could do it to anyone; Zane knew that from recent personal experience. So the lad’s burden of sin was a technical thing, not really reflecting badness. The definition ought to be changed, to be more realistic. But of course there was nothing Zane could do about it. He was only Death, performing his own office.

“
Damn
the office!” he swore abruptly. “Why should I participate in what I believe is wrong?”

Nature had shown him another aspect of her power by enabling the left-footed dancing girl to revive. That death had not been final. Could this one be similarly negated? He thought of the condition of the body, its skin largely burned away, and shuddered. There was no point in returning the soul to that!

But what about Chronos? Maybe the Incarnation of Time could enable him to go back to the moment before the fire broke out, and warn the boy, so that—

“Take me to Chronos,” Zane directed Mortis, stopping his countdown.

The gallant Deathsteed slowed to a stop at a passing field and started to graze. Zane looked around, perplexed. “I don’t see—”

“Then turn about, Death,” the voice of Time came. It had a certain echoing quality, with a trace of grit, as if some sand had leaked into it from the hourglass.

Zane turned. There stood Chronos, in his white robe. He had surely not been there a moment ago. He must have come when Zane asked for him.

“I would like to have your help,” Zane said. “A demonstration of your power, if it does not lead to paradox.”

“I have power, and I love paradox,” Chronos said.

“I have just taken the soul of this boy,” Zane explained, showing the soul. “I want to return it so he can have a proper chance to redress his balance in life. Could you, with my concurrence, arrange that?”

“Take me to the place, and I will take you to the time,”
Chronos said equably. “It is true one Incarnation may not safely interfere with another, but since you will it, I can assist. We do cooperate, at need.”

Just like that! Chronos mounted Mortis behind Zane, and the horse took off.

“Now, while we are isolated by the ambience of the Deathsteed,” Chronos said, “there is another matter you wish to ask of me.”

“Isolated?” Zane asked. “You mean no one can overhear us here, even—?”

“Speak not his name, lest you summon him,” Chronos warned. “Mortis protects you better than you know, but nothing protects against folly.”

“Uh, yes, of course,” Zane agreed, disgruntled.

“Naturally you found a pretext to contact me, so that he would not have cause for suspicion.”

Zane hadn’t thought of it that way. But he did have something else to talk about. “The Purgatory computer flashed your symbol on its screen when I questioned it about the status of Luna Kaftan.”

“A most interesting case,” Chronos said, after a pause as if to recollect the details. “Fate alerted me to it, for she notes the significant threads. Circa twenty years from this moment, Luna Kaftan will be instrumental in—”

“But she’s going to die within the month!” Zane protested.

“That, too,” Chronos agreed.

“Then how can she—?”

“History is mutable, of course. If she lives, she will go into politics—”