On a Pale Horse (36 page)

Yet how many people would suffer eternally if Satan had his way? If one person—Luna—could be sacrificed to help fifty in a plane wreck, why couldn’t fifty be sacrificed to help the entire world? Satan was putting pressure on him, and he had to withstand it. He had known it would not be easy, but had underestimated the cunning ingenuity of the argument.

“I deeply regret the suffering of these people,” Zane said. “But it is your will, not mine, that precipitates it. The sooner my petition is considered and Luna is freed from her unfair sentence of early death, the better.”

“I believe the date of the hearing could be moved up,” Satan said, as if it were an incidental matter. “Come consider My case, and I will see that yours is considered.”

So the Devil did have power to affect that matter—or so he was letting it be implied. “You are proffering a deal?”

“I specialize in deals.”

“How can I trust you to honor any part of any deal you make?”

“A deal not signed in blood is not worth the blood it’s signed with,” Satan said, grinning affably.

“I refuse to sign in blood!”

“Nor are you required to. That was merely a medieval custom; the client’s blood gave Me the magic power to enforce the contract. Today fingerprints or retina-prints do just as well. But no contract of any nature can bind an Incarnation, so that’s irrelevant.” Satan leaned forward, his handsome face radiating sincerity. “Merely appreciate the background rationale, Death. It is to My interest to persuade you to end your strike. It is to your interest to guarantee the welfare of your girlfriend. It is thus to our mutual interest to establish communication and complete understanding. Cheating does not facilitate this.”

“If I go to Hell and do not return, there will be a new person to assume the office of Death. That one, I am sure, will be more amenable to your guidance.”

Satan smiled in wry agreement. “You are quick to appreciate
reality. But all you have to do is consult with Fate, who arranges the details of transitions. No one else can do it. She will not, I suspect, deceive you on this matter. If you have her assurance that your transition will not be made at this time—”

Zane wasn’t sure about that, but thought it worth investigating. “If I visit Hell, listen to your spiel, and then turn it down, will you free Luna from her sentence?”

“Of course not!” Satan said indignantly. “I will merely seek some other avenue to achieve My objective.”

“Then what is the point of my tour?”

“You might be persuaded. Then you could reap great reward and be eternally happy.”

“I can’t be eternally happy unless I die,” Zane pointed out.

“By no means, Death. Your present office is eternal.”

“Until I leave it.”

Satan’s smile became slightly strained. “How may I reassure you, then?”

“Free Luna.”

“You are being unreasonable.”

“By your definition. If that concludes our business—”

A faint halo of smoke formed about Satan’s face, but he hung on to his smile. “Suppose we compromise. Compromise is an excellent route to Hell. If your tour of Hell does not convince you—”

“You will free Luna,” Zane finished firmly.

Satan sighed. “I could have wished for a more responsive officeholder. But—I will free Luna.”

Was Satan lying? Probably—but Zane was just uncertain enough of his own position and power to try it. If Satan reneged, he would be proved to have bargained in bad faith, and Zane would have no further doubts. Meanwhile, Death still would not take Luna. He really had nothing to lose, as long as he remained in the office.

And that was the key. If he lost his own position … yet Satan’s barb about the worth of a man who would not risk his soul for love still stung, and so did Zane’s own conscience. He should at least listen to the other side. “I’ll consult with Fate.”

“I’ll put her on,” Satan said. Fate appeared on the television screen, in her lovely young Clotho guise.

“No,” Zane said. “That could be your demon doing another imitation. I want this personal.”

“As you wish,” Fate said. Smiling, she stepped out of the TV picture to stand before him. “The creatures of Hell who can manifest on Earth can assume any form physically, but not intellectually.” She stretched a bright thread between her hands. “And no one but an Incarnation can emulate an Incarnation. This is your thread, Death; see, I can move you with it.”

She made a kink in the thread—and suddenly Zane was sitting on the floor. She straightened it again, and he found himself back in the easy chair. “I can spin it long or short, smooth or furry, thick or thin. As Lachesis, I can measure it to define your life—” She was now the middle-aged form. “And as Atropos, I can cut it off.” She became an old hag with a huge pair of scissors.

“Enough!” Zane cried. “I accept your identity!”

“That’s nice,” she said, returning to Lachesis. “This deal the Infernal One proffers is legitimate, Death, at least to the extent of your survival. Your thread continues beyond this episode. Thereafter it becomes tangled; I can not guarantee the tapestry far ahead when Satan draws on it.”

“I’ll worry about Thereafter thereafter,” Zane said.

“As you choose, Death,” she said tightly, and he realized that she feared his survival meant he would be converted to Satan’s side. That, more than anything else, satisfied him about her validity. “But watch yourself in Hell.”

“I shall. What about Luna’s thread?”

Fate drew out another thread from the air, inspecting it. “That, too, is tangled.”

“Satan has promised to free her if I am not convinced by this tour.”

Fate squinted closely at the thread again. “No, I can’t be sure of that; there is too much interference. You must be alert for loopholes. Did he say when?”

“When?”

“When he would free her. Immediately or in one century?”

Zane’s heart sank. “No.”

“When you choose,” Satan said equably.

“I don’t trust that,” Fate said. “He’s as slippery as a greased eel. But I suppose you had better go to Hell and see what you can see.”

“Maybe I should hire a guide,” Zane joked weakly.

“Do that,” she agreed seriously.

Suddenly it was not a joke. “Who might be a guide for a tour such as this? No living person could do it, and I don’t know many dead people—” He paused, remembering one. “Molly Malone! The ghost fishmonger! Would she—?”

Fate’s lips quirked ever so slightly with approval. “I know that gamin. She’s one canny guttersnipe.”

“I really don’t see why you should choose to complicate a simple private tour,” Satan said.

“Just what is Molly’s standing in Eternity?” Zane asked. “Obviously she doesn’t reside in Heaven or Hell.”

“She is unattached,” Fate said. “But most of her friends are in Hell. Molly was unwilling to desert them when she died, but she was too good a girl to go Below, so she’s serving her term on the streets. Eventually she’ll tire of this and allow herself to waft up to Heaven—but meanwhile, she can safely visit Hell.”

“We have no use for her kind,” Satan grumbled.

“But you can’t deny her visiting privileges,” Zane said. “Because of her loyalty to some of those incarcerated. I want her with me there.”

“I will fetch her,” Fate said, smiling covertly.

The smoke about Satan increased, but he remained silent.

In a moment the ghost appeared. “I hear you want to go on another sightseeing tour, Death,” Molly said brightly. “But where’s your date?”

“Luna will never see Hell,” Zane said. “Satan seeks to convince me to let her die, and if she dies she will go to Heaven, and if he can’t convince me to take her, maybe he’ll leave her alone.”

Molly glanced darkly at the Prince of Evil. “When Hell
freezes over,” she muttered. Satan only smiled tiredly; he had heard that expression countless times. “You can’t trust the Prince of Evil, Death. His minions lobby for legislation on Earth to promote liquor and guns, so that drunken drivers and hotheaded malcontents will send themselves and others to Hell early.”

“On the contrary,” Satan said. “I promote legislation to outlaw antisocial things like pornography and gambling—”

“Because that puts the police to work raiding bookstores and penny-ante card games, instead of bearing down on crime in the streets!” Molly came back hotly. “You don’t want people inside their homes reading or entertaining themselves; you want them outside and restless and frustrated, stirring up real mischief!”

Zane realized that Molly, who had died young in the streets, had a personal grudge here. “Will you be my guide in Hell, Molly?” he asked. “I mean, if you will come along and talk to your friends who are incarcerated there—”

She smiled brilliantly. “I’ll be glad to, Death! His Lowness always puts bureaucratic obstacles in my way when I want to see a friend; maybe this time he won’t be able to do that.”

“Then let’s be on our way,” Satan said savagely. He reached forward to push against his side of the TV screen, and it swung out, a glass door. “Come into My parlor.”

Molly extended her hand to Zane. “Just step out of your body, Death,” she said. “You’re your own client now.”

Zane took her hand, uncertain about this. There was a funny feeling, a kind of internal parturition, and he got up out of the easy chair. He turned around and saw himself sitting there as if asleep or dead. His soul had departed his body.

“It’s strange at first,” Molly reassured him. “But you get used to it in a decade or so. Come on.” She drew him toward the open TV set.

They stepped through together without difficulty, for animated souls were highly malleable. Zane did not feel at all thin or translucent, the way the souls he handled were; he seemed quite solid to himself.

Now they stood in a kind of furnace room, with open fires burning in a ring around them, smoke billowing up to obscure whatever ceiling there was. The air was hot.

“Welcome to Hell, Death,” Satan said, extending his hand. It was red with fine scales, and the fingernails were talons. Zane hesitated, but then went ahead and accepted the hand. It was best to keep this as polite as possible.

The hand was hot, but not burning. “No place like the present,” the Prince of Evil said briskly. His head, too, was more pronounced from this close vantage. His horns were larger and brighter than they had seemed before; canine teeth gleamed before his thin lips, and his hair resembled a ripple of flame. “These cursed souls tend the central heating plant of Hell, performing useful labor while expiating their burdens of sin.”

Zane looked at the people. Some had shovels that they used to put coal on the fires. The heat where they worked was terrible, but they wore asbestos aprons to shield their bodies from the worst of it. Zane knew they were souls with very little physical substance, but since he was in soul form himself at the moment, they seemed substantial. “What is the point?” he asked. “I realize Hell has to be heated, but you could set up an automatic conveyor belt for the coal—”

“These are the souls of people who abused their status in life,” Satan explained. “They had responsible positions in industry, overseeing the heating plants of manufacturing companies, apartment buildings, and such. Instead of striving for efficiency and comfort for their clients, they exploited them, refusing to modernize, though they knew people suffered as a result. Now they expiate that sin by laboring under the primitive conditions they forced on others.”

Zane studied the laborers. His apartment on Earth, before he became Death, had been intermittently cold in winter because, he suspected, the landlord was fattening his profit margin by skimping on heating fuel. Zane could appreciate Satan’s rationale. “How do they expiate their sin?” he asked. “Do they have to shovel a certain number of tons of coal, or what? How long does it take, and what happens to them when they’ve paid their debt?”

“Excellent questions!” Satan said, glowing with more than human animation. “The term of penance varies with the individual. Roughly, each soul must labor until it has suffered the same amount as it inflicted on others during its life. That can take time; and, of course, some souls are incorrigible. It is not merely the labor, but the attitude, that counts; the soul must sincerely repent its prior evil. Eventually each soul will be purified by suffering, and will at last qualify for release to Heaven.”

“So souls aren’t condemned to Hell for Eternity?” Zane asked, surprised.

Satan issued his pleasant laugh again. “Of course not! Hell is merely the ultimate reform institution, where the cases too difficult for Purgatory are handled. A truly evil or indifferent person can not be cured by gentleness. Here in Hell we have the mechanisms to straighten out even the most crooked souls. I assure you, by the time any soul qualifies for Heaven, it has become quite gentle. I am a perfectionist; I will free no soul before its time.” And Satan’s countenance assumed an infernally noble aspect. Zane remembered that Satan was reputed to be a fallen angel; maybe some angelic element remained in him.

“But what about the bureaucratic errors?” Zane asked. “Honest mistakes are possible.”

“No. Not when I’m in charge. I can guarantee absolutely that not one defective soul has been sent from Hell to Heaven.”

Molly had been poking around by herself. Now she returned to Zane. “I don’t know any of these folk. Let’s take a look at the Ireland section.”

But already Satan was showing the way to another region. He opened a door in air, and they stepped through to a foggy, gloomy region crowded with people garbed in rags. Men, women, and children of every race plodded along a barren plain. Each was gaunt, and some were emaciated. All stared unwaveringly at the ground.

“These are the wasteful,” Satan explained. “They threw out good food unused, knowing that others in the world were starving. Now they are hungry themselves. They squandered money; now they have only what they can
find lying in the street, the refuse of others. They destroyed good clothing in the name of frivolous fashion; now they have only bad clothing, which they value more than all the garments of life. They must save in death as much as they wasted in life—and their resources are meager here.”