On a Pale Horse (43 page)

“I recognize that,” Zane said. “But I met you on my own turf, which is not a matter of physical locale. Never again will you bluff me there.”

“You were a man performing an office,” Satan said. “Now you have become the office.”

“Yes.”

“And who informed you about the formations of matchsticks?”

“Nature,” Zane said, realizing only now the extent of her oblique advice to him.

“That green mother!” Satan snarled with disgust, and vanished.

Zane went to Luna. “Begone, vermin,” he told the thugs, who hastened to oblige.

“But how did you do it?” Luna asked as he untied her and put the Deathcloak about her bare torso. “No one is stronger than Satan, except maybe God.”

Zane realized that she had not grasped all the implications of his confrontation with the Prince of Evil. She still thought of him as a man—and indeed, he was a man, with a man’s love for his woman. “To be strong is not to be omnipotent,” he explained. “There are seven Incarnations, not five, when we include Good and Evil, rendering them G-od and D-evil. No one can say for sure whether one Incarnation is superior to another, but certainly each is supreme in his own bailiwick. So while Death can not balk Satan’s administration of Hell, however corrupt it may be, Satan cannot balk Death’s activity
either. And no Incarnation can directly harm any other, unless that other accedes by design or ignorance or carelessness. Once I realized that and truly believed it and comprehended its implications, Satan had no further power over me.” He smiled. “Or you. I’ll take you by Purgatory now, to verify that Satan has dropped his claim to your early demise. Then I’ll resume my job.”

“You are brilliant!” she exclaimed. “Once you had that revelation, Satan himself was unable to oppose you. I see now the wisdom of my father’s decision in giving me to you. I’m sorry I lacked the faith in you that you had in me.”

She did not realize how weak his faith had been, before his intuition! “I
hoped
Satan could not oppose me,” he admitted.

She stared at him. “You mean you didn’t
know
?”

“How can one know an intuition? There is no direct connection between question and answer. I could not be sure of its validity until I tested it.”

“So you deliberately stripped yourself of all your magic and challenged Satan—not sure you were right?”

“That is so,” he confessed, embarrassed.

“Why, Zane, that’s the most courageous act I ever saw!”

“It was my final desperation ploy, when I realized that Satan himself was participating. If there had been any other way—”

“I thought I could love you, before,” she said. “Now I am sure of it.”

“It was not, ultimately, for love I did this,” he said. “Love counseled me to let you die and go to Heaven so you would not suffer any more pain. But I had to keep you alive for your role in saving humanity from Satan twenty years hence.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “Now I know I will never yield to Satan. I have come to understand him too well.” She paused, turning to Zane. “One other thing—”

He looked at her. The torture had not broken her spirit. Her flesh surely had not recovered, but she was radiantly beautiful in the Deathhood. “Yes?”

Luna flung her arms about him and kissed him with
amazing passion. “Those twenty years until my turn comes,” she said. “You and I—”

“Life and Death,” he agreed.

They mounted Mortis and leaped; for Purgatory.

They arrived at the Mansion of Death, and Zane conducted Luna inside. She was mortal, but somehow he had known he could take her with him this time. He could take her anywhere—alive. She was now his acknowledged Deathmaid.

They settled in the living room, relaxing, and watched the television. “The hearing petitioned by Death has been canceled,” the news announcer said. “The issue has been resolved privately.” The announcer smirked. “It is rumored that the horns of the Prince of Evil are still steaming.”

“That’s what I wanted to verify,” Zane said. “You definitely will not die before your time, Luna. Now I can return to my work.”

“You had better,” she murmured. “Thousands of people are suffering. They really need your service.”

“I will have Chronos move me back far enough so that that suffering is erased; there will be no gap for the mortals.”

“Now conjecture is rife about the future status of the new Death,” the announcer continued. “He has virtually turned his office upside down, making substantial waves through both Heaven and Hell. We sent queries to God and Satan, but neither deigned to comment.”

Zane shook his head in rueful admiration. “Purgatory has one sharp news staff,” he said. “
Too
sharp at times, I think.”

“This is interesting,” Luna said. “I did not realize you were such an important figure in Eternity.”

“I’m not. This news is personalized. I’m sure the other Incarnations get news relating to them. We can turn it off.” He got up and moved toward the set.

“However,” the announcer continued, “we were able to interview several witnesses destined to testify at Death’s trial-period assessment.”

Zane’s hand paused near the knob. “Witnesses?”

“Incarnations require special handling,” the announcer
explained. “Their powers are such that ordinary definitions of good and evil do not necessarily apply. In this instance, the four other Incarnations have pronounced this Death viable. They testify that he has been put to the question, unofficially, and that his answer was sufficient. They are willing to work with him for whatever portion of Eternity relates.”

“Oh,” Zane said. “Naturally they’re satisfied. They got me into this.”

“But neither they nor my father picked you for your regular job performance,” Luna said. “Perhaps they did not expect you to be a good Death in that respect.”

“I surely lived up to that nonexpectation,” he said ruefully.

“I wonder.”

“While nothing is certain until the assessment itself has been rendered,” the television announcer said, “we believe it is fair to say that the recommendation of one other key witness will have overwhelming force.”

“What
is
this?” Luna asked.

“Maybe one of my clients,” Zane replied uncertainly.

“And here he is,” the announcer said. “The key witness, the one who knows whether the burden on the soul of Death will shift toward Heaven or toward Hell as he enters his regular term in the office.”

“Who?”
Zane demanded.

The camera swung around to center the picture on—

Mortis. The Deathsteed.

“And what do you say, witness?” the announcer asked.

The horse neighed.

“This is ludicrous!” Luna exclaimed.

“I don’t know,” Zane said. “Mortis is no ordinary horse.”

“And there you have it, folks. From the horse’s mouth.” The announcer paused. “Oh, the translation? Of course. Mortis says his new master has demonstrated a quality unique among Incarnations, and this alone transforms his errors to assets. He will have a positive freighting on his soul, and will go on to become one of the truly distinguished holders of the office.” He paused, while Zane
stood amazed. “Congratulations, Death. We of Purgatory are proud to have you with us.”

“Zane!” Luna exclaimed. “You won!”

“But all I did was try to help make it easier for people to die,” Zane said. “I broke several rules, and often I bungled it anyway.”

Then the television camera swung upward to show the welkin, the lovely dome of the Earthly sky. In a moment it turned from day to night, and the stars scintillated in their myriads, and the images of rafts of angels formed, each angel with a shining halo. All of them applauded politely: the salutation of Heaven. It seemed to Zane that one of them looked like his mother, and others resembled some of his clients.

The camera swung down to show the fires of the nether world, with its massed demons, all of them sticking out their forked tongues. But dimly visible behind them were the condemned souls of Hell, and here and there among these were covert thumbs-up gestures.

Zane smiled, experiencing a joy as deep as Eternity. “Thanks, folks,” he said, and clicked off the set. “I’ll settle for the applause of one.” He turned to Luna.

“Always. Forever,” she agreed, kissing him.

“But I wonder what that unique quality of mine is supposed to be?” he said as an afterthought.

“It is why I love you,” she said.

Zane, back in the routine of his office, saw that the mother was suffering terribly from the first shock of her grief as she cradled her dying baby in her arms. He was still working on the enormous backlog of clients that had accumulated during his strike, but he could not let the bereaved mother suffer more than she had to.

Zane stood before her. “Woman, recognize me,” he said softly.

She looked up. Her mouth fell open in horror.

“Do not fear me,” Zane said. “Your baby has an incurable malady, and is in pain, and shall never be free of it while he lives. It is best that he be released from the burden of life.”

Her mouth worked in protest. “You—you wouldn’t say that if one you loved had to go!”

“Yes, I would,” he said sincerely. “I sent my own mother to Eternity, to end her suffering. I understand your grief and know it becomes you. But your child is the innocent victim of a wrongful act—” He did not repeat what she already knew, that the child had been conceived by incestuous rape and born syphilitic. “—and it is better for him and for you that he never face the horrors of such a life.”

Her haunted eyes gazed up at him, beginning to see Death as more friend than nemesis. “Is—is it really best?”

“Samuel Taylor Coleridge said it best,” Death replied gently, extending his hand for the suffering baby’s soul.
“Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, Death came with friendly care; The opening bud to Heaven conveyed, And bade it blossom there.”

As he spoke, he drew the tiny soul out. He knew even before he checked it that this one
would
go to Heaven, for now he had discretion in such cases.

“You’re not the way I thought you would be,” the woman said, recovering some stability now that the issue had been decided. “You have—” She faltered, seeking the appropriate word. “Compassion.”

Compassion. Suddenly it fell into place. This was the quality Zane brought to the office of Death that the office had lacked before. It made him feel good to realize that the delays he had indulged in and the rules he had broken—that such acts could be construed positively instead of negatively. He
cared
about his clients, strove for what was best for them within the dreadful parameters of his office, and was no longer ashamed to admit it.

He knew he had been installed in this office for reasons not relating to merit. But he had conquered his limitations and knew that he would perform with reasonable merit henceforth.

“Death came with friendly care …” he repeated as he set his watch for the next client. He liked the thought.

Every novel is an adventure, for the author as well as the reader, but some are more so than others. The last extended Author’s Note I did was for my science fiction novel
Viscous Circle;
those readers who encountered that and didn’t like it should avoid this one, because it is more of the same. I believe that a work of fiction should stand pretty much by itself and not require any external explanation; certainly
On a Pale Horse
can survive without this one.

Coincidentally—if one believes in coincidence—my Author’s Copies of
Viscous Circle
arrived as I was typing this Author’s Note. I glanced at that prior Note and realized it signaled the change in my outlook that has resulted, among other things, in
On a Pale Horse
. I had suffered an illness in 1980 that disrupted my schedule, put me in the hospital, and forcibly reminded me of my own mortality. In consequence, I planned to shift my efforts from the kind of science fiction I had been doing to fantasy, horror, World War II fiction, and maybe some general mainstream writing, exploring and broadening my parameters while it was convenient to do so. That is, while I still had my health and vigor and imagination. I wanted to discover where I could achieve more meaning in writing.

So how did that effort work out? Well, I did try—but the first thing I discovered was that publishers were not
interested in nonfantastic-genre Anthony efforts. They showed the same disinterest that they had shown in my early science-fantasy writing—and it took me eight years to break into print. It seems it may take me a similar period to break into another genre. I have kept plugging away, meanwhile filling in with light fantasy, because that is easy and fun and the readers like it and it makes a lot of money; if I have to wait those extra years for publishers to appreciate my merit, I might as well wait in comfort. Thus I completed almost half a million words of fantasy in 1981, and that seems to be expanding my reputation in that subgenre. I will continue trying the other genres, for I remain an ornery cuss, and I think in time I will break through and prove that all those uninterested editors were wrong, just as I did before. I have, as may be apparent, not much respect for editors as a class.

But impediments, whether editorial or otherwise, can lead to rewarding innovation. As I wrestled with the problem of putting meaningful writing into print, I discovered that it was possible for me to do much of the social commentary I had in mind—within the SF/fantasy genre itself. Instead of stepping outside the genre to protest such things as world hunger and nuclear folly, I realized I could stretch the genre boundaries to cover the territory. Since I already have markets and readers for my fantastic-genre writing, the editors can’t stop me. This facilitates my ambition enormously.
On a Pale Horse
, for example, is on one level a fun-fantasy with a unique main character, and I hope most readers enjoy it on that level. Fiction should always entertain! But on another level it is a satiric look at contemporary society, with some savagely pointed criticism. It is also a serious exploration of man’s relation to death. Man is the one creature on Earth who knows he will die, and that is an appalling intellectual burden.