The Astral Mirror (8 page)

“I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t believe in angels?” The stranger cocked a golden eyebrow at him. “Come now, I can see into your soul. You do believe.”

“My church doesn’t go in for that sort of thing,” he said, trying to pull himself together.

“No matter. You do believe. And you do well to believe, because it is all true. Angels, devils, the entire system. It is as real and true as this fine house you live in.” The angel heaved a small sigh. “You know, back in medieval times people had a much firmer grasp on the realities of life. Today...” He shook his head.

Eyes narrowing craftily, the man asked, “If you’re an angel, where are your wings? Your halo? You don’t look anything like a real angel.”

“Oh!” The angel seemed genuinely alarmed. “Does that bother you? I thought it would be easier on your nervous system to see me in a form that you’re accustomed to dealing with every day. But if you want...”

The room was flooded with blinding golden light. Heavenly voices sang. The stranger stood before the man robed in radiance, huge white wings outspread, filling the room.

The man sank to his knees and buried his face in the rug. “Have mercy on me! Have mercy on me!”

He felt strong yet gentle hands pull him tenderly to his feet. The angel was back in his Brooks Brothers suit. The searing light and ethereal chorus were gone.

“It is not in my power to show you either mercy or justice,” he said, his sweetly youthful face utterly grave. “Only the Creator can dispense such things.”

“But why... who... how...” he babbled. Calming him, the angel explained, “My duty as your guardian angel is to protect your soul from damnation. But you must cooperate, you know. I cannot
force
you to be saved.”

“My soul is in danger?”

“In danger?” The angel rolled his eyes heavenward. “You’ve just about handed it over to the enemy, gift-wrapped. Most of the millionaires you dined with tonight have a better chance to attain salvation than you have, at the moment. And you know how difficult it is for a rich man.”

The man tottered to the wingback chair next to his king-sized bed and sank into it. He pulled the handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopped his sweaty face.

The angel knelt beside him and looked up into his face pleadingly. “I don’t want to frighten you into a premature heart seizure, but your soul really is in mortal peril.”

“But I haven’t done anything wrong! I’m not a crook. I haven’t killed anyone or stolen anything. I’ve been faithful to my wife.”

The angel gave him a skeptical smile.

“Well...” he wiped perspiration from his upper lip. “Nothing serious. I’ve always honored my mother and my father.”

Gently, the angel asked, “You’ve never told a lie?”

“Uh, well... nothing big enough to...”

“You’ve never cheated anyone?”

“Um.”

“What about that actor’s wife in California? And the money you accepted to swing certain deals? And all the promises you’ve broken?”

“You mean things like that—they count?”

“Everything counts,” the angel said firmly. “Don’t you realize that the enemy has your soul almost in his very hands?”

“No, I never thought...”

“All those deals you’ve made. All the corners you’ve cut.” The angel suddenly shot him a piercing glance. “You haven’t signed any documents in blood, have you?”

“No!” His heart twitched. “Certainly not!”

“Well, that’s something, at least.”

“I’ll behave,” he promised. “I’ll be good. I’ll be a model of virtue.”

“Not enough,” the angel said, shaking his golden locks. “Not nearly enough. Things have already gone much too far.”

His eyes widened with fear. He wanted to argue, to refute, to debate the point with his guardian angel, but the words simply would not force their way through his constricted throat.

“No, it is not enough merely to promise to reform,” the angel repeated. “Much stronger action is needed.”

“Such as... what?” he croaked.

The angel got to his feet, paced across the room a few steps, then turned back to face him. His youthful visage brightened. “Why not? If
they
can make a deal for a soul, why can’t we?”

“What do you mean?”

“Hush!” The angel seemed to be listening to another voice, one that the man could not hear. Finally the angel nodded and smiled. “Yes. I see. Thank you.”

“What?”

Turning back to the man, the angel said, “I’ve just been empowered to make you an offer for your soul. If you accept the terms, your salvation is assured.”

The man instantly grew wary. “Oh no you don’t. I’ve heard all about deals for souls. Some of my best friends...”

“But this is a deal to
save
your soul!”

“How do I know that?” the man demanded. “How do I know you’re really what you say you are? The devil has power to assume pleasing shapes, doesn’t he?”

The angel smiled joyfully. “Good for you! You remember some of your childhood teaching.”

“Don’t try to put me off. I’ve negotiated a few tricky deals in my day. How do I know you’re really an angel, and you want to save my soul?”

“By their fruits ye shall know them,” the angel replied.

“What are you talking about?”

Still smiling, the angel replied, “When the devil makes a deal for a soul, what does he promise? Temporal gifts, such as power, wealth, respect, women, fame.”

“I have all that,” the man said. “I’m on top of the world, everyone knows that.”

“Indeed.”

“And I didn’t sign any deals with the devil to get there, either,” he added smugly.

“None that you know of,” the angel warned. “A man in your position delegates many decisions to his staff, does he not?”

The man’s face went gray. “Oh my God, you don’t think...”

With a shrug, the angel said, “It doesn’t matter. The deal that I offer guarantees your soul’s salvation, if you meet its terms.”

“How? What do I have to do?”

“You have power, wealth, respect, women, fame.” The angel ticked each point off on his slender, graceful fingers.

“Yes, yes, I know.”

“You must give them up.”

The man lurched forward in the wingchair. “Huh?”

“Give them up.”

“I can’t!”

“You must, if you are to attain the Kingdom of Heaven.”

“But you don’t understand! I can’t just drop everything! This world doesn’t work that way. I can’t just... walk away from all this!”

“That’s the deal,” the angel said. “Give it up. All of it. Or spend eternity in hell.”

“But you can’t expect me to...” He gaped. The angel was no longer in the room with him. For several minutes he stared into the empty air. Then, knees shaking, he arose and walked to the closet. It too was empty of strange personages.

He looked down at his hands. They trembled.

“I must be going crazy,” he muttered to himself. “Too much strain. Too much tension.” But even as he said it, he made his way to the telephone on the bedside table. He hesitated a moment, then grabbed up the phone and punched a number he had memorized months earlier.

“Hello, Chuck? Yes, this is me. Yes, yes, everything went fine tonight. Up to a point.”

He listened to his underling babbling flattery into the phone, wondering how many times he had given his power of attorney to this weakling and to equally venal deputies.

“Listen, Chuck,” he said at last. “I have a job for you. And it’s got to be done right, understand? Okay, here’s the deal—” he winced inwardly at the word. But, taking a deep manly breath, he plunged ahead. “You know the Democrats are setting up their campaign quarters in that new apartment building—what’s it called, Watergate? Yeah. Okay. Now I think it would serve our purposes very well if we bugged the place before the campaign really starts to warm up...”

There were tears in his eyes as he spoke. But from far, far away, he could hear a heavenly chorus singing.

This late at night, even the busiest corridors of the Pentagon were deserted. Dr. Young’s footsteps echoed hollowly as he followed the mountainous, tight-lipped, grim-faced man. Another equally large and steely-eyed man followed behind him, in lockstep with the first.

They were agents, Dr. Young knew that without being told. Their clothing bulged with muscles trained in murderous Oriental arts, other bulges in unlikely places along their anatomy were various pieces of equipment: guns, two-way radios, stilettos, Bowie knives... Young decided his imagination wasn’t rich enough to picture all the equipment these men might be carrying.

After what seemed like an hour’s walk down a constantly curving corridor, the agent in front stopped abruptly before an inconspicuous, unmarked door.

“In here,” he said, barely moving his lips.

The door opened by itself, and Dr. Young stepped into what seemed to be an ordinary receptionist’s office. It was no bigger than a cubicle, and even in the dim lighting— from a single desk lamp, the overhead lights were off— Young could see that the walls were the same sallow depressing color as most Pentagon offices.

“The phone will ring,” the agent said, glancing at a watch that looked absolutely dainty on his massive hairy wrist, “in exactly one minute and fifteen seconds. Sit at the desk. Answer when it rings.”

With that, he shut the door firmly, leaving Dr. Young alone and bewildered in the tiny anteroom.

There was only one desk, cleared of papers. It was a standard government-issue battered metal desk. IN and OUT boxes stood empty atop it. Nothing else on it but a single black telephone. There were two creaky-looking straight-backed metal chairs in front of the desk, and a typist’s swivel chair behind it. The only other things in the room were a pair of file cabinets, side by side, with huge padlocks and red SECURE signs on them, and a bulletin board that had been miraculously cleared of everything except the little faded fire-emergency instruction card.

Dr. Young found that his hands were trembling. He wished that he hadn’t given up cigarettes: after all, oral eroticism isn’t all that bad. He glanced at the closed hallway door and knew that both the burly agents were standing outside, probably with their arms folded across their chest in unconscious imitation of the eunuchs who guarded sultans’ harems.

He took a deep breath and went around the desk and sat on the typist’s chair.

The phone rang as soon as his butt touched the chair. He jumped, but grabbed the phone and settled himself before it could ring again.

“Dr. Carlton Young speaking.” His voice sounded an octave too high, and quavery, even to himself.

“Dr. Young, I thank you for accompanying the agents who brought you there without questioning their purpose. They were instructed to tell you who sent them and nothing else.”

He recognized the voice at once. “You—you’re welcome, Mr. President.”

“Please! No names! This is a matter of utmost security.”

“Ye—yessir.”

“Dr. Young, you have been recommended very highly for the special task I must ask of you. I know that, as a loyal, patriotic American, you will do your best to accomplish this task. And as the most competent man in your highly demanding and complex field, your efforts will be crowned with success. That’s the American way, now isn’t it?”

“Yessir. May I ask, just what is the task?”

“I’m glad you asked that. I have a personnel problem that you are uniquely qualified to solve. One of my closest and most valued aides—a man I depend on very heavily— has gone into a tailspin. I won’t explain why or how. I must ask you merely to accept the bald statement. This aide is a man of great drive and talent, high moral purpose, and enormous energy. But at the moment, he’s useless to himself, to this Administration, and to the Nation. I need you to help him find himself.”

“Me? But all I do is—”

“You run the best computer dating service in the nation, I know. Your service has been checked out thoroughly by the FBI, the Secret Service, and the Defense Intelligence Agency—”

“Not the CIA?”

“I don’t know, they won’t tell me.”

“Oh.”

“This aide of mine—a very sincere and highly motivated man—needs a girl. Not just any girl. The psychiatrists at Walter Reed tell me that he must find the woman who’s perfect for him, his exact match, the one mate that can make him happy enough to get back to the important work he should be doing. As you know, I have a plan for stopping inflation, bridging the generation gap, and settling the Cold War. But to make everything perfectly clear, Dr. Young, none of these plans can be crowned with success unless this certain aide can do his part of the job, carry his share of the burden, pull his share of the load.”

Dr. Young nodded in the darkness. “I understand, sir. He needs a woman to make him happy. So many people do.” A fleeting thought of the bins upon bins of floppy disks that made up his files passed through Dr. Young’s mind. “Even you, sir, even you need a woman.”

“Dr. Young! I’m a married man!”

“I know—that’s what I meant. You couldn’t be doing the terrific job you’re doing without your lovely wife, your lifetime mate, to support and inspire you.”

“Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, of course. Well, Dr. Young, my aide is in the office there with you, in the inner office. I want you to talk with him, help him, find him the woman he truly needs. Then we can end the war in Indochina, stop inflation, bridge—well, you know.”

“Yes sir. I’ll do my best.”

“That will be adequate for the task, I’m sure. Good night, and God bless America!”

Dr. Young found that he was on his feet, standing at ramrod attention, a position he hadn’t assumed since his last Boy Scout jamboree.

Carefully he replaced the phone in its cradle, then turned to face the door that led to the inner office. Who could be in there? The Vice President? No, Young told himself with a shake of his head; that didn’t fit the description the President had given him.

Squaring his shoulders once again, Dr. Young took the three steps that carried him to the door and knocked on it sharply.

“Come in,” said an equally sharp voice.

The office was kept as dark and shadowy as the anteroom, but Dr. Young recognized the man sitting rather tensely behind the desk.