Up Jumps the Devil (7 page)

Zachary was knocked into a deep rain puddle, where he lay on his back, stunned. Two seconds later, a high-voltage winch splashed into the water beside him.

A FLASH, like a giant welding torch.

A SNAP like a cracking whip.

Zachary came to his feet like a zombie in convulsions, and stood there, staring at nothing, drooling and jerking.

Memory climbed out of the wreckage, shaking. When she spied Zachary, her stomach lurched.

“Zach?”

No response. A tiny stream of Fish's blood swirled past Zachary's left foot.

Help arrived. They dragged Fish loose, and wrapped his hand in a T-shirt.

“Get my fucking thumb,” said Fish, and someone did.

Others gathered in a loose circle around Zachary. Someone said, “This cat's been electrocuted.”

They wrapped him in blankets as the helicopter came thundering down.

Memory had a sudden mental picture of her future. It was empty, like her past, like amnesia in reverse.

Philadelphia, 1750

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WAS UP
past midnight, giving himself electric shocks in the name of science.

He took a copper cylinder filled with lemon marmalade, and lowered it into a zinc cylinder filled with vinegar. He clipped copper leads onto each cylinder, then crossed the leads to see what would happen.

ZZZZZT!

Marmalade
, he wrote in a leather-bound journal,
can hold a charge
.

He sat for a bit with his hand in his chin, pleased with himself, as he often was.

THE DEVIL SAT
on a shelf in the corner of Franklin's laboratory, perched excitedly between a pair of encyclopedias.

Franklin—America!—was about to capture lightning—God's own superpower!—and tame it like a dog. For the first time in hundreds of years, the Devil began to hope again that Earth might surpass Heaven after all.

“Comfortable?” asked Franklin.

The Devil wondered who Franklin was addressing.

“I don't mind the intrusion so much,” said Franklin, tinkering with the marmalade coil, “as the not introducing oneself. It's poor manners.”

It dawned upon the Devil that Franklin was one of those rare, wise souls who could see him when he made himself invisible. Nevertheless, he was taken by surprise when the scientist turned and flung an old wheel of cheese at him.

“Well?” said Franklin, regarding him over the rims of his spectacles.

The Devil, knocked from his perch, stood and offered a courtly bow. “I hope,” he said, dusting himself off, “that you will take my intrusion as a compliment. You have become a gifted and important man of science.”

“Rubbish!” boomed Franklin, but he blushed.

The Devil asked, then, if he might be permitted to continue observing, or even to assist in, Franklin's lab work.

“Why didn't you just ask, before?” Franklin inquired.

“You seemed religious.”

Franklin's belly shook with glee. “I very much
mean
to seem religious,” he said. “Quite right! You may call again at noon tomorrow. Good day!”

The Devil bowed again, and vanished up the chimney.

LATE THE NEXT MORNING
, Franklin bumbled about the lab, preparing a demonstration not only for the Devil, but for other guests as well. While he worked, he addressed his dog, a great black Newfoundland bitch named Queen, who had been driven from the house by Mrs. Franklin.

“All things hover between the province of Heaven and the Devil,” Franklin told his dog. “A shade of gray, as it were, between ideas of pure form.”

Queen seemed neither to agree nor disagree.

The lab hosted a library of jars and bones, volumes of law, a stuffed otter, a stuffed cat—strangely featured, from the Orient—and an unopened box of cotton kneesocks.

A clock, hidden away on the shelves, chimed noon just then, and three gentlemen let themselves in at the door. These were the Devil and two Presbyterian strangers he had encountered upon the walk: two fat, dwarfish men in black frock coats.

Franklin introduced them as “the reverend brothers Poole: Jacob and Bosley.”

Indicating the Devil, he said, “Your Eminences, such as you are, may I present the Excellent Mr. Scratch, a patron of Science.”

There were pleasantries and Madeira wine. Franklin disappeared through a rear door and staggered back in, wrestling an enormous, warlike turkey.

Feathers scattered. A jar shattered. Franklin plunged the turkey into a wooden cage and locked it up tight.

“Much has been made,” he declared, holding aloft a pair of wire leads, “of electricity's seemingly contradictory power to create or destroy. On the one hand, we have lightning, which burns houses. On the other, properly shepherded—”

“All
I've
seen it do,” barked Bosley, “is cause a woman's hair to frizz and rise round about her head.”

“Or to make tin glow in a Leyden jar!” added Jacob.

“Properly controlled,” Franklin argued, “electricity can kill.”

“Lightning kills,” said Bosley. “That's no surprise.”

“Man cannot control lightning,” answered Franklin. He indicated cylinders attached to the leads. “He
can
control
this
.”

Soberly, Franklin knelt before the cage and hobbled the turkey with a pair of copper manacles.

“With apologies to this fine bird,” he said, “I offer you gentlemen the advent of electricity as a weapon both terrible and—”

Franklin twisted a wire.

SNAP! FLASH!

A thousand suns! Followed by thick smoke and the stench of overcooking.

The smoke sank to reveal a recumbent Franklin, rising like an island in a receding tide. He seemed to be asleep. One of his hands was burned. Indeed, it still smoked.

The turkey was on fire, and also somewhat inside out. At the front of the cage, the copper manacles and their wiring lay melted.

The ministers Poole hovered over Franklin from a distance.

“Is he—?” said Bosley, coughing.

“Has he—?” said Jacob, trembling.

The Devil observed that Franklin was breathing evenly.

“The good doctor will live to strike another day,” he assured the Presbyterians, ushering them toward the door. “Let us consider our adventures complete for the day.”

“But—” began Bosley, indicating the blazing turkey.

“See here—!” barked Jacob, indicating the battery, which had begun to glow and spit marmalade.

The Devil drew himself up, dark and tall.

“Good day,” he bid them, in a certain voice he had.

The ministers made their goodbyes. The Devil bolted both doors and closed the windows. With a wave of one wooden hand, he extinguished the battery and the turkey. He located a roll of clean linen and a jar of ointment, and sat down to tend Franklin's hand.

“Wake up,” he told the scientist.

Franklin's eyes shot open. He spied the Devil leaning over him and smelled smoke.

“If this is Hell,” he grouched, “it's a disappointment.”

“You're not dead,” the Devil told him. “Only foolish. Now sit up.”

Franklin sat up, peering into the turkey cage.

“Piddle,” he said.

“Hmm?”

The Devil released Franklin's hand, neatly bandaged.

“The poor creature was in a state, naturally,” explained Franklin. “Its bladder emptied on the floor of the cage, the leads crossed amid the moisture, completing the circuit ahead of its time, unleashing … Well, you were there. You saw.”

“It wasn't grounded,” said the Devil, in a patient tone.

“That's right,” said Franklin, eyeing him with surprise.

“You need help,” declared the Devil. Inspired, he reached into the cage, tugged loose the two smoking, thoroughly cooked legs, and scraped them clean with a pocketknife. He offered one leg to Franklin, who accepted, and took a bite from the other. They chewed a while in silence.

“You mean
your
help,” said Franklin. “I'd rather not.”

“Listen, friend,” said the Devil, “let me tell you something of your future, and then decide what help you need.”

Franklin was suspicious, but he said, “Go on.”

“Without my help,” said the Devil, “you will be held to scorn in the British courts. You and your son will find yourselves on opposite sides in a bloody war, and history will say you were a buffoon who chased after women young enough to be your granddaughter.”

“Twaddle!”

“
With
my help, the ages will remember you as the greatest scientist of your time, and as a father of a nation of free men.”

“History will say what it will,” said Franklin, tossing aside his turkey bone. “Besides, nothing is without its price. Least of all, as I understand it, your help. I'll take my chances, and keep my soul.”

“It's of no use to you,” the Devil said.

“You seem to think yourself awfully clever,” said Franklin, cleaning his spectacles with a handkerchief. “If I were to depend upon you for my success and reputation, it would behoove me to determine just how clever a fellow you really are.”

“What is it you suggest?”

“Nothing much.” Franklin turned away, unearthed a pen and an inkwell on his workbench, and began to write something on the flyleaf of a book. “I will ask you a riddle. If, at the end of a week's time, you can answer the riddle, I will forfeit my soul on terms agreeable to us both. If you fail, then the terms will be reversed.”

The Devil bit his bottom lip. Franklin was a prize like no other. If any mortal could help Earth surpass Heaven, it was Franklin, and the country he would help to hatch.

If
Franklin did everything just so. Which he wouldn't, the Devil didn't think, without his influence.

“Very well,” said the Devil, reaching into his pocket. “But I should like to add something into the bargain.”

He produced a glass ball, which he placed on the workbench.

“This crystal ball will show you anything you like of the past, present, or future,” he said.

Franklin's pen quivered.

“I will leave it on the workbench for the space of one week. In that time, you must never look into it. If you do, then your soul is mine regardless of my success with your riddle.”

“Done,” said Franklin. He finished writing on the flyleaf, tore the page loose, and handed it to the Devil.

The Devil read, frowned, and reread, aloud: “‘How far can a dog run into the woods?'”

“Your riddle,” Franklin said. “Till next week, then?”

The Devil turned toward the door, hesitated, and faced Franklin again.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing,” said the Devil. “Except I wonder if you might be so good as to let me borrow your dog?”

THE DEVIL WAS DEVOTED
to Science. He was methodical.

He hired a carriage to take himself and Franklin's great Newfoundland out of the city, and leave them at the edge of the woods.

“I suppose,” said the Devil, “that this is the sort of woods he meant.”

Queen gave him a sideways look and licked his hand.

“Fine, then,” barked the Devil, speaking Queen's own native tongue. “Off you go!”

And off she went, running. It was important, he had told her, that she run. The riddle, after all, did not ask how far a dog could stroll into the woods, or saunter, gallop, dance, or trot. Queen, trained to obedience, ran all the way through the woods, stopping on the other side, where the Devil contrived, by unholy means, to be waiting for her.

He had purchased a notebook, in which he now scrawled,
All the way through the woods
. He noted that it had taken her about two minutes, and that the effort had caused her to slobber.

A good scientist, in the Devil's opinion, was to observe and record everything. Later, he would be better able to judge what was and was not important. It was often said that the Devil was in the details, and he knew this to be true.

They were at the woods an entire afternoon. The Devil had Queen run through the woods in the opposite direction (two minutes, ten seconds). Had her make an effort to avoid obstacles (three minutes, fourteen seconds), and to travel in a straight line regardless of dead trees, gopher holes, and a briar patch (nine minutes precisely, mostly due to the briar patch). He had her run backward. He had her run as if hunting, and then as if being hunted. He had her enter the woods at different points. He made notes about the position of the sun, the position of the moon (which rose at half past, nearly full, but quite pale), and the temperament of the weather, which he recorded as
Uneasy
.