Up Jumps the Devil (9 page)

“Since when does the Devil do nice surprises?” she croaked, passing the pipe back.

“People think they know me,” muttered the Devil, smoking. “I can do nice things like anyone else.”

She turned and looked at him. He must be impossibly old, she knew, and if you looked closely, you could see it. In his tanned face were traces of furrows and scars, like a battlefield healed and grown over. Beneath it all, she sensed hidden rumblings and vibrations. He was like a storm that hadn't happened yet, a thought you weren't quite thinking.

A memory you didn't have.

“You said I reminded you of someone,” she said.

The Devil tucked the pipe away in his shirt pocket.

“Yeah,” he said. “It's partly the way you sing. Maybe I'll tell you about it if you'll quit being mad and come back to the van.”

Memory waited a minute just so he wouldn't find her too easy, then followed him through the trees, back to the road.

THEY TALKED ABOUT
lots of things, the next few hours. Like favorite foods and Good and Evil.

They talked about practical things as well.

“How much did you get for the other vans?” asked Memory.

“Thousand each.”

She wrote this down on a notepad. They only had so much money left.

“And I paid off the crew with the last of your studio cash.”

“Cool. Why are we going south?”

“I asked you to trust me.”

“And I told you no.”

He didn't answer.

“Answer me.”

“When I feel like it. Jump out if you don't like it.”

She didn't like it, but she didn't jump out.

The morning became afternoon, then evening, and they stopped at a Holiday Inn. The Devil signed them in as Mr. and Mrs. John Scratch, and the clerk asked no awkward questions.

FARTHER SOUTH
, the next day.

In the Smoky Mountains, they parked the Microbus on the shoulder of a National Park Service road, and Memory followed the Devil through a silent forest until he stopped at an old, dead tree.

He stuck long claws down inside, and pulled out something wrapped in leather. He didn't speak, and she followed him back to the road, where he undid the leather and drew out a fiddle and a bow.

A fiddle, which might have been wood or solid gold, depending on the light, and a bow made from the same wood or the same gold, strung with what might have been horsehair, but wasn't.

“Haven't needed Ol' Ripsaw here for a while,” he said, looking the fiddle over from every angle.

“What do you need him now for?” asked Memory, even though she thought she knew.

“
You
need him,” said the Devil. “Because you need a guitar player.”

He drew the bow across the strings, and Old Ripsaw groaned like an old, sleepy soul.

“Please tell me where we're going,” she asked.

“Louisiana,” he said, drawing sparks with his bow. “To see if old Two-John Spode has been practicing.”

THE SECOND THEY CROSSED
into Louisiana, the radiator blew.

Memory woke up, saying, “What happened?”

“This thing's not even supposed to
have
a radiator!” complained the Devil, pulling over. “Air-cooled German technology! Who the hell customized this thing?”

“The studio bought it for us,” said Memory, yawning. “It was cheap.”

“Well,” said the Devil, “go find us some cheap water to keep it running.”

“Why don't you just magically make the radiator not leak? Else what's the point in being the Devil?”

“It's hard to explain.”

“Try.”

The Devil walked around behind the bus, and opened the rear doors to hunt for something like a bucket.

“It would get boring,” said the Devil, overturning blankets, old food wrappers, and an amplifier. “You'd be surprised how much of your happiness has to do with little problems. Like having to go get toilet paper or having to fetch some water. If you just sat around and ‘magicked' everything, then you'd wind up just … sitting around.”

“Why don't we drive the limo and tow the bus?”

The Devil looked offended.

“That car,” he said, “is not a tow truck.”

“How come I'm the one who's got to get the water?”

“What's the point of being the Devil if I can't make people bring me water?”

He appeared at her window with a bucket.

There was water in the ditch. She fetched three buckets of ditch water, the Devil plugged the radiator with a piece of black-cherry bubble gum, and they went another fifty miles.

SWAMP TREES AND KUDZU
framed the road at first, then gave way to flat country and fields of green sugarcane.

The horizon piled high with clouds. Thunder spoke, far away.

The second time they needed water, they happened on a gas station. After they had filled the radiator, Memory climbed behind the wheel.

“What are you doing?” asked the Devil.

“Driving. If I gotta fetch the water, I should at least get to drive some.”

“Do you have a license?”

“I don't know.”

But she didn't move, except to turn the key and start the engine.

The Devil walked around to the passenger side, and they rolled on south. Before long, the cane fields gave way to swamp forest again, and not long after that, it came down raining.

MEMORY TRIED TO
get the Devil to tell her what was so special about Two-John Spode.

“You heard what the boys said,” he reminded her.

“They made him sound about half real.”

“He's real.”

“Then—”

“Watch the road.”

Rain slathered the windshield. Not far ahead, red taillights glowed, and Memory slowed to follow an old farm truck.

“Why wouldn't you tell me where we were going when I asked?”

“You wouldn't have come. I had to wait till we were too far down the road.”

He closed his eyes and tried to catch some sleep.

“That's some devious shit,” said Memory, “for somebody who wants to be trusted.”

“I suppose it is,” said the Devil, without opening his eyes.

The rain made a fog, which crept and rose. Everything beyond the windshield might have been a trick of the eye, except for the red lights of the farm truck, which sped up, and then slowed again.

“It's like driving between worlds,” Memory told the Devil.

The Devil had fallen asleep.

“Yep,” he said, nonetheless.

Heaven and Earth, the Age of Creation

THE DEVIL DREAMED
.

When most people dream, it's a casserole of wishes and fears. Being several billion years old, the Devil had a lot of memory backed up—and you can wind up with issues if you don't sort through it all somehow. So when the Devil dreamed, he
remembered
. It kept him from talking to himself more than he did.

Dreaming in the passenger seat, he remembered the very oldest things of all. Before he was the Devil. When he was Lucifer, in Heaven.

Back before Heaven and Earth were separated, because there was no Earth. There was hardly much of anything except God and the angels, surrounded by something called “the Face of the Deep,” and something called “the Waters.”

“The Waters” were a kind of flood, about six inches deep, and quite calm. You could either walk around in it all the time, or sprout wings. The angels sprouted wings.

No one knew what the Face of the Deep was, except that it was deep and surrounded the Waters.

“What
is
it?” the angels sometimes asked, but God only answered with a proud, inscrutable silence.

A lot of angels thought God was kind of self-absorbed and crazy right from the Beginning, and would have left Him more or less alone if He hadn't insisted they sing to Him around the clock.

This wasn't as awful as it might sound. There was something bright and correct about God, plus it gave the angels the idea of Competition. In this scramble for excellence and holy favor, Lucifer emerged as God's undisputed Golden Child, shining over them all like a cherry atop a sundae.

ONE DAY
, out of nowhere, God said, “Let there be light.”

Something like a nuclear FLASH tore across the Deep, causing the singing to falter into blindness and screaming.

When his eyes cleared, Lucifer approached God and asked what
that
was all about.

“I'm not sure,” He said. “But look!” He waved at the Deep with an expression of dumb wonder.

Stars and galaxies exploded all over the place.

The angels staggered around God in their ranks and millions, and sang to Him in shaking voices.

God was impressed with Himself, of course, but at the same time, Lucifer could tell He was troubled.

“I didn't know it was going to do that,” He told Lucifer, indicating the expanding universe overhead.

They splashed through the Waters, side by side.

Lucifer shrugged and said it was a nice surprise.

“Surprise.” It was a new idea.

“It was an impulse,” God complained. “I won't fly off blind like that again. There should be an order to things.” He looked over his shoulder at the neat, concentric choirs of angels.

Lucifer asked if God planned to create more things, besides just light.

“I do,” answered God.

“Like what?”

And God answered.

The Plan (as He called it) would take effect over billions of years. Step-by-step, God would fill Heaven with living wonders—and he had it all figured out in advance this time. Oceans and streams of water and air, rich with new forms and structures.

But as he watched the universe spreading out like so much radioactive spaghetti sauce, it seemed to Lucifer that this creation had a wild seed in it. He wondered if the Plan was going to proceed with the order God intended. While ideas like “surprise” and “wild” were fascinating to Lucifer, he suspected God would be less than overjoyed with their effects.

The beginnings of the Plan were cause for celebration: The sun and moon were greeted with symphonies. The angels sang like never before.

Lucifer made note of the angels' joy, which frothed and bubbled. He made note that God didn't share in this. God was
pleased
, but He never frothed or bubbled. Lucifer realized then how distant God must be, how different from them all in ways they could never understand.

The Plan continued.

The angels went bananas when the dry land appeared. That was their favorite. Everyone came in for a landing, then took off again, because the dry land was hot. But they sang while rubbing their feet.

“This is Good,” said God, more pleased than ever.

It was a strange idea, “Good.”

Lucifer frowned. If this or that, from now on, was “Good,” then by implication there were things that were not.

“Life” was the most complicated part of the Plan.

“What is it?” asked Lucifer, touring the first sandy beaches with God.

God didn't quite know.

“It's sort of like what
we
have, you and Me and the angels. It's got question marks all over it, but it will grow in good order, I think.”

“What if it grows in some way you don't expect?”

“I'm okay with … what did you call them? Surprises? I'm willing to be surprised, within reason.”

“Within whose idea of reason?”

God faced Lucifer, and gave him a very direct, very final kind of look.

“Mine,” he said.

Lucifer stood biting his lip. “Maybe it will
choose
to grow in good order,” he said.

God's brow furrowed. “Choice” was another new and uncomfortable idea.

LIGHTNING STROKED
the sea.

A few proteins woke up and started putting themselves together like puzzles.

The puzzles were symmetrical, like God and His angels. This pleased God, and He said it was Good.

The puzzles became complicated, and soaked up chemicals from the sea. They turned green, and ate up light as if it were food.

“I didn't see that coming,” said God, “but I like it. That's Good.”

The green spread out all over the place.

Some of the protein complexes grew arms and legs like God and the angels (“Good!”). These things crawled up onto the dry land and started eating plants. (“That's Good, I suppose,” said God. “They've got to eat something.”).