Demons

by Gardner Dozois

  The man's voice came out agonyshrill. "Dualist. Heresiarch. Sectary. Ah. Ah ah ah—goslin!"

  "Take ya hands outa my pants!" shrieked the pseudo-child, and, with a cry of almost totally authentic fear, fled. Faroly, seeing people stop, faces changing, flung up his arms and ran for his life. The goslin-child, wailing and slobbering, trampled up steps into an empty hallway where the prismatic edge of a broken windowpane caught the sunlight and winkyflashed rainbow changes. The goslin stretched thin as a shadow and vanished into the bright edge of the shard.

  Exhausted, all but prostrated by the heat, overcome with humiliation, shame, tormented with fear and confusion, Faroly stumbled through the door of his home. His wife stood there, looking at him. He held to the doorpost, too weary even to raise his hand to kiss his mazuzah, waiting for her to exclaim at his appearance. But she said nothing. He opened his mouth, heard his voice click in his throat. "Solomon," his wife said. He moved slowly into the room. "Solomon," she said.

  "Listen—"

  "Solomon, we were in the park, and at first it was so hot, then we sat under a tree and it was so cool—"

  "Listen . . ."

  ". . . I think I must have fallen asleep . . . Solomon, you're so quiet . . . Now you're home, I can give the Heshy his bath. Look at him, Solomon! Look, look!"

  Already things were beginning to get better. "And the High Priest shall pray for the peace of himself and his house. Tanya Rabbanan:—and his house. This means, his wife. He who has no wife, has no home." Small sighs, stifled sobs, little breaks of breath, Faroly moved forward into the apartment. Windows and mirrors were still, dark, quiet. The goslin day was almost over. She had the baby ready for the bath. Faroly moved his eyes, squinting against the last sunlight, to look at the flesh of his first born, unique son, his Kaddish. What child was this, sallow, squinting back, scrannel, preternaturally sly—? Faroly heard his own voice screaming screaming changeling! changeling!

  —Goslin!

  Nellthu

  by

  Anthony Boucher

  There are basically two ways to deal with demons: You can go the witch's route, which involves going to Black Masses and chanting "Beelzebub, Beelzebub, Beelzebub" and praying to some horned-headed representative from Hell, or you can make like a mage and trick the demons into giving you what you so richly deserve. Tricking demons is a time-honored tradition. You can learn the ins and outs by looking in any decent grimoire. It certainly looks easy . . .

  But you can't believe everything you read. Most of those grimoires are old and musty and out of date. Demons have smartened up these days. You've got to be creative to trick them now, as the late Anthony Boucher points out in the very short, and very logical, story that follows.

  As a writer and reviewer Anthony Boucher had a considerable effect on science fiction, but it was as co-founder (with J. Francis McComas) and long-time editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction that he really became a seminal influence on the field. Founded in 1949, F&SF soon became a showcase for the most literate and sophisticated work being done in the field, and Boucher earned himself a secure place in the pantheon of science fiction's greatest editors. Boucher wrote one science fiction novel—Rocket to the Morgue, under the pseudonym of H. H. Holmes—but as a writer he is best remembered for wry and ironic stories such as "The Quest for St. Aquin," "Barrier," "Snul-bug," and "The Compleat Werewolf." His stories are collected In Far and Away and The Compleat Werewolf and Other Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He had a separate and very successful career as a writer and critic in the mystery genre, and was a recipient of the prestigious Edgar Allen Poe A ward of the Mystery Writers of America.

  Ailsa had been easily the homeliest and the least talented girl in the University, if also the most logical and levelheaded. Now, almost twenty-five years later, she was the most attractive woman Martin had ever seen and, to judge from their surroundings, by some lengths the richest.

  ". . . so lucky running into you again after all these years," she was saying, in that indescribably aphrodisiac voice. "You know about publishers, and you can advise me on this novel. I was getting so tired of the piano. . . ."

  Martin had heard her piano recordings and knew they were superb—as the vocal recordings had been before them and the non-representational paintings before them and the fashion designs and that astonishing paper on prime numbers. He also knew that the income from all these together could hardly have furnished the Silver Room in which they dined or the Gold Room in which he later read the novel (which was of course superb) or the room whose color he never noticed because he did not sleep alone (and the word superb is inadequate).

  There was only one answer, and Martin was gratified to observe that the coffee-bringing servant cast no shadow in the morning sun. While Ailsa still slept (superbly), Martin said, "So you're a demon."

  "Naturally, sir," the unshadowed servant said, his eyes adoringly upon the sleeper. "Nellthu, at your service."

  "But such service! I can imagine Ailsa-that-was working out a good spell and even wishing logically. But I thought you fellows were limited in what you could grant."

  "We are, sir. Three wishes."

  "But she has wealth, beauty, youth, fame, a remarkable variety of talents—all on three wishes?"

  "On one, sir. Oh, I foxed her prettily on the first two." Nellthu smiled reminiscently. " 'Beauty'—but she didn't specify, and I made her the most beautiful centenarian in the world. 'Wealth beyond the dreams of avarice'—and of course nothing is beyond such dreams, and nothing she got. Ah, I was in form that day, sir! But the third wish . . ."

  "Don't tell me she tried the old 'For my third wish I want three more wishes!' I thought that was illegal."

  "It is, sir. The paradoxes involved go beyond even our powers. No, sir," said Nellthu, with a sort of rueful admiration, "her third wish was stronger than that. She said: 'I wish that you fall permanently and unselfishly in love with me.' "

  "She was always logical," Martin admitted. "So for your own sake you had to make her beautiful and . . . adept, and since then you have been compelled to gratify her every—" He broke off and looked from the bed to the demon. "How lucky for me that she included unselfishly!"

  "Yes, sir," said Nellthu.

  Snulbug

  by

  Anthony Boucher

  And then again, sometimes you've got to use psychology to get around a demon . . .

  "That's a hell of a spell you're using," said the demon, "if I'm the best you can call up."

  He wasn't much, Bill Hitchens had to admit. He looked lost in the center of that pentacle. His basic design was impressive enough—snakes for hair, curling tusks, a sharp-tipped tail, all the works—but he was something under an inch tall.

  Bill had chanted the words and lit the powder with the highest hopes. Even after the feeble flickering flash and the damp fizzling zzzt which had replaced the expected thunder and lightning, he had still had hopes. He had stared up at the space above the pentacle waiting to be awe-struck, until he had heard that plaintive little voice from the floor wailing, "Here I am."

  "Nobody's wasted time and power on a misfit like me for years," the demon went on. "Where'd you get the spell?"

  "Just a little something I whipped up," said Bill modestly.

  The demon grunted and muttered something about people that thought they were magicians.

  "But I'm not a magician," Bill explained. "I'm a biochemist."

  The demon shuddered. "I land the damnedest cases," he mourned. "Working for that psychiatrist wasn't bad enough, I should draw a biochemist. Whatever that is."

  Bill couldn't check his curiosity. "And what did you do for a psychiatrist?"

  "He showed me to people who were followed by little men and told them Pd chase the little men away." The demon pantomimed shooting motions.

  "And did they go away?"

  "Sure. Only then the people decided they'd sooner have little men than me. It didn't work so good. Nothing ever does," he added wo
efully. "Yours won't either."

  Bill sat down and filled his pipe. Calling up demons wasn't so terrifying after all. Something quiet and homey about it. "Oh, yes it will," he said. "This is foolproof."

  "That's what they all think. People—" The demon wistfully eyed the match as Bill lit his pipe. "But we might as well get it over with. What do you want?"

  "I want a laboratory for my embolism experiments. If this method works, it's going to mean that a doctor can spot an embolus in the bloodstream long before it's dangerous and remove it safely. My ex-boss, that screwball old occultist Reuben Choatsby, said it wasn't practical—meaning there wasn't a fortune in it for him—and fired me. Everybody else thinks I'm wacky too, and I can't get any backing. So I need ten thousand dollars."

  "There!" the demon sighed with satisfaction. "I told you it wouldn't work. That's out for me. They can't start fetching money on demand till three grades higher than me. I told you."

  "But you don't," Bill insisted, "appreciate all my fiendish subtlety. Look—Say, what is your name?"

  The demon hesitated. "You haven't got another of those things?"

  "What things?"

  "Matches."

  "Sure."

  "Light me one, please?"

  Bill tossed the burning match into the center of the pentacle. The demon scrambled eagerly out of the now cold ashes of the powder and dived into the flame, rubbing himself with the brisk vigor of a man under a needle shower. "There!" he gasped joyously. "That's more like it."

  "And now what's your name?"

  The demon's face fell again. "My name? You really want to know?"

  "I've got to call you something."

  "Oh, no you don't. I'm going home. No money games for me."

  "But I haven't explained yet what you are to do. What's your name?"

  "Snulbug." The demon's voice dropped almost too low to be heard.

  "Snulbug?" Bill laughed.

  "Uh-huh. I've got a cavity in one tusk, my snakes are falling out, I haven't got enough troubles, I should be named Snulbug."

  "All right. Now listen, Snulbug, can you travel into the future?"

  "A little. I don't like it much, though. It makes you itch in the memory."

  "Look, my fine snake-haired friend. It isn't a question of what you like. How would you like to be left there in that pentacle with nobody to throw matches at you?" Snulbug shuddered. "I thought so. Now, you can travel into the future?"

  "I said a little."

  "And," Bill leaned forward and puffed hard at his corncob as he asked the vital question, "can you bring back material objects?" If the answer was no, all the fine febrile fertility of his spell-making was useless. And if that was useless, heaven alone knew how the Hitchens Embolus Diagnosis would ever succeed in ringing down the halls of history, and incidentally saving a few thousand lives annually.

  Snulbug seemed more interested in the warm clouds of pipe smoke than in the question. "Sure," he said. "Within reason I can—" He broke off and stared piteously. "You don't mean—You can't be going to pull that old gag again?"

  "Look, baby. You do what I tell you and leave the worrying to me. You can bring back material objects?"

  "Sure. But I warn you—"

  Bill cut him off short. "Then as soon as I release you from that pentacle, you're to bring me tomorrow's paper."

  Snulbug sat down on the burned match and tapped his forehead sorrowfully with his tail tip. "I knew it," he wailed. "I knew it. Three times already this happens to me. I've got limited powers, I'm a runt, I've got a funny name, so I should run foolish errands."

  "Foolish errands?" Bill rose and began to pace about the bare attic. "Sir, if I may call you that, I resent such an imputation. I've spent weeks on this idea. Think of the limitless power in knowing the future. Think of what could be done with it: swaying the course of empire, dominating mankind. All I want is to take this stream of unlimited power, turn it into the simple channel of humanitarian research, and get me $10,000; and you call that a foolish errand!"

  "That Spaniard," Snulbug moaned. "He was a nice guy, even if his spell was lousy. Had a solid, comfortable brazier where an imp could keep warm. Fine fellow. And he had to ask to see tomorrow's newspaper. I'm warning you—"

  "I know," said Bill hastily. "I've been over in my mind all the things that can go wrong. And that's why I'm laying three conditions on you before you get out of that pentacle. I'm not falling for the easy snares."

  "All right." Snulbug sounded almost resigned. "Let's hear 'em. Not that they'll do any good."

  "First: This newspaper must not contain a notice of my own death or of any other disaster that would frustrate what I can do with it."

  "But shucks," Snulbug protested. "I can't guarantee that. If you're slated to die between now and tomorrow, what can I do about it? Not that I guess you're important enough to crash the paper."

  "Courtesy, Snulbug. Courtesy to your master. But I tell you what: When you go into the future, you'll know then if I'm going to die? Right. Well, if I am, come back and tell me and we'll work out other plans. This errand will be off."

  "People," Snulbug observed, "make such an effort to make trouble for themselves. Go on."

  "Second: The newspaper must be of this city and in English. I can just imagine you and your little friends presenting some dope with the Omsk and Tomsk Daily Vuskutsukt."

  "We should take so much trouble," said Snulbug.

  "And third: The newspaper must belong to this space-time continuum, to this spiral of the serial universe, to this Wheel of If. However you want to put it. It must be a newspaper of the tomorrow that I myself shall experience, not of some other, to me hypothetical, tomorrow."

  "Throw me another match," said Snulbug.

  "Those three conditions should cover it, I think. There's not a loophole there, and the Hitchens Laboratory is guaranteed."

  Snulbug grunted. "You'll find out."

  Bill took a sharp blade and duly cut a line of the pentacle with told steel. But Snulbug simply dived in and out of the flame of his second match, twitching his tail happily, and seemed not to give a rap that the way to freedom was now open.

  "Come on!" Bill snapped impatiently. "Or I'll take the match away."

  Snulbug got as far as the opening and hesitated. "Twenty-four hours is a long way."

  "You can make it."

  "I don't know. Look." He shook his head, and a microscopic dead snake fell to the floor. "I'm not at my best. I'm shot to pieces lately, I am. Tap my tail."

  "Do what?"

  "Go on. Tap it with your fingernail right there where it joins on."

  Bill grinned and obeyed. "Nothing happens."

  "Sure nothing happens. My reflexes are all haywire. I don't know as I can make twenty-four hours." He brooded, and his snakes curled up into a concentrated clump. "Look. All you want is tomorrow's newspaper, huh? Just tomorrow's, not the edition that'll be out exactly twenty-four hours from now?"

  "It's noon now," Bill reflected. "Sure, I guess tomorrow morning's paper'll do."

  "O.K. What's the date today?"

  "August 21."

  "Fine. I'll bring you a paper for August 22. Only I'm warning you: It won't do any good. But here goes nothing. Goodbye now. Hello again. Here you are." There was a string in Snulbug's horny hand, and on the end of the string was a newspaper.

  "But hey!" Bill protested. "You haven't been gone."

  "People," said Snulbug feelingly, "are dopes. Why should it take any time out of the present to go into the future? I leave this point, I come back to this point. I spent two hours hunting for this damned paper, but that doesn't mean two hours of your time here. People—" he snorted.

  Bill scratched his head. "I guess it's all right. Let's see the paper. And I know: You're warning me." He turned quickly to the obituaries to check. No Hitchens. "And I wasn't dead in the time you were in?"

  "No," Snulbug admitted. "Not dead" he added, with the most pessimistic implications possible.

  "What was
I, then? Was I—"

  "I had salamander blood," Snulbug complained. "They thought I was an undine like my mother and they put me in the cold-water incubator when any dope knows salamandery is a dominant. So I'm a runt and good for nothing but to run errands, and now I should make prophecies! You read your paper and see how much good it does you."

  Bill laid down his pipe and folded the paper back from the obituaries to the front page. He had not expected to find anything useful there—what advantage could he gain from knowing who won the next naval engagement or which cities were bombed—but he was scientifically methodical. And this time method was rewarded. There it was, streaming across the front page in vast black blocks:

  MAYOR ASSASSINATED

  fifth column kills crusader

  Bill snapped his fingers. This was it. This was his chance. He jammed his pipe in his mouth,, hastily pulled a coat on his shoulders, crammed the priceless paper into a pocket, and started out of the attic. Then he paused and looked around. He'd forgotten Snulbug. Shouldn't there be some sort of formal discharge?

  The dismal demon was nowhere in sight. Not in the pentacle or out of it. Not a sign or a trace of him. Bill frowned. This was definitely not methodical. He struck a match and held it over the bowl of his pipe.

  A warm sigh of pleasure came from inside the corncob.

  Bill took the pipe from his mouth and stared at it. "So that's where you are!" he said musingly.

  "I told you salamandery was a dominant," said Snulbug, peering out of the bowl. "I want to go along. I want to see just what kind of a fool you make of yourself." He withdrew his head into the glowing tobacco, muttering about newspapers, spells, and, with a wealth of unhappy scorn, people.

  The crusading mayor of Granton was a national figure of splendid proportions. Without hysteria, red baiting, or strikebreaking, he had launched a quietly purposeful and well-directed program against subversive elements which had rapidly converted Granton into the safest and most American city in the country, he was also a persistent advocate of national, state, and municipal subsidy of the arts and sciences—the ideal man to wangle an endowment for the Hitchens Laboratory, if he were not so surrounded by overly skeptical assistants that Bill had never been able to lay the program before him.