Braugh turned.
A girl had just entered the door. She was short, red-headed, and delightfully the right side of plump.
Her copper hair was done up on top of her head. She was breathing with indignant short breaths that made her look as though she would shake to pieces. She wore an expression of utter exasperation and nothing else.
“So!” she rapped out. “At it again!”
No answer. Much quartet trembling.
“How many times—” she began, then stopped and bit her lip. Abruptly she ran to the wall, seized a prodigious glass retort and hurled it straight and true. When the pieces stopped falling, she said: “How many times have I told you to cut out this nonsense or I’d report you!”
“N-nonsense?” quavered Belial. He tried to stanch his bleeding cuts and attempted an innocent smile.
“Why Astarte, wh-what d’ you rn-mean?”
“You know damned well what I mean! I will not have you smashing my ceiling, dripping things down on my office. First molten lead—then water. Four weeks work ruined. My new Sheraton desk ruined!”
She hitched around and exhibited a long red sear that ran straight down from shoulder to hip. “Twelve inches of skin—ruined!”
Belial went: “Tsk-tsk!”
Braugh went: “My-my!”
The red-headed Astarte turned on him and lanced him with level green eyes. “Who’s this?”
“We don’t know,” Belial began eagerly in an effort to change the subject. “That’s why we were . . .
er—Well, it just walked up to my desk, and .
and that’s all.”
As Braugh stepped forward he heard Rimmon whisper: “Might try Parthenomancy . . . that is, if Astarte is—”
Then he took the girl’s hand and said: “The name is Braugh. Christian Braugh.”
Her hand was cool and firm. She said: “The name is Astarte. I, too, am a Christian.”
“Satan’s crew Christians?”
“Why not?”
There was no answer to that. He said: “Is there some place where we can get away from these Zanies?”
“There’s always my office.”
“I like offices.”
And he also liked Astarte. She ushered him into her place, on the floor below, swept a pile of papers and books off a chair, and casually invited him to sit down. Then she sprawled before the ruin of her desk and after one malevolent glance at the ceiling, listened to his story.
“As I get this,” she said, “you’re looking for Satan. Evil Lord of the Universe. Well, this is the only hell there is, and ours is the only Satan there is. You’re in the right place.”
Braugh was perplexed. “Hell?” he inquired. “Fire, brimstone, and so forth?”
“There are the business offices,” she explained. “If you’re looking for torments—”
“No,” Braugh interrupted hastily. “I thank you. No torments.”
She smiled at his solemn face and went on: “All this brings us to something rather vital. Just how did you get here? Dead?”
Braugh shook his head.
“Hm-m-m-” She made an interested survey. “You’ll bear more looking into. I’ve never had anything to do with the live ones. You are alive, aren’t you?”
“Very much so.”
“And what business have you with Father Satan?”
“The truth,” Braugh said. “I was granted a wish. I wished to discover the truth of all. I was sent here.
Why Father Satan, as you call him, should be official purveyor of truth rather than—” He hesitated, then delicately indicated heaven. “I don’t know. But to me the truth is worth any price, so I should like very much to have an interview.”
Astarte rapped glittering nails on the desk and smiled broadly. “This,” she said, “is going to be delicious!” She arose, flung open the door of her office and pointed down the corridor. “Straight ahead,” said Astarte, “then turn to the left. Keep on and you can’t miss.”
“I’ll see you again?” Braugh asked as he set off.
“You’ll see me again,” Astarte laughed.
This, Braugh thought as he trudged along the corridor, is all too ridiculous. You pass a veil intending to seek the Citadel of Truth. You are entertained by four ridiculous creatures and by a red-head goddess. You ask to see the Knower of All Things and discover Him to be Satan rather than God. Then off you go down a musty corridor, turn left and then straight ahead.
What of this yearning of mine? What of these truths I seek? Is there no solemnity, no dignity anywhere? Is not Satan a fearful, thunderous deity? Why all this low comedy—this saturnalian air of slapstick that pervades the Underworld Offices of Satan?
He turned the corner to the left and kept on. The short hall ended abruptly in a pair of green baize doors. Almost timidly Braugh pushed them open and to his great relief found himself merely entering an open stone bridge—rather like the Bridge of Sighs, he thought. Around him was nothing but that same sulfurous mist. Behind him was the giant façade of the building he had just left—a wall of brimstone blocks. Before him was a smallish building shaped like a globe.
He stepped quickly across the bridge, for those misty depths on either side of him made him queasy.
He paused only a moment before a second pair of baize doors to gather his courage, then tried to smile and pushed them in. You do not, he muttered to himself, come before Satan with a smirk in your heart; but there is an air of general insanity in hell that has touched me.
It was a large office—a kind of file room, and for the second time Braugh was relieved at having put the awesome moment a little further into the future. The office was round as a planetarium and was filled with the largest and most complicated adding machine Braugh had ever seen in his life. The thing was all keyboard. A long platform before the banks of keys buckled and creaked like a painter’s scaffolding as a dried-out little clerk wearing glasses the size of binoculars rushed up and back, punching keys with lightning speed.
More as an excuse to put off the meeting than anything else, Braugh watched the little old man scurry before those keys, punching them so rapidly they chattered like a dozen stuttering motors. This little old chap, Braugh thought, has probably put in an eternity figuring out sin totals and death totals and all sorts of statistical totals. He looks like a total himself.
Aloud, Braugh called: “Hello, there!”
Without wavering, the clerk said: “What is it?” His voice was drier than his skin.
Braugh said: “Those figures can wait a moment, can’t they?”
“Sorry,” said the little old man. He bustled down the scaffolding on a mad run.
“Will you stop a moment!” Braugh shouted.
The clerk paused and turned, removing the enormous binoculars very slowly.
“Now—that’s better,” Braugh said. “See here, my man, I’d like to get in to see Satan. His Black Majesty, Satan—”
“That’s me,” said the little man.
Braugh said: “G-Gug—”
For a fleeting instant the dried-out face flickered into a smile. “Yes, that’s me, son. I’m Satan.”
And, despite all his imagination, Braugh had to believe.
He slumped down on the lowermost tread of the steps that led up to the scaffold. Satan chuckled faintly and touched a clutch on the gigantic adding machine. Instantly there was a click of gears and with the sound of free-wheeling the machine began to cluck softly like a contented hen.
His Diabolic Majesty came creaking down the stairs and seated himself alongside Braugh. He took out an old silk handkerchief and began polishing his glasses. He was just a nice little old man sitting friendly like alongside Braugh. At last he said: “What’s on your mind, son?”
“W-well, Satan—” Braugh began.
“You can call me Father, son.”
“B-but why should I? I mean—” Braugh broke off in embarrassment.
“Well now, son, I guess you’re a little worried about that heaven-and-hel
l business, eh?”
Braugh nodded.
Satan clicked his tongue and shook his head dubiously. “Don’t know what to do about that,” he said.
“Fact is, son, it’s all the same thing. Naturally I let it get around in certain quarters that there’s two places.
Got to, to keep certain folks on their toes. But the fact is, it’s not really so. I’m all there is, son. God or Satan or Siva or Official Co-ordinator or Nature—or whatever you want to call it.”
With a sudden rush of good feeling toward this friendly old man, Braugh said:
“I call you a fine old man!”
“Well—that’s nice of you, son. Glad you feel that way. You understand, of course, that we couldn’t let everyone see me that way. Might instill disrespect.”
“Y-yes, sir, I see.”
“Got to have efficiency.” The little old man went: Tsk! and shook his head. “Got to frighten folks now and then. Got to have respect, you understand. Can’t run things without respect.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Got to have efficiency. Can’t be running things all day long, all year long, all eternity long, without efficiency. Can’t have efficiency without respect.”
Again Braugh said: “Yes, sir—” While within him a hideous uncertainty grew.
This was a nice old man—but this was also a maudlin old man. His Satanic Majesty was a tired creature much duller and not nearly so clever as Christian Braugh.
“What I always say,” the old man went on, rubbing his knee reflectively, “is that love and all that—you can have ‘em. They’re nice, of course, but I’ll take efficiency any time. Yes, indeed . . . any time . . . leastways, for a body in my position. Now then, son, what was on your mind?”
Mediocrity, Braugh thought grimly. He said: “The Truth, Father Satan. I came seeking the truth.”
“And what do you want with the truth, Christian?”
“I just want to know it, Father Satan. I came seeking it. Want to know why we are, why we live, why we yearn—I want to know all that.”
“Well, now”—the old man chuckled—”that’s quite an order, son. Yes, sir, quite an order indeed.”
“Can you tell me, Father Satan?”
“A little, son, just a little. What was it you wanted to know mostly?”
“What there is inside of us that makes us seek the unattainable!” Braugh cried with passion. “What are those forces that pull and tug and surge within us? What is this ego of mine that gives me no rest, that seeks no rest, that frets at turbulence and yet seeks nothing but turbulence. What is all this?”
“Why,” the old man said, pointing to his adding machine. “It’s that gadget over there. It runs everything.”
“That!”
“Yes. That.”
“It runs everything?”
“Everything that I run—and I run everything there is.” The old man chuckled again, then held out the binoculars. “You’re an unusual boy, Christian. First person that ever said a kind word for old Father Satan. First person that ever had the decency to pay the old man a visit. I’ll return the favor. Here!”
Wondering, Braugh accepted the glasses.
“Put ‘em on.” said the old man.
And then the wonder began, for as Braugh slipped the glasses over his head he found himself peering with the eyes of the universe at all the universe. And the adding machine was no longer a machine, but a vastly complex marionetteers crossbar from which an infinity of shimmering silver threads descended.
And with his all-seeing eyes, with the spectacles of Satan, Braugh perceived how each thread attached itself to the nape of the neck of a creature and how each living entity danced the dance of life to the tune of Father Satan’s efficient machine. ,
Wondering, he stumbled up to the scaffold and reached toward the banks of keys. One key he pressed and on a pale planet a creature hungered and killed. A second key and it felt remorse. A third, and it forgot. A fourth, and a half a continent away another entity arose five minutes early and so began a chain of events that culminated in discovery and hideous punishment for the murderer.
Slowly Braugh backed away from the adding machine and in a kind of horror slipped the glasses up to his brow. The machine went on clucking, and only vaguely did he note that the meticulous chronometer on the wall had ticked away a space of three months’ time.
“This,” he thought, “is ghastliest of all. We were puppets. We danced the dance of death in life, for we were little better than dead things hung from a string. Up here an old man, not overly intelligent, clicks a few keys, and down there we dance on our strings and take it for a thousand things—for fate, for free will, for Karma, for evolution, for nature, for a thousand false things.
“And none of us knew or knows or will care to know the truth—that there is neither reason, nor beauty, nor sanity to life. That all our mysterious yearning is the push of a decrepit finger on a tab.
Oh—it’s a bitter thing, this sour discovery. It’s a bitter thing always to yearn after truth and find it to be shoddy!”
He glanced down. Old Father Satan was still seated on the steps, but his head slumped a little to one side, his eyes were half closed and he murmured indistinctly about work and rest and not enough of it.
“You’re a good boy, Christian,” the old man mumbled, “a good boy—” And revolt stirred in Braugh.
“This isn’t fair!” he cried. “Father Satan!” “Yes, my boy?” The old man roused himself slightly.
“This is true? We all dance to your key-tapping?” “All of you, my boy. All of you.”
“And although we think we are free, yet we dance to your tune?”
“You all think yourselves free, Christian, and yet you all dance to Father Satan’s playing.”
“Then, Father, grant me one thing—one very small thing. There is in a small corner of your mighty kingdom a very tiny planet . . . a very insignificant speck called the Earth—”
“Earth? Earth? Can’t say I recollect it off-hand, son, but I could look it up.”
“No, don’t bother, Father Satan. It’s there. Only grant me this favor—break the cords that bind it.
Let it go free!”
“Now, son, don’t be foolish. I can’t do that.”
“In all your kingdom,” Braugh pleaded, “there are souls too numerous to count. There are suns and planets too vast to measure. Surely this one tiny bit of dust with its paltry few people—You who own so much can surely part with so little!’’
“No, my boy, couldn’t do it. Sorry—”
“You who alone knows freedom,” Braugh cried. “Would you deny it to others?”
But the Coordinator of All slumbered.
“This, then, is His Satanic Majesty,” Braugh thought. “This likable, simple old man is the one free agent in an entire cosmos. This is the answer to my seeking, and behold, the answer sleeps!”
Braugh grimly slipped the glasses back over his eyes. Let him slumber then, Book of Maart; XIII:29—37.while Braugh, Satan pro tem, takes over. Oh, we shall be repaid for this disappointment. We shall have a giddy time writing novels in flesh and blood! And perhaps, if we can find the cord that leads to my neck and search out the proper key in all these billions, we may do something to free Christian Braugh!
He turned from the keyboard and craned his head over his shoulder, and even as his eyes searched, he stopped short, stunned, transfixed. His eyes ran up, then down, then up again. His hands began to tremble, then his arms, and finally his whole body shuddered uncontrollably. For the first time in his life he began to laugh, and the hysterical peals rang through the vast-domed room.
And Father Satan awoke and cried anxiously: “Christian! What is it? What is this laughter?”
Laughter of frustration? Laughter of relief? Laughter of promise? He could not tell as he shook at the sight of that slender tendril that stretched from the nape of Satan’s neck and turned him, too, into a capering puppet. A silver thread that stretched upward into the i
nfinite heights toward some other vaster machine hidden in the still unknowable reaches of the cosmos—
The blessedly unknowable cosmos.
V
Now in the beginning all was darkness. There was neither land nor sea nor sky nor the circling stars.
There was nothing. Then came Yaldabaoth and rent the light from the darkness. And the darkness He gathered up and formed into the night and the skies. And the light He gathered up and formed into the Sun and the stars. Then from the flesh and the blood of His blood did Yaldabaoth form the earth and all things upon it.
But the children of Yaldabaoth were new and green to living and unlearned, and the race did not bear fruit. And as the children of Yaldabaoth diminished in numbers they cried out unto their Lord: “Grant us a sign, Great God, that we may know how to increase and multiply! Grant us a sign, 0 Lord, that Thy good and mighty race may not perish from Thine earth!”
And Lo, Yaldabaoth withdrew himself from the face of his importunate people and they were sore at heart and sinful, thinking their Lord had forsaken them. And their paths were the paths of evil until a prophet arose whose name was Maart. Then did Maart gather the children of Yaldabaoth around him and spoke to them, saying: “Evil are thy ways, 0 people of Yaldabaoth, to doubt thy God. For He has given a sign of faith unto you.”
Then gave they answer, saying: “Where is this sign?”
And Maart went into the high mountains and with him was a vast concourse of people. Nine days and nine nights did they travel even unto the peak of Mount Sinar. And at the crest of Mount Sinar all were struck with wonder and fell to their knees, crying: “Great is God! Great are His works!”
For Lo, before them blazed a mighty curtain of fire.
BOOK OF MAART; XIII: 29-37
Pass the veil toward what reality? There’s no sense trying to make up my mind. I cannot. God knows, that’s been the agony of living for me—trying to make up my mind. How can I when I’ve felt nothing . . . when nothing’s touched me— ever! Take this or take that. Take coffee or tea. Buy the black gown or the silver. Marry Lord Buckley or live with Freddy Witherton. Let Finchley make love to me or stop posing for him. No—there’s no sense even trying.
Selected Stories of Alfred Bester Page 25