Mack moved closer. He saw that there were many pretty things carelessly thrown on the great pile.
There were babies' embroidered gowns, and crocheted tablecloths, there were well-wrought candlesticks, there were oil paintings by artists of no great reputation, and a lot of other stuff.
As Mack came closer, he saw, on the edge of the fire, a large painting in an ornate frame. Since Mephistopheles had gifted him with a knowledge of art, he saw at once that it was a Botticelli, one of the middle period of the master's paintings. It was worth a lot of money, and was rather pretty, too.
Surely, Mack thought, in all this great mass of paintings, it wouldn't matter if I took one?
He looked around, saw that no one was looking at him, and pulled the painting out before the flames had reached it. It looked as good as new. He put it to one side and looked around for others. There was a Giotto, but the surface had already begun bubbling in the heat. He sought hungrily after others. If saving one Botticelli was good, saving two ought to be excellent. And lucrative as well! And surely it was not wrong to serve Art! Especially when it was just lying around waiting to be burned! Those other choices Mephistopheles had given him had just sounded too weird. He was sure no one could object to a man who rescued great art.
Then there was a hand on his shoulder. A thin, splendidly dressed man with a short beard was staring at him severely.
"Sir, what are you doing?"
"Me?" Mack said. "I'm just watching the fun like everyone else."
"I saw you' take a painting off the bonfire."
"A painting? Oh, you mean this." Mack gestured at the Botticelli and grinned. "The servant put it out by mistake. We had taken it down to have it cleaned. It's a Botticelli. You just don't burn Botticellis in bonfires, not even vanity bonfires."
"And who might you be, sir?" the man demanded.
"I'm just a local nobleman," Mack said.
"Strange I haven't seen you before."
"I've been out of town. Who are you?"
"I," the man said, "am Niccolo Machiavelli. I work for the commune of Florence."
"That's a coincidence," Mack said. "I've been told to tell you not to write that book you're planning, the one you call The Prince."
"I have written no such book," Machiavelli said. "But it is a catchy title. I just might try it out."
"Do what you please," Mack said. "But remember, you've been warned."
"And who is the warning from?" Machiavelli demanded.
"I can't disclose the name," Mack said. "But I can assure you he's a devil of a good fellow."
Machiavelli stared at him, then turned and walked away, shaking his head. Mack picked up the painting, preparing to get out while the getting was good. But just then Pico della Mirandola came back.
"I've been checking with certain infernal powers," he said. "What have you done with the real Faust?"
Pico advanced threateningly. Mack cowered back. Pico raised one of those newfangled firearms that fired a ball large enough to tear a man apart. Mack looked for a place to hide. Nothing was immediately forthcoming. Pico's finger tightened on the trigger.
At that moment, Faust appeared. "Don't do it, Pico!" he cried. "Why not? The man is trying to pass himself as you!"
"But we are not allowed to kill him. He is impersonating me. But it is necessary for him to stay alive as long as he occupies my role." "What role is that, Johann?" "All will be revealed later. For now, old friend, desist." "You are a wise man, Faust!" "I may call upon you later, Pico. I have a plan!" "Count on me!" Faust vanished. Then Mephistopheles appeared. "Ready?" he said to Mack. "Let's go. What's everybody gawking at?"
Mack decided not to tell him about Faust. "You know how people are. They'll stare at anything." He got a tight grip on the painting and Mephistopheles conjured them both away.
CHAPTER 7
Mack and Mephistopheles arrived in Limbo, conjuring themselves into existence at the entrance to a small building on a hill close to where the judgments for the Millennial contest were to be held. "What's this place?" Mack asked.
"This is the Waiting Room of Limbo. I've got a storage facility here where you can store your Botticelli.
Unless you want to sell it to me immediately?" "I think I'd like to hold on to it for a while," Mack said. "So how did I do?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"On the contest, in Florence."
Mephistopheles didn't answer until they were inside. He indicated a room that Mack might use to store his painting. "You didn't get anywhere with trying to get Medici and Savonarola to patch up their quarrel. You get a zero for your ineffectuality."
"But I told Machiavelli not to write The Prince. That was a good thing, wasn't it?"
Mephistopheles shrugged. "We don't know. It's up to Necessity to judge these matters. Good and Bad must remain subservient to What Must Be. By the way, who was that man? He seemed to know you."
"What man?"
"The one who kept Pico della Mirandola from killing you."
"Some nut," Mack said, deciding not to mention Faust. "I have no idea who he was. The painting's nice, isn't it?" Mephistopheles held the painting at arms' length and gazed at it for a while. "Yes, it's very nice. I'll be happy to take it off your hands."
"Not just yet," Mack said. "I'd like to see what the market is worth, that sort of thing."
"A good idea," Mephistopheles admitted. "Here's a spell to get you to London. Don't dawdle, though. We need you for the next appearance."
"Don't worry, I won't be late," Mack said.
Mephistopheles nodded and vanished. Mack looked around the room and found a large metal box with a key in its keyhole. He unlocked it and was about to put in the painting. As he lifted it, he heard a scratching sound under his feet. He stepped hastily out of the way. The floor cracked, a small pick poked through the hole, then was replaced by a shovel. The hole was rapidly enlarged. Soon a diminutive shape clambered out. It was Rognir. "Hi," said Mack, remembering the dwarf from the Sabbat.
"Nice painting," said Rognir. "Where'd you get it?"
"Oh? What were you doing there?"
"I'm in a contest," Mack said. "It's to decide the destiny of mankind for the next thousand years."
"Is that what they sent you to the Renaissance for, to get a painting?"
"I don't really know what they sent me for. I did some other stuff. Bat I gat the painting because Mephistopheles said he'd like one, and he'd pay me a pretty price for it. But I haven't sold it yet. I decided to see what the market's worth."
"He wanted you to get a painting, did he?"
"Sure he did. Since I was going to be there anyway. Sorry, gotta go. I'm due in London next. It's a big one."
"Good luck," Rognir said. "Maybe I'll see you there."
"I look forward to it," Mack said. He hesitated, looking at the hole in the floor. "You're going to clean that up before you leave, aren't you?"
Rognir told him not to worry, his painting was safe. He left musing about just what kind of stupid jerk this guy Mack was. He didn't even know he was being manipulated. The idea of making up his own mind had never occurred to him. He was still trying to please other people. As he'd probably been doing all his life.
And yet, there was something about him that roused an odd bit of sympathy.
ACHILLES
CHAPTER 1
In the meantime, there were consequences that emanated from Azzie's taking of Helen of Troy from her place in Hades, where, together with her husband, Achilles, she reigned over the social aspects of the underworld. Azzie had conjured Helen away rather casually, not stopping to wonder why this sort of thing was usually not done and what the consequences might be. A moment's thought would have reminded him that the dead have some powers and it is not good to run afoul of them.
Achilles really didn't take it well when he returned one evening from hunting ghost deer in the mist-covered meadows that lay just past the Slough of Despond, and found that Helen was missing. That was unlike her. At first he tho
ught she was off visiting neighbors. He enquired, but no one had seen her.
Still, people just don't go missing from Hades. Someone has to take them out. Achilles went at once to his old friend and neighbor, Odysseus, for help.
Odysseus had fared pretty well in the battle of the archetypal ratings. He had his own problems, of course. Although he was a pretty tricky fellow, it was hard to think up any new stunts that would deserve the term Odyssean wiliness. The spirits behind archetypes can reach their prime and fade away, but they have to continue trying to surpass themselves anyway. You know what they say about teaching old gods new tricks. Odysseus' later schemes tended to be pretty obvious. And sometimes a little nasty. There was a mean streak in Odysseus. He liked to win, and he'd do anything to achieve victory.
Odysseus was sitting on the front porch of his house when Achilles came to ask his help. Odysseus lived by himself in a marble house near a tributary of the Styx. Asphodel grew in the moss on his front lawn.
The place was shaded with the inevitable black poplars, which one gets very tired of after a while, in Hades and elsewhere. It was a gloomy day, like all the other days in Hades. It was just chilly enough so you weren't comfortable sitting outside, but not cold enough to be invigorating. Odysseus had a fire going in the living room, but it threw very little heat. Not that it mattered: the dead can never get warmed up properly anyway. Odysseus brought Achilles into the kitchen and offered him a breakfast of dates and porridge. They weren't real food, of course. But the dead are attached to the habits of the living and go right on eating, and even plan elaborate banquets. Eternity goes on for a very long time, and food is a way of passing it.
Sex is a way of passing time, too, even though dead people can't be properly said to have sex, ectoplasm being devoid of sensation as well as immaterial. But sex is something they used to do, so they go on doing it after death, or at least going through the motions.
Odysseus was currently unmarried. He and Penelope had split up long ago. Odysseus had always had his suspicions about what she'd really been up to with the suitors during the twenty years he was away fighting Trojans. For a while he kept the family together for the sake of the boy, Telemachus. But then Telemachus found his own archetype, nothing big, but quite steady, and now he lived in another section of Hades and had as his friends the sons of other famous men.
So Odysseus was alone, and he had little to occupy him. He did his exercises faithfully every day.
Sometimes he visited his friend Sisyphus. Sisyphus was still rolling the big boulder up the mountain. He didn't have to do it. He had been set free long ago. But, as he said, it gave him something to do, and, above all, it kept his archetype alive.
Sometimes Odysseus went to visit Prometheus, one of his oldest friends, who was still spread-eagled on a rock, with a vulture eating away his liver. Prometheus had been a difficult case for the gods. Setting him loose would have endangered everybody, since the world still wasn't ready for personal freedom. And the guy wouldn't promise to shut up about his ideas. Again, a modus vivendi, so to speak, might have been worked out—sooner or later, all of the dead compromise their values—but Prometheus was interested in keeping up his reputation. Recently he had turned moody and some days wouldn't even talk to Odysseus. People said that his only friend was his vulture.
So Odysseus was bored. He used to go out hunting ghost deer with Achilles or Orion, but that sport soon palled. The main disadvantage of a ghost deer was that you couldn't kill it. And even if you could, you couldn't eat it.
Odysseus was in a receptive mood when Achilles came over and told his problems. Odysseus suggested that they go at once and talk to Dis, king of Tartaros, in the black palace he shared with Persephone.
Dis had his own problems. He was engaged in jurisdictional disputes with the Roman chthonic deity Plutus, who had recently become the chief deity of the Roman underworld, and had pulled strings to be declared a separate deity in his own right and not subsumed under the Hades concept. Because of this ruling, Dis immediately lost control of a large section of the classical underworld, and no longer had jurisdiction over the Latins who had formerly been his subjects. In one way he was glad to see them go.
Latin dead had never gotten along well with the Greeks. On the other hand, losing the Latins diminished his kingdom, and shrank his archetype.
Problems, problems. And then suddenly there were Achilles and Odysseus, demanding justice.
"What do you expect me to do about it?" Dis said. "I don't have any power up there. To hell with Dis, that's what they say. They've got new constructs."
"There must be something you can do," Achilles said. "If you're so ineffectual, you should step down and let somebody else rule Hades. I've got a good mind to bring it before the Hellenic General Assembly at the next Bylaws of Hades meeting."
"Hell, no, don't do that," Dis said. "Let me think about this. Do you know who took her?"
"There was "a demon involved," Achilles said. "Alecto told me that. He was one of those spirits from the cycle that came after ours."
"Which side is this demon on?" Odysseus asked.
"Alecto said he represented Darkness or Badness," Achilles said. "I can't remember which."
"Darkness," Odysseus mused. "I suppose that equates with Badness? In that case we know which party to apply to for redress. I've never been able to understand the distinctions between Good and Bad.
People only started making them some centuries after our time."
"Beats the hell out of me too," Dis said. "But people seem to like the Good and Bad stuff."
Odysseus said, "Meanwhile, there's a wrong here we must right. If you'll give us a provisional reality card so we can get out of here, and your authority to act for the classical infernal construct in this matter, Achilles and I will bring this matter to the attention of the proper authorities."
"All right, you've got it," Dis said. He felt pleased with himself. One of the most important things about having authority is being able to delegate responsibility. Now it was up to Odysseus to right this wrong.
CHAPTER 2
After Odysseus received permission from Dis to accompany Achilles to the world of the living, he decided to seek out Tiresias, the most notable magician of the ancient world. Tiresias would know what they had to do and how they could get where they were going.
The two heroes set off for the grove of Persephone, with its black poplars and aged willows, at the point where two rivers of Hades, Phlegethon and Cocytus, flowed into the Acheron. There they dug a trench and poured in the blood, heroically desisting from drinking it themselves. Whenever dead people came by asking for some, they turned them down. They wouldn't even give a sip to Agamemnon, their old commander-in'chief, who drifted by, drawn by the scent. This blood was for Tiresias alone.
Dark and oily, the blood lay in the trench. Then it suddenly frothed, then diminished, drunk by an unseen presence. Immediately after that Tiresias appeared, a slight figure in a long gray wool mantle, his face painted with ochre and blue clay, his dank white hair hanging down over his eyes.
"A very good day to you, gentlemen. Thank you very much for the nice sacrifice. Some of Dis' private store, isn't it? Lovely stuff! Don't have any more, do you? Too bad! Well then, what can I do for you?"
"We seek Helen of Troy," Odysseus said. "She has been unlawfully abducted from her husband, Achilles, here."
"Somebody always seems to be stealing the fair Helen," Tiresias said. "Do you know who did it?"
"We are told it was a demon from the new age," Odysseus said. "But we do not know his name or where to find him. We need your advice and assistance."
"All right," Tiresias said. "The demon's name is Azzie and he is part of the new Dark-Light overview which has captured the minds of mankind."
"We will go seek him out!" Achilles said.
"You're going to find it a different world out there," Tiresias said. "You will have to go to the main place from which Evil is commanded, which is called Hell, and make your
enquiries there. I can provide you with a Traveling Spell, as long as you have Dis' permission to use it. As a matter of fact, I happen to know who Helen is with at present."
"Tell us!" cried Achilles.
Tiresias cleared his throat and turned toward the trench, now drained of blood.
"We have no more to give you," Odysseus said. "But at the first chance we will provide another sacrifice."
"The word of Odysseus is good enough for me," Tiresias said. "But I warn you, finding Helen won't be easy. She's moving around a lot since she is now the consort of a famous magician named Faust."
"Faust?" Achilles said. "That doesn't sound like a Greek to me."
"He's not. Other races have come up in the world and are now the physical as well as intellectual masters. This Faust is engaged in a game with the gods themselves. I mean the new gods."
"Where are our old gods, by the way?" Odysseus asked.
"Well then, where do we find Faust and Helen?"
"They are traveling," Tiresias said. "But not only on the Earth. They are traveling in time as well."
"Can we get to where they are by boat?" Achilles asked.
"Not unless it's an enchanted boat. Traveling by spell is really the only way."
"You're sure we can't get there by land?"
"Not that way, either. It takes a bit of magic to get where Helen has gone to. Luckily, I have brought along my bag of spells." From beneath his mantle he took a horsehide bag. It bulged and creaked suspiciously, and gave off little sighs and whines.
"The spells are restless today," Tiresias said. "Use them with care and mind your fingers when you take them out of the sack. Do not be precipitate. Remember, the matter must proceed step by step. First you have to visit Hell and get permission from the Powers of Darkness to take Helen back. There's always a procedure in these matters."
"And will you accompany us there?" Achilles asked.
"No, I will not. But I'll be looking around for information. Don't forget, you owe me a sacrifice! Now, I must away."
If at Faust You Don't Succeed Page 16