If at Faust You Don't Succeed

by Roger Zelazny

  "Your Majesty!" the tall coachman said. "Where the devil have you been?"

  "What do you mean, where have I been?" Marie asked. "I am here at the appointed hour."

  "I hate to contradict you, but you're four hours ate. It's going to make it difficult."

  "Me? Late? Impossible!" She turned to Ylith. "What time do you have?"

  Ylith consulted her small traveling hourglass. "Eight o'clock."

  Marie consulted hers. "I make it just eleven."

  "And I," said the coachman, "have three in the morning!"

  The three looked at each other in consternation, simultaneously bemoaning the lack of a unified timekeeping system in the world at that time. To Ylith it was now painfully obvious that Marie Antoinette was figuring in French Royalist Time, the coachman in Swedish Reformed Time, and she herself in Spiritual Standard Time, and that in each of these times and many others, Marie Antoinette was late for a vital appointment.

  The coachman said, "No help for it, let's go. But we're late, very late."

  CHAPTER 6

  Mack was having a bit of a doze at the Hotel de Ville when someone shook him roughly by the shoulder.

  "What is it?" He awoke with a start and peered into a small, bearded face.

  "I'm Rognir, the dwarf." "Oh, yes." Mack sat up and rubbed his eyes. "I guess you are. What can I do for you?"

  "Nothing at all. But I bring news. Ylith asked me to come by and tell you she wasn't successful in hurrying up the queen. Something about uncertainty as applied to time, but I can't remember that part." "Damn!" Mack said. "So the royal carriage has left late on its ill-fated run to Varennes!"

  "If you say so," Rognir said. "No one bothered to fill me in on what's going on."

  Mack said, "I'm trying to prevent the royal family from capture. But I don't know what to do now unless I can get a horse."

  "A horse? What do you need a horse for?"

  "So I can get to Saint-Menehould where I'll get my next chance to change the fate of Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette."

  "Why don't you get there by magic?" Rognir said, pouring out a mugful of wine for Mack.

  "I don't know the right words," Mack confessed.

  "That other fellow would."

  "What other fellow?'

  "The one I helped on the Styx."

  "You mean Faust?"

  "That's who they tell me he was."

  "I'm also Faust."

  "If you say so."

  "But he's trying to get rid of me!"

  "Tough on you, then," Rognir said. "Nothing personal. I figured that helping him would put out of joint the nose of a certain demon of my acquaintance. He shortchanged me on a recent work contract. Dwarves have long memories."

  "And short, bristly beards," Mack said. "Damn! How am I to get to Saint-Menehould before the royal carriage?" "You need to get out there and get a horse," Rognir said. Mack stared at him. "You think it's as simple as that?' "It'd better be," Rognir said, "or you're really in a lot of trouble." Mack nodded. "You're right. All right, I'm going." Some time later, Mack was galloping through a dark forest upon a spirited black charger. He had seized it from a groom Rognir had located for him in front of the Tuileries, in the name of the Committee for Public Safety. No one had wanted to argue with him. And so he galloped along the dimly lit forest path congratulating himself on the fine mount he had chosen. Then he heard something behind him, turned and looked, then turned back and hunched over the horse's neck. Yes, he had a fast horse, but it wasn't fast enough to keep the rider behind him from gaining steadily.

  There was nothing he could do about it. The pursuer drew up even with him, and he saw it was Faust, the black tails of his long coat flapping wildly, stovepipe hat pasted flat against his forehead by the wind, grinning maliciously.

  "So, impostor, we meet again!" Faust cried.

  They galloped side by side for a time. Mack was having a lot of trouble just hanging on to his horse, since galloping at top speed through a forest at night with another rider neck and neck and screaming insults was not his usual practice. Nor was it Faust's, presumably. But the magician of Wittenberg was doing fine, riding like a Magyar, as they say, and he was also managing to keep Helen on the back of his horse, too, her scrumptious arms wrapped around his waist. Mack of course was carrying Marguerite, who had been silent so far, entranced by the flickering play of moonlight and shadow. The horsemen were evenly matched as to weight. But Faust had by far the edge in aplomb.

  Faust's words were garbled and his imitation of slang of the future was unfortunate, but the intent of his words was clear: Get out of my face, or else.

  "I can't go away now!" Mack howled back. "This is my story!"

  "Like hell it is. I am the only and the maximum Faust!" Faust cried, and the glow in his lambent werewolf's eyes was disquieting. Edging his horse closer to Mack's, he took from an inner pocket of his waistcoat an object about three feet long and studded with jewels, and with a glow about it that proclaimed it not just a mere scepter, as it might have appeared, but a magical one, stolen, in this case, from Kublai Khan by Mack. But the magical scepter was now in Faust's hands, and those hands knew no mercy. By the way Faust held this scepter, Mack could tell that the magician of Wittenberg had somehow divined its efficacy; viz., that when you pointed at a person and said, "Bang!" that person was annihilated in a manner that anticipated the deathbeams of a later age.

  Faced with that much occult firepower, Mack almost gave up hope. Then he saw at hand a desperate expedient for avoiding the power-thrust of the magical scepter. The expedient was looming up in the form of a great oak. Mack timed his move carefully, then swung his horse into Faust's path. Faust checked to the other side, the instinctive move in such a circumstance, and Mack swung to the right, around the tree, while Faust crashed head-on into it with such force that the stars he saw became visible to Mack's eyes for a little while even though they were imaginary. From his rear, Mack heard Marguerite utter a small whimper of sympathy. The doctor crashed to the ground, dazed, while his maddened horse ran off in one direction and Mack galloped off in another, the way that led to Saint-Menehould. Helen, consort of warriors, leaped to the ground before the moment of impact, rolled several times, rose to her feet, and adjusted her coiffure. The launching of one sorcerer or a thousand ships—it was all the same to her. One should be at one's best whatever the occasion.

  CHAPTER 7

  After galloping alone for a considerable distance, Mack came to a clearing in the forest. Here he saw a country inn with a curl of smoke coming from its chimney. It seemed a good place to take a badly needed break. And so he stopped, helped Marguerite to dismount, tied his horse to a post provided for that purpose, and drew water for him from a nearby hogshead. Then he and Marguerite went inside.

  There was the usual tavern keeper polishing brass behind the bar, and at the end of the room there was a fire nicely burning. Another traveler sat near it, face turned away from Mack, warming his hands at the fire. "Good day to you, travelers," the tavern keeper said. "Will you have a cup of brandy to cheer the appetite?" "It's too early for a drink," Mack said. "Just a noggin of fir-knot tea to keep us awake."

  "Take a seat at the fire and warm yourselves," the tavern keeper said. "I've got the fir knots mulling nicely and I'll bring mugs of it right over." Mack went over and sat down beside the fire, nod' ding politely to the man who sat there already, wrapped in a long cloak, his face concealed in a hood, with a bow leaning on the wall beside him.

  "Good evening," the man said, and threw back his hood. Mack stared. "You know, I think I've seen you somewhere before."

  "You might have seen my bust at some museum," the stranger said. "I am Odysseus, and how I got here from my house in the suburbs of Tartaros would make a pretty tale, had we but time. But we don't. You wouldn't happen to be Faust, would your Odysseus spoke in Homeric Greek, with a slight Ithacan accent, which Mack was able to understand since Mephistopheles had never taken away his Language Spell. "Well, yes," Mack said.
"That is, I know him after a fashion. That is to say, I have been doing Faust's job for him, but now I am of two minds about the whole proposition." "Are you that Faust who travels with Helen of Troy?" Odysseus enquired.

  "No, that's the other one," Mack said. "I travel with Marguerite." He turned to introduce Marguerite to Odysseus but found that the girl had already fallen asleep in a corner of the booth. "But you claim that you are Faust, too?" Odysseus asked. "Right now, I play the part of Faust in this contest between Dark and Light. But the real Faust is trying to force me out."

  "And what do you intend to do?" Odysseus asked.

  "I'm not at all sure," Mack said. "It's starting to weigh on my conscience, this matter of my taking his part. Maybe I just ought to drop out and leave the Faust role to him." Odysseus said, "You seem to be doing well enough at the job. Why should you give it up? What does Faust have that you do not?"

  "Well, this other Faust, you see, is a great magician, so he's got the right to represent mankind…"

  "Not a bit of it!" Odysseus hitched his cloak more closely about himself. "Why should mankind be represented by a magician? They're about the same as politicians, only worse. Don't you know the truth yet? Magic always works against mankind."

  "I never thought of it that way," Mack confessed.

  "Magic is power, and only a few people are good at it. Do you think it's right to have a bunch of magicians leading the people? Would you really want Faust to rule you?"

  "I just assumed magicians knew more than ordinary men."

  "What they know is not necessarily useful to the rest of us. I've had some experience with magicians. In my time we had Tiresias. He was really preeminent. But do you think we'd let him lead us in politics or war? Never! Our leader, Agamemnon, was flawed in many ways, but he was a man, and he didn't claim any special dispensation from the gods or spirits. Beware of men who claim to speak for the gods!"

  "But he's the real Faust!"

  "Maybe so. But that doesn't make him the real possessor of the Faustian spirit. That is you, my dear Mack, a man standing up just as he is, without special knowledge or abilities, without magical powers, and nevertheless trying to rule himself."

  Mack took heart from these brave words. He finished the tankard of fir-knot tea that the tavern keeper had brought him and stood up, getting the sleepy Marguerite to finish hers and rise with him. "I'd better be getting on."

  "And Faust?"

  "He follows behind me." "Ah, good," Odysseus said. "Do you hear, Achilles?"

  Achilles, who had been slumbering in a dark corner of the booth, gave a start and sat up. "Did you call me, Odysseus?" "Get ready, my friend! Faust comes!"

  Odysseus and Achilles! Mack hoped these two would hold up Faust for quite a while.

  "Come, Marguerite," he said.

  "Coming," she agreed, stifling a yawn.

  They left the tavern, remounted, and rode off again in the direction of Saint-Menehould.

  CHAPTER 8

  Faust arrived at the inn in the forest twenty minutes later. He had a yellowish bruise on his temple from his headlong contact with the oak tree, but other than that seemed perfectly all right. Helen was windblown, but lovelier than ever.

  Faust entered the tavern and came face-to-face with Odysseus, who said, "I know who you are. You are named Faust."

  "There's no secret about that," Faust replied.

  "And you have Helen of Troy in your possession."

  Odysseus introduced himself and Achilles. If Faust was impressed, he did not show it.

  "The fact is," Odysseus said, "we want Helen back. Your demon had no right to kidnap her from her husband's home in Tartaros."

  "Don't take it up with me," Faust said. "She was given to me, and I'm going to keep her."

  "It seems to me I've heard all this before," Odysseus said, alluding to the events that began the Iliad, when Achilles objected to giving up the girl Briseis to Agamemnon, and, when Agamemnon wouldn't give her back, sulked in his tent until the Greeks almost lost the Trojan war.

  "Maybe you have heard it," Achilles said. "It matters not. Give her to us."

  "Not a chance. Are you going to try to take her from me?" From an inner pocket of his cloak he drew a flintlock.

  "If we wanted to, believe me, we could," Odysseus said. "And yon weapon would not stop us. But hold your sword, Achilles. There is a better way."

  Odysseus put two fingers in his mouth and whistled, a long, low, mournful whistle that was answered almost at once by a screaming and shrieking noise that at first seemed like wind and then resolved itself into old ladies' voices.

  The door of the tavern was suddenly blown open by a blast of ill-smelling air. The Furies flew in. They came as three big crows with dusty black feathers, screaming and squawking and bombarding everyone with smelly excrement. Then they transformed themselves into their human shape—three old women, long-nosed and red eyed, wearing ragged, dusty black garments. Alecto was fat, and Tisiphone was skinny, and the third, Megaera, was both fat and skinny, but in all the wrong places. All the sisters had eyes like fried eggs after the yolk has run. They danced around Faust, screeching and cackling, laughing and hooting, leaping and capering, and Faust tried to maintain a dignified silence, but it was difficult with these ancient harridans carrying on so.

  At length Faust said, "This behavior will do you no good, my dear ladies, because I am not of your time and construct and so it is unlikely that your presence will fill me with pious horror."

  "Pious, schmious," Tisiphone said. "Maybe we can't coerce you physically. But you will find it difficult to carry on a conversation with us screaming in your ear all the time."

  "This is ridiculous," Faust said.

  "But that's the way it is," Tisiphone said. "Maybe you'd like to hear us sing a particularly irritating folk song with several hundred choruses? All together, girls."

  Faust reeled back in alarm as the Furies burst into an early Hellenic version of "Roll out the Barrel." It somewhat resembled the sound of a pack of hyenas in heat, but was worse, far worse. Faust bore up under it for a moment, but found he couldn't think, could barely breathe, and finally in desperation he held up his hand.

  "I crave a moment's silence, ladies, while I consider my situation."

  With precious silence reigning again in his head, Faust retired to the other end of the room to have a little conversation with the tavern keeper. But the Furies didn't trust him, because immediately they began to converse among themselves, in voices that seemed to emanate from his own mind. The voices were pretending to be his own interior consciousness, saying, "Well, hell, I don't know how I got myself into this fix. I can't even hear myself think with this din going on in my head. And if I were to think, what would I think about? Helen? But how can I think of Helen when these old hags have my mind filled with the horror and repulsion of themselves?"

  The old ladies were gone as suddenly as they had come. Helen was gone with them. Odysseus and Achilles had also left, and Faust ate a pannikin of bread and washed it down with a draught of wine. He was annoyed at having lost Helen, but then he hadn't wanted her much in the first place. Being rid of her freed him to devote all of his powers to the main chance, becoming the Faust of record in the great contest of Dark and Light. There was no time to waste. He went outside and took to his horse again, and soon he was riding hard on Mack's trail.

  CHAPTER 9

  Mack came at last to a clearing, and beyond it was the village of Sommevesle where Mack hoped to find the duc de Choiseul, the great white hope of the royalists. He discovered him sitting outside an inn at the edge of town and reading the used horses ads in the Paris newspaper.

  "You are the duc de Choiseul?" he asked.

  The man looked up from his newspaper and peered at Mack over wire-rimmed spectacles. "I am he."

  "I have news of the king!"

  "Well, about time," the duc de Choiseul said. He folded the newspaper to the front page and pointed to a dispatch from the Paris Revolutionary Journal.


  "Have you seen this? Danton and Saint-Just are calling for the king's blood, and for Marie Antoinette's, too. We used to call that libel in the old days, and punish it severely. But nowadays people can publish what they please. And they call that progress! Where is the king, sir?"

  "He is coming here," Mack said.

  "When?"

  "I'm not really sure," said Mack.

  "Oh, that's great," the duc de Choiseul said sarcastically, screwing a monocle into his left eye and peering at Mack disapprovingly. "Hours late already, the villagers ready to mob us because they think we're here to collect taxes, and you tell me he's coming. And just exactly when is he coining?"

  "The royal peasants are on their way, too," the duc de Choiseul said, gesturing. Mack looked and saw a mob of peasants armed with pitchforks gathered in a compact crowd at the foot of the street.

  "Well, what of it?" Mack asked. "They're only peasants. If they cause you any trouble, shoot them down."

  "Easy for you to say, young fellow. You're obviously a foreigner. You don't live around here. But I have estates filled with these fellows. I need to get along with them next year when I exercise the droit du seigneur. This is France, where sex is important! And anyhow, these peasants are only the visible few.

  There are thousands more just beyond town, and more gathering every hour. They could peel us like a peach. And you advise me to shoot them down!"

  "It was only a suggestion," Mack said.

  "Hello," the duc de Choiseul said, turning away. "Who's this?"

  A rider in black was galloping up the road, coat-tails flying. It was Faust. He clattered into the courtyard, vaulted off his horse, and approached the duke.

  "Your orders have been canceled," Faust said. "Sir, get your troops out of here at once."

  "Hoity-toity," said the duc de Choiseul, who was addicted to humorous English expressions. "And who might you be?"