“Bubkes!” said Rosenthal. “Nobody’s partners with me. I take on help now and then, but I own this place. I don’t need partners, I need servants. Period.”
“Whatever. What do you want me to do?”
Rosenthal smiled. “I want you should work on the new arrivals.”
“I don’t know if I can do that.”
“Sure you can. You’ve got great ideas. You’ve got all those plaid-skirted Ste. Nitouche’s Academy horror stories you can use; and when you use all those up, you can make up brand-new ones of your very own. You can have complete freedom to express yourself. You can develop your creativity. Who knows? You may find a God-given gift you never even knew you had.”
“I didn’t expect such a nice reception in Hell,” she said. She was still dubious.
Rosenthal was glad she didn’t remember anything at all about her own recent anguish. “I want you to start on Mr. Friedman here.”
“How will I do it?”
Rosenthal klopped his forehead with the heel of one hand. “I’m a fool,” he said. “I wish Rosalyn had enough power to wish up torments for Mr. Friedman and whoever else comes along, but not enough power to hinder or harm me in any way.” And just like that, Rosalyn became second-in-command in Hell. She woke Friedman up and took him off across the plain. Rosenthal was once again alone.
Some time later, as Rosenthal was wandering along the base of the obsidian cliff looking for an end to his boredom, he saw a growing spark of light high up above his head. It looked like a bright star, but it quickly became a burning moon, then a blazing sun. The light was too intense for Rosenthal to watch directly. He muttered a curse and averted his eyes, wondering what was happening now. Even in Hell you couldn’t get any peace and quiet. It was always something.
The light, whatever its source, flared brighter and spread further and further through the gloom. Something was approaching Rosenthal that was going to be awfully impressive when it got there. “I wish I could look at it without feeling like I got jabbed in the eye.” And just like that, he had a pair of polarized sunglasses in his hand. He put them on.
He saw a gigantic callused hand. The hand, at least as big as Shea Stadium, was ill-formed and badly manicured. It was attached to an arm so huge that it rose into the shadows out of sight. Rosenthal shuddered, imagining how vast the entire body must be, judging by the size of this grotesque hand. He didn’t want to know whose hand it was. It was reaching down into the very pit of Hell like you’d reach down into the garbage disposal to retrieve a spoon; and in the hand was the brilliant passenger.
It was an angel an angel with a flaming sword, yet. “Ai-yi-yi,” muttered Rosenthal. He felt an intense fear, although he was sure that there was nothing more Heaven could to do him. He was already in Hell, what could be worse? He had the paralyzing suspicion that very soon he was going to find out. God forbid.
The hand set the angel down on the floor of Hell and lifted itself back up into the gloom overhead. The angel looked up and waved. “Thanks, Antaeus,” he called. “I’ll let you know when I’m finished here.”
Rosenthal just stood where he was. The sight of an angel in full glory, evidently on official business, was awesome. It made the clerk-angels he’d seen soon after his death almost drab. The angel of the flaming sword sighted Rosenthal and raised a hand. “Peace be with you,” called the angel.
“So nu? That’s why you brought a flaming sword?”
The angel smiled. “Never mind that, it just goes with the job. Personally, I think a badge or a nice cap would be better than shlepping this thing around, but it does make some impression.”
“And to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I am Orahamiel, an angel of the order of Virtues, which is a few orders above Archangel. Virtues are the bestowers of grace, and we’re also those angels men refer to as ‘guardian angels.’”
“That’s nice,” said Rosenthal. “Well, I have work to do, so if you need anything “
“Mr. Rosenthal,” said Orahamiel sternly, “we must talk.”
His own name sounded odd in Rosenthal’s ears. He had long since forgotten that he had ever been Morton Rosenthal; he had assumed the role of devil, and he was brought up short by this recollection of his earthly existence. “How do I come to have this little chat with my opstairsiker?”
“There seems to have been a minor mistake made in the handling of your case, Mr. Rosenthal. I’ve been sent to correct it.”
Rosenthal looked down at his tough, blackened skin that even yet did not fully protect him from the incendiary fury of Hell. He gave a humorless laugh. “You people take your time,” he said.
Orahamiel pretended to study his flaming sword. “Errors do not often happen in Heaven,” he said. “As a matter of fact, your damnation was the very first such error in memory. We’re all sorry as h I mean, sorry as we could be about it. I know that hardly makes up for the misery you’ve suffered here; but I hope you’ll listen to the remarkable story I have to tell, and then accept our apology.”
Rosenthal was more bitter now than he’d ever been, because it had all been “a mistake.” Pain and suffering were inevitable, he supposed; but nothing in the world is as hard to bear as unnecessary pain. “You must miss being in Heaven,” he said. “You must sure be on somebody’s list, to get stuck with a lousy job like this, coming down to Hell when everybody else is still up there hymning and everything.”
Orahamiel looked surprised. “Why, this is Heaven,” he said, “nor am I out of it. I mean, it doesn’t make any difference where I am if I have to carry a message to Hotzeplotz and back I’m still in the presence of God.”
“You’re in Hell now, not Hotzeplotz.”
“Look,” said the Virtue, spreading wide his wings, “not so much as a singed feather.”
“Mmneh,” admitted Rosenthal. “So you were saying?”
“Do you mind if I lean this sword against the rocks and we sit down? This is a longish story.”
“Sitting hurts,” said Rosenthal.
“I can relieve your pain while we sit,” said Orahamiel.
“Then we’ll sit.”
They made themselves comfortable at the foot of the towering rocks; miraculously, Rosenthal didn’t feel the slightest discomfort. It was like the sun coming out after a long, grim, and dreary day. The angel began his story. “You see, there was an interruption while your case was being processed “
“I remember some big tummel. The angel who was looking at my records got up and wanted to see what was happening.”
Orahamiel nodded. “Well, you’ll never guess what it was all about!”
“Probably not!” agreed Rosenthal.
“You just had the unbelievably shlimm mazel to appear in Heaven at the precise moment when Satan and all his fallen angels decided to repent and ask God’s forgiveness. That’s what all the fuss was about. They were being welcomed back into Heaven.”
Rosenthal stared at the angel, then looked around the vast, frightening solitude of Hell. “That’s why I was all by myself? I thought maybe being alone was my punishment, but “
“There was always a tradition an unofficial tradition, sometimes labeled heresy, but that was just your human theologians limiting the grace of God in the three Middle Eastern religions that someday the devil would get fed up with Hell. All that kept him here was his pride. If he asked for mercy. God in His infinite benevolence would grant it. Satan was once a seraph, you know, and he’s been given back his old rank and privileges, and nobody in all the choirs sings praises more loudly now than he.”
“While Morton Rosenthal, poor shmuck of a butcher, sits on his tuchis and takes his place.”
“You were supposed to be asked if you repented your crimes,” said Orahamiel. “Even at that last minute, if you repented, you’d have been welcomed into Heaven, too. Your angel was distracted a little by the sudden reappearance of the fallen ones. You weren’t given due process.”
Rosenthal shrugged. “To err is human,” he said.
“But not angelic. Now, Mr. Rosenthal, I ask you: do you repent?”
Rosenthal started to respond, but closed his mouth and thought for a moment. At last he said, “Do I get a little something in the way of reparation?”
The Virtue frowned. “We’re not in the reparation game, Mr. Rosenthal.”
“You’re telling me you don’t pay for your mistakes?”
“We’re making you quite a generous offer. I’ve come all the way to Hell to take you back to Heaven with me.”
“But you won’t give me anything for the physical and mental distress you’ve caused me. I get a better deal than that from some momzer who sideswipes my car. I’m sorry, but it’s true.”
“It isn’t smart to try to bargain with Heaven, Mr. Rosenthal.”
“Ha! I’ve got you over a barrel and you know it. You just won’t admit you’re wrong.”
Orahamiel looked stern again. “We could see who has whom over a barrel very easily. I’ll just leave you here in the darkness and wait for you to come to your senses.”
“You just do that. You can’t push people around like this. There’s such a thing as justice, you know.”
“Your choice is between Heaven and Hell. Now you must choose.”
When put that baldly, the proposition made Rosenthal hesitate. “If I stay here “
Orahamiel was astonished. “How could anyone even consider staying here, in preference to returning to Heaven?”
“You forget, I was never really in Heaven. I don’t know what I’m missing.”
The angel thought that over. “Yes, Satan’s punishment was the denial of the beatific vision, and his memory of the bliss he’d lost.”
“I never had it to lose in the first place. This Hell isn’t much worse than what I was used to when I was still alive.”
“And I suppose you’d rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven, that old business again?”
Rosenthal really didn’t want to commit himself, but he’d come too far to back down. “I guess so,” he said.
“Your answer was anticipated. Now I must learn if you plan to pursue a course of subversion against the human race, as Satan did before you.”
Rosenthal’s shoulders slumped. “What do you think I am?” he asked hotly, insulted.
“Well,” said Orahamiel, “if this is what you wish, I’ll leave you to your new kingdom, such as it is.”
“You do that, see if I care,” said Rosenthal. He was bluffing, although his mind was telling him to fall to his knees and beg for another chance. He thought about his wife. Rose, whom he’d murdered, waiting to greet him in Heaven. He shuddered and hardened his heart, determined that he would make the best of it in Hell, instead. Especially if he was the new gontser macher around here.
“That kind of reasoning is just Satan’s error of pride, all over again,” said the angel, reading Rosenthal’s thoughts. He just shook his head, got to his feet, and gathered up his flaming sword. “Last chance,” he said.
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
Orahamiel shrugged. “Go figure,” he said sadly. He called to Antaeus. As the gigantic hand cut through the darkness lower and lower, Rosenthal looked away. Across the great plain he saw six more sinners approaching, probably Commandments Three through Eight. They’d all been given the opportunity to repent, and they’d all in their foolishness refused. He turned his back so that he wouldn’t have to watch Orahamiel rising up toward Heaven. “Home is where the heart is,” said the devil, disgusted by the reeking, foul place he’d chosen, disgusted by the newly arriving lost souls, disgusted by his own stubbornness. The terrified damned inched nearer, accompanied, he now saw, by Rosalyn. “Oy,” he murmured.
Many fantasy tales are set in bars, perhaps because bars by their very nature give rise to the telling of tales and spinning of yarns. Except that the bar in this story is no more. Which in no way limits its usefulness or, inevitably, its clientele.
It’s an easygoing little story Roger Zelazny spins here. Nothing of very much import. The fate of mankind, the destruction of ecosystems … mere background material for matters of true magnitude.
Like chess. And beer.
You’ll like the characters who populate this bar. Readers who are also habitual imbibers may even find some of them familiar. Perhaps that’s why they seem so natural in this setting. It’s their very ordinariness that makes them so much fun to be around. Clearly Roger Zelazny thought so, as he played around with …
Unicorn Variations
ROGER ZELAZNY
A bizarrerie of fires, cunabulum of light, it moved with a deft, almost dainty deliberation, phasing into and out of existence like a storm-shot piece of evening; or perhaps the darkness between the flares was more akin to its truest nature—swirl of black ashes assembled in prancing cadence to the lowing note of desert wind down the arroyo behind buildings as empty yet filled as the pages of unread books or stillnesses between the notes of a song.
Gone again. Back again. Again.
Power, you said? Yes. It takes considerable force of identity to manifest before or after one’s time. Or both.
As it faded and gained it also advanced, moving through the warm afternoon, its tracks erased by the wind. That is, on those occasions when there were tracks.
A reason. There should always be a reason. Or reasons.
It knew why it was there—but not why it was there, in that particular locale.
It anticipated learning this shortly, as it approached the desolation-bound line of the old street. However, it knew that the reason may also come before, or after. Yet again, the pull was there and the force of its being was such that it had to be close to something.
The buildings were worn and decayed and some of them fallen and all of them drafty and dusty and empty. Weeds grew among floorboards. Birds nested upon rafters. The droppings of wild things were everywhere, and it knew them all as they would have known it, were they to meet face to face.
It froze, for there had come the tiniest unanticipated sound from somewhere ahead and to the left. At that moment, it was again phasing into existence and it released its outline which faded as quickly as a rainbow in hell, that but the naked presence remained beyond subtraction.
Invisible, yet existing, strong, it moved again. The clue. The cue. Ahead. A gauche. Beyond the faded word SALOON on weathered board above. Through the swinging doors. (One of them pinned alop.)
Pause and assess.
Bar to the right, dusty. Cracked mirror behind it. Empty bottles. Broken bottles. Brass rail, black, encrusted. Tables to the left and rear. In various states of repair.
Man seated at the best of the lot. His back to the door. Levi’s. Hiking boots. Faded blue shirt. Green backpack leaning against the wall to his left.
Before him, on the tabletop, is the faint, painted outline of a chessboard, stained, scratched, almost obliterated.
The drawer in which he had found the chessmen is still partly open.
He could no more have passed up a chess set without working out a problem or replaying one of his better games than he could have gone without breathing, circulating his blood or maintaining a relatively stable body temperature.
It moved nearer, and perhaps there were fresh prints in the dust behind it, but none noted them.
It, too, played chess.
It watched as the man replayed what had perhaps been his finest game, from the world preliminaries of seven years past. He had blown up after that—surprised to have gotten even as far as he had—for he never could perform well under pressure. But he had always been proud of that one game, and he relived it as all sensitive beings do certain turning points in their lives. For perhaps twenty minutes, no one could have touched him. He had been shining and pure and hard and clear. He had felt like the best.
It took up a position across the board from him and stared. The man completed the game, smiling. Then he set up the board again, rose and fetched a can of beer from his pack. He popped the top.
Wh
en he returned, he discovered that White’s King’s Pawn had been advanced to K4. His brow furrowed. He turned his head, searching the bar, meeting his own puzzled gaze in the grimy mirror. He looked under the table. He took a drink of beer and seated himself.
He reached out and moved his Pawn to K4. A moment later, he saw White’s King’s Knight rise slowly into the air and drift forward to settle upon KB3. He stared for a long while into the emptiness across the table before he advanced his own Knight to his KB3.
White’s Knight moved to take his Pawn. He dismissed the novelty of the situation and moved his Pawn to Q3. He all but forgot the absence of a tangible opponent as the White Knight dropped back to its KB3. He paused to take a sip of beer, but no sooner had he placed the can upon the tabletop than it rose again, passed across the board and was upended. A gurgling noise followed. Then the can fell to the floor, bouncing, ringing with an empty sound.
“I’m sorry,” he said, rising and returning to his pack. “I’d have offered you one if I’d thought you were something that might like it.”
He opened two more cans, returned with them, placed one near the far edge of the table, one at his own right hand.
“Thank you,” came a soft, precise voice from a point beyond it. The can was raised, tilted slightly, returned to the tabletop. “My name is Martin,” the man said.
“Call me Tlingel,” said the other. “I had thought that perhaps your kind was extinct. I am pleased that you at least have survived to afford me this game.”
“Huh?” Martin said. “We were all still around the last time that I looked—a couple of days ago.”
“No matter. I can take care of that later,” Tlingel replied. “I was misled by the appearance of this place.”
“Oh. It’s a ghost town. I backpack a lot.”
“Not important. I am near the proper point in your career as a species. I can feel that much.”
“I am afraid that I do not follow you.”
Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves Page 14