On A Pale Horse (34 page)

Zane studied the laborers. His apartment on Earth, before he became Death, had been intermittently cold in winter because, he suspected, the landlord was fattening his profit margin by skimping on heating fuel. Zane could appreciate Satan's rationale. “How do they expiate their sin?” he asked. “Do they have to shovel a certain number of tons of coal, or what? How long does it take, and what happens to them when they've paid their debt?”

“Excellent questions!” Satan said, glowing with more than human animation. “The term of penance varies with the individual. Roughly, each soul must labor until it has suffered the same amount as it inflicted on others during its life. That can take time; and, of course, some souls are incorrigible. It is not merely the labor, but the attitude, that counts; the soul must sincerely repent its prior evil. Eventually each soul will be purified by suffering, and will at last qualify for release to Heaven.”

“So souls aren't condemned to Hell for Eternity?” Zane asked, surprised.

Satan issued his pleasant laugh again. “Of course not! Hell is merely the ultimate reform institution, where the cases too difficult for Purgatory are handled. A truly evil or indifferent person can not be cured by gentleness. Here in Hell we have the mechanisms to straighten out even the most crooked souls. I assure you, by the time any soul qualifies for Heaven, it has become quite gentle. I am a perfectionist; I will free no soul before its time.” And Satan's countenance assumed an infernally noble aspect. Zane remembered that Satan was reputed to be a fallen angel; maybe some angelic element remained in him.

“But what about the bureaucratic errors?” Zane asked. “Honest mistakes are possible.”

“No. Not when I'm in charge. I can guarantee absolutely that not one defective soul has been sent from Hell to Heaven.”

Molly had been poking around by herself. Now she returned to Zane. “I don't know any of these folk. Let's take a look at the Ireland section.”

But already Satan was showing the way to another region. He opened a door in air, and they stepped through to a foggy, gloomy region crowded with people garbed in rags. Men, women, and children of every race plodded along a barren plain. Each was gaunt, and some were emaciated. All stared unwaveringly at the ground.

“These are the wasteful,” Satan explained. “They threw out good food unused, knowing that others in the world were starving. Now they are hungry themselves. They squandered money; now they have only what they can find lying in the street, the refuse of others. They destroyed good clothing in the name of frivolous fashion; now they have only bad clothing, which they value more than all the garments of life. They must save in death as much as they wasted in life—and their resources are meager here.”

Again Zane was impressed. He had once approached a paper-towel dispenser in a nonmagic public lavatory—he had distrusted magic sanitary facilities, as some used the refuse to fashion voodoo dolls, and that could be a literal pain in the posterior—only to see the man ahead of him snatch the last three sheets and throw them away almost unused. He had been furious at that callous anonymous waster, but had not spoken up because the man had been large and aggressive. Now Zane felt a kind of vindication. Such people certainly needed to be punished!

“You see. Hell performs a necessary service,” Satan said smoothly. “We would not want wasteful louts littering Heaven.”

“I don't know anybody here, either,” Molly muttered. “I think this is a showcase section, not the real inferno.”

“Why don't you go seek out someone you do know?” Satan suggested. “I had understood you were along to guide Death, but if you insist on mixing in your personal business—”

“Let's go next to the Irish showcase,” the ghost said rebelliously.

“I have many more enlightened sets,” Satan said. “There is little point in subjecting ourselves to the abuse of the unmitigated tempers of Ireland.”

“Oh, is that so!” Molly exclaimed, showing her own unmitigated temper.

Satan glanced about as if seeing something invisible to the others. “For example. Hell's Kitchen.” He opened a door on a huge room filled with fat chefs who were baking and cooking and mixing drinks. The odors of fresh foods were almost overpoweringly strong, making Zane hungry, though he had recently eaten.

“Try an aperitif,” the Prince of Evil said, lifting a sparkling glass from a tray an elegant waiter brought and proffering the drink to Zane.

“Don't touch it!” Molly cried. “Anyone who eats or drinks anything in Hell can never escape it!”

Satan's mouth stretched down in affected sadness. “I had thought such superstition was beneath you, fishwife. I have no need to trap people in Hell! They come to Me because their souls are burdened with sin.”

“What about Persephone and the six pomegranate seeds?” Molly demanded.

“I will thank you to leave My private life out of this!” Satan snapped, and small sparks radiated from the tips of his horns. “She wanted to stay; the seeds were merely a pretext to satisfy her image for her domineering mother.”

“Then what's all this fancy food for?” Molly asked, showing her Irish stubbornness. “You never feed it to any of my friends who are imprisoned here, I'm sure! I've visited here before, you know.”

“You have visited limited regions before, snippit,” Satan told her. “You have not seen the complete Hell or comprehended any part of its purpose.”

“That's my complaint!” she said. “You're hiding something, Foul Fiend! You refuse to tell what the food is for.”

Curls of smoke rose from Satan's reddening hide. “For the cadre, of course, slut! They receive privileged treatment. The finest gourmet food, beverages, entertainment—” He gestured, and a chorus line appeared: shapely nude girls kicking their legs in unison. “I would be happy to provide this service for you in Purgatory, Death; My cooks and girls are able to go that far.”

“I already have a staff at the Deathmansion,” Zane said.

“Ah, but not a staff like this! You have never experienced the delicacies these cooks generate; not Bacchus himself ever feasted like this. And My personal tailor will create for you a suit that Solomon in all his evanescent glory could not match. And for your nocturnal entertainment, the Queen of Love and Sex, Isis herself, shall attend—”

“The Old Serpent proffers a bribe!” Molly snapped. “Who needs Isis, that slattern, when he has a woman like Luna?”

That brought Zane forcefully back to reality. He had been somewhat dazzled by the movements of the dancing girls, but of course Luna was all he desired. How fortunate that Molly was along!

“True,” Satan said mildly, though the heat of his body now clothed him in steam. “Still, there are other forms of entertainment for the discriminating person. Hell has the finest library of Eternity, completely unexpurgated. Many of its collected works have been written after the authors' deaths and are available only in the Infernal Literary Annex. The same for paintings and music—here, listen to Chopin's latest on the piano.”

Beautiful piano music flooded the chamber, its exquisite touch lifting Zane's spirit.

“Come down from there,” Molly said, catching Zane's leg.

Startled, he looked down. He was floating toward the ceiling! Since he was currently in spirit form, with no material body to weight him down, he had been literally lifted by the lovely music.

“Why offer me this?” Zane asked as his feet returned to the floor. “I'm only here to hear your presentation.”

“Merely a gesture of amity,” Satan said. “I happen to enjoy doing things for My friends.”

“Death is no friend of yours. Old Nick!” Molly said. Again Satan smiled; it seemed to be his protective reaction. “Death is a business associate, of course. That is no reason for negative relations.”

“I want to see the Ireland section,” Molly insisted. Zane sighed. He could appreciate Satan's irritation with this single-mindedness. “We'd better go there, Lucifer.” The Devil seemed like a sensible fellow, but there was no sense getting Molly upset. “We can check in on her friends, then see the rest of Hell.” He had not changed his mind about Luna, but realized it would be nice if he could in some fashion accommodate Satan's worthy purpose.

“Naturally,” Satan said with deific grace. He opened a new door in air, and they stepped through to an Irish city-slum.

It was chill, cruel winter. Snow swirled in the air, and dirty slush coated the filthy street. Peasants dressed in heavy outdoor garb were cleaning rubbish and fish heads from the gutters, using inadequate shovels and brooms.

“These were litterers,” Satan said. “Now they labor all year round to recover as much litter as they strewed in life, and to make the street as clean as it was before they desecrated it. Unfortunately, the litter keeps reappearing.”

Molly snooped around, looking for her friends. This time she found one. “Sean!” she cried. “I haven't seen you in a hundred years!”

The man paused in his labor. “Sweet Molly Malone! When did you die? I never thought I'd see you here! You don't look a lifetime older!”

“That's because I died early of a fever and took my youth and beauty with me to the grave.”

The old man gazed at her appreciatively. “Sure an' you did that, girl! You were just a little bit of a thing, prettiest waif on the street. I thought sure you'd be a grandmother by the time you were sixteen.”

Molly smiled. “I tried, but life ended too soon. I thought my soul would be damned to Hell, after what that honey-tongued man did to me—”

“Not your soul, dear child! You were the petunia in the onion patch, sure, always ready with a favor to them worse off'n you. Sure an' it's a shame you died before your time.”

“How are they treating you, Sean?” she inquired. “Well, it's not fun, as you can see. We clean and clean, but the mess never ends, and at times like this it's so cold—”

“Haven't you expiated your burden of sin yet? After all, you've been in Hell longer than you lived on Earth, Sean, and you were never a really bad man, just a litterer.”

Sean scratched his head. “I don't know, lass. They keep the accounts, and somehow I never seem to gain. I must have a really incorrigible nature.”

“Here, your glove is torn,” Molly said solicitously. “Let me fix it.” She reached for the man's hand.

“Oh, no, that's all right, miss,” he said quickly, snatching his hand away. “I'll get by. I've got to get back to work anyway.” He resumed shoveling ineffectively at the slush.

“If you're sure—” Molly said, concerned. “As you can see,” Satan said with another smile, “we are tough but fair, here in Hell. People who refuse to reform in life are hard to reform in death, but persistence and consistency eventually pay off.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Zane agreed. “It certainly seems reasonable—”

He was interrupted, for Molly had stumbled and collided with him, shoving him into one of the Irish workers. Her ghost form was completely solid to his spirit form. Zane's hand slapped bare flesh before he recovered his balance. “Oh, I'm sorry,” he said, apologizing to the man he had struck. “I lost my footing—”

“The guttersnipe was the clumsy one,” Satan muttered. “It's all right,” the man said gruffly, drawing his patched overcoat around him more tightly. “Just clear out and let me work.”

Satan opened a new door in air, and they stepped through to a comfortably furnished living room suite. “So you see, there is no point in disrupting the system,” he said.

“I agree,” Zane said. “Yet I also don't see why I should take Luna out of turn. I think I'm on the fence about this.”

“By all means,” Satan said readily. “I am sure when you consider all aspects, you will see it My way.” He opened still another door, and Zane and Molly stepped through to Zane's own Death house living room. The door swung closed behind them, becoming the television screen.

Zane walked to his still body, positioned himself, and carefully sat down in his own lap. He sank into his flesh, reuniting with his host. In a moment he opened his eyes, solid again. It was a relief!

“I will send My minions to see to your comforts, Death,” Satan said from the screen. Then he winked out, and the regular news program returned.