If at Faust You Don`t Succeed

CHAPTER 7

Mephistopheles flashed into existence in the Princess Irene's chambers, accompanied by a roiling of sulphurous yellow smoke that gave some hint of his mood. He had been plucked from his favorite chair in front of a nice log fire reading Memories of an Evil Childhood, one of the most inspirational books he had come across in a long time. He had just reached the place where the story's young demon hero-prince discovers the pleasures to be gotten from betraying those near and dear to him in morally ambiguous circumstances.

And then the telephone had sounded, tearing him out of his daydream, and he heard a message from one of the unseen witnesses to the contest, reporting that an interference of a serious nature had just occurred; viz., the protagonist had been unlawfully removed from the drama and exiled to a mirrored room of tumultuous reflecting surfaces.

Mephistopheles had had to put down his book and come hurrying to Constantinople, even though he was technically off duty at that moment. He didn't really resent it, though, because those who are serious about evil are ready to hurry off whenever the call to iniquity comes, leaving behind more passive pleasures when the chance to do something really bad comes up.

"Ylith," Mephistopheles said, "what are you trying to do? Why have you locked up Faust?"

"I am correcting a great wrong," Ylith said, with bravado, but with some of the certainty already leaking out of her, punctured by the demon's sharp look.

"What did you do with Faust?"

"I locked him up on a morals charge, that's what," Ylith said.

"Woman, how dare you! You have no right to interfere in this contest! You are here purely as an observer."

"As an observer," Ylith said with sudden asperity, "I have an observation to make. You have obviously been tampering with Faust and suggesting unsavory things to him, and permitting him to stray from the narrow path on which he has been set; otherwise explain how he finds the time to seduce innocent princesses when he should be making one of the choices offered in the situation?" "Me? You dare accuse me? I had nothing to do with it!" Mephistopheles replied hotly. "If he seduced the wench, he did so on his own responsibility!"

Then they both remembered that Princess Irene was there. They turned and looked at her, then at each other. They reached an unspoken agreement. Ylith raised an eyebrow; Mephistopheles nodded. Ylith produced a small Sleep Spell, light as fairy's down, which she cast over the princess. It carried sleep, with a retrograde memory blank-out for the last half hour. With Irene safely out of the way, and Mack still in his mirrored prison, Ylith turned to Mephistopheles, fury in her dark blue eyes.

"It's all your fault! And don't think to get around me with blandishments and so-called learned arguments.

Remember, I was once of your camp." "Woman, control yourself," Mephistopheles said. "The Language Spell I gave to Faust was simply to enable him to operate in this oriental babble of tongues. Anyhow, whatever the rights and wrongs of it, you can't just take the protagonist out of the drama. That's a worse crime than anything Faust might have done." "You are a liar," Ylith said.

Mephistopheles nodded. "Yes, of course, but what has that got to do with it?"

"I want Faust replaced with a more moral creature!"

"Woman, you presume! There is no place for dogmatic moral judgments in Heaven or in Hell. Release Faust at once!"

"No! I am not yours to command!"

Mephistopheles glared at her, then, reaching into the pouch he carried under his cloak, he took out a small red portable telephone. He punched a number into it—999—the number of the Beast upside down—which is the number of the Angel—and stood, tapping his toe.

"Who did you call?" Ylith asked. "One who will talk a little sense into you, I hope."

In a moment there was a puff of light-colored smoke, and a chord of harp music. The Archangel Michael appeared, looking annoyed, dripping wet, and dressed only in a very large fluffy white towel. "What is the emergency?" he said, as annoyed as an archangel ever gets. "I was just having my bath."

"You're always in the bath," Mephistopheles commented.

"So what? You know what they say about cleanliness."

"It is a vile canard! Evil is easily as fastidious as Good. Cleanliness itself is neutral. But we have no time for disputation."

"Correct. Why have you called me here?"

Michael turned to Ylith. His broad brow was puckered into an expression of annoyance rarely seen on the brow of an archangel. His face had taken on the contours of bemused quizzicality. "Removed Faust?

Can this be true?"

Ylith, in a voice not quite as certain as before, but still defiant, said, "What was I to do? His Faust was seducing the princess Irene."

Michael said, "And who is the princess Irene? No, don't tell me. It doesn't matter who the princess Irene is. Why by all that is holy did you see fit to interrupt our Millennial contest because of some silly little seduction?"

"Alleged seduction," Mephistopheles put in.

"Even worse," Michael said. "How could you so presume on our gracious pleasure in appointing you an observer, which we did only to quiet down Babriel, who is besotted with you, for something as trite and unimportant as a seduction, and only an alleged one at that?"

"We are taught that seductions are Bad," Ylith said in a small voice.

"No doubt they are," Michael said. "But you should know by now it is not our policy to step in whenever anyone does something Bad, just as the other side doesn't step in whenever anyone does something Good. Didn't you read about Moral Relativity and the Joining of Opposites in the Angel's Practical Guide to Everyday Earth Matters?"

"I must have missed that one," Ylith said. "Look, don't shout at me, please. I'm just trying to be good and to have everyone else be good."

"Acting ingenuous won't get you out of this one," Michael said. "Angels are supposed to temper Goodness with Intelligence. Otherwise Good would become an insensate, all-devouring force, bad by nature of its totalitarianism if nothing else. And we don't want that, do we?"

"I don't see why not," Ylith said.

"You shall find out. Release the man at once and restore him to his place in this drama. And then report to the Fervor Defusion Center for chastisement and retraining."

"Oh, don't be so hard on the poor girl," Mephistopheles said, seeing a chance to score a point for the magnanimity of Bad. "Let her go on observing. Just no more interfering."

"You hear him?" Michael said.

"I hear and I obey. But to think I'd ever hear an archangel tell me to obey the commands of a demon from Hell!"

"You've got some growing up to do," Michael said. He hitched his towel more closely about him. "And now may I return to my bath?"

"Enjoy," Mephistopheles said. "Sorry to have disturbed you."

He vanished. Ylith quickly collapsed the Mirror Prison. Mack stepped out, blinking. Mephistopheles smiled and disappeared.

"I seem to be back," Mack said. "Did you talk to the princess?"

"Just watch yourself," Ylith said to Mack, and then she disappeared.