None But Lucifer

Chapter XXVIII

HALE STAGED it well. He and Gloria stood in solemn dignity at the edge of the enormous field. Walking across any field makes any figure seem crawling and insignificant. Therefore, he would let Johnson march, small and lonely, toward him over the airport.

If he had had complete control over such matters, he would not have taken Gloria along. She squirmed and craned her neck, anxious to see Johnson, which somewhat spoiled the effect. Nor would he have made it so bitingly cold. Much as he wanted to remain haughtily motionless, in somber majesty, he had to flap his arms and stamp his feet now and then. That reminded him that he would have to do something about the weather. Johnson was probably responsible for the condition that "Man is born to shiver and perspire," with, of course, just enough enjoyable weather to make the extremes more uncomfortable.

Alexander P. Johnson came out of the airliner and climbed heavily down the portable steps. Hale's heart pumped swiftly. At that distance there seemed to be no change. It was too far, Hale reasoned. Watch for the sagging shoulders, the plodding walk.

But, round head erect, belly heaving up and down at every step, Johnson marched toward him without a trace of self-consciousness, the soles of his shoes jerking up into clear view at every step. Hale had to admit that he appeared as confident as ever. When Johnson waved his short arm, Hale quivered. But he shrugged off his momentary qualm. Johnson would never show emotion, no matter how thoroughly he was defeated.

"William, my boy!" Johnson cried ecstatically, pumping Hale's hand. His voice was as professionally hearty as ever. "And little Gloria — beautiful and charming as always! Ah, what joy it is to see you both after so long!"

"It's nice seeing you, too, partner!" said Hale. If Johnson observed Hale's emphasis, he didn't show it. He nodded and showed his false teeth in a grin of pleasure. "I must get a newspaper immediately," he said. "Come into the waiting room with me." And he began waddling away, almost at a run.

That, Hale thought, was the first slip. Jolly as he seemed, Johnson couldn't entirely hide his concern. You bet he had to get a newspaper! To see where he could start wrecking, of course. Well, let him!

"Oh, before I forget," said Johnson, fumbling in the pockets of his tentlike overcoat. He handed two packages to Gloria and Hale. "Congratulations, William, on your birthday, and on the magnificent job you've done. This is just a small token of my satisfaction —" Before Hale could answer, he had darted inside and was racing toward the newsstand.

"Isn't he darling?" gushed Gloria, fumbling with the string. "Why didn't you tell me it was your birthday, Billie-willie?"

"I ... I forgot." The waiting room was comfortingly warm, but Hale was past noticing such trifles. Magnificent job? Certainly it was, but not from Johnson's point of view. What in hell did the devil mean?

JOHNSON held a paper wide open. "Ah, here it is," he said brightly. "Really, William, I had to hasten to get in at the kill. I left a number of interesting plans undeveloped, but I felt this was more important. Here —" He handed the paper to Hale, who read:

PAN-AMERICAN CREDIT CORP. IN

TEMPORARY RETRENCHMENT

The board of directors of the Pan-American Credit Corporation, in an official announcement, today gave out the information that momentary circumstances require a temporary restriction of further credit for expansion of business.

This transitory situation, as official spokesman for the corporation stated, should give rise to no misgivings. He warned that foreign interests, alarmed by the sudden gigantic productivity of the new world, might allege that in this briefly necessary action the Pan-American Credit Corporation, which is the largest coalition of its kind in the world, demonstrates lack of confidence in the future of the Americas.

Speaking in the most vigorous terms, the spokesman for the corporation stated emphatically that Pan-American has the utmost confidence in this hemisphere's capacity for unending expansion. The corporation's temporary action, he stated, is necessitated for a brief time by the increase of business inventories. He further stated that when these inventories are depleted somewhat, the corporation will embark on a credit policy even greater than in the past.

Hale returned the paper, smiling. How long would it take him to understand his enemy? What else could he expect from Johnson but a subtle attempt to demoralize him? But Lucifer, the supreme cheat, reduced to this pitiful wile! "What about it?" he demanded evenly.

"Splendid, William! One of my first tenets is never to appear other than a mere human being; always to seem to participate in the dominant human emotion of the moment."

"Come on, get to the point!"

Johnson looked uncertainly toward the highway entrance. "Have you brought the car?"

Hale nodded and started toward the door, but Gloria seized his arm. She had unwrapped her parcel. "Oh, look!" she squealed, holding up a golden looped cross. "What is it? It's gorgeous!"

Hale felt contempt for Johnson. Did Johnson think the object would scare him? A silly trick!

"The ankh," Johnson explained, guiding the Hales toward a door. "An excellent reproduction of one made for me by a superb Egyptian artisan ... let me see ... about four thousand years ago. The original was too valuable to keep. I acquired it very cheaply; the goldsmith was a fugitive — political trouble, you know, even in that time. A private collector paid me an exceedingly handsome price. Though yours were made by a modern Hindu craftsman, after a similar time you should also get a large price for yours —"

"But what is it?" Gloria insisted.

"The Egyptian symbol of eternal life."

"Oo!" Gloria quickly kissed Johnson's pudgy cheek. That was too much for Hale. Following them silently, he resolved that if Gloria wanted him to kiss her she'd have to scrub her mouth.

JOHNSON PLOPPED into the soft seat, leaned forward, and closed the glass screen separating them from the chauffeur. The car started.

Hale said: "You don't have to pull that stuff on me. That article doesn't mean a thing! Sure, we have surpluses. people can't go on buying like maniacs all their lives. But as soon as Europe's settled, we'll have all we can do supplying them."

Johnson patted Hale's knee approvingly. "Excellent, William. However, I'm not a mortal who needs persuasion. We both know very well that at the moment munitions aren't being accepted as a medium of exchange. And really, there is nothing else the former autocracies could offer. The dictators performed the most extraordinary feat. They plundered their nations of everything. Literally everything! You can't sell to people who have nothing to offer in exchange."

"We'll get out of it, all right," Hale said confidently. "We'll give credits to the rest of the world."

"You're testing me, aren't you, William?" Johnson's grin looked quite sincere, to Hale's irritation. "I'm afraid it isn't necessary. I understand your strategy quite well. But I won't spoil your fun." He lit a cigar with his usual gestures. "I will admit that you've introduced into Hell a factor that I hadn't thought of. William, I must confess I am astonished at you. You seem to be a perfectly nice boy, and still you are capable of devising such utterly diabolical torments!

"I should never have been cunning enough — now, I mean; you can realize how one's mind grows dull with the passing millennia — to contrive it. Now, I must inform you, I haven't much longer to live. There is no need for both of us, since you have proved yourself a worthy successor."

Hale swallowed. Johnson went on, as if Hale had interrupted with a protest of modesty: "Yes, you probably don't consider yourself worthy. But you have tormented an entire hemisphere more efficiently than I have done in centuries; and soon the whole world will be involved, tortured more by their incomprehensible difficulties than even a war could have tormented them. Ah, William, you have done a beautiful job indeed! If I couldn't match it with a comparable accomplishment of my own — quite an old one, I confess; roughly five thousand years old — I should be inclined to envy you."

"Oh, cut it out!" snapped Hale. "I've defeated you, and you know it. Don't try to wiggle out of it."

"I try to wiggle out of it?" Johnson looked shocked. "Why, William, that's the last thing in the world I want to do. In a sense you have defeated me. Actually, though, you have shown yourself capable of succeeding me ... as Lucifer!"

"What's the gag?" Hale fought to keep his temper.

"Now, boys," said Gloria, "don't quarrel!"

Johnson tapped the ash off his cigar with irritating composure. "Nothing of the sort, my dear.

"You see, William, my predecessor invented the instinct of self-preservation, thereby showing his ability. My own accomplishment was the discovery of hope. Both of these have increased the misery of Hell.

"But with your invention-blind, senseless confidence — there is almost no torment imaginable that can further augment man's suffering.

"He will continue producing to the limit of his endurance, regardless of the mounting surplus. He counts on extending credit to plundered nations, when you and I know that the Pan-American Credit Corporation hasn't a penny to lend them —"

"What? Don't be an ass! It has all the future to draw on. There's no limit to its credit!"

JOHNSON BOBBED his white head admiringly. "Sinister, William, most sinister indeed! You showed far greater ingenuity than mine when you planted that insane confidence in their minds. They will believe in the limitless credit of the future, and never admit that the future has already been exhausted. There is no more credit, and we know why, eh, William? Though we'll never convince your subjects."

"Yeah? Why?"

Johnson wagged a finger. "Don't pretend innocence! Everybody owes everybody else, and in turn is owed by everybody. Consequently it will be impossible to collect, which erases the possibility of credit. Incidentally, money will, I fear, be destroyed as a medium of exchange. That I regret, for I had an inordinate fondness for the pretty stuff; but as I shall go on to my reward soon, that is your concern. When money debts become uncollectible, money will have to be abandoned; and my opinion is that a highly industrialized, more impractical form of barter will complicate matters for the damned even further."

Hale sat quietly, chilled. "They can slow down production —"

"Ah, but they can't!" Johnson gazed at Hale with frank respect. "There you showed your astounding artfulness. They will never, never believe that their system of anarchic, geometrically increasing production is unworkable! Furthermore, you have adroitly removed all the natural checks on such insensate production. Formerly an employer could reduce his expenses and wait for his inventory to diminish. But now every man is his own employer. He can't very well throw himself out of work, can he?"

"He can stop producing for a while and live on his savings."

"He has no savings. At any rate he won't when the system collapses under the weight of its surpluses, which should be some time this week. I'm glad I shall be here to see the crash; it will make the Battle of Troyes look like a back-yard squabble."

Hale opened his mouth to protest some more. But what could he say? Johnson's statements appeared to add up. And then he went on: "By proving yourself a worthy successor, William, you allow me to go on to my next existence. What it will be I don't know. But it can't help being more pleasant than this one, since this is Hell.

"Evidently we — those of us who are doomed, from time to time, to the supreme torment of indeterminate immortality as manager of Hell — committed the most unspeakable crimes in some other existence. While Hell would no doubt supply plenty of torment without our help, a manager is evidently required to assure the most efficient and economical distribution of misery. So this is our punishment. We must redeem ourselves with infinitely greater pain than any of the other damned souls.

"I have done so, at the cost of five thousand years of the most intense anguish; monotony, boredom, loneliness. You have escaped loneliness by your spell, but I greatly fear the cure will prove worse than the disease, if you will excuse the trite expression. I am unutterably tired and anxious for an end to my torment.

"However, I must warn you not to count on redemption within five millennia. Before you leave this place, you will be required to find and train a successor, one who deserves what eventually seems like eternal damnation. You will seize and discard any number before you strike one who is cursed as we are, for unspeakable crimes in those other planes are damnably rare, it seems. You will live in a perpetual agony of hope that each generation will deliver up your successor. And you will never know, until almost the last moment, when your successor is at hand, except by the most intensive search for him ... or her! That could as easily be a million years —"

Hale's nerves had gone completely limp. There was no more rebellion in him. You get what you want, if you try hard enough — and then wish you hadn't. You can't escape first principles.

Victory was defeat. Why? Because: "By grasping the principle that anything you do, irrespective of your intentions, will increase the misery and torments of the people, you have confirmed my belief that you were to be my successor, for you understand that that is how Hell is constructed. If you didn't know it before, you do now, most emphatically!"

One hope had been smashed, the solitary hope that he might, by defeating Lucifer, escape relatively eternal torment. He had succeeded. What was the result of his victory? It bound him forever to his defeat. So far from defeating Lucifer, he had become Lucifer.

"I don't want —" he said. "I didn't intend —"

Johnson patted his arm sympathetically. "I know, my boy. That's the way it was with me, when I invented hope. That's the way it is with all of us. It's part of our fate." He sat back, puffing his cigar. "Yes, William, I can never express my relief that I have not put my trust in you to no purpose. You were my last hope, and for a while I feared you were too nervous and temperamental for the job. If you had failed me, I don't know what I should have done.

"Ah, my boy, what gratification it gives me! Developing you, watching you, guiding you, to take my place as the supremely damned manager of Hell. In training you as my successor, I have not wasted thirty years!"

Hale was shocked erect. "Thirty years! You mean you planned all this ... Gloria and everything —"

"I'm sorry," Johnson reached across Hale's lap and took something from Gloria. "I see your eternal helpmate has unwrapped your birthday present." He put the second ankh in Hale's limp grasp. "I mean thirty-two!"

"Isn't it cute, Billie-willie?" cried Gloria.

Hale stared at the object. Billie-willie ... .Cute ... The ankh, immortality, cute!

He sat, numbed and dumbly cold, staring at the bright, hard gold that symbolized his inescapable eternity of doom.

The End