On a Pale Horse

Chapter 9 BUREAUCRACY

Zane went to work on his backlogged case load. He was continuing to grow more proficient, orienting on a given soul anywhere in the world well within the time his Deathwatch showed. Even so, he found himself becoming increasingly thoughtful about the nature of his office. Death was not the calamity of life, but a necessary part of life, the transition to the Afterlife. The tragedy was not dying, but dying out of turn, before the natural course of a given life was run. So many people brought their terminations upon themselves by indulging in suicidal endeavors, getting into strong mind-affecting drugs, or tampering with black magic. Yet he himself had been as foolish, trying to kill himself because of his loss of a woman about whom he no longer cared.

In a way, he realized, he had not really been living until he left his life. He had been born again, in death.

Now, as he got well into the office of Death, he began to believe he could fill it well. It was intent, more than capacity, that made the difference. Probably, his predecessor could have done a superior job — but hadn't bothered. Zane had less ability, but a strong desire to do right. He did not have to be a specter. He could try to make each person's necessary transition from life to Afterlife gentle. Why should anyone fear it?

Of course, he was still in his initiation period. If the powers that were didn't approve his performance, his personal balance of good and evil would suffer, and he would be doomed to Hell when he left the office. But as far as he knew, he could not be removed from the office by any other power. Not as long as he was careful. So if he was willing to damn his soul, he could continue indefinitely, doing the job right.

Yes, that was it. "Damn Eternity!" he swore. "I know what's right, and I'm going to do it. If God damns me or Satan blesses me, then it's too bad, but I've got to have faith in my own honest judgment." Suddenly he felt much better; his self-doubt had been ameliorated.

His current client was underground, in the general vicinity of Nashville, the rustic song capital. This was no problem for Mortis, who merely phased down through the ground, carrying Zane along. He saw the strata of sand, gravel, and different kinds of rock, until he reached a sloping shaft through a vein of coal and came to the chamber where two miners had been trapped by a recent cave-in. There was no hope for them; air was limited, and it would take days for others to clear the shaft of rubble.

It was completely dark, but Zane could see well enough. It seemed his office imbued him with magic vision, so that mere blackness could not stay him from his appointed rounds. The men were lying against a wall of rubble, conserving their strength and breath; they knew there was no way out.

"Hello," Zane said, feeling awkward.

One of the miners turned his head. The pupils of his eyes were enormous as they tried to see — and, of course, Zane became apparent, magically. "Don't look now," the man murmured, "but I think we're about to cash in our green stamps."

Of course the other looked and saw. The caped skull!

"That's Death!"

"Yes," Zane said. "I have come for one of you. "You've come for us both," the first miner said. "We've only got air for an hour, maybe less."

Zane glanced at his watch. "Less," he said.

"God, I don't want to die!" the second miner said.

"But I knew when I heard the cave-in start that it was hopeless. We were living on borrowed time anyway, with all the safety violations the company wouldn't fix. If I'd been smart, I'da gotten out of this business!"

"Where would you have gone?" the first miner asked.

The other sighed. "Nowhere. I'm fooling myself; this is the only job I can handle." He looked again at Zane. "How much time?"

"Nine minutes," Zane replied.

"Time enough to shrive me."

"What?"

"Confess me. You know, my religion, final rites. I never was a good churchman, but I want to go to Heaven!"

The second miner laughed harshly. "I know I'm not going there!"

Zane brought the Sinstone near. "You are bound for Heaven," he told the first. "You are in doubt," he told the second. "That is why I must take your soul personally."

"In doubt? What does that mean?"

"Your soul is balanced between good and evil, so it is uncertain whether you will go to Heaven or to Hell, or abide awhile in Purgatory."

The man laughed. "That's a relief!"

"A relief?"

"As long as I do go to one place or another. I don't care if it's Hell. I know I deserve it. I've cheated on my wife, stolen from the government — you name it, I've done it, and I'm ready to pay."

"You don't fear Hell?"

"Only one thing I fear, and that is being in a cramped box like this, with the air running out and me helpless — for eternity. For an hour I can stand it, but not forever. I don't care what else happens to me, as long as it isn't that."

"I care!" the first miner said. "I'm so scared, I'm near gibbering!"

Zane considered. He realized that the dying needed someone to hold their hands, not to shun them. It was hard enough for any person to relate to the unrelatable. Zane had to try to help. "I came for the one in balance, but I think the other needs my service more."

"Sure, help him," the balanced client said. "I won't say I like dying, but I can handle it, I guess. I knew the odds when I signed up for this job. Maybe I'll like Hell."

Zane sat beside the other. "How can I help you?"

"Shrive me, I told you; that will help some."

"But I'm no priest; I'm not even of your religion."

"You are Death; you'll do!"

That must be true. "Then I will listen and judge — but I know already your sin is not great."

"One thing," the man said, troubled. "One thing's haunted me for decades. My mother — "

"Your mother!" Zane said, feeling a familiar shock.

"I think I killed her. I — " The miner paused. "Are you all right. Death? You look pale, even for you."

"I understand about killing mothers," Zane said.

"That's good. She — I was just a teenager when — well, she was in this wing of the hospital, and — "

"I understand," Zane repeated. He reached out and took the man's hand. He knew his own gloved fingers felt like bare bones, but the miner did not shy away.

"She had cancer, and I knew she was in pain, but — "

Zane squeezed his hand. Reassured, the miner continued: "I visited her, and one day she asked me to step outside the room and read what it said on the — you know, above the door, what kind of word it was. So I went out and looked, and there was something written there, but I couldn't read it. It was in Latin, I think. I went back and told her that, and she asked whether it was — she spelled it out, letter by letter, and you know, she was right, that's what it was. So I agreed that was it, wondering how she had known it, and she thanked me. I thought she was pleased."

The miner took a shuddering breath. "And next morning she was dead. The doctor said she seemed just to have given up and died in the night. No one knew why, because she had been fighting so hard to live before. But I — I checked into it and found out that that word in Latin I had spelled for her — it meant incurable. I had told her there was no hope, and so she quit trying. I guess I killed her."

"But you didn't know!" Zane protested.

"I should have known. I should have — "

"Then you did her a favor," Zane said. "The others were hiding the truth from her, keeping her alive and in pain. You released her from doubt." He was speaking for himself as much as for the miner. "There is no sin on your soul for that."

"No, I shouldn't have let her know!"

"Would it have been right to preserve her life by a lie?" Zane asked. "Would your soul have been cleaner then?"

"It wasn't my place to — "

"Come off it!" the other miner said. "You were guilty of ignorance. Nothing else. I wouldn't have known what those Latin words were either."

"How would you know?" the first one snapped. "You weren't there!"

"I guess not," the second miner admitted wryly. "I don't even know who my mother was."

The first miner paused, set back. "There is that," he conceded. Somehow it seemed that in making that technical concession, he was also accepting the human point. At least he had known his mother and cared about her. "Now, I'm no philosopher," the second said. "I'm a sinner from way back. But maybe if I'd had a mother like yours, a good woman, I would have turned out better. So take it from one who hasn't any right to say it: you should remember your mother, not with guilt or grief, but with gratitude — for the pleasure she gave you while she lived, for the way she steered you toward Heaven instead of Hell."

"For a sinner, you've got quite an insight! But if I could only have helped her live longer — "

"Longer in a box with the air turning bad?" the other asked.

"No, I agree," Zane said. "It was time to end it. These things are scheduled in ways no mortal comprehends. She knew that, though you did not. If there had been a chance for survival, she might have been willing to fight on through, for the sake of her family, for the things she had to do on Earth. But there wasn't, so it was best that she not torture herself any longer. She put aside life as you would put aside a piece of equipment going bad, and she went out of the gloom of the depths of the mine and on up to the brightness of Heaven."

"I don't know." The man was breathing shallowly now, not finding enough oxygen in the air. He seemed to be more sensitive to this deprivation than his companion was. Zane had no problem; evidently his magic helped him this way, too. He was still discovering things about his office. "You will join her there," Zane concluded. "There in Heaven. She will thank you herself." The miner did not answer, so Zane released his hand and turned to the other, his true client. "Are you sure there is nothing I can do for you?" The man considered. "You know, I'm a cynic, but I guess I do sort of crave some meaning in life, or at least some understanding. There's this song going 'round in my head, and it sort of grabs me, and I think it means something, but I don't know what."

"I'm not expert at meaning," Zane said. "But I can try. What is the song?"

"I don't know the title or anything. It's just, I guess it's an old whaling song. Maybe I have whaling blood in my veins. It goes — what I can remember — goes like this: …and the whale gave a flunder with its tail, and the boat capsized, and I lost my darling man, and he'll never, never sail again. Great God! And he'll never sail again. It's that 'Great God!' that gets me. I don't give a damn about God, never did, but I feel it, and I don't know why."

Zane suspected the man cared more about God than he thought, but did not make an issue of that. "It's an exclamation," he said, intrigued by the fragment. There was indeed feeling in it, as of a wildly grieving widow crying out in pain.

"It's a protest. Great God! Why did this have to happen? For a sunken ship, or a mine cave-in. Great God!"

"Great God!" the first miner echoed. "But why is a song about whaling bothering me now, when I'm buried in this stinking hole?" the second miner demanded.

"It must have special associations for you," Zane said. "I'm not equipped to interpret — "Clear enough to me," the first miner said. "Drown in the depths of the sea, suffocate in the depths of the earth, and your wife grieves."

"Yeah, maybe she will," the second said, brightening. "But I don't think that's it. It's as if there's a message, if only I could get it." He snapped his fingers as if trying to call the message forth, and the sound echoed in the recesses of the mine. "Look, Death, you want to do something, tell me a story about that song. Anything, just to make it make some sense." This, then, was the client's last request. Both men were gasping now, and time was short.

Zane had to try to honor the man's wish, even if he bungled the attempt. He thought for a moment, then started to talk — and what he said surprised him. "There was a young female whale named Wilda. She roamed the oceans of the world, happy in the company of her kind, and when she came of age she thought she would mate as the other whale cows did and bear a cub and bring it up. But then the hunters came, in their huge boats, and they speared her father and her mother and her bull friend and hauled them out of the water so that nothing was left but their blood and dreadful fragments of their bodies that the sharks congregated to consume. Wilda escaped, for she had learned magic; she changed her form so she resembled a trashfish and swam away. "She grieved, singing her whale song of loss and pain, but she was angry, too, and confused. Why should these little creatures from land, called men, come to slay whales who had never harmed them? It seemed to make no sense. She realized that she had no hope of dealing with the problem when she didn't understand the motive of the enemy. So Wilda changed herself into human form and walked to the fishing village where the whalers lived. "Some human folk laughed at her, for she was naked and innocent of their ways. But a young man named Hank took her into his home, for she was also beautiful. Hank lived with his widowed mother, and the two of them clothed her and taught her the tongue of their kind, and she learned quickly, for she was an intelligent whale and really wanted to know the nature of this strange species. She learned that Hank was a whaler, who went out periodically to hunt whales, for that was how he earned his living. Here on land, food was not free for the taking; people could not simply swim about and open their mouths and catch and swallow succulent squid; and when it grew cold they could not blithely migrate south to warmer waters, for travel was complicated on land. A human person had to work and get gold, and he used this gold to buy all the necessities that life on land required.

"Now Wilda understood. There was no personal animosity here; the men folk had a more pressing lifestyle than the whale folk, which compelled them to acts they might not otherwise have considered, and they did not regard the whale folk as sapient creatures. Perhaps if the men folk were made to understand about the culture and feelings of the whales, things would change and the dreadful killing would stop. She tried to explain to Hank, but he thought she was joking. After all, his father had been killed by the flunder of the tail of a whale, so that his grieving mother had had to bring him up alone. Great God! How could he feel for the whales? He asked Wilda to marry him, for he needed a woman and he believed her to be his gift from Heaven.

"This made things very difficult for Wilda, for she had come to love him, though he was not of her species. So she brought him to the edge of the sea and walked into the water and returned to her natural form, believing that once he had seen her as the whale cow she was, he would be revolted. But he cried for her to come back and apologized for not believing her before and promised he would never kill another whale. She had, after all, persuaded him, and his love surmounted his awareness other nature.

"But now she was a creature of the sea again, and the call of the sea was strong. How could she leave the brine forever and be dry? And she spied another whale, a bull who was handsome and strong. She thought she might mate with him, but he told her he was really a squid, who had assumed the form of her kind in order to learn why the whales preyed on the squids, who did not harm the whales. Wilda was amazed and chagrined, for she had never thought of these creatures as having feelings or being sapient. How could she return to devouring squid? Yet she realized that death was a chain of eat and be eaten, with no justice to it except need, power, and chance, and that in this respect her species was no different from the human species or the squid species. It was all a matter of viewpoint. So she apologized to the squid, returned to land, resumed her girl form, and married Hank, her problem resolved."

"And perhaps," Zane concluded, "if we men had a similar insight into the larger pattern of our existence, we, too, would accept the natural order, though at times it is painful for us, especially when we die prematurely."

He stopped, waiting for some response from the miners. But too much of the oxygen had been exhausted, and the men were unconscious. Zane took his client's soul and returned to Mortis, uncertain whether he had done the right thing.

Now he had another concern. Someone he knew was being taken out of turn, and he was not as acquiescent about her fate as Wilda had been about that of her family. But how could he gain the comprehension he needed?

Nature had spoken of patterns of thinking. The first was the linear path — the generally straightforward mode. Would that do him any good?

What was the straightforward way to gain understanding? To do as Wilda had done, and ask someone who had the information. Who was that? Who else but the Purgatory computer!

He stopped in at Purgatory once he had caught up with his case load. "I want to consult the records," he told the information girl.

She directed him to the appropriate wing. It was, of course, another computer center, with a terminal ready for him. He wasn't sure whether this was the same computer he had dealt with before, but suspected that all terminals connected to the same central mechanism.

He sat down and turned the terminal on.

HOW MAY I HELP YOU, DEATH? the screen inquired in green.

"I want to look up the status of Luna Kaftan," Zane said, starting to type in the order.

THIS TERMINAL IS PROGRAMMED FOR VERBAL INPUT, the screen advised him. LUNA KAFTAN, UNDEAD. PRESENT RATIO OF GOOD TO EVIL 35-65. THIS FALLS WITHIN THE PARAMETERS FOR UNASSISTED CONVEYANCE TO HELL UPON DECEASE.

"Exactly," Zane said, wondering how the computer could be so current on a soul that had not been officially read. But of course Purgatory had to know such things, in order to arrange Death's schedule for pickups. "She deceived her father and also took a chunk of his evil so he could qualify for Heaven." But as he said it, he felt a wrongness. Magician Kaftan had not sought Heaven, he had sought an appointment with Death. He could readily have given Luna a little more of his burden of sin and been assured of Heaven. Instead, he had calculated it precisely, so Death would have to attend him personally, so Magician and Death could chat about seeming inconsequentials. Just as Nature had summoned Zane for a different idle chat. Why did these powerful people go to such lengths for so little?

THE LAWS OF DETERMINATION DO HAVE SOME LOOPHOLES, the screen confessed.

"If you ran Eternity, things would be different?" Zane inquired with a smile.

AFFIRMATIVE. And the screen flashed a cartoon smile face formed of tiny squares.

"Yet the presumption was that she would have time to redress the balance," Zane said. "Why is she scheduled for premature demise?"

THAT INFORMATION IS NOT IN THE FILE.

"But motive is an essential part of the record," Zane protested. "It is needed to determine whether any given soul is good or evil. Since the balance determines where any person goes upon demise, and whether I, Death, will attend directly — "

THE CLIENT'S MOTIVES ARE RECORDED. NOT THE MOTIVE OF THE ONE WHO SCHEDULED HER EARLY TRANSFORMATION.

"Who scheduled it?" Zane asked.

NOT IN FILE.

"How can such an order be given anonymously?" Zane demanded. "Doesn't there have to be some sort of accountability, in a matter of such importance?"

NORMALLY SUCH DIRECTIVES ARE SIGNED, the Screen agreed. THIS ONE IS NOT. ASSUMPTION: THERE HAS BEEN A GLITCH.

"You mean the order isn't valid?" Zane's pulse increased. Luna might live, after all!

PAUSE FOR VERIFICATION… NO REFUTATION OF ORDER FOUND.

"But no signature either? Shouldn't that order be set aside, pending identification of the source?"

THERE IS NO PROVISION FOR SUCH INACTION.

"But you can't condemn someone to premature death without authenticity! There must be authentication!"

ASSUMPTION: AUTHENTICATION EXISTS, BUT HAS BEEN GLITCHED OUT.

Zane realized that the machine was not about to take responsibility for changing an order. Bureaucracies were fashioned to enable their components to avoid responsibility. He would have to approach this circuitously. "Who has the authority to issue such a directive?"

CLARIFY QUESTION.

Oh. He hadn't specified which directive — the one decreeing Luna's early death, or the one canceling the first. "Who can specify that a given individual shall die out of turn?"

ALL INDIVIDUALS DIE IN TURN.

"Don't get canny with me, computer! Luna Kaftan should normally live forty more years. Longer, with decent breaks. Why is she suddenly, mysteriously, scheduled for death?"

THE MOTIVE OF THE SOURCE OF THE DIRECTIVE IS NOT ON RECORD IN MY FILE, the screen reminded him. "Who is the source of that directive?"

THAT INFORMATION IS NOT — "Are you giving me a runaround?" Zane demanded.

YES.

Zane paused, taken aback. He had underestimated the literal way the computer took things!

"You are? Clarify."

I AM NOT PROVIDING THE INFORMATION I KNOW YOU SEEK.

Zane was interested in this aspect. Was the machine trying to help him in its fashion? "What information is that?"

THE SOURCE OF THE DIRECTIVE OF EARLY RETIREMENT OF LUNA KAFTAN.

"And the reason for it," Zane concluded. "Is there information you could provide, if I phrased the question properly?"

NEGATIVE. But there was a pause before the word was printed. What did that mean?

"If I phrased the question improperly?" Zane asked without much hope.

AFFIRMATIVE.

Intriguing! There was a way around this barrier, if he could figure it out, but normal channels would not suffice. "How should I phrase it to gain the desired information?"

NEGATIVELY.

Negatively. Zane pondered that a moment. Did this mean the computer was not permitted to answer directly, but could do so indirectly? How should he phrase his questions, then? It wouldn't make sense to ask who had not issued the directive — or would it? Maybe that was worth a try.

"What is not the source of the aforementioned directive?" he asked, mentally holding his breath.

ANY NATURAL AGENCY.

That covered a lot! What was left, except a supernatural agency? The Incarnations were partly supernatural, but did not make Eternal policy; they only implemented it. That seemed to leave God and Satan. Yet why would God do such a thing? Satan, on the other hand — "What supernatural agency lacks any motive for such an order?"

GOD.

Sure enough. But why would Satan do it?

Zane saw the answer to that: Luna was now doomed to Hell at death, while if she lived longer, she would have a chance to redeem herself. Satan had to catch her now, or lose her.

But why hadn't the computer simply told him this?

Zane sat for a while and pondered. Something didn't add up. This machine was acting the way Nature had, never quite expressing the essence. Was there a reason?

Magician Kaftan had been indirect, too. He had also taken care not to name Satan, lest the Prince of Evil be alerted. A machine, in Purgatory, should not fear Satan in the same manner — but maybe the computer had been ordered not to print Satan's name in this connection. Thus it could respond negatively, but not positively.

If Satan was behind this thing, feeding in a spurious order — Satan was a dread prime mover, second in power only to God — how could anyone or anything oppose him? Not the Purgatory computer, certainly! If it aroused Satan's ire, it might find itself replaced by a competitive make of machine. It might not have any emotion about such an occurrence, but perhaps did have the intelligence not to pursue a self-destructive course.

Yet if Satan had the power to abort a person's life, to cut the thread early, why hadn't he simply claimed Luna openly? Why go to the trouble of concealing his part in it?

Concealment — that suggested wrongdoing. Satan, or course, was the Father of Lies, so that was consistent. But he was taking Luna the hard way, and that did not make sense — unless he could not take her any other way.

Was Satan himself constrained by rules? Surely so, for otherwise he would simply grab the whole world, and to Hell — literally! — with formalities. God and Satan had been opposing each other for all eternity past, and would continue for eternity future; neither could afford to squander strength in wild anarchy. So of course there were rules, tacit if not express, and the manner in which any given person died was surely central to such an understanding.

Zane decided not to push this matter further at the moment. If Satan were cheating, it would be best for Death to make no protest — until he could establish his case absolutely. For sure as Hell — literally, again — Satan would not change his ways merely because someone on Earth objected. Zane had no intention of dropping the case; he just needed to make it airtight.

This matter did, after all, relate to his area of expertise — the death of a person. Nature had advised him that each Incarnation was supreme in his own bailiwick, if he chose to be. The computer had shown him one avenue of investigation by being indirect. What he needed now was to put it all together and find a way to accomplish his desire, despite the opposition of Satan. Certainly he would not prevail if he barged blindly ahead.

"Thank you, computer," Zane said. "You have been very — " As he spoke, the screen flickered as if shorting out, and it occurred to him that he could get the machine in trouble if he acknowledged its help. "Uncommunicative," he finished.

ANY TIME, DEATH, the screen flashed, with a picture of an hourglass.

Zane departed Purgatory and punched his client timer. His case load got crowded whenever he took time off, but he was used to that now. He wondered how Fate managed to schedule the fatalities of these clients so that they were ready only when Death was ready to collect them. How could anybody know when Death was going to take a few hours off? Obviously there was a great deal of organization behind the surface that he glimpsed only in passing.

Who could know the random future? Chronos, of course! The realization struck Zane with a minor glow of excitement. He had just gained another insight into the operation of the system. Obviously Chronos did not just dawdle; Time had to be constantly on watch, tracking events and advising Fate of the necessary schedules. Chronos was well aware of Death's activity, past and future, as he had shown when Zane left his Deathwatch on hold too long.

And the computer had signed off with the words ANY TIME, and with Time's hourglass. That was more than a note of parting; that was a reference to Chronos. Surely that Incarnation knew what was going to happen and could tell Zane.

Yet what use would that be? He could ask Chronos about the future and get a confirmation that within the month Luna was going to Hell, where her demon lover would put it to her for the rest of eternity. Some revelation!

Zane was now close to his client, driving through a slum development in the immense eastern city of New York. He smelled smoke. In a moment he saw it — a tenement house ablaze. His gem pointed right to it; his client was trapped inside.

It was already too late; the red hand of the Deathwatch was touching zero. Zane drew his protective cloak tightly about him and walked into the flames. The fire could not hurt him; the only awkwardness was in getting to the upstairs where his client was, when the stairs were burning and insecure. Fire couldn't stop him, but how about a fall? "Support me," he murmured in a kind of spell, and the footing firmed. Once more Death had power to reach his destination. Again he remembered Nature's remark: an Incarnation could not be balked unless he allowed it.

The figure was struggling in the linen of a bed that had become a minor inferno. Obviously it — for in this situation Zane could not tell whether his client was male or female — had tried to flee the fire by delving into the bed. Instead, the sheets had ignited, taking hair and skin with them. Zane understood that death by fire was the most painful possible; he believed it.

Quickly he strode across and hooked out the soul. The flayed body relaxed, its pain abruptly gone. This was the one unmitigated blessing Death brought — the relief of the agony of living. Yet what good was that, he wondered, if that soul was destined to pass from the flames of life to the eternal flames of Hell? The pains of life were temporary, but the pains of Hell were not.

On his way to the next client, Zane reviewed the soul. He was getting steadily more efficient at this, classifying more than half his clients on the run. He had become conversant with the broad categories of sin, so could generally tell not only how much, but what kind of sin weighted a given soul.

This soul belonged to a boy of about ten, whose principal burden was a major sexual transgression.

Zane paused. At this age?

He examined the soul more carefully and pieced the story together. Things were crowded in the slums, with several families or branches of families sharing facilities.

Intense friendships and enmities occurred. He understood that crowding tended to intensify the natural traits of people, so in this instance, interaction had been extreme. This boy's curiosity had been aroused, naturally enough, by the secretive mechanisms of adult romance. He had naively inquired of a mature woman who was nominally baby-sitting him while his folks worked. She, perhaps dissatisfied with her own life, had taken the mischievous opportunity to educate him with considerable thoroughness.

Zane pondered this. When a grown man seduced a female child, it was molestation, for surely his attentions were forced on her; but when a grown woman did it to a male child, it was apt to be considered generosity. Zane could understand that; force was unlikely to be a component. But evidently the burden of sin attached to the boy as well as to the woman, especially if the child believed the liaison was wrong. There seemed to have been several repetitions, so the sin now amounted to fifty percent. The boy had been overwhelmed by the personality of the mature woman; fear of discovery mixed with the erotic joy she provided him. He had been caught in a kind of trap that an older person could readily have broken, but he lacked the courage or experience. It was quite understandable; he was a victim of circumstance — but still the accretions of sin had been charged against him.

This bothered Zane. He remembered how Fate had quoted from Henley's poem about a man being the captain of his soul — but surely this was not as true for an impressionable boy. It seemed to him that an adult standard of responsibility was being applied to a juvenile person, and this was unfair. As a man who had once been a child, he could appreciate the appeal of an available woman at any age. He himself had longed for information at that age and had been denied it. He had tried to purchase a charm to summon a succubus, but the vendor had refused to deliver such magic to a child. Zane still regretted that; since succubi were nonhuman, yet the essence of sex, he could have learned a lot without involving anyone who counted. But of course there were laws, and they did tend to discriminate against children. Theoretically, this was to protect those children; actually it had seemed more like punishment for being young, inflicted by those who wished they themselves had not aged.

At any rate, he deeply regretted taking this lad, who had only responded to the urges Nature had provided him. The Green Mother could do it to anyone; Zane knew that from recent personal experience. So the lad's burden of sin was a technical thing, not really reflecting badness. The definition ought to be changed, to be more realistic. But of course there was nothing Zane could do about it. He was only Death, performing his own office.

"Damn the office!" he swore abruptly. "Why should I participate in what I believe is wrong?"

Nature had shown him another aspect of her power by enabling the left-footed dancing girl to revive. That death had not been final. Could this one be similarly negated? He thought of the condition of the body, its skin largely burned away, and shuddered. There was no point in returning the soul to that!

But what about Chronos? Maybe the Incarnation of Time could enable him to go back to the moment before ' the fire broke out, and warn the boy, so that — "Take me to Chronos," Zane directed Mortis, stopping his countdown, The gallant Death steed slowed to a stop at a passing I field and started to graze. Zane looked around, perplexed, "I don't see — "

"Then turn about. Death," the voice of Time came. It had a certain echoing quality, with a trace of grit, as if some sand had leaked into it from the hourglass.

Zane turned. There stood Chronos, in his white robe.

He had surely not been there a moment ago. He must have come when Zane asked for him.

"I would like to have your help," Zane said. "A demonstration of your power, if it does not lead to paradox."

"I have power, and I love paradox," Chronos said.

"I have just taken the soul of this boy," Zane explained, showing the soul. "I want to return it so he can have a proper chance to redress his balance in life. Could you, with my concurrence, arrange that?"

"Take me to the place, and I will take you to the time," Chronos said equably. "It is true one Incarnation may not safely interfere with another, but since you will it, I can assist. We do cooperate, at need."

Just like that! Chronos mounted Mortis behind Zane, and the horse took off.

"Now, while we are isolated by the ambience of the Death steed," Chronos said, "there is another matter you wish to ask of me."

"Isolated?" Zane asked. "You mean no one can overhear us here, even — ?"

"Speak not his name, lest you summon him," Chronos warned. "Mortis protects you better than you know, but nothing protects against folly."

"Uh, yes, of course," Zane agreed, disgruntled.

"Naturally you found a pretext to contact me, so that he would not have cause for suspicion."

Zane hadn't thought of it that way. But he did have something else to talk about. "The Purgatory computer flashed your symbol on its screen when I questioned it about the status of Luna Kaftan."

"A most interesting case," Chronos said, after a pause as if to recollect the details. "Fate alerted me to it, for she notes the significant threads. Circa twenty years from this moment, Luna Kaftan will be instrumental in — "

"But she's going to die within the month!" Zane protested.

"That, too," Chronos agreed.

"Then how can she — ?"

"History is mutable, of course. If she lives, she will go into politics — "

"But she is an artist!"

"So was Winston Churchill, and Adolf Hitler studied to be one. Artistic temperament is no necessary bar to political achievement."

Zane thought of Churchill and Hitler, opposing leaders in the great Second World War between the Allies and the Axis, where both magic and science had run rampant until it all terminated in the first detonation of nuclear fission. He didn't like the association. Nuclear fission could destroy the realm of the living! "So if she lives, there may be a chance of that — she will go into politics and — ?"

"And be instrumental in balking the Nameless in his attempt to install his most hateful minion in the highest political office of the United States of America."

"Why would — that Entity — want political power?" Zane asked, bewildered. "His realm is Below."

"And the other Entity's realm is Above. Neither controls the battleground that is the living world, but each draws sustenance from it. Expressed in monetary terms, the world is the principal, and the souls departing it are the interest. The Eternals split the interest, but each would like a share of the principal. The proportion of souls each receives is critical. At this moment the apex has the upper hand, but a substantial change in the orientation of the living folk, followed by a massive exodus to Eternity, could shift the balance of power to the nadir. Then — "

"I don't care to think about it," Zane said with a shudder. "And you say Luna will prevent that from happening?"

"Yes — if she lives."

"Now I understand why Someone wants her dead!"

"So it would seem."

Mortis had arrived at the site of the burning building in New York, which was now a smoldering mass. The firemen had come too late, as was typical for this area of the city where the tax base was small, and doused it with a suffocation-spell; now they were picking through the ruin for bodies. The survivors stood staring, half in shock. It was a grim scene.

Chronos lifted his hourglass. Abruptly time froze, as it had when Zane used the center knob of the Deathwatch. The rising smoke hovered in place, and the people formed a tableau, standing like statues. Only Chronos, Zane, and Mortis remained animate.

Then the fine sand streamed upward from the lower segment of the hourglass to the upper. It was not as if the glass had been inverted, set in an antigravity field, or spelled to levitate; it was a literal reversal of time, as sand rose from the mound below, squeezed through the tight neck, and shoved the upper sand higher in an even pattern. Zane was fascinated.

The flow of sand accelerated, moving faster than any natural cause could account for. The level in the upper chamber climbed visibly. But Zane's eye was caught by events beyond.

The standing people milled rapidly about, walking backward at running speed. The firemen backed hastily to their trucks and accelerated away in reverse. The fire abruptly blazed up, out of control. But it was no ordinary conflagration; the great orange-yellow flames were plunging downward into the apertures of the structure. Smoke roiled down to feed those flames, drawing in from the broad night sky. People backed closer to the building, carrying in items of furniture and apparel and food. Other people fled the fire, backward, their faces illuminated by the flames in postures of excitement. Everything happened at triple or quadruple velocity.

Soon the flames diminished, squeezing into the clarifying building. The last of the smoke sucked in, too. Windows restored themselves, their fragments of glass flying up to become whole panes, and the fire was out.

Time slowed, than paused, then reversed. Once more the sand trickled from top to bottom, at normal velocity. "You have two minutes. Death," Chronos said, dismounting. "Use it as you please."

Zane stared a moment, amazed by the power Chronos had shown. How could anything oppose an Incarnation with the ability to reverse finished events?

He jumped down and ran to the door. It was locked, but opened at his touch. He charged up the stairs to the boy's room, feeling in his bag for the soul. Did he still have it, or had the reversal of time restored it to the boy? He, Zane, had been insulated from the reversal; none of his experience had been subtracted. But the boy had been a participant, so should have recovered his soul. Which version was fact, now?

He reached deeper into the bag and found the soul. But as he drew it out, it tugged from his hand and flitted forward. When Zane came in sight of the sleeping boy, the soul plunged in and disappeared.

Zane reasoned it out as he moved. Time had reversed, but his personal isolation from the effect had prevented the soul in his possession from zipping back in its turn. Similarly, he had not seen himself attend to the boy during the fire. Of course, this time he had been outside the building, so wasn't really in a position to see himself in action. The reversal had been imperfect because he had stood separate, instead of racing backward through his own involvement. Interesting, but apparently not critical; here he was, just before the fire erupted. Evidently there was no paradox.

He stood over the bed. "Wake!" he cried. "Wake, lest you die!"

The boy woke. He saw the specter of Death looming over him. He screamed and rolled, tumbling, from the bed. He scrambled to his feet and started for the open window.

Zane leaped to intercept him. What use to save the lad from the fire, only to scare him into a suicidal plunge through the window? He was trying to interfere with the handiwork of Fate, and that was problematical — unless she also knew of this matter and was amenable.

He spread his skeletal hands, barring the way. "Give up the woman," he said, remembering the burden of sin that had brought the lad to this pass. "Go and live righteously. You are spared from Death to do this." The boy stared, then backed away, terrified. Then the first whiff of smoke came. The fire was starting. "Wake the house!" Zane cried. "Go outside. Live — and remember."

The boy fled. In moments his screams were waking the others. "Get up! Get up! I saw Death! Live right! Go outside!"

It was effective. Soon the people were trooping down the stairs and out, escaping the fire with armfuls of their possessions. Others who had died in the first play of this scene were surviving in the replay. Truly, the boy had saved them.

Zane walked among them, unnoticed. He returned to his horse, ready to thank Chronos, but Chronos was gone.

Well, Time probably had other business. He would thank Chronos when they next met. Perhaps he would have occasion to return the favor. Now he had business himself. He started his timer, reorienting on the client he had set aside.

He worked for a day, his time, catching up the backlog. His mind was increasingly on Luna and her fate. Now he knew Satan had engineered her termination so she could not later balk his will, and Zane realized that the other Incarnations were aware of this. But none of them had offered to do anything about it! Either they were powerless against the will of Satan, or they simply didn't care.

And why should they care? This was his own concern. If anyone was to do anything, he was the one. Yet he could think of nothing. He would not even be involved in her transition, directly, for her soul was weighted for Hell. If only she had more time in life to redeem her soul, to redress the balance — Could he appeal to God? Zane doubted it, for God seldom seemed to involve Himself in the affairs of living man. God still honored the Covenant of nonintervention. Satan was the one who was cheating — and Satan would hardly consider any appeal to negate his effort.

Zane grew angry about that. Was Satan to win the celestial war because he cheated while God did not? Yet if God could only counter Satan by cheating Himself, He would become evil, and evil would still prevail. God had to be incorruptible! Therefore — there would be no action from God.

Zane wrapped up his schedule and went to call on Luna.

She had not been using her relief stones. The knowledge of death and damnation was taking its grim toll; her face was pale, and the lines on it were etched more deeply. Her tresses hung in lank masses. Her eyes were heavily shadowed. She wore no makeup; that would have been pointless, for she had evidently been crying considerably.

Zane's breast experienced a soft explosion of love for her. He took her into his embrace and held her close, wanting to reassure her yet knowing there was nothing he could offer except his own pain.

He kissed her, but she held back. "We must not," she said, knowing where this was leading.

"Not?"

"The stones say no."

He hardly cared about the will of the stones, but he did not want to oppose her own will in any way. "Then let me hold your hand."

In response she hummed a little tune.

Zane's brow furrowed. "Am I missing something?"

She smiled fleetingly, and a bit of her beauty showed. "A folk song. I'm sorry; I'm distracted, and didn't realize I was doing it aloud. I'm in poor shape, because the stones don't abolish grief, they only postpone it, so I have to suffer it all sometime; in any event, I do want to experience natural emotion for my father, and for myself."

"What folk song?"

She made an "I'll show you" sign, then moved to the center of the room and posed. She sang: "It looms so long, I'll miss you, miss; I've got to take your hand… I've got to dance with you… We all will dance with you. Oh."

He might never see her again, because she would be dead. A catchy tune, but a macabre mental connection for hand-holding. She certainly was upset, and he could not alleviate her distress.

"It looms so long, I'll miss you, miss, Luna sang again. So let me spin and turn." And she spun prettily, her skirt flaring. But the image that came to Zane's mind was that of the left-footed girl, prisoned in the magic slippers. There was no joy in Luna's dance, however lovely it made her.

He walked toward her, still uncertain what to do. She sang the first line again, then continued: "We all shall spin and turn." This time Zane turned with her, joining her dance.

Then he caught her hand and led her to the couch.

They sat for the better part of an hour in silence, holding hands, and in that time the burgeoning love he felt for her suffused every crevice of his awareness. The girl the Love stone had directed him to had been a dream; Luna was reality. How could he live without her? "I will go with you," he said suddenly.

Luna smiled wanly. "Few would make that offer, and I thank you for it. But you will not be going to Hell!"

"Surely I will, because I have been breaking the rules of my office!"

"You have been breaking them in good ways. But even if you do die soon and go to Hell, Satan would not let us be together there, any more than he would let me see my father. Hell is for suffering."

"Your father is not in Hell. He is in Purgatory, working out his account."

"But has he any chance at Heaven?"

"Of course he has! He's a good man!"

She smiled. "You are kind to say so."

In due course he left her, more than ever determined to save her, more than ever uncertain how to do it. He was only Death, a functionary; he could not dictate the identity of his clients — and Luna was not his client. Not directly.

But, damn it, Satan was cheating! It wasn't right! Was there no justice in Eternity? Some court of appeal, to set the record straight — There had to be! Zane turned off his timer. Mortis leaped for Purgatory without directive, knowing the will of his master.

"Why, yes. Death, you may file a petition," the Purgatory Administration annex desk girl said. "It will be reviewed by the Immortal Board at the next meeting, and a committee assigned —

"When's the next meeting?"

She checked her perpetual calendar. "In ten Earthly days."

"But the wrong is in process now!" he protested. "Ten days may be too late!"

"I don't make the rules," she said, with just that edge of irritability that public servants knew, from millennia of experience, that they could get away with.

Zane sighed. Bureaucracy was the same everywhere! He filled out the form and left it. Maybe there would be time. Luna's death had been omened within a month, of which five days were now gone; it could happen any time within the next twenty-five. That gave him ten out of twenty-five chances to lose, and fifteen out of twenty-five to win, or odds in his favor by a three or two margin. But he distrusted that, fearing what Satan would do.