But Lilith was right, he told himself.
Only about one person out of a thousand sold his soul for the granting of even a minor unselfish wish, and it might be millions of years yet, or forever, before the ultimate one was made. Thus far, no one had even come close to it.
«Okay, Lil,» he said. «Just the same, send him in first; I’d rather get it over with.» He flicked off the intercom.
The little man who came through the big doorway certainly didn’t look dangerous; he looked plain scared. Satan frowned at him. «You know the terms?»
«Yes,» said the little man. «At least, I think I do. In exchange for your granting any one wish I make, you get my soul when I die. Is that right?»
«Right. Your wish?»
«Well,» said the little man, «I’ve thought it out pretty carefully and—»
«Get to the point. I’m busy. Your wish?»
«Well … I wish that, without any change whatsoever in myself, I become the most evil, stupid and miserable person on earth.»
Satan screamed.
THE DOME
Kyle Braden sat in his comfortable armchair and stared at the switch in the opposite wall, wondering for the millionth—or was it the billionth?—time whether he was ready to take the risk of pulling it. The millionth or the billionth time in—it would be thirty years today, this afternoon.
It meant probable death and in just what form he didn’t know. Not atomic death certainly—all the bombs would have been used up many many years ago. They’d have lasted long enough to destroy the fabric of civilization, yes. There were more than enough bombs for that. And his careful calculations, thirty years ago, had proven that it would be almost a century before man got really started on a new civilization—what was left of him.
But what went on now, out there, outside the domelike force field that still shielded him from horror? Men as beasts? Or had mankind gone down completely and left the field to the other and less vicious brutes? No, mankind would have survived somewhere; he’d make his way back eventually. And possibly the record of what he had done to himself would remain, at least as legend, to deter him from doing it a second time. Or would it deter him even if full records remained to him?
Thirty years, Braden thought. He sighed at the weary length of them. Yet he’d had and still had everything he really needed and lonesomeness is better than sudden death. Life alone is better than no life at all—with death in some horrible form.
So he had thought thirty years ago, when he had been thirty-seven years old. So he still thought now at sixty-seven. He didn’t regret what he had done, not at all. But he was tired. He wondered, for the millionth—or the billionth?—time whether he wasn’t ready to pull that lever.
Just maybe, out there, they’d have struggled back to some reasonable, if agrarian, form of living. And he could help them, could give them things and knowledge they’d need. He could savor, before he was really old, their gratitude and the good feeling of helping them.
Then too he didn’t want to die alone. He’d lived alone and it had been tolerable most of the time—but dying alone was something else. Somehow dying alone here would be worse than being killed by the neo-barbarians he expected to find out there. The agrarians were really too much to hope for after only thirty years.
And today would be a good day for it. Exactly thirty years, if his chronometers were still accurate, and they wouldn’t be far wrong even in that length of time. A few more hours to make it the same time of day, thirty years to the minute. Yes, irrevocable as it was, he’d do it then. Until now the irrevocability of pulling that switch had stopped him every time he’d considered it.
If only the dome of force could be turned off and then on again the decision would have been easy and he’d have tried it long ago. Perhaps after ten years or fifteen. But it took tremendous power to create the field if very little power to maintain it. There’d still been outside power available when he’d first flashed it on.
Of course the field itself had broken the connection—had broken all connection—once he’d flashed it into being, but the power sources within the building had been enough to supply his own needs and the negligible power required to maintain the field.
Yes, he decided suddenly and definitely, he’d pull that switch today as soon as the few hours were up that would make the time exactly thirty years. Thirty years was long enough to be alone.
He hadn’t wanted to be alone. If only Myra, his secretary, hadn’t walked out on him when … It was too late to think of that—but he thought of it as he had a billion times before. Why had she been so ridiculous about wanting to share the fate of the rest of humanity, to try to help those who were beyond help? And she’d loved him. Aside from that quixotic idea she’d have married him. He’d been too abrupt in explaining the truth—he’d shocked her. But how wonderful it would have been had she stayed with him.
Partly the fault was that the news had come sooner than he’d anticipated. When he’d turned the radio off that morning he’d known there were only hours left. He’d pressed the button that summoned Myra and she’d come in, beautiful, cool, unruffled. You’d think she never listened to the newscasts or read the papers, that she didn’t know what was happening.
«Sit down, my dear,» he’d told her. Her eyes had widened a bit at the unexpected form of address but she’d gracefully seated herself in the chair in which she always sat to take dictation. She poised her pencil.
«No, Myra,» he said. «This is personal—very personal. I want to ask you to marry me.»
Her eyes really widened. «Dr. Braden, are you—joking?»
«No. Very definitely not. I know I’m a bit older than you but not too much so, I hope. I’m thirty-seven although I may seem a bit older right now as a result of the way I’ve been working. You’re—is it twenty-seven?»
«Twenty-eight last week. But I wasn’t thinking of age. It’s just—well. ‘This is so sudden,’ sounds like I’m joking, but it is. You’ve never even»—she grinned impishly—«you’ve never even made a pass at me. And you’re about the first man I’ve ever worked for who hasn’t.»
Braden smiled at her. «I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was expected. But, Myra, I’m serious. Will you marry me?»
She looked at him thoughtfully. «I—don’t know. The strange thing is that—I guess I am in love with you a little. I don’t know why I should be. You’ve been so impersonal and businesslike, so tied up in your work. You’ve never even tried to kiss me, never even paid me a compliment.
«But—well, I don’t like this sudden and—unsentimental—a proposal. Why not ask me again sometime soon. And in the meantime—well, you might even tell me that you love me. It might help.»
«I do, Myra. Please forgive me. But at least—you’re not definitely against marrying me? You’re not turning me down?»
She shook her head slowly. Her eyes, staring at him, were very beautiful.
«Then, Myra, let me explain why I am so late and so sudden in asking you. First I have been working desperately and against time. Do you know what I’ve been working on?»
«Something to do with defense, I know. Some—device. And, unless I’m wrong you’ve been doing it on your own without the government backing you.»
«That’s right,» Braden said. «The high brass wouldn’t believe my theories—and most other physicists disagreed with me too. But fortunately I have—did have—private wealth from certain patents I took out a few years ago in electronics. What I’ve been working on has been a defense against the A-bomb and the H-bomb—and anything else short of turning Earth into a small sun. A globular force field through which nothing—nothing whatever—can penetrate.»