"Humans are rarely asked to these matters," Ylith said. "But of course I see what you mean." "And when do I get my reward?"
"I don't know anything about that," Ylith said. "You'll just have to wait. This is Limbo, and in Limbo, people wait." Ylith conjured herself away with an elegant move of her slim hands. Mack paced around for a while, then saw a pile of books on a little table and sat down in a chair beside them. He picked up The Road to Hell and How to Find It, a product of the Satanic Press. He read, "Do you really want to get into Hell?
Don't be surprised. A lot of people do! You're not alone. Hell is characterized by the importance of the appetites. Unlike the stories told, you can feed these appetites perfectly well in Hell. Trouble is, they never stay fed. But they never did when you were alive, either. Let us consider…"
Suddenly there was a flash of light and a puff of smoke. When the smoke cleared away Faust was standing there. He was looking good, dressed in a fine scholar's gown with an ermine collar.
"Hi, there!" Mack said, happy to see a familiar face, even if it was Faust's, and even if it was frowning.
Faust said, "Look, I'm in a hurry. Did you see a tall, very skinny man with yellowish eyes and long, lank dark hair and a somewhat weird expression go by here?" Mack shook his head. "Nobody's passed this way since I've been here except for a female spirit named Ylith."
"No, she's not the one I'm looking for. The count of Saint-Germain said he'd meet me here. I hope he's not going to be late." "Who's he?" Faust gave him a superior look. "Only one of the world's greatest magicians, that's who. He came along after your time."
"But your time is also my time. How do you know about him?"
"Oh, well," Faust said, "I am a great magician myself, the greatest who ever lived, and it is to be expected that I would know the important men in my line of work past and future. Living or dead, or yet unborn, we magicians stay in touch."
"Why did you call up this Saint-Germain guy?"
"I'm afraid it would be premature for me to tell you," Faust said. "Let's just say I have a little surprise in store."
"The contest is indeed over, though it will be interesting to hear what Ananke will make of your clumsy and uninformed efforts to influence history. But despite this being the end, the last word has not yet been spoken. To put it to you succinctly, my dear Mack, Faust himself has not yet been heard from."
"Faust? You mean you?"
"Of course I mean me! I am Faust, am I not?"
"In a way. But in a way I'm Faust, too."
Faust looked at Mack long and hard, and then threw back his head and laughed.
"You, Faust? My dear fellow, you are the very opposite of the Faustian ideal, an abject sort of creature, mean-spirited, docile to your masters, treacherous to your friends, vulgar, uninformed as to history, philosophy, politics, chemistry, optics, alchemy, ethics, and, above all, the master science, magic." Faust smiled cruelly. "Now, Mack, you may have filled Faust's shoes for a time, as a child can step into an adult's boots, and perhaps even take a step or two. But now, thankfully, your clownlike moment on the stage of human history is over. My friend, there is nothing Faustian about you, or, indeed, anything even interesting about you. You are one of the lowest common denominators of humanity, and we don't need you here any longer."
"Oh, is that so?" Mack said, his mind boiling with incoherent retorts. But he spoke to the empty air because with a single intricate gesture of his left hand, Faust had conjured himself away.
"I wish I could do that," Mack said aloud, alone again in the Waiting Room in Limbo, rage leaking out of him and being replaced by self-pity. He said aloud, "It isn't fair, putting me up against all these famous people, to say nothing of spirits who can conjure themselves where they please in the twinkling of an eye, whereas I, a common, earthy sort of man, must proceed on foot, and make effort, and take every step that lies between here and there."
"What dreary self-pitying do I hear?" a deep and sarcastic voice behind him said.
Mack turned quickly, startled, because he had thought himself entirely alone. There was Odysseus, tall and splendid, magnificent in a freshly pressed white tunic. Thrown over it was a cloak with the many folds beloved by sculptors. Odysseus had a face so noble that it could make a common man like Mack, with his common features and snub nose and freckles, consider himself no comelier than an ape. Odysseus stood a head taller than Mack, his skin bronzed, muscles rippling in his well-formed arms.
"Hello, Odysseus," Mack said. "What are you up to?"
"I'm on my way to the great assembly hall to listen to Ananke's judgment and perhaps offer a few ideas of my own. And your?"
"I'm waiting for Mephistopheles to come with the reward he promised me."
Odysseus shrugged. "Do you think it's wise to take it? Personally, I wouldn't accept an obol from these present-day devils. They seek to enslave you by making you dependent on them. But to each his own.
Farewell, Mack."
And with that, Odysseus released a Traveling Spell from his leather sack of spells and vanished from sight.
"Say you so?" said a voice behind him.
Mack had a moment to wonder if there was some special mechanism in the universe that enabled people always to conjure themselves into existence behind his back. He turned and beheld Rognir the dwarf, who had just come up through a hole in the floor that he had cut with his mattock.
"Of course I say so," Mack said. "Everyone else around here gets about by magic. They just have to say the word and they're where they want to be. But I am forced to walk, and I don't even know where I'm going."
"That's really tough," Rognir said with heavy sarcasm. "What do you think I do, buster?"
"You? I never thought about it. How do you get around?"
"Dwarves travel in the old-fashioned way. On foot. Dwarves don't just walk, however. They first dig tunnels to wherever they want to go, and then walk. You think it's easy to build a tunnel?"
"I suppose it's not," Mack said. He thought about it for a moment. "I suppose sometimes you encounter rock."
"The places we tunnel through are made up more of rock than of dirt," Rognir said. "We dwarves get positively cheerful when there's nothing but dirt to tunnel through. Rocks and boulders are bad enough, but the worst is tunneling under a swamp. You have to shore up the tunnel as you go along, and that means you have to cut balks of wood and drag them to where you need them. Balks of wood don't come ready-cut, and forests are usually far away from where you want the wood. Sometimes we use shaggy little ponies to help us, but most of the time it's just muscle power and grit."
"I guess you don't have it very good."
"Wrong again," Rognir said. "We dwarves feel that we have it very good indeed. We are not humans, remember. We are a class of supernatural being, though we don't make a big deal of it. We could have petitioned the high powers for special abilities. But that's not our way. We are the one and only race in the cosmos that isn't asking anybody for anything."
"Aren't you concerned about who wins the contest between Light and Dark?"
"Not in the slightest. The outcome doesn't affect us dwarves. Concerns about Good and Evil leave us cold. Dwarves know no good except digging, and no bad except digging, either. Our destiny is mapped out from birth to death: we dig till we drop, and when we're not digging we walk our tunnels and find jewels and attend jamborees. We don't expect spirits to come along and do our work for us."
"Well, I suppose I should feel properly ashamed of myself," Mack said, feeling, in fact, a little abashed.
"But what do you expect me to do?"
"Tell me if I'm wrong," Rognir said, "but isn't it true that all these spirits and demigods and Faust himself are fighting for the right to rule mankind for the next thousand years?"