"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?"
"That's my understanding of it," Mack said.
"Fine. So what are you going to do about it?"
"Me? You mean me personally?'
"That's who I'm referring to," Rognir said.
"Why… Nothing, I suppose. There's nothing I can do. And if there were, why should I?"
"Because it's your destiny they're talking about, dummy," Rognir said. "Don't you want a say in it?'
"Of course I do! But who am I to tell people how I should be ruled?" "Who is the one to speak for mankind? Is it Faust?"
Mack shook his head. "Faust thinks he's Mr. Universal, but he's really just a loudmouth magician with a couple of good tricks. People like that are different from the rest of us. I know some of their tricks, but when they talk about the higher aspects of the alchemist's art it leaves me cold." "Quite properly so," Rognir said. "It's all a lot of hot air. There's only digging. That's for us, the dwarves, of course. As for you, why should you let a mug like Faust tell you how you are to be ruled?"
Mack stared at him. "But what can I do?" "For one thing," Rognir said, "you can get angry."
"But I'm not mad at anyone," Mack said. But even as he denied it, he felt the stirrings of a long-suppressed rage. At first he thought he was faking it, as he had faked so many things in his life, and he told himself to calm down, it would go away. But this feeling of rage didn't go away. Instead it grew and spread through his head, until he could feel black anger inflaming his eyeballs, engorging the veins of his neck, threatening to burst out the top of his head. "Well, damn it, it's not right!" he burst out at last. "Nobody should decide the fate of the common man but the common man himself. It's been too long that we've let spirits, and so-called great men like Faust, decide our destinies for us. Now is the time to do something about it!" "Now you're talking," Rognir said.
Mack's shoulders sagged. "But what can I do?"
"It's an interesting question," Rognir said, and turned to the tunnel he had just excavated and walked into it.
Mack stood still in the room and stared for a while at the hole Rognir had disappeared through. He had a great desire to dive into it himself. But of course men don't dive into tunnels like dwarves. Mack crossed the room and opened the door. Outside, the vast, indistinct landscape of Limbo spread out before him. There were hills ahead, but they were nebulous, and seemed to disappear into the clouds, unless those were mist-veiled mountains behind them.
Looking more closely, Mack saw there was the indication of a path. He followed it through swirling white and yellow mists. Presently he came to a crossroads. There was a sign that read road to earth and pointed one way, road to hell another way, the way you've come pointing back the way he had come, and road to heaven as the last direction. Mack made up his mind and started walking.
pointed one way, road to hell another way, the way you've come pointing back the way he had come, and road to heaven as the last direction. Mack made up his mind and started walking.
2 It was a clear day in the part of Limbo reserved for the judgment of mankind's destiny. The sky was fishbelly white, but that was not unusual for the time of year. A few snowflakes had fallen earlier, but no real accumulation was expected. In the distance, the hills of Nothingness were a low blue line on the horizon. It was literally true that on a clear day you could see forever.
Mephistopheles and the Archangel Michael were sitting side by side on a tall pillar recently vacated by Simon Stylites, who had found a better way to mortify his spirit by picking a punishment from the future and forcing himself to watch televised reruns of every game the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had ever played.