He sighed at my ignorance. "To kill you we must try. That also is a rule. But there was no need for so good a job of it. No need for all the fancy business. These expediters sit around and think up these fancy schemes, and it's all right if that's the way they like to spend their time, but they get so hopped up about these fancy ways of doing it, that they have to try them out. The trouble they will go to accomplish simple homicide is past all understanding. It's all you humans' fault, of course. You humans do the same. Your book writers, your comic artists, your script writers—every one of your creative people—sit around and think up all these crazy characters and these impossible situations and we are the ones who get stuck with them. And that, I think, brings us around to the proposition I wish to talk with you about."
"Then get on with it," I said. "I've had a tough day and could do with about twenty hours of sleep. That is, if there is a place where I can bed down."
"Oh, there is," he said. "In between those two boulders over there is a bed of leaves. Blown in by the winds of latest autumn. It will be a restful place to catch a needed nap."
"Complete," I asked, "with rattlesnakes?"
"What do you take me for?" the Devil demanded, wrath-fully. "Do you think I have no honor, that I would entrap you? I pledge to you that no harm will come to you before you're well awake."
"And after that," I asked.
"After that," he said, "there is yet another threat and danger to fulfill the rule of three. You can rest assured that you have my best wishes in that encounter, whatever it may be."
"O.K.," I said, "since I can't weasel out of it. I wonder if you might just speak a word for me. I'm getting slightly worn down. I don't think I'd care right now for another serpent."
"I can promise you," the Devil said, "it won't be a serpent. And now let's get down to business."
"All right," I told him, somewhat weakly. "What is on your mind?"
"It is," the Devil said, somewhat petulantly, "this junky fantasy that you are feeding us. How do you expect us to build any kind of life system with all this fuzziness and froth? Little dicky birds perching on a branch and yelling 'I thought I saw a putty tat—I did, I did, I did, and the fool cat down there on the ground leering up at the bird in a helpless and half-guilty manner. Where, I ask you with wholesome honesty, can we arrive at any decent character in a situation such as this? You gave us, to start with, a foundation that was solid and substantial, born out of firm conviction and a sound belief. But now you are facetious, and you give us character patterns that are both improbable and weak, and material such as this, rather than contributing to our strength, is undermining all we have accomplished in the past."
"You mean," I said, "that it would be a more healthful setup for you if we continued to believe in devils, ghouls, and goblins, and such-like."
"Much more healthful," said the Devil, "at least if you believed with some sincerity. But now you make a joke of us…"
"Not a joke," I protested. "You must remember that, for the most part, the human race is not aware that any of you actually exist. How could they be when you go about killing off the ones who have some suspicion that this world exists?"
"It is this thing," said the Devil, bitterly, "that you designate as progress. You can do almost anything you want and you keep on wanting more and you fill your minds with hopeful expectations and have no room for introspection on personal values—such as one's own shortcomings. There is no fear in you and no apprehension.."
"There is fear," I said, "and plenty of apprehension. The difference is in the things we fear."
"You are right," the Devil said. "The H-bombs and the UFO's. What a thing to conjure up—crazy flying saucers!"
"Better, perhaps, than a devil," I reminded him. "A UFO a man might have some chance to reason with, but a devil, never. You kind of folks are tricky."
"It's the sign of the times," the Devil mourned. "Mechanics instead of metaphysics. Would you believe that in this sad land of ours we have a horde of UFO's, most detestable contrivances and inhabited by all manner of most horrendous aliens. But with no honesty in their horror such as I carry in my person. Gimmicky creatures — that make.no sort of sense."
"Perhaps it's bad for you," I told him, "and I can see your point. But I don't know what can be done about it. Except in certain culturally backward areas you find few people now who believe in you with any honesty. Oh, sure, they talk of you at times. They say 'to the devil with it' or that it's the devil's work, but mostly they don't even think of you when they are saying it. You've become a very faintly dirty word. The belief in you simply isn't there. Not the way it once was. I don't think that attitude can be changed. You can't stop human progress. You'll simply have to wait for what comes next. It might just possibly be something that will work to your advantage."
"I think we can do something," the Devil said, "and we're not about to wait. We've waited too long now."
"I can't imagine what you'd do," I said. "You can't…"
"I am not about to reveal my plans to you," he said. "You are by far too clever, with that dirty, weasely, ruthless cleverness of which only a human being can be capable. I tell you this much only so that sometime in the future you will understand and then perhaps will find some willingness to act as an agent for us."
And, saying this, he vanished in a puff of sulfurous smoke and I was left alone upon the ridgetop, the smoke of his leaving drifting eastward with the wind. I shivered in the wind, although it wasn't really cold. The coldness was, rather, from the company I'd been keeping.
The land was empty, lighted palely by the moon— empty and silent and foreboding.
He had said there'd be a bed of leaves between two boulders and I hunted for and found it. I poked around in it, but there were no rattlesnakes. I hadn't thought there'd be; the Devil didn't seem the kind of being who'd tell a downright lie. I crawled between the boulders and arranged the leaves so I'd be more comfortable.
Lying there in the darkness, with the wind moaning on the land, I thought, with thankfulness, of Kathy safely home. I'd told her that somehow we would make it back, the two of us together, and when I'd told her that I had not dreamed that within another hour she would be safely' home. Through no effort of my own, of course, but that didn't really matter. It had been the Devil's doing and although his act had not been dictated by compassion, I found myself feeling rather kindly toward him.
I thought of Kathy, her face turned up toward me in the firelight from the blaze upon the witch's hearth, and I tried to catch again the happiness that had been upon her face. I couldn't seem to get the right expression and while I still was trying I must have gone to sleep.
To wake to Gettysburg.
14
Something nudged me and woke me so quickly that I sat bolt upright and bumped my head on one of the boulders. Through the stars that spun within my brain I saw a man scrooched down and staring at me. He held a rifle and while the barrel was aimed in my direction, I got the impression that he wasn't really pointing it at me. He had used it, more than likely, to nudge me into wakefulness.
He wore a forage cap which did not fit well because it had been some time since he had had a haircut, and his jacket was a faded blue with brass buttons on it.