The Philosophical Strangler

  Of course I dug in my heels right there. Until I found out just what the perks and requirements were for my new job as "Professional Hero, Excelsior, Management," I wasn't about to let any precedents get established. Not for nothing does the wise man say: "Lackey once, you'll lackey forever."

  "Do it yourself!" I snarled. "What? Am I supposed to be some kinda—"

  Sometimes it's a real pain in the ass trying to have a rational discussion with Greyboar. For a guy who claims to love philosophy, he's got an astonishing lack of appreciation for the dialectic. He picked me up and pitched me through the Evil Horizon.

  Having, on occasion, undergone this lowbrow form of debate with him, I landed in a roll and came up to my feet without injuries or too much, even, in the way of damage to my dignity.

  "What seems to be the problem?" I asked, dusting myself off casually. "Greyboar asked me to look into it."

  Hrundig shrugged and jabbed a thumb at the Horizon. "Damned thing won't let Benvenuti through. We just tried again."

  Benny was standing next to him, looking exceedingly disgruntled. His sculpted physique was starting to look much the worse for wear. That might have assuaged my primitive envy, except that his loincloth was looking worse still. Not to put too fine a point on it, he'd have been more modest if he were stark naked.

  But the truth is I'd grown pretty fond of the guy, despite his handicaps. And I reassured myself that, first, Gwendolyn was on the other side to keep him preoccupied; and, second, that he really didn't seem to have much of a poaching inclination; and, finally, that neither Angela nor Jenny had ever been the least impressed by standard notions of male pulchritude. Any kind of male pulchritude, actually. (Except me!)

  So I didn't hesitate more than two seconds before setting the whole matter straight.

  "Evil Horizon!" I hollered. "Cut the crap!"

  The Evil Horizon might have flickered, maybe. Good enough. I told Benny the way was clear and he leaped into it and came bouncing back and suffered a bit more wear and tear. The loincloth was pretty much nonexistent, now.

  "Guess not," I mused. I scratched my head, not sure what to do.

  Then, the Evil Horizon flashed soundless shrieks of lightning and started getting real fuzzy around the edges. A moment later, Zulkeh came stalking through the damn thing. As casually as if he were taking an evening stroll, except for the ferocious scowl on his face and the way he was waving his staff around.

  "Impudent metaphysical phenomenon!" he barked. "Bah! Attempt to obfuscate me, will you?" He stopped more or less in the middle of the Evil Horizon—which was more in the way of a rapidly-receding tunnel, now—and began making peculiar gestures with his one hand while fingering various grotesque carvings on the staff with the other.

  "The principle is well established!" he proclaimed. "I refer you to Chandrasekhar Sfondrati-Piccolomini's magisterial pandects, in which the limit of irredeemable moral collapse is set precisely at 1.4 times the mass of preexisting wickedness from which, however—take note, ethereal ignoramus!—must be subtracted the degree of coercion involved in attempting to force said collapse, the which—attend, spectral wretch!—must in turn be calculated—and calculated only—by use of—"

  Hrundig and Benny and I raced into the opening at the center of the Evil Horizon, passing Zulkeh in a flash.

  "—not forgetting, of course, to factor out all manner of sins which are not germane—"

  And emerged back in the outer cavern just in time to see the fallen angel and the fallen saints rise shakily from the state of scholarly stupor in which Zulkeh must have sent them before he started his pedant's charge into the Horizon.

  I almost felt sorry for them. Not quite.

  Zulkeh came out himself a moment later. Behind him, what was left of the Evil Horizon seemed to tighten into a ball. Like a whipped cur.

  The mage glowered down at the angel and the saints. "Shocking!" he pronounced. "To see such incompetence in official authorities!"

  "We were just following the rules," whined one of the fallen saints. "Decreed by the Old Geister Himself!"

  Zulkeh sniffed. "A sad state of affairs, when God Almighty fails to stay abreast of the literature." Then, sighing: "But—'tis well said. Mathematics is properly the province of the youthful scholar. I fear me the Lord is past His Prime."

  The fallen saints glowered and the fallen angel seemed about to make some kind of protest, but Zulkeh's glare cowed them into silence.

  "Bah!" He turned to the rest of us. "Come, my fellow adventurers—let us be off. For even as I correct divine error, time wanes!"

  Zulkeh began striding toward the door leading back into the Infernal Regions. "We may still make good our escape before the equinox of galactic oscillation!"

  * * *

  And—we did.

  Just by the skin of our teeth, mind you, and we probably wouldn't have made it at all if Zulkeh hadn't decided to gamble with the Osirian Detour. Which was no fun at all, what with having to fend off a giant serpent in pitch darkness riding the most primitive damned boat you ever saw with only a ragpatch doll of a so-called deity to steer the blasted thing. But at least we were able to circumvent all the Joe relics and the Nun and the Beast From Below and the deadly Worm of the Deep—the other Worm of the Deep, the really nasty one; not Apep, who's just a glorified snake—and the Slathering Sanguine Skulker and the Creeper from the Crevasse and the Undulant Umbellant from Under and the It and the Thing and the Them and the They.

  We did have a moment's unpleasantness with the Torrid Terror. And the Flaying Crutchman. But the Minions of the Minotaur were pretty small potatoes and the Minotaur himself never made a showing. And now that I've had a bit of a set-to with troglodytes I can assure you that their reputation is grossly exaggerated.

  The Mesozoic ones might have been a bit of a handful, true. But with Greyboar along that encounter was pretty much a picnic. Actually, it was a picnic. The troglodytes mistook Greyboar for a distant cousin and insisted we stay for lunch. Don't ask me what we ate. The less said about Mesozoic troglodyte cuisine the better.

  But at least we didn't run into any poetry, except for when Hrundig got tipsy at the picnic—on what? don't ask—and he started matching lays with the Mesozoic troglodytes and got adopted into the clan himself.

  In fact, when we finally got back into our house we discovered that only thirty-six hours had elapsed. At least, according to the grandfather clock which Jenny and Angela had bought at an auction and installed into what they called our "foyer."

  Zulkeh was ecstatic. "Proof positive!" he exclaimed. "For this alone, the expedition was worth it! Irrefutable evidence that time passes in the netherworld at a rate precisely"—a bunch of incomprehensible twaddle here—"and that Greenwich Laebmauntsforscynneweëld is every bit the dunce that I have named him in treatises too numerous to detail. To which," he added, stalking toward the library, "I shall now add yet another."

  * * *

  So he was happy. Marvelous.

  So was Shelyid, needless to say, because while the wizard spent the next several days in nonstop scribbling at the writing desk in the library, the dwarf could lounge around without any of the onerous duties which Zulkeh usually saddled him with. Dust the mage off, once or twice, and that was it. Spent the rest of his time with Hrundig and Greyboar and the Cat getting plastered down at The Trough. Marvelous.

  Magrit must have been happy too, judging from the way she decamped in the middle of the first night back. I caught a glimpse of her by candlelight passing through the front door, cackling something about Finally Getting Even with somebody or other. Wittgenstein mooned me on the way out.

  Marvelous.

  Gwendolyn and Benvenuti? Oh, they were downright ecstatic—in that ridiculous star-crossed-lovers' achy-breaky way of theirs. Because of the "rigors," as they say, of our trek out of the netherworld, they hadn't been able to talk much until we got back. Then they spent a few hours holding hands on the couch in the salon, having what people call a "heart-to-heart." Much as I tr
ied, I couldn't help overhearing some of it. The gist of which was that As He Was Still Committed To Art—and had apparently picked up some kind of silly Foul Wrong To Be Righted In The Blood Of The Evildoer along the way—and She Was As Always Bound Body And Soul To The Cause and, furthermore, Disapproved Of Personal Vengeance, their love was every bit As Hopeless As Ever and therefore They Must Part Again.

  Which, once settled, didn't stop the two of them from spending the next several days not moving once out of their bedroom on the third floor. Well. "Not moving" in the sense of leaving the bed. I began to fear for the structural integrity of the building. Marvelous.

  On the morning of the fourth day after our return from the netherworld, Benny stopped into the library to bid me farewell. Hrundig was with him, waiting in the doorway.

  "Adieu, good Ignace!" he exclaimed, in his perfect baritone. "I must be off! There is a wrong to be avenged! In the blood of the perpetrator!"

  I'd been wondering why he was garbed all in black. He even drew his rapier out of its scabbard and inspected the razor-sharp blade with great satisfaction. Which was a bit unusual. Despite appearances, Benvenuti really wasn't much given to dramatic excess.

  "Off, I say! Godferret Superior #3 is a doomed man!"

  I hadn't realized Benny had a grudge against the guy as much as Hrundig did. Normally, I would have asked about it, but I was too mired in my own misery to care much about the travails of others.

  I did manage to summon up enough civility to inquire as to his plans After The Wrongdoer Met His Just Desserts. Given that Benvenuti had pretty much scuttled his prospects as an artist anywhere in Sfinctria. Benny shrugged and said that he was thinking of perhaps trying his fortune in Kankria.

  "Kankr?" I choked. "Kankr? They haven't got a pot to piss in!"

  "All the greater the challenge, then!" he replied. His perfect teeth gleamed under the perfect mustache. Then, with a flourish of his cape, he was gone and Hrundig with him.

  A few hours later, after nightfall, Gwendolyn made her own departure. She took the route through the Underground Railroad, of course. Even at night, Gwendolyn wasn't going to risk being seen on the streets of New Sfinctr. Not with Queen Belladonna having just issued a new writ for her arrest.

  She kissed me on the cheek before she left, and we hugged for maybe ten minutes and I'll admit that warmed me up a bit. Well, okay, a lot. Even though I blamed her almost as much as Greyboar for the disastrous state of affairs we found ourselves in, I was still glad that the old feud was over. The truth is, I had a soft spot in my heart for that woman. Squishy soft, to be honest.

  Then Greyboar wandered in and gathered us both up in his own embrace. It was the three of us again, like it hadn't been in a lot of years. An awful lot of years. Even if it was only for a moment, before Gwendolyn went off to her crazy revolution and Greyboar and I went off on even crazier feats of derring-do.

  The arms around me got tighter. Then tighter. Gwendolyn's even more than Greyboar's. I'd forgotten how strong the woman was. But I hadn't forgotten her, it seemed. And so there was a little strange part of me—that maniac that resides somewhere in everybody—that was happy as a lark.

  Stupid bastard. All these years I'd spent, trying to pound some sense into him. And here he was, back again, just as crazy as ever.

  * * *

  Gwendolyn left then, after giving me a last kiss. Greyboar escorted her out of the room. I stayed behind, simultaneously basking in the warmth of the present and shivering at the bleak bitter cold of the future.

  Reconciliation. A marvelous thing, indeed. Marvelous.

  Still—

  A disastrous state of affairs is a disastrous state of affairs, no matter how you slice it.

  * * *

  And what was I doing all this time, you're wondering?

  Ha!

  Working like a dog, what else? It's the old story. The proles can play when the shift is over. But responsible management stays on, working weak and weary into the night.

  Chapter 32.

  Saved by the Rules

  Sure, sure. Everybody else could lounge around, basking in the

  splendor of our glorious deed and our even-more-glorious newfound moral stature.

  Professional Heroes, Excelsior! Marvelous!

  Well . . . To be precise, Greyboar was a Professional Hero, Excelsior. I wasn't. I wasn't even a Professional Hero's manager and agent, to my chagrin. The first thing I discovered upon our return—we'll get to it; hold your horses—is that a Professional Hero can't have a manager and agent. Matter of professional ethics, don't you know? Seems that by the nature of the trade, a Hero must always act out of High Principles, and a manager/agent would tend to bring that principle under what they call a "cloud of disrepute."

  Which meant . . .

  That I was now officially a Professional Hero, Auxiliary, Sidekick. With the wondrous prospect of eventually advancing—should the sidekick Prove His Mettle In Deeds Of Renown—to the august status of Professional Hero, Auxiliary, Companion.

  Marvelous.

  * * *

  All this was explained to me the day after our return from the netherworld. At the crack of dawn, there came a furious pounding on our door. Bleary-eyed, I opened the entrance and beheld three stooped and withered old men, clad in rags, each clutching a bundle of tomes.

  They charged into the foyer without so much as a by-your-leave. "Where's the dining room?" demanded one. "We'll need the largest table in the house," quavered another.

  The third one didn't say anything. Jenny and Angela had appeared in the foyer, rubbing sleep from their eyes, and the oldster was ogling them. Not that they weren't worth ogling, mind you, dressed as they were in those gauzy nightgowns which they favor (and I normally do except when lechers are in the vicinity). But I still thought it was grotesque. The way the geezer was wheezing, I was half-sure he was about to expire on the spot. Which I wouldn't have minded in the least, except I'd have to deal with the body. From the looks of them, if his two companions tried to carry him out they'd drop dead themselves.

  "It's that way," yawned Jenny. She pointed the way to the dining room and started back up the stairs. Angela followed. "Call us if you need anything, Ignace," she mumbled.

  All three of the vieillards ogled them until they passed out of sight. Then, they nodded in unison.

  "Excellent! Excellent!" exclaimed one. "Flagrant libertinism," proclaimed another. "The Second of the Sure Signs," he added gleefully, cackling and rubbing his hands.

  I had no idea what they were talking about. I was just coming awake enough to order them out of the house when they charged down the hallway toward the dining room. By the time I got there, they had all the tomes spread out and open, covering the entire surface.

  I was about to toss them out bodily when they spoke the horrid words.

  "Ahem. Sirrah Ignace. We are the Rules Committee of the Professional Heroes Guild. Here to welcome you into our ranks and instruct you as to your new responsibilities. I am Pathos. This is Bathos, and the other goes by the name of Cannabis."

  "We also double as the Ethics Committee," added Bathos. Apologetically: "I'm afraid we're required to do so by our small numbers and meager purse. We are not, as you are perhaps aware, one of the more populous and prosperous guilds."

  The two of them turned to Cannabis, as if waiting for him to speak. But he was just ogling the walls, apparently oblivious. Perhaps he was hoping that more nubile damsels might spring forth from the woodwork. I got the feeling his mind wasn't entirely there.

  Pathos cleared his throat. "Well. He's had a bit of a rough time of it for the past few decades. Ever since that unfortunate episode with the dryads."

  He heaved a small sigh. "To be honest, Sirrah Ignace, we're the smallest and the poorest of the professional guilds. In fact, the three of us are pretty much it, in the Excelsior class. Except for Hamhead Jones, if he recovers from his injuries. And the Apprentices Rafael and Ethelrede the Younger." Again, he cleared his throat. "Assuming t
hat Rafael comes out of his coma. And Ethelrede the Younger escapes from the rock to which he's currently chained in the netherworld, after carving himself a new wooden leg."

  "Oh, no," I croaked.

  "So pleased to welcome you into the Guild!" exclaimed Bathos. "I think I speak for all of us when I say we were delighted—"

  "Ecstatic!" qualified Pathos. Cannabis flopped his head around, drooling a bit. Agreement, perhaps, but I suspected he was lost in unfortunate memory.

  "—to hear the news that Greyboar the Great has eschewed his wicked ways in favor of a Hero's Life."

  "Oh, no!" I wailed.

  * * *

  It was all downhill from there. By the end of the day, when they finally left, the Guild All-Committees-In-One had made clear our new professional ethics and standards.

  Starvation loomed, assuming we survived that long.

  Just to drive home the point, our first job showed up on our doorstep that same afternoon.

  "We're the village elders from the small province of Rockandahardplace," pronounced the gap-toothed swineherd at the front. "Terrible it's been, the way the Dragon devours our maidens. Which puir lasses we moost chain up outside the Creature's lair 'pon every full moon."

  "Terrible! Terrible!" intoned the other dozen or so peasants. "Been the ruination of all moral standards! 'Tis nary a maiden to be found past the age of twelve! The foul slatterns!"

  The swineherd cleared his throat. "Fortunate, as it is, th'Dragon's no really so fussy."

  They beamed at me. Then, two of them hauled up a small cart filled with potatoes. A none-too-plump piglet was tied to the cart, looking none too pleased.

  "O' course," announced the doughty fellow in charge, "we has brought th'customary Gift To The Hero. As stip'lated in the Rules."