On A Pale Horse

  "They are stacking up in the hospitals," she said severely. "The terminal cases just won't die, and new patients keep coming in at the normal rate—it's been only a few hours. Can you imagine what it will be after a few days'! The world can't go on this way!"

  "I know it is hard," Zane said. "But the alternative—"

  "Aren't you the one who smashed up a hospital room to free one client from a pointless and painful life? You believe in death!"

  "I believe in death," Zane agreed, seeing it as a revelation. "I really do! Death is the most sacred right of the living; it is the one thing that should never be denied. Yet in this case—"

  "It's not as if they can be saved," she continued relentlessly. "The fact that these poor people don't die does not mean they live productive lives. It only means a dreadful prolongation of terminal suffering."

  "True," Zane acknowledged weakly. "Death is certainly a necessary service to those whose life is finished. It is best that it be prompt and painless. Yet—"

  "I have been painting a picture," she said. She gestured to an easel she had set up in her living room. On it was a partially completed representation of a child whose lower body had been crushed by a car. Nearby was the tangled remnant of a bicycle or miniature magic carpet that the child had evidently been riding carelessly. Zane noted how artistically the elements of both carpet and machine had been integrated to make the device unidentifiable; this was a symbolic example, not a literal one. It had also been hastily done, for Luna had been home only a few hours.

  The most compelling thing was the aura of the child. It looked very like a soul half out of the suffering body, and its agony was manifest. What a terrible image this would be when complete!

  It was, of course, also a representation of Luna's own state. She had died violently, yet lived—and knew that she was at least in part responsible for the torment of all the people who could not die.

  "But if Satan takes over Earth, because you are not there to stop him," Zane said, "millions of souls who might have gone to Heaven will instead be damned to just this type of torture in Hell! I must prevent—"

  "I can't believe that!" Luna cried. "Hell is only the place where bad souls are punished. In time, when these souls reform, they are freed—"

  "No, they're not! I checked with the Purgatory computer—"

  "Zane, I have decided. I want you to end your—" The door crashed open. A brutal-looking man charged in, pointing a handgun at Zane. "Now shall you die, Death, and I shall take your place!" he bellowed.

  "How did he get past my griffins?" Luna demanded indignantly. "Where's my moon moth?"

  "My Lord Satan spelled them off," the intruder said with an evil grin. "You will be the first booty I take, gorgeous creature, once I have the office."

  Zane drew his cloak and hood more closely about him. "Beware, oaf! I am invulnerable to mortal weapons."

  "Not any more, Death!" the thug cried. "You have been declared in violation of your office, and your magic has been turned off." He sighted along the barrel of his weapon, aiming at Zane's heart.

  "No!" Luna screamed, lunging at the man.

  The gun fired. Blood spattered from Luna's right leg, where the bullet from the deflected gun struck. She crumpled.

  Zane had never been much of a fighter, but his berserker temper was invoked again. The red of Luna's blood magnified before his eyes like an exploding star. He launched himself at the intruder as the gun swept back toward him. One of Zane's gloved hands shoved the barrel aside; the other reached for the thug's face.

  The man screamed and fell back, dropping the gun. Zane turned to Luna, who was sprawled in her own blood. "I must get you to a doctor!"

  "No good!" she gasped. "The hospitals are overcrowded with the undead. No room for minor cases."

  "But you could bleed to death!"

  She flashed him a smile through her pain. "Then you'd have to take my soul, Death, wouldn't you! And that would—would free all the others."

  With renewed horror, Zane realized that this was a two-pronged trap. If he had been assassinated, his replacement would have ended the Deathstrike and taken Luna. If Luna had been mortally hurt, Zane himself might have had to take her, for he could not bear to see her suffer. Either way, Satan won.

  "But now that I've seen—" Luna paused to gasp, catching up with necessary breathing, then resumed. "—seen how eager Satan is to get rid of you, I'm not sure I ought to go."

  "Some medical attention—I don't even know how to stop the bleeding—"

  "Just fetch me the white gem from the mantel there," she said, her voice losing force. "It's a—healing stone—"

  Zane leaped to fetch the stone. Luna took it with trembling fingers and touched it to her leg, and the bleeding slowed and stopped. The flesh began visibly to mend around the edge of the wound. "I'm adding more burden to my soul, using this black magic," she said. "But I don't care about me. I think maybe you're doing more than I thought, Zane, and I should support you."

  "It's true," he said somewhat ungraciously. "But it's you Satan wants dead; I'm only blocking that. In a few days my petition will be heard, and the matter of your scheduling should be corrected. Then you will be free to live your life, and I can return to the duties of my office."

  "I really don't see how I can be so important," she said, getting to her feet as the wound in her leg disappeared. That was one potent Healstone! "It must be something my father set up. Then he arranged to have Death himself guard me..."

  "You're worth guarding," Zane said—"Now I must go. You have already been hurt because you were near me; I don't want that to happen again. I can protect you best by staying away from you."

  "But Satan can attack me regardless!" she protested. "He just proved that!"

  "It will do him no good while I retain the office. He must deal with me first."

  The thug Zane had downed groaned. They looked at him. Luna gasped and Zane stiffened.

  No wonder the man had given up the fight so readily. One of his eyes was a mass of blood and fluid. The other—

  "I must have forked him in the eyes with my fingers," Zane said. "I wasn't even conscious of—"

  Luna handed him the Healstone. Zane brought it to the man's face, near the punctured eye. In a moment the eye healed and cleared. Then he put it near the other. The eyeball was drawn up by its dangling nerve like a yoyo until it popped back into its socket and firmed in place.

  "I'm sorry," Zane told the man. "I acted without thinking."

  The man felt his face tentatively. "You fixed me up!" he exclaimed. "I can see again! The pain's gone!"

  "Yes. I shouldn't have struck you like that. I was angry."

  "I don't like you when you're angry!" the man said, scrambling to his feet. "Just let me out of here! I won't tangle with you again!" He stumbled out.

  "He thinks you healed him in a gesture of contempt," Luna said. "That makes him twice as wary of you. He doesn't know what you will do to him next time, or whether you will bother to fix it."

  Zane shook his head. "I never dreamed there was such a beast in me! To spike out a man's eyes—"

  "Just because he wanted to kill you and take your place and then kill me—"

  Zane smiled, grimly rueful. "I guess I did mean it. When I saw him shoot you, a fuse blew in my brain. All my civilized restraints puffed away like so much fog in a furnace." He shook his head. "I'll leave you now. I can't blame you for being horrified."

  She came to him, taking his hands in hers. "Zane, you have said you love me, and I have not replied. I feel I owe you a—a statement. I do like you, more than I have liked any other man except my father, but the situation—"

  "I value your candor," he said carefully. "Of course you are not in a position to—"

  "What I'm trying to say is that you can prevent me from dying, but love is on another schedule. So soon after my father, tangled in grief—I just can't—"

  "I understand." And he believed he did. Luna loved her father, and that man had died. Coul
d she afford to love Zane, too, when Satan was trying to assassinate him? When she herself was slated for early demise?

  "Oh, Zane, take care of yourself!" she cried, flinging her arms about him and kissing him.

  There was a neigh outside. Mortis was sounding the alarm. Zane disengaged hastily and hurried out.

  "Trouble?" he asked, checking the translation stone in his ear.

  "Other assassins," the horse said. "Some I can outrun, some I can't. It is best to keep on the move, so that we encounter them singly."

  Zane mounted and Mortis moved down the street, his hooves striking the pavement silently. Still Zane found he was not afraid. He was in a battle whose outcome he did not know, and he simply had to fight it through and hope he prevailed. It was as if there were some emotional spell on him, blocking out incapacitating fear. But there was no magic, simply his virtual certainty that he was right. This belief did indeed provide a kind of strength, without depriving him of his realistic cynicism about the outcome. He knew his cause was in doubt and perhaps hopeless, but he would not let it go.

  "Is this campaign against me legal?" Zane asked. "Won't there be an investigation if I am dispatched?"

  "Satan honors few rules that are not convenient for him. By the time his foul play is revealed, he will have had his way. Justice may pursue him, but he is the most elusive entity in the cosmos."

  Which meant that Satan was cheating again, and could probably get away with it. Accomplishment was nine-tenths of the law, in Eternity as well as on Earth. Zane wasn't even angry; he knew he had to deal with reality rather than with idealism. He might be in the right, but without his defensive Deathmagic, he was fairly helpless.

  Still, he recalled how rapidly, efficiently, and viciously he had acted when Luna had been directly threatened and when the Hellhounds had come for him. There was a lot of evil in him yet, being turned to good use against the greater evil of Satan's minions. Now that he had something to fight for, a new aspect of his personality was manifesting, making him more like Mars. He might be far from Heaven, but he wasn't entirely helpless.

  Mortis swerved. "There is one ahead," the horse explained. He galloped down a side alley. "Oops!" came a neigh of dismay.

  Even as the horse tried to dodge, Zane saw it. A tattered beggarman stood close, intercepting them, his arm swinging in a throwing motion.

  Suddenly Zane was choking. He was breathing, but suffocating. There seemed to be no oxygen in the air!

  Mortis turned his head, aware that something was wrong. "You have been hit by a suffocation-spell!"

  "Yes!" Zane gasped. He could speak, for there was atmospheric pressure, but he couldn't breathe!

  "The scythe! Use the scythe!"

  Bewildered, Zane wrenched the folded scythe from its holster on the horse. Through tear-blurred eyes he saw a hole in the end of the handle. He put his mouth to it—and sucked in oxygenated air.

  "It's a small-diameter suffocation-spell," Mortis explained. "Doesn't reach to my head. So the scythe tube is out of its range. The spell is bound to you, therefore you can't run away from it—but it loses power a meter out. In a few minutes it will dissipate; these things don't usually need much duration."

  Zane could appreciate why. If he hadn't had horse and scythe to extricate him—!

  In due course the spell dissipated as predicted, and Zane was able to put away the scythe and breathe freely. "Why is there a tube in the scythe handle?"

  "This sort of thing must have happened before," Mortis said. "My former master once used it to blow a dart; that's how I knew."

  Had attempts been made on Death's life before by supernatural agencies? It made a certain sordid sense. Surely Death had not universally pleased all parties at all times in the course of Eternity, and Satan was obviously one to try any means to get his way. So some Death officeholder along the line had had the scythe handle hollowed. Very nice.

  If Death had been under siege before, it seemed he had survived it. Otherwise he would not have been able to modify the scythe handle. That was a positive sign.

  No, maybe it was intended as a drinking straw, when water was available only from some well without a bucket, too deep to reach directly. He would probably never know. So he had no certainty. Were there other little things about this office that he ought to find out? His continuation as Death might depend on his information.

  "What other resources do I have?" he asked Mortis.

  "I hardly know," the horse confessed. "I have the impression that the powers of the office are far greater than normally employed, but your predecessor did not employ them."

  It did make sense. Death should not be balked or intimidated by others, not even by Satan. Otherwise the office would soon become meaningless. But what powers did the office retain, once its magic had been turned off? Had Death ever gone on strike before? If so, how had that been resolved?

  Mortis snorted. "Monster intercepting. I don't think I can avoid it."

  "Don't try," Zane said. "It's my quarrel, not yours. Set me down in the monster's vicinity."

  "You have courage."

  "No. I'm just doing what has to be done. I'm walled in by circumstance, like water in a channel. If I had choices, I'd flow away into the ground and be lost. I'm nothing by myself."

  "You have a choice. You can resign the office."

  "No."

  "Any Incarnation can resign without prejudice. I think that's how the others usually change personnel. They get tired or bored and make way for a successor."

  "Without prejudice?"

  "Reverting to the state of the soul when that person ended formal life. For you, this means balance."

  "So I would go to Heaven or Hell, exactly as I would have, had I not killed my predecessor. Nothing would have changed for me."

  "Yes. Of course, after your initiation period is done, your balance of good and evil will change, and your resignation would be on different terms."

  "Interesting." Zane considered. "No, I can't resign. My successor would take Luna, and Satan would win. I can't allow that to happen."

  "Then you do have courage. You have an easy way out that you do not accept."

  "No, if I had any acceptable way out, I would take it. That's not the same."

  Mortis halted at a green golf course. "The monster from Hell has intercepted us. You would have a better chance against it if you rode me."

  "You need to survive for my successor. You have not betrayed your office; I will not involve you further in my problem." Zane dismounted, took the scythe, and stepped forward. Then he paused and turned back. "What type of monster is it?"

  "A preying mantis."

  "Praying mantis? They're small."

  "Prey-ing mantis. A minion of Hell never prays, but does prey. They're large."

  Now the monster appeared. It was shaped like a praying mantis, but it was five meters tall. Its huge pincer legs looked capable of crushing a man in one fell squeeze. Its small head peered down at Zane from its awful height, judging at what point to pounce.

  Zane looked up at the mantis and was terrified. Courage? He had none of it! But he thought of Luna dying and Satan prevailing on Earth, and stood firm. "All right, move out," he told Mortis. "Fast!"

  The horse bolted—and the mantis struck. Its body launched forward so rapidly it blurred, and its massive forearms unbent and clapped together again like those of the insect monster it mimicked.

  It missed. Its pincer arms crunched together empty. Almost empty—there were a few strands of horsehair in that grasp.

  The mantis had been going for Mortis, the moving target. Zane had not moved at all, so had not triggered the monster's attack response. Blind luck! The horse had moved suddenly and so rapidly that he had escaped—but that episode was enough to demonstrate the blinding speed of the monster. Zane knew he could not outrun it. He could not even bring his scythe into play before the creature grabbed him; his reflexes simply were not fast enough.

  The lofty, tiny triangular head tilted as if trying
to discover what had become of the prey. Then the mantis got back to its feet, poising for a new launch. It had four legs besides the heavy front set, and four huge wings now folded along the back of the long body. The preying mantis looked clumsy, like a wooden branch propped on stilts but Zane had seen that creature move. It was no more clumsy than was Satan's tongue!

  Zane had had some notion of standing his ground and swinging the scythe, but now knew this was hopeless. All he could cut with the scythe was the middle pair of legs—and long before he got there, the front legs would catch him and crunch him. In fact, he couldn't move at all without getting pounced on; he had been warned by Mortis' departure. What, then, could he do?

  Well, he could wait. It seemed the mantis would not pounce as long as there was no motion. Probably it wasn't sure whether Zane was alive and, like the Hot Smoke dragon, did not feed on carrion. When he moved, it would know he was alive and would act accordingly, rendering him dead. What chance did he have? He couldn't wait forever, could he?

  He was a man, with a man's brain. He was much smarter than the monster; he was sure of that. But how could he outsmart it when he couldn't move?

  He conjured the five matchsticks to his mind's eye. Did ||||| offer any way out? It didn't seem to. How about ? Nothing there either. Try creative thinking: *.

  How could he outsmart a monster who would destroy him the moment he moved? Standing still and thinking smart thoughts wouldn't suffice; the mantis could surely outwait him. So if he moved, he lost, and if he stood still, he lost. What creative thought could alleviate the squeeze?

  Nevertheless, his thoughts played about the creative formation. Suppose he died where he stood, and his ghost haunted the preying mantis? That might serve it right, but meanwhile Satan would win. He needed to remain unmoving and alive at the same time his ghost haunted the monster and drove it away. A nonsense notion.

  Nonsense? Not necessarily. He had departed his body briefly in order to visit Hell; why not do it again, to confound the mantis?

  He tried, but nothing happened. He had no ghost to help draw him out, and probably his loss of magic also had something to do with it. His soul was now firmly fastened to his living body. It would depart only when his life did, and that was not the way he wanted to go.