In a way, he realized, he had not really been living until he left his life. He had been born again, in death.
Now, as he got well into the office of Death, he began to believe he could fill it well. It was intent, more than capacity, that made the difference. Probably, his predecessor could have done a superior job - but hadn't bothered. Zane had less ability, but a strong desire to do right. He did not have to be a specter. He could try to make each person's necessary transition from life to Afterlife gentle. Why should anyone fear it?
Of course, he was still in his initiation period. If the powers that were didn't approve his performance, his personal balance of good and evil would suffer, and he would be doomed to Hell when he left the office. But as far as he knew, he could not be removed from the office by any other power. Not as long as he was careful. So if he was willing to damn his soul, he could continue indefinitely, doing the job right.
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Yes, that was it. "Damn Eternity!" he swore. "I know what's right, and I'm going to do it. If God damns me or Satan blesses me, then it's too bad, but I've got to have faith in my own honest judgment." Suddenly he felt much better; his self-doubt had been ameliorated.
His current client was underground, in the general vicinity of Nashville, the rustic song capital. This was no problem for Mortis, who merely phased down through the ground, carrying Zane along. He saw the strata of sand, gravel, and different kinds of rock, until he reached a sloping shaft through a vein of coal and came to the chamber where two miners had been trapped by a recent cavein. There was no hope for them; air was limited, and it would take days for others to clear the shaft of rubble.
It was completely dark, but Zane could see well enough. It seemed his office imbued him with magic vision, so that mere blackness could not stay him from his appointed rounds. The men were lying against a wall of rubble, conserving their strength and breath; they knew there was no way out.
"Hello," Zane said, feeling awkward.
One of the miners turned his head. The pupils of his eyes were enormous as they tried to see - and, of course, Zane became apparent, magically. "Don't look now," the man murmured, "but I think we're about to cash in our green stamps."
Of course the other looked and saw. The caped skull! That's Death!"
"Yes," Zane said. "I have come for one of you.
"You've come for us both," the first miner said. "We've only got air for an hour, maybe less."
Zane glanced at his watch. "Less," he said.
"God, I don't want to die!" the second miner said. "But I knew when I heard the cave-in start that it was hopeless. We were living on borrowed time anyway, with all the safety violations the company wouldn't fix. If I'd been smart, I'da gotten out of this business!"
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"Where would you have gone?" the first miner asked.
The other sighed. "Nowhere. I'm fooling myself; this is the only job I can handle." He looked again at Zane. "How much time?"
"Nine minutes," Zane replied.
"Time enough to shrive me."
"What?"
"Confess me. You know, my religion, final rites. I never was a good churchman, but I want to go to Heaven!"
The second miner laughed harshly. "I know I'm not going there!"
Zane brought the Sinstone near. "You are bound for Heaven," he told the first. "You are in doubt," he told the second. "That is why I must take your soul personally."
"In doubt? What does that mean?"
"Your soul is balanced between good and evil, so it is uncertain whether you will go to Heaven or to Hell, or abide awhile in Purgatory."
The man laughed. "That's a relief!"
"A relief?"
"As long as I do go to one place or another. I don't care if it's Hell. I know I deserve it. I've cheated on my wife, stolen from the government - you name it, I've done it, and I'm ready to pay."
"You don't fear Hell?"
"Only one thing I fear, and that is being in a cramped box like this, with the air running out and me helpless - for eternity. For an hour I can stand it, but not forever. I don't care what else happens to me, as long as it isn't that."
"/ care!" the first miner said. "I'm so scared, I'm near gibbering!"
Zane considered. He realized that the dying needed someone to hold their hands, not to shun them. It was hard enough for any person to relate to the unrelatable. Zane had to try to help. "I came for the one in balance, but I think the other needs my service more."
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"Sure, help him," the balanced client said. "I won't say I like dying, but I can handle it, I guess. I knew the odds when I signed up for this job. Maybe I'll like Hell."
Zane sat beside the other. "How can I help you?"
"Shrive me, I told you; that will help some."
"But I'm no priest; I'm not even of your religion."
"You are Death; you'll do!"
That must be true. "Then I will listen and judge - but I know already your sin is not great."
"One thing," the man said, troubled. "One thing's haunted me for decades. My mother - "
"Your mother!" Zane said, feeling a familiar shock.
"I think I killed her. I - " The miner paused. "Are you all right. Death? You look pale, even for you."
"I understand about killing mothers," Zane said.
"That's good. She - I was just a teenager when - well, she was in this wing of the hospital, and - "
"I understand," Zane repeated. He reached out and took the man's hand. He knew his own gloved fingers felt like bare bones, but the miner did not shy away.
"She had cancer, and I knew she was in pain, but - "
Zane squeezed his hand.
Reassured, the miner continued: "I visited her, and one day she asked me to step outside the room and read what it said on the - you know, above the door, what kind of word it was. So I went out and looked, and there was something written there, but I couldn't read it. It was in Latin, I think. I went back and told her that, and she asked whether it was - she spelled it out, letter by letter, and you know, she was right, that's what it was. So I agreed that was it, wondering how she had known it, and she thanked me. I thought she was pleased."
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The miner took a shuddering breath. "And next morning she was dead. The doctor said she seemed just to have given up and died in the night. No one knew why, because she had been fighting so hard to live before. But I - I checked into it and found out that that word in Latin I had spelled for her - it meant incurable. I had told her there was no hope, and so she quit trying. I guess I killed her."
"But you didn't know!" Zane protested.
"I should have known. I should have - "
"Then you did her a favor," Zane said. "The others were hiding the truth from her, keeping her alive and in pain. You released her from doubt." He was speaking for himself as much as for the miner. "There is no sin on your soul for that."
"No, I shouldn't have let her know!"
"Would it have been right to preserve her life by a lie?" Zane asked. "Would your soul have been cleaner then?"
"It wasn't my place to - "
"Come off it!" the other miner said. "You were guilty of ignorance. Nothing else. / wouldn't have known what those Latin words were either."
"How would you know?" the first one snapped. "You weren't there!"
"I guess not," the second miner admitted wryly. "I don't even know who my mother was."
The first miner paused, set back. "There is that," he conceded. Somehow it seemed that in making that technical concession, he was also accepting the human point. At least he had known his mother and cared about her.
"Now, I'm no philosopher," the second said. "I'm a sinner from way back. But maybe if I'd had a mother like yours, a good woman, I would have turned out better. So take it from one who hasn't any right to say it: you should remember your mother, not with guilt or grief, but with gratitude - for the pleasure she gave you while she lived, for the way she steered you toward Heaven instead of Hell."
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"For a sinner, you've got quite an insight! But if I could only have helped her live longer - "
"Longer in a box with the air turning bad?" the other asked.
"No, I agree," Zane said. "It was time to end it. These things are scheduled in ways no mortal comprehends. She knew that, though you did not. If there had been a chance for survival, she might have been willing to fight on through, for the sake of her family, for the things she had to do on Earth. But there wasn't, so it was best that she not torture herself any longer. She put aside life as you would put aside a piece of equipment going bad, and she went out of the gloom of the depths of the mine and on up to the brightness of Heaven."
"I don't know." The man was breathing shallowly now, not finding enough oxygen in the air. He seemed to be more sensitive to this deprivation than his companion was. Zane had no problem; evidently his magic helped him this way, too. He was still discovering things about his office.
"You will join her there," Zane concluded. "There in Heaven. She will thank you herself."
The miner did not answer, so Zane released his hand and turned to the other, his true client. "Are you sure there is nothing I can do for you?"
The man considered. "You know, I'm a cynic, but I guess I do sort of crave some meaning in life, or at least some understanding. There's this song going 'round in my head, and it sort of grabs me, and I think it means something, but I don't know what."
"I'm not expert at meaning," Zane said. "But I can try. What is the song?"
"I don't know the title or anything. It's just, I guess it's an old whaling song. Maybe I have whaling blood in my veins. It goes - what I can remember - goes like this: ... and the whale gave aflunder with its tail, and the boat capsized, and I lost my darling man, and he'll never, never sail again. Great God! And he'll never sail again. It's that 'Great God!' that gets me. I don't give a damn about God, never did, but I feel it, and I don't know why."
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Zane suspected the man cared more about God than he thought, but did not make an issue of that. "It's an exclamation," he said, intrigued by the fragment. There was indeed feeling in it, as of a wildly grieving widow crying out in pain. "It's a protest. Great God! Why did this have to happen? For a sunken ship, or a mine cavein. Great God!"
"Great God!" the first miner echoed.
"But why is a song about whaling bothering me now, when I'm buried in this stinking hole?" the second miner demanded.
"It must have special associations for you," Zane said. "I'm not equipped to interpret - "
"Clear enough to me," the first miner said. "Drown in the depths of the sea, suffocate in the depths of the earth, and your wife grieves."
"Yeah, maybe she will," the second said, brightening. "But I don't think that's it. It's as if there's a message, if only I could get it." He snapped his fingers as if trying to call the message forth, and the sound echoed in the recesses of the mine. "Look, Death, you want to do something, tell me a story about that song. Anything, just to make it make some sense."
This, then, was the client's last request. Both men were gasping now, and time was short. Zane had to try to honor the man's wish, even if he bungled the attempt. He thought for a moment, then started to talk - and what he said surprised him.
"There was a young female whale named Wilda. She roamed the oceans of the world, happy in the company of her kind, and when she came of age she thought she would mate as the other whale cows did and bear a cub and bring it up. But then the hunters came, in their huge boats, and they speared her father and her mother and her bull friend and hauled them out of the water so that nothing was left but their blood and dreadful fragments of their bodies that the sharks congregated to consume. Wilda escaped, for she had learned magic; she changed her form so she resembled a trashfish and swam away.
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"She grieved, singing her whalesong of loss and pain, but she was angry, too, and confused. Why should these little creatures from land, called men, come to slay whales who had never harmed them? It seemed to make no sense. She realized that she had no hope of dealing with the problem when she didn't understand the motive of the enemy. So Wilda changed herself into human form and walked to the fishing village where the whalers lived.
"Some human folk laughed at her, for she was naked and innocent of their ways. But a young man named Hank took her into his home, for she was also beautiful. Hank lived with his widowed mother, and the two of them clothed her and taught her the tongue of their kind, and she learned quickly, for she was an intelligent whale and really wanted to know the nature of this strange species. She learned that Hank was a whaler, who went out periodically to hunt whales, for that was how he earned his living. Here on land, food was not free for the taking; people could not simply swim about and open their mouths and catch and swallow succulent squid; and when it grew cold they could not blithely migrate south to warmer waters, for travel was complicated on land. A human person had to work and get gold, and he used this gold to buy all the necessities that life on land required.
"Now Wilda understood. There was no personal animosity here; the menfolk had a more pressing lifestyle than the whalefolk, which compelled them to acts they might not otherwise have considered, and they did not regard the whalefolk as sapient creatures. Perhaps if the menfolk were made to understand about the culture and feelings of the whales, things would change and the dreadful killing would stop. She tried to explain to Hank, but he thought she was joking. After all, his father had been killed by the flunder of the tail of a whale, so that his grieving mother had had to bring him up alone. Great God! How could he feel for the whales? He asked Wilda to marry him, for he needed a woman and he believed her to be his gift from Heaven.
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"This made things very difficult for Wilda, for she had come to love him, though he was not of her species. So she brought him to the edge of the sea and walked into the water and returned to her natural form, believing that once he had seen her as the whale cow she was, he would be revolted. But he cried for her to come back and apologized for not believing her before and promised he would never kill another whale. She had, after all, persuaded him, and his love surmounted his awareness other nature.
"But now she was a creature of the sea again, and the call of the sea was strong. How could she leave the brine forever and be dry? And she spied another whale, a bull who was handsome and strong. She thought she might mate with him, but he told her he was really a squid, who had assumed the form of her kind in order to learn why the whales preyed on the squids, who did not harm the whales. Wilda was amazed and chagrined, for she had never thought of these creatures as having feelings or being sapient. How could she return to devouring squid? Yet she realized that death was a chain of eat and be eaten, with no justice to it except need, power, and chance, and that in this respect her species was no different from the human species or the squid species. It was all a matter of viewpoint. So she apologized to the squid, returned to land, resumed her girl form, and married Hank, her problem resolved.
"And perhaps," Zane concluded, "if we men had a similar insight into the larger pattern of our existence, we, too, would accept the natural order, though at times it is painful for us, especially when we die prematurely."
He stopped, waiting for some response from the min- ers. But too much of the oxygen had been exhausted, and the men were unconscious. Zane took his client's soul and returned to Mortis, uncertain whether he had done the right thing.
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Now he had another concern. Someone he knew was being taken out of turn, and he was not as acquiescent about her fate as Wilda had been about that of her family. But how could he gain the comprehension he needed?
Nature had spoken of patterns of thinking. The first was the linear path:
the generally straightforward mode. Would that do him any good?
What was the straightforward way to gain understanding? To do as Wilda had done, and ask someone who had the information. Who was that? Who else but the Purgatory computer!
He stopped in at Purgatory once he had caught up with his case load. "I want to consult the records," he told the information girl.
She directed him to the appropriate wing. It was, of course, another computer center, with a terminal ready for him. He wasn't sure whether this was the same computer he had dealt with before, but suspected that all terminals connected to the same central mechanism.
He sat down and turned the terminal on.
HOW MAY i HELP YOU, DEATH? the screen inquired in green.
"I want to look up the status of Luna Kaftan," Zane said, starting to type in the order.
THIS TERMINAL IS PROGRAMMED FOR VERBAL INPUT, the screen advised him. LUNA KAFTAN, UNDEAD. PRESENT RATIO OF GOOD TO EVIL 35-65. THIS FALLS WITHIN THE PARAMETERS FOR UNASSISTED CONVEYANCE TO HELL UPON DECEASE.
"Exactly," Zane said, wondering how the computer could be so current on a soul that had not been officially read. But of course Purgatory had to know such things, in order to arrange Death's schedule for pickups. "She deceived her father and also took a chunk of his evil so he could qualify for Heaven." But as he said it, he felt a wrongness. Magician Kaftan had not sought Heaven, he had sought an appointment with Death. He could readily have given Luna a little more of his burden of sin and been assured of Heaven. Instead, he had calculated it precisely, so Death would have to attend him personally, so Magician and Death could chat about seeming inconsequentials. Just as Nature had summoned Zane for a different idle chat. Why did these powerful people go to such lengths for so little?
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THE LAWS OF DETERMINATION DO HAVE SOME LOOPHOLES, the screen confessed.
"If you ran Eternity, things would be different?" Zane inquired with a smile.
AFFIRMATIVE. And the screen flashed a cartoon smile- face formed of tiny squares.
"Yet the presumption was that she would have time to redress the balance," Zane said. "Why is she scheduled for premature demise?"
THAT INFORMATION IS NOT IN THE FILE.
"But motive is an essential part of the record," Zane protested. "It is needed to determine whether any given soul is good or evil. Since the balance determines where any person goes upon demise, and whether I, Death, will attend directly - "
THE CLIENT'S MOTIVES ARE RECORDED. NOT THE MOTIVE OF THE ONE WHO SCHEDULED HER EARLY TRANSFORMATION.
"Who scheduled it?" Zane asked.
NOT IN FILE.
"How can such an order be given anonymously?" Zane demanded. "Doesn't there have to be some sort of accountability, in a matter of such importance?"
NORMALLY SUCH DIRECTIVES ARE SIGNED, the Screen agreed. THIS ONE is NOT. ASSUMPTION: THERE HAS BEEN A GLITCH.
"You mean the order isn't valid?" Zane's pulse increased. Luna might live, after all!
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PAUSE FOR VERIFICATION... NO REFUTATION OF ORDER FOUND.
"But no signature either? Shouldn't that order be set aside, pending identification of the source?"
THERE IS NO PROVISION FOR SUCH INACTION.
"But you can't condemn someone to premature death without authenticity! There must be authentication!"
ASSUMPTION: AUTHENTICATION EXISTS, BUT HAS BEEN GLITCHED OUT.
Zane realized that the machine was not about to take responsibility for changing an order. Bureaucracies were fashioned to enable their components to avoid responsibility. He would have to approach this circuitously. "Who has the authority to issue such a directive?"
CLARIFY QUESTION.
Oh. He hadn't specified which directive - the one decreeing Luna's early death, or the one canceling the first. "Who can specify that a given individual shall die out of turn?"
ALL INDIVIDUALS DIE IN TURN.
"Don't get canny with me, computer! Luna Kaftan should normally live forty more years. Longer, with decent breaks. Why is she suddenly, mysteriously, scheduled for death?"
THE MOTIVE OF THE SOURCE OF THE DIRECTIVE IS NOT ON RECORD IN MY FILE, the screen reminded him.
"Who is the source of that directive?"
THAT INFORMATION IS NOT -
"Are you giving me a runaround?" Zane demanded.
YES.
Zane paused, taken aback. He had underestimated the literal way the computer took things! "You are? Clarify."
I AM NOT PROVIDING THE INFORMATION I KNOW YOU SEEK.
Zane was interested in this aspect. Was the machine trying to help him in its fashion? "What information is that?"
THE SOURCE OF THE DIRECTIVE OF EARLY RETIREMENT OF LUNA KAFTAN.
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"And the reason for it," Zane concluded. "Is there information you could provide, if I phrased the question properly?"
NEGATIVE. But there was a pause before the word was printed. What did that mean?
"If I phrased the question improperly?" Zane asked without much hope.
AFFIRMATIVE.
Intriguing! There was a way around this barrier, if he could figure it out, but normal channels would not suffice. "How should I phrase it to gain the desired information?"
NEGATIVELY.
Negatively. Zane pondered that a moment. Did this mean the computer was not permitted to answer directly, but could do so indirectly? How should he phrase his questions, then? It wouldn't make sense to ask who had not issued the directive - or would it? Maybe that was worth a try.
"What is not the source of the aforementioned directive?" he asked, mentally holding his breath.
ANY NATURAL AGENCY.
That covered a lot! What was left, except a supernatural agency? The Incarnations were partly supernatural, but did not make Eternal policy; they only implemented it. That seemed to leave God and Satan. Yet why would God do such a thing? Satan, on the other hand -
"What supernatural agency lacks any motive for such an order?"
GOD.
Sure enough. But why would Satan do it?
Zane saw the answer to that: Luna was now doomed to Hell at death, while if she lived longer, she would have a chance to redeem herself. Satan had to catch her now, or lose her.
But why hadn't the computer simply told him this?
Zane sat for a while and pondered. Something didn't add up. This machine was acting the way Nature had, never quite expressing the essence. Was there a reason?
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Magician Kaftan had been indirect, too. He had also taken care not to name Satan, lest the Prince of Evil be alerted. A machine, in Purgatory, should not fear Satan in the same manner - but maybe the computer had been ordered not to print Satan's name in this connection. Thus it could respond negatively, but not positively.
If Satan was behind this thing, feeding in a spurious order - Satan was a dread prime mover, second in power only to God - how could anyone or anything oppose him? Not the Purgatory computer, certainly! If it aroused Satan's ire, it might find itself replaced by a competitive make of machine. It might not have any emotion about such an occurrence, but perhaps did have the intelligence not to pursue a self-destructive course.
Yet if Satan had the power to abort a person's life, to cut the thread early, why hadn't he simply claimed Luna openly? Why go to the trouble of concealing his part in it?
Concealment - that suggested wrongdoing. Satan, or course, was the Father of Lies, so that was consistent. But he was taking Luna the hard way, and that did not make sense - unless he could not take her any other way.
Was Satan himself constrained by rules? Surely so, for otherwise he would simply grab the whole world, and to Hell - literally! - with formalities. God and Satan had been opposing each other for all eternity past, and would continue for eternity future; neither could afford to squander strength in wild anarchy. So of course there were rules, tacit if not express, and the manner in which any given person died was surely central to such an understanding.
Zane decided not to push this matter further at the moment. If Satan were cheating, it would be best for Death to make no protest-until he could establish his case absolutely. For sure as Hell - literally, again - Satan would not change his ways merely because someone on Earth objected. Zane had no intention of dropping the case; he just needed to make it airtight.
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