"But if there is to be ruin—"
"Ah yes, we must not forget that. Action certainly must be taken. A new God would surely take it, and perhaps succeed in averting disaster. But if there is no new God, and the present inaction continues, the remaining Incarnations will have in the end to turn to the most effective remaining prospect. That, of course, is the Incarnation of Evil."
"You—You support God—because you think this will bring you ultimate power?"
"Now at last you have it, My dear. That is the essence of My motive. Certainly I will act to avert the crisis; the mortal realm will survive. But the power will be Mine."
"I just can't believe—God cannot be so—"
"And if you will merely express that same support to Luna, and encourage her to sit out that key vote, I will call Nox and she will return your baby to you now. I think this is a generous offer."
Orlene stood still, trying to come to terms with this. Satan urging her to support God—and offering what amounted to a handsome bribe to that end! Her entire quest could be completed this moment, merely by agreeing.
"I think," she said at last, "that you know more of this than I do. If you believe that my plea to Luna will be effective, then it may be. If you believe that this would give you ultimate power, then it must be. Therefore I must not do this. I must trust in Luna's judgment, trust in her to do what is right, even though it runs contrary to my instincts."
"Even though it costs you your baby?" Satan asked softly.
Orlene squeezed her eyes closed, trying to dam back her tears. "How can I weigh my baby—against the welfare of the world? I do want my baby, but not at such a price. I must do what I believe is right, even though it pains me, even though I am uncertain what is right."
"Are you sure?" Satan looked grim.
"No, I am the least certain ghost in the world! But I think this is the way it must be."
"Then it shall be Nox's way," Satan murmured.
"Her way?"
"We made a deal, she and I. She would support My way, by yielding the baby, if I could make it work. I would support her way, if I failed. I have failed to Tempt you, so must honor the bargain I made."
"But what is that bargain?"
"If the Office of Good is declared vacant, there will be a nomination and voting by the remaining major Incarnations. Nox can neither nominate nor vote in that, because she is not of the forces of Day. But now she can act through Me. I will support her candidate."
"Who—"
Satan shook his head. "Nox is excellent at secrets. I must keep hers, until the time, lest the others marshal against it. No other is privileged to know her will."
"Her will has made endless mischief for me!" Orlene flared.
"So it seems. It may be that you would prefer to have the deal I proffered, instead of the alternative." He paused, but Orlene did not change her tormented mind. "But your options are not exhausted. What I proffered was a deal to shortcut your quest to My profit. You may still earn My curse, if you choose, and try to save your baby as you have planned."
"Oh," Orlene said, nonplussed. "I had forgotten, or thought you would no longer honor that."
"I honor every deal I make," Satan said. "Do Me My service, and I will guarantee your curse."
"Then I will do your service," she said. "What is it?"
"There is a new client who is uncooperative, as evil souls tend to be. I wish you to obtain his cooperation."
"But I know nothing of damned souls!" she protested.
"I believe you do know this one. His name is Kane."
Good God! Vita thought.
"Please refrain from using such language here, Vita," Satan said. "You must be aware it is out of place."
"We—We did kill him?" Orlene asked, disturbed anew.
"Technically, he killed himself. You were not truly at fault, and very little sin attaches to any of the four of you who were involved. He did, after all, initiate the sequence, and it was your right to defend the host. I will say that I regard your method as ingenious, however; seldom is a person killed by a story."
"I suppose we could try," Orlene said. "He can't kill us here, can he? I mean, Vita's body?"
"You will remain in the privileged passage, where no harm can come to you. Do not leave it, for a mortal host may not enter Hell proper. You will only talk to him, and persuade him to cooperate."
"What do you want from him?"
"The names of all the women he killed. There are, I believe, a fair number."
"You do not know them?"
"Orlene, Hell receives many thousands of souls every day! We process them in as well as we can, but we cannot pay close attention to all the details. In any event, the majority, of the women probably did not come to Hell, so we cannot interrogate them. The information must come from the ones we do have: the murderers."
"But what good can that information do? The girls arc already dead, and the murderer is already suffering!"
"But not as appropriately as he should be. Each damned soul should suffer the Atonements of his victims, according to the ancient convention. I cannot set these up until I have the identities of the women. With those, I can subpoena the records from Purgatory, and proper Atonement can begin."
"That never gets past the first one?" she asked sharply.
"That is not always the case. Sometimes they make it through a number before entering a closed loop."
"If I had any say in the matter, I'd get that fixed!" she cried. "I agree that they ought to do penance, but this only leads to bureaucratic gridlock! Nobody benefits!"
"Agreed. At such time as I have the final say, I shall make that little reform."
She sighed. "Show me the man. I'll do what little I can."
"Gladly. He is in the chamber nearest to this one, along the privileged passage. If you succeed in making him cooperate, I will know it, and I will reserve My curse for your use when the time comes. You may proceed directly down the passage to the other chamber, where you will be home back to Purgatory. You will not have to face Me again."
She looked at him, uncertain of his slant. Then she turned and exited.
The chamber was right there—and within it was Kane, still in his clothing, lying on his stomach, blood flowing from his groin. Evidently he had bled to death, but here there was no relief of unconsciousness, and he had to suffer consciously.
You know, Jolie told the story, Vita reminded them. Should she take over for this?
"No, it is my favor I am seeking," Orlene said. "I must do it. But I confess to having little notion how."
The man heard her. His head lifted. He grimaced. "Who are you? Another bad woman, come to torment me?"
"I think you are already in sufficient torment," Orlene said. "But it is true that I am associated with one you thought to make your victim. Do you remember the last one?"
"The black bitch? How could I forget! Look what she did to me!" He squinted at her. "But you aren't that one. I don't remember you."
"I was with her, in spirit, with two others. We told you the story of Lorelie. We were the ones who orchestrated your demise. The living host-girl could not have done it alone."
"For sure!" he agreed, wincing as his exclamation triggered more pain from the knife embedded in his flesh. "I killed a dozen before her, and none ever came close to getting away, let alone killing me."
"It was time to stop you," Orlene said. The man bothered her, and his condition; she knew he deserved it, but she hated seeing the pain.
"Maybe. Now take off; I don't need any more whores to laugh at me. I'm sorry I didn't get rid of all of you."
"I am here to ask you to cooperate with Satan. He needs the names of the women you killed."
Kane laughed, wincing as he did so. "Go ram this knife up yourself, you damned slut! I know what happens when Satan gets those names! Think I want to suffer for the whores? I'd rather leave this knife in me!" But after a pained pause, he qualified that. "Gak, it hurts, though!"
"Gak?"
"But you can't progress, you can't be absolved of your sins, if you don't do this," Orlene argued. "You will be locked at this initial stage, forever suffering the knife. Surely you can't want that!"
"I'm stuck—ha-ha—with it!" he gasped. "It's better than giving those bitches the satisfaction. Let them work out their own sins; Gak knows they deserve to!"
He was certainly recalcitrant. Orlene did not know what else to say.
What about Laurie? Jolie thought. She's the one woman he worships. If she asked him—
Say, yeah! Vita agreed. Do you think she could be down here too? I mean, she must've whored just to survive, and she would've come back for him if she'd lived, so—
"Let's ask," Orlene said. She returned to Satan's door and knocked.
Again the door went up in flame. Satan stood within. "You have completed your assignment already?"
"I may be making progress. I need to know whether a certain woman is here in Hell."
Satan snapped his fingers. Immediately Ozymandias stood beside him. "Her name?" Satan asked.
"Laurel. I don't know her last name."
Ozymandias frowned. "That narrows it to about half a million. We could line them up for your inspection."
Describe her from his memory, Jolie thought. She made a mental picture of the madonna figure she had seen in Kane's mind.
"She is pretty—beautiful, really, even at age fifteen," Orlene said. "Perhaps not so when she died. Hair waist-length, dark, brown verging on black, figure slender, not pronounced. Eyes brown. She may have had to go into prostitution to survive when she ran away from home."
"About four thousand of that name answer that description," Ozymandias said, checking a notepad which appeared in his hand.
"She ran away about thirty years ago." He flipped a page. "Three hundred."
"She has a brother named Kane."
"Twelve."
"Who is five years younger than she."
"Two."
"If I could interview those two—"
"One moment." Ozymandias disappeared.
"Good man," Satan said. "I bless, if you will pardon the expression, the day I rescued him from anonymity. Laurel is the client's older sister?"
"Yes. I think she will have influence on him, if we can put them together."
"That would be irregular."
Orlene repressed a smile. "Just how serious is your interest in the client's cooperation, Satan?"
He almost smiled in return. "No doubt a deal can be made."
Jolie knew that Satan was pleased, but she wasn't sure why. Normally he did not appreciate backtalk from the denizens of Hell. Of course this was his stepdaughter; he liked seeing her take hold. But Jolie wasn't sure that was all of it.
Ozymandias reappeared. Behind him stood two young women. Both were pretty, but both had had hard use. Neither quite fitted Kane's mental picture.
But Orlene didn't give up. "Which one of you promised to return for your ten-year-old brother?"
"What's it to you?" the left one asked.
"He is here."
She put her hands to her face. "Oh, the poor boy! I was sure he was bound for H—" she choked.
"Heaven," Satan said. "The damned cannot say that word."
"She is the one," Orlene said. "I must talk to her, and then have her talk to him. What can I offer her for her cooperation?"
"One minute per hour, with him," Satan said. "If she is instrumental in making him cooperate."
Get a load of his generosity! Vita thought.
Orlene decided not to argue. "May I talk to her alone?"
"One minute," Satan said. He and Ozymandias and the other Laurel disappeared, leaving only Orlene and the woman in the office.
"We have only one minute," Orlene said. "Laurel, your brother loves you, and I think will do anything you ask of him. You are his madonna figure, his perfect woman. He is a mass murderer who was knifed to death at age forty, but he loves you. His Atonement can proceed faster if he cooperates. You can spend one minute of each hour with him if you get him to do that. Will you?"
"No!" Laurel cried. "He mustn't know how far I sank! Let him keep his good image of me!"
"If you don't tell him about your life, I won't. Just tell him to cooperate. Then, every hour, you can console him. I don't think he'll ever ask how you died, or how you came to be here. All he will care is that you have returned for him, even here in Hell. For one minute each hour he won't suffer so much. You can keep your promise."
"My promise!" she breathed. "My one good hope—"
Satan reappeared. "Well?"
"I must take her to the client's cell," Orlene said. She took Laurel by the arm and guided her out the door and down the hall. "You can enter," she told Laurel. "I cannot. Talk to him. Get him to cooperate, and the reward is yours."
Laurel saw the suffering man lying on the blood-soaked bed. Suddenly he assumed the form of a ten-year-old boy, uninjured. "Oh, Kane!" she cried, running in to him. Now she, too, was younger, fifteen and lovely.
"Laurel! You came!" he cried.
They embraced. "I said I would! But I cannot stay! You know this is Hell, Kane; you must do what they want, or you will never get out of it!"
"If you ask me—"
"We can be together—one minute each hour!"
"Then I will do it." His capitulation was that simple, once his deepest dream had been tapped. Orlene's effort of understanding and compassion had accomplished what Hell's torture had not.
Ozymandias appeared in the cell. "The names."
Kane, still held by his loving sister, started giving the names. Ozymandias noted them on a scroll with deft strikes of a quill.
Then he gestured. Laurel vanished, and Kane was back as an adult, with the knife. "She will return next hour," Ozymandias said, and vanished himself.
Kane gazed at Orlene. "You did this," he said.
"Yes."
He grunted something that almost sounded like "Thanks."
I still can't stand him, but I'm glad we did it, Vita thought. She spoke for them all.
Orlene turned away. She walked down the hall toward the exit. But when she came to the man she had talked with before, she paused.
"I asked Satan, but he said he couldn't change the rules. I am going to visit God next, and I will ask Him."
"I thank you," the man gasped, turning color. He was going into his suffocation stage.
"No, this isn't fair!" Orlene cried. "Atonement, yes, but not pointless torture!" She stepped into the chamber.
Halt! Jolie thought in desperation. You can't go there! It's off the—
But Orlene had already done it. Vita's mortal body came up against an invisible barrier and stopped, but Orlene's spirit went on. It was leaving the host, glowing.
What happens now? Vita thought, horrified.
We must pull her back! Jolie responded. She must not be discorporate in Hell!
They both grabbed at Orlene's spirit. But it stretched, the bulk of it going on into the cell. They were left holding the tail of the ghost, while the front reached the man.
Orlene put her faint hand on the man's head. The glow intensified, surrounding him. Go on to the next! she thought. Break the chain! You must do it!
The man stopped choking. He sat up, becoming gaunt. "I'm starving!" he exclaimed.
The joint pull exerted by Jolie and Vita finally prevailed. Orlene was drawn back into the host.
He's in the next torture! Vita thought, amazed.
"That boy—he stole money from a friend, and so the friend went hungry," the man said. "I am suffering that hunger. Oh, thank you, lovely spirit!"
I didn't know you could do such magic! Jolie thought.
"I can't," Orlene said, dazed. "He must have done it himself. I only encouraged him."
But Jolie had seen the glow. She knew that it required more than encouragement. Apparently there was an active c
omponent as well as a passive one to Orlene's lifelong magic.
Orlene went on, not quite understanding the significance of what she had done, at the dire risk of her soul. Had she not been hauled back, she would have been trapped in Hell, unable to escape despite her evident goodness.
They reached the end of the passage. The vapor closed about them. They moved upward, out of Hell.
Chapter 13 - GOOD
They emerged before Gaea's Treehouse. They heard the voice of the Purgatory News announcer coming from within; evidently the set was on. "All Purgatory is agog over the visit of one 'Natasha' to the abode of the Incarnation of Nature. Gaea is, of course, married to the Incarnation of Evil, and remains nominally faithful to him, though the marriage was never consummated. For her to entertain another man..."
Orlene smiled briefly as she knocked on the door. They knew who Natasha was, now, and why he had come. There was no scandal. The Purgatory News, like that of the mortals, was sensationalist and not too scrupulous about its implications.
Gaea opened the door. "You succeeded?"
"Yes. But now I must go to Heaven, and not with my soul alone, because I mean to return. I have no idea how to get there."
"I think Natasha will have to guide you again," Gaea said, with a smile similar to Orlene's own.
"I shall be glad to," Natasha said, appearing outside. "As it happens, I have a friend who knows the way through chaos."
Yeah, that bitch Nox! Vita thought.
"Oh? Perhaps I should come too," Gaea said.
I keep forgetting they can hear us! Vita thought, chagrined.
"By all means come along!" Natasha said, extending one elbow to her and the other to Orlene.
They took the elbows. The region darkened, then turned gray. They were traveling into the vagueness of the Void.
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