Hell Can Wait

by Theodore Judson

  “Anger is commendable,” nodded Archevil. “So is maintaining control. Here in the company, we, above all else, want our people to exhibit control over themselves and others. If they do not, their behavior indicates they are thinking things we do not think, and you know, Abby, how we in the front office feel about that sort of thing.”

  “Yes, Mr. Archevil,” said Absinthe and cringed. “Where, by the by, did you get that beautiful blazer?”

  “From someplace you could not afford to go,” said the office manager and abruptly turned on his cloven heels, leaving the demon and Maternus alone once more.

  “I’m done here,” said Absinthe and closed Maternus’s file. “I’m sending you up to your hearing before you cause me any more trouble with your ancient sentiments. Just sign these forms. Make a mark with this,” he said and handed Maternus a ballpoint pen and a reef of pages. “It’s like a stylus. Make your mark on all three forms. We do everything in triplicate — at least.”

  Absinthe then led Maternus out a side door to a towering circular stairwell, on which a long single-file line of souls was already standing; each of the souls was holding a manila-colored file similar to the one Maternus had gotten from his demon. There were so many individuals waiting the line extended beyond the point Maternus could see.

  “Not too many waiting for a hearing today,” said Absinthe, also gazing upward to where the line was supposed to end. “You may be in line here only a decade or two.”

  He slapped Maternus on the back and left him behind a gaggle of recent arrivals from the American Solipsist Society, who had recently gone to Vegas on the cheapest charter plane their organization could find, and who were now having trouble with the notion that there were so many others sharing the afterlife with them.

  “I didn’t even like having anyone in the society other than myself,” one of them was saying. “Now do I have to recognize everyone in front of me?”

  One of his associates decided he did not; he proclaimed that these lost souls in line could have no more existence than did the people back on earth. The first solipsist agreed with his associate, although he added he still refused to acknowledge the other man’s existence, regardless of how perceptive his thinking was. The group of them then proceeded up the stairs, where they were quickly confronted by several thousand Chinese men who were dressed in quilted coats and had been standing in line ahead of the solipsists, each reading from a small, red book. In the melee that followed, the Chinese beat the solipsists unconscious and tossed them down the stairs once more. When the latter group regained consciousness, they argued among themselves whether or not the universe had ceased to be during the space of time they had been unable to think of it.

  Before this debate was concluded, everyone on the stairwell, Maternus included, became aware of a new presence among the countless host. Whatever it was, it emanated from a point high above the lost souls and seemed to drift downward until it came among them, growing more powerful as it approached. Maternus first saw it as a light floating toward him. When it was nearly upon him, the soldier could discern a human face within the circle of light, then the outline of a body, and finally the light faded, leaving Maternus standing face to face with someone who appeared to be a middle-aged man dressed in a white robe. He was not large, or in any way imposing, or even particularly handsome, yet his was the first face the soldier had seen in eighteen centuries that awoke a serenity in Maternus that the battle-scarred veteran had only felt in the garden with Maria on that warm September day he still held in his memory.

  “Come with me, friend,” the being said to Maternus and, by touching the soldier’s hand, they both rose as lightly as petals carried aloft by a summer wind and together they soared over the heads of the astonished host waiting in line. “You have suffered enough delay,” the being said to Maternus as they glided along. His words were in the same language the demon Absinthe had used, but now the tongue sounded far less coarse.

  Seconds later Maternus found himself standing in a peculiar location that seemed to be vaguely white in every direction, yet did not have a definite outline to its floor, ceiling, or walls. The spot resembled the interior of a cloud, except that Maternus could walk there and not fall to earth. In this place there was a single desk that was larger and less cluttered than the desks in the lower office had been. A solitary demon was seated at the desk, stylishly dressed in a black tie and tails — two of which were attached to his top coat — and sporting a tidy goatee. The white being took his place beside the demon, and Maternus found his place in the vacant chair in front of the desk.

  “Your file, please,” said the demon, and took the folder from Maternus. “Odd weather we’ve been having, isn’t it? Rather clammy. I can’t bear to wear linen when it gets like this.”

  “What a foolish thing to say to a man who has not seen daylight in nearly two millennia,” said the white being. “I am Mr. Worthy,” he said to Maternus. “I am, as you might guess, not from around here. People commonly refer to my type as angels; among ourselves, we have no name other than messengers.”

  “I myself was also an angel once,” said the natty demon at the desk as he scanned the loose pages in Maternus’s file.

  “And the universe was once a single cell of hydrogen, Mr. Banewill,” said Mr. Worthy. “Tell me, my friend,” he said to Maternus, “did the priests of your religion teach you what an angel is?”

  “My religion was that of the divine Mithra,” said Maternus. “I know only of the great egg of creation and the hero’s sacrifice of the white bull.”

  “Well, all right,” snickered Mr. Banewill. “We did so used to love Mithraism! All those baptisms in blood, and the ritual violence. The whole religion was one big, never-ending frat party — with swords!”

  “The Roman soldiers only adhered to the Mithra nonsense because their emperors imposed it upon them,” said Mr. Worthy. “The caesars built temples to that false god in every military station and told the soldiers they would be rewarded if they joined in its ceremonies. The cult’s priests stuck initiates in dark rooms, deprived them of food and drink, drugged them, made them stare into barrels of water until their senses became undone, and finally played some sleight of hand on them or stuck them under an iron grate and sacrificed a bull over their discombobulated persons. The poor soldiers, if they did not go insane, became devotees for life, simply because they did not know any better. The martial cult provided but another excuse for the ghastly life the legions were already living.”

  “Before you measure soldier boy here for a halo,” said Mr. Banewill, “I suggest you take a better look at him. He didn’t get those scars he has all over his body by nicking himself while shaving. Like other Roman troopers, our boy spent the first five years of his enlistment just learning how to fight hand to hand. Think of it: five years totally dedicated to mastering the two combat skills every legionary had to know: how to hurl his two pila and how to thrust with his short sword — his gladis — while he protected himself with his shield. He got good at what he did. He was a killing machine, our great hulking lout was. When we take into account the limited technology of his day, we have to judge that he and his chums were damned near the most effective killing machines, relatively speaking, ever to burden the earth. Look at how big he is! He’s well over six feet tall and built like a slab of concrete; he was a monster for his time. And when I say he was good, I’m not saying the half of it: he was really good at his bloody work, and yes, he enjoyed it.”

  “He was beaten, humiliated, starved, knew only hardships, only denial,” said the angel. “What else could he have become other than the beast he was? Time and again his commanders led him onto a dusty battlefield and told him he either had to kill or be killed. No, he merely did what he had to do, as terrible as his actions were.”

  “Your side was not so forgiving of his commanders.” said Banewill.

  “They chose to do what they did,” said Mr. Worthy. “What’s more, a just code of morality, you may recall, is like good
comedy — it holds the powerful to a higher standard than it does the weak. War was not where our man’s heart was. Tell us, friend, for the record: where would you be, if you could be anywhere in creation?”

  Maternus did not ponder his response for long.

  “In that garden,” he murmured.

  “Yes, with gentle Maria,” said the angel and smiled. “That was where you would have been, if you could have. We know you felt true love for her. Not even the devils can dispute that. It makes me glad to hear you say that is what you want, my friend.”

  He touched Maternus on the shoulder, and for a few seconds the soldier could see her face again, as if she were there with him and looking up into his eyes.

  “‘Makes you glad to hear him,’” repeated the demon in a mocking tone. “That’s another one of your holy conjuror’s tricks, Worthy. You knew before he answered what he was going to say. You’re an angel. You think I’ve forgotten you can read minds?”

  “That I knew beforehand what he would say does not make what he said untrue,” said Mr. Worthy. “Of course, I also knew beforehand that you would object, but that doesn’t matter either.”

  “Which is another thing that makes you damned hard to argue with, Worthy. To level things out, you should let me read your thoughts sometimes.”

  “Contests between good and evil are not meant to be equal,” said the angel. “That’s one of the many concepts your side understands but does not accept.”

  “Are you reading my mind right now?” asked the demon and flashed a wicked smile at his rival.

  “No, when I anticipate you are about to think something particularly vile, I shut you out, which means I shut out your thoughts most of the time,” explained Mr. Worthy. “Why don’t you go ahead and play the video?”

  “What video?” asked Banewill, taking care to keep a straight face.

  “The one of our friend fighting German tribesmen,” said the angel. “You intended to play it to make me think worse of him.”

  “I thought you weren’t reading my mind.”

  “I’m not,” said Mr. Worthy. “I was looking into the future. That’s something else altogether. Now play the video.”

  The demon touched a button on his desk that caused a large rectangular screen to rise from the opaque whiteness that was the enclosure’s floor.

  “High definition,” said Banewill proudly. “What do you upstairs boys have?”

  “You know there is no television in Heaven,” said the angel. “We don’t need it, as we never get bored.”

  “There’s a fine bit of holy rationalization,” the demon pointed out to Maternus. “They don’t have it, because they can’t have it. But I’m sure they still love the rules as much as I did in my time up there.”

  “Don’t play that,” said Mr. Worthy of a disc Banewill was about to put in the player. “That’s one of your pornographic videos.”

  The demon shrugged and got another disc from his desk, and the angel shook his head at this one as well.

  “More porn,” he said. “You really should get better organized, sir. At least separate your personal things from business items.”

  “Thank you for the housekeeping advice,” said Banewill, searching through the open drawer. “And ‘pornography’ is such a pejorative word, don’t you think? I prefer to call it ‘erotica.’ Anyway, I think this is it.”

  He popped a third disc into the machine, and soon the screen displayed a horrific ancient battle on the banks of the Rhine between the compact legions of Rome and some howling, frantic, but badly organized German tribesmen.

  “The Alemanni,” said Maternus in recognition of the ferocious bearded men in wool kilts.

  “That’s right, ape boy, the Alemanni,” said the demon. “What magnificent, unthinking savages they were. Pity your type killed most of them. Look, Worthy, here’s our bundle of joy, right in the front ranks of his century, the hundred men he led to glory that day.”

  He pointed to a section of the wide screen where a young Maternus in full battle armor was hacking away at the hairy men.

  “Oh my,” gloated Banewill. “That was a father of seven our boy cut in half there. Watch this: see this beardless youth he’s about to wack in the skull? He was a poet among his people, loved sunsets and spring rains. Didn’t he have a soul, too? There he is, in his final throes. Such lovely thrashing about and screaming. You were proud of this, weren’t you?” he asked the soldier.

  Maternus had been forbidden to express many feelings during his violent lifetime. Pride in martial skills, however, was something his commanders had not merely allowed, they had encouraged it.

  “The Eighth was the best there ever was,” said the soldier. “None dared stand before us.” His remark brought a contented grin to the demon’s face and caused the angel to shake his head in sorrow.

  “Turn that infernal thing off,” said Mr. Worthy, who had never taken his eyes off Maternus. “Do you think I did not already know what warfare looked like then? I know everything he did, and I accept him nonetheless.”

  The demon made the screen go blank and sent it back into the unusual floor.

  “You will also know, then,” said the demon as he returned to his desk, “that he is surprisingly smart. Granted, he’s uneducated and his years of hard service made him cruder than he was born to be, but he did, I admit, have first-class brains. Had he really been the grunting, insensate thug he appears to be, he never would have able to persuade other men to accept his leadership, nor could he have planned the difficult stratagems he did. Were we to give him an IQ test today, I dare say he would score right off the charts. Now, Mr. Worthy, you combine his innate intelligence with that magnified sense of pride he had, and you have a man who all his life knew he was being forced to live below his rightful station. The resentment he felt for his betters, especially for his chuckle-headed, puffed-up commanders, impresses even me, and we in Hell know a thing or two about injured pride. That resentment of his all too often blossomed into rage, an anger so great this admittedly crafty chap sometimes did indeed become the thoughtless, uncontrollable machine of death he looks to be. Granted, he did feel something for the downtrodden; he did have a primitive sense of justice, but it wasn’t that sense of justice that made him rebel against the empire as much as his deep, abiding resentment of how he had been treated since the day he was born. Isn’t that so, Mr. Muscle-Bound?”

  “There’s no need to taunt him,” said Worthy. “I’ve made up my mind. There is nothing you say that will dissuade me.”

  “Then it won’t matter,” said Banewill, “if I point out he has no patience. Women are a mystery to him, and children absolutely terrify our soldier boy, as he has rarely been around them. He’s unfamiliar with those who come from different races or speak different languages; he’s only seen such people from afar or on the other end of his sword. He’s provincial with a capital P. Put him in a modern city, let him mingle among the varied types he is certain to meet there, and Mr. Maternus is highly likely to explode. The first time this angry Roman trooper tries to walk against the light and some big-city hot-shot on a Honda nearly runs him over and flips our centurion the bird as he drives away, our boy is likely to hunt him down and beat him to death with his own motorcycle. He’s not in the least prepared to handle the hundreds of little indignities a modern person has to endure every day. How is he going to react when he’s stood in line at the supermarket for five minutes, and then has some gum-popping check-out girl tell him he has eleven items and she can only accept ten at her register? What happens if some barroom dolt with six months of karate classes who thinks he’s tough makes the fatal mistake of picking a fight with our boy? What is a good angel like yourself going to say to that poor dolt’s grieving widow? I would think a sensitive sort like yourself should be at least a little worried about what Ares’ faithful servant here might do to several of the still living once he goes off his leash.”

  “Every life, even the quietest, entails a certain amount of danger,” said
the angel. “Yes, he will have to learn to contain his temper. He has other qualities that will serve him well. Like all men, he is a risk we are willing to take. We are willing to wager the good in him will overcome his other inclinations.”

  Both the angel and demon were now looking directly at the soldier. Banewill stroked his tidy beard and was lost in thought for a few silent moments.

  “I shouldn’t let you talk me into this,” said the demon from his desk. “Whenever you are this confident about an individual soul, it is usually because you have looked into the future and know he will succeed in his trials.”

  “Yet there remains the possibility you might win this time,” said the angel, and for once he smirked as the demon had done repeatedly.

  “We are weak in the face of any temptation,” sighed the demon, and was again silent while he further studied Maternus.

  When he spoke again he pronounced: “He has to be among the unfamiliar, in some nation that could not have existed in his lifetime. There have to be independent women who are able to stand up to him, and lots of bothersome children to distress him. Put him in an affluent place, somewhere that would not know or pardon his type of violence.”

  The demon took a slip of paper from a drawer and on the page wrote three sentences.

  “You are thinking of California?” asked the angel.

  “The once Golden State has gotten to be a dicier proposition in recent years,” replied the demon as he continued to write. “There are too many possibilities there. A really tough guy such as he might prosper in the right neighborhood. I want him to be somewhere the natives haven’t seen anyone as scary as him, someplace that is not spoiled by either too much poverty or too much affluence.”

  “Western Australia?” suggested Mr. Worthy.

  “Not quite diverse enough,” said Banewill. “He will have a harder time of it if he occasionally has to interact with those who seem strange to him. How about Colorado?”

  “Wonderful,” said the angel. “We could set him on a ranch, let him be a cowboy, or he might be a roughneck in the oil fields, or perhaps a coal miner on the Western Slope.”