Mack stared, disbelieving. A voice in his head said, "I'm going crazy!" And another voice said, "I wonder if they've left anything to read around here." Mack realized there was nothing he could do about any of it, and so he closed his eyes and tried to think pleasant thoughts.
CHAPTER 7
Mephistopheles flashed into existence in the Princess Irene's chambers, accompanied by a roiling of sulphurous yellow smoke that gave some hint of his mood. He had been plucked from his favorite chair in front of a nice log fire reading Memories of an Evil Childhood, one of the most inspirational books he had come across in a long time. He had just reached the place where the story's young demon hero-prince discovers the pleasures to be gotten from betraying those near and dear to him in morally ambiguous circumstances.
And then the telephone had sounded, tearing him out of his daydream, and he heard a message from one of the unseen witnesses to the contest, reporting that an interference of a serious nature had just occurred; viz., the protagonist had been unlawfully removed from the drama and exiled to a mirrored room of tumultuous reflecting surfaces.
Mephistopheles had had to put down his book and come hurrying to Constantinople, even though he was technically off duty at that moment. He didn't really resent it, though, because those who are serious about evil are ready to hurry off whenever the call to iniquity comes, leaving behind more passive pleasures when the chance to do something really bad comes up.
"Ylith," Mephistopheles said, "what are you trying to do? Why have you locked up Faust?"
"I am correcting a great wrong," Ylith said, with bravado, but with some of the certainty already leaking out of her, punctured by the demon's sharp look.
"What did you do with Faust?"
"I locked him up on a morals charge, that's what," Ylith said.
"Woman, how dare you! You have no right to interfere in this contest! You are here purely as an observer."
"As an observer," Ylith said with sudden asperity, "I have an observation to make. You have obviously been tampering with Faust and suggesting unsavory things to him, and permitting him to stray from the narrow path on which he has been set; otherwise explain how he finds the time to seduce innocent princesses when he should be making one of the choices offered in the situation?" "Me? You dare accuse me? I had nothing to do with it!" Mephistopheles replied hotly. "If he seduced the wench, he did so on his own responsibility!"
Then they both remembered that Princess Irene was there. They turned and looked at her, then at each other. They reached an unspoken agreement. Ylith raised an eyebrow; Mephistopheles nodded. Ylith produced a small Sleep Spell, light as fairy's down, which she cast over the princess. It carried sleep, with a retrograde memory blank-out for the last half hour. With Irene safely out of the way, and Mack still in his mirrored prison, Ylith turned to Mephistopheles, fury in her dark blue eyes.
"It's all your fault! And don't think to get around me with blandishments and so-called learned arguments.
Remember, I was once of your camp." "Woman, control yourself," Mephistopheles said. "The Language Spell I gave to Faust was simply to enable him to operate in this oriental babble of tongues. Anyhow, whatever the rights and wrongs of it, you can't just take the protagonist out of the drama. That's a worse crime than anything Faust might have done." "You are a liar," Ylith said.
Mephistopheles nodded. "Yes, of course, but what has that got to do with it?"
"I want Faust replaced with a more moral creature!"
"Woman, you presume! There is no place for dogmatic moral judgments in Heaven or in Hell. Release Faust at once!"
"No! I am not yours to command!"
Mephistopheles glared at her, then, reaching into the pouch he carried under his cloak, he took out a small red portable telephone. He punched a number into it—999—the number of the Beast upside down—which is the number of the Angel—and stood, tapping his toe.
"Who did you call?" Ylith asked. "One who will talk a little sense into you, I hope."
In a moment there was a puff of light-colored smoke, and a chord of harp music. The Archangel Michael appeared, looking annoyed, dripping wet, and dressed only in a very large fluffy white towel. "What is the emergency?" he said, as annoyed as an archangel ever gets. "I was just having my bath."
"You're always in the bath," Mephistopheles commented.
"So what? You know what they say about cleanliness."
"It is a vile canard! Evil is easily as fastidious as Good. Cleanliness itself is neutral. But we have no time for disputation."
"Correct. Why have you called me here?"
Michael turned to Ylith. His broad brow was puckered into an expression of annoyance rarely seen on the brow of an archangel. His face had taken on the contours of bemused quizzicality. "Removed Faust?
Can this be true?"
Ylith, in a voice not quite as certain as before, but still defiant, said, "What was I to do? His Faust was seducing the princess Irene."
Michael said, "And who is the princess Irene? No, don't tell me. It doesn't matter who the princess Irene is. Why by all that is holy did you see fit to interrupt our Millennial contest because of some silly little seduction?"
"Alleged seduction," Mephistopheles put in.
"Even worse," Michael said. "How could you so presume on our gracious pleasure in appointing you an observer, which we did only to quiet down Babriel, who is besotted with you, for something as trite and unimportant as a seduction, and only an alleged one at that?"
"We are taught that seductions are Bad," Ylith said in a small voice.
"No doubt they are," Michael said. "But you should know by now it is not our policy to step in whenever anyone does something Bad, just as the other side doesn't step in whenever anyone does something Good. Didn't you read about Moral Relativity and the Joining of Opposites in the Angel's Practical Guide to Everyday Earth Matters?"
"I must have missed that one," Ylith said. "Look, don't shout at me, please. I'm just trying to be good and to have everyone else be good."
"Acting ingenuous won't get you out of this one," Michael said. "Angels are supposed to temper Goodness with Intelligence. Otherwise Good would become an insensate, all-devouring force, bad by nature of its totalitarianism if nothing else. And we don't want that, do we?"
"I don't see why not," Ylith said.
"You shall find out. Release the man at once and restore him to his place in this drama. And then report to the Fervor Defusion Center for chastisement and retraining."
"Oh, don't be so hard on the poor girl," Mephistopheles said, seeing a chance to score a point for the magnanimity of Bad. "Let her go on observing. Just no more interfering."
"You hear him?" Michael said.
"I hear and I obey. But to think I'd ever hear an archangel tell me to obey the commands of a demon from Hell!"
"You've got some growing up to do," Michael said. He hitched his towel more closely about him. "And now may I return to my bath?"
"Enjoy," Mephistopheles said. "Sorry to have disturbed you."
He vanished. Ylith quickly collapsed the Mirror Prison. Mack stepped out, blinking. Mephistopheles smiled and disappeared.
"I seem to be back," Mack said. "Did you talk to the princess?"
"Just watch yourself," Ylith said to Mack, and then she disappeared.
CHAPTER 8
After Mack was released from the Mirror Prison, he said good-bye to the bewildered Princess Irene and hurried back to warn Marco of the plot. But getting back to Marco's apartment proved more difficult than leaving it. Mack stumbled into unfamiliar corridors that spiraled up and down steep ramps he couldn't remember passing before. There were many people in the corridors, so many that he thought he had somehow gotten outside the palace, into a covered bazaar that apparently spread for acres around the palace. But then he heard the sound of the royal pipes and drums again and knew he was on the right track. Puffing and out of wind, he finally reached Marco's apartment and burst in without knocking.
"Mar
co! I have word of the utmost urgency for you!" But he was talking to empty walls, because Marco was no longer there.
Mack realized that some hours must have passed while he was in the mirror maze. It was probably evening now, though you could never tell from inside, since the corridors always had the same even lighting, day and night. He rushed out again, and, with a stroke of luck, found the Banquet Hall without incident. He pushed past the guards and entered.
The celebrations were in full progress. Kublai and the other dignitaries were arranged on the dais as he had seen them that morning. Marco was there, and so was the princess Irene, and so was the court wizard in his star-spangled gown. A small orchestra was tuning up, and on a little stage a Mongol comedian in baggy goatskin pants and painted nose was saying, "Take my yak… please, take my yak."
But no one was listening. All eyes were turned to Mack.
Mack felt more than a little embarrassed by the attentive silence with which his arrival was greeted. He coughed and cleared his throat, and said, "Marco, I'm glad I've reached you in time. There's this plot against you. I overheard it in the courtyard where the soldiers were exercising. There were these two guys from Tyre, see, and they were saying—"
Marco held up a hand, stopping him in midword. "Are you referring to these two over here?"
Mack saw the two bearded soldiers he had overheard in the courtyard. "Those are the guys," he said.
"Very interesting," Marco said. "They came here an hour ago to warn me of a plot that they say was instigated by you."
"That's not the way it was," Mack said.
"They're just trying to get out of it themselves! Marco, I've told you the truth!"
"Your behavior has been suspicious," Marco said. He turned to the Khan. "May I proceed to demonstrate the duplicity of this fellow?"
"Do proceed," Kublai Khan said. "Western techniques of litigation and interrogation have long fascinated me."
"I call upon the princess Irene," Marco said.
Princess Irene arose from the little throne that had been set out for her on the main dais. She had had time to change into a sky blue mantle decorated with embroidered buttercups. She looked the model of innocence as she said, in broken Mongol, "This long-legged jackanapes came to my chambers, which no man is allowed to do. He made indelicate suggestions toward me, speaking to me in my native tongue, but in the familiar dialect that is used only among family members, or by uncultured persons with a homicidal streak. I was in fear of my life, for when strangers talk to you in that dialect, it means, if they're not related, they're planning to kill you. I fainted, and when I awoke he was gone, frightened away, perhaps, by some noise in the corridor—for he seems a cowardly lot—and I changed into my sky blue mantle and ran down here."
"Lies, all lies," Mack said. "You, Marco, sent me to talk to the princess yourself!"
"I sent you to the princess?" Marco said, rolling his eyes and glancing at the Khan with a showman's gift for innuendo. He turned to the assembled nobles. "You know me, gentlemen. I have been here seventeen years. Would I do something that is prohibited by Mongol law, to say nothing of common decency?"
The only sound that could be heard in Kublai's Banquet Hall was the creaking of necks as heads among the audience shook, no, no. And even the severed heads piled up in pyramids seven feet high on the corner stones of the pillars seemed to shake, no, no.
"This is a setup!" Mack declared hotly. "It is clear to me now that Marco Polo, for his own reasons, is out to get me. He probably can brook no rival at the Khan's court. And he probably feels inferior since he's only a Venetian merchant, whereas I am the ambassador from Ophir."
"As to that," Marco said, "let the court wizard speak."
The wizard stood up and rearranged his star-splattered robe. He adjusted the wire-rimmed spectacles on his nose, cleared his throat twice, harrumphed a few times, and said, "I have made enquiries of all the learned men in Peking who are especially skilled in geography. They agree that there is no such place as Ophir. They further assert that if it ever did exist, it perished long ago in a natural cataclysm. And they conclude that if it did exist today, it would never employ a German as its ambassador."
Mack waved his hands in frustration. Indignation raged in his brain, annoyance set his fingers to clicking and his toes to tapping, but he couldn't think of a thing to say.
Kublai Khan said, "I don't like to do this, because my court is renowned for its gentleness and high standards, but this man has been found guilty before a jury of his peers of being an impostor and a fake representative of a nonexistent country, as well as being a seducer of royal women. Therefore it is the judgment of this court that he be taken from here and brought to the common prison, where he is to suffer such tortures as are indicated for impostors, and then be strangled and disemboweled and drawn and quartered and burnt."
"An excellent suggestion," Kublai said. He raised his magic scepter and made a gesture. From the back of the room a fat bearded man came forward. He was dressed in a chamois loincloth and matching waistcoat, and he wore an enormous turban.
"Royal executioner at your service, Great Khan," he said.
"Do you have your bowstring handy?" Kublai asked.
"I always keep it on me," the executioner said, untying it from around his waist. "You can never tell when it might come in handy."
"Guards," Kublai said, "seize that man! Executioner, do your duty!"
Mack turned and tried to run from the place, hoping to hide himself in the interminable corridors of the Khan's palace until some better notion came to him. But Marco, smiling maliciously, stuck out a leg and Mack stumbled over it and fell sprawling. Bowmen seized him and held him tightly. The executioner approached, twirling the bowstring in his hand like the professional he was. Mack called out, "Your Majesty, you're making a mistake!"
"If so, let it be so," Kublai said. "To err with confidence is the prerogative of power."
The executioner bent over and whipped his bowstring around Mack's throat. Mack tried to shout, but no sounds came. He had a moment to reflect that one's life really doesn't flash in front of one's eyes at the moment of death as they say it does. All he could think of as the bowstring tightened around his throat was an afternoon lying on the banks of the Weser during a school holiday, and remarking to a student friend from the monastery, "You know, a man can never guess how he will die." And that was true, because he could never have imagined at that time (he was no more than fourteen then) that he would end up a couple of hundred years in the past, being executed at the court of Kublai Khan at the instigation of Marco Polo while engaged in a contest on behalf of the forces of Light and Dark.
And then there was a flash of light and a puff of smoke, and Mephistopheles appeared.
Mephistopheles was annoyed, and at such times he made extremely spectacular entrances, as he did this time, employing an entire panoply of fireworks and causing various prodigies of vision to appear in the air and then fade away mysteriously. He had found that spending a few moments setting up the atmosphere saved time in the long run, because those to whom he appeared were in such awe that they never thought to oppose him.
"Release that man!" Mephistopheles thundered. - The executioner fell back as though struck by lightning.
The bowmen collapsed in terror. Kublai Khan cowered back. Marco ducked under the table. Princess Irene fainted. Mack stepped forward, a free man.
"Are you ready to go?" Mephistopheles asked.
"Ready, my lord!" Mack replied, getting up and dusting himself off. "Just one last thing."
He walked up to Kublai Khan. As Kublai looked around for help, Mack lifted the magic scepter from his hands and tucked it into his pouch. "Now see how long your reign lasts!" he cried spitefully. And then Mephistopheles made a gesture and both he and Mack had vanished.
Marco said, "I think we have witnessed a genuine supernatural occurrence. It puts me in mind of something that happened to me when I was in Tashkent. It was spring, and the flowers of the valley—
"
Just then the great bronze doors of the Khan's Banquet Hall opened again. Marguerite entered. She was wearing a new Chinese dress of watered silk with high collar and form-fitting lines. She had also been freshly made up, washed, perfumed, had her hair set and her nails done. They knew how to make language lessons interesting in Kublai's court.
"Hi," she said. "I'm just back from class. Listen to this, everybody." And in crude but understandable Mongol she said, "The swain from Spain is standing in the rain." She smiled and waited for words of approval.
"Shall we execute her?" Marco asked Kublai, getting out from under the table and dusting himself off.
"Might as well," Kublai said, the thought of cruelty helping him regain his dignity. "It's better than nothing."
Marco called out, "Guards! Executioner!"
Once again the grim charade proceeded. Marguerite was seized. The executioner, resolutely, despite the fact that his legs were shaking, approached. And then Mephistopheles appeared again.
"Sorry, I forgot all about you," he said. He gestured. Marguerite disappeared. Then Mephistopheles disappeared. The Khan and his guests stared in stunned silence at the places where they had been. And then the waiters came in with the main course.
FLORENCE
CHAPTER 1
Well, Faust, we are sending you on your way again for the next contest. In this one, you are going to the city of Florence, in the year 1497. How I envy you, my dear fellow! You will see at firsthand the city that can claim to be the artistic inventor of the new world. Many scholars argue that the Renaissance began in Florence. How does that sound?"
If at Faust You Don't Succeed Page 13
