If at Faust You Don't Succeed

by Roger Zelazny

  When Odysseus had finished and returned to his place in the audience, there was much buzzing of conversation among the myriad sitting spirits. But Ananke called for order and said, "Excellent are the words of Odysseus, and they will be considered. But we have another speaker who wishes to put forth a claim, and he is as famous in his way as Odysseus in his. I refer to none other than Dr. Johann Faust, who has gone to considerable difficulty to be with us today. I give you Dr. Faust."

  Faust walked up to the stage, whispered, "Thank you, Marguerite, I'll make it up to you somehow," then turned to the assembled spirits.

  "My right honorable friend, Odysseus, has been known throughout history for his ability to charm through words. I myself am no charmer. I'll tell you some blunt truths, however, and you can make of them what you will. First, as to Odysseus' argument: A classical construct has great charm, no doubt, but no force of rightness about it. Those Hellenic fellows and their gods have had their day. The world forgot their religious views with very little regret. We don't need that lot back again. Not them or any other gods. I say, let's put down all the gods, both ancient and modern. We men don't need gods. We are like workers voting for a class of superior beings with which to oppress themselves. What do we need with these airy concoctions? Why should gods or devils or anything else rule our fate? I am Faust and I stand for man triumphant, man in all his frailties ruling his own destiny, without recourse to the supernatural.

  With but a single decision we could dissolve the whole thing—the entire airy parliament of devils and angels who plague us with their cross talk and their endless arguments. Man will do his best, and needs no supernatural ism to exhort him to greater efforts. But if a go-between is needed, if a council of wise men is required, I have brought forth a group of people with more right to rule mankind than all these deities with their conniving qualities. I say, let the magicians rule us! They have always done so; we have just not admitted it to ourselves."

  Faust clapped his hands. A line of men walked slowly out onto the stage.

  Faust said, "Here are Cagliostro, Paracelsus, Saint-Germain, and many others. This is the council that should advise the world."

  Michael stood up and said, "You can't do this, Faust."

  "The hell you say. I'm here and I'm doing it. You have discounted man's ability to call up magic. I have here the greatest seers that ever lived. They have plumbed Nature's secrets. Their gifts belong to them as right of conquest, not the gift of some masquerading spirit. We humans can take care of ourselves, led by these geniuses, who are the precursors of the scientists who will come later."

  "Exactly what I was going to say."

  "I defy you!" Faust said. "We magicians repudiate devil and God! Get away from us with your incomprehensible rules! We will rule ourselves."

  Both Michael and Mephistopheles bellowed, "Begone!"

  Faust and his magicians stood firm.

  Michael said, "Let Ananke decide, for Necessity rules us all."

  Faust said, "Ananke, you can see that I am right."

  Marguerite wavered. "Yes, Faust, you are right."

  "Then you must decide in our favor."

  "No, Faust, I cannot."

  "Why?Why?"

  "Because, in the conjectures of Necessity, being right is only one quality to select for. There are others, and they are equally important in the makeup of what will be."

  "What are they?"

  "There is warmth, Faust, and you have none. There is the ability to love, Faust, and you do not have it.

  There is the ability to rule yourself, and you, Faust, do not have it. There is compassion, Faust, and you do not have that, either. What Odysseus proposed was nostalgic, but your ideas are anathema.

  Therefore, Faust, despite a valiant effort, you have lost and the world will continue without you telling it what to do."

  There were cries from the audience. "But who has won, Dark or Light?"

  Ananke held the audience in her gaze. "Now, as to the results. Let's start from the top and work down.

  But first, as to the ancient gods and the old religion, that is mere sentimentality, because the old never returns, never comes back into favor. The old gods are gone, and they will not return. As for Faust, he will put himself to be your new leader. But there are a few things to be said about Faust, too, notably, he is cold, indifferent, doesn't really care to lead you. These are the various claims, and we leave them where we found them.

  "Now comes the judgment of what is and what will be. Each of the acts which Mack performed may of course be judged in a variety of ways, in terms of results, in terms of intent, in terms of the urban or rural influences—in short, they provide a dialectical mess which Good and Bad could argue about for another Millennium. Here are the results:

  "First, Constantinople. The icon that Mack saved is later destroyed. The city gets sacked by those who came to preserve it. Bad wins a point here.

  "Second, Kublai Khan loses his scepter. The loss of the scepter deprives the Mongol horde of part of its luck and driving energy. Threat to Western civilization eased. Good wins a point thereby.

  "Fourth, Dr. Dee's mirror was not really important. But Marlowe was. Had he lived he would have written more edifying and, ultimately, morally beneficial works. A second point for Bad.

  "Fifth, saving or not saving the French royal family wouldn't have made that much difference in the long run, in averting the democratic reforms of the nineteenth century. But evil was done to the king and queen. A tie here.

  "Finally, there was cheating on both sides. This, too, cancels out. This contest is hereby declared no contest!"

  CHAPTER 5

  Mephistopheles didn't find out at this time. But later he got the news from an angel who had been traveling down from Heaven to Limbo to be present at the announcing of the contest winner. This angel had chosen to go by her own wing power, because she felt she needed the exercise and because it was a long time since she had seen the sights along the way. As she made her way down from the heavenly mansions, leaving behind one of the very desirable suburbs of Heaven, whom should she see but Mack, trudging along up the rocky road that led to the supernal heights of the divine palace above. He was moving slowly, the angel noted, but he was on his own two feet and he was moving. That was all the angel knew.

  "But where can he be headed?" Mephistopheles asked.

  "He looked like he was going to see You Know Who," the angel said.

  "Not You Know Who!" cried Michael.

  "That's how it looked. Of course, it's possible he was just sightseeing."

  "But how can he presume to seek out God? How dare he? Without a pass? Without a recommendation?

  Without an escort of spiritual dignitaries of proven piety? It is unheard-of."

  "It's what's happening," the angel said.

  "I wish I could see what's going on," Michael said, and Mephistopheles nodded in agreement.

  CHAPTER 6

  When Mack reached the topmost cloud mountain, he beheld, directly in front of him, the great pearly gates, which opened slowly on their valves of gold as he approached. He entered, and Found himself in a bounteous garden in which every tree and bush bore good things, and there was not a slug or weevil in sight. And then a man came hurrying up to Mack, a tall, bearded man in a white robe before whom Mack bowed low, saying, "Hello, God." The man hastened to help him to his feet, saying, "No, no, don't bow to me, I'm not God. I'm afraid He can't come talk with you right now, as He'd love to do, but He sent me, His servant, to tell you that He has decided to overrule Ananke and proclaim you the true victor in the contest."

  "Me?" cried Mack. "But what have I done to deserve that?"

  "I'm not clear on the details," the bearded man said. "And anyhow, it's nothing personal. It's just that a decision has been made to turn the workings of the world over to common rogues and people no better than they ought to be. The old gods have tried to lead mankind and failed, God and the devil have tried and failed, Law has tried and failed, Reason ha
s been insufficient, and even Chaos has proven insufficient.

  This is the era of the common man. Your simple, self-serving actions, Mack, done for your own good but with a vague hope that they would serve nobler purposes, must be declared the winner of this contest, for even that hint of idealism has in it more conviction than all those greater and more complicated ideas."

  Mack was dumbfounded. "Me run things? No, it's impossible, I won't hear of it. Frankly, it sounds like blasphemy."

  "God exists in the blasphemy, the devil in the piety."

  "Look," Mack said, "I think I'd better discuss this with God Himself."

  "If only that could be!" the man said sadly. "But the One God is not to be seen or talked to, not even here in Heaven. We have searched for Him and He simply isn't here. He seems to have absented Himself.

  There are even those who say He never existed, and of course we have no photographs to prove that He did. But our legends say that at one time He did exist, and that the angels visited Him often and basked in His countenance. He used to tell them that Heaven and Hell were in the details. No one understood that.

  He told them that as below, so above. No one understood what that meant until slums began to appear in Heaven, and then crime."

  "Crime in Heaven?" Mack said. "I can't believe that."

  "You'd be surprised what goes on here. It was along about that time that He suddenly told everyone that He wasn't God at all, not the big one, the immanent, the indwelling, no, He was standing in for God because God had had something else to do. But everyone wondered what that could be. Some suspected that He was starting things all over again in another space and time, and this time simplifying them so that they worked. It was felt by general consent that God was disappointed with how things had turned out in this universe, though of course, being a gentleman, He'd never breathed a word about it.

  Perhaps 'intimated' would be a better word."

  Mack stared at the bearded man in the white robe, then said, "You really are God, aren't you?"

  "Well, yes, in a manner of speaking. What's the matter?"

  "Oh, nothing," Mack said.

  "No, no, not at all."

  "I know that's what you're thinking. Remember, I'm omniscient. That's one of my attributes."

  "I know. Omnipotence, too."

  "Well, yes, that. But that's a power best left in abeyance. God's real task is resisting His own omnipotence and refusing to be bound by it."

  "Bound by omnipotence? How can that be?"

  "Omnipotence is a strong hindrance when combined with omniscience and compassion. There's always such a temptation to interfere on the side of gentleness, to right a wrong."

  "So why not do that?"

  "If I put my omnipotence in the service of my omniscience, the result would be a clockwork universe.

  There'd be no free will. No one would suffer the consequences of their actions. I'd always have to be there to see that no sparrow fell from the sky, that no person died in a traffic accident, that no doe was ever taken by a leopard, that no human went hungry, naked, cold, that no one died before their time, or, indeed, why not go all the way and make it so they don't die at all?"

  "That sounds good to me," Mack said.

  "That's because you haven't thought it through. Suppose everything that ever had been continued to exist.

  All of them with their claims, their priorities, their desires. All of which must be met. And of course some other arrangements must be made. If the leopard isn't allowed to eat the doe, then we have to provide other food for him. Turn him into a vegetarian? But what makes you think that plants don't know they're being eaten, and don't resent it as much as you would if someone were eating you? You see the ramifications. It would leave me doing everything, interfering constantly. People's lives would be unutterably boring if I did all the important stuff for them."

  "I see there's quite a lot for You to think about," Mack said. "But then, You're omniscient. That must help."

  "My omniscience tells me to limit my omnipotence."

  "And what about Good and Evil?"

  "Well, I realized, of course, that it was absolutely important, but I could never quite figure out which was which. It was all very complicated. I had deliberately projected this less-than-godlike image of myself.

  Even though I am a god, and the only God at that, I still had a right to be humble. And I had the right to give myself something to be humble about. Even though I was omniscient and omnipotent, I refused to use those powers. I felt it was an unnecessary restriction, trying to make Good right all the time. It seemed very partisan and onesided to have to support Good constantly. Anyhow, since I was omniscient in those days, I knew that in some ultimate analysis, Good and Evil were complementary, equal. Not that that solved anything. I refused to be checked by it. I said the trouble with knowing everything was that you never learned anything. I preferred to go on learning. Maybe I did know the secret reason behind everything. I never let myself know what that secret was. I have said that even God is entitled to His secrets, and had the right and duty not to know everything."

  "But what am I supposed to learn from all this?" Mack said.

  "That you're as free as I am. It may not be much, but it's something, isn't it?"

  CHAPTER 7

  There's always a letdown after something as big as a Millennial contest. Soon after it was over, Azzie found himself at loose ends again. He decided to see what had happened to Faust and the others.

  He found Faust in a tavern outside of Cracow. Amazingly enough, the angel Babriel was also there, sitting with him in a booth and drinking a beer. They welcomed Azzie when he came in and offered him a drink.

  Faust continued his conversation, saying, "Did you hear that dame, Ananke? That was Marguerite, who earlier did everything she could to win me!"

  "It was nothing personal, old boy," Babriel said. "She was speaking as Necessity."

  "Yes, but why did Ananke choose her?" He thought about it a moment, then said, "I suppose it's because she had the qualities that Necessity required in its blind direction of human destiny."

  Babriel blinked, sipped his ichor, put it down. "You see that, do you? You've learned something, Faust!"

  "Not enough," Faust said. "We could have done it, Babriel! We humans, I mean. We could have thrown off all the yokes. If only I'd…"

  "Not you alone," Babriel said. "I hate to sound smug, but it was the failings of all mankind that were judged, not just yours."

  "There's something unsound about it," Faust said. "It's rigged against us from the beginning. They find what qualities we're lacking, then say that those are the ones they want, and that we lose because we don't have them. When we get those qualities, they have something else in mind. But where would they even get the idea of how we should behave if not from us?"

  True enough," Babriel said. "Come now, let's not talk politics. The game is over. Let's have a drink, talk over the good times we had, and be on our way."

  Just then Mack came in, singing a student's song. Since the contest he had pulled himself together remarkably. He was a merchant now, and on his way to becoming wealthy. He had a beautiful girlfriend who looked a lot like Marguerite. Since his visit to Heaven, he had taken up his life on Earth again with good cheer.

  The others gathered around him. Azzie asked, "So what did He say?"

  "Who?"

  "God, of course. We watched from the Palace of Justice as you mounted into Heaven. What did you learn?"

  Mack blinked and looked uncomfortable. "I can't say that I learned anything. Anyhow, it wasn't God I saw. It was just a friend of His."

  "Not exactly. My understanding was, I got to do whatever I wanted with my own life. And that's what I'm doing."

  "Is that all you can tell us?"Azzie asked.

  Mack frowned and didn't answer. Then he smiled again.

  "Come, friends," he said, "I've reserved a table for us at the Wounded Duck. They have a roast goose ready for us. Well eat and toast our accomplishm
ents and laugh at our failures."

  That seemed a good idea to everyone. But Faust said he'd be along later. He left the tavern and walked down Little Casimir Street, and came to the elegant little tea shop where he'd arranged to meet Helen.

  He went in.

  Helen was seated at a little table, sipping orange pekoe. She smiled coldly when he entered and sat down.

  "So, my dear," Faust said, "you gave those old ladies the slip. And you've come back to me!"

  "Only to say good-bye, Johann," Helen said.

  "Oh? That is your decision?"

  "I've decided to return to Achilles," Helen said, nodding. "That's a necessary part of the Helen archetype.

  I returned finally to Menelaus when he was my husband, you know."

  "Well, I suppose it's for the best," Faust said, not really sorry to see her go, because she was entirely too much of a good thing. "Our archetypes aren't well suited to each other. We are both dominant, unique.

  But imagine the fun we could have had!"

  "More fun for you than for me," Helen said. "And besides, you prefer the little goosegirl type. Why don't you take up again with your Marguerite?"