Dialogues With the Devil

by Taylor Caldwell

  God gave examples of true femininity to women in the form of holy women, in the shapes of Leah and Rachel and Ruth, and surmounting all others, His own Mother. But do the women of Terra emulate these creatures of Grace, and desire, above all, to be like them? They do not. A woman of gentleness and refinement does not permeate gross politics, nor does she wear masculine garments, nor does she seek sexual pleasures without the inevitable results. She is no toy or a marching “friend” to men, a destroyer of her sons, a destructive and contentious force with her daughters, a shouter in the market place, a contender among males, a heaver at manly games, a muscular monstrosity who is neither male nor female. She is what Solomon said a good wife was, more precious than rubies, and all her ways are pleasantness and all her paths are peace.

  Well do I remember Mary, the Queen of Heaven, when she was born and lay in her cradle, unstained by the sin which man incurred at his fall. She opened her infant eyes and looked upon me gravely, and even then she knew what I was. She was not afraid. The light of Our Father lay across her face, and the wings of our brother, Gabriel, protected her. I knew why she had been born; I had known from the beginning. This sweet creature, this frail morsel, this woman, who, even as a babe, was a true woman—Ah, even while I hated her for her destiny, I bowed before her. Hell itself trembled at her birth. She was woman incarnate, the woman Our Father had desired women to be, the image which all women should strive to imitate.

  But they do not. A poet of Terra wrote of Mary: “Our tainted nature’s solitary boast.” But millions of women on Terra scorn her, or doubt that she ever lived, or utter lewd jests of her. I designed it so. Were the women of Terra to become like Mary, my hells would not be fat with female life, and the groves of despair would not echo with female voices.

  I turn from the women of Terra with a disgust which even I cannot bear, and look upon the women of other planets, where the race has not fallen, or even where it has fallen. How beautiful are those women, how pleasurable to the sight, how soft of hand, how gentle of speech, how watchful of their children, how devoted to their men! Not all the planets are so, I admit, but none is so ugly as Terra or so base, and Terra deserves her women, and the women deserve the world they made.

  And the women of other planets, now destroyed and lifeless, were worthy of their worlds, for it is they who ravished them.

  Yes, I know that the fearful stark mountain peak on Melina is filled with gold—and only it possesses that foolish and appalling metal. But I am not committing an error against logic by imputing human, or diabolical, qualities to material of an unsentient existence? Truly, but that is an error men—and demons—commit. Gold is not evil in itself, as Our Father made plain, but only the lust for it. The metal is a beautiful one, intended for decoration and ornament, and a thousand other innocent and pleasurable uses. Nothing is wicked until man makes it so.

  It is notable that sparsely settled worlds are industrious and peaceful ones. But worlds heavily populated and filled with infamous cities are the breeding-houses of crime. It seems that men cannot endure the close proximity of other men—and I do not chide them there! I understand it was Our Father’s intention that the human female have her breeding season as other female animals have theirs, so that human intelligence would prevent an excess of multiplication and thus an excess of populations, and then, in due course, wars for living space. But when men fell—and still fall—man sinks to bestiality lower than the beasts, and loses all restraint, and with it suffers the loss of instinct and natural rhythms of life, as other animals possess them.

  We have discussed all this before through all the tumultuous millennia, and we have observed that with the growth of populations and bloated cities a medium of exchange is necessary to facilitate trade and commerce and the market place—and the inevitable wars. As gold is always the least plentiful of metals, and also the most durable and the most beautiful and desirable, it was natural that it become the medium of exchange among men. In time, it becomes not only the symbol of power but power itself, and that is the greatest of men’s desires, even above the desire for women, for with power comes all things. A man may lose his taste for the ladies through age and boredom, but he never loses his taste for the mastery of his fellowman, and this yearning for mastery has its roots in his innate hatred for his brother, born of sin.

  Men do not often die for love of God, but they will risk death for the promise of power. And gold is power. The newborn men of Melina will discover the gold in their forbidden mountain, and ennui of ennuis, they will fall again, and the whole wretched story will be repeated. It is fortunate for me that the area of spiritual existence is not confined to material barriers, but can be extended infinitely, otherwise, assuredly, I’d be wanting space for my hells. I will tell the new race on Melina of that wonderful gold in the mountain, and recite them the song of power and the control of their fellows, and the ancient story will be duplicated. I am not immune, sorrowfully, to the sameness of the story, and the wearisomeness of it through the ages.

  Man has only to refuse to be tempted, on Melina, to take that gold, but he will take it. You do not know—and neither do I—but sometimes I conjecture if sentience is not a tediousness to Our Father, also, and existence not tiresome. However, when the men of Melina fall again, they will overbreed, they will build their threatening cities, they will desire conquest and worldly glory, all of which rises from the possession of gold. They will deform their world and become a menace to all that lives, including themselves. We are experimenting, in hell, with new weapons of death and fury and annihilation, not only for Melina but for all the other worlds. One is a simple negative charge which will obliterate all positive charges, and thus eliminate not only men but their worlds in one gesture, and set all to floating in harmless gas and mist in the deeps of space. This is not so dramatic as the crude weapons I have given to the men of Terra, which can only set cities to burning to the earth and blinding and killing and maiming men, and blotting out their breeding places, and mutating their species. (Ah, it is a fine sight to see a world wholly burning, like a huge star, itself, until it is a mere cinder!) But my newest weapon, on which my scientists are working so avidly in my hells—their only pleasure that does not ultimately pall—is much cleaner and there will be naught left of worlds at all, not even fragments. My scientists are also experimenting with the negation of magnetic forces and the very laws of gravity, itself. Who knows? It may be within our powers to destroy all gross and fleshly life everywhere. That will be my final victory.

  You will admit, dear Michael, that I could not do all this without the fine cooperation of man, and he always cooperates handsomely. The men on Terra are working with me enthusiastically, for their own death and the destruction of their planet, and perhaps the rude weapons I have already given them will be sufficient. They are not intelligent enough for more lethal and more intricate weapons, and never will they be, for they are not of the mind of the dead men of Melina and so many hundreds of thousands of other planets that were finally cleansed of human life. My scientists despair of them, and are impatient for their disappearance, for scientists, above all men, detest intellectual inferiority and mediocrity, both attributes of Terra. Even the earlier races on that dark planet, before the Flood and the sinking and rising of continents, were not superior. Yet, in their hatred for their brothers they need feel no humiliation before other planets, and no shame or mortification, for they equal the worst.

  Well I remember the planet Mercury, in that little solar system on the borders of your galaxy, Michael, which has the incredible history of Our Father’s sacrifice of His Son. The ancients were not amiss in calling it quicksilver, for once, indeed, it possessed a cool and argent light, sheltered from the ferocity of the parent sun by thick and perpetual clouds. Small though Mercury is, it once was an exquisite miniature of a world, the illumination pale but shining, its river and lakes pearly and glimmering, its seas dove-colored, its mountains softly glittering, its earth silver-gray with foliage like fragile m
etal. The clouds that shielded Mercury were the color of dim opals, streaked with rapid and tremulous fire, and the hours of total darkness were short because of the fast rotation of the planet.

  The race of men created by Our Father to inhabit that world were as nimble and graceful as their world and full of merriment. They built little cities and cultivated their earth and lived in innocent delight, and created miraculous songs and all the arts in profusion. It did not take me long to plot and consummate their fall and destruction. I told their scientists what they already suspected: that the source of their life was in the hidden sun, and I described other worlds to them, sunlit and vigorous and teeming and possessed of far more color than Mercury, that silvery little world. They needed only to invent a formula to dissipate their eternal clouds, I told them, and they, too, would become a symphony of brilliant hues and tints and shades, hot and splendid and vivifying. Above all, I told them of the majesty of the sun, itself, against which their pale eyes would not be proof, unless protected. And scientists are always eager.

  I gave them the formula and the methods to disperse their sheltering clouds from the face of the close sun. You, Michael, told them of their coming destruction if they listened to me, but they said to you, “You would deprive us of knowledge? Are we not men, and was it not designed that as men we should know all things?” I was proud of them, for they spoke in my own language, and with their own words the men of Mercury fell from their innocent state, and Grace, and busied themselves with the works of death.

  You will have to acknowledge that it was a notable day when the scientists began firing their weapons of dispersal at their clouds. The planet was delirious with excitement and expectation. All men ceased their work while they might look at the spectacle. The first effort was not very successful, but successful enough so that the fierce light of the sun shot down upon them for an instant through the torn clouds, and they felt heat and the presence of a radiance they had never known before. It should have been a warning, but naturally it was not. They could speak, thereafter, only of the glimpse they had had of the sun, and the blueness of the sky; at which they marveled. It was a beauty such as they had never dreamed of, but now they dreamt. “Away with these ashen airs!” they cried. “Are we not men, and entitled to the embrace of the passionate sun, and his promise of new life?”

  All efforts, thereafter, were concentrated on the total vanquishment of the clouds, and the day came of complete success. I shall never forget it! The clouds coiled upwards like flaming and stricken serpents of fire, and were gone, and the sun poured down upon Mercury unrestricted. The seas immediately boiled; the lakes were gulped in one breath; the rivers sank into the palpitating earth, which dried and cracked and shook and became instantly burning stone. The cities dissolved as if in a furnace, and a furnace it was, before the awful face of the sun. All flesh evaporated at once, and no life endured for more than a second or two. Mercury’s orbit, though near the sun, had still been a perfect ellipse; now it was suddenly changed to an erratic orbit, and men live no longer on that blazing little world, one face of which is turned mutely forever on the sun which destroyed it, and which was its punishment. It was a very tragic day, was it not, Michael? But one to be inevitably expected.

  No sooner had Mercury become a dead world than out of the darkness moved Venus, out of the far void in which waited other children of the sun for their own experiment in living, and their inexorable death. Venus was so fair a planet, much larger than little Mercury, and when the sun shone on her coldness she came to life, like a dreamer stirring on her couch. Her dull seas became cerulean and warm; her valleys quickened; her lakes sparkled like laughing eyes. Ice fell from her breast, to remain only on her towering mountain heights. Our Father stretched out His Hand and at once Venus seethed with life of endless variety, pink and golden forests, purple steeps, rushing diamond-like cataracts, blue hills, green and yellow grain, fields whispering in balmy winds. Then came the animals of many colors and forms and shapes, vehement with strength and vividness, and with a thousand voices.

  Our Father could not refrain. He created man on Venus, as you know, and you visited the first men and gave them, as always, the warning against me, and you called them your brothers and they knelt before you for your blessing. Unfortunate Michael! You smiled upon the aureate heads of the men of Venus, and you looked into their tawny eyes, and you delighted in the sight of their gilded flesh and you rejoiced in the comeliness of the race. Tall they were, as gods, almost as beautiful as the angels, and Our Father had endowed them with great intelligence even in their newborn state. That was a supreme offense to me.

  You had told the men of Venus of the vices of concupiscence, and that they must breed only in the ordained seasons, lest their world be overrun and their cities become great hungry mouths of unsatisfied hunger. But again, Our Father gave them the gift of free will. The pleasures of sensuality were permitted only for two weeks every year and at no other time. They knew the Commandment, and for two hundred years they kept it, in spite of Damon and Lilith and all their promises of unrestrained rapture.

  Then the younger generations questioned with vexation, “Why should this ecstasy be permitted us only for a brief few days every year, when it is obvious our women are capable of much more, not to speak of ourselves! Why should we be denied? Are we not men, and must we turn our face from our wives and sleep like brothers beside them, until it pleases—whom? Whom are we to please? Oh, our fathers tell us of the Commandment, but we have not heard it, ourselves, nor have we seen this Michael, and we have no knowledge of God but what our fathers have written in their busy books, and what they have preached to us in the little golden temples. But our fathers were apparently men of no vigor and no joy, that they denied themselves in obedience to some myth, and they spoke of ‘forbidden pleasures’ out of the thickets of their beards. There is no zest in them, no love for experimentation and delight. They withhold themselves from their wives—and in obedience to what, and to whom? Is our race so despicable, then, that we need to limit our numbers? Surely that is defiance of life, itself, and we are lovers of life, and not haters. Let us fill the world with our beautiful kind!

  “They say that if we indulge ourselves in our nature—and why should not that nature be indulged?—we shall surely grow old and feeble and die, and our world will die with us. What nonsense! What childishness! Mere pleasure could not bring such calamities upon us, for were we not born of pleasure, ourselves—though only a seasonable pleasure? Let our fathers reveal this Michael to us, and let us hear his voice and the speaking of that alleged Commandment, and let us look upon that God of Whom they talk endlessly.”

  Are you not tired of the timeless history, Michael, and the same silly words of men? Damon and Lilith were soon successful in the seducing of the Venus race, and in a very few centuries Venus was one huge city and the green land shrank in area and the seas and the waters—a very old story. Wars became more terrible as men fought for places to live and breathe air not polluted by the breaths of their fellows, and hatred replaced all love, even the love of women, and of the gold which they, of course, soon found under my tutelage.

  We of the hells came to the rescue of the panting men of Venus. We gave their scientists the secret of inhibiting the breeding powers of “enemy” women, and the secret of the sterilizing of the “enemy” men. What they refused to accomplish as an act of obedience to God they accomplished as an act of disobedience and hatred. I assured the scientists of all the nations that I also had the secret of protecting their own countries—but am I not the father of lies? Children ceased to be born, and as the men of Venus had brought old age, disease, and death to their planet, there was no replenishing of life, no, not even in the shrunken forests and the fields and the filthy waters. Seventy more orbits around the sun, and the race of Venus was no more, and Our Father shrouded the face of the planet with hot clouds, forever and forever.

  Then out of the darkness and the void and the cold moved forward the third world, Ter
ra, and Terra quickened and Our Father threw His Shadow of light upon her frozen breast and her dark clouds, and the sun saw the face of another child. Alas.

  In anticipation of the coming death of Terra, I have visited the outer planets many times, conjecturing upon them. Mars with his cold red cheeks, Saturn with her rainbowed rings, Jupiter with his huge crimson spot, Neptune, Uranus, Pluto. They do not live, as yet. Are they awaiting the hour when Terra’s orbit will be empty and they may move forward into their new places, while Mercury and Venus fall into the sun?

  Or, will He indeed, as He promised, come again to Terra? He has said that not even the archangels know that day—and perhaps He has now repented His Word and will not keep it. If He comes as He came before, vulnerable to the wickedness and the plots of men, then assuredly He will die the second death! He will need all the protection of His angels, for never have I seen such a savage and doltish race, no, not ever from the first dawning of light on any of the worlds.

  Your brother, Lucifer

  Greetings to my brother, Lucifer, who has been very busy of late, and who is the great Plausible, as he will admit, himself:

  It is quite true, unfortunately, what it is you say of the women of Terra, but indeed not all. It is true only of those called the “advanced” races where culture is alleged to be the most sophisticated. But, as you have remarked, Terra also has her barbarians, as she always had in the past. I know you are quite capable of loosing the barbarians upon that part of Terra which the people designate as the “West.” You have done it before. You did it in Babylonia, in Greece, in China, in Rome, in Egypt, India and other lands of subtle civilizations. You did it on the sunken continents. The signs of your deft seductions are everywhere, while you at the same time inspire the barbarian with envy and greed and yearning for what will kill him, too, when he achieves the state he desires. I agree that man, anywhere, never appears to learn from history and experience.