If at Faust You Don`t Succeed

CHAPTER 1

After Mephistopheles conjured him away from Varennes, there was a break in the continuity of Mack's consciousness. He fell into dreams of a strange sort, but the details swam out of his grasp. Then there was a period of sleep, and finally, Mack awoke.

He found himself lying on a green couch in a hazy, indistinct sort of place. He tried to make out details, but they fuzzed before his eyes. Still, he knew of only one place that had this sort of green couch. He had to be in Mephistopheles' office in Limbo!

He got up and looked around. Through a low archway there was another room, and in it was the storage locker with the salvaged Botticelli.

There was the sound of a door opening and Mack turned, ready for trouble. Ylith came in. She was wearing a beige sheath dress that came down to midcalf on her fine legs. Her long dark hair was worn in a soft upsweep and pinned in place by imitation tortoiseshell combs. Her face was customarily pale, but a quick dab of rouge had put dots of color in her cheeks.

"It's all over," she said. "That was the last sequence where you needed to make a choice."

"I thought that's what Mephistopheles said! What happens now?"

"Now the judging begins. That's where I'm going. I just stopped by to see how you were."

"That was good of you. I don't suppose I was invited to the judging?"

"Not that I know of," Ylith said.

"That's very like them," Mack said with some bitterness. "Mephistopheles was all smiles and attention when there was something he wanted me to do, but now that it's over I don't even get asked to the celebration."

"Humans are rarely asked to these matters," Ylith said. "But of course I see what you mean." "And when do I get my reward?"

"I don't know anything about that," Ylith said. "You'll just have to wait. This is Limbo, and in Limbo, people wait." Ylith conjured herself away with an elegant move of her slim hands. Mack paced around for a while, then saw a pile of books on a little table and sat down in a chair beside them. He picked up The Road to Hell and How to Find It, a product of the Satanic Press. He read, "Do you really want to get into Hell?

Don't be surprised. A lot of people do! You're not alone. Hell is characterized by the importance of the appetites. Unlike the stories told, you can feed these appetites perfectly well in Hell. Trouble is, they never stay fed. But they never did when you were alive, either. Let us consider…"

Suddenly there was a flash of light and a puff of smoke. When the smoke cleared away Faust was standing there. He was looking good, dressed in a fine scholar's gown with an ermine collar.

"Hi, there!" Mack said, happy to see a familiar face, even if it was Faust's, and even if it was frowning.

Faust said, "Look, I'm in a hurry. Did you see a tall, very skinny man with yellowish eyes and long, lank dark hair and a somewhat weird expression go by here?" Mack shook his head. "Nobody's passed this way since I've been here except for a female spirit named Ylith."

"No, she's not the one I'm looking for. The count of Saint-Germain said he'd meet me here. I hope he's not going to be late." "Who's he?" Faust gave him a superior look. "Only one of the world's greatest magicians, that's who. He came along after your time."

"But your time is also my time. How do you know about him?"

"Oh, well," Faust said, "I am a great magician myself, the greatest who ever lived, and it is to be expected that I would know the important men in my line of work past and future. Living or dead, or yet unborn, we magicians stay in touch."

"Why did you call up this Saint-Germain guy?"

"I'm afraid it would be premature for me to tell you," Faust said. "Let's just say I have a little surprise in store."

"The contest is indeed over, though it will be interesting to hear what Ananke will make of your clumsy and uninformed efforts to influence history. But despite this being the end, the last word has not yet been spoken. To put it to you succinctly, my dear Mack, Faust himself has not yet been heard from."

"Faust? You mean you?"

"Of course I mean me! I am Faust, am I not?"

"In a way. But in a way I'm Faust, too."

Faust looked at Mack long and hard, and then threw back his head and laughed.

"You, Faust? My dear fellow, you are the very opposite of the Faustian ideal, an abject sort of creature, mean-spirited, docile to your masters, treacherous to your friends, vulgar, uninformed as to history, philosophy, politics, chemistry, optics, alchemy, ethics, and, above all, the master science, magic." Faust smiled cruelly. "Now, Mack, you may have filled Faust's shoes for a time, as a child can step into an adult's boots, and perhaps even take a step or two. But now, thankfully, your clownlike moment on the stage of human history is over. My friend, there is nothing Faustian about you, or, indeed, anything even interesting about you. You are one of the lowest common denominators of humanity, and we don't need you here any longer."

"Oh, is that so?" Mack said, his mind boiling with incoherent retorts. But he spoke to the empty air because with a single intricate gesture of his left hand, Faust had conjured himself away.

"I wish I could do that," Mack said aloud, alone again in the Waiting Room in Limbo, rage leaking out of him and being replaced by self-pity. He said aloud, "It isn't fair, putting me up against all these famous people, to say nothing of spirits who can conjure themselves where they please in the twinkling of an eye, whereas I, a common, earthy sort of man, must proceed on foot, and make effort, and take every step that lies between here and there."

"What dreary self-pitying do I hear?" a deep and sarcastic voice behind him said.

Mack turned quickly, startled, because he had thought himself entirely alone. There was Odysseus, tall and splendid, magnificent in a freshly pressed white tunic. Thrown over it was a cloak with the many folds beloved by sculptors. Odysseus had a face so noble that it could make a common man like Mack, with his common features and snub nose and freckles, consider himself no comelier than an ape. Odysseus stood a head taller than Mack, his skin bronzed, muscles rippling in his well-formed arms.

"Hello, Odysseus," Mack said. "What are you up to?"

"I'm on my way to the great assembly hall to listen to Ananke's judgment and perhaps offer a few ideas of my own. And your?"

"I'm waiting for Mephistopheles to come with the reward he promised me."

Odysseus shrugged. "Do you think it's wise to take it? Personally, I wouldn't accept an obol from these present-day devils. They seek to enslave you by making you dependent on them. But to each his own.

Farewell, Mack."

And with that, Odysseus released a Traveling Spell from his leather sack of spells and vanished from sight.

"Say you so?" said a voice behind him.

Mack had a moment to wonder if there was some special mechanism in the universe that enabled people always to conjure themselves into existence behind his back. He turned and beheld Rognir the dwarf, who had just come up through a hole in the floor that he had cut with his mattock.

"Of course I say so," Mack said. "Everyone else around here gets about by magic. They just have to say the word and they're where they want to be. But I am forced to walk, and I don't even know where I'm going."

"That's really tough," Rognir said with heavy sarcasm. "What do you think I do, buster?"

"You? I never thought about it. How do you get around?"

"Dwarves travel in the old-fashioned way. On foot. Dwarves don't just walk, however. They first dig tunnels to wherever they want to go, and then walk. You think it's easy to build a tunnel?"

"I suppose it's not," Mack said. He thought about it for a moment. "I suppose sometimes you encounter rock."

"The places we tunnel through are made up more of rock than of dirt," Rognir said. "We dwarves get positively cheerful when there's nothing but dirt to tunnel through. Rocks and boulders are bad enough, but the worst is tunneling under a swamp. You have to shore up the tunnel as you go along, and that means you have to cut balks of wood and drag them to where you need them. Balks of wood don't come ready-cut, and forests are usually far away from where you want the wood. Sometimes we use shaggy little ponies to help us, but most of the time it's just muscle power and grit."

"I guess you don't have it very good."

"Wrong again," Rognir said. "We dwarves feel that we have it very good indeed. We are not humans, remember. We are a class of supernatural being, though we don't make a big deal of it. We could have petitioned the high powers for special abilities. But that's not our way. We are the one and only race in the cosmos that isn't asking anybody for anything."

"Aren't you concerned about who wins the contest between Light and Dark?"

"Not in the slightest. The outcome doesn't affect us dwarves. Concerns about Good and Evil leave us cold. Dwarves know no good except digging, and no bad except digging, either. Our destiny is mapped out from birth to death: we dig till we drop, and when we're not digging we walk our tunnels and find jewels and attend jamborees. We don't expect spirits to come along and do our work for us."

"Well, I suppose I should feel properly ashamed of myself," Mack said, feeling, in fact, a little abashed.

"But what do you expect me to do?"

"Tell me if I'm wrong," Rognir said, "but isn't it true that all these spirits and demigods and Faust himself are fighting for the right to rule mankind for the next thousand years?"

"That's my understanding of it," Mack said.

"Fine. So what are you going to do about it?"

"Me? You mean me personally?'

"That's who I'm referring to," Rognir said.

"Why… Nothing, I suppose. There's nothing I can do. And if there were, why should I?"

"Because it's your destiny they're talking about, dummy," Rognir said. "Don't you want a say in it?'

"Of course I do! But who am I to tell people how I should be ruled?" "Who is the one to speak for mankind? Is it Faust?"

Mack shook his head. "Faust thinks he's Mr. Universal, but he's really just a loudmouth magician with a couple of good tricks. People like that are different from the rest of us. I know some of their tricks, but when they talk about the higher aspects of the alchemist's art it leaves me cold." "Quite properly so," Rognir said. "It's all a lot of hot air. There's only digging. That's for us, the dwarves, of course. As for you, why should you let a mug like Faust tell you how you are to be ruled?"

Mack stared at him. "But what can I do?" "For one thing," Rognir said, "you can get angry."

"But I'm not mad at anyone," Mack said. But even as he denied it, he felt the stirrings of a long-suppressed rage. At first he thought he was faking it, as he had faked so many things in his life, and he told himself to calm down, it would go away. But this feeling of rage didn't go away. Instead it grew and spread through his head, until he could feel black anger inflaming his eyeballs, engorging the veins of his neck, threatening to burst out the top of his head. "Well, damn it, it's not right!" he burst out at last. "Nobody should decide the fate of the common man but the common man himself. It's been too long that we've let spirits, and so-called great men like Faust, decide our destinies for us. Now is the time to do something about it!" "Now you're talking," Rognir said.

Mack's shoulders sagged. "But what can I do?"

"It's an interesting question," Rognir said, and turned to the tunnel he had just excavated and walked into it.

Mack stood still in the room and stared for a while at the hole Rognir had disappeared through. He had a great desire to dive into it himself. But of course men don't dive into tunnels like dwarves. Mack crossed the room and opened the door. Outside, the vast, indistinct landscape of Limbo spread out before him. There were hills ahead, but they were nebulous, and seemed to disappear into the clouds, unless those were mist-veiled mountains behind them.

Looking more closely, Mack saw there was the indication of a path. He followed it through swirling white and yellow mists. Presently he came to a crossroads. There was a sign that read road to earth and pointed one way, road to hell another way, the way you've come pointing back the way he had come, and road to heaven as the last direction. Mack made up his mind and started walking.

pointed one way, road to hell another way, the way you've come pointing back the way he had come, and road to heaven as the last direction. Mack made up his mind and started walking.

2 It was a clear day in the part of Limbo reserved for the judgment of mankind's destiny. The sky was fishbelly white, but that was not unusual for the time of year. A few snowflakes had fallen earlier, but no real accumulation was expected. In the distance, the hills of Nothingness were a low blue line on the horizon. It was literally true that on a clear day you could see forever.

Mephistopheles and the Archangel Michael were sitting side by side on a tall pillar recently vacated by Simon Stylites, who had found a better way to mortify his spirit by picking a punishment from the future and forcing himself to watch televised reruns of every game the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had ever played.

Michael hadn't visited Limbo in quite a while, not since he had met with Mephistopheles to set the contest. He was happy to see that nothing much had changed. There was still the same dear old vagueness about where the sky ended and where the land began, the same pleasing ambiguity over the colors of things, the same uncertainty as to shapes. Vagueness! And its concomitant, moral uncertainty!

After a long life of absolutes, there was something refreshing about it.

"Limbo is just the same as it ever was!" Michael said.

"My dear archangel," Mephistopheles said, "if you rein in your passion for paradox for a moment, you can see that there's been a lot of change around here. Don't you notice all the building that's going on?"

"Oh, that, of course," Michael said. "But that's quite ephemeral. Underneath it's the same dear old Limbo." He peered in a westerly direction. "What are they putting up there?"

Mephistopheles looked in the indicated direction. "Didn't you know? That's the new Palace of Justice, where the judgment will be announced."

Michael peered at it. "It seems to be a most noble structure."

"It's certainly large enough," Mephistopheles said. "I understand quite a few guests have been invited from both sides. Even some humans, though that's quite unusual."

"Well, it seems only right," Michael said. "After all, it is their destiny being decided."

"So what?" Mephistopheles snorted. "The forces of Light and Dark never consulted mankind back in the good old days. We just told them the way it was going to be, and they had to like it or lump it."

"Science and rationalism have changed all that," Michael said. "It's what is called progress. A good thing on balance, I believe."

"Of course you believe that," Mephistopheles said. "What else could you say, given your predisposition to affirm?"

"And what else could you say but the contrary?" Michael asked.

"You've got a point there," Mephistopheles admitted. "We're both restricted in our viewpoints."

"Exactly. That's why we have Ananke to do the judging."

"Where is Ananke, by the way?"

"No one has seen her latest incarnation. Necessity has strange ways of conducting herself. And there's no use complaining about it. She just says it's Necessary, and never explains why."

"Who's that coming?" Mephistopheles asked.

Michael looked out across Limbo. Even with perfect vision, it took him a moment to bring into focus something as small as a man on the vast landscape of zilch.

"That's Mack the Club!" Michael said.

Mephistopheles looked. "Are you quite sure? That is the man I've been dealing with during this contest."

"Oh, it's definitely Mack," Michael said. "Is it possible that you made a mistake in Cracow, my dear demon? Has the wrong Faust been performing in your contest?" Mephistopheles looked again, and his lips thinned. His dark eyes seemed to smolder. Glaring at Michael, he said, "I seem to see a fine spiritual hand in all this!"

"You give me too much credit," Michael said.

Mephistopheles looked again. "That's definitely the fellow who's been doing the contest. Are you sure he's not Faust?" "Afraid not. His name is Mack, and he is a common criminal. I'm afraid you picked the wrong man to decide human destiny, my dear Mephistopheles."

"And you have picked the wrong devil if you think you can get away with this?"

Michael smiled but did not reply.

Mephistopheles said, "We'll settle this later. I must get down to the banquet hall. Darkside is catering the refreshments this time." He peered out across Limbo again. "Where is that fellow going?"

"Read the signpost. He is on the road to Heaven," Michael said.

"Really? I didn't know that was the direction to it!"

"It changes from time to time," Michael said.

"But why?"

"We of the forces of Good," Michael said with dignity, "try not to spend too much time asking why."

Mephistopheles shrugged. Together the two great spirits proceeded to the Palace of Justice.