Fred Hoyle - Element 79

So it was common for women in their late thirties or early forties to find themselves suddenly abandoned both by husband and children, for this was the time when the children were avid to leave home. It was too late, almost, to begin again. Life itself had blown up in their faces. To compound the tragedy, “friends” dropped away too, for married women did not welcome the divorcée into their homes, especially when divorcée and husband had known each other these many years past. Such women, then, were obliged to keep company with others in a similar plight. A few succeeded in fighting back, but the majority fell just where they were intended to fall by the Devil, who had planned it all so long ago.

Ironically, just when it seemed as if there would be no limit to his success, the Devil overreached himself. Ironically, too, it was the intervention of a simple, innocent girl that brought about his downfall.

Polly Warburg was one of those who crossed the desert by car, descending into Slippage City through a pass in the fringing mountains. She came with only a few possessions, only a little money, a pretty face, pitifully seeking her fortune. Another girl, some years older, from the same hometown, had done very well for herself, it was rumored. Polly could have done all right back in the hometown, but it would have been hopelessly dull. Here it was all glitter and “life.”

The girl innocently and optimistically tried to break into one of the more glamorous, highly paid activities. She was rapidly and effectively disillusioned. Rather desperate now, Polly searched around for some humbler occupation. It soon boiled down to a choice between the life of a night-club cutie, with a big, blue butterfly on her backside, and a job in one of the new superplus hotels. The nature of the second job wasn’t specified, suspicious in itself. The man who interviewed her said it was a daytime job, so Polly in her innocence thought it must be on the level. As it happened, the job was in fact a more or less proper one. It wasn’t really a job at all, or more accurately, it shouldn’t have been a job at all. Lots of things go wrong in superplus hotels. The plumbing doesn’t quite work. Noise somehow gets piped up from the street, presumably through the steel structure, so the nineteenth floor is noisier than the street itself. Your room gets stuffy and you can’t find any heating control and the windows won’t open. There is no end to your troubles in such places. Most people accept the all-pervasive inconvenience as a part of the deal, because it is not usual for most people to stay in superplus hotels. Not so your experienced traveler, your up-and-on-top executive. They holler like hell for the manager. Something has to be done about it, make no mistake. Now the simplest thing to do, so say the psychologists, is to let the manager be out of town and to substitute a pretty face in his stead. Let the girl smile, let her hear the complaint, let her note it down, and let absolutely nothing to be done about it. To the delight of the rogues who run these abominable places, the method works, particularly when the pretty face can be combined with a sweet temperament. Polly had both these assets and that was why she walked immediately into a job which many girls would have been glad to have.

Of course, it never occurred to Polly that she was a mere face, a front-woman sheltering an inefficient, greedy organization. She hadn’t been in the City long enough for its influence to have penetrated very far. She was living in its superficialities, like the bright lights at night and the sea and the mountains on weekends. She was adequately paid and she was always meeting important people, admittedly under rather trying circumstances, but one day it might lead to something, she persuaded herself. In short, Polly was happy. This in itself was an asset, since even happiness had commercial value in Slippage City.

One morning Polly was walking through the reception lobby when she saw two chubby men coming down from the mezzanine floor. They were wearing gay straw hats and there were big, fire-brick-red rosettes in the buttonholes of their light linen coats. Polly supposed they were from the big convention which was holding its meetings on the mezzanine floor. She gave the two chubby men one of her warmest smiles and passed on. She left them still talking. Not in her wildest dreams could she have guessed about what.

Not only Polly, but the whole management believed the hotel to be “entertaining” the annual convention of broom-handle manufacturers. Actually, the hotel was doing nothing of the sort. It was entertaining a convention of Devils from outer space. They came from all the planets on which suffering and turmoil existed. They came to compare notes and to discuss ways and means. Their number was large, far more than would ever have gone into a convention hall, even a political convention, if—being Devils—they hadn’t possessed mastery over space and time. Of the two on whom Polly had smiled, one was our own, workaday, terrestrial Devil. The other was the Devil from α Serpentis, none other than the Dean of all Devils.

The convention had been called by the terrestrial Devil precisely to demonstrate his new city, for Slippage City had originality, it had facets of devilry which he felt sure would be instructive to his interstellar colleagues. On the whole, the convention gave him a good hearing, but the Devil from α Serpentis was not convinced, and it was Serpens himself whom our terrestrial Devil wanted most to convince. The two of them had still been arguing the matter while they walked down the stairs from the mezzanine floor, they had been arguing as Polly had smiled on them.

“There, look at that,” exclaimed Serpens. “That’s a good-looker for you, and can you have her when you want her, will she come running at the snap of your fingers? Will she my fanny. Let me tell you, Earth, my boy, your system is a washout. That girl will get herself married. Someone else, not you, will work on her exactly the way he feels like working. Okay, so she’ll be divorced, so what? She’ll get married again, twice, three times, maybe. Then, at the end of it all, she’s yours, spoiled goods. I like ’em young and fresh myself, same as vegetables.”

At this the terrestrial Devil became a little angry. He could have one little girl for the taking, he pointed out, anytime he wanted. What his system did was to give quantity, hundreds of thousands, soon millions. The Devil from α Serp replied that, while he must acknowledge it to be largely a matter of taste, he himself preferred one tasty dish to a veritable mountain of indigestible stuff. Then he broke off the conversation in a rather pointed way and went over to chat with the Devil from β Orionis.

After this there was no other alternative, of course, but for the terrestrial Devil to give an open demonstration to the whole of his convention of all that could be done in Slippage City to a girl like Polly Warburg, in fact, to Polly Warburg herself. Wheels were made to revolve. Polly received a communication the following day from a glamour agency, one she had tried to interest in the first place. The offer from the agency was a distinctly good one, in fact, a really excellent one, as a thoroughly well-established independent agent confirmed to her.

Polly was naturally elated to find her talents so worthily, if tardily, recognized. Her agent pointed out a possible hitch in the fine print attached to the contract which Polly signed, to the effect that the agreement would become null and void should a certain wealthy backer of the glamour project withdraw his support. The clause was quite a normal one, the agent said, not to worry about it.

The following day the rather attractive young man who was handling the matter “from the other side” told Polly, in the strictest confidence, that he saw no prospect of support being withdrawn if she could see her way to affording the wealthy backer a few slight favors, in fact, a weekend of slight favors. The backer, he said, was a splendid, jolly fellow, generous and openhanded, humorous and gay, indeed, a girl could do worse.