Roger Zelazny - If at Faust You Don't Succeed

He made as if to go. But Mack plucked him by the sleeve.

"What is it?"

"If you would be so kind as to settle the bill, if it please Your Demonship."

"Have you no money of your own?"

"I may need it. You can't tell what might come up on an assignment like this."

Mephistopheles contemptuously threw a handful of coins on the table and made as if to disappear. Then, remembering appearances, he stalked out of the tavern and found nearby a little cul-de-sac where his vanishment would not be remarked.

Mack put the handkerchief-wrapped object into his pouch without looking at it, then counted out the exact change from what Mephistopheles had left, pocketed the rest, made enquiry as to the location of Dr. Dee's house, and departed.

In the next booth, concealed from Mack and Mephistopheles by its high back, a muffled figure stirred.

He was a fox-faced fellow dressed in crimson and green finery, complete with large starched ruff. Azzie, for such it was, tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the oak table, and his long upper lip lifted in a humorless grin.

He had followed Mephistopheles here in a surreptitious manner, eager to get to the bottom of the mystery of the demon's behavior. So that was what Mephistopheles was up to! Cheating! And there had to be a way that Azzie could make use of that knowledge. He considered for a moment, then thought he found a way to go about it.

He conjured himself out of the tavern upon the instant, before the astonished publican could present the bill. Let the superstitious lout blame it on Marlowe's Faust. Azzie had devilish work to do. Swiftly he mounted to the starry firmament, bound for the spiritual regions, where he had something of interest to say to a certain former witch of his acquaintance.

We shouldn't be meeting this way," Ylith said, looking around with worried glance. But it seemed she had nothing to worry about. This cocktail lounge, The Mixed Spirit, just inside the blue-black walls of Babylon, and just around the corner from the temple to Baal, was well known as a neutral place where the operatives from Good and Bad got together from time to time, exchanged information, and tried to suborn each other. Since each side thought it had the advantage in the suborning business, neither had gotten around to proscribing meetings. Babylon in those days, before the Hittites moved in and trashed the neighborhood, and before Alexander ruined the place for good as he did Thebes, was a fun place to spend some time. The city was famous for its musical revues, its great zoo where animals of all varieties wandered in a paradisaical setting, its hanging gardens, which were like a frozen Niagaras of vegetation tumbling down from the heights of the upper city. Although this information was later suppressed by the jealous Athenians, Babylon was the intellectual capital of the world in those days, a place where Phoenician and Jew, Bedouin and Egyptian, Persian and Indian, could meet in cheerful confab in one of the city's many coffee houses—for Babylon had learned the great secret of coffee, espresso style, the steamed water pushed through the fragrant brew by great bellows operated by the Nubians and Ethiopians who had a monopoly on the trade. Babylon was also a food capital, whose shish kebabs were second to none, and whose baby buns were famous as far as Asmara and beyond. And above all, Babylon was splendid with color and pageantry, a place given to public festivals and to kingly revels.

Ylith looked at him fondly but with dubiety in her gaze. Azzie was a handsome demon, there could be no doubt about that. His orange-red fur was close-cropped and lustrous, his long, thin-bladed nose had a great elegance about it, and his lips, twisted and smiling, had touched hers too often for her to be able to gaze upon them with complete indifference. Yes, she still cared for him. But that was not the reason she had accepted his invitation. She knew that resisting him was good for her soul; and besides, it gave her a frisson to feel the pangs of a love that never could be, a love that she had transferred recently to the angel Babriel. Yes, Babriel was very good indeed, and that was good, as far as goodness went. But of late Ylith had begun to feel immortal yearnings, which she hoped were not also immoral.

Snap out of it, girl, she admonished herself. And then, to Azzie: "So what's new?"

"Nothing much," Azzie said with an elaborate shrug. "Just the same old skulduggery and double-dealing.

You know what a demon's life is like."

"Who have you been double-crossing recently?" Ylith asked.

"Me? No one. It's been a quiet time for me, since the Powers That Be in all their wisdom decided not to employ me on the current Millennial contest."

"Mephistopheles is a competent demon, so I hear," Ylith said. "No doubt he'll do a good job for Your Side."

"No doubt. Especially since he improves on chance with guile."

"That's to be expected. He's a demon, after all."

"I know. Guile's fine. But outright cheating is not, according to the agreement."

"Cheating?" she echoed. "I'm sure Mephistopheles wouldn't cheat. He's an upright devil, from all I've heard."

"Perhaps it wasn't cheating, then," Azzie said. "Perhaps I misunderstood."

She sat up, her back stiffening. "What did you misunderstand?" "It was the merest nothing," Azzie said, breathing on his fingernails and buffing them on his flaring red velvet jacket.

"Azzie, stop teasing me! What did you see?"

"Nothing at all. But I overheard…"

"What?"

"I overheard the redoubtable Mephistopheles giving instructions to Johann Faust, the contestant in our game of Light and Dark."

"Well, of course he gave him instructions! Otherwise Faust wouldn't know what to do."

"Now he knows all too well," Azzie said.

"Stop these vague presentimentalistic mutterings! Tell me what you are hinting at."

"Mephistopheles is supposed to offer Faust a choice, correct?"

"That is well known."

"I heard him tell Faust exactly what choice he should make, and how he should go about accomplishing it."

"You mean he coached the contestant?"

"That's exactly what I mean. Forget about free will in this contest, my dear. It is Mephistopheles' will that is being served."

She stared at him openmouthed. And Azzie told her of the conversation he had overheard between Mephistopheles and Mack in the inn in London, and how Mephistopheles had directed the famous magician to save Marlowe, and had even suggested to him how to go about it.

"Azzie, if you're just trying to stir up trouble…"

"I'm always ready for that," Azzie said. "But what I have told you is absolute stone truth, without elaboration or embellishment."

Ylith was silent for a time, taking it in. She took two sips of her nectar frappe, an ambrosial beverage that disappeared from the world when Alexander the Great leveled the walls of Babylon and destroyed the frappe parlors in an act of misplaced Macedonian piety. Then she said, "If you say true, this is very serious."

"I never thought otherwise," Azzie said. "But you see, I am at a disadvantage here. Mephistopheles is on my side, and it wouldn't look right for me to go to the High Council with word of his misdoings. And yet, within me, Ylith, there beats a heart dedicated to truth and justice, just as your own does."

"How can you say that?" Ylith demanded. "You and your kind willingly serve lies and Badness!"

"Yes. But we do so in the cause of truth," Azzie said, employing paradox when the simple truth would never do. "We Darksiders just have our own way of going about it."

She shook her head at him, but her smile was fond. "You always were a silver-tongued devil!"

Ylith didn't understand Mephistopheles' motives.

"If he rescues Marlowe," she asked, "won't that be a Good Thing, since it will give the world more of his plays?"