Roger Zelazny - A Farce To Be Reckoned With

"Terribly sorry," Babriel murmured.

Babriel babbled about Aretino's manuscript, its title, its first line, together with the information that the poet was celebrating a new assignment, and, from the look of the celebration, a well-paying one.

"Seven Golden Candlesticks,," Michael mused. "It does not ring a bell. But come, let's consult the computer that the Heavenly Department of Attractive Heresies has recently installed."

He led Babriel down the hall to his workroom, where, beside the Gothic file cabinets and the Romanesque desk, there was a computer terminal of the cubic design called modern. The archangel sat down at the console, clapped a pair of spectacles on the end of his nose, and typed in various identifying words. He did other things with the keys, and soon data was flowing, black and green, down the screen in a rushing stream. Babriel blinked, but it was all going by too rapidly for him. Michael seemed to have no difficulty scanning the information, however, and he soon nodded and looked up.

Objections had been raised as to the suitability of computers in Heaven. The main argument in their favor pointed out that they were mere extensions of quill pen and stone tablet, both sanctioned for use in portrayals of spiritual places for purposes of signifying the Idea of Information. The computer was inherently no different from earlier writing technologies, and it had the virtue of taking little room in which to store a lot of information—unlike stone tablets, which could grow quite unwieldy and brought with them the attendant need of reinforcing the floors of the places where they were stored. Even parchment papers, though light by comparison to stone tablets, had their problems, not least of which was their destructibility.

"What did the computer tell you?" Babriel asked.

"It seems there is an old gnostic legend about Satan giving Adam seven golden candlesticks with which to find his way back to Eden."

"Did he ever get there?" Babriel asked eagerly.

"Of course not!" Michael snapped. "Don't you think you'd have heard about it if he had? Don't you realize that all of mankind's history is based on the fact that Adam didn't get back to Eden, and that he and every other man are still striving for it?"

"Of course, sir. I didn't think."

"If the Enemy is playing around with a story from the earliest days of creation, when the ground rules were set up to run the interaction between men and spirits, that is a matter of considerable interest to us.

Seven golden candlesticks!"

"Did they ever exist?" Babriel asked.

"Probably not."

"Then presumably they don't exist today and can do us no harm."

"Don't jump to conclusions," Michael said. "Myths are the damnedest things. If those candlesticks did exist, they could cause a lot of trouble in the wrong hands. The risk is so terrifying that I think we must assume they do exist until proven otherwise, and even then we must remain cautious."

"Yes, sir. But if Azzie had the candlesticks, what would he do with them?"

"And what about me, sir?" Babriel asked. "Shall I get back to spying on Azzie?"

The archangel nodded. "You're getting the idea," Michael said.

Babriel hurried back to Venice. But a hurried search, and then a more careful search, convinced him that Azzie was no longer in that city.

Azzie had been called to Hell in a peremptory fashion. His head was still spinning as he stood in Satan's sitting room in the white clapboard house where the CEO of Hell did much of his business.

A demon in blue suit and rep tie came out. "His Excellency will see you now." And just like that, Azzie was in the chambers of Satan. Satan's place looked like a Long Island sitting room in a fancy house in one of the best suburbs. There was nothing particularly Satanic about it—just golf trophies, hunting prints, and a smell of fine old leather.

Satan had all the elaborate Hellish stuff, the torture instruments, recordings of Black Masses, all the stage trappings, but they were in a different part of the house, which he kept for official business.

Satan was smallish, "with neat, prissy features, balding, bespectacled. He could take on any appearance he pleased, but he generally favored an unassuming look; at the moment he wore a yellow dressing robe with a paisley ascot tied around the neck.

"Ah, Azzie, it's been a long time! I haven't seen you since you were in my class on the ethics of Evil, back in the good old university days."

"Those were the good old days, sir," Azzie said. He had always been impressed with Satan. Satan was one of the main architects and theoreticians of Evil, and he had been the demon's role model for many years.

"Now, then," Satan said, "what's this I hear about you putting on a play?"

"Oh, yes," Azzie said. "It's true." He thought Satan would be pleased with his initiative. Satan was always telling the young demons to get out there and do something bad.

Azzie said, "I got this idea for an immorality play from watching one of the other kind. You see, sir, our opponents are always trying to prove that good actions are the only way to get good results. That's propagandistic and quite untrue. My play is going to show how absurd their notion is."

Satan laughed, but there was something pained in his expression as he said, "Well, I wouldn't exactly say that! The opposite of Good is not exactly Bad. You will remember, I pointed this out in my classes on basic infernal logic."

"Yes, sir. I don't mean to put Bad in the position of meaning you don't have to do anything to be rewarded for it."

"I should hope not!" Satan said. "That's not the position that Good takes. That's a fact of life whether you're good or bad."

"Yes, sir," Azzie said. "I guess I didn't quite see it that way. I mean, can't I do a play that brings up some of the good features of Evil?"

"Is it, sir? Yes, of course it is! I don't know, sir, I just got the idea that this would be a good thing to do.

It's amusing, you see, and our opponents are so serious minded."

"Do you mean to imply that we here in Hell are not serious minded? I can assure you that's not the case."

"That's not what I meant, sir!"

"I'd be rather careful about this idea," Satan said. "I don't want to order you outright to drop it. Why don't you put it on hold for a 'while? I'll try to find you some other assignment."

"On hold, sir? I couldn't do that. I've already got people working on it," Azzie said. "I've made promises.

I wouldn't want to stop my actors and go back on my word. Unless of course I am ordered to."

"Oh, no, no," Satan said, "I'm not going to order you to stop. Wouldn't that make me a laughingstock—if I ordered one of my own demons to stop putting on a play extolling Hellish activities! No, my dear fellow, it's entirely your choice. Just remember, if it doesn't work out the way you are rather fatuously hoping it will, well, you were warned. We did ask if you wouldn't like to at least postpone it until you could think it over."

Azzie was so shaken by all this that he left without asking after one of his main concerns: was the candlestick story really true? But he left determined to go on with his play, and to visit the one being he thought could help him with the matter, true or not.

Azzie was determined now to find out whether or not the golden candlesticks actually existed. He had a plan either way: if they did exist, he would use them in the play he was going to stage for the edification of man and spirits; if not, he would find some craftsman who could make facsimiles.

But he was hoping they did exist.

Everyone in Hell knows that if you need an answer fast, you just go to The Man — Cornelius Agrippa, a figure of singular importance in recent centuries and still much discussed in the Renaissance. He lived in an ideal sphere that was neither spiritual nor material but had some odd makeup of its own that had not been defined yet. Agrippa himself had been surprised when it sprang into being, and he hadn't had time yet to assimilate it to his system.