Roger Zelazny - A Farce To Be Reckoned With

"I suppose I did," Azzie said, "but what of it, what's wrong with magic horses?"

"What does this have to do with reality?" Azzie asked.

"Listen up good now, my fine young demon. Reality is a sphere of solid matter made up of various substances lying in strata. Where one stratum abuts another, there, we can say, is a potential fault line, just as it is in the Earth. Anomalies are the things that explode shock waves along these interfaces. Your illicit use of the magic horses was one such anomaly bomb. But other anomalous things have been happening, too. The fact that the old gods have escaped is an event so impossible that its occurrence has shaken the universe.

"It is poor Venice that is bearing the brunt of this cosmic disaster that you have perpetrated. The city has had the bad luck to be the focus of events, and your work has subjected it to a reality strain. The floods, the Mongol invasion, and the plague soon to follow, are not at all part of the main line of Venetian history.

They weren't really supposed to happen at all. They are side possibilities, with vanishingly small chances of being activated in the normal run of things. But due to you they have been activated, and so all of recorded history from this time forward lies under threat of destruction."

"How can time forward be threatened?" Azzie asked.

"You must think of the future as something that has already happened, and that is threatening to happen again, wiping out all that has gone before. That is what we must avoid at all costs."

"A lot of stuff is going to come down," Ananke said. "But first, you must get these pilgrims of yours back to their homes."

Azzie had to be content with that. But at the back of his mind, there began a small stirring beneath the sea of anxiety. Ananke said he wasn't acting according to reality. But what was reality but the balance, the agreement, between Good and Bad? If he could get Michael to change that agreement, to their mutual benefit… But first he had to look in on his pilgrims.

When Azzie left the Palace of Justice his tail was between his legs and a suspicious wetness was in the corners of his brown eyes. He was trying to get used to the idea that his play, his great immorality play that was going to astonish the worlds, was never going to happen. The legend, the all-important legend of the golden candlesticks, was not to be allowed to play to its ending. He was under direct and unambiguous orders from Ananke Herself to stop his actors in midscene.

There had to be a way around her order. Moodily he went to a Power Booth outside the Palace of Justice and refilled his travel spell. At a nearby lunch area he found a stall that specialized in quick convenience foods for demons, where he bought a sack of deviled cats' heads in a nice clotted red sauce. It would give him something to snack on on his way back to Earth. Then he activated his spell and found himself hurtling through the transparent veils that spiritual space seems composed of.

Soon he was back over Venice, and the sight of the city from the air was a sad one. Rising waters had already engulfed some of the low-lying outer islands. The winds had fallen off, but floodwaters had risen to engulf the San Marco's Square to a depth of ten feet. The older and less secure buildings were already collapsing as the brackish tidal waters washed out the old mortar that held their bricks and stones together.

Azzie came down at Aretino's house and found the poet outside in his shirtsleeves, trying to shore up his house with sandbags. It was a task useless on the face of it, and Aretino put down his tools and sadly followed Azzie indoors.

They found a dry room on the second floor. Wasting no time, Azzie said, "Where are the pilgrims now?"

"They're still at the inn."

Now Azzie had to change the plans, collect all the golden candlesticks, and make sure they got back to Fatus' castle in Limbo. Then he needed to get the pilgrims out of Venice. He saw no reason, however, to tell Aretino all of that just now. He would find out when the others did that the ceremony had been scrubbed.

"We're going to have to get the pilgrims out of Venice," Azzie told Aretino. "Between the Mongols and the floods, this city looks doomed. I have it on good authority that there's going to be a change in the timeline in which this sequence of world history is taking place."

"A change? What do you mean?"

"The world spins a timeline, and from it different events spring forth. The way things are going now, Venice looks as if it will be destroyed. But this result is unacceptable to Ananke, so the Venice timeline will be split just before I started with the golden candlesticks. It will become the new main line. This line, the one we're in now, will be relegated to Limbo."

"And what will that mean?" Aretino asked.

"The Limbo version of Venice will run for no longer than a week, from the time I first asked you to write a play to the time, predicted for midnight tonight, when the Mongols arrive and the floods spill over the walls. It will have but a week of life, in one sense, but that week will replay itself, beginning again as soon as it has reached its end. The inhabitants of the Limbo version of Venice will have an eternity of weeks, each of which will end in doom and destruction."

"But if we get the pilgrims away from Venice?"

"If we get them out before midnight they will be able to continue their normal lives, exactly as if I had never happened. They "will be returned to the time just before they met me."

"Will they have any memory of what happened?"

Azzie shook his head. "Only you will remember, Pietro. I'm arranging that so you can write the play based on our contest."

"I see," Aretino said. "Well, it's all a little unexpected. I don't know how they'll like it."

"They don't have to like it," Azzie said. "They just have to do it. Or suffer the consequences if they don't."

"I'll make sure they understand that."

"Do so, most excellent Pietro. I'll meet you at the church."

"Where are you going?"

"I've got one more idea," Azzie said, "that just might save this whole thing."

Azzie passed quickly into the Ptolemaic system with its crystal spheres and stars fixed in their orbits. It always cheered him to see the orderly recession of the stars and the fixed planes of existence. He hurried on until he reached the Visitors' Gate that lets into Heaven. This is the only entrance that visitors are supposed to use, and there are severe penalties for anyone, human or demon, trying to enter by any of the angels' gates.

The Visitors' Gate was a literal gate of bronze, a hundred feet high and set in marble. The approach to it was thick with fleecy little white clouds, and angelic voices in the air sang songs of hallelujah. In front of the gate were a table and chair made of mahogany, and seated at the table was a balding oldish man with a long white beard, dressed in a white satin sheet. He wore a name tag that read, ST. ZACHARIAS AT

YOUR SERVICE. HAVE A HOLY DAY. Azzie didn't know him. But usually it was one of the lesser saints who pulled this duty.

"What can I do for you?" Zacharias asked.

"I need to see Michael the Archangel."

"Did he leave your name on the visitors' list?"

"I doubt it. He didn't know I was coming."

"In that case, my dear sir, I'm very much afraid —"

"Look," Azzie said, "this is an urgent matter. Just send my name in to him. He'll thank you for it."

Grumbling, St. Zacharias went to a golden speaking tube that snaked down the side of the bronze door.

He said a few words into it and waited, humming to himself. Then someone spoke through the other end.

"You're sure? It's not really proper form… Yes… Of course, sir.