Piers Anthony - On a Pale Horse

A slow recovery was beginning as he walked back toward the door. The preacher caught Zane's eye. "Some folk think the Lord don't intervene," he remarked gently, as if aware of Zane's own doubts.

Zane couldn't answer. He walked on out, past the choir girls as they righted themselves, and through the quiet crowd to his horse.

A new vehicle was pulling up, with the emblem of the State Social Services on its side. It seemed the commotion had attracted the notice of the relevant authorities, and there was about to be an inspection of the nursing home facility and operation.

Zane allowed himself a private smile. They would discover one or more dead men, tied to their chairs, in a room reeking of urine where no music or entertainment was permitted — these strictures so absolute that the police had been summoned to enforce them. Zane doubted that would make a favorable impression on the inspectors. Substantial reform was about to come to one nursing home, and the lot of the surviving inmates would be improved.

He glanced once more around the neighborhood before he left. There stood the church, nursing home, and dance hall in a row. Surely the fate of all three would improve, now that they had interacted in this fashion and discovered what each had to offer the others, and there would be music for everyone! Maybe the entire city of Miami would experience a gradual renovation as the spirit of this hour spread.

His next client was in the country. Mortis changed to Deathmobile form and drove along the superhighway, as they were not pinched for time. Zane read the billboards and realized there was an ad war on here.

WHY DRIVE A LANDBOUND CAR WHEN YOU CAN RIDE A CARPET? the first billboard demanded in huge, shining print. The picture was of a car struggling through a traffic jam, while a magic carpet sailed blithely over, its handsome family smiling.

Zane also smiled. He was at the moment car bound — but he would never be trapped in a traffic jam. Not with Mortis! "Did you show me this just to make me appreciate you properly?"

The car did not answer, but the motor purred.

The next billboard proclaimed DRIVE IN COMFORT. The picture was of a family huddled on a flying carpet in a rainstorm. The man looked grim and uncomfortable, the woman's once-elegant hairdo was a wet mess plastered about her ears, and one child was sliding off the rear, about to fall. The material was evidently wrinkling and shrinking in the rain, heightening the family's discomfort and peril. Below, the same family could be seen happily in a closed car, safely seat-belted, untouched by the rain.

"So the car fights back," Zane remarked. "I can see it." He glanced at his watch. Still several minutes to go.

The next billboard showed the carpet sailing blithely over the rain cloud that largely obscured the traffic jam below. BABYLON CARPETS OUTPERFORM ANY LANDBOUND VEHICLE! it proclaimed. MORE DISTANCE PER SPELL.

But the auto maker came right back with a picture of the family gasping for air aboard the high-flying carpet, while the car zoomed along the open highway. KEEP SAFE, KEEP COZY, it advised. USE A CAR INSTEAD OF A CARPET.

Perhaps the ad war continued, but Zane had to turn off to approach his client. This was a residential enclave in the countryside; the houses were very similar to one another, the lawn manicured. Zane wondered why people bothered to live in the country when all they did was take the city with them. He turned into the appropriate drive and parked in the limited shade of a medium pine tree. He noticed there was a disabled sticker on the owner's car; evidently the disablement was terminal.

Zane entered and made his way to the bathroom. There was a young, fairly muscular man taking a deep bath. He looked relaxed.

The man did not react to Zane's appearance and did not seem to be in trouble, yet the gem-arrow identified him as the client. "Hello," Zane said, uncertain how to proceed.

The man glanced up languidly. "Please leave," he said, his voice mild.

"First I must do my job," Zane said.

"Job? Perhaps you are in uniform, and assume I recognize your business. I can not see you, for I am blind."

Oh. That accounted for the disabled sticker. But mere sightlessness wouldn't kill this man, unless some bad accident were coming up. "I suspect you will be able to see me, if you try," Zane said.

"You are a faith healer? Go away. I am an atheist, and have no traffic with your kind."

An atheist! One who did not believe in God or Satan, or in their related artifacts. How could Death have been summoned for a nonbeliever?

Two answers offered. It was possible that this man was not as cynical as he professed — and really did believe in Eternity perhaps unconsciously. Or it could be that there had been another glitch, and that the Powers that Be had not realized that no service was required for this particular client.

Well, Zane was here, and the case would have to be played through to whatever conclusion was fated. He looked at the water in the bath and saw that it was discolored by a cloud of darkness. "You are committing suicide," he stated.

"Yes, and I must ask you not to interfere. My folks are away for two days, so will not know until it is safely done. I have slashed veins in my ankles and am pleasantly bleeding to death in this hot water. There is no greater kindness you can do me than to let nature take its course."

"I am here for that," Zane said. "I am Death."

The man laughed, becoming more animated as his attention focused. "An actual, physical personification of Death? You're crazy!"

"You don't believe in Death?"

"I believe in death, and, obviously. I am about to experience it. Certainly I don't believe in a spook with skull and crossbones and scythe."

"Would you like to touch my hand and face?" Zane asked.

"You persist in this nonsense? Very well, while I still command my faculties, let me touch you." The man lifted an arm from the water with some visible effort and extended it toward Zane.

Zane clasped that hand in his own gloved one, curious how the man would perceive it. He was hardly disappointed in the reaction.

"It's true!" the man exclaimed. "A skeleton!"

"A glove," Zane said, not wanting to deceive him. "And my face is a skull-mask generated by magic. Nevertheless, I am Death, and I have come to collect your soul."

The man touched Zane's face. "A mask? It could fool me! That's a skull!"

Zane had been uncertain before whether his skull-face was tactile as well as visual; now he knew. "I am a living man performing an office. I wear a costume and have certain necessary powers, but I am alive and have the flesh and feelings of a man."

The client took his hand again. "Yes, now I perceive the flesh, faintly, the way I do my own when my foot is asleep. Strange! Perhaps I do believe in you, or in your belief in the office. But I don't believe in the soul, so your effort is wasted."

"What do you believe happens when you die?" Zane asked, genuinely curious. This man seemed to have a good mind.

"My body will be inert and in time will dissolve into its chemical components. But that is not what you mean, is it? You want to know about my supposed soul. And I will answer. There is no soul. Death is simply the end of consciousness. After death, there is nothing. Like the flame of a candle snuffed out, the animation is gone. Extinction."

"No afterlife? You do not consider death a translation to a spiritual existence?"

The man snorted. He was slowly sinking in the tub, as loss of blood weakened him gradually, but his mind remained alert. "Death is a translation to intellectual nonexistence."

"Does that frighten you?"

"Why should it? It is the deaths of others I should fear, for they can cause me inconvenience and grief. When I myself pass, I shall be out of it, completely uncaring."