Piers Anthony - On a Pale Horse

And the computer had signed off with the words ANY TIME, and with Time's hourglass. That was more than a note of parting; that was a reference to Chronos. Surely that Incarnation knew what was going to happen and could tell Zane.

Yet what use would that be? He could ask Chronos about the future and get a confirmation that within the month Luna was going to Hell, where her demon lover would put it to her for the rest of eternity. Some revelation!

Zane was now close to his client, driving through a slum development in the immense eastern city of New York. He smelled smoke. In a moment he saw it — a tenement house ablaze. His gem pointed right to it; his client was trapped inside.

It was already too late; the red hand of the Deathwatch was touching zero. Zane drew his protective cloak tightly about him and walked into the flames. The fire could not hurt him; the only awkwardness was in getting to the upstairs where his client was, when the stairs were burning and insecure. Fire couldn't stop him, but how about a fall? "Support me," he murmured in a kind of spell, and the footing firmed. Once more Death had power to reach his destination. Again he remembered Nature's remark: an Incarnation could not be balked unless he allowed it.

The figure was struggling in the linen of a bed that had become a minor inferno. Obviously it — for in this situation Zane could not tell whether his client was male or female — had tried to flee the fire by delving into the bed. Instead, the sheets had ignited, taking hair and skin with them. Zane understood that death by fire was the most painful possible; he believed it.

Quickly he strode across and hooked out the soul. The flayed body relaxed, its pain abruptly gone. This was the one unmitigated blessing Death brought — the relief of the agony of living. Yet what good was that, he wondered, if that soul was destined to pass from the flames of life to the eternal flames of Hell? The pains of life were temporary, but the pains of Hell were not.

On his way to the next client, Zane reviewed the soul. He was getting steadily more efficient at this, classifying more than half his clients on the run. He had become conversant with the broad categories of sin, so could generally tell not only how much, but what kind of sin weighted a given soul.

This soul belonged to a boy of about ten, whose principal burden was a major sexual transgression.

Zane paused. At this age?

He examined the soul more carefully and pieced the story together. Things were crowded in the slums, with several families or branches of families sharing facilities.

Intense friendships and enmities occurred. He understood that crowding tended to intensify the natural traits of people, so in this instance, interaction had been extreme. This boy's curiosity had been aroused, naturally enough, by the secretive mechanisms of adult romance. He had naively inquired of a mature woman who was nominally baby-sitting him while his folks worked. She, perhaps dissatisfied with her own life, had taken the mischievous opportunity to educate him with considerable thoroughness.

Zane pondered this. When a grown man seduced a female child, it was molestation, for surely his attentions were forced on her; but when a grown woman did it to a male child, it was apt to be considered generosity. Zane could understand that; force was unlikely to be a component. But evidently the burden of sin attached to the boy as well as to the woman, especially if the child believed the liaison was wrong. There seemed to have been several repetitions, so the sin now amounted to fifty percent. The boy had been overwhelmed by the personality of the mature woman; fear of discovery mixed with the erotic joy she provided him. He had been caught in a kind of trap that an older person could readily have broken, but he lacked the courage or experience. It was quite understandable; he was a victim of circumstance — but still the accretions of sin had been charged against him.

This bothered Zane. He remembered how Fate had quoted from Henley's poem about a man being the captain of his soul — but surely this was not as true for an impressionable boy. It seemed to him that an adult standard of responsibility was being applied to a juvenile person, and this was unfair. As a man who had once been a child, he could appreciate the appeal of an available woman at any age. He himself had longed for information at that age and had been denied it. He had tried to purchase a charm to summon a succubus, but the vendor had refused to deliver such magic to a child. Zane still regretted that; since succubi were nonhuman, yet the essence of sex, he could have learned a lot without involving anyone who counted. But of course there were laws, and they did tend to discriminate against children. Theoretically, this was to protect those children; actually it had seemed more like punishment for being young, inflicted by those who wished they themselves had not aged.

At any rate, he deeply regretted taking this lad, who had only responded to the urges Nature had provided him. The Green Mother could do it to anyone; Zane knew that from recent personal experience. So the lad's burden of sin was a technical thing, not really reflecting badness. The definition ought to be changed, to be more realistic. But of course there was nothing Zane could do about it. He was only Death, performing his own office.

"Damn the office!" he swore abruptly. "Why should I participate in what I believe is wrong?"

Nature had shown him another aspect of her power by enabling the left-footed dancing girl to revive. That death had not been final. Could this one be similarly negated? He thought of the condition of the body, its skin largely burned away, and shuddered. There was no point in returning the soul to that!

But what about Chronos? Maybe the Incarnation of Time could enable him to go back to the moment before ' the fire broke out, and warn the boy, so that — "Take me to Chronos," Zane directed Mortis, stopping his countdown, The gallant Death steed slowed to a stop at a passing I field and started to graze. Zane looked around, perplexed, "I don't see — "

"Then turn about. Death," the voice of Time came. It had a certain echoing quality, with a trace of grit, as if some sand had leaked into it from the hourglass.

Zane turned. There stood Chronos, in his white robe.

He had surely not been there a moment ago. He must have come when Zane asked for him.

"I would like to have your help," Zane said. "A demonstration of your power, if it does not lead to paradox."

"I have power, and I love paradox," Chronos said.

"I have just taken the soul of this boy," Zane explained, showing the soul. "I want to return it so he can have a proper chance to redress his balance in life. Could you, with my concurrence, arrange that?"

"Take me to the place, and I will take you to the time," Chronos said equably. "It is true one Incarnation may not safely interfere with another, but since you will it, I can assist. We do cooperate, at need."

Just like that! Chronos mounted Mortis behind Zane, and the horse took off.

"Now, while we are isolated by the ambience of the Death steed," Chronos said, "there is another matter you wish to ask of me."

"Isolated?" Zane asked. "You mean no one can overhear us here, even — ?"

"Speak not his name, lest you summon him," Chronos warned. "Mortis protects you better than you know, but nothing protects against folly."

"Uh, yes, of course," Zane agreed, disgruntled.

"Naturally you found a pretext to contact me, so that he would not have cause for suspicion."

Zane hadn't thought of it that way. But he did have something else to talk about. "The Purgatory computer flashed your symbol on its screen when I questioned it about the status of Luna Kaftan."

"A most interesting case," Chronos said, after a pause as if to recollect the details. "Fate alerted me to it, for she notes the significant threads. Circa twenty years from this moment, Luna Kaftan will be instrumental in — "