Robert Sheckley - City of the Dead

"Achilles thinks he had a lot more fun when he was alive than was actually the case. He makes too much over living."

"Tell me the truth" Persephone asked me. "Is being alive really that good?"

I shrugged. "Achilles thinks so. But that's just one dead man's opinion."

Persephone and I were sitting together beside a black poplar and close to an enormous weeping willow, its branches trailing in the black waters of Lethe which flowed silently past us with a slight gurgle, like a dead man's gasp. You could see low gray shapes across on the far shore but it was not possible to make out what they were. I was strangely happy. Being with Persephone always brought up that mood in me. They made hell seem brighter. Although gray clouds forever overhung this place, they seemed majestical and inspiring today rather than ominous and sad. I was happy in hell. Which was lucky because I was king. Or, I should say I was almost happy and I was virtual king.

I looked at Persephone's hands. The one that held the pomegranate seed was on the other side, away from me. I couldn't see if she had taken the seed or not. I supposed not. It seemed almost as if she had forgotten about it. But how could she have forgotten? The weight of all that stagecraft pressed on my soul. I knew something was about to happen.

Then, very faintly from the direction of the palace, I heard a jingling sound. Persphone heard it too. She said, "That's the little bells on Demeter's harness. It's the harness she put on the bullocks that draw her cart. She is coming for me, as we agreed."

"Yes," I said. For I had been forced to agree to Persephone's returning to the upper world. The weird old ladies who make up what you could call the Supreme Court of Hell had handed down a restraining order on me. Cease and desist. Give the wench up. I had briefly contemplated revolt. But then wised up. I didn't stand a chance against the living. Not even if all the dead fought for me, which was far from sure. Trouble is, the dead don't fight worth shit. Dying seems to take something out of a man. It would be slaughter. There's nothing the living like better than killing the dead. They consider us evil. A case of projection if I ever saw one. But impossible to fight against.

And anyhow, I was in the wrong, snatching her off the face of the earth like I'd done was against the rule. I was in the wrong. And being in the wrong weakened my case.

The way it was originally set up, when Zeus, Poseidon and I divided all creation between us after we succeeded in killing old Cronus, our rules were very simple and clear. Each to be supreme lord of his own realm, and no poaching on the terrain of any of the others. These rules were not always followed in full. But potentially, if anyone had a complaint, this was the rule they referred back to. I knew that but I took her anyhow. I took her because I wanted her. But my desire had no standing in the law. And even though Persephone was the most important thing in my life, such as it was, because I think you understand now that the life even of a king of hell is not to be compared to that of the most miserable living human being, or so the philosophers say, I was bound by the rule of law concerning cosmic property and all that relates to it, unfair and arbitrary though that rule might be. But you simply must have the rule. Your life is nothing without rules, and not even death is anything much without its rules.

"The seed," I said. "What about the seed?"

She opened both her hands. They were empty. "Oh," she said. "I must have dropped it." And yet there was a lightness in her voice. Nothing very playful ever happens in hell so I didn't really know how to react to it.

"Don't tease me," I said. "Do you have the seed? Or did you drop it? Or did you conceal it and plan to take it later?"

She bent forward and kissed me on the forehead. "Of course I'm going to tease you. Teasing, my love, is exactly what you need. You're all too gloomy and serious here."

"You've changed all that," I told her. "You've brought a lightness and a pleasure to hell that I never thought possible. Won't you leave me now with some hope that you'll return?"

"Oh, you'll always have that hope," she said, "no matter what I do or say. It's certainty that you really want, isn't it?"

"I suppose it is," I said. "Can't I have that? The certainty of your return for six months of every year?"

She shook her head but she was smiling. "Certainty is a very salient quality of your realm. Everybody knows exactly where they stand, which is nowhere. There seems to be nothing quite as certain as death. I think that's what Achilles really objects to about being here. That's what you dead people have grown very accustomed to. "Maybe death is bad, you say to yourself, but at least it's reliable, at least I can count on it."

"Sure we say that," I said.

"That's because you're dead," Persephone pointed out. "But I'm not, I'm alive. I'm not bound by your rules. I'm a creature of the realm of life. Where I come from, we have no certainty. Everything changes from better to worse, from worse to better. There's always hope and there's always despair."

The sound of the bullock's bells grew louder. And then the wagon itself came into sight, decked in flowers, drawn by six garlanded heifers. Demeter herself was standing in the front looking stern and classical, her usual look. She had a little whip in her hand made of grapevine. Her hair was blowing free and she brandished her whip in the air in salutation when she saw Persephone.

Demeter is one of those people who are important but you don't want to deal with them. They're so significant that you don't want to shortchange them, but they don't play any part in your story so how much characterization do you need? Does a personification of Autumn need a mole on her chin? Must we give her a dumpy figure, and flinty, unrelenting eyes. Yes, the eyes, maybe. But not the rest. She comes in riding standing up in a bullock cart. You know what kind of woman would do that. Need we say more?

Persephone rose, then she bent over and kissed me once, lightly, on the lips. Before I could put my arms around her, she had drawn away. She stepped up lightly into Demeter's cart. And soon they were gone.

Hades stood there with a stupid look on his face. She was gone. And he had no one to talk to. It looked like he was going to have to monologue.

Suddenly she was back with her cart and her disapproving mother and her garlanded bullocks. The whole shot. The eternal recurrence! Hades' heart leaped.

"I forgot to remind you about Achilles and Helen," she said. "You'll have to cancel our dinner with them."

"You did remind me," I said.

"I did?" Helen said.

"You did," I said. "Previously. But I"m glad you came back. There was something I was going to ask you."

"I thought you'd never get around to asking me anything," Persephone said. "I know you love me, but you're entirely too silent and gloomy about it. At least you could talk about it a little. Yes, I'll be pleased to answer. What do you want to ask?"

What I want to ask," I said, "is that I heard that you know what is happening to Tantulus these days, and I wanted you to tell me."

"I'll be happy to," Helen said. "I'll be as quick as possible, mother," she called out to the old woman in the shawl driving the bullocks, her mother, Demeter. Her mother nodded resignedly. It was enough she was getting her daughter back. No sense offending her by interrupting her story.

TANTULUS

Helen said, I've always found Uncle Tantulus an interesting figure. You know his general circumstances, I assume. Waist deep in mud in a swamp. Huge rock suspended above him on a thin copper wire. The rock never drops, of course, but the suspense is nevertheless intense, because it was written in by Zeus himself that no one should take anything for granted concerning the boulder, it could drop at any time, there was no story device forestalling it, even though we always pick it up at a moment when the boulder is just hanging there solid as a rock. There is no way around such a situation except by arbitrary rule: You will feel anxiety for Tantulus on account of the boulder over his head. Do that or we'll strike the Greek Myth set.