The Devil is Dead, page 1
THE DEVIL IS DEAD
by
R. A. Lafferty
AVON BOOKS
A division of
The Hearst Corporation
959 Eighth Avenue
New York, New York 10019
This is the first publication of THE DEVIL IS DEAD in any form.
First Avon Printing, May, 1971
Table of Contents
PROMANTIA SEAWORTHY AND THE DEVIL
Chapter Two MERMAID AND OGRESS
Chapter Three THE FURTIVE MAN
Chapter Four THE WIVES OF SINDBAD
Chapter Five THE UNACCOUNTABLE CORPSE
Chapter Six LULUWAY IS THE PLURAL OF DIAMOND
Chapter Seven HABIB, I HAVE FOUND SOMETHING
Chapter Eight ANASTASIA DEMETRIADES
Chapter Nine
DIANA ARTEMIS
Chapter Ten DOWN WITH THE DEAD MEN
Chapter Eleven 36,000 PIECES OF PAPER
Chapter Twelve CREST AND SHATTER
Chapter Thirteen BILOXI BRANNAGAN
Chapter Fourteen COMPANY OF FIFTY
Chapter Fifteen BASSE-TERRE
Chapter Sixteen LIAR'S PARADISE
Chapter Seventeen ANGELA COSQUIN
Chapter Eighteen FIN IN THE GRAVEYARD
Chapter Nineteen THE DEVIL IS DEAD
Promantia
Chapter 1 Seaworthy and the Devil
Chapter 2 Mermaid and Ogress
Chapter 3 The Furtive Man
Chapter 4 The Wives of Sindbad
Chapter 5 The Unaccountable Corpse
Chapter 6 Luluway is the Plural of Diamond
Chapter 7 Habib, I Have Found Something
Chapter 8 Anastasia Demetriades
Chapter 9 Diana Artemis
Chapter 10 Down With the Dead Men
Chapter 11 Thirty-Six Thousand Pieces of Paper
Chapter 12 Crest and Shatter
Chapter 13 Biloxi Brannagan
Chapter 14 Company of Fifty
Chapter 15 Basse-Terre
Chapter 16 Liars' Paradise
Chapter 17 Angela Cosquin
Chapter 18 Fin in the Graveyard
Chapter 19 The Devil Is Dead
PROMANTIA
And they also tell the story
of Papadiabolous the Devil and his company, and of two of the hidden lives of Finnegan; and how it is not always serious to die, the first time it happens.
Here is one man who was buried twice and now lies still (but uneasy of mind) in his two separate graves. Here is another man who died twice--not at all the same thing. And here are several who are disinclined to stay dead: they don't like it, they won't accept it.
Given here, for the first time anywhere, are the bearings and correct location of the Terrestrial Paradise down to the last second of longitude. You may follow them. You may go there.
Here also will be found the full account of where the Devil himself is buried, and the surprising name that is on his tombstone boldly spelled out. And much else.
We will not lie to you. This is a do-it-yourself thriller or nightmare. Its present order is only the way it comes in the box. Arrange it as you will.
Set off the devils and the monsters, the wonderful beauties and the foul murderers, the ships and the oceans of middle space, the corpses and the revenants, set them off in whatever apposition you wish. Glance quickly to discover whether you have not the mark on your own left wrist, barely under the skin. Build with these colored blocks your own dramas of love and death and degradation. Learn the true topography: the monstrous and wonderful archetypes are not inside you, not in your own unconsciousness; you are inside them, trapped, and howling to get out.
Build things with this as with an old structo set. Here is the Devil Himself with his several faces. Here is an ogress, and a mermaid, both of them passing as ordinary women to the sightless. Here is a body which you yourself may bury in the sand. Here is the mark of the false octopus that has either seven or nine tentacles. Here is the shock when the very dead man that you helped bury continues on his way as a very live man, and looks at you as though he knows something that you do not. Here is a suitcase with 36,000 pieces of very special paper in it. Here is Mr. X, and a left-footed killer who follows and follows. Here are those of a different flesh; and may you yourself not be of that different flesh?
Put the nightmare together. If you do not wake up screaming, you have not put it together well.
Old Burton urged his subscribers to keep their copies of the Nights under lock and key. There are such precipices here! Take it in full health and do not look down as you go. If you look down you will fall and be lost forever.
Is that not an odd introduction? I don't understand it at all.
Chapter One
SEAWORTHY AND THE DEVIL
In fact, give a Neanderthal man a shave and a haircut,
dress him in well-fitted clothes, and he could probably
walk down New York's Fifth Avenue without getting
much notice.
--ASIMOV
1.
Finnegan met the eccentric millionaire early one morning. At least he said that he was a millionaire and eccentric. Finnegan told him that he was dull.
"You only believe me dull because you don't know me well," the millionaire said. "I am one of the true eccentrics. Stick with me and you will see that I am."
Finnegan doubted also that the man was a millionaire. He was unshaven and shabby, and he had the shakes. A millionaire will sometimes have one or two of these disabilities, but seldom all three.
The conversation may have begun when Finnegan asked what town they were in.
"The license plates are mostly Texas," said the man. "That is, you can see only one license plate from here, but it's mostly Texas."
They were sitting on the sidewalk in front of a bar waiting for it to open. They were across the boulevard from the graveyard. The millionaire had a scar or tattoo on the inside of his left wrist, and Finnegan looked at it.
"You have the same mark," said the man. "I wouldn't have trusted you otherwise."
"No. I haven't that mark," Finnegan objected.
"It is still below the skin, but I can see it," the millionaire said. "Say, it's chilly for Texas. I wonder what month this is."
"I would guess either spring or fall," Finnegan hazarded. "Probably fall. I remember a summer not long ago. But I am usually in the North when fall hits. Then I have to migrate, often at great pain. You really are a millionaire?"
"Oh yes. As soon as the bar opens we can have a drink. Then we will be well enough to look for other bars and have other drinks. After that we can make plans. By that time I should remember my own name, and you may remember yours. Possibly we will be well enough to look for a bank, and as the day goes along they will be open. When I am in funds I will buy you a pair of shoes."
"If you don't know what town this is, how do you know that you have money in the bank?" Finnegan asked him.
"I am known," the man said. "I even begin to know myself again now."
"Which of us was sitting on the sidewalk first?" Finnegan asked him. "Or which came first, the sidewalk or the people?"
"I don't know. I don't remember how I got here. We were already here and in conversation when I became aware. Your shoes are very bad and your feet have been bleeding. I have compassion on you."
"You are in near as bad a shape," said Finnegan.
"It is different with me. I have always the means of succor. It is just that I am preoccupied when I forget to get a place to sleep, or when I do not eat, or change clothes. When I have been guilty of such a shattering drunkenness as this, I usually have something heavy on my mind. Is the clay and loam of this place not peculiar? It is mixed with sand and old oyster shells. We are both caked with it, you know. We should brush off a little."
Finnegan looked deeply into the man's face, as he had not done before. It was dull, but there was a bottomless depth to that dullness and Finnegan knew that a deeper word would be needed to describe it. It was a lined face made out of old granite. The millionaire was a much older man than Finnegan.
"My cognomen is Finnegan," Finnegan said finally. "I do not yet remember my proper name, but it will not matter; I use it seldom. This amnesia is not new to me. I often have it when I move from one life to another. I have an upper and a lower life, you know."
"Who hasn't! All of our sort indulge in amnesia, of course. With you it is almost as though you do not know what you are. All of us changelings arrive at the understanding late. Finnegan, this is a seaport, it has the atmosphere of one. That being the case, I have some sort of ship here. We will fit it, if it needs fitting, and we will take a trip around the world immediately. I have often found that this clears the head. Will this not prove that I am an eccentric?"
"No. It will prove only that you remember what you were about. Do you remember your name yet, millionaire, or where we are?"
"Saxon X. Seaworthy is my name. I was pretty sure it would be. Yes, I remember everything now, and there is one thing that I forget again quickly."
Well, Finnegan didn't. He didn't remember the pre-dawn adventure, the fearful thing he had been engaged in with Seaworthy before they came to themselves sitting on the sidewalk. The forgetfulness of this event antedated itself considerably; Finnegan realized that there was a gap of several months in his memory before that climax which he could still savor but not remember. 'All of our sort indulge in amnesia,' Seaworthy had said. 'It is an indulgence I had better give up,' Finnegan told himself
The barroom opened. Saxon and Finnegan went in and drank beer, Texas beer only, nothing else was cold. And Saxon was angry.
"There should be a punishment to fit the crime," he said. "We did but ask a drink in the name of Christ and you gave us this. It were better in that hour, it were better in that hour--"
"What were better in that hour, little granite face?" the bargirl asked.
"For less than this they did penance in Ninevah. God will punish you for this, young lady."
"Bet He don't. Some of the places handle beer from the states, but I don't know why they bother. Drink it, Mr. Seaworthy. We will calk you up with it and see if you will float. Bet you don't. What have you two been doing to get so bloody and dirty?"
"We don't remember," said Finnegan. "Really, we don't remember." He wanted to ask the girl how she knew Seaworthy's name and how well she knew both of them.
An hour went by. The club opened, so they went into the club.
Saxon Seaworthy cashed a check. 'Knew he could,' thought Finnegan. He gave Finnegan five twenties, and a little reality trickled into the Finnegan head. There are men who will hand out money to a stranger without reason, but there are not millionaires who will do it. Finnegan was being paid, but he did not know whether for past or future service.
The bargirl ran a wet cloth over the Finnegan face. Then she rinsed it out and did it again. Well, it got some of the blood and the sandy clay off, but that was all. It was a grotesque face and washing could help it only a little. Most of what was on it would not come off.
"Does all this service come with the drink?" Finnegan asked her.
"Yes, Finn the gin, all for free. You are one sorry looking tramp." She led him to a stool behind the bar. She plugged in an electric shaver and went to work on him. "We don't mind tramps here," she said, "It's just that we like clean tramps. Oh, we love clean tramps."
Reality? This was not reality that was trickling back in. Reality was too pale a word for this girl. She was flesh and ichor, but she was also transparent, translucent, transcendent. A conjurer's trick, but not a cheap conjurer's trick.
"Are you always here, or do you sometimes go away?" Finnegan asked.
"Not till the other girl comes."
That wasn't what he meant. He knew that she was real, that she belonged to one of the only two peoples who have ever been civilized, and she wasn't French. But she was something else at the same time. She was a chameleon, and she changed every time he looked at her.
"Where did you meet Mr. Seaworthy?" asked the girl, if she were a girl. Finnegan remembered hearing of another sort of creature that sometimes took that form.
"I don't know how we met, girl. We were sitting on the sidewalk talking together when the sun came up. That may have been the beginning of the world, but I can't prove it. Something like it happened to me on a night several years ago. I talked all night with another man then. It was all strong talk with the horns and hooves still on it. This was up in the north woods and he was a young hobo. He seemed to change in voice and manner as the night went on. We had an open fire there, but the light from it was tricky. But when it was morning, the sun showed that he was a different man entirely from what he had been the night before. He was about forty years older."
"Don't stop there, Finn. What did you do?"
"I got away from there fast, girl, and left him mumbling to himself. Then a curtain came down over it and I forgot all the tall things that we had talked about during the night. But I had not gone a hundred yards from him when I heard a terrible wailing. He had discovered, looking into a pool there, that he had become an old man overnight. It rended my heart to hear that wailing."
"I know that it did, Finn, but what happened last night? I have reason for asking."
"I do not remember last night. I do not remember anything for several months, now that I see the date and month on that arty piece on the wall. But this morning I was with Seaworthy. When I came to myself I was already talking and in the middle of a sentence. If I could know the first part of my sentence it might clear things. I don't know how long we were sitting on the sidewalk. Was Saxon Seaworthy a young man before we had our congress, of whatever sort, last night?"
"No, Finn. He didn't age forty years in the night. He was the same. Oh, Finn, Finn! Look! He's just aged forty years in three seconds now! What is it? He's shaking to pieces."
"So am I," Finnegan shook. Finnegan did not have to look at what presence had just come into the club. He felt the fear of it melting his bones. 'He can't be alive,' Finnegan moaned to himself, 'he has no business being alive.' He didn't remember the thing, but only the aura of the thing. He looked at the now ashen and very old granite face of Saxon Seaworthy, and at the shaking of the millionaire's hands and lips.
But Seaworthy pulled himself together quickly, regained his hard granite color, threw off his deadly old age, and quelled his quaking. He nodded shortly to the presence that Finnegan would not look at. And he was the mysterious and controlled Saxon Seaworthy again.
"Are you drinking, Papa-D?" the bargirl asked the presence somewhat nervously.
"No. I looked in only for a moment," sounded the almost-human voice. "Ah, that all be well even as I am well!"
There was something about the opening and closing of a door. And the presence was no longer present.
"Is he a phoney?" Finnegan asked after a very long pause.
"Papa-D?" the girl asked.
"I don't know any Papa-D," said Finnegan. "It is here that amnesia has its advantages. I mean Seaworthy."
"I suppose he is. How do you mean?"
"Is he a millionaire?"
"He spends like one. Which is to say that he seems to spend a great deal, and doesn't. He carries weight, whatever that means. I guess he is one."
"Does he have a boat in every port?"
"I don't think so. But he has a ship in this one."
"Will it go around the world?"
"It has. They say that he is going again."
"He says that he will take me with him."
"If he says that he will, then he will, Finnegan. Fm going to try to get on too. He will need a barmaid. He had a young Negro boy for bartender when he came to town, but he's disappeared off somewhere. Nobody knows what's happened to him. Will you put in a word to Mr. Seaworthy for me?"
"You must know him much better than I do, girl. I've known him only for an hour and a half."
"It had to be quite a few hours longer than that, Finnegan. And it won't hurt to give me a boost. Just remark what a remarkable little girl I am."
"Yes, you washed me when I was filthy and anointed my wounds with gin and bitters. What is your name?"
"You know it. Anastasia Demetriades. You've been here before. Which will it be, amnesia or me?"
"Oh. Yes. I did know your name. Anastasia, what more apt! I was dead and you gave me life. You brought back my respectability with an electric shaver. Anastasia, the resurrection!"
Finnegan got an odd look at Seaworthy the millionaire. He hadn't, for all his looking, seen him this way before. He had the mark on him, and 'twas not simply the mark on the wrist. A long time before he had met Seaworthy, it had come to Finnegan what the mark consisted of. Finnegan was clairvoyant. Since he had understoood it, he had seen the mark that is not actually a mark on many others, sometimes on a man in a crowd, sometimes on a man alone. But he had never before seen it on a man he was committed to. Seaworthy had that mark.
'He has killed a man, or men,' Finnegan said to himself. 'And he told me that I have the same mark, but what he meant was only part of it. Have I killed a man or men also?'
