If at Faust You Don't Succeed Read online

  If at Faust You Don't Succeed

  Roger Zelazny

  Robert Sheckley

  Roger Zelazny Robert Sheckley

  If at Faust You Don't Succeed

  MISSPELLED CONJURATIONS

  Faust intoned a spell, but nothing happened. The trouble was, he hadn't brought along much in the way of magical ingredients, so great had been his hurry to find the impostor. Still, he had to try. He found a pinch of henbane in the bottom of his pouch, added a sprig of mistletoe he had left over from a midwinter ceremony. What else did he need? Common dirt would have to substitute for graveyard mold. And for mummy powder, he would substitute nose snot.

  "That's disgusting," Marguerite said.

  "Shut up, it may save your life." All was in readiness. Faust waved his hands and chanted. A glimmer of rosy light appeared in the middle of the pentagram, a fiery dot at first, then it expanded.

  "Oh, you did it!" Marguerite cried.

  Turning to the growing light, Faust said, "O spirit from the darkest deep, I conjure you in the name of Asmodeus, of Beelzebub, of Belial—" A voice came from the glowing light. It was a young woman's voice, and it said matter-of-factly, "Please stop conjuring. I am not a conjurable spirit."

  "You're not?" Faust asked. "Then who or what are you?"

  "I am a representative of the Infernal Communication Service. We cannot accept your conjuration in its present form. Please check your spell and if you think you have it wrong, please conjure again. Thank you. Have a nice day." The voice stopped and the rosy light dwindled and disappeared… ACKNOWLEDGMENT We would like to thank all those who suggested titles for this book—Willie Siros, Scott A. Cupp, Kathi Kimbriel, Jane Lindskold, Walter Jon Williams, and Thorarinn Gunnarson. And yes, A Faustful of Talers did have a certain ring to it.

  THE CONTEST

  CHAPTER 1

  The two representatives of Dark and Light had agreed to meet at the Halfway Tavern in Limbo, there to set in motion the Contest that had been agreed between them.

  Limbo was a gray sort of place with very even lighting. It existed between the Abode of Light and the Abode of Dark, a nebulous waiting-room sort of a place, vague at the best of times, but not entirely devoid of qualities.

  There was the Halfway Tavern, for example, situated right in the middle of Limbo. The tavern was a queer, rickety old wooden building with a crazy tilted roof. It had been built on the line that separates the part of Limbo nearest Heaven from the part nearest Hell. This place didn't get much business, but it was support-ed by equal contributions from Light and Dark. It was maintained for the succor of those spirits who happened to find themselves passing through on their way to somewhere else.

  "So this is the famous Halfway Tavern!" said the Archangel Michael. "I've never been here before. Do they have a decent sort of a kitchen?"

  "It is reputed to be quite good," said Mephistopheles. "But half an hour later, you don't know that you've eaten anything. Persuasive but insubstantial, like the rest of Limbo."

  "What's that region down there?" Michael asked, pointing.

  Mephistopheles peered. "Oh, that's the waiting area. In the old days, that's where they sent virtuous pagans and unbaptized babies, to wait until something could be done with them. That's not important nowadays, but a lot of people still find their way there for one reason or another."

  "I wonder if this is the best place for our meeting," Michael said, for he didn't like the look of some of the things he could see going on in the waiting area.

  "It was agreed beforehand between your people and mine," Mephistopheles said. "Limbo is neutral territory, neither fish nor fowl, and certainly not good red meat. What better place for us to meet and begin the contest? Come, shall we go in?"

  Michael nodded a little reluctantly, but proceeded into the tavern.

  Michael was tall even for an archangel, and well made, since heavenly bodies tended toward athleticism.

  He had black kinky hair and a hooked nose and olive skin, souvenirs of his Semitic and Persian ancestors. In the old days, Michael had been the guardian angel of Israel, back when there were still local deities who had not been subsumed into the One God system that had proven so popular on Earth.

  Michael could have had divine cosmetic surgery, since in Heaven you can look any way you want, as long as you don't use your looks for your personal advantage, but he kept his features in memory of the old time, even though he could have been a blue-eyed blond like the other archangels. He thought wiry black hair and aquiline features lent him an air of distinction.

  "But how could it be cold?" Michael asked. "In Limbo there is neither hot nor cold."

  "People say that," Mephistopheles said, "but it's not true. That stuff about Limbo having no qualities is patently false. There's enough light to see by, isn't there? And if you can have light, why not cold?"

  "In Limbo," Michael said, somewhat pompously, "one sees by the inner vision."

  "And shivers with the internal cold, I suppose," Mephistopheles said. "No, you're wrong about this one, Michael. The wind that blows through Limbo can sometimes be exceedingly biting, blowing as it does from the direction of Despair."

  "I'm not wrong," Michael said. "But I suppose it's part of the scheme of things that you and I should disagree, representing, as we do, two glorious but opposed viewpoints. And that is how it should be, of course."

  "I think that's my line," Mephistopheles said cheerfully, sitting down in the booth opposite Michael and drawing off his gray silk gloves. "I suppose we can agree that we disagree on almost everything."

  "Especially on the matter of cities versus country."

  "Yes. Our last contest left that inconclusive, didn't it?"

  Mephistopheles was referring to the recent .great Millennial contest in which the forces of Dark and Light had contested for control of mankind's destiny for the next thousand years. That contest had centered on the conceit proposed by a young demon named Azzie, who had reenacted the Prince Charming legend, intending to bring it this time to a dolorous conclusion, and to do so through no machinations of his own, but solely through the spirit of Failure expressing itself through Prince Charming's concocted body. Good had gone for the bet, although the contest appeared to be biased in favor of Dark. But Good always enters such contests, assuming that the pull of Good is so great among mankind, a sentimental lot, that someone has to weigh the scales in favor of Evil for there to be anything of an agonal nature going on at all.

  The Dark side, for its part, delighted in putting forth schemes of an involved nature, since the Dark side of things feels at home only in complications. Light, being simple, albeit in a doctrinaire way, was pleased to confront the dubious inventions of Dark, oftentimes losing because you can only weight a scale so far before it comes crashing down on one side, which is then considered preordained.

  The proprietor of the tavern came over. He was an indistinct fellow, as are all who stay for any length of time in Limbo, and the only definite things about him were the cast in one eye and his large and clumsy feet.

  "Yes, my lord," he said to Mephistopheles, louting low. "What can I bring you?"

  "An ichor daiquiri will do very nicely," Mephistopheles said.

  "Yes, lord. And could I interest you in a slice of devil's food cake? Fresh today!"

  "All right. And what else have you got?"

  "The ham is very nice today. We have a place in Purgatory that devils it for us especially."

  "No blood sausages?"

  "That's only on Thursdays."

  "Well, bring along the deviled ham," Mephistopheles said. To Michael he remarked, "Can't let the side down, can we?"

  "Certainly not. But isn't it ti
me we got down to business?"

  "I'm ready," Mephistopheles said. "Did you bring along an agenda?"

  "No need," Michael said. "It's all in my head. It has fallen to our lot to decide upon the next Millennial contest. Hopefully, also, we will settle the question of the Goodness or Badness of cities this time around."

  "How quickly time passes when you're immortal!" said Mephistopheles. "Being a master of one-pointed concentration has something to do with it too, of course. Well then, let the cities rise like mushrooms." "Like flowers is an apter image," Michael said. "Which is the truer image remains to be seen," Mephistopheles said. "So, trot out one of your urban saints and my merry crew of demons and I will have him foreswearing Good in no time."

  "No, he needn't be a saint," Michael said, demonstrating again Good's irresistible tendency to give up advantages. "And anyhow, we have something more elaborate in mind. Something with a bit of sweep and grandeur to it to be held in a variety of times and places throughout the new millennium. But I'll tell you about that later. For now, are you acquainted with our servant Faust?" "Of course," Mephistopheles said, though here he committed a typical error of the Dark side, pretending to knowledge that he didn't have. "You mean Johann Faust, of course, the well-known magician and mountebank who resides in—where was it now?—Koenigsberg?" "Whether or not Faust is a mountebank is still under discussion," Michael said. "But he's not in Koenigsberg. You'll find him in Cracow."

  "Of course, I knew that all along," Mephistopheles said. "He's got a little place near the Jagiellonian University, does he not?" "Not at all," Michael said. "He resides in chambers in Little Casimir Street near the Florian Gate." "It was on the tip of my tongue," Mephistopheles said. "I'll go to him at once and put the scheme to him.

  What is the scheme, by the way?"

  "Here comes your deviled ham," Michael said. "While you eat it, I'll explain."

  CHAPTER 2

  Johann Faust was alone in his chambers in Cracow, that city in distant Poland where his peripatetic scholar's path had taken him. The officials of the Jagiellonian University had been glad to have him, for Faust was a considerable scholar who had by heart the most important writings in the world—those of Paracelsus, and Cornelius Agrippa before him, and, before him, the secret writings of Virgil, supreme magician of the Roman days. Faust's chambers were simple—a bare wooden-planked floor, swept clean each morning by the serving girl, who muttered a prayer each time she entered Faust's oval-headed door, and spit between her fingers for good luck, because you need all your luck when you clean up after a man as uncanny as Faust. She had crossed herself when she saw, there on the floor, the pentagram, chalked afresh each morning, with its spaces filled with wriggly Hebrew letters, and with symbols that not even the Masons understood.

  The furnishings of the room never changed. In a corner was Faust's alembic. The coal fire in the small fireplace burned faintly but hotly; Faust kept it stoked up night and day, summer and winter, for he suffered from chilblains that never entirely went away. There was a window, but heavy velvet drapes generally kept out the light of the day. Faust liked an even lighting, and his eyes were accustomed to the flicker of the fire and the yellow flames of the candles burning in pewter holders in a dozen places around the room. They were tall candles of good beeswax that common citizens could not afford. But some of the wealthy citizens of Cracow kept Faust supplied with these tapers, which were finer than any seen anywhere but the cathedral. They were scented, these candles, with balsam and myrrh, and with rare floral essences distilled from the brilliant flowers of spring. Their odors in part overcame the vapors of mercury and gold and other metals, whose fumes rendered the closed chamber unfit for any but an alchemist long practiced in his art.

  Faust was walking up and down his chamber, ten paces in one direction to the wall with its portrait of Agrippa, ten paces to the cabinet with its marble bust of Virgil. His long gray scholar's gown flapped around his spindly legs as he marched, the candles wavering in the slight breeze of his passing. As he walked he talked to himself aloud, because long familiarity with that inner solitude that only the learned know had accustomed him to this form of social intercourse.

  "Learning! Wisdom! Knowledge! The music of the spheres! The knowledge of what lies at the bottom of the uttermost seas, the certainty of being able to say what the great cham of China eats for his breakfast, and what the emperor of the Franks says to his mistress in the stygian dark of the night! These are fine things, no doubt! Yet what do they mean to me?"

  The blank-eyed bust of Virgil seemed to watch him as he paced, and on the Roman's thin, pale lips a slight expression of surprise might have been noticed, because this discourse by the learned doctor was unlike any that had come from his lips heretofore.

  "Yes, of course," Faust went on, "I know these things, and many others besides." He chuckled ironically.

  "I can detect the-harmony of the divine spheres that Pythagoras knew. In my investigations I have found that still point from which Archimedes claimed the ability to move the terrestrial globe itself. And I know that the lever is the self, extended to infinity, and the fulcrum is the esoteric knowledge that it has been my lifetime task to learn. And yet, what does it mean to me, this confabulation of miracles to which I have given countless hours of study? Do I live any better than the most ignorant village swain, who seeks his love among the haystacks? True, I have honor among the old men of the cities, and am renowned among the so-called wise ones, of this country and many others. The king of Czechoslovakia has put a golden circlet on my forehead and declared me peerless among men. Does this cause my ague to diminish when I awaken on a chilly morning? Do the fawning ministrations of the king of France, resplendent in his lynx ruff and soft boots of Spanish leather, with the circlet of Clovis on his narrow head, bring any relief to my dyspepsia, my morning sweats, my evening despair? What have I in fact achieved in my attempts to encompass the ever-expanding sphere of knowledge? What is knowledge to me, what is power, when my body shrivels daily, and my skin draws tight around my features, presaging the skull beneath the mottled flesh, which must in time come out?"

  "This pursuit of knowledge is all very well. At one time, when I was a youth, ages, decades ago, I thought that all my heart's yearnings would be satisfied if I could capture that divine essence and distillation of knowledge that only the angels know. Yet how satisfying is knowledge, really? What would I not give for a sound digestion? I sit here and eat my daily gruel, since it is all my stomach can digest, while outside the rude red world bustles on, sweaty and unthinking! What is it to me, this piling up of knowledge upon knowledge, amassing a dungheap of wisdom in which I burrow like a beetle? Is this all there is? Would a man not be better offending it all? With this slender dagger, for example?"

  And so saying he took up a thin-bladed, keenly pointed stiletto that had been presented to him by a student of the great Nicolas Flamel, who was now buried in Paris at the church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie. Faust held it up to the flickering candlelight and watched the reflections play up and down its narrow blade. Turning it this way and that, he said, "Is it in vain, then, that I have learned the several arts of calcination, sublimation, condensation, and crystallization? What good now does my understanding of albification and solidification do for me, when the inner man, Faust the homunculus, the ageless spirit of myself who resides within this aging flesh, is sorrowful and confused, purposeless and adrift? Might it not be better to end it all with this well-made bodkin, inserting it into the pit of my stomach, for example, and ripping upwards, as I have seen the gorgeously costumed Orientals of a distant eastern island do in my visions?"

  He turned the stiletto again and again, fascinated by the play of light upon the blade, and the wavering candles seemed to cast a disapproving expression across the white face of Virgil. And there came again that sound that had barely ruffled the surface of his attention: it was the sound of church bells, and Faust remembered belatedly that this was Easter Sunday.

  Suddenly, as
quickly as it had arisen, his black mood began to dissipate. He moved to the window and opened the drapes.

  "I've been breathing too deeply of the fumes of mercury," he said to himself. "I must remember, the Great Work is dangerous to the practitioner, and carries with it on one side the danger of failure, on the other, success and the risk of premature despair. Better for me to go out into the air this fine morning, walk about on the newly sprung grass, even take for myself a glass of beer at the corner tavern, aye, and perhaps a toasted sausage, too, for my digestion feels better this morning. The vapors from the alembic have their counterpart in the vapors of the mind. I'll go forth this instant to dispel them."

  And so saying, Faust slipped into his cloak with the ermine trim, a cloak that an emperor might not have scorned, and, making sure he had his wallet, though his credit was high, left his chamber, heading out the front door into the bright sunshine and uncertainties of the new day, uncertainties that even the most skilled of alchemists might not foresee.

  CHAPTER 3

  The bells from the many churches of Cracow were sounding their Te Deums as Faust walked along Little Casimir Street, away from the Florian Gate, in the direction of Drapers' Hall in the big market square. He could tell each church's bells by their sound: the high and heavenly carillon from the convent of Mogila, the brilliant steely middle tones of St. Wenceslas, the great rolling voice of St. Stanislaw, and, dominating all, the thrilling bass from the deep bells of the great Church of Our Lady at the corner of the market square. It was a brilliant Easter Sunday, and the sun's golden light seemed to penetrate into every corner of the steep-roofed old city. The sky overhead was a bright blue, and there were soft-edged, puffy little white clouds of the sort painters like to depict as fitting resting-places for cherubs and allegorical figures. So fine a day could not help but cheer Faust's spirits, and so he took the shortcut to the market square along the noisome little alley called the Devil's Walk. Here the buildings bulged out like fat-bellied men in a steam bath, and there was not room for two people to walk abreast. The alley, with the steep overhanging roofs blocking the light, was a place of deep shadow on even the finest day. Faust had not gone ten yards before he began to regret his decision. Should he not have taken the high street, even if it would take a few minutes longer? After all, what did time matter to an alchemist and a philosopher?