"Crudity, always crudity," the anthropomorphic unicorn murmured, clasping its knee between its hands. "You're a relic of the dark ages, Belphegor."
"You're a jackass, Amduscias," said Belphegor. The three-headed spidery horror said nothing. It regarded Tracy unwinkingly.
"Look, human," Amduscias began, squinting along its horn, "devil to man, have you any preference?"
Tracy croaked inarticulately. He found his voice with some difficulty.
"P-preference? About what? Where-How'd I get here?"
"Death hath a thousand something doors and they do open both ways," Amduscias quoted inaccurately.
"I'm not dead."
"No," said the demon rather reluctantly. "But you will be. You will be."
"Tooth, horn, and claw," Belphegor interjected.
"Where am I, then?"
"Oh, it's a hinterland," Amduscias said. "Bael made it specially for our rendezvous." He glanced at the silent three-headed creature. "Meg sent us. You know Meg, don't you?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I know her." Tracy licked his lips. He remembered the book, and lifted it with unsteady hands. The number on the cover was unchanged-12.
"Sit down," Amduscias invited. "We have time for a talk before you die."
"Talk," Belphegor growled, yanking viciously at his tail. "Pah! Fool!"
The unicorn head bobbed solemnly. "I am a philosopher. There's no need to keep staring at Bael, human. He may strike you as ugly, but I assure you we're a handsome group, as Hell's lords go. If it's Bael's plurality that troubles you, you should see Asmodee. Our Eurynome-the progenitor of the bogeyman. Sit down and let's talk. It's been years since I spoke with a human being outside of Hell. And the ones in Hell can't carry on a lucid conversation," Amduscias went on ruminatively. "I used to talk with Voltaire a great deal, but since around 1850 he's done nothing but laugh. Mad, quite mad," the demon finished.
Tracy couldn't keep his eyes off Bael. The petulant, melancholy human face regarded him fixedly. The toad face stared at the sky. The cat face looked at nothing. It wasn't Meg, though. That was something. Or was it? Tracy's nails dug into his palms.
"What do you want?"
"You speak specifically, I assume-of now." Amduscias hunched his shoulders. "Be still, Belphegor," he added irritably. "If you had your way, this human being would be in tattered shreds within seconds. And then what? Back to Hell for us."
"What's wrong with Hell?" Belphegor demanded, tugging at his tail, as though giving himself some eerie sort of spinal adjustment. "Too crude for your cultivated tastes?" He dug a reddish clot from under a toe claw.
"Exactly. I don't like this hinterland. Bael's got the damnedest ideas for scenery."
"Result of a tripartite mind, I suppose," Amduscias said. "Well, human, how do you prefer to be killed?"
"I don't," Tracy denied.
Belphegor grunted. "Stop fooling around. Meg told us to get rid of this human being. Let's get it over and go back home."
"W-wait a minute," Tracy interrupted then. "Can't we straighten this out somehow?" The feel of the book in his hand gave him an unreasonable confidence. "Meg's only a familiar. What right has she got to tell you what to do?"
"Courtesies of the trade," Amduscias explained. "Now tell us how you'd prefer to be killed."
"If you had your way," Belphegor said bitterly, "you'd talk him to death."
The other rubbed his horn. "It's an intellectual amusement. I don't pretend to be another Scheherazade, but there are ways of driving human beings to insanity through-um-conversation. Yes, I vote for that method."
"My master, how you do run on!" Belphegor exclaimed. "All right, I vote for ripping him apart, cell by cell." His broad gray mouth twitched slightly.
Amduscias nodded and glanced at Bael. "How would you like to dispose of the human being?"
Bael said nothing, but began to crawl purposefully toward Tracy, who drew back. Amduscias waved a deprecatory hand.
"Very well. We're in disagreement. Shall we snatch the human being off to Hell and give him to Astoreth or Agaliarept? Or, perhaps, we could leave him here. There's no way out of this hinterland, except through Bael."
Tracy tried to speak, and discovered that his throat was dry. "Hold on," he croaked. "I-I've got something to say about this, haven't I?"
"Very little. Why?"
"Well, I've no intention of being eaten."
"Eaten! Why-Oh!" Amduscias looked at Belphegor's bared fangs and laughed softly. "We've no intention of eating you, I can say definitely. Demons can't eat. There's catabolism, but no metabolism. I wish human beings took a broader outlook toward the universe," he finished, with a little shrug.
"I wish supernatural beings wouldn't talk so damn much," Tracy said, with a flash of irritation. "If you're going to kill me, go ahead and do it. I'm sick of this, anyway."
Amduscias shook his head. "We can't decide on how to dispose of you, so I suppose-eh?-we'll just leave you here. After a while you'll starve. That all right, Belphegor? Bael?"
It seemed to be all right. Belphegor and Bael vanished. Amduscias stood up, stretching. "I'll say good-by," he remarked. "No use your trying to escape. That door's locked for good. You can't get out through it. Farewell." He disappeared.
Tracy waited for a while, but nothing further happened. He looked down at the book. It still said Page 12.
"He's bluffing." About what? Who? Amduscias?
The door?
Tracy tried it again, but could not stir the knob, which seemed to have frozen motionless. He shoved the book back into his pocket and considered. What next?
It was utterly silent. The ambiguous melting objects here and there on the plain did not move. Tracy walked toward the nearest and examined it. He could make nothing of the blobby outline.
The horizon.
He had a feeling that he was in the Looking Glass garden, and that if he walked far enough, he would suddenly find himself back where he had started. Shading his eyes under his palm, Tracy swept the unearthly landscape with a searching stare.
Nothing.
He was in danger, or else the book wouldn't have a page number on its cover. Again he referred to Page 12. Somebody was still bluffing. Amduscias, apparently. But bluffing about what?
Why, Tracy wondered, hadn't the demons killed him? Their tactics reminded him of a war of nerves. They had wanted to destroy him-at least, Belphegor and Bael had; there was no doubt about that. Yet they had refrained.
Maybe they couldn't kill him. They had taken the next best course, imprisoned him in this-this hinterland. What had Amduscias said at parting? "No use your trying to escape. That door's locked for good."
Was Amduscias bluffing?
The door loomed surrealistically in the distance. Tracy hurried back toward it and tried it again. The knob didn't move. He took out his pocketknife and tried to unscrew the lock, but couldn't. He succeeded only in breaking a blade. Some sort of stasis held the entire lock frozen motionless.
He kicked the door, but it was solid as iron. Meanwhile, the book still said Page 12. And the book was never wrong.
There had to be some way out. Tracy stood glaring at the door. He had walked out of the bathroom into this alien world. If he could only reopen the door, he could walk right back into that hotel bathroom. Or-"Oh, hell," Tracy said, and walked around to the other side of the door, turned the knob easily enough, and stepped back into the room where Barney Bonn, Tim Hatton, and the two other men were sitting around a table, cards in their hands.
Donn nodded. "You weren't long," he said. "Ready to call me now?"
Tracy hurriedly closed the door behind him. The book had not failed him, then. There were obviously two sides to every problem-and the demons had not expected Tracy to think of the logical solution. Or, rather, the illogical one.
His experiences in the hinterland had not been measured by earthly time, either. Apparently he had left the room for only a minute or so. At least, the chips were in the pot, and Donn was holding his cards close to his chest, grinning encouragingly.