The one at left-center needed close watching. For a moment it would be a handsome young man, not much different from Hermes himself. Then, in a flash, it would be a long, drawn-out old man banging away at the floor with a heavy cloven hoof. Another flash, and it would be a toothless hag in a battered hat who sat there leering up into the face of the blood-spitting king. A trick cyclist, if Hermes ever saw one.
At right-center sat a patriarch with a huge white beard, fully a yard wide. He sat motionless and quite without expression.
At extreme right, equally motionless and equally expressionless, was a thing. Essentially all body, broad with a thick chest, it had a face of a sort, the features apparently of gilt. Hermes had the fancy the features consisted merely of gilt lettering, but this seemed absurd.
Aphrodite floated in to the sound of exquisitely delicate music. Simply but superbly dressed, she took her accustomed chair on the raised dais. Hermes caught a glimpse of the fabulous legs and sighed.
The king in the yellow cape was the first one up. “I am Tamerlenk, conqueror of nations, conqueror of mankind.” A veritable torrent of blood swished into the spittoon.
“I see a beautiful country before me, a land golden with ripening corn.” The fellow threw out his cloak, as if to suggest yellowing fields. Then he pointed straight ahead. “I will have that country. I will have every last thing in it, every woman, every man, every child. With subtle potions I instruct my soldiery to intense greed and cruelty. I inflame them to intense lust. I drive them like the whirlwind into the land of the ripening corn. Women are raped before the eyes of lovers and husbands, men are flogged until not a piece of flesh will cling to the bare bones. Terror reigns supreme, terror untempered by pity. Then I hold up my hand—so!—and peace descends instantly on the land. All is now silent and still, and with silence comes abject obedience from every man, every woman, every child. The land is now mine, every last thing in it.
“This is no vainglorious boasting. The pages of history stand open to attest to my conquests. I waste no more words. Power lies in strength, not in words, and the true servants of power are the whip, the chain, and the branding iron.”
Tamerlenk gave a last decisive ping into the spittoon and sat himself down, plainly satisfied with his performance. Well he might be, thought Hermes. Aphrodite was making notes in her special little book, the way she always did when she was impressed. This monster had hit Aphrodite’s weakness—the exercise of brute physical force—slap-bang on the nose, just as Ares, the war god, always seemed able to do. Hermes had a sudden suspicion of this Tamerlenk fellow. This might be a trick by Ares himself, a trick to maneuver himself into bed with Aphrodite. Once there, once home again, as it were, it wouldn’t be hard for him to make her forget their last quarrel.
Why must it always be the screwballs who were attractive to women, the plausible rascals and the pathological idiots? Hermes shook his handsome young head, and sighed again.
The trick cyclist was the next one up. In the guise of the old crone in the hat, the creature began in a high falsetto. “I frighten the maidens of the villagery. Sometimes I skim milk, sometimes I labor in the quern, and bootless make the breathless housewife churn. Sometimes I make the drink to bear no barm. Sometimes I mislead night wanderers. Hee-hee! Laugh I at their harm.”
In a flash the old crone was gone, replaced by a skull inside which a brisk fire was burning. The skull itself seemed to be inlaid with turquoise mosaics. Before Hermes could make quite sure of this, a creature with lank, black hair parted down the middle, a creature with a vast mouth—the teeth even and flat at the bottom like a pair of scissors—was standing there. This apparition immediately gave way to an oddity with the horns of a cow, the teeth filed into sharp needles this time. The gyrations went faster and faster until Hermes became quite dizzy. Aphrodite turned on him with a quizzical shrug.
“I haven’t the slightest idea how the idiot got himself in here,” he muttered apologetically.
Aphrodite had seen enough. “Stop it!” she snapped. The command was not to be ignored. The gyrations halted dead. It was the thin creature standing there, the one with the cloven hoof. Hermes noticed it had a big black tail, a tail which twitched continuously. The thing seemed incapable of being still, even from one second to the next.
“I am the Devil,” it began.
“Never mind who you are. What’s all this twinkling in aid of?”
“Those are the many guises of my assistant devils. I have many assistant devils, at my orgies.”
“What orgies are these? Will you be good enough to stop twitching.”
The Devil swiveled uncomfortably on his cloven hoof. His case wasn’t going any too well. The thrashing tail was stilled for a moment. He must think up something to show off his power. “I have an enormous orgy starting promptly at midnight on Walpurgis night.”
Apart from the merest whistle through the teeth, Aphrodite took this absurdity with complete composure. “Will you be good enough to define the word ‘orgy?’ Exactly what goes on in an orgy?”
“Well, devilry, of course, generalized devilry. I get ’em all going round and round in a wild dance, faster and faster I force ’em to go. Until the first cockcrow.”
The Devil started up quite a realistic drum roll with his hoof. Aphrodite and Hermes exchanged glances. Neither could remotely conceive of why the first cockcrow should have anything to do with it.
“I instructed you a moment ago to be more explicit. Who are ’em?”
“Damned souls, of course, out of graves gaping wide. I open up the graves of all damned souls on the nights of my special orgies.”
“What is the purpose of this ridiculous nonsense?”
“Everlasting torment, my dear lady. Hell is my kingdom. In hell everlasting tortures are inflicted on the hosts of the damned. Following this little session, it is my intention to enjoy an extended interview with the damned soul who immediately preceded me. I’ll soon have him spitting out of the other side of his face, I promise you.”
The Devil beat out a veritable tattoo with his tail. Hermes had the feeling the creature could give you a really nasty thwack with that big black tail. He also had the feeling Aphrodite wasn’t going to put up with this nonsense for very much longer. Her voice was already dangerously silky. “How would I go about it, becoming a damned soul?”
“Nothing easier,” said the creature cheerfully, “particularly for a woman. Just get yourself seduced.”
“Really, as easy as that?”
“Nothing more needed, one of my oldest tricks. Just get yourself solidly seduced.”
Too late, the Devil realized his foolish mistake, talking nonsense about seduction to the very goddess of love. He started his twinkling tricks again, hoping, no doubt, to confuse the issue. Hermes could see the skull with the turquoise inlay, then the scissor teeth, then the cow horns, round and round in a whirling kaleidoscopic display. Aphrodite gave the big thumbs-down, and like a flash Hermes stabbed the button. In the merest fraction of a nanosecond, the ground opened up at left-center.
The Devil was gone now, but the noise he was still able to kick up with his drumming hoof rumbled up from the depths below, more than loud enough to be a nuisance.
“Better clear him altogether,” muttered Aphrodite.
Nothing loath, Hermes pressed the clear-store button. Instantly the noise stopped, but in its place a vast sulfurous cloud of smoke belched up out of the floor like some enormous geyser. Hermes just managed to punch the air-conditioner before the smoke entirely blotted out the console keyboard.