Read Online Black Easter by James Blish - Free Book Online Page B

showed her teeth and emitted a disgusting belch of fire. The cat settled its front feet indifferently.
    ‘Stand, by the Seal,’ Ware said. ‘Stand and transform, else I shall plunge thee back whence thou camest. I command thee.’
    The she-wolf vanished, leaving behind in the triangle a plump, modest-looking young man wearing a decorous necktie, a dildo almost as long and nothing else. ‘Sorry, boss’ he said in a sugary voice ‘I had to try, you know. What’s up?’
    ‘Don’t try to wheedle me, vision of stupidity,’ Ware said harshly. Transform, I demand of thee, thou’rt wasting thy father’s time, and mine! Transform!’
    The young man stuck out his tongue which was copper-green. A moment later, the triangle was occupied by a black bearded man apparently twice his age, wearing a forest-green robe rimmed in ermine and a glittering crown. It hurt Baines’s eyes to look at it. An odour of sandalwood began slowly to diffuse through the room.
    ‘That’s better,’ Ware said. ‘Now I charge thee, by those Names I have named and on pain of those torments thou hast known, to regard the likeness and demesne of that mortal whose eidolon I hold in my hand, and that when I release thee, thou shalt straightaway go unto him, not making thyself known unto him, but revealing, as it were to come from his own intellectual soul, a vision and understanding of that great and ultimate Nothingness which lurks behind those signs hecalls matter and energy, as thou wilt see it in his private forebodings, and that thou remainest with him and deepen his despair without remittal, until such time as he shall despise his soul for its endeavours, and destroy the life of his body.’
    ‘I cannot give thee,’ the crowned figure said, in a voice deep but somehow lacking all resonance, ‘what thou requirest.’
    ‘Refusal will not avail thee,’ Ware said, ‘for either shalt thou go incontinently and perform what I comand, or I shall in no wise dismiss thee, but shall keep thee here unto my life’s end, and torment thee daily, as thy father permitteth.’
    ‘Thy life itself, though it last seven hundred years, is but a day to me,’ said the crowned figure. Sparks issued from its nostrils as it spoke. ‘And thy torments but a farthing of those I have endured since ere the cosmic egg was hatched, and Eve invented.’
    For answer, Ware again stabbed the rod into the fire, which, Baines noted numbly, failed even to scorch it. But the crowned figure threw back its bearded head and howled desolately. Ware withdrew the rod, but only by a hand’s breadth.
    ‘I shall go as thou commandest,’ the creature said sullenly. Hatred oozed from it like lava.
    ‘Be it not performed exactly, I shall call thee up again,’ Ware said. ‘But be it executed, for thy pay thou shalt carry off the immortal part of the subject thou shalt tempt, which is as yet spotless in the sight of Heaven, and a great prize.’
    ‘But not yet enough,’ said the demon. ‘For thou must give me also somewhat of thine hoard, as it is written in the pact.’
    ‘Thou art slow to remember the pact,’ Ware said. ‘But I would deal fairly with thee, knowing marquis. Here.’
    He reached into his robe and drew out something minute and colourless, which flashed in the candlelight. At first, Baines took it to be a diamond, but as Ware held it out, he recognized it as an opalescent, crystal tear vase, the smallest he had ever seen, stopper, contents and all. This Ware tossed, underhand, out of the circle to the fuming figure, which to Baines’s new astonishment – for he had forgotten that what he was really looking at had first exhibited as a beast – caught it skilfully in its mouth and swallowed it.
    ‘Thou dost only tantalize M ARCHOSIAS ,’ the Presence said.‘When I have thee in Hell, magician, then shall I drink thee dry, though thy tears flow never so copiously.’
    Thy threats are empty. I am not marked for thee, shouldst thou see me in Hell forever,’ Ware