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"Before we settle down to any lengthy conversation," I told him, "there are some questions that I want to ask. There was a woman with me and she has disappeared. She was at the i
"I know all that," he told me, with a leer. "Name of Kathy Adams. You can rest easy concerning her, for she has been returned to Earth—the human Earth, that is. Which is just as well, for we didn't want her. But we had to4ake her, because she was with you."
"Didn't want her?"
"No, of course not," the Devil said. "You were the one we wanted."
"Now, look here…" I started to say, but he cut me off with an airy wave of a massive hand.
"We need you as a negotiator. I suppose that's the way to say it. We've been looking for someone who could do a job for us, you might say be our agent, and then you came along and…"
"If that was what you wanted," I told him, "you went about it in a ham-handed sort of way. Your gang did their best to kill me and it was only by good luck…"
He interrupted me with a chuckle. "Not good luck," he said. "A well-honed sense of self-preservation that worked far better than anything I've seen for years. And about this business' of trying to do you in—I can promise you that there are certain expediters here who have smarted for it. They have one-track minds and too much imagination and there'll be some changes made. I was busy with too many other things, as you can well imagine, and did not hear, at first, of what was going on."
"You mean that this rule of three times is a charm.."
He shook his head sadly. "No, I regret to tell you there is nothing I can do to change that. A rule's a rule, you know. And, after all, it was you humans who made up the rule along with a bunch of others that made no sort of sense. Like 'Crime does not pay, when you know damn well it does, and all that foolishness about early to bed and early to rise." He shook his head again. "You can't begin to imagine the kinds of trouble those fool rules of yours are always giving us."
"But they aren't rules," I said.
"I know. You call them adages. But once you get enough people to believe there is something in them, then we are stuck with them."
"So you are still going to have one more go at me. Unless you agree with the Referee that this Quixote business…"
"The Quixote business stands," he growled. "I agree with the Referee that this crack-brained character out of Spain is not difficult for anyone above the age of five to handle. But I want you out of this and the quicker and the easier I can get you out of it, the better it will be. There's business to be done. What I can't understand is what misplaced sense of chivalry made you agree to take on another round. Once you polished off the serpent, you were in the clear, but then you let that slimy Referee talk you into…"
"I owed Kathy something," I told him. "I got her into it."
"I know," he said. "I know. There are times I can't get you humans figured out. Most of the time you go around slitting one another's throats and sticking knives into your fellow humans' backs and climbing over them to achieve what you call success, then you turn around and get so damn noble and compassionate it's enough to make one sick."
"But why, in the first place, if you have some use for me, and I really can't believe you have—but if you do, why try to kill me? Why not just reach down, if that is how you do it, and simply pick me up?"
He sighed at my ignorance. "To kill you we must try. That also is a rule. But there was no need for so good a job of it. No need for all the fancy business. These expediters sit around and think up these fancy schemes, and it's all right if that's the way they like to spend their time, but they get so hopped up about these fancy ways of doing it, that they have to try them out. The trouble they will go to accomplish simple homicide is past all understanding. It's all you humans' fault, of course. You humans do the same. Your book writers, your comic artists, your script writers—every one of your creative people—sit around and think up all these crazy characters and these impossible situations and we are the ones who get stuck with them. And that, I think, brings us around to the proposition I wish to talk with you about."
"Then get on with it," I said. "I've had a tough day and could do with about twenty hours of sleep. That is, if there is a place where I can bed down."
"Oh, there is," he said. "In between those two boulders over there is a bed of leaves. Blown in by the winds of latest autumn. It will be a restful place to catch a needed nap."
"Complete," I asked, "with rattlesnakes?"
"What do you take me for?" the Devil demanded, wrath-fully. "Do you think I have no honor, that I would entrap you? I pledge to you that no harm will come to you before you're well awake."
"And after that," I asked.
"After that," he said, "there is yet another threat and danger to fulfill the rule of three. You can rest assured that you have my best wishes in that encounter, whatever it may be."
"O.K.," I said, "since I can't weasel out of it. I wonder if you might just speak a word for me. I'm getting slightly worn down. I don't think I'd care right now for another serpent."
"I can promise you," the Devil said, "it won't be a serpent. And now let's get down to business."
"All right," I told him, somewhat weakly. "What is on your mind?"
"It is," the Devil said, somewhat petulantly, "this junky fantasy that you are feeding us. How do you expect us to build any kind of life system with all this fuzziness and froth? Little dicky birds perching on a branch and yelling 'I thought I saw a putty tat—I did, I did, I did, and the fool cat down there on the ground leering up at the bird in a helpless and half-guilty ma
"You mean," I said, "that it would be a more healthful setup for you if we continued to believe in devils, ghouls, and goblins, and such-like."
"Much more healthful," said the Devil, "at least if you believed with some sincerity. But now you make a joke of us…"
"Not a joke," I protested. "You must remember that, for the most part, the human race is not aware that any of you actually exist. How could they be when you go about killing off the ones who have some suspicion that this world exists?"
"It is this thing," said the Devil, bitterly, "that you designate as progress. You can do almost anything you want and you keep on wanting more and you fill your minds with hopeful expectations and have no room for introspection on personal values—such as one's own shortcomings. There is no fear in you and no apprehension.."
"There is fear," I said, "and plenty of apprehension. The difference is in the things we fear."
"You are right," the Devil said. "The H-bombs and the UFO's. What a thing to conjure up—crazy flying saucers!"
"Better, perhaps, than a devil," I reminded him. "A UFO a man might have some chance to reason with, but a devil, never. You kind of folks are tricky."
"It's the sign of the times," the Devil mourned. "Mechanics instead of metaphysics. Would you believe that in this sad land of ours we have a horde of UFO's, most detestable contrivances and inhabited by all ma
"Perhaps it's bad for you," I told him, "and I can see your point. But I don't know what can be done about it. Except in certain culturally backward areas you find few people now who believe in you with any honesty. Oh, sure, they talk of you at times. They say 'to the devil with it' or that it's the devil's work, but mostly they don't even think of you when they are saying it. You've become a very faintly dirty word. The belief in you simply isn't there. Not the way it once was. I don't think that attitude can be changed. You can't stop human progress. You'll simply have to wait for what comes next. It might just possibly be something that will work to your advantage."