"Keep trying awhile longer," Michael said. "A working knowledge of painting is useful in helping to evaluate the many masterworks Heaven has in its superlative collections. Have you encountered your friend Azzie again?"

"Indeed I have, sir. Just a little while ago I saw him coming out of the house of Pietro Aretino, the well-known scurrilous poet and ribald playwright."

"Did you indeed? What do you think it was all about? Simple fan worship?"

"That's what I'd like to believe," Babriel said. "However, a certain appearance of upset in my friend's behavior when I mentioned Aretino's name has led me to wonder if it might not be otherwise. But I hate to accuse anyone of possible double-dealing, sir, and least of all one who is my friend, despite being a demon."

"Your scruples do you credit," Michael said. "Though we would expect no less of one who is after all a full- fledged angel. But consider. Azzie, as a servitor of Bad, would not be doing his job if he were not up to some subterfuge conducive to the advancement of Evil in the world. So to accuse him of harboring wrongdoing is simply to give him his due. Of course he's up to no good! The question is, what is he doing?"

"As to that, I have not the slightest idea."

"Yet I think we need to find out. Azzie is no longer an insignificant personage. Twice has he served the Powers of Darkness in great affairs. There was the case of Prince Charming to begin with, and then the matter of Faust, the outcome of which is still under adjudication in the courts of Ananke. I understand Azzie now stands high in the councils of unrighteousness. It seems obvious that he is a prune player in those games that spring up from time to time to bedevil mankind and set the feet of humans on the path to d.a.m.nation."

"My friend is as important as all that?" Babriel said, round-eyed with amazement.

"So it would seem these days," Michael said. "At the least, it seems wise to investigate what his interest is in the wily and too-clever-by-half Aretino."

"I think you're right, sir," Babriel said.

"And you, my lad, are the very angel to do it."

"Me? Oh, surely not, sir! You know how lacking I am in guile, your archangelship. If I attempted by duplicitous conversation to ascertain his purposes, Azzie would see through me in an instant."

"I know that," Michael said. "Your ingenuousness is legendary among us. But it can't be helped. You are in the perfect position to do a bit of spying, since you are here in Venice already. It should be easy enough for you to make the acquaintance of this Aretino. Go to him as one who has long admired his work, and speak to him, look around his house, see what you see. Even buy him lunch to draw him out further. We'll put down the cost to Heavenly Investigations."

"You really think it'll be morally okay if I spy on my friend?" Babriel inquired.

"It stands to reason that it is," Michael said. "One cannot betray an enemy, only a friend. Without betrayal there'd be no revelation."

Babriel nodded and agreed at once to do what Michael asked. Only later did he realize Michael had never given him a direct answer. By then it was too late to worry about it, though. While betraying a friend may or may not be a moral wrong, going against the order of an archangel is decidedly inadvisable.

Chapter 2.

The next day, on the stroke of twelve, Babriel knocked at Aretino's door.

There was no response at first, although he could hear a variety of sounds from within. They seemed to be the strangest mixture of musical instruments and human voices, many of them raised in laughter. He knocked again. This time a servant opened it, a very proper-looking man save that his wig was askew. He looked as if he had been trying to do too many things at the same time.

"I wish to speak with Aretino," Babriel said.

"Oh, dear, everything is in such a state of upset," the servant said. "Wouldn't another time do?"

"No, it must be now," Babriel said with unaccustomed firmness, stiffened by the thought that he'd soon have to report his progress - or lack of it-to Michael.

The servant stepped back, admitting Babriel. He led the angel to a drawing room, and said, "Kindly wait here. I'll ask if the master can see you."

Babriel teetered back and forth on his heels, a trick he'd learned long ago to help pa.s.s the time. He looked about the room and saw a ma.n.u.script on a little drawing table nearby. He had seen only the words "Father Adam" when there was a bustle of noise and a group of people came in. Babriel sprang back guiltily.

They were musicians, but they had discarded their for-mal coats and jackets and were walking at ease in their shirtsleeves, playing their instruments. It wasn't any church air they were striking up, but rather a lively dance melody.

They pa.s.sed through without so much as a glance at Babriel. They were intent on penetrating to some inner room from which a babble of voices and high-pitched squeals and brays of raucous laughter betrayed the fact that some mirthful activity was in progress. Babriel stole another look at the ma.n.u.script, and this time he was able to read a half sentence: "Father Adam, shortly after his expulsion from the Garden of Eden for eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge..." Then he was interrupted again, this time by peals of girlish laughter.

He looked up just as two damsels came running into the room. They were young beauties, one with dark tousled hair, the other with tangled blond tresses. They wore bright diaphanous clothing that floated behind them as they ran, one in playful pursuit of the other, and Babriel blushed as he became aware that their clothing was sufficiently disheveled to reveal carmine-tipped b.r.e.a.s.t.s and rosy thighs.

They stopped in front of him. In the most delightful French accent, the blonde said, "You there! Have you seen him?"

"To whom do you refer?"

"That naughty Pietro! He promised to dance with me and Fifi here."

"I haven't seen him," said Babriel, resisting the urge to cross himself because he thought the ladies might find it offensive.

"He must be around here somewhere," the blonde said. "Come, Fifi, let's hunt him down and punish him." She gave Babriel a certain look that sent a shiver down him from the crown of his head to the nethermost extremities of his toes. "Why don't you come, too?" she said to mm.

"Oh, no, no," Babriel said. "I am supposed to wait here."

"And you always do what you're supposed to? How boring!"

Laughing, the girls swept on into the next room, down the corridor, and out of sight. Babriel mopped his brow and tried to get another look at the ma.n.u.script. This time he managed to read the t.i.tle. The Legend of the Seven Golden Candlesticks.. And then the sound of footsteps alerted him and he moved away from the table.

Aretino came in, his beard in disarray and his doublet unfastened, his hose hanging halfway down his shanks. His fine linen shirt was stained, probably with wine. He walked with a decided list to starboard, and his eyes were bloodshot and bleary, the eyes of a man who has seen too much too often but still seeks to see more. He carried a half-filled wine sack in his hand, and his step was none too steady.

With some difficulty, the poet came to a stop in front of Babriel, and with owlish dignity demanded, "Who the h.e.l.l are you?"

"A student," said Babriel. "A poor student from Germany. I've come here to Venice to bask in the bright sunshine of your genius, dear master, and to buy you lunch, if I may be so presumptuous. I am your greatest fan in all the country north of Aachen."

"Are you indeed?" said Aretino. "You like my stuff?"

" 'Like' is a paltry word, dear master, to express what I feel toward your oeuvre. Men call you the Divine Aretino, but even that is to d.a.m.n your genius with faint praise."

Babriel was not a flatterer by nature, but he had been around enough, in both high circles and low, to know how to handle the lingo. He only hoped he wasn't laying it on too thick for credence. But Aretino, especially in his present state, found no expression of his talent too fulsome.

"You speak well, my boy. I'll say that for you." Aretino paused to suppress a hiccup. "I'd love to have lunch with you, but it'll have to be some other time. I'm right in the middle of a party now in celebration of my new commission. Where in h.e.l.l are my guests? Up in the bedrooms already, I'll warrant. But I'm not far behind!" And so saying he staggered toward the door.

"Might I inquire, dear master, as to the nature of your new commission? Your wellwishers all over Europe would be so interested to hear."

Aretino stopped, thought for a moment, then came back into the room and picked up the ma.n.u.script from the table. Tucking it under his arm, he said, "No, no! I am sworn to secrecy on this matter. But you and the rest of the world will be astonished, I promise that. The scale of the enterprise alone... But not another word." And so saying he walked out of the room, moving quite well save for the odd lurch or two.

Chapter 3.

Rushing back to Heaven, Babriel went directly to the suburbs where Michael had his split-level ranch house. He burst in on the archangel in his study, a fine, well-lighted room where he had laid out his stamp collection on a rosewood table under a Tiffany lamp and was going over it with magnifying gla.s.s and tweezers. The blond angel's sudden appearance caused a gust of wind to arise, and the stamps danced merrily in the air. Babriel rescued a Capetown Triangular before it blew out the window, and he put a paperweight atop it to keep it safe.

"Terribly sorry," Babriel murmured.

"Just try to be a little less impetuous," Michael said. "You have no idea how difficult it is to get these rarer issues up from Earth without awkward questions being asked. I take it you've met with some success in your investigations?"

Babriel babbled about Aretino's ma.n.u.script, its t.i.tle, its first line, together with the information that the poet was celebrating a new a.s.signment, and, from the look of the celebration, a well-paying one.