"Listen to me closely," Azzie said.

"I listen," said Aretino, somewhat taken aback by Azzie's suddenly commanding manner.

"I am Azzie Elbub, a demon of n.o.ble lineage, at your service, Aretino," Azzie said, making a negligent gesture with one hand, at the end of which blue sparks of lightning flashed.

Aretino's eyes opened wide. "Black magic!"

"I avail myself of these infernal stage effects," said Azzie, "so that you might know at once with whom you are dealing."

Drawing his fingers together, Azzie produced a large emerald, then another, and another. He turned out six of them and lay them side to side on the little table where the wine stood. Then he made a pa.s.s over them, and the emeralds shuddered and collapsed into a single large stone, the largest emerald the world had ever known.

"Amazing!" said Aretino.

"It must return to its original form after a while," Azzie said. "But the effect is pretty, is it not?"

"Amazing!" said Aretino again. "Can such a trick be taught?"

"Only to another demon." said Azzie. "But there is a lot I can do for you, Aretino. Come into this enterprise with me and not only will you be paid beyond your wildest dreams, but also you will receive a tenfold increase in your already sizable fame because you will be the author of a play that will set forth a new legend upon this old Earth. With a little luck, it will presage the beginning of an age of candor such as the hypocritical old globe has not yet seen."

Azzie's eyes flashed fire as he spoke-he wasn't one to stint his effects when trying to make a point.

Aretino stumbled back at this display. He tripped over a footstool and would have fallen heavily had not Azzie reached out a long lean arm covered in fine red hair and restored the surprised poet to his balance.

"I can't tell you how flattered I am," Aretino said, "that you would come to me for this supreme production. I am entirely in accord with your wishes, my dear Lord Azzie, but the matter isn't quite so simple. I would not give you less than the best. Give me a week's time, my lord, in which I may consider the matter, and meditate, and consult the ancient stories and legends I have heard. The entire basis for this play of yours, however it is mounted, must be a story. It is the search for that story to which I'll devote myself. Shall we say until next week at this same time?"

"That is most excellently said," Azzie said. "I am glad you are not jumping into this matter lightly. Yes, take a week."

With that, Azzie made a gesture and vanished.

PART TWO.

Chapter 1.

When a demon leaves Earth in order to go to the Realm of Darkness, profound forces are involved, discernible only to senses that can detect what for most humans is undetectable. That evening, not long after his talk with Aretino, Azzie gazed upward at the starry sky. He snapped his fingers - he had recently procured a new finger-snapping spell, and now .was a good chance to try it out. The spell kicked in and flung him into the air, and soon he was traveling rapidly through s.p.a.ce, his pa.s.sage brighter than a falling star.

Azzie roared through the transparent separation that forms the covering of the Heavenly sphere of the heavens, picking up ma.s.s as he went in accordance with the law of speeding objects that governs even devils in their flight. The stars seemed to nod and wink at his pa.s.sage. The wind that howled between the worlds sent a chill through him, and Ur-frost formed on his nose and eyebrows. He felt the savage chill of those desolate s.p.a.ces, but he didn't slow down. He was in the devil's own hurry. Once Azzie got an idea, he was unstoppable.

In order to get a great event like an immorality play written and staged, he needed money. He had to pay the human actors, and it cost plenty to purchase the special effects - those fortuitous miracles that would occur to cheer his actors on their way to undeserved good fortune. Azzie had remembered that he hadn't been paid his bonus for the Bad Deed of the Year award which he had received for his part in the Faust affair.

At last his speed was sufficient for the great shift that propels a being from one realm of existence into another. Suddenly Azzie was no longer traveling through the sphere of mundane objects and energies made up of atoms and their const.i.tuent member particles. He had pa.s.sed through the invisible and impalpable separation that divides ordinary objects like mumesons and tachyons from the finer particles of the Spiritual Realm.

He found himself in a place of great misty shapes and indistinct colors, where vast and indistinct objects swam in a honey-colored atmosphere. He was home again.

Just ahead of him were the great grim blue-black walls of h.e.l.l City, on which the walls of ancient Babylon had been modeled. Sentinel devils patrolled the high bastions; Azzie waved his pa.s.s at them and hurtled on.

He came in over the dark Satanic suburbs and soon was in the business section of h.e.l.l City, where the administrative work was carried out. He pa.s.sed by the Public Works division; it was of no interest to him just now. The great bureaucratic buildings coalesced around him, he picked the right one, and soon he was hurrying down a corridor filled with other demons, as well as imps in pageboy's uniforms. Here and there were the inevitable kimono-clad succubi who made the lunches of senior officials so pleasant. He came at last to the Accounting Section.

He was expected to take his place at the end of the long line of pet.i.tioners who waited impatiently for someone to hear their cases. They were a down-at-the-heels and seedy bunch. Azzie went right past them to the head of the line, flourishing a gold-edged Bypa.s.s Card he had gotten from Asmodeus back when he stood high in that senior devil's favor.

The clerk in charge of Payments Past Due was an ill- favored Transylvanian imp-goblin with a long nose and breath that was horrific even by h.e.l.l's standards. Devoted as he and all his fellows were to doing as little as possible, thus saving their own energy and h.e.l.l's money, he claimed that Azzie had not filled in his papers correctly, and in any event, he had filled out the wrong forms. Azzie showed him a Waiver of Correctness signed by Beelzebub himself. It stated that no impediment in the paperwork was to stop or delay the payment of moneys owed to said demon. The imp-goblin was sore pressed by this, but found a last excuse.

"I do not have the authority to pa.s.s on these things. I'm just a wretched little imp-goblin clerk. What you've got to do is go down the hall, take the first door to your right, go up the staircase - "

Azzie was having none of it. He produced another form, an Instant Action Chit, which stated that no excuses would be tolerated in the paying of this demand, and that any obfuscation on the part of the requisite clerk would be met with Pecuniary Punishment, viz., taking the amount owed out of the clerk's own salary. This was the most drastic form of action anyone could take in h.e.l.l City, and Azzie had had to steal the form from the special office where they were handed out only to the favored few.

The form's effect on the imp-goblin was immediate and gratifying. "It's not coming out of my pocket!" the imp- goblin said. "Where's my stamp?" He rummaged around his desk, found it, and stamped Azzie's papers with URGENT! PAY IMMEDIATELY! in letters of fire. "Now just take that down the hall to the Payments window. And then kindly go away. You have quite ruined my day."

Azzie did so. He vowed to return with nasty new tricks if there was any further trouble. But the clerk at the Payments window, seeing the notation PAY IMMEDIATELY!, initialed it and handed over forthwith and without delay several sacks of gold coins, making up the full amount of what Azzie was owed.

Chapter 2.

By the time Azzie got back to Venice, six days of Earth- time had pa.s.sed. The weather had turned mild and glorious, and flowering plants had burst into bloom in the little parks. White and yellow blooms were everywhere, glorious in the mild sunshine. The ladies of Venice promenaded in the fine weather, the men walking along with them, prattling of the affairs of n.o.bles and their ladies. The tide was falling, carrying the garbage and debris of the inhabitants out to sea. The spanking east wind was sweeping out the odorous vapors that made Venice a likely place for European plagues to begin. All in all it was a good time to be alive.

Azzie had planned to look into the a.r.s.enal, the most famous shipbuilding facility in Europe, but no sooner had he turned into a narrow cobblestoned street that led to it than he b.u.mped into a large blue-eyed fellow who took one look at him and gave him a warm thump on the back.

"Azzie! Upon my word, it is you, isn't it?" said the other.

It was the angel Babriel, an old acquaintance from bygone adventures. Although they served opposite sides in the great battle of Light and Dark, they had become friends - or if not exactly friends, something closer than acquaintances- over the course of events. They had another connection, too-the love they both bore the beautiful black- haired witch named Ylith.

Azzie thought that Babriel, who worked nowadays for Michael the Archangel, might be here in Venice to keep an eye on him, and might even be suspecting him - through some previously unheard-of Heavenly art - of the scheme he was attempting to hatch.

After Babriel expressed surprise at Azzie's presence in Venice, Azzie replied, "I took a little time off from my duties in h.e.l.l to enjoy the sights of this fair city. It is surely the Earthly paradise of the present generation."

"It was wonderful to see you again," Babriel said to Azzie, "but now I must rejoin the others. The angel Israfel comes at vespers to pick us up and return us to Heaven, this being only a weekend outing."

"Good journey to you, then," Azzie said.

And so they parted. Azzie had picked up no intimation that Babriel was spying on him, yet he wondered why the blue-eyed angel was in Venice at just this time.

Chapter 3.

Babriel always enjoyed getting back to Heaven. It was such a pretty place, with its rows of small white houses on generous green lawns, its fine old trees, and its general air of genteel Goodness. Not all of Heaven looked like that, of course, but this was West Heaven, the better side of Paradise, where the archangels lived and where the Spiritual Embodiments had summer places. The Spiritual Embodiments were tall and attractive women, and an angel could do far worse for himself than tie up with one of them -for the mating of excellent qualities was allowed in Heaven. But as beautiful as they were, Babriel wasn't attracted to them in the way of a man and a maid. His heart went out to Ylith. Perhaps because of her previous history as Wh.o.r.e of Athens and a.s.sistant Wh.o.r.e of Babylon, back when she served Bad, he found her irresistible. Ylith sometimes seemed in love with Babriel, sometimes not.

He went by a shortcut to East Heaven and stopped at Ylith's house, just to say h.e.l.lo, but she was not in. A refurbished nature spirit gotten up like a cherub was mowing the lawn, a penance he had imposed on himself for past indiscretions. He told Babriel that Ylith was away leading a group of young angels to sacred shrines on Earth.

"Oh, really?" Babriel said. "What period are they visit-

"I believe it's called the Renaissance," said the nature spirit.

Babriel thanked him and left in a thoughtful mood. Was it merely coincidence that Azzie was also visiting that period? Babriel was not suspicious by nature, and was considered trusting even for an angel. But he had learned the hard way that, strange though it might seem, everybody was not like him. Especially not Azzie, in whom dissimulation was such a second nature as to overshadow entirely his first nature, whatever that might be. Babriel had his doubts as to Ylith's orthodoxy, despite her enthusiasm for every sort of Niceness. He didn't think she would turn away from her allegiance to Heaven, but she might have been tempted to look up her old boyfriend-or, more likely, he her. If that was the case, why had they picked the Renaissance in which to rendezvous? Or was it just coincidence?

Babriel was brooding on these matters when he walked up Shady Olive Tree Lane and came to the big white mansion on top of the hill where Michael lived. The archangel was tending to the roses in his front yard, the sleeves of his white linen gown pushed back to reveal his brawny forearms.

"Welcome back, Babriel!" said the archangel, putting down his clippers and wiping from his brow the sweet sweat of honest labor. "Did you enjoy your sojourn in Venice?"