"Yeah, sure, man," the kid said faintly. "We'll be ready in half an hour. But you know, this ain't exactly our bag. It ain't going to be too sharp."

"It will suffice." Zane left them and strode to the church on the other side of the nursing home.

He was in luck. The church choir was rehearsing for the coming weekend service. Several black girls present, doing what to Zane's ear was a mishmash of notes and ululations.

The preacher spotted him immediately. "Hey, don't you go takin' none of mine. Death!" he protested. "We're good folk here. We don't want no trouble with you!"

Zane realized that this church might be poor and backward, but the preacher was a true man of G.o.d, able to discern a supernatural manifestation instantly. That would help. "I only want a hymnbook and a singer," Zane said.

"Hymnbooks we got," the old man said eagerly. "This white do gooder group, they raise money, bought us books, don't know nothin' 'bout our music. Got a big pile of 'em under dust in the closet. But one of my girls Death, I won't stand by and "

"Not to die," Zane said quickly. "To sing one hymn for the folk next door. For a man who is about to die."

The preacher nodded. "Man's got a right to one last melody. What's it called?"

"Holy, Holy, Holy."

"That's in the book, but we don't sing it. Not our style."

"Find a singer willing to try."

The preacher addressed the practicing choir. "Anyone sing white music? Hymnbook stuff?"

There was a murmur of confused negation.

"Listen," the preacher said. "You don' know this person in the hood, and you don' want to. But / know him. The eye of the Lord is on him, and he needs one hymn, and we've got to help him any way we can. So if any of you can even try to oblige him, come on."

At length one rather pretty girl in her teens spoke. "Sometime I sing 'long on the radio stuff, jus' for fun. I guess I could try, if I got the words."

The preacher rummaged in the closet and brought out an armful ofhymnbooks. "You got the words, sister. Come on, we'll go help this person. Won't be long."

Zane took some of the books and led the way to the nursing home, where the Livin' Sludge was setting up, to the considerable entertainment of the inmates and the non protesting nurse. Probably there had not been an event like this here in decades. Cables and loudspeakers and instruments seemed to fill the main room. "Hey, don't set those big speakers in here," the nurse was saying. "Small place like this, that noise'll deafen these old folk, and they've got problems enough already. Face those monsters out the windows." And it was done, for it seemed the Livin' Sludge was const.i.tutionally unable to function without full volume amplification.

The young singer eyed the Sludge, and the Sludge eyed her. Each evinced a certain morbid fascination with an alien life form, but neither evinced approval. Zane realized it had probably been a mistake to involve the instrumental group; the girl would have done better a cappella. Too late now; The preacher stepped in, seeing the need. "You boys don' know hymn music, okay? This is Lou Mae; she don' know junk music, so you're even. So let's try her doing the hymn, you follow, okay?" He was more or less speaking pigeon, in order to get his meaning across to these foreigners. He pa.s.sed out the hymnbooks.

The musicians leafed through the books, bewildered. "This scene's worse'n bad spelled H!" one muttered. Zane knew that H was bad, enchanted H was worse, and badly enchanted H was a horror. But addicts had to take what they could get. "We'll never live this down."

"You boys getting high on S H?" the preacher asked, frowning. "That'll put you in H!" He pointed down, signaling the change in meaning. "You better find some better interest before it's too late."

"Wish we could," the drummer confessed. "But you know, we're locked into the scene. S H don't let n.o.body go."

"Neither does H," the preacher said, with a dark glance down. "n.o.body hooked on either H in my church."

"Yeah, sure," the drummer said wearily.

Zane got them on the page with Holy, Holy, Holy. "Play this," he said.

They tried. They were, underneath, reasonably competent musicians. The tune did not adapt well to drum and guitar, but the electric organ picked it up easily enough.

The phone rang, the sound almost lost amidst the noise of preparations. "But I can't sing into a mike," LouMae protested. "It's in my way, and it looks funny."

"I'll tell you what it looks like!" the Sludge drummer said, grinning.

"Jus' ignore it, sister," the preacher advised quickly. "Jus' sing your way."

"There are people gathering outside," a nursing home inmate cried gleefully by the window. "Gawking at the loudspeakers!"

"Hey, they must think we have a party in here!" another said. "Cutting the mustard!"

"Sure we are! You can tell by the smell!" Laughter burbled around the inmate sector. This was turning into the biggest event of these old people's lives.

"Hey, mister," the male nurse called through the din. "That was my boss on the line. For once he checked with his answering service. I told him I couldn't stop the music, so he's calling the police. Better do that song and get out of here soon." It was fair warning, but obviously the nurse was enjoying the ongoing event.

The Sludge was still getting organized, piecing out bits of melody, trying to integrate unfamiliar elements. "I can't do this," Lou Mae complained. "Singing a hymn to a drum roll?"

"Listen, black doll, we don't like it either," the drummer said. "But we got to have a beat."

"You jus' do your best," the preacher said soothingly to both. "The Lord will make it right."

"Man, He better!" the drummer muttered. "This whole thing's crazier than a double b.u.m trip!"

"Still worth doing right," the preacher said.

Zane heard the sound of a siren. He went to the door where the other choir singers cl.u.s.tered, peering in. They gave way nervously before him, and Zane saw the police cars arriving. The vehicles screeched up to the nearest comer and disgorged helmeted riot police. These were tough cops armed with billy clubs, hefty side arms, teargas bombs, and disorientation spells, accustomed to breaking heads in the lawful performance of their duty. That nursing home owner had really made a complaint!

Zane turned to face inside. "Do the hymn now," he said.

Lou Mae, suddenly nervous, dropped her book and had to scramble to recover it. " 'Sokay, chick," the drummer said sympathetically. "First night jitters. We all get 'em. We'll start without you, a preamble, and you catch your place and signal when you're ready. Like Uncle Tom says, we'll merge."

She flashed him a fleeting smile. The music started, drum roll leading into guitar, the beat of it blasting like developing thunder out the windows as the police charged up the steps, billies in hand. The choir girls crowded back fearfully, not liking any close contact with the big, brutal men in uniform.

Zane drew his cloak close about him and stepped out to meet the lead cop skull to face. "Do we have business?" he asked.

The policeman's eyes and mouth rounded out as he stared into the aspect of Death. He fell back, literally, and had to be caught by the two behind him. The urgency of the intrusion of the law abruptly abated.

Now Lou Mae found her place. The drum faded to a background beat, and the song proper began. "Holy, holy holy! Lord G.o.d Almighty!" she sang, starting tremulously but gaining courage as she sounded the name of the Lord. Somehow the amplification provided resonance and authority that her voice might otherwise have lacked. The drum roll behind her growled like the rising wrath of Deity, and the guitar punctuated the theme with an inspired extemporaneous counterpoint.

"Early in the morning, our song shall rise to Thee!" And the electric organ swelled in an urge of joyous worship, sounding exactly like the monstrous pipes of a towering cathedral.

The crowd in the street was being rapidly augmented. Some of the police were trying to hold the people back. It was already late morning, but the height of the surrounding buildings sheltered the street from direct sunlight. Now that light angled down, a broad beam that splashed across the pale helmets of the police and CAN RIDE A CARPET? the first billboard demanded in huge, shining print. The picture was of a car struggling through a traffic jam, while a magic carpet sailed blithely over, its handsome family smiling.

Zane also smiled. He was at the moment carbound but he would never be trapped in a traffic jam. Not with Mortis! "Did you show me this just to make me appreciate you properly?"

The car did not answer, but the motor purred.

The next billboard proclaimed DRIVE IN COMFORT. The picture was of a family huddled on a flying carpet in a rainstorm. The man looked grim and uncomfortable, the woman's once elegant hairdo was a wet mess plastered about her ears, and one child was sliding off the rear, about to fall. The material was evidently wrinkling and shrinking in the rain, heightening the family's discomfort and peril. Below, the same family could be seen happily in a closed car, safely seat belted, untouched by the rain.

"So the car fights back," Zane remarked. "I can see it." He glanced at his watch. Still several minutes to go.

The next billboard showed the carpet sailing blithely over the rain cloud that largely obscured the traffic jam below. BABYLON CARPETS OUTPERFORM ANY LANDBOUND VEHICLE! it proclaimed. MORE DISTANCE PER SPELL.

But the auto maker came right back with a picture of the family gasping for air aboard the high flying carpet, while the car zoomed along the open highway. KEEP SAFE, KEEP COZY, it advised. USE A CAR INSTEAD OF A CARPET.

Perhaps the ad war continued, but Zane had to turn off to approach his client. This was a residential enclave in the countryside; the houses were very similar to one another, the lawn manicured. Zane wondered why people bothered to live in the country when all they did was take the city with them. He turned into the appropriate drive and parked in the limited shade of a medium pine tree. He noticed there was a disabled sticker on the owner's car; evidently the disablement was terminal.

Zane entered and made his way to the bathroom. There was a young, fairly muscular man taking a deep bath. He looked relaxed.

The man did not react to Zane's appearance and did not seem to be in trouble, yet the gem arrow identified him as the client. "h.e.l.lo," Zane said, uncertain how to proceed.

The man glanced up languidly. "Please leave," he said, his voice mild.

"First I must do my job," Zane said.

"Job? Perhaps you are in uniform, and a.s.sume I recognize your business. I can not see you, for I am blind."

Oh. That accounted for the disabled sticker. But mere sightlessness wouldn't kill this man, unless some bad accident were coming up. "I suspect you will be able to see me, if you try," Zane said.

"You are a faith healer? Go away. I am an atheist, and have no traffic with your kind."

An atheist! One who did not believe in G.o.d or Satan, or in their related artifacts. How could Death have been summoned for a nonbeliever?

Two answers offered. It was possible that this man was not as cynical as he professedand really did believe in Eternity perhaps unconsciously. Or it could be that there had been another glitch, and that the Powers that Be had not realized that no service was required for this particular client.

Well, Zane was here, and the case would have to be played through to whatever conclusion was fated. He looked at the water in the bath and saw that it was discolored by a cloud of darkness. "You are committing suicide," he stated.

"Yes, and I must ask you not to interfere. My folks are away for two days, so will not know until it is safely done. I have slashed veins in my ankles and am pleasantly bleeding to death in this hot water. There is no greater kindness you can do me than to let nature take its course."

"I am here for that," Zane said. "I am Death."

The man laughed, becoming more animated as his attention focused. "An actual, physical personification of Death? You're crazy!"

"You don't believe in Death?"

"I believe in death, small d, obviously. I am about to experience it. Certainly I don't believe in a spook with skull and crossbones and scythe."

"Would you like to touch my hand and face?" Zane asked.

"You persist in this nonsense? Very well, while I still command my faculties, let me touch you." The man lifted an arm from the water with some visible effort and extended it toward Zane.

Zane clasped that hand in his own gloved one, curious how the man would perceive it. He was hardly disappointed in the reaction.

"It's true!" the man exclaimed. "A skeleton!"

"A glove," Zane said, not wanting to deceive him. "And my face is a skull mask generated by magic. Nevertheless, I am Death, and I have come to collect your soul."

The man touched Zane's face. "A mask? It could fool me! That's a skull!"

Zane had been uncertain before whether his skull face was tactile as well as visual; now he knew. "I am a living man performing an office. I wear a costume and have certain necessary powers, but I am alive and have the flesh and feelings of a man."

The client took his hand again. "Yes, now I perceive the flesh, faintly, the way I do my own when my foot is asleep. Strange! Perhaps I do believe in you, or in your belief in the office. But I don't believe in the soul, so your effort is wasted."

"What do you believe happens when you die?" Zane asked, genuinely curious. This man seemed to have a good mind.

"My body will be inert and in time will dissolve into its chemical components. But that is not what you mean, is it? You want to know about my supposed soul. And I will answer. There is no soul. Death is simply the end of consciousness. After death, there is nothing. Like the flame of a candle snuffed out, the animation is gone. Extinction."

"No afterlife? You do not consider death a translation to a spiritual existence?"

The man snorted. He was slowly sinking in the tub, as loss of blood weakened him gradually, but his mind remained alert. "Death is a translation to intellectual nonexistence."

"Does that frighten you?"

"Why should it? It is the deaths of others I should fear, for they can cause me inconvenience and grief. When I myself pa.s.s, I shall be out of it, completely uncaring."

"You have not answered," Zane said.

The man grimaced. "d.a.m.n it, you are putting my toes to the fire! Yes, my own death does frighten me. But I know that is merely my instinct of self preservation manifesting, my body's effort to survive. Subjectively, I do fear extinction, because instinct is irrational. Objectively, I do not. I have no terror of the nonexistence before I was conceived; why should I fear the nonexistence after I die? So I have overridden the foible of the flesh and am proceeding to my end."

"Wouldn't you be relieved to discover that life continues on the spiritual plane?"

"No! I do not want life to continue in any form! What uncertainties or tortures might I experience there? What tedium, existing for eternity with no reprieve in another person's sterile conception of Heaven? No, my life is the only game, and the game has soured, and I want nothing more than to be able to lay it aside when its convenience is over. Oblivion is the greatest gift I can look forward to, and Heaven itself would be h.e.l.l to me if that gift were denied."

"I hope you find it," Zane said, shaken by this unusual view. A man who actually insisted on oblivion!

"I hope so, too." Now the atheist was fading rapidly. The loss of blood was affecting his consciousness and soon he would faint.

"A man's death is the most private part of his life," Zane said. "You have the right to die as you wish."

"That's correct." The voice was slow and faint. "n.o.body's business but mine."

"Yet shouldn't you be concerned about the meaning of your life, about your place in the greater scheme of things? Before you throw away your one chance to improve "

"Why the h.e.l.l should I care about improvement when I don't believe in Heaven or h.e.l.l?" the atheist demanded weakly.

"Yet you a.s.sume that your own relief is all that matters," Zane said. "What of those you love, who remain in life? Those who love you, and who will find your body here, a horror to them. They will still suffer. Don't you owe them anything?"

But the atheist was too far gone. He had lost consciousness and no longer cared who else might suffer, if he ever had cared. In due course he died.

Zane reached in and drew out his soul. It was a typical mottled thing, good and evil spotting it in a complex mosaic. He started to fold it and the soul disintegrated, falling apart into nothingness.

The atheist had his wish. He really had not believed, and so the Afterlife had been unable to hold him. He was beyond the reach of G.o.d or Satan. That did seem best.

It was best but was it right? The atheist had not seemed to care about anyone except himself and in that uncaring, perhaps had rendered his own existence meaningless.

Zane rejoined Mortis. "I think that man was half right," he said. "He is better off out of the game but the game may not be better off without him. A man should not exist for himself alone. Life made an investment in him, and that investment was not paid off." But Zane wasn't sure.

His timer was going again. He oriented on the next client, wondering how he was going to account for the soul that disintegrated. The Purgatory News Center would have a ball with that one. He visualized the headline: THE FISH THAT GOT AWAY.

He arrived at a hospital. That was not unusual; the terminally sick tended to congregate there, and he had made a number of similar collections all over the world. But he still didn't like hospitals very well, because of his lingering guilt relating to his mother.