The General Zapped an Angel: New Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction (8 page)

“It's not red oil,” someone said.

“Goddamnit, it's not oil!”

“The hell it's not! It's oil.”

We were moving back as it spread and rose and covered the trucks and houses, and then it reached a gap in the valley and poured through and down across the desert, into the darkness of the shadows that the big rocks threw—flashing red in the sunset and later black in the darkness.

Someone touched it and put a hand to his mouth.

“It's blood.”

Max was next to me. “He's crazy,” Max said.

Someone else said that it was blood.

I put a finger into the red fluid and raised it to my nose. It was warm, almost hot, and there was no mistaking the smell of hot, fresh blood. I tasted it with the tip of my tongue.

“What is it?” Max whispered.

The others gathered around now—silent, with the red sun setting across the red lake and the red reflected on our faces, our eyes glinting with the red.

“Jesus God, what is it?” Max demanded.

“It's blood,” I replied.

“From where?”

Then we were all silent.

We spent the night on the top of the butte where the shelter had been built, and in the morning, all around us, as far as we could see, there was a hot, steaming sea of red blood, the smell so thick and heavy that we were all sick from it; and all of us vomited half a dozen times before the helicopters came for us and took us away.

The day after I returned home, Martha and I were sitting in the living room, she with a book and I with the paper, where I had read about their trying to cap the thing, except that even with diving suits they could not get down to where it was; and she looked up from her book and said:

“Do you remember that thing about the mother?”

“What thing?”

“A Very old thing. I think I heard once that it was half as old as time, or maybe a Greek fable or something of the sort—but anyway, the mother has one son, who is the joy of her heart and all the rest that a son could be to a mother, and then the son falls in love with or under the spell of a beautiful and wicked woman—very wicked and very beautiful. And he desires to please her, oh, he does indeed, and he says to her, ‘Whatever you desire, I will bring it to you'—”

“Which is nothing to say to any woman, but ever,” I put in.

“I won't quarrel with that,” Martha said mildly, “because when he does put it to her, she replies that what she desires most on this earth is the living heart of his mother, plucked from her breast. So what does this worthless and murderous idiot male do but race home to his mother, and then out with a knife, ripping her breast to belly and tearing the living heart out of her body—”

“I don't like your story.”

“—and with the heart in his hand, he blithely dashes back toward his ladylove. But on the way through the forest he catches his toe on a root, stumbles, and falls headlong, the mother's heart knocked out of his hand. And as he pulls himself up and approaches the heart, it says to him, ‘Did you hurt yourself when you fell, my son?'”

“Lovely story. What does it prove?”

“Nothing, I suppose. Will they ever stop the bleeding? Will they close the wound?”

“I don't think so.”

“Then will your mother bleed to death?”

“My mother?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“My mother,” Martha said. “Will she bleed to death?”

“I suppose so.”

“That's all you can say—I suppose so?”

“What else?”

“Suppose you had told them not to go ahead?”

“You asked me that twenty times, Martha. I told you. They would have gotten another dowser.”

“And another? And another?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” she cried out. “For God's sake, why?”

“I don't know.”

“But you lousy men know everything else.”

“Mostly we only know how to kill it. That's not everything else. We never learned to make anything alive.”

“And now it's too late,” Martha said.

“It's too late, yes,” I agreed, and I went back to reading the paper. But Martha just sat there, the open book in her lap, looking at me; and then after a while she closed the book and went upstairs to bed.

TOMORROW'S
“WALL STREET
JOURNAL”

A
T
precisely eight forty-five in the morning, carrying a copy of tomorrow's
Wall Street Journal
under his arm, the devil knocked at the door of Martin Chesell's apartment. The devil was a handsome middle-aged businessman, dressed in a two-hundred-dollar gray sharkskin suit, forty-five-dollar shoes, a custom-made shirt, and a twenty-five-dollar iron-gray Italian silk tie. He wore a forty-dollar hat, which he took off politely as the door opened.

Martin Chesell, who lived on the eleventh floor of one of those high-rise apartments that grow like mushrooms on Second Avenue in the seventies and eighties, was wearing pants and a shirt, neither with a lineage of place or price. His wife, Doris, had just said to him, “What kind of a nut is it at this hour? You better look through the peephole.”

“Drop dead,” he replied as he looked through the peephole.

Knowing a good tie and shirt when he saw them, Martin Chesell opened the door and asked the devil what he wanted.

“I'm the devil,” the devil answered politely. “And I am here to make a deal for tomorrow's
Wall Street Journal.
”

“Buzz off, buster,” Martin said in disgust. “The hospital's over by the river, six blocks from here. Go sign yourself in.”

“I am the devil,” the devil insisted. “I am really the devil, scout's honor.” Then he pushed Martin aside and entered the apartment, being rather stronger than people.

“Martin, who is it?” his wife yelled—and then she came to see. She was dressed to go to her job at Bonwit's, where she sold dresses until her feet died—every day about four-twenty—and she saw enough faces in a day's time to smell the devil when he was near her.

“Ask your wife,” the devil said pleasantly.

“It wouldn't surprise me,” said Doris. “What are you peddling, mister?”

“Tomorrow's
Wall Street Journal
,” the devil repeated amiably. “Everyman's desire and dream.”

“It's an old, tired saw,” Martin Chesell said. “It's been used to death. Not only have a dozen bad stories been written to the same point, but the
New Yorker
ran a cartoon on the same subject. A tired old bum looks down, and there's tomorrow's
Wall Street Journal
at his feet.”

“That's where I picked up the notion.” The devil nodded eagerly. “Basically, I am conservative, but one can't go on forever with the same old thing, you know.” He walked sprightly into their living room, merely glancing into the bedroom with its unmade bed, and measuring with another glance the cheap, tasteless furniture, and then spread the paper on the table. Martin and Doris followed him and looked at the date.

“They print those headlines in a place on Forty-eighth Street,” Doris said knowingly.

“Ah! And the inside pages as well?” The devil riffled the pages.

“Suppose you let me have a look at the last page?” Martin said.

“Ah—that costs.”

“Mister, go away. There is no devil and you're some kind of a nut. My wife has to go to work.”

“But you don't? No job. Bless your hearts, what does a devil do to prove himself. My driving license? Or this?” Blue points of fire danced oh his fingernails. “Or this?” Two horns appeared on his forehead, glistened a moment, and then disappeared. “Or this?” He held up finger and thumb and a twenty-dollar antique gold piece appeared between them. He tossed it to Martin, who caught it and examined it carefully.

“Tricks, tricks,” said the devil. “Look into your own heart if you doubt me, my boy. Do we deal? I sell—you buy—one copy of tomorrow's
Wall Street Journal.
Yes?”

“What price?” Doris demanded, precise, businesslike, and to the point, while her husband still stared bemused at the coin.

“The usual price. The price never changes. A human soul.”

“Why?” Martin snapped, holding out the coin.

“Keep it, my son,” the devil said.

“Why a human soul? What do you do with them? Collect them? Frame them?”

“They have their uses, oh yes, indeed. It would make for a long, complicated explanation, but we value them.”

“I don't believe I have a soul,” Martin said bluntly.

“Then what loss if you sell it to me? To sell what you do not own without deceiving the purchaser, that is good business, Martin—all profit and no loss.”

“I'll sell mine,” Doris said.

“Oh? Would you? But that won't do.”

“Why not?”

“No—it just wouldn't do.” He looked at his watch, a beautiful old pocket watch, gold and set with rubies and with little imps crawling all over it. “You know, I don't have all the time in the world. You must decide.”

“For Christ's sake,” Doris said, “sell him your damn soul or do we spend the rest of our lives in this lousy three-room rathole? Because if that's the case, you spend them alone, Marty boy. I am sick to death of your sitting around on your ass while I work my own butt off. You're a loser, sweety, and this is probably the last chance.”

“Good girl,” the devil said approvingly. “She has a head on her shoulders, Martin.”

“How do I know—”

“Martin, Martin, what do you have to lose?”

“My soul.”

“Whose existence you sensibly doubt. Come, Martin—”

“How?”

“Old-fashioned but simple. I have the contract here, all very direct and legal. You read it. A pinprick, a drop of blood on your signature, and tomorrow's
Wall Street Journal
is yours.”

Martin Chesell read the contract. A pin appeared like magic in the devil's hand. A thumb was pricked, and Martin found himself smearing a drop of blood across his signature.

“All of which makes it legal and binding,” the devil said, smiling and handing Martin the paper. Doris forgot her job and Martin forgot his erstwhile soul, and they flung the paper open with trembling hands, riffled to the last page but one, where the New York Stock Exchange companies and prices were printed, and scanned the list. The devil watched this with benign amusement, until suddenly Martin whirled and cried:

“You bastard—this is a rotten day. Everything is down.”

“Hardly, Martin, hardly,” the devil replied soothingly. “Everything is never down. Some are up, some are down. I will admit that today is hardly the most inspiring of days, but there is a surprise or two. Just look at old Mother Bell.”

“Who?”

“American Telephone,” the devil said. “Look at it, Martin.”

Martin looked. “Up four points,” he whispered. “That makes no sense at all. American Telephone hasn't jumped four points in a day since Alexander Graham Bell invented it.”

“Oh, it has, Martin. Yes, indeed. You see, until two o'clock today, it will just dilly-dally along the way it does every other day, and then at two precisely the management will announce a two-for-one split. Yes, indeed, Martin—two for one. Just read those prices again, and you will see that it touches a high of five dollars and seventy-five cents over the two o'clock price, even though it closes at a profit of only four points. So you see, Martin, if you sell at the high, you can clear five dollars and better, which is a very nice return for an in-and-out deal. No reason at all why you shouldn't be a very rich man before today is over, Martin. No reason at all.”

“Marty,” Doris shouted, “we're going to do it. We're going to make it, Marty. This is the big one, the big red apple—the one we've been waiting for. Oh, Marty, I love you, I love you, I love you.”

The devil smiled with pleasure, put on his forty-dollar hat, and departed. They hardly noticed that he had gone, so eager were they to be properly dressed to make a million. Doris tied Martin's tie—something she had not done for a long time. Martin admired the dress she changed into and quietly agreed when she snapped at him:

“You keep that newspaper in an inside pocket, Marty. Nobody sees it—and I mean nobody.”

“Right you are, baby.”

“Marty, what do we go for? Five dollars a share—is that it?”

“That's it, baby. Suppose we pick up twenty thousand shares—that's one hundred thousand dollars, baby. One hundred thousand bright, green dollars.”

“Marty, have you lost your mind? This is it—the one and only—and you talk about one hundred thousand dollars. We pick up a hundred thousand shares, and then we got half a million. Half a million dollars, Marty. Beautiful, clean dollars.”

“All right, baby. But I'm not sure you can buy a hundred thousand shares of a stock like American Tel and Tel without influencing the price. If we drive the price up—”

“We can't drive the price up, Marty.”

“How do you know? What makes you such a goddamn stock market genius?”

“Marty, maybe I don't know one thing about the market—but I know how it closes today. Honey, don't you see—we have tomorrow's
Wall Street Journal.
We know. No matter how many shares of that stock you buy, it is going to stay put until two o'clock and then it's going to go up five dollars and seventy-five cents. Isn't that what he said?”

Marty opened the paper and concentrated on it. “Right!” he cried triumphantly. “Says so right here—no movement until two o'clock—and then zoom.”

“So we could buy two hundred thousand shares and make a cool million.”

“Right, baby—oh, you are so right!”

“Two hundred thousand shares then—right, Marty?”

“I hear you, kid.”

They took a cab downtown to the brokerage office of Smith, Haley and Penderson on Fifty-third Street. When you have it, you spend it. “Lunch today at the Four Seasons?” Doris asked him. “Right, baby. Right, baby.” Rich people are happy people. When he and Doris marched up to the desk of Frank Gibson, their poise and pleasure were contagious. Frank Gibson had gone to college with Martin and had supervised his few unhappy stock market transactions, and while he did not consider Martin one of his more valuable contacts, he found himself smiling back and telling them that it was good to see them.