CHAPTER 7

Mack and Mephistopheles arrived in Limbo, conjuring themselves into existence at the entrance to a small building on a hill close to where the judgments for the Millennial contest were to be held. "What's this place?" Mack asked.

"This is the Waiting Room of Limbo. I've got a storage facility here where you can store your Botticelli.

Unless you want to sell it to me immediately?" "I think I'd like to hold on to it for a while," Mack said. "So how did I do?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"On the contest, in Florence."

Mephistopheles didn't answer until they were inside. He indicated a room that Mack might use to store his painting. "You didn't get anywhere with trying to get Medici and Savonarola to patch up their quarrel. You get a zero for your ineffectuality."

"But I told Machiavelli not to write The Prince. That was a good thing, wasn't it?"

Mephistopheles shrugged. "We don't know. It's up to Necessity to judge these matters. Good and Bad must remain subservient to What Must Be. By the way, who was that man? He seemed to know you."

"What man?"

"The one who kept Pico della Mirandola from killing you."

"Some nut," Mack said, deciding not to mention Faust. "I have no idea who he was. The painting's nice, isn't it?" Mephistopheles held the painting at arms' length and gazed at it for a while. "Yes, it's very nice. I'll be happy to take it off your hands."

"Not just yet," Mack said. "I'd like to see what the market is worth, that sort of thing."

"A good idea," Mephistopheles admitted. "Here's a spell to get you to London. Don't dawdle, though. We need you for the next appearance."

"Don't worry, I won't be late," Mack said.

Mephistopheles nodded and vanished. Mack looked around the room and found a large metal box with a key in its keyhole. He unlocked it and was about to put in the painting. As he lifted it, he heard a scratching sound under his feet. He stepped hastily out of the way. The floor cracked, a small pick poked through the hole, then was replaced by a shovel. The hole was rapidly enlarged. Soon a diminutive shape clambered out. It was Rognir. "Hi," said Mack, remembering the dwarf from the Sabbat.

"Nice painting," said Rognir. "Where'd you get it?"

"Oh? What were you doing there?"

"I'm in a contest," Mack said. "It's to decide the destiny of mankind for the next thousand years."

"Is that what they sent you to the Renaissance for, to get a painting?"

"I don't really know what they sent me for. I did some other stuff. Bat I gat the painting because Mephistopheles said he'd like one, and he'd pay me a pretty price for it. But I haven't sold it yet. I decided to see what the market's worth."

"He wanted you to get a painting, did he?"

"Sure he did. Since I was going to be there anyway. Sorry, gotta go. I'm due in London next. It's a big one."

"Good luck," Rognir said. "Maybe I'll see you there."

"I look forward to it," Mack said. He hesitated, looking at the hole in the floor. "You're going to clean that up before you leave, aren't you?"

Rognir told him not to worry, his painting was safe. He left musing about just what kind of stupid jerk this guy Mack was. He didn't even know he was being manipulated. The idea of making up his own mind had never occurred to him. He was still trying to please other people. As he'd probably been doing all his life.

And yet, there was something about him that roused an odd bit of sympathy.

ACHILLES

CHAPTER 1

In the meantime, there were consequences that emanated from Azzie's taking of Helen of Troy from her place in Hades, where, together with her husband, Achilles, she reigned over the social aspects of the underworld. Azzie had conjured Helen away rather casually, not stopping to wonder why this sort of thing was usually not done and what the consequences might be. A moment's thought would have reminded him that the dead have some powers and it is not good to run afoul of them.

Achilles really didn't take it well when he returned one evening from hunting ghost deer in the mist-covered meadows that lay just past the Slough of Despond, and found that Helen was missing. That was unlike her. At first he thought she was off visiting neighbors. He enquired, but no one had seen her.

Still, people just don't go missing from Hades. Someone has to take them out. Achilles went at once to his old friend and neighbor, Odysseus, for help.

Odysseus had fared pretty well in the battle of the archetypal ratings. He had his own problems, of course. Although he was a pretty tricky fellow, it was hard to think up any new stunts that would deserve the term Odyssean wiliness. The spirits behind archetypes can reach their prime and fade away, but they have to continue trying to surpass themselves anyway. You know what they say about teaching old gods new tricks. Odysseus' later schemes tended to be pretty obvious. And sometimes a little nasty. There was a mean streak in Odysseus. He liked to win, and he'd do anything to achieve victory.

Odysseus was sitting on the front porch of his house when Achilles came to ask his help. Odysseus lived by himself in a marble house near a tributary of the Styx. Asphodel grew in the moss on his front lawn.

The place was shaded with the inevitable black poplars, which one gets very tired of after a while, in Hades and elsewhere. It was a gloomy day, like all the other days in Hades. It was just chilly enough so you weren't comfortable sitting outside, but not cold enough to be invigorating. Odysseus had a fire going in the living room, but it threw very little heat. Not that it mattered: the dead can never get warmed up properly anyway. Odysseus brought Achilles into the kitchen and offered him a breakfast of dates and porridge. They weren't real food, of course. But the dead are attached to the habits of the living and go right on eating, and even plan elaborate banquets. Eternity goes on for a very long time, and food is a way of passing it.

Sex is a way of passing time, too, even though dead people can't be properly said to have sex, ectoplasm being devoid of sensation as well as immaterial. But sex is something they used to do, so they go on doing it after death, or at least going through the motions.

Odysseus was currently unmarried. He and Penelope had split up long ago. Odysseus had always had his suspicions about what she'd really been up to with the suitors during the twenty years he was away fighting Trojans. For a while he kept the family together for the sake of the boy, Telemachus. But then Telemachus found his own archetype, nothing big, but quite steady, and now he lived in another section of Hades and had as his friends the sons of other famous men.

So Odysseus was alone, and he had little to occupy him. He did his exercises faithfully every day.

Sometimes he visited his friend Sisyphus. Sisyphus was still rolling the big boulder up the mountain. He didn't have to do it. He had been set free long ago. But, as he said, it gave him something to do, and, above all, it kept his archetype alive.

Sometimes Odysseus went to visit Prometheus, one of his oldest friends, who was still spread-eagled on a rock, with a vulture eating away his liver. Prometheus had been a difficult case for the gods. Setting him loose would have endangered everybody, since the world still wasn't ready for personal freedom. And the guy wouldn't promise to shut up about his ideas. Again, a modus vivendi, so to speak, might have been worked out—sooner or later, all of the dead compromise their values—but Prometheus was interested in keeping up his reputation. Recently he had turned moody and some days wouldn't even talk to Odysseus. People said that his only friend was his vulture.