Bester, Alfred Read online

  Alfred Bester - Hell Is Forever

  Round and round the shutter'd Square

  I strolled with the Devil's arm in mine.

  No sound but the scrape of his hoofs was there

  And the ring of his laughter and mine.

  We had drunk black wine.

  I screamed, "I will race you, Master!''

  "What matter," he shriek'd, "tonight

  Which of us runs the faster?

  There is nothing to fear tonight

  In the foul moon's light!"

  Then I look'd him in the eyes,

  And I laughed full shrill at the lie he told

  And the gnawing fear he would fain disguise.

  It was true, what I'd time and again been told

  He was old-old.

  From "Fungoids," by Enoch Soames

  There were six of them and they had tried everything.

  They began with drinking and drank until they had exhausted the sense of taste. Wines-Amontillado, Beaune, Kirschwasser, Bordeaux, Hock, Burgundy, Medoc and Chambertin; whiskey, Scotch, Irish, usquebaugh and Schnapps; brandy, gin and rum. They drank them separately and together; they mixed the tart alcohols and flavors into stupendous punches, into a thousand symphonies of taste; they experimented, created, invented, destroyed-and finally they were bored.

  Drugs followed. The milder first, then the more potent. Crisp brown licoricelike opium, toasted and rolled into pellets for smoking in long ivory pipes; thick green absinthe sipped bitter and strong, without sugar or water; heroin and cocaine in rustling snow crystals; marijuana rolled loosely in brown-paper cigarettes; hashish in milk-white curds to be eaten or tarry plugs of Bhang that were chewed and stained the lips deep tan-and again they were bored.

  Their search for sensation became frantic with so much of their senses already dissipated. They enlarged their parties and turned them into festivals of horror. Exotic dancers and esoteric half-human creatures crowded the broad low room and filled it with their incredible performances. Pain, fear, desire, love and hatred were torn apart and exhibited to the least quivering detail like so many laboratory specimens.

  The cloying odor of perfume mingled with the knife-sharp sweat of excited bodies; the anguished screams of tortured creatures merely interrupted their swift, never-ceasing talk-and so in time this, too, palled. They reduced their parties to the original six and returned each week to sit, bored and still hungry for new sensations. Now, languidly and without enthusiasm, they were toying with the occult; turning the party room into a necromancer's studio.

  Offhand you would not have thought it was a bomb shelter. The room was large and square, the walls paneled with imitation-grained soundproofing, the ceiling low-beamed. To the right was an inset door, heavy and bolted with an enormous wrought-iron lock. There were no windows, but the air-conditioning inlets were shaped like the arched slits of a Gothic monastery. Lady Sutton had paned them with stained glass and set small electric bulbs behind them. They threw showers of sullen color across the room.

  The flooring was of ancient walnut, high polished and gleaming like metal. Across it were spread a score of lustrous Oriental scatter rugs. One enormous divan, covered with Indian Batik, ran the width of the shelter against a wall. Above, were tiers of book shelves, and before it was a long trestle table piled with banquet remains. The rest of the shelter was furnished with deep, seductive chairs, soft, quilted and inviting.

  Centuries ago this had been the deepest dungeon of Sutton Castle, hundreds of feet beneath the earth. Now-drained, warmed, air-conditioned and refurnished, it was the scene of Lady Sutton's sensation parties. More-it was the official meeting place of the Society of Six. The Six Decadents, they called themselves.

  "We are the last spiritual descendants of Nero-the last of the gloriously evil aristocrats," Lady Sutton would say. "We were born centuries too late, my friends. In a world that is no longer ours we have nothing to live for but ourselves. We are a race apart-we six."

  And when unprecedented bombings shook England so catastrophically that the shudders even penetrated to the Sutton shelter, she would glance up and laugh:

  "Let them slaughter each other, those pigs. This is no war of ours. We go our own way, always, eh? Think, my friends, what a joy it would be to emerge from our shelter one bright morning and find all London dead-all the world dead-" And then she laughed again with her deep hoarse bellow.

  She was bellowing now, her enormous fat body sprawled half across the divan like a decorated toad, laughing at the program that Digby Finchley had just handed her. It had been etched by Finchley himself-an exquisite design of devils and angels in grotesque amorous combat encircling the cabalistic lettering that read:

  THE SIX PRESENT

  ASTAROTH WAS A LADY

  By Christian Braugh

  Cast:

  (In order of appearance)

  A Necromancer Christian Braugh

  A Black CatMerlin

  (By courtesy of Lady Sutton)

  Astaroth Theone Dubedat

  Nebiros, an Assistant Demon Digby Finchley

  Costumes Digby Finchley

  Special Effects Robert Peel

  MusicSidra Peel

  Finchley said: "A little comedy is a change, isn't it?"

  Lady Sutton shuddered with uncontrolled laughter. "Astaroth was a lady! Are you sure you wrote it, Chris?"

  There was no answer from Braugh, only the buzz of preparations from the far end of the room, where a small stage had been erected and curtained off.

  She bellowed in her broken bass: "Hey, Chris! Hey, there-"

  The curtain split and Christian Braugh thrust his albino head through. His face was partially made up with red eyebrows and beard and dark-blue shadows around the eyes. He said: "Beg pardon, Lady Sutton?"

  At the sight of his face she rolled over the divan like a mountain of jelly. Across her helpless body, Finchley smiled to Braugh, his lips unfolding in a cat's grin. Braugh moved his white head in imperceptible answer.

  "I said, did you really write this, Chris... or have you hired a ghost again?"

  Braugh looked angry, then suddenly disappeared behind the curtain. "Oh my hat!" gurgled Lady Sutton. "This is better than a gallon of champagne. And, speaking of the same... who's nearest the bubbly? Bob? Pour some more. Bob! Bob Peel!"

  The man slumped in the chair alongside the ice buckets never moved. He was lying on the nape of his neck, feet thrust out in a V before him, his dress shirt buckled under his bearded chin. Finchley went across the room and looked down at him.

  "Passed out," he said.

  "So early? Well, no matter. Fetch me a glass, Dig, there's a good lad." Finchley filled a prismed champagne glass and brought it to Lady Sutton. From a small, cameo-faced vial she added three drops of laudanum, swirled the sparkling mixture once and then sipped while she read the program.

  "A Necromancer... that's you, eh, Dig?"

  He nodded.

  "And what's a Necromancer?"

  "A kind of magician, Lady Sutton."

  "Magician? Oh, that's good... that's very good!" She spilled champagne on her vast, blotchy bosom and dabbed ineffectually with the program.

  Finchley lifted a hand to restrain her and said: "You ought to be careful with that program, Lady Sutton. I made only one print and then destroyed the plate. It's unique and liable to be valuable."

  "Collector's item, eh? Your work, of course, Dig?"

  "Yes.''

  "Not much of a change from the usual pornography, hey?" She burst into another thunder of laughter that degenerated into a fit of hacking coughs. She dropped the glass altogether. Finchley flushed, then retrieved the glass and returned it to the buffet, stepping carefully over Peel's legs. "And who's this Astaroth?" Lady Sutton went on.r />
  From behind the curtain, Theone Dubedat called: "Me! I! Ich! Moi!" her voice was husky. It had a quality of gray smoke.

  "Darling, I know it's you, but what are you?"

  "A devil, I think."

  Finchley said: "Astaroth is some sort of legendary arch-demon-a top-ranking devil, so to speak."

  "Theone a devil? No doubt of it-" Exhausted with rapture, Lady Sutton lay quiescent and musing on the patterned divan. At last she raised an enormous arm and examined her watch. The flesh hung from her elbows in elephantine creases, and at the gesture it shook and a little shower of torn sequins glittered down from her sleeve.

  "You'd best get on with it, Dig. I've got to leave at midnight."

  "Leave?"

  "You heard me."

  Finchley's face contorted. He bent over her, tense with suppressed emotions, his bleak eyes examining her. "What's up? What's wrong?"

  "Nothing."

  "Then-"

  "A few things have changed, that's all."

  "What's changed?"

  Her face turned harsh as she returned his stare. The bulging features seemed to stiffen into obsidian. "Too soon to tell you... but you'll find out quick enough. Now I don't want any more pestering from you, Dig, m'lad!"

  Finchley's scarecrow features regained some measure of control. He started to speak, but before he could utter a word Sidra Peel suddenly popped her head out of the alcove alongside the stage, where the organ had been placed. She called: "Robert!"

  In a constricted voice Finchley said: "Bob's passed out again, Sidra."

  She emerged from the alcove, walked jerkily across the room and stood looking down in her husband's face. Sidra Peel was short, slender and dark. Her body was like an electric high-tension wire, alive with too much current, yet coruscated, stained and rusted from too much exposure to passion. The deep black sockets of her eyes were frigid coals with gleaming white points. As she gazed at her husband, her long fingers writhed; then, suddenly, her hand lashed out and struck the inert face.

  "Swine!" she hissed.

  Lady Sutton laughed and coughed all at once. Sidra Peel shot her a venomous glance and stepped toward the divan, the sharp crack of her heel on the walnut sounding like a pistol shot. Finchley gestured a quick warning that stopped her. She hesitated, then returned to the alcove, and said: "The music's ready."

  "And so am I," said Lady Sutton. "On with the show and all that, eh?" She spread herself across the divan like a crawling tumor the while Finchley propped scarlet pillows under her head. "It's really nice of you to play this little comedy for me, Dig. Too bad there're only six of us here tonight. Ought to have an audience, eh?"

  "You're the only audience we want, Lady Sutton."

  "Ah! Keep it all in the family?"

  "So to speak."

  "The Six-Happy Family of Hatred."

  "That's not so, Lady Sutton."

  "Don't be an ass, Dig. We're all hateful. We glory in it. I ought to know. I'm the Bookkeeper of Disgust. Some day I'll let you see all the entries. Some day soon.,,

  "What sort of entries?"

  "Curious already, eh? Oh, nothing spectacular. Just the way Sidra's been trying to kill her husband-and Bob's been torturing her by holding on. And you making a fortune out of filthy pictures and eating your rotten heart out for that frigid devil, Theone-"

  "Please, Lady Sutton!"

  "And Theone," she went on with relish, "using that icy body of hers like an executioner's scalpel to torture and... and Chris... How many of his books d'you think he's stolen from those poor Grub Street devils?"

  "I couldn't say."

  "I know. All of them. A fortune on other men's brains. Oh, we're a beautifully loathsome lot, Dig. It's the only thing we have to be proud of-the only thing that sets us off from the billion blundering moralistic idiots that have inherited our earth. That's why we've got to stay a happy family of mutual hatred."

  "I should call it mutual admiration," Finchley murmured. He bowed courteously and went to the curtains, looking more like a scarecrow than ever in the black dinner clothes. He was extremely tall-three inches over six feet-and extremely thin. The pipestem arms and legs looked like warped dowel sticks, and his horsy flat features seemed to have been painted on a pasty pillow.

  Finchley pulled the curtains together behind him. A moment after he disappeared there was a whispered cue and the lights dimmed. In the vast room there was no sound except Lady Sutton's croupy breathing. Peel, still slumped in his deep chair, was motionless and invisible except for the limp angle of his legs.

  From infinite distances came a slight vibration-almost a shudder. It seemed at first to be a sinister reminder of the hell that was bursting across England, hundreds of feet over their heads. Then the shuddering quickened and by imperceptible stages swelled into the deepest tones of the organ. Above the background of the

  throbbing diapasons, a weird tremolo of fourths, empty and spine-chilling, cascaded down the keyboard in chromatic steps.

  Lady Sutton chuckled faintly. "My word," she said, "that's really horrid, Sidra. Ghastly."

  The grim background music choked her. It filled the shelter with chilling tendrils of sound that were more moan than tone. The curtains slipped apart slowly, revealing Christian Braugh garbed in black, his face a hideous, twisted mass of red and purple-blue that contrasted starkly to the near-albino white hair. Braugh stood at the center of the stage surrounded by spider-legged tables piled high with Necromancer's apparatus. Prominent was Merlin, Lady Sutton's black cat, majestically poised atop an iron-bound volume.

  Braugh lifted a piece of black chalk from a table and drew a circle on the floor twelve feet around himself. He inscribed the circumference with cabalistic characters and pentacles. Then he lifted a wafer and exhibited it with a flirt of his wrist.

  "This," he declaimed in sepulchral tones, "is a sacred wafer stolen from a church at midnight."

  Lady Sutton applauded satirically, but stopped almost at once. The music seemed to upset her. She moved uneasily on the divan and looked about her with little uncertain glances.

  Muttering blasphemous imprecations, Braugh raised an iron dagger and plunged it through the center of the wafer. Then he arranged a copper chafing dish over a blue alcohol flame and began to stir in powders and crystals of bright colors. He lifted a crystal vial filled with purple liquid and poured the contents into a porcelain bowl. There was a faint detonation and a thick cloud of vapor lifted to the ceiling.

  The organ surged. Braugh muttered incantations under his breath and performed oddly suggestive gestures. The shelter swam with scents and mists, violet clouds and deep fogs. Lady Sutton glanced toward the chair across from her. "Splendid, Bob," she called. "Wonderful effects-really." She tried to make her voice cheerful, but it came out in a sickly croak. Peel never moved.

  With a savage motion, Braugh pulled three black hairs from the cat's tail. Merlin uttered a yowl of rage, and sprang at the same time from the table to the top of an inlaid cabinet in the background. Through the mists and vapors his giant yellow eyes gleamed balefully. The hairs went into the chafing dish and a new aroma filled the room. In quick succession the claws of an owl, the powder of vipers, and a human-shaped mandrake root followed.

  "Now!" cried Braugh.

  He cast the wafer, transfixed by the dagger, into the porcelain bowl containing the purple fluid, and then poured the whole mixture into the copper chafing dish.

  There was a violent explosion.

  A jet-black cloud enfolded the stage and swirled out into the shelter. Slowly it cleared away, faintly revealing the tall form of a naked devil; the body exquisitely formed, the head a frightful mask. Braugh had disappeared.

  Through the drifting clouds, in the husky tones of Theone Dubedat, the devil spoke: "Greetings, Lady Sutton-"

  She stepped forward out of the vapor. In the pulsating light that shot down to the stage her body shone with a shimmering nacreous glow of its own. The toes and fingers were long and graceful. Color slashed acro
ss the rounded torso. Yet that whole perfect body was cold and lifeless-as unreal as the grotesque papiermƒch‚ that covered her head.

  Theone repeated: "Greetings-"

  "Hi, old thing!" Lady Sutton interrupted. "How's everything in hell?"

  There was a giggle from the alcove where Sidra Peel was playing softly. Theone posed statuesquely and lifted her head a little higher to speak. "I bring you-"

  "Darling!" shrieked Lady Sutton, "why didn't you let me know it was going to be like this. I'd have sold tickets!"

  Theone raised a gleaming arm imperiously. Again she began: "I bring you the thanks of the five who-" And then abruptly she stopped.

  For the space of five heartbeats there was a gasping pause while the organ murmured and the last of the black smoke filtered away, mushrooming against the ceiling. In the silence Theone's rapid, choked breathing mounted hysterically- then came a ghastly, piercing scream.