The Devil
Part Two, in which a Demon and an Angel visit one of the Ineffable's "Many Mansions". This particular mansion is carried on the backs of four elephants which in turn stand on the back of a giant astro-chelonian…
As the decision was made, Crowley and Aziraphile found themselves slipping out of a deep-space perspective. Previously, it had felt as if they had just been standing there, gaping at the improbable planet passing by. Now, they were falling towards it, at a faster and faster speed.
Crowley, exultantly whooping, found the psychic breath to shout at the Angel (metaphorically speaking).
Hey! Aziraphile! Now you know what it feels like to Fall! Great, isn't it?
The Angel just screamed, goggle-eyed, as the land surface of the Disc rushed up to meet them.
Where's your faith, Angel? HE wouldn't have sent us here just to splatter on the ground from several miles up, would He? And besides….
The back of Crowley's Roman-styled tunic tore along its seams and the huge black-pinioned wings spread into the Discworld sky. Wondering how he was going to explain this to Stores when he got back to Heaven to indent for a new body, Aziraphile happily grasped the chance , and soon a set of white angelic wings had bloomed alongside the black leathery pinions.
Both of them soon realised their rate of decent had slowed rather than stopped. Something was incessantly pulling them down, towards the mountain range right in the middle of the central continent, and most specifically towards the single lofty spire that rose from the dead centre, like a finger raised to the Ineffable… but at least, with wings, the fall was manageable now and there was actually air to support them. They could also resume direct conversation rather than mind-to-mind.
"Oh, dear oh dear!" said Aziraphile, shaking his head. "I can sense pagan deities nearby. They're not doing anything very much, just watching us."
"Nnngh!" said Crowley, who could sense them too. Some of the probing minds seemed hostile, defensive…
"They're wondering who we are… if we're new Gods. Oh no, I don't want them getting THAT idea!"
"Why not? New place, different set-up. We can gather believers. Tithes. Thing. Really clean up!" said Crowley, who quite liked the idea of promotion to God-hood. It was the biggest primal reason why Lucifer had Fallen, after all. But he also sensed the established people had not got to where they were today by allowing competition…
"Eyeballs?" said Crowley, as they descended further. What looked like a couple of disembodied eyes were circling them, curious and unblinking. Underneath, Aziraphile was looking at positively the most tasteless piece of vanity-building since the nouveau-riche of Rome had started throwing up large vulgar villas as a means of displaying their wealth in public.
"Ugh!" he said.
"Ugh indeed, Angel" said Crowley. "I don't suppose a disembodied mouth might like to turn up and tell us what's going on?"
"They can't hear you, Crowley. No ears." said the angel. And then, as if a decision had been made, the eyes zipped off back towards a distant spire of the gaudy building. Crowley and Aziraphlie found it impossible to approach the wedding-cake confection of spires and palaces that signally failed to grace the top of the mountain. They uniformly shone gold: Crowley would remember this occasion thirty or forty years later, when he returned to Earth and ended up in a position advising the mad young Emperor Nero about the design for a new palace.(1)
Something appeared to be forcing them away, sending them sailing lower down the mountain.
Aziraphile turned, puzzled.
"Apparently we're going in through the back door. Whatever that means." he said.
"I think it means that!"
They looked down to where an utterly black chasm had opened between the lesser mountains at the base of Cori Celesti. The utter dark repelled them both and drew them in at the same time. It was like a whirlpool in space and time. Crowley fancied he could hear the whispers of souls as they descended…
"Oh, Hell." Said the Angel, quietly.
"You get used to it. " said Crowley. "It isn't so bad."
The next stage of their journey was in Stygian darkness. They switched on their supernatural sight, so as to see what they could in the dark, such as a river, which they flew across, thus getting around the long queue for only one boat. Disregarding the boatman's cry of "'Ere! That's against regulations, is that! And you owe me fourpence!", they flew to the far shore. There was a gateway. It might once have had an inscription upon it. A dejected and disgruntled -looking woman in a robe sat just outside. She appeared not to notice the two entities.
Aziraphile nudged the demon. Crowley shrugged.
"Oh, that'll be Hope. She got abandoned here. But it doesn't stop her trying!"
They knocked on the door. A diabolical countenance appeared at the guard's window.
"Yes?"
"Two to come in. Apparently." said Crowley, who had resigbned himself to going with the flow. The dreaded entity looked at a clipboard.
"Party the name of Crowley, demon from a different dimension? Plus one?"
"Yes He's a…"
"Oh, I know what he is! He's on the invite as an Observer, right? They get to send people here from time to time. He's in, so long as she don't try to tag along."
The gate-demon scowled and flicked a thumb-like proboscis towards Hope, who had briefly perked up. "That's DEAD against the door code, that is! Better do you two gents a name-badge each, won't be long…" The gate-demon turned away.
"Sorry…" Aziraphile said to Hope. She smiled.
"Oh, that's OK. This is the one place they tell me I can't go. Got to keep trying, though. So I picket the door every so often."
"You don't have to be "damned" to work here, but it helps" Crowley said, reading the new portal message. "You know, angel, I might pick up a few ideas here!"
Then the gate-keeper returned.
Two fiery name-badges were passed over. Both read "VISITOR".
"Clip 'em where you can, gents. You're going down, by the way.."
The door opened onto an old-style passenger lift. Crowley and Azirpahile had barely time to steady themselves before it plummeted downwards. Through the lattice-work sides, they glimpsed appalling, soul-destroying things, but never in sufficient detail. It all coalesced into a mind-wrecking miasma of futility and ennui and boredom after a while. The Angel whimpered. Crowley felt quite at home, and shrugged. He wondered where they were heading.
Finally the hourney ended, inside a large and well-appointed office. They stepped shakily out of the lift, which disappeared. A loud voice boomed "WELCOME!" and handshakes were offered.
Crowley regarded the demon critically. He was dressed in a rather showy way, that was just beginning to come into fashion in his Hell. Cloven hooves, naturally, but some sort of all-in-one blood-red jump suit and a long black, red-lined, cloak. His horns were neatly kept, great spiralling ram's horns in black, he affected a little goatee beard, and he wore a golden crown. And was that a trident propped up in the corner?
"Astfgl, King of Hell." He introduced himself. "Although let's not stand on ceremony here." He turned and boomed "Nuggan, you little worm, get some coffee for our guests! No, not the cheap stuff from the machine! That's only fit for the damned, and you! The good stuff, the stuff I drink!"
This was addressed to a cringing little man in a toga, with slicked-back hair and a fussy little jobsworth moustache.
"Apologies, you can't get the staff these days." Astfgl said. "Used to be a God, until he pissed on his chips and disaffected so many followers that they lost belief in him! As that's effectively death to a God, but we were so impressed in exactly how he killed himself, the neighbours offered him a choice. He could go drifting on the wind again as a semi-sentient Small God and take his chances, or he could come down here and stay himself. He chose here. Got sent to me as a personal assistant. I must say he's promising, cringing little tick, and the ideas he had as a God really interest me."
"Can I be blamed? All I wanted to do was to give their insignificant human lives a little structure!" the ex-God Nuggan whined. "The Abominations were for their own good!"
"Ah, paved with good intentions…" murmured Aziraphile. "I say, are those scrolls over there?"
"And books." Said the Demon-King, cheerfully. "Keep meaning to get them into some sort of order, but there's so much to do and plan that there's never quite time… never seen a book before? Nuggan, show him!"
Nuggan capered towards the bookcases that appeared to line all the walls of the office suite.
"The principle is very simple" he explained. "With a scroll, you have to continually unwind one roll and wind onto the other to find the passage you want. That's time-consuming. With all the pages stitched and glued into a binding, in sequence, all you need know is the page reference and you're there in seconds…"(2)
Aziraphile was entranced.
"Such a simple, effective, idea!"
Astfgl placed a kindly senior-demon hand on Crowley's shoulder.
"I've introduced a few good ideas upstairs." he said. "Haven't been up for a look for some time, but Vassenego and the others assure me it's running like clockwork. What do you think of this one?"
"Health and Safety Regulations" Crowley read off the spine. He opened a sample page. And very soon his mind was firing with ideas, too.
As Aziraphile set about introducing a simple cataloguing system to allow Astfgl to keep track of his books, scrolls and manuscripts, Crowley and the Demon-King were trading ideas for how to spread the maximum amount of sin across the greatest number of people for the least effort. With a greatly increasing wheeled vehicle traffic in the major cities of the Roman Empire, Crowley had sketched out a plan to get the humans to introduce traffic wardens and parking regulations. (3)Astfgl listened intently, and suggested this be compounded with regular expensive and cumbersome roadworthiness examinations for all vehicles, conducted in bureaucratic impenetrability and expensive and irksome to the vehicle-owner. And this road insurance idea of yours?
Nuggan, meanwhile, was learning about order and position and shelving from an expert. In a very definite way, all four of the people in an office in the bowels of Hell were happy doing what they did best. Temptation comes in many forms...
I may return with more short crossover tales, published seperately, of the adventures of Crowley and Aziraphile on the Discworld. But this will do, for this purpose... "The Star" will arrive soon!
(1) Nero wanted a palace fit for the greatest Emperor ever – ie, him. Thinking back to the magnificent vulgarity of Dunmanifestin, and reasoning that such an architectural abortion would spread incremental disgust, ennui, negativity and general ill-feeling around most of the million-strong population of Rome, Crowley had drafted pictures and plans for the monument to tastelessness that became the Golden House. Crowley adamantly denied any responsibility for implanting the idea to burn Christians alive and feed them to starving wild animals in the Arena. He firmly insisted Nero had come up with that one all on his own, and anyway, the Christians were such a miserable bunch they'd utterly failed to make converts, would have spread ill-feeling, and would have died out naturally. Until some clever bastard chose to make martyrs out of them, ensuring a flood of fresh recruits to a persecuted minority faith.
(2) It's like the difference between video cassettes and DVD's.
(3) This had been submitted to Hell in 4BC and lost in the filing system, only to re-emerge in 1965. Crowley had received a very late demerit for this.