Limbo 56 - Mike Morris (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud TXT) 📗

thousand years old. “You can’t come in here,” I told him. “Get back where you belong.” I thought about scooping up some of the dirty rain water and chucking it over him, while I said something like “I cast thee out, Devil,” but after all, this was only Limbo, not the Real Thing, so I didn’t think it would work.

“Sez who?” he asked cockily.

“Sez me,” I told him. “I’m in charge here.”

His demeanor changed immediately. “Oh, thank G-g-g,” he stuttered. They can’t take the name of the Almighty in vain. “Oh, sir, thank glory I found you.” He almost bowed and touched his right horn as if I were some Lord of the Manor or something. “You can’t come in here,” I told him, “Only dead people are allowed in here.”

“But I am dead,” he said. “I’m deader than anyone here.”

“You are,” I told him firmly,” a Devil. “How did you get in here?”

He coughed nervously. “I’ve been promoted,” he said. “I’ve been kicked upstairs.” He fumbled in his black cape and fished out a singed and crumpled piece of parchment. “I just couldn’t hack it down there. Failed everything from Anger to Sloth, except, perhaps Lust – but I’m not proud of that,” he said hastily.

I uncrumpled the piece of parchment and read with some difficulty “To Whom It May Concern, Pleeze find a spot for Imp therd class Jasper, who has been dimoted for failing to pass the most elim – simple tests we can give. He is truly a falure and will fit in nicely – ugh – in your Pergatry.” I tossed the parchment back to him. “What sort of note is this?” I asked. “Are you trying to tell me that this is a letter of introduction, an official letter?”

“Yes,” he said faintly.

“Look,” I told him, “almost all of the slickest lawyers that ever existed are down there. Are you trying to tell me this is genuine?”

He coughed.

“It’s not even spelt properly.” I started to turn away. “Now, get out of here, I’ve wasted too much time already.”

“Wait,” he cried. “Maybe I did stretch the truth a little. I am a Devil after all, a Demon, third class.”

“I don’t want to hear,” I told him, walking away.

“I escaped,” he shouted, “I claim sanctuary.”

I laughed at him. “Where?” I asked. “In the pub? This is Limbo,” I told him, and started to spell it, still walking away. “L for leather, I for India, M for, er Mephistopheles,…”

“I can help you get your quotas up,” he called after me, “or I can wait a couple of weeks till they fire you, and deal with the new guy.”

I stopped. “What quotas?” I demanded, “What new guy?” I continued, my voice rising in alarm.

“I can help with your quotas,” he told me. “The local Angels are wandering about in rags, trying to play harps with no strings. – And the haloes – rusty, bent. The Devils are laughing their heads off, and your Angels don’t like it.”

“It’s not my fault,” I blurted before I could stop myself. Despite myself, I began to explain the pressures I was under. “We have worn out machinery in the foundry, unionized labor, and we lack decent harp-tuners. It’s all right for the Devils,” I told him. “That’s what Hell is all about, shoddy goods, out of tune bagpipes.” I swallowed. “New Guy?” I asked.

“New Guy,” he repeated. “I applied for the job myself, but the Devils Council vetoed my application, which is why I escaped.”

I almost wrung my hands. “Almost a hundred years,” I said, “I’ve given my best. I’ve tried everything I know, worn my fingers to the bone - if I had real fingers. Now it’s come to this.” I shuddered. The Angels wanted to fire me, the Devils wanted to get their hands on me – I knew where I was headed.

“As I said. I can help with your quotas,” Jasper told me and I sniffed. “Listen,” he continued,” I was a slave in Nero’s court, a tough place to be. They were supposed to feed me to the lions, but in two days I ended up ‘Advisor to the Emperor’, and, he added, leering, ‘beauty consultant to his wives and mistresses.”

“You can’t wander around looking like – what you look like” I told him.

“Give me a few days,” he said confidently. “Was that a woman I saw, tending bar?”

I was confused for a moment. “Ah,” I answered, “Sadie.”

“I can stay at the pub,” Jasper told me. “Sadie won’t talk.”

“How do you know,” I asked foolishly.

“I’ll keep her occupied,” he said smirking.

I didn’t like it at all, but much worse alternatives seemed to be closing in on me. “I’ll let you stay, temporarily,” I told him.

“Sure,” he said airily. He knew that he had won.

Jasper was quick on the uptake, I had to admit. In a couple of days, he resembled every slick lawyer who had ever gotten a client free on a technicality. He was supposedly my assistant, and the inhabitants of my little Limbo already hated him. Except, that is, for Sadie who bloomed, and startled everyone by beginning to wash herself. We had our first brainstorming session in the back room of the pub.

“You’re going about it in totally the wrong way,” he said after I explained to him my desperate attempts to recruit more half sinners. “Now, what’s the whole point of this place?”

“Well, it’s a sort of halfway house,” I told him.

He sighed. “I mean.” What are we doing here?”

I opened my mouth. “I’ll tell you what we’re doing here,” he said. “Most of your flock works in the foundry, making tridents and haloes, and all that junk.”

I bit back an angry reply. “Eighty-five percent,” I said. “That’s almost everyone apart from a few instrument tuners and service personnel.”

“And union leaders, and strikers, and trouble-makers and malingerers,” he said. “Half the people in that foundry spend most of their time hiding from the foreman, sloping off to the pub, or just resting on their shovels.”

“I don’t get the best of the best here,” I told him plaintively.

“First thing we do,” he said, “is to put up a notice on that greasy notice-board where they clock in. The notice will say that all personnel who have been here for longer than a year will be entered in the, what shall we call it ‘annual moral assessment exam’. To determine whether they stay in this rat hole, sink into the Abyss, or ascend to the Heavenly Hosts.”

“I can’t make up a story like that,” I told him.

“Why not?” he asked genuinely puzzled.

“Because the Angelic auditors would kick me downstairs in the blink of an eon,” I told him.

“And how often do they set foot in your decrepit old foundry?” he asked.

“They’d sooner take an exclusive tour of Hell,” I said. I sighed. “I must admit I had thought about doing something like that but, pretty soon there’d be no-one left to work there. You know, if I give them a test, they’ll all want to know if they passed, and if I force them to be good the Heavenly Hosts will take them to their bosom.”

He shuddered. “What a disgusting thought. Tell you what, though, we can promise the over-achievers a shorter working day, and...”

“What,” I yelled, “they’re hardly working now. It’s all they can do to punch in.”

“They need incentives,” he said. “Who wants to work in a smoky soot-filled dangerous barn like the Foundry?”

“You’re missing the point,” I told him patiently. “This is supposed to be Limbo.”

“Limbo, schmimbo he chanted. “Look,” who wants to work in a place where his foot will get burnt off, or his hand will get crushed.”

“They grow back,” I told him sulkily. “After all, these people are the undead.”

“Make the foundry safer and more efficient,” he told me, and fewer people can produce more stuff. I’m thinking,” he continued. “We can modernize, the furnaces, the moulds, we can automate and use that as an incentive to attract your good workers.”

“Where do I get the new machinery,” I demanded.

“Leave that to me,” he said. “You know, down there,” he gestured at the floor. “We have some of the most efficient furnaces in the universe. In fact,” he continued, “if Devils weren’t so lazy, they’d be cleaning up by now, and you’d be out of business.”

“Sloth,” I murmured. “One of the seven deadly…”

“And the Angels,” he said, “Are no better. They’re careful, temperate, not to mention generous and fair. Can you imagine an Angel in charge of this place? In a couple of days, your entire workforce would be down at the pub, getting soused, and if an Angel ever ventured into such a den of iniquity it would be ‘Sir, I’m sorry, Sir, I’d love to work, just to put a crust of bread in the mouths of me sweet old mother an’ me seventeen chillum. Sir, but it’s me back ye see, I can’t straighten up; the pain is awful, an the onny thing as helps is a drop o beer.” Jasper snorted. “And the kind and generous Angel would probably stand the whole bar a drink before going home to flagellate himself – or herself.”

“True,” I murmured.

“It’s my opinion,” he said judiciously, “that you’re getting too good for your britches. That’s why your workforce is getting out of hand.”

I rubbed my eyes. “I admit it. I’ve been trying to be fair, and look where it’s gotten me. Nobody gives me any respect; quotas are going through the floor, and the Angels are after my blood. Yet, if I get tough, issue the supervisors with whips, install thumbscrews in each work area, the Angels threaten to send me down below.”

“You are trapped,” Jasper said, “in a catch-22 situation.” I looked at him blankly. “You are in charge, you are responsible. Whatever you do, you are screwed. That basically is catch-22. If you’re too angelic, your results go down, and, probably, so do you. If you pull out the whip, you’re a cruel, heartless taskmaster, fit only for demotion downstairs. On the other hand,” he continued, “I’m a Devil. I can do anything I want.”

We met up the next day. Outside the foundry, it was a beautiful day. It always was for the incoming workers. The off-shift wandered out into a rainy night. I could never figure that out. Jasper blocked the entrance. Outgoing workers streamed round him and through him but the new shift were trapped in the rain. “Shift number 3,788,512,” he bellowed. “There will be a short delay, possibly ten minutes while minor changes are made to the machinery. Do not enter.” It started to rain on them as we walked into the eerily empty foundry and surveyed the mess. For the first time in Limbo history the furnace was shut down and the conveyor belt was silent. “You go out there and calm them down,” he told me. I walked across the echoing stones, and glanced back before I went out. It seemed as if a big hole appeared in the concrete floor, underneath the old furnace, and orange light spilled out.

The first batch of malingerers was already sneaking away as I came out. I rounded up most of them,