impossible!'
'Not impossible, but perhaps unfeasible,' she said. 'Look in the mirror, please.'
Zane looked. The death's-head gaped back at him, encased in its hood. Hits hands in the gloves were skeletal, and his ankles above the shoes were fleshless bones. He had assumed the visage of Death.
'You are, of course, invisible to most people when in uniform,' Fate said. 'Clients can perceive you, and those who are close to them emotionally, and the truly religious people, but the rest will overlook you unless you call attention to yourself.'
'But the mirror reflects my image — as that of Death! People will faint!'
'Perhaps I misspoke myself. You are not physically invisible; you are socially invisible. People see you, but do not recognize your significance, and forget you once you pass. But when you remove the uniform, your powers fade. You are then vulnerable; you can age and be touched and hurt. So don't step out of character without reason.'
'Why would Death want to step out?'
She formed an obscure little smile. 'It does get dull socializing with your own kind exclusively. I am said to be attractive in my Clotho aspect — ' She became abruptly young and lovely, a striking figure of a woman with hair so light in color it seemed to shine and with skin like alabaster, but her eyes remained disturbingly knowing. 'Yet I would not hold your interest for centuries, perhaps not even decades. So we must dally on occasion with mortals.'
Zane wondered how many decades or centuries it would take to get bored with a woman who looked like that. It was an intriguing thought, but in a moment he returned to his prior concern. 'How can a single Death person take several people each second? Hundreds of people must have died just while we've been talking here! I didn't collect their souls and I don't think this person did.' He indicated the defunct Death.
'I see I will have to explain in greater detail.' Fate shifted back to her middle-aged aspect and sat down in Zane's best chair. Her eye caught the Wealth stone on the table beside it. 'Oh, I see you have a junkstone. You use it to produce dimes for telephones?'
'Something like that,' Zane admitted sheepishly.
'I've seen them before. The stone is dirt-grade ruby from India, imported wholesale and sold in five-thousand carat lots for fifty cents a carat. It's technically corundum, but too poor a quality to hold a decent spell. I understand some idiots are deluded into paying gem-grade prices for individual stones.'
'True,' Zane agreed, drawing the Death hood close about his face so his flush would not show.
'Still, as a cheap novelty item, it's not bad. Once in a while a stone like this will take a better spell and locate dollar bills. But it's axiomatic that such a rock will never produce the value paid for it.'
Zane thought again, painfully, of the beautiful, rich, romantic Angelica. 'True.'
'Well, you won't need money now, unless you spend a lot of time out of uniform and get hungry. Better to acquire a small cornucopia and use it for such occasions.
Your job should keep you too busy for that, until you develop proficiency.'
'I still don't see how — '
'Oh, yes, I was about to explain. Only a small percentage of people need Death's personal attention. The vast majority handle the transition themselves — though, of course, this is via the extended ambience of Death's will.'
'Death's will?'
'Oh, my, you are a novice! Let me see, I need an analogy. You know how your body goes on breathing when you're not paying attention, even when you're sleeping? It's a bit like that. Death's power is immediate and personal, but it is also distant and impersonal. When Death attends to a client personally, it is like consciously breathing; when Death merely permits a soul to depart its host unattended, that is like your autonomic system, the automatic functioning of your body. But when you die, these functions cease, both the conscious and the unconscious. When Death dies, all deaths in the world cease, until the new Death commences the office. The former Death, for example, is not really dead yet; his soul remains pinned in his body. He can not die until you act, though his body will never again be animate. That is why it is so important that the transition be facilitated. Imagine the havoc if no one ever died!'
'I don't know. If people lived forever — '
'I haven't time to argue foolishness!' she snapped. 'Just be satisfied that the first soul you personally attend to will free all the rest to depart naturally, on their private schedules, as my threads have dictated. Up to half an hour can be tolerated; I have arranged for this. But beyond that, there will be one atrocious tangle.'
'What souls do I — does Death have to attend to personally? I really don't understand — '
'It relates to the nature of souls and the balance within each soul of good and evil. Every good thought and deed lightens the burden, and every bad deed or thought weights it down. A newborn infant, generally, is about as close as we come to true innocence; only when self-discretion comes can evil be indulged in. As William Henley put it: It matters not how strait the gate. How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. So the younger the person is at death, the more likely his soul is to remain innocent, and to float to Heaven when released. As William Wordsworth put it: Not in entire forgetfulness. And not in utter nakedness. But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! With age and self- discretion, the evil tends to accumulate, weighting the soul, until the balance is negative. Such souls plummet like lead sinkers when released. But a few souls are in balance, with equal freighting of good and evil; these have no dominant affiliation and tend to cling to their familiar housing. These are the ones who need assistance,'
'That's what Death does!' Zane exclaimed, catching on at last. 'Collects ambiguous souls!'
'And sorts them out carefully, determining their proper destination,' Fate concluded. 'Those few that are in perfect balance must be delivered to Purgatory for professional treatment.'
'This is really to be my job?' Zane asked. 'To collect balanced souls?'
'And to facilitate the progress of all the others,' Fate agreed. 'It really is. You may find it difficult at first, but it is certainly better than the alternative.' She glanced at the virtually dead Death.
Zane shuddered. 'But why was I chosen to fill this office? I'm completely unqualified! Or is it pure chance?'
Fate stood. 'I prefer to answer that at another time. I must not keep you from your appointed rounds any longer.'
'But I don't even know how to locate my — my clients!'
'There should be an instruction manual somewhere. Mortis will help you.'
'Who is Mortis?'
She looked about. 'Oh, I almost forget. You had better take the accouterments; I'm not sure how they work, but you'll need them.'
'Accouterments?'
'The jewelry. The magic devices.'
'My Wealth stone? I don't see — '
'Not that junkstone. Leave everything of your former life here as it is. Especially the star. Sapphire is no good for wealth divination at its best, and this one's inferior. Leave your watch, too, and any rings you have. You are through with living.' She walked toward the door.
'But I have so much to learn!' Zane cried plaintively.
'Then get to it. Death,' she said, closing the door behind her.
Zane looked desperately about, seeking some better hold on reality. How could he be Death? He had never even imagined anything like this!
He saw something flashing. It was a solid watch on the wrist of the dead Death that would hardly be in keeping with the corpse of Zane, who had been too broke to redeem his pawned watch. This was surely an accouterment. He bent, with a certain distaste, to remove it, then put it on his own wrist. It was heavy, a good four ounces, but fitted comfortably, as though sized for him, and the flashing stopped. Evidently the watch had merely been calling attention to itself so that it would not be overlooked; it went with the office. It was, of course, dead black: a mechanical, self-winding instrument that seemed dull but expensive.
Why would Death use a mechanical watch, of whatever quality, instead of a sophisticated electronic one, or a miniature magical sundial? Zane couldn't answer that at the moment. Maybe the last Death officeholder had been of a conservative bent. He might have lived for centuries before getting careless and failed to keep up with the
