Mister B. Gone

audible response was from one of his own, who said:

'Excellency, your robes.'

'What about them?'

'There's nothing of them left.'

'They wearied me.'

'But how will you leave?'

'You'll go fetch more, idiot! And before you ask, yes, I will put my human face back on, down to the last carbuncle on my nose. Though Demonation, it feels good to be free of that wretched stuff. I'm practically stifled in that skin. How do they put up with it?' The company let the question remain rhetorical. 'Well, go then,' he told his troubled underling. 'Fetch me my attire!'

'What shall I say happened to the vestments you were wearing, Excellency?'

The Archbishop, pushed beyond the limits of his patience by the witlessness of his servant, threw back his head and then instantly threw it forwards again. A wad of spittle flew from his lips and missing its target struck the wall no more than a body's length from where I crouched, and ate at the stone. But nobody looked my way. At that moment the Archbishop had the attention of every eye in the room.

'Tell them I gave it all away to those of my flock who are stricken with disease, and if anyone doubts you tell them to go looking in the plague houses down by the river.' A bitter laugh erupted from him, raw and joyless. The mere sound of it was enough to make me confer upon him all the hatred I'd felt towards Pappy Gatmuss.

The stirring up of old venom didn't make me forget the dangerous state in which I remained, however. I knew I had to retreat from the door before the Archbishop's lackey made to leave, or I would be spotted. But I could not bring myself to withdraw from the threshold until the very last moment, for fear of missing some exchange that would help me better understand the true nature of this clash of wills divine and demonic. The lackey pushed back his chair. But even as he began to rise, the naked Archbishop gestured for him to sit down again.

'But I thought you wanted — '

'Later,' his Unholy Holiness replied. 'For now we must be equally matched, if we're to play.'

To play. Yes, that's what he said, I swear. And in a sense you have the whole sorry story in those two Words. Ah, Words! They work to confound us. Take, for instance, Printing Press. Can you imagine two less inspiring words? I doubt it. And yet…

'This is not a game,' the Angel Hannah said grimly. The colors in the pool of robes in which she floated darkened, reflecting her change of mood. Blue went to purple, gold to crimson. 'You know how important this is. Why would your masters send you here?'

'Not just masters,' the Archbishop replied with a sultry tone. 'I had mistresses, too. Oh, and they are cruel.' His hands went to his groin. I could not see what he was doing but it clearly offended all of Heaven's representatives. Nor had the Archbishop finished. 'Sometimes I deliberately make a punishable error, just to earn myself the reward of their torments. They know by now, of course. They must. But it's a game. Like love. Like…'

He dropped his voice to a skinned whisper. 'War.'

'If that's what you want, demon, it's yours for the asking.'

'Oh now, listen to yourself,' the Archbishop chided her. 'Where's your sense of priorities? And while you're mulling that over, ask yourself why we of the Demonation would care about having control of a device that makes insipid copies of books whose only claim to significance in the first place was their rarity? I couldn't imagine a more pointless reason for the two halves of our divided nation to set upon one another, than this.' He looked at Gutenberg. 'What's it called?'

'A printing press,' Hannah said. 'As if you didn't know. You don't fool anybody, demon.'

'I tell the truth.'

'Insipid copies!'

'What else can they ever be?' the Archbishop protested mildly.

'You sound as if you care,' Hannah observed.

'I don't.'

'Then why are you ready to go to war for this thing you can't even name?'

'I say again: We don't need to be at one another's throats over what Gutenberg had made. It's not worth fighting over, and we both know it.'

'Yet you don't return to the comforts of your palace.'

'It is scarcely a palace.'

'It is scarcely less.'

'Well, I won't stoop to trivialities,' the Archbishop said, waving this fruitless exchange away. 'I admit, I came here because I was curious at the beginning. I was expecting, I don't know, some kind of miracle machine. But now I see it, and it isn't very miraculous at all, is it? No offense to you, Herr Gutenberg.'

'So you are leaving?' the Angel Hannah said.

'Yes. We're leaving. We have no further business here. And you?'

'We are also leaving.'

'Ah.'

'We have business above.'

'Pressing, is it?'

'Very.'

'Well then.'

'Well then.'

'We are agreed.'

'We are, indeed, agreed.'

That said, stillness fell. The Archbishop peered at his warty knuckles. Hannah stood staring into middle distance, her attention absented. The only sound I could hear was the soft murmur of the fabric that surrounded Hannah.

The sound drew my gaze towards it, and I was surprised to see that there were strands of black and red passing through the otherwise placid color and motion of the Angel Hannah's robes. Was I the only one in the chamber noticing this? It was evidence, surely, that for all her calm composure the angel couldn't help but let the truth show itself, even if it was only for a few seconds.

Now, from somewhere, perhaps the workshop behind me, I heard another sound. That of a clock ticking.

And still nobody moved.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

And then, at precisely the same moment — as though they were more alike than not when it came to matters of patience and politics — both the Archbishop and Hannah stood up.

Both set their hands down, knuckles first, on the table and leaning forwards both begin to talk at one another, their voices in their righteous anger so alike that it was difficult to separate one from the other, the words simply one endless, incomprehensible sentence:

— for why you the haven't been the holy oh yes you can holy isn't you right what's swords and this business be harvesting not books aren't we don't futile yellow don't blood on this whole yes gone entirely —

And on and on it went like this, with everybody in the room doing exactly what I was doing, concentrating their attention upon either the Archbishop or upon Hannah in the hope of deciphering what they were saying, and by doing so making it easier to comprehend the other party's contribution to this crazy exchange. If others were having any luck with the tactic, they showed no sign of enlightenment. Their expressions remained puzzled and frustrated.

Nor did the Demon Archbishop and the Angel Hannah show any sign of mellowing their vehemence. Indeed their fury was escalating, the power their rage and suspicion generated causing the geometry of the room, which had seemed to me flawless when I'd just taken it in, to warp out of true. The way it did so may sound crazy, but I will tell you what my eyes told me, as best I can, hoping that the words I use don't crack beneath the paradoxes that I'm obliged to describe.

They were approaching one another — the Devil and the Angel — their heads swelling prodigiously as they