in place, uncertain whether to pull the trigger now, before being interrupted, or to hope for some amazing reprieve. Could Angelica have changed her mind and sought him out? Foolish notion! Or was it merely his landlord?
It was neither. The figure that appeared was garbed in nonreflective black, with a hood shrouding its head. It closed the door behind it silently, then turned to face Zane full on.
A bald, bony skull looked eyelessly at him:
This was Death, come to collect him.
Zane tried to cry out in pointless protest, but his throat locked. He tried to loosen his trigger finger, but it was already obeying the squeeze message and would accept no countermand. Time seemed to slow, and Zane could do nothing to abort the suicide he had set up. Yet the shock of seeing the visage of Death himself had abruptly banished any desire Zane had to kill himself.
His finger muscles would not obey him, but his larger arm muscles did. Zane wrenched the pistol around. The muzzle came to bear on Death's head as the trigger tripped. The gun seemed to explode, kicking back against his hand.
The bullet smashed into the center of Death's face.
A hole opened. Blood flowed. Death fell heavily to the floor.
Zane stood aghast. He had killed Death.
Chapter 2
HOUSE CALLS
The door opened again. This time a woman of middle age entered. Zane had never seen her before. She glanced approvingly at the fallen figure. 'Excellent,' she murmured.
Zane wrenched his horrified gaze to her. 'I killed Death!' he exclaimed.
'Indeed you did. You shall now assume his office.'
'I — what?' Zane was having trouble regaining mental equilibrium.
'You are the new Death,' she said patiently. 'This is the way it is done. He who kills Death becomes Death.'
'Punishment…' Zane said, trying to make sense of this.
'Not at all. This is not murder in the normal sense.
After all, it was him or you. Self-defense. But you are committed to take his place and to do the best job you can.'
'But I don't know how to — '
'You will learn on the job. We all do. Certain enchantments will imbue you, to facilitate your performance and stabilize you, but the real motivation must be yours.' She stooped to strip Death's black cloak from his body. 'Help me, please; we do not have excessive time and we don't want to get blood on the uniform.'
'Who are you?' Zane demanded, getting half a grip on himself despite the overwhelming unreality of the scene.
'At the moment I am Lachesis. You can see I am of middle age without much sex appeal.' She was quite correct; her face had the lines of solid maturity, and her hair was nondescript under a tight bun. She was comfortably overweight, but moved efficiently. 'I determine the length of the threads. Now lift his body; I don't want to tear the cloak.'
Distastefully, Zane put his hands on Death's corpse and lifted. 'Who is Lachesis? What threads? What are you doing here?'
She sighed as she worked the cloak off the body. 'I suppose you do deserve some minimal explanation. Very well; you keep working, and I will tell you some of what you need to know. Not all of it, for some secrets are reserved to me, just as some, you will discover, are reserved to you. Lachesis is the middle aspect of Fate. She — '
'Fate?'
'You will not learn very much if you insist on interrupting,' she said with some asperity.
'Sorry,' Zane mumbled. This felt unreal!
'Now get his shoes. They're invulnerable to heat, cold, penetration, radiation, et cetera, just as is the cloak. You must always be properly garbed when making a collection, or you become vulnerable. It is essential that you not be vulnerable. Your predecessor here was careless; had he closed his hood across his face, the bullet would not have harmed him. See that you are more careful; you will have greater need to be on guard than he did.'
'But — '
'I believe that interjection constitutes an interruption.'
Zane was silent. There was an eerie power about this woman that had nothing to do with her appearance. She could be the mother of any rebellious teenager.
'I am Fate, with three aspects,' she continued after just enough of a pause to verify her command of the situation. 'I determine the threads of the tapestry of life. I am here to ensure that you change roles expeditiously. It is very important that you perform better as Death than you have as a living person, and I believe you do have the potential. Now stand up so I can fit the cloak to you.'
Zane stood, and she set the cloak on his shoulders. It was not heavy, but it carried a peculiar mass. She had spoken of magic; this item of apparel reeked of it. 'Yes, it is close enough. Go ahead and don the shoes; and don't forget the gloves. The shoes will, among other things, enable you to walk on water. Your rounds must not be balked by mundane trifles.'
'But this is preposterous!' Zane protested. 'I was about to kill myself and now I'm a murderer!'
'Certainly. I had to measure your thread very carefully. Technically, your life just ended; see, Death's body will be taken for yours.' She turned over the body, and Zane saw that it looked uncomfortably familiar. It now resembled his own — with a bullet hole in the face. 'You will fill the office until you, too, grow careless and permit a client to turn on you.'
'Or until I die of old age,' Zane said, not really believing any of this.
'Old age will never come to you. Neither will death, if you perform well. If you ask the average person what he most desires, he will answer, 'Never to die.' That is, of course, an absolutely foolish wish; in due time you will be better able to appreciate the importance of dying. It is not the right to live, but the right to die that is most important.'
'I don't see — '
'What is life, except an ongoing instinct for survival? Nature uses that instinct to make us perform; otherwise we would all relax, and the species would disappear. Nature is a cruel green mother. The survival instinct is a goad, not a privilege.'
'But if I don't age — '
'Time holds all supernatural agents, especially the several Incarnations, in abeyance. You will live until you die, however many days, years, or centuries that may be, but you will never change from your present physical age.' She guided him to his wall mirror.
'Supernatural agents?' Zane was grasping at peripherals, being as yet unable to get to the nucleus of this situation. 'Incarnations?'
'Death, Time, Fate, War, Nature,' she said. 'The major field agents operating between God and Satan, answerable to neither. If any of us were scheduled to die like mortal folk, we would have to be concerned for the disposition of our souls, and that's a conflict of interest. No, we are immortal, as we have to be, accountable to neither superpower. But we do have to do our jobs, or things become complicated.'
'Our jobs,' Zane repeated weakly. 'I'm no killer. At least I wasn't, until this — '
Fate glanced at him penetratingly, and suddenly he knew she knew about his mother. He felt cold, and the guilt rose up in him again. But Fate did not raise that matter. 'Of course not,' she agreed, eying the body on the floor. 'This was a mismanaged suicide. Death does not kill; Death merely takes the souls of those who are dying, the problematical ones, lest they be lost and wander forever inchoate.'
Now Zane found something concrete to argue. 'There are five billion people in the world! A hundred million or so die each year. Death would have to take several each second, scattered across the globe. That's
