Horrors of the Dancing Gods

it's late and doesn't get off until sunrise. Does it turn to dust or explode or something?'

Marge yawned. 'Well, being a night person myself, I can't complain about the scheduling, but I guess we ought to keep crucifixes and the like around anyway, huh?'

'No religious symbol, for good or evil, has any power without the holder's complete and absolute faith in what it represents,' Poquah reminded her. 'I'm afraid we are all much too jaded to depend on that.'

'Um, yeah. It does sort of put us at a disadvantage,' she admitted.

Irving wandered back over, frowning.

'What's the matter, Irv? Second thoughts?'

'No,' he replied. 'I was just wondering where everyone else is.'

'Huh? What do you mean?'

He looked up at the sky for a moment. 'I would say we're no more than an hour or so before sundown. It's Monday, so unless they're skipping a week, they should be here in about two hours, right?'

'Yeah, I guess so. So?'

'Well, where's the traffic? Somebody has to use this service. That's a pretty big dock from the looks of it, and the length of space between the knobs they use to tie things up shows a pretty fair- sized boat, too. You don't run a big boat empty. You either run a small boat or no boat, right? But here we are, maybe two hours ahead of the boat, and we're the only ones here.'

Poquah looked around and shook his head. 'I don't know, but something tells me that we will find the answer to this shortly. I feel it. We will not be the only passengers.'

And as the sun set and shadows began to shimmer and then blend into the landscape, he was proved correct.

You needed faerie sight to see them, but Irving's cultivation of some magical powers in his own right had given him that ability, which his two companions had as a matter of course. It was not, however, an unmixed blessing, particularly in this case.

It began with what seemed like the wind, although there was no wind, a great, deep roar of misery, a cosmic sigh of regret, coming, it seemed, from all places at once. Then, slowly, they began to arrive and resolve themselves in the total darkness.

People… long chains of people, male and female, all linked together by spell threads so deep and dense that they seemed jet black. All were nude, and in spite of a deathly pale cast to their skins and a hollow, hopeless series of expressions that were hard to look at, they seemed in the main no older than Irving and in excellent shape. It was easy to see, though, that they were not what they appeared; although they seemed to be regular humans of a number of human racial types, the bodies were actually entirely faerie.

'Human souls,' Poquah explained, shaking his head.

Marge was aghast. In all the time she'd been on this world, she'd never seen anything like it. 'But — they look so healthy!'

'In a sense they are. This is the true faerie component of humanity,' the Imir told her. 'Everyone comes out his ideal and ageless self, of course. However, these will soon change, as this material is both malleable and corruptible. It is raw material on its way to the foundry to be reshaped to their new masters' whims.'

'Then they're on their way to Hell? Via boat?'

'Perhaps. Some will go there, some won't. Don't think of Hell as a place of eternal punishment. It is not, except in the sense that it is totally removed from all that is Heaven. These people are now at the eternal mercy of Hell and its rulers. In a sense, going the other way is the same thing, but it is generally felt that God and the angels are much better to work under than Satan and the demons. Just don't think of it as necessarily eternal punishment. These people are being sent where their souls' owners wish, to be used for those owners' purposes.'

A mysterious tall, dark figure nearby overheard the explanation and came over toward them. It wore a dark robe and hood, and only the glow of two beady red eyes and a larger glow below showed any features at all.

'Hello, brothers and sister,' the creature greeted them in a deep but convivial voice that sounded so silky smooth, it reminded Marge of a Texas politician. 'Couldn't help overhearing your explanation, there, friend, and you're pretty much on the mark.' A black arm went up and took something from the mouth, and as the glow swept down with it, they could see that the mysterious larger object was a very large, fat, and somewhat smelly cigar. 'Nimrod's the name. Louie B. Nimrod. That's my string over there.' He pointed to a long and typically unhappy lot, and they could now see the nearly absolute black of the spell against the night that linked them to the demon.

'You're taking them to Hell?' Marge asked uneasily. 'I thought if you were supposed to go there, you just went.'

'Oh, my, no! I'm taking them to Yuggoth, of course. I assume that's why you and everybody else are here. I mean, this boat don't go to Hell, little lady. You're right to some extent about not needing some of this in the more routine operations, but you always got to collect 'em. Even the enemy collects. They generally got an easier collection job than we do, of course. Damn fools actually want to go with them. They don't know the eternity of total boredom that awaits them up there.'

'Your reputation for what happens to them after they go with you does not include boredom in general, I'll give you that,' Marge commented dryly.

'Oh, it's not nearly that bad. I mean, we're not talking circles of punishment and fiery pits and all that rubbish. Why would we? That would put us in the business of punishing the enemies of our enemy, wouldn't it? That lake of fire business is if we lose, and we've not lost by a long shot. We're at war. These are soldiers. They became soldiers the moment they enlisted in our cause when still alive, and they're even more useful now that they've gone through their enlistment incentives and bonuses.'

'Enlistment incen— oh!' Marge suddenly realized that the demon was talking about whatever these people got from demons like Nimrod while still alive. It took a little mental gymnastics to switch points of view here. 'So what do they do for you now?'

'Well, now that they're totally ours, they go to work. Privates all, of course. Pretty rare to get instant officer material from the living, although it does happen. These are mostly support troops in the making. We'll put 'em in and train 'em on Yuggoth in the basics. Sort of the ditchdiggers, heavy laborers, that kind of thing. We'll evaluate, test, observe, and the most promising ones will eventually get promoted, while the rest will stay down doing the crap work that always has to be done by somebody. And of course we'll be checking for special skills and aptitudes to develop.'

'Is this normal, though?' Poquah asked him. 'So many off to Yuggoth instead of to Hell?'

The demon took another puff and then replied, waving his cigar for emphasis like a prop. 'See, we don't have to enlist most folks. They volunteer, whether here or on Earth. We don't even bother with them. These, though, are ones I had to enlist. Ones with a real possibility of going the enemy's way. These are the ones we really prize, since they're generally the most useful to us and have the most potential to harm the enemy. We always keep our bargains to the letter, so now they all get their chance before being sent down. It's not always easy, I don't mind telling you! I mean, we don't even bother with the usual types — murderers, rapists, torturers, politicians, lawyers, TV evangelists, that sort. These, now — revolutionaries, wide-eyed save-the-world types, bleeding hearts, guilt trippers — these people all had the best of intentions, the noblest and most self-sacrificing of motives. That's where I come in. My firm, Azaroth, Beelzebub, Zarnath, and Smith, P.A., is one of the top recruiting firms in Husaquahr. Why, in independent surveys by I. M. Power, four out of five of our clients rated us tops in delivering what we say, and our collection rate is among the best in the business. You won't catch ABZS clients haunting houses and stalking graveyards, no, indeed!'

'It is nice to see someone happy in his work,' Marge whispered.

Another, larger demon noticed them and came over. 'You been puffin' yourself up again, Louie? If you're that good, how come you're workin' the poor side of the street instead of Earth?'

'Seniority, that's all, and you know it!' Nimrod snapped back.

'Seniority, my ass!' the newcomer snapped. 'You really want to know, folks? Because we're threatened with a two-front war, that's why! We need every soul in creation to build the dikes in Yuggoth or we're gonna get drowned, that's what!'

Nimrod sounded genuinely shocked. 'Blasphemy! Can't nobody beat Hell!'

'Not one on one,' the newcomer agreed. 'But if we have to fight on two fronts, and if our ancient enemy is