The Devil You Know Read online

  Maybe not actually storming Heaven, at least not to begin with. Start with a modest, attainable goal and work upward from there. First, conquer the world; an immortal army could do that standing on its head. Defy the gods; set yourself up in their place. I give you the superman; man is something to be evolved up from. What is the defining limitation of Man? His mortality. Take away that, and his pathetic need for his daily bread, and his health and physical safety—now he’s equal with the gods on that score, their superior in so much more; all the arts and sciences he’s learned in the days of his mortality make him stronger than the gods, now that he’s escaped the great restriction. Consider men and elephants; consider which one hunts, kills, tames the other. Man is small but clever; the elephant is big but stupid. Being small made us need to be clever. We’re smarter than the gods. Need proof? Look at me. Living proof; the emphasis being on the living.

  He was right about the crucial role of gold in alchemy; he got there, eventually. Not soon enough to beat me to it; he arrived at the realisation just nicely in time to save me the effort of explaining it to him.

  In the course of my travels, I’ve seen the most extraordinary things. For example: in the Blemyan desert there are sandstone cliffs, split by earthquakes. In those rifts you can find the bones of giant monstrous creatures, buried long ago. Now, you don’t have to be a genius to figure out that once upon a time, that desert was actually the bottom of the sea. The sandstone cliffs were once the seabed, and the bones are the remains of huge sea-creatures, who died, drifted to the bottom, and sank into the soft mud, a hundred feet deep. Clearly a lot of time has passed since then—thousands of years, maybe, who knows? The bones themselves have rotted away, and what you’re actually seeing is an impression in the sand, squashed into rock by the sheer weight of the water. They were remarkable animals, those sea-monsters; forty, sixty, a hundred feet long, enormously strong, unbelievably powerful. But look at their tiny little heads, and then discount the space inside those heads taken up with bone, muscle, sinew, eyes, ears, and other ancillary equipment. Those awesomely strong monarchs of the deep had brains the size of walnuts. And so it is, as far as I can tell, with the gods. All power and no intellect. Strength makes you stupid. It’s the weak who grow smart.

  And what makes us weak? The passage of time. That’s all.

  Man is something to be out-evolved.

  * * *

  You’re not supposed to be always on the doorstep clamouring for instructions. Use your discretion and your initiative, they say, that’s why you’re the grade you are. And then, when it all goes wrong, it’s all your fault. What on Earth possessed you to do all that without checking back first? How could you have been so stupid?

  So back I went. You can never tell, of course, but I had the distinct impression he’d been expecting me.

  “It gets worse,” I told him. “He’s brewing up gallons of the stuff. Enough for an army.”

  “Is that right?”

  “That’s not all. He’s also invented a super-weapon.”

  He gazed at me, as though I were the view from a high window. “What sort of weapon?”

  “An explosive,” I said. “An eggcupful blasts a hole big enough to bury a man in.”

  That provoked a frown from the impassive face. “Is that right?”

  “I did a full analysis,” I said. “It’s just nitre and vitriol mixed with distilled honey. You don’t need me to tell you what that means.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “It means the ingredients are in plentiful supply. He could cook up thousands of gallons of the stuff. Millions. He could brew up enough to blow up the world.”

  Silence. Then: “Why would anyone want to do that?”

  Such an odd question to ask. “It’s a threat,” he said. “Think about it. He has an immortal army, and a weapon that can destroy the Earth.”

  “Do you seriously believe he could overcome us?”

  I shook my head. “That’s not how mortals think. I think he’s going to issue an ultimatum; hand over power, or I’ll destroy everything. It’s death,” I explained. “It colours every aspect of how mortal minds work. Everything is conceived of in finite terms. If I’ve got to go, I’ll take the whole lot with me.”

  Another silence. “Do you think he’d be capable of that?”

  “He’s Saloninus. He’s capable of anything.”

  He looked at me again. This time, I was some sort of optical illusion, something that couldn’t possibly exist, but did. “Do you think he wants to rule Heaven and Earth?”

  Now that was a question I hadn’t asked myself. But I found the answer came to me without much hesitation. “I think he feels he has no choice. It’s that or eternal damnation. Again, it’s how mortals do things. Think of palace coups; a man kills the king and takes his throne because if he doesn’t he knows he’ll be executed. They’re such an all-or-nothing species.”

  “If he were to blow up the world, wouldn’t we simply rebuild it?”

  My turn to be silent for a moment. “Would we, though? Or would we wash our hands of the whole experiment and move on to something else?”

  “Would we?”

  I shrugged. On a need-to-know basis, presumably. “I can’t possibly make decisions when the stakes are as high as this. I need instructions. What should I do?”

  He turned his face away. “Need you ask?”

  * * *

  Well; since my superiors in my organisation had failed me, I turned for guidance to a source of wisdom I had always believed in and trusted. Fortunately, I had a copy with me. Signed by the author.

  I opened the book at random. I saw—

  I give you the superman. Man is something to be overcome.

  Indeed. Make some immortal, blow up the rest. Evolution takes no prisoners. A loathsome philosophy, but hard to argue against. Repulsive, but entirely valid. Otherwise, the Earth would still be populated by giant pea-brained lizards.

  (Actually, I remember them with affection; even though they spent their entire lives poised between blood-lust and mortal terror, eating and being eaten, trampling down forests with every pace, and stealing each others’ eggs from the nest, at least they never invented morality. Simpler times. Happier times.)

  There’s a sect somewhere who believe that in the beginning, humans lived in a beautiful garden, completely unaware of right and wrong, good and evil. Then a wicked snake tricked them into learning about it—ethics, morality—and everything went downhill from there. I rather like that story.

  Could I stand idly by and see the world blown up, Mankind exterminated, replaced in the gear-train of evolution by the immortal, warlike superman, a subtle blend of artists, whores, and highway robbers? There was a sort of wonderful logic to it. Take anything to its logical conclusion and you’re likely to end up with the grotesque and the absurd.

  I realised I knew the answer. Man is not something to be overcome. Man is something to be kept firmly in its place.

  * * *

  “I know what you’re up to,” I said.

  He was sitting at his desk in that ghastly shack, looking at the view. It was one of the good days. The mist had cleared and the sun was out, bathing the mountains in pale gold; you could almost believe that his men had been out there early, scraping off all the turf. The usual biting easterly wind had dropped, and from that angle you couldn’t see the hideous scars of the open-cast mines. Too beautiful to be blown up, I decided. Worth saving.

  He put down the book he’d been reading; Amphitryon of Scona on the properties of materials. “Do you really?”

  “Yes. And you can’t do it.”

  He frowned. “You’re not supposed to tell me what I can and can’t do. It’s in the contract.”

  “Damn the contract.”

  He seemed to find that mildly amusing. “Go on, then,” he said. “What am I up to?”

  I took a deep breath. “You’re going to raise an immortal army, besiege Heaven, and threaten to blow up the Earth.” He didn’t rea
ct. I went on; “It’s useless, of course. You can’t win.”

  “Neither can you.”

  Maybe some tiny part of me had still been hoping I’d been wrong. If so, it died. “Anything you destroy we can rebuild. In the blink of an eye.”

  He nodded. “Yes,” he said. “If you’ve a mind to.”

  I had nothing more to say, so I glared at him. He said, “There’s a legend about how your lot got so fed up with the iniquities of the world that they sent a great flood. The idea was to kill off everything and start again. In fact, you changed your mind and killed off nearly everything. Of course, it’s only a legend, though I find myself asking, was that the flood that trapped the giant lizards in the sandstone cliffs? Anyway, that’s beside the point. Would you rebuild it, if I blew it up? You don’t know. You can’t be sure. And you love the world. You love the human race, and its art and its literature. Considerably more, I guess, than I do.” He smiled at me. “And it’s your call.”

  “Of course it’s not,” I said. (And I thought, so that’s what lying feels like. Overrated.) “Do you really think they’d leave the future of your species in my hands? But I am authorised to offer you a deal.”

  Just for a split second—a split second in my timescale, so a very short time indeed—I thought I saw something in his eyes; the faintest reflection of a vast, unfathomable smugness. But it passed, and he said, “I don’t want a deal. I’ve already got one, thank you very much. I’ve got a contract.”

  I nodded. “Of course,” I said. “A contract which you know you can cheat on. A contract which depends on your death, which we both know will never happen, once you’ve drunk that horrible potion.”

  He raised one finger in tacit acknowledgement. I could’ve hit him.

  “I know exactly what you’ve got in mind,” I said. “Immortal armies, laying siege to Heaven, threatening to blow up the world unless we abdicate and go away.” For a moment words failed me. “I thought better of you than that,” I said.

  He frowned, almost as though what I’d said had had some effect on him. Wishful thinking on my part, I’m sure. “I don’t see that I have much choice,” he said. “It’s godhead or hellfire.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have signed the contract in the first place.”

  He paused before replying. “My life passed me by so fast,” he said. “And I realised, I’d spent it all lying and cheating, and nothing to show for it. All that talent, wasted. Really, the only person I’d cheated was myself. It was a gamble, sure. But I had nothing to lose. That’s being mortal for you. I don’t suppose you could possibly understand.”

  That hurt me a little. Maybe it’s true, and I have spent too long among these people. Or not long enough. “There’s an alternative,” I said.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Do you really want to blow up the world? Do you really want to kill millions of people?”

  “Did your lot want to kill millions of people when they sent the great flood? Or millions of sea-monsters, or giant lizards, it doesn’t really matter. Evolution has no compassion. Besides, they’re all condemned to death anyway, so what difference does it make? But my supermen—”

  “A handful.”

  “Only a few,” he conceded. “We few, we happy few. Just think what I’m offering to my species. The next level.” He smiled. “You said you liked my doctrine of sides. Well, I’m on their side, and you’re on yours. Sorry. I wish we could’ve been friends.”

  “There’s an alternative,” I repeated.

  He looked at me for a long time, during which the cock crowed thrice. “Go on, then,” he said. “I’m listening.”

  * * *

  From my sleeve I took the brass tube containing the contract. I held it out. “Yours,” I said. “You can take it and put it in the fire. There will be no contract. Your soul will not be forfeit.”

  He didn’t move, didn’t even breathe, for ever so long. “And in return?”

  “All your alchemy equipment,” I said, “and your notes and your chemicals go in a big heap down at the bottom of the valley. Then you roll your barrel of hellbrew off the cliff on top of it. And you never, ever even think about practising alchemy again.”

  He frowned. “If you’re saying we put the clock back—”

  “No.” I shook my head. “You can keep the restored youth, and Mysia, all of that. You’ll have fifty or sixty years of natural life, and then you’ll go quietly and enjoy eternal bliss with the elect in paradise, or whatever.”

  He smiled. “Apart from that, we just forget all about it and pretend it never happened?”

  “You make it sound shabby and something to be ashamed of. It’s a good deal.” I paused. “Please,” I said. “I’m asking you as a friend.”

  He looked at me. “Oh, in that case,” he said, and held out his hand.

  * * *

  I changed my mind about one thing. We didn’t roll the barrel off the cliff. I didn’t want anyone—especially the New Mysians, that collection of cutthroats and intellectuals—learning that it was possible for a human being to make any sort of weapon that powerful. Instead, we poured the stuff a trickle at a time down a deep, deep fissure into the very bowels of the Earth, into the broiling sea of molten magma. Then we dropped in the books, the notebooks, the stills, and the alembics.

  He straightened up and looked at me. “It’s all still in here.” He tapped the side of his head. “Somewhere,” he added.

  I shuddered. “That’s your guarantee,” I said. “But just because you’ve got it doesn’t mean you have to use it.”

  “Exactly.” He beamed at me. He had a very charming smile. “Let’s be civilised about it.”

  Then I gave him the brass tube. He fished out the sheet of parchment and showed it to me. “You never checked,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Look.” He pointed. At the foot of the page, where his signature should be, he’d written Nemo Neminis filiu: nobody son of no one. “I distracted you, remember? At the moment of signing. Invalid signature, invalid contract.” Then he tore the paper into little bits, and ate them. “I imagine you could get into a lot of trouble for that,” he said. “But the evidence is gone, so what the hell. It can be our secret.”

  I felt a cold hand brush my analogue for a heart. A lot of trouble, indeed. I hated him and loved him, all in the same moment.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Don’t mention it.” He stepped back from the fissure. A waft of hot air rose up, enough to singe a mortal’s hair. That would be the explosive, I guessed. “Well,” he said, “it’s been interesting. Any time you’re passing, do drop in and take a look at the art.”

  “I’d like that,” I heard myself say, and realised I meant it. “One thing,” I said. “The artists. I know you wanted them for the perfect genetic mix, for your supermen—”

  He shook his head. “That only occurred to me once they were here,” he said. “They were for you. Because you like to look at paintings.”

  I felt a tightness in my throat. “I wish I could believe that.”

  He smiled. “Believe what you like,” he said, and walked away.

  * * *

  Of course it was a gamble. And of course I got lucky.

  The biggest stroke of luck—the thing that gave me the whole idea in the first place—was stumbling across the amnesiac woman. I don’t know who the hell she was—obviously—but when her family called me in and asked if there was anything I could do for her, it suddenly came to me, fully formed and perfect, in a flash. I paid them a lot of money for her—despicable, a family who’d sell their own flesh and blood to a perfect stranger—and arranged for her to be found in the ruins of Phocas’s palace. That was the luck.

  The gamble was that their system of archives and records was quite as chaotic as I thought it must be, after years and years of diligent research. It was a huge risk, though I’d covered myself with the invalid signature—still, that silly little trick wasn’t much to fall back on, in the event that I
’d grossly miscalculated. But I hadn’t; they really are as grossly inefficient in their record-keeping as I’d assumed, and of course the relevant officials would do everything they could to cover up their negligence; up to and including their gross exaggeration of the power of alchemy. That, of course, was what gave me the clue. I know for a fact alchemy doesn’t work, but Heaven treats it as the worst possible sin. Why get so worked up about a nonexistent threat? Answer: someone somewhere is covering something up. Discrepancies in the records? Blame them on the alchemists. Once I’d reached that conclusion, all I had to do was figure out how to take advantage.

  So; I did it. The one big score. I rule a kingdom literally built on top of a mountain of gold, from my throne-room in an impregnable castle. My subjects are the toughest warriors on Earth, leavened with great artists and beautiful women. I control the politics of the civilised world. Oh, and I’m twenty-five years old and in perfect health. If you can think of a bigger score than that, please don’t tell me. You’ll only give me ideas.

  It’s always the money with me; the money, personal gain, the one big score. Along the way, I happen to have proved myself right—morality, good and evil, the fatuity of gods who can be tricked—up to a point. I honestly couldn’t care less. If I’d discovered synthetic blue paint forty years ago, none of this need ever have happened, and I wouldn’t have written those dratted books.

  Of course, in forty years’ time I might see things differently, again. But I’m not worried. I’m sure I’ll think of something.

  About the Author

  PHOTOGRAPH BY SHELLEY HUMPHRIES

  Having worked in journalism, numismatics, and the law, K. J. Parker now writes for a precarious living.

  K. J. Parker also writes under the name Tom Holt.