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Chapter 46

Agonostis' infernally clever plan couldn't die just because Hell had lost Agonostis, Lucifer thought. The Devil's Point theme park stood to drag in souls faster than any gimmick Hell had ever tried, but the whole concept needed to be under tough management—it needed to be in the hands of someone who was as close to irredeemable as any Hellish soul could be.

Lucifer had a few openings Earthside. Souls he had considered unsalvageable were drifting Heavenward at an alarming rate; while Hell would not be depopulated of its billions any time soon, Lucifer resented the loss of even one soul to the opposition. He needed to make sure the souls who went up to earth wouldn't keep on rising. He needed the truly hideous, the incorrigibly vile, the bitter, the viperous, the deadly—

And the worst of the lot he needed to promote Earthside as manager and place in charge of building Devil's Point.

He closed his eyes and thought, then pulled up the personnel records in Quick'N'Dead. He looked for war criminals, mass murderers, poisoners; he came up with a few possible subjects. Adolf Hitler, transmuted into his executive secretary Pitchblende, might have held some possibilities, but Lucifer considered him too tender. Pol Pot, the Cambodian nightmare, had just arrived, and would still have all the deliciously rough edges of his humanity about him, but he'd not shown any real skill at budgeting, and Lucifer wanted an operation that brought in both souls and money. Besides, he'd lacked subtlety. Genghis Khan lacked administrative skills, and was as crude as Pol Pot had been. Lucretia Borgia might have done, but she didn't work well with others. Lucifer had the same reservations about his list of serial killers. And while a few of the late American presidents had shown themselves to be both smooth liars and fine manipulators, able to work well with large numbers of people, none of the Democrats knew a damned thing about economics, and the Republicans couldn't have made a theme park fun if they'd had Walt Disney as their chief advisor—and Disney was working for the other side.

So I need to think lower profile, he thought. Someone who was a clever slime—good with money, evil as Hell itself, someone who had done horrible things and who hadn't gotten caught. He punched in the characteristics he was looking for, and waited interminably for Hell's computer system to run through its list of evildoers.

Lucifer read the printout that started churning out of the printer with some frustration. The Evilness index, which could run from a low of two hundred (high enough to get damned) to a high of one thousand, for most individuals ran in the three-fifties and four hundreds; pretty damned unimpressive. A few souls topped five hundred, but that wasn't high enough.

Just to check the numbers, Lucifer brought up Pol Pot's record. He scored in the high eight hundreds—that was very good. It was a shame he hadn't bothered to get an MBA.

But then an actual MBA popped out with a score of nine-sixty. Lucifer whistled and double-checked the records. Nine-sixty, and steady as a rock. The man's record, on the surface, was hardly a picture of evil. He'd been a small-town businessman, widowed with three kids, two boys and a girl. He'd run a tight ship business-wise, and while he was hardly well-liked in the town where he'd lived, he had managed to spend his whole life there without ever raising the suspicions of even his closest neighbors.

He'd killed his wife to get rid of her after she'd had their last child—killed her because the doctor had informed him that she wouldn't be able to have any more children. Then he'd systematically abused and molested all three of his own children. One had died in an "accident" engineered by his father when the man had suspected he was going to tell; the other two had learned their lessons and kept quiet. And when they grew up and fled, the man had started preying on children in his own neighborhood, and picking up strays. He'd gotten sicker and more deadly, until his backyard was a veritable graveyard, full of the children he'd destroyed.

No one had ever known—or if they had, they'd been too terrified to tell.

Lucifer smiled slowly and leaned back, studying the name on the paper. Nothing was lower than a child molester, a pederast, an abuser of the innocent and helpless. Not even God had much hope of seeing one of those monsters repent.

"Pitchblende!" he shouted. "Get in here! I have a job for you."

Back | Next
Contents
Framed

Back | Next
Contents

Chapter 46

Agonostis' infernally clever plan couldn't die just because Hell had lost Agonostis, Lucifer thought. The Devil's Point theme park stood to drag in souls faster than any gimmick Hell had ever tried, but the whole concept needed to be under tough management—it needed to be in the hands of someone who was as close to irredeemable as any Hellish soul could be.

Lucifer had a few openings Earthside. Souls he had considered unsalvageable were drifting Heavenward at an alarming rate; while Hell would not be depopulated of its billions any time soon, Lucifer resented the loss of even one soul to the opposition. He needed to make sure the souls who went up to earth wouldn't keep on rising. He needed the truly hideous, the incorrigibly vile, the bitter, the viperous, the deadly—

And the worst of the lot he needed to promote Earthside as manager and place in charge of building Devil's Point.

He closed his eyes and thought, then pulled up the personnel records in Quick'N'Dead. He looked for war criminals, mass murderers, poisoners; he came up with a few possible subjects. Adolf Hitler, transmuted into his executive secretary Pitchblende, might have held some possibilities, but Lucifer considered him too tender. Pol Pot, the Cambodian nightmare, had just arrived, and would still have all the deliciously rough edges of his humanity about him, but he'd not shown any real skill at budgeting, and Lucifer wanted an operation that brought in both souls and money. Besides, he'd lacked subtlety. Genghis Khan lacked administrative skills, and was as crude as Pol Pot had been. Lucretia Borgia might have done, but she didn't work well with others. Lucifer had the same reservations about his list of serial killers. And while a few of the late American presidents had shown themselves to be both smooth liars and fine manipulators, able to work well with large numbers of people, none of the Democrats knew a damned thing about economics, and the Republicans couldn't have made a theme park fun if they'd had Walt Disney as their chief advisor—and Disney was working for the other side.

So I need to think lower profile, he thought. Someone who was a clever slime—good with money, evil as Hell itself, someone who had done horrible things and who hadn't gotten caught. He punched in the characteristics he was looking for, and waited interminably for Hell's computer system to run through its list of evildoers.

Lucifer read the printout that started churning out of the printer with some frustration. The Evilness index, which could run from a low of two hundred (high enough to get damned) to a high of one thousand, for most individuals ran in the three-fifties and four hundreds; pretty damned unimpressive. A few souls topped five hundred, but that wasn't high enough.

Just to check the numbers, Lucifer brought up Pol Pot's record. He scored in the high eight hundreds—that was very good. It was a shame he hadn't bothered to get an MBA.

But then an actual MBA popped out with a score of nine-sixty. Lucifer whistled and double-checked the records. Nine-sixty, and steady as a rock. The man's record, on the surface, was hardly a picture of evil. He'd been a small-town businessman, widowed with three kids, two boys and a girl. He'd run a tight ship business-wise, and while he was hardly well-liked in the town where he'd lived, he had managed to spend his whole life there without ever raising the suspicions of even his closest neighbors.

He'd killed his wife to get rid of her after she'd had their last child—killed her because the doctor had informed him that she wouldn't be able to have any more children. Then he'd systematically abused and molested all three of his own children. One had died in an "accident" engineered by his father when the man had suspected he was going to tell; the other two had learned their lessons and kept quiet. And when they grew up and fled, the man had started preying on children in his own neighborhood, and picking up strays. He'd gotten sicker and more deadly, until his backyard was a veritable graveyard, full of the children he'd destroyed.

No one had ever known—or if they had, they'd been too terrified to tell.

Lucifer smiled slowly and leaned back, studying the name on the paper. Nothing was lower than a child molester, a pederast, an abuser of the innocent and helpless. Not even God had much hope of seeing one of those monsters repent.

"Pitchblende!" he shouted. "Get in here! I have a job for you."

Back | Next
Contents
Framed