Chapter 22

During that first meeting with the Devil upon my return to Hell, I asked if I could have an office where I could keep my paperwork up to date and write up what I thought was important about each day. Naturally, as I expected, He immediately called in a flunky to make the arrangements. I specified what I figured that I would need, such as a desk with a suitable chair, a couple of chairs for visitors, and the necessary writing materials. All of this was easy for the flunky to arrange as soon as the Devil approved of my requests. To my surprise, my office was ready for me in only a couple of hours. It was as if the Devil had already made the arrangements before I even showed up in Hell.

I planned to make copious notes of what happened each day so that I would have some backup in case I ever had a minor disagreement with the Devil. Of course, I was going to make a point of never having a major disagreement with Him because He might get the idea to force me to agree with him simply by blocking my return to Isbardia. I didn’t know for sure that He could do that, but I was not going to take a chance on messing things up between us.

By the way, I was going to keep my notes in a special pseudo language that I had made up for taking notes in high school. The language was basically English, but I always left out the unnecessary vowels and changed some of the spelling of words to be more phonetic. As a simple example, in my notes the word “back” would be written simply as “bk” and phrases like “the Devil” would be written as “tD.” I had no doubt that the Devil could read every human language, but I hoped that my use of a pseudo English rendition would be not worth the effort that He would have to devote to it to read them behind my back.

I even had an excuse for doing this in case he asked me for an explanation. I said that sometimes in my notes I would write something not completely complimentary about Him, and I did not want to mess up our friendly relationship by writing something that an English speaking human could easily read. After all, much of the population of Hell consisted of people who fit that description. Dammit, if I couldn’t get away with that, I could be in deep trouble within only a few weeks.

Not only that, but I also planned to throw in as much slang and Marine jargon as I could to make it even harder to understand what I had written. I also considered adding some totally unnecessary words that could confuse somebody who was fluent in English and trying to find something that could be used against me. I was not so naive as to think that He was going to let me write things down that could be used against Him. I figured that my office would be bugged in every way imaginable with full audio and video records of every moment that I spent in there, and that included pictures of what I wrote.

I also asked for an hour meeting with Him each morning that I was in Hell. He agreed to that as I was sure that He would. His mastery and control of time made it possible for him to have any schedule he wanted or none as the mood struck Him. I hoped to be able to make good use of that flexibility as I continued my duties as the ambassador to Hell from Isbardia and indirectly from the Milky Way galaxy.

The next morning, I offered a suggestion to the Devil of how He could fill his otherwise boring hours. I suggested that he arrange a contest to the death between a giant spider and one of the humans locked up in the insane asylum across the street from the palace. That got His attention immediately because it was something that He could gamble on with me as his opponent. “Suppose we work on the nature of the fight itself and let the wager go until we come up with something that is a fair fight with either side having a chance to win.

“If you explain that a loss by the human will mean his death I am sure that you will have no trouble finding human contestants. I have no idea how you will select the giant spiders that appear in the fight. You can insist that You are wagering on the spider, and a victory by the human should be something that would annoy You greatly. I am sure that such a possibility would be enough to make the human fight as hard as he or she can to score a victory.

“As a further incentive for the human, you could offer him or her an improvement in living accommodations and possibly a sex partner if the human were interested. You must have a number of former military people locked up in the asylum, so You would not have any trouble finding people who are already trained in the use of military arms such as swords or pikes, etc. Those people will have already given up hope of escaping You, so the opportunity to die permanently and thus escape would be a great offer that they could not refuse.”

Well, I must admit that I was not prepared for the enthusiasm the Devil showed in my idea. He offered me the opportunity to be his guest while he set up the experiment. He wanted my opinion as to whether the test was fair and suitable as a gambling contest, so I could not refuse. Besides, this was the first step in my campaign to free the Milky Way of the Devil’s active interference. He enjoyed seeing a sentient individual die, so he would be amused even by the death of the spider.

My personal emotional and intellectual escape from remorse for this killing would be that it was what the human ultimately wanted, and I hoped that the spider felt the same way. I also suggested that the winner of the contest should have some time to enjoy the victory and some rest and relaxation (R&R) before being pitted against a new opponent. The contests must continue until the previous victor had finally been killed. The Devil especially liked the irony of that!

What surprised me was that the Devil started immediately to arrange for the first fight. This would be a part of the experiment and would not be wagered upon because we were simply looking at how to make this an even fight. I didn’t know what the spider might use for a weapon, but I suggested that the human be given the choice of weapons. I suggested that the Demon Bane be included in the list of possible weapons, but that would require some extra training time for the human. Most of the humans currently in Hell had never seen the weapon, so they should be given an opportunity to test it out before committing to it. That was acceptable, so we went to see the first contest that very afternoon.

The human had chosen a polearm as his weapon of choice, and the spider had turned down the opportunity to use a weapon that it had not been born with. The specific polearm chosen by the human was a standard military halberd. The halberd had a blade similar to the Demon Bane affixed to the sharp end. There was also an axe blade on one side of the pole near the spear point and a sharp point 180° around the pole opposite the blade. This was all mounted on a pole about 10 feet long. The halberd was a formidable fighting weapon when used in a human army, so I expected it to do well against the spider.

The Devil had constructed an arena with a fighting area about the size of a professional basketball court of my youth and had a dome put over it so that neither contestant could escape by running away. The dome was completely transparent, but both contestants knew full well that it was there. The entire area was covered by video cameras so that the Devil would have some amusement to keep Him going between duels.

This was a duel to the death and would last as long as it took one of the contestants to be killed. There were no time-outs or rest periods; once the fight started, it continued without a pause. There were spare halberds around the fighting court in case the human’s halberd shaft was broken, but the spider was free to attack while the human was trying to fetch a replacement weapon. Actually, I thought that the Devil hoped that this would happen so he could see the desperation of the human’s mad dash to fetch a new weapon. I expected Him to laugh if this actually happened.

Guards ushered the two contestants onto the field and left them there while they rushed to the exit gate, which would no longer be operable as soon as the last living guard made his escape. That was when a bell would ring signaling that the duel had started.

To my surprise, and apparently to the surprise of the spider, the human charged it at the moment the bell rang. He had lowered the sharp end of the halberd to be at the level of the spider’s jaws and ran as fast as he could directly at the mandible. Frankly, I don’t know one spider from the other, so I could not identify the type of spider it was nor if it had ever faced an armed human before this fight.

The spider had two fangs, one on each side of what I thought of as its mouth, and the points of these fangs were aimed at each other. The fangs were curved so that a victim trapped by the fangs was literally stuck where it was with no chance of escape. These two fangs were open to what looked to me like the maximum possible span to allow for the human to change his position relative to the mouth a bit, but still be caught by one or both of the fangs when it got close enough.

Well, this human was a lot better fighter than the spider allowed for. He got close enough to jam the sharp point of the halberd into the spider’s mouth as far as he could in one lunge, turned the halberd loose, and dashed for the nearest halberd leaning against the side of the dueling field before the spider could react to what had been done to it by the human.

In a kind of reflex action, the spider snapped its fangs closed, and that seemed to jam the point of the halberd farther into its mouth. The pain must have awoken the spider to what had happened to it, and it tried to pull the halberd from its mouth by using its two front feet to pull on the wooden handle. I was flabbergasted when that pulled the wooden shaft from the spider’s mouth, but caused the steel head with the sharp points to remain where it was. Naturally, the spider dropped the halberd shaft and tried to dig the steel head from its mouth.

It did manage to grab the steel shaft attachment and pull on it, but that looked like it only caused the axe blade and the spike to dig into the spider’s flesh even more than they already had. That so completely upset the spider’s equilibrium that it forgot everything but getting that damned thing out of its mouth.

The human had picked up another halberd from the side of the arena and had run back to the spider. It was obvious that the spider was so distracted by that foul device stuck in its mouth that it still did not react properly to the return of the human. Of course, the human recognized this and grasped his opportunity with all of his might and mien. The human did not hesitate to use the axe blade of the halberd to chop off the spider’s head. The human stepped back a few paces to be able to continue the fight if that were necessary.

However, the spider vaporized in about 15 seconds, and that proved two things. The first was that the human had won the duel and was due the spoils of the battle, so the Devil transported him back to his new quarters, which were sumptuous compared to how he had been housed. He was met there by a flunky who asked him what he wanted to begin his R&R.