Armageddon In Retrospect - Kurt Vonnegut [60]
At first, Dr. Tarbell thought the reaction was due to fear—fear of the Devil’s retaliation for the war we wanted to make on him. Later, after he’d had time to study the opposition’s membership and statements, he said gleefully, “By golly, they think we’ve got a chance. And they’re all scared stiff they won’t have a chance of being so much as a dogcatcher if the Devil isn’t at large in the populace.”
But, as I said, we felt that we had less than a chance in a trillion of changing the world much more than one whit. Thanks to an accident and the undercurrent of opposition, the odds soon jumped to an octillion to one.
Shortly after the Committee’s first recommendation, the accident happened. “Any fool knows the quick and easy way to get rid of the Devil,” whispered one American delegate to another one in the U.N. General Assembly. “Nothing to it. Just blow him to hell in his headquarters in the Kremlin.” He couldn’t have been more mistaken in thinking the microphone before him was dead.
His comment was carried over the public address system, and was dutifully translated into fourteen languages. The Russian delegation walked out, and telegraphed home for a suitable reaction. Two hours later, they were back with a statement:
“The people of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics hereby withdraw all support of the United Nations Demonological Investigating Committee as being an internal affair of the United States of America. Russian scientists are in full agreement with the findings of the Pine Institute as to the presence of the Devil throughout the United States. Using the same experimental techniques, these scientists have found no signs whatsoever of the Devil’s activities within the boundaries of the U.S.S.R., and, hence, consider the problem as being uniquely American. The people of the U.S.S.R. wish the people of the United States of America success in their difficult enterprise, that they may all the sooner be ready for full membership in the family of friendly nations.”
In America, the instant reaction was to declare that any effort on UNDICO’s part in this country would mean a further propaganda victory for Russia. Other nations followed suit, declaring themselves to be already Devil-free. And that was that for UNDICO. Frankly, I was relieved and delighted. UNDICO was beginning to look like a real headache.
That was that for the Pine Institute, too, for Pine was dead broke, and had no choice but to close the doors at Verdigris. When the closing was announced, the hundreds of phonies who’d found wealth and relaxation in Verdigris stormed my office, and I fled to Dr. Tarbell’s laboratory.
He was lighting his cigar with a hot soldering iron when I entered. He nodded, and squinted through the cigar smoke at the dispossessed demonologists milling around in the courtyard below. “About time we got rid of the staff so we could get some work done.”
“We’re canned, too, you know.”
“Right now I don’t need money,” said Tarbell. “Need electricity.”
“Hurry up, then—the last check I sent the Power and Light Company was as rubber as your overshoes. What is that thing you’re working on, anyway?”
He soldered a connection to the copper drum, which was about four feet high and six feet in diameter, and had a lid on the top. “Going to be the first M.I.T. alumnus to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Think there’s a living in it?”
“Seriously.”
“Such a sober boy. First read me something aloud. That book there—see the bookmark?”
The book was a classic in the field of magic, Sir James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough. I opened it to the bookmark, and found a passage underlined, the passage describing the Mass of Saint Sécaire, or the Black Mass. I read it aloud:
“‘The Mass of Saint Sécaire may be said only in a ruined or deserted church, where owls mope and hoot, where bats flit in the gloaming, where gypsies lodge of nights, and where toads squat under the desecrated altar. Thither the bad priest comes