Armageddon In Retrospect - Kurt Vonnegut [62]
Now, in the name of science and humanity, Dr. Tarbell put his whole heart into the performance of the Mass of Saint Sécaire, doing, with a look of horror on his face, what no good Christian could look upon without being struck blind and deaf and dumb.
I somehow survived with my senses, and sighed with relief as the clock in Schenectady knelled twelve.
“Appear, Satan!” shouted Dr. Tarbell as the clock struck. “Hear your servants, Lord of Night, and appear!”
The clock struck for the last time, and Dr. Tarbell slumped against the altar, exhausted. He straightened up after a moment, shrugged, and smiled. “What the hell,” he said, “you never know until you try.” He took off his headset.
I picked up a screwdriver, preparing to disconnect the wires. “And that, I hope, really winds up UNDICO and the Pine Institute,” I said.
“Well, still got a few more ideas,” said Dr. Tarbell. And then he howled.
I looked up to see him wide-eyed, leering, trembling all over. He was trying to say something, but all that came out was a strangled gurgle.
Then began the most fantastic struggle any man will ever see. Dozens of artists have tried to paint the picture, but, bulging as they paint Tarbell’s eyes, red as they paint his face, knotted as they paint his muscles, they can’t recapture a splinter of the heroism of Armageddon.
Tarbell dropped to his knees, and, as though straining against chains held by a giant, he began to inch toward the copper drum. Sweat soaked his clothes, and he could only pant and grunt. Time and again, as he would pause to catch his breath, he was pulled back by invisible forces. And again he would rise to his knees, and toil forward over the lost ground and inches beyond.
At last he reached the drum, stood with stupendous effort, as though lifting bricks, and tumbled into the opening. I could hear him scratching against the insulation inside, and his breathing was amplified in the chamber, awing.
I was stupefied, unable to believe or understand what I’d seen, or to know what to do next.
“Now!” cried Dr. Tarbell from within the drum. His hand appeared for a moment, pulled the lid shut, and once more he cried, sounding far away and weak, “Now.”
And then I understood, and began to quake, and a wave of nausea passed over me. I understood what it was he wanted me to do, what he was asking with the last fragment of his soul that was being consumed by the Devil in him.
So I locked the lid from the outside, and I closed the switch.
Thank heaven Schenectady was nearby. I telephoned a professor of electrical engineering from Union College, and, inside of three-quarters of an hour, he had devised and installed a crude air-lock, through which air and food and water could be gotten to Dr. Tarbell, but which always kept an electrified, Devil-proof barrier between him and the outside.
Certainly the most heartbreaking aspect of the tragic victory over the Devil is the deterioration of Dr. Tarbell’s mind. There is nothing left of that splendid instrument. Instead, there is something that uses his voice and body, that wheedles and tries to gain sympathy and freedom by shouting, among other bitter lies, that Tarbell was dumped into the drum by me. If I may say so, my own role has not been without pain and sacrifice.
Since the Tarbell affair is, alas, controversial, and since, for propaganda reasons, our country cannot officially admit that the Devil was caught here, the Tarbell Protective Foundation is without Government subsidies. The expense of maintaining the Devil-trap and its contents has been borne by donations from public-spirited individuals like yourself.
The expenditures and proposed expenditures of the Foundation are extremely modest in proportion to value received by all humanity.