Harlan Ellison - Deal From The Bottom

There was really quite a simple reason for Maxim Hirt's presence in the death cell. He had bungled the murder badly. The reason for his bungling was even simpler. Maxim Hirt was awfully stupid.

He had fancied himself an actor, and for a while, had even managed to convince a few people that such was the case. Then came the advent of television, and he had taken a healthy swing at appearing weekly in the homes of the nation. The paucity of his talent was painfully apparent to anyone viewing Clipper Ship, his series (where. in he played a clipper ship pilot for hire, the networks being anxious to avoid the hackneyed soldier-of-fortune for hire theme) for a famous beer concern.

It was only after the first thirteen weeks, when signs of sponsors on the horizon were dim, very dim, for renewal, that Maxim Hirt took to the telephones, to call the critics.

"Hello, Sid?"

"Who's this?"

"Max, Sid. Old Maxie Hirt, out in Coldwater Canyon."

"Yeah, Max. What can I do ya?"

"Just wanted to call, let you know my new series, y'know Clipper Ship - "

"Yeah, Max, I know."

" - let you know it's got a real winger comin' up this Thursday night. Filmed it down in Balboa. Real coo- coo, see it's about this broad, she's got an uncle who found a cache of diam - "

"What is it ya want, Max? A plug? So all right, so I'll give you a plug. Now...anything else, Max, I'm busy."

"No, no, nothing else, Sid. Just thanks a lot. I, uh, I need this plug, Sid."

"So okay, Maxie, okay, so take it easy. G'bye."

The review, ghosted by a writer of true action adventures for the hairy-chested men's magazines, read: We caught Maxim Hirt's new series Clipper Ship last night. Somehow we got the impression it was about a rugged, handsome guy who rents his plane and his talent to the highest bidder. Now that the light from the idiot box has faded, we don't know where we could have gotten that idea, because the paunchy, punchy bumbling of Hirt indicates no talent whatsoever. With luck, this abomination will not see renewal and Hirt can fold his tent...

Etcetera. The use of the word "bumbling" seemed almost mandatory when speaking of Maxim Hirt. Which was the reason, when he killed Sidney Gross, the columnist (after Clipper Ship folded its chocks and silently so forth), that he was apprehended. It was also the reason he managed to bungle away his lawyer's defense, and talked himself right into the death house.

Where he now sat, pad and pencil in hand, jotting down notes on what he would like for his last supper. Maxim, being what he was, and being basically stupid, had managed to jot only one delicacy for that final repast. Baked beans.

He was sitting on the hard-tick mattress, doodling, trying to think of something else for dinner, when the air just beyond his nose shivered, shimmered and solidified into the form of a medium-sized man. The man wore a pair of tight jeans, a black turtleneck sweater and thong sandals. His beard had a definitely Mephistophalean point to it.

"Aaargh!" aaarghed Maxim as the tail which protruded from a slash in the seat of the jeans whipped across his legs.

"Oh, sorry, man," said the bearded one. "Reflex, like a shiver, every time I get summoned. Wildsville, y'know, man."

Maxim Hirt was not very bright, but he knew a devil when he saw one. Even one who looked as beat as this item. "Y -y-y-yough, " Maxim pontificated.

"Oh, excuse the far out garb, daddy-cool. I just came from a set with a Tin Pan Alley song plugger. He wanted a hit, y'know. Hell, his soul ain't worth much, but then, business is business."

"I - I d-didn't summon y-y-you..." Maxim warbled heavily.

"Sure ya did. The doodle there," he pointed a sharp, dirty fingernail at the pad, "that's the sacred symbol, man. Like the hippest."

"But I was just d-d-doodling," Maxim argued.

"Cuts no ice, Father," said the devil. "The song plugger didn't know he was summoning, either. You'd be surprised how close to the ancient runes some of them rock n' roll lyrics get."

Maxim Hirt felt sweat coolly crawling. "What do you want from me?"

The turtled neck went up and down. "Me? Man, I don't want nothin'. I mean, like you invited me to the pad. What do you want?"

Maxim Hirt fed a bitter laugh to his lips. "There's not much you can do for me...by the way, do you have a name? Are you...are you Satan?"

The bearded one doubled with laughter, fell to the concrete floor and flopped about helplessly, his tail thrashing the walls, floor and bunk with terrible cracks. Finally he settled to rest, leaned his feet against the wall and mumbled, "Oh, man, you gas me. Satan; Satan, yet! Hell, we retired the old man aeons ago. Kicked him downstairs to a desk job. Hell, you'd never catch him out in the field. Thinks he's too good; shows you what a good press agent can do. Makes a personality out of a cat, next thing you know he's holding you up for elevator clauses, the whole schlepp."

"But who're you'!" Hirt persisted. (The madness of it all hadn't really caught up with him yet.) "Oh, man, if you must hang a tag, lay it on me like Skidoop. You dig'!"

"Y-yes, I suppose so."

"Now, like I've made the scene, Pops, so what do you want'! You name it, I frame it. Swing."

"Like I was saying," Hirt squeezed his hands together in anguish, "there isn't anything you can do for me, unless you can get me out of here. Otherwise I go to the gas chamber tomorrow morning."

Skidoop shook his head, and looked ceilingward. "No skin, man. I can do almost anything, but not that. It involves your destiny, and that's His bailiwick." He pointed at the ceiling. "Got the whole damned market on destinies cornered. Got there first. "

"Well, then what good are you?"

Skidoop looked pained. "Man, I'm beginning to feel you are very unhip. Come to think of it, you dig Camus, Goethe, Kerouac, Rexroth, the rest of the boppers'!"

"Uh..." Hirt began.

"I figured. You're so far out you'd have to masquerade to get back in. But like my uncle Moishe keeps tellin' me, biz is biz. So what can I do for you, right?"

"Yes. What can you do for me'!"

"Well, we can always introduce an extenuating circumstance, that's cool. No rules against that; I introduce the e.c. and you change your own destiny. How's that swing'!"

"Fine, but how can you do it'!"

Skidoop fingered his beard, muttered something about getting a bellows and trimming it with a pair of wire cutters, and jubilantly replied, "There! You're writing down your last meal. So okay, so I give you the ability to eat. To eat and eat and eat, just keep feeding your face, without any debilitating physical side-effects, and they never gas you."

"They never gas me'! Why not'!"

"Who ever heard of killing a guy when he's eating his last meal'! It can't be done. It's barbaric. A cincheroonie."

Maxim Hirt's commercially handsome face sloughed into an expression connoting thought. A look of guile overcame his features. "You guarantee it'll work? I can keep eating indefinitely and it won't hurt me at all?" The bearded one waved a negligent palm. "Not a bit."

"I've heard about deals with you people," Hirt noted. "I'd have to have immortality along with it. You might fix it so I'd eat myself to death. Can you give me immortality with it?"

Skidoop thought for a moment, then said thoughtfully, "Well, we'd have to put in a clause about that.

Contingent on whether or not they avoid frying you. If they don't, you get the immortality. But if they do, why should I waste valuable life-force on you, since His destiny ruling would come first, anyhow, and they'd gas you anyway."

"I get immortality if this extenuating circumstance works, right?"

"Correct-o-roony," said Skidoop, snapping his fingers in contrapuntal variation.

Hirt again looked wary. "What do you get? I've heard about how you guys always gyp a client."

"The vicissitudes of a bad press, man. Nothin' but a hard sell from Him. We wouldn't stay in business long if we didn't give good service."

"What do you get, then?"

"Your soul, man, the standard kick."

Hirt went white, and shook his head from side-to-side with frantic intensity. "Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh!" he voted the motion down.

Skidoop spread his hands. "Oh, man, will you like please cool it. I mean, fade blade. You know what your soul is?"

Hirt waggled his head again.

"It's only your imagination. That's all. I mean, they jabber about this and that and the soul kick and the life force kick, and all of it, when the straight poop is that it's only your imagination."

"That's all?"

"That's all, daddy-cool. And let's face it, if I wasn't bound by the Fair Trade Union, I wouldn't even have come on this summons. I mean, let's face it, dad, you haven't got much imagination to begin with. "

"And nothing else?"

"Nothing else."

"Honest Injun?"

"Tear out my heart and hope to burn!"

"Okay, it's a deal. But let's get it straight once more..."

"I'll run through it, from the top: I give you the ability to keep eating, as long as you live, and if they don't gas you, then you get immortality on top of it. In exchange for which all I take is your imagination."

"Where's the pen to sign the paper?" Hirt asked, now anxious.

"Paper, pen? Oh, man, all them modern fantasy writers been corrupting the legend again. We do it in blood; good old legal tender. No contract, just a mix of the haemoglobin, tom."

Hirt was surprised.

"What type are you, man, so I'll know if I have to ring in a notary with all-purpose corpuscles? CP A, Corpuscle Public Accountant."

Hirt tried to remember, then said, "I'm type 'O'."

"Nutsville," Skidoop caroled, and bit a hole in his wrist. The blood began spurting. He offered a finger to Hirt, and the condemned man used the sharp fingernail to start a scratch on his own forearm. They mixed. "Done!" Skidoop chortled, grabbed the imagination in both hands, wrenched it loose, and split the scene. Maxim Hirt sat on the bunk, and knew an would be well. He had it knocked.

Which was true. Because when they brought him his meal, he ate and ate and ate and ate.

And did not stop eating; so they commuted his sentence to life, because you can't strap a man in the gas chamber who hasn't finished his last meal.

Which would not have been such a bad way to finish out a life, sitting there eating an day and night, except that when Skidoop took Hirt's imagination, he took Hirt's ability to think of anything else but baked beans to eat. So the last meal consisted of baked beans, plate by plate by plate by...

Obviously, it was a deal from the bottom.

In many ways, it was a fate worse than death.