He muttered unhappily, reaching for more grapes, while Henry began to decide nothing was going to happen to him, at least physically. Souls were things he wasn't quite sure of, but he couldn't see how just talking to Alféar could endanger his.
"Still," the creature said thoughtfully, "it could be worse. No pentagram. I never did get mixed up with some of the foul odors and messes some of my friends had to take. And I've developed quite a taste for sugar; tobacco, too." He reached out and plucked a cigarette out of Henry's pack, then a book of matches. He lighted it, inhaled, and rubbed the flame out on his other palm. "Kind of weak tobacco, but not bad. Any more questions while I smoke this? There's no free oxygen where I come from, so I can't smoke there."
"But if you demons answer such—such summons, why don't people know about it now?" Henry asked. "I'd think more and more people would be going in for this sort of thing. If the wizards were right all along...."
"They weren't, and we're not demons. It didn't get started until your Middle Ages. And if it hadn't been for old Apalon...." Alféar lighted another cigarette off the butt, which he proceeded to extinguish on the tip of his sharp tongue. He scratched his head thoughtfully, and then went on.
"Apalon was studying your worship. You see, we've been studying your race the way you study white rats, using lower races to explain our own behavior. Anyhow, he got curious and figured out a way to mentalize himself into your plane. He was sort of a practical joker, you might say. So he picked a time when some half-crazy witch was trying to call up the being you worship as Satan to make some kind of a deal. Just as she finished, he popped up in front of her, spitting out a bunch of phosphorus to make a nice smoke and fire effect, and agreed with all her mumbo-jumbo about having to do what she wanted. She wanted her heart fixed up then, so he showed her how to use belladonna and went back, figuring it was a fine joke.
"Only he made a mistake. There's something about moving between planes that lowers the resistance to conditioning. Some of our people can take five or six trips, but Apalon was one of those who was so conditioning-prone that he had the habit fixed after the first trip. The next time she did the rigamarole, back he popped. He had to dig up gold for her, hypnotize a local baron into marrying her, and generally keep on the constant qui vive, until she got sloppy and forgot the pentagram she thought protected her and which he was conditioned to. But after he disintegrated her, he found she'd passed on the word to a couple of other witches. And he knew somebody at the Institute was bound to find what a fool he'd made of himself.
"So he began taking members aside and telling them about the trick of getting into your world. Excellent chance for study. Have to humor the humans by sticking to their superstitions, of course. One by one, they went over on little trips. It wasn't hard to find some superstitious dolt trying to summon something, since word had got around in your world. One of us would pop up, and that spread the word further. Anyhow, when Apalon was sure each member had made enough trips to be conditioned, he'd tell him the sad truth, and swear him to secrecy on penalty of being laughed out of the Institute. The old blaggard wound up with all of us conditioned. There was quite a flurry of witchcraft here, until we finally found a psychiatrist who could break the habit for us. Even then, it was tough going. We'd never have made it without the inquisitions and witch-burnings one of our experimental sociologists managed to stir up."
Alféar put out the third cigarette butt and stood up slowly. "Look, I don't mind a chat now and then, but my wives are waiting dinner. How about dismissing me?"
"Umm." Henry had been thinking while he listened. It had sounded like a reasonable explanation on the whole, except for the bit about Apalon's disintegrating the witch. Apparently as long as a man wasn't too unreasonable, there was a certain usefulness to having such friends on call. "What about the price for your help? I mean—well, about souls...."
Alféar twitched his ears disgustedly. "What the deuce would I do with your soul, Henry? Eat it? Wear it? Don't be a shnook!"