"Why not? You fellows don't want to take your immortality too seriously. It's a necessary pose, of course, as a matter of business; but you see my god was really very old. He had a premonition, too, and very thoughtfully left me a letter of recommendation. Would you like to see it?"
"Thanks, but I never look at letters of recommendation. I have written too many of them. But tell me about this death of your employer."
"My partner, you mean," corrected the Devil. "Of course, I was only the junior partner, but I had a share in the loot. As I said, this chap was old and had won and lost many realms. I was with him on his final venture, running a hell as usual, and a purgatory on the side—the heavy end of the job, I call it, on that three-realm theology. This old god had nothing to do but sit up there surrounded by his angels—yes, he really had angels, old-fashioned place, you know—and wait for the resurrection when I was to deliver up his share of the loot from purgatory, and the Chief Arch was to blast the sleepers out of their graves."
"That's a bit muddled," remarked Gud.
"I grant it, but we had it arranged that way. Well, we got everything ready and I turned the crowd out of purgatory as per agreement; and the Arch blasted out the sleeping souls, and they all went trooping into heaven, demanding to see their god.
"It was a sorry affair, all those countless souls who had lived and died, and some of them had suffered in purgatory for eons. And finally they came trooping into heaven and no god in sight.
"They sent an angel down for me, for the situation was beyond those harp playing satellites. I found that the old god had died peacefully in his sleep, leaving the letter for me and a proper will drawn up, but he was dead.
"I fixed up a double and set him on the throne to keep the crowd quiet while I stood behind a screen to prompt him. But some disgruntled little wing flapper betrayed us and the fraud got out. The crowd stopped squabbling about their gowns and harps, and dropped their hymn books and stared up at us.
"It makes me sad yet when I think about it. I have roasted them and flayed them and boiled them without mercy; all that was nothing like seeing the disappointed expression in the eyes of those poor souls, all arrayed in their new celestial gowns and with harps in hand, staring like little lost children up at a dummy on the throne, and wailing because their god was dead!"
"When did all this happen?" asked Gud.