Page 18 - Ferry Tales

Cado

“Fine, fine,” he says, as if I have a problem. “I’ll take it up with
someone in a position of authority. What is the name of your
supervisor?”
“You know damn well who that is. Good luck.”
“Thank you.” Cado had the snide politeness down pat, the
result of decades of trampling over underlings and kissing up to
his superiors. “He will have to follow the rules, same as anyone. I
made a deal fair and square: he could have my soul if he cleared
my path to taking over Global Eyes and Ears, Ltd. It didn’t
happen. They laid me off before I could even make it to the
lowest level of vice president. So, there it is: he didn’t deliver, so
he can’t have it. Or me. Whatever. Change course now, my man:
else you may be disciplined for aiding in this miscarriage of
justice.”
Well, you know me, old mega-mastiff: patience is my strong
suit. You can’t go off like a jet of magma every time a passenger
becomes obnoxious—not if you want to be a ferryman. But I
couldn’t let him sit there nursing his grudge and acting like the
owner of a yacht.
So I says to him—calmly, of course!—”I’m no infernal lawyer,
Mr. Cado, but I wonder if you could produce that document. I’d
like to see the wording in the contract.”
“Very funny,” he comes back. “Nothing is in writing in this
sort of affair. You should know that. The Devil appears in your
head as just another voice. It takes a while to recognize that it’s
not one of your own. It’s behind you, or on your shoulder, or in
your stomach. And it’s singing the siren song of temptation. You
know that there’s never something for nothing, and you’ve heard
all your life about the deal of a lifetime. So you give it some
thought, look at it from all angles and decide it’s worth it. You do
that mentally, and the voice agrees. That means you are prepared
to pay the price—if you get what is promised. As far as I’m
concerned, the Devil is a cheat and a liar, and the deal is null and
void.”
I pretend to think things over, and then I tell him this, in a very
judicial manner: “You have stated your case, and now it is time to
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