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done with it.
Meanwhile the Angel was floating supremely after him, effortlessly keeping the pace. "Repent!" he cried,
lifting the sword.
Walter realized that he couldn't escape physically. He tried something truly desperate. "I repent!" he
cried, throwing himself to the ground. "I abase myself, I confess all my sins."
The Angel hovered over him. "Then give up thine evil things of the flesh," he said.
Oh-oh. That meant that words were not enough. Walter tossed away the pistol. "I give up this weapon,"
he said.
"Swear never to use such an evil device again," the Angel said.
More trouble. How long was "never"? If he forswore all guns, he would be prey to all the others in the
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game who still used them. If he got out of the game alive, would his word still bind him in life?
He concluded that he couldn't afford such a commitment. He might escape the Angel, but it would wipe
him out in the game and life, and perhaps prevent him from saving Baal. "No," he said.
The Angel swelled larger and brighter. "You swear falsely? The penalty is death!"
"No!" Walter cried. "I am refusing to swear falsely."
The Angel hesitated. "How so?"
"I need such weapons to prevail here in the game, and I have necessary things to do here," Walter
explained. "I must try to save my life, and to save the life of a woman. If I give up my weapons, I will not
be able to accomplish these things, and that would be evil."
"Evil!" the Angel cried.
"You call things evil," Walter said. "I call actions evil. I repent any evil action I have ever done, and
resolve to do no more, but things are only things and must not be abjured as evil in themselves. Therefore
I can not so swear, lest I perjure myself and in the process wreak greater evil."
The Angel stared at him. Then he faded away.
Walter stared back at the vacant space. He had hoped only to stave off the Angel's assault while he tried
to figure out what else to do. Instead, it seemed, he had abolished the Angel. By arguing the paradox of
the Angel's demand: riddance of an evil thing would enable evil to prevail. Apparently the Angel had
been programmed to respond to such logic. But Walter had only been arguing his case, not trying to
destroy the Angel. He had, it seemed, been unusually persuasive, and lucky. It figured, he realized
belatedly.
So where did that leave him with respect to the pistol? He decided that since he had reversed himself and
refused to eschew such weapons, he had won his right to use it when the Angel backed off.
But already the Sorcerer was completing another spell. "Axe," he said.
A great long-handled double-bitted battle-axe appeared. Each cutting edge gleamed sharply. There was a
spearlike point at the end. The axe hovered in the air for a moment, then flew purposefully toward
Walter.
There would be no repentance this time, Walter knew. The axe was a dumb enchanted object, knowing
only one thing: how to chop.
And chop it did. It charged him and swung itself down in an evident effort to split him into equal linear
halves. He dodged aside, and the axe smashed into a tile, sending fragments flying.
Walter did what came naturally, again: he ran. But the axe had no more trouble following him than the
Angel did. It was obvious that he couldn't avoid it more than a few seconds.
Could he get it to chop into something, getting itself stuck? Maybe, if he had a really solid green sticky
billet of wood. There was nothing of that nature in view. Could he get it to break itself up by striking hard
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objects? After seeing what it did to the stone tile, he doubted it. This thing could probably chop through
anything.
Still, he had better try, because otherwise it would be his body it chopped. He dived behind the fountain,
landing in the water, the axe in hot pursuit. It came down, cutting neatly through the stone pedestal and
the metal pipe within it, halving both. The water of the fountain squirted away to either side.
Walter splashed out to the nymph's couch and tried to hide behind it. The axe came down and chopped
couch and damsel in perfect halves. The damsel looked annoyed as she whirlpooled out.
Walter fled to the stone steps. He flung himself just around them and cowered behind. The axe cut the
staircase in half. There was, indeed, no stopping it. Its long handle almost brushed Walter's head as it
passed.
Acting on impulse, Walter reached up and grabbed that handle. The axe quivered with seeming anger and
tried to wrench itself free, but he grasped it with both hands and hung on. At least it couldn't chop him
now.
It could haul him around, though! The axe charged the wall, and Walter clung desperately, running along
behind it. It made a tight circle, trying to get behind him, but he stiffened his arms and kept himself away
from its business end.
The axe bucked, but Walter clung as if riding a bronc. It shook itself, but couldn't shake loose his death-
grip. It dived into the pool, but he dived with it.
Then it tried to fly high. Walter's hands felt as if they were being pulled off, but this was the game; as
long as he told them to grip, they gripped, and the grip could not be broken. The axe pulled so hard that it
hauled him into the air, and still he clung.
The axe, like all magical things, was tireless, but it wasn't geared for this. There were limits. Walter's
weight was too much for it, and in a moment it was dragged back down to earth. That wasn't much of a
victory for him, because it still had more than enough power to cleave him in twain if he let go. Could he
hang on for fifteen minutes? He doubted it; though his grip remained strong, his hands were sweating,
making the handle slippery, and the handle would inevitably slide out in another minute or two. That
suggested that this ploy too had been tried before, and so the sweaty-hands business had been
programmed in to nullify it.
He spied his pistol, lying on the tiles where he had thrown it during his session with the Angel. He had
decided that it was all right to use it, since he had in effect vanquished the Angel. But it was no good to
him, because he didn't have it and couldn't get it. Not unless he let go, and then the axe would chop him
in half.
Then he got a notion. It was extremely chancy, but perhaps no worse than the fate awaiting him when his
sweaty hands slipped off. It was a two- or three-stage ploy, and would require his very best effort. But if
it worked, he just might beat the Sorcerer, and nail him before the man got into the "B" spells.
Walter timed his move carefully. Then, as the axe looped by the nymph, who was now being restored
again, and the fallen pistol, he loosened his fingers and let the handle slide free. He fell to the ground, and
the axe, suddenly released, soared up into the sky.
While the thing veered out of control, Walter took a roll and grabbed the pistol. He continued his roll as
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he tucked the weapon into his waistband. The axe was recovering its equilibrium and homing in on him
again. He got his feet under himself and leaped up and away as the blade chopped viciously down,
shattering the last tile he had rolled on. So far so good; he had accomplished his first objective.
He charged the wall as the axe yanked itself up and reoriented. It was a single-minded instrument, intent
only on splitting him in twain. That was in a way its weakness; it didn't have any observational or
reasoning processes, so didn't realize or care that he had armed himself.
He put his two hands our as he crashed into the wall, the muscles of his arms acting like springs to absorb
the shock of collision. Then he rebounded, hurling himself back just as the axe chopped at the wall where
his head had been. Fragments of plaster and brick sprayed out. The force of the blow was such that the
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