"The Lord did it by means of the Flood-"
"Surely you don't believe the Biblical tale of the Flood?"
West said austerely, "I am a creationist geologist, sir."
I understood everything. "Ah," I said. "The Lord promised he would never again send a Flood upon the Earth, but he didn't say anything about sound waves."
"Exactly! The billions of dead will fertilize and fructify the Earth, serve as food for other forms of life who have suffered much at the hands of humanity and who deserve compensation. What's more, a remnant of humanity shall undoubtedly survive. There are bound to be a few human beings who will have nucleic acids of a type that will not be sensitive to the sonic vibrations. That remnant, blessed by the Lord, can begin anew, and will perhaps have learned a lesson as to the evil of Evil, so to speak."
I said, "Why are you telling me all this?" And indeed, it had occurred to me that it was strange that he was doing so.
He leaned toward me and seized me by the lapel of my jacket-a most unpleasant experience, for his breath was rather overpowering-and said, "I have the inner certainty that you can help me in my work."
"I?" I said. "I assure you that I haven't any knowledge whatsoever concerning wavelengths, nucleic acids, and-" But then, bethinking myself rapidly, I said, "Yet come to think of it, I may have just the thing for you." And in a more formal voice, with the stately courtesy so characteristic of me, I said, "Would you do me the honor, sir, of waiting for me for perhaps fifteen minutes?"
"Certainly, sir," he answered, with equal formality. "I will occupy myself with further abstruse mathematical calculations."
As I hastened out of the lounge, I passed a ten-dollar bill to the bartender with a whispered, "See that that gentleman, if I may speak loosely, does not leave until I return. Feed him drinks and put it on my tab, if absolutely necessary."
I never fail to carry with me those simple ingredients I use to call up Azazel and, in a very few minutes, he was sitting on the bed lamp in my room, suffused with his usual tiny pink glow.
He said, censoriously, in his piping little voice, "You interrupted me when I was in the midst of constructing a papparatso with which I fully expected to win the heart of a lovely samini."
"I regret that, Azazel," I said, hoping he would not delay me by describing the nature of the papparatso or the charms of the samini, for neither of which I cared the paring of a fingernail, "but I have here a possible emergency of the most extreme sort."
"You always say that," he said, discontentedly.
Hastily, I outlined the situation, and I must say he grasped it at once. He is very good that way, never requiring long explanations. My own belief is that he peeks at my mind, although he always assures me that he considers my thoughts inviolable. Still, how far can you trust a two-centimeter extraterrestrial who, by his own admission, is constantly trying to overreach lovely saminis, whatever they are, by the most dishonorable ruses? Besides, I'm not sure whether he says he considers my thoughts inviolable or insufferable; but that is neither here nor there.
"Where is this human being you speak of?" he squeaked.
"In the lounge. It is located-"
"Don't bother. I shall follow the aura of moral decay. I think I have it. How do I identify the human being?"
"Sandy hair, pale eyes-"
"No, no. His mind."
"A fanatic."
"Ah, you might have said so at once. I have him-and I see I shall require a thorough steam-bath when I return home. He is worse than you are."
"Never mind that. Is he telling the truth?"
"About the saser? Which, by the way, is a clever conceit."
"Yes."
"Well, that is a difficult question. As I often say to a friend of mine who considers himself a great spiritual leader: What is truth? I'll tell you this; he considers it the truth. He believes it. What a human being believes, however, no matter with what ardor, is not necessarily objective truth. You have probably caught a hint of this in the course of your life."
"I have. But is there no way you can distinguish between belief that stems from objective truth and belief that does not?"
"In intelligent entities, certainly. In human beings, no. But apparently you consider this man an enormous danger. I can rearrange some of the molecules of his brain, and he will then be dead."
"No, no," I said. It may be a silly weakness on my part, but I do object to murder. "Couldn't you rearrange molecules in such a way that he will lose all memory of the saser?"
Azazel sighed in a thin, wheezing way. "That is really much more difficult. Those molecules are heavy and they stick together. Really, why not a clean disruption-"
"I insist," I said.
"Oh, very well," said Azazel, sullenly, and then he went through a whole litany of puffing and panting designed to show me how hard he was working. Finally, he said, "It's done."
"Good. Wait here, please. I just want to check it out, and then I'll be right back."
I rushed down hastily, and Hannibal West was still sitting where I had left him. The bartender winked at me as I passed. "No drinks necessary, sir," said that worthy person, and I gave him five dollars more.
West looked up cheerfully. "There you are."
"Yes, indeed," I said. "Very penetrating of you to notice that. I have the solution to the problem of the saser."
"The problem of the what?" he asked, clearly puzzled.
"That object you discovered in the course of your speleological explorations."
"What are speleological explorations?"
"Your investigations of caves."
"Sir," said West, frowning, "I have never been in a cave in my life. Are you mad?"
"No, but I have just remembered an important meeting. Farewell, sir. Probably, we shall never meet again."
I hastened back to the room, panting a little, and found Azazel humming to himself some tune favored by the entities of his world. Really, their taste in what they call music is atrocious.
"His memory is gone," I said, "and, I hope, permanently."
"Of course," said Azazel. "The next step, now, is to consider the saser itself. Its structure must be very neatly and precisely organized if it can actually magnify sound at the expense of Earth's internal heat. No doubt, a tiny disruption at some key point-something that may be within my mighty powers-could wipe out all saser activity. Exactly where is it located?"
I stared at him thunderstruck. "How should I know?" I said.
He stared at me, probably thunderstruck also, but I can never make out the expressions on his tiny face. "Do you mean to say you had me wipe out his memory before you obtained that vital piece of information? "
"It never occurred to me," I said.
"But if the saser exists, if his belief was based on objective truth, someone else may stumble upon it, or a large animal might, or a meteorite might strike it-and at any moment, day or night, all life on Earth may be destroyed."