read too many Happy Birthday cards, Mr. Fangs. After the last of these gewgaws has blown its lid, there won’t be no geraniums left to tell the tale, the watering cans’ll be scrap and so will the people that were gonna use them on the geraniums that ain’t there anymore.”
“Technically, sir, we call it the nuclear winter,” said the physicist. “Allow me to explain: as the radioactive cloud—” but Lucifer was gone, gone like a shot, gone in a panic that was a pity to see. The truth is, the devil needs people for his mischief, because there’s no such thing as disembodied mischief. Mischief is absolutely void until it gets into living creatures. So the devil flew like a bullet to the mansion of the lord, where he didn’t even announce himself; he merely plunged in and demanded an immediate audience.
When God took him into his private cabinet, he couldn’t hold himself back. “Murder,” he bawled, “it’s murder, it’s massacre, it’s a plot against me, don’t tell me it isn’t, I ought to know a plot when I see one, and what in hell am I going to do without people?”
The lord chuckled. He’d never seen Lucifer in such a broil. “At last,” he said, and then he repeated, “at last and at long last I have found the way of besting you. The forces of evil are smashed. Hang up your pitchfork, Satanas, I’ve outsmarted you. I’m almighty after all.”
“You mean—” said the devil, gasping. “I do. From now on, it’s cosmic dust for you; enjoy it if you can.”
And that is the story of how evil had to quit the Earth forever.
HOW GOD LEARNED WHAT MEASURE IS
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