Free Only Human by Tom Holt

rather than feeling it himself.
    â€˜Erm,’ he said.
    The congregation looked up at him; whereupon the rest of him suggested to the valiant minority that it had better shut up or they’d chuck it out of his ear. It took the point.
    â€˜Dearly beloved,’ he said.
    Where did that come from? The memory banks, apparently. He hoped there was plenty more because he really hadn’t the faintest idea what he was supposed to be doing here, or even why he was here at all.
    Hmm. Fairly standard human mindset, as far as he could judge. Perhaps the feelings of disorientation and fear just come with the territory. He smiled.
    It didn’t go down well. The congregation shuffled their feet and carried on looking at him. He hammered on the door of the memory banks and pleaded for help.
    â€˜Dearly beloved,’ he repeated. ‘My sermon today will be about Hell.’
    The audience relaxed visibly, and Artofel cautiously allowed himself to join them. According to the get-you-started pack of memories and instincts that went with this body, he was now supposed to preach to the congregation for about a quarter of an hour on some uplifting topic; such as, for example, the horrid things that were going to happen to them after they died if they weren’t good. That, Artofel reflected, ought to be a piece of cake; except . . .
    Except that, if he told them what it was really like, they weren’t going to believe him. In fact, they’d probably start booing and throwing things. If the word-associations that went with Hell in the host’s memory were anything to go by, these people had a set of preconceptions about Flipside that made Artofel wonder if they were talking about the same place.
    Probably better, he reasoned, to give them what they’re expecting; so he launched into a rambling description of lakes of burning sulphur, dog-headed fiends, pitchforks, fire and brimstone that would’ve been downright amusing in any other context.
    It was the right thing to do, apparently; because when the service was over and the punters were filing out past him, most of them made a point of shaking him vigorously by the hand and saying how nice it was to have a good, meaty, old-fashioned sermon for a change, instead of all the modern stuff. Apparently these poor fools wanted to believe in the combination-sewage-farm-and-barbecue vision he’d conjured up for them. As if believing in all that cod somehow made them better people.
    Still, he told himself as he bolted the church door and tottered into the vestry, if that’s what they want, good luck to them; the chances were that none of them would ever get to see the real thing and realise he’d been telling them a load of porkies. And, provided he could get out of this mess and back behind his nice safe desk in HQ, he couldn’t care less anyway. He was, after all, a wages clerk, not a political officer. When it came to the crunch, what he actually knew about Good and Evil could be written on a wasp’s eyelid with a thick-nibbed pen.
    He dismissed all such considerations from his mind, remembered where his host kept a half-bottle of supermarket Scotch and took four substantial glugs. It wasn’t a patch on Flipside liquor - there are some advantages to living in God’s wine cellar - but it helped quite a lot, simultaneously clearing the mind and numbing pretty well everything else.
    In the mirror he saw a short, bald, middle-aged man with rosy cheeks and square, black-rimmed glasses; not entirely unlike what he saw in his mirror at home, except for the lack of horns and the regrettably uncloven feet. Trying to balance on these flat nan-bread-shaped things was a nightmare in itself; to someone who was used to the functional elegance of the hoof, it was like trying to do a Fred Astaire dance routine in snowshoes. The lack of horns was something else he’d have difficulty getting used to if this strange state of affairs lasted for any