And The Devil Will Drag You Under (1979) (19 page)

O'Toole was still standing there, but now had as-sumed a fencer's position. She stepped up on the platform beyond the curtain and faced him, also at the ready.

They began. A few feints, testing each other out, then becoming a bit more serious.

Feint-thrust-parry! Feint! Thrust! Parry! Back and forth they dueled, gathering increasing admiration for each other's skills.

"One thing!" she yelled at him even as they con-tinued to fence and dance, she trying to get near the box, he trying to prevent her, and both trying to avoid the bed with the demon upon it.

"Tell me the name of the master who sent you here! Was it Mogart?"

He never let down his guard and, in fact, started pressing his attack, yet he answered, "Nay, lass, I know not a Mogart. 'Twas old Theritus the tempter who sent me, ten thousand curses on his immortal hellish soul!"

Somehow that made her feel better. She surged with added vigor and started pressing him back. While it was true that he had no physical substance, the sword did, and required force to wield it and mass to support it, which meant that she might as well be fighting a live man. The only problem was, even if she stabbed him through the heart she would do no damage to him, only open herself to a deadly counterthrust.

"The hell with this!" she snapped, and jumped upon the bed. The demon in it stirred and mumbled a few meaningless noises but did not awaken.

The maneuver had taken O'Toole by surprise and he'd lunged forward, then had to turn to face her. As soon as he did, she jumped back onto the floor-only then was she where she needed to be, allowing him to press as she retreated; parrying his attempts, backing up slowly, carefully, toward the foot of the bed and the little chest.

The old ghost was impressed. "Bless me! Why didn't I think of that?" he seemed to scold himself. "Up on old druggie's bed and about! What a fool ye are, O'Toole!"

She was back to where she had to be, and, if anything, the Irish ghost had eased off, laid back to allow her to use her free hand to flip open the box. The jewel was in there, lying on a bed of yellow satin. She'd almost expected it not to be.

All at once she realized that the ghost was not pressing at all. He was
letting
her take the jewel!

She turned, sword still
en garde,
and looked in wonder at the specter. "Why?" she asked him.

Again the Irish chuckle. "Faith, lass, ye duel as well as any I've ever fought, and better than any man I can think of! I'm not heartless, either. Ye
earned
yer way past me with the blade, and ye need the bauble for good purpose. When ye leave, I'll still have my exchange, and we'll see how good the other lass is as well!"

She thought about it. Here she was, the jewel in her hand, and a gallant and likable ghost was allowing her a getaway at the price of another's innocent life. No, more than that, for she would condemn Yoni to per-haps centuries here, alone with the drugged demon. There
had
to be an answer! There
had
to be!

O'Toole seemed puzzled. "What's the matter, lass? Conscience? 'Tis a bad thing to have. It always gets in the way. Do it, lass! I grow increasingly impatient to break these bonds, and I'll not wait until close to daylight and be robbed of my freedom when she's good as dead, anyway. Do it-or stay and join her! Choose now!"

She felt like a trapped rat whose only means of escape was to feed its mate to the cat, yet O'Toole was right. She could not delay.

"I'm sorry," she began, speaking to Yoni trapped inside, when all of a sudden an idea came to her-one gamble, one risk, one possibility. "I'm sorry-O'Toole," she said softly, then shouted quickly, "Jewel! Take me to my room at the inn!"

The world blinked, and then, quite suddenly, she was immersed in darkness. She still held the sword and used it to feel her way around wherever she was.

She'd taken the one gamble-that, being an alien on this world, the jewel that obeyed her order to take her to Mogart would obey other orders as well. It had been a dangerous thesis; if she had been wrong, it could have killed her or trapped her somewhere in between the worlds.

The fact that she still held the sword told her that she was still Yoni, still in Yoni's body. There were solid things in the blackness, and a path between. She felt her way with the sword, then found a wall and walked to it, feeling along it with her hands. She pushed when something seemed loose, and a shutter opened.

She looked out on the street below the room at the inn, dimly lit by oil lamps. "Oh, thank God!"

she breathed, and sank down, crying softly for a while.

Her other hand held the jewel. She looked at it glowing in the dark.

It started to burn her.

"Goodbye and thank you, Yoni the Thief," she said aloud. "May good fortune follow you."

Inside her head, there seemed to be a feeling of thanks and relief.

The jewel was terribly hot now; she had to go before it killed the woman it had been used to save.

"Take me to Asmodeus Mogart!" Jill McCulloch demanded.

The nothingness took on a new texture as she sped back to her world. She'd learned some valuable things, though, this time out, although some seemed of doubt-ful use. She'd learned that human beings, too, could command the jewels.

She'd learned something about herself, too. She hoped it would not be tested again, for next time there might be no demon in man's skin or magical way out.

She prayed that she be spared that most terrible of choices.

Main Line + 2076

MOGART WAS EASY TO LOCATE IN THE BAR.

"I went down to the Saint James Infirmary,"
he was bawling, horribly out of tune,
"to see my
poor bay-be there!"

"Mogart!" Jill McCulloch yelled to him. "Sober up!"

Mogart clutched a drink uncertainly, spilling a little. He didn't seem to hear her. "Damn, can never 'mem-ber the rest of it." He swigged on the glass, then looked up, seemed to brighten. "Oh, yeah." He mumbled to himself, then started,
"Come to me my melancholy baby!"

"Asmodeus Mogart!" she practically screamed at him. "It's me! Jill McCulloch! I have the jewel!"

He halted in midword, seemed to realize that he was not alone in this time frame, and looked around to see her standing there. He grinned stupidly.

"Hi, there, girlie! Have a drink and siddown!"

She had not left the chalk pentagram on the floor the last time, and decided not to leave it this time, either. She suspected that to do so would require set-ting up another, and Mogart was in no condition for that.

She held up the jewel, which burned no longer, for she was now in her own body and holding an alien jewel. "Look, Mogart! See what I've got!" she invited. He looked, couldn't seem to focus, then looked again and seemed to see it. He grinned drunkenly, got up from the stool, and started making his way to her with extreme difficulty.

"A jewel!" he exclaimed, amazed, then stopped and stood unsteadily a few feet from her. "It-it is one, isn't it?"

"It is," she affirmed, then glanced at the clock. It was almost midnight. Mogart had been wrong about the time differential.

The drunken demon reached for the jewel, missed it, finally grabbed it on the second try, and looked at it in bleary amazement. "Bedamned," he mumbled. "Lemme shee, now." He reached into his pocket, missed it three times, finally found it and got into it by using his other hand to steady the coat, and brought out the other jewels.

Jill McCulloch's heart leaped. Four! He had
four!
That meant that the man, Mac whatever his name was, had gotten one! Two to go, and almost five hours on the clock. They could make it!

Mogart seemed to be just staring at the jewels, and she suddenly realized that he'd gone to sleep like that, standing up and holding the glowing orbs.

"Mogart!" she yelled at the top of her lungs.

He started. "Umh? Huh?" he managed, and shook his head for a moment, then looked up at her. "Yesh?"

"Send me after the next jewel! We have a chance to get all six!"

He seemed to struggle with himself, to bring himself together. It was a losing proposition, but he did manage to pocket the jewels on the first try.

"Shorry," he mumbled apologetically. "I-I drink, y'know. I-I don' think I can go with you thish time, you'll have to go yourself," he added. "I'd just screw things up."

"But you've
got
to!" she pleaded. "How will I know whose body to use or what the rules are?"

He shrugged. "Itsh a counterpart world," he told her. "Same short of shtuff as this one.

Alternate ideas -controls and all that sort of rot. Magic works, machines don't, otherwisch the same. You don' need no body 'cause you're already there!" he explained mys-teriously.

She wasn't sure she liked this, but she had no choice. "Walters!" she shouted at him, suddenly remembering the man's last name. "If Walters gets back, send him to me!"

Mogart nodded. "Why not?" he said. "Sho go-got lotsa time there. One hour, one week. Lotsa time. But Theritus, he loves the good life but he's dangerous, like me." He drew himself up straight, but the figure was more ludicrous than terrifying.

"Asmodeus, King of the Demons!" he proclaimed, and fell flat on his face. The drink and glass shattered and splattered everywhere.

He looked up at her drunkenly. "Before you go, can you please help me?"

"I don't think I should get out of the pentagram," she responded dubiously.

"Oh, no, no, don't get out," he murmured. "Just tell me one thing-do you know the next four lines to
Saint James Infirmary?"

She sighed, exasperated. "Yes, sure I do," she told him.

"Excellent!" he cried triumphantly. "Now go!" There was blackness.

Main Line +2000 Training Ground #4

1

"I DARE NOT EVEN ENTER THIS PLANE," MOGART HAD told him as they'd traveled.

"Of all the problems, this is the one that I fear the most. It is a training area for adepts in the Probabilities Department-not very large as universes go, and tremendously malleable. Unlike most of the planes, this one has no fixed rules. It is designed to respond to the willpower of the utilizer.

Thus, you're going to encounter not an old sot or a nut case but someone fully in good with the powers that be."

Mac was nervous about that. "Then with the jewel and no weaknesses, I'll be a sitting duck for him," he'd objected.

"Not at all," the demon had responded. "The jewel is of no consequence here except to get you in or out. Nor did I say that brother Abaddon had no weak-nesses. He has a great many that might well be his undoing in the future, but the one most prominent and the one you can make the most use of is that he is a compulsive gambler. It's only because he is that we are risking this one. And he is honorable, as things go. If you wager with him he will play by the rules and will honor the terms of the wager. Beware, though -he loves loopholes, and he will take advantage of any you leave him."

Mac Walters had smiled bitterly, thinking of the rules of the fight back in that other, primitive world. "I'll take care on that score. But what am I to expect? What sort of rules apply here?"

"No rules at all, except what is made by willpower. All that you will see and hear is created in another's mind. You will find that you, too, will be able to do the same thing if you can concentrate and place your requirements in clear terms in your own mind. Don't try a contest of wills, though. Abaddon has the advantage in mental training and experience. First look over the place and test yourself out. There are a lot of leftovers from other training exercises, and more than likely he'll just consider you one of those. Then, when you think you are ready, seek him out-chal-lenge him, appeal to his sporting interests. A contest under clearly defined rules for the jewel. He'll leap at it. The rest, though-winning it, I mean-that's up to you.” There had been more, of course. These training levels were used between testing out new jobs and concepts as refresher courses for active experimenters. That was what Abaddon was doing now. It was, in many ways, a sophisticated equivalent of target practice for a marksman. Now Mac entered the plane, not in anyone else's body but as himself, for the train-ing ground was open.

If there was a hell, he decided, this might be it-the real thing. A gray nothingness spread from horizon to horizon; the ground was featureless as well, with the appearance of dull gray tile but with the feel and consistency of hard-packed dirt. There was no moon, no stars, no sun, although an eerie bright twilight permeated everything. There was no problem seeing where you were going, but there didn't seem anyplace to go.

Yet, somehow, even the stagnant and heavy air around him seemed to be charged with some sort of energy, some kind of electricity he sensed but could not otherwise identify. There was nothing to see, hear, smell, taste, or touch-yet it was there, all the same, and could be felt by some inner part of his brain.

The line "and the Earth was without form or void" came unbidden into his mind, and Mac realized that this must be what it had been like. He resisted the temptation to proclaim "Let there be light!" For all the evidence to the contrary, Mogart had told him he was not alone here, and he was almost afraid that if he said something like that, the living energy all around him would obey and give him away.

He stopped and considered what Mogart had said. The energy
would
be obedient to him if he learned how to use it. You only had to be specific in your mind as to what you wanted; great computers of some sort, filled with every bit of knowledge necessary to creation, were here, or could be tapped from here. If you wanted a tree you need only have a clear idea of the tree you wanted-the physiology, chemistry, all the other material necessary to that tree would be provided.

You could change that formula, of course, but only if you so directed.

He considered that. It might do to experiment on some scale before going any further. He held out his hand, looked at it, and said commandingly, "Let there be an apple in my hand!"