And the Devil Will Drag You Under Read online

  Mogart smiled, let out a deep sigh, and put the jewel back in his pocket. "I am the sole input," he intoned lightly under his breath. "The two are bound as my vassals, and so it shall remain as long as I have need of them." He lapsed into thought for a moment, then said, "All right, let's get things straight. We have five jewels to get and we have very little time. The best way is to dispatch each of you to a different plane-a one-person operation. As soon as you have the jewel in your physical possession, just wish yourself back to me and you will come. That should simplify matters a bit-you won't have to worry about a getaway. With-out their jewels, the rogues can't even give chase. If one of you has more success than the other, well, we'll continue with the operation with the other, and if we're lucky, both of you will combine for the last two quests."

  "You mean we'll be alone?" Jill gasped. "Not even a team? I thought the two of us-"

  "No time," Mogart cut her off. "But you won't be alone. I cannot go anywhere physically from this plane except back home-the Main Line, as it's called. But I can be summoned when needed, and I can also pre-pare the way. You will be matched to the plane-time rate, language, whatever will be needed for you to be both unobtrusive and safe from death through ignor­ance of local conditions. Also, it's possible for anyone with a jewel to find the whereabouts of any other jewel-bearer, just in case. Since you are bound to me, it's just about the same, so you won't have to comb a whole world." He slid out from the booth and stood. "Come on! Let's be away!"

  They also slid out and stood, and as they did, Mogart walked in back of the bar, took a glass, and poured himself a straight double shot of Scotch.

  The young couple looked nervously at the barman. He seemed still, as if frozen in position, eyes wide open but unseeing. Mac went up to him and examined him closely.

  The barman seemed to be alive, but a living statue.

  "No, nothing's wrong with him, or with anybody else in the bar," Mogart told Mac, anticipating the question. "It's us. As soon as you both entered my service, I started speeding us up. We won't be able to put you in the proper planes until you are physically, temporally, matched to their rates." He downed the contents of the glass, coughed, belched, and then came back around the bar.

  "All right. Just a second." He took a piece of chalk from the blackboard behind the bar announcing spe­cial drink prices, cleared a place in front of the bar of furniture, and motioned them both to come to him.

  "Stand close together," he instructed, "while I draw this thing. Don't touch or cross the line," he warned.

  Quickly he bent and sketched out a chalk pentagram around them, with the three of them in the middle, then stood up and turned to face them.

  "Ready?" he asked, and before they could reply things started to happen.

  The entire bar and its people and contents seemed to fade slowly out of existence. It was replaced with a grayness, a nothingness that nonetheless seemed to be substantial, to be something or some place. They had no bearings; even the floor was gone, and they felt as if they were floating. Now and then images would flicker by for an instant, but never long enough to tell what shapes and scenes they held.

  "It is now six-fifteen, in your world, on the evening of August twelfth." Mogart's voice came to them, not as if he were speaking but as if he were somehow projecting his thoughts into their minds. "Remember, time is of the essence, and one failure means we all fail. Even though the worlds in which you will exist run much faster, time will not stop on Earth. The quicker each jewel is procured, the better."

  "Where are we going first?" Jill asked, still feeling that she was in some sort of strange dream.

  "We will choose the lines temporally closest to ours and close in as we go," Mogart explained, at the same time explaining nothing.

  "I'm not sure I want-" Mac Walters began, but it was too late. One of those flickering images came up and he felt himself being pushed out into it by a force too strong to resist.

  A few seconds later Jill McCulloch felt the same shove.

  What they wanted was strictly beside the point, Mogart thought with satisfaction. Time was of the es­sence, and the sooner they got started the sooner he could get back to that damned bar and get himself another drink.

  Main Line + 1130

  Zolkar

  1

  SHE FELL AS IF FROM A GREAT HEIGHT, YET SHE HIT cool grass with little impact and rolled comfortably. Then she picked herself up and looked around.

  She was on the edge of a forest, near a main road paved with hand-hewn bricks leading off to a town in the distance that seemed to be out of the Arabian Nights minus the desert. Spires and minarets abounded, the only tall structures in a village other-wise without any real multistory buildings. Everything seemed made of brick or of some sort of adobe.

  It was a quiet place, though; some birds flew and whistled in the winds above the trees, and occasionally an insect would buzz by, but beyond this there was a stillness.

  It is really a pretty scene, she thought.

  She heard someone move near her and turned with a start to see Mogart. At least she hoped it was Mogart -he was now nude, and; she discovered irritably, so was she.

  Mogart was much more alien and fearsome when unclothed. From his forehead now sprang two tiny horns which, she realized, had probably been there all along but were masked by the thick head of hair, and his face looked much more demonic and inhuman. His upper torso was squat and surprisingly muscular, and, she saw, he had no navel.

  From the waist down he was covered in a deep blue fur tinged here and there with gray, leading down to two powerful animal-like feet terminating in cloven hooves. His tail, tied somehow in his suit, was now revealed to be long and serpentine, ending in an arrow-shaped membrane. Even his hands seemed more fearsome, more menacing, his long fingers terminating in what might better be described as claws than hands.

  "Please don't be alarmed," he said gently to her. "First of all, I can't translate the artifacts of a world without more power, and that, alas, includes clothing. But this should serve a good purpose as well. Now you see me as I really am, and you have your memory of me as a disguised human of your line. This should give you more clues as to what to look for in my brother here. We all would look identical to your eyes, I assure you-so you're looking for another like me."

  She accepted that much, still having some of that dreamlike feeling. "But what about me?" she asked him, concerned. "Surely I can't go nude into a new society." She stopped for a second, thoughts diverted. "You are transparent," she noted. "I can see very slightly through you."

  He nodded. "And you, too. We are slightly out of phase with this world as yet, deliberately. We can perceive its reality but are not yet a part of it. I cannot be-this is about as much as you can get of me. We are ghosts here; they cannot see or hear us. Come, let us go toward the city while I brief you on this rather strange place. Do not be worried if we encounter anyone; I assure you and your modesty that we can't be seen, heard, or felt."

  She had no choice; she started walking with him over to and then down the Toad.

  "The city is called Zolkar; we are still on the Earth and within your own standards of what is human, so we don't have that problem."

  "And the jewel-the other one of you-is in this Zolkar?" she quizzed.

  He nodded. "Yes, indeed. I dare not get too close to him or he will become aware of my presence-and that would be disastrous. But it is definitely in Zolkar ­the jewels draw each other together like magnets. It is here. I know this because we are here, and we could therefore be nowhere else."

  "What sort of place is this, then?" she prodded.

  "A very nice one, really," he responded. "As I remember it, the Philosophy Department got into a big dispute over whether or not there was an innate moral sense, or whether or not people could be trained to have a totally ethical behavior set. This world is one of the attempts at finding out. Do you know anything about the Islamic faith?"

  She shrugged. "Not much. I thought this place looked
kind of Middle Eastern, despite the trees."

  "This is approximately the location of San Jose, California, in your world," he told her. "And the faith here is more like Islam than others, about in the same way that Judaism and Pentecostal Christianity are more like each other than either is to, say, Zen Buddhism. The rules are fairly simple and basic-sin is defined by the rules as anything you think of as a sin, within certain limits, of course. Insanity is compensated for, and conscience is established by social rules taught from the cradle. The difference is that if you commit a sin in our little corner you might feel guilty, but here sin is divinely punished. It makes for a wonderful ex­periment in Pavlovian conditioning-divine justice is meted out equally to all. It works pretty well, at that-drop a gold coin here, and they will rush to return it to you. There is none of the fear and tension plaguing your civilization. It's pretty dull, actually, which is why the experiment was abandoned."

  She stopped short. "Do you mean that anything I do that either I or this society considers wrong is pun­ished? A bolt from the blue?"

  He nodded. "Oh, yes. Just so. The University uses this place now only for the most serious miscreants of my own people."

  Jill was sure she wasn't going to like this at all. He caught her reluctance and said, "Look, we need the jewel and we have no slip-ups allowed us. You must do it."

  She shook her head in bewilderment. "But how do you steal a jewel-or anything, for that matter-when you can't get away with anything?"

  He shrugged. "Hopefully you'll figure that out. As you will see, particularly among the younger ones here, there is sin, but it doesn't last long. Excessive pride might make you incapable of lying; vanity is a sure guarantee of ugliness. Severity increases with repetition, so a first-time thief might lose only a couple of fingers."

  She shuddered. "Is there any way to reverse this divine verdict?"

  "Oh, yes," he replied lightly. "If it's a sin with vic­tims, you must confess to your victims and beg their forgiveness, which will wipe away the sin. They have to forgive, you know. Otherwise they'd have no charity or compassion, and that would mean they would have divine retribution in kind. If you commit a victimless crime, you bear the punishment until true repentance and contrition is within you, and you beg God for for­giveness. Commit the same offense three times and you're stuck with it for life."

  They were approaching a robed and bearded peasant walking alongside a cart being pulled by an enormous bison. They approached from his rear, and Jill became conscious once again of her nudity."

  "I told you we aren't of this world as yet," Mogart chided, and walked around the cart. When she hesi­tated, she felt a strong taloned hand grab her arm and pull it forward.

  It was true. The peasant paid them no notice what­soever. Once she accepted the situation, she went over and walked beside the peasant, even putting her hands in front of his eyes. Neither man nor animal took any notice at all.

  She felt better, relaxed, and they entered the city.

  Still, she began to have a different sense of unease as she looked at the alien buildings and exotic dress of the inhabitants. This was not her world nor her people; even if time were not a factor, it would be almost impossible to feel at home here, to operate inconspicuously and, yes, daringly.

  For the first time she grasped the reality of the situ­ation, and it unsettled her. She felt like a spy in a strange land, an amateur spy totally ill-equipped for a dangerous mission.

  "I don't think I can manage this," she muttered.

  Mogart seemed less bothered. "Don't worry so much. I wouldn't just plop you here alone. Ho! See? The street we're looking for!"

  They turned a corner and she saw a nearly de­serted street composed of cracked one- and two-story adobe houses.

  Mogart seemed to know where he was going, and she had to trust him. At the ninth door he stopped, turned, grinned, showing those sharp, stained teeth, and said, "Come on. Follow me." With that he walked right through the door without opening it.

  The action was so startling that she just stood there a moment, amazed; suddenly a hand emerged, grabbed her arm, and pulled her through. There was no sensa­tion; she just passed through the door as if it were not there and then she was inside.

  The house was covered with a straw floor; at the back of the single room was a crude fireplace, and hung on hooks around the room were flickering lanterns that smelled of some kind of foul oil. Near the back of the room were two beds of matted straw stuffed inside wood frames. A low wooden table flanked by thick woven straw mats were the only other furnishing.

  Sitting on the mats were two children. The boy, wearing the same loose-fitting robe she'd seen on the peasant, was munching some kind of confection that looked like peanuts imbedded in hardened molasses. He looked no older than ten or eleven, and he was filthy and disheveled. A couple of flies buzzed around him, although he took no notice. The girl looked per­haps a year older; she showed signs of being close to turning into a woman, and her hair, like his, was very long. She appeared to take a little better care of herself than the boy did, but it was only a matter of de­gree. Both of them could stand several hours in a hot tub, Jill decided.

  "Who are they?" she asked.

  Mogart smiled. "The boy is called Gaha'auna, which means `Shadow of the City'; the girl is Ma'houdea, which means `Bright Star of the Night Skies.' Both are orphans-street urchins, really-who make their liv­ing by begging. Charity is a virtue, so they never starve, although these are a poor people and you'll not get rich on it. This can be a cruel culture for those without family, no matter what the cause. They have great value, though, since children have a freer hand in this society than adults, whose roles are pretty much predetermined, and street urchins are worldly-wise far beyond their years."

  She looked them over. "They are brother and sister?"

  Mogart chuckled. "Oh, my, no. Just partners, you might say. This place has been vacant for a while, so they moved in. in a society where sin is divinely pun­ished there's no need for locks and such, so they'll be all right until the place is rented again. The landlord knows about them, but until he has a renter it would be uncharitable to throw them out, a minor sin in its own right."

  She nodded thoughtfully. "And they-ah, they know what I'm here to do?"

  "More or less," Mogart told her. "I've used them on occasion before. You see, I can't actually enter this level of existence myself-my brother's jewel prevents me. So when I want something-they make a simply incredible wine here, for example-I need help. I can make myself known, with difficulty, in the other levels."

  Jill sighed. "All right, then. I guess it's mostly a matter of doing it. There isn't much choice, is there?"

  He shook his head sadly from side to side. "Not if we are to save our own lovely world. Act quickly here -the time frame is much, much faster than ours, but it is still the slowest of the five in relation to us. A full day here equals more than an hour back home-and every second counts."

  The boy shifted uncomfortably. "Sama'har du ting zwong," he said matter-of-factly to the girl.

  She nodded, looking a little nervous, and shifted position slightly. "Frum du tossiang, jir zwa," she re­sponded uneasily.

  "I can't understand a word they're saying," Jill noted. "How will this ever work?"

  Mogart smiled again. "Integration. I cannot drop your physical form here-it would, well, interfere with the physics of the thing, let's say. Nor, of course, could you learn the language and all else in so short a time. So the arrangement is to integrate you with someone here, in this case that girl. I'm going to slip you in, so to speak, so you'll be inside her head, in full control of her mind and body."

  That thought was unsettling. "Then what becomes of her?" Jill asked.

  "Oh, she'll be there, just pushed way back into the unconscious. Her personality, that is. You'll have lim­ited access to her memory, which will include the basics like language. Occasional flashes of her past might come to you, along with certain knowledge, but it's not controll
able. The moment you have the jewel in your hand, just wish yourself back to me. Saying my name would do it. That will restore her to normal, and, I assure you, both of them will be well rewarded for it." He paused a moment. "But time is pressing. Our Mr. Walters is on a slightly different time frame, but I better get to him soon or he could have some prob­lems where he is."

  With that Mogart left her side and walked to the area between the boy and girl, on the table, in fact. As he did so, she noticed for the first time a series of small cubes of onyx on the table-two dozen at least. Mogart stared down at the randomly scattered cubes and seemed to concentrate.

  The low fire in the back suddenly flared up, and a sudden gust of wind seemed to rush through the room. Both the boy and the girl suddenly looked at each other. The girl seemed scared.

  Then the cubes started moving, each appearing to take on a life of its own and to slide and form a pattern on the table. One end remained open, but Jill could already tell what the small cubes had formed.

  A pentagram.

  "Du grimp zworken ka mugu," the boy told his female partner.

  She remained frozen, staring into the center of the pentagram, the small opening in it right in front of her now. She didn't, couldn't, move.

  Jill McCulloch sympathized. This ritual was eerie enough when she could see Mogart, know who was doing it, and know at least a little of the man behind the magic. They couldn't-they saw only the flare and the wind and the cubes form the shape. It would scare the hell out of anybody.

  "The wind and fire flare are caused by the interac­tion of our existence, out of phase with theirs, coming in a bit," the wizard or demon or exiled professor or whatever he was told Jill matter-of-factly. He turned and faced the stricken girl and sighed. "Hmmm ... Well, I hate to do this, but . . ."

  With that he reached into that body-pouch of his and brought out the jewel itself. He held it out in front of him, stooped down, and placed it right in front of the girl's frightened eyes.