And the Devil Will Drag You Under Page 5

  "I notice that everybody seemed to be in boy-girl pairs," she noted as they walked back to the main street. "Why is that?"

  Shadow of the City looked a little bemused. "It's not seemly for a male to beg unless he is crippled," the boy explained. "That means a girl must do the begging. But girls can't touch or spend money, so the system always results in that kind of partnership."

  Another bit of craziness, she thought.

  "And what if you can't find a partner, or you out-grow yours, like your friend back there?" she con­tinued with the same line of thought, suddenly realizing the meaning in some of the odd commentary. "Do you starve?"

  The boy chuckled. "Did Whisperer of the Long Marsh Grasses look like be was starving?" he asked.

  She had to admit that, if anything, the chubby boy could have stood a diet, and said as much.

  "Sometimes the girls outnumber the boys, which is fine, since more than one can beg for a boy. So if a boy gets without a partner, then an extra girl moves in with the boy who needs one. That's how I got you-that is, how I got Bright Star of the Night Skies-aw, you know what I mean."

  She nodded, sympathizing with his confusion. Had the boy not already had experience with others from outside his world, he could never have handled this conversation at all, she realized.

  "But you don't have that now, do you?" she asked him. "What happens when there are more boys than girls?"

  He shrugged. "If things are going good, we all chip in to help him, and there are always places like the cantina. If times are real bad and he faces starvation, say, he might die or he might take The Risk."

  They were walking along the wide central street now, and she realized that the town was truly a city with perhaps ten thousand or more people in it. They were heading toward the tallest building in town, that was for sure-she could see the odd pyramidal tower's top ahead.

  "The Risk?" she prompted, glad to get whatever added insight into this new culture she could.

  He nodded grimly. "Appealing and praying to the Holy Spirit for divine charity."

  "You get it?" she asked, fascinated.

  His smile turned sardonic. "Oh, you get it, all right. It just might not be what you think. You come to judgment right then and there, really, and if you're found completely worthy, then you'll get what you need. If not, well, I've known guys struck dead on the spot or turned into buffaloes or even girls!"

  She didn't like the obvious distaste of that last, and said so. He just grinned and shrugged it off.

  She sighed, reminding herself that she was, after all, talking to a small boy-hard as it was to remem­ber that sometimes, with his older-than-his-years man­ner-and changed the subject.

  "What happens when you grow up?" she asked. "I understood you to say that you can't beg any more."

  He nodded ruefully. "Manhood means you must act honorably always, and that means an honorable job. If you can't find one or somehow learn a trade-which is hard to do if you're an orphan-then you become a shareholder and go out and work on the land of a Lord for a share of the crop."

  She recognized that part, anyway, from her history classes. Feudalism pure and simple. The poor sold themselves to the rich for food, clothing, shelter, and protection. This would be the fate of most of the boys, and it was sad to think of such bright and free spirits voluntarily chaining themselves for life. It was a depressing if certain future, one obviously not talked about much, as she could feel from his manner. Still, once aired, the subject remained in the mind and had to be discussed.

  "You girls have it easy," he said irritably. "Some guy will come along and take you in and give you everything you want, and all you have to give him are babies. Even if you don't, there's always church service. Not boys. We're stuck with the responsibility."

  To her that sounded like a no-win situation.

  They had by then reached the temple square. It was enormous, a grassy park with four paths forming a plus shape and intersecting at the temple itself, a huge pyramid made out of massive stone blocks whose only entrances were atop hundreds of stairs.

  They stopped across from it. "The main temple of the Holy Spirit," he told her in tones hushed and reverent.

  "The strange-looking man with the jewel-he works there?" she asked him, a little awed herself. She tried to imagine building such a massive structure by muscle power alone and couldn't.

  The boy nodded. "Works there and lives there, as do the church leaders and Women of the Spirit."

  She stared anew at the structure. "Hard to believe anybody actually could live inside there."

  "It's not as bad as you think," he replied. "I've never been inside, but the whole park here, grass and all, forms a roof over a big castle that maybe goes down as far as the temple goes up. Enormous number of rooms and lots of twisty passageways. I think it's part of a big cave or something. Leastwise all I heard is that it's cool down there but always breezy so the smoke doesn't bother you."

  She sighed. On top of everything else, the man she sought lived inside a virtual fort of unknown dimen­sions and honeycombed with labyrinthine passageways. She began to think she would never even find the demon with the jewel. Suddenly a thought came to her.

  "You said something about girls giving themselves to the church," she recalled. "And just now you said some people called Women of the Spirit lived there. Just what does that mean?"

  He shrugged. "Beats me. All I know is that any girl who's passed blood but is unclaimed could show up at one of the four doors there and give herself to the church and get taken in. What happens after that nobody knows, since I don't think anybody ever sees them again."

  That was not cheering news for several reasons. For a brief moment she had an idea to volunteer her­self-at least that would get her inside and perhaps give her some familiarity with who and what was where -but puberty was required, and this body was still months, perhaps even a year, away from that. How long had Mogart said? One day here equaled more than an hour back home. Certainly not enough time. It didn't matter, though; she was certain she couldn't stand a year in this society. Of course, if she didn't solve this problem she'd spend more than that here, she realized suddenly, and new urgency came over her. Her mind raced.

  "Look, you know the one I'm looking for?" she asked almost desperately.

  He nodded. "The Holy Elder himself, the ruler of the temple. Of course. No one else has hair on his face of any amount, and he has lots of it, plus a lot more. He is not human; that is how we know he is the Holy Elder. He is only half man, and half something else."

  That description fit Mogart pretty well, and Mogart had said that to humans his kind would all look basi­cally alike. This line of questioning was becoming in­teresting now.

  "And how do you know this about the Holy Elder? Have you seen him?" she pressed almost desperately.

  The boy nodded. "Oh, yes. He comes out for services and prayers, of course, at midday." The boy suddenly saw where she was heading with this line of questioning. "No services scheduled for a week," he told her. "Prayers, of course, every day at midday, but that won't do you any good."

  "Why not?" she asked, not wishing further disap­pointment.

  "Because you're praying, of course," he responded in that condescending tone that told her she had asked something dumb.

  She let it pass, and considered ways of approaching the demon at the midday ceremony.

  "He does have audiences, though," the boy said suddenly.

  Hope soared. "Audiences? With common people?"

  He nodded. "I've never been to one, 'cause the only reason you're supposed to go is if you have a problem too big to solve. Almost everybody does, so it's crowded, and he usually only gets to talk to a few."

  Obstacles, she thought. Always obstacles. But these were lesser obstacles, ones that could be surmounted. She just wished she had more time.

  "I'd still like to be here for the midday prayer," she told him.

  He shrugged. "All right, but it's only gonna mean trouble. We can set up
here and beg until it's time. Might as well get something done."

  Begging, it turned out, was a universal sort of thing for any culture. Jill was filthy and her hair was, too, but that didn't stop Shadow of the City from finding a remaining mud puddle and applying even more mess to her, almost getting her to wallow in it.

  "It washes off," he assured her. "But the worse you look the better the pitch."

  "I thought charity was a must," she responded, recoiling from the muck.

  "It is," he agreed, "but not to the point of going broke. You give what you can afford, and then usually only once a day. Do you know how many begging teams there are in a city of this size?" He paused and added special emphasis to his next sentence. "Espe­cially right around the Holy Temple?"

  She got his meaning. If she wanted to be here at midday, she would be working in the most competitive of neighborhoods. It was hard to ignore a beggar child when you were within sight of the temple, so competi­tion would be fierce.

  Surprisingly, even to her, with a little coaching she proved pretty good at it. Begging was particularly dif­ficult in this sort of society, where you couldn't tell a good lie without immediately getting tripped up. The boy told her that even a small lie would result in having to tell the absolute truth for a pretty long while, and no fudging.

  Still, it was easy. The mud, the sun, and a little time made her a truly pitiful-looking sight. Even worse was when she had to go to the bathroom and discov­ered that buildings had lime-filled pit toilets in the back most of the time and that toilet paper hadn't been invented. The working and well-to-do had their special cloths, but you brought them and took them back for washing out. The poor just endured the smell and sometimes more until they could get to a river or other water source.

  Looking pitiful, you then spotted a mark-a likely giver-and went to work, running out to him, plead­ing with him, telling him that you were dependent on his kind generosity for the smallest things and lacked everything, all in the most pitiful, miserable voice and with the most desperate expression you could muster. Most of the time they'd just say something like, "I am sorry, but I have nothing I can give you but the bless­ings of me and my house to the Holy Spirit," which was easily the Zolkarian equivalent of "I gave at the office." Still, she got coins-more than she expected, much more, obviously, than the boy had expected.

  Shadow of the City would stay in the background, watching her follow and beg and plead with a mark. If the mark was inclined to give, then he would toss one or more coins on the ground-never hand them to the girl. That was the cue for Shadow of the City to emerge, slowly, walk over and pick them up and stuff them into his robe as if he had just been walking down the street minding his own business and happened to see them.

  It was a cultural charade, true, one of those social rituals of an alien society, but the system worked and preserved the boy's dignity. Women, of course, were assumed not to have any dignity to begin with.

  And then it was midday.

  She had just finished with a mark and gotten a small coin when she heard, behind her, the blast of what sounded like an enormous combo of air horns. She jumped, turned, and looked up. From where she stood she could see two of the doorways high up. Inside men were blowing on what looked like giant shells of some kind, making the tones that carried over the whole city.

  The boy was immediately at her side. "Enough business," he told her. "We have a day's worth plus here, anyway. Now we must pray." He looked at her, a serious expression on his face. "Now, at the first horn, you must stop. In a moment a second will sound, and with that you fall completely down on your stomach, face to the ground. Then just repeat what everybody says and do what they do. Don't do anything else-this is required by Holy Covenant!"

  The last was a real warning here, she knew.

  Then came a second set of blasts, and she was aware of everyone around her, in the street and in the square, dropping down, lying on the ground face down. Shadow of the City went down in front of her, facing her, so she could both see and hear him.

  A new voice took over, obviously with a great deal of amplification. She couldn't imagine the source of that amplification, though; it sounded almost electronic.

  "I praise the Holy Spirit, who is with me always," the voice chanted, and the crowd repeated it. She fol­lowed along. The phrase was repeated several more times.

  "I am the property of the Holy Spirit, who is my Lord and master, be I Lord or slave," came the voice.

  Again the litany was repeated, not once but several times.

  "I exist only to do His will," came the next line, and so it went. Basically the whole chant was a total pledge of submission. Its only saving grace was that it was rhythmically quite beautiful; in Zolkarian it rhymed and was perfectly metered poetry.

  "Praise be to the Holy Spirit, whose will is my will," came the chant.

  She started to repeat it, then stopped and gasped. She recognized that voice now, even if it was reverber­ating unnaturally all over the town. Of course!

  It sounded like Asmodeus Mogart!

  "Complete the chant!" the boy murmured. "Hurry! Before the next line! You must catch up!"

  "But you don't understand," she whispered back. "That's-"

  "Too late," sighed the boy, and a new line came.

  3

  It was over now, over for everyone else, anyway. She was still excited and started to get up, but couldn't. Instead, inside her head, that unearthly, inhuman voice intoned, "CONTRITION!"

  She couldn't move out of the prayer position. "Shadow of the City! What's wrong? What must I do?" she called, her voice slightly panicky.

  The boy, who had already gotten up, squatted down in front of her. "Your people sure are dumb," he sighed. "The simplest little thing there is and you can't repeat a few words without fouling up."

  "Never mind the insults," she shot back. "What do I do now?"

  He sighed again. "I don't know. The general rule is that you keep saying the prayers over and over until you believe them, obey them, and are genuinely re­pentant. Even for one of us that could take days; I'm not sure it'd ever work for you. Could you ever be­lieve in and fully accept the Holy Covenant?"

  She collapsed and sighed as tears of frustration rose within her. No, she had to admit to herself, she couldn't. This God or Holy Spirit or whatever was as inflexible as a computer-it probably was some kind of cosmic computer. It would accept nothing less than total submission because it could do nothing else, and it could see into her mind.

  "Then I'm stuck here, in the middle of the street, in the praying position?" she moaned.

  The boy thought it over. "Well, there's one way. Every once in a while people run into problems like yours-not for being this dumb, though. Sometimes you just get caught in the system whether you want to or not, and it's hard to feel guilty when the whole thing wasn't your fault. Then we take them to somebody with the power."

  "The power?"

  He nodded, although she couldn't see. "Yeah. We sit you there and they look at you and give you a po­tion to drink that makes you kinda sleepy, and then they tell you how you gotta feel and you do."

  A hypnotist, she thought. Maybe that would work long enough to get her out of this!

  "Look," she said. "Maybe that's the way. Then it'll be all right, it'll wear off, and we'll-"

  "No good," he responded, cutting her off. "It doesn't wear off. If it did you'd be back on the ground. Oh, sure, if he just looks at you, to get rid of a headache or something, the effect wears off-but this problem would take the potion, and that doesn't wear off."

  And that wouldn't do at all, she understood. If the hypnotist made her believe not only in the system but in its rightness and naturalness, she'd accept it, even want to live in it. She'd be a good Zolkarian girl and wait anxiously to be taken into a household and have babies.

  No way.

  "There's no other way?" she moaned.

  He thought for a moment. "You gotta understand, this wouldn't even be a problem if
you was one of us. No, I guess the only thing you can do is take The Risk."

  "The Risk?" she repeated, then recalled that that meant petitioning the Holy Spirit directly-but not knowing what would be done about your problem. "What would I tell Him?" she asked, a little frightened.

  The boy shrugged. "Tell Him the truth. He might excuse your ignorance. Then again, His ways are not for folks to understand. He might just make you Zolkarian, and that would solve the problem."

  This problem, and this world's problem, she thought glumly. Not hers. "There is no other way?"

  "Nope. That's about it. You can think on it a little."

  She did, and grew increasingly uncomfortable, while drawing the same blank as he.

  "There's really no choice, is there?" she said at last, and he admitted ruefully that there wasn't.

  Ever since she was a little girl, religion had played little or no role in her life. A nominal Catholic, her less-than-pious father seldom got, her to church or catechism classes-too much time out from gymnastics practice. Later there were the meets themselves, and the training. She went to church, usually, at Easter and Christmas time, and the most religious she had been in recent years was a few blasphemous oaths and little prayers before a meet. And now here she was, stuck, having to pray to a God she knew was there but somehow couldn't take seriously.

  She waited a little, composing in her own mind what she must say, then took a deep breath and decided she was as ready as she'd ever be. She felt the same way she had before big and important meets, standing there at the starting line, only a good deal more helpless since the result here did not depend on her effort alone. "Here goes," she thought aloud, and plunged in.

  "Oh, Holy Spirit, hear my prayer," she began, closing her eyes. "Please-I need your help. I am a stranger here, a spirit from another world, inside this body from your world. My name is Jill McCulloch, and my world is close to its end from a great moon that is going to hit it." She paused a second, hoping that flattery would work. "We cannot stop the Moon alone. We need the aid of your Holy Elder to save us. I was sent here to get that aid, and I have not been able to figure out how to reach him. It was this desperation that caused me to miss the ending of the prayers, for when I heard his voice I could think only of my own home in terrible danger and that this was the man who could save my people. Can you excuse a poor foreigner whose desperation to save the lives of her people is foremost in her mind? Only you, Holy Spirit, can ex­cuse and help me now. I seek and plead for your help."