And The Devil Will Drag You Under (1979) (2 page)

Just a few special kinds of superbombs planted here, a few others there, on the asteroid, a nicely timed and coordinated detonation, and it would miss the sun, whip around, and come back.

More bombs to brake it and park it. Just so.

Just so.

Only all the bombs hadn't gone off. The special things had to be individually and carefully built, but there had been no way to field-test an individual bomb, only a design. And the values were too critical-no redundancy. They had shot their wad on it in their stupid optimism, and it hadn't worked. It wouldn't work. The initial explosions had gone fine, and the asteroid had whipped around the sun and was now on its way back at tremendous speed. Time to put on the brakes.

Oops! No brakes? And the dumb bastards had actually gone into those bombs, to try to fire them manually!

Some of them
did
fire. Some, not all. Enough to point the damned thing straight at the Earth.

From an orbit a few million kilometers out, the gravitational effects would have been annoying but not serious-and slow. More than made up for by the riches of the place.

But now the thing was a bullet, and even though it raced at thousands of kilometers per hour to its target, it seemed to move in slow motion, like a bullet creep-ing toward someone in front of a firing squad.

It didn't matter now. Three, four days, the radio had said. Not true, he knew-and he knew that the people still around, the people in this bar even, didn't believe it, either. Hours. A day or two at most. The Earth had already started to wobble, to crack. There would be little left when the thing hit, anyway.

The barman wanted two bucks before he'd give him any more doubles. He sighed, got up, and went back over to the three lonely slot machines. He had six quarters, but he didn't need them. He put a quarter in the first one, and before it came up three oranges he had already put a quarter in the second one. By the time the third one was spinning, the second had come up three bells, and now the third one had three cherries.

He returned to the bar with a handful of quarters and plopped them down on top the bar. The barman had an almost stricken expression on his face; he shook his head incredulously and poured a double for the little man and one for himself.

Even the young couple seemed distracted by his little display. The machines rang an electric bell whenever a jackpot came up, and the din from all three going off within seconds of one another had been im-possible to ignore.

He turned on his stool, looked straight at them, and smiled. Picking up his drink, he hopped off the stool and wandered over to their booth. "Might I join you for a moment?" he asked pleasantly.

They seemed to hesitate for a second, glancing first at him and then at each other, but both were also fascinated, and it was something that took their minds off the reality outside.

Jill McCulloch and Mac Walters shrugged at each other, and Mac said, "Why not? Have a seat?" He scooted over to allow the little man to sit next to him, opposite Jill.

The man looked something like a skid-row bum-tiny, frail, with an unkempt growth of gray beard and a stained suit that might really have been brown but was definitely slept in. He reeked of whiskey and stale cigarettes.

"You are from the University?" he asked them pleasantly in his slightly accented tones, his voice un-slurred by the prodigious amounts of alcohol he'd been consuming.

Jill shook her head negatively. "Not me. I don't even know why I'm in this crazy city."

Mac nodded. "Same here." They introduced themselves by name.

The little man seemed pleased. "I am Asmodeus Mogart," he responded, then paused and pulled out a cigarette, ignoring Jill's obvious distaste for both the smoke and him. He looked at them seriously.

"You know we only have one more day," he said softly, matter-of-factly. "And you know that no one in the end can survive."

They both gave involuntary starts, not only from the assurance and authority with which he spoke, but also because his words brought their attention back to the one thing that they had, for a brief moment, managed to put at the back of their minds.

Walters looked anew at the strange little man. "Are you from the University yourself?" he asked, thinking that the stranger's condition could easily be explained by current events.

The little man smiled. "Yes, in a way I am. Not in the same way as some of the others around, though. A different one."

Jill's eyebrows rose. "Oh? Which? I didn't know any of them were still going."

He grinned now, revealing nasty, yellow-stained teeth that seemed somehow inhuman. They all came to a point. She decided that, overall, he was the most repulsive-looking man she had ever seen.

"Not any one that you would have heard of, I assure you," Mogart told them. "And not one that you could pronounce in any event." His expression grew grave. "Look, would you save this world if you could? Par-ticularly if it meant the only way to save your own lives?"

They looked at him strangely. "What kind of ques-tion is that?" Walters wanted to know.

The little man looked thoughtful for a moment, then drained his double and crushed the glass beneath his foot. The barman didn't see this. They watched as Mogart reached down and picked up a long splinter of glass and unhesitatingly pricked his thumb with it. He squeezed on the thumb, in no apparent pain, until a drop of blood appeared.

The other two gasped.

"A true blueblood, as you can see," Mogart said lightly. And it was true. Unless there were some kind of trick involved, his blood
was
blue-and not a dark blue, either. A nice, pretty sky-blue.

He reached up and pushed back his long gray hair, revealing his ears. They were small, and back flush against the side of his head. They were basically rec-tangular, except that the outer edge of the top of the rectangle had a sort of S-shaped curve. They were not human ears, anyway-more like those seen on gar-goyles and demons.

Mac Walters edged a little away from the strange man, almost pressing himself against the wall of the booth. Jill could only stare at the little man, or whatever he was, in horrid fascination.

"I have a tail, too," the little man told them. "But pardon me if I do not disrobe. It is enough to show you that I am not human. I trust you are convinced of that?"

"Who-what-are you, then?" Jill demanded.

The little man sucked on the thumb he'd penetrated. "I told you-Asmodeus Mogart. At least this week, anyway." He looked sadly at the crushed glass. "I am, as you might have guessed, an alcoholic. Things tend to blur a bit when you have that problem." He sighed, considered calling for another double, discarded the idea for the moment, and continued.

"As to what I am, well, you might think of me as a University professor on leave. A behavioral scientist, you might say, studying the charming little civilization you have-ah, had here."

"But not from any University on this world," Wal-ters responded. "Are you here to study us at the end or something?" That thought suddenly became the most important thing to both of the humans, far more so than what the little fellow was.

Mogart shrugged, a wistful look on his face. "No, no. I was-ah, terminated, you see. Drinking.

There was a scandal. Since I was on the project that created this research run, they decided to stick me here."

"Research run?" Jill prodded.

He nodded. "Oh, yes. Probabilities Department, you know. Get yourself a nice hypothesis, and they con-struct a working model. This universe of yours, for example. One of hundreds they've done. Maybe still do. I'm out of touch after so long, you see."

Mac Walters was horrified.
"Construct? Universe?"

"Oh, yes," Mogart replied casually. "Easy to do, they tell me. Lots of machines and data and all that, but not really difficult. Just expensive." He gave a mournful sigh. "That's the problem, you see. It's the whole universe they've built, not just this little planet. I actually took pride in hand and tried to talk them into saving it. Actually made the trip-first time in I can't remember how many centuries. They didn't care." He looked at each of their faces in turn. "Face it. If you had a rat colony, observing how it worked, and one of the rats died, wouldn't that be
part
of the ex-periment?"

Jill McCulloch shook her head disbelievingly. "I can't accept all this. Here it is the end of the world and I'm sitting in a bar talking to a madman."

The little man heard her comment but ignored it.

"You see, this thing has caused me a problem. Stay here and die with you all, or go home."

"That's
a problem?"
Mac asked him, thinking there'd be no choice.

He nodded sadly. "They'll put me out to pasture in some nice little place, but it's a cold little world and there's no booze. None." His tone was sad and tinged with self-pity, and there seemed to be tears in his dark, slanted eyes. "I couldn't stand it. So, you see, I must go for the third alternative, try it, anyway."

They looked at hint curiously, expectantly. In other circumstances they would have beaten hasty exits, dismissing him as an imaginative drunk or a drunken madman-which, in fact, they still really thought he was, deep down. But in other circumstances they wouldn't be there, not now, and they certainly would not have invited him to sit down with them. When the end of the world was nigh, and you had exhausted all hope, you sat in a bar and listened to a drunken madman and took him seriously. It didn't hurt in the least, and they were getting more than slightly tipsy themselves.

"What alternative?" Jill McCulloch wanted to know.

The little man seemed to forget himself for a mo-ment, then suddenly animation gripped him again.

"Oh, yes, yes," he mumbled apologetically. "But, you see, that's why I didn't do this sooner.

Too many drinks, too much lost time. Now I can no longer pick and choose the best people to send. Now I must feed the broadest possible requirements into my, ah, computer, let's call it, and take what I can get. I sent out the call, and here you both are. See?"

They didn't see at all.

He looked at Jill McCulloch. "How old are you? Tell me a little about yourself." His hand went into his pocket, and he seemed to be touching or rubbing something inside that pocket. Neither Jill nor Mac could see him doing it.

Jill suddenly found herself wanting to talk. "I'm twenty-five. I was born in Encino, California, and lived most of my life in Los Angeles. My father was a former Olympic team member, and from the start he decided I was going to be a star, too. Bigger than he was, since he never won a medal. I was put into gymnastics training before I can even remember. When Mom died-I was only seven-that only increased my father's determination. I got special treatment, special schools, coaches, all that. I barely missed the Olympic team when I was fourteen, but made the U.S. meet.

I did it at eighteen and won a bronze medal. But shortly after that, the drive started to go. I just didn't seem as sure of myself as I was. I knew I'd had it, and Dad seemed to accept it. I went to USC, taking a phys. ed. major-after all, it was all I knew how to do. Maybe become a coach, find the next gold medal-ist. I got bored, though. After all, I'd
had
all that stuff since I was born. I dropped out when I was twenty and got a job doing some disco dancing, got a little place near the ocean, and spent my time swimming, surfing, hang-gliding, and generally drifting."

Mogart nodded. "But you have kept yourself in excellent physical condition, I see."

She nodded back. "Oh, yes. When you do it for your whole life, it just becomes second nature to you."

Mogart sat back in the booth for a moment,, thinking. The pattern had been youth, athletics, bright mind, and guts. This one looked all right. He turned to Mac, his hand still in his pocket.

"You?"

Now it was Walters' turn to feel talkative.

"Ever since I was small, I wanted to be a football player," he told them. "I worked at it, trained for it, did everything I could to make the grade. Hell, my father was a West Virginia coal miner-I saw what that life did to him and Ma. No way. And I did it, I really did. Big high-school play got me scouted by Nebraska, and they signed me as a running back. I was good-real good. But after a friend of mine was hurt on the field and they told him he'd never play again, I got smart in other ways, too. I took my degree in business. I was signed by the Eagles and played almost five years with them and the Broncos, until my knee really started in on me. They told me there was a risk of permanent damage if I kept playing, and I started looking around. Kerricott Corp.-the big restaurant-and-hotel chain-made me an offer. I'd been working with them in the off season after I got my M.B.A. from Colorado. I took it. Junior executive. I was on the way up when this stuff happened. Me and a few of the others were going to take a plane to New Zealand, but somehow I wound up here."

Mogart seemed extraordinarily pleased. Another good fit. "You would never have made it to New Zea-land," he consoled. "No fuel stops, most of the islands gone or the volcanoes erupting.

Same with New Zea-land. It's gone." He shifted. "How's your knee now?"

"Fine," Walters responded unhesitatingly. "I think I got out in time."

"Either of you married?" Mogart prodded. "Fam-ily?"

"I was married once," Walters told him. "We busted up a year and a half ago. I guess she's dead now. I don't know about West Virginia-I haven't been able to get a line east of the Rockies. I guess they're all gone, too.

Mogart turned his head to look at Jill McCulloch. "You?"

She shook her head slowly from side to side. "Dad wouldn't move out. We tried, but by the time he de-cided to do anything it was too late. The tidal waves, you know. He was all I had-close, anyway. Gone now." That last was said so softly it could hardly be heard, as if for the first time she was suddenly facing up to what "gone" really meant.

"Do either of you have any experience with wea-pons?" Mogart continued his questioning.

"I'm pretty good with a rifle and did some deer hunting with a bow and arrow when I was a teen-ager, but nothing else," Walters told him.